stes were in their way historical poems, and they
were, as we have seen, soon followed by directly historical poems in
considerable numbers. It was not, however, till the prose Arthurian
romances of Map and his followers had made prose popular as a vehicle
for long narratives, that regular history began to be written in the
vulgar tongue. The vogue of these prose romances dates from the latter
portion of the twelfth century; the prose chronicle follows it closely,
and dates from the beginning of the thirteenth. It was not at first
original. The practice of chronicle writing in Latin had been frequent
during the earlier centuries, and at last the monks of three
monasteries, St. Benoit sur Loire, St. Germain des Pres, and St. Denis,
began to keep a regular register of the events of their own time,
connecting this with earlier chronicles of the past. The most famous and
dignified of the three, St. Denis, became specially the home of history.
The earliest French prose chronicles do not, however, come from this
place. They are two in number; both date from the earliest years of the
thirteenth century, and both are translations. One is a version of a
Latin compilation of Merovingian history; the other of the famous
chronicle of _Turpin_[131]. These two are composed in a southern
dialect bordering on the Provencal, and the first was either written by
or ascribed to a certain Nicholas of Senlis. The example was followed,
but it was not till 1274 that a complete vernacular version of the
history of France was executed by a monk of St. Denis--Primat--in French
prose. This version, slightly modified, became the original of a
compilation very famous in French literature and history, the _Grandes
Chroniques de France_, which was regularly continued by members of the
same community until the reign of Charles V, from official sources and
under royal authority. The work, under the same title but written by
laics, extends further to the reign of Louis XI. The necessity of
translation ceased as soon as the example of writing in the vernacular
had been set, though Latin chronicles continued to be produced as well
as French.

[Sidenote: Villehardouin.]

Long, however, before history on the great scale had been thus
attempted, and very soon after the first attempt of Nicholas of Senlis
had shown that the vulgar tongue was capable of such use, original prose
memoirs and chronicles of contemporary events had been produced, and, as
happens m