Robert of Torigni’s Liber Chronicorum: The Chronography as a textual project in Avranches, Bibliothèque patrimoniale, ms 159 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Scribes, Kings, and a Roll Chronicle: Dating and Provenance of British Library, Add. MS. 30079
eBLJ, 2019
Created in a period of political transition, as England moved from the end of Henry III’s reign towards that of Edward I, British Library Add. MS. 30079 is an important witness to the historical events of the late thirteenth century. This manuscript was one of the first chronicle rolls written in Latin recording the history of England through a genealogy of its kings, a model which would then acquire popularity in the Anglo-Norman world during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. An investigation surrounding the manuscript’s context of origin will show how Add. MS. 30079 can be a relevant source for a broader historical analysis of the period. This paper considers the dating and provenance of this chronicle roll, putting particular emphasis on the implications of scribal choices and of the circumstances of manuscript transmission.
From the perspective of an ancient historian, medievalists' struggles to define the chronicle genre and particularly to construe it in terms of medieval novelty are difficult to understand. As this article argues, the chronicle is a very old genre, in fact the oldest historical genre, with roots in the Ancient Near East. We trace the genre from those Near Eastern roots to their Greek and Latin successors and then to their eventual combination with the tradition of Hellenistic apologetic chronography in the work of Julius Africanus and Eusebius. In the Latin West, a native Roman tradition, that of lightlyannotated consular fasti known as consularia, was hybridized with chronicles on a Greek model and became the dominant form in late antiquity, indeed the only chronicle form transmitted directly to the Middle Ages. This late ancient chronicle, we conclude, is the model for all medieval development of the genre.
A Genealogy of the Kings of England in Papal Avignon: British Library, Egerton MS. 1500
2013
This article examines the use of Anglo-Norman genealogical rolls in Fra Paolino Veneto's L'Abreujamen de las estorias (Eg. MS. 1500), a diagrammatic world history that was composed in the Occitan vernacular in papal Avignon, circa 1321-1326 (see eBLJ articles by Botana and Ibarz). That such documents were available as a source in an international context raises new questions about the uses to which genealogies of rulers were put. The king list of Britain and England includes passages that were translated from Anglo-Norman French. Its omissions and inaccuracies betray a bias against the Post-Conquest kings of England but in favour of English rule over Ireland. Such evidence supports the idea that a genealogical roll had a political and cross-cultural function outside its insular or dynastic context. In turn, this enquiry leads to further consideration of the intended readership of the Abreujamen.