Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle
Get access
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
| Help us improve our service |
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
Jaume I of Aragon
(300 words)
1208-76. Aragon/Catalonia (Iberia). King of Aragon 1213-76. Author of the
Llibre dels fets (Book of deeds). Written in Catalan prose, dictated by the king, probably during the last five years of his life. About 160,000 words in length, it is a history of Jaume's early life (1208-29), his successful military campaigns in Majorca (1229-35), Valencia (1232-58) and Murcia (1264-6), and his political relations, especially with Navarre, Castile, Urgell and the papacy. As the king's own version of events, it was intended for the use both of a general public …
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean d'Antioche
(288 words)
[Harent d'Antioche] fl. late 13th century. Palestine. Translator into Old French. Jean belonged to the Hospitalers; his name refers to his stay in Antioch before the conquest by the Mamelukes in 1268; he then moved to Acre, where in 1282 (or 1272 - both dates are in the manuscript, Chantilly, Musée Condé, 433, likely autograph) he translated Cicero's
Rhetoric as the
Rettorique
de Marc Tulles Cyceron at the request of Guillaume de Saint-Étienne. This translation is signed
Johan d'Antioche, que l'en apele de Harens. He is probably identical to the Harent d'Antioche who signed th…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Haynin
(149 words)
1423-95. France. Burgundian knight, writing in French. His
Memoires cover the period 1466-77. He used his own notes, mostly made shortly after the events described, and is strongly pro-Burgundian. Although mainly interested in war - his narrative goes from the war of the League of the Public Weal to the executions of Hugonet and Humbercourt - he also describes the wedding of Charles the Bold. The work can be divided into two parts. The first, 1466-70, the more valuable, is largely an eyewitness account. The second, 1470-7 is based on second-hand information. Jean's style is u…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Joinville
(481 words)
1224-1317. France. Friend and biographer of Louis IX of France (St. Louis). The son of Simon de Joinville, senechal of Champagne, and Beatrice d'Auxonne, he was knighted in 1245 and accompanied Louis on the seventh Crusade (1248-54). In 1250, the king and his troops were captured by the Mameluks in al-Mansourah. After their release, the king and his remaining advisors travelled into Syria, where Joinville and Louis IX forged an intimate friendship that lasted well beyond their return to France in 1254. However he refused to participate in Louis' new crusade in 1267. Louis died in Tunis in …
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Langhe
(257 words)
[John of Ypres, de Ipra; Iohannes Longus, le Long] ca 1320 (?) - 2 January 1383. France. Born in Ypres (modern Belgium), he became a monk and (from 1365) abbot of the Benedictine abbey of St. Bertin near Thérouanne in the County of Flanders. Author of the
Chronicon Sancti Bertini (also known as the
Chronicon Sithiense).Written shortly before 1383, the chronicle is a compilation of older historical narratives (most notably the 10th-century
Gesta abbatum Sithiensium of Folcuin of St. Bertin and his 12th-century continuators), hagiographies and archival sources. It deals with th…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Magnicourt
(125 words)
ca 1415 - post-1507. France. Lord of Verchin-en-Ternois. Between 1458-68 he wrote a continuation of the chronicle of Enguerrand de Monstrelet (1444-67) in twelve chapters. Sources include the
Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, Jean Froissart and chronicles of Flanders and Liège. There are two manuscripts (location uncertain). One, only two folios in length and containing a description of the battle of Azincourt, is probably still in the château de Trancourt. Peter S. NobleBibliography Text A de Loisne, "La bataille d’Azincourt d’après le manuscrit du château de Trancourt",
Bulletin histo…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean d'Enghien
(159 words)
15th century. Low Countries. Flemish knight, who was the lord of Kestergat (West of Brussels) and was in the service of Philip the Good from 1420. He wrote a French chronicle of Brabant up to 1288. The chronicle starts with the Flood and finishes with the Battle of Woeringen in 1288. He draws on the work of Jan van Boendale, Emond de Dynter, Hugh of Fleury, and the Pseudo-Turpin amongst others. There are four books, of which the fourth fills nearly half the chronicle. There may have been a fifth, lost book. Three manuscripts survive: Brussels, KBR, 21266, fol 1r-159v (15th-16th century); KBR, 21…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Noyal
(331 words)
[Desnouelles] d. 1396. France. Abbot of the Benedictine monastery of St. Vincent in Laon between 1367 and 1396. Author of two world chronicles, the French
Miroir
historial and a lost Latin
Historialis
Collectarius.The
Miroir historial originally recounted history from the creation until 1380 in twelve books. However, the first nine books are lost. The last three books (x-xii) are preserved in a sole manuscript, Paris, BnF, fr. 10138 (191 fol.), of the mid-15th century, containing several unfinished features. Excerpts from Books vii-xii are to be found in the 17th-century BnF, Baluze…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Roye
(270 words)
ca 1425 - early 1490s. France. Chamberlain and counsellor to Louis XI, secretary to the duke Jean II of Bourbon and author of a chronicle known as the
Chronique scandaleuse. Born to a high-ranking Parisian family, he was appointed notary at the Châtelet in Paris at the beginning of Louis' reign. In 1465, he became secretary to Jean and warden of the Hôtel de Bourbon. His chronicle has been known since the 16th century as the
Chronique scandaleuse due to his critical views of Louis XI's reign. There are two surviving manuscripts (Paris, BnF, fr. 2889 and 5062). The former starts
in medias res with…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Stavelot
(274 words)
