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Wesleyan University
Clio and Chronos an Essay on the Making and Breaking of History-Book TimeAuthor(s): Elizabeth L. EisensteinReviewed work(s):Source: History and Theory, Vol. 6, Beiheft 6: History and the Concept of Time (1966), pp.
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CLIO AND CHRONOS
AN ESSAY ON
THE
MAKING
AND BREAKING
OF
HISTORY-BOOK
TIME*
ELIZABETH L. EISENSTEIN
I. THE
PRESENT PREDICAMENT
'Tis
all
in
peeces,
all cohaerence
gone.
John Donne's lament has appeared
with
remarkablefrequency
-
a
thousand times
in
the past forty
years,
accord-
ing
to Douglas Bush
-
in
recent scholarly
studies. This
reiteration reflects,
I
believe,
not only
an interest in seventeenth-century
reactions
to the Copernican
hypothesis,
but
also a cr
de
coeur
about
the state
of their
own
craft
on
the
part of many historians. No single new philosophy of history has called all the
old ones
in
doubt.
Yet a clutter of broken
historical perspectives
points to the
shattering impact
of
some sort
of
collision, produced by forces
that remain
undefined. Ostensible diagnoses
turn
out to be symptomatic and
self-contra-
dictory.
Although preoccupation
with discontinuity
is currently displayed
in
many ways,
two
incompatible
schools of
thought appear
dominant.
The
first stresses a recent
acceleration
in
the
rate
of
historical change
that
has
rendered
prior
experience
irrelevant. An unprecedented increase
in cogni-
tive and technological innovations has so drastically altered the intellectual
and
material environment
of Western
man that a kind
of evolutionary
muta-
tion
-
a
great
leap
into the future
-
has
resulted.1 By and large, this
view is
an
extension
of
nineteenth-century elaborations
on ideas of
progress.2
It thus emphasizes
open-ended, developmental
forms of
change, stressing what
*
Acknowledgment is due Marshall
McLuhan,
The
Gutenberg
Galaxy:
The
Making
of
Typographical
Man
(Toronto,
1962),
for
suggesting
the
thesis
I
will
explore
in
this
essay.
The importance
of
considering
available means of
communication when
thinking
about historiographyand the need to examine further the historical consequencesof the
utilization of
movable
type
were
both
brought
to
my
attention
by
this book.
1. Carl
Bridenbaugh,
The
Great
Mutation,
American
Historical
Review
68
(1963),
315-331; Raymond
Aron, The
Dawn
of Universal
History,
transl.
D.
Pickles (New
York,
1961);
Kenneth
Boulding,
The
Meaning of the
Twentieth
Century: The
Great
Transition
(New
York, 1965);
Louis Halle,
'The
World: A
Sense of
History, The
New
Republic (Nov.
7, 1965), 94-95.
2. For
a
recent
vigorous
reassertion of
nineteenth-century
views, see
E.
H. Carr,
What
Is
History? (New
York, 1962).
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CLIO AND CHRONOS 37
once was called the advancement
of learning
and improvements in the
arts of peace
and war. For
comparisons between the present situation
and
prior experience,
it draws heavily
on testimony provided by those
nineteenth-
century gradualists who regarded the slow change of time as the most
natural form of historical process,
and historical
leaps
-
notably the French
Revolution
-
as unnatural.
Accordingly, upheavals
experienced by prior
generations
are glossed over
and a vivid contrast drawn between
the slow-
changing, stable, well-rooted
societies of the
past and the fast-changing,
unstable, fluid
society of today.
To earlier visions of the course
of history as
a single on-going process working
without rest, without haste, '
the great-
mutation theory merely adds a corollary:
harnessed to a
run-away tech-
nology, the process has been abruptly accelerated.
The
second
school, while
retaining the emphasis on tension
and conflict
that
characterized
social-Darwinian
and Marxist theories,
rejects all
nine-
teenth-century assumptions
about gradualism, continuity, and
synchronized,
on-going processes.4
An age which has undergone
great upheavals
. . .
will
not be
impressed
when it is told that history
is a story of continuity governed
by a law not
of revolution but
of evolution. 5 The scientific and
metaphysical
theories
which
are
held
responsible
-
wrongly,
in
my opinion
-
for
evolu-
tionary assumptions are dismissed as outmoded. The degree to which prior
generations
experienced abrupt dislocation and
decisive upheaval,
rather than
the slow
change of time, is stressed. (The extent
to which such
upheavals were
localized,
unevenly distributed, and not simultaneous
receives
less attention.)
This
abandonment
of
gradualist
evolutionary
views is
accompanied
by concern
with
forms of
change
which are not
developmental,
open-ended,
or
progres-
sive.
Hence
it
involves a revival
of
classical
cyclical and
early Christian
catastrophic concepts. The
former tend to be modernized by importation
of
contemporary Oriental philosophies and notions pertaining to what has been
called
a meeting
of
East
and West.6
Tinged
with
mysticism,
dependent on
a
feeling
for
certain hidden rhythms, cyclical schemes are favored
by philoso-
phers
of
history.
Such
schemes, however, play
a
relatively
minor
role in more
specialized empirical
studies
refuting
or
revising
the work
of nineteenth-
century
historians. Catastrophism,
which
plays
a
predominant
role in
these
reappraisals, probably
serves
best to
exemplify
our second
school.
In
a
wide variety
of recent
studies
pertaining
to
diverse developments in
different areas and eras, one will find metaphors borrowed from modern
3. A.
F. Pollard,
cited
by
J.
H.
Hexter, Reappraisals
in
History (Evanston,
1961), 38.
4. J.
H.
Hexter
and
Geoffrey Barraclough,
History
in a
Changing
World
(Oxford,
1955),
exemplify
this
school.
5. Barraclough,
7.
6.
Grace E.
Cairns, Philosophies
of History:
Meeting of
East and
West
in
Cycle-
Pattern
Theories
of
History (New
York, 1962), exemplifies this
tendency.
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38
ELIZABETH L. EISENSTEIN
technology, Freudian psychology, or existentialist philosophy employed to
bring up to date very old concepts about decisive points of no return and
fateful encounters with unpredictable Acts of God. Recent verdicts by
geneticists and quantum physicists are also cited to show that nature has always
done
many things by leaps. Nineteenth-century terms, such as emergence,
''growth, development, rise and fall, decline, decay, are discarded in
favor
of
more fashionable
terms:
catastrophe, dissociation, mutation,
conflict, take-off, breakthrough,
breakdown.
Beginning
with the
trauma of the Black Death,7 every era
once
regarded as
transitional s
now
presented as an age
of
crisis.
In
fact, the great
mutation of
one
school
comes
almost
as an anticlimax to the
succession of
crises presented by
the other.
One
may read, in chronological sequence, about the political crisis of the early
Italian Renaissance and the aesthetic crisis of the late Italian
Renaissance;
about innumerable
crises
-
including an identity
crisis
-
precipitated by
the Reformation; about a general European crisis in the early seventeenth
century (1560-1660);
about a
crisis of the European conscience in the late
seventeenth century (1680-1715); and about the age of crisis immediately
following, during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment (1715-1789). Four
centuries of crisis thus
have to be traversed even before arriving at those classic
late eighteenth-century points of departure for our present twentieth-century
crisis: political revolution in France and Industrial Revolution or the so-called
Great
Transformation in England.8 Headline writers manage to measure the
type
size
required to report different kinds of unprecedented events; a sense
of
proportion
is
equally indispensable to historians. It appears to have vanished
at
present. So, too, has the possibility of integrating recent treatments of the
succession
of
crises and upheavals into a single coherent account.
