HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

CHAPTER ONEUNIVERSAL HISTORY 300–1000: ORIGINS ANDWESTERN DEVELOPMENTSMichael I. AllenFor Peter WhiteBeginningsThe practice of universal history from A.D. 300 to 1000 reflects basictenets and wider concerns of Christian belief. Adherents to the faithreceived in baptism a sacramental cleansing from Original Sin, inheritedby all humanity from Adam and Eve. The baptized, whatevertheir personal stories, gained forgiveness and kept, for that, a natureshared with the first parents in their fallen state. Ambrose of Milanevoked the common origin of all in his sermons on the Hexaemeron,or “Six Days of Creation”, which he delivered in A.D. 386 duringthe paschal week that culminated in the new and annually reaffirmedchristenings of the Easter Vigil. To aspirants who had applied forbaptism, the bishop preached other sermons on Abraham and thepatriarchs. 1 For new and established believers, there lay—beyondkith, kin, locality, and perceived time—an inherited community andhistory rooted in the Bible: to believe was to assent to a divine planwhose origins Moses had written and whose end the prophets andthe resurrected Christ had foretold. Yet, if Christian leaders likeAmbrose harked back to a common beginning, or “principle” ( principium),promptly allegorized into Christ himself, 2 the task of elaboratingwhat was simple and all-embracing was often complex andtime-bound. Genesis set the beginning of history, and St. Paul, for1Cf. Introduction to Sancti Ambrosii Opera, ed. C. Schenkl, CSEL 32/1 (1897),2:vi–viii.2Ambrose, Hexaemeron I.4.15, ed. C. Schenkl, CSEL 32/1 (1897), 2:13.