The Medieval Chronicle Society is an international and interdisciplinary organization founded to facilitate the work of scholars interested in medieval

annals Annals ( la, annāles, from , "year") are a concise historical record in which events are arranged chronologically, year by year, although the term is also used loosely for any historical record. Scope The nature of the distinction between ann ...

and chronicles, or more generally medieval

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods of historians in developing history as an academic discipline, and by extension is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiography of a specific topic covers how historians ha ...

. It was founded in 1999 and in February 2011 had 380 members.

Aims and history

Annals and chronicles were the main genres of historical writing in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

. Consequently, they have always been of great importance to historians. The extent to which they are also of interest to students of

medieval literature Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages (that is, the one thousand years from the fall of the Western Roman Empire ca. AD 500 to the beginning of t ...

or of

historical linguistics Historical linguistics, also termed diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of language change over time. Principal concerns of historical linguistics include: # to describe and account for observed changes in particular languages # ...

was only fully realised in the latter part of the 20th century. Since many chronicles are illustrated, they are also a fruitful object of study for

art historians The history of art focuses on objects made by humans for any number of spiritual, narrative, philosophical, symbolic, conceptual, documentary, decorative, and even functional and other purposes, but with a primary emphasis on its aesthetic visu ...

. It was the desire for a forum in which these disciplines could operate together that led to the foundation of the society. The history of the society began with a series of triennial conferences initially in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

, but later moving from place to place. These early conferences were hosted by Erik Kooper (English studies, Utrecht). It was at the second of these conferences, in 1999, that the society was formally founded. The society maintains a website financed by the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

, and publishes a regular newsletter with information on recent publications in the chronicles field. The Society’s logo, depicting two interlocked dragons, was inspired by a unique series of fifteenth-century Utrecht manuscripts, all containing one or two dragons as part of their historiated initials. These two particular dragons were adopted for the logo because they aptly represented the twin disciplines of history and literature, and the city where the Society was established in 1999.

Journal ''The Medieval Chronicle''

Volumes of proceedings of the first three conferences were published by Rodopi. When the society was founded, this triennial publication was transformed into a yearbook, now the peer-reviewed journal ''The Medieval Chronicle''. It is edited by Erik Kooper and (since volume 8) Sjoerd Levelt. The journal is trilingual, with articles in English, French and German. As well as the proceedings of the society's conferences, and also of the Cambridge Chronicle Symposium, the journal includes research submitted independently of the conferences. A number of text editions of chronicles have also been published here.

Conferences

Conferences to date: #1996 Utrecht ( Driebergen) #1999 Utrecht (Driebergen) #2002 Utrecht (

Doorn Doorn is a town in the municipality of Utrechtse Heuvelrug in the central Netherlands, in the province of Utrecht. History In a document from 885 to 896, the settlement is called "Thorhem", dwelling of Thor, the God of Thunder. Vikings quart ...

) #2005

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of letters, symbols, etc., especially by sight or touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifaceted process involving such areas as word recognition, orthography (spelling ...

#2008

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdom ...

#2011

Pécs Pécs ( , ; hr, Pečuh; german: Fünfkirchen, ; also known by other #Name, alternative names) is List of cities and towns of Hungary#Largest cities in Hungary, the fifth largest city in Hungary, on the slopes of the Mecsek mountains in the countr ...

#2014

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a populat ...

#2017 Lisbon #2021

Poznań Poznań () is a city on the River Warta in west-central Poland, within the Greater Poland region. The city is an important cultural and business centre, and one of Poland's most populous regions with many regional customs such as Saint Joh ...

#2023 Nancy (in planning)

Projects

A number of interdisciplinary projects have been inspired by the society, including ''Repertorium Chronicarum'' an on-line database of Latin chronicle manuscripts maintained by Dan Embree on the website of Mississippi State university. EMC cover

A major project of the society was the ''Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle'' published in Leiden by Brill, edited by Graeme Dunphy.Graeme Dunphy. ''Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle''. Leiden: Brill. 2009. . See page viii for the link to the Chronicle Society. Reviews:
The Medieval Review
'' August 2010;

' 3 August 2011; ''Aetas'' 20 (2011), 208-11;
IASL-Online
'; ''Modern Language Review'' 107 (2012), 1226-28;
Francia-Recensio
', 2012; ''Revue des Etudes Sud-Est Européennes / Journal of South-East European Studies'', 50 (2012), 365-366;
H-Soz-u-Kult
', 2012; ''Mediaevistik'', 24 (2012), 381-383; ''Das Mittelalter'', 17 (2012), 153-154; ''Historische Zeitschrift'', 296 (2013), 174-175;

', 13 (2013), Nr. 6. The ''EMC'' contains around 2500 usually quite short articles on individual authors or on anonymous works. A majority of these are from Western Christendom, but there are also entries on Slavic, Byzantine, Syriac, Islamic and Jewish chronicles. These give information on the date, language, form and manuscript tradition, and discuss issues which have been highlighted in recent scholarship. There are also about 60 longer "thematic" articles on particular aspects of chronicles. The two-volume paper edition appeared in 2010 and runs to around 1830 pages, with about 60 black-and-white full-page illustrations. About 450 scholars collaborated in writing it. An electronic edition with additional articles appeared in 2012, co-edited by Cristian Bratu; updates with significant expansions appeared in 2016 and 2021.

References

External links