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
Satechronik
(242 words)
(Chronicle of the treaty) ca 1396. Germany. The Low German so-called
Satechronik describes the conflict between the city of Lüneburg and the Dukes of Lüneburg at the end of the 14th century, contextualizing it in a larger historical perspective. Beginning with the Dukes' enfeoffment in 1235 by Emperor Frederick II, the text presents the contemporary conflict as the result of a series of offences by the Dukes against the city and the Emperors. The conflict started with the Lüneburg war of succession in 1369 (see: Nikolaus Floreke) and was temporarily settled in 1392 by a treaty (
Sate). Only…
Date:
2021-04-15
Sattler, Johann
(287 words)
ca 1470-1523. Germany. Author of a town chronicle of Freiburg im Breisgau in Latin and Early Modern German. Sattler hailed from Balingen in Württemberg. He matriculated at the University of Freiburg in 1484 and graduated with a master's degree in 1497. In the same year he became priest in charge at St. Peter's Church in Weilheim an der Teck. In 1505 he received a chaplaincy at Freiburg cathedral.Sattler dedicated his
Cronica von den Hertzogen von Zäringen Stüffter der Statt Freyburg im Breyßgaw to the Freiburg supreme guild master Ulrich Wirtner on 23rd May 1514; it was subsequently a…
Date:
2021-04-15
Sauer, Stanislaus
(232 words)
1469-1535. Silesia (Poland). Born in Lwówek Śląski (Löwenberg). Official and canon of the cathedral chapter in Wrocław, provost in Jelenia Góra (Hirschberg im Riesengebirge). Author of a Latin chronicle of Silesia. This
Chronica [Silesiae] a tempore regis Matthiae, Wladislai et Ludovici describes the history of Silesia during the reign of the kings Matthias Corvinus, Wladislaus, and Louis, and especially the life of the Wrocław episcopal centre up to 1523. One manuscript copy has been preserved: Munich, BSB, clm 965. Only fragments have been edited (mainly German transla…
Date:
2021-04-15
Savonarola, Michele
(341 words)
1385-1466. Italy. Paduan physician and medical writer, who composed a panegyric to his native city, organized around the lives of famous citizens. Born into a family of commoners, he studied arts and medicine at the University of Padua, where he later served as promoter of many doctoral candidates, lectured on Avicenna, and taught medicine. In 1440 he moved to Ferrara where he served as court physician to Niccolò III d'Este, and later to Leonello and Borso d'Este, to whom he dedicated his study on mineral baths (
De balneis). He also wrote medical treatises on pregnancy, fevers, an…
Date:
2021-04-15
Saxo Grammaticus
(650 words)
ca 1160 - post 1208. Denmark. Author of the Latin
Gesta Danorum (History of the Danes) (see fig. 1). From his work it is apparent that Saxo belonged to a prestigious family of warriors and that he must have received his education abroad, probably in Northern France in the 1170s or 1180s. His work was commissioned by Archbishop Absalon (1178-1201), and the finished text must have taken decades to accomplish. We know from Sven Aggesen that he was at work in about 1185 and from indications in the text that it cannot have been finished by 1208. Modern scholarship has made…
Date:
2021-04-15
Sayf ibn ʿUmar
(125 words)
[Sayf ibn ʿUmar al-Usayyidī] d. ca 188 ah (786 ad). Mesopotamia. Muslim chronicler from Kufa (now Iraq). He is the author of the
Kitāb al-futūh al-kabīr wa ʾl-ridda, a lost work which is partly transmitted by later authors like al-Tabarī, for whom he served as major source for the early Islamic conquests. Sayf ibn Umar was one of the first historians to treat the origin of the Muslim empire, its early conquests and expansion, but his reliability is a matter of controversy in modern scholarship.Marta Bailón GarcíaBibliography Literature L.I. Conrad,
History and historiography in early…
Date:
2021-04-15
Sbignei, Henricus, de Góra
(210 words)
pre-1435 - post-1465. Poland. Author of
Tractatus contra cruciferos,
Regni Poloniae invasores (Tretise against the Teutonic Knights, the invaders of the kingdom of Poland), a political tract containing historical information, filling 12 manuscript folios. Sbignei studied at the Kraków Academy 1455-6, probably under the guidance of the chronicle commentator Jan Dąbrówka. His
