History and Historians Selected Papers of R. W. Southern Edited by R. J. Bartlett History and Historians History and Historians Selected Papers of R. W. Southern Edited by R. J. Bartlett Editorial material and organization ß 2004 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd blackwell publishing 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK 550 Swanston Street, Carlton, Victoria 3053, Australia The right of R. J. Bartlett to be identified as the Author of the Editorial Material in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. The right of R. W. Southern to be identified as the Author of Chapters 1 to 13 in this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. First published 2004 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Southern, R. W. (Richard William), 1912–2001 History and historians: selected papers of R. W. Southern / edited by R. J. Bartlett. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-4051-2387-7 (alk. paper) 1. Middle Ages – Historiography. 2. Medievalists – Biography. I. Bartlett, Robert, 1950– II. Title. D116.S67 2004 909.0700702–dc22 2004003050 A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library. Set in 10/12pt Sabon by Kolam Information Services Pvt. 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For further information on Blackwell Publishing, visit our website: http:/ /www.blackwellpublishing.com Contents Abbreviations vii Place of First Publication viii Preface by Janet Nelson x Introduction 1 Part I Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 1 The Classical Tradition from Einhard to Geoffrey of Monmouth 11 2 Hugh of St. Victor and the Idea of Historical Development 30 3 History as Prophecy 48 4 The Sense of the Past 66 Part II History 5 The Shape and Substance of Academic History 87 6 The Historical Experience 104 7 The Truth about the Past 120 vi Contents Part III Historians 8 Review of The Letters of Frederic William Maitland 137 9 Sir Maurice Powicke (1879–1963) 144 10 Vivian Hunter Galbraith (1889–1976) 168 11 Richard William Hunt (1908–1979) 193 12 Marjorie Reeves as a Historian 218 13 Beryl Smalley (1905–1984) 225 Notes 240 Bibliography of the Publications of R. W. Southern 260 Index 271 Abbreviations BL British Library CCCM Corpus Christianorum, continuatio mediaevalis EHR English Historical Review JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History MARS Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies MGH Monumenta Germaniae historica OMT Oxford Medieval Texts PBA Proceedings of the British Academy PL Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, ed. J.-P. Migne (221 vols., Paris, 1844–64) RS Rerum Britannicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores (‘‘Rolls Series’’) (251 vols., London, 1858–96) SRG Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum (MGH) SS Scriptores (MGH) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Place of First Publication Part I Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing ‘‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 1: The Classical Tradition from Einhard to Geoffrey of Monmouth,’’ TRHS, 5th ser., 20 (1970), pp. 173–96. ‘‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 2: Hugh of St. Victor and the Idea of Historical Development,’’ TRHS, 5th ser., 21 (1971), pp. 159–79. ‘‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 3: History as Prophecy,’’ TRHS, 5th ser., 22 (1972), pp. 159–80. ‘‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing 4: The Sense of the Past,’’ TRHS, 5th ser., 23 (1973), pp. 246–63. Part II History The Shape and Substance of Academic History (Inaugural Lecture as Chi- chele Professor of Modern History, Oxford, 1961, repr. in The Varieties of History from Voltaire to the Present, ed. Fritz Stern, 2nd ed., London, 1970, pp. 403–22). Reprinted by permission of The University of Oxford. ‘‘The Historical Experience,’’ Times Literary Supplement (June 24, 1977), pp. 771–4 (the Rede Lecture, delivered in the University of Cambridge, May 3, 1977). Reprinted by permission of the Times Literary Supplement. ‘‘The Truth about the Past’’ (unpublished paper delivered to the St. John’s College Historical Society, Oxford, November 1988). Place of First Publication ix Part III Historians Review of The Letters of Frederic William Maitland, ed. C. H. S. Fifoot, vol. 1 (Cambridge and Harvard University Press, 1965), History and Theory 6 (1967), pp. 105–11. Reprinted by permission of History and Theory. ‘‘Sir Maurice Powicke (1879–1963),’’ PBA 50 (1964), pp. 275–304. Re- printed by permission of the British Academy. ‘‘Vivian Hunter Galbraith (1889–1976),’’ PBA 64 (1978), pp. 397–425. Reprinted by permission of the British