"L’Histoire (du Moyen Âge) est un sport de combat, parce que l’Histoire, et au-delà les sciences humaines, est menacée par la posture utilitariste dominante dans notre société, pour laquelle seul ce qui est économiquement et immédiatement rentable est légitime : le reste n’est que gaspillage de temps et de deniers publics. Dans cette situation, l’Histoire médiévale est dans une situation paradoxale puisque s’ajoute à ce déficit général de légitimité des sciences humaines un détournement généralisé du Moyen Âge à des fins variées, jouant tantôt sur le caractère irrationnel et sauvage prêté à la période, tantôt sur la valeur particulière des « racines » médiévales. Le Moyen Âge devient ainsi un réservoir de formules qui servent à persuader nos contemporains d’agir de telle ou telle manière, mais n’ont rien à voir avec une connaissance effective de l’Histoire médiévale."

J. MORSEL, L'Histoire (du Moyen Âge) est un sport de combat... (ouvrage téléchargeable ici).

02 septembre 2014

The Vetus Collectio Manuscripta Ecclesiae Nannetensis and the Lost Chronicles of Brittany, by Louise Stephens



Louise Stephens, de l'Université d'Ottawa, a donné lors des dernières journées d'études organisées par The Medieval Chronicle Society à l'Université de Liverpool (7-10 juillet 2014) une importante communication sur les chroniques médiévales de Bretagne réputées "perdues", dont les vestiges nous ont été transmis par les Mauristes du XVIIIe siècle, et sur le "fameux" manuscrit 1 F 1003 des archives départementales d'Ille-et-Vilaine, dont il a été question à plusieurs reprises sur le blog Hagio-historiographie médiévale, notamment ici. Nous sommes très heureux de publier ci-dessous le texte de cette communication, avec un résumé en français par son auteur que nous remercions bien vivement.



The Vetus Collectio Manuscripta Ecclesiae Nannetensis and the Lost Chronicles of Brittany[1]

Résumé

Au début du XVIIIe siècle un Mauriste breton, Dom Guy-Alexis Lobineau, a publié une histoire de la Bretagne avec un volume complémentaire de plus de mille pages contenant ses sources ou « preuves ». Quelques décennies plus tard un autre Mauriste, Dom Pierre-Hyacinthe Morice, a publié sa propre histoire en deux tomes, complétée par Dom Charles Taillandier, cette fois-ci avec non moins de trois gros volumes de sources. Parmi les documents préservés dans ceux-ci il y a plusieurs textes présentés comme des chroniques médiévales, notamment le Chronicon Britannicum, les Chroniques annaulx et la Chronique de Nantes, que les Mauristes disent avoir trouvées dans un ancien recueil manuscrit de l’Église cathédrale de Nantes. Aujourd’hui cette source, la Vetus Collectio Manuscripta Ecclesiae Nannetensis, est souvent considérée comme disparue, surtout hors de Bretagne, une impression largement répandue depuis 1896 quand René Merlet a publié son édition célèbre de la Chronique de Nantes. Cependant, ce précieux recueil subsiste encore et se trouve actuellement aux Archives départementales d’Ille-et-Vilaine sous la cote IV 1 F 1003 dans le legs de l’historien et archiviste breton éminent, Arthur de la Borderie, qui est lui-même responsable de l’erreur. Ce petit carnet en papier de 206 pages, qui selon certains aurait appartenu à l’historien breton du XVe siècle Pierre Le Baud, est surtout connu de nos jours comme la source d’un texte arthurien très controversé, la Legenda Sancti Goeznovei, mais il renferme en outre de nombreux extraits de documents copiés dans les archives bretonnes vers la fin du XVe siècle dont il est ou bien la seule source ou bien la source principale, comme c’est le cas de la plupart des chroniques publiées par les Mauristes parmi leur « preuves ». Mais que sont exactement ces textes désignés comme « chroniques » par les Mauristes et, plus important, quelle est leur relation avec ces chroniques médiévales que selon le témoignage de l’historien breton du XVIe siècle Bertrand d’Argentré existaient encore vers 1500 quand Pierre Le Baud les a eues à sa disposition ? Une comparaison préliminaire du Chronicon Britannicum — en apparence le plus simple des trois — avec le matériel préservé dans le manuscrit révèle que ce texte, loin d’être la reproduction d’une chronique médiévale, est en réalité un texte hybride composé par Dom Lobineau et ses collègues à partir de deux séries de notes chronologiques distinctes. Il appartient donc par son fond au Moyen Âge mais par sa forme au XVIIIe siècle — le produit d’un processus de sélection et d’édition en deux étapes dont la première a été réalisée par les compilateurs médiévaux anonymes et la deuxième par les Mauristes eux-mêmes. C’est aussi le cas des autres « chroniques » publiées par les Mauristes qui proviennent entièrement ou en partie de cette source. Ainsi le ms IV 1 F 1003 mérite une étude plus approfondie non seulement à cause des documents de base parfois uniques que ses compilateurs ont réussi à préserver, mais aussi parce qu’il nous offre la possibilité de mieux comprendre comment ce recueil modeste a contribué à former l’historiographie de la Bretagne médiévale et en particulier celle des Mauristes.


