The Chronicle of John of Worcester: Volume IV: Chronicula

John of Worcester is celebrated for his work on the Worcester Chronica Chronicarum, which was put together in stages in the first half of the twelfth century, and which became one of the most important historical texts to have survived from Britain of that period. A great deal of our understanding of early medieval British history, from before and after the Norman Conquest, depends upon it. At a late stage in the production of the Chronica Chronicarum, John turned his hand to the writing of an abbreviated chronicle, which he called his Chronicula, and which survives in a single, autograph manuscript in Trinity College, Dublin. The Chronicula interacts with its parent text, the Chronica Chronicarum, in interesting ways: it reassembles the Chronica according to the reigns of the emperors, it splices together information from different annals and sometimes redrafts the Chronica’s entries, thus providing an altered emphasis. The Chronicula also contains unique details (notably a set of poems and two long miracle episodes) and makes use of sources in ways that are not seen in the Chronica. In editing, translating, and providing a full introduction and commentary to the Chronicula for the first time, the volume provides both crucial access to twelfth-century historiographical material and unprecedented detail concerning the working methods of a twelfth-century monastic historian.

+P. McGurk, D. A. Woodman

David Woodman is Associate Professor in History at Robinson College, Cambridge, and Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge. He has held visiting research positions at Harvard, Trinity College, Dublin, and, most recently, New York University. Woodman has published extensively in the field of early medieval British history, with a particular focus on manuscripts, historiography, Latin literature, and documentary practices. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Honorary Secretary of the British Academy Anglo-Saxon Charters Committee.

Patrick McGurk, formerly Reader in Medieval History at Birkbeck College, University of London, was a leading palaeographer and historian of the early medieval period. As well as his important work on volumes two and three of the Worcester Chronicle, he specialised in the study of early medieval gospel books. In 1998 a number of his articles were published under the title Gospel Books and Early Latin Manuscripts.