HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

MEDIEVAL URBAN HISTORIOGRAPHY 349Gandenses (1296–1310), written by an author who remains anonymousbut was a friar of a local minorite convent, where he composed thework from 1308 to ca. 1337. 79 Written in mediocre Latin and dividedinto chapters, the Annales offer us a dense and concentrated expositionof this important manufacturing and commercial center, followingthe Flemish military undertakings more than the peacefulones, for example, against the English, then against the king ofFrance. However, particular emphasis is placed on the alternate connectionswith the count of Flanders, the main regional authority,and also relations, sometimes amicable and sometimes hostile, withthe nearby centers of Bruges and Arras, Naumur, Ypres, and Courtrai.In a rather mature phase of civic institutions and with the declineof the traditional institutional church (the local monasteries of St.Peter and St. Bavo), the voice of our Franciscan chronicler of Ghentis one which better succeeds in understanding from contemporaryexperience the signs of pride and coherence of an incipient, even ifnot unified, urban consciousness among the laity of Ghent. 80Although not the seat of a bishopric during the Middle Ages,Berne (Switzerland) also succeeded in developing over time, from itsfoundation (ca. 1191), a community life of an urban level, perhapsmore due to the initiative of its military aristocracy than throughthe activity of its productive classes, although the latter was alreadyintense in the late Middle Ages. Thus tell us the so-called AnnalesBernenses (1191–1405), by unknown authors (one of these is thoughtto be identified with a certain Pfund or Phunt, otherwise unknown). 81The narrative text is divided into two quite distinct parts: a Cronicade Berno (1191–1344) with around thirty quite brief notations, writtenin Latin by a chronicler of the fourteenth century, perhaps on thebasis of personal experience, of oral traditions, and of local annalistictraditions; and a series of Notae Bernenses (1286–1405), a sort of bringingup to date juxtaposed on the preceding text by a presumablymore thoughtful author, on the basis of analogous information. Againin this case we are dealing with generally brief and fitful information,79Annales Gandenses, ed. J. M. Lappenberg, MGH SS 16 (Hanover, 1859), 554–97.80Annales Gandenses, ed. Lappenberg, passim. The work, handed down to us inone manuscript, now lost, nevertheless has enjoyed after the nineteenth century fiveeditions and up to the 1960s of around fifteen specific philological and historiographicalstudies. See Potthast (1962–98), 2:284.81Annales Bernenses, ed. G. H. Pertz, MGH SS 17 (Hanover, 1861), 271–74.