Book Series Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, vol. 38

Matthew Paris on the Mongol Invasion in Europe

Zsuzsanna Papp Reed

  • Pages: 469 p.
  • Size:156 x 234 mm
  • Illustrations:12 b/w, 1 col., 2 tables b/w.
  • Language(s):English, Latin
  • Publication Year:2022

  • € 125,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-59552-8
  • Hardback
  • Available
  • € 125,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-59553-5
  • E-book
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The volume provides detailed analysis of the entirety of the Mongol-related texts in Matthew Paris's Chronica majora.

Review(s)

“The volume is a handy companion both to scholars of English historiography and those who want to read critically the oft-cited primary sources of the history of the Mongol military operations in Europe.” (Studi Medievali, LXIV/1, 2023, p. 561)

Matthew Paris on the Mongol Invasion in Europe is a dense read, to say the  least, and the few paragraphs above do not do full justice to its richness. (…) readers will be impressed  by her command of multilingual scholarship and the refreshing contacts she  establishes between English and eastern European, including Hungarian, Czech,  and Polish, scholarly traditions. This is a book that will count in the ‘Afterlife of  Matthew’s Mongol Story’ (another study that Papp Reed conducts in an excellent last chapter) and will also ensure that Matthew Paris’s historiographical writings  continue, to borrow Papp Reed’s own words, to ‘hit my desk and yours’ (p. 23).  ” (Hélène Sirantoine, in Parergon, 40/2, 2023, p. 238)

 "Papp Reed offers a broadly convincing argument for reading the Mongol material as a more sophisticated and considered strand of the Chronica. But, in this reviewer’s opinion, the real success of this book lies in the author’s attention to the nar>rative devices, textual recursivity, and literary qualities of Matthew’s Chronica." (William Kynan-Wilson, in Speculum, 99/4, 2024, p. 1328)

BIO

Zsuzsanna Papp Reed is a literary historian and medievalist, currently teaching at the Central European University, Vienna.

Summary

This is a novel, interdisciplinary study of the Mongol military campaign in Eastern Europe (1241–1242) — the North, as thirteenth-century Europeans saw the region — in the works of contemporary English chronicler, Matthew Paris of St Albans Monastery. Tracing the journey of his sources, the volume explores thirteenth-century information networks against the backdrop of the struggle between Emperor Frederick II and Pope Innocent IV.

Parallel to the history of information, the subject of the study is the Chronica majora and its afterlife, Matthew’s chronicle world where the sometimes fictitious (and often very real) episodes of the Mongol story unfold. Tracing major landmarks in the meta-history of the Chronica majora, the author wishes to emancipate Matthew Paris as a historian — one in the series of a multitude of others who continue to write and rewrite the history of the Mongol invasion across centuries of historiography.

The volume is a handy companion both to scholars of English historiography and those who want to read critically the oft-cited primary sources of the history of the Mongol military operations in Europe.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations, Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. Inside the Book

  • Mise-en-abîme Within and Without
  • The North by the Northwest
Chapter 2. Outside the Book

  • The Book in the Scriptorium
  • The Scriptorium in England
  • England in the European Networks
Chapter 3. Fright: Mongols in the North and East (1237-1240)

  • 1237: Chaldeans, Medes, Persians, and Armenians
  • 1238: Northbound to Hungaria major
  • 1239: Dacia, Gothia, Frisia
  • 1240: False Alarm and Irruption
Chapter 4. Fight: Mongols in the Middle (1241)

  • Holy War on the Mongols
  • The First 1241 Cluster
  • The Second 1241 Cluster
Chapter 5. Flight: Rivaling Stories of Retreat (1243-1248)

  • 1243: The Tartar Khan’s Englishman
  • 1244: Frederick’s Triumph
  • 1244: The Man from Russia
  • 1245-1248: Endgame
Chapter 6. Letters from the Afflicted Lands in the Additamenta

Chapter 7. The Afterlife of Matthew’s Mongol Story

  • Chronicles and their Afterlife
  • Back to the Future: Modern historiography
  • Vice prologi
Appendix 1: List of Manuscripts

  • Manuscripts containing the Chronica majora and its fragments / continuations
  • Manuscripts containing Matthew Paris’s Flores historiarum, and its fragments / continuations
  • Flores manuscripts listed in medieval catalogues
  • Notes on transcription
  • Further appendices
Bibliography

Index

Media
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