Mony wylsum way

The Jaunts of Sirs Thomas and Thomas

2011-06-29T17:18:00.003-04:00

The following is adapted from a few paragraphs of chapter 3 of my thesis - the story, so far as it can be deduced from a few records here and there, of one member of the family whose movements in the 1320s I've been piecing together. And his friend. I thought it might be fun!

In the first three months of 1322, the forces of Edward II and the rebel barons fought out a brief civil war, ending at the Battle of Boroughbridge in the middle of March. In the king’s army were a minor baron called Sir John Engayne and (most likely) his brother Sir Nicholas. In the barons’ army, however, was one Sir Thomas Engayne, actively fighting against his king and, therefore, against his relatives. According to the Boroughbridge Roll – the list of those killed or taken in arms against the king – he escaped after the battle and he fled over the sea, as did several other knights, for refuge in France (CPW II App. 201). Among these knights was one Sir Thomas Roscelyn of Norfolk, son and heir of Sir Peter Roscelyn.

Early in the following year, Thomas must have returned to England. A warrant was issued from Newark for his arrest, and for several others in his company: “Jakemin de Darynton, John de Hereford, parson of the church of Depeden, Robert de la Lee, Walter de Brawode, John de Goldynton, knight, Thomas Rocelyn, knight, Robert de Burer, John de Rothyng and Thomas de Engayne” (CPR EII IV p. 238). Of these men, Sirs Thomas Roscelyn and John Goldynton were at Boroughbridge, and the latter is recorded as being imprisoned as a result, although, in view of this arrest warrant, that may be a mistake (CPW II App. pp. 200-01, MS BL Cotton Cleopatra D IX [Fineshade manuscript] f. 88r).

The hunt was on – but it met with no success. Another warrant was January 6 of 1324, the men still at large. According to this warrant, Sir Thomas Engayne, Sir Thomas Roscelyn and James Darynton spent December and January 1322-23 safely ensconced in the priory of Bermondsey, Surrey, at which Darynton was a canon. Consequently, this warrant demands the arrest of the prior Walter de Lutz and “his fellow monk” Bartholomew de Whytsand, together with both knights, Darynton, Darynton’s brother Percival and one Peter de Mountmartyn, identified as the brother of Sir Ponsard de Mountmartyn. According to the warrant, the canons “received the said Jacominus, Percival, Peter and other persons adherents of the rebels, and especially of Thomas Rosselyn and Thomas Dengayne, knights, in the priory of Bermundsey, co. Surrey, and aided them from the feast of St Nicholas 16 Edward II [6 December 1322] until Shrovetide [8 February 1323], when they permitted them to go away at the expense and mounting of the said prior” (CPR EII IV 358).

No further warrants were issued for Thomas Engayne or Roscelyn. They were never caught - it is likely that they left England and, as many knights were to do, joined those exiles on the continent who were later to join Queen Isabella and Mortimer in their invasion.[1] The Westminster parliament following Edward III’s coronation would have restored them their lands, as it did all those who had lost them in 1322. But we do hear of them again.

In 1329, Henry of Lancaster assumed his executed brother’s mantle and capitalised on his popularity as a martyr to royal oppression, emerging as leader of the baronial opposition to Isabella and Mortimer. In January of that year, Thomases Roscelyn and Engayne were among this Lancaster’s armed forces when he marched into Bedford in open resistance, as were Sir John Goldynton and several other names familiar from the Roll of Boroughbridge. Roscelyn, being one of Lancaster’s four chief adherents, personally arrested and detained the sheriff for the duration of their occupation (CIMisc 274-75). And this time, Sir Thomas did not fight against his family: Sir John Engayne, who had inherited the estate from his uncle John in 1323, was also in Bedford with Lancaster’s party. On February 9, after Henry of Lancaster’s surrender, John Engayne acknowledged a fine of 1200 marks against his Essex lands for his participation in the uprising, and his lands were restored to him on those terms two days later (CClR X pp. 529 and 437).

Roscelyn, however, did not get off with a fine. He and Henry’s other three chief supporters were banished, partly for their part in this uprising and their general trouble-making status, but officially for the murder of Sir Robert Holland the previous October (ODNB “Henry of Lancaster”, CClR X p. 425).[2] The same four men, together with Henry, were pardoned by Edward III on 4 December 1330, following his coup against Mortimer and assumption of personal power. Although the charges against them are mentioned, they are tempered by the addition of “as was surmised by Roger Mortimer, our late enemy” (op. cit. p. 530-31, misfiled under December 1329). Finally, while in exile, Roscelyn was involved or implicated in the Earl of Kent’s attempt to rescue and restore Edward II to the throne (Murimuth 254).

It's interesting (although, lacking data, rather fruitless) to speculate on a hypothetical family dinner around this time, and what turns a conversation on Politics and the State of the Land might have taken. Nicholas and the older John, whatever their sympathies may have been, held to their legal obligations, while the younger John, although quiet during Edward II’s reign, was later to espouse a similar cause during the queen’s regency. Thomas felt strongly enough (or, of course, was in sufficient financial or legal trouble) to take a stand on the other side, both in 1322 and 1329. Between these years, and possibly earlier, Thomas kept company with Thomas Roscelyn, a man who was a close adherent of Mortimer, and who was later to aid Henry of Lancaster. In each case – Thomas of Lancaster, Roger Mortimer, Henry of Lancaster, even Edmund Earl of Kent – Roscelyn was quick to align himself with the man who presented himself as a force for change in the country. The frequent appearance of Thomas Engayne’s name in conjunction with his may suggest either a man easily influenced by a charismatic personality, or one inspired by a similar desire for change. Roscelyn and his opinions may therefore also have made themselves heard around the family estate at Blatherwycke, if only at second hand.

I’m not sure how close a relative Thomas Engayne was to the centre of the family – another brother to John and Nicholas, another of Nicholas’ sons and thus brother to the younger John, a cousin – but he was close enough to be known and significant to a canon writing at the priory of Fineshade, adjacent to Blatherwycke, of which the Engayne family were patrons.

The Fineshade manuscript (MS BL Cotton Cleopatra D IX, ff. 84-90) includes a version the Boroughbridge Roll, it includes neither the name of Sir Thomas Engayne, nor of Sir Thomas Roscelyn. It can hardly be an accidental omission, or an omission in the exemplar. A Fineshade canon could not fail to notice the name of Engayne above all others in such a list, nor would the exemplar be necessary to make that information known to the priory. That the same accident should extend to the knight who fought with him against the crown and accompanied him in his exile is altogether too much of a coincidence. Whether it is intended as rejection or protection of the exiled knights, the omission must surely be deliberate. Sirs Thomas and Thomas are carefully written out of the event.

This omission throws other silences on the chronicler’s part into interesting relief, illuminating the effort to which he has gone to render the chronicle an impersonal account. One or both of Sirs John and Nicholas Engayne must have been present at the battle and the following parliament, but they are not mentioned. Sir Thomas Engayne and a friend to whose name the chronicler was not indifferent were present in a very different capacity, but the chronicler of the priory carefully deletes them from precisely the point where he ought to have recorded their names. The events most closely detailed by the chronicler are precisely the events which these men experienced, but though that they must have been in his thoughts as he wrote, he who prayed regularly for the Engaynes’ souls mentions none of them. Their presence is systematically erased.

-----------

[1] Mortimer was a logical connection for Roscelyn to seek out, as they seem to have had a substantial prior acquaintance. Roscelyn had aided Mortimer in the Marcher rebellion, and had earlier been one of the “closest circle of Mortimer adherents” who witnessed his son’s wedding in 1316 (Ian Mortimer 79).
[2] Holland had been perceived by Lancastrians as a traitor, as his desertion of that earl on the brink of the Battle of Boroughbridge had been instrumental in his defeat. He had been murdered the previous October, and his head sent to Henry of Lancaster.

------------

Cited:
MS British Library Cotton Cleopatra D IX ff. 84-90 [Fineshade manuscript].

Murimuth, Adam. Continuatio Chronicarum. In Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum et Robert de Avesbury De Gestis Mirabilibus Regis Edwardi Tertii. Ed. Edward Maunde Thompson. Rolls Series 93. London: Longman, 1889. 1-276.

Calendar of the Close Rolls [CClR]. 21 vols. London: Public Record Office, 1902-27.
Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous (Chancery) [CIMisc]. 3 vols. London: Public Record Office, 1916-2003.
Calendar of Patent Rolls [CPR]. 49 vols. London: Public Record Office, 1891-1986.
Palgrave, Francis, ed. [CPW] The Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons. 3 vols. London: Eyre, 1827-34.

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online) [ODNB].

Mortimer, Ian. The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327-30. London: Jonathan Cape, 2003.

The Mediaeval Kangaroo

2011-05-02T18:28:00.001-04:00

In place of actual content, I have written a bestiary entry for a kangaroo, as it could have been understood had mediaeval Europe been aware of it.

This is for the class on the mediaeval bestiary that I am teaching to a bunch of year 10 students tomorrow - I will give them this description, without telling them the animal, and have them draw it. The results should go some way to explaining why the crocodile in bestiaries variously resembles a dog, a fish, a large bird and a snake. And the point is also, of course, that the bestiary entry is really about the meaning of the animal, not (what we would consider) the animal itself. A large part of the aim of this lesson is to teach them about allegory as a basic tool of mediaeval thought.

They are a very good group - they guessed today what animal 'vellum' was made from based on the name, argued about whether Henry VIII was a Protestant or a Catholic, volunteered the printing press as a possible date/event to mark the end of the Middle Ages then (as a group) came up with good reasons as to why that might be so significant a cultural shift (then one pointed out that we're in the middle of a similar revolution at the moment, re. internet and digital information, completely pre-empting me!), asked spontaneously about several myths of the Middle Ages (how real was King Arthur, did they think the world was flat) and managed to volunteer all of the languages spoken in mediaeval England without prompting. And when you have the answers "Middle English?" "No, OLD English." "French!" "No, they spoke French in France," and "Latin", it is very satisfying to be able to say "you are all absolutely correct, here's why".

Kangaroo follows.

Of course, there ought to be a few fanciful etymologies for the name, but firstly that would give it away, and secondly I think even Isidore would be stretched to come up with a Greek+Latin derivation for a word that derives from an English misinterpretation of an Aboriginal phrase.

This creature has the face of a sheep and the ears and fur of a rabbit. Its tail is still like a log, and it is stiff so that the animal can stand upon it.

Its back is hunched like a hill, and it has hands like a child's, but black.

Its eyelashes are long and thick like a camel's, to keep out sand and dust. When it is hot, it licks itself like a cat.

The ape gives birth to two children at once, and it loves one while it hates the other; but this creature has always one child older than the other, and loves both equally. For it feeds each according to its needs, giving the elder one kind of milk from one teat, even while it feeds the younger another milk from a second teat. By this we understand that each man should be taught the Word of God according to his capacity to understand them. He who is young and innocent is best taught with simple fables and allegories of beasts, but he who knows more of the Lord and can better understand his ways may be nourished on the words of the Fathers of the Church.

When this creature bends its head to eat, it stands upon four legs, and, its head being low to the ground, can see nothing about it, for its eyes are covered by the grasses. But when it stands tall it can see for many miles, and no predator may take it by surprise. Thus the devil creeps upon those who bury their heads in gluttony and desire, but those who stand tall and see clearly he cannot surprise.

The Judgement and Death of Roger d’Amory (part 2 of 2)

2011-03-14T17:28:00.014-04:00

Below are three copies of the Judgement after Boroughbridge (for the context of which, see the previous post). The first is that passed against Roger d'Amory, the second is an amalgamation of those passed against two different men, the third the generic one from the last folio of the Fineshade manuscript. Following all three is a translation for the Fineshade version - all three are very similar, and the interest lies mostly in the comparison. The first two are transcribed by me from the Parliamentary Writs (Record Commission, 1830), II, ii, Appendix, pp. 261-267. The third is my transcription from the manuscript, but I differ little from Haskins' edition (Speculum 4 (1937): 509-511).

The judgement against d'Amory
The judgements against Francis de Aldham and Bartholomew de Ashburnham
The Fineshade version
Translation

1. Roger d’Amory (PW p. 261).
Square brackets are editorial insertions in the Writs; underlining is my expansion of their abbreviations, which follow the manuscripts. Note that d'Amory's judgement uniquely contains a small addendum in which his execution is postponed - see yesterday's post.

Tenor judicii super Rogerum Damory redditi patet in sequenti.

Pur ceo qe vous Roger Damory homme lige notre Seignour le Roy countre votre fay homage & ligeaunce, faucement & traitorousement alastes en Gales ove banner desplye, Chastels & Villes robastes & preiastes, & preistes sa Ville & soun Chastel de Gloucestre & ylumastes sa Ville de Briggenorth & ileok tuastes ses gentz & robastes ses liges gentz & preyastes le pays par my la terre ou vous estes aleez a feer de gwerre en estruaunt soun pople taunqe vous venistes al Chastel notre Seignour le Roi a Tykehalle & ileoqes asigeastes le dit Chastel ove baner desplie com enemy notre Seignor le Roi & du Realme, & la tuastes & nauverastes ses liges gentz, & de illeoqes alastes en la cumpaignye des traytours atteyntz Thomas jadys Counte de Lancastre & Umfrey jadis Counte de Hereford tauntqe a Burtone sour Trente & illeoqes arestutes le gentz notre Seignour le Roi qil ne poient le pount passer, vous armez ove baner displie come tretour & enemy encountre votre lige Seignour & encountre votre fey homage & ligeaunce, & la tuastes & nauverastes ses liges gentz. Et puis [vous] com traytour & enemy notre Seignour le Roi aperceivaunt la venue le Roi forciblement alumastes la Ville de Bourtone, et vous meistes en chaump en batailles ove vos baners desplies attendaunt votre liege Seignour davoir combatoutz ove lui si vous & les autres traytours ussez eou power. Et quant vois veistes la sarraye & forcible venue votre Seignour le Roi lige & des [ses] altres batailles, les quels vous ne osietz attendre ne ne poiez arester e puys tournastes le dos & fuistes dever le North derobeaunt le pays devaunt vous com traytour & robeour tauntqe vous venistes a Tuttebiri. Et si vous Roger ussez eou a ceo la force & le power le quels traysons, arsons, homicides & roberies chyvaches ove baner desplye & sount notories a Countes Barouns & a altres gentz petiz & grauntz de soen Realme ; agarde notre Seignour le Roi de soun real power & recorde, par quei ceste Court agarde qe pur la traysoun soiez traynez & pur les homicides arsons & roberies pendutz; mes Roger pur ceo qe notre Seignour le Roi vous ad en temps moult amez & fuistes de sa meygne & prives de lui & avez sa nyece esposee, notre dit Seignour le Roi de sa grace & de sa Realte met en respit execucioun de cel jugement a sa volunte.

2. a: Fraunceys de Aldeham & Bartholomeu de Assheburneham. b: Bartholomeu de Assheborneham alone (PW 266-67).
Single square brackets [a|b] indicate differences between the two versions. Double square brackets [[]] are square brackets present in PW. Differences of spelling and abbreviation not noted - where there is a difference, b is used.
NB: there are copies also for Henry de Wilyngtonne & Henry de Mounfort (262); another against B. de Ashburnham (263); Henry Tyeys (264); and Bart. de Badlesmere (265), which adds that his head will be “mys outre la porte de la Ville de Caunterburez pur doner ensaumple as autres qe il nenpreignent tieles traysouns & mauvestes come vous avetz faitz” (“set outside the gates of the City of Canterbury to give example to others that they may not be infected by such treasons and evil as you have done”).

Por ceo qe vous [Fraunceys de Aldeham & vous Bartholomeu de Assheburneham| Bartholomeu de Assheborneham] homme lige nostre Seignur le Roi [ |,] [countre|encountre] vostre foi, homage & ligeaunce [ |,] faussement & tretrousement preistes sa Ville & son Chastel de Gloucestre [ |,] & allumastes sa Ville de Breggenorth & illuqes tuastes [ces|ses] gentz [ |,] & robbastes [ces|ses] liges gentz & preyastes le paiis parmy la terre [ |,] ou vous estes alez a foer de guerre[,| ] tancqe vous venistes au Chastel le Roi a Tikehill[ |,] & illuqes assegeastes le Chastel, ove banere desplye, come enemy du Roi & du Roialme [ |,] & naufrastes & tuastes les liges gentz nostre Seignur le Roi[, &|. Et] [de illoqes|dilluqes] alastes en la compaignie des treitres atteyntz Thomas jadis Counte de Lancastre & Humfrei jadis Counte de Hereforde , tancqe a Burtonne sur Trente [ |,] & illuqes arrestustes les gentz le Roi[ |,] les queux ne poeynt le pount passer, ove bannere desplaie come tretour & enemy encontre vostre lige Seignur le Roi, vostre foi, homage & ligeaunce, & naufrastes & tuastes illuqes ses liges gentz[, et|. Et] puis vous & les autres tretours & enemys le Roi apparceyvaunt la venue le Roi afforcement allumastes la Ville de Bourtonne, & vous meistes en chaump en batailles[ |,] ove banneres desplayez[ |,] attendant vostre Seignur lige[ |,] davoir combatuz ove luy, si vous & les autres tretours eussez eu le poer[, &|. Et] quant vous veistes la forcible venue vostre lige Seignur [,| ] & [de ces|ses] batailles [le queux| ] vous ne [ |les] osiez attendre[,| ] ne ne poiez arrester; tournastes le dos & fuystes vers le Northe[ |,] derobbaunt le paiis devant vous come [treitours & robbours,|tretour] tancqe vous venistes au Pount de Burghe, ou vous [trovastes|tournastes] les liges gentz le Roi[,| ] eanz son pleyn poer [,| ] a lever le poeple [ |,] & de arester les treitours & les enemys [,|.] [&|Et] vous & les autres enemys & treitres illuqes assemblastes a eux [,| ] ove banneres desplaiez [ |,] & aucuns des gentz le Roi tuastes [,| ] & aucuns naufrastes [,| ] ou vous & les autres traitors de vostre faus acord & covyne feustes desconfitz & aucuns tuez [,| ] & vous aucuns [autres| ] des enemys pris, & les autres senfuyrent, issint qe en vous ne demorra poynt [ |,] qe vous ne eussez outree vostre Seignur lige a Bourtonne & pris ses liges gentz eyauntz son pleyn poer a Pount de Borghe, si vous eussez [eu|a ceo] la force [les|& le poer. Les] queux treisouns, arsouns, homicides [ |,] robberies, chevaucheez ove bannere desplaie sont notoires as Countes [,|& as] Barouns & [ |a] autres grauntz & petitz de son Roiaume. Et nostre Seignur le Roi [&|de] son real poer le record[,|;] pur quoi agarde ceste Court, qe pur la traisoun soiez traynez & pur les robberies & homicides penduz.

3. Fineshade manuscript version: edited transcript
The Fineshade manuscript is a single quire, being one of the booklets contained within BL Cotton Cleopatra D IX - the third of five. Cotton appears to have bound those five together in the 1610s. This is, properly speaking, another manuscript, added a few years after the composition of the rest of the quire – a single leaf, written lengthways and attached to the main Fineshade manuscript along the spine. It is written in an official hand, and appears to be one of the many copies of the 1322 judgement that were re-issued in 1325, as a warning to those who were, by that time, becoming restless again. For this theory George Sayles, “The Formal Judgement on the Traitors of 1322”, Speculum 16 (1941), 57-63.
Paragraph breaks are mine. Line breaks in the ms are indicated with /.

Pur ceo qe vous . j . homme lige nostre seignur le Roi , contre vostre foi homage , e ligeaunce , fausement e treiturousement / pristes sa ville e son chastel de Gloucestre , e aluminastes sa ville de Briggenorthe, e illuqes tuastes ses gentz e robastes / ses liges gentz , e preiastes le pais parmi la terre ou vous estoiez alez a faire de guere , tant que vous venistes au chastel / le Roi de Tykille, e illoqes assegastes le chastel oue baner desplere comme enemi du Roi e du Roialme , e naufrastes e / tuastes les liges gentz nostre seignur le Roi , e de illoqes alastes en la compaignie des treiturs atteintz , Thomas , iadis / Counte de Lancastre , e Umfrei , iadis Counte de Hereforde, tant qe a Burtonne sur Trente , e illuqes arestutes les / gentz le Roi , qils ne poeint le pount passer ; armes oue baner desplere comme treitours e enemis contre vostre lige / seignur le Roi , vostre foie , vos homages , e ligeaunces , e naufrastes e tuastes ses liges gentz illoqes , e puis vous e les / autres treitours enemis le Roi aperceiuaunt la venue le Roi aforceement , aluminastes la ville de Burton , e vous / meistes en chaumpe en batailles oue baners despleres attendants vostre lige seignur dauoir combatu oue luy . Si vous / e les autres treitours eussez eu a ceo le pouer , e quant vous veissez la sarre e forciable venue vostre seignur lige e de ses batails , / les queux vous ne osiez attendre , neue poer aresteer ; tournastes le dos , e fuistes deuers le Northe enrobaunt le pays de/ uante vous. come treitours e robeours tanqe vous venistes au Pount de Burghe, ou vous trouastes les gentz le Roi / eant son poer a leuer le poeple , e de aresteer les treitours e les enemis le Roi , Et vous e les autres treitours e / enemis illoqes assemblastes a eaux oue baner desplere , e ascuns gentz le Roi tuastes , e ascuns naufrastes , Ou vous e / les autres treitours de vostre faux accorde e coueigne feustes descomfiz. e ascuns tues , e vous e ascuns autres des / enemis pris , e les autres senfuirent issint qen vous ne demura point , qe vous ne eussez encontree vostre seignur lige / a Byrtonne e puis ses liges gentz eant son poer a Pount de Burghe, si vous eussez en a ceo la force e pouer. Les / queux treisons , arzons , homicides , Roberies , cheuauchees oue baners desplerez ; sount notoirs as Conts , Barons , e / altres grantz e petitz de son Roialme. Et nostre seignur le Roi de son Roial pouer le recorde , Par qei ceste Courte / agarde qe pur la treisone serez treine , e pur les Roberies e homicides ; pendu. /

4. Fineshade manuscript version: translation

For that you, a liegeman of our lord the King, contrary to your faith, homage and allegiance falsely and traitorously took his castle of Gloucester, and burnt his city of Bridgenorth; and there you slew his people and robbed his liegemen and plundered the country throughout the land where you had gone to make war, until you came unto the King’s castle at Tykille.

And there you beseiged the castle with banners unfurled as enemies of the King and of the realm, and wounded and slew the liegemen of our lord the King; and you went from that place in the company of the attainted traitors Thomas, sometime Earl of Lancaster, and Humphrey, sometime Earl of Hereford, unto Burton-upon-Trent; and there you impeded the King’s men that they might not cross the bridge, armed and with banners unfurled as traitors and enemies against your liege lord the King, your faith, your homage, and alliegance, and wounded and slew his people there.

And then you and the other enemy traitors of the King, perceiving him approaching with great strength, burned the city of Burton and took to the field of battle with banners unfurled, awaiting your liege lord to fight against him, if you and the other traitors should have the strength thereto.

And when you saw the well-armed and mighty approach of your liege lord and his batallions, which you dared not meet and could not hinder, you turned your backs and fled towards the North, plundering the country before you, like cowards and thieves, until you arrived at Boroughbridge, where you found the King’s men, bearing his power to raise men and to arrest traitors and enemies to the King.

And you and the other traitors and enemies assembled there, with banners unfurled, and slew some of the King’s men, and wounded others; and there you and the other traitors of your false accord and covenant were defeated, and some were slain, and you and certain others of the enemies taken, and the others fled so that not one remained for you, that would not have met with your liege lord at Burton and then with his liegemen bearing his power at Boroughbridge, if you had had the force and power to avoid it.

And these treasons, arsons, murders, robberies, and raids with banners unfurled, are notorious to the Earls, Barons and other greater and lesser men of the realm. And our lord the King by his royal power records it. For which this court finds that for the treason you should be drawn, and for the robberies and murders, hanged.

The Judgement and Death of Roger d’Amory (part 1 of 2)

2011-03-13T17:04:00.002-04:00

This post was actually written a couple of weeks ago, but given the proximity of the date, I figured I might as well save it for an anniversary post!

On the 13th or 14th of March, 1322, Roger d’Amory died – ‘obiit morte propria’ – at Tutbury Priory, Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire[1]. As the remaining rebel barons fled north, their numbers greatly depleted, d’Amory was left at Tutbury to await the arrival of King Edward II, who had completely routed the rebel forces at Burton-upon-Trent on the 10th. The castle was surrendered to him immediately, and with it d’Amory.

The phrase above, ‘obiit morte propria’, is from the Fineshade chronicle’s list of the slain, exiled, imprisoned and executed barons and knights after the denouement of the rebellion at Boroughbridge (16 March) [2]. Literally ‘died his own death’, it seems to refer to death from wounds sustained in the battle (not, eg, ‘natural death’), standing in contrast to the death in battle (as Hereford and others) or execution (as Lancaster and most others). It must have been a severe incapacitation to prevent him fleeing north with the other rebels, given the reception he could expect; and, given he captured Worcester for the rebels in January, and seems to have participated actively in the battle of Burton-upon-Trent, it can hardly have been a lingering illness. [3]

What is clear is that he was not executed. In Edward’s eyes, d’Amory was a traitor, and he passed on him the same sentence that he passed on the others. The sentence was largely the same for each of the traitors, differing usually only in details about which specific treacherous activities they were involved in – eg, some were not present at the burning of Bridgnorth, and for obvious reasons d’Amory’s sentence omits the usual itinerary after Burton-upon-Trent. I will include the usual text and d’Amory’s judgement in the following blog post. The sentence was sufficiently standardised that it was possible, some years later, when Edward needed to quash rising murmurs of rebellion again, to re-issue generic versions of it with no name attached at all. One of these is the final folio of the Fineshade manuscript. [4] There is, however, one moment in which the judgement on d’Amory departs dramatically – and, for me, rather movingly – from this standard.

Roger d’Amory was not just any traitor to Edward. Edward II’s reign was characterised by his intense emotional attachments to a few favourites – Piers Gaveston in his early years, Hugh Despenser from about 1319 until the deaths of both men in 1327. But in the years between the murder of Gaveston in 1312 and the emergence of Despenser as clear favourite, Edward had instead a group of men who were close to him and influential, d’Amory among them. In 1317 Edward even arranged d’Amory’s marriage to Edward’s widowed niece, Lady Elizabeth de Clare / de Burgh. [5] Edward tends to leave unambiguous traces of personal attachments on the historical record, and d’Amory was without question one of the ‘in’ crowd for those years.

Just why Roger d’Amory joined the movement against Edward that became a rebellion is, of course, unknown and unknowable. Politically, broad guesses might be made: Despenser had ousted him and the other ‘group’ favourites; Despenser and his father were dangerous and greedy and both sides were becoming increasingly litigious and violent; d’Amory and Despenser were both married to sisters of Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester and Hertford, who had died without issue in 1314, leaving his vast estates to be divided (and debated) among the husbands of his sisters. [6] Logical reasons may be sought for one course of action or another, but the deciding emotions in the case – on the part of either man – are not a matter for historical inquiry. In the usual way of things I’d leave them be, but there are moments when they strike me forcibly. Speculation aside, here is a man who had been very close to the king, who joined a movement against him that Edward took very personally (not to mention his fierce grudge against Lancaster, who gradually assumed the mantle of leader), and whom Edward found dying in Tutbury of wounds sustained in his first major engagement with the rebels’ troops.

