Was Matthew Paris a trustworthy historian—or a biased commentator with an agenda? This article explores how one of medieval England’s most vivid chroniclers blurred the line between fact, rumour, and political messaging.
By Björn Weiler
Matthew Paris (c.1200–c.1259) was a monk at the English Benedictine community of St. Albans. A mapmaker and artist, he was also an accomplished and prolific writer. His oeuvre included universal history, regnal history, communal history, and hagiography written in both Latin and French. It is estimated that, between 1247 and 1259, he and his assistants composed almost a million words of prose. His horizons were exceptional. He wrote about the Mongol incursions in the early 1240s, the conflict between pope and emperor, the affairs of the Holy Land and of Scandinavia.
Interspersed with such weighty matters were local and regional concerns. For example, Matthew narrates the Mongol invasion of Europe in 1241, detailing the very dramatic conflict that was taking place. At the same time, the chronicler also noted that herring prices had collapsed in the English port of Great Yarmouth, explaining that vendors from Denmark and the Baltic states were not coming there because of the Mongol threat. Much attention was given to the ongoing dispute about Tynemouth, involving St. Albans and the bishops of Durham. The affairs of St. Albans also featured prominently, as evident in the list of beneficiaries of St. Albans – a lengthy account of who had given what – or the rich biographies of its abbots, and of St. Alban and of Offa, the abbey’s reputed founder.
A Reliable Narrator?
Pope Innocent III depicted by Matthew Paris. Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 016II, f.178r
Matthew did not, however, merely record events: he also commented upon them. This has sometimes led to debates about the nature of his reporting. How reliable was he? Would he have considered his actions bad or reprehensible? Two examples stand out for what they tell us about his method and way of doing things. In the Historia Anglorum, a revised history of England since 1066, Matthew recorded how some felt that Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) had met with “a terrible fate” – a code for hell. Innocent, Matthew expanded, had incited the English barons and clergy to rebel against their lord, the king, only to betray them afterwards – a reference to Magna Carta and the charter’s initial revocation, at King John’s request, by the papal court.
Still, these lines were probably written in about 1251–1254, a good 35 years after the events recorded. They thus indicate what people might have felt about 1215, but filtered through the intervening decades. By the 1250s, the memory of events surrounding Magna Carta had grown dim. What was remembered were the long years of struggle that followed in 1215: the outbreak of rebellion, the vainglorious kingship of Louis of France, and the minority government of Henry III. It was not until 1225 that government was fully restored.
With all these evils stemming from Innocent III’s act of 1215, it was no surprise that some people felt he deserved such a nasty end. In their eyes, he had prolonged the suffering of the English people, for no reason but the ambition and greed of the papal court. Yet, the events of 1215 also echoed the intervening decades.
When Matthew described Innocent, in the same passage, as a great immutator mundi, agent of change in the world, he referred to papal correspondence. More specifically, he alluded to a series of letters by Innocent’s successors, directed at Emperor Frederick II (r. 1196–1250). These aimed to paint the emperor in apocalyptic colours, in a bid for sympathy – and hard cash. An immutator mundi was someone who would undermine the order of the world. He would not seek to improve matters, but to bring chaos and instability into the world. He was clearly a precursor of Antichrist and to be fought by all means necessary. By alluding to this language, and by applying it to one of the papacy’s own, Matthew’s account was transformed from mere rumour (some people believed that Innocent III suffered) to one of certainty (Innocent was an immutator mundi). What had been mere suspicion was turned into fact. Intriguingly, he had done so in a rather specific context: in England, in 1215, in relation to Magna Carta.
Now, compare this to the other pope sent to hell, Innocent’s namesake and successor, the fourth of his name. In the Chronica Majora, a world chronicle to 1259, Matthew inveighed bitterly against Pope Innocent IV (r. 1243–1254). Innocent IV’s posthumous travails were not just reported once or twice, but three times. In total, they take up nearly 2,000 words in the printed record. A summary will have to suffice.
