HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

152 THOMAS J. HEFFERNANthese divine beings. That very day the sky clouded over and therain fell. Adomnán underlines the veracity of these events in the nextchapter (II.45) by repeating that he witnessed it (quae ipsi perspeximusfidem indubitanter confirmant). 92 The actual event he described is, however,closely related to, and was likely borrowed from, an incidentreported by Gregory the Great in the Dialogues (III.15). Gregory tellshis disciple Peter of a posthumous miracle performed with the tunicof the monk St. Eutychius of Noricia. There are a number of interestingparallels between Eutychius and Columba: both were monks,both became abbots, and both nurtured their respective monasteriesfor many years before their deaths. Gregory reports that therewas a serious drought in the area. Eutychius’s cloak was broughtout by the citizens of the region and held aloft, and prayers wereoffered while citizens processed through the fields. Invariably therains would fall shortly after the ceremony concluded.The miracles are virtually identical. Why would Adomnán insiston being an eyewitness to an account that bore so close a correspondenceto Gregory’s account of Eutychius and not acknowledgethe correspondence? If we accept Adomnán as a reliable narrator,then we must conclude that both events could have taken place.However, that does not adequately explain the similarity of languagein the two accounts (eius tunicam levare Dial. III.15; circumirent tunica ...leuarentque VC II.44) and the order of events in the two different narratives.It is plausible that the miracle in the Dialogues was used bythe community of Iona, possibly prompted by Adomnán himself, andritually performed in order to end their drought. Adomnán thenwould have reported this event to which he was indeed an eyewitnessin the VC. Since the earlier miracle served as the prompt forthis event at Iona, Adomnán wished his readers to know—and hencethe obvious use of the familiar borrowed language and order—notonly that the founder of the Iona community was capable of endingthe drought but also that Columba—this representative of a communitythat some would think rustic and barbarous—possessed thesame power as the great leaders of Benedictine monasticism. Adomnánis making use of the rhetorical principle of recursive structures discussedabove. The recognition facilitated by the recursive structuresubordinates the importance of the actual event on Iona to Columba’s92Adomnán, Life of Columba, 174.