information on topics as diverse as grammar, mathematics, and medicine, Isidore discussed the topic of history writing.
Predictably, history is seen as a subsection of grammar, which itself is part of rhetoric. Grammar Isidore defines as “the art of writing,” and history as “a written narrative of a certain kind.” He distinguishes history from fable and myth: fable expresses truth by means of fiction . . . while poetic myth expresses truth by means of fictions about the gods . . . History differs from these kinds of narrative in being true in itself. It is “the narration of deeds done, by means of which the past is made known.”43
Isidore went on to argue that history must depend upon the account of eyewitnesses. He writes: “None of the ancients would write history unless he had been present and had seen what he narrated; we grasp what we see better than what we gather from hearsay. Things seen are not represented falsely.”44 A historian writing about the past is thus basically forced to be a compiler dependent upon his sources, which hopefully are or rely upon eyewitness accounts.
By all standards, Bede was the most outstanding historian of the early Middle Ages. In his Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum), he adopted a Eusebian approach to church history, listing and quoting from his sources “in order to remove all occasions of doubt about those things I have written, either in your mind or in the minds of any others who listen to or read this history,” as he wrote in his dedication to King Ceolwulf of Northumbria. In his treatment of the biblical period, Bede stood within what Southern has called the scientific tradition of medieval historiography.45 Bede adopted the six-age scheme of Augustine46 and popularized Isidore’s BC/AD dating. Within the six-age pattern, Bede incorporated a genuine concept of autonomous development in history. Southern has described Bede’s originality in the following manner:
Just as the first Day began with the separation of light from darkness, and ended with the fall of Night, so the first Age began with the creation of man, continued with the separation of the good from the bad, and ended with the destruction of the universal Flood. Bede applied this form of exegesis to each of the six ages. As a result, each age acquired a distinct momentum, similar in pattern but distinct in its results: at the beginning of each there was an act of restoration, succeeded by a period of divergent development, leading to a general disaster which set the scene for a new act of restoration. I think that Bede is quite original in giving to each Age this rhythm of dawn, growth, and destruction, containing the promise of a new dawn. It is a rhythm which has some faint similarity to the Hegelian dialectic of history, and this similarity is strengthened by the way in which Bede ties his ages of history together in a movement analogous to the seven ages in the life of man. The first age, Infancy, is the time beyond the reach of memory before the Flood; the second, Childhood, is the time before Abraham when human language was first formed; the third, Adolescence, is the time of potency, when the generation of the Patriarchs began; the fourth, Maturity, is the time when mankind became capable of kingly rule; the fifth, Old Age, is the time of growing afflictions; the sixth, Senility, is the time in which the human race moves into the decrepitude which precedes the age of eternal rest . . . Bede brought history to the point at which it could be looked on not only as a succession of distinct ages with development of their own, but also as a kind of biological process preceding from age to age.47
Although Southern has here probably overstated the originality of Bede,48 this medieval historian certainly grasped something of the developmental process in human affairs and pondered deeply over the shape of universal history. In most of his works, however, Bede manifests the medieval fascination with the miraculous and the visionary, but it must be remembered that he, especially in the ecclesiastical history, was writing for the edification of his audience and was stressing the role of divine providence in Anglo-Saxon conversion to Christianity.
In the Carolingian period, under the Frankish rulers Charlemagne (768–814) and his son Louis the Pious (814–40), significant intellectual and educational developments occurred. Royal prescription decreed that monasteries and bishops’ houses should be centers of education. At Charlemagne’s palace school, the seven liberal arts—the Trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic) and the Quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy)—were cultivated. Latin was restored to the position of a literary language, and there was a revival of interest in classical texts, both Christian and pagan. The works of Sallust and Suetonius were especially influential. Einhard drew upon Suetonius’s Lives of the Caesars for his life of Charlemagne and thus chose to imitate a style that differed radically from general medieval hagiography and biography and allowed for a rather secular and critical interpretation. Einhard’s treatment of Charlemagne gave impetus to numerous royal biographies; but biography as a form became an instrument of the church, and rulers tended to be treated from clerical perspectives. Thus they hardly advanced the general cause of historiography. The classical eulogy and the Christian tradition of saints’ Lives combined to reduce the amount of factual information required in biography.
The Suetonian model permitted more precision, but it proved to be too bare for medieval taste. The rhetorical tradition defeated it. We cannot expect to find objectivity either; biographers wanted to praise or excuse. Their saving grace is that they remember the traditional advice to the historian to tell the truth and to report events as an eyewitness wherever possible . . . Sudden flashes of realism light up their most conventional stories. If we judge them as propagandists, we have to admire their ingenuity. All do their best for rulers who fell short of what was expected of a Christian hero.49
Historians who quoted and imitated Sallust’s Catiline Conspiracy and Jugurthan War failed to make use of a significant factor in his works: ‘there is no sign of any interest in Sallust’s theory of historical causation . . . none of them so much as noticed that he had an overall theory of the development and decline of political societies.”50
The Carolingian revival of learning was oriented towards preparation for Bible study. During the reign of Charlemagne, several attempts were made to revise the Latin text of the Bible.51 The most important was that of Alcuin, presented to the king at his coronation as emperor on Christmas Day 800. Alcuin was certainly familiar with the Greek text and used this occasionally to correct the Latin. Some evidence exists to suggest that at least some Christian scholars were acquainted with Jewish interpretations of the Old Testament—with their emphasis on a literal reading of the text—if not with Hebrew itself.52 During this period “there begins a veneration for the Fathers that invests their views on the meaning of Scripture with dogmatic authority.”53 Commentaries produced by piecing together excerpts from the fathers were common in the ninth century. Such commentaries not only served the devotion of the faithful but also brought to attention “the inconsistencies and gaps in the patristic tradition.”54 Differences among the patristic authorities meant that attempts had to be made at reconciliation or harmonization or, as in the case of Paschasius and John the Scot—who was familiar with Greek theology—one might be led to compare, criticize, and even discuss the differences and the meaning of the text.
The primary concern of historians during the Carolingian period was contemporary history. Royal historiography possessed a commanding subject in Charlemagne and his family. During the period, “a new form of historical writing is evolved in the Annales, which develop gradually from entries in a liturgical calendar to an increasingly fuller narration”;55 but this too was oriented towards contemporary events. Nothing comparable to the works of Augustine, Orosius, or Bede were produced during this time.
What might be called national history continued as a major concern of the post-Carolingian period as it had been in the early medieval period. “The lesson that destiny of nations is the noblest of all historical themes” was not lost.56 Most of these works were similar in intent to the earlier histories of Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon. “A whole series of attempts was made to apply to other races the theme in Virgil’s Aeneid of a noble group of people guided by the gods towards a splendid destiny.”57 Widukind produced his work on Saxon history, Dudo wrote about the Normans, and Richer about the Franks. This form of writing reached its apogee in the romantic and fantastic
