Chronicles of popes and emperors were widespread in the High and Late Middle Ages. Numerous manuscripts containing these historiographical works testify to the popularity of the genre. Offering historical knowledge in a compact format, they are by no means dry compendia, but differ considerably in form and content. Martin of Troppau’s successful chronicle has over-shadowed the many other chronica pontificum et imperatorum, which have not been studied in detail. The conference aims to address this desideratum by examining the contexts, contents and traditions of such chronicles. Who wrote such histories, for which audiences, and according to which models? What do they report beyond the framework of popes and emperors? How are the mise en page and the mise en texte organised?

The conference will be held online via Webex on June 7, 2024. There is no registration fee, and everyone is welcome. In order to attend the conference, please register contacting giuseppe.cusa(at)uni-siegen.de. Access information will be sent to you shortly before the conference.

Programme :

09:00 Raphaela Averkorn/Giuseppe Cusa (Universität Siegen): Welcome and introduction

Section I: Contexts

09:20 Mikhail Khorkov (Instytut Historii Nauki, Polskiej Akademii Nauk, Warsaw): In searching for John Hagen’s forgotten chronicle. Towards a history of  the origin of an ambitious 15th-century Carthusian project
10:00 Synnøve Midtbø Myking (Det Kgl. Bibliotek, Copenhagen): The papal chronicle of the Liber Polypticus in a 12th-century manuscript from Denmark
10:40 Alberto Cotza (Università di Pisa): The Catalogus Regum Tuscus (11th century). A historical analysis

Section II: Contents

11:40 Stanislav Mereminskii (Independent researcher): Between Hugh of St Victor and Martin of Opava. The genealogical chronicle in London, British Library, Cotton MS Faustina B VIII, its sources and context
12:20 Șerban Marin (Arhivele Naționale ale României, Bucharest): The place of the world chronicle in the Venetian manuscript tradition14:00 Gábor Bradács (Independent researcher): Die landesgeschichtlichen ‚Meisternarrative‘ in den Papst-Kaiser-Chroniken des Spätmittelalters

14:40 Giuseppe Cusa (Universität Siegen): Urban history in the so-called Annales Veronenses Antiqui, a 13th-century Veronese chronicle of popes and emperors 

Section III: Traditions

15:40 Alessio Marziali Peretti (Université de Montreal): Tradition latine et traductions vernaculaires du Chronicon Pontificum et imperatorum Romanorum de Gilbert. État de l’art et nouvelles perspectives
16:20 José Manuel Simões (Universidade de Évora): A canonist’s strange resonance, or the echoes of the Iberian Peninsula in the papal chronicle of Iohannes de Deo and its transmission
17:00 Matthias Kuhn (Independent researcher): Illustrated pope-emperor scrolls. Interpreting the world, telling history, depicting structures

17:40 Concluding remarks