Radulfi de Diceto Decani Lundoniensis opera historica: The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London

Ralph de Diceto (d.1199/1200), dean of St Paul’s, was both a painstaking compiler of information and an intellectual historian of remarkably wide vision. This two-volume collection of his writings, originally published in 1876, covers the history of the world from the Creation to 1202 (it was continued posthumously). Volume 2 contains the second half of Diceto’s most important work, the Ymagines historiarum, his Opuscula (a collection of far shorter texts) as well as various appendices. In his preface to this volume, William Stubbs (1825-1901) assesses the historical value of the work via an exploration of its date of composition and its sources, whether primary or secondary. His edition also benefits from the reintroduction of Ralph’s elsewhere-omitted marginal signa - a pictorial code of crosses, swords, and crowns being torn at by jealous hands - which act as signposts for the reader.