In most of the copies of the judgement I’ve read, the conclusion reads as follows, with only the usual differences of spelling and punctuation:

Les queux treisouns, arsouns, homicides, robberies, chevaucheez ove bannere desplaie sont notoires as Countes & as Barouns & a autres grauntz & petitz de son Roiaume. Et nostre Seignur le Roi de son real poer le record; pur quoi agarde ceste Court, qe pur la traisoun soiez traynez & pur les robberies & homicides penduz. [See following post for citation.]
The which treasons, arsons, murders, robberies, and raids with banners unfurled, are well-known to the Earls, Barons and other greater and lesser men of the realm. And our lord the King by his royal power records it. For which this court finds that for the treason you should be drawn, and for the robberies and murders, hanged.

So the sentences passed on Bartholomew of Ashburnham and Francis d’Aldham; so the general sentence preserved in the Fineshade manuscript; so, up to a point, the judgement on d’Amory.

But d’Amory’s, uniquely, continues:

& pur les homicides arsons & roberies pendutz; mes Roger pur ceo qe notre Seignour le Roi vous ad en temps moult amez & fuistes de sa meygne & prives de lui & avez sa nyece esposee, notre dit Seignour le Roi de sa grace & de sa Realte met en respit execucioun de cel jugement a sa volunte.
and for the robberies and murders, hanged; but Roger, because our Lord the King did at one time love you greatly and you were of his company and close to him and did marry his niece, our said Lord the King, by his grace and his royalty, defers the execution of the said judgement according to his will.

I found this at a moment when I was looking for something else. I wasn’t prepared for it, wasn’t thinking about these two men and their relationship, was not particularly invested in its termination. But I found it suddenly and deeply touching. D’Amory would die: that much was clear. It was necessary to pass the sentence of death, but it was not necessary to kill him. He was dying already; and perhaps if Edward had been feeling particularly vindictive he might have dragged him out to the gallows. But he didn’t: he deferred the punishment and let him die ‘morte propria’, not the death of a thief.
Edward, however, was not there to see it. Roger d’Amory died on the 13th or 14th of March, 1322, and on the 11th Edward had left, pushing north in pursuit of the fleeing Lancaster.

Sometimes, in reading these documents – particularly in manuscript form – these moments just happen, moments in which I find I have to pause and sit back for a moment to allow myself to realise the weight of centuries-past human emotion behind the tiny glimpse afforded by the words on the page. It is necessary to sit back because distance is, of course, necessary. Emotion is a difficult and potentially highly subjective field of study, and I’ve not the courage nor the background to go there yet. Even if I did, the question is irrelevant to my present studies, and in engaging my own emotions too far could potentially jeopardise my discussions of (particularly) Edward’s actions in these few months. But I think it is also necessary to have that realisation. Just from time to time.

[1] Here and elsewhere, for specific (and occasionally debateable) details as to people’s lives – particularly dates – I have preferred to follow their biographies in the online Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, accessed 7 February this year.

[2] BL Cotton Cleopatra D IX, mss. 3 and 3a within the codex, f. 88r l. 8, published by George L. Haskins as “A Chronicle of the Civil Wars of Edward II,” Speculum (1939): 73-81. I will include my edition of this chronicle and the documents attached to it as an appendix to my Masters thesis, and will publish it if I can. The only other extant copy of this list, in MS Egerton 2850, calls itself “Les nouns des grauntz mortz a Borghbrigge le Marsdy & le Mekerdy apres la feste Saint Gregoire”, and says of d’Amory merely that he “fust mort un poy devaunt a Tottebury”. The Egerton list is transcribed in Parliamentary Writs and Writs of Military Summons, 2.2.ii, Appendix pp. 200-01, but I couldn’t get hold of it without actually going to the British Library anyway, so I just read both! That was the first roll I ever handled. It was rather nerve-wracking.

[3] See also Kathryn’s post on the latter part of his career on her Edward II blog, where she includes (among other details) other contemporary theories about his death.

[4] For this argument see George Sayles, “The Formal Judgement on the Traitors of 1322”, Speculum 16 (1941), 57-63. He writes in response to Haskins’ publication of the Fineshade judgement, in which Haskins attempts to identify it as passed upon a single condemned (“Judicial Proceedings against a Traitor after Boroughbridge, 1322,” Speculum 4 (1937): 509-511).

[5] While in London last October I transcribed, on Kathryn’s request, a letter from Edward to Elizabeth on the matter, written 10 September 1316. I’m sure I remember Kathryn writing a blog post based on it, but I can’t find it now – sorry Kathryn! I may do something on it myself, as it’s rather interesting on its own terms – there are three clear stages of revision to it, in three different hands, and each revision sounds sterner than the last. Edward clearly had second (and third) thoughts about Elizabeth’s biddability – and given she’d run away with and married Lord Verdon early in 1316, he probably had good reason.

[6] The third sister was Margaret, widow of Piers Gaveston and remarried in 1317 to Hugh d’Audley, another of Edward’s then-favourites.

Jottings on Beowulf and fragmentation of the body/nation

2011-03-07T17:28:00.001-05:00

As I've not posted anything in a while, here's a note-form version of something I'm working on at the moment. This is the seminar paper I delivered a couple of weeks ago, and which I am currently working on expanding into a full-length paper (c. 20-22 pages, if I can keep it down to that length!). I'm keeping it in note form, because I am, sadly, beginning to get a little chary of copyright on the internet.

Not that I expect to publish this. I am not going to make my first major analytical publication on Beowulf.

A - General outline: Fragmentation or unity of the body as reflective of (and a site for exploring anxieties about) that of the nation.

- Lerer calls beowulf ‘a poem of the body’ (723). [1] Poem’s focus on the physical deeds and prowess of the warrior body often excludes the use of ornamentation, weaponry or armour. Every conflict with a monstrous opponent results in not merely the death of one party but in the fragmentation or destruction of their body: Grendel rends and eats his victims, Beowulf relies on muscle rather than weapon and tears off Grendel’s arm, Grendel’s mother tears off Aeschere’s head and discards it far from civilisation, Beowulf kills Grendel’s mother and cuts off Grendel’s head then displays head and arm as tokens of his victory. He cleaves the dragon in two; the sea monsters try to make a feast of him, but he scatters their bodies on the shore. All of the most dramatic moments of conflict with an outside force, Lerer concludes, draw attention to the maintenance of the intact body of the victor over the broken body of the defeated.

B - ‘Nation’ (for this purpose) as defined not by maps or land but as the people and culture.

- Spatial imaginaire, but not the physical boundaries on which Michelet[2] focusses. Not particularly useful for Beowulf (partly for reasons Hiatt points out, but also simply because the rest of the land is not very interesting, with the partial exception of its coast-boundaries).

- Instead, nation is centred on / symbolised by the vivid image of the hall and the bodies within - as Michelet does point out, it is the hall in each instance (whether human or monstrous) that is under the threat of invasion. The invasions into the hall (by Grendel or the dragon) lead to a breakdown in unified social function (Michelet 79).

- Within the hall, imagery is centred on the body and the cultural actions of the body, esp. re. gift-giving (and the throne, the centred position of the leader, is a particular point of threat from both Grendel and dragon). Proximity to the central figure as crucial element in ordered and functioning social space - cf movements of queen within hall bearing cup to guests, etc. (May not be spatial centre if one were to draw a floor plan, but is imagined/conceptual centre.) The absent leader provides space for his replacement with Grendel (Hroðgar leaves the hall in the night, Michelet 92). (note that the den of dragon and Grendel provide a negative image of this)

- Image of nation therefore as the body (esp. that of the leader) within the communal space.

- But centre and boundaries are defined against each other: centre implies boundaries, boundaries necessitate centre (Michelet 10, then 24). Anxiety about definition and establishment of secure boundaries, the point where in becomes out, us becomes them, at which they touch by necessity, the point farthest from centre. How do we define the boundaries? ... monsters!

C - Jeffrey Cohen’s work on the idea of the giant in Anglo-Saxon literature/mythology[3] as a starting point from which to examine the nature of the threat presented by Grendel and his mother. [Firstly: giant tears and eats, is a threat to the body, but also, in its violent exaggerated human form, a threat to unified society] Especially:

- The giant as inhabiter / transgressor of boundaries, of both society and human bodies. Cohen 1-2 re. giant as psychological and cultural delineator of boundaries - extend this to spatially, to the temporal boundaries of beginnings and endings, and also culturally taboo-boundaries like cannibalism: in each instance the physical body and its physical effects are important.

- The giant as originary or causative, particularly in their body, inhabiting some distant past on which the present is built. The broken body of the giant provides origins (cf Gog/Magog, who are thrown into the sea as the dragon is) (p. 9 for Ymir). The giants’ violent acts and boundary-breaking, the damage they visit on bodies and landscape (17), form the origin both of cultures (imaged in the body) and cultural space.

D - Fragmentation of that body

- By consumption or mutilation.

- Maintenance of the intact body = success, vs. consequences of defeat = dismembered body (Grendel, Aescere’s head, etc) - see Seth Lerer. What is at stake in the conflicts, then, is unity vs fragmentation, as conceived in terms of the body.

- He does not point out, however, that each conflict (even Beowulf vs. sea monsters) has one party transgressing the boundaries of the other’s space - one enters to the other and the result is a dismembered body within a violated space. The space itself often shows signs of this violence - the blood bubbling to the surface of the mere is an irrefutable sign of the violence within, and is read as such, although Hrodhgar’s men misread the results of that violence. Crossing the boundary is a defining moment that, like the passage of the Rubicon, commits the intruder to a battle for control of the integrity of the space and the body. Attention is thus drawn to the boundaries and the moment of breaking them.

- Therefore the body (society or the body of its leader) defined / celebrated by challenge to it.

E. Grendel and his mother inhabit and transgress the boundaries of body and nation and thus help to delineate them (Michelet 94-5). The image of the broken body of the giant + intact body of hero (alive or celebrated in his tomb) provides origin, projected back into the past?

- Cohen: fragments of Grendel’s body are elevated as symbols of “a public validation of the control and acceptance of structured society whose antitheses Grendel represents” (24). So the fragments are not only a result of victory, but a sign of it, signalling triumph over the other and a society (and heroic body) whose unity has been affirmed.

- Michelet points out that “The demon’s footsteps provide the spatial transition between the two places” (Heorot and the mere) (80) & treading the grounds defines the limited (107-08). He does not point out that Grendel’s footprints are not merely impressions in the dirt, but marked in blood, signs of the damage to his body and his consequent defeat. Cannot break the boundaries of his space until his body is broken - and once he does, Beowulf breaks his body again.

- Walkers in the wasteland: with their feet, especially the bloody footprints, they mark out and define the boundaries of civilisation.

In expanding this to a proper paper, I'd like to explore further the idea of temporal boundaries - the beginning and ending of nations / things / memory / knowledge. Beowulf and Wiglaf are the last of their people, Beowulf says, and this is signalled by the breakdown of society after Beowulf dies, as if his death and the sundering of social ties shown by the earls’ failure to help him signal the actual end of the Geats as a whole. Beowulf’s body, however, remains: he says that his cairn is to be a signal to later generations, or later ages, far into the future. But there is very little human history, only a few generations back, as if the past can only be accessed by the monsters.

Drawing again on Cohen: the hilt of the sword that Beowulf takes from the mere depicts the giants before the flood, which is where they’re usually found, in some legendary but foundational long-ago. They build, yes, and old stone ruins are often referred to semi-metaphorically in Anglo-Saxon poetry as ‘the work of giants’ (Cohen 11), but other landscape features are also attributed to them. They and their brute strength are used to explain the presence of mountains, lakes, ancient cities, broken rocks, changes wrought long ago before the human nation arrived. In Germanic cosmogonies they predate the material universe, which is fashioned from the corpse of one of them (7).

So giants are originary or causative, particularly in their body, inhabiting some distant past on which the present is built. The broken body of the giant provides origins - Gogmagog is dashed into a thousand pieces and thrown into the sea so that Brutus can found Britain. The dragon, incidentally, meets the same fate - but I don't think we can equate the dragon and the Grendelkin so easily. He seems to me to be a very different creature, especially in terms of how he relates to the beginnings and endings of human civilisations.

Grendel’s fragments possibly provide, for the poem’s audience, a similar imaginative origin in the defeat of the previous inhabitants of the land. The giants’ violent acts and boundary-breaking, the damage they visit on bodies and landscape (Cohen 17), form the origin both of cultures (imaged in the body) and cultural space, but they also demarcate a boundary in time that cannot be crossed by human knowledge: once again, they demarcate the unknowable.

[1] Seth Lerer, ‘Grendel’s Glove’, English Literary History 61 (1994): 721-751. (The glove Grendel wears – ie, the monster as symbolised by his hand and his mouth, Beowulf’s removal of these; Norse traditions of giants’ gloves; Beowulf is ‘a poem of the body’, and victory results in destruction of the body of the defeated.)
[2] Fabienne Michelet, Creation, Migration and Conquest: Imaginary Geography and Sense of Space in Old English Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2006. (Anglo-Saxon conceptions of space; Grendel’s mere and the dragon’s den compared and contrasted to Heorot, Beowulf’s hall, Beowulf’s cairn; demarcations of land boundaries in Beowulf.)
[3] Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ‘Old English Literature and the Work of Giants’, Comitatus 24 (1993): 1-32. (Figure of the giant in Old English literature; debts to Germanic and Latin/Old Testament traditions; psychological function of the monster; figure of Grendel within this tradition.)

Elegies in Binary

2011-02-15T10:42:00.001-05:00

A little cheeky of me, perhaps; but I was reading Lukacs' Theory of the Novel (trans. Anna Bostock, London: Merlin Press, 1963), and felt that his writing was best answered in a medium that can respond fully to his binary worldview. And therefore...

Mr. Lukacs,
I couldn't help but notice that your code seemed a little faulty, and was throwing up some awkward errors in unexpected places. I have taken the liberty of extracting the source code and reading through it, and believe I have located some of its weak points.

Your first problem is a simple typo. On line [page] 30 you have written:

if(epic = "homer")

rather than

if(epic == "homer")

["... no one has ever equalled Homer, nor even approached him - for, strictly speaking, his works alone are epics..." (30)]

As you know, of course, if(epic == "homer") reads 'if the value of the variable epic is equal to the string "homer", while epic = "homer" sets the value of epic to "homer". One considers the current value, the other defines a new one. This holds true even within an 'if' expression, so in checking the value, you appear to have inadvertently set it to have that and always that value from that line on. This, of course, greatly reduces the flexibility of your code later.

I do recognise that this part of your code has been copy/pasted from that of Webmeister Hegel; but even great coders can make typos, and once you incorporate them into your own work you take responsibility for them.

Secondly, in this same early stage, you seem to fall into the trap of setting up all your arrays in simple binary form, so that you end up with a series of arrays with only two elements each. Eg, ({"world", "self"}), ({answer, question}), ({"wholeness", "fragmentation"}), ({"interior", "exterior"}), ({"Greeks", "us"}), ({epic, novel}), ({old, modern}). There is, of course, nothing wrong with this in itself; but arrays can support more than two elements at a time, Mr Lukacs, and some of the situations you consider could do with more than a simple choice between 0 and 1.

Moreover, I feel that you do not need quite so many arrays as you have here. The first elements of all the arrays I have noted above are all almost synonymous with each other, defined only against the second element, their relationship to each other left barely coherent. Perhaps you could use fewer arrays if you clarified these relationships?

For example, you elide "Greeks" with "Homer", and "Homer's world" with "the Greek world", and "Homer" with "epic" (although see above). However, you also consider "Plato" and "Greek tragedy" as an indistinguishable part of this Greek world, particularly in your opening chapter, which overloads your definition of "epic" to the point of meaninglessness, at least insofar as it may be used to define a genre.

Perhaps "epic" should be an array instead of a variable?

The same determination to reduce all your code into binary also leads you to this declaration:

if(year < modernity) { genre = "epic"; }
else { genre = "novel"; }

["... the epic had to disappear and yield its place to an entirely new form: the novel." (41)]

Now, given you have defined what precedes modernity only as "Greek", and the true epic only as "Homer", this does seem to leap somewhat precipitously over the intervening years. Dante is by no means the only tripwire between these two trees; and though you do strive to accommodate him, he cannot ultimately be fully reconciled with your argument, as you never quite redeclare the array ({"epic", "novel"}) to include a third element, "dante".

Of course, if you were to include a third element, you would be obliged to add exceptions in every other instance where you have assumed that the array has only two elements. You would also need to master not only the if/else structure, but the if/else if/else. For example, if we allow "dante" to stand as the name of the genre for now:

if(year < mediaeval) { genre = "epic"; }
else if(year < modernity && year > mediaeval) { genre = "dante"; }
else { genre = "novel"; }

However, this will quickly become messy if you want to add more exceptions, and is ultimately an extended form of binary. May I suggest instead the use of switch(), into which you can incorporate as many gradations along a continuum as you like? Eg (assuming year is a number):

switch(year) {
   case ..-500: # Less than or equal to -500
   period = "pre-classical";
   break;
   case -501..0: # Between -501 and 0
   period = "classical";
   break;
   case 1..500:
   genre = "late classical";
   break;
   case 501..1500:
   genre = "mediaeval";
   break;
   case 1501..1800:
   genre = "early modern";
   break;
   case 1801..: # Greater than or equal to 1801.
   genre = "modern";
   break;
}

And so forth. You might also consider using strings instead of ints, for a little more subtlety and complexity. Instead of providing simply for -500..0, 1501..1800, and so on, you could instead consider tragedy, comedy, history, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, tragical-comical-historical-pastoral, scene individable, and poem unlimited. And of course, you may also define a default case for those works that just refuse to fit in anywhere else.

Now of course, the basic assumption and assertion behind binary is that 1 != 0 and 0 != 1. There is a fundamental and unbridgeable gap between them. Your "modernity" is, accordingly, defined by the fact that is is not "the age of the epic": although these never appear in the same array, they appear to be your ultimate 1 and 0. Your opening paean makes it clear that your world, your modernity, is defined not only by the separation of interior from exterior, of the world from meaning, but by a longing for a state in which this separation did not exist - in which there was only 0, not 1 - which you call the time of the epic.

It follows, therefore, that you would create this 0 if it did not already exist; that it is very likely modernity, feeling this lack in itself, would try to create it somewhere - in the past, if nowhere else. Feeling your wholeness fragmented, you have created an inaccessible whole, and simultaneously pushed it back behind an unbridgeable gap of time. If 0 did not exist, you would invent it, and it would tell us little about Homer and his work and a good deal about you.

Personally, I like the number 6. It brightens the place up.

Beowulf and the intimidated critic

2011-01-19T17:49:00.002-05:00

I confess it: I have been avoiding Beowulf.

Now, of course, as soon as I confessed this to myself, I had to jump in and volunteer to present in the first of two classes in which we will discuss Beowulf in our 'Mediaeval (As) Epic' class - ie, in two weeks, which makes me the first seminar presentation overall. Despite my rational mind saying 'oh, you should probably go for one of the later Anglo-Norman epics, 12th or maybe 13th century, that way you can double up your theory with your thesis, which, may I remind you, you are writing this semester'. Because Beowulf is the behemoth, the Hamlet-scale terror, at the mention of which everything in me retreats to huddle behind a defensive barrier of 'oh, I work in the late Middle Ages, no, I have no opinion on Beowulf, that would require reading reams and reams of lifetimes' works of scholarship, also I do not speak Old English, no, please, do not get me fascinated by Old English, I don't have time'.

So of course I have now put myself in the position where I have to have an opinion by next week. Oh well.

The course is on the concept of epic, and we seem so far to be leaning towards discussion of the later appropriation of that concept, particularly for nationalistic purposes, which accords with the secondary reading for that week (largely nation and romanticism in the 19th and early 20th centuries). And there I can double up on theory with my thesis, in terms of the opportunistic (re)construction of 'history'. I much suspect that my key terms will be not only 'nationalism' and 'alterity' but also 'borders' and 'fragmentation' - as that will be a topic of discussion later when we reach Raoul de Cambrai - and thus - Grendel! March-reaver and literal object of fragmentation!

And this, of course, means that I have an excuse to read J. J. Cohen. This is always a treat.

Fight those cliches, people!

2010-11-28T16:53:00.000-05:00

This is a post of great insight and depth and moment, in which I say ‘hey, look, something interesting’.

A few points of interest in this Middle English Yorkshire (?) chronicle, from c. 1327 (it goes up to the coronation of Edward III)! Quite aside from the fact that it seems unaware of the (supposed) murder of Edward II in September of that year, I suspect an early date due to its entire failure to adhere to the expected narrative pattern for the last few years of Edward II’s reign.

(All quotes are by line number from Caroline Eckhardt’s EETS edition – Castleford’s Chronicle, or The Boke of Brut, EETS 305-6 (1996), volume 2 of 2.)

For a start, the Despensers are not mentioned once in the narration of the civil war (well, skirmishes) of 1321-22. Despite the fact that they are the main point of contention (or the symbol of it) between the barons and Edward, and that contemporary chronicles habitually just blame them for the whole. Unless they are pro-Edward, in which case it’s either all deeply unfortunate, or Lancaster’s fault. But that’s not the case here – the chronicler is not too fond of Edward, and Lancaster is referred to (at least in the rubrics, although they could be scribal rather than authorial) as “Saynt Thomas” (39320). It’s uncertain whether the author would have participated in the martyr-cult language, as there is a very inconvenient folio missing between the capture of Lancaster at Boroughbridge and the invasion of Isabella in 1326, but in the text as it stands there is no overt sanctification of Lancaster – he’s merely the leader of the barons, and his virtues are not extolled above those of any of the others.

So, no Lancaster-villain or (probably) Lancaster-martyr, and very little Despensers. Possibly the Despensers were mentioned in the height of their power between 1322 and 1326, but, missing folio. When the Despensers are mentioned... well, here’s the real surprise. They aren’t villains.

In Bristoln, Huge Spenser þe alde,
In Bristol, Hugh Despenser the elder
So noble a knight hade bene and balde,
[Who] had been a knight so noble and bold,
Wi3 horses draghen, his domes slik,
[Was sentenced to be] drawn by horses, his doom/sentence being such
And siþen his heide of to strik.
And then his head to be struck off.
And Huge Spenser, þe yonger knight,
And Hugh Despenser, the younger knight,
For he in lande bare him noght right,
Because he in the land behaved not rightly
Sum men said, wrang consail[d]e the kynge,
Some men said, counselled the king ill
Þai dampnede him to draugh [and] hyng,
They damned/sentenced him to draw and hang…
(Castleford’s Chronicle, 39376-383)

This comes in the context of the author’s account of the “ful grefe suffrede þat tim” by all the supporters of Edward II. It is, in fact, almost sympathetic. And, although the chronicler is not entirely sure whether young Hugh’s character is entirely spotless, he isn’t the evil evil villain of evil scheming doom that he so often becomes, and the chronicler even praises the knighthood of the older Hugh.

The chronicler goes on to tell, with equal sympathy, of the deaths of Edward II’s other principle pillars at this time: Arundel, Baldock and Bishop Walter Stapelton of Exeter. The first two were executed by Isabella (no mention is made in this chronicle of Mortimer, unless it is in that missing folio), but, upon the news of Edward’s capture, Stapelton was killed by a London mob before Isabella even approached the city. Doubtless he would have been executed anyway, but as it was, the queen was not directly responsible for his death. Interestingly, however, this chronicle makes no distinction between execution (however doubtful its legality) and mob violence. ‘Death came to each of these five men in these ways’, it says, rather than ‘four of these men were executed and the Londoners rose up against the fifth’. The manner of each is narrated as if all stemmed from a common cause.

Þe bishop of Excestre, Walter,
The Bishop of Exeter, Walter,
Þat was þe kynges tresorer,
Who was the king’s treasurer
In London, at þe strete of Chepe,
In London, on Cheapside
Smote of his heide, noght els to threpe,
His head [was] smote off, with no further ado,
Amanges rascaile of þe cite,
Among the rabble of the city
And oþer wele fele wi3 him to se.
And others very many with him to be seen.
(Castleford’s Chronicle, 39396-401)

And, for completion, the chronicler’s summary of Edward II’s character. Note that crop failure during his reign is entirely an aspect of his character as king. Poor Edward.

Þis Edwarde, als anens his lede,
This Edward, as regards his rule,
Was wis of worde ande fole in dede.
Was wise in word and fool in deed.
Ek he was ful vngraciouse man,
Also he was a full ungracious man, [lit. lacking God’s grace; possible connotations ‘unnatural’, ‘wretched’, ‘wicked’]
Wel ner in alle þinges he bigan;
Well near in all things he undertook;
He gaf him, þof it semede no3 wele,
He devoted himself, though it did not appear well,
To al kins werke manuele.
To all kinds of manual work.
Durande alle his daise wel ner
During almost all his days [as king]
Chepinge of al kins corn was dere,
Purchase of all kinds of grain was expensive,
Feldes failede, vngre was grete,
Fields failed, hunger was great,
Poueraile diede for defaute of mete,
The poor died for lack of food,
Morin of men, of bestes alsua,
[There was] widespread death among mean, and beasts also,
Alle Englande in contek and wa,
All England [was] in discord and woe,
Alle Englande in contek and strife,
All England [was] in discord and strife,
Na pes stabliste durande his lif.
He established no peace during his life.
(Castleford’s Chronicle, 39412-425)

Modes of perception or stylistic conventions?

2010-11-16T18:22:00.001-05:00

My supervisor recommended me last week a book that he finds has received less attention than it deserves, partly because it is awkwardly titled for its contents: William Brandt’s The Shape of Medieval History: Studies in Modes of Perception (London: Yale UP, 1966). I have found myself alternately fascinated and frustrated by it.

Brandt argues that mediaeval clerical writers lacked any concept of causal correlation, that a basic characteristic of mediaeval modes of perception was that events or objects stood in isolation as entities in themselves. Consequently events, not processes, are the basic units of mediaeval history writing. Rather than a chronicles being true narratives, or even continua, they were ‘written as collections of incidents or events... the clerical chronicler simply did not see a basic continuity of action’ (85-6). In Brandt’s analysis, the events that form the basic units of the chronicle are included as if no context existed, unrelated either by the chronicler’s awareness of an underlying process or cause, or by any kind of ‘temporal dimensions’: each stands alone, ‘one particular instant in time’ (66).

Brandt’s ideas are fascinating and thought-provoking, and some of them I find very productive. In particular, given my area of study, I am happily toying with his conclusion that the world perceived by mediaeval clerical writers [Footnote: Or, as I prefer to restrict it, the world as it is organised in the chronicles of said writers.] was ‘non-temporal... Our modern feeling for time is a function of our feeling for process; time is the means of continual change. The discrete and self-contained character of action as perceived by the medieval clerk meant that the world could not be perceived as process’ (171). There are some productive ideas here. I do agree with him that the mediaeval concept of time does seem to involve a fundamental division into discrete units, although I’d add that all of these seem to bear the same relationship to each other, and can therefore function as proximate examples (for example, an incident from antiquity may be used as an example that reflects on an incident in 1274).

