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‘Instructing readers’ minds in heavenly matters’: Carolingian History Writing and Christian Education
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2019
Abstract
This article explores the ways in which histories were used in the moral and doctrinal education of Christian elites in the West from the late Roman to the Carolingian periods. In the sixth century, Cassiodorus wrote that histories, whether Christian or not, were useful for ‘instructing the minds of readers in heavenly matters’. How far was this characteristic of the period? Traditionally, scholars have emphasized either the apologetic purpose or the moral of specific histories, such as Orosius's Historiae or Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica. Few modern scholars, however, have examined the long-term development of history writing as a vehicle for Christian education during the transformation of the Roman world. Those who have done, such as Karl-Ferdinand Werner and Hans-Werner Goetz, have emphasized continuity rather than change. The article sketches some of the changes and continuities across the period. In particular, it demonstrates that there was a shift from the apologetic concerns of the fifth-century historians, writing to educate Christians from pagan backgrounds, to the doctrinal (as much as moral) concerns of Frankish historians, emerging from the Carolingian Renaissance.
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- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2019
Footnotes
I wish to thank the audience at the Ecclesiastical History Society's Winter Meeting in January 2017 for their helpful observations, my supervisor Rosamond McKitterick for her feedback on early drafts of this article, and the anonymous peer reviewers for their stimulating comments. Any mistakes remain, of course, my own.
References
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25 ‘[D]isciplina a discendo nomen accepit’: Isidore, Etymologiae 1.1.
26 ‘Historiae gentium non inpediunt legentibus in his quae utilia dixerunt’: ibid. 1.43.
27 ‘[A]d institutionem praesentium’: ibid.
28 Cassiodorus, Institutiones (Cassiodorus senatoris Institutiones, ed. R. A. B. Mynors [Oxford, 1937]); cf. Innes, Matthew and McKitterick, Rosamond, ‘The Writing of History’, in McKitterick, Rosamond, ed., Carolingian Culture: Emulation and Innovation (Cambridge, 1994), 193–220Google Scholar, at 193.
29 McKitterick, Written Word, 194.
30 Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.1–16 (ed. Mynors, 2–55).
31 For Carolingian attitudes to Scripture, see de Jong, ‘Empire as ecclesia’.
32 ‘[H]abent etiam … relatores temporum et studia Christiana … qui cum res ecclesiasticas referant, et vicissitudines accidentes per tempora diversa describant, ut sensus legentium rebus caelestibus semper erudiant’: Cassiodorus, Institutiones 1.17.1 (ed. Mynors, 55).
33 ‘[Q]uando nihil ad fortuitos casus, nihil ad deorum potestates infirmas, ut gentiles fecerunt, sed arbitrio Creatoris applicare veraciter universa contendunt’: ibid.
34 Ibid.
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36 Peter Van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford, 2012), 186–207; although see the recent response by Goetz, Hans-Werner, ‘Orosius und seine “Sieben Geschichtsbücher gegen die Heiden”. Geschichtstheologie oder Rhetorik?’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 96 (2014), 187–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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40 Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, VLQ MS 20. I have discussed this manuscript elsewhere, with Rosamond McKitterick, in ‘A Carolingian Epitome of Orosius from Tours: Leiden VLQ 20’, in Helmut Reimitz, Rutger Kramer and Graeme Ward, eds, Historiographies of Identity, 4: Historiography and Identity towards the End of the First Millennium, a Comparative Perspective (Vienna, forthcoming).
41 ‘[D]eo sibi adminiculante’: VLQ MS 20, fol. 139v; cf. Orosius, Historiae 7.35.23.
42 ‘[M]asezel iam inde ad theodosium sciens quantum in rebus desperatissimis oratio hominis per fidem Christi a clementia dei impetraret … uictoriam meruit’: VLQ MS 20, fol. 139v; cf. Orosius, Historiae 7.36.5.
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48 ‘Domino cooperante’: AMP, s.a. 688 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 5).
49 ‘Christo largiente’: AMP, s.a. 691 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 13).
50 Annales Regni Francorum (hereafter: AMP; MGH SRG 6); see Reimitz, History, Identity, and Ethnicity, 335–45, for the most recent discussion.
51 Evans, ‘Christian Hermeneutics’, 154–5.
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54 ‘[P]restante Domino’: AMP, s.a. 688 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 2).
55 ‘[G]ratia Dei repleta caelesti disciplinae’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 4).
56 ‘[G]ratia divine preditus cunctas salubres suae genitricis ammonitiones … preveniebat’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 3).
57 Fouracre and Gerberding, Late Merovingian France, 24.
58 ‘[N]on paribus consiliis’: AMP, s.a. 690 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 10).
59 ‘[I]n innumerabilis populi multitudine magis quam in consiliis prudentiae confidens … gloriabatur’: ibid.
60 ‘[T]raditum sibi iam Pippinum’: ibid.
61 ‘[Q]uod pro eius amore gerebat, qui potestatem habet salvos facere sperantes in se’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 10–11).
62 ‘[S]ese votis et orationibus Dei omnipotentiae … commendarent, qui dat honorem et victoriam omnibus timentibus eum et custodientibus precepta eius’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 10).
63 ‘[P]restantior consilio et armis’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 11).
64 ‘[S]polia ampla, Deo gratias referens, suis fidelibus impertitur’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 10, 12).
65 Reuter, Fulda, 1–14; MacLean, Simon, Kingship and Politics in the Late Ninth Century: Charles the Fat and the End of the Carolingian Empire (Cambridge, 2003), 23–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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70 ‘Domino illi infidelitatis suae condignam mercedem retribuente … unde et a caelesti medico … curari promeruit’: AF, s.a. 869 (MGH SRG i.u.s. 7, 68–9).
71 ‘[C]rebris incursionibus infestant’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 7, 67).
72 ‘[P]lurima loca devastant et quosdam sibi incaute congredientes interficiunt’: ibid.
73 ‘[U]nde necessitate conpulsus Karolum filiorum suorum ultimum eidem exercitui praefecit’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 7, 68–9).
74 ‘Domino exictum rei commendans’: ibid. (MGH SRG i.u.s. 7, 69).
75 ‘[I]neffabilem … munitionem et omnibus antiquissimis dissimilem’: ibid.
76 ‘Dei auxilio fretus’: ibid.
77 ‘[D]e victoria sibi caelitus data gratulantes’: ibid.
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