There are two main themes or lines of inquiry in this very scholarly monograph. Both, in a sense, are posed by the title. One is to explore how a medieval chronicle was written and/or assembled, with Matthew Paris’ “awe inspiring” Chronica majora as the case study. The other is how information--primarily about the Mongol (Tartar) depredations in Hungary and eastwards in the 1230s and 1240s--reached a monk’s writing desk at a Benedictine house a few miles north of London.
The monastery of St. Albans has long been recognized as thirteenth-century England’s premier house of historical/literary production. By the time Matthew Paris (probably an Englishman) began to make his own mark, there was already Roger of Wendover’s major work, Flores Historiarum, as a guiding light for the venerated abbey. The house’s tradition of a well-informed and active scriptorium was widely recognized, making it a logical receiving station for information about both England and the further reaches of Christendom. Then we come to the 1240s. With V. H. Galbraith as the best known of the many who have examined and explicated the work of the monks there, current scholarship has broadened the scope of what we might think of as the collective “St. Albans curiosity”; alongside information about Henry III’s troubled kingship there was a regular concern for the affairs of Eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and the eastern Mediterranean. [1]
To summarize Reed’s presentation of how Matthew worked, perhaps the word “wove” brings home the way or method whereby new information was added to what had already been set down. Though the word “chronicle” implies a work basically shaped by a year-by-year narrative, in reality the author was free to return to what had already been set down for an earlier year in order to offer additions, revisions, changes of viewpoint, or corrections, as he now chose. Matthew’s great work was the end product and representative of this type of scholarly and literary effort. Without a thirteenth-century editor or publisher breathing down his neck for the final version, Matthew was free to give us a chronicle “written in stints.”
The book’s other theme, as proclaimed in its title, is to look at what was known to an English monk about the far-off Mongols, and how Matthew came to know it. This line of inquiry takes us from the parochial confines of a Benedictine house to an overview of Europe--to some extent at least, conceived and presented as a single entity: usually with just one pope, one emperor, one king of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, etc., even if all of these men and seats of power had enemies, rivals, and sceptics concerning rank and worthiness. Against an inclination to see medieval Europe as a network of parochial states and claims, we have here a view of “Catholic Europe as an intellectual free trade zone with personnel and resources flowing from place to place.” [2] And because of the wide recognition of the traditional and collective curiosity at work at the scriptorium at St. Albans regarding a concern for historical issues, especially touching Matthew’s own and well-recognized network of friends and informants, St. Albans was a logical collecting point for news from afar and abroad, as it was for domestic events and the ups and downs of the court of Henry III.
The search for Matthew’s sources of information about the Mongols is vast and widespread, no doubt utilizing both written and oral sources. Some of what he learned came to him through his own network of high level friends and their retinues: Richard of Cornwall, brother-in-law to the emperor and brother of the king, or Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln and a collecting point for all sorts of events, or John Mansel, who had fought in Italy and knew the continent, or rulers in Scandinavia, where Matthew himself had once been. And beyond what Matthew may have been told, written sources, of course--the “written memory” that makes it all possible--were widely circulated throughout Europe. Letters of Frederick II, of Duke Henry of Brabant, of Otto the papal legate, of King Bela of Hungary (in desperate need of aid), were but some of the sources of information. The wide networks of the Dominicans, many alumni of Oxford, carried news--usually “bad news”--across much of Europe. No one could fail to see the danger, if it were a distant one, posed by those godless monsters who “have destroyed cities, castles, and even municipal towns, and spared neither Christians, pagans, nor Jews, putting to death all alike without mercy...” as a letter from Hungary drove the point home in the hopes of a crusade.
If the invasions and depredations of the Mongols were the most dramatic events, or series of events, in thirteenth-century Europe, this book offers well-documented testimony to the widespread interest aroused by these horrors. Numerous illustrations bear witness to Matthew’s own hand and the pages of the manuscripts. Other illustrative material: Figure 5 (p. 174) is a table, showing how Matthew synthesized his various sources for the entry for 1241. On p. 318 we have his self-depiction, kneeling before the Virgin Nary. A long final chapter (“The Afterlife of Matthew’s Mongol Story”) traces the way the Chronicle was read, edited, and published in the centuries since Matthew offered his version of great events. His work, now available in such as the Rolls Series and modern translations, and analyzed in detailed studies by Richard Vaughan and others, reminds us of the gulf between monastic life and that too-familiar medieval one of the battlefield. [3]
A few critical comments, offered in the interest of easier reader-reception. The scholarship underlying this book is extremely impressive. However, the insertion of many paragraphs of Latin adds little to the narrative, as they are always followed by an English translation. Had they been omitted they would not have been missed. A few choices of wording would puzzle a student reader: “metadiegetic” or “mise-en-abîme” are well beyond the survey course in medieval history. A single table of all of Matthew’s writing would help clarify the long and impressive tale of weaving, re-weaving, and insertion. But these are minor points that tighter editing might have handled. All in all, very impressive scholarship on a subject of enduring interest, if not always an easy read.
--------
Notes:
1. V. H. Galbraith, “Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris,” in Kings and Chroniclers: Essays in English Medieval History (London: Hambledon, 1982), 5-48.
2. Reed, p. 53, quoting Hugh Thomas, The Secular Clergy in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), p. 239.
3. Richard Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958).