HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor
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HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

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UNIVERSAL HISTORY 300‒1000 23and a model of rhetorical discretion. All these St. Jerome conveyedin his Latin translation and extension of the work to A.D. 378.Jerome and His ContinuatorsThe Latin Chronicle of Eusebius-Jerome widely disseminated the messagesof its now-lost Greek original. Jerome carefully preservedEusebius’s exacting layout and historical breadth, which he supplementedwith added Western details for the specific needs of a contemporaryLatin readership. 19 He engaged his translator’s task as abiblical specialist and ended his forward temporal projection withthe still-lingering upset brought upon the Roman world through thedefeat and murder of the Arian emperor Valens by Gothic forcesat Adrianople in A.D. 378. In his final summation of chronology,Jerome clearly followed Eusebius in accenting Christ’s preaching tothe world, yet he spoke differently when he then continued to marktime back to Creation itself from the world’s troubled 5,579th year. 20Whether or not the Gothic turmoil loosed new communal fears, theend of the millennial week was plainly nowhere to hand. More important,Jerome set the alpha of time squarely into view, paced off hisplace from it, and emphatically broadened the province of all-embracinghistory to its biblical start. He also set, as translator and continuator,the example of reflecting on the flux and continuities oftime, or providence, down to the present.Actual manuscripts of the Chronicle of Eusebius-Jerome tended likewiseto extend the work in one direction or more. Accounts of pre-Abrahamic biblical history often fill out the preliminary void left byEusebius and merely bridged by Jerome, and one, the prefixedexordium of a de luxe edition used in early sixth-century Italy, showsthe adaptive reach of the Christian universal idiom in new circumstances.While it had suited Eusebius to fuse Greeks and barbariansinto an amorphous protohistory, Genesis itself also traces, along withthe cardinal line of sacred genealogy, Gentile origins in the offspringof Noah. A tabular translation of that history places the Gentiles,too, in their biblical origins, and neatly anticipates, as though in19Cf. Burgess (1999), 90–98.20Cf. Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, Prologue and 2394, pp. 1–7 and 249.

24 MICHAEL I. ALLENreverse, their later re-integration into sacred history, which was theactual or inherited experience of most Christian readers. 21 At thenear end of the Chronicle, Jerome himself pointed the way for futurecontinuators, whose additions now often chiefly rate as independenthistorical documents. The Chronicle of 452, in its earliest and bestcopy, from the early tenth century, continues an adapted Jerome tothe eponymous date, where the manuscript then briefly shifts to analternate continuation by Prosper of Aquitaine to A.D. 455, and thereafterfinishes with the Chronicle to A.D. 581 of Marius of Avenches(†A.D. 594). Each of these linked additions, like Eusebius-Jerome itself,preserves unique factual information and has attracted focused attention.22 The problem of the whole, however, remains, since a majorninth-century use of the implicated variant of Jerome and its otherwiseunknown appendix by Marius simply ignores the interveningChronicle of 452. Without prejudice to their factual substance, the stillmurkyhistory of the medieval Eusebius-Jerome allows little certainlyas to when and how some continuations were added, spliced, orreplaced, and the date of the present assemblage may be closer tothe tenth century than one expects. 23 Like the grafts, the stalk toocould vary. The altered Eusebius-Jerome, among other adjustments,elevates Rome, from her first strength, into a proleptic and privilegedopposition vis-à-vis the diverse nations (diuersae gentes) that sheeventually subsumes. 24 The change complicates the sober division ofsacred and secular in the original epitome of world history but accuratelyreflects St. Jerome’s own mature and influential understandingof the mechanisms of providence.Christian universal history was, for Jerome and his Latin successors,both a matter of schematic, epitomized content and also of purposivetheological reflection. The expression of universal historical21Cf. Schöne (1900), 25, 276. The exordium is published in Schöne (1875),43–49.22Cf. Muhlberger (1990); Favrod (1993); Burgess (2001).23The ninth-century complication arises from the Histories (A.D. 830) of Frechulfof Lisieux, on which more below. On the still unwritten history of Eusebius-Jeromein the early Middles Ages, cf. Schöne (1900), 39–41, 135–37.24Consider, for instance, the new arrangement and rubrication of Eusebius-Jerome at Chronicon 1504 (p. 106), where the adapted text joins, to the left, prospectiveRoman with actual Persian leadership (“Reges Persarum et Romanorum”)opposite, to the right, the “other peoples” (“Reges gentium diuersarum”); see alsoMS London, British Library, Add. 16974, fol. 87 v .

UNIVERSAL HISTORY 300‒1000 23and a model of rhetorical discretion. All these St. Jerome conveyedin his Latin translation and extension of the work to A.D. 378.Jerome and His ContinuatorsThe Latin Chronicle of Eusebius-Jerome widely disseminated the messagesof its now-lost Greek original. Jerome carefully preservedEusebius’s exacting layout and historical breadth, which he supplementedwith added Western details for the specific needs of a contemporaryLatin readership. 19 He engaged his translator’s task as abiblical specialist and ended his forward temporal projection withthe still-lingering upset brought upon the Roman world through thedefeat and murder of the Arian emperor Valens by Gothic forcesat Adrianople in A.D. 378. In his final summation of chronology,Jerome clearly followed Eusebius in accenting Christ’s preaching tothe world, yet he spoke differently when he then continued to marktime back to Creation itself from the world’s troubled 5,579th year. 20Whether or not the Gothic turmoil loosed new communal fears, theend of the millennial week was plainly nowhere to hand. More important,Jerome set the alpha of time squarely into view, paced off hisplace from it, and emphatically broadened the province of all-embracinghistory to its biblical start. He also set, as translator and continuator,the example of reflecting on the flux and continuities oftime, or providence, down to the present.Actual manuscripts of the Chronicle of Eusebius-Jerome tended likewiseto extend the work in one direction or more. Accounts of pre-Abrahamic biblical history often fill out the preliminary void left byEusebius and merely bridged by Jerome, and one, the prefixedexordium of a de luxe edition used in early sixth-century Italy, showsthe adaptive reach of the Christian universal idiom in new circumstances.While it had suited Eusebius to fuse Greeks and barbariansinto an amorphous protohistory, Genesis itself also traces, along withthe cardinal line of sacred genealogy, Gentile origins in the offspringof Noah. A tabular translation of that history places the Gentiles,too, in their biblical origins, and neatly anticipates, as though in19Cf. Burgess (1999), 90–98.20Cf. Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, Prologue and 2394, pp. 1–7 and 249.

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