Gesta Stephani

Deeds of King Stephen or Acts of Stephen or Gesta Stephani is a mid-12th-century English history by an anonymous author about King Stephen and his struggles with his cousin Matilda of England, also known as the Empress Maud. It is one of the main sources for this period in the history of England.

Some historians think the author may have been Robert of Bath, Bishop of Bath from 1136 to 1166.

The Gesta Stephani was first published in Paris in 1619, from a manuscript in the episcopal library at Laon which was subsequently lost. A fuller manuscript has recently been found, and since published, in the Municipal Library at Valenciennes, having been transferred from the nearby abbey of Vicoigne. The Latin text tells in 120 chapters of the Anarchy of King Stephen's reign, and ends with the accession of King Henry II.

See also

• English historians in the Middle Ages

References

• Gesta Stephani, edited and translated by K.R. Potter Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976 ISBN 978-0198222347 Latin text with facing-page English translation, with introduction and notes by R. H. C. Davis
• British History Online Bishops of Bath and Wells accessed on September 23, 2007
• Huscroft, Richard Ruling England 1042-1217 London: Pearson Longman 2005 ISBN 0-582-84882-2

External links

• Latin Chroniclers from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries: Gesta Stephani from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Volume I, 1907–21.