22 Facts About Matthew Paris

Matthew Paris authored a number of historical works, many of which he scribed and illuminated himself, typically in drawings partly coloured with watercolour washes, sometimes called "tinted drawings".

Matthew Paris is sometimes confused with the nonexistent Matthew of Westminster.

Matthew Paris's is a renowned Medieval work, in many cases being a key source for mid-13th century Europe, partially due to his verbose insertion of personal opinions into his narrative and his use of sources such as records, letters, and conversations with witnesses to events including the English king Henry III, earl Richard of Cornwall, the Norwegian king Haakon IV, a number of English bishops, and many others.

Matthew Paris often tended to glorify Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and denigrate the pope, expressing strong criticism of centralised church authority and at times royal power.

In spite of his surname and knowledge of the French language, Matthew Paris was of English birth, and is believed by some chroniclers to be of the Matthew Paris family of Hildersham, Cambridgeshire.

The first we know of Matthew Paris is that he was admitted as a monk to St Albans in 1217.

Matthew Paris's life was mainly spent in this religious house.

In 1248, Matthew Paris was sent to Norway as the bearer of a message from Louis IX to Haakon IV; he made himself so agreeable to the Norwegian sovereign that he was invited to superintend the reformation of the Benedictine Nidarholm Abbey outside Trondheim.

Matthew Paris inherited the mantle of Roger of Wendover, at that time the abbey's foremost chronicler, after Wendover's death in 1236.

Matthew Paris revised Wendover's work, a chronicle covering Creation to 1235 known as the Flores Historiarum, and added new material of an annalistic nature from 1236 onwards which Matthew Paris sustained until his death in 1259.

Matthew Paris scribed 2 major abridgements of his Chronica: his Historia Anglorum, and a work named like that of Wendover, the Flores Historiarum.

Matthew Paris is known for his illustrations and cartographic ability, often found as marginalia however sometimes being given full pages.

The manuscripts produced by Matthew Paris show few signs of collaboration, but art historians detect a School of St Albans surviving after Matthew Paris's death, influenced by him.

Matthew Paris's style suggests that it was formed by works from around 1200.

Matthew Paris was somewhat old-fashioned in retaining a roundness in his figures, rather than adopting the thin angularity of most of his artist contemporaries, especially those in London.

Matthew Paris's colouring emphasises green and blue, and together with his characteristic layout of a picture in the top half of a page, is relatively distinctive.

From 1235, the point at which Wendover dropped his pen, Matthew Paris continued the history on the plan which his predecessors had followed.

Matthew Paris derived much of his information from the letters of important people, which he sometimes inserts, but much more from conversations with the eyewitnesses of events.

The king knew that Matthew Paris was writing a history, and wanted it to be as exact as possible.

Henry Richards Luard supposes that Matthew Paris never intended his work to be read in its present form.

Matthew Paris wrote a life of St Edmund of Abingdon, sometime Archbishop of Canterbury.

Matthew Paris wrote the Anglo-Norman La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei, which survives in a beautifully illuminated manuscript version, Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS.