the uses of the past in the early middle ages

24 Pages·2001·0.21 MB·English

THE USES OF THE
PAST IN THE EARLY
MIDDLE AGES
edited by
YITZHAK HEN AND MATTHEW INNES
publishedbythepresssyndicateoftheuniversityofcambridge
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TheusesofthepastintheearlyMiddleAges/editedbyYitzhakHenand
MatthewInnes.
p. cm.
Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
isbn0-521-63001-0(hb)
isbn0-521-63998-0(pb)
1.MiddleAges–HistoriographyCongresses.I.Hen,Yitzhak.II.
Innes,Matthew.
d116.u752000
909.07@07@2–dc21 99-36182 cip
isbn0521630010hardback
isbn0521639980paperback
Contents
Listofcontributors pagevii
Acknowledgements viii
Listofabbreviations ix
Introduction:usingthepast,interpretingthepresent,
inXuencingthefuture 1
MatthewInnes
1 Memory,identityandpowerinLombardItaly 9
WalterPohl
2 Memoryandnarrativeinthecultofearly
Anglo-Saxonsaints 29
CatherineCubitt
3 TheusesoftheOldTestamentinearlymedievalcanon
law:theCollectioVetusGallicaandtheCollectioHibernensis 67
RobMeens
4 Thetransmissionoftradition:GregorianinXuenceand
innovationineighth-centuryItalianmonasticism 78
MariosCostambeys
5 TheworldanditspastasChristianallegoryintheearly
MiddleAges 102
DominicJanes
6 TheFranksastheNewIsrael?Educationforanidentity
fromPippintoCharlemagne 114
MaryGarrison
7 PoliticalideologyinCarolingianhistoriography 162
RosamondMcKitterick
v
vi Contents
8 TheAnnalsofMetzandtheMerovingianpast 175
YitzhakHen
9 Theempireasecclesia:HrabanusMaurusandbiblical
historiaforrulers 191
MaykeDeJong
10 TeutonsorTrojans?TheCarolingiansandthe
Germanicpast 227
MatthewInnes
11 Amanforallseasons:PaciWcusofVeronaandthe
creationofalocalCarolingianpast 250
CristinaLaRocca
Index 280
chapter 1
Memory, identity and power in Lombard Italy
WalterPohl
In 1222, a notary from Piacenza, Johannes Codagnellus, told a very
uplifting story. Many centuries ago, he wrote, Longobards (Longobardi)
under their king Gisulf had invaded this part of Lombardy. But in a
terrible battle, another people called the Lombards (Lombardi) suc-
ceeded in defeating the invaders and putting them to Xight.1 In a
northernItaliancommune troubled by successive interventionsof em-
perorsfromGermany,thepublicmayhavebeenpleasedwithsuchan
example of self-assertion. They may not have been aware of the para-
dox implied in this way of ‘using the past’: in the sixth century, in this
part of Italy the Roman Empire had succumbed to a ‘Germanic’
invasion by the Longobards, whose name was later turned into ‘Lom-
bards’. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, ‘Germanic’ Roman
emperors invaded a country defended by ‘Romanic’ Lombards.
JohannesCodagnellushad tostretchhis materialconsiderably,buthis
solution to ‘double’ the Lombards makes perfect sense in this contra-
dictorysituation.
Nowadays,Lombard origins are being used against another kind of
‘Roman’ interference, to argue for a secession of Padania from the
bureaucracy in Rome which governs Italy. Such modern ideological
contexts make early medieval barbarian ‘histories’, like those of the
Lombards,anuncomfortabletopic,fullofrisksandmisunderstandings,
but also more relevant to the contemporary world than most topics in
earlymedievalhistory.Theyare alsoa Weldof scholarlypolemic.Two
conXictingmodesofinterpretationhavestirrednumerousdebates.One
school has brought together an impressive stock of ethnographic and
mythologicalparallelstoprovethebasicauthenticityofthematerialin
1 Johannes Codagnellus,Liber Rerum Gestarum, ed. O. Holder-Egger, Neues Archiv 16 (1891), pp.
475–505,esp.p.479.SeeJ.W.Busch,‘DieLombardenunddieLangobarden’,Fru¨hmittelalterliche
Studien29(1995),pp.289–311.
