Matthew Paris

Not to be confused with Matthew Parris.

Matthew Paris (Latin: Matthæus Parisiensis, lit. 'Matthew the Parisian'; c. 1200 – 1259), was an English Benedictine monk, chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts, and cartographer who was based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire. He 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". Some were written in Latin, others in Anglo-Norman or French verse. He is sometimes confused with the nonexistent Matthew of Westminster.

Quotes

• Et nos in vitium prona caterva sumus.
  • We are but cattle prone to vice.
  • s.a. 1236, as translated by J. A. Giles, Mathew Paris's English History, vol. 1 (1852), p. 21. Saying attributed to Mahomet (see: Saracen)

• The Saxon nobles ... did not repair to church in the morning, according to Christian use, but loitering in their couches and their wives' embraces, they were content with hastily snatching a word of the solemn rites of matins and of mass.
  • Matthew Paris (ed. 1644), p. 4, as quoted in Jules Michelet, History of France, translated by G. H. Smith, vol. 1 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1882), p. 200

External links

• Historia Major and Lives of the two Offas, kings of Mercia, and of twenty-three abbats of St. Albans, together with Additamentorum and Auctarium Additamentorum to the Historia Major. Latin text printed by Dr. Wats, 2nd ed. (London, 1684), and translated into English from the same by John Allen Giles, Matthew Paris's English History, 3 vols. (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852, '53, '54)