Historical Events Database - History

[Mike]

Re: Historical Events Database

Meanwhile, books I would like to get but we can't afford them, so we need scans if somebody can get them from Uni libraries and scan them. I guess they are so expensive because of this:

The Chronicle of Battle Abbey
Edited with a facing-page English translation from the Latin text by Eleanor Searle
Clarendon Press Oxford Medieval Texts
372 pages | 216x138mm
978-0-19-822238-5 | Hardback | 08 May 1980
Price: £112.00

This one is at my library, so I'll get it and photocopy it tomorrow to mail off early next week.

 

[Oxajil]

Re: Historical Events Database

Hi Laura,

These books are hard to get, as most of them are part of the ''Special Collections'' section at the uni library here, which only enables a person to view them in the library :(. I can get The Chronography of George Synkellos once it has been returned (currently on loan). Maybe Shijing/others, you will have some more luck? Otherwise, I'll see what I can do at the library. Will keep you updated!

 

[Zadius Sky]

Re: Historical Events Database

Hi Laura,

These books are hard to get, as most of them are part of the ''Special Collections'' section at the uni library here, which only enables a person to view them in the library :(. I can get The Chronography of George Synkellos once it has been returned (currently on loan). Maybe Shijing/others, you will have some more luck? Otherwise, I'll see what I can do at the library. Will keep you updated!

Most on the list are in "special collection" at my uni library as well - I can't copy/scan them as they're just strictly for research. I would have to read them in the library under observation.

Only Knighton's Chronicle 1337-1396 that I can get (but I don't have the equipment to scan it into a pdf file).

 

[Gaby]

Re: Historical Events Database

I suppose you guys don't have smartphones? There is an app for scanning documents and the quality comes up just as good. fwiw! Evil technology sometimes is useful ;)

 

[Pierre]

Re: Historical Events Database

They have one copy of this boy in one of the Toulouse library:

The St Albans Chronicle, Volume I 1376-1394
The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham
Edited by John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs, and Leslie Watkiss
Clarendon Press Oxford Medieval Texts
1,150 pages | 3 in-text half-tones | 216x138mm
978-0-19-820471-8 | Hardback | 09 October 2003
Price: £239.00

It's available and can be lent. So 'll borrow it.

 

[Mike]

Re: Historical Events Database

The Chronography of George Synkellos
A Byzantine Chronicle of Universal History from the Creation
Translated by William Adler and Paul Tuffin
728 pages | 234x156mm
978-0-19-924190-3 | Hardback | 22 August 2002
Price: £218.00

Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel
With supplementary extracts from the others. A revised text edited with Introduction, Notes, Appendices, and Glossary, on the basis of an edition by John Earle
Charles Plummer
With a bibliographical note by Dorothy Whitelock
1,053 pages | 182x121mm
978-0-19-811104-7 | Hardback | 26 March 1963
Price: £162.00
2 Volumes requested

The Chronicle of Adam Usk 1377-1421
Edited with a facing-page translation by C. Given-Wilson
Clarendon Press Oxford Medieval Texts
388 pages | 216x138mm
978-0-19-820483-1 | Hardback | 23 January 1997
Price: £135.00


I just requested these for inter-library loan, so we'll see if it is in any kind of special collection and they are available. The requests went through, so we'll see.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

At the moment, I'm looking at the Attila the Hun thing in Gregory of Tours. There are several problems with the text I'd like to mention (and which I will add into the notes in the database.)

First, the text:

Attila the King of the Huns marched forward from Metz and ravaged a great number of other cities in Gaul. He came to Orleans and did all he could to capture it by launching a fierce assault with his battering-rams. At that time the Bishop of Orleans was the saintly Anianus, a man of great wisdom and admirable holiness, the story of whose miracles has been faithfully handed down to us. The besieged inhabitants begged their Bishop to tell them what to do. Putting his trust in God, he advised them to prostrate themselves in prayer... the Bishop said: 'Keep a watch from the city wall, to see if God in his pity is sending us help.' His hope was that, through God's compassion. Aetius might be advancing, for Anianus had gone to interview that leader in Arles when he foresaw what was going to happen.... they were ordered by by old man [Bishop] to look out a third time. Far away they saw what looked like a cloud of dust rising from the ground. This they reported to the Bishop. 'It is the help sent by God,' said he. The walls were already rocking under the shock of the battering-rams and about to collapse when Aetius arrived, and with him Theodoric, the King of the Goths, and his son Thorismund. They hastened forward to the city with their armies and drove off the enemy and forced them to retreat. Orleans was thus saved by the prayers of its saintly Bishop. They put Attila to flight, but he made his way to the plain of Moirey and there drew up his forces for battle. When they learned this, they bravely prepared to attack him.

