Seminar V: Rhetorical Histories

The subject of this week’s seminar is the production of grand, rhetorical, history in the early and high Middle Ages. The Greco-Roman world bequeathed to the Middle Ages two basic models for the writing of this kind of history: the classical monograph as practiced by historians such as Sallust (86–c.35 BC), Tacitus (c. AD 56–c.120) and, in late antiquity, Ammianus Marcellinus (c.325/30–c.391/400); and the ecclesiastical history, a genre which was invented in the early fourth-century East by Eusebius of Caesarea (c.263–339/40) and transmitted to the West when his Historia ecclesiastica was translated (sometimes with extensive modifications) into Latin and continued by Rufinus of Aquileia (344/5–410/11). Both types of history were written to persuade, but their methods were quite different.

A T-O map of the world The classical monograph is typically concerned with a self-contained story or event of relatively short duration, such as a war, a crisis of some kind or (under the principate) the reign of a particular emperor or dynasty. Taking its organisation from the event/story itself rather than from a larger chronological system, it seldom concerns itself with dates. Except in so far as fate and divination figure as recurring motifs, the monograph avoids religion. Its usual subject matter is res gestae—the deeds of great men and, on occasion, women. The ecclesiastical history, on the other hand, takes a long-term perspective, being concerned with the history of the Church since its inception in the time of the Apostles. Its usual themes were first defined by Eusebius, who declared in his preface that he would give an account of (i) the bishops of the most illustrious sees, (ii) the heralds, oral or literary, of the Word of God in each generation, (iii) heretics, (iv) the fate of the Jews, (v) pagan attacks on the Word of God, and (vi) the sufferings of the faithful witnesses to the Word. Ecclesiastical history is very much concerned with defining the boundaries between the true Church, the community of genuine Christians, and its ‘others’, the various non-Christian communities. (The influence of this template helps to explain why historians like Gregory of Tours, who was much influenced by this model, are concerned with Jews and heretics even though their actual significance to the history of his region, sixth-century Gaul, was minimal.) Another key point of difference is that whereas the monograph conceals its textual sources, avoiding any reference to them, the ecclesiastical history puts documentary evidence in the foreground. As Robert Markus puts it, ‘scissors and paste were the classical method of ecclesiastical historiography.’ Letters and tracts are often quoted at length, or rather this is how the argument is constructed, for ecclesiastical historians were not above editing and even on occasion fabricating proofs. Ecclesiastical history was also marked, in its earlier manifestations, by a certain outward simplicity—by an avoidance of ornate prose and of devices such as the invented speech, which was one of the hallmarks of the classical monograph. Both genres were vehicles for argument, but they articulated their arguments in contrasting ways.

It should also be noted briefly that the classical world bequeathed to the medieval historian another significant model in the form of two histories by the Jewish apologist Titus Flavius Josephus (AD 38–100), the Jewish Antiquities and The Jewish War. These works were transmitted to the Latin world in three-versions: (i) the free paraphrase of the The Jewish War written in about 370 by a Christian historian known as ‘Pseudo-Hegesippus’ or sometimes simply as ‘Hegesippus’; (ii) the literal translation of The Jewish War produced by Rufinus of Aquileia; and (iii) the translation of the Antiquities and of Against Apion (a short defence of Judaism) which the sixth-century thinker Cassiodorus commissioned ‘from his friends’. The Antiquities were certainly known to Bede and there is ample evidence that all three works were widely known in England from the first half of the twelfth century onwards. Cassiodorus, more to the point, writes of Josephus as though he were a not a Jew, but a Christian: he cites his works as examples of ecclesiastical history before turning to those of Eusebius and his successors (Institutes, I.xvii.1).

Many rhetorical histories were produced in the Middle Ages, but none—except perhaps for the History of the Tyrants of Sicily attributed to Hugo Falcandus, a tremendous imitation of a classical monograph—adheres exactly to either of these two models. Rather the typical pattern is that rhetorical histories produced between 500 and 1400 are ‘hybrids’ in which some passages resemble the entries one finds in annalistic chronicles, other sections the material found in classical monographs, others that in ecclesiastical histories, and others that in hagiography. It is as though the classical monograph and the ecclesiastical history provided models, less for the organisation of a history as a coherent whole, than for how to make a certain type of point or for how to write up a certain type of event.

