“A Medieval Search for the Historical Jesus? The Vita Christi in Ranulf Higden’s Compilation and John Trevisa’s Translation of the Polychronicon”

My chapter, “A Medieval Search for the Historical Jesus? The Vita Christi in Ranulf Higden’s Compilation and John Trevisa’s Translation of the Polychronicon,” now appears in The Medieval Chronicle 16 (Brill, 2023, chap. 2, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004686267_003.

ABSTRACT:

The Polychronicon, a fourteenth-century universal history of the world compiled from Latin sources by the Benedictine monk of Chester, Ranulf Higden, and translated into English by an Oxford-educated priest, John Trevisa, contains in its fourth book a vita Christi. The life of Jesus in the Polychronicon is interwoven with the historical narrative of the chronicle but, at the same time, it is not presented solely as a series of literal, historical events. It is also subtly enriched with medieval allegorical interpretations. Indeed, for all that the vita Christi in the Polychronicondiffers from traditional works in the genre, it was carefully, rhetorically constructed by Ranulf and translated by Trevisa to situate the conception and birth of Jesus in time, to represent Christ’s divine power through supernatural miracles and over earthly kings, and to contrast his initially hidden identity in Mary’s womb with a revelation of his later public identity through his ministry and its culmination in his Passion. The approach of the chronicler and his translator proved influential on later writers.