Soon afterwards the rumour reached Rome that Aetius was in great danger with the troops of the enemy all round him. When she heard this his wife was very anxious and distressed. She went frequently to the churches of the holy Apostles and prayed that she might have her husband back safe from this campaign. This she did by day and by night. one night a poor man, sodden with wine, was asleep in a corner of the church of Saint peter. When the great doorways were closed according to custom, he was not noticed by the porters. In the middle of the night he got up. He was dazzled by the lamps shining bright in every part of the building and he looked everywhere for the exit, so that he could make his escape. He tugged at the bolts of first one doorway and then another, but, when he found that they were all closed, he lay down on the floor and anxiously awaited an opportunity of escaping from the building at the moment when the people should come together for their morning hymns. Then he noticed two men who saluted each other with great respect and asked how the other was prospering in his affairs. The older of the two began as follows: 'I cannot bear any longer the tears of the wife of Aetius. She keeps on praying that I should bring her husband back safe from Gaul. God in His wisdom had decreed otherwise, but nevertheless I have obtained this immense concession that Aetius shall not be killed. No I am hurrying off to bring him back alive. I order the man who has overheard this to keep his counsel and not be so rash as to reveal my secret, for otherwise he will die immediately.' The poor man, of course, heard this, but he was not able to keep the secret. As soon as day dawned in the sky, he recounted what he had heard to the wife of Aetius. He had no sooner finished speaking when he became blind.

Meanwhile Aetius and his allies the Goths and the Franks had joined battle with Attila. When he saw that his army was being exterminated, Attila fled from the battlefield. Theodoric, the King of the Goths, was killed in this conflict. No one has any doubt that the army of the Huns was really routed by the prayers of the Bishop about whom I have told you; but it was the patrician Aetius, with the help of Thorismund, who gained the victory and destroyed the enemy. ...

Attila retreated with the few men left to him. Soon after Aquileia was captured, burnt and destroyed by the Huns, who roamed all over Italy and laid waste to the country.

The problems I see with this text are as follows:

1) The name of the Bishop, Anianus. This is strikingly similar to a New Testament name that occurs in a specific context:

Ananias: was a disciple of Jesus at Damascus mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles in the Bible, which describes how he was sent by Jesus to restore the sight of "Saul, of Tarsus" (known later as Paul the Apostle) and provide him with additional instruction in the way of the Lord.

So, I hope you noticed the association of this name with a story that includes a man being struck blind.

2) The Noachian nature of the Bishop's instructions, given three times, like the doves and ravens sent from the Ark.

3) The story of the assumed angels having a discussion in the church at night witnessed by the drunk who then lost his sight for revealing the episode is strikingly similar to several such discussions between gods and goddesses in the Odyssey.

Now, it seems fairly secure that something was going on at that time because there is also "The Chronicle of Hydatius". (Isn't somebody trying to get ahold of this one at the moment?)

Hydatius or Idacius (c. 400 – c. 469), bishop of Aquae Flaviae in the Roman province of Gallaecia (almost certainly the modern Chaves, Portugal, in the modern district of Vila Real) was the author of a chronicle of his own times that provides us with our best evidence for the history of the Iberian Peninsula in the 5th century.

Hydatius was born around the year 400 in the environs of Civitas Lemica, a Roman town near modern Xinzo de Limia in the Spanish Galician province of Ourense. As a young boy, he travelled as a pilgrim to the Holy Land with his mother, where he met Jerome in his hermitage at Bethlehem. About the year 417 he entered the ecclesiastical state, and in 427 was consecrated bishop probably of Chaves (the Roman Aquae Flaviae) in Gallaecia....

Hydatius' main claim to historical importance is the chronicle he wrote towards the end of his life. The chronicle was an historical genre very popular in Late Antiquity, though with precedents in older chronographic genres like the consular fasti. A consciously Christian genre, the main goal of the chronicle was to place human history in the context of a linear progression from creation according to the Genesis creation myth to the Second Coming of Christ. Under the entry for each year one or several events were listed, usually with great brevity. The greatest exponent of the form had been the fourth-century bishop Eusebius of Caesarea. Jerome brought the Greek chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea up to date as far as the year 378, after translating it into Latin. Jerome's translation and continuation proved very popular, and others decided to continue Jerome in the same way.

