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Prologue to the Book of Histories | Li prologue ou livre des estoires

British Library MS Additional 12029 f.22v [Public Domain]

Introduction to the Text

This text is the prologue to a long work of history compiled in Northern France in the first third of the thirteenth century CE. The history was intended to be universal: spanning the creation of the world, through the ancient civilisations of Assyria, Greece and Rome, via the age of migrations in Europe, to the rise of powerful medieval kingdoms. However, the history was not completed and in fact only recounts as far as the Roman emperor Julius Caesar, hence the title commonly given to the work: Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César (Ancient History until Caesar).

Despite being unfinished, the work was immensely popular in medieval Europe, and seventy-four copies survive of the first redaction (the first version, before the text was revised). These manuscripts were produced in places as far apart as Paris, Venice, and Acre (a crusader city in what is now Israel). It is often found in combination with another work of ancient history, the Faits des Romains (Deeds of the Romans), which indicates the great interest that medieval audiences had in ancient history.

The prologue has been included in the Global Medieval Sourcebook because it summarises the entire work (including the unfinished parts) and shows how medieval people in Western Europe wove together Biblical stories with the histories of pre-Christian empires.

Although the prologue is in rhymed verse, the main body of the history is in prose, with interspersed sections of verse offering moral lessons drawn from the historical content. However, when the text was recopied, these verse sections (including the prologue) were often omitted. This may suggest that audience expectations about works of history were changing, preferring the voice of the author - or the moral interpretation - to be less prominent.

About this Edition

This English translation is based on the transcription by Paul Meyer of Paris Bibliothèque Nationale Française MS 20125, ff. 1r-2v (corrected using Vienna Imperial and Royal Library Lambecius MS 258). A facsimile of the Paris manuscript is available online here. Meyer’s transcription was published in: Les premières compilations françaises d’histoire ancienne. I. - Les Faits des Romains. II. - Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César. Romania, vol 14, 1885, pp. 1-81. The transcription can be found on pp. 53-6. A digital version of this publication is available here.

Credits

Transcription by Paul MeyerTranslation by Mae Velloso-LyonsEncoded in TEI P5 XML by Mae Velloso-Lyons

Suggested citation: Anonymous. "Prologue to the Book of Histories." Trans. Mae Velloso-Lyons. Global Medieval Sourcebook. http://sourcebook.stanford.edu/text/book-histories-prologue. Retrieved on March 29, 2024.