His Excellency Martin of Opava | |
|---|---|
| Archbishop of Gniezno | |
 | |
| Church | Roman Catholic |
| Archdiocese | Gniezno |
| Installed | 1278 |
| Term ended | 1278 |
| Predecessor | Janusz z Tarnowa |
| Successor | Jakub Świnka |
| Orders | |
| Consecration | 2 March 1259 |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 1215–1220 |
| Died | 1278 Bologna |
| Coat of arms |  |
Martin of Opava, O.P. (died 1278) also known as Martin of Poland, was a 13th-century Dominican friar, bishop and chronicler.
Known in Latin as Frater Martinus Ordinis Praedicatorum (Brother Martin of the Order of Preachers), he is believed to have been born, at an unknown date, in the Silesian town of Opava, at that time part of the Margraviate of Moravia. [1]
From the middle of the 13th century, Martin was active in Rome as confessor and chaplain for Pope Alexander IV and his successors, Urban IV, Clement IV, Gregory X, Innocent V, Adrian V and John XXI (d. 1277), the last pope to appear in his chronicles. On 22 June 1278, Pope Nicholas III, while in Viterbo, appointed him archbishop of Gniezno.
While travelling to his new episcopal see, Martin died in Bologna, where he was buried at the Basilica of San Domenico, near the tomb of the founder of his Order. [2]
Martin's Latin chronicle, the Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, was intended for the school-room. It is mostly derivative in content and is therefore of limited value to modern historians. However, its importance is in the way the material is presented, which is a quantum leap forward in didactic method. The genius lies in its layout; each double page covers fifty years with fifty lines per page. The left-hand pages give the history of the papacy, with one line per year, and the right-hand pages give the history of emperors, the two accounts being kept strictly parallel. This was a revolutionary approach in graphic design, which was not appreciated by all his contemporaries: many manuscripts simply copy the text without retaining the page layout, which results in a rather chaotic chronology. The chronicle was enormously influential; over 400 manuscripts are known, and the influence on many dozens of later chroniclers is palpable. Translations were made into many medieval vernaculars, including Middle English, as well as an Old French translation by Sébastien Mamerot in the late 15th century. [3] Martin's Chronicon is the most influential source for the legend of "Pope Joan". It was also a source for Rashid al-Din Hamadani's Jami al-Tawarikh . [4]
Other of his works include the Promptuarium Exemplorum.
The Liber Pontificalis is a book of biographies of popes from Saint Peter until the 15th century. The original publication of the Liber Pontificalis stopped with Pope Adrian II (867–872) or Pope Stephen V (885–891), but it was later supplemented in a different style until Pope Eugene IV (1431–1447) and then Pope Pius II (1458–1464). Although quoted virtually uncritically from the 8th to 18th centuries, the Liber Pontificalis has undergone intense modern scholarly scrutiny. The work of the French priest Louis Duchesne, and of others has highlighted some of the underlying redactional motivations of different sections, though such interests are so disparate and varied as to render improbable one popularizer's claim that it is an "unofficial instrument of pontifical propaganda."
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