Matthew Paris depicts Innocent IV at the Council of Lyons – Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 016II fol. 155r
In the entry for 1254, the account of the death of Pope Innocent IV stretched over three distinct but closely linked episodes. The first recorded a vision in which the recently deceased bishop of Lincoln appeared. Initially quite genial, the spectre became increasingly irate, and in the end he used his staff to give the pope a good beating. Upon waking, Innocent suffered an unbearable pain in his side that did not abate until his death a few weeks later. Next, a Roman cardinal and Innocent’s successor beheld scenes of posthumous judgement. The Virgin and a woman representing the Church accused the late pope before God, resulting in the agitated pontiff being carried off for punishment. The chronicler concluded with the pious hope that Innocent had only been sent to Purgatory.
Let us prise apart these episodes. They can be found in the continuation of the Chronica Majora begun in c.1254, and they were probably recorded within a year. We will find that it is not Matthew who is commenting. The first encounter is a dream vision, experienced by Innocent IV; the second is related by an (as caution demanded) unnamed member of the curia; and the third is narrated by Alexander IV. Thus, Matthew avoids commenting himself. In fact, he playfully suggests that it was not known whether the visions were true – but they were widely known. At the same time, visions and appearances of the other world granted his reporting the patina of history, of recounting only what was true – or what revealed a higher truth, which could be accurate, even if the circumstances reported were not.
That reflects the subject matter at hand. When Ecclesia (the woman representing the Church) brought her charges against the pontiff, she had three main points to make. First, Innocent IV had abolished grants that had been made. This was a central concern of Matthew’s: grants, once issued, could not be revoked, unless with the agreement of the monks. The right order of the world depended upon this. If privileges and other grants could no longer be deemed valid, chaos would ensue.
Second, the Church was founded for the benefit of sinners, so that a guiding light would be provided for them. Innocent, however, had turned the ecclesia into a cashiers’ table. That is, the pope was not concerned with the rescue of fallen souls, but with the income that would accrue to him from exploiting the Church – for instance, by giving benefices, designed to pay for the provision of pastoral care, to absentee landlords. That was a practice that became ever more popular with Innocent IV, to the great annoyance of monks such as Matthew.
And finally, the Church relied on three principles: firmness of faith, justice, and truth. However, under Innocent, the mores and customs of the Church were weakened, justice was inverted, and what was true became more difficult to ascertain. Innocent IV thus became another immutator mundi, a changer of the world, an inverter of the right order of the world. Matthew did not have to set out his case, because it was there for all to see.
Perceptions
This raises the question whether Matthew would have perceived his reporting – collecting mere rumour – as in any way untoward. The answer is probably no. Issues of some importance were at stake: the validity of written grants (enough, it would seem, to condemn Innocent III to hell), the structure of the Church, and, in a way, the truthfulness and reliability of Peter’s successor. These were grave matters, which demanded to be aired in public. If no satisfactory answer could be found to them, what was the point?
One also wonders whether Matthew’s intended audience was in on the joke. The monks who read these passages knew precisely what was going on. They knew that Matthew had not been privy to the dreams of Innocent. And there is no indication that the Chronica was ever intended for circulation outside the cloister walls. Its audience was predominantly domestic: monks, patrons, and benefactors. Those men were certainly aware of Innocent IV’s exploitations – not least because they themselves had witnessed them. They also knew how to filter out the noise. They were fully aware that Matthew could not have witnessed what Innocent experienced in his dreams. They would also take the posthumous cardinal with a pinch of salt. However, they also shared Matthew Paris’s anger at the Roman curia, and at actions that went to the heart of papal authority. Quite conceivably, they read Matthew’s account of Innocent IV with agreement, perhaps even with a sense of excitement and joy that one of their own did not hold back but chronicled and listed the many abuses of Innocent IV.
Björn Weiler was a Professor in Medieval History at Aberystwyth University and a leading scholar of medieval European political history. He passed away in 2024.
Further Readings:
Weiler, Björn. “Historical writing in medieval Britain: The case of Matthew Paris.” In Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500, edited by Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner, and Elizabeth M. Tyler, 319–338. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Was Matthew Paris a trustworthy historian—or a biased commentator with an agenda? This article explores how one of medieval England’s most vivid chroniclers blurred the line between fact, rumour, and political messaging.
