Питерборо Хроникасы: Англия тарихының бірегей қолжазбасы

Manuscript which contains unique information about the history of England

The Peterborough Chronicle (also called the Laud manuscript and the E manuscript) is a version of the Anglo Saxon Chronicles originally maintained by the monks of Peterborough Abbey, now in Cambridgeshire. It contains unique information about the history of England and of the English language after the Norman Conquest; according to philologist J. A. W. Bennett, it is the only prose history in English between the Conquest and the later 14th century. The Anglo Saxon Chronicles were composed and maintained between the various monasteries of Anglo Saxon England and were an attempt to record the history of Britain throughout the years AD. Typically the chronicles began with the birth of Christ, went through Biblical and Roman history, then continued to the present. Every major religious house in England kept its own, individual chronicle, and the chronicles were not compared with each other or in any way kept uniform. For example, in the opening paragraph of this chronicle it is said that the Britons that settled in South Britain came from "Armenia". ("Armenia" is probably a mistaken transcription of Armorica, an area in Northwestern Gaul.)

Today, the Peterborough Chronicle is recognised as one of the four distinct versions of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle (along with the Winchester Chronicle or Parker Chronicle, the Abingdon Chronicle and the Worcester Chronicle), but it is not wholly distinct There was a fire at Peterborough (Friday, 4 August 1116) that destroyed the monastery's library, and so the earliest part of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle at Peterborough is a copy of Winchester Cathedral's chronicle For the 11th century, the chronicle at Peterborough diverges from Parker's, and it has been speculated that a proto "Kentish Chronicle", full of nationalistic and regionalistic interests, was used for these years; however, such a single source is speculative The Peterborough copyists probably used multiple sources for their missing years, but the Dissolution of the Monasteries makes it impossible to be sure. Regardless, the entries for the 12th century to 1122 are a jumble of other chronicles' accounts, sharing half entries with one source and half with another, moving from one source to another and then back to a previous one. This shifting back and forth raises, again, the vexatious possibility of a lost chronicle as a single, common source. It is after 1122 that the Peterborough manuscript becomes unique. Therefore, the document usually called The Peterborough Chronicle is divided into the "first continuation" and the "second continuation" from the time of the fire and the copying. The two continuations are sui generis both in terms of the information they impart, the style they employ, and their language. The first continuation covers 1122–1131. The second continuation runs from 1132 to 1154 and includes the reign of King Stephen. The copied portion uses grammatical gender and inflections like in Old English, but there are discrepancies. ), the chronicler protests at some length at the illegality and impiety of the appointment. He also mentions that the Wild Hunt was seen at the same time as the appointment, as an ill omen. When Henry was eventually removed by death, the monk again takes the position that this was divine remedy, for Henry had tried to make Peterborough part of the Cluniac Order and had attempted to have his own nephew be the next abbot, "oc Crist it ne uuolde" ("but Christ did not will it"). The first continuation shows a major change in grammatical gender and inflections from how they were used in Old English. Though there are still three genders masculine, feminine, and neuter several nouns seem to have been shuffled among the categories in a manner that cannot be completely explained by a move towards natural gender or the gender of French nouns, as the inflections marking gender are re purposed for other functions.

The two Peterborough continuations sympathise with the poor, and this makes them almost unique in Latin or English history. They also focus more on life outside of the abbey than other Chronicles. The general Chronicle is somewhat insular. While most versions note the national events, such as a progress of the king or a change in sovereign, discussion of the countryside around the monastery is limited. Portents and omens receive coverage, but rarely do the chroniclers discuss political alliances (as the author of the second continuation does with his denunciation of the bishops who were allied with Matilda) or the legalities of monastic rule (as the author of the first continuation does in his lament over Abbot Henry). The monks who compiled the continuation at Peterborough were either consciously striking out in a new direction (perhaps under the direction of Abbot Martin) or continuing a type of chronicle that was confined to their own monastery (that was lost with the fire). It does not seem likely that Peterborough was in any sense a lax or secular monastery, as the description of drunkenness causing the fire would not have made the abbey singular in the age. The continuations are also unique in their linguistic shifts. When copying from Winchester, they preserve the orthography and syntax of late Old English, and when they get to events for which they have no copy text the language abruptly changes to a newer form. Given that the loan would have taken place just before the continuation, the change in language reflects either a dramatic attempt at greater vernacular by the continuation authors or a significant and quick change in the language itself as Norman influences spread. Because the chronicle is in prose, the artificiality of verse form does not entail the preservation of linguistic archaisms, and historians of English can trace the beginnings of Middle English in these pages.

The manuscript of the Chronicle is now held by the Bodleian Library. It was donated to the library by William Laud, who was then Chancellor of Oxford University as well as Archbishop of Canterbury, on 28 June 1639. Laud included the manuscript together with a number of other documents, part of the third of a series of donations he made to the library in the years leading up to the English Civil War. It is currently identified in the library catalogue as Laud Misc. 636; previously it was designated as O. C. 1003 based on the "Old Catalogue" by Edward Bernard. The Bodleian has made a series of images of Laud Misc 636 available.