HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE MIDDLE AGES - Julian Emperor

HIGH AND LATE MEDIEVAL NATIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY 205with monasteries, church institutions, and universities. Of less significancewas the comparable Eulogium historiarum from the monasteryof Malmesbury, written in the 1360s. 94 Its five books follow eachother not chronologically but, rather, thematically: Book I is dedicatedto biblical history, Book II to papal history, Book III to theworld empires and the Empire, and Book IV to a description of theearth. Finally, the fifth and most comprehensive book contains atotal description of English history from the Trojan beginnings tothe rule of Edward III.At the beginning of the fourteenth century, still before the reestablishmentof the Polish kingdom under W∑adys∑aw „okietek in1320, a new draft of Polish history was written in Krakow. Theauthor, whose name is handed down as Mierswa or Dzierzwa, is arather unknowable person; it is suspected that he was a KrakowFranciscan or a member of the cathedral chapter. His ChronicaPolonorum 95 is based mainly on the chronicle of Kad∑ubek, which hereduced significantly and made more readable by giving up the dialogueform; for the period of the thirteenth century up to the prematureend of the depictions in 1288, the chronicle is organized inthe form of an annal. The text is worthy of special interest by virtueof its beginning section, in which Dzierwa carries out a new kindof organization of Polish history. He derives the Poles from Noah’sson Japhet, gives them a progenitor Wandalus, which makes referenceto the designation of the Poles as Vandals found already inKad∑ubek, and places this pater Polonorum Wandalus, who is supposedto have lived at the time of the Old Testament Joseph, additionallyinto Roman Trojan genealogy.By virtue of the introductory integration of Polish history, the socalledGreat Polish chronicle (Chronica Poloniae maioris) 96 is also worthyof consideration. The anonymously handed-down text, which wasput together possibly by Janko of Czarnków (ca. 1320–87), the formerunder-chancellor of Casimir III, in the 1370s/80s, is first strongly94Eulogium (historiarum sive temporis): Chronic ab orbe condito usque ad annum DominiM.CCC.LXVI., a monacho quodam Malmesburiensi exaratum, 3 vols., ed. F. Scott Haydon,RS 59.1–3 (London, 1858–63).95Miersuae Chronicon, ed. A. Bielowski, in MPH 2 (1872), 145–90, 283–438; MPH3 (1878), 46–52. The most important analyses of the texts are Banaszkiewicz (1977)and (1979).96Chronica Poloniae maioris, ed. B. Kürbis, Monumenta Poloniae Historica, NovaSeries 8 (Warsaw, 1970). See also Derwich (1985).