The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

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THE PERCEPTION OF THE PAST IN TWELFTH-CENTURY EUROPE

This page inlentional~y lefl blank

THE PERCEPTION OF THE PAST IN TWELFTH-CENTURY EUROPE

EDITED BY

PAUL MAGDALINO

THE HAMBLEDON PRESS LONDON

AND

RIO GRANDE

Published by The I:Umbledon Pre"' 1992 102 OlouccSier Avenue, London NWI SHX (U.K.) P.O. Box 162. Rio Grxndc. Obio 45672 (U.S.A.) ISBN I 8S2&5 066 3 ©The contributOr>l992

A dciiCription of Lhil; book is avoiJable from The British library and from the library of Congress.

1)·pesec by York House l)'po&~aphic Ltd .. London. Princed on acid·free papet and bound 1n Great Bnwn by Combridge Univc,.ty Press.

Contents vii

Preface Introduction

l

xi

Discovering a Past for the French Aristocracy

1

Jean Dunbabin 2

Past, Present and No Future in the T welhh-Ccntury

15

Regnunr Teutonicum Tvnothy Reuter 3

Adam and the Eve of Scandinavian History

37

Birgit and Pettr Sawyer 4

5

6 7

8

9 10 11

How the Twelfth-Century Monks of Worcester Perceived their Past

Julia Barrow Administration, Family and Perceptions of the Past in Late Twelfth-Century England : Richard FiuNigel and the Dialogue of the Excheque.r John Hudson The Texts and Contexts of Ancient Roman H;story in Twelfth-Century Western Scholarship Lars Boje Montnsen The Fourth !Gngdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism Ruth Macridts and Paul Magdalino Borrowe.d Time: Perceptions of the Past in Twelfth-Century Rus' Simon Franklin

53

75

99

U7

157

The Sense of the Past in Italian Communal Narratives Chris Wickham The Political Use of the Past in Norman Sicily T.S. Brown

173

Malleable Accounts: Views of the Past in Twelfth-Century Iberia Raymond McCluskey

211

191

227

Index

v

This page inlentional~y lefl blank

Preface

Besides being the work of its contributors, this volume is the product of a unique academic eovironment~ where medieval hi.~tory not only flourishes as a separate department of teaching and research, but also embraces an unusual range of interests. Thanks to the enlightened vision of its founding father, Lionel Butler, and his successor, Donald Bullough, medieval history at ~'t Andrews has always operated within broad chronological and geographical limits. There arc probably few o ther places in the world where a Byzantinist, a Hispanicist and an Engl.ish medievalist could have sat down to discuss a common academic project, and come up with 'The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe' as a formula for attracting internal and external interest. There is probably no other plaoe where the Byzantinist could have been given responsibility for seeing tbe project throug!l. After the initial enthusiasm, the project was more than once in danger of falling by the wayside. That it did not is a tribute partly to my colleagues who held me to it, and partly to the encouraging response of those scholars who were invited to contribute. The project initially took shape as a conference held at St Andrews on 24-27 September 1989. The conference was organised with publication in mind, and with one or two changes, this volume is the published version of the proceedings. Most importantly, the book like the conference maintains a balanced, if not comprehensive, coverage of the whole of Europe. By a happy though totally unforeseen coincidence, the conference occurred two months before the breaching of the Berlin Wall and the book appears at a time of momentous moves towards European integration.

A project so long in the making inevitably accumulates many debts of gratitude, which it is a pleasure to record. Barbara Crawford, John Hudson, Raymond McCluskey, Constanze Schummer, John Walker and Lorna Walker all helped with the planning and organisation of the conference, which also benefited from discussion with Peter Archer, Donald BuJiough, and David Corner. In his capacity as departmental chairman and Director of St John's House, Donald Bullough ensured valuable material and moral support. The British Academy helped with the travel expenses of speakers from abroad, and vii

viij

The Perception of the Past i11 1\vc/fth-Century Europe

the Arts and Divinity Research Fund of the University of St Andrews provided a grant against loss, pan of which has been used to assist publication. David Brown, Michael Oanchy, David Corner and Peter King all read papers at the conference which do not appear here. The volume is the poorer for their absence. To offset the loss, Julia Barrow and John Hudson bravely came to the rescue with essays that reduce what would otherwise have been a huge geographical gap. The illustration on the dust-jac.k et is reproduced by kind permission of the MMiath~que Louis Aragon, Le Mans. Finally, my warmest thanks go to Martin Sheppard of The Hambledo n Press for agreeing to publish the book, and for his expert copy-editing. Paul Magdalino St Andrews. June 1991

Twelfth-Century Bishops on Rome and Athens

J.flildebert of Lavardin (1056-II34), Bishop of Le Mans On Rome None is your equal, Rome, though you are all but ruin. How gteat you were intaet t broken you teach. Long age destroyed your pride; both Cae.<ar's citadels and temples of the gods lie in a swamp. felled is that toil. that toil at which the dread Araxes quaked while it stood, and grieve.< now it has fallen; which swords of kings, the senate's provideot'laws, and gods above established head of all; which Caesar sought to hold alone by crime, rather than partner and pious father be ; which grew by dealing on three fronts with enemies, crime and friends, taming by force, pursuing with Jaws, purchasing with wealth. On which. as it took shape, the care of lea ders watched, piety helped the task and immigrants the place. Tile poles of earth sent craftsmen, payment, goods, the site ito;elf accommodated walls. Leaders expended treasure, Fates their favour, workmen their effort and the whole world wealth. The City has fallen, of which if something worthy

l should strive to say. this can 1.: 'Rome it was'. Yet neither passing years, nor ftamc nor sword, were able to efface this ornament in full. So much still stand<, so much is felled, that neitlter what remains could now be rivalled, nor could the ruins be restored. Collect wealth, marble and new favour from on high , let hands of artisans be active in new works, yet neither can device be equal to the ·wall which stands, nor ean a loo~ely ruin be restored. The care of men could fabricate a Rome so great as care of gods could not have power to loose. Here gods themselves admire the forms of gods and long to match their artificial faces. Nature could not make gods witlt looks like these which man created for gods' wondrous images. These spirits have a face and are more honoured by craftsrnens' pains than by their own divinity. 0 happy city, bad but that city lacked her lords, or were it base for lords to lack true faith. Translated by Paul Magdalino, with changes suggested by Mary Whitby, from tbe l.alitt le~l ln HUthbmi CMomnm~nsis C'IU1ft.ina minora. ed. A.B. Scou (U-ipzig.1969). 22--4

ix

X

2. Michael ChortiaJes, Metropolilan of Athens (1182-1205) Ver.res of the most wLve metropolitan of Athens, Kyr Michael Choniares, on the original reconstruction of the ciJy of Athens. Love of Athens, of ancient legend, depicted these things, with shadows playing to cool the ardour o f my longing. For since, alas, was nowhere to be seen in its own right that celebrated city which Time long aged and incalculable has hidden , in oblivion's depths obscured, I suffer literally the passion of the lovestruck, who, when the true sight of those they long for among those prcse.nt they find no way of seeing, looking on their likenesses, as in pretence soothe the ftame of their desires. 0 unhappy I, a new lxion, in love with Athens as he loved Hera, then, eluded, a phantom e-mbracing. Alas, all that I suffer, say and describe: dwelling in Athens, I see Athens nowhere, only drab dust and empty blessedness. All is gone now and suitable fo r myths ,

trials. judges, courts, votes, laws, orations. persuasive eloquence of rhetors, councils . festivals, and expeditions both of tbe infantry and of the navy, the manifold Muse, the might of learning -perished, the whole renown o f Athens, not even a faint token of it may one see. So I am forgiven, if with no way ofseeiog, the celebrated city of the Athenians I have graphically raised her image. Translattd by Paul Magdalino. from the text published by S.G. Mera ui, 'lntorno aLia Elepa d:i Micbcle Acominato sulla deouJenza deUa ciltA di Alene ', I~ to_fvijp."ll! I1t'.0 . /uij.t.•pou (Athens. 1935), 423·7 [rep, , in i
byurninische Dars.teUUDg der aatiken Stadt Atben', f:.A).,"'""'~cl. 28 (1975). 415-18.

Introduction The idea behind this collection of essays can be summed up very con-oeniently in terms of two phrases which figure in the titles of recent books on medieval history: 'Renaissance and Renewal,' and 'Kingdoms and Communities'.' The twelfth century is associated with the most important of those bursts of cultural activity in medieval Europe wbich have been described as 'Renaiss-ance_~ before the Renai.'ISallce'- the title of another book.2 Any movement of renovatio or renaissance presupposes a heightened response to the past -

both the distant past of a lost 'golden age', and the more recent past of intervening decline. The cultural activity of the twelfth century. moreover. was promoted by, and served, the accelerated development of more articulated and sophisticated forms of collective organisation in western European society. Whether it was a question of old institutions expanding and asserting their role, or of finding a role for new ones, the past was the t\rst place to look for meaning. reassurance. identity and legitimacy. The theme of perception of the past is thus built into the source material and the problems studied by scholars with twelfth..:entury interests. Ye1 although in a sense self-evident, it bas not been formulated as an object of study in its own right, either for the twelfth century or for any other period of medieval history. Perception of tbe past includes, but is not identical witb, the writing and reading of his
RernUs.t4n<:t and RcntWGt in the Twelfth Cmtury. ed. R.L.. 8c:JI$()n and G. Con!itable (Cambridge, Mass .. l982h S. Reynolds. KingdomJAAd Communitits in Wr.Wt'rn Eurupt. 900-/3()() (O.rord, 1984). 1 Rerra.Wo.nces before du RmaUsance, c:d. W. Treadtold (Stanford, 1984) . l Chris Wickham, 'LawyerS' lime: History ar~d Memory in 'l~nth and Etevcotb-Cc:ntury Jtaly', Studits in Meditvol HistOry Prettnted to R.H.C. D
xi

"''

The Perception of rhe Pasr iJ> 'l\velfrh-Cenwry Europe

exhaustive. Being a collaborative effort of different scholars working on diverse material, it is meant to reflect, primarily. the sheer variety of which the subject is capable and the potential Ihat remains. AI the outset one overriding principle was adopled which shaped 1he volume decisively. The subject was to be approached by 'country' rather Ihan by medium, genre or theme; only one essay crosses ' national' boundaries. Contributors were free, indeed encouraged, not to limit themselves to historiography but to discuss all kinds of evidence. Another consequence of the geographical approach w-.ts that great importance was attached to an even geographical spread. Indeed, care was taken to overcompensate for 1he natural preponderance of France and 1he Anglo-Norman kingdom. As a resul1, &andinavia and Iberia are equally wellrepresented, and there are two essays o n the Italian peninsula.

More controversially. perhaps, this volume includes chapters on the Eastern Empire and Russia. ByLantium and its 'commonwealth' are commonly omit.. 1ed or marginalised in surveys of medieval Europe and medieval Christendom - 10 the extent that 1he qualifying adjective ·wes1ern' is often con., idered redundant. The reasons for this are understandable but not. ultimately, acceptable. Tite empire or New Rome was always a European as well as an Asiatic state, never more~ than in the Comnenian period (108l·ll80), when its eastern terrilories were drastically reduced, but its Balkan terrilories remained intact and provided the basis for continuing and e ven expanding influence in Italy and Hungary. It is true 1ha1 the IWelfth century saw the deepening of the ecclesiaslical schism belween Greek Easl and Latin Wes1. Yet the schism deepened in a context of growing, not diminishing, CQntacts at

all social levels. It is in any case notoriously difficult to pinpoint the realisation that a schism had occurred, and for ever after the fact there were those on bolh sides who were convinced 1ha1 il oughl never to have happened. The fa1eful events of 1204 were in part the result of a misguided belief that the Greeks could be forcibly integrated with Latin Christendom, a belief which owed something to an earlier, diplomatic effort by Ihe Emperor Manuel I Komncoos (1143·80) to take control of the crusading movemenl and u•lify the whole of Christendom under Byzantine leadership.' It seems obvious today that Manuel's efforts were doomed to failure but was it so obvious in the mid twelfth cennJTy? Were the Greek and Latin worlds so completely incompatible as we conventionally and conveniently assu.me them to be? May we not have read 100 literally the polemics Qf their gro wing hostility? Have we not too readily idemified a cuhure gap and a generation gap where we ougbl to be looking for sibling rivalry? O ur reading of the evidence has a lol 10 do with our preconception of the dynamic rclalionship between

• P.. Magd.alioo. 'The Phenomenon of Manuel I Komncoo5', in Byz.aruium and rhe West, t:. 850-c. 1100, ed. J.D. Howard·Jobnstoa J= byzantinisciJt' fonclnmscn. 131 (Amstt.rdam, 1988),

l11·199 (re-pr. io P. MagdaJino, ffoditiotf and Transform~Uioll in M'die:val Byzantium (Londoo. 1991)}; idem. '1ht Empire of M4n.utll Kcmnenos (Cambridge, fortbooroiog).

Jmroduction

XIU

Ea.
~ M. An&old, TM Byzontin~ Empin /025-12fU: A Polilicol Hi.ttory (London, J984); A.P. Ka:tbdan al'ld A. Wharton Ep~ttin. Clwlgt> in JJyuuttiM- Culture in the Ek!lfmh tmd Twrtl/111 Ctnturi~l (Berkeley •mt Los Angeles, 1985) ~ M. F. Hendy, St•uJies i11 rhe By:QJttint MON!zary Economy, c.JQ0-1450 (Cambridge, 1985); A. Hatvey, &o, omic Exp.Qnsion ;, th~ Byz(Dttil'lc Empir<. 911()./.IOO(Cambridse, 1989).

xov

The PercepLion of the Past ill Twe/fth·Cemury Europe

very specific aspects, • and those on France and northern Italy with special types of historical narrative. Although the focus is overwhelmingly on the writing of narrative history. it is clear that in all parts of Europe apart from Scandinavia and Russia, relative newcomers to the religion and cuJture of the Book, 'serious' history was being written against a wider background of literary - not to mention oral - reference to the past. The discussion of French aristocratic family histories opens by pointing out that the collective historical conSciousne-'iS of the French aristocracy was typefied by the Song of Rolan d . Other essays remind us that in England and throughout the Mediterranean wo rld, legal writing was a constant response to the past. So too was the falsification of ancient legal documents, which turned imitation of the past into a busy and profitable industry. as is noted in the context of the two Norman kingdoms and the German Reich. The extraordinary ftourishing of forgery in Norman Sicily is all the more striking in view of the relative povcny of local historiography.7 This raises the question as to how much cross-fertilisation actually occurrc.d between different literary genres of perception of the past. Historiography , canon~law , ;;md theology probably did interact in late twclfth'"(;Cntury Byzan ~ tium, and there may have been a legal mode of histo rical thinking and writing in tbe northern Italian communes. Richard litzNigel's Dialogue of the Exchequer. an administ[ative treatise exhibiting a multiplicity of historical percep-tions , is explicable in terms of the same milieu and rhe same mind which produced the author's now lost ' three-column' history of the reign of Henry II. On the other hand . we arc tOic.l that in the wc~tcrn e mpire the historicist methods developed by canonists and theologians in the Investiture Contest were hardly taken up by histo rians. In the cast. the non-historiographical Greek literature of the twelfth century communicates a radically new attitude to the ancient Greek past which is totally lacking in the chronicles o f the time. although tbesc shared in the same climate of intellectual sophistication. The o'•crall impression that emerges, at least from ·old Europe', is one of great variety: of many different perceptions of the past existing side by side,

sometimes in combination but often quite unconnected. without any se.nse of incongruity. A G reek abbot put it well when he observed that the three very different oral traditions concerning the ·archaeology' o f his monastery all, like confluent river.;, rose far apart but merged in the reality of the present.8 The antique past was both a familiar decor and a foreign country. The past could be used to promote existing institutions or to criticise them ; in Byzantium it was " Thi$ was also true of tbc unpublishc.d paper which Michael Clanehy ga~·e 10 the conference, under 1he Litle 'St Cuthlxrt's Ren
' The cxpress..ion isbotTQwed from David Srow11's unpubli!>hcd oonrerc.noe paper cn1itlcd 'The P'overt)' ur Historiography in 'l'welfth~Century Sootland'. 3

Ed. A. PtlpadopouJos.-Kerameus. Ntx,rn Pttropolitan
Introduction

XV

used to construct alternative 'national' identities. Rational, critical approaches to time remembered developed alongside the uninhibited invention of anachronistic tall stories. The oomposition of reflective, merary histories inspired by classical models took off, while !be compilation of traditional, annalistic chronicles remained the order of the day. The annalistic method itself provided the means for radically new restructuring of tbc past, as David Corner argued in his unpublished conference paper. From his comparison of two contemporary writers from the Norman-Breton border, the chronicle of Robert of Torigny emerged as the radical work, whereas the deceptively 'ethnographical' l0>~ History of tM Two Briltanies by Reginald fitzJocelin was seen to perpetuate an old 'Celtic tradition of interest in topographical matters and places as t.he key structural elements in the composition of literary works'. 9 Most contributors are not, in the event, directly exercised by the theme of 'renaissance and renewal~, and only the Byzaotinists are concerned to argue for the existence of a ttwelfth--centu.ry renaissance' - a reflection of the extent to which the Greek cultural achievements of the period remain undervalued, even by otber Byzantinists. ' Kingdoms and communities' are rather more in evidence, and here it is interesting to observe bow consistently contributors have chosen to emphasise the continuing role of local communitie.'i and lordships in shaping and promoting historical consciousness. even within the framework of historic or potential 'national' kingdoms. The picture is somewhat distorted by the fact that the contn'butors on England and France have deliberately chosen not to ooncentrate on royal ooun historiography. Yet even in the two empires, where court historiography flourished, parochial attitudes abounded. ln twelfth-century Russia1 •national' unity lay in a brief moment of the eleventh century and in the eye of the Byzantine church. In Iberia and I taly, it lay in the future; in neither area was the memory of the old Germanic ldngdom invoked to inspire or sustain the regional kingships of the twelfth century witb a programme of restoration and unification. Even !be memory of glorious Christian reoonquest in !be previous century was muted; hardly the stuff of which national myths are made. One is also struck by the discontinuous and limited scope of many of the historical perceptions highlighted in these chapters. Again, the picture is distorted by its obvious omissions; the ages of Arthur, Bede, Charlemagne and Alfred all impinged on the literate consciousness of the twelfth century in important ways which the authors of this volume did not choose to discuss. The fact that they made this choice is in it.,<;clf suggestive that there may be something in the consistency with which two periods of twelfth-century memory keep coming into view: the antique past, and the recent past, going back to the tenth century. One essay investigates the texts and contexts in which Western Europeans read about the history of ancient Rome. Antiquity, both classical and Chris· 9

•'f\\-o Different Approaches to S1mcn.uing 1he Past (rom rhe Norman/8reton Border'.

xvi

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

tian, was highly fashionable in the twelfth century, and not just as a source of literary ornamentation: for the two empires. in particular, it had a serious utilitarian function as an antidote to the crisis of confidence whieh affected both of them from the late eleventh century. The twe.lfth century was a time when Germans solemnly called themselves Romans, and the citizens of East Rome, when not disputing this claim, began to think of themselves as Hellenes. Where antique origins could not be traced they could always be invented. However1 the essays on Italy play down the significance of the antique e_xemplo with which the brash new powers of the peninsula, the communes in the north and the Normans in the south, were occasionally compared. It was not until the thirteenth century that antique foundation myths became dt rigutrll' for northern Italian city states, although we should not forget the fatal attraction that antiquity held for the ideologists of the one commune that never succeeded in liberating itself from its bishop, the pope. 10 For both the regno and the communes, real history began in the ele\'enth century, even though it could . by the adoption of a different strategy, have begun much earlier. Something similar was at work among those French aristocratic families who chose not to trace their family histories back to ihc mists of time, o r even to the heyday of the Carolingian empire, but started them with a 'Big Bang' in the chaos of tb.e Vtking invasions - a strategy designed to conceal the illegitimate origins of the principalities rather than to enhance the pedigrees of their rulers. A 'Bang' in the tenth cenrury was how the twelfth-eenrury monks of Worcester chose to explain the conversion of their cat11edral from a secular to a -monastic community. Dmmatic acts of conversion in the tenth and eleventh cenrury were alw at the perceived origins of other groups. As Peter King noted in his unpublished paper, reformed monastic communities of the twelfth century attached great.significance to the moments when their founding fathers convened from a life of secular sin or unreformed rcligiou.• observance. " In Scandinavia and Russia, conversion to the true faith on a grand scale around the turn of the millenium marked a great divide, which twelfth-century writers perceived through the filter of triumphal eleventhcentury propaganda. At the o ther extreme, no history could have been more continuous than that of the succession of Byzantine emperors, yet here too, twelfth-century historiography conveys a sense that the relevant past belonged to the last two hundred years. Although these essays do not represent the whole of the past that was visible from twelfth-century Europe, they may, in their selective combination, bring us closer to an idea of what twelfth-century Europeans actually looked for in the receding landscape. R. Krautbeimer, Rome: Pro{llf:. of u City, J12·1JQ8 (Princeton. 1980), 197·200: Roben L.. BeMoOo, 'PoUtical Re.no...a@: Two Models from Roman Antiquity', in Renai.t.ta.nu illld Renewal, 340-359~ H. Blodt, ·ocr AutOr dcr "Graphia aurcaeurbis Romae.. ·• Dcutsclrr.s Ardtiv, 40( 1984), 10

t52!f. 11

·Reform Vindicated: Some Reftections on Monastic Hagiography'. The paper considered lhe. httgi<)grtt.phy oC Jobn Gu~lttert . Hedouin or B~>e, and 1hc founders o( Aftli&hem.

1

Discovering a Past for the French Aristocracy Jean Dunbabin King Charles, our great Emperor, Has been in Spain for seven years. He has conquered that haughty land right to the sea, No fortress can resist him. 1 Do the famous words with which the Oxford version of the Song of Ro/Jmd begins convey a perception of the past"! Did the poet think Charlemagne bad dominated Spain like that? Or did he simply sketch a fictional background of conquest over the Saracens in order to highlight the slaughter of Ronccvaux? Or perhaps in order to encourage crusading among his cootemporaries? For well over a century French literary experts have been engaged in debating the contribution of history to the vernacular epic;' hardly surprisingly. given the complexity of the question, they have not produced a standard answer. At the same time, scholars would probably agree that, whatever the intentions of the poets, epics formed the corporate historical con.
' G.J. BrauJt, ed. and u . (Pc·nMylvania, 1978), lint$l-4. ~ For a summary o( the debate in relalioo to RtJo/4/ de Combroi, $t~ P. Matar3.m, Rtc.hudats

h/.swriqud et liubtJitf's sur 'RDwJ de Cambrai' (P...uis, 1962) 2-53. For a reccm treatment ot Tht S.ngof Rolond, 1\.F. Coo~. Th< S.>Ut ofTh<SongofRoiMd (Ithaca and London, l
I

2

The Perceprion of rile Pas/ in Twelfrh-Cemury Europe

and rccei,·ed with pleasure similar stud ies written by their clerks or the monks of local monasteries. Most of these Latin family histories did not circulate widely outside the families for whom they were v.'l'itten, and because their authors did not usuallr know each others' works they do not form a vcl)' coherent genre. But despite this drawback , the perception of the past ther convey should be much easier to analyse than that inherent in the vernacular epics, chiellr because their authors specifically intended to instruct their aristocratic readers about what had actually happened. And though they also hoped to entenain and edify, their ehoice of prose rather than poetry as the medium for their message, while constituting no guarantee of truthfulncss 1 provided at least some insura.oce against the wi.ldcr flights of fancy.) Their intentions were therefore relatively straightforward. Furthermore, from the modem investigator's point of view. the histories are less plagued than the epics by problems of composition. With the exceptions of Flandria generosa and Gesta ccmsulwn Andegnvon11n whose. evolutions scholars have traced. each history is an individual work, which can be discussed v.ithout reference to hypothetical chains of recension or multi-authorsh ip. Literary experts would envy such simplicity. Nevertheless, as I hope to show, the family historians as a group do not convey a single perception of the nature of the past. Nor indeed do individual authors have a single perception throughout their work; rather they chop and change without warning, and with a rapidity startling to the twcntieth-centUI)' mind, !rom regarding the past as something to be discovered to looking on it as inventable. In order both tO demonstrate this, and to e xplain what they thought (or purponed to think) the actual historical past bad been like, I shall discuss their work under four headings: their use of genealogies; their choice of staningvpoints; their incorporation of legend; and their exploitation of ~mach· ronism . Genealogies provided the skeleton of all family histories a.nd through their form deeply influenced the attitudes of those who exploited them.' Any family tree sugg<'Sts to it~ reader a certain achievement; medieval trees, linked as they were to title-holders, bespoke the triumph of long-established privilege. By tracing the heirs of the title do wn to the time of writing, they automatically demonstrated the present incumbent's right to enjoy his possessions. By recording the famous names and distinguished marriages of his ancestors they underlined the virtues he had inherited . They potently evoked the past to validate the present. At the same time they conveyed an implicit assumption about the character of history: retailing only births, marriages, and sometimes deaths, they built up ao image of generations of equal stature participating in

' D.B. 'l)'son. 'P.auonage o£ Freneh Vemacular Hi~lcny Writer$ in 1hc 'I"A•elf1h and Thirteenth Cenmries'. RomiJIIlu, tOO ( 1979), 186-87.

• L. Ocnioot, Ln Glntlllogin, in Typologie W $()U.rr.es du Moyen 4ge occldtntal, fasc. tS (tumhOut, 197S) provides introduction lo the genre.

DLvcovering a Post for the French Aristocracy

3

an almost timeless 6ow of family ascendancy, a 6ow which surely would continue into the years ahead. Thus the monk.' of those churches responsible for the burial of aristocratic families, where the memory of each member was kept green in the masses performed for the souls of the dead, taught French lords to view their family pasts as stately, almost inevitable progressions, in themselves pleasing to God. Wh.ile the humble peasant bad neither past nor future, the lord could take pride in his position as heir to his ancestors, tbe product of an advantageous marriage, and the begeuer of future lords. There was. of course, nothing new in this. Jewish, Roman and barbarian precedents te-stify to the n>tural human instinct for tracing back a man's ancestry to the mists of time, to demonstrate something of the qualities be has inherited. The genealogy best known to the French, that of their own kings, deriving their line from the Trojans, was a Merovingian creation. In the twelfth century what had hitherto been the prerogative of kings became over the years the commonplace possession, not only of princes but also of castellans•. Whereas in 1097 so great a prince as Fulk le R~chin of Anjou had to confess to ignorance about the doings of his ancestors earlier than his grandfather,• by the beginning of the thirteenth century Lambert of Ardres, writing about a much less signiJicant family, could trace in detail five generations of its history, including the collateral lines.' Tb.is development can be accounted for in terms of tbe expansion of religious institutions and their patronage by a wider cia,., combined with a greater tendency to record in writing what had to be remembered. But the commonsensical explanation for the phenomenon omits to strcs.' the pleasure family t rees elicited in those for whom they were produocd; Lamben of Ardres.• for example, undertook his strenuous labour because it was the only means he knew of turning away his lord's wratb.8 Of course there were obvious advantages for noble families in having clerks delve into their ancestry: while wishing ro avoid marriages within the prohibited degrees, they also needed the equivalent of stud books with which to impress potential bridegrooms for their daughters. Yet io dismiss the spread of genealogie.' as nothing more than either yet another instance of the vulga.risa· tion of cultural models or the product of self-advertisement is, as I hope to show, to underestimate it. The rapid evolution of the genre suppons the belief that the discovery of the past, however eccentrically carried out, was a definitive feature of twelfth-century noble culture in France. Flanders saw the steadiest evolution from the original genealogical model to full history. Alone among the princes of France, its count~ had dared in the.

" Though on the counts of Flanders, sec below, 4. 6 Chr011iquts tk1 c.omt~s d'Anjo•~ n. dt$-sdglleurs·d 'Amboitt, ed. L.. Halpben and R. Poupardlo (Paris. !9ll), 233. ' Most cleMl)' sbowo in G. Ouby, Tht K!rlghl, the LAdy tmJ the Pries•: Tire M4kingof Modnn Mania~ in Mtdk\•al Fronce, tt. B. Bray, {Harmondswonh. 1983) 269·78. 11 Ed. I. Heller, Lamb«-rti Aui~Mis hi.ftoria comirum Ghis-netuium, MGH SS 24,638.

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

4

early tenth century to annex to themselves the famous royal genealogy 9 Under instructions a monk from Compiegne, Charles the Bald's capital, drew up forSt Bertin a genealogy deriving in the standard fashion from the Trojans and following the established route through Merovingians and Carolingians to Charles the Bald; at this point it concentrated on the marriage of Charles's daughter Judith to Count Baldwin I of Flanders, then traced their children through the next three generations.'" As far as is known , though assiduously kept up to date, this piece of comital presumption remained confined within the monastery walls, with no significance other than liturgical, until the beginning of the twelfth century. Then in ll20 Lambert of St Omer (whose Libcr jtoridus also contained another genealogy concerned only with the counts' paternal connections), used the St Bertin genealogy as the basis for his new account in verse of the eomital family." From this time on, a succession of anonymous writers added to and interpreted the. facts recorded in the. Lib~r floridus, until what had sraned as a genealogy was stantial detail; they found they could not establish the rights and wrongs of >he issues and God's judgement on >hem without fuller narr.nivc. The pleasures of a wider discourse once ta..c;ted? there could be no turning back. Genealogists turned into chroniclers, even into historians. By the end of the twelfth century the authors of F/andria generosa's continuations had discovered that much withi-n a society as complex as the one they i.nhabited required explanation in tcrrns that went beyond the characters or intentions of their rulers. As a consequence their work was set to become a history, not just of princes but of the Flemish principality as a whole. 12 Its expanding subject matter is the earliest indication of a desire to cater to the historical curiosity of a new and broader readership, the literate town-dweller.

~ The oount$ of Boulugne's genealogy. 6rst wrinen in Lothariogia. derived from the 10yal line: cd. l.C. Bethmann, MGH SS 9. 299·30), A.t1d I am indebted tr.t Pmfe~sor T. Bisson for the information that the (;:C.)Unt~ of Barcelooa b.lld a simjJar one. But both were later in date. 10

Ed. L.C. Betbrruum, MOH SS 9, 302.3.

Ibid., 308. On this sec L. Genicot, &uda sur Irs princip(mtts lotharing,rnnrs (LouV(IJn, 1975), 220. "lbc.paternal genealOgy is printed in Rtc.u~U d~s hl.sto~ des G11uleJ et de Ia Franct, xiv, 52()..22, 11

It for e.:xampCe it discus.scs the effect of the war between Philip Augustus and Phihp or Atsace on th-e common people; it dC$CribC's St Orner"$ motj\le$ io initially resisti.n~ and then openin&it$ gates to Louis VIH: and it explains the different reaclions of the townsmen ot Ypres, Bcuges and Ghent to Prince Ferrand; Ruw:il du hlstfJrleru drs Gaults tr dt '" Frana. xviii, 560, 564.

Discovering a Past for the French Aristocracy

5

FlandriiJ generosa, like Topsy, just growed. Lambert of St Orner probably did not appreciate his luck. Because the work emerged directly from long· established oomital genealogies, be did not have to face the problem of how and where to begin his account . Other authors of family histories were not so fonunate-. On the o ne band they were more ambitious than the original compilers ofthe Flemish genealogy; from the stan they intended to tell a story. On the other hand , the genealogies they exploited were short, fragmentary or meaningless; for one reason or another they imparted no obvious shape to a narrative. Where, then, should the stories of aristocratic families start? The standard answer wa.• some time between the death of Charles the Bald and the 930s. That there should have been a standard answer has perplexed some modem historians, especially those who emphasise the continuity of aristocra· tic histo~ from the Carolingians through at least to the cady eleventh century.' In their perplexity they perhaps underestimate the family historians' intentions, their concern not with mere lineage but with the right to rule. Twelfth.century Frenchmen were aware of the great rupture in the Carolingian political framework through which their ancestors had lived; they knew their world of principalities and castellanies had only tenuous, and in some cases exiguous, roots in the past. They saw their landscape still altering under a wealth of new castles and churches; they noted the changes taking place every day in the customary laws they all observed. In order to write a history that validated the present, they were fo rced willy·nilly into searching for disconti· nuity. Yet governed as they were by precedent, the only circumstance that could legitimate discontinuity for them was foreign invasion. It followed that the period of the Viking raids must assume the significance of a turning point in Frankish history. Their confidence in this interpretation was bolstered by the only model they had for their genre, Dodo of St Quentin's famous De moribus et actis primonm1 Normanr1iat! ducum which. given its subject maner, had of necessity begun with Rollo and his marauding bands. 14 The example was potent. Count Fulk Je R~chin (the only Jay author among the historians) wrote the ltistory of his Angevin ancestors around !097, just after be had received from Pope Urban II a gift he identilied as a sign of God's favou r towards him. "To those still unconvinced of his righteousness, he set out to demonstrate the steady and systematic increase in power enjoyed by the counts of Anjou. on account of their military ability, and its culmination in his own reign. The shape of his narrative was therefore to be a steady upward curve; but where should it start? Relying on what his uncle Geoffrey ManeI had taught him, he postulated as his 6rst known ancestor a certain Enjuger, active in the reign of Louis the Stammerer, whose honour had been conferred on him by that king. u For a su.mmary or recent scholarship on thi10 m.auc.r, see J. Maniodale, 1'he French Aristocracy in che Early MickUe Ates: A Ruppraisat·, PArt and Pr~sem. 75 (1977), 5~S. 1

"

u

Ed. J. A . lair (P:aris, 136$). Cltroniqu~ du comus d'.Anj()U 2:38.

The Perceprion of rhe Pasr in Twelfrh-Cemury Europe

6

According to Fulk, Enjuger and his three successors were responsible for removing Anjou from the hands of the pagans and for defending it against its Christian enemies. Their right to rule wa.• therefore e.•tablished both by the Carolingian monarchy and by their own efforts. This story ha~ puzzled modern historians, not so much on account of its inaccuracy- FuJk had good reason. after King Philip I bad abducted his wife Sertrada, to minimise t he Angevin debt to the Capetians- as on account of its appare nt ignorance. The author

neither knew nor cared about his fa mily's old and blue blood (they were descended through the female line from Lambert , king of Italy) , nor about their very long connection with the city of Angers, both as viscounts and as advocates of the church o f St Aubin. 16 Fulk's story can plausibly be interpreted as evidence of a real blockage of dynastic memory. brought about by the disruption of monastic houses during the period of the Viking invasions in France." The count could tell us nothing about his ancestors because, buried in unknown graves. they had slipped out of the long corporate memory of any monastic community. On this hypothesis Fulk's intentions were honest, he told the truth as he knew it; but he shared in a widespread and profound ignorance about what bad happened. 1l1ere is. however, an alternative and equally plausible explanation: Fulk was less ignorant than indifferent to aspects of his family history not directly linked to the honour of Anjou; in pursuit of self-justification he mentioned only those ancestors who had , he thought, borne lhe title 'coum of Anjou· before him. Therefore no conclusions should be drawn from any fact he failed to record about earlier holders of less distinguished titles, however blue their blood. furthermore. in describing the origin of the county he knew to be a new

c'fcation on the map of France, he endowed it with legitimacy in the only way he believed would carry conviction with his contemporaries: the Carolingian gift and the 'pagans' to be resisted were the fruits of a strongly 'creative' impulse. O n this assumption , Fulk's history should be treated with deep scepticism. We are therefore faced with an open choice: either men living around 1100 had almost no knowledge of their o wn ancestors, in which case it can surely be argued that the succeeding century discovered the past as never before; o r alternatively. they were already well-versed in the tricks of propagandist pre.<entation. in which case the twelfth century saw no radical shift in perception of the uses of history, despite the much greater general interest in men and matters long dead. Whichever interpretation we prefer, f ulk's Big Bang beginning became standardised in subsequent family histories. In addition to rendering irrelevant 0 . Guillot, U comte d'Anjol4 ~~ srm r:nlou.I'Qgt QU Xle :;iilt (P..trls 1913). i. l·IS, 127·50. 195-201. I am pal1icularl)' inCr 'T'rar.tSmirtiog rhe Pa5' in rbe Ekvenlh Century•, delivered at the Davis Center, Princeton University, in March 1988. which is concerned witb memocy blockage in relation to the Chronkon Jllowtlicitnu. I am most grateful to Professor Geary for allowing •ne 10 re.:1d this work aod for elaborating. in aJetter to me. O(llhc break in continuity io burial and liturgical memoria. 16 17

Discovering a Past for the French Aristocracy

7

all events before the late Carolingian period, thus simplifying the historian's task, it had !he literary merit of situating heroic creativity against a background of desolation caused by invasion. Lambert of Ardres' history of the counts of Guines iJiustrates this. To Lambert's annoyance, the monks of St Bertin had found in Folcuin's cartulary mention of a certain Walbert who in the eighth century bad ruled over some part of Guines. Under pressure from them, Lambert mentioned Walbert but emphasised his unimportance. He then hurried on to the early tenth century, by which time (according to our story· teller) the county had been so devastated by Vikings that it consisted o f nothing but uncultivated woodland in which cowered only a few inhabitants. Tbe point of dwelling on this bleak picture was to highlight the achievement of Sifred, called the Dane, the legendary founder of the house of Guines. Establishing his autbority in the God-forsaken spot Sifred at once transformed it into a properly governed county and bcnowed upon its people the boon ol hereditary lordship. 18 The contrast in the land before and after his advent was Lambert's striking illustration of the benefits of aristocratic rule. Thomas de Loches, author of the first redaction of the Gtsto consu/um A!Ukgavorum, used a variant of this literary device to more exalted purpose. Working from a genealogy of the counts of Anjou not available to Fulk Je Recbin, he postulated two ancestors of the line prior to Enjuger (the first mentioned by Fulk); of these the first was Torquatius, a mere Breton forest· dweller with no claim to aristocracy; and the second Tertullus, wbo founded the family's fortunes by winning glory and position at the court of Charles the Bald.'9 (In portraying this king's court as a re•i•ed Arthurian one in which chivalric deeds were always well·rewarded , Thomas was subscribing to a deYeloped tradition; in his part of France Charlemagne was for long outshone by his grandson both as an emperor and as a relic-collector.) The effect ofthese prefixes to the family tree was to add new piquancy to the story; for Torquatius and Tertullus were explicitly 'new men'. who owed their rise to their own talents not to their inheritance. This allowed Thomas to class the counts ol Anjou among the 'new nobles', and therefore to apply to them the praises sung by Marius in Sallusl's Catiline Conspiracies, a work our author quoted liberally in the prologue to the Gesro."' His invention of the forest-dwelling ancestor had as its underlying purpose the instruction of Count Fulk the Young (for whom he wrote) in the norms of conduct advocated by Sallust. Thomas was a peda,gogue through and through. Therefore, if there is doubt about whether Fulk Je Rechin's Big Bang beginning should be ascribed to ignorance or to creativity, there is no question about Lambert's and Thomas's. Both authors were clearly motivated by literary and didactic considerations. For

111

Ed. HcUer.5(16.67.

111

ChrMiqua dt.t cmnu.t d'Anj()u, 26-29

"'Ibid. 25.

The Perception of rhe Pasr in Twe/jih-Century Europe

8

them the past was malleable to the needs of the present. It had no autonomous existence.. Myth about distant events often gives way to a more factual account as the story proceeds . Since much of what aU family historians said can be corrobo r· ated by other sources, particularly charters, it must have been based on research. Tbis is no more true of Lam ben ofSt Orner or of Fulk le R~ehin who purposely eschewed fancy than o f the more imaginative Thomas de Laches or Lambert of Ardres. Indeed Thomas exploited his position asFulk the Young's chancellor to gain access to comital charters; and Lambert wa~ genuinely interested in the written agreements he found that modified customs within

Goines. Histo rical truth obviously mattered to them all, even if rather episodi· cally. One of their number even viewed the distant past as a fit subject for detailed scholarly investigation. The author of the Gwa Ambaziensium dominorum prefaced his work with a lengthy sketch of Frankish history, especially as it touched on Amboise, coupled with an attempt to explain when and why the inhabitants o f that town built the features still surviving on the landscape: town walls, eaves in lhe IUUside and the first forrre.-s.21 Here he demonstrate.d a measure o f that archaeological interest more famously dis· played by Guiben of Nogent when discussing the pagan tombs at Nogent. 22 The Amboise author's thought process was analagous to those of his Loire valley contemporaries who were preoccupied with physics, the science of the invisible causes of visible'things; as they argued from observe.d phenomena to the explanatory hypotheses behind them, so he sought to deduce history from existing topographiea.l features. If his method was creative (though not in the pejorative sense of the word) , and bis theories no longer tenable, IUs perception of the past was nevertheless definitely antiquarian. 23 The indubitably scholarly instincts sometimes demonstrated by twelfth· century historians were balanced by their partiality for recounting established legends and even inventing oew ones. After all, they lived in the century that notoriously pioneered the portrayal of Charlemagne as a crusader and absorbed King Arthur and his knights into lhe canon of history; they could not be immune to the prevalent disease. Although some of their number were more prone than o thers to blatant credulity, none steadfastly turned his back on all echoes of popular tradition. Marjorie Chibnall has shown how even the sceptic-•! Orderic Yitalis reponed the disaster of Fraga as the Spanish hoped it might be remembered." Others were less discriminating. The author of the historical introduction to the Gesta Ambaziensium dominorum, whose imaginative scholarship I have just commended, found himself in deep trouble when Ibid., 7-8. Ed. J.F. Benton, u-. C.C. Swiotoo Blaod, Stlf and Sockty in Me~al Ftatttt: T~ Meml)irs o{ Abb<>l Gulbtrt of No~m (New York, 1977), 119. 23 Compare the rather d.itrerent and more hesitant \'ersion ot £ .Audllrd in DictionNJire d'histoirt ~~ dt' glogr«phlt t.tcli~Uutlqu~. ii, undet Atnboise, 104?·Sl. ~ E«lr:siauiali History, vi (Oxfotd, 1978), 412·18 and uii·ili. '!I

22

Discovering a Past for the French Aristocracy

9

recounting the fall of the Roman empire in Gaul. His chief source for classical history, the Gesta Romanorwn, seems to have ended with the battle of Adrianople . So lor the fifth century be happily switched to Geoffrey of Monmouth, whom he followed in recounting the loss or Britain and Arthur's conqu<$t of Gaul and Italy, ending his borrowings at the point when the newlycrowned emperor was recalled from Rome on hearing the news of Mordred's abduction of Guineviere. One might forgive him for failing to rumble Geoffrey; after all, most of his contemporaries also succumbed to the charm of the Historia regum Britanniat. But be added to the offence by embellishing his borrowing.•. Where Geoffrey explained Arthur's d ivision of Gaul into provinces, he added a tale of the count of Anjou conferring the lordship of Amboise on one of his followers;25 thus he endowed the castellany with a sixth-century origin, no doubt to the delight of his mid twelfth-century lord and patron . Then aher this flight of fancy he carne back to earth with a bump. His subsequent, and much more historical, account of events in Gaul in the fifth and sixth centuries involved a leap in time that left oo chronological space for Arthur. The discontinuity must have been as obvious to him as to his modern reader. What kind of perception of the past was this that could combine antiquarianism and invention in so eclectic a fashion? Nor was this unusual. Thomas de Laches, whose patient investigations into the ~hives shed light on the donations of the early tenth-century counts Fulk the Red and Fulk the Good, figures unknown except in name to Fulk le Rcchin, nevertheless abandoned research for imagination when be came to describe the reign of the next count Geoffrey Grisegonelle. By h.is pen Geoffrey was transformed into a hero in the epic vein. It was he who bore the king's standard, he who led the charge against the hostile foe and he who slew in single combat a Danish giant. The excuse for this representation was that Geoffrey was mentioned as Charlemagne's standard-bearer in the Song of Roland and remembered in Anjou as a formidable fighter. As a model of ideal comital condu<1 he therefore. bad powerful appeal. But because hi.' historical enemies bad been neighbouring West Fr.mkish princes Thomas. unwilling to fan the ftames of ancient quarrels, decided drastically to remould his life story by inventing other foes, Danes and Flemish, for Geoffrey to slaughter. At the same t.ime he enhanced his hero's prestige by ascribing to him other men's deeds and devised an explanation for Geoffrey's soubriquet 'Greymanlle' that was fully in tune with epic expectations. 26 The end result of his ingenuity was that the historical count would have found almost nothing to recognise in bis portrait. To understand wh)' Thoma.' thus revamped the past we must take account of

~ Chronlqu~s des comre.s d'Anjou, 9-ll. The GtaJII Romanorum 5hould be Wstinguished from the famous .Franciscan so~o~r~~ tee tbe edi1ors' introduction. l't'ii. 16 lb;d., 37-44. On tbis see F. Lot, 'Ge.offroi Gri$et.oad)e daM l'tpopte•, Rom(Jni4, 19 (1890), Jn-93.

10

Tile Perception of the Past in Twelfth·Cenwry Europe

two very different pressure.~ on him. The-first was that of oral tradition. His life story of Geoffrey may not have departed very far from the version prevalent in the Touraine at the time (though if so, it is odd that Fulk le Rechin knew nothing of it when he wrote in 1097). The literary experts, who have done so much to pin down this nebulous subject, have charted oral tradition's rapid transformation of history into legend as each teller spiced up events to enthral his listeners, confused roughly similar names and attributed stock heroic deed' to any charismatic figure.27 Although twelfth..:entury men talked of the poems in which o ra l tradition was enshrined as potentially misleading, they were no better equipped than we a.r e to isolate the elements of truth in what they beard.>"JfThomas de Loches was reciting the established local tradition about Geoffrey Grisegonellc, his Jack of critical restraint was understandable. This was how the men of a recently conquered part of the Angevin dominions wished to picture the ancestor of their conqueror; his heroic stature, inherited by his descendants, excused their failure and put balm on their wounds. Thomas was more creative than this implies. He was, after all, engaged on a work which , by itS very title , Gesta consulum Andegavorum, was designed to excite comparison between the counts of Anjou and the heroes of classical antiquity. In the text he determinedly pressed home the similarities by his frequent citations from Sallust , Sidonius Apollinaris and Cicero. The product of the Loire valley classical renaissance, he will have appreciated the significance of Cicero's dictum that history was 'the guide to life' (De Orolore, II. ix, 36), with its e mphasis on human responsibility Cor what happened and its implicit licence lO mould from the past timeless representations of particular virtues, to act as examples for the men of the presc.n t. 29 Thomas's attitude towards his work. was identical with that of Miles Crispin wbo. introducing his Uves of the Abbors of Bee, remark.ed: 'Long ago it was customary to set up statues of one's ancestors and to keep a written record of their achievements for the edification of posterity; tbeirs was the pattern of life to be imitated.' 30 Both realized the overarching relevance of the past to the present; but it was a past from the gloomy passage of which certain individual.• of stature cnuld be snatched w a timeless glory; and if, in the course of the snatching their deeds were magnified, their glory exaggerated, it was all to the good, for then their

1'1 See for example R.. Lejeune, k«
{le(ei\•ed by Pseudo-Thrpin; Hi.Hnire. et cultu~ historique dtms toa:idmt mlditvole, (Pwis, 1980).

no.

:::' T.P. Wisen1an, 'lllttodu..,'1iol'l: CI3S$.ica11-listoriography', in C. Hokls.vronh a.odT.P. Wi~man (ed$.), The lnJteri,anu oj HLuoriiJsrtJphy, 350-9()() (Exeter, 1986), 1-6. 30 Ouoted by M. Gibsoo, "Hlstory at Bee in the Twel(lh Century'. The Wri!ing ofJlislory in 1ht Middlt Ages: Essuys Pr~rnttd 10 R.W. &whtrn, ed. R.H.C. Davis aod J.M. WaUacc-Hadrill (O>"fO
t98t), 170.

Discovering a Past for the French Aristocracy

11

example would be the more potent. On this line of argument Geoffrey Orisegonclle the epic hero was easily excused. John ofMarmuutier's later redaction of the Gesta consulum Andegavorum is enlightening on how far he saw the past as subject ro invention as well as discovery. Repeating Thomas's account of Fulk Nerra's deeds, he added the story that, on return ftom his famous Jemsalem pilgrimage, the count of Anjou visited Rome and there lured to his death the Roman aristocrat Crescentius, who had dominated the pope for many yean." The historical foundation for this legend was the Emperor Otto IU's slaying ofCresceotius in 998. In order to tit the incident into the known chronology of Fulk's journey, John had to ascribe the deed to the pontificate o f a later pope; and he allowed himself the indulgence of fantasising about the way in which Crescentius was lured to his death. Otherwise he kept close to the known facts with, of course, the major reservation that he ascribed the liberation of the papacy to the wro ng man. Since John was writing between ll64 and ll73, at the time wben the Becket conftict aod its aftermath absorbed international attention, and since be also dedicated his work to King Henry II of England,32 the inference must be that his story was intended as a sharp reminder to Henry of his ancestor.~' devotion to the Roman pontiffs. Teaching a moral Jesson was obviously more important to John than telling the truth ; he was blatantly 'creative' . Yet oddly he had some kind of regard for the facts. Instead of starting from scratch, he took two roughly contemporaneous historical events, Otto III's slaying of Crcscentius and Fulk's pilgrimage, and amalgamated them in such a way as to inflict little damage oo the fabric of papal history, while underscoring the moral for Henry . If he regarded the past as very malleable, it was at least the past he was using; even his inventing demanded hard research. In this he was true to his classical mentors. The impac'l of classical scholarship on perceptions of the past was stronger in the Loire valley than elsewhere. Yet all French family historians perceived their materia] as fluid, reinterpretable and subject to mysteri_ous forces to an extent inconceivable in later centuries. While an explanation for this may someti.mes be found in their ignorance or lack of critical sense,33tbey also shared at least a little in the prevalent lay sense that rational norm.' were only doubtfully helpful in establishing what bad happened in time past. Personal experience did not inhibit Thomas de Loches from describing the death of one of Charlemagne's warriors after a 361-year lifespan." Such de.parture.• ftom

31

Cltronj,qw.Jdescomrad'Anjou, l44-41. John drew on R~ouJGiabcr. Sec Rodolplw.s Gfabtr.

The. fivt Books o/tM Histo/U$, ed. and tr. J. France (Oxford. J989), 24-6 and cii. )2 Chroniql«'s des comta d'Anjou, 162.

n G. Spiegel, 'Political Utility in Medic-val Historiosraphy. A Sketch' HisuJry tWI iheory,14 (t97S) 316, explains the m:illeabillty of the past in terms of the lack of criticaJ knowledge; and 8. Que('lte sc:ems 10 contU'I' with tl\is ln Hlstoir' tt culture hl:.uoriqut, 3S2. -.•hen he oomp,ares the twelfth century with l.atcr periods of greater intellectual sophistieatton. ,. Cltroniqu~4 Ms comu•s d'Anjou. 24

12

The Perception of the PtJSt in Twelfth-Cemury Europe

the natural law were perfectly conceivable. All religious authority supported the contention that the future was unknowable; both heaven and hell lay Op<:n but impenetrably obscure. Why then should the nature of life in the past be any more plumbable? Be5ides, it was common ground that events could acquire new significance, effectively be changed, by actions much later in time. After all, the full meaning of the Old Te>1ament story had emerged only when the events it prefigured had actually occurred in the life of Christ. With this precedent before their eyes, clerks had to accept that aspects of the past unknown to o ne generation might suddenly and legitimately acquire deep emotional significance to the next. Therefore it was useless, and might even be dangerous, to challenge innovation in the story of the past. Family fables, however incredible, might always have a grain of literal truth in them; and even if they did not, because they could always be interpreted symbolically, they could be useful. Scepticism was out of place in family history. Godfrey de Bouillon's grandfather Godfrey the Bearded (d. 1069) had earned the nickname 'Knig)lt of the Swan'; how we do not know. lt was a tillc Likely to encourage romance. When two of his grandchildren became in turn rulers of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the conceit that they were descended from a swan quickly acquired popular appeal, presumably because it was symbolically satisfying: these heroes of Christendom were as pure white as the most elegant of birds. We know, because William ofTyre took the trouble emphati· eally to deny it, that many less educated inhabitants of Outremer took the conceit literally , believing their rulers to have been conceived from a swan's semen. 35 (In the thirteenth century this version became the basis for a famous poem.) William regarded the legend with scorn. On the other hand Lambert of Ardres, whose master Baldwin of Guines claimed descent from the house of Boulogne, emphatically rebuucd the charge that the swan was imaginary : it was rather both Hesh-and-blood and divine.36 His choice of words implies that what had started as no more than a symbolic truth bad acquired a semire-ligious significance at the courts of Guines and Ardres; as was the case with the Holy Grail, legend was shading into mysticism. The barrier between William of Tyre's attitude and that publicly professed by Lambert was almost insunnountable. What to one was ignorance was to the other piety. If twelfth-century historians were normally more credulous than their successors, they were far from unusual among their contemporaries in their refusal to concede to per.;onal experience a unique status as instructor in natural laws. llte relatively low standing of empirical evidence in any but scholastic circles (and even there its high standing was accompanied by refusal to engage with all implications) complicates the question of explaining anach-

» 1/Luor•'a 'nwn in partibl.l$ tranJmarinif g~stuum, book 9.
Di..covering a Past for the French Aristocracy

13

ronism in an and literature. Did twelfth-century men think time could play tricks, blending customs and events of one period with another? O r were they simply time-blind?'' Or, alternatively, were they so acutely aware of period that they could employ anachronism to literary effect? It is perfectly possible that all three explanations hold true for particular instances during the century. Yet instances of consciously employed anachronism would apparently suggest a much more sophisticated perception of the past than my discussion of family histories bas thus far indicated. They can be found, though only occasionally. The first example is from the De Commtndaticmt Turonicae pro'l'inciat, a document which, though it could not be described as a family history, comes from the same intellectual e nvironment as the Gtsra consulum Andegavorum, to which it might almost be <-onsidered an appendix. A survey of the Angevin province of Touraine, its author clearly attributed a classical o rigin to the political frontiers that were actually created by the Angevin conquest of 1044, describing as ancient the castles built to facilitate that conquest. 38 The obvious motive for this manipulation of the timescale was propagandistic; less than three generations after the terrible events of 1044, they were being written out of history. Though his intention was certainly to deceive his readers, the author's own grasp of the past was clear, his misdating a deliberate attempt to put the legitimacy of Angcvin rule in the Touraine beyond question. Lambert of Ardres alw appreciated the potential of anachronism a legitimizing devise. At the beginning of his account, he described how Sifred the Dane, having made himself de facto ruler of Guines, sought the count of Flanders' assent to his acquisition . He had Sifted appear before 'the knights and barons of the Flemish coun·, bow low out of deference to the prince, and conduct himself with such elegance and urbanity that - assisted by the king of De nmark's brother - be not only won his case but also earned the count's affection .:w Sifred's late twelfth-century standard of <-ounesy was by implication held up as an example to Lambert's master Arnold of Ardres who, e ngaged in conflict both with the count of Boulogne and with Matilda of Portugal , was in need of a reminder that good manners paid. The chief point of the anecdote was that Lambert described the court before which Sifred appeared as if it were that of the peers of Flanders -a twelfth-century creation; be thus gave the impression that the oomital family's right to Guines had o nce been reoognised by the assembly now regarded as of unimpeachable authority. It was an ingenious piece of invention. Only a few paragraphs later, the cleric of Ardres produced an anachronism

a.•

» The e\'OC:ative descriptio(!(){ R. Gla5$er, Time in Frtm:h Life Gild Tho~ght, 17. I am m05t grateful to Professor GiJcs Cons:ab)e for anowjng me to re;)d his artide 'Po!lst and Present in the 1Wclfth Century: The Perception of Tune and Change', to appear in the acts of&ttim aM dl studio at La Mendola, 19S6, whtch I found particularly hclpfuJon thE$ ~etion . • J. Tricard, 'La Toorai.nc d'un Tourangeau au die si~de', in U Mnkr d'historien llu M t>)'M A.ge: trudts S'Ur l'h/.$wriogrQphit mldib-·4/l, cd. 8 . Gucnc!:c (Paris. 1977). 79--93.

" Ed. HeUer, 568.

14

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

of a quite diffe.rent son , designed purely to evoke sympathetic laughter."' He explained that Sifred had taken advantage of the new friendship between Aanders and Guines to ma.k e the young count Baldwin Ill's sister pregnant. (This ungallant act wa.• essential to the family history, since it alone substan· tiated the Ouines' family boast that the comitaJ blood of Aanders ran in its veins.) On being forcibly sepaiated from his lady-love, Sifred died of a broken bean like Andrew of Paris (Andr~ de France). T his allu•ion to the hero of a recently composed romance was intentionally humorous;'" Lam ben expected his audience to realise that a tenth-century count could not have been inspired by the larger·than· life exploits of the central figure in the latest fashionable literary diversion from Paris. That was what was funn y. Yet this instance of an author obviously assuming his listeners' awareness o f temporal disharmony should make us hesitate before ascribing anachronism in other contexts to unadulterated ignorance. Trying to disentangle the family historians' own perception of the past is like looking for the first time at Cubist an. Though the individual pieces are clear enough. they point in different directions. On the one hand individual authors at cenain stages clearly viewed the past as a narrative discoverable by genealogical research, by the exploitation of archaeology and topography and by much reliance on cbaners. On the other hand, they also thought it could be invented. Because they subsumed the search for it under literature, they subscribed to the conventions: either of cla.~icaJ writing or o£ the vernacular poetry of their o wn day, each of which encouraged dramatic remoulding of what had been. They moved from one to the other approach without warning.

Worse still, they sometimes had truc·k with the fabulous. It follows that for them there we{e as yet no accepted limits on creativity and no single approved route to h.istorical truth. Nonetheles.< their sophisticated use of anachronism. occasional though it was. suggests a dawning awareness of the need for facts. Even the vaguest sense of period could not but begin to undermine the past's malleability. By 1200 invention wa.< on the point of losing sway. The perception of the pa.
40

lbkl. . S68. On this see R.J. Cormier1 ·The Problem of AnachronWn: Reoen1 ~hularship on

the Freneh Medieval Romances or Anglcal Qua.urly, 53 (1974), t45· 57.

E. Trojd , 'AndrC de Paris et Andre de France•, Romartla, 18 (1889). 473-77. dates: the Jir'$t mendon of this no longer eJU.a.nt romance to around ll80. •t

2

Past, Present and No Future in the Twelfth-Century Regnum Teutonicum T imothy Reuter The following essay will offer a tour d'horizon rather than a detailed study of a particular writer or group of writers. It will consider primarily tbe evidence of historical writing, but also that which can be gained from the uses of history. While doing so comparisons will occasionally be made along rwo axes: the temporal, i.e. the changes which took p lace in historical percept ion.• in the rweUt.h century as compared with those of the early Salian epoch ; and the geographical, comparing wit h the kingdoms to t he west, France a nd England. Comparisons along a time axis are not particularly problematical. Geographical comparisons on the other hand are. It is not just a question of the very large areas of the author's ignorance or impedect information but also of the starting-point. The collecting, editing and evaluation of the narrative historical sources has been done much more thoroughly for the twelfth-century regnum Teut<micum than for England, let alone for france.' This statement may seem like self-praise. coming from a Monumentist, but it is objectively defensible. Its significance may be illustrated by the counter· example of one of the MGH's most serious areas of weaknes;. The Qucllenkri· tik of the nineteenth century allowed hagiogJap hical writing only a subsidiary role. The use of sainL~t lives and miracle collections was a necessary evil which had to be accepted for the period up to about 1000, because there was simply a shortage of more reliable material. Even then the texts were often only edited

The fundame..l1aJ ooUeedon i~ that of the Monumenta Gennaniae Historica (henteforch: MGH1~ lhe series of panieu1at relevance are the S¢ript1)1'es in folio lhenc:eforth~ SS}, the Scrip<me$ 1

rerum Gennanicarum in usum tchoJarum (benccfOftb: SRGJ, and tbe Sc:riptore$, nova series (henceforth: SS NSI. 'lbc s•andard guide to the$<: and other historical sourCC$ is w. Wanenbach and "R. Hottzmann, thll.tlcltlands Gfichich.L~-.ulkn im Mittda/Jer: Dk 7.f!it d~t .tac.hu'n wtd S4Jier, :l vols_, new edition by f ..J. Schmale. (Darmstadt, 1967·71) {hcoccfonh: Wancnbach· f.loltzmann-Schmalc, with voJume no .J. for the early part of the oentury, and W. Wattenbach and f ..J. Schmale, Deursc:hlands Gtschic.htsquellen im Mittelallm Vom Tode Kaiser Htinrk:hs V. bU ~um Entk lkslnterr~num, 1 (Dannuad1, 1976) (heucetorlh: wanenbacb.&hmale) whicb oovers the rest of tbe lWe.lfth ce-ntury. Schm.'\le has also wtiuen a vet)' valuable s-urvey, Funklit>n und Formtn milft'l61tt.rlidler Gtsthichuschtdbung: f.int Eiitfo,hrWlg (Dannltadt, 1985).

15

16

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Cemury E14rope

partially, to provide users with their 'interesting bits', that is. with passages which could be exploited positivistically. After the turn of the ntillenium, however, real narrative sources become much more plentiful: in consequence) anyone who uses the folio Scriptores volumes of the MGH can easily gain the impression that hagiography was killed off in Germany by the Investiture Contest. This bas had consequences for the secondary literature: there are numerous studies of Merovingian hagiography, for example, but only very modest beginnings lor that of the hagiography of the twelfth-century regnum Teutonicum. and the handbooks on sources often relegate mentions of such

works to intermittent footnotes' Similar considerations apply, as bas long been recognised, to the full study of twelfth-century historical writing proper: you can't easily assess an incarnation-chronicle if rhe editor has le-ft out or merely summarised the supposedly boring nine-tenths which are mere compi· lation-' All this shows how important it is to have your material properly collected, edited and assessed. A comparative approach has another drawback: it inevitably stresses elements of change and development. 1t is as well to remember that the vast majority of those who recorded events in twelfth-century Germany did so in a thoroughly traditional manner. The folio volumes of the MGH &riptores show clearly that those who wrote traditional annals not only hopele$ly o utnumbered mQre reflective and 'professional' historians but managed. col· lectively, a very considerable output. This is the longue duree of historical writing: the underlying substratum which changes only slowly. It is certainly wrong to see it as having been completely static in its practices and its attitudes. but after this brief hint at its existence it will not receive much attention in what follows. Nor will hagiography (for the reasons already indicated) or forgery, which flourished like the green bay tree in the twelfth-century regnum Teutoni~ cum and which necessarily implies an 'attitude to the past', but which has received enough treatment recently, as has historische Bewtisfuhrung, the political argument from historical example.•

1

For the-MenWingianssee the elassicSiudy b)' F. Graus, Volk. HtmcJter u.rtd Htillger im Rl':lth der MuoMnga (Pr3tut~ 1965), and mos1 recently Paul Founcre.• 'Merovingian History and Metov:lngi.an Hagiography', Ptrst and Pr~s~m. 127 ( 1990), J.-38 and Karen A. Winstead, ''lbe Transforma1io.o or the Mir&ck Story in the Liber 1/UtorilUWTI o( Gregory or Tours', M~dium ttevum, 59 (1990), l-IS. For the ~.Jftb<entury llrich there are only a rew betumings. e.g. on the cirde of Paul of Bemried (see Waueo.b&cb-Sclunate. 244-46) or on 1be genre or che ooble convened late in life (below, n. 00). l Sc:hmale, FunJc.don und Formtn, 3; A.·O. von den 8-rinden, StudU.n r.ur latLinist'lttn Wtltchronistik bis in J4.f Zti.uJ/ttr OliOS von Frei.sing (DUsseldorf, 1957). 1. ,. See Jo'iJlschungtn im Miaelalt~r: fnJt:rnDlinnal~r Kongreft dtr Mon~UMn.Ja G~rmaniae. ilislor· «:#, Miinc:he.n. 16.-19. Sqtembn- 1986, S rob, Schri.ften der MGH 3311-V (Hanover. 1988); J. ZiC$C-. His10risc.he. BewWjUhrung ;,. Strei.tsduifttn du ln~·tnirurstreius , MUnehener Bei1rige rur Medllvislik und Renais.sanccfonchung. 8 (Munich, 1972); H.-W. C'JQetz, 'Ge&clticbte alt Argu· ment. Hjstorischc Bcweisfiihrunc und Gescllichtllbewu8tsein in den Strcitschriflen des Jnvcstiturstrcit:f , Hi.JJorisdre U itsdvift, 2AS (1987), 31-70. with a very (uU bibliography.

Past, Present and No Future in the Rtgnum Teutonicum

11

A funher point needs to be made about comparisons: the twelfth-century regnum Teutonicum was a mainstream European country and partook of most of the developments found in France and England. It is perhaps surprising that the 'historicist' methods which were developed under the stress of the Jnvcsti· ture Contest by the canonlsts and theologians of the Reich in particular (think of Bemold of Constance o r Alger of Liege as the precursors of Ahelard and Gratian) were hardly taken up by historian.,, he re as elsewhere;' but histori· cal method or historical research in V.H. Galbraith's sense can be found easily enough.6 We have historia ns who think about their sources, lry - not always successfully -to resolve contradictions of chronology and eliminate anachron· isms, a nd so on 7 We can al~ lind the invention o f a mythical past intended both as a serious construction and as an entertainment in the anonymous authorofthe Gesta Trtverorum, who supplied an elaborate pre-Ro man history for his city, or in Godfrey of Viterbo, who in his works gathered toge ther exempla drawn fro m every possible source be oould get his hands on. 8 These may stand as counterparts to Geoffrey of Monmouth o r perhaps to the

s The caseofBemold is particularl)' remarkable, ashe wa<; bo1h :s canon lawyer and polemicist Mel a historian. Sec J. Autenrieth, D~ Dmtuchul~ vo" Konstanz zru airW Jnv~stiturffn'il$: Di~ wisst.nscMftlic.he Arb~il$ti.Yis~ Btrnolds vQn Korutonz und ZWf'Wr J(f~riku dargtst~llt auf Grund VM Htmdsdlri/lrn.studkn, Forscbungtn zur Kircben· und Oe~tesgesdUehte, neue Folge 3 (Stutt· gllft, 1956); l .S. Robinson. •z.ur Att>eits.,..·eise Berrdds von Konsum und seine& Krc:ises. Untersuchuns.en zwn Schlettstidter Codc.x 13',CH.uaclt.er Art'hivfar Erfors,Jtung
34 (1978). Sl· l22; and. on Bcmold as a historian, Wattenbach HoluPULnn.Sc:hmal(. U, 521-·8 and iJi, 1$7*. AJfj.t:r Of Littce •ISO ~nti tO tu.,,.>e h;;sd no influence On the ,.·ery rich ftow of historical writing in L~gc and its surroundin.gr. in the twelfth century, to which AJgcr himself oontnlluted: see OR the Ubtr R. Krett$Cbm.ar, Alger l'()n LiirtlchJ Trok.tur 'lk misc:ricf)rdill d iusriti11': Ein ktmCMisri.scMr Xonkordtvtzversuch Oiltf d~r Ztil dn ln\•~sritursr.rtils. Unt~rn~eh•.mgtn und EdJdon, Quellen u.nd Fotsdum.gen tum Recta lot Mittelaher 2 (Si&J1141rln.geo, 1985) and on Lit, ehistorica1 writing. inclucUng Alger'$, J·L. Kupper, Litgt tl fetlls~ lmpbiuk: X~·XII' silcl~s (Bnwc:ls, 4

1981), 14-t8, 32'J.l0.

VJ-1. Galbraith, HisloriaU Research ill MtditviJI Englond ( London, 195'1). , 1"tNo uscfu1 diuertatioos provide a wealth of exampl.« : B. l...uch, DIJ.S Etll•tJcNn und di~ Entwicktlu.ng lkr JtisloTi..ft.hen Kri.tJ'k im MinL/41ur (•·Qnt V/.·XU. }Qhr/Uullkrt) (Bre61au, 1887)t and M SChutt, Dir Ltltrt von dtr ltisrorisc.htn MeJ!wdt bd tUn Oudtic.hwcltrtibt.m des Mille· 14/kn (V/,•XIll. JahthWidut), Abbandtungen ntr mitlleren und ncueren ~hicbte 13 (Berlin. 1909). 8 On the Gdla TrtvotrQrum ~e H . TllOmn. Snulien ,_,.,. Triuer Ge.schicltmchrribung des 11. Johrlwnderts, insbt.sontkrt :u dtn Gessa Trtvtrorum, Rheinisches Arcbiv 68 (Bono, 1968) and Wanenb~Hohzmann-..~hmale ii. 621·3 and iij, 110• -11•. On Godfrey ot Viterbo sec the bibliography in Waneobach-Scbmale, n -92, and on Godfrey's: career G. Buteo. 'Zur Beunet. ll.)ng Gottfried$ von V.terbo'. in Gtscilidtt.uchreibUIIB IUld gd.tligu Lebtn im MilteWtcr: Fest· u hriftforHtm;e L6•v:zum6.S. Geburt:Jt~~g, ed. i'-. Hauck and H. Mordek (Co)ogne,l_978),373-94. The c:hronolaty, textual traD.vni55kiG aDd purpose ol Godfrey's numerous worts !itiO await" dari.&cation . some of whicb wiU be provided in dissenations stiJJ to be publisbed by Friederike Booc.k.mAnn (Municb) and Loren Weber (Los Angclea). 6

18

The Perception of the Prut in Twelfth-Century Europe

Policraticu.r 9 As a counterpart to manuscripts like Paris, BN MS 12710. an assembly in manuscript of a comprehensive collection of materials for the study of the pa." history of the kingdom which stands at the hean of the St Denis historiographical tradition.'" one might consider London Additional MS 21109 from Stavelot, a collection of historical works covering the history of the Frankish k;ngdom from the early seventh to the mid tenth century, with small amounts of historical putty including genealogical material to fill in the cracks." Similarly, the regnum Ttut()nicum can offer plenty of cartularychronicles, a genre admittedly not invented in the twelfth century, but one which flou rished then. 12 It is not intended to argue here that Germany was inteUectually an advanced country in the rwelhh century, merely to provide a background of similarity and continuity to what follows, when it is differences which will be stressed. We may now con.sider some of the specifics of historical consciousness in the twclflh·ccntury regnum Ttutonicum. ln the epistolary preface which Otto of Freising supplied for the copy of his Chronicon which he dedicated to the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa he wrote: Your nobility should know that we wrote: this history in a bitterness of mind into which we were led by the disturbance of the clouded times which prece-ded your reign. For this reason we did oot so much write the sequence of events as weave their misery in the manne.r of a tragedy and thus proceed book by book, terminating each section in misery until the seventh and eighth, whic-h prefigure the peace of souls and the.double cloak of the Resurrection .1'

This points clearly to the secular crisis experienced in the Reich between 1070

' N.F. P'olrtne.r, S(!rious Entvuzinmtftl.l: the Writing of History in 12Jh ~Century Engldnd \'Qfl Moos. G~schklttt al.s Topik: D4S rhttoriscl~ Extmp/Jun 11011 Mr Antib z111 Ntuuit und di~ hi.:Jtorioc im ' Policra~iaa• Johatms v011 S"lisbury (liiJdcsbeim, 1988). 10 J. Lair. ·Memoire ~1u deux (:hroniques Iatines c:omp<):Sks au XII~ ri«le Al'abb,.ye de Saint·

(Chicago. 1977); P.

Denis'. Bibliothiqu. de I'Ewl< des Ch4n•-'· 33 (t874). 543-80; G.M. Spiegel, TM CltrOAitt. Tmdition tJ/Suint-Doris: A Survey (Broot.Line, 1978), 414. u Sec i . Reuter, 'GedtnlcUberliekrung und ·pru-is im Dridbuc.h Wibak1s von Stabkl~. in Dn Ubt-r Vir.u dtr Abui Corvq: Studien ZUT COTveyerGtdtnkiJbttlit:/tn.tng und zur EnchlkPuflg m Ulw Vuoe, cd. K. Schmid and J. WoUasth (Wiesbadcn. 1989). 115 with note 1.56; N. Glk.lekc:. •Eine Karolingergencak>gie des trtihen 10. J3brhundens?'. Franci4, tS (1987), 777•94. u Sec J. Kastner, Nistoriue fundlltiOnum mO!UlSterWrum: FrUhf0Tm(11 moMStlschtr lnstiruri()fl.f· St>schichwchreibwlg im Mitttllllt~r. MMchtl'ltt Btilriige wr Mtdilvistik und Renaissance-For· scbu;ng 18 (Muoid•. 1974), which is particularly imponam 1$ an anal~s or the genre and the ¥ariou3 forms it took. l'l Chmnicon, ed. A. HoCmcister. MGH SRO (Hanover, 1912). 2·3: 'Unde nobilitas vesua ~~ nos hanc his.1oriam oubJios.i rempori!, quod arne \10$ fuh, turbulel'lda induclos ex amaritudine anin~i Sc.:rlpsisse ac:Qb hoe I'IOI'IIam r~l'\lm gt$1art.~ rn $eriem quam earu.,dem miseriam lo modum tragediac texu.iS&C e1sic unamquamque librorum cJjifinctionem usque ad septimum et octavum, per quos aoimarum quics rcsurrcctionisque duplex stola significatur, in mtseria

terminasse'.

Past. Present and No Future in the Regnum TeuJonicum

19

and 1150. The twin shock of the Saxon revolt and of the excommunication of Henry IV, with all the consequences of these events, left deep scars in the consicousnesses of the ruling class of which Otto of Freising was a leading member. Stability and prosperity were watched out for anxiously in the first half of the twelfth century, and the watcbcrs were usually disappointed." When they did seem to have revived in the second half of the twelfth century there was stiU an underlying insecurity. Even before the papal schism of 1159 broke out the least signs of discord could provoke worries that the fundamental dispute between rtgnum and sactrdotium might return." Equally, memor· ics of the Saxon revolt were still very much alive a century later on both sides: Helmold of Bosau could see it, in terms much like those used in the 1.070s, as a heroic struggle for tiberty ,' 6 while Otto of Freising (in spite of his extensive knowledge of the history of the Reich in the tenth century) thought of the Saxons as antiqui regni hostes.11 There was in other words a crisis of confidence in the twelfth century regnum Tewonicum: answers to the questions of where the community had come from and where it was going were both more needed and more difficult to provide. There was an additional problem. The kingdoms of France and England were in no great need of justification or explanation by means of the past; they were

•• Ekkebard of Aura. ChtOniCII, ed. f ..J. Scbmak, A1J8.&ewahhe Ouellen -tur deutschen Gesdlidlte de5 Mittelalten IS (Darmsudt, 1m). $.a. U04: •ffis uunen exceptis {lh&t is, the murder ofSigc.han of Burg.bausen and the revolt of Heru)' V against bis fa ther) uodiq\le terra satjs quievit pace simu.J et fertiJitate . . . '; 5ec also h.is CQI'l\JlteDt$S.a. Tll6, p. 324, 1121., p. 350,1123, p . 362 and 1125, p. 374. Chro~~ica rtgia ColQtlitn.fis, ed. G. Waitz. MGH SRG (Hanover,l880), s.D. 1152, p. 88: 'E.rat (Conrad Iff) uunc:n vir militari \'irtutc lltn:nous ct, quod resem dccuit, valde anJn'IMus; 5ed quodam lnforwnio ~s pubUea tub eo Jabetactari ccperat'. u Wiba.ld ol Stavelot (here and elsewhere Wibald'!lleuers wiJI be dtcd by text and number of the editloo I am preparing for 1he MGH whh a reference to page and oumberoftheedition by P. Jaffe, MonlUI'Ivtkl Corbdctsio IBertin ISlJOl) k:uer338 to Eberhard of Bamberg (• Jatft. no. 374, p. 502): 'Et subtili appendi.culo cavendum, ne inter duaset interdum dissidentes po1es1ates, quibm fidei \'il)Cuio alligati sumus, $inceritatis ooer~ rectitudir.etn ullo d.ioendi vel a.gencll modo distor. queamu.o;'; Jetter 339 to Pope £ugeniu.o; III ( • Jaffe, nQ . 375, p. 503): 'Mullaenim, qu~ legimus et audivi.mus et vidimus inter re\·erendo5 Urbis pontificcs et imperatores beta e t dicta, non indcbita nos soUicitudiM terreb3nt,' For similar fears in tbeclrc~ol Eberhard of D.ambergand Eberhard of Salzburg see Ono of FreisitJ.8, Gnta iv, 22, ed. WaiLZ and \'On SimSOn, '262-63 (letter &om Eberh-ard of Bal'llberg to Catdi.oal Hyac:Unh) and tbe correspoOOtnoe between the IWO Ebcrh.atds in D~ Admo11rer B~g. ed. G. HOd.l and P. Ousen. MGH Die Bride der dtulseben Kaiserzeit v (Municll, 1983), oot. MJ. p. 78-79; 47, p. 95; SO, pp. 99-100. l6 Hclmold of Bo&au. Chronka SlaWJrum, i, rt. ed. B. Scbmeidler. MGH SRO, second edition (Hanove-r, 1937), Sl-54. tbouah his view$, e.g. on Ru-dolf of RbeinCeJden, were oot wholly an.ti. Salian and pro·S.Uoo: cf i. 2.9. p. 57. See KJ. Leyt~tr, "The Cl'i$i! of Medieval Ger'1'1'1;8.Ry', Proc.et4Jng1 ()j the Brirish A cackmy, M (1983), 441-42 on the .survival of Saxon ideals of lihoJo.t in tbe b.igb and late middle a&es aod also on the c:risi!l of oon&dc[l(lC discussed above. 17 Otto of Frei.s.ing to Wibald of Stavek>l (Iener 3S3 = Jaf(~ ao. 381, p. 520). SeeK. Jordan, "Sachsen uod du deutsche KOrU(tUm im Millelalter•, Hi.Jt<Jris~ Ztibcltrlfl, 210 (1970). S29-41; W. Giese, De.r Sumam du s.dum und das Reid! in oriDni.u:lw Wid .solLfdur Zdr (Wiesb4den. 1979). 1·2.

20

The Perception of the Pasr in Twelfrh-Cenrury Europe

there because they had always been there. The regnum TeuiOnicum, by contr.lst, was a polity whose nature was not wholly clear. This has the consequence that many statements in the twclfth·century regnum Tewonicum which are seemingly statements about the present are also, or even primarily, statements about the past. This is the critical difference between the position of intellectuals and politidans of the regnum Teutonicum and that of their onunterparts in France and England. In what follows we shall examine some of the strategies they adopted fo r dealing with the problem, especially as revealed in the genres and choice of subject-matter for historians. We may identify a number of such strategies: the revival of interest in Roman history and in its political relevance for the present; an enthusiasm for the writing of local history which took very varied forms; the study of eschatology; and- perhaps not so directly related to the crisis of consciousness - a deepened interest in chronography. The term 'strategies' is not meant to imply that the crisis of confidence just identified was foremost in the consciousne,ss of all the, authors wbo will be mentioned in the following pages, merely that it existed and affected writers of history, whether they were aware of it or not. Interest in Roman past was scarcely confined to the regnum Teutonicum in the twelfth century, yet while elsewhere il was something thai could be played with, it had a sharper political significance in the Reich. The late Ottonian and early Salian rulers had come to call themselves emperors of the Romans, but only after some debate and considerable opposition. h was printarily the Rome of the saints and martyrs which provided inspiration, even, it may be argued, for Ono III. 18 From the late eleventh century we can see a shift. The German rulers came to call themselves 'Kings of the Romans' even before their coronation as emperor. and though Helmut Beumann has sought to associate this with eschatological ideas of the Last Emperor and the need to as.sen continuity in the Romlmum imperium, 19 it is ooleworthy tbat the Rome of antiquity began to take on a political dimension north of the Alps from about this time. The anonymous author of the Kaisercltronik dedicate
n,e literatu.rc un lhe 'RornarUiess• of the Ottonian and Salian idea of C'mpire i.s now enormous; tor ln1rod\IC,t0f)' surveys: $U E . Hlawitsdtka. Vom f'rtJnlu11uich zur Formiuung dtr ~ropilisclum Suwen· und V~lk~rgemtirucltaft 840·1046 (Darmstadt, 1986), 2lS·20. and T. 1'

Reuter, Germany in tM Early Middl~ Agt:s, c. 8()().1()56 (London, 199(). 274-84. 1 ~ H. lkumann. D~r d~uucltt KOnig als Romaoorum rex, Sitzun&J/Hrichre du wissmrcluJ{rli· cltm Gesdlst'haft an der JuM.nn Wolfgtmg I'On Goerht·UniweyitiJt Frtmkfun am Mw'n, 18 ( 1981), 73·84. E. MOller~Mertens, Regnum Teutonicum. Awf/wmmrn und Vcrbrt
Past, Present and No Future in lht Rtgnum Teutonicum

21

evidently saw the Reich as coterminous with the Roman res publica, for example.10 1bere was, in consequence, a new interest in Roman history in the twelfth c:enwry. Thi.s interest had side.effects; for example, there was more interest in the nuts and bolts of Roman chronology in the twelfth century than earlier, when on the whole Orosius and Jerome had seemed adequate for the purpose.21 But interest in Rome wa.< not just antiquarian; it was politically highly charged. Robert Benson and Gotrfried Koch have pointed to the political significance of the pre-Constantinian Roman empire under Frederick Barbar~22 Roman emperors could be drawn on for genealogical purposes: Godfrey of Viterbo managed to make Henry VI a d escendent of Julius Caesar and hence of Venus and Aeneas."' This might look at first sight to be gamesplaying, bu.t it is an idea which recurs in the writings of S
10

A.nonymi chron.it'.a impmJIQrunt Htmrico V. thdiC41a, prologue. ed. F.-J. Schmale and I. Schmale-Ott, Ausgewibhe Ouellen rur deuuchen G~h ichte des M inelo;~ lters JS (Darmstadt, 1972), 212: 'Cum igit1.1r cot• inle.nlio huius libri tam Romani imperii quam Tcutoni~i regni dcscrviat honori, quorum regnorum ooniunctio cepit a Karolo Francigc-.na, nettl>.o;arium duxim!li cam oobilissime gentis, que babilis i.tlvtota e&c ad J)C'QC;teandO$ domi.n~ Roma.ne. potende, altius ori$-inc.m re~tert:· ct !Uc per antiquissime: n.obUitatis ieneracione11 usque &d eundtm K.ar<~lum n.untione deducta, qualiter ipse capeueret rem publkam Jabefactam et qualiter deinde Roms· num imperium per soocessk>nes regum tstius gentis exceiJentis..sime gubemaretur . ...• 41

l.asc:b, Hi.sl()riJche Kritlk. 29-40.

n R.L Benson, 'Political rettOWllio~ TWQ Models from Antiquity', io Rettaissanct und Renewal in tAt Th.'tlfth Century, ed. R.L. Beo&On and G. Constable (Oxford_,1982), 339·86~ G. Koch, Auf dem Wege zum sactum imperium: Studitn zuritkologirclfm 1/t:rDchuftsbqriindung du deuncht:tt Untral~wrd-t im ll. und 12. Jahrhundtrt. forscbunsen t ur mittelalterlkhen GCfiChH:hte 20 (Berlin (E.), 1972), 178·2-<S. . 11 H. f'lCbtena~. 'Vom VersUtndnit de:r r6mis.cheo Gtsebictlte bei deutscben Cbronisten des Mhtelalten·. in Btitrlige zur Medl4vi$lik: AIISgt~~>•IJ.hllt Auft.IJI.:t, I (Stunga.n. 1979). 3. ;.~Speculum rtgum, MGH SS 22, Zl; on this and o ther passages in Godfrey'$ work Ke U. Schmidt. K6nigswtthl und ThrotJ/olgt im 12. JahrhMdm (Cologne, 1987), 239. n Ono of Freising, Gttto Fridtrid impera.Jaris, ii. 2, cd. G. Wailz and B. von Siln$0n. MGH SRG. tbhd editicm (H&oover, 1912). 103-4; s.ee K. Schmid, 'De tqiG srirpe W4ibliltgen.sium, lleme-rkungen zu.m Sdbsl\'Cf'S1indnis der Stauter'. UUsdarift fiir die CesdJichu d~ Oberrheins, 124 (1976), 63-74, and the di$C1.1$SiOn 'Staufer - Welfen- Zlhrin&tr. lhr Selbstven.tindois und seine Ausdruck.sformen', Zeimhri/t fiJr die (J~chiclttt d~s ObertAtin.t, 134 (1986), 21·88, with OOnlribulklns by K. Schmid, G. Althoff, O.G. Oexle and J.l. SchwarT.maicr.

22

The Perception of rhe Past in Tweifrh-Cenmry Europe

Godfrey of Viterbo also pointed out."' Authors of the late twelfth century produced not just this kind of genealogical continuity but also drew lessons from Roman history. fo r example the idea that prccedcn~• d rawn from antiquity could legitimise there being two empe ro rs at the same. time. an emperor and a co-emperor27 This was a matter of considerable interest under Frederick B arbarossa and Henry VI , both of whom were interested in estab· lisbi ng hereditary succession not just to the regnum Teuronicum but a lso to the imperiwn Romontun by the Capetian device of anticipatory association of the heir. zs A different legitimising function is provided by the story, which appears - apparently independently - in a number of historical works of the twelfth century. that Julius Caesar, having been proscribed by the Romans for outstaying his term as general abroad, allied himself with the Germans and with their he lp was a ble to return, defeat the R omans and becoroeemperor 29 This merges the notion that German virtus (or a supposedly h istorically inevitable progression of time from east to west) had led to the Germans' holding the Roman empire, with the notion that t here was unbroke n conti· nuity between the Staufer e mperors and their antique predecessors; one should not draw too sharp a disti nction between the idea of translmio and that of reformatiolrenovotio. 30 Nor should one see 'Romanism' in Stauter imperial ideology as having been mere ly the product of the re vival of Roman law." an essentially Italian phenome non, tho ugh that is of course very impo rtant. Barbarossa's chancery pre.sents him as a R oma n emperor not just when occasionally citing the Institutes in an a renga, but also in such phrases as

~

Sdtmid, 'Ck"gfa stirM', 64. 67•69. Godfrey of Vilel'bo, Pamhton, MGH SS 22, 163. Sc:hmidl. Thronj()/g~. 195~224~ Andrew W, Lewis, RoyDI SU~X~JJ.i(Ht In Qtpttla" Franu : S~Udiestm F41miHol Ortkr und lhe StOIC', Harvatd Historical Stl.ldies i09(C.ambridge. Mass.,l981). 2

' 26

Ficbleoau 'Vom Versdlndnis', S. The s1ory is found in Otto of Fre:il>ing, ChronicQn ii, 48. ~d . HC)fmei!>te r, 125-26: G~m Tl't••trQrtina, c. 13, MGH SS 8, 14'2-43; AmuHied, v. 400-36, cd. M. Roed.ig.er, MGH OeutS<"he Cbronikeo 1 (Hanovtr. 1895), 124; KaU·e.rt:hrvrn'k, v. 455-94, ed. E. SobrOder, MGH Deutsc::heOuoniken 1(Hanover. J895). 89~ Chrr.mlcon EbershtinutU'e, MGH SS 23,432. Thi.slist is not eJhaustive, and the soutees ate by no nu:an1aJI dependent on one a.nother. 30 W. Goez. 'l'rum·lolio imp~rii: Eln Btitr(lg ~ur Gt$Chk:hte d~ Gar.hichJStknbn$ und dtr poUtiJch~n Theoric.n im Mitl~lulter und ln dtr frUht:n NeuuiJ (rubingen, 1958), 1~ ·36: P.A. van den Baar, Dl~ klrchlit:llt Uhr~ dLr T"Ttl11.\'l.ulo imperil Romani bis zu.r Mitre dts JJ JohtJuindms, Analecta Gre"'riana 78 ( Rorr.e. 1956). is here ICM helpful. ll Koch. Auf dem Wtgt zum .sacrwn imperium. 23().45; T. SZO'Ib6, Hf:TQch~rbild und Rdchsge• dankt: EJne Srudlt zur hOfisdltn Ge.sr.hlchmchrdbung unttr Friederich Borburossa (0'-s.i:. Frti· 19

bw-g. 1971), 61-79. 103·42; T. Sl3b6, 'R6mi.s duecbtlicbe Eir'lftasst auf dle- Ba.ie.bung des Herrschcrs ~Recht.: Eine Smdie 'l.U vier Autoren aus der Umgebuog f riedrich Batbarossas', Q14ellcn und 1-0ncltungtn ous iJalitni:w:lren Archil't'n und Bibliot.htk.tn, 53 (1913), J4..48.

