Marjorie Chibnall

Marjorie Chibnall
Born	(1915-09-27)27 September 1915 Atcham, Shropshire
Died	23 June 2012(2012-06-23) (aged 96) Sheffield
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Cambridge
Spouse	Charles Chibnall
Scientific career
Fields	Medieval History
Institutions	Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, Girton College, Cambridge.
Thesis	The English priories and manors of the abbey of Bec-Hellouin  (1942)
Doctoral advisor	Eileen Power

Marjorie Morgan McCallum Chibnall OBE FBA (27 September 1915 – 23 June 2012) was an English historian, medievalist and Latin translator. She edited Historia Ecclesiastica by Orderic Vitalis.

Biography

Born to a farming family at Atcham in Shropshire in 1915, Chibnall was educated at Shrewsbury Priory County Girls School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where she was taught by Evelyn Jamison, V. H. Galbraith and F. M. Powicke.

In 1947, she married the biochemist and amateur medieval historian Charles Chibnall, who died in 1988. Chibnall died in Sheffield on 23 June 2012, at the age of 96. and was survived by their son and daughter, Mary and John, and by two step-daughters, Joan and Cicely.

Scholarly life

Marjorie Chibnall took her BLitt at the University of Cambridge on the topic of ecclesiastical law, before moving to a study of the relations between the great abbey of Bec in Normandy and its dependent English priories for her doctorate. She completed her doctorate in 1939 under the supervision of the renowned economic historian Eileen Power. Her early career was spent teaching at the University of Southampton (1941–43) and the University of Aberdeen (1943–47).

Chibnall was from 1947 a lecturer in history at Girton College, Cambridge, and from 1953 a fellow of the college, but she relinquished her positions there in 1965 in order to complete her editorial work on the Historia Ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis. Four years later she was made a research fellow and subsequently a fellow of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge, and an honorary fellow of Girton College.

In a career spanning more than six decades, Marjorie Chibnall worked extensively on Anglo-Norman and Norman history. She encouraged much scholarship on these topics, as an active participant at the Battle Conferences on Anglo-Norman history and an editor of their proceedings. Chibnall's edition of Orderic Vitalis's, and also of Atcham's writings, and her biography of the Empress Matilda were acclaimed works. She continued to publish well into her nineties. Her last book, a short account of the Normans, was published in 2000.

Honours

Chibnall was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1978. In 1979, the University of Birmingham granted her an honorary doctorate. In 2004, she was awarded an OBE for services to history.

Select bibliography

• Select Documents of the English lands of the Abbey of Bec, (Royal Historical Society, Camden Third Series vol. 73, 1951)
• John of Salisbury’s Memoirs of the Papal Court, (London, 1956)
• (ed. & tr) The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, 6 vols., (Oxford, 1969–1980)
• Charters and Custumals of the Abbey of Holy Trinity, Caen (Oxford, 1982)
• The World of Orderic Vitalis, (Oxford, 1984)
• Anglo-Norman England 1066-1166, (Oxford, 1986)
• (ed.& tr.)The Historia Pontificalis of John of Salisbury, (Oxford, 1986)
• Empress Matilda, (Oxford, 1991)
• (ed. with Leslie Watkiss) The Waltham Chronicle : An Account of the Discovery of Our Holy Cross at Montacute and its Conveyance to Waltham (Oxford, 1994)
• (ed. & tr. with R. H. C. Davis), The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, (Oxford, 1998)
• The Debate on the Norman Conquest, (Manchester, 1999)
• Piety, Power and History in Medieval England and Normandy, (Aldershot, 2000)
• The Normans (Oxford, 2000)

External links

• A Memoir of Marjorie Chibnall by Diana E Greenway Accessed 25 July 2015