The practice of historiography seems to be engaging larger, different, and more politically centered projects these days. This collection of nineteen essays is the fifth volume of a sub-series entitled “Historiography and Identity,” the main goal of which is “to develop a critical methodology that harnesses the potential of identity studies to enhance our understanding of the construction and impact of historiography.” Two of the editors--Walter Pohl and Veronika Wieser--provide an introduction that orients the reader to the historiography of new peoples and polities in northern and eastern Europe, putting forth the argument that to understand what happened in those regions, one would have to focus on the “cultural brokers” (often churchmen), “who conveyed shared Christian values and political models to the new elites” (9). The volume’s contributors carry this argument through and flesh it out in nineteen case studies split into five thematic sections: “Scandinavian and Baltic origins”; “Cosmas of Prague, the Gesta principum Polonorum, and their Western contexts”; “Hungarian origins and their political uses”; “Histories of origin from the Adriatic and the Balkans”; and “The Rus’ Primary Chronicle, the Old Testament, and the Byzantine background.”
The four chapters of the first section examine ways in which medieval authors in Scandinavia and the Baltic region tried to build a sense of “national” identity through the use of history. Ian Wood analyzes Adam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, Sverre Bagge the works of Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturlusson, and Stefan Donecker and Peter Fraundorfer look at the use of Biblical motifs and the shaping of ethnic categories in the chronicle of Henry of Livonia. Only Rosalind Bonté employs archaeology to assess the validity (and trustworthiness) of the Orkneyinga Saga, particularly its coverage of the conversion to Christianity in the Orkney islands. She also employs the results of genetic analyses to conclude that there was an “overwhelming Norse presence in the islands” (92), but without any chronological framework, it is difficult to establish precisely when that Scandinavian ancestry came about. The second section debuts with an excellent chapter by Pavlína Rychterová, which analyzes how the (Bohemian) Slavs are depicted in the tenth-century Legenda Christiani and in the Chronicle of Czechs by Cosmas of Prague. The latter author is also in the focus of Jan Hasil’s chapter on the relation between spatial structures and identity. Like Bonté, Hasil relies on the archaeological evidence, but in a much more sophisticated way of “reading” the landscape. Jan Klápště turns to Helmold of Bosau and his Chronicle of the Slavs for a chapter analyzing the way in which the confrontation between Christianity and paganism shaped ethnic categories. This chapter could have been included in the first section, as it has much more to do with the Baltic environment than with that of East Central Europe. Two chapters in the second section deal with Gallus Anonymus. Zbigniew Dalewski looks at the way in which dynastic identity is reflected (and shaped) in the Deeds of the Princes of the Poles, while Jacek Banaszkiewicz analyzes the episode of Otto III’s visit to Gniezno, in comparison with Chronicon Salernitanum and Pélerinage de Charlemagne, in terms of what he calls the narrative pattern “Sheba visits Solomon.”
Maximilian Diesenberger’s chapter on Hungarian origins and Carolingian politics in the chronicle of Regino of Prüm opens the third section of the book. He clearly states that Regino treated the Hungarians as Scythians (275), but in the following chapter, Dániel Bagi claims that the identification of the Hungarians with the Huns goes back to Regino (298). Bagi looks at the description of foreigners and indigenous peoples in theGesta Hungarorum of Master P., as well as in that of Simon of Kéza. He seems to believe that Master P. was a proponent (if not a “follower”) of the “new institutions” introduced by King Andrew II (289 and 293) and that theGesta Hungarorum is “a typical gesta” (292). In fact, Master P. criticized King Andrew’s reforms and his work is a parody of the origo gentis genre. Bagi also believes that the Gesta Hungarorum that Master P. wrote is a “memorial history of both the dynasty and the nobility” (290). If so, could the members of the Kalán family (one of the most prominent in thirteenth-century Hungary) have taken lightly Master P. mocking their ancestor, Ónd, for feasting “in pagan manner” on Mount Tarcal on the meat of the plumpest horse? László Veszprémy concludes the section on Hungarian origins with a chapter about the contrast between Christian identity and heathenism as reflected in the Hungarian chronicles. Veszprémy thinks that the “lightly armed eastern-style soldiers” standing on the right side of King Louis I in the frontispiece of the Illuminated Chronicle were the rulers of Walachia, Moldavia, and Bosnia, who were vassals of the king (306). However, the Illuminated Chronicle ends with the long account of the disastrous campaign, which Louis I’s father, King Charles I of Anjou, led against Walachia and from which he barely escaped alive. It is unlikely that the illuminator would have depicted an enemy as a vassal, not even as wishful thinking. Moreover, according to Veszprémy, the chronicles of Hungary were concerned with the “east-west problem” and “Hungary’s search for its place in the Christian world” (306).
