Matthew Paris in Norway

Abstract

The thirteenth-century English Benedictine Matthew Paris was a prolific writer of history. In fact, his oeuvre constitutes one of the central sources for our understanding of Europe in the first half of the thirteenth century. Yet, despite a coverage that extended to Frederick II, the crusader States, the Mongols, as well as England, Matthew only ever left England once, in 1248-9, to settle a dispute at the Norwegian abbey of Nidarholm. It is with this Scandinavian sojourn that the present article is primarily concerned. The expedition was central to Matthew’s self-perception as a writer and monk, thus allowing for wider questions to be asked about his use of sources, or the relationship between the social context of his writing and the moral imperative so central to his understanding of the historian’s craft. It also sheds new light on Matthew Paris the individual as well as Matthew Paris the chronicler.