User:PericlesofAthens/Sandbox/Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle

Dunphy, Graeme, Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (2 vols, Leiden, Boston, 2010).

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McClay library sources available to read online:

Crusading and chronicle writing on the medieval Baltic frontier (electronic resource) : a companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia / edited by Marek Tamm, Linda Kaljundi, Carsten Selch Jensen

The reign of Philip the Fair (electronic resource) / by Joseph R. Strayer

Also, INCLUDE GENERAL INDEX AND PRIMARY SOURCE QUOTATION FROM STONES AND SIMPSON IN THE APPENDIX AFTER BIBLIOGRAPHY.

After Given-Wilson talks about state control of the flow of information to the monasteries and into their chronicles, write: "This contention seems to be supported by the fact that Edward I had sent letters of the competitors to the Scottish throne to all the great monasteries of England for them to preserve in their chronicles."

About that lapse of chronicles, John of Worcester's is a good example. From below, Vol. 2, p. 943: "Its entries cover irregular numbers of years."

About Anglo-Saxon events preserved in later chronicles, it is known that John of Worcester's chronicle uses the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as a source (p. 943).

Volume I, A-I

Bernard Gui [Bernardus Guidonis] (pp 170-172): by Régis Rech

• p. 170: "ca. 1261-1331. France. Author of various Latin histories."
• p. 172: "For Bernard the work of compilation was a learned construction, the reworking and combination of a variety of texts to create a concise, clear, coherent, dispassionate account free from any personal judgments. His intended reliance on purely authentic documents and histories demonstrates his serious, learned view of the writing of history but unfortunately he was not always capable of recognising the apocryphal. If he defends his own actions as Inquisitor during the Albigensian Crusade, he avoided taking sides in the account of the conflict between Philippe le Bel and Boniface VIII. His traditional approach to the French monarchy made him accept the myth of its Trojan origins, the role of Clovis as founder of a Christian kingdom, Charlemagne as a model king and the legitimisation [sic] of the Capetian dynasty by the Reditus ad stirpem Karoli, but this is true of his contemporaries."
• p. 172: "Bernard's work was disseminated quickly and widely in the 14th century. The flow was slower in the 15th century, and interest in his texts in the 16th century was so small that none was printed at that time."

Chronicle of Bury St. Edmunds (p. 315): by Andrea Ruddick

• p. 315: "ca 1250-1301. England. Benedictine monks of Bury St. Edmunds. Latin prose annalistic chronicles from Creation to 1301, in three sections, the first (to 1264) by John de Taxter and the remaining two more contemporaneous sections (1265-95, 1296-1301) by anonymous continuators. Sources include well-known authorities up to 1212, then royal letters and eyewitness testimony, including unique information from royal visits to the abbey. Alongside local events and a preoccupation with the abbey's rights and liberties, particularly in relation to taxation, topics include unusual weather and eclipses, the Crusades, the Baron's Wars and the Great Cause - the latter two in some detail. Although the work is critical of Edward I's taxation of the Church, his piety and military prowess are celebrated. It survives complete in one manuscript (London, College of Arms, Arundel 30) with sections on varying length in five more...This chronicle should not be confused with the Cronica Buriensis."

Chronicon de Lanercost (pp 357-358): by Andrea Ruddick

• pp 357-358: "ca. 1350. England. Multiple monastic authorship over time. This anonymous Latin prose chronicle of northern English provenance, which covers 1201-1346, is usually attributed to the Augustinian priory of Lanercost, but arguments have also been advanced for Franciscan authorship in Carlisle."
• p. 358: "The chronicle appears to share with the Anonimalle Chronicle a common source identified as a now-lost northern Franciscan chronicle, partly attributable to the friar Richard of Durham."
• p. 358: "The chronicle covers political events, notably the Baron's Wars and the Anglo-Scottish wars, and frequently reproduces government documents. However, its purpose is more moral edification than political history and in places it reads like a collection of sermon exempla. Later parts of the chronicle have a virulently anti-Scottish tone, including several abusive poems. The chronicle's northern perspective is reflected in the condemnation of Edward II's failure to defend the north, and a marked sympathy for Andrew Harclay's ill-fated peace negotiations with the Scots. Nonetheless, graphic passages are not necessarily direct eyewitness records; the vivid account of the destruction of Hexham in 1296 is lifted almost verbatim from Edward I's correspondence with Boniface VIII in 1301, and also appears in Walter of Guisborough. The chronicle survives in one 14th or early 15th century manuscript."

