Narratives of a New Order Cistercian Historical Writing in England, 1150-1220: Cistercian Historical Writing in England, 1150-1220 (Medieval Church Studies, 2)

Narratives of a New Order ____________

MEDIEVAL CHURCH STUDIES 2

Narratives of a New Order Cistercian Historical Writing in England, 1150–1220 by

Elizabeth Freeman

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. Freeman, Elizabeth Narratives of a new order : Cistercian historical writing in England, 11501220. – (Medieval church studies ; 2) 1.Cistercians – England – History 2.Historiography – England – History – To 1500 3.Literature and history – England – To 1500 4.England – Church history – 1066-1485 5.Great Britain – History – Plantagenets, 1154-1399 I.Title 942'.03 ISBN 2503510906

©2002, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2002/0095/36 ISBN: 2-503-51090-6 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Contents

Acknowledgements ..............................................................................vii Abbreviations ........................................................................................ix Introduction............................................................................................1

PART ONE: AELRED OF RIEVAULX: CISTERCIAN HISTORIOGRAPHY IN THE 1150S Prologue ...............................................................................................19 1. Multiple Meanings for Multiple Audiences: Aelred of Rievaulx’s Relatio de standardo ..........................................................31 2. The Timeless Nation: Aelred of Rievaulx’s Genealogia regum Anglorum..............................................................................................55

PART TWO: AFTER AELRED: 1167–1200 3. Building Solid Foundations: Expanding the Definition of Historical Production ...........................................................................91

PART THREE: FOUNDATION HISTORIES AND INVENTED TRADITION, 1200–1220S Prologue .............................................................................................127 4. Resolving Uncertainty: The Fundacio abbathie de Kyrkestall ......137 5. The Literal and the Allegorical: The Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii ...........................................................................151

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PART FOUR: NATIONAL HISTORY WRITING, C. 1220 Prologue .............................................................................................171 6. Meanings in the Borders: Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum ........................................................................................179 Conclusion .........................................................................................215 Bibliography.......................................................................................221 Index ..................................................................................................239

Acknowledgements

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any people have helped in the preparation of this work. I would like to thank the following: the Benedictine community at Arcadia, NSW; Megan Cassidy-Welch; Marsha Dutton for continuing encouragement when it was needed; Simon Forde for encouragement as well; Anne Gilmour-Bryson; Di Hall; Adina Hamilton; Julian Harrison for generous sharing of ideas and research; Helen Hickey; the Institute of Cistercian Studies at Kalamazoo and the participants at the 1998 Cistercian Studies Conference; Kevin Long; Lucy Mills for the title and much else; Nancy Partner for commenting both perceptively and generously; Meagan Street; Ann Trindade; and John O. Ward. Many other people generously responded to enquiries during the course of my research, for which I am very grateful. I also appreciate the help extended by the following institutions: the Baillieu Library, especially Vija Pattison and the Inter-Library Loans staff, University of Melbourne; the Bibliothèque nationale; the Bodleian Library; the British Library; the College of Arms, London; Cambridge University Library; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; the Institute of Historical Research, London; the Morris Miller Library, University of Tasmania; Trinity College, Cambridge; the Waldo Library, Western Michigan University; York Minster Library. Finally, I thank the members of the Department of History at Melbourne and the School of History and Classics at Hobart for providing a friendly and stimulating work environment. This work has been a long time in development. Parts of various chapters have appeared in various experimental forms over the years. Readers will note debts to, and developments of, the following: ‘Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Bello Standardii and Medieval and Modern Textual Controls’, in Deviance and Textual Control: New Perspectives in Medieval Studies, ed. by Megan Cassidy, Helen Hickey, and Meagan Street (Melbourne: Department of

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History, University of Melbourne, 1997), pp. 78–102 (reprinted with permission); ‘Aelred of Rievaulx’s De Bello Standardii: Cistercian Historiography and the Creation of Community Memories’, Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 49 (1998), 5–28 (reprinted with permission of the editors of Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses); ‘The Many Functions of Cistercian Histories, using Aelred of Rievaulx’s Relatio de Standardo as a Case Study’, in The Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Erik Kooper (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999), pp. 124–32 (reprinted with permission); ‘Meaning and Multi-Centeredness in (Postmodern) Medieval Historiography: The Foundation History of Fountains Abbey’, Parergon, n.s., 16 (1999), 43–84 (reprinted with permission); ‘Wonders, Prodigies and Marvels: Unusual Bodies and the Fear of Heresy in Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum’, Journal of Medieval History, 26.2 (June 2000), 127–43 (copyright Elsevier Science and reprinted with permission); and ‘Beautiful Lands and Wastelands: Medieval Monastic Communities and the Correct Use of Space’, Lateral: A Journal of Textual and Cultural Studies, 3 (2001), at http://www.latrobe.edu.au/www/english/lateral/index.html (reprinted with permission).

Abbreviations

The following abbreviations apply throughout this work: An Cist

Analecta Cisterciensia (formerly Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis)

A-NS

Anglo-Norman Studies

ASOC

Analecta Sacri Ordinis Cisterciensis

CCCM

Corpus Christianorum Continuatio (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971– )

CF

Cistercian Fathers Series

Cîteaux

Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses

COCR

Collectanea Ordinis Cisterciensium Reformatorum

Coll Cist

Collectanea Cisterciensia (formerly Collectanea Ordinis Cisterciensium Reformatorum)

CS

Cistercian Studies

CSQ

Cistercian Studies Quarterly (formerly Cistercian Studies)

CSS

Cistercian Studies Series

EHR

English Historical Review

HSJ

Haskins Society Journal

Mediaevalis

x

NLT

Narrative and Legislative Texts from Early Cîteaux, ed. by Chrysogonus Waddell, Studia et Documenta, 9 (Brecht: Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 1999)

PL

Patrologiae cursus completus, series latina, ed. by Jacques-Paul Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64)

RS

The Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, published under the direction of the Master of the Rolls (‘Rolls Series’), 99 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1844–95)

SCH

Studies in Church History

Statuta

Statuta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Cisterciensis ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, ed. by D. JosephusMia Canivez, 8 vols, Bibliothèque de la Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, fasc. 9–14 B (Louvain: Bureaux de la Revue, 1933–41)

TRHS

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Introduction

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his book is a chronological survey of selected historical writings produced by Cistercian monks in England from their first compositions in the 1150s through to the 1220s. The Cistercian order is best known for its distinctive spiritual writings and, as a result, most scholarly attention has been directed at the monks’ sermons, treatises, vision literature, and so on. Since there has been no comprehensive treatment of the English Cistercians’ historical writings it is timely to draw attention to this important component of the Cistercians’ literary tradition. At the most basic level, this book can be appreciated as a series of close readings of certain Cistercian histories that have been understudied in past scholarship. But, in the spirit of medieval exegesis, there are more meanings to be drawn here than simply the immediate. Besides the chronological studies of individual histories, three further levels of analysis inform this study. The first is the question of Cistercian corporate life and how it developed during the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. The first hundred years or so of the Cistercian order is recognized as a time of enormous change, a medieval change which is rivalled today by the swiftness with which old scholarly certainties concerning this first Cistercian century are themselves altering. It is no exaggeration to state that scholarly debate, interpretation, and reinterpretation in relation to Cistercian corporate history is one of the most vibrant fields of medieval religious scholarship at present.1 Most participants in this debate investigate devotional and legislative sources, but this 1

See, for example, the most recent contribution to the debate, Constance H. Berman’s controversial reassessment of the order’s first century, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).

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book argues that chronicles can also provide helpful evidence concerning the order’s changing institutional and spiritual activities. A second area worth investigating is the wide field of English historical writing in the mid-twelfth to thirteenth centuries and, more than this, the dependence of historical writing on, and its contribution to, the politics of the period. We already know a great deal about this topic for the earlier part of the twelfth century. We know, for instance, that it was the specific need to define, name, and characterize the English nation that was the driving force behind the revival of historical writing following the Norman Conquest. Both cause and consequence of this was the fact that ‘the nation’ represented an extremely potent site of historical meaning. And this was not just any nation. In the early to mid-twelfth century, writers and readers of history invested their greatest hopes and energy in the English nation in its particular Anglo-Saxon incarnation. Here the flexibility of the Anglo-Saxon past was critical. A given textual community could describe the AngloSaxon past in order to embrace political and social changes, as the AngloNorman nobles did who suddenly started commissioning English histories. On the other hand, totally different textual communities could describe the nation precisely in order to resist change, as the old Benedictine monastic hierarchy did, well before the Cistercians had even arrived in England. Thus, the nation itself was the dominant personality in historical writing in twelfth-century England; it could be harnessed to so many disparate ideologies with the minimum of rearrangement. And this was its greatest strength—‘England’ itself was an historiographical agent. All of this is simply to point out that commentators have already detected a relationship between history writing in medieval England and broader national imperatives. And I will follow in this path. At the same time, however, I need to emphasize that there were other political and social orders besides the national which prompted medieval communities to write about their pasts or, indeed, prompted them to write about the pasts of others. Many of these imperatives have been well studied. Thanks to several generations of scholarship, commentators today have a good understanding of the major changes and developments in ways of representing the past that occurred in English monastic, lay, canonical, and bureaucratic milieux in the Middle Ages.2 But the role of the Cistercians in all this has been overlooked. The second level of this study is therefore an interrogation of how Cistercian historical writing confirms or denies the picture of English history writing (and its national and local political bases) that past commentators have developed. The third and final level is the broad area of current issues in historiographical theory. This refers to some of the methodological and theoretical questions occupying commentators on historiography more broadly, not 2

The classic study, from which all further studies derive, is Antonia Gransden’s comprehensive work Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974).

Introduction

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simply commentators on historiography from the medieval world. To say that significant changes have occurred in this field in the last thirty years is an understatement. The impetus for change has come from the consequences of the linguistic turn, most notably with the change of focus from event to means of representation. This redirection of scholarship has affected all areas within medieval studies, but it has been particularly noticeable in the field of historiography.3 Given that the written history was long defined as a text providing a more or less true account of events that had really happened, any attention to the ways in which ideas and truths are inextricably tied up with the means of representation was always going to necessitate a change of scholarly direction. Scholars of medieval historical writing have risen to this challenge by moving away from studying histories as quarries of information to accepting that so-called documentary histories are primarily literary texts in which the conventions and peculiarities of, for example, genre, language use, and format determine the types of meanings that we today can hope to retrieve from these texts. This book will respond to some of the more pressing questions resulting from this reassessment of narrative and its constitutive powers, questions especially relevant for commentators on historical writings. One such issue is the relative usefulness of intention-based, reception-based, and manuscript diffusion-based studies. Another is the degree to which reading practices derived from exegetical models can help readers to distinguish between a given history’s ‘facts’ and its ‘meanings’, a distinction which carries particular relevance to contemporary debates on invented traditions. Yet another perennial issue is the question of historical genres, such as the differences between chronicles and annals—why the distinction is important in the first place, and whether chronicles and annals suggest meaning in the same ways. By studying how Cistercian histories inform our understanding of these contemporary themes, this book contributes to debates relevant not just to scholars of the medieval Cistercians or of medieval England but also to scholars of medieval and modern narrativity and historiography more broadly. Before proceeding I need to establish just what kind of historiography is being investigated here. At the moment there is strong scholarly interest in the many non-written ways in which medieval communities remembered their pasts.4 For example, oral family genealogies, tombs and funerary laments, and the weaving of family legends on tapestries all reflect the desires of certain communities to articulate and disseminate their histories using a range of 3 See the thorough discussion in Gabrielle M. Spiegel, The Past as Text. The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). 4 See Patrick Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), and Elisabeth van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe 900–1200 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999).

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media besides the amplified written narrative. According to this expanded, non-written, definition of what constitutes a community history, the medieval Cistercians were without question deeply committed historians. As followers of the Benedictine Rule, Cistercians kept history alive by maintaining the customs lived by thousands of medieval monks before them. They looked to the historical events of the Bible as pointers for their personal spiritual journeys. They honoured saints from past centuries. And, of course, the liturgy itself was a cycle of repetition and reverence for the past. But if medieval Cistercians embraced the past in non-literary ways, their attitude towards written histories is another matter entirely, a matter which has drawn contradictory assessments in the modern scholarship. The implications of this scholarship are such that it is timely to investigate the relationship between the Cistercian monastic order and written histories. Thus, this book is not an investigation of the Cistercians’ many non-written forms of historical awareness but, rather, an investigation of what may be called the traditional history, the written account of the past. Even within the written format there were many different expressions of historical consciousness. Indeed, defining the written historia in the medieval context is an undertaking fraught with complexities, exceptions, and uncertainties.5 The first point to make is that different definitions apply in different written discourses. According to the definition drawn from poetics, historia was the narration of things that have occurred. According to a hermeneutic approach, it was the first, literal, level of meaning, which was itself the first step granting access to higher truth. Following a definition drawn from academic disciplines, historia had no independent status at all; in this instance history was linked to grammar. Given these brief points, it is clear that defining the medieval historia is a book in itself, beyond the limits of this study. On the other hand, there is good reason to believe that concentrating too closely on the (contradictory) medieval definitions of historia, chronicon, and annales may be a counterproductive strategy in any case. We risk missing out on much of the richness of medieval historical writings if we confine our studies solely to those texts corresponding to the authoritative definitions of, for example, 5

The scholarship is enormous. For a good brief commentary on the complexity of the term historia, see Roger D. Ray, ‘Historiography’, in Medieval Latin: An Introduction and Bibliographical Guide, ed. by Frank A. C. Mantello and A. G. Rigg (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1996), pp. 639– 49. Other recent discussions of the umbrella term historia appear in Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), pp. 19–25; Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, Local and Regional Chronicles, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, 74 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), pp. 13–14; and, in another context, Päivi Mehtonen, Old Concepts and New Poetics: ‘Historia’, ‘Argumentum’ and ‘Fabula’ in the Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-Century Latin Poetics of Fiction (Helsinki: Societas Scientarum Fennica, 1996), chap. 3 (p. 64).

Introduction

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Cicero or Isidore of Seville. Although these authors’ theoretical definitions of history were often invoked in the Middle Ages, there is a difference between invocation and emulation and it has been noted that such definitions were generally honoured only in the breach.6 In fact, the classical definitions of history were always unsatisfactory for medieval compositional practices and they were often invoked simply because they were the most obvious authorized definitions to hand. This never meant, however, that medieval historiography was confined to styles that fell within these frameworks. Rather, a range of works, formats, and styles was always accepted as historical in nature. In light of these points, in the following investigation I will refer to ‘medieval history writing’ and ‘medieval historical writing’ as broad terms which contain within them such different sub-genres as histories, chronicles, and annals. Roger Ray’s sensible definition will be followed. This is one in which historiography is confined to ‘Latin prose narratives that claim or seem to treat real events of primarily non-saintly experience over some stretch of time’.7 The key aspect here is the truth claim. That is, the claim to veracity, and the expectations prompted in a given text’s readers as a result, is what most distinguishes the history from other forms of prose writing. Ray’s exclusion of saintly narratives is also endorsed, although not without some regrets. There have been some strong calls for studying saints’ lives according to the same criteria as histories,8 and there is certainly scope for more investigation into Cistercian vitae and the ways in which they promote their own versions of Cistercian truth. But this is not a study of hagiography. The English Cistercians wrote a great deal of history even without including their vitae, and attempting to include even more texts would necessitate brief and partial discussions which would compromise my principle of thorough readings. As mentioned already, there have been no synthetic studies of the English Cistercians and their production of written histories. Instead, the field has been characterized by a small number of case studies, either of individual histories or of the œuvres of individual writers. The former field includes Derek Baker’s excellent investigations into the foundation history from Fountains abbey in Yorkshire while the latter includes examinations of Aelred of

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Roger D. Ray, ‘Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and Progress of Research’, Viator, 5 (1974), 33–59 (pp. 35–42), and Barbara N. Sargent-Baur, ‘Veraces Historiae aut Fallaces Fabulae?’, in Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. by Norris J. Lacy (New York: Garland Publishing, 1996), pp. 25–39. 7 Ray, ‘Historiography’, p. 639. Although, in principle, I see no reason to focus solely on Latin works, this Latin emphasis happens to apply well to the Cistercian examples of this study. 8 Felice Lifshitz, ‘Beyond Positivism and Genre: “Hagiographical” Texts as Historical Narrative’, Viator, 25 (1994), 95–113.

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Rievaulx’s histories.9 Although these studies have provided many insights, Cistercian historiography in England still awaits the broad kind of study that English Benedictine historiography has received and, more recently, that continental Franciscan and Dominican histories have also received.10 Interestingly, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the lack of a survey work, there has still been a tendency for scholars to posit generalizations about Cistercian historical writing in England. These generalizations are important since they contain an inherent contradiction which has influenced all subsequent scholarship on Cistercian history writing, both in England and on the continent. The contradiction is that some commentators credit the Cistercians as committed writers of histories while others argue precisely the opposite. The most common view is that Cistercians in both England and continental Europe were infrequent and uninterested historians. The standard evidence for this assessment is a piece of legislation from the order’s General Chapter which forbade unauthorized literary composition. This sole piece of evidence was invoked in Antonia Gransden’s classic survey of English historical writing and, through this survey, it has become something of a standard argument.11 Other influential arguments have been the claim that the Cistercian order in general was anti-intellectual and, in the specifically English context, that Cistercian historical writing was characterized by manuscripts of poor quality and poor handwriting.12 But other scholars have produced tentative qualifications to this approach. Bernard Guenée, for example, introduces his discussion of Cistercian historical culture by invoking Gransden’s reference to the allegedly

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Derek Baker, ‘The Genesis of English Cistercian Chronicles. The Foundation History of Fountains Abbey I’, An Cist, 25 (1969), 14–41, and ‘The Genesis of English Cistercian Chronicles. The Foundation History of Fountains Abbey II’, An Cist, 31 (1975), 179–212. The most insightful commentator on Aelred is Marsha L. Dutton; see ‘Aelred, Historian: Two Portraits in Plantagenet Myth’, CSQ, 28 (1993), 113–43. 10 On Franciscans, see Bert Roest, Reading the Book of History: Intellectual Contexts and Educational Functions of Franciscan Historiography 1226–ca. 1350 (Groningen: Regenboog for Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, 1996). Dominican historiography was discussed by Simon Tugwell, ‘Early Dominican Chronicles Between Fantasy and Chronology’, unpublished paper delivered at The Medieval Chronicle Conference, Utrecht, 13–16 July 1996. 11 Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 263, 287. The proscription and its influence on Cistercian scholarship will be discussed in Chapter 3. 12 For references to the anti-intellectual allegation, see Marie-Anselme Dimier, ‘Les premiers cisterciens étaient-ils ennemis des études?’, Studia Monastica, 4 (1962), 69–91. On English historical manuscripts, see Christopher Holdsworth, ‘Learning and Literature of English Cistercians, 1167–1214, With Special Reference to John of Ford’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Clare College, Cambridge, 1960), p. 24.

Introduction

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prohibitive legislation.13 Interestingly, however, Guenée proceeds to point out a contradiction: whereas the proscription should have worked against the creation of an historiographical culture, the opposite situation obtained and Cistercians composed histories quite often. Another commentator, Christopher Cheney, has turned away from official legislation and has looked instead at the books the English Cistercians actually kept in their libraries.14 Cheney concedes that twelfth-century Cistercians were predominantly interested in building up their liturgical and devotional collections and that, therefore, most literary activity was directed to this end. He points out, however, that there was a smaller but still significant interest in history. Cheney’s views concerning the English Cistercians have been accepted by David Dumville, who talks of the ‘Cistercian appetite for history’.15 Finally, some commentators have kept their options open and have argued from both sides. John Taylor is one of these, mentioning both that the ‘Cistercian settlement constituted a major influence behind twelfth-century historical writing [in England]’ and that ‘in view of official Cistercian policy’ historical writing at the English Cistercian abbey of Rievaulx was curbed by the end of the twelfth century.16 The preceding points indicate that modern scholars have assessed Cistercian historical writing differently according to the sources they have used. Those favouring theoretical rules and legislation have argued against a dedicated Cistercian historiographical culture, both in England and on the continent, while those favouring manuscript studies have argued that, if not outstanding historians, the Cistercians in England and on the continent nonetheless produced a decent number and variety of written histories. This contradiction between theoretical rules and practical denial of those rules lies at the heart of scholarly approaches to Cistercian historical writing, although it has never been identified as such. Perhaps the reason this contradiction has persisted so long is due to the general disregard of Cistercian histories. That is, while those scholars who have discussed English Cistercian historiography have done so in an inconsistent manner, it has in fact been much more common for commentators to overlook the Cistercian histories entirely. This is because histories written by English Cistercians have appealed neither to scholars interested in English historiography nor to scholars interested in English Cistercians.

13 Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980), p. 47. 14 Christopher R. Cheney, ‘English Cistercian Libraries: The First Century’, in his Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 328–45. 15 David N. Dumville, ‘Celtic-Latin Texts in Northern England, c.1150–c.1250’, Celtica, 12 (1977), 19–49 (p. 48). 16 John Taylor, Medieval Historical Writing in Yorkshire (York: St Anthony’s Press, 1961), pp. 7, 10.

