Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 History and Ethics: The Framework of an Enquiry
- 2 Ethics: From Classical Philosophy to Monastic Practice
- 3 Ethical Thought in the Works of William of Malmesbury
- 4 The Reading of Ethics and the Ethics of Reading: History as a Vehicle for Moral Education
- 5 The Gesta Regum Anglorum, Books I and II
- 6 The Norman Kings
- 7 History, Ethics – and Truth?
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - History, Ethics – and Truth?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- 1 History and Ethics: The Framework of an Enquiry
- 2 Ethics: From Classical Philosophy to Monastic Practice
- 3 Ethical Thought in the Works of William of Malmesbury
- 4 The Reading of Ethics and the Ethics of Reading: History as a Vehicle for Moral Education
- 5 The Gesta Regum Anglorum, Books I and II
- 6 The Norman Kings
- 7 History, Ethics – and Truth?
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Why did William of Malmesbury spend so much energy on writing, copying, and collecting books? From one perspective, perhaps not even William himself would have been able to give the full range of reasons behind his literary activities; the inspiration behind a life's work must of necessity be complex and composite. Still, William's large corpus of writings arguably provides some grounds for formulating hypotheses as to how he would have characterized his activities. One overarching aim for reading and writing recurs in his self-reflections and descriptions of the texts he produced: literature, to William, had its primary raison d'être in its efficaciousness ‘ad bone uite institutum'. I have attempted through this study to arrive at an approximation of William's concept of the vita bona, and how the conceptual scheme in which the notion of the good life was embedded also underlies his most famous, most comprehensive, and least openly spiritual work.
I have argued throughout this study that there was a unity of purpose underlying all of William's disparate literary activities. His love of classical literature and the patristic theologians gave him a good grounding in what ethics was, how its principles were discovered and how its precepts were put into practice. From a certain perspective, the history of ethics from classical Rome, through the Church Fathers, to the Middle Ages is the story of continuity and development of a set of core principles which remained the same although great changes took place around them.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History , pp. 259 - 272Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2012