The Gallic Chronicle of 511: A New Critical Edition with a Brief Introduction

Abstract

The Chronica Gallica ad annum LXI, or Gallic Chronicle of 511, as one has it today, is an extremely complicated document. The Spanish era was not used in north-eastern Spam, the obvious location for the proposed Spanish author. Inscriptions with eras appear mostly in western Spain, especially in Lusitania and Baetica. In the manuscript the chronicle is presented as a single continuous text, two columns per page. The only differentiation in this unbroken text is the appearance of blank spaces at the head of entries noting a change of emperor, where the rubricator should have written large red capitals. Most chroniclers in Latin, Greek, and Syriac, except for Eusebius, assign the first regnal year of an emperor to the first full year after that emperor's accession. Regnal years are still no doubt missing from entries 80 and 87, and perhaps 79, although there is no way to tell what they were.