Temporal identity

So I’m returning to this idea again, which I first floated back in September over here, of temporal identity. I’ve still not really seen it explored anywhere, but I do think it’s potentially a valuable methodological approach. 

The idea is to interrogate texts for a sense of identity defined with significant attention to one’s place in time.  This identity may be personal, or attached to membership of a small group (family, parish, social stratum), or on a larger scale approaching national or universal.  It may also involve the deliberate exclusion of other groups (we are more advanced / more traditional than they are), or an attempt to forge a more inclusive future.  It may be unconscious, assumed, or defensive of something that ought to be generally assumed; or it may be deliberately constructive of a particular historical moment.

For example, we know that (broadly speaking) some Renaissance texts could be found to define themselves deliberately against an immediate mediaeval past, particularly certain aspects of it that they found repellent or obstructive, and simultaneously assume to themselves similarities with a more distant classical past, in an attempt to construct (in collaboration with other people now) a more idealised future. 

Millenarians (which I know nothing about) could also be an interesting case in point, as investing (or professing to invest) an exceptional degree of identity in one clearly defined future point, beyond which there would be no future (or would there? how does divine/infernal eternity relate to this?).  But to what extent do they (individually - I doubt they were ever really a body as such) acknowledge a debt to the Biblical and classical traditions on which they were drawing, or relate the coming final moment to the sinful actions of the distant past, immediate past or present?  How did they understand the effects of one moment in time, or one age, on another, on themselves, on the world around them, on the moments to come?

Other potentially interesting fields of investigation:

- On a smaller scale, and prompted just now by thoughts of millenarians’ focus on a specific immediate future point: what about individual testimony within individual lives? such as a pregnant woman awaiting childbirth, if such a testimony exists? Could we extend this sort of investigation to such an intimate, complicated test subject?

- Genealogy. In every age that I’ve investigated there is a degree of interest in one’s ancestry to be traced, especially amongst the nobility for whom it can prove land claims and precedents.  We could therefore perhaps study it across several centuries to ask what it can reveal about changing temporal identities.  For example, who was interested in it at any given time? 1066 and the next generation or two doubtless provided a crisis in England for both the locals and the invaders in terms of tracing one’s bloodline and preserving a connection with the past – are there similar moments later on? What effect did it have? Was it exclusively or primarily a noble (or gentle) pastime until the late mediaeval/early modern times? and is pastime the correct word? How and when did it spread, and to whom? What was it used for? proof? of what? to what ends? And what could prove it? The Earl of Warren’s sword with which his great-grandfather helped William invade England? A diagram on paper shaped like a tree whose roots are literally in the bowels of William the Conqueror?

- What about ‘progress’? Whose idea is that? And I mean that in a continuous way – not ‘where did it originate’, which is not a helpful question, but ‘in any given generation, was the idea of progress present, and was it positive or negative according to any given member or group in a given population’.  Of what did it consist, where were the emphases laid, and did it give any sense of a continuum in which the past, via the present, informed the future? or was the past being discarded?

- Is there any particular polemic associated, at any given point, with temporal identity? Is it continuous enough to trace any sort of history of it? To what extent do people use temporal concepts as insults (and do they in that context have an implicit identity-forming function by contrast)? I imagine, for example, this might come up a lot in theological/academic argument – accusing someone of being outmoded, or of abandoning auctoritas, places a value judgement on intellectual temporalities (or rather, lends them a temporal angle).  Or to look at it another way, the age of an individual – Chaucer’s Januarie/May repeats a well-established pattern of despising the body of the aged in comparison with the fresh body of youth, but of course there is more to the discourse of age than that, and the compliment might often be reversed (wisdom of age vs folly of youth, etc).  And how does this alter when someone has died, is past?

- And of course, most interesting from my point of view – how does a person’s perception of their individual relation to history, of their age’s place within a broader (divine?) scheme, of their duty to a future time (and/or present patron) affect their perception of their immediate task when they sit down to write a chronicle, write history? And what else gets in the way?

 

Lego librum – who is the reader?

John of Salisbury was on the brink of distinguishing three meanings for the verb legere, but then leaves it at two.  He says that the word ‘to read’ is equivocal, indicating either the activity of a teacher reading out and a listening learner (‘docentis et discentis’) or that of studying what is written for oneself (‘per se scrutantis scripturam’). John therefore refers to three different persons (teacher, learner, individual reader), but lumps the first two together by seeing them under prelectio, the communication between teacher and pupil, as distinct from lectio, individual reading. By thus squeezing out the learner-listener (discens) from the usage of legere, John has confined himself to a double function of this verb.  He therefore remains content with the suggested distinction between prelegere (to read aloud to others) and legere (to read for oneself).[1]

 

That distinction that John of Salibury doesn't quite commit to is actually quite an interesting one if it's fully articulated. And if it isn't, that is in itself interesting. When we analyse mediaeval reading patterns, do we consider locutor and audens to be one single unit, the lector? When we read a mediaeval reference to a specific act of reading, does the author of the reference consider them as a single unit, and if not, where is his/her focus? To whom is the verb legere given - where does the credit lie?

If we consider (or our hypothetical author considers) the speaker to be the reader, we foreground the skill of reading - in other words, we buy into (or examine) the cultural stratification around that ability that was for so long the closely guarded property and defining characteristic of clerics. If we consider the hearer to be the reader[2], we foreground instead the act of comprehension - involvement in a specific moment rather than intellectual accomplishment, internal analytical processes rather than external processing - and open possibilities for the meaning of 'legere' approaching, for example, spiritual contemplation.  This might also tie in, depending on period and author, with the opposition of mouth and ear, and the concerns over positive and negative functions of speech.

I don't suggest that either is more correct - I simply think it's a distinction that is valuable to bear in mind when reading mediaeval accounts of such moments, to see which figure/idea is foregrounded by the author, or to reserve our own ability to analyse the scene from both angles.

 

 

[1] D. H. Green, Women Readers in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007, 5-6.  Internal quotes are John of Salisbury, Metalogicon I 24 (qtd in Green, Medieval listening and reading: The primary reception of German literature 800-1300, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994, 337 n. 155).

[2] The speaker may also be a hearer, and thus a reader under this definition, but not invariably.

