Chronicon Livoniae is the main source for learning about the history of the peoples of the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. The information contained in the Chronicle allows us to understand the socio-political processes taking place in these lands. Chronicler Henry, while documenting the fate of the peoples Christianized by the Germans, also included mentions of their neighbors living nearby. The information about the principalities of northwestern Ruthenia is interesting, especially about the functioning of the Principality of Polotsk. This is important because the Polotsk chronicle has not survived.
Henry's Chronicle also allows us to verify the information from the so-called Yeropkin chronicle, from which Vasily Tatishchev drew his "Polotsk mentions" for the first edition of his Russian History, written in the first half of the 18th century.
Henry's Chronicle helps reconstruct the last years of the independent Principality of Polotsk.
