The Fasti (Consularia) Vindobonensis as a Chronicle

Abstract

This research has uncovered the content features and the form of the compilations written down in Italy on the sunset of the Late Antiquity, known as the Fasti Vindobonensis (according to Th. Mommsen) or the Consularia Vindobonensis (according to R. Burgess), repeating some consular lists of the Roman Empire, the Ostrogothic kingdom, and Byzantium from the fifth and sixth centuries. It has been uncovered that the source possesses every feature of late antique chronicle. From these features and some passages, there are reasons to interpret the document as related by genre and sense to the late antique fasti like Scaliger’s Anonymous and Consularia Constantinopolitana. The comparison of excerpts from the said documents with the Fasti Vindobonensis has shown different textual, and therefore semantic, traditions. Moreover, the Fasti Vindobonensis feature the genesis of mediaeval traits: the attention to the Easter cycle calculation, the documenting of the most significant annual events only, the desire to set up the chronology of the facts mentioned, and the care of popular martyrologies of saints. Information streams of Rome and Ravenna origin in either editions of the Fasti are related to local events only. The compilers of both editions of the Fasti used the methods of selection and representations of historic events reflecting their biased approach, determined by Rome’s and Ravenna’s stay under the Amali, but simultaneously finding themselves under the influence of Justinian I’s Empire. However, the value of what was mentioned in the document remained equally important despite their Rome’s or Ravenna’s origin.

Keywords

• источниковедение поздней античности, позднеантичные хроники, позднеантичные фасты, fasti vindobonensis