Arma Christi, pedii alii

I visited the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne) a few days ago, and don’t know why I’ve never got around to it before.  It is a very good place to spend an afternoon.  Though their mediaeval collection is small, and mostly comprised of worn wooden statuary[1], there were a few late mediaeval paintings that I spent some time peering at curiously, much to the amusement of the curator (apparently they weren’t the ones most people were interested in).

The most interesting one was this: 

Hans Memling. Man of Sorrows in Virgin’s Arms. Flemish, 1475-79. Oil and gold leaf on wood panelling. At the National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne).

It’s quite small – less in height than the length of my forearm – so despite the vivid colours, no one else was much interested in it.  But the scarlet particularly is very brilliant (less so in the image here than in real life), and the expressions of the faces – especially those of the heads scattered around the background – are very vivid and characterful.  Mary and Jesus are a little more conventional, and less colourful, save for the blood.

What struck me about this painting was, firstly, that it’s an arma Christi, a convention (or genre, really) that I thought was rather outdated by this time (though it’s way out of my field, so I could be very wrong).  I was also curious to see that the rather brief information on it didn’t mention that, or give any explanation of the visual conventions to which Memling appeals. 

The second curious thing is that, among the traditional objects of torture – the whipping-post, the flail, the spear, the hammer and nails – are positioned the heads, hands and feet of the multitude who jeered him.  The hands particularly are interesting, positioned variously to pinch, punch, slap, whip and jeer (one seems to be making a rude gesture?), as if to cover all the insults that a hand might inflict on a man.  The fragmented bodies of the crowd become weapons against Christ, and therefore for him, extensions (by implication) of his own body – literally his arma.  And the vivid personalisation of every face (from many different professions and social ranks, given their clothing) implicates and involves them as individuals, not as tokens.  I don’t know how common this sort of image was, but I haven’t seen it before.  Is anyone else familiar with this as a tradition?

All in all, it seems to me that Memling was using more recent techniques – the vivid colours, the realistic portraiture – to reinvigorate much older images – not only the arma Christi itself, but the fascination with and veneration of the bodily fluids.  Christ catches and cups the blood running down his side, drawing attention to it and perhaps beginning the process of converting it to a relic. The blood on his head and shoulder is echoed and reinforced both by the duplication of the colour in the costumes of the crowd, and by the pure, clear tears running down Mary’s cheeks.

If this is deliberate (and if I’m not misreading completely), perhaps Memling is trying to draw his viewers into the picture, to show real “modern” people as the tormentors of a traditionally recognisable Christ, to convey that very personal “we are his tormentors, we daily wound him with our sins” message.

Incidentally, in hunting the web for the image (before I thought to go to the NGV’s website) I found this:

At the Capilla Real (Granada); image from Wikipedia.

Same artist, same period, but apparently much less expensive production – the duller colours may be due to less careful preservation, but the gold leaf background is lacking.  Interestingly, Mary’s headscarf is much less ornate, and Jesus’ hair less beautifully brushed.  The combination of these factors would lead me to guess that this one came first, and the NGV version was, perhaps, commissioned by a richer patron after he/she saw the Capilla Real painting. And that might have been a good reason to change those two religious-looking folk in the top left corner to something a little less politically suggestive.
Also, this one has a rooster (on top of the whipping post, where there’s another head in the NGV painting), presumably he who crew three times; which makes this version more of a retelling of the Passion than a focus on the arma.

------

[1] There was one curious carving of St John the Baptist, which I puzzled over for a while – I couldn’t work out whether he was meant to be wearing the skin of a goat or a dragon.  I remembered lately it’s meant to be a camel skin he wears, but this one had dragon scales, goat hooves and a reptilian but goat-shaped head.  Apparently very odd depictions of unfamiliar animals aren’t unique to the illustrators of bestiaries!

The fiend as God’s sergeant (part 2/2)

And if the fiend functions as God’s – executor, as it were – carrying out God’s will to the greater glory of the saints while managing to be evil himself (because apparently God has great PR officers), what can we say about these lads?  This is the torture and mastectomy of St Agatha, and I think I may venture to hypothesise that the two at her with pliers are EVILEVILEVIL. Look at their faces – they’re approaching the fiendish themselves[1].

Bibl. Nationale, MS n. a. fr. 16251 fol 87v. Le Livre d'images de Madame Marie, c. 1300. Image taken from Caviness 82.

Hassig has written a chapter on specific details of mediaeval portrayals of Jews/monsters/others/foreigners/devils, all of which elide rather tellingingly at some point.  If I recall[2], there were several things that functioned most strongly in depicting evilother, among them distorted faces, grimaces, crouching posture, tightly curled hair and dark skin.  All of these features are not only present in these unpleasant-looking lads, but accentuated by contrast in every case to the serene, upright, very pale figure between them. So they are associated, not only by narrative function but by visual language, with the actions of the devil.  Standing in for him in the physical performance of Agatha’s martyrdom, they take on physical attributes associated with him – but also, of course, with themselves as ethnically other.

So Christianity’s tendency to create enemies [3] comes in handy here – we have a sliding scale between foreign and devil, between not-us and persecutor and enemy of God, where the only difference between foreigner, pagan, idol, demon and Satan is  of degree.


As the corollary to this, what does Agatha resemble in this picture? Well, in context, that’s rather obvious – who stands around looking bright and benevolent while surrounded by tormentors, with arms stretched out to either side of his head?  And is a complete contrast to devils? In case we missed the similarity, she has her convenient halo to point it out.  There is also a clear sexual difference – she is pure and white and fully clothed (save where they have exposed her body for humiliation and torture) with skirts to the ground, while their legs are bared and the violating instruments are held in a suspiciously phallic position.

Physically, she is approaching (literally) Christ – she is raised above her tormentors, as if halfway to heaven.  And alright, so she has breasts and that’s not entirely Christ-like – but hey, her tormentors are (sergeant-like) removing those for her, so that won’t be a problem for much longer.   Remove those curves, and she would be almost entirely masculine in appearance. 

Of course saints are often depicted as resembling Christ, or rather partaking of the same visual code of virtue and holiness, just as the torturers resemble the devil. But a female saint is visually farther from Christ to begin with, and it’s hardly illogical that she should become masculinised in depiction in the process of approaching him[4].  Caviness has mentioned the tendency towards masculinisation in the tortures visited on female martyrs - Agatha’s isn’t the only mastectomy, and the torments often appear to result in a masculine display of physical courage or fortitude, etc (Caviness 90).

