World chronicle

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Heinrich von München: Weltchronik, Bavaria around 1400

A world chronicle was a historical work typical of late antiquity and the Middle Ages , which claimed to portray the entire history of the world from “creation” through antiquity to the present of the chronicler . In this context, “world history” should only be understood to mean the historical description for that part of the world that was known to the author of the respective work and for which sources were available to him. The interweaving of biblical and profane events is characteristic, which means that world history is interpreted as the history of salvation. The main focus of the presentation was usually the rulers of the Greco-Roman and Christian era.

The oldest fragments of a world chronicle date from the 2nd century AD and are known as the Leipzig world chronicle by an anonymous (perhaps Christian) author. Christian chronography began primarily with Sextus Iulius Africanus in the 3rd century. Further examples of ancient world chronicles are the Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea (continued in the Latin West by Hieronymus ), Cassiodorus , Johannes Malalas and the Chronicon Paschale . Byzantine world chronicles, such as those of Georgios Synkellos and Theophanes from the 9th century, are also important ; Johannes Zonaras wrote a popular chronicle in the 12th century .

In the Latin Middle Ages, numerous world chronicles were also written , often based on the Eusebius arrangement by the church father Hieronymus . Many of them (such as the Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus by Otto von Freising ) tried to assign their time a place in the divine plan of salvation .

In his work Chronicon, Hermann von Reichenau for the first time provided all the years in his world chronicle exclusively in relation to the year of the birth of Christ. Other important works are the chronicles of Richer von Reims , Frutolf von Michelsberg and his follower Ekkehard von Aura , Annalista Saxo (from the Berge monastery in Magdeburg ) and Gottfried von Viterbo . The works of Vinzenz von Beauvais , Martin von Troppau or the anonymous Flores temporum are characteristic of the late medieval development . Rudolf von Ems , Heinrich von München , Jans der Enikel and Heinrich Taube von Selbach found numerous readers of the vernacular chroniclers . In July 1459 the town clerk Johannes Platterberger and the clerk Dietrich Truchseß completed an extensive two-volume world chronicle in Nuremberg. At the end of the Middle Ages, the Schedelsche Weltchronik ( Nuremberg ), which was published in both German and Latin, testifies to the continuing interest in this genre of historiography.

literature

  • William Adler: Time immemorial. Archaic history and its sources in Christian chronography from Julius Africanus to George Syncellus (= Dumbarton Oaks Studies. Vol. 26). Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Washington DC 1989, ISBN 0-88402-176-9 .
  • Richard W. Burgess, Michael Kulikowski: Mosaics of Time. The Latin Chronicle Traditions from the First Century BC to the Sixth Century AD. Volume 1: A Historical Introduction to the Chronicle Genre from its Origins to the High Middle Ages (= Studies in the early Middle Ages. Vol. 33). Brepols, Turnhout 2013, ISBN 978-2-503-53140-3 .
  • Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken : Studies on the Latin world chronicle up to the age of Otto von Freising. Triltsch, Düsseldorf 1957 (at the same time: Münster, university, dissertation, 1956).
  • Heinrich Gelzer : Sextus Julius Africanus and the Byzantine chronography. 2 parts in 1 volume (in deliveries). Hinrichs, Leipzig 1880–1898 (reprint. Gerstenberg, Hildesheim 1978, ISBN 3-8067-0748-0 ).
  • Karl H. Krüger : The Universal Chronicles (= Typology des sources du moyen age occidental. Vol. 16, ISSN  0775-3381 ). Brepols, Turnhout 1976.
  • Martin Wallraff (Ed.): World time. Christian world chronicle from two millennia in the holdings of the Thuringian University and State Library Jena. de Gruyter, Berlin a. a. 2005, ISBN 3-11-018480-X .
  • Gerhard Wolf, Norbert H. Ott (Hrsg.): Manual Chronicles of the Middle Ages. De Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2016.

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