TY - CHAP
T1 - MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHICAL TERMINOLOGY
T2 - THE MEANING OF THE WORD ANNALES
AU - Burgess, R. W.
AU - Kulikowski, Michael
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2013 Brill. All rights reserved.
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - The term annals/annales as it is generally used by modern medievalists – to describe Easter tables with infrequent historical notations or similar works without the Easter table apparatus – is inaccurate and can be dangerous, because it can give us a false idea of the development and nature of medieval historiography. The word was never used with this strict meaning in the Middle Ages, when it generally meant only ‘history’ or ‘written record of the past’ and after c.1200 gradually came to be used as a synonym for chronicles as well, a development that arose from a misunderstanding of descriptions of early Latin historiography in Cicero and the newly popular Aulus Gellius. Therefore annals and chronicles were never contrasted in the Middle Ages as two distinct genres as they often are today. Believing that they were distinct genres with separate origins leads to erroneous conclusions about the works described by medieval authors as ‘annals’, the development of these works, and their relationship to chronicles. We should, therefore, call such works ‘chronicles’, which is what they are, and in order to distinguish them from other types of chronicles, like those of Jerome or Sigebert, we should use a term like ‘paschal chronicles’ or ‘Easter-table chronicles’.
AB - The term annals/annales as it is generally used by modern medievalists – to describe Easter tables with infrequent historical notations or similar works without the Easter table apparatus – is inaccurate and can be dangerous, because it can give us a false idea of the development and nature of medieval historiography. The word was never used with this strict meaning in the Middle Ages, when it generally meant only ‘history’ or ‘written record of the past’ and after c.1200 gradually came to be used as a synonym for chronicles as well, a development that arose from a misunderstanding of descriptions of early Latin historiography in Cicero and the newly popular Aulus Gellius. Therefore annals and chronicles were never contrasted in the Middle Ages as two distinct genres as they often are today. Believing that they were distinct genres with separate origins leads to erroneous conclusions about the works described by medieval authors as ‘annals’, the development of these works, and their relationship to chronicles. We should, therefore, call such works ‘chronicles’, which is what they are, and in order to distinguish them from other types of chronicles, like those of Jerome or Sigebert, we should use a term like ‘paschal chronicles’ or ‘Easter-table chronicles’.
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U2 - 10.1163/9789401209885_008
DO - 10.1163/9789401209885_008
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85052698497
T3 - Medieval Chronicle
SP - 165
EP - 192
BT - Medieval Chronicle
PB - Brill Rodopi
ER -