Chronicle of the Picts and Scots [Anglo-Norman] (p 390): by Richard Moll

• p. 390: "ca 1292-1304. Scotland. Anglo-Norman origin narrative and regnal list. The text, a translation of a Latin original, survives as an interpolation in Thomas Gray of Heton's Scalacronica (both are transmitted uniquely in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, ms. 133), inserted into its account of the Great Cause. Attributed to an unknown Life of St. Brendan, it describes the foundations of Ireland and Scotland by Gaidel and Fergus, followed by a regnal list which traces the kings of Scotland to John Balliol. The text shares many features with similar origin narratives in chronicles by John of Fordun and Andrew of Wyntoun. One notable distinction is that it gives a more favourable [sic] portrait of Gaidel than Fordun does, and Fordun, or one of his sources, may have denigrated Gaidel (after whom the Gaelic language was supposedly named) in order to account for the barbaric reputation of the Highlanders."

Chronicle of the Picts and Scots [Latin] (pp 390-391): by Edward Donald Kennedy

• pp 390-391: "13th & 14th century. Scotland. This was the title SKENE [sic] gave to two Scottish regnal lists containing some commentary. The first, written in the 13th century but surviving only in an early 18th century transcript, BL, Harley 4628, lists 23 kings, beginning with Fergus, who reigned in 'Scotia', then 60 kings of the Picts, and finally 26 kings of the Scots from Kenneth mac Alpin (ca 842) to the coronation of Alexander III (given here as 1251, but actually 1249)."
• p. 391: "The second list, completed in 1317 and surviving in Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms. Lat. Misc. C. 75 (formerly Phillips 3119), lists 65 Pictish kings, followed again by kings of the Scots from Fergus to the coronation of Alexander III. Both lists were intended to show the antiquity of Scottish civilization. Also see Regnal lists of Scotland."

Geoffrey of Monmouth (pp 681-684): by Jane Beal and Edward Donald Kennedy

• pp 681-682: "Although Geoffrey claimed to be a historian, the Historia is not based upon fact; ECHARD suggests a new category, historia fantastica. It was supposedly a translation into Latin of a 'very ancient book, written in the British [Welsh] language' that he received from Walter the Archdeacon, a source unavailable to his contemporaries Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury, who should, he said, therefore restrict their work to the Saxons. Most now believe that the ancient book never existed and that Geoffrey's sources included Historia Britonnum, Bede, Gildas, Virgil's Aeneid, saints' legends, the Bible, oral tales, and his own imagination."
• p. 682: "Unlike most chronicles, the Historia gives just three dates: the deaths of Cadwalladar in 689 and King Lucius in 156 and Arthur's departure for Avalon in 542. Judging from Geoffrey's alignment of British history with events in the Bible and antiquity, the founding of Britain by Brutus, the great-grandson of Aeneas, probably occurred ca 1100 BC. Geoffrey writes that Brutus and other Trojans, after wandering through Europe, arrived in Albion, an island uninhabited except for a few giants...the island is renamed Britain in honour of Brutus, and after his death his sons, Locrinus, Kamber, and Albanactus, divide the island into three parts that become England, Wales, and Scotland (That Loegria [England] was ruled by the eldest son would fuel later English claims to hegemony over the other two.) After presenting Britain's distinguished classical origins, Geoffrey then gives an unbroken line of British rulers, including Leir and his daughters and Arthur, until the end of the 7th century. The Roman invasion ends not with conquest but with a truce in which the British king Arvirargus agrees that it would be no shame to be affiliated with Rome. At different times Britons-the brothers Belinus and Brennius, Constantine I, Maximianus, and Arthur- conquer Rome. Constantine I, in fact, becomes the first Christian Roman emperor. The account of Arthur is the most fully developed part of the book."

Gray, Thomas, of Heton (p. 730): by Richard Moll

• p. 730: "ca 1272-1363. England. Northumbrian knight and chronicler. Sir Thomas Gray was the warden of Norham Castle when, in 1355, he was captured by the Scots during a minor skirmish. Imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle for at least a year, he was surprised to learn how little he knew about British history...His Anglo-Norman chronicle, the Scalacronica, begins with the Trojan war and ends with the marriage of David, king of Scots, to Margaret de Logie in 1363. The prologue to the Scalacronica identifies the author both through his heraldic device and a simple acrostic poem..[Using Walter of Oxford, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Bede, Ranulf Higden, and John of Tynemouth] Gray draws on a wide variety of material to augment his accounts of Troy, Alexander, Arthur, and others. Eyewitness accounts supplement the later sections, as both Gray and his father figure prominently in the campaigns of Edward III."

