Matthew Paris (c. 1200-1259), a Benedictine monk, was a chronicle writer and an artist. He took up the great St. Alban's chronicle where Roger of Wendover left off in 1235 and continued it until his own death in 1259. The necessity of keeping an Easter calendar and the tradition of Benedictine scholarship led to the keeping of annals or chronicles. A specially designated monk kept records of the appointment of abbots, legal activities and land acquisitions, local curiosities and happenings. In the case of the St. Alban's Chronicle, Matthew Paris and Roger of Wendover went well beyond these minimal records to provide a narrative history of their times. Matthew further embellished his work with lively pictures: battles, ceremonies, monstrosities, and the famous elephant which was a gift from the King of France.[6] Among these illustrations were his maps. Each copy of the Chronica Majora, (there are three surviving copies each accompanied by a set of maps) or St. Alban's Chronicle, was originally prefaced with a (mapped) itinerary from London to Apulia, a map of Palestine, and one of Britain.[7] He experimented with a variety of forms, and his maps may be said to represent most of the possibilities of medieval cartography. There is the itinerary, a strip map showing city by city a journey from London to Otranto in Apulia and, alternatively, to Sicily, either one an embarkation point for the Holy Land. He tried his hand at a mappa mundi, which he said was a copy of the one at Waltham Abbey in Essex.[8] He drew a succession of maps of Britain notable for their accuracy and progressive development. Yet he also drew Situs Britannica in which the kingdom is represented abstractly as a floral emblem. Another map of Britain shows the four chief roads intersecting (which they actually do not) in schematic fashion.

His maps of Palestine, with the exception of the Oxford map, are heavily decked out with pictures and text. In contrast the Palestine map in Oxford is rather restrained. Only a few small drawings (a star over Bethlehem, two pitchers at the site of Cana) ornament the map, and the text is mainly place names. On it can be found many of the important sites for a Crusader pilgrim of the thirteenth century: fortresses, monasteries, roads, ports, bishops' seats, and holy sites. Here Damietta and Tripoli co-exist with the ditch where Adam was made and Rachel's tomb; the great Crusader castle of Krak des Chevaliers ("the Parthenon… of medieval castles"[9]) with the salt statue of Lot's wife. These are not amusing archaisms, but reflect the interest of the thirteenth century. Travellers to the Holy Land made heroic efforts to see, for example, the above-mentioned salt pillar. About 1280 Burchard of Mount Sion reports with vexation, "I strove hard to see this, but the Saracens told me that the place was unsafe… I have learned since that it was not so."[10] Estimates of travel time line the coast in an attempt to establish scale, and there are warnings of lions in the forest near Arsuf and advice on the best road to Jerusalem. Matthew even shows the rise and fall in the elevation of the road as it continues to Jericho.