Godfrey Of Viterbo

, the author of an ancient chronicle, is supposed to have been born in the twelfth century, at Viterbo, in Italy, and educated in his youth, at least, at Bamberg. He was afterwards chaplain and | secretary to king Conrad III. the emperor Frederick, and his son Henry VI. He informs us that he spent forty years in searching among the manuscripts of the Greeks, Latins, Jews, Chaldeans, and barbarians, for materials proper for his Chronicle, had made himself acquainted with all these languages, and performed many voyages and travels in the same pursuit. This Chronicle, which does not, however, gratify all the expectations that might be formed from such learning and industry, begins with the creation of the world, and ends with 1186. It is written in Latin prose and verse, and entitled “Pantheon.” It was first printed at Basil, by Basilius John Herold, 1559, reprinted at Francfort in 1584, and at Hanover in 1613, in Pistorius’s collection of German writers; and Muratori has inserted in his great collection, that part which respects Italy. Lambecius speaks of another work by Godfrey, which exists in ms. in the imperial library at Vienna, entitled “Speculum regium, sive de genealogia regum et imperatorum a diluvii tempore ad Henricum VI. imperatorem.” Godfrey appears to have been a man of learning and observation, and is thought to deserve credit as to his relation of the events which occurred in his own time, and with which his situation at court enabled him to be acquainted. ¹