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Document Details :

Title: Sprookspreker Jan Bot, heraut Gelre en het ontstaan van de Korte kroniek van Holland
Author(s): SLEIDERINK, Remco
Journal: Spiegel der Letteren
Volume: 58    Issue: 3   Date: 2016   
Pages: 323-350
DOI: 10.2143/SDL.58.3.3178231

Abstract :
According to a recently discovered entry in an account book, the itinerant poet and reciter Jan Bot – of whom it was already known that he wrote a poem about John of Beaumont (†1356) – offered in May 1360 a rotulus containing a short chronicle of Holland to the Holland nobleman John of Blois (John II of Châtillon). This article brings together all the documentary evidence about Jan Bot known to date (from the period 1358 tot 1366) and attempts to identify the chronicle. Especially the so-called Korte kroniek van Holland (‘Short Chronicle of Holland’) seems to be a plausible candidate. A lot of the information in this short rhyming chronicle has been borrowed from Jacob van Maerlant’s Spiegel historiael. Until now, this chronicle was assumed to have been compiled in the late fourteenth century by Herald Guelders (Claes Heynenzoon), since he made two copies of the text and also wrote a continuation. However, this attribution is not without problems. Furthermore, there is a good reason to believe that the chronicle already came into being shortly after 1354. On the basis of these reflections, it cannot be excluded that it was a version of the Korte kroniek van Holland that was offered to John of Blois in 1360 in the form of a rotulus. The poet Jan Bot may have been the compiler of this short chronicle.

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