Widukind of Corvey

Widukind of Corvey (c. 925 – after 973) was a medieval Saxon chronicler. His three-volume Res gestae saxonicae sive annalium libri tres is an important chronicle of 10th-century Germany during the rule of the Ottonian dynasty.

In view of his name, he possibly was a descendant of the Saxon leader and national hero Widukind, mentioned in the Royal Frankish Annals, who had battled Charlemagne in the Saxon Wars from 777 to 785. Widukind the Chronicler entered the Benedictine abbey of Corvey in the Westphalian part of Saxony around 940/42, probably to become a tutor. It is widely assumed that he had reached the age of 15 upon his access, though it has been recently suggested that he may have joined the Order as a child. In 936 Henry the Fowler, the first East Frankish king of the Saxon ducal Ottonian dynasty had died and was succeeded by his son Otto the Great.

Otto's rise as undisputed ruler of a German kingdom against the reluctant dukes made great impression on the Benedictine monk. By his own admission, Widukind first wrote several Christian hagiographies before he began his Res gestae saxonicae. He dedicated the chronicles to Abbess Matilda of Quedlinburg (c. 955–999), daughter of Emperor Otto the Great, like himself a descendant of the Saxon leader Widukind. The annals were written after Otto's coronation by Pope John XII on 2 February 962; however, though both Otto and his father Henry the Fowler are named Imperatores, this incident is not mentioned. After the elevation of Matilda's brother Otto II as co-emperor in 967 and the death of her half-brother Archbishop William of Mainz one year later, the abbess remained the only important member of the Ottonian dynasty in the Saxon lands under regent Hermann Billung; therefore, Widukind may have begun the writing—or started all over again—to create a kind of mirror for princes.

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