![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() He asked a Latin expert, Professor David D’Avray of University College London, to translate it. “I looked at this passage and thought it doesn’t look right to me.” The chronicle has been in print since the 19th century, in a multi-volume collection titled the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, but only in the original Latin – “flowery Latin at that, not the normal administrative Latin that most medieval historians – like me – can cope with,” Morris said. “Every biography of William on my shelf mentions Hugh’s description of William the Conqueror in the context of the king’s funeral in 1087.” Morris decided to go back to the original text, which was written by a Burgundian monk called Hugh of Flavigny after William’s burial in St Stephen’s Church at Caen in Normandy. ![]() He told the Observer: “It’s very difficult assessing people’s personalities at a distance of a millennium, but academics for the past 50 or 60 years have written that … he was quite jovial, cheerful, eloquent, good-natured – not the brute you might suppose.” The discovery was made by a British historian, Marc Morris, while researching his forthcoming book on William of Normandy, whose conquest of England in 1066 altered the course of the nation’s history. ![]()
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