I am here today to share with you something interesting that I stumbled upon when I was working on something quite different. I have been working on an edition of a literary text known as the Livre des faits d’Arthur or the Book of the Deeds of Arthur, a fragment of an epic poem that survives in a single copy in a late fifteenth-century manuscript, often referred to as the notebook or “carnet” of Pierre Le Baud, a Breton historian or chronicler who died in 1505. It contains a wealth of material copied in Latin and French in cursive scripts by two main hands and at least three additional contemporary ones from a variety of sources such as cartularies, histories, saints’ lives, letters, epitaphs and, especially, chronicles. It is housed in the Archives départementales d’Ille-et-Vilaine in Rennes, Brittany, as IV 1 F 1003[2] among the papers of the eminent Breton historian, Arthur de La Borderie, who died in 1901. La Borderie was the first to identify in this manuscript the fragment of this lost poem[3] and also the more famous—and controversial—Legenda Sancti Goeznovei.[4]
 
            In the eighteenth century editions of several chronicles based on this manuscript, including the Chronicon Britannicum, the Chroniques Annaulx, and the Chronique de Nantes, were printed in two enormous collections of source documents or “preuves” by Benedictine monks from the congregation of St.-Maur, known as Maurists, to accompany their histories. The first was published by Dom Guy-Alexis Lobineau in 1707, containing what he labels his preuves and pieces justificatives,[5] and the second by Dom Pierre-Hyacinthe Morice, consisting of three volumes of source documents entitled Memoires in the period 1742-46.[6] Both historians refer to this manuscript as the Vetus Collectio Manuscripta Ecclesiae Nannetensis, or the Old Manuscript Collection of the Cathedral of Nantes, which I shall call the Vetus Collectio for short.
            I decided to examine these chronicles because I wanted to understand the collection better and the way in which the Livre des Faits d’Arthur fitted into it. So I pulled out the Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle to consult the relevant entries and I was very surprised to find that the manuscript was generally considered lost. So today I would like to begin with a brief explanation of how this came about. I shall then compare one of the chronicles printed by the Maurists, the Chronicon Britannicum,[7] with the way it appears in the Vetus Collectio in order to show how complex the relationship is between these printed texts, this manuscript, and the medieval chronicles that lie behind them.
            Now I had been aware when I started working on the manuscript that something peculiar had happened. Up to the 1880s, La Borderie refers to it explicitly as the Vetus Collectio, but by the 1890s it has become the Vetus Collectio Manuscripta de Rebus Britannicis Armoricis. Indeed, in a bundle of handwritten notes accompanying the manuscript, which contain invaluable research, the original title has been written over everywhere except on page 2. I had not, however, been aware of the full story, and I should like to thank André-Yves Bourgès in Brittany for his invaluable help in understanding it. I should also like to stress that this will be an oversimplification, and that any errors in interpretation are mine and not his.
            The reason La Borderie altered the title is that he had, to put it delicately, appropriated the manuscript from the Cathedral of Nantes. In 1864 he portrays this as a kind of heroic rescue from the very teeth of rats.[8] Later he adds damp.[9] As late as 1883 he was still quite candid about its true title,[10] but by the 1890s he was forced to cover it up.[11] He also wished to maintain control over the contents, and in particular the Legenda Sancti Goeznovei, which purports to date from 1019 and which, according to him, demonstrated the existence of an earlier text, a Historia Britannica that predated Geoffrey of Monmouth and provided proof for his argument that the migrations of the Bretons from insular Britain took place almost entirely as a result of the Anglo-Saxon invasions in the mid-fifth century.[12] The late Breton scholar Hubert Guillotel characterizes the use he made of this text as “un étonnant psychodrame,” and one that shows, and here I am translating, “how he grew intellectually intoxicated and deliberately misled generations of historians.”[13] When La Borderie published the text for the first time in 1883, he only included the first three sections of it and ironically, as Guillotel points out, it still undermines his argument.[14] When the remaining sections were published in 1971 by Gwenaël Le Duc and Claude Sterckx,[15] the cat was out of the bag. In fact there is an anachronism, spotted by Guillotel himself in 1981,[16] that proves that this text dates not from 1019 but rather from 1135 at the very earliest. To this I can add, having examined the text in the manuscript, that La Borderie’s version is more hostile to the Anglo-Saxons than what is in the manuscript. In a footnote he explains that he “completed” and “rectified” the text using variants from another, shorter version found in an extant early fifteenth-century Breton chronicle, the Chronicon Briocense or Chronicle of Saint-Brieuc.[17]
            Thus for decades until his death, La Borderie guarded this manuscript jealously and restricted or even blocked other scholars’ access to it,[18] although there were suspicions of the true state of affairs. In particular, when in 1896 the French archivist and scholar, René Merlet, published a meticulous reconstruction of the Chronique de Nantes, for which this manuscript is one of the key sources, not only did La Borderie not let him examine it, but he persuaded him to put in print that the Vetus Collectio had been lost.[19] It was not until the 1970s, decades after La Borderie’s death, that the manuscript was again brought to the attention of the scholarly world, chiefly by Le Duc. However, as so much attention has been centred on the Arthurian texts and also the manuscript’s possible connection with Pierre Le Baud, its identity as the Maurists’ source has been overshadowed. Thus although scholars in Brittany are aware of the identity of this manuscript and do occasionally refer to it by its eighteenth-century title,[20] the confusion sown by La Borderie persists.  
  
