HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor
HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor
UNIVERSAL HISTORY 300‒1000 21relations. Constantine attributed his decisive victory at the MilvianBridge in 312 to a battle standard revealed to him by the ChristianGod, and he richly acknowledged that divine favour, and others, forthe rest of his life. This sea-change in Christian fortunes did not seemarbitrary to its beneficiaries, and Eusebius’s formulation of Christianuniversal history helped to conceptualize the meaning of events. 9After excellent scholarly training at Caesarea, Eusebius first composedhis Chronological Canons, or Chronicle, in the shadow of the GreatPersecution initiated by Diocletian in the early 300s. He had assembledan extensive dossier, or Chronography, of regnal lists and historicalextracts, and this he reshaped into a companion volume ofparallel chronologies and world history from the year of Abraham’sbirth. It sufficed merely to sum up earlier biblical times, since a tandemGreek or barbarian record, that is “Gentile history”, was lacking.10 Eusebius thus asserted sacred precedence, lifted from Creationthe liability of anchoring a cosmic chronology, and laid out a novelsynchronic table that reconciled biblical time with other major systems.He shared the outward-looking concerns of earlier Christian apologists,and plausibly intended to address eschatological fears stirredby persecution. His revised account of biblical chronology movedthe Incarnation to the year 5,199 from Creation, and silently brokewith the earlier millennial typologies and their eschatological baggage.11 The Chronicle set the decades from Abraham’s birth in its leftmostmargin and, under those auspices, laid out known history assynchronous vertical columns of regnal dates and coordinated statementsor judgments of fact. For nineteen major peoples, the columnsappear, continue, or disappear in step with their associated regnaltallies, from four vertical rows initially, to a maximum of nine, andfinally to the lone column of the Romans. The rows nestle aroundinterior spaces reserved for concise historical notes, first on two-pageopenings, with sacred matters to the left and secular ones to theright, until the flow of significant data reduces to one field in a progressionof single pages. 12 There, sacred and secular data commingle9Cf. Momigliano (1963); Barnes (1981).10Eusebius, Prologue to Eusebius-Jerome, Die Chronik des Hieronymus (HieronymiChronicon), 2nd rev. ed., ed. R. Helm, Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller 47 [=Eusebius Werke 7] (Berlin, 1956), 15: “in quibus [temporibus] nulla ...gentilis inueniturhistoria”. [3rd ed. repr. with Preface by U. Treu (Berlin, 1984).]11Cf. Landes (1992), 359–60.12For the layout, see Helm’s edition: over two pages, four columns, p. 20, and
22 MICHAEL I. ALLENuntil and beyond “the peace granted to Christians by Constantine”,at least in Eusebius’s final version of the work down to what wewould call A.D. 325. 13 In its completion, this “epitome of universalhistory” 14 elaborates myriad particular facts and sets them in thecontext of a new whole. The Christian scholar might learn from itto order major dates and events, and found pagan holy lore reducedto an innocuously uncelestial retelling. 15 More important, no readercould avoid the implications of the overall articulation, which wasunprecedented. 16 If Eusebius could lump barbarians and Greeks intoa proto-historical Gentile commonality, the graphical movement ofhistory itself later resolved all peoples and temporal conventions intoRome and the presiding count from Abraham. Eusebius knew thepractical advantages of the Saviour’s birth under the newly wroughtmonarchy and stability of Caesar Augustus. But he chiefly emphasizedthe dawn of Jesus’s public life and his call to all peoples asthe fulfilment and enlargement to the Gentile world of the ancientbiblical promises first made to the Hebrews. 17 Eusebius’s ecumenicaldigest of time charted the course and integration of many historiesas the unfolding of God’s single providential plan for all mankind.Constantine’s new Christian allegiance expressed this divine providenceas a symptom reveals its cause, yet in the Chronicle, Eusebiuspreferred to exploit arrangement and matter-of-factness, to illustratea historical dynamic rather than to commentate its latest effect. Thelegacy to future writers included, of course, the effect, whose storyEusebius told in his Church History along with earlier Christian travailsand triumphs. That amply documented narrative gave his “mostfull account”, but only of the end-game of a vastly longer unfoldingof God’s intentions. 18 For the future, the Chronicle itself provideda cosmic dynamic and framework, a store of ancient fact and lore,later nine, p. 83; with a single-page format from p. 106, narrowed to the singleRoman regnal column on p. 187.13Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon 2330, 2342, pp. 230, 231.14So Eusebius in his Eclogae propheticae I, PG 22, col. 1024A.15Analogous chronological guides are still published, e.g., Finegan (1998). Eusebius,for instance, reduces the origins of Trojan War to the squabble of three women,one of whom promises Helen to the shepherd asked to rate their beauty: Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon 826, p. 60b.16Burgess (1999), 80–82; Croke (1983); Mosshammer (1979), 29–37.17Cf. Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon 2015, 2044, pp. 169, 173.18Historia ecclesiastica I.1.6. Cf. Momigliano (1963); Barnes (1981), 126–47.
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22 MICHAEL I. ALLENuntil and beyond “the peace granted to Christians by Constantine”,at least in Eusebius’s final version of the work down to what wewould call A.D. 325. 13 In its completion, this “epitome of universalhistory” 14 elaborates myriad particular facts and sets them in thecontext of a new whole. The Christian scholar might learn from itto order major dates and events, and found pagan holy lore reducedto an innocuously uncelestial retelling. 15 More important, no readercould avoid the implications of the overall articulation, which wasunprecedented. 16 If Eusebius could lump barbarians and Greeks intoa proto-historical Gentile commonality, the graphical movement ofhistory itself later resolved all peoples and temporal conventions intoRome and the presiding count from Abraham. Eusebius knew thepractical advantages of the Saviour’s birth under the newly wroughtmonarchy and stability of Caesar Augustus. But he chiefly emphasizedthe dawn of Jesus’s public life and his call to all peoples asthe fulfilment and enlargement to the Gentile world of the ancientbiblical promises first made to the Hebrews. 17 Eusebius’s ecumenicaldigest of time charted the course and integration of many historiesas the unfolding of God’s single providential plan for all mankind.Constantine’s new Christian allegiance expressed this divine providenceas a symptom reveals its cause, yet in the Chronicle, Eusebiuspreferred to exploit arrangement and matter-of-factness, to illustratea historical dynamic rather than to commentate its latest effect. Thelegacy to future writers included, of course, the effect, whose storyEusebius told in his Church History along with earlier Christian travailsand triumphs. That amply documented narrative gave his “mostfull account”, but only of the end-game of a vastly longer unfoldingof God’s intentions. 18 For the future, the Chronicle itself provideda cosmic dynamic and framework, a store of ancient fact and lore,later nine, p. 83; with a single-page format from p. 106, narrowed to the singleRoman regnal column on p. 187.13Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon 2330, 2342, pp. 230, 231.14So Eusebius in his Eclogae propheticae I, PG 22, col. 1024A.15Analogous chronological guides are still published, e.g., Finegan (1998). Eusebius,for instance, reduces the origins of Trojan War to the squabble of three women,one of whom promises Helen to the shepherd asked to rate their beauty: Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon 826, p. 60b.16Burgess (1999), 80–82; Croke (1983); Mosshammer (1979), 29–37.17Cf. Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon 2015, 2044, pp. 169, 173.18Historia ecclesiastica I.1.6. Cf. Momigliano (1963); Barnes (1981), 126–47.
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