Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 43.djvu/218

 Jerusalem,’ a map of England and Scotland, the portrait of Matthew Paris with the Virgin (see above), a table for Easter, &c., all which were believed by Madden to be the work of Paris himself. The ‘Historia Minor’ was edited by Sir F. Madden in the Rolls Series as ‘Historia Anglorum, sive, ut vulgo dicitur, Historia Minor,’ 3 vols. 1866–1869. With it Madden also printed a book called ‘Abbreviatio Chronicorum Angliæ,’ from Cotton. MS. D. 6, which he believed to be the work of Paris, though he seems to have had no sufficient ground for this (, Catalogue of Materials, iii. 141).

In Cotton. MS. Nero, D. 1, will be found the ‘Vitæ duorum Offarum,’ frequently attributed to Paris, and printed by Wats in his edition of Matthew Paris as his work. It is, however, certain that the life of the second Offa is not by him, for it is largely used in the St. Albans compilation (Chronica Majora, i. 345 seq.), while it is extremely unlikely that he wrote the life of the fabulous Offa. These lives are followed by (3) ‘Vitæ Abbatum S. Albani,’ the lives of the first twenty-three abbots of the house, to 1255, each life having a miniature of the abbot at the beginning of it. They were certainly compiled, and the last two or three composed, by Paris, who more than once introduces himself in them as the author; and it is extremely probable that most of them were more or less taken from some earlier record written in the house. The lives were printed by Wats in his edition of Matthew Paris. They were incorporated by Walsingham, with some alterations and additions, in his ‘Gesta Abbatum,’ edited by Riley in the Rolls Series, 1867–9, 3 vols. After these come numerous documents relating, some to the lands and privileges of the monastery, others to the affairs of the kingdom or of foreign countries. They were copied under the direction of Paris, who evidently intended them in some cases for use in his history, and in the greater number as a kind of appendix to his two histories and his lives of the abbots, as containing valuable and illustrative matter with which he could not burden the pages of his books. Among them is an account of the rings, &c., belonging to St. Albans, with coloured drawings of the gems in the margins. It is often spoken of as a separate work, and is entitled ‘De anulis et gemmis et paliis quæ sunt de thesauro hujus ecclesiæ.’ It is printed among the ‘Additamenta’ by Dr. Luard, who gives a reproduction of a page with the illustrations. References are made by Paris to this collection in various places in his greater and lesser histories, and in his ‘Vitæ Abbatum;’ he calls it (4) ‘Liber Additamentorum,’ ‘Liber Literarum,’ and by other names. Some of the documents were printed by Wats, and the whole number, so far as the date of Paris's death, with the exception of those included in his other works, by Dr. Luard in his edition of the ‘Chronica Majora,’ vol. v. Additamenta. The book is illustrated probably by Paris himself. It was used after his death as a ‘kind of commonplace book for the insertion of any matter which was of interest to the monastery’ (, ib.). A full table of the contents of the volume is given by Dr. Luard (ib. App. p. iii). Paris is also said to have written lives of (5) Sts. Alban and Amphibalus, of (6) Sts. Guthlac, Wulfstan, Thomas and Edmund of Canterbury, and Stephen Langton (, ii. 303;, De Scriptoribus, cent. iv. script. 26; , Catalogue of Materials, vol. iii. Preface, p. xlviii). Fragments of his life of Stephen Langton, and a piece of the history of the translation of St. Thomas are in the ‘Liber Additamentorum,’ and have been printed by Dr. Liebermann in his ‘Ungedruckte anglo-normännische Geschichtsquellen’ (Chronica Majora, vol. vi. Additamenta, p. 522). He speaks himself of his life of St. Edmund, as written by 1253, from information given him by Richard de la Wich [q. v.], bishop of Chichester, and friar Robert Bacon, as containing the miracles wrought through the saint's intercession, and as kept among the historical books at St. Albans (ib. v. 369, 384). It is not now known to exist u.s. vol. iii Preface, p. xciii). It will be observed that the St. Albans compilation contains a long passage on the life of St. Guthlac, taken from Felix, and that to this Paris has added nothing, though the compiler has inserted a few words (Chronica Majora, i. 324–8); that he has added nothing to the notices of the life of Bishop Wulfstan (ib. ii. 26–43); and that, though he inserts in Wendover's chronicle a notice of the translation of the bishop, copied apparently from Coggeshall, with a note of his own as to the acquisition of a relic of the saint by St. Albans, repeated at greater length in his ‘Lives of the Abbots,’ nothing is said as to any life written by him (ib. iii. 42; Gesta Abbatum, i. 283). Stowe (Annales, p. 43, ed. 1631) and Ussher (Antiquitates, p. 83, ed. 1687) say that Matthew Paris translated a Latin account of the passion of Sts. Alban and Amphibalus into French verse, and that his poem was in a manuscript book belonging to St. Albans, given or shown to Henry, and containing another piece, entitled ‘Tractatus de Inventione seu Translatione S. Albani,’ the title of one of the pieces in the ‘Liber Additamentorum.’ This poem has generally been identified with a French poem in the