Christian Historiography (Western Medieval Historiography)

The Christian Historiography of Medieval Ages

In the historiography of the European Middle Ages, from the 5^th century to the 15^th century, historia and chronica were used for sequencing and inscribing the past. Historia, according to Isidore of Seville, means ‘a narration of facts’. And this term got a deeper meaning with the use of the word chronica (chronicle). Both terms provide a meaning to history as a narrative of past events in chronology.

From the Christian historiographers and other historians in the Middle Ages, emphasis was given on properly attributing facts to their corresponding dates and times and placing them accurately in a chronological sequence.

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Christian Historiography

The early Christian histories were universal. They aimed at satisfying the demand to integrate Biblical history into ancient chronology, including a vast pre-Christian past and spread over various eras. Contemporary political developments in Europe, mainly the formation of the vast feudal lordships and monarchies, also cast their shadows over history-writing. Writing history in the Middle Ages was popular among Christian monks and clergy.

 They wrote about the history of Jesus Christ, that of the church, and that of their patrons, the dynastic history of the local rulers. In the early Middle Ages, historical writing often took the form of annals or chronicles recording events year by year, but this style tended to hamper the analysis of events and causes. An example of this type of writing is the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, which were the work of several different writers: it was started during the reign of Alfred the Great in the late 9^th century, but one copy was still being updated in 1154.

 Some writers in the period did construct a more narrative form of history. They include Gregory of Tours and more successfully Bede, who wrote both secular and ecclesiastical history and is known for writing the Ecclesiastical History of the English people. Meister Eckhart, making Christ the centre of the salvational history, used the new formation of political power as his reference points.

Otto of Freising composed his history of the world in 1146, called The Two Cities. Though he adopted a theological concept of history, he thereby indicated the transitoriness. The fluid sense of chronological boundaries is also visible in chronicles of the High Middle Ages. Here, two chronological systems dominated – the incarnation era and the registering of reigns and pontificates, and numerous chroniclers strove to establish a factual as well as narrative unity of these elements.

For medieval historians, historical change was primarily a cycle of growth and decay of regents and kingdoms. During the Renaissance, history was written about states. The study of history changed during the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Voltaire described the history of certain ages that he considered important, rather than describing events in chronological order, history became an independent discipline. It was not called philosophia historia anymore, but merely history.  

The Catholic Church was the major unifying cultural influence, preserving its selection from Latin learning, maintaining the art of writing, and a centralized administration through its network of bishops. Bishops were central to medieval society due to the literacy they possessed. As a result, they often played a significant role in governance.

However, beyond the core areas of western Europe, they remained many peoples with little or no contact with Christianity or with classical Roman culture. Martial societies such as the Avars and the Vikingswere still capable of causing major disruption to the newly emerging societies of western Europe.  

Thus, Christian historiography led the field of history in the following centuries.