HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

4 DEBORAH MAUSKOPF DELIYANNISbetter with our eyes, than we learn from hearing others. For what isseen can be reported without lying. This discipline pertains to grammar,since whatever is worthy of being remembered is committed towriting.Isidore then divides historia into three genres: diaries or ephemerida,which recount actions day by day; calendars, which tell things monthby month; and annals, which record events year by year. Historiadeals with events from many years or periods of time, and differsfrom annals in that “history is about those times which we haveseen, but annals are about those years which our age does notknow”. 8 Interestingly, the primary distinction for Isidore seems notto be historia vs. annales, but the unit of time that is the base of thenarrative.After Isidore, theoretical writing about history ceases. We are thereforedependent upon the statements, usually quite brief, found withinhistorical texts, in which the authors explain what they are doing.Bede, in the preface to his Historia ecclesiastica, notes that “as is atrue law of history, I have endeavored to commit to writing thosethings which I have gathered from common report for the instructionof posterity”. 9 Some modern scholars have taken the vera lex historiaeto mean that Bede thought there were rules for writing history, whichinvolved checking sources and reporting facts accurately (all thingsthat Bede is known to have done). However, Roger Ray has arguedthat Bede meant not that there was one true law for writing historybut that one of the laws used in writing history allowed for the useof evidence from hearsay if it is thought to be true. 10 The focus on‘truth’ as a characteristic of history-writing, based on the definitionsof Cicero, Isidore, Bede, and other authorities, did form part of thedefinition understood by most historians throughout the Middle Ages.For example, Hugh of St. Victor noted that “historia est rerum gestarumnarratio quae in prima significatione litterae continentur”. 118Isidore, Etymologiae I.44.4: “historia est eorum temporum quae vidimus, annalesvero sunt eorum annorum uos aetas nostra non novit”.9Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, preface, my translation: “ui, quod veralex historiae est, simpliciter ea quae fama vulgante collegimus ad instructionem posteritatislitteris mandare studuimus”.10Ray (1980).11Hugh of St. Victor, De sacramentis, prologue, PL 176, col. 185A.