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

Bamberg Bamberg (, , ; East Franconian German, East Franconian: ''Bambärch'') is a town in Upper Franconia district in Bavaria, Germany, on the river Regnitz close to its confluence with the river Main (river), Main. Bamberg had 79,000 inhabitants in ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

, of which he became

prior The term prior may refer to: * Prior (ecclesiastical), the head of a priory (monastery) * Prior convictions, the life history and previous convictions of a suspect or defendant in a criminal case * Prior probability, in Bayesian statistics * Prio ...

. He was probably a native of

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

. 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 th ...

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 languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

. 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 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 ...

. 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 An anachronism (from the Greek , 'against' and , 'time') is a chronological inconsistency in some arrangement, especially a juxtaposition of people, events, objects, language terms and customs from different time periods. The most common type ...

, 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, was king of the Ostrogoths (475–526), and ruler of the independent Ostrogothic Kingdom of Italy between 493 and 526, regent of the Visigoths (511–526 ...

Attila Attila ( or ; ), frequently called Attila the Hun, was the ruler of the Huns from 434 until his death in early 453. He was also the leader of an empire consisting of Huns, Ostrogoths, Alans, and Gepids, among others, in Central Europe, C ...

and

Ermanaric Ermanaric (died 376) was a Greuthungian king who before the Hunnic invasion evidently ruled a sizable portion of Oium, the part of Scythia inhabited by the Goths at the time. He is mentioned in two Roman sources: the contemporary writings of ...

into contemporaries, when any reader of

Jordanes Jordanes (; Greek language, Greek: Ιορδάνης), also written as Jordanis or Jornandes, was a 6th-century Eastern Roman bureaucrat, claimed to be of Goths, Gothic descent, who became a historian later in life. He wrote two works, one on R ...

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 The (Latin for "Historical Monuments of Germany"), frequently abbreviated MGH, is a comprehensive series of carefully edited and published primary sources, both chronicle and archival, for the study of parts of Northwestern, Central and Souther ...

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 Chroniclers from the Holy Roman Empire 11th-century writers in Latin 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