For it is no
longer sufficient to try to arrange in some sort of sequence the
great revolutions affecting church and state, trade routes and prices, population
7.
William
Langer,
The Next
Assignment,
American
Historical Review 63
(1958),
283-304.
8.
Hans
Baron,
The Crisis
of
the
Early
Italian
Renaissance: Civic
Humanism
and
Republican
Liberty
in an
Age of
Classicism and
Tyranny,
2
vols.
(Princeton,
1955);
Arnold
Hauser,
The Crisis
of
the Renaissance and
the
Origins of
Modern
Art,
2
vols.
(London,
1965);
The
European
Crisis 1560-1660-
Essays
from
Past and
Present,
ed.
Trevor
Ashton
(London, 1965);
Paul
Hazard,
La
crise de la
conscience
europeenne
(Paris,
1935);
Lester
Crocker,
An
Age of
Crisis:
Man
and
World in
Eighteenth
Century
French
Thought
(Baltimore,
1959).
See also
remarks
about the
philosopher'
anguish
related to the
crisis of their
Christian
civilization
in
Peter
Gay,
The Party
of Hu-
manity (New
York,
1964),
126. The term
identitycrisis
is
taken
from
Erik
Erikson,
Young Man
Luther:
A
Study
in
Psychoanalysisand
History
(New
York,
1958);
great
transformation
from
Karl
Polanyi,
The
Great
Transformation:
The
Political and
Economic
Origins
of
our
Time (New
York,
1944).
The
concept of
political
revolution
in
France has
recently
been
expanded
both in
space and
time:
see
R. R.
Palmer, The
Age of
the
Democratic
Revolution,
2
vols.
(Princeton,
1959,
1964).
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CLIO AND CHRONOS
39
movements, and modes of production.
We must
simultaneously attend to all
the
claims being
made for the impact of scattered
innovations (whether
imported
or indigenous), such as the
stirrup and horse
collar, the grist mill, the me-
chanical clock, double-entry bookkeeping, movable type, the compass, the
steam engine, the dynamo, and
others. Vast social
transformations,
resulting
from a complex interaction of
multiple forms
of change, some chronic and
some unprecedented,
are treated as abrupt, decisive
upheavals.
Separate in-
novations,
once regarded as single
inventions or discoveries which
unpredict-
ably and abruptly changed the
course of history
within a few decades, are now
regarded as complex
social processes in themselves.
The invention
of printing,
the
discovery
of America, the
Copernican revolution may no
longer be iso-
lated as discrete events or filed under certain names and dates. Each such
innovation has
become increasingly problematic.9
It is difficult
to describe
when each one occurred or
who was responsible
for it. Thus nineteenth-
century gradualism
is altering former simple-minded
notions about
the sudden
advent of
a single invention
or discovery even while twentieth-century
catas-
trophism is prevalent
in
accounts
of major social transformations,
experienced
unevenly by vast populations
over long intervals of time. Modern
artists have
composed
decorative assemblages by juxtaposing
incompatible
ingredients
and disassociated images. A jumbling of time sequences accords well enough
with efforts by
avant-garde
novelists or film makers to enliven
their art. For
historians, however, entanglement
in
snarled guidelines
is neither an
aestheti-
cally pleasurable
nor intellectually edifying experience.
It is instead
dispiriting.
As I see it,
a distinguished American historian
noted recently,
mankind
is
faced
with nothing
short of the loss
of
its
memory and this memory
is
history. '0
One
purpose
of this
essay
is
to
suggest
that
this is a
misreading
of
the
pre-
dicament confronting historians today. It is not the onset of amnesia that
accounts for present difficulties
but a more
complete recall than any prior
generation
has ever experienced. Steady
recovery, not
obliteration,
accumula-
tion, rather than loss,
have
led
to
the
present
impasse.
No full
accounting
of
what has happened to
the
sense
of
history
in
the
twentieth
century
will
be
attempted
here.
I
shall
only
try
to
suggest why
any
account must
consider
how
our
print-made
culture,
our so-called
knowledge industry
operates at
present.
I
shall
explore
the
possibility
that
the
present
historical
outlook
is
less
directly conditioned by what has happened in the world outside the library and
9. See, for examples, treatments
of the
discovery
of
oxygen by
Thomas S.
Kuhn,
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(Chicago, 1962), Chapter VI, and of the dis-
covery of America by Wilcomb
Washburn, The Meanings of 'Discovery' in the 15th
and 16th Centuries, American
Historical Review 67 (1962), 1-21.
10. Bridenbaugh, 326.
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40
ELIZABETH
L.
EISENSTEIN
schoolroom
than by what has
been happening
within it. In
so doing,
I hope to
illustrate an aspect
of the impact
of a revolution
in communications
that began
five centuries ago
and is still
gathering momentum.
I hope also to show
that
available means of communication have to be considered when examining his-
toric consciousness
in any
era. My working hypothesis
is
that all views
of
history have been
fundamentally
shaped by the
way records
are duplicated,
knowledge
transmitted, and
information
stored and retrieved.
Although my
point of departure
is the present, and
the following
discussion never
really
leaves
the twentieth-century
library, it
must range far into
the past.
Ancient
views and the conditions that
shaped
them have to be considered.
The per-
petuation
of these
views
-
abstracted
from their
historical contexts
and inap-
propriately applied to dissimilar ones - has contributed much to the present
outlook.
There is
no
need
to
trace
the origins
of
current
views
or to enumerate
all
the
prototypes
from which they
derive. The
resources
of
a
modern
encyclopedic
culture have
been sufficiently
exploited toward
this end
already.
The evidence
uncovered
suggests
that all known
ways of
viewing historical
change
may be found in almost
any
area within the Western
world, during
almost any era
since the first chronicles
were
written, the first records
kept.
Although such views have been classified in many different ways, they seem
to
fall
into
three
main categories,
schematically described
as cyclical,
cataclys-
mic,
and
developmental.
Thus historical
change has
been
patterned
in terms
of: 1)
repetitive,
recurrent, or periodic
phenomena;
2) abrupt upheavals,
discontinuous
leaps, decisive
points of no return;
or 3) cumulative,
progres-
sive,
continuous open-ended
processes.
Each
of these schemes,
of course,
contains elements
of the
others.
Cyclical
theories,
derived from
Oriental,
Near
Eastern, or Greco-Roman
sources, allow
for periodic
cataclysmic endings
and cosmic creations as well as for a limited sequential progression such as
the
decay
of nature theme or
Hesiod's
Four
Ages. 11
Cataclysmic theories,
derived from
scriptural
sources, emphasize
points
of no
return,
such as
the
Fall,
the
Flood,
the
Incarnation,
or
the Last
Judgment. They
may
also
be
plausibly
described
as
one-cycle
variations
on other
cyclical
models.'2
The
persistence,
in Latin
Christendom,
of ideas about eras
lying
beyond
the
Second
Coming
and
about
the
eternal
return
of the
Savior'3
suggests
the
11. Mircea Eliade, Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return [1949],
transl.
