Godfrey of Viterbo and His Readers ─ Imperial Tradition and Universal History in Late Medieval Europe

"This collection provides a systematic survey of the wide readership the works of Godfrey of Viterbo enjoyed in the late Middle Ages. In the last years of the twelfth century this chronicler and imperial notary wrote a series of historical collections that gained considerable and lasting popularity: between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, his works were copied in elaborate manuscripts in almost all of Latin Europe. Godfrey was a herald of the new political ideas the Hohenstaufen developed after the years of defeat against the papacy and the Italian communes, but also a universal chronicler whose interests reached far beyond the political issues of his day. Bringing together a group of specialists on manuscripts and historical writing in late medieval England, Spain, Italy, Germany, Bohemia and Poland, this volume demonstrates how Godfrey's works were understood by medieval readers"--

Thomas Foerster studied at Heidelberg University where he was awarded his PhD in 2008 and has since worked in different postdoctoral positions in Norway, France, and since 2013 at the Norwegian Institute in Rome, Italy. He is author of Conquest and Political Culture: Hohenstaufen Sicily and Capetian Normandy, c.1185-1215 (forthcoming) and Vergleich und IdentitA?t: Selbst- und Fremddeutung im Norden des hochmittelalterlichen Europa (2009).