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
Higden, Ranulf
(887 words)
d. 1363/64. England. Benedictine monk at St. Werburgh's Abbey in Chester. Compiled the
Polychronicon, a Latin universal history written in Latin prose, except for a verse chapter on Wales. Ranulf entered St. Werburgh's as a monk in 1299 and remained there, for the most part, until his death.Ranulf wrote four prefaces to the
Polychronicon and divided the history into seven books. The first is a geographical survey of the known world, and in the first letters of its chapters, he incorporated an acrostic which reads:
Presentem cronicam compilavit Frater Ranulphus Cestrensis monachus (Bro…
Date:
2021-04-15
Hilarius of Litoměřice
(213 words)
1412/13-68. Bohemia. Theologian. Author of
Hystoria civitatis Plznensis. Hilarius was born in Litoměřice to an Utraquist family. He achieved his bachelor in 1442, and his master of arts at the University of Prague in 1451. After spending time in Italy (1451-4), he converted to Catholicism and was ordained a priest. In 1462 he became administrator of the archbishopric of Prague. He died in České Budějovice.On 10 May 1467 he gave a speech in remembrance of the liberation of the town of Plzeň from the Hussite siege, conceived as a eulogy and history of the town, for which reaso…
Date:
2021-04-15
Hinderbach, Johannes
(367 words)
1418-86. Austria and Italy. Lawyer and bishop. Author of several historical works and commentaries. Son of magistrate Johann Scheib, in Rauschenberg, Hesse, and relative of the principals of the Vienna university Heinrich Heinbuche von Langenstein, Hermann Lelle von Treysa and Dietmar Hinderbach. Having adopted his mother's name of Hinderbach, he studied at the universities of Vienna (MA 1438) and Padua (1441). He was a member of the royal chancellery and diplomat to Frederick III, who promoted him
doctor in decretis on his way to Rome in 1452. In 1465, he was made bishop of Tr…
Date:
2021-04-15
Hinojosa, Gonzalo de
(295 words)
d. 1327. Castile (Iberia). Hinojosa belonged to a family of Castilian
ricos hombres related to Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada. Bishop of Burgos from 1313 until his death, he acted as ambassador at Avignon (1313-14) and Paris (1317, 1320). In 1317 he wrote the
Passio Sanctae Centolae et Helenae.His main work, the
Cronice ab origine mundi, is a Latin universal chronicle. It is a compilation of several sources upon which the author tended not to elaborate, among them, Dares Phrigius'
De excidio Troiae historia for the pagan ancient history, the
Historia Arabum and
Historia Gothica of Rodrigo Jimé…
Date:
2021-04-15
Hippolytus of Rome
(836 words)
2nd-3rd century ad. Italy. Born ca 170 ad, probably in the East (Alexandria or Asia Minor), Hippolytus became a presbyter of the Roman church and an influential author of polemical, dogmatic, exegetical and historical works. His church-political activities and disagreements over doctrine and practice brought him into conflict with other church leaders, in particular the bishop of Rome, Calixtus I (217-22 ad). On accusing Calixtus of Modalism, Monarchianism and Patripassianism, Hippolytus in turn found himself accused of Ditheism. He also rejected as too l…
Date:
2021-04-15
Hippolytus of Thebes
(209 words)
6th-9th century. Greece. Author of a universal chronicle (Χρονικόν) in Greek prose, which survives only in fragments. The only clues to the date of composition are doctrinal information apparently known to the author, which places him not earlier than the sixth century, and the manuscript tradition, which begins in the ninth. As he apparently was not familiar with Egyptian geography, we conclude that the Thebes in his toponym is Thebes in Greece (Boeotia).The passages which have survived concern the lives of Mary and Jesus Christ, but even these show some chronologi…
Date:
2021-04-15
Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César
(1,547 words)
ca. 1208-1214 or slightly later (before 1230). Flanders. The
Histoire ancienne is the first surviving universal chronicle in French and an early example of French literary prose. In two manuscripts, Paris, BNF fr. 20125 (produced in Acre in the second half of the 13th century) and Vienna, ÖNB, 2576, (produced in Venice, ca. 1350), the verse prologue contains approximately twenty moralizations. These versified reflections discuss topics such as loyalty, jealousy, generosity, greed, and death, and generally tend to exhort the aristocratic…
Date:
2021-04-15
Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal
(333 words)
1219-29. England. Anonymous biography of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke and regent of England (1145-1219) in Anglo-Norman verse. This biography of the first great Marshal of England covers the period from his birth (ca 1145) to his death in 1219, when he had become the Earl of Pembroke. As the biography of a person of less than royal rank, the
Histoire is unique for its period. Rising from relatively humble beginnings as the younger son of the king's Marshal, William made his reputation and his fortune through his prowess on the tournament field. As a royal officer, he served the Young King H…
Date:
2021-04-15
Histoire de Païs-Bas 1477-92
(201 words)
15th century. France. Anonymous narrative in French of events in the Low Countries (principally the northern lands of the dukes of Burgundy) from the marriage of Mary of Burgundy to Maximilian of Austria (18 August 1477) to the recovery of Arras from French forces on 5 November 1492. It records dynastic and military events, ceremonial entries and peace treaties (such as the Peace of Arras, 1482), but also reports events elsewhere (the battle of Bosworth, England). It favours Maximilian's cause (though not his German mercenaries): his enemies are divinely punished by famine and plague.T…
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia [anonymi] Eduardi Tertii
(331 words)
14th century. England. The title was given by Thomas Hearne to a chronicle covering the life of Edward III from his coronation at the age of 15 in 1326 until his death in 1377, which Hearne added to his 1731 edition of Walter of Guisborough (Hemingford). He describes the
Historia as being previously unedited and based upon a codex owned by the antiquarian and bishop Thomas Tanner (1674-1735), but he does not identify the manuscript. In fact it is a compilation derived from Adam Murimuth and Ranulf Higden, using material from Higden's
Polychronicon and its continuation after Murimuth's…
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia archiepiscoporum Bremensium
(260 words)
(History of the archbishops of Bremen) 14th-15th century. Germany. A Latin episcopal chronicle in prose and verse, compiled in three steps by at least three anonymous authors, following the pontificates of the bishops. The first part (788-1307), was probably written in 1307 by a canonicus of St. Willehadi monastery in Bremen. He predominantly used the chronicle by Albert of Stade and sometimes Adam of Bremen. From 1257 the work becomes more independent. In the mid-14th century it was extended to 1344 with two archbishops' biographies in elaborate rhyming hexameters. Around 1417 a …
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia Augusta
(202 words)
late 4th century. Italy. A series of Latin imperial biographies in the mould of Suetonius covering the emperors from Hadrian to Carus and his two sons bearing the names of six different authors who claim to be writing around the beginning of the fourth century. This was accepted until 1889 when Dessau demonstrated that it was the work of a single author, writing at the end of the century. This author began by writing serious biography based particularly on Marius Maximus (an earlier continuator of Suetonius), "Ignotus" (an unknown biographer), the
Kaisergeschichte, Herodian, Dexippus, a…
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia Bohemica, Polonica et Silesiaca
(251 words)
15th century. Silesia (Poland). Latin prose annalistic compilation from the outset of history till 1459, written perhaps by a clergyman of Wrocław, in the late 1450s or 1460s. The text, which fills ten manuscript folios, is based on a later version of the
Chronica Bohemorum [anonymi] covering the period up to 1420, to which some records about the Silesian and Polish history were added. This is followed by annals depicting the events of the years 1418-59 with the accent on Wrocław. The work is one of the first expressions of the cultural id…
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia Britonum abbreviata
(72 words)
14th century. England. A Latin prose mini-chronicle from Brutus to the last king of the Britons, Cadwaladr, based upon the commentary written to accompany the
Metrical History of the Kings of England, with some details from the
Metrical History itself. Preserved in London, BL, Cotton Claudius D.vii, fol. 11ra-15va. Unedited. Edward Donald KennedyBibliography Literature A.G. Rigg,
A Book of British Kings 1200 BC – 1399 AD, 2000, 2, 9, 15.
