HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

98 MICHEL SOTand it has been listed in catalogues. All of these concerns are takenup again, amplified, and rendered more explicit in the Liber pontificalis.Louis Duchesne showed that its primitive version, which is knownonly through cross-checking between its second edition and the abbreviatedsegments from this first version, must be attributed to the timeof Pope Hormisdas (514–23) and of his two successors, John I andFelix IV (d. 530).Form and ContentThis first version of the Liber pontificalis is introduced by two apocryphalletters, one from Saint Jerome to Pope Damasus (†384) andthe other from Damasus to Jerome, according to a rhetorical formulathat is not without examples. Jerome wrote to Damasus thathe wanted to know the names of the martyred popes and the popeswho transgressed the canons. Damasus replied that he was sendingto Jerome what he was able to find, that is, the series of documentationon his predecessors from former times and the collected accountson the more recent predecessors. 20The entries concerning each pope are organized according to aoutline format 21 that reflects the concerns of all former local history.First, the name of the pope and his number are given in chronologicalorder, beginning with the catalogue of Liberius (up to 354)and other catalogues whose common sections appear to have ceasedin the fifth century. It was crucial for the author to be able to specifywhich figures could be included in the rank of pope and to establishthe order in which they followed one another. Next comes theorigin and family of the pope: his nation and the name of his father,according to an arrangement taken from Jerome’s de Viris illustribus.Then the duration of the pontificate in years, months, and days borrowedfrom the previous catalogues.The popes’ status as martyrs is explained next, in order to answerthe first question asked in the letter of Pseudo-Jerome: the authorplaces here the passions and the oral traditions that are linked, instead20Liber pontificalis, ed. Duchesne and Vogel, Intro., ch. II.21Liber pontificalis, ed. Duchesne and Vogel, Intro., ch. IV.