Medieval historiography

Medieval historiography

1. Medieval historiography Written by Richard T. Vann CONTRIBUTOR LOCATION:  Middletown, CT, United States   Lectured by Ram Proshad Barman Lecturer, sociology, BRUR

2. The early  Christian  conception of history Incorporation of the Hebrew Bible into the Christian canon helped to shape the Christian conception of history. By tracing their history to  Adam and Eve  and the other figures who preceded Abraham, Christians  encompassed  all of humanity within their worldview. Reflecting the influence of the Hebrew prophets, the early Christians held that sins were inevitably followed by divine punishment and that the plot of history was the unfolding of God’s will for humanity. Disasters represented punishment for sins; prosperity indicated divine favour to faithful humans. Thus, nothing could happen that could not be explained by the providential interpretation of history.

3. The early  Christian  conception of history In particular, what was the place of the Roman Empire in the divine plan? For almost three centuries Christians provoked in Roman authorities puzzlement, exasperation, and  intermittent  persecution. For their part, Christians treated the empire as at best irrelevant and at worst (as in the  Revelation to John ) as one of the beasts of the  apocalypse . But with the conversion of the emperor  Constantine  in 312, Christian historians had to come to terms with the historical significance of a Christian emperor. The challenge was met by  Eusebius , whose  Historia ecclesiastica  (written 312–324;  Ecclesiastical History ) was the first important work of Christian history since the  Acts of the Apostles . For Eusebius, the Roman Empire was the divinely appointed and necessary  milieu  for the  propagation  of the Christian faith. Roman peace and Roman roads allowed the Apostle  Paul  to travel tens of thousands of miles on his evangelical journeys, and now Constantine had been appointed to end the persecution of Christians.

4. Augustine The sack of Rome by the  Visigoths  in 410 posed a severe challenge to Eusebius’s interpretation of history. The most famous response was the monumental  De civitate Dei contra paganos  (413–426/427;  City of God ) of St.  Augustine  of Hippo (354–430). Augustine was forced to confront the argument that the establishment of Christianity as the state religion of Rome had led to the downfall of the empire. His rebuttal dissolved the identity of empire and Christianity. Humanity was composed of two cities, inextricably mixed: the earthly, built on self-love, and the heavenly, animated by the love of God

5. Augustine The issue of periodization was vital. Augustine divided history into six ages, comparable to the six ages of the individual human life span : 1. from Adam and Eve to the biblical Flood 2. from the Flood to Abraham 3 . from Abraham to  King David 4. from David to the Babylonian Exile 5. from the Exile to Jesus 6. and from Jesus to the Second Coming The end of this kingdom would be the end of the world.

6. Early  Germanic  and English histories The fall of the Roman Empire actually resulted from the successful attempt of  Germanic peoples  to occupy its lands and enjoy its benefits.  Goths ,  Lombards ,  Franks , and other Germanic peoples carved out new kingdoms from the  moribund  Western empire and adopted its traditions and even its identity Yet there were difficulties in fitting the Germanic invaders into this pattern. They were nonliterate and preserved their memories of the past orally in heroic poems such as  Beowulf . Historical writing was almost all done by clerics, in Latin.  Gregory of Tours  (538/539–594), for example, wrote  Ten Books of Histories , a history of the Franks from the perspective of the old Gallo-Roman aristocracy, and St.  Bede the Venerable  (672/673–735) composed the  Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum  ( Ecclesiastical History of the English People ). For both authors, the invaders, once converted to orthodox (Roman) Christianity, were instrumental in repressing heresy: the Franks opposed  Arianism  (which held that Christ was not divine but created), and the Anglo-Saxons suppressed the irregular practices of the Celtic church.

7. Islamic  historiography The  Qurʾān , the sacred text of  Islam , contains  allusions  that  constitute the basis of a providential history of humankind from Adam through  Muhammad , the founder of Islam. Another valuable resource for Islamic historians is the  Hadith  (the traditions or sayings of Muhammad), which is arranged in such a way that lines of transmission can be traced back to those who knew the Prophet. Al- Ṭabarī  and Rashīd al- Dīn The greatest early Islamic historian,  al- Ṭabarī  (839–923), was reputed to have memorized the  Qurʾān  at the age of seven. Legend credited him with producing a 30,000-page commentary on the Qurʾān and an equally long universal history The Persian scholar  Rashīd al- Dīn (1247–1318) composed a more truly universal history,  Jāmiʿ al- tawārīkh (“Collector of Chronicles”), which covered not only the  Islamic world (which by then extended from Spain to northern India) but also included data on the popes and emperors of Europe and on Mongolia and China.

8. Ibn Khaldūn The sophistication of Islamic historical thought was dramatically illustrated by the  Muqaddimah  (“Introduction”) of the Arab historian  Ibn Khaldūn  (1332–1406). The subjects Khaldūn considered in his work include historical method,  geography , culture, economics, public finance, population, society and state, religion and politics, and the social  context  of knowledge Khaldūn lived with the Bedouins of North Africa and in the sophisticated Muslim cities of Granada and Cairo. These experiences were the source of one of his main ideas: that humans first lived in Bedouin tribes and then achieved civilization, but civilization became  decadent  with increasing wealth and luxury. No dynasty or civilization, he believed, could maintain vitality for more than four generations (though the only example he gives is the decline of the Israelites after  Abraham ,  Isaac ,  Jacob , and  Joseph

9. Ibn Khaldūn Khaldūn contrasted his writing with “surface history,” which was “no more than information about political events” and was used to “entertain large, crowded gatherings.” Historians of his day, he thought, were too credulous in accepting tradition. As for their frequent moralizing about the misconduct of certain  caliphs , Khaldūn asserted that people like to justify their own misconduct by looking in histories for examples of the great who have done the same things. To reach the “inner meaning” of history, the historian had to be “speculative” and give “subtle explanations” of causes. To accomplish this, history had to be rooted in philosophy—or, as Khaldūn said of his own work, it had to be a new and original science.