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To begin, commentators on English history writing have had other priorities besides the Cistercians. It is common to refer to the twelfth century as England’s century of historiographical reawakening. This is the century of Eadmer, William of Malmesbury, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle at Peterborough, and the Durham historians. Perhaps understandably, the very strength of this predominantly Benedictine historiographical culture has made it all the easier to pass over the Cistercian histories. Following the influence of Richard Southern, the early twelfth century in particular is defined as the great era of Benedictine histories.17 Recent projects culminating in new editions of texts by William of Malmesbury and John of Worcester simply confirm the critical role these early-twelfth-century texts will always play in our understanding of historical writing in medieval England. While I do not deny the importance of these histories, my aim here is simply to point out that when there is such a weight of attention focussed on one part of a century then textual productions from later years in the given century do not always gain the attention they deserve, and are not always studied on their own terms. This is particularly so in reference to the twelfth century, given the dominating influence of the so-called ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’ and the resultant focus on classic (that is, non-Cistercian) texts which allegedly represent this intellectual movement at its peak. Moreover, in addition to the Benedictine focus, another parallel trend has arisen more recently and this too deflects attention from the Cistercians’ writings. Currently in chronicle studies there is significant interest in the non-monastic historians of the 1120s through to the 1150s, including most famously the secular clerks Henry of Huntingdon and Geffrei Gaimar, and, of course, Geoffrey of Monmouth.18 Both these approaches carry with them strong ideological projects. The long-standing attention to Benedictine histories is premised on the view that 17

For one of Southern’s many formulations of this argument, see Richard W. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 4. The Sense of the Past’, TRHS, 5th series, 23 (1973), 243–63. 18 See, for example, Diana Greenway, ‘Authority, Convention and Observation in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum’, A-NS, 18 (1996), 105–21; John Gillingham ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. by Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson, and Alan Murray, Leeds Texts and Monographs New Series, 14 (Leeds: University of Leeds, School of English, 1995), pp. 75–101; John Gillingham, ‘Gaimar, the Prose Brut and the Making of English History’, in L’histoire et les nouveaux publics dans l’Europe médiévale (XIIIe–XVe siècles), ed. by JeanPhilippe Genet (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1997), pp. 165–76; Ian Short, ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Liber vetustissimus’, Speculum, 69 (1994), 323–43; and sections of Michelle R. Warren, History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain, 1100–1300 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), for Geoffrey of Monouth. Some aspects of Peter Damian-Grint’s work on vernacular historians also fall into this category: The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1999).

Introduction

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post-Conquest historiography was an essentially nostalgic and backwardlooking undertaking, engaged in by besieged Benedictine monks feeling simultaneously defensive and wistful for their lost past and thus ossifying an idealized version of the pre-1066 past in their monastic histories. The more recent attention to secular histories also proceeds from the premise that historiography is a powerful weapon in the campaign to create and maintain community identities. But this school of thought argues that history writing was undergoing a crucial change in England in the second quarter of the twelfth century—the argument is that, by this period, history was being created confidently and almost greedily by a whole new range of communities who extended far beyond the Benedictine monastery. Laymen and laywomen, French readers and Latin readers, Anglo-Norman families who had only been in England a couple of generations—these people were all taking the initiative to call the history of England their own and to possess their own written versions of it. Now history was used in a more optimistic, forward-looking fashion, rather than as the intellectual solace it had been to the Benedictine monks. Although neither of these trends deals with histories written after approximately 1155, still the effect has been to overshadow the historical productions of the following forty-five years. With two such important areas of English historiography demanding study, historical writings of the second half of the twelfth century have not gained anywhere near the same degree of attention. This is not to suggest a total lack of scholarship but, rather, to point out that no equivalent attempt has been made to establish any broader frameworks for histories of this later period. Gransden’s survey, for example, does discuss Cistercian productions but, in contrast to its excellent treatment of the Benedictine texts, the study does not question whether there might be common features to the Cistercian histories or even an overall corporate motivation behind the production of Cistercian historiography in twelfth-century England. The same applies with histories from around 1200 and the early decades of the thirteenth century. The most popular thirteenth-century histories have always been those by Matthew Paris, Roger Wendover, and, indeed, historiographical investigations have concentrated strongly on the St Albans school in general.19 In other studies, William of Newburgh and Richard of Devizes have been examined in detail, generally in so far as they anticipate what have been termed the more scientific and less monastic historiographical views of the thirteenth century.20 The degree to which Cistercian

19

Richard Vaughan, Matthew Paris, rev. edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and, more recently, Rebecca Reader, ‘Matthew Paris and Anglo-Saxon England: A Thirteenth-Century Vision of the Distant Past’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Durham, 1994). 20 Nancy F. Partner, Serious Entertainments. The Writing of History in TwelfthCentury England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977). See too Monika Otter,

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histories from the first two decades of the thirteenth century confirm or modify the conclusions drawn from these studies has not been pursued. There is still scope, then, to investigate how Cistercian histories fit into the models of English historiography proposed by Gransden and others. Scholars explicitly interested in the Cistercians have proceeded with a similar hesitation when it comes to examining the historical writings of Cistercian monks. For a good part of the twentieth century Cistercian scholars were preoccupied with arguing about the existence and characteristics of the so-called ‘medieval Cistercian degeneration’. This view posited a decrease in spirituality around the start of the thirteenth century and, although now discredited, the argument has cast a long shadow over Cistercian scholarship.21 Following this argument, participating in and writing about worldly history were considered unfortunate manifestations of an allegedly excessive contact with the outside world. Hence, Cistercian historiographical culture was ignored, dismissed, or, most often, simply not studied in any depth. Following another logic, modern Cistercians have always paid their greatest attention to sermons, biblical commentaries, and, in general, to treatises which display the order’s unique affective theology. This is considered the most fruitful area in which to detect the Cistercian mentalité and it clearly carries direct relevance to the many religious men and women who form a large proportion of commentators on medieval Cisterciana. In the light of this imperative, it is understandable that Cistercian histories have not been at the forefront of modern investigations. It is clear then that Cistercian histories have fallen into the gap between two areas of research, research into English historiography and research into Cistercian life. Bringing these two fields together via the study of Cistercian historiography is one of my aims here. However, there is more at stake than simply filling a scholarly gap. My further contention is that neither of these areas of research can be argued to its fullest potential unless it incorporates elements of the other. As mentioned already, most academic attention concerning English historiography has been directed at Benedictine histories from the early twelfth century and, more recently, at histories by secular clerks from the slightly later period of the 1120s to the 1150s. Although the point has not been made in so many words, there is a strong similarity in the themes discussed and conclusions arrived at in both these debates, a similarity which warrants attention here. In both contexts historiography was clearly Inventiones: Fictions and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical Writing (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996). 21 The theory of decline is clearly evident in the title given to the standard survey of the Cistercian order; Louis J. Lekai, The Cistercians — Ideals and Reality ([n.p.]: Kent State University Press, 1977). For a survey and debunking of the degeneration theory, see Constance Brittain Bouchard, ‘Cistercian Ideals versus Reality: 1134 Reconsidered’, Cîteaux, 39 (1988), 217–31. Berman’s recent reassessment also rejects the degeneration premise.

Introduction

11

used to forge group identity, whether that group was the Benedictine monastery of the early twelfth century or the Anglo-Norman laity of the 1150s. Further, in both contexts this group identity was premised on the claim that there was an unbroken continuity between past and present. The present-day audiences wished to posit themselves as recipients of all that was best in the past and, hence, argued that they possessed a direct legacy of virtue, sanctity, and so on. The tendency of histories to deny change and to elide difference is common in all kinds of medieval historiography and it has been particularly noted among Benedictine histories of the postConquest period. But in the case of the two contexts described above there is one point that still needs stressing. That is, whereas the Benedictine histories were related to their social context in a negative fashion (by seeking to mask and deny the changes of the post-Conquest world), lay audiences such as Geffrei Gaimar’s patron Dame Custance embraced the insular past, sought it, and tried to incorporate themselves within it as a means of establishing themselves in their new land. In other words, these lay audiences were buying themselves a history; they were accumulating cultural capital. They were interested in the insular past not in the sense of denying that it was over but, on the contrary, because they wanted to appropriate it for their current senses of identity. This means that there were similar textual results in these two historiographical contexts (effacement of difference, retrospective application of twelfth-century themes into the Anglo-Saxon past), but for completely different reasons. The principle I draw from this debate is that there are many different reasons why groups might seek continuities with the past. Moreover, although it has become a commonplace to state that medieval histories were composed and consulted by groups who sought to establish continuity with their pasts, and who wanted to align themselves with all the best features of those pasts, we need to remember that the desire to build bridges between past and present could take on a variety of forms. Not all versions of continuity were the same. Different communities might find continuity in very different logical frameworks and written histories might pursue these goals in a variety of ways. For example, important work by Lesley Johnson has emphasized that medieval English historians’ dedication to continuity and changelessness was more complex than simply a dogmatic refusal to accept any invasions, military defeats, or other breaks in the historical record.22 Rather, it seems to have been closer to a subtle give-and-take relationship

22 On discontinuity as an integral part of the historical process, see the works by Lesley Johnson, ‘Commemorating the Past: A Critical Study of the Shaping of British and Arthurian History in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannie, Wace’s Roman de Brut, Layamon’s Brut and the Alliterative Morte Arthure’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, King’s College, University of London, 1990), and ‘Etymologies, Genealogies, and Nationalities (Again)’, in Concepts of National Identity, ed. by Forde, Johnson, and Murray, pp. 125–36.

12

between change and continuity, something which, I will argue, equates very closely to the modern notion of invented tradition. Twelfth-century writers are famous for their use of such similar but different terms as renovation, renewal, revival, and so on.23 The subtle variations between these words remind us that medieval authors were highly attuned to the points along the scale from continuity to change and, further, that they identified various middle points at which change was an unavoidable, perhaps even necessary, component of continuity. Good examples of this trend survive from England in the 1120s to 1150s in the writings of Geffrei Gaimar, Henry of Huntingdon, and the Benedictine William of Malmesbury. Although these historians’ writings are frequently explained as exercises in forging seamless links with the Anglo-Saxon past, the issue is more complicated than this. These histories all suggest that an overarching sense of communion with the past could nonetheless still sustain a significant degree of conflict, change, and dissent without the overall unity being compromised.24 An example of this is the popular medieval tendency towards cyclical history, where intermediate failures (generally in the form of inconvenient conquest or monastic declines) can be admitted and included in the historical record because they are part of a greater whole which will see periodic revival just around the corner. Another is the theory of translatio imperii, which allowed a given people to link itself with the unassailable authority of the classical past while simultaneously subordinating inconvenient change to a broader and infinitely preferable continuity. The critical point here is that even those English histories that allegedly present historical landscapes of smooth and harmonious atemporality in fact contain within them a range of complicated narrative mechanisms that permitted change to exist as a legitimate and perhaps even necessary constituent of this greater end. The preceding points are arguably the most exciting and pressing implications of recent investigations into English historiography of the midtwelfth century. These implications can be elaborated and problematized yet further through a study of Cistercian histories from the period immediately following the mid-twelfth century. There are two reasons for this. First, the alleged defining feature of twelfth-century histories (the desire to advertise a strong and unbroken link with the Anglo-Saxon past) is necessarily missing from the writings of an order which did not exist in the Anglo-Saxon period and which, in any event, had only recently arrived in England. It will be helpful then to investigate whether the theme of continuity still influenced English Cistercian historiography in other guises. 23

Giles Constable, ‘Renewal and Reform in the Religious Life’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable with Carol D. Lanham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 37–67. 24 On the narrative and conceptual strategies which enabled this coexistence, see my earlier work, ‘Twelfth-Century Historians and the Creation of the English Past’ (unpublished master’s thesis, University of Melbourne, 1993).

Introduction

13

This leads to the second point. The Cistercian order was interested in another kind of continuity besides a link with the insular past. The Benedictine Rule pays great attention to stability. The Cistercians asserted their faithfulness to the Rule (indeed, asserted this faithfulness as their defining feature25) but, problematically, they developed many innovations and much instability in order to promote this continuity. The problem was compounded by the medieval period’s infamous ambivalence towards novelty. Cistercian apologetic literature such as Idung of Prüfening’s Dialogus duorum monachorum indicates that twelfth-century Cistercians were highly sensitive to claims of breaking with the Benedictine past.26 And, indeed, it is true to say that residual unease at this contradiction was a persistent feature of medieval Cistercian culture. It will be useful then to investigate whether Cistercian historiography was exploited as a means of reconciling this paradox, whether the written past was used to explain to a broader literate culture which was antagonistic to change just how the Cistercians’ new monastic enterprise was in fact justified. Since the Cistercians were aware that their present organization contained a mixture of continuity with the Benedictine past and divergence from the Benedictine past, they are a suitable case study for problematizing our understanding of the relationship between continuity and change in the historical record, that is, for examining the complex ways in which medieval historiography could be used to subsume difference to an overwhelming consistency. Later attention to the phenomenon of invented tradition will explore this issue in depth. In addition to providing insights into medieval ways of representing the past, this multi-layered study also enhances our understanding of Cistercian life. As mentioned, the fact that most scholars of the Cistercians are interested in the order’s affective theology accounts for the comparative neglect of the histories in Cistercian circles. This book demonstrates, however, that Cistercian devotional issues are in fact closely linked to the field of historiography and, hence, argues that the two areas can be most profitably investigated in tandem. Cistercian affective theology has been exhaustively studied.27 In brief, we can state that Cistercian theology is devoted to the recovery of the divine likeness in humanity; in other words it is the quest for the region of similitude. 25 For Cistercian adherence (perceived, asserted, and actual) to the Rule, see Jean Leclercq, ‘The Intentions of the Founders of the Cistercian Order’, CS, 4 (1969), 21– 61, and Louis J. Lekai, ‘The Rule and the Early Cistercians’, CS, 5 (1970), 243–51. 26 Cistercians and Cluniacs: The Case for Cîteaux, by Idung of Prüfening, trans. by Jeremiah F. O’Sullivan, CF, 33 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1977). 27 The scholarship is enormous. See the classic work of Étienne Gilson, The Mystical Theology of Saint Bernard, trans. by A. H. C. Downes (London: Sheed and Ward, 1940), and Marsha L. Dutton’s survey, ‘Intimacy and Imitation: The Humanity of Christ in Cistercian Spirituality’, in Erudition at God’s Service, ed. by John R. Sommerfeldt, CSS, 98 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987), pp. 33–69. Further works in the Cistercian Studies Series provide excellent insights.

14

It is sapiential in emphasis, a theology in which individuals seek the experience of God, particularly via appreciation and contemplation of Christ’s humanity. Since God chose to participate in human history, this endorsed human time and human activity by the power of association. This endorsement of experience has two important consequences for an investigation into Cistercian historiography. It means that, in so far as one can detect a distinctive Cistercian spirituality, it is characterized first by its endorsement of human experience and second by its resultant emphasis on community life. That is, God is sought through the experiences of others and through experiences with others.28 For example, the Cistercians’ most influential spiritual writers endorsed the inherent value of the interim, the period of earthly pilgrimage and the deeds and events that occur there.29 Although the soul will not be restored until after it is dissociated from the temporal body, in the meantime (in the interim) individuals can and must continue to seek the region of similitude in whatever contexts they happen to be living in. All of this means that Cistercians were committed to earthly time and to earthly deeds as the legitimate contexts of humanity’s restoration. As Columban Heaney argues, ‘What primarily interested them was not what constitutes man essentially in this image and likeness, but what is happening to the image and likeness in the various phases of man’s historical existence.’30 This is an unequivocal endorsement of earthly experiences or, in other words, an endorsement of the res gestae of the historical record. Thus, as I will argue, the historical writings which recorded these res gestae are relevant to, and inextricably linked with, the Cistercians’ broader spirituality and daily communal life. By studying historical texts in the light of what we know about the order’s spiritual concerns we gain both a means of entry into the sometimes ambiguous histories and, also, a greater appreciation of just how broadly the order’s famous cenobitic theology (such as the doctrines of charity and friendship) permeated all areas of Cistercian life. This study is not an exhaustive one—there are Cistercian histories from the period in question which are not examined. But it is not a random study either. Given that it is impossible to discuss every history written, copied, or 28

The Cistercians’ preparedness to see human relations as positive features in one’s quest towards God has prompted exhaustive study. Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), chap. 2; Amédée Hallier, The Monastic Theology of Aelred of Rievaulx. An Experiential Theology, trans. by Columban Heaney, CSS, 2 (Shannon: Irish University Press, 1969); and Charles Dumont, ‘Seeking God in Community According to St Aelred’, CS, 6 (1971), 289–317 are all good introductions. 29 See Charles Dumont, ‘Contemplative Action: Time in Eternity According to Saint Bernard’, CSQ, 28 (1993), 145–59 (p. 153), and François Chatillon, ‘Hic, Ibi, Interim’, Revue d’ascétique et de mystique, 25 (1949), 194–99. 30 Columban Heaney, ‘The Concept of Sabbath in Aelred’s Theology’, Hallel, 16 (1988), 16–27 (p. 17).

Introduction

15

annotated in a Cistercian abbey between 1150 and the 1220s, only those histories which illuminate all three of my key themes are examined: that is, corporate Cistercian life (comprising institutional trends, devotional trends, and historiographical trends) during the period in question, English historical writing and its relationship to local and broader politics during the period in question, and modern historiographical debates. A further principle of selection is that histories have been chosen only from periods when important developments in all three areas can be detected. These periods are the 1150s, the years immediately following 1200, and the 1220s. With Cistercians, ‘England’ frequently means ‘Yorkshire’, due to the high concentration of monasteries in the area from an early period. While the nature of manuscript survivals means that the Yorkshire emphasis also persists in this study, some attention will also be paid to histories produced and read in other areas. The study progresses chronologically, thus furnishing a narrative of development and change in the Cistercian historiographical enterprise in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Part One examines histories composed by Aelred of Rievaulx in Yorkshire in the 1150s. It includes Chapters 1 and 2, which feature close studies of Aelred’s Relatio de standardo and Genealogia regum Anglorum respectively. Part Two is the only one not devoted solely to the Cistercians’ original historical compositions. Instead, Chapter 3 demonstrates that, for the period between the 1160s and 1200, the Cistercians’ understanding of the historiographical enterprise can best be understood through close studies of manuscript collections, both surviving and lost. Part Three returns to close studies of histories, this time examining foundation histories written soon after 1200 at Kirkstall and Fountains abbeys in Yorkshire. Chapter 4 is a close study of the Fundacio abbathie de Kyrkestall while Chapter 5 examines the Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii. Part Four treats the 1220s, with the sixth and final chapter featuring a close study of a history from Essex, Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum. The chapters are all complete in themselves but, as emphasized already, the book makes its greatest claims to meaning when the chapters are read in combination. On one level this study provides insights into how Cistercian monks made particularly Cistercian histories; on another level it furthers our understanding of some critical points of the English historiographical tradition and its political impetuses; and, finally, on another level it embraces questions of medieval historiography and representing the past in the broadest sense. The study, then, speaks simultaneously to many audiences and in so doing stresses the wealth of meaning that medieval writers of history have left for the modern world.

PART ONE Aelred of Rievaulx: Cistercian Historiography in the 1150s ____________

Prologue

The Cistercian Order

T

he popular image of the Cistercian order is that it was characterized by uniformity, centralization, and bureaucracy. In many ways this is accurate: the organization and cohesion of this order was genuinely extraordinary, at least for certain periods in its history. Expanding from a single house in France in 1098 to a Europe-wide corporation of over 500 houses a century later,1 the Cistercians managed to ensure that the customs, the prayers, the work, and the laws of all these diverse abbeys were the same. The key to this uniformity was the General Chapter held every September in France. Items on the agenda covered all areas of Cistercian life: foundation and incorporation of abbeys, admission of novices, election and deposition of abbots, liturgical practice, observance in general, discipline of both individuals and abbeys, and delegation of judicial tasks. With all abbots required to attend, the chapter’s decisions could then be passed on to every abbey and hence to all members of the order regardless of their location. All of this sounds like a model of structure and organization. But while it is true that the Cistercian bureaucracy and General Chapter did eventually attain a high level of efficiency and influence, it was not this way from the outset. Indeed, one of the greatest insights of current research into 1

On the order’s growth, see René Locatelli, ‘L’expansion de l’ordre cistercien’, in Bernard de Clairvaux: Œuvres complètes, vol. I, Introduction générale: Bernard de Clairvaux, histoire, mentalités, spiritualité, Sources Chrétiennes, 380 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992), pp. 103–40. For an important distinction between growth through incorporation and growth through so-called ‘apostolic gestation’, see Constance H. Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), chap. 3.

20

Cistercian history, something which is no less than a revolution in Cistercian studies, is the reminder that many of the characteristics we ascribe to the order did not arise until the second half of the twelfth to the early thirteenth centuries.2 This applies to administrative institutions such as the General Chapter as much as it does to spirituality. Uniformity and centralization were attained only after a period of change and development, particularly during the order’s first fifty years. Following this argument, the standard word used to describe Cistercian life in the twelfth century is now ‘evolution’. With the benefit of hindsight we know that a degree of uniformity of liturgical, legal, and administrative practice did more or less occur (although not to the extent that we imagined even five years ago), but this was by no means clear to the Cistercians of the first generation, the monks who were contemporaries of Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153). Before the 1150s there was still the flexibility, uncertainty, and experimentation that characterize any new organization. But, significantly for my purposes, the death of Bernard or, more precisely, the 1150s in general, does seem to have marked a watershed in Cistercian institutional life. According to one definition, it was the transition between the ‘first order’ and the ‘new order’ of Cistercian life.3 The first characteristic of this new order is that there were now sufficient abbeys for the Cistercians to be irrevocably entrenched in the social and ecclesiastical landscape of Europe. Indeed, the expansion had progressed so successfully that in 1152 the order could afford to place a temporary halt on new foundations.4 In England, fifty-one houses had been established between the first foundation at Waverley in 1128 and this temporary cessation twenty-four years later.5 2

This is the thesis of Berman’s recent volume. The general thesis is not as radical as some of its constituent elements and claims of forgeries might suggest; for example, earlier works by Auberger and Bell also indicated that the Cistercian order did not originate with all its characteristic features fully formed; Jean-Baptiste Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primitive: mythe ou réalité?, Cîteaux Studia et Documenta, 3 (Achel, Belgium: Éditions sine Parvulos, 1986), and David N. Bell, ‘Is There Such a Thing as Cistercian Spirituality?’, CSQ, 33 (1998), 455–71. 3 Significantly for my purposes, even scholars from a range of perspectives (e.g. Berman and others) agree on this point. See, for example, René Locatelli, ‘Rappel des principes fondateurs de l’ordre cistercien. Aux origines du modèle domanial’, in L’espace cistercien, ed. by Léon Pressouyre (Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1994), pp. 13–26 (p. 14), and Waddell, NLT. Berman places even greater weight on the death of Bernard as a significant impetus behind the Cistercian ‘order-building’ and ‘invention’ of its official institutional structure. According to Berman, the General Chapter was created in the 1150s, precisely as a means of countering the independent power that Clairvaux had built up under Bernard; The Cistercian Evolution, pp. 148–51, 153. 4 Statuta, ann. 1152, I (I, 45). Although the dates of many of the early statutes have been questioned, there is no clear evidence that this date is incorrect; see Berman, The Cistercian Evolution, pp. 50–51. 5 On expansion in England, see David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 247.

