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Encyclopedia Britannica

HIGDON (or HIGDEN), RANULF (c. 1299c. 1363)

This article appears in Volume V13, Page 454 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: HEG-HIG

HIGDON (or HIGDEN), RANULF (c. 1299c. 1363) , English chronicler, was a

Benedictine

BENEDICTINE

monk of the monastery of St Werburg in Chester, in which he lived, it is said, for sixty-four years, and died " in a good old age," probably in 1363.

Higdon

HIGDON (or HIGDEN), RANULF (c. 1299—c. 1363)

was the author of a long chronicle, one of several such works based on a plan taken from Scripture, and written for the amusement and instruction of his society. It closes the long

series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

of general chronicles, which were soon superseded by the invention of printing. It is commonly styled the Polychronicon, from the longer title Ranulphi Castrensis, cognomine

Higdon

HIGDON (or HIGDEN), RANULF (c. 1299—c. 1363)

, Polychronicon (sive Historia Polycratica) ab initio mundi usque ad mortem regis Edwardi III. in septem libros dispositum. The

work

WORK

is divided into seven books, in humble imitation of the seven days of Genesis, and, with exception of the last book, is a summary of general history, a compilation made with considerable style and

taste

TASTE (from Lat. taxare, to touch sharply; tangere, to touch)

. It seems to have enjoyed no little popularity in the 15th century. It was the standard

work

WORK

on general history, and more than a hundred MSS. of it are known to exist. The Christ Church MS. says that Higdon wrote it down to the year 1342; the fine MS. at Christ's College, Cam-bridge, states that he wrote to the year 1344, after which date, with the. omission of two years, John of Malvern, a monk of Worcester, carried the history on to 1357, at which date it ends. According, however, to its latest editor, Higdon's part of the work goes no further than 1326 or 1327 at latest, after which time it was carried on by two continuators to the end.

Thomas

Gale

, in his Hist. Brit. &c., scriptores, xv. (Oxon., 1691), published that portion of it, in the

original

ORIGINAL

Latin, which comes down to io66. Three early translations of the Polychronicon exist. The first was made by John of Trevisa, chaplain to Lord Berkeley, in 1387, and was printed by Caxton in 1482; the second by an anonymous writer, was written between 1432 and 1450; the third, based on Trevisa's version, with the addition of an eighth book, was prepared by Caxton. These versions are specially valuable as illustrating the

change

CHANGE (derived through the Fr. from the Late Lat. cambium, cambiare, to barter; the ultimate derivation is probably from the root which appears in the Gr. «a urmu', to bend)

of the English language during the period they cover.
The Polychronicon, with the continuations and the English versions, was edited for the Rolls

Series

SERIES (a Latin word from serere, to join)

(No. 41) by Churchill

Babington

(vols. i. and ii.) and Joseph Rawson Lumby (1865--1886). This edition was adversely criticized by Mandell Creighton in the Eng. Hist. Rev. for October 1888.

End of Article: HIGDON (or HIGDEN), RANULF (c. 1299c. 1363)

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