Originality and function of formal structures in the chronicle of Michael the Great

Abstract

The world chronicle or the universal chronography by Michael the Great is the most voluminous historical work written within the Syriac Orthodox tradition. Usually its content is used to gain historical data, either about events it is dealing with or about its sources. In the present paper some suggestions are made to read the work as a historical achievement in its own right. Though very different from each other, both modern and post-modern thinking often evaluate historiography — at least historiography written by others — with categories developed for poetic literature. One of the consequences of this approach was and is a rather critical attitude towards the world historical achievement of the patriarch, which does not consist of a narrative in the strict sense of the term. While reserve and distance are useful elementsof sober historical analysis it should not exclude detachment from one’s own point of view: History of historiography should be questioning both, the source and the self. Ancient and medieval chronography is not directly linked to ancient and medieval narrative historiography, it served different functions, and it was not a “premature” stage of it. Chronography developed scientific methods to measure past time within specific sets of questions, it was writing about time, not stories. In this context one can take a closer look at Michael’s chronicle, a “look” in the literal sense of the word, for the chronicle not only consists of “text” but also of graphical elements. These graphical and language elements are the specific formal structures of the work. An interpretation of the formal structures seems to be useful, and indeed vital for evaluations of the chronicle. But there are good reasons to believe that the disposition represented by Chabot’s facsimile and the Aleppo version respectively is not congruent with the original version. Still there seems to be no doubt as to the “originality” of the chronicle as a synthesis of different historical genres of its tradition, a synthesis which needed both high calligraphic skills, and a strong cognitive drive growing out of a still lively scientific tradition. Some reflections on the function of the formal structures are presented.