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Rewriting Saints and Ancestors: Memory and Forgetting in France, 5-12
Thinkers in medieval France constantly reconceptualized what had come before, interpreting past events to give validity to the present and help control the future. The long-dead saints who presided over churches and the ancestors of established dynasties were an especially crucial part of creative memory, Constance Brittain Bouchard contends. In Rewriting Saints and Ancestors she examines how such ex post facto accounts are less an impediment to the writing of accurate history than a crucial tool for understanding the Middle Ages.
Working backward through time, Bouchard discusses twelfth-century scribes contemplating the ninth-century documents they copied into cartularies or reworked into narratives of disaster and triumph, ninth-century churchmen deliberately forging supposedly late antique documents as weapons against both kings and other churchmen, and sixth- and seventh-century Gallic writers coming to terms with an early Christianity that had neither the saints nor the monasteries that would become fundamental to religious practice. As they met with political change and social upheaval, each generation decided which events of the past were worth remembering and which were to be reinterpreted or quietly forgotten. By considering memory as an analytic tool, Bouchard not only reveals the ways early medieval writers constructed a useful past but also provides new insights into the nature of record keeping, the changing ways dynasties were conceptualized, the relationships of the Merovingian and Carolingian kings to the church, and the discovery (or invention) of Gaul's earliest martyrs.
Working backward through time, Bouchard discusses twelfth-century scribes contemplating the ninth-century documents they copied into cartularies or reworked into narratives of disaster and triumph, ninth-century churchmen deliberately forging supposedly late antique documents as weapons against both kings and other churchmen, and sixth- and seventh-century Gallic writers coming to terms with an early Christianity that had neither the saints nor the monasteries that would become fundamental to religious practice. As they met with political change and social upheaval, each generation decided which events of the past were worth remembering and which were to be reinterpreted or quietly forgotten. By considering memory as an analytic tool, Bouchard not only reveals the ways early medieval writers constructed a useful past but also provides new insights into the nature of record keeping, the changing ways dynasties were conceptualized, the relationships of the Merovingian and Carolingian kings to the church, and the discovery (or invention) of Gaul's earliest martyrs.
- GenresHistory
384 pages, Hardcover
First published October 8, 2014
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 14, 2023
Instead of reading source material for the content, see what it tells us about the authors and the purpose of the source
Writing as a belief system
Listen to your sources
Different from other scholars because she Steps back to understand the way they understood their present and their use of the past to do so
Everywhere in the text- she ties back to the thesis and overarching topic
Most convincing aspects: detailing of forgeries and chapter 6
Least convincing aspects: Polyptyques Chapter- arguing that the monks deliberately left out and forgot about it (Should try to not make an argument out of what isn’t there as there is almost no way to know why it isn’t there)
Bouchard structured this book "to move chronologically backward" from the twelfth century to the sixth. This structure was helpful to think about topics as meaningful acts (not just as events and dates).
She definitely knew her sources well and gave her more credibility because of that.
She makes major contributions to the historiography as she is adding new knowledge to the field.
My main critique is that the intention of proving bias overshadows the study itself. She also takes advantage of a lot of assumed knowledge within the reader.
It did seem kind of cliche due to the fact that she basically explains the saying the winners write history.
Writing as a belief system
Listen to your sources
Different from other scholars because she Steps back to understand the way they understood their present and their use of the past to do so
Everywhere in the text- she ties back to the thesis and overarching topic
Most convincing aspects: detailing of forgeries and chapter 6
Least convincing aspects: Polyptyques Chapter- arguing that the monks deliberately left out and forgot about it (Should try to not make an argument out of what isn’t there as there is almost no way to know why it isn’t there)
Bouchard structured this book "to move chronologically backward" from the twelfth century to the sixth. This structure was helpful to think about topics as meaningful acts (not just as events and dates).
She definitely knew her sources well and gave her more credibility because of that.
She makes major contributions to the historiography as she is adding new knowledge to the field.
My main critique is that the intention of proving bias overshadows the study itself. She also takes advantage of a lot of assumed knowledge within the reader.
It did seem kind of cliche due to the fact that she basically explains the saying the winners write history.
Displaying 1 of 1 review