David Whitton remarks that "no historian of eleventh and early twelfth century Rome or of the Reform Papacy can advance very far in his studies without giving attention to the Annales Romani.
Only Bonizo of Sutri's Liber ad amicum is comparable for the history of the city in this period.
[2] According to Mary Stroll, they are sometimes melodramatic and typically "riddled with errors", but "one can still glean valuable information" from them.
[3] Louis Duchesne argued that the surviving annals are fragments of a once continuous narrative.
Ludwig Bethmann believed that the 1044–1073 series was originally a separate piece of pro-imperial and pro-Guibert propaganda.