Sigebert of Gembloux Master of History – SiGMaH

Since the 12th century, many historical compilations recounting the history of mankind from the Creation to the present day were composed: each of them is a microcosm of knowledge, authorial practices, material conditions and worldviews, and the template they all used is the Chronicon of Sigebert of Gembloux. The aim of the SiGMaH project is to understand and demonstrate the central role of this work in the development of Latin European historical culture by producing a network of critical editions that account for the interconnected intellectual processes, methods and tools having reshaped this legacy through the centuries.
In continuity with the chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea translated and enriched by Jerome, Sigebert collected many sources in a manageable text, organised annalistically and considering synchronically the events of the European kingdoms with a strong imperial outlook. After his death in 1112, monks from various abbeys copied, enriched and modified his text. The reworked copies spread rapidly and greatly in France and the Empire and were adapted by numerous historians to new needs and new visions of the world. Some of these revised copies and chronicles were also translated into French, which made Sigebert enter the first French national histories, definitively consecrating him as a ‘master of history’.
Nevertheless, despite a few pioneering editions and studies, the real historical and cultural impact of this network remains obscure. Our aim is therefore to create an innovative system of critical editions in XML-TEI that allows for both a ‘vertical’ reading of each reworked version of Sigebert and their ‘horizontal’ consultation, showing the successive transformations of their components and the layers of information by which each version was built. From this starting point, we will enter the ‘laboratory’ of historians, assessing how each one appropriated a particular version by transforming its information and structure to create his own sense of the historical process and to meet the expectations of different audiences.
We will begin by examining the systematic rewriting of the original text in a group of reworked copies that have played a major role in Sigebert’s reception, then we will gradually focus on more isolated revised versions. By focusing on the historiographical projects that prove to be the most original and that had the greatest impact on both Latin and French historiography, we will investigate the debt each chronicle owes to Sigebert and their wide range of innovations in terms of selection, re-elaboration, enrichment, alternative ways of ordering matter. Particular attention will therefore be paid to Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale as the new model of universal history that ended up replacing Sigebert and marking the intellectual development of Europe in the 13th to 16th centuries.
To revitalise studies on Sigebert as a guide and historical model, we will therefore have to: 1) appreciate each witness as the product of specific material and historical issues; 2) create new tools capable of structuring large amounts of interrelated and evolutive data to allow for fine comparisons and in-depth research; 3) use these materials to understand the intellectual techniques and compositional practices through which Sigebert’s chronicle was revitalised but also gradually replaced by works more in line with the demands of a profoundly renewed cultural horizon.
Building this project at the École nationale des chartes and the Centre Jean-Mabillon, within a wide network of collaborations, competencies and synergies, will be an asset. It will especially stimulate the study of the materiality and history of each document and the production of innovative tools to communicate the dynamism of a text that has shaped the perception of medieval history for centuries.