Characteristics of Christian historiography in medieval period

In medieval Europe, the writing of history began with church histories. After the fifth century for nearly eight hundred years, the Christian writers dominated the field of historiography. Christian or medieval European historiography has been variedly called patristic, providential or salvation historiography.  

The main characteristics of Christian historiography in medieval period are:

1.       Universal history: The Bible History written on Christian principles is bound to be a universal history or a history of the world, going back to the origin of man, the Book of Genesis. Historiographical thinking was combined with the theological needs of history. The Bible gave a coherent history in a historiographical frame of reference.  The acceptance of Catholicism strengthened this historical homogenization, for one of its core elements was its character of being a universal religion.  The earliest Christian historical works were chronologies designed to link events from scripture with political events, and to create a universal history of humanity.

2.       Chronology- History periodized: Having divided the past into two, Christian historiography subdivided it again. Thus history was divided into epochs or periods; each with a particular characteristics of its own, and each marked off from the one before by an epoch-making event.

These histories had a concept of time which was changeless because it was the divine time. Gradually, however, there was a change in the concept of time. Influenced by the pre-Christian tradition of history-writing, the historians began to think of time in more temporal terms, as a measurable sequence. This change in thinking made possible the use of chronology to write history. Contacts with other regions such as the Byzantine and the Arab world brought different influences from which also the medieval European historiography benefited.

This fluid sense of chronological boundaries is also visible in the 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 a narrative unity of these elements. This resulted in a belief in the

natural changeability and the ephemeral nature of history as such, because all earthly

things were ruled by time. For the medieval chroniclers, historical change was primarily a

cycle of growth and decay of regents and kingdoms.

The medieval concept of the past thus was determined by an extremely peculiar, ambiguous,

even paradoxical, mixture of belief in historical progression on the one hand and its immutability on the other, of an epochal change and at the same time a continuity of times and historical situations. In the final analysis, it lacked a sense of the truly historical characterisation of the past. However, owing to its emphasis on verifiability of the chronological arrangement, this understanding cannot be classified as being truly timeless, but in various ways it nevertheless lacked a sense of assigning a specific peculiarity to each passing epoch. The past was perceived as a (temporal) development corresponding to the saeculum, the earthly time, with an unchanging character and essence. This engendered a widespread tendency to order historical events according to their respective time which was in no way seen as contradictory to the opposing tendency to detach the subject matter of the same events from their chronological order.

Historiographical thinking was combined with the theological needs of history

The Bible in the middle ages was seen not simply as a literal description of the unfolding of a Christian religion, but also as a chronicle of a succession of spiritual parts. The diverse texts of the Christian tradition were unified in the Bible, thus giving it a coherent history in a historiographical frame of reference which was blended with a unified system of symbolisms, so uniting history with tradition and representation. The acceptance of Catholicism strengthened this historical homogenisation, for one of its core elements was its character of being a universal religion which had little space for the particularist rules, norms and values of specific groups. The earliest Christian historical works were chronologies designed to link events from scripture with political events, and to create a universal history of humanity.

Another feature of medieval historical writing in Europe was that it seemed perennially poised at the crossroads between eschatological aspirations of a universal Christendom and the objective conditions of the real world.

In this fashion, world history came to be established as a computable, finite, yet unstable entity under the control of change in the historiographical traditions of medieval Europe. But, this view of world history soon came under stress. Two factors caused the stress: first, there was the manifestly continuous existence of the world despite the eschatological belief that the predicted end of the world was close; and second, there was the reception in the Occident, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of the Aristotelian concept of time as an endless process. The first factor was enhanced by the use of the AD chronology itself, which helped to deal historiographically with the institutional discontinuities of the Roman Empire. Hence it was ultimately in conflict with the eschatological belief in the finiteness of the existence of the world as an earthly city. The Aristotelian definition of time, came to be reintroduced in the Occident through the Arab translations of Aristotle’s original works from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. According to the Aristotelian concept, time was regarded as the mover of all things, elevated above all other divine creations. In consequence of the spread of this concept of time, it became difficult to conceive existence without time, even beyond Judgement Day. In other words, if time was prior to everything else, existence became inconceivable outside of or beyond time and thinking about a world without change became subject to fairy tales and mere speculation.