Pa.~t.

Present and No Future in the Rtgnum Teutonicum

23

vicrrices aquiw convertere.n Drawing on Caesar, Augustus, Constantine and Justinian also legitimised more immediate predee<:ssors, Charles and Otto the Great (who lost none of their importance, as for example the Aachen KJJrlsschrein demonstrates);33 it was an implicit response to the Gregorian critique of German domination, echoed in John of Salisbury's famous outburst against the Germans."' Wllat is worth noting here is the interaction between intellectuals and the Stauter court in the production of a legitim ising, historically-based view of tbe emperors as RomtUI emperors. The seoond half of the twelfth century saw the production of a number of works which could, loosely, be described as inspired by the Stauter court. There are perhaps some parallels v.ith historical writing in Henry II's England, but German (and some north Italian) historical writing of the Stauter era seems to go further in the extent to which it was directed from the court in order to diffuse a particular view of contemporary events. 35 This too is new, at any rate since the Carolingian period, and there the 'officious' nature even of the Amulles regni Francorum, let alone of ninth· century works lilce the Annales Bertiniani or the Annates Fuldenses, is easy to exaggerate and has indeed actually been exaggerated .36 The idea of Ottonian

n Friderid /, Dlplomat4 ed. H. Appell tt. 41.. MGH DipJomata rt-gum t-1 imperatotuJJl Otmuut.iac x/1-4 (Haoover, 1975-90) fcited bc:acefortb as 0 F. 1 and number) no. · l~ (H.SS co

Louis., l.andp'a\'C ofThuri.agia); oos. 351, 3S2 (1162, to Archbishop Eberhard of Salzburg, to the f()r Roman law reminiscences see e.g. D F. I S (1152, to Pope Eugenius 01), wbH:b <:ites the Proemi~o~m to the Institutes in it$ openinJ words. » See· U. Nilgen, 'Amtsgenealogje und Aml$bei1igkejt, Konigs- und Biscbofsreiben in der Kunstpropaganda de• Hocbmittclaltcrs', in Studi~n wr mint'lo.lrtrlichm Kwut, 81J0-1250: Futst:hdft {llr Fh:nYnrint Mtuherich zum 70. Gthurrsro.g, ed, K. Bieri)ra~o~er, P.K . Klein 11..od W, Saue:rlinder (Munich, 198S). 217-34, for tbis aspect of the production of 'official' works of art in the twelfth century. Jo4 John or Salisbury to Ralph of Serre, ep. 124. ed. W.A. Millc>r, S.J., and H. E. Buder. Tht urms ofJohn ofS.Usbvry: Tilt urly unm (IJ.l.l-6/)(li.dinburp, 1955), 206: 'Qui• Teutonioos constituh iudk-e11 natiooum? Ouii b.anc brutis et inpctuos:is bominibus auctoritatcm contulit, ut pro artritrio principem statuant super capit& fi]jorum bomlnum?' Set in teneral F. Bo.hm, Das Bild FrWJrich 84tl'b4roncu: &Uid .stina Kai.urlums in chn ausld~Ulisdaet~ Qudlm «iner Ut, Ebtri.ugs HistoriscbeStudicn 289 (Berlin, 1936), and K.F. Werner, 'OM hochntittelaltc:rlicbe Imperium im potiti.sc.hc-.u Bewu8cse1n Franb-eichs (10.-12. Jahrbundcrt)', HitJo.ri.1,cM ZLiucMift, 200 (l%5), 160. NOt everyone !ell tbe same way as John. » Tbe ootioo of Staufet court C\ilt•.ue undet Frederick Barbarosaa will be subject to a dc:vastatirl& and larg.ely justified critique by P. Ganz. 'Barbarossa und sei:n Hor. in Frkdrich &rkiWS~t, ed. A. Haverkamp, Vortriige uad F«schllnseo he.rausgegebt.n V(ln'l Koostamer Arbcits.krcis rur miuc.laltc.rticbe Ge!lebictue (Sigmaringen. fonbcomiog). U there was sucb a thing il;( .u then it i$to be found m the element of propa3Jodi$ric$elt·display Qlhi'i';Ued io Barbar06Sa'S Pisii.OS, and to Count lvo of Sc>iMoos).

c:irde. » On the Annals of Saint-Bertin see J. Nelson, 'lbe Allnnls of $tJliii·Btrtin'. in Politics tmd Rilwal ln Url1 Mtdkvol Europe (l...ondon, 1.986), 8.18l-S; lhc matter will be further explored in the introduccions to the traoshuioas of 1he se><:atled Aonats o( Sai:at-Bertin and of the so-called Annals or Fulda by J. Nelson aJ>d T. Re••er ,.._;vely (Mand>esle<. IOrthoo
24

The Perception of the Past in Twe/fth-Cemury Europe

'coun historiography' is a t t he least an oversimplification.37 Nor did the Salians take much pains to propagate a view of the mselves through histo rical writing; both Wipo's biography of Conrad II and Erlung o f Wiinburg's Vira Heinrici IV (if he is in fact the author) were written after the deaths of their subjects and not, as far as we C8JI see, on commission.)$ The only substantial piece of contemporary pro-Salian historiography to deal with the Saxon wars is the Carmen .U bello Saxonico; this is not much to set against the Annates of Lampert of Hersfeld or Brun's Ubtr de bello Saxonico. The change bega n under Henry V, who not only had a chronicle based on the work of Frutolf of Micbelsberg and Eklcehard of Aura dedicated to him but also commi~
7

See E. Karp(, RemdiUiqitimarJQn und ReicJzsbt&riff in lkr ()U(mlsdu:n (i.Q(;JUchlsJchrti· bung d/!1 10. JtJhrltuttderu (Wicsba~n. 1985), 185-91; G. Althoff, 'Calt.S'a sc.ribendi und Oatslct· )

lungsabsicht: die Lcbensbeschreibungc:n d.er KOnigin Mathilde und aode:re Bcispjde', in Uttt-r~U Mtdii Anri: Femchrift fUr Johaimt Authtnriflh zu ihre.m 65. Gdati'L\'tas, cd. M. Borgohe t~nd H. Spilling (Sign~aringc.n , 1988). 119-20. Jll Wipo. GC'.$ta Chuonradi impenllorU, cd. H. Brcsslau, MGH SRG (Hanm-er. 1915): the "'urt was dedicated to Henry 0 ! , bot that pro~·C$littlc . Heruy Drs own reputadon in contemporary writing has rcc:ently been 11tudied by P.O. Sdlmidl , 'Heinrich Ill. - Das Bild des Hemcbe.rs in ck.r

Uttratur seiner Ze-11', Dtwschts Archlv for Er{Qrschung iks MiUtltJ/ters, 39 (1983), 582·90: ou.merous dedications. no oornmissions. The Yir.a lldnrici /\!., ed. W. Eberhard, MGH SR.G (H31"10\'tr, 1899), may ha.,·e been written by Bishop Ertung or Wiinburg but hardly as a commission of Henry V's; see most recentl)' M. Scbluclt, Die Vi1a Hein.rici JV. lmperatoris, Vorulge und Forschungcn, Sonderband 26 (Siparingen, 1979) and F. Lotter, 'Zur titc:rarischen f <Jrm und Intention dcr Vita Heinrici IV.', in f'e3trchrift fii.r H. 8eum4nn, ed. K.•U. JiSCbke and R. Wenst us (Siparingc-n, t9n), 288-319. Both leave me q\lt$tioo of authonbip open •nd play down the 'propapndktic' elements in tbe work, which survives only in a siogle ou. 39 For the K11Jstrc.hronlk. see above, note 20; ror t~ historiography of Ull ~e tU. le)'ser, 'Engl~ and tbe Empire ill the Early 1\\'tok ;:u the authorship of the Aonalisra Saxo d$ewhcre. '*1 CJtronicon, cd. Ho£meistcr, 1-3; GeJill, ed. Wailz 3od von Simson, l-S.

Past, PresenJ and No Fuuue it1 the Regnum Tewonicum

25

rather the source he drew on), the so-called Chronica rtgia Coloniensis. the Liguri,.us and the historical writings of the poet, grammarian and (probably) imperial notary and capellanus Godfrey of Vitcrbo, all qualify for inclusion in a list of Stauter court historiography. 41 Tbe whole theory has been subjected to massive criticism since it was first propagated by Robert Holt2.111ann in the 1920s, and closer inspection indeed leads to a good deal of shrinkage. Most of the so-called court historiography deals with the early years of Frederick's reign: only Otto Morena, Burchard and the Chronica regia Cownitnsis go beyond the fall of Milan in 1162, and it is immediately apparent that the nature of their sources changes after that point as well. If there was court historio· graphy, in other words, it was not sustained through the whole of Frederick's thirty-eight year reign. Much of it turns out to be court historiography at second hand, either mediated through the work of Otto and Rahewin, or through the narrative letters with wttich the Stauter chancery justified tbe politics of iL~ master (following here very much in the Salian tradition)!3 Yet tltis docs not mean that the circle around Frederick Barbarossa had no intention of influencing 'public opinion', that the whole thing is simply a question of writers using other materials as sources. On tile contrary: the narrative letters which accompanied Frederick's politics were evidently meant to be used as source-material , and the court's copy of tbe Gesta Friderici (as well as other archival materials) was made available to at least two other writers.44 Here we have, if not an attempt to rewrite the past, at least an

42

R. Holtzmano, ·ouCarmen de Frederico I. lmpera1ore aus Ber&amo unddic Anfinge ciner

stauli.«flen Hofhistoriographie'. NelMS Archiv, 44 (19'22), 252-313; COIUro , £ . Oumar. 'Ou Carmen de F'Teckrioo I. imptratore aus a~rga.mo ~o~nd &eil'le ~tehun,cn tu Otto-Rabcwin!S Oc:~a Friderid. Gunthers Ugwi.J1u$ und Burchard von Unbergs Cbronkon·, Neue:; Archiv, 46 (1926), 430·89 and t. Schmale-Ou in me introductiod 10 her tditi011 of the C.tmnen de ge:stis Frtderia· /, imptnuorit in Lombardio, MGH SRG (Haocwer, 196.5), x:aiv-xl. Set: Wauenbach..SchmaJe, 4692. wilh the cdition:s of a.nd bibliography for the wOrkli in question . ., C. Efdmaon, 'Oi
Milan. the assemblies at Saint·Jeande Losoe and WUrtbur&. itnd the dilllnter of 1167, all produc::ed enc)'d~. tbou&h there waslinle oo this front after 1167. Cf. D F. I 3-SJ, 3S2_ , 363, 364, 365,479483, 538. The G~sta were used by the author of tbe Cwmat (abl.we. n. 4'2). by Ouotber in the Ligurinus, ed. E. Assmann, MGH SR(i (Haoo'Yer, _1987), and by OOOfrey of Viterbo io later editions of the MtmoTia St"culoTUm. 'The Carmen author •nd Gunther at least h11d 1ccess tl> a manuscript of the C claM. which ~presccn ~s. the text as pn5ented by Rahewin to the coun in 1160; &ee F.•J. Sclunale, 'Die Gem Friderici I. imperatoris Ottas von Frcising und Rahewlns:Ursprong· tiche Form und Oberliderun.g', D
168-2}4.

26

Tile Perception of tile Past in Twelftii-Cemury Europe

auemptto determine the writing of the present with the imention ofinfluenc~ ing the historical writing of the futu re. Hagen Keller has described the political structure of the early Salian Reich as 'polycentric', meaning that it did not even theoretically have a monarchical structure in which all authority was exercised directly or indirectly by a single ruler but rather numerous oentres of legitimacy which could both compete and coexist ." The idea is a helpful one: insofar as contemporaries were conscious of it they seem to have become so with a certain degree of temporal lag, for although there were precedents in the early eleventh century it was the late eleventh and twelfth which saw a real nourishing of historical writing con· sciously devoted to a regionally significant centre of legitimacy such as a bishopric or a dynasty. Not everything which in modern editions has a Latin title like Caralogus o r Series episcoporum is in fact significant of this kind of consciousness~ many such works a.re little more than 1ists with not rouch intellectual activity disoernible behind them ... Yet we do have, either directly preserved or clearly visible through later derivatives, a number of works devoted to the deeds (gesta) oflhe bishops of a see. This seems to have been a particularly Lotharingian genre - the communis opi11io of scholarship is that it was first made known north of the Alps by Paul the Deacon, who composed a Liberponrijicalis for Metz, the house bishopric of his patrons the Carolingians. However that may be, we have from Lotharingia a number of twelfth-century specimens of the genre, from Cambrai, Liege, Verdun, Metz, Toul, and Trier, though the Gesta Treverorum is a rather special case.47 But it is also found in Saxony, in the episcopal histories of Halberstadt and Magdeburg." Compar· able works are known 10 have existed in the Rhineland, from Mainz and Worms, tboug.h these do not now survive in their twclfth.century form, and

~ M.ost recentl)' ·in 'Zum Charakter der "Staatlichkeit" zwische-n karolingi.-;chcr Reichndorm und hochmittc:laJterlichcm HerrK'ba!tsalUibau·. FrUitmiueWtcrlich~ Stut.lkn, 23 ( 1989), 261, with

references to bis earlier \\'ort.
On these aod their nmillcatioas see, besides

Wattenb~Kb•Sc.:hmalt.

18-22, 394--8. K.·U, Jibchke, Die iilt~/(: Holb~mUdter BU'CIIofschronik. Unt('nuc.hungen zu mitstld.euJscht:n Ge· schi<:Jusquclkn tks holmt M•'uelaiJ~m. Miudtkut$Cbe fonehWlgeo 62/1 (Coklgne, 1970), which goes some way towards unravelling a very complex problem or transmi$sion but is by oo meailS tbt last word oo the subje1.1.

Pasr, Presenr and No Furwe in rhe Regnum Teuumicum

27

examples arc also found in Bavaria, from Freising, and in a sense from Salwurg.49 A related phenomenon is the isolated biography of a bishop, conceived as a demonstration of the man's piety and devolion to duty, certainly, but not or not primarily as a proof of saintliness: a secular biography. Probably the earliest example is the eleventh-century Vita of Benno of Osnabrilck, but in the twelfth century there are a fair number: Adalbert nand Arnold of Mainz; Albero of Trier (two, o ne written in verse in his own lifetime), and later Hillin and A rnold; Conrad of Sal2burg, Hanman.n of Brixen .50 It would be wrong here to draw a sharp line between hagiography and biography, even though the distinction between someone who was a saint and someone who was not was being sharpened at precisely this point. Yet with many of these individual lives the closeness to the Gesra episcoporum genre is clear : what were originally independent lives of several of the twelfth-century bishops of Trier were later worked in as continuations of the Gesra Treverorum.51 Wbat is significant is the ideal set out for these men: it was in most cases their devotion to and their efforts on behalf of their sees which earned them biographies. 52 They were local patriots. Under favourable circumstances even a bishop from an earlier era could be the object of such a biography: Werner of Minden, Altmann of Passau, Adalbero ofWiirzburg. A particularly good example is the Life of Meinwerk of Paderbom . Meinwerk was bishop from 1009 to 1036, and between 1155 and 1165 was given a biography by Conrad, abbot of Abdinghof, a monastery founded by Meinwerk.53 This illustrates a number of themes and concerns which crop up in the local historical writing of the twelfth century. It begins with the incarnation, proceed.< to t he conversion of the Saxons and the foundation of the bishopric, and then gives a brief Gesra episcoporum Patherbnmnensium before coming to Meinwerk in chapte r 9 . Chapters 30-131 are (lightly edited) tran<eripts o f contemporary charters from Meinwerk' s episcopate, and much of t.he material of the following chapters is taken from these and funber charters, with only occasional d iversions for Meiowerk's conversatio and his edifying end. We have here in a single work elements of incarnation chronicle, of episcopal gesta, of commeoted chartulary and of biography which

,., FQr references see Wattenbach-Sctu.nale, _13(1..31, t40, 163-68, 2SJ..54 . ... lbW., t32->IO, 347-51, 164, ~51 lbid.,l48·53, with further literature. See also cbe wocb o( Rainer of U~ge. note 47 abo\'C, n On the mange in the episcopa1 ideal a.c; rcftecttd in hagiography and biographysc:e.O. Eo&d!l, 'Der Rdtbsbisdlof (10. und 11. JahrhundertY, in Dtr Bischof in ttinu 7...tit. Bischoj!ltypu.r und 8iJcluJfsJdttJ ,·m Spiegel der KiJlnu Kirc.he, FtSttobe for lt» eph KardlfUIJ HiJ/fner Erzblsclwf YOn Kl)(n, «1. P. Berglaralld 0 . Engels (Cologne, 1986). 41-94. n Vila Mdnt4't't'Ci e.pllropi PalhtrbrunM~J.tis, ed. F. Tt.nektlolf, MGH SRG (Hanover, 1921);

see K.

Hon9Clma~M,

'Oer Au.tor Oer Vita Mcinwerci '<ermutUctl Ab' Koot&d \'On Abdingbof,

Wntjalisch~ ZtiJrchrift,

114 ( 1964), 349-$2, and H. &nn3SCh, •FJIICber aus Fr&nmip.eir. Der Mc:inwertbiograph - c.ln mittel.alterliche Fibche:r und sein Selb!itvcntindnis', Archiv filr Diplq. ,..,;k, 23 (1m), 224-4l.

28

The Perception a[ the Past in Twe/fth·Century Europe

waver between conventional hagiography and the more secular type of biogra· phy already mentioned. It was not only bishoprics which could be the object of a locally-orientated historiography. A further well-developed twelfth-century genre in the regnum 1'eutoflicum was the monastic chronicle which reJated the history both of a foundation and of the family of the founders. with tbe laner being seen very much in the context of the foundation rather than as an object of study in their own right. Often, but not always, such works take the form o f a commented canulary. with the charters or tradition~notices forming a chronological fra. mcwork. 54 Examples of the genre go back, in Lotharingia at least, to the late tenth and eleventh centuries, but it is in the twelfth century that the genre became widespread (at least in Bavaria, southern Suabia, lower Lotharingia and east Saxony).ss Tite Suabian Casus ~rwnasterii Pttrihusensis,56 and the Chronicon Zwi£/alttllSt by Berthold and Ortlieb are particularly prominent example$ of a popular form.S7 Pure family history, of a kind familiar to us from George Duby's works, can be found in the Historia We/forum, which is not primarily a piece of monastic historiography, though the interpolated Weingarten version shows how it could be 10rncd into that. The flistoria is in original intention more an alternative ro Sraufer court historiography: it is to be seen in the context of the regal or quasi-regal aspirations of Henry the Proud, Henry the Lion and Welf VI. 58 Early examples of territorial historiography, a genre appropriate for the shape whkh the German polity was taking on. can be found in the writings associated with Reinhardsbrunn and the landgrave.s of Thuringia or, in Lotharingia, in Gislcbcrt of Mons· Chronicon Hanonituue." Arguably a hagiographical variant of the genre 'family history'

s.. Fundamental here arc H. Patze, 'Adel und Stiftercbronllt', Bliittu fiir d~ut.scM Landts_g~· 100 (1964), 8-81 and 101 (196S), 67· 128~ and Kai!l)er. HLYIOri~ fumlMlonum

schicht~,

mOniUtnit>rum.

» See the map In Patte. 'Adel und Stif1crcbrooik' (196.'5) 128. » Ed. 0 . Feger, Schwabische Chroniken dc:r Stauferzeit 3 (Lindau, 1956). n Ed. 1<..0. MOller. E. K6nig and L Wallach, Schwibi~e. Cbronitc:n der Staufendt 2 (Berlin, 1941): for the convoluted editorial history see the preface to the reprint (Sig,m~uin£,cn, 1978). ~ E.d. E. KOnig, Scbwibischt Chroniktn der Sta\lfe.rzeit I (Berlin, 1938): .see Watenb3Ch· Schmale, 298-302 and 0.0. Oe,;le, 'Oie ..s.tlchs.ische We-lft i)Qilell~" nls Ze!l&f'i.$ ckr wetfi5e-hen Ha.usUbedieferung', DeutJchts Archlvfiir Er[orscilung des MitreWtus, 24 (1968), 43S-97: K. Schmld, ·welllsche11 SelblJivtN.l~.ndnis., in Adel ur~d Kirdte: Oerd T~llLnbach zum 65. G~buruJag (Freiburg. 1968), 389·416; J. Fried, 'KOnig.'Sedankrn Heinrichs des L6wen·, Archiv for Xullurgt · Sl'hichle, SS (1973), 312-51; O.G. Oexle, ·Bischof Konrad ''On t
Past, Present tmd No Future in the Regnum Teutonicum

29

is tbe type of vita which deals with the aristocratic founder of a monastery or house of canons who himself enters the religious life: Eberhard ofNellenburg, louis of Arnstein, Godfrey of Cappenburg and, worked into the Annalts Pegavenses, the life of Wiprecht of Groitzsch.60 Even a seeming work of 'national history' like the chronicle known as the Anna~sta Saxo can be the hearer of this kind of tradition, as Gerd Althoff has recently shown.61 In general this seems to have been a form o f historical writing and consciolL~ness peculiarly favoured within the regnum Tewonicum by comparison with Eng· land and France. There it is by no means unknown, but much less common, panicularly when in the fonn of a full-blown chronicle o r history by contrast with an expanded foundation charter. There are varying forms of consciousness to be found in these work.~. It should not too easily be assumed, for example, that to write about local history meant ignoring or rejecting the history of the Reich. This is in fact frequently mentioned,., though generally in a local context rather than as something simply going on contemporaneously; it was a means of reorientating the view of the present and the past in the face of polyccntrism and the decline in the numinous authority of the ruler. One possible link lay in applying the genre to monasteries with royal founders. We can see this being done in the Liber aureus of PriimM or in the second version of the Viru Heinrici II imperatoris, which was composed some years after Henry's canonisation, in Barbarossa's

60

Eberhard of Nellenburg: the work survr.·cs only in a Middle High German translation, see Watttnbach-S<.:hmale, 292--93; touis o( Arnstein: Vila L.txkwki comitis de Am.uein, ed. J.F. Boebmer. Fonte~· rr:mm Gui1Wikllrl.4m (Stung_art. 18S3). vol. 3, 326-39: Godfrt)' of CappenbuTg: MGH SS 12, 513-30; a new edit ion is in p re.paration b)' G . Niemeyer, sec her ' Die" Vitae Qodefridi C.ppc:nbu1'8,ensis', Deutschts A rcltiv f iir Er[Mdtung des MittelulkTS, 23 (1967), 405-67. See J. Ehl~.rs. • Adlit.eStiftu.ng unci pcn.Onliche-Kooven:lon. Z.Ur Sozlalguchidue frllhe'r PrimQ""1raten. serkonvente', in Gachichte und VufauungJgefUgt. Festschrift fiir Walter Schlesinga, Frankfurter HistOrische Abhandlungen S (Wiesbaden, 1913), 32·55. The Life of Wipred:lc of Groitz5ch in the Anna/a Ptgavietues, MGH SS 16, 234-SSis a rather different case: the Story(death-~ entry into the religlOU$life in \M family (ouodatton) is similar, but there is no attempt to make anytb.ina of Wi.predu's COOYC't$ion or to presem his u indy qualides. n.t work, with hs s.ac.a ~like (amiJy oriJ.in&. its emph~i.s on Wiprc:<:bt 1~ warrior, and tht topical PfOiogue prais.ing the. deed$ of lamou$ men, has more in oommon with some oftbe French aristocratic family histories studied by Jean Ounbabtn io this voJume. See.T. Reuter, 'Wipre<:ht ''on Groinsch. Ein ••setf-mJlde m.an•• des 11 . Jahrbundert~?· (forthcoming). 01 0 . Althoff. 'Heinrich der LOwe und d.as Stader Erbe. Zum Probkm der Beurteilung d~ " A.nneliua Saxo" •, DculfChes Archi11 fUr ErforKhui'IK des Miuelclter.t, 41 (1985), 66-101; Althoff ar~ that the primary purpo~ of the AMali31 in midn& 'oation.al Mtory' with "genealogf was to jul>tify a particular case in tht dispute o-..-er the in.he.tiran« of tbe counts of St~e (extinct in the male line from 1144) between Arcbbisbop Hanwig of Bremen and Htnl)' the Lioo. 61 cr.e.g. the ZwiefaJtenerchronkte(cditionasabcwe. n. 57), ii 6--811nd 30, pp. 160-10, 232-36. 63 Sec Rhtln und MQ(J$; Kun.r1 und Ku1Jur8f)()-U ()(), I. f
30

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth· Century Europe

reign, and includes a miniature early history of Henry's epis.:opal foundation.64 Another approach was - as with ·national' history- to take up the theme of Romanness. ln writing.• of the late eleventh and twelfth centuries we frequently find links made between a local and Roman history. Very large numbers of German towns were alleged in the twelfth century to have been founded by Julius Cae.~r: Andernach, Boppard, Deutz, logelheim, Julich, Maioz, Magdeburg, Merseburg, Luneburg, Oppenheim, Worms, Speyer. 6' Caesar was not just a founder of towns, but also of institutions: the Alsatian Chronic~:m Ebershti~nse made him in effect the inventor of the monastery's ministeriales; here again, it was antiquity which counts~ and we can see here a local parallel to the legitimising function of antiquity for national institutions.66 Other towns, like Niimberg, Rcgensburg and Augsburg, claimed another Roman emperor as their founder."' As with the genre of 'local history', there are examples of this going back to the tenth and eleventh centuries, but the numbers of such claims really take off in the twelfth century. Most can be traced back to a local source; and though some of these towns might in the twelftl• century still have been recognisable as Roman in origin, it is doubtful whether we are simply faced with the attempts of local antiquarians to explain the archaeology of their towns (though this could happen, as we have seen with Burchard of Ursperg). On the other hand, local patriotism was certainly a possible strategy. Those towns which had always been conscious of their Roman past, notably the episcopal cities of upper Lotharingia, did not need to start inve-nting one. On the contrary~ Trier historians were busy inventlng a pre· ROman and even a pre-Trojan origin for their city. 68

(,4 MGH SS 4, 792-.81• (first ve~i<>n) ; sec. Wane.f)bath·Schm31 e, 15'2·54 for deutiJs of tbe manuscript transmission and further literature. 6.1 A full list is ~·en b)' Annelie$e Grotu. Du G~dan.kt dcr Htrkunft i11 d~r Mutsclr~n Gesthithusdveibung dfs Ml.ttdolltrt (TrojtUag~ "'ld Vmwmdlts} (Diss. Leipzig. 1938), 211'1, 92.

See also Fithtenau, •vom Verstlindnis', 5 n. 13~ A. UtOtsky, '0-as Romlstbe Ahe•tum im GescMchtsbild cia Minelahers', in Auftllttt UJ&d V()nrdge. 3, cd. H. Wagner aod H. KoUer {Muni<:h, 1912), 9·25; 3!ld f . Gra\l$,/,.tbtndig~ VergMgenheir.: O~rUefenmg im Miud4lt
Past, Present and No Future in the Rtgnum Ttutonicum

31

It is interesting that whereas the writers of 'national' history favoured the familiar topos of writing on the deeds of the good as examples to be imitated aad on the deeds ofthe wicked as examples to be shunned, or even argued that history should include the whole uuth, wans and all - 'nemo autem a nobis sententias aut monilitates exspectet', wrote Otto of Freising@- the prologues of works devoted to local history generally favoured the related but different ropos: the remarkable deeds of ancestors and predecessors are examples to be imitated.'0 It takes some time before local history-writing can deal with negative examples (though of CQurse the invectives of an Otto of Freising or a Gerbocb of Reicbersberg in historical writings of more than local horizon against the local persecutors of their church were meant not just to be personal expressions of anger but to warn the faithful as well)." One caaoot, alas, talk about the sense of the past in the twelfth-century regnum Teu(()nicum wit bout saying something about the connection between history and eschatology: roll on the German symbolists. There is no need here to expound their theories and divergences from one another at length, as there is no shortage of works which go through the same sequence: Rupert of D eutt, Anselm of Havelberg, Otto of Freising, the Ludus de Antichristo, Gerboch of Reichersberg aad Hildegard of Bingen12 Apocalyptic speculation is a fairly rebarbative subject. but it obviously belongs here - apocalypticism presupposes an attitude to the present atleast,lf not also to the recent past, aad it is worth looking at why the last things should have been a significant object of study in the rtgnum Teutonicum and apparently less so elsewhere. What was it which led to the djgearding of the view established by Augustine and 'fYCQnius that the millenium was not a matter for literal or historical inte'P.retation? This was felt to be a difference even by contemporaries. Bernard of Clairvaux, having asked Norbert o f Xanten when he thought the end of the world would

~ Omnicon, Prologue to Book 2 , ed. HofmeiSter, 68. 10

See the eumples cited by Schulz.. lli.storisrhe Mdhotk, 78-81. and exhaustively in G. Simon, 'Un1ersuchungen tur Topik der WMJroungsbrie(e miuelalltrlk:her Ge!dlkbt.S:SdtreibeTbis tum Ende de5 12. Jahrltunc:k:tb', A.rthiv fiJr Diplom41ik, 4 (1958), 52· 119 and 516 (1959160), 73-153, here 106-11. "~

See ChrQII/txJn, vi, 20, ed. Hofmeister, 281-4, Cor Ono's invecdves agaUm the Wiuelsba(bs• for Gcrboch on the laymen wbo threlltcocd Re~rsberg see below, oote 79. -n More than jU$1 an introductmyoric.ntation (not just tQthe ~nnan &ymbolitt&) it provided by P. Oasse(l, •Ru Gt#at, Univtl'$8.1His.tocy, Apoc:IIJypsc: Visions of PM-t and Futurt.', in Rtnai.t~ .f4'1U tlnd Rt11ewo.l in tilt Twtlfllt Century, ed. R.L. Benson and G. Constable (Oxford. 1982), 387~ 4"20, wi1h bibliography. Se-e further W. Kamtah, Apoi«Uypst wut Gudllcllutht()}()gle: Dit mittdllltt'.rliclte Au.tlt'.gwtg tkr Apokalypse "or looclt.im ~·on Fiore, Hilltori$cbc Stud.ien 28S (Bertin, 1935), ?S-104; A. Fuokenstein. Heilspl4n und natUrlicJ~ £ntwicklung: Formtn db Oegenwtuabtst,.mmung im Gt'.sdlklat:Jdtnken dt'.r hoht'.n Mill('./alttn (Munich, 1965); H. D. Raub. Da.r Bild ths Antlch.rirl im Mitcd4ltQ: VOn Tywnius zum dcut.i·c.hm Symbo/ismus. Beitrige zur Ge!idl.khte dcr Phil()$()pbie: und Theologiedes M:inelalter, n.s. 9, 2nd. ed1tion (MUruter, l979)> H. Grundmann, Studim iibu Joadtim 110n Fiort'. (l..e.ipzig, l937) 89-9S~ B. T6pfeT, Das A.'()mmtndt Rddr du Fri.tdetu: Zur Entwicklung chiJiastischt'.r Zukt.M/tsltol/nungeJI im Hrx.hmindalkr,, Forschungen wr mittelaltertkheo Ge5ebk:hte 11 (Bertin [E.}. 1965).

32

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

come and been told that the pre<ent generation would see it, asked why Norbert thought this. Having been given the teasons- though unfortunately be does not teU us what these were - he commented: 'I do not think on the evidence he gave I would be justified in holding this view', 13 much as the modem French intellectual deno unces the neuro tic, apocalyptic Spiegel· induced Ang.
Putting aside national characteristics, though, we can make. a number of observations. This interest in the last things was academic rather than practical or chiliastic. There was virtually no heresy in the twelfth-century regnum Ttutonicum. let alone any tendency to pursue. the rnjlleoium.15 H is note· worthy that a large number of surviving manuscripL' of the prophecy of the Tibunine Sybil come from late eleventh- and twelfth-<:entury reg11um Teutonicum, but virtually none of them make any attempt to actualise the prophecy: the initials of the kings remain unchanged, except in some manuscripts of Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon. 76 Here we have an interest in prophecy - due probably to a sense of being the Roman empire and hence the thing referred to - but it is an intellectual rather than an emotional interest. 1be same can probably be said of the pseudo-Sybilline prophecy about Louis vn and the Second Crusade, wh.ich appears from its manuscri~ distribution to have found a wjder readership in Gennany than in france.

1\velfth-century Gem:uln

historians claimed that this had a great effect on the French, but there is no other evidence that it did; evidently they simply thought it ought to have done, as it predicted that Louis VII would become tbe Last Ruler Constans and hence by implication succeed to the role of the emperors. The ·German symbolists' may all have been intere&ted in working out the relation between the Apocalypse and contemporary history, but they came to varying conclusions and most were not apocalyptic in aU their writings. Anselm of Havelberg, for instance, thought that the church had only reached the

..,s Lener .56 to Bishop Godfre)' of Ch.anres, ed. J. lec:lc:.rc:q, Sonai Btmurdi opero omnia (Rome-, 1974), 7, 148: 'VC"rum ck: Antkhristo rum inquirerem quid $«1dret, durante ~hu e ea. qamc nunc est, ac.ncratione re\'elaodwn i.Uum esse <:eetissi.rue !It Kite protestatus esc. At C\lm eamdcm oertitudlncm unde baberct, sciscitarui mihi, cxpooere ''ellet, auditO q\lod respondil, non me illud pro certo credere debece pucavi'. 14 T. Reuter, 'John of Salisbury and the Germans·, in 1'11~ \1/t,rld of John of Su/i;t·bury, e.d.

C.N.L. Brooke, D.E. Luscombe and M.J. Wilts, SuW~io Ourtb History, Subsidia 3, (Oxrord. 1984). 4lS-2S. -r; TOpfer. Reich des Friedeil.f, 21, 46-7. ?O E. Sackur, Sibyllini.Jcht' Tt:ru u.nd Fonchungm (Hallt. 1898), 1~37. 11

Sec OttoofFrcising, Gt'slo, Prologue:, eeL Waitz and \'00 Sitn$()n, lO and n, J; Annalts So.ncti JQC'Obi Ltodie.ns&. MOH SS 16~ 641. and T6pfer, Reich dts FrltdenS, 19.

Past, Present and No Future in the Regm.un Ttutonicum

33

fourth of the seven stages, that of the hypocrites.'• Both Otto and Gerboch. though at times clear enough about the nearness of the e nd of time, could also see the past quite differently: the annals compiled by Gerhoch, though formaUy an incarnation chronicle. tum into a quite normal mixture of Tradirionsbuch, accounts of clashes with local persecutors and provincial items of news as they get nearer Gerhoch's own time, 79 while the contrast between Otto's Chronicon and the Gesta Friderici is well-known, explicit and not to be wbolly explained away by any amount of scholarsh"ip""" Only Rupert of Deutz, whose earliest surviving work is a poem which begins with an invocation of the Red Dragon of the Apocalypse and whose last work was an apocalyptically laden aocount of the 6re at Deutz in 1128, apptied his eschatology systematically to his historical writing whatever genre he was working in. 81 AU universal chronicle-writing trembles on the edge of eschatology, and the twelfth century was for the regmun Teuwnicwn a great era of universal chronicles: works purporting to give an acoount of the history of the world either since its creation or, al lhe least, since the birth of Christ. 82 Ye1 such works are oot necessarily or e\'en usually a sign of an eschatoJogical conscious.. ness. The best anecdotal demonstration of this is the Annals of Melk , an incarnation·chronicle compiled , as its author tells us, in 1123; the author himself prepared the manuscript - and left two lines blank for each year up to 1300.83 Evidently he was a Bemardine, not a Norbertian . The last years of the eleventh century and the early years of the twelfth saw the production of a number of major works in this genre within the regnum Teutonicum: one might name Hugh ofFiavigny, Sigebert of Gembloux, Frutolf of Michelsbe rg and the anonymous author of the so-<:alled Chronicon Wiruburgense... We have shorter compendia, sometimes as parts of encyclopedias, as in Lambert of St Orner and Herrard of Landsberg as well as with Honorius Augustodunensis, whose Imago mundi was probably written in southern Germany,

"* Raub, Bild de.1 Anddlrisl, 282-90.

P. Cla!)Sen. GnhtXh wm Rtlchtnl~rg.; Eint BiotrtJPMt (Wiesb&dcn, 1960), 2:80-9, 304. PilU H.-W. Gottt. D4r Gt.tchkilnbild Ot~ W)n Frdsing: £in B«i.lrttg zur hi.Jt()riJdrcm Vor.JttUungsw4lll urul zur Gtschic:h1~ da /2, JMrhundtrlS (Cologne, 1984), 275-35. and K.F. MQrrison, 'Otto of Freising•s Q1.1e11t for the Hermeneutic Cirtle', Speculum, SS (1980). 207-36. 1 ' MonocJti cuhudam exuli.r $ancti Laurtnlii de coU:nWQlibus tcelttitJe uo.dknJis opusculum. cd. H. Boehmer, MVH Ubc.Ui de Ute 3 (Hanovcr.tm),~-41; H. Gnmdmann, 'Der Brand \'OO Oeutz (ll28) in der Oarstt,Uuag Abt Ruperts von Oeutz: lntrrpreu tion und Texuusgllbc\ Dc:uucllr:s A.rdtiv fiir Erforschunt des Mintlultus, 22 (1966), 385-471. On Rupen see J. Vlln Enten. Ruptrl ofDtUIZ (Berkeley 1983) rather than M. L. Arduini. Rup~n von Deutz (1076·1129) und dtr 'SIIIIUS Chrisd4nilt~rts~srintr Ztil (Coklgne 1981). 112 Many so-caned univusal tbronkies from the twdfth-ccntury ugmun T~uJQnicum bt'sin in A.D. !, forex
sn.ss) .

., MGH SS 9. 480 (on the milk-e~up o( tbe manuS(.:rfpt) • .501 (on tbc dntc of oomposition). 64

Von dtn Brincken, Wdu:lumrisdk, 149-9S.

34

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

judging by the manuscript distribution."' Hugh of St Victor's Chronicon evidently stands in the same tradition. As this was certainly written after Hugh had arrived in France it can hardly be claimed wholly for the regnum Teutotricum - even if one accepts that Hugh was born in Saxony and spent some time in Lotbaringia - but it tits well tbere.86 Otto of Frci•ing's own universal chronicle stands alone in its mixture o f universality and reftective~ ness. but at a les.\ elevated le.vel we have universal chronicles from the mid

twelfth century by Heirno of Barnberg87 and Dietrich of Deutz,88 both with a strong computistic clement. C.atalogues of this kind are not very illuminating; let us try to provide some more interesting gcncraJisations. Contrary to the tenor of much of what has been said so far. the interest in universal history found in the Reich is often not to be attributed e ither to the sense of the regnum Teutonicum as a continuation

of or successor to the Roman Empire octo some kind of underlying search for identity following the secular crisis of the late eleventh century. Frutolf in particular pursues 'academic' questions of chronography and stud.iously evades judgement on the past orthe present: historical writing as displacement activity ..w In this he is probably at least as typical as Otto of Freising. Quite apart from anything else, universal history as a genre is something of a construct , as may be gathered from the list above: some of the works there are histories in Gervase o f Canterbury's sense,90 telling a coherent and connected story, but most are chronicles, using a deliberately dry and non-committal style, while others might be compared with Storey or Steinberg or Little f$ R . Green, M. Evans, C. BiSchoff, M. KuTSChmann. Herrod()[ Hohmburg, 'HfJrlkt Dtlt· ciarum'. 2 vols. Studies of the Warburg lnttitute 36 (Loodon, 1979); R. Oerolez, ' British and

English hi:s:lo-ry in the l..iber Floridus' Mel R.C. \'an C{l.eoegetn. 'TbeSouroes of Flemish Hjuory in the: liber Aoridus', both in Libtr Fforidw Colloquium, ed. A. Dcrolez: (Cent, 1973) , 59·70 and 11-86. For Houoriu5set Wan eobacb-Scbrnalt, 21·38 ~~·d V. l.J. flin1. ·wodd His1ory in the early t,.elfth century: the " Imago Mundi" of Honorius Augustodunensi$'. in 1'11e Wtiri11g o[ HU l()ry in the Middle Ages-: E.ugys Pre~nttd to AidiDrd WUiitun Sourhmr. cd. R.H.C. Davis and J.M.

Wallace-Hadrill (O•(ord. t98t). 211 -38. 811 0 . van den Eynde, &saisur 14SIJ('«.tsion ('/ /Ddotr:desir:rlt.rde llugo dt .5tlint•Vktor(Rome . 1960). 90-92. dates the Chron;oon co 1130..35; for Hugh's origjns and 1he chtot.~ology of bi:s atrival in france .see J. EhlerS. Hugo \'()n St. Viktor: Studitn z:um Ceschichtsdtnktn u11d tllr Gt· tc:Ju'drtsst.."hrtibung drs /2. Jahf'l,undtrt:t, F'runkfuner Hjstorische Abbandlun.gco 7 (Wiesb:.den. tm). 27·~3. '' A.•O . ..·o n den Brink_ en, 'Die: Welt- uod lntamationsita bci Heimovoo St. Jakob', DtuLJ.Chu Al'(h/\• filr f.r/t)rtchrmg dis Miu~laltLn, 16 (1900), 155-94; 0 . Meyer, 'Wcli.C'hroni.stik und Compotw. iro hooehmittelaltcrtichen Bamberg', Jahrbiich fUr Friirtkischr LandeJ{orschUJ'Ig, 19 ( 1959), 241-60. R . Blank, We/IIJild und WtluhusteJ/wrg in Wiirz.burg und 84m1Hrg vom 8. bi.s zum Entk d('S- 12. JtJhrlrundutJ: Ein Beitrag t ur Bil®ngsgtschidrtt da MlttdaJters (Bamberg, 1%8). lRI 'Wattenbach-Sctunale, )70. "' Von den BrincJtcn. Weltchronisrik, 188-91. \Ill Gervase or Canterbur)'. Cltnmic:~ . in Th~ Historintl Works of a~rva:s~ of CAIII~rbury, cd. W. Stubbs, RoUs Serle$ 1311 (London, 1879). 87: 'Historici et mroniei secundum aliquid una est intcntio ct materia sed divcrsus tractandi modus est ct forma varia . , . Forma uactandi varia. q1.1ia hbtoricus diffuse ('t ('.l eg<~nlc-r inc:edit, chronic:us vero simpliciter graditur et brevite.r'.

Past, Present and No Furure in the Regnum Teutonicum

35

Arthur- catalogues with an encyclopaedic inrention 9 1 The intellectualloca· tion of such works and of their attitudes is the schools. This is something which was panicularly characteristic of twelfth..:entury historical studies in the regnum Teutonicum: their association with aspects oftbe quadrivium, with lhe comp11tus 1 with arithmctic-.tl and astronomical studies. There is no shortage of

treatises from all over Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries on the

compl41u.s. 92 GeneraJiy these stand alone or are associated witb ao;-tronomical

studies. ln the regrwm Tewonicum they are frequently combined with historical studies, in a number of different ways. The most important of these is simply the association of author. The tradition of historians writing treatises on a.•tronomy or computus, though going back at least as far as Bede, was very strongly revived in the eleventh and twel_ fth..century regnum Teutonicunr:

Hermann the Lame, Marianus Scotus, Frutolf, Sigebert and Heimo all wrote on chronology as well as composing historical works. It was the Reich which between 1080 and U35 saw lengthy discussions involving a number of scholars about whether the Dionysian era was correct; these schoJars were mostly

practising chronographers. 93 It was this association of historical studies with a traditional subject in the quadrivium which aJiowed historical writing to be a subject taught in the schools, and allowed historians to have pupils: Berthold was a pupil of Hermann the Lame, while Bamberg seems to have produced several successive generations of bistorians.94 What has been offered so far is a picture of a kingdom undergoing a reorientation in its sense of legitimacy, reordering its sense of the distant and recent past as well as of contemporary history. using a number of different strategies to do this which, howe,•er, frequently turn out to be interrelated. It is

fair to point out that this represents only a part of the picture. At the beginning reference was made to the continuity in the twelfth-century regnum Ttuwni· cum of traditionaJ forms of historical writing - hagiography and n.on·conti·

nuous annalistic works. We may conclude by looking briefly at the very widespread use of the past more or less as mere decoration . The past was, for many educated members of the elite of the twelfth-century regnum Teutonithe works cited above, on. 85 and 86. Apart from the references in tbe two foUowinJ notes, see W. Bergmann, 'Komputi!itik', Uxikon cks Miut'lo/tus, S (1991), 129l-9S; Sic:.geberl \'OR Gcmbloux, Liber Dtc:ennalis, «1. J. Wie~~enbach , MOll Quellcn tur Gc:istesgesc.:bichte des Mlttclaltcrs, 12 (Weimar, 1986), 31·168. See abo G.R. E\'ans. 'Schools and Scholars: 1'he Study of the Abacuti in English Schools c. 980- c. ll50'. EHR, 94 (1979). 71·89, whid\ has ~ther different conoems but makes the point in pas.,ing. ~ See

92

93

See the literature cited above. note 87, aod also H.•G. Schmitt. Klosttr Pri4fcning im 12.

Jllhrlwndm (Munich, 1975), 198·200, 235-37, on Wolfger of PrOJen;ng and the computisric' bi$tnrical manu.~pt Vienna, NationalbibJiotbek cvp 12600. ,. Berthold: Wattenbacb·Holtzmano..Schmale, ii, 514-Zl ~ Bamberg: Waneabacb·HohzmannScbmale.li, 491·506 and iii, 143'·4· (for the so-n Wirziburgense) 149•-ss• (Cor

Frutolf and Erdcetulrd. oo \\jhom set abo Scb.rMie's provisional edition fabcwe, note l4), Watteobach-Schmalc, 39-4(1 (Qfl Heimo}.

36

The Perception of the Pasr in Twelfth-Ctnrury Europe

cum, both a source of exempla and an opportunity to show off one's culture and education - what may be called the John of Salisbury syndrome, the cocktail-party conversation of the twelfth-century inteJleaual. We may think here of the writings of Godfrey of Viterbo, for instance, as well as of sueh early thirteenth-century writers as Gervase of Tilbury and Caesariusof Heisterbach; but the writings of non-historians are also significant. The man whose letters I am currently editing for the Monument• Germaniae Historica, Wibald, abbot of Stavelot and Corvcy, had cxteMive historic-d) interests: he took. care to acquire historical works for the library of Stavelot ,9' he collected the works of Cicero for the library of Corvey, to rescue them from oblivio.96 and he commissioned a LiOer vitae for Corvey which in effect sets out in tabular form the history of Corvey's relations with its founders. benefactor.; and other foundations with which it was lin.k ed by ties of confraternity. 97 He was also well aware of the effects of the late eleventh-century cri~is. 98 Yet in his letters the past - whether in the form of anecdotes drawn from Aulus Gellius, Varro and other.;. of allusions to ancient and more recent history, of explicit or disguised quotations from Roman law. or of reference to his own extensive experience- appears more than anything else as a source of largely atemporal rhetorical decoration.99 To return to the parallel between Norbert of Xanten and the modern Spiegel-reading German intellectual: Wibald was subject to anacks of Angst on Monday mornings but by 1\Jesday at the latest he had conquered this and reverted to being a knowledgeable and well-informed person. For him, as for many other intellectuals of the twelfth-century rtgnum Teutonicum, the past w:1s, in the words of Dough•S Adams, 'truly like a foreign c-ountry. They do things exactly the same there'. 100

~ Fot Londoo, BL MS Add. 21109 $CC above, n. II~ for the Sta\'eiQI copy of che Chronicle of Monte Cl:s!lioo see H. Ho(fmann, 'Studicn :~;u r Otronik von Montecanino', Dtuucltts Archil•fir £rfo.•sc/umg tks Miat.14h"' · 29 (t973), 63-4, 7$-3, IS~ . 06 Leners t89. 190 (• JaUC. 1\0$. W, 208. pp. lU-8): on the ms Bertin lat. fol. 252 sec-most recently R.D. and M . Rouse. 'Cicero, Speecbc~·. in i~m and 'l'ransmiSsjon: A JUIVt')'Oflhe Lotin OO$tic$, oct l-0. Jteynolds. MXOnd edition (Oxford. 1989). S4-98 passim. ~ See Schmjd and WoUa.sch. Librr Vi/at. "' Seen. 15 above. 99 Sec in general the notes 10 my fonhcoming edhlon; pankularly inte-resting in the prese-nt context are the two 'r-cry Ions leltcr!i to Bishop Bernard of Hiktesht.im and to the. stlwlt»titur Manegotd ot Pl:lderbom ( 124and 14'2 = b.UC. not. ISO, pp. 231·51; 167. pp. ~76-88) . The letter to M;~negold in pattioular i$ run or the kind of decorative allusion aod hUtorical reminisC"e-nce refcncd to a))o\•e; but the letter to Bernard, formally a dtfenoe ot WibOlld'$ acttons as abbot o( Con·-cy. is also decked out ~ith (not tenibly reltV'd.Ot) quo~tiOM (tOOl. the Digests and doses with a (still ItS$ retevaru) reference to the m11.n whose job ·it was 10 ride in the ctl~riot behind the emperor at a triumph and whisper 'Remember that thou an mom!'. 100 Li/r, the Unb•trse a1td £wrything (London, 1982). 85.

3

Adam and the Eve of Scandinavian History Birgit and Pete r Sawyer The main histories produced in medieval Scandinavia were written in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. most of them between 1170 and 1230.1 The earl.iest known works were written in Denmark but, to judge by the number of surviving texts, interest in history was greatest in Iceland. fslendingab6k (2), written by Ari between 1122 and 1132, is the first systematic account of the history of any part of the Scandinavian world a nd he may also have been partly responsible for compiling Landnflmab6k (3), in which the ancestry of the leading Icelanders is traced back to the time of the settlement, and beyond . It was, however, not until1190 that Icelanders began to produce a spate of sagas about Norwegian kings. They continued to write historical sagas throughout the thirteenth century but after about 1230, with the exception of two sagas about contemporary Norwegian kings (29, 30), one about Danish kings (32) and an expanded saga about OlafTryggvason {33) most were about Icelanders

1

The foUowinA abbreviations arc used: Adam • Adam ol Bremen, Gtsta HommabuJ'8e1uis ecdesitH Pomificum. ed. B. Schmeidler

Monumtcua Oermaoiae Histotiea. Seriptores Rerum Germanicarum in usum scbolarum (Hanovtt and Ltipzig. 1917)- references to book aod chapter. Oove.r and LiDdow • Old Nors~lc~lan.dic /,.itbatu~: A Crititlll G UJ.dl!. ed. Carol J. Oovcr and John Undow (Jslandica 4S~ Ithaca and London, 1985). Hkr =- SOOfri Sturluson, Ht'inukrinsto. ed. Hjarni AOalbjamarson, 3 vols (lsJen:zk Fomrit 26-8; Reykja•or.k. 1941) - references to saga and chapter. Kl. • KuhurhUtorUk leluikonfor nordi.tk middtla/d~r, 22 voJs (Copenhage-n llOd elsewhere 1956-78) .. references lOvolume and column. MHN =- Momun
37

38

The Perception of the Past in nvelfth-Century Europe

who lived in the period of conversion in the tenth and early eleventh centuries.2 or were about events in Iceland after Ari's time. 3 Between 1170 and 1220 Sven Aggesen and Saxo Grarnmaticus produced the two main accounts of early Danish history ( 10, 11 ). The early sections of later Danish chronicles were largely based on Saxo's Gesta Dunorum and a simplified compendium of his work was made in the fourteenth century, but no alternative version of early Danish history was produced before the Reforma· tioo . It was in the same period, between 1170and 1220, that the only surveys of early Norwegian history by Norwegians were produced (7-9). Sweden was exceptional. A legend of a Swedish saint, Sigfrid, may have been written towards the end of the twelfth century but that version has not survived.• The earliest known historical compilation. apparently produced in the mid-thirteenth century, is a coJiection of listS 1 with additional details, of Swedish kings, beginning with OlofSkotkonung (d. 1022), and of the contemporary bishops of Skara and lawmen of Vii.stergotland (34). So far as is known all the early Scandinavian historians were clergy or monks. but it was only in Denmark that they all wrote Latin. Elsewhere, especially in Iceland, vernacular was also used. The fact that m0>1 Icelandic historians wrote in Old Norse has tended to obscure the extent to which they were influenced by the Latin culture of Europe. That influence is very clear in the Historia Norwegi{l! (7) and Gesta Danorum by Saxo, who well deserves his epithet Grammaticus; he was familiar with a very wide range of classical literature and used over twenty different metres in the poems he composed. 5 The earliest works were, naturally, concerned with the history of particular

churches, especially bishoprics, their founders and patron saints, or more generally with the Christian missions and the process of conversion. Annals were remarkabl)' rare, Lund appears to have been the only place in Scand_ ina· via where they were produced in the twelfth century. 6 The earliest compilations were lists of bishops and saints lives. Early in the twelfth century several texts (including 3) were produced at Odense about King Knut , who was martyred and buried thc.re, and the greater part of Ari's fslendinga/:J6k is devoted to the first two native Icelandic bishops, fslcifr and Gizurr. Missionary saints naturally figure prominently in the more general accounts of conversion

and so do the kings who accepted the new religion , in particular Ute Norwe-

For example E.gils saga Skallagrimsronar and N;atssogu. Fur these and other ~led famil y sag_•s see KL, 7:496-SU. and Carol J. Oover 'Jcc:landic famil)' Sagas (/JlctdinasOgur), in Oover 2

and Lindow, 219-315. 3 The main collection is known as Sturtunga Saga ('31). Several bishops sagas wen.~ also wriner• in the thir1eentb century. se.e KL. 1:63().1. 4 l..'lJ$ Olof l..aJSSOI), Det m<
Adam and the Eve of Scandinavian History

39

gians Ola!Tryggvason and Ola!Hataldsson, and their Swedish contemporary, Olof Skotkonung. The principal source of information about both the conversion and early kings was, and still is, Adam of Bremen's Gesra Hammaburgensis ecdesiae pontificum (1), the main text of which was completed by 1075, eight or nine years after he arrived in Bremen from southern Germany. HJs main purpose was to describe the history of the see until the death of Archbishop Adalbert in 1072, and to demonstrate the justice of the archbishops' claim to authority over the church in Scandinavia. He did this not only by carefully noting the papal and imperial authorisations, but also by recounting the role of his church in the oonversion of Scandinavia. Adam based his Gwa panly on written records, including both the lives of and the miracles wrought by saints, lists of bishops, charters and papal letters. Some of the texts he used, including Rimbert's Vita Anskarii, have survived independently and give valuable insights into Adam's methods. He also used information provided by missio· narics and by the Danish king, Sven Estridsen, who is cited and even quoted verbatim many times, although his reliability may be doubted.7 Adam's Gesta was quickly accepted as an authoritative source and most of the historical works discussed here contain some information ultimately drawn from it, although often modified to serve very different purposes. The debt of some, including the Roskilde Chronicle (4) is obvious but, although it is likely that Ari read it when be visited Scandinavia,8 in Iceland Adam's work was only known indirectly. The historians of the twelfth century bad many other sources besides Adam. One of the most important was poetry composed in the tenth and eleventh centuries, much of it in praise of princes, that was preserved orally until it was quoted in Icelandic sagas• Traditions that were treasured and elaborated in royal and noble households, as well as in cathedtals and monasteries, provided many details, as did the genealogies and lists of kings aod bishops that were also preserved orally before they were written down in the twelfth century or later. 10 By then many of these lists included names drawn from Adam's Gestti, especially for the tenth and eleventh cenruries, but often in a different order. There were some obvious confusions, the most remarkable being the inclusion in a thirteenth-century Swedish episcopal list (34) of Unni, the archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen who died io 936, as the second bishop of Skara a century later. Some lists and genealogies were extended back into the distant past, even to such eponyms as Dan and Nor. Poetry provided authority for many of the mythological and fantastic elemcnrs in these lists, and one poem, Ynglingatal , traced the Swedish ancestry of a ' Pecer Sawyer. Tht Making()/ S~dm (Aliog.d:s. 1989), Jl-3. Aksel E. Chris(eost-u. 'Om krooologieo i Aris Js.lend.ingabot og dens laan fra Adam al Bremen'. N()l'disk.t srudiu: Fes:skrlft till Chr. WtSitrgArd-Nids~n pd 6$-dndagen dtn 14 novtmbtr 11

Jm, c:d. Jobs. Br-tmdum-Niclscn Dol. (Copenha&cn, 197S), '23-34. 9

Roberta Frank, 'Sk:aldic Poetry•, Oovcr aod Lindow, JS?-96. "Kl., 1:628-30; 9:9t-92, 509-10.

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe Norwegian dynasty through twenty generations of rulers back to the god Odin. an achievement even the Capetians could not match. u This poem, said to have been composed by l>j6561f in the early tenth century, was a source for Hisroria Norwegi~ and for Ynglingasaga, with which Snorri's Heimskru1gla (20) begins, although in elaborating Ynglingatal knowledge of happenings long after the period described in the poem was used. 12 Christian historians had to come to terms with their pagan past. One way was to treat it as a time of preparation in which ideal models could be found . Thus Saxo used his version of t.h e poem 8jarkamdl to emphasise the loyalty that was due to a lord,., and the career of one of the key figures in his history, Eric the Eloquent, showed how the success of a ruler largely depended on the guidance of wise men, a group represented in his own time by the bishops. 14 Icelandic historians depicted noble heathens, even contrasting them with wic-ked Christians. 15 Disasters were, however, often blamed on women ; Skuld was held responsible for the death of Rolvo and the collapse of the Lejre kingdom. 16 According to Saxo the situation was saved by the Sja?!landers, a significant detail for they represented the Danes who were especially favoured by Saxo and his patron Absalon. Many other contemporary concerns were reflected in the treatment of the pagan past. Disputes a bout the methods of determining royal succe.<;Sion, the conflict between hereditary and elective principles, and the designation of an heir, are mirrored in the contrasting ani tudes of Sven Aggesen, whose kings all succeeded by inheritance, and Saxo, for whom election or recognition in the different provincial assemblies was essential. Tht:se-historians. agreed in their attitude to another topic of immediate concern in twelfth-century Denmark, the threat of German domination , Sven Aggesen described the defiance of the Germans by Offa, fa ther of Dan. while Saxo has severa.l episodes implying hostility between Danes and Germans in the distant past. The obvious contemporary relevance of many episodes in twelfth-<:entury histories has encouraged some scholars to identify particular writers as representatives of different factions, in effect as spokesmen for class or nationalist interests. That is to go too far. There was no conflict between kings and the aristocracy as a class, nor is there any sign of clearly defined ' national' interests. The groupings were around rulers and lheir opponent.ct, and untiJI he

11

KL . 20;362..()4. H6Jeygjasal, a late tenth-century poem, similarly tnoes. the anoeruy of the

jarls of lad<, Kl, 6, 54-55. 12

Sawyc.r. Making of Sweden, 11. 39. u Saxo IJ, vii, 4· 28: FrilWensc:.n, Su..ro Gru.mmatlcus 41 l.,4tin P~t, 64-JOI. 1 • Saxo V~ Kutt Jobannesson. S4¥o Grtunmaricu.r: Kompo.tiliQn och viirtdtbitd i CJC$ta

Daoorun• (Stockholm t978), 135·45. JJ Lars lAnnrotb, 'The Noble Heath-en: A Theme in the Sagas', ScandiM~ian Studit-s 41 (1969), 1-29. l6- S.Uo. n,vi, 11•\'i.li, 5; Birgit Strand, Kvinnor tXIr miln in GtSUJ Dal1()'um (CiOteborg, 1980), 136.

Adam and the Eve of Scandinavian History

41

latter part of the twelfth century these fac.tions or interest groups seem largely to have accepted the same ideals or values. The disputes in which rivals exchanged places were much like the shifting overlordships of dark-age Europe. But the twelfth century was a time of structural change. The church itself was responsible for some of the most imponant developments and many disputes concerned the rights of churchmen. These confticts have left their mark on historical writing. Theodricus, who dedicated his work to 0ystein , archbishop of Nidaros, clearly presents a clash between Christ.ian and pagan values, well exemplified by his treatment of Jarl HAkon's ovenhrow by the missionary king Olal Tryggvason. 11 Theodricus's contemporary, Saxo, whose Gesta Danorum was commis
SUo, XV, vi, 9. Ibid., X, i.x, 5. 21 J6n Vi~r Sigur&lion, Fm Godord tit Riku: Godr- osgodort:binslilll#on~u urvikling ptl lrlorul pdlJ(X)..Qg 1200·t4llet (Bergen Urllversite•• Historisk lnstitut, liovedtagsoppga.vc 1987).

42

Th• Perception of th• Past in Twdfth·C
their inheritance rights, 22 an accusation that is not found in the earlier Norwegian histories. Saxo also appea.rs to have been a defender of the traditional order, despite gi>·ing a bigger role to the bishops than Snorri did. This 'traditional' tendency of Snorri and Saxo provides one clue to their motives but before discussing the reasons for the outburst of historical writing in Scandinavia it may be helpful to consider the ways in which different historians treated one important episode: the baule in which Olaf Tryggvason wa.• defeated. The earliest evidence for this baule is provided by slcaldic verses composed cady in the eleventh century but these give few details and pose many problems of interpretation; as Alistair Campbell remarked. the 'Norse poets

aimed at the artistic decoration of fa(..'tS known to their hearers rather than at giving information' ." The first account of the battle is in Adam's Gesto. 24 According to him the Danish king Svcn married the unnamed widow of the. Swedish king Eric and, ha,1ng at last renounced paganism , made a pact with her son Olof to spread Christianity. When the Norwegian king Olaf Tryggva· son, who is described as. at best, a semi-pagan, heard of this agreement between Sven and Olof, he was incited by his Danish wife Tyra, to auack the Danes. He. gathered an 'innumerable' fleet but was defeated by the Danes in Oresund, and committed suicide by throwing himself into the sea. Sveo1 then ordered Christianity to be received in Norway. The roles Adam gave these kings reflec.ted their relations with the church of Hamburg-Bremen; since Olaf Tryggvason bad not accepted its authority he was treated by Adam as an enemy, even a pagan. Sven c.ouJd be regarded with favour because his decision to renounce paganism was due to the action of the Swedish king Olof, who was well remembered as an active supporter of the claims of Hamburg·Bremen. What is more , Sven and Olof were believed to have joined in a missionary alliance. For Adam, the uhimate cause of the bailie was the paganism of the Norwegian king, who was incited by a woman. As a resuh Olaf Tryggvason came to an ignominious end and his widow 'spent her life miserably, in hunger and want, as she deserved', while Svcn, belatedly a champion of Christianity, triumphed. It is hardly surprising that Adam's version was not aeeeptcd by either Norwegian or Icelandic historians; for them Olaf Tryggvason was the mission· ary king, by whose initiative Iceland had been converted. According to the Hiswria Norwegia; and Agrip Olaf ·rry~vason was a zealous Christian. who fought his last battle for a just cause. 2 They claim lloat his wife Tyra. King Sven's sister, had earlier been married to a Slav ruler. \Vhen s ..·cn dt:nicd Tyra her dowry (which according to Historia Norwtgia; was the whole of Sjrelland),

~ Hkr. Harald$ J.ogo Hdifagro , 6. n Alis1air Campbell. P.ncomium Emmatt resinat' (London, 1949). 66. -z.. Adam. ii, 36, 3941.

" MHN ll.S·49; Apip, ed. OUS
Adam and the Eve of ScandinaviJln Hiscory

43

OlafTryggvason decided to seize it. He mobilized his fleet, but since only part of it turned up , he set out to ask for help from the Slavs. On his way through Oresund be was surprised by Svcn and his ames and defeated. With its legendary features this version turns Olaf Tryggvason into a victim: his intention was righteous, but he was abandoned by his own people a nd was unexpectedly attacked by enemies with larger fleets. Moreover, both texts emphasise that his defeat was a disaster for the church in Norway. The other Norwegian historian, Theodricus (8) , and the Icelandic sagas located the battle near an island called Svold, which is named in the eatly poetry. It is unidentified, but these historians claimed that it was near the coast of the territory of the Slavs known as Wends.26 In some Icelandic sagas OlafTryggvason is treated as a forerunner of St Olaf in both religious a nd political matters, but Snorri, who did not treat him as a martyr, emphasised his activity as a Viking and his martial qualities. In his version the battle was the result of a property dispute and a desire to a venge burt pride. 27 The blame is put on two women : Olaf's wife Tyra , who goaded her husband to recover her property in Wendland and Sven's wife, who urged him to avenge her. Snorri called her Sigrid StorrAda and explained how she eamed the epithet, which means 'strong-minded' ; tiring o f petty kings who came from other lands to propose to her, sbe invited two of them to a feast, made the m drunk and at night set fire to the hall in which they slept. She did, however, react more favourably when Olaf Tryggvason proposed marriage. They met to discuss the terms at Konungahella but when Olaf demanded that she be baptised, Sigrid answered: 'I will not go from the faith I had before, and my kinsmen before me. I will not say anything against you if yo u believe in the god that pleases you.' IGng Olaf was very angry and answered hastily: ' Why should I marry you , you heathen bitCh?', and he struck her in the face with the glove he was holding in his hand . After that be-stood up and Sigrid likewise, and she said : 'This may well be your death!' They parted and Sigrid married the Danish king Sven instead , a match that led to friendship between Sven and Sigrid's son Olof. Sven had promised his sister Tyra to Burislav, ki ng of the Wends, but she resisted , protesting that she did not wish to matry an old and heathen man. Succumbing to pressure, however, she 'wept and went away most unwillingly'. Soon after the wedding she tled home to Denmark but, fearing that Sven would send her back to Burislav, she sought refuge with King Olaf in Norway. and accepted his proposal of marriage. Soon after the wedding Tyra began to complain about the loss of her great possessions in Wendland and asked Olaf to recover them. The king's friends all advised him against such a venture but she taunted him as a coward. Eventually he yielded and prepared fo r war. In Denmark Sigrid, who could not forget Olaf's insult , persistently urged Sven to

"MIIN, 24.

" Hb. 614ft s.g• Trygg•asoNir 60-61. 89· 113.

44

The Perception 1>[ the Past in Twelfth-Ceruury Eur1>pe

fight Olaf, claiming that by marrying Tyra without her brother's consent the Norwegian had given cause for war. Thus Snorri gave two women, Tyra and Sigrid, leading roles as instigators of conflict. Many of the elements of Snorri's story came ultimately from Adam's Gesta but he reshaped them. In contrast to Adam, Snorri casts doubt on the Christian orthodoxy of both the Danish and Swedish kingl'; Sigrid, Olofs mother, is described as a determined pagan, yet Sven married her and. to make matters worse, be married his sister to a pagan king. The theme of women as inciters is elaborated. In Adam's Gesta Tyra fills that role but Snorri adds Sigrid, who is cast in the mould o f Brynhild , familiar in Eddie poetry, and be thus makes women the cause of OlafTryggvason's downfaJJ. Another significant variation, to which we shall re turn, concerns the aftermath of the battle; in Heimskringla the defeat of Olaf Tryg&'•a-;on led to the division of the government of Norway between two jarls, whose toleraocc is emphasi.sed. Saxo draws details from both Adam's Gwa and from Icelandic sources, but his account does not share their tendencies.28 His purpose was not only to denigrate the Norwegian king and demonstrate his stupidity but also to depict Sven as a cunning ruler of th e Danes. In Gesta Danorum O laf Tryggvason's ambition was to conquer tbe Danes. In order to gain Swedish support he proposed to Sigrid but Sven, fearing an attack on two fronts, devised a way to prevent their marriage: Olaf was persuaded to offer marriage instead to Tyra, now described as Svcn's young daughter, not sister, and the threat of a coalition between Norway and Sweden was countered . Saxo represents Olaf as well satisfied: 'He pre ferred the maiden to the mature lady; he would rarher marry the young girl and did no t feel at all inclined to waste his fair youth in the arms of a widow. He soon brought to light how little he esteemed t he latter, and how much he honoured the former.' Olaf sent for Sigrid and , pretending tba t he wanted to calk to her, invited her to board his ship. A fter some hesitation the chaste Sigrid did so but when she was on the gang-plank Olaf had some of his men dislodge it so that she fell headlong into the water. The queen nearly drowned and only just reached the shore, while the Swedes just stood by ' feeling annoyance'. When she had regained her composure and understood that by accepting the invitation to board Olafs ship she had been made to appear wanton, she could remain silent no longer but, as Sa.xo puts it 'uttered threats' against him. Sven's guile thus succeeded in depriving O laf o f Sigrid's support and, instead, be won her for h imself , all the more.easily as she now hated O laf. Sven then took revenge for his wife's shame by refu.~ng to allow Olaf to marry his daughter. The discord between the kings resulted in open war. There are many significant differences between these two accounts of the background to Olafs defea t. Accolding to Snorri, Olaf was a Christian who. having reasonably refused to marry Sigrid because she was an unrepentant

111

Sa.xo. X. xil. p. 282~84.

Adam and the Eve of Scandinavian History

45

pagan, married a Christian and died in an auempt to make good her just claims against pagan Slavs. Saxo, however, describes Sigrid as an old widow, a subject of ridicule, while the Norwegian king is made to appear a political simpleton wbose insulting behaviour towards Sigrid was typical of Norwegians. Women play a prominent part in both versions. In Heimskringla Sigrid and Tyra were directly to blame for O lafs downfall, but in Ge.stu Danorrun they are given more passive roles and, although Sigrid incites Sven, Olaf was the aggressor. With these very different versions we have come a long way from Adam. It is time to turn to the second meaning of the Eve in our title and to consider the

function of women in the Scandinavian histories. Both Icelanders and Saxo give women very important roles but, it must be emphasised, only in the pagan past. Sigrid is one of the last women in Snorri's Heimskringla to have power and Saxo marks the diffe rence between the pagan and the Christian periods in a similar way: Sigrid's fall, both literally into the water and from power and influence, symbolises the fate of the female characters in Gesta Danorum. The few women who appear later are but pale shadows of their pagan predecessors;

they never take the initiative and are no more than passive objects of men's ac.1ions.29 Many scholars have interpreted this change as reflecting a real alteration in women's circumstances and in auitudes towards them. It has been argued that

after the acceptance or Christianity women lost the independence and freedom they had enjoyed in pagan society. Far too little is known about pagan Scandinavian soc.i ety to justify such a claim. Christianit y doubtless affected the status and role of women but we do not know in what ways; whatever happened, the change was not sudden. Since these early historians repeatedly demonstrated that the influence and actions of women tended to have disastrous consequences. it is more likely that the disappearance of strong and

powerful women after the conversion in their histories is due more to wishful thinking than to reality. By letting such women appear only in the pagan past, the authors underline the ''iew that female activity and independence was S!)mething that belonged, or ought to have belonged, to bygone and imperfect times, before Christianity came to help man to master his world .30 Another difficulty in trying to draw conclusions about the real condition of women is that in Snorri and Saxo's histories many of the women, including Sigrid, are fictional. It is clear that their main function is to act as scapegoats who could be blamed for cw;toms that were not approved by the church. Many acted as inciters, urging men to take revenge instead of negotiating ; others performed magic. Overall they display an impressive range of vices and, as in other pans of Europe, they appear as worthy daughters of Eve, the root of aU

•9

Sttatld, Kvinnor och mifn, £oglish summary, 349-58. Birgit Sa'llloytr. 'Women and 1be Convenkm of Sc:mdinavi.a', Frautn in SpiitaJtrikt Wid PriJhmit~tltdkr: Ltbcn.sb«llngungtn - Ltbensnor~n - Wbens/OI'I'Mit, ed. Werner Affeldt (Sigmarinsen, 1990), 263-81 . !'Ill

46

1'/ze PerceptiOII of the Past in Twe/ftlt-Century Europe

evil. An interesting di!ference is that misogyny is not so openly expressed in Norse literature as in Saxo but this is mainly a matter of style. Norse writers do

not comment, and neither condemn nor praise. Saxo. in contrast, is very explicit about his view of woman's nature: ' (Thus) all vows of woman are loosed by change of fortune and melted by the shifting of time; the faith of their soul rests on a slippery foothold and is weakened by casual changes; glib in promises, and as sluggish in performance, all manner of lustful promptings enslave it, and it bounds away with panting and precipitate desire, forgetful of o ld things in the ever hot pursuit after something fresh."31 Another difference is that Norse writers depict women acting On the same footing as men and as dangerous enemies, while Saxo often tries to render women harmless by belittling and ridiculing them. Not all women were Eve-like. Some who were strong and active, especially those who forwarded the interests of male heroes, are described in favourable

terms. Another reason for praising a woman was indirectly to criticise a weak and incompetent husband. Saxo often used this technique when dealing with kings whom he could not criticise directly. The.re is, in fact, much concealed criticism of kings in some-of these h istories. In contrast to such an avowed royal propagandist as Sven Aggesen both Snorri and Saxo used the past to question and criticise contemporary kings and their policies. 'Thus Snorri presents Olaf Tryggvason in a favourable light in comparison with his Danish and Swedish enemies but not in relation to his own people or the Icelanders, for he stressed his, and St O laPs, brutality and violence. The fact that he represenl' many pagans as speaking with the voice of reason. while the missionary kings are depicted as ruthless and cruel, suggests that he was projecting back into the missionary period conHicts of his own time between local chieftains and the centralising power of king and church . His treatment of these earlier confron· tarions can be interpreted as an indirect criticism of the attempts by con tern· porary rulers to enlarge their power in disregard of tndirional customs. Snorri made this point very clearly when he praised the jarls who ruled Norway after O laf Tryggvason's defeat: 'Jar! Erik and Jarl Svcn were both baptised and accepted the truth faith; but during the time they ruled over Norway they let everyone do as he pleased about the keeping of Christianity, whereas they kept well the old laws and all customs of the land, and they were greatly beloved and governed wcll.'n Similarly Saxo does not present the victorious Sven as an unqualified hero. He follows Adam in describing him as initially a ferocious pagan who revolted against his own - Christian- father, and suffered divine punishment by being exiled and imprisoned three times before be repented. Saxo 'improves' Adam. pointing out how Sven revealed his slave-nature by lening himself be ran-

)I Saxo, IV. ii, 3. n llkr, 016/s saga TryggwuQNlr Ill. the translation is from Lee M. Hollander, Htinukringlo

(Austin 1964), 244.

Adam and the Eve of Sca11dinavian History

47

somed, and it does not add to the Icing's honour that - in the end- it was the Danish women who saved him.)' Saxo similarly expressed contempt for Valdemar by stating that it was only women and peasants who believed in his divine nature or who mourned him. 34 According to Saxo~ Sven showed his gratitude by giving women the right to inherit, something that, he adds, the law had hitherto forbidden. Women's inheritance rights were clearly a much debated issue in Saxo's rime; by explaining them as a result of this 'horsetrading', Saxo seriously questioned their righteousness. ls There are in fact many indications that both Snorri and Saxo wrote in protest against growing royal authority; Snorri did so on behalf of the aristocracy, above aU of Iceland, while Saxo represented the interest.< not only of the Danish aristocracy, especially the higher clergy, but also of the educated men of humbler origin like himself who served ecclesiastical or secular masters. The writings of these historians had to be acceptable to their rulers and lords. Criticisms bad, therefore, to be oblique and the resulting ambiguities have long obscured their true message. They had d ifferent methods; Snorri used a deoeptively objective style and expressed no opinions openly, apparently leaving his audience to draw their own conclusions. His own attitude is conveyed by the actions and words of his characters. Saxo, in contrast, offered many explicit judgements but skilfully revealed his own, often very different view. by implication.36 As suggested earlier, these tendencies provide a key to understanding why histories were written in twelfth-century Scandinavia. It may be tempting to suppose that the Scandinavian historians were simply following the lead given elsewhere in Europe, and that the fashion reached this peripheral and backward region relatively late. Doubt is cast on that explanation by the very uneven distribution of historical writing within Scandinavia. The absence of any such texts from Sweden can hardly be explained by assuming that the Swedish clergy were so much less well-educated and out o f touch than their contemporaries in Iceland. What is more, a delayed reaction hardly explains why, even in Iceland, interest in early Norwegian history diminished so dramatically after about 1230. The fact that the wave of historical writing began at much the same rime in both Denmark and Norway, in the reigns o.f Valdemar I (1157-82) and Sverrir (1177-1202), suggests that, in the first place, it was due to the need to legitimise the rule of these kings, both of whom cm
» Saxo X. ix, 4. ,... Ibid .• XV, vi~ 11. l.\ rbid. • x. ix, 5~ Sawyer, 'VaJdemar, Ab$aloo and Suo', 699-700. 36

Ibid.

The Perception of the Paot in Twelfth-Cemury Europe himself to present him as the legitimate ruler of the Norwegians who, despite doubts about his birth, had been chosen by God. Most of the other histories considered here were also largely concerned with kin!!$ but arc not so royal is tic as these two works. Theodricus and Saw wrote in support of the church. while Snorri, and perhaps also the Hislf)ria NorwegiiZ, reflect the interests of the arist ocracy. More detailed analyses ofthe other histories are needed but it may reasonably be suggested that they were all, in some measure, written in

response to the changes that were occurring then, in particular to express approval or disapproval of the growing royal power . The hypothesis that the production of histories was a response to a new situat ion explains why they were no longer written in Denmar k and Norway after royal power was firmly established, and why historical writing began so much later in Sweden, where royal power continued to be weak and disputed. It also explains why the main production was in Iceland where the new order meant submission to the

Norwegian king, a development that was vigorously resisted by some Icelanders. One response was to look back on the good old days, when royal power was less of a menace to the traditional interests of the aristocracy. It is clear that Snorri viewed kingship with some suspicion; his Heimskringla. which is a collection of sagas about t he kingsofN t)rway, begins with Ynglingasaga, in which many kings met ignominious ends. such as drowning in a vat of beer or being shot by a slave? 7 The remarkable interest in Scandinavian history e xhibited in the decades after 1170 was not directly caused by Adam, but none of the hi..torians who wrote then. nor their successors, could escape his influence. The different ways

medieval historians, from the twelfth century to the sixtee nth, adapted the information quarried from Adam's Gesta. to give whar was, in their view, a more 'correct' version of events, are a revealing guide to their own various purposes.

11

Lars L6nnrotb, 'Oomal.di't Oeatb and the Myth of S3cral K.in&$bip', Stru<;ture D!ld Mt:Qnlf!g f11 Old Norst LitC"nuurt, ed. John Uodow eta/. (Oden.se, 1986), 13-9.3.

Appendix A list of the main account$ of Scandinavian history written between 1070 and c. 1300, excluding annals (see note 6 above), lives of bishops and most lives of saints. The texts of which only fragments survive are indicated, others that are only known because they were used in later compilations are marked with an asterisk. The period covered by each work is indicated and in most cases the probable date and place of compilation arc noted in square brackets. Texts in Latin are noted, the others are in the vernacular. References are given to KL where editions e tc. are listed. Supplementary references, mostly to recent

works, are given in the final section.

I Adam, Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesitU: pontificum, to 1072 [c. 1068-75, later additions to c. 1080: Bremen) Latin. KL, 5: 283-89. 2 Ari, fslendingabOk, to 1120 [1122-32: Iceland) KL, 7: 493·95. 3 l.A.ndn4mab6k [?c. 1130 with later revisions: Iceland) KL, 10: 214-17. 4 A:.lnoth, GI!SUl Swenomagni regis et filiorum cius, 1047· 1101 [c. 1!22: Odense) Latin. KL, 8: 596.(,()(). 5 Roskilde Chronicle, 826-c. 1140: [c. 1140 Roskilde) Latin. KL, 14: 427·28. 6 Eirikr Oddson, • Hryggjarstykki, on Sigurlir slembir (died 1136) [c. liS()) KL. 1: 25-26. 7 Historia Norwegire, Nor-1030 (c. 1170, but possibly as late as 1220: by a Norwegian, but possibly written in Denmark) Latin. KL, 6: 585-87 . 8 Theodricus, Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium. c. 850-1130 [c. 1180: ?Nidaros,J Latin. KL, 6: 5&.~·85. 9 Agrip af N6regs Konunga s6gum, c. 850-ll30 (7·1171) [?Norway: c. 1190) KL, 1: 60-61. 10 Sven Aggesen, Brevis historill regum Dacie, Skjold-1185 [c. 1190: Denmark) Latin KL, 17: 501-2. II Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum, Dan & Angul-1185 [1182 -c. 1210: Lund) Latin. KL, 15: 49-57. 12·23 Sagas Writtm in Iceland, 1190-1230 12-13 Sagas of 0/afTryggvason (died 1000) KL, 12: 551-53 12 Oddr Snorrason, 6/afs saga Tryggvasonor [c. 1190) Latin, but only known in an Icelandic version made c. 1200.

49

50

Th• Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Ctnmry Europe

13 Gunnlaugr Lc.ifsson, '016fs saga Tryggvasonar [c. 1200].

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27

28 29

30 31

32 33 34

14-16 Sagas of St Olaf (died 1030) KL, 12:546-50. 616[s st•ga helga, the olde-st [c. 1200] only fragments sutvive. Styrmir Karason, '016fs saga helga [c. 1220) Snorri Stutluson, 6Mfs saga helga [122G-3()] 'Skjoldungasaga, on the Danish dynasty from Skj61d to Gorm, c. 950 [c. 1200] K L , 15: 596-9g. • Haralds saga hdr[agra, on King Harald Finehair (d. c. 950) [c. 1200). • Hlai>ajarla saga on t11e jarls of Lade, lOth ccotury [c. 1200]. Hakonar saga lvarssonar on Hakon lvarsson, grandson of Ji6rl!ruson, H6k.orlllr saga H6k.onarsonar. on King Hakon (d. 1263) [1264-65] KL, 6:51-53. Sturla 1'6r1!arson, Magmlss sagll /agab6tis, on King Magnus (d. 1280) (c. 1278-80] only a fragment swvives, KL, 11: 237-38. 31 - JJ Later Icelandic Sagas Sturlw•ga saga, a collection of sagas on Iceland 1120-1264 [13th century] KL, 17: 355-59. Knytli11ga saga, c. 950-1185 (l26G-70) KL , 8: 615-17. 0/d[s saga Tryggvasonar en mesta [c. 1300) KL, .12: 551-53. Lists of Swedish king$, bishops of Skora, and lawmen ol Vastergotland. c. IOOO·c. 1250 (c. 1250: ?Skara) KL, 1: 628-30; 9, 5()9..10; 10, 165-66.

The best sui"Vey of tCCCtn disc;ussioos of tbt Norwegian texts aod the Icelandic KiJ)gs' Sagas is 'TheoOOre M. Andel1~, 'Kings• Sag:!$(Knnungl1Sbgt.U)', C&over and Lindow, pp. 197·238. 1 AJU\C K. G. Kristensen. Srudir>n zur Adam 110,. Bremen: Obe.rlitftrung (Cope:nbag.cn, 197.)). 3 Svci_nbj(lm RaJr1$$0n, Studitr; Landmfmab6k: Krit.isko l>idrag tiJI den lsllindsk·ic:w by Jakob DC"ncdikts500, SGga·Book of the Vikiflg Society , 19: 2·3 (1!175-76), 3tt-t8. 4 Prebeo Mculengracht Sorensen, 'Om ~l norh og hans bog'. if/no1hJ Krt1niM. ovefl.Ut og kommcntcrct Erling Albrcct$Cn (Odcnsc, 1984), 11$-39. S Carsten Oreengaard, Mv.rttl om l.ttaeiJ HllS.' Rtgnum og J'OCbdQtium I Dtmmurk JQSQ.JJ70 (Copenh"S"•· 1982), Sl-12. 8 Sverre Bagge. 'Tht'Qdoricus Moi'U)(:hi.1S; Clerical HilUOti<Jgraphy in Twelflh·Ccntury Norway', Scandinavian Jol.dlt4l of History 14 (1990). lU-3"3.

Adam and the Eve of Scandanavian History

51

II EricCb.ri8'iansen, .Sa.ro Gmmm.aricw Books X XVI British Ardlaeological Reporl'i. lntema ~ tiona! Series 84, 118; (Ox£qrd 1990-81); Birgit Sawyer, 'Valdemar, Absakm and Suo: Historiography and Politics in Medieval Denmark', Revue 8tJge tk pJJilolotit n d'lti.noin. 63 (191!S), 68S-70S. t7 Bjarni Gu&uon. !Hmakommga S(}gur fslcrnk Fornrit 35 ( Reytja\'IX 1982), lni~lxuvii. 91-321. 22 Peter Foote:, ' ObservatKnu on OrkM)'ifllll Saga·, Sl Magnus Cathedral ~~nd Orlmty':s Tv.~lfth Ctntury Rt11aW.1111«, ed. Sarbara E . Crawford (Abetd«.n. 1988). 192-207. 4

28 .Knut Hetle, Omkring Bog/ung«Wgur(Uni\'trsitetet iBtr&'tll Ar'bok 19S8, tlistorisk...antikvari!llr: rckke no 7) , 23 Pe1er Foo1e. Aur.·IIIUIJ/sra (Oooose, 1984), 165·221 .

32 Gu&ason, D~n.akorWnga S6gur, ix-txx, J-90. 34 Jvar lindqu~t, Vt4tg<.ltal41geru Li.tttrira 8ilagQr (Sb:ifitr utg.ivl'la ltV Vetens:kaps--Societt teo 1 Lund. 26: 1941).

This page inlentional~y lefl blank

4

How the Twelfth-Century Monks of Worcester Perceived their Past Julia Barrow This essay aims to examine one particular ma.nifestation of that common phenomenon, the attempt to remould the paM by the writing of history. Under the writing of history we must include, of course, not only the texts openly intended to be historical writings, histories and chronicles for example. but also t.hose written in one age with the intention of making the reader believe that riley were written in a previous one, in o ther words forged documents." The aim of this essay is thus unambitious, since exercises of this type are frequent, but it will, I hope, be justified by its choice of subject: Worcester Cathedral was one of the richest and most powerful churches in medieval England; it is, for the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, one of the best documented and, above all, it was affected deeply by ideological conHicts from the early eleventh to the late twelfth cent ury which colou.r all the surviving

documentation. The point at issue at Worcester from perhaps as ear-ly as the e-arly ele-venth cemury until at least the middle of the twelfth century was the speed with which the community bad been converted from a congregation of sec'Uiar clergy to Benedictine monasticism. As Patrick Wormald showed in a recent study of JE.thelwold, the eccentricity of this event has not always been grasped sufficiently c.learly by hi.torians (and has often been att.ributed by them simply to English separatism) .' lt was well understood in the twelfth century that the

• I am very pateful to Corpus Christi Colle--ge. Oxford, for allowing me to consult MS IS7. to Mrs Christine Butler of the Ubrary of Corpus Olrist i Collese for her assi.$t.3noe, and to Patrick Wormald, Martin Brett and Mary Chene)' f'oT a<Mcc.and infonnation generouslygiven. Respot'lsibillty for any erron i.o this artiole is solely mine. 1 P. WOrmald. '£thelwold aod his Continental Counterparu: Comact, Compari$on, Con· trast', in Bishop Aithetwuld: His C4r~tr 1111d lnjlumce, ed. S. Yorke (Woodbridge, 1988), B-42. here esp. 37-8; this view is also expressed by N.P. Brooks, 'I'M & rly Histor)' ojtlrt Church of C411J~rbury (Leicester, l984). 2SS·58. But see also David Knov.·tes, Tlte MOMSiic Ordt:r in &gland, 2nd edo. (Cambridge, 1963), 41, 12.9-134, and O.H. Farmer, 'The Progress (If the Monastic Revival', in T~nth Century Studies, ed. D. PaJSOOs (London and CbicMster, 1975),

12-13.

