HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

186 NORBERT KERSKENpoint of departure for all high medieval syntheses was the Gothichistory of Isidore of Seville. 20 A first compilation was undertaken byPelayo, 1098/1101–1130 and 1142–43 bishop of Oviedo, the formercapital of Asturia (†1153). Around 1118, Pelayo put together acompilation of chronicles, the so-called Corpus Pelagianum, which beganwith Isidore’s history of the Goths and was supplemented with achronicle by Pelayo himself for the eleventh century. 21 The significanceof Pelayo, who stands in disrepute due to his forgeries in favor ofhis diocese, consists in the fact that he places the Leon-Castiliankingdom in the tradition of the Isodorian Goths for the first timeand thereby postulates a ‘Spanish’ historical context. The so-calledCrónica Nájerense, compiled in the middle of the twelfth century in theClunaic abbey of Santa María de Nájera (Rioja), represents a furtherdevelopment. 22 The three books of the chronicle offer, following auniversal-historical introduction, a portrayal of ‘Spanish’ history upto the beginning of the twelfth century from a Castilian perspective.The two earliest texts presented here date already from the eleventhcentury. They refer to the youngest system of rule at the time, thedukedom of Normandy, which underwent a politically and constitutionallyindependent development since 911 in the north of theWest Frankish empire. 23 Commissioned by the ruling duke RichardI, Dudo (ca. 965–before 1043), a canon from Saint-Quentin whowas in diplomatic legations at the Norman court, began in the years994 to 1015 to write a comprehensive depiction of the history ofthe Norman rulers, a Gesta Normannorum. 24 Dudo refers to Frankishhistorical thought, which since the seventh century had claimeddescent from the Trojans and, thereby, historically equal worth withthe Romans, and he claims for his part that the ancestors of theNormans, the Daci or Dani, descend from Antenor, who fled fromTroy. In the depiction of the Viking-Norman heroic early period,the legendary Hasting, who, as the “archetypical Northman”, 2520Cf. the article by Pizarro in this volume.21Crónica del obispo Don Pelayo, ed. B. Sánchez Alonso, Textos latinos de la EdadMedia española 1 (Madrid, 1924). See also Fernández Conde (1971).22Crónica Nájerense, ed. A. Ubieto Arteta, Textos Medievales 15 (Valencia, 1966).23On Norman historiography generally, see Boehm (1969).24Dudo of Saint Quentin, De moribus et actis primorum Normanniæ ducum, ed. J. Lair,Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de Normandie III, 3 (Caen, 1865); Englishtrans.: Dudo of St. Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. E. Christiansen (Woodbridge,Suffolk, 1998).25Davis (1976), 54.