Henry of Huntingdon (pp 769-770): by Jane Beal

• page 769-770: "ca 1080-1160. England. Secular clerk, archdeacon of Huntingdon, and author of Historia Anglorum in Latin prose with some verse. Henry of Huntingdon served as archdeacon in the household of Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln and afterwards served Alexander of Blois, who commissioned the Historia Anglorum. Henry composed and revised his work between 1129 and 1154. His prose and verse chronicle surveys English history from the coming of Julius Caesar in 43 BC to the accession of Henry II. In its final form, the chronicle contained twelve books: 1) the Kingdom of the Romans in Britain, 2) the Coming of the English, 3) the Conversion of the English, 4) the Kingdom of the English, 5) the Danish Wars, 6) the Coming of the Normans, 7) the Kingdom of the Normans, 8)Exalted Matters...9) the Miracles of the English, and 10) Present time."

• p. 770: "Henry drew on Bede's Ecclesiastical History for the earlier part of his work, beginning with a geographical description of Britain."

• p 770: "The Historia Anglorum reflects Henry's interest in his home, Lincoln, in the Arthurian legend, and in moralization, that is, in making history meaningful by noting God's interventions to punish the guilty or reward the righteous, especially with respect to the succession of kingdoms in England."

Henry of Livonia (p. 770-771): Paweł Jeziorski

• p. 770: "ca. 1188-post-1259. Germany, Eastern Baltic. Author of the first Livonian chronicle, Chronicon Livoniae. He probably came from the village of Poppendorf near Magdeburg, and spent his childhood in a monastery in Segeberg, Holstein, where he learned Estonian and Latvian while staying with hostages brought from Livonia. He came to Riga in 1205, where he stayed at the court of bishop ALbert von Riga. In 1208 he was ordained a priest by him. He received the parish of Papendorf (Rubene) on the river Ymera (Latvian-Estonian border), where he probably stayed until the end of his days. He took part in military operations as a guide and translator."
• pp 770-771: "The chronicle was written in prose during the years 1225-27. It has a simple construction, modelled [sic] on the Vulgate, breviaries and missals. It is the main source for research on the beginnings of German settlement in Livonia and the history of the local tribes, and includes descriptions of battles and diplomatic negotiations. It is very reliable as the author took part in the events he describes, or based his descriptions on the reports of eyewitness es [sic] as well as documents. He dedicated his chronicle to domini et socii Rigenses."
• p. 771: "Sixteen copies of the chronicle from the beginning of the 14th up to the 18th century have survived, though not all are complete. The oldest preserved manuscript, the only copy written on parchment, is the so called Codex Zamoscianus (Warsaw, Polska Biblioteka Narodowa, BOZ cim. 28, early 14th century)."