W.
B. Trask (New York,
1959),
112-132.
On Hesiod's
metallic
ages,
see
also
M.
I. Finley,
Myth, Memory,
and
History,
History
and
Theory
IV
(1965),
286.
The
closely
related
decay
of
nature theme
is discussed
by
Hiram
Haydn,
The
Counter-
Renaissance
(New
York,
1950),
ChapterEight,
parts
3 and
4.
12. Cairns,
Part
II,
Chapter
Two.
13. On
Siger of
Brabant's
heretical opinions
about
the infinite
appearance
and
dis-
appearance
of Christianity
and
the periodic
recurrence
of
the crucifixion,
see E.
J.
Dijksterhuis,
The
Mechanization
of the
World
Picture,
transl.
C.
Dikshoorn
(Oxford,
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CLIO
AND CHRONOS
41
ease with
which these
two
models
could
be fused.
Cataclysmic
views
could
also
merge
into developmental
ones.
The unique
Incarnation
could
be anti-
cipated by
prophecies
and
eternally
renewed
for each
generation
by
religious
ceremony. Efforts to link the Old Testament and New, doctrines pertaining
to
an
apostolic
succession
or to the
institutional
continuity
of
the
Church
made
it possible
for lines
to be
drawn
from one
point
of no return
to
another.14
Some lines
could be indefinitely
prolonged
-
like the
sway
of eternal
Rome,
the
last of
the Four
Monarchies
in
the Book of
Daniel.
Finally,
views pertain-
ing to continuous,
irreversible
processes
may
incorporate
epoch-making
events,
distinct
stages,
watersheds,
and
great divides.
They
may also
take
into
account periodicity
and
rhythmic
oscillations.
They may be
fused
with
cyclical models by patterning change according to an ascending or descending
spiral
movement.'5
Developmental
models lend
themselves
as easily
to
con-
cepts
about
regress
as to those
about
progress.
Both,
suggesting as they
do
a
steady
tendency
toward increasing
order
or
increasing
disorder,
are not
al-
together
open-ended.
The increasingly
rich
orchestration
of developmental
themes
after the
mid-
fifteenth century
has
attracted much
comment. Certaintly
before the
invention
of
printing
few
variations
were
played
on such
themes
in scribal
writings,
whereas many were played upon cyclical and catastrophic ones. But the latter
as
well
as
the former
did not
emerge
as distinct historical
typologies
until
the
advent
of
typography.'
Intermittently
revived,
usually
outside
official
aca-
demic establishments,'7
they
have
nonetheless been progressively
elaborated,
more
thickly
documented,
and
clearly
articulated down
to the
present.
Three
incompatible
conceptual
schemes
that
were once amorphous
and blurred
have
been steadily brought
into
sharper
focus.
They
now
impinge
simultaneously
with
almost
equal
force
upon
the
modern consciousness. Throughout
much
of the past they were, on the contrary, barely perceptible.
1961), 156.
Other medieval
variations
on the theme of eternal return
are noted
by
Eliade,
143-144;
see
also
Chapters
Three and
Four.
14. How
this was done
in
some patristic
writings
and later exploited
in the
seventeenth
century is described
by E. Tuveson,
Millenium
and
Utopia:
A
Study
in the Background
of
the Idea of Progress (New
York,
1949).
15. Cairns
includes all
such linear
schemes under
her one-cycle category.
K.
Lbwith,
Meaning
in
History (Chicago,
1949),
like
R.
G. Collingwood,
The Idea of
History (Oxford,
1948)
and many others, does
not differentiate catastrophic
from
linear schemes. Both are fused into a single model which is sharply contrasted with
cyclic
theories.
For
a
recent
example
of this
contrast,
see Frank
Manuel, Shapes
of
Philosophical
History
(Stanford, 1965),
2-6.
16. Manuel introduces
his shapes of
history
as typologies by
now profoundly
im-
printed
upon
our intellectual
consciousness
that do not
rub off easily. (6)
Elsewhere
he
describes
Augustine
as a form imprinter.
(32)
I
believe
there
is more than a verbal
connection
between typography
and the
fixing of
indelible impressions.
17. Cf. 0.
F. Anderle,
A Plea for
Theoretical History,
History
and Theory
IV
(1964),
33-35.
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42
ELIZABETH L. EISENSTEIN
II. THE
CONDITIONS OF SCRIBAL
CULTURE
During the
centuries
which precededthe
advent
of
printing,
and for
several
centuries
hereafter, ne must look
in a
wide
varietyof
contexts
to
locate
atti-
tudes toward historical
change. They
will be found
only
occasionally
in
writings
ostensiblydevoted
to
history
and
often
have
to
be read
into
such
writings.
They
must
also
be read into
sagas
and
epics,
sacred
scriptures,
funerary
nscriptions,
glyphs and
ciphers, vast stone
monuments,documents
locked in
chests
in
munimentrooms, and
marginal
notationson
manuscripts.
Only
gradually
were
attitudes nherent
in
different
kinds of
record-keeping
extricated
from their diverse
contexts, worked out
in different
regions by
generationsof
scholars,
and combined
into
full-fledgedgrand designs.
The
capacity
o workout
such
designs
and to
locate the
elements
which entered
nto
them has been
acquired
elativelyrecently.
We
tend
to
forget
the recentnessof
this development
ince
ancient
scribal
chronicles
have been seen in a
deceptive
dual format for
hundredsof years.
Ever
since
they were firstset
in
type four
or
five
centuriesago, they
have been
indistinguishablerom works
deliberatelywrittenfor
publication.
They
are
now studiedby
perusingprinted
editions,decked
out with
scholarlyapparatus,
or
by
perusingmanuscript
ersions and
collatingvariants n
order to
produce
a
new,
more
authoritative dition. Each
such
edition
tells us more
about how
the
manuscript
was
composed
and
copiedthan was
previouslyknown.
By
the
same
token
each makes t
more
difficult
o
envisage
how
a
given
manuscript
r
one
of its various
copies appeared o
the small
groups of scholars
who
had
limited access
only to
undated,
untitled
works written by
hand
that were
identified, f
at all, by incipits,
nd
catalogued, f at all,
temporarily
y their
position
on
the
shelf
of
a
given
library.Historians
are
trained o discriminate
between
manuscript ources and
printed
texts; but they
are not
trained to
think
with
equal
care
about how
manuscripts
ppearedwhen
this sort of dis-
crimination
was
inconceivable
when
everythingwas off
the record,
so to
speak,save that
which
got readto those
who stood
withinearshot.
Similarly he
more
thoroughly rained
hey
are
to
use our
presentprinted
reference
guides,
the
less
capable hey are
of
imagining
how men
kept track of temporal
change
with
no
uniform
chronologies
or
historical
atlases
to guide
them.'8
1.
Before uniform reference
guides
could be
devised and become
available,
images
of
the
past
were ordered
by
a
seemingly
random
but in fact locally
18.
