Written Sources for Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s «Historia Normannorum» (Posing the Problem)

This article is an attempt to identify the written sources of the chronicle of the French monk Dudo of Saint-Quentin created in the early 11th century and entitled «De moribus et actis primorum Normaniae ducum», known also as «Historia Normannorum». It is the first text dedicated to the history of Normandy and a text based mainly on the oral information obtained by Dudo from the dukes of Normandy and their entourage. This fact attracted many modern scholars whereas Dudo’s written sources received much less attention which hinders attempts to explain certain factual lacunae in his text and occasional mismatches of his reports with the reports of other authors of the same period, something which for a long time discredited this chronicle in the eyes of researchers. Striving to identify the written sources which Dudo employed while composing his chronicle, the author clarifies the chronicler’s literary aims and the particularities of his work with available sources. This, in turn, helps to properly assess the originality of his work and the reliability of the reports contained in his chronicle.

Dudo of St.-Quentin, early medieval France, the duchy of Normandy, Frankish chronography, oral and written sources of medieval historians