A German cleric and author of the Chronica Slavorum.
Born around 1120, in his youth Helmold joined the Augustinian canons in Segeberg in Holstein. As a result of Slavic attacks, the canons later had to move to Neumunster. Helmold then went to Braunschweig to receive further education. On his return, his friend and mentor Bishop Gerold of Oldenburg and Lubeck made Helmold a priest in Bosau around 1156.
Helmold probably began writing his chronicle shortly after 1167, incited, as it seems, by an erupting conflict between the newly elected Bishop Conrad I of Lubeck and Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony. The chronicle, dedicated to the canons of Lubeck, describes in great detail the Christianization of the Slavic peoples northeast of the river Elbe from the time of Charlemagne until 1171, emphasizing the importance of the Saxon mission and expansion in the region. Helmold recounts the frequent rivalries between the Saxons (notably Duke Henry the Lion), the archbishopric of Hamburg-Bremen, and the kings of Denmark as background to the crusades against the Slavs. His writings undoubtedly influenced later chroniclers, but they also provoked others, such as the Danish chronicler Saxo Grammaticus, into presenting events differently.
-Carsten Selch Jensen
Bibliography
Degn, Christian, “Geschichtsschreibung in Schleswig-Holstein: Ausdruck ihrer Zeit,” Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft fur Schleswig-Holsteinische Geschichte 109 (1984), 11-34.
Helmold of Bosau, Chronicle of the Slavs, trans. Francis J. Tschan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1935).
Helmold von Bosau, Slawenchronik, ed. and trans. Heinz Stoob, 6th ed. (Darmstadt, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesehschaft, 2002).
Petersohn, Jurgen, Dersudliche Ostseeraum im kirchlich-politischen Krdftespiel des Reichs, Polens und Ddnemarks vom 10. bis 13. Jahrhundert: Mission, Kirchenorganisation, Kulturpolitik (Koln: Bohlau, 1979).
Scior, Volker, Das Eigene und das Fremde: Identitdt und Fremdheit in den Chroniken Adams von Bremen, Helmolds von Bosau und Arnolds von Lubeck (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2002).
France, and the following spring he briefly accompanied Louis to Egypt, where 120 Cypriot knights subsequently participated in Louis’s failed campaign. Henry died in Nicosia (mod. Lefkosia, Cyprus) on 18 January 1253 and was succeeded by his son Hugh II.
-Kristian Molin
Bibliography
Edbury, Peter, The Kingdom of Cyprus and the Crusades, 1191-1374 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1991).
Hill, George, A History of Cyprus, 4 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1940-1952).
Mas Latrie, Louis de, Histoire de l’tle de Chypre sous le regne des princes de la maison de Lusignan, 3 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Imperiale, 1852-1861).
World History