The manuscripts in which ‘rhetorical histories’ are preserved are seldom very distinctive in their layout. There was, in contrast to the pattern with annalistic chronicles (and list-chronicles, another important sub-genre), no need to maintain a specific format: the books in which they were written might be large or small, lavishly or simply decorated, carefully or informally written, laid out in strictly observed double columns or with wide margins so that futher information could be inserted with signes de renvoi, ‘signs of return’. Where rhetorical histories were concerned scribes were usually required to make copies which reproduced their exemplar’s text as exactly as possible, modifying the presentation only in so far as the script and the artwork had, of necessity, to follow the practice of their own house. One often finds, however, that there are different ‘recensions’ or versions of these works. Indeed, it was quite common for medieval historians to continue tinkering with their texts long after the first ‘finished version’ had gone into circulation with the result that the surviving copies often fall into distinct groups, each deriving from a different stage in the author’s revision of his text. One common pattern, for example, is that the author will remove or water down passages in which important historical figures are criticised—a response, perhaps, to negative feedback from those persons’ relatives or from the author’s colleagues. In any case, these patterns of ‘publication’ are amply illustrated by the surviving manuscripts of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum Anglorum and by those of Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum.

The significance of these patterns of ‘publication’ also lies in what they reveal about the demand for new historical writing in the Middle Ages. For the speed with which texts went into circulation suggests that that demand was urgent: religious communities seem to have been so keen to acquire histories of the recent past that they sought them out for copying as soon as they got news that such a text had been completed. Yet the evidence of the surviving library catalogues shows that works about theology and the religious life took up vastly more space in the holdings of most religious establishments. Most religious houses owned a few copies of the ‘classics’—Eusebius, Josephus, Bede, and also Geoffrey of Monmouth, the one major addition to the canon in the twelfth century—but copies of other rhetorical histories were rarities. This much is true even in the case of the wealthiest houses. The writing of new histories was, it seems, an unusual but significant event: such works were seldom attempted; when they were undertaken, they were avidly sought out and read; but as soon as their moment had passed, they became objects of rare and occasional attention, chiefly of interest to scholars.

Topics for Discussion

The Classical and Judaeo-Christian background to the writing of rhetorical history in the Middle Ages.
The methods of rhetorical historians, including their use of annalistic sources, eye-witness reportage, invented speech, documents in quotation, and satire.
Attitudes to truth and the manipulation of received historical material.
The balance between the secular and the religious in medieval rhetorical histories.
The significance of variant texts in the manuscript traditions of medieval rhetorical histories.

Texts (and manuscripts) for Discussion

Sample texts should be downloaded from the Moodle website.

Strongly Recommended Reading—Available on Moodle

Some influential guidance as to how to write history was provided by classical rhetorical manuals, many of them associated with the great Roman orator, Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC):

Cicero, De oratore, ed. and trs. E. W. Sutton, Loeb Classical Library, 2 vols. (London, 1942), ii.51–64 (pp. 234–47). In ‘On the Orator’, Cicero discusses the difference between annals and history, and sets out various rules as to how the latter ought to be written.
Ad Herennium de ratione dicendi (Rhetorica ad Herennium), trs. H. Caplan, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1954), i.8.12–9.16 (pp. 22–28). The tract ‘On the Logic of Speaking’ addressed to Herennius was widely attributed to Cicero in the Middle Ages, and this passage provides instructions about literary method that could be applied to the writing of history.
Cicero, De inventione, ed. and trs. H. M. Hubbell, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1949), I.xx.28–30 (pp. 56–63). In this early work, ‘On Composition’, Cicero advises the orator to adjust his presentation of the facts in order to better win the argument!

These passages can be downloaded from the Moodle website.

Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, trs. F. J. Tschan, The Records of Civilisation 53 (New York, 1959). Available as an ACLS Humanities E-Book and at MIY.K.
Blatt, F., The Latin Josephus, vol. 1, Introduction and Text: Antiquities, Books I-V, Acta Jutlandica 30 (Aarhus, 1958).
Cosmas of Prague, The Chronicle of the Czechs, trs. L. Wolverton, Medieval Texts in Translation (Washington, DC, 2009).
Eusebius/Rufinus, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. E. Schwartz and T. Mommsen, Die Kirchengeschichte [mit] der lateinischen Übersetzung des Rufinus, in Eusebius Werke, vol. 2, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller 11, 1–3 (Leipzig, 1903–9). For translations, see Eusebius, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, trs. G. A. Williamson with an introduction by A. Louth (Harmondsworth, 1989) [PO.A]; Rufinus of Aquileia, History of the Church, trs. Philip R. Amidon, Fathers of the Church 133 (Washington, DC, 2017) [PO.A]; Rufinus of Aquileia, The Church History: Books 10 and 11, trs. P. R. Amidon (Oxford, 1997).
Helmold of Bosau, The Chronicle of the Slavs, trs. F. J. Tschan, Records of Civilisation 21 (New York, 1966). Available as an ACLS Humanities E-Book.
Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum (The History of the English People), ed. D. E. Greenway, Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1996). MVC.
Historia Falcandi Siculi de rebus gestis in Siciliae regno, trs. G. A. Loud and T. Wiedemann, The History of the Tyrants of Sicily by ‘Hugo Falcandus’, 1154-69, Manchester Medieval Sources Series (Manchester, 1998). MFWE.Q.
Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum, ed. E. Koestermann (Heidelberg, 1971). Ask Enquiries: 7XJ.S169. Medieval MSS of the Bellum Iugurthinum often contain T–O maps like the one shown above: see E. Edson, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed their World, The British Library Studies in Map History (London, 1997), pp. 18–21 [DQL3].
Ussani, V. (ed.), Hegesippi qui dicitur historiae libri V, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 66, 2 vols. (Vienna, 1932–60). PN.D.
Warner, D. A. (trs.), Ottonian Germany: The Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg, Manchester Medieval Sources (Manchester, 2001). MHBD.T.
Widukind of Corvey, Deeds of the Saxons, trs. B. S. and D. S. Bachrach, Medieval Texts in Translation (Washington, DC, 2014). Available at JSTOR.
William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. and trs. R. A. B. Mynors, Rodney M., Thomson and Michael Winterbottom, 2 vols., Oxford Medieval Texts (Oxford, 1998–9). MVB.C.

Medieval Rhetorical Thought

Auerbach, E., Literary Language and its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trs. R. Manheim (London, 1965). XJQ.
Alberic of Monte Cassino, Flores rhetorici, ed. D. M. Inguanez and H. M. Willard, Miscellanea Cassinense 14 (Montecassino, 1938), pp. 31–59; trs. J. M. Miller in Readings in Medieval Rhetoric, ed. J. M. Miller, M. H. Prosser and T. W. Benson (Bloomington and London, 1973), pp. 131–61. YUV3.B.
Damon, P., ‘Allegory and Invention: Levels of Meaning in Ancient and Medieval Rhetoric’, in A. S. Bernardo and S. Levin (eds), The Classics in the Middle Ages: Papers of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 69 (Binghamton, NY, 1990), pp. 113–27.
Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi: Instruction in the Method and Art of Speaking and Versifying, trs. R. P. Parr, Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation 17 (Milwaukee, WI, 1968). XJR.V6. A formative text for the development of rhetorical thought in the later Middle Ages.
Minnis, A. J., and I. Johnson (eds), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 2, The Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2005). YBRH. Note esp. J. J. Murphy, ‘The Arts of Poety and Prose’ (pp. 42–67).
Morse, R., Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation and Reality (Cambridge, 1991). Probes the foundations of medieval narrative literature, mainly historiography and biography. YUV.
Murphy, J. J., Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA, 1975). YUV3.B.
Troyan, S. D., Medieval Rhetoric (London, 2004).
Ward, J. O., Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion and Commentary, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental 58 (Turnhout, 1995).
Ward, J. O., ‘The Medieval and Early Renaissance Study of Cicero’s De inuentione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium: Commentaries and Contexts’, in V. Cox and J. O. Ward (eds), The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 2 (Leiden: Brill, 2006), pp. 3–75. A general survey of the tradition, from the classical period to the fifteenth century, with an appendix listing catena-glosses on the De inventione and Rhetorica ad Herennium (pp. 70–75).

Other Useful Readings—Just a Sample

Albu, E., The Normans in their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion (Woobridge, 2001).
Bagge, S., Kings, Politics, and the Right Order of the world in German Historiography c. 950–1150, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 103 (Leiden and Boston, 2002). Important, but not held at Lancaster.
Bainton, H., History and the Written Word: Documents, Literacy, and Language in the Age of the Angevins, The Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia, PA, 2020).
Bartlett, R., England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225, The New Oxford History of England (Oxford, 2000). MVE. Chapter 12 (pp. 616–33) provides an excellent overview of historical writing in 12th-century England.
Beer, J. M. A., Narrative Conventions of Truth in the Middle Ages, Études de philologie et d’histoire 38 (Geneva, 1981). Treats the claim to be telling the truth to be literary device which could be legitimately parrodied and manipulated by authors.
Bouchard, C. B., ‘Episcopal Gesta and the Creation of a Useful Past in Ninth-Century Auxerre’, Speculum, 84 (2009), 1–35. Journals L6.
Brandt, W. J., The Shape of Medieval History: Studies in Modes of Perception (New Haven, CT, 1966).
Bugyis, K. A.-M., A. B. Kraebel and M. E. Fassler (eds), Medieval Cantors and their Craft: Music, Liturgy and the Shaping of History, 800–1500, Writing History in the Middle Ages 3 (York, 2017). Available at Ebook Central.
Collins, S., ‘The Written World of Gregory of Tours’, in J. Glenn (ed.), The Middle Ages in Texts and Texture: Reflections on Medieval Sources (Toronto, 2011), pp. 45–55. MB.
de Nie, G., ‘History and Miracle: Gregory’s Use of metaphor’, in K. Mitchell and I. N. Wood (eds.), The World of Gregory of Tours, Cultures, Beliefs and Traditions: Medieval and Early Modern Peoples 8 (Leiden, 2002), pp. 261–79. MSC7.
de Nie, G., Views from a Many-Windowed Tower: Studies of Imagination in the Works of Gregory of Tours (Amsterdam, 1987).
Deliyannis, D. M. (ed.), Historiography in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2002). A general survey by a team of authors. L43.B.
Franklin, C. V., ‘Reading the Popes: The Liber pontificalis and its Editors’, Speculum, 92:3 (2017), 607–29. Available online at the University of Chicago Press.
Galbraith, V. H., Historical Research in Medieval England (London, 1951). Pamphlet L43ea.
Gantner, C., R. McKitterick, and S. Meeder (eds), The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 2015).
Geary, P. J., Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, NJ, 1994). MBLE.I.
Gerberding, R. A., The Rise of the Carolingians and the Liber Historiae Francorum (Oxford, 1987). MSC.
Glenn, J., Politics and History in the Tenth Century: The Work and World of Richer of Reims, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought, 4th ser. 60 (Cambridge, 2004). MSEC.J.
Goffart, W., ‘Bede’s vera lex historiae Explained’, Anglo-Saxon England, 34 (2005), 111–6. Cambridge Journals Online
Goffart, W., The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton, NJ, 1988). MBB.
Haahr, J. G., ‘William of Malmesbury’s Roman models: Suetonius and Lucan’, in A. S. Bernardo and S. Levin (eds), The Classics in the Middle Ages: Papers of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 69 (Binghamton, NY, 1990), pp. 165–73.
Heinzelmann, M., Gregory of Tours: History and Society in the Sixth Century, trs. C. Carroll (Cambridge, 2001). MSC.
Lake, J., ‘Rewriting Merovingian History in the Tenth Century: Aimoin of Fleury’s Gesta Francorum’, Early Medieval Europe, 25 (2017), 489–525. ‘Through a process of selective editing, strategic silence, and rhetorical invention [Aimoin] compiled a history that would appeal to its probable target audience, King Robert II of West Francia.’ Available at Wiley Online.
Loud, G. A., ‘History Writing in the Twelfth-Century Kingdom of Sicily’, in S. Dale, A. W. Lewin, and D. J. Osheim (eds), Chronicling History: Chroniclers and Historians in Medieval and Renaissance Italy (University Park, PA, 2008), pp. 29–54. MFP.I. Discusses Alexander of Telese, Falco of Benevento and ‘Hugo Falcandus’, providing extracts in translation from the former two authors’ histories (pp. 49–54).
Markus, R. A., Bede and the Tradition of Ecclesiastical Historiography, Jarrow Lecture 1975 (Newcastle, 1975) [PN.DM.B35]. Rpt. in Bede and his World: The Jarrow Lectures, 2 vols. (Aldershot, 1994), i, 385–403 [MVC7]. It should be read in conjunction with Markus, R. A., ‘Church History and the Early Church Historians’, in D. Baker (ed.), The Materials Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History, Studies in Church History 11 (Oxford, 1975), pp. 1–17 [PO7]. Both articles are rpt. in Robert A. Markus, Sacred and Secular: Studies on Augustine and Latin Christianity, Variorum Collected Studies Series 465 (Aldershot, 1994), nos. II and III.
McCready, W. D., Miracles and the Venerable Bede, Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Studies and Texts 118 (Toronto, 1994), esp. chps. 8, ‘Vera lex historiae’, and 9, ‘Truth and its Limits’. MVC.
Morrison, K. F., History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Princeton, NJ, 1990).
Mortley, R., ‘The Hellenistic Foundations of Ecclesiastical Historiography’, in G. Clarke with B. Croke, R. Mortley and A. E. Nobbs (eds), Reading the Past in Late Antiquity (Rushcutters Bay, NSW, 1990), pp. 225–50.
Nichols, S., Romanesque Signs: Early Medieval Narrative and Iconography (New Haven, CT, 1983). YU.B. Late tenth- and eleventh-century Frankish historiography.
Partner, N. F., Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago and London, 1977). L43ea.
Paul, N. L., ‘Origo consulum: Rumours of Murder, A Crisis of Lordship, and the Legendary Origins of the Counts of Anjou’, French History, 29 (2015), 139–60. On the genesis of the Chronica de gestis consulum Andegavorum. Available from Oxford Journals.
Paxton, J., ‘Lords and Monks: Creating an Ideal of Noble Power in Monastic Chronicles’, in R. F. Berkhofer III, A. Cooper, A. J. Kosto (eds), The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350: Essays in Honor of Thomas N. Bisson (Aldershot, 2005), pp. 227–36. MBM7.
Paxton, J., ‘Textual Communities in the English Fenlands: A Lay Audience for Monastic Chronicles?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 26 (2004), 123–37.
Pizarro, J. M., ‘Mixed Modes in Historical Narrative’, in E. M. Tyler and R. Balzaretti (eds), Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West, Studies in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 91–104. MBR.
Pizarro, J. M., A Rhetoric of the Scene: Dramatic Narrative in the Early Middle Ages (Toronto, 1989).
Pizarro, J. M., Writing Ravenna: The Liber pontificalis of Andreas Agnellus (Ann Arbor, MI, 1995).
Ray, R., ‘Bede and Cicero’, Anglo-Saxon England, 16 (1987), 1–15. MVC.
Ray, R., ‘Bede, the Exegete, as Historian’, in G. Bonner (ed.), Famulus Christi: Essays in Commemoration of the Thirteenth Centenary of the Birth of the Venerable Bede (London, 1976), pp. 125–40. MVC5.* Mostly concerned with Bede’s concept of historical truth and its relation to his theories of scriptural truth.
Ray, R., ‘Bede’s lex vera historiae’, Speculum, 55 (1980), 1–12. JSTOR; Journals L6.
Ray, R., ‘The Triumph of Greco-Roman Rhetorical Assumptions in Pre-Carolingian Historiography’, in C. Holdsworth and T. P. Wiseman (ed.), The Inheritance of Historiography 350-900, Exeter Studies in History 12 (Exeter, 1986), pp. 67–84. L43.
