The Chronicon Angliae Petriburgense is a 14th-century chronicle written in Medieval Latin at Peterborough Abbey, England, covering events from 604 to 1368, although the original manuscript ends with an entry for 868, and the remainder was added in the 17th century.[1][2][Fn 1] It survives as part of a composite manuscript volume held at the British Library with the mark Cotton Claudius A.v, in which it appears on folios 2–45.[1][3] An edition of the Chronicon was published in 1723 by Joseph Sparke, in a collection of English histories by various writers.[4] According to John Allen Giles, in the preface to his own edition published by the Caxton Society in 1845, the Chronicon was attributed by both Simon Patrick and Henry Wharton to John of Caleto (or "Caux"), who was an abbot of Peterborough (1250–1262).[5][Fn 2] Giles reported a marginal note in the manuscript making a similar attribution, besides a similar note at the beginning of the manuscript stating that it belonged to Peterborough Abbey.[7][Fn 3] However, Giles observed that this manuscript attribution was "comparatively modern", and regarded the chronicle's author as unknown.[5][Fn 4] In Giles's view, the Chronicon is "extremely valuable both on account of the numerous facts which it contains, and for the [700 years] which it embraces."[11]
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Footnotes
^The Latin title translates to English as "Peterborough chronicle of England."
^Patrick's attribution is in his preface to Gunton 1968. The identity of "Caleto" with Caux is illustrated by Gunton: "He gave also a great bell to [Peterborough Abbey], whereon was written, "Jo[ha]n[nes] de Caux Abbas Oswaldo consecrat hoc vas" (Abbot John of Caux consecrates this vessel to [St] Oswald).[6]
^The marginal note attributing the Chronicon to Abbot John appears at the top of its first page, above an inscription reading "Iste liber pertinet ad monasterium de burgo sancti petri Anno Domini DCliiii Amen" ("This book belongs to the monastery of Peterborough AD 654 Amen"). The inscription forms the first line of the chronicle.[1]
^Whereas Thomas Duffus Hardy described the Chronicon as "enveloped in a mystery which [he had] not been able to unravel", Antonia Gransden is uncritical in accepting the authorship of "John of Peterborough".[8][9] Writing for the Dictionary of National Biography, Edmund King stated that "John de Caux is not to be identified with the John of Peterborough said to have written or owned the Peterborough–Spalding annals in BL, Cotton MS Claudius A. v. fols. 2–45."[10]
