The Chronicon Livoniae in Early Modern Scholarship: From Humanist Receptions to the Gruber Edition of 1740 [Abstract] more

Stefan Donecker: The Chronicon Livoniae in Early Modern Scholarship: From Humanist Receptions to the Gruber Edition of 1740. In: Crusading and Chronicle Writing on the Medieval Baltic Frontier. A Companion to the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia. Ed. by Marek Tamm, Linda Kaljundi and Carsten Selch Jensen (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), 363-384. Abstract Among modern scholars, the 13th-century Chronicon Livoniae, a vivid eyewitness account of the Baltic Crusades written by the missionary priest Henry of Livonia, is regarded as one of the preeminent examples of medieval historiography in north-eastern Europe. Previous generations, however, have been less appreciative. Hermann von Brevern, one of the most influential Livonian scholars of the early 18th century, denounced Henry’s chronicle as the work of an “ignorant monk”, “quite devoid of good remarks”. His contemporary, the Swedish historian Arvid Moller, spoke of an “unreliable text, or rather insignificant piece of scrap paper”. With these dismissive comments, Brevern and Moller expressed the common attitude of 16th-, 17th- and early 18th-century scholars towards the Livonian Chronicle. Early modern scholarship has, in general, not been kind to Henry of Livonia. In this paper, I survey the reception of Henry's Chronicon Livoniae during the early modern period – or rather the lack thereof. Among most 16th-century humanists, 17th-century polyhistors and all the other different specimen of early modern scholars, Henry's chronicle was either unknown or deliberately ignored. Nevertheless, the chronicle left some faint traces on early modern scholarship, both in Livonia and abroad. Most existing manuscripts date from the 17th century, and individual scholars, most notably the late 17th-century chronicler Thomas Hiärn, did appreciate and utilize Henry’s chronicle, despite the disdain of their learned colleagues. The Chronicon Livoniae was rediscovered in the 1730s by the Hanoverian scholar and librarian Johann Daniel Gruber, who published the first edition of the text in 1740. Both the chronicle and the edition were met with almost universal acclaim by the scholarly community. The “insignificant piece of scrap paper” turned, within few years, into an exemplary achievement of historical erudition, “a model of a good chronicle, and likewise a model of a perfect chronicle edition”, as the famous German historian August Ludwig Schlözer phrased it. This extraordinary re-assessment of a previously underestimated text can be explained through the paradigmatic shifts of the early enlightenment, most notably the state of nature theorem. The volume can be ordered at the publisher’s webpage.