53

54

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth· Century Europe

ruonacbisatioo of Winchester Cathedral by !Ethelwold in 964 had been unpre·

cedcntcd and the subsequent conversions of Canterbury and Worcester unusual. The deepest sense of unease was felt by the many continental clerics who were brought face to face with these arrangements. The existence of monastic cathedrals had even been viewed unhappily at first by the former monk Lanfranc and cenainly continued for some years after Lan[ranc's time to arouse suspicion among those bishops who were not themselves monks. Worcester in 10951ost , with the death of Wulfstan, its last monastic bishop for nearly a century. At least two of Wulfstan's successors had begun their ecclesiastical careers as cathedral canons. at Bayeux. In this circumstance ties part of the explanation for the treatment of the conversion by Worcester historians. In spite of claims made by respectable twelfth-century historians, moreover ones with strong contacts with historical writi ng at Worcester (Eadmer and William of Malmeshury), that the conversion process at Worcester had been gradual, Worcester's own historians, John of Worcester' and the anonymous authors of two important Worcester documems, the forged charter of Edgar known as Altiumantis3 and the record of the 1092 Worcester synodal agreement.• insisted that it had been a sudden proces~ taking immediate effect. Perhaps a lunhcr interest i11 the case or Worcester lies in the fact that these Worcester historians were so succ.e.;.;..~ful that for generations they have con~ vinced most of their audience that the. conversion process was sudden. Unt il recently only a few historians (J. Armit<~ge Robinson, lvor Atkins and Peter Sawyer) stood against this trend, and although their c-•se is sound it has not

Eadmcr's Lift of Os~~rvlld i:s to be round in Hi.JtorillttS of tit< ChUJ'ch of York, 00. J. Raine.• Rolls Series, J vob ( 1879 94), vol..ii; William of Malmesbury lncluded a shot1 account of Oswilld's career in his G~sta pontificum. ed. N.E.S.A. Hamilton, RotlsSetits (1870); the chroncieleoC John or Woroesttr, usually rderrtd to as 1ba1 of A<1rence of Worcester. was published in a somewhat abbce,•iated and umatisfac::tory form M Aofenct (I{ Worc::tMCr. Ch.r(Jniet.m ~z Chr<mit;is) ed. 6, Thorpe. 2 \lOis (London. 1848-9), with 1he sectioo from IUS «o 1140, usually referred 10 as the chrontcte of John or Worce~er, being edited by J.R. H. Weaver, The Chronicl-e of John of WOtttJ.Ia, Aoecdol3 OKooiensi.a, Medieval and Modem Seric$, 13(0xford, 1~8). Fordi.$r::us.~oo Ke M . .Bren, ' John of WOfotster ~nd his Contemporaric$' in 71, Writing qf flistor)' illtht Middl,. Ages, ed. R.H.C. Oa\I)S a_nd J. M. Wallacc-Hadrill (Orlord , 19-81), 101-126, and A. Gramden. Historical Writing In F;ngland c. 55tJ-JJ07 (London, 1974). 60-66. 107-11. 3 Altitonantif is printed in W. de G. Dir<:h, Canulurlum Saxcmicum, 4 vols (London. 1885·99) (hencdol"''lo'ard CSJ. iii. nO. U3S. and Tht Clvt!d4ry of Worc.t.tttr Calhtdral PrkJry. ed, R. R. Oarlin.glun, Pipe Roll Scx:ilet)'. n.s. , 38 (1968) rh-enoeforward WorctJter CanularyJ.) 4-'1. no. I; the ch~rter ~'S: li!.tcd with full bibliograpbical rdcrco~ in P.H. Sawytr, Anglo-Saxon Chontn: An 2

4

Annouued Li.u and

Bibliography (London, 1968) [hencc:fol"''lo·ard SJ, no. 731. " T he l 092 synOdal doCument is printed in Councils ~nd SynodJ, with Olha Doc.um~nu ReiOJlng ro 1he Engll$1t Chui'()J 1. ed. D. Whitelock, M. Bteu and C.N.L. Brooke, h'OJs (Oxford . 1981), ii , 636-9: IYoru.Jtt'r Corndary. 31·32. no. SZ; and aJso H . Wharton , Anglia Sacra, 1 ''01$ (l.oc>don, 169t), i, 542-43.

The Monks of Worcester

55

always won complete acceptance.5 So, given the importance of Worcester as an institution and as a centTe for historical writing, there is a strong justifica· tion for reevaluating the sources, the more so since a c-ritical examination of one of the sources just mentioned, the 1092 synodal document, has never been undertaken. This essay will look in tum at different pieces of evidence for the conversion process and then put them together to see why there was so linle agreement between them. The pieces of evidence arc: I. The leases of Bishop Oswald as preserved in Worcesters oldest cartulary, BL Cotton MS Tiberius A xiii; 2. The earliest, anonymous, Ufe of Oswald written at Ramsey, probably by Byrhtferth;6 3. The 'gradualist' accounts of the conversion given by Eadmer in his Life of Oswald and by William of Malme~bury in his Gwa ponrificum; 4. The chronicle of ' Florence' of Worcester, in reality the work of John of Worcester; 5. The 1092 synodal document; and 6. Alrironantis. 1. Oswald's Leases in BL Cotton MS Tibtrius A xiii The richest surviving source for the composition of Worcester cathedral chapter in the period at issue, the second half of the tenth century, is the series of 79 leases issued by Bishop Oswald of Worcester. Most of the leases are dated and are witnessed by members of the cathedral community, which has allowed Peter Sawyer to analyse the community. None of these ebaners has survived in the original; though many originals did survive into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries they have since been los!. 7 But they were copied into Worcester's earliest cartulary, BL Cotton MS Tiberi us A xiii 8 Cotton Tiberius A xiii is in fact a composite manuscript made up of an early eleventh· century cartulary and a late eleventh-century one, compiled by Hemming at the request of Bishop \VuJfstan. begun late in the latter's lifetime and com-

) J. Armitace Robinsoo, S1 Oswald and tM Clturch ofWofC'e.rttr. British Academy Supple-men· tal Paper$, S(l..ofKioo, 1919)~ J. Atkins, 'Tht Churdlat Worces-tet from the Eigluh to 1he 1\I.'C.Iflh

Century', part 2, Antiquaria Journal, 20 (1940), 1-38; P.H. Sawyer, 'Ch.anen of the Rdonn Movemen'' ln TtntJI Ctntury Studks, ed. D . Panoos, 84·102. ~wye.r's U5e bas woo complete

acccptanor. from Brooks. Tht Early Hislory of tlu? Cltl4/'Ch ()/ CQ.nltrburr, 255-56, P. Wormllkl. '.£thcho"'id and hi$ Contemporaries', 37-38, and E. Mason,St WulfttDn ofWorcuttr, c. 1008·1095 (Oxford, 1990), 13·15. but more balf·heanedacceptaooe from H. Vollrath, DkSy.odtlt Engltmds bU /()66 (Packrborn, 1985), 261,455-64, and no ae«ptance {tOn'l Ei"ic klh.n, 'War ;and Society in the 1'enth Century: The Maldon Campaign', »onsocri~ oftM Royal Hlswrlcal Stxkry. Sth ser., 27 (t977). 192·93. <> HisrOTiiJtl$ of rht Church of York, i, 399-475. M. Lapid.ge has provided evidence to oonfirm older theories chat h was wriuen by Byrhtferth of R..mscy be.twcen 995 aad lOOS: "The Hermtneuli¢ Styte in Tenlh·Ccntury Angl(>.Latin Litcrawrc', Angl()o$ax()ll Englimd, 4 (1975). <>P· 91. aod 'Byrhtferth >od the Vita S. EA:gwini', Mrdi
56

711e Perception of the Past in Twelfth·Cenrury Europe

pleted after his death." Hemming's cartulary duplicates much of the material in the earlier one. 10 For most of the years between 0.,-wald's appointment and his death there are surviving leases with witness lists giving the names of the members of the cathedral community. There are two important gaps: no leases at all survive for the two years 964 and 965, while for the years 970-76 inclusive only two survive. one with a witness list lac.king any member of the community and another, dated 974, '>ith a witness clause in suspect form which seems to have been interpolated: 'This wres gedon on Wynsiges gcwitnesse decanus 7 alra thara munuca mt Wiogurna cca....trc' . 11 This c.lause is very similar to that in another Oswald lease. one bearing the date 969: 'This wres gedon on Wynsiges gewytnesse muneces 7 on ealra munuca ret Weogorna ceastre•IZ Both these charters were copied into the earlier pari of Tiberius A xiii and so the interpolations must already have been in existence in the first half of the eleventh century. The leases to which they were added appear otherwise genuine: it is likely that the interpolator added the witness clauses to the two originals (both presumably originally unwitnessed), between the main text of the lease and the boundary clause in the 969 lease, and after the boundary clause, but before a short note about the current holders of the lease, in the 974 lea.se. The form of the witness clause in these. two charters is markedly different from the standardised form adopted in aU Oswald's other leases. The witness liSIS of the Oswald leases bave been claimed by Eric John to show a distincti,·e change, 1 ~ a 'thorough purge' between 963 and 966- Dr Jobn wishes to claim Lhat the community was rnonachiscd in 964 as claimed by Altilonantis and so to retain the nucleus of Altitonantis as genuine - but this has been refuted by Peter Sawyer," who has pointed out that the replacement of seven members of the community by seven others. though rather greater in scale of upheaval fro m the changes visible over any other four years in the period covered by the leases, could easily be explained by natural wastage, while the period fro m 969 to 977, which also shows considerable changes.

~ N.R. Ket, 'Hemming's Cartulary: A Dc.scriptkm of the two Worocster Cartul(l;rics in Cotton Tiberiu5 a. xiii', in Swdics in Mtdie••al HiJJ{)ry PNstnud 10 FNderick Mauri~ Po-,.icke. ed. R.W. llu111, W.A. Pattdn a.od R.W. Southern (Oxford, 1948) , 49-75. 1 " lbid., 58; E. Mason. St Wulftt4n ofWorctstt>r. c.sp. 294-95. 11 P. K. Sawyer, 'ChAncrsof the Reform Movemtnt', e5p. 88-92. Sawyer omits from his analysis S'J328 of 973 because it U unwitnessed and St329 (CSI298), dated 974, because its witnessing clause is an intcrpol_ation:cf. J.A. Robinson, St0swald4fld tM ChurchofWorust~r. 35·36. 51329 is copied into the carlic.r pan of Bl. Couon MS Tiberius A xiii. fos. 13v·74. and is prUned In Hemm.inJ;, i, l5S. •:a Sl121 (CS12~3: BL Couon M.S Tibcrius A xiii. fo. 98-98v; H~mming i, 209). The differences in the $pcJJins; of the name Worcester are pce!lumably because the sc:ribe of moa~ of fo. 98 was different from the &tribe()( fos. 73v·74, thou&h both iU't: early caeve:ntl\ cent-uty: $Ce N.R. Ker. 'Hcmmiog's Cartulaty'. Sl·.S2. n Etic .John, Orbi.J Britanniat and Orhu StudiU (Leioc&tcr, J%6). 247·78. 1 "

P.H. Saw)'er. ·Olarters of the Retonn Movement•. A9.

The Monks of Worcester

57

shows recruitment rather than los.<, with five new recruits in 969 and eight new recruits in 977, and only four losses, three of these four being from the five new recruits of 969. The most valuable part of Sawyer's survey is his analysis of the descriptions of the witnesses. Each member of the community is routinely d=ribed according to his role in the community: as primus or head, priest. deacon or clerk, or, in a few eases, as monk. Two men, Leofwine and Oswig, are referted to as monks frequently, though not absolutely consistently; in one charter ten ofthe community are described as monks. but they revert to being clerks, deacons or priests in other subsequent charters: the ten inc.Jude Wynsige, the head of the communiry from 977 to 985, and here at the top of the list immediately after Oswald, 3lld Athclstan, \Yynsige•s succes.."ior as pri·

mus." Athelstan oeeurs in only one other witness list as a monk; Wynsige, in addition to his appearance in the 969 lease mentioned above, is also described as a monk in the charter in which Oswald grants him land for three lives. ' 6 The charter evidence shows that as late as the mid 990s the majority of the community was fortned of secular clerks; as Sawyer remarks, they clearly were secular clerk.<, since the fact that Leofwine and Oswig are frequently described as monks shows that a distinction was being drawn. Oswald's refortn seems to have had the effect of establishing two monks at Worcester and of encouraging the head of the community after 977 to lhink of himself as a monk. A possible hypolhesis for this mixed community not mentioned by Sawyer is that the two monks served Oswald's new church of St Mary, begun perhaps as early as 966, the first year in which Oswald started to commend his leases to the threefold protection of StMary (the patron saint of tbe new church), St Michael (the dedicatee of his new foundation at Bishop's Cleeve) and StPeter (the patron of the existing cathedral)'' Probably the clerks continued to serve St Peter's while the monks served St Mary's; Eric John's thesis that the church's e.ndowments could not have supported two communities or two churches is unreasonable, given that the entire group of clergy, monks included, was not large, that the two churches were small and that Worcester's estates were wealthy.t8 The cleriClll community was probably quietly extinguished in the early years of the eleventh century.

Sl333; cr. P.H. Sawyer, 'Cbartcn o f the Refonn Movement', 92. S1336; discussed in P.H. Sawyer, 'Cbanen of tbc Reform MO\Iernenf. and sec comment there abouc Lbc propriety of a monk receiving such a lease. 17 S1309 (Hrmming, i, 110-l). StMary's was completed nearly twenty years later: see EricJobn. 01bU BriJgMiur, 2.43, and E. Mason, St Wulfttan, 20. On the probable ccrexisttnoe of the IWO cbutches, see A . Gcansden, 'Troo.itionalism and Continuity during the La:u. Centucy of AngloSaxon Mooa$ricl$m', JQW'n41 of £cclnitu1ical History, 40 (1989), 172. StPeter's continued to stand ror about a oentury: t« E. Ma.'fOil, St Wui{Wln, 54-SS. lt E. John1 Orbis Brilllltnia~. 2l6. L$

16

58

Tire Perception of the Pust in Twelfth-Century Europe

2. Byrhtferth's Life of St Oswald (Sometimes Called the Anonymous Life of Oswald) The earliest Life of Oswald. which as Michael Lapidgc bas shown was very probably written by Byrhtfertll of Ramsey between 995 and 1005, 19 describes Oswald's monachisation of Worcester as follom (I paraphrase): Oswald established two monasteries, one in \Vorccstcr, the other in Winchcombe. He placed Germanus, dean of our monastery, in charge of Winchcombe, consec· rated him, installed him and placed monks under his rule. He appointed IEthelnoth to head the community at Raom ey and Wynsinus, a priest, who had been taught in the gynwasium at Ramsey. to head the community at Worcester and attached a few brothers from Ramsey abbey to the Worcester community :2/J This is the earliest source which links Wynsige with Ramsey. Several later S<>urces. both fro m Ramsey and from Worcester, were to claim that Wynsige had been a monk at Ramsey, but .Byrhtferth says merely that he had studied there. Byrhtfenh's account does not state that Oswald attempted to make the clerks at Worcester become monks, merely that he set up a monastery there and established a few Ramsey monks in it. This account is compatible with the picture we receive from the leases of Oswald forming a smaU monastic cornmunily at St Mary's.

3. Eadmer's Ufe of St Oswald and William of Malmesbury's Gesw Ponrijicum Eadmer's version of events: The clerks of Worcester shut their hearts to Oswald's talk of correction of their way of life. With the consent of Dunstan and Edgar, Oswald started to build a monastery next to the cathedral and dedicated this new church to St Mary. The clerks of St Peter's (the cathedral) continued to serve the.rc but the laity first ftuctuated between St Peter's and St Mary's and then began gradually to absent themseh·es from St Peter's, thinking that the monks' service was more seemly. Offerings at St Peter's dwindled and those at St Mary's grew. One of the clerks, older and of higher binh than the others, by name Wensinus, became a monk and gave himself and all his possessions to the monks. A little after this Oswald sent him to Ramsey to be educated in godly (literally: 'heavenly') studies, and on Wen;;. nus's return set him in charge of the monks of Worcester. \Vensinus lived up to Oswald's hopes . Several oft he clerks, observing these developments, decided to become monks; in this way the sec was transferred from St Peter's to St Mary's.21 Eadmcr places this story before his account of how Oswald became arcbbis· hop of York but since he attaches no dates to the story the events which he describes could have extended over many years, perhaps to a point after

l:.O 20

11

Sec n. 6 aboYC. JJistorions of the C/lur(-.h of Y(Jrk. J, 435. Ibid., ii. '23·5.

The Monks of Worcester

59

Oswald's new appointment. 22 Eadmer probably wrote the Life between 1113 and lll5.23 William's version of events: Oswald, considering that there was good material in the souls of the clerks forming the community at Worcester, if they could be persuaded to reform, did not drive them out by force but got round them by holy cunning. He built a ~nd church, dedicated to St Mary, in tbe graveyard of the see-church, StPeter's, and, because he liked to perform the divine offices there in a more intimate fashion, the people, who liked to be blessed by so holy a bishop, all started to attend St Mary's. Therefore the clerks, bereft, dcdded to beco= monks. In this way Oswald won renown and the king made him archbishop of York."" Here the dating of the conversion is quite '-pecifically placed before Oswald's elevation to York (which took place, though William does not give a date, in 971), but it is still a gradual process, just as it is in Eadmer's account. The decisive element, just as it is in Eadmer, is the building of the new eburch to be served by the monks which attracts the laity away from St Peter's. William completed the Gtsta pon1ijicum in 1125 but had probably collected his Worcester material on a visit there at some point between 1113 and 1124.25

4. The Chronicle of' Florence', i.e. John, of Worcester Under the year 969, after a brief account of the assassination of the Byzantine e mperor Nicephorus, comes the passage: The.peace-loving king ofthe English, Edgar, orde.red St Oumnan of Canterbury, 1he blessed Oswald of Worcester and St i!ltbelwold of the church of Winchester, bl$hOps, tO place monks in rhe more important monasteria est.abfuhed throughout Mercia, having thrown out the clerks. Whence St Oswald, made·aware of his vow, expelled from the monastery those derb ofthe church of Worcester who refu5Cd to accept the monastic habit: and in the same year, by his own account, made those who agreed to his command monks, and be appointed WynsinllS, a monk (ctnobita) of Ramsey. and a roan of great religion, in the place of a dean.2,.

The oldest manuscript of 'A orence's' Chronicle, a Worcester manuscript and John's autograph, and the archetype of later versions of 'Florence', is Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 157. ln this manuscript the e ntry for 969 is not original as it stands. The parchment under the entire entry for the year is thinner than the rest of the folio, suggesting that it has been scraped,

n Oswakl became lrehbishop otYurk, retainin' 1be see of Worcest.er, in 97): HandlxKJk Q{ British Chr
60

The Percernion of the Past in Twelfih·Cemury Europe

presumably to erase a previous text; however, the erasure was performed with care, the surface having been re ndered smooth afterwards, since the ink on it has hardly blurred at all. More significantly, the writing of the e ntry, though in the same hand as tbe pre ce ding and succeeding entries, is extremely compact and becomes smaller from about the beginning of the sent ence concerning Edgar's rcfonn. Beginning with the word 'expu/it' (expelled), the final e ighteen words of the entry are in the margin. The alte ration is impos.,ible to date exactly but was certainly carried out before Bodleian MS Bodl. 297 was copied fro m it in the 1130s. since here none of the 969 entry (an exact copy of the reworked 969 entry in CCC 157) is place.d in the margin .27 Another version of 'Florence', the Chronicula, an autograph in John's hand. also shows lilat an alteration has been carried out at precisely the same passage.211

5. The '1092' Sy110da/ Doctunent The ' 1092 synodal document' survived in what a ppears to have been its original fomt until a t leastlile late seventeenth century, when it was edited by Henry Wharton; 29 this has since disappeared. A copy survives in the thirteenthcentury cartulary of Worcester cathedral priory,30 from which it ha.• been published by Hearne and more recently by Reginald Darlington ." It was not copied into He mming's cartulary, although other documents from later in the 1090s were.» The document is a notification by Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester ofthe findings of a synod held by him in 1092 in the crypt of the monasterium of St Mary's. Two priests, A'.lfnoth of St Helen's and Ala m of St Alban's, both churches in the city of Wo rcester. brought a dispute concerning the parish

boundaries and the prcrogati\'C.<; of their churches. An inquest formed of Prior Thomas, lEife r the sacristan, Uhtred lile canto r aod several members of Wulfstan's household, including his most senior clerks, decided that there was only one parish in the whole city and that it be longed to the mother church , that is . to the cathedral. The c hurch of St Helen's had (they said) existed as the. vicaria of the cathedral from the date o f the foundation of the diocese in 680

21

Oxford Corpu.<> Christi College. MS IS7. fo. 314: Bodkian Library. MS Bodl. 297. fo. 332v. MS Bodl '1!17 was copied from Corpus Cbtitti MS 157 in the eady 1130s: seeM. Brett. ·John of Woroc:t.ter', l07. 109.

a i rinit)· Cotlege Dublin MS 503, fo. 74v: the wording from 'clericos Wi,gomiensis ecc:lesie' to •t()Co dc:cani prtfccit' is in Lighter inJc than the $urrounding text ~ it has almost bot not quit<: the same ""'Ordin& as 'Florence'- a few word$ of •florc.noe-' are.on:Uned. I am very grateful to Dr Martin Breu fOf informing me of dUt . For~~~ relationship of 'Oin.ity CoJ)ege Dublin MS 503 to O~rfl'lrd , COrpU$Ch.risti MS 157 Md tbc·identification of John'sbaod,$ee M. Brett, 'Jobn of Worcester and his Contempour~s·. 110, quoting E.A. Mcintyre, 'Early Twc:.Jftb-Centu.ry Worce,ster CalhedraJ Priory, with Special Reference to the Manuscrip~ Written There· {unpubli.s.hed Oxford Univcnity

D.Pbil. thesis, 19'11!. :.rt H. Wharton. Angli.t Sacra, i, 542·3. 31)

'll }l

Wotcester C3lhedrai,Oc:an and <.."'bapter l ibrary, MS A 4, fos. 7v.S. Hemming, ii, 527-31 ; Wota'.ue.r Ca.rtuiMy, 31·32, no. 52. E.g.., fltmming, ii, 421-24. 426-29.

The Monks of Worctsrtr

61

until the time of Archbishop Oswald, who, at the request of Edgar and on the authority of Ourt~tan, had changed the community serving the cathedral from the irregular way of life of clerks to the regular way of life and habit of monks in the year969. In Oswald's time Winsius, the priest of St Helen's, had been 'the representative (vicarius) of this holy mother church' (i.e. the cathedral had been the rector of St Helen's and Wynsige its vicar, subordinate to the cathedral). Winsius. at Oswald's admonitions, along with tbe other clerks serving the cathedral, adopted the monastic habit, and gave the keys of St Helen's, of which he had been the custos or warden a.'i well as the vicar, along with its lands, tithes and other income. to the common use of the monks. After Winsius had become a monk , the church and other items, which up to now (i.e. 1092) have belonged to the monks, the lands, tithes, burials, and all other cu..oms and ecclesiastical dignities which bad almost been the private property or the clerks, passed into the right (ius) o f the monks and were set aside for their common use. with the assent of King Edgar and of Archbishops Dunstan and Oswald. In the third year of the monastic conversion ofWinsius the priest, Oswald bestowed on him the office of prior (prioratus) over the monks of this church, with the assent of the said king. Oswald also granted to Winsius and to all his successors as prior of the cathedral the right to be deans over all the cathedral's churches and priests, so that no (rural) dean and no archdeacon might meddle with the monks' churches or their clerks, except by the permis· sion of the prior of the cathedral. The prior as the c.hief dean of the bishop is to pay all ecclesiastical customs to the bishop for his churches. Although a faint caveat was expressed about the validity of this document in Councils and Synods 1, 33 it bas been everywhere accepted as genuine.34 Indeed Darlington went so far as to say, 'We do not know what chronicles or documents were consulted at the time of the synod of 1092, but it can be said

that the litigation between the two priests of St Helen's and St Alban's could not have required or stimulated the forgery of charters by anyone' . On this point, Darlington was right: a d ispute between the priests of St Helen's and St Alban's, as such, would not have led to the production of a forgery. But the aim of the 1092 document was not to record the settlement of a dispute between the two priests; it was to spell out the claim of Worcester cathedral priory to ecclesiastical jurisdiction and parochial superiority within Worcester (hence the constant reference to the cathedral as the 'mother' church rather than the more normal term for a cathedral, 'greater' church or maiorecclesia). This, coupled with the somewhat early description or a diocesan synod, should

:u Cc>WtciLt QJid ~IIOd$1, ii. 63S. ).1 E.g. , by R.R. Darlins.ton in Worcester Cartubuy. pp xliv-xtvi; H. VoUrath, DF t Syn()den E.ngland.J, 460: R MallOn, S1 W~.tlfoum ofWorustu, 21J..I6; Eric John, Orbi$ Bri,anniat, 240 and idem, 'War and Socic:ly in tbe T(nth Century', 193.

62

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth·Cenrury Europe

have made Darlington suspicious. 3.s Furthermore. there- are three serious problems raised by the document , two of terminology and one of dating, which have hitherto been overlooked. These are the use of the tenns •ctean' and

' vicar', and the choice of a 969 date for the conversion ooupled with a date of 'Y/2 for Wynsige's appointment as prior. By 1092 the use of the term 'dean' to describe one of the dignitaries in an ccclcsiasticaJ community. either secular or monastic, was accepted in England. The term •dean· to describe the chief canon in a secular cathedral community took root late in England ; it was coming to be accepted at the very earliest from abQut the IOSOs. 36 The term was also in usc throughout t he eleventh century at Worcester to describe the head of the monastic oommunity. William I issued a writ to !Elfstan 'the dean' between 1066 and 1080." We have already seen that one of the leases in Cotton Tiberius A xiii interpolated in the early eleventh century describes Wynsige as dean. Byrhrfertb's Life of St Oswald uses the term dean to describe Germa.n us's role at Ramsey; by extension the title might be applied to Wynsigc, who is mentioned as the head of the Worcester oommuoity in the same passage. The usefulness of the term 'dean' (it was bQrrowcd from French monastic parlance) in the context of a monastic cathedral chapter was that it provided a title for the senior monk; the most obviou.'\ term, abbot, could not be used, because an abbot could not have a superior within his community. In a monastic cathedral chapter the bishop was. so to speak, the abbot. By the early twelfth century in England the term ' prior' was coming to be more widely used, while the term dean was being more and more reserved for the heads of secular cathedral chapters, for monks in charge of ceUs and, though probably not until at least 1108, for deans of Christianity or rural deans. The usc of the term 'dean• to mean ·rural dean•, that is, an e:cdesiastic:al official with a minor jurisdictional role, subordinate to the archdeacon, starts to occ.u r rather later in England than the use of 'dean'to mean a dignitary in a oommunity. The earliest date attested for a dean in the jurisdictional sense in England is during the abbacy of !Elfward of Evesham (c. 1014-44), who is said to have appointed a oer1ain Avirius as dean of Christianity over the whole of the Vale of Eve.~ham, butt he source recording this is late, the early thirleenth century chronicle of Evesham. in a passage almost certainly written by Thomas of MarlbQrough . Thomas perhaps was making use of the reference in the

,b Wotet:Stt'l' CAttJJ/4r)·. p.xh·i. Thl! nc~t diocesan synod 10 be recorded in Englnnd is one suppo$C
The Monks of Worcester

63

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to JE.fic, 'the noble dean of Evesham', who died in 1037. It is very likely that A3fic was given the title because be was t.he acting head of the community of Evesham while itS abbot )E)fward was bishop of London (1035-44); he was certainly a monk of the community, and occurs as such 1021 x 1023. Moreover Thomas was anxious to prove that Evesham's claim to the deanery in the Vale was a long-standing one; he is therefore an unreliable witness. His remark that Abbot Walter (1077-1104) appointed a secular clerk as dean and steward is likewise not above suspicion, but in any case the exact nature of this official's duties is not spelled out.38 The process by which Evesham acquired control over the churches in the Vale is obseure. D.C. Cox. followed in a recent article by Jane. Sayers. bas argued that Evesham probably obtained control over the hundred of Fish borough during the reign of Edgar (the area of the hundred coincides roughly with that of the deanery of the Vale), and that the abbey probably mi.nistered spiritually to the surrounding area from this time. By the early thirteenth century the deanery contained six chapels, two of them in Evesham itSelf, in the large graveyard adjoining the abbey. Their dates of foundation are unknown.39 Domesday records few churches for Worcestershire and these were important churches controlling large parishes, within which new chapels, if they had been founded (as is likely) had not won any measure of independence. 40 While Evesham's spiritua1 control over the area as early as the tenth century is probabJe. it is unlikely that this control was viewed clearly in terms of spiritual jurisdiction until the 1070s at the earliest, when secular and spiritual jurisdiction were separated from each other by William 1.41 As soon as archdeaoons began to appear in English dioceses - oouncils mention them from c. 1070 aod individual archdeacons start to appear from 1075:' great churches started to claim areas of exemption from archidiaconal control. Severa] secular cathedral "' ChTonicon Ab/xdlue d~ E•v.$ham, ed. W.D. Macray. Rolls Series (U163), 83; on Thomas's autborshipoftbis sel"tiQn sec A. Gransdcn, HllwrlCQI Writing Jn England, c. jj(}./3()7, Sl9;for'he reference to £~"$death. ~;ee The Anglo-Saxon ChronjGfe, ed. D. Whitelock, D .C. Doogla$ and S.l. Tucker (Loodoo,l%1).104: the cbanerwitnessed by .Elk. as monk isS937. .Efic:'sdeanshipis aocc:pted as a rural dc-.anery by D.C. Cox, 'The Vale Estates ot tbe Qur<:h of Evesham•. VGlc of El¥3ham hUtoricol Soddy H6a~rch Psptr$, 5 (1975·). 33, but rejected by J.E. Sayer1. "'Ori&i;• nat'', Cartulary and CbronkJe: 'The Case of the.Abbey or Evesham', in FiJI.schungftf 1m M fiUWitr. InlcrnationaJcr Kongreu der Mooumenta Ocrmani.ac Historica, 5 vols (H300\'er,1988), iv. 387. For Abbot Walter's dean see CJmmicon Abbotiae d~ £ veJ,ham, 97. " D.C. Cox, 1'be Vale Estates', 25-SOand J.E. Sayen, 'The Proprietary Church io EogJand: A Nnlc On Ex ore ~~~tis (X 5.33.11)'. Zt'itschri/t dtr SRvigny-Stiftung f/Jr Rechlrgt.fchicllu, Kanonjsdsebe Abteih.tng, 74 (1988). 234-&. .o ln general on the question see J. Blair, ·1..oea1 Churthes in England in Domesday Boot and Bdore·, in Domesday Sludits, ed. l .C. Hoh (Woodbridge, 1981). 26S.18, and, on churcbes in Worcestershire, ste C.J. Bond, 'Church and Parish in NonnaD Woreestenhin:', i:n Miruler:r lliJd Parbh Church.s. cd. 1. blair (Oxford, 1988), 119-58. <~J On wbieb see most rectntl)' C.N .L. Brooke, 'The. Archdeacon and tbe Normao Conquest', in

Tradillc>nand 011mge, 1-8. 1 "'

lhid.

64

Tile Perception of the Pa.
chapters successfull y demanded archidiaconal rights for their deans within the cathedral cities. Great monasteries similarly claimed areas of exemption. Bury from c. 1071,43 St Albans, the cathedral priory of Durham, and, sooner or later, Evesham. Clearly. \Vorcester's monks we.re claiming just such an exemption. Yet there is no conclusive early evidence for the title given to these areas of exemption or to the officials plaoed in charge of them: certainly there is no evidence apart from the 1092 synodal document that the titles deanery and dean were applied as early as the 1090s. It is more likely that the terms 'dean' and 'deanery' to describe the office.r in charge of an exempt jurisdictional area and that area itse.Jf would have been adopted with the introduction of rural deanerie. into Englisb dioceses, as a form of monastic competition against burgeoning diocesan officialdom. How· ever, the origins of rural deaneries in England cannot, on the available evidence, be pushed back further than the early years of the twelfth century: this, as summarised by Marrin Brett in Tlu English Church under Henry 1,44 shows that the earliest reference comes in the dccTccs o f the 1108 synod, followed by e'•idence from the charters of Bishops Roger of Salisbury and Ralph of Chichester. Bishop Ralph's charter was issued between 1107 and U23; Roger's is dated by Brett to the later years of Henry l's reign. The inspiration behind the introduction of rural deans almost oenainly came from Normandy, where the 1072 Rouen council stressed the importance of the role of deans in providing an example of upright living to persuade married clergy to change their ways."" Another duty given to the rural deans by this council was that of distributing the holy oi1s.46 The dean with his two roles of setting a mo ral example to his fellow clergy and of distributing the oils seems likely to have been a recent innovation in Normandy in 1072, since the council of Lisieux in 1064 which mentions botb holy oils and clerical marriage makes no reference to him .•7 Distributing holy o ils became a duty of rural deans in England once they bad been established. but in the eleventh century the task was carried out by minster churches, wb.ich continued to do this until at least the time of Anselm."" Even in northern France outside Normandy, references to deans of Cltristia· nity are not common before the rwelftb century. Most of Orderic Vitalis's

csp. n.30. M. Brett, Tht £nglish Cllurdr mrdtr Henry I (Oxford, 197S), l1Z.J4. 4S Ibid., 2t2; in geni:ral on Nonnan oounc:ils seeR. Fore-ville, ''The synod of the province of Roucn in the ele.,.enth and twelhh cenu.~ries•, in Chu.rc.h and OowrnnutU in til~ Middl~ Age'S, ed~ C.N.L. Brooke, O. B. Luscombe, G.H. Marti_n aod D. Owen, (Cambridge, 1976), 19-39; for this dccrc.c sc:e Oom Bessi.n, Concilfu Rotomag~nsis provina'~ (Roucn, i711). 54. ot6 lbid, S6. .t3 Ibid., 8

.w

"' C.ltefelc. Histoire dtscondlts. ed. and cr. H. Leclercq. 8 ''oJs in 16 (Paris. 1907·21). ivpc. 2. 14l1l·2t. .ta M . Brett, Tht F.ng/Uh Church uttdtr lltttry l , 164-5, and csp. 164, n.4.

The Monks of Worcester

65

references to deans are to deans of cathcdrals'9 From the early twelfth century (c. 1112) we have G uibert of Nogeot's acoount (rom the diocese of Laon of a priest taking reve nge on a oolleaguc who had accused him of a minor crime in a calendar chapter held by a rural dean.~ Sources from eleventh · century Chartres do not mention rural deans. lmbart de la Tour suggests that French evidence for rural deaneries is very sparse before the twelfth century.51 Both in France and in western areas of Germany the archpriests were still major figures in the eleventh century and were o ften o nly shoved aside, or sometimes simply succeeded by, rural deans in the twelfth century.52 To sum up, rural deans did exist before c. llOOon the contin ent, but references to them are no t plentiful. If, as late as the 1070s, the Norman church bad still not given rural deans a clear..;ut jurisdictional role, but merely a position of moral authority, it makes it easier to understand why post-conquest reformers in England did not hasten to introduce them but concentrated instead on establishing archdeacons. Apart from the 1092 Worcester synodal document, the earliest clearly datable and genuine English evidence for both rural deans and vicars is preserved in the decrees of the IJOS London primatial council. One of the decrees concerns the e nfo rcement ofthe proscriptions of canon law on married priests. Archdeacons and deans had to swear on pain or being deprived of thcii offices that they would not accept money nor tolerate priests to have wives, whether they said mass themselves or e mployed vicars to do so for them; furthermore priests who bad renounced their wives were ordered to cease saying mass for forty days and to employ vicars meaowbile.53 By 1108, therefore, rural deans were an accepted p art of the ecclesiastical hierarchy in England but this cannot be taken as proof that they had existed in England sixteen years earlier or that in l\08 they were already to be found in all dioceses. Re liable evidence for vicars in 1108 does not exist e ither. Apart from the 1092 synodal document and the decrees of the ll08 council the earliest occurrences of the word 'vicar' meaning a substitute or subordinate priest in a living are in the charter or Bishop Ralph Luffa o r Chichester mentioned 49

Tilt> Ecde.fia.nical History of Ordl-ric Vitali$', eel. M . Chibnalf, 6 vol$ (Oxford, 1969·80) b86 references to rural deans ii, 286and ii, 290 (Orderic's report of tbe 1072 Roucn q-nod), and iii, 24, a re-fe-rence. u, Archbishop William of Rouen dc.J epting many of his duties 10 dtaM and arcbpric!lts.. w J.P. Migoe, Patrologia Latina d\'i, 936 CD, wilb transla&ion by J.F. Benton, SdfiUid Soddf in Mtdievgl Frwtee (rc.pr. Toroot(), 1984), 189; on c:alendat chapters .see H. Feine, X.irch/icM Rechu!JfJChkhlt. 4
» H. Feine, Kirchllche R"-hlsgtschlchlt, 201. S) Cot.~ncil.t 4lld Synods I, ii. '702.

66

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth·Cemury Europe

aoovc," in a charter supposedly of Bishop Reinhelm of Hereford (1107· 15). but in fact a forgery of the middle of the twelfth century or la ter, to judge from its greeting and its use of the first person plurat,'5 and finally a charter of Archbishop Th' of York, supposedly either Thomas U (1109·14) or Thurstan (1114-4(1), but which on palaeographical ground< was written not before the middle of the twelfth century and probably rather later-'6 It is common in the twelfth century for clergy serving churches in the place of parsons (whether individual or monastic) to be called simply clerici,S? Vicars were probably not a necessity before the early twelfth century at the earliest. Pressure on married priests not to say mass. though it existed, had not become strong enough tO make them look for substitutes. Absentee pluralists already existed among the clergy in the eleventh century. but in those cases where absentees were members of collegiate communities (like Spirites and Reginbald), there was no need to provide cover for absence, for the remaining members of the commu~ nity could say the services. furthermore, lords of churches were free to e xploit churches as a source of revenue as they chose. Lay lords of churches had not yet seen their rights restricted solely to that of advowson, while ecclesiastical lords of churches did not require the title of rector to enable them to take over a share of the revenues. The process whereby large numbers of parish churches were appropriated by religious houses, which thereby be.came rectors of these churches and were required to appoint vicars to serve them, began only in the middle of the twelfth century.'" Manin Brett has a rgued in The English Church w1der Htnry /that vicars would have been necessary to cope with the pluralism of royal clerks such as Reginbald and Roger of Salisbury .'9 wbi.le Frank Barlow has argued in The English Church, 1000-1066 that great churches often farmed out the parish churches which !hey owned: 'and in practice a farmer was not unlike a parson' ,

.So4 Th~Apj ofChlchesltr, 101$·1207,00. H. Mtlyr·Harting, Carnerbury and York Socic1y. 130 (1964). no. S; !he seorcfl«: ill th.is .;haner referring co the v~r and the rural dean rc.ads as Lhougb it had bc't.n i_nsened later. "Oxford. Batllol College MS 271. fo. I02v, to be published io E11glish f.pi.scopal ACtQ, \'i.i, Htrtford, J(Yl9·123f, ed. J. Barrow, fonhcoming. no. 1. » F~gU.fh Episcopal AcJa, v. 'York, 1070-1154, ed. J.E. Burton (Brilis.b Academy. 1988),no. 29. wi!.h facsimile, pl.l; Early Yorkshire Cluute.rs , cd. W. Farrer aod C:r. Clay, l2 ''ols, Yorkshire

Archaeological Socil!ly, Rerords .series, cxtn scri" ( 1935·6S), vj, oo. 11. wilh f.acsimilc, pl.ll.

n Early Yorkshi1e Churters. J. 458 and CtJrndary of 04~nt)l Abbey. ed. H.E. Salter, vi. Oxfotd liituoricul Society, 101 (1936), 1'10. 1046, both of the 1120s. SS C.R. Chen~)', !-Tom 8uktl ro Langton ( Manchester, 1956), l2S. J should like to withdraw lhe statcmcn_l which I made in m)' artide 'Gennan Cathedral~ and the Monetary Economy in the Twclftb Cc:.ntury', Journal of Mc4lt:vul His#ory, 16 (1990). 30,1<) theeffec;t lhat vicarage!S were well eiublish.od i.o Eog.tsnd uRdcr Henry I. However, the (~rmlng of churc.tlcs, V.'
The Monks of Worctsttr

67

He then went on to call these farmers 'vicars', perhaps on the strength of the 1092 synodal document. 60 Brett's point about pluralism is somewhat weakened by tbe fact that many of Reginbald and Roge r's churches - Thatcbam, Cookham, Sray, Frome, Shrivenham and Avebury, as well as the f•mous collegiate churches of StMartin le Grand and Wolverhampton - are ones identified by John Blair as 'superior' churches recorded in Domesday Book.61 These superior churches would certainly have be
"' F. Barlow. The English Chwch /IXJ0-1066. 2nd «ln. (London, 1979). lSl-208, ••P· 21)4-5. 1 ' J. Blair. •Secular MiMter ~m·cbts In Domesday Book'. in Domtsda18ook: A Rtttts~n mtnl, ed. P.H. Sawyer (London. 1985). 108-9. Some of the others mc.ntioned, ln Nonhamptonsh.i~-. unluckily Jay in the Domesday '0' circuit, !or which very L iltte loformationon obun:hq was recorded. 61 R.A. R. Hanridgc-, A HLfiOf)' of Vicar«ge.J in llu 1\fi.ddk Agt'.r (cambridge, 1930), U; the English ~Yiden<'-e is analysed by C.R. Cheney, From Bed~:r to Langton, 121·26, who !h<w.'S tbat there arc no vkan mentioned bc:.tween Arehblshop Th'$ dl:arter, which he 1ala to be genuine, and the middle of the t"'-elfth century. A dlarter mentioning vicar:; issued by AJ'Cbbishop Thurstan or York for Durham in tbe 11.20$ is 001 oompletdy abo-ve suspicion: d . note!' in Englirlt Episcop4/ Aaa, v, York. ed. J.E. Bunon, no. 43. 6:s HiMori4n.t of lhl Church of York, i. 43S.

68

The Perception of the Past in Twelfrh-Cenrury Europe

date of foundation as 969"' while the Ramsey chronicler. writing c. 11 70. gives the date as 968. He goes o n to say that Oswald built the church of St Mary at Worcester and gave the cathedral clerks the choice between renouncing their pre bends and becoming monks in 969; some clerks chose the former 'and thereafter not h aving fixed places o f residence were reported to be wanderers throughout the land' . Others took Oswald 's advice and became mool<s; one of these was Wynsigc, of higher birth a nd greater wealth than the rest. He was sent to Ramsey to be insLiucted in monastic lore and then was summoned back to Worcester, where he became prior.65 The sequence of events is so close to that in 1092 that it is likely that one o f them acted as a model for the other. Apart from the claim of '1092' there is no evidence that Wynsige had actually bee n a priest o f St Helen's. It is likely, even if '1092' is not a forgery, that he had not been. and that the author invented this because he wished to find a figu re who was definitely known to bave become a monk under Oswald. \Vynsige, stated to have become a monk in 'Florence', and recorded as a monk in the interpolated 969 Oswald lease, was the obvious choice, the more so since he clea rly had moral authority. A grant by him (for all his prope rty was said to have passed to the cathedral) would give greater legitimacy to Worcester cathedral's claim to St Helen's. Positing Wynsige as the be nefactor a nd suggesting that he bad been an active parish priest up to 969 would mean that his period of training at Ramsey would have to be placed afrer his monastic conversion, bill if a date of 969 or even %8 was coming to be generally accepted for Ramsey's foundation this scheme of events would be the only possible one anyway. In fac.t , rhe author of '1092' rook care not to stale that

Wynsigehad been at Ramsey but merely. in saying that Wynsige only became dean in 972, e nsured that those readers who were a ware of Wynsige's conne~'lion with Ramsey would not have their doubts excit(:d. Making Wynslge dean in 972 squa red with his appearance as dean in the interpolated lease of 974. Best of all, the use of the term 'dean'. sanctioned after all by Byrhtferth and the interpolated 974 lease, would allow the reader of '1092' to make the subconscious leal> from thinking of a dean as the head of a monastic community to thinking of a dean as a jurisdictional official. It is not possible to prove absolutely (,'Onclusively that '1092' is an out-andout forgery, since the evidence against it is mostly drawn from negative sources - the absence of evidence fo r jurisdictional deans and parish vicars in England

M C.':nrtltlnrium mt>naskrii de Rwnt,tei4, td. W.H. Ht'lrt ~ nd P.A. L)'OOS. 3 vols, Rolls Stries (1884-93), ii, 50: lhe fOf!Cd foundMion chaner of Edgar for Ramsey, CS131 1 (:u1odu:r verston ill CSI310), dated 28 Dec:embcr 974, which !lays th.at the cchuroh had been oon!>C'!Ctated 8 November 974, 5 years a.od IS days after the foundati.on; 1bid., iii, LWff, ,. Usa o f .abboi.S. giving the date of

foundation as 969. liS Chrvnh."'n abbdrloe Ramesere~ttiJ, ed. W. Macray, Rolls Selic$ (1886), 39-42. On Lhe background 10 Ramse)··s foundatioo see H. Vollrath, 'K
10 {1978), 67-81.

The Monks of Worcester

69

before 1108, and the sparsity of evidence for them between 1108 aod the middle of the twelfth century. However, it is essential to put the validity of •t()92' to the t~'t . because it has been used as C\ri.dence for so many argume.nts about ecclesiastical organisation. Two other small points may be noted before we consider the date when it is likely to have been writte n. The author of ' 1092' takes care - far more c.are than one would normally expect in a legal record- to set the scene. He makes Wulfstan say that be is nearing the end of his days and he places the synod in Wulfstan's crypt. These points give the reader assurance - they are corroborative details which remind the reader of what he already knows. Wulfstan did die, very o ld, in 1095, and the crypt was the most imposing physical monume nt of Wulfstan's activity. The latest possible terminus ad quem for ' 1092' is 9 August 1179, the death of Bishop Roger of Worcester (1164·79), who issued an inspeximus of '1092' ; this charter eanoot be dated more closely than ll64 x 1179.66 It is possible that '1092' existed as early as 1131 x 1148, when Bishop Simon of Worcester, at the request of Bishop Robert de B~thune of Hereford (1131 -48), restored the church of St Helen•s in Worcester to the monks, though it is not mentioned in Simon's charter, a nd in order co prove their case co Simon the monks could have relied simply o n the notification of Frilheric.• Wulfstan's chaplain, wrinen at some point after Wulfstan's death, that be had o nly a life interest in the church. Fritheric's notification was copied into Hemming, and so must be. genuine.67 At some point in the mid twelfth century , probably before 1154, a forged charter of Stephen was concocted for Worcester in which there is a reference to a charter of Wulfstan attesting to the cathedral priory's control over the church of St Helen and confirming the office of the prior, and this almost certainly refers to '1092' . It is likely that ' 1092' was therefore produced in the late 1140sor early 1150s, at the time when references to vicars in English charters begin.
6. Altiumanris 'Aitilonantis' is the name usually given to the diploma purporting to have been issued by Edgar 28 December 964 to the church of Worccstcr ... lt claims to g~"ant to the servi of St Mary's, who are stated to have been installed there by Oswald after he bad thrown out the clerks who had previously formed the cathedral oommunity, the half hundred of Cu thburgcslawe; Edgar makts this up to a full hundred with a number of estates, the largest of which occur as

"M.G. Cheney, Rog
oo.?S; Worcttru Car1uklry, 34, no. 55. 6 ~ Hemming. B. 427·9 and Won:('.'l'.ttr C4rtul.tJry. 3'2·3. no. 53. M For Stephen's forged confimunio.l) see Wor«ster Ctmu/ory, p.tx ..;il, and dbcu.ssion below at n.82. For rcfc.rc.nces co vicarages se-e n.62 above and also English Episcopal Act#, iii, Canttrbur)', IJ91-l21J5, cd. C.R. tbc.nc.y and E. John (British Aaderny, 1986). 373.lislintt aU referen-ces in Canterbury arcb~Hicopal oaa between 1162 and 1205. ~ Worcnt.er OtrhlW.ry, 4--7, no. 1 (CS113S; S731).

70

The Perception of the Past in Twel[lh-Ce111ury Europe

monastic estates in Domesday, and the remainder as episcopal estates. This hundred is placed in the charge of 'Winsinus the revered priest', whom Bishop Oswald has set over the monks in the episcopal sedes with Edgar's approval. In addition two o ther hundreds are created for Bishop Oswald so that all three can form a shipsoke, which, ir has been agreed , is to be called henceforward Oswaldslaw 'in memory' of Oswald. The arguments against the validity of this charter have been rehear.;ed by Reginald Darlington:"' the 'original' is in a hand of the mid twelfth century; the diploma, though it would have been of great use to the monks in the late eleventh century. is not included in Hemming's carmlary; other Anglo-Saxon diplomas creating hundreds do not exist. and there is no evidence fo r the creation of shipsokes before 1008. Darlington analysed the phrasL"
the.wording resembles th;u of chartc.rs to be found in Hemming_, and also, in its description of Edgar's military achievements, Byrhtferth's Life of 0>-wald. lr oould also be pointed out that the author of the document, instead of opening it with an invocation, an arenga o r a date. the normal openings of Edgat's diplomata, has opened it with a devotional formula whose echoing of words (altitonans , for example) to be found in the proems to Edgar's genuine diplomata does not quite disguise the oddity of its position. One item which pUZ7.1ed Darlington was the source used by the author o f Altitonantis for his remark that Edgar had subjugated Dublin and the ·greatest part' or Ireland. But this, as Eric John has pointed out. is connected with lhe early twelfthoentury letter of Nicholas the monk of Worcester to Eadmer, which states that Edgar had subjugated the king of Dublin - the same verb, subiugare. is used in both. 7 1 Alritonamis was confirmed in the charter purporting to have been issued by Stephen. which if genuine would have to have been issued between 1136 and 1139. This confirmation is sealed with a forged matrix of Stephen's great seal which was also used to seal four other documents for three othe~: religious houses: Oseney, Reading and Rochesrer.n Although it is generrdly accepted, save by Eric John. that Altito1uuuis is an out-and-our forgery. and rho ugh Eric John himself accepts that the charter is at least heavily interpolated, its date of fabrication has not been conclusively established. Eric John would like to see its core, with the statement that the monachisation of Worcester occurred in 964, preserved as the nucleus of a genuine tenth-century grant. For him , the disparity in the date given for the monachisarion by Altitonantis on the one hand (964), and 'Florence', ' 1092', and the rest on the o ther (969). is actually proof that the conversion did occur.

Worcrsta CtJrtulary, pp. tiit-X:ill.. " Mtm<)rial.t ofSt DUtUtan, ed. W. Stubbs, RoH1. Series (1874), 4'22. cited by E. John in his essay 'Thr Age of Edgar in Tilt A~~glo.So.xoJU , cd. J. Campbell (Oxford, 1982), 255. n WCJr"ster CGrtulury, pp.l_x\·jj.bvm $.1JI'Ilmutists the atguments for and bg..timt its vaHdily; R.R. Darlington thought on balance lb.at the charter was genu.illt. Gloucester Abbey forged a oonfinnation charter or Stephen in the late 1140s: seen. 8Z below. 7t)

The Mon/q of Worcester

71

with the compulsory extrusion o f the clerks, in 964. 73 H e further claims that the compo$ilion of the exist ing text took place in the time of Wulfstan, but before the cQmposition of the !092 synodal document and of 'Florence', and this argument has also been accepted by Emma M ason.74 Reginald Darlington, on the other hand, had been happy to place the concoction of Alti/Onantis in the middle of the twelfth century, the date of the handwriting of the pretended original, and of the handwriting of Stephen's pretended confirmation." To answer Erie John's argument that the conversion must have occurred in 964, we have seen from Oswald's leases that the process of conversion must have been gradual. The choice of 964 as the date of conversion is surely more likely to have been twelfth-century one-up-manship with Winchester, which was mooachised precisely in 964; the selection of the term 'spurcus' in Alritonantis to describe the behaviour of the Worcester clerks is an echo of 'eiectisque negligentium clericorum spurcitiis', the description of the ejection of tbe clerks of Winchester in the proem to Regularis concordia. 16 The discrepancy of dates between Altitonantis on the one hand and 'Florence' and '!092' is eye-catching, but we have already noticed numerous other discrepancies between most of the sources. The problem is more noticeable to readers in an age when primed texts are widely available for comparison than it could ever have been in the twelfth century. Altitonanti$ and Stephen's confirmation would have been written to be produced in royal courts to try to prove Worcester's rights of secular jurisdiction ; the 1092 synodal document was produced (as we know from Bishop Roger's inspeximus) in ecclesiastical couns to prove Worcester cathedral priory's rights of spirimal jurisdiction and to tight off b ishops, archdeacons and, almost certainly , Worcester's great enemy, the abbey of Evesham . It sho uld not be overlooked that the church of St Alban's. whose priest A lam was said in the synodal document to be claiming independence from the church of St Helen's, was one of the possessions of Evesham abbey and , as Emma Ma.~n says. 'was a visible representation of Evesham's interests within the cathedral city'. 77 It would therefore have been unnecessary to produce '1092' and Altitonall1is in the same court, for they would not have been required together as proofs in any single case; thus the discrepancy would not have to be noticed. In conclusion it appears that the two interpolated leases o f 969 and 974 were

73 '

4

E. John. ·war and Society in the Tenth Century', 192-3. E . John, Orbit Brirannluc. 240· 1: E . MMOn, St Wu/fskm of W"Of'C't'JII!r, 216-7, though she

rejects a %4 date or any ~udden W.te: (C)I' 1bt mon,c:bisacion. n Worcrtrtr Cartulary, p.xvi~ see facsimile ibid .. pt Ill. of the 001\fumatiol\ or Stepbel\. "Cited b)· D. Knowles. T1tt MotUJStic Ordtr, 41n. 71 E. Mason. St WulfsUJn of Worctsttr, 214. Oo US, ibid., she discusses wo~te.r's dispute with Eve$ham over Hampton and 8elt8tWOtlb. Howtver, hu identification of the disputed Hampton as Hampton in Warwi.d..sllire i$ probably W[()"3> liiCXOTding to Patrick Wormald, to 'Nbom I am grateful ror advice on lhi~ point. Hampton in Wor«stcrshife (in tbe priva1t 1riple hundred ol OswWdslow) is the only poo;ible idcntifkation.

The Perceprion of the Past in Twelfrh-Century £«rope

72

closely connected with Byrhtfertb's Life of Oswald. Byrhtfcrlh's Life perhaps inspired the early elevenlh-ccnlury monks of Worcester to supply some evidence of monastic origins in lhe 960s and 970s by tucking witness clauses into hitherto unwitnessed leases. There is a contemporary parallel for this behaviour in Eadui Basan's forgery in the 1030s of a charter purported to be of !Eihelred, which records that !Eihelred had expelled the clerks of Canterbury Cathedral in 1006, though in fact there is no reference to monks at Canterbury until the 1020s78 Eadmer's Life of Oswald places no dates on the monachisation process at Worcester; his claim that it was gradual was probably based on oral trdditioo in Worcester, where the lwo churches of St Peter and St Mary still coexisted in Wulfstan's day. 79 Moreover, the evidence of the Oswald leases would have shown the use of the triple invocation of StMary, St Michael (the patron of Oswald's foundation at Bishop's Cleeve), and StPeter over a long period from the 960s to the 980s. Eadmer's Life had probably already been written before John of Worcester altered the entry for the year 969 in bis chronicle. The alteration might have been carried out before 1125, the date of completion of William of Malmesbury's Gma pontificum, though if William knew of the reworking, a..~ he would have done if it had been worked out beforehis trip to Worcester 1113 x IJ24, he did not let it in.Ouence his version of events.80 A likely date for the insertion would indeed have been the mid 1120s, when several _Benedictine house.~ in England were worried about threats to their status, and when Durham cathedral chapter even obtained a papal privilege guaranteeing that Durham should always be served by Benedictines. Certainly the correction was in place before tbe copying of Bodleian MS Bod! . 297 in the early 1130s.81 Independently of this development , and not many years after the corrected version of lhe 969 entry had been inserted in Oxford. Corpus Christi College MS 157, the monks of Worcester concocted Allitonantis and its confirmation by Stephen, for which they obtained the use of a seal matrix which was evidently being made available, doubtless at a price, to monastic houses with something to prove. The choice of 964 as a date. whether a conscious or an unconscious rejection of John's chronicle, suggests that the

forgery was probably not carried out until after John's death, which may have happened in or shortly after 1140. The confirmation of Stephen was almost certainly forged before Stephen's death, for it would have been useless after 1154, and it may well have been written at about the same time as a charter purportedly issued by Stephen forged by Gloucester Abbey, in the late ll40s; Gloucester's Stephen charter was forged simply so that it could be confirmed

'1t1

N.P. Brooks. The £,Qrly Hi.ftory of the Church of CtmterbUt)'. ZS6-S8.

19

E. Mason. St Wul/J.til/1 of Woroeslt"r. 54-SS.

80

R.M. Thomson. Wilh'am of M11/meshury (Woodbridge, 1987), 73. On OuJharn, s«- D. BelheU, 'Eng.l;s.b Bla(k Monk!! aOO _Epis.copal EJections in the 1120$', English Histuri'·"l Re.,inv, 84 ( 1969), 680; on John, sec M. Brett, 'John of Worcester and his Contemporaries', 107, citing E.A. Mdntyre. 'Early ·rwel!tb-Centu:ry Woroester Cathedral IU

Priory'.

lhe Monks of Worcester

73

by Archbishop Theobald and perllaps WorceS1er cathedral priory hoped that the archbishop could perform the same service for them.82 Meanwhile, however, the abbey of Ramsey was trying to establish the story of its founda· tioo, and contact with Ramsey and acquaintance with its t_raditions, genuine or invented, probably inlluenoed the-version of events given in the 1092 synodal document, even though the Ramsey Chron.icle, written c. 1170, is likely to be up to twenty years later than '1092'. At all events '1092' is unlikely to have been composed before the middle of the twelfth century, when the steady flow of references to vicars in episcopal charters begins. The underlying reasons for Ibis procession of fakes have been eJpounded by Martin Brett in his article on John of Worcestcr;83 they can be boiled down to two essential motives, the need to show continuity of property and traditions between the pre·and Jl0$t·Conquest periods, and the need to stand up to a newly strengthened diocesan authority (characterised, as we see in '1092'. by archdeaooos and rural deans). Of the greater Benedictine houses, which were the ones most deeply implicated in forgery in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Martin Brett says: 'Their position of unquestioned eminence as tile pattern of religious excellence wa' weakened by the growing activity of the bishop and his diocesan ageniS, seeking to regulate the monks' conduct of their external affairs. Canons and secular clergy challenged their claim to exercise any authority beyond their cloister walls.' Diocesan control over the parish or parishes of Worcester wa• precisely what the monks of Worcester were seeking to avoid. Moreover it might well have been the case that Wulfstan's successors, all seculars until the pontificate of Baldwin (1180-84), .. felt that a secular cathedral community, in providing patronage for their own and other people's clerks. would have been more useful than a monastic one. This would have provided an impelling motive for the invention by the monks of Worcester of the story that the convenion of their cathedral bad been a sudden one and that the clerks had been expelled, for the removal of the latter at one swoop with

a:z Cl. 1M Chronicle of Juh.n of Worcester, ed. J.R.H. Wea,·cr, 10. On Glque«t~r'li- forged Sk:phen chatter and the circv.msta~s (){ ilS oompOSilion, set C.N.L. Brooke, 'St Peter or Gloucester and St Cadoc of UanearfaJ'', in Cdl11nd &:ton: Studiu ln tht Early Britl.th Borda, td. N. Chadwick (Cambridge, 1%3), 272-7• (repr. io C.N.L. Brooke. The C~ur
BMtkr U. the Centro/ Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 1986}). *1 M. Breu, •Jobn of Wortcster llnd his oontemporarie!l', 125-26. On various aspecu of the vigorous focgiog activities oC th.: En&lish Benedictine houses in tbc twelfth century, see R.W. Soutbem, "The Canu~rbury forgeries'. English HistoriaJJ .Revintl, 73 ( I~); Durluzm EpiscoptU Ch•mrs, /07J .JJJ2, ed. Jl.S. Oilier. Sunees Society, t79 (1968), nos. 3·la, 6, 7, 10, and 36; A. Morey aod C.N.L. Brooke, Gilbtrt Poliot ~~nd his Wrm (Cambridge, 1965), 12446-, and M.. Brclt, ' Fo~ry at R.ocbesur', in Flilsdaungrn im Min~lalttr, lotttnlltiooaJer Kongress der Monumenta Gennaniac: Hiswrica, 5 vots {Hanove-r, 1988), iv, 397-412. .. Ro~-r had tiob with St Victor's in Paris and it'> daughter house Ste Barbe-en·Auge, but he does noc seem to have bttn al"' Augustinian: see M.G. Oteney, Rogu, Bishop ofWorcater, /Jf>.l. /179(0xfor4,19ll0), 10,S3. F;sbops.s«: D. Knowlc., Tht MOtt4$liC Ordtr, 709~10.

74

The Perceprion of the Pasr in 1'welfrlt-Cenrury Europe

official sanction would be proof that t he monks' o wn position in the cathedr al was legitimate. \Vorcester's monks had strong motives for recreating their past but were unable to present a uniform version; this essay tries to show that discrepancies were unavoidable, both because the monks had to take account of evolving rraditions in other monaste ries and also because they had to fight new threats unforeseen by their predecessors. More importantly, the discrepancies in the stories which they told evidently did no t have any harmful effect o n their credibility in the twelfth century; nor have they invariably damaged their credibility since then.

5

Administration Family and Perceptions of the Past in Late Twelfth-Century England: Richard FitzNigel and the Dialogue of the Exchequer1 John H udson 'Different g)"Oups of people remember things in different ways.'2 In addition, individuals each have a multiplicity of perceptions of the past. The individual perceptions will vary according to the various sources from which the pictures are constn1c1ed - personal experience, word-of-mouth. tradition, books, and so on - and according to the circumstances in which the past is recalled . Views of the past need not always exist in a conscious and readily expressed form. For example, it may only be when questioned that a person is forced to construct explicit perceptions of the past 3 Th.e form in which tbe perception is presented may also help to determine the content of the perception. The vitality of the twelfth-century interest in the past is demonstrated both by attempts to construct a coherent view from diverse traditions and also by the very diversity of the traditions themselves. In this essay, I shall seek to illustrate these arguments primarily from the material - familiar to English historians at least - of Richard fitzNigel's Dialogue of1he Exchequer. Many different groups of individuals in twelfth-century England were interested in the past. The achievements of the chroniclers of the period arc

1

Th~ text

o( tbe Dialogue. with translation, is most readity accessible in Richard 6tzNigd, ed. & tr. C. Jo.bMon. wilh¢arrections.byF.E.I... Carter&. D.E. Greenway (Ox.ford, 1983). In general I ha~ l.lSedJohNOn's translation, altho\lgh v.·ith$0me modilic1uions to rtndcr it d05erto the Latin, evcnifal the cxpcose o(ftueocy. 'The Lati.o tnt isbasod on tb.atoftbe I~ edition, which remains vital for its introducfion and exten!iive notes~ Richard, Soo of Nigel, D~ Ncr~s:uuiir obs~rvantiis scaccarii di41ogus, commortly C4ll"d Diolo&us dL scacc.u;o, ed. A . Hughes, C. G. Oump, & C.lobBSOn (OxfOmer. Judith Green and Patrick. Wormald Cor thelr commcn~oo lbe C$S$f, aod Ken Lawson Cor his: thoughts on the appendix and for tint arousing my interest in twelftb~ntUt)' perceptions of Cnut aDd IUs Ia\\'$, l C. Wi.ckbam, 'Lawyers'Timt: History and Memory in Tenth- and E~nth-<::entury Italy', in SIUdlts (n Medit•'41 H®>ry Prett~~1ed to R.H.C. Dc:wts, c.d. H. Mayr-H.arting &. R.I. Moore Dialbgwdr.~io.

(Loodoa, t9gj) , 54.

) Witb regard to Richard fittNigel, see beklw n. 39.

75

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Cenlllry Europe

76

well reoognised, and have been inspiringly studied. James Campbell has written that the greatest advances in tbe study and underStanding or the Anglo-Saxon hiscory

made before the ninecccnth century were those of the twelfth. They were in large. measure accomplished by historians working during the reigns of Henry I and 4 Stephen.

Sir Richard Southern comments 011 the writers of the same period that Out of their local k.nowledge and cbeir k>cal materials tlley created the image of a phase of English hi~tory which would scarcely have existed wilhout their cffortst substantially they were responsible for bringi11g Anglo-Saxon history into existen~.s

It was not just chroniclers who were interested in the past. The century also saw the oomposition of various legal collections, generally referred to as Leges. One of their concerns was to provide versions ofthe laws which had existed in England before 1066. They drew partly on the Anglo-Saxon law codes, partly presumably on tradition, but also on other sources scarcely likely to reveal the truth about Anglo-Saxon law, for example various of the continental barbarian law codes! Some of the vocabulary used and practices described bear no resemblance to those of other English documents of the time.' The various versions of the 1..-cgcs Edwardi Confessoris, in particular, also included mate r· ial of a more specifically historical nature, for example concerning the descent

• J. Campbell, 'Some Twclhh-ccntury Views oftbe A npo-Saxon Pas.t', in hili E'.ssays i, Anglo· S...on Hlsro•y (London. t986), 21)9. ~ R. W. Southern, 'Aspc:CIS of the Eur()flean Tradjtion of Hi$lorical Writing, 4, The Sense of the PaM', Tran.stJcticms o{ tltt Ro)'Q./ HiflOticol ~iety, Stb. Scr. 23 (1973), 256. Interest in the Ang.I~Salon pa.st did n.(lt end with the tv.'Clfth century; see e.g. S.O. Ke)'nes on Mauhew Paris's view or King Offa, History Today, 40 (19'JO), lS-16. See also below, uppendix n. 23. 4 The Leg~s are printed in Dit Gtsetu dtr Angtlsudutn, ed. F. Liebetmaon, 3 vol's (Halle., 1903-16); 4« also Leges Htnrici Primi, ed. &. tr. L.J. Downer (O:d'ord, 19n), On tbe Ltgt:t. see aJso appendix brlow. .For use of continental oowoes. see e .g, the Ltgts Henricfs tre&tment of inheritance, which is dcrh·cd largely from tht Ltx RibuAri.t, with an import•mt addition ba\Cd on Alfred'$ code; L~gts Henrid Ptimi, 70 JS.22a, DoWMr, 224, 385-86. For -a oontrary opinion oo the prac:ticatity of tbe laW'S, liCe e.g. F.Ucbc:.rm.ann, 'On the /n:rtltula Cnuti uliorumque Regwn A.nglorum', 'lhmsactions ofllu> RoyaiiJistork.al Sudety . n.s. 7 (1893), 92. 7 E.g. Ugts Ht nrlei Prim/, 70 19. DoK•tttr, 224, uses the v;wd htredipml; tbe ooly other etevtnth· or twelfth~entury u$C of 1he "'Ord ""'id\ r have di$00vered i$ in a docree of a couocil at COmpostclla in JH4; J. Snel)% de Aguirre. NotititJ COIICiliorum liispanie, GJqra noui Qrbi$ (Salamanca. 1686). 21>6-67. I have yet to 6tltblish any connection bc-f\\•ecn these two ilt$lanccs.

Richard FitzNigel of the English crown. Such works were surely not directly practical documents, in the sense of teaching twelfth-century men what laws were to be applied in

coun.8 Nevertheless. convincing, if not necessarily accurate, knowledge of the past was of immediate practical neces;ity, for example in establishing claims to land. Enquiries, such as that of 1166 into knight service, required information concernin~ earlier decades• Administrators needed a factual knowledge of the past.' Furthermore, although the administrators were not bound by a strict doctrine of precedent, past usage should help to determined present

action: 'there are cases where the causes of events and the reasons for decisions are obscure; and in these it is enough to cite exampla, particularly those derived from prudent men.' 11 Late in the twelfth century there emerged a new form of literature, tbe administrative manual , Richard fitzNigel's Dialogue and the law book known as Glanvi/1. 12 Whilst the authors are not devoted only to the life of the specialist administrator, they may have been seeking to promote their place in the royal circle by promoting the repute o f their area of expertise. Richard's work, in particular, with its clements of autobiography and family history, emphasises the importance of those knowledgeable in the 'sacred mysteries of the exchequer' . 13 Even so, the writers felt a need to justify writing o n administration, their concentration on practice rather than ideals. Richard fitzNigel pointed out that 11 l-egt.t Edwardi CQt~[t:tf()ri.t, cc. 34-35. l)ebcrmann, Ge.mu, i, 662·66. Nme also the mi:xture or matcriaJ in the Ttxrut Ro!ftml$. facsimile cd. by P.H. Sawyer (Earty Engl i~h Manu.~cripts in Faoimik, vii & x.i, 19S7 & 1962). Such WQrk$, to an extent litcrar)' productions, of ooune can be liC:c:n u ~w,,.-ing a practical purpo~ in increasing the wi5dom -Nonnon.no'flm, iii, ed. H. A. Oonnc & R.H.C. Da1ri.s (Oxford, 1968), no. 975. a confirmation ofYmk's liberties datin& from 1136: ' Under king:~ and an:hbi:!.hops of old, and. as rnany can re-member, under King EdW1rd and Arcbbil'hop Aldred, che cusrom (l( the church or St Ptrcr wtts of OOtSt~nd ing freedom: The question of whether th)s charter is gen uine is here: beside the point. A f3mOu!J ins.t.~uloe of 1be usc:futnes$ o( «mvii)Cing ltoowltdge of the past - ~cited by p<>titital authori1y - is pre~rved in the Chro11icl~of Batlle Abbty. cd. &. tr. E. Searle {Oxford, 1980), 21-4 ~ one party argu«< tbat ahhough be had heard chirograpb$ of his predccesson; read out, 'he dKt not

see tbe e~o>idence of ttl.ell seak appeoded to them', thereby que$tionin~ their ..-aJidit)·. To this. Richard de Lucy, the jus.ticiar, replied that 'it WM not the custom in the past for e''ery petty knight 10 have a seal. Tbcy are appropriate o nly fo • kiogs and g.rea1 rnu'. Ric:hJrd then went on h.> portray the pa...a M a le!isliti,gM>us age: ' nor in okt times dkt malice make men pcuJfoggers and cavillc.ll:, as is ll\le nowadays'. Cftr()ttit:Orl momUitrll dt Abingdon, ed. J. Ste,-ensoo. 2 "ituarion when he was a boy bciog brou&Jn uJ'I at Abingdon. 11 Dia/ogus ( 1.983), 59. Richard relcB to lon£--Sianding custom and usage as 'a not inooo$ickr· able authority', 51; note also 72, where an inno,•alion from after the death of Henry I 'is obscr'\'00 as though it al~·ays hOO been the Jaw·. 12 'Ranulf d~ Glanvill'. Tracumu th ltgibus. tl c<mSu(Jwilnlbus rcgni AngUt <JUi Glan-..·illtl l'O(;Gl'IU, ed. & u. G.O.G. HaU(Edinburgh . 1965). n Ste below. p. 82.

78

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

he had no model for a work o n his subject. ' 4 In his Prologue, he expressed doubts about writing a book on s uch day-to-day matters, 'affording no scope ror fine distinctions, or pleasing nove l tie.~·, b ut then went on to pre-sent a justification, almost a celebration of the down~to·carth: •those who delight in novelties, o r in hunting for subUe matters, have Ar istotle's and Plato's books. Let t he m hear them! Yo u write not of subtleties but of uscful things.' 15 Within his work concerning 'useful things', Richard revealed an interest in the history of the e xchequer and in wide r history and it is upon Richard fi tzNigel's perceptions of the past that I shall now concentrate. Richa rd was bo rn probably a ro und 1130. 16 He was brought up at the abbey of Ely, a monastery certainly interested in the writing of history at this lime. 11 His family had been closely l ied to t he development of t he cour1 of the Exchequer, the royal central court of audit. 18 His father Nigel was the nephew o f He nry l's great minister, R oger, bishop of Salisbury. Richard was illcgitimace, probably having an E nglish mo1her. Nigel had become Henry's treas urer and bishop of Ely. He wa.< responsible for the restora tion o f royal finan cial administration at the beginning of Henry II's reign. a nd made use o f his son who soon became treasurer. Richard's importance as an administ rator continued to increase. in both tinandaJ a nd judicial matte rs. He may have been involved in the restructuring o f Norman financial institutions including

,.... Diologus ( 1983). 127. Justinian's tcxt ~boot of law, the Institutes, perhaps provided some of the lospiralion. if not a model, for bolh ruchlld and the author of Glunvi/1; see below, p. 83. 1-s Di.u«Jgut (198)}. 5; see F. E. Liebermann, /iir~Je;twJg itt dttt DiiJiqguJ tk Scaa:arH>. (GOn~ ingen, I815). S4-SS. 94; also his comment on 32 concerning the, way in wbk b ·die bittere Scbuk des lcbe-ns• entered into Riduud'$ upbc'inging. See al~ M.T. Oaneby. •Af~(/erni in Ed11¢lltion and Govenu neot in England'. Spec4llum. SO (1975 ). 671-.88, citing thi.s passase at 678. Contempt for intelkctual subtlety is furth-er expressed in the Diilk>gus (1983), 6, wrtic.b criticises "writers on the liberal ~ns' oo S\ICh groul)d$, O n sutnkt~· and utilily, see also e .a . Tht Mt.udogicon of / ()lrn of Salifbury, u. D. O. McGarry ( St .fkele)'. 19SS), 90-91. IUcbard sa"'' his task as ~te.Uing wb.at the practice i$. not what it uu&bt perhaps to be'. Dialugw. (1983). 106. This does not preclude the possibility that Richard sometimes ideaUsed prac-tioe, Dialogus, (t90l). 12. PtrhapHoncemed to obtain respect lor his book. Richard emphasised tbC- skiU o! hi:s scienoe. the need !OJ prew. p. 81. Ul On rhe exchtq,.er, ~e c5p. R.L Pook, The £.xr.h~quu in lh~ Twtlflh (>.nrury (Qxf<)rd. 1912); J. Orecn. 1'he Govtnmltnl of Engl.ond under Htnry I (Cambridge, 1986), esp. cc. 3 & 4; H.G. Richard-son &G.O. Saylc:.s. The Gollernonu of England from lllt C(mqueJIIo Magna C1.1tt.11 (Edinburgh, 1963},«. xi-xHi, pbydown the impotlatlc.:eo!the exchequer in royal tlnance. S« also below, n . 86.

Richard FitzNigel

79

the Norman exchequer in 1176. Judith Green suggests that this conceivably 'stimulated 6tzNigel to start writing the Dialogus in the 23rd year of Henry II's reign, as he himself says'. 19 O~pensation from his illegitimacy allowed him also to rise in the church, finally becoming bishop of London in 1189. He died on 10 September 1198. Any historian of the twelfth century would be delighted to discover Richard's youthful work, the Tricolumnis: a little book ... about tbe history ofthe realm of England underthe illustrious king of the English Henry II, under three heads. I called it Trirolunmis because 1 arranged it aO in three oolwnns. 1be first column dealt with very many affairs of the English Church md some papal bulls. The second dealt with tbe said king's noble deeds, wbicb are beyond human belief. In the third are mat~y matters of pubiic. or private interest, and also judgements of the King's court. Uit should come into your hands. take care not to let it go ag.ain.lll

The editors of the Dialogue in 1902 were dubious whether a complete chronicle ever existed: Our own view. which we put forward with some diffidence. is that we ought to see in lhe Trkolumnis only the register-bOok of Richard Fitz-Neal, in which he set down anything that interested him. Such a. book would probably remain in the Exchequer

and would there perish by usc or neglect, as so many Exchequer registers have perished . . . . It is hard to suppose that this book was ever published in tbe modem sense of the word.21

This may be excessive. The work could be 6nished, without being frequently copied, let alone 'published in the modern sense of the word'. Richard's statements in the Dialogue make the 1ricolumnis sound like a completed, if not terribly polished work .'" 111

J.A. Green. ' Unity and Oisunit)' in the Anglo-Norman State'. Hisrori.c:DI Rneo.,cll, 63(1989), t22 n. 40. ll> Ditdosus (1983), 27; see abo 77 & xvii-xvili. W. Stubb$. LtCiurt.t " " Etuly Engll.slt Hluory, ed. A. Has.sall (london, 1006), 135. re!tl"!) to the loss ol the 1'ricolwnni.J u '(Of E:ogJisb history a1 least, ooe ol tbe create11t l~s of the mkklle ages'. 21 Dialogw (1902), 12. 1:be 1902 editon admitted that their interpretation of the pM.uge involved problenu, notably with the meaning of the \lo-ord t-didi. z, Stubbs• suggestion that a portion ol'Benedk:t of Peterborough's' CltrQnick was based on tbe Trtcolumnis De\'et obtained general aooeptaa.ce. even perhaps from Stubs himself; the theory i$propounded in Gt3ta retit Htnrid secundl IkMdtai Gbbotis. cct. W. Stubbs, 2 vols (London, 1867), i, pp. lvii·OOii. where the discussion of the possible link between the OtJtll and tbe 1Hcolumni.teod$ with a q~o~esUon : ·ts it dtawing too mu<:h on liter.tf}•tredulhy to suppose tbat these were one and the $11M?' cr. his more cautious opinion, Chronica magistri Rogtri dt- Houtdent, ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols (London, 1868-71), i, p. li. Sec al$0 Uebenn.a.nn,. Eln~itung. 66-69. wbo concludes ·und so mlissen wir Stubbs' HypOthese, so .msprccbend &ie scheint, fallen Jauen', and O.M. Stenton, 'Roger of Howden Jnd 8ent4id. English HistoriaN Re11iP~~, 68 (1953), 576.

80

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

Sadly, if the book fell into anyone's hands, they did not take care of it. Nevertheless, one may place the putative work in some historiographical context. For example, one may suspect that the third column was in a sense a 'rerord' chronicle, of the son being produced at varinu.< monasteries in the first half of Hen.ry U's reign. Such works might have a practical usc fo r administra· tors; John of Salisbury wrote in his Historia p ontifica/is that ' the records of chronicles are valuable for establishing o r abolishing customs. for strengthening or destroying privileges'. 23 What is most notable. though, is the structuring of the work. T he twelfth century was growing more familiar with the use of the written word. 24 One feature of increasingly literate societies seems to be an interest in tabulation. The Norman historian, Robert of To rigny, noted the use of tabulation in the writing of history: he described bow Sigeben of Gembloux placed across the top of the page the names of eight kingdoms; next, the names of the kings of each kingdom; then in the midd le of the page the regnal years of each ruler: in the margin the names of the popes; and finally the years of grace opposite the regnal year." Richard similarly took advantage of the tabulated written fo rm, in order to construct simultaneous narratives. At the same timet these very advantages forced him to make interpretative decisions., for example about

which affairs concerned the church, which the king. In this quest for structure, Richard's solution may have been personal, but his needs were not.26 James Campbell bas written of historians in the twelfth century that ' the creation of an ordered framework is of the essence of their work and among the weightiesl of their contributions'. and interestingly he

compares such fr ameworks with the structures involved in the administration of the realm. 27 Campbell selects as a prime example Henry of Huntingdon: he was 'often anxious to sort o ut , reorder, clarify, to make sure that the reader knows where he ba!\ got to and whe-re he is going'.28 Now Henry's patron wac;

Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, who also was a key figure behind another, very different historical enterprise , Geoffrey of Monmouth's translation of the

n John of Salisbury, Hisl()ria potttificali$, ed. M . Cbibnall (Edinburgh, 1956), 3. Sec also e.g. Lilxr £lltnsil'; Ahingdf)l1 Chr()ltid~. :,.. See ge:nerall)' M.T. Ctanchy, From Munor)' to Wrilltn Rn:ord (London, 1979) . u On tabulation and literacy. see e.g. J.R. GOOd)'.• The D~.stitorUm ()/the Savgge Mind (Counbridge, tm), c:!ip. c. 4. On Robert ofTorig.n)', seeM. Gib$0t1, 'Hisctory at Bee in the T\f.tlftb Cenwry', in The Writing of History in lhe Middle Age:s: Essays Prt!Senlt:d f() Rk:hurd WJ.Ulam .Southern , cd. R .H.C. Davi' & l.M. Wallooe-H>drill (Odotd, 1981). 175, cin h•w; note abo that the Ugu HttUid Pn'mi can be seen as a paraiJel auc:mpt to create a systematic. coUectlon from the Quadripilrtitus. " See also A. Gransden, HI.rwri
.. tbid.,lt3.

Ricluud FirzNigel

81

'Prophesies of Merlin' .29 Alexander was almost certainly the brother of Nigel, bishop of Ely, and hence was Richard's uncle. Richard thus comes from not only a monastery but also a family connected with the various types of historical writing going on in the twelfth century.30 In tbe absence of the Tricolumnis, I shall analyse Richard's perception of the past as expressed in the Dialogue. Unlike most previous writers, I am not primarily interested in what we can Jearn directly from Richard about earlier periods. Historians such as Round, Richardson and Sayles have ensured that Richard fitzNigel has not suffered 'too much forgiviog'.31 Rather, I wish to unravel the various strands which compose his perceptions of the past, the various origins of his views. The Dialogue was composed in the late 1170 s, although the extant text contains passages which seem to be later interpolations, some of which may not be by Richard.32 It is divided into two books, ' the first devoted to the structure and functions, and lheseoond to the actual operation of thccourt' .33 Richard presents himself as obliged to write the Dialogue. This obligation was linked to his position on the nature of historical development in finance: 'the modem age in its quest for money has scarcely laid down laws more lenient than the earlier ones.' Hence the moral need to preserve old practices: 'it is better to make known to posterity the laws appointed by their forefathers than by keeping silence to cause new laws to be made .'34 Richard was obliged to continue the work of preservation since he was the latest repository of the

~ ~ Hiswlrid rtgum Britannk of Geoffrey of Monmowlt 1: Bun 8urgnblbi/0Jh~k. m1. 568. ed. N. Wright (Cambridge. 1985) , 73. Red Book. iii, 1032·39. oootaioa• glossary of Anglo-Saxon technical terms. which m2y ori.gioau. with AJexandtr, bi~ of lincoln, R'd ~Wok, i.ii, a:biii.

Rich.ard himself was liUtdy not wholly-ignorant of the Anglo-Saxon Jaw codes: sec bdowp. 84, on Richard and Aoglo-Saxoo clurtc:n. » Uebenna.on, Ebtlrlcung. 30-31. Ni&el mus.t at leasr have been aware of lbe writing; (If •be l...ibtr f.Jims.i.~. However, recent '<\'Orlc by Dr. T. Webber confirms that Roger of Salisbury tuad little, if any, connca.ion with the writing O( hbtory. ruehard lltzNigd Cllmespondcd with Ralph f)ioeto~ 0rat~8de-n,

H&ttt)rlcul Writing, 23).

» 1be quotatkln is most im.rncdiatcl)' from Campbell. 'Twclftb~ntury V~'$', 226, who traces its getleal(®'. For critkisou ot kichard's perception of the past, see e.,. J.H. Round, n~ Communt of Ll.mdon (Westmi.oster.t899). 67.@; Rkhardsoo and Sayles, Govemanct, 243,247, S10, the last being an iDdex ecnry for 'DiA!ogus tk Sc"'"(;(lrio, flC:Iioru~ or. For more generous readjngs, soo bektw, n. 39. It hall been $ijg&eSted that a furthet problem i.s telling when Richard was writing of his own time, when of Henry I'$~ Dildogus (1983), ;o. Howevtr, nOCle of his inaccuracies arc more readily explained as anachronisms rather ltuln in other ~)'li. See below, p, 90, Cot lhe i.naOCW'a(:y or an interpolator of lhe original text. Richard oould also make mbtak.es in non~ b.iiltOrical passages; see e ., . his use of lsidore, Dinlogus (1983). 00. See aJso Uebennann, E/111
Sec Ricb.ascbon~ 'Rieha.rd fit:t Nea.l', 336.40; Di~j/ogw (19&'3), u-uii . .u Ditllog'UJ ("1983), xxli, Cf, R.ich.ardson aod Sayle:~. Go"ent®ce, 243. who state that 'the "OWogus.. coven a ..-c.ry gn.aJJ part oft~ field' ol finaocial adrninisuation. " Di4/cgws (1983). SO. )2

82

The Perceptiou of the Past in Twelfth-Century europe

learning and traditions of tbe exchequer - he must nol let his knowledge die with him.35 His text emphasises . seeks to elevate, such traditions and practical knowledge: 'scienn'a de scaccario' 1

·consuetudines er iura scaccarii', 'consritutas

leges scaccarii'. The exchequer was a court of law, enforcing the principle of

accountability. Its house rules were very different from customary law or royal edicts as assizes, and the nature of all these, and perhaps differences between them, was surely much discussed in Henry If's court. 36 In addition, the traditions were more lhan just practical, they were the sacramenta of 1he exchequer. 37 Richard's books would reveal the exchequer's mysteries, would

confer wisdom on his readers.38 As the title indicates, the book takes the form of a dialogue, between a Master [Magister] and a Student (Discipulus]. 'Ibis literary structure of the work is not nec-essarily neutral in its effect on Richard's perceptions ofthepast. Often the Student's questions must have been constructed so that the Ma.,ter mi&IJt express Richard's pre-existing views on a subject. O<:casionally. however, the question and answer (orm may have forced Richard to construct

views of the past which he may nor have consciously held until he had to put his words on parchment .39

Richard's perceptions ot the past were also coloured by the terms in which he eould present them, to himself and to others. Obviously it is impossible to be certain how far the text he gives us reflects his own personal thoughts on the past, how far it is dressed up in the form he felt proper for lilcr.uy presentation. Yet, with evef)' caution , one may suggest that the terms in which his text presents his views do r eflect. C\.tCn if at a di~tant remove, the ways in whi-ch

his education and mentality coloured his personal perceptions. As one would expect, Richard was influenced by the 'Bible.40 Occasionally h.is presentation of events is interlaced with bibljcal reference, most notably in the case of the rebellion of Henry Il's oon.41 His fondness for classical phrases may be seen as a more superficial literary habit, rather than as shaping his thought.42 However. hi.s familiarity with at least some Roman Law texts

" Ibid .. S. ~

Ibid., S, 6. 13 respectively. These thoughts on the role of the exchequer were olarified in my mind by the commc:nLo; uf Judith Green. " Ibid, 26, 126. " Ibid., 126. ~ See e.g. refereooe\ l() ·o:mj«tura.l histoty' in Dialogu.t (1902). 201. and to 'ratlona.Hsed h.i$toty' in Stubbs, Uctures, 131. Su(;h w oj1.1rin8 up of uplimnioos in'l(lh·e oot onl)' Ri.chard's perceptions of the past. Sometimes he adml" igJJofance as to 1hc reasons ror ~nd the-origins of concnt praetkc and then seeks to tbink of explsn;ltions. for example as to why the Usher of the tl'e3sury received n(l wages. Dialogus (1983), 13; see aiM> 44. Note abo R.khann in'r-entioo of an c1ymoJog,· for tbe \\'Ord fon:.rta, Dilllogw ( J983), 60. On Richard 's style and form generally. see Liebcrmann 1 E:inl~ihmg . 9()..95• ., DialiJgus (1902), 11; also 164 on the cardinal virtlle$. •, Diaiqgu.t (1983) , 75-77; this ma)' fonn purt of a later addition to the origio.al text. 2 " tJintogus (1902). 10·11: also 232.·33 on use of the categories of Iogie.

