HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

LATER MEDIEVAL INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 289these volumes we find both an evaluation of the important workdone after 1970 and major prolegomena for subsequent research.The study of mendicant historiography properly speaking owesmuch to Anna-Dorothea von den Brincken’s and Gert Melville’sinterest in the compilatory format and historical conceptions of successfulmendicant chronicles, the re-evaluation of the architecture ofVincent de Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale by Hans Voorbij and thescholarly circle around Monique Paulmier-Foucart, the renewed interestin later medieval historiography as a form of encyclopaedic writing,and the attention for dissemination of late medieval mendicantchronicle manuscripts by Peter Johanek and his collaborators inMünster. 38 Thanks to such endeavours, the traditional lamentationsabout the compilatory and ‘uncritical’ nature of mendicant historiographyhave been exchanged for a genuine fascination with thecompository strategies of mendicant compilers and the incredible distributionof mendicant chronicles.This redemption of mendicant historiography touches in particularthe so-called ‘kompilatorische Weltchronistik’, which can hardlybe depicted as institutional historiography in the strict sense of theword. However, as a typical product of ‘mendicant’ historiographicalpractice, it deserves some of our attention. The order histories andorder-related hagiographic texts always have been and predominantlystill remain the domain of specialists in medieval hagiography andof (mendicant) scholars interested in the literary and religious cultureof the mendicant orders as such. These various forms of institutionalhistoriography in the strict sense of the word are neglectedby historians in search of general patterns in medieval historiographicalwriting, maybe because many such order histories on averagedo not seem to waver much from the traditional catalogue format.Yet they form the core of mendicant institutional history properlyspeaking. They constitute a considerable part of the mendicant historiographicaloutput, and in addition have some interesting qualitiesof their own, reasons for which they will be central in thefollowing sections.38For instance Brincken (1981), 694–735, (1985), 461–500, and (1989), 551–91;Melville (1987), 57–111, and (1988), 133–53; Voorbij (1991); Meier (1992), 157–75;Mierau, Sander-Berke and Studt (1996).