Annales breves Wormatienses ('Short Annals of Worms', German: Kurze Jahrbücher von Worms) is the conventional title for a set of anonymous Latin annals known from a single manuscript found in the in Worms. They cover the years 1165–1295 and, to judge by their focus, were probably written in the archdiocese of Mainz and not in Worms.[1] The manuscript, copied at Kirschgarten between 1496 and 1510, is now in Copenhagen, Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection, AM 830 4°, where the Annales are found on folios 134r–139v.[2] It was edited by G. H. Pertz for the Monumenta Germaniae Historica series.[3]
In the manuscript, the annals are introduced by a rubric that reads Qvae contigerunt temporibus Frederici primi imperatoris ejusqve sequacium ('what happened in the time of Frederick the first emperor and his successors').[2] The annalist makes frequent errors of dating, which Pertz corrected in the margins of his edition.[3] For example, the first entry bears the date 1170, but it describes events that took place in 1165.[1] The entry on the anti-Mongol crusade of 1241 reads:
1238. [sic] Tartari de locis suis cum infinita multitudine exeuntes, Hungariam Poloniam Moraviam et terras adiacentes in maxima parte destruxerunt, contra quos principes de Merseburg cruce signantur.[3]The Tatars, [leaving their places with an infinite multitude, and] against whom the princes at Merseberg are signed with the cross, destroyed the greater part of Hungary, Poland, Moravia and adjacent lands.[4]