Richurd FitzNigel

83

conceivably had a greater effect. He knew the ' Institutes', which particularly inftuenced h.l• ' Preface', just as they did G/unvi/fs 'Prologue'. Rlchard also derived some legal knowledge from the 'Digest', but probably only indirectly-" He echoed Civil Law by incorporating the word novella when referring to recent ordinances.44 More generally, it seems to have concerned those in Henry Il's circle familiar with Roman Law that England did not have written Jaws. Glanvilfs response was to emphasise the authority and promulgation of English laws.'5 A similar concern may had led Richard to recount Henry of Blois' story attributing to the Conqueror a decision 'to bring the conquered people under the rule of written law'. 46 Richard's perceptions of the past come into the work in various ways, which may tentatively be categorised as follows. Sometln!es his opinions seem implicitly coloured by a view of the recent past. The ringing declaration that To the powers ordained by God we must be subject and obedient with aU fear. For all power ls of the Lord God. There is cleatly, therefore, nothing incongruous or inconsistent for ecclesiastics to sen•e kings as supreme powers . . ,

is surely that of a man fot whom memoty of the Becket dispute was very immediate.'' Next, there are a few incidental mentions of the past, fot example concerning the background oft he Exchequer official, Master Thomas Brown.48 Then there are his opinions of the exchequer's past. Sometimes these are merely undeve loped explanations of current practice; on other occasions, Richard does make e xplicit the 'past' which underlies present

. , DiD/Qgus ( 1902), H . (1983). xvii, 91. Ct Uoll , JWtvi·d on Glatt\•ill and Roman Law. The languag.e of Rjchard~s 'Preface' can abo be ¢0mpared I() thiit of Hugh of Fl.c.ury'& ~ &glu ptH~sltJk~ e.g. J.P. Migne, Plllrologi.a latina , 163 ool. 941, quoting RomaM 13 i: '1loD es;t PQteStaS nisi a Deo. Ouae etUm sint. a Deo ordinatae runt'. d. Dialogw ( 1983), 1. See also Dialogw, (1902), 163. '" Ditllt?fu.r ( 1983). 17, 71; see aleUeved Wiltiam lO have iatroduoed Roman Law to England; rather that he portra)'5 William writing down Jaws, at the Romw did; cf. 8cde &d~si4nicollliuory, ii, Son ,£tbelbert of Kent. See abo below, p. 88, aftd appendix, etp. n. 1. Oo Ric:hard'$learoin:g ceneraJiy, se~ Uebermann, £inlti.tung, :U-32. " Di4/o8"1 ( 1983) , I; S<< aao Dialogws (1902), 13 """"""iog clerical privilege. Di41o8"1 (1902). 210 tales ibid .• as a po!i.Sibk refere:oce to the story of Beeke1, but.sueb a reterence is far from clear. On Richard's \iews on 'Church and State', see Uebermann, E-inltilUII&, 55-$3. .. l)ialr;gu.r (1983). 35.

84

Tire Perception of the Past in Twelftlr·Century Europe

practice.•9 Finally there are occasional pieces of wider history. such as Richard might earlier have included in his Trico/umnis.50 Let us now tum from the areas in which Richard's perceptions are of importance to the origins of those views. Often Richard drew on his own memories of the past. He wrote of the Dialogue that 'in it you have all the more important points of the learning of the exchequer, in sketch at all events, so far as my weak memory serves'. 51 Writing of the privileges enjoyed by the barons of the exchequer, which were recorded in Pipe Rolls as ;in pardons by the King's writ', he stated that 'I remember seeing something of the kind in recent times, which in the course of time will be allowed to those entitled to it by a similar formula~. 52 He also reported his experiences of circumstances which prompted Henry II to make reforms. For example, Henry sought to restrict the sale of knights' and villeins' challels when their lord was being distrained for personal debt, whereas, Richard wrote. ;I myself, although not ye.t hoary· headed, have seen not only the lord's chattels lawfully sold for his personal debts, but also the challels of his knights and villeins'.>3 When lacking immediate personal experience, Richard's knowledge sometimes came from documeots. He wrote of the ' daily use' of documents whilst the exchequer was sitting. 54 His description of Domesday Book reveals his awareness of its form. 55 ln explai.ning the term ' hundred', he mentioned oral tradition, but also directed his student to documents: ' in the old charters of the kings of the English, you will often find a hundred (hundredumJ called a century (ctnturialam]'. It may be possible to identify tbe very charter concerned. Richard had been brought up in Ely. and a privilege survives recording a granl of Edgar to Ely. Not only does this use centuriatuum but it also survives in an o ld English version using hundredum in the same place. The Latin version was reproduced in the Liber Elie.nsis. and it may be from there or from the originals that Richard derived his information."' One anyway gets ~See

below, pp. 89·92..

~See below, pp. 85·88. " Dial<>g"' (1983), lZ7 & n. I. u Ibid., 51. .n Ibid., 112: sec a.tso e.g. 71. ~ lbtd., 62. ,; fbid., 63-64; Dlologus (1902), 2(12,; Stubb$, Ucrura , 139. ~ Dlalogu.t (1983), 64. The charter is P.H. Saw,·er, Anglo·SiuOtf CJwrwrs: An AnfWUit~d List and Bibllogrtt.phy (London, 1 968)~ no. 779. 'l'be Latin ltxt is. most readily a'•aitab)t in L~r ElitiUi$, 76-S,Ihe £ ngtish in A.J. Roberuon,AngWaxc>n Chanm, 2nd. ed. (Ctmbridge,I9S6), oo. 48. On tbis charter see also Li/Nr Elknsis, 414-S; E. John, OrbiJ Briuanloe 1111d Otlr~r Studies (L.eicc$ter,l966),21~33; and on thcO.E. vcnicm,J. Pope, 'Aelfricand the OklEnsfish ~r$.ion .;>f the Ely PrhiJe&e', in Eng/QIId lhj()r~ ~ Conques1: StudW;s bt PriJJVJry Sourcu Pre.tt.tlltd lt.> Do"JJhy Whiltki
Richard FitzNigel

85

the impression that Richard, like Suger in France, had spent much time poking around in arcbives, whence stemmed in pan their skills both as administrators and historians. 57 A more difficult question is whether Riehard drew on the twelfth-<:entury Leges, and moot notably the Lege.• Edwardi C<m[essoris. Connections have been suggested for Riehard's passage concerning William J's imposition of written laws on England,03 and, most firmly, that concerning Danegeld. Richard recounts that England was under attack from overseas, and that 'chief amongst these pirates, and the most destructive, were the Danes' . For defence agaiitSt these enemies the English kings decreed that two shillings should be paid ever after from eadt hide of the realm for the wages of the stout fellows who should patrol the coas.ts and keep diligent watch to repel t.he$e hostile a«acts. So because tbis tax was instituted mainly on account of the Danes, it is called ·oanegeJd•. Under the native English k.ings this was .. . paid annually. w

The most recent edition of the Dialogue notes that the passage on the Danegeld 'seems to be copied' from Leges Edwardi.00 Yet such a connection is very dubious. The passage was certainly not copied word-for-word, the only noteworthy verbal similarity being the reference to the Danes as 'pirates' .61 It is probable that similar traditions concerning Danegeld influenced both writers: a textual link seem.~ unnecessary. This argument is reinforced when one turns to the murdmm line, and discovers that the Dialogut attributes its introduction to WiUiam I, the Leges Edwardi to Cnut. 6lTbcre is no reason to

n Suger, Oeuvr~s cmnplttes, cd. A. lecoy de Ia Marche (Pari$, 1867), 160. Cr. John or Salisbul')'. HiuorUJ p
Rolls.

" Dlalogut (198~). 63. See above, n. %. and below. appe.Wx. " Ibid., SS. Dilllogw (.1902), 197. 110 Dialogus (1983). SS n . 4: cf. Diologu:r (1902). 196 u..<;;cs lhe ph.ra.st •no douhl copied.' Liebermann, Einltitwag, 11 notes the dirferc.noe on Oanegdd, and 11·72, rejects an old idea thai Richard WM tbe autbor of the Legts Edwardi. ,;, The W(lrd Wll$ nOt an unusual ooe; see: e.g. Abingdon Chronicle, ii, 6. 61 l_..tg~s Edwardi Conf~mri.J, c . 16, Liebermann. GtstJzt, ~. 642. 'Braeton' recounted lbi! uaditKln; ' Henry de. Rracton', Ck Ltgihu.r e~~udinlbu.t rtgnl An&lit. td. & •r. S.E. Thorne, 4 YOI.s, (Cambrida.e, Mass., 1968-77), fos. 134b-l35, ii, m. F.E. LM:~rmann . Ot>n d~ l..tBU EdMlardl Con/t~oris (Halle, 1896), 111-12., compellingly rejected the Oanl$h origin: also H.E. Yn l~ma. 'The Lex Murdrorum: An Episode in the History ol £n,glish Criminal L.aw', Harvard Law Rtvlew, 36 (1922.-3), 149-SS, f .C. Hamil. ··Presentment or Engtis.bry aDd the Murder Fine', Sptculum, 12 (1937), 286-87~ G.S. Garne tt,' "'FrAnci et Angli"': the Legal Distinction between Pcopb after the ConqUC$t', Angl¢o-NOrtnlln Sludits, 8 (Woodbridge, 1986), U6-28. Compare with this disagreement modc:m ckbate as to whether frankplcdge Wll$ introduced by Cou1. Wdliam I, or some othe r candidate; W.A. Morris, Tht Frankpltd~ Sy$ttm, Har.,.ard Hi~torical Studies 14 (C.mbridgc, MaM., 19 10), 1-41.

86

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

believe that Richard made any use of the twelfth-century Leges, and in this he was in common with the author of Glonvllt.63 Richard does mention one literary work in his discussion of Danegeld: Chjef among these pirates. and always the most destructive, wa$ the w"r-like and

numerous people the Danes, who were not merely greedy for plunder bur had some claim. on ancient right, to the lordship of the kingdom; as is mure fully told in the

History of the Britons. The reference may be to Gaimar's L' Histoirt des Engles, or to a lost source of Gaimar or Geoffrey of Monmoulb.64 If such suggestions are correct, it would seem that Richard, like the justiciar Ranulf de Glanvill. learnt at least some of his history from romances. 65 Personal contacts were also important to Richard. 'From fathers we ha••e learnt' about the nature of renders from royal lands to the first Anglo-Norman kings. They consisted of produce, not money, 'so that I myself have seen persons who themselves saw victuals being brought at fixed times to the court from the royal estates' .66 The mention of 'fathers' sounds like a general

cr. 'Bracton"s' ~of the Ltses; e.g. BmclOil. fo. l24b, Thornt, ii, 351, explicitly '$tcundum lqcs Edwatdi resh', alsO e.g. Bracton. !o. 134b, Thome , ii, 379. See also, however. the mixture or Laws pre~~tnted b)' Howdtn,li 215ft.. wbkhooota.ins 'William t'.s Ten Article:s'~ the Ltgn Edwardi, 63

aad ChulviU.

.,. Dilllogus (1983), 5~ . & n. 3: DtaJogUJ (1902), 196. AnC>ther suggestiotl Js that Riebard was drawing on Henry of Huntingdon's description of the Danish raids. Thi.s theor)· G3nnot be ptO\'ed but might reinfOfoc: notions of ramily links in Rietry at the schOOl ofOtleans.i H. RMbdall, The Unlvtrtltiaof Europe in the MlddleAgt;"S, New Editton by F.M. Powidte & A.B. Emden, 3 volt, (Oxford, 1936). ii, 140.44. On law at OrleaM, see E.M. Meijers. ttudtsd·'hhtoirtdl.i dr()lt, 4 vols, (leiden, 1956-66), iij, 3- 148. D.C. Douglas, "The ''Soog of R<>tand" and the Norman Conquest of England', Frtnch $rudjes, 14 (1960). JOl-5. commcotsoo admi n~trath·e language in lhc 'Sonc of Roland'. (o6 Dilllog~a (1983), 40. 1bc degree of accuracy In Richard's statement is uneenain; a recent a.s!itumenttome$ in G t «JJ, GVllrrnmenl,&-63, ·a passage il'l the Dia/Qgue, t,hough inaccurate Ol) polot.s of det~il. ~em to be giving the sub5tancc of a serit:$ of me-asures taken in Henry l's reign • • . . The [Dialogue's) $tatemeot th.at no cash revenue came from royal l.snds after tbc-C:lnquest is dearly incorrect. Howe\ocr, the termJnology or Domesday Boot suggt:Sl$ that some rood re.nders were still being paid in l086, a nd 1t is possibJe that these v.•ere oommutcd under Henry 1'. See also e.g. E. Millet and J. Hatcher, MedJttvttl &!gland: Ruru/ S<x.:kty und Eronomit CJzungt, f()86.J3#J (London. t978), Z7.

Richard FitzNigel

87

reference to older men; when Richard means his own father, or another relation, he is far from unwilling to name them. Richard wrote of learning various pieces of information from the natiui. Does this mean that he questioned villeins, for he himself, in a famous passage, stated that 'nowadays, when English and Normans live close to each other and marry and give wives in marriage, the nations are so mixed that it can scarcely be decided (I mean in the case of freeman) who is English by birth and who Norman; except, of course, the villeins . . . ' 67 Yet perhaps it may seem more likely that be used rnuiuus in a fairly loose sense, implying neither villeinage nor pure English blood. When asked by the Student ' what are counties, hundreds and bides', the Master replies 'countrymen know best about that', aod went on to list their opinions.68 The word rurictJie indicates fairly minor men, but they are surely more likely to have been those who attended shire or hundred courts, rather than villeins. Nevertheless, Richard's mother was probably English, and he perhaps had access to traditions which bad originated in English circles.69 From the 'natives' Richard learnt of a tradition concerning the events afte·r Hastings, the dispossession of the English and the redbiribution of lands to the Normans.70 Beneath the story lies a perception of the past in some ways similar to that of earlier twelfth-century cbronklers. Thus William of Malmesbury wrote of England: It is the habitation of strangers and the domlnation of foreigners. There is today oo

EogJishman who is either earl, bishop or abbot. The newcomers devour the riches and entralls of England, and tbere is no hope of tbe misery coming 10 an end. 71

However, Richard gave it his own colouring. Having heard tbe complaints of the English, the Conqueror and his council: decreed that they shouJd be granted by inviolable rig.ht whatevc,r they had been able to acquiTc from their lords by their own desens and by lawful bargain. But they dtd

" DIAWtllS (1983). S3. ,. Ibid., 64. Ht lbid .• xiv. 70

Ibid., S:\-54. Sec abo Stubh$, ~ru, 136-37. Cf. Brocton, to. 1b, thorne, ii, 37-38 oo

ICJWnl$ O( lbe 11

royllJ demeSne.

William o( Malmetbury, [)f Grsris rt'gum Anglorum libri q·uinqu~. ed. W. S'ubbi, 2 vols

(London, 1887·89), i, 278; cjttd and tr. Southetl'l, 'Sense or lhe hst', 24<1.

88

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe not succeed in establishing a title to inherit pre..C.Onquest property. This was obviously a "ise decision since the}' were thus obliged, in their own intere$t, to purc.hase the grace of their lords by devoted service. 12

Such might have seemed wise to an administrator of the Angevin king in the U 70's; the English in the late eleventh century may have seen things rather differently. On other occasions, Richard did not even describe his informant by a general term such as natiui or ruricofe. He stated the rea!;ons for the introduc-

tion of the murdrum fine and then continues, ' they say that this was done so that a generally imposed penalty would secure the safety or tra,·ellers and induce all to make haste to punish so great a crime or to deliver up to judgement the man by whose fault so great a loss injured the whole neighbour· hood' _?J 'Otis was not the only theory concerning the introduction o r the fine, but Richard showed no awareness or any other. 74 Sometimes, however, Richard named a major figure as his source. On Domesday Book, be wrote that 'the reason for its compilation was told to me by Henry, once bishop of Winchester' .75 Henry's account also mentions that William I decided to bring the conquered people under written law: So, sening out before him the English Laws in their threefold versions, namely, Mercian Law. Dane Law, West Saxon 1...3w, be rcpudjatedsome of them. approved others and a.dded tbosc Laws of Neustria overseas whicb seemed tOhis most effective in preserving th~ peace of the rea.lm?~

Other traditions, with many different details, are contained in the Leges

Edward! Con{tssoris and the Leges Willelmi, but again there is no reason to see any textual ooMection between the Dialogue and the Leges-"

n Dialogw (19f0), 54.

Ibid., 52-Sl. See abo~-e. p. 8So also below. otppeodi.x. " Dialogus (1983). 63; Henry cannot have ftrmrnbcred scei.n&or hearing these O\'ents (or tJ

74

himstU. ~

Ibid., 6J, See also abo\·e. n. 46, and below. appendix and esp. n.7. 01) William Iaoo law. Tbe

notions of eutting, ~ppr<wing and 31ddill& are topoj, notably for the activities of conquerors. " a .Stubbs, LecnuGt, 139. On the L~gtt Edwordi and the Dialogu.Jconeerning this point, Stt l..icbennann, £inlfttung, 72, on the. /..tge.r WUielmi and lhe DiiJlogur, see Liebermann, £ inltinmg, lOS. See also Tht &cltsitutical HistOT)' of Ordtric ViJali.J, ed. & tr. M. ChibnaU, 6 \'Ois (Oxford,

1969-80). vi., lSI: · King WUJiam brOugl\1 En&hmd under his laws for its own advtntage!

Richard FitzNigel

89

Such were vital source-< for Richard's knowledge of wider history. For the exchequer's own past. he mu.~t have drawn on the exchequer's own traditions. These traditions covered various subjects. For example, when discussing how the name of the exchequer board was transferred to the court in session there, Richard stated that 'where we now today say ·•ar tbe exchequer" they used to say " at the tallies'", thereby suggesting that tallies had a
Eve.nrually Henry I repented, 'and so it ca.me to pass that the privilege granted to our forefathers is still preserved in their posterity.' 79 Clearly, one of Richard's purpQses in recording these traditions was to prevent any such challenge arising again. Against outside challenge the members of the exchequer might well be united upon their privileges. 80 However, even within the exchequer. percep-

tions of the past were not unanimous•• Richard reporrs that men differed 'on

Dio.Wp.t (1983), 7. On the:.possible accuracy of the tatem~at, see Gree-n, Cio~mmtnt, 4l ; Roond, C:ommunt of London, 74·75; R.kbardsoo and Sayles:, Governanu , 279-80, whose '.fl

argument from ailt:ooe is hardly compelling. " Dialogw (1983). SO.SI. 110 Howe\'tr, other controversies could spring up. Robert, eart of Lekt.s.ter threatened the priviJcges olthe exchequer, on the iuue- of assarts if) the kin&'s fort!t. Nigel. bMo, of Ely's pef'SQOal statemeot ofth~ danger of ertali.ng a bad precedent was not suftieie.nt to settle the. issue: 'since opinlom differed, as they generaUy do on doubt(uJ poinlS, a stronger proor wa1; adduced, a Pipe Roll of 1hat great kitlg or whom we spoke abcwe, under whom tbt dignity and knowledge or the Excftequer had its full (lower. and something was f<M.~nd in tt '1\'hicb supported the Bishop's assertion of the dignity of the m~mbers of the Coun.' Robert 'thcrdorc abaodoocd the writ, and chose to be acquitted by the privilege of those sittiog at the Exchequer'. Dilllogus (1983), 57-59. 111 On tblipatsagt.. see S.P.J. Harvey.
90

The Perception of the Past i11 Twelfth-Century Europe

many important poin!S' on the o rigins of the greater exchequer. Some said that it existed under the 'English k ing.~ . arguing. from the fact that the farmers of trO'Wn estares. some of them feeble otd men hut wilh an excellent me-mory for matter of this kind ~

know by their father's teaching bow much they are bound to pay for t'ach

pound for the blanching of their farm.82

On this Richard comments that it ' is a cogent proof o f the payment oft he fam>, but not o f the session of the exchequer' . The text then contains a further view, objecting that Domesday Book makes no mention of blanch farm , 'from which its seems probably that it was after the. compiling of Domesday Book in the time of William l that blanch farm was instituted by his devoted servan!S for the reasons noted below'. The writer. it would seem, bad not properly examined Dome.way Book, which docs occasionally mention blanching. The passage is almost certainly an interpolation."" As such, it should not lead to condemnation of Richard.84 Rather. it reveals how fresh theories might emerge and perhaps become further, rh•altraditions. In this process o f comparison and criticism o f tradition, Richard again resembles twelfth-century historians such as "Florence' of Worcester, of whom James Campbell has written t hat 'il is important that he was capable of overtly contra•ting his sources when they differed.'"' To such historiographical abi· lity, Richard also added the skills of an administrator, who for practical reasons had often to compare and decide between different stories. So far I have referred to all these as 'exchequer traditions' . Yet the twelfth· centu.ry court of the exchequer must not be seen as a faceless bureaucracy.

111

Dio.logus ( 1983), 14. The: process of 'blanching' im•olves the assaying of the coin offered in

payment, whicb ls thtn accepted at its value in pure silver. u DiaiOKJIS (1983). 14. n. I. cr. Poole. Exclltqucr. 61-62. who criticises 'the extreme COUJK of rejecting the pa.mge . , . as an interpobuioo. {The 1902 editors) point ourC()frectt)· cnoug.h that besides beittg uotruc. it desuoystbe continuity of the.a!jument, but I fear that tbcyare applying a standard oCliterarycobesion,.·bkJl few medieval writC:·I l would satisfy.' Yet RjcharQ':; 01rgu.ment i$ notably cobesi\·e. FurthennQre, whil$1 he on various oocasKms sets out a point of view and then tebuts it with his. m •n, here unusually three arguments are put forward; it still seems best co take the chird as an interpolation. The iotcrpoJator may ha..·e been confused by Richard's lack of dear d.Uitinctioo between the blanchina of payments by the farmers of royal manon, dcsc;:ribed ln the passage quutcd above, and a later passugc whkhcolhes in tM discuss.i.on of tbe bJanchil:.'lg of the ~mire farm paid by &he s.heriff, aJtbough tbis passage tOO concentrates largely on payment recch•ed (rom fO)'al msnor!i; Dialop.t (1983) . .Q. lt is possible that local assa)'s may ha..·c taken pl!Ke even before the ConqucM, but tbat the assa)' at the e~cheq\ler ••as introduced a1 Richo'lrd de&crib«~ Dilllogus (1983), xl-xli. &.- Cf. Rouud, Communr of Umdon , 65-.67. JtS Campbt.U, ...1\1.-c){th-Ccntur)' Vtews', 213. Such contrasting of sourceg was, or course, a feature of m all)' tweltth-oentury writers. amongSt the greatest of whom Wtrc Abelard and Gratian.

Richard FrtzNigel

91

Rather it often resembled a small family business, and the author of the Dialogut the latest member of that family: as Stubbs wrote, ' the body of ministers, and not the office oft he Excheque r only , was a son of family pany, or a guild and mystery, and to some extent continued so for a generation after this book was written' ,1!1. Often the traditions with which Richard agreed must have been his family traditions. Richard looked back to his great uncle, Roger of Salisbury: a prucknt man. far-sighted in counsel. eloquent in speech and (by the grace of God) sudck:oly tbe chief mover i_n great matters . .. He grew in favour with the king, lbc dergy and the people, was made: Bishop of Salisbury. enjoyed the most imponant offices and honours in l h<: rea.Lm, and had the profoondeit knowledge of the exchequer . . . It is from the overflow of his learning that I have received, in my blood, the little I know.~

It is. for example, to Roger that Richard attributes the introduction of the assaying of tbe shire farm. 88 Richard bad also learnt from his father, Nigel, bishop of Ely, whom Henry II had frequently consulted about excheque r procedure: 'nor was it unbecoming

¥Stubbs, Lectures, 1:)4, Not e also C.W. Hollister, '1be Rise of Admini$trati\'C Xinpblp: Henry [ ',in ht.M~y. Mrwuut>slliUI lnsritr.aUuuintMA"glo·N()nMJ:I World(Londoo. 1986), 232. E\•cn in Henry ll's rei,gn, it can be a mistake to reaard t he exchequer asadiKret~ innitution, with narrowly defined functions, and complc:tdy sc.parated &om the housc.h old . Rather. tbc: exchequer was a place for regular rnee•ings tO carry out particuJar busineu. There wlS coosider· ablecwedap of personnel with other areas o( royal adminisuatioo, and a wKie ranac: of cases could be heard before the coun of the exchequer. StUl, ooe may coosider works such as the Dialogus u

proc\U'SOts of greater self·eotisclousncss of beloogio& to a pank:ular sectl.oo of government. Dcpanmcntal fcetin& WB.$ to b«ome $tronger io the. thin eenth ccntwy, and WM expressed panly through an inlertS{ in the dc.partment's pua ... for bOtb purely practical and more antiquarian reasons. Akxanck-r de Swerdord, cbic( baron of the exchequer from 1234. 'seucbed thrOugh the misoellanea of t.bc: exch.cqu~tr Cor retum11 whid!. ought to be: prese~ in the arcflivet of his department', llod the resull wa.'i the Red 80Qk ofthe Excllequer; R.C. Staoey. Polilics, PQ/icy and F'UUU~ce untkr 1/enry 111. 1216-1145 (Oxford , 1987). 41-2. Sec Rt'd Book, ii, 6S9foronestatement concerning bow Alexander obtained his information. Unk.ed to such dc:\'dopmcnts is the emerg.enoc of \'leW$ wbieb seem to be peruliarly those of adm.inlstrator1. Or at least members of tbc royal housebold: Ricbard may e.xpress one such view whea he rerers to l-ords as the 'domestk enemies· or their villeins, Dlatogus (1983), 101. See also Ue:bermano, £1.nkiwnt. S9-63. Oo foelings of .solidarity, "the dosing of rank3 against outsiders, •.• tbe ready exc.-banae of f•vourt between members', within the royal househokJ, rather than within indi\'idual departments. see J.E.A. JoUHfe. Angt'l-'in Killgsldp (London, 19'55), 207-8. "' Dlalogut (1953), 42. Ol Ibid., 42-43.

92

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

so wise a man and so outstandingly powerful a prince to concern himself with this mauer as well as with others of more importance' .39 Richard referred to his father as ' treasurer of Henry I and nephew of the bishop of Salisbury mentioned above' . Nigel 'had incomparable knowledge of the Exchequer': Frequently asked by the ycat King Hcmy. he restored the knowledge of the Exchequer, which had almost perished during the long years or war, and like another Ezra, the diligent restorer of the Bible. renewed its form i:n all its dctails.90

On occasion. Richard makes explicit that he had learnt something from Nigel, for example concerning the Pipe Roll phrase ' in pardons by the king's writ'.91 Richard's pride in thescientia scaccarii was also family pride.92 Sir Richard Southern has wrillcn that 'the mistake is often Jrulde of looking for a historical revival o nly in the histories which it produces'.93 Richard fitzNigel's interest in the past is one manifestation of a climate of histo rical interest at Henry Jl's court. In the much quoted phrase of Peter of Blois, it was school every day,'>' and this included school in history and school in administration. Nor could the two be fully separated. We have Richard fitzNigel writing a history tmd an administrative rnanual. The next such manual, the TrACtArus M. Legil>us was copied into a chronicle written by a royal justice, Roger of Howden."' The view of the past in the Dialogue. one historian has suggested, •was the product of the collective memo ry of Henry ll's administrators' and that its crucial ' points of historical reference' are the Conquest, Domesday Book, the development of dues in money, and the development of the exchequer under

~

lbid., 3.

Ibid ..SO. The "'-ords ccbo 2 Ma<:c. 2:13, whicb tefers 10 Nehemiah, but oote:· also 4 Ezras 14:22-47 (Vulgate), 2 Ezr., 14: t9-48 (Authorised Version.) •• Dialogos (1983), 49-51. 9:: Note Ri<:htud's pride lo his not t~rribly ftaneri.ng family name., DiDIOgU$, (1983}. 42 & n. 3. On the inberitanct of knowledge. lee also, ibid., 40. 60, and es.pedally 4'2, on which sec /)iologu~ (1902). 187-$8. u Soutbem. 'Stnseofthe P:tSf, 249. Ora.nsdtn, H;storia l Writing, 269, writes that the Ramsey Cbconicle attd other such work$ 'are..symptomatkof an age which corrunitted to writing previously unwritten law and customs, the-<'&e ot Glanvill and of the DUdogue oft~ Uchtqutr: "' Motfflols /flr the HiJzory qf Tlwm4S Btd.ts, 00. J.C. Robcnson & J.B. Sheppard, 7 "Ois (L;tndon,l87S·85). \'ii, 573. On chroniclers' education in history, soeCampbeU, 'Twelfth-Century Views'. 22.().21. '» IJoll. l·•·hi. 90

Richard FirzNigtl

93

Roger of Salisbury and its decline in the wars under Stephen. In addition , kings, William 1, Henry 1 and implicitly Henry II, feature both as 'direct actors' and 'crucial JOints of reference, their actions themselves conferring legitimation•. On tbe ba.sis of the argument above, I would suggest that these insights into the Dialogue, very usefully made for comparative purposes in a highly skilled analysis of Italian lawyers' views of the past, can be developed. Richard drew not only on administrators' memories. For example., he was almost certainly aware that the English bad had their own peculiar traditions. Other things could be best learnt from country-dwellers. Furthermore, there was not one 'collective memory' amongst those involved in administration under Henry 11, but varying traditions. The tradition that was strongest for Richard was that of his family. His work provides a history, a biography. even a genealogy, for his k.in and for the exchequer, promoting his own and their importance. 1n addition, his family provided further vital points of historical reference. Roger of Salisbury and Nigel, bishop of Ely were in a sense his authorities; their lives, together with his own, helped to structure bis view of the past. Different reference points were useful for structuring different areas of the past in differing drcumstances. Richard's great clarity stems fro m his skill in controll· ing his various vie..,'S. For a writer with no model from which to work, such clarity was a great achievement.

~ Wickham, •t.aW)·ers' Tune·, 6S. For lbe kin&S a.s a pomt ot reference, $tC e.g. DWogus (1983). 71 which n:fen to a nowllacon.uituti(.J, 'thatis, aftcrtbc cimeofHenry 1'. nwbich refers to lhe time: ol Henry II'~ a:randiathC"r, that ts. Henry I. See also LiebetmaM, Einkhung. 59·60 on !Uchanrs treatment of Henry l aad Stephen.

Appendix

Twelfth-century views or pre-Conquest law also reveal the diversity of perception of the past. As is well known, the Anglo-Norman kings promoted the idea that they were preserving the Laga Edwardi. Thus Henry I's Coronation Chaner stated that ' I give back to you the law of King Edward with those emendations which my father made by the counsel of his barons.'' On occasion, the l.Aga Edwardi may have been regarded as having certain specific provisions, but more importantly perhaps, it represented good c-ustom, what Michael Clanchy has called 'the Good Old Law' 2 Such stress on the 'Good Old Law' was part of the wider process of legitimation of a new regime; Cnut had taken a similar step in recalling the Jaws of Edgar. 3 Edward the Confessor at his accession may have sworn to uphold the Jaw of Cnut and his sons.• Certainly he later took the Laws of Cnut to he the 'Good Old Law' . The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 1065 t he Nortbumbrians rebelled against Earl Tostig. Tostig's brother Harold met them at Northampton, and I hey entrusred him with a

m e~age 10

King Edward. and also sent messengers

with him,and asked that they migh1be allowed 10 have Morcar as their carl. And the 1 Uebermaon. Grrttu. i. S22: see also lh~ se,•ent.h of'WiUiam I"$ Ten Artides'. ibid., i, 488. Note also 'Fiorenoc. or \Voreester•, ChronittJn ex dmmku, td. B. 'Thoc'pc. 2 vots. Eng. Hi.st. Soc. (loodon, 1848-49}, ii .132, on 1he cirQem of London requesting from 1he em pre._~ i.n I 141 'u1 leges cis regis E.dwa.rdi OOsc:ruare licere1, quia optimac cram, oon patris: $-l)i Hcnrici, quia gra"cs crant'. Study of the matters discu!i~d in this appendix v.;u be greatly furthered by Patrick Wormald's forthcoming work on Anglo-Saxon royar la\lo"S -and law-malting, early draft'i of which he: has \•ery tilldly allowed me: to see. ! M.T. (.lanchy, 'Remembering tbe Past and the Good Old Law', HU·tory. 55 (1910). 165-176. ' Anglo-So.xon Chronicle version ·o·. s.tt. 1018; u. D. Whitelock. D.C. Oou~;lM. S.l. Tucker (Londotl, 1961), 97 n. 13 ( Heneefonh \VhileltXk ~~ 4/,) See also E.A. Freeman. f/U·rory of tht NormiJJt Conqutrt, 6 Y'Qls (~Qrd , 1867·79), i. 462-65. D u® of St. QI.Jcnti.n, Dt Muribu.t ~~ octls primorum Nonnarmiat Ducum, ed. J. l air, Mtm. de La Soc:i~W des Amiquaites de Nor-mand~ (Caen. 1S6S). tcllscf Harald kingo(theDaoes confirming Rollo's la...,"S in Nonnandy in the middle nf 1he tenth ceotur)'. " (JuodripartitJJ.S, •argumentum•. Uebe-rm.-.on, Gt!>'ttu, I. 533.

94

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

95

king !!)"anted this, and send Harold back to them at Nonhampton ... And he proclaimed lbis to them, and gave surety for it, and be renewed there the Law of King

Cnut.'

•

In the case of the Normans. the proce.<;o; of legitimation has been well studied by Garnett .6 He emphasises the way in which the concentration on Edward helped to tum Harold into a non-king. Thus, for example, Domesday Book shows 'the time of King Edward' as the crucial point for legitimating claims. Later, the Leges Edwardi Confessoris retold how William I, in the fourth year of his reign, sought to discover and confinn the laws of King Edward: Alter the founh year of King William's acquisition of this land. by the counsel of his barons he made to be summoned, throughout all the counties of t.be country, noble Englishmen. wise and learned in their law, so that he might bear from them their

custom.s.7 Concentration on Edward did not preclude mention of another king, Cnut. Following the Norman Conquest, some churches had charters of Cnut which they naturally wished to use to reinforce their claims.• For example, in 1102x1103, Henry I granted a general confirmation to the monastery of Bury, 'in such freedom as they were in the times of Cnut and Edward, kings of the English, as their charters witness.• Cnut was not remembered just as a grantor of specific rights. William of ~ Attglo-Saxon Citron/de, versioo5 •o• & 'E', s.a. 1065, WhiultXk ~~ o/., 138. It is unclear (tom the syntax whether it was the. king or Harold who was responsible for this renewal. See alw Freeman, Nomum Conque:sr, d, 498--SOO. 0 G.S. Garnett. 'Coronation IOd Propaganda: Some lmplica1ioas of the Notma.n Claim to the Ttu-Ol\C of En$1aa.d ia 1066', Thtnsoc-tioiU of the Ro)'Ql Hlstoriu/ Sockcy 5th Ser. :\6, (1986). 91·116. ., Ugt>s EdKeuments from the Abbey t>f Bury S1 Edmund¥ , ed. D.C. Douglas ( Londoat 1932),

no. 21 .

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Richard FitzNigel

Malmesbury, having reproduced Cnul's 'R oman' letter, which cl05ed by promising strict enforcement of church dues 'according to the laws', stated that Cnul 'ordered that all the laws laid down by former kings, and especially by his predecessor Elbelred, be observed for all time, under threat of royal fine'. 10 The Ramsey chronicler, writing at the beginning of Henry JJ's reign , regarded Cnut, not the simple Confessor, as the great law-giver: 'Couto rex Christillnissimus. nuiJl predecessorum suorum regum comparatione uirtutum ueJ bellica exercitatione inferior ... justas leges uel nouascondere ucl anliquitus condi· tas obseruare:n Similarly at Bury, Hermann an d Samson's works on the miracles of St Edmund praise Cnut with regard to laws. 12 Perhaps we have here house traditions, or even East Anglian ones. Such a reputation had already produced attempts to set down in writing these 'just laws' . The Textus Roffcnsis, from the beginning of the twelfth century, contains an 'improved' version of Cout's Jaw--codes, now referred to as the lnsin
inrntur, non quod Hie statuerit, sed quod ob3Cruarit.' Wormald pOints out that William could hardly have known of t he ckbt of C nut's la\\'$ 10 .Ethdred'f had he nt,l read bath, He alwwgsa.ts a Jinlt between William and the Ramsey \oiews of Cnut a.od of Atrred, but differences of wording c:ou&d ~ stpaJa(e tro~dilion& . See also ~nerally P. Stafford, 'The Law ol Cnut anc.l the History

of Ang)o-Saxoo Royal Promi$C$', Anglo·$1Ulm £nglattd, 10 (1982). J7J..90. 11 Clmmicnn llblxttia~ Rumt's.timsis. ed. W.O . Macny, (London, 1886), 125, cr. lS5 on lhe Confessor; on the ~te ol tbe CbrOclide, Gr.ill.sden. HiJtoricul Writing, 210. FOT an c:nHcr reference-to Cnut as a suppres.wr n{ unjust laws.,. see F.nct.unium f.mm(Jt Ytginae. ed. A. CampbeU (Camden Society, 3rd. Ser., 12, 1949), 36. Note also Cnut'l>later repute in Denm.ark as a law· giver (or the bouse~arb; set Sara GrolmmtJiicus Danoru.m rqum heroumquehi$lori4 Books X·X'VI, td. E. Cbristiao.sen (Britim Archawlogjcal Repotts, lntanational Series, 84; O.rlord, 1980), i, book x, 3744, and N . HOOper. 'Tilt ltousec:arts i.n Ellgla.nd Jo the Elevemh Century·, Angfq..Nomwn Sn,d;n, 7 (Woodbridge, 1985), 166·8. " M<>mo,ia& ofSt Edmund't Abbey, i, 46, 126. William of Malmcsbllry. Grds tbat C(lut caused a trc:.lch to be du.g for St Edmunds around the abbey'$ l and$.~ the monastery bjd reawn 10 be grateful for tlli$servicc since t~ trcncb prevented the incun>ionsof tu ooUec:tors. See also above. appendix n. 8. u Liebermann, Ge.«!Jzt, i. 612·7. Liebcnnann, 'lnstituta Cnud•, 79, lu&(!:ests that the aulhot's original Iitle \\"~t.SinstirutJI de legibus St'CIIIIdum Cnud Rt'gtm Anglorum: see also 90 which SUU;t3fS that the <:Otnpilcr's 'ins.c.rtions and the OOtHinutttioo wfticb do not bclovg to (A)ul must (10( ind1.1oc us to c::aU him a forger •• . He simply follows rhe medieval pNtetice of ntt.ming a oompila.tion after ili opeuin& clause'. M)' argume.ms in this appendix sugge-st further reuoO$ for the attribution 10 Cnut. Note: al~o Liebermann, 'lnstirum Cnurr. 86. on the compiler's 'doc:idc:d predilection for (he. Dilnetagu.' u On tht Artia'li Willdml, see U tbennann, Gtse~.u, iii, 217-8. Brocton. fo. I.Slb, Thome. ii,

•Z1·28. '" Uebermalm, G'stue, i . 618-l9.

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

97

buted to Cnut as law-giver continued to appear in the later twelfth century, when a tract on the forest was composed in Cnut's name a.nd included excerpts of the lnstituta Cnuti. 16 One reason for the continued emphasis on Cnut's laws was surely their

existence as a text. The absence of such a text for Edward's laws may well have worried the Anglo-Norman writers. A later hand beaded the Consilatio Cnuti 'leges que vocantur Edwardi'. 17 Still more notable is the introduction to the Qwulriportitur: 'Leges quas dicuot Edwardi regis ex Otudi primum institu· riooe diductas esse, sicut ab antiquis aceepimus . . . '18 One wonders whether the oompiler of the Quadripartitus had hoped t() find a text for Edward's laws but bad been forced to admit that they rested on Cnul's codes. Documentary reasons are not the sole cause of the interest in the Laga Cnuti. Another view is expressed in the Leges Edwardi Conftssoris. The earliest version states that William I wished certain Jaws of the Norsemen to be held, 'since he said that because his own ancestors and those of almost aU the barons of Normandy came from Norway, they ought to follow their ancestors' law dutifully'. 19 Such laws, he held, were more honourable than aU others, that is those of the Britons, the Angles, and the Picts. However, William was persuaded to reject the idea and accept the laws of King Edward, wbo bad granted him the kingdom. A second version adds, 'How or from what reason King William wished to set aside thelawsofthe English and hold to the laws of the Danes'. 20 Clearly the notion of the Lllga Cnuti would help to satisfy such sentiments. It gives an added complexity to ideas of 'the Norman Myths' .2 ' Interestingly, the author of the Leges Edwardi's own opinion of Otut as law· giver is unfavourable. He made Edward look to Edgar as the source of the. 'Good Old Law' 22 Nor is his opinion of William I, and his attachment to the Danelaw favourable. Indeed the attribution of the murdrum fine to Cnut, " Ibid .. i. 620·26. 11

Ibid., i, 618. H.G. Ricbardson aod G.O. Sayles, LAw and Ugislation from A~llt~lherhliD

.VagM Con. {Edinburg)~. 1966). <46. u• Lie.ben:nann, Geuttt, i, 532. 19

Ugu Ed"';Yirdi Confe:ssoris, c. 34, Ucbenn.ann, GestJ.u, i, 661. See abo Freeman, Norman Qmqut:rt, iv, 324. v , 399. 3l Legu E.lhtvmii Con{e:s.wris, c. 33, Liebermann. GeJ~u. i, 660; £M. pa.s.sage. continue$ 'et qualitcr postea per toiam Angliam constitute sunt c:t conll.n:nate, que per LXVIII a.nnos cnnt pretermissc'; c. 34 2e, Uebermann, GeJettt, i, 663, expllliru tbat the sixty-eight yean are tbe time from the death of Edsar to the acce$$ion of Edward the O.nfessor. Another interC$\iog refereoee to the taws of the Oaoea comes io the Liber mQIIasttrli de H)•d4, ed. E. Edwards (L.oodon, 1866),

where Earl Wattbeor. foUowi.n& hi.s rebellion, is s:Ud to have bun condemned 'StCUndum leges Anglorum et Daaonun'; d. Ordtric, EccksiaJtico.llli.Uory, ii, 314 • where Walthwf state!i that 'Aft<ca lt.~ capitis obtrunc:&done traditort.m mulllt, omnemque progcntem cius naturali hercdi· tateomnino priuat'. aod also ii, 318 where Earl Roger ofHerefotd's tate was decided: 'secuudum kges Norroanoorum iudi(Olt\lS (Sl, et amissa omo.i be:reditm tenea.a in CMCere regis perpetuo damnat~ esf. 11

a . R.H.C. Davis, TheNormDIUGnd lhdr Myth (London, 1976). Soeal$o G.A. Loud. 'The Gent AllliQrum - Myth or Reality?', Anglo-Nomum Sludies, <4 (Woodbridge, 1982), 108-9. 'Z2 Uga Edw.wdl C<M{essoris, ( , 34 3, Liebermann., Guet.:e. i, 663.

98

Richard FitzNigel

mentioned above, n1ay even be a coded criticism of William and the Normans.23 Other great law-givers were praised by other writers. William of Malmesbury recalled Alfred,"' and so too, in a rather stranger way, did Geoflrey of Monmouth. He wrote that Gildas translated the Molmutinc laws into Latin and Alfred put them into English. 25 He also provides the marvellous story of the laws laid down by the noble woman Marcia, which the- Britons called 'Marciao' law and which Alfred translated into the Saxon tongue as 'Mercian Law'.26 The earliest thirteenth-century version of the Leges Edwurdi Confes· soris noted that King Arthur introduced a law calling upon all great men, knights and free men of all Britain to come to a full folk-moot,swcar to defend the reabn against foreigners and enemies, and do fealty to their lord king. Having fallen into disuse, this Jaw was revived by Edgar. 21 Here we may well be moving into the realms of invention. Again, however, the vitality of interest in the past is illustrated by the very diversity of traditions and views and the uses to which they were put.

23

Oamcu. 'Franci et Angli', 125. In the fii&t half of the thirteeruh century, ooe cltconider opcnty criticised Cnut ror $tUing aside tbe good Laws and customs provided by Alfted~ 'The Cbrooide Attributed to J.ohn of 'Wallillgford', c:d. R. Vaughan, in Camd~n MiJ~/IIlny. x.xi (Camden Soc. , 3rd. ser.. ·xc. 19S8). 65. Otber write~ of tbe $3me period praised Cnut: e.g. Roger of Wendover noted that in 1022 tbc Englis:h and Oanes Jg.reed to observe the laM or Edward the Elder. Cout ordered tbem 10 be translated into Latin, and 10 be obser.•ed lo both England and in Denmark: Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, cd. H.R. Luard, 7 \'Ois (London, 1812-83), i, 504. u William or Malmesbury, Gn-1a regum, i, 12.9-130. Patrick. Wormald will argue in his forthcoming work that WIUjam is to be taken seriousty concerning the legal and admioistralive measu.n:s oC Al!n:d. See abo Ramsey Chronicle. 13 oo Alfred 3$' Anglicarwn legum conditOr', and the Winchester Annals in Annales mc~~~Utid, ed. H.R. Luard, S vols (London, 1864--69), ii, 10. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia r~tum, 26-27. · u. Ibid., 31. See .above, appendix n. 23, for the early thirteentb<entury rrputation of &!ward tbe E.lckr as law-gi,•er. 11 Leges Edwwdi Con/tJS()ris, 32A5·8, Uebcrmann, Gtsetu, i, 655. The collection was inftuenced by the wotk or Geotrrey of Monmouth. 1-
6

The Texts and Contexts of Ancient Roman History in Twelfth-Century Western Scholarship* Lars Boje Mortensen There will always be a very marked difference between the perception of a past within living memory and of o ne beyond that. For one thing, the former is to some extent shared by all adult members of a given community whereas the latter is only the concern of a well-educated minority working with written records (or, in recent times, with physical remains). Furthermore, the recent past is subjected to a bewildering wealth of interpretations, each built on a variety of unprocessed information; by comrast, the perception of a more distant past - in the middle ages relying almost exclusively on the written word - is already patterned by the structure of a written source. Finally, interest in the life of the family, community or nation one or two decades ago is selfe••ident and often understandably passionate, while it is much more difficult to explain how people can get excited about something that happened a thousand yea.r s ago. This is especially so in the case of medieval western societies wbkb had no institutions for the study o( history. Yet attention was often drawn 10 the distant past, e.ither in order to legitimise certain claims by fam.ilics, ec.:c.lesiaslical institutions or en1ire nations, or to achie11e a precious identity furnished by a long ancest.ry; sueh references to long gone ancestors almost invariably mirrored very contemporary local needs. Whe.n the 'international' distant past received attention in the twelfth ~ century west, it was due to two peculiar circumstances. Firstly. large parts of the Holy Scripture were in effect historical w.riting (and were considered as such) dealing with the ancient Near East up to the Hellenistic pe.riod. Secondly, virtually all reading and writing presupposed command of a foreign language, Latin, of whieh the acknowledged masters and models (including the major church Fathers) lived and wrote in the Roman empire from c. B.C. 200 to A.D. 600. As a result even the superficially learned would encounter very old texts with all their references to the time in which they were composed, while the more erudite would search for further information on ancient history in order to elucidate the same authoritative texts. How mueh was actually known about classical Rome, its institutions and

•

I am grneful to the Cat.lsberg Founda110n ror supponing this enqu.Jry.

99

100

77re Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

historical development? To offer an exhaustive answer to that question is beyond my present scope, but basically I can think of two different approache-s . One is to analyse the works of the historians of the twelfth· century and see what they have to say on the Roman past, where they picked up their information and how they interpreted it. Even though no twelfth· century scholar produced a proper survey of ancient Roman history. it was often alluded to o r described in summary, especially in the world-history literature (the so-called universal chronicles). Some work has been done in this area, particularly on eminent figures like Fruto lf o f Reichersberg, William of Malmesbury and Otto of Freising, but so far no comprehensive surveys exist. 1 This approach is certainly worth following, though one must be aware of its inherent drawback, namely that it will only tell you what a few iotellect\lal giants knew about ancient Rome. It cannot clarify what notions less eminent people entertained M indeed whether they cared at all about that very distant past. The o ther approach is to look at the manuscript evidence for texts on Roman history that circulated in the twelfth century. What texts were used, how widely were they copied, and in what context were they srudied? In this essay l shall confine myself to giving an o utline of this approach. Before producing a systematic list of texts concerned with Roman hislory. it may be rewarding to refer to similar twelfth-century lists of important histori· cal texts. I have chosen the testimony of three English intelleetuals, one from the beginning, one from the middle, and one from the end of theceotury. This is not because they represent any deveJopment il\ histo rical tho ught- they do not - hut rather because their lists of historical writers are embedded in three diffe rent types of composition. This will bring out, I hope, some of the limits and qualities o f a historical culture where- owing to the absence of printing each book was unique. The first one is William of Malmcsbury~s beautiful anthology of texts on

Roman history: MS Oxford, Bodleian, Libr. Arch. Seld. B 16.2 Jt is William's 1

Tbc srudyo( ancient history in the Middle Ages has been discussed by F. Landsberg, Das Bild der altM (i~dlichte in Mittelalttrliclln. Wtltchroniktn (Sasci·Scrlin, 1934), E.M. Sanford, 'l bc Study of Ancient History in the MjddJc Agcs•,JourtUll oflh~ lliMory of/deus, 5 (1944), 21-43, H.

Fichtenau, "Yom Verstindnis dcr rOmischcn Ocscbicfltc bei dcutsche.n Ononis.ten des Mind· aJters,'. Bl'ilrifge zur M~didl•i.ulk: Ausgewlihlte Auj.fiiru , i, J.2J (Stuttgnn _.1974), and A. Lhotsky, 'Oa.s rOmische Altertum im Geschichtsbild des Mittclaltc1s· in l/istorio$rophit , Qudltn.kundt, Wirtschoftsg~schicht~: A.ufoiitu w1d Voruiige , ill. ed. H. Wagner & H. Koller, (Munich, 1972). ~ 25- in that order of importance. The political use or cla.1-sjcaJ Rome in the t'A'elfth oentury (by theRoman oommune and by the German emperorS) ha.'l bee-n suf\·eyed by R.L Beoson, 'Potitieal R~novatio: ,....,.o Models frOm Roman Andqulty' in Rtnalssontt and R.tnth'aJ tn the Twtlfrh Ct:ntury, ed. R.I... Uenson &. G. Constable (Cambridge. Mass_, 1982) 33'}.86 - with rich biblioP,.raphy. Frutolf's tod Ouo·s attitude towards iUlck.nt Rome is described by Land$bcrg, Ono's alw by Sanforc:l. William of Mahnesbury"s b)! R_. 1'ho(I)&On. WiUJam ()j Mlllmnbury

(Woodbridge, 1987), pa,.;m, '2 The manuscript has bc.c.n studied b)' W. Stubbs in the introduction (cxxxi-c:xJ) to Rtulutji de Oicdo opeM l1 i.tWrir:a , Ruum Bri.tonnicon~m mtdii tuv; scriptores, \'Ois 68·69(London. 1876), and

by ThtlmSon, \Vii/lam of Malm~sbury, 66-61. 92-93, & 11& 117.

The Texts and Contexts of Ancient Roman History

101

own composition in tlle sense that he carefully selected the texts. put them in order and wrote brief links between them. The anthology covers Roman history from the fall of Troy to 1129 A.D. (when William apparently produced the book) by reproducing the following works: Dares Phrygius on the fall of Troy (in tlle twelfth century believed to have been translated by Cornelius Nepos aod dedicated to Sallust), excerpts from 'Cato' and Justin, and the entire Hi.storiat adve,-us paganos by Orosi us. That brings us to the beginning of the fifth century A.D. Now William guides his readers back to the origins of Rome again by having Eutropius' Breviarmm copied. He himself explains why: The foUowi.ng ten books of Roman his.tory were composed by Eutropius for the Emperor Valens. As quite a lot of this, however, was added by Paul, a monk from

Monte Cassino, 1 bave endeavoured. by putting in their names at every turn, to make it clear to the reader who wrote what. The same Paul compiled the following five books up to Justinian, u.~ng a number of authors, particularly Orosiu~ and Jordanes, as 1have takt·n care to note in the margin. Jba,·c put Orosius before.Paul. and Jordancs after so the reader will have the full texts on each side or those cxccrpt5 Paul chose to make. From Justinian to Louis, Haimo the motlk ooUec:ted the material.3

'Haimo' is in fact a mistake for Hugh of F1eury whose Hiscotia ecclesiastica in its se<:ond edition brings the narrative up to 1110; but- as William states after the text of Jordanes's Romano- it has been cut down to sil.c ror the present collection: Jordanes the bishop and Paul the Deacon composed the preceding histotjes of emperors. The following i:s compiled ftom various authorS by Haimo. a monk of

Fleury. l.n all instances J have kept the sense of his text, and sometimes also the wo.rding, though I ha\'c left out his material on thb Lombards. Prank·s. and Goths. These peoples" hjstory cnn be studied elsewhere in the particular books dc~o·otcd to them ...

William also added a brief continuation up to 1129. The second half of the manuscript (fos. 140va-222va) contains Roman law ( 8revi(lrWm Alarict). It is hard to come up with a precise label for William's collection o f texts. He talks about 'gesta Romanorum' and 'gesta imperatorw11' , and his effort to skip Hugh's paragraphs on Lombards, franks and Goths also indicates something like a continuous ' history of the Roman.< and their empire', altllough lhe law code hardly forms an integral pan of that theme. The second list of works on ancient (and recent) history can be extracted from John ot Salisbury's prologue to his Hi.storia pontifica/is (probably from

) Fo. 13; quo1ed by 'T'tKirnson. lVi/luon nf Malmt>.fbury, 61>67 (m)' translation). • Fo. 135: quoted by Tbom\On. \Vi(Jiam of Murm~sbury. 67 {my tmtmat)on).

Hl2

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth·Cenrury Europe

1.164).' It deals with papal history in the )'ears 1148-52, but John clearly envisaged the work as the most recent addjtion 10 a narratio perpetua of church history. His overview of the maze of ancient and me.dieval historical literature is refre.
mentions Orosi us, who included much materi;•l on Roman secular bistory. Thus even in a list of ecclesiastical histories, an imponant 'Roman historian' surfaces. The last twelflh-<:<:ntury enumeralion of hislorians I want to draw anention to? is the one Ralph of Diss inserted at the opening of his Abbre"iationes chro11icomm (1190$). He himself explains the purpose of ihe rather tong list: Bul before (the reader! comes to the title of lhe present book, he will find the n•mcs of famous men and information about the time in which they wrote, and also, adjoined to the List, ptolo,gues of some of the works. Thus>if he does not have eas)' access to the full volumes, he will be able to see at a glance what their opinions were) and what memorable deeds they transmitted through the centuries to posterity .11

In effect, Ralph's list is a bibliography of the works he 'abbreviated' from, and -as many modem counterpans - it is a slightly inHaled one. It turns out that he probably knew some of the works only second-band, but there is oo doubt that be consulted the majority himself. 9 The list opens with Justin and Josephus

s On the work and its dating: 1'h' Historia Pomificalis of John of Salisbury , eeL and tr. M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1986), in particuJar xxx & xxxix. 6 In her edition of John's Jlistoria pondfiatlis, Joe. ci1. Olibnatl Jea,·e.s ~1 ug.hl$ work unidenti· fied. hut in her artie! ~ on 'John of Salisbury as Historian' (Tht World ofJohn of Satisbur.v. td. M. Wille$ (Oxford, 1984), 169-71) she seems to ao.:ept the idt,ntiftcation with the Chronicu {also ltoowo as Libtr d' trib1u mllximis ~;irc:llmsttmtiis g~storurn) , John'sdeseripti(ln of the ~A'Ork: fits ~~>•ciJ whb who'll is kJ~'n aboo.tliugh's nill unpubljshcd v.'t)rk;d. the outline$ given hy R. Baron ( 1967) 'Y Ouonique de Hugue!) de Saint·Vtetor-', i.n $nulla Oratillna , 12 (Collee1anea Stephan Kuttne r vol. 2), cd. I. Forchiclli & A.M. Stkkler ( Bologna. 1967}. l6>80. ' Prologue. 1·3 (ed. Olibnall). A Abbm>iuti.(Nlrt, 19·2.0 (rny trans.lati(ln- as below). 9 Stubbs· prc£acc-m vul. ii, pp. x,•ii-n.

The Texts and Contuts of A ncient Roman Hisrory

!03

and others but a litlle funber on we find the works concerned with Roman history proper: Euttopius describes Roman history from the time or Janus and Saturn up to the year of the incarnation 366. Paul the Deawn add$ s.ix books of Roman history. 10

Then follows Jerome and his continuators (including Sigebert of Gembloux), Rufinus' (= Eusebius) Ecclesiastical History etc. Orosius' world history is called a 'chronography' . 11 The list closes with one of Ralph's important sources for chronology and recent history, Robert de Monte, and be himsell comes at the very end. In all these 'Usts' of historical works . it is clear that ancient Roman history forms part of a continuous world history. Yet there is a strong difference in emphasi..: William of Malmesbury's book was not opened by biblical history, and its wide selection of texts on Roman history almost makes that the subject in itself: the modern parts merely act as an appendix. This is one important aspect: tbe history of ancient Rome was not as weii.<Jefined a subject as it is today - there was e.g. no idea of an end of 'classical civilisation' - and its contents tended to be swallowed up by tbe stream of church or world history. On the other hand it could certainly have been seen by Wiltiam and others as a pivotal period in itself- regardless whether they chose to place-the end in the age of Justinian (following Paul the Deacon's Historia Romana), or at the time when the Roman empire of the Romans became the Roman empire of the Franks. Another interesting feature seems to emerge. The texts we consider essential for the study of Roman history - Sallust, Caesar, Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus- are aU absent. To twelfth-century English scholars Roman history was offered by late antique writers: Orosi us - the only one to be included by all three - and Eutropiuswith Paul the Deacon's additions (referred to by William and Ralph, and the only work labelled 'Historia Romana'). Le,t me now try to broaden the perspective from the evidence given by a few contemporaries to the evidence of the extant manuscripts, and to a list of the texts on Roman history that might have enjoyed attention as such in twelfthcentury scholarship. In order to make the task manageable and to avoid mentioning every work rhat has anything at all to say on Roman history, some types of texts must be eliminated from this survey. The following three groups can- " ith good reason I think- be disregarded. First, the non-nacrative chronicles in the tradition of Jerome. Jerome's Latin edition of Eusebius' Ch.ronicle was, of course, a major reference book for the history of the ancient world. Its entries on Roman history were cenainly often

111

AbbrevUuionf's, 21.

II

Ibid. 22.

104

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

consulted by rwelfth-ceotury scholars and its ingenious set-up could yield fine material for a chronographer, but it in no way presents a coherent (part of) Roman history. This is less true of Jerome's antique continuators - Prosper, Victor of Thnnunna, Hydatius, Marcellinus Comes, John of Biclaro, Marius of Avenches and others - but they tend to reflect the cultural disruption of the Roman empire in the fifth and sixth centuries by dealing typically with a very short span of time and often from a rather local point of view. There is no doubt that Jerome's work was widespread in the twelfth century. A hand-list of exjsting manuscripts includes 63 which were copied before c. 1200 and of these 26 are from the rwelfth century itself (from now on the notation for this will be 63126). 12 Secondly, the late antique church histories, i.e. Rulinus's translation of Euscbius. and Cassiodorus's/Epiphanius's translation and compilation of Euscbius's continuators Theodore!, Sozomen, and Socrates - the above mentioned Hiscorifl ecclesiastica cripartila (HET). Both texts were widely diffused in the twelfth century, and no doubt provided knowledge about aspects of Roman secular history as well. The manuscript tradition of HEThas been studied in depth: it rums out that among the extant manuscripts, 72 existed by c. 1200, and 28 of these were copied in the twelfth century (72128)." Thirdly, the 'classical' historians, i.e. Sallust, Caesar, Livy. Tacitus, and Ammianus. The extant works of the first two merely treat of minor episodes of Roman history and they were useless a." guides beyond that. They were, however, not neglected by rwelfth-century scholars. who actually studied Sallust to a great extent. This is evidenced by the number of manuscripts (excluding excerpts): Sal lust, i11gurtha: 130 existing by c. 1200/85 copied in the twelfth century: Sallust , Catiline, 115/n: Caesar, The Gallic War. 28116;

11

1bc tist is found in B. Lambcn. Rihliorltecti 1/itr<mymiQM mu.nu:scripta. La trudiliOn

manurcn)e des ouevm de saint Jirimte , 4 vols (Stenbrugbre, 1969·12), ii, 31-4'2. l..al'l\bert renders

mainly second-hand infonnation and the l:'lUntbers of m.anu.._~ri pt$ v.'OOid PfObably increase somewh.a.t if a thorough in~stigation was catried out. In counting from his list 1hll''e induded Cra&ments and exduded e.x:cerpa (cr. below note 18). 1 " I have counted the mss from \V, Jacob, Die hondtchriflik:lte {JfN_rfiefmmg dcr sogi'Ninnttn IIUtoria tripartila dts Epiphtmiut~Ca...t,tiod()r. Texte und Unte.nu<:hungen tur Ot$Cbidue der altcbris.tlichen Uteratur. Bd. 59 (• V. Reihe, Bd. 4). ed. R. Hanilik(Bertio 19S4). For the method

of counting dubiou.'> dating,s see below n!)te 18. 1'ht maouscript C\'idcnce for Rufinus remains to be: mapped ou.t. My imprwion o! ils popularity derives from mcdie\'31 and modem ma.nusc:ripe catalogues. Some exampk:s of th~ use of H £,1' as a source by tw~lftfH::entury scholars can be found in L.B. Mortemeo, ':i:txo Gntmm3rieus' View of thc Origin of the Oanes and his Hlstoriogr<tphical Models'. CaltJt.rs dt l"inJtJ'nu du mcytn·ogt gr« eJ/adn, SS (1987), 169-18:) and idem, 'Twe1fthCentury Studies in Trier's Roman Past. (Chronological dbx:us.sions in MS British Libcaty. Addit. 19967)'. it>d.. 59 (1989) 297-322.

The Texts and Conte;cts ofAncient Roman History

105

Caesar, The Civil War: 11161 ' Sallust was taught in the school• and often served a.~ a literary model for historians and other twelfth-<:entury writers. In late antiquity the complete texts of Livy, Tacitus and Ammianus formed an

elaborate continuous history of Rome 1 probably the most well.. informed and judicious history of Rome ever to have existed in Latin: Livy covered every· thing from the origins to Augustus: Tacitus went on from Augustus to Nerva; and Ammianus gave an account of imperial history from Nerva to Valens (378 A .D.). By the Carolingian renaissance the major part ofthiHnormous corpus

was 1ost, and what remained was fragmented . Of Livy's text the first, third, fourth, and fifth decades led separate and not very glamorous afterlives ( I: 221 7, IU: 1214, IV: 310, V: U0 15 , whereas Tacitus and Ammianus virtually suffered a coma in the twelfth century (Tacit us, Annalts: 210. Hlstoriae: 110, Ammianus: 210). 16 In short, the major classical historians were either unknown to the twelfth century or they were known only for minor pieces dealing with short episodes of Rome's long history. The texts to be considered here are firstly narrative histories of the world with substantial chapters on Roman history and secondly works on Roman history proper. The first group includes t hree items, here presented in thei r chronological order of composition. I. Paulus Orosius' HiJtoriae adversus paganos dating from 417 is a work of considerable dimension (310 modem pages). 17 lt is the only Christian narra· tive of the world that we know from antiquity. That honour partly accounts for its ubiquitous success but I suspect that other factors may have been equally

important. Orosi us's claim that he WTOte the work on Augustine's request lent it a certain splendour; this is clearly visible in medieval manuscripts where the fact is often published in large coloured letters on the title page. An even more important feature of the work was that it dealt comprehensively with profane

world history from the creation to Orosius's own time, and it did so in a clear, though not unadorned language. Books 1·111 are heavily dependent on Justin and treat of the ancient Near East, Greece, Alexander and the relevant parts of Roman history. Books IV-VIl (almost two· thirds of the work) are foeused entirely on Rome from the time of the war with Pyrrhus up to Emperor Honoriu~. This part- drawing particularly on Livy and Eutropius - gives a 14

SaUus.t: B. Munk Olsen. 'La popularit~ des textes classiques entre le IXe et le XDe s.i~clc' RtvU< d'hisU>ire des J<:rte>, 14-IS (1984-I!S} 169·81: 111 & Munk Obcn. I.:tlwk
w

1910). 11 Hect and La 1he toUowi.n& the ownberof pa.gcsarecaJculatedon the !iame basis (t350unhs for

·->·

106

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth·Ctntury Europe

broad continuous narrative of Republican as well as Imperial Rome ; the only other rexr thar could match this feat was Histori« Romarw (see below). Among extant manuscripts of Orosi us, an astonishing 107 also existed by c. 1200. and 47 of these were produced during the twelfth century. 18 2. Jordanes's Romana from 551. This is a much more modest work than Orosius's apologetic world chronicle (85 pages), and it is Christian in irs tendency only in so far as ir opens with biblical chronology. Soon the action centres on Roman history, which in fact takes up the remaining four fifths of the book. Jordanes' main sources are Aorus, Jerome, and Marcelli nus Comes. Sixteen of tbe extant (llSS pre-date c. 1200 and eight of these are twelfth· century eopies. 19 3. The Carolingian scholar Fre<;ulfus of lisieux composed (c. 825/30) a large and rather original Chronieon in rwo volumes. It covers approximately the same period as Jordanes' world histo ry (Adam to Justinian), but its structure and contents are much more explicitly Christian: the dividing point between the two volumes is the binh of Christ and the prehistory and the history of the church loom very large. That is not to say that profane- oreven literary - history is ignored. Much effon has been put into this compilation and it is all presented in an anfullanguage. The first volume takes up 180 pages and is divided into seven books; the second is even larger (260 pages), but consists only of five books. Roman matters surface in the fourth book of the first volume, and dominate in Book Seven which deals with the civil wars. The

1

'

Unless other reCerences are made the

IUIJT\bel'$

ot manuscripts are taken from my own

database, of which the (ull doc.umenlat;on will be pub&bcd at a later SUIJC. The base has been built on modern caullogues anc::l on inspe4:tion of mo.t.y of the mss themSelves, but some gaps still nud to be filled. The numbcn presented Mre, however, will not deviate 'ignificantly from 1ht final results. 1be dat:ings of the mss are mainly taken from We catalOJUCSal)d'Qr more rect-at palaeograpbjc liter&ture. where available. ln a few instances 1 have c:orrected u.n old cataklJue's datin' myself. Oatings of the type 11112 hav-e.()( course, been retained from my i;Ources und in the pr-esc:nt calculus but oi these are oountcd as e leventh oentury, half as twelfth; similarly half of tho$( date$ 12113 have been disregarded. Manuseripts recently ~~ of which good description" e.xist are included. Fr.gments are- a1. they should be - counted as manusaipu; bO\\'ever, one must be t~wart tb.:lt chis ten4s «>favour tbe statistiai for long tc:n.o; sli&)ltly. be-cause frapu:nt'i are more likely h) Jurvive from the&e than from sbort ones. As regards lhe.manuscripts ry). A few epitomes or Orosius also exist- some, il seems, made io the twelfth century- but they have been left out as Wtlf. beeau.se they requite lurcher study, Tht s.taoda.td edidon of Orosius is by W. Z.a.ogemeistcr, Corpus scrlpumun eccltsilltri«mun 14tin()rwn. v (Vienna. 1882). The h:ru half of a nc:w criti
The Texts a11d Collle:
107

second volume focuses entirely on Roman imperial history, though this is, as stated, i.n tertwioed "ith ecclesiastical history. Freculfus's main source for Roman llistory is Orosius. Additional sources include Jerome's Chronicle, Horus' Epitome (see no. 7 below), Rufinus, HET, Jordanes' Roma110, and Epitome de Caesaribus (see no. 5 below). The first volume was well known in the twelfth century (25120), whereas the second one seems to have been rare

(5/4).'"' The second group consists of texts exclusively concerned with (major parts of) Roman history: 4. Historia Romana has already been mentioned several times. It came in one ofthree basic editions: Eutropius's Breviarium (c. 365), Paul the Deacon's flistoria Roma110 (c. 770), and Landolfus Sagax's Historia Miscella (c. 1000). The two first titles do appear in the manuscripts, but the third one is a more recent characterisation and should be avoided - especially in this medieval context. In fact it is safest simply to caU the work 'Historia Rom ana'. no matter what the given edition, because that is by far the most frequent usage in medieval manuscripts and medieval library catalogues. The nucleus text was Eutropius's overview of Roman history from Romulus to Jovian (364). It is a rather short piece (80 pages) written in an unpretentious idiom. The pure text of Eutropius was not very widely copied in the twelfth century: 1317.21 In a similar unadorned language Paul the Deacon added six books (William of Malmesbury's above-quoted count of books is anomalous), and took the history up to the age of Justinian. He also added a new introduction on the mythical age before Romulus (and even before Aeneas) and inserted a few passages into Eutropius's account, dealing with biblical chronology and ecc.lesiastical events. The prehistory he gleaned mainly from the late antique Origo gtnris Rotmlf!Jlt, whereas the Christian chronological notes originated with Jerome and Orosius. The additional material within Eutropius's text is not very substantial, but with the new six books on top, the History had more than doubled its size (170 pages). The material on the period between the late fourth and the mid sixth century Paul conftated from various sources, e.g.

Orosius. Jerome, Prosper.

Jordanes~

Bede, and saints' lives. Even in this

sixteen·book form the text still presented itself to the twelfth·century reader as 'Euttopius's flisroria Roma110' on the first page. Only between the tenth and eleventh books would he find a note stating that Paul the Deacon was

20

With sti,g.in altera1ions I have toUowed the lbt of DUUluscripts giveo by C.F. Natuoewicz., 'Fr«U.Jptrus of Us.icux. his Chronicle and Mont St M.kbd Manuscript•. So.cri.' Erudiri, 17 (1966),

88·134. Still me tn06C TeOClH edition is in PL 106: 917·1258. Zl Tbe most recent edition i1 by C. Santini (Srult&ar1 1979) . On the manusaipb'ste also L.D. Reynolds (ed.). Tt'xt:s ond Tr411$mW.i.on: A SuiVt-)' of tht Lt~rin C/Qs#ct (OxJord 1983) IS9-6l. Noone of these liMs claims to be complete. aod I ha\•e added some items from my database.

108

TM- Perception of tht Prur in Twelfth-Century europe

responsible for the rest of the work. Paul's edition was the standard 'History of Rome' in the Middle Ages. The manuscript numbers for the twelfth century are 37119. 22 About 200 years later yet another edition appeared. It was compiled by the otherwise unknown Landolfu.~ Sagax. He followed the same strategy as Paul: adding to the text aod updating it at the end- though not all the way up to his own tione. He excerpted large sections especially from Orosius and inserted them where appropriate . Additional sources were, among others, Jerome, Rufinus, and HET. For the period between Justinian and Leo V (813-20) he relied on Anastasius Bibliothecarius' traoslation of Greek chronicles ( Chronographia tripanita). The result was a huge volume (615 pages) divided into 26 books (Landolfus split Paurssi.xtecn books into eighteen, and added eight new o nes). Despite these dimensions the work fared equally well as tbe handy 'pure' Eutropius in the twelfth century: 917.23 If all three editions of Historia Romana are taken under the same heading the numbers are 59133. 5. In modem editions the anonymous Epitome de Caesaribus (4Q pages) is often read together with three other late antique texts that encompass most of Roman history: Origo ge111is Romanae. (on the origins), De viris illusrrilms (on the kings and outstanding Republican figures), and Aurelius Victor's compact series of imperial lives, Caesares. In the middle ages, however, this was not so: The Epitom~ had a separate transmission and is known in a few copies from the twelfth century: 12/5. The other texts are known exclusively from post-1200 manuscripts_, and only two scholars before that demonstrably used ooe of the

texts (viz. Paul tbe Deacon and Landolfus Sagax wbo used Origo). The Epitome is based in part on Aurelius Victor's work, but for the. 'post· Suetonian' period it relies on sources now lost. Its brief biographies stretch from Augustus to Theodosius the Great.24 6. Festus' very short Breviarium (20 pages) dates from c. 370. In contrast to The best edition of 'PauJ'5 Hi.storio R.onuma is by A . Crivelluoci in Ponti ptr Ia .storiD d'/talio (Rome, 1914). His thorough- but uldin.ished 31)(1 hetetogeneous - n~'ICesoo tbecx1arn rnanug;ripts were publisht\1 posthum0t.11ly as 'Ptr l'edi:zione della HUroria RomaM di Paolo Di~conq' Bfdl(ltinO tkU'i.stiJUUJ storko Ualiano, 40 ( 192l ). 7-103. Cri.,-e.Uucci sccms 10 ha\'C kfl 0\11 only few e.xtant maouscrip(S, but J have supplemented his informarioo (tspt(ially on dating) from other 22

5()urets and M)' database. :3 J\.g.'Ain tbe best edition is by A. C.riveUucd in fomi ptr Ia stori11 d~ltaUD. 2 vols (Rome, 191213). Only some of the extant manuscripts are mentioned in his introduction. 24 lbe most reoeot editkm of the EpiJo,te includes the other text.'; F. Pi<:blma}'r, &,ni A.urciU Victor~\' Liber de Cae:um'bus, pracudunt Origo gentis Rormmat. et Libcr tic ••irU ill•.stribus Romnt, sub.vequitur Epitnmr de Caesuribus (Leipzig, 19U). On tbe t.ransmiss.ion ot the Epltomt there i::s nothiog better than PichJma)T'S introduction, whereas the corpus of the other cexts isdiscUSStd by A. Momjg.liaoo 'Soroe ObscrvaliOft$ on abe Origt> gtnd$ Rom~~nM'. Jourlull of Rorn~Jn Stud.i#s , 48 (l958) . 56-73. See funbermorc-G. Puccioni, LA fortuntJ n~dit\•ale dtlla Origo ge111U RonuJntle (Biblioteca di cultura coatempornnea 60. Messi.na·Fircnze 19S8): he denies Paul's use of Ofito. but is proven wrong by G. 81\l&!lOIJ, 1..a latjnitrt di Paolo di~oo: l'archeolo~a itahca'. BentdicriJta, 12 ( 1958). 185-203 and Klcm. 'Paolo D i3COI'IO e I'Origo gt-.nli.r Rt>mlu~'. Rivb·u, dJ culmra clauica e medievale, 2 (1960). 311~7 .

The Te.r:ts and Contexts of A ncient Roman History

109

the other texts it is not chronologically arranged, bur geographically: the provinces a re catalogued with information o n the rustory of their annexation by Rome. Festus's useful little survey was rare in the twelfth century: 1213.lj 7. Florus's epitome from the second century covers Republican Rome (Ro mulus to A ugustus) and its main source is Livy. In CQntrast to the othe r epitomators Horus's text is quite long (120 pages) and he displays literary ambitions but his style obviously d id not captivate his twelfth-century readers: the manuscripts are distributed 15n."" 8. The. late antique summaries of Livy, Perioclwe Livianae, are barely a readable text but their 100 pages do have a lot of information on the period from Ro mulu.• to Augustus. They do not seem to have been in high demand in the twelfth century: 1013.n 9. Su ctonius. The imperial biographies o f the Julia.ns and Aavians (Caesar to Domitian) writte n around A.D. 120enjoyed some popularity in the twelfth century: 17/13.28 10. The controversial sequel to Suctonius's biographies, Historiu Augw:tanow CQmmo nly dated to the end of the founh century - enjoyed some attention during the Carolingian renaissance but interest then seems to have pete red out. Only one twelfth-century scho lar {Godfrey of Vitcrbo) used the work and the only twelfth-century manuscript C
suc::c:ts de I'oeuvre', of 8 . Gue~e . HUUJirt ~ C'.ulturc hi.JtQriqut: duns I'occidcnJ mldiivaf (Puis., 1980) for a discu.s.1ion or various aspects ofthe popularity of historiettJ writings io the middle ages.

110

The Perception of the Past i11 Twelfth·Cenn
Copied c. 1100.1200

107

47

Historia Rom.

59

33

Freculfus I Suetonius Jordanes

25

20

17

13

16

8

FlonL~

15

Epitome Frcculfus 11 Festus Pcriochac Historia Aug.

12

7 5

5

4

12 10

3 3 1

Orosius

6

Having established a typology of texts and some statistic guidelines, we can now attempt to extract some clues from the mss as to a typology of readers. Who studied Roman histories, and in which contexts? The first obvious question is whether any of the relevant texts formed part of a curriculum in the cathedral or monastic schools. To judge from the numbers of manuscripts it would he tempting to plaoe at lea.•t the top three - Orosius, Nistoria Romano, and Freculfus I - in a school conte-:«. 31 I do not consider that feasible. There are two main reasons for denying this possibility: I. The absence of a commenta.ry tradition ; 2. The physical characteristics of the manuscripts in question. I shaJI deal with these reasons S¢parately, and tht"·n turn to the problem of an alternative context. Of the totall91 pre-1200 manuscripts of the three most widely copied texts, I have inspected about a third and have collected reliable second·hand infonna· tion on a few others. My impression from this is unambiguous: there is no standard commentary on any of these texts. In fact I have found no commen· taries at all (beyond marginal summaries) on Historia Romana and Freculfus 1.

Nor have I come ac.ross independent continuous commentaries. A few Orosiu.'i

manuscripts display twe lfth-century marginal commentaries.32 These need to be studied before any confident general sta tements can he made. However, it is much more likely that these few commentaries will turn out to have been individual scholars' private work, rather than products of a school. Their number is too few, and codicological considerarions (discussed below) do not support such a claim. Anothe.r missing scholastic feature is the access us, the

Jl

This. has in fact been wgg.ested (or Orosius and f'reculphus: Bo.tely & Ross. "A Check Ustof

Manu~pts•, 329. and Natune.,.,icz., 'f,eculfus of Lisieu:x',

93. l2 I have setn four: Cambt:dge. Tti~:"~ily College 0.4.34; Paris BN lat. 4871 (eleventh
ms): Pari$ BN lat. 4876; Paris BN lal. 4877. Furthermore secood·banc.l information poiocs to th.rtt more: ae.rtio, StaatsbibUothek lat. F. 223; Engelberg. Stiftsbibliothek 1009; Stul1pn HB F. 410. Finally St Callen 621 and Vatican Reg. lat. 16$0 display Carolingian commenlaries. and Bern U:()

some eleventh•century notes(?).

Tlw Texts and Contexts of Ancient Roman History

111

introduction to the author and his work. In Freculfus manuscripts there is nothing, and in Historia Romana manuscripts there is the short statement on Eutropius and Paul referred to above. Orosius manuscripts have either no introduction or just a brief entry on the author taken from Gennadius's Dt viris iJJustribus; in some cases, however, this is slightly enlarged with a pattern that seems to have a scholastic origin. Again this needs further study but I suspect that it is another instance of private scholarly work. 1\veUth~enrury copies of Orosius and Freculfus are almost invariably found in rather stately volumes, sized about 30 x 20 em and often larger. The average size of copies of Historia Romano seems to have been slightly smaller. This is not to say that they are luxury volumes, so far I have not seen any really lavish books. They represent a solid and well·organi..:d - expen~ve, but not princely - production of books. Thus the cbeap extreme is also absent and that is equally important: even if large beautiful books are guarded better than modest ones,» one would expect a certain number of, for instance, the extant 47 twelfth-century copies of Orosius to have a small scholastic format and unpretentious lay-out; this is even more so if one assumes for Orosius the status of text-book on the very basis of the numerous extant manuscripts. These observations lead me to the conclusion that none of the top three autbors (nor, probably, any of tbe others) ranked as an aucsor. This is perhaps not surprising when one considers the style of the Roman histories in question. As outlined above, the only ones who wrote in an adorned style, or one that could possible gain pupils in the classici~g twelfth century, were Freculfus and Florus and, to a lesser extent, Suetonius and Orosi us. The fact is, anyway, that there are hardly any examples of twelfth-century historians u~ng one of them as a Leitautor. Although it is difficult at the present stage to describe, beyond these negative terms, the wider context of these texts and to detennine more precisely what kind of people used them, how and how often they were. consulted, it is pos.;ble to say something about their contexts in a strict sense: in many manuscripts the texts on Roman history are accompanied by other texts. In the present essay I can only offer a few examples but they suffice, I hope, to show that the contexts are not completely random. Let me begin by explaining what I mean by an accompanying text. A medieval manuscript holding a given historical text very often contains other texts as well. In many cases the copies of these others are heterogeneous: they arc clearly written in an earlier or later hand, or they differ in lay-out (script, size, columns, lines etc.) . These other texts, then, cannot be counted as 'accompanying' because they were probably not copied with that intention; they were certainly not copied at the same place and/or time as the historical text in q uestion. The latter must be treated as a single text, although of course it might originally have had other partners of which we have no evidence.

"' 0 . Mul1k Olst.n 'La popula.ritt des textell da!ijiqut$', 112·73.

l\2

The Perception of the Past in Twe/[11.-Ctnlury Europe

In some instances the copies of the other texts are homogeneous with the copy of the historical text. These fall into two categories: I. When the different texts occupy different COc twelfth century), because collections were. of course, often copied as such. (This docs not minimise the importance of the collections as tbey ought not to be viewed exclusively from the perspective of production, but equally from the perspective of 'consumption': the given texts were also found together by twclfth-«ntury users.) In a few instances comemporary evidence on collections of texts swvives: either there is a list of contents in the manuscript itself. or the manuscript can be identified with an item in a

medieval library inventory. Then we can easily reach a very likely description of the original contents of that manuscript. I $hall now give a few examples on contexts for the top three authors on

Roman history, and I will indicate whether we are dealing with type {I) or (2) accompanying texts. The most voluminous texts, Orosius and Landolfus'

Historiu Romtma, could easily take up the space of a ''olume on their own. Many copies, there(o(e, made a book in themselves and were not accompanied by any texts at all. A good example of the standard 'single' Orosius is MS Oxford Jesus College 62 from Cirenccster: it measures 33 x 22 em and needs 143 folios with 341ines in two columns to render the text. It is unwise to talk of a 'standard Landotfus' among seven extant twelfth..eentury manuscripts, but MS Paris BN lat. 5795, from Tournai , at least gives a good idea of what it took to produce a copy of that text: 162 los. of 34 x 25 em with 41-42 lines in two columns.

,. 0{ w u.11e, 50me books COO$i$ting of hcterogeneotH& parts (e.g. from the. ninth and the eleventh tentury) may have been assembled L"Onsciously by a twelfth-ceotury scribe or stholar. Such coUections are important lor the presc.nt inquiry, bu1 d.e chaoce lha1 they .are identifiable is so minimal, lMt they ca.n be ruled <Mln practice.

The Texts and ContexJs of Ancient Roman History

113

Sometimes two rather large texts both dealing with ancient history accom· pany each other. Three Brussels manuscripts contain Orosi us plus Fre<:ulfus 1: MSS 9531-32(1348), 5424-25 (1349), and 9170-73 (1347). The first of these is a type 2 companionship, the otber two type l. Another example is Orosius bound together with his main source for the first (non-Roman) part, Ju."tin: MS Leiden Voss. lat. F. 18 (type 2, from England) and MS Paris BN lat. 4874 (type 1, from France) ." Even larger masses of text could accompa.ny each other. This is the case - though probably an extreme one - when Landolfus and H ET are joined in a late eleventh- or early twelfth-century manuscript produced in Trier, now London, British Library Add. 19967 (type I). The result was very unwieldy: 38 x Z5 em and 267 folios. The geographical compilation by Solinus (c.200 A. D.) is joined to Orosius in MSSParisBN lat. 17543 and in ParisBN lat. 4873 (&8319, fo. 49) (both type 2). 36 The first also includes some twelfth-century theological treaties (by Richard of St VICtor) and the second Isidore's History of the Goths (c. 620 A.D.) . Another more fancifttl handbook of geography by ' Aethicus Ister' (seventh or eighth century) is combined with Orooius in MSS Cambridge Trinity College 0.4.34 & 0.4.36; this is followed by Jordanes' History of the Goths (Getica). That collection (type 2) was produced in Christchurch, Canterbury." In MS Paris BN lat. 5802 Eutropius is accompanied by two other Roman histories, F1orus and Suetonius, and in the same volume was added Frontinus' military manual (end of first century A.D.), Cicero's Philippic speeches and bis Tusculan disputations (type 2). 38 This is a French manuscript, but it has an English counterpan in MS Oxford, Lincoln College, lat. 100 which contains Eutropius, Frontinus, and another military treatise (the late antique Vege--

tius), as well as a list of Roman emperors (type 2); the collection was in fact organised by William of Malmesbury. Sometimes Historia Romana iscombioed with a great variety of ancient and medieval historical texts. One instanoe isMS Brussels 64394151 (3!08) which is a oollection focused on Frankish history, but introduced with Eutropius (type 2). In the order of appearance the other main texts are: MarceUinus Comes' Chronicle, a survey of the Gallic provinces, Gregory of Tours' History of the Franks I-IX, his seventh-century continuator 'Fnedegar', and as the main pan tbe Annales Berliniani. The manuscript, which is almost half a meter high (47 x 32 em), concludes with tists of Frankish rulers and counts of

1

' For anaJysisofthetwo Justin nw: Munk Olsen, i, 544 & 544. FOt a$tlJ"\\t_)l o£\becumbinition ol Orwius and Juuinus: L.B. Mortensen, 'Orm:ius and Ju.stinU$ in One Volume: Posc.C0oqi)C:St Boob across the Owtncl', Caltius tk finstiml du moytn·4gt gr« tt lalin, 60 (1990), 389--99. " Mllftk Oben, H. ltO & Sl4. "' Ori:gina.I.Iy one tnal1usai:pc as demonlttatcd. by Mommaen in tbe edition of Jordanes, J.xi-b:ii. His analysis b.u sainod immetl$0ly in value, btu~ lho seoond pan coota.ining most ot Aetb.icus and the entire Oetica wu burned in his house sbonly afterward&. • Munk Olsen, i.lS4.l87. 393 &. U, S1S.

114

J'IJ,

Ptraption of the P<1$1 i11 'f'welftlr·Cet~n
Aanders. It is from around 1100 and was copied in iL' entirery from MSS Sa.intOmer 697 & 706, dating fro m about a century before."' Similarly Hi.!toria Romana in Paui Lhe Deacon's version was copied to form part of an interesting Italian collection. The manuscript is now in Brussels (3897-3919 (3095)), but was compiled by Guido of Pisa. He introduces the collection (type 2) himsell: · .. . The first book contains the cities and province.' of Italy, and Roman history. The second is on kingdoms and military terminology . .. . The third is on the parts of the world . ... The fourth is the book of kings- the chronicles of Jerome and Augustine. The fifth the history of Alexander and Dares. The >ixth contains the Roman history .' 40 The first-mentioned Roman history turns out to be an 'inventory' of the city of Rome - hills, regions etc. (fos. !Ov-13r). The other is the proper Roman history by Paul the Deacon (fO$. 142r· l72v ends imperfectly at the death of Valentinian). Guido's book is relatively compact (172 fos. 26 x 18 em) and furnished with nice illustrations, e.g. a portrait of Julius Caesar in the middle of the Roman history (fo. 158v). Another rich twelfth-century 'collection (type 2), this time from Tegemsee . deserves mention: MS Paris BN nouv. acq. lat. 3104 1 On the last page (fo. 228) a contemporary index says: 'excerpt om ex libro Orosli presbiteri. Hi.~toria

Romanorum. Breviarium de Gestis

Ron1auorum~

Gesta Alexandri magni.

