Editing Chronicle (section)

==Subgroups==
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| quote = "It is well known that history, in the form of Chronicles, was a favourite portion of the literature of the middle ages. The annals of a country were usually kept according to the years of the sovereign's power, and not those of the Christian æra. The Chronicles compiled in large cities were arranged in like manner, with the years reckoned according to the annual succession of chief magistrates."
| source = – [[John Gough Nichols]], [[critical edition]] foreword to ''[[Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London]]'' (1852)<ref>{{Cite web |title=Chronicle of the Grey Friars of London : Camden Society (Great Britain) : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive |author= |work=Internet Archive |date= |access-date=18 June 2023 |url= https://archive.org/details/greyfriarsof00camduoft/page/n9/mode/2up}}</ref>
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Scholars categorize the genre of chronicle into two subgroups: live chronicles, and dead chronicles. A ''dead'' chronicle is one where the author assembles a list of events up to the time of their writing, but does not record further events as they occur. A ''live'' chronicle is where one or more authors add to a chronicle in a regular fashion, recording contemporary events shortly after they occur. Because of the immediacy of the information, historians tend to value live chronicles, such as [[annals]], over dead ones.{{cn|date=October 2024}}

The term often refers to a book written by a chronicler in the Middle Ages describing historical events in a country, or the lives of a nobleman or a clergyman, although it is also applied to a record of public events. The earliest medieval chronicle to combine both retrospective (''dead'') and contemporary (''live'') entries, is the [[Chronicle of Ireland]], which spans the years 431 to 911.<ref>Roy Flechner, '"The Chronicle of Ireland: Then and Now" ''Early Medieval Europe'' v.21:4(2013) 422-54  [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/emed.12025/abstract Article] [[doi:10.1111/emed.12025]]</ref>

Chronicles are the predecessors of modern "[[time line]]s" rather than analytical histories. They represent accounts, in prose or verse, of local or distant events over a considerable period of time, both the lifetime of the individual chronicler and often those of several subsequent [[continuator]]s. If the chronicles deal with events year by year, they are often called [[annal]]s. Unlike the modern historian, most chroniclers tended to take their information as they found it, and made little attempt to separate fact from legend. The point of view of most chroniclers is highly localised, to the extent that many anonymous chroniclers can be sited in individual [[abbey]]s.{{cn|date=October 2024}}

It is impossible to say how many chronicles exist, as the many ambiguities in the definition of the genre make it impossible to draw clear distinctions of what should or should not be included. However, the ''[[Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle]]'' lists some 2,500 items written between 300 and 1500 AD.{{cn|date=October 2024}}