Vernacular Chronicles c.1000

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of vernacular chronicling c. ad 1000. It discusses both work on the surviving manuscript of Chronicle A and Chronicle G, a copy of Chronicle A produced at this time. G is one of the few Anglo-Saxon vernacular chronicles to survive in an original manuscript setting alongside other works. This is used to underline the probable episcopal connections of G and A with Winchester and further to illuminate the reception of Bede. The chapter covers the production now of a Latin translation of a vernacular chronicle by a layman, Ealdorman Æthelweard. It places in the hands of Wulfstan II, archbishop of York, a copy of the Northern Recension, an important textual ancestor of Chronicle D, and considers the unusual references to women in D’s tenth-century annals. The chapter provides a conspectus of vernacular chronicling at the height of the so-called Monastic (or Benedictine) reform movement.