Flores Historiarum

The Flores Historiarum (Flowers of History) is the name of two different (though related) Latin chronicles by medieval English historians that were created in the 13th century, associated originally with the Abbey of St Albans.

The first Flores Historiarum was created by St Albans writer, Roger of Wendover, who carried his chronology from the creation up to 1235, the year before his death. Roger claims in his preface to have selected "from the books of catholic writers worthy of credit, just as flowers of various colours are gathered from various fields." Hence he also called his work Flores Historiarum. However, like most chronicles, it is now valued not so much for what was culled from previous writers, as for its full and lively narrative of contemporary events from 1215 to 1235, including the signing of Magna Carta by King John at Runnymede.

The book has survived in one thirteenth-century manuscript in the Bodleian Library (Douce manuscript 207), a mutilated 14th century copy in the British Library (Cotton manuscript Otho B. v.), and in the version adapted by Matthew Paris which forms the first part of his Chronica Majora (ed. Henry Richards Luard, Rolls Series, seven volumes).

The sources brought together in the Flores include Bede, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Sigebert of Gembloux, Florence of Worcester, Simeon of Durham, William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Robert de Monte, William of Tyre, Ralph de Diceto, Benedictus Abbas, Roger of Hoveden and Ralph of Coggeshall (to 1194). A detailed list is given by Luard, who in his running text also marks up the apparent source of each section. From 1201 and through the reign of King John it draws on a source common between it and the Annales Sancti Edmundi later also used by John de Taxster, and also some annals added to the St. Albans copy of Diceto.

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