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The ''Peterborough Chronicle'' (also called the Laud manuscript and the E manuscript), one of the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicles'', contains unique information about the history of England 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.)〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://avalon.law.yale.edu/medieval/ang01.asp )〕 ()〔Joseph Bosworth, ''The Elements of Anglo-Saxon Grammar,'' p. 277. (This book is in public domain)〕 However, whenever a monastery's chronicle was damaged, or when a new monastery began a chronicle, nearby monasteries would lend out their chronicles for copying. Thus, a new chronicle would be identical to the lender's until they reached the date of copying and then would be idiosyncratic. Such was the case with the ''Peterborough Chronicle'': a fire compelled the abbey to copy the chronicles from other churches up to 1120. When William the Conqueror took England and Anglo-Norman became the official language, the ''Anglo-Saxon Chronicles'' generally ceased. The monks of Peterborough Abbey, however, continued to compile events in theirs. While the ''Peterborough Chronicle'' is not professional history, and one still needs Latin histories (e.g. William of Malmesbury's ''Gesta Regum Anglorum''), it is one of the few first-hand accounts from the period 1070 to 1154 in England written in English and from a non-courtly point of view. It is also a valuable source of information about the early Middle English language itself. The first continuation, for example, is written in late Old English, but the second continuation begins to show mixed forms, until the conclusion of the second continuation, which switches into an early form of distinctly Middle English. The linguistic novelties recorded in the second continuation are plentiful, including at least one true innovation: the feminine pronoun "she" (as ''"scæ"'') is first recorded in the ''Peterborough Chronicle'' (). ==The fire and the continuations== 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)〔Savage, A. ''The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles'' Colour Library Books. (1995) ISBN 1-85833-478-0 page 249.〕 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 1132–1154 and includes the reign of King Stephen. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Peterborough Chronicle」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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