7 - History Books at Worcester, c.1050–1150, and the Making of the Worcester Chronicle

Summary

According to Orderic Vitalis, the creation of the now famous Worcester Chronica Chronicarum (hereafter CC) was begun on the instructions of Bishop Wulfstan II (1062–95). Orderic, a monk of Saint-Evroult in Normandy, presumably obtained this information on a visit to Worcester. There he met John, the monk whose name appears in a rubric at the chronicle's entry for 1138 in the copy of the chronicle created by and apparently for the Benedictine community at Worcester cathedral (now OCCC MS 157). That manuscript was produced, reworked and extended by multiple scribes over at least a quarter century. The manuscript is now incomplete, breaking off in the entry for 1140. The first phase of work on the manuscript seems to have been completed in the second decade of the twelfth century (on the basis of changes to the bishop lists, which end c. 1114), but it is conceivable that it was produced using materials that were compiled earlier. In that context it is plausible that the monk Florence, whose death is recorded in the entry for 1118, with the claim that his ‘scholarly labours have made this chronicle of chronicles outstanding among all others’, played a part in preparatory work for the history. The size (32.9 by 25 cm, 201 fols.) of the manuscript, togetherwith its decoration, suggest a level of ambition for the project in keeping with an association with Wulfstan, who was being promoted as a saint in the early twelfth century. However, the manuscript underwent significant alterations in the following decades as the community received different accounts of the recent past. Important work on the chronicle's sources and phases of creation has been done by Martin Brett and the most recent editors of the chronicle: Patrick McGurk and R. R. Darlington. This essay stands on the shoulders of those scholarly giants to re-examine the evidence provided by OCCC MS 157, surviving copies of some of its potential sources, and the copies of the CC made in the twelfth century. The aim is to reflect on what these manuscripts reveal about the ambitions of those involved in the Worcester project and the clues they provide about the movement of manuscripts containing material concerning English history in the twelfth century.