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Volume 1 | Issue 7 - Theory
Article by Thom Absalom. Edited by Claire Stratton. Additional Research by Liz Goodwin.
If you asked someone what history is all about, you would most likely get a reply something along the lines of ‘discovering and recording facts about things that happened in the past’. To be fair, this is, by and large, true – for what would be a history essay if it did not include facts and that which defines the discipline for non-historians, dates? Over the past century, historians have moved from recording facts and dates in political or economic histories into the more abstract realms of society and culture. This has led historians to the study of myths and legends, stories that societies told themselves about themselves.
For many years, historians were content to ‘puncture’ the legends of the past, discovering the truth behind the stories. Indeed, this is still occurring; a recent book by Patrick Geary attacked the idea that modern national identities have their origins in early medieval Europe. He writes: ‘Europe’s peoples have always been far more fluid, complex, and dynamic than the imaginings of modern nationalists. Names of peoples may seem familiar after a thousand years, but the social, cultural, and political realities covered by these names were radically different from what they are today.’ Discovering the ‘Truth’ is obviously important, but over the last few decades, historians have increasingly been interested in understanding the meaning of myths, not just the truth behind them.
This leads us, quite naturally for anyone who has studied under James Shaw, to the canals of Venice. Shaw has great reason to entitle his module ‘The Myth of Venice’ for just about every aspect of that city’s history is coated in myth, including its historiography. One prime example of the meaning of myths comes from the story of the trionfi, or the gifts bestowed by Pope Alexander III (r.1159-1181) on doge Sebastiano Ziani (r.1172-1178) in 1177. The story went that Alexander, fleeing capture by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa’s (1122-1190) soldiers, travelled to Venice in disguise. He was recognised by a pilgrim, who reported the pope’s presence to the doge. Ziani promised to protect the pope and to mediate in the dispute between Alexander and the emperor. After being defeated in a naval battle, the emperor was reconciled with the pope on Ascension Day 1177. In return for his aid, Ziani was given a white candle, a sword, a gold ring, lead seals, an umbrella, eight banners, and silver trumpets. Edward Muir’s study of these objects in his book, Civic Ritual in Renaissance Venice, has shown that they became symbols of Venetian power, independence and piety, carried in all major ducal processions. The gold ring, for example, became a symbol of Venice’s dominion over the sea. During the ‘marriage of the sea’ ritual, conducted every year on Ascension Day, the doge would throw a gold ring into the sea, with the words ‘We espouse thee, O sea, as a sign of true and perpetual dominion’.
Muir has uncovered the truth behind the myth, stating that there was never a naval battle and that Venice was chosen as a neutral place for negotiations because she would not pick a side in the war between the emperor and the pope. Furthermore, some of the objects, such as the banners and lead seals were being used before Ziani supposedly aided the pope. The trionfi were provided with their value and meaning precisely by this myth of Venice’s involvement. The myth provided Venetians with a sense of their political sovereignty and independence.
But myths have not just informed our ancestors. They have influenced historical writing over the last century. James Grubb, in surveying Venetian historiography of the late twentieth century, noted that Venice had been used for things as abstract as finding the origins of American republicanism. Frederic Lane, in a speech to the American Historical Association, said that ‘suspicion and disgust’ with the Cold War and communism had prompted him to locate in Venice a republicanism characterised by personal liberty, freedom from outside domination and capitalist economy. Another text, written by William Bouwsma (Venice and the Defence of Republican Liberty), was also about a great Atlantic republican tradition that had (writes Grubb) ‘a schematisation so absolute and abstract as to be beyond verification or refutation and thus to make further concrete historical enquiry almost pointless.’ Thus we see myths influence not only the past but also our own time.
It is this problem of reaching the ‘Truth’ (as in unadulterated factual history) that prompted William McNeill to coin the term ‘mythistory’. He writes: ‘To become a history, facts have to be put together in a pattern that is understandable and credible; and when that has been achieved, the resulting portrait of the past may become useful’. Furthermore, McNeill states that historians are all engaged in ‘pattern recognition’, relegating the irrelevant facts to the background to draw out a recognisable ‘pattern’ in history. What histories are after all, are the ‘perceptible relationships among important facts.’ I am inclined to agree; read any history book or essay, and you will see the selective use of information to support one point of view or argument. Read another, and you might see different facts and figures to counter the previous argument. Thus, instead of the ‘Truth‘, we are presented with ‘mythistories’ – history shaped by the conscious choices of the author(s). Unfortunately, without this selection of relevant material, we would end up with ‘incoherence, chaos, and meaninglessness’ (McNeill). In a sense, then, historians perpetuate myths. Any work of history is inherently ‘mythical’ in the sense that it does not present every single fact and figure; the author has consciously shaped it.
The study of myths over the last century or so has changed. Early historians interested in myths were concerned to ‘bust’ the myth, discovering the truth that lay behind it – a process that still occupies historians today. Others, taking the lead from anthropology, now study myths for their value to the societies within which they were propagated, attempting to understand their meanings and power. Myths, however, have also influenced historical writing of the last century, being adopted in response to current affairs. Beyond this is the realisation that all historical writing has some element of myth in it, even though most of us would prescribe to the value of objectivity. In making our conscious selections from the multitude of information facing us, we create our own mythologies, even if they are more factual than our ancestors’ stories.
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