Orderic Vitalis (1075–c. 1142) is predominantly known to modern readers as the author of narrative texts relating to the history of Normandy and the deeds of Norman secular and ecclesiastical personalities at home and abroad, during the period c. 1050–1142. Orderic's two principal works are his interpolated copy of William of Jumièges’ Gesta Normannorum ducum, completed c. 1113, and his own much larger and more ambitious thirteen-book Historia ecclesiastica, completed c. 1141. Together, they provide a wealth of contemporary commentary on some of the most important social, political and ecclesiastical affairs of Orderic's lifetime, as witnessed and interpreted from his home at the monastery of Saint-Évroul in southern Normandy.

The last decades of the eleventh century and the first half of the twelfth witnessed an upsurge of historical writing at a number of intellectual centres throughout England and Normandy. Orderic's historical works should be viewed in the context of this new wave of historiographical enquiry, in which a range of authors sought to rediscover the events of the past and to preserve the memory of their own times for future generations, especially future generations of the communities within which and for which they wrote. Writing in the 1120s, the English author William of Malmesbury reflected on this renewed desire to write history by lamenting the paucity of sources for English history after Bede, and declaring his intention to ‘mend the broken chain of our history’. Across the English Channel in Normandy, Orderic also recognised the need for new historical narratives. Writing in the 1130s, he introduced the first book of the Historia ecclesiastica by stating his ambitions to bring a new energy to the creation and preservation of historical texts: