HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

HIGH AND LATE MEDIEVAL NATIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 203sion of Edward II (1307). After Robert of Gloucester’s chronicle, itis the second historiographic text in Middle English; it makes use,like the former, of the verse form and derives possibly from a clericin the western Midlands. The portrait of English history is determinedby a developed territorial consciousness and the continuity ofthe kingdom, untouched by dynastic breaks. At about the same time,in the years around 1300, the Augustine canon Peter of Langtoft inBridlington (east of York) wrote an English history from the beginningsto the death of Edward I (1307) in Anglo-Norman verse. 87With the depiction of the death of Henry III (1272), he is independentof previous works in his depiction of contemporary history.The verse chronicle enjoyed great popularity, which is apparent inthe fact that the text was translated into Middle English in 1338 byRobert Mannyng of Brunne, a Gilbertine canon. 88Peter of Langtoft marks a final turning point in the historicalthought of medieval England. Outside the circle of educated monks,clerics, and the court, a noble lay public had developed an interestin national history. The understanding of English history for thispublic was based neither on a concept of Volksgeschichte nor on a conceptof a history of kings but, rather, on a notion of the territorialunity of the island, which was conceived even in its natural spatialexpanse and thus included both Wales and Scotland. The main textof these Brut-chronicles is an anonymously handed-down text calledBrut or The Chronicles of England. It was begun as a prose chroniclein Anglo-Norman, extended in its oldest version to the year 1272,and was continued during the beginning of the fourteenth centuryfor Edward I’s period of rule, to 1333. From one of these versions,a translation into Middle English was prepared in the third quarterof the fourteenth century; 89 the Anglo-Norman version was not continuedfurther after that time. The exclusive, pragmatic organizationof the text in narrative sections guaranteed an openness of form,87The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, in French Verse. From the Earliest Period to the Deathof King Edward I, ed. T. Wright, 2 vols., RS 47.1–2 (London, 1866, 1868); newed. of the contemporary part: Édition critique et comentée de Pierre de Langtoft, Le règned’Édouard Ier, ed. J. C. Thiolier (Créteil, 1989). See also Summerfield (1998).88Robert Mannyng of Brunne, The Chronicle, ed. I. Sullens, Medieval and RenaissanceTexts and Studies 153 (Binghampton, N. Y., 1996).89The Brut or The Chronicles of England, ed. F. W. D. Brie, 2 vols., Early EnglishText Society. Original Series 131, 136 (London, 1906, 1908). See also Brie (1905);Taylor (1986).