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Magister Gregorius de Mirabilibus Urbis Romae: A New Description of Rome in the Twelfth Century

1919; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 9; Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/295987

1753-528X

G. McN. Rushforth,

Byzantine Studies and History

In 1917 Dr. M. R. James, now Provost of Eton College, discovered in a manuscript belonging to St. Catharine's College Cambridge, and printed in the English Historical Review , a description by a certain Magister Gregorius of the most remarkable sights or ‘wonders’ of the city of Rome. The manuscript appears to be English, of the last years of the thirteenth century; and Dr. James thinks that the author was an Englishman, and lived in the twelfth century. Though this is the only copy of the work that is known, it is not the first that we have heard of it, for it was used in the fourteenth century by Ranulf Higden (d. 1364) in the description of Rome in the first book of his Polychronicon. We now know that he passed over some of the most curious and interesting of Gregory's statements, so that the discovery of the original is a real addition to our knowledge.