The Past of the Past: Historical Distance and the Medieval Image

Abstract

This essay's subject is the role of visual culture in constructing both the medieval idea of antiquity and the modern idea of the Middle Ages. Historians of the early twentieth century saw the medieval image of antiquity as epoch-defining-'image' in both conceptual and visual senses of the word, which in this discourse were fundamentally connected. Theirs was a profoundly influential argument, which still structures the conversation about medieval historical consciousness across many disciplinary fields of inquiry. Some very specific kinds of sources often lie at the heart of this argument: manuscripts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (e.g., Figure 7.1). Returning to the medieval textual culture at the foundation of that argument makes it possible to reconsider, historicise, and critique controlling paradigms of twentieth-century intellectual history about the classical reception, periodisation, and the relationship between the two. But returning to the manuscripts also makes apparent this flawed argument's great insight: the significance of its key sources for understanding their creators' historical thought and conceptions of temporality.The first part of this essay re-examines the twentieth-century paradigm's foundational argument and some of the assumptions behind it-above all, the concept of 'historical distance'. Part II then returns to the kinds of sources on which it is based, in a detailed contextual and visual analysis of one especially significant example: a group of three medieval manuscripts of Livy's Roman history (Figures 2-6). Livy's history was ultimately read everywhere in Europe, in its transmitted, translated, revised, re-translated, redacted, and derivative forms; this work of historical literature about and from antiquity therefore played a central role in the 1 understanding of the ancient world among those with access to learned or recreational literacy. The three manuscripts on which this discussion concentrates are all copies of 1 the same text: Pierre Bersuire's 1350s French translation of Ab urbe condita, in its * An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Director's Work-in-Progress Seminar at the Warburg Institute, during my tenure there as a Frances Yates Long-term Research Fellow. I would also like to express my thanks to Jeffrey Hamburger, Richard Thomas, and Jan Ziolkowski, who guided this research at its inception; and to Kathleen Coleman, Jaś Elsner, Anne D. Hedeman, Gervase Rosser, and the anonymous readers, who have offered helpful comments along the way.For the transmission, early translation, and textual legacy of Livy's Ab urbe condita, see: G.