            So now I come to the lost chronicles of my title. But what do I mean by lost chronicles? These are not strictly the chronicles or rather collections of extracts from chronicles found in the Vetus Collectio. Instead I am going further back still to the manuscript’s sources, the medieval chronicles and other sources that we know existed at the end of the fifteenth century from the evidence of Pierre Le Baud, who was commissioned by Duchess Anne in 1498 to write a history of the sovereigns of Brittany. Le Baud did extensive research in archives; he himself speaks of consulting history books, annals of kings, princes, times, ancient churches and the legends of saints.[21] We also know from Pierre Le Baud’s own great nephew, the historian Bertrand D’Argentré, that many of the chronicles and other documents that were available to Le Baud in 1500 had disappeared by the 1580s, destroyed by wars and other accidents; he even lists some of them by name, including the Chronique de Nantes.[22] D’Argentré also acknowledges that there was a certain skepticism among some of his contemporaries as to whether some of these chronicles had, indeed, ever existed.
            This brings me to an important question. What can the Vetus Collectio show us about how the chronicles printed by the eighteenth-century Maurists relate to these lost medieval Breton chronicles? What, indeed, does the label “chronicle” mean in this context? These editions certainly preserve some of the contents of lost chronicles, possibly some of the ones Pierre Le Baud names but other ones as well. Two of them have titles used by him. But are these medieval chronicles? The answer turns out to be that they are something very complex. They are ultimately the product of two processes of selecting and editing, first by the compilers of the Vetus Collectio and second by Dom Lobineau and possibly other Maurists, who, according to Dom Morice, also travelled around to Breton archives in the 1680s much the way their medieval predecessors did.[23]
            The first stage of this process of selecting and editing is difficult, of course, to recapture as the Vetus Collectio is the sole source for much of this material. But we can work out some things about it from the manuscript itself. First, as I have been stressing, this is a collection not of complete chronicles but of extracts, so the choices made by the compilers determined what was collected. According to internal evidence, the manuscript was completed between 1484 and 1493, under Duke Francis II or his daughter, Anne. The compilers were especially interested in historical events concerning the sovereigns, who could be kings, counts, or dukes depending on the period, births and deaths, genealogies, place names, and geographical details. Sometimes they just copy a series of notes without comments, but at other times they give the name of the source or its location. Occasionally a compiler makes reference to his travels; for example, one of them writes, “The things that follow I found in the Abbey of Saint Matthew in Finistere,” (p. 51) and on the following page, “These things that follow I found in a certain very ancient book of the Abbey of Landevennec in Cornouailles.” They often make corrections and add entries in between lines. They also record variants and on page 171 one comments that he could not find something. The notes are not always in chronological order. It is hard to know if errors are attributable to the copyists or if they existed in their sources. Small gaps such as those in an entry in the Chronicon Britannicum about the heretic Éon de l’Étoile that are represented using dots in Lobineau (cols. 33–34) and Morice (col. 5) suggest they also had trouble reading their originals. The biggest question is, of course, how to know where the sources began and ended, an important factor for understanding the Maurists’ printed texts.
            This second stage of selecting and editing, that carried out by the Maurists, is easier to check, but it also turns out to be extremely complex. To illustrate this complexity, I have selected one of the three chronicles, the Chronicon Britannicum,[24] because, unlike the Chroniques Annaulx and the Chronicque de Nantes, it is presented as a single chronicle rather than a composite. The title of “Chronicon Britannicum” is simply a label for “a Breton Chronicle.” I do not have time to give details here, but I think that this chronicle is based on a source connected to the Abbey of Sainte-Marie-de-Boquen. It starts in A.D. 211 with the death of Septimius Severus and ends in 1356 with a siege of Rennes by Henry, duke of Lancaster and John IV, duke of Brittany. The entries are sparse near the beginning and grow fuller near the end. Curiously, there is an entry containing only the name of Guy, bishop of Saint-Brieuc, dated 1330 and inserted out of sequence between 1345 and 1346. At the end of the chronicle in Lobineau’s collection but not in Morice’s there is a note, “Cetera ut in Chron Briocensi,” indicating that the rest of the chronicle is the same as the Chronicon Briocense, which survives in two separate manuscripts; this implies that the chronicle continues beyond the printed text.
