THE PERCEPTION OF THE PAST IN TWELFTH-CENTURY EUROPE
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THE PERCEPTION OF THE PAST IN TWELFTH-CENTURY EUROPE
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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
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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 standhcd oonrerc.noe paper cn1itlcd 'The P'overt)' ur Historiography in 'l'welfth~Century Sootland'. 3
Ed. A. PtlpadopouJos.-Kerameus. Ntx,rn PttropolitanUt ofTh<SongofRoiMd (Ithaca and London, l
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{ Abbl 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 conqun 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
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 Vcrbrting, 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 OeutSr, 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 $tJliii·Btrtin'. in Politics tmd Rilwal ln Url1 Mtdkvol Europe (l...ondon, 1.986), 8.18l-S; lhc matter will be further explored in the introduccions to the traoshuioas of 1he se>d T. Re••er ,.._;vely (Mand>esleok ;:u the authorship of the Aonalisra Saxo d$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, 'OiIO, 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. 1tify 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. fj6561f 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.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 lsllindskWtciLt 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$Cmer. Judith Green and Patrick. Wormald Cor thelr commcn~oo lbe C$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-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$, to an extent litcrar)' productions, of ooune can be liC:c:n u ~w,,.-ing a practical purpo~ in increasing the wi5dom gus (1983), 6, wrtic.b criticises "writers on the liberal ~ns' oo S\ICh groul)d$, 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$. not what it uu&bt perhaps to be'. Dialugw. (1983). 106. This does not preclude the possibility that Richard sometimes ideaUsed prac-tioe, Dialogus, (t90l). 12. PtrhapHoncemed to obtain respect lor his book. Richard emphasised tbC- skiU o! hi:s scienoe. the need !OJ predrill (Odotd, 1981). 175, cin h•w; note abo that the Ugu HttUid Pn'mi can be seen as a paraiJel auc:mpt to create a systematic. coUectlon from the Quadripilrtitus. " See also A. Gransden, HI.rwri 44. Note abo R.khann in'r-entioo of an c1ymoJog,· for tbe \\'Ord fon:.rta, Dilllogw ( J983), 60. On Richard 's style and form generally. see Liebcrmann 1 E:inl~ihmg . 9()..95• ., DialiJgus (1902), 11; also 164 on the cardinal virtlle$. •, 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 alther 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 Ri, 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 hslliUI 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 Malater repute in Denm.ark as a law· giver (or the bouse~arb; set Sara GrolmmtJiicus Danoru.m rqum heroumquehi$lori4 Books X·X'VI, td. E. Cbristiao.sen (Britim Archawlogjcal Repotts, lntanational Series, 84; O.rlord, 1980), i, book x, 3744, and N . HOOper. 'Tilt ltousec:arts i.n Ellgla.nd Jo the Elevemh Century·, Angfq..Nomwn Sn,d;n, 7 (Woodbridge, 1985), 166·8. " Mmo,ia& ofSt Edmund't Abbey, i, 46, 126. William of Malmcsbllry. Gionsof tu ooUec:tors. See also above. appendix n. 8. u Liebermann, Ge.«!Jzt, i. 612·7. Liebcnnann, 'lnstituta Cnud•, 79, lu&(!:ests that the aulhot's original Iitle \\"~t.SinstirutJI de legibus St'CIIIIdum Cnud Rt'gtm Anglorum: see also 90 which SUU;t3fS that the if he does not have eas)' access to the full volumes, he will be able to see at a glance what their opinions were) and what memorable deeds they transmitted through the centuries to posterity .11
In effect, Ralph's list is a bibliography of the works he 'abbreviated' from, and -as many modem counterpans - it is a slightly inHaled one. It turns out that he probably knew some of the works only second-band, but there is oo doubt that be consulted the majority himself. 9 The list opens with Justin and Josephus
s On the work and its dating: 1'h' Historia Pomificalis of John of Salisbury , eeL and tr. M. Chibnall (Oxford, 1986), in particuJar xxx & xxxix. 6 In her edition of John's Jlistoria pondfiatlis, Joe. ci1. Olibnatl Jea,·e.s ~1 ug.hl$ 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.nuc 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~ 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-), 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.,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, 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)'SOntine 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.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, tUJilws, Athmisc!te Abt
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 eaigenc: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 teians 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
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.'
