Writing Civic History in London, Cologne and Genoa

Summary

Medieval historical writing was an institutional business. It developed, at first, in the monasteries, cathedral chapters and royal courts of Europe. By the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it had diffused widely into the towns as men holding office in civil administrations began to write chronicles in large numbers. In Italy, one thinks immediately of the Florentines Dino Compagni and Giovanni Villani; in Germany of the scores of writers who penned town chronicles. Indeed, today's Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte vom 14. bis in 16. Jahrhundert series comprises thirty-eight volumes, the majority of which contain several chronicles. In the mid-thirteenth century, however, very few men were doing anything comparable elsewhere in Europe. In fact, there were just a handful of cities where any chronicles on a substantial scale were being produced by the townsmen themselves. This study will focus on three of those cities: London, Genoa and Cologne.

Of course, three such different cities in three different countries produced three distinct historical texts. But there was also much alike in all three cities and their respective chronicles, and these parallels can tell us a great deal about the features and circumstances of medieval urban life which drove men to write history. This essay will argue that urban historical writing was fostered only after the establishment of two very practical preconditions: first, the creation of civic political institutions; second, the emergence of a literate, mercantile/commercial culture. Thereafter, it will try to shed a little light on this emergent trend in European history. But first we must turn to the cities and chronicles themselves.

The buds of this new literary genus first blossomed in Genoa. In 1100, a Genoese crusading fleet sailed east. Among the three thousand or so Genoese in this expedition was Caffaro di Rustico di Caschifellone, a nobleman born in 1080. Caffaro enjoyed a distinguished career as a military commander, an ambassador, a six-time consul de comuni and two-time consul de placitis.