HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

UNIVERSAL HISTORY 300‒1000 39matical elements. 72 Most subsequent universal history builds verydirectly on the past. Yet the merging of old history into new, asbackground to present, still requires us to look beyond what seemsfamiliar, and one particular example combines so much that is strictlyold that scholarship has yet to appreciate fully what is new.New Interpretations: FrechulfFrechulf of Lisieux addressed his Histories (ca. 830) to the Carolingiancourt. He combined all the writers we have mentioned, and endedhis summary of time since the Fall more than two hundred yearsbefore his own day. His work shows the quiet force of a mind atpains to mark a fresh trail without rejecting any useful source. Somecareful readers have praised him as a prodigious compiler devoid ofguiding historical ideas, but have done so too hastily. 73Frechulf traced the first two Ages of the World as a prelude to avast narrative enlargement on the factual cues of Jerome’s Chronicle.He worked out the origins of history as the establishment of Augustine’sTwo Cities, and these he presents as the segmented but intersectingcircles of a single humanity. 74 At the outset, he emphasizes a sociologyof intention, an aspiration to angelic citizenship, centered in the cultof the true God. The dynamic is neither closed nor clearly delimitedto the external eye, and it is authentically Augustinian. 75 Notinsignificantly, Frechulf absorbed as much of it straight from Augustineas indirectly via the writings of his own suspect contemporary, the72In general, e.g., von den Brincken (1957), Krüger (1976); on the narrative subtype(historia), Werner (1987), Werner (1990); on the motifs of Kingdoms and Ages,respectively, Goez (1958), Schmidt (1956).73Notably, Schelle (1952), 139–44, who looked for usual ideas; more temperately,Brunhölzl (1991), 151–52. Other optimists perplexingly misconstrue the evidence,e.g., McKitterick and Innis (1994), 212–13. Staubach (1995) positivelytransformed the landscape. For Frechulf’s sources, see my edition (Frechulf of Lisieux,Historiarum libri XII, in Opera omnia, ed. M. I. Allen, CCCM 169 [Turnhout, 2002],17–724), which I cite according to chapter and line number. I expand on pointsmade herebelow in the volume of studies that will complement the edition.74See the middle and concluding chapters of Frechulf, Historiae I.1, which variouslyparse and distinguish humanity based on lineage, language, and affection.75Frechulf, Historiae I.1.3 [11/15] (angelic aspiration); I.1.7–9 (origins of the Citiesand their different worship); I.1.33 (their sociological presence and partial indistinction).Cf. Staubach (1995), 183–88, 190–93.