Bruno of Merseburg and his historical method,<i>c</i>.1085

AbstractBruno of Merseburg wrote his history of the war between the Saxons and King Henry IV c.1085. Scholars generally have treated Bruno's text as a polemic and consequently of relatively little historical value except insofar as it corroborates material found in other contemporary sources such as Lampert of Hersfeld's more highly regarded Annales. The main historical value of Bruno's text has been seen in his embedding of some two dozen letters in his account, most of which are not otherwise attested in the source record. The burden of this essay is to examine Bruno's historical method and sources of information to shed light on the ways in which an ostensibly polemical text also was a work of history in the Isidorean sense of recording events that actually happened. It is the authors' view that although Bruno worked actively to disparage King Henry IV and to present the Saxon nobility in the best possible light, he also strove to present a depiction of events as he understood them to have happened and not simply as he wished them to have taken place.Keywords: Bruno of Merseburghistoriographyhistorical methodKing Henry IV of GermanyIsidore of SevilleCicerorhetoric of plausibility Notes1 The best edition of Bruno's Saxonicum bellum is now to be found in Franz-Josef Schmale and Irene Schmale-Ott, eds. and trans., Quellen zur Geschichte Kaiser Heinrichs IV.: Die Briefe Heinrichs IV., Das Lied vom Sachsenkrieg, Brunos Sachsenkrieg, Das Leben Kaiser Heinrichs IV. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974), 192–405, with facing-page German translation [hereafter SB].2 The letters included by Bruno in the Saxonicum bellum are the feature most discussed by scholars. Some of these texts have not survived elsewhere and provide crucial insights into the diplomatic relationship between King Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII. See, for example, Kurt Heidrich, ‘Die Datierung der Briefe in Bruno's Sachsenkrieg’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für Ältere Deutsche Geschichtskunde 30 (1905): 113–40; and H.E.J. Cowdrey, ed. and trans., The Epistolae vagantes of Pope Gregory VII (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), xxi–xxii.3 In his useful biography of Henry IV, for example, I.S. Robinson, Henry IV of Germany 1056–1106 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), devotes virtually no attention to the problem of source criticism with regard to Bruno. The same is true of Gerd Althoff, Heinrich IV. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2006).4 This scholarly tradition is treated by Schmale and Schmale-Ott, eds., Quellen, 28–31.5 Gerd Althoff, ‘Pragmatische Geschichtsschreibung und Krisen. Zur Funcktion von Brunos Buch von Sachsenkrieg’, in Pragmatische Schriftlichkeit im Mittelalter: Erscheinungsformen und Entwicklungsformen, ed. Hagen Keller (Munich: Fink, 1992), 95–107.6 Wolfgang Eggert, ‘Das Wir-Gefühl bei fränkischen und deutschen Geschichtsschreibern bis zum Investiturstreit’, in Wir-Gefühl und Regnum Saxonum bei frühmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibern, eds. Wolfgang Eggert and Barbara Pätzold (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1984), 13–179 (158–61); and idem, ‘Wie “pragmatisch” ist Brunos Buch vom Sachsenkrieg?’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 51 (1995): 543–53.7 Eggert, ‘Wie “pragmatisch” ist Brunos Buch’, 552–3.8 Eggert, ‘Wie “pragmatisch” ist Brunos Buch’, 553.9 The limited details that are known about Bruno's background and career are discussed in Wilhelm Wattenbach and Robert Holtzmann, eds., rev. Franz-Josef Schmale, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter: die Zeit der Sachsen und Salier, vol. 2, Das Zeitalter des Investiturstreits (1050–1125) (Cologne: Böhlau, 1967), 592–4; and by Schmale and Schmale-Ott, eds., Quellen, 28–9.10 Schmale and Schmale-Ott, eds., Quellen, 28.11 In this context, see the useful discussion by Schmale and Schmale-Ott, eds., Quellen, 29–30.12 The most famous case is that of Brun, the youngest son of King Henry I of Germany (919–37). Henry sent his son to study at the cathedral school of Utrecht, and during the reign of Otto I (937–73), Brun was archbishop of Cologne (955–65).13 See, for example, SB, chapters 25, 39 and 