By Björn Weiler
Matthew Paris (c.1200–c.1259) was a monk at the English Benedictine community of St. Albans. A mapmaker and artist, he was also an accomplished and prolific writer. His oeuvre included universal history, regnal history, communal history, and hagiography written in both Latin and French. It is estimated that, between 1247 and 1259, he and his assistants composed almost a million words of prose. His horizons were exceptional. He wrote about the Mongol incursions in the early 1240s, the conflict between pope and emperor, the affairs of the Holy Land and of Scandinavia.
Interspersed with such weighty matters were local and regional concerns. For example, Matthew narrates the Mongol invasion of Europe in 1241, detailing the very dramatic conflict that was taking place. At the same time, the chronicler also noted that herring prices had collapsed in the English port of Great Yarmouth, explaining that vendors from Denmark and the Baltic states were not coming there because of the Mongol threat. Much attention was given to the ongoing dispute about Tynemouth, involving St. Albans and the bishops of Durham. The affairs of St. Albans also featured prominently, as evident in the list of beneficiaries of St. Albans – a lengthy account of who had given what – or the rich biographies of its abbots, and of St. Alban and of Offa, the abbey’s reputed founder.
A Reliable Narrator?
Matthew did not, however, merely record events: he also commented upon them. This has sometimes led to debates about the nature of his reporting. How reliable was he? Would he have considered his actions bad or reprehensible? Two examples stand out for what they tell us about his method and way of doing things. In the Historia Anglorum, a revised history of England since 1066, Matthew recorded how some felt that Pope Innocent III (r. 1198–1216) had met with “a terrible fate” – a code for hell. Innocent, Matthew expanded, had incited the English barons and clergy to rebel against their lord, the king, only to betray them afterwards – a reference to Magna Carta and the charter’s initial revocation, at King John’s request, by the papal court.
Still, these lines were probably written in about 1251–1254, a good 35 years after the events recorded. They thus indicate what people might have felt about 1215, but filtered through the intervening decades. By the 1250s, the memory of events surrounding Magna Carta had grown dim. What was remembered were the long years of struggle that followed in 1215: the outbreak of rebellion, the vainglorious kingship of Louis of France, and the minority government of Henry III. It was not until 1225 that government was fully restored.
With all these evils stemming from Innocent III’s act of 1215, it was no surprise that some people felt he deserved such a nasty end. In their eyes, he had prolonged the suffering of the English people, for no reason but the ambition and greed of the papal court. Yet, the events of 1215 also echoed the intervening decades.
When Matthew described Innocent, in the same passage, as a great immutator mundi, agent of change in the world, he referred to papal correspondence. More specifically, he alluded to a series of letters by Innocent’s successors, directed at Emperor Frederick II (r. 1196–1250). These aimed to paint the emperor in apocalyptic colours, in a bid for sympathy – and hard cash. An immutator mundi was someone who would undermine the order of the world. He would not seek to improve matters, but to bring chaos and instability into the world. He was clearly a precursor of Antichrist and to be fought by all means necessary. By alluding to this language, and by applying it to one of the papacy’s own, Matthew’s account was transformed from mere rumour (some people believed that Innocent III suffered) to one of certainty (Innocent was an immutator mundi). What had been mere suspicion was turned into fact. Intriguingly, he had done so in a rather specific context: in England, in 1215, in relation to Magna Carta.
Now, compare this to the other pope sent to hell, Innocent’s namesake and successor, the fourth of his name. In the Chronica Majora, a world chronicle to 1259, Matthew inveighed bitterly against Pope Innocent IV (r. 1243–1254). Innocent IV’s posthumous travails were not just reported once or twice, but three times. In total, they take up nearly 2,000 words in the printed record. A summary will have to suffice.
