ORDERIC VITALIS (1075–c. 1142), the chronicler, was the son of a French priest, Odeler of Orleans, who had entered the service of Roger Montgomery, earl of Shrewsbury, and had re ceived from his patron a chapel in that city. Orderic was sent at the age of five to learn his letters from an English priest, Siward by name, who kept a school in the church of SS. Peter and Paul at Shrewsbury. When eleven years old he was entered as a novice in the Norman monastery of St. Evroul en Ouche. Orderic did not know a word of French when he reached Nor mandy; his book, though written many years later, shows that he never lost his English cast of mind or his love of England. His superiors rechristened him Vitalis, after a member of the legendary Theban legion. But in the title of his Ecclesiastical History he prefixes the old to the new name and proudly adds the epithet Angligena. He became a deacon in 1093, a priest in 1107. He left his cloister on several occasions, and speaks of having visited Croyland, Worcester, Cambrai (1105) and Cluny (1132). For many years he appears to have spent his summers in the scriptor ium. His superiors (at some time between 1099 and '122) ordered him to write the history of St. Evroul. The work grew under his hands until it became a general history of his own age. St. Evroul was a house of wealth and distinction. War-worn knights chose it as a resting-place of their last years. It entertained vis itors from southern Italy, where it had planted colonies of monks, and from England, where it had extensive possessions.
Thus Orderic, though he witnessed no great events, was often well informed about them. His narrative gives us much invaluable information for which we should search the more methodical chroniclers in vain. He throws a flood of light upon the manners and ideas of his own age; he sometimes comments with surprising shrewdness upon the broader aspects and tendencies of history. His narrative breaks off in the middle of 1141, though he added some finishing touches in 1142.
The Historia ecclesiastica falls into three sections. (I) Bks. ii., which are historically valueless, give the history of Christianity from the birth of Christ. After 855 this becomes a bare catalogue of popes, ending with the name of Innocent I. These books were added, as an afterthought, to the original scheme ; they were com posed in the years 1136-1141. (2) Bks. iii.–vi. form a history of
St. Evroul, the original nucleus of the work. Planned before 1122, they were mainly composed in the years 1123-1131. The fourth and fifth books contain long digressions on the deeds of William the Conqueror in Normandy and England. Before 1067 these are of little value, being chiefly derived from two extant sources, William of Jumieges' Historia Normannorum and William of Poi tiers' Gesta Guilelmi. For the years 1067-1071 Orderic follows the last portion of the Gesta Guilelmi; hence this is of the first importance. From 1071 he begins to be an independent authority. But his notices of political events in this part of his work are far less copious than in (3) Bks. vii.–xiii., where ecclesiastical affairs are relegated to the background. In this section, after sketching the history of France under the Carolingians and early Capets, Orderic takes up the events of his own times, starting from about 1082. He has much to say concerning the empire, the papacy, the Normans in Italy and Apulia, the First Crusade (for which he follows Fulcher of Chartres and Baudri of Bourgueil). But his chief interest is in the histories of Duke Robert of Normandy, William Rufus and Henry I. He continues his work, in the form of annals, up to the defeat of Stephen at Lincoln in 1141.
The Historica ecclesiastica was edited by Duchesne in his Historiae Normannorum scriptores (Paris, 1619). This is the edition cited by Freeman and in many standard works. It is, however, inferior to that of A. le Prevost in five vols. (Soc. de l'histoire de France, Paris, 1838-55). The fifth volume contains excellent critical studies by M. Leopold Delisle, and is admirably indexed. Migne's edition (Patrologia latina, clxxxviii.) is merely a reprint of Duchesne. There is a French translation (by L. Dubois) in Guizot's Collection des memoires relatifs a l'histoire de France (Paris, 1825-1827) ; and one in English by T. Forester in Bohn's Antiquarian Library (4 vols., 1853-56). In addition to the Historia there exists, in the library at Rouen, a manuscript edition of William of jumieges' Historia Normannorum which Leopold Delisle assigns to Orderic (See this critic's Lettre a M. Jules Lair (H. W. C. D.; X.)