The Chronique scandaleuse is a collection or selection of texts that combine scandals as well as gossip stories about persons, places, epochs or milieus. Secret stories of people of a higher rank (eg nobles, clergy) were often spread, although the correctness of the narrated anecdotes was in the least of all cases secured and, consequently, a great many untruths were spread. Sometimes the term is also defined as a secret – sometimes maliciously exaggerated – selection of the mistakes of other persons or individual places.
The term can be derived from French and roughly translated with scandalous story or scandalous chronicle and is therefore written in prose. However, it is not entirely clear what the designation is due to. Two variants are found in the literature.
For the first time, the term was used for a rather polemical treatise on King Louis XI. of France, who also described the social conditions in the middle of the fifteenth century. Originally, the book was published under the title of Chroniques du très-chréstien et victorieux, Louys de Valois, but was then printed in 1611 by a bookseller again under the title Chronique scandaleuse and is in this case the cause of the designation.
A further possibility – which is also unsecured – is a work by the French poet Claude Le Petit. The author was dealt with under the King Louis XIV for blasphemy, which was due to the fact that he wrote in 1668 a script called Chronique scandaleuse de Paris, which satirically and sarcastically parodyed streets, bridges, squares, and palaces in Paris.