In the entry for 1254, the account of the death of Pope Innocent IV stretched over three distinct but closely linked episodes. The first recorded a vision in which the recently deceased bishop of Lincoln appeared. Initially quite genial, the spectre became increasingly irate, and in the end he used his staff to give the pope a good beating. Upon waking, Innocent suffered an unbearable pain in his side that did not abate until his death a few weeks later. Next, a Roman cardinal and Innocent’s successor beheld scenes of posthumous judgement. The Virgin and a woman representing the Church accused the late pope before God, resulting in the agitated pontiff being carried off for punishment. The chronicler concluded with the pious hope that Innocent had only been sent to Purgatory.
Let us prise apart these episodes. They can be found in the continuation of the Chronica Majora begun in c.1254, and they were probably recorded within a year. We will find that it is not Matthew who is commenting. The first encounter is a dream vision, experienced by Innocent IV; the second is related by an (as caution demanded) unnamed member of the curia; and the third is narrated by Alexander IV. Thus, Matthew avoids commenting himself. In fact, he playfully suggests that it was not known whether the visions were true – but they were widely known. At the same time, visions and appearances of the other world granted his reporting the patina of history, of recounting only what was true – or what revealed a higher truth, which could be accurate, even if the circumstances reported were not.
That reflects the subject matter at hand. When Ecclesia (the woman representing the Church) brought her charges against the pontiff, she had three main points to make. First, Innocent IV had abolished grants that had been made. This was a central concern of Matthew’s: grants, once issued, could not be revoked, unless with the agreement of the monks. The right order of the world depended upon this. If privileges and other grants could no longer be deemed valid, chaos would ensue.
Second, the Church was founded for the benefit of sinners, so that a guiding light would be provided for them. Innocent, however, had turned the ecclesia into a cashiers’ table. That is, the pope was not concerned with the rescue of fallen souls, but with the income that would accrue to him from exploiting the Church – for instance, by giving benefices, designed to pay for the provision of pastoral care, to absentee landlords. That was a practice that became ever more popular with Innocent IV, to the great annoyance of monks such as Matthew.
And finally, the Church relied on three principles: firmness of faith, justice, and truth. However, under Innocent, the mores and customs of the Church were weakened, justice was inverted, and what was true became more difficult to ascertain. Innocent IV thus became another immutator mundi, a changer of the world, an inverter of the right order of the world. Matthew did not have to set out his case, because it was there for all to see.
Perceptions
This raises the question whether Matthew would have perceived his reporting – collecting mere rumour – as in any way untoward. The answer is probably no. Issues of some importance were at stake: the validity of written grants (enough, it would seem, to condemn Innocent III to hell), the structure of the Church, and, in a way, the truthfulness and reliability of Peter’s successor. These were grave matters, which demanded to be aired in public. If no satisfactory answer could be found to them, what was the point?
One also wonders whether Matthew’s intended audience was in on the joke. The monks who read these passages knew precisely what was going on. They knew that Matthew had not been privy to the dreams of Innocent. And there is no indication that the Chronica was ever intended for circulation outside the cloister walls. Its audience was predominantly domestic: monks, patrons, and benefactors. Those men were certainly aware of Innocent IV’s exploitations – not least because they themselves had witnessed them. They also knew how to filter out the noise. They were fully aware that Matthew could not have witnessed what Innocent experienced in his dreams. They would also take the posthumous cardinal with a pinch of salt. However, they also shared Matthew Paris’s anger at the Roman curia, and at actions that went to the heart of papal authority. Quite conceivably, they read Matthew’s account of Innocent IV with agreement, perhaps even with a sense of excitement and joy that one of their own did not hold back but chronicled and listed the many abuses of Innocent IV.
Björn Weiler was a Professor in Medieval History at Aberystwyth University and a leading scholar of medieval European political history. He passed away in 2024.
Further Readings:
Weiler, Björn. “Historical writing in medieval Britain: The case of Matthew Paris.” In Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500, edited by Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner, and Elizabeth M. Tyler, 319–338. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Weiler, Björn. Paths to kingship in medieval Latin Europe, c. 950–1200. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021.
Connolly, Daniel K. The Maps of Matthew Paris: Medieval Journeys Through Space, Time and Liturgy. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 2009.
Top Image: Matthew Paris drew this picture of himself as part of his Historia Anglorum. © British Library Royal 14 C. VII, f.218v.
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