9
10 walter pohl
2
thesehistories,evenwhereit islegendary. Othershavearguedforthe
moreorlessWctionalcharacterofthesetexts.3Thepolemichasfocused
on two connected issues. One is the factual accuracy of the histories,
especially those passages that deal with the remote period before the
integrationof Goths, Lombards or Anglo-Saxons into the late Roman
world.DidGothsorLombardscomefromScandinavia,arethesuccess-
ive stages of their migration rendered correctly, and, probably more
interesting,how reliablearethefragmentsofinformationaboutpagan
beliefsandarchaicsocietiesinthesehistories?Thesecondissueismore
fundamentaltothethemeofthisvolume:didoriginmythsandhistories
haveafunctionfortheethniccommunitiesin whichtheywerewritten
4
down, or were their authors ‘storytellers in their own right’ who only
soughttoentertainandtoedifytheircontemporaries?Or,inshort,what
were the uses of the past in the early medieval regna? And, to add a
furtherquestion:howdidtheseusesshapethetexts?Didtheyencourage
codiWcationormanipulationofhistoricalnarratives?
In the case of the Goths, Herwig Wolfram has proposed a rather
complex model of the use of historical narrative in the Getica, a sixth-
centuryGothichistory byJordanes,andtherehasbeena livelydebate
5
ever since. Lombard texts have been studied less carefully. Those
scholarswhodealtwiththemmostlyconcentratedonthepivotalWgure
of Paul the Deacon who wrote his Historia Langobardorum towards the
end of the eighth century, not long after the Carolingians had taken
6
possessionoftheregnumLangobardorum. Butitmaybemisleadinginthis
2 Thisapproachwaschosenbymostpre-1945Germanscholars.Amorecritical,butstilloptimistic
view is found in post-war German scholarship (for instance R. Wenskus, Stammesbildung und
Verfassung:DasWerdenderfru¨hmittelalterlichenGentes(Cologne,1961);2ndedn(CologneandVienna,
1977)andinmanycontemporaryItalianworks.FortheLombards,see,forinstance,S.Gasparri,
LaculturatradizionaledeiLongobardi(Spoleto,1983).
3 ThispointofviewbecamepopularinAnglo-Americanscholarshipafterthe‘linguisticturn’,and
in early medieval studies with Walter GoVart’s The Narrators of Barbarian History AD550–800.
Jordanes,GregoryofTours,Bede,andPaultheDeacon(Princeton,1988).Forareviewofthedebate,see
W. Pohl,‘Tradition, EthnogeneseundliterarischeGestaltung’,inK.Brunnerand B.Merta
(eds.),EthnogeneseundU¨berlieferung.AngewandteMethodenderFru¨hmittelalterforschung,Vero¨Ventlichun-
gendesInstitutfu¨rO¨sterreichischeGeschichtsforschung31(Vienna,1994),pp.9–29.
4 GoVart,NarratorsofBarbarianHistory,p.428.
5 H. Wolfram, DieGoten. Vonden Anfa¨ngen bis zur Mittedes 6. Jahrhunderts,3rd edn(Vienna and
Munich,1990);publishedinEnglishasHistoryoftheGoths(Berkeley,LosAngelesandLondon,
1988);GoVart,NarratorsofBarbarianHistory;P.J.Heather,TheGoths(Oxford,1996);P.Amory,
PeopleandIdentityinOstrogothicItaly,489–554(Cambridge,1977).
6 PaultheDeacon,HistoriaLangobardorum[hereafter:HL],ed.L.BethmannandG.Waitz,MGH
SRL (Hanover, 1878), pp. 12–187. GoVart, Narrators of Barbarian History; W. Pohl, ‘Paulus
Diaconus und die Historia Langobardorum: Text und Tradition’, in G. Scheibelreiter and A.
Scharer (eds.), Historiographie im fru¨hen Mittelalter, Vero¨Ventlichungen des Instituts fu¨r O¨ster-
reichischeGeschichtsforschung32(Vienna,1994),pp.375–405,withfurtherliterature.
Memory,identityandpowerinLombardItaly 11
case to study just one author or one text, or even historiographictexts
7
alone. Distinguishing according to a typologie de sources or between
literarygenresmaybehelpfulinunderstandinghowatextworks,butit
does not explain how discourses are formed and diVused, and which
texts contribute to the construction of identities. Social memory not
only consists of narratives, but also, for instance, of implicit or explicit
8
knowledgeofhowtoactundercertaincircumstances.
Therefore,the wholebody of texts that deal withthe Lombard past
hastobestudied.WhowasinterestedinLombardmemories,andhow
weretheyperceivedandconstructed?Answeringthisquestionrequires
going back to the manuscripts, for three reasons. Firstly, only the
manuscriptscanshowwithsomeprecisionhowinterestincertaintexts
develops. More than a hundred extant manuscripts of Paul the Dea-
con’s Historia Langobardorum survive, and their speciWc geographical
distribution allows a proWle of interests in the Lombard past to be
drawn, in spite of all hazards of U¨berlieferungschance, chances of trans-
9
mission. Secondly, this large body of copies of one text is surprisingly
heterogeneous, and its variants often correspond to speciWc interests.
The nineteenth-century editors of the MGH volumes of the Scriptores
Rerum Langobardorum and the Leges Langobardorum did an excellent job,
but theytried to reduce the multiplicityof textual variantsto an Urtext
so that the actual manuscript traditions, the many-faceted process of
10
r´ecriture, were obscured. Thirdly, our editions pay little attention to
the way texts were arranged and combined in a manuscript. Many
texts were copied into manuscripts that contain one or several other
texts, thus establishing a textual conWguration that could change the
signiWcance of each individual text. Sometimes, but not always, these
manuscripts were organized according to aYnities of genre. By separ-
atinghistoriographicfromlegaltextsin twodiVerentvolumes,accord-
ing to the established typology of sources, the MGH editors drew
much clearer lines than the texts themselves suggest, and split Lom-
bardsocial memoryinto two parts. This chapterproposesto lookat it
asawhole.
7 Arecent,interestingattempttodiscussthehistoriographyofLombardoriginsbefore800in
contextisS.Cingolani,LeStoriedeiLongobardi.Dall’OrigineaPaoloDiacono(Rome,1995).
8 Wemay,ofcourse,choosetoregardevenalawcodeasavirtualnarrativethatestablisheswhat
could,andwhatshouldhappen.Forsocialmemory,seeJ.FentressandC.Wickham,Social
Memory(Oxford,1992).
9 For the term: A. Esch, ‘U¨berlieferungs-Chanceund U¨berlieferungs-Zufallals methodisches
Problem des Historikers’, Historische Zeitschrift 240 (1985), pp. 529–70; for an outline of the
transmissionoftheHistoriaLangobardorum,Pohl,‘PaulusDiaconus’.
