The Sources

This chapter provides a brief overview of the main sources used in the study. The purpose is twofold. First, to provide the key information germane to each source so that the reader is aware of these when encountering them later in the study. Second, in providing such an overview, the chapter aims to demonstrate the diversity and heterogeneity of the sources within which urban panegyric is found. Praise of the city was disseminated via hagiographies, poems, chronicles, epistles, charters, encyclopaedia, and works of compilation, texts focused directly on one city and its history, vernacular texts, and sermons. It will highlight those formats of praise which were particularly innovative post-1100 (especially sermons, vernacular works, and compilation texts). The survey will commence also with a short discussion on pre-1100 material to remind the reader at this point that the later works did not exist in a historical vacuum.