Martin of Opava


Martin of Opava, O.P. also known as Martin of Poland, was a 13th-century Dominican friar, bishop and chronicler.

Life

Known in Latin as Frater Martinus Ordinis Praedicatorum, he is believed to have been born, at an unknown date, in the Silesian town of Opava, at that time part of the Margraviate of Moravia.
From the middle of the 13th century, Martin was active in Rome as confessor and chaplain for Pope Alexander IV and his successors, Urban IV, Clement IV, Gregory X, Innocent V, Adrian V and John XXI, the last pope to appear in his chronicles. On 22 June 1278, Pope Nicholas III, while in Viterbo, appointed him archbishop of Gniezno.
While travelling to his new episcopal see, Martin died in Bologna, where he was buried at the Basilica of San Domenico, near the tomb of the founder of his Order.

Works

Martin's Latin chronicle, the Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum, was intended for the school-room. It is mostly derivative in content and is therefore of limited value to modern historians. However, its importance is in the way the material is presented, which is a quantum leap forward in didactic method. The genius lies in its layout; each double page covers fifty years with fifty lines per page. The left-hand pages give the history of the papacy, with one line per year, and the right-hand pages give the history of emperors, the two accounts being kept strictly parallel. This was a revolutionary approach in graphic design, which was not appreciated by all his contemporaries: many manuscripts simply copy the text without retaining the page layout, which results in a rather chaotic chronology. The chronicle was enormously influential; over 400 manuscripts are known, and the influence on many dozens of later chroniclers is palpable. Translations were made into many medieval vernaculars, including Middle English, as well as an Old French translation by Sébastien Mamerot. Martin's Chronicon is the most influential source for the legend of "Pope Joan". Other of his works include the Promptuarium Exemplorum.