One major problem with medieval European historical writing was its perception of history

as primarily as a chronological progression.. Historical changes were seen in political rise

and decline or in change of rulership, possibly complemented by spatial displacement of

the centres of power, and historical events were installed in their precise temporal frame.

But these changes were not estimated, interpreted, or explained according to their

respective historical situations, as structural changes, changes in contemporary attitudes,

or, even in the historical conditions. Owing to a linear concept of time, the authors

recognized an irretrievability of history, but they did not acknowledge a thorough alteration

through the coming of new epochs. Therefore, they completely lacked any sense of

‘alternative pasts’ or of the historical peculiarity of each epoch. The twelfth century, as a

modern historian has remarked, the twelfth century was not simply concerned with ‘the

pastness of the past’ but with ‘its timeless edification’. The past and the present were

thus fused in one continuous narrative.

The tendency to link the present time with the period of the Roman Empire and to emphasise a continuity indicates a characteristic feature of the concept (or consciousness) of history in the high Middle Ages that seems to contradict the tendency to determine and record precise historic dates. On the one hand, the authors acknowledged and noted change and development, and they distinguished between epochs or phases in history; on the other hand, their perceptions of the events were imbued with an astounding sense of ‘timelessness’ that ignored a real difference in the epochal character insofar as this went beyond the political succession of power, reign, and kingdoms. On the contrary, it allowed events that were long past to be applied directly to the present.

Characteristics of Christian/western historiography in medieval period:

Ecclesiastical history suffers from a series of defects from the beginning itself. First, it had adopted the entire ancient pre-Christain and Jewish history without checking its authenticity. Hence, it become very difficult to accept the persons and events mentioned in the Gospel as historical personalities and events. Secondly, Church history is closely related to revelation, but in history, it is difficult to substantiate revelations. It is an accepted fact that knowledge can be gained through observation, intuition and revelation, but knowledge gained thorugh the last two methods cannot be called historical knowledge, which should be such as to be reflected and revived in the historian’s mind. Since this is not possible in the case of revelation it goes out of the purview of history, however, powerful an instrument it might be for philosophy and religion. Thirdly, church history made a very vicious distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ history. Religious history was sacred to it and secular history was profane. It developed such an antipathy and resentment for the ordinary and worldly deed of men that it did not care to regard them as worthy of our attention. Consequently, a good part of human activity, essentially the substance of it, ws excluded fromt e domain of history. What remained was speculative and hypothetical ideas that oculd hardly constitute history. Fourthly, Church history built around itself a ring of false guardianship of piety and authority, which defied all scrutiny and logic. It has ever been a wealness of church history that it never subjected itself to a dispassionate analysis either of its sources or of its interpretations. It is the solitary branch of history that claims exception from critical investigation of treatment.

Providential history: Christian historiography ascribed events not to their human agents but to the workings of providence, preordaining their course.

Apocalyptic history: Christian historiography attached a central importance to the historical life of Christ. It treated earlier events as leading up to it or preparing for it, and subsequent events as developing its consequences. It therefore divided history into two parts: the first part leading up to the birth of Christ has a forward-looking character consisting in blind preparation for an event not yet revealed; the second part has a backward-looking haracter depending on the fact that the revelation has been made.

These histories had a concept of time which was changeless because it was the divine time. Gradually, however, there was a change in the concept of time. Influenced by the pre-Christian tradition of history-writing, the historians began to think of time in more temporal terms, as a measurable sequence. This change in thinking made possible the use of chronology to write history. Contacts with other regions such as the Byzantine and the Arab world brought different influences from which also the medieval European historiography benefited.

Sheikh Ali’s : Characteristics of church historiography:

2 chief characteristics:

1)      First, it developed a special technique to treat inspired and sacred writings. It was concerned mostly with explaining the ways of God to man, and hence it was not interested in secular matters.

2)      Secondly, its approach was not objective but subjective. It was not based on reason but on faith and belief. It obeyed not any law that could be explained by logic, but a divine law which has a fixed course of action, and whose destiny is best known only to God. Therefore, whenever an extraordinary or unusual situation arose its explanation is sought in the Divine Will, and not on the basis of cause and effect. Consequently, the church historiographers developed a method of the own which interpreted situations in terms suitable for religious literature. They adopted an indirect method of conveying their ideas and wrote in allegory which bypassed critics,.

