The Sumerian King List or Chronicle of the One Monarchy is an ancient literary composition written in Sumerian that was likely created and redacted to legitimize the claims to power of various city-states and kingdoms in southern Mesopotamia during the late third and early second millennium BC. It does so by repetitively listing Sumerian cities, the kings that ruled there, and the lengths of their reigns. Especially in the early part of the list, these reigns often span thousands of years. In the oldest known version, dated to the Ur III period but probably based on Akkadian source material, the SKL reflected a more linear transition of power from Kish, the first city to receive kingship, to Akkad. In later versions from the Old Babylonian period, the list consisted of a large number of cities between which kingship was transferred, reflecting a more cyclical view of how kingship came to a city, only to be inevitably replaced by the next. In its best-known and best-preserved version, as recorded on the Weld-Blundell Prism, the SKL begins with a number of fictional antediluvian kings, who ruled before a flood swept over the land, after which kingship went to Kish. It ends with a dynasty from Isin, which is well-known from other contemporary sources.
Regino of Prüm or of Prum was a Benedictine monk, who served as abbot of Prüm (892–99) and later of Saint Martin's at Trier, and chronicler, whose Chronicon is an important source for late Carolingian history.
Giles of Rome was a medieval philosopher and Scholastic theologian and a friar of the Order of St Augustine, who was also appointed to the positions of prior general of his order and as Archbishop of Bourges. He is famed as being a logician, who produced a commentary on the Organon by Aristotle, and as the author of two important works: De ecclesiastica potestate, a major text of early-14th-century papalism, and De regimine principum, a guide book for Christian temporal leadership. Giles was styled Doctor Fundatissimus by Pope Benedict XIV.
Vincent of Beauvais was a Dominican friar at the Cistercian monastery of Royaumont Abbey, France. He is known mostly for his Speculum Maius, a major work of compilation that was widely read in the Middle Ages. Often retroactively described as an encyclopedia or as a florilegium, his text exists as a core example of brief compendiums produced in medieval Europe.
Tasciovanus was a historical king of the Catuvellauni tribe before the Roman conquest of Britain.
Gondophares I was the founder of the Indo-Parthian Kingdom and its most prominent king, ruling from 19 to 46. He probably belonged to a line of local princes who had governed the Parthian province of Drangiana since its disruption by the Indo-Scythians in c. 129 BC, and may have been a member of the House of Suren. During his reign, his kingdom became independent from Parthian authority and was transformed into an empire, which encompassed Drangiana, Arachosia, and Gandhara. He is generally known from the Acts of Thomas, the Takht-i-Bahi inscription, and silver and copper coins bearing his visage.
The Secretum Secretorum or Secreta Secretorum, also known as the Sirr al-Asrar, is a treatise which purports to be a letter from Aristotle to his student Alexander the Great on an encyclopedic range of topics, including statecraft, ethics, physiognomy, astrology, alchemy, magic, and medicine. The earliest extant editions claim to be based on a 9th-century Arabic translation of a Syriac translation of the lost Greek original. It is a pseudo-Aristotelian work. Modern scholarship finds it likely to have been written in the 10th century in Arabic. Translated into Latin in the mid-12th century, it was influential among European intellectuals during the High Middle Ages.
This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in the 12th century.
The Gesta principum Polonorum is the oldest known medieval chronicle documenting the history of Poland from the legendary times until 1113. Written in Latin by an anonymous author, it was most likely completed between 1112 and 1118, and its extant text is present in three manuscripts with two distinct traditions. Its anonymous author is traditionally called Gallus, a foreigner and outcast from an unknown country, who travelled to the Kingdom of Poland via Hungary. Gesta was likely commissioned by Poland's then ruler, Boleslaus III Wrymouth, or his chancellor, Michał Awdaniec; Gallus expected a prize for his work, which he most likely received and of which he lived the rest of his life.
William Perault,, also spelled Perauld; Latinized Peraldus or Peraltus, was a Dominican writer and preacher.
Latin translations of the 12th century were spurred by a major search by European scholars for new learning unavailable in western Europe at the time; their search led them to areas of southern Europe, particularly in central Spain and Sicily, which recently had come under Christian rule following their reconquest in the late 11th century. These areas had been under Muslim rule for a considerable time, and still had substantial Arabic-speaking populations to support their search. The combination of this accumulated knowledge and the substantial numbers of Arabic-speaking scholars there made these areas intellectually attractive, as well as culturally and politically accessible to Latin scholars. A typical story is that of Gerard of Cremona, who is said to have made his way to Toledo, well after its reconquest by Christians in 1085, because he:
arrived at a knowledge of each part of [philosophy] according to the study of the Latins, nevertheless, because of his love for the Almagest, which he did not find at all amongst the Latins, he made his way to Toledo, where seeing an abundance of books in Arabic on every subject, and pitying the poverty he had experienced among the Latins concerning these subjects, out of his desire to translate he thoroughly learnt the Arabic language.
Lechites, also known as the Lechitic tribes, is a name given to certain West Slavic tribes who inhabited modern-day Poland and eastern Germany, and were speakers of the Lechitic languages. Distinct from the Czech–Slovak subgroup, they are the closest ancestors of ethnic Poles and of Pomeranians, Lusatians and Polabians.
Jonas was Bishop of Orléans and played a major political role during the reign of Emperor Louis the Pious.
The medieval genre of speculum literature, popular from the twelfth through the sixteenth centuries, was inspired by the urge to encompass encyclopedic knowledge within a single work. However, some of these works have a restricted scope and function as instructional manuals. In this sense, the encyclopedia and the speculum are similar but they are not the same genre.
The Chronica latina regum Castellae, known in Spanish as the Crónica latina de los reyes de Castilla, both meaning "Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile", is a medieval Latin history of the rulers of Castile from the death of Count Fernán González in 970 to the reconquest of Córdoba by King Ferdinand III in 1236–39. It was probably composed by Juan de Soria, the Bishop of Osma and chancellor of Ferdinand III, between 1217 and 1239. The majority of the text deals with the reigns of Alfonso VIII (1158–1214) and Ferdinand III (1217–1252). It was designed with two purposes: for use at the royal court as a speculum principis and to defend the interests of Castile against those of the Kingdom of León.
The Talbot Shrewsbury Book is a very large richly-illuminated manuscript made in Rouen (Normandy) in 1444/5. It was presented by John Talbot, 1st Earl of Shrewsbury to the French princess, Margaret of Anjou, in honour of her betrothal to King Henry VI. It contains a unique collection of fifteen texts in French, including chansons de geste, chivalric romances, treatises on warfare and chivalry, and finally the Statutes of the Order of the Garter. The work is an excellent example of book production in Rouen in the mid-fifteenth century and provides a rare insight into the political views of the English military leader and close confidant of the crown, John Talbot.
Ethiopian literature dates from Ancient Ethiopian literature up until modern Ethiopian literature. Ancient Ethiopian literature starts with Axumite texts written in the Geʽez language using the Geʽez script, indigenous to both Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Hujjat al-Din Abu Abdallah Muhammad ibn Abi Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Zafar al-Siqilli, commonly known simply as Ibn Zafar al-Siqilli, was a philosopher, polymath and Arab-Sicilian politician of the Norman period, and has come to be known in the West as "Niccolò Machiavelli's Arab Precursor".
Guibert of Tournai was a French Franciscan friar, known for his sermons and other writings.
Henri de Gauchy was a French magister and canon of Saint-Martin de Liège in the late 13th century.
