GOFFREDO da VITERBO. — Chronicler, born in Viterbo around 1120, perhaps of a Saxon family, he was taken by Lothair to Germany in 1133, where he received a sound cultural education at the school of Bamberg. Appointed chaplain and notary at the court of Conrad III, he served him and his successors Frederick I and Henry VI faithfully, often accompanying them on their expeditions: he says that he was twice in Sicily, three times in Provence, once in Spain, frequently in France, and that he made the journey from Germany to Rome forty times. He was also entrusted with various diplomatic assignments.
Of his historical writings, largely poetic, he dedicated some to the young Henry VI, whose tutor he was and whom he perhaps outlived. He wrote a Speculum regum (1180) in verse, covering history from the Flood to Pepin; Gesta Priderici, also in verse (1181), later incorporated into the Memoria saeculorum (ca. 1185), partly in verse and partly in prose. His major work is the Pantheon, modeled largely on the chronicle of Otto of Freising. The historical value of his accounts of events that he did not witness is very slight, whereas their literary value is not negligible.