Gcsta Karoli magni. Gesta Godefridi, Epistola Johanois prcsbiteri.' No less than three texts on Roman history are assembled here: an abbreviated Orosius, the rare Breviari11m of Festus, and the full text of Paul the Deacon's Historia Romano. The book is also outstanding by the inclusion o f crusading history, The 'Gesta Godcfridi' is Robert us Monachus's account of the first crusade (Historia Hierosolymitana) . whereas the letter of Prester John is an

even more recent work: this forge-ry. supposed to have been sent by a Christian king reigning over a huge empire in the Far East, began circulating in the West only i.n the third quarter of the century. ' 1 The Tegemsee compilator provided almost excessive material on Roman history as well as being very much

up-to-date. Very rarely are the Roman histories paired with non-historical texts. One manuscript. Vatican Ottob. lat. 68. seem to have aimed at illuminating the author, Orosius: the first main pan gives the Historiae advers11s paganos and the second part a spurious dialogue between Orosius and Augustine. Orosius

~ Cl. Reynok4, T'.xJs and '!TdMntission , 160.

~ My translation of bits of the rather long introductii tbe ms is given by Mu.nk Olsen, i, 367. •• The provenanoo is derived from tbe script (ct L.. Delisle Manusai:s lalins tt jr®fllis 11jousls ()~.'X fonds des noul•elle:s acquisitions, 1815·1891 (Pu:ris. 1891), 452 and the ftfteenltK.-entury ex libris on the i.nside bad: cover 'attiot l Tt.gemsee'. •l C1. 0. ZaganeUi 'Le leuere dd Ptt.te Gianni: Oi u~ ialso t: cklle sue verlt~· 243-60, in Fiil.schungtn lm Mirttlaltu, T eil V: Fi11gWm Btie[e, Fr(imntigke.it und Ftl/.tclumg. Reo.UtnfiJJscJ,un· gen (Hanover, 1988) .

The Text< and Contexts of Ancient Roman History

115

asks fundamental theological questions and Augustine solves the problems.<3 Two curious London manuscripts (British Library, Burney 216 and Royal 6 C viii ( + Cotton Vitellius C. viii, fos. 4-21)) both contain Orosius and Dares (type 2). But the Burney MS also has some translations of medical treaties by Constantinus Africanus (1020-87) and the Royal MS a chronicle of English affairs and a poem by Abelard.44 While it must be stressed again that the above examples are not necessarily representative, I would venture to claim that when texts on Roman history are accompanied by other texts, these other texts mostly deal with history or, to a lesser degree, with geography. Roughly these volumes could be said to serve a twofold purpose. In one way they acted as a quarry of historical (and geographicallmmtary) knowledge: they were reference books for mature scholars (whoever they were) and not meant for reading in their entirety. At the same time the selected texts on Roman history are narrative in their character and - though perhaps not great literature- very readable. In many cases they were accompanied by entertaining narrative histories of other peoples (e.g. Franks, Lomhards) or of other parts of ancient history (Dares, carious pieces on Alexander, Justin's Epitome). The literary value, or at least the fantastic contents of some of these writings, secured them a European following, sometimes beyond their o riginal local scope (exell)plified by Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain and Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards). Orosius and Historia Romana could not compete in adventure, but they probably gained popularity by the importance of their subject, the history of Rome. That was a common point of reference for all with the slightest interest in literature and in the past. Perhaps more telling are the absent contexts. I have not yet come across a single instance. of a full text of Orosius, Freculfus I, or Historia Romano accompanied by Sallust, or any other popular schooltext. This is a significant corroboration of the view that the histories presently discussed did not play any role in a curriculum. Nor are. they usually found with biblical commentaries, treatises of the church Fathers. nor with contempor•ry theological or philosophical literature. History was not a branch of learning in the twelfth century but historical texts do seem to have a 'branch• in medieval libraries: they constituted a separate group of books. From these lew observations and examples I hope it has emerged that a study of each extant copy of the texts in question is worthwhile if we want to understand more fully how, to what extent and for whom Roman history was <~)

Whetber this ls a 1ype 1 or 2 partnenhip 1 ha,·e not yet established. The diaJogue is printed in PL 40:733...51. Only one manWJCript wmbines Orosi us' Jliston'u~ ~ith his other extant •
lbe Deacon's historical or other works into one volume. .. On tbe cwo Londoa manu.saipt$; Munk Olsen, i, ~1().71.

116

The Perceprion of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

made available during the twelfth century. The question of wbo must of course, as already pointed o ut, be answered more completely by using the evidence of the twel.fth-century historians themselves, in addition to that given by the manuscripts. That is beyond the scope of the present essay. It is imponant to realise, however, that the dividing line between an historical composition by a twelfth-century scholar and a textual copy of e.g. Orosi us is more blurred than we, ae<:ustomed to a world of printed hooks, often assume. ln their way of 'referring' to Orosiu.~ the three English scholars mentioned in the beginning of tlus essay, exemplify this. John of Salisbury simply names Orosius as an earlier author of world history. He implies that the interested reader could locate this volume for himself somewhere. Ralph of Diss explicitly names the same option but also renders the service of excerpting bits and pieces. At one and the same lime be composes an 'independent' work and produces yet another copy of pans of Orosius and many others. William in a sense makes the most complete reference to Orosius: he provides a new and well-organised copy ofthe eotire text. These intellectua1 giants were involved

in an ordinary copying process as well as in an intelligent manipulation of the text of Orosi us. There is of course a great difference between the activity of a scribe copying Orosius and Freculfus I together, and Ralph of Diss copying bits of many authors chosen by himseU for a specific purpose. But the difference is less clear when known compilators of ancient history, Ralph of Diss, Otto of Freising and othe.rs, are compared to the anonymous compilator of. for instance, the Tegernsee manuscript. The activity of twelfth-century scholar.; concerned with Roman history centred exclusively on o ld texts, most of them late antique. The production of texts for the.ir own use was 'just' reproduction. But to some degree every copy was manipulated and, equally imponant, every manipulation constituted a fresh copy.

7

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism Ruth Macrides and Paul Magdalino

introduction (Paul Magdalino) 'This essay attempts to convey something of the wealth, the variety, the hidden depths and the general intereJ>~ of perceptions of the pa.~t in twelfth-century Byzantium. We are presenting material which, we hope, students of othe-r European cultures wiU be able to relate. mulatis mutandis, to their own knowledge. It may therefore. be useful to begin by setting tbe Byzantine scene with a few general remark.< about the social position and cultural values of the Byzantines whose perceptions we are studying. 1 We are dealing with the writings of seventeen individuals who, despite differences in origin and vocation, formed a remarkably homogeneous group. All were highly educated in Constantinople in a curriculum consisting essentially of grammar, rhetoric and philosophy. All, with the significant exception of the imperial princess Anna Comnena, aspired more or less successfully to paid offic-ial employment, and nearly all managed to supplement their inherited wealth with public salaries or pensions~ some- of them also wrote on commission for noble patrons. None were monks by choice, though two became monl<s under duress. All, again with the exception of Anna, belonged to a 'bourgeois gentry' which intellectually and, to a large extent, genetically, had been perpetuating the literate tradition of church and state for at least three centuries. They were the guardians of religious and political orthodoxy and as such were diehard conservatives. The system which educated and paid them had it aU worked out. Yet during the eleventh and twelfth centuries the system became subject to new influences and pressures. Its ranks were infi1trated by nouveaux riches. There was an increasing demand for education as a career investment and the best products of education were becoming increasingly sophisticated. Michael 1

I dt.aJ elltensi,·ety with these themes in a number o{ recent and fonhooming publications, which are reterred to suo l.oco below. Mos1 o( l.be relevant studies aJready published are reprinted together in 1ny Ttodirll.m tJnd TriiiiSj'ormiJ.Ji<m (see n.4 of the introduction to this volume) panicularly, no. I, 'B}'tantine-SnOObe.ry', 6r$1publb.hed il'l T1t.e 8y'l4nlifl~ Arist()CTacj•, IX 10 Xl/1

Ctmurin, ed. M. Angold, British Arcb.acoLogical Rc:pons, lntemation:a.J Series, 22-1 (Oxford, 1984), 58-78. Sec: aho, in a.cneral, tbe "'Orb o{ Aogold. Har.,.ey, Hendy and Kazhdan referred to ln the Umoductioo 10 this \'Oiume. n..5.

117

118

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century E::urope

Psellos is seen as marking lhc beginning of a new humanism . There.was a new vogue for the academic study of law and medicine. There was also a new interest in philosophy. which was not entirely killed by the show trial of John halos in 1082.2 The trial. of ltalos. though a conservative reaction, was symptomatic of three further developments which stamped the Byzantine cultural elite in the twelfth century. The first was the rise of the Comnenian dynasty, which demo ted the traditional elite to the status of a second-<:lass aristocracy, socially inferior to, and dependent on, the princes of the large, extended imperial family. The second was Ute consolidation of the cathedral clergy of Constantinople as the driving fo rce not only in the government of the church but also in education and in the determination o f the whole cultural and ideological agenda. 3 The third development was the empire's increasing defensiveness with regard to those who were perceived as outsiders. Byzantine intellectuals in the twelfth century were thus both more insecure and more confident than they had ever been. On the one hand, they were acutely conscious of their empire's territorial contraction and its infiltration by predatory foreigners, above all the western crusaders, traders, mercenaries and courtiers who were lreated with great favour by the Byzantine emperors, especially Manuel I , who freely advertised his liking for tbe 'Franks'. The intellectuals were also conscious of belonging to a class which was being squeezed from all directions: from above, by the Comneoian aristocracy, which monopolised the official definition of D()ble birth; from below, by the upward mobility of freed slaves and tradesmen; from the sides, by favoured foreigners. On the Olhcr hand, there was supreme (;Onfidcncc; confidence in

the e nduring vitality of the empire's institut.ions, in the rightness of its traditions. in the wealth. splendour and renown of Constantinople and, above all, in the sheer weight of learning preserved and transmitted in the city's schools and libraries. This learning left the intellectuals in no doubt at all as to who really mattered in their society. Two aspects of this cultural con.fldence are worth stressing in the present context: the importance attached to literacy as memory and the dominant role o f rhetoric. Books, wro te Theodore Prodromos in c. 1]2()..30, arc among life's major necessities because they are the most effective defence.against Tune the great destroyer. Think ofthc Bible, not to mention the classics.

2

See J. Gouillard. ·Lt pr~s ()fficiel de. Jean I'Jtalien; les actes et leun sous-tntendu.s', d Mtmmres, 9 (1985), 13~; L. Clucas., Tht Ttiai of John lta/4$ tmd tht Crisit of

Trg~·lllwx

lntell«tual Valuq in BytQIItium in th~ £ln>~r11h Ctntury, Mi$c:ellanea Byuntina Monacens.ia 26 (Munich, 1981). On Alcxios, ~enow the colloquium \"Olume Alaios I Komn~no.s , ed. M. Mullen and D. Smythe (Bc:lfas~. Corth<:Omi.t'lg); on Byuntine: pbiklwphy in the cweUtb century. &ec Nicbol;as of Metbone. RefuwiQn fJ{ Pmdu.l' Elt'"4!-nlJ of ThtOI()gy , ed. A. Aogelou (AlbeN/ L.cidcn, 1984). esp. liii-lxiv. 3 Set- P. Maadalino, '1'he Reform £diet o f 1107'. in Altxio$ I Komnenos (abo\·e, o.2), ~idem, ·Enlightenment and RepreMioD in '1\\ltlftb·C.e-l'ltuty Byzantium:'tbe Evidence of the Canonists'.

in B>•latllium in the Twdfth Century, cd. N. OikOI'lOn:'lides (Athens, 1992).

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

119

The Trojan wars, the Persian wars, Marathon, Achilles, Pericles .. . Miltiades?

Wby not add Hannibal of Carthase, Alexander of Macedon, Cac:;ar of Rome. and all the rest of tbe history that hooks. have preserved? See if you can number the solar cycles from then until now. No way. But while tbe thingti themselves bave grown aged with time, their memory flourishes in books.'

There speaks a mao for wbom memory without literacy was inconceivable. But there also speaks the trained rhetorician, stating the protheoria, the opening theme, for an encomium of a patriarch who had commissioned multiple copies of rare books for the use of poor scholars. Of the three elements in the Byzantine Trivium, rhetoric was by far the most important, and never more so than in the twelfth century. More than an academic discipline, rhetoric was a mentality which governed all forms of communication. It was effectively the art of finding the right form of words for the occasion.' It was also seen as an art of verbal illusioni.~m and it is no aecidentthatthe occasions when rhetorical speeches were delivered were known as ' theatres' 6 A friend of Theodore Prodromos wrote to him that rhetors 'swell and constrict things by .. . artifice, so as to speak largely of small things and to report big things in tiny terms, as if transforming and refashioning them with words' .7 The problem in reading Byzantine authors is knowing when, and how, they are having you on. The problem applies as mueh to 1"'-rccptions or the past as to perceptions of everyday reatity. 8 This is well illustrated by a lener which John Ttetzes wrote to the emperor Manuel aboutllSO. Tzetzes says he has beard that the emperor intends to honour a certain coun poet with a triumphal procession; he is lhererore concerned that the ceremony should follow the correct procedure, which he outlines on the basis or a description by Dio Cassius. At face value, the letter appears to show that three ~nturies ahead of Petrareh, the ancient

custom of honouring a poet in a public ceremony was revived by a Byzantine eml"'ror, advised by an antiquarian expert . .But alas, when we turn to tbe scbolion which Tzetzes obligingly provided for this letter, we learn that it wa.< really a devious piece of rhetorical ingenuity (&t<~s), intended as a subtle criticism of the way the empero r had already conducted some other triumphal

• Ed. K. M~t~~apbes, in<E"'e'"'p~tET~hpt.:O~ &(cn.'fn.Wlt £~"• 41 (1974), 223...2, esp.

22H .

s See G. Kustas., Studru in B)'Z411rin~ Rltnwic ~-sllloniki,l973); lt. Beaton, ''The Rhecoric of Poverty: the Lives an.d OpirUons of Theodore Prodromoo'. Byzan.t int and Modem Gtttk Snulies, II (1987), 8·12. 6 M. Mullett, 'Aristocracy and Patronage in the Literary Ordes ol Comnenian Connantinople', 7Ju~ Bytan.tine Ari.fi()C't'OC)', cd. A.ngold, 173-201, esp.l74tf. ,. Mic:bad ltalikos, LttcrN ~~ dis(OIU's. ed. P. Gautier (Pam. l972). 63. ' P. Magdati.oo. "lbe Utera.ry Perception of Everyday Ufe. in BytanriuM: Some General ConskleratiOM and the Case of John Apotautos'. Byzmuinrul.avic.a, 47 ( 1987), l:S-38.

120

The Perception of the Past in T'welfth-Cemury Europe

procession - perhaps an imperial triumph. It bad taken place 'in an artles~ and corrupt way, but to criticise or admonish the emperor openly is dangerous·.• As this example shows, Byzantine rhetoric, though dedicated to upholding the starus quo, could, in its very defence of tradition, invent a scenario even more unconventionaJ than the innovation it set out to discredit. We shall not be surprised to find, therefore, t.hat twelfth-century Byzantine writers regis· tered their perceptions of the past not only in time-honoured ways, but also in ways which reflected Ute changes that were happening to them and their sociecy. They continued to see their state as the continuation of the Roman Empire, and tltey were more insistent than ever that Constantinople, the New Rome, was the result of a ' transfer of empire' by Constantine from the Tiber to the Bosphoros- indeed , in the twelfth century they even appropriated the Donation of Constantine to prove their point.' 0 They continued to fit their imperial past into a biblical framework and to sec the Roman Empire as the last in the series of four world monarchies prophesied in the Book of Daniel. They continued to write about their past in the traditional genre of the world chronicle. If anything, the Comnenian period saw a renaissance of the genre. But the twelfth-century updatings show a new sophistication and tlexibility in handling the materjal. Moreover, in writing the histo.ry of their own times, rwelfth·century writers also used the new, classicising, biographical scyle of history writing pioneered by Michael Psellos in the previous century. This style was part of a wider imitation (mimesis) of ancient literary models. which reached a peak in the twelfth century and led some contemporary authors to rehabilitate and

C'\'Cn

idealise an element in thei_r pas t which had previously

been off limits: ancient Hellenism. The rest of this study therefore falls conveniently into IWO pans. The first will deal with the view of the Roman and Byzantine past as seen mainly by history writers. The second will discuss the rhetoric of Hellenism contained mainly in other literature.

History-Writing in the 1wel/th Century (Ruth Macrides) To examine perceptions of the past in writers of history seems a most obvious and fundamental approach to take. Chronicles especially appear to be promis· ing texts for such an investigation as their long-term view of history gives plency of scope for examining concepts of time , periodisation, and views on when old times ended and the writer's own times began. Yet sucb an inquiry John 'Thetzes. Epistulnc, ed. P.A .M. Uont (Lc:ip:~:ig, 1972),141-.42, 173. Cf. C41sii OiotUs Cocceio:n.i Hist.otiorum Romaflttrum quot~·u~mmt , ed. U.P. BoiMevain. i (Btrtin, i898).1l; Solln Zon
below.

See J. Splteris, lA t;rilict~ bluinliM delprimatQ RomiUIO nc:lscc.olo XII, Orient&lia Christiana Ann.Jecu11208 (Rome, 1979), passim, r:sp. 70-84, 232Cf. 10

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhewric of Hellenism

12!

has not been undertaken for twelfth-century hi.story·writing, u even though more of it bas survived from that cenrury than any other. Twelfth-century chroniclers, like their predecessors, have been read mainly for spotting their sources and excising interesting titbits of information. Perhaps students of the pan lack i.ntere!!l in this area of research beeause they think they know the answer at the outset. 'The Byzantines' - tbe history books teU us - 'always called themselves Romans ('P"'"""'') and their Emperor considered himself as a Roman ruler, the sucre;sor and hei.r of t.h e old Roman Caesars. They remained under the spell of the name of Rome as long as the Empire lasted ·12

Twelfth-century writers in particular had good reawns to register their romanitas, for the Komnenoi who ruled over them made it a dynastic policy to

promote, a renovasio imptrii which was itself a revival of an earlier renovatio, that of Justinian. 13 The church supported them in this and it is mainly in the church's activity in this area that an explicit renovatio is evident. At the beginning of the century, in the reign of Alexios I (108J.l118), the Patriarch John Agapctos instiruted an annual celebration of the memory of Justinian." In the middle of the century, an archbishop of Bulgaria, a relation of the emperor, was the first to claim that his own sec of Ochrid was identical with Justiniana Prima, the city Justinian had built at his place of birth and to which be had granted special privileges.•s The renovatio was well under way in the reigns of Alexios and John U (lllS-43) but it awaited a renovator in Manuel whose most explicit statement of this was the edict he had inscribed in marble and displayed in Hagia Sophia. There he styled himself 'heir to the crown of Constantine the Great and in spirit holding sway over aU his rightful possessions, inasmuch as some have broken away from our empire' . 16 The diploma· tic used to promulgate the law was an arcbaising imitation of the Roman edict, while the indtulatio contained a siring of triumphal epithets reminiscent of A notable exception ls E.M.. Jetfn:yli, 'lbe Attitudcti of Byzantine. Ouonidcn towards Ancient Hi.story', By::.anlion 49 (1979) 199·238 (hereafter. Jctfrcys, "'J'he Attitude&') wh.icb deals mainly Mth Manaues and hi$ J!;ixth·ce.ntury prede<:essor Malalas. u G. {),;trogonky, His1ory of th~ Byzmuill~ Stau (Oxford 1968) 28. u P. Ma.gdatii'IO, 'Asp«!.¥ of'T'--elf~h·O:ntury Byzantine /Uiis~rJc:ri#k', Speculum, S8 (1983) 32646, bere at 34344 (berealtet, Magdalino, ' Kols.,hritik'); idem .• 'The Phenomenon ol Maruu:l I Komoenos•, in Byz4111ium and Ihe Wat, c.8Sf)-1200, ed. J.D. H<>ward.Johnston (Amsterdam 1988) 171-99, here at 178-80. The~ articles a.re repril1ted In tbe author's. Tr4dJlion diad Tr#I'IJformD• tion in MdiLvGl ByzGntium (London 1991), oos. jv, ix. See too G.PrinziQ&. 'Dat Bikl Justini.ans 1. io der Obertieferung der Byumtiner vom 7. bis IS. Jahrhundcn', F()I'IU3 Minoro, 1 (1986) 1·98. here at 74-77. Both authors ;ue cautious about giving the rt"Ol•'ario a 'Justinianic'label bccau~or the relatively linLe explicit reference 10 that emperor. 14 V. Grumcl, LtJ Rtg~talk:sACltsdu PatriaTC~~Jdr0Nu1411tinoplr. reviKd by J. Darrouz!s, i (Pari• 1989) no. t006. u G. Prinzil)$. 'EntstebUDg und Rezept:ion de:r JU$tiniana· Prima·Tbeorie i1o Miuela.lter'. Byumtioobulgoriclt,, S (1978) 269-87• here at zn,281. 1 • C. Mango, 'The Conciliar Edict ofll66', Dumbanon OW P~~~Krs, 17 (1963) 317-30. here at 320-321. 324.1·11,l30. 11

122

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

Justinian which had not been u,;ed since Heraclius." At the time of the edict's promulgation in 1166, Manue l was negotia ting with Pope Alexander 111 for recognition as the Roman emperor. 18 As has been pointed out, the Comncnian renovatio is best unde rstood when seen as having developed parallel and in reaction to t he Roman revival in the west , which also had been appropriated by the imperial monarchy. 19 While there were good traditional and a lso contemporary reasons for twelfth-century hi~tory·writers to emphasise the R oman past and lor their modem readers to have few expectations of anything different, there is another reason why the writers of chronicles. at least. have not been read for their perceptions of the past: that is, the genre itself. The chro nicle, as a compilation and as a Christian view of history, can be regarded as a vehicle of received wisdom which perpetuates someone else's view o f the past. There would seem to be little room here for the author's sclf-expression. 20 There is also the inherent crit icism implied in the label. 'a typical monk's chro nicle' which is a pplied even to those chro nicles not written by monks, as most Byantine chronicles were not.21 Oearly, for all tbe,;e reasons. sights are set low when reading a chronicle. Yet the genre ftourished, not least in the twe lfth century from which five chronicles have survived.22 The sheer number or these wo rks requires an explanation. Why was so much history wriuen in the twelfth century'! For. in

addition to the chronicles, there are four classicizing histories to be

consi~

23

dered. Skylitzes, writing in Alexios's reign at the beginning of the. century, gave an answer in his preface which is distinguished by the lengthy and detailed OJl the epilhel!>, see P. O .assen. 'Di~ Komnenel) und die K~i~rkrooe des We'Stens',Journu/ o{ MtdJntal History, 3 (1977), 207-24, csp. 214 ff. On Manuel as renm•aiQr, 5ee P. Ma.gdalitlo and R. Nelson. --rhc .Emperor in B)'zanti.ne Art ol tht Twelfth Century', Byzantinisc-he Fonchung~n. 8 (1982) l23·83. here at 17o-73: repr. in Magd~lioo, TrodJti(Ht a,d Transfor/1'1Atien (as io n .J3}. 17

no.fv.

111 John KlMamos, Epitome. ed. A. Meineke (Soon 1836) 21S.20; tr.C.M. Brand, Dud.t of ltJhn and Manu~/ Comntnus (New York 1976) 165·67. MagdaJino, ''The Phenomenon or Manucll Komneoos',(asin n. J3) 178andn. l9. 19 Ma.gdaliuo. 'Kai.w*ritik', 344. On 1bis point see th.e- oouunenrs by T. Reuttr, above:. 20-24. 11) This view of the ebrooide wbicb seelll$ to be set in ooncrcte, was expressed most r«ently by H. Hunger, Dit h()dtJprachliclu: pro{aiU'. Liurahlr dtt 8yzantinn Gtsthlchtsschrdbwng wnd Gtschiclat.rdtulwnz. (Ftststhrift K. AdJtr) (Freibur~u.nkh -1965) ISS.97. his a remarkable fact that me~ny $Cbolll1 wbo cite lhis ""'ork wilh approbatio-n oo.uinue to express opinions ab()ut chron.idcs which Beck 5bowed to be falsely he ld . ~ John Stylitu$, G eorge Kedrenos, Constantine Mana;;scs, John Zonaras, Mic:hatl Gl)'kas. On the authors Wld their W()rbsee. Hunger, Liu-rulur, i. 389-426. In this es..<;ay I will deal onty with the la11t thrtt writer$. n Nike-phoros Bryenoicxs. Anna CornoUia, John Kinnamos, NikttasO.oniates: H ungc:,r Lit~rn · rur. i. 394-400. 400-9.409-16, 42941 . Here I will dcaJ with the last thre~ autbotS.

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

123

list of earlier chronicle writers he cites- a list which indicates how much has not survived. Previous writers, according to Skyli12A:s, had failed to be accurate, for they had undertaken their work in an off-hand way and leh out the most critical events. They were of no use to their successors, having merely listed rulers and otherwise nothing. Because each writer had put forward hi.s own case, one praising an emperor, the other censuring a patriarch, they had confused and diu.ied their audience with the conflicting cases they presented. Skylitzes set out to resolve the disagreements in his sources, writing with

clarity, accuracy and succinctness. 24

Yet is this the whole answer? Did each chronicler write to impro,•e on his predecessors in precision and conciseness? Certainly this reason was also given by the twelfth-century chroniclers who wrote aher Skylitzes, in the reign of Manuel, after an interlude of thirty or so years. These three authors, Constao· tine Manasses, John Zonaras, and Michael G tykas show a totally different approach to their work, even though each one begins at the beginning with the creation of the world and brings the story down to the late eleventh and early twelfth century. Even though they had similar educations, lived in Constanti· oople and wrote there in the mid to late twelfth century, they were neither

similar to eac.b other nor to their predecessors in the way they percei\•ed the past. Indeed they give reason to believe that there is no such thing as a typical chronicle and that there is more to chronicles than the Bible and the same old Rome. By the twelfth century both aspects of the name •world chronicle' had ceased to have their original meaning. The annalistic format for recording events on a world scale had long since been abandoned. T ime wa.. mea.•ured by reigns of rulers and dates were few and far between. The 'world' aspect of the chronicle wa< limited to the story of the creation of the world and to an account of the great empires: the Assyrian, Persian, Maoedonian and Roman. Whether the chronicler gave a central place to the Book of Daniel in his work or not, the eschatology derived from it seems to have led to an emphasis on the succession of empires.25 That the first of the chroniclers to be considered here, Constantine Manasscs, saw the history of the world in te rms of rulers and empires is explicitly stated in the introduction of his work, dedicated to a member of the imperial court, a sister-in-law of Manuel, the sebastokratori.ua Eirene who had commissioned the piece. 2~ Manasses is known mainly for works written for members of the Comnenian court but he also leh a verse account of his

u. [O(Jms& Scylllz« Syn()psi.t Hisroriurum, ed. J. Thum (~rliWNew York: 1973) 3·4. u Jeftre)'$. 'The Anicudes', 206. For 1ht 1te00uo1 cf h.is diplomatiC. mission in U60, 6ee K. Horna, 'Das HQdoiporikon de$ Konstantinos Maowc&', Byzal'llinischt 7.~i.ttchrift, 13 (1904),

rurr. 2lt

7-17.

Constantine Manuses, Synopsis Clrronik~, cd. B.G. Niebuhr (Bonn 1837) lloes 1~26, esp.

124

The Perceptwn of the Past in Twelfth-Cenu.ry Eumpe

diplomatic mission to Antioch, undertaken to negotiate a bride for Manuel."' Manas.sc.s' chronicle is noteworthy among other reasons because it is the: first and almost the last which was written in verse form. The fifteen-syllable lines he used were common for didactic works and therefore suited to the writing of a work which he calls 'a treatise to give plain teaching in ancient history (archaiologia)'. 28 Manasses was also the first to use this verse form for the newly revived

g~nre

of the He llenistic romance, in his novel Aristandros and

Kal/irhea."'' Although Manasses wrote his chronicle in the reign of Manuel, be ends his work in 1081 , on the eve of Alcxios Komncnos' acce»ion, with the disclaimer that he could not possibly do justice to the achievements of the Komnenoi.30 But he pays tribute to the Komnenoi in an indirect way, through his treatment of Rome. For Manasses. it is not so much the idea of the connection between New and Old Rome that matters as the dramatic moments of disconnection. His accounts of the fall of Old Rome under Romulus and the coronation of Charlemagne become occasions for an encomium to New Rome and its emperor Manuel. Old Rome is left behind wbile the New flourishes: 'Thus the previous bond of the cities was rent/thus between mother and daughter a sword feiU;l'litting and dividing the youthful, attractive, younger Rome from the wrinkled old senile Rome. ' 31 Clearly this is what they liked to hear at court. The images of o ld and young Rome, mother and daughter, were on the tongues of coun encomiasts. 32 If Maoasses' presentation of Rome is consistent with what one would expect of a piece commissioned by an imperial relation, another aspect of hls view of the pa.
v Jeffrt)'$, 'The Attitudes', 202~J. 211 In the fourteenth century Ephraim was the: nc.xt and last writer o( a chronicle in \'C:rse form: Hung.cr-, LiltuiJUr, i, 478-$0. On the •WJactic' Oltture o f the tifteeo s)·Uable ve~ ronn see M.J. Jd{re)'S, 'The Nawre and Origlns of Politico! Verse'. Dwnbarton Oaks PtJptn. 28 (1974) 143-9S. 29 The romance -rurviwe.o; only in ftagtnenlaty form; 0. Mazal. Der Romnn de.s KonJtJJnrinot Manasus (Vienna, 1961}t R. Beaton, Tht Medk•·al Gre'-k RomJJnt:t (Cambridge, 1989), 7fr.77 (hereafter. Beaton. R()MAf.ce). "' Manasses. ed. N~buhr, lines 6722-6733. " Ed. Niebuhr, tines 2523-2S52 (one the faU of Old Rome and tnoomium of Manuel 1)_,lines 4505-4S24 (on Cbarlemagne and rending o{ the bond bel~'tt.o the two Romes). n For Old and New Rome in the poems of Theodore Prodromos, writing during Manuel's rei.go, tee W, H6raodoer, Theodoros Prodr(}m()J: Hlslorltdtt Gtdiclllt (Viettoa, 1974). oos. i, 180.105. xvi, 282.17$-283. 182, xviii, 306.?7ff, x.x. 320.13-20. 4

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

125

pure/nor prosperity unmixed with distress and sadness.'33 This theme would seem to be more appropriate to the romance than the chronicle and indeed featured prominently in Manasses' own novel, from which later romances may have borrowed it. 34 h may be that he introduced it into his chronicle because the verse form o f the latter suggested this treatment and invited such elaboration . Certainly the chronicle contains many other ornamental elements which are found in the romanoe or are common to other literary genres. Por example Manasses' Creation story is an extended ekpltra.s
" Ed. Niebuhr, li.I)Ct 9$$-959 (on Ck;opacra), lines 2640-2647 (on Theodosios, Eudoki.a and Pl\llinos), Lines 4377-4384 (Eircoc:'' blindio& of her soo). lines 6240-6249 (Constantine Monoma-

cbos's tise to power). " Ed. Ma:zal, Book Ill, fr. 49. 50,52, S4,S9; Book IV, fr. 68. Book V, fr. 9<; Book VU, fr. 137; Book. !X. fr. 159. Cr. 160. Beaton, Ront4nu, 151, 219 note 20. See too Muas.'ies· addres6 to Mkbael Ha&iotbeodorites, lcgOlhau tow dromou (no1 one of the Comnenian nobi..lity): 'Nobility is a &ift of chance (tydt~) who pl.&f$1his way and chat . . . •: P. Magdalino, 'Byuntjne Snobbery' (as in n.l abo\-e), f:IJ. J) £d. Niebuhr, line$ 65·276; Jdfreys, 7be. Attitudes', 209~ Huog.er, l..lltntrur, i, 421 and rcferenOC$, for Man.&Me!l \'C)Cabulal")' and cbe prominence.of plants and animals in chronicle and romance. Sec also Maruwes' c kphnlsison bird-catching(L. Sternbach, 'Anaketa Maoauea', EoJ, 7 (1901), 181ft.) and a mosaic depicting nature. (L.. Sternbach, 'Beitrig.e zus Kunp.tgt!$CltiCbte', JGhrt:sltefie dts Omrrrk.hist:Mn Arc.ll6ologUcAen lmlitu~s, S (1902), Bciblau, ools. 74-79). )0: Ed. Niebuht, lines 607S-6080; Hunger, UterQ/Ur , t. 421. "Ed. Niebuhr. lines 4445ff., 4472ff. a . R. M.acrides. 'Poetic Ju.uioe in the Plltri~tn:hate. Murder and Cannibalism ln the ~in<:.:ll', Cupido legum. cd. L. 8\Ugmann, M. Th. FOacn. A.

Scluttinck (Frantfwt 19*5) 137-68, her. .t 140-43 (Unes 57-96), and 149-51, 159 and n.S9. Jl!l A. Kuhdan (with S. Franklin), Studiu on ByzMtine Lhtnuu.u n/IM Eln-t:n~lt 411d Twelfth Ctnturies (Cambridge 1984) 1S0.81. On the large ~e of Chance in the twelfth-century romanocs as compared to thelr ancient models, see .Beatoo. Romance. $8-62.

126

Tile Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

awaiting the blow of the executioner. 39 Manasses' account of Belisarios' fall from favour , with its emphasis on the workings of envy, is an elaboration of sixthacentury accounts which influenced the later Belisarios romance.40 Ma nasses' ideas about e nvy which affected his view of past history a nd e xe rted an influence on later writers, were themselves the product of his own e xperience." A vehement outburst against pllthonos ends on a personal note: 'harsh beast. robber, murderer, persecuterlscorpion of a thousa nd stings, devouring tiger/poisonous dragon, deadly plant/my passion overcomes me, my sorrow confounds me/for 1 too, though I oughc noc to have, fell into your hands/and stung by your pricks, lie bare ly breathing'. 42 This pa'<Sage is all the more striking in view of the relative infrequency of the chronicfe..writer's direct interve ntion in his work. In a letter to an imperial official written years after che chronicle Manasses alludes again co his personal encanglement with phthonos.4 ) His presentation of past history in terms of these forces shows. a t th e very lease, the c xccnc 10 which bounda ries becween genres were flexible, and impression oonfirmed also by Zonaras and G lykas.44 If the number o f s urviving manuscripts is any indication of a work's readership, that of Manasscs· chronicle which su.r\'ives in seventy manuscripts, would appear 10 have been sizeable. The c hronicle o f Jo hn Zonaras which contains none of the en tertaining elements of Manasses' work is, howe ver, re presented by a similar number of manuscripts.4 } His work differs in every conceiva ble way from thac of Manasses. Zonaras wrote his chronicle o n an island in self·appointed exile ~ a.~ a monk,

~

Ed . Nkbuh.r, tines :nn.3247, Eh ewhcre. too, Manassesspe:ak.s oftbc wheel off~onune and Envy lo&e-r_her: lioe 2645, 6~85. 40 W,F. Bakker and A.F. van Ocmen,..l(77o~ '100 Bt ).wapWv (Athens. 1988). 23, 28. 30·3'2. 79: Jeffreys, 'The Ani1udes', 2ll. •• Choniates &i''es an acc:oum of the tan from fa~ur of a hit}\·rankin&civil stl'\•anr (Theodore StyppeiOie$) in the r-<:ign ()I Manuel io tetm!l of the intrigues of a jealot.~s collc.:agiJe. He spe~k$ al:so io geoeta.l about the- en\')' of rultrs whQ fee l thrc.atent:d if their subjects excel: Niatae Choni.D.u:li HisJorUJ, ed. J.L. van Dieteo ( Bertin/New York 1975) 11().13, 14'3.57·64; tr. H J. MagouliOlS. 0 City of Byrtu~tium: AMalt o{Nikeuu Chofti4U.1 ( Dt.troit 1984) 63-64,81. f or the context of these comments see Magdalino, ' Kais~rkritik ' ,l26-21 , 333<14. •t Ed. Niebuhr, lincs 3248-3262. •) K. Homa. 'E.ine unedierle Rede des KonnantJn Maoasses', Wit ner Studitn. 28 (1906). 185 . .. r-or Zooaras and Glykas sec below. On tbe mixing of genrct in twelfth-century literature. see M.acridei. 'Poetic Justice in the Patriarchate' (as in n.37} 137-68. In addition to the wheel or Fortune and the role of £ nvy, many olhef featurei of Manasse$' chronicle are pre$etl1 in bis OV.TI roll)ance and in l~ 1 er no,·els wbich ml'ly have been mRuenoed by bis; 10 partM::ula.r, the exotic beasts which ~ue so centnlto ~ll pari.$ of hjs chroni<:fe: Huoget , Literatur, i. 421 and n .S07; Beaton . Romance, 76, L76; Jeffreys, 'The Attitudes>, 209, 212, 236-37. ol$ Hunger, UJerDtur. i, 418, 422.

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

127

after a career as head of civil courts in Constantinople. 46 ln his long preface he claims that friends urged him to write the chronicle, and later in the work, he refers to requestS he made to be supplied with books. 41 Zonaras bas made his greatest impact on modem scholarship because of the large sections of Dio Cassius' Roman History which he had at his disposal and which now only survive through his chronicle."' Yet, while receiving credit for this and for his critical use of sources, the final judgement on his work reads, 'at the end of the day it is a monk's chronicle' .'9 This is based on nothing more than the fact that he was a monk when he wrote. Zonaras' unique contribution to Byzantine chronicle-writing, his uncom· man perception of the past, has gone unappreciated. For Zonaras is the only Byzantine chronicler to deal extensively with Republican Rome.50 For other chroniclers Rome means Empire and to reach their goal they take a giant leap in Roman history from the expulsion of the kings to Julius Caesar. It is this neglected period that Zonaras gives in oonsiderable detail , in over two books of his chronicle.; , Unlike other Byzantine chroniclers he shows an interest in and knowledge of forms of government. In his preface and on four separate occa.•ions e lsewhere in the chronicle he uses the evolution of the Roman constitution as a scheme of periodization for Roman history. H.is programme, stated in the preface, is to discuss the origins of the Romans, the foundation of the city,

and how this city was at first ruled by a !dog and bow Tarquin tbe Proud was deposed after transforming the kingdom into a tyranny , . . and bow Roman affairs were converted to an aristocracy and subsequently to democracy with consuls and dlctaton and also tribunes conducting the administration or public affairs, and what

the oonsulship was in ancient times, what tbe dietatonhJp, wbat tbe task of lbe censors, and how long a period was allocated to each of tbese-particular offices ... and what events took place in the times of the consuls ... and how wbsequently

from this state of affairs the Roman realm lapsed into monarchy.52

Zonaras repeats this scheme at the end of his section on Jewish history as an ~ 1b~ chronicle is in three volume': /()(lltnes 2Attar4e AnNJits, ed. M. Pinder i, ii (Bonn 1841, 1844); ed. T. Bii.Hntr·Wobst iH (Bonn 1897). Information about Zonaras' life and career is derived $Oldy from his Own wo-rks; ICXJIIMS ZOMrM Annaks, ed. M. Pioder, i, 3 (critical apparatwl,); G.A. Rhallts and M. Potles, SynkiiJ'M ton thtion k4i hitron kanonon, ii (Athens, 1852, rcpr. 1966), 1. Ac cbc University of St Andrewli a joint projecl is underway in the dc.panmeots of aneien1 a.od

medieval history to trart\late and oomment on the chronKie . ., Zonaras. ed. Pinder, i,4.7·8.6; ii, 297.9-22. 43 Zonaras preserves 1he strucwre of the lirst cwt.nly bookS: F. Millar A Srudy nf Ca.uius Din (Oxford, 1968), "2-3~ For his: use of Dio, 'Die Hauptbedtutung der Weltchronik ... ·: see K. Zicclcr, Rea/encydoplklk, 19 (1972), 2nd series, cols. 718-23. n Hunger, Lireratur, i, 41$, quoring Krumbachcr in approval. :~n Po''" Jeffreys, 206, 233-34.238. See Ma.gtlalioo, 'Kaisttlcrilik', csp.342·343. 1

Ed. Pinder, ii, 47•298. n Ed. Pinder, 1, 12.16-13.7. $

128

The Perception of the Past in 1\ve/flh·Century Europe

introduction to Roman history,53 at the end o f his section on Republican history before his account of Julius Caesar,54 and most Strikingly in his account of the four kingdoms of Daniel's dream,S5 as an illustration of the diversity of form.• of government of the Fourth Kingdom. The evolution of Ro man government appears one more time in Daniel's interpretation of Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the statue of gold, silver, brass and iron. Zonaras' discussion of the second chapter of Daniel is the most detailed of all Byzantine chroniclers b ut takes a totally different direction. His exegesis could have been inspired by Thcodorct's commentary but Zonaras turns his attention in particular to the weakness of the Ro man Empire, symbolised by the feet made partly of iron and partly of clay. As an explana· tion of the weakness he applies the three stages of Roman government: (I} the Republic, in which the clashes of the people and senate constituted weakness; (2) the later period when Roman affairs were transformed from an aristocracy to a monarchy and Roman strength was weakened by civil wars under Caesar and Augustus; finally (3) the later reigns, 'when you will find Roman rule to be partly strong and partly weak, having lost most of its ancient ma;~ery and now circumscribed by this fractional part of that ancient authority-' .56 Zonar· as' commentary on Daniel has been declared a high point in the treatment of the material but it is concerned with the historical evolution of Roman government and not with pagan and Christian Rome, as has been asserted by those who cannot see past Zonaras' monastic vows.51 It should be evident from Zonaras' statement here that he· did not use tbe periodisatioo of Ro man history as a mere transitiooaJ device jn his chronicle·.

That Zonaras understood the Republican constitution of Rome and applied his knowledge of Roman history- tbe whole·of it - to the later eastern empire is evident throughout. His knowledge contributed to his critical attitude to the monarchy of his times and gave him the vocabulary for criticism. 1n his description of the celebrations at the foundation of Constantinople o n 11 May 330 Zooaras commenL< oo the horoscope made at the time by the astrologer Valens, that the city would last 696 years: These ha\'Clong since run by; so one must either suppose th.at Valens•s prophecy was false and bls an tauJty, or else one must think that he meant those years in which the customs of tlle polity were kept up, and the constitution and the senate were honoured. and theciti:zc:ns flourished, and the.re was a ·rawful dominion'. that is, ruJe was royal but not outright tyranny. with the.ruleT'$ considering the common propetty their own and using it for their own enjoyment . .. and granti.ng public revenues to whomsoever they p.lease, and behaving to their subjects not like shepherds, merely

'1

13d. Pinder. i, S6l.J7-S62. 14. s. Ed. Pinder, ii, 297.9-298.7. ~~ Ed. Pinder, i, 222-227. t$p , 22.7.3.-228.21. ,. Ed. Pinder. i, 2tt ~2H, here at 213.24·214.2. 17 G. Podskalsky, By:antinisrlle Rtichusl'.hOJQ/4gie (Munich, 1972) 57-60.

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

129

shearing off exceM wool and sparingly drinking their milk but, after the manner of chieves, slaughtering the sheep and devouring their flesh. or even sucking the marrow fn')m their bones.l8

Zonaras' criticism of rulers here is based on constitutional issues and is not expressed in terms of orthodoxy, piety and Christian morality. He stresses the emperor's responsibility to earthly institutions. The tyrant is the ruler who disregards and changes ancient customs; this applies also to forms of dress. The trappings of power, extravagant imperial garments, are a subject on which Zonaras makes observations throughout the chronicle.59 His disapproval comes out most strongly in a passage in which be reports that Antony sometimes wore a Persian sword, thus transgressing ancient customs. 'Since; argue.'i Zonaras. 'this form of dress was considered blameworthy in a man who was a consul and general of the Romans, how can one excuse the present emperors of the Romans from blame and reproach when they change their dress in violation of ancient customs and sport barbarian dress, and this not sometimes but always•. 60 For Zonaras elaborate dress and failure to respect one's subjects' property and well-being go together. Thus, commenting on Basil II's triumph in Constantinople after his victory over the Bulgarians, Zonaras adds that the

emperor wore the upright tiara 'which. is commonly called toupha but should, I think, be named typhos (delusion) because it fill• those who wear it with arrogance.'61 He goes on to explain that Basil was not moved by the patriarch's entreaties to abolish a certain tax, even though be bad promised to do so if he conquered Bulgaria. Justinian also is not exempt from Zonaras'

criticism. 'Justinian's reign was not a monarchy,' be comments, 'but rather power was divided into two.' Justinian spent money on buildings. on wa.rs, on anything he desired; Theodora was no less inventive in finding ways to extract money.62 Zonaras criticises even Constantine the Great for his magnificence because he must have imposed heavy taxes to pay for it.63 These were the very emperors to wbom the renovatio looked. 64 Zonaras too believed that a renewal was taking place but for him what was being renewed was not past greatness but past tyranny. This is nowhere more evident than in

$6 iii, cd. BUttner·Wobst (Bonn 1897) JJ..JS: cited, with alterations, from tbe tram. by Mag
c:urownial: De. Mog.ti, 2-4: A.C. Baody, lormn~s Lydu.r on Powt:n (Philadelphia, 1983);see too R. Seou. 'Malalas and bis CoD.Ietnporaries', in S1wdia on John MGJalaJ, cd. E. Jeffreys, with B. Croke, R. Soon (Sylloey, 1990), 67.,%, here a1 74. "' Ed. Pinder, ii, 394.4-11. M Bd. Blltroer·Wobst, iii, S6(i. II.S67.6. " tbKI., 151.11-152.9. .. lbKI., 2S.3-7. ~ Compare Manasses on these emperors: ed. Niebuhr,line 23l3ff. (Constantine 1). line 3123 (Jw.tinian: 'lhe most magnificent of ealliu emperon'). line 5926{1. (BasU U).

130

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

his treatment of Alexios Komnenos, with whose death Zonaras ends his chronicle. Of two of Alexios' actions - the invention of new court titles and new types of coins - he uses the. word •innovation', which sounds dose to the flattering language of reno••ario but is meant as anything but.65 For Zonaras uses a variation of the word to describe the tyrant Tarquin's ac-tions, thus establishing a connection between the last Roman king before the Republic and the last Ro man emperor in his chronicle.66 What is more, Zonaras' anti-renovali.o remarks are not reserved for his chronicle but are expressed also in his commentary on the canons - one of three from the twelfth century- which he probably wrote in Manuel's reign.67 There too Zonaras expresses regret and anger at the disregard fOr ancient customs and Jaws and the same critical stance toward the monarchy o f his day.~ On Canon 28 of Chalcedon which based the right of the see of Constantinople to the same privileges as the Elder Rome on the fact that the New Rome was 'honoured with the monarchy and the senate', Zonaras states that this can hardlv stand as " re,.son since the 'former has been transformed into a tyranny and-the Jailer has folded up and gone away .... There arc further examples of parallels and the interrelating of interests and approaches. Zonaras' knowledge of the canons can be seen to affect his historical narrative,10 while he applies his knowledge of history to argue a case in an interpretation of the canons.71 Moreover, in both works he shows an antiquarian interest in the past," in his glosses on Latin terms and his explanation of ancient ecclesiastical and civil customs." In the chronicle, these interests are also expressed in his discussions of the origins of statues and buildings still standing in the Constantinople of his day," and his recording of

f.S

Ed. Biittner-WOb$1. 732.8-9 (XQ:t ;Wra ~e.o~lliqe,avr4' "0 &~joln) . 738 (t"liiOl,vunv l'ia<; On tht b.nguage of renowuW, see: Mag.d;dino, 'KaiserkritilC, 337 and a.69.

&hw~). 6<1 (.1

Ed. Pinder. 23.8~ L)(.(lu'C)1'6~'fl(ftll.

Zonaras's commentary is pub&hed in Rhalk$-Potles (as inn. 46), vols. i.i·iv {ALhens 18521854, repr. 1966). On the date of his commentary see Q.. Macrides, 'Nomos and Ko.non on paper 3.ftd itt cour1', Chllrdt and Ptoplt in Byzuntium, ed. R. Morris (Birmingham, 1991), 73 and n.60. "RhnJJes·Potles iii, 207; ii, 231; For 3 discussion orZonaras' oommenu.ry, sec. R. Macrides., 'Per¢trcion of the Past io the Twelft.Centul)' Canooists', in 8yzanJium in lht twtlfth CtniiU"f, ed. N. Oi.konomides (Athens, 1992), ht re.Utet Macridt;s, 'Th·elfth·Ctntwy Canoni.sts'. 69 Rhalles-Potks, H. 282.84o MiH:ridd. '1\
56.)4-15 (.WCI'OSQnC'lUS). Rhalles.Porlcs, ii, 254-255 ~ iii, SJ9; Mae:rides. 'Tw~l fth-Century Canoni$LS'.

IUt.r), T.1

'* The.porphyry oolumo in the Forum (iii,23); M.atue.o( Apollo from Troy (iii,l8), column wilh the equestrian 5tatue of Jws.tiniao (iii.1S9); Hippodrome statue from thebatde at Actium (iU,39C>), 1

th-e O('J'har.~otropheioo (iii. 7~4 .16-745.8) .

The Fourth Kingdom atul the Rhetoric of Htlhnism

131

the inscriptions on some monuments which he took, it seems, no1 from the monuments themselves but from tbe collection in the Palatine Anthology." Zonaras' knowledge of and interest in the-past- the antiquarianism which he exhibited in his work< - had been made possible by the eleventh-century revival of things Roman on which the twelfth-century renovario, which he rejected, was based. Ironically, it W'oiS probably that earlier Roman antiquarianism which gave him the impetus and tools to dig for a Rome which lay be-neath imperial Rome. For tbe eleventh century restoration had seen a reinstatement of 'academic' legal studies and a revival of interest in Oio Cas.
" Epi&ram on dlt Sangarios rive-r bridge (ili,459): on Justin ll's Sopbianae, (Ui, l74· L7S), on the

tomb of Cooscantina, wife of Maurice (ill, 198). For Zonaru' use of the Palatine AolhoJogy, .see Averil Ca.meron, 'Notell on the Sophi.ae, lhe Sophia_nae and the Hal'bOUT or Sophia'. Byzanrion, 31 (1968), 11-20. tsp. 16, repr. in Corllinully and Cluingt in Sixt.h·Qnlury By~at~tium (Lond<>n, 1981), oo . xiit ~ Magdalino, 'Kaiurbitik', 434-35. 71 Although John Lydus abo bad 11 good kno~·Jedge of Republican Ro1ne and wat hostile to djctat()l'$ a!)d tyrant$, he thougbt the monarcb)' the beat (onn of government and wu confide-nt that chc present was ao improvemtJtt on tbe past: Scott, 'Mala.las and bis Cont.cmpora.ric!!' (as in n.

59) 69-73• ..., Magdalino. 'KtdstTkridk', 344• .,., Ziegler, 'Zonaras' (as in n. 48),718. • Hunger, Litm»u.r. i, 423. See S.Mauromate~KatsouyianOOI)Q'uk>u, "H X~l'O'YPQlPY:. ,.Oii f>,wQ xu\ ot "'M'(Vi~ Til'!: (11.:~ tOO 11.X.- 1118 ~~o.X.) (Thcssaloniki, 1984), 61-62.

M~xcx.f\).

132

11UJ PerctptiOII of the Past in 7\ve/ftlz·Cffltllry Europe

reveals interests characteristic of tile times in which he lived. In Glykas. an imperial secretary in the reign of Manuel!, these take the form of a fascination with the natural world and a knowledge of canon law, medicine and theology. While Manasses turned his account of the Crccation into a series of extended ekphraseis of tree., planl< and birds, Glykas' Creation is a catalogue of animal< and plants with a discussion of their nature. properties and medicinal valuc.81 He cites church Fathers side by side with Aelian , Aristotle and Galen. One of his most extensive passages on the animal wo rld, that on snakes, illustrates well the wide range of Glykas'ssources and the way in which nature.• medicine and theology are related in the chronicle. In detail and in general conception the discussion is similar to the passage on snakes in tile Plzysiolo· gos, the anonymous early Christian work on animals. plants and stones to which Glykas' Creation has been comparcd.32 Both use the habits or nature of the sna~e as an allegory for Christian behaviour and as an exegesis of Gospel passages.83 But Glykas goes fu rther, introducing a discu.ssion of poisonous snakes and in particular the basilisk, whose ability to kill by his eyes alone is compared with the Evil Eye. Plutarch and St 83l>il are dted on tllis subject and although the church Father is the last to speak. denouncing the idea that eyes can emit poisonous arrows, Glykas' earlier statement supporting that idea, 'This experience and time have from the beginning demonstrated to be so',84 leaves the more lasting impression. His discussion of the Evil Eye is followed by an exposition on tloeriiJka, in particular bow tbe medicinal property of snakes' skms was first doscovcrcd. 8~ The interests, [hemes and is.sues in the story of the Creation, far from being

limited to that part or the chronicle, run through tile entire work and are fundamental to Glykas' view of the past. Glykas spends so much time and space on the Bible and on Jewish-Oriental history because they provide an explanation o f how the world came to be the way it is. Hls account is not in temt.\ of empires and forms of government, as arc those of Manasscs and Zonaras, but is based on revealing the natural causes or origins ofthings visible and invisible and God's care and providence in ever)1hing.86 The otller side of this explanation of the world is a total rejection of the notion that the stat'S rule human destiny and. tbcrclore, a dismissal of astrology.67 These themes and points or view are evident in another work by Glykas. the Theological Chapters, a collection of 95 repljes to questioos addressed to him

41

Annules,
.&4 Ed. Se.k&;er, 110. ~ lbKI .• 112·113.

,. E.g.. Ibid .. 2S,99.ZI6. " Ibid .. 54.55 ,50,213.21~ ,215.216.220.355.364-365 ,388.

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

133

by laymen and monks over a period of time. 88 The q uestions which the addressees put to b.im are tb.e problems generated by the Bible or dilemmas which arose in belief and practice. They are mordl and canonical rather than doctrinal. Some oftbe 'puzzles· be was asked to solve were, 'Will the bodies of the dead be resurrected as male and female bodies and will they eat real food?', or, 'Should one pay attention to those who say that the devil is the primary cause of evil in u.s1'89 One of his longest answers is in reply to a question on predestination, free will and divine providence. 90 This issue, which he also discussed in the chronicle in many diffe rent passages. was indeed a source of debate in Glykas' time.9 l Manasses, as we have seen . took a totally different position from G lykas. It may be that the questions which were addressed to Glykas gave him the impetus to produce an account of world history which dealt with the issues he knew to exercise his contemporaries and wb.icb. demonstrated the truth about the divinely ordered world .92 It is plausible to expect too that the audience for his chronicle would be composed of the addressees of his answer.; and others of similar statu.< and background. 93 Another indicatio n that the Theological Chapters and the chronicle were intimate ly connected - beyond their communality of themes and outlook - is the similarity in the ir style of exposition. For the chronic.le is not so much a

narrative account as a didactic piece: the text is punctuated by a series of interjections addressed to a son or pupil whom Glykas calls 'child' or ;beloved' . He advises, •it is wonh knowing,' 'note/ 'do not wonder,' 'take care.' guiding his addressee past fallacies and steering him around apparent contradictions in the sources.?< In this way he anticipates questions and dilemmas which could arise from the sources. This approach links the chroni· cle with the Theological Chapters, themselves a form of Erotapokri.seis, answers to que:srions on canon law and rhe everyday practical problems facing

• s. Eus.natiades. ed .. [~ TO.q &.1ropW:a~ 't'iti 9eio.q rpo.~ 1tt¢~(lW. i (Athens. 1906), ii ( A.lenndria, 1912). " Ed. Eu$1tariadco, i. dtap.6, 67·70, dlap. 7. 71-l~S. clwp.8, 89-IIS. 110 Ibid., chap.36, 379-415 (to the panseb~lOS seba&tos Coos•andoe Palaiokl&OS). " Kazhdan frank.lin, S11ulies on Byumdnt UletalW'e, 180-181 . Set. the discuuion of Glykas's. contribution to tbe quC6tion of the predetenni.oed rime of a p«&&n's dealh : W.Lctekntr, NiJ<~phnros 8/mamytks ~gtn dit Vorherbtsdmmllllg dtT Tod~mund~ (AlbensfLejden 1985) tuix-txxxii, lx:uvii-txxxviii, x~;Uj (for Gl)'kas's itdtuence on lau:r writtn), Glyk.as bandies lhis question five times in his Theological Chaprm •rtuing for n;uure agains1predete.rminatio". !l:l Krumbacher. Gtschicluc, l83 , ass.umes that the chrontcl.e was written before 1he Thtolt>gic:t~-1 Chaptcn;. Hunger, Litmstur , i. 423, points out that their common theme$ sbOW$ both \lo'Ofks U) have been written close togetber i.n •ime. 93 Seek, 'Zur b}untini$Chcn "MOncbschronik" (as in n. 21). 195. 4

,. E . ~.• 5,6,54.

The Perceptio11 of the Past i11 Twelftlr·Cemury Europe

134

a Christian.9S All these works use the same didactic techniques which cre-ate a

sense of debate and controversy. Glykas in his chronicle shows also in other ways an affinit)· with the canonical commentaries of his times. those by Zo naras and Theodore Balsa-

moo . Although in style he is closer to Balsamon,96 it is certain that it was Zonaras' commentary he had read and used. In his description of Septimius Sever us' siege of Byzantion, and the city's subsequent subjugation to Thracian Herakleia, Glykas takes his account word for word from Zonaras' canonical

commentary, not from Zonaras' chronicle.97 Like Zonar_as, too, Glykas was interested in explaining the origins of ecclesiastical cu.~toms and continuity in cburch practices.98 He seems to have been well·read in canon law in general,

for he is our only source for certain canons of the Patriarch Nikephoros (806-15).'"' Perhaps the most important example of Glykas' close relationship with the commentaries oo the canons is his use of the argument of historical relativity or cootexl. Zonaras and Balsamon utilise this argument to smooth out apparent

contradictions in the canons, ' 00 while for Glykas it provides an explanation ol the changes which have occurred in ecclesiastical practice - different times require different behaviour. "1' In one case in particular he appears to be

defending contemporary practice by applying this consideration. In the reign of Marcian, Glykas explains, the earliest stylite, Symcon, mounted his column and remained on it for a long time without communicating. 'in order to mark out a beginning, lor many are those who find fault'."" It is uncle:lf whether Glykas is thinking of Symeon's contemporaries or his own who did indeed find

fault "ith the 'holy' men of their time, considering them inade.quate to the aske#< compared with their illustrious predecessors. It is likely that he had both in mind. In any case. he appears not to agree with those like Eustathios, archbishop of Thes$alonica, who claimed that the great saints had Jived once

upon

11

time and were no longer possible103 For Glykas, Symeon's long

~ Beck, ·Zur bytantinischen ..Monchsch_ronik'', 195. On Erotapok~W:i$. see J.A. Muoitiz. 'Calecbetical Teaching-Aids in Byzantium·, Ktl&r}.,.,yrplOI: Euays Promtttd to Joan HlLUtt.)l, ed. J.

Chr)'SO\1, (as in n.SO). 374-.375. rrom Zonar:t!\1 commentary on canon 3 or the $«0nd oecutnt nical council: Rhalles.·Podes, ii, 171. 1111 Ed. Bekker. 439, 8·11 (Saturday as adayoHast in the west) , 464-6S(tbe oelebratKmofE~ter on a Sunday). 499.6- 13 (dle i:-..stiturion of lhe rc:ast day of the: Hypapanlt in Jm.tinhm'l reign). SQS, IO·Tl (the Fridny pn)Ccs.sion of the Slacbcmithsa), S38. 19·l l (•be anire ot priests). '~'~ Grumet·DanouUs. Regtsld (as in t'1. 14) no. 406. 49·52: Amtale.t. cd. ReJc)::cr, 454. 15·19. ' 00Macri
The Fourth Kingdom and tht Rhetoric of Hellenism

135

isolation had more to do with establishing a beginning than with an inimitable greatness. It is worth pointing out that for Glykas this was a real issue , not only because his contemporaries were discussing the place of the holy man in society but also because among his addre.'OSees he had a stylite who enquired about adjusting the prescribed penances in compassion for the penitent; 104 in other words a stylite who did communicate with those who sought his help. •os The argument from context is most evident in the twelftb·eeotury canonical oommentaries where it served tO salvage old canons and bring the corpus of canon law up to date. It is obviously also an important tool for the historian. It is notable that Zonaras applie.' considerations of historical relativity in his canonical oomrnentary but not in his chronicle. while in Glykas an awarenes.' of context appears strictly speaking only in his discussion of ecclesiastical prac1iee. Although it is the conventional wisdom that the Bible serves as a framework for Roman history in Byzantine chronicles, to apply this in Glykas's ease would be to misconstrue the balance and the import of his work. For in that chronicle Roman history and its Byzantine oontinuation appear almoSt as an after· thought, appended to the fundamental knowledge about the world. There are many signs that romaniras meant little to Glykas, quite apart from the relative brevity of the section devoted to it. 106 To begin with, although the chronicle is full of prophecies, Daniel's on the Fourth Kingdom is oonspicuously absent. On the fall of the western empire one reads, 'The Roman empire ceased to exist'. 107 There is no lament on its passing. no hint that things Roman did not end altogether. The Emperor Justinian is nothing special to Glykas who gives more attention to the care-er of his general Belisarios and to the construction of Hagia Sophia-""' And from the reign of Basil U on , Glykas abandons his interjections to his son or pupil,'09 which in any ease became fewer in the oourse of the narrative of Byzantine history. as if he has lost interest altogether. One passage in particular, however, is most revealing of his relative lack of interest in the Roman empire. It demonstrates better than anything else that the past provided each writer with the opportunity to discuss what really mattered most to him. In Glykas' case this was certainly not Rome, Old or New. On his discussion of the foundation of Constantinople and the astrologer Valens's prediction ar that time tbat the city would survive 696 years, Glykas bad Zonaras as a source. While Zonaras used thi.' prophecy to launch a virulent attack against the tyrannical rulers of his time, Glykas curtly com· ments, 'Consequently, therefore, the prediction of Valens is mistaken and the JOoiChap. 3, addressed to the stylite John Sio.aitt.5, ~d. Eustratiades, i, 1-10. 'osfor tbt dic:botomy i.o public opjnioo see Magditlino, 'Holy Man·. (a.~ in n.I03) ' 06 Hunger, Lbuann, i. 424; Mauromate·Katso'UyiannopouJou, 61-62. 1

cnEd. Betker, 490.1-S. 108 1bid., 494.7-13 (Beli5ario$). 495-498 ( Ha,;a Sophia). '"Ibid .. S76.t4.

136

The Perception of the Past in 1'welfth-Cemury Europe

art is clearly exposed as utterly failed' .'10 Compared to Zonaras' acute criticism of government, Glykas' statement looks simplistic and naive. Yet he was no less critical a thinker. His intere.,ts simply took him in a different direction. For Glykas the prediction provided an opportunity to demonstrate the folly of astrology, a subject wttich Glykas develops throughout the chronicle and in some of his Theological Chapters.m He furthermore makes the same criticism of Valens' prediction in a letter to Manuel I in which he attacks that emperor's defence of astrology . 112 This letter is connected by some with Glykas' imprisonment and blinding."~ Like Zonara.5, Glyka5 may have used his enforced retirement from public life to expound his own critical account of how the world had come to be as it was. The chronicles of Manasses, Zonaras and Glykas show a variety of approaches to writing about the past, a variety which is directly related to each author's personal interests, knowledge and preoccupations. For each of the chroniclers a different past was important. For Zonaras, who had the bestdeveloped historical sense, it was Republican Rome; for Glykas, the creation of the world . Onl)• for Manasses could it be said that imperial Rome was of any significance but even in his case there are no signs of a special attachment or identification with that period, even if he wrote more enthusiastically because of his generous patroness, as he hi mself says. Another aspect which emerges from a study of the chronicles is the homogeneity of themes aod points of view which link each aurhor's historical work with his other writings. While these chroniclers have traditionally been studied for their versions of the past with $(;arccly uny regard to their individuality and nooe for their contemporary context. it is prec.isely these features which emerge from a.n examination of

their perceptions of the past. The classicising historians, Anna Comnena, John Kinnamos and Nikctas Choniates, who like Manasses, Zooaras and Glykas wrote in the reign of Manuel or shortly thereafter, might from the outset be expected to differfrom the chroniclers in their perceptions of the past for reasons connected with the content and style of their works. For the historians nece•sarily took a shortertcml view of the past, narrating the events of their own times: and shortly

110 tbid., 463.6-10: ·valens, the most a<::Wc:ue, S1.1pposedJy, of astroklg.ers'. See above fC>t the Zooams passa&e. HI E.&. Anm1l~s, ed. Bekker, 54, 56,220: ''T"hese •hings I submit ro you, c-hild, so that you do not subject the coufigurati6ns of tbe sa.a.rs 10 aceu$ation, if the$e things are ac:custormd to occur for pbystcaJ re.a.son.s: n.eolot;ical Ot;:.pters, c-d. Eustratiades, i, dutp.37 (36), 394, 4'10, 446; ii, chap. 41 , 1·7; 76, 259·66. On the world chronicle as a dcfcnoe a_gaiou the daimli o( astrokla;y, sec V. Aint, 'World hi~tory in the early twcJrth century; the."Imago Mundi" of Honorius Aug:ustoduneo· !1G', The Writing of llistoryin the Middle Ages: Essays presented to Riebard WitUam Southern.cd. R.H.C. 011vis and J.M. Wallaoe-HadriJI (Oxford, 1981) , 211·38. 11'~ Ed.

Eustratiadcs, l, chap. 40, 47~500, csp. 48.S.l7-436.22.

uHungcr, Liraorur, i, 42.2423 and rdcn::ncc.s,

1

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

137

before, and wrote in a more 'elevated' language and style, which might itself have suggested literary allusions to the ancient Greek past. The more distant past enters into the narratives of these historians in three ways or contcru: in comparisons of contemporary Byzantine emperors with past rulers or generals; in descriptions of the physical remains of cities or sites; and in the discussion of buildings, customs and institutions associated with Constantinople . All three historians refer to the more distant past - which is significantly not ancient Greece - in a vague way to invoke the aura of past greatness. It is a greatness which Anna and Kinnamus believe to have been made possible once again, respectively by Alexios and Manuel , while for Choniates it is firmly located in an irretrievable past. For Anna and Kinnamos the past has two main points of reference: the tenth century and an earlier, less weU-
ucEd. Meiockc:, 192.7·22~ C.M. Brsnd, tr., Dt~lb ofJohn and M411Ud C()ntntnu.t (asian. 18) t-46. mEd. Meineke, 13.14-14.2; Srand, D«.th of John Gfl.d Manuel CorrtMnus, 20. "'B. Leib, ed., Afexl•d<, iU (P:arl$, t94S) t79.U 18t.8; 229.2-4-27. 111 Ed. Ltib, i, 10.33· 11.6; iii. 181 .9-2S.

138

The Perception of rite Past in Twelfrh-Cemury Europe

Purple Chamber of rhe palace; rhe chapel buili next to Hagia Sophia as a re.fuge for fugitives from the Jaw; and the bronze hands affixed to an arch at the Philadelphion where the condemned could still gain a reprieve from the death sentence. The 'emperors of old. 'emperor$ and caesars' or 'the a.ncients1 provided these, and in the last two cases thereby showed 'grear consideration for the well-being of !heir subjecrs' . 118 These references to a vague pas! serve to illustrale the antiquily of the empire Alexios ruled, as does Anna's promotion of the idea thar the Porphyra where she and her siblings were born was made of the red marble which ' emperors of old' broughr from Rome when the city was founded."~ The myth of the Coosranrinian foundarioo of the Por· phyra was ar lea.
'l11e impression of a sometimes lirerary and often imprecise perception of the past is reinforced by Anna's report of inscriptions a! Dyrrachion which testify to that city's rebuilding by Amphion and Ze•hos after the time ol King Pyrrhus. lZl Buckler is horrified by chis anachronism and finds it difficuh to ascribe to Anna."" Yet side by side with Anna's suspension of criticalfacuhy there is also an indica lion of Anna's and Kinnamos' knowledge of and feeling for the changes which the passage of time has brough1. In botb cases this is connected wirh places and sites. Anna speaks of the ruined remains of rhe city of Philippopolis, crccrcd by the Roman , nor rhc Macedoni:ln, Philip, which she bad seen herself on a visit. l2" Kinnamos describe~ the changes wrought on Dorylaion which had enjoyed fine dwellings built by the caesar Melissenos, populous villages and public amenities i.n the years before the Turkish attacks reached their pcak. 12s Although here Kinnamos is conjuring up a past which is ooly a century before the time of his writing, it nevertheless shows an appreciarion of change . Thus the same writers offer cut-out ligures from the pas!, an unfocused backdrop of greatness, at the same tjme as a more precise perception of a real pas1. Tltis is in stark contrast to the usc of the past which Choniates makes. For him it is a more or less undifferentiated past and serves co underline a negative "'Tbid., i, 76.25·77.3: iii, 74, 11·24. 11 "Jbid., ii, 9().7· 19. 120See rhe discussion by J. Shepard. 'ln(ormadon, Disin(ormadon and Delay i.o Byzantine Oiplomacy', B_vzGIItinische Forsdumgc.11, 10 ( 1985). 233-93, here at 239-40. 1::1'to my knowledge there i.$ no eatlicr referet:~oe to the 'PrO$-phygion• 111 Ha.gia Sophia bm rbe 'bromc bands• are memioned by a teoth-cemury Arab tntvellcr to Constantinople. For n~!uc-noes and di!w:u~ioo see A. Berger, Untencltung~n z" dct P41ri4 Konstanrinupol~os , Poitila Byzantina 3 (Boon, 1.988), 340. 'l'his is or c;our~ no proof that the origin of the 'institution' ill tenth-century. tz:tEd. Leib. i, 142.5·13. 1 ~0. Buckler, Anna Comnena: A Srudy (OxfQrd, 1968), 200. 1~ Ed.

115

Lcib. iii . 178. 1L·22.

Ed. Meineke. 294.12-29S.S. tr. Brand. 220.

The Fourtla Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

139

comparison at the expense of contemporary emperors, more specifically Manuel! and Isaac II (1185-95). ChoniatescaUs into question the very aspects of imperial behaviour which Anna and Kinnamos find commendable. 'The desire to emulate emperors whose fame was great aod whose boundaries had stretched not only from sea to sea but from the eastern horizon to the Pillars of Hercules' was, for Choniates, an 'untimely love of glory' . 126 When Isaac fl appropriated sacred treasures for his own usc, comparing himself with Constantine the Great ' tbe first and most powerful of the Christian emperors' be deliberately overlooked the reason why Constantine had done this, 'that is, in order to proclaim the Word of the Cross as a divine force to the Hellenes' . U? The 'siege' ofHagia Sophia in 1181 provided Choniates with the opportunity to recall the Roman general Titus 'who besieged Je rusalem in ancient times' and distinguished himself in bis efforts to save the Temple of Solomon from destruction, 'although be did not know the God from whose temple he drew back'. 123 So much could not be said for tbe present besiegers of the church of Holy Wisdom. In every case, for Choniates the present is a fall from the past. These examples from Anna, Kinnamos, and Choniates show a clear division in the use of the past between the pro-impe rial historians and Choniates, who (along with Z,naras) was the twelfth-century voice most critical of the ideals of renovatio. Nostalgia for imperial Rome was stronger in all three classicising historians than in the chroniclers and may have been a function of the literary mode in which they wrote. The Rhetoric of Hellenism 129

(Paul Magdalino) Elizabeth Jeffreys, in her pioneering study on Byu>ntine chroniclers and

ancient history, has drawn attention to tbe-curious and basic fact that these chroniclers hardly mention the history of classical Greece, although this was the civilisadon from which they derived their language and literature.' 30 As she observes, the omission is particularly striking in the rwelfth-eentury chroniclers in view of the good press which the ancient Greeks were beginning to receive in other contemporary writings. After more than five centuries in which Hellenism had been synonymous with paganism~ and the adjective Helle-nic had rarely been used in a neutral, let alone a positive sense, Byzantine inteUe.:tuals were now prepared on occasions to call themselves Hellenes. At u 6 &t. Van Oicteo, 160.2S·IZ6.'l9 with reference 10 lbe joint MJS:adcr·Byuotine expediti<1o to Egyptlo 1169. On this passage see al&O Magdatino, 'Tile Phenomenon or Manuel I KomnenO$',

177. m _Ed. Vjn Dietcn. 14'3.83-144.95. Cr. Mlg(lalino and Nelsoa. (as i.n n. l7) 179-lfMl. 1

:n~Ed.

Vap Die:ten. 241.75-87. 2'.1The following s.t\ldy refines and elaborate$ v;ews ex:p1es&ed in a ptevious artkle, 'Hellenism

1

a.od Nationalism in Byzantium', in Magdalino, Tradldmt Md TrtuuforntJJ.tion ill Mtdi~v41 8 yz(ln·

r;um, no. xjv,

·•~Jeffreys. ''The Attitudes', (see abo\·e. n. J1), passim. es:p. 206((.

140

The Perceptwn of the Past in Twelfth-Cemury Europe

the same time, they began to idealise the ancient Greeks as models of a whole range of fine qualities: manliness. humanity, civilised and Jaw-abiding beha· viour, good sense, rationality. and, above all, nobility. 131 They even began to indulge in nostalgia for ancient A thens. The way for these changes had been prepared by the revival of classical studies in the ninth century, and d~pite the changes traditional. negative attitudes continued to prevail. Nevertheless, it can plausibly be argued that Hellenism first came openly out of the closet in the twelfth century, and that its rehabilitation, however qualified, was a momentous departure for a society whose very existence was predicated on the suppression of Hellenic error. The Byzantines added a new dimension to their cultural and- dare one say it'/ - their national identity. Why then did they not write it into their history? The ob,•ious answer i.s that since ancient Greece was not one of Daniel's Four Kingdoms, it did not fit into the historical genre. One cannot help feeling, however. that there was more to it than this, that if Byzantine historians bad wanted to include a potted history of classical Helias, they could have brought it in as background to Alexander the Great, or as a digression from the history of Persia. lt is hard not to agree with Elizabeth Jeffreys that Byzantine historians did not couot Athens as part of their past in quite the same way that they counted Jerusalem and Rome. The question therefore arises whether they conceived of Hellenism as being somehow outside history and, if so, whether their rehabilitation of it did involve any meaningful perception of the past. Elizabeth Jeffreys takes the view that the ancient Greek world was indeed a b1ind spot in the·Byzantine historical vision. Writing o( Constantine Manasscs, she contrasts his omission of ancient Greek topics with his obvious literary pretension to ·an ideal Attic purity whose standards were first set by Greek authors of the fifth and fourth centurie.• B.C.', and she concludes that 'Manasses demonstrates here a total lack of curiosity about the origins of his cultural heritage'. She offers the explanation that historians like Manasses ignored ancient Greece because they had no time either for its paganism or for its political pluralism aod republicanism. They and their readers could think only in terms of monarch.ies and empires. 'A city state, such as Athens or Rome of the early Republic, represents a form of government whose transitory authorities and scale must have been almost incomprehensible when viewed from the centre of the Byzantine world empire in the twelfth century.' 132 The

implication js that the Byzantines could not accept, or even perceive, ancient of Ochrid, ed. f. Gautier, Throphylt~c.t~ d'Adv,.d!J: DiJrouN. trQJ'd&. poilits (Tbessalonikj, 1980). 137: lbeodote Prodromos. in Ml.goe, P11rroWgia Gnm:a (hereotfter PG) 133. ools..1311·18; Constao1ine Maoasses, eel. 0 . Mo:zal, D(r Roman des Kon.ttantinos Manasse.t (as in n.29) 170; idem, ed. K. Homa, in Wi.tner Studien 2.8 (1906), 173; Eustathios ofTbessalonica, cd. T.L.F. Tafel in EustaJhii Opuscuht (Frankfurt, 183'2; repr. Amsterdam 1964), 66, Klma, ed. W. Regel, in Fontetrtru.m byUntlnarum, i (St Pttersburg.1892; repr. Leiptig, 1982), 65; tdem. ed. P. Winb, in By:CIIItWn 34 (1966). 277. lUJeffre>"'• 'The Attitudes:', 207. 131Theophylact

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

141

Hellenism a.< a complete cultural package but had eyes only for the packaging. In other words, the argument comes down to the now conventional wisdom that Byzantine Hellenism was purely a matter of litetary imitation. According to this view, when the By>.antines called themselves Hellenes they were entering a literary mode and following the logic of a convention which required that the empire's neighbours be called by the names of the peoples who had inhabited the same areas five hundred o r a thousand years earlier. Or, t.antine Helle· nism was obviously and, to our laste, grossly affected and anachronistic. But it is by no means clear, and modern scholarship has done nothing to clarify, whether the anachronism was spontaneous or contrived, whether the affec· tation was ingenious or ingenuous. If the Byzantines had a problem in relati11g to their Hellenic heritage, was this because they were too detached or because they were not detached enough? There can be no doubt that twelfth-century Byzantines had a strong sense of antiquity and of the distance that separated them from the ancient Greek world. This is clear above aU from the rhetoric of nostalgia for ancient Athens which reached its fullest expression in the works of Michael Choniates, metropolitan of Athens from 1182 to 1205. In seventeen of his speeches and letters, Michael contrasts the glory of classical Athens with the wretchedness of the present city, which, he says, preserves the memory of its former self only in the landscape, a few place names and a few venerable ruins. 134 Time, the taxman and piracy have succeeded where Darius and Xerxes had failed. Athens does not even look like a city now; the borne of learning has become a semi-desert, sparsely inhabited by barbarous rustics who cannot begin to comprehend the virtues of their ao.cestors. Of course, there is a good deal of topos in the facility with which these sentiments recur and M_ichael's purpose in uttering them is usually paStoral, not antiquarian . As a preacher. he is

l»Sce, notabty, the cburcb in Athens known as the 'Litde Metropolis': K. Michel 3nd A. Suuek, 'Dte miuelbytantinisehen Kirchen Athens', and P. Steiner. 'Antike Skulptur«m a.n der Panagia Gorgoepek()()s x:u Atbea', in Mittl'.i/u"g4'.n da KaUt1lklt Deuuchtn Arc.hikologisclltn I>UJilws, Athmisc!te Abtr. Gron;n&en, 1968). esp. ;, 93!(., 1-46-9. 1500'., 156ff., 2ll·2, 26$, 312ft., 324ff.; u, tJ.tJ, 26-7. 43, 81, 87, 102~3. Cl. K.M. Senon, 'Atbcus in the later Twelfth Century•, Spta~lum, 19, (19«),179·206 {repr. in idem, ArMnt ill sit~ Middk AgtS (Loodoo 197S)J; J. HeJTin, 'Ru.litiesoC B·yzantinc- Ptovincial Go~mment: Hella.s and Pdoponnesoll, 11~1205', Dwmbaru>n Oaks Papus, 29 (t97S), 2lJ.84.

142

The Perception of the Past in Twelftl•-Century Europe

•!>pealing to local pride ; a.• the defender of his Hock's and his church's material interests, he is looking for sympathy from the government officials he is lobbying. As a bishop, he cannot f(>rget that the most important thing that happened to Athens was the conversion of the Parthenon into a church to the Mother of God - and he never once mentions the famous sculptures that still decorated the exterior. Despite all this, there are signs that Choniatcs really did regret the passing of the ancient city. In one Jetter he compares the ancient Athenians favourably with the modem inhabitants of Constantinople,"' and if we are to believe the evidence of one poem translated under his name, he actually commissioned a pictorial reconstruction of Athens in all its ancient glory . 136 Whether or not Michael Choniates was sincere in his classical nostalgia is ultimately beside the point: the p<)int is that he expected it to fall on fertile ground. Where his Rock were concerned he was. as he himself admitted. !;adly mistaken - his inaugural sermon, in which be exhorted them to surpass the virtues of their pagan ancestors, left them cold. 137 But in addressing fellow churchmen and imperial bureaucrats who had shared his literary education , he rnay well have struck a sympathetic chord. It was, after all, an imperial official who observed to him that ancient Athens resembled present-day Constantinople in depending on the sea for its wcalth. 1)8 Michael's rhetoric of nostalgia has to be seen against a background of similar, though less developed, comments in other twelfthcentury texts. Some occur in the writings of the great Homeric commentator Eustathios, who was Michael's teacher in Constantinople before he went on to become metropolitan of Thessalonica. '"" One notable passage occurs in a still unpublished work written in a bout 1150 by Eustathios' own teacher, Nicbolas,140 and in about 1155 t he metropolitan of Ephesos embellished a letter to his Athenian colleague with some fine phrases on the contrast between ancient and contemporary Athcns. 141 The Oorid encomium of Athens with which

Innocent Ill prefaced his privilege to the Latin archbishop (1206) may well

'"'Soc above. p.x, fot translation and refe«"ntts.

)eEd, Lampros, ii, 82~3; d . Magdalino, 'Hellenism', 14-IS. '"Ed. Lampros. i, 124-S. '"'Ibid., ii, 99. •»See the pas.sages frcmt h.is commcn(31")' on the Iliad. ciced below. nn.163·4, and his speech on the dt.ath of Nicholas Hask»hcodorites, metropolitan of Athens (d. tIn). in CQdu ScorialtnJis graecus Y-11·10. fo.:Wr. On Eustathios in general, see t<.a.zbdan and Franklin, Studit$ (as i:n n.JS), lJS-95, although the chronology poslulated by Kuhdan must be ~'Ubjett to c.aution. t«)Scor.gr, Y·U·IO. Co. 336 N ': pan.i<JJ uanslatioo. in M3gdaU11o, 'Helle~~Jsm ', 14. ...., George Tornikes, ed. J. Danou7A$. George.1 et D~mi.IriM Tornik~t: lf.nrl!$ et dLs«Jurs (Paris., t97t>). 20S-7. 1

The Founh Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

143

derive from a now lost imperial chrysobull of c. 1150. 142 Michael Choniates was clearly building on an established topos- but one that was recently established. It is instructive to compare the stereotype of Athens projected in earlier literature. In the nint!Kentury We of the eighth<enrury St Stephen of Surozh, the saint visits Athens to worship at the church of the Mother of God where, we are told, he bas discussions with local philosophers and rhetors before reruming to Constantinople. 143 The philosophers and rbetors must be pure fantasy but are revealing of the reputation that Athens still enjoyed. The tenth·century poet John Geometres positively gloats over the fact that Constantinople has succeeded Athens as the metropolis of learning.'.,. With the letters of Michael Psellos, in the eleventh century, we begin to see hints of romantic antiquarianism: a reminder to a correspondent in Greece about a

request ~concerning statues'; the obse.IVation that 'a few columns of venerable monuments, abandoned ruins', are aU that is left of the glory that was Hellas; remarks to the effect that Athens attracts and inspires educated men. 145 But it is only in the twelfth century, with the authors we have mentioned, that the decline of Athens is both acknowledged and regretted. In this changing perception we can see not only the progress and growing confidence of classical studies in Constantinople, but also a shift from a perception of Athens as an ever-present reality, to a triumphal celebration of its demise and finally to the realisation that it was a lost world which might be wonh trying to recover. Michael Chooiates' unrequited love for ancient Athens was the extreme manifestation of a wider sense of antiquity evinced by twelfth-century writers. A good ca.~ in point is Eustathios ofThessalonica, whom we have already met as a formative influence on Michael's education. In a sermon denouncing

1 1 ,.

Migne. PaJrologla UuiM, 215. ool$. 1559·62: cf. M. Barber, •westcm Attirudcs to Franki$1\ Grecoe in the 1birtceotb Century', in Latins and Gr~eks in the Eruttm Medit~rranean after 1104.

00. 8 . Arbel. B. Hamilton, 0 . Jacoby (London 1989), ll2. The lon&rheiOrieal proemiW'rl seenu to be quite exoc:.pcjonal among lnooccnt IJI'$ ~ . whio::h suggests that it might ha,•c beeo prompted by one of the acts that the pope was ulced to confirm. In t148, the emperor Matluel I i$sued a genml privilege lor till the bi.sbopries of the empire. followed by a scrie~ of charters for inctividual sees. To,gettw:.r these constituted the most far·reac-hing cooce5Sioo$ to tbe·cbl.trcb granted by lD)' Byzantine emperor: see. l'. Svoronos, 'Les priviltges de rl!&lise l l'tpoque des Comnenc.s Cli: un rescrit in~dh de Maouel 1•r Comn~ne·, Travaux d mhnoim. ( 196S), 360£f (repr. in idem, hudc f.Ur l'organisut.ion inllrieure, Ia sorllte ~~ l"kottomi~ de ftmpi~ Byunlin (London 1973)). A ehrysob\tUof Manlad J was tbecetore almost certainly amoag U.e doc:umentation that tbe Utin Archbishop of Athens $Ubrnin.ed to tlk:: pope. t.uEd. V. Vas.ilie\'Sky. Russk.(,.vizanri/.skijfl 1-ukd()vantiil (St Pe•el1bUJt, 1983). 75; d. R. Brownina:, 'Athens in the "Dark Age"', i_n Cullurtand Hitt()ry: Essaylprestnttd f.OlackL.inds"Y· eel. 8. Smith (S)'dney, 19S4). 300 [repr. in idem, Hirtory, Langua~and l.ireuu;y in'"- BytDndnt Wo,td (Norlhamplon, 1989)) 144 ~ticnc, PO. 108. cots, 9.50·51. 1 .&;1Sce K. Sathas, Biblimh«ilgraeca ~Mdli aevi, v (Paris, 1876), 268, 384~ G. Weiss. Ostromi.Jche Btamt.t im Sfnegel d~r Schrifkn des Michotl Pstllm , Miscellanea Byzaotina Mon.accll$ia 16 (Munich, 1973). 280-81: P. Ga\ujer. 'Quelques: Jettres de P1ellos inldites ou dtjA6dittes' Rtwut tks &ud
The Percepti011 of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

144

hypoc6sy Eustathios describes this as the ultimate perversion of the noble art of drama, whose degeneration he
146

Ed. Tafel. EUS'Ulthii opwcu.la, 88-98.

17 " Contem.pora.ry intereu io dramatic Jiterature was intense and constantly

found e1pressioo in substitute$ for 'rear drama: see MuUen, 'Ari!tocrtiC)' and Patronage' (cited above, n. 6)> Macride5, 'Poetic Justice' (as in n.37), 137· 168. 1 •£d. Tafel, Euslathii opwcula, 97, 253~ ct. P, MaAdaUoo, 1"he Byuntine Hoi)' M.an in dW! ·rwelftb Century' (as inn. 103) Sl-66. t.-t9Sec bc.Jow, n. ISS. 1~ee above, n.J4S. u-lHi.twrUt. ed. I. Be:k_ker(Bonn. 1853), 90. 1 ~eodorc La$earis, Epiftult~>t CCXVII, cc:t N. F'eua (Florcncc, l898), 107-8; pactiallr.)..US.(ation by C. Mango, T1te Art of tit~ Byumtl'ne Empire, J/2-USJ: Sowus unJ fkx:.uments (EQg.le~ wood CUJfs. NJ .. 1972). 245. msee above. n. l24. 15• Migoc., PG, 133, cols.928-29; U. A. Stewart, 1'M Pilgrinwg~ of Joann~s Phocu in tM Holy Lond. Palestine Pigrims' Texl Society (London. 1896), 6{f.