Ita/Wn Communal Narratives
179
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.
I80
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-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$;t()ricaJly ctnlr~l.
184
Tht Perception of the Past in Twtlfth-Cemury Ellrope
pine Gauls, Germans, Hungarians and Longobards (sic), elected Diocletian, a noble from Rome, to defend them, and then after his death the Milanese Maximian, who beat back Gisulf of the Longobards and Alexius of Hungary_ Codagnello, evidently not a supporter of Frederick II, saw Italian history as a whole sionply as city resistance to invasions. And that was when he saw history in terms of the regnum ltolicum at all; his Annale.< Piacentini, which he wrote up at the same time, are almost as city-ok more closely at an annalistic text. let us, as a sample, look at the annals of Crcmona as a typical late rwelfth·century text with some time depth. even if a much lc...ss detailed one than the maritime chronicles, to see how the image of the city develops. The Cremona annals begin, as do those of Genoa, with the First Crusade. They are nm in any sense a full narrative thereafter, however: mosl of the year entries are only a few lines long at most and there are many gaps. In the early twelfth century they pursue a fairly characteristic path of disasters and wars: in 1098 the Cremonesi attacked Crema; in 1107 they burnt Tortona; in 1110 they fought Brescia; in the same year (recu Bllj Henry Y came to Rome; in Jill the Milanesi took Lodi; in 1113 there was a fire in Cremona; in 1116 [recte 1117] there was an earthquake (almost all north Italian annals record this); and in the
:0 The Milanese Gt$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 IJrixil'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 "" mxx: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$. 1901), xxvij..lXix, 0. Cnpitani, 'Motivi e momeotl di storiograJb mc\'e'·a· in A. Gui:Uou d al., Jl Me.zzogiorno d.IJJ' Bizantini a Fednico II (Stnria d'llalia UTET. Ill, Turin 1983), d pecially 563·614. P.lrticularly useful are the papcn gi\·en in the ''arious Bari ·s:iomate normanno.$Ve"'e' conference$, n-cu.ahly Socitrd, portr'-"ppOI() Mll't>tli tli Rugg~ro 11 {Sari, 1979). 1
The Political Use of the Past in Norman Sicily
193
coherent unifying myths which one can see emerging in other parts of Europe. In contrast a ~eat many myths have developed about 'Norman Sicily'. First it is important to reject the notion which prevailed until comparatively recently that Norman Sicily was 'the first modem state', a conscious creation run on rational lines and dominated by cosmopolitan bureaucratic elements from the Byzantine and Muslim worlds.8 More recent work has suggested that, despite the kingdom's undoubted precocity in certain areas, feudal relationships and western notions of royal power predominated, and that in many respects the apparently prosperou.< and powerful regno was a ramshackle ad hoc creatioo.9 The second myth concerns the Normannitas of the kingdom. This problem has attracted considerable attention and there is no need to rehearse the various arguments here, especially as the issue has been the subject of a judicious survey by Graham Loud. 10 There is little evidence fo r any identifiea· tion with the Norman past in twelfth-century Sicily. None of the area's historians were themselves Normans with the exception of Geoffrey Malaterra, writing right at the beginning of the century." Also all, again with the exception of Malatcrra, hardly use the term Norman : Hugh Falcandus. for example, uses it once in a rather casual manner. J2 The northern historian Orderic Vital is, who had an exceptional inierest in the south as a result of the ties of bis monastery, was right when he wrote that the Normans who had gone
11
This notion wh[ch has itS roocs pertaps i:n Burckhardt'$ 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.'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 thin 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). 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 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 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. Twelfth-century peroeptions of the past have a vital place in these argument.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 gcstf th~ Eucharirt in tht &rly ScholiuJic Period (Oxford . 19S4), espcdally 137-41. :» CAl. 165-86 (Castilian translation, 187-206). )(l CAl, 17S: ·Pontius isra 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).
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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 CbroniSlav 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«-14, 216, 219, ZIIJ-23 t..OO. 149 Levante (Spain) 224 L' HI.mi1nD (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 Tolesterg6tland 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~Jd 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. dlurIWiouinus) 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