Editing Flodoard (section)

== Works ==
Flodoard wrote three substantial historical works and at least two other minor works. In 922, he began writing a [[chronicle]] known today as the ''Annals'', which he maintained for most of his career. Flodoard primarily reported major political and military events, focusing on those in West Francia but extending his coverage to the [[Ottonian empire]] and [[Kingdom of Italy (Holy Roman Empire)|Italy]]. He also regularly recorded miracles and other supernatural phenomena. Flodoard seems generally to have written his annals in a year-by-year fashion, and there is no evidence that he revised his text. The ''Annals'' constitute one of the tenth century's relatively few contemporary chronicles, and the work is the only major West Frankish chronicle to have survived from this time, so Flodoard's work has been much valued by modern historians.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Flodoard of Rheims and the Writing of History in the Tenth Century|last=Roberts|first=Edward|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2019|isbn=9781108226851|location=Cambridge|pages=5–6}}</ref>

Flodoard's ''History of the Church of Reims'' (''Historia Remensis ecclesiae'') is one of the most remarkable productions of the tenth century. This work recounts the history of Reims back to its supposed origins in the time of [[Romulus and Remus]], though it focuses principally on the Christian era up to 948. The work, a celebrated example of the genre of ''gesta episcoporum'' ("the deeds of bishops"), takes the form of serialized biographies of the church's bishops. Flodoard had access to an episcopal archive stretching back to the sixth century, and based much of his history on original documents which he summarized or reproduced extracts from. His summaries of some 450 letters of Archbishop [[Hincmar]] have been considered especially valuable.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Sot|first=Michel|title=Un historien et son Église au Xe siècle: Flodoard de Reims|publisher=Fayard|year=1993|isbn=978-2213031842|location=Paris}}</ref>

Flodoard's poetical works are of hardly less historical interest. In the 930s he composed an epic poem known as ''The Triumphs of Christ'' (''De triumphis Christi''), a history of [[Christianity]] in nearly 20,000 verses. The poem narrates the victories of Christ, martyrs, saints and [[pope]]s, drawing on a vast range of earlier historical and hagiographical literature. Flodoard evidently gathered material for the work when he visited Rome in 936/7, and the text is a rare witness to the history of the city and the popes in the early tenth century.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Jacobsen|first=Peter Christian|title=Flodoard von Reims. Sein Leben und seine Dichtung 'De triumphis Christi'|publisher=Brill|year=1978|isbn=90-04-05407-3|location=Leiden}}</ref>

The historian wrote at least two other minor works. One, known today as the "Visions of Flothilde", records the otherworldly visions of a local girl in the early 940s, a time of great political conflict in Reims.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Koziol|first=Geoffrey|date=2016|title=Flothilde's Visions and Flodoard's Histories: A Tenth-Century Mutation?|journal=Early Medieval Europe|volume=24|issue=2|pages=160–84|doi=10.1111/emed.12139|s2cid=163578509}}</ref> Another work, now lost, is also referred to in the ''History of the Church of Reims'': when discussing miracles that had taken place in and around Reims cathedral and were attributed to the [[Virgin Mary]], Flodoard mentioned that he had previously collected these and put them into verse.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Roberts|first=Edward|title=Flodoard of Rheims and the Writing of History in the Tenth Century|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=2019|isbn=9781316510391|location=Cambridge|pages=207–8}}</ref>

Flodoard's works were published in full by [[Jacques Paul Migne|JP Migne]] (''[[Patrologia Latina]]'', vol. 135); the best modern edition of the ''Annales'' is that edited by Philippe Lauer in 1905. The ''History of the Church of Reims'' was recently re-edited for the [[Monumenta Germaniae Historica]] by Martina Stratmann (1998). There is, however, no modern edition of ''The Triumphs of Christ'', which remains best consulted in Migne's ''Patrologia Latina'' edition.