Prologue

21

The second point characterizing the new order is that it was during the 1150s that the Cistercians made a concerted effort to harmonize all their previously ad hoc customs into a standardized written form.6 This may or may not have been because the Cistercians of the 1150s were consciously ‘inventing’ a structured monastic order that had hitherto not existed, as Constance Berman has recently suggested.7 But even if one disagrees with Berman’s claim for the lack of structure in Cistercian life in the period 1098–1150, one can still accept that a conscious attempt at structuring and restructuring the monastic corporation occurred from the 1150s on. That is, even if Berman has overstated the lack of a distinct ‘ordo cisterciensis’ for the earlier decades, this does not change the fact that a renewal of energy for defining and redefining the order’s characteristics did take place from the mid-century on. For example, the order’s two main houses at Cîteaux and Clairvaux first produced and then reissued many official legal documents at this time, including both constitutional and non-constitutional law. The constitutional law was described in the Carta caritatis. This document describes the system of filiation, the simultaneous autonomy of individual houses and the overall unity of the order, and the role of the General Chapter in government and jurisdiction. The charter stresses unity and indicates that the common bond of charity will ensure that all monks and houses will also be bound in practice and custom. Although a version was probably in 6

For good brief surveys, see Jean-Baptiste Auberger, ‘La législation cistercienne primitive et sa relecture claravallienne’, in Bernard de Clairvaux: Œuvres complètes, I, 181–208, and Jean A. Lefèvre and Bernard Lucet, ‘Les codifications cisterciennes aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles d’après les traditions manuscrites’, ASOC, 15 (1959), 1–22 (pp. 6–10). The definitive longer study is now Waddell’s NLT, containing both editions and commentary. 7 In The Cistercian Evolution Berman is particularly explicit: the Cistercian order, as a structured and formalized order, dates to the second half of the twelfth century (particularly, 1150–75) and certainly not to the first quarter. It is worth stating an important point again: that is, although Berman takes her arguments further than other commentators, her basic claim that the order’s administrative structures were not yet in place in the early twelfth century (as was once believed) is in fact neither new nor controversial. As will become clear, I am less interested in Berman’s fine details of datings and forgeries of exordia and constitutional documents than I am in detecting broad trends in Cistercian corporate documentation which I can then correlate with trends in English historical writing. At this stage, I have refrained from incorporating Berman’s revised datings into my account, following instead the interpretations of Chrysogonus Waddell. The point to stress, however, is that even if I were to accept Berman’s dating suggestions for documents and institutions, this would make little difference to the contextual picture I am developing, since Berman frequently identifies the periods of ‘about 1150’, ‘the 1150s’, or ‘the late 1150s’ as the origins of this campaign of invention (pp. xiii, 76, 71). Hence, for different reasons, both Berman and I would identify the 1150s as a key period in which the Cistercians produced documentation concerning their alleged origins—the difference is simply whether or not this was the first time such a campaign had been conducted.

22

existence before 1119, there was no official amendation to this text for over thirty years.8 In 1152, however, there was renewed interest in the document and a new version was produced at Cîteaux. There were also three papal bulls from the 1150s and two from the 1160s which all confirmed the charter, thus indicating the particular esteem in which the Cistercians and others held this constitutional document during the mid-twelfth century. Importantly, after the revisions of the mid-century the Carta caritatis evolved very little,9 despite the fact that spiritual treatises on the doctrine of charity were increasingly popular in Cistercian quarters at this time. From this we can detect a perceived need that was particularly strong among the Cistercians of the mid-twelfth century—a need to assert precisely, but in legal as opposed to spiritual terms, what it was that defined this new monastic order. The non-constitutional Cistercian law consisted of various elements, all of which were issued or reissued during the 1150s. Regulations concerning daily matters of liturgy and broader community organization were confirmed in what might be described as the central portion of the customary, that is, the Book of Uses or Ecclesiastica officia. An important reissue of this was completed between 1150 and 1152.10 The Usus conversorum dealt with lay brothers, while discipline was discussed in the Instituta generalis capituli, a series of selected statutes which were first edited into one collection in around 1147 and then periodically re-edited thereafter (particularly in the early 1150s).11 The Instituta were derived from another type of document, the statuta, which recorded legal matters decided at the General Chapter. The statuta were revised in 1152 and it was this 1150s version which was subsequently disseminated throughout the order.12 8 NLT, pp. 261–73. Even agreeing with Berman’s revised dating of the Carta caritatis (‘certainly not before the second half of the century’, The Cistercian Evolution, p. 49), it is significant that the 1150s still feature as a critical decade in the history of this text and its dissemination. 9 NLT, pp. 371–73, 416. 10 For edition see Daniele Choisselet and Placide Vernet, Les ecclesiastica officia cisterciens du XIIème siècle (Reiningue, France: Abbaye d’Œlenberg, 1989). Although the term ‘customary’ is strictly broader than the Ecclesiastica officia, the EO’s prescriptions for the day to day running of the monastery form the core of the customary, hence the term is usually applied to this section only; see NLT, p. 23. 11 See Jean A. Lefèvre’s edition of the Usus conversorum in ‘Les traditions manuscrites des Usus Conversorum de Cîteaux au XII siècle’, COCR, 17 (1955), 65– 97 (pp. 84–96). For the Instituta, see commentary and edition at NLT, pp. 172, 299– 300, 318, 453–97. 12 On the complexities of dating, see Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primitive, pp. 61–62 and two essays, Christopher J. Holdsworth, ‘The Chronology and Character of Early Cistercian Legislation on Art and Architecture’, and Christopher Norton, ‘Table of Cistercian Legislation on Art and Architecture’, both in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. by Christopher Norton and David Park (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 40–55 and pp. 315–93. Berman argues that the General Chapter did not even exist until the 1150s; yet,

Prologue

23

The common feature of the preceding points is the date—the 1150s. This period witnessed the dissemination of many updated official Cistercian documents, all reflections of the order’s desire to shape and reshape its official history. Cistercian manuscripts dating to before or after 1152 contain, respectively, either unrevised or revised versions of certain documents,13 indicating the definitive fashion in which the order was codifying its custom in the 1150s. This culture of constant textual revision only became possible, and indeed necessary, once the Cistercians had succeeded in establishing abbeys at a rate unprecedented in medieval Europe. As well as evidence of an order sufficiently successful to spare the time and expense for textual activity, the revision was also a response to criticisms from the Benedictine order. Judging from the Cistercians’ apologetic rejoinders, these criticisms must have been particularly strong in the 1150s.14 Thus, even if there was not yet the reality of a united and unanimous order, there was at least an institutionally endorsed Cistercian project aimed at creating unanimity. And the written word was the weapon of choice for this project. What all this leads to is the fact that, by the 1150s, the Cistercian order possessed an extremely strong historical consciousness. Indeed, the more we learn about the Cistercians’ fascinating first century the more their selfconscious use and reuse of historical documents becomes clear. As followers in the apostolic path, the monks clearly had many centuries of history into which they could incorporate their own tradition. But there was also a more pressing imperative for their historical awareness. This was the essential paradox of the Cistercian custom—the fact that the monks had developed new institutional practices while at the same time asserting a direct link with earlier Benedictine ways. In an age in which ‘new’ was rarely equated with ‘better’, change had to be explained very carefully in order to incorporate it within a greater sweep of continuity and tradition. The new Cistercian order, more than other monastic orders, was preoccupied with this relationship between continuity and change, between tradition and innovation. A defensiveness and sensitivity concerning new practices is the background to all the Cistercians’ official documents of the early and midtwelfth century, both the legal documents discussed already and, equally, the historico-legal documents produced in the same period. Eager to exploit the polemical powers of the written word, monks from Cîteaux and Clairvaux quickly produced the historical cum legislative documents known as although she disagrees with traditional scholarship on this specific point, she nonetheless agrees on the broader point that the 1150s witnessed a critical developmental stage in reference to the Chapter and its statutes; The Cistercian Evolution, pp. 47–51, 76. 13 NLT, p. 22. 14 I refer here to Idung of Prüfening’s Dialogus duorum monachorum, written in 1153, in which a Cistercian responds to allegations of instability made against the Cistercian order by a Benedictine.

24

the Exordium parvum and the Exordium Cistercii.15 These texts describe the circumstances of the order’s foundation, the processes by which its constitution was established, and the papal and episcopal approval received by the new order. Originally composed in stages between the early 1110s and 1140s, but occasionally updated thereafter, these exordia were among the Cistercians’ earliest corporate texts and, hence, demonstrate the speed with which the order recognized the importance of disseminating a uniform account of its origins. As with the legal documents, the exordia documents were both recopied and disseminated in the early 1150s, regardless of whether they had undergone initial or interim composition in the 1110s, 1130s, or 1140s. Thus, once again, it is legitimate to speak of the 1150s as a period in which the Cistercians were particularly interested in written histories and in the authorizing powers that historical documents could carry. It is no exaggeration to claim the exordia documents as the Cistercians’ earliest corporate historiographical productions; they are effectively protofoundation histories and they belong as much to the historical genre as they do to the legal genre. Produced by the abbot of Cîteaux, the Exordium Cistercii was probably written and first diffused soon after the mid-1130s.16 In its form at least, it has generally been accepted as a simple chronological narrative, indeed as a ‘straightforward, undocumented narration of the foundation and early history of Cîteaux’.17 But although such a comment may seem to do justice to the text on an initial reading, there are in fact ample layers of complexities and ambiguities in this document. The Exordium parvum is just as complex. This text is a manifesto of Cistercian self-definition which describes the same sequence of events as the Exordium Cistercii, incorporating supporting documents which the Exordium Cistercii had mentioned only briefly. Structurally, it is more complex than the Exordium Cistercii, combining official documents such as letters, a papal bull, and some early decisions of the General Chapter within a running commentary and historical narrative. There are many hypotheses concerning the Exordium parvum’s date and process of composition.18 The document seems to 15

Here I use Waddell’s recent editions of the exordia, published in NLT. The scholarship on matters of dating and manuscripts is enormous. Waddell provides essential surveys of past work while, for a brief introduction to the ‘complex historiographical maze’ of these early Cistercian historico-legal documents, Rozanne Elder’s work remains useful: ‘A Seminar on Early Cistercian Documents’, CS, 18 (1983), 252–58. Besides Waddell, another key modern commentator is Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primitive, pp. 42–60. Alberic Altermatt provides brief and useful comments, ‘The Cistercian Patrimony: Introduction to the Most Important Historical, Juridical and Spiritual Documents’, CS, 25 (1990), 287–328. Note that it is only in relation to the Exordium Cistercii and Exordium parvum that I differ in any meaningful sense from Berman’s suggested datings (contra her suggestions of, respectively, the 1160s and 1170s; The Cistercian Evolution, chaps 1–2). 16 NLT, p. 161, and pp. 147–56 for summaries of past scholarship. 17 Elder, ‘Early Cistercian Documents’, p. 255. 18 On complexities of dating, see NLT, pp. 205, 230–31, and pp. 199–205 for summaries of past scholarship.

Prologue

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have been begun by Stephen Harding in around 1113, although its current form dates from around 1147 when the abbot of Cîteaux revised it to form the historical introduction to the order’s revised customary. The 1140s was also the period when entrants from the Savigniac order required information concerning Cistercian traditions and legislation, and also when Bernard was engaged in liturgical reform, a reform demanding knowledge of Cistercian history. It is important to point out, then, that the Exordium parvum was produced for a specifically Cistercian audience. Its primary function was to assert and confirm an idealized notion of Cistercian history for Cistercian readers and listeners. Precisely what constituted ‘ideal’ Cistercian history is of course a matter for interpretation.19 There is an emphasis in the Exordium parvum on the love, prayer, hard work, and repose that the Cistercian life offers. By stressing these elements, the text may well be encouraging monks to embrace all that was affirming in the Cistercian custom. But the point remains that the text also contains incidental, more legalistic, features which made it an effective pre-emptive weapon against the Benedictines. In fact this flexibility was precisely the strength of the document—the way in which the same claim concerning the essential features of Cistercian life responded to the needs of two very different audiences. Since every Cistercian house was required to possess copies of the exordia documents (and, indeed, since the means of transmission was the very public customary manuscripts as opposed to, say, less frequently consulted land charters) it is possible to speak of common historical reference points which would have been recognized throughout the order. Manuscript evidence confirms that the dissemination of these texts was widespread. As Chrysogonus Waddell has pointed out, manuscripts of the Cistercian customary or consuetudines always commence with the Exordium Cistercii (the more attractive, since shorter, exordium narrative), thus suggesting that the customary’s picture of Cistercian devotional and legislative life was not considered complete unless it was prefaced with history. Indeed, it is likely that the Exordium Cistercii was composed specifically to serve as the introduction to the customary.20 This arrangement of the manuscripts to include both the exordia documents and the customary documents indicates that all these texts were seen as an integrated corpus, as an historico-legal collection. It was by manuscript dissemination in this form that the understanding of history presented by the exordia quickly became part of the historical consciousness of the order as a whole. 19

As stated, I follow Waddell’s interpretation of the Exordium parvum. This does not mean I reject Berman’s important points about the Exordium parvum ‘protest[ing] too much’ over its allegedly accurate picture of Cistercian origins (The Cistercian Evolution, p. 11), but simply that I detect multiple imperatives behind the text—the desire to affirm the advantages of love, hard work, and so on, as well as the desire to refute Benedictine criticisms. I see no reason to argue that the text was solely intended to act as a kind of legal brief against criticisms of the Cistercians. 20 NLT, pp. 137–41, 156.

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This mid-century historical consciousness was an extremely knowing one, and the exordia texts are by no means as straightforward as they seem. First, the exordia were created neither spontaneously nor at one sitting. Rather, as circumstances within the nascent order changed, so too the documents were revised as part of an historiographical campaign which, as described already, also involved compilation, revision, and dissemination of the legislative statuta. Second, and following this, it is now impossible to do much more than discern tantalizing stages in what was clearly a concerted attempt by the order’s headquarters at Cîteaux to define and advertise its chief characteristics by recourse to written histories. These foundational exordia texts were written in opposition to their social context; they are rewritings of history and they simultaneously derive from, yet efface forever, the immediate past. Already within them they seem to be responding to some earlier historical debates about which today we cannot be certain.21 And so the first official examples we have of Cistercian historical writing show the monks already engaged in revisionism, alleging an original and continual adherence to the Benedictine Rule in response to later accusations of unwarranted innovation. All of this suggests an historiographically adept monastic organization which was able to use the written history in a selffulfilling campaign of defining itself and its allegedly permanent, unchanging characteristics. Thus, Cistercian history writing was premised from the outset on denying change in favour of a broader image of unassailable stability. And this mentality found expression in the 1150s, precisely the period in which Aelred of Rievaulx was writing his histories.

The English Historiographical and Political Order English historical writing of the 1150s has recently begun to receive the attention it deserves. Thanks to the investigations of John Gillingham, we can now appreciate that the 1150s consolidated an important development in the way in which English chronicles represented the nation. As Gillingham has identified it, between the 1120s and 1150s there was an irrevocable conceptual change concerning national allegiance in England and, more than this, this change was best and most fully represented through the medium of the written history.22 Influential arguments by Southern and 21 For instance, even Berman, The Cistercian Evolution, is less explicit on the reasons for the Cistercian invention of a unified identity than she is on the fact that such an invention took place. 22 The origins of the argument can be found John Gillingham’s ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 5 (1992), 392–409, and ‘Conquering the Barbarians: War and Chivalry in Twelfth-Century Britain’, HSJ, 4 (1992), 67–84. For the definitive thesis, see his ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. by Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson, and Alan Murray, Leeds Texts and Monographs New Series, 14 (Leeds: University of Leeds, School of

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followers have previously had it that nationalism as represented in Benedictine histories from the 1120s to 1140s was a defensive sense of opposition to the new Norman regime. Englishness was defined as a loss, as something that had been overridden by the Normans. By the 1150s, however, Gillingham argues that Englishness was defined more optimistically. Now the Anglo-Normans in England (that is, the descendants of those who settled as a result of the Conquest) began to identify themselves as ‘English’. Now there was more of an understanding that everyone’s future was tied up together. But this new nationalism did have a dark side. In order to strengthen this sense of community, a group of outsiders was identified and, indeed, conjured into existence. In this case, the ‘English’ claim to culture entailed the simultaneous ascription of non-culture (barbarism) to all Celtic ‘others’. Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman could embrace precisely because they both rejected the Celt. As with all applications of this term to medieval contexts, here the word ‘nationalism’ is used loosely. Since current research into national allegiances is such a strong field, it is worth suspending the precision of terminology briefly in order to investigate whether any of this new research can provide insights into medieval contexts. Some medieval scholars, for example, have been influenced by Benedict Anderson’s understanding of the nation as an ‘imagined community’.23 Gillingham, for one, concentrates on the ways in which nations are imaginatively created, although he does not refer explicitly to Anderson’s model. More specifically, Lesley Johnson has discussed Anderson’s arguments in detail. She has argued that his model is relevant to the medieval period precisely because ‘it draws attention to the way in which the concept of a nation is a cultural artefact which has a historical life, and may be imagined in different styles, and must be continually re-imagined and re-made’.24 Such an idea of nations being imagined and summoned into existence by the power of words, collective memories, and myths can be applied just as readily to the medieval period English, 1995), pp. 75–101, esp. p. 76, repeated in ‘Foundations of a Disunited Kingdom’, in Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History, ed. by Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer (London: Routledge, 1995), pp. 48–64. These works are now reproduced in Gillingham’s The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity, and Political Values (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2000). Gillingham’s arguments are supported by Elisabeth van Houts, ‘The Memory of 1066 in Written and Oral Traditions’, A-NS, 19 (1996), 167–79 (p. 179), and Robert Rees Davies, ‘The Peoples of Britain and Ireland, 1110–1400: II Names, Boundaries and Regnal Solidarities’, TRHS, 6th series, 5 (1995), 1–20. 23 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983). 24 Lesley Johnson, ‘Etymologies, Genealogies, and Nationalities (Again)’, in Concepts of National Identity, ed. by Forde, Johnson, and Murray, pp. 125–36 (p. 132). Further to this, see Johnson’s other essay, ‘Imagining Communities: Medieval and Modern’, in Concepts of National Identity, ed. by Forde, Johnson, and Murray, pp. 1–19 (p. 6).

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as to the modern world for which Anderson’s model was created. Here the medieval ‘nation’ is not defined in terms of modern criteria such as geography, political structures, or legal structures but instead by the extent to which a collective sense of unity has been created. While I reject the formal modern criteria of the nation, focussing instead on the power of the imagined, there is one characteristic of modern nationalism that will certainly be acknowledged and explored in this study. This is the tendency of the nation to be gendered. Although Gillingham has not explored the relationship between gender and nationalism in English historiography, I argue in the following pages that nationalism in medieval historiography can be presented very effectively through the vehicle of gender and, specifically, through the ways in which gendered representations focus on women. Thus, I suggest that the political order of nationalism was critical to English historiography of the mid-century, and so too was the social order of gender relations.

The Narrative Order Sometimes the most basic questions are the ones worth asking. To begin this study, I ask simply: What is a legitimate and useful way of studying medieval historical writings? What is an appropriate methodology that will enable us to do most justice to the world of the historical texts, and to the social worlds beyond the historical texts? As Patrick Geary has put it, there are three strategies that commentators on medieval chronicles might use in order to avoid what he describes as the ‘prison house of language’.25 That is, given that texts always reflect other texts and that historiography can therefore slip easily into literary study, Geary argues that various strategies are necessary in order to avoid the temptation to study texts alone, at the expense of people. While I do not agree that the inherently literary nature of the written history means that literary and historical studies need get conflated (after all, the truth claim distinguishes the literary history from literary fiction—this truth claim should be sufficient to ensure that we do not apply purely literary analysis to the history), nonetheless Geary’s tripartite model is a clear and sensible one. Although none of the suggested strategies is a new approach, what is significant for my purposes is the particular manner in which they are combined. The first area of investigation is authorial intention, the second is the real and/or implied reception of the text, and the final area is the manuscript diffusion and subsequent popularity of the text. By combining all three approaches, we can begin to move somewhere near the many meanings that a written history carried to its many audiences. That is, by tracing 25

Patrick Geary, ‘Frühmittelalterliche Historiographie. Zusammenfassung’, in Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter, ed. by Anton Scharer and Georg Scheibelreiter (Munich: R. Oldenbourg, 1994), pp. 539–42.

