Prolegomena to a critical edition of the Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, with a discussion of computer-aided methods used to edit the text
The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa is the primary Armenian-language historical source for the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Matthew was a monk who lived in the ethnically mixed city of Edessa; within his Chronicle, he describes the apogee of independent Armenia, its fall to piecemeal Byzantine annexation, the subsequent loss of Byzantium's eastern territory to the newcomer Saljuq Turks, and the sectarian tension that accompanied the First Crusade. This thesis sets out the methodology adopted for the construction of a critical edition of the text, addresses the approach that Matthew took to the composition of the Chronicle, and gives the edited text of the prophecies attributed to YovhannÄs Kozeáčn and the author's prologues to Books Two and Three of the Chronicle. Chapters 2 and 3 comprise a review of the scholarship to date on the Chronicle, and a discussion of the approach taken to a critical edition of the text. The Chronicle survives in a large number of relatively recently copied manuscripts; it was therefore necessary to devise an approach to text collation and editing that takes full advantage of recent advances in computational methods of philology. I have developed a set of software tools
Andrews, Tara L.
History ; Late antiquity and the Middle Ages ; Literatures of other languages ; Armenia ; Edessa ; Matthew of Edessa ; Byzantium ; first crusade ; text criticism ; computer collation ; stemmatology ; text phylogenetics
Prolegomena to a critical edition of the Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, with a discussion of computer-aided methods used to edit the text. The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa is the primary Armenian-language historical source for the eleventh and early twelfth centuries. Matthew was a monk who lived in the ethnically mixed city of Edessa; within his Chronicle, he describes the apogee of independent Armenia, its fall to piecemeal Byzantine annexation, the subsequent loss of Byzantium's eastern territory to the newcomer Saljuq Turks, and the sectarian tension that accompanied the First Crusade. This thesis sets out the methodology adopted for the construction of a critical edition of the text, addresses the approach that Matthew took to the composition of the Chronicle, and gives the edited text of the prophecies attributed to YovhannÄs Kozeáčn and the author's prologues to Books Two and Three of the Chronicle. Chapters 2 and 3 comprise a review of the scholarship to date on the Chronicle, and a discussion of the approach taken to a critical edition of the text. The Chronicle survives in a large number of relatively recently copied manuscripts; it was therefore necessary to devise an approach to text collation and editing that takes full advantage of recent advances in computational methods of philology. I have developed a set of software tools
prolegomena critical_edition chronicle matthew discussion computer_aided method_use edit text chronicle matthew primary armenian language historical_source eleventh matthew monk live ethnically mixed city within chronicle describe apogee independent fall piecemeal byzantine annexation subsequent loss byzantium eastern territory newcomer turks sectarian tension accompany first_crusade set adopt construction critical_edition text address matthew take composition chronicle give edit text prophecy attribute author prologue books chronicle comprise review scholarship date chronicle discussion take critical_edition text chronicle survive large_number relatively_recently copy manuscript therefore_necessary devise text collation edit take full advantage recent_advance computational method philology develop set software tool