Lucien
Febvre's
Le
problem
de
l'incroyance
au
XVle
si'cle:
la
religion
de
Rabelais
(L'evolution
de
l'humanite
Liii)
(Paris,
1942),
418-437,
is so
remarkable
an
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CLIO AND CHRONOS
43
significant
-
association of events. Historical events happened once upon a
time. They could, to be sure, be intermittently ordered by those who had
access to various scattered collections of disparate manuscripts. Overlapping,
contradictory temporal sequences were worked out, based on dynasties and
Olympiads,
consulates and
tribunates,
or on
counting generations
descended
from Romulus and Remus, from Adam, Abraham, Noah, or Aeneas.'9 Much
scholarly energy was expended on this sort of counting. An elite group of
learned men had to be specially trained to master it. But even as Bishop
Ussher's chronology provoked derision by the nineteenth century, so too would
Ussher's contemporaries regard with enlightened scorn the errors compounded
by scribal chronologies. Adult intelligence and painstaking industry, rather
than carelessness, credulity, or a childlike mentality have, in my view, charac-
terized most
groups
of
chronologers. The conditions of scribal culture
rather
than
naivete
on the part of scribal scholars accounted for the muddle their
efforts produced.
These
conditions
probably
also
accounted
for
the mixture
of
sacred
and
profane tales, imaginary
and real
locales, allegorical
and
eyewitness accounts,
wide-ranging mythologies and
localized
contemporary reports that was
de-
posited
on
printed pages
in the
era
of
incunabula. From
such ingredients,
rudimentaryhistorical perspectives were traced by Renaissance scholars. Their
contradictory versions have plagued historiography ever since.20 Some human-
ists,
for
example, emphasized the gulf
between
pagan error and Christian truth.
Others,
to the
contrary, bridged
the era of the
Incarnation,
in
order
to
divide
a
bright
millenium
of
pagan prophecy
and Christian fulfillment
from
a
dark
millenium
of
Gothic
barbarism. Italian
cycles
of
republican
virtue and
imperial
decadence
were
incompatible
with
Portuguese
and French
Aeneids, entitled
Lusiad or Franciad, and with John Foxe's quasi-scriptural historic prose epic
exception
that it seems
to
prove
the rule.
Despite
the wealth of valuable data
contained
in
another work of which he was
co-author,
Febvre and
Martin,
L'apparition
du
livre
(L'evolution de l'humanite XLIX)
(Paris, 1958),
the relevance
of
printing
to
the
gap
Febvre
imaginatively bridged
in his book on Rabelais is nowhere made
clear.
19. An interesting glimpse of
conflicting
schemes for
describing
eras, involving
Abraham,Adam, Christ, Diocletian,
the
Seleucids,
the foundation
of
Rome, Olympiads,
etc.,
is offered
by
J.
Finegan,
Handbook
of
Biblical
Chronology (Princeton, 1964),
xxv.
Much
of this book is relevant to the above
discussion.
20. Here,
as
everywhere else,
it is
necessary
to discriminate
between what is seen
in
retrospect and what was visible to contemporaries. It is possible now to collate and
compare
versions produced by
sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century
historians attached to
diverse
institutions, elaborating disparate
traditions, relying
on
records gathered in
different places.
Whether these versions are
harmonized and patterned
after the fact or
presented
untouched
and
unreconciled,
as evidence of incoherence, they are in both
instances seen from an entirely different
viewpoint from that of the
scholars who com-
posed
these versions.
From their
viewpoint, new order and symmetry
were being intro-
duced
into
world
history, although
from
ours overlapping and incompatible schemes
were
being developed.
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44 ELIZABETH L.
EISENSTEIN
that
portrayed Elizabethan England as an
elect nation. 2' They
also con-
flicted with notions that elsewhere persisted
about the continued sway of
eternal Rome. 22
Seven or six ages composing a vast cosmic week, four ages
of metal within which a fifth age of heroes was inserted, four successive
monarchies or
empires, three ages corresponding to the persons of the Trinity,
were
similarly
mutually incompatible.23 Nor did many of these schemes
have
much to do
with
various calendars of marvels
and disasters compiled
from
local annals.
Nevertheless, it was the duplication of records that made parts of
the muddle
visible
and inspired efforts to clear it up. With the advent of print-
ing each
individual scholar or book-reader could
see more of his past spread
out before him than anyone had ever seen before.24
What remained of unused
written records could begin to be uncovered, collected, and preserved. New
experiences could
begin to be recorded in a
much more permanent form. It
thus
became
possible, for the first time, to sort out
and to compare the accumu-
lating deposits left by successive generations, and
to reorder them in a single
uniform sequence
as they accumulated.
Oral
transmission,
as
is
later discussed, had worked at cross
purposes
with
such an endeavor.
Scribal culture, which was
more closely tied to oral and
auditory memory-training than is often
recognized,25had frequently frustrated
and always limited it. The scholars attached to the Alexandrian Museum
21. William
Haller's
The
Elect
Nation: The
Meaning
and Relevance
of
Foxe's
Book
of
Martyrs (New
York,
1963)
is a
pioneering
study
of the
impact
of
printing
on
the
shaping
of a national historical
mythology.
F. Smith Fussner's
The Historical
Revolu-
tion:
English Historical
Writing
and
Thought
1580-1640
(London,
1962), although it
covers
a
wider
range
of
relevant
data,
is much
less useful in
this
regard.
22. The
four-monarchy
scheme,
involving
the
persistence
of
Rome,
was
forcefully
dismissed in
sixteenth-century
France
by
Calvin,
Bodin,
and
LeRoy.
See
Tuveson, 58,
65, 222n. Its
prior
rejection
by quattrocento Florentine
humanists is stressed
by
Hans
Baron,
The Querelle of the
Ancients
and
the
Moderns as
a
Problem
for
Renaissance
Scholarship, Journal of the History of Ideas 20 (1959), 11-12. Although it was none-
theless retained
by Bossuet a
century
later
(Ldwith,
138-139),
it
apparently
did
not
linger
on
among lay
scholars
in France
as it did in
the
Germanies
down
to
the
eighteenth
century.
Rejected by
Calvin,
it
had
been
espoused by
Luther
and
Melanchthon.
See
Herbert
Butterfield,
Man
on His Past:
The Study of
the
History of
Historical
Scholarship
(Cambridge,
1955),
45-46. For
ancient views
pertainingto
the
eternal renewal
of
Rome,
see Eliade,
134-137; for
diverse
interpretationsof this
theme
by
historiographers,reach-
ing down to
mid-nineteenth-century
American
fundamentalists,Manuel,
Shapes of His-
tory,
17-19.
23.
On the
ancient
Near-Eastern
background of
notions
pertaining to
cosmic
weeks,
triadic and quadripartitedivisions of ages, see Eliade, 124-127; on subsequentdevelop-
ment of
these
schemes,
Manuel, Shapes
of
History,
24-45.
24.
The sixteenth
and
seventeenth
centuries saw
more
of
the Middle
Ages than
had
ever been available
to
anyone
in
the
Middle
Ages.
Then
it had
been
scattered
and
inaccessible
and
slow
to
read.
Now it
became
privately portable
and
quick to
read.
(McLuhan, 143.)
25. See references cited
by
McLuhan,
92-100.
