keyword: St. Gall
St. Gall
- The Greater Annals of St. Gall: Introduction, Translation, and Notes
Issue: Leeds Medieval Studies, 3 (2023)
As the house annals for one of the most important monasteries in Europe and a critical source for the foundation and expansion of the tenth-century Saxon empire, the Annales Sangallenses maiores or Greater Annals of St. Gall are a crucial historical document. This paper provides the first published translation of the Greater Annals into English alongside a study of the text’s context and themes. The Greater Annals are a composite work, first created from the basis of the Annales Alamannici just after 955, continued intermittently until 1024, then concluded with a long portion from 1025 to 1044 relying on a shared source with Wipo of Burgundy’s Gesta Chuonradi imperatoris and Hermann of Reichenau’s Chronicle. The autograph copy of the text, which fortunately survives, is the work of at least thirty-three different scribes, many of whom seem to have updated the text as the desire took them with little thought to narrative coherence or factual consistency. Nevertheless, several consistent themes can be detected in the analysis of the text; in particular the presentation of alternative viewpoints regarding the great events of German history, the development of regional political power in Alemannia, and the history of St. Gall itself. The Greater Annals represent an early medieval historical source which has been significantly understudied by modern scholars; both the text itself and the fascinating autograph manuscript deserve more attention.