Abstract
Mythistory has insinuated its way into the historical record from antiquity to the present. Once fused together, myth + history becomes mythistory, a hybrid, which feeds on history and is unthinkable without it. Some might call it parasitic. As a response to the extraordinary in the workaday world—a myth-reading rather than a misreading of history—mythistory simplifies, but also elaborates. Medieval chroniclers exploited the devices of mythistory to the full, whether in the form of mythistorical motifs, which brought an extra dimension to historical texts, or as self-contained, enlivening anecdotes, sprinkled throughout an otherwise dutiful narrative. Readers of history were thereby invited to partake of the pleasures of the imagination.
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Notes
See Nancy F. Partner, “Historicity in an Age of Reality-Fictions,” in Frank Ankersmit and Hans Kellner (eds.), A New Philosophy of History (Reaktion Books: London, 1995), pp. 21–39, here at pp. 23–5.
The classic text is Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 1978)
Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (Oxford University Press: New York, 1967), p. 36, who writes, “historiography has become a discipline more devious and dubious because of our recognition that its methods depend to an unsuspected degree on myths and fictions.”
Evelyn B. Vitz, Medieval Narrative and Modern Narratology (New York University Press: New York, 1989), p. 111.
For the text, see G.G. Coulton (ed.), Social Life in Britain from the Conquest to the Reformation (Kegan Paul: London, 2004), pp. 537–8.
For commentary, see Nancy Partner, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1977), p. 121.
St. Médard, p. 521; translation modified from Hecker, p. 359. Literary mockery of the count of Champagne’s military defeat in 1230 at his castle of Mont-Aimé is supposedly the source of the battle of the dogs; see Jacques Berlioz, “Il Rogo del Mont-Aimé,” Storia, Vol. 3, no. 22 (October 1988), pp. 30–3, here at p. 33. The author kindly supplied me with his article. A later chronicler adds that a great assembly of birds also slaughtered one another: Geoffrey de Courlon, Chronique de l’abbaye de Saint-Pierre-le-vif de Sens (to 1294) (M.G. Julliot, ed./trans.) (Sens, 1876), pp. 518–19.
O. Holder-Egger, “Ueber die verlorene grössere Chronik Sicards von Cremona I,” Neues Archiv, Vol. 29 (1903–04), pp. 177–245, here at p. 241, nn. 3–4.
Ernest R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (trans. W.R. Trask) (Bollingen Series, 36) (Pantheon Books: New York, 1953), pp. 98–100. Cf. Brown, Birth of the Messiah, pp. 488–9.
Attribution of authorship to the Franciscan friar (who was not St. Bonaventure) and the newly edited Latin text: Johannes de Caulibus, Meditaciones vite Christi (ed. M. Stallings-Taney) (Corpus Christianorum, 153) (Brepols: Turnhout, 1997). English translation: Meditations on the Life of Christ (trans. Isa Ragusa) (Princeton University Press: Princeton, 1961), pp. 75–94, here at p. 89 and pp. 92–3.
See Josephus, The Jewish War (trans. G.A. Williamson) (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1959), pp. 319–20.
Cf. Lamentations, 2:20 and 4:10. For a medieval version (1003), see Rodulfus Glaber, Opera (ed./trans. John France) (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1989), pp. 81–3.
Varagine, Vol. 2, pp. 373–4. But Varagine is mistaken about their departure and Genoa’s attitude towards Frederick II in 1212: see Teofilo Ossian De Negri, Storia di Genova (Giunti: Florence, 2003), p. 333.
See W.M. Lindsay (ed.), Isidori Hispalensis, Etymologiarum sive originum, Vol. 2 (Oxford, 1911), XI. ii. 10.
See J.B. Pitra (ed.), Analecta Novissima Spicilegii Solesmensis. Altera Continuatio, 2 (Paris, 1888; reprinted Farnborough, 1967), sermo 73, ad pueros et adolescentes, pp. 439–42, here at p. 440.
