HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

LATER MEDIEVAL INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 285period. As historians tend to see the papacy as the primordial episcopalinstitution, other episcopal histories usually are presented asthe diocesan pendant of the Liber pontificalis. Among these episcopalhistories the Gesta episcoporum in particular are singled out as generically‘quintessential’. Such Gesta, which frequently were written bymembers of the bishop’s familia (often his secretary) or by membersof the cathedral clergy, predominantly trace the history of the episcopalsee as a succession of bishops and their religious and worldlyendeavours from the foundation of the diocese onwards. 26 As a literarygenre, the Gesta episcoporum would have reached its apex betweenthe ninth and the twelfth century, notably in Northern France,Lorraine, and Saxony: centres of Carolingian, Ottonian and Salianimperial culture with close-knit ties between imperial and episcopalpower. 27Like the Gesta abbatum mentioned before, these Gesta episcoporum canbe interpreted as an intermediary between a mere catalogue andveritable historia: dealing with the succession of bishops within thediocese, but also digressing on the history of larger territories andthe vicissitudes of the Empire as a whole. Sot mentions in this regardthe Gesta pontificum Hammaburgensis ecclesiae, compiled by Adam ofBremen (ca. 1070), 28 and the episcopal chronicle of Thietmar ofMerseburg (†1018). Many original Gesta received one or more continuations,whereas others received reprisals, or became a muster forepiscopal histories elsewhere. Again the episcopal chronicle of Thietmarof Merseburg is a case in point. Thietmar’s work formed the basisfor later Gesta archiepiscoporum Magdeburgensium, Gesta episcoporumMerseburgensium, and Gestae episcoporum Halberstadensium, which were continuedinto the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. 29As was the case with monastic chronicles, the Gesta episcoporumcombined a range of different objectives. They firmly grounded thefoundation of the diocese with its territory and its churches in asaintly past, and they confirmed the legitimacy of episcopal powerin Church and Empire with recourse to historical precedent andestablished rights and privileges. The former element accounts forthe fluent transition between episcopal histories and episcopal saints’26On the Gesta episcoporum as a genre, see Kaiser (1994), 459–80.27Cf. Handschuh (1982); Engels (1989), 135–75.28Cf. Buchner (1963), 15–59; Sot (1981), 7–15, 32 ff.29Cf. Lippelt (1973).