'Matthew the Parisian';[1] c. 1200 – 1259), was an English Benedictine monk, chronicler, artist in illuminated manuscripts, and cartographer who was based at St Albans Abbey in Hertfordshire.

His Chronica Majora is a renowned Medieval work, in many cases being a key source for mid-13th century Europe, partially due to his verbose insertion of personal opinions into his narrative and his use of sources such as records, letters, and conversations with witnesses to events including the English king Henry III, earl Richard of Cornwall, the Norwegian king Haakon IV, a number of English bishops, and many others.

He often tended to glorify Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II and denigrate the pope,[2] expressing strong criticism of centralised church authority and at times royal power.

However, in his Historia Anglorum, Paris displays a highly negative view of Frederick, going as far as to describe him as a "tyrant" who "committed disgraceful crimes".

It is on the assumption that he was in his teens on admission that his birth date is estimated; some scholars suspect he may have been ten years or older; many monks only entered monastic life after pursuing a career in the world outside.

In 1248, Paris was sent to Norway as the bearer of a message from Louis IX to Haakon IV; he made himself so agreeable to the Norwegian sovereign that he was invited to superintend the reformation of the Benedictine Nidarholm Abbey outside Trondheim.Apart from these missions, his known activities were devoted to the composition of history, a pursuit for which the monks of St Albans had long been famous.

Paris scribed 2 major abridgements of his Chronica: his Historia Anglorum, and a work named like that of Wendover, the Flores Historiarum.

They are in French and in his handwriting: It is presumed the last relates to Paris acting as commissioning agent and iconographical consultant for the Countess with another artist.

The lending of his manuscripts to aristocratic households, apparently for periods of weeks or months at a time, suggests why he made several different illustrated versions of his Chronicle.

Many of Paris's manuscripts aside from his Chronica contain multiple texts and often begin with a large assortment of prefatory material, often including full-page miniatures.

A panel painting on oak of St Peter, the only surviving part of a tabernacle shrine (1850 × 750 mm), in the Museum of Oslo University has been attributed to Paris, presumably dating from his visit in 1248.

His colouring emphasises green and blue, and together with his characteristic layout of a picture in the top half of a page, is relatively distinctive.

In 1257, in the course of a week's visit to St Albans, Henry kept the chronicler beside him night and day, "and guided my pen," says Paris, "with much goodwill and diligence."

Although the offending passages are duly omitted or softened in his abridgement of his longer work, the Historia Anglorum (written about 1253), Paris's real feelings must have been an open secret.

[24] A sequence of pictures of towns on the route marked the terminus of each day's travel, enabling the viewer to envisage and follow the whole journey rather like a comic strip – an achievement unprecedented elsewhere in the medieval world.