Prologue

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through from the initial stages of the author’s and patron’s intentions to the later stages of the text’s reception and dissemination we are in a good position to embrace the multiple meanings that a history contained, suggested, and, indeed, had imposed upon it. Far from seeking one single meaning for a given text, the following studies work from the premise that the full potentials of a given history cannot be retrieved without charting that history’s shifting or continual importance to different communities over time. The following chapter is a close study of Aelred of Rievaulx’s Relatio de standardo, structured according to these triple principles of authorial intention, audience reception, and manuscript dissemination. This chapter argues that such a pluralist investigative approach is particularly helpful for providing insights into medieval histories like the Relatio de standardo— that is, relatively short histories which gained only modest fame in the medieval period and which today are often dismissed as ambiguous, derivative, or inconsequential.

CHAPTER 1

Multiple Meanings for Multiple Audiences: Aelred of Rievaulx’s Relatio de standardo

A

s far as we can be sure, Aelred of Rievaulx was the first Cistercian in England to write histories. Specifically, he is the first writer of history whose name we know. Famous today and in the Middle Ages mainly for his spiritual writings on the doctrines of charity and friendship, Aelred was also a dedicated composer of histories. Between the early 1150s and early 1160s he produced a corpus of historical and hagiographical writings which includes vitae of Saints Edward and Ninian, a moral tale concerning the Nun of Watton, a local history of the priory of Hexham, a lost work on Cuthbert, and the Genealogia regum Anglorum and Relatio de standardo to be studied here. The Relatio de standardo was probably composed between 1155 and 1157.1 It is a vivid piece of contemporary history which provides a summary account of the Battle of the Standard. This contest occurred in 1138 at Northallerton and was one of the battles linked to the civil strife between supporters of Matilda and Stephen. The aggressor was King David of Scotland (Matilda’s uncle and supporter) who, along with his ill-assorted armies, advanced into northern England. Stephen unfortunately was caught at the opposite end of the country when called upon to fight. But his northern barons fought successfully on his behalf, resulting in a solid defeat for David. 1

On dating and manuscripts, see Anselm Hoste, Bibliotheca Aelrediana, Instrumenta Patristica, 2 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), p. 39. For the text, see Aelred of Rievaulx, Relatio de standardo, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. by Richard Howlett, RS, 82, 4 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1886), III, 179–99 (hereafter cited by page number). The history is also known as De bello standardii, as in PL vol. 195: cols 701–12. Although both titles have medieval authority, I favour the Rolls Series edition since this is based on a manuscript from Rievaulx. Translations are my own.

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CHAPTER ONE

The Relatio’s descriptions of this conflict are somewhat vague, perhaps because Aelred expected his immediate audience to remember the details of the battle which had occurred in their general vicinity. The work starts and ends abruptly, features little contextualization, and focuses instead on two battle speeches. A long and rousing speech is placed in the mouth of Walter Espec, the patriarch of the northern barons, while Robert Bruce (who had a foot in both camps) tries eloquently but unsuccessfully to dissuade King David from his planned assault. Hereafter, the Relatio fades away. Oddly for a work traditionally defined as a battle narrative, description of the fighting and its aftermath is brief and underdeveloped.

Authorial Intention: Lay and Monastic Audiences The first of my three concerns—Aelred’s intention in writing the history— is famously difficult.2 Aelred’s sympathies seem to have lain in many places simultaneously and investigation is not helped by the fact that the work lacks the traditional preface in which medieval historians often presented their personal views on the historiographical enterprise. This means that it is necessary to turn to the narrative itself for Aelred’s thoughts on the practice of history and the results that he intended or hoped it to effect. After all, much of the intention of the author necessarily comes down to us embodied in the intention of the text. This is not to say that Aelred’s ‘actual’ intentions are necessarily lost to us—contextual knowledge of Aelred’s life and career clearly helps us here—but simply that it is through the words of the text that we can approach these intentions. Within the body of the work Aelred includes three explicit references to the value of history. Significantly, these all occur in speeches, thus presenting history as an overwhelmingly public rather than private activity which was designed to reach the maximum audience possible. The first reference to the utility of history is delivered by Walter Espec, the hero of the narrative, who incites the northern army to attack the Scottish forces. At the outset of his speech he deviates from classical rhetorical tradition in order to argue for the importance of history. Although Ciceronian strategies for introducing speeches were known at Rievaulx, 2 This is why the Relatio has drawn so many different interpretations—scholars credit Aelred with different intentions and, consequently, their assessments differ widely. See Derek Baker, ‘Ailred of Rievaulx and Walter Espec’, HSJ, 1 (1989), 91–98; John R. E. Bliese, ‘The Battle Rhetoric of Aelred of Rievaulx’, HSJ, 1 (1989), 99–107; Aelred Glidden, ‘Aelred the Historian: The Account of the Battle of the Standard’, in Erudition at God’s Service, ed. by John R. Sommerfeldt, CSS, 98 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987), pp. 175–84; and David Walker, ‘Cultural Survival in an Age of Conquest’, in Welsh Society and Nationhood. Historical Essays Presented to Glanmor Williams, ed. by Robert Rees Davies and others (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1984), pp. 35–50.

Multiple Meanings for Multiple Audiences

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Aelred has Walter ignore them entirely.3 Instead, Walter rejects the standard classical model and begins his oration by saying that he would prefer to be doing something else. And what he would prefer is to be an historian. If only the young heroes could know what events the day would bring, then Walter could turn aside and sleep, play at dice or chess, or ‘if those things do not suit a man my age, then I would pay attention to histories or, as I often do, lend my ear eagerly to a teller of the deeds of our ancestors’.4 Following these remarks, we can assume that occupation with history was considered a virtuous use of Walter’s free time and was more respected than attention to dice or chess. This sentiment reflects the prevalence of historical interest among the Anglo-Norman laity in the mid-twelfth century and accords with what we know of Walter from Geffrei Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis.5 Writing in the 1130s, Gaimar refers to Walter as the owner of historical books and, further, as an integral member of an informal reading and book-lending group among the northern nobility. Although one can question whether Walter ever delivered the words that Aelred places in his mouth, it seems clear that the sentiment was in agreement with Walter’s past practices and, further, that it was considered quite possible and laudable that a layman would have the desire and means to educate himself in historical matters. Indeed, should Aelred have invented the speech then this indicates all the more clearly his commitment to stressing the importance of a shared history as a means of community cohesion among the AngloNorman laity. In brief, this passage represents the nascent ethos of AngloNorman nobles seeking cultural capital by their participation in literacy and, more precisely, by their participation in what Nancy Partner has aptly termed the ‘serious entertainment’ of historiography.6 And so, although Walter Espec is delivering a battle speech, he elects to devote the crucial introduction to matters of history. He does not refer to the upcoming battle but, rather, considers that the audience will be made well disposed by learning about his constructive use of leisure time. As presented here, Walter’s expertise lies in the realm of history rather than in the realm of warfare. Indeed, as Walter points out, if only this speech could be avoided then he could return home and indulge his preference for history. 3

On knowledge of Cicero at Rievaulx, see Birger Munk Olsen, ‘The Cistercians and Classical Culture’, Cahiers de l'institut du moyen âge grec et latin, 47 (1984), 64–102 (p. 77). 4 ‘Et certe si omnes, qui me audiunt, saperent et intelligerent, et ea quae nobis hodie ventura sunt praeviderent, silerem libentius et sompno meo requiescerem, vel luderem aleis, aut confligerem scaccis, vel si ea aetati meae minus congruerent, legendis historiis operam darem, vel more meo veterum gesta narranti aurem attentius commodarem.’ p. 185. 5 Geffrei Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engleis, ed. by Alexander Bell, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 14–16 (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1960), lines 6441–50. 6 This term is borrowed from the title to Partner’s monograph, where it is used in a more clerical context.

CHAPTER ONE

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But unfortunately the speech cannot be avoided and so Walter launches into the rest of his oration. And, ironically, this man who would rather be at home reading or listening to history now proceeds to deliver a lengthy speech which is itself nothing other than pure history. Walter Espec is presented here as the repository of his troops’ memory. He uses the oral, declaimed history to direct the creation of collective memory. By ascribing his own sights and memories to the entire army (‘we saw, we saw with our own eyes’7), Walter includes all the men as informants and sharers of the glorious past. Here Walter is the agent through whom an individual private memory is transferred into the public realm. As well as crediting his followers with the same memory of watching the French defeat, Walter extends the range of events which are considered suitable for inclusion in a history. When introducing the Scots’ atrocities, Walter points out how such barbarous acts have no place in histories.8 But at the same time that he says he will refrain from mentioning them, Walter includes these activities as legitimate components of his history. Employing the technique of praeteritio, Walter claims that he will not mention (indeed, he dreads to mention) the way in which the enemy stormed and defiled God’s sanctuary. But, of course, Walter does mention these crimes and his motivation (indeed, Aelred’s motivation) is the desire that such atrocities should become part of the historical culture and memory of his audience. Knowledge of the past is so important that Aelred has Walter advertise its worth a second time: It is not a waste of time for you young brave men to listen to an old man who, through the vicissitudes of time, through the changes of kings, and through the many events of war, has learned to reflect on the past, weigh up the present, and surmise about the present from the past, the future from the present.9

Walter considers it useful not only that he possesses his own knowledge of the past but that his peers acquire this knowledge also. But knowledge of the past is not desirable just for its own sake. Rather, Walter emphasizes that this knowledge has to be applied to present or future situations. One must learn from history and use it to ensure a better future. The future relevance of the past is echoed by the text’s third endorsement of history. When Robert Bruce tries to sway David from war he reminds the king, ‘It is not wise to be alert to the beginning of things and 7

‘Vidimus, vidimus oculis nostris, regem Franciae cum universo suo exercitu nobis terga vertentem’, p. 186. 8 ‘talia dicam, qualia nec fabulae ferunt, nec narrant historiae a crudelissimis acta tyrannis’, p. 187. 9 ‘Non inutile est, inquit, viri fortissimi, si senem juvenes audiatis; me dico, qui multorum temporum vicissitudine, mutatione regum, et diversis bellorum eventibus didici et praeterita revolvere, et aestimare praesentia, et secundum praeterita de praesentibus, secundum praesentia de futuris capere conjecturam.’ p. 185.

Multiple Meanings for Multiple Audiences

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not to their finish and conclusion; or for the present to ignore remembrance of the past or care for the future.’10 Current knowledge is useless if it is not complemented by historical perspective, while historical knowledge in itself is insufficient unless it is applied to the issues of the present day. As in all rhetorical speeches featuring sermocinatio, the words of Walter and Robert were probably not pronounced in the form Aelred describes, if indeed they were pronounced at all. Given this scope for invention within hortatory descriptions, it is useful to investigate the sections of the speeches which are unique to the Relatio since these can provide insights into Aelred’s particular preoccupations. Significantly, the unique sections of the speeches are the sections on the worth of history. These do not appear in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, the work most likely to have been used by Aelred as a source. Instead, the emphasis placed by Walter and Robert on history was wholly Aelred’s design. What purpose then did this serve? Walter’s speech stresses that historical awareness does not come automatically. History is a process which involves the unreliable memory and which must be worked at in order to bring rewards. Walter continually exhorts his listeners to participate in the conscious and willed activity of remembering. This was in keeping with standard medieval historiographical practice. Medieval authors conceived of a link between memory and history, whereby the genre of history was the formal and institutionalized means of preserving memory. Chronicle prefaces frequently contain such terms as memoria, meminisse, and derivatives.11 Following classical precedents, composers of histories stated that they were prompted to write by fear that memories might be lost and that good and bad deeds might slip from those memories. This led to the related but separate claim that events were being recorded because they were worthy of memory.12 In sum, the genre of history was the narration of those things worthy of memory. This is not to say that history was the same as memory. Just as modern theorists distinguish between communal memory, invented tradition, and individual and official histories, so too medieval writers of history appreciated the links (but not the equivalence) between these separate items. Aelred provides a clear example of this conceptual distinction between history and memory. To begin, he argues that it was not sufficient merely to remember the past. Memory had to be retained and then projected by the 10 ‘Non enim sapientis est, o rex, rerum tantum initia, non etiam exitus finesque prospicere, et pro solis praesentibus praeteritorum memoriam vel futurorum providentiam abolere.’ p. 192. 11 Bernard Guenée, ‘Histoire, mémoire, écriture’, Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres. Comptes rendus des séances (Jul–Oct 1983), 441–56. 12 In the late twelfth century Gervase of Canterbury would distinguish between memorable things (memorabilia) and things worthy of memory (memoranda). Only the latter should be recorded in histories. Gervasii Cantuariensis opera historica, ed. by William Stubbs, RS, 73, 2 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1879–80), I, 89.

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present into the future. This was the reasoning behind Robert Bruce’s argument that ‘It is not wise to be alert to the beginning of things and not to their finish and conclusion’. Memory allowed Aelred and his intended audience to connect past with present and future but, on the other hand, memory alone was not enough. The connection between past, present, and future was only possible when memory was secured by historiography. That is, the written history secured the unreliable memory and safeguarded it against the vacuum of forgetfulness. Many medieval authors and audiences besides Aelred were aware of this complicity between the three processes of history, memory, and writing.13 All three elements were integral to the process by which community meanings were created and shared. First, memory ensured that the past became present to posterity to begin with. Then the written history was the medium which secured the retention and availability of this memory and proffered it to the waiting audience. Common enough in medieval chronicles generally, references to memory carried particular significance in the Cistercian theological context. It is here that we approach the particularly Cistercian meanings of Aelred’s references to the utility of history. More so than other orders, Cistercians were committed to writing about the soul; indeed, almost every Cistercian of note wrote a treatise on this topic. In these texts Cistercians frequently stressed the three vestiges of God that could be found in the soul: memoria, intelligentia, and voluntas. Along with the will and knowledge, memory had a locus in the soul and thus by definition a relation with the divine. Although damaged by the Fall, it had the potential to lead one to God. This much is standard in Cistercian theology overall and, especially, in Aelred’s personal theology.14 But what is less obvious is that the Cistercian approach to memory links strongly with the notion of historiography as a description of God’s works performed among men and women. In such an historiographical understanding of memory, one has to apply the human power of understanding to the materials presented by memory in order to share God’s truth. In this case, the materials are the res gestae of the historical record and the rewards are foreshadowed in the historians’ conventional references to the utility of history. Thus when Walter Espec reminded his troops of the usefulness of his historical speech he invoked a memorial message that

13 14

Guenée, ‘Histoire, mémoire, écriture’, p. 450.

For Aelred’s theory of the soul, see his earliest composition, Speculum caritatis, c. 1142–43. Although the soul retained the image of God, ‘forgetfulness distorts memory, error clouds knowledge, and self-centredness stifles love’, all to be restored by means of charity: Aelred of Rievaulx, The Mirror of Charity, trans. by Elizabeth Connor, CF, 17 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990), I. 4. 13 (p. 94). ‘Nam et memoriam corrumpit obliuio, scientiam error obnubilat, amorem cupiditas coangustat’: Aelredi Rievallensis Opera omnia, vol. I (Opera ascetica), ed. by Anselm Hoste and Charles H. Talbot, CCCM, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), Liber de speculo caritatis, I, 13 (p. 17).

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would have carried particular theological significance for the Relatio’s current and future Cistercian audiences. To conclude this section, I suggest that the Relatio de standardo is an articulate commentary on the importance of memory retention via the formalized genre of historiography. It speaks to two audiences—members of the newly literate Anglo-Norman laity such as Walter Espec, and the Cistercian monk—and it emphasizes the importance of memory in terms customized to each audience. Having reminded his multiple audiences of history’s memorial functions and his intentions for the use of history, Aelred now proceeds to discuss an area in which a standardized historical memory was considered necessary—the area of genealogy.

Text Reception: Lay and Monastic Appeal The dual lay and Cistercian appeal of Walter’s speech leads me away from authorial and textual intention to a more extensive study of the Relatio’s reception. There are two subsets of this theme, the continuity of Cistercian foundations in England and the continuity of Norman prowess. Both areas involve frequent references to nationalism, although this is a nationalism which is highly ambiguous. By raising a third point, however, I will proceed to argue that the seemingly contradictory theme of nationalism is subordinated to the reconciling features of sanctity and pious commemoration. And once again the same themes speak to the needs of two audiences simultaneously. The first memory that Aelred wished to confirm was the edifying memory of orthodox Cistercian foundation. Here the Relatio adopts certain characteristics of the foundation history, a type of historical production not usually associated with the Cistercians of this early period. While listing the members of the Anglo-Norman baronial contingent, Aelred arrives at Walter Espec. Aelred then writes, ‘He [Walter Espec] also brought to this area the Cistercian Order, the reputation of which England had barely heard and towards which glorious King Henry showed favour.’ Not only Henry, but God, St Bernard, and the mother house at Clairvaux are also mentioned, thus providing the Rievallian Cistercians with an unimpeachable lineage. Walter ‘received the brothers from the most illustrious monastery of Clairvaux, through the intervention of the abbot saint Bernard, beloved by God’.15 The passage proceeds to stress that Rievaulx was the mother house of still further foundations in both the English and Scottish kingdoms. In describing Rievaulx’s monastic descendants and antecedents, Aelred presents the house as the Cistercian point of reference. He suggests that the 15

‘Cisterciensem quoque ordinem, cujus vix famam audierat Anglia, favente sibi glorioso rege Henrico, in has partes advexit, suscipiens fratres de nobilissimo monasterio Clarevallis per manum sancti ac Deo dilecti abbatis Bernardi.’ p. 183.

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successes of other foundations lead to and derive from Rievaulx. This was despite the fact that Waverley and not Rievaulx was the origin of the English Cistercian enterprise. Aelred dutifully mentions Waverley but he describes it as hidden away in a corner and pays little attention to it. Founded in 1128, Waverley was located in the south of England and was not of the same filiation as any of the Yorkshire abbeys. It did colonize five other houses before 1150 and so evidently was large enough to spare at least 65 monks.16 But it could still not compete with Rievaulx (founded 1132) which was enjoying its period of great expansion during Aelred’s abbacy. Between Aelred’s composition of the Speculum caritatis in about 1142–43 and his death in 1167 the community of monks, lay brothers, and laymen would increase from 300 to 640.17 So too the influence and reputation of this northern abbey increased. All of this combined to make Aelred’s image of the English Cistercians an overwhelmingly northern one. Aelred was able to emphasize all strengths in the Cistercian order by reference to northern houses. He did not find it necessary to discuss the southern foundations since it was the exemplary religious life of the Rievallian monks, and the Rievallian monks only, that had encouraged large numbers of converts to the English Cistercians, at least in Aelred’s opinion.18 In brief, ‘justifiably, the monastery of Rievaulx by its reputation and religious life surpasses others in England of the same order’.19 Here Aelred’s unqualified praise of Rievaulx begins what would later be a strong trend in Cistercian institutional history—downgrading Waverley’s influence and lauding the histories of the northern houses. Soon, however, Aelred changes strategy. He concludes his discussion of Rievaulx and proceeds to describe the egression from St Mary’s York when dissatisfied Benedictine monks had left to establish the Cistercian community at Fountains. These unusual circumstances meant that Fountains’s position in the system of Cistercian filiation was potentially unclear. Strictly speaking Fountains was the product of autogenesis and hence the daughter house of nobody. But it had always maintained links with Bernard and indeed eventually became an adopted member of the Clairvaux filiation. This provided the all-important link with Rievaulx, a house which also belonged 16

On Waverley’s daughter houses, see David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious Houses. England and Wales (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1953), pp. 104–21. 17 Mirror of Charity, II. 17. 43 (p. 195); Walter Daniel, The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx, ed. and trans. by Frederick Maurice Powicke (London: Thomas Nelson, 1950), XXX (p. 38). Although not the most recent edition, this 1950 Latin-English presentation of Walter Daniel’s vita remains the most useful. 18 ‘Qui venientes in Angliam, anno ab incarnatione Domini 1132, nacti locum in valle profundissima super ripam Riae fluminis [. . .] multos suae religionis fama ad optimorum studiorum aemulationem incitaverunt’, pp. 183–84. 19 ‘Unde non immerito coenobium Rievallense cetera, quae in Anglia sunt ejusdem ordinis, fama et religione praecellit.’ p. 184.

