The Medieval Chronicle 8 (2013) – Abstracts
Julia Marvin – Latinity and Vernacularity in the Tradition of Geoffrey of Monmouth: Text,
Apparatus and Readership
Scholarly interest in self-conscious authorial claims about translation can make it easy to overlook just
how little concern many translators display about their choice of language, and how comfortably Latin and
vernacular coexist in manuscripts of Anglo-Norman and Middle English texts. In this essay I examine the
Latinity and vernacularity of several works in the Brut tradition: the Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey
of Monmouth, Wace’s Roman de Brut, Layamon’s Brut, the Anglo-Norman prose Brut chronicle, and
Robert Mannyng’s Story of England. I consider the role that Latin plays in their manuscripts, as well as
the evidence for what their authors and scribes thought appropriate or necessary for a vernacular work. I
then suggest how this evidence may affect our own views about the motivations behind, audience for, and
significance of vernacular translation in England, as well as the possible role of the Brut tradition in the
spread of vernacular literacy. (MedChron 8 (2013): 1-41)
Erik Kooper – Content Markers in the Manuscripts of Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle
Medieval authors and scribes of long texts were well aware that finding a particular place in their
manuscripts was not easy. They therefore developed tools to meet this problem, for instance by adding
chapter headings, running heads, special capitals and the like, which may be subsumed under the term
‘content markers’. In the present article three types of such markers will be studied as they occur in the
manuscripts of Robert of Gloucester’s Chronicle: large initial capitals, headers and marginal comments. It
appears that there is a basic difference in the treatment of, on the one hand, the capitals, which may be
traced to Robert himself, and, on the other, of the headers and marginal comments, which are mostly
scribal additions. (MedChron 8 (2013): 43-64)
Dániel Bagi – Genealogische Fälschungen und Fiktionen als Legitimierungsmittel in narrativen
Quellen des Östlichen Europas im 11–13. Jahrhundert
This paper gives a short summary of genealogical fictions in the dynastic historiography of Hungary,
Bohemia and Poland in the twelfth century, with special regard to the question how the commissioners of
historical texts tried to paint their predecessors either in legitimate or in illegitimate colours. The use of
genealogical fictions could have been used for argumentative discussions between dynasty members about
the question who within the dynasty the real owner of the power were, but as is shown in this paper, in
most cases the parties omitted to use this device, because if they had asserted that one of the ancestors of
the family was of illegitimate origin, they themselves could have endangered their own authority.
(MedChron 8 (2013): 75-92)
Isabel de Barros Dias – The Emperor, the Archbishop and the Saint: One Event Told in Different
Textual Forms
In Alfonso X of Castile and León’s scriptorium were produced a wide variety of works. The king is also
known to have paid special attention to some of these, namely those concerning historiography, law and
lyrics. This article studies one episode, dealing with the death of the Emperor Julian the Apostate, extant
both in the Estoria de Espanna and in the Cantigas de Santa Maria. Thanks to a comparative procedure
that considers the sources used and later texts, the question of genre awareness is discussed. The criteria
applied in the selection of materials by historiography and devotional texts show that there was a very
clear idea about the subjects appropriate for each kind of text. (MedChron 8 (2013): 93-111)
Anders Bengtsson – L’Essor de la proposition participiale dans la prose historique
This article in historical linguistics of the French language is a survey of the use of participial propositions
in three historical prose texts from the Middle French era: the Miroir historial of Jean de Vignay, the
Miroir historial of Jean de Noyal, which is in fact a compilation from the same century, concluding with a
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comparative reading of another historical work: Commynes’ Memoires. Even if this text is not properly
speaking a translation from the Latin, it clearly echoes its periods.
Originating at the beginning of the fourteenth century, the construction managed to survive across
ensuing centuries, ultimately becoming an integral part of the French written language. Its progress in
Middle French can be accounted for in part by the expansion of nominal forms of the verb such as the
present participle and gerundive. Its actual origins may have more to do with the (re)latinisation
characterising the period.