Where I quibble with Brandt is not over his analyses of mediaeval historical writing, but in his insistence that the results of his analysis reveal some basic mediaeval ‘mode of perception’. Brandt sets out to find some kind of mindset or perceptive frame that he might characterise as recognisably mediaeval, and he believes he finds it in certain structural characteristics of some of the most typical late-mediaeval chronicles. While the search itself may be a worthy one, it seems to have led him to exaggerate the significance of his findings. He applies the phrase ‘fundamentally antitemporal’ not to a particular style of writing, but to the mind that produces it (93).

Brandt attributes the wide variety of material and the resulting lack of narrative flow in universalising chronicles to this inability to perceive causal relationships between situations. While acknowledging that Matthew Paris seems to have been aware of the irrelevance (impertinentia) of certain of his material to what Brandt interprets as his main subject, Brandt denies that, for Matthew or his contemporaries, it could have been a major criterion in selecting that material:

When we say that something is relevant to something else, we ordinarily mean that there is a causal relationship between them. Lacking in great measure the perception of relationships, the medieval chronicler who took his work seriously, as Matthew certainly did, was hard put to know what was relevant and what was not. (47)

Although it may be a result of unfortunate phrasing, Brandt seems to imply that Matthew was conscious of a debilitating lack in his perceptual tool box which complicated his task. This seems unlikely, as a recognised intellectual lack is easily remedied. In any case, the supposition that the mediaeval mind was so hampered by its inability to recognise causal correlations as to be unable to distinguish between relevance and irrelevance is easily disproved: think genres as diverse as analyses of vices and virtues, legal treatises, mirrors for princes, and many chronicles whose scope is more specific than Matthew’s.

Brandt seems himself to be hampered by a particular mode of perception, at least as it relates to the purpose of historical writing. This is illustrated by the falsity of his supposition in comparing Matthew’s perception of relevance to the conceptual decisions that a modern historian might make in planning out a work. An historian nowadays has the luxury of selection: any material omitted may reasonably be expected to exist elsewhere in easily accessible form. We have the luxury of structuring our work around a process or an argument. We may choose a process, argue it and select the events to fit. Matthew Paris, however, is not telling a story or arguing a process, but recording events. From his point of view it is probably better that any particular event be given the benefit of the doubt in the question of inclusion – who knows whether it will be recorded elsewhere? And if it is, there is no guarantee that it will ever be available to any of his particular readers. Once such a wide variety of material is admitted, a chronological structure is likely to be more coherent than any attempt at narrative ordered by topic (as Brandt himself points out, 46). This does not mean that Matthew (or his contemporaries) was not capable of telling a story, shaping the narrative and the events to fit. The Fineshade chronicler, for example, does exactly that. [Footnote: Granted, the Fineshade chronicle is what Brandt would call an occasional chronicle, as opposed to the universalising chronicles of Matthew Paris; but if this ‘mode of perception’ were indeed as fundamental to the structure of mediaeval thinking and writing as Brandt claims, that would make no difference.]

Brandt seems throughout to view the work of the mediaeval historian through his ideas of what a modern one ought to write, which reveal themselves from time to time as condescension, fascination or mild frustration. For example, in discussing the aristocratic chronicle, he remarks as if wonderingly that ‘it aims to celebrate, not to explain, the actions with which it is concerned. An explanation that may occur along the way is never the point of the narrative’ (88). There is no reason, outside of Brandt’s expectations, why Matthew Paris, or Jean le Bel, or Sir Thomas Gray, should make explanation the ‘point’ of their writing. The mediaeval chronicle, after all, is descended from (and existed concurrently with) simple annalistic lists of events, with no commentary or expansion at all.

I would prefer to account for the lack of explanatory context in another way. Although I agree that mediaeval modes of perception doubtless differed widely from ours, in ways that still call for exploration, I would rather pin this particular difference not to authorial perception, but to modes of reading.

The mediaeval intellectual mind was well-accustomed to glossing, to extrapolating larger meaning from single points, to reading significance in juxtaposition or similarity. There is literal glossing, of course, in which the bare text of (say) a work of Augustine’s was expected to travel with one or more levels of interpretive gloss, which leant it several layers of (sometimes mutually contradictory) reading. The Bible was expected to be accompanied by the Glossa Ordinaria. Images, too, could provide a kind of gloss. An image on a page, though not directly illustrating the text, may on reflection emphasise or alter one’s reading of that same text. Texts were intended to be considered and re-considered, each page to be contemplated. A reader is, then, in the habit of taking on a certain burden of interpretation. The interpretation is naturally guided by the reader’s own cultural paraphernalia. If his (or occasionally her) copy of Mark’s Gospel lacked the Glossa, he would nevertheless have the intellectual apparatus to, say, produce a reasonable allegorical reading of a given passage, or read the appearance of a certain animal in terms of its usual symbolic significance.

In a similar fashion, in a chronicle – especially a local one – a list of events may perhaps be expected to function effectively as an aide-memoire. Exact sequences of events and dates may be forgotten, and so are recorded as the basic skeletal structure of memory. Memory’s flesh, however, the emotional weight and drama behind a certain event, or its significance to a given community – the shared cultural heart of it, in short – may be expected to come to mind far more easily, especially when prompted by the bone-like facts. Writing in Ramsey Abbey, where the death toll included the abbot, it may not be necessary to say more of 1349 than ‘hoc anno fuit magna pestilencia hominum’: anyone reading it knows what that means, fundamentally, in human terms. The year may slip one’s mind, but not its horror, whether one lived through it or not.

In this analogy, chronicle would function as text and internalised cultural memory as gloss. The gloss is an important element in correctly reading the text, although it may be implicit rather than spelt out. Brandt, I feel, goes too far in problematising the absence of an explicit authorial interpretative presence in the chronicles he examines. He frets over the lack of a connecting narrative in Matthew’s account of the conflicts between Henry III and the church, finding that the chronicler sees ‘only a series of events… The things that make these struggles intelligible for a modern reader – the church–state controversy, for instance – were invisible to Matthew’ (76).

Can a man of Matthew’s sense and intellectual curiosity have been blind to the tension between church and state whose manifestations he so enthusiastically records? Perhaps instead we should say that they were not only visible, but so very obvious that he had no need to explain them.

The Page left Blank: the rest of MS BL Additional 54184.

2010-10-15T01:14:00.028-04:00

When, probably in the late 1330s, the scribe of Ramsey Abbey finished copying what he had of Murimuth’s chronicle – up to 1334 – he had a few folios left in his quire. He, or someone with a similar hand, ruled up the remaining pages (ff 144v-146r) for an annal, assigning a year to each line – enough for very short notices. There is a broad margin to the left of the year, which became used for notices regarding the Abbey, with the main column to the right for notices on national events. It’s an impressive statement, bold in its very carelessness: he simply filled the next 4 pages with dates, down to 1478.

It seems not to have occurred to him that Ramsey might not, by that year, be using this book, or not be in a position to uphold and maintain its tradition of chronicle-keeping, for well over a hundred years into the future. Ramsey the Golden, she had been called, one of the very richest and most powerful monasteries in England once upon a time. And, if the expenses incurred by two of the early-fourteenth-century abbots, and the Great Famine and subsequent economic downturn, and the changing climate in England with regards to piety and attitudes towards monastic institutions, had perhaps tarnished her splendour a little, she was still Ramsey, one of the great Benedictine monasteries of the Fenlands, heir to a proud and ongoing tradition of scholarship.

But those pages were barely used. There are only a handful (sorry!) of hands there, jotting down – often some time after the event – those events that one always records as the turn of an age: the deaths and accessions of abbots and kings. And the very first entry written, in a mid-late 14C hand, is for 1349: “Hoc anno fuit magna pestilencia hominum”.

Looking at that entry, I was suddenly very personally moved, in a way that’s rare when I’m wearing my scholarly hat. There are notices of the changes of abbot in the left margin, but they were written later – much later, as the same hand (and the same ink) has written all the notices of the changes of abbot until that in 1395. And he got the first wrong. He puts the death of Abbot Robert Nassyngton in 1347. But he didn’t die in 1347 – he died in 1349, of the plague. Whoever wrote the notice of the plague was looking at the same page that I was – a little less faded, the leaves a little less stiff - but it was empty of entries.

All the page held, when this monk was looking at it, was the frame, the shape of the years to come optimistically marching on into the future, the ruling of the page as rigorously structured as the foundations of the Abbey itself - but blank. This monk, whoever he was, had lived through the plague. Ramsey was hit hard: I don’t have the numbers by me, but I do remember seeing a chart of their food expenses over this decade, and there is a dramatic plunge right there.

He also knew it wasn’t an isolated event. He wrote a notice for 1361: “Hoc anno fuit secunda pestilencia hominum.” Such a little phrase for something so catastrophic. The turn of an age indeed, even if not in a way that anyone might have thought to date by previously. The future was uncertain, and very different to whatever the original scribe had anticipated.

I transcribed the rest of the notices, because they were brief and easy and I had the time. For anyone who’s interested, I have included them below.

Incidentally, I find it curious that all the notices of the deaths and elections of abbots are in the left margin, while all the space in the main column is left empty except on the rare occasion of a national event worthy of recording. And it’s not simply a matter of secular events being on one side and monastic on the other. The left margin does function as a margin, not a narrower column – the notices are not simply written to the left of the date, but referenced with a lemma, a symbol by the date that corresponds with a symbol by the note. Essentially, they’re like today’s footnotes. The monastic events are literally marginalised, curious for a centre of power like Ramsey.

Transcription follows. Underlining indicates an expanded abbreviation. {text} indicates the bracketed text is faded or almost obscured by a stain. ^text^ indicates a superlinear insertion. *text* indicates that text is written over an erasure (by the same hand unless otherwise stated). I’ve only labelled the hands that recur.

f. 144v

1342. Hoc anno Symon de / Eya obiit. Et Rober-/tus de Nassyngtonne / abbas efficitur. [“In this year Simon de Eye died, and Robert of Nassyngton was made abbot.” Added by lemma, outer margin. Similar to hand B, probably identical (B has gothic elements that appear self-conscious and not entirely consistent, which may account for the differences between this notice and the others by B).]

1347. Hoc anno obijt Robertus Nassyng-/tonne abbas. & Ricardus Schenyngtonne abbas / efficitur. [Lemma, outer margin. Hand B. NB: date is incorrect, should be ‘49.]

1349. Hoc anno fuit magna pestilencia hominum. [“In this year was the great pestilence of men.” Main column. Hand A.]

1361. Hoc anno fuit secunda pestilencia hominum. [“In this year was the second pestilence of men.” Main column. Hand A.]

f 145r

1377. Hoc anno Edwardus tercius ^rex^ obijt cuit suc-/cessit Ricardus *filius eduuardi principis*. [“In this year ^King^Edward III died, to whom succeeded Richard son of Prince Edward”. Main column, two lines, both connected by a line to the date. Hand C (similarities with hand A). The correction over the erasure is by D, a very different hand using paler ink.]

1378. Hoc an/no Ricardus Sche/nyngtonne ab-/bas obijt . & / Edmundus /Elyngtoni / abbas effi-/citur. [Lemma, left margin. Hand B.]

1395. Hoc anno obijt / Edmundus / Elyngtoni ab-/bas. & Thomas / Boterwyke / abbas efficitur. [Lemma, left margin. Hand B. He (or a later hand) has also drawn a text box around these notices of abbot changes in the shape of a scroll. The ink is yellower than the text. Someone else has done similarly on the following pages.]

1399. Hoc anno *R Ricardus rex obijt sine liberis*. / cui successit henricus quartus in regnum. [Added in the margin: per conquestum.] [“In this year King Richard died without issue. Henry IV succeeded him to the kingdom (by conquest)”. Main column, two lines, underwritten with a single line which loops up to connect to the year. Hand C; amendments (over erasure and in margin) by D.]

1412. *H*oc anno ob*ijt* henricus quartus rex. cui successit henricus .vtus. in regnum [Main column, in a small hand to fit on one line.]

1415. [Lemma in margin + “hoc anno”, matching lemma by date over an erasure of three lines, but entry not completed. Possibly same hand as previous, sample too small to say.]

f. 145v

1419. Hoc anno obijt Thomas /Boterwyke abb. Et E-/lectus est Johannes Tyche-/merche in abbatem. [Lemma, left margin. Small hand, E.]

1421. Hoc anno obijt henricus quartus rex [sic]. cui successit henricus .vj. [Main column. Possibly E – same ink. Differences may be accounted for by limited space available for previous notice.]

1429. xxxix / x [Probatio pennae. Main column.]

1434. Hoc anno obijt Johannes Ty-/chemerch abbas & / Johannes Crolande / abbas efficitur. [Lemma, left margin.]

1436. Hoc anno o Johannes / Croyland abbas / & Johannes Stow / abbas efficitur. [Lemma, left margin.]

f. 146r

1460. Hoc anno fuit bellum apud norha{mtoniam} [Lemma in left margin, note at top of page. Edge of leaf damaged and blackened, so place name partly obscured.]

1461. Hoc anno Eduuardus quartus coronatur. [“In this year Edward IV was crowned”. Note the lack of mention of Henry VI – there is absolutely no form for this! Main column.]

1468. Hoc anno octavo decimo die augusti Dominus Johannes Stow / abbas huius locis propter inbesillitatem [sic] corporis ^suis^ resig-/nauit baculum pastoralem manus domini. Iohannes Schad-/worth episcopi Lincolniensis. Et. v. die septembris id est in die / sancti bertinis abbatis Electus fuit dominus Willelmus Wyttyl-/sey in abbatem. Et in vigilia sancti quintini / fuit stallatus [sic] littera dominicalis. v. ["In this year on the 18th day of August the Abbot of this place, lord John Stow, on account of the weakness of ^his^ body, resigned his pastoral crook into the hands of lord John Shadworth Bishop of Lincoln. And on the 5th day of September, that is on the day of Saint Bertin the Abbot lord William Whittlesea was elected Abbot." Main column, ignoring the horizontal ruled lines – paragraph-style, with a dash from first line to year. Small hand, cursive elements. Final sentence added in different hand.]

Annales Tres Seu Quattor Chronicarum: On MS BL Add. 54184.

2010-10-14T04:23:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, after poring over it in the manuscripts room of the British Library, I gathered my courage and sent an email to their manuscripts department about MS Additional 54184, suggesting an amendment to its catalogue listing.

Add. 54184 is a manuscript of (mostly) the second quarter of the fourteenth century, from the great old monastery of Ramsey in Cambridgeshire. As it stands, it presents a history of England from her mythic origins to the (then) present day. Rather than composing their own, Ramsey used the Historia Anglorum of Henry of Huntingdon up to the death of King Stephen (1135, ff. 1-48v), the Annales Sex Regum of Nicholas Trevet up to the death of Edward I (1307, ff. 49r-130v) and – according to the British Library’s catalogue – Adam Murimuth’s Continuatio Chronicarum from the ascension of Edward II (1307) to the election of Pope Benedict XII in 1334 (131r-144r):

Murimuth's full Chronicle covers the period 1303-1347. The present text, headed 'Incipiunt Annales Regis Edwardi filii Regis Edwardi . . .', is very similar to that printed in E. Maunde Thompson, ed., Adam Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum, Rolls Series (1889), pp. 3-219. Entries for 1307-1308 are different and much fuller in the present MS., which is not listed by Maunde Thompson, than in the Rolls Series version. A. Hall, who published the text under the title Adami Murimuthensis Chronicon (1721) was aware of the existence of the MS. in the posession [sic] of the Earl of Cardigan, but does not use the fuller 1307-1308 material in his version.

And there is a good reason that he didn’t (whether he knew it or not). The years 1307-1308 (ff. 131r-133r) are not Murimuth. Even if this were the only extant witness to them, that fact alone (in a chronicle so much copied ) would suggest that the author was a monk at Ramsey (or the author of Ramsey’s exemplar) rather than Murimuth. It would, in that case, be an interesting appendix to an edition of Murimuth – particularly as it is very full, very detailed, and very colourful in its language (in complete contrast to Murimuth’s usual style) – but one could hardly ascribe authorship to him.

But, in fact, this is not the only extant witness to this text. It’s actually the Annales Paulini for those years, the annals of St Paul’s in London, which Bishop Stubbs published as part of the Rolls Series in the 1880s. And that accounts for it being so well-informed about the London events – the coronation, in particular, is so detailed that I was seriously wondering (on my first quick read-through) if the Abbot had been a guest, and if so, how (given he died in 1314, if memory serves) he had managed to pass on such an anecdotal account to his monks that it was remembered in great detail in (at earliest) the mid- to late- 1330s. And even that wouldn’t account for the degree of geographic and locational specificity in the account, which sounds very much like a Londoner’s (as, of course, it is).

So I was reading it, becoming more and more incredulous about the idea of it being derived from Ramsey, and becoming increasingly sure that I’d read it before somewhere, when I came across the line “In omnem igitur terram exijt rumor iste / quod Rex plus amaret hominem magum malificum quam sponsam suam” (f. 132r ll. 21-22) - “And therefore across all the land arose this rumour, that the king loved an evil male sorcerer more than he did his wife”. And I said to myself, “Ah. THAT chronicle”.

So I checked it more thoroughly against Stubbs’ version, and found it is word-for-word the same, save for the opening sentence and some shuffling at the end of 1308, and the occasional scribal variants – preferring a few odd constructions of the perfect stem, and, entertainingly, amending Gaveston from being “poten[s]” (powerful) in the realm of England to “puten[s]” (stinking) in the realm of England. Which, I have to say, is entirely in character for language used by the chronicler elsewhere.

And so I daringly emailed the manuscripts department and suggested they mention the presence of a short extract from the Annales Paulini in the catalogue (mentioning the folio numbers and corresponding page numbers in Stubbs). We shall see what they think.

Thomas the fugitive, run to ground

2010-09-20T09:32:00.039-04:00

Well. Not quite. But I know where he was in February 686 years ago. That counts for something, right?

So, part of trying to understand the history and composition of a manuscript I'm working on involves tracing the Engayne family and trying to ascertain just what they were doing in the Lancastrian rebellion of 1321-22. John Engayne, the head of the family, was the patron of the priory that wrote the chronicle, and it's probably safe to say that he (or his heir of the same name - he died sometime in the second half of 1322[1]) gave the priory the documents which it appended to that chronicle, and (most likely) contributed to their opinions, knowledge and loyalties about the events in question. Unfortunately, I can't say for certain that he even participated. However.

Going through the Patent Rolls, I find passing references to various other members of the family - mostly uninformative notices such as their signatures as witness on various grants and so forth, not enough to say which Engaynes were about at the time, especially since many of them shared names. But even without knowing which is which, many of the references are suggestive. In 1326, for example, while Edward is a little busy with a certain invasion, two different Engaynes are among those listed as committing acts of violence against the lands of men who are away in the King's company, armed in his service. There are similar moments leading up to the battle of Boroughbridge in 1322. Nothing that one could cite as definite evidence of the activities of John Engayne, but certainly suggestive of the loyalties of some other members of his family.

However, I am most fond of one Thomas Engayne. I have no idea how he is related to the others, but I like him most of all because he is absent from the Fineshade manuscript. Absent, that is, from the list at the end of the chronicle of those who have fled overseas following Boroughbridge, even though the only other extant witness of this list includes his name. Omission, possibly, but is it likely that one could accidentally forget to copy the name of one's patron's family?

Sadly, I could find nothing more about this Thomas - until yesterday.

January 30, 1323. Stow Park. Writ of aid for John le Barber, Andrew Roskyn and Richard de Mereworth appointed to arrest Nicholas de la Beche, knight, Jakemin de Darynton, John de Hereford, parson of the church of Depeden, Robert de la Lee, Walter de Brawode, John de Goldyngton, knight, Thomas Rocelyn, knight, Robert de Burter, John de Rothyng and Thomas de Engayne. By K. (Edward II vol. 4, p. 238)

He's back in the country! And they don't want him. The Engaynes, by the way, have a manor at Darington, so there is a connection there with at least one of the other knights in company with him.

I thought I would hear no more about this fugitive band, but apparently they were more sneaky than expected! Almost a year later, they are still at large, and their hunter is very belatedly uncovering their tracks:

January 6, 1324. Henley. Writ of aid for John de Weston, commissioned to arrest Walter de Lutz, now prior of Bermundeseye, Bartholomew de Whytsand, his fellow monk, Jacominus Darynoun called James de Darynton [Jakemin from the previous writ?] and Percival his brother, and Peter de Mountmartyn, brother of Sir Ponsard de Mountmartyn and Thomas Rosselyn and Thomas Dengayn; it having been found by inquisition made by John de Weston and Hamo de Chigwell that the said prior and his fellow monks Bartholomew de Whytsand and Godfrey de London had received the said Jacominus, Percival and Peter and other persons adherents of the rebels, and especially of Thomas Rosselyn and Thomas Dengayn, knights, in the priory of Bermundeseye, co. Surrey, and aided them from the feast of St. Nicholas 16 Edward II [6 December 1322], until Shrovetide [8 February 1323], when they permitted them to go away at the expense and mounting of the said prior. By K. (Edward II vol. 4, p. 358.)

This sounds like the stuff of a Walter Scott novel. Roving bands of fugitive knights, outlawed for their part in fighting for the cause of (today's flavour of) justice, hunted by authorities, sheltered in secret by small, sympathetic convents. Just don't mention that little cote you raided for poultry (and/or women) last Sunday.

[1] He died sometime during that regnal year, ie, between July 1322 and June 1323, but we have a presentation dated January 4 1323 of a new rector to a church in his estate, performed by Edward II because John Engayne is dead and his heir is underage. I think it's probably safe to say that he didn't die on January 1, 2 or 3.

Slippery stories

2010-08-25T22:22:00.026-04:00

Stories are supple things. They are far more (in many senses) than fact: they twist into myth and retrospect and drama and allegory as occasion demands. Sometimes they evolve by deliberate choices made by retellers, but mostly by shifts in emphasis, an embroidery here and there - or an error that just seems to fit.

I'm currently working on (among other things) a small, early 14C chronicle collection from the priory of Fineshade, which Cotton bound with a few other contemporary historical works to form Cotton Cleopatra D IX. The Fineshade manuscript contains transcripts of a few letters associated with Thomas of Lancaster's 1322 rebellion against Edward II, and a short chronicle of a few thousand words, written a year or two later (so before the deposition in 1327), narrating Edward II's reign in retrospect, as a story culminating in the events of 1322. The chronicler is not always correct in his facts, especially for the early years - he's far more accurate as he approaches the rebellion. However, where he errs, he errs in favour of improving the story.

For example, this author has the date of the Earl of Gloucester's death wrong. Gloucester died in 1295 (from memory), but here he dies after Edward II's accession, in the midst of the shower of ill-advised gifts that Edward is busy bestowing on Piers Gaveston, just so that Edward can also gift him Gloucester's daughter (Edward's niece) in marriage. This fits into the carefully structured 'gift crescendo' - royal money and treasure, then money and treasure extorted by taxes, then a wife of royal blood, then the earldom of Cornwall, all capped with a proverb about what sudden accession of power and riches does to a man's head. Gloucester’s death immediately preceding the betrothal, and perhaps acting as a catalyst for it, also fits with the theme of flouting the wishes of the dead patriarch. Just as Edward seems destined to ‘throw away’ all that his father gained, no sooner is Gloucester’s daughter Margaret left alone by the death of her father than the man who ought to have replaced him as her protector – her uncle the king - ‘wastes’ her on an upstart Gascon. There is probably also an implied parallel here between Margaret and the treasures “safely stowed [in the Tower] by his ancestors, so long ago that memory has faded”[1], which were also (according to this writer) given carelessly away to Gaveston.

The story, in this writer's hands, becomes a cohesive piece of literature in which the flaws that concern him most in Edward II's character are evident from his early years and provide the cause of all that comes after. They are even prophesied by Edward I before his death. The figures of Gaveston and Despenser stand less as players in their own right than as reflections (or strategic deflections?) of these crucial flaws in the king's character, embodying the financial mismanagement - first by inappropriate generosity and increasingly by violence - that in the view of this writer characterised Edward's reign.
There is also a more specific and interesting example of the evolution of a story in this manuscript which I think the writer did not intend. I should mention at this point that fragments of the collection, the chronicle among them, were published in the 1930s by George Haskins in Speculum and the EHR[2], but that, in examining the microfilm, I'm finding myself correcting Haskins far more often than I would have expected for a few pages of chronicle[3]. There are, of course, some matters of opinion - but one of them, I really wish he'd commented on. Here's an image:

Full sentence, with abbreviations expanded into italics: "Quod rex ut audiuit grauiter mouebatur in animo & peticionem imporor[sic]-/tunam ferens indignanter ips?m ad terram deiecit pedibus que conculcauit dicens / totam regionem anglicanam per ipsum fore amittendam" - "And hearing that, the king was greatly moved in his soul and, taking the importunate petition, flung ? indignantly to the earth and trampled it with his feet, saying that he [his son] would give away the whole of the realm of England.

This is early in the story, and it is what looks like a popular (and probably oft-repeated) myth of Edward II's early years. A better-known version of it is in the continuation of Walter of Guisborough's chronicle. We know that Prince Edward went to his father and asked him to grant the county of Ponthieu to Piers[4], that Edward I was rather displeased and refused, and that very soon after this, probably as a result, Piers was banished from England. Of course, we don't know Edward I's actual reaction - Walter of Guisborough's chronicle gives an extravagant account of Edward I's violent fury - he calls his son "fili meretricis male generate" (base-born son of a whore) and tears out as much of his hair as he can manage before throwing him out (ed. Harry Rothwell, Camden Society 89, 1957, pp. 382-83)[5].

And here is another version of what seems to have been a popular story circulating[5]: this chronicler has Edward I "indignantly taking the importunate petition [the physical object, presumably]" and throwing... something to the ground and stamped on it. And what that something is - the petition, or his son - depends on how you expand ipm.

Haskins writes ipsum without comment - masculine, so Edward I is physically attacking his son, as in the Guisborough version. And yes, when reading a chronicle or a series of letters dealing with politics you become accustomed to expanding abbreviated ipm as masculine, because it usually refers to a person and almost all the actors in these events are male. But there's actually no reason it can't be feminine ipsam, so far as I can see – and thus refer to the petition. The sentence would scan rather better syntactically, not to mention logically. Why take the chronicle just so that you can kick your own son? If the writer had wanted to avoid ambiguity he could have used a little 'a' above ipm (as below over abbreviated "tractati"), but this writer is not careful about ambiguities, and tends to go with muscle habit when it comes to abbreviations - see the quote above, where he absent-mindedly writes 'importunam' in full, but also adds a horizontal stroke to the stem of the p, which is the abbreviation for 'per' or 'por' (he does something similar a few page later, writing 'opprobrium' but adding a hook behind the first 'p' so that it technically reads 'oproprobrium'). And he is more accustomed to the single horizontal stroke about ipm - he's written it many times on the last few pages. To amend it, he'd have to stop and think about possible misinterpretations. Context is usually enough - but in this case, context fails him.

