Chronicon Paschale
The Chronicon Paschale , derived from the Greek name Πασχάλιο χρονικό , also has the alternative titles Easter Chronicle , Chronicon Alexandrinum , Chronicon Constantinopolitanum or Fasti Siculi . It is a chronicle written in Greek in the Eastern Roman Empire and written around 630. The modern name comes from the time calculation used according to the Christian Easter canon .
The author is unknown because the beginning and end of the chronicle are missing. According to many researchers, however, it can be concluded from the work that he was a clergyman and a confidante of Patriarch Sergios . Other scholars, on the other hand, assume, due to the occasional use of the first person plural in connection with the staff of the magister officiorum , that the author of the Chronicle was not a cleric, but a member of the civil imperial administration, which could be supported by the fact that the author apparently Latin - in Ostrom was officially an administrative language until around 625 - mastered what would have been unusual for a clergyman at that time.
The extensive work represents a world chronicle from the days of Adam (the creation of the world is dated March 21, 5509 BC) to the year 630; however, the main manuscript from the 10th century breaks off with the year 628. The sources used by the author cannot always be clearly identified, but he did use Johannes Malalas, for example; after the death of the emperor Maurikios he was an eye-witness of the event. While the years from 534 to 601 are often left untreated, the report for the following period is much more extensive and detailed than was actually usual for chronicles. The Chronicon Paschale is therefore one of our most important sources for the years from 602 to 628 .
The work is in part incorrect (especially for the time before 602), but also contains some very important historical information about the time of the end of late antiquity in the east of the Mediterranean world. Some of the documents included in the chronicle are believed to be authentic. For example, the text of the letter in which the new Sassanid king Kavadh II Siroe asks the Eastern Roman Emperor Herakleios for peace in 628 is apparently quoted in full, as are various imperial pronouncements.
The tradition is based on the Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1941 from the late 10th century. Editio princeps is the edition of the Augsburg Jesuit Rader with a Greek-Latin parallel text (Munich 1615).
translation
- Mary and Michael Whitby (translators): Chronicon Paschale 284–628 (= Translated Texts for Historians ). Liverpool 1989, ISBN 0-85323-096-X (this annotated translation contains only that part of the work that deals with late antiquity).
literature
- James Howard-Johnston : Witnesses to a World Crisis. Historians and Histories of the Middle East in the Seventh Century . Oxford 2010, p. 37ff.
- Eduard Schwartz : Chronicon Paschale . In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III, 2, Stuttgart 1899, Col. 2460-2477 (reprinted in: Eduard Schwartz: Greek historians , Leipzig 1957, pp. 291-316).
- Warren Treadgold : The Early Byzantine Historians . Basingstoke 2007, p. 340 ff.
- Paschal Chronicle . In: Encyclopædia Britannica . 11th edition. tape 20 : Ode - Payment of Members . London 1911, p. 882 (English, full text [ Wikisource ]).
Web links
- Chronicon Paschale in the Catholic Encyclopedia
- Rader's Editio princeps from 1615 on Google Books