94. For a general overview of the treatment of peasants by the authors of medieval narrative works, see the discussion by Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999).14 SB, chapter 94.15 SB, chapter 94.16 SB, chapter 123. For an important discussion of this topic, see John Gillingham, ‘Christian Warriors and the Enslavement of Fellow Christians’, in Chevalerie et christianisme aux XII et XIII siècles, eds. M. Aurell and C. Girbea (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2011), 1–18.17 SB, chapter 123: ‘Si qui vero capti ad aliquem de nostris hominem probum sunt adducti, sanati, si vulnerati erant, gratis in patriam suam remittuntur, vestibus et armis decenter instructi.’18 SB, chapter 125.19 It is well understood by specialists in medieval military history that medieval clerics, most of whom came from the higher social orders and had fathers, brothers, cousins and nephews who were soldiers, were well informed about military matters. See, for example, the discussion by David S. Bachrach, ‘The Military Organization of Ottonian Germany, c.900–1018: the Views of Bishop Thietmar of Merseburg’, Journal of Military History 72 (2008): 1061–88.20 See, for example, SB, chapters 21, 39, 46, 47, 53–4, 96 and 122.21 SB, chapters 46, 97, 98, 100, 101 and 122.22 SB, chapters 29, 46 and 94.23 Monika Suchan, Königsherrschaft im Streit: Konfliktaustragung in der Regierungzeit Heinrichs IV. Zwischen Gewalt, Gespräch und Schriftlichkeit (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1997), offers an important analysis of the variety of diplomatic communications that were utilised by opposing parties during the reign of Henry IV.24 Bruno includes 10 letters from Pope Gregory VII in his account, and seven letters from the Saxons to the pope.25 SB, chapter 36.26 SB, chapter 131.27 Bishop Werner is identified in the prologue of SB as the dedicatee.28 See, for example, Hans-Eberhard Lohmann, ed., Brunos Buch vom Sachsenkrieg (Leipzig: K.W. Hiersemann, 1937), 2; and the discussion by Klaus Sprigade, ‘Über die Datierung von Brunos Buch vom Sachsenkrieg’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 23 (1967): 544–8.29 Sprigade, ‘Datierung’, 544.30 SB, chapter 131: ‘Dei misericordia faciente, ne tot suos labores, quos pro patria toleraverat, in ultimis temporibus perderet, equus, cui insidebat, in plano campo cecidit … ’31 See the discussion by Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 239–74.32 Robinson, Henry IV of Germany, 275–95.33 See the discussion of this point by Sprigade, ‘Datierung’, 545–6.34 The significant developments in historical writing that appeared in the wake in the First Crusade are an important topic for the study of historiography during the twelfth century. See, for example, the important collection of articles in Thomas M.S. Lehtonen and Kurk Villads Jensen, eds., Medieval History Writing and Crusading Ideology (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2005).35 This point is commented on briefly by Thomas F.X. Noble in his introduction to Charlemagne and Louis the Pious: Lives by Einhard, Notker, Ermoldus, Thegan, and the Astronomer (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009), 3–4. For a very helpful survey regarding the scholarly treatment of Einhard's biography, see 7–21.36 See the discussion by Janet Nelson, ‘Public Histories and private history in the work of Nithard’, Speculum 60 (1985): 251–93; and eadem, ‘Ninth-Century Knighthood: the Evidence of Nithard’, in eadem, The Frankish World, 750–900 (London: Hambledon, 1996), 75–87, who draws attention to various aspects of Nithard's sense of the task of the historian and his treatment of military affairs.37 See the discussion of this text in David S. Bachrach, ed. and trans., Warfare and Politics in Medieval Germany, c.1000: On the Variety of Our Times by Alpert of Metz (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), particularly xv–xxxvii.38 For the use of the Creation as the starting point in world chronicles in the period before the first millennium, see A.