We have said that the writing of the Thirteenth Century must have been done to a great extent for the sake of the women of the time, and that its very existence was a proof that the women possessed a degree of culture, that might not be realized from the few details that have been preserved to us of their education and habits of life. In this last passage of Joinville we have the proof of this, since evidently the telling of the stories of these days of battle was done mainly in order that the women folks might have their share in the excitement of the campaign, and might be enabled vividly to appreciate what the dangers had been and how gloriously their lords had triumphed. At every period of the world's history it was true that literature was mainly made for women and that some of the best portions of it always concerned them very closely.
We have purposely left till last, the greatest of the chroniclers of the Thirteenth Century, Matthew Paris, the Author of the Historia Major, who owes his surname doubtless to the fact that he was educated at the University of Paris. Instead of trying to tell anything about him from our own slight personal knowledge, we prefer to quote the passage from Green's History of the English People, in which one of the greatest of our modern English historians pays such a magnificent tribute to his colleague of the earlier times:
"The story of this period of misrule has been preserved for us by an annalist whose pages glow with the new outburst of patriotic feeling which this common expression of the people and the clergy had produced. Matthew Paris is the greatest, as he is in reality the last of our monastic historians. The school of St. Albans survived indeed till a far later time, but the writers dwindle into mere annalists whose view is bounded by the Abbey precincts, and whose work is as colorless as it is jejune. In Matthew the breadth and precision of the narrative, the copiousness of his information on topics whether national or European, the general fairness and justice of his comments, are only surpassed by the patriotic fire and enthusiasm of the whole. He had succeeded Roger of Wendover as Chronicler of St. Albans; and the Greater Chronicle, with the abridgement of it which has long passed under the name of Matthew of Westminster, a "History of the English," and the "Lives of the Earlier Abbots," were only a few among the voluminous works which attest his prodigious industry. He was an eminent artist as well as a historian, and many of the manuscripts which are preserved are illustrated by his own hand. A large circle of correspondents--bishops like Grosseteste, ministers like Hubert de Burgh, officials like Alexander de Swinford--furnished him with minute accounts of political and ecclesiastical proceedings. Pilgrims from the East and Papal agents brought news of foreign events to his scriptorium at St. Albans. He had access to and quotes largely from state documents, charters, and exchequer rolls. The frequency of the royal visits to the abbey brought him a store of political intelligence and Henry himself contributed to the great chronicle which has preserved with so terrible a faithfulness the memory of his weakness and misgovernment. On one solemn feast-day the King recognized Matthew, and bidding him sit on the middle step between the floor and the throne, begged him to write the story of the day's proceedings. While on a visit to St. Albans he invited him to his table and chamber, and enumerated by name two hundred and fifty of the English barons for his information. But all this royal patronage has left little mark on his work. "_The case,_" as he says, "_of historical writers is hard, for if they tell the truth they provoke men, and if they write what is false they offend God._" { 231} With all the fullness of the school of court historians, such as Benedict or Hoveden, Matthew Paris combines an independence and patriotism which is strange to their pages. He denounces with the same unsparing energy the oppression of the Papacy and the King. His point of view is neither that of a courtier nor of a Churchman, but of an Englishman, and the new national tone of his chronicle is but an echo of the national sentiment which at last bound nobles and yeomen and Churchmen together into an English people."