A different history. Rodulf Glaber (ca. 980–1047), the transformations of the 11th century and historical writing as an interpretation of the present.

• Applicant: Dr. Christoph Haack
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 567740505

The project re-evaluates a key source for the history of the 11th century, the Historiarum libri quinque of the Burgundian monk Rodulf Glaber (c. 980-1047). These “Five Books” provide the outstanding opportunity to trace the writing process of a high medieval historiographical work in multiple stages (between c. 1020–1050), as the author’s manuscript and partial autograph has been preserved (Paris, BnF, lat. 10912). With this starting point, the project aims to gain a contemporary perspective on a period that has been characterized as a situation of transformation by historians. Rodulf’s work has traditionally formed a core witness for an abrupt periodical rupture around the year 1000, the so-called “Feudal Revolution”. Over the past decades, however, this rupture has been reinterpreted as a very prolonged process of change throughout the 11th century. In this new debate, however, Rodulf’s work has played little role. The project aims to reintegrate Rodulf Glaber into the reframed academic debate and to use his work as an instance where contemporary relevant questions were negotiated. The project starts 1) from the study of the author’s manuscript to reconstruct the writing process and 2) from the analysis of the exceptional narrative structure of the Historiarum libri quinque, which is organized around the Christian millennia 1000 and 1033. From these starting points, the project investigates whether and how Rodulf described transformation and whether he perceived his own present as a moment of accelerated change. The project is 3) embedded in a currently central debate of historical theory, the debate on “temporalities”, i.e., different culturally specific experiences of time. It uses this discussion to gain a new perspective on the distinctive organization of the work. The project 4) also considers Rodulf’s hagiographical work, which has hitherto received little attention: a Vita of his abbot William of Volpiano (†1031). This allows, for the first time, a systematic examination of Rodulf’s complete oeuvre, enabling an analysis across both texts and genres to reconstruct the author’s historical understanding. The project’s concrete result is a contribution on historiography and historical thought in the early 11th century in the form of a monograph. The project dissolves a key source from its classical interpretative framework, thereby making a prominent source reaccessible that has so far been largely absent from a newly framed debate. In doing so, it reconstructs a contemporary perspective on historical change. Simultaneously, it offers a medievalist contribution to the historiographical debate on “temporalities”, which is also a debate on alternative forms of historical writing.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants