It will be observed that in presenting it in this way we to some extent idealize the Christian conception; and this is true, but in the same way and in the same measure as we have idealized ancient humanism, which was not only humanism, but also transcendency and mystery. Christian historiography, like ancient historio- graphy, solved the problems that were set to it, but it did not solve other problems that were only formed afterward, because they were not set to it. A proof of this is to be found in the caprices and the myths that accompanied its fundamental conception. The prodigious and the miraculous, which, as already observed, surrounded Christian historiography, bore witness precisely to the in- complete ideality of the new and loftier God, the thought of whom became converted into a myth, his action into 208 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY fabulous anecdotes. Yet when it was not a question of miracles, or when these were reduced to small compass, attenuated and held back, if not refuted, there neverthe- less remained the miracle of the divinity and of the truth, conceived as transcendent, separated from and opposed to human affairs. This too was an attestation of the Christian spirit, in so far as it surpassed the ancient spirit, not with the calmness and security of thought, but with the violence of sentiment and with the enthusiasm of the imagination. Transcendency led to a consideration of worldly things as external and rebellious to divine things: hence the dualism of God and the world, of a civitas ccelestis and of another that was terrena^ of a civitas Dei and of a civitas diaboli which revived most ancient Oriental conceptions, such as Parseeism, and was tem- pered, if not internally corrected, by means of the provi- dential course of history, internally compromised by that unconquered dualism. The city of God destroyed the earthly city and took its place, but did not justify it, although it tried to do so here and there, in accordance with the logic of its providential and progressive prin- ciple. St Augustine, obliged to explain the reasons of the fortune of Rome, escaped from the difficulty with the sophism that God conceded that greatness to the Romans as a reward for their virtues, earthly though they were and not si:h as to lead to the attainment of heavenly glories, but yet worthy the fleeting reward of earthly glory. Thus the Romans remained always reprobate, but less reprehensible than other repro- bates; there could not have been true virtue where there had not been true religion. The contests of ideas did not appear as conflicting forms of the true in its becoming, but simply diabolical suggestions, which disturbed the truth, which was complete and possessed MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 209 by the Church. Eusebius of Caesarea treated heresies as the work of the devil, because it was the devil who prompted Simon Magus, and then Menander, and the two currents of gnosis represented by Saturninus and Basil. Otto of Frisia contemplated the Roman Empire succeeding to the Babylonian as son to father, and the kings of the Persians and the Greeks almost as its tutors and pedagogues. In the political unity of Rome he discovers a prelude to Christian unity, in order that the minds of men should form themselves ad majora intelligenda promptiores et capaciores, be disciplined to the cult of a single man, the emperor, and to the fear of a single dominant city, that they should learn unam quoque fidem tenendam. But the same Otto imagines the whole world a primo homine ad Christum...exceptis de Israelitico populo paucis> errore deceptus, vanis super- stitionibus deditus^ d<emonum ludicris captus, mundi illecebris irretitus, fighting sub principe mundi diabolo, until venit plenitudo temporis and God sent His son to earth. The doctrine of salvation as a grace due to the good pleasure of God, indebita Dei gratia^ is not at all an accidental excrescence upon this conception, but is its foundation or logical complement. Christian humanity was destined to make itself unhuman, and St Augustine, however much reverence he excites by the energy of his tem- perament, by his gaze ever fixed above, offends us to an equal degree by his lack of human sympathy, his harsh- ness and cruelty; and the ' grace ' of which he speaks assumes in our eyes the aspect of odious favouritism and undue exercise of power. It is nevertheless well to re- member that by means of these oscillations and deviations of sentiment and imagination Christian historiography prepared the problem of the surpassing of dualism. For if the search for the Christianity of the non-Christians, 210 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY for grace due to all men from their very character of men, the truth of heresies, the goodness of pagan virtue, was a historical task that has matured slowly in modern times, the division and opposition of the two histories and the two cities, introduced by Christianity, was a fundamental necessity, as their unity thought in the providential divine Unity was a good preparation for it.
