Helmold (redirected from Helmold von Bosau)

Helmold 

Born about 1125; died after 1177. German priest and missionary from Holstein; author of the so-called Slavic Chronicle, in which he described the seizure by German feudal nobles of the lands of the Polabian Slavs and their colonization and Christianization. For part of the chronicle (ninth to 11th centuries), Helmold primarily used the works of Adam of Bremen, but events of the 12th century (up to 1171) are described by him from his own observations and information obtained from contemporaries. Despite a strong German-Catholic bias and factual inaccuracies, Helmold’s chronicle is a principal (and for some things the only) source on the history of the Polabian Slavs. It was continued (up to 1209) by Arnold of Lübeck.

WORKS

Slavianskaia khronika (Foreword, translation from Latin, and notes by L. V. Razumovskaia.) Moscow, 1963.

REFERENCE

Egorov, D. N. Slaviano-germanskie otnosheniia v srednie veka: Kolonizatsiia Meklenburga v XIII v., vols. 1-2. Moscow, 1915.