HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

INTRODUCTION 3and other texts and objects. 4 The common thread is ‘narrative’, whichis perhaps useful to remember, but without any specific connotationof the form or factuality of the given story.Nevertheless, many medieval authors who wrote works that weconsider historiographical did have some idea that historia was a particulartype of narrative. It is difficult to assess precisely what allmedieval historians thought they were doing, because there are veryfew theoretical treatises devoted to the writing of history. Isidore ofSeville’s discussion of the place of historia is probably the most frequentlyquoted, partly because Isidore’s exposition was so clear, andpartly because his work was so widely consulted in the Middle Ages.Isidore discusses history in book I of the Etymologiae, which is devotedto grammar. 5 After explaining parts of speech and rules of syntaxand poetic meter, Isidore comes to fabula and historia as the two basictypes of writing. Fabulae are fables, fictional accounts (such as thoseabout speaking animals) intended to prove a point. History, as theparallel to fabula, likewise is intended to prove points. “Historiae arethings which really have been done; argumenta are those thing whichin fact have not been done, but could be done; fabulae are thingswhich neither have been nor could be done, since they are contraryto nature”. 6 Isidore notes that the etymological root of the word inGreek means ‘to see or to know’: 7Among the ancients, no-one wrote history unless he was present andhad seen what he was writing about. For we discover what happened4Cf. Ray (1974), 36.5The place of historia in the trivium was not clear; Alcuin, like Isidore, assignedit to grammar, but Honorius Augustodunensis, in De Animae exsilio et patria, and othersafter the twelfth century assigned it to rhetoric. See Boehm (1957); Goetz (1985).6Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae I.44.5, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911): “Namhistoriae sunt res verae quae factae sunt; argumenta sunt quae etsi facta non sunt,fieri tamen possunt; fabulae vero sunt quae nec factae sunt nec fieri possunt, quiacontra naturam sunt”. This is based on the classical tradition, inherited from (pseudo)Cicero, in the Ad Herennium and De inventione: history was a genre of prose writing,one of the three main parts of narratio, alongside fabula and argumentum. “Fabula est,quae neque veras neque veri similes continet res, ut eae sunt, quae tragoedis traditaesunt. Historia est gesta res, sed ab aetatis nostrae memoria remota. Argumentumest ficta res, quae tamen fieri potuit, velut argumenta comoediarum” (Ad herennium13); see Roest (1999), 51.7Isidore, Etymologiae I.41.1–2: “Apud veteres enim nemo conscribebat historiam,nisi is qui interfuisset, et ea quae conscribenda essent vidisset. Melius enim oculisquae fiunt deprehendimus, quam quae auditione colligimus. Quae enim videntur,sine mendacio proferuntur. Haec disciplina ad Grammaticam pertinet, quia quidquiddignum memoria est litteris mandatur”.