See also T.F. Crane (ed./trans.), The Exempla of Jacques de Vitry (Publications of the Folk-Lore Society, 26) (London, 1890), pp. 120–1 (Crane’s translation is faulty).
Laon, p. 71. Nicole Bériou, L’avènement des maîtres de la Parole: la prédication à Paris aux XIIIe siècle (Collection des Études Augustiniennes, Série Moyen Âge et Temps Modernes, 31), Vol. I (Paris, 1998), p. 60, n. 188.
Matthew 2:16–18. R.M. Woolley (ed.), The Canterbury Benedictional [c. 1025–50] (London, 1917), p. 78: …primitias martyrum ab innocentia paruulorum.
See also Martin R. Dudley, “Natalis Innocentum: The Holy Innocents in Liturgy and Drama,” in Diana Wood (ed.), The Church and Childhood, Studies in Church History, 31 (Oxford, 1994), pp. 233–42, here at p. 237.
See Gavin I. Langmuir, Towards a Definition of Antisemitism (University of California Press: Berkeley, 1990), pp. 282–4.
See Richard Kieckhefer, Magic in the Middle Ages (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1990), pp. 181–7.
Cited in Jeffrey B. Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 1972), p. 146.
E. Louis Backman, Religious Dances in the Christian Church and in Popular Medicine (trans. E. Classen) (London, 1952), pp. 181–90, here at p. 186.
See Gérard Sivéry, “Rural Society,” cap. 1c of The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 5 (ed. David Abulafia) (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1999), pp. 38–49, here at p. 39.
On Alberic of Trois-Fontaines, see Dr. Wilmans, “Über die Chronik Alberich’s”, Archiv für Altere Deutsche Geschichtskunde, Vol. 10 (1849), pp. 174–246;
U. Berlière, “Albéric de Trois-Fontaines,” in Dictionnaire d’Histoire et de Géographie Ecclesiastique, Vol. 1 (Paris, 1912), col. 1413;
M. Prevost, “Aubry de Trois-Fontaines,” in Dictionnaire de Biographie Française, Vol. 4 (Paris, 1948).
Note especially Mireille Schmidt-Chazan, “Aubry de Trois-Fontaines, un historien entre la France et l’Empire,” Annales de l’Est, 5th series, Vol. 36 (1984), pp. 163–92,
André Moisan, “Aubry de Trois-Fontaines à l’écoute des chanteurs de geste,” in Actes du IXe Congrès International de la Société Rencesvals, Vol. 2 (Mucchi: Modena, 1984), pp. 949–76.
Edouard Baratier (ed.), Histoire de Marseille (Privat: Toulouse, 1973), p. 69.
Note A. Mortreuil, “Moeurs et Institutions Marseillaises au Moyen-Age. L’Esclavage,” Revue de Marseille, Vol. 4 (1858), pp. 155–6.
For a general overview, see Simon Lloyd and Rebecca Reader, “Matthew Paris,”, The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 42 (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2004), pp. 620–8.
Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England, c. 550 to c. 1307 (Routledge & Kegan Paul: London, 1974), pp. 356–72.
Richard Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1958), p. 134.
Vivian Hunter Galbraith, Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris (Glasgow University Publications, no. 61) (Glasgow, 1944), p. 24.
Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the “Chronica Majora” (Scolar Press: Aldershot, 1987), p. 2.
Chronica Majora (Rolls Series) (ed. H. R. Luard), Vol. 5 (1857), pp. 246–53. Translation revised (defective, especially on the crucial identification of the youthful leader of 1212 as the future Master of Hungary): Matthew Paris’s English History (trans. J.A. Giles) (H.G. Bohn: London, 1852–54), pp. 451–7. For bibliography, see Gary Dickson, “Shepherds’ Crusade, First (1251),” in Alan Murray (ed.) The Crusades: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2006), Vol. 4, pp. 1093–4.
See Evelyn B. Vitz, “The Apocryphal and the Biblical, the Oral and the Written in Medieval Legends of Christ’s Childhood: The Old French Evangile de l’Enfance,”, Satura (ed. Nancy M. Reale and Ruth E. Sternglantz) (Shaun Tyas: Donington, 2001), pp. 124–49.
See Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages (Routledge: London and New York, 1992), p. 187.
Mortemer, p. 467; Ex annalium Rotomagensium continuationibus (to 1280) (ed. O. Holder-Egger) in MGH. SS., Vol. 26, p. 501. As a source for Matthew Paris, it could be that Rouen is the better bet.
Jeffrey B. Russell, Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London, 1984), p. 207.
On Vincent of Beauvais, see B.L. Ullman, “A Project for a New Edition of Vincent of Beauvais,” Speculum, Vol. 8 (1933), pp. 312–26.
Beryl Smalley, Historian of the Middle Ages (Thames and Hudson: London, 1974), pp. 175–9; Monique Paulmier-Foucard, “Ecrire l’histoire au xiiie siècle: Vincent de Beauvais et Helinand de Froidmont,” Annales de l’Est, Vol. 33, 5th series, pp. 49–70; English summary of J.B. Voorbij’s Groningen Ph.D. thesis on Vincent of Beauvais—Het “Speculum Historiale van Vincent van Beauvais (1991)—in the Vincent of Beauvais Newsletter, Vol. 16 (1991) (unpaginated)
Ullman, “Project for a New Edition,” p. 323; Gregory G. Guzman, “A Growing Tabulation of Vincent of Beauvais’ Speculum Historiale Manuscripts,” Scriptorium, Vol. 29 (1975), pp. 122–5. Personal communication from Dr. J.B. Voorbij of the University of Utrecht (August 12, 1996). I am also grateful to him for extensive material on Vincent.
The printed text reads “Arsacidae” but a shoulder note indicates “Assassini” is what is meant. Cf. the Lanercost chronicle which copies Vincent on the pueri: Chronicon de Lanercost (to 1346) (ed. J. Stevenson) (Maitland Club: Edinburgh, 1838), p. 14: Assisinos.
Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum Historiale (Douai, 1624; reprinted Graz, 1965), cap. 5, p. 1238. Translation revised from Hecker, p. 356.
Quotation cited from F.M. Chambers, “The Troubadours and the Assassins,” Modern Language Notes, Vol. 64 (1949), pp. 245–7.
Dorothee Metlitzki, The Matter of Araby in Medieval England (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 1977), p. 223.
On the Assassins, see Robert Irwin, “Assassins,” in Murray, The Crusades: An Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2006), Vol. 1, pp. 113–15.
M.S.S. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins (Mouton: The Hague, 1955).
Bernard Lewis, The Assassins (Weidenfeld and Nicolson: London, 1967).
Charles E. Nowell, “The Old Man of the Mountain,” Speculum, Vol. 222 (1947), pp. 497–519, here at pp. 516–17. Cf. Hodgson, The Order of Assassins, pp. 133–9.
Alphons Lhotsky, Quellenkunde zur Mittelalterlichen Geschichte Oesterreichs (Mitteilungen des Instituts für Oesterreichische Geschichtsforshung, ergb., 19) (Hermann Böhlaus: Graz-Cologne, 1963), pp. 190–1.
Gerlinde Möser-Mersky, “Das österreichische ‘Chronicon rhythmicum’,” Mitteilungen des Instituts für Oesterreichische Geschichtsforshung, Vol. 73 (1965), pp. 17–38. Also note Repertorium Fontium Historiae Medii Aevi (Rome, 1970), p. 277.
See Karl Young, Ordo Rachelis, University of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, 4 (Madison, 1919), 18: I. Processio Puerorum; II. Interfectio Puerorum; III. Lamentatio Rachelis.
On the supposed pilgrimage songs of the German pueri, see Reinhold Röhricht, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Kreuzzüge, Vol. 2 (Weidmann: Berlin, 1878), p. 257, n. 14.
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© 2008 Gary Dickson
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Dickson, G. (2008). Mythistory: The Shape of a Story. In: The Children’s Crusade. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230592988_7
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