Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle
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Subject: History
Edited by: Edited by Graeme Dunphy and Cristian Bratu
The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle brings together the latest research in chronicle studies from a variety of disciplines and scholarly traditions. Chronicles are the history books written and read in educated circles throughout Europe and the Middle East in the Middle Ages. For the modern reader, they are important as sources for the history they tell, but equally they open windows on the preoccupations and self-perceptions of those who tell it. Interest in chronicles has grown steadily in recent decades, and the foundation of a Medieval Chronicle Society in 1999 is indicative of this. Indeed, in many ways the Encyclopedia has been inspired by the emergence of this Society as a focus of the interdisciplinary chronicle community.
The online version was updated in 2014, 2016 and 2021.
Subscriptions: See Brill.com
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The Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle brings together the latest research in chronicle studies from a variety of disciplines and scholarly traditions. Chronicles are the history books written and read in educated circles throughout Europe and the Middle East in the Middle Ages. For the modern reader, they are important as sources for the history they tell, but equally they open windows on the preoccupations and self-perceptions of those who tell it. Interest in chronicles has grown steadily in recent decades, and the foundation of a Medieval Chronicle Society in 1999 is indicative of this. Indeed, in many ways the Encyclopedia has been inspired by the emergence of this Society as a focus of the interdisciplinary chronicle community.
The online version was updated in 2014, 2016 and 2021.
Subscriptions: See Brill.com
Castor of Rhodes
(117 words)
mid-first century bc. Greece. Author of an important and well-known Greek universal Olympiad chronicle in six books from Aegialeus, king of Sicyon, in 2123 bc, and Ninus, king of Assyria, down to 61 bc. It was an important source (direct and indirect) for Eusebius' Assyrian, Median, Lydian, Persian, Sicyonian, Argive and Athenian chronologies. The text survives only in fragments in these later works. Richard W. BurgessBibliography Text F. Jacoby,
FgrH, B:
Texte, no. 250; D:
Kommentar, 814-26. Literature P. Christesen,
Olympic Victor Lists and Ancient Greek History, 2007, 295, 311…
Date:
2021-04-15
Casus Monasterii Petrishusensis
(247 words)
[Chronik des Klosters Petershausen, Petershausen Chronicle] mid-12th century. Germany. The anonymous Latin chronicle was written in the Benedictine monastery of St. Gregor in Petershausen, near Konstanz. Its six books cover the time from the monastery's foundation in the late 10th century up to the 12th century. The work focuses on the history of the monastery, with only occasional remarks on the history of the Empire. For these excursions into general history, primarily covering the events during the reign of Henry IV (1056-1105), the ch…
Date:
2021-04-15
Catalan universal chronicles
(263 words)
15th century. Catalonia (Iberia). A group of universal chronicles in Catalan that narrate the history of the world from the Creation. The antecedents of these texts can be found in the translation into Catalan (13th century) of Martin of Opava's
Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum (El Escorial, RMSL, P-ij-18) and, in the 14th century, Jaume Domènec's translations of Vincent of Beauvais'
Speculum historiale and Guillaume de Nangis's
Chronica (Madrid, BNE, ms. 10.235), the latter two on the initiative ofKing Pere III "el ceremoniós". The first universal chronicle in Catalan…
Date:
2021-04-15
Catalogues of Czech Rulers
(497 words)
12th-14th centuries. Bohemia. Catalogues of rulers represent the most concise form of national history. They are preserved in Bohemia in two versions. The first is older and represents the official court catalogue, while the second, “historiographic”, catalogue is based on historical texts, especially the
Chronicon Bohemiae by Přibík Pulkava of Radenín. They differ in the number and order of the rulers mentioned. The official catalogue lists all the rulers who were installed on the Czech throne, whereas the “historiographical” catalogue la…
Date:
2021-11-10
