Chronicon

Abstract: This work illustrates the changing rhythms of the Benedictine monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno, one of the great centres of Dark Ages Europe, placing particular emphasis on its ever-changing political context and its important role in the making of the Middle Ages. Situated in the foothills of the Abruzzi in Central Italy, the monastery's epic history has long been known from the "Chronicon Vulturnense", an illuminated manuscript written in the middle of the 12th century. Its author paid attention both to the spectacular rise of the monastery as a result of Charlemagne's patronage and to its cataclysimic sack by Arab marauders in 881. In 1981, when Richard Hodges began the excavation of the site, new light was thrown on the history of the monastery and its Samnite and Roman origins. The 8th-century monatery was modest; by contrast the 9th-century monastic city was grandiose and remarkable for its wealth of architecture and artistic culture. San Vincenzo is revealed as a model Carolingen monastery.

Abstract: Ademar of Chabannes (988-1034) of noble family, a-monk in the monastery of St. Cybard (Eparchus) at Angouleme, compiled a Chronicon in three books. The first begins with the origins of the Franks and ends with the death of Pepin the Short in 768; the second deals with the reign of Charlemagne; the third covers the years 814 to 1030. The first two books and the first fifteen chapters of the third (down to the year 877) are wholly derivative from identifiable sources. But from chapter sixteen onward the third book provides valuable information chiefly on the period 877-1030 in Aquitaine, presumably drawn from local written sources and from the memories of Ademar's associates. These included notably his two uncles, who were attached to the monastery of St. Martial at Limoges, as was Ademar himself in his youth. It was at St. Martial that on a stormy night in 1010 Ademar had a vision in the heavens of a fiery Cross with Christ upon it weeping a great river of tears: an experience that rendered him so ...

Abstract: From the perspective of modern historiography, the historical works of Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636) are of poor quality. They fail to discriminate between the important and the unimportant. They are silent when it would seem that their author should be taking note of what we know was happening -matters of which he was surely aware. They sometimes offer extended remarks on small items. And at times they are unbearably homiletical. We are inclined to think it unfortunate that they became major sources and models for medieval historiography. E. A. Thompson, after ruefully admitting that for the period from 589 to 632 Isidore's works are our only sources for Visigothic Iberia, says of the good bishop's Historia Gothorum Wandalorum Sueborum: "He could hardly have told us less, except by not writing at all."' Ernest Brehaut says: