This book provides an analytical overview of the vast range of
historiography which was produced in western Europe over a thousand-year
period between c.400 and c.1500. Concentrating on the general principles
of classical rhetoric central to the language of this writing, alongside
the more familiar traditions of ancient history, biblical exegesis and
patristic theology, this survey introduces the conceptual sophistication
and semantic rigour with which medieval authors could approach their
narratives of past and present events, and the diversity of ends to
which this history could then be put. By providing a close reading of
some of the historians who put these linguistic principles and
strategies into practice (from Augustine and Orosius through Otto of
Freising and William of Malmesbury to Machiavelli and Guicciardini), it
traces and questions some of the key methodological changes that
characterise the function and purpose of the western historiographical
tradition in this formative period of its development.