HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

388 PETER AINSWORTHaccount. The learned still recalled Cicero’s De Oratore, which requiredevery historian worthy of the title to observe a scrupulous respectfor truth, showing neither fear nor favor. 3 Throughout the MiddleAges, the function of the historian would remain that of “establishingand relating the factual events of the past”. In the opinion ofB. Lacroix, the medieval historian saw himself simply as an ‘expositor’,his role (opus narrationis) being to transform facts into stories tobe listened to and read. Only worthy of featuring in historical accounts(historia) were events reputed to be true and which were judged memorablebecause they were also edifying. Above all, these were theacts and deeds of the great:Historiae sunt res verae quae factae sunt. 4Non tamen omnia memorabilia notare cupio, sed memoranda tantum,ea scilicet quae digna memoriae esse videntur. 5Historia est narratio rei gestae ad instructionem posteritatis. 6This conception of narrative history, conferring immortality uponthe great of this world, was commonplace in the Middle Ages. Itoriginated with Herodotus, who had wanted to prevent the recordof the great and marvelous exploits accomplished by the Greeks andBarbarians from being erased from human memory. Yet, as Guenéereminds us, medieval historiography in Latin had no place of its ownin the trivium of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. An ancillarydiscipline, it was associated with the study of grammar and rhetoricand drew on the teachings of theology, law, and ethics for its edifyingillustrations (littera docet):ed. W. M. Lindsay, 2 vols., Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis (Oxford,1911 and 1957), 1:40–45.3Cicéron, De Oratore, trans. R. Southern and H. Rackham, Loeb Classical Library(London and Cambridge, Mass., 1967), 234–35; quoted in Hay (1977), 4.4Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum Sive Originum Libri XX, ed. Lindsay, 1:44,45; quoted in Lacroix (1971), 17; cf. Isidori Hispalensis Episcopi Etymologiarum, 1:41:“Historia est narratio rei gestae per quam ea quae in praeterito facta sunt, dinoscuntur”.5Gervase of Canterbury, Opera Historica, ed. W. Stubbs, 2 vols., Rolls Series(London, 1879, 1880); in Lacroix (1971), 20.6John of Salisbury ( Ioannis Saresberiensis), Memoirs of the Papal Court, trans. fromLatin with Introduction and Notes by Marjorie Chibnall [= Historia Pontificalis, 1sted.] (London and Edinburgh, 1956, 1962, 1965); in Lacroix (1971), 172.