Vitalis, author of a very valuable history of England and Normandy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was born at Attingham (Atcham), a village on the Severn, near Shrewsbury, on the 17th of February 1075. Our information respecting his life is confined entirely to his own writings. His father, Odelerius, quitted his native city of Orleans to accompany Roger de Montgomery into England, and received from that lord a grant of lands near Shrewsbury, where he built a monastery, to which he retired in 1110. The child received the name of Ordericus after the priest who baptized him. At the age of five years he was sent to school at Shrewsbury, where he remained under the care of Siward, a priest, till his tenth year. His father then gave him in charge to Raynold, a monk, who conveyed him to the abbey of St Evroult, in the diocese of Lisieux in Normandy, and dedicated the boy to a monastic life. Ordericus received the tonsure in 1085, and assumed the name of Vitalis in honour of the saint whose memory was solemnized on the day of his admission to the monastic order. He attained afterwards to the rank of priest. The remainder of his days were devoted to the peaceful performance of the duties of his order, and to the composition of his Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy. The rules of the cloister were not compatible with the gratification of his strong inclination for travel; yet he was permitted occasional absence for the purpose of collecting materials for his History. With this intention, he visited Croyland Abbey and Worcester on two separate occasions, besides making various journeys to different parts of Normandy. In 1141 he draws his History to a close, "worn out by age and infirmities." He was then in his sixty-seventh year, and must have died soon after. Although removed from his native country while yet a mere child, he never ceased to glory in the name of Englishman, and describes himself in the title of his great work as Vitalis Angligena.

His History, which consists of thirteen books, seems to have been written in a very irregular manner. What stand now as books first, second, and seventh, were composed after the rest of the work had been completed. M. Guizot says of it in his Introduction to the French edition, "On more than one occasion his materials seem thrown together pell-mell, as chance or opportunity brought them into the author's power. But this irregular surface covers a mine of real wealth. No book contains so much and such valuable information on the history of the eleventh and twelfth centuries—on the political state, both civil and religious, of society in the west of Europe—and on the manners of the times, whether feudal, monastic or popular." The entire work of Vitalis was first printed in the collection of Du Chesne in 1619; a French version of it by Dubois appeared in 1826; another, by Le Provost and Delisle, 1833-54; and an excellent English version, by T. Forester, was published in 4 vols. by Bohn, London, 1853-56.