Jerome, Chronicle (2005). Preface to the Online Edition
The Chronicle of St. Jerome
Introduction
The Chronicle of St. Jerome was composed around 380AD and became the primary available source of information on dates and events from the time of its composition until the end of the middle ages. Jerome's work itself was a translation into Latin of the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea, brought up to date, but it was through Jerome that it came to be so influential.
It is the first text in which we see an attempt to accurately date all the events of times previous. Every event is assigned to a date, the kings and the dates are drawn up in columns, and brief notes made against each. The revolutionary tabular format forces the chronologist to be precise in whatever data is entered and highlights any errors involved in synchronising lists from different kingdoms of kings and the number of years they reigned.
The Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea wrote his chronicle ca. 311 AD, and is responsible for the revolutionary format which transformed the study of history.
Prior to Eusebius, a chronography would consist of lists of kings, and how long they reigned. An occasional note might be attached to the name of a king, stating that in the 3 year of his reign such-and-such event occurred. Each kingdom would be treated separately, and its rulers or magistrates listed. Eusebius himself compiled a chronography of this kind, which is today known as book one of his Chronicle , and has the title The Chronography . But the problem for the reader was how to link information about rulers and events in one kingdom to events in other kingdoms. Eusebius wanted to write a history of the church, and needed to link together information from Jewish sources with the chronographical information that he obtained from numerous Greek predecessors, such as Porphyry, Castor, and Erastothenes, and also from Christian predecessors such as Julius Africanus.
His own contribution was to draw up the existing mass of chronological information in a tabular format that enforced a perpetual synchronism between the various parallel strands of data. This innovation may rightly be described as a moment of genius. The second book of his Chronicle was drawn up in this way and entitled The Chronological Canons . This was the portion that Jerome translated and its format can be seen below. Jerome's translation is the most accurate version of this book that has reached us.
To do this, Eusebius took the then new medium of the codex (the modern book format, as opposed to the roll) and exploited the concept of a page. He divided up the page using a tabular format.
He drew vertical columns on the page. The lefthandmost he headed as 'Kings of the Persians' (or whichever other empire was current at the time). The righthandmost he headed 'Kings of the Egyptians', so long as there were any. When new kingdoms came along, he added an extra column for them; when kingdoms disappeared, the column vanished with them.
When a king came to the throne, he placed his name on a separate line by itself, for any events of that king which had no specified year. Beneath it he then enumerated the years of his reign on succeeding lines; 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on. Thus for each year there was a line on which information could be entered. Also, by running along the line, it could be seen precisely who ruled where at any given time.
The new format was an act of genius, which ensured that the problems of Greek chronography would not continue to bedevil history.
Eusebius also decided to start his Chronicle, not with the date of Creation, but with the earliest date that he felt he could reasonably calculate, which was the birth of Abraham. Since his new format placed each year on a separate line, he marked every ten years how many years it had been from the birth of Abraham. This universal dating foreshadowed the invention of the standard Anno Domini dating by Dionysius Exiguus. That a standard dating system would come into being was ensured by the popularity of Jerome's version of the Chronicle, and the obvious need for it once that work existed.
Eusebius did not collect the materials himself for his work, but relied on whatever works he could find which gave brief lists of events and rulers. Once he started work, the problems of Greek chronography must have become exceedingly evident.
The problems of Greek chronography
By the time of Eusebius, Greek chronography was a mess. There were a number of reasons for this.
There was no agreement in the ancient world on which date the year should begin. Each city would have its own calendar and reckoning. There were several different systems of months in use. There were also systems like 'Ab Urbe Condita' (AUC - from the founding of the City, Rome). But there were so many of these, and they enjoyed such limited use, that these did not advance things. The Romans, rather than using AUC, tended to date a year by the names of the annual consuls then in office. Greek cities often did likewise.
The most common system of dating was by the regnal year of a reigning monarch, and inscriptions often record that they were erected in the nth year of king xyz. Lists of kings and the number of years they reigned circulated, and exist still, carved on the walls of Egyptian temples. But kings do not always come to the throne on the 1 of January, and some rule for less than a year, and some are obliterated from the lists for political reasons. In consequence any reckoning based upon regnal years was bound to be in error, sometimes substantially as errors in a dynasty accumulated.
Once the Olympic games had begun, with a group of four years between games known as an Olympiad, some of the Greeks began to refer to those four-year groups by the name of the victor in the games. Later yet, a number was assigned to the olympiad. Chronicles based on the four-year cycle began to come into existence, since this dating was more universal for Greek affairs than lists of annual officials in each city.
Anyone trying to write a history had to struggle with these obstacles. Frequently the best that could be done was to say that a certain man flourished in the reign of such a king. Yet even here problems occurred, since the Greek word used for 'flourished' was extremely similar to that for 'was born.' The result of such errors can be seen in the Chronicle in the dates assigned to Lycurgus, who appears 3 times over a period of more than a century. The first is in fact when he was born; the second his hey-day, and the third refers to someone of the same name! But each can be traced back to impeccable sources in the Greek tradition that Eusebius used.
Eusebius' approach to the chronological problems
Eusebius was powerless to solve most of these problems. His innovative format however forced him to deal with some of them. In many cases he simply recorded what he had, and left others to deal with the problem. In others he presumed an error and adjusted the count of years assigned to a given ruler in order to make the lines tally and 'correct' the 'error'.
Starting with a mess of loosely connected regnal years, he linked them together through synchronisms. These were points at which he had information that tied together events in two different kingdoms.
For instance he was able to determine that Darius of Persia and Alexander the Great of Macedon lived at the same time, since the latter overthrew the former. This linked the Greek lists with the Persian ones. The Greek lists could be linked together through the Olympiads, which were often recorded for Greek events. He was able to link Jewish events with Persian ones because it was recorded that the second temple was built in the Second Year of Darius. This last date is one of his crucial synchronisms. The date of the Trojan War was present in many of his lists, and forms another such link.