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to the Clairvaux family. Further, it was traditional to argue that the edifying example of the Rievallian monks had inspired the St Mary’s community to pursue the Cistercian life in the first instance.20 This forged another link between Rievaulx and Fountains. Thus despite Fountains having no connection with Walter Espec, the subject from whom the excursus on foundation history derived, Aelred evidently considered the narrative leap from Walter to Rievaulx to Fountains to be logical and justified. Aelred’s urge to discuss the Fountains community indicates that by this stage of the history his interests have moved on. Reference to Walter had led logically to a discussion of Rievaulx, which leads logically now to a discussion of the Cistercian order’s defining features. Aelred harnesses Fountains’s history to wider Cistercian history in general and invokes Fountains as representative of wider Cistercian ideals. He writes that Fountains was established by monks seeking to imitate ‘Cistercian poverty and purity’. The monks then founded their new community with ‘the greatest poverty and wonderful fervour’.21 These are important phrases in relation to Cistercian self-definition. For example, throughout his writing career Aelred always paid special attention to the Benedictine Rule and its command of poverty, most often in his sermons.22 Moreover, by the late twelfth century continental Cistercians were retrospectively claiming that their founders had embraced the desert ideal; that is, they were claiming that Cistercian identity had always been premised on the physical, spiritual, and scripturally inspired retreat to isolated places.23 The English Cistercians argued likewise, although the phenomenon has generally been dated to the beginning of the thirteenth century at the earliest. As Constance Berman has pointed out, this was part of a broader trend whereby the Cistercian textual community was, by the early thirteenth century, consistently using genealogical and biblical imagery to redefine incorporated houses as houses of

20 This argument would later find clear textual expression in the Fountains foundation history, composed in the early thirteenth century. Hugh of Kirkstall, Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii, in Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains, vol. I, ed. by John Richard Walbran, Surtees Society, 42 (Durham: Surtees Society, 1862), pp. 4–5. 21 ‘quidam monachi de ecclesia beatae Mariae Eboracensi Cisterciensem puritatem et paupertatem zelantes’, ‘maxima paupertate, miro fervore Fontanense coenobium creaverunt’, p. 184. 22 Hilary Costello, ‘The Rule of St. Benedict in Some English Cistercian Fathers’, Regulae Benedicti Studia, 6/7 (1977/78), 123–47 (pp. 143–45). 23 Jean-Baptiste Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primitive: mythe ou réalité?, Cîteaux Studia et Documenta, 3 (Achel, Belgium: Éditions sine Parvulos, 1986), pp. 124–27, and Benedicta Ward, ‘The Desert Myth: Reflections on the Desert Ideal in Early Cistercian Monasticism’, in One Yet Two: Monastic Tradition East and West, ed. by M. Basil Pennington, CSS, 29 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1976), pp. 183–99.

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so-called ‘apostolic gestation’.24 Aelred’s reference here to the Cistercian desert ideal (with the ideal’s call for poverty and purity) is an earlier version of the same argument. It contains an assumption that poverty and purity were, and always had been, the defining features of the order; it contains an assumption that these qualities were somehow accessible to other Cistercian houses by means of the genealogical link between members of the same filiation; and, further, it contains an assumption that there existed uniquely Cistercian types of poverty and purity. And so the desired memory of a group is given self-fulfilling voice. Given that Aelred’s work was composed relatively early in English Cistercian history, it is a valuable contribution to our understanding of how the first generations of Cistercians subtly reshaped their own image via historical writings in order to claim continuity with a glorious past. In addition to the strictly Cistercian elements, the foundation passage also contains clear non-monastic meanings, represented best in the person of Walter Espec. It seems likely that Walter dedicated himself to founding monasteries out of a desire to perpetuate his own memory. As Aelred points out, Walter had no children and so he made Christ his heir by founding a house at Kirkham. Later he would do the same at Wardon and Rievaulx. From a range of sources, we know that Walter was an enthusiastic patron who maintained a strong involvement in the affairs of his foundations. He initiated transfers of property and he seems to have been the agent behind other agreements as well.25 These types of activities would have immersed Walter in what we can term a ‘memorial economy’—by constantly participating in monastic affairs, Walter was making his claim to permanent identification with these houses. By his deeds, he was inserting himself just as thoroughly into the community memories of the houses as he would have done through participation in the writing, reading, or appreciation of written histories. In both instances a link was created between a layman and a monastic house, a link which connected past actions with the present and future. Walter’s literary presence in the Relatio, then, is another more formal example of his participation in the physical creation of the houses’ identities. By allocating space to Walter’s determining role in these foundations, Aelred recognized Walter’s right to be associated with monastic memories. This means that the Relatio does more than simply praise an absent patron. In addition, Walter is presented as a key participant in Cistercian history just as he is identified as a key informant for Norman history. This is why we can identify Walter as the most important figure in the history—he is the link between the Relatio’s two audiences, monastic and noble. Returning to 24

For Berman’s excellent points, see The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), chap. 3, esp. pp. 103–06. See too p. 228. 25 Derek Baker, ‘Patronage in the Early Twelfth-Century Church: Walter Espec, Kirkham and Rievaulx’, in Traditio — Krisis — Renovatio aus theologische Sicht, ed. by Bernd Jaspert and Rudolf Mohr (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 1976), pp. 92–100.

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the broader issue of the foundation passage in which these themes are presented, we can see that the passage serves two social functions—it responds to the Cistercian quest for origins and it also conflates insular monastic history and Walter’s noble history. This latter point is significant for it reminds us that monastic and lay histories were not considered separate and exclusive. Rather, the two were linked via the person of Walter Espec. The description of monastic foundations is followed by Walter Espec’s speech. As seen already, this speech opens with an important argument concerning the value of history. But this is not the traditional reason for the speech’s popularity. The speech is more renowned for its promotion of the so-called ‘Norman Myth’. The Relatio de standardo was composed at the end of a period of identity reformulation among the Norman and French nobilities. Although the beginning of the phenomenon is not completely understood, it is clear that the eleventh and twelfth centuries witnessed changing conceptions of noble landholding and family self-definition.26 The family name passed from the name of a geographically fixed location to the name of the founder of one’s lineage. With so much resting on the achievements of a single person, knowledge of one’s family history became an increasingly necessary proof of one’s current status. The result was a memorial imperative which took literary form in chronicles, romances, and genealogies and which affected family communities, national communities, and monastic communities. The Normans were eager participants in this trend, probably because their real genealogies were so precarious. Norman historians worked solidly to fashion a group identity which was based on a selffulfilling proposition of unity and uniqueness. In short, Norman historians created the famous and problematic Norman Myth. The focus of this myth was the Normans’ fighting prowess.27 Military strength was not actually an end in itself but was important because it facilitated the acquisition of further territory. In keeping with the growing inseparability of territorial and genealogical interests in the twelfth century, Norman histories stressed that contemporary Normans enjoyed direct descent from the earlier all-conquering generations. Consequently, contemporary Normans inherited land and a legitimate history, as well as a superior fighting capacity. All the best qualities of the past were handed down to them undiluted and so could serve the Normans indefinitely into the future. 26 R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies. A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 64–75, and Constance Brittain Bouchard, ‘Family Structure and Family Consciousness among the Aristocracy in the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries’, Francia, 14 (1986), 639–58. 27 The basic study is Ralph H. C. Davis, The Normans and Their Myth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976). See too John R. E. Bliese, ‘The Courage of the Normans — A Comparative Study of Battle Rhetoric’, Nottingham Mediaeval Studies, 35 (1991), 1–26.

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Aelred’s Relatio presents a standard version of this argument. As with the foundation section, once again Walter Espec is the point of departure for this thematic subset of the history. Walter’s battle oration to the northern barons takes up over a quarter of the Relatio’s total 450 lines and it includes all the common reference to past glories and military success. This invocation of history is intended to rouse the army to future successes against King David. The Relatio emphasizes victory more than Henry of Huntingdon had done in his version of the speech and it points out that earlier Normans achieved their glories despite having fewer troops than the opposing armies. ‘Didn’t our ancestors invade most of Gaul with very few soldiers and wipe out both the people and the Gaulish name?’ asks Walter rhetorically.28 Audiences are reminded that Norman victory in the past was immediate and complete. The Normans rapidly overrode England and would have outfought even Julius Caesar. And, finally, their success was all but universal—encompassing France, England, Greece, Germany, and Italy. The implication of this speech is that Walter’s army will succeed against David’s forces now, just as their Norman forebears succeeded in the past. Walter refers to his audience exclusively as Normans, although the army undoubtedly contained a range of fighters. Henry of Huntingdon had introduced his equivalent battle speech with the words, ‘Nobles of England, illustrious Norman-born’,29 thus conceding the English component of the men’s loyalties. Aelred was certainly aware of the various origins of the troops, for he refers in the narrative sections of his history to the less specific southerners. Nonetheless, Aelred seems to have viewed nationalism as a flexible self-identification, something to be claimed, altered, and exploited. Walter’s speech, for example, is premised on the unifying capacity of a shared history and shared name. The name of Norman is important since it links Walter’s audience with all the great deeds that have been achieved under that name throughout the centuries. (Likewise, this is why it was essential that the Normans wipe out the name of the Gauls and not just the Gauls themselves.) Thus, continuity of success is promised to the twelfth-century fighters due to continuity of name and continuity of their identification, real or imagined, with that name. To summarize the preceding two examples: Aelred’s history responded to the preoccupations of two groups that are often studied more in isolation than in combination—English Cistercian monks and the Anglo-Norman laity. This is where reception-based interpretation can encourage us to account for what might otherwise seem contradictory assessments. In this instance, it helps to remember that the Cistercian order had been 28

‘Nonne proavi nostri maximam Galliae portionem cum paucis invasere militibus, et ab ea cum gente etiam ipsum Galliae nomen eraserunt?’ p. 185. 29 ‘Proceres Anglie clarissimi Normannigene’: Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum. The History of the English People, ed. by Diana E. Greenway (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), x. 8 (p. 714).

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characterized from the outset by the noble or knightly origins of its recruits and that Cistercian monks frequently included themes from the secular (particularly military and courtly) world in their writings.30 Thus there would have been no barrier to a monk responding to the military and secular appeal of the Norman myth. And, in a more general sense, we should beware of constructing unnecessarily exclusive literary milieux when discussing post-Conquest England and its literary productions. PostConquest England was a society of coexisting, competing, and mutually enhancing literary cultures in which individuals and communities need not have allied themselves with one type of writing at the expense of another. For example, many post-Conquest saints’ lives seem to have been successful precisely because they appealed to a variety of audiences.31 The same applies with historiography such as, most famously, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae. This complex interaction between the languages, genres, and themes of the post-Conquest literary world finds its most debated expression in the area of nationalism, particularly in the area of nationalism and history writing. On the positive side, it is clear that the histories by William of Malmesbury, Geffrei Gaimar, and Geoffrey of Monmouth were all informed at least to some degree by nationalist imperatives, be these explicit or not. On the negative side, not all examples of this nationalist historiography are easy to analyse, particularly those featuring the complexities of so-called ‘Anglo-Norman’ identity.32 Aelred’s Relatio de standardo falls into this latter category. It is certainly true that nationalism is a persistent theme throughout the Relatio but my arguments thus far have emphasized that other issues were promoted as well. For example, by studying parts of the text as a foundation history we have seen that Aelred acknowledged national boundaries as real but as less important than the internationalism of the Cistercian mission. The same argument applies to Walter Espec’s speech propounding the Norman myth. Here, the Normans were so successful and indeed invincible that, ironically, they surpassed the boundaries of nationalism and became universal. 30

For the classic study of lay/courtly themes in Cistercian writings, see Jean Leclercq, Monks and Love in Twelfth-Century France: Psycho-Historical Essays (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), pp. 8–26. 31 David Townsend, ‘Anglo-Latin Hagiography and the Norman Transition’, Exemplaria, 3 (1991), 385–433. 32 The existence of a unified cross-channel Anglo-Norman identity is in question; see the essays in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. by David Bates and Anne Curry (London: Hambledon Press, 1994). On the other hand, however, Aelred’s Relatio and other historical texts from England indicate that there was still an attempt to impute collective feelings and allegiances to the nobility living in England and Scotland, even if this unity of self-image did not extend beyond the Channel. It is this English- and Scottish-based version of the Norman myth that is relevant to the collective mentality I am investigating.

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The Norman Myth section demonstrates most clearly the ambiguities of the national arguments in the Relatio de standardo. As always, the question of nationalism in Aelred’s writings is complicated by the peculiarities of his background. Born to English parents in Northumbria, raised in the Normaninfluenced Scottish court, Aelred then joined a monastic order which had been founded by French monks. Due to his varied background, Aelred has often attracted reductionist biographical explanations for his writings and, in the case of nationalist sentiment, there is certainly evidence for whatever allegiance one might wish to attribute to him—be that a distinctive English (in the sense of Anglo-Saxon, pre-Conquest) sentiment or else the kind of Anglo-Norman nationalism favoured by scholars discussing the Norman Myth.33 But all of this is premised on an understanding of national allegiances which is discrete and exclusive; one must favour either one side or the other, with no scope for multiple allegiances. And, yet, multiple allegiances are precisely the forces at play in Aelred’s work. In this instance, it seems more helpful to envisage a situation in mid-twelfth-century England where there were now broad and multiple definitions of what it meant to be English. As Gillingham’s work has led us to expect, the Relatio is an agent in the mid-twelfth-century redefinition of national identity. Reading the Relatio we are reading a state of affairs in flux, a stage in English history when communal identity was being redefined. Aelred’s history is valuable precisely because it shows a different nationalist allegiance from other, more well-known, histories of the twelfth century. When added to the wider corpus of insular historiography from this period, the Relatio shows us the many different nationalisms that seem to have coexisted in the cultural whirlpool of Anglo-Norman England. A helpful strategy for identifying the particular nationalist arguments in the Relatio is to concentrate on the areas in which Aelred depended on previous historians and the areas in which he deviated from them. There are clear links between the Relatio and both Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum and Richard of Hexham’s De gestis regis Stephani et de bello standardii, particularly in the respective versions of Walter Espec’s speech. But even though Aelred depended on both these works to varying degrees, there is one feature of his text which resonates with specifically Aelredian concerns. This is the stress on the northern barons’ piety. Richard of Hexham had already provided graphic examples of the Scottish tribes’ impiety, but his aim seems to have been different from Aelred’s. Richard’s history is filled with massacres and church desecrations committed by the

33

For some of the diverging interpretations of Aelred’s national allegiances, see Rosalind Ransford, ‘A Kind of Noah’s Ark: Aelred of Rievaulx and National Identity’, in Religion and National Identity, ed. by Stuart Mews, SCH, 18 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), pp. 137–46, and Thomas Merton, ‘St Aelred of Rievaulx and the Cistercians (V)’, CS, 24 (1989), 50–68. Despite the date, Merton’s insightful article was written in the 1950s.

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Scots.34 Richard employed such examples in order to present the greater argument that all Celtic tribes were uncivilized. He included frequent massacres and rampages in his history but he did not find it necessary to explain the lessons to be drawn from these events or to describe their relevance to the rest of the narrative. The violent acts were obviously proof in themselves of barbarity. With this mentality, Richard is a crucial witness to the ideological shift that Gillingham has identified for the mid-twelfth century—the simultaneous redefinitions of ‘Englishness’ to mean ‘culture’ and ‘Celticness’ to mean ‘barbarism’. But Aelred was concerned not so much with criticizing the barbarous Scots and Picts as with praising the devout southerners. Whereas Richard had described only the negative Scottish side of the picture, Aelred contrasts the two camps. When he describes the unfitting behaviour of the Scottish armies he couples this with a corresponding anecdote about the northern barons and their devotion. Although he does decry the impiety of the Scots and Picts his emphasis is more on affirming what is positive than on lamenting what is negative, a view in keeping with the mentality behind his spiritual treatises and sermons. In Aelred’s history the differences between nations are demonstrated by the nations’ different attitudes towards saints and not so much by the differences in culture or civilization that Gillingham’s model would suggest. This reflects Aelred’s great commitment to local saints which appears in his hagiographical writings. In the Relatio de standardo the southerners prosper due to their respect for hagiographical and historical traditions, while the tribes under David’s command respect only the trivialities of the moment. The conflict is therefore a military conflict but also a conflict between different formulations of community memory and holy tradition. The southern forces were equipped with respect for their past while, in contrast, the Scots displayed extreme flippancy. ‘Actors, dancers, and dancing girls precede them [the Scots], the cross of Christ and relics of the saints precede us.’35 The preceding sentence demonstrates two of Aelred’s persistent concerns. The first is his dislike of theatrical pretence. Earlier Aelred had written in his Speculum caritatis that unsuitable church music prompted saucy gestures from singers and encouraged people to laugh and jeer, something more suitable in a theatre than in a church.36 Exaggerated noises directed attention away from the inner meaning to the superficialities of mere amusement. If Aelred’s disapproval of histrionic gesticulations was 34

The Scots were as barbarous as pagans and murdered the young, the sick, and the pregnant; Richard of Hexham, De gestis regis Stephani et de bello standardii, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. by Howlett, III, 137–78 (pp. 151, 163). 35 ‘Illos histriones, saltatores et saltatrices, nos crux Christi et reliquiae sanctorum antecedunt’, p. 189. 36 Mirror of Charity, II. 23. 67 (pp. 210–11).

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strong, his second concern was equally emphatic. This was Aelred’s devotion to northern saints and relics, a devotion which would find hagiographic expression in his account of the Hexham saints, in his lost work on Cuthbert, and in his encouragement to other writers to compose vitae on local saints. While the Relatio de standardo does not belong to the hagiographic genre, it does contain a persistent emphasis on the powers of sanctity. We know from Richard of Hexham’s account that the standard under which the southern forces fought was a ship’s mast displaying the banners of Saints Peter, Cuthbert, Wilfrid, and John of Beverley, as well as the sacred host. The choice of these saints was not arbitrary. Peter represented York, Cuthbert represented Durham, while Wilfrid and John signified Ripon and Beverley respectively. Thus, the Battle of the Standard demonstrates the union of various English sees against the Scots. With such a holy rallying point, it is not surprising that Aelred emphasizes the saintly nature of the southerners’ fight. He pursues this theme by invoking saints at strategic points in the narrative, resulting in a work enveloped in a saintly glow. When Aelred introduces the opposing camps he points out that archbishop Thurstan of York had published an edict throughout the diocese, advising that ‘all who could proceed to the wars should hurry to the nobles from each of his parishes, preceded by the priests with cross and banners and relics of saints, to defend the church of Christ against the barbarians’.37 Henceforth, then, the fighters would profit from the guardianship of these assorted and unnamed saints. In contrast to the king of the Scots, who was advancing with the greatest pride and ferocity, Thurstan and his comrades were described as advancing with the accumulated might and righteousness of God and his saints. The assertion that God was fighting on one’s side was of course a common medieval topos, although it was no less influential for its prevalence. Importantly, this assertion does not appear in other histories of the battle, thus suggesting that the theme was one that Aelred had developed on his own initiative and particularly wanted to emphasize. As the history progresses, Aelred continues to depict the southerners as recipients of God’s power mediated through his saints. Once again, Walter Espec is the conveyor of this information. He promises that Divine aid is at hand. The whole heavenly court will fight for us. Michael will be here with his angels [. . .]. Peter and the apostles will fight for us [. . .]. The holy martyrs will go before our army [. . .]. The holy virgins [. . .]

37

‘Sed et Thurstinus Eboracensis archiepiscopus per totam diocesim suam edictum episcopale proposuit ut, de singulis parochiis suis presbyteris cum cruce et vexillis reliquiisque sanctorum praeeuntibus, omnes qui possent ad bella procedere, ad proceres properarent, ecclesiam Christi contra barbaros defensuri.’ p. 182.

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will fight for us with prayers. Even more I say, Christ himself will take up arms and shield and rise to help us.38

The degree of heavenly assistance promised here is unusual for medieval battle orations; indeed, it is amplified more fully in Aelred’s Relatio de standardo than in any other contemporary work.39 Most orations guarantee divine help but this is normally restricted to God or Christ. Aelred, however, has Walter promise assistance from the entire heavenly army. Should the army fail to be encouraged by such words, Walter proceeds to contrast the merits of his followers with the demerits of the opponents. ‘For they come to us in pride, while we proceed in humility.’40 And finally, as mentioned already, the enemy is accompanied inappropriately by actors and dancers while Walter’s followers walk in the path of the saints. Thus, quite literally, the saints are the reasons for and the antecedents of the southern army’s success. To summarize, we can state that the history’s attention to saints demonstrates the power of pious commemoration. Nationalism is certainly an important theme in the Relatio, but this nationalism is presented in a singular way. Nationalism is never a universal term referring to uniform and atemporal behaviour; rather, it is always linked to context and, hence, it inevitably takes on many faces. In the Relatio we see that national ties are flexible and that they are defined in terms of hagiographic devotion—piety then is the inflexible benchmark endorsed by Aelred. Perhaps this was part of a specific project on Aelred’s part to encourage his monks to recognize the importance of the specifically northern English past, in preference to the continental history of their French order. Certainly, the strong devotion to the northern saints of the standard indicates that Aelred was writing out of (and writing for) a decidedly Northumbrian milieu, while the criticisms of dancing girls and theatrics suggest peculiarly Cistercian concerns. Thus Aelred was presenting a moralized history that anticipated the concerns of his specifically northern Cistercian audience.

38 ‘quibus divinum auxilium praesto est, cum quibus tota coelestis curia dimicabit. Aderit Michael cum angelis [. . .]. Petrus cum Apostolis pugnabit pro nobis, quorum basilicas nunc in stabulum, nunc in prostibulum converterunt. Sancti martyres nostra praecedunt agmina, quorum incenderunt memorias, quorum atria caedibus impleverunt. Virgines sanctae licet pugnae dubitent interesse, pro nobis tamen oratione pugnabunt. Amplius dico, ipse Christus apprehendet arma et scutum, et exurget in adjutorium nobis.’ pp. 188–89. 39 This conclusion is taken from John Bliese’s study of over 270 orations; ‘Aelred of Rievaulx’s Rhetoric and Morale at the Battle of the Standard, 1138’, Albion, 20 (1988), 543–56 (p. 554). 40 ‘Ipsi enim veniunt ad nos in superbia; nos cum humilitate procedimus.’ p. 189.