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

145

author wanted to identify with Jusriniana Prima - an early, if unsophisticated, attempt to locate a site with the aid of archaeological evidence.'" As tbis last example suggests, twelfth-century Byzantines did not bother much with inscriptions, but they did read histories and delve into archives, particularly those of the patriarchate in the Great Church of Constan· tinople.1S6 Between their chron.icles and their archives they bad a fairly good idea of the time-scale into which ancient Greek history had to be slotted. Thus Michael Glykas, the least classicising and most theological of the twelfth· century world chroniclers, r«orded that Sophocles, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, Pythagoras, Thucydides, Euripides, Herodotus, Empedocles, Diogenes, Hippocrates, Plato and Aristo tle all lived under the Persian Klng Artaxerxes the Long-armed - in most cases, he was nor out by more than fifty years. 157 ln other words, the sense of Cllristian antiquity contributed to the se.nse of Hellenic antiquity. In the twelfth century, research into Christian antiquity was particularly stimulated by ecclesiastical controversy. Both in countering the papal claims, and in anempting to update their own house rule$ 1 apologists and canonists of the church of Constantinople made great use of the argument of historical relativity - that 'things were different then' in the days of the early chutch councils, when Rome was still an imperial capital and paganism was still rife. This canonistic perception of the past is most fully developed in the canonical commentaries of Theodore Balsamon. an e xact contemporary of Eustathios. 1SI! Balsamon was greatly indebted to his predecessor John Zonar· as, whom we have already met as both chronicler and canonist. As we have seen, Zonaras had a sound and sympathetic understaoding of the republican constitution of ancient Rome. This alone must cast doubt on the idea that twelfth-century Byzantines were incapable of comprehending the institutions and the scale of the ancient city-state. 1bere is, indeed, much else to contradict this idea. Two twelfth-century sources positively idea lise the 'mixed constitution' of antiquity, and apply it to their own limes. Stephen Skylitzcs, the teacher of Theodore Prodromos, wrote c. 1121 in a commentary on Aristotle's Rhetorica: 'The best stare', i.e. the kingdom (IM.
U.:&L Prinzing, 'Enlsltilung und Rezeption' (ill i.n n. l5), 7:17. uo5ee ANelm o( fu.vdberg. ln Mignc:, PL. 188, ooL1223; Theodore Balnmon. in !UtaJics· Podc$, S)'llltlgmtJ, ii (as in n.46), 300-1. u'Mid'lael Glykas. Chronick, 376. 15'See Macride!i, 'Twelfth-Ctntury Caoooillts' (cited above, n.68).

146

Thel'erception of the l'ast in Twtlfth·Century Europe

be seen: a certain (constill.ltional) order (1axis) surrounds the city prefec.t (tptm:hos)

and rules the city. 159

The last remark shows clearly that the author is thinking of contemporary Constantinople. The more discerning mind of Eustatbios found a better example. In a remarkable passage Eustathios begins by describing God's rule over mankind as a mixed constitution; he then goes on to note that the only contemporary society to preserve a shadow of this form of government is l.he

city of Venice. When we consider that fifteenth-century Italian humanists praised Venice for exactly the same reason, we realise that twelfth-century Byzantium anticipated the perception of the cla<;Sical past tbat was central to

the ·civic humanism' of the Renaissance..I flO Of course this passage is dwarfod by the volume o f panegyric that Eustathios poured out in extravagant praise of the emperors of his day. notably ManueL Even his sermons were laced with government propaganda holding up the 'divine emperor' as a model of human behaviour. 161 It is certainly no accident that Homer was his, and mosl Byzantines', favourite ancient Greek author: 162 the Homeric world of palaces and citadels was in some ways closer to the Byzantine experience than the classical polis ofThueydides and Demosthenes. In his huge commentary on the Iliad, Eustathios endorse-• Odysseus's statement that 'multiple kingship is not a good tlung' (2.204), and launches into a long digression on the superiority of monarchy to democracy and aristocracy: ' this royal nile established the legendary great powers of history: that of the Persians, that of the Indians, Ehat of I he Romans. Md no regime ever became of such great account as that of royalty.' He then adds an interesting, and gratuitous, qualification: The poet•s Odysseus did well to approve monarchy b)' not rejecting o1her constitu· tions. but by selecting the best form of goodness . . . For to s.llY 'multiple kingship is nota good thing' was not saying that the legalised rule of many is bad. For what is not good l-s not of necessity bad. That neither-democracy nor aristOcracy is a bad thing is dear from many cities wbich fared wciJ under democratic or aristocratic rule. tt>J

Significantly, Eustathios very rarely digresses on non-philological points. One

lW£d. H. Rabe, in ConrmtntMio in ArUto-tti<m GrMt·Q, xxi/2 (Bttlio. J896). '269: d . W. Wol$ka-Conus, •A propo$ desuo-Ut$ de St6pbaoos ~ Ia Rhtwrlqutde'At.istote: l'autew, l'oeuvre, le milieu'. Ac.tts du XlVt Qmgrb ltUflrnali()nal des trudu Byzamlnts. iii (Bnchar~t. 1976), 599.(;)6. IOOMigne. PG. 136, cat 717; MagdaJino, . KtJistrkritik'(as in n. 13} 344-45 rrcpr. in TrQditiOII tlnd Tra~t.t/ormmion J. l.t;t Ed.

Tafel. Eu:ilochii opwcul#, 86-81, 196; Soor. gr. Y·ll·lO, fos. 4lvif, 367r-68T.

•ftlSee R. Browning. 'Homer In Byzantium'. Y'zator. 8 (1975), 1S~31(repr. in idem. Sludits on 8yz411tdne History. Uttrmur~ Md F..ducori(ll'l (t.ondon, 19n)} t&Ed. M.H.A.L.H. van dcr Valk, Ewtalhii tlrdtitpiscopi Tltasaloniunsis commtmarii ad Homtri JIUultm pt.rlinmta:, i (Uideo, 1971),'308--9.

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

1.47

other notable instance where he does so is when he eomes to Athens in Homer's Catalogue of Ships (2.546f1). Athens, he notes, sent only fifty ships against Troy, ' but in later times the Athenians were so well off for ships that for many years they were the best sea-fighters under the sun and dominated the seas' . Such was the fame of Athens in ancient times, he goes on to note, that it was called 'the Museum of Hellas', the ' Hellas of Hellas', the 'hearth and headqua rters of Hellas'. Commenting then on the poetic variation by which Homer refers to Athens as the 'deme of Erechtheus', Eustathios adds: Tt seems that he: is emphasising tbe quality of democracy, in which the Athenians took a special detight. The histories say that they e•perimented wilh every rype of rule. For they were ruled by kings and converted to democracy. then !hey wore ruled by tyrants, and later they came under oligarchy. But democracy pte\'ailed, being more dear to them than other forms of constitution.164

In these passages, which may well represent the substance of lectures attended by Michael Choniates, Eustathios shows clearly that he knew a nd accepted how integral democracy had been to the greatness of the Athens which he and his contemporaries admired. Enough bas been said to establish that rwelfth..:entury Byzantines bad an info rmed and dista nced pe rception of ancient Hellas as an historical phenomenon. Whether they let this perception impinge on their literary imitation o f ancient authors is quite anothe r matter. Oassics, after all, by definition do not date and the point of imitating them is to perpetuate a timeless ideal of literary perfection. Byzantium had the added complication that 'Attic' Greek was both a dead and a living language: we cao never be sure bow far literary imitation was a matter of rranslating thoughts into the idiom of a bygone age and how far it was simply a matter of writing stylishly. What was going on in the mind of an author who referred to rwelfth·cenrury 'TU.rks as ·Persians'? Was he (I)

consciously echoing any one o f a number of authors from the fifth century B.C. to the seventh century A.D. ; (2) doing what he bad learned at school; (3) suggesting that this was just another round in the age-old struggle between Hellenism and oriental barbari.~m? When twelfth-century B)'UlOtines wro te set piece descriptions (ekphras•is ) of what were obviously ancient sculptures or mosaics, why did they dwell on almost everything but the a ntiquity of the pieces concerned? 165 Did they take this as read, did .they not value antiques, were they slavishly following the rules of a genre, or were they pretendjng to be ancient an-critics? In short. was the literary imitation of antiquity the mec.hani· cal perpetuation of a cultural tradition; or the eonscious revival o f a cultural

lliolfbid.' ~37. 165ConstaDtine Manuses, ed. l. Sternbl&(h, 'Beitrige l.llr Kunstscschic;hte' (i1.5 in o.lS), ools.

74-79, 83-85.

148

The Percep1ion of 1he Pas1 in Twelflh·Cenlury e urope

tradition; or a re\'ivaJposing as continuity? Or was it somehow a combination of all three'/ On tbe whole the syncretism of Byzantine •Attic' Greek - its apparently indiscriminate amalgamation of clements from Homer to the present - speaks for continuity rather than revivaL 166 But the twelfth century saw two devcloJ>-

ments which suggest a greater sclf~consdous.ness in the imitation of ancient literature. One was tile emergence of a literary vernacular, which reOccts a growing sense of differentiation between ancient and modern Greek. 167 The other wa.~ the revival of a literary genre which had been redundant since the second century: the Hellenistic noveL Here we have positive proof tllat the literary mimesis of antiquity was beginning to become a conscious exercise in anachronism and thus to involve real perception as weU as perpetuation of the

past.'"' There are three, possibly four, works in question. Three are by authors who are known from their other writings to have lived in the early to mid twelfth century: the Rodun1he und Dosikles (RD) of Theodore Prodromos; the Drosilla and Charikles (DC) of his pupil Niketas Eugenia nos; and the Arisllllt· dros and Kallilhea (AK) , of which only fragments have been preserved, by Constantine Manasses. The Hysmine a11d Hysminios (Hll) of the otherwise unknown Eustathios/Eumathios Makrembolites can probably be assigned to the same period, although a later, even thitteentb·century, date has been suggested. 169 These no,·els, once thoroughly despised and neglected, have recently come in for much revaluation, notably by Roderick Beaton in his study of the medieval G reek romance. Beaton's signal contribution has been to bring out the fuJI significance of the novels as works of literary artifice. As he points out~ their use of the past is an important part of their self~conscious artificiality; they add a new dimension to the 'belatedness' of the andent romances, which

tllemselves 'look backwards with an element of nostalgia to a lost classical or immediately post-classical period which can plausibly be considered as the "golden age'' of the Greek culture with which writers and readers alike identified themselves'. Tbe Byzantine texts 'are historical novels in a sense which is only vestigial in the surviving ancient romances: they are attempts not 160Sce in Jlt(leraJ R. Drowning. 'Tbe Language of Byzantine Literature'. in T1tt 'PQ.S( in Mtd~ fAnd Modf!nt Grttk Culture, ed. Sp. Vryonis Jr. (Malibu, 1978), 116-28 rrepr. in idem,

Hlslory, Langtu~ge and LirtrDcy (abo\·e n. 14)1

1' 1tbtd.; M. Alelriou, 'The Po\•erty of£crilure and the Cratt of Writing: Towards aJle1pp3Jaisal of the Prodromic Poems', Byzantine ond Mod#n Greek Szudiu. 10 (1986), 1-40. 168Sce in gc:ntral, Hunget, l..irfrDiln, ij, 119·41 : Beaton, Ronwru (as in n.29). 1 ~ teAtS at¢ edited by R. Herdw.:(, Erofid Scripmre$ Graec.i, ii, (leipzig, 1859), lS9-~n; the trac.rnentsof AK ha\·c been m:dited by Mazal, Dn Roman (abOve, n.3). For tbe date: of HI/, see Beaton, Romana, nff; conlra. S. MacAJister. 'Byzantine TweUth·Century Romanoes: A Rela· th·c Chronology'. Byzmrlintand Modt-rn Gruk Srudlts, IS (199 1)~ P. M.agd>llino, •Eros1he King and tbc: King of Amouts: Some Obser..,ation' on HyJmint and Hy$minas.', Dwnbmron OakJ Popm. 46 (l99Z).

The Fourth Kingdom aod the Rhetoric of Hellenism

149

just to revive past literature by anu.~ion and imitation, but to recapture, in the fictional world they create, the world of the past in which that literature took shape'. The twelfth-century romances are therefore relevant to our enquiry, not only as monuments but also as documents of the relationship between past and present in the Byzantine rhetoric of Hellenism. More than any other sour= they show how twelfth-century writers set about constructing an antique environment, what they t hought was appropriate to put in it and what they wanted out o f it. 170 On first reading the yield is disappointing. There is a standard plot, whose clements arc lifted from the ancient novelists -Achilles Tatius, Heliodorus etc. A nice boy falls madly in love with a nice girl. She reciprocates but her parents nave promised her to another. They run away on a passing ship. He cannot wait but she does not believe in sex before marriage; in any case they are captured by pirates, paned and sold into slavery. Each takes the other for lost and complains to the deity which promised them a bright future together. However, this deity ensures that their paths soon cross, and they manage to keep in touch by pretending to be brother and sister. Meanwhile, their parents have joined forces in looking for them, encouraged by an optimistic oracle. There is a grand reunion after which the couple are freed and get married. Equally standard sub-plots occur in the form of the hero's companion in captivity whose own Jove life has gone tragically wrong and the master or mistress who falls fo r the heroine or hero. The sto ry is n.o t related to histo rical events. Theodore Prodromes sets pans o f his story in Cyprus, Rhodes, Abydos, and Delpni; Eugenia nos brings in Phthia and Lesbos but otherwise all plaoes and people arc imaginary. The only detailed descriptions are of idyllic gardens, works of an and dreams. The characters are much given to senten-

tious moral ising on Love, Fate, Fortune and the Gods. On second reading, \\tith longer experience of Byzantine literature, and with guidance from Bec·k , Hunger, Kazhdan, Margaret Alexiou and others, the texts become more interesting and relevant .'" Jfysmine and Jfysminias turns out to be a sensitive study in the psychology of young male Jove, with some very evocative dream sequences (HH 3.5-7, 5.1-5) . The descriptions of works of art show a typically Byzantine taste for artifice and artislry and evoke the sort of objets d'art that rich Byzantines might have possessed . The notable exception is the description of the mural in H ysmine's garden depicting the god Eros as an enthroned king to whom all kinds of men and animals are making obeisance (HH2.7 -11). The scene is one, however, which echoes the motifs of Byzantine court art, rhetoric and ceremonial; I have argued elsewhere that the image of King Eros was inspired by Manuel I . 172 The realities o f imperial

1'70seaton,

Romanet, 51·54.

111 For references, d. ibld.• index t. ~,~ ~also S . MacAlit-ICt, 'Arin odc on the Dream; A Twe lfth-Century Romance Revival', Byzamion. 60 (1990), 195-212. "'Magdalli>o, 'Eros' (as ln o. 169 above).

150

1'1!e Perception of tht Past in Twelfth-Celltury Europe

government are also reflected in Rodbmhe and Dosikles, in the scenes set at the courts of IGng Mistylos, whose fleet has captured the. hero and heroine, and his rival King Bryaxes (RD 4-j)), Bryaxes sends an embassy to Misty los to demand the return of a disputed town (RD 4.9-73). Having received and refuse{! the request. Mistylos entrusts the ambassador, Artaxaocs, to the care of his own satrap Gobryas (RD 4.74-110). Gobryas treatS Artaxanes 10 a magnificent dinner. One of the courses is a roa•'l lamb which, when it is brought to the table, emits a Oock of li,·e sparrows. (RD 4.121·208) After the meal, Gobryas brings on a conjuror who does a convincing imitation of cutting his own throat and falling down dead in a pool of blood but then, at Gobryas's command, leaps up and sings a hymn of praise to Mistylos (RD 4.209-316). By these stunts, Gobryas managed to persuade his inebriated guest that Mistylos can work miracles (RD 5.51-72). As Hunger has pointed out, this episode echoes the Byzantine impe rial use of ceremonial to overawe gullible barbar· ians.m Bryaxes, however. is not taken in by his ambas..,.dor's report and declare.• war on Mistylos. Before the battle, he addresses his troops, exhorting them. among other things, 'to die for their children and fall for their [ather· land' (RD 5.374·5). This could be straight out of the eve-of-battle rhetoric of the .Byzantine army."• Later on, when Bryaxes, victorious over Mistylos, is about to sacrifice the hero to the gods as a thank-offering, he makes a speech justifying his right to dispose of prisoners of war as he thinks fot: hierarchy, he says, the lordship of masters over slaves, is what keeps the world in order and makes civilisation possible (RD 7.369ff).m Prodromos may be influenced here by his reading of Aristotle, but he is also stating the principle which underpinned the society in which he lived . There are o ther, more homely, vignettes drawn from Byzantine life. In Rodbntht lllld Dosikles, there is the drunken sailor Nausikrates twisting his legs in a dance-rhythm as he sleeps (RD 3.17·32; cf.2.109·10), and the reunion of the hero and heroine with their fathers) all embracing ea<:h other, compared to the figures of extraordinarv beasts which the author has seen depicted on silk tapestries (RD 3.320-4). 176 In Drosilla and Charikles there is the s<:ene of the old woman, Maryllis, so moved by the reunion of the couple that she takes

mHunger. Liurt~tur. i.i, 131. 11"Set Leo VI. in Migoc, PG.101. cols.S:Z.S..27. 115 See P. M8gdalino. 'Honour among Romaioi; tbe Framework ofSocial Values in lbe World of Di&Cnt$ Akrhes ar.ad Kehumenm', ByzanJin~ and Modern Gruk Stl4dlt.s, 13 (1989), 216. 1"'Beaton, p. 65, ebaraotcri$es this u 3 'set·pic« oontri"\•aDoe even more pcrvcf'$( by the SttU)C.Iatd-s of modern aesahctja.' than the d«eription ~arl ier in the text, or a beautiful caJ'\•cd eup which had just been broken by the drunken Artax:anes- u description indebted to Achilles Tatius. who in tum was indebte-d 10 Hc:rodotus(RD4.331·411) . h isccrtainlyoorrect tOUrC$$tbe common dement of oontrivtd, self·oon.o;ciaos an i ft~. in the two descriprions. btn in doing so one m~AS-1 not £Werloot the: oontrast between the dasskal, lilCrary inspiration of the description of the cup and tbe C)'C·witncss dai.m made fOr the description of the textik design. This is the only first-person i_ntervention of the author in the tC:ln, wbic:h strengthens the po!!:sibiJjty that the reference is to real, contemporary objc:ccs.

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

151

a napkin in each hand and starts undulating. exactly like the pictures of dancers in Byzantine paintings (DC 7.211·86). m All in all the novels oontain a fair amount of colour. But the colour is drawn from contemporary experience and from the pyrotechnics of literary artifice. not from perception of the antique past in which the narrative is supposedly set. With the notable e xception of religion and slavery, the concrete realities of ancient city life are oonspicuous by tbeir absence: there is no attempt to provide an authentic backdrop of monumental public buildings or of the civic councils in which the father.; of the protagonists should. as leading citizens, preswnably have sat. Yet having said this, we should note that, within its limits, the pretence of an antique setting is very consistently maintained. The religious factor is significant: the Olympian pantheon is in full control, and the characters take the gods as seriously as a Byzantine would have taken Christ and the saints. 178 Each city has iL' o wn cult which is important to its identity. Festivals of Dion)'SOS figure prominently in the action of Drosi//4 and Charikles (DC 1.105£1: 3.351-411), and the whole narrative of Hysmine and Hysminias is constructed around local cults and festivals of Zeus, A rtemis and Apollo. The novels are consistent, too, in portraying the heroes as Hellenes and their captors as barbarians. It is true that Hysmine and Hysminias become slaves of other Greeks, who refuse to free them even when their parents turn up- however, thi& provokes a stern lecture from the priest of Apollo , who tells them that enslaving free Hellenes is wrong (HH 10.14). The barbarians are full of human intere.
177CI. the figures on the Budapest, ·crown of Monomac.bos': K. Wessel, Byz4t1tine £name& from tM. Sth t() dtt /3rh Ctmuty (Oree:nwic:b, CoM_., 1967), no.32. ~"'*Beaton, pp.61·62 flahtty notes Chat the By:z:at~tinc authors, beina Christialu, ponray P~&an religion with • detachment tbat was Jacldog in the ancient no'-ds they were i.mitabng.liowcver, it is djfficuh 10 sbare his view mat the protagonisrs' occasional exprusions or disillusion v.itb their gods betray Christi.A.n $«pticisco. or that their total dependeflc:e on Fate and lhe gods reflects the. Ouistian vinue of pas.-.ive ~ffe.ring. Rather, both aspedS shoukl bee:a seen as authemjcating touches. The doubts are of the kind to which all relisious believers are naturally prone in moments o{ a.d\·ersit)'- witne'5s the Apostles Peter aad 'lbomas. As {or the passivity, chit is e-xactly what Onbodox CbristiaDS would Cxped or peOple governed by fulse cuds and the fon::es of nature and therefore unable 10 exercise the {acuJty ol free monl dtoioc sn·en them by lhe one true God (cf. espcciaiJy RD 6.84·8). Twtlftbo«ntwy Orthodox writers, aJarmed aJ the current \'ogue (OJ the determiniit doetrinn of N~atonism and astroklgy, were panicularly keen to empa$l$c tbat Divine Providence rewardecJ trllm.an action And did not determine it. Jt il ccrtainl}' true that HH oondudes by pinning hope: ofimmonalit)' on rhetoric, no11be gods (U.21; Beaton, Ront41'l«, 84), but in doing so it pa)'5 tribute to He-rm~. thes<>d ofpcnand ink,andooe should not for~t tbe.rok o( Apollo. god or the Muses, in redeeming the hero and heroine from slavery (HH, 10.13·14).

152

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth· Century £urope

Pisa. 179 ln this light the absence of any reference to politics or government in the life of the Greek cities begins to look like more than mere oversight. Do we infer that free Hellenes are not ruled by kings and that kingship is ipso facto barbaric? It is with some reluctance that Hysminias submits to the lordship of Kin.g Eros, with its Byzantine imperial connotations, and until the bappy ending be is doubtful of Eros' legitimacy, twice calling him tyrant; here, and in Drosilla and Charikles, Eros is like the barbarian kings ina.<mucb a.' be too uproots the hero and heroine from their family homes and native communities (HH 4.20, 5.18, 7.7, 8.10, 9.13; DC 2.88·100, 127-43, 3.139·49, 4.411-13,

6.366-79). The authors of the novels leave it up to the reader whether to distance himself from the protagonists as bygone pagans or to identify with them as civilised, pious and sympathetic human beings. In this the Hellenism evoked by the texts is consciously both past and pre.~nt. It is past for the purposes of saying things which were inadmissible in a Byzantine context. The fictional antique setting serves as a notional laboratory in which Nature, Fate and Fortune can be studied in isolation from real heavenly or earthly authority. At the same time, Hellenism is made contemporary for the purpose of giving order and meaning to cenain recurrent facts of human existence: falling in love, sea-travel, piracy, separation and exile, and the division of the world into civilised 'us' and barbarian 'them'. Tbe~e we.re aJI conditions wbicb affected the Byzantines as much as the ancient Greeks, irrespective of church and empire. 180 This analysis of the novels is confirmed. I believe, by two other twelfth· century works of fiCtion where the dual perspective on antiquity is made explicit by reference to real, historical characters and situations. The Timar.ion, a satirical dialogue in the style of Lucian, written possibly as early as c. lltO, is set recognisably in the author's own time. 181 However, the main action takes places in a fk.1ionaJ Hades, where the. narrator, Timarion, has been broughl through an admjl\i~trati,·e error on the part of the compete.nt demons and lodges an appeal against h is untimely eviction from his body. In the underworld Timarion meets both famous ByLantines and famous ande.nt Greeks, but he talks only to the Byzantines. With two exceptions, the ancients do not th.ink at all highly of the modems, to whom they pejoratively refer as

l'll;I'Hunger, Urmuur. il, 132. Beaton, Romanee, 11·13, perb~ps Ol.isst$ tbe point here when be play!i down tbe allusion to Byz;antin.e cereroonhd M the· grounds that 'the perpeuatOI'$ of 1he spectade . . . are a pankulad)' nascycrew of piratC$~ aod • . . if a contemporary B)7.antine custom i.s alluded to, it hM bt.:er:~ subjected to a ilni~;ter tnMformarion•. ll!l>fbc peril$ of piracy arc:.evoked horri.ftcally by Conuantine Mao.as5es in cOnoeaion with his account of his visit to Cyprus in 1160: 'HodoipOrikon', ed. Higenc:s and Timarion'. in Alaios l Komn~11o9 , ed. MuUelt owd Smythe.

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of He/knism

153

Galileans, and Timarion is afraid that whe.n his appeal against his sentence is heard by the judges of the underworld, Ajax and Minos, they will be prejudiced against him. But his old teacher, Theodore of Smyrna, tells him not to worry- the Hellenic judges arc impeccably just , which is why they have been given tbeir jobs. The different religion of the defendants is nothing to them; as far as they are ooncerned, everyone is free to follow tlte 'heresy' of his choice. Since, however, the Galileans' belief has spread to all the world, Providence has decreed that a Christian colleague, the Byzantine Emperor Theophilos, should join the bench. It is already a biting indictment of Byzantine ju>'lice that Timarion expects his judges to be biased and bigoted and that the only Byzantine figure deemed worthy to sit beside them is the Iconoclast emperor Theophilos (827-42), a major btre noire of Orthodoxy. The trial scene which follows is an obvious satire on Byzantine legal procedure, as well as on the medical profession, which is summoned to give evidence. Even more clearly than in the novels, the literary perspective is ancient while the human perspective is Byzantine, with the preposterous fiction of the former giving greater licence to the Iauer. Ancients and Byzantines are scrupulously distinguished on grounds of religion but profess the same cultural and moral values, and all end up in Hades. The Byzantines are more taogible characters but the ancients have higher standards, in justice as in philosophy. The o ther te
tnEd. A. Papadopoukls--Kc.rameus, Varia GrtJ«4 Sacra (St Pete001118, 1909~ rcpr. Leiprig, 1975), 8().97. From the concluding Unes, it i$ cltar that tbe piece was wrinen at a time of pcatleful

rdatiotU between tbe empire and 1he t.il'l.,gdorn <>f Stcily.

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The Perception of the PIJSt in Twelfth-Cemury Europe

allia.nce of Christian faith and Hellenic wisdom against the bruce power and ignorance of Rome . Imperial power is cast as the villain of the piece; and here we are reminded of Rodanthe and Dosikles, with its contrast between the nonpolitical culture of the Hellenes and the imposing courts and armies of the barbarians. Returning now to the q uestion with which we started - whether twelfth· century B)'l:antines conceived of Hellenism as being somehow outside history - I think the answer is yes. but not because it was a blind spot in their perception of the past. One might hazard the suggestion that they thought of ancient history as history in the ancient sense: as a distillation of c.xemplary

truths about the affairs of men which wa• too valuable to be buried in the stratigraphy of the world chronicle. It was in this sense that Eustathios recommended Homer as an excellent introduction to the art of histor)' writing. 13.l Of course Eustatbios and bis fnends were perfectly well aware, and ostensibly very happy, that paganism and the classical polis were dead and buried. To this extent it is quite true to say that they kept the packaging and rejected the package. Like their official guides, the Cappadocian Fathers o f the fourth century. they wanted the best of both worlds: an 'outer' culture of Hellenic learning and an ~inner' culture of Orthodox Christianity. 1beir Hellenism found its sanction in the rhetoric with which St Gregory of Nazianzos, exulting at the death of Julian the Apostate. had denounced thiS emperor for having forbidden Christians tO teach rhetoric and philosophy: how absurd of this tyrannical pedant to proclaim that Hellenic education could not be detached from Hellenism as a way of life and a system of belief. 18-4 Yet it was one thing to prescribe this amputation in a world where Hellenism was still intact , another thing to live with the consequences in a world where only the disembodied Uterature remained. Tbe evidence we have examined suggestS that by the twelfth century Byzantine intellectuals had begun to feel that somctbing was missing. While working within the limits set by patristic orthodoxy, and keeping well clear of paganism , they used the rhetoric of Hellenism not only as ornament, but also as a means of recalling the past- of

constructing an imagiMire of ancient Greece. Seen in isolation, this imaginoirt seems sanitised and banal; put in the context of the Byzantine religious and political orthodoxy v.1th which it pointedly invites comparison, it begins to look almost daring. The perception of the ancient G reek past as a Golden Age was completely at odds with the historical vision propagated by ecclesiastical and imperial rhetoric, according to which Grace and Revelatio n were cumulative, the new dispensation was automatically superior to the o ld, the. New

IIPCommetuarii in /liadem, ed. van dtr Valk, ii, 2·3. 1

~Magdali no,

11 ~

G. Bowersock, Hellenism in Lau Amiquity (Cambridge. 1990), 11·13. For cbe imporhtooe of Gregory of Nui.a.or.oi as a Jittnuy model, d. 'Hc.'llen.iw and Nationalism',

L.R. Cresci. 'SWla fonuoa di Gregorio di Naziaozo ncl XII seoo~·. B<Jllttino dellll Badia gr~ca dl Gromt/~"ata,

n.s., 37 (19$3), 3-17.

The Fourth Kingdom and the Rhetoric of Hellenism

155

Rome had supc..eded all other earthly cities, and the present em~ror surpassed all past heroes with whom he could possibly be compared. 1 The division of the world into Hellenes and barbarians implied that the Romans were among lhe latter and that the empire was a barbarian state - an implication reinforced by the portrayal of monarchical power as alien to the Hellenic way of life. Above all, the idealisation of this way of life as idyllic and virtuous. despire the error of its paganism and the imperfection of its statehood, struck at the root of the assumption that the salvation of mankind was tied to one faith, one form of government and one city. An escape from reality, a disguise for reality, and a foil for reality: twelfthcentury Hellenism was all these things. This much has, in effect, been said before. What previous scholarship bas not done, and what I have tried to do, is to confront the paradox that Hellenism was both an irretrievably past phenomenon and the ever-present medium by which this phenomenon was perceived. I hope to have brought out the versatility, and the full subversive potential, of the way the rhetoric of Hellenism commuted between past and present and allowe(i its authors to enrich their historical identity with an added, imaginary dimension. But why the twelfth century? Why did it take the Byzantines so long to fall for the seductive ghost which had always haunted their library shelves? It was partly, as already suggested, a matter of time- of an earlier classical revival coming of age, and of distance lending sufficient enchantment and security to the view. But the main explanation is surely that the traditiona!Byzantine identity and the traditional perception oft he past did not fully answer to the needs and circumstances of Byzantine intellectuals in the Comnenian period. They were in the curious and novel position of belonging to the establishment while also feeling oppressed and humiliated by the established regime. Their ideal of Hellenism corresponded admirably to

their mixture of insecurity at thelr powerlessness and pride in their status as highly literate, civilised 'insiders'. Moreover, the contrast between the grand universalist pretensions of their emperors and the vulnerability of their

empire. which reached crisis proportions at the end of the century, made them look back not only to t he great days of the Roman Empire but also to the golden age of Athens, which they could more easily recover in their imagination and which was also more exclusively theirs. Above all, the rise of Latin Europe, its eastward expansion and their own emperors' efforts to absorb this into the Byzantine state made the traditional division of the world into Roman and barbarians, or Christians and 'gentiles'. inadequate for expressing the exclusive sense of 'us versus them' which they felt with regard to the Latins they met at court or on the strecL< of Constantinople. When they called themselves Hellenes, they usually did so in the context of reference to

'" For twelflh-oeotury c:xpr~ioo.s of this idcoiogy, see e .g., Nilceta.s Se;ides, cd. R. Gabbauer. Gttgt:n lhn Primlll du P11pstes (Munich. 1975); and Constantine Man~s. ed. E. Kurtz., io Vitantilsk/1 V - / k . 12 (1905), 931!.

156

1'ht Perception of the Past in

Tweljih-Celllr~ry

Europe

westerners. The chronology oftbe evidence is also instructive. It clusten; at the middle and the end of the century. The fin;t examples of Byzantines calling themselves Hellenes, the first expressions of nostalgia for ancient Athens and at least three of the neo-Hellcnistic novels all date from the two decades on e ither side of 1150. This was the time of Ma nuel's grand opening to the West , <>f the Second Crusade, of the Sicilian sack of Corinth, A thens and Thebes, a.nd also of a very significant episode in the western rediscovery of Roman antiq uity: the revolt of the Roman commune against papal lordsltip. 186 The more mature humanism of the two great seholar archbishops o f Thcssalonica and Athe ns dates from the last two decades of the century, when it became clear that the empire of New Rome had passed t bc peak of its latest , Comncnian revival. It cannot be stressed too often that in appropriating Hellenism. the Byzantines did so on top of, not in place of, their identity as Christian Romans. ln other word~ they implicitly acknowledged that they belonged to a Christian Roman community of nations, among wh.ich they wanted to be more clearly distinguished. This is why tbe.ir perception of t he past has to be seen in a European context . In twelfth-<:entury Byzantium the professionally literate of Church a nd Sta te used the ir collective me mory to boost their collective morale , partly by supporting a.od partly by subverting the system they served. Was this so differen t from what was happening e lsewhere?

1116 For bibliography, sec the introduction to thi~ \'Oiume, n.8.

8

Borrowed Time: Perceptions of the Past in Twelfth-Century Rus' Simon Franklin For Russians and Ukrau>ians 1066- mutatir quite a lot of mutundir- happened in 988. According to national myth - the kind of myth that becomes an inteUectualand functional reality - 1be definitive event, which gave shape and sense to their early hi.stOI)•, was the official convcr..ion of the Rus' to Christianity under Prince Vladimir I of Kiev. Vladimir's decision wa$, in 11tat much· overworked expression, epoch-making. lt came to mark 1he boundary between the 'before' and the 'after', lhe 'us' and the ' them' of native history. Beyond political and economic calculation, beyond lhe acceptance of a se1 of beliefs or dogmas or rituals, Vladimir's decision led to the discovery of identity, to the definitive location of the Land of the Rus' in time and under Providence. Such is the myth . But Vladimir was not himself the myth-maker, nor were any of his contemporaries. The search for articulate tenth-renrury responses to the conversion leads to fiustration. Indeed, lhe search for articulate tenthcentury responses to anything leads to frustration. This i~ not because tenth· century Kievans were inarticulate, but because they had not yet begun to record their articulations in writing. By contrast with the various native paganisms, Christianity, imported from abroad, was the religion of the Book. By accepting Christianity Vladimir accepted the desirability, the necessity, of a written high culture. However, there is no C\'idcncc of a productive wriUcn high culture for about half a century after the official conversion. Apart from a handful of scratched and mostly fragmentary inscriptions, no specimens of native writing survive from before the mid eleventh century. 1 The years from 988 to around the 1040's are the Dark Ages of early Christian Rus'; dark because relatively little is known about lhem; dark because our iJnpressions a re formed by suspect subsequent portrayals of lhem; dark also because, in all probability, lhcy genuinely were cult urally unproductive, at least by comparison wilh t he enormously energetic period of 'culture building'

' See S. Franklin, 'Literacy a.~d Documentation ln Early Medieval Russla' Sptc.ulum, 60 (1985), 1 ~38; it:km, 'The Writing in the Ground: Reoern Soviet Pttbllcations on Early Rustl3n Litc:ntL-y', Tht Slavonic IUid Eas1 Euro[N!an Revkw, 6S (19870, 411 21. 4

157

!58

The Perceptum of the Past in Twelfll•·Century Europe

which was to follow. The t
On the emergence or Christian cuhurc in Kiev see G. Fc:dOtov, The Ru..u-1411 Religious Mind, CJuiJtiiJnity (Cambfidgc, Mass .• 1946); 0. OboJcnsk)', The By:.arUffle COtnmon~'ttllrh (London, t97!), 353-48S; A. POppe. Til< RiseofCivuliml Rusria (Loodon 1982); G. l'<>dskalsky, Chri.frenrum und Jheologischc UtuDiur in dcr K;n•cr Rus' (988·1137) (Munich, 1982). :. O.S.likh~hev. Ch~kw~tk vllt~ttllur~ Drevnri Rr~·l (M()Sc;Ow, 1970), 26-62. 1

i,

l<.it\'tul

Russia: Borrowed Time

159

notions of time. But among Christians outright condemnation of the native pagan past is very rare indeed. Instead they coocentrated on trying to create a new past, a synthetic past in which the native and the foreign, the local and the universal, the writ.ten and the oral, the Christian and the pagan, could be integrated into a harmonious and intelligible structure. It was not just a question of squaring the facts. The two versions of the past were not only facruaUy distinct, but in many respects conceptually incompatible, embodying different perceptions of time and space, of causation and significance, different abstract and social vocabularies. And besides, each version was in itself a composite. From native sourecs there wa.• probably no integrated narrative of the country we now caU Russia (or European Russia and Ukraine). The Land of tbe Rus' was vast and ethnically diverse, an assemblage of micro-histories. Indeed, one of the purposes, or consequences, of conversion to Christianity was to provide an ideological and functional device to transcend the micro-histories and micro ~myths. to suppon the increasingly ambitious territorial presumptions of the rulers of Kiev. But the imponed Christian versions, which filtered through to the Rus' via Bulgarian translations and Byzantine Greek texts, formed a heterogeneous cluster of exegesis and

narratives composed in various times and places for a variety of purposes and audiences.• Jaroslav's bookmen faced a major task of selective interpretation. Both sets of traditions needed to be plau.
the two versions of the pas1 were made to converge in a miraculous and potent synchrony, in tbe reigns of Vladimir and his son laroslav. Jaroslav's bookmen devised and propagated a double-stranded teleology which pointed directly at themselves as its goal and culmination and fulfilment. 5 This scheme became

<~

PrincipaJiy the ninth·tt'ntury chronicle o( George the Monk with a tcnth~cntury exteosion

aurib~ttd

to 'The Logothete•; the sixth-century ehtonicte of John Malalas; Josephu1.'s Je~·ith

Wan; taksofAie.xandet the Great; and the 'historical' boob of the Old Testament, together with

•.-oluminou$ commentaries thereon. See- I. Sorlin, 'U dilluUoon etla l•ansmi.ssio.o de La litt~nture chronographique byuntine en Russie p~moagoJe du Xl' au x.m• $i~de', Tr~tYQ-lolX d Mlmoirts, S (1973), 385-408; 0 .V. T\'Orogov, DrtYMru.tslr.ie lr.hronqgrafy (l.enin&rad, 1975); idem, ·Vizantiis.ki.e Ktlmniki v Drevnei Rusi', in Ru.ukaJQ ; gruzlnskllla lrtdMVt.lcovy~ literatury (Leningrad, t979) , 86-~

' F<>r the fu.llest cxpre1.sions or thi$ view see esp. PQvtjt' 11r~rmykh let. ed. D.S. Likb.aebev. V.P. Adrianova.PerttLs, i (Moscow, Leningrad, 1950; hereafter abbrevialed as Povat'), 10.90; EngUsb translatloo by S.H. Cross. O.P. Shcrbowitz-Wetzor, Tht Ru.ui4n Primary CJsronkle (Cambridge, Mass., 1953; herealie.r 'Cross'), 51-126; and the Stnnon on Law and Gt'4Ct by Uarion, metropolitan of Ki.ev in che earty 105&; text in J. Fennell. D. ()boe;osty, A His1orkAJI Russ-ian Rtodtr (Oxford, 1969): English u:in!Jatlon in S. Fr:tn_ldln, Se.rmon.s Qnd Rhtwric of Kiev., Rus' (Cambridge, Mass., t991), 3-29.

160

The Perception af the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

the basis of the national myth. Indeed, to this day it remains a powerful element in at least two confticting national myths among the Eastern Slavs. What were its principal ingredients? The national myth was concocted from two linear narratives lightly blended and then coated to taste with a selection of figural glosses. As one might expect, the linear narratives are most fully presented in chronicles, the figural exegesis in more rhetorical genres. But although the sources vary in emphasis they reinforce. one another in essence. The myth can be illustrated with examples from vinually any writer of the period. The first linear s.:hcme goes back to the book of Genesis, to the peoples descended from the sons of Noah, and to the tongues scattered after Babel. The 'tongue' of the Rus', as the chroniclers discovered, was among the Japhctid.< of the North, stemming from the Pannonian Norici who- according to one version o f the many imported lists of scan ered to ngues- could be traced to the original post-Babel dispersal 6 So the Bible may not actually mention the Rus', but if you look hard enough you will find them. We might note, irrelevantly and in passing, that outsid ers could be less charitable in their biblical investigations. The Byzantine historian l eo the Deacon looks for the progenitors of the Rhos not in Genesis but in Ezekiel, where he finds the darkly apocalyptic Gog and Magog. princes of Rosh.' The second linear scheme goes back to the mid ninth century. This was the dynastic narrative of the Riurikids, now known as the Varangian legend. Aconrding to the legend, the Land of the Rus' received its rulers and its name from the Yarangian Riurik, whose people were caUed the Rus', and who was

'invited' to rule by the fractious tribesmen of the north around Novgorod and ladoga, and whose descendants extended their rule along the river-roads 'from the Varangians tO the Greeks\ eventually establishing their centre of

power in Kiev.8 The· genealogies are tenuous. the chronology is shakily constructed around a Rimsy frame of dates collated from Byzantine sources. 9 But so long as the joints were not s haken too vigoro usly the s tructure would

stand, and the facade was pretty enoug)l.

The two linear schemes met when the Scandinavian rulers were slavonised, and when the slavonised Rus' were Christianised and thus re-entered sacred history through baptism. This conve rgence, according to the myth took plaoe under Vladimir. Thus the pagan past was incorporated into the Christian

~ 1

/>()vt$1', H7; Cross, 51·58. Lt:o the Deacon, fliJroriot libri d«-tm, eeL B. H&~e (Bonn, 1828), ISO.

8

Povtst' ,

19·54; Cross, 59·91.

See e.g .. l\ .A.. Sha.lr.b.ln;nov, •tskJloclnaia tochlr.a \etoschi$Jer:ilia PO"it$ti Vremt:ru'\~kh let', Zhurnal Minisursrvll Nal'tXInogc> Pro.Yvu hche.niia., 1897, No.3, 217·222~ idem, 'Kbrooologiia drevneishikb russ.kikh letopisoykb svodov·, Zhwnol Minister-siVa Narodnogo Pt(UVtshcheniitJ , 1891, no.4, 463.82~ K. Ericsson, ·Die Aofangsdatumdt.r Laurentiuscbronik A.M. 6360: einc.neue I...Osun.g', A.nnoles lnttiruli Slavit:i Snli.sburgo·R"tisbonQISis, 1, pt.2 (Wiesbadcn. 1966), 114·117. 9

Russia: Borrowed Time

161

present, vindicated and sanctified through Vladimir. The rulers imposed Christianity, and Christianity in tum justified the rulers. Linear history acquires meaning through the patterns and cycles and sym· bois of sacred history. The significance of events in time is revealed in their relation to timelessnes~ or eternity. A long with the narrative.s. the Russians imported a wide range of possible interpretative models and devices - figural, allegorical. apocalyptic- to help them shape the past in their own image. They chose aptly .10 Although all the available schemes were ultimately derived from Byzantium, the Kievans tended to ignore those which were central to the myth of Byzantium itself. Instead of presenting the world as a sueecssion of great monarchies as foreshadowed in the book of Daniel. they focused instead on the dynastic exemplars in Genesis, narratives which could be interpreted as prefigurations of their own political order. Instead of marvelling at the providential synchrony of Christ and Augustus, they ignored the ' Romanness' of Byzantium (for them, Byzantines were not Rhomaioi but Greeks) and made a virtue out of their own potentially embarras.•ing tardiness, out of their status as latecomers. Vladimir was a new Constantine as the converter of a great pagan people; but Christianity's universality was linked to prophecies about all the nation-s of the gentiles, rather than to any succession of empires. Gideon's tleece, toilers of the eleventh hour, old wine in new skins - these are some of the favourite points of reference. For, as the eulogist of an eleventh-century monk reminds us, the last shall be first. u All of this still leads to Vladimir and 988. However, the elevcnth-<:entury myth-builders were not going to leave themselves out of the picture. Vladi· mir's achievement, they concluded, wa< spirituaL He had recognised the truth and had brought the Grace of baptism to his 'new people'. But the spiritual transformation still had to be made vi..~ible, physical~ articulace. tan,gible; il had to be realised in deed . This was the role of Jaroslav. And here, despite the shift in historiographical emphasis, the temporal model was Constantinople. To create a Christian civilisation meant to create a kind of icon of Constantinople. And so, largely with the help of architects hired from Byzantium, Kiev was duly kitted out with itS grand cathedral ofSt Sophia, seat of tbe metropolitan; its Golden Gates, its Church of tbe Holy Apostles. Even some of the frescoes in St Sopbia depict coun life and entertainmentS in the Byzantine capitaL 12

10

Set S. FrankiJn, 'The Empire of the Rlwm4ioi as Viefted trom Kievan RuWa: Aspects of Byzantino-Russisn CUJt\1,..1 Relations', Byumtion. S3 (1983), S0?-37. 11 tn Pllnti.Juniki lilulJlury Ortv~i Rwi. Xll vd (Moscow, l980), 4S6_;Eng!Uh trao&lation in M. Heppeu. Tht 'Patuik' of lhtt Kil!van C.aw.t .Voruu~try (Cambrid~;e, MaM., 1989). 100. 2S; d . Ut~HJ&Skii Jbornik XII·XIIIvv, cd. $.1. Kotkov e-t af. (Mosoow, tm). 72. Note lhal the IGevan:s also discovered apostolk autbority, ia a purported visit o(St Andrew 10 the hiiJs of the future Kiev: PO~e$r', 12: Ct0$8., '3 ·~. 12 See V. ~arev, Old Russiall Murals 111td M().tllic..t (London, 1966), 56-(,()~ S.A. Vys<MskU, S•
162

The Perceprion of rhe Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

The seals of Riurikid princes were inscribed in Grcek; 13 monasteries took their spiritual inspiration from Athos and the authority of their Rule from the Constantinoplolitan mona.
1~

V. L. lanin, AktOl'Yt" ptdtati Dt\•nd RUSt X-XVvv, i {Moscow, 1910). 14·35. Pow~·(. 104-8; 13942 u Powsl', 104-S; Cross. 139~ HtppeJI, T~ 'Paterik', 19·20: Pu.mlul.nik.i lilertuurj, 434. See Fran)clln, SD'mt)n$ and Rhetoric, ~·i·xliv. 1~ Heppc:U, Thl' ·p41erik'. US; Pumiolniki 1/terotury, 482. 17 ·rext in L, MaUer. Die altrujli.fchtn hagklgrophi.uMn EniJJdung~ und lilurgischen Diclflun· gen Ubv dJt ht:iligttn Boris und Gl~b (Munich, 1967), 1·26; (In th( p(ltitics $tCJ. FtttneU, A. Stokes, &rty Ruukut t.lleraturt. (London 1974), 29·30. " For the- most inftucntial modem hypOthesi:.s see D .S. Likhachcv, The Grea; Hedtase 14

(Mo>
Russia: Borrowed Time

163

of the Caves monastery o r the princely court. Secondly, Kievans solved the mystery of potent historical mythologising in the way in which they combined the two categories of time. The catego ries can be labeUed linear and cyclical, or historical and mythological, or temporal and eternal: in this context the precision of the labels does not matter. Potent historical myth is born from those moments when the two categories of time can plausibly be synchronised, when there is perceived to be an identity between a singular set of events and the transcendent purposes of a grand design. Media-monopoly and aesthetic plausibility are not in themselves sufficient conditions for sustained success. The JGevan bookmen created, in effect, a beautifully enclosed system. In t heir own activities one of the great chapters of the book of the world was brought to completion. Their present and their past were like mirrors facing each other. They were immensely significant. But linear time carries on, and the synchronicity is lost. What of the future, when time was out of joint? What happened when the Russians had to worry not about making their past but about living up to it? What, in other words, were Russian perceptions of the past in the twelfth century? The first thing we notice, looking down on the scene in the mid twelfth century, is that there is a lot more of everything. Writing, building and painting have sprouted all over the place. The second thing we notice is the diversity: of style, of genre, of location, of subject, of social o rigin. Lots more people are writing, from metropolitans to trade.smen ; on all kinds of topics, from the nature of sciptural exegesis to the interest due on private debts; acros.< the land, from Smolcnsk in the the west to Suzdal' in the north-cast. But besides the quantitative accretions, we a.lso notice that something has been lost: a sense of scale and self-importance. Nobody now builds churches of the grandeur of St Sophia in Kiev . 19 Chronicles detail the events affecting their own cities and princedoms with contiguous but separable histories.20 Sermons and epistles provide splendid models of pious edification ~ but the focus is more narrowly biblical and eccle
Stee.g., C. Mango, 8yz1uuiM ArchittaU.rt!( l.ondon. J979), 180-89~ abo G. Vagner, KatWn ; J.til" v d~vnen.t.tskom itkuut"e (Moscow. 1987), 133-51 . 20 O.S. Likhachev. Runkk l.uopin I ikh lcul'turn~istoridl~~k.« znod1mi~ (M<»oow, U:niograd. t947), 173·280. 1 -'

164

The Perception of the Pasr in Twelfth-Century Europe

and could be manipulated in practice,21 so that the Riurikid princes spent much of their time fighting each other. The larger principalities - Galich, Smoleosk, Kiev, Novgorod, Suzdal' - now in effect pursued independent foreign policies and linked themselves to separate networks of international alliances. Even in the eleventh century the Kievan myth-makers had indulged in a fair measure o f wishful thinking. Now, we might conclude from our perch above the mid-twelfth century, the gap between the received myth and the observable and lived reality must have become roo wide to ignore. Here, surely, was a potential crisis of identity, a pressing need for the past to be more appropriately reshaped. Responses to this potential crisis were varied. Let us consider how the past was perceived from three d ifferent angles: from the point of view of Kievan chroniclers, of a Suzdalian prince, and of a B)"lantinc churchman. The Kievan chronicle was compiled over the course of U!e century and reached roughly its extant form towards 1200. Like most Russian chronicles it does not exist (and perhaps never existed) as a separate work. In me manuscripts we find it tacked onto the end of the Primary Clrronicle. so that the two fonn a continuous narrative. 22 The Primary Clrronicle grew over the second half of the eleventh century and reached roughly its present form in the 1110s. The very fact that the twelfth-<:entury chronicle was presented as a continuation of the earlier work shows, of course. that its editors accepted and promoted the eleventh-century myth. Nevenhel<.$s, the two pans of this composite Kievan text differ from each other in their representations of time and space. As a simple device to illustrate the differe.nce, we can look at their respective systems of 'back-references': the ways in which the respective ge.oerations of chroniclers recalled or invoked the past in thelr accounts of the resent . The Primary Chronick is flooded with names from other ages and places. from the world of the Old Testament there arc Moses, Pharaoh, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, Abraham, Cain and Abel, Lamech, Abime.Jech, Shem and Ham, Esau, Samuel, Hezekiah, Daniel, Elijah, Sarah, Lot, Ishmael, Barlaam, Habakkuk, Saul and Ncbuchadnezzar. Orestes and Agamemnon put in guest appearances from classical mythology. From the Maccdonian era we find Alexander the Great and Antiochus Epiphanes. The apostles Andrew and Peter, and King Herod, step out of the New Testament. Early Christian

See A. PtC$0iakov, KnituhrH pruv.o v d"vnti Rusi: ocht1k po fyloril XJ -XJJ stoleril (St Pe(ersburg, 1909~ repr. The.Hague, Paris.J966), 1·S7; also G. Vmtad:U:.y. Kft~·tm Ru.t~·ia. 2rld ed. (New Haven, Conn., 1972). 214-33; H. ROss., 'Das Rt.ieb voo Kie\•', in Handbt«:h tkrGeJcJticlue Ru.ulands, cd. M. Hellmann, i (Stul1g.art, 1981) . esp. 325·51. u As part Qf
Russia: Bo"owed 1'ime

165

times are well represented through Simon Magus and Menander, Apollonius of Tyana (a specialist in prophylactic talismans), the sainted monks Antony, Euthymius and Sabas. Here also are the Roman emperors Hadrian, Probus and Aurelian, and the Byzantine emperors Constantine the Great, Justinian, Maurice and Constantine Copronymus. This list can be sub-divided. Only a small proportion of the names predominantly those from the Old Testament- were introduced directly into the chroniclers' own narratives. The majority - including all the classical mythology and all the names !rom Roman and Byzantine secular history (not counting Constantine the Great, who is sacred)- were incorporated at second hand, within quotations borrowed by the Kievan compilers from the translated Byzantine world chronicle of George the Monk.23 These two groups- direct back-references and quotational back-references- need to be segregated if we want to distinguish between the chronicler's active and passive vocabularies of the past. Functionally, however, they served identical purposes. They b roadened the scope. they provided typological and moral paradigms, they provided proof by precedent. The same purposes we.re served by other quotations from imported sources in tbc Primary Chronicle, whether or not these borrowed passages happened to include historical names. Such quo lations were a kind of cultural or stylistic back-reference. The Primary Chronicle is full of them. Apart from the ubiquitous echoes of the Bible, there are citations from the Byzantine chronicles of John Malalas and (especially) George the Monk , from the 'crotapocritic' collection attributed to Anastasio.~ of Sinai. from a version of the LihelltlS de fide orthodoxa of Michael Syncellus. from the Apocalypse of pseud<>Methodius of Patara, from the Vita of Basil the New, from a homily attributed to John Chrysostom, !rom the commentaries on Daniel by Hippolytus of Rome. and from a lost narrative compilation which probably contained, imer alia, extracts from the pscudepigraphal Book of Jubilees and !rom the treatise On Weights and Measures by Epiphaniu_< of Salamis.24 For the compilers of the Primary Chronicle the foreign and distant past, the universal past - whether evoked with facts and names or through style and citation - was the constant source of authority. This borrowed past was the measure of the authenticity of their own words. It was an indispensable part of their myt h-making designs and methods. The twelfth-<:entury Kievan continuation has an utterly different temporal texture. There are almost no 'factual' back-references to foreign sources of authority. As to names, there are just a couple of comparisons with Judas, a

., Oo types of ci1atioo from Gootgc the Monk see 0. V. T••orogov, ·Povc$t' vremeno~ykh let i Khrooograf po velikomu itlozheoiiu'. Trudy mdela dr~Mru.ukt>i lituarury , 28 (1974). 99-113. :• A.A. SbakbrMtov, 'Povesr' VTt.mtnnykh tetl ee iM()Chniki', Trudy otdtltl drevntru.ukoi littratwy, 4 (J!MO), II-ISO~ also S. Fnlnk:lin, 'Som~ AJ){)Cfyphal Sourou of Kievan RuS$lan Historiography', Oxford Slavonic Papers, n.s. 15 ( 1982), 1-27.

166

The Percepda11 oj' rhe Pasr i11 Twelfrh·Cenmry Europe

brief mention of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Ninevites, a note on S1 Clement, a passing regret for tile fall of Jerusalem to the Arabs, and a comparison between a Russian prince and Solomon. Greece, Rome and Byzantium have fallen out of view.lS Moreover, by contrast with the Primary Chronicle. there arc no explanations, no concern to make readers understand why or how or even whether the universal past justifies the present. Partly in consequence, quotational back·references have dwindled to almost nothing: a few biblical tags, a word or two from Chrysostom. 26 But besides the losses there are gains. Gradually over the course of the text, one can trace the emergence of a new dimension in the awareness of the past. First, a new period of history is brought into the framework of reJerence: Russian history, tlte Golden Age of Vladimir and laroslav. "!be eleventh· ce.ntury Rus' had no native past to which they could tum. Or rather. 1he native past could only be made significant when set in a universal context. Now the R us' had grown their own significan t past a nd had abso~bed it into their active vocabulary of history. The twelfth·century Kievan chronicle is actually just as full of factual back·refercnccs as its predecessor. The parade of paradigmatic names is local, from the past created by its predecessor : Vladimir I , his son Sviatopolk 'the Cursed', and the murdered and canonised princes Boris and Gleb, G leb's murderer Goriaser, Vladimir's ot her sons J\L\1islav and Jaroslav, Jaroslav's sons Iziaslav and Vsevolod a nd their shadowy cousin Vse.
"' 1/yp., 241' 358,382, 395. 398, 441. z. Ibid .. 402.

.,., Ibid., 219, 227,246,268,362,378, 39'7, 398, 451, <62. llJ E.g., Hyp. , 378, 36R.. 426,247, 441. 409,437,397, 417: cf. Pcwe.w', 98, 149, 183, 190, 145 ae1d )._ a. ~ and 6523·27. " E.g.. Hyp.. 368, 411, 418. 462.

Ru.ssia: Borrowed Time

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century Kiev an chroniclers were secure enough not to have to wrap them in an apparatus of borrowed exegesis on the filial piety of the sons of the Old Testament patriarchs. Kiev an cbronicle·writing in the twelfth century was less grandiose than t-hat of the eleventh century. poorer in ideas and in literary ambitions. But in a way it was also more authentic, more faithful to the actual operations of Kievan polities and so, for the modern historian, more reliable. Wbere. then, was the crisis? Looking with the eyes of the Kievan chroniclers we find endless crises of polities, but apparently no crisis of historical perception. The national myth was established and accepted, too obviously true to be worth pressing, and could simply be left to lie quietly in the background while people got on with the ordinary business of dynastic in-fighting. The chronicle recorded changes in personnel, but the company structure was unaffected. This impression of blandness would have suited the Kievans. It sounded like common sense, but, like most common sense, it was subtly and perhaps unconsciou.
168

The Perception of the Past in Tovelfth-Cemwy Europe

Andrei lurevich, called J3ogoliubskii, was prince of Suzda!' from 1157 to 1174.30 His father, Iurii Dolgorultii ( Jurii ' Long-Arm') , youngest son of the great Vladimir Monomakh of Kiev, had wasted men and years and sustenance in baules over Kiev, disputing his claims with his nephew lziaslav Mstislavich, who was junior in generation but senior in line. Why should the prestigious Monomakhan succession be exclusive to Kiev? Rus' was Kievan only by lexical habit: in the twelfth century the word 'Rus" most commonly denoted not the vast collective patrimony of tbe Riurikids but merely the parcel of territories around Kiev itself. Kiev was rich, but so was the land of Suzdal' with its access to the lucrative fur trade." And look at the international alignments: Kiev had entered into a series of alliances with Hungary, while Andrei sided with Byantium.31

Andrei's decision, for most of his reign, was simply to ignore Kiev and channel his efforts into constructing an autonomous and equivalent focus of power and prestige in his own principality. He employed the usual methods: church-building, patronage of literary works without the exclusively Kievan teleology, the import of precious icons and relies. And finally, in the fust and most significant move to instit utionalise this autonomy, Andrei requested from Constantinople permission to establish a separate metropoliL1nate in his capital. If one were looking at the request in purely practical terms, one would think it entirely reasonable and innocuous. The metropolitan see of Rhosio, with its incumbent resident in Kiev, was absurdly Large, far vaster than any other ecclesiastical province of the patriarchate of Constantinople. It may have been appropriate when Christianity in this notionally converted country had barely extended beyond the prince and his retainers but now the single metropolita· nate was administratively far too cumbe-rsome. However. neither Andrei nor anybody else viewed the request in purely practical terms. Nobody was ignorant of the symbolism. Andrei was trying to create a SuzdaJian myth equivalent to the Kievan myth, and the request for a metropolitan was an anempt to have the myth institutionalised. Andrei himself came to be enthusiastically mythologised in later centuries and the late mythologies continue to affect modern perceptions of him.:u The main reason for interest is that Andrei's territory happened to include a smaiJ and little-known outpost called Moscow. Andrei is seen as a kind of proto-

On Andre-i sec £. Hunvil7. Pri"u Andr~j Bugoljubskij: Tht Man and tht Myth (Florence. 1980); lu.A. LimOOO\', Vludimiro-3uzdul'skoiu Rus' (Lellingrad, 1987), 38-98. 31 J. Martin, Tmll'ul't' from thr lAnd of Dadr.nes$: Th€ Pur Trade and iu Significance for M4'.dlryol RJ.WUJ (Cn.mbridge, 1986). U8·30. n Sec E. Fraocc:s, 'les reb.ttons rusw-by1.antins au xnc si~de et la domioation de Ga.licie au 8as--Oanube', Byzontino-slavk:o, 20 ( L9S9). 50-62; V.i. Pashutu, Vnuhnaia poliliko Drevnr; Rusi (Moscow, 1968). 145·225; M. An!;()ld, 7'/u ByzontiM Empire. /025·1204: A PolitiCal HiJtory (London 1984), 173~78: Umonov. Vladimiro·s-uzdtJI'Jkaia Rus', n .31, 1?4·200. :u See Hurwitz, Princr: Andrej BOgt)/jub:JI-:1) , 1-6. 30

RttSSiil: Borrowed Time

169

Muscovite. This is a mistake. Muscovite rulers projected themselves as succeSiors to Kiev, rightful inheritors of Kiev's special place in sacred history. Moscow was the second Kiev as well as the Third Rome. Muscovite rulers accepted and promoted the idea of Kievan pre-eminence, and appropriated it for themselves. Andrei, by contrast, was ccnainly not in favour of Kievan pre~ eminence, nor did he necessarily seek.to replace Kie\'. He wanted institutional scparation.34 In the view of the Kievan chronicler$, the many strands of the past bad converged and been woven together under Vladimir and Iaroslav, whence they proceeded as a single Kievan thread. For Andrei there were many heirs to the legacy of Vladimir and laroslav, many srrands leading back from the present to their shared source of legitimacy in the native past. Andrei's perception seems to be both practical and accurate. The curious point, therefore, is that Andrei's attempt failed. The patriarch rejected his request and Andrei accepted the decision. 35 Two aspects of this incident are odd. Why did Byzantium turn down such a sensible request? And why did Andrei comply? We turn to the view of the churchmen. In twelfth-century Russia the church was the only formal institution which truly embodied both the territorial and hierarchical ideals articulated in the eleventh century: the metropolitanate of Rhosia- the Land of the Rus'- based in Kiev, the focus of hierarchical authority over all the territories of the Riurikids, Byzantine in cbaructer, authenticated by its status in the outside world. Byzantium's refusal to split the metropolitanate wa..4i doubtless due in pan to nostalgic traditionalism, and in part to concern about ruffting the feathers of the other princes. But there was a stronger reason. In the tension between regionalism and centralism in twelfth-century Rus·. Byzantium chose centra· lism, against political fashion and against geographical logic, out of a clear sense of self-interest. ByLantium's own authority was weakened when the metropolitan became an instrument in locaJ politics, when he bec-.m1e too closely associated with any particular local prince, especially when - as in Rus' - the princes spent so much time fighting one another. This was not just a theoretical consideration. In the time of Andrei's father, lurii Long-Arm, the prince of Kiev had tried to hijack the appointment of the metropolitan and to use his appointee to lend moral force to his regional policies. There had been the undignified spectacle of the metropolitan - never recognised as .such by

l4 For a different interpreUII)oo of Andrei's policie$see J. ft.Lenski, 'The Sack of Kiev in U69: Its Significance for the Sucrusion to K.lenn Rus• •, Hlm'atd UkroWtan SsutWs. ll (198711988)), 303-16i idem, '1be Contnt for the ''K.ievan Su.c:ces51on" (1155-1'175)', Hflnlard Ukroinl4n Scud/a, 12 (1988 (1990)). , HuNil%., Prlrtu Andrej &goljutnkij, l9•36, 87-89; al!o W. VoOOrt, 'Un ..pucie thCoaari· que" dan." Ia Russ:ie du XW si~cle?', Caitkrf tk civili.JM;on mMUIIOJ#. 17 (1974). 19:}.-.215.

170

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

Byzantium - having to ilee the city whenever it changed hands-'6 The metropolitanalc could not be allowed to become the. twelfth...century equivalent of a political football. We thus arrive at an irony. The notional myth, q uietly localised by the Kievan chroniclers, putatively modified by the regional prince, was most visibly sustained, as it had been treated, by authority from abroad. The very term 'all Russia', whicb was to become deeply embedded in later political consciousness, was actually invented in the late twelfth century by Greek churchmen: previously they had been called metropolitans of Rhosia, with no qualifying epithet: from the II 60s. precise-ly the time of the Andrei Bogoliubs· kii controversy. their seals began to bear the designation ' all Rhosia' .37 The new term was supposed to reinforce the o ld tradition. The myth did not collapse, and not all the credit, o r the blame. for it> survival lies with Greek churchmen . Other foreigners helped: notably the Cum an tr ibesmen of the southern st~ppes. aod then the Mongol conquerors. There is nothing like a military defeat to revive thoughts of a Golden Age, and the defeats suffered by the divided Riurikids inspired laments of grand nostalgia: the Lay of Igor's Campaign, the fragmentary lyrical lament On the Ruin of the Land of the Rus' . Tbe past was most eloquently and passionately evoked when it had been lost. And at that po int the myth ceased to be either a justification or a burden for the present; it became an inspiration for the future. Although many of tbe ideas and problems which I have outlined will be ramiliar in various forms 10 historians of othe·r oount:ries and cultures, ne'\•ertheless there is no mi.r aculous synchrony of perceptions of the past spanning eastern and western Europe in the twelfth century. The Russians only created their past in the mid eleventh century. The twelfth century was.rather too soon for revivalism. Furthermore, if we step beyond the c.hronologicallimits of this survey, we find that Russian recoveries of the past, when they did eventually occur (one thin.ks especially of thirteenth-century Galich and sixteenthcentury Moscow) differed from their western counterpartS, and the reasons for the differences are traceable to the time of Vladimir and laroslav. The Russians' great gain and loss was to receive the sacred culture in something approximating to their own tongue and to maintain the assumption that what they had received was complete and perfect of its kind. They never joined the Latin or Greek linguistic cultural communities. and Greek and Latin secular culture -'classical' culture- was not perceived as part of their past and was never high on the scale of cultural values. Throughout the middle ages (that is, in a

On this indden\,ln..'OJving the disputed metropolitanate of t
$erm<>M411d

Russia: Borrowed Time

171

Russian context, until the middle of the seventeenth century) the Russians never recovered the ancient past. Recoveries of the past were (ostensibly, in form) re<:ovcries of the Kievan and Slavonic Christian heritage, reaffirmations (and of course distortions) of the primary myth. The possibility of fresh myths, of a new sense of identity in time. only arose when the closed circle of sources was broken, with a massive new cultural infusion from abroad, a new bor· rowed view of the past. From the eighteenth·century new myths did appear, but still the durability of the eleventh-<entury version was and is remarkable. Created by a handful of dedicated bookmcn under their ambitious prince. it survived the regionalism of the twelfth <entury; it was strengthened, at least as a folk-memory, by the catastrophe o f the Mongol invasions; it was haggled over by the emerging post· Mongol powers ofTver, Moscow and Lithuania, and it was eventually appropriated by Moscow, where, despite persistent attempts at diluti.o n or sup-pression, it remains strongly and controversially entrenched even now.

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The Sense of the Past in Italian Communal Narratives Chris Wickham Caffaro di Rustico of Cascllifellone, who lived from c. 1080 to 1166. was many times a consul de comuni, the principal office of his city, Genoa, and held several other civic offices as weU. When be turned up in front of tbc consuls of 1152, at the age of 72, with a manuscript of a history of Genoa compiled by himself on the basis of notes he had takensincehe was twenty, it is perhaps not surprising that the consuls (some of whom had once served with him) agreed to make lbe history official, putting it into the comuni can:ularium, 'that henceforth for all time the victories of the city of Genoa be known to future men'. Caffaro continued his chronicle under public auspices until 1163, and the commune employed notaries and official$ to continue it thereafter for another 130 years; it is regarded as the first communal chronicle in ltaly. 1 Caffaro had a very clear image of what the past consisted of. II was the names of consul' and the varieties of consulates or compagniae (the sworn associa.tion at tfle basis of the commune, which changed it.~ constitution several times in the period) , the victories of the city, and the changes in coinage. That is what be tells us in the introduction, and in the body o f the chronicle proper he starts straight in: 'At the time of the expedition to Caesarea, just before it (he means the siege of Caesarea during the First Crusade, in 1099), in the city of the Genoese a compagna of three years duration and of six consuls was begun. 1beir names were these.'2 This matter-of-fact style is common enough in twelfth-century Italian city narra1ives; and Caf!aro kepl more carefully than

AnnaU ~na~·e.d di CtJI/4TO ~de' suoi cot~tirwaiOri, i, ed. L.T. Belgnno (Rome, 1890), 3-7$ oootains the text; 3-4, d . 59, for quote. Tbe basic work& oo Ca.fbro arc 0 . AmakU, Srudi sui CT(Jttisti tkU4 M11ra1 TrtrvigUtnu Mlfeld di Eutlino d4 Ronuuto (Rome, 1963). 22545 (ct. also idem, •n notaio<:ronista e le crontcbe cin.adine in lta.lia', in LA sklrlo dtl diritto ntl qU4dro deUe scknze aw~ (Aorence, 1966), 29)..309; idem, 'Cronacho con documt.nti. cronacbe "auteo· ticbe'' e pubbltca storiogratia', tn Fond medi()tvaJJ e prQbkmalku 31¢rivgrQ{tc(J, ( Rome, 1976). i. 351-74); G. Petti Balbi, C4ffaro ~ lammtlchi.trlCAgtMvest(Genoa, 1982), 18·31,103·33. There i8 llbo a brief Wsr..."U!osion ofCaflaro in EnJliah, R.t>. Faoe, 'Serolar History in Twelfth-Century Italy: CaiJaro otOeno•', /ourtl4i of Medi«wJ HiMry, 6 (1980), 169-84. 1 Annali Otnow.tl, L 3. S. 1

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The Perception of the Past in Twelflh-Ceruury £urope

most to his programme, not getting side-tracked by rhetorical tropes or anecdotes. The cbange-s in the communal constitution and the victories of thecity are indeed what he talks most about. He discusses other issues too when they are relevant, such a.-. diplomatic relations with p<:>pes and emperors,

coinage (as he said he would), fires in the city, city legislation, and, systematically from 1154, the building of urban defences and their cost. From 1160, too, there begin ominous references to internal discord, which, although certainly not new in the 1160s, was (his successor tells us) the main reason why Caffaro stopped updating his text in 1163, three years before his death. 3 The body of the Annales lanuenses consists of war, between the Genoese and Saracens, Pisans, or rural lords; the framework is the communal constitution. Year by year the chronicle begins with a list of the consuls and a description of their terms of reference when the latter changed, as they frequently did. Time itself, from the beginning of the consulate, is closely related to these cQn$ular lists; indeed, in the period up to 1122, when consuls were (for the most pan) sworn in for four years at a time, Caffaro gives us ilis narrative in four-year blocks rather than by the single years of the consulatus unius llllni that existed thereafter.• Caffaro balances this consular pattern against the anna domini date (he never dates by emperors or popes), but the

consuls are the most imponant structural element: much indeed as they are in Livy. There is so little classicising in Caffaro that it was assumed by Pe ter Classen that this similarity is chance, and he was probably right (although one should note that in the early twelfth century in Italy there was a fair amount of Roman Republican imagery in usc, not least, as we shall sec, in Genoa's arch· rival Pisa); nonetheless, the way the Genoese saw time was of all things most similar to that of the Roman consular fasti, with office-holders "eadily marking the passing o£ the years from the beginning or the Republican constitution onward~. 5 Caffaro and hjs successors have not until recent years been as much studied as one might expect; until OiO\'anna Petti Balbi's recent works,6 Genoese

historians have tended to focus on the notarial registers of the city, which themselves survive from the remarkably early date of 1154. The Genoese chronicle has, nonetheless, long had a high reputation among historians, which largely derives from the fact that it seems to be about the right son of thing. Historians note that in twelfth-century nonhem Italy (and they could equally say ninth- to thineenth-century northern Italy) there are •·ery few univeiSal or even national histories, such as are found in nonhero Europe; and , from the mid twelfth century onwards, unlike almost everywhere else, the more local

' Ibid .. 155-56. • Ibid .. 13·18.

' P. Oa$$t.tl, 'R~s gesl#e, Universal His1ory. A.pocal)'pst\ i.o R.L.. Benson and 0 . Coostabloe (ed$,), RenaisSliiiC~ Md Rtnrwal in cJ•e Twtlfth Century (Oxiord, 1982). 387-417, at 398. ' See ~bQve, n. I.

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city-based texts that the north Italians did write arc rarely the work of clerics. but rather are written by laymen - to be more precise, literate patrician ma_ les, usually notaries or other city office-holders.' This lay literature is generally seen, and not entirel)' wrongly, as one of the earliest signs of the vita civile. the Italian contribution to the genealogy of modern western civilisation that the independent city states made possible. Caffaro captures the $0rt of awareness of a new environment that historians have often looked for. precisely be<:ause he has in the centre of his vision an under.;tanding of the novelty of the Genoese communal constitution and an interest in how it changed- as the city leaders experimented with its forms, altering the number of judges for each quarter, for example, or instituting the office of city chancellor- that exactly matched the concerns of German and Italian Verfussungsgeschichre in the century after 1860. There are two ways, it seems to me, in which this reading of Caffaro is misleading. The first is to see his carefully described communal constitution as too fully formed too early. The Genoese consulate was . as elsewhere, an ad hoc response to particular organisational needs. certainly including the Cae· sarea campaign itself, perhaps on Pisan models. (Pisa, at least, did have consuls by the 1080s, tile first that are known in Italy; Caffaro does not, unfortunately, discuss what led up to the 1099 compagna.) The consulate was not, however, necessarily regarded as being permanent ; as late as 1150 contracts with the commune of Genoa included escape clauses for the eventuality that it might dissolve 8 Caffaro's insistent preoccupation with consular offices perhaps in pan reflects an unease, on the part or a member of the consular dite it~elf. about the stability and permanence of the city's governing structures. although they were in his eyes the only bulwark against civil war. Only in the last few years of the period covered by his chronicle did two generations of habit, amplified by recent judidal and legislative intervention by the consuls, by tax-raising and public works, and (in 1162) by recognition by Frederick Barbarossa, make the commune institutionally firm in the way that twelfth-century observers would have understood. And Genoa was pre.cocious in its institutionaJ crystallisation; other cities were still working towards such stability when Barbaross.a appeared in the north. The second way to misread Caffaro is to take him as typical. The Gcnoese annals are the earliest lay city chronicle by date of writing. They are also far

Classen, R~s gtstoe, 393·98; Amaldi, $1udl .~ui tronL~·tl, 225·4So G. Martini, 'Lo Spirito cluadino t Ie.orici.ni dc-Ua s.torioa.rafia comunaJe lomb3rda', Nuov11 rivlslll uorlca. 54 (1970). 1-22. 11 J.K. Hyde, Society ond Politiu ill M~d~val/taly (Lonckm, 1973). 51·52; U. Fonnentini, Stori4 di Gmo1111, li (MUan. 1941). 257-78; the lit.and.ard k-gal-institutional SUJ'\Ie)' of the early commune l$ 1. Peri . 'Gene':li c formazionc del L'Omune comobre a Genova'. and 'Otdinamento del 0001une oon:sotare', Atti dt"Jla Auad.cmia di scienze teuere e arti di Palmno, ser. 4, 2 (1950-Sl). S· 63. 65·198. FQf Pis-a. we below, nn. 14, '30. Cartaro tell$ U$ ~sually ttlatlhe 1099 compt~gna was 7

not the first in G-enoa (A nna/i (itnnw,ti, i, 111 ), but, signjfKanrty, in III'IOthtr text~ he evide.nUy chose very deliberately to stan the Annal$ at Caesarc:a.

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J11e Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

more detailed for the early twelfth century than any later city annals: those for Piacen.ta or Milan or Pisa contain linle more than one-line ent.ries until well on into the century, when Caffaro is already describing campaigns with consider· able circumstantiality. This difference in detail is , however, not enough to explain the fact that all the other city texts arc almost entirely silent about one of Caffaro's chief two interests, the composition of the early consulate. The Piace112a annals, compiled in the 1220s-30s, only give prominence to city officials after 1179; the Annates Mediolanenses minores, late thirteenth·cen· tury but using earlier texts, only begin to do so in 1186; even the very full Pisan annals, written in the 1180s by Bernardo Maragone, an aged city official much like Caffaro. only date by consuls from 1156.9 Yet all these th ree cities, as we know from other sources, had oonsulates in tbe early twelfth century; Pisa indeed, as 1 have no ted , had the first consuls documented anywhere. 1 will argue later that this late attention of other city chronicles to urban iosritutions is not only more common than Caffaro's consular concerns, but also a more accurate reading of the reality of the period; the incoherence of early twelfth· century urban government that Caffaro's interests conceal is actually more correctly represented by the silences of other texts. These two warnings about how not to read Caffaro are thus very evidently linked: he is misleading precisely because he ha.."i similar interests to modem historians, for not only did other writers not have !hem but even Genoa was not governed in as clearly organised a manner as he implies. This point stands at the heart of debates about the early commune and is of crucial importance for an understanding o f the sense of the past held by north halian city elites. (I will restrict myself to these elites, which are already heterogeneous enough; non-elite and non-urban consciousness would take far longer to cba_racte-rise.) Caffaro's own sense oflhe past was bound up in the insti!Utio nal ltiscory of tlte commune, and tltis imagery presumably had meaning also fo r the 1152consuls wlto made ltis history olfJcial- although they did so, in Caffaro's own p<>ssibly significan1 words, in order to keep Genoa's victories known , rather than its consulates. Most other writers did not have this sense , however; only pas! city wars mattered to them , and not past urban o rganisation. Almost the o nly way in which Caffaro was 1ruly typical of most other city writers was the lack of historical deplh of his account: his ltistory starts abruptly in !099, with the compagmr and the First Crusade, and, as we shall see. similar symbolic beginnings mar k ocher chronicles too. I ltave already re•1ricted myself to urban elites, but even that is too wide a topic for a shon essay. For the twelfth century alone at least seven cities in northern Italy and Tuscany left reasonably substantial local narratives, in very various g_e.nres and styles, and another half·dozen or more cities have thir·

' Johunni.r CodugnclliAnna/Q l'loce7llini, cd. 0 . Jloldcr·Eggc:r, MGii SRO (Hanover, 1901), 11; Annales Mt!diQlantnJe$ minorcs, ed. P. JafT6, MGH SS, J8 (Hanover. 1863-). 396~ B. Maragone, Anna/e:v Pisani. ed. M. Lupo Gc:ntiJe. R.LS., 6.2 (B~oa:n a, 1936). 16.

lta/Um Communal Na"atives

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tecnth-.century chronicles evidently based in their twelfth-century sections on earlier material; they cannot all he discussed here.l will, rather, look at Pisa as a counterpoint to Genoa, and then at some of the texts for Lombardy, before coming to a brief discussion of some gene raJ issue..: the interest of city-dwellers in the history of the kingdom of italy; the level of local consciousness of the development of the commune; and the imponance of the pre-twelfth-century past to urban writers. Here some tentative generalisations can indeed be made. 10 Bernardo Maragone, the nwjor early Pisan annalist, was not the city's first historian, or at least not the first writer about Pisan activities. His annals were preceded by a remarkable group oflargely poetic texts about Pisan sea raids on Arab lands, possibly beginning as early as the late eleventh century (the point is disputed), but cenainly cuhninating in the years 1115·25, that is to say the decade foUowing the last and greatest of these campaigns, that against Majorca. I will not separate these poems out, even though each desecves to be looked at separately (Giuseppe Scalia and Craig Fisher did so in the 1960s, very usefully)u It is enough to say that as a whole, lhey provide poetic commentaries on the high poinL~ of the Pisan victories overseas in the previous century: the 1005 raid on Reggio, the 10!5-16warsinSardinia, the 1034 raid on Annaba, the 1064 sack of Palermo, the 1087 anack on Mahdiya, the Pisan contribution to the First Crusade- the list is from the Pisan annals of c. 1119, a short prose text tz - and then the Majorca campaigns in 1113-15. These were

10

A con'r'Cnient guide to the major SOUI'CC$ is 0. C'.apitani, 'Motivi c mumenti di storiosrafin mecboc:vale italiana: $CCC. V-XIV', in Nuow: que~·rioni di storio meditK~~alt:(Milan, l964), 129..800~ the most stimulating recent discUS$ions of them are in R. Bordone, l...t;z .sockld dlt4diml del r~gno d'Jwlltz (Turln. tm). l wOJ discu.i i 1be prose naffll.tivtt without t.n3k.ins OOtinedons between 'chronicles' and 'annals., tor that simple ()pp(l$ition is not helpful in this period. Allbou&h there arc \'tty evident diffe.reoces in mental outlook between fragmentary references to city W8J1., Qften not even in chronological order, and full-blown nanati\•e 1exts, one can fade very griKiuaUy into the ott~et. 1bese micro-cultural differtnoes (ofteo inside the same professic.'lnal group, oommuo.al

notaries. lawyers and oftkials) .tte d~d by OabrieUa Severino in receot unpub&bed work, which she h.u very generously le-t me see. The linked issues ot the relationship between b.ls.torkal sensibilities and tbe different s.enres or prose and poetry, and the dependence of these on the development of rhetorical trainint in twelfih- a.nd thirtet.nth·cel'ltury bal)l u.~. diseus:w:d att.n&i·· vely in February 1990 W a oonfereoce in Rome, on bis.toriog.taphy .Md poetry in medieval e~o~hure ; it'i procredinS$. to be·publi!ihed soon, will be an impo.rtant point of rdercnce (or future work. 11 Editions of and oommeotarics on the poem$ can be found in Liber MaWiicllillus. ed. C. Calisse (ltome, 1904)~ G. Scalia. ·t:pigraphica Pisana'. in Mi.tullan~a di studi.Up411ici (Pisa. 1963). 234-86; idem, 'II carme pisano 5ull'imprm oontro i Sataoeoi del 1081'. in Str..di di fiJologio ronvmJa off~rtl o Silvio Ptlkgrlni (Pttdua, 1971). 56S·627: idem, • "Romanhas.. pisana tra XI e XlJ

scoolo', StUd/ medl<>.t/13 (1m), '191-843: C.B. Fisher. 1be Pisan Clergy aod an A"akenln& ol Hio;torical Interest in a Med~al Commune•. Sllld4'e.s in Mt:dhval and Rtnllissanu HIJrory 3,

(t966). HHt9: H.EJ. Co.,drey. 'The Mahdia Campaign of1087', E•gllsh Hiswrlcol Rtvl
sou1b ltalia.n wurces. For the dale of the ttu, ~Fisher, 'Pisan Oergf, J.S2.

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The Perception of the P11!1t in Twe/fth-Ctmury E11rope

evidently, to the Pisans, a set of stepping-stones leading firmly upwards. a proof of divine favour, and, increasingly, a demonstration that ancient Rome's mantle had fallen to the city on the Arno; the poems indeed systematically refer to previous campaigns, as models to follow and if possible surpass. The 1064 , 1087 and 1113-15 campaigns also quite explicitly paid for the rebuilding of the cathedral, and some of the shorter poems survive bet-ause they were walled into iL< fac;ade: there was a local religiou.<symbolism to Pisan triumphalism, too. The lll9 a nnals evidently begin well before the Gcnoese starting date of 1099; their particular focus is clcventh-<:entury wars, against Luochesi and Genoese as well as Saracens. The poems, however, although they reflect the same interests, only celebrate attacks on Muslim countries (in part, presumably, because their rhetoric is, in the longer poems at least, associated with notions of Christian warfare): one of the reasons why they stop with Majorca may be that twelfth-century wars were predominantly against Genoa. The sense oft he past shown by these poems is at one level very complex, for it is replete with classical allu.
I)

For classical altusions and parallels see Fisher, 'Pisan Oerg)", (177·83 for Guido of Pisa):

Scali3, • "ROtnMitas. pi\aoa'' • (805 for Roma altera). Roman imas.ery in the twelfth century has a large bibliography, but 1«, amoog othcn, ft. Morghen, Medioevo cri.rtiano {Bari, 1958), 39-59; R.L. Benson, 'Politkal Renowttio'. tn &mott and Constable. cit. o. S. 339-86 (Cor the very different u:sts made-of i1 b)' 1be corurm1no and by Bat\»tOS$3). A. Gear, Roma Ml/4 mtmoriu e n£lh immagir~11zione del medio evo. 2 \'Ols. (Turin, JAA2-33) remain~ useful.'

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military campaigM of the last oentury. This self-absorption matches that o( Caffaro; but where his staning-point is the emblematic link between the First Crusade and the first permanent compagna, the Pisan poets are concerned for the victory oftbeir ciry rather than of their commune, and can therefore begin earlier. Genoese eleventh-century victories happened , too, but are only known from non-Genoese sou roes; conversely. the start of the Pisan commune is not referred to by any of these texts, and its existence can only be inferred from casual references to consuls in the poem on the Mahdiya campaign of 1087 (as also from a few contemporary documents)-the Pisans, that is to say, did not visibly invest its appearanoe with any historical significance at all. " These anonymous poets were numerous enough for me to have described them generically as 'Pisans', although they were beyond doubt atypical of the citizen elite, as poets and classicisers, and almoot cenainly as all clerics. Nonetheless, Maragone, a lay official resolutely devoid of any literary pretension. who furthermore shows no knowledge of the longest of these texts, on Mahdiya and on Majorca, was in his attitude to the past identical to the poets. As the first pan of his work, Maragone simply put together the 11l9 annals with the Palermo poem on the cathedral fa~ade and a prose account of Majorca; be only got into detail in the 1130s, when perhaps his own memories starred (he was born around 1110)." H e thus perpetuated the image of the eleventh-century past as simply being a string of victories overseas; his own chronicle for the next fifty years matched this, with Genoese and Sicilian wars at the forefront. In Pisa, that is to say, clerics and communal officials alike, writing in radically different genres, shared much the same historical assumptions~ the.~ included a lack of interest in the theme of communal origins a~ a topic with historical resonanoe - indeed. Maragone mentio.n s no consuls at all before his fasti stan in 1156. His lack of interest in this theme extends to much of cartaro's subject mauer, too. The Jerusalem campaign, C3ffaro's startingpoint. is in Maragone only one out of Pisa's long series of victories again_st Muslims. More significantly still, Maragone, an active judge, says nothing about legislation - although we have much Pisan law from the middle of the century - or about almost any other aspect of city government. One begins to wonder why he mentions the consuls at all: it may be because he himself began to hold office in the 1150s; it may be because from 1156 he wanted to describe the rebuilding of the city walls, of which he gives very detailed descriptions (much as Caffaro did), thus entailing more specific reference to its organisers; it may well be, as we shall see later, that formal records of consuls themselves began at this point. But the essential historical subjects for Maragone are the

1

'* The best recent &umm.ary of the ma1erial is in G. RosseRi, 'Storia familiare e sttuttura soc:i.aJe e pOtitita di Pisa nei .secoli XI e Xll', in eadem (ed.), F~ di potert. t.tli'Uitllrlt #XitJ/t in I l41itJ ntl M";oevo (Bol(lzna, 1.971), 233-46. u Maragooe, A.NUJ~ts Pis4ni, 3·10.

