HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

40 MICHAEL I. ALLENiconoclast Claudius of Turin (†ca. 827). 76 Among the outer segmentsof humanity, there were both future citizens of God’s City and writingsuseful for an historian.Frechulf ’s cultic focus makes temple-based worship, both Hebrewand pagan, the key leitmotif of his work. In the first installment ofseven books, he paces history, where possible, by the pivotal momentsin the call to worship fixed in God’s people. In the five books ofthe second part that begins from the Incarnation, he calibrates theextension of salvation in Christian times by the successive demise ofsuperseded temples, in Jerusalem and elsewhere. The topos of theTemples punctuates his books. 77 The final conversion of the Pantheonat Rome into the Church of St. Mary and All the Martyrs caps theconsecutive narrative at the moment when “the Franks and theLombards have succeeded Roman officials and Goths” as the rulersof Gaul and Italy. 78 Frechulf thus sealed his story of religious transformationand affirmed Carolingian readers by halting his Historieswhen the spatial foundations of their world were laid. 79 Not least,his account of “imperial deeds, saintly triumphs and teachings” aimedat challenging his readers, since he cast the work explicitly as a “mirror”in which “all should know to find themselves” and there “discoverhow to act and what to avoid”. 80 As a Carolingian writingabout the past, Frechulf traced a history of anecdotes, facts, andexempla whose actors and readers shared a common possibility, if notan equal grace, to discern and help make their own place in God’sCity. It was a rich, if understated, call to learn and measure up.Far from confusing the Ages or omitting the Kingdoms, Frechulfset them aside to chart a new course. Beyond Abraham, he adheredto a division of Hebrew history that had been recommended butnot followed by Eusebius, with divides at the Exodus, Solomon’s76Namely, his Commentary on Genesis. Cf. Allen (1998), 288–89, 305.77Allen (1994), 69–73.78Frechulf, Historiae II.5.26 [4/8] (conversion of the Pantheon); II.5.27 [22/24](closure of the work).79The phrase “kingdoms of the Franks and Lombards” echoes Charlemagne’stitulature after his conquest of the Lombard Kingdom of Italy in A.D. 774. Cf.Wolfram (1967), 217–24.80Frechulf, Historiae I.7.19 [63]: “Vt omnes sciant: in me sunt” (the explicit ofPart I); II Prol. [28/32]: “His [scil. libris] enim uelut in speculo . . .”; II Prol. [43/46]:imperatorum gestis sanctorumque triumphis atque doctorum magnificentium doctrinisinlustratus, cautius quid agendum sit siue subtilius inueniet quid sit uitandum”.