Historie und Chronographie. Enstehung und Frühzeit lateinischer Chronistik (von Hieronymus bis Beda)

Abstract

The chronicle is a very frequent form in Christian historiography. Greek chronographies and Latin fasti with their apologetic function served as models, but only Jewish-Christian understanding of time made this peculiar mixture of timemeasuring and history possible. The first Christian chronicle by Eusebius had still an apologetic function, but it also showed a Christian interpretation of history in an easily understandable manner, and this is probably the cause of its success. Between Eusebius and Isidore, most historians wrote their works as continuations of older chronicles. This needs an explanation, which could be found in the circunstances and intentions of these authors. Some of them could only list up the spare informations which they got, and were not able to analyse their background. But other authors seem to have employect chronicles in order to present blased information in a seemingly objective form.