I’ve described it as purely visual, but of course the cultural attitudes are hardly limited to the pictorial. Though Caviness is primarily discussing images, rather than literature, she implies that this tendency is also present in the shape of the stories of the female martyrs: “The threat of the female is expunged by her becoming masculine (or female-less) in response to bodily exposure and torture.  The repetition of the mastectomy topos in so many saints’ lives, possibly by a borrowing from one to the other, is an indication of its cathartic power” (93). 

But doesn’t this imply that ‘female’ is something expunged from the body to leave a pure male remaining? Yet the feminine is already defined by its lack relative to the male body, so logically in lacking both masculinity and femininity one becomes genderless.  Is there, then, a similar tradition (though fainter, I think) in the purification of male saints by castration? I can’t think of nearly so many instances, but one could construct an idea of an idealised non-gendered spiritual body, purged of sex. 

Of course, this is rather too (theo)logical and rather less fundamentally attractive than the idea of ripping off women’s breasts or ‘improving’ the bodies of admired women until they resemble men (the best of men), so it’s not likely to have such a wide currency in popular stories.


[1] Cf. the faces of the people flaying St Barthlomew (from the same ms) in the picture at the end of the last post: one's turning his head away, one looks uncomfortable, and one looks like he's positively enjoying himself.  All three are similarly dressed to Agatha’s tormentors, and the face of the third is the most distorted. 


[2] Unfortunately I haven’t read this article for over a year and my photocopy of it is in Canada and I can’t source it over here in Adelaide, but I shall sharpen the specifics as soon as I get back to Ottawa. I don’t think my memory misrepresents her.

[3] It's ridiculous, isn't it? given the cultural dominance of Christianity for, oh, 1700 years, its insistence on a neurotic self-representation as a persecuted minority. Childhood really is a very formative time, apparently for religions as well as people. It is a very attractive self-representation too, isn't it - it means you needn't mature emotionally beyond that childhood phase of ranting at injustice and being misunderstood, and may construct enemies everywhere at a moment's notice. After all, you're the victim, right?


[4] This raises a question, which I’m not addressing now because I’m really just thinking aloud (well, on a screen): Are any female martyrs depicted in a Marian code, rather than a Messianic one? I can’t think of any, and it’s less intuitive – but are the unmartyred female saints depicted consistently in the visual tradition of Mary, then? Is there an appreciable divide there?


Cited.
Caviness, Madeline H. Visualizing women in the Middle Ages: Sight, spectacle and scopic economy. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania P., 2001.
Hassig, Debra. "The iconography of Rejection: Jews and other Monstrous Races". Image and Belief: Studies in the Celebration of the Eightieth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art. Ed. Colum Hourihane. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1999. 25-46.

The fiend as God's sergeant (part 1/2)

In the medieval narratives [of female martyrs] good girl and bad girl alike were stripped only to mortify the flesh, whether at the behest of an evil emperor or of Satan, who oddly enough carries out the punishments to which sinners are condemned by God. (Caviness 85)

Well, but it isn’t odd. At least according to the pattern of the Gilte Legend (which, incorporating as it does many different versions of many different stories from many different traditions, rarely has a pattern but does manage one in this case), infernal intervention in saints’ lives is always associated with the pattern of divine will. Fiends enact God’s purpose, both in demonstrating the saint’s glory and in performing divine vengeance on sinners. They get the dirty work, but their actions tend to God’s ends. Of course, from a narrative point of view, every character and action in a moralistic short story point towards the same moral end; but the articulation (by narrator, saints and fiends) of the fiends’ purposes show a deliberate unity between infernal and divine intentions.

I’ve only a few pages of the Gilte Legende with me here in Adelaide, and none have examples of Satan or fiends explicitly involved with a martyrdom (though, as I mention in my next post, they’re there ‘in spirit’ in the person of the tormentors). But of the eight pages I have (well, sixteen – eight photocopies of facing pages), there are enough consistent references to fiends to generalise about their behaviour – and they are far from autonomous.

When the son of the provost who sent St Agnes to the brothel goes to visit her there (presumably with rape in mind, given he takes a gang of his friends along), he is foiled by a/the fiend acting in concert with heavenly light:

And whanne he wolde haue touched her the bryghtnesse of the light come ayeinst hym, and he yelded no worshippes ne thankyngges to God, wherfor he was anone strangeled of the fende. (110)

“Strangled by the fiend” (“strangled” can mean “smothered” or even just “killed”) seems almost a figure of speech (though of a piece with the literal behaviour of fiends elsewhere), until Agnes explains to his father that yes, in fact, agency in that act does belong to the devil, and is due explicitly to the boy’s choice of him over God:

He of whom he wolde fulfell the wille toke pouer vpon hym and slough hym, and whanne his felawes sayn the miracle of God thei turned ayein all dredfulli withouten any harme. (110)

Moments like this in which fiends punish sinners usually occur as a direct result of some action by the saint[1] (though notice that the saint does not instruct the fiend to do so):

[St Longinus] toke an axe and braste doun all þe ydollis... And þe fendis þat wente oute of þe ydollis entrid into the [evil] prouost and within his felawis, and þay al torente hemself as madde men and knelid doun to Longius. (212)

Longinus then removes the devils and restores the men to sanity[2]. Similarly,

... the preste of the idoles that hadde geue his counsell [to kill St Vitalis] was anone rauished withe the fende and was verray wood .vij. dayes and cried in the place wher Seint Vitall was buried: ‘Allas, Vitall, how thou brennest me.’ And in the .vij.te day þ fende threwe hym in the riuer wher he deied cursedly”. (284)

Even when not punishing the saint’s tormentors, the fiends invariably (so far as I can recall) take action solely for the benefit of the saint – the moral and demonstrative benefit, that is, even if they humiliate his/her body. They enable the saint to either ascend to a higher moral plane, or (more commonly) to demonstrate his/her moral/spiritual superiority and the power consequently given him/her by God.

The demonstration, of course, works on two levels: to other characters in the narrative, and to the reader. Some incidents are designed more for one audience than the other: proof aimed at the world of the narrative often involves very public confrontation or spectacular miracles, as in the previous examples, while those aimed at the reader need not be witnessed by other characters, and are more likely to recall stories of Christ’s actions or passion.

