HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

248 LEAH SHOPKOWthe family chose to identify themselves as Welfs, and the literaryflowering at Welf court at Braunschweig, a new court in search ofan anchor. 133 But this kind of history became most fully useful whenthe prestige of literacy soared, the audience for learned texts expanded,and literature of all kinds became more readily exploitable by thecourt. Thus the author of the late fourteenth-century Austrian vernacularchronicle of the dukes flaunts his considerable erudition andmastery of Latin sources; the text opens with a reference to Seneca’swork on the cardinal virtues. 134 When that change occurred in thelate fourteenth century in the German lands, an explosion of dynastichistory followed and, as I have argued elsewhere, a similar explosionof all kinds of history took place across western Europe. 135But there is no reason that the history of such a territory had totake dynastic form; there were always alternatives to such a meansof forming identity, which might focus instead on common institutionslike laws and customs, or on a particular monastery or bishopric.In the fourteenth century it is clear that civic chronicles receivesome of these local historical energies. Consequently, the histories ofregions are not often organized around their rulers, even if thoserulers play a very important role in the histories. In France, dynastichistory endured, and it makes a kind of sense. There was in Franceno common law, as there was in England to inspire a Bracton, buta scattering of common laws and Roman law. What held the Frenchterritories together, to the degree that they were held together, wasthe person of the king. In other words, the king was the main sharedroyal institution and perhaps the only possible repository for nationalhistory. The reasons why history also took on a dynastic organizationin Aragon, I shall leave to a scholar of that region.133See Schmidt (1983); Nass (1995); Hucker (1995); Moeglin (1995), 525.134Österreichische Chronik von den 95 Herrschaften, ed. Seemüller, cclii–ccliii on thesources; cclxxvii on the author’s education; 1 and n. 1 for the reference to Seneca.135Johanek (1992), 205–06; Shopkow (1997), 263–71.