Another well-known aspect of this dualism is dog- matism, the incapacity to understand the concrete particularization of itself by the spirit in its various activities and forms. This explains the accusation levelled against ecclesiastical history of overriding and tyrannically oppressing the whole of the rest of history. This did in fact take place, because ecclesiastical history, instead of developing itself in the concrete universal of the spirit, remained rooted in a particular deter- mination of it. All human values were reduced to a single value — that is to say, to firmness of Christian faith and to service of the Church. This value, thus abstractly conceived, became deprived of its natural virtue and declined to the level of a material and immo- bile fact, and indeed the vivid, fluid Christian conscious- ness after some centuries of development became solidified in dogmas. That materialized and motionless dogma necessarily prevailed as a universal measure, and men of all times were judged according to whether they had or had not been touched with the divine grace, were pious or impious, and the lives of the holy fathers and of believers were a Plutarch, who excluded every other profane Plutarch. This was the dogmatism of transcendency, which therefore resolved itself into asceticism, in the name of which the whole actual his- tory of mankind is covered with contempt, with horror, MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 211 and with lamentation. This is particularly noticeable in Augustine, in Orosius, and in Otto of Frisia, but is to be perceived at least in germ as a tendency among all the historians or chroniclers of the early Middle Ages. What thoughts are suggested by the battle of Ther- mopylae to Otto of Frisia? Ttedet hie inextricabilem malorum texere cratem; tamen ad ostendendam mortalium miseriam> summatim ea attingere volo. And what by the deeds of Alexander? Regni Macedonum rnonarchia, qu<e ab ipso ccepit, ipso mortuo cum ipso finitur...Civitas autem Christi firmata supra firmam petram,...With asceticism is linked the often noted and often ridiculed credulity of the medieval historians (not to be confounded with the belief in miracles, originating from religion): this credulity is generally attributed to the prevalence* of imagination, or to social conditions, which rendered books rare and critical capacity difficult to find — that is to say, to things which required to be explained in their turn.
Indifference is, indeed, one of the principal sources of credulity, because no one is ever credulous in the things that touch him closely and of which he treats, while on the other hand all (as is proved in daily life) are ready to lend an ear to more or less indifferent talk. Asceti- cism, diminishing the interest for things of the world and for history, assisted in the neglect and dispersion of books and documents, promoted credulity toward every- thing heard or read, unbridling the imagination, ever desirous of the wonderful and curious, to the disadvan- tage of discernment. It did this not only in history properly so called, but also in the science of nature or natural history, which was also indifferent to one who possessed the ultimate truth of religion. The weak capacity for individualization noticeable in medieval 212 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY historiography must be attributed to ascetism, which is usually satisfied with the general character of goodness or badness (the c portrait ' is very rare in it, as in the figurative arts of the same age), and it has even less consciousness of the historical differences of place and time, travestying persons and events in contemporary costume. It even goes so far as to compose imaginary histories and false documents, which portray the sup- posed type. This extends from Agnello of Ravenna, who declared that he wrote also the lives of those bishops of Ravenna about whom he possessed no information, et credo (he said) non mentitum esse, because, if they filled so high a past, they must of necessity have been good, charitable, zealous, and so forth, down to the false decretals of the pseudo-Isidore. We also owe to asceticism the form of chronicle as its intimate cause, because, when the meaning of particular facts was neglected, it only remained to note them as they were observed or related, without any ideological connexion and with only the chronological connexion. Thus we frequently find among the historians of the Middle Ages the union (at first sight strange, yet not without logical coherence) of a grandiose history, beginning with the creation of the world and the dispersion of the races, and an arid chronicle, following the other principle and becoming ever more particular and more contingent as approach is gradually made to the times of the authors.
