Grandes Chroniques de France

It was first compiled in the reign of Saint Louis (d. 1270), who wished to preserve the history of the Franks, from the coming of the Trojans to his own time, in an official chronography whose dissemination was tightly controlled.

It survives in approximately 130 manuscripts,[1] varying in the richness, number and artistic style of their illuminations, copied and amended for royal and courtly patrons, the central work of vernacular official historiography.

[2] Following the contemporary styles of illustration seen in other manuscripts, early copies had mostly fairly small scenes, normally with a patterned background rather than a landscape or interior setting.

[4] Philip the Good's copy follows the Paris text up to 1226, but then uses Guillaume de Nangis' Chronicon up to 1327, and then Flemish chronicles from the monasteries of Saint Bertin and Notre Dame at Saint-Omer.

[6] The earliest surviving version is that of Primat de Saint-Denis, a copy of which was presented to Philip III of France in about 1274, with 36 miniatures (many with multiple scenes) and historiated initials by Parisian artists.

These were mostly derived from other manuscript sources, but ingeniously focused into a coherent programme of illustration reflecting the points the abbey wished the king to absorb, regarding both its own aspirations and the nature of kingship in general.

These inexpensive books filled a practical need; they provided a chronology for persons charged with maintaining the state archives and doubtless also assisted them in their increasingly common role as writers of history".

[11] Printed copies on vellum, which were then illuminated, were produced in Paris by Antoine Vérard, who specialized in such hybrids, and normal editions by others, but by around 1500 the work seems to have been regarded as outdated, and was replaced by other texts.