HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

322 AUGUSTO VASINAthese proposed biographical questions. Relatively difficult even forthe urban historiography of north-central Italy after 1000, the questionsbecome decidedly less answerable for the urban chronicle productionof most countries of transalpine Europe, which, in general,is less copious, is less studied, has (for the most part) a less numerousand more fragmentary presence of witnesses, and is almost alwaysanonymous. 12Other inescapable conditions arise from the necessity of singlingout and characterizing for each city the diverse peculiarities of itspolitical, institutional, economic, social, and cultural development, inorder to be able to adequately situate the various historiographicalproductions and the activities of each chronicler. In this case, thetask of expanding our historical knowledge of later medieval Italianand European cities has been abundantly undertaken, above all inthe second half of the twentieth century, by specialists of medievalurban history, through a continuous series of learned monographs,more or less ample in both analytical and synthetic breadth. 13 As awhole, this rich and articulate production of studies of urban historymakes it less difficult, and more equivalent among the variousregions of medieval Europe, to investigate the facts of the particularsurrounding conditions and of the individual processes of theirdevelopment in diverse, important urban centers, especially in thecultural sense, and of the specific evolution of collective mentalityand civic consciousness. Even so, for certain regions and centers,obstacles persist that are not negligible for expanding our knowledgein these particular sectors. In fact, one must admit that in not a fewcases the indispensable operation of crossing and comparing dataacquired by the biographical investigations of chroniclers with theseresults of the research of the ambient and structural character of thecity does not allow us to respond in an adequate measure to thenumerous questions which are at the base of this article.12This is one of the aims of Potthast (1962–98), vols. 2 and 3, respectively, underthe terms Annales and Chronica or Cronica or even Chronicon. For a suitable comparisonof narrative texts of medieval transalpine historiography distinguished by nationalareas, one can still see the MGH, SS (n. 3 above). See also van Houts (1995),“Bibliography”, 9–12. The difficulty of working in this larger field of research ofthe rest of Europe appears also from reading the works by Guenée (1980), passim,which are only marginally interesting to medieval urban historiography.13This is seen already in Dupré (1956) and Dupré (1958); still useful in thisregard is Ottokar (1948), 3–65 and 179–82 (above all for the Italian and Frenchcities); cf., in particular for Germany, Ennen (1972).