science

Medieval Chronicle Society

Medieval Chronicle Society is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Medieval Chronicle Society rather than just read about it. In short: The Medieval Chronicle Society is an international and interdisciplinary organization founded to facilitate the work of scholars interested in medieval annals and chronicles, or more generally medieval historiography. It was founded in 1999 and in July 2026 it had 579 members.

Key takeaways

Medieval Chronicle Society belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Medieval Chronicle Society to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Medieval Chronicle Society from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Medieval Chronicle Society is an international and interdisciplinary organization founded to facilitate the work of scholars interested in medieval annals and chronicles, or more generally medieval historiography. It was founded in 1999 and in July 2026 it had 579 members.

Aims and history Annals and chronicles were the main genres of historical writing in the Middle Ages. Consequently, they have always been of great importance to historians. The extent to which they are also of interest to students of medieval literature or of historical linguistics was only fully realised in the latter part of the 20th century. Since many chronicles are illustrated, they are also a fruitful object of study for art historians. It was the desire for a forum in which these disciplines could operate together that led to the foundation of the society. The history of the society began with a series of triennial conferences initially in Utrecht, but later moving from place to place. These early conferences were hosted by Erik Kooper (English studies, Utrecht). It was at the second of these conferences, in 1999, that the society was formally founded. The society maintains a website financed by the University of Liverpool, and publishes a regular newsletter with information on recent publications in the chronicles field. The Society's logo, depicting two interlocked dragons, was inspired by a unique series of fifteenth-century Utrecht manuscripts, all containing one or two dragons as part of their historiated initials. These two particular dragons were adopted for the logo because they aptly represented the twin disciplines of history and literature, and the city where the Society was established in 1999.

Journal: The Medieval Chronicle

Volumes of proceedings of the first three conferences were published by Rodopi. This triennial publication was then transformed into a peer-reviewed yearbook. Volume 17 was the first to be published by Brill as a peer-reviewed journal with two issues per year. The proceedings and yearbook (volumes 1-16) were edited by Erik Kooper and (since volume 8) Sjoerd Levelt. As well as the proceedings of the society's conferences, and also of the Cambridge Chronicle Symposium, the Medieval Chronicle included research submitted independently of the conferences. A number of text editions of chronicles have also been published here. Volume 15 was a collection of essays in honour of Erik Kooper. Since volume 17, the journal has been edited by Cristian Bratu and Alison Williams Lewin. The journal is trilingual, with articles in English, French and German.

Conferences Conferences to date:

1996 Utrecht (Driebergen) 1999 Utrecht (Driebergen) 2002 Utrecht (Doorn) 2005 Reading 2008 Belfast 2011 Pécs 2014 Liverpool 2017 Lisbon 2021 Poznań 2023 Nancy 2026 Munich

Projects A number of interdisciplinary projects have been inspired by the society, including Repertorium Chronicarum an on-line database of Latin chronicle manuscripts maintained by Dan Embree on the website of Mississippi State university.

A major project of the society was the Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle published in Leiden by Brill, edited by Graeme Dunphy. The EMC contains around 2500 usually quite short articles on individual authors or on anonymous works. A majority of these are from Western Christendom, but there are also entries on Slavic, Byzantine, Syriac, Islamic and Jewish chronicles. These give information on the date, language, form and manuscript tradition, and discuss issues which have been highlighted in recent scholarship. There are also about 60 longer "thematic" articles on particular aspects of chronicles. The two-volume paper edition appeared in 2010 and runs to around 1830 pages, with about 60 black-and-white full-page illustrations. About 450 scholars collaborated in writing it. An electronic edition with additional articles appeared in 2012, co-edited by Cristian Bratu; updates with significant expansions appeared in 2016 and 2021.

See also List of historical societies List of literary societies Rolls Series Text publication society List of sources for the Crusades

References

External links Website of the Medieval Chronicle Society Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle – catalogue entry at Brill Publishers for the print version. Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle – online access to the electronic version.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Medieval Chronicle Society

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Medieval Chronicle Society claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Medieval Chronicle Society before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Medieval Chronicle Society ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Medieval Chronicle Society

In research: Medieval Chronicle Society appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Medieval Chronicle Society in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Medieval Chronicle Society is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century encyclopedias, Chronicles, History organizations, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Medieval Chronicle Society outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Medieval Chronicle Society in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Medieval Chronicle Society means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Medieval Chronicle Society out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Medieval Chronicle Society in simple terms?

Why does Medieval Chronicle Society matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Medieval Chronicle Society?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Medieval Chronicle Society.