HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

30 MICHAEL I. ALLENAbraham and God’s promises up to the Incarnation. 42 As if to meltthat history and its Christian fulfillment into the meaning he intends,Augustine only then traces, as a single book, the surrounding andcontrasting story of the earthly city from Abraham up to his ownday. 43 The Saviour’s work extended God’s promises to all humanityin Christian times, and changed their quality and expectation. However,for that, the broadened sociology of heavenly longing no longerreduced straightforwardly to any earthly assembly. 44 The enemies ofGod’s city included some of her yet unknown future citizens, whereassome companions of her earthly pilgrimage, even joined in her sacraments,would prove alien to the eternal reward of the saints. 45Augustine warily understood his fellow Romans and Christians, andset his stock by the heavenly citizenship of the angels and their rightlove and worship of the true God. 46Two very different understandings of human circumstances thusemerged with the help of universal historical narrative. Augustine’smetahistorical categories, if clearly understood, made familiar earthlyconstructs unreliable for the needs of God’s city. Orosius, who claimedAugustine’s sponsorship, powerfully asserted the providential constructof Rome’s empire and made all history, pagan or sacred, intoa means of instruction, subject to the historian’s power of exegeticalprophecy. Orosius met and vastly exceeded the apologetic goalof cataloguing ancient disasters. For subsequent historical expression,his work brilliantly commended the narrative form of books andchapters, and its trove of data became an omnipresent authoritativereference. 47 Readers prized its analysis of unfailing divine punishmentand reward, which invited the extension of Christian ethicsinto the political sphere through the use and new creation of historicalwriting. 48 The practical clarity and force of Orosius’s engagementmostly overrode Augustine’s subtle theological vision. The claim42Cf. Ibid. XVIII.1, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 48:592–93.43Ibid. XVIII, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 48:592–656.44For an analysis of Augustine’s understanding, with a survey of important literature,see Staubach (2002), 345–58.45Cf. Augustine, De ciuitate Dei, I.35, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 47:33.46Cf. Ibid. X.7, ed. Dombart and Kalb, 47:279–80; XVIII.54, ed. Dombart andKalb, 48:656.47Hillgarth (1992).48Cf. Werner (1987), 7–16.