HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

224 LEAH SHOPKOWThe Distribution of Dynastic HistoriesAlthough dynastic histories of any type are uncommon in generalduring the Middle Ages until the very end, there are some discernablepatterns to their production. Before about 950, all dynastic historiesare genealogical and all, with the exception of Irish genealogies,concern royal lineages. 29 Many historians are familiar, for example,with the genealogies provided by Nennius in his Historia Britonum andby Asser in his Life of Alfred the Great. 30 There is some debate whetherthese genealogies arise purely from indigenous cultural patterns—Germanic or Irish oral traditions of descent—or were influenced bythe genealogical materials in the Bible in their creation, but thatthey contain biblical material and in their written form were deeplyinfluenced by the Bible is beyond question. 31 Royal genealogies havesurvived from the early medieval period for both the Merovingiansand Carolingians, for the Goths (reported by both Cassiodorus andJordanes), for the Anglo-Saxons, and for the Welsh kings; the largebody of Irish genealogical materials, containing the names of some12,000 individuals, are not exclusively royal. Genicot has noted thatwith the exception again of the Irish genealogies, genealogical literaturecomes from northern, “Germanic” Europe in this period. 32From the end of the tenth century, however, new genealogiesbegan to appear of families who, while they may have claimed royalor imperial descent were themselves not always royal or imperial.The earliest of these was the genealogy of Arnulf the Great ofFlanders, compiled around 965, composed by Witger, perhaps atCompiègne, but preserved at the monastery of Saint-Bertin. 33 Thesewere followed by genealogies from all over France (although morefrom the north than the south), from Spain, from Germany, andfrom the Latin territories of the east. 34No history organized around the family that was not simple genealogyseems to have survived from the first millennium. After 1000,however, the number slowly begins to grow, but interestingly, and29Ó Corrain (1985).30On these and other genealogies, see Davis (1992).31On Ireland, see Ó Corrain (1985), 55; on England see Davis (1992), 30–31.32Genicot (1975), 17.33Genealogiae comitum Flandriae, ed. Bethmann, 302–04.34For a more comprehensive account of the surviving genealogies, see Genicot(1975).