            In fact, this Chronicon Britannicum, although it is composed of medieval material, never existed as a medieval chronicle. It is an eighteenth-century composition and Dom Lobineau is in a very real sense its author. It is made up of two separate series of notes from the Vetus Collectio that have been spliced together, rearranged, and supplemented. The first set of notes starts at the top of page 15 in the manuscript with the date of 211 and ends in the middle of page 22. Lobineau stops at an entry for the death of John III, duke of Brittany, in 1341, mistakenly dated to 1340, the event that set off the Breton War of Succession that lasted until 1364, but there are two more entries in this series. The remaining entries in the printed Chronicon Britannicum which continue until 1356 actually come from a different set of notes about the Breton civil war a few pages later that are not all in chronological order. Lobineau uses the entry about John III in 1340 as his transition into the new set of notes. He takes the two remaining entries in the first series, the first of which is a reference to the death of John of Montfort, John III’s younger brother, in 1345 and the second the curious entry dated 1330 about Guy, Bishop of Saint-Brieuc, which is also out of sequence and too early as well as Guy was not elected until 1335. He  inserts them both into the entries based on the second set of notes. The entries in the Chronicon Britannicum based on this first set of notes from 211 until 1340/41 are reproduced relatively accurately, but there are some alterations and additions that are not flagged, the most interesting of which is the addition of an entire entry for the year 879 about the election of Alan the Great as duke; this entry is taken from a completely different set of entries on page 171 of the manuscript. (See Appendix, Example A.) Only half of this entry is included; the other half concerns the claims of Breton rulers to be considered kings.
            Lobineau then skips to p. 26 over another collection of notes and extracts to another entry concerning the death of John III that belongs to a different series of notes. (See Appendix, Example B.) This entry is correctly dated to 1341, but Lobineau keeps the incorrect date of the other series and prints the correct one in the margin. He keeps the beginning of the entry up to the phrase “post cujus obitum,” which he uses to replace the grammatically equivalent “post mortem Iohannis ducis Britanie” in order to combine the two entries into one. This series of notes is clearly from a different source. The years are not simple Roman numerals as in the first list, but they often include the words “anno Domini” and are occasionally written out in words; Lobineau has made them all consistently Roman numerals. Also the calendar dating system uses the system of days numbered with ordinal numbers rather than the older system of Kalends, Nones etc.
            These entries in the Chronicon Britannicum also constitute a much more complicated patchwork of material not only from this second series of notes but also from the notes in between pages 22 and 26. For example, the entry for 1345 shows how entries from three separate places, including the unused entry from the first series about the death of John of Montfort, have been combined together, but the dating in relation to the Kalends from the first series has been preserved. (See Appendix, Example C.)
            Finally, there is the question of the end of the Chronicon Britannicum. Are the subsequent entries actually the same as the Chronicon Briocense and how far does it actually go? Unfortunately this part of the Chronicon Briocense has not been published in a modern edition, so I can only compare it to the extracts printed by Dom Morice in 1752. The entry for the year 1363, which recounts the signing of the Treaty of Evran between John IV, duke of Brittany and count of Montfort, and his opponent, Charles of Blois, shows that this part of the chronicle is very closely related to the Chronicon Briocense, but it is not exactly the same. (See Appendix, Example D.) Some of the wording is different, and the information in this entry is much fuller. As far as I can tell, this block of notes goes at least as far as August,1377, over two decades past the end point of 1356 in the printed edition, but I have not had time to decipher all of it.

