Less is More. Medieval Memory as Process of Creative Selection. An Introduction

Abstract

There is neither the capacity nor a necessity to store everything that can be known. Information about the past in particular cannot be retained in its entirety.In order to be used and made fruitful in new circumstances it has to be organized, arranged and above all: selected. Data from the past accumulates in every generation until it is no longer manageable and understandable; the past becomes a burden. In this sense, the process of selection must be regarded as the fundamental moment – the Urszene – of making History, that is, the selection and transformation of an incoherent series of data from the past into coherent historical narratives. Yet selection is not only a rational and intentional process that reduces information: it also implies the unlikely survival of the most condensed texts. Above all, the process of selection depends on many incalculable factors, such as the author who takes decisions to reduce and arrange information, the audiences being guided by their own interests and the media and material transmission. In all three fields, creativity plays an important role, when details from the past are chosen to form part of the reservoir of knowledge for the next generation. The Middle Ages present an especially extensive field of examples, where contemporary authors and political decision-makers used historical memory for their own purposes. They reduced the material available in order to make the vast ‘halls of memory’ manageable and manoeuvrable for their own times. In selecting, they made arguments from the past more effective and convincing: less is more. However, selection was many faceted, as it was used to defend or define tradition, consolidate or challenge power, validate or question perspectives, create or deconstruct legitimizing links to the past that have an impact on the future. The right selection of elements could be used as an argumentative base for one side or another. The handling of historic details by medieval authors has always attracted interest. Authors’manipulation of the past has been analysed as well as their authenticity and reliability, their narrative strategies and even qualities as managers of collective memories and forgers. In 1994, however, a new perspective was established with Patrick Geary’s Phantoms of Remembrance. His book was an attempt to understand the complex process of constructing memory through non-linear, irrational and subjective means, to “retrieve all sorts of information that together provide the referential field within which to experience and evaluate their daily experiences and to prepare for the future.”1 Various authors and genres have since been reassessed in the light of