10 F.Bluhme(ed.),MGHLNG4;BethmannandWaitz(eds.),MGHSRL.
12 walter pohl
In the year 643, the Lombard king Rothari promulgated the Wrst
11
Lombardlawcode. Theprologueexplainsthathisaimwas‘tocorrect
thepresentlaw,improvingandamendingallearlierlawsbyaddingthat
which is lacking and eliminatingthat which is superXuous’ (Necessarium
esseprospeximuspresentemcorregerelegem,quaeprioresomnesrenovetetemendet,et
quoddeestadiciat,etquodsuperXuumestabscidat).Theprocessisdescribedin
somedetailin theso-calledepilogue,chapter386oftheEdictusRothari:
‘Wehaveorderedtheselawstobewrittendownonthisparchment,thus
preservingtheminthisedictsothatthosethingswhich,withdivineaid,
wehavebeenabletorecapturethroughcarefulinvestigationoftheold
lawsof theLombardsknowneitherto ourselforthe oldmen,we have
putdownin thislawbook.’Thetextdescribestheprocessoflegislation
as a complex practice of social memory. ‘With the greatest care and
most careful scrutiny, obtained by heavenly favour, after seeking out
andWndingtheoldlawsofthefatherswhichwerenotwrittendown’(cum
summostudio. . .inquirentesetrememorantesantiquaslegespatrumnostrorum,quae
scriptae non erant), the lawbook was improved and established ‘with the
equal counsel and consent of our most important judges and with the
rest of our most happy army’ (pari consilio parique consensum cum primatos
iudices cunctosque felicissimum exercitum nostrum augentes constituimus). The
wording makes it clear that the additions did not require a diVerent
12
procedurefrom thelawsderivedfrommemory. Thekinggave order
to write the resulting edict on parchment: in hoc membranum scribere
iussimus.Again,the‘subtle’processofpreservingmemoryishighlighted:
‘so that those things which, with divine aid, we have been able to
recapturethroughcarefulinvestigationoftheoldlawsoftheLombards
known either to ourself or to the old men of the nation’ (quod . . . per
subtileminquisitionemdeantiquaslegislangobardorum. . .memorarepotuerimus,in
hocedictumsubiungeredebeamus).Finally,theedicthadtobeconWrmedbya
formal procedure, by a ‘gairethinx’ according to the customs of the
Lombards:pergairethinxsecundumritusgentisnostraeconWrmantes.Allsubjects
hadtoobserve thenew lawcode:abomnibusnostrissubiectis custodiatur.In
chapter388, Rothariprovides for a carefully controlleddistribution of
thelawbook:‘Weaddthisgeneralorderlestanyfraudbeappliedtothis
11 AnEnglishtranslation,withintroduction,waspublishedbyK.FischerDrew,TheLombardLaws
(Philadelphia,1973),c.386onp.128.ArecentLatin-Italianeditionwithcommentary:C.Azzara
andS.Gasparri(eds.),LeleggideiLongobardi.Storia,memoriaedirittodiunpopologermanico(Milan,
1992).
12 Fischer Drew, The Lombard Laws, p. 128, oddly translates ‘cum primatos iudices cunctosque
felicissimumexercitumnostrumaugentesconstituimus’as‘andwiththerestofourhappynation
assisting,wehaveestablished’.
Memory,identityandpowerinLombardItaly 13
edictthroughthefault ofthe scribes:if anycontentionarises,no other
copies of this code shall be accredited or received except those which
have been written or recognized or sealed by the hand of our notary
Ansoaldwhohaswrittenthisinaccordancewithourcommand’(Etahoc
generaliterdamusinmandatis,nealiquafrausperviciumscriptoruminhocedictum
adibeatur:sialiquafueritintentio,nullaaliaexemplariacredaturautsuscipiatur,nisi
quodpermanusansoaldnotarionostroscriptumautrecognitumseurequisitumfuerit,
quipernostramiussionemscripsit).Repeatedinvocationsofdivineclemency
andfavourcompleteoneofthemostdetaileddescriptionsoftheprocess
ofsocialmemorybyanyearlymedievalking.
Rothari’sEdict,itssourcesandtheactoflegislationhavestimulated
numerousdebates.Therespectiverolesofthekingandthepeopleofthe
Lombards, and the rituals involved in their interaction spurred some
controversy.Foralongtime,thegairethinxsecundumritusgentisnostraewas
envisaged as an ear-shattering ceremony in which the whole of the
Longobard army banged their spears on their shields to signal their
approval.Some time ago, Ennio Cortese argued convincinglythat the
laws also provide for liberation of slaves or even sales of property per
gairethinx,andthereforemightnotatallimplygranddisplaysofmartial
shield-clattering.13 The ritual employedby the Wrst Lombardlegislator
thusmaynothavebeenasarchaicasoftenenvisaged.Asimilarquestion
concernsthe‘oldlawsofourfathers’.Chapter386hasoftenbeentaken
as proof of the existence of a Germanic oral judicial tradition and its
directconXuenceintothewrittenlawcode,althoughsomescholarshave
argued that, in spite of its claim, Rothari’s Edict was copied from an
14
existing written collection. Here, I would like to disentangle myself
fromtheloomingproblemoforalityversuswrittenmemorybypropos-
ingasimplehypothesis:thisquestioniscentralonlyifyouautomatically
associate oral tradition with archaic origin, authenticity and purely
‘Germanic’characterofthistraditionincontentandform;andidentify
literacy with classical (or clerical) erudition,manipulation and dilution
oftheoriginaltext,butalsowithitstransplantationintoaLatinculture.
