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Biographies

A Scribe’s Life (3): Snorri Sturluson

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This article is part of an ongoing series of short biographies of medieval scribes.

Scribe: Snorri Sturluson
Lived c. 1179 – 1241
Location: Reykholt, Iceland
Notable works:
Prose Edda – literary work, mythological narrative, and poetics guide
Heimskringla (History of the Norwegian Kings) – political chronicle
Egils saga (?) – Icelandic family saga/warrior-poet narrative

Of all the historians and scribes this series will be covering, there are few who will have such a prominent life outside of their written works than the Icelander Snorri Sturluson. He is almost certainly the only historian we will be covering with the political agency to directly disobey a king and be assassinated for his temerity. Unfortunately, Snorri’s own fascinating story and contentious political life is generally subordinated in the popular consciousness to his most famous work, the Prose Edda, a text simultaneously praised as our primary source for much of what we know of Old Norse mythology, and condemned refracting that mythology through the lens of Christianity. But to construe Snorri’s legacy as being the Prose Edda, and construe the Prose Edda as being a flawed recollection of pre-Christian belief, is more than a little reductionist and not really fair on either.

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Biographies

A Scribe’s Life (2): John of Worcester

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This article is part of an ongoing series of short biographies of medieval scribes.

Scribe: John of Worcester
Lived: c.1075 – 1140
Location: Worcester Priory
Notable works: Chronicon ex chronicis

John of Worcester was a contemporary of William of Malmesbury, Orderic Vitalis, and Henry of Huntingdon (among others) and, while it may be fair to say that his name is lesser known of this esteemed company, his Chronicon is an important and unique source of English history. John’s chronicle provides much in both content and approach to differentiate it from other contemporary histories, while at the same time being invaluable for the evidence it provides of inter-connected networks of scholarship in post-Conquest England. Naturally, the Chronicon finds its greatest direct historical value in its record of post-Conquest history, as this was the cultural milieu in which John operated. However, John was an excellent scholar and the work he did in compiling a history of Anglo-Saxon England from varied sources, grafting it to material relating to broader Western European history, is masterful. (Almost all the work I do with John’s Chronicon relates to pre-Conquest history). Yet for many, John’s name is more likely to evoke the spectre of an ongoing scholarly debate than it is a hard-working scribe and historian, a scholar thought of highly by Orderic, and a correspondent of William, with whom he exchanged sources. You see, until quite recently, the Chronicon was believed to be primarily the work of Florence of Worcester, based on this entry for the year 1118:

Dom Florence of Worcester, a monk of that monastery, died on the 7th July. His acute observation, and laborious and diligent studies have rendered this chronicle of chronicles [chronica ex chronicis] above all others. Continue reading A Scribe’s Life (2): John of Worcester →

Biographies

A Scribe’s Life (1): William of Malmesbury

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This is the first of an ongoing series of short biographies of medieval scribes.

Scribe: William of Malmesbury
Lived c. 1095 – 1143
Location: Malmesbury Abbey, England
Notable works:
Gesta regum Anglorum (Deeds of the English Kings) – political chronicle (449 – 1120)
Gesta pontificum Anglorum (Deeds of the English Bishops) – ecclesiastical chronicle (449 – 1120)
Historia Novella (The New History) – history of contemporary events (1126-1142)
Vita sancti Wulfstani (Life of Saint Wulfstan) – hagiography
De antiquitate Glastoniensis ecclesiae (The Early History of Glastonbury)

It is probably a little unfair to reduce William of Malmesbury to the role of ‘scribe’ or even ‘cleric.’ William was a scholar, an historian, an author and hagiographer, a competent linguist, reluctant politician, librarian and manuscript collector, and (to be a little cynical) something of a forger, propagandist, and historical revisionist. There are few historians and theologians from medieval England that have left such a broad corpus of material for us to examine, and none between Bede in the eight-century, and William in the twelfth. Continue reading A Scribe’s Life (1): William of Malmesbury →