Macarius, for example, is tested privately, “in the supulture of a dede man” in “a place of desert”, recalling Christ’s temptation in the wilderness[3] and his entombment (possibly also the harrowing of Hell). The fiends who find him have no purpose but “to make hym afraied”, and Macarius’ imperviousness causes them to flee, helpfully informing the audience as they go that he has “ouercome us”. Another more violent fiend later tries to attack him with a scythe, “but he myght not”. Macarius need not even speak to deter this fiend, as he is simply and mysterious impervious. This fiend is also handily explicit in not only demonstrating Macarius’ moral superiority, but explicating its nature to the reader:

And thanne he saide hym: ‘A, thou Makarie, thou makest me to suffre gret violence, for I may do nothyng ayeinst the. And I doo as thou doost, thou fastest and I ete not, thou wakest and I slepe not, but one thing is wherin thou ouercomest vs most.’ Thanne the abbot saide: ‘Wherin is that?’ And the fende saide: ‘Humilitie, wherfor I may do nothyng ayeinst the.’ (93)

The place of the fiend in these tales is very ordered.  It cannot be a true enemy, with motivations and agenda of its own, nor can it pose a real threat to the saint or to God’s plan.  Though malicious, it acts only within God’s plan, and can have effect only against those who have already committed themselves to the devil by actions against God or God’s proxy.  Attempted action against that proxy serves only their aggrandisement – and the fiends not only seem to know this, but sometimes get quite chatty with the saints about it (Longinus is another such).  They may have rebelled originally against God, but they seem incapable of rebelling against their place as it is now in the natural order. 

I am reminded of Dante’s Minos:

Gustav Doré's impression of Minos, 1890

Stavvi Minòs orribilmente, e ringhia:
essamina le colpe ne l'intrata;
giudica e manda secondo ch'avvinghia.
Dico che quando l'anima mal nata
li vien dinanzi, tutta si confessa;
e quel conoscitor de le peccata
vede qual loco d'inferno è da essa;
cignesi con la coda tante volte
quantunque gradi vuol che giù sia messa. (Inferno V.4-12)

Minos crouches in the second circle, “horrible and growling”, examining the sins of all who come before him and, by the number of times he curls his tail, indicates the circle to which divine judgement condemns the sinner. Enacting God’s justice, he nevertheless remains monstrously other – an infernal other, not divinely elevated. He points doom with that least human organ, the tail, rather than the hand with which God made the world. Similarly, a loving God is not directly responsible for the horrors visited on the saint or meted out against his/her tormentors (as the saint does not instruct the fiends to punish the pagans); but nevertheless they remain part of a greater divine plan.

It seems to me this view of the fiend serves two functions: reassurance and permission.  On the one hand, the fiend is not active in the world without the supervision of God: these torments, while physically horrific, not only guarantee the saint a place in God’s presence but are ordained by God, who ultimately has control over the situation, over the worst of what happens to us in life.  On the other hand, by token of the first, the martyrdom is an act of God and may therefore be venerated, obsessed over, fetishised, depicted, relished as a work of literature or art. It creates and defines an acceptable way of looking, for images like this:

The flaying of St Bartholomew; Bibl. Nat. MS n. a. fr. 16251 fol. 67v. Le Livre d'images of Madame Marie, c. 1300.

[1] Note that in Agnes’ case the punishment is prompted not by her action but by action against her. I may have to collect a larger sample group to observe whether this is usually gendered. Cf. St Vitalis, whose death is the precipitating factor; though I think I would argue that for a saint martyrdom is an action, potentially the moment of their greatest power.
[2] Upon which, they kill him. At his own request. And the provost weeps for him. Saints are peculiar.
[3] And in Jerusalem, technically, thanks to Lucifer and his superspeed travel. And I’d just like to say that, if refusing the suggestion that you throw yourself off a tall building is a qualification for divinity, I manage to do that every day. Well, I would if more people suggested it to me on a regular basis. I think I would make a relatively sensible deity.  Though some sects might carry out pogroms in the name of correct use of punctuation and antecedents.

Cited:
Caviness, Madeline H. Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle, and Scopic Economy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.
Dante. Inferno. Ed. Giorgio Petrocchi. Società Dantesca Italiana, 1994.

Word made flesh #1

Now this is interesting.

The story is that of the Levite’s concubine from Judges (King James and Latin Vulgate): 

Judges 20.4: I came into Gabaa, of Benjamin, with my wife, and there I lodged: 5 And behold men of that city, in the night beset the house wherein I was, intending to kill me [volentes me occidere], and abused my wife with an incredible fury of lust [incredibili libidinis furore], so that at last she died. 6 And I took her and cut her in pieces, and sent the parts into all the borders of your possession: because there never was so heinous a crime, and so great an abomination committed in Israel. 7 You are all here, O children of Israel, determine what you ought to do.

According to the earlier narrative, the men who came to the house desired not to murder him but to rape him.  The host, reminiscent of Lot, offered his virgin daughter and his guest’s wife rather than the guest: “I will bring them out to you, and you may humble them, and satisfy your lust: only, I beseech you, commit not this crime against nature on the man” (“educam eas ad vos ut humilietis eas et vestram libidinem conpleatis tantum obsecro ne scelus hoc contra naturam operemini in virum”, Judges 19.24).  When she returned to the host’s house and fell dead on the threshold, her husband took her and cut her into twelve pieces, which he sent “into all the borders of Israel” (Judges 19.29.  The outrage summoned the Israelites, whom he addressed as above; and war was the result[1]. This is an image of the key scene from a 13th century Bible Moralisée (sadly blurry):

Österreicheische NationalBibliotecke Codex Vindobonensis 2554 fol. 65v, copied from Caviness 148.

The upper two images are of the corpse being brought home on an ass, and then being divided for distribution.  The lower two are of Jerome and Augustine helping Lady Philosophy  down from the ass of paganism, then giving the twelve books of the Patriarchs to the apostles.

But note the very deliberate visual parallels.  The corpse and Philosophy are helped down from the ass, Philosophy drooping in a way that imitates the inertia of the corpse.  As the corpse is dismembered into twelve parts for demonstrative distribution about the land, Philosophy is fragmented into twelve books to be distributed via the apostles.  Even the divided body parts are very flat and square, resembling images of the parts than the parts themselves, and lacking the curves that usually mark the feminine.

So the books are directly glossed as the dismembered body parts, which are themselves implicitly converted to relics and offered for idolising perusal, their femininity negated.  The female body of Philosophy, meanwhile, appears to have been constructed entirely of the books into which she is fragmented (and she has no more agency of her own, even when intact, than does the corpse). Word is made flesh – just as the words in the books are written on the dismembered flesh of the sheep who kindly donated the parchment.