-D. von den Brincken, Studien zur lateinischen Weltchronik bis in das Zeitalter Ottos von Freising (Düsseldorf: M. Triltsch, 1957), 252, who observes that of the 28 extant chronicles of this type, 26 begin with the Creation.39 Regarding the importance of Eusebius as a model, see M.I. Allen, ‘Universal History, 300–1000: Origins and Western Development’, in Historiography in the Middle Ages, ed. D.M. Deliyannis (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 17–42.40 With respect to the desire by authors to illustrate the divine hand in human affairs through the grafting of contemporary events into a lengthy pre-history, see Rosamond McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), particularly 7–35.41 Concerning Gregory's decision to focus extensively on contemporary affairs, and the consequently unusual balance of his entire historical work, see Walter Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History (A.D. 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009), 130.42 This point is made quite clearly by Goffart, Narrators, 150–1 and 168–9.43 The political strategies of Carolingian historical writers have received considerable attention from scholars over the past three decades. Among the most important scholars in this tradition is Rosamond McKitterick, whose numerous studies have illuminated many of the characteristic elements in eighth- and ninth-century historical texts. See, for example, Rosamond McKitterick, ‘Constructing the Past in the Early Middle Ages: the Case of the Royal Frankish Annals’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, 7 (1997): 101–29; and her synthesis of much of the scholarship on this topic in Charlemagne: the Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), particularly chapter one. This grafting of an examination of contemporary affairs onto the stem of a universal history was given the useful label of ‘historiographische Chronographie’ by Karl Hauck, who used this term to describe the two-part structure in the Chronica of Regino of Prüm (d. 915), which was written during the first decade of the tenth century. See Karl Hauck, ‘Erzbischof Adalbert von Magdeburg als Geschichtsschreiber’, in Festschrift für Walter Schlesinger, vol. 2, ed. Helmut Beumann (Cologne: Böhlau, 1974), 276–353 (281). But also see the lengthy discussion of Regino's text by Simon MacLean, History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe: the Chronicle of Regino of Prüm and Adalbert of Magdeburg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2009), 1–53, who makes the case that Regino was shaping the universal history to meet current political needs.44 For a useful overview of annales, see Michael McCormick, Les annales du haut moyen âge (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975).45 With regard to episcopal vitae, see Michel Sot, Gesta episcoporum gesta abbatum (Turnhout: Brepols, 1981).46 The exact date or dates of composition of the Annales is contested. See Robert Holtzmann, ‘Die Quedlinburger Annalen’, Sachsen und Anhalt 1 (1925): 63–125 (100–3); and M. Giese, ed., Die Annales Quedlinburgenses. Monumenta Germaniae Historica [hereafter MGH], Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 72 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2004), particularly 41–57. For the text of the Gestae of the bishops of Liège, whose author died in 1056, see B. Koepke, ed. Anselmi gesta episcoporum Leodiensium. MGH Scriptores in folio 7 (Hanover: MGH, 1846).47 Lampert of Hersfeld, Annales, ed. Oswald Holder-Egger. MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi 38 (Hanover: Hahn, 1894).48 For Adalbert's self-conception as a historian, see Hauck, ‘Erzbischof Adalbert von Magdeburg als Geschichtsschreiber’, 276–353; and the broader survey of the literature by MacLean, History and Politics in Late Carolingian and Ottonian Europe, 1–53.49 For the Latin text of Berthold and Bernold, see I.S. Robinson, ed., Die Chroniken Bertholds von Reichenau und Bernolds von Konstanz 1054–1100. MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, nova series 15 (Hanover: Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2003); and the translation of these texts in I.S. Robinson, Eleventh-Century Germany: the Swabian Chronicles (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008). For the efforts by Berthold and Bernold to present contemporary affairs within a continuum of Christian history dating back to the incarnation of Christ, see Robinson, Eleventh-Century Germany, 23 and 50, respectively.50 On the comparable Norman practice of history writing, see Emily Albu, The Normans in