Valerius Anshelm born as Valerius Rüd (or Ryd), was a Swiss

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

 chronicle

Chronicle

Generally a chronicle is a historical account of facts and events ranged in chronological order, as in a time line. Typically, equal weight is given for historically important events and local events, the purpose being the recording of events that occurred, seen from the perspective of the...

r working in Bern.

Anshelm was born in Rottweil

Rottweil

Rottweil is a town in the south west of Germany and is the oldest town in the federal state of Baden-Württemberg.Located between the Black Forest and the Swabian Alb hills, Rottweil has about 25,000 inhabitants...

, a city in Swabia

Swabia

Swabia is a cultural, historic and linguistic region in southwestern Germany.-Geography:Like many cultural regions of Europe, Swabia's borders are not clearly defined...

 that was allied with the Old Swiss Confederacy

Old Swiss Confederacy

The Old Swiss Confederacy was the precursor of modern-day Switzerland....

. His grandfather „Boley der Rüd genannt Anshelm“ had fought on the side of the Eidgenossen

Eidgenossenschaft

Eidgenossenschaft is a German word meaning confederation. The term literally translates as "oath fellowship". An Eidgenossenschaft is a confederacy of equal partners, which can be individuals or groups such as states, formed by a pact sealed by a solemn oath. Such an alliance could be either...

in the Burgundy Wars. After studies in Kraków

Kraków

Kraków also Krakow, or Cracow , is the second largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in the Lesser Poland region, the city dates back to the 7th century. Kraków has traditionally been one of the leading centres of Polish academic, cultural, and artistic life...

 (1493–95) and Tübingen

Tübingen

Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

 (until 1499) he spent some time as a travelling scholar (in 1501, he was in Lyon

Lyon

Lyon , is a city in east-central France in the Rhône-Alpes region, situated between Paris and Marseille. Lyon is located at from Paris, from Marseille, from Geneva, from Turin, and from Barcelona. The residents of the city are called Lyonnais....

). He then settled in Bern, where he was appointed on August 22, 1505 the headmaster of the Latin school. In 1508, he became the city physician.

As a sympathizer of the Reformation

Reformation in Switzerland

The Protestant Reformation in Switzerland was promoted initially by Huldrych Zwingli, who gained the support of the magistrate and population of Zürich in the 1520s. It led to significant changes in civil life and state matters in Zürich and spread to several other cantons of the Old Swiss...

, he corresponded with reformers such as Zwingli

Huldrych Zwingli

Ulrich Zwingli was a leader of the Reformation in Switzerland. Born during a time of emerging Swiss patriotism and increasing criticism of the Swiss mercenary system, he attended the University of Vienna and the University of Basel, a scholarly centre of humanism...

 and Vadian. A critical remark of his wife on the veneration

Veneration

Veneration , or veneration of saints, is a special act of honoring a saint: an angel, or a dead person who has been identified by a church committee as singular in the traditions of the religion. It is practiced by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Roman Catholic, and Eastern Catholic Churches...

 of Mary earned him a reprimand by the city council and a substantial pay cut in 1523, and as a consequence the family moved to Rottweil two years later. However, there he got involved in the conflicts between Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

s and Protestants, too, and even spent some time in jail. When the Protestants were banned from Rottweil in 1529, he more than gladly followed a call of Bern (which had become Protestant in 1528) to serve as the city's chronicler. From 1535 to 1537 he again served also as the city physician. He died between August 1, 1546 and February 21, 1547; the exact date is unknown.

Anshelm's appointment as chronicler was based on his having written a Latin chronicle of world history already during his first stay in Bern. Written in 1510, it was not printed until 1540, but Anshelm had distributed handwritten copies before. His main opus, however, was the Berner Chronik, a history of the city of Bern on which he worked in his position as city chronicler until his death. After a brief introduction to the early history, it covered especially the time from the Burgundy Wars until 1536, although only fragments of the period of 1526 to 1536 survived. It remained buried in the municipal archives of Bern and was thus not widely known until the 17th century, when Michael Stettler was commissioned to continue Anshelm's work. Stettler's own Schweizerchronik, a history of Switzerland that was based on Anshelm's work, appeared first in 1626.