Gabrielle M. Spiegel

This is one of those books which is only for the specialists: a painstaking reconstruction of the historical chronicles produced by the French abbey of Saint-Denis over a period of some four centuries and an identification of their likely authors. This means that Spiegel spends a lot of time discussing the various manuscripts of various chronicles in order to establish their "genealogy", so to speak. I did find that aspect of this book—which is the majority of it—quite heavy, dense show more going, but didn't really find any holes to pick with it. (Though I speak of course as someone who is not an expert palaeographer and who hasn't looked at the original manuscripts.)

The most interesting parts for me were the introduction and conclusion, in which Spiegel sketches out the history of Saint-Denis and its association with French royalty, and analyses the significance of its chronicles in helping to create a historical narrative which supported the burgeoning French state. Over time, she asserts, the abbey positioned itself as the premiere repository of royal and state memory, writing formal chronicles in Latin which were later translated into the vernacular and became the histories with which most literate French people were familiar during the medieval period. Overall, a useful, if not a thrilling, book. show less