HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

56 JOAQUÍN MARTÍNEZ PIZARROTestament, especially the Books of Kings. Historia is not national orethnic in subject, but centers instead on the functioning of a Christiansociety and very particularly on the duties of its rulers, who—in associationwith the priests of God—lead the people towards salvation. 46Drawing on Werner’s definition of historia, a recent study of Gregorysolves the problem of narrative discontinuity by tracing throughoutthe Historiae a non-chronological pattern of antitheses combined witha typological interpretation of history. 47 The work as a whole, butalso each individual book, must be read with these paradigmaticsymmetries in mind and particular attention must be paid to thefirst and last chapters of each book, which represent the terms ofthe antithesis, and to the thematic middle chapters, which ofteninvolve a mediation between those terms. This complex structurewould explain Gregory’s passionate opposition to any abbreviationor “improvement” of his text. The elaborate pattern would conveya definition of ecclesia as Christian society in its entirety and a pleafor full collaboration in its government between rulers and bishops,a collaboration that Chilperic I rejected and that his antithesis, thebonus rex Guntram, apparently was willing to practice. 48Of the historians of the early Middle Ages, Gregory always hasbeen considered the only one to give his readers a sense of the actuallife of the period, its daily realities and its emotional climate. Thisability of Gregory often has been presented as a function of his literarynaivety: the realism of his narrative was wholly unstudied, aneffect of his chaotic and spontaneous reproduction of what he witnessed.With the rise in appreciation of Gregory’s literary originalityand artfulness, pioneered by Auerbach in 1946, 49 it also has becomeapparent that Gregory’s fascinating ‘reality’, his world of dramaticcontrasts of sanctity and violence, is largely a product of his art andnot to be taken at face value by critical historians.46Werner (1987).47Heinzelmann (1994), esp. 84–135.48Heinzelmann (1994), 158–67. Ian Wood has proposed external (i.e., nonliterary)reasons for some of the discontinuities in the Historiae and particularly inthe moral characterization of the leading figures (Wood [1994] and, more generally,[1994b]). He identifies numerous erasures, delays, and diplomatic suppressions(e.g., in the portrayal of Chilperic before and after his murder) dictated by thecourse of events and political expediency.49Pp. 81–97, English edition 77–95. See also Auerbach (1958), 78–83 [Englishedition (1965), 103–12]; Thürlemann (1974); and Pizarro (1989).