The Chronique was probably made for the use of town officials, who would have wanted a record of local history for help in administration and in forging civic pride.
The recording of town officials, such as council members, was also important, and in two manuscripts the Chronique is found along with the Charte de 1204, a compilation of local customary law.
In general Le petit Thalamus has the most complete entries, though both it and Montpellier H119 were composed "negligently and hastily, with frequent orthographic and historical errors" and differ in the dating of many events.
In the sixteenth century one President Philippy, a local official, made a critical edition of the text of the Thalamus des archives du roi, but this went unpublished.
The Archaeological Society of Montpellier published the first edition of the chronicle, based on Le petit Thalamus, in 1836.
The editors of Le petit Thalamus speculated that the original chronicle, from which all the manuscript versions derive, was begun around 1088, during the reign of William V of Montpellier, and continued by a succession of scribes.