Tractatus is a political tract which expresses the views of the party gathered round Cardinal and Kraków Bishop Zbigniew Oleśnicki, including the justification of Poland's claims in regard to the Teutonic …
Date:
2021-04-15
Scala, Bartholomaeus della
(577 words)
17th May 1430 - 14th July 1497. Italy. Born the son of a tenant miller near Colle Val d'Elsa, Scala studied in Florence and became a loyal servant to the Medici family. From 24th April 1465 until his death he was the first chancellor of the republic of Florence and introduced important administrative chancery-reforms. On these grounds Scala composed a
Historia Florentinorum (History of the Florentine people) that was intended to cover the period from the origins of the city until 1450, in twenty books.While Rubinstein assumed that Scala wrote the
Historia from about 1484, finishing on…
Date:
2021-04-15
Scala Mundi
(690 words)
14th century. England. An anonymous diagramatic chronicle (see fig. 1). The title
Scala Mundi appears at the beginning of some manuscripts of this anonymous universal chronicle:
hic incipit liber qui dicitur Scala Mundi. It is not known when or where it was written, but its focus on English history strongly suggests that it is an English work; a date in the second quarter of the 14th century is likely as the entries in the original hand end in 1330/40 in one of the early copies (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, ms. 194).The work can be described as a hybrid of an annalistic and a g…
Date:
2021-04-15
Schamdocher, Georg
(284 words)
15th century. Germany. Author of a short German vernacular chronicle of contemporary imperial events published under the title
Breve Chronicon Georgii Schamdocher Rerum sub Friderico III. gestarum ab A. MCCCCXL. ad A. MCCCCLXXIX. The author announces at the very beginning that he was present at the coronation of emperor Frederick III in Aachen:
…und ich zoch auch mit (and I went too; p. 315).The report covers the period 1440-79, but with no aspirations to completeness: the text has indeed the appearance of a compilation of snippets of memories, as if we wer…
Date:
2021-04-15
Schedel, Hartmann
(1,259 words)
13 February 1440 - 28 November 1514. Germany. Author of the first printed world chronicle. The Nuremberg historian Hartmann Schedel is one of the most important German intellectuals of the 15th century. Encouraged by his older cousin Hermann Schedel, he studied first humanities in Leipzig (BA 1457; MA 1459), then medicine in Padua (1463-66). He returned as
Doctor medicinae and in 1470 became town physician in Nördlingen. In 1477 he took the same position in Amberg, near Nuremberg. Around 1480-82 he moved to imperial free city of Nuremberg itself, where he remained unti…
Date:
2021-04-15
Scheurl, Albrecht
(105 words)
d. 1462. Silesia (Poland). Representative of the Wrocław townsman's family Scheurl. Author of family records in German. Fragments known in the 19th century were once regarded as an autobiography, but when the autograph was re-discovered in 1900, it turned out to be the book of household accounts. Manuscript: Nuremberg, Scheurl-Archiv, ms. 596/492. Wojciech MrozowiczBibliography Literature M. Beer, "
Civis Magnificus et Mercator Famosus. Das Auffinden des verloren geglaubten Haushaltsbuches Albrecht III. Scheurls († 1462) und dessen Edition", in N. Conrads,
Forschungen zur s…
Date:
2021-04-15
Scheyerer Fürstentafel
(336 words)
(Scheyern table of princes) [Tabula Perantiqua Schirensis (Table of Scheyern's antiquities)] 1393-95. Germany. Vernacular history of the Benedictine monastery of Scheyern and the genealogy of the house of Wittelsbach from Tassilo (748-88) to Ludwig II, the Strict (1253-94). Beginning with a fabulous tale of the foundation of the monastery by the Dukes of Scheyern and the descent of the Dukes of Wittelsbach, the chronicle was written in the Bavarian dialect on a wooden panel (
tafel) in the ducal chapel in Scheyern. It has been understood as propaganda against the incri…
Date:
2021-04-15
Schilling, Diebold Jr.
