Chronicles of Fredegar

This is a fully revised, much augmented and extended version of a book first published in German in 2007, which has been much cited in subsequent work on Frankish history of the seventh and eighth centuries. In its new and expanded form, it is intended to serve as a handbook for all those who become engaged, professionally or otherwise, with the anonymous seventh century historical text, known for centuries as The Chronicle of Fredegar, and with its separate but related eighth century version that may have been called the Historia vel Gesta Francorum. In doing so, it looks at the arguments over the nature, origin and authorship of both versions, from the time when the chronicle received its only complete edition in 1888 up to the present, but also at the way it has been used and understood from its first creation onwards, and at the distribution in time and place of all the surviving complete and fragmentary manuscripts of both versions. Each of these manuscripts and the more recently discovered fragments is subjected to detailed description, to encompass script, decoration, state of both the text and the codex itself, including loss of folios and quires, and all subsequent annotation and correction that can now be detected. All other texts found in manuscripts containing Fredegarian material are also described, and useful references provided. All of the printed editions of the chronicle from the earliest in the sixteenth century onwards are given a similar detailed treatment, with the contexts of their creation and the vivid personalities of the successive editors also explored. In addition, current historical arguments in which one or both versions of the chronicle have been called as witness are also discussed and some new interpretations are offered. It concludes with seven appendices of texts and a substantial and up to date bibliography and index of manuscripts.