Frutolf of Michelsberg (died 17 January 1103) was a monk in Michelsberg Abbey in Bamberg,

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, of which he became prior. He was probably a native of

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. Frutolf was possibly a teacher of the

quadrivium From the time of Plato through the Middle Ages, the ''quadrivium'' (plural: quadrivia) was a grouping of four subjects or arts—arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy—that formed a second curricular stage following preparatory work in the ...

in the monastery, but principally a librarian and manuscript copyist. In this capacity he was responsible for a substantial increase in the stock of the Michelsberg library. Some of the manuscripts he copied are still extant. He was also an author, writing in

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 ...

. His "Chronicle of the World" (''Chronica'') is among the most complete and best-organised of the early

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 ...

. It extends from the creation to 1099 and after Frutolf's death was edited and extended by other Michelsberg monks. It is also fairly certain that a "Breviary of Music" (''Breviarium de musica'') is by him. An unedited liturgical treatise entitled ''De officiis divinis'' (On the divine offices) survives in Frutolf's own hand in Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, Msc. Lit. 134. He may also have written ''De rhithmomachie'', a work concerning a popular medieval mathematical and strategy based board game. He developed a critical view of history and awareness of anachronism, among other things pointing out that "some songs as 'vulgar fables' made

Theoderic the Great Theodoric (or Theoderic) the Great (454 – 30 August 526), also called Theodoric the Amal ( got, , *Þiudareiks; Greek: , romanized: ; Latin: ), was king of the Ostrogoths (471–526), and ruler of the independent Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy ...

, Attila and Ermanaric into contemporaries, when any reader of

Jordanes Jordanes (), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat widely believed to be of Gothic descent who became a historian later in life. Late in life he wrote two works, one on Roman history ('' Romana'') a ...

knew that this was not the case".The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, page 245, Yitzhak Hen, Matthew Innes, Cambridge University Press, 2000. .

Sources

* Waitz, G. (ed.), 1844: ''Ekkehardi Uraugiensis Chronica'', MGH SS 6, 33-210. Stuttgart: Monumenta Germaniae Historica
online
* Schmale, Franz-Josef (ed.), 1972: ''Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken und die anonyme Kaiserchronik''. in I. Schmale-Ott: ''Ausgewählte Quellen zur deutschen Geschichte des Mittelalters'' (Freiherr-vom-Stein-Gedächtnisausgabe), vol. 15, 1972; includes inter alia ''Einführung zu Frutolf'', pp. 4–19; ''Frutolfs Chronik'', pp. 46–121 (Latin/German text from the year 1000 onwards) * Schmale, F.-J., Schmale-Ott (eds.), MGH 33 *McCarthy, T. J. H., ''Music, scholasticism and reform: Salian Germany, 1024–1125'' (Manchester, 2009), pp. 40–3, 94–108. *McCarthy, T. J. H., ‘Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle, the schools of Bamberg and the transmission of imperial polemic’, ''Haskins Society Journal'' 23 (2011), 51–70. *McCarthy, T. J. H., ''Chronicles of the Investiture Contest: Frutolf of Michelsberg and his continuators'' (Manchester, 2014). . *McCarthy, T. J. H., ‘''Quos manu sua pene omnes ipse scripsit'': Frutolf of Michelsberg’s legacy to a Bamberg scriptorium’, in A. Nievergelt et al. (eds), ''Scriptorium. Wesen, Funktion, Eigenheiten'' (Comité international de Paléographie latine, XVIII. Internationaler Kongress St. Gallen 11.–14. September 2013; Munich, 2015), pp. 325–37. *McCarthy, T. J. H., ‘Scriptural allusion in the crusading accounts of Frutolf of Michelsberg and his continuators’, in E. Lapina and N. Morton (eds), ''The uses of the Bible in crusader sources'' (Leiden, 2017), pp. 152–75. *McCarthy, T. J. H., ''The continuations of Frutolf of Michelsberg's Chronicle'' (Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 74; Wiesbaden, 2019).

References

German Benedictines German chroniclers 11th-century Latin writers 11th-century births 1103 deaths People of medieval Bavaria German male non-fiction writers 11th-century German historians Medieval music theorists 12th-century German historians {{RC-bio-stub