Because I’ll be going back to BJU tomorrow, many of my future posts will be a record of daily happenings so that family and friends can know what’s going on. Therefore, I am inaugurating a new category: “The Chronicle.” To explain the name, I’ll briefly excerpt my notes about medieval historiography from Dr. John Matzko’s class “Historiography.”

Why weren’t the Middle Ages a great era for the writing of history?

  • Medieval man lacked a sense that the past was different than the present. That mindset cannot promote historical study.
  • Some histories were bizarrely anachronistic.
  • Medieval man took an uncritical view of evidence.
  • There wasn’t much interest in cause and effect in history. Events were recorded, but no one was interested in why events happened.

The primary form of medieval historical writing was the chronicle. Medieval chronicles were different from what we consider history because they didn’t spring from a detached view of facts. They were haphazardly organized and showed no relationships between events other than between sin and punishment. They decided what the facts were based on what promoted faith. They were stylistically rough.

In short, medieval chronicles did little more than say what happened. My record of daily events won’t claim anything better.