3)      Thirdly, it is highly defective in chronology. According to Sextus Julius Africanus, creation took place 5499 years before Christ. It divided the historical period into five parts – 1) from Abraham to the Trojan War 2) from the Trojan war to the first Olympiad 3) from the first Olympiad to the reign of Darius 4) from the reign of Darius to the death of Christ and 5) from the death of Christ to the reign of Constantine. Christian historiography achieved a certain unity which was theological and gave a religious meaning to history.

4)      Fourthly, the Christian Fathers developed a kind of history which was to vindicate the charge that Christianity was responsible for the fall of Rome. This they had to write in  order to answer the charge of the pagans who accused the Church of engineering the fall of the empire. The vindicatin came in a forceful way from Paulus Orasius (AD 380-420), a Spaniard who later became a disciple of St. Augustine. He wrote seven books of history against the pagans, and argued that the ultimate destiny of all mankind, whether pagan, Jew or Christain would depend on god.

5)      Fifthly, Church historiography falls into two heads, religious and secular. Religious history was based on the assumption that human history was guided by God, and this history comprised mostly of miracles and saints. The other name for such a religious history is patristic history. Secular history was known as pagan history, which received greater attention in later years, although religious history still maintained its ground. Until the Renaissance period, histories of both these types were written side by side with no improvement. The defects of patristic history persisted until the age of Enlightenment. But all history was the monopoly of the monk, who wrote both secular and religious history.

6)      Sixthly, in the period that followed the reign of Charlemagne a new type of historical literature, namely Annals and Chronicles, came into existence. The word Annals means annual information, particularly astronomical records determining the exact date of the Easter festival. This was no more than a kind of almanac table. This practice first began in England and later spread to other parts of Europe.  This Chronicle which followed was concerned with the events of a place. Its object was not to presents a piece of literary composition but to supply some information or prove a particular point. Chronicles give full information on contemporary happenings, but not on past events, and they are not very authentic or accurate accounts if events but merely narrativs of the events that took place when the author was alive. Of all the chronicles produced during the medieval period, the Anglo-Saxon chronicle is the most famous.

7)      Finally, with the fall of the Roman Empire, the historians gained a wider scope to comment on the events. They raised their voice, while the empire was in the process of decay, against administrative inefficiently, corruption, increasing taxation, social derangement, economic strain, breakdown of law and order and the barbarian invasions.

8)      Thus, the historiography of the period was characterized by dogmatic interpretation, a primitive and crude style and a highly colored and subjective approach. The Churchmen and the monks alone were the custodians of history, and they presented their own point of view. History was an instrument in their hand to advance the interests of the Church, and to propagate the Christian faith by indicating how nations had suffered by not observing the Divine Law. Since a body of authentic record was not available, and since they did not bother to collect material by personal exertion, they wrote wither on the basis of old traditions and gospel stories or on contemporary events or on significant episodes such as the Crusades. Reason which had played such a vital role during the Greco-Roman period was pushed to the background and faith took its place. This did not in any way help in the promotion of thought.

9)      Gibbon went to the extent of saying the most powerful factor for the downfall of the Roman empire was Christianity which restrained the free thought and checked human liberty, as it was obligatory to obey not man-made laws but only  the Divine Law, the custodian of which was the church. Since the priests were the instruments to administer this law which was supposed to be infallible, there was no scope for flexibility of the law, and for the growth of the human mind. The historians became the key agents to foster such thoughts as they had the power too substantiate the thesis with reference to the events of the past. Consequently, the period has rightly earned the title of the Dark Ages. Christians considered the affairs of history as the expression of the Divine Will.

10)  In short, the Christian conception of history matured in the writings of St. Augustine. The City of God became manifest in the Church which warned against sin, injustice, immorality and impropriety. For the Christians the fall of Rome had no meaning because their real city was far away from it. St. Augustine considered history as a linear movement consisting of eight stages, five of the past, one that is present and two in the future when Christ will incarnate himself to save humanity. The motive force of this movement id the will and grace of God. The entire drama of history, moving from creation to dissolution and the advent of Jesus is the manifestation of Divine Will. All things good or bad form links of that long chain of Divine planning. Thus, the Christian outlook on historical change is ‘charismatic, linear, universal and impersonal.’

11)  Since its main purpose was to build faith in transcendental forces, it was far from rational or critical history, and a number of weaknesses have been noted by scholars.