The Bede Goes On: Pastoral Eschatology in the Prologue to the Chronicle of Moissac (Paris BN lat. 4886)

Abstract

This article presents a close reading of the introduction to the ninth-century Chronicle of Moissac as it occurs in the twelfth-century manuscript Paris BN lat. 4886. It will be argued that the combination of the main text of this prologue – a reworking of Bede’s ideas on the Six Ages of the World – and the interlinear and marginal glosses to this part of the text show that the narrative of the Chronicle as a whole should be understood as an eschatological commentary on the political situation in the Frankish Empire in the early years of Louis the Pious, as seen from the vantage point of an author working in Aquitaine, in the South-Western corner of the empire. At the same time, it will be shown that the text is given a timeless quality through these marginal comments, which may have prompted the copyist responsible for the extant manuscript to maintain them despite the different circumstances at the time.