GRAND MASTER
. The position of Grand Master of France, established in 1451, had already existed for a
century under other names, the earliest being “sovereign master of the king’s household.”
This personage presided over a household of several hundred people, many of whom
were important political figures or influential royal advisers. In the 14th and 15th
centuries, when the composition of the royal council often reflected the political mood of
the realm more than the king’s personal wishes, the king often drew his most trusted
advisers from the household. The master of the king’s (and dauphin’s) household became
an important player on the political stage.
John Bell Henneman, Jr.
GRANDES CHRONIQUES DE FRANCE
. The official history of the French realm, as kept in French at Saint-Denis from 1285 on,
the Grandes chroniques presents the history of France as a series of kings’ reigns. The
first part of the Grandes chroniques was the translation, made by the monk Primat ca.
1274, of a Latin chronicle from the early 13th century. This was itself based upon the
histories of Aimoin de Fleury and his continuators, Einhard, Pseudo-Turpin, the
Astronomer, Suger, Rigord, Guillaume le Breton, and the Gesta Dagoberti and the royal
Frankish annals, as well as the archival resources of Saint-Denis. By 1285, the Grandes
chroniques were official.
Anonymous historians continued the text to ca. 1350, using translations of Guillaume
de Nangis’s lives of Louis IX and Philip III and the chronicles of Géraud de Frachet and
Richard Lescot. The chronicle was then continued by outsiders, first by Pierre
d’Orgemont, the chancellor of France (to 1384), then by Juvenal des Ursins, archbishop
of Reims (to 1402), and finally by the Berry Herald (to 1422). Jean Chartier, a monk at
Saint-Denis, wrote the last part of the chronicle (to 1461).
The Grandes chroniques are of supreme historical and literary interest, since after
1274 they are contemporary with the events they describe; many manuscripts have
survived (the simultaneously-kept Latin chronicle exists only in fragments). They reflect
the rich holdings of the library at Saint-Denis, as well as the growth of a powerful
tradition of vernacular historical writing under royal auspices.
Leah Shopkow
[See also: HISTORIOGRAPHY]
Viard, Jules M.E., ed. Les grandes chroniques de France. 10 vols. Paris: Société de l’Histoire de
France, 1920–58.
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