SOURCE: Ward, John O. “The Monastic Historiographical Impulse c. 1000-1260. A Re-Assessment.” In Historia: The Concept and Genres in the Middle Ages, edited by Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen and Päivi Mehtonen, pp. 71-100. Helsinki, Finland: Societas Scientiarum Fennica/Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, 2000.

In the following essay, Ward discusses secular influences on monastic historiography.

The Importance of Monastic Historiography in the Period

Historical studies had deserted the cathedral chapters because, especially around the year 1000, they had found in the monasteries, their “foyer de prédilection”. […] The Benedictine atmosphere was very favourable to the study of history. By contrast, Cluniac spirituality scarcely encouraged it […] It is traditional no note, from the thirteenth century on, the ‘essoufflement’ of monastic historiography.¹

Recent publications in the field of English medieval historiography² and the general interest of the assertions implicit in the above paragraph have prompted the remarks offered in the...