HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

78 JOAQUÍN MARTÍNEZ PIZARROof secular history, the Rerum gestarum Saxonicarum libri tres (RGS ) or“Three Books of the Deeds of the Saxons”. 106 Scholars agree thatWidukind produced three versions of this work. A first one, completedby 967/8, is sometimes referred to as the monastery version.A second one, adapted from the first version almost immediately anddedicated to Mathilda, a daughter of Otto I who at the age of elevenhad just become abbess of Quedlinburg, adds pompous prefaces toeach book, rephrases some of the earlier chapters, and providesjustifications for sections that have little to say about the glory ofthe dedicatee’s Liudolfing ancestors. A third version, finished in 973or shortly thereafter, brings the narrative to the death of Otto I onthat same year. 107As a whole, the RGS cannot be described as an ethnic history.Only the first fourteen chapters of Book I focus on the Saxons andsketch out a brief legendary origo. The remainder of Book I coversthe passing of the kingdom of the East Franks from the FrankishConradines to the Saxon Liudolfings and the rule of the first Saxonking, Henry I (Henry the Fowler). Books II and III give a very fullaccount of the reign of Henry’s son Otto I, with particular attentionto the civil wars he was forced to fight with his nobility andmost often against his own near relatives, his military successes onthe eastern borders against Magyars and Slavs and, towards the end,his achievements in Italy and increasingly confident dealings withthe court of Constantinople. The optic of the narrative after I,14 isthoroughly imperial: Widukind never loses sight of the fact that Henryand Otto are ruling a Frankish realm and can, in the best of cases,only claim to have been elected to their position by “the peoples ofthe Franks and the Saxons”. 108Widukind’s Saxon origo is largely made up of legendary materials,some of it reflecting the author’s considerable learning, as when hespeculates that the first Saxons may have been relicts from theMacedonian armies of Alexander the Great (I,2), or when he hasrecourse to etymology and onomastics to account for the name ofthe Saxons (I,7) or that of their war-god (I,12). Two legends (I,2–7)106Die Sachsengeschichte des Widukind von Korvei, ed. P. Hirsch and H. E. Lohmann,5th ed., MGH, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum (Hanover, 1935; repr.1977).107Beumann (1970), 857–62.108Cf. Eggert (1994).