The
key work is
H. J.
Chaytor's
From
Script
to Print:
A
a
Introduction
to
Medieval
Literature
(Cambridge, 1945),
a fascinat-
ing investigation
of
this
issue.
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CLIO AND
CHRONOS
45
like
Eratosthenes, the
father of chronology
-
or those who
had access to
other large libraries26
might devise
rudimentary chronologies
and make a
start
at
mapping
the whole world.
They
were
fortunate
enough
to
live
at
the
right
place and time to take advantage of the varied and dissimilar collections of
texts that had been gathered
together. But many scholars were
less fortunate
than
the
immediate
successors of an
Eratosthenes
or
a
Eusebius. They were
confronted
not only by
the
dispersal
and
destruction of
the texts, upon which
their
predecessors'
work was
based;
this
work
was, itself, partly or
altogether
lost and
they had to begin
all over again
-
once
upon a time.
Those portions of
the
imperishable past
which
were
neither inscribed in
sacred
books
-
themselves
copied,
and often
altered, by generations
of
scribes27 nor committed to verse and preserved by human voices, led a
precarious
existence before the advent of
printing.
Insofar
as ancient papyri
were
handled,
their lifetime
was
short.
Only
those
which
were
stored
and
went
unread could outlast the
life-span
of
a
few
generations. But moisture,
vermin, theft,
and
fire took
a
heavy
toll
of stored
documents.
Whether they
were
locked in chests
in
muniment
rooms,
moved
about with
ambulatory
princes,
or
deposited
in
scattered
chanceries,
archives,
or town
halls, medieval
documents
were accessible
only
to local
elites.28
Manuscripts
which
went
uncopied duringthe medieval millenium because they did not suit the practical
needs
of
professional jurists,
teachers,
and
preachers survived to
find their
way
into
print
on a
random
basis.29
The
history
of
the
destruction
of
library
collections
throughout
the Near East and
Europe demonstrates
how scholars
had
to
perform
the
labors
of
Sisyphus
until
the
divine
art
came to their aid.
Almost
all
such collections
were
doomed
to
destruction.
The
deliberate exer-
cise of
pious
zeal
by pagan
or
apostate,
Christian
or
Moslem authorities led
to
many
book-burnings.30
The
very
term
vandalism
indicates
what barbarian
26.
Thus
Eusebius,
the father of church
history,
worked
at a
theological
school
in
Caesarea where
Pamphilus
had established
a
magnificent
ibrary
of
biblical
literature
frequently
mentioned
by
St.
Jerome.
27.
M. H.
Black,
The Printed
Bible,
Cambridge
History of
the
Bible,
ed.
S.
L.
Greenslade
(Cambridge,
1963),
408,
notes
that Jewish scribes
preserved
their
writings
from
corruption
by
elevatingcopying
to a
ritual,
making
inaccuracy
a
blasphemy,
and
also doubtless
by
insuring
an
adequate
supply
of
young
men
who
committed
the Talmud
to
memory. Rigid
sanctions,
absolute
inflexibility,
devotion to
learning
by
rote
and
by
reading
were
required
to
preserve
the Law
(and
a
uniform
chronology)
among
Jews
of
the Diaspora after the destructionof the JerusalemTemple eliminated a vital message
center
and
scattered
synagogues
were
in
constant
peril.
28. On
the chaotic
state of
quasi-public
records
in
sixteenth-century
England, sec
Fussner, 69-82.
29.
E. P.
Goldschmidt,
Medieval Texts
and
their
First
Appearance in.
Print
(Supple-
ment to the
Bibliographical
Society's
Transactions
#it6)
(London,
1943),
13.
30. Thus
thc
great
library at Cordova was
destroyed by
Alnmanzor n
978,
muach
as
Diocletian and
Julian
had
destroyed Christian
libraries.
See H.
R.
Tedder and
J.
D.
Brown,
Libraries ,The
Encyclopedia
Britannica, 11th
ed.
(New York,
1910-11),
XVI,
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46
ELIZABETH L.
EISENSTEIN
conquests
and
sacks of cities
often involved.
But carelessness r neglect on the
part of any
one generationof custodians,unavoidable
accidents,
and random
acts
of God
also underscored
he vanityof learning n the
era of
scribal
culture. Nearlyevery monasticor cathedral ibrarysuffered ire at one time
or another. '31
During the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuriesin Italy, where
the trade
in
manuscripts
nd
their
collection
n
libraries
had
reached sizable
proportions,
scholarsbegan
to be sensitive
o
anachronism.32
ivic loyalties,
humanist
edu-
cational
reforms affecting
he studyof law and language,
contrastsbetween
antiqueand
Gothic
styles
in rhetoricand art, all may have contributed o
a
rudimentaryhistorical consciousness n
quattrocento
Florence. But without
continuous
access
to
increasingly
vailable exts made possible
by the utiliza-
tion of movabletype,
a
local revival of
learningmight
well
have been
extin-
guished
in
the disorders
of
the sixteenth
century, as was the Carolingian
revivalafter
Charlemagne's
eath.The Laurentianibrarymight
have suffered
the fate of the
collection of fiftythousandvolumes amassed
by MathiasCor-
vinus, King
of
Hungary,
which
had
already
been
despoiled
before it was
sacked by
the Turks at the
fall
of
Buda in
1527.33
Similarly,knowledge of
545-551.
Before
printing,
the destruction of a
major library
dealt a moral blow to
a
strategic
social institution. In the
present
century,
such
phenomena
as Nazi
book-burn-
ings or the
setting
fire to American
libraries overseas have become ritualistic and
sym-
bolic. Only
two centuries
ago,
however
-
before the
publication
of
huge
source
collec-
tions
had
begun
-
the
sporadic
destruction of chateau archives
during
the French
Revolution obliterated much evidence of French feudal
history.
It is
partly
because
it
is so
difficult to eliminate data
once fixed in
print
that totalitarian
controls have to be
so extensive and all-inclusive.
Repeated
Soviet efforts to rewrite
history may
be
less
effective
than
many
accounts
suggest.
31. James
Westfall
Thompson,
The
Wanderings
of
Manuscripts,
The
Medieval
Library, ed. J. W. Thompson (repr. New York, 1957), 659. See also the reference to
archives of
St.
Benoit-sur-Loire,
Marc
Bloch,
The
Historian's
Craft,
transl.
P.
Putnam
(New York,
1964),
77.
32. Goldschmidt
notes
how
strangely
blunt
in
their
perception of
anachronisms
were
fifteenth-century
cribes and
copyists (24);
there
is
a
tendency
to
overrate
humanist
anticipations of
modern
scholarship
or
higher
criticism.
Had
his
successors not
been
able to
take
advantage
of his
Neapolitan
polemic against
Pope
Eugenius IV, it is
doubt-
ful
whether Lorenzo Valla's De Constantini
Donatione
Declarnatio (which, according
to
Thompson,
resumed textual criticism
at
the
point where
the
Alexandrian School
had left
it ) would
have
launched
a
tradition as
it
did after being
published by
Ulrich von Hutten. In the first half of the twelfth century, Otto of Freising had also
held the
Donation
of
Constantine
to
be a
forgery.
See J. W.
Thompson, A
History
of
Historical
Writing (New
York, 1942), 1,
196, 493-494.
33.