This also raises the question of the female body as text.  It is not an autonomous text, however, but glossed, interpreted and directed by men – and the written word itself is essentially a male-dominated medium, so in converting to words the body that had temporarily escaped the Levite’s control, he reasserts his ownership and control. It becomes a commodity to be distributed according to the gift and will of its owner, with no more meaning than he chooses to assign it.  The woman’s experience of rape is not heard, only the man’s experience of theft.

Nevertheless – the woman has become Philosophy, and distributed to the inspiration of men’s intellect.  Grammatically feminine, of course, so she must be depicted by a woman, but it’s not a bad reincarnation for a gang-raped concubine, surely?


[1]   Which I’m sure was a great comfort to her.




Cited: Caviness, Madeline H. Visualizing Women in the Middle Ages: Sight, Spectacle, and Scopic Economy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001.

101st post.

Well, the last one was one of a series, so I couldn't really make a big deal of it being the hundredth.

So, it's been a busy semester, and not quite over yet - I've still some marking to do. It's also looking to be a challenging one next semester. The university has only offered me one marking position, which is almost $10/hour less than a TA position and only 37.5 hours total, as opposed to the 130 of a TA position. I had three marking positions last semester and barely scraped by, and now a) I'm to be moving out and renting next semester and b) on a third the income. So I shall have to go begging an RA position.

In addition, of the two courses I'm taking next semester, the mediaeval one is (theoretically, at least) to be conducted in French, and the other is - very modern. 18th century! They have regularised spelling and all!

Motivated by this, and the fact that I have a whole lot of thoughtful notes in my notebook for last year's Restoration course that I never did anything with, I've started a new blog called Protestants and Printing Presses (and other Newfangled Fripperies). It will only be updated intermittently, but it a mediaevalist-encounters-the-early-modern blog, as I'm chary of turning this one into an anything-goes blog. All my early modern posts from here have been exported over there, but they remain at their original locations as well.

And, in searching EEBO for woodcuts to use as a background to the title, I found a highly amusing title page which immediately turned into an inaugural post.

Meanwhile, I have some more posts on the Gilte Legende waiting to be polished up for here, and a delicious-looking book on mediaeval women and the gaze which I am looking forward to reading and responding to, so I may actually get a slight little holiday before next semester starts!

Merry Christmas to you all out there. I'm having one!

Cleopatra D IX: MS V, ff. 118-168. South English Legendary.

A fragment of an otherwise unknown manuscript of the South English Legendary.

 

Description.

Parchment, 51 ff., 265 x 165 mm with the text block 205 x 112 mm. Written in one column of 40 lines. Folios in twelves, with ff. 1-5 of the first quire lost and the final quire in eight. The last leaf is blank. Written in two hands, both Anglicana approaching textura, very clear. B is rounder with smaller strokes. A writes ff. 118-149v (John Evangelist, Thomas of Becket), B ff. 149v-166 (Theophilus/Virgin, Cecilia, Gregory). No decoration save the “traditional blue initials flourished in red with marginal extensions”, not filled in (Görlach, Textual tradition 112). All folios but the last numbered in modern foliation.

 

Contents.

The end of a manuscript of the South English Legendary, lacking at least five leaves from its first quire and probably several other quires containing a more complete collection of the poems. The South English Legendary is a popular collection of saints’ lives in vernacular verse, surviving in many manuscripts, originating in the Worcestershire/Gloucestershire region in the late thirteenth century. Görlach observes that it seems to have been confined to this region “for the first 50-80 years of its existence, spreading into the Midlands only in the second half of the 14th century” (Revision 9). The legends contained in this manuscript are (Brown 267-68):

- 118r: The final eight lines of St John the Evangelist (Him sende here his ringe a3en & þonked him also...). ½ p.

- 118r-149v: St Thomas of Canterbury, followed by his Translation (Gilberd was Thomas fader name þat trewe was & god...). 32 ff.

- 149v-155v: St Theophilus, with Miracles of the Virgin (Seint Teophle was a gret man & gret clerk also...). 7 ff.

- 155v-158v: St Cecilia (Seint Cecile of noble kinne ibore was at Rome...). 4 ff.

- 158v-166v: St Gregory (All þat beoþ in sinne i-bounde / And þencheþ godes merci to abide...). 9 ff.

 

Origin.

Görlach’s study of the dissemination and variations of the Southern English Legendary, together with the dialect and orthography of this version, led him to place it in the Gloucestershire/Oxfordshire region (Görlach, Textual tradition 112). Its acquisition by Prise may suggest a religious house in Gloucestershire, as he enacted the dissolution of many houses there and apparently none in Oxfordshire (cf. Pryce; Ker, Sir John Prise), although there is no evidence that he acquired it directly from its original location rather than from another collector.

 

Date.

Görlach judges both hands in this manuscript as belonging to the middle of the fourteenth century.

 

Later provenance and position within codex.

At some point during the sixteenth century the manuscript, or possibly its remains, fell into the hands of Sir John Prise, employed by Henry VIII during the 1530s to close down monasteries in the west of England (Ker, Sir John Prise 5). Prise’s aversion to altering or rebinding the manuscripts in his collection (ibid) suggests that it would have passed on to Cotton (presumably via one or more intermediaries) alone, unbound with any other manuscript within the codex. The gap in foliation between the previous manuscript and this, however, suggests the presence of two blank leaves, possibly used by Prise to enclose this fragile fragment to prevent the loss of further leaves (if indeed it was fragmented at this point).

While Prise may have been more concerned with the preservation of the original state of his manuscripts than many of his contemporaries, his attitude was not entirely reverent. Ker mentions the “numerous, strongly Protestant and anti-Becket” notes in Prise’s hand written in the margin by that legend: “What arrogance is this! of one that had spent his tyme more in merchandize hauking and hunting than in lernyng” (qtd. in Ker, Sir John Prise 21). Precious his books may have been to Prise, but ultimately utilitarian.

There is also the possibility that Prise may have received the manuscript intact. This is perhaps more likely: history was his subject, not the vagaries of poetic saints, and a mere fragment of such a text might have not seemed worth preserving. If, then, it passed on to Cotton as a whole and was fragmented by him (see introductory post), he may have bound it with another two leaves to distinguish it from the ‘serious’ matter of the volume, or to hold it together pending proper binding. This is another question on which the manuscriptitself could shed light, as the age and wearing of the outer leaves of the manuscript and of the sheltering leaves ought to give some clue as to how long each has spent unprotected.

