ORDERIC VITALIS (1075-C. 1142)  , the chronicler, was the son of a

French priest, Odeler of Orleans, who had entered the service of Roger Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, and had received from his patron a chapel in that city . Orderic was the eldest son of his parents . They sent him at the age of five to learn his letters from an English priest, Siward by name, who kept a school in the church of SS Peter and Paul at Shrewsbury . When eleven years old he was entered as a novice in the Norman monastery of St Evroul en Ouche, which Earl Roger had formerly persecuted but, in his later years, was loading with gifts . The parents paid thirty marks for their son's admission; and he expresses the conviction that they imposed this exile upon him from an earnest desire for his welfare . Odeler's respect for the monastic profession is attested by his own retirement, a few years later, into a religious house which Earl Roger had founded at his persuasion . But the young Orderic felt for some time, as he tells us, like Joseph in a strange land . He did not know a word of French when he reached Normandy; his book, though written many years later, shows that he never lost his English cast of mind or his attachment to the country of his birth . His superiors rechristened him Vitalis (after a member of the legendary Theban legion) because they found a difficulty in pronouncing his baptismal name . But, in the title of his Ecclesiastical History he prefixes the old to the new name and proudly adds the epithet Angligena, His cloistered life was uneventful . He became a deacon in 1093, a priest in 1107 . He left his cloister on several occasions, and speaks of having visited Croyland, Worcester, Cambrai (I1o5) and Cluny (1132) .

But he turned his

attention at an early date to literature, and for many years he appears to have spent his summers in the scriptorium . His superiors (at some time between 1099 and 1122) ordered him to write the history of St Evroul . The work grew under his hands until it became a general history of his own age . St Evroul was a house of wealth and distinction . War-worn knights chose it as a resting-place of their last years . It was constantly entertaining visitors from southern Italy, where it had planted colonies of monks, and from England, where it had extensive possessions . Thus Orderic, though he witnessed no great events, was often well informed about them . In spite of a cumbrous and affected style, he is a vivid narrator; and his character sketches are admirable as summaries of current estimates . His narrative is badly arranged and full of unexpected digressions . But he gives us much invaluable information for which we should search the more methodical chroniclers in vain . He throws a flood of light upon the manners and ideas of his own age; he sometimes comments with surprising shrewdness upon the broader aspects and tendencies of history . His narrative breaks off in the middle of 1141, though he added some finishing touches in 1142 .

He tells us that he was then old and infirm . Probably he did not

long survive the completion of his great work . The Historia ecclesiaslica falls into three sections . (I) Bks. i., ii., which are historically valueless, give the history of Christianity from the birth of Christ . After 855 this becomes a bare catalogue of popes, ending with the name of Innocent I . These books were added, as an afterthought, to the original scheme; they were composed in the years 1136–1141 . (2) Bks. iii.-vi. form a history of St Evroul, the original nucleus of the work . Planned before 1122, they were mainly composed in the years 1123–1131 . The fourth and fifth books contain long digressions on the deeds of William the Conqueror in Normandy and England . Before Io67 these are of little value, being chiefly derived from two extant sources . William of Jumieges' Historia Normannorum and William of Poitiers' Gesta Guilelmi . For the years 1067–1071 Orderic follows the last portion of the Gesta Guilelmi, and is therefore of the first importance .

From 1071 he begins to be an

independent authority . But his notices of political events in this part of his work are far less copious than in (3) Bks. vii.-xiii., where ecclesiastical affairs are relegated to the background . In this section, after sketching the history of France under the Carolingians and early Capets, Orderic takes up the events of his own times, starting from about Io82 . He has much to say concerning the empire, the papacy, the Normans in Italy and Apulia, the First Crusade (for which he follows Fulcher of Chartres and Baudri of Bourgueil) . But his chief interest is in the histories of Duke Robert of Normandy, William Rufus and Henry I . He continues his work, in the form of annals, up to the defeat and capture of Stephen at Lincoln in 1141 . The Historia ecclesiastica was edited by Duchesne in his HistoriaeNormannorum scriptores (Paris, 1619) . This, is the edition cited by Freeman and in many standard works . It is, however, inferior to that of A. le Prevost in five vols . (Soc. de l'histoire de France, Paris, 1838–1855) . The fifth volume contains excellent critical studies by M . Leopold Delisle, and is admirably indexed .

Migne's edition (Patrologia latina, clxxxviii.) is merely a reprint of Duchesne . There is a French translation (by L . Dubois) in Guizot's Collection des memoires relatifs a l'histoire de France (Paris, 1825–1827) ; and one in English by T . Forester in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (4 vols., 18J3–1856) . In addition to the Historia there exists, in the library at Rouen, a manuscript edition of William of Jumieges' Historia Normannorum which Leopold Delisle assigns to Orderic (see this critic's Lettre a M Jules Lair (1873) . (H . W . C .