Chronicle of Fredegar
Some copies of the manuscript contain an abridged version of the chronicle up to the date of 642, but include additional sections written under the Carolingian dynasty that end with the death of Pepin the Short in 768.
The Chronicle of Fredegar with its Continuations is one of the few sources that provide information on the Merovingian dynasty for the period after 591 when Gregory of Tours' the Decem Libri Historiarum finishes.
[2] The name "Fredegar" (modern French Frédégaire) was first used for the chronicle in 1579 by Claude Fauchet in his Recueil des antiquitez gauloises et françoises.
[3][4] The question of who wrote this work has been much debated, although the historian J. M. Wallace-Hadrill admits that "Fredegar" is a genuine, if unusual, Frankish name.
[10][11] The original chronicle is lost, but it exists in an uncial copy made in 715 by a Burgundian monk named Lucerius.
[18] In the prologue the author (traditionally Fredegar) writes: I have most carefully read the chronicles of St Jerome, Hydatius and a certain wise man, of Isidore as well as of Gregory, from the beginning of the world to the declining years of Guntram's reign; and I have reproduced successively in this little book, in suitable languages and without many omissions, what these learned men have recounted at length in their five chronicles.
[22] On the reverse of the folio containing the papal list is an ink drawing showing two people which according to Monod probably represent Eusebius and Jerome.
One group of manuscripts (Krusch's Class 4) contain a reworking of the Chronicle of Fredegar followed by additional sections that describe events in Francia up to 768.
Krusch in his critical edition, appends these extra chapters to the text of the Codex Claromontanus creating the false impression that the two parts originate from the same manuscript.
The first begins with a section based on the treatise De cursu temporum by the obscure fourth century Latin writer Quintus Julius Hilarianus.
At this point a colophon is inserted in the text explaining that the writing of the chronicle was ordered by Charles Martel's brother, Count Childebrand.
Wallace-Hadrill's translation is: Up to this point, the illustrious Count Childebrand, uncle of the said King Pippin, took great pains to have this history or "geste" of the Franks recorded.
[31] The medievalist Roger Collins has argued that the text in the Class 4 manuscripts is sufficiently different from the Fredegar Chronicle of the Codex Claromontanus that it should be considered a separate work.
