The Anonimo Romano at his Desk: Recounting the Battle of Crécy in Fourteenth-Century Italy.

The Cronica of the Anonimo Romano, written between late 1357 and the first months of 1358, is the only extant fourteenth-century Roman chronicle. In his preface, its author states that he used exclusively oral sources for his history whenever it concerned events he did not himself witness; nevertheless, written sources are likely to have been used for portions of the work, particularly when dealing with matters from far afield. This paper focuses on the Cronica’s account of the battle of Crécy, where the Anonimo mentions no sources. This part of the Cronica offers a special perspective for the study of the Anonimo’s way of writing foreign history, since it can be compared with a wide range of different accounts of the battle, ranging from a matter-of-fact letter of Edward  III to the wide and colourful accounts by Jean Froissart. These different accounts allow us to understand and fully assess the quality of the Anonimo as historian providing an insight into the way in which he used his written and oral sources, and into the transmission and reception of information around Europe at the time. An English translation of the Anonimo’s narrative of the battle is provided in the Appendix.