The ''Breve chronicon Northmannicum'' or ''Little Norman Chronicle'' is a short, anonymous

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

chronicle A chronicle ( la, chronica, from Greek ''chroniká'', from , ''chrónos'' – "time") is a historical account of events arranged in chronological order, as in a timeline. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and lo ...

of the

Norman conquest of southern Italy The Norman conquest of southern Italy lasted from 999 to 1139, involving many battles and independent conquerors. In 1130, the territories in southern Italy united as the Kingdom of Sicily, which included the island of Sicily, the southern th ...

, probably written in

Apulia it, Pugliese , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = , demographics1_info1 = , demographic ...

in the early twelfth-century. It covers the years from the first Norman "invasion" of Apulia in 1041 to the death of

Robert Guiscard Robert Guiscard (; Modern ; – 17 July 1085) was a Norman adventurer remembered for the conquest of southern Italy and Sicily. Robert was born into the Hauteville family in Normandy, went on to become count and then duke of Apulia and Calabri ...

in 1085. Though once treated as an important source, its reliability and authenticity have been called into question by André Jacob, who showed that it is probably an eighteenth-century forgery by Pietro Polidori. According to John France, who seems unaware of Jacob's argument, it was based mainly on an

oral tradition Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. Vansina, Jan: ''Oral Tradition as History'' (1985 ...

and was subsequently used as a source for both the ''

Chronicon Amalfitanum In historiography, a ''chronicon'' is a type of chronicle or annals. Examples are: * ''Chronicon'' (Eusebius) * ''Chronicon'' (Jerome) *''Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham'' *'' Chronicon Burgense'' *'' Chronicon Ambrosianum'' *''Chronicon Compostellan ...

'' and

Romuald Guarna Romuald Guarna (between 1110 and 1120 – 1 April 1181/2) was the Archbishop of Salerno (as Romuald II) from 1153 to his death. He is remembered primarily for his ''Chronicon sive Annales'', an important historical record of his time. Life ...

. The first edition of the ''Chronicon'' was published by

Ludovico Antonio Muratori Lodovico Antonio Muratori (21 October 1672 – 23 January 1750) was an Italian historian, notable as a leading scholar of his age, and for his discovery of the Muratorian fragment, the earliest known list of New Testament books. Biography Born ...

in the fifth volume of his ''Rerum italicarum scriptores'' (1724) under the long title ''Breve chronicon Northmannicum de rebus in Iapygia et Apulia gestis contra Graecos''. The text he used was preserved in a twelfth- or thirteenth-century codex borrowed from Pietro Polidori, as well as a copy of ''c''.1530, both now lost. Only one authentic copy remains, though a forgery of G. Guerrieri also exists. In 1971 a new edition was published by Errico Cuozzo in the ''Bollettino dell'Istituto storico italiano per il Medioevo''.Errico Cuozzo, "Il Breve Chronicon Northmannicum", ''Bollettino dell'Istituto storico italiano per il Medioevo'', 83 (1971), pp.131–232.

Notes

{{Authority control Italian chronicles Catepanate of Italy 12th century in Italy 12th-century Latin books Norman conquest of southern Italy