HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

LATER MEDIEVAL INSTITUTIONAL HISTORY 309to the court of the Ill-Khans, where the Persian court historianRashid al-Din included it in his chronicle collections as the ‘Historyof the Franks’. Its handy format and coherent hierocratic vision madethe Chronicon extremely popular among the regular clergy, hence itswide dissemination into many mendicant libraries and its enormousimpact on late medieval historiography.The papal orientation of Martin’s Chronicon was even more outspokenin the Historia nova ecclesiastica, written between 1313–17 inAvignon by the Dominican Ptolomy of Lucca. Like Martin, Ptolomywrote this work for theologians and canonists. He presents the papacyalone as the binding chain of history since Christ. The work cantherefore be interpreted as an extended pope-catalogue, with closeaffinities to the Liber pontificalis. 117 A comparable hierocratic visionwas deployed in Bernard Gui’s Flores chronicorum seu catalogus pontificumRomanorum and its abbreviation (the Pontifices Romani). Gui complementedthese concise pope catalogues with separate short chronicleson the emperors and the kings of France. 118 Aside from theseDominican pope-emperor or pope chronicles, 119 there were alsonotable Franciscan specimens. 120 The most successful ones were thepapally oriented Chronica minor auctore minorita Erphordiensi (ca. 1264–72,also known as the Cronica Romana), 121 and the Schwabian Flores temporum(ca. 1292), in which world history forms a background or‘spine’ (spina) for the miracles of saints and the passion of martyrs(history’s flowers), therewith constituting a historicized Legenda Aurea. 122117The work is partly edited in L. Muratori, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, vol. 11(Milan, 1727), 743–1242. On its impact and use by mendicant and non-mendicantchroniclers, see Schmugge (1976), 495–545.118For Bernard’s sources and his methods of compilation, see Lamarrigue (1981),205–19.119To which can be added others. Cf. comparable works of Bartholomew ofTrente, Galvano Fiamma, Antoninus of Florence (1389–1459), Jerome Albertuccide Bursellis (†1497), and John Meyer (†1485). See Kaeppeli (1970–93), 1:79–84,172 ff., 3:271–73, and 4:46–47, 90–91; Walker (1933).120For a survey of smaller and intermediate Franciscan pope-emperor chronicles,such as the Gesta imperatorum et pontificum of Thomas of Pavia, see Roest (1996),42 ff.121For a partial edition, see Cronica Minor Auctore Minorita Erphordiensi, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH Scriptores Rer. Germ. 24 (Hannover, 1899), 486–671. On its hierocraticvision, see Roest (1996), 209–14.122Not the popes but the emperors are the binding spine of worldly history, towhich the deeds of holy men can be attached; see Roest (1996), 49–50. For its disseminationin southern Germany, see Mierau, Sander-Berke and Studt (1996).