Matthew Paris Closes — Then Reopens — Chronica Majora
Matthew Paris Closed His Chronicle in 1250 for the End of the World. He Reopened It in 1251
Twenty years of storms, Tartars, and heresy convinced the St Albans monk that 1250 would end the age. He quit writing — then started again a year later with ordinary court news.
What was claimed (paraphrase)
he used evidence he had collected over twenty years to predict the imminent end of the world
— Matthew Paris (Benedictine monk of St Albans; Chronica Majora) · said 1250 · due 1250
He shut Chronica Majora for doomsday in 1250. In 1251 he was writing again, opening with King Henry III's Christmas at Winchester and never noting the miss.
The Story
Matthew Paris was a Benedictine monk at St Albans and the author of Chronica Majora, one of the great English chronicles of the thirteenth century. For twenty years he filled it with signs he took as proof the end was near: terrible storms and droughts, rivers flowing backward, ships seen in the sky, sea monsters in English rivers, Tartar attacks, earthquakes, eclipses, meteors, dead princes and popes, and rising heresy.
By 1250 he was convinced. That year, he wrote, capped the worst fifty years since the time of Christ. The end of the world was imminent. He shut the book with a short poem to himself:
Matthew, here your toils are o'er Stop your pen and toil no more Seek not what the future brings What comes next brings other things
He waited more than a year. Then he started again and never admitted the miss. His first new line was ordinary court news about King Henry III of England: in 1251, the thirty-fifth year of the reign, the king spent Christmas at Winchester. The failed ending got no footnote.
He kept writing for another nine years, until about 1259. The doomsday poem stayed in the manuscript, uncorrected.
Receipts
Corpus Christi Cambridge (Dr Philippa Hoskin): Paris treated twenty years of weather, miraculous signs, Tartars, earthquakes, eclipses, deaths of princes and popes, and heresy as proof that 1250 capped the worst fifty years since Christ.
Closing poem and Winchester Christmas reopen as in the Story; he wrote on until about 1259 and left the miss in the manuscript. Claim line paraphrases Hoskin; poem text from the same piece.
As of Oct 25, 2026
since it didn't happen
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