            In conclusion, the Vetus Collectio allows us a privileged glimpse into the Breton archives with the compilers as they travelled around the duchy and scribbled hastily. It also shows us the layering of selection, arrangement, and possibly interpretation imposed on these hasty notes by the Maurist historians as they created not only their histories but in a real sense rewrote these source documents and imposed order upon what is often a jumble, creating new chronicles in the process. I can say that, having worked on this manuscript, I can understand La Borderie’s fascination for it, if not what he did, and I have had reason to be grateful to him and others for the enormous work that they did over several centuries as it has helped me navigate this fascinating but often baffling manuscript.




Appendix
Examples of Entries from the Chronicon Britannicum and the Chronicon Briocense Compared With Entries from MS IV 1 F 1003

Example A

Entries 876–917 (Lobineau col. 32; cf. Morice col. 4) The inserted material is marked in bold.

A1.   DCCCLXXVI. Rollo Dux Normannorum in Gallis appulit.

A2.   DCCCLXXIX. Alanus cognomento Magnus expulsis à Britanniâ Paganis-Danis & Northmannis, cunctisque Britonum proceribus in subjectionem positis post multa miserabilia bella intestina unâ totius exercitus voce factus est Britanniae Dux. Hic nepos erat Regis quondam Salomonis & comes Venetensis, qui pro sua maxima strenuitate dictus est Magnus.

A3.   DCCCCXVII. Obiit Rollo primus Dux Normanorum. Cui successit Guillelmus filius ejus.

Corresponding entries[25] in IV F 1 1003. The inserted material is marked in bold; the material not used is italicized.

A1.   dccc lxxui Rollo dux Normanorum in Galiis appullit. (p. 17)

A3.   dcccc xvii obiit Rollo primus dux Normannorum cui successit Guillelmus filius eius. (p. 17)

A2.   dccc lxxixo Alanus cognomento magnus expulsis a Britania paganis Danis et Normannis cunctis Britonum proceribus in subiectionem positis post multa miserabilia bella intestina una totius exercitus uoce factus est Britannie dux. hic nepos erat regis quonam Salomonis et comes Venetensis qui pro sua maxima strenuitate dictus est magnus. ab isto primo {princeps} principes Britanie monarche ceperunt dici duces a Conano enim primo eorum rege usque ad istum Alannum regis utebantur nomine. hic autem ducis nomen accepit quo tunc temporis nulli uel pauci admodum principes utebantur. reperi tamen in quibusdem antiquissimis kartis   ecclesie Nannetensis quod ipse maximus Alanus regem se in suis kartis appellabat unde sic dicitur Alanus Rex summus Britonum dux. (p. 171)
     [Corrigendum: I am sure that it should be quondam Salomonis rather than quonam. There is definitely a pale d with a squiggle at the end of the word].



Example B

Entry 1340 (Lobineau col. 35–6; cf. Morice col. 7). The phrases used as the transition are underlined.

B.     MCCCXL. Obiit bonus Johannes Dux Britanniae. Post cujus obitum fuit bellum apud montem Relaxam inter Carolum de Blesio & Comitem Montisfortis, in quo pars Caroli fuit devicta.

Corresponding entries in IV F 1 1003. Italics indicate omitted text in edition.