[Johannes Stabulensis] 1388-1449. Low Countries. Chronicler, poet, illustrator and painter. The son of the deputy mayor of Stavelot, he became a monk in the Benedictine Abbey of St Laurent in Liège in 1403. He wrote two chronicles, one vernacular, the other Latin.Composed between 1411 and 1447 the vernacular
Chronique
liégeoise covers the years 1400-47. It continues the chronicle of Jean d'Outremeuse (for which it forms the fifth book) and in its turn is continued by Adrian of Oudenbosch up to 1482. Jean de Stavelot is particularly interested in the schism between Benedict XIII and Urban…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de St. Gelais
(134 words)
early 16th century. Northern France. Author of
Histoire de Louis XII, roy de France, Père du peuple (History of Louis XII, king of France, father of the people), a work in vernacular prose, composed in 1510.This work is frequently quoted by historians because of the author's familiarity with the French court, allowing him to give valuable insights into the administrative structures and the private life of Louis; it awaits a modern edition.Manuscript: Vienna, ÖNB, cod.2588 (dated 1510). Françoise Hazel Marie Le SauxBibliography Text T. Godefroy,
Jean de Saint-Gelais, Histoire de…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Venette
(346 words)
ca 1307-70. France. Author of a Latin history of the mid-14th-century. A Carmelite from the village of Venette near Compiègne who usually lived in Paris in the Carmelite house of the Place Maubert. He spent two years (1354 and 1368) in Reims. Almost certainly a different person from the CarmeliteJean "Fillons" de Venette, who in 1357 wrote a huge poem of some 40,000 lines in French entitled
Les Trois Maries.The chronicle has been incorrectly considered to be a continuation of the chronicle of Guillaume de Nangis because it happened to appear in some of the same manuscripts. It r…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Vignay
(261 words)
ca 1282/5 - post 1335. France.Originally from Normandy, law student, priest and hospitaller of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas. He made French translations of works in various genres. His
Miroir
historial is a very faithful rendering of the entire Latin text of Vincent of Beauvais'
Speculum historiale (Leiden, UB, VGG F 3 A, ca 1332, illustrated). On the other hand, the
Chronique
de Primat,a translation of Primat's Latin chronicle, is a puzzling text in that the Latin original is now lost, except for the extracts borrowed by Guillaume de Nangis. As he used Primat's chronicle as a contin…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean de Wavrin
(664 words)
[de Waurin] ca 1400 - ca 1475. Flanders (Low Countries). Author of a French-language chronicle on English history. Born around 1400 (his chronicle describes him as 15 years old when he was present at the battle of Agincourt), Jean de Wavrin was the illegitimate son of a Flemish nobleman who followed a military career in the Burgundian and English armies. After the Treaty of Arras (1435) he returned to the service of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy and married Marguerite Hangouart at Lille (1437). Duke Philip legitimised Wavrin in the same year and employed him in di…
Date:
2021-11-09
Jean d'Outremeuse
(425 words)
[Jean des Preis; des Prés; Johannes Ultramosanus] 1338-1400. Low Countries. Clerk from Liège. Author of several works in different genres in French including historical texts, most importantly the
Chronique abrégée, the
Geste de Liege and the
Myreur des Histors. His
Ogier le Danois is a
chanson de geste, which presents Radus Des Prés, Ogier's right hand man, as Jean d'Outremeuse's ancestor. He also wrote a
Trésorier of precious stones. Compared to his Liège contemporary Jacques de Hemricourt, Jean d'Outremeuse is seen as less serious, judicious and reliable, more poetic…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean le Bel
(516 words)
[li Bials; le Beaulx] ca 1290-1370. Low Countries. Canon of Saint Lambert of Liège, from a Liège aristocratic family. Author of a Middle French (Picard) chronicle written in the third quarter of the 14th century, probably in two or three phases. It covers the beginnings of the Hundred Years War and the reign of Edward III of England, from 1326 to 1361. The work is known as
Chronique, but in the prologue it is called
Vraye hystoire du proeu et gentil roy Edowart (True History of the Valiant and Noble King Edward).Though a cleric, Jean lead a noble lifestyle and took part in Edward's Scottish campai…
Date:
2021-04-15
Jean Lefèvre de St. Rémy
(222 words)
[Jean Charolais; Jean Toison d'Or] 1396-1468. Northern France. King-of-arms of Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy. Author of a French-language chronicle, the
Chronique ou Mémoire sur l'institution de la Toison d'Or (Chronicle and Dissertation on the Institution of the Golden Fleece), which was composed between 1462 and 1468. It describes the
faits d'armes (deeds of arms) in Valois Burgundy between 1408 and 1436, and emphasises the role of the order of the Golden Fleece. An important witness of contemporary events, Lefevre also produced other texts used by Georges Chastelain> in his …
Date:
2021-04-15
Jerome
(741 words)
[Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus] ca 347-419/20. Eastern Mediterranean. Christian apologist, Bible translator and historian. Born in Stridon, in Dalmatia (precise location unknown). Active in Antioch, Constantinople, Rome and Bethlehem, where he moved in 386 and stayed until his death.In the late 370s, Jerome discovered a copy of Eusebius'
Chronici canones in Antioch and in the lead-up to the Council of Constantinople in 381 took it upon himself to translate it into Latin, augment and correct it, and continue it down to his own time. The work appeared …
Date:
2021-04-15
Jewish chronicle tradition
(2,054 words)
Jewish historical writingThe Jewish tradition of historical writing is of great antiquity. The medieval Jewish chronicle could look back to antecedents of great stature. Among the pre-medieval Jewish writings which are referred to elsewhere in this encyclopedia are the historical books of the Hebrew Bible (current text from ca sixth century bc); Artapanus, Aristobulus andEupolemus (all third or second century bc); and Flavius Josephus and Justus of Tiberias (both first century ad). These and other classical Jewish writers were among the precursors of the Jewish, Ch…
Date:
2023-07-18