Chronicles of the Investiture Contest

Frutolf of Michelsberg and his continuators

Edited and translated by T. J. H. McCarthy

Publication date:

28 February 2014

Length of book:

348 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9780719084690

This book is the first English translation of one of the most significant chronicles of the Middle Ages. Written in Bamberg at the end of the eleventh century, Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle offers a lively and vivid account of the great struggle between the German emperors and the papacy known today as the Investiture Contest. Together with numerous continuations written in the first quarter of the twelfth century, Frutolf’s Chronicle offers an engaging and accessible snapshot of how medieval people reacted to a conflict that led to civil war in Germany and Italy, and fundamentally altered the relationship of church and state in Western society.

Introduction
1. Frutolf of Michelsberg, Chronicle (1001–1101)
2. The 1106 Continuation of Frutolf’s Chronicle (1096–1106)
3. The Bamberg Imperial Chronicle (1096–1114)
4a. Ekkehard of Aura, Chronicle, book 5 (1106–16)
4b. Ekkehard of Aura, Hierosolimita
5. The 1125 Continuation of Frutolf’s Chronicle (1117–25)
Bibliography
Index

‘Frutolf's text will now be accessible to English-speaking historians, both students and professionals who are not at ease with Latin, and therefore unfamiliar with the sources for this crucial period of medieval history. But the translator has done far more than one would ordinarily expect from a translation. The modest and annotated by on the title page next to the translator's name hides a significant accomplishment. McCarthy provides in the long introduction of eighty pages a succinct, knowledgeable and clearly written survey of the historical background of the last hundred years or so of the chronicle that is up-to-date and focused on English secondary sources, but includes older essential bibliography in languages other than English as well. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography divided into primary and secondary sources (286-311).’
Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Catholic University of America (emerita), The Medieval Review