 

Lacunae.

Perhaps fittingly, considering its position as the final manuscript in the codex, this manuscript’s value as a witness lies less in its contents than in its later history. The poems it contains, with minor variations, survive in more complete manuscripts and have been published several times, while their cousins and progeny live on in texts such as the Canterbury Tales and the Gilte Legende. On the other hand, its treatment at the hands of Prise (and possibly Cotton) stands with the fate of the psalter in Royal 13 D I in testimony to the likely fate of a good many such manuscripts at the hands of the Protestant antiquarians. The violence visited on the ‘body’ of this manuscript seems to evidence a need to correct and subdue a recalcitrant creature amongst the diligent, precious subjects better beloved of their keepers. As such, the mystery of its missing leaves and the firm rebukes written in its margins form an appropriate counterpart to the quiet survival of the Brief Chronicle, and to the repeated studying and reproduction of the Liber Alani de Ashbourne.

 

 

Cited.

Brown, Carleton. A Register of Middle English Romance and Didactic Verse. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1916.

Görlach, Manfred. The textual tradition of the South English Legendary. Leeds: University of Leeds, 1974.

----- An East Midland Revision of the South English Legendary: A Selection from MS C. U. L. Add. 3039. Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1976.

Ker, Neil R. “Sir John Prise”, The Library 5th series 10 (1955): 1-24.

Pryce, Huw. “Prise, Sir John (Syr Siôn ap Rhys) (1501/2–1555).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP, 2004. 03 Dec 2009.

A study of Cleopatra D IX: MS IV, ff. 90-115. Epistola ad regem Edwardi III.

A manuscript of the Epistola ad regem Edwardi III, by William of Pagula (?-1332), written c. 1331, complaining of the practice of purveyance. The manuscript dates from the late fourteenth century (or early fifteenth), attributes the work to Archbishop Islip, and is unique in the volume in being the only manuscript in paper.

 

Description.

Paper, 26 ff. No description of the manuscript has been published.

 

Contents.

A long complaint and advice tract against the practice of purveyance, particularly as it is imposed on the surrounds of Windsor Forest. Addressed to the young Edward III, it is in the form of a long list developing a formal argument, with most points beginning with the formula “O domine mi rex...”. Similar to the slightly later Speculum regis Edwardi III, it is sometimes referred to as Recension A of the Speculum. This label derives from Moisant, who published both works in 1891 and decided that the Speculum proper was merely a later revision of this Epistola. In labelling it the Epistola, I follow Boyle, whose work establishing the authorship, relationship and differing intents of both tracts is now considered definitive (Boyle, “Oculis Sacerdotis” & “Speculum”).

 

Date.

Judging by internal evidence - allusions to Edward’s youth, his sister, his recent assumption of full authority, recent treaties with France, contemporary local events and the author’s statement that forty years have passed since Edward I instituted the laws of purveyance in the eighteenth year of his reign – Tait and Boyle both judge that the Epistola was written early in 1331 and its companion Speculum a few months later (Tait 112-13; Boyle, “Oculis Sacerdotis” 107). William of Pagula died in 1332 (Boyle, “Oculis Sacerdotis” 100; Nederman, “William of Pagula”).

This particular manuscript, however, has not been the subject of discussion by either (or later by Nederman, who approaches the text as a legal historian and not a codicologist). Boyle mentions it in passing as a fourteenth-century witness (Boyle, “Speculum” 330), but specifies neither a more precise window of production, nor his reasons for judging it so. If he is correct, however, two things would point to a later date within that century:

-The attribution to Archbishop Islip dates it firmly after 1349 (the date of his provision to the see), and suggests a date still later, as the venerable blur of time obscured the fact that the Epistola had already been in circulation for some years, and possibly heightened the prestige of Islip’s name to the point where it would improve the reception of a text credited to him. I would tentatively suggest that this manner of attribution would increase in likelihood with the natural reverence following his death (1366).

- This manuscript is written on paper. According to Thompson, the first paper mills in France were those in Troyes, not built until 1348. England did not follow suit until shortly before 1490, although some paper made its way to the island via Gascony, largely from the mills of Bordeaux (634-35). Although Thompson gives dates neither for the earliest English uses of paper, nor the establishment of the earliest Bordeaux mills, this suggests that a date before the last quarter of the century would be very unlikely.

More precise dating could be achieved by consulting the manuscript, as a manuscript of 26 folios ought, by means of watermarks, to reveal at least a tempus a quo and place of origin for its primary materials.

 

Origin and authorship.

The Epistola was written by William of Pagula, as Boyle has established (“Oculis Sacerdotis”), though later manuscripts attribute it to Archbishop Simon Islip. Boyle calls it a “localized appeal from the location of Windsor Forest for letters of protection” against the practice of purveyance, written during William’s time as vicar of nearby Winkfield (Boyle, “Oculis Sacerdotis” 99 & 107).

The origin and scribe of the present manuscript, however, are unknown. Knowledge of the paper’s watermarks, in consultation with paper supply routes (if that information is available) could indicate some of the most likely centres of production, but is unlikely to yield any definite evidence due to the quantities of French-imported paper swamping the English paper market until halfway through the sixteenth century (Shorter 16) . A Gascon origin is perhaps more likely in any case, as paper was in commoner use in England’s continental holdings than on the island well into the fifteenth century (Thompson 634-35).

Whether the manuscript was made on the continent or in England, the use of paper (as expensive as parchment due to rarity) and the fact of its preservation long enough to be bound with the other manuscripts in this volume may suggest a reasonably high level of production, possibly for presentation or gift. The level of professionalism, of course, could be quickly determined by consulting the manuscript.

 

Later provenance and position within codex.

Whatever the date of the Epistola manuscript, it is undoubtedly the youngest in the codex, grouped with them and ordered according to its contents rather than its own age. While the concerns the Epistola expresses are tantalisingly similar to those of the chronicler of the previous manuscript, and the town of Pagula (Paull) is also in the Yorkshire region, there is no evidence to connect the two. Certainly the style of the short chronicle bears no resemblance to the formal, didactic Latin of William of Pagula. Given the discrepancy in their age, any thematic similarities are likely to be due to Cotton’s judgement, and their juxtaposition in the codex is adequately explained by the approximately chronological ordering of its contents up to this point.