Volume II, J-Z

John of Worcester (pp 941-943): by Paul Antony Hayward

• p 941: "fl. 1095-after 1141. England. Benedictine of Worcester Cathedral Priory, follower of Marianus Scotus and author of Chronica chronicarum and Chronicula. The Chronica chronicarum used to be attributed to Florence of Worcester. Both men are mentioned in the text: Florence is thanked for his contribution in an obituary which appears under the year 1118, whilst under the year 1138 the reader is invited to correct John if he is wrong. Florence was once thought to have written the work as far as 1117, with John being a continuator [sic] who brought its annals down to at least 1140, where the text ends imperfectly in the holograph...The annals for 1095 to 1122 could not have been written until after October 1122, however, since they use Eadmer of Canterbury's Historia novorum. Moreover, the manuscripts show that the work was not written in a contiguous fashion. Thanks to the survival of a holograph in which 'layers' of annotation may be distinguished and put in chronological order with help of the five other medieval manuscripts (all derived from Corpus Christi 157...), the later stages in the evolution of the text can be reconstructed in unusual detail. Florence may have helped collect data and prepare an initial draft; but the work was vastly amplified after his death and was still being revised in the early 1140s. John was apparently director of the enterprise."
• p. 941-943: "Whether he should be seen as having conceived a new work is debatable, however, for Chronica chronicarum is a re-tooled version of Marianus Scotus's tract of the same name. Robert de Losinga, bishop of Hereford (1079-95), had had a copy of Marianus's work brought from Lotharingia to England...Whether John used this copy alone is a moot point; but his Chronica chronicarum certainly re-works that of Marianus. Books one and two, concerning the age of the world and the chronology of Christ's life, are left almost unaltered. The major changes lie in book three, an annalistic account of world history since the Incarnation. This has been expanded through the interpolation of material, drawn largely from English sources, that concerns the Franks, Danes and Normans, and particularly the English. John also expanded the appendices, re-arranging the marginal annals in the Easter tables, adding episcopal lists for the various English dioceses and genealogies for the major Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. Among the final additions was a new conclusion (covering 1128 until at least 1140/41), a set of papal annals and a brief history of Worcester Cathedral Priory. The Chronica chronicarum was first edited in 1592 by William Howard."
• Illustration on page 942 from John of Worcester's chronicle
• p. 943: "The Chronicula is less obviously indebted to Marianus. As first completed - it was later continued at Gloucester Abbey - its narrative proper begins with the Incarnation and ends with an entry covering 1106 to March 1123. Its entries cover irregular numbers of years, and its relationship to the 'layers' in Chronica chronicarum suggests that it was produced in the late 1130s. Most of its material derives from the Chronica chronicarum, but fresh items were taken from diverse sources, including Hugh of Fleury and the F-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle."
• p. 943: "John's guiding aim was, apparently, to sell Marianus's chronological theories to an audience of English religious. His generic choices may be explained as an attempt to put these ideas before three different types of reader: Chronica chronicarum before the intellectual heavyweight, Chronicula before those in search of edifying entertainment, and the lost source of the Coventry and Winchcombe Chronicles before students needing an introduction to world history."

Lydgate, John (p. 1052-1053): by Sarah L. Peverley

• p. 1052: "ca 1370-ca 1449. England. Benedictine Monk of Bury St. Edmunds, Prior of Hatfield Regis, Essex (1423-1434). Arguably the most industrious writer in 15th-century England, Lydgate produced a vast corpus of work in English prose and verse, ranging from saints' lives to political poetry, including several works which order on the chronicle genre."

Ralph of Diceto (pp 1253-1254): by Melissa Pollock

• p. 1253: "1120/30-ca 1200. France, England. Works include Abbreviationes Chronicorum...and Ymagines Historiarum. He studied in Paris in the 1140s and late 1150s. By 1152 he was archdeacon of Middlesex under the patronage of the Belmeis family...he was elected dean of St. Paul's in 1180. Thereafter he was involved in the Angevin court and attended Richard I's coronation in September 1189...Although he supported ecclesiastical involvement in secular office, he did not support Henry II's attempts to unify the church and state under his authority."
• p. 1253: "The Abbreviationes Chronicorum begins with the creation of the world, ends in 1147, and contains a summary of events from various sources...These themes revolved around ecclesiastical issues, the anointing of kings and the relationship between the dukes of Normandy and kings of England. Sources include various chronicles, notably the Gesta Consulum Andregavorum commissioned by the counts of Anjou in the late 11th or early 12th century, and such classical authors as Lucan and Sidonius Appolinaris."
• p. 1254: "The Ymagines Historiarum, covering 1148-ca 1200, are also found in the first six manuscripts cited above. This work was based in part upon the letters of Hubert Walter, archbishop of Canterbury, and upon the Chronicle of Robert of Torigni for events prior to ca 1172. After 1172, Ralph relied upon his own experiences, and this material represents a valuable contemporary account of the late 12th century [.] Like the Abbreviationes it draws upon the Gesta Consulum Andregavorum. That Ralph dedicated space to the history of the counts of Anjou testifies to his recognition of Henry II's ancestry. Although referring at times to less flattering moments in the king's career, he usually puts the king in the best possible light. Examples of this partisanship can be seen in his concern about the political fragmentation caused by the king's sons and their allies, discussed at length in an oppobrium about the evils of rebellious sons from biblical times to the present day. Though he did not agree with the king's attempt to control the church in England, he exonerated him in his account of the capture of the king of Scots in 1174, which followed Henry's public penance at Becket's tomb."