It seems clear however that the participial propositions are indeed abundant in historical prose texts,
since the construction is a means of accelerating the action of events. Could this genre be in part
responsible for the progress of the construction in French? (MedChron 8 (2013): 113-33)
Cristian Bratu – Translatio, autorité et affirmation de soi chez Gaimar, Wace et Benoît de SainteMaure
Twelfth-century writers such as Geffrei Gaimar, Wace and Benoît de Sainte-Maure used four main
strategies to assert themselves as translators and historians. The first strategy consisted of elaborating the
persona of a highly knowledgeable clerk as translator and narrator of the text. Secondly, they quoted (or
pretended to quote) from various authors and historical texts to enhance their own authority. Thirdly, they
resorted to what we could call the strategy of ambiguity, in the sense that they presented their writings as
translations while posing as de facto authors of the text. Finally, they portrayed themselves as the terminus
ad quem of a translatio studii from ancient (or simply more prestigious) authors to themselves.
The concept of translatio studii paralleled the idea of a transfer of political power (translatio imperii)
from East to West which was described in many other medieval texts. I argue that patterns of translatio
studii can be found in the longer epilogue to Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis, in Wace’s Roman de Brut, as
well as in the prologue to Sainte-Maure’s Roman de Troie. (MedChron 8 (2013): 135-66)
R. W. Burgess and Michael Kulikowski – Medieval Historiographical Terminology: The Meaning of
the Word Annales
The term annals/annales as it is generally used by modern medievalists – to describe Easter tables with
infrequent historical notations or similar works without the Easter table apparatus – is inaccurate and can
be dangerous, because it can give us a false idea of the development and nature of medieval
historiography. The word was never used with this strict meaning in the Middle Ages, when it generally
meant only ‘history’ or ‘written record of the past’ and after c.1200 gradually came to be used as a
synonym for chronicles as well, a development that arose from a misunderstanding of descriptions of early
Latin historiography in Cicero and the newly popular Aulus Gellius. Therefore annals and chronicles were
never contrasted in the Middle Ages as two distinct genres as they often are today. Believing that they
were distinct genres with separate origins leads to erroneous conclusions about the works described by
medieval authors as ‘annals’, the development of these works, and their relationship to chronicles. We
should, therefore, call such works ‘chronicles’, which is what they are, and in order to distinguish them
from other types of chronicles, like those of Jerome or Sigebert, we should use a term like ‘paschal
chronicles’ or ‘Easter- table chronicles’. (MedChron 8 (2013): 167-94)
Nicholas Coureas – The Conquest of Cyprus during the Third Crusade according to Greek
Chronicles from Cyprus
Three Greek chronicles from Cyprus recording the Third Crusade and the conquest of Cyprus by King
Richard I of England will be discussed. Whether their information is corroborated by Western sources will
also be examined. The Greek chronicles are as follows: two references to the conquest of Cyprus in two
minor chronicles of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the much fuller narrative and contemporary
chronicle of the Greek monk Neophytos the Recluse and the fifteenth-century chronicle of Leontios
Makhairas. This last chronicle was written by a Greek with personal and familial connections to the
Lusignan royal court. All Greek accounts of the conquest of Cyprus recount it and the campaigns in Syria
and Palestine in extremely general terms, unlike the Western sources. They were probably unwilling to
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discuss in detail the Latins’ defeat of the Greeks, which they found humiliating. (MedChron 8 (2013):
195-205)
Isabelle Guyot-Bachy – La Chronique abrégée des rois de France et les Grandes chroniques de
France: concurrence ou complémentarité dans la construction d’une culture historique en
France à la fin du Moyen Âge?
In addition to the Grandes Chroniques de France, the Chronique abrégée des rois de France or
Chronique française des rois de France, initiated by Guillaume de Nangis, amplified and continued in
Saint-Denis during the fourteenth century, formed the basis of the historical culture of the French elites in
the late Middle Ages.
Manuscripts of the work produced in the fifteenth century can be divided into two groups: the first,
consisting of lavish copies containing only the Chronique abrégée, referred to the royal ideology and to
the noble identity of their owners. Copies of the second group, less prestigious, belonged to royal officers.
