HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

ETHNIC AND NATIONAL HISTORY CA. 500‒1000 53of the legend of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus, a short treatise onchronology and the stars, and another (now lost) on the interpretationof the psalms. These other works are of considerable relevanceto the understanding of the Historiae, which combine the narrativeof secular affairs with innumerable miracles and hagiographic sketchesand with descriptions of omens and natural “signs”.In both his historical and hagiographic writings, Gregory deploreshis shortcomings as a stylist and even lists the grammatical mistakesof which he is guilty; he then counters that his simple languagereaches a wider public because it is easily understood (cf. generalpreface to the Historiae, preface to Glory of the Confessors, preface toMiracles of St. Martin). In a much-cited afterword to the Historiae, heexhorts future bishops of Tours to keep the text of his works unchanged,whatever may be wrong with its Latinity. These passages have oftenbeen read as conventional modesty topoi and as the expression ofa realistic self-appraisal on Gregory’s part, since scholars tended toagree that his Latin represented a dramatic drop in standards comparedto that of other authors of his age (Caesarius of Arles andVenantius Fortunatus, for instance). Recent students of his work havefound these issues less straightforward and raised the question whethermodern editors, by preferring the more “Merovingian” manuscriptsof the Historiae, have not distorted our sense of the Latin Gregoryactually wrote. 33 An equally important question is whether Gregory’sendorsement of a simpler language is not part of a Christian polemicagainst standards of Latinity associated with pagan and secularliterature. 34The Historiae opens with a general prologue followed by ten booksof historical narrative of which I, II, III, and V also have individualprefaces. Between the end of Book X and his invocation to hissuccessors to respect the integrity of the text, Gregory has insertedan account of the bishops of Tours in the form of a series of verybrief biographies. This may well be the earliest instance of what wasto become the genre of gesta episcoporum. 35 The ten books with theirprefaces are clearly conceived as a single work, but Heinzelmannhas argued persuasively that the first four, which cover an enormous33Vollmann (1983), cols. 124–28; See also Auerbach (1946); du Plessis (1968).34The best discussion remains Beumann (1964).35Sot (1981), 16 and 33.