Ba.   mccc xl. obiit bonus Johannes dux Britanie post cuius obitum [uacat] (p. 22)

Bb.   anno Domini mccc xlio. post mortem Iohannis ducis Britanie fuit bellum apud Montem Relaxum inter Karolum de Blesi et comitem Monstisfortis in quo pars Karoli fuit deuicta. (p. 26)


Example C


Entry 1345 (Lobineau col. 36; cf. Morice col. 8)

C.     MCCCXLV. Eadem civitas Corisopitensis fuit obsessa per Dominum Joannem Comitem Montisfortis, sed non fuit capta. (1) Obiit Dominus Johannes de Monteforti apud Henbont, frater boni Johannis Ducis Britanniae & filius Arturi VI. Kal. Octobris. (2) Die veneris ante Nativitatem S. Joan. Baptist. fuit bellum in Landa Cadoreti, in quo Dominus Thomas Dagorne tenens partem Comitis Montisfortis obtinuit, & pars Caroli de Blesis fuit devicta & succubuit. (3)

Corresponding entries in IV F 1 1003

C2.   mcccxluo. obiit dominus Iohannes comes de Monteforti apud Hembont frater boni Iohannis ducis Britanie et filius Arturi ui kalendas octobris.  (p. 22)

C1.   anno Domini m ccc xluo. idem [sic] ciuitas Corisopitensis fuit obsessa per dominum Iohannem comitem Montisfortis sed non fuit capta. (p. 26 [top])

C3.   mcccxluo. ueneris ante natiuitatem sancti Iohannis Baptiste fuit bellum in landa Cadoreti in quo dominus Thomas Dagorne ferens partem comitis Montisfortis obtinuit et pars Karoli de Blesis fuit deuicta et succubuit.  (p. 26 [further down])



Example D


First part of entry concerning the Treaty of Evran (1363) in Chronicon Briocense (Morice col. 43)

 Anno 1363. die 12. mensis Julii fuit tractatum & juratum in Landis de Evran, quod Carolus  de Blesiis haberet mediam partem Britanniae, & inter coetera quod idem Carolus infrà  quindenam vel mensem traderet civitatem Nannetensem eidem Comiti cum residuo usque  ad medietatem totius Ducatus. Et in quantum tangebat arma Ducatûs, voluerunt hoc à Regibus Franciae & Angliae ordinari sine ressorto. De caetero debebant esse veri  consanguinei & amici; & haec omnia juraverunt ad sancta Dei Evangelia & super Corpus D. nostri J.C.


Corresponding part of entry in IV F 1 1003 (The additional information is marked in bold.)


 anno domini millesimo ccc lxiii xiia. die iulii fuit iuratum et promissum in landis dEuran quod Karolus de Blays haberet mediam partem Britanie pro se et suis et dominus  Iohannes comes Montisfortis haberet alliam mediam partem et inter cetera idem  Karolus debebat infra quindenam uel mensem tradere potessionem ciuitatis Nannetensis eidem comiti ac residuum usque ad dictam mediam partem totius ducatus. et in quantum tangebat arma ducatus consenserunt hinc inde tenere super hoc ordinationem regum Francie  et Anglie et per hoc debebant esse de cetero ueri consanguinei et amici. et hec omnia iurauerunt ad sancta Dei euangelia et super corpus Christi in dictis landis dEuran tenere complere obseruare et in contrarium non uenire per se nec per alios quouismodo in  presentia utriusque exercitus ipsorum et baronum Britanie ibidem tunc existentium.   (p. 26)



Primary Sources

D’Argentré, Bertrand. L'Histoire de Bretagne, des roys, ducs, comtes, et princes d'icelle. (1582) New Ed. Rennes: Jean Vatar, 1668. PDF. Google Books.

La Borderie, Arthur Le Moyne de, L'Historia Britonum attribuée à Nennius et l'Historia britannica avant Geoffroi de Monmouth. Paris:  H. Champion, 1883. PDF. Google Books.

Le Baud, Pierre. Histoire de Bretagne avec les Chroniques des Maisons de Vitré et de Laval. Ed. Le Sieur d'Hozier. Paris: Gervais Alliot, 1638. PDF. Les Bibliothèques Virtuelles Humanistes,          Université de Tours.

Le Duc, Gwenaël, and Claude Sterckx. "Les fragments inédits de la Vie de saint Goëznou,"  Annales de Bretagne 78 (Number 2, June 1971) 277-285. Print.

Lobineau, Dom Guy Alexis, Histoire de Bretagne, composee sur les titres et les auteurs originaux. Tome II. Contenant les Preuves, & pieces justificatives. Paris: Chez la Veuve François Muguet, 1707. PDF. Google Books.

