Matthew Paris

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Matthew Paris

Circa 1200–1259
English monk and historian

Obscure Origins . Matthew Paris was a monk of the Benedictine Order at the Abbey of St. Albans in England in the first half of the thirteenth century. The exact date of his birth is not known, nor are the details of his early life, but his activities become somewhat easier to follow once he became a monk on 21 January 1217 and subsequently expressed himself in many writings.

Monk of the Monastery . It is quite common to associate monks of the Middle Ages with remote monasteries, because generally only monastic monks had the privilege of engaging in a relatively pure religious life, especially important to contemporary notions of spirituality, such as isolation and economic independence of the community. A religious site was founded at St. Albans in Hertfordshire, England, around 793 and developed with construction of the renowned abbey church in 1077, leading to greater wealth and importance for the shrine of the first martyr for Christianity in Roman-held Britain, the pagan Alban. The abbey church generated so much attention to the story and remains of Alban that the invading Danish kings, wishing both to protect and control the relics, took them back to Denmark. For much of the Middle Ages, St. Albans was nonetheless a market town, a Roman outpost transformed into a medieval center of exchange. The secular residents of St. Albans were, however, to feel the sometimes overpowering presence of the abbey. The town seemed to hold a particular attraction during the early thirteenth century, in return for which the townspeople paid a heavy price in disruptions: in 1213 a council was held at the Abbey at which both barons and churchmen discussed their grievances in what was to become the first step toward the Magna Carta of 1215; in 1217, after the Magna Carta was ignored by King John and the barons invited the French to help them depose him, the dauphin of France, Louis, initially occupied the town for a while, then later that same year returned to despoil it after it had been sacked by the king’s mercenary leader, Faulkes de Bréauté. As monk at the Abbey, and as a traveler to London and other English cities as well as to Norway, Paris had a front-row seat to observe the town, as well as the kingdom, in some disarray throughout an important period of English history.

Accounts . Paris’s writings, which could only be carried out in the duly privileged environment of monastery or court, start with his original accounts beginning in 1235 in his great work, the Chronica Majora (Great Chronicle). The first task of the chronicler, as medieval writers of history were called, was to observe and record events, either from direct experience or from local sources. Paris conceived of his project as a large-scale enterprise: a single chronicle might encompass several thousand years in one continuous account. Generally, a medieval chronicler did not re-create originally every part of an account from biblical Creation to his present day, but rather re-edited an earlier author that he chose to use up to a certain date, as Paris had Roger of Wendover’s Flowers of History. Once, however, Paris reached the date of 1235, the content of his Chronica Majora is his own and is presented accordingly as a first-hand account and/or critical commentary. Some of Paris’s works are written in his own hand in either a weighty “book” handwriting, or a cursive “court” or “charter” script. Although there seems no evidence to corroborate an inference from his name that Paris was directly connected with the city of Paris either by birth or education, it is thought by some that before he entered the Abbey of St. Albans, Matthew may have studied in Paris and acquired there a curiously secular character to his handwriting. The lack of a consistent, finished, and technical quality to Matthew’s penmanship suggests, however, that he was not actually trained as a scribe. Perhaps writing en route, Paris may have devised a rapid script as an expedient solution carefully contrived to meet the urgent need to write prodigiously, but with elegant authority. Once back at the abbey, his hand could become more deliberate on the piece of vellum and further embellished with telling little drawings in the margins or his various maps and plans which were unsurpassed in European medieval geography, before the rise of portolani, or nautical charts. His works, Chronica Majora, Historia Minor (Smaller History), Historia Anglorum (The History of the Angles), and History of St. Albans (perhaps as well a Life of Stephen Langton also attributed to him), made for fascinating reading for many of his contemporaries within and outside England who sought to supplement their libraries with current history. Such chronicles were often within collections of otherwise strictly religious works.

Observations . Paris traveled about freely, to London and the English royal court. During the reign of Louis IX of France, he went to Norway with letters of the king of France inviting the Norwegian king, Haakon IV, to join his crusade. As he traveled, Paris seems to have visited locals, observed, then reflected and commented upon what he saw, readying his thoughts to be contemplated by others. If possible, he encapsulated his observations and feelings together to persuade the reader, who could in turn, of course, reject his opinions (and observations). Without doubt, Paris was, as he has been described by historians of our day, “a man of strong views” whose “sympathies and prejudices color every line he wrote.” Foreigners, the king, churchmen, and mendicant friars are all repeatedly criticized throughout his works, while the honor of St. Albans and associated English people is always preserved. Much of the evidence in Paris’s own writings supports the assertion that he was on intimate terms with the French king Louis IX; the English king Henry III and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall; and perhaps with many members of both French and English royal families.

Stereotypes . However much exposure Paris’s ideas might have had when forming the most recent component of his various histories, his readers still faced the age-old difficulty of all readers when it comes to another’s account. In the thirteenth century many religious writers were playing out their side of a rivalry between monks and friars, between the older religious orders, like the Benedictines, and the newly established ones, like the Franciscans and Dominicans. Paris, like some other contemporary authors, accepted at face value the many different epithets applied to the other side: “hypocrites,” “false preachers,” or “vagabonds.” When, however, he turns to the subject of the economic lifestyle of the friars, it does appear that Paris has his own accounts to settle. He questions, as om-ers, the ability of a community of Dominicans at Dunstable to be able to pay for the building of a comfortable house, while professing voluntary poverty. The number of indulgences, the need for accounting, the possibilities for spiritual wrangles made theirs a business as highly specialized as the sale of sheep on the wool market. Yet, it was so highly lucrative, with revenues regularly augmented by other forms of mendicancy, that they could not help but become wealthy men.

Personal Affairs . Paris wrote his series of chronicles from a specific perspective, which historians of today have described as “a gathering behind walls.” On the other side he encountered Dominicans and Franciscans, whose contemplative “cell is the whole earth” and whose “cloister is the ocean.” While he had waited as much as thirty-five years to join the abbey at St. Albans and had since tasted much of life outside the cloister, he still could not refrain from exhorting other brethren to keep well to themselves so they might not “usurp to themselves the functions of the clergy or the scholar.” Paris remained at home in St. Albans until his death in 1259, sustaining what might be called the historical school or institute of the monastery of St. Albans, then the chief center of English narrative history or chronicle. With a slightly different evolution for his abbey, it might have become the nucleus of a great university, and like few among the regular orders, he might have found himself a colleague of the friars he so criticized.