by Scott McGill
The Gallic Chronicleof 511 is another anonymous Gallic continuation of Jerome, though like Prosper it follows only an interpolated epitome of Jerome. It was probably written in Arles and is attributed to Sulpicius Severus in the sole surviving thirteenth‐century manuscript (Biblioteca Histórica Marqués de Valdecilla of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid 134). The text has been heavily epitomized (perhaps more than once), so it is difficult to say anything specific about the author or his purposes. Hydatius, Orosius, the Gallic Chronicleof 452, and a recension of the Consularia Italica are the most obvious surviving sources for the work, and they make up the bulk of the narrative before ca. 450. There is also evidence for the use of a now‐lost chronicle of Arles and a source that parallels Marius of Avenches, Isidore, and the Consularia Caesaraugustana. After 450 the chronicle becomes more valuable as an independent witness to events in southern Gaul, northern Spain, and northern Italy (Chron. Min. 1, pp. 626–628, 632–666; Burgess 2001b; Holder‐Egger 1875; Murray 2003, pp. 98–100 [translation from section 71]).
Marcellinus comes, an Illyrian courtier living in Constantinople, composed a continuation chronicle of Jerome, first to 518 and then to 534. As they did Prosper, consularia prompted him to abandon Jerome’s chronological structure of regnal years, Olympiads, and years from the birth of Abraham for consuls, to which he added indictions. His major identifiable sources for the early part of his chronicle are Orosius, a recension of the Descriptio Consulum that continued down to the early years of the sixth century (a related source was used in the Chronicon Paschale to 468), a recension of the Consularia Italica, and Gennadius’s De Viris Illustribus. The chronicle was recommended along with Prosper by Cassiodorus, and it was later used by Jordanes, early Irish chroniclers, and Bede (Chron. Min. 2, pp. 60–104; Croke 1995, 2001).
An unknown chronicler continued the second edition of Marcellinus’s chronicle from 534 to at least 548, where the text breaks off in mid‐sentence in the sole surviving sixth‐century manuscript (Oxford, Auct. T. II. 26). Although Brian Croke believes that the continuator wrote in Constantinople, the author’s sources of information and his focus are fundamentally Italian, and the manuscript is Italian as well, so there is nothing that prevents the work itself from being Italian (Chron. Min. 2, pp. 104–108; Croke 1995, pp. xxv, 45–52, 127–39; Croke 2001, pp. 216–236).
Marius, the bishop of Avenches in Switzerland (573–593), continued Prosper down to 581, though his work is little more than annotated (and not even fully or regularly annotated) fasti that offer frequent entries only from 553. Marius employed five identifiable written sources, of which the most important are a recension of the Consularia Italica; an Italian chronicle, or consularia, exhibiting parallels with the continuation of Marcellinus comes; and a Burgundian/Frankish chronicle exhibiting parallels with Gregory of Tours. The work survives in a single manuscript (British Library, Add. 16974), the same manuscript that contains the Gallic Chronicleof 452 (Chron. Min. 2, pp. 232–239; Favrod 1993; Murray 2003, pp. 100–108 [translation]).
Victor, bishop of Tunnuna in Africa Proconsularis, lived during the second and third quarters of the sixth century and composed a chronicle that covers the years 444 to 565 as a continuation of a truncated version of the 455 edition of Prosper (Muhlberger 1986). He spent the last 25 or so years of his life in exile or prisons across the Mediterranean for his staunch support of the Three Chapters, anathematized by Justinian in 543/544. His chronicle follows Prosper in using consulates down to 541 (from corrupt fasti), then post‐consulates for 22 years, and then regnal years of Justinian for the last four years. His content focuses exclusively on imperial, papal, and patriarchal succession; events in Africa involving the Vandals; and, most especially, ecclesiastical affairs. His main source down to 518 (section 101) was the ecclesiastical history of Theodorus Lector, but he also used both historical works of Isidore and various ecclesiastical texts (Chron. Min. 2, pp. 165–206; Cardelle de Hartmann 2001, 7*–115*, 3–55; ODB 3, p. 2165).
