HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

UNIVERSAL HISTORY 300‒1000 37but he disavowed its terms and results when Orosius manipulatedbiblical typology as if earthly politics, not Christ himself, had beenthe object and fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Nevertheless,Orosius’s scheme of reward and punishment and his identificationof earthly rulership with God’s design ensured his brand of admonitorynarrative an important medieval future, not least as the typeof historical writing offered to princes and configured for their instruction.62 Lapidary concision sufficed for the study hall. Charlemagne,Einhard tells us, preferred Augustine’s City of God for meal-time listening.63 Narrative extended the applications of universal history withoutdisplacing the appeal of more concise rhetoric.The models for the future themselves reflect an accretion of outlooksand possibilities, and later choices illustrate both lines of dependenceand new aspiration. The multiple threads of Eusebius-Jerome,whether recopied to start over two pages or compressed onto one,remained ever-present. The work provided tell-tale facts. Its tersenotice that “Pericles died” defined, for instance, the sum total ofmedieval knowledge of the great Athenian statesman and shows,where it recurs, a direct or indirect act of faith about a matter thatno medieval copyist or writer could have fully understood. 64 Thetapering contour was itself a message, which could be retained orcollapsed into a single column of historical notices, with immediateeffect for the interplay between sacred and profane history and, notleast, for the implicit dynamic of imperial Rome at the Incarnation.Such alterations meant choices, and not merely simplification, 65 sincethe sheer complexity of Jerome’s layout could actually favour itsintact survival. 66 In his single-column epitome and extension ofEusebius-Jerome and Orosius, Prosper of Aquitaine deployed, in fact,a structure that helped to reassert his Augustinian “sense of historyas the theatre of God’s hidden purposes”. 67 Conversely, in the absenceof the visual armature of a multi-threaded chronicle, Orosius’s narrativerequired an exegetical paradigm like the “Four Kingdoms” to62For a good discussion of this strand of universal history as the genre historia,as distinct from universal chronicles, see Werner (1987) and Werner (1990).63Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ch. 24.64Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon 1588, p. 115. The reuse of this entry is a leitmotifin von den Brincken (1957).65Pace von den Brincken (1957), 67.66Cf. Introduction to Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicon, xxi–xxv.67Cf. Markus (1986), 40–41.