Rodulfus Glaber

Rodulfus Glaber (French: Raoul Glaber or Raoul le Chauve; 985–1047) was an 11th-century Benedictine chronicler.

Glaber is best known for Historiarum, which he is believed to have started writing during his time at the Abbey of Cluny around 1026 or so, and completed at Abbey of Saint-Germain en Auxerre some time later. Initially intended to be an ecclesiastical history, Glaber's focus is on events in the center of France, but occasionally ranges as far as Scotland and Southern Italy. His writings often sympathized with proponents of church reform of that age, including Henry II, Henry III and Robert II of France, while criticizing others like Conrad II, and Pope Benedict IX.

Quotes

 * Igitur infra supradictum millesimum tercio iam fere imminente anno, contigit in uniuerso pene terrarum orbe, precipue tamen in Italia et in Galliis, innouari ecclesiarum basilicas, licet plereque decenter locate minime indiguissent, emulabatur tamen queque gens christicolarum aduersus alteram decentiore frui. Erat enim instar ac si mundus ipse excutiendo semet, reiecta uetustate, passim candidam ecclesiarum uestem indueret.
 * Just before the third year after the millennium, throughout the whole world, but most especially in Italy and Gaul, men began to reconstruct churches, although for the most part the existing ones were properly built and not in the least unworthy. But it seemed as though each Christian community were aiming to surpass all others in splendour of construction. It was as if the whole world were shaking itself free, shrugging off the burden of the past, and cladding itself everywhere in a white mantle of churches.
 * Historiarum, book III, chap. iv, 14; John France, ed., The Five Books of the Histories (Oxford, 1989), pp. 114–17