I do not think that this bipolarity makes much sense. Latin and Ger-
maniclanguage,traditionalistandlegislativerhetoric,andtheattitudes
13 EnnioCortese,‘Thinx,gairethinx,thingatio,thingareingaidaetgisil’,RivistadiStoriadelDirittoItaliano61
(1988),pp.33–64.
14 Cf.,for instance, B. Paradisi, ‘Il prologo e l’epilogo dell’edittodi Rotari’, Studia e Documenta
HistoriaeetIuris34(1968),pp.432–57;A.Cavanna,‘Nuoviproblemiintornoallefontidell’Editto
diRotari’,StudiaeDocumentaHistoriaeetIuris34(1968),pp.269–361;G.Dilcher,‘Langobardisches
Recht’,inA.ErlerandE.Kaufmann(eds.),Handwo¨rterbuchzurDeutschenRechtsgeschichte(Berlin,
1978),vol.2,cols.1607–18.
14 walter pohl
and rituals of late Roman judicial and ‘Germanic’ warrior cultures
were,bythemiddleoftheseventhcentury,tooentangledtounderstand
themasfundamentallydiVerentwaysofdealingwiththepast.Theyear
643 was hardly the Wrst instance when the Lombards encountered
literacy,althoughitverylikelymarksthemostambitiousattemptsofar
at integrating all available cultures of memory. Orality and literacy
oftenseemtobequiteinseperableonthebasisofourevidence,andthe
‘milieu of memory’ at the Lombard court certainly relied on both
writtenandoraltradition.
Rothari’s Edict does not set out to diVerentiate between what is old
and authentic, and what is not; on the contrary, it suggests that there
was no essential diVerence in dealing with both old and new law, for
whichitproposesamodelforthecorrectinteractionofmilieuxdem´emoire
15
and lieux de pouvoir, of memory and power. This included the antiqui
homines,butalsothenotaryAnsoald,theprimatiiudices,thearmy,and,of
course, the king in his palace at Pavia. A similar interface between
memoryandpowerisfoundintheprologueoftheEdict.Again,weWnd
areferencetothe‘oldmen’fromwhosememorythetextdrew,thistime
because ‘we found it useful for the memories of future times to write
downthenamesofthekings,ourpredecessors’(utilemprospeximuspropter
futuris temporismemoriam, nomina regum antecessorum nostrorum,ex quo in gente
nostralangobardorumregesnominaticoeperuntesse,inquantumperantiquoshomines
didicimus, in hoc membranum adnotari iussimus). History and law obviously
requiredsimilarstrategiesofmemory.TheLombardpastWgurespromi-
nentlyintheprologueoftheEdict:thereisalistofseventeenkingsand
anotherlistoftenancestorsofRothari.Andthereistheprotocolwhere
the king’s legitimacy is reinforced by two basic historical arguments.
Firstly,heisexplicitlypresentedastheseventeenthking,Ego. . .septimo
decimum rex gentis Langobardorum, just like Romulus and, in the Amal
genealogy constructed by Cassiodorus, Theodoric’s grandson
16
Athalaric. And secondly, Rothari refers to the providential arrival of
the Lombards in Italy under King Alboin: ‘In the eighth year of my
reign,thethirty-eighthofmyage. . .andintheseventy-sixthyearafter
thearrivaloftheLombardsintheprovinceofItaly,sincetheywereled
here by divine power under Alboin, in those days king and my prede-
cessor’(annodeopropitianteregnimeioctabo,aetatisquetricesimooctabo,indictione
15 Cf.P.Nora(ed.),Leslieuxdem´emoire(3vols.,Paris,1984–6).
16 Wolfram,Goten,p.42.Cassiodoruswasanadvisorofthesixth-centuryGothickingTheodoric
andwroteaHistoryoftheGothsinwhichhepraisedtherulingAmaldynasty,laterusedby
JordanesinhisGetica.