MATTHEW PARIS

Monk, artist, and most important of the English chroniclers of the 13th century; b. c. 1199; d. 1259. He received the Benedictine habit in 1217, and was trained as a scribe and illuminator in his abbey of st. alban's. His first works were illustrated lives of saints (alban, Edward, and later, Thomas and Edmund of Canterbury). He started to write history, in about 1236, by helping Roger of Wendover whom he later replaced. In 1246, he was sent to reform the Norwegian abbey of St. Benet Holm, when the abbot disappeared with the community seal. Matthew arranged for loans from Cahorsin money-lenders and introduced the customs of St. Alban's there, but returned soon afterwards a disappointed man. Thenceforth, he worked tirelessly at writing and rewriting his extensive histories: Chronica majora, Historia Anglorum, Flores historiarum, and Abbreviatio chronicorum. These survive in part or in whole in Matthew's own hand and are enlivened with marginal drawings of coats of arms or of the events he describes. His exceptionally full and well-informed narrative, based often on conversations with royalty and magnates who stayed at the abbey, is at times prejudiced and partial. His illustrated life of St. Alban represents the highest development of the saint's legend, and his drawings of an elephant, and of himself prostrate before the Madonna and Child, are justly famous. One of his lesser literary works, the chronicle of his own abbey, describing several of its monks, and the works of art in the church, is both revealing and successful. He lacked the discipline and patience necessary for a true scholar and historian, but he excelled at retelling contemporary gossip and events.

Bibliography: Works. Chronica majora, ed. h. r. luard, 7v. (Rolls Series 57); Historia Anglorum, ed. f. madden, 3 v. (Rolls Series 44). t. walsingham, Gesta abbatum monasterii Sancti Albani, ed. h. t. riley, 3 v. (Rolls Series 28) v.1. Literature. Illustrations to the Life of St. Alban in Trinity College Dublin ms. E. i. 40, reproduced by w. r. l. lowe and e. f. jacob (Oxford 1924). v. h. galbraith, Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris (Glasgow 1944). r. vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, Eng. 1958).

[h. farmer]