The medieval universal chronicle thus traces history from the beginning of the world up to the present and was an especially popular genre of historiography in medieval Europe. The universal chronicle differs from the ordinary chronicle in its much broader chronological and geographical scope, giving, in principle, a continuous linear account of the progress of world history from the creation of the world up to the author's own times, but in practice often narrowing down to a more limited geographical range as it approaches those times. They usually have a theological component and are often structured around the ideas of the six ages of the world or the four empires from the Book of Daniel.