their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001); and Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the 11th and 12th Centuries (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1999).51 Widukind of Corvey, Res gestae Saxonicae, in Paul Hirsch, Max Büdinger and Wilhelm Wattenbach, eds., rev. by Albert Bauer and Reinhold Rau, Quellen zur Geschichte der sächsischen Kaiserzeit: Widukinds Sachsengeschichte, Adalberts Forsetzung der Chronik Reginos, Liudprands Werke. Ausgewählte Quellen zur Deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 8 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1971).52 Thietmar of Merseburg, Chronik, ed. and trans. Werner Trillmich. 8th edn. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002) and the English translation, David A. Warner, ed. and trans., Ottonian Germany: the Chronicon of Thietmar of Merseburg (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001).53 Even Einhard offered a defence of writing about contemporary affairs in his prologue, despite the fact that he was writing a biography that necessarily dealt with recent events.54 Nithard, Historiarum libri IV, in Die Reichsannalen, Einhard Leben Karls des Grossen, zwei ‘Leben’ Ludwigs, Nithard Geschichten, eds. O. Abel and J. von Jasmund, rev. by R. Rau. Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters 5 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1955), preface: ‘praecepistis, ut res vestris temporibus gestas stili officio memoriae traderem.’55 Alpert's emphasis on brevity and his claim that some people complain about hearing about contemporary affairs recalls the sentiment expressed by Einhard in his prologue: ‘I carried out the huge task as briefly as I could. I neither omitted anything about those matters that came to my attention nor offended with a long-winded narration those who find new things distasteful – if, indeed, it is actually possible to avoid offending with a new work those who find disagreeable even the old masterpieces composed by the most learned and eloquent of men.’ We have used here the translation by Noble, Charlemagne and Louis the Pious, 22.56 Bachrach, ed., Warfare and Politics, 4–5: ‘Et si demum hec obicientur et arguar, quod omnibus cognita scripserim, tuo consilio perpendant me hac responsione uti: nota delectabiliter sepius audiri, ut solet fieri in cantilenis, quod, veteribus ex assiduitate fastidius, nove frequentius in dies repetite delectabilius audiuntur.’57 Bachrach, ed., Warfare and Politics, 6: ‘magnas et auctorales causas … conservasti.’58 SB, prologue: ‘ … ut etiam ea, quae torrente violentia temporis rapiuntur ad interitum, ab ipso temporis impetus litterarum virtus conetur eripere et semper nova quasi stationaria legentibus ostendere.’59 SB, prologue: ‘Quod cum sui magnitudine, tum misericordia Dei, quam in ipso bello experti sumus, est memorabile.’60 SB, prologue: ‘Sic enim in flagella vino severitatis oleum pietatis admiscuit, ut et prophetam vera locutum esse gaudentes agnosceremus: Cum iratus fueris, misericordiae recordaberis, et apostolum: Fidelis Deus, qui non permittet vos temptari super id, quod potestis.’ See also Matthew 25:29.61 See the important study on the impact of Cicero's ideas regarding the proper role of the authors of historical works by Justin C. Lake, ‘Truth, Plausibility, and the Virtues of Narrative at the Millennium’, Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009), 221–38; and Matthew Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 255.62 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive originum libri xx, ed. W.M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), 1.40. ‘Historiae est narratio rei gestae, per quam ea, quae praeterito facta sunt, dinoscuntur.’ Also see the translation of the work, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. Stephen Barney and others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).63 Isidore, Etymologiarum, 1.40. Regarding the widespread acceptance of Isidore's dictum, see Benoît Lacroix, L'Historien au moyen âge (Paris: Librairie J. Vrin, 1971), particularly chapter one, and the review article of this work by Robert W. Hanning, History and Theory 12 (1973): 419–34; A.J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar Press, 1984), particularly 1–20; D.H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: the Primary Reception of German Literature 800–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 246–8; Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text: the Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 88–90; Almut Sauerbaum, ‘Accessus ad auctores: Autorkonzeption in mittelalterlichen Kommentartexten’, in Autor und Autorschaft im Mittelalter, eds. Elizabeth Andersen and others (Tübingen: M. Niemeyer, 1998), 29–37; and Sebastian Coxon, ‘Zur Form und Funktion einiger Modelle der Autorenselbstdarstellung, “Wolfdietrich” und “Dietrichs Flucht”’, in Autor und Autorschaft im Mittelalter, eds. Andersen and others, 148–162, particularly 151 and 162.64 SB, prologue: ‘sicut ab his, qui rebus intererant, potui cognoscere’.65 SB, chapter 96.66 SB, chapter 96: ‘Quod illi me non ad contumeliam, quisquis hoc legit, sed dixisse putet ad gloriam; quia ab ipsius ore non semel audivi, quod ipsam nuditatem non tolerasse nollet pro pondere quolibet auri vel argenti.’67 SB, chapter 38: ‘eumque sine mora mori vidimus et, quia episcopus talem medicinam non gustaverat laetati sumus.’68 SB, chapter 52.69 See the discussion of this issue by Sot, Gesta episcoporum gesta abbatum, 49; Reinhold Kaiser, ‘Die Gesta episcoporum als Genus der Geschichtsschreibung’, in Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter, eds. Anton Scharer and Georg Scheibelreiter (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1994), 459–80, particularly 471; and the more recent discussion by David S. Bachrach, ‘The Rhetoric of Historical Writing: Documentary Sources in Histories of Worms, c.1300’, Journal of the History of Ideas 68 (2007): 187–206.70 SB, chapters 41–2.71 SB, chapters 65–6.72 For an overview of this issue, see Heidrich, ‘Die Datierung der Briefe in Bruno's Sachsenkrieg’, 115–16; and Schmale and Schmale-Ott, eds., Quellen, 30–1. However, also see Otto-Hubert Kost, Das östliche Niedersachsen im Investiturstreit: Studien zu Brunos Buch vom Sachsenkrieg (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1962), who makes the case that Bruno deliberately changed the text, or even wrote many of the letters that are included in the text. With regard to the accuracy of Bruno's transmission of the letters, also see, for example, Cowdrey, ed., Epistolae vagantes, 32–3, who points out that Bruno's Saxonicum bellum was one of several works that provide the same basic text for Pope Gregory VII's letter, issued in the summer of 1076, which was intended to reassure waiverers in Germany that the excommunication of King Henry IV had been determined justly. For similar see Cowdrey, ed., Epistolae vagantes, SB, chapter SB, chapter SB, chapter quia rei non omnibus in SB, chapter SB, chapter SB, chapter sed cui non SB, chapter SB, chapter ‘sicut SB, chapter ex SB, chapter SB, chapter SB, chapter SB, chapter SB, chapter SB, chapter See, for example, the crucial analysis by Goffart, Among the most scholars this view is See, for example, his ‘Die der in der die Heinrichs als Geschichte in und ‘Die Heinrichs und im in der ed. Michael (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, und Das der und Die die der and Die der (Munich: See, for example, the important insights by in eds. Scharer and This point has been made with respect to Carolingian sources with military matters by Thomas Die der und der und in der (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Also see in this S. Bachrach, of as an of Military Journal 12 and See, for example, SB, chapter von and A. eds., Die der deutschen und die Heinrichs IV. (Hanover: Hahn, See, for example, M. ed., (Darmstadt: and ed., des und (Leipzig: S. See, for example, Helmut die Karl ‘Die in vom und im in in der eds. and Gerd Die Die und und ‘Die im und in der frühen zur im 7 and Geschichte und der und S. is of Medieval History at the University of and the of (Woodbridge: Press, and Warfare in Germany (Woodbridge: Press, on the military and history of medieval Germany the Ottonian and and medieval during the reign I S. is of Medieval History at the University of The author of and more articles and his recent Early Carolingian to University of Pennsylvania Press, The the of Medieval and and Early a and Military (Leiden: Brill, in Europe, the medieval and medieval source

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