Matthew Paris (1200-1259)

by Andrea Kocsis (See Chinese translation)

Matthew Paris (c. 1200-1259, see alternative names), was a Benedictine monk, English chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts and cartographer, based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire. He wrote a number of works, mostly historical, which he scribed and illuminated himself, typically in drawings partly coloured with watercolour washes, sometimes called "tinted drawings". Some were written in Latin, some in Anglo-Norman or French verse.

The Chronica Majora begins with the creation of the world and contains annals up to 1259, the year of Paris's death. The content up to 1234 or 1235 is primarily based on Flores Historiarum by Roger of Wendover (d. 1236), with additions; after that date the material is Paris's own, written in his own hand from the entry for 1213 onward.

The first two parts of the Chronica, covering the years up to 1188 and from 1189 to 1253, are contained in two manuscripts in the Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Parker MS 26 and MS 16. The remainder of the Chronica, from 1254 until Paris's death in 1259, is in the British Library, bound as Royal MS 14 C VII folios 157-218, following Paris's Historia Anglorum (an abridgement of the Chronica covering the period from 1070 to 1253).

Paris' manuscripts mostly contain more than one text, and often begin with a rather random assortment of prefatory full-page miniatures. Some have survived incomplete, and the various elements now bound together may not have been intended to be so by Paris.

In Chronica Majora Matthew Paris tended to glorify Emperor Frederick II in contrast to the Pope. However, in his Historia Anglorum Paris displays a highly negative view of Frederick, going as far as describing him as a "tyrant" who "committed disgraceful crimes".

He focuses on the West, but briefly mentions the East as well. He stated that Tatars attacked Europe "like demons of hell". He argued that Europeans should view the Tatars as common enemies of Christianity. He also reports on “tatar cannibalism”.

He noted that Emperor Frederick II's merchants sailed to India, and described how the Mongol invasion of Russia in 1238 affected the herring market: the invasion threatened the commoners of Novgorod in the Baltic and North seas and thus deterred their merchants from travelling to England to buy fish, forcing to sellers to lower their prices.