Orderic Vitalis (c. 1075-1142)
“My present object is to treat of what passes under our own observation, or we are called upon to endure. For it is fitting that as new events continually occur they should be carefully committed to writing, to the praise of God; and thus, as the history of the past has been handed down to us by preceding writers, so also a relation of what is going on around us should be transmitted to future generations by the pen of contemporaries.”
- From the preface of the Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy by Orderic Vitalis, translated by Thomas Forester. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1854.
