Talk:Chronicle of Fredegar

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[edit] What? not a peep from any 7th century contemporary of Fredegar?

The statement "The Chronicle of Fredegar (died ca 660) is the main source for Western European events" was too bold for one editor, who amended it to read "a major source". If there are other major sources for this period, then, let us mention them briefly. Or is this tweak simply twaddle? --Wetman 01:03, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Well for England there's Bede, for a start; I'm working on his History of the English Church and People right now. There are many thousands of mediaeval chroniclers, analists and historians, and many of them cover the Early Middle Ages; not to mention the "accidental" transmission of historical data in other literary genres. Roman history is well documented, and we know plenty about the history of the Church. Byzantine culture was experiencing something of a golden age, and of course their historiography refers to Western events too. It all depends what exactly you're looking for. But the idea that the Early Middle Ages were "dark" in the sense that we know nothing about them is nonsense. --Doric Loon 08:46, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Bede in the 8th century— precisely: in other words you can't name another contemporary chronicler of Merovingian events of the first half of the 7th century. Neither can I, save Ouen/Dado's vita of Eligius. So shall we reinstate the bolder statement, if no one else can point to a contemporary chronicler who overlaps Fredegar, anything we can call a "major source", one by which we might corroborate Fredegar's statements? Who is chronicling 600–650? All the "history" has been assembled long afterwards, has it not? (One may vaguely feel that "Dark Ages" overstates the case, but actually, just now there's a Wikipedian currently going through all the articles listed at "What links here" at Dark Ages, furtively removing all the hyperlinked mentions of "Dark Ages" in other articles! ) --Wetman 09:37, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but that's rather a different question, isn't it? If you are asking for historians LIVING at the same time as Fredegar, and are also narrowing it to say that they must be working in the same geographical area, then there are indeed somewhat fewer candidates, though Isidore (chronicling around 630 in Spain) easily eclipses Fredegar in importance. But the statement in the article referred to the whole of Western Europe, and it referred to chroniclers who RECOUNT that history, not ones who lived through it. The most reliable sources for mediaeval (as for classical) history are often people who wrote several centuries after the events they describe. And as I mentioned, chronicles are not in any case our only source of information. Papal edicts, imperial letters, etc. etc. These are all sources. Not that I want to minimise Fredegar's importance in any way.

As for me fixing the Dark Ages links, there is nothing furtive about it. You will have noticed that my edits on the page itself have aimed at disambiguating; we are currently distinguishing nine meanings of "dark ages", most of which have separate articles, and the links should go to the right places. Occasionally the most helpful place to link to is not any of these nine, but somewhere quite different. Obviously I want to make that as user-friendly as possible. But since I have worked on the Dark Ages page myself, I am hardly going to have a vested interest in stopping people from finding it when it is relevant to them, now am I? --Doric Loon 14:51, 12 September 2005 (UTC)