Petrus Comestor in the context of Guillaume aux Blanches Mains

The Chronica sancti Pantaleonis, also called the Annales sancti Panthaleonis Coloniensis maximi, is a medieval Latin universal history written at the Benedictine monastery of Saint Pantaleon in Cologne. It was written in 1237 and covers the history of the world in a series of annals from Creation down to the year of composition. A continuation down to 1249 was added later. Up to the year 1199 it relies heavily on other sources; from 1200 it is an independent source.

The Chronica emphasises the four "great kingdoms" of Daniel (the regna maxima). For ancient history, it relies on Flavius Josephus, Paulus Orosius, Justinus, the Venerable Bede, Regino of Prüm and Petrus Comestor. For more recent events in Germany the annalist used the Chronicon universale of Frutolf von Michelsberg, the chronicle of Ekkehard von Aura and the Chronica regia Coloniensis.

Johannes (Hans) Grüninger (1455–1533) was a German printer whose career spanned from 1482 to 1533 and produced up to 500 publications. Grüninger was one of the single most prolific printers of Strasbourg, printing up to 80 books a year. While a great deal of his publications were Catholic, he managed to print a great variety of works ranging from humanist to scientific texts. His work was fairly equally representative of both Latin and the vernacular; about 39% of his works were printed in Latin and the remaining 61% in German.

Grüninger was born as Johannes Reinhart in 1455 in the town of Markgröningen, Württemberg (from which he took his name "Grüninger"). He learned about the printing trade in Basel before he moved to Strasbourg which was experiencing a boom in the printing industry. Between 1508 and 1528 about 70 printers had established themselves in Strasbourg. Grüninger had a head start on this competition and in 1481 he moved to Strasbourg. A year later bought his print shop and in August 1483, he printed his first book, Petrus Comestor's Historia Scholastica. Some of his notable publications include a German-language Bible, and illustrated editions of Horace's Opera, and Virgil's Aeneid. Grüninger died in 1532 and was succeeded by his sons Wolfgang and Bartholomew (primarily Bartholomew, who was also a printer albeit on a smaller scale than his father). As was common, his sons promptly sold the business to Peter Schöffer the younger in 1533 after being unable to maintain past production rates.

The Historia scholastica (Latin pronunciation: [his'toria sko'lastika]) is a Biblical paraphrase written in Medieval Latin by Petrus Comestor. Completed around 1173, he wrote it for the cathedral school of Notre Dame in Paris. Sometimes called the "Medieval Popular Bible", it draws on the Bible and other sources, including the works of classical scholars and the Fathers of the Church, to present an overview of sacred history.

The Historia scholastica quickly became a school text, a required part of the curriculum at both Paris and Oxford. Preserved in more than 800 manuscripts dated from 1175 to the end of the 15th century, the College of Sorbonne library alone held seventeen copies.