Peterborough Chronicle

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First page of the Peterborough Chronicle

The Peterborough Chronicle (also called Laud Manuscript ) is one of the Anglo-Saxon chronicles ; it contains unique information on English history and, according to philologist JAW Bennett, is the only prose history work in English from the period between the Norman conquest of England and the late 14th century .

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles were compiled and continued by several monasteries in Anglo-Saxon England and represent an attempt to write down the history of mankind. Each of these chronicles begins with the creation of the world, reflects the Bible and the history of antiquity , and is continued into the present. Every major religious institution in England had its own individual chronicle, which was not aligned with one another. On the other hand, it was customary to lend neighboring monasteries their own chronicles as a copy if their chronicles were damaged or a new chronicle was started, so that the two chronicles were identical up to this point in time. This is also the case with the Peterborough Chronicle : a fire forced the abbey to copy its chronicle from other chronicles until 1120.

When William the Conqueror conquered England ( 1066 ) and Anglo- Norman became the official language, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles in general ceased. The monks of Peterborough Abbey, however, continued their work. Although the Peterborough Chronicle is not a work of professional historiography and one has to use Latin works (e.g. Wilhelm von Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum ) to supplement it, it is nonetheless an original source for the period from 1070 to 1154, which also gives a point of view that is not that of the court.

It is also a valuable source for the early Middle English language itself. Its first sequel, for example, is written in late Old English , the second sequel begins in mixed forms and ends in a distinct early form of Middle English. The linguistic innovations in the second sequel are abundant, including at least one real innovation: the feminine pronoun "she" (written "scæ" ) is recorded here for the first time (Bennett).

The fire and the sequels

Today, the Peterborough Chronicle - alongside the Winchester Chronicle or Parker Chronicle , the Abingdon Chronicle and the Worcester Chronicle - is considered to be one of the four different versions of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle , but is not entirely different from the others. (Bennett, "Early"). The cause is a fire in Peterborough that destroyed the monastery library: the first part of today's Peterborough Chronicle is therefore a copy of the chronicle of Winchester Cathedral (Ramsay). For the 11th century , the two differ from each other, which is why it was speculated that a proto- Kentish Chronicle full of national and regional peculiarities served as a model for this time (Cambridge). The Peterborough copyists presumably use several sources to fill in the missing years, but the dissolution of the monasteries under King Henry VIII ( 1537 ) makes it impossible to be sure here. The entries for the 12th century through 1122 are a jumble of accounts from two other chronicles; the constant alternation between these two sources feeds the suspicion of the existence of a single source, which is now lost.

From 1122 the manuscript becomes unique. From here on, the Peterborough Chronicle is divided into the First Sequel and Second Sequence. The two sequels are independent of each other, both in terms of content, style and language. The first continuation covers the period from 1122 to 1131, the second continuation that from 1132 to 1154, so it mainly includes the reign of King Stephen .

First continuation (1122–1131)

Although the second sequel is the more important, the first sequel also contains unique accounts of events in the vicinity of Peterborough that give an insight into the lives of the common people of the time. The first sequel contains the Norman conquest, the invasion of Sven III. of Denmark and rumors of further turbulence around the throne, but does not provide any information about Anglo-Saxon resistance against William the Conqueror and his sons. A report by an eyewitness describes the abbey fire, which was started by drunken monks. The sequel also features ecclesiastical scandals, such as that of the Abbot of Glastonbury Abbey who hired mercenaries to take control of his abbey.

With the entries for the year 1122, the language of the text changes: Old English becomes a mixture of Old and Middle English vocabulary (with Gallic forms) and Old and Middle English syntax (a simplification of the pronouns and the strongly conjugated Germanic verbs) and one Declination of nouns .

Both the authors of the first sequel and those of the second sequel develop sympathies for ordinary people. The first sequel is outraged both by the execution of 44 thieves in 1122, some of whom were innocent, and by the fire at Gloucester monastery . The monastic author claims that taxes are too high and force the impoverished people to steal or starve, which the nobles are guilty of in two senses: on the one hand, because they execute innocent people and treated the guilty extremely cruelly, on the other, because it for the nobility at least as sinful to compel theft with their greed, as for the poor to steal bread. When the Norman Henry of Poitou , who was already abbot of Saint-Jean-d'Angély, was imposed as abbot on Peterborough Abbey, the chronicler protested at length against the illegality and irreverence of this appointment. He also mentions as a bad omen that the wild hunt was sighted at the same time as the appointment. When Heinrich resigned in 1132 , the monk wrote of a divine solution to the problem, because Heinrich tried on the one hand to make Peterborough part of the Cluniac order and on the other hand wanted to appoint his own nephew as his successor - "oc Crist it ne uuolde" ("but Christ didn't want it ”).

Second continuation (1132–1154)

The second sequel , which tells of the anarchy of the English Civil War from 1135 to 1154 , is noteworthy because it has the unity of a single author. Researchers speculate that this sequel was dictated (because the language is a version of early Middle English, usually settled in the aftermath of King Stephen and Matilda of England ) or was written down as the memories of an elderly monk. The second sequel is a moving account of torture, fear, disorder and hunger.

