HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

ETHNIC AND NATIONAL HISTORY CA. 500‒1000 67masterpiece than in any other historical narrative of the period.Alongside the chapters on ecclesiastical and political history, Bedehas set up a parallel series of saints’ lives, miracles, and visionaryepisodes that trace the spiritual transformation of Britain as opposedto its institutional incorporation into the Roman church: the martyrdomof St. Alban and the miracles of Germanus of Auxerre inBook I, the posthumous miracles of King Oswald, the life and miraclesof Aidan, the Irishman Fursey’s vision of the hereafter in BookIII, the life of St. Chad, the miracles of the nuns of Barking, thelife of St. Hilda of Whitby, the story of Caedmon and his miraculousgift of poetry, the life and miracles of St. Cuthbert in Book IV,the life and miracles of John of Beverley, and three successive visionsof heaven and hell (by Drycthelm and two anonymous visionaries)in Book V. While the many miracles create a sense of the gradualsanctification of Britain, the visions add an apocalyptic perspectiveconfirmed later on by dire omens in Bede’s appraisal of the state ofthe country (V,23).In historiography, Bede’s chief model was Eusebius of Caesarea,whose Ecclesiastical History he knew in the Latin translation of Rufinus. 73The most distinctive structural trait of the genre created by Eusebiuswas the incorporation of many documents, whole or in part, intothe text. Bede follows him in this practice, reproducing the entirelibellus responsionum sent by Pope Gregory to Augustine of Canterburyto answer questions of pastoral policy that had come up in the earlydays of his mission 74 in Book I, and many letters from the registrumof Gregory’s correspondence and from the correspondence of laterpopes in Books I, II, and III. In Book IV he incorporates the actsof the synods of Hertford and Hatfield (the latter only in part), andBook V contains the lengthy and erudite letter of Abbot Ceolfrid ofWearmouth-Jarrow to Nechtan, king of the Picts, explaining the superiorityof the Roman Easter and tonsure over the Irish. AmongBede’s other literary sources we may count Orosius, Gildas’s De excidioBrittaniae, and several hagiographic works of Northumbrian origin: theanonymous Lindisfarne life of Cuthbert, the Whitby life of Gregorythe Great, and the vita of Wilfrid of York attributed to EddiusStephanus. His celebrated narrative style owes much to the example73Barnard (1976).74Cf. Meyvaert (1986).