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The Perception of the Past in Twelfd•-Cenrury Europe

city and its amted people ; in this respect nothing has changed since the first of the poems. 16 This oonvergence of views did not characterise all of Pisa's elite; the Pisan Brevia consulum, the statutes of the late 11505 and early 1160s, have quite a different historical image. Instead of wars, they sta rt with Jaw: with a famous judgment by Bishop Daibcrto on the height of city towers dating from c. 1090, which was regarded as one of the cores of subsequent legislation. Daiberto's judgment shows very clearly the link between justice and the avoidance of civil disturbance (symbolised by the towers) which Jay at the heart of the early oommune. Daibeno, one may add, was the Pisan leader during the First Crusade: although the 1090 text does not mention oonsuls, we arc here very close to the constellation or communal origins that Caffaro regarded as most significant. It may be that one can distinguish inside the official elites of both Pisa and Genoa - and not only there- groups more oriented towards legal and constitutional points of reference and groups more inclined to commemorate war. This must remain speculative at the moment; the world-views of twelfthcentury legal experts have hardly begun to be studied. Some of Caffaro's specificity may well lie in a particular kind oflcgal expertise, and not just in the pructical experience of judging, which all communal leaders had. " Maragone was very different from Caffaro in his concentration on the city rather than the commune as his historical point of reference . Although this may

be

due to a difference in their persona) expe.rience rather than an

opposition between Pisa and Genoa, one can at least say that Maragone was representative of a wide range of writers in Pisa . Chroniclers elsewhere in Italy universal\)• follow Maragone in this respect. In some others, however, the Pisan and the Genoese stand together: above aU in their relentless lack of interest in any historical tradition based out.side their walls. Neither had much trouble from Frederick Barbarossa, and this helped - both were very broadly philo-imperial, and were safely across the Appe.nnines from Lombardy; both gained early recognition fro m Barbarossa as a result . Caffaro and Maragone were both concerned with what German armies were up to in northern Italy, as any prudent city official would be; but it was not pa.rt of their task to record Barbarossa's actions in any more detail than necessary, say, for intelligent poticy-making. It was different in the north , above all in the cities around

•~

Ibid .. 13-Zl Da.iberto's judgeruet11: F. Bonilini. StUIUli intditi dt.llt;l clu~ di Plsa. i ( Florence, JSS4). II, IS, 16-18. For 1egi$:1ation in general see G. Volpe. Studi sullt i.rtimzioni comUIIoli a Pisa (2nd edn., Florence 1970), 132·SS: A. D'Amia, Diriuo ~ s~nunu di Pisa (Milan, 1962); P. Classen, Studium wrd Otsefhchaft im Mittelaltn (Stuttgart, 1983). 82-88. 'For legal (:Uiturc, see ibid., pp. '27·126; J. Fried, o;(l; Enm~ng dn JurU·t(l;n.tt411dts lm 12. lAhrhundtrt(Co_ logne, 1974); Stverioo, <>p. ~it . n. 10. t di:sc:US$ed the~ in 'Law)'Crs' Time: History and Memory in Teflth· and EJt\'Cnth-<:entul)' 11

Italy', in H. Mayr-Harring and RJ. Moore (eds.). Studies in Mtdirl•al HiJ1ory Pnsemedto R. H. C. Da-.,·ls (London. 19&S). 53·71 . an artlcle that needs nuancing in the li.gbt or these arguments.

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Milan, Frederick's chief enemy. So, lor a final geographical contrast, let us look at the Milanese narratives, before we begin to generalise. If we take the Milanese texts as a whole (and the pattern is much tbe same if we add its closest neighbours and enemies, Como, Bergamo and Lodi), we can see a development analogous to that at Pisa: a late eleventh-century/early twelfth-<:entury group of texts mostly written by clerics (some of tbe oooMilanese texts in verse), and a late twelfth-century set written by laymen, often city officials of some kind. Here again there has often been a sharp distinction drawn between the two groups on the ground t.hat the second marks the start of a new lay and notarial historiography more suitable to communal and city consciousness as it should be in the Italian city states; ' 8 in terms of o ur inte rests here, however, they all have much in common. They are mostly rather more concerned with kings than are the maritime chronicles. The first two Milan chronicles, those of Amulf and Landulf Senior (which focus on the bishops and church of Milan, especially in the Patarene period, the 1040s-70s), regard the doings of kings, back to tbe Ottoniao period and before, as highly relevant to their theme: partly because kings did actively intervene in Milan, and partly because Milanese .self-centredness allowed them to presume that the history of the city somehow encapsulated that of the rest of the regnum Jta/lcum. 19 Landulf Junior, the third Milanese chronicler, does not give so much weight to royal activities in the period he discusses, J()g7. 1137, but these years were something of a nadir for royal intervention in Italy; anyway, tbe text is one of the oddest twelfth-century narratives, being in large pan a shrill justification of the political activities of his uoc.Je, the Patarene Lipraodo, and of his own claims to the church of S. Paolo, which were consecutively rejected by archbishop, pope and commune .20 But when Frederick Barbarossa appeared in the nor
1

'

See, {Of exlmlplc-, Martini, 'Spirito cittadino' .

., Amul!. Gtsta GN:It~piscoporum Mt:dio/Qnouiwn, and Laodulf, Historia Malio/anM.f/s, are

bodl
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The Perception of the Past in Twelftlt·Century Europe

judges from all the cities: Barbaros..a had law on his side, both Lombard and Roman, when he tried to reestablish royal power, and legal experts knew it. 21 City concern with Barbarossa was, on the other hand, very local in its nature. None of these writer.~, even the most pro-imperial, spend any space on Frederick's activities in Germany; and the· fullest and best of them, Otto and Accrbo Morena of Lodi, a re quite expli
'll For Roncagti.a. see Otto of Freisingand Rahewin, Gestt.J iridm'ci I imperotori.r, ed. G. Wait:z, MGH SRG, (Hanover, 1884), i'v. 3-9; Otto Morena ~~toria Fridtrici I ed. F'. GUterbo<:k. MGH

SRG, (Bertin, 1930). 58-61. Basic on Frederick's gc.wernmen1 in ht~Jy is A. Haverkamp, llt:rrt• chtlfuformcn tkr Frahstouftr In RtklrslMII'tn (Stuttgan, 1971). The main early Friderici.an IC~l$ from lombardy are Morena and the otber texts below, n. 22. n Ouo of Frti~ng. Gtsta Friduid, e .g. ii .. l3-16; Otto Morena, fliswrio Friderici, J-2~ the Bertamo Oumen de gesrit 1-'rtdtrici I imptuuoris in Lombardia, cd. I Scbmalc-Ou. MGH Sf.tG, (Hanover, 196S). 11.6-63; comp. the Milancs.e.anti-imperial Citsta f'edtrici imptlatoris. ed. G.H. Peru, MG H SS, tS(HilJIOVeJ. t893). 359-78. n Qu.,, of Frti$ing, Hi.~toda dt duabu.r dt~•'tatU,u.t ed. A, HofJntis.ter, MGH SRG, ( Hanover, 19ll), comparing. e.g.• vii.29. 34, with Book viii; cf. H.M. Klinkcnbcrg, •oe.r Sinn Qcr Chr(mik Ottos von Frci$.iqg', in A us Mint/alter und NtuuiJ., cd. J. Engel and H.M. Klinkenbcrg (Bonn, 1957). 6J..76; and the artide of l'. Reuter in thi!i volume. For the Carolingian hi:s.torical imas,c, .see R. Foli:., Lc S<JIWtnir ~:tiD llg~ndt: d~ Clwrlt:magne dmu: ft:mpire gtnntmiq~ midiivDI (Pari!i, 1950). 186-202.

Italian Communal Narrulives

183

from Biblical times: in this vision, Frederick was the heir of every people, Lombards, Romans, Trojrms and Franks alike, and even the Visigoths and their Leonese successors; their histories were simply seen through the deeds of their kings. Godfrey was an odd man, a son of German Gerald of Wales, but he was dose to the centre of the eoun of Frederick and his son Henry, and expected his works to be sympathetically received there."' This was, then, the usable past as seen at the Germa.n court. There were no equivalents to these historians in northern Italy~ there was no surviving local historical tradition that put tbe kings at centre stage as the focus of the Italian past. After the essentially clcventh-<:entury preoccupations of Amulf and landulf Senior, no twelfth·century historian from the Po plain even went back to the events of the 1070s,let alone to Otto I or Charlemagne, as points of reference in his account. Most chronicles were strictly contemporary, strictly matter·of·fact. Their past touchstones were the awful things cities did to each other, the Milanese destruction of lodi in 1111 or the sac.k of Como in 1127, and these were all preny recent?S F<>r the writers of Italian city chronicles in this period the commonest image of the further past was simply a general sense of the exposure of northern Italy to invasions. This underpins many a reference to Frederick's heterogeneous army simply as Teutonici , and is made explicit in the prologue of the Milanese Gl!.llll Federici (an otherwise entirely contemporary narrative}: Lombardy has suffered many dreadful invasions, from Romans, Vandals, Goths, Winili (who are the Lombards themselves, a point the author cannot allow himself to make), Franks, Hungarians and now Germans; tbe latter are to he described in the text, ad utilitutem post~rorum. This image, crystallising in the imagination, was to result a cenrury later in tbe chronicle of Gio,·anni Codagnello of Piacenz.a, who postulated in the 1230s a wonderful history in which the cities of Cisalpine Gaul (otherwise known as lombards}, under threat from Transal·

l,.

Godfrey's oomplex interrelated texts are c.d. G. Waitt in MOH SS, 22 (Hanover, 1872); sec

Folt. Sou~~tnlr, 2SJ.66; aod above, 21·22. 25. Cot

biblioyaph~.

On his lire. see G. &.aken. 'Zw

Bc:urteilung Gottfriods von Viterbo', in Gt.u:ltidt.u:schrtibung uttd ge«dgt':$ UhM lm Mllttflaltn,

ed. K. Ho.nck and H. Mordek. (Cologne, t978), 373-96. tJ See Wickham, 'l.awytl'$' Time'. An erceptioo th~t proves the ruk is lbe wurld c:brooide (with "Pf=cial rdercn~ to Jtaty) wriucn by Bishop SicardoorCremona, dating t.rom the 1210s. for Sicardo, when discussing twelfth-century kil\g$. had oo indigenous jnformatlon; be had co base bimsdf on Godfrey and on the pap<~ I h is.~oric.s. See SiCJUdi (piscopi CrtmOnttUis eroni.cd, ed. 0 . Holder·J:.ut:r, (Hanover. 1903), 22·181. One may add chat Si(ardo has rela1ively Jiule co say about bishops, eitht'r; even in the late twelfth century, when he is virtually writing a k>c:ul c:bronkle, those of Cremonl only rec:civc: casual reference. One. must conuas.t German)' b(:re. whe-re twelfth· century ci cydlrOni~les were e;sentiaJJy or explicitly epi500pal histories., e .~. in Lotha.tingia. G~.tttJ tpi.scoporum MtlltnJiwn ed. G. Waitz, MGH SS, IO(HaoO\·er, IB52), 531-51; G~ta1Ytwro11.1.rn, ed. idem MOH SS, 8(Hat~ovet , 1848) . 1 S8-l00; Oeytu tpiscopo~&ma Tullt'RSi~Jm , eel. ide-m. ibid., 63148,-see Reuter. abo\·e, 26-8; I am grateful to h.im for ad\ice witb tbe&e references. There is no paraUel to this ln the Italian kingdom after Landulf Scllior; episcopal mew Md J)O'o''t:r in twelfth· oel)tury haJy, ;)llhough often great. remamed at the Jc,•d of the informal, and ('eased to 1x commemon~tcd u hi$;t()ricaJly ctnlr~l.

184

Tht Perception of the Past in Twtlfth-Cemury Ellrope

pine Gauls, Germans, Hungarians and Longobards (sic), elected Diocletian, a noble from Rome, to defend them, and then after his death the Milanese Maximian, who beat back Gisulf of the Longobards and Alexius of Hungary_ Codagnello, evidently not a supporter of Frederick II, saw Italian history as a whole sionply as city resistance to invasions. And that was when he saw history in terms of the regnum ltolicum at all; his Annale.< Piacentini, which he wrote up at the same time, are almost as city-<:entred as those of Genoa or Pisa. 26 These are literary images, of course, by definition, although they are ncar-universal in our sources. They are, however, backed up by court records 1 in which witnes;es date their testimonies almo.r entirely by city wars and tbe like, including the major moments in the wars against Barbarossa; even moving entirely away from literary genres, the loca.l preoccupations we have looked at remain dominant .n In the rwelfth century Frederick I was descending into a north Italian pJain whose historical imagination was JocaJ and contemporary, and one of whose enduring myths was invasion from the· north: it was not exactly waiting for him with open arms. Profess-ional lawyers~ with their Pavese or Bolognese uaining in royal legislation. may have recognised the historical roots of (at least some of) his activity, but to others he was just an invader, whether welcome or unwelcome, like so many othe-rs. How do the northern city narratives contribute to our understanding of the issue of local consciousness of the development of the commune? The detailed histories of the citie$ under Barbarossa a re tQO short in temporal perspective to give us much sense of urban institutional development; to have an idea of bow communes were seen in the north, we need to k>ok more closely at an annalistic text. let us, as a sample, look at the annals of Crcmona as a typical late rwelfth·century text with some time depth. even if a much lc...ss detailed one than the maritime chronicles, to see how the image of the city develops. The Cremona annals begin, as do those of Genoa, with the First Crusade. They are nm in any sense a full narrative thereafter, however: mosl of the year entries are only a few lines long at most and there are many gaps. In the early twelfth century they pursue a fairly characteristic path of disasters and wars: in 1098 the Cremonesi attacked Crema; in 1107 they burnt Tortona; in 1110 they fought Brescia; in the same year (recu Bllj Henry Y came to Rome; in Jill the Milanesi took Lodi; in 1113 there was a fire in Cremona; in 1116 [recte 1117] there was an earthquake (almost all north Italian annals record this); and in the

:0 The Milanese Gt$Ui Fednici, 360~ 0 . Holde.r-Egger, ·Obcr die Jmtorischen Wcrt c:. d« Johann« Cad.agnc:llus \'ctn Piacenza', Neue:t Archiv. 16 (1891). 253-346, 41S-S09. which includes botb (partial) te•t and romrnenuny: 415·80 for Diocleli:iU') and Maximian. (For the Annab, set above, n. 9.) One ma.)' no1e tbat Codagnello's historical myth-making does not amo1.1n1 to a senea.IOSY of imperial intervention~ even in negative: there is nothing in his chronicle between

Charkmagr-e· and Barbarossa. 21

R. Bordooe, 'Memoria del tempo negli abitanti dt.i comuni iLU.liani aJJ'c~ del Ba.rbaros.sa'; see fu.nher P. Racine. •A propos du 1em.ps dans: Je pi'~ (xn-xnt si~cles)'; both are in II te.mpo ''is.ful() ( Bolo&na. 1988). 47-62. 63·75. Sec below, n. 34>for Tuscany.

Italian C,ommunal Narratives

185

same year (rtcte 1127) the Milanesi took Como and the Po froze; in 1120 the Cremonesi fought Panna, and so on. Frederick's arrival does not make the text more extensive, although his campaigns are similarly noted. The only change comes suddenly in 1182, with a new compiler, for in that year the annals say that Gerardo da Carpineto was the first podeslii of the city; and thereafter the podtstil and/or consuls of Cremona are always listed. There is barely any more detail in the year entries other t.han that, however, and after 1201, for several years, there is Jess.23

The Cremona annals are not a remarkable text in any way, or even very interesting; but they are typical. People compiled chronicles for a dozen or more cities like this between 1150 and 1300: with an early t.Welfth-century set of entries of local wars, a later t.Welfth-century set with Barbaro~;sa in it as well, and then consuls and pocksta appearing systematically in the 1180s, or maybe 1170s or l19(ls. The late twelfth-century appearance of local consular lists can be found again in Piaeenza, Milan and (slightly earlier) Pisa, as we have seen,

and also in Florence, Lucca. Verona, Mantua, Brescia and Panna: not only, that is to say, much later than consuls can be found in documents, but also aU at almost exactly the same time.29 These texts were themselves interlinked and often mutually dependent in their referencing, but the local consular lists were by definition local. Editors generally remark that annalists must have had access to lists that only started around that date , and they must be right in this; but why didfasti of consuls andpodesul, with one or two exceptions, only start in the final decades of tbe t.Welftb century? I have already made reference to the argument that communal institutions did not crystallise early in twelfth-century Italian cities; they began as ad hoc, informal, even semi-privat.e agreements, and only later changed, as cities began to have formal governing structures, not just ruling groups bonded together with private oaths and personal links, to use the formulations of

Anna.lts Cremontn.tu. ed. 0 . 1-lolder~EUtr. MGH SS. 31, ( Hanover, 1903), 1·21; for dating see idem, •Ober die Annalcs Cre-monenses•, N~ An!'hiv2S (1900), 499-519, who ar8'-'CS that the rv.~lfth-centurycntries were the work ot two c»mpilen, both writing i.o the late twelfth., tbe second takingo...er in 1182. The first OOO$Ul$ mentioned are io 1130. bu• lhey are the. only onescltedbefore 28

11111.. 29

See above. n. 9. For F'lore-nce, see the consular lists, beginning in 1196, eeL in 0 . Hartwig, Qurlkn u.nd Fonclumg~n rur iiltt:s~n Gnchichte du S1adt AOnnz, 2 vok (Marburg, 1875/Halle., 1880). ii, 184·5-cf. the re.oonscructed Gestfl Flortminorwned . in Tholrmtti Luunsist1MalnbyB. SchmeicUer. MGH SRG, n.s., 8 (Berlin. 1930). where the fa.m· begin in 11'¥7 (p.250). For Lucca, see ibid. , 298, for slighlly Uuerminent Liscsbeg.inningin l188. For Verona, AMain VtTQnt'Ma, cd. G.H. Petu, MGH SS.19 (Haoover, 1866), 1-18, ;U 4-5: lislli from 1193, iotemritlcnt un1n 1206. for Mamua. AAMieJ ManhUJnJ, ibid., 19·31, at 19: l~u £tocn IJ83. For Drek:ia, Annalt-.r IJrixi<.tUt--s, ed. L. Bethmann, MOH SS, 18 (Hanover, 1863), 8U·20: intcrmiuent lists from 1182 (p. 814). For Parma. AMal<..t Parm<.nst-s maiores. eel. P. J~ff~. ibid.. 664-790, which begin with/asd from 1165, sequential from 1175. (Some of these: texts also have isolated rcferenOC$ to earlier OOMUIS, bUI they are much mGfe w utl.) Private mem
186

The Perception of the Past in 1\ve/ftii-Century Europe

Gioacchino Volpe. Volpe bas been criticised in this, notably by people who stress that cities as formal coUective bodies. with assemblies and organised military service, are visible right from the start of the twelfth century and, in the case of Pisa, well before (for how else could it equip all those naval expeditions?).10 These are valid objections; but the informality of early consular and other communal offices is not lessened by the continuing public nature of the city community as a whole. For a long time, the consuls held no monopoly over city government; even the administration of justice remained in the hands of a mutltitude of powers, public and private, with consular tribunals as only one out of many possible recourses, un til well on into the century in most cities. The consulates gradually came to control more and more of the city's preexisting public and legal activity, but it was far too gradual a process to be noticed by most sources. Pe-rhaps one could regard communal institutions as becoming more or less stable in most places by the middle of the twelfth century; no netheless, the fact that they were io legal terms revolution· ary, or even historically interesting, may not even have been understood by most people in the cities until Barbarossa came. It was essentially the impact of Barbarossa that not only led most cities in the end to ally together and defeat him and extract the treaty of Constance in Jl83, which gave formal legal recognition to city autonomies. as is wen known , but also led the cities themselves to recognise the historicity of their consular and podestarial institutions. as structures whose pcrwnnel it mattered to record. Hence the sudden appearance of consuls in late twelftb-ceotury records; but their writers, even those contemporary with this proce ss, evidently found it unnecessary to

reconstruct consular office back more than a few years. Even if they were as interested in communes as Caffaro (which most of them were not), they may not have known any better than us (which is in most cases not at all) when their consuls actually began, even to the nearest decade 31 The future changes of city institutions were to be important touchstones for chronicles, but not l.heir beginnings. It can be, and has been , argued that if we look fo r <'Onsuh as a mark of the origins o f Italian city states, we are looking for the wrong thing. Cities began to be autonomous in much more fragmentary. inoonsistenc , indeed contradictory ways; even to try to pio down a single moment of origin for this autonomy in the long parallel development of organised city identities between the early

30

G. Volpe-, 'Questioni fondOllrotmali sull'origine c. svol.gimeoto dc:i comuni italian;• (1904). in

idem, Mt!dio~vo illfllafiO (Aorcnoc-. 1961), 87-118; 0. Banti, · "Civi tas'"' ~ ..commune.. neUe Conti il•l.iant: dei $eCOii XI t XU', in Rosselli. cit. o . 14. 217-32. developlng oomment! by CassandrO,

;b;d., 15.1-73; G. Tabacoo, The Slruggu for Power in Mt414v•llr•ly (CIIIDbridg<, t989). 182-90, 337-42; Bordonc:. Sodet4 cilladin4 , J30-4J: the!le, togerbt:r with tbe article and the boot cited in the next nme. a.rc guide$ to what follows. ~t H. Keller, 'Gii ini:ri del comune in LoJnOOrdia: Umiti dtUa doewllentarioo.e t metodi di ricerca'. in L'~ul~dtlle cltt4ludlaru: tltii'XI k«JlfJ, ed. R. Bordooe and J, Jall'lut (Bologna, 1988). 45-70.

Italian Communal Narratives

187

eleventh century and the late twelfth can be a meaningless imposition of external order. What we can look at i_s what contemporaries thought were the signifieant points of origin that were worth beginning chronicles from: for these can be seen in many cases as founding moments, t.b at were perhaps taken seriously by more people than just chroniclers. Here the Pisan annals, as we have seen, bad the eadiest point of reference: their founding moment was the sea campaigns beginning in the early eleventh century. In those of Cremona and Genoa, it is the First Crusade that begins the narrative (as well as, in the latter case, the permanent compugna). In the brief Milan annal sets of the twelfth century, the effective starting point is the battle of Campo Morto against Pavia in 1061, one ofthe first of Milan's contado and inter-city wars. In Piacenza the civil war between milirts and populus in 1090 is the first major local event in Codagnello's writings of c. 1230; it ended with a concordia u pax that is evidently suppoSed to symbolise city identity (although not the 'com· mun<:' as such, which Codagnello did not think to record or invent an origin for). Sanzanome, a Florentine c-ontemporary of Codagnello, began his Gesw f'k>rtntinorum with an equally symbolic event, the 1125 sack of Fiesole, which he regarded as the mythic starting-point of dty history; other Aorentine chroniclers of the twelhb and thirteenth centuries were more prosaic, but began with similar early twelfth-century local wars.32 It is often not entirely easy to identify clear starting-points for annals. Many like the Pisan ones begin with borrowed texts such as king-lists or else, as in some of the annals from Milan, the deaths of local bishops and the erection of churches. It is oot insignificant that they are there, as genealogies of city identity that can go a long way back. Nonetheless, the typical moment in which a city activity is first mentioned, whether it is a major military enterprise (either inside the diocese or beyond it) or a major moment of the aggregation of tbe city as a whole- or, as with the First Crusade, both- is clearly visible in most texts. So are absences. Apart from in Pisa, city wars or moments of collective affirmation do not predate 1060; indeed few predate 1090. Yet there had been many, as we know from otber sources: the Cromona revolt against its

n Milan; of tbe six 3.Mal selS ed. P. Jaffi in MGH SS1 18.385-402. aU predatiol 1.300 110d some twelfth--century, rwo begin with Campo Mono. ooe with tour episcopal deaths and then Campo Mono, one wit.h several episcopal deaths aod church buUdi~ aod thtn Campo Morto, twO with rwelfth~ntury events. (Noc all we.re i:n cflronological order i.n the manuscripts.) CodagoeUo's AnMI.t.s Piacentini (cited n. 9). 1·3 sjve the text of 1090. Its tcmlhKJiogy is deatty Cbirteerub· ceruury; :~eefor c:ommetuary P. Racine, P/4isanceduXbneA ltlfindu Xll/bneri«Jt(Paris,l979). 218·35. Codagnello did not put it quite at the beglnning o( this anoals, one should note; it belongs almost a-s mll(h, to bis chronicle (above, o. 26; see Holder.£gger, 'Job.annes Codagnellus', 508). The annals tbeln$tlves only have four previous one·line entries: an c:pisoopal death, a batde., a famine and a war. For ronc()rd/4 imaaery. see Bordooe, S«Jetll dt.t4dina, 183-97. florence: HartWig. Q~Uen u11d FMchUf18en i. 1..J.4 tor Sanzanome (2..S tor the Resole war); tbe to.'O annal$ ~~el'i ed. ibid, ii. :3-4 (not orden:dch~logica.Uy), 4G-42becin respecri\•elywith a 1110 battle oo tbe

Pesa and the U07Pratowar; the Gwa Flor~nrin()I'Um (cit. o.. 29), 246begin wi1h HeruylV'tartaek on F1oreocc in 1080 [rttte 1081) and tbeo the Prato war. Sec: below. o. 36.

188

The Perception of the Past in Twe/fth· Ontury Europe

bishop in the 1020s-30s and the Milan revolts of the 1030s· 70s, to name but two. Arnulf and Landulf Senior had chronicled the latter in some detail; but they were l<>.st as memories by the later twelfth century. Similarly, the Florentine religious struggle against Bishop Pietro Mezzabarba in 1068, for all its contemporary importance in the d tyJ was not d ted by any subsequent annalist.» There seems to have been a time, slightly diffe rent in each city, before which collective activities were coo early to be remembered. That time is roughly that of the wars of Henry IV in the contcXI of the Investiture D i>l'ute, wruch have indeed often been seen as a counterpart to those of Barbarossa a century later as steps in the crystallisation of Italian city autonomy ; but Henry IV, and still more Gregory VII, are virtually forgo tten by these texts as well. One has the sense that what makes the late eleventh century the starting-point for city memories is not presence (of Henry. or of war), but absence: the point at wh.ich all real external restraint on city activity finally disappeared, forcing cities to look after their own affairs whether they wished to or not. City founding moments could come only when such restraints became too weak to be relevant. but each city understood this moment in

different ways, depending on local circumstances. I have argued elsewhere that the tenth and eleventh centuries in northern Italy were a period of extremely weak historical memory, above all at the level of the state. What I think we are seeing at the end of the eleventh century, and only then, is the beginning of the reconstruction of a usable past, in e-ach case highly local, that could then continue in people's memories long enough for it to be recorded in late twelfth· or early thir-teenth-century annals. Florentines remembered back to the sack of Fiesolc, although not back to Pietro Mezza· barba: and ordinary (upper-class) Florentine.' really did remember Fiesole and the other contado wars, for, as in the north, they are recalled as dating tools by witnesses in transcripts of judidal inquests at the end of the century by clerics and knights. 34 ln the thirteenth century~ memory began to change; for reasons

u Sicardo's chronicle.(above. n. 2!i) is lhe onJy one to mention the Cre.mona uprising (p. 160): but Skarda wu in a panieulari)' prhileg~d ~ition. for it was be who had ooiJec:ted the documents which are the main sourct for our owo koowledgt or i1 . See E.A. ColemM, 'Cr:enxma: Oty 3od Civic Jdenticy. 996-1128' (Oxford Uo.iv. O.Phil. tbc~s 1981), for the pof_itk$ of the period. F01 1068 in Floren~e. see G. Micooli. Pierro Jgnco (Rome, 1960). It is nol recorded in an)'oftheann.aJs cd. by Hartwig: and even Giovanni Vl)lani in the early four~enth centu.ry, who knew abo-ut Giovaruti Gualbeno. tbe organi.$(.1of l.be tnQ\'Cment ag.a.inst Mexzabllrba, does nol mentMln either 1be hlOVemeOI or ils climax, PietJ() lgneo's orde.al (CronacD diG. Villafli. i [Florence, 1823], IV. 17). 'The latter must be rcprC$Cntcd by the ordeal o( 'Petrus Ming.ardole', dated to 1120by the first Florc.ntine annals (Hartwi&, QueUe11 und Fonchungm, I. 3): the day of lhe year is roughJy right. but e\•erything else is wrong. ,. See L. P.•mrini. ·Doeumemj cbe i.UuMtaoo La memori3: una monaca del S«''Oo XlU', Al'('lii"o norica iuili41to, 3 s.er., 23 (18'76) . 205-11, "385-403; oomp. J.-P. Oelumeau, 'La m~moire des gens d'Arezzo et de Sienne A trovc:n; de.-. d6posidous des t6moin:s'. in Temps, mt.rrwire, lrudJliQn "" m<1yttn•t1gt (Aix, 1983). 45·67; cl. abo\'e, n, Z1. For wuk memory o( the state, Wickham, 'Lawyers' Time'.

JtaliDn Communal Narratives

189

that cannot be discussed here, writers began to overlay these sketchy founding moments with myths. of Roman or Trojan origiD.$, thai have little parallel in Italy before. In Genoa in the 1280s, for example, Jacopo Doria, the last of the official city annalists, felt he had to add a section o n the ancient origins of the city, since Caffaro had not done it." Yet the points of reference did not always change, fo r all that. We have seen how Codagnello transposed the Lombard League back into the late Roman empire. Similarly, Sanzanome, here following preexisting early thirteenth-century learned legends, trans· posed the Fiesole war back to Caesar's time. Fiesole, the opponent of Rome, Florence's archetypical precursor. was the stronghold of Catiline, who had become the archetypical anti-Roman; Caesar sacked Fiesole and founded Florence. 'A destructione itaque fesularum moderois temporis facta victoriarum sumatur initium , cum eius occasione Aorentia sumpsiset originem.' The developing myth of Rome simply and precisely adapted iL•elf to the image of the 1125 Florence-Fiesole war as Florence's founding mo ment; it showed how strong the latter image already was in local etite consciousness. 36 We cannot tell ho w long it took fo r these founding images to take root, or whether some were overlain by others, or indeed how important precise images were: our sources are rarely ri~h enough for that. It is quite possible that a generatised sense of the local enthusiasms and victories of the early twelfth century was the major point of refere-nce that most citizens had or needed in the succeeding decades. But it is at least clear that the late eleventh century marked tbe start of the process. From then onwards a new time began for each city. lt was a time that produced, slowly, communal institutions and autonomous cit)' policies; but in elite consciousness it was a time that produced a new legitimacy for city campaigns, against other cities or rural lords, as the real objects of relevant history. Barbarossa saw as his majo r problem the former; but it may have been his Jack of a real place in Italian perceptions of the practically relevant worJd, either in the legitimate present or in the usable past (which is, of course, for most people virtually the same thing), that contributed most powerfully to his defeat.37

,~ Arrnali Gtnt.wal (ci1. n. 1), v, td. C. lmperiak: di Sanl'Angelo (Rome:. 1929). 3-8; see Petti Balbi, Coff41o, 7Z.74. 82. H Saoza.Dome: Hartwig, (Jutlltn wad Fortcltun~n, i, 1·2. Fur the F'teSOie legends. the Chrottk4 tk origiM a ...ilatu, see ibid .• i, 37-65. Cml:meruary: A. del Monte. 'La storiogra6a tiorentina dei scooli Xll c Xlll', Bulkttino dtl/'11h.Udo IUJrico it4/ilmo ptr il ~dio tVC) , 62 (19SO). 175-282., at

176-90; see further the attidet of 0 . Weinlitein and C . T. Davi ~ in Floruuine Studia, ed. N,. Ru~nstclo (Loadon 1968), ts.-69. and the oontriburion$ ofF. B1\lni and G. Severino to the Rome amfercnce. cit. n. 10. .n See, fur past and present, J.W. Fentress ~nd C.J. Wi(t.bam. Socilll MemOry (Oxford, 1991). For the~oeral issue of city consciousness, see further Bonk>ne, Soderbc.ittadina. I am g.ratduJ to Les.lie Brubaker. to the St Andrev.--s conlereooe pattkipants and to my coueagues at Birmingham (or critK:al comments oo my original paper.

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The Political Use of the Past in Norman Sicily T.S. Brown Few areas of oomparable size seem so dominated by their past as Sicily. Successive conquerors have left monuments of dazzling splendour and diversity, and many of these have survived natural catastrophe and man-made upheaval to this day. Not untypical of the reaction of visitors to the island wa• that of Goethe in 1787; after a visit to Palermo be wrote in his diary ' ... to be standing on that wondrous spot whither point so many radii of world history is no trivial matter.'1 That the same interest in the past is shared by the island's inhabitants is shown by the featuring of conflicts between the Moors and // gran conte in the Opra di'pupi of Palermo - a city where mariontlfe are the feature not only of street-corner puppct·theatres but of large·scalc fesre and

international congressi. 2 What then of sucll interest in tile past of the twelfth century - a period of undoubted brilliance in the history of Sicily and the adjoining areas of the mainland Mezzogiorno and one in which the whole area impinged considera· bly on the political and cultural life of Europe? Curiou.•ly little attention has been paid to this question . Take for example the work of Charle~ Homer Haskins. whose writings on both the Normans and twelfth-century cultural history have exerted unparalleled inftuence in the English-speaking world. In his Renaissance of the Twelfth Ctntruy the longest chapter is devoted to historical writing but the treatment of the Norman kingdom is sketchy in the extreme, with only a couple of pages on Hugh Falcandus and brief mentions of Romuald of Salerno.' Many imponant studies on western medieval historiography neglect Norman Sic~y almost completely.• On the other hand most studies of the historians of Norman Sicily deal with specific problems of

1

Quoted in V. Schuster. 'The Mosaics of Piazza Armerina', COnooisut.u. 188 (1915), 174. V. Podrcoca, an. •Marioncna". &cidopedla Jr41UJna>xx:i (llome. 1934) , 357. ' C. H. Haskins, Tile RtnlliJ.Sanuofthe ~lfth CtnlUI"f (Cambridge. Mass., 1927), 224·75, at 2&-63. 237-38, 240. • Ooe aample amoog many i$ H. Btwnano, 'Die 1-li.s-torio&aPNe des Mittelahc-.n als QueUe tiir die Jdeeagescbiebte des KOni&tums', Hisrori.sclte Ztilsdlrifl, 180 (19SS). 449·88. 2

191

192

The Perception of tile Past in Twelfth-Cemury Europe

content o r style, and do not full y deal with perceptions of the past or place them in a wider European context. s Before we attempt to explain why the historians of the Norman south have experienced such relative neglect and what part they played in the great leap forward in the quantity and quality of historical writing in twelftb-«ntury Europe, we should be clear what is meant by 'Norman Sicily'. This expression, together with the term 'the regr.o' is conventionally used as shorthand to cover all the territories which were united under the rule of the Norman dynasty of Hauteville from the early twelfth century, including the mainland regions of Apulia . Calabria, Campania, Molise and much of the Abruui as well as the island of Sicily. Strie~ly Norman rulers from the coro nation of Roger 0 in 1130 onwards were kings only of the island - they ruled the mainland with the titles of dux Apuliae and princeps Capuae. 6 However the kings devoted considerable energy to integrating their possessions, attempting to enforce the same degree of authority over the mainland as that traditionally enjoyed in Sicily proper,1 and as we shall see the mainland had a much more dynamic historiographical tradition than that of Sicily. Taking 'Sicily' in this broad sense it has to be admitted at the outset that the eviden~ for a developed sense of the past in the twelfth century is for the most part disappointing. There is for example oo evidence for the development of

.s Briefdiscussions of the historical sou roes (Of" Norman Sicily include E Gbalandon, HUtorit th Ia domitsation normonde m l t111it t1 en Sk;il~. i (Pili$. 1901), xxvij..lXix, 0. Cnpitani, 'Motivi e momeotl di storiograJb mc
(GOningen, 1969), 6'2·75. D. Clementi, 'Stepping Stone,. in t~ Making of the Regno•, Bullt!ftino dtlrhuriTUJO S1orko 1taliD110 ptr if Mtdi4eY090 (l91W3), 227-93; S. ·namontana, ' La monarchia normanna c 1>\'e'·a· in A. Gui:Uou d al., Jl Me.zzogiorno d.IJJ' Bizantini a Fednico II (Stnria d'llalia UTET. Ill, Turin 1983), d pecially 563·614. P.lrticularly useful are the papcn gi\·en in the ''arious Bari ·s:iomate normanno.$Ve"'e' conference$, n-cu.ahly Socitrd, portr'-"p<>pOI() Mll't>tli tli Rugg~ro 11 {Sari, 1979). 1

The Political Use of the Past in Norman Sicily

193

coherent unifying myths which one can see emerging in other parts of Europe. In contrast a ~eat many myths have developed about 'Norman Sicily'. First it is important to reject the notion which prevailed until comparatively recently that Norman Sicily was 'the first modem state', a conscious creation run on rational lines and dominated by cosmopolitan bureaucratic elements from the Byzantine and Muslim worlds.8 More recent work has suggested that, despite the kingdom's undoubted precocity in certain areas, feudal relationships and western notions of royal power predominated, and that in many respects the apparently prosperou.< and powerful regno was a ramshackle ad hoc creatioo.9 The second myth concerns the Normannitas of the kingdom. This problem has attracted considerable attention and there is no need to rehearse the various arguments here, especially as the issue has been the subject of a judicious survey by Graham Loud. 10 There is little evidence fo r any identifiea· tion with the Norman past in twelfth-century Sicily. None of the area's historians were themselves Normans with the exception of Geoffrey Malaterra, writing right at the beginning of the century." Also all, again with the exception of Malatcrra, hardly use the term Norman : Hugh Falcandus. for example, uses it once in a rather casual manner. J2 The northern historian Orderic Vital is, who had an exceptional inierest in the south as a result of the ties of bis monastery, was right when he wrote that the Normans who had gone

11

This notion wh[ch has itS roocs pertaps i:n Burckhardt'$ portrayal of lhe Norman Sicman ioberitaooe of Frederick lias an early example of 'tbe state as a wort of an', (Tht Qviliutlon of lhl! R4nai.tS~n« in Italy , trans. S.G.C. Middle.ton {London, 1960). 2) vnt supported b)' Ha.skiM. n~ NOI?JIIltU in EIU()pun HLttory. (reprinted New York, 1966) 218-49; 'The ~ci1ian ~tate . . . !itood well in advance of its contemporaries in all that goes to make a f1'10dem type of JOVemmcnt• (ibid., 233). A variant was maintained as recently as 1964 by Antonto Marongju, 'A Model State in rhe Mkklle Ates.: the Norman kingdom ofSicil)'". OJmpatali~ S/"114ks ln $()(./tty dnd History. 4 (1964), republished with other relevant article!. in his ByzMtih~ Norman, Swabilln a11d Lour lnstitutkMJ (l..oodoo, 1972). 11 More consid~rOO and realistic asses$menl$ wt.rc first proposed by L. M~nage:r, mm.t notably in 'L'institution monarthiqve daD:$ te:s tealS norm1nds d'ltalie'. (4/rier$ M Civillsation MbiiiWJ/e, ii (1959) , 303·31, 445-68. and the Qtber works in his Homma t t .structures de r/tal~ nonn41tdt (London, 1981 ). For recent discussions sec the worts listed in note 7. 10 G . Loud, ''l'be Gens Nori'MNJOrum - Myth or Rtality?·, ProuediflgsoftM &ul~ Con{t:rmu. ()II Anglo~Norman Studit.s, iv (1981). 104-16. 'The dc\'eloprntnl in t.ht north of a pride in supposed Norman qualities and a sJJj~red interes1 in their past deeds amounting to ·a sas.a of tbe Norman raoc.' in the North was .sug,gC$tCd by R.H.C. Davis, Tht Normiln Myth (London, 1976), 66, although be admitted that oone·of the hiMorians of south Italy saw tht. activities of the Normans there ·as part or the wider 3Cibievc.meot$ of lbe Norman rice' (ibid., 89). Davii'l work is to be commended as asalutary oouoterbalaooe to wolbex.aueralin.g the Norman's iK'lual pOssession of distinctive qualities (as opposed to their development of an e1bnie myth). u De nbu:s gttris Rq~rii C4labtiM ~~ SiciliM comi.ri.f. ed. E. Pontieri (Re.t'Um ltalicarum Sc.:ripcores. 2a ed .. v, i, Sologna, 1928). On Malaterra $CC idem, 'Oofftedo Mal3terra t torioo del g.ran conte Ru&gero', in bis Tm i Norma11ni neJJ'JtoUanuridionult(2nd ed., Naples, 1964).211-82. u Hugh Faleaud·us, Ub¢r d~ rtgno Siciliae e Ia Epistola ad Pttrwn Panormilanot ecde.3J4t th~saurarium, f!'d. G.B. Siracusa (Font~ per la S1oria d'h.alia, nil, Rome, 1891).

194

Tire Perception of tlae Past in Twelfth-Cemury E11rope

south had 'forgotten Normandy.' 13 As Loud points out, the elaboration of a 'Norman myth' is a phenomenon of the eleventh century, rather than the twelfth, and this is particularly true of Sicily. There is a dramatic change of emphasis between the writers dealing with the eleventh century- William of Apulia, Amatus o f Monte Cassino and Malaterra. and their twelfth-century successors." The former empha.'iise the enterprise and daring of the Norman gens in a heroic manner, whereas the Iauer are much more dynastic and •statist1 in approach, centring their accounts on the kings and their courts and developing a more complex set of relations between ruler and people. The reasons for this change are hard to identify, especially as we are vecy poorly served for sources between the death of Roger I in 1101 and his son's invasion of the mainland in 1127, but we can perhaps point to a number of relevant factors. Firstly the Normans themselves were be·coming deracin~, no. only through aeeulturation but also due to the watering-down influence of non· Norman northern immigrants. Secondly the flauteville rulers were d eveloping more sophisticated foundations to their power than the traditional individual fidelicas. Thirdly they had to work out an ideological modus vivendi with their native subjects, who vastly outnumbered them. finally the change can be related to the opening up of new ideological and cultural horizons through the strengthening of new ties with north-western Europe. 15 Some clements of Norma.n consciousness do remain of course, notably their adherence to distinctive anthropooyms, and there is some evidence of continued interest in the Norman pa.
u Otderic Yilalis, ~ltsl4Jd(;ollluwry. ed. M. Chibnall, ii (Oxford, 1969) 126, referring to

William of £chi~uffour. a . Davis, Norman Myth, 64. l• William of Apuli3, LA Gt.tJt de R{)bot C/.dsc4rd, cd. M. Mathieu (Palermo, 1961); Scoria dc'Normanni di A moJOdi Mon.t«a.ftino volgarizzata in t11ttico frmu:a l!, ed. V . de Bartbolomaeis (Fonti per Ia Storia d'ItaJia, txxvi, Rome, 1933). The latter dces oot survi"e in the Latin original

but only in an execrable French wnslation Irom the Angevin period. u Cf. N . Ciltnto, 'La "cosclenza" del r-egno nei: cron\:\ti meri4ionali', Pottre, $()(:ier.b e popolo tro eta normaiVUI c d O .u•eva (A.tti deJJe GkJrntae normaMo..n•tNe) (Bari, 198J), 176. The enoourage.ment o( immigration by northern ecclesiastical aod bureaucratic c.arpet-baggers is a

factor here. On anthroponyms, L. R. M6nager. ·resanteut et 6tkJJogie de la colonisation ootmaode de J'halie'. Rob~rto il Guiscaulo e il ~·uo te.mptJ (Rome, l97S), Hl~21 4, 26(}3~) (zHornmel ~ W#union.t no. iv}. Malatcrra, c-d. Pont~ri , 3, 4, refers to nlolou:t and r«itatores, an appare-nt aliU$.ion to tellers o( tales among the Normans. C!. A. Nhsc:hlte, 'Beobaclltungen zur oormann~ chen Erziehung im ll.Jahlbuockrt', Arc:::hiv fUr Kulturg~schkhte, 4) (1961), 265-98. 16

The Political Use of the Past in Norman Sicily

195

title), its extensive knowledge of Roman write rs such as Sallust, its use o f the ancient ooncept of fortuna and its development in the final hook of the ideal of the just and enlightened ruler. If we tum o ur attention to the mainland, we find a strong historiographical tradition going back to Paul the Deacon's History ofrhe Lombards. 11 This was maintained throughout the Latin south , in the no minally Byzantine cities of AmaJJi and Naples as we ll as the independent Lombard principalities a.nd the Lombard areas, such as Bari, which came under By.tantine authority from ~6 onwards.•• (There does not however seem to ha ve been a mong local chronicle tradition in the Greek-speaking areas of southern ltaly19. ) The Lombard production can be divided into two main groups: firstl y the historical works produced in the great monasteries. most notably Monte Cassino, but also La Cava, San Vtocenzo al Volturno and others; and secondly annals a_'OS()ciated with particular cities such as Bari and Benevento: these too were produced in a monastic or at least clerical environment, but show oonsiderable interest in the political affairs of their cities and a rc secular in to ne.20 What happened to these two types of bistory·writiog in the twelfth century? If we take the strongly monastic histories, there is clearly a decline from the eleventh century, which produced the vivid and incisive works of Leo of Ostia a_ nd Amatus. The chronicle writing continues of cour.se, not only at Mo nte Cassino but at a host of other monasteries. but the chronicles lack the vigour and range of the ir predecessors and tend to play safe and concentrate on the

17

1.b e reoeot study of W. G
$tresses lhe wort's as.~oclation1 with soulbem Italy. IJt For a bfief survey sec N. Cilento, 'La t~oriografi11 dcll'ltalia meridionale', St'«lmtutA di Sludio

del Cenlro IU~.Iiano dl Studi l ull'Alto MeditHvo. 17. ii (1910). 521·56. For the poth~l baekgrOUdd T.S. Brown, 'Ethnic lodcpendeooe and Cultul'31 Deference-: The Auitude o f the: Lombard Principalities to Byzantium c. 876- 1077' in V. Vavtfock. ed .. Byzafllium und ht'r Neighbours from

tht Mid·9rh dll the 12th C'btlury (Prague. forcbcoming). t!)

There are bov.-ever both Greek and Arabic vcnions of the Cron~~Ca Sicukr.flli'OOMO di

O:.Widgt, ed. G. Cozz>·f>Oll. ~m<M pvlaMrla diSiclf/4. serie ;v. 2(1890). 22-48. 98-!09. h bas aLso been argued by H.W. Klewitt, •Studicn Utw:
Archll'tn und Bltnk>IMI«m. 15 (1933·4), 14647, tbat tbe chronicle of Tr~s TDbmwe in Calabria (ed. E. Caspo.r, ibid.. 10( 1907), 1..56), which iuupposedlya Latit'l workohhe twelfth century, was a f&lsification of the sixreenttl centUr)' based on 11 Greek source of ttle twelfth eent'ury, 11> Jmpon~n• nlOnaslic cbronidu •part {rom those of Moott Q.ssino, Tdese (see below) aod Casauria (seen. 22) include the Chron~on $ . Btmholomaei de CArpintU> (9Q..US9) and the C.hronka F'-rrtlrim.tis (S Maria de- Fcmria: 681·1228). Various vcn ion of annals alsos-utvi'-·e from Monte Cassino and la Cava. For a recently dtscovercd chronicle of the late twelfth eentury from SS. Trinita.di Venosasee H. Houben, MediM~'O nronastico mtn'dkmo/~ (Naplcs,l987), 86, U1· 12. 169-70. Monastic bistorics are di:ocussed in Chalandon, Histoire, x:xx·xtix and the works of Oldoni

cited in n. 22. The Barese '-"'Orb are Anoaymus Barensts. ChrcM.icon cd. C. Pellepino, Rmmt ltalK:arum Scriptor~. v ( Milan, 172A), 147·56. Annales 8 3reoses. ed. G.H . hrtz., MGH SS, S (Hano,>er, ll:l44), 51-6 and Lupus Protospatbarius, Annales, ibid., Sl-63. 0. &rtolini, •Qii Anoa~ Beneventani'. Bullr'niflo df-11'/sritrdo Storico ltoli4no prr il mrdio evo. 42 (19'23), 1-163.

196

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

fortunes o f their own communities." Gone is the strong Lombard patriotism and interest in the secular life of the local area and cities. In part this is a reflection of the decline of independent political life in the cities themselves, but a'so relevant is the relative decline of the monastic communities, as they became more inward-looking, increasingly restricted by the papacy and no longer enjoying the close symbiosis with local secular society as o••crlords and as sources of education and clerical manpower.22 A particularly striking case is offered by the important Abruzzese monastery of S.Ciemente of Casauria. John , the author of the O~ronicon Cosaurit~~se (866-JJ82) took a relatively hostile view of the early Norman rulcrs.23 However, political reality and self· interest forced John, and other monastic chroniclers, to acknowledge that 'the most serene and victorious' Roger 11 had restored order and pmtected

monastic rights and lands.24 This is not to say that a keen and evc.n scholarly concern with the pa.sl atrophied in these monastic circles. The outstanding example of Cassinese historical writing in the twelfth century is the remarkable Peter the Deac-on, librarian of the monastery in the second third of the century, continuator of the history-writing tradition of Leo of Ostia and one of the most audacious forgers of all time . One thinks of the phoney privileges attributed to Justin I (who never had authority O>'er Italy) and Justinian II (who had worse relations with the peninsula than any other Byzantine ruler and reigned at a time when the monastery was still derelict), which were concocted in the hope that they would be confirmed by the Emperor Conrad on a visit. Then there are his totally spurious Life of St Placidu.,, a follower of St Benedict, supposedly composed in Constantinople, and the long list of Sicilian fundi claimed by his monastery, which were cobbled together from the list of Roman stationes in the sixth century lti.Mrarilm1 Anlonini.25 Most modem scholars since the classic study of Caspar have been scathing about Peter's daring mendacity?•

21

Note: bowe\•c:r the interesting Qse ot th<"- Chronic.um Vultum(!IUf' from the important monas.tery of S. Vinoenro (ed. V. Federici. fonti per la Storia d'halia, tvii-xl (Rome.1925-19400. 'The work wa.o; compiled by the monk (later abbot) Jobn from lllS. but Cleil$tS to be very detailed from t076. 22 Cf.C'dento. ·u "oosclerw.. 173-74. M. Oldoni, 'lntelleuuall CII$Sii\C$i di ftonte ai Normanni (sec. XI·XIl)"1 in MiScdltmt~ di Storia llallAM e Mtdittrr4nefl ~r N. I.Ambogl;a (Genoa. 1978). 93--lS3; idem, 'Mentallt~ e C\'Qfuzione nella storiografta nomw..nna (ra t'XJ e il XU seook>in ltalia'. Rugguo il Gran (:()me (&ri, 1977), 139·74.

lJ Ed. t..A. Mur11ori, R.trtJm ltt~licanun Scripf()l'ts ii (t-.man, 1726), 775, cf. V. d'Akssandto, 'Roberto il Gui$C~:~rdo nella s.toriog:rafia mcdievalc:'. in Roberto il Gf(iscardo tro. Europa. Oriutte e Mtzzogiomo, ed. C.D. Fonseca (Dati, 1988), 181. lA Cilento, 'La ''cooctentu", 172. ':.' H. Bkx:h, 'Peter the Deacon's VtsionofBY".antium and a RedisoovcredTreatisein hisAcUlS. Placidi'. SMimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Stttdi sui/'Alto Medioevo, 34 (Spolcto, 1988).

797-847.

~E. Casp:.r, P~rus Diaeonu.r und die 1\.fontt Cat#ntttr Fdlschungen: Ein Bdsrtsg zwr Ges· italit.!Wchen Geistdltbens im Mintl4lter (Berlin, 1909).

cl1ich~ d.u

The Political Use of the Past in Norm(JJI Sicily

197

Typical is the judgement of R.H. Rodgers, who wrote of Peter's 'exaggerated reverence for the past ... coupled with h is own grandiose fantasies'.27 Most scholars have tended to treat Peter as a psych.iatrk case, emphasising his megalomania or his creation of a historical fantasy world. Certainly Peter has to he seen as a junkie hooked on the past, but one should not neglect the positive side of his achievement. His writings reflect wide reading of the astonishingly rich holdings of his monastery's library, particularly in the field of history.28 His familiarity with the Italian and even the Byzantine past is commendable. even if he distorted and misused his knowledge. Many of his

writings give a very vivid> and even convincing, impression. He maintains a vigou.r and a taste for the anecdotal and bizarre, which had been evident in the Chronicon Sa/emitanum and tbe History of Erchempert. Nor was he exceptional io manufacturing evidence to strengthen his monastery's claims. MCnager has concluded that in South Italy and Sicily the falsification of charters and titles reached heights unknown in the rest of Europe and that between 55 and 90 per cent of ducal and royal acts are ecclesiastical forgeries.29 Peter was exceptional only that he did this on a more exhaustive, more stylish and in

some ways more historically professional scale. There was also a decline of the local annals wh.ich one can broadly describe as urban. In the eleventh century, for example~ the history of Bari wa"i covered by no less than three sets of annals, the Chronicon BareiiSe, the work attributed to ' Lupus Protospatharius' and the Anonymous Barensis. All give a remarkably vivid picture of urban life, its tensions. feuds, patronage and civk pride, and can he seen in some respects as precursors of the more specifically urban and secular of northern communes such as Pisa and Genoa. 30 Only the first of these chronicles continues far into the twelfth century- until ll49, significantly only seven years before the city's fateful revolt against William I and its devastating sack. Historiographical attempts to focus the glories of such cities~ past seem to have fallen out of favour. The o b\ious explanation for this is the gradual erosion of the political independence of the cities . but also relevant are practical considerations such as the growth of more noncontroversial foci for ci''ic pride, such as the building of impressive churches and cathedrals (common to moot of the major Apulian cities)," the growth of R.H. Ros.crs, cd., P~11; Di.econi viut iWtorum unobli Cwin~ML,, (BerkeJey·Los Angeles, 1972), :u:vi.ii. a One noteworth)' example is the lis1 of book~ recorded in Clvonictl mQtU1Sttrii Cas/Mnsis, iii, 63, ed. H. Hoffmann, MGH SS, 34, 444-46, and d . H. Bloch, 'Monte Cas.sino's Teachus and Library jn the H'&h Middle Aga', Srttimotu di St,.uJio d'J Cmtro lt~r/Ulno di Studi Juii'Aito Medi..,o. 19 (1971). S63·6t3. ~ L.R. Mtnager~ 'Notes el documents SUI qut-lqut$ metnasteres de Calabria a l'tpoque normande'. BywuW$cloe Z
198

The Perception of the Past in Twe/flh-Ct,.tury Etuope

the cult of patron saints (one thinks of the translation of the relics of St Nicholas fro m Myra to Bari in 1087), and the creaming off of local administrative and intellectual elites (an obvious example here is the famo us case or Maio of Bari, grand admiral under William l)n So far a rather gloomy view has been presented of historical writing on the mainland of southern Italy_ Certainly some traditionally strong types of historical writing became more inward~looking and Jess adventurous Lhan before, essentially because such daring was politically inadvisable and because the cities and momasteries were no longer the e-xdusivc centres of intellectual activity and literary patronage. But there are o ther hi.roriaos who are interesting for their background and outlook as much as their actual output. Particularly important is the underrated history of Falco of Benevento, which covers the period 1102-40. 33 Falco was a layman and particularly well suited to write about tbe affairs of his city since be served as notary, judge and chancellor of the sac-red palace there. Benevento fought a long struggle to avoid Norman domination and Falco records this with a blazing pride in his city

and a vitriolic hatred of the Normans. Benevento's strong identity as centre of Lombard patriotism, the scat of the first Lombard duchy (later principality) of southern Italy comes over again and again. .Perhaps the best example is his usc or the Life of St Barbatus, a saint previously invoked in the Lombards' campaigns against the Byzantines and now called in to help the Beneveorans withstand the Norman siege of 11~3. There is another echo of the concerns of early Lombard historiography when be regularly equates the Normans with the Saracens. Re expects his audie nce to be h.istotically literate and

tO

know

the glorious past of their 'holy' city. but be does not describe it in detail, perhaps because he found the contrast with the city's current misfortunes painful. Falco is particularly useful because he appears to reflect Lombard national feeling, which failed to find o vert e xpression i_o the Norman--con-

trolled areas. and offers an emotional denunciation of Roger U. comparing his atroc-ities with th05C of Nero. At the same time, he rcHccts the historical sophistication of his area by moving beyond a merely chronological account and by rising above a purely hostile picture of Roger. The Norman ruler is praised for his historical curiosity and his title of king is accepted as rightful, perhaps because the Lombard's own 'constitutional' status in the past was shaky 05eillating as it did between allegiance to the eastern or western empires. We are fortunate in pos-sessing anotber historian who is the minor image of Falco, substituting a royalist view for the ' municipal' perspective of the latter. Alexander ofTelese, abbot ofthe monastery of S. Salvatore o nly 30 km north :.~ M. Car3Ya.lc.. ll rctgtto nonnaMo di s;ci[UJ (Milan, 1966), 89·90. Chtonicon, cd. 0. del Re, in Cronisti ~ scrillori .sincr(mi dtlla domi.narion~ narm4nn4 (Napks. 184S). 161·251. S1udi.e$(Jf Faloo irdude 'fl'l.Joo Dene"~t.nta.no e la sua cronaca', Bull(tilW d~lflnj,uro ltll/imto rnr il nudio n•o, 54 (1939). 1· 128, and M. Oldoni, ·ReaJism.o e diWdeoza nell ~ storiografia su Rusgcro II: Falcone di Bcnevemo c- Alc$Sandto di Tdese.. in~. pottrt e popo/o (cited in o. 1), 251-83. l.l

The Political Use of the Past in Normon Sicily

199

of Benevento wrote a history of 'the most serene King Roger', covering the period 1127-36- a brief period but one that was crucial to Roger's oonsolida· tion of his power on the mainland.$<~ Alexander's work was written at the behest of Roger's sister Matilda and includes an aUoquium addressed to the king himself. Alexander's history is a curious mixture of the parochial and the grandiloquent. His perspective is very much that of his monastery - Roger is praised for protecting aod endowing S. Salvatore and the local Lornbards are condemned for their violence, cowardice and vice. We know nothing of Alexander's background, but because of his bitter denunciation of the Lornbards he is usually considered to be a northerner, although it is possible that his defensive tone suggests a renegade who has !brown in his lot with the new regime. Certainly his monas1ery had unusually strong Norman connections: a previous abbot, John, had been a monk at Bee and a disciple of St Anselm. 31 Roger is seen as the instrument of God, the divinae via iustitiae. and the Normans, whose cruelty he acknowledges, arc cast as the divine scourge of the wicked. Roge.r , rather improbably, is portrayed as a most pious child, who asked his mother how he could help pilgrims and the poor. This makes Alexander's work sound like a banal, one-sided panegyric, but there is more to it than this. Quite an elaborate set of moral examples and lessons are brought in and Roger is portrayed as suffering defeat because of a loss of humility. Exemplary figures are continually employed. Some of these are Roman but, as befits a ruler who conquers by 'divine dispensation'. most are biblical. The lives of David and Solomon are held up as didaetie models, blinding is defended by the use of biblical parallels and the sack of Aversa is justified on the grounds that it was 'the new Sodom'. One non-biblical historical reference stands out however: Roger's coronation is justified on the grounds that Sicily had formerly been a kingdom. This is a subject to which we shall return since it involves a subject which proved troublesome for most of the area's historians, the legitimacy of the regno. In fac~ Alexander does not appear to have worked out a very coherent position on this, since he omits the thorny question of papal claims to southern Italy and the controversial recognition of Roger's royalty by Pope Anaclerus 11 in 1130, which was bitterly condemned by the rival pope Innocent II and his suppo rters. One striking fact about both Alexander and Falco is that neither's history reaches further back than the writer's own times. The explanation for this is partly perhaps that there was a stro ng historiographical tradition which would have been familiar to their readers but also that neither found it very expedient to talk about the Lombard or early Norman past. The eleventh century seems to have been a historical no-go area because both Telese and Benevento were

.)4 De rebut gc:s1is Rtgtrii SH;iliutlibriqlUIIIUOr, td. G. del Rc, Cronisli ncrirtori,81-14$. Cf. D. Oemcnti, Alu~~ndrl T~ll!dm· YSIQri# #r~nlssinU Rogerii primi rtgis Ski/it«, Ub. jv6-10, 8ulltttino dlU'lslitu«> Swrko Jta/.ion() per ii mtdit> evo. 77 (1965), 10S·26. lS Cikonto, 'La "coscienza" ', 174.

200

The Perceplion o{1he Pas1 in Twelflh-Celllury E11rope

in the sphere o( the Iiautevi!Je's rivals, the princes o f Capua. whose remark· able early history seems to have suffered a damnalio mtmoriut. 36 One prominent mainland writer did however venture further into the past,

to the extent of writi ng a universal chronicle. The chronicle of Romuald, archbishop of Salerno, extends from the creation to 1181.11 I accept the traditional anribution o f the work to Ro muald, although D.J.A. Matthew has cogently argued that the work is composed o f three clements, a universal chronicle which he associates with Troia, covering the period up to 1125, a second part written in Salerno by an unknown author and a thitd brief section covering the last few years, whose allribution to Ro muald he accepts."' Even if Matthew's argument is accepted, it still seems to me that Romuald would have had a primary say in the final compilation . He was of course a very important figure as a member of a leading Lombard family, prelate o f the most important political centre on the mainland and William ll's envoy to tbe

conference at Venice in 1177, which resulted in the establishment of peace with the western empire. The work ought therefore to be valuable as a more or less official view of how the past was regarded. Here however we are d isappointed because Romuald says surprisingly linle about the south Italian past. The early part is a conventional universal history which draws on such sources as

Orosius, Bede and the Uber pomificalis. For later history it mainly employs papal sources and the Historia Francorum of A imoin of Fleury. Thus for lhe most part Lombard h.is10ry is discreetly passed over. Henry IV is roundly denounced (quite conveniently since he was an arch-opponent of the Normans) and fairly conventional notices arc given of the early Hauteville rulers as far back as Drogo (but not of course the rival Capua dynasty). Antagonism to the Muslims is strong, which fits in with Amatus of Monte·

cassino's account of the first arrival of the Normans, intended to help repel a Muslim attack on Salerno. But ovemll Romuald is weak on the political specifics of the past since they might prove awkward, and prefers to emphasise the Norman rulers' role as !he most recent in a series of great kings. Among these are the ancient reges Siciliat. i.e. the Greek tyrantS. As in Alexander's work various moral lessons arc drawn in a 'mirror of princes' manner. Despite the secular tone of the chronicle, emphasis is placed on the wretched fate of

"' So effective in fact that their hi!ltory i$ not adequately studied even today. but d . G. l...oud •Calendarof the Oi.plomasofthc 1\'orman Princes ofCapua·, Papers oftht British School 111 Rom~. 49 ( 19tH) , 99-243 and idem, CJuuch and Socitty in lht NorntMI Pri11dpalily of Capua (Oxford, t985). ).,. Chronicon. ed. C.A. Gatufi ( Rerum haJ.carum Sc:riptores. la ed., ..1i. i. BolOgna. 1909-35). ~ O.J.A. M:mhcw. 11\e Chrooielc ofRomuald ofSaluno', in R.H.C. Davisand J.M. Waii3Ce· HadriU, edd., The Writing <J/ Hi.Jr<Jry in lhe Mtddlt Ages: Essays Prtltnltd tr) R. W. Sowh~m. (Oxford, 1981), 239-74. The case for single authorship by Rornuald wafi upheld by H. Hoffman, 'Hugo Filk<mdus und Romuald von Sal-erno', Deu.tsch~s A rchi~ fUr Er{orscltung dt:l Mlut /alttrs 23 (1967), 116-70,

The Political Use of the Past in Nornwn Sicily

201

kings who succumb to greed, heresy, despoiling ofthe church or (especially) fornication. So far we have considered historians from the mainland. This is for the good reason that there are no early surviving historians from Sicily. The most likely reason for this is that there was no indigenous Latin tradition on the island.

Before Roger l's conquest the elite had of course been Muslim, and although the Norman ruler's policy was remarkably tolerant, at least until the end of Roger ll's reign, and various Arab writers were employed at court, the latter wrote poetry and scientific works rather than histories (here one thinks of Abd'al·Rabman and Jdrisi). Unlike some parts of the mainland tbe Greeks were in a marginalised position socially and politically. while the numerous Norman and other migrants from the North appear to have felt to alien or too isolated to attempt histories of their new homeland. We do however have one outstanding text which deals with Sicily, or at least the coun of Palermo, namely the Uber de regno Siciliae which goes under the name of the mysterious Hugh Falcandus.39 This covers the period 1154.{)8. with a brief glance back at tbe reign of Roger II , but was written later, some time after JJ81. It is a breathtaking piece of history, vivid, pungent , striking for its lively characterisation, its strong but pessimistic moral tone and its biting comments on the actions and personalities of the Sicilian court. Not for nothing has tbe work's author been christened 'the Tacitus of Sicily'. However the text bristles with problems so far unresolved, the main one being the identity of tbe author. Various figures have been suggested, the most detailed and learned case being made for the admiral Eugenius, a remarkable Greek official at the courr of the later Norman kings, by the late Evelyn Jamison.40 However I would follow the scholarly consensus in rejecting this ingenious suggestion on the following grounds: 1. The work's style and its historical notion-s are too imbued with Latin

traditions to he attributable to a Greek. 2. Both its language and its moral view differ considerably from the known works of Eugenius, his poetry and his translations of the Prophecies of the Erythraean Sibyl and tbe fable Stephaniles and lehnelalt!$ derived from a Greek version of an Arab translation of a Sanskrit tale. 3. Miss Jamison's suggestion that the work was written in a German prison in 1195 after the fall oftbe Norman kingdom seems totally inconceivable in view of its polished tone. Can one therefore derive any conclusions about the work's authorship? Much depends on its relationship with the text with which it is associated in all

39

Hua,h FaJcandus., Lll>u de reg,M Skili.M e Ia EpiskJIQ (cited at n. J2). «)E. Jamison, The Admitlli £ugtnlus ()/Sicily: His Lift and W<>rk 4lt4 the Authorship oflhe. fpi.st<Jia ad P~lrum and the Hisron·a Falcondi Siculi (London, J957).

202

Tire Perception of the Past ilr Twelfth-Century Europe

surviving manuscripts, t he Epistola ad Petrum, a letter of bitterforeboding and remarkable Sicilian patriotism written to a cleric in the island after the death of Wiltiam II without heirs when a German invasi<:m was looming. I am convinced that both works are by the same author since the language is remarkably similar. Both use cornparati>·ely rare words, such as constuprare ('to gangrape')." The author's ide ntity remains a mystery. All one can say is that he was particularly anached to Sicily, which he termed his ' nurse', although he may originally have come from the mainland or even northern Europe. He was also extremely well versed in certain classical authors, notably Sallust and Quintilian and he must have been a high figure at court.' 2 What is curious about 'Falcandus' i.< a cla.<Sic case of the dog that didn't bark -in other words what be does not say about the past. Not only does he not go back before 1154 except for his e ulogy of Roger ll 'whom necessity forced to be severe'. but both the history and the Epis10la are singularly lacking in historical echoes and allusions. The few that exist, such as his approval of the Romans' attachment to images of their ancestors to encourage Jo,•e of justice are misleading, since they are derived from his models (in this case Sallust). Of course to some extent ' Falcandus' is writing a contemporary work, almost a diary, rather than history, but his complete disregard of the past, a part from a vague fondness for Roman ethical notions and theclassic.1J concept of fortuna, is striking and !think deliberate. It offers a clue to the awkward role of the past in the minds of int.ellectual.s of the regno and it is to this topic that we must now turn. The Norman roJers of Sicily fa.cod 3 severe p.-oblem o f legitimacy. The lands which they conquered were claimed by the greatest powers of the time . the western emperor, the Byzantine emperor and the pope. Their subjectS were ethnically diverse. but each group had its own cuJturc and traditions. whe1her Arabic, Greek or Lombard. ln general the Normans' policy was to secure some measure of recognition from the pope, as in 1059, 1098, 1130, 1139 and 1156. but even this lelt the rule rs' status vague 43 The problem became more acute with Roger U's coronation in 1130, which was seen by both empires as usurpation by a parvenu. Roger's advisers seem to have sought to build up his prestige by pointing to the precedents for his rulership in the Sicilian past- in Libu, ed. dt.• 115, 116, 117; Epistola, c:d. cit. , 170: seeM. Fui8J)(). ·ugo Falcaodo', in his Studi di storiografia mcdionrfllr t um4n1J:t41 (Naples, 1975), 111. 41 Cf. Fuiano. lbid.136:' . .. O(ln vi t nl.llJa di cerca: non\c, condizionc, patri.a'. Another ~ful ! UI'\'e)' of &eb(llarship(ln F~kandus i8 A. de t..ei_ U!i, Alli dell'Accademio di Scienu, Ltlt~rr e Arti di Pal<mw. ser. iv, 33 (197>). 49t-572. '*' J. Deer, Popsttrmt und Norman~n: Untent-dtungtn zu ih"n lrhnrtt:htiit.htn und klrtMn• politisclrt:n Brzith.wtgen, (Cologl'e·Vicnna, 1m). w. Holrzmann, 'Sui rapporti rra Normanni e Papato'. Archivio Swri«J PuglieJ~, U ( 19SS), ~38; E. Jordan, 'La poliriquc: ec:dCsjastique de Roger I et let Qfigines de Is ''legation sid lienne" '. Lt! Moyett Agt', 33 ( 19'22), 237-n and 34 (1923), 32-65; R. Elze, 'Ruga:ero II e i papi del iiuu tempo', SodttliJ, p
The Political Use of the Past in Norman Sicily

203

other words building up a theory o f restitutio regni- but it has to be admitted, as Helene Wieruszowski recognised in a classic article, 44 that the evidence for this is pretty meagre. The bull of Innocent II of U39 speaks of the regnum SiciliDe which existed in antiquity, •s 3nd Alexander ofTelese has baro ns call for the establishment of the capital at Palenno because it was tbe residence of the kings 'in former times': Olim sub priscis temporibus, super bane provinciam reg~ nonnullos babuisse traditur, quae postea, pluribus evolutis annis, occulto Dei disponeotc iudic;io nunc sine regibus mansit ..&6 This line is echoed in a royal charter of 1140.47 Finally Romuald of Salerno mentioned the rulers of Sicily in the Greek past without bringing out any specifi<; parallel with the title of the Nonnan kings ... A leading cleric and translator at Roger ll's court, Henry, took the name of Socrates' Sicilian disciple Aristippus.•• One suspecls however that the parallel was more a literary allusion, with which a few officials and intellectuals played, rather than a consistent ideological weapon. References to it are few and it does not seem to have any reflection in the varied and active artistic programme of the kings of in a medium where models would have been readily available, the coinage.50 While the earlier kingship referred to generally appears to allude to the rule of the Greek tyrants, which was well-known through mentions in Orosi~ts and elsewhere, there may also have been an element of Sicily's virtually independent SL1tu.< under the Arabs. The title malik, approximating to king, was used by some Sicilian emirs and was occasionally employed by Roger I." However use of this notion seems to have been half~hearted and shon~lived. presumably because it entailed serious disadvantages. There were obvious problems in suggesting identity with an infidel regime, while the parallel witb early Sicilian tyrants such as Dionysius of Syracuse was hardly good public relations, sinee

.. H. Witi'U$ZOWski. 'ROgt:r D, Rt~ Tyrmmus, in ~Lfth-Century Political Thou&ht', Sptc"· IW>O, 38 (t963), -73. ·~ P. K~h.r.luditJ PonlificitJ , viii ( Berlin, 1935), 42. «'> Akxandtr. op. cit., i, ii. cc. 1-2. A~odenbcn gocsootouse thelt.e~dilafOftheokl SjciJian kingdom as Ju.s.ti6cation for the extension or Roger's rule to the mainland: ibid., 101. Cf, Cilento, 'La "co.cienza" ·. 165-18.

Wierusrowski, ·Roger tr. 48. " E.g. RomUllld, a.m. 3838, cd. Garufi. 38. 49 On whom see E. Francttchini, Diz.WNJritJ b;ografico rkKii !t1Jiim1i, iv (Rome, '1962), 201~. so I have found f)O copyiog of motifs from tbe <:Oins of the Sici.lian tyrants in the-m)·al is5ue$ pubUthe
Numisnuuir:a, 2A ( 1911), 437·75 and R . Spahr, Le ~It 1-tci.JJMM dal Blz1111tini a Qulo 1 d'A,.gW

(Gru, 1!176). St As a.rgued by M. FW110o. 'La Foa~ del rtgnwn SiciliM neUa vtssio-ne di Alessandro di Tebc:', P~rs oflM BriJUh SdwoJ 111 Ronv., 2A ( 1.956), 65·77.

204

The Perception of the Pan in Tweljih·Century Europe

their abuses were well-known. If we take one contemporary text among many, John of Salisbury's Policraticu.s shows a familiarity with the Sicilian tyrants. ' 2 Among Roger's opponents St Bernard biu erly anacked the king as a tyrant bee-• use of his usurpation of the royal title :md his role in the Anacletan schism, although the saint never made a specific connection with the. earlier Sicilian tyrants.53 The parallel was howeve r very clearly spelt out by Ono of Freising, who described Sicily as 'the nurse of t yrants', and claimed that Roger's tyranny was panemed on the deeds of the ancient Sicilian tyrants. a line keenly followed by later Ge rman hi.~torians. 54 There were of course other historical lines o f approach which could be deployed to bolste r the HauteviUe's legitimacy. Right of conquest was the forst of these and was widely used, at least in an implicit sense. 11 was particularly convenient and apt in the case of Sicily, which could be portrayed as restored to the Christian faith by the heroic efforts o f Roger I and his followers. This was b roadly the triumphalist line taken by Geoffrey Malaterra at the beginning of the century. Later on. however. it was played down to a remarkable extent. This may partly have been to avoid o ffending the susceptibilities o f the king's Muslim subjects who formed a numerous and sometimes imporU!.nt clement in Sicily. bur it is more likely to have been a reaction to the king's failure to participate in the crusades of the twelfth century. Excessive glorification of the events of 1060 and 1072 would have produced an embarrassing contrast with the safe stay·at·home policies of Roger U and the two Williams. Alternatively, the Normans could have adapted an existing historiographical tradition to their own uses. We have seen how this was attempted on the mainland. with the kjd-glove handling of the Lombard past by Alexander of Telese and Romuald. Curiously, there is no case of a historical carpe t·bagger, a twelfth-<:cntury hack, being brought in from northern Europe to write a history of the Normans after Ma.l aterra. There were plenty of learned northern immigrants in lhe Nonnans' service as churchmen and officials, but none felt the inclination to write a history or was commissioned to do so. As for the Arab tradition, dominant in Sicily before 1060, Muslim writers were employed, as of course were ~1.uslim artists, architects and craftsmen. but

$l John afSalisbury, Policraticw, \'1, 25, viii , 6, ,.ii. 23, ed. C.C.J. Webb, i (Oxford, 1969). 222· 3, 2.16, 408. » Berrua.rd, Epp, 127, 129, 130. 139. 140, 348, eel. J. Leclercq and H. Rocba\1, Op~nJ , vii (Rome, 1974), lll. 324, 32S, 335.336: vili (Rome, 1977), 292. 54 Otto of Freising_, ChroniCQ, ii. l9, ed. A Hofmeisler, MGH SRG (Hanover 1912). 88-90: Ski/i-4 tnlm primt) Cydopum, past tyrantl()nll'l usq~« ln prese.nrtm ditm (and cr. ibid, vii. 20. 342

and G~sta Frtdt:riri imp~rotoris ii.49, ed. G. Waitt, MGH SRO (Hanover, 1912), 127). Wieruszowski, 'Roger 11', SS-51.

Cr. H.

Tire Polirica/ Use of the Past in Norman Sicily

205

they only wrote works of science and poetry. Histo ry was presumably consi· dcred ideologically too dangerous a subject to entrus< to them.55 Theone remaining tradition which could have been used was the Greek one, who remained slrong especially in the towns and monasteries of Calabria and of the Terra d'Otranro. As is well known, the Norman rulers made extensive use of Greek collaborators and of Greek styles in a number of fields, either from the south Italian communities or directly from the Byzantine empire itself, but it is unlikely that there was ever any coherent historical programme behind this. A few cases which might point to an orchestrated campaign are ei
n On ArabcuJture i:n Norman Sicily !iCc A . Ahmad A Hi.rl{)f)'()/ArabSicily(Ediftburgb, 1915), U. Rizzilano 'La <:ullura anba nella Sicilia normanna·, Atti d~l Congru.ro lnto~Wzicnal~ di Studi $Wla Slcillh No"""nna (Pakmro 4-8 dicembre /971) (Palermo, 1973). 279-97. F. Gabrieli, 'La politique mbe des NO
206

The Perception of tile Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

sions. These culogise Roger II in a manner borrowed lock, stock and barrel from Byzantine panegyric."' As such they both would win additional prestige for the king among his Greek-speaking subjects and form an integral element of the lavish external style of Norman kingship, with art, coins, dress, insignia and ceremonial derived from that of contemporary Byz.antium. 59 Two points deserve emphasis concerning these borrowings. Firstly, they arc taken over without any coherent ideological justification or historical theory such as trwulatio imperii. Jt is more a question of acquiring the glitziest contemporary status symbols ·off the shelf_ A king such as Roger II was so concerned with his own prestige projectS that he neglected works which might glorify the Hauteville dynasty; thus the church at Venosa intended as a fitting resting-place for his ancestors, Humphrey, Drogo and Robert Guiscard, was never completed. 60 The Norman kings appear to have used their wealth to 'buy' prestige like characters in a designer novel or a glamorous soap-opera. Sec<>ndly, they are part of a very eclectic programme of ideological pilfering, also evident in Iauck.< and ordines (borrowed from France, Germany and Rome) 61 and secular art and architecture (largely borrowed from the Muslim world).62 All the Hemchaftzeichen rmd StaOLSymbolik were acquired in this haphazard manner without any coherent historical context . A particularly good example arc the porphyry tombs commissioned for the kings. Deer bas argued that these were utilised because they were familiar from contemporary Rome and that associations with their ~-pecial status in the Late Roman empire were seoond-hand.63 Much as historians may dislike admitting it, the Norman kings did not bolster up their shaky legitimacy with elaborate historical myths but with blatant displays of wealth and a parvenu takeover of the latest styles of kingship from whatever source was either familiar to them or their advisers or simply d Ia mode. Not for nothing has an entire book been written by an Italian scholar on the 'ephemeral' in Norman Sicily. 64 And it seems 10 have workedfor a time. If we take the Normans' G reek subjeas, for example, in the Life o r

s. C. Cupane, ·filagatl)da Cerami phllcsophos e didtJ.sk41oJ, ContribmoaJia storia della culnna bizanti.na', Siculorum Gymnt:Uium. ru., 31 ( 1978), 1•28, " 0. Demus. TM MMaiCSQ/ Nomwn Sicily (London. 1949), E. BoBOOk, M~ssages i11 Atosaic: Royal Programrraes of Norman Sicily. 1130- 1189~ (0xford,l990). 00 As Davis, Normtm Myth , 100. polots out. ~ £ . Kall t
438-59. 0 . G. Di Stefano, Monumrnti tkllll Sldlla NormlmM (Palt.t~no, 196S). J.OW. 'the OynOJrlc Porphyry Tomb$ of N017M11 Sidly (Wathinston, D.C., l9S9). argues Ibat although 'Roger(OJ must have been full)' aware:.of the ~ignlflcance and political symbolism of prophyry· (ibid., 126), his ~crcmoniod d~')llay in this field was the result or rivalry with the pap.aq• (ibid., IS~S). 64 S. Tramolltana, L'tfjimeto nt.lla Sicilia Mmtd.nnQ (Pa)errno, 1984). 6: 0

The Political Use of the PI1St in Norman Sicily St Bartholemew of Simeri the Greek saint treats Roger l1 as just as pious and legitimate a sovereign as the By-Lllntine emperor.65 • The conclusion which therefore emerges is that Norman Sicily was one of these areas of Europe which experienced a relative historiographical vacuum. Perhaps the lack was not as total as in Scotland or Sweden,66 but the emphasis throughout was on more or less contemporary events and immediate, superli· cial, rather than historical props to legitimacy. The essential problem was that the Normans rulers were stuck in an ideological log·jam. They ruled over too many diverse societies, each with its powerful traditions, for an integrated, legitimating history to be possible. Any po•-siblc historiographical scenario involved problems. whether it was resting their claims to rule on the ancient past of the Greek tyrants o r stressing continuity with the Lombard, Arab or Byzantine past of their territories. The deeds of the Norman conquest were

trick:y because it would have been difficult to avoid mentioning the role of other families and this would have undermined the role of the Hautevilles and their new·found status as kings. A pan·Norman approach, glorifying the distinc-tive qualities of .the geru was hardly a valid option when the Norma.ns were a small minority, rapidly adopting the customs of their new homeland and la
~

Acto S4nctorum. &pr., viii (Brussels, li62}, 81~26 . A point wonh making aboul tbc Byzantine wodd ls that there may ha,·e been a change &om a tw:Jief in a single unhtc.r.s:aJ authority to a more 'polya:tttrie' potltical \•Won. particularly ilS tbe area of Byzantine politicaJ oontrol beaune mu.cb narrower thao the world oC Greek cultural and lingui:stk bcgemony. 66 See Above, Jnuoduetion. n. 7, and pp. 38. 4?. 61 h might abo have eruailed acknow~geme.u1 ()( KJ«tt vestigia) superior authority being ~taincd by the .king of Ef\81and as du.ke of Normandy. Relations roukl in (acl be (ar from friendly as Rtchard I'' visit to Mes-sina illus.tntcs. a R.S. Loomis, ed. Anhurian Lil.eratl4t't it~ the Middle Ages (Oxford, l959), 61, 67{18, 383·84, 419; A. Oral, Mili, leggende e supustizioni dtl me4io e\'o (Turin, 1893) , i.i, 30J.3S.

208

The Perception of the Past in 1\velfth-Cenmry Europe

What I have dealt with covers only the elite tip of the social iceberg and our authors give us lillie sense of the feelings of the general population.69 However it seems clear that by the end of the twelfth century no distinct historical identity had emerged which the diverse social and ethnic groups could relate to. 10 Indeed its lack at all levels reinforced various institutional weaknesses and helped bring about the kingdom's conquest by the Gennan Emperor Henry VI in 1194. If the Norman kings were unsuccessful in harnessing the past fo r political ends, one should not neg)et,"t one o f their subjects whose use of the pa'it for prophetic purposes was to have a dramatic effect throughout western Europe in the thirteenth century and beyond. Joachim, abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Corazzo in Calabria from 11nand later of his own foundation of Fiore. bas variou.'\ly been described a.'i lthe first futurologist ~ and :the moSt powerfuUy imaginative and comprehensive historical mind of the middle ages' and has given rise to an enormous scholarly industry?' It is impossible to do justice to such a complex tlture but it is worth making one or two suggestions about the political context within which he operated an which has not been fully appreciatcd .'2 The o rigins of his remarkable apocalyptic view of history remain obscure. Theories of a derivation from Byzantine or Jewish notions of prophecy have generally been rejected , while his ideas diverge radically from the traditional approaches found in western eschatological historians. 73 In particular Joachim writes with great personal urgency of the menac-ing dangers in the world and ofthc imminent o nset of the third age of the spirit. It is hig)lly likely that one element in the evolution of Joachim's thought wa.c;. the crisis which first overhung and later befell the Norman kingdom. Not all his source material is biblical; his identif>eation of certain of the seven persecutors of the church, matching the seven seals. appears to reflect south Italian preoccupations, e.g. Mahomet and Henry IV, as well as the more contemporary figure of Saladin. J1 is also conceivable that Joachim's approach is in pan a reaction to the historical barrenness of twelfth-century southern Italy. What better reao-

69

As pointed 001 by Ok:nto, 'La ..c:oscicnza·• ·. 182. XI Cr. Cih~nto, 'La ..coscierua•• ', l82, who points 10 the un¢Ct'tain juJidieal notion' and unden~IQped sense: of tbc state among tweJflh-oenhuy authors. 71 R. Southern. 'A!peru of the European TJ;Jdition of His.torical Writing: 3. History ~ Prophecy'. TrlliUoClionJ of 1he Royal Hi.ucrital SQcitty, 5tb series. 2l (J972), 174. ?1 ~.r1it:u.latly in,portant works include M. R~eves, 71tt! lnjlutnu of PtOphtcy in tht Lattr Middlt Agt'S.' a Study in lD«himi~m (Oxford~ 1969), eadem, Joocltim of Fiort' and t)t~ PorpJit'Jic Future ( UJndon. 1911) and B. McGinn. The Culubrifln Abbot: Joudlim ofFiore in the History of Wq t.ern Thought (New York, IQ8,S). ,, Including thos.c: German hiMurians discussed b)' i . R.eutc:r, abo\·e, 31 ff .

The PolitiCill Use of the Past in Norman Sicily

209

tion than an obsessively ordered structuring of the past ending in a futurological Big Bang? The early biographical materials for Joachim suggest that he was born into a local notarial family and served att.he court of William II before he travelled to the Holy Land and underwent conversion. We can also trace close relations between his monasteries and the local aristocracy. 74 Paramount in Joachim's thought it a detestation of the German empire - the 'Rome' in which he claimed that the first Antichrist had already been born. This loathing was shared by his local contemporaries, as one finds for example in Faleandus' denunciation of the Germans as barbarians. Particularly signif>eant is t.he year when he first appears as a prophet, 1184, when be was summoned before Pope Lucius II to offer his interpretation of the so-called Samian Sibyl.l'S This visit took place a few months after the betrothal had been arranged between William Irs aunt, Constance, and the future Henry VI, a match which aroused great foreboding and opposition in t.he regno. He was certainly a supponer of Tancred,76 and a later tradition has him predicting the desolation of Sicily after his death - quite justifiably as it turned outn Around 1191 , according to Grundmann, Joachim wrote a treatise defending ccelcsiasticallrcedom (stJcer· dotium) against the claims of the overrnighty imperium. 78 Obviously there is a great deal more to the complex and essentially spiritual ideas of Joachim than merely political angst, but the political situation in the Norman kingdom, where times were quite dearly out of joint, deserves consideration for its bearing on the development of his thought. In a paper delive red in 1974 Ovidio Capitani concluded that 'the Norman chroniclers of southern Italy can be seen as witnesses to the rise and fall of an anempt unique in history: the attempt to fuse di_ fferent cultures and different not only in a single state but above all in a unified Welrunschouung' .79 That may be true, but the historians attest to the failure of that attempt and also

,. H. GrundmaM, •z.ur Biotraphie Joad\ims vun Fiore uod Rainen von Ponza·, Ckuucll~$ Ardt:iv fUr E:rft>rscJwng th3 MiueWtcrt, 16 (1960), S2844. n 8 . MacOinn, Vuiont of tht End: Apoulypric TradiJions in th~ Middl~ Agn (Nc-.w York, t979), 126. 16 The anonymous Life of Joschim records generous pantS made by the king jn U90 and •hat cht abbot bitterly a.u.ad:ed Henry VT at a meetinc in 1191: Gruncbna.on. 'Zu.r Biographie', 535-36, 537. 71

Reeves, ltifltume of Prophtcy, 40.

,.. The Lmtlligenlio su.per (4/QI/sb• (t.tnedited): H. Orundmann, 'Kirchcnfrciheit und Kaiser· macht um 1190in der Sicht Joachim.svon Fiore'. Dt.ustches ArchivfUr Erforsdumg dn MitUIIJltos. t9 (1963), 355-96. 79 'Specifk motivations· (cited at n. 6). 24. His up-bell picture. is at odds with myownaod that o{ Cilento, 'La "cooscien:za" •.