Tedder
and
Brown,
Libraries,
551.
One
should note
the size
of some other
libraries
during
the
fourteenth and
fifteenth
centuries.
Cambridge University had
122
volumes
in
its
library
in
1424,
330 in
1470.
The
library of a
king of France
should be
compared
with
that
of
the
king
of
Hungary.
in
1373,
Charles
V-II
owned
130
volumes,
all
of which
had vanished
by
1411. See
Curt
Bbhler, The
Fif
teentl
Centurly
Book
(Phila-
delphia,
1960),
19.
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CLIO AND CHRONOS
47
Greek
might
have withered
away
once again in
the
West. Instead it was the
familiar
scribal phrase: Graeca sunt ergo non legenda that
disappeared from
Western
books, never
to
reappear. For Greek type founts could
be cut,
Greek
grammars as well as standard editions of Greek texts could be issued. The
duplicative powers of print fixed
whatever was known in a
more permanent
mold, making possible the
progressive recovery of arcane
letters and ancient
languages
along with the systematic development of historical
scholarship and
its
auxiliary sciences. Only a little more than a century after
the first incunab-
ula, it
was possible to compare
written records with one another and
order
them
sequentially with
unprecedented scope and skill. In 1583 J. J. Scaliger's
De
Emendatione Temporum was published. This work
revolutionized all
received ideas of ancient chronology. 34 It represented a feat which might
ultimately have been achieved by
Eratosthenes's successors
had the Alex-
andrian
libraries
not been
destroyed.35
In the
age of print
no
special care was required to
preserve work like
Scaliger's, and
energies could
be
devoted to improving upon it. Although press
variants
multiplied, gradual correction
rather
than
inevitable corruption or
destruction
was
for the
first time
possible.36 The knowledge that useful works
of
reference would
not
be abruptly obliterated or
slowly
erased
and
blurred
probably affected the way literate men thought about their past and their
future.
Indeed,
catastrophic and cyclical theories of historical
change appear
to
be
closely related
to
the
specific problems that were
posed by
the
migration
of
manuscripts.
Scholars
relying solely
on
scribal
records had
direct experience
with
disastrous acts
of
God that seemed to be directed
at
the
vanity
of
learning. They
also
had
experience
with
seemingly
miraculous recoveries
of
whole systems of knowledge7 and golden ages that sometimes receded and
34. R. C.
Christie
and
J.
E. Sandys,
Joseph
Justus
Scaliger
(1540-1609),
Encyclo-
pedia
Britannica,
11th
ed.,
XXIV,
284.
35. Had some
successor
of
Eratosthenes
written this
work,
it
might
have been
pre-
served that
is,
altered
by copyists
and
emended
by glossators
-or else
lost,
like
the chronology of
Dionysus of
Halicarnassus.
By
the
fourteenth
century,
corrupted
manuscripts
used
by
universities were
partly
protected
from further
corruption
by
the
system
of
pecia
(that is,
renting
out
portions
of a
specially supervised
manuscript
to
copyists
who
returned
it for
re-use
as
a
model).
See
Febvre
and
Martin,
10-11,
23. The
doubtful criteria involved in supervising an already corruptedcopy need to be kept in
mind.
36. Although
M. H.
Black, The
Printed
Bible, 408-414,
argues
that press
variants
multiplied down to the
eighteenth century and
that
texts were
altered more
rapidly by
early
printing methods
than
they had been
by
fourteenth-century
university
copyists,
he
also
notes
that
this
process
of corruption
was
ultimately arrested
by
printers.
37. When
the
works
of
such
ancients as
Ptolemy
re-entered the
West by
circuitous
routes,
they
bore few
traces of
their
antecedents.
The
extent to which
their immense
technical
superiority depended
upon
access to the
great
libraries of
antiquity was
not
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48
ELIZABETH
L.
EISENSTEIN
sometimes eemed
on the verge
of dawning.Views based
on theseexperiences
were embeddedn
all scribal
writings,and,down to the
seventeenth entury,
t
should
be
remembered,
hese
were the writings that predominated
n
pub-
lishers'cataloguesand booksellers'ists.38As writtenwords were cheapened
and books became
more plentiful,scribal
views were
duplicatedn a variety
of
contexts.They thus outlivedthe
culture
that had nurtured hem.
The decay
of nature heme,
which was altogether
compatible
with the steady erosion
of manuscript ecords,
was less compatible
with the
steady accumulation
f
printed
materials.Yet this theme
survived
to inspirepessimistic
social phi-
losopherswith theories
about
decadenceandentropy
n the nineteenth
entury.
The
contentsof theLibraryof
Congress
or the BritishMuseum
have not been
thinned out and are not threatenedby dispersal.Alarms about the loss of
mankind'smemory
may
nonetheless tillbe heard.
Abstracted rom
their con-
text and perpetuated
as typologies,
then, cyclical
and catastrophic
heories
survived. But at
the
same
time, the rapid
duplicationof useful
reference
guides
and the systematic
developmentof
many forms
of knowledge hat
this
duplication
made possible encouragedthe
formulationof new
views.
The
premiseof straight-line
irection
was powerfullyreinforced
by the progres-
sive accumulation
f
records
and
the
advancement f learning
hat went
with
it. It is by now so firmlyentrenched n Westernhistoriographyhat, despite
recent
revisions,
t cannotbe
dislodged.
Many fields of
human activity
have, in fact, been
subjectto continuous
development
during he past fivecenturies
hat were
not subject o this kind
of
development reviously.
Steady
advance, George
Sartonhas
suggested,
im-
plies exact
determination
f
every previous
step. 39Not only
was
exact
deter-
mination
mpossible
given
the
migration
of
undated,
untitled
manuscripts;
n
any field of knowledge hat
involved
arge-scale
ollection
of
data,backsliding
was morecommonthan advance.A comparisonof Ptolemaic worldmapsof
the second
century
with twelfth-century
mappae
mundi offers a
useful
correc-
tive to
modern
preconceptions.
t is also
noteworthy
hat modern
conclusions
drawn
from
this comparison
were
not evident to
fifteenth-century rinters,
who
duplicated
both crude and relativelysophisticated
world-pictures
imul-
taneously
n an era
when still
more accurate
renderings
han
Ptolemy's
were
being
traced by
hand
by
Mediterraneanartographers.40
ave
among
closed
recognized. This
superiority,
linked
with Christian allegorical
interpretations
of
pagan
prophets who anticipated the Incarnation, encouraged belief in the special insights of
ancient seers who
had recourse to a divine illumination.
38.
The
preponderance
of books published
for academic markets
down to the seven-
teenth century
consisted of medieval theological texts, according
to
Goldschmidt,
13-23.
39. George Sarton, The Quest for Truth:
Scientific Progress during
the Renaissance,
The Renaissance: Six
Essays (Metropolitan Museum Symposium,
1953) (New York,
1962), 66.
40. Boies Penrose,
Travel and Discovery in the Renaissance 1420-1620
(New York,
1962), Chapter 16.
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CLIO AND
CHRONOS 49
circlesof specially
nitiated raftsmen,distinctionsbetweenwhatwas
advanced
on one hand and
retardedon the other
could not be perceived.