Ray, R., Bede, Rhetoric and the Creation of Christian Latin Culture, Jarrow Lectures 1997 (Newcastle, 1997). Discusses the influence of Cicero’s De inventione on Bede (either directly or through Marius Victorinus’s commentary) and suggests that this first-hand knowledge provided the impetus for his attempt to build a Latin Christian culture. PAH can supply copies.
Reynolds, B. R., ‘Latin Historiography: A Survey, 1400–1600’, Studies in the Renaissance, 2 (1955), 7–66. JSTOR.
Rozier, C., D. Roach, E. van Houts, G. E. M. Gasper (eds), Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2016). MBM.
Schreckenberg, H., and K. Schubert, Jewish Historiography and Iconography in Early and Medieval Christianity (Assen, 1992). PN.I.
Shopkow, L., ‘Dynastic History’, in D. M. Deliyannis (ed.), Historiography in the Middle Ages (Leiden, 2002), pp. 217–48. L43.B.
Shopkow, L., History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC, 1998). MTC.I.
Sønnesyn, S. O., ‘In vinea Sorech laborare: The Cultivation of Unity in Twelfth-Century Monastic Historiography’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 36 (2014), 167–87. JSTOR.
Sonnesyn, S. O., ‘Studiosi abdita investigant: Orderic Vitalis and The Mystical Morals of History’, in C. Rozier, D. Roach, E. van Houts, G. E. M. Gasper (eds), Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations (Woodbridge, 2016), pp. 284–97. MBM.
Spiegel, G. M., ‘Historical Thought in Medieval Europe’, in L. Kramer and S. Maza (eds), A Companion to Western Historical Thought (Malden, MA, 2002), pp. 78–98. Available as an electronic resource and at L43.
Stein, R. M., Reality Fictions: Romance, History and Governmental Authority, 1025–1180 (Notre Dame, IN, 2006).
Trompf, G. W., Early Christian Historiography: Narratives of Retributive Justice (London and New York, 2000). PO.A.
Tyler, E. M., and R. Balzaretti (eds), Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West, Studies in the Early Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2006). MBR.
Van Houts, E. M. C., ‘Historical Writing’, in C. Harper-Bill and E. M. C. van Houts (eds), A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2002), pp. 103–21. MVE7.
Van Houts, E. M. C., Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (London, 1999). MBM.
von Güttner-Sporzynski, D. (ed.), Writing History in Medieval Poland: Bishop Vincentius of Cracow and the Chronica Polonorum, Cursor Mundi 28 (Turnhout, 2017).
Vessey, D. W. T. C., ‘William of Tyre and the Art of Historiography’, Mediaeval Studies, 35 (1973), 433–55. Y6. Ask at Enquiries.
Ward, J. O., ‘Classical Rhetoric and the Writing of History in Medieval and Renaissance Culture’, in F. McGregor and N. Wright (eds), European History and Its Historians (Adelaide, 1977), pp. 1–10. A ground-breaking essay, important on the differences between medieval and Renaissance rhetoric.
Ward, J. O., ‘Some Principles of Rhetorical Historiography in the Twelfth Century’, in E. Breisach (ed.), Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, Studies in Medieval Culture 19 (Kalamazoo, 1985), pp. 103–65. The fundamental account of the Res gestae in the twelfth century.
Wilcox, D. J., ‘The Sense of Time in Western Historical Narratives from Eusebius to Machiavelli’, in E. Breisach (ed.), Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, Studies in Medieval Culture 19 (Kalamazoo, 1985), pp. 167–237.
Wolf, K. B., Making History: The Normans and Their Historians in Eleventh-Century Italy, Middle Ages Series (Philadelphia, PA, 1995). MFP.
Wolverton, L., Cosmas of Prague: Narrative, Classicism, Politics (Washington, DC, 2015).