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Manuscript Dissemination: From Multiple Audiences to Cistercian Audiences Following a reader-response method based on the role of the implied reader, I have suggested that Aelred’s history spoke to two audiences, the noble laity and Cistercian monks. This accords with Iser’s classic approach to implied readers, an approach in which studying a text’s reception necessarily draws our attention to two kinds of readers—the readers whom our knowledge of the historical context tells us would have come into actual physical contact with the texts themselves (in this case, Cistercian monks) and, also, readers whose interests are being reflected in the text (in this case, the nobility).41 Within the one narrative Aelred responded to the literate laity’s growing interest in oral and written history while also responding to the Cistercian commitment to community memory. He responded to the Norman laity’s myth of collective glory while also responding to the monastic urge to secure the spiritual and territorial foundations of the monastery, and he managed simultaneously to appeal to nationalist sentiment and then submerge this sentiment under both Cistercian universalism and hagiographic piety. However, whether or not both these lay and monastic audiences can be demonstrated to have read the Relatio is another matter entirely. That is, Aelred may well have anticipated two audiences, and written a history that responded to their respective interests, but this means one thing if the audiences actually succeeded in reading or acquiring copies of the history and quite another thing if they did not. The conclusions that we as historians can draw will differ depending on which of these situations obtained. Furthermore, no matter how closely we can or cannot identify Aelred’s intentions in writing this text for dual audiences in the 1150s, later medieval audiences would still have imposed their own meanings and read the history with their own concerns in mind. After all, the Relatio is quite vague concerning the military and political details of the Battle of the Standard—was it even possible for later audiences to learn anything about the battle from reading this history? Or do manuscript studies suggest that they were reading it for entirely different reasons? The Relatio survives in three manuscripts, of which two are from the late twelfth century and one is a fifteenth-century copy. There is also evidence of two other versions, both copied before the sixteenth century, which have since been lost. The first twelfth-century manuscript (York Minster, MS XVI.I.8, fols 195r–99v) provides important evidence for the text’s immediate devotional popularity. This manuscript comes from Rievaulx and contains seventeen separate works, most of which are the sort of

41 On the two kinds of implied or hypothetical readers, see Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978 [1976]), p. 28.

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standard devotional texts traditionally favoured by the English Cistercians.42 Constituent works include Old Testament studies by Jerome; a standard collection of works by Jerome, Gennadius, and Isidore; a text of monastic instruction by Hugh of Foliot; as well as assorted other Old Testament studies generally believed to have been written by Jerome. These works were all copied en masse, while Aelred’s history was added soon afterwards. It must have been added by the 1190s since it is mentioned along with the other components of the manuscript in the Rievaulx library catalogue of this date.43 It seems difficult to appreciate the connection between a twelfth-century battle account and works by such authoritative Christian authors as Jerome and Isidore. It is possible, however, that the Rievallian manuscript compilers were prompted just as much by Aelred’s reputation as a theological writer and abbot as by the purely historical nature of the work. Indeed, as this chapter has stressed, the Relatio contained many elements beyond the strictly historical and so was not out of place among more devotional works. Other manuscripts showing a dedication to Aelred’s work were also produced at Rievaulx in this period and it may have been that the Rievallian monks were prompted by a desire to possess as many copies of their abbot’s works as possible.44 Further, it is important to remember that the York Minster version of the history is not the autograph (but is presumably copied from it). This suggests that during the late twelfth century there must have been two copies of the Relatio de standardo at Rievaulx, a situation indicating a certain commitment to Aelred’s history and the desire that his work should be passed on to future Cistercians. Further inferences about the importance of Aelred’s history to English Cistercians can be drawn from a study of the other early manuscript, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 139, fols 136v–40r. This famous manuscript contains a large collection of historical texts relating to northern England and consequently carries great significance for the historiographical culture of this region during the late twelfth century. It was associated at various times with Durham, Hexham (perhaps), Fountains, and Sawley.45 42

This is the manuscript used in the RS edition. On the seventeen works, see David N. Bell, ‘Lists and Records of Books in English Cistercian Libraries’, An Cist, 43 (1987), 181–222 (pp. 204–05). On the English Cistercians’ devotional focus, see Chapter 3 below. 43 The Rievaulx catalogue is most easily accessible in Hoste, Bibliotheca Aelrediana, pp. 150–76. The manuscript in question appears as item 178 (pp. 167–68). 44 London, British Library, Cotton MSS, Vitellius F III is the classic example of Rievaulx copiers devoting a complete manuscript to Aelred. Contents include Aelred’s Vita Edwardi, Genealogia regum Anglorum, Vita Niniani, and De sanctis ecclesiae Hagustaldensis. 45 For the complicated history of this manuscript, see Christopher Norton, ‘History, Wisdom and Illumination’, in Symeon of Durham, ed. by David Rollason (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1998), pp. 61–105 (pp. 61–62, 87), and Bernard Meehan,

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The entries were copied at different times and it appears that the manuscript is a compilation of at least two and possibly as many as four sections. Although precise dating is unclear, most of the composition seems to date from the 1160s, although elements were still added over the next fifty years or so. By the late twelfth or early thirteenth century the manuscript existed in the form we have it today. It contains the unique copy of Symeon of Durham’s Historia regum, a copy of John of Hexham’s Historia Johannis prioris Haugustaldensis ecclesie xxv annorum (that is, John’s continuation of Symeon’s Historia regum), the Durham Cathedral Priory text entitled De obsessione Dunelmi, archbishop Thurstan’s letter describing the foundation of Fountains, as well as the sole copies of Richard of Hexham’s De gestis regis Stephani et de bello standardii and Aelred’s own De sanctimoniali de Wattun. Further historical entries include a version of the Historia Brittonum and the foundation account of St Mary’s York. The history of CCCC MS 139 is highly complex and debate will clearly continue for some time. Nonetheless, it is possible to draw some conclusions in the interim. The most significant point for my purposes is the variety of houses and religious orders through which the manuscript passed. Durham was a cathedral priory, Hexham was an Augustinian canons’ house, while Fountains and Sawley were Cistercian. It seems then that institutional differences between houses might have made little difference when it came to which historical works were read in the late twelfth century. Thus the manuscript diffusion provides small but still significant evidence for networks of intellectual and manuscript exchange between the different religious orders in the north—still a field in which much work remains to be done. It is also possible that the connection with Sawley suggests a concerted effort by a Cistercian house to acquire a corpus of insular historiography. Granted, the manuscript seems to have been produced at the great historiographical centre at Durham. But this is no reason to reject the existence of a Sawley historiographical interest as well. It has been pointed out that the abbey’s poverty meant that, ‘of all the Cistercian abbeys in the north of England, Sawley is the least likely to have sheltered a major centre of historical writing’.46 This may well be so but there is more than one way to express dedication to the past, and physical writing of history is only one activity among many. Ownership, reading, and marginal annotation of a written history are also legitimate forms of historical endeavour. And one thing we do know for sure is that by the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, CCCC MS 139 was owned by the Sawley monks and annotated ‘Durham Twelfth-Century Manuscripts in Cistercian Houses’, in Anglo-Norman Durham: 1093–1193, ed. by David Rollason, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1994), pp. 439–49 (pp. 440–42). Debate continues, but the most recent view has the manuscript written at Durham and then housed and read at Sawley. Earlier arguments that Sawley monks copied the bulk of the manuscript’s texts are no longer accepted by most commentators. 46 Norton, ‘History, Wisdom and Illumination’, p. 74.

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with the Sawley ex libris. This helps us debunk the persistent claim that English Cistercians were apathetic participants in historiographical culture. While the Sawley community was certainly not a great producer of historical writings, it is still important to note that the monks at Sawley were reading many of the key northern histories and, presumably, being influenced by them. By extending the manuscript investigation to incorporate copies from the later medieval period, we can suggest that Aelred’s history remained important to the Cistercian order and to the Cistercian order overwhelmingly. For example, the Relatio appears in the early-fifteenth-century library catalogue from the Cistercian abbey of Meaux in Yorkshire. Although this copy is now lost, it was used as a source by Thomas Burton of Meaux in the chronicle he wrote in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Burton combines direct quotations from the Relatio de standardo with passages from Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum to provide a short narrative of the Battle of the Standard.47 Another late copy, British Library, Cotton MSS, Titus A XIX, fols 144v–49v, is a modified version of Aelred’s text. It uses the Relatio de standardo as the narrative frame and includes further information drawn from Henry of Huntingdon and the Vita Thurstini. It is one of the last elements of a composite volume that features many texts relating to Kirkstall and York. Although it is tempting to allocate this fifteenth-century manuscript to the Cistercian abbey at Kirkstall, there is insufficient evidence for certainty.48 Caution demands that it is allocated simply to the north of England. Some important conclusions can be drawn from these two late copies. Both texts indicate that Aelred’s history has been read and evaluated and then combined with other sources to create a coherent narrative. The fact that the Relatio was included alongside a standard historical work such as Henry of Huntingdon’s history suggests that later compilers accepted it as an authoritative source. The advice of Walter Espec and Robert Bruce has been heeded—history has been used. Further, the very fact that Aelred’s history continued to be copied and used in the late fourteenth century through to the fifteenth century implies that it had retained a more or less successful manuscript life in the interim, although unfortunately the details of this transmission have been lost to us. 47

The Meaux library catalogue mentions a copy of ‘Alredus de standardo’: Chronica monasterii de Melsa: A fundatione usque ad annum 1396 auctore Thoma de Burton, abbate, ed. by Edward A. Bond, RS, 43, 3 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1866–68), III, xcix. For Burton’s quotations see Chronica monasterii de Melsa, I, 121. 48 Neither of the two authoritative recent studies accepts a Kirkstall provenance: David N. Bell, An Index of Authors and Works in Cistercian Libraries in Great Britain, CSS, 130 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1992), p. 4, and Andrew G. Watson, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain; Supplement to the Second Edition (London: Royal Historical Society, 1987), p. 41.

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Another lost copy for which we have tantalizing evidence is the ‘Historiola de virtute Gualteri Espec, autore Alredo, abbate Riaevallensi’ seen by Leland at the Augustinian priory at Kirkham in the sixteenth century.49 Kirkham was situated near Rievaulx and was one of Walter Espec’s foundations, as in fact Aelred had pointed out in the Relatio. Presumably dedication to their founder inspired the canons to keep a copy of this history in which Walter featured so prominently. We see then that the Relatio’s importance was a local and immediate one and that the work seems to have meant most to those northern monks and canons who had some relationship to its protagonists. Overall, then, Aelred’s history did not travel far. It was composed in the north of England and all known copies, both surviving and lost, were written and read in the north. Notwithstanding the Relatio’s points about national allegiances, and the way in which Aelred participated in quite new debates concerning national identity, later audiences seem to have been interested first and foremost in the local connection. Three of the five copies of the Relatio were definitely associated with Cistercian abbeys in Yorkshire, one came from the general vicinity of York and Kirkstall, while the fifth came from an Augustinian house with strong links to Walter Espec, the history’s hero. Thus, manuscript diffusion modifies (but does not contradict) the view drawn from the intention-based and reception-based examinations. While these two studies stressed the potential of the Relatio de standardo to appeal to both lay and monastic concerns, manuscript diffusion provides no evidence that the history ever acquired any lay audiences. This was not unusual—many medieval histories failed to gain their intended or desired audiences. The absence of noble readers may well have been because many Cistercian recruits came from noble backgrounds anyway. Thus, they could have appreciated both levels of the history’s meaning and so forestalled any possibility that the history might have been given away or lent into the lay milieu. It seems then that the Relatio de standardo found its audiences within the Cistercian community and, on occasion, that it was also read by members of other orders provided there was a local Yorkshire connection. Two main conclusions can be drawn from this chapter. First, at the same time as Aelred’s Relatio de standardo provides a straightforward narrative account of a relatively standard medieval battle it does something more by enhancing our understanding of the historiographical revisioning which was occurring in both Latin and vernacular circles in England in the mid-twelfth century. This was the process whereby the historiographical interests of the monk and non-monk were, in some areas at least, converging. As Gillingham and others have reminded us, post-Conquest historiography did much more than console the Benedictine losers, as traditional interpretations by 49 John Leland, De Rebus Britannicis Collectanea, ed. by Thomas Hearne, 2nd edn (London: B. White, 1774), IV (p. 36).

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Richard Southern and followers have had it. Rather, this consolation was simply one manifestation of a wider historiographical imperative which embraced many non-Benedictine communities such as secular clerics and Anglo-Norman nobles also. This historiographical culture was characterized by a range of works which nonetheless had the common functions of serving both as mechanisms for corporate self-definition and as means by which different communities could stake their claims in the new political territory of the twelfth century. Translations from Latin to French; sharing of resources between canons, monks, and secular clerics; and AngloNorman nobles commissioning histories of the ancient British and English pasts—all of this was evidence of new groups claiming conceptual ownership of a range of insular pasts. Aelred’s Relatio de standardo is an important contribution to this model of historiographical exchange. By identifying the history’s persistently dual interests this investigation confirms that twelfth-century English historiography was not comprised of exclusive monastic and non-monastic histories but, rather, that the defining characteristics of this historiographical culture were exchange and influence across institutional divides. The second conclusion concerns Aelred’s personal view of history. Part historiographical treatise, part foundation history and saints’ history, and, yes, part battle account, Aelred’s version of the battle at Northallerton in 1138 is also an example of Aelred directing the most highly specific military deeds to a range of other ends. After presenting a theoretical argument for the worth of history, Aelred then presents his image of history in action. With emphasis on saints and continuity of foundation, this was a view of history that highlighted sameness rather than difference. The past was not lying there to be discovered in its peculiarities but, rather, to be respected in its timelessness, stability, and authority. This was Aelred’s characteristic view of history and it can be found again in another of his historical works, the Genealogia regum Anglorum.

CHAPTER 2

The Timeless Nation: Aelred of Rievaulx’s Genealogia regum Anglorum

A

s I have already suggested, nationalism is not a modern phenomenon. While it is certainly true that terminologies have become most precise in the modern world, there is no doubt that medieval people, as they formed and re-formed themselves into communities, did envisage and articulate their group identities in ways which allocated significant meaning to national sameness and difference. Given this premise that the medieval world did produce and maintain clear nationalist discourses, it may seem strange then that I begin this discussion by invoking the arguments of Benedict Anderson. For Anderson is adamant that nationalism is a decidedly modern invention, something that was simply not possible before the spread of print. And, yet, I suggest that there are great benefits to be gained in revisiting Anderson’s argument, benefits that will bear strongly on the following interpretation of Aelred of Rievaulx’s Genealogia regum Anglorum. Benedict Anderson’s views on the processes of nationalism have been resumed many times before. There may seem little point in providing further summaries of his work. And, yet, ironically, there is a particular imperative for providing summaries in the context of medieval studies. And this is because Anderson’s theories strongly affect the world of medieval scholarship, notwithstanding the fact that these theories mainly relate to the post-medieval world. Indeed, this is entirely the point—in the process of discussing modern nationalism, Anderson must necessarily raise and then dispense with the ghost of medieval nationalism. Anderson has argued that the way in which a culture envisages (‘imagines’) its own nationalism is integrally connected with the way in

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which it conceptualizes time.1 Specifically, Anderson suggests that modern national feelings are in fact a replacement activity—they provide individuals with a sense of connection and unity that was previously provided by the medieval combination of cosmology and temporality. Once this medieval cosmological thinking disappeared, a new means of linking fraternity, power, and time was required. Modern nationalism was the result. The potentials of Anderson’s argument have not been fully appreciated by medieval historians, perhaps because scholars have been preoccupied with challenging what they rightly believe to be Anderson’s cursory understanding of medieval institutions. Some scholars have borrowed his term ‘imagined communities’ to refer to the ways in which various group identities were conceived of in the medieval period. And some of these authors have referred specifically to chronicles and historical writings more broadly as evidence for these group feelings.2 But, on the other hand, their discussions have been confined to a borrowing of vocabulary and they do not address the heart of Anderson’s argument. In terms of genuine attention (and, in fact, challenges) to the premise itself, Lesley Johnson and Kathleen Davis have provided the most helpful insights for medievalists.3 (Interestingly, both make their strongest points in reference to medieval historiography, indicating the frequency with which issues of nationalism converge on issues to do with writing about the past.) Both have criticized the way in which Anderson refers to a homogeneous medieval viewpoint. Johnson, for example, rejects this universalizing claim and points out that not everyone in the Middle Ages would have thought the same way about the cosmological links between God, earthly time, and earthly events— some of the key topics at issue in Anderson’s discussion. Johnson’s response has emphasized that we need to study each manifestation of group and national feelings on its own terms, rather than relying on a single interpretation of an allegedly uniform Middle Ages. One way we can continue this critical work is to pursue another of Anderson’s claims—the suggestion that the medieval period could not have experienced true nationalism because it enjoyed no strict distinctions of time. Thus, 1

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983), pp. 28–40. On Anderson and medieval history writing, see Sarah Foot, ‘The Making of Angelcynn: English Identity before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS, 6th series, 6 (1996), 25–49 (pp. 36–37), and Thea Summerfield, The Matter of Kings’ Lives: The Design of Past and Present in the Early Fourteenth-Century Verse Chronicles by Pierre de Langtoft and Robert Mannyng (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), p. 208. 3 Lesley Johnson, ‘Imagining Communities: Medieval and Modern’, in Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. by Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson, and Alan Murray, Leeds Texts and Monographs New Series, 14 (Leeds: University of Leeds, School of English, 1995), pp. 1–19, esp. pp. 4–5, 14–15, and Kathleen Davis, ‘National Writing in the Ninth Century: A Reminder for Postcolonial Thinking about the Nation’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 28 (1998), 611–37. 2

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although Anderson’s points have not drawn much favour in medieval scholarship, I argue in this chapter for renewed attention to the arguments concerning time. As Aelred of Rievaulx’s Genealogia regum Anglorum demonstrates, while nationalism alone is an important element of medieval historiography, it is more precisely the convergence of time and nationalism which provides a particularly fruitful site in which to seek meaning in medieval histories. The Genealogia regum Anglorum was written for a man who would be king. Unlike the Relatio de standardo, which was written approximately two decades after the battle it described, the Genealogia was composed in direct response to the political events of late 1153. The key event here was the Treaty of Winchester which made it clear that Henry, who at the time was Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine and Count of Anjou, would become King Henry II of England on Stephen’s death. Written soon after this treaty, but before Henry did become king in 1154, the Genealogia is the earliest of Aelred’s historical writings. As a genealogy it is inevitably difficult to define.4 Originally produced by royal families, genealogies were independent works written to establish the filiation of a family or individual. Following the rise of the European aristocracies in the twelfth century, lay families also embraced the genealogy as a means of advertising their glorious deeds or, just as often, as a means of imposing a layer of certainty on what were in reality very dubious lineages. In England there were genealogies incorporated into histories from the time of Bede onwards, but the peak period resulted from the arrival of the Normans. This is a reflection of the Norman Myth mentality described already—that is, a desire to rewrite and embellish histories which were not as long or as glorious as the Normans in England wished them to be. In this context, genealogy became a metaphor for history itself, since it depicted the sole kind of history that nobles were interested in—family history—and it secured self-aggrandisement for them in the process. These genealogical histories might be presented in many media and genres—oral performances, Latin genealogical texts, or the so-called Anglo-Norman ancestral romances. In keeping with the trend on the continent, the two main levels of English society dedicated to genealogy were royalty and aristocratic families. But in addition to royals and aristocrats, a third level of English society was also interested in genealogy. Regardless of whether or not Aelred made a conscious effort to bring the Genealogia regum Anglorum to the attention of its addressee Henry, there was already an audience much closer to home—the monastic community at Rievaulx. From their readings of Genesis, Matthew, and Luke, the Rievallian monks would have been 4 On the genealogical impulse and genre, see R. Howard Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies. A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) (with references), and Léopold Genicot, Les généalogies, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), esp. pp. 11, 14–23.