And that makes it interesting. Because a story with violence displaced onto a non-human object suddenly has the potential to have the violence directed to its cause, which rather disrupts the author's otherwise stable themes of proper and proportion use of power. Because any reader who loves drama who comes to read this manuscript later, without the author around to correct them, will be more likely to read ipsum than ipsam, because it's more usual. And - well, it makes a far more interesting and dramatic story, doesn't it? Particularly if they've also read the Guisborough version, and thus have the suggestion of violence in their mind. Fling the paper, or beat the son? Experience tells us which is likely to have the greater staying power.

------------

[1] All quotes in this post are from f. 87r of the manuscript. I’ll post the text of the whole – and eventually a translation – when it’s tidied up.

[2] “A Chronicle of the Civil Wars of Edward II”, Speculum (1939): 73-81; “The Doncaster Petition, 1321”, English Historical Review 53 (1938): 478-485; “Judicial Proceedings against a Traitor after Boroughbridge, 1322”, Speculum 4 (1937): 509-511; for the latter see also George Sayle's correction of Haskins' error in “The Formal Judgement on the Traitors of 1322,” Speculum (1941): 57-63.

[3] He frequently leaves out or inserts 'et', or (in the Anglo-Norman documents) one or the other of commonly paired words like 'lige' and 'seygnur' in 'notre seygnur lige le roy'. Twice he skips an entire line, and several times he mis-expands an abbreviation. I think he must have had little time with the ms and been mostly working from his own notes in preparing the edition, because some of the errors just look like haste. Will post more about this at some point.

[4] This chronicler actually says Cornwall, rather than Ponthieu, which is the earldom Edward II gave Piers when he became king himself "iuxta sui desiderium prius conceptum & ordinatum" ("as he had already desired and fixed upon") - another example of retrospective narration, in which the story becomes smoother and more coherent.

[5] Given Walter of Guisborough seems to have died c. 1304, and this was supposed to have taken place in early 1307, this particular story can't have been narrated by him, but his successor seems to have inherited his flare for dramatic exaggeration and putting speeches into the mouths of his characters.

Piers Gaveston's cups and Edward II's incontinence

2010-08-18T02:29:00.003-04:00

So, yesterday I was browsing through the indices to various issues of the journal Northamptonshire, Past and Present to see if Fineshade Priory (or, failing that, Castle Hymel or John Engayne) got even a passing mention anywhere (they didn't), and I found something completely different, and rather entertaining. The index to the 2008 issue pointed to one reference, on page 20, to a certain Piers Gaveston. Naturally I went to investigate, and then almost embarrassed myself with laughing too loudly in the stacks.

The article was a guide to the various chronicles known as belonging to, written by, edited by, derived from or possibly misattributed to Peterborough (Nicholas Karn and Edmund King (and what a perfect name), "The Peterborough Chronicles", pp. 17-29). And Walter of Whittlesey, writing early in the fourteenth story, includes what Karn and King call "the abbey's 'Piers Gaveston story'" (20). Translation is mine, because I am picky:

And in the thirty-fourth year of the reign of that King Edward [I, so c. 1306]... the abbot Godfrey also received at the Borough lord Edward, son of that king, and lord Piers Gaveston, and to these he sent gifts as is here narrated: When the abbot's messenger reached lord Edward with a certain cup to the value of 50 pounds[1], he asked intemperately ('petiit idem Eduuardus incontinenti') if a gift had also been sent to lord Piers. When the messenger replied that he had not, he disdained the cup and would not receive it: the messenger then seeking out the lord Piers upon the abbot's command bearing a cup valued at 40 pounds, he was granted admission and the abbot's gift was joyfully received with thanks ('gratanter donum abbatis recepit, gratias agens quam facere'). The messenger was also sent on the abbot's behalf as if to beg the advice of lord Piers on the question of whether the other cup would now prove pleasing to the lord Edward, and he replied that it would; the messenger then revealed that he had not wished to receive it, and the lord Piers summoned his chamberlain to say to him, 'Go to the lord Edward and tell him that I would like him to receive the abbot's gift'. Upon their returning to the said lord Edward with the said cup as directed, he received them gladly, bestowing thanks on the abbot ('gratias conferens abbati') for his gifts. [2]

But the thing is, this isn't a Piers Gaveston story - it's an Edward story. It isn't Gaveston's behaviour that's the problem here, but that of the future king. Not only does he insist on putting Gaveston on a similar status to himself, as a guest in his own right rather than part of the future king's train, but he sends the Abbot - the Abbot of Peterborough, no less - supplicating to an untitled knight for the favour of the prince. The prince who is his guest. Gaveston's reception of his gift actually shows Edward up - he 'gives thanks' to the abbot (using 'agere', which is to the best of my knowledge the usual verb coupled with 'gratias'[3]), and even has an adverb to emphasise his gratitude, while Edward, when he gets around to deigning to accept the gift, seems to give his thanks as a favour ('conferre'). The difference in Walter's word choice there could be due to the difference in their rank, but given the exasperation (and, I think, glee) of the narration, I suspect he's playing the two scenes up in deliberate contrast.

Of course, I understand what Karn and King mean when they call this "Peterborough's 'Piers Gaveston' story" - everyone had one, I'm sure, just as many later had a 'Hugh Despenser' story. He lent himself to flamboyant stories, and Edward certainly wasn't one for being diplomatic about it (although, honestly, Edward, Abbot of Peterborough + host). But Piers Gaveston is never just Piers Gaveston. He's a metaphor for what Edward does wrong - just as the whole sodomy thing in contemporary accounts is never about sodomy, but about the imbalance of power that was perceived to be threatening the entire structure of the state[4]. The abbot is denied access to the prince who is his guest, in stark contrast to the civil visits and interactions with his father narrated immediately before this tale. The abbot is forced to almost double the value of the polite gift-giving he expected on the occasion of a royal visit. The abbot is humiliated, via the messenger, and not only the messenger but the whole monastery are clearly destined to know about it, and probably recount it in gleeful detail. The vividly imagined little scenes, even the snippet of direct speech from Gaveston, savour to me of repeated retellings and scandalised delight.

I'm assuming, on those grounds, that the story is at least a little exaggerated, possibly embellished with details from other similar 'Piers Gaveston stories'. But even in its bare bones, it's interesting, firstly (and most reliably) as witness to the types of stories people were telling and relishing at this point, but also for the hazy glimpse it affords us of the actors within it. Even if only a little of the story is true, Edward is becoming increasingly defensive about people's reactions to Gaveston at this point, and making it worse with his own behaviour. I'd say he's 'acting out' in a teenage way by taking advantage of those times when he's away from his father to enforce his opinion of the proper order of things - and it is completely characteristic of him at this period, to be recognising only in his father any kind of restraint, or constraint, to the extent that he does not feel the need to be bound by usual codes of polite social interaction.

Well, why should he. He's the prince. And people just keep slighting his Piers. They deserve a little tetchiness.

------------
[1] Karn and King say 100, but Sparke's Latin clearly reads L, not C. They may have silently corrected this in consultation with manuscript sources; but I am translating Sparke's edition. In light of the value of Gaveston's cup, it's not an insignificant question - is the knight worth 4/5 or 2/5 of the prince?
[2] Walter of Whittlesey's continuation of the Peterborough Chronicle; ed. Joseph Sparke, Historiae Coenobii Burgensis Scriptores Varii, London 1723, 171-72.
[3] Cf the Latin of the Gloria in the mass - 'Gratias agimus tibi propter magnam propter magnam gloriam tuam'.

Thesis proposal

2010-08-13T15:32:00.003-04:00

“Res audita perit, litera scripta manet”: Temporal Identity in Early Fourteenth-Century History Writing.

Proposal for Masters Thesis: Hannah Kilpatrick

Contents:

Summary.
Conceptual Framework and Introduction.
1. Ego, Adam Murimuth: Naming, anonymity, and authority.
2. Writing the institution: Ramsey Abbey.
3. Composition and compilation: the chronicle collections of Lichfield Cathedral and Fineshade Priory
Bibliography / Works cited.

Summary.
Considerable academic ink has been spent debating how individuals and institutions conceive their identity relative to concepts such as nation, religion, sexuality, or gender. Less discussed, however, is self-construction in terms of historical time. Examining several English chronicles of the first half of the fourteenth century, I will question how writers relate to time as a social construct and define themselves relative to it. A. J. Minnis’ well-known discussion of the mediaeval concept of ‘author’ and the ways in which authorial identity was constructed will provide the framework for my discussion of how the chronicler understands the act of writing the past and present, of making ‘history’ for the future. Assimilating recent scholarship on memory and uses of the past, the composition and purposes of history writing, and studies of different forms of identity, I will examine these chronicles for their sense of temporal identity: self-construction of the individual or institution in terms of the relationship of the present to the past and the future.

Of three main chapters or sections, my first chapter will analyse the relation of authorial self to historical time in the work of a single author (canon and diplomat Adam Murimuth); the second chapter will focus on the writings (composition and compilation) of one powerful religious institution – Ramsey Abbey – and particularly one manuscript which contains Ramsey’s copy of Murimuth’s chronicle. The third chapter will conduct a similar investigation into two shorter chronicle collections of much the same period and with interests in common. They originate respectively from a secular cathedral (Lichfield) and a small priory of regular canons (Fineshade), and, as do Ramsey’s writings, contain a mixture of assembled and original material. This selection offers a range of perspectives and styles which I believe will engender more fruitful discussion of the question of temporal identity than would a study which considered only the large-scale, well-known, ‘authoritative’ histories of the period.

Conceptual Framework and Introduction.
My introduction will establish the key terms ‘author’ and ‘temporal identity’, discussing them in relation to theological and philosophical attitudes to auctoritas and time inherited by the early fourteenth century. Contextualising the theoretical with reference to the (usually) more work-a-day attitudes of the chronicles under consideration, I will use this discussion to provide the groundwork for the terminology on which the remainder of the thesis will rely.

My concept of ‘author’ will draw heavily on the work of A. J. Minnis (Theory of Authorship), according to whom exegetes of the late thirteenth century were beginning to develop an awareness of (and interest in) the idea of the author as an individual with human qualities, rather than as simply the effector of the authoritative text (5). Concurrent with this change in focus came terms for defining more precisely the role of any given writer: Minnis follows Bonaventura in using ‘scribe’, ‘compiler’, ‘commentator’, and ‘author’, in that order (94-95). These terms (while necessarily simplified) will allow for a nuanced discussion of the roles potentially involved in the production of any given text. By including the ‘scribe’ (who theoretically, according to Bonaventura, writes the words of others “nihil mutando,” qtd. Minnis 94), my discussion can encompass not only abstract and original composition, but the decision to reproduce an existing text, possibly with certain alterations, and the physical practicalities of doing so.

I will differ from Minnis in two ways: by adding the term ‘writer’ to refer less specifically to any of these four roles; and by applying the concept not only to an individual man but to a community – particularly, for my discussion, a regular religious institution. I will consider both individual and institutional identity as important mediaeval social constructs, and contend that, while they may not be entirely analogous, they do reflect usefully on each other, are in many cases inextricable, and cannot be considered entirely in isolation one from the other.

Minnis’ account of a rising awareness of “the human qualities” of the individual author by the end of the thirteenth century is a useful one here (5), in distinguishing between the writer who composes as an individual and the writer who represents the institution. Speaking in terms of biblical exegesis (as the major centre for the development and replication of literary theories in the late Middle Ages), Minnis argues that the emphasis on divine inspiration of texts had previously hampered recognition of human authorship. By the end of the thirteenth century, a new type of exegesis was fashionable, emphasising human creativity, in which the author appeared as an agent, not a vessel (4-5). This movement towards what Minnis calls a “more literary” interest in texts (ibid) need not imply that all writing suddenly became individualised and autonomous. Those engaged in more traditional, more work-a-day, or less personally engaging writing might well have continued to follow the older model which remained available to them: a well-established, respectable mode of writing and thinking in which the author remained subordinate to the text that he received, interpreted and transmitted. A similar case might be made for the conceptual difference between a writer who works pro se and one who conceives his work as a product of the community in which he lives. Minnis’ work can, therefore, form the groundwork of a model of identity as well as a model of authorship.

The arrangement of my material allows me to focus first on the individual self, then the institutional, then to make a comparative analysis between them. My first chapter will consider a writer, Adam Murimuth, who seems to write almost entirely pro se, and about whom much may be said as an individual. In my second chapter, it is almost impossible to discern any individual, and the compositional tradition and inspiration belongs to one monastic community. However, the chronicles of Fineshade and Lichfield, which I will discuss in my third chapter, appear each to be a project overseen by one man writing as a member of the community he inhabits. Both individual and institution appear in an authorial role, and the relationship between these two authorial impulses will therefore be more capable of discussion in these chronicles than it could be in my first two chapters.

My second key term, ‘temporal identity’, can be broadly defined as self-construction (by an individual or a community) in terms of one’s place in historical time; that is, one’s sense of existing in a particular historical moment, defined against the centuries that come before it and one’s idea of what is to come. This necessitates considering not only the typical fourteenth-century conception of the time from Creation until Judgement Day (if indeed there is such a thing), but how one particular age, lifetime or year may be considered by one of its inhabitant to relate to that grand whole. The concepts of long-term, impersonal time necessarily intersects with short-term subjective time – occasionally quite literally. Adam Murimuth, for example, dates each year of his chronicle by giving the number of years since the birth of Christ and the regnal years of king and pope, thus positioning his narrative relative to the broad arc of God’s plan for the universe and the immediate, finite span of secular politics. However, in later years, he also inserts his own age as a counter – whether as a boast, personal note, or proof of the extensive reach of his own memory, he does not say.

I intend to investigate not how the entire span of Creation is perceived by the writers I study, but how they position themselves – as individuals, as institutions, as members of a particular century or year – within that span. I find that the turbulent first half of the fourteenth century provides a particularly interesting period for such a study, for its qualities both representative and unique. While it inherits the philosophies, attitudes and literary styles of previous centuries, I will argue that it is possible to trace a change in attitudes to society’s position in time and a chronicler’s individual duty to past, present, and future. While the perception of the broad span of earthly time remains more or less constant – one long story shaped by an eternal hand, bounded by the Creation and the Last Judgement, subordinate to heavenly time which exists for eternity – the chroniclers’ ideas of the role of a generation within that time seem to change with the social, political, and economic crises of early fourteenth century.

Adam Murimuth, when he began writing his chronicle in (probably) the late 1320s, opened it by quoting the famous maxim of Horace: Res audita perit, litera scripta manet (“The event that is heard perishes, the word that is written remains”, 3). The maxim – the inclusion of which he justifies on the grounds that it derives from “antiqu[i]s” - draws a sharp contrast not only between audita and scripta, between perit and manet, but between res and litera. Murimuth begins his formidable task by asserting that an event has no permanency, no lasting form of its own, until changed, shaped, formed into the lasting, tangible letter. He highlights from the first the tension between the heard and the written, hearsay and auctoritas, the transitory and the stable, the temporal and the eternal.

These contrasting pairs, though strongly felt and well-rooted in contemporary scholastic understanding of earthly time and the relation between the created and the divine, must become problematic when applied to the composition of ‘history’. The wielder of the quill is human and mortal – like the res audita, he will perish. In writing of events of his own time, presumably he must rely at least a little on the spoken word, where no written history yet exists. Yet he fulfils a role that necessitates standing outside of time, giving form (and meaning) to the past and consciously delivering it to the future. In a society so accustomed to thinking in figures and allegory, such a role must be at least potentially analogous to that of the only being who is not subject to time at all, who shapes history to his will.

Writers such as Adam Murimuth – and he is not alone, though neither is he typical – who write their name and intentions firmly into the opening of their histories, often seem conscious of the historical moment – in both senses – of the task they undertake. Murimuth speaks to the future and seems hardly to write for his present audience – an audience for whom he cannot have the auctoritas of those historians who are already dead.[1] Other writers whom I will consider in my thesis did not take such a stance, preferring to deflect authority back onto the materials they copy rather than their own compositions, or onto the historical genre itself, or onto the weighty reputation of their abbey or cathedral. Whether the historian as an individual has a place within the history to which he contributes (and for which he writes) seems uncertain, but there could be no doubt that (for example) Ramsey Abbey was as fixed and stable an historical object as anything could be.

[1: Minnis argues that only the works of an established author, whose life is firmly in the past, could possess genuine auctoritas, pointing out the common practice of attributing popular contemporary texts to older auctores to strengthen their appeal, value and legitimacy (9-12). He also quotes at some length the complaint of Walter Map, a late twelfth-century writer who felt that the only fault in his work is “that I am alive... each age from the beginning has preferred the past to itself” (qtd. Minnis 11-12).]

The idea of not only the individual but the community or institution possessing an identity within time raises the question of the etymology of ‘temporal’ and ‘secular’,[2] terms which define the unprivileged bulk of humanity by its subjection to the unstoppable progression of the years. This terminology implicitly positions monasteries (being regular, rather than ‘secular’) outside the world, aspirant to the atemporality of the divine. This privileged position may both justify and render problematic their literary function as conduits of memory and voices of the past. In considering these questions, I will draw on significant recent critical work on the important and uses of memory, both individual and social.[3]

[2: Derived from the Latin noun saeculum, a generation or an age. In later Christian Latin, however, it acquired the concurrent meaning of ‘the world’, as opposed either to the church or to monastic retirement.
3: See particularly the work in Medieval Concepts of the Past (ed. Althoff, Fried and Geary) in 2002 and McKitterick’s Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (2004). Frederick and Jennifer Paxton have (variously) published similar work applying directly to twelfth-century English chronicle writing in 2004-5. Paul Strohm’s observations in England’s Empty Throne (1998) on the power and political use of prophecy make an interesting corollary to the use of memory: potentially, canny use of prophecies could control the present by means of a past view of the future, and justify the past actions of the present speaker in order to make secure future power.]

I will complete the introduction by describing the kinds of questions I intend to ask of the sources in the subsequent chapters; in particular, whether we can detect a sense in contemporary chronicle-writing that this period is in some way momentous or definitive, and whether the relationship between history and historian changes from 1307 (the beginning of Edward II’s dramatic and ill-fated reign) until 1348 and the arrival of the Black Death. I will then briefly introduce the main chronicles and manuscripts that I intend to discuss in the remainder of my thesis.

Chapter 1: Ego, Adam Murimuth: Naming, Anonymity, and Authority.
In my first section I will work from a single published text, Adam Murimuth’s chronicle of the first half of the fourteenth century. Murimuth chronicles his own time, from 1303 until his death in 1347, and he emphasises the role of experience and personal memory in the process of composition (“ex visu et auditu mei temporis” (4)). In this chapter, my focus will be primarily on literary analysis of Murimuth’s style, priorities and choices, rather than questions of textual transmission and manuscript history.

Adam Murimuth is a particularly interesting subject for a study of an individual’s beliefs and assertions about his own personal role in writing history. He opens his chronicle with a statement of self, intent, and method; before 1328, he takes part (as a diplomat and a bureaucrat) in the action he narrates; in the later years of his chronicle he regularly inserts his own age as a counter, equivalent with the papal year, regnal year and years since Christ’s birth; yet he draws as far as possible back from narrating those events in which he participated directly, refers to himself in the third person whenever he cannot avoid mentioning his involvement, and the years in which he was most actively involved in politics are the years for which his narrative is most sparse and uninformative. For example, although he was an important international emissary during the latter half of Edward II’s reign, we hear very little of the negotiations in which he was directly involved. He also maintains an uncharacteristic silence on the major events and developments in the bishopric of Exeter, despite – or perhaps because of - his own managerial role there for several years after the murder of Bishop Stapleton (1327).[4]

[4: Documented in the letter book of John de Grandisson, bishop of Exeter 1327-1369. To date these letters have received little attention relative to Murimuth.]

As I have already mentioned, the maxim with which Murimuth opens his chronicle (and indeed the whole of his introduction) simultaneously invokes the transitory nature of mortal existence and positions himself, as author, outside it. The same curious balance between humility and pride, between the vanity of worldly striving and the (literal) ego of one who means to outlive it, reappear with each use of the first person. This, together with his omissions and emphases throughout, suggests a strong conceptual distinction between Murimuth the author of history and Murimuth the actor within it – if, indeed, he considers the latter to exist. Given his minute interest in the appointments and troubles of other English dioceses, these silences and inconsistencies beg investigation.

Chapter 2: Writing the Institution: Ramsey Abbey.
My second chapter will shift my focus from an individual’s conception of his own historical writing within time, to that of a single monastery. From a discussion of Murimuth’s text, I will move on to a case study of one of its manuscript witnesses, British Library MS Additional 54184 (formerly Deene Park), and the institutional and local history that gave rise to its production. My focus will be on how the institution itself is conceived to relate to time, particularly the less passive moments in which the writer(s) deliberately emphasise their institution’s place within history, reshaping time around it.

Ramsey Abbey inherits a particularly assertive tradition in this regard, a legacy of the civil wars of the twelfth century and the depredations suffered by several of the powerful Benedictine monasteries of the English Fenlands during Stephen’s reign.[5] Add. 54184 is an adaptation of the chronicles of Henry of Huntingdon, Nicholas Trevet, and Adam Murimuth into one continuous history, compiled by the venerable Fenlands monastery at a crucial moment in its history. According to the British Library catalogue entry for this manuscript, there has been a certain amount of rewriting and editing of all three chronicles (particularly Murimuth’s), but the paucity of work conducted on this manuscript leaves the extent and nature of this work uncertain. I intend to examine these changes in particular, but also the manuscript as a complete project, to investigate Ramsey’s aims and priorities in creating this book at this time.

[5: In 1142, Geoffrey of Mandeville, first earl of Essex, invaded and sacked the abbey and evicted the monks, garrisoning the premises as a fortress in his rebellion against Stephen. The civil wars took their toll on Ramsey’s neighbouring monasteries as well: in that and the next year, the earl looted the Isle of Ely and terrorised much of the Fenlands. The trauma to the collective imagination of communities accustomed to think of themselves as permanent and inviolable is, as Jennifer Paxton demonstrates, amply witnessed in the house histories written by several of these monasteries over the next few decades.]

In conjunction with this manuscript, in which Ramsey Abbey appears more as compilator than author, I will examine a text more properly the Abbey’s own: its Liber Benefactorum. Superficially a rather disjointed house history which inherits its most noticeable stylistic traits from the old charters and grants it compiles (and perhaps occasionally fabricates), it is, upon closer examination, a powerful assertion of the Abbey’s rights, identity, and power (political and miraculous).[6] It was composed in direct response to the trauma of the civil wars of Stephen’s reign, a physical object that could embody and encompass what had been abruptly proven too insubstantial: not only legal ownership but the idea of Ramsey Abbey, the community’s sense of self. The two extant manuscripts, however, date from the end of the thirteenth century or opening of the fourteenth, within a decade or two of the commencement of the volume that we know today as Add. 54184.[7]

[6: See particularly Jennifer Paxton’s demonstration of such a reading of this and other comparable local histories of its generation in “Lords and Monks” and “Textual Communities.”
7: Neil Ker dates Add. 54184 to the beginning of the fourteenth century, but only notes the first chronicle by name. The British Library catalogue dates it to the middle of the fourteenth century. As all three entries are in different hands (there are four main hands in total), and the text of Murimuth’s chronicle continues through to 1334, both may be correct, giving up to four distinct stages of compilation marked by time as well as hand. ]

The fact that the Liber was re-copied at least twice at the close of the thirteenth century may suggest that, at the beginning of the period under inquiry, Ramsey was feeling the need to reassert its ability to yoke the past to present privilege, as it had done in crisis before. That the economic downturn, famines, crop failures, and civil wars of the first three decades of the fourteenth century were sorely felt by the abbey once known as Ramsey the Rich is witnessed by certain of the documents appended to manuscripts of the Liber Benefactorum (and included in the appendices by Macray).[8] The social status, and political power of monastic institutions were also suffering a decline more sustained and widespread than that to which Ramsey Abbey responded in composing the Liber in the twelfth century. In light of the new physical form given to the text of the Liber at the close of the thirteenth century, the presence and contents of Add. 54184 – particularly the presence of the chronicle of their close neighbour and advocate, Henry of Huntingdon – offer intriguing possibilities as a sustained project of historical restatement and reassertion on a similar (if broader) scale.

[8: Particularly revealing are the letter books of abbots John de Sawtrey (1285-1316) and Simon de Eye (1316-42), and a short account of the abbacy of the latter entitled “De obitu Simonis Eye quondam Abbatis, et de diversis notabilibus per ipsum factis in vita sua” (“Of the death of Simon Eye, formerly the Abbot, and of the many notable deeds done by him in his lifetime”, 349-53). The “notabiles” that the composer saw fit to record are obsessively, almost exclusively, concerned with money.]

These two texts, then, appear to complement each other productively for a consideration of the social function of history writing in constructing an institution’s identity. My particular focus will be on how the community for which (and by whom) a history was written might construct its own identity through its uses of time, memory, projection, and prophecy in acts of writing (whether compository or compilatory). Omissions, additions, divisions, layout, and alterations must be considered in the light of the abbey’s own conception of the purpose of history writing and its relation to the institution.

For comparative purposes, I will engage closely with the substantial critical attention already devoted to the literary heritage of Ramsey’s close neighbour, St Albans. There is also a strong corpus of recent scholarship on the use of written (and rewritten) memory in mediaeval monastic circles, particularly the exemplarity of patron saints, divine intervention in monastic founding myths, and statements of institutional power in relation to relics or land claims. Although most critical attention has centred on the Carolingian period, works such as Amy Remensnyder’s “Topographies of Memory,” Jennifer Paxton’s “Textual Communities,” and Rosamond McKitterick’s Perceptions of the Past could be applied fruitfully to the later Middle Ages.

It should also be noted that the manuscript itself, Add. 54184, has received little critical attention. It remained in a private collection at Deene Park until 8 April 1967, when the estate of George Brudenell sold it to the British Library (BL “Add. 54184”; see also Ker and Watson). Its late addition to a public collection means that most of the critical editions of the chronicles in question do not take this manuscript into account. The exception is Diana Greenway’s 1996 edition of the Historia Anglorum of Henry of Huntingdon; however, as this manuscript is not a particularly valuable witness to the text of that chronicle, Greenway spends little time on it. A good codicological description is available on the British Library online catalogue, but the text remains unstudied. I will transcribe any variations from published editions for my own reference, and hope I may make any significant differences available to other scholars in the wake of this project.

I will consult this manuscript (as well as those for the next chapter) in microfilm. However, I also intend a visit to the British Library in October as a research assistant to Professor Taylor, which will allow me to consult the manuscripts directly.

Chapter 3: Composition and Compilation: the Chronicle Collections of Lichfield Cathedral and Fineshade Priory
My third chapter will undertake a similar exercise to the second, but examine two chronicle collections written and compiled during the 1320s in a more modest tradition than the Benedictine. The first is a project led by a member of the secular clergy – Alan of Ashbourne, vicar for Lichfield Cathedral in Staffordshire – and the second apparently by an unknown regular canon at the small Augustinian priory of Fineshade in Northamptonshire.