When on the one hand the two cities, the heavenly and the earthly, and on the other the transcendency of the principle of explanation had been conceived, the composition of dualism could not be sought for in intelligence, but in myth, which put an end to the strife with the triumph of one of the two adversaries: MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 213 the myth of the fall, of the redemption, of the expected reign of Christ, of the Last Judgment, and of the final separation of the two cities, one ascending to Paradise with the elect, the other driven back into hell with the wicked. This mythology had its precedent in the Judaic expectations of a Messiah, and also, from some points of view, in Orphism, and continued to develop through gnosis, millenarism, and other heretical tenta- tives and heresies, until it took a definite or almost a definite form in St Augustine. It has been remarked that in this conception metaphysic became identified with history, as an entirely new thought, altogether opposed to Greek thought, and that it is a philosophical contribution altogether novel and proper to Christianity. But we must add here that, as mythology, it did not unite, but indeed confounded, metaphysic and history, making the finite infinite, avoiding the fallacy of the circle as perpetual return of things, but falling into the other fallacy of a progress beginning and ending in time. History was therefore arranged in spiritual epochs or phases, through which humanity was born, grew up, and attained completion: there were six, seven, or eight epochs, according to the various ways of dividing and calculating, which sometimes corresponded to the ages of human life, sometimes to the days of the creation, some- times to both these schemes combined; or where the hermeneutic of St Jerome upon the Book of Daniel was accepted, the succession of events was distributed among the four monarchies, of which the last was the Roman, not only in order of time, but also in that of the idea, because after the Roman Empire (the Middle Ages, as we know, long nourished the illusion that that empire persisted in the form of the Holy Roman Empire) there would be nothing else, and the reign of Christ or of the 2i4 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY Church and then of Antichrist and the universal judg- ment were expected to follow without any intermission. The end which history had not yet reached chrono- logically, being also intrinsic to the system, was ideally constructible, as the Apocalypses had already ideally constructed it, pervading theological works and even histories, which in their last section (see the works of Otto of Frisia for all of them) described the coming of Antichrist and the end of the world: hence the idea of a history of things future^ continued by the paradoxical Francesco Patrizzi, who gave utterance to his theory in the sixteenth century in his dialogues Upon History (1560). This general historical picture might be here and there varied in its particulars, but never shattered and confuted; it varied in orthodoxy up to the time of Augustine, and afterward among the dissentients and the heretics: most noteworthy of these variations was the Eternal Evangel of the followers of Gioacchino di Flora, who divided history into three epochs, corresponding to the three persons of the Trinity: the first that of the Old Testament or of the Father, the second that of the New Testament or of the Son, the third and last, that of the Spirit. These are but artificial combinations and transactions, by means of which life always seeks to find a passage between the preconceived schemes which compress and threaten to suffocate it.
But such transactions did not avail to get the better of the discord between reality and plan which everywhere revealed itself. Hence the necessity of the allegorical interpretation ', so dear to the Middle Ages. This consisted substantially in placing an imaginary figure between the plan and the historical reality, a mixture of both, like a bridge, but a bridge which MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 215 could be crossed only in imagination. Thus personages and events of sacred and profane history were alle- gorized, and subtle numerical calculations made and continually reinforced with new imaginary contributions, in order to discover correspondences and parallelisms; and not only were the ages of life and the days of creation placed on a parallel line with historical epochs, but so also were the virtues and other conceptions. Such notions are still to be found in books of devotion and in the preaching of the less acute and less modernized of sacred orators. The ' reign of nature ' was also included in allegorical interpretation; and since history and metaphysic had been set at variance with one another, so in like manner was natural science set at variance with both of them, and all appeared together in allegorical forms in the medieval encyclopaedias, the Pantheons and Mirrors of the World.
Notwithstanding these inevitable strayings, the new idea of history as the spiritual drama of humanity, although it inclined toward myth, yet acted with such energy as to weaken the ancient heteronomous con- ception of history as directed toward the administration of abstract instruction, useful in actual practice. History itself was now the teaching, the knowledge of the life of the human race from its creation upon the earth, through its struggles, up to its final state, which was indicated in the near or remote horizon. History thus became the work of God, teaching by His direct word and presence, which is to be seen and heard in every part of it. Declarations are certainly not wanting, indeed they abound, that the reading of histories is useful as counselling, and particularly as inculcating, good behaviour and abstention from evil. Sometimes it is a question of traditional and conventional declara- 2i 6 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY tions, at others of particular designs: but medieval historiography was not conceived, because it could not be conceived, heteronomously.
