ABSTRACT
A historian depends on the evidence of every kind left by earlier ages. Buildings, tools, clothing, works of art and works of utility are all grist to his mill. His prime source of information is, however, the words of the period with which he is concerned literary works, including contemporary histories, and administrative records of all sorts, from the official accounts of governments to the ledgers and letters of private persons and corporations. One has to remember the great number of chronicles composed and continued' in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to view in perspective the output of the monastic annalist in the later Middle Ages. A knightly way of life had been the accepted social norm in western Europe for many centuries. Government at every level in the Middle Ages depended on written documents. As government became more ambitious and effective in the thirteenth and later centuries this documentation becomes more abundant.
