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Johannes Gerson.” Gerson is mentioned in Melanchthon-Peucer, by last
name only […] the other names do not appear in any version of Carionʼ.39
In Franck’s Chronica, however, we find the following: ‘Anno Mccccxvi
leuchtet […] Petrus Cameracensis, Leonhardus Aretinus, ein Philosophus,
Orator und Historicus, Poggius Florentinus, Johannes Gersonʼ [In 1400
Petrus Cameracensis, Leonhardus Aretinus, philosopher, orator and his-
torian, Poggius Florentinus and Johannes Gerson shone brightly].40 That
is to say, Franck records all four names in exactly the same order. Other
details found in Oddverjaannáll and also recorded by Franck are 1396 as
the year of the Battle of Nicopolis (Carion’s Chronicle has 1395),41 the de-
tailed description of Emperor Sigismund’s lascivious second wife Barbara
(as opposed to the single sentence in Carion’s Chronicle) and the comment
that Jerome of Prague was burnt 140 days after Jan Hus.42 Not all the in-
formation which Cook refers to can be found, however, in Franck’s work,
so it is clear that information has been supplemented from elsewhere. A
case in point is the reference to Emperor Sigismund becoming the 36th
Holy Roman Emperor in 1410 and the enigmatic reference to a strange
occurrence in Augsburg ten years previously. The earliest editions of
Carion’s Chronicles say that Sigismund is the 35th emperor, while Franck’s
Chronica makes him number 117 in an unbroken line of emperors all the
way from ancient Rome (and records no significant events in Augsburg in
1400). Curiously, in another work by Franck, his Germaniae Chronicon,
the numbering of the German emperors is much more in line with that
found in Oddverjaannáll, with Sigismund the 36th emperor. Moreover in
Germaniae Chronicon under the entry for 1380 we are told of the discov-
ery of gunpowder for firearms by a monk and that this technology came
to be adopted in Augsburg in 1400 (Franck’s Chronica, both the edition
from 1531 and that from 1536, seem to contain an error at this point and
39 Cook, “The Chronica Carionis,” 233.
40 Franck, Chronica (1531), cccix recto. Cook states that he has ‘not been able to identify
“Petrus Cameracensis”ʼ. This would seem to be Pierre d’Ailly (1351–1420), at one time
Bishop of Cambrai and Gerson’s teacher.
41 Franck, Chronica (1531), cxcvii recto. For the battle of Nicopolis, the number of
Christians killed is given as 100,000, which, admittedly, does not match the 920,000 of
Oddverjaannáll.
42 Franck, Chronica (1531), cciiii recto, ccccx recto.
TIMUR, ‘THE WRATH OF GODʼ