Academy. ‘‘Richard William Hunt (1908–1979),’’ PBA 67 (1981), pp. 371–97. Re- printed by permission of the British Academy. ‘‘Marjorie Reeves as a Historian,’’ in Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves, ed. Ann Williams (Harlow, 1980), pp. 1–9. Reprinted by permission of Pearson Education. ‘‘Beryl Smalley (1905–1984),’’ PBA 72 (1986), pp. 455–71. Reprinted by permission of the British Academy. Preface A long-cherished project has been realized in the present volume. At once time-related and time-transcending, like all the finest historical writing, the papers of Sir Richard Southern here collected, and especially his four presidential addresses to the Royal Historical Society, offer profound in- sights into the aims and practices of historians, and the place of history in culture at large, in medieval and modern times. That the Society should enable these papers to reach a new generation and a wider readership is something we are confident Sir Richard himself would have approved. The Society is extremely grateful to Peter Southern for his warm encour- agement, to Alexander Murray for help of many kinds, to one of our Literary Directors, Andrew Pettegree, for piloting the volume toward its publisher, to Christopher Wheeler of Blackwell for taking it forward, and above all, to Robert Bartlett whose devoted and skillful efforts have seen the whole project through. At a time when history is attracting a larger audience than ever before, may this book signal both the mighty contribution of RWS, and the Society’s ongoing commitment to history and historians. Janet L. Nelson President of the Royal Historical Society Introduction Sir Richard Southern (1912–2001) is widely regarded as one of the greatest medieval historians. His first book, The Making of the Middle Ages, pub- lished in 1953, translated into many languages, and never out of print, is a classic of its kind: a lucid exposition of an age that captures both the dynamism of the period and the inner workings of human thought and emotion. His studies of St. Anselm are standard works on that great monas- tic thinker; his superb synthesis, Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages, vividly conveys ‘‘the history of the most elaborate and thor- oughly integrated system of religious thought and practice the world has ever known’’; his last but also one of his most ambitious projects was his multi-volume Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe. Natur- ally, over the course of his life he also wrote numerous shorter pieces – essays, lectures, memoirs, and so on. Many of Southern’s papers were col- lected in the volume Medieval Humanism and Other Studies, published by Blackwell in 1970. In that same year appeared the first of the series of reflections on medieval historical writing that Southern produced during his tenure as President of the Royal Historical Society. According to the custom of the Society, the four presidential addresses were published in successive volumes of the Transactions of the Society. Under the general title ‘‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing,’’ Southern dealt in turn with classicizing history, universal history, prophetic history, and, with the designation ‘‘The Sense of the Past,’’ English antiquarian history, which he saw as aiming at ‘‘total recall of the past.’’ As in all his writings, the range is wide, the learning deep, and the insights penetrating. The essays belong together naturally and their repub- lication here in book format is intended to make these writings by a master medievalist on such an important theme more accessible and con- venient. They are supplemented by Southern’s occasional pieces on two related subjects: the nature of academic history and appreciations of other medievalists, both his teachers and his contemporaries. 2 Introduction In the four addresses to the Royal Historical Society, Southern examined the historians of the past not as sources for events but as objects of study in their own right. He saw the limitations of ‘‘the tradition which regarded medieval chroniclers simply as repositories of facts and not as evidence of the minds and intentions of the authors.’’ His avowed subject was exactly the ‘‘aims, methods, and limitations of the historians of the past.’’ His first essay dealt with the classicizing, rhetorical tradition inspired by the writers of ancient Rome. Its most notable medieval example was Einhard, its most successful Geoffrey of Monmouth. Southern recognized that the invented speeches, the stock descriptions, and the stylistic elaboration of these writers were useless for ‘‘a modern historian in search of a fact,’’ but that was not the point.