If asceticism mortified minds, and if the miraculous clouded them, it is not necessary to believe, on the other hand, that either had the power to depress reality altogether and for a long period. Indeed, precisely because asceticism was arbitrary, and mythology ima- ginary, they remained more or less abstract, in the same way as allegorical interpretation, which was impotent to suppress the real determinations of fact. It was all very well to despise and condemn the earthly city in words, but it forced itself upon the attention, and if it did not speak to the intellect it spoke to the souls and to the passions of men. In its period of youthful vigour, also, Christianity was obliged to tolerate profane history, dictated by economic, political, and military interests, side by side with sacred history. And as in the course of the Middle Ages, in addition to the religious poetry of the sacred hymns and poems, there also existed an epic of territorial conquests, of the shock of peoples and of feudal strife, so there continued to exist a worldly history, more or less mingled and tempered with religious history. We find even fervent Christians and the most pious of priests yielding to the desire of collecting and handing down the memory of their race: thus Gregory of Tours told of the Franks, Paulus Diaconus of the Lombards, Bede of the Angles, Widekind of the Saxons. Their gentle hearts of political partisans do not cease to beat. Not only do they lament the misery and wicked- ness of humanity in general, but also give vent to their particular feelings, as we observe, for instance, in the monk Erchempertus, who, ex intimo corde ducens aha suspiria, resumes the thread of Paul's history to narrate MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 217 the deeds of his glorious Lombards (now hunted back into the southern part of Italy alone and assaulted and ambushed on every side), non regnum sed excidium> non felicitatem sed miseriam, non. triumphum sed perniciem. And Liutprand of Cremona, although he makes the deity intervene as ruler and punisher on every occasion, and even the saints in person do battle, does not fail, for instance, to note that when Berengarius proceeded to take possession of the kingdom after the death of Guido, the followers of the latter called for King Lambert, quia semper Itali geminis uti dominis volunt^ quatinus alterum alterius terrore coherceant: which is also the definition of feudal society. They were most credulous in many things, far from profound and abandoned to their imagination, but they were not credulous, indeed they were clear-sighted, shrewd and diffident in what con- cerned the possessions and privileges of the churches and monasteries, of families, and of the feudal group and the order of citizenship to which each belonged. It is to these interests that we owe the formation of archives, registers, chronologies, and the exercise of criticism as to the authenticity and genuineness of documents. The conception of the new Christian virtue oppressed, but did not quench, admiration (though held sinful by the most severe) for the great name of ancient Rome, and the many works of pagan civilization, its eloquence, its poetry, its civil wisdom. Nor did it forbid admiration for Arabic or Judaic-Arabic wisdom, of which the works were well received, notwithstanding religious strife. Hence we may say that in the same way as Graeco-Roman humanism did not altogether exclude the supernatural, so the Christian supernatural did not prevent human consideration of worldly passions and earthly transactions.
218 HISTORY OF HISTORIOGRAPHY This becomes more and more evident as we pass from the early to the late Middle Ages, when profane historio- graphy progresses, as the result of the struggles between Church and State, of the communal movement, of the more frequent commercial communications between Europe and the East, and the like. These are them- selves the result of the development, the maturing, and the modernization of thought, which grows with life and makes life grow. Neither life nor thought remained attached to the conceptions of the fathers of the Church, of Augustine, of Orosius, to whom history offered nothing but the proof of the infinite evils that afflict humanity, of the unceasing punishments of God, and of the "deaths of the persecutors." In Otto of Frisia himself, who holds more firmly than the others to the doctrines of Augustine, we find the asperity of doctrine tempered by grace; and when he afterward proceeds to narrate the struggle between the Church and the Empire, if it cannot be said that he takes the side of the Empire, it also cannot be said that he resolutely defends that of the Church, for the eschato- logical visions that form so great a part of his work do not blind his practical sense and political judgment. The party of the faith against the faithless remained, however, always the ' great party,' the great * struggle of classes ' (elect and reprobate) and of * states ' (celestial and earthly cities). But within this large % framework we perceive other figures more closely particularized, other parties and interests, which gradually come to occupy the first, second, and third planes, so that the struggle between God and the devil is forced ever more and more into the background and becomes somewhat vague, something always assumed to be present, but not felt to be active and urgent in the soul, as something