Although there is, on the surface, little to connect these two manuscripts beyond their approximate dating and the fact that Sir Robert Cotton bound both into one volume in the early 1610s (BL Cotton Cleopatra D IX), there are several suggestive parallels between them. Both manuscripts contain a mixture of original writing and copied material, but with a considerable difference in scope and vision. Lichfield’s, written by her vicar, Alan of Ashbourne, is a book of historical lists, annals, and stories, in Latin and Anglo-Norman, including the history of the world and closing with the vicar’s own history of Coventry and Lichfield up to his own time. The Fineshade manuscript, by contrast, consists of a short chronicle and several supporting documents, all concerned with a very narrow temporal window and a specific historical place: the civil wars of 1321-22, with an emphasis on events in the north. Both texts, however, demonstrate a drive to set local concerns in a universal context. Similarly, the contents and priorities of the chronicles seem to place their writers among the many across England who felt prompted by the civil and natural disturbances of the 1320s to impose some order on events and dignify them with the name of history, to construct a meaningful and comprehensible idea of their own time and its relation to past and future.

Sections of each manuscript have been published. George Haskins published editions of the chronicle and several of the other documents from the Fineshade manuscript in Speculum and the English Historical Review between 1937 and 1939. Georgine Brereton, in 1937, published the version of Des Grantz Geanz (an Anglo-Norman romance of the founding of Albion) to which the Lichfield manuscript is the sole witness. Alan of Ashbourne’s local history, however, around which the remainder of the manuscript he compiled must be read, has never been published.[9] This piecemeal treatment of the manuscripts obscures their internal cohesion: each, I believe, can be demonstrated to have a clear logical structure and a definite set of goals driving its assembly. The Lichfield manuscript shows a balance between dry lists and narrative chronicles, and the field of vision narrows steadily from the universal to the national to the local. The selection and arrangement of the contents of the Fineshade manuscript also suggest a careful overall design: gathered as they are, they tell a story, and rather a personal one, of the wars as witnessed either by the canon who wrote it or by Fineshade’s patron, John Engayne, to whom several of the letters are addressed.

[9: The original manuscript (or a mid-fifteenth-century copy) was, however, consulted by William Whitelocke in the late 1560s in the composition of his own history of Lichfield Cathedral.]

Given this cohesion, I think it reasonable to consider each collection as the product of one ordered purpose, and thus capable of being analysed as a whole, and interrogated as to the social function of history writing in constructing the identity of both individual and institution in relation to the past and present.

My final chapter will thus re-visit questions and concepts raised in earlier sections, but from a perspective should allow for a discussion that is simultaneously better-rounded, and more specific. As communities, Fineshade and Lichfield are in many ways very different from Ramsey Abbey – for example, their size, structure, political power, age, finances, literary tradition, even the rule (or lack of it) shaping the pace of their daily lives. Alan of Ashbourne and the anonymous Fineshade writer(s) may have been impelled in their writing by reasons very different from those of Adam Murimuth, the well-travelled diplomat who wrote himself into and out of his chronicle. The similarities and differences in these various chronicles thus allow for a certain amount of careful extrapolation from the specific to the general. This will necessarily be balanced, however, by the highly individual characteristics of the chronicles (and manuscripts) selected, as it is hardly the purpose of this study to sketch a universal rule for the entire period. The differences and similarities between the chronicles will rather be used to understand those aspects that are unique and curious in each work, the better to compare each writer’s attempts to construct or understand their own identity within their historical time.

Bibliography.
Manuscripts.
London. British Library MS Additional 54184 (Ramsey manuscript of Henry of Huntingdon, Trevet and Murimuth). Formerly Deene Park.
--- MS Cotton Cleopatra D IX (contains the house chronicles of Lichfield Cathedral and Fineshade).
--- MS Cotton Vespasian A XVIII (Ramsey chartulary and parts of Liber Benefactorum).
London: Public Record Office E 164/28 ff. 132-61 (Liber Benefactorum, vols. 1-3 in Macray’s edition).
Manuscript catalogues and data.
Ker, Neil R. Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books. 1941. 2nd ed. London: Royal Historical Society, 1964.
---, ed. “Patrick Young’s Catalogue of the Manuscripts of Lichfield Cathedral.” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 2 (1950): 151-168.
Ker, Neil R. and Watson, Andrew G. Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books. Supplement to the Second Edition. London: Royal Historical Society, 1987.

Editions of primary sources.
Grandisson, John de. The Register of John de Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter (AD 1327-1369). Ed. F. C. Hingeston-Randolph. London: George Bell, 1894.
Haskins, George L., ed. “A Chronicle of the Civil Wars of Edward II.” Speculum (1939): 73-81.
---, ed. “The Doncaster Petition, 1321.” English Historical Review 53 (1938): 478-485.
---, ed. “Judicial Proceedings against a Traitor after Boroughbridge, 1322.” Speculum 4 (1937): 509-511.
Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon. Henrici Archidiaconi Huntendunensis Historia Anglorum. Ed. Thomas Arnold. London: Longman, 1879. Rolls Series 74.
---. Historia Anglorum. Ed. and trans. Diana E. Greenway. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1996.
Murimuth, Adam. Continuatio Chronicarum. Adae Murimuth Continuatio Chronicarum et Robert de Avesbury De Gestis Mirabilibus Regis Edwardi Tertii. Ed. Edward Maunde Thompson. London: Longman, 1889. 1-276. Rolls Series 93.
Ramsey Abbey. Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis. Ed. W. Dunn Macray. London: Longman, 1886. Rolls Series 83.
Trokelowe, John, and Henry Blaneford. Chronica Monasterii S. Albani Johannis de Trokelowe et Henry de Blaneford. Ed. Henry Thomas Riley. London: Longman, 1866. Rolls Series 28.

Secondary sources.
Burton, Janet. “Citadels of God: Monasteries, Violence and the Struggle for Power in Northern England, 1135-1154.” Anglo-Norman Studies 31 (2008): 17-30.
Carley, James P. “William Rishanger’s Chronicles and History Writing at St Albans.” A Distinct Voice: Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard E. Boyle, O. P. Ed. Jacqueline Brown and William P. Stoneman. Notre Dame: UP Notre Dame, 1997. 71-102.
Clark, James G. “Monachi and Magistri: the Context and Culture of Learning at Late Medieval St Albans.” The Vocation of Service to God and Neighbour: Essays on the Interests, Involvements and Problems of Religious Communities and their Members in Medieval Society. Selected Proceedings of the International Medieval Congress, UP Leeds, 14-17 July 1997. Ed. Joan Greatrex. Turnhout: Brepols, 1997.
---. “Thomas of Walsingham Reconsidered: Books and Learning at Late-Medieval St Albans.” Speculum 3 (2002): 832-860.
Clarke, Catherine A. M. “Writing Civil War in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum.” Anglo-Norman Studies (2008): 31-48.
Coakley, John W. Women, Men and Spiritual Power: Female Saints and their Male Collaborators. 2006.
Dolnikowski, Edith Wilks. Thomas Bradwardine: A View of Time and a Vision of Eternity in Fourteenth-Century Thought. New York: E. J. Brill, 1995.
Geary, Patrick J. Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages. London: Cornell UP, 1994.
Goetz, Hans-Werner. “The Concept of Time in the Historiography of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries.” Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography. Ed. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried and Patrick Geary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 139-166.
Greenway, Diana. “Authority, Convention and Observation in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum.” Anglo-Norman Studies (1995): 106-121.
Hollis, Stephanie, and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. “St Albans and Women’s Monasticism: Lives and their Foundations in Christina’s World.” Christina of Markyate: a Twelfth-Century Holy Woman. Ed. Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser. London: Routledge, 2005. 25-52.
Ker, Neil R. “Sir John Prise.” The Library (Fifth Series), 10 (1955): 1-24.
Knowles, David, and R. Neville Hadcock. Medieval Religious Houses: England and Wales. London: Longman, 1953.
McKitterick, Rosamond. Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages. Notre Dame: UP Notre Dame, 2004.
Minnis, Alastair. J. Medieval Theory of Authorship. 1984. 2nd ed. Philadelphia: UP Pennsylvania, 1988.
Minnis, Alastair J. and A. B. Scott, eds., with David Wallace. Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism c. 1100 - c. 1375. The Commentary-Tradition. 1988. Rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003.
Partner, Nancy. Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England. Chicago: UP Chicago, 1977.
Paxton, Frederick S. “Abbas and Rex: Power and Authority in the Literature of Fleury, 987-1044.” The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350. Ed. Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, and Adam J. Kosto. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. 197-212.
Paxton, Jennifer. “Lords and Monks: Creating an Ideal of Noble Power in Monastic Chronicles.” The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950-1350. Ed. Robert F. Berkhofer III, Alan Cooper, and Adam J. Kosto. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005. 227-236.
---. “Textual Communities in the English Fenlands: A Lay Audience for Monastic Chronicles?” Anglo-Norman Studies (2004): 123-138.
Putter, Ad. “Gerald of Wales and the Prophet Merlin.” Anglo-Norman Studies (2008): 90-103.
Remensnyder, Amy G. “Topographies of Memory: Center and Periphery in High Medieval France.” Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory and Historiography. Ed. Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried, and Patrick J. Geary. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 193-214.
Schmidt, Paul Gerhard. “Perché tanti Anonimi nel Medioevo? Il Problema della Personalità dell’Autore nella Filologia Mediolatina.” Filologia Mediolatina: Rivista della Fondazione Ezio Franceschini (2000).
Strohm, Paul. England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399-1422. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998.
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn et al., eds. The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280-1520. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania State UP, 1999.

Murimuth Learns a New Word

2010-08-11T01:29:00.001-04:00

So, I have been mysteriously silent of late. This is the silence of a) trying to finish a thesis proposal while running frantically about getting ready to go home for a month and b) stressing about finances and whether it will actually be in any way possible for me to stay in Canada for long enough to finish my Masters, with money even more not-there-at-all than it has been for the last year and c) being lazy and not thinking about anything that is not my thesis proposal[1].

I am now sitting in a very pleasant little coffee shop[2] near the beach in Adelaide, sipping GOOD coffee which has been nowhere near North America and its evil evil coffee-betraying habits (sorry, people, but it’s true), waiting for my sister’s hair appointment to finish. She takes approximately an hour and a half longer than I do, because of the colouring. We have had a morning of family haircuts, because A Very Special Family Event is happening on the weekend. We will soon go home and get down to little details like cleaning out the cobwebs from behind that painting in the hall, making sure all the outdoor chairs are adequately oiled and preventing the beagles from investigating the fact that the side fence is being replaced and that their domain has therefore expanded dramatically.

Meantime, I have been looking at microfilms of the two manuscripts I’ll be working on – Cotton Cleopatra D IX and Additional 54184 – and translating Murimuth’s chronicle (well, parsing it and annotating difficult passages so that I can read it easily). It’s rather interesting watching the pace of his narration slow dramatically with the opening of Edward III’s declaration of war against France. [Over x of the y pages of the chronicle are devoted to the ten years Murimuth lived after the war began, leaving only z for the years from 1305-36.] That said, a good deal of the bulk is his careful transcription of letters and proclamations related to the diplomacy of the war; but even with these excised, his own narration is far more detailed and interested – and, one feels, impassioned – than it is for the first three decades.

An interesting feature of this is the expansion of his vocabulary. Words are appearing that are in no Latin dictionary I can find, mostly imported from the vernaculars. His martial and naval vocabulary in particular become much more nuanced, and seek out new words for what seem to be new concepts. Some words are simple enough. ‘Admirallus’ may not appear in the dictionary, but in the context of the sea battle of 1340 at the [mouth of the Swinbourne?], this is hardly ambiguous:

… [comes] Huntyngdoniae, qui fuit dux et admirallus navium de Quinque Portubus, et dominus R[obertus] de Morley, qui fuit admirallus et dux navium borealium…

The Earl of Huntingdon and Robert de Morley were commander and admirallus of, respectively, the fleet of the [Five Ports] and of the north. I don’t think it’s necessary to spend too much time hunting obscure fourteenth-century Latin word usages to determine that admirallus doesn’t mean a small kind of brass teaspoon. But I find it interesting that he still feels he must say dux et admirallus, as if admirallus lacks the cultural weight to stand up on its own[3].

Another term that he embraces more whole-heartedly, however, and that did confuse me slightly at its first occurrence, was galea. The first time it appears, we are informed that fifty galeae attacked the city of Southampton on the Monday following the feast of St Michael in 1338. Apparently a galea, in Latin, is a helmet; so I hypothesised that this may be a usage similar to ‘lance’, denoting a soldier or a particular unit of armed men. But mark the sequel! for the armed men carried away everything they could to their helmets. And then they set fire to all the houses, and returned to their helmets. Clearly, there was a flaw in this theory, unless Phillip of France had pioneered a really large make of helmet in which his men could paddle.

So I went to the OED and looked up ‘galley’. That confirms that a mediaeval Latin galea/galeia existed, derived from ancient Greek but with the ultimate etymology unknown. But apparently it wasn’t very common, and for Murimuth it was quite recent: there is one attribution for c. 1300, and one for c. 1330. The Anglo-Norman dictionary has it attributed a few more times, towards the end of the 1200s. So it seems to have been circulating as a concept only reasonably recently, suggesting (perhaps?) a new kind of warship, a new trend in ship-building, which only really forced itself on Murimuth’s notice when it suddenly became relevant with the naval battles and coastal attacks of the early years of the Hundred Years War. Thereafter, he uses it frequently, and seems to distinguish consistently between galeas and naves.

Everyone becomes an armchair strategist in times of war, I suppose – but Murimuth seems to have been sitting as close to Westminster as he could as often as he could, getting close access to all the most recent war news and letters, professionally interested in the manoeuvring of diplomacy and its subtleties as well as in the more dramatic aspects of the war. And, of course, he’s in his sixties and seventies, and enjoying it – it was 1338 when he proudly began to insert, alongside the annus domini and the regnal year of the current king and of the pope, his own age as a counter (sixty-four, in that year). You can just see him sitting around pontificating on exactly how the war is going and correcting everyone with precision, and becoming an expert on the precise terminology and functions of everything related to war.

--------------

[1] Which I think I will post. It may interest some people at some point in some tiny measure of its being.

[2] Which uses GOOD milk for its coffee, sells pre-made soups and sauces made on-site that actually look good, and offers cooking classes like ‘Pasta and Risotto’, ‘Vietnamese and Cambodian’, ‘Balinese’, ‘Simply Spanish’ and ‘Moroccan Spice’. Cook’s Pantry, it’s called.

[3] No, that’s not a mixed metaphor, so long as the weight is appropriately distributed for optimum balance.

Guest blogger post

2010-06-08T17:03:00.001-04:00

From Elizabeth. She is fascinated with why adults spend so much time pushing buttons on their shiny things that open and close. She opened my blogpost-composing program all by herself, and proceeded to contribute the following:

ujnnbbbbbbbi4rty;u0op[78y-u\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\bgggggg4oooo

9k]];io’.~*

k,j’n;.l’;/..’’’’’``’’’’’’’’3q2d1iB1`G2KQJMKK

QUL.;````````q!@

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG15UI85Y5

21`WW

DFGYYD,, 5¼66666S

HH3``````````````VCV CV XQV V VC ZXJK<

---------------------

I should also point out that she is very conscientious about her spelling, and called up the spell-checker at least five times while writing. She also tried to make a category for it (something like 23b4, I believe), but the silly enter key was mysteriously stuck (possibly something to do with the fact that she was leaning on shift).

She is now performing similar operations with her little (musical) keyboard, and trying to play it with her mouth.

Comment moderation on.

2010-06-05T16:19:00.000-04:00

Sadly. Tired of the links to suspicious auto-downloads that were turning up on every post, and the occasional porn. But in recompense I have removed the word verification thingie, and the requirement that you be a registered user.

Notes on the concept of history in Henry of Huntingdon's Prologue

2010-06-02T22:03:00.000-04:00

In around 1130 Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, was commissioned by his boss Bishop Alexander of Lincoln to write a history of the English people. The result was the Historia Anglorum, nominally completed in 1135, but which he continued to revise and extend until his death, some 40-odd years later.

The prologue was written in 1135, addressed to Bishop Alexander, and contains some interesting statements about Henry's ideas of historical writing, and about the structure of history itself.

Henry appears to have three central ideas about history: that the study of it is worthy and improving, that it is structured in a comprehensible way by a divine hand, and that its shape demonstrates the ultimate failure and decline of all worldly things.

----

1. History as genre.

Nothing is more excellent in this life than to investigate and become familiar with the course of worldly events. Where does the grandeur of valiant men shine more brightly, or the wisdom of the prudent, or the discretion of the righteous, or the moderation of the temperate, than in the context of history? (3)

Cynicism would immediately suggest that, if you're turning to history to find brighter examples of "the grandeur of valiant men" than you can observe in the world around you, the history you're reading probably isn't very historical. However, this not only imposes modern genre divisions on the twelfth century, but misses Henry's point. 'History' could include, eg, Homer, as Henry proves in the very next sentence. A catalogue of the Ramsey Abbey library in the mid fourteenth century includes, under the heading 'Books of History', a volume of the Acts of the Apostles - despite having plenty of copies of the Bible and New Testament under other headings [2]. In Henry's view, the purpose of history is (broadly speaking) to teach, and he finds it a more effective tool for doing so than philosophy.

"Narrative" might, in some ways, be a better term, perhaps with “historical” as a clarifying adjective when necessary. Henry’s estimation of its pedagogical value seems centred on the fact that it tells a story, rather than preaching abstractly. As Jesus taught effectively by parables, Homer's stories and the examples of men's actions shown within them teach more effectively than the "many volumes of moral philosophy" that Chrysippus and Crantor "sweated to produce". Narrative demonstrates proper and imitable moral codes "more clearly and agreeably than the philosophers" (3).

The question of factual accuracy seems not expected to arise. Perhaps, as the events of history are shaped according to divine plan, a written history may be assumed to be true to that plan if it improves the reader. And truth must surely be ranked above mere accuracy.

---

2. History as pattern. According to Henry, Homer's characters embody various vices and virtues. Ulysses is prudence, Agamemnon fortitude, Nestor temperance, and Menelaus justice; while Ajax represents imprudence, Priam feebleness, Achilles intemperateness and Paris injustice.

So far so good – unless you’ve actually read the Iliad. My predominant impression of Menelaus is not of his sense of justice; I’m sure Priam has some qualities as a ruler besides being old and a little infirm; I’d call Agamemnon irascible before I’d call him strong.

But the list couples them into opposing pairs: Ulysses/Ajax, Agamemnon/Priam, Nestor/Achilles, Menelaus/Paris. And those pairs are supported and encouraged by the narrative – Homer sets them against each other, with the possible exception of Nestor/Achilles (though one might easily make the case for it, particularly once Agamemnon and Ulysses are already spoken for). And the most obvious contrast between Agamemnon and Priam could very well be strength and weakness, and Nestor and Achilles certainly contrast in the extent of their emotional self-indulgence. The competition between Ulysses and Ajax undeniably pivots on some intellectual quality, which one might choose to label prudence. And Menelaus - justice? Well, if you want an opponent to Paris, and the injustice of Paris’ most infamous action, who else would it be but the husband whose property he stole?

It takes some jiggling and squinting, but the pattern is visible, once you impose it. Henry goes on to do the same for characters in the Old Testament. Yet this is not literary analysis, but an observation of patterns in history. Man did not put them there, although he may have, through ‘true’ writing, made them clearer. These events, and the patterns within them, were shaped by God, creator both of the the participants in history and the medium through which it moves, time. And, of course, of the historian. This is how history is shaped.

Perhaps this justifies the departure from authority that Henry allows himself in the structure of his Historia. Bede is his primary source, naturally, but Bede does not anticipate the shape Henry gives to British history. It is dominated by five invasions, called plagues, visited on Britain by “divine vengeance” whenever her people become too sinful or arrogant (15). The invasions by the Romans, Picts and Scots, English, Danes, and finally Normans thus provide for Henry a structure around which he can shape the events that precede and follow them, repeatedly building up a litany of sin and pride which leads to devastation and pain. The most recent iteration is, of course, still being feelingly lived in Henry’s lifetime.

For Henry, history is the story of God "raising up and putting down peoples and kingdoms by Thy judgement, that operates sometimes secretly and sometimes openly" (17). History repeats, because the same hand is at work throughout – and that hand seems to deliberately create comprehensible patterns for the moral edification of mankind.

----

3. O Fortuna, velut luna semper crescis aut decrescis…

There may be an implicit comfort in the idea of God sitting back and shaping history, but the rise-and-crash pattern isn’t a very comfortable one for those who live through it. Henry’s view of history is essentially pessimistic, founded on mutability and divine punishment. What was is lost; what is wil be lost.

Early in the first book, Henry describes the geography of Britain, both as it is and as it once was. He gives the names of "twenty-eight very noble cities" for which the island was famous once, many of which have changed or been forgotten, or belong to cities that no longer exist (13). Then, on describing the division of the island into shires, he decides it necessary to include a list of their names. For, he says,

with the passage of time it may perhaps come about, in the same way that the names of the cities just mentioned - which were once well loved and highly regarded - are now considered barbarous and ridiculous, that the names of the shires, which are now very well known, may become either unrecognizable or unbelievable. From this it is clear how pitiably and uselessly we who live in the shires strive to make our own names famous, when even the names of cities and countries cannot survive. (17)

Not only their names will be loss, but their honour. As the English are now shamefully subject to the Normans, so have their place names suffered a corresponding loss in status: they are now ridiculous. And from the vainglory of a people, to that of a shire, to that of the individual, Henry turns to point his favourite moral.

But notice what remains constant in this tale of ruin. It is his own individual striving, his own achievement – or at least, that of the men among whom he now numbers himself. At this future point he envisions, when provinces have shifted and been renamed, when human memory fails, he clearly still expects his history to be present and read to speak the names of the lost shires. It is history writing which provides the link between past, present and future. Henry knows the names of the old cities because of the books he has consulted in old libraries, and we know them because we have read them in his work. The people in his future will know the names of the shires for the same reason – and they will also know those of the old cities. Henry’s work stretches from past to future, linking through the present, sitting in that privileged position that allows him to survey, however mistily, the whole of creation. He becomes ever so slightly atemporal – and as such, he even rebukes his temporal patron:

And we pray you, Bishop Alexander, father of the fatherland, prince second to the king, that anything we have written well may be brightened by your praise... Here you see kings and peoples whom the lottery of fate has raised up and put down, but judge[3] the future by them. See, great father, what has become of the powerful: see how the honour, the lustre, the glory of the world come to nothing. (7-9)

Is Alexander, prince second to the king, to be numbered among the glorious powerful, invited to see his own downfall in the pattern of Henry’s history? Well, technically he’s a member of the secular clergy – he is subject to the movements of the saeculi.

----

4. And one other thing:

History ... brings the past into view as though it were present, and allows judgement of the future by representing the past. (5)

This sounds familiar, but not in application to humans. According to Augustinian (and Boethian) adaptations of Aristotelian/Platonic philosophy, all created beings exist in time and are subject to it, unable to grasp the past or know the future, existing only in a perpetually fleeting present. God, by contrast, is not subject to time: it is an aspect of his creation, and he lives in an eternal now which includes all of time and creation. Every moment is equally present to him.

The conflation of past, present and future suggested by Henry here thus does more than broaden the mind or provide the reader with knowledge. It places him[4] halfway outside of time, less subject than previously to its constraints, able to grasp a little more of the course and pattern of events and guess at their meaning. Implicitly, it also enables him to observe enough of time to at least guess at the ideal eternity on which it is modelled, and so glimpse a little of the nature of he who made it. In short, he rises further above the beast and closer to the divine.

It is perfectly logical, therefore, for Henry to continue:

The knowledge of past events has further virtues, especially in that it distinguishes rational creatures from brutes, for brutes, whether man or beast, do not know - nor, indeed, do they wish to know - about their origins, their race and the events and happenings in their native land. Of the two, I consider those brutish men to be the more wretched, because what is natural to beasts comes to brutish men from their own mindlessness, and what beasts would not be capable of, even if they wished to be, such men, even if capable, do not desire. (5)

The lives and deaths of these men, he says, are condemned to "perpetual silence" - they do not speak, or they are not spoken of. History does not include them.

---------------------

[1] All quotations are from Diana Greenway's 1995 edition and translation of the Historia Anglorum (Oxford: Clarendon).

[2] Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis. Ed. W. Dunn Macray. London: Longman and Co., 1886. Rolls Series 83.359.
[3] According to the Latin, this is the imperative, not an indicative sharing its subject with the previous clause.
[4] You know the good thing about studying the Middle Ages? Frequently, you can get away with just using the masculine pronoun, rather than saying "they" (informal), "one" (limited and stuffy), or that ugly "he or she". Given the overwhelming majority of Henry's intended audience would have been male, I think I can legitimately avoid the charge of slighting my own gender.

Hugh Despenser: a finger in every pie...

2010-05-14T11:14:00.001-04:00

... and lo, the pie was then abruptly smashed and everyone did make a grab for the finger. And they clamoured over the rings thereupon.

Cotton Vesp. A xviii[1] contains a cartulary of Ramsey Abbey of the mid-1300s. On f. 113v there’s a list of the abbots from its founding (though incomplete) with a sentence or less about each. Except for Simon of Eye, abbot from 1316-1342. In place of his entry, we have a long and detailed obituary, amounting to a short biography or chronicle (pp. 349-353 in Macray’s edition). It is headed “De obitu Simonis Eye quondam Abbatis, et de diversis notabilibus per ipsum factis in vita sua” (Of the death of Simon of Eye sometime Abbot and of the diverse deeds of note performed by him in his lifetime); but the “notabiles” that the composer saw fit to record are obsessively, almost exclusively, concerned with money.

The first page and a half in Macray’s edition, after a brief introduction (in which we are informed that he spent lavishly on strengthening the church against “persecutiones” and “insultus”), are almost entirely a list of “Item adquisivit” and “Item emit” (also he acquired, also he bought).

The second section of the obituary is a more expansive narrative of his abbacy, but it is also heavily structured by the movement of money. The title seems to suggest a story marked by the conventions of martyrdom – ‘Placita et adversitates quae sustinuit pro ecclesia sua’ – but if so, Simon’s trials and sufferings are only financial. Even the grand narrative of national affairs is phrased in these terms. For 1326, the year in which Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer invaded England, deposed Edward II and set his son on the throne in his place, this author reports that the abbot “sustinuit magnum certamen et laborem cum illis de Ramesey [the village] propter mutationem saeculi quia dominus Rex cum matre sua applicuit in Angliam” (351). The dramatic deposition and incarceration of a crowned king appears only as it causes trouble to Simon de Eye and arguments with the villagers.

But this next section in particular entertains me. The monk writing is terribly indignant over what happened the following year, when Isabella, Mortimer and Edward III stopped by to visit. The villagers got uppity again, and the men and women of Ramsey, because of “malam voluntatem versus dictum abbatem” (ill will towards that abbot), accused him of treachery before the king. The charge was “ipsum habere magnam partem thesauri Hugonis le Despenser nuper suspensi” – that he had taken to himself a large part of the wealth of Hugh Despenser, then lately hanged.

Poor Hugh. To the best of my knowledge he hadn’t any property in the area (though, let’s face it, he had some just about everywhere by that stage), but his thesauri seems to have reached legendary status, especially in a country still suffering through the effects of the Great Famine (technically ended 1322, but all those abandoned villages and unsown crops and reduced labour forces take their toll). Accusations and acquisitions naturally attend the downfall. Even if Eye had not grabbed some (and the author doesn’t comment on that, because he’s too busy being indignant), it was obviously credible enough or easily enough imagined that the villagers thought it was a good accusation to effectively get the king on their side in their ongoing struggles with the abbey.

