Narratio and enarratio: History and exegesis in the Historia Scholastica, Breviarum Historie Catholice, and General Estoria.

This dissertation examines the relationship between biblical exegesis and historiography in three historical compilations: the Historia Scholastica, a school text written by Petrus Comestor in the 1170s, the Breviarum Historie Catholice, another Latin university handbook written by Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada, and the General Estoria a massive vernacular Castilian universal history commissioned by King Alfonso X of Castile in the 1270s. All three texts draw from traditions of biblical exegesis and historiography. Because they are both history and commentary at the same time, they offer an excellent opportunity to examine the relationship between narrative and interpretation in the Middle Ages. Chapter One examines in detail the relationship between biblical exegesis and historiography, drawing upon the Jewish Antiquities and an accessus to Lucan's Civil War for examples. Narrative and interpretation are related formally in the way in which both disciplines organize themselves around certain topics, as in the circumstances of actions of classical rhetoric, or the topics of the early medieval accesuss.$\sp1$ On a cultural level, exegesis and historiography both make the past and its texts accessible to contemporary audiences. Chapter two examines the relationship between memory, history and exegesis in the Historia Scholastica and the Breviarum Historie Catholice. These texts arrange their narratives according to the mnemonic theories developed by Hugh of Saint-Victor several decades. This is in keeping with developments of book technology at the time, specifically consistent folio numbering and alphabetical indices, which are themselves based on mnemonic principles. Chapter three studies the way in which the vernacular General Estoria adapts not only its source texts, but also the tradition of commentary that accompanies them, to vernacular historiography. The Alfonsine compilers are aware of traditions of commentary and their compilatory method stems from exegesis. However, since they write in the vernacular, they must redefine the General Estoria both as a historical text and an exegetical text. The result is a narrative that is as much about the texts from which it draws as the events which it recounts, and which serves to write its patron and Castilian culture into a tradition of authoritative texts and commentary. ftn$\sp1$Copeland, Rita, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts, (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991).Ph.D.Ancient languagesBiblical studiesLanguage, Literature and LinguisticsMedieval literaturePhilosophy, Religion and TheologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/131423/2/9909886.pd