In these manuscripts, the Chronique abrégée is an ‘authorized’ foundation for the kingdom’s history,
around which the owners organise a pragmatic reading of history, adding other texts, and sometimes
inserting also their own historical productions. Four manuscripts produced in Normandy between 1418
and 1450 reflect the particular political thought of their owners in the context of the Hundred Years War.
(MedChron 8 (2013): 207-234)
Mihkel Mäesalu – A Crusader Conflict Mediated by a Papal Legate: The Chronicle of Henry of
Livonia as a Legal Text
In the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Germans of Livonia and the king of Denmark were both
crusading against the heathen Estonians. They soon began to quarrel among themselves over conquered
territory. The papal legate to Estonia and Livonia from 1225 to 1226, Bishop Guillelmus of Modena, tried
to settle these disputes via arbitration.
The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, written between 1224 and 1227, tells the tale of the crusade from
the German point of view. It justifies German rights to the provinces under debate by claiming that the
Germans were the first to subject the provinces to christianity, Danish missionaries used false methods of
baptism and Danish administration was so cruel that the neophytes preferred German lordship. Henry
probably inserted arguments made by the German side during the arbitration into his chronicle in order to
preserve them for possible future use. Therefore parts of Henry’s Chronicle were based on a legal text and
were meant to be used in a legal context. (MedChron 8 (2013): 235-48)
Adrien Quéret-Podesta – Le Gallus anonymus et l’abbaye de Saint Gilles du Gard
Since the middle of the last decade, the discussion of the origin of the so-called Gallus anonymus, i.e. the
author of the first medieval chronicle concerning Poland (written c.1113), has been particularly important
since it saw not only the revival of the theory of a Venetian origin but also the birth of a new hypothesis
which tries to link the anonymous writer with the Bavarian monastery of Bamberg. Both hypotheses
challenge the traditional theory, which designates France as the place of birth of our chronicler.
Numerous supporters of this theory state also that there were important links between the anonymous
author and the benedictine abbey of Saint Gilles du Gard. In this context, the analysis of the information
concerning this abbey in the chronicle provides interesting elements of reflection since it clearly proves
that the anonymous chronicler had a very limited knowledge about the geographical environment and the
past of the abbey of Saint Gilles du Gard. However, this result does not disqualify the hypothesis about the
French origin of our anonymous writer. (MedChron 8 (2013): 249-61)
Lisa Ruch – Digression or Discourse? William of Newburgh’s Ghost Stories as Urban Legends
William of Newburgh’s inclusion of four ghost stories in his Historia rerum Anglicarum has been noted
by various scholars. However, the question of why William would choose to insert these seemingly
digressive tales into a specific point of his chronicle – one which is lauded for its historical reliability –
has not been adequately addressed. Instead, scholars studying the tales have focused on their folkloric or
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popular roots, their function as religious exempla, or their anthropological significance as indicators of
twelfth-century views of life and death. Their narratological function in the chronicle as a whole has not
been studied. This article seeks to initiate that discussion, tying William’s four tales of the supernatural to
the history into which they are inserted while reading them through the lens of urban legend study. Their
four-fold display of a cycle of error, loss, expiation and redemption correlates to William’s descriptions of
the events during the reign of Richard I which surround the ghost narratives. A close reading of this
interplay of historia and fabula shows the craftsmanship and artistry of William of Newburgh’s chronicle.
(MedChron 8 (2013): 263-73)
Biörn Tjällén – Political Thought and Political Myth in Late Medieval National Histories: Rodrigo
Sánchez de Arévalo (†1470)
By the end of the fifteenth century, most European realms had created their national pedigrees in the form
of written histories. The result often took the form of schematic pre-histories or ethno-historical origin
myths, with original heroes who are as eponymous as they are historically implausible. But the last
medieval century was also a time of constitutional experimentation, debate and consolidation, a process
sometimes described as a development from a ‘crisis of monarchy’ to its ‘triumph’. This article explores
the role of the national-historical writing in such debates of constitutional ideals and suggests that their
naïve representations of political origins might be better understood in the context of learned political
speculation. (MedChron 8 (2013): 275-90)
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