Jezierski, Literatura
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T
AKING
S
IDES
:S
OME
T
HEORETICAL
R
EMARKS ON THE
(A
B
)U
SE OF
H
ISTORIOGRAPHY
Wojtek Jezierski
Abstract
This article should be seen as an attempt to put the early medieval
chronicles in a more theoretical frame concerning identity formation
and creation of historical tradition. The empirical examples are pro-
vided by two tenth-century chronicles:
Chronicon Æthelweardi
by
Æthelweard of Wessex, and
Res gestae Saxonicae
by Widukind of
Corvey. As the theoretical frame serve the conclusions and ideas
taken from the research on collective memory, discourse analysis,
and a more general reasoning about the affinity between knowledge
and power. In effect, the article illustrates not only those mecha-
nisms and literary strategies, but also, more broadly, demonstrates
the pointlessness of common accusations of medieval historio-
graphy’s failure in its pursuit of objectivity. Partiality was the
raison
d’être
of medieval chronicles, and, it is argued, our research should
focus more on its appearances.
The purpose of this article is, once again, to discuss the problem of the
objectivity in medieval historiography.
1
However, if hitherto it was
often said that medieval authors simply failed to reach the expected
standards of neutrality, it is my contention that conscious choices
underlay the whole concept of history writing in the early Middle
Ages, which fulfilled many important social and cultural functions. In
this respect medieval historiography stands closer to the modern
phenomenon of heritage than to professional historical research of our
days. In order to illustrate this I will test this claim against two tenth-
century chronicles. First I will characterize the phenomenon of heri-
tage, and then introduce the analyzed chronicles and the institutional
context in which they were written. The analysis of the texts and their
authors’ motives comes in third place.
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Wojtek Jezierski
Until recently it was quite popular to accuse medieval historiography
of a broad use of stereotypes, bias, a lack of sense of evidence etc. A
few years ago, Gabrielle Spiegel summed up these allegations. What
she found was: ‘propagandistic intentions, vulnerability to invasion by
fiction, forgery, myth, and miracle’. Furthermore, medieval historio-
graphy’s
literary alliance with rhetoric, … made it inimical to the pursuit of truth;
its exemplarist and stereotypical use of historical events and persons for
moral teaching, denying them what a modern historian would consider
their historicity…. In short, medieval historiography, by all critical
odds, is inauthentic, unscientific, unreliable, ahistorical, irrational,
borderline illiterate, and worse yet, unprofessional. (Spiegel 1999: 100)
This critique was based on the assumption that historiography should
provide us with historically accurate facts. What this account missed
was that
historicity
and
rationality
are modern inventions, valid
neither universally nor eternally, and to require these standards from
medieval authors is absurd, at any rate. Yet there is something to these
accusations that actually says more about our understanding of the
historian’s
craft
and
medieval
historiography,
and
how
our
pre-
suppositions obscure our view of the sources.
What is striking about the Spiegel’s collection of remarks is that simi-
lar allegations are substantiated by professional scholarship against the
modern phenomenon of heritage. By the term
heritage
I mean the kind
of historical knowledge delivered by schoolbooks, theme-museums,
memorial parades or national monuments. Heritage is meant to be
exclusive; it is ‘ours’ as it is to attest the distinctiveness of ‘our past’.
It is, and is supposed to be, selective in the presentation of historical
data, exposing the victories and successes of ‘our’ ancestors and
keeping the shames and defeats hidden. Any accusations of irrational-
ity or bias are completely pointless, as bias is the very essence of
heritage, and it is faith and not reason on which it is based. There is
hardly any distinction between fact and its evaluation in the logic of
heritage – ‘it is not a testable or even a reasonably plausible account
of some past, but a
declaration of faith
in that past’ (Lowenthal 1996:
121).
The distinction between history, understood as
narratio rerum
gestarum
, and heritage is vital. As David Lowenthal writes:
Some Theoretical Remarks on the (Ab)Use of Historiography
101
History differs from heritage not, as people generally suppose, in
telling
the truth, but in
trying
to do so despite being aware that truth is a
chameleon and its chroniclers fallible beings. The most crucial dis-
tinction is that truth in heritage commits us to some present creed; truth
in history is a flawed effort to understand the past on its own terms.
(Lowenthal 1996: 119)
Even if heritage mimics qualified historiography there is something it
gives us that history cannot. Belonging to the toolbox of nationalism
more than professional scholarship,
2
heritage gives us material for the
construction of identity and this is
per se
part of the sphere of
emotions, not reason (Connor 1993). Heritage is anchored in
collective memory, whose aim is to create a politically usable past,
where some things have to be forgotten or silenced. Only in that way
can a coherent community, carrying these memories, be constructed
(Misztal 2003: 14, 17, 52-53). Because of its professionalism, histo-
riography (pursued in academia) distances itself from such attempts,
although it cannot be claimed that it does not have a political
dimension. It does, but the divide between its aims and methods is
much bigger and of a different character making it impractical for
heritage’s purposes.
3
Thirdly, in heritage there is an instilled belief
that ‘our’ past has to be right, which empowers the authority that
creates this image within the community (Lowenthal 1996: 90;
Misztal 2003: 20-22). Knowledge is power, but only certain know-
ledge, which is hallmarked and issued by relevant authorities. We
shall see now how these conclusions drawn from the studies on
heritage work in the context of early medieval historiography.