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familiar with a number of biblical genealogies. From their reading of Bede they would have been familiar with the way in which a small genealogy might be incorporated within a longer chronicle, and also with the custom of tracing English royal genealogies back to Woden. Thus, Aelred’s decision to compose a royal genealogy, and the structure he used, would have been familiar and comprehensible to the immediate monastic community at Rievaulx. There is some uncertainty concerning the Genealogia’s contents.5 The work was certainly popular in medieval England (nineteen manuscripts still survive), but difficulties arise since the text as it stands in these manuscripts is a combination of two separate works which were written in close succession.6 As Aelred’s contemporary biographer Walter Daniel stated, Aelred ‘published a Life of David King of Scotland in the form of a lamentation and [then] added to it a genealogy of the King of England, the younger Henry’, combining the two into a single volume.7 This original ‘Life of David’ was more frequently entitled the Eulogium Davidis and it is a standard medieval lament. Despite being incorporated into most manuscripts of the Genealogia, it retains its distinctive eulogistic qualities and is a separate work from the Genealogia.8 The section following the Eulogium (the section Walter described as ‘a genealogy of the King of England’) was, however, clearly a history and was dependent on standard English historiographical sources. Although the PL edition combines both the Eulogium and this historical work under the title ‘Genealogia regum Anglorum’, it is this second work only that deserves the title.9 Following convention, then,

5

For an edition, see Aelred of Rievaulx, Genealogia regum Anglorum, in PL vol. 195: cols 711–38 (hereafter cited by column number). Translations are my own. As will become clear, a new edition is sorely needed. 6 On the manuscripts, see Anselm Hoste, Bibliotheca Aelrediana, Instrumenta Patristica, 2 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 111–12. 7 Walter Daniel, The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx, ed. and trans. by Frederick Maurice Powicke (London: Thomas Nelson, 1950), XXXII (p. 41): ‘Ante tamen hoc tempus uitam Dauid Regis Scocie sub specie lamentandi edidit cui genealogiam Regis Anglie Henrici iunioris uno libro comprehendens adiunxit.’ 8 Aelred acknowledged in the Eulogium that he was not writing as an historian in this instance but rather as a mourner: ‘Quoniam autem recenti morte illius contristatus, vitam ejus et mores sicut nunc amor, nunc timor, nunc spes, nunc dolor meum variant affectum, non historiando, sed lamentando, brevi stylo collegi,’ 713C. Later medieval audiences also recognized the discrete nature of the Eulogium. It was often copied on its own (apart from the Genealogia); see, for example, its incorporation into the fourteenth-century Chronica gentis Scotorum by John of Fordun: The Historians of Scotland, ed. by William F. Skene (Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1871), I, 235–51 (Book 5, chaps 35–49). 9 The PL version includes an incomplete version of the Eulogium Davidis regis at cols 713–16. For the full text, see Aelred of Rievaulx, Eulogium Davidis regis

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in this study I separate David’s Eulogium from Henry’s historical Genealogia.10 In one sense, both works deserve further scrutiny. Neither of the works has gained much attention in the past, and further research will certainly raise new points of interest. But, given that the Eulogium has already been studied (although by no means exhaustively) as part of research into Cistercian lamentations, it is timely to refocus attention onto the larger but less well-examined genealogy.11 Thus, this chapter concentrates on the section of the Genealogia following David’s lament, that is, the section addressed specifically to Henry. When reference is made to the Genealogia regum Anglorum, this does not then include the prefatory Eulogium. Pointing out that the text was addressed to Henry necessarily raises the question of Henry’s involvement as patron. This is a complex topic, particularly given that the degree to which Henry II actively commissioned literature and histories is under constant reassessment.12 Although recent scholarship has reduced the number of works explicitly commissioned by Henry, it has simultaneously increased the number of works which, while composed unofficially, nonetheless presented what have been called

Scotorum, in Pinkerton’s Lives of the Scottish Saints, vol. II, rev. and enlarged by William M. Metcalfe (London: Alexander Gardner, 1889), pp. 269–85. 10 All commentators on the Genealogia and Eulogium separate the two works. See, most authoritatively, Aelred Squire, Aelred of Rievaulx. A Study (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1981 [1969]), p. 88. 11 On the Eulogium, see Francesco Lazzari and Anna Maiorino, ‘Senso del tempo e nostalgia del passato in Aelredo di Rievaulx’, Annali dell’istituto italiano per gli studi storici, 1 (1967/68), 147–71. In so far as the Genealogia has been studied this has been as a constituent element of larger projects. The first serious discussion was by Aelred Squire, ‘Aelred and King David’, COCR, 22 (1960), 356–77 (pp. 365– 71). Martha Newman has investigated the work as part of the Cistercians’ literature of advice to temporal leaders: The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 175, 178–82. For a literary analysis, see Walter F. Schirmer and Ulrich Broich, Studien zum literarischen Patronat im England des 12. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1962), pp. 48–53. See also the brief discussions in Peter Johanek, ‘ “Politische Heilige” auf den britischen Inseln im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert’, in Überlieferung — Frömmigkeit — Bildung als Leitthemen der Geschichtsforschung, ed. by Jürgen Petersohn (Wiesbaden: L. Reichert, 1987), pp. 77–95 (pp. 84–89), and Norbert Kersken, Geschichtsschreibung im Europa der ‘nationes’: Nationalgeschichtliche Gesamtdarstellungen im Mittelalter (Cologne: Böhlau, 1995), pp. 212–19. 12 There is a vast historiography on Henry and Eleanor’s literary ‘court’. See Jean Blacker, The Faces of Time: Portrayal of the Past in Old French and Latin Historical Narratives of the Anglo-Norman Regnum (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994), chap. 3 for patronage of histories in particular, and n. 4 for bibliography.

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‘patterns of interest consistent with Henry’s political needs’.13 These unofficial works included histories of the English, Norman, and Angevin pasts, all of which responded to Henry’s persistent quest for both insular and continental authority. The Genealogia, which is addressed to Henry in the second person, is one of these unofficial histories. It can therefore be understood as a text both ‘addressed’ to Henry and responsive to the political contexts of the day. As its title suggests, the Genealogia regum Anglorum traces the family background of the kings of England. After a brief introductory reference to Henry’s female forebears going back to his great-grandmother Margaret of Scotland, the Genealogia then moves on to a list of men. It starts with Margaret’s father Edward, then passes through his father Edmund Ironside, his father Ethelred, and so on backwards to the traditional ancestor of the Anglo-Saxon kings, Woden. The text then continues to work backwards from Woden to Adam. Having done all this in a summary fashion, and thus having alerted the audience to the general order of the genealogy, Aelred then begins the narrative proper with the Wessex monarchy and King Ethelwulf (839–58). From here the text moves forwards in time and each king from Ethelwulf onwards is discussed in some detail. Following Ethelwulf is his son Alfred, who is made to deliver a lengthy battle speech. The text continues to adhere to chronology until it reaches the Danish kings, Canute and his sons, who are not mentioned. Thus, the Genealogia skips from Edmund Ironside to Edward the Confessor who later restored the English dynasty. Chronology is then resumed and the text proceeds through to William the Conqueror and the Anglo-Norman kings. The Genealogia concludes with descriptions of Malcolm and the Scottish royal family, who are presumably deemed relevant to a genealogy of English kings because Margaret Queen of Scotland had been the grandchild of Edmund Ironside. The opening focus on women indicates that this is not a standard genealogy. Royal genealogies traditionally featured the same standard elements. In order to fulfil the royal imperative of asserting continuity with a glorious lineage it was common to emphasize the continuity of the royal office rather than the individuality of the particular person holding that office. This accounts for the similarity of characters in medieval genealogies. Every king was humble, every king was just, and every king was a strong warrior since every king drew from the same unchanging stock of royal attributes. Following this logic, Aelred needed to present each king as a ‘good king’ and to demonstrate how Henry (soon to be Henry II) reaped the benefits from this shared heritage. There was already a standard way for medieval writers to argue this. The most popular method in the twelfth century was to use the Trojans as a genealogical origin point, a method the 13

Lee Patterson, Negotiating the Past. The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), p. 200. Likewise, see Karen M. Broadhurst, ‘Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patrons of Literature in French?’, Viator, 27 (1996), 53–84.

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Normans in particular favoured.14 Reflecting an historical consciousness bound in with aristocratic and lay mentalities rather than with monastic mentalities, this Trojan genealogy identified the power of origins not in the Christian story of the Bible but in the resolutely secular story of Virgil. Aelred could have invoked this new and popular Trojan argument. But he did not. Instead of a genealogy of male deeds and secular glory, he deviated from the standard genealogical themes of the day to produce a genealogy incorporating female deeds and monastic virtues. The emphasis on the female and the monastic are both manifestations of a broader point— this genealogy’s particularly Cistercian flavour. Thus, the Genealogia was a genealogy of virtue which drew from and appealed to a specifically Cistercian audience. This monastic background is present in two distinct areas of the Genealogia—in the description of kings and in the description of women.

Kings as Representatives of Nation The first area is the focus on kings. In line with the Mirror for Princes genre, the Genealogia contains standard exhortations to Henry to strive for unity and peace and to be humble, just, and merciful. The premise here is that a ruler’s individual actions will determine whether good or evil accrues to the people more generally. There is no distinction here between a king’s public and private deeds. Rather, the office is the man; the king’s personal actions influence his public office of king and, equally, his public duties constitute his personal character. It is because of this inseparable relationship between the king or prince’s personal behaviour and the people or nation’s public benefit that scrutiny of the moral virtues of the king is warranted. Hence, this is why medieval national histories devote so much attention to the affairs of individual rulers. Strong in medieval thought in general, this conflation of private and public behaviours was particularly important to the twelfth-century Cistercians. In the mid-1150s the Cistercians had not yet fully developed the attention to meditation and affective theology for which they would later become famous. At this period, the monks gave just as much priority to practical activities such as building their monasteries and following the Benedictine Rule.15 In particular, they were committed to following the 14 Later works personally commissioned by Henry II, such as Wace’s Roman de Rou and Benoît de Sainte-Maure’s Chronique des ducs de Normandie, follow the Trojan model; David Rollo, Historical Fabrication, Ethnic Fable and French Romance in Twelfth-Century England (Lexington, KY: French Forum Publishers, 1998), chaps 4, 5. 15 This has been well-stressed by David N. Bell, ‘Is There Such a Thing as Cistercian Spirituality?’, CSQ, 33 (1998), 455–71.

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Rule’s model for living the contemplative life in community rather than in isolation. Personal piety was lived out in the public setting of the monastic community—in the rounds of liturgy, reading, and work. Labour and activity were emphasized and excessive solitude and meditation were shunned. All of these exterior actions were much more than mere actions—they were representations of inner character. Further, the two issues were equated, so that one’s inner life was one’s exterior actions. Thus, for many twelfthcentury thinkers in general, and for Cistercians in particular, public action was a true reflection of one’s inner spirituality. All of this meant that the Cistercians drew broad significance from a prince’s public and private activities. And they were not content simply to look on with interest; they ensured that their views were widely known.16 Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, wrote letters to temporal rulers and Aelred himself wrote letters (now lost) to a range of recipients including the kings of France, Scotland, and England. In these admonitions, Cistercians argued that all orders of society were responsible for ensuring church unity. While theoretically this responsibility fell just as heavily on the everyday layman and laywoman as on the king or emperor, Cistercian authors were pragmatic enough to realize that it was the layman in a position of power who would have the greatest influence on whether or not church unity was maintained. In summary, in the 1150s when Aelred was writing there was already a Cistercian tradition of providing advice to secular leaders, based on the understanding that the successes or failures of the public more broadly were dependent on the private and public affairs of kings. Further, of all the themes that they might possibly have stressed, Cistercians chose to stress that the king had a particular duty to maintain church unity. This theme also appears in Aelred’s Genealogia and it is presented by means of arguments drawn from the stockpile of standard Cistercian tropes. Even before Aelred wrote, English historical writing in the early and mid-twelfth century was strongly royalist. William of Malmesbury, for example, was determined to compile lists of the kings of Mercia, East Anglia, and the East Saxons even though he conceded they had done little deserving historical commemoration.17 Henry of Huntingdon also paid detailed attention to the kings of Anglo-Saxon England. For these writers, regnal continuity as shown by military success and public deeds was an important part of their conception of the nation. Aelred was also interested in royal continuity. But for him the importance lay more in the private rather than public actions of England’s kings. 16

On Cistercian advice to kings and princes see Newman, Boundaries of Charity, chap. 7. 17 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, vol. I, ed. and trans. by Roger A. B. Mynors, completed by Rodney M. Thomson and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), i. 96–97 (p. 140).

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Because he was writing for an Angevin king (in waiting), he was not faced with the difficulties encountered by William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon in somehow finding meaning in the terrible events of the Norman invasion. Rather, the difficult task for Aelred was to establish how Henry the Angevin was related to the Anglo-Saxon kings in the first place. Aelred achieved this connection by arguing backwards through Matilda and the female line. Once he had done this, he was able to concentrate on personal history rather than political history. It had been more difficult for the earlier historians William and Henry who had had to explain how, if these Anglo-Saxon kings were so devout, they had eventually lost their kingdom. These two writers had been forced to include bad and incompetent kings in their histories in order to justify the eventual defeat of 1066. But Aelred’s history was going to be different—it could be filled with good kings, good kings who displayed specifically Cistercian qualities such as harmony, charity, and friendship. From its opening lines the Genealogia shows that it will present a particularly Cistercian image of secular rule. When Aelred addresses Henry and informs him why he is undertaking the work he presents a traditional Cistercian discussion of the will and the soul.18 He reminds Henry that the soul loves virtue and that it naturally inclines towards good. This was of course a standard Christian tenet, but it was particularly influential in the Cistercian milieu with its preoccupation with Augustinian discussions of the soul. The statement would therefore have been readily comprehensible by the immediate monastic audience at Rievaulx. Beyond this, Aelred ensures that the allusion makes sense to Henry as well. He does this by appealing to self-interest. He foreshadows the rewards that will accrue to Henry if he permits his soul to follow its yearning towards virtue: ‘whoever strives after good behaviour and virtue easily draws and turns to himself the love of everyone.’19 This discussion sets the tone for the rest of the Genealogia’s statements on royal behaviour. Aelred sets high standards for the English kings. He demands that they pursue virtue, ‘reject pillaging, turn away from slaughter, avoid setting things on fire, do not bring hardship on the poor, and that they preserve peace and respect for priests and churches’.20 All this is acknowledged as difficult but Aelred reminds Henry that the reward makes the work worthwhile: the reward is that Henry will be loved by all people and, importantly, will be ‘justly proclaimed’ by all as the ‘glory of the Angevins, the protector of the Normans, the hope of the English, and the 18

711D–713A. ‘quicunque bonis moribus virtutique studuerit, facile sibi omnium illicit et inclinat affectum.’ 712D–713A. 20 ‘Quis enim obstupeat juvenem pro regno certantem abstinere rapinis, caedibus parcere, cavere incendia, nullum gravamen inferre pauperibus, pacem et reverentiam ecclesiis et sacerdotibus conservare?’ 713A. 19

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pride of the Aquitainians’.21 Thus, pursuit of the Cistercian ideal of virtue will ensure that Henry attains his personal ideal (and the genealogical genre’s traditional ideal) of universal endorsement and acceptance of his political position. In order to stress the king’s obligations towards pious living and ecclesiastical participation, Cistercian writers often invoked a modified version of the ‘two swords’ argument from Luke 22. 38. The traditional medieval interpretation of this imagery was dualist; it emphasized different spheres of activity and authority for the ecclesiastical and secular powers. But the Cistercians’ conception of a universal church united by caritas led them to alter this tradition. Following the optimistic view that all members of the church would be bound by caritas in the same way, and would want the church to thrive, Cistercian writers assumed that both swords would be used to the same end. Bernard of Clairvaux, for example, urged the two parties to work in unison for the greater success of the united church.22 In practice, then, the Cistercians rejected the separatist implications of the doctrine of the two swords and instead reformulated the argument to encourage greater cooperation between the two spheres, ecclesiastical and royal. Aelred pursues this logic in the Genealogia. He argues not only that kings should display the traditional qualities of humility and munificence but, further, that they should cooperate with monks to serve the greater needs of the church. For example, Ethelwulf, the first king discussed in detail, is described in conventional terms as the father of orphans, the judge of the destitute, the defender of churches, and the supporter of monasteries. The next king Alfred is lovable to good people, frightening to wicked people, awe-inspiring to church ministers, easy-going with friends and allies, and gentle and generous to the poor. His successor Edward the Elder was so gentle, pious, and affable that the Scots, Cumbrians, Welsh, Northumbrians, and remaining Danes all submitted to his rule willingly. Then Athelstan was described as a most Christian king who showed devotion to churches and mercy to the poor.23 The discussion of Athelstan indicates how the private activities of England’s kings could carry wider public significance. In effect, the pious actions of Athelstan meant that the nation as a whole was pious. This is best demonstrated in the discussion of Athelstan’s devotion to St John of Beverley.24 The anecdote begins with a reference to some peasants returning from a pilgrimage to the saint’s shrine. Soon the focus shifts to the king alone. He too travels to the shrine, seeking military success. That night he sees the saint in a dream and is promised military protection. And the logical 21 ‘Unde non immerito Andegavensium gloria, Normannorum tutela, spes Anglorum, Aquitanorum decus ab omnibus praedicaris.’ 713A. 22 On Bernard and the two swords, see Newman, Boundaries of Charity, p. 180. 23 718A; 719A; 723A–B; 724B–C. 24 724C–725A.

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extension of the king being protected is that the people will also be protected. Thus, all the English people will benefit due to the activities of this one man who represents them. This protection against the Scots is promised solely on the strength of Athelstan’s individual devotion, thus confirming the idea that in genealogies the individual actions of kings stand in for the actions of all the people. The trend continues throughout the rest of the Genealogia and reaches its height with King Edgar. Edgar was a fair dispenser of justice and was sympathetic to the needs of the poor. All aspects of English life prospered under his rule and the sun was brighter, the sea was smoother, and there was no torture or banishment.25 In addition, Aelred places a speech in Edgar’s mouth in which the ideal relationship between church and state is described. The speech articulates a conception of church-state relations in which the ruler has an obligation to participate in the affairs of the church. Speaking to Archbishop Dunstan, Edgar asserts, ‘I hold Constantine’s sword in my hands, you hold Peter’s. Let us join our right arms, let us link sword to sword so that lepers will be thrown out of the camp, and so that the Lord’s sanctuary will be cleansed.’26 On the other hand, despite its importance, the king’s role did have definite limits. Earlier, Alfred had stated that, although he knew his view was rarely shared, nonetheless he still felt that it was part of a king’s high dignity to have no final power in Christ’s churches.27 These two views of the state’s role in religion indicate the ways in which a genealogy could present a clear religio-political agenda in addition to its apparently simple chronological and biological agenda. The image of church-state relations offered by Edgar’s speech is an idealistic and harmonious one. This is in keeping with the Genealogia’s broader dedication to unity. As the following discussion of nationalism will emphasize, Aelred desired the ideal king in his public activities to be a reconciler of nations, a reconciler of Anglo-Saxon and Norman. But the sections on the ideal king and his private and personal qualities advocate a different type of unity. In these instances, the king is to be a reconciler of church and state through his attention to his own personal development in piety. The needs of church and state combine in the person of the king, presenting a blueprint for a new and harmonious England. Another area in which the Genealogia ascribes a Cistercian mentality to the English kings is in their collective manifestation of charity. Like the attention to church unity and the two swords, the theme of charity was not unique to Cistercian thought. But in the mid-twelfth century it was certainly 25

726D–727A. ‘Ego Constantini, vos Petri gladium habetis in manibus. Jungamus dexteras, gladium gladio copulemus, ut ejiciantur extra castra leprosi, ut purgetur sanctuarium Domini.’ 728B–C. 27 ‘Et quod nunc raro invenitur in terris, illam maximam regis credidit dignitatem, nullam in ecclesiis Christi habere potestatem.’ 719A. 26

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drawing great interest from the Cistercians. In the 1140s Aelred’s Speculum caritatis had been an important early contribution to this trend. Moving into the early 1150s, centrally endorsed revisions to the Carta caritatis confirmed the theme and ensured that the focus on charity was disseminated to all Cistercian houses. One example of royal caritas appears towards the end of the Genealogia in the discussion of King Malcolm of Scotland and the nobleman who was planning to murder him.28 Aware of the plan, Malcolm nonetheless went out hunting alone with the man. He challenged the noble to fight and said that, although the man could not avoid infidelity, he might at least avoid baseness if he chose to fight honourably, that is, fight ‘man to man’. The nobleman fell to his knees in tears and was promised by the king that no harm would come to him. The man then promised to be Malcolm’s friend and the two returned home, telling no one of what had just happened. The phrase translated as ‘man to man’ is one which carried particular significance in monastic circles for relationships between two individuals. This was the solus cum solo motif. Aelred was particularly fond of this theme, even more so than other twelfth-century Cistercians.29 For Aelred, this ideal was one where two souls became one and in which, ‘alone to the alone’, one could confer with the friend in the privacy of the heart even amidst the noise of the world. In Aelred’s devotional discussions of charity, this phrase conjured up all that was most revealing about human relationships. When two people were alone with each other there was no room for secrets or dissimulation. This was the ultimate test of character. In the discussion of Malcolm Aelred uses the solus cum solo motif three times. At the beginning of the episode he writes that Malcolm and the traitor withdrew from the crowd, ‘solus cum solo’. Immediately following this Malcolm repeats, in direct speech, that the two men are ‘solus cum solo’ and that no one will intervene if the traitor pursues his planned attack. Finally, towards the end of the speech, Malcolm incites the traitor to act like a man and to fight ‘solus cum solo’. The frequent use of this theme confirms that the ideal king should be one who can hold his own, morally, in the presence of anyone. Being ‘alone to the alone’ is the surest way to test an individual’s character and Malcolm is praised for the upright manner in which he withstands such scrutiny. He is a king who displays his best qualities not on grand public occasions but on private and personal occasions. And this is the model endorsed by the Genealogia for all kings. The traitor story emphasizes that it is particularly necessary to love people who lack virtue. Evident in Aelred’s spiritual writings, this philosophy was part of Aelred’s greater belief that love should be tailored to 28

735A–D. Aelred had already used the motif in his Speculum caritatis; Mirror of Charity, trans. by Elizabeth Connor, CF, 17 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990), III. 39. 109 (p. 298). 29

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the needs of the individual and, as such, it was a component of his persistent argument for the rewards of charity. When Malcolm forgave the man and promised ‘don’t be afraid, you will not suffer any harm from me’,30 he exhibited the mercy that the Genealogia demanded from all kings. Further, mercy was a quality that was particularly important in Cistercian culture more broadly. The order demanded mercy from all people in power, whether they be abbots, bishops, or kings.31 Thus, the episode concerning Malcolm and the traitor is one in which the ideal king is presented in the guise of the exemplary Christian, as that exemplary Christian was defined by the Cistercian corporate theology. All the Genealogia’s ideal kings display the characteristics of charity and attention to moral reform that were valued by the broader Cistercian philosophy of the twelfth century. Another way to understand Aelred’s conception of royal charity is to investigate the qualities against which it is opposed. By investigating what the ideal king should not be, we can gain further insights into what he should be. Here it is noteworthy that charity is invoked in the first anecdote of the Genealogia, the discussion of Ethelwulf. Aelred writes that ‘while wielding earthly sovereignty he always thought about the heavenly kingdom. This demonstrated that he was not overwhelmed by cupiditas but, rather, was motivated by caritas’.32 The invocation here of cupidity as the opposite to charity identifies this work as a Cistercian (and, especially, Aelredian) production. Indeed, here we see an early example of what would later become a persistent theme in Aelred’s spiritual writings, namely, a focus on the perils of sexual desire and the rewards of virginity. Significantly, in Aelred’s De institutione inclusarum and De sanctimoniali de Wattun preservation of virginity was important not just in its own right but because it reflected a greater ideal, contemptus mundi.33 This example with Ethelwulf also emphasizes Aelred’s preoccupation with rejecting the world; it presents the king in the guise of the ideal monk who rejects the fleeting desires of the world and prefers the more satisfying delights of charity. There were other occasions where Aelred teamed his criticism of cupidity with praise of Cistercian characteristics, notably with friendship. An example of this is the juxtaposition of the good kings Edmund the Noble and Edred with the flawed king Eadwig. In all these episodes the power of friendship was exhibited by Archbishop Dunstan. Edmund and Edred adhered to the rules of friendship and turned to Dunstan for counsel. Edred 30