Among
all
groups herewas,
furthermore, blurred
perceptionof whatwas new and what
was old. This was partly because of objectiveconditions.What was found
by onegenerationhad often been previously
ound and then
lost by priorones.
The
confusion of
old with new, remote
with recent, also involved a
more
purely subjective
factor: namely, an inability to envisage
clearly or
gauge
correctlydistances
betweenone era andanother.
2.
Throughoutmostof the centuriesof scribal
culture, iterate
elites sharedwith
pre-literateolk a
commonrelianceuponoral transmission
o teach them most
of what
they knew
about the past. Silent
readingwas apparently n unfamiliar
practice,while wordof mouth was required
o supplement
he scarce supply
of books. Theordinary
man of our own
times probably ees more ... written
matter
n
a week
than the medievalscholardid in a year. '41
Even as publica-
tion beforeprinting
generally nvolved
obtaininga publichearing or a given
text, so too is it appropriate o thinkof a hearing atherthan a reading
public as the customary
audience or scribal books. It is
essential to keep in
mind
that chroniclers
and scholarswere,
all of them, membersof this hear-
ing public, when considering heirviews
of history.
A sense
of the past that is primarily
based on hearing
tales from
others is
altogether
different
rom one
that is primarily
based on reading
hemoneself.
As a moment's reflection suggests,
historical
scholarship
and hearsay
are
fundamentally
ncompatible.Speech
is
too
fleeting to permit
any
listener to
pausefor reflectionat all. By meansof cadence andrhyme,however, speech
can
preserve
human
memories
over
incredibly ong
intervals of
time.
The
ability
of
pre-literate
olk
to
preserve
ntact
in
their
sagas
and
epics
accounts
of
episodesfrom
a very distantpast invariablyappears
uncanny o those
who
learn
their
history
from
history
books.42Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century
scholarswere
altogether
unawareof this
ability. They
lived in
an era
when
stories
previously
acceptedby most intelligent
adults were for the
first
time
dismissedas
fairy
ales
and
circulated
n
printed
orm
to
specialized
markets
41. Chaytor,
10. What
immediately
precedes
and
follows
this citation
is also
drawn
from this study.
42.
Apart
from the
references cited in fn.
25,
I
found useful data
on the
working of
oral/aural
memory (as opposed
to
visual)
in
Finley, 293-294;
G. J.
Whitrow,
The
Natural
Philosophy of
Time
(New York,
1963), 92
n.2; and Albert
B.
Lord, The Singer
of Tales
(Cambridge, Mass.,
1960), passim.
Lord's
study points
to vast
controversial
literature on the
oral
composition of
epics,
sagas, lays,
etc.
-
a
somewhat
tangential,
albeit
closely related,
issue.
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50
ELIZABETH L. EISENSTEIN
composed
of children and country-folk.43
The assumption
that oral lore
was
bound to be corrupted
after
the passage of about
one century
was, for example,
a firm
rule of Newton
in his chronological
study.44 It was, however, more
in
the jumbling of time-sequence than in the falsifying of the record that oral
transmission
was inferior
to scribal. The
latter lent itself to
forgery and cor-
ruption, the
former to prolonged
preservation but
also to vague
temporal and
spatial
location. This accounts
for the ease
with which Christian saints and
holy days
could
be superimposed
upon pagan ones
and for
the tendency
to
think of Cathay
or Jerusalem as no more
real, no
less fabulous than Atlantis
or
Paradise.
For
much of what men
heard in rhythmic
cadence was invisibly
preserved,
and thus subject to unnoted variations and alterations. Although some versions
remained almost intact, others
were
transposed into new
keys as they were
applied
in
different situations
or transplanted to different
places,
and some
were altered beyond
recognition.
Local
lore could, however, keep
indefinitely
alive certain
vivid episodes that registered
the
comings and goings
of good
times
and
bad
ones. This
chain
of
living
memories, associated
with an
indefi-
nite but
living
past, persisted long
after print,
and indeed down
to the
present, since every
child is
still introduced to the
world of the
past by hearing
old versions of fables, songs, or stories intermingled with private, familial, or
local
lore. It has, however,
become increasingly diminished
in scope.
Though
even as adults
many of us still
hear fragments of a
ballad about
a bonny boat
which
carried a lad
who
was born to be King,
if we wish to know
more about
the prince
who sailed over the
seas to Skye, we must
somehow
locate his name
upon
our
mental time chart
and
then consult
our
print-made
encyclopedias
or
biographical
dictionaries. The compendia
compiled
during the eras of
scribal
culture,
invariably vague about
location in time,
employing
no standardized
nomenclature to identify person or place, would provide us with little or no
help
in
locating
the innumerable Lords and Princes who had come and
gone.45
Nor would many
of the
scribal
histories or chronicles
-
even of the Italian
city
states
-
provide
such
help. However
sharply focused
and closely ob-
43.
Philippe
Aries,
Centuries
of
Childhood,
transl.
R.
Baldick
(New
York,
1962),
96-98, and
Robert
Mandrou, De
la
culturepopulaireaux 17e
et
18e
siecles
(Paris,
1964),
both
suggest that the seventeenth
century was
a
turning
point,
but both
illuminate
the
French
scene
only.
44. F. Manuel, Isaac Newton, Historian (Cambridge,Mass., 1963), 53. See also views
of the
eighteenth-centuryG6ttingen
scholar,
A. L. von
Schlbzer, on how
many genera-
tions may be
expected
to
retain an
accurate account
of
a
past episode, in
Butterfield, 58.
45. One
would
have
difficulty finding
proper
names
in
the first
place.
Aside from
the
absence
of
a
standard
nomenclature
or title
pages
bearing
authors'
names, even
later
medieval
catalogues
were
almost
never
alphabetical
in
their
arrangement
of
incipits.
Alphabetical
arrangements
beyond
the
initial letter
were,
in
the
twelfth
century, entirely
unknown
(see
C.
H.
Haskins,
The Renaissance
of
the
Twelfth
Century
[Cambridge,
Mass.,
1939],
78).
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CLIO AND CHRONOS
51
served were
the events of a chronicler's
own epoch,
those which preceded
it-
beginning with Moses
or Aeneas
-
belonged to a misty past
where heroes of
all ages
inhabited the
same Elysian fields. Episodes
pertaining to this distant
era grew only more blurred as they were copied and recopied, and often set to
verse.
We
often
forget that
many of the more celebrated
so-called
historians
down to
the era of printing
-
and, in most areas,
for two
centuries there-
after
-
were not writing history,
as we know
it, at all, but describing con-
temporary
events as observant
journalists and foreign
correspondents.
When
they were
not copying the classics
-
emulating
Suetonius as Einhard did,
or
following
Thucydides' account of the
plague in
Athens as Boccaccio did
-
or
retelling bardic myths, or transcribing from accounts by their immediate pre-
decessors,
they were reporting
as contemporary
observers upon
expeditions
abroad
or
experiences at the court
and in the town.
Polybius' Histories,
for
example,
deal with his own times,
from 221 to
146 B.C. Even Guicciardini,
attempting
the unprecedented task
of encompassing
the history of all the city-
states
upon
the Italian peninsula,
begins his account
with an event that
oc-
curred
when
he was
twelve years old. The narrative
skill and
analytical insight
displayed
by such historians were
applied to
events within their
own
life-
times, and occasionally to those in the days of their parents or grandparents.