(650 words)
ca 1460 - ca 1515. Switzerland. Son of the Lucerne clerk Hans Schilling and nephew to the Berne clerk and chronicler Diebold Schilling Sn.., he studied perhaps in Basel and Pavia. Since summer 1479, he acted as public notary in Lucerne. By 1481, he was an ordained priest. In the same year, he started to assist his father in the Lucerne chancellery. In May 1483, he became chaplain first in St. Peters', then in the town's main church, St. Leodegar.Begun in summer 1509, written and illustrated between 1511 and 1513, Schilling's German
Chronik was presented to the government of Lucerne tow…
Date:
2021-04-15
Schilling, Diebold Sn.
(876 words)
ca 1430/35-85/86. Switzerland. Author of chronicles in German prose. Diebold Schilling was born in the Alsatian Hagenau to a family from Solothurn. He held his first position as scribe in Lucerne in 1457. When his brother Hans (father of chronicler Diebold Schilling Jr.) was elected town scribe in Lucerne in 1460, Schilling moved to Berne, where he passed through several clerical positions within the chancellery. He was a member of the greater town council in 1468, and fellow of the patrician society
Zum Narren und Distelzwang (Jester and Goldfinch) from 1462. His historiographi…
Date:
2021-04-15
Schiphower, Johannes
(249 words)
[Johannes de Meppis] 1463 - ca 1521/5. Germany. Born in Meppen, the son of mayor Gerhard Schiphower. Ordained to the Augustinan hermit order in 1484. Studied in Bologna 1485-1488. Held several clerical offices, amongst others prior of Anklam from 1491. Schiphower wrote the
Chronicon Archicomitum Oldenburgensium (Chronicle of the archbishops of Oldenburg), which by his own admission is mostly compiled from Heinrich Wolter, Martin of Opava, Florenz von Wevelinghoven, and others. It runs from ca 50 BC to the date of writing, recording not only the archbishops but a…
Date:
2021-04-15
Schnitt, Konrad
(789 words)
1495/1500–1541. Switzerland. Born as Conrad Appodecker in Constance, documented in Basel from 1519. Schnitt was a painter and woodcutter and signed his works as C. A., later C. S. He held official positions as councilman, guild master, and steward in Basel. Schnitt worked with Sebastian Münster, Johannes Stumpf, Niklaus Briefer, and Ägidius Tschudi.Schnitt wrote a compilation of a world chronicle, composed between 1537 and 1541 and centered on the Emperors of the Roman Empire from Julius Caesar to Charles V. The focus is mostly on the Basel regi…
Date:
2021-04-15
Schöfferlin, Bernhard
(275 words)
1436/38-1501. Germany. Jurist and humanist, composer of a history of Rome in German prose. Schöfferlin belonged to the inner circle of duke Eberhard I of Württemberg. Four years after Schöfferlin's death, in 1505, the printing house Schöffer in Mainz published his
Romische historie vß Tito liuio gezogen (History of Rome excerpted from Livy), a history of Rome in three parts encompassing the period
ab urbe condita to the Second Punic War and illustrated with numerous woodcuts. Scholars long regarded Schöfferlin's monograph as a mere Livy translation. In fact, however, the
Romische his…
Date:
2021-04-15
Schradin, Niklaus
(533 words)
ca 1470 - 1506/31? Switzerland. Citizen of Lucerne in 1505. Scribe in the chancellery of the abbot of St. Gallen 1491-1500, scribe in the Lucerne chancellery from June 1500. Author of a printed German verse chronicle of 1292 lines with prose inserts.The
Cronigk of the Swabian War (the conflict of 1499 between on the one side the Habsburg Maximilian I of Austria and the Swabian league, and on the other the Swiss Confederacy), was put to press by an unknown publisher in Sursee near Lucerne in the autumn of 1500 as the first chronicle to be printed in the…
Date:
2021-04-15
Schulthaiß, Christof
(335 words)
1512-1584. Southern Germany. Politically active patrician, mayor of Konstanz, collector and chronicler. Schulthaiß was born into a patrician family of long-standing political influence, several members of which were interested in historical writing, notably Nicolaus Schulthaiß and Christof’s father Johannes, his brothers Joachim (both authors of chronicles lost today) and Jakob (author of a family history, Konstanz, Stadtarchiv, A I 17).Christof wrote an episcopal chronicle that lists the bishops of Konstanz up to 1567. For this he used the older works …
Date:
2021-04-15