The Platonic Concept of the Memory of Ancient Deeds in the Chronicles of Master Vincentius and Theodoricus the Monk

Abstract

The article discusses the reception of the Platonic concept of memory of ancient deeds in twelfth-century historical writing in the ‘younger Europe’. It focuses on the myth of Atlantis, as described in the translation of Timaeus by Calcidius, illustrating the manner in which two twelfth-century chroniclers – Master Vincentius Kadłubek and Theodoricus Monachus – used the said myth as a structural basis for their accounts of the past of Poland and Norway, respectively. Both chroniclers invoke Plato’s idea of a memory of ancient past that survives through centuries without recourse to scripture and is the province not of the people whose history it concerns, but rather of one that is closely related, or, at times – of an older generation.