Henry Knighton ( born Henry Knighton , Latin: Henricus Cnitthon , d. 1396 [4] .) Is an English historian and chronicler, an Augustinian monk, one of the chroniclers of the Hundred Years War , the author of The Chronicles of Knighton ( Eng. Henry Knighton's Chronicle ).
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Content
Biography
Scanty biographical information can be extracted from his writings. The entry in the first book of his historical chronicle HENRICVS CNITTON indicates that he could have come from the village of Knighton [5] , located 2 miles south of Leicester , and possibly belonging as a manor to the local abbey of St. Mary on Luga [6] .
Probably in the early 1360s he studied at Oxford , where he met John Wycliffe and his followers. Never sharing their views, he was nevertheless interested in their teachings and became the first chronicler of the Lollard movement in England [7] .
As a member of the Order of the Augustinians , he served as a canon in St. Mary’s Abbey on Meadow ( Leicester , East Midland ) from 1363 , as is clear from the record of King Edward III visiting this monastery [8] , and until his death in 1396. He left a lot of information about the economic prosperity of the Abbey of St. Mary, which in his time was one of the richest in the country, and during the time of Henry VIII it was destroyed and is now in ruins.
Compositions
His main historical work is The Chronicle of Naithon ( lat. Chronicon ), written in Latin in five books, covering the events of the history of England from 959 to 1396, and first published in 1652 .
The first three books of the chronicle are not original and do not represent significant interest for historians, but the last two contain valuable descriptions of the events of the Hundred Years War , reporting, in particular, about the victories of Edward III over France and Scotland , about the Spanish company of the Duke of Lancaster , the “black death” epidemic in England, the revolt of Wat Tyler , the movement of the Lollards and the fight against it by church and secular authorities. They also contain information on the collapse of the feudal system, the financial situation of the clergy and laity, on wages and prices in the country, etc.
In his historical essay, Henry Knighton clearly sympathizes with Edward III, calling his reign a “golden age”, generally skeptical about the reign of his successor Richard II , whose chief advisers are Earl Robert de Vera , Archbishop of York Alexander Neville , Earl of Suffolk , Lord Chief Justice Robert Trezillana and Lord Mayor of London, Nicholas Bremer, - Unambiguously characterizes as "the five main seducers of the king."
The relatively loyal attitude and obvious attention of Knighton to Wycliffe and his supporters is probably due to the sympathy for them by the influential Duke of Lancaster John Gaunt , who owned Leicester [9] . In particular, in his chronicle, Knighton claims that in 1382 "every second in the English kingdom" sympathized with the views of the Wycliffists.
As sources, Knighton used the works of 12th-century historians William of Malmesbury and Heinrich Huntingdon , the Great Chronicle of Matvey of Paris (13th century), which continued with the Westminster Chronicle, as well as the Walter Chronicle of Heminburg and Polychronikon by Ranulf Higden (first half. XIV century.) [10] .
Research and Publication
According to 19th-century historians, Walter Shirley and Henry Richards Luard , Knighton himself, decrepit and almost blind by the 1380s, managed to compile only the first four books of the chronicle, bringing them to 1366 [11] . The fifth, covering 1377-1395, was written by his anonymous successor, possibly a monk of the same abbey, and a foreigner who sympathized with Lancaster .
Shirley’s hypothesis, with reservations, was supported by J. R. Lambi who prepared in 1889-1895 a commented two-volume scientific publication of the Chronicles of Knight in the academic Rolls Series [12] .
Only in 1957 did the historian Vivian Hunter Gelbright , carefully examining the chronology of Knighton's work, managed to refute the statement of W. Shirley, having come to the conclusion that the last book of the chronicle could have been compiled after earlier sections, and, therefore, the “successor of Knighton” never existed. Galbraith's opinion is shared by Russian media historian E.V. Kalmykova and British researcher Professor of Liverpool University Sarah Peverly, who cite the year 1378 as the date of the start of work on Knighton's work [13] [14] .
The first chronicle of Henry Knighton was published in 1652 by the historian Roger Twisden in his compilation of medieval English chronicles “Ten Writers of the History of England” ( Latin Historiae Anglicanae Scriptores Decem ). The latest edition was released in 1995 in Oxford by the famous British historian-archivist Jeffrey Howard Martin with the participation of J.R. L. Highfield.
See also
- Centennial war
- Edward III
- Richard II
- Leicester Abbey
- John Wycliffe
- Lollards
Notes
- ↑ German National Library , Berlin State Library , Bavarian State Library , etc. Record # 119349949 // General regulatory control (GND) - 2012—2016.
- ↑ 1 2 BNF identifier : Open Data Platform 2011.
- ↑ SNAC - 2010.
- ↑ Martin GH Knighton, Henry // Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. - Oxford University Press, 2004.
- ↑ Martin GH, transl. Knighton's Chronicle 1337-1396. - Clarendon Press, 1995. - p. xvii.
- ↑ Kalmykova E.V. Images of war in historical representations of the British of the late Middle Ages. - M., 2010 .-- S. 488.
- ↑ Martin GH Knighton's Chronicle. - p. xviii.
- ↑ Burton EH Knighton, Henry // Catholic Encyclopedia. - Vol. 8. - NY, 1913.
- ↑ Kalmykova E.V. Decree. Op. - S. 489.
- ↑ Gene B. History and historical culture of the Medieval West. - M .: Languages of Slavic culture, 2002. - S. 136, 247.
- ↑ Luard HR Knighton, Henry // Dictionary of National Biography. - Vol. 31. - L., 1892. - P. 270.
- ↑ Index to the Rolls Series . Compiled by Steven H. Silver.
- ↑ Kalmykova E.V. Decree. Op. - S. 488.
- ↑ Peverley, Sarah L. Knighton, Henry // Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle. - Leiden, 2016.
Editions
- Knighton Henry. Chronicon Henrici Knighton; vel. Cnithon, monachi leycestrensis, ed. by JR Lumby. - 2 vols. - London, 1889-1895.
- Knighton's Chronicle 1337-1396, transl. Geoffrey Haward Martin - Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995 .-- ISBN 0198205031 .
Bibliography
- Kalmykova E.V. Images of war in historical representations of the British of the late Middle Ages. - M.: Quadriga, 2010 .-- 684 p. - (Historical research). - ISBN 978-5-91791-012-3 .
- Vaughan Robert. The life and opinions of John de Wycliffe. - London: Holdsworth and Ball, 1831.
- Henry Richards Luard. Knighton, Henry // Dictionary of National Biography. - Volume 31. - London: Smith, Elder & Co, 1892. - P. 270.
- Burton Edwin Hubert. Knighton, Henry // Catholic Encyclopedia . - Volume 8. - New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1913.
- Deanesly Margaret. The Lollard Bible and other Medieval Biblical Versions. - Cambridge University Press, 1920.
- Duls Louisa De Saussure. Richard II in the Early Chronicles. - Paris: Mouton, 1975.
- Martin Geoffrey. Henry Knighton's Chronicle and Leicester Abbey // Joanna Storey, Jill Bourne, Richard Buckley (ed.). Leicester Abbey: Medieval history, archaeology and manuscript studies. - Leicestershire Archaeological & Historical Society, 2006.
- Peverley Sarah L. Knighton, Henry // Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy and Cristian Bratu. - Leiden: Brill, 2016.