 

Lacunae and potential.

The majority of the lacunae, in this case, can be filled by consultation with the manuscript, as they are largely codicological and a good deal is known about the circumstances of its contents’ composition. Such an examination would narrow, though not eliminate, the broader gaps in our knowledge of the origin and history of the manuscript itself, shedding light on the circulation and popularity of both the text and the medium of paper in fourteenth-century England, together with the social implications of both.

 

 

Cited.

Boyle, Leonard E. “The Oculis Sacerdotis and some other works of William of Pagula.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 5th series 5 (1955): 81-110.

----- “William of Pagula and the Speculum Regis Edwardi III.” Mediaeval Studies 32 (1970): 329-36.

Moisant, Joseph (ed). De speculo regis Edwardi III, seu tractatu quem de mala regni administratione. Paris, 1891.

Nederman, Cary J. & Cynthia J. Neville. “The origin of the Speculum Regis Edwardi III of William of Pagula.” Studi Medievali 3rd series 38 (1997): 317-329.

Nederman, Cary J. “Pagula, William (d. 1332?).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP, 2004.  (03 Dec 2009).

Shorter, A. H. Paper making in the British Isles: An Historical and Geographical Study. Devon: David & Charles, 1971.

Thompson, James Westfall. The Medieval Library. 1939. New York: Hafner, 1957.

A study of Cleopatra D IX: MSS III, IIIa, ff. 84-88, 89. Fineshade collection.

A collection of letters and a chronicle relating to the civil wars of 1321-22, from the priory of Fineshade, with a related proclamation from 1325 attached.

Description.

III: Parchment, 5 ff. Single column of 40 lines. Two letters and a petition transcribed, followed by a short chronicle and some notes. In two hands, one predominant, with occasional corrections suggestive of composition rather than copying in the chronicle and no similar errors in the previous documents. A, the primary scribe, uses a rounded and rather irregular Anglicana, with heavy downstrokes that can tend toward the blotchy, irregular minims, and a rather awkward serpentine ‘s’ whose lower bowl sits noticeably below the line. B, who writes less than half a page on 87v before A resumes on 88r, uses a contemporary Anglicana that is smaller and more regular, with consistently angled curves and controlled decorative flourishes on his maiuscules. Miniscule ‘a’ is typical of the differences between the two hands: A’s lower bowl varies in size relative to the x-height, to the extent that the eye is sometimes broad and sometimes almost non-existent, while the upper bowl is left open as the pen-stroke trails off. B’s ‘a’ has a lower bowl that is usually consistent with the x-height, while the upper bowl is firmly closed with a broad stroke. Some pages also have contemporary marginal notes, in a hand that appears to belong to A, though smaller and in a lighter ink.

IIIa: An official proclamation of the judgement against the traitors at Boroughbridge, issued 1322 or 1325, on a smaller sheet of vellum, approx. 250x150 mm (Haskins, “Proceedings” 511). Added later, according to Sayles, which accords with Ker’s assessment that only ff. 84-88 originate from Fineshade (Ker, Libraries 87). The text of the judgement is written lengthwise on the page, in a clear, contemporary hand. Two titles have been added at a later date, one “at least as late as the middle of the fourteenth century”, the second modern (Haskins, “Proceedings” 510-11). The first is partly obscured by a torn corner of the parchment (the bottom right?), and reads “COMENT LE CUNTE DE LANCASTRE FU ACOUPE DEVANT …[?la bataille de Pount de Burgh et jugee a] LA MOR[?t...]”. The second is smaller, inserted between the first and the text, and reads (more accurately) “Judicium in Barones captos apud Burgh Bridge” (qtd. in Haskins, “Proceedings” 511).

 

Contents.

- 84v: A copy of the king's letters of prohibition issued to Engayne and others forbidding attendance at a meeting at Doncaster, November 1321. Chronologically, follows the previous entry. Latin, ½ p.

- 84v-85r: A letter of summons from Lancaster to John Engayne, urging him to attend a meeting at Doncaster on 29 November, 1321. Anglo-Norman, 1 p. Incipit:

A honurable homme et nostre trescher amy, Monsure Johan Dengayne, Thomas, / Counte de Lancastre et de Leycestre [etc], saluz / e cheres amitez. Sire, pur les granz periles et oppressions et grantz maux, qe nous / sentoms et entendoms... (qtd. in Haskins, “Petition” 483; in all quotes from Haskin’s editions, it must be assumed that he has regularised punctuation and spelling.)

- 85r-86r: A petition drawn up by Lancaster’s adherents for the forbidden meeting at Doncaster. It may have been composed at the meeting or in preparation for it, as there is no evidence that it ever took place (Haskins, “Petition” 479). Anglo-Norman, 1 p. Incipit:

A touz honours e reuerences, &c. Sire, pleysea a vostre seynurie sauer come plusurs e de-/-uerse greuaunces qui sont monstrez a nous e a nos autres bon piers de la tere... (qtd. in Haskins, “Petition” 483).

- 86r-88r: A short chronicle of the civil wars of Edward II, focussed primarily on the battles in Yorkshire in 1321-22. The final eight lines on 87v and all of 88r comprise a roll of the dead, executed, imprisoned and exiled after Lancaster’s final defeat at Boroughbridge. Haskins notes that this list apparently has a common source with a similar roll in MS Egerton 2850: each omits some names contained in the other, and the ordering of the names suggests that the original was in two columns, which one copyist read from left to right while the other read down (Haskins, “Chronicle” 74). Latin, 3 ff. Incipit:

Anno dominice incarnacionis .M°.CC°. octogesimo quintodecimo et regni regis Edwardi / .xx°ij°. et etate Edwardi filii predicti regis Edwardi quartodecimo. Cum idem rex transfre- / -tasset in Flandriam causa pacis inter regem Francie et comitem Flandrie, vt dice- / -batur, reformande... (qtd. in Haskins, “Chronicle” 75).

- 88v: A list of other historical notes which Haskins labels “various entries of no interest” Haskins, “Chronicle” 73). Presumably they were of some interest to the chronicler, but we are left to speculate as to their content. Latin, 1 p.