Catalogues of the Bishops and Archbishops of Prague
(314 words)
13th-14th centuries. Bohemia. The catalogues of Prague’s bishops and archbishops present a brief history of the Catholic Church in Bohemia. They contain the succession and dates of Prague’s bishops and, from 1344, archbishops, and sometimes other information such as the place of burial, affiliation with a monastic order, or the deeds and fate of individual prelates.The oldest catalogue is preserved in a manuscript of computistic texts (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Clm 17703, fol. 89v) from the third quarter of the 13th century (before 1278). In the first third of the 14th ce…
Date:
2021-11-10
Catalogus episcoporum Ultrajectorum
(133 words)
early 14th century. Low Countries. Catalogue and short biographies (varying from ten words to ten sentences) of the bishops of Utrecht from Willibrord (695) until the election and consecration of Jan van Arkel in 1342, based on saint lives, epitaphs, necrologies and episcopal charters. It is important as a source for Johannes de Beke's
Chronographia (1346). Around 1390 the text was interpolated and continued by at least two authors, the first of whom added much information from Beke's
Chronographia and one of its continuations. The unique manuscript (Utrecht, Bisschoppelijk Archie…
Date:
2021-04-15
Cavalcanti, Giovanni
(305 words)
1381-ca 1451. Italy. Florentine patrician and historian descended of a minor branch of an élite family. After holding several offices, he was imprisoned during the 1420s (till 1439), because the Cavalcantis were not willing (or not able) to pay the taxes raised for the anti-Viscontean wars. In prison he wrote his
Istorie fiorentine, and his
Seconde istorie, written after his release, continues this in a different form. Cavalcanti's last years were dedicated to the
Trattato politico-morale, in which he sums up what he has learnt from his own experiences comparing them w…
Date:
2021-04-15
Caxton, William
(321 words)
ca 1424-92. England. The first English printer. Born in Kent, Caxton began his career as a London mercer's apprentice (ca 1438). He later worked in Bruges and Cologne as "Governor of the English Nation" (ca 1465-70) and printer (ca 1471-75), before setting up the first printing press in England (ca 1476). Of the various texts issued from his Westminster press, three are historical works:
The Cronicles of Englond (1480 and 1482),
Godeffroy of Boloyne or
The Siege and Conqueste of Jerusalem (1481), which is Caxton's translation of the French version of William of Tyre's history of the Fir…
Date:
2021-04-15
Celtis, Konrad
(287 words)
[Conradus Celtis Protucius; Konrad Bickel, Pickel] 1459-1508. Germany. Humanist. Son of a vinedresser in Wipfeld, Bavaria. 1485 magister artium at Heidelberg university; 1487
poeta laureatus of emperor Frederick III. Travels to Italy, Hungary, Poland and Bohemia. Professor of rhetoric and poetry at the universities of Ingolstadt and Vienna. Celtis played a central role in the German humanist movement, initiating a reform of the study of the arts, founding the
Collegium poetarum et mathematicarum in Vienna (1502) and establishing learned
sodalitates. He published classical …
Date:
2021-04-15
Centelles, Jordi de
(379 words)
c. 1433-1496. Spain. Jordi de Centelles was a Catalan canon, and translator of Antonio Beccadelli’s
De dictis et factis Alphonsi regis Aragonum. Very little is known about the life of Jordi de Centelles. He was the illegitimate son of the count of Oliva, Francesc Gilabert de Centelles (1408-1481), who served Alfonso the Magnanimous from 1433 to 1458. It seems that Jordi was born during this period, probably soon after his father moved to Italy. He studied law and was canon in Valencia. He was apparently a highly pas…
Date:
2021-04-15
Cerretani, Bartolomeo
(360 words)
1475-1524. Italy. Florentine patrician, merchant and historian. Like the rest of his family he was not really rich, but he made his career as a follower of the Medici regime. After 1494 he favoured the religious ideas of Girolamo Savonarola, though he remained a critic of the political development during this period. When the Medici returned to Florence in 1512, he had already held some of the important offices, and again profited from the reinstalled Medici regime. His writings, all in Italian, include a journal and a town chronicle.In 1500 he started writing his
Ricordi (Memoirs) descr…
Date:
2021-04-15