HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY: FOUNDATION TO MATURITY 151sentence—“They should be mindful that the kingdom of God comesnot from the exuberance of rhetoric but from the flowering of faith”—is from the ninth line of Sulpicius’s prefatory remarks to his friendDesiderius in the Life of St. Martin. The appropriation is clear asthese two selections illustrate:VSM: . . . qui regnum Dei non in eloquentia, sed in fide constat.VC: . . . que regnum dei non in eloquentiae exuberantia sed in fideflorulentia constare. 89If Adomnán was to rehabilitate the reputation of Columba’s monastery,he had to associate his predecessor with the most unimpeachablesaints.There are a few instances when Adomnán’s narrative raises interestingepistemological issues. For example, in the Second Preface hemakes the traditional claim that he will write only the truth andreport nothing “doubtful or uncertain”/quaedam dubia uel incerta scripturum.90 Most of the miracles in the VC are drawn from oral testimony.Adomnán rarely claims to have been an eyewitness to Columba’smiracles. Yet in his retelling of one of the more important posthumousmiracles he claims to have witnessed, he has made significantuse of a similar miracle from Book III of Gregory’s Dialogues. Theincident is worth amplifying. Adomnán reports the existence of asevere drought and its miraculous end in God-sent rain. (II.44) Afteracknowledging that he had been an eyewitness to this miracle (nostristemporibus factum propriis inspeximus oculis), he fixes the approximate timeof its happening, seventeen years before his writing about it, orapproximately 575–80 (Ante annos namque ferme xuii). 91 He carefullyplaces these specific historical markers before the anecdote is told.He then tells the story: the monks, suffering from a severe drought,fearing that there would be no harvest, took Columba’s white tunic,the tunic he died in, and those books he had personally written,and, after choosing some from among the elders, they caused themto walk around the ploughed land raising the tunic in the air andshaking it three times. They then took his books and read from thematop the hill of the angels where Columba was seen conferring with89Adomnán, Life of Columba, 2,1a; Sulpicius Severus, Vie de Saint Martin, 248.90Adomnán, Life of Columba, 6; Sulpicius Severus, Vie de Saint Martin, 253–54.91Adomnán, Life of Columba, 172.