King Henry I died in 1135 , and both Stephen and Matilda laid claim to the throne. The monastic author describes the rebellion of the barons against Stephan, Matilda's flight, and the torments that the barons' soldiers inflicted on the people. The author rebukes Stephan for the anarchy in his reign of being "soft and god" where firmness and toughness were necessary. When Stephan took the rebel barons prisoner, he let them go again after they had sworn allegiance to him. The author writes:

"Ða ðe suikes undergæton that he milde man was, and softe and god, and no iustice ne dide, ða diden hi alle wunder."
"When these men understood that he (Stephan) was a gentle man, and compliant and good, and not righteous, everyone wondered (about him)." (Quoted from Bennett and Smithers)

Trying to get the money to be able to build castles (which the author considered a rare innovation so far), the barons robbed everyone they met with the aim of robbing everyone they met:

“Ævric rice man his castles made and agenes him heolden; and fylden the land full of castles. Hi suencten suythe the uurecce men of the land mid castelweorces; tha the castles uuaren maked, tha fylden hi mid deovles and yvele men. Tha namen hi tha men the hi wendan that any god hefden, bathe be nihtes and be dæies, carlmen and wimmen, and diden heom in prison and pined heom efter gold and sylver untellendlice pining; for ne uuaerern naevre mas martyrs swa pined alse hi waeron. "
“Every chief built castles and held them against the king, and they filled the land with castles. They viciously tortured the poor people of the country with work on building castles; when the castles were finished, they filled the land with devils and bad people. Then they expropriated those who had goods, day and night, working men and women, and threw them into prison and tortured them for gold and silver with unspeakable torments, so that no martyr was tortured like these men. "

The monk and author sympathizes with the common peasant and crafts and talks about the destruction that the open country suffered. He is outraged by the torture reports and complains:

"Me henged up bi the fet and smoked heom mid full smoke. Me henged bi the þumbes other bi the hefed and hengen bryniges on her fet. Me dide cnotted strict abuton here hæued and wrythen it ðat it gæde to þe haernes… I ne can nelne mai tellen alle ðe wunder ne all ðe pines that he diden wrecce men on ðis land. "
“They hung one by his feet and filled his lungs with smoke. One was hung by his thumb, another by his head with chain mail on his feet. They pulled a knotted string over one of the heads and twisted it so tightly that it penetrated his brain ... I can neither nor will I report on all the atrocities, nor on all the tortures that they inflicted on the wretched people of this country. "

Death and hunger ensued when the farms lay fallow and the peasants were murdered. When a mounted traveler came into a village, the monk reports, everyone fled for fear that he was a robber baron or one of these barons. Trade came to a standstill and there was no longer any supply of goods. Those who traveled with money to buy groceries were robbed or killed along the way. The peasants thought, reports the monk, that Jesus was sleeping and God had turned away from the land, and said: "We suffered all this and more for our sins for 19 winters."

After the report on the civil war, the chronicler turns to church issues. He speaks of Abbot Martin, who replaced the illegitimate Heinrich, as a good abbot. Martin had a new roof put on the monastery and the monks moved into a new building. According to the author, he also succeeded in reacquiring monastic land that had previously been occupied by nobles. The chronicle ends with the death of Martin and the new abbot, Wilhelm, who presumably had the writing stopped.

A unique voice

The two sequels to the Chronicle of Peterborough sympathize with the poor, which makes them unique in both Latin and English written history. They are also more focused on life outside the abbey than other chronicles that are more focused. While most versions record national events such as the change of the throne, reports of developments around the monastery are rare. Bad omens are mentioned, but political alliances are rarely discussed (as, for example, the author of the Second Sequel does with the bishop who joined Matilda) or the legality of the abbots (as the author of the First Sequel does with his complaint about Bishop Heinrich). The monks who wrote the sequel in Peterborough either deliberately took a new direction (perhaps by order of Abbot Martin) or continued a kind of chronicle that had been customary in their abbey and had been lost with the fire. It does not appear that Peterborough was in any way a laid back or secular abbey, as the description of the drunkenness that caused the fire shows.

The sequels are also unique in their language. In the copy from Winchester, the orthography and syntax of Old English is preserved; for more recent events for which there is no template, there is an abrupt change to a new form. Assuming that the loan is to be located immediately before the beginning of the sequel, the linguistic change either reflects the attempt to write more in dialect , or clear and dramatic changes in the language itself, probably triggered by Norman influences. Since the Chronicle is written in prose, the verse form does not lead to the artificial preservation of linguistic archaisms, so that linguists can follow the beginning of Middle English on these pages.

The manuscript

The manuscript of the Chronicle is in the Bodleian Library . It was donated to the library on June 28, 1639 by William Laud , then Chancellor of Oxford University and Archbishop of Canterbury . The manuscript was one of a series of documents, the third group of manuscripts, which he kept in the library in the years leading up to the English Civil War . sent. The manuscript is now numbered Laud Misc. 636 and was previously referred to as OC 1003 based on Edward Bernard's "Old Catalog" .

literature

  • Jack AW Bennett: Middle English Literature (= The Oxford History of English Literature. Vol. 1, 2). Edited and completed by Douglas Gray. Clarendon Press, Oxford et al. a. 1986, ISBN 0-19-812214-4 .
  • Jack AW Bennett, Geoffrey V. Smithers (Eds.): Early Middle English Verse and Prose. 2nd edition, reprinted. Clarendon Press, Oxford et al. a. 2003, ISBN 0-19-871101-8 .
  • James H. Ramsay: The Foundations of England or, Twelve Centuries of British History BC 55 - AD 1154. Sonnenschein u. a., London a. a. 1898, p. 122.
  • Adolphus William Ward, AR Waller, William Peterfield Trent, John Erskine, Stuart Pratt Sherman, Carl Van Doren (Eds.): The Cambridge history of English and American literature. An encyclopedia in eighteen volumes. Cambridge University Press et al. a., Cambridge et al. a. 1907-1921.

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