Chronographia and Imperium : continuing the chronicle tradition of Eusebius-Jerome and Sigebert of Gembloux in twelfth-century Normandy

The Eusebius-Jeromian tradition of universal chronicle, as transmitted in twelfth-century Normandy via Sigebert of Gembloux, embodied an understanding of time (chronographia) as framed by the succession of the political order (imperium). Whereas earlier scholars attributed the twelfth-century success of Sigebert's chronicle to its chronological precision rather than its political ideas, this thesis shows that the Eusebius-Jeromian tradition, as transmitted to twelfth-century Normandy, hinged on a political understanding framed by the ebb and flow of political order. By analysing the wider textual community of Sigebert's chronicle in Normandy, the thesis addresses Robert of Torigni's (1106-1186) Chronography, the Mortemer continuation, the Ourscamp continuation, and John of Salisbury's (1120-1180) Historia Pontificalis. Norman and Norman-linked chroniclers actively engaged with the political implications of Sigebert's chronicle, manipulating its conceptions of time, political order, and empire to match the political realities emerging in twelfth-century Normandy and Europe. Robert of Torigni, along with the Mortemer and Ourscamp chroniclers, elaborated a unitary narrative of the past to legitimize Henry II's hegemony after the civil war. The Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and the more dubious Galfridian British pasts were normalized within the succession of time since the Creation and elevated as crucial stages within the economy of Salvation. John of Salisbury, member of the Angevin court and, later, exiled by the outburst of the Becket dispute, recognized the political implications of Sigebert's chronicle and wrote his Historia Pontificalis as a hybrid continuation and, at the same time, as an opposed reaction to Sigebert's chronicle. Because of the politico-chronological dimension of the Eusebius-Jeromian tradition, its Norman and Norman-linked continuators elaborated sophisticated textual projects which provided a political reconstruction of the order of time and propagated a unitary vision of universal history matching the political realities emerging in twelfth-century Normandy and Europe.