The most entertaining thing, I find, is that the author isn’t really concerned with telling the story of the accusation and its outcome, but rather the story of how outrageous and ungrateful those sorry little plebeians were, and how poor long-suffering Simon was such a martyr for putting up with them. His last word on the subject is that “[p]ropter quae idem abbas pacifice sustinuit magnam tribulationem, ac diffusas fecit expensas pro dicto falso clamore sedando” – on account of these accusations that abbot pacifically suffered great trials, and it cost him many expenses to subdue that false clamour.

And note the terms in which his martyrdom is expressed? Good old money.

--------------

The relevant passage:

… dominus Rex cum matre sua Regina et aliis filiis et cum Rogero de Mortuo Mari, instinctu dicti Johannis de Hothom tunc cancellarii Regis, venerunt apud Rameseiam cum tota familia eorum, ubi plures de Rameseia tam viri quam mulieres, attendentes malam voluntatem versus dictum abbatem, in adventu ipsorum Regis et Reginae dictum abbatem false et malitiose accusabant et traditorem regni vocabant, asserentes ipsum habere magnam partem thesauri Hugonis le Despenser nuper suspensi. Vendicabant etiam mercatum de Rameseia, communiam in diversis locis, et alias libertates eis injuste ablatas et subtractas. Propter quae idem abbas pacifice sustinuit magnam tribulationem, ac diffusas fecit expensas pro dicto falso clamore sedando.

--------------

[1] Published in the appendices of the Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, which should be called the Liber Benefactorum Rameseiensis, as the main manuscript calls itself. Ed. W. Dunn Macray. London: Longman and Co., 1886. Rolls Series 83. 351.

Ramblings on Christina of Markyate’s mouth

2010-03-20T12:14:00.003-04:00

So I accidentally bought a book the other day (the bookshop was just there, flashing its volumes enticingly at me): The Life of Christina of Markyate, A Twelfth-Century Recluse. It’s published in 2005 by Toronto U. P., but is actually a re-issue of a 1959 edition+translation by C. H. Talbot, who managed with great effort to transcribe those parts of the single manuscript that were not destroyed or obscured by the Cotton fire of 1731 (honestly, why would you move a collection of priceless manuscripts to a place called Ashburnham House for temporary storage? Someone was just asking for trouble). My excuse for the flagrant self-indulgence (it cost all of $9!) is that it is tangentially related to my thesis, as it’s a product of St Albans, and I’ll be using existing studies on the historical-writing culture of St Albans as a touchstone for more original work that I intend to do on other places. And, although she lived during the first half of the 12th century, and the vita seems to have been writing during her vita, the surviving manuscript was written (apparently with some intentional alteration from the lost original) in the mid 14th, so it’s within my time period too[1].

I’ve only just started reading it, but I was immediately struck by the style of narration, in which speech is very prominent. It frequently uses direct speech, marked by the use of the first person (note the punctuation of the transcription):

Dixitque. Dimitte me. ut eam hostium obserare. Quia licet minime Deum metuimus. saltem homines opere tali ne superveniant vereri debemus.
And she said to him: ‘Allow me to bolt the door: for even if we have no fear of God, at least we should take precautions that no man should catch us in this act.’ (42-43)

Direct speech is both frequent and usually marks the emotional and moral crux of each scene. Not only that, but it emphasises speech and its style and effect to such a degree that it would not be an exaggeration to call the whole vita (well, so far as I’ve read) a narrative of speech events.

Almost every scene centres around a particular potent occasion of speech.
Christina’s devotion to Christ is learned and expressed through speech, as is the battle for her mind and chastity.
The proof of her holiness is in her speech: eg, when young she speaks aloud to Christ in her room at night, in a loud clear voice, believing that no mortal could hear her while she was addressing God.
Her spiritual education by Sueno is told in terms of his speech and the “colloquium” he had with her. And the elided “cum” in “cum”+“loquor” is appropriate: we are told that he is learning from her speech as much as the other way around.
Similarly, when trying to force her into marriage, her parents’ primary method of coercion is to keep all religious, god-fearing men from having “colloquium” with her, as if blocking access to the words can keep God away. Instead, she is surrounded examples of bad speech, by “people given to jesting, boasting, worldly amusement, and those whose evil communications [mala colloquia] corrupt good manners [mores bonos]” (47).
In addition, they set one of her best friends on her, who uses flattery and persuasion and sheer persistence for a whole year to try to persuade her to consent – to that one verbal act that constitutes a contract of betrothal or marriage (depending on verb tense).
Vows, prayers and moments of verbal consent are the turning points that provide the dramatic structure of the narrative.
In trying to seduce her, the evil bishop Ralph of Durham uses not force, or even simply words, but explicitly “that mouth which he used to consecrate the sacred species”, neatly demonstrating the moral difference between his speech and hers.

In the example I quoted above, the use of direct speech provides the dramatic and moral crux of the scene. Ralph is trying to seduce/rape the young Christina in his bedroom, and she is employing a ruse to allow her nearer the door so that she can escape, while pretending to acquiesce. The direct speech thus dramatises the ploy, heightening its effect, and doubles it by having her feign what we as readers know is a completely insincere disregard for God and God’s omnipresence. At the same time, that jarring note serves as a harsh reminder of exactly what the bishop’s priorities should be, highlighting his hypocrisy and thus suggesting that Christina’s apparent dishonesty is excusable, in the service of a higher truth.

The bishop demands her oath that she would not ‘fail’ but that she indeed lock the door; she swears to it, darts out of the room and locks him in. These happen in reported speech, rather than direct, playing out the suggestions inherent in the direct speech.

Incidentally, the word I’ve rendered above as ‘fail’ is my own translation of ‘falleret’. Talbot, who prefers throughout to read this text as a literal account of her life[2], misses the double meaning here and translates it as ‘deceive him’ – certainly the primary meaning in context, and the only meaning Ralph intends, but I would have preferred to have the ominous hint preserved. To fall truly in this instance, to fail in her vows of virginity, would be to stay in the room with him.

This emphasises the difference maintained throughout the scene between her reading of words (which is largely allegorical) and his (determinedly centred on the physically present). She observes that the door is closed but not bolted (“clausum… sed non obseratum”). Similarly, her chastity is so far defended, but not inviolable. Bolting the door erects a physical barrier between her and her would-be violator, just as there is already a spiritual barrier between them. She has kept her promise she made to him: she has locked the door both physically and spiritually, in a manner far more significant than he intended. She is not forsworn: she adheres to a truth he cannot comprehend.

--------------------

[1] Copying a text, especially with substantial editing, definitely counts as historical writing for my purposes. Oddly, Talbot seems to make little distinction between the original author and the amending copyist – so far as I can tell, as he uses the word ‘biographer’ for both, he seems to assume they’re both from St Albans on the grounds of the same textual evidence (use of “nostrum” etc when referring to the saint or monastery).

[2] He emphasises the biographer’s close relationship to her and the fact that it was written in her lifetime, as well as the paucity of fantastical tales that mark most hagiography of the period, to conclude that it was a genuine attempt at a “history” of the real woman rather than a collection of “stock elements”. I… disagree, mostly with that distinction.

Bloggers with faces and pre-Carolingian Baptists (in the sixties)

2010-03-13T08:22:00.000-05:00

Further Things I Have Learned In New York:

- CUNY is fun. And has fun people at it.

- Some bloggers are real people, and are actually moderating your panel (hi Jenn!).

- Mediaeval music theorists also used Venn diagrams.

- You can tell at the start of the day which of the speakers from the first panel will be interested enough to stick around for the rest of the day, and which will vanish soon after giving their own paper.

- More people will appear for the papers immediately preceding and succeeding lunch.

- No matter how interesting the papers, those chairs start to hurt after five hours.

- Friends of the Saints is a fun group to join for an evening's discussion after the conference, even if you haven't done the reading.

- Most importantly. If you (hypothetically speaking) wander into the room where such a group is meeting simply because you want the free wine and cheese, despite not being any manner of historian, do indeed sit down at the back of the group to shield the single focus of your intent, but do not feel obliged to comment on the proceedings. Really. There is a reason we haven't discussed Protestants or Baptists yet.We're not being discriminatory, it's just that we're discussing the pre-Carolingian relics trade.

- In entirely unrelated news, some discussion leaders are very very good at taking random comments and assimilating them into the discussion as if they were actually relevant and helpful. Now, there is a skill I envy.

New York, New .... Jersey?

2010-03-12T08:18:00.001-05:00

Things I Have Learned So Far While In New York For A CUNY Grad Conference:

- There are two Penn stations. When the man at the air train tells you to get off at Penn Station, he actually means do not get off at Penn Station, but rather stay on the train and wait for the next Penn Station. Otherwise, you will find you are still in New Jersey.

- Always book a hotel right next to the Empire State Building. That way, you can step out of the train station and go 'hm, Eighth Avenue, but is Fifth this way or ... oh, what is that I see looming right over the skyline over there? Right, that way it is.'

- There are many jobs in the world that I Do Not Want. Current top is standing on the street corner holding up the sign that says 'Dunkin Donuts ---->'.

- There really are a lot of yellow taxis.

- No wonder America spawns so many superheroes that fly or leap from building to building. Their streets are canyons.

- They really do offer you cheesecake for breakfast. The place I'm sitting in now even looks like the place where they have the wager over cheesecake or strudel in the Frank Sinatra film of Guys and Dolls. (I am being non-iconic and eating yoghurt with fruit and muesli.)

- It is possible to get decent pizza in New York. As, not three inches deep and drowned with cheese and containing vegetables (if any) that have not been freeze-dried for years.

- And I haven't even gone to the conference yet. Registration is in 45 minutes. The question becomes, after a night spent waking up all the time to the dulcet tones of New York car horn conversations, will I have the brain left by 3 pm to give an engaged and energetic performance? Well, if not, one simply regards it as a performance and falls back on old stage training!

The Tale of Zeus and Dame Ragnelle

2010-03-05T11:53:00.030-05:00

No, it will make sense. Bear with me.

So, I’ve a conference next week at which I’m speaking on The Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, a mid-15C analogue of the Loathly Lady tale that also appears in, for example, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. The fact that the conference theme is “Intimacy: Family, Friendship and Fealty” means that I can’t just go haring off after the diversion that occurred to me last night, so: once more unto the blog!

The history of the Loathly Lady figure relative to Irish sovereignty tales (in which the lady represents the country) has been well established. I have no citations by me, as I am writing this on the bus, but I believe Frederick Madden had something to say about it in his collection of Gawain stories, and it goes on from there according to the usual patterns of late 19-early 20C myth-discovery. That is, therefore, the accepted mythical ancestor of the figure, and as hunting out mythological precedents is rather out of fashion and the genealogy is well traced I don’t believe anyone has thought to dispute it, or posit any additional ancestor.

But surely the obvious classical precedent is the god-who-comes-to-dinner? Zeus, or some other god (usually Zeus as the patron of hospitality), disguises him/herself as some ugly, poor old beggar and asks for shelter and food. Or, of course, for help crossing a river, etc. This is a test, the protagonist responds according to their moral stature, and the god suddenly sheds his unprepossessing exterior to reveal himself in all his glory to pass judgement on the protagonist, along with appropriate reward or punishment. I don’t recall offhand whether any examples of that trope appear in Ovid, but it’s entirely in keeping with the system of virtue and reward evident in the Aeneid, to consider just two of the most culturally influential classical texts extant in the Middle Ages.

The main linking device is, of course, the transformation: a disguised stranger who appeared unworthy according to the ideals of the genre – poor and old and helpless in Greek mythology, disgusting and unmannerly and often old in romance – is suddenly transformed into the epitome of those ideals. In addition:

the transformation is in direct response to the actions of the protagonist towards the stranger,
in entering the narrative, the stranger will, explicitly or otherwise, initiate a kind of test for the protagonist, in which their response demonstrates (and thereby establishes) their virtue,
the stranger retains to him/herself the authority to pass judgement on the protagonist’s actions after the return transformation (rather than delegating that task to the narrator), claiming the status of moral arbiter of the narrative,
similarly, the stranger him/herself dispenses punishment or reward.

The trouble with this is that it’s a bit of a jump from Greek mythology to mediaeval romance. And there is a good deal of cultural filtering and reconditioning that must take place there to make any Greek story (or figure) have any relevance to a late-mediaeval audience.

So where else can we find a more immediate precedent to this figure, a precedent that provides a type of bridging device between classical myth and late-mediaeval readership? a precedent in a tradition that is entirely accustomed to absorbing classical and/or pagan stories and recasting them to its own set of moral values?

Well:

... whanne Seint Iulian reste hym aboute midnyght al forweried [weary] and the wedyr colde and a gret froste, he herde a vois that wepte piteously and cried: 'Iulian, helpe me ouer for Goddes loue or ellis I perische for greuous colde.' And whanne he herde that voys he arose al sodenly [immediately] and passed the colde water and founde that pore creature that deied nigh for colde, toke hym up and bere hym to his hous and light the fere and dede al his diligence to warme hym. And as he myght in no wise make hym take warmthe he toke hym in his armes and bare hym to his bedde... And a litell after he that apered to be so sike and as a foule lepre stied vp shinyng into heuene, saieng to his oste: 'Iulian, oure Lorde hathe sent me to the, sendyng the to saie that he hathe receiued thi and ye bothe shull reste in oure Lorde witheinne a litell tyme' And anone he vanished awaye... (Gilte Legende, ed. Richard Hamer, EETS 2006; v. 1, 144)

Appropriately enough, that comes from the story of St Julian Hospitaller, Zeus’ descendant in the role of protecting the sacred laws of hospitality and defending the safety of guests. But it works perfectly well in a Christian context, thus refigured – well enough that throughout the Gilte Legende (and elsewhere), saints and even Jesus himself regularly pop up where they’re not expected, mysteriously disguised, usually as someone helpless, and initiate a test of some kind or another. Quite of a piece with the popular belief that saints really could interfere in a very material way with everyday life – all your big brothers are watching you.

So, if Dame Ragnelle has cross-genre precedents in, for example, St Julian and others, can we expect that her contemporary audience might have recognised them and picked up on the currents? I think so – if nothing else, Ragnelle seems to deliberately play with the collision of genre, pushing herself forcibly into society, conscious of her own incongruity and playing it for all it’s worth with her fine clothes and horse. If so, the audience could expect her at her appearance to make demands which would set up a challenge as a moral test – apparently for both Arthur and Gawain. And she does, tests which Gawain passes and Arthur fails (largely by fobbing responsibility off on his nephew).

But if she refers to or recalls testing figures in hagiography, does this have an effect on what is being tested? Courtly virtues? Christian ones? The story of St Julian explicitly opposes the life of the court (and its values) with the humble Christian values that attend helping mysterious sick strangers (for which you have to live in an isolated hut beside a ‘flode’). The Wife of Bath’s nameless loathly lady gives a pillow-lecture that could be read as being in opposition to ‘courtly’ virtues. And Gawain, when his ugly wife has become beautiful, thanks God for her deliverance from a curse (and presumably for his from the equally horrible fate of having to look on her all the time). Perhaps Arthur’s failure is that he tries to adhere to courtly virtues which are (or could be read as) so dependent on appearance as reflective of personal status.

Another temporality thought - on conversion

2010-02-21T22:06:00.001-05:00

According to Patrick Geary (Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages, London: Cornell UP, 1994), there is, under the parish church of Flonheim, a series of tombs that predate the conversion of the local population to Christianity.

[Archaeologist] Ament sees grave 5 as a founder's burial, like that at Lavoye. Around it, in the sixth and early seventh centuries, other clan members were buried. When the chapel was built, the importance of this founder's burial was still recalled, and the builders included the other clan graves within the confines of its walls... [This positioning] strongly suggest[s] that the continuity between pre-Christian and Christian clan members was not broken by baptism. In fact, on a physical, structural level, the founder was given a burial infra ecclesia after the fact, thus including him in the newly Christianized clan tradition. (37-8).

Well, why not? Why do we assume that conversion is tied to a moment in time, extending only forward from that moment and denied to all who came before it? We do now, of course, because of long-established tradition that (for example) pagans are denied entry into heaven, even Virgil because he unluckily died just a few years short of a certain critical historical moment. But that's quite an assumption to make, isn't it? That everyone would automatically understands religion and relationship to religious standing in that way? Why can it not simply be a cultural and behavioural difference, a difference in architecture, into which one may incorporate the past as easily as one might build a temple to an ancestor in a new architectural style and depict them in this generation's sartorial fashions in the frescoes?

Widows, memory and identity

2010-02-20T11:27:00.001-05:00

I was reading a couple of days ago a chapter by Bernard Jussen: “Challenging the Culture of Memoria: Dead Men, Oblivious and the ‘Faithless Widow’ in the Middle Ages”[1].

Now, for a start, that’s an interesting premise: memory not just as an abstract concept but as a culture and set of behaviour that the abandoned wife performs, with the effect that she keeps her dead husband ‘alive’ to the community; that her remarriage ‘forgets’ him, implicitly killing him or consigning him to oblivion.

Jussen examines the story of the Faithless Widow[2] in its various mutations over the years (and it dates back originally to Ancient Rome) to show that the mediaeval versions focus less on the sexual misdemeanour than on the implications of remarriage. For Jussen, that is where the threat lies, not in the (adulterous?) sex itself. He then extends this to examine the tension between a widow’s duty to the dead (mourning, fidelity, memory) and to the living (feeding and clothing herself and her children, maintaining the dead man’s house and social status), seeing the tension as ideally resolved with a set period of mourning. The wife ‘dies’ with her husband (and he points to extravagant hopeless behaviour associated with the deserted wife at a funeral, including flinging herself onto the coffin and into the grave) and suffers a period of ‘death’, suiting her habit and social behaviour to this new (temporary) identity, before returning to life and the living (221-22).

Of course, this is very interesting to me, because it raises the question of a very particular kind of temporal identity – that defined by a period in one’s life, rather than within a broader social epoch. Widowhood is in itself a kind of identity bestowed by temporality and focussed on the past (until and unless it is renounced). Effectively, your time is over. Mourning is much more intense, more prescribed, more culturally sensitive and more symbolic – but implies a return to some kind of life, albeit the life of widowhood that is, in itself, an end.

How did women think about themselves as different during either period? or how were they told they should? Of course, it would always differ from one individual to the next; but can we see women looking forward to the end of mourning, seeing themselves as living within a death with expected resurrection, or was the ‘death’, while experienced, meant to be complete, hopeless? Do we find comparisons to purgatory, to hell, to the three days before the Resurrection? Or (re. either mourning or widowhood) to more ordinary, everyday experiences of religion than the spiritual – Lent, for example, turning the experience to simply a kind of fasting, a time in which behaviour is culturally restricted but identity is not fundamentally altered?

Can we usefully consider widowhood (or mourning) beside other liminal and peripheral social figures / states of being?

- More permanent models of death-in-life are offered by monks and nuns, or (more extremely) anchorites, with the habits (both sartorial and behavioural!) to match. For some (all?) of these, the change in identity may have a start date, but (most likely) not an end date, or not an expected one. On the other hand, the expected or prescribed temporal shift here might be less to do with entering a new model of identity and more to do with modelling oneself on heavenly time, rather than earthly. In moving towards that kind of time, they place themselves closer to God, and their prayers gain (presumably) more effect with him to beg favour for others.

- What about lepers – with the ceremony of consecration that is so close to a funeral? with their special outsider status, halfway elevated and halfway lowered? This has a definite starting date, and it is not something undertaken willingly. It also has an implicit end date, in that leprosy is an eventual sentence of death – you are on time that God allows you. Lepers are also interesting in that that time they spend suffering on earth (earthly time) reduces not just their own time suffering in heavenly time after death in purgatory, but that of other people. Their sentence to reduced time on earth, their physical bodily status within that time, their adherence to particular socially prescribed behaviour, has the power to affect the spiritual status of others, and their very relationship to God.

- Unchurched new mothers? This was a prescribed time out of society, like mourning – but with taints of uncleanliness, like leprosy, and with the very real threat of death for one or both parties. Like widowhood, however, it has a stipulated ending, and offers the way to a joyous ‘rebirth’ into society for the mother, who has with her own body brought another Christian soul into the world, if all went well.

Widows are also special in similar ways – particularly during mourning, they are expected to perform certain behaviours that aid their husbands’ passage through purgatory and towards God. At the same time, society expects them to return to their duties to the living, and their husbands’ living house. In the case of many women, the ability to support their children financially would mean marrying again, potentially endangering their devotions to the dead husbands.

I don’t think I’m aiming for any particular argument here, just tossing ideas around. But we seem to have arrived at:

- People placed on the periphery of society, in privileged, socially prescribed positions that are analogous to death (and often compared explicitly to it by the behaviour and dress custom accords them) seem to be simultaneously ‘shut away’, hidden from view, and yet to have some kind of special access to the heavenly help line.

- In drawing closer to heavenly time, how do they gain the ability to affect the spiritual state of others, with a focus on the time allotted others in torment after death?

- How does mediaeval theology distinguish between earthly time and heavenly? how did individuals understand themselves within this pattern?

- To what extent does failure to correctly adhere to the identity prescribed to the individual by their special status diminish or remove the effect of their influence, retarding the process of (eg) the husband’s passage through purgatory?

- Meanwhile, performing proscribed actions seem to be able to cause the husband to retrospectively ‘vanish’ from time altogether. If the re-marrying wife who violates her mourning hangs her husband up in place of the nameless thief, remarriage figures as oblivion/death, analogous to an eternal (or very very long) time spent in purgatory.

--------------

[1] In Patrick J. Geary, Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried (eds). Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.

[2] Newly widowed woman cries and weeps on the grave of her husband, refusing to leave it despite her family’s insistence that she ‘return to life’; passing soldier says the same thing and she has sex with him on her husband’s grave, promising/proposing to marry him; his neglect of his duty has meanwhile caused the hanged corpse he ought to have been guarding to be stolen, so she proposes they dig up her husband and hang him in the other corpse’s place to prevent the soldier being punished.

Temporal identity

2010-01-26T15:46:00.002-05:00

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?

2010-01-24T14:59:00.001-05:00

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

2010-01-12T16:40:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-01-04T17:53:00.004-05:00

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)

2010-01-02T00:09:00.003-05:00

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

2009-12-26T22:50:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-12-24T02:22:00.003-05:00

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.

2009-12-23T18:39:00.000-05:00

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.

2009-12-22T18:30:00.001-05:00

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.

2009-12-22T07:04:00.001-05:00

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.

A study of Cleopatra D IX: MS II, ff. 80-83. Breve chronicon.

2009-12-20T06:48:00.000-05:00

A brief chronicle arranged by year from 1066 to 1304, extended to 1314 in another hand, with a later addition in a third.

Description.

Vellum, quarto (Hardy 352), 4 ff. Brereton mistakenly includes this manuscript and the following to f. 88 in her foliation of the Liber Alani de Ashbourne (see previous post), suggesting that it resembles those manuscripts at least superficially in layout, script and quality of parchment.

Contents.

A brief chronicle with three different periods of authorship. Incipit “Anno ab Incarnatione millesimo sexagesimo sexto”; explicit “In die nativitatis ejusdem Johannis” Baptistae (qtd. in Hardy 352).

Date.

According to Hardy, it imitates the Chronicle of Wigmore to 1279 (though scantily), then continues independently to 1304, where the first hand ends. The second hand continues through to 1314, while a single entry in a third hand notes the truce between France and England in 1341 (352).

Origin, authorship, later provenance.

The nature of the chronicle and the multiple authorship suggest a religious house. Hardy notes that local references would suggest Gloucester or nearby Wales, with influence from Wigmore, Herefordshire (Hardy 352). As Sir John Prise was very active in the dissolution of the religious houses in Gloucestershire, and had a penchant for collecting chronicles (Ker, Sir John Prise 5), it is possible it passed directly into his hands in 1535 or 1539, and thence to Cotton by a similar path to the South English Legendary fragment.

Lacunae and potential.

The brevity and imitative quality of this chronicle leave few clues as to its history, and have drawn it little attention from those scholars who have studied the manuscript. It sits, quiet and unassuming, in approximately the middle of the codex, least remarked of all. However, it is perhaps this very unremarkable nature that makes it valuable. A comparison with the Lichfield and Fineshade chronicles, together with some of the many other small-scale monastic chronicles by religious houses around this period, has the potential to establish a valuable pattern against which to judge impulses of conformity and diversity, inspiration and influence, in historical writing of the day.

Cited.

Brereton, Georgine E. (ed). Des grantz geanz: An Anglo-Norman poem. Oxford: Medium Ævum 1937.

Hardy, T. Duffus. Descriptive catalogue of materials relating to the history of Great Britain and Ireland v. 3. London: Rolls Series 1871.

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

A study of Cleopatra D IX: MS I, ff. 5-79. ‘Liber Alani de Ashbourne’.

2009-12-19T05:56:00.000-05:00

A book of historical lists, annals and stories from Lichfield Cathedral’s library, written or commenced by Alan of Ashbourne, vicar of Lichfield.

Description.

Vellum, small folio (Ward 198), 75 ff. Written on the recto of the first folio is “Liber Alani de Asshhburne Vicarii Lichf”. According to Brereton’s description of one item in it, that section at least has three columns with 50 lines (with an initial in red). Brereton describes the whole as being “in the same hand throughout, except for a few later additions on columns and pages left blank for the purpose” (vi). The accuracy of this assessment is questionable, as her examination of the remainder of the manuscript is cursory, to the extent that she includes the next two manuscripts in the number of folios she allots to this [*]. However, the error suggests that the hand, and perhaps the layout, of the manuscript are at least superficially uniform throughout.

Contents..

Historical lists and annals, local and universal, all in Latin save one Anglo-Norman romance. Although Des Grantz Geanz, a foundation poem recounting the mythic pre-history of Britain, survives in several manuscripts, this is the only witness to the longer redaction. It has been published by Brereton in a facing-page edition with the shorter redaction. There has been no edition of the remainder of the manuscript.

- 5v-24v: Annals from the beginning of the world to 1291 (or possibly 1292). Latin, 20 ff..

- 25r-37v: A list of the popes from St Peter to John XXII (Jacques Duèze, papacy 1316-1334), until 1317 according to Planta’s catalogue. Presumably this is an a quo date calculated on the ascension date of the last pontiff listed. Latin, 13 ff.

- 38r-69r: Annals of the deeds of the English, from the death of Hengist to 1377. In at least two different hands. Neither Ward nor Brereton mentions at which year the hands change, or how much space the first leaves for subsequent additions. Latin, 32 ff.

- 70r-71r: Des Grantz Geanz, long redaction (281 octosyllabic couplets). Anglo-Norman, 2 ff. At the foot of the first page is a jotting, presumably intended for a decorative header to the poem:.

Incipit tractatus de terra Anglie a quibus inhabitabatur in principio ante aduentum bruti . que terra primo vocabatur Albion . et postea a bruto britannia. Deinde Anglia nuncupata est. (qtd. in Ward 198).

The first four lines are:.

Ci put hom saver comen.
et quant et de quele gen.

Les grants geans primes vindren.

et Engleterre primes tindrent.
(ibid)

- 72r-74r: A list of the Archbishops of Canterbury, from Augustine to the investiture of John of Stratford (1333). Latin, 3 ff.

- 74r-79: A history of the bishopric of Coventry and Lichfield to 1347, with additions in a later hand to 1388. Latin, 5ff.