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia Brittonum
(886 words)
[Britonum] 829/30. Wales. Short Latin history surviving in at least 35 manuscripts, representing nine recensions, and also found in an Irish translation,
Lebor Bretnach (ca 1072).Its chronology is far from clear and was reinterpreted by Halsall in 2013.
Historia Brittonum is a compilation of texts by authors of historical and legendary material and of genealogies of Welsh and English kings. It includes various origin stories of the Britons and the Scots, a life of St. Patrick, an account of the Roman occupation of Britain to 388, one of the wars between the Britons an…
Date:
2022-11-07
Historia compendiosa de regibus Britonum
(204 words)
possibly 13th or 14th century. England. An abbreviated version of Geoffrey of Monmouth's
Historia regum Britanniae, from Brutus to 689, incorrectly said by the 16th and 18th-century antiquarians John Bale and Thomas Tanner to be based upon a lost source by the 14th-century Augustinian Friar John Bramis (Bramus, Bromus) since the author refers to a former compilation as
haec Bream or
de compendio Brome. Bramis's authorship of the source is questionable, since at least one manuscript of the
Historia is older than an Anglo-Norman romance,
Waldef, that Bramis is known to have trans…
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia Compostellana
(320 words)
12thcentury. Galicia (Iberia). A Latin work, mainly concerned with Diego Gelmírez, first archbishop of Santiago de Compostela.
Historia Compostellana
siue de rebus gestis D. Didaci Gelmirez, primi Compostellani archiepiscopi is the title given by Flórez, who first published it in 1765. It is basically a gesta, a narrative of Gelmírez's considerable accomplishments. But the authors refer to their work as registrum, a new form which combined direct documentary transcription with the historical narratives that framed the documents. We are faced, then, with a combination of
gesta an…
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia Daretis Frigii de origine Francorum
(140 words)
8th century. France. The text was inserted into the chronicle of pseudo Fredegar with its two continuations. It precedes Fredegar's account of the Trojan origins of the Franks and falls into two distinct parts. The first is a reduction of the
De excidio Troiae of Ps-Dares the Phrygian to one eighth of its length, the second a legendary history of the Franks and the Romans after the fall of Troy, which shows some affinities with the
Cosmographiae of Aethicus Ister, but is unfortunately spoilt by gaps in the story. Among the handful of extant manuscripts are Montpellier, Bibliothèque Univers…
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia de landgraviis Thuringiae
(301 words)
[Historia Eccardiana] shortly after 1414. Germany. Latin regional history in a world-chronicle framework, presumably written by aFranciscan in Eisenach. The ill-chosen title
Historia de landgraviis originates with the 1722 edition, obscuring the fact that this is actually a world chronicle in annalistic form from a Thuringian perspective, the author's aim being to locate the history of Thuringia within global history. The main source was an extended version of the
Chronica Thuringorum, the so-called
Historia Thuringorum amplificata, also written in the Franciscan house…
Date:
2021-04-15
Historia dello pseudo-Iamsilla
(247 words)
[Cronaca di Jamsilla] 1261-2. Italy. Latin prose chronicle formerly (and wrongly) attributed to Nicola de Jamsilla or Jamvilla, who was, rather, the owner of the manuscript used for the first edition. Undoubtedly written by a
notarius, secretary and confidant of King Manfred, reflecting royal interests and bias, the Chronicle covers events in the kingdom of Sicily from 1210 until 1258, focussing on Manfred's struggle against the Pope, with a quite openly apologetic purpose under the guise of apparent impartiality. It has been consider…
Date:
2021-04-15