The Amtliche Berner Chronik (Official Chronicle of Bern) was
commissioned by the city of Bern in 1474. About ten years later,
Diebold Schilling was able to present the city council with this
three-volume work, with its title pages in color, decorative
initials, and more than six hundred large illustrations. The third,
artistically richest volume contains Schilling’s own description
of the Burgundian wars, together with that of the preceding period,
up to the year 1480. It is closely related to the Grosse
Burgunderchronik (Great Burgundian Chronicle) currently held by the
Zentralbibliothek Zürich. The work remained in the possession of
the Bern Chancellery for nearly three hundred years before the
volumes were given to the City Library in 1762.
