Matthew Paris

Matthew Parris thumb| Matthew Paris (Latin: Matthæus Parisiensis, lit. 'Matthew the Parisian'; c. 1200 – 1259), was an English Benedictine monk, chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts, and cartographer who was based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire. He authored a number of historical works, many of which he scribed and illuminated himself, typically in drawings partly coloured with watercolour washes, sometimes called "tinted drawings". Some were written in Latin, others in Anglo-Norman or French verse. He is sometimes confused with the nonexistent Matthew of Westminster. Quotes Et nos in vitium prona caterva sumus. We are but cattle prone to vice. Chronica Majora (s.a. 1236); tr. J. A. Giles, Mathew Paris's English History, vol. 1 (1852), p. 21 (Misattributed to Mahomet) The Saxon nobles ... did not repair to church in the morning, according to Christian use, but loitering in their couches and their wives' embraces, they were content with hastily snatching a word of the solemn rites of matins and of mass. Chronica Majora (Paris, 1644), p. 4; quoted in Jules Michelet, History of France, tr. G. H. Smith, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1882), p. 200 They had ravaged and depopulated Great Hungary, and had sent ambassadors with threatening letters to all people. Their general gave out that he was sent by Almighty God to subdue the nations that had rebelled against him. The heads of these barbarians are large, and disproportioned to their bodies; they feed on raw and even on human flesh; they are incomparable archers; they carry with them leathern boats to cross rivers in; they are robust, impious, inexorable; their language is unknown to all people with whom we are acquainted, (quos nostra attingit notitia.) They are rich in flocks of sheep, oxen, and of horses so swift of foot as to make three days' march in one day. They wear good armor in front of their body, but none behind, in order never to be tempted to fly. Inhabiting the northern region, the Caspian seas, and those that confine with them, they are named Tartars from the name of the river Tar. Their number is so great, as to seem to threaten mankind with destruction. Although there had been. former invasions of the Tartars, there was greater dread of them this year from their seeming more furious than usual; thus the natives of Gothia and Frisia did not come this year, as they commonly did, to the English coast, to load their ships with herrings; consequently herrings were so abundant in England as to be sold almost for nothing; even in districts far distant from the sea, forty or fifty excellent ones would be sold for a small bit of money. A Saracen messenger, of powerful and illustrious birth, who had come on a solemn embassy to the king of France, chiefly from the Old Man of the Mountain, announced these events in the name of all the Easterns, and sought aid from the Westerns to repress the fury of the Tartars. He sent one of his companions in the embassy to the king of England, to set forth the same things to him, and to tell him that if the Mussulmans could not withstand the shock of these enemies, nothing could hinder them from laying waste the West. The bishop of Winchester, who was present at this audience, (he was Henry the Third's favorite,) and who had already taken the cross, took up the word in a bantering tone, "Let us leave," he said, these dogs to devour one another, "that they may perish the sooner. And then, when we shall fall upon those of Christ's enemies who survive, we shall make away with them more easily, and clear the earth of them. Then the whole world will be subject to the Catholic Church, and there will be but one shepherd and one fold. Chronica Majora, p. 614 (s.a. 1238); in Jules Michelet, History of France, vol. 1 (1882), p. 298 External links Historia Major and Lives of the two Offas, kings of Mercia, and of twenty-three abbats of St. Albans, together with Additamentorum and Auctarium Additamentorum to the Historia Major. Latin text printed by Dr. Wats, 2nd ed. (London, 1684), and translated into English from the same by John Allen Giles, Matthew Paris's English History, 3 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852, '53, '54) Category:1250s deaths Category:Historians from England Category:Artists from England Category:Chroniclers Category:Monks