BRAKELOND, JOCELYN DE (ft. 1200), English monk, and author of a chronicle narrating the fortunes of the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds between 1173 and 1202. He is known only through his own work. He was a native of Bury St. Edmunds ; he served his novitiate under Samson of Tottington, took the habit in 1173, and became abbot's chaplain under Samson. The picture which he gives of his master, although coloured by enthusiastic admiration, is singularly frank and intimate. The unique interest of his work lies in the minuteness with which it describes the policy of a monastic administrator who was in his own day considered as a model.
Jocelyn has also been credited with an extant but unprinted tract on the election of Abbot Hugo (Harleian ms. 1005, fo. 165), but from internal evidence this seems to be an error. He mentions a (non-extant) work which he wrote, before the Cronica, on the miracles of St. Robert, a boy whom the Jews of Bury St. Edmunds were alleged to have murdered (118i).
See the editions of the Cronica Jocelini de Brakelonda by T. Arnold (in Memorials of St. Edmund's Abbey, vol. i. Rolls series, 189o), and by J. G. Rokewood (Camden Society, 1840) ; also Carlyle's Past and Present, book ii. A translation and notes are given in T. E. Tomlin's Monastic and Social Life in the Twelfth Century in the Chronicle of Jocelyn de Brakelond (1844). There is also a translation of Jocelyn by Sir E. Clarke (19o7).