Neven Budak opens the fourth section of the book with a chapter on circles of identity in the narratives of Archdeacon Thomas of Spalato and Domnius de Cranchis of Brač. Similarly comparative, Peter Štih’s chapter relies on Archdeacon Thomas’s History of the Bishops of Salona and Split for the image of Split as Salona nova, and on several ninth- to eleventh-century sources for the image of Grado as Aquileia nova. Among the latter is also John the Deacon’s Istoria Veneticorum, which is the topic of Francesco Borri’s chapter on the search for Venetian origins. The section closes with Aleksandar Uzelac’s chapter on the “Diocletian tradition” in the Serbian literature of the early thirteenth century. This chapter brings Byzantium into conversation, teasing out the relationship between the influence of the Byzantine administrative and territorial notion of Dioclea and the native, Serbian attempts to fill that notion with new, politically different meanings. In that respect, this chapter is rather connected with the final section of the book, dedicated to the Primary Chronicle of Rus’ “and the Byzantine background.” In the first chapter of the section, Donald Ostrowski offers a survey of the debate over that chronicle’s authorship. He suggests that the Primary Chronicle consists of two different narratives with two separate authors. In the following chapter, Oleksiy Tolochko disagrees. According to him, the chronicles’ author was Abbot Sylvester of the Monastery of St. Michael in Vydubychi. Tolochko’s chapter, however, is not concerned with authorship, but with the way in which the chronicle creates the notion of time, forges a Rus’ identity, and contributes to the building of the state. Although it operates as an epilogue for the entire volume, Walter Pohl’s chapter on comparative perspectives in the historiography of “the new Europe” concludes the final section, which is dedicated to Rus’. The chapter is fraught with multiple problems. The most egregious, in my opinion, is Pohl’s insistence upon the idea of the medieval historiography of Eastern Europe simply following pre-existing models: “This historiographic frame remained basically unquestioned in the Northern/Eastern chronicles, in spite of all the minor divergences” (472). Pohl makes room for the possibility that histories written in East Central and Eastern Europe diverged “in the relative importance given to identifications of people, country, kingdom, dynasty, or ecclesiastical institutions” (475). There is in fact nothing quite like the Primary Chronicle in the “well-established framework of Christian realms” of western Europe, while the only parallel to Master P. is Geoffrey of Monmouth, who is not exactly within the “Western historiographic matrix” (472). According to Pohl, Regino of Prüm was not used much by authors writing in East Central Europe, for he “had much less information on the neighbouring regions to the east than later authors.” However, Master P. copied a long passage from Regino’s chronicle (complete with the name of bishop Liutward of Vercelli), which he manipulated in order to make it work with his own narrative. Similarly, Pohl maintains that the author(s) of the Primary Chronicle did not have access to the works of the early Byzantine authors who wrote about Slavs in the sixth century. However, more than 80 years ago, Aleksei Shakhmatov has that the Primary Chronicle used the chronography of John Malalas. Finally, Pohl thinks that in his Gesta Hungarorum, Master P. has “surprisingly little” to say about St. Stephen. However, Master P. mentions King Stephen three times, always as sanctus. He knew that he was the son of Sarolta and the grandson of Prince Taksony, that he preached the word of Christians and baptized the Hungarians, and that he subjugated to himself the land of Transylvania, after defeating Gyula. Moreover, the reign of Stephen is used as a chronological framework for placing Ohtum in the narrative. This is neither surprising, nor indeed “little.”
The volume has some weaknesses. Some are factual errors. At the time that early medieval Bulgaria came into being, there was no “Orthodox world” (3). Writing in Old Church Slavonic is not “writing in the vernacular” (472). There was no “lore about Scythians and Huns” (474) in Hungary at the time Master P. and Simon of Kéza wrote their respective works. Everything about Scythians and Huns that appears in those works is of purely bookish origin. Outdated stereotypes are sometimes nonchalantly reproduced, such as Lucien Musset’s “obscure progression” of the early Slavs, supposedly responsible for the fact that in their society there was “little division of labour and social differentiation” (2). It is simply not true that “early Slavic cultures [sic] left only few archaeological traces” (2). Despite claims to the contrary (6 and 288), Gesta Hungarorum of Master P. is not a chronicle by any stretch of the imagination. Nor is it true that the mention of Rhiphaen Mountains in Adam of Bremen’s History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen is “totally legendary” (56). To Adam, they were just as real as they had been to Aristotle, as Aleksandr V. Podosinov has shown. Henry of Livonia cannot possibly be compared with an embedded journalist, if his chronicle “was intended as a report of the papal Curia” (119-120). Other weaknesses are clearly the result of oversight: there are presumably six groups for which the Primary Chronicle mentions “the existence of princely authority,” but only five are listed (454 with note 14). There are also some incorrect citations. For example, one will find nothing in Florin Curta’s Southeastern Europe in the Middle Ages about the infrastructure in the Balkan Peninsula falling into disuse (2 with note 6). The volume’s politics are a bit confusing. ThePrimary Chronicle is repeatedly called “Russian” (32, 59 and 477), while great care is taken to use “Kyiv” as the (politically) correct spelling for the most important town in Rus’ (32, 60, and 477).
Although the introduction is signed by two editors, “I” appears twice in the text (4 and 5), most likely in reference to Pohl. For mysterious reasons, the Tower of Babel is renamed “Tower of Babylon” (15, 30, 166, 479). There are a few cases of poor wording (such as “most” instead of “many” on page 7; “display window” instead of “showcase” in note 1 on page 144; “truly” instead of “true” on page 245; “civic” instead of “civilian” on page 297), misspellings and typos (“Livonian Crusades” instead of “Livonian Crusade” on page 117; “Jan Uundusk” instead of “Jan Undusk” on page 120; “Wagrarian” instead of “Wagrian” on page 221; “Salomon” instead of ”Solomon” and “pèlerinage” instead of “pélerinage” on page 251; “Rumanian” instead of “Romanian” on page 291; and “us and them” instead of “we vs. them” on page 300).
As the editors recognize, there are problems with studying constructions of identity in historiographic texts. For instance, one cannot simply assume that because no such texts are known from medieval Bulgaria, no social and political identity was constructed in that country. And might texts not treated in this volume, such as the Hungarian-Polish Chronicle, the chronicle of Vincent Kadłubek or the Chronicle of Halych-Volhynia, have a different role altogether--perhaps linked to other narrative aims and political goals? Is it not possible that history writing being done on the side, as Timofey Guimon and Aleksei Shchavelev have recently shown, the question of purposes, motifs, or functions has multiple answers? In any event, Pohl, Wieser, and Borri, as well as all contributors to this volume, have provided a welcome and valuable service to raising, advancing, and challenging understandings of medieval historiography in northern and eastern Europe.