Morice, Dom Pierre Hyacinthe. Mémoires pour servir de preuves à l'histoire ecclésiastique et  civile de Bretagne, tirés des archives de cette province, de celles de France et d'Angleterre, des recueils de plusieurs savans Antiquaires, et mis en ordre. 3 vols. Paris: L'Imprimerie  Charles Osmont, 1752-56. PDF. Google Books.


[1].      This is the corrected text of a talk given at the Seventh International Conference on the  Medieval Chronicle in Liverpool, 9 July 2014.
[2].      The transcriptions are taken from digital images of the manuscript obtained from the Institut de recherche et d’histoire des textes, Paris, France.
[3]     Histoire de Bretagne, vol. 3, (Rennes: J. Plihon and L. Hervé, 1899; repr. Mayenne: Joseph Floch, 1975), pp. 388–90.
[4].       L'Historia Britonum attribuée à Nennius et l'Historia Britannica avant Geoffroi de Monmouth (Paris: H. Champion, 1883), pp. 88–94.
[5]     Histoire de Bretagne, composee sur les titres et les auteurs originaux. Tome II. Contenant les Preuves, & pieces justificatives (Paris: Chez la Veuve François Muguet, 1707).
[6].      Mémoires pour servir de preuves à l'histoire ecclésiastique et civile de Bretagne, tirés des archives de cette province, de celles de France et d'Angleterre, des recueils de plusieurs savans Antiquaires, et mis en ordre, 3 vols. (Paris: L'imprimerie Charles Osmont, 1752-56). 
[7].       Lobineau, Histoire, Col. 30–36; Morice, Mémoires I, Col. 1-8.
[8].      La Borderie, Arthur Le Moyne de. “Examen Chronologique des chartes du Cartulaire de Redon antérieures au XIe siècle, Suite des observations générales. Section II.—Princes Bretons (suite),” Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, Vol. 5. Ser. 5, (1864), 403 n. 3.
[9].      L'Historia Britonum, p. 90.
[10].     Ibid, p. 19.
[11]    Histoire de Bretagne, vol. 2, (Rennes: J. Plihon and L. Hervé, 1898; repr. Mayenne: Joseph Floch, 1975), p. 525 n. 3.
[12]    Hubert Guillotel, “Le poids historique d’Arthur de la Borderie,” Mémoires de la Société d’Histoire et  d’Archéologie de Bretagne, 80 (2002): 356-358.
[13].      Ibid., 356.
[14].      Ibid., 357.
[15]    "Les fragments inédits de la Vie de saint Goëznou," Annales de Bretagne 78, 2 (June 1971): 277-285.
[16].      Review of Les origines de Bretagne by Léon Fleuriot (Paris: Payot, 1980), Mémoires de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de Bretagne 58 (1981), 356.
[17].     L'Historia Britonum, p. 90, n. 2.
[18].     See in particular Philippe Guigon, “Le bénédictin François Plaine et le ‘bénédictin laïque’ Arthur de la Borderie : Chronique d’une amitié enfuie,” Mémoires de la Société d’Histoire et  d’Archéologie de Bretagne, 80 (2002), p. 369.
[19].     La Chronique de Nantes (570 environ - 1049) (Paris: Alphonse Picard et Fils, 1896), pp. xxii–iii.  
[20].     A-Y Bourgès, "La cour ducale de Bretagne et la légende arthurienne au bas Moyen Âge: Prolégomènes à une édition critique du Livre des faits d'Arthur," A travers les îles celtiques, Mélanges à la mémoire de Gwenaël Le Duc, Britannia Monastica 12 (2008), p. 80. 
[21].     Avant-propos to the Histoire de Bretagne avec les Chroniques des Maisons de Vitré et de Laval, ed. Le Sieur d'Hozier (Paris: Gervais Alliot, 1638), np.
[22].     L'Histoire de Bretagne, des roys, ducs, comtes, et princes d'icelle (1582), 2nd ed. (Rennes: Jean Vatar, 1668), p. 23.
[23].     Preface to the Histoire civile et ecclésiastique de Bretagne, vol. 1, (Paris: Delaguette, 1750),   p. x.
[24].     Lobineau, Histoire, vol. 2, cols. 30–36; Morice, Mémoires, vol. 1, cols. 1-8.
[25].    Proper names have been capitalized and minimal punctuation added for clarity.

Printfriendly