210

The Perceptian of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

either keep aloof from or fail io making any contribution to such fusio n o n an ideological level. What emerges fro m a study of the 'oooventional' writings about the immediate and more distant past in the regno is that for a number of reasons history writing came to a virtual dead end and failed to produce a oommon identity or reinforced sense of cohesion for the kingdom or its inhabitants. This failure to produce a unifying histo rical myth may have a bearing on the kingdom's remarkably rapid collapse in the period 1189-94. l n the brittle and diverse cultural milieu of the kingdom of Sicily it is perhaps appropriate that its most systematic historical thinker, the abbot Joachim , concluded that terrestrial history had no futurc.80

Thanks ate due to my(:uUe~tgue Dr. Michael Af\80id and co several a:encration$ofstudcntsin our joint clAM on Nonnan Sicil)' for scimulacing my intere.<;t in lhe regno. 110

11

Malleable Accounts: Views of the Past in Twelfth Century Iberia Raymond McCluskey The study of the perception of the past in the twelfth century is not synonymous with the study of historiography. Nonetheless, historiography looms large in what follows. There need be no apologies for this. For generations in the English-speaking wo rld , the histories of medieval Spain and Portugal have remained exotic territory for a small band of scholars. Their dedication has seen their influence probably outweigh their numbers several-fold. Amongst the foremost of this group arc Richard Fletcher (on the Leonesc church and the Cid), Peter Unehan (on the Castilian cllurch) and Bernard Reilly (on Alfonso V1 and Urraca of Casule-Le6n) 1 Despite such sterling efforts, however, the chron.icles and annals of the twelfth-century Christian kingdoms of the peninsula (the main geographical scope of this essay) remain latgely unknown and unexplored by medievalists outside the field. This needs further remedy and soon. Two problems in particular have, in recent years, come to dominate historical debate in Spain: namely. the ideological longevity of the 'Reconquest' idea (if it existed at all) and its problematic overtones of Christian pretensions to hegemony over the whole of the Iberian peninsula. Something of that debate needs to be communicated to a wider public.> Twelfth-century peroeptions of the past have a vital place in these argument<. The histories produced during the course of the century are marvellous

1

R.A. Aetcbcr, The EplJcopll# In tlte Kingdom of Ltdn in rM Twt:l/th-Ctnl'ury (Oxford, 1978): ;dcm, S•int '"'""''s Car.pllit (Oxford, 1984): idem, '1M Quut for El CW (Loom of L
211

212

Th• Puuptio11 of th• Past in Twelfth-Cmmry Europ•

windows to those perceptions a nd they will feature prominently, though certainly not exclusively or comprehensively, in what follows.3 1 should like to begin by referring to a text which is pre-eminently suggestive o f the anachronism prevalent in twelfth-century depictions o f the past: namely, the first piece of extant vernacular drama from Castile, dating most probably from the middle of the twelfth century. Traditionally e ntitled the Auto de los Reyes Magos, it is a short, truncated exercise covering some 52 Jines of manuscript folio and consists of a text which was evidently intended to be performed liturgically on the feast of the Epiphany (probably in the cathedral at Toledo which is t he place of provenance of the oldest manu· script).' The parts for the three Magi- Caspar, Balthasar and Melchior - are clearly identifiable. Despite its title, the Magi are not identified as kings but as the wise men and astronomers of early medieval commentaries on St. Mat· thew's Gospel . As all familiar with the story will know, however, the question o f kingly power and the jealous protection of its unique privileges dominates these events. In the Auto, it is Caspar who informs Herod abruptly thus: 'King, a king Ita.\ been born who is lord of the land.'' The double ' lting' jars, giving the line a hard cutting-edge. Herod's reply is especially interesting. He eric'S out:

Corne· forth my steward who tends to my properties. Have my abbots come to me;

and my great men; and my scribes; and my grammarians; and my astrologers~ and my rhetoricians. Let them tell me if aU this is true, if it is written anywhere or if they know or have known of any oC these things. 6

Here the author has seen fol to present Herod as a twelfth-cen tury monarch with aU the trappings of kingship which a contemponlry royal apologist would ideally have expected of him. It is a depiction heavily reminiscent of the courtly life of the twelfth-century re naissance.' Herod commands churchmen and lay magnates; he is served by a great array of loyal ouurticrs; his court is a centre of 3

tt seems right. given the proximity of its subject·maner tl) the prtsenl e:~~y .

that forward

notice 3bwk.t be gi'•el) of 1he ·~gisu~ria~ study of bi$tory·"''t'itil)g and h~tori ani in ~~le"al Spail'l

by Dr. Linehan which is fonbcoming from Cl3rendon Press, Oxford. " Auto dt los Rt)'U Magosf• ARM), ed. R. Me~odez Pidal, in Obf41 tQm(Jlttas de R. Mttttnde.: Pidtll, xii, 165-77 (Madrid, 19'76). ' ARM, 174, Bne 84: 'Rei, un rd es nacido queessenior de tirra'. (Orthography fo.Uows the MenEndez Pidal edition). 6 AR.\1, 176, lines U7·26: 'Venga mio Mai
of tbe 'rwelfth<entury rcoaissanoe.' in Spain. His argument$ arc based Otl lexiookJ&y and tbe ·~astie' debate berwecn Herod's advisers. See A .D. Deyennond, 'EI "Auto de los rtyt$ magus"ye.trena.cim)eoto del sislo Xll', in ACI4S lkt JX Ccng1aotk Ill Amciaci6tJlltlernadonal d~ Hi.s[XUiisfus. i (Frankfu.n am Main, 1989), 187-94.

Iberia: Malleable Accc>UIU$

213

culture and the exotic; the magic of the written word, as well as the stars, is studied and practised. In sum, Herod's rallying-<:all to such a plethora of subjects aod sldUed servants emphasised his status: this was the eanhly power of a king in action. The tantrum which immediately precedes the above extract, however, catches the eye even more emphatically. I translate with a little licence: 'Whoever saw such a dirty trick played on a king! I am not yet dead! I have not yet been plaoed in the earth! Another king over me? H a! I've never heard of such a thing! .a What apt words for the times in which they were recorded. The geo-political nightmare of the twelfth..:entury peninsula with which modem historians have to grapple has gained the popular epithet, popularised by Ram6n Menendez Pidal. of 'los cinco reinos': Le6n, Castile, and Portugal in the west, Navarre and Aragon-Catalonia in the east! The political life of these kingdoms was characterised by a shrewd, oftentimes faltering counter· balancing of inter""1S and a parcelling out of responsibilities in defending frontiers with the Muslim south. Alliance and counter-alliance amongst the Christian monarchs mark out the century as one of attempted consolidation of gains achieved· as well as of expansion against the Moors and, on occasion, each other. One-up-manship amongst Christian rulers was the name of the game in this context. The machinations which the twelfth century spawned made for difficulties in the creation of a sense of shared identity amongst any of these peoples. (One hesitates, more so than Unehan- for his own well-founded reasons - to use tbe word 'nationalism' for this period.) 10 The facts are these: at the beginning of the twelfth century, Aragon and the county of Barcelona remained quite distinct entities; Le6n and Castile were both under the rule of Alfonso VI (1065[Le6n]11072[Castile]-1109); Navarre was united to Aragon in the person of Pedro I (1094-1104); Portugal was but a county, carved out of his territories by Alfonso VI as the dowry of his daughter, Teresa, to her new husband.

11

ARM, 176. tines 107-12: 'Oui.n viC) numqua!o> tal mal / sohre rei otrotal? I Au.n r:ton so iomon:o

I ni sola terra pll!tol / rei otro sobre mi? I numquas atal non vi!'

~ R. Men~ndez PidaJ, Ellm~rio hitpdnico y los cinco rdmJi (Mad'rid.l950). is • wotk with a

mission: to der.oonstrak d~ survival of Spartiih unity
214

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-CenJury Europe

Henry of Burgundy. As the year 1200 approached, however, the kingdom of A ragon and county of Barcelona had become bonded in the rather awkwardlynamed Corona de Aragon, under the count-king, Pedro D (1196-1213); Leon and Castile were once again the separate patrimonies of Alfonso IX (ll881230) and Alfonso VDI (1158-1214) respectively; Navarre had thrown off Aragooese rule aod was governed by its own monarch, Sancho VD (11941234); and most spectacular of all, perhaps, was the emergence of a new regnum Portugalense in the west under Afonso Henriquc-.< {1128-U85), now inherited by his son, Sancho I (1185-1211)11 As if making sense of aU that happened io the period between these two sets of political maps were not complicated eno ugh, historians have also to digest and interpret the concurrent complexities of the emerging ecclesiastical geography of the peninsula as the Christian domains progressed southwards. Contemporaries themselves. <>f course. were puzzled or angered, elated or uplifted by what they saw happening around them. Some of them, in order to make sense of their present, took recou{SC in their past. There were multifarious motives for doing so: lessons to be learned; rights and privileges to be attested to. An example, first of all , from Leon-Castile: the Historia Silense was composed around the year ll!S by a cleric who, for m8Jly decades, was considered to have been a monk of Santo Domingo de Silos, located in the Castilian heartland to the south-east of Burgos. 12 This provenance is now hotly disputed. 13 Suffice it, for present purposes, that the author produced his work in a monastery of Castile or Leon. It was intended to be a vita of Alfonso VI of Lc6n·Castilc but this is not what has come do~'ll to us for, effecth•ely, the historical narrative runs from Vitiza (69&-710) until the death of Fernando I , Alfonso VI's father, in 1065. Why the author never completed his project is a mystery. The reasons for the commencement of the piece appear to be less so, however, for it can be forcefully argued that the Silenst's origjnal intention was the reassurance of Christian powers in the face of grave threat. Alfonso VI had achieved a great propaganda coup in taking Toledo in JOSS. As in the ninth and early tenth centuries, the last great period of Christian historiography under Alfonso III, the advance and succe.~ of the Chri.~tians gave cause for dynastic

celebration and reaffirmation of roots.•• 11

The best general .sun·eys of medieval Spain, avadable m Englitsh. are J.F. O'CaiJagban, A IIU.uwy of Medieval Spain (llhaea, 1915)~ A. Mackay, Spain in the Middle A.gu (London. 19'77): D.W. Lomax, The Ra:onqlldt ()/ Spa;n (Londoo, 1978). 11 Hi.ttori~r Siknse. l=HSJ. ed. J. ptrel de Urbtl and A . Gon1Jiez. Rui.:z~ZorriUa ( Madrid,

1959). u 11)ere i~ reason to belitVC' that the HS was a product of the great l..tonesc monastery of SahagUn \\'herC' Alfonso V1 was buried. Thrt i&1be appealing oondusion of bt M. Canal Siinc:betPllgin. 'Cr6nica Silensc ocr6ni¢a
Jberw: Malleable Accounts

215

This is not the whole story in unde.standing the Silense. The seizure of Toledo had been followed in less than a year by the incursion of the Almoravides into the peninsula and the crushing defeat of a Christian force at Sagrajas. Although Alfonso managed grimly to remain entrenched at Toledo, he was unable to save the Cid's Vale.ncia after the latler's death in 1099; Valencia was evacuated in 1102. 15 These were threatening reversals in fortune, destabilising the (with hindsight) almost cosy relationship of the Chris· tiao monarchs with the Moorish taifa city-states which had existed since the second and third decades of the eleventh century. Gone were the vast payments of pariD into the coffe.s of the Christians: in their stead rose the spectre of a man whose name struck terror into the hearts of Christians and caused untold destruction in the late tenth century: AI-Mansur. In the course of the early eleventh-century Chronicle of Bishop Sampiro of Aswrga, which the Silense's author interpolates in its entirety, the fear can still be dete<.~ed. 16 Of AI·Mansur, othetwise known as Almanzor, he states: 'His tikes has never been nor will be again.' 17 Here, perhaps, was the message of hope for the Si/ense'• audience (though the question of audience, lost in the search for the chronicle's origins, has never been satisfactorily addressed). Things might be bad; but they bad been bad, even worse, before. The Silense's cannibalism of Sampiro, of course, is representative of one of the ways in which historical narrative was built up: the historian as compiler and collector of chronicles and annals is abundantly evident. But the Silerue's scavenging of an earlier source had a serious and sophisticated purpose: it was an appropriation which reiterated and vindicated tbe erratic prejudices and impressions wbich constituted the collective memory of the Christian elite in north-west Spain during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Siltnse may not have actually got round to Alfonso VI - apart from some prefatory remarks - but it does have things to say about his predecessors. Moreover, 'unitarists' of the modern era have found enshrined (and the word is not used flippantly) within the Silense one of the most sustained and eloquent articulations of the 'Reconquest' idea. 18 This idea- known to historians as the 'proto-Gothic' myth - can be summed up in a few words: before 711, the entire peninsula had been under Visigothic rule, centred on Toledo; that unity was swept away by the Moorish invasion of 711 and afterwards; not all was lost - as a band of Goths in the mountains above Oviedo, inheriting the mantle of the Christian kings, began, with a victory at Covadonga in 722, the lengthy process

u See Actcber, The Quest for El Cid, 185416. •• HS, 159·13, especially 112 (or re.fereooe to AJmanwr. Sec. J. P~r~ de Urbcl, Sampiro, su cr6nii:a y /11 moniiJ'qllio LeoM:Ja m d siglo X (Madrid, l9S2). 17 HS, 112: 'qualk non aotea fuit nee futurus crit'. 1 " 'This belief underlies the approach. !Of example, o( C. Siocbez-AlborQoz., £n 1orno a los orlg~nq dtl frvdml$mQ, ii: futnlc$ d~ /(1 hislorilz hisp4Jnt>-m&LJulmGTUl (Mendoza, 1942). W.S9 and idem, 'Sobre c:l autor de Ia Uarnada Historia Silcose', Cuadtt'n()i: dt Hi.rtorl4 dt &PQ-ritl, 23·24 (19SS), 307-16.

216

The l'erceptio" of the Past in Tweifth-Cemury Europe

of 'Reconquest' which was to end, finally, with the fall of Granada in 1492. This n1yth. propagated by the Castile of the conquistadors, is too simple a framework with which to underotand the Silense's perception of the past. '~ For there was a problem: in the final analysis, the original Visigoths had failed. They bad fallen to the onslaught of unbelievers. How could this be explained? Enter God, stage left! The Visigoths had fallen because of their sins and the peccadillos of their kings. especially Vitiza and Rodrigo, the-last two Visigothic monarchs. God had to punish them and purify his people through their toils. Pelayo, the victor of Covadonga, described as the spatarius of Rodrigo, was essentially a new start - a second chance allowed by God. It was the theology of the ftood. The implication o(all this was that the present was an opportunity to make good the past and return to God's favour.20 One person who does not come out of the Silmse well is Charlemagne. 21 The author definitely knew Einhard's Vita Karoli and almost certainly the Cha11S011 de Roland in some form - or stories similar - and reacted negatively to Charlemagne"s seeming desertion of flispania to her fate as a Moorish prisoner. This antipathy towards the great emperor con tram strongly with the treatments of the Asturian-Leooese kings themselves, especiallhFernando I (1035-65), to whom the Silense devotes a good deal of altcntion. In contrast to Charlemagne's run for cover, as it were , fernando I demonstrates his position as the dominant power in the peninsula through his reception of tribute-payments (paria) from Muslim rulers and caps his reign with the bringing 'home' of the bodyofSt Isidore, one of the Visigothicchurch'sshining stars of I he seventh century, from exile in Moorish Seville to Le6n in 1063. The translation of the body of so famous a saint had weighty symbolic significance, adding lustre and legitimacy to fernando's rule. 23 But the main contrast to Charlemagne may well have been meant to be Alfonso VI, the victor of

1 ')

There is C(rtainly evidcn(e of Christian rejoicing at the taking of land from Muslims b)' Alfonso V1 in HS. 119: 'Huic vcro in rcgnum Yspanorum ampliando, in barbaros c:xc:rcendi~ue belli$, quanta animosita.s fuerit. provintias ab corum sacrilcgis manibus rdractas c:t in Christi 6dc:m OOA\>'tt'SJI$ singiJatim enumerando, ut mc:c: capacitat~ industria dederit eundo profabor'. On the general problem of intc-rprcti.ns such conventional sentiments, see the artide by Flctc:bet on 'Reconquest and Crusade' mc:ndoned above (n.2). :o The.author or HS prefaces his treatment of Pelayo wilh words 'Nhictl support !his interprtta· tion (131): ' lgitur, post tantam Yspan,arum ru)·narn, opere pretium eS-t refenc qualiter dh·intorum re5umptis \iribus pullulare fecerif. l:l us. ll9.J1 . 1:! 21

HS, 183-20'1. The S<:nsc of ritual and auspkious moment hang.>~ hea••y ever the pnnc.of HS, 203: ']gitur.

pOSt annO$ quJ~tuor<:entos obituJ wi. itib

h~lc«m.ium

civitate tnmSlatum esa COrpus beatiMimi

Ysidori oonlc.sso'i:s Christi. atqoo in urbt. l..cgjoncMi cum digno h<more condinun. A®atis e tcnim tocius rcgni 5Ui nobilibus episoopis et abbatibus. prefatam ccclesiam rex in honore

oon!esoris fecit'.

lberia: Malleable Accoruus

217

Toledo, the carver out of large domains, the lord of many men. Because of the failure of the author to complete his piece, we shall never know. The author of the Chronica Adejo1111i imperatoris (Chronicle of Alfonso the Emperor), written around the year 1147 a nd concerned with AlfOn'iO Vl's gtandson, Alfonso Vll (112(>.57), clearly had Charlemagne within his sights. 2' Einhard is the anonymous author's model (there are strong reasons to believe that the author was Amaldo, bishop of Astorga [1144-52153)15) and the motivation for composing his work is an echo of Einhard's d esire that 'eve.nts which are happening in our own lifetime should not be held unworthy of record and be permitted to sink into silence and oblivion'. 26 This is what our author declares in his preface:

Since tru: memory (mtmoria) of ancient hiitories has atways been handed down (tTaditur) to posterity by historians. through their writings and the famous deeds of

emperors. consuls. potentates and other he-roes from or old made.present to us (de vereribus nova focium), I am of a mind, as the best thing that I can do. to describe the deeds of Alfonso the Emperor as I have learned and heard them from those-that saw thero, beginning at the out<et of his reign which began with the death of Queen Urrnca, daughter of King Alfonso (Vl) and Queen Con,tanza, a.< will be disclosed in what follows, and mindful that omnipo~nt God worked tbrough him and with him so that the people of Christ might enjoy well·being in tile mid>t of his lands:.27 kings~

This preface suggests a certain magic in the historian's ability to mix his potion of word~ in such a way that the past becomes present again. ThL< idea of the active vitality of the past in the present was, of course, a pre·eminent perception during the twelfth century with repercussions seen around Europe io , for example, Frederick Barbarossa's antics and tbe pursuit of the vitu

24

Chronic4 Adeyonsi imperotaris 1=CAl], cd. L S.!ncbez Bdda (Madrid, 1950).

n CAl, Lx.-nxi. ~ Ei.nlt.ard 111td Not.k~r tltt Slllmmlrtt: 7).oQ U vu of Chtulnnagnt. tr. L. 'T'horpc (Loodoo.

1969), St. The author or liS adopted £iohard even more directly: •Hac itaquc neccssitudioc ingruentc:, ct s.criptore:s: defue.re et YspltnOrum gcst
218

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Cenntry Europe

apo.uolica. The debate over the significance of the Eucharist, especially the manner in which Christ was ' made present' on the altar during the Mass, was another famous eonsequence.28 For the autho r of the Chronica Adtfonsi imperawris, in his turn, the challenge Jay in setting Alfonso VTI on tlle same stage as the 'greats' of the past. The memoria - so inadequately translated into English as 'memory' - handed down implied a contest of virtue and prowess between those alive and dead: a seeming impossibility which constituted a triumph of the intellect over the physical world. It could only happen in the mind. The story is told, firstly, of Alfonso's dealings with other Christian powers and, secondly, of his campaigns against the Moors. Again, like the Silense, the Chronica appears to be an unfinished work for the author ;., side-tracked by what is perceived to be a wondro us event- the conquest of Almeria (1147), deep in the south-east coast of the peninsula. Almeria was to fall out of Christian hands again ten years later and, indeed, remained Muslim territory as part of the kingdom of Granada until the fifteenth century. Within a short time of the Christian seizure of the town, however, il seemed a very great ach.ievement indeed. The Chronica's author interrupted h.is Latin prose to produce a work of Latin verse. known to posterity as the P<Xm of Almeria which, unfo rtunately, we have in an incompJctc version.29 The poem des· cribes the build-up to the conquest, evoking the call to arms of vassals and allies, stirring up the dust of Andalucia, making its reader sweat with the army in the heat. The past, a potent brew of fact and fiction, is used as a convenient roll-aU of individual example and precedent with the implied semblance of oounts to men such as Hector a.nd Gideon supplying impressive Classical and Old Testament credentials 30 But Alfonso is Charlemagne.31 Indeed, the Poem is the Song of Roland with improvements. For a start, it is in Latin and Alfonso gives the Moors a good hiding. After comparing Alfonso to Charle· magne and referring to them as equals in military might and fame, the author does not leave the story there. With reference to Alvaro. o ne of Alfonso's lieutenants, the author says: 'l assert without sacrificing truth that if, in the time of Roland, Alvaro had been the third man after Oliver, the race of the Saracens would have been brought to heel by the Franks and tbe beloved

zt1 Sec 0 . Maey, The Theologie.t t>f th~ Eucharirt in tht &rly ScholiuJic Period (Oxford . 19S4), espcdally 137-41. :» CAl. 165-86 (Castilian translation, 187-206). )(l CAl, 17S: ·Pontius isra <:0n1es regir a&min• oobWs basta I vi.rtus San.sonts enu hie, gladius

Gedeonis; I comparerst lonathae, plaeclarus uti Jesm nave. JCentis enl rector, sicut fonis~1mus Hector'. .ll CAl. 166: ·His AddOOSU$tr.U. oomeo ten-et imperatorisl f3l:t astquenG Caro.U, cui oompe:tit

aequiparari'.

Iberia: Malleable AccounlS

219

companions would not have met their deaths.' 32 So much for Roland and Oliver - if only Alvaro had been there, things wou.ld have been different. or course this mig)lt be construed as stylistic convention, pure and simple. But it is more than this: the past was seen to give witness to a succession of great and evil peoples to be emulated or shunned. It delivered challenges to the present and proffered agendas for the future: it demanded justice; it cried out, ' I must be avenged'. The idea of 'reconquest' in Castile and Le6n was born out of the insistent articulation of the belief that compensation for injustice suffered by Christians at the hands of Moors in the past legitimised cormscation of territories, piece·meal or in great dramatic sweeps, such as the Almeria campaign. The Chronica Adefonsi's mandate was to summon up the past and its heroes in such a way that it was plain tbat right was on the Chri'\tian side. This was the cleric-historian's job in justifying the bloodshed and policies of his monarch. The past, if presented as providing the rig)lt reasons for actions, was the present's insurance policy against the terrifying future of t he Last Day and djvine j udgement.

Before leaving the kingdom of Le6n, there are two further historical compilations which deserve special mention: the Corpus Pelagianum and the Hi.!toria Composte/lana.:uThese were two works which sought to promote the fortunes of the dioceses in which they were redacted: both promoted, at the same time, doctored versioM of the past. Pelayo, bishop of Oviedo from HOI · 30 and, again, from 1142-43, is notorious in the annals of Spanish historiography because be quite conscientiously tampered with the purity of the manuscript tradition before him. Lineba.n 's pithy comment that 'scratch any piece of evidence for our subject before about 1130, it sometimes seems to me, and out sheepishly will come that prince of falsifiers, Bishop Pelayo of Oviedo, the ink still wet on his fingers' is not without justification.3" Pelayo was rather

too inclined to enhance the role of his predecessors, his diocese and, especially, himself in his revised ve.-.ion of chronicles and records. But, amidst all the howls of scandal! scandal!. it bas to be said plainly that he was not doing anything new and was not unique in so doing. Here is the rub: Pelayo's fault, for later historians, was that he blatantly tampered with a 'national' inheri· taoce and blurred the national perspective of the past. This was rich coming from eighteeoth-ce.n tury historians who tampered with the past in the interests

32

CAl. J78: "rempofc Rokl'ni 5i tenius Alvanu esset I pos1 oth·en;un, Coueor sine crimine vcrum, / !iub iusa Franco rum tuerat aens Apreoor'I.UI:',/ nee socii c:h.ari iacuissent morte perempti'. 33 C.'r6"ic" drl Ohi.rpo Don Ptlayn, cd. 8 . S:incbel Monso (Madrid, 19'24); Hi.tlorUI Camposu:J. km later, of lbe decrees of the 1055 Council of Coyanz.a- a to\d1i.ng·up of d.e past whicb passed unno{iced for centuries (lSI-.82).

220

The Perception of the Past in Twelfth-Century Europe

of their monarchs and patrons. The furore over Pelayo is a curious case of the pot calling the keule black. 35 The Hisroria Compostellana is much too extensive a work to deal with properly here. Richard Fletcher has. in his book on Diego Gelmfrez, provided an excelle01 commen1ary. 36 The Hiswria is not a history at all but it had a view of the past to put across nonetheless. It is essentially a registrwn of the acts, decisions and d ealings of Diego Gelmirez, bishop and fi~t archbishop of Santiago de Compostella ( Jl00-40). Amongst the copies of charters which were transcribed, the Compostellan canons who compiled the volume inserted several narratives of local events but the tlistoria's immediate concern was to build-up a picture of the church of Santiago as one of the great churches of Cbristendom and its archbishop as a great man. There were good reasons within the Iberian peninsula itself for ensuring that this was so. The ecclesiastical geography of the peninsula was not reemerging as a carbon-copy of the seventh-century church. That church had consisted of six provinces: Toledo, Tarragona, Seville. Braga. Merida and Narbonne . The political realities of Christian expansion by the twelfth century made the resurrection of this map appear very far off.37 Bishops, like Diego Gelmirez, were not prepared to wait: they acted. Diego's victory was to have the archiepiscopal rights of Merida (as yet unconquered) translated by Pope Calixtus II, with some reservations. in JJ20 to Santiago. This was the cue for a long-running battle with Braga over rights and boundaries which was a reflection. writ large~ of many similar disputes between dioceses throughout the peninsula.~8 In 1174 Archbishop Pedro Smbez of Santiago had) for example . to intervene in a

dispute between Salamanca and Ciudad Rodrigo dioceses because the Iauer had no seventh<entury precedent and had been carved out of the ancient Salamanca diocese.~• The past had its part to play. Archives were raided; chattel's were forged. h was a conslant merry~go--round. The root problem was a lack of history: the arrangement of the Visigothic church was too imperfectly known and unde~tood. In this way the present playe.d havoc with the past. Santiago is most famous as a centre of pilgrimage and for the appearance of its saint as a military caudillo at the side of Christian monarchs in the thick of baule. The protection and favou~ of Santiago were not only sought by Leonesc and Castilians. Amongst hordes of others were people from the east

'-' There i$ dite nttd, for example , of a monograpb~Jength study of the: compilation of the £spolia sagrada, S4 vol$ (Madrid, 1747·1961), especially tb~ editorial ooncem.s aod methods o(

Enrique fl6rez and Manuel Ri$00, Tbt traditional imprt$Slon of these- two churchmen as disintere5ted servants of sebolarsh.lp is grossly m.isleJidiog,. " Fletcher_. Saini JnmtJ's CtJtapuJs (see above, n. 1), 7 ' Flerehet, Th~ £pi$c(Jpalt . 21·2S. ditCU.\$e$ $0tne of the problem' encoun~ered. 311 Apin, many exampln or ~uch disput« arc to be found i:n Actcher, TM £pUcop41t , 31-76. ' 11 Fletcher, T11t Episc.t>put4, app. XV, 24.5·47, trauscribtsthe document carrying PedroSutrez's decitkln, acting as papal judge-delegate, concerning this boundary dispute.

Iberia: Malleable Accoums

221

of the peninsula, from Aragon and Catalonia.~ The po~tical relationships between the rulers of these lands and those of Castile and Leon were always in a state of flux. Certainly the Catalans, as distinct from the Aragonese who have left little in the way of historiography, did not share their history with the Castilians and their understanding of tbe past was shaded somewhat differently. The Gesta comitum Barcinonen.sium (Deed.< of the CounL< of Barcelona) is the most extended piece of history to have been produced in the royal monastery and dynastic burial-place of RipolJ around the year JJ62.41 It is a celebration ofthe first count-king of the c-rown of Aragon, Ram6n Bercnguer IV {1131-{)2) and begins with a draft of his lineage. Records would have been close at hand as Ripoll monks had been in the habit of keeping annals for generations. As Thomas Bisson has pointed out, •we know from the Brevis historia of Ripoll, composed in 1147 to bolster claims of fiscal immunity, how efficiently the monks could draw on their own archives'.•z The GestD, far from sharing the attitude of the anonymous autho r of the Leonese Chronica Adefonsi imperatoris, is intent on demonstrating the direct descent of their count from Charlemagne. Indeed CaLalan historiography looks to the north, above the Pyrenees, as much as down the eastern peninsular coast. The Gesta explains that the first count of Barcelona was the splendidly named Wifred the Hairy (873-98) - and aptly too. When he returned from exile in Aanders to recapture his ancestral honour of Barcelona, he is immediately recognised by his mother because 'he had hair where other men had none' . Reconciled with his faithful magnates, Wifred goes off to wreak vengeance on the Gallic count, Saloman, who has stolen his lands. After his success, be is threatened once more, this time by Moors. He appeals to the Frankish king for aid but the aid is unforthcoming. Instead a promise is made: if he can himself defend his lands, they will be granted to hinl and his descendants for aU time.43 It's all most probably nonsense, of course, but the myth's role in the twelfth ce.ntury was fundamenLal to adding legitimacy to Ram6n Berenguer in his dealings with recalcitrant vassals and fellow counts in the region. More significantly it afforded a vision of the past which jarred and would continue to jar to the present day with the ·proto-Gotllic' myth of the Castilians and Leonese.

• Still the bc:!it wrvcyof the pilgrims' route to Santiago, 8$ well as the town itself. is L. V6:tquez de hrga, J. Ma. L.acaarra and J. Uria ~u. LA.r putgrinadon.es a $(1Jtl/ag() de CMnporte/a, 3 vob (Madrid, t948-49). 41 Gt3111 comltum &rrlilonttt.Slwn

t~GCB ) , ed. L. BarraU: Dihi.go and J. Ma:sso Tom:nts, (Barcdona, 1925). I actnowledse here my indcbtedot$5 Qn numcn Cat.J•n to Tholll.ls N. Dts:son's m.aanl6oeot ooUet:tion of essays Mtdi.wol F'ranct tutdlter Pym.tDII Ndghba4trt: Studies in

arly butinniono.l history (london, 1969), especjaUy 'The Rise of catalonia: Identity, power and ideology in a Twelfth-Century Sociecy· (12.1-52). 42 Bisson, "The Rise of cataklnia'. 134~ ...::1 GCB, 3-5. See Biuol), '1't\e Rise of Du1loaia', 133·39, for 11 diKussion of the origins aod purpose o! GCB.

222

The Perceprion of rhe Pasr in 'T'we/frh-Cenrury Europe

The historiography of Navarre, the tiny kingdom huddled in the western Pyrenees can be dealt with summarily: there is none to speak of.44 There are several genealogies, perhaps designed to give support to the independent monarchy re-established by Garcia Ramfrez in 1134. To the west,the dust had not had time to senle on the incipient kingdom of Portugal. The Chronicum L11.1ilanum, which Benito Alonso identifies as the first truly Portuguese (i.e. nationalistic, a telling inference) chronicle still depends to a large extent on Castilian and U<>nese prototypes, although there is a not unexpected focus on more Joeal events.•s The historical perception of Portugal as a nation with a distinctive story from the rest of the peninsula remained to be encapsulaled by the writers of !he lhirteenth century and beyond. Althouglllhe emphasis up 10 this point has been on hi,toriography (and a selective one at that, though the hlstorical products of the peninsula arc hardly abundant),46 this is only one key to discerning a twelfth-century perception or percep1ions of the pas1. With reference to legal texts, for example, age granted authorily. Association wilh heroes of the past enhanced legitimacy. The famous twclfth·century law-code of the county of Barcelona, produced during the reign of Ramon Berenguer IV and popularly known as the Usarges, was an unofficial compilation for judges and , moreover it would appear, was never actually sanctioned by the count." It was ideally intended to be used for brow· beating castcllans into submission to the count's authority. Part of that aim was hoped to be achieved by crediting an earlier c-ount, Rarn6n Bercnguer I (1035· 76), with the commissioning of the work. Clearly the redactors of the compila· tion wanted to harness the mellow memories of a past era in order more readily to put over t he vigorou.~ new policies or the present . As Bisson oo succinctly puts it: 'So for the laws as fo r the dynasty a mythical ancestry was invented."'8 Twelfth~century realities, as in eccle.~iastical geography, caused problems for judge.•. In Le6n and Castile, the nominal authority of the Uber ludidorflm survived throughout the twelfth century but its pra(..1.ical usefulness was fragmented by the social realities of sprouting towns and presura for land to

"See B. sgnchetAklnso. Hi.storia dt: lD hiswrWgrafia EspaAnla (Madrid, 1947) , 137. 4 Ibid, 143-44. ~ One mlljor sou.rct which I have n01 con5ickrcd (or rea..som of space is the Hisloria Roderici, a life of the Cid written some time during the.!ieoond decadeofthc: twelfth century . liowc:\'er. a good deal already exists in Engtisb on the topic. mos.t nutabl)' the ~tudk:s of Gwlfrey West. Espeda.Uy related to the present topi.eare two o.t'ddes by We~: 'Hero or Saint? Hagiographte Elements in the Lifeo(the Cid',Jourl'lal ()/HiJpanlc Philology, 1 (1982·83), trl· IOS;and 'Med~a.l Hjs.torioyaphy Miscoostrued: The Exile of the Cid. Rodriso Ofaz. and tbe 3Uppo$td ..invidia" or Alfonso V1'.

M•dlum A"·um, 52 (t983), 286·99. 47 Usmgt1 dt Buctlona, cd. R. d'Abadal t Vinyats and F. VaUs Tan~roer (Barcelona. 1913), 48 Olsson, "'lbe Rise of Cutaklni.a', 140,

lberill: Mal/eabk Accounts

223

which more localised jUeros were a response.'9 Nevertheless, it remained a.n important window to the Gothic past. The reassertion of rights of ownership and privileges through the compila· lion of collections of charters granted in the past gathered pace signilicanUy in the twelfth century. The Liber feudorum maior, produced in Barcelona cathedral between 1192 and 1196, is a striking e xample.so In one of its exquisitely decorated miniatures, Alfonso U (ll62-96) is shown accepting the finished product. The past was being put at his disposal, made manageable and authoritat ive. Some of the most splendid twelfth..:entury images of ldogship, however, belong to the Libro de las estampas (SO-<:alled because of the portraits it contains) o f Le6n Cathedral. 51 This cartulary of donations made by kings, some forged , over the generations are accompanied by miniatures of the monarchs themselves: Ordoiio II, Ordofio IJJ. Ramiro Ill. Vermudo II. Alfonso V, Fernando I and Alfonso Vl. The kings' apparel is patently anachroni-stic but tbe most interesting features are the gre-at scrolls which they are seen to hold saying, for example, 'Ego O rdonius minor rex confirmo'. For the scroll"i have attachments whic:h none of the original charters would have bad: they carry enormous seals. Yet, as Peter Russel.! demonstrated in an article as long ago as 1952, seals of this type were slow in infiltrating the Leonese empire - not until the middle decades of the twelfth century. 51 In effect, the artist of the Libro de las estampas provided his kings with the latest fashion in authentication. The present shaped the past in its own likeness. What , by way of tentative conclusion, might be learnt from all this scattered detail with reference to the ideal of unity in the twelfth-century peninsula? The point, it seems to me and a t the risk of a glaring generalisation, is that the peoples of the twelfth ·ceotury Christian kingdoms of the northern peninsula were eclectic in their attitudes to the past. AJJ dynamic societies whose impetus and pace made for rapid change in terms of political developments and economic resources, the respective kingdoms seem only to have been con· cemed with their own respective. welfare and scatus. Like Actcher and Linehan before me, 1 find little to convince me of the existence in the twelfth ce-ntury of a reconquista idea involving territorial unity. 53 Alliances were-o ne

4!t L.tges V'~.tigothorum, od. K. Zewner. in M<mumerlla Ge.rmanioe Hi.rtoric.a, Leges I ( Hanover~ Ldprig. 1902). Tbe inertasin& limitations on. the usefulness of the Ub~r /udiciorum emerged t'\'en earlier than the twtlftb oenrury. See R. Collins, &rly Medie•·td SJXJJ'n: Unity in Dive.rsily 400-I(}()() (Londoo, t983), 2A7. .so For an edition. sec Ubt:r ft,ud(}rum nt4ior: Carwlulo rtdl quest co.ruerwu f'n ~I Arcltivo de lo CoroMlk Arag6n, ed. f. ~uel ROSt:tl, 2 \'OI$ (Barcekma, 1945-47). st An t.xoeiJent facsimile is available: £/ Libro dt 141 £4t4m.JXU, ed. A. FernAnda Alon&O

(I.Wn. 1981). n P.E. RusstU, ·Some Problems or Diplomatic in the •'Cantat de Mio Ctd" and their lmplication.s', Mo-Mm Lmtgwge Rtvkw, 47 (19S2), 340-49. Related to thi:s, sec R.A. A etcher, 'Diplomatic and the Cid Revisited: The Seal$ and Mlllndatefl of Al.f<ms() VIr. Journal ofMedi~,,..Q] History2 (19?6), JOS.J8. n Witb refen:nee to F1etcber and U nehan, sceabove, nn. land 10 rcs.pcctively.

224

The PerceptiOII of the Past in Twe/fth-Centr;ry Europe

thing; absorption was another. Navarre had ehoscn independence in 11.34 faced with the choice of submission to Barcelona's oount." On the other hand, in thec-•seoftbe personal union of Aragon and Barcelona, the kingdom and county continued to develop along distinctive lines. The king of Aragon was never the king of Barcelona. He was always a count. That pcr.;onal union of Barcelona and Arago n leads us towards the crux of the matter. Loyalties in the twelfth century were not territorial. We can never know what response soldiers in the field might have gi\•en to the evocation of the classical Hispanw by clerical authors, such as in the Si/ense.>S Loyalty? Dreams of a united pe ninsula? A recreation of the Gothic state? It all seems doubtful. First and foremost, their loyalties were personal: to their king, to their lord. This cuts across modem nationalistic theories. The famous epithet in the Poem of the Cid- 'what a noble vassal; if only he had a noble lord' 56 underlines that , e ven in the late twelfth century, there was an audience for tales of noble rebels. that the first loyalty was to the one who oould ensure you the spoils of battle or the protection to plant your crops or feel safe in your town . The story of the royal breakdown of these local ties in later centuries is a long and complex tale. The past had indeed its role to play but territorial unity was not one of the ideals it was called upon to serve. At Ca.zola in 1179, for instance, the Castilian and Aragonese monarchs of the day agreed terms o n spheres of prospective influence within the peninsula: 'Dividunt namque inter se terram Hyspanie hoc scilicent modo.'51 This. in fact. was an acknowledgement of the other's de facio existence and status against the background of rivalries foc.u sed on the Christian kingdom of Navarre and the mixed populations of the Levante. Yet

it is the matter-of-fact language of the treaty of Cazola, contrasting so starkly with the vivid invocations of Hispania in the chronicles which. above all?hints at a quite different1evel of perception. Monarchs in the twelfth century were

certainly not bereft of pragmatism and sometimes events would force new perspectives on the past .

.S4 Sec.thc-livelyaccount in L.G. de ValdeaveUano. Historiu d~ &jxuia: De los orlg~1ta a lu bajo l'.dad mtdia, pt. l. \'Ol.2 (4lh ed.: Madrid. 1968), 434·35 .

.Sl lbc cWsic definitkm o( 'Hispanla' b)' Isidore was oommcm t~ in tbe twelfth oe.ntur)': 'Hispania prius ab lbc:ro aml'le Iberia nut~cupata, postea ab Hi$palo HisptH:'Ii* c:ogl'lomitUita e$1\ The full pou;sagc: will ~ {(M.Ind in lsid<Jri Hitpttl~~·is epiJ.:opi Erymologi1uum ,ti~ ()riginum /ibn XX, ed. W.M. Lindsay. (O"Jord, 1911), ii, lib. XIV.i v, 28·30. See J.M. Marav~ll, £1 C(Htcepto ck £spa1Ut tn lit tdad media, (Madrid, 1964), 222-4l. A recently published article ba-; shO'.\'n that 'Hispania' wa~; al50 a term used by twelfth-century writen to refer to any land dominated by the ·Saraceni', inc-luding tbc- Holy Laod: O.W. l..()m.ax. 'Un nuevo significado del topc)nim.o "Espana" '. Etpaclo, Tltmpo )' fOrmA: Revi.sw d~ lo f(l(;U!uJd de Geograjfa ~ Hisrorla. 4 ( 1989),

309-15. ~

'Oios, que bue n vassallo, si oviesse bu(.n senor!'. The Poem of the Cid, ed. I. Michael (Loooo.. 1984). n. n J, Ooo~:Uez. £1/lr.lno dt CastUia en /tJ tpO
Iberia: Mal/table Accounts

225

As it was, the twelfth century saw Hispania fragment tetritorially (the emergence of Portugal; the division o f Alfonso Vll's empire between his sons) and imperial bonds of vassalage weaken. The rebonding of the Castilian myth of the past with a brief for the future was to become the special property of the thirteenth century in the works of Lucas of l\iy and Rodrigo Ximenez d e Rada.58 Above all, the patronage by Alfonso X el sabio (1252-84) o f a history in tbe Castilian vernacular remains singularly significant. 59 But these three famo us thirteenth-century works betray a subtle shift in their perception of the past. They are universal histories, beginning with Genesis and proceeding in a grand sweep to their respective presents, setting events in Hispania, at least initiaJJy. against wider contexts. There is a new confidence wbkh stimulates thoughts of the early seve nth century. Isidore the historian has been reborn. No twelfth-century parallel exists for no twelfth-century writer would have felt fit to undo Isidore's sandals. The difference between twelfth- and thirteenthcentury historical perceptions can be explained in four words: Las Navas de Tolosa (1212). Nothing succeeds like success and, where medieval perceptions of the past are concerned, nothing mo re sharply focuses those perceptions than astounding, glorious success against the odds. If history was the decipherment o f God's providence, then Las Navas de Tolosa was a message loud and clear. In the final analysis, Alfonso YO's siege of Almeria could not compete.

58

Lucas of T\1y'i Cronkbn mundJ is let be found in Jl&spanill/Uusrr41a, c:d. A. Schon, ,.ol. 4 (Frankfurt, 1~) . 1· 116. Amon&St Rodrigo's workS, see Rodu ici Ximmii th Rada Hi.Jt«la dt 'tbu.t Hi.rpanit .si~v 1/Worill Gothic.o, c:d. J. Fernin~ Valvel"de, Cc>rpus Christianorum Continua· tiro Mediaevalill n (Tumbt>ll, 1987). 59 Prii'MTtz Cr6niCd GM~'al de &pafut, ed. R. Men~ndez Pidal, 2 vols (Madrid, 1955).

This page inlentional~y lefl blank

Index Abbr~11iationts chronicorum

102

Abd'ai-Rabman 201 Abell64 Abelard 17, 90 n.85, 115 Abime lecb 164

Abraham 164 Abtuzzi 192. 196

Absalon 40. 41 Abydos 149 Acerbo Morena 182 Achilles Tatius 125, 149, ISO n. 176 Adalbero, bishop o! Wurz\>urg 17 Adalben, arcllbishop of Bremen 39 Adalbert II , bishop or Maint 27 Adam 106 Adam of Bremen, 39. 4'2, 44, 46. 48, 49 Adrianoplc 9 !Efic 63 ll!lfcr 60 £lfn01h 60 A;elf$lan 62

tE.clfward. abbot of Evesham, bjshop of London 62, 63 IEelfwin, abbot of Ramsey 8 Aelian 1)2

Aeneas 21, 107 ll!thclrod king of F..ngland 72. 96 ll!thclwold 53-54, 59 'Aetbjcus lster' lJJ Alonso Henriquez. king of Portugal ll4 Agamemnon 164 ;\grip 42 Almoin of Fleury 200 Ajax 153

Alexander m , pope 122 Alexander, bishop of Lincoln 84)..81 Alexander of Tclcse 198-200, 203. 204 Alexios l , emperor 118 n.2. 121.122, 124, 130, 137·38 'AlexiosofHungary' 184 Alfonso U. king of Aragon 223 AJfonso m. kin& of Aslurias.-LeOn 214

Alfonso v , king of I.Wn 223, 224 Alfonso Vt. king of Castile· Leon 211 , 21317,223 Alfonw VII, king of CaSiilo·LWn 217-19. 225 AJfoO>O VIII. king of Castile 241 Alfonso IX, lOng of Leoo 214 Alfonso X , the Wise, king of Castile 225 AJfred, lOne of Wessex xiii, 96. 98 Alger of Li~ge 17 Al·Mansuo'Almanzor 2!5 Almeria 218-19. 2lS Almoravidcs 215 AIJ>$ 182 Altdorf21 tlhu-nas 54. 55, 56, 69-72, 84 o.56 Altmann, bishop or Passau 27 Alvan) 218- 19 Amalfi 195 Am.atur. of Monte Cassino 194, 195

Arnboise 8·9 Arnpruon 138 Ammianus Marcellinus 103. 104-5 AnadetullJ, Pope 199i Anadetan schism

Alam 60, 71 Albero, bishop of Trier 1:1

204 Anast.asius Bibliothecarius 108 An.a:stasius of Sinai 165 Ana.ui'Ora.'i14S

Alcxanderthe Great lOS, 114, US, 140, 159 n.4, 164. 178

Andatucia 218 Andernach 30

'227

Tht Ptrctptioll of rht P/JSr in T»dfth-Ctnrrrry Europt

228

A ndrei lurevich,llo J()Iiubskii, princt t)f

Suzdal 168-69

Assyrian empire 123

Astorga 215,217

Andrew of Paris (Andr6 de Fraocc.} 1-4 Ang~rs 6 Anl!es97 An&t<>-Suon Cbroni
Asturian 216

Anjou. cowtts ol I . 3. S.1. 9-10

Attic. Anicism 140, 147·8

Anna Comnenal l7. 122 n.2J, IJ6.39, 144

Aupllurg30 Augustine, St, bis~ or Hippo 31, lOS, 114. 115

Annaba

1n

A ,.,II, IC.'i (Tacitu!.) lOS

A nna/41 &rtinlani 23, 113 1\nMks Fuldl'fUts2J AniUIIU lanunr.ut 174 ANt4/e MtJioltJntnsn mhtorul16 Ann.alt:J Pt-tfl'-'ti1Sn 29 Annaks Pla«nrfn/1 84, 187 n.32 A ttnale.1 regni f rancorum 23

Annalista Saxo 29 Annals ol Melk 33 Anon)'roout Barens~ 195 n.20. 197 Anselm, Sl, abbot olll«, arcbbisbop o1 Can tertMiry 6$ , I99 AnS
Antichrist ~ Antioch 124, 144 Antjoch u$ Epiphane$ 164 A ntony ( M a.ra~s Antonius) 1'29 Amony. founder of the caves monutcry, Kiev 162 Appe.nnine moutuoinJ 180 Apollo lSI ApOUoniu.s of ·ryana l65 Apulia 192, 19'7 Arab. Arabic 166, 171·78, J9S n.l9.

201-205 Arqoo 213-14,221 Archimedes IS3 Anlres 12 An 37-38. 39, 49

J\,;.rt4ndros IVf.d Kallithu 124. 148

Arisdppus 203 Ariiitolle 78. 132, 14S. ISO 1\molclo, b<<~op ol Astorga 217 Amwr 181. 183. 188 Anaxues 150 Allamxes. king of l'
A'belstao. Kfng of WcSStx and Mercia S7,

9Sn.8 Atheosx. 140-44, 147. 155-S6

Augustus. emperor 23, 105, 108, 109, 128.

161 Au Jus, Gelliu$ J6 Aurtfian. emperor 16S Awdius Vtctor 108

Auto th los R~yn magos 212·13 Ave bury67 Av~rsa

199

Avit1us62 Baklwin of Guir.es 12 BaJdwin o f Hainauh 10 ft.Z8 Baldwin I, count of Fbod~ri 4 Baktw:in lfJ. count of flanders 14

Baldwin, bishop nf Woroc:ster 73 Balsamon: s~t Theodore Balsamon Jb Hhasar 212

Bamberg 35 Datbarossa; sn Froderid: I BarbarosJ~t

Bareel- • n.9. 213, 214,221, 223-lA Bari 195. 197-')8

Barlaam 164 Basil, St, or Caesarea t32

Da!lii iJ, emperor 129, 137 Onvaria 1:7, 28 l.b ycux 54 Ike, a bbe)' oliO, 199

lle
Benedictine monk• 'n-73 Deneveto 19S, 1911-99 Denno of Osnabnlcl: 27

Jler..wvo 162 Jlerpmo 181-82 Bernard ofClairvau.x, St )I, '20-1 llernardo Marogone 176. 1n, 119-«1 Bemold of Comtanc.'C 17

Arnold, bishop of Maini. 27

llen.hold 28

Arnokl. bishop of Trier 27 Anemis 151 Anhur, Anhuria.n xv, 7, 8. 98,201 Amtvli Wilklmi 96

Bermo.da 6 Billhop's Cleeve (St Ml
229

lndu 8jarkam~40

llolosna, Botosne,. 184 lloppard 30 Boolosne. """""of 4 n .9. 12. 13 B
Bremen 39. 42 llrelda 184, ISS Oteton 7 Brt11lo con.fuhlm

180

B"""'ri"'" (Eutropius) 101 ~ioriwn (F<1tuo) 108-9. 114 Brtvuuittm Aliii'Ki 101 Brens/Wrorill (Ripoll) 221 8ritOIU 91,98

Orugcs 4 n.l2 Bryue; ISO, l SI Brynllild 44 Bulpria, Bulprian$121, 129. LS9 Bur
Bu.ridav 4'3 Bury St Edmund> 64. 9S·96 Byrhlferth 55, 58, 61, 62, 67, 68,70 Byzantioo (city) 134 &·yzantium, Bytantint. xii·xvi, U7tr. 161. 165-66, 168-70, 196. 198,202, WS-7

Caesar: 1« Julius Caesu Ooesm:~ (Palestine) 173, 175 n. 8 Cusfl.l't:S (Aurelius Vtaor) 108 Ca~arius o( Hc:isrerbac:h 36 Cof(aro di RuMioo, ot Caschifcllo ne 173·76 Coin 164 Col&bN 192,205, 208 Calinus U, pope 2211 Camt>rai 26: ~« RaooJ Campanial92

Campo Morto 187 Canterbury 54, 72, 113 Capetiaus 6, 22, 40

C.ppadocion Fathen!S4 C.pua 192, 200

c.m....

s.........

24 k l>d/() , ..,,..,, d< t<Sfis Fridtrid prillti in llllli4 24 Caro6ngian. Carolinaians svi, 4, 5, 6, 23, 26, lOS. 109, 182n.23 Carthage 119, 178 C..auria 196 C..per212

Cassiodon.$ 102, 104 _.clWri.. s

Castile, Castilian Zll· l4, 216,219-21. 224-25 CAJIU mOIItuttril PttriJuuensis 28 Qnalooia, Catalan 213, 221 Catilinc (Lucius ~'P"' C.tifina) 189 OlliliM ConsplmdD 7 Cato 101, 178 Caves mona.uery. Ki
s.

Cbarues65

Oloniates: IN Mk+Jael, Niketas Ch10nico A
Chronicle of 8i.JI1op Sampiro of A.ttt>rgu 215 Qroniclc-o f Monte Cas.sioo 36 n. 9S cbrooicles {lenre) 28. 120lf. 145. 154, 1601f, 17Jtr, 195-200 Citron/co rttlo C<>i<MI<mlt 25 Chi'Ofti<<>t~ (Frecultus of Usieus) 106 Chronicon/Chronlca (Hugh o( St VICtor)

34. 102 Cltrotticon, sil't lllflorill tk duabus civitatibus (Ouo ol Fr.:W.g) 18, 14, 33, 34. 182 Orrotri
Chronkort H~UUN~itfUt 28

Chronkon trWrlaJttrll dt Abingdon 17 n.IO ChrorUcon NovaUdr.t~e 6 o. 17 Chronicon Sal~r~lilam~m 197 Chf()IJkon Wintburg~nse 33

O.rd Rodri&O 220 O odiw 2l Cnut: stt Knut Codagnmo 181. 183. ISS

230

The Perception of the Past in Twt lfth-Centtvy Europe

compogn•l13. 175, 187 CompiCgna4 Compostella: see Satuiago de Compostella compw~a35

Conrad II, emperor 24 O:mrad Ill_, kin,g of Gcnnany 24, 196 Cotuilotio Cnuti 96 Constance. wife of emperor Henry VI 209 Constance, treaty of 186 Constans (Last Empe.ror) 32 Con!ltantine I the Great~ emperor. Constantiniau 21~ 23, 120. 121, 129. 137· 38, 161 , 165 Constantine V Copron)'mus, emperor 16S Con~tantine VI, c:mperor 125 Co0$lantine IX. Monomaehos, emperor

115 n.33 Coo!itantinc. Manasses 121 n.ll, 122 n.22~ 123-26. 129 n.64, 131· 33, 136, 140and n.I31,14S ConSiantinople II H8. 120. 123. 127, 12830, 135, 137-38. 142· 43, 145-46. 155·56. 16Hi2, 168.• 196, 205

Cons-tantjnus Africanus 115 Constama. queen of Le6n·Castile 211 COO$Uls, consulates 173 ~76, 179-80. 185·8<1 contado 187-88 Cookham 67 Corauo 208 Corinth 156 Comeli1.1s Nepos 101

Corpus Pdagianum 219 Corvey 36 Covadonga 21S-16 Crc:ma 184 Cremona 183 n.25. 184·85, 187-88 Crescenllus U crusades, eru"'ding 1. 12. 114, 156. 173, 177·78, 180, 187 Cuma0$170 Cuthberge~lawc

69

Cyprus 149 Daedalus 178 Daibeno, bi
Dane, Danish 7, 9. 13.37-38,39.40. 42·4<1, 46-47. 85. '11 Danegeld 85-86 Daniel120, 123, 128, 135. 140, 161, 164, 165. Dare$ Phrygius 101, l iS Darius, king of Pet!Wa 141

Oavid 199 Ott 0>mfnfftdalione Turonic« provincio4 13 Dt> m<Jn'bus et «tis primQrum Normannitl.e ducwn S De "iri3 illu.tttibus 108

Delphi 149 Demosthenes 146 Denmark 13. 37. 40. 41, 43. 4!1. 96n.ll DeuiZJO Diologue of 1he Exchequtr xiv, 75fr Diego Gclmire.t, bi_$bop and archbishop of Santia&o de Compos.tella 220 Dietrich of Oeutz 34 Dio Cmius 119. 127, 131 Diocletian,emperor 129 o .59, 153, 184 Diog_e11es 14S Dionysios, tyra.nt of SyracllSe 203 DiOR)'SOS 151

Domesday Book 63, 67. 70, 84.86 n.66, 88, 90, 92, 95 Dornitian, emperor 109 Donation of Constantine 120 Dnrylaion 137 Ooxopatre:o: ue Nilos Oox:>patres Drogo 200, 206 Drosifla and Clutrikles 148, 150-52 DubUn 70 Dudo or St Quentin S, 94 n.3 Dunscan . St, archbishop of Canterbury 58, 59,61 Durham 64, 12 Oyrrxhion 138 Ead~r 54, SS, 58. 59. 67, 70.72 EaduiBa.an72 Eberltard of Nellenburg 29 Edgar, lting of England 54. 58. 59. 6(), 61. 63,69-70.84.94. 96,98 Edward the Confe=r. l
Enjug<:r 5, 7 England ,:jij, xiv, xv, l5, 17, 19, 20. 29, 62.

64-65. 7SIJ, U3

231

Indu Ephraim (Bytantine ch.tonicler) 124 n.28 EpjpbaniiiS 104 Epipbanius of SaiiUilill 165 Episwla lld Pdrum 201-2 Epitome (Florus) 107, 109 Epitome dt CtU.$arlbus 107-8. 110 Erchempert 197 Erechtheus 147 Eric the Etoquent, king of Denmar-k 40

Eric, Icing of Sweden 42 Erik, Jarl (No<Way) 46 Erlung of Wiinburg 24 Eros 149, 152

E"xapokriseis 133·34, 16S Erythraean Sibyl201, 205,208-10 E4au 164 e~eha tology 20, 31·34, 123 Eudokia, empress 125 n.33 Eugenius, admiral, of Palermo 201, 205 Euripides 145 Eusebius of Cac$11roa J02, 103, J04 Eustatbii)S of Tbessalonica 134, 140 n. 131, 142, 143-44, 145, 146- ..,. 154 Eu'!it.athios!Eu.mathios Mak.rembolites 148 Eutrl)pius 101, 103, !OS. 107-8, Jll, ll3 Evesbam 62-64, 71 Exchequer 78-79, 83-84, ~93

Fnonks, Frankish 5, 18, 101, 113, US, US, 1113, 218. 221 Freculfu• of Lisieux 106-107, UO, Ill. 113, 11S,t16

F<edegar tl3 Frederick I Barbarossa, emperor 18, 21, 23, 0.35, 25, 29. 175, 180, 181..86, 189, 217 Frederick II, emperor 184, 193 n.B Frcising 27; su Otto Fritberic 69 Frome 67 Frontinus 113 frutoll of Micbelsberg 24, 33. 35 Frutolf of Reichenberg 100

tu-ros223 Fulk the Good, count of Anjou 9 Fulk the Red. f.:Ount of Anjou 9 fulk le Rtdlin, COUOt o! Anjou I, 3, .).10 Fulk Nerra. counl of Anjou 11 Fulk tbe Young, count of Anjou 8

Fa1candus: su Hugh falcand us Faleo of BeneW:nto 198-99

Gaimar86 Galich 164, 170, Galen 132 Gallic War (Caear) 104 Garda Ramirez, king: of Navarre 222 Gaul 9; :st~ lll.Jo Cisalpine, Transalpine genealogy, genealogies 2-7, 21, 39. 93, 1 ~. 222 Oenesili 1~61 , 22S,
Fathen, O.urch (latin ) 99, ItS

Genoa, Gcnocse 173-76.178-80,184. 187,

Euk.lel

1~

(Greek) 132, 144, 154 Fernando I, king of Lo6n-Ca5tile 214, 216 Ferrand, Prince 4 n. l2 Festu& 108-9.

JIO, 114

189, 197 Geoffrey Gris.egoneUe. oount of Anjou 9· 10, II Geof:&e.y of Monr:noutb xiij, 9, 17, 80-81,

86, 98, liS Geoffrey Malaterra 193, 194,204

Fiesole 187, 188·89

Geofftey Martel 5

Fishborougb 63 f'Wldel13·5,\3, 14,113·14, 221 Flandria gtMrosa 2 Aavian emperors 128 Flemish 9, 13 Florence 187, 188-89 'FJorenoe' of Worcester 55, 58. 59--60, 67, 68, 70, 71, 90,94 n.l Florus 106, 107,109, uo, 111, Jl3 forgery 16, 53, 72-74, 196-7,219 Fortune (/ortuna/n,'X:'l) 124-26, 133, 152, 195,202 Fraga 8 France :tii, xiv. xv, 3, 6, 7, 15, 17, 19, 20. 29. 32, 64-65, 113. 206

Gcorce the Monk IS9 n.4, 165 George Kedrenos 122 n.22 George Tornik... metropolitan bi$hop of Ephesusl42 Oen.ld of Wales l ltl Gerard, bishop of Hereford 62 n.lS

Gerardo da Carpinero 185 Gerhoch of ReicherSberg 31 , 33 Germanus (Ramsey) 58, 62 Gennany. German J:iii, xiv, xv, 16, 18, 32, 39, 65, 180, 1f!2..84, 201·2. 204, 206. 2()8.$9 Qe.rva.se of Canterbury 34 Gervase of Tilbury 36 Gtsta AmhDzitnsium domiM rum S.9 Gerta comitum Bardnont.nsium 221

232

Tile Puc.p11on of th• Past i11 Twelfth-Century EuroP'

Gtma c:onsuJum 1\ndtguvonml 2. 7. 10.

II ,

13 Ou111 Dllnomm 38, 44·45, ;tnd ff, 49 GaUl ~piscopotum fulhubrunmmsiwn 21

GaUl Ftdtrid 183 Gatfl Flomrtinonma 187 Guut FrUkrid 2H.S. JJ. 182 Gt8t4 Jlammubut8tn.JU t«ltsio.t prmtifir.um 39, 42, 44, 48. 49

GttsUJ poniificum (Willillm of Malmesbury) ss. 57. ss. n Gtlt4 Romanoru.m 9 GatG Trn-"U()I'Wft 17, 26,21 Gttial U3 Ghent 4 n.l2 Gideon 161.218 (iildtls 98 Oillcbcn of Mons 18 Oiovanni Codag.netlo 183-84, 187 n.32 Oiturr 38 Gt...illn. 83.86 Gi
58

Hadrian, emperor 16S Hagia Sophia. church of (Constantinople) 121, m. 138-39, I6I hagibgraphy l S-16, 28·29, !53, 162, Haimo: stt Hu' h o( Fleury I llloa (Jail) 41 Halberstadll6 Ham 164 ~lo mburg 39, 42 Hanniballl 9, 137 Harald. king of the Oanes 94 n.3

Harald Finehair. king of Norway •• Harold, king of &pnd 94-9S Hastings. N.ult of P

Hauteville dyna"y 192. 194, 200, 204.

2116-7 Hector 118,218 Heimo oiBambers 34, 35 Ut im.rkringt. 40, 44·4S, 48, SO lleliodoros 149 Hellas. Hellene. He:Ucniun xvi, 120. ll9tr llelmold olllos3u 19 HenlDtingSS, S6,60,69, 70 Henry II, empc:ror 29-JQ Henry IV, eropc:ror 19. 188, 200,208 Henry V, empc:ror 20, 24, 184 Henry VI, emperor 21-22, 183.208-9 l·lenr)' I. king nt E.nglaOO. x:iv, 64. 71 n.ll . 78.81 n.JI , 86n. 66.89, 92, 93, 9S Henry II. kinG ol En&Jaod II. 23, n n 10, 78-80. 82·84, 91·92. 93. 9S o.7, 96 Henry of Blois, bis:hop of Winches1~r 83, 88 Henry of {Jurg\lndy 214 Henry of Huntingdon 80. 86 n.64 Henry tbt Uon. duk~ of Saxony and Ba...U28 Henry lbe Proud, duke o( Saxony and Bavaria 28 Henry Aris.tippus 2D3 Hcraditus \45 Heracliu§, 4!'mperor 122. 131 Herlkleia (Thraoo) 134 Hennann lhe Lame 3$ Herod 164, 212-13 Herodotus 14.5, 130 n. l'll> Herr:ml or Land>bera 33 HClcktah 164 Hildebc.rl of Lavardin, bisbop of le Mans ix. 144 I lildegard ol Blnaen 31 Hippo<:ralf$

Habl.ktuk 164 Hldt$152-53

1'5

Hippolytus of Rome 16S HiJpaniD 22+ 2.5

Index Hisroria Augu.tta 100, 110 Historia Compost~llaM2 19·20 Hisroria ec
85, n.S7. 101 Hi.storia regum Britumia~ 9. 11S 1/isU>ria RomoMI06, 107·8, 110, Ill , 114, 115, HistoriD Silens~ 21•16 Hlstoria Wtlfortma28 HiJtnri« (Tatitu$) 10$ Hi..ttnritw adv~nu.r paganos (Orosius) 101 , 105, 114 Holy Apostles, churches of (Co11$tantioople and Kiev) 162 Holy Graill2 HQmtr, Uameric 14'2, 146-47, 148, 1S4 HonoriU$, cmpeTC)r lOS HQnQriUS Augu5todunensi~ 33, 136 n. lll Hugh of Aavigny 33 Hugb of floury 101 Hugh ofSt Victor 34, 102 Hugh Falcandus 191, 193, W1·2, 209 Humphrey W6 Hungary, Hungarian xi.i , xiii, 168. 184 Hydatiu.s 104 HysmiMQ.Jid IJysminias 148-49,151-52 b.n>Slav the Wise, prince of Kieo.· 15$-59, 161·62, 166, 169-70 Iberia. Iberian xli, x.Ui, xv, lUn JcelaJ:'Id, lcelan&rs., Icelandic 37-48 ldrisi WI llarion, metropothan bishop of Kic'' IS9 n.S, 161 1/iud 146 Imago murul/ 33 lmban dela Toor 65 i.ln{Krium RomDn«m 22 Ine, king of Wesse-x 96 lngclheim 30 Innocent II, pope 199.20.1 Innocent nt, pope 14Z lnst.itw.o Cnuli 96-91 Jrcland 70 Isaac II, emperor 139 Ishmael 164

233

lsidoreSt,oiSeville81 n.31, 102, 113.178. 216, 224 n.55, 225 fsleilr 38 t.itrullngalxJk 37, 49 ltalikos: set Michael halikos lta1os: s~~ John ltalos ltaJy, Italian x.ii. xv. xvi, ll4, 146. l?Jff, 195·99, 208·9 ltintrarium Antonini 196 lurti Dolgorukii 168, 169 Waslav, son of Jaroslav the Wise 166 Was!Av Mstlslavich 168 Jacopo Doria 189 Janus 103 Jerome, St, 21, 103, 106·8, 114 Jerusalem 12, 139, 140, 166, 179 Jews, Jewish t27, 131·32 Joachim of Fiore, al>bor of Corazzo wg.10 John I Tzimiskcs, emperor 137 Joho H, emperor 121. 137

John IX Agapetos ~ patriarch of Constantinople 121 John, Jbbot of S. Sal\'atote ncar Beoeve,oto 199 John of Biclaro 104 John of Casauria 196 John of Marmouticr 11 John of Salisbury xiii, 18 n.9. 23, 32, 36, 80, 85 n.l , 101·2, 116, 204 Jobn of Worcester 54, 55, 58, 59-60, n, 73 John Chrysosrom, Sr 16S·66 John Geomctres 143

Jobn J..los 118 Jonh Kinnamos 122 n.23, 13~39 John Lydu' 129 n.S9, 131 John MaJalas 121 n. IJ . 159 n.4, 16S Jolin Phoku 144 John Skylicz.es 122 aod n.22. 123, 205 Jobn Tzeues 119·W, 153-54 John Zooaras 122 n.Z2. 123, 126·36, 14.1 JO«
Jugunha 104 JOlicb JO Julian the Apostate, emperor 154 Julian emperOr$ 109 Julius Caesar ix, 21, 22, 23, 30, 1()3, 104-S, 114, 119, 127·28. 189 Justin I. emperor 196 Justin II , emperor 131 n.75

Th~ P~rc~ption of th~

Past in

Ju.stin (Marcus Justinu$ Junianw.) 101 . 102, 105, 113, 115 Justinian J. t=mpc:rvr 23. 78 n.t4, 101. J03, 106-8.121, 125,129, 130 n.74,13l , l .l4 n.98, ill, 137, lliS Ju:stmian U. ~I"'f 196 Justinian Prima 121 . 145 Kuistrchronik 20 Kbtamon 138 Kedr~oos: su Georgo Kedre•~os

Ki
l..a Ca•'819S Ladoga 160 1-"8• Ouni97

1Ago£d"w di94

l.oonbcn, king of ItAly 6 Lambcn or Ardres ), 7, 8, 12, 13 Lwnben or St Omer4, 8 Lamech 164 l..ampen ol Hersleld 24 undn4m4b61< 31, •9 l..andollus Sagu IID-8, 112, 113 Landoll Junior 181 Landull Senior 181, 183. 188 U nfranc:, i!TChbisbop of Canterbury 54 Laon 6S L.as Navas de Tolosa 225 kludtl206

Lay of Igor's COMp•ig• 170 l.q
97-98. - flt11rid Primi16n.6 - Willelmi 88 Lcjrc 40 Leo V, emperor 108 Leo ol Ootta 195, 196

Leo .... IJHooo 160 ~int:S7

LeOn, Lconese 183,211. 21>-14, 216, 219, ZIIJ-23 t..OO. 149 Levante (Spain) 224 L' HI.
l.IJHr GIV<W (Pnim) 29 Ub 24

Twelfth·C~ntury Euro~

Liber d~ rtgno Slciliat 201 Libtr Elitmi!t 78 n.l7.tn n.30, 84 UlNr f~udorum malor 223

Ub
178 UlHr mottaSierli dt llyda 'f1 n.20 Libtr pontifitalis (Meu.) 26 Uber po..,if/t olL• (Rome) 200 Ub
~ 26; ' " Al&er Upr.mdo 181 U..C1U64 Uthu.ania 171

Li.-.sofw Abbooof8 ec 10 Livy 103, 104-S, 109, 174 l..oc'hC$: set ·J'bomas Lodi 181-84 'f..ocothere' chronicle 159 • -• IAitt 8. 10. \1 lombard Le-ague 189 Lombard, Lomb•rd> 101, 115, 183-84, 19596, 198-99, 202,204, 2(11 Lombardy I n, 180 London, council of (1108) 65; •« £ llward Loll64 Lothu lU. tmpti"'f 2-'

l.otharinp • n.9, 26. 28, 30 Louis abe StammererS Louis VII, king of France 32 Louis VJJJ, tlng of France 4 n.12 Loul~ o f Arnslein 29 Lucan 178 LIACa$OITu y 225 l...u«ha, Loo:he,. 178, 18$ Lucian 152 Luciusll. pope 209 Ludus tk AnitU$ Prol<>5plltharius 19~ n.20, 197 Macedonian empire Ill Magdeburg 26. 30 Magi Magog 160 Mahdiya 177, 179 Mahome1208 MaillL 26. 30 Maio ol Sari 198 Majorca 177-79

Indu Mnhuerra: see Geoffrey Malaterra mtJ/Ik 203

Ma.nasses: su Con.Jtantine Manasses Manid1ae;all$ 137 Manrua l&S MMUd I, Empero< u. 118-9, 121... IJO, 132, 136, 137,139, 143" 142, 1<6, 1~9. 20S m..,Kripl> , gencrol II Off, 126 man\l$Ciipts: - 8rrlin, StaaLsbibUotlttk Lat. F.223 110 n.32 - o,..,,.;., Jfi97-J9J9 (JIJ9j) U4 54l4-2S (/349) 113 6439-6451 (3108} 113

9170-13 (1347) 113 95)1-32 (1348) 113 - O.mbrldgt, Trlnlly O.lltgt 0.4.34 110 n.32, 113 0.4.M 110 n.32, U3 - Dublin, Tr/llity O.lkg< 503 60 n.18 - Eng~. Stifbbiblk>i.lt
n

- Oxford, Bod/dan W1 60, Libr. Atdr. Stld. B /6 110

Corpus Christi Cu//qe/57

59{)0, 72

Jesus College 61 112 Llneoln Colleg< lat. 100 113 - Paris, BN lat. 41171 110 n.32 /at, 4/J13 IIJ lat. 41174 113 lat. 4117~7 110 n 32

""- 5795 112

llll. 5802 lat. 8319 lat. 127/0 lat. 17543

113 113

18

l1J .....ocq.lat. 310 114

- St c;..u.n, 621 110 n.32 - St Omo. fill ond 1fl6 114 - Vcttlaln, R<'l. ;.,, /650 110 n.32 Onob.lat.68 114 - Wornmr O.r!ltdral, /kan and Chapttr Ubrary A 4 60 n.30 Marathon, battle ol 119 Man:cllinus Cornel lG4, 106. 113 M~Uus1S3

Mataa.. emperor I 34

235

Mariauus Scorus 35 Marius 7 Mariu$ of Avenchc:,s 104 MOI')'IIis lSO M•lilda ol F.lctupll3 Matilda, sitkr c( RotPer II of Sicily 199 Maurice, emperor 131 n.7S, t6S Mein~·cr\, bishop of Padcrbom 27 MeJchior 21"2 Melissenos (Nikcphoros), Cae$8r 138 Me: nander 165 Me~ 59 MU\da220

Mcrovia&ians 3. 4, 16. 21 McnebwJ 30 MedlOdius (P
Michael IV. the Pa.pblagonian, emperOr 12S n.33 Mkb•cl Att2ldaou 1.. Mid=l O>oaiatco, m<~ropotiwl biobop ol Alhefts . , 141.... 147 Michael Glykti 122 n.22, 123, 126, lll·36, 145 Michael Haglotheodnorites, /ngOlheJcs 1ou dromou 115 n.34 Mlchaelllalitos 119 n.7 Micha
Monumenta Germa.niae Historica (MOH) 15-16.36

Moon. MoorUh 191, 213, 215, 216, 218-19, 221 Morcar94

Moocow, MU>C<)vite 168-71 Moses 164 Msrislav, Prince or K~v 158, 166 Myra 198

236

The Perception of the Past in nvelfth-Cenwry Europe

Narbonne 220 Nausi.krares 150

Navarre 213, 222, 224 Nebuchadneuar 128, 164

Nero. emperor 198 Nen•a, emperor lOS Nestor 162 New Tct.:lament 164 NicephQr~ : see Nikcphoros Nicctas: see Njke.tas Nicholas, monk (Worcester) 70

Nicholas, bishop of Methene 118 n.2 Nicholas Hag.iotheodorites. metropoHtan bls.hop of Athens 142 Nicholas (8 Ka,.atf>~gpov) t teacher in

Olosta.ntioople 142

Nidaros 41 , 49 Nigel, bishop of Ely 78, 81 n.JO. 89 n.80, 91 -92

42-44 Oppenheim Orange: se~ William Orderic Vitalis xili.• 8, 64-65, 97 n.20, 193-94 ordin~s 206

Ordoiio II, king of t.c6o 223 Ordooo Ill, king of le6n 223

Orestes 164 Oresund 42-43 Origo gmtif Romanae 107-8

Orosius, Paulu•21.101·3, 105-8. 110, Il l. 112, ll"-66. 200 ()seney70 Oswald. bishop of Worcester and archbish01) of York 54 n.2. SS-58, 67-70

Oswaldslaw 70 Oswig S7 Otr.wto 205

Nikephoros I, emperor 59 Nikephoros II Pho kas, emperor 131 Ni.kcpbor
Otto I (lhe Great). cmperor23. 41, 183 Oito Ill. emperor 11. 19 Otto of freising 18, 19~ 21, 31, 33-34, U:Nl, ll6, 182,204

134 Nikephoros Brycnntos 12"2 n.23

Otto Morena 24-25, 182 Ottonian 20, 23, 181

Niketas Cbotliates t"'22 n.23, 126 n.4l, l36,

Outremer 12 0\·ic~o 215, 219

137-39 Niketas Eugenianos 148·49 Nilos Doxopatres 205 Nineveh 166

Noah 160, Nor 39 Norbert of Xanten31. 36 Norid 160

Norman, Nonnans xii, xiv, xv. xvi. 78. 79. 80, IP. 95,97-98, " Jif Normand)' S, 64, 94 n.3, V'J , 194 Nortbamptoo 94-95 Norway, Norwegian 37, 31>-48, 97 No,.gorod 160. 164 Nllmberg30

0ystcin, archbishop of Nidaros 41

Palermo 177, 179. 191.201.203 Pannonia 160 PmuMon 32 Pasdlasjos 153

Patarene (Milan) 181 l'llul the Deacon 26, 101.103, 107-108, Ill. 114, 115, 178, 195 Paulinos 125 n .33

Paris 14; ue manuscripts Parma 185 Pavia, Pavese 184, J87 Pedro I. king of Aragon and Navarre 213 Pt.dro U, king or Aragon and Count of

Ochrid 121 Odense38 Odin 40 Odysseus 146 Offa (lather of Dan) 40 Ogier 1

Olaf Haraldsson 39 Olaf Trywason, king or Norway 37, 39, 41, 42-46 Old lbstamcnt 12, 159 n.4, 164 Oliver 1, 218-19 Olo!SkOtkooung. King of Sweden 38,

Barcelona 214 Pedro Su,rt2., archbishop of Sttntiago de

Compostclla 220 Pelayo, bi$hop or Oviedo 219 Pelayo, spa~ariiJ.1 216 Pelops 178 Pergamon 144 Pc-ride$ 119

Periqc:lwe Livianae 109. JIO Persia, Persian 119, 123. 125. 140, 145, 146, 147 Peter tbe Deacon 196-97

Index Peter of Blois 92 Pt:tnm;.h U 9 Pbaraoh 164 l'hil>
RamOn Berc:n&uer IV, king of Aragon and count of Barcelona 221·22 Ramsey Abbey X, SS, 58, S9, 67. 68, 73, 95,96 Ranulf de Glanvlll i6 R-.1 of C=bni I

Readil1gi0

Pbllip I. kine of Fr1nco 6 Philip 0 Augustus., K.i.ng of Ftaoee 4 n. 12 l'bilip of A1saee 4 n.12 Philip emperor 138 Pbilip, king of Maoedon 138 Pbilippopolis 138, 144 Pblhia 149 p/tllt(HoM (Envy) 125-26 Phpio/ofus 132 176. 183, 185, 187

ReJe6 rrnovatio xi, 121·22, 129-31. I.J8.39

Pieuo Mez:z.obarba, btjhop of Aorence U:18

RhtttoriCJJ 145 Rhineland 26 Rhodes 149 RhM/4 168-70 Ridlard I. kin1 of EacJand 1111 n.67 Rimard de Lucy n n.IO Riobard fitzN'...l 751f Richard of St Victor 113 rik/41

Pi-= Pic:ts en

Pipe Rolls S4. 92 PiSI, Pisan lSI, 174·80, 184, 185. 187, 197 PissellO

Pj6&6K «< Placo 78, 145 Plutarch 132 Po, river and plain lfO, 185 Pwm of Alm~rf" 218 p<J
polill46. 154 popes, papacy. pap>J avi. ll, lS6

l'o
Probus, Emperor 16S Prodromos: stJt T'heodore Prodromes Prooper of Aquiooioe 104, 1(77 Prilm l9 fxlb; IU Michael PJeUos Pyrenees 221. m Pyrrhus, IGng of Epiros 10$, 138 Pythagoras 14$ quodrivium 35 Quodriptutilus 97

Qumlilian 20:2 Rthcwin24 Ralph of Diss (Dioeoo) 80 n.26, 81 n.JO, 102·3, 116 Ralph Lufla, bishop ol Cl>Jchester 64, 6S Ramio-o I, king of Lcdn 223 Ram6n Berengoer I , count of Barcelona

m

237

Rionbert39 RipoU 221 Riurik, Riuri.kids 159. 160, 162.f>4, 167·70 Rohen de Btthuoe, bullop of Hereford fb Rob!Y ""· (alJo called Robert de Monic) 80, 103 Robert. earl ot Leloester 17 n.lO, 89 n.80 Robmi1nD (Jorclanes) 106 Rome. Roma il, xtii. rvi, 9 , 11, ~u.JO. 3', 36. 82·83, 96, tM. 119, UW,

238

The Perctption of the Past in T~·tlfth·Century EurQpt

140, 144, 145, 146, 1 53-~ . 165.()6, 169, 174. 178, 182, 183, 184, 189, 195-96,202, 205, 206.207 Romuald of Salcmo 191. 200, 203, 204 Romulus 109. 124 Roocngfia~ decrteS o( 181 Ronce\'aux 1 Rosh 160 Roskilde Chronicle 39, 49 Rouen64 Rufinus 103, 104.• 107-8 On lht Ruin of lhe Land of tht Rus' 110 Rupert of Deutt 31

Sallu51 7, 10, 103, 1()4, US, 195, 202 Sal>burg 27 'Samian Sibyl' 209 Sampiro, bis.bop of A!torga 215 Samuel 164 S. aemenre. abbey of (Casauria) 196 S. Sah·atore, abbey of (near Benevento)

198-99 Sancho VU, king of Navarre 214

Sancho I, king of Portuaa.l 214 Sandwich 95 n.S Santiago de Compostella 220 Saoto l)omingo de Silos 214

Rus' 157tr, 16H8 Russia, Russian xii, xvi, 157·59. 164, 166

San Vinoeoz.o al Voltumo 195 Saozanomc 187

Sagraju 215 Saints:

Sarah 164

Andrew, Aposlle \61 n. ll, 164

Antony 165 Barbatu.s 198 BartholorMw ()f Simeri 207 Basif the New 165 Benedict 196

Boris the Oleb 162, 166 Edmund% Euthymiu.s 16.S Lucy 153

Nicbolas 198 01al43. 46 Peter, Apostle 164 P1acidus 196 Sabas 165 Sigfrid 38 Stephen of SurO'Zb 143 Symeon St)'Utes 134-35 see o.Lw Anselm. Augustint., Basil, Dunstan, Edward the Confessor, Gregory of Natianzos. lsidore, Jerome, Jobn Chrysostom

St Albans64 St Bertin 4, 7

StDenis 18 St Martin le Orand, ohurch 67 S t Omer 4 n . l2; sn afso Lambert

St Sophia, church of (Constantinople): S<e Hagia Sophia (Kiev) 161, 163 Saladin 208 Salamanca 220

Salerno 200 sauan ts, 20, 24-25 Salisbury: see John

Saracens I, )74, 178, 198,218 Sardinia 117 S:Hum 103 Saul 164 Sawtrey Abbey 95 n.8

Saxo Grammaricus 38, 40. 41, 44-48. 49. 104 n.l3

Saxon,Saxonsl9,24,27 Saxony 28. 34 Scandinavia, Scaodinavian xiiff. J1ff, 160 Scipio 137 Septimius Se't'erus, emperor 134 Seville 216. 220 Sheba, queen of 164 Shem 164 Shrivenbam 67

Sicard or Ctemona 183 n.25,188 n.33 Sicily, Sicilian 1S3 n.82, 156, 179, 191ft Sidonius A.pollinaris 10 Sifred 'the Oane' 7, 1.3-14

Sigehert of Gembloux 33, 35, 80, 102-3 Sigrid StorrMa 43-45 Simon Magus 165

Simon, bishop of Worcester 69 Sjaelland, Sjaellander$ 40_.42 Skara 38, 39 Skuld 40 S kyUttes: su John, Stephen Slavs 42·43, 45, 160 Smoleusk 163·64 Snorri Stutlu.son 40-47, SO

Scxrotes 203 Socrates, ecclesiasrical historian 104 Sodom 165, 199 ·Solinus 113 Solomon 164, 165, 199 Song of Roland xiv, 1, 9, 86 n .65, 2 16, 218

Sozomen 104

239

Index Spain 1. 21lf( Speyer30 Staufer21·2.5. 28 Stavelot 18: see Wib."ttd ~phanilts and lchnelalts 201 Stephen.• ting of England 69-72. 93 Stephen Skylitzes 145 Stoudios, monastery o f in Constantinople

162 Suabia 28 Sucton.ius 108-11, 113 Suger, abbot o( St Denis 85 Suular 1 6~. 168 Svcn Aggcscn 40. 46, 47, 49 Sven E.\tridsen, lUng of Denmark 39

Sven Forkbc:a rd, king or Denma rk 41-47

Sven, Jar! (Norway} 46 Sverrir, King of Norway 47 Sviatopolk 'lbe Cursed' 166 Svold43 Sweden, Swedish 38, 39, 42, 44, 47-48, 207

Syracuse 153 Tacitus 103-5, 201

Taf)cted, Count of Leece 209 Tarqui_n the Proud, king of Rome 127, 129 n.59, 130 Tarragons 220 Tegemsee 114, 116 Toles<: 199 Teresa, dauglner of Alloliso Vl 213 Terril d 'Otrunto 205 Tutullus 7 Texrus Roffen.Sis 96 Tbatcbam 67 Theobald, archbishop of Canterbury 73 Theodora, emprt."SS 129 T heodore 11 Laskaris:, Emperor 144 Theodore Balsamon 134, 14S Theodore Prodromos 118, 124 n.3Z, 140 n.131.145, 148-51 Theodore of Smyrna 153 Theodore Styppeiote' 126 n .41 Theodoret 104, 128 Theodosius J. emperor lOS Theodosi\ISU, e.mpt.r or 12S n.33 Theodo$iU$, abbot of the c~ves monastery

162, 166 Tbeodricus 41, 43, 48, 49

Tbeophilos, emperor 153 Tbeophylact of Ocbrid I~ n . l31 The5.$1llon ic~ 14"2, 144~ su a/S(} Eu&tath.ios of Thessaloni.ca

ThQma$ U, archbishop of York 66 Thomas Loche!l 7. 9- 11 Thomas of Marlborough 62, 63 Thomas, prior o( St Mary's Worcester 60 Thomas Brown 83 Tbucydides 145, 140

Thuringia 28 Thurstan, archbishop ol York 66, 67 n.62 Tibunine Sibyl 32 Timarion 152-53 Titus 139 Toledo 212,214-15, 217,220 'Torquatiu.t 7 Tortona 184 Tootig 94 TouJ 26 touphD 129

"foumai 112 TracJatu.t th legibus 92

translaliQ imperii 22 Tricolumnis 19, 81,84 Trier 26~ 30. 104 n.13, ll3 Troia 200 Troj aO<.Troy3, 4 .21, 30, 119. 147,178,

183 Thnisia 178 Thrks 147 Tuscany 176 l'ver 171 Tyconiu.~ 3·1

1)>r.l42-4S

Tyre: :~ee William Tzerzes: su John fuw:.s Uhtred 60 Ulys:ses 178; s~e. also Od)'sseu.s Unni 39 Urban II , pope S Urraca, queen ofCastile~ l..e6n21 1 , 217 u...tg., 222 Valdemar I. king of Denmark 41.47 Valens. emperor 101. 105 Valcns. Vcttius, astrologer 128, 135-36 Valentini.an, emperor 10'2. 114 Vandal$ 183 Varangian 160 Vano~

'W>terg6tland 38 Vegctius 113 VelvuM 144 Venice 145, 200 (peace conference o() Venos.a 206

TIU! Ptretption of dtt P/J.Jt in Twtlfth· Ctntury £u,o~ Venus21 Verdun 26 Vem,udo I I. king of Lc6n 223 Verona l8S Victor of Tunnwma 104 Vik•npxvi .S. 7, -13

Virpll78 Vi•igochs, Visigothic 183, 215·16 Y,'ta An.skltrli 39 Vilu lltinrici II im~J
168 V«slav of Polotsk 166 Vrevolod 166 Walblingm21 Walbert 1 Wlltu, abbot of E't·elham 63 Woltheof, cor1 97 n.W Well VI 2& Wells 21 Wcnds43 WeJtbury 67 Wt!red the IWI}', Count ol BU<dorut 121 w.mam 1. !be conqueroc. kine of EacW>d 62. 63. 83. &5, 86 n.64, 87. 90. 93.94 n.l,

9S,97,9& William I, king of Sidly 197-9A, 204 William JI. king of' Sicily 200, 202. 204, 209 Wtbold of Swvelo< 19 n.IS, 36 Wilham of Apulia 194 William of Molmabuc y xiii, 54, SS. S3-S9.

n. 87. 95-96. 9&, 100.3. 101. 113, 116 William of Oranae 1 William of Tyre •iii, t2 Wincboomhe 58. 67 Wmchester SA, 71, 98 n.2• (annals of) WinUii8J

Wipo2A Woprecht of Gr<Mtzscb 29 Wolverhampton 67 Woro~-ster xvi, Slft'

St Alban, church of ~I , 71 St Helen. dlur<:h ol61).61. 68-69. 11 Sl Mary, mooastt<)ld>UTCh of S1, 58,

S9. ~1. 68. 69. 72 StPeter. cathedral church of 57, 58, 59, ~1 ,72

Wonns 30 Wulfstan.,. bishop o( Worcester 54, SS, 60, 68, 71. 73 W)~te (also called WynsinusiWeosinu:sl WonsiU>IWiouinus) S6-S9. 61 , 62, 67~. 70 Xerxes. king or P.,rsia 141 Yngliflgasttgt.~

40. 48

Yng/lngaua/ 39, 40 York S3-S9 Ypr<s • n.l2 Zctllos 138

Zeus lSI Zoe. empress llS Zonata.s: n.~ John Z.Onruas

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