The selection and arrangement of the contents suggests a careful overall design. There is a balance between dry lists and narrative chronicles, and the field of vision narrows steadily from the universal to the national to the local. Given this level of organisational integrity, the apparently incongruous presence of an Anglo-Norman mythic romance in the midst of Latin prose histories provides a picturesque example of the flexibility of mediaeval understandings of genre..

Date, Origin and Authorship.

The library of Lichfield Cathedral (Ker, Medieval Libraries 115), c. 1323-1334 with later additions, Alan of Ashbourne and others..

Brereton dates the manuscript “with certainty” (vi) between the deaths of Simon of Mepham (1333) and Alan of Ashbourne (1334), on the grounds that the book records the death of one and is written by the other. This precision, however, rests on the assumptions that the book was written (or compiled) within the space of one year, and that it is primarily or exclusively the work of Alan of Ashbourne’s own hand. The first assumption is undermined by the book’s length, as well as Brereton’s own observation that the manuscript “consists of historical miscellanea and is written in the same hand throughout, except for a few later additions on columns and pages left blank for the purpose” (vi). This suggests that it was intended to function as a continuing record. If so, the vicar could have initiated it as a project any number of years before, rather than writing cover to cover within the space of a year. Greenslade asserts, based on internal evidence, that he began it in 1323, the year after his appointment at Lichfield (8).

The communal function implied by the long-term nature of the layout also complicates Brereton’s second assumption: although the majority of the work of compilation does seem to fall before his death, the book may have been initiated or directed by the vicar, without being written by his hand..

The addition of later entries up to 1388 and the inclusion (in transcription) of at least two works composed earlier (Des Grantz Geanz and the annals of the world) further complicate notions of any hypothetical authorship or definite date of composition. In particular, it is suggestive that the early annals end in the year 1291 or 1292. In 1291, a fire broke out in the Lichfield complex severe enough to burn at least the monastery to the ground (Knowles & Hadcock 192). Might the author have died in this fire, or stopped writing in the upheaval of rebuilding and recovery? The coincidence of dates suggests that while Alan of Ashbourne was compiling his own history of the bishopric, he collected or directed the collection of several other historical documents already belonging to Lichfield Cathedral – possibly including a (fire-damaged?) manuscript of a short chronicle written within fading living memory. The unfinished incipit the first page of Des Grantz Geanz strengthens the impression of a haphazard work in a constant state of composition, never polished and final.

His work appears to have been adopted on his death by his immediate community, enough to be referred to and intermittently updated for the next half century. By 1390, the manuscript seems to have fallen out of use as a record, superseded, forgotten or simply filled, and updates ceased..

The manuscript as a whole, with a history more accessible than most small-scale monastic chronicles can boast, provides valuable glimpses of possible motivations behind such an undertaking. Local and personal motivations sit side-by-side with a broader sense of national purpose. For example, if the first item (annals of the world) was written locally, as seems reasonable, a factor in the vicar’s decision to include it could well have been neighbourly reverence for the memory of its author and his not inconsiderable undertaking, from a man engaged in one no less ambitious. On the other hand, its contents demonstrate an anxiety to set local concerns, to which the majority of his efforts will be dedicated, in a universal context. Similarly, his local history and history of England suggests that he was among the many across England who felt prompted by the civil and natural disturbances of the 1320s to impose some order on events and dignify them with the name of history.

Later provenance and position within codex.

The picture is complicated around 1450 by Thomas Chesterfield, prebendary of Tervin in Lichfield Cathedral, who made a copy of Alan of Ashbourne’s chronicle and donated it to Lichfield Cathedral. It survives as MS Bodleian 956 pp. 113-229, and the inscription of the donor’s name on this copy led to the attribution of the authorship of both manuscripts to him in subsequent centuries (Greenslade 8-9 & notes; cf. Planta). The presence of two copies of the collection at Lichfield complicates their subsequent history.

The Franciscan house at Lichfield was dissolved in 1538, though other parts of the Lichfield establishment remained, including the cathedral, which is still in use today (Knowles & Hadcock 192). One of the two manuscripts, however, seems to have remained in the library of Lichfield Cathedral, as it was consulted there by William Whitelocke in the composition of his own history of Lichfield Cathedral in the late 1560s (Kettle, “Whitelocke”). This was probably the Chesterfield manuscript, as Whitelocke attributes the chronicle to him. The absence of both from the catalogue compiled by Patrick Young c. 1622 (Ker, “Young’s catalogue” 152 &c) suggests that both passed into the hands of a private collector at some time after 1670. Perhaps Whitelocke, “[o]ne of the few clergymen of the period to make a significant contribution to antiquarian studies” (Kettle, “Whitelocke”), felt it would be no disloyalty to his cathedral to allow such a manuscript to pass into the burgeoning library of some fellow antiquarian; or possibly the private circulation of his histories piqued someone’s interest in his source. The original Liber may also have been retired from the cathedral library prior to the dissolution, and fallen into private hands then.

Whether directly or through several intervening libraries, it was in Cotton’s hands by 1608, when he loaned it to Archbishop Bancroft (Tite 44-45). The loan entry reads only “Lichfield chronicle”, suggesting that at this time the manuscript was still circulating independently.

As for Chesterfield’s manuscript, this may be the one referred to in a note written c. 1617 in Bodleian Twyne 22 as the property of Thomas Allen (Tite 215). As Cotton indisputably possessed the original manuscript by that date, and had probably already bound it into the existing codex, Allen’s may very well have been the fifteenth-century copy – although it is also possible that he owned one of the manuscripts of Whitelocke’s adaptation.

Lacunae and potential.

- Basic codicological details and paleographical details are lacking, together with information about the contents of each section.

- As noticed above, this manuscript contains the sole surviving witness to the long redaction of Des Grantz Geanz. The second redaction, more than a hundred lines shorter, first appears in 1333, leading Brereton to suggest that this manuscript may be the source from which the second was abridged (vi). The lack of evidence regarding the origin of those manuscripts makes speculation somewhat futile, although it seems safe to say that both are evidence of an increased interest in this poem from the late 1320s onwards. If this is the case, judging only by the surviving manuscripts (which may not be representative), Lichfield Cathedral seems to have been a little ahead of the literary fashion.

- Many of the suggestions made above rest on the history of Lichfield from 1290 until Alan of Ashbourne’s death, particularly the local writing culture and the effects of the fire. For these, the chronicle itself may well be the best source we have, if it were available..

- The irregular number of folios – 75 does not divide easily into any set of regular quires – may suggest the addition or removal of folios or leaves after the primary stage of assembly. An examination of the manuscript could potentially confirm or deny this, as well as giving some indication of where changes may have taken place, potentially informing our understanding of how the vicars of Lichfield understood and interacted with their book as a historical document.

Cited.

Brereton, Georgine E. (ed). Des grantz geanz: An Anglo-Norman poem. Oxford: Medium Ævum 1937.

Greenslade, M. W. The Staffordshire Historians. Staffordshire Record Society, fourth series, 11 (1982).

Kettle, Ann J. “Whitelocke, William (c. 1520-1584).” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford UP, 2004. [http://www.oxforddnb.com.proxy.bib.uottawa.ca/view/article/29318, accessed 03 Dec 2009].

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

--- (ed). “Patrick Young’s catalogue of the manuscripts of Lichfield Cathedral”, Medieval and Renaissance Studies 2 (1950): 151-168.

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.

Tite, Colin. The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use. The British Library. Bury St Edmund’s: St Edmundsbury Press, 2003.

Ward, H. L. D. Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum. London: British Museum, 1962.

A study of Cleopatra D IX: Introduction.

2009-12-18T02:37:00.004-05:00

For an earlier mention of my investigations into this manuscript, see this post. Some things mentioned in it turned out to be incorrect or were dropped from the final study because I pursued a different angle, but I’m leaving it as is.

BL Cotton Cleopatra D IX has received only intermittent scholarly attention, and that piecemeal. Here a poem has been isolated from its manuscript and published, there a list of names or saints’ lives has been analysed for its relation to other such sources. One line – and not the most reliable - from a single chronicle has repeatedly been quoted to add weight to arguments that Edward II’s relationship with Piers Gavaston was sexual, with no consideration of the source.[1] As the codex is an early seventeenth-century assembly of disparate fourteenth-century texts, it has received no consideration as an entity; and it might reasonably be argued that it ought not. The authors and scribes of the various manuscripts contained in it certainly intended no relationship to the others, and Cotton’s assembly of it has no great psychological or historical significance. Moreover, the manuscripts contained in it are generally obscure enough that there must remain serious lacunae in our comprehension of the provenance and movements of the component parts, until the moment of their combination.

However, the mysteries and tantalising clues of their histories are precisely what have the potential to inform our broader understanding of the composition and later reception of manuscripts of this type. A collection of this type provides a ready collection of facts, impressions and resulting hypotheses – all potentially mistaken but all valuable to speculate around - of circumstances, motivations and habits of composition, and simultaneously of the treatment which the manuscripts were likely to receive at the hands of the early modern antiquarians.

Combined and bound by Cotton around 1616, the volume contains three large manuscripts (the Liber Alani de Ashbourne, the Epistola and the South English Legendary fragment), between which are bound two briefer manuscripts (a brief chronicle from Gloucestershire and the Fineshade chronicle collection). There is a considerable degree of order and intent in the collection and arrangement of the manuscripts in the volume, but it remains a superficial imposition. This volume was one of many assembled by Cotton from similar manuscripts in the mid 1610s, and as such is part of a larger project in which page size and number of folios seem also to have been a weighty consideration.

The codex begins with what Cotton probably considered the most valuable or useful of the book: the Fineshade collection was borrowed by Archbishop Bancroft in 1608 and consulted by John Selden c. 1617 (Tite 45 & 215), and before it fell into his possession had been copied and incorporated into other histories of the bishopric and the county. The first four manuscripts are reasonable uniform in size and nature, as well as appearance and layout if Brereton’s error is indicative (see later entry on the Liber Alani de Ashbourne). There is some thematic continuity, also, between the concerns of the Fineshade chronicler and William of Pagula’s reproaches against Edward III’s governance (mss III-IV). All are products of fourteenth-century England, although there is a possibility that the Epistola (ms IV) was copied in Gascony, and Cotton appears to have gone to some effort to arrange them into chronological order, which would require more than a passing glance at their contents.

The fifth manuscript, a fragment of the South English Legendary, stands out: popular culture, non-historical (at least to post-Reformation eyes), highly Catholic, middle English and clearly incomplete, the only elements in common with its companions seem to be its size and date.

A possible clue to its inclusion can be found in the original fly-leaves of the volume as Cotton bound it. Until 1913, the codex had fly-leaves formed of two leaves from a fourteenth-century psalter. The same psalter was also cannibalised for binding material for at least twenty-five other newly assembled Cotton volumes c. 1615-1618, most of which what appear from Planta’s catalogue to be similar historical collections, often local or monastic. Carley and Tite document this fragmentation, and have concluded that the remaining bulk of the psalter, which was bound into what is now Royal 13 D I, was intended by Cotton simply as filler after he removed something else from that volume (97 &c). The psalter has now been reunited with its missing leaves, rebound in 1913 as Royal 13 D I*, but its traces leave a useful record of Cotton’s activities in the mid 1610s.

As demonstrated by his treatment of the psalter, Cotton’s approach to his library was utilitarian rather than reverential, and he frequently fragmented or rebound manuscripts according to convenience of consultation. Sharpe observes that items “were bound together that were often consulted together” (69). This codex seems only to half embody that impulse: the first four booklets can all be described as fourteenth-century local histories with a broader political view, but the South English Legendary fragment stands alone. Perhaps it was added, being an appropriate size, simply to complete the bulk of the volume for binding, as with the psalter in Royal 13 D I. If this was the motive, we cannot exclude the possibility that Cotton himself is responsible for dismembering the complete South English Legendary manuscript as he did the psalter: they are, after all, both overtly Catholic texts with little of interest to offer Cotton’s generation of antiquaries. Perhaps we ought to seek its missing leaves in the pastedowns and fly-leaves of other Cotton volumes.

Individually and as a group, from a literary perspective or a codicological, there are difficulties with using the contents of Cleopatra D IX as a historical source. The scope of vision of each is local and limited, and much of the information unique to these manuscripts can’t be relied upon unless verified from other sources. Similarly, there are simply too many lacunae to construct a firm picture of their composition, transmission, later history and collection, so they serve as a definite historical example neither for their own time nor for Cotton’s. On the other hand, there are benefits to using texts like these as a historical source. I do not mean the more mundane benefits that Haskins points to when he praises the Fineshade chronicle’s ability to augment and correct another manuscript’s list of the dead and punished after the Battle of Boroughbridge in 1322 (Haskins, “Chronicle” 74-75). This sort of information-gathering has its place, of course, but only as it helps us understand more broadly the human and cultural implications behind the development of these manuscripts.

For example, the multiple layers of composition and contribution evident in each of the first three manuscripts provide a valuable example of the dangers of applying modern assumptions to a term like “author”. The presence of Des Grantz Geanz in the Liber Alani de Ashbourne, meanwhile, performs a similar service for the term “historical”.

In addition, comparison with other similar manuscripts could also provide the grounds for a detailed and powerful study of the motivations behind much of the historical writing of this period. Edward II’s reign, with its natural and civil upheavals and perceived perversions of the natural order upon which society was built, seems to have prompted a flurry of chronicles and other similar documents, suggesting a widely-felt need both to record momentous events to impose some imaginative order on them. While these manuscripts seem to belong, to varying degrees, to that tradition, they also give us a glimpse of a flurry of possible personal motivations informing the writing, from duty to the local parish to displacement from home, from higher instruction to memories of the dead.

The information gathered in the entries to follow is of necessity incomplete, even beyond the true lacunae imposed by time and obscurity. Only one page of the manuscript has been sighted in its assembly – f. 87v, reproduced in the appendix below. The remainder of the information is collected and deduced from the attentions of other scholars, some of whose interests lay in very different directions to my intent. For example, William of Pagula’s Epistola has received a respectable amount of attention, and much is now known about the circumstances, motivation and dating of its composition; but not one description of this manuscript is to be found. Brereton has published Des Grantz Geanz, from the Liber Alani de Ashbourne, but commenting on the contents of the other sections of the manuscript is out of her purview. This information, then, is incomplete, and many gaps could be filled by a simple trip to the British Library.

It should be also noted that in its assembly, I have deliberately engaged in speculation. Many hypotheses have had to be revised as new evidence came to light, and doubtless as many of the remainder would be proved incorrect if only all the information guessed at were available to us. I make no apology for it, however: the exercise of speculation in considering a collection such as this must be an end in itself, opening up possibilities and raising valuable questions about the individuals involved and the push and pull of cultural motivations in play, about what they believed they were doing in the act of writing, whom they thought they were serving and how, what “history” meant to each and how the community around them interacted with their text. The caveat remains, of course, that such speculation is only valuable – only safe – so long as one never forgets where it begins, and where it must end.

[1] “Quem filius regis intuens in eum / tantum protinus amorem iniecit quod cum eo firmitatis fedus iniit, et pre ceteris morta- / -libus indissolubile dileccionis vinculum secum elegit et firmiter disposuit innodare” (f. 86r, qtd. in Haskins, “Chronicle” 75), usually translated with varying degrees of luridness that occasionally almost match the Latin. References are typically to Haskins, occasionally mentioning the codex by pressmark. (See my previous post).

Cited:

Brereton, Georgine E. (ed). Des grantz geanz: An Anglo-Norman poem. Oxford: Medium Ævum 1937.
Carley, James P. & Colin G. C. Tite. “Sir Robert Cotton as collector of manuscripts and the question of dismemberment: British Library MSS Royal 13 D. I and Cotton Otho D. VIII.” The Library 6th series 14 (1992): 94-99.
Haskins, G. L. “Chronicle of the Civil Wars of Edward II.” Speculum. 14 (1939): 73-81.
Planta, Joseph. Catalogue of the manuscripts in the Cottonian Library deposited in the British Museum. The British Museum: Department of Manuscripts. London: Hansard, 1802.
Sharpe, Kevin. Sir Robert Cotton 1586-1631: History and Politics in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1979.
Tite, Colin. The Early Records of Sir Robert Cotton’s Library: Formation, Cataloguing, Use. The British Library. Bury St Edmund’s: St Edmundsbury Press, 2003.

Muddling a manuscript

2009-11-19T12:50:00.003-05:00

So, in an attempt to get all this information straight in my head, I’m going to do a blog post about it.

I’m trying to reconstruct a reasonably thorough codicological description of Cotton Cleopatra D IX, a codex which is an early modern collection of three, five, seven or eight 14th century mss (depending on how you count). It is, by the way, the codex that includes the short monastic chronicle of the civil wars of Edward II which I was translating [??] a while back. There’s a lot of missing information, much of it simply lost to time but a frustrating amount which could be resolved by looking at the codex. Or if any of the scholars who have, over the past century, commented on various articles within the codex had bothered giving trivial details about things like, oh, size of the page, or which pages are more worn than others, or whether the titles given to various entries are in a contemporary hand or an early modern one, or in fact only exist in the catalogue, and trifling little details like that. The most recent catalogue for the Cotton mss was published in 1802, and it’s rather cursory. I hear there’s another catalogue in process, due to be completed at the end of 2009, so this post may be rendered obsolete or proved inaccurate in several points within a few months – here’s hoping!

In brief, the main five manuscripts:

- a collection of historical writing from the Benedictine abbey of Lichfield,

- a brief chronicle from 1066-1314 from Gloucester or thereabouts,

- a chronicle with supporting documents relating to the events of 1322 and their aftermath from the Augustinian priory of Fineshade,

- a treatise of advice (speculum) to Edward III on the bad management of the kingdom,

- a fragment of a few saints’ lives from the South English Legendary, probably from the 1340s, somewhere around Gloucestershire or Oxfordshire.

We can call it six if we include the two leaves from a 14C service book which help to bind the codex as a while; seven if we count the single leaf attached to the Fineshade chronicle which appears to be an official proclamation from 1325; and, at a stretch, eight, if we count the two (almost) blank leaves binding the South English Legendary section.

So there is a certain thematic and temporal coherence, particularly if one considers the saints’ lives as historical sources on much the same footing as the other documents (as most people in this period would). The trouble is that they weren’t assembled in the 1300s – there’s no reason to think that the two whose origin we can pinpoint left Fineshade and Lichfield before they were dissolved by Henry VIII (1536 and 1538 respectively). And yet the Speculum Edwardi III is written on paper. It must have been kept very, very carefully to still be legible even by the 1500s, never mind by 2009, and I find it very hard to believe that it wasn’t bound up with other (parchment) mss very early to have survived at all. There is also thematic continuity between the Speculum and the concerns of the Fineshade chronicler in the manuscript immediately preceding it, though that may be just coincidence; but the ordering of the first four mss suggests a very careful grouping and consideration and knowledge of contents (and the historical events to which they refer), managing to approximate a chronological order for a chronologically complex group of texts. And yet, this care for the text is not reflected in the vandalism of a service book to bind them - unless it’s specifically a care for the text, not the manuscript? Or the binder had plenty of service books at his disposal (post-dissolution, presumably) and considered them far too ornate and popish (and common) to be worthy of the respect accorded to these more unique documents? Or were these four mss grouped by one person, and later bound together with the SEL fragment by another?

I’ll throw in a name at this point – Sir John Price, originally Ap Rhys (born in Wales, but built up quite a career in London before retiring to Herefordshire). He was heavily involved in the dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s, gathered an extensive personal library from their collections, and we know that he had at least the SEL fragment in his possession. Possibly he was the one to bind it with the two folios that surround it in the codex: we know he was opposed to rebinding volumes that were already bound, and we owe the preservation of many fine 11C volumes to his opinions in that regard. However, the SEL fragment was already broken up and had lost many leaves already (we don’t know how many because every collection of the SEL is different, so there’s no way of knowing how many legends this ms originally contained), and both the first and the last leaves extant are damaged. Preservation, in this case, would have meant protection rather than his usual more hands-off approach.

He would not, however, have been the man to bind the ms together with the other four. He may have owned them all – at least the first three of the five seem to be monastic in origin – but unfortunately the monasteries that we can identify as dissolved by Price are all concentrated around the Welsh border (Herefordshire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Worcestershire). The brief chronicle from around Gloucestershire might have fallen into his hands, but he would be venturing rather afield to reach Lichfield in Staffordshire, and Fineshade (Northamptonshire) would seem to be far outside his purview. So it’s more probable that either he acquired them later, or that when his library was broken up at his death a friend with similar interests acquired those mss Price had, and this other collector combined them with one or more of his own collection to form the codex we have now. This other collector may have been Cotton – does anyone know how likely Cotton would have been to bind this sort of collection together? – but it may also have been someone else from whom Cotton later acquired this volume as it now stands.

So that’s a simple overview of what we know about the later history of the mss in Cotton Cleopatra D IX – more questions than answers. The whole codex in itself presents (or in some cases, tries to obscure) an interesting story, or set of questions, about the production and dissemination and collection of manuscripts from the fourteenth century onwards. It is, after all, essentially a collection of collections, or possibly a collection of collections of collections. I still have no firm answers to almost anything about this book, and all the visible trails are broken at least once or consist of nothing more than a single point. But we have enough that we can see the broad strokes of the picture, and a few random finer ones that don’t really make up anything comprehensible, but which allow us to consider the more human aspects behind inspiration, purpose, production, retention, collection, in ways that may not answer any questions definitely, but at least give us plenty of other interesting and more germane questions to consider.

Structure and symmetry in the Gilte Legende (1): St Julian

2009-11-10T14:50:00.008-05:00

So, a couple of weeks back I discussed the disjointed nature of some of the vitae in the Gilte Legende (ed. Richard Hamer, EETS OS 327-8, 2006-7). I also mentioned the plethora of stories of Julians that the author tells under the entry for St Julian (v. 1 pp. 141-47) just to make sure we know which St Julian is the right St Julian; but despite the generally confused nature of that entry, the story of St Julian itself is beautifully symmetrical, and his saintly functions relate perfectly to the events of his life.

Briefly, the story is this. Fleeing a prophecy that he will kill both his parents (laid on him as punishment by a hart he was hunting), he moves away, marries and conveniently gets set up as a lord in a nicely feudal castle, as happens to so many unconnected vagabonds. When his parents find his castle, his wife invites them in, realises who they are, lavishes hospitality on them and gives up her bed to them, going to sleep elsewhere for the night. Returning home, he sees a man and a woman in his wife’s bed and kills them both in a fit of jealousy. As he emerges from the bloody chamber he meets his wife emerging, pointedly, from the chapel, and is slightly chagrined to hear her explanation. Realising that “whan I wende to eschewe this sorifull dede I most cursed haue fulfelled it” (144), he flees his castle and society and goes hermit – with his wife, who refuses to desert him. “And thanne they went togedre besides a grete flode where many men perisched, and there besides in that desert thei made a litell hospitall for to do there penaunce and for to bere ouer all tho that wolde passe” (ibid), until one day a horrible slimy smelly old leper turns up and says HELP ME ACROSS THE RIVER. Well, given the Greek-myth heritage of this story which has already been so obvious I didn’t even bother to use the word Oedipus anywhere, we know how this bit goes. He helps the leper, takes him in and feeds him and, because he's dying of cold, “toke hym in his armes and bare hym to his bedde and hilled hym diligently” (ibidetc). And lo and behold, the leper is secretly an angel sent by God to receive his penance and promise him that he will be taken to God soon. Incidentally, that “hilled” is probably “healed” but could also mean “cover, wrap” and possibly “embrace”. So perhaps it’s not surprising that if he was cuddling a leper (who probably had flu, and also fleas) in his bed, it was only “a litell after” that he and his wife both “slepten in oure Lorde Ihesu Crist”.
Just like Sir Gawain, this story invites diagrams. So:

No, I'm not procrastinating, why do you ask?

The story is driven by three revelations, each following an action of Julian’s. Pursuit of the hind leads to a prophecy, the murder of his guests is followed by the revelation of their identity and charity to the leper is followed by the revelation of the angel. In turn, each revelation leads to a journey:

I COULD continue to elaborate this picture and add all the other little structural things mentioned below and more, but I don't think Paint would let it be legible after another two lines or so.

Interestingly, the first two journeys are principally away, fleeing a prophecy and his shame respectively. It is only the third journey, instigated by God, that is a journey to a specific destination. Also, the first journey would seem to be in an upwards direction: socially, he ascends, and topographically he ends up in a nice tall castle which is presumably on some sort of a hill. But the folly of this social and earthly ascension is revealed by the consequences of his (newly acquired?) social pride, when his jealousy leads him to murder. The next journey is deliberately downwards, through the social scale and to the banks of “a grete flode”, and it is here that the spiritual state is reached which allows him to ascend correctly in the end. Or, to put it another way, his initial quest is away from his birth identity, now revealed as dangerous, to one which is more socially pleasing and validated by the community but leads to grave sin through a lack of his own self-knowledge (failing to recognise his parents), and thence towards social obscurity that leads him to discover a purer and truer identity in God.
There are other pleasing little contrast-dualities happening in the structure:

Most obviously, Julian’s attitude to his guests changes from the initial monstrous misunderstanding of his duties as host (and son) to his parents, to the self-sacrificing devotion he shows to an unfamiliar leper (who stands in for his spiritual father). There are shades of a similar guest in the hart, not recognised by Julian even as human until it speaks, and thereby foreshadowing his slaughter of his parents.
Wilderness vs. culture, where the first (initial forest, final flood) bracket the second and seem to be places of truth and self-knowing, while the second causes obscurity of the soul and blinds with frivolous things.
More specifically, the bedroom vs. the church. Note that, while Julian was in his bedroom being murderous, lustful, prideful, greedy et al, his wife was in the church, dutifully at her morning prayer after being beautifully hospitable and giving up her bed to the guests. Both emerge from their respective spaces of darkness and light at the same moment, and it is the sight of her that initiates the revelation of Julian’s error (“and whanne he seigh her he hadde mervaile”, 144), removing his blindness.
His wife has a pleasing sense of symmetry also, promising to stay with him in good time and in bad, “for sethe I haue parted with you in ioye I shall be partener of your sorw”. Their impending departure (and de-part in Middle English could also mean divide) “parts” the story into two, and there is a sense that her presence and her “part” in his fate will be a decisive factor in making this a clean break, providing a sort of rebirth.
The initial promise of the hart is echoed and laid to rest in the promise of the angel, the first predicting dire acts and bloody division from his parents, the second imminent peace and reunion with his heavenly father.

So, all in all, a very clever little example of certain elements from classical legend rewritten comprehensively enough to a) not feel patchy and disjointed and b) seamlessly rewrite the messages to a mediaeval Christian moral setting.

Querela divina and Responsio humana in BL Add 37049 (transcription)

2009-11-03T14:51:00.001-05:00

For reference, this is the full text of the poetic exchange on the page discussed in the last post (BL Add 37049 20r). Couplets are compressed onto one line for space, line breaks indicated with /. The only punctuation is an occasional medial punctus, transcribed as a full stop. Maiuscules follow the manuscript. Abbreviations are expanded with italics. The scribe made a few errors in the final lines (were they obscured in his original?) and has crossed them out, possibly with some attempt at scraping or rubbing – it’s hard to say on the colourless image. On the first two occasions he crossed the letters out before completing the word and continued on the same line, while on the third he completed the line before realising his mistake and inserted a superlinear correction.