Hydatius was one such continuator. His continuation begins with a preface explaining his debt to Jerome, and then picks up in the year 379. Hydatius had access to a number of chronographic and historical sources and used four parallel chronological systems. Because of this, and particularly towards the end of the chronicle, it can be difficult to translate his chronology into any modern calendar. At the beginning, Hydatius' continuation offers relatively little information for each year. He narrates the events from 427 onward as a contemporary witness and the text becomes increasingly full as the years progress until it resembles an organic literary work more than a typical chronicle.

Hydatius' main concern throughout is to show the dissolution of civil society in the western Roman empire and in Hispania in particular, and he paints a very dark picture of fifth-century life. His deep pessimism may stem from a belief in the imminent end of the world, since he had read the apocryphal letter of Christ to Thomas, which was interpreted to show that the world would end in May 482. Hydatius may thus have believed that he was chronicling the world's last days, and on occasion he deliberately distorted his account to show events in a gloomier light. This is especially true of the narrative climax of his account, the sack in 456 of the Suevi capital at Braga by the Visigothic king Theodoric II, acting in the service of the Roman emperor Avitus. Regardless of his sometimes very sophisticated literary devices, Hydatius' chronicle is an essential source of information for reconstructing the course of fifth-century events. Moreover, it is our only source for the history of Hispania in the period up to 468, at which point the narrative breaks off.

Anyway, a note in Kronk's "Cometograpy" mentions, under the heading of Comet Halley in 451:

Hydatius said in his Chronicle (468) that during the 26th year of the reign of Valentinian III, Attila and the Huns invaded what is now northern France and were defeated at Chalons-sur-Marne. Shortly thereafter, a comet was said to have become visible on June 18.

Nevertheless, all this mystical mumbo-jumbo that Gregory includes in his story of Attila makes me very suspicious. Was Attila the great scourge he was made out to be, or was he "helped" by some environmental events?

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

Meanwhile, books I would like to get but we can't afford them, so we need scans if somebody can get them from Uni libraries and scan them. I guess they are so expensive because of this:

The Chronicle of Battle Abbey
Edited with a facing-page English translation from the Latin text by Eleanor Searle
Clarendon Press Oxford Medieval Texts
372 pages | 216x138mm
978-0-19-822238-5 | Hardback | 08 May 1980
Price: £112.00

This one is at my library, so I'll get it and photocopy it tomorrow to mail off early next week.

Thanks. I've been looking at bookbinding techniques since I'm getting a collection of copied/scanned books that would otherwise be unattainable and being put in a ring binder is not entirely satisfactory.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

Hi Laura,

These books are hard to get, as most of them are part of the ''Special Collections'' section at the uni library here, which only enables a person to view them in the library :(. I can get The Chronography of George Synkellos once it has been returned (currently on loan). Maybe Shijing/others, you will have some more luck? Otherwise, I'll see what I can do at the library. Will keep you updated!

Most on the list are in "special collection" at my uni library as well - I can't copy/scan them as they're just strictly for research. I would have to read them in the library under observation.

Only Knighton's Chronicle 1337-1396 that I can get (but I don't have the equipment to scan it into a pdf file).

Can you take it to a copyshop and have them scan or copy it?

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

Well, we ought not to be surprised that the average person - even teachers, etc - have no real clue about history because the books that you need to research it closely are so expensive and/or unavailable.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

In looking over all of them, this is the one I really want:

The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire ~ Burgess. A good scan of this one would be sharable amongst us.

 

[Oxajil]

Re: Historical Events Database

Now, it seems fairly secure that something was going on at that time because there is also "The Chronicle of Hydatius". (Isn't somebody trying to get ahold of this one at the moment?)

In looking over all of them, this is the one I really want:

The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire ~ Burgess. A good scan of this one would be sharable amongst us.

Yep, I got that one. Bo will hopefully have it done by this week or next.

 

[Bo]

Re: Historical Events Database

In looking over all of them, this is the one I really want:

The Chronicle of Hydatius and the Consularia Constantinopolitana: Two Contemporary Accounts of the Final Years of the Roman Empire ~ Burgess. A good scan of this one would be sharable amongst us.

I will have this one finished tomorrow.

 

[Laura]

Re: Historical Events Database

Bo, can you make the PDFs compact or something? The last one I could never download because my computer announced it would take 13 hours! Maybe copying it onto a CD or usb stick would work?

 

[Mike]

Re: Historical Events Database

I started looking at scanners some online and want to see if anyone has a recommendation for one to purchase in order to scan (instead of copying) books. Figure if I get one for $200 that would be less cost than all the copying I would do if all the above books I have on order come in.

My printer has a scanner, but it really takes a long time per scan and I don't know if it would allow multiple scans into one PDF document. I'll stop by some stores today, but if someone has one that works well or a recommendation it would be appreciated. I'll also look into the availability of scanning the books at a shop.