- 89: An official issue of the judgement against the rebels of Boroughbridge. Names Lancaster and Hereford personally, leaving the remainder general. Anglo-Norman, 1 f. Incipit:

Pur ceo que vous .j. home lige nostre seignur le Roi, contre vostre foi, homage, e ligeaunce, fausement e treiturousement / pristes sa ville e son chastel de Gloucestre... (qtd. in Haskins, “Proceedings” 483).

Although Planta’s catalogue, still the official catalogue of used by the British for the Cotton collection, describes this manuscript as a whole simply as “Fragments relating to the civil wars”, even this brief summary of the contents reveals a greater cohesion of purpose than the term “fragments” implies. Gathered as they are, this manuscript – and here I include the additional leaf – tells a story, and rather a personal one. The first three documents seem to be copies of those possessed by John Engayne with relation to a single fraught political event of late 1321, and the chronicle, while it begins with the generalised lurid speculation and frequent inaccuracies that characterise rumour-informed accounts of Edward II’s earlier reign, becomes both more accurate and more emotionally invested as it approaches the final battles of 1321-22, with its sympathies firmly in the baronial camp. The addition of the judgement adds a literal closing page to a grim chapter of recent history, recalling the epitaphical list of the victims of Boroughbridge incorporated by the chronicler into his final pages.

Date.

Hardy dates the chronicle at 1327 (395), though the narration ends in 1322. It shows no awareness of the invasion and overthrow to come in 1326-27, unless this is noted among the entries on 88v. The judgement was issued in the aftermath of Boroughbridge in 1322, but Sayles demonstrates that this manuscript is among those re-issued as a general warning in 1325 (61), at which time sufficient copies were made and distributed that “the chronicler would have had little difficulty in securing one for his own use” (57).

Origin and authorship.

An unknown canon from the Augustinian priory of Fineshade in Northamptonshire (Ker, Libraries 87). The letters and petition have been transcribed from another source, by the same hand (A) that appears to have composed the chronicle. Several errors, corrected by the same hand interlinearly or midway through the line, are suggestive of composition rather than copying: for example, on several occasions on ff. 87r and 87v the scribe simply changes his mind on word order. The relation of A to B is unknown, though they seem to be working in close collaboration, but A appears to be the dominant force in writing the chronicle and collecting the supporting documents.

Given the location of Fineshade, therefore, it is curious that the letters and petition focus on events in the north, and the chronicle in addition shows a first-hand knowledge of events in the north beyond what can be accounted for by those documents. Haskins conjectures that the author is a northerner, “probably from somewhere in the county of York, for his account becomes at once more accurate and detailed as the scene shifts, in the spring of 1322, to the region of Boroughbridge and Pontefract” (“Chronicle” 74). Although this precedes Ker’s establishment of its origin, the point remains valid. We must suppose either that the chronicler was a northerner who moved south to Fineshade sometime between 1322 and 1325, or that he had access to the personal memories of someone heavily involved in the final stages of the baronial rebellion.

Both may be true: while the style of the chronicle seems to show a level of personal investment that may be indicative of a local’s attachment, a canon writing at Fineshade had a possible witness in the person of John Engayne, the local baron and a follower of Thomas of Lancaster. Richard Engayne had founded Fineshade in the 1208 (Knowles & Hadcock 137), and the pope’s confirmation in 1223 gave the establishment the right to elect their own prior without consent of the Engaynes (Serjeantson & Adkins 135). Nevertheless, they seem to have retained a close enough relationship with their erstwhile patrons that the priory (or the canon personally) could borrow and transcribe the letters and petition that were presumably among John Engayne’s personal papers.

This being so, there is a possibility that the memory and personal involvement reflected in the chronicle belong to John Engayne, shared in conversations with the canon who was writing what amounts to a history of Engayne’s experiences. Engayne died in 1323 or early 1324 (Dugdale 466), so perhaps it is not too great a leap to speculate that the chronicle may be partly coloured and motivated by reverence for his memory.

If, on the other hand, we hypothesise a smaller role for Engayne, limited to the loan of his papers (possibly by his estate after his death), we return to the supposition that the chronicler himself was a Yorkshireman, who moved to Fineshade after the disturbances of the civil wars. In this scenario, it may have been the move itself – from a place shaken by events that were justifiably felt to be of national importance, to a place less impressed by or less knowledgeable about those events – that prompted the impulse to record, to draw a comfortingly cohesive history from the catastrophe.

Later provenance and position in codex.

There is no evidence of the movements of the manuscript after its composition, and no later additions save the mid-fourteenth-century title on the final leaf. Fineshade was dissolved in 1536 (Knowles & Hadcock 137), and the manuscript may be presumed to have fallen into private hands at this date, if not before. The date and source of Cotton’s acquisition are not known, but it seems to appear on none of his loan lists, so was probably not among his most popular possessions with his fellow antiquarians.

Lacunae and potential.

- Perhaps the most frustrating lacuna is one that could easily be solved by examining the manuscript: the contents of those “various entries of no interest”, which have the potential to add tantalising clues (though possibly no answers) to the question of the date, circumstances and motivation of authorship.

- The field of candidates for authorship is pleasingly narrow, given the probable size of Fineshade at this period. However, without details of the names and biographies of all the canons resident in the 1320s, there is little evidence to pursue beyond that point.

- The exact relationship between Engayne and the chronicler is probably not discoverable. It may be possible, however, to find out a little more about the final two years of Engayne’s life, and whether his experiences in the war hastened his demise a year later.

 

Cited.

Dugdale, Sir William. The Baronage of England. London, 1675.

Haskins, G. L. “Chronicle of the Civil Wars of Edward II.” Speculum 14 (1939): 73-81.

----- “Judicial proceedings against a traitor after Boroughbridge, 1322.” Speculum 12 (1937): 509-511.

----- "The Doncaster Petition, 1321." English Historical Review 53 (1938): 478-485.

Ker, Neil R. Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books. London: Royal Historical Society, 1964.

Knowles, David & R. Neville Hadcock. Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales. London: Longmans, Green & Co, 1953.

Planta, Joseph. Catalogue of the manuscripts in the Cottonian Library deposited in the British Museum. The British Museum: Department of Manuscripts. London: Hansard, 1802.

Sayles, George. "The Formal Judgments on the Traitors of 1322." Speculum 16 (1941): 57-63.

Serjeantson, R. M. & W. R. D. Adkins (eds). “Houses of Austin canons: The Priory of Fineshade or Castle Hymel”. A History of the County of Northampton v. 2. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1906. 135-36.