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

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

and

chronicle A chronicle (, 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 local events ...

s, or more generally medieval

historiography Historiography is the study of the methods used by historians in developing history as an academic discipline. By extension, the term ":wikt:historiography, historiography" is any body of historical work on a particular subject. The historiog ...

. 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 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

. Consequently, they have always been of great importance to

historians A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human species; as well as the ...

. 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 known as diachronic linguistics, is the scientific study of how languages change over time. It seeks to understand the nature and causes of linguistic change and to trace the evolution of languages. Historical li ...

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 aesthetics ...

. 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 List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...

, 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 The University of Liverpool (abbreviated UOL) is a Public university, public research university in Liverpool, England. Founded in 1881 as University College Liverpool, Victoria University (United Kingdom), Victoria University, it received Ro ...

, 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) #2005

Reading Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch. For educators and researchers, reading is a multifacete ...

#2008

Belfast Belfast (, , , ; from ) is the capital city and principal port of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan and connected to the open sea through Belfast Lough and the North Channel (Great Britain and Ireland), North Channel ...

#2011

Pécs Pécs ( , ; ; Slovak language, Slovak: ''Päťkostolie''; also known by #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 c ...

#2014

Liverpool Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population ...

#2017

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

#2021

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

#2023 Nancy #2026

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

(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 Brill may refer to: Places * Brielle (sometimes "Den Briel"), a town in the western Netherlands * Brill, Buckinghamshire, a village in England * Brill, Cornwall, a small village to the west of Constantine, Cornwall, UK * Brill, Wisconsin, an un ...

, 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;
Cahiers de Recherches Médiévales et Humanistes
', 2011; ''Revue des Etudes Sud-Est Européennes / Journal of South-East European Studies'', 50 (2012), 365-366;
Romania
', 131 (2013), 228-229;
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