Muriel Debié: The parting of the ways and the writing of History: 6th C Historiography in the light of Post-Chalcedonian Church Politics

This paper will examine the impact of the Christological divisions taking place in the 6^th century on the writing of history in the Christian Near East. Since most of the genres of contemporary historiography were Christian and focused on church history, the slow process of division leading to the constitution of separate churches undermined the way the Christian communities understood their past and wrote their present. A shift in the language used, from Greek to Syriac, as well as a change in the very genres of historiography, took place at this time and ought to be accounted for. Sources in languages other than Greek, especially Syriac ones, will be taken into account in order to provide a double sided view of the contemporary history and history writing of competing denominations.