HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

UNIVERSAL HISTORY 300‒1000 33readily adapted than developed. The scheme of the Ages spoke inparticular to concerns rooted in exegesis and chronology, and wherethese persisted, they invited the re-application of Augustine’s solutionin conjunction with other arguments or chronological evidence.Churchmen in positions of leadership adapted, condensed, and continuedEusebius-Jerome to frame their own situation in time, andfrom the early seventh century, the scheme of the Ages regularlyappears as an organizing superstructure in updated compendia ofuniversal history. As he did with so much else, Isidore of Seville(†A.D. 636) takes credit for amalgamating and popularizing Augustine’stemporal conceit. Isidore analyzed and applied it in the discussionand Lesser Chronicle (A.D. 627) given in his Etymologies, and there builton the use found in his Greater Chronicle, whose re-editions (from A.D.615) meld several sources, including the City of God. 55 In both settings,Isidore filled out Eusebius-Jerome for the two pre-Abrahamicages and extended the underlying chronology in a single-column distillateof universal history, now matched with running dates configuredto the Creation. Augustine’s stature may have recommended theAges even where polemical needs were not acute, but the GreaterChronicle did underscore his warning about the uncertain remainderof earthly time, with concluding advice that “each should look tohis own passing”, since “that is for him the end of the world”. 56Isidore’s cosmic numerical datings showed as well that the world’sages varied considerably in extent. Nevertheless, reliance on the GreekSeptuagint’s chronology, followed since Eusebius-Jerome, still placedthe start of the Sixth Age in the year 5,196, a figure easily roundedinto a troublesome spectre.In reaction, Bede the Venerable (†A.D. 735) seized on the countingof the “Hebrew Truth” of Scripture to place Christ’s birth in theyear 3,952 from Creation. He significantly developed the allegory ofthe Ages to introduce and articulate his own renumbered summaryof universal history. He built on the temporal scheme’s original function,and also played out a palpable desire to overlay Isidore’s encyclopedicand partly uncritical treatment of “times”. In a multiple55Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. W. M. Lindsay, Oxford Classical Texts(Oxford, 1911), V.38.5; V.39 (= Lesser Chronicle). The latter is edited with the GreaterChronicle by T. Mommsen, in Chronica minora, vol. 2, MGH AA 11 (1894; repr.Munich, 1981), 424–81.56Isidore, Chronica, § 418, p. 481.