Thompson
regards it as singular
that the Greeks were always
so
interested
. . .in
contemporary
history.'
46
Given the scarcity
of Greek libraries,
they
were
well
advised to
focus their attention on
current events.
Curiosity,
ana-
lytical intelligence, and
sophisticated
skepticism could not
be effectively
applied
to
the
study
of distant
eras. Throughout
the centuries
of scribal culture,
an
imaginary world
of fantastic
history and wild geography 47
was inhabited
by all members
of the hearing public.
Discrimination between the mythical and historical remained blurred for
a full
two centuries after
printing. Groups of antiquarians
scouring
the country-
side
for
records
and scholars
engaged
in
what
was for
the first time
described as
research were only beginning
to
sift
out fact
from fancy in
the seventeenth
century.
Their
findings
had
yet to
reach the
newly
created reading public.
Works such
as An
Historical
Treatise
of
the
Travels
of
Noah
in
Europe
were
circulated
instead.
One
is
reminded of Sir Edward
Coke's
belief that
Britain
had
been settled by
Aeneas'
grandson,
that
Alfred
the
Great
founded
Oxford,
and that the common law (and the English constitution) were of immemorial
antiquity.48
That
oral transmission
and scribal
culture did not
convey
the sense of
the
past
with
which
modern historians are familiar is suggested by
the
problems
46.
Thompson, History of Historical Writing
I,
24. See also
Finley, 300-302.
47. Chaytor,
26.
48.
Thompson, History of Historical Writing I, 626.
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52
ELIZABETH
L. EISENSTEIN
that persistaboutdating
preciselyall
mannerof events, such
as Charlemagne's
coronation,
recorded n the remote
past; about determining
when the
New
Year
began
in different egionsthroughout
Europe,
or even within
the
Italian
peninsuladuring he earlymodernera; about synchronizingMoslem, Chinese,
or Jewish
chronologieswith our own
at present;
or aboutdecidingupon
ap-
propriate
ostumesand
settingwhenproducing
a,
Shakespearean
lay. Downto
the era
when maps andbooks could
be duplicated
n a scaleunknownbefore,
and
for at
least two centuries
hereafter,
many courtiersand
chroniclers ended
to shuffle
Caesar,Charlemagne,
Alexander,and
David like kings in a pack
of
cards.The mentalprocess
which is
now taken for granted (save
by pre-school
children)
49
of reachingback through
he orderly
equenceof chapters n history
books to locate such figures was relativelyrecentlyacquired.The abstract
concept
of a uniform
world-wide ime was unthinkable
eforethe seventeenth
century.50
Among rural
folk in most regions, among
urban
artisans n many,
achronicityprevailed
until
the last
century; t was by
then a
concomitant
of
illiteracy.But a highly
iterateelite
throughouthe continent
had, duringprior
centuries,
relied just
as heavily on
oral
transmission
and was similarly
un-
familiar with a standardizedhistory-book
ormat
and
uniform chronology.
Before
the reading
of
chapters eparatedby pagination5'
isplaced
he hearing
of tales delivered n rhythmiccadenceby a living narratoror re-enactedby
troupes
of
mummers,
memory
of
all
past episodes,
whether
very
remote
or
very
recent,
remained
qually
vivid. Sir
Pilate,
he villainousSaracen,
was a
famil-
iar
figure
n
medieval
mysteryplays.
Costume
changes
over the course
of
cen-
turies
were
unnoticed;manuscript
llustrationsclothed
Trojan
warriors
n
medieval
garb,
and
manuscript
exts
depictedAchilles,
Medea,
Aeneas,
and
Dido
as barons
and
damsels.52
We have
already
remarked
hat
sensitivity
o
49.
But even
our
two-
and
three-year-olds
have
already
been
trained,
as our
forebears'
children
were not,
to
order their
own
lives by counting
the years
which separate
them
from
the
day of
their
birth. Aries,
15-18.
50. Whitrow,
58.
Chronology
was
still far
from
a
neutral
subject
circa
1700.
(Manuel,
Isaac
Newton,
Historian, 38.)
51.
Unlike
early printed
chronicles,
annals,
and histories, printed
Bibles
were
always
divided
into
chapters (this
division
dates
back to thirteenth-century
manuscripts).
But
the
chapter
number
was
tucked
at the
end
of the
preceding
chapter
down
through
the
sixteenth
century.
Arabic
numbers appear
for
the
first time
on
each
page
of an
edition
of the
scriptures
with Froben's publication
of
Erasmus'
New
Testament in
1516,
which
set
the
style
for the
well-differentiated
book-and-chapter
headings employed
by
Luther,
Tyndale, Lefevre, and other translators of the Bible into vernacular languages. See
H.
M. Black, 419,
435.
52. E.
Panofsky,
Renaissance
and
Renascences
(Stockholm,
1960), 85-86.
The impor-
tance
of
printing
and
engraving
in
making
visible
costume
changes
up
to then
un-
perceived
is
a
paradigm
of
what happened
to all previouslyunperceived
stylistic
or
social
changes.
On their importance
for science
and
technology,
see
Sarton,
67; also,
R.
J.
Forbes
and
E.
J.
Dijksterhuis,
A
History of
Science
and Technology
(London,
1963)
II, Chapter
16.
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CLIO AND CHRONOS 53
anachronismn
quattrocento
Florenceprecededprinting.But it is equally
m-
portant o stressthat, well afterclassical orms had been visuallyreunitedwith
classical spirit and Ciceronianprose had been sharply differentiated rom
medievalLatin, time intervals till tendedto be contracted n such a way as to
suggest even to sophisticatedFlorentinehistoriansand scholarlyChristian
humanists a much closer relationship o the institutions of the Roman
Republic
or
those of the churchfathersthan men subsequently nfluencedby
nineteenth-century istory-book ime could ever experience.53
III. ASPECTS OF HISTORY-BOOK TIME
Muchas spokenLatin andchantedverse were transformed fter the adventof
printing, so, too, what is sometimes called the collective memory
was
graduallyaltered.Elaboratemnemonictechniques,passed down through
he
ages, began to wither from disuse.54The function of transmittingmessages
from the past was detached rom humanvoices and entrusted o book-readers,
who were taught to look on libraryshelves, in cataloguesor referenceguides
for permanently-storednformationavailable for retrieval. A vast abstract
referencesystemmade it possible to locate all data uniformlyon time scales
andglobal maps. Despite imperfectsynchronization f intractablemanuscript
chronologies, events vaguely and diversely placed by different groups of
chroniclerswere assigned denticalpositions by all. But, althougheverything
could be
permanently
tored
for possible retrievalby this uniform
reference
system,
the
system
was so
capaciousthat no single mind could possibly
en-
compass
all
the data it
could hold
however hey were purified,validated,
or
classified.Each successivegenerationhad to sift out, from all the ingredients
constantlydepositedby an expandingencyclopedicculture,those portionsof
the past for which it had particularuse. Conscious contrivance,deliberate
selection,
resort
to a
literaryart that counterfeitedreality were required o
recapture hose everlargerportionsof the past that were no longer preserved
by
oral
tradition.
Removed
from
living
memories