A more elaborate example that I would like to present here focuses on
two tenth-century chronicles i.e.
Chronicon Æthelweardi
by Æthel-
weard of Wessex, and
Res gestae Saxonicae
by Widukind of Corvey.
Both were written in the second half of the tenth century and had
powerful German abbesses as addressees. In the Ottonian
Reichs-
kirche
, abbesses such as Mathilda of Quedlinburg and Mathilda of
Essen, for whom the chronicles were written, were responsible for
preserving the memory of their families. Inspiring historiographical
works that could praise their forebears was one of the main issues of
this caretaking. Since memory and history were a form of social
capital in the early Middle Ages, we can speak of these nunneries as
power resources in Ottonian politics. These chronicles played a part in
102
Wojtek Jezierski
a larger process of identity-making, which was taking place in those
monasteries, as one of their most important goals was to educate the
female members of the Ottonian nobility (Althoff 1991; Althoff 2000;
van Houts 1992).
The author of the
Res gestae Saxonicae
was Widukind (c.925-
c.971), a monk of Corvey, an old and powerful monastery, which was
originally a Carolingian foundation, established in order to christian-
ize Saxony. A hundred and fifty years later Corvey stood in the very
center of the Ottonian
Reich
,producing
vitae
of important saints,
collecting relics and trying to win eminence for its patron, St. Vitus,
one of the most important saints of Saxony of that time. Widukind
himself also took part in this manufacturing of tradition, writing lives
of saints, contacting other monasteries, abbesses etc. (Beumann 1950:
1-6). What distinguishes Æthelweard (d. c.998) is that he was a lay-
man, holding the office of ealdorman of Wessex, and a stalwart of
King Æthelred the Unready. As he states in the prologue to his
chronicle, he was a distant relative of Mathilda of Essen, King
Æthelstan being their first common ancestor.
4
As stated above in the context of heritage, both authors are highly
possessive about the histories they write. There is no general, ob-
jective and impersonal history, the past has to belong to someone in
order to be identified with that person. In the very first words of the
first book Widukind writes:
Post operum nostrorum primordia, quibus summi imperatoris militum
triumphos declaravi, nemo me miretur principum nostrorum res gestas
litteris velle commendare.
(After my first works, in which I have presented the victory of the
greatest leader of the army, no one should wonder that I want to put
down the great deeds in writing.)
5
And adds:
quia in illo opere professioni meae, ut potui, quod debui exolvi, modo
generis gentisque meae devotioni, ut queo, elaborare non effugio. (
Res
gestae Saxonicae
I, 20)
(I do not want to neglect my pledge, my vigor and loyalty towards my
house and my people, so I will praise them with all my powers.)
Some Theoretical Remarks on the (Ab)Use of Historiography
103
No striving for objectivity, no traces, not even slight, of accurateness,
nor claims to a representative account:
Nec tamen omnia eorum gesta nos posse comprehendere fatemur, sed
strictim et per partes scribimus, ut sermo sit legentibus planus, non
fastidiosus. (
Res gestae Saxonicae
I, 16)
(However, I have to confess that it is not my intention to describe all
their deeds but only a brief selection, in order to make my presentation
legible for the reader, not to fatigue her.)
And, indeed, he does what he declares. History is something that
belongs either to ‘them’ or ‘us’, and bears evidence of a struggle
between these groups (Bagge 2002: 84-85). No wonder, that ‘they’,
for example Hungarians, are seen as barbaric sons of Satan and savage
malefactors of all kinds (
Res gestae Saxonicae
: I, 70).
6
However, the
‘us’ in Widukind's account may be misleading to a modern reader,
because the pronoun was no clear-cut category but denoted many
different groups, and its meaning implied by the context only. The
category of the ‘ours’ many times seems to connote all Saxons and all
Saxony (
Res gestae Saxonicae
III, 154, 168), the Saxon army (
Res
gestae Saxonicae
II, 104; III, 176), sometimes everyone speaking
Saxonian (
Res gestae Saxonicae
I, 46), or Christian Saxons and
Franks (
Res gestae Saxonicae
I, 44), sometimes a group narrowed to
him and Mathilda, extended to their monasteries (
Res gestae
Saxonicae
I, 16; II, 82; III, 168), sometimes only his own monastery
and brothers (
Res gestae Saxonicae
III, 130). As we see, ‘us’ was a
politically heavy laden term indicating diverse identities and referring
to numerous loyalties that the author wanted his readers to feel
connected to. It is no wonder that in Widukind’s account the whole
past is subjugated to the ruling family and Saxon patriotism – his work
opens with the coming of the Saxons, the first book ends with the
death of Henry I. The second book starts with Otto the Great’s en-
thronement and concludes with Queen Edith’s burial. The advance
installation of Liudolf, Otto’s son, initiates the third and last book,
which ends with the bereavement of leonine Otto the Great. Time and
the past are colonized totally and framed in dynastical and national
themes (Beumann 1972: 84-86; Misztal 2003: 52).
Æthelweard’s vision of the past is not very different from Widu-
kind’s. In his opening letter to Mathilda of Essen, he states frankly and
without any haziness:
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