HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

190 NORBERT KERSKENat Sázava; and, finally, in the 1280s by a canon of the Prague cathedralchapter. 32In England in the first decade of the thirteenth century, the monkGervase from the monastery of Christ Church in Canterbury wrotea Gesta regum Britanniae, an outline of English history from Brutus to1210 33 as pure royal history, since no such continuations had beenundertaken since the middle of the twelfth century. As regards thecontent, it is worth mentioning that the Monmouth draft of earlyBritish history makes up, quite understandably, the beginning partof the depiction.Other English histories up to the end of the thirteenth centuryare remarkable in that they are integrated in the framework of auniversal-historical beginning portion. First the writings of Ralph deDiceto (ca. 1120/30–1202/03) should be mentioned. Distinguishedby his position as dean of the London cathedral church and his specialcloseness to the court of Henry II Plantagenet, he began workin the 1180s on a large-scale universal-historical excerpt project, theAbbreviationes chronicorum, 34 in which he placed the older English historyin world-historical contexts. Contemporary history (tempora moderna)begins for him in 1147/48 with the beginning of the political influenceof Henry II, which he deals with in a work of its own, the Ymagineshistoriarum. 35 In the structure of his depiction it becomes apparentthat he is not interested in English history in the traditional sense;rather, his selection is geared toward the dynastic interests of hisking. He thus devotes little attention to the oldest history of Britanniaand the Anglo-Saxon period, but considers the non-English territoriesof the Angevin empire, the dukedom of Normandy, and the earldomof Anjou. Such a ‘Plantagenet conception’ of English history, a connectionof historiographic conception to dynastic coincidences, thenadmittedly lost its basis with the end of the personal union.32Ed. Josef Emler in Fontes rerum Bohemicarum, Prameny dîjin ‘eskÿch, vol. 2 (Praha,1874), 201–69; Pokra‘ovatelé Kosmovi, ed. M. Bláhová and Zdenîk Fiala (Praha, 1974).33Gervase of Canterbury, Gesta Regum, in The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury,vol. 2: The Minor Works, ed. W. Stubbs, RS 73.2 (London, 1880), 3–324.34Ralph de Diceto, Abbreviationes Chronicorum, in The Historical Works of Master Ralphde Diceto, Dean of London, ed. W. Stubbs, vol. 1, RS 68.1 (London, 1876), 1–263.See also Zinn (1977); Duggan and Duggan (1980).35Ralph de Diceto, Ymagines Historiarum, in The Historical Works of Master Ralph deDiceto, Dean of London, ed. W. Stubbs, vol. 1, RS 68.1 (London, 1876), 265–440;vol. 2, RS 68.2 (London, 1876), 1–174.