John of Biclar was born in Lusitania, educated in Constantinople, and exiled to Barcelona for 10 years upon his return. He later founded a monastery in Biclar and was appointed bishop of Gerona between 589 and 592. He wrote his chronicle sometime after 604 (he knows of the death of Gregory in that year, section 81), even though the latest dated event is the Romano‐Persian peace of 591. The chronicle is a continuation of Victor’s and continues Victor’s Byzantine regnal years, to which are appended Visigothic regnal years from 569. John’s account was more influenced by Jerome’s version of history and by consularia than by Victor, in that he presents a traditional political and military narrative, mostly of Spanish affairs, with few references to purely ecclesiastical matters other than papal succession and the floruits of local churchmen (Chron. Min. 2, pp. 165–77, 207–220; Cardelle de Hartmann 2001, 7*‐94*, 124*‐43*, 59–83, 110–148; Wolf 2011, pp. 1–9, 51–66; ODB 2, p. 1062).
11.4 Chronicles after the Sixth Century
In Latin the late Roman chronicle tradition ends with John in 591, though the Paschale Campanum does note the accession of Phocas in 602. A new independent tradition of chronicling had begun in Ireland in the sixth century but was not associated with the central European tradition until the middle of the seventh century and the resulting major recensions did not appear until ca. 740 and 911. Meanwhile, in the seventh and eighth centuries chronicling was picked up again in Kent and Northumbria, and these early texts were bound up in the new Frankish interest in chronicles that began in the eighth century and exploded at the beginning of the ninth in the Carolingian period (Burgess and Kulikowski 2013, pp. 1, 56, 184, 208–221, 237–239, 243–249). Throughout these years the well‐known late antique chronicles described above were still being read and copied.
In the eastern empire, the chronicle in Greek virtually came to an end with Eusebius and whatever fourth‐century continuators he may have had. The next known chronicle, the Chronicon Paschale, was written 300 years later ca. 630. It is a unique genre‐bending work that interpolates often lengthy excerpts from different narrative texts (particularly Malalas) into chronological underpinnings drawn from an epitome deriving ultimately from Eusebius (which begins numbering every year only from Abraham), with regnal years, Olympiads, anni mundi, and eventually indictions, and then a Greek translation of the Descriptio Consulum, with the addition of consuls (which mistakenly start in 440 BCE instead of 509) (Whitby and Whitby 1989; Treadgold 2007, pp. 340–348; ODB 1, p. 447). It had no imitators and there are no other known chronicles until the appearance of Theophanes’s Chronographia in 814. The niche once held by chronicles in Greek historiography was replaced by universal breviaria and even shorter synopses, works that were brief but for the most part displayed no interest in chronology at all.
In the Near East Eusebius’s chronicle prompted the adoption of the chronicle format in Syriac, starting as early as the beginning of the sixth century (the Chronicle of Edessa), and two epitomes of Eusebius’s chronicle are preserved within other Syriac chronicles, one from around 640 and the other from 775. There is also the chronicle of James of Edessa, which was written at the end of the seventh century as a continuation of a “simplified” version of the Chronici canones. True chronicles continued to be composed in Syriac as late as the ninth century, and they, in turn, prompted Arabic and Armenian chronicles and chronographic histories that are beyond the purview of this chapter (Debié 2009, 2015).
ABBREVIATIONS
Chron. Min. = Chronica Minora 1–3. In: Monumenta Germaniae Historica 9, 11, 13 (ed. Theodor Mommsen). Berlin: Weidmann, 1892–1898.
ODB = The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium. 3 vols. (ed. Alexander P. Kazhdan). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.
RE = Paulys Real‐Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft. 82 vols. (ed.Georg Wissowa et al.). Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1894–1980.
RE Suppl. = Supplemental volumes of RE.
TTH = Translated Texts for Historians
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