HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor
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HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

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ETHNIC AND NATIONAL HISTORY CA. 500‒1000 59feast”, 44) or, far less often, from natural death (“morte propria”, 59).The genre of the work has never been satisfactorily defined. Itmakes no use of vernacular legends, as would be expected in anorigo gentis. On the other hand, despite its title and the dominantinfluence of Orosius, its exclusive concentration on the Visigothsmakes it impossible to classify the HG as a historia in the late antique/early medieval sense proposed by Werner.It has been argued that the HG marks the literary and ideologicalbirth of the Spanish nation, created and led by the Goths andunified under their rule and in this sense the earliest of the Europeannations of today. 54 This reading of the text is contradicted by thetotal absence from its pages of the Hispano-Roman majority, anabsence so pronounced that the Spania of the famous “Praise ofSpain” with which the work begins has to be presented in purelygeographical terms, almost as if it were uninhabited.The originality of the HG, surprising in an encyclopaedist such asIsidore, lends credibility to the argument made of late that the shortversion of the HG is in fact either identical with or else very closeto a historiola of the Goths ascribed to Maximus of Zaragoza andlong believed lost. 55 In this case, the long version would be Isidore’srevision of Maximus in light of the events of the early 620s and, inparticular, of the achievements of Suinthila.Two Historians of the Franks A. FredegarThe author known as Fredegar 56 composed his chronicle circa 658–60,some seventy years after Gregory completed the Historiae. The presentform of the text, four books divided into chapters, does notoriginate with the author but was introduced later. The author hadarranged it as a series of chronicles, five of them abbreviated fromearlier historians, the sixth his own; the present fourth book, identicalwith this last chronicle, still bears the heading “In nomine domininostri Iesu Christi incipit chronica sexta”. 5754Teillet (1984), esp. 463–501.55Collins (1994), 345–58.56Evidence for this name goes back to the sixteenth century only.57Chronicarum qui dicuntur Fredegarii scholastici libri iv, ed. B. Krusch, MGH, SSRMII (Hanover, 1888; repr. 1956).

60 JOAQUÍN MARTÍNEZ PIZARROScholarship on Fredegar long was dominated by two questions:whether the chronicle as a whole was the work of one or severalauthors, and when it was composed. Authorship was made particularlydifficult to establish by the fact that two thirds of the text consistof extracts and summaries from other works, all systematicallyinterpolated by the author. Recent studies of Fredegar have returnedto the hypothesis of a single author, in part because the case formultiple authors has not been proved, but mainly because the evidencefrom stylistic analysis points strongly in this direction. 58 Thedate of composition helps determine the authority of Fredegar’s ownchronicle (i.e., Book IV), the greater part of which centers on the620s and 630s. A dating circa 658–60, supported by references toevents after 657 and 658 (IV,76; IV,81; IV,84), agrees with the senseof several scholars that the chronicle contains an unusually high proportionof legendary and fictional materials. 59A general prologue, which has survived as prologue to Book IV,describes Fredegar’s original project: a world history compiled fromfive other authors and followed by a chronicle of his own. Thesources listed are Jerome, Hydatius, “a certain wise man” who turnsout to be Hyppolitus of Porto, Isidore, and Gregory of Tours. Thedistribution of these materials in the present four-book format isas follows: Book I is taken largely from Hyppolitus of Porto’s Libergenerationis, to which are added lists of Roman emperors and kingsof the Jews as well as a computation of the age of the world. A fewof the materials at the end of I are derived from Isidore; others arevery similar to the lists and computations in Isidore’s universal chronicle,and Fredegar may have believed them to be Isidore’s work.Book II consists of extracts from the chronicles of Jerome andHydatius, with important interpolations. Book III is based on Gregory’sHistoriae, Books II–VI (to the death of Chilperic I in 584). Book IVbegins with a characterization of King Guntram in the twenty-fourthyear of his rule over Burgundy (584) and continues with informationabout the Frankish kingdoms and a number of foreign countriesuntil about 658.58Hellmann (1935), esp. 40–59; Goffart (1963), 339–45; Erikson (1965). Forimportant arguments in favor of two authors, see Gerberding (1987), 13–17.59Wallace-Hadrill (1958), 84–88; Goffart (1963), 345–54; Wood (1994b).

60 JOAQUÍN MARTÍNEZ PIZARROScholarship on Fredegar long was dominated by two questions:whether the chronicle as a whole was the work of one or severalauthors, and when it was composed. Authorship was made particularlydifficult to establish by the fact that two thirds of the text consistof extracts and summaries from other works, all systematicallyinterpolated by the author. Recent studies of Fredegar have returnedto the hypothesis of a single author, in part because the case formultiple authors has not been proved, but mainly because the evidencefrom stylistic analysis points strongly in this direction. 58 Thedate of composition helps determine the authority of Fredegar’s ownchronicle (i.e., Book IV), the greater part of which centers on the620s and 630s. A dating circa 658–60, supported by references toevents after 657 and 658 (IV,76; IV,81; IV,84), agrees with the senseof several scholars that the chronicle contains an unusually high proportionof legendary and fictional materials. 59A general prologue, which has survived as prologue to Book IV,describes Fredegar’s original project: a world history compiled fromfive other authors and followed by a chronicle of his own. Thesources listed are Jerome, Hydatius, “a certain wise man” who turnsout to be Hyppolitus of Porto, Isidore, and Gregory of Tours. Thedistribution of these materials in the present four-book format isas follows: Book I is taken largely from Hyppolitus of Porto’s Libergenerationis, to which are added lists of Roman emperors and kingsof the Jews as well as a computation of the age of the world. A fewof the materials at the end of I are derived from Isidore; others arevery similar to the lists and computations in Isidore’s universal chronicle,and Fredegar may have believed them to be Isidore’s work.Book II consists of extracts from the chronicles of Jerome andHydatius, with important interpolations. Book III is based on Gregory’sHistoriae, Books II–VI (to the death of Chilperic I in 584). Book IVbegins with a characterization of King Guntram in the twenty-fourthyear of his rule over Burgundy (584) and continues with informationabout the Frankish kingdoms and a number of foreign countriesuntil about 658.58Hellmann (1935), esp. 40–59; Goffart (1963), 339–45; Erikson (1965). Forimportant arguments in favor of two authors, see Gerberding (1987), 13–17.59Wallace-Hadrill (1958), 84–88; Goffart (1963), 345–54; Wood (1994b).

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