Querela diuina

O man vnkynde / Hafe in mynde

My paynes smert

Beholde and see / Þat is for þe

Percyd my hert

And yitt I wolde / Or þan þu schuld

Þi saule forsak

On cros with payne / Scharp deth agayne

Ffor þi luf take.

Ffor whilk I aske / None oþer taske

Bot luf agayne

Me þan to luf / Althyng abofe

Þow aght be fayne

Responsio humana

O lord right dere / Þi wordes I here

With hert ful sore

Þerfore fro synne / I hope to blynne

And grefe no more

Bot in þis case / Now helpe þi grace

My frelnes

Þat I may euer / Do þi pleser

With lastyngnes

Þis grace to gytt / Þi moder -eh- eke

Euer be –þry- prone

Þat we may alle / In to –þat- \þi/ halle

With ioy cum sone

Amen.

The words around the wound in the heart:

Þis is þe mesure of þe wounde þat our / Jhesus crist sufferd for oure redempcoun [sic – I just can’t make out an i anywhere in there!]

Christ’s words:

Þies woundes smert. bere in þin hert and luf god aye. / If þow do þis . þu fil haf blys with owten delay

Incidentally, the scribe originally started writing this verse higher on the page, stopping when he realised that the words would run into Christ’s halo. There seems to be an attempt at scraping the first attempt away, and the line enclosing the text banner is thicker over the half-erased words in an attempt to hide them. It’s probably not to much of a jump to hazard that the scribe was also the illustrator, and didn’t do anything very elaborate in the way of plotting out his page layout beforehand. I think we also have an indication that he was thinking about the illustrative rather than the poetic side of things when copying out the second line of this couplet, in that he (automatically?) added the usual “en” to “withowten”: it rather destroys the rhythm, and could have been omitted.

Herte and mesure in BL Add. 37049 20r: in response to Caroline Walker Bynum

2009-11-02T12:58:00.010-05:00

I was reading through an article by Caroline Walker Bynum a few days ago (see below for citation), and found a few points with regards to one manuscript image she discussed that I wanted to expand.

The article focuses on the violence and gore in many high to late mediaeval theological images, its possible implications and the differing emphases laid on images of the perforated or violated body. The manuscript is BL Additional 37049, a Carthusian miscellany which has plenty of other creatively gruesome images. I particularly like this take on the usual memento mori: you may look pretty and rich and noble even in death, but you are still worm-food, frail mortals! Specifically, Bynum examines 20r:

British Library Additional 37049 fol. 20r. Click for full size.

Bynum cites this image to support her argument that the wounds of Christ “evoked love”. Specifically, she notes that Christ “displays his own heart … [which] bears within it all five wounds of Christ’s body, and the accompanying dialogue… ends with the hope that we will soon come to joy” (Bynum 18). She also adds that the image “returns us to the theme of fragmentation”.

However, although she quotes the exchange between Christ and the kneeling man, she doesn’t, to my mind, adequately examine the literal centrality of the heart on the page and in the poetic exchange:

Querela diuina: O man unkynde / hafe i[n] mynde / my paynes smert[.] / Beholde + see / Þat is for þe / percyd my hert [...]

Responsio humana: O lord right dere / þi wordes I here / with herte ful sore[.] / Þ[ere]fore fro synne / I hope to wynne / And greue no more [...]

The heart is the centre and focus of the page; but also, it seems to me, of their exchange. The pain in Christ’s heart is matched by the pain in the heart of man, caused by the same sin. The mutual wound suggests a shared heart – as indeed the page represents, presenting the heart as the means of communication, the addressee of the gaze and words of each. The word “heart” is exchanged between them as is the wound, something shared and mutually comprehensible. In this way, I’d question (or at least complicate) Bynum’s interpretation of the heart as Christ’s: it seems to me the heart shared between God and man. On the other hand, by that very token, it becomes a form of mediation between the human and the divine, the common halfway point: Christ himself, as the word made flesh, the mediator for humanity before God.

Aptly, the heart literalises the concept of “word made flesh”: it appears to speak. The central wound seems almost a mouth, and the words around it may be seen as issuing from it. Interestingly, though the image of Christ is made to speak, and the heart appears to, the man remains silent, except for the voice in the poem. Silent before Christ, or only capable of speaking through the emissary of the heart – whether that be addressing God through Christ, or one’s own internal voice of prayer, rather than the potentially destructive external voice?

Central throughout Bynum’s article is the idea of metonymy, “undergirded by… the doctrine of concomitance (the idea that the whole Christ is present in every particle of the eucharist)” (22):

From folk assumptions that a measure or particle (fingernails or hair) can be the person to abstruse theological debates over the mode of presence of an immaterial God, medieval culture gloried in the paradox of parts that not so much represented as were the whole. (23)

Bynum then draws the connection between this and the mediaeval obsession with numerology, particularly the ability of the right numbers to convey truth: effectively, to stand in as a metonymical “part” that might stand for / be the whole. I’d draw the comparison, for example’s sake, with the pentangle on Gawain’s shield and its ability to simultaneously represent Gawain (or the idealised version of him) and the perfection of Christ or the Trinity[1]. She applies this to the motto inscribed around the “mouth” of the heart:

Þis is þe mesure of þe wounde þ[a]t our Ih[esu]s Christ sufferd for oure rede[m]ptiou[n].

Bynum points out the emphasis on the precise length of the wound contained in “mesure”, pointing out a long mediaeval tradition in which “length is a metonym for person” (20). The correct dimensions of the wound carry with them the nature of the person represented by it, and therefore, if it adheres to those dimensions, “an image of the wound was Christ” (20). However, I’d venture to add to her conclusion. It seems to me that the evidence she cites to the effect that precise numerical detailing of an object can reproduce it in its precise identity means that perhaps in this case the numerical “mesure” need not be the central concern. If “mesure” has become abstracted to the extent she describes, we might as well read “this is the nature”, or “this is exactly that wound Christ suffered and how it was given him”. In this way the heart that is the focus of the gaze of Christ, of the kneeling man and of the reader (given the layout of the page) becomes a demonstration and revelation of the words they exchange through it: the manner of the wound, the piercing sin that harms both (or all three) in the doing, a visual representation of the exact truth – the “mesure” – of the Passion.

----------

Arthur, Ross G. Medieval sign theory in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Toronto: Toronto UP, 1987.

Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Violent imagery and Late Medieval Piety”, German Historical Institute Bulletin 30 (2002), 3-36. Available online on the GHI Bulletin website.

Chaucer, out of the mouths (et al) of babes.

2009-10-31T11:04:00.003-04:00

Let it be known that 12-day-old Elizabeth is already developing literary opinions. She likes the Knight, is indifferent to the Squire, abhors the Shipman, dribbles at the descriptions of the Franklin's feasts and passes gas at the Cook. Most promising, she gets very excited about the Clerk, waves her arms enthusiastically at the idea of having more books in her room than pretty things and claps her hands to her mouth excitedly at the talk of buying books even without being able to get a benefice (tenure?). Let us hope she doesn't emulate him so far as to borrow money for books and forget to pay it back.

Choices, challenges and chance in the first part of Dryden's Conquest of Granada

2009-10-28T17:38:00.005-04:00

Alright, so time to 'fess up: I am studying a Restoration course this semester and am thus not always thinking about the mediaeval. So I am having non-mediaeval thoughts sometimes. Such as about The Conquest of Granada.

I like to think I'm still not a terrible person?

The first part of Dryden’s Conquest of Granada was written in a society regaining its confidence after the upheavals of the Civil Wars, the Protectorate and the Restoration. It depicts a nation besieged from without, blithely (and wrongly) confident in its own power despite strife and divisions within. However, Dryden does not focus on the city as a direct analogue for English society in the past generation. Instead he explores the human motivations behind each character’s shifts of loyalty that destabilise their society, challenging his audience to self-analysis in a way that perhaps they could not have stood five years before. Almanzor and Lyndaraxa stand out from the general confusion, not for their constancy, but for the control that they alone manage to retain over their own power of choice.

The play opens to an image of a society perfectly ordered, or perfectly controlled. Powerful men – the king and the patriarchs of the leading families – sit in luxury and discuss the day’s games, a mediaeval-style tournament of male prowess and display (under the eyes of the ladies, naturally), with some fashionable local colour in the form of Spanish bulls. As in any era, the expensive and' extravagantly organised games are a display and proof of centralised power; and naturally, as the King expects, the heroes of the establishment[1] affirm their superiority over their hypermasculine opponents. The only catch is that the audience doesn’t see it. Uninvolved in the off-stage action, the audience’s point of view is limited to that of the character-turned-narrator, who thereby asserts his control of the events and world portrayed. The spectator relies on the perceptions of the most interested parties - and their complacent view of their world is soon dispelled by the “confus’d noise within” (I.I.98) that signals the beginning of civil disorder.

The eruption of combatants onto the stage – shocking after the elegant inaction and controlled, distant violence of the preceding speeches – exposes the flaws in Boabdelin’s model of kingship. In his world view, his authority and the system that sustains it are built of rock, not of people: an independent structure that stands regardless of the differences of mere mortals. Magnificent though he may be initially in confronting the armed mobs, his words have no effect because he does not realise the possibility of his subjects having opinions and agendas of their own, nor the necessity of addressing these to resolve the cause of the conflict. To manage the passions of a nation a king must surely first acknowledge them, but the competing hatreds exchanged across him – murders, superiority of family claims, racial or religious contamination - pass by unnoticed. It is his very insistence on absolute authority rather than disputation that causes the situation to escalate, recalling Charles I’s stubborn obliviousness to the depth of the currents, until the water around his stately galleon churned visibly white. Almanzor’s challenge (“I alone am king of me” etc, I.I.206), predicated on individualised honour and choice rather than state-harnessed honour and obedience, is incomprehensible to Boabdelin, alien to his stone-built tower of a world, and consequently unanswerable.

Boabdelin’s tower, however, is soon shaken and divided by the factionalism of civil war, prompting a flurry of about-turns from almost every major character. Abdalla rebels, Abdelmelech vacillates, Boabdelin throws his lot in with just one clan of his empire, and Abenamar and Selin turn against their respective children, who both abandon filial obedience for love. Rather than let these instances simply pile up, Dryden links them with imagery of wind and water, shifting, insubstantial and helpless. Memorably, Almanzor calls Boabdelin a “weathercock of State”, who “stands so high, with so unfix’t a mind, / Two factions turn him with each blast of wind” (III.I.10-12). Abdalla applies this idea to humanity more generally when he laments the insubstantial nature of “frail reason... kick’d up in the Air / While sence weighs down the Scale”: human conscience is too easily “born away: And forc’d to count’nance its own Rebels sway” (III.I.58-63). The same imagery recurs throughout the play, undermining each individual’s attempts to explain away their decisions and changes. The effect of this is to attribute the mutability not to the direct cause of each occasion, but to basic human nature, subject to chance.

The first major defection, Abdalla’s, is also the one Dryden examines most closely, exposing his ongoing fascination with the interior reasonings of these changes. It is initiated by Lyndaraxa’s half-promise to renege on her affections for Abdelmelech, and cemented by the excuses offered him by one of Boabdelin’s strongest subjects. Abdalla’s own consciousness of the moral implications of his decision (II.I.174-253) makes him look curiously helpless. He portrays himself as “tost” like a helpless ship between “love and vertue” (II.I.184), opposing internal forces which will decide his fate for him without the possibility of his own intervention. His plea to Zulema to second his flagging honour so it might “renue the fight” (II.I.189) also seems to absolve him of any personal responsibility for his decision, and Zulema’s persuasive arguments against that honour conveniently finish the job. After the event, he shows no hesitation in laying the blame on Lyndaraxa, using the language of the scorned chivalric lover (III.I.72-74) and of chauvinistic mistrust:

This enchanted place,
Like Circe’s Isle, is peopled with a Race
Of dogs and swine, yet, though their fate I know,
I look with pleasure and am turning too. (III.I.95-98)

To cast Lyndaraxa as Circe implicitly turns Abdalla into unfortunate victim made bestial through womanly wiles, incapable of honour or conscious decision; but it also implies that all of Granada is peopled by men who cannot retain their shape, or lack the moral drive to wish to.

Abdelmelech and Abdalla are equally helpless in their inability to renounce Lyndaraxa. Despite the knowledge of her changeability, each lacks the power to choose to turn away, or to take any other path than the one down which she drives them. Abdelmelech, for example, perceives that her heart “was never fix’d, nor rooted deep in Love” (III.I.164); but, through her skilful handling, he is begging permission within twenty-five lines to pledge his own constancy to the inconstant target, while Lyndaraxa mocks him with the possibility of his own future defection (“You would be perjur’d if you should I fear”, III.I.190). By the time he presses Lyndaraxa to run away with him as “proof of love to me” (IV.II.36), the city is a mess, Almanzor has changed sides and the tides of war twice, and the audience is as conscious as Lyndaraxa of the fruitlessness of any such proof. In this world as presented, no person can be proven, and a person who trusts in such proof is left vulnerable and manipulable.

Lyndaraxa plays to reserve the moment of choice only because she is more conscious of this fact than are the men around her: she admits freely to herself that “I my self scarce my own thoughts can ghess, / So much I find ‘em varied by success” (IV.II.4-5). She speaks the unacknowledged creed of almost every other character in the play when she declares that she “will be constant yet, if Fortune can” (IV.II.7), consciously placing her own steadfastness in the power of that most fickle of deities. By contrast, each man appears to believe his current loyalty to be the only admissible possibility, leaving himself subject to Fortune’s whims.

Almanzor is an exception within this general turmoil. The difference lies not in his stability of loyalties – he is the most infamously changeable character of all – but in his consciousness of the power of his own choices. Instead of reacting to changes in Fortune, Almanzor causes them: if Boabdelin is a weathercock turned by each passing wind, Almanzor turns himself, knowing the wind will swing to follow him. Initially, Almanzor seems to stand in opposition to human fickleness. On his first appearance, he appears to provide a stable moral centre to the play, disproving the supremacy of the old regime and epitomising a new system based on personal honour and conscience. He stands up to the irrational judgements of a tyrannical king (I.I.204-231), advocates responsibility with power (I.I.218-20), notes the weakness in the current system (I.I.226-29, I.I.285-86, III.I.10-12) and offers to fix it by pinning the weathercock with his own immovable weight:

The word which I have giv’n shall stand like Fate;
...
But now he shall not veer: my word is past:
I’ll take his heart by th’roots, and hold it fast. (III.I.9-14)

With these words, the king seems but a butterfly, weak and movable: Almanzor, staunch and strong, standing for eternal principle against self-interest and factions’ advice. But Abdalla’s request immediately following unsettles this comforting impression. Remaining firm to his own individual “word”, Almanzor commits himself to the ultimate social disruption of civil war. As various characters comment, including Almanzor, from that point he takes on Fortune’s role (“I am your fortune; but am swift like her”, IV.I.30), and his actions govern the consequent reactions of the remaining characters. Almanzor is characterised not as a changeable subject to the vagaries of the Fortune’s wind, but as the agent of change, steering the fortunes of others “as winds drive storms before ‘em in the sky” (III.I.526).

The change is not in Almanzor, it should be noted, but in the audience’s growing realisation of their inability to trust any moral advocate, no matter how charismatic. The terms in which he agrees to help Abdalla (III.I.21-28), and announces to Boabdelin his intention to continue to change sides as he chooses (IV.I.54-55), are consistent with his first glorious speeches that win the stage to him. His very first line (“I cannot stay to ask which cause is best; / But this is so to me because opprest”, I.I.128-29), despite its consciousness of the arbitrary nature of any such judgement, shows a determination to retain control of the moral context of his decisions – and potentially the power to change his choice at a later date, if the first judgement should prove erroneous. By consciously assuming the power and responsibility for his shifts in loyalty, and acknowledging the possibility of Fortune changing, Almanzor reserves to himself the power of change rather than the Fortune-shaped reactions of his compatriots.

The sheer number of these human changes, once realised, makes the whole world appear mutable. The city of Granada has little concrete existence of its own. Unlike the village and houses of Sir Samuel Tuke’s The Adventures of Five Hours or the streets and rooms and islands of Thomas Shadwell’s The Libertine, the writing of Conquest evokes no firm sense of locale. Most scenes could be set indoors or outdoors, in a hall or garden or a street, or on a blank stage. The strongest scene-painting in the play is the opening description of the bullfight (I.I.1-98), an event which takes place offstage and therefore exists only in the words of its narrators. While a hypothetical set might provide some context and colour, its effect is little next to the spoken word: the theatre’s lack of a cohesive authorial voice ensures that in most plays the characters and their words are the world. Juliet’s orchard is vividly alive, regardless of staging choices. But Granada, as a city, is barely there: she has her only substance in the minds of her inhabitants, and she is soon forgotten. As a society, she is only as substantial as a group illusion. In the first act, by questioning certain fundamental issues of social organisation - the proper nature of government and kingship (I.I.194-288), the right to inheritance and title (I.I.292-346) – Dryden destabilises the social structure binding the individual characters together. With these things recognised as insubstantial, the characters themselves are left to hold their world together unassisted. As each wanders off whithersoever he (or potentially she) would, the whole of social structure becomes illusory.

Despite the gloominess of such a point of view, the final vision, for its first audience, need not have been so bleak. For those who made the comparison between the events in Granada and the storms of the last generation, there remains sufficient distance in Dryden’s writing that they need not have assumed Granada’s downfall was England’s. There is no consistent parallel between any character in the play and any on England’s recent political stage, though there are occasional passing similarities. Granada’s character is sufficiently foreign, especially with the real Christians hovering at the gates, that the audience could be in no danger of identifying themselves completely with the Moors who comprise her population. Dryden challenges his audience to consider the nature, causes and moral implications of the changes humans make under pressure, but England is not Granada. England has come through the wars, is not doomed, and can consider these questions in retrospect, without the danger being pulled to pieces from within.

-------------

[1] Almanzor, the triumphant stranger, is potentially a threat, and will so prove; but at this point the speakers claim him as their hero, the epitome of those qualities that they treasure in the world their words create. Though Abenamar recognises him as "more than man" (I.I.48), he appears to consider it only a matter of degree: the challenge implicit in this difference is not recognised.

Conan Doyle exorcises the Restoration

2009-10-23T22:59:00.001-04:00

So, definitely not mediaeval. Maybe mediaevalist, though, or at least following the same lines of thought.

I’m half-TAing for three classes, one of which is on the genre of the mystery novel. Unsurprisingly, it contains The Hound of the Baskervilles. In fact, I’ve a bundle of essays in my bag beside me on the bus right now on how The Hound is both Gothic and anti-Gothic. The basic intent of the set question is that the story contains Gothic elements and creates an atmosphere highly suggestive of the supernatural, cashing in on the thrill inherent in that genre, but has it both ways in that cold science and human agency carry the day. But I attended the lecture just now, and found myself questioning what Gothic actually means in this context.

The prof taking the course highlighted certain elements in the story that he regards as particularly Gothic – the emphasis laid on the age of Baskerville Hall (at one point he called it mediaeval), the animal savagery in the face of Selden (the convict hiding up on the moors) – without explaining just what made them Gothic in the society in which Conan Doyle was writing. The age of Baskerville Hall – its decrepitude? Suggestions of a dark past? The (probably figurative) ghosts of past ages of who-knows-what morality? The fact that the sheer size of the house (temporally as well as spatially) suggests ominous and unknowable secrets? What was it in the figure of Selden that would give the average reading Victorian a frisson? Both, I think, are linked in the story that initiates the drama, the 18th century manuscript telling a story of the 17th, the story of Sir Hugo Baskerville.

The prof in question pointed, again, to certain aspects of this story as Gothic, and again I would have preferred to shift his emphasis. He spoke of Hugo Baskerville as the Gothic villain because, as a lord of the manor, he ought to take a paternal attitude towards his dependants and he fails rather spectacularly in this. He also pointed out the final vision of the hellhound lifting its bloodied jaws from Hugo’s throat, and the horror of his erstwhile companions. Now, I certainly wouldn’t dispute that a Gothic story needs a good old bad-to-the-bone villain who epitomises the worst of humanity, or even something beyond the human, and also a good shock of gore. But ingredient don’t make atmosphere; and for me the Victorian terror lies elsewhere. The strongest Gothic moment in that tale-within-a-tale, so far as I’m concerned, is the moment when Hugo Baskerville rides off ahead of his companions into the dark on the moor, surrounded by his dogs, baying for the blood of his hapless (female, naturally) victim. There we have simultaneously the moment when human darkness turns over completely to the diabolical, and the terror of the darkness and the unknown in the dark, of what is happening ahead on the moors, until that moment of shock and revelation when the hound raises its head. And Hugo? Well – he’s set very precisely in historical time. He’s a Restoration libertine.

The libertinism of the Restoration, of course, was looked back on with varying degrees of romanticism and dutifully appalled fascination by later generations. Filtered through Conan Doyle’s eyes, the Restoration (in the person of Hugo Baskerville) stands in for the darkest and cruellest in English history, a time of the most shocking and unmentionable drunken depravities known to man (or fiend)[1]. The age of the house is partly sinister because it provides a link to the deeds of this man, the ethos of this time, in the vast and unsettling halls that swallow you up in visions of old carousing and predation, the darkness beneath the surface. And there we have Selden – the animal in man, the werewolf, the vampire, the monster hidden under the veneer of civilisation that Hugo Baskerville became when he consigned his soul and body to the devil if he might only overtake the girl, clapped his spurs to his horse and sped off with his hounds. The modern villain of the novel, Stapleton, is associated through his own actions with both the devil-invocation and uncontained sexuality of Conan Doyle’s libertine era. In creating the devil dog, he consciously calls up the “devil” to do his work, just as did his ancestor Hugo[2], and his adultery and exploitation of the two women in his life turns them both into interchangeable victims (though not so helpless as the nameless damsel). Plus there’s the tiny issue of gruesome murder, of course.

The Gothic need not recall the Restoration in its every occurrence, of course, but I think it’s fair to say that in Hound of the Baskervilles Conan Doyle does relate it to a time period and corresponding (perceived) historical mindset. As such, it turns into a metaphor for the terrors within, the supernatural and diabolical that give rise to the werewolf but are always ultimately human. Holmes defeats these elements of the story and proves them false by the powers of Reason and Science and Logic – the thinking man’s triumph over the savage.

There we are – I have convinced myself.

I don’t say this in criticism of the prof in question. This is all, after all, beyond the scope of the lecture. But certain of his statements and omissions started me thinking – and that’s certainly something to thank him for!

[1] Which just goes to show how sex-obsessed the Victorians really were, because only part of the libertine movement was about sex. A large part of it was about freedom of religion, too, while Conan Doyle’s vision completely excludes the divine and is scrabbled over by greedy fingers of the devil.

[2] Though with differences, necessitated by the physicality of the events in the real world. Both men intend to run their victims to death, probably by setting their dog(s) on them – in Hugo’s case his real dogs never get a look-in, as something far scarier than them comes along. Both the damsel and Sir Charles Baskerville die of fright after fleeing their pursuer, rather than being mauled. And Hugo calls on the devil to help him catch the damsel, while Stapleton builds his own faux devil, and presumably, in doing so, gives the real one his soul once his body is sucked down into the mire (devoured by his master below!).

Alcohol: shame and usefulness.

2009-10-18T14:42:00.004-04:00

So, how do the rest of you find it? This whole, brain-doesn't-switch-off, over-activity-of-the-grey-matter, how-do-you-stop-thinking-all-the-time thing? You see, alcohol may be frowned on generally, but it can actually be really useful when it comes to relaxing. Whether it be because you're practising your vocal exercises for a singing exam, and your mother is disturbed and distressed by your confession that it's far easier when you've had a half-cup of wine but it makes damn sense because it switches off the instinctive muscular tightening and clamping that is sabotaging your performance through over-thinking everything and the inability to trust your body to support your performance unsupervised; or because your stomach is cramping horribly because, well, that's what it does once a month, and your body doesn't consult you first to ask whether you've got, say, a paper due to be delivered (performed) tomorrow and you just need to turn brain and muscle off because you've done as much as you can for the time; or just because it's the end of the day and your brain hasn't realised yet and keeps doing interesting things with texts which, yes, are interesting but I'm trying to relax now and go to sleep please shut up...

... Am I alone in thinking this is somehow shameful? Or am I alone in thinking it's maybe, within moderate limits, acceptable?

Teaching the Glossa Ordinaria

2009-10-14T15:06:00.001-04:00

No, I’m not. Though I may be teaching the second half of a class on sci-fi literature tomorrow (or possibly next week), with two days’ notice (or nine), and no, I have no idea why. Or on what. Hoorah for improvisation skills!

But we’re looking at the Glossa Ordinaria on the Song of Songs in one of my classes (ed. Mary Dove, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), and have been asked to think about how we might use it in a general cultural history course – what we might pick out from it for students, how would we read other texts through it, what we would pair with it.

Well, first I choose to disregard that ‘general cultural history’ stipulation, or at least set it aside briefly to assume a very long course in which I could spend a lot of time delving into the mediaeval and playing Disprove The Myths. The myth in question would be the general perception of the Middle Ages being a time in which everyone was miserable and hated themselves for being lowly dirty worms and thought about boring religious stuff all the time. I would then throw this and some saints’ lives – from the Gilte Legende, possibly, but I’d make a goodly effort to get Christina the Astonishing in there, because who doesn’t love stories about women flinging themselves in ovens and perching on church rooftops while their families hang around below looking increasingly hassled and waving the shackles enticingly? And that’s rather the point – whether or not everyone thought about religion all the time, the cultural spectrum included under ‘religion’ was just a tad broader than nowadays, and needn’t entail either boredom or self-flagellation (unless you’re into that, of course). Meanwhile, offering two such different text – academic/popular, analytic/narrative, Latin/vernacular, Biblical/apocryphal, high-flown/good rolicking fun – is a great way to smash that idea of a homogenous huddling “everyone”, which is part and parcel with the idea of Dark Ages.

And what they do have in common is revealing too. Others may come up with some other overreaching unifying feature, but for me it would be passion. Legend or gloss, this matter is far from boring to its authors. The glossators on the Song of Songs don’t try to quash the sensual delight in their text – they use it, glory in it, redirect it towards Christ and heaven. It doesn’t require excuses, just translation: the passion itself is entirely appropriate. The theological aspects of the Gilte Legende aren’t nearly so sublime. They tend to feel more generic, more obligatory; but the same enthusiasm resides elsewhere in the stories. People’s more everyday hopes, terrors, delights, schadenfreude, secret kinks, all there in much more accessible format, what entertains and what instructs.

Of course, one could easily turn that into a chapter in a general cultural history course anyway. Continue on to the Reformation and throw some Thomas More at them, or better, the hotly debated religious arguments used in Henry VIII’s attempts to get under Anne Boleyn’s skirts; consider the implications of Hamlet senior’s ghost apparently confirming the existence of Purgatory; look at some of the inflammatory pamphlets printed about the Catholic/Irish plots during the English Civil Wars. Just because religion permeated (almost) every aspect of people’s lives doesn’t make it boring: generally the opposite, I’d say, because people aren’t good at being bored. They make things interesting.