Regnal lists of Scotland (p. 1266): by Edward Donald Kennedy

• p. 1266: "13th-16th century. Scotland. Scottish regnal lists were lists of kings that functioned as non diagrammatic genealogies to indicate the relationship of kings to their predecessors. They were originally cited at Scottish coronations to bolster the belief that Scotland had been independent since antiquity, in contrast to England, which had been ruled by Britons, Romans, Danes, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans. Although at times the lists, like genealogical chronicles, had brief accounts of the kings' reigns, they were often no more than lists of names that had been passed on from the early Middle Ages through oral tradition and were sometimes combined with lists of Pictish kings to give the Scots a longer history. Most were in Latin, but some were written partially in Gaelic and at least one in Anglo Norman."
• p. 1266: "They continued to be copied in the later Middle Ages. Two lists concluding with James V - one with text, one without - were published with the prefatory material to the first edition of Hector Boece's Historia Scotorum (1526/27), and one of these lists also appeared in the edition of John Bellenden's translation of Boece (ca. 1540)."

Roger of Howden (pp 1289-1290): Lisa M. Ruch

• p. 1289: "d. 1201/02. England. Clerk in the court of Henry II, 1174-89. Roger of Howden's Latin prose Chronica covers English history from 732 to 1201. In early parts it is a compilation, derivative of other chronicles, including the Historia Saxonum sive Anglorum post obitum Bedae, Symeon of Durham, Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum, the Chronicle of Melrose Abbey, and the Gesta Henrici II. Of particular importance in the Chronica are the sections 1148-69 and from 1192-1201, which cannot be traced to any major source."
• p. 1289-1290: "Later chroniclers, including...Robert of Gloucester and Matthew Paris, made use of Roger of Howden's text. Overall, the chronicle displays a clear interest in Northern affairs, especially those related to the See of York, as would befit a text written near Howden in Yorkshire."

William of Malmesbury (1511-1512): by Lisa M. Ruch

• p. 1511: "ca 1095 - ca 1142. England. Benedictine monk of Malmesbury, Wiltshire. William was a prolific writer of chronicles, who worked from a wide range of sources. In his earlier works he strove to remain neutral as a scholar, favouring neither the Normans nor the English during a time of heated debates, as he systematically cited and collated his source texts, carefully noting the connections and disparities between them. He revised his writings over the coruse of his career...He was influenced not only by histories of his own land, including those by Gildas, Nennius, and Bede as well as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, but also by European historians, such as Suetonius, William of Jumieges, and William of Poitiers. William of Malmesbury's writing is by no means dry annalistic history; he incorporates vivid descriptions, telling dialogues, and witty humour into his Latin prose text."

• p. 1511: "The Gesta Regum Anglorum...covers English history from the arrival of the Romans under Julius Caesar to 1120. The first version was completed ca 1125, while the revised second and third versions were completed ca 1135-1140. The arrangement of the text is mainly by regnal histories, with ecclesiastical and legendary materials interspersed throughout."

Notes on General Index

• p. 1620: out of 1547 pages of encyclopedic entries on chronicles, there are only two pages which even mention the Great Cause in this entire encyclopedia. Those being p. 315 (chronicle of Bury St. Edmunds) and p. 390.
• p. 1629: out of 1547 pages, there are also only three pages mentioned in the index for political concerns, those being a political account, political poetry, and political songs.

Welsh homage

Wendy Davies, 'Celtic Kingships in the Early Middle Ages,' in Anne J. Duggan (ed.), Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe (London, 1993).

• p. 111: From 700 to 1000, overkings of Ireland, including the kings of Tara, Cashel, Connacht, and Leinster, levied taxes and made laws for tuatha.
• pp 112-113: However, overlodship was not practiced by the Picts or Scots.
• p 113: Wales also did not have practices of overlordship until the 10th century with interactions with the Anglo-Saxon English kings. "The English kings from Alfred to Edgar expected 'submission' and occasional attendance at their courts in England, and they sometimes demanded military assistance and tribute; they did not, however, interfere directly in Welsh affairs. In effect, the English became overkings of many of the Welsh kings. Although the English relationship with Wales weakened considerably from the 950s, it is quite clear that the experience had repercussions within Wales: the leading Welsh kings of the later tenth and eleventh centuries sought the submission of their weaker neighbours. Overkingship therefore became prominent in Wales, where once it had been insignificant."
• pp 113-114: Overlordship in Ireland became even more important during the 11th century