GOTTFRIED OF VITERBO. — Chronicler, born in Viterbo ca. 1120, perhaps of Saxon family, was taken by Lothar in 1133 to Germany, where at the school of Bamberg he received a good education. Made chaplain and notary in the court of Conrad III, he faithfully served him and his successors Frederick I and Henry VI, often accompanying them on their expeditions: he says he was twice in Sicily, three times in Provence, once in Spain, frequently in France, and made forty journeys from Germany to Rome. He also carried out various diplomatic missions.
Of his historical writings, largely in verse, some he dedicated to the young Henry VI, of whom he was tutor and whom he may have outlived. He wrote a Speculum regum (1180) in verse, covering history from the Flood to Pepin; Gesta Friderici, also in verse (1181), later absorbed into the Memoria saeculorum (ca. 1185), partly in metre and partly in prose. His major work is the Pantheon, largely modelled on the chronicle of Otto of Freising. The historical value of his accounts of events of which he was not a witness is slight, while his literary merit is not negligible.