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

juliano.multiculturas.com
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21.07.2015 Views

MEDIEVAL URBAN HISTORIOGRAPHY 351A few elements, in truth, shed light on urban life and that of thesurrounding territory, more diffuse in the variety of its components.It is certainly true that the urban community saw itself united in thecult of St. Stanislav, above all in moments of great danger (invasionsand devastations by the Tartars, ca. 1261; defeats of local milites,destruction and burning of the city, etc.), but the chronicler revealsno significant traces of a precise perception of a Cracovian urbanconsciousness. 87It remains now to deal with two areas neglected in the precedingpages—the Anglo-Saxon and Iberian regions—but we find ourselvesin these cases faced with a historiographical production that,however intense and varied, does not usually present the specificqualifications of properly urban chronicle production. There is, infact, for the British Isles the case of the chronicles and annals ofLondon, usually dominated by the presence and deeds of kings, notonly English ones, while sometimes the commercial connections ofthe island with the continent and particularly with Flanders appearepisodically. 88Analogous considerations, at least in certain aspects, can be madefor Iberian historiography and, in particular, for Spanish: primarilyreligious-ecclesiastical-cultic motives, or monarchical-princely-dynastic,interweave themselves also in the annals dedicated expressly to thecities, leaving usually very little space and breadth for the voices andthe authentically expressive forces of the urban world, in its tensionstoward political autonomy and the modernity of economic-social lifeof the productive classes and of the lay components in general. Inaddition, the anonymity of these texts, the irregularity of times ofnarration, and the dispersion and generally diffuse heterogeneity ofthis production render problematic an appropriate treatment of thechronicle traditions of important cities like Compostella, Toledo,Barcelona, Burgos, Tortosa, Maiorca, and Oviedo. 8987Annales Cracovienses, ed. Roepell and Arndt, passim. The work, conserved forus in one manuscript, has been studied and published three times and also thoroughlyre-examined through subsequent specific investigations in the nineteenth andtwentieth centuries. See Potthast (1962–98), 2:267.88See in this regard n. 63 above. On the chronicle writing of London, see alsoEx Arnaldi [Thedmari] cronica Londoniensi, ed. F. Liebermann and R. Pauli, MGH SS28 (Hanover, 1888), 527–47, 552–54; Potthast (1962–98), 2:298; Van Houts (1995),43, 46–47.89See in this regard notes 12 and 63 above.

352 AUGUSTO VASINAThe present list of chroniclers and chronicles of the city in thelater Middle Ages is certainly inadequate, even when only comparedwith the amplitude and variety of the entire historiographical panoramain question. However, in its temporary state, it is proposed as anattempt to give new form to a rather complex body of material ofresearch and study, according to a comparative methodology. Inaddition, it is intended to indicate some essential lines of developmentwithin a process of transition, through the humanistic experience,from late medieval urban annal-writing to the urban historicalscholarship of the modern age.

352 AUGUSTO VAS<strong>IN</strong>AThe present list of chroniclers and chronicles of the city in thelater Middle Ages is certainly inadequate, even when only comparedwith the amplitude and variety of the entire historiographical panoramain question. However, in its temporary state, it is proposed as anattempt to give new form to a rather complex body of material ofresearch and study, according to a comparative methodology. Inaddition, it is intended to indicate some essential lines of developmentwithin a process of transition, through the humanistic experience,from late medieval urban annal-writing to the urban historicalscholarship of the modern age.

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