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 Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk and English chronicler,
based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire.
In spite of his surname, and of his knowledge of the French language, he was of
English birth but may have studied at Paris in his youth after early education
at the St Albans Abbey School
The first we know of him
is that he was admitted as a monk at St Albans in 1217.
His life was mainly spent in this religious house.
In 1248, however, he was sent
to Norway as the bearer of a message from Louis IX of France to Haakon IV; he
made himself so agreeable to the Norwegian sovereign that he was invited, a
little later, to superintend the reformation of the Benedictine monastery of St
Benet Holme at Trondheim.
Paris was an excellent stylist and narrator, and in his rewriting of
Wendover's chronicle he formulated the hostile image of King John that has been
copied by historians until very recent times.
Bad Boy
Wendover
Alban St
Albans Bells
Magna Carta Great Council Prayer
Godiva Mathew
Paris Stephen Langton
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