HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

326 AUGUSTO VASINABut before analyzing the position of some chroniclers and theirworks of particular representative significance, it seems to me opportuneto define further the methods of separating out various historicaland historiographical areas of medieval Europe. A glance at ahistorical map of Europe permits us, in fact, to single out some territorialregions of particular urban density, made up of centers oftravel, markets, and ports, especially on the seacoasts and river coursesof considerable importance; cities, nodes of intensive movement ofmen and goods and thus also of inter-city communications and information—justthe type of exchange of information of interest to thechronicler. 16In the transalpine world, the manifestations of urban historiographyafter 1000 appear primarily in the area of France and Germany,in particular on the course of the Rhine but also, to a lesser degree,on the coasts of the North and Baltic Seas. In contrast, in northcentralItaly, other than the marine cities of Genoa, Pisa, and Venice,chronicle production appears to be concentrated in the regions ofLombardy, the Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, and Tuscany, with a particulardensity in the plain of the Po, an area in which an exceptionalnetwork of land and riverine paths of communication developedalong trade routes. 17 Other parts of Europe are placed in a marginalposition, not only because production of chronicles was lesscommon but also because they seem for many reasons to be less ornot entirely qualified in a truly urban sense for the period consideredhere.We must emphasize again that the region of the Po is responsiblefor a greater density, structure, and continuity of urban chronicleproduction than anywhere else, with examples ever more frequentfrom the communal era to the seigniorial, observable on both the16I propose the geo-historical information that precedes and follows to be functionalfor drawing a map of lines of development of urban historiography in Europein the period under consideration, on the model of the cartographic apparatusoffered for the diffusion of other historiographical typologies, above all monastic,by Guenée (1980).17We are dealing also—and indeed we should not forget it—with areas of particularurban density characterized by centers known generally for a strong presenceof productive and intellectual classes, politically important and increasing insize. A quantitative calculation, although not exhaustive, of civic chronicles distributedby region shows in the first position Tuscany with sixteen texts, the region ofEmilia-Romagna with fifteen, Lombardy with thirteen, and the Veneto with nine.