‘Noli, inquit, timere, nihil a me patieris mali.’ 735D. For more on this, see Newman, Boundaries of Charity, pp. 178–79. 32 ‘Hic in regno terreno semper meditabatur coeleste, ut manifeste daretur intelligi eum non victum cupiditate, sed charitate provocatum.’ 718A. 33 On Aelred’s preoccupation with contemptus mundi, see Francesco Lazzari, ‘Aelredo di Rievaulx dal “contemptus mundi” alla “spiritualis amicitia” ’, in his Monachesimo e valori umani tra XI e XII secolo (Milan: Riccardo Ricciardi, 1962), pp. 79–98. 31

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in particular was described as walking in the paths of his brothers. Eadwig however did not walk in the paths of his ancestors but instead indulged in adultery.34 As seen in the previous chapter, Aelred was fond of the imagery of walking in the paths of saintly predecessors. Eadwig’s failure to do this demonstrated what could happen when human relationships were turned to the wrong end. It was only due to Dunstan’s continual prayers for Eadwig that the dead king was eventually pardoned for his sinful behaviour. Thus, the moral of this anecdote is that the good friend (in this case, Dunstan) who kept working on his friend’s behalf was eventually able to overcome the sinful powers of cupidity and adultery. The Genealogia’s practical examples of friendship in action complement Aelred’s better known theories of friendship. In the decade following composition of the Genealogia Aelred would formalize his views on spiritual friendship in his De spirituali amicitia. In this work Aelred endorsed friendship as a means of facilitating the love of Christ, since ‘quickly and imperceptibly the one love passes over into the other’.35 Indeed, Aelred introduced his De spirituali amicitia by stating that whenever friendship was present, so too Christ was present. Friendship then possessed the highest value within Cistercian (and, particularly, Aelredian) conceptions of monastic life. Before proceeding any further, it is important to note that the single term amicitia covers a range of feelings and relationships.36 Although the theory of monastic friendship described in Aelred’s De spirituali amicitia is an important view of friendship, and certainly deserves the attention it has gained, it was not the only view prevalent in the Middle Ages nor indeed in Aelred’s writings more broadly. Aelred did provide other examples of friendship in action, examples where it was not simply the monastery that was the most fruitful site in which to seek God and to find the image of God through friendship with others. In the Relatio de standardo he described the strong friendship between Robert Bruce and King David of Scotland. 34

‘nec ambulavit in viis patrum suorum, sed in sancta illa progenie novus quidam Herodes emersit.’ 725D. 35 Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, trans. by Mary E. Laker, CF, 5 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1977), 3: 133 (p. 131). Likewise, 2: 20–21 (pp. 74–75); 3: 87 (pp. 113–14). The date of composition for the De spirituali amicitia is unclear, but it was still being reworked on Aelred’s death in 1167. See too the same argument in the Speculum caritatis, from approximately 1142–43, Mirror of Charity, III. 2. 3 (p. 223). 36 Cistercian attitudes to amicitia have consequently prompted varying interpretations. See Charles Dumont, ‘Aelred of Rievaulx’s Spiritual Friendship’, in Cistercian Ideals and Reality, ed. by John R. Sommerfeldt, CSS, 60 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1978), pp. 187–98; Brian Patrick McGuire, Friendship and Community: The Monastic Experience 350–1250, CSS, 95 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1988), chap. 7, and Marsha L. Dutton, ‘Aelred of Rievaulx on Friendship, Chastity, and Sex: The Sources’, CSQ, 29 (1994), 121–96.

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Similar examples of friendship in action beyond the monastery occur in the Genealogia also. The friendships of Edmund, Edred, and Malcolm have two important implications. First, they emphasize that friendship in its formalized state is within reach of people beyond the monastery. Although Aelred and other Cistercians always focussed on the monastery when they gave examples of virtuous friends, nonetheless the Genealogia provides useful models of successful friendships located in the royal sphere rather than in the communal religious setting. And second, the examples also indicate how highly Aelred thought of these kings. For Aelred, chaste friendship was the ideal human relationship. Thus, the fact that he credited these kings with friendship in action indicates the high esteem in which he held them, and the particularly Cistercian quality for which he admired them. There was clearly a moral imperative behind Aelred’s genealogy. Even separate qualities that were condemned or praised were in fact linked conceptually in the narrative. For example, cupidity is mentioned in juxtaposition with its opposing but related qualities such as charity, friendship, and chastity. The final lines of the Genealogia confirm the inter-relatedness of these themes. Here Aelred writes, But, as I reach the end of this book, I beg God as a gift of his mercy to make your [Henry’s] behaviour such, your acts so holy, your life so chaste, your mind so free of cupidity, so untouched by pride, so innocent of cruelty, so humble and pleasant towards the poor, so devoted to the worship of God, that I might have material about you that is worthy of lasting memory which I can then pass on to posterity by the service of letters.37

Thus, the Anglo-Saxon kings were not important to Henry simply because they had handed him a patrimony. In addition to the territorial heritage they had also handed him a moral heritage. And this moral heritage was one which stressed humility, virtue, friendship, and, above all, caritas. That is, it stressed all the most valued Cistercian characteristics. To summarize thus far: the Genealogia credits the English kings with two main characteristics, strong participation in uniting church and state, and strong demonstration of charity and charity’s attendant qualities such as virtue, friendship, and lack of desire. Both themes were important to Cistercian spiritual thought in general and to Aelred’s spiritual thought in particular. Indeed, in many ways the English kings were described as ideal Cistercian monks. We can see then that the Genealogia anticipated the needs of two audiences simultaneously; it endorsed Henry and all his royal forebears, but it did so in a way which appealed directly to the Cistercian monastic mentality. The 37 ‘Ego autem in calce libri obsecro Deum meum, ut ex munere misericordiae ejus tales tibi sint mores, actus tam sancti, vita tam casta, mens tam libera cupiditatis, tam expers superbiae, tam crudelitatis ignara, erga pauperes tam humilis et jucunda, circa Dei cultum tam devota, ut habeamus aliquid aeterna memoria dignum quod ministerio litterarum de te ad posteros transmittamus.’ 738A.

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fact that most of the surviving manuscripts come from monastic scriptoria confirms this monastic appeal. But these two characteristics can tell us more than the simple fact that the Genealogia is infused with a peculiarly Cistercian mentality of personal probity. In addition, they inform us of the constituent elements of the ideal English nation in the twelfth century. Private acts of church devotion and unification, private acts of charity, and private occasions ‘solus cum solo’ were all described by Aelred as equivalents for the public acts of the nation. By focussing on the most minute level, Aelred made a statement about the affairs of the English people at their broadest national level. On every occasion the king’s personal success or failure was translated directly and without alteration into the success or failure of the English people. On one level, the Genealogia is an unexceptional example of the midtwelfth century’s increasing discussion of English national affairs and, further, of the tendency to discuss these national affairs through the medium of historical writing. Both these points align the Genealogia with contemporary works such as Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum, Richard of Hexham’s De gestis regis Stephani et de bello standardii, and, even, Geffrei Gaimar’s slightly earlier Estoire des Engleis. Where the Genealogia differs from these other histories is in the particular kind of nation that it describes. This is a nation that is clearly encapsulated in the body of the good king.

Women in the Genealogy of Nation This second section investigates the portrayal of women in the Genealogia. On the immediate level the Genealogia conforms with the conventions of royal genealogies as they were traditionally known in England and on the continent. It says that it is about kings, and it traces through one male ruler after the other. Yet there are enough women in the Genealogia to make us wonder. What functions do these women serve? Why are some women described but others omitted? The men in the text are kings yet the women mentioned are not always queens. What does this mean? In order to pursue these questions, the scope needs to be expanded from ‘women’ alone to ‘gender’ more broadly. Here I take my starting point from the traditional division that is drawn between biological sex (women) and social distinctions based on sex (gender). By focussing on the social distinctions that different cultures apply to biological sex, a gendered investigation reminds us that there is a necessarily relational element to what might otherwise be divided into ‘medieval women’s studies’ and ‘medieval men’s studies’. That is, one area needs to be studied in relation to the other. Returning to the Genealogia, simply looking for all the separate references to ‘women’ in the text does not provide a full appreciation of the ways in which sex differences are used to suggest meaning and to present

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truth claims. But by recognizing the inherently social and contextual nature of gender we can identify meaning even in instances in which women are absent from the text or, as is frequently the case in all areas of the medieval world, when women written about in the text are actually the textual products of male authors such as Aelred. Finally, by separating the category ‘women’ from the category ‘gender’ we permit ourselves to realize that even when women are the subjects of a particular historical anecdote, they may in fact be being placed to the service of a different argument which has nothing to do with women, one which may be using and maintaining traditional gender premises and stereotypes. Representations of nation provide a classic example of this dual focus—that is, females are frequently described, but this is sometimes in order to maintain an image of nation which is resolutely male and sometimes (although less often) to provide an image of nation which is proudly female. To repeat, texts about nationhood make many of their points by means of gendered debates. They use and depend on literary structures and motifs which are inherently gendered, frequently (although not always) signalling these gendered arguments by means of ‘textual women’—by writings that talk about women, by anecdotes that focus on women. For example, modern symbols equating the national body with the female body are quite common and have prompted research into the different ways in which men and women participate (by means of literary image) in national polities in the modern age.38 Some questions posed in the modern context are whether a national community is imagined by and on behalf of men only, whether all women or just privileged women appear in representations of the nation, and whether the desirable role played by women in the constitution (literary and otherwise) of a nation is different from that of men. These questions are just as applicable in the medieval context, particularly given that medieval genealogies such as Aelred’s work are the classic medieval texts of nationhood. More specifically medieval issues include what role representations of women played in the mid-twelfth-century English historiographical revisioning and, more broadly, in the resultant constitution of a new English nationhood. In the Middle Ages, when lay and monastic genealogical writings featured women it was traditionally in ancillary roles only. That is, women appeared very rarely as subjects in these texts, and this rarity simply emphasized the pervasive manner in which the genealogies, and the resultant nationhood, were gendered as masculine. When women did appear they played particular biological roles. In Anglo-Saxon literature, there was strong praise of the peace-weaver, the noble woman who through her marriage to a man of an opposing tribe bore children and so wove the blood

38 For good case studies, see the essays in Nationalisms and Sexualities, ed. by Andrew Parker and others (New York: Routledge, 1992).

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of the two tribes together.39 In France from the eleventh century onwards, when women were featured in genealogies at all it was to provide spurious assertions of continuity for parvenu lineages. Common motifs included the fictitious female ancestor and the rape or seduction of a noble girl.40 These females provided the essential social capital for later generations; through giving birth they passed their own high standing onto what would otherwise be unimpressive lineages. The premise was the same in other lay contexts. In the late thirteenth century in England, a woman would be included in illustrated royal genealogies only as a means of arguing for a genealogical continuity that circumstances dictated could not possibly be argued through the male line.41 The goal was always to return to the genealogy and deeds of the male protagonists. Hence, female characters were used to point to something beyond themselves—they pointed to men. The same was true in monastic contexts. Here, the emphasis on male protagonists drew its precedent from Old and New Testament genealogies. The lay and monastic genealogical traditions were therefore complementary and mutually confirming, both in the ways in which they represented women and in their rationales for doing so. They included women only to play down discontinuity in the historical record and to return to the unproblematic series of history as quickly as possible. Women were therefore most likely to appear in the genealogical record when there was a period of uncertainty that demanded resolution. Women appear in extraordinary times, times of transition, and times of insecurity. In all these contexts women feature as bridges over turmoil, discontinuity, and doubt. The most obvious woman to feature in a genealogy of kings would seem to be the queen. But uncertainties in the queen’s public role meant that there were corresponding uncertainties in the ways queens were represented in the written genealogy. As far as we can tell, it appears that in so far as medieval queens possessed widespread authority this was dependent on their close relationship to the body of the king.42 They might be accorded credit for their own actions, but this was only to the extent that they remained ancillary to their husbands the kings. This was the wider cultural 39

Jane Chance, Woman as Hero in Old English Literature (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1986), chap. 1. 40 Georges Duby, ‘Structures de parenté et noblesse dans la France du Nord aux e e XI et XII siècles’, in his Hommes et structures du moyen âge (Paris: Mouton, 1973), pp. 267–85, and Donald Maddox, ‘Domesticating Diversity: Female Founders in Medieval Genealogical Literature and La fille du comte de Pontieu’, in The Court and Cultural Diversity, ed. by Evelyn Mullally and John Thompson (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 97–107. 41 Judith Collard, ‘Gender and Genealogy in English Illuminated Royal Genealogical Rolls from the Thirteenth Century’, Parergon, n.s., 17 (2000), 11–34. 42 This is the common point to come out of the essays in Medieval Queenship, ed. by John Carmi Parsons (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1993).

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context to which medieval chroniclers were exposed. And the beginning of Aelred’s Genealogia shows a strong dependence on this logic. The Genealogia’s first reference to women comes soon after the beginning. First there is the standard explanation of all genealogies. Aelred says that he is writing the genealogy for Henry since ‘to know that one is privileged with noble blood from the best families is the strongest incentive to moral effort, since the noble-spirited man is always ashamed to be identified as the degenerate member of a glorious lineage’.43 This takes us immediately to the heart of the genealogy’s rationale—to describe the virtues and successes of past members of the dynasty and hence to glorify the current incumbent by virtue of association. Naturally, for this association to be valid, the author had to establish beyond doubt that there was an unbroken line of continuity from person to person through the ages. And this is why Aelred invokes women almost at the start of the genealogy. He writes, ‘Therefore, relying on the most authentic and ancient histories and chronicles I could find, let me present the lineage of your [Henry’s] family, starting from you yourself, most distinguished of men, and proceeding through your most famous mother and most distinguished grandmother, arriving quickly at Adam himself, father of all mortals.’ Continuing from here: ‘You therefore, your excellency [Henry], are the son of the most glorious Empress Matilda, whose mother was the most Christian and excellent queen of the English, Matilda, who was the daughter of the most saintly woman Margaret, queen of the Scots, who preferred sanctity of custom to the splendour of her own name.’44 The inclusion of three women in a row is unusual for a genealogy. However, this situation does not last. After Margaret, the genealogy returns to the style of a conventional genealogical list. ‘The father of her was Edward, who was the son of Edmund the most invincible king, of whom the father was Ethelred, of whom the father was Edgar the peaceful, of whom the father was Edmund’ and so on and so on.45 These kings go back one after another through the

43 ‘Est enim ad optimos mores obtinendos maximum incentivum, scire se ab optimis quibusque nobilitatem sanguinis meruisse, eum ingenuum animum semper pudeat in gloriosa progenie degenerem inveniri.’ 716C. 44 ‘Sicut igitur in veracissimis et antiquissimis historiis vel chronicis potui reperire, a te ipso, virorum clarissime, exordium sumens, et per gloriosissimam matrem tuam aviamque clarissimam ascendens breviter usque ad ipsum Adam, patrem cunctorem mortalium lineam tibi tuae cognationis ostendam’, 716C–D. ‘Tu igitur, vir optime, filius es gloriosissimae imperatricis Mathildis, cujus fuit mater christianissima et excellentissima Anglorum regina, Mathildis filia sanctissimae feminae reginae Scotorum Margaretae, quae nominis sui splendori morum sanctitatem praeferabat.’ 716D–717A. 45 ‘Hujus pater Edwardus, qui fuit filius Edmundi regis invictissimi, cujus pater Edelred, cujus pater Aedgarus pacificus, cujus pater Eadmundus, cujus pater Edwardus senior.’ 717A.

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West Saxon line, through Woden, eventually terminating at Adam, the father of everyone. The role played by the three women, Matilda, Matilda, and Margaret, in the preliminary list is simply as a means to an end. Henry had no link with the glories of the Anglo-Saxon kings through any of his male ancestors. It was only his great-grandmother Margaret who provided this link. Margaret had been queen of Scotland and, since she was the only grandchild of Edmund Ironside to have produced legitimate children, it was through her that later kings and claimants traced their lineage back to the pre-Conquest past. Thus, Aelred’s decision to begin with a female reference was a genealogically necessary strategy if he wished to link the Angevins with the AngloSaxon kings. Aelred was not the first historian to draw this connection. Earlier writers had referred to Margaret and, indeed, Margaret was the only woman who made anything like a regular appearance in genealogies at this time. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle noted that she was ‘a kinswoman of King Edward of the true royal family of England’.46 Eadmer and Orderic Vitalis also used genealogical terms to comment on Margaret’s importance, in contrast to their descriptions of other queens, such as Matilda, which were based on the more common exemplary characteristics of piety, humility, and so on.47 Margaret’s role in the series of English history should not be overplayed—it was purely functional. The genealogy had to trace back through her in order to arrive at what was more important, that is, the list of great kings which included Edmund the most invincible, King Alfred, and so on. The three women, Matilda, Matilda, and Margaret, are invoked at the outset of the Genealogia because they are necessary bridges over what would be the worst thing possible in a genealogy, dubious lineage. They are invoked to bypass uncertainty and to redirect attention to the glories of the earlier kings. The two Matildas and Margaret are certainly needed in the historiographical project but, as in many genealogical contexts, they are only needed because they point to something beyond themselves—in this case, to the greater glories of Anglo-Saxon kingship and a nation that is quite clearly gendered as masculine. This use of women as a last genealogical resort is confirmed in the following chapters of the Genealogia. For despite being glorious, excellent, and saintly, the two Matildas and Margaret do not warrant their own chapters. They transmit dynastic blood but they are ancillary figures who have no active role in the history of England at this stage. The Genealogia now starts working forwards through the kings, starting at Ethelwulf in the early 46

The Peterborough Chronicle 1070–1154, ed. by Cecily Clark, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), s.a. 1100. 47 Eadmeri historia novorum in Anglia, ed. by Martin Rule, RS, 81 (London: Longman and Co., 1884), p. 121, and The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. by Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–80), X. 16 (V, 298–99).

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ninth century. Ethelwulf possesses all the standard qualities of the good king. He was the father of orphans, the judge of the destitute, and the supporter of monasteries. And, as Aelred tells us, he was also the father of King Alfred. But, if we need to know that Ethelwulf was Alfred’s father, Aelred does not think we need to know who Alfred’s mother was. The next section is a long chapter on Alfred’s battle against the Danes and it is introduced with the simple link sentence that Alfred was the son of Ethelwulf. Here the genealogy of Henry II is represented solely with reference to the names and activities of past kings and reference to women is unnecessary. The next king, Edward the Elder, is also apparently born without the need for a mother. However, one woman does play a role in this period of English history. Significantly she is not a queen, as Matilda and Margaret were, but instead she is the sister of a king. This is Aethelflaed, ‘Lady of the Mercians’, the famous warrior and sister of King Edward who effectively ruled Mercia as independent ruler between 911 and 918, following the death of her husband.48 Aethelflaed was highly praised by medieval writers of history but, significantly, different authors praised her for different reasons. These changing images of Aethelflaed betray a given chronicler’s overriding aims and concerns and, also, betray the different ways in which an author exploited gender differences to fulfil those aims. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle had stressed Aethelflaed’s heroism and military victories against the Vikings and this theme reappeared in most of the later histories.49 The chronicle of John of Worcester, for example, referred to Aethelflaed without fail as ‘domina Merciorum’ and emphasized her successful fortress-building campaigns.50 This chronicle also asserted that Aethelflaed had been ruler in her own right, as did Henry of Huntingdon.51 Henry wrote, ‘This lady is said to have been so powerful that in praise and exaltation of her wonderful gifts some call her not only lady, or queen, but even king.’ Henry then continued his effusions by composing a poem in Aethelflaed’s honour. Aethelflaed 48

On Aethelflaed, see Frederick Threlfall Wainwright, ‘Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians’, in Scandinavian England, ed. by Herbert P. R. Finberg (Chichester: Phillimore, 1975), pp. 305–24. 49 Aethelflaed appears most often in the C version of the Chronicle. See also Asser’s Life of King Alfred Together with the Annals of Saint Neots Erroneously Ascribed to Asser, ed. by William Henry Stevenson (Oxford, 1904; new impression Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), chap. 75 and pp. 299–300. 50 The Chronicle of John of Worcester, vol. II, The Annals from 450 to 1066, ed. by Reginald R. Darlington and Patrick McGurk (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), s.a. 871, 908–919; pp. 294–97, 362–63, 366–81. 51 The Chronicle of John of Worcester, s.a. 919, pp. 380–81; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum. The History of the English People, ed. by Diana E. Greenway (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), v. 16–17 (pp. 304–09), esp. v. 16 (pp. 304–07).

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was ‘worthy of a man’s name! Nature made you a girl so you would be more illustrious; your prowess made you acquire the name of man. For you alone it is right to change the name of your sex’.52 At the same time as John and Henry were producing these endorsements of Aethelflaed as warrior and ‘king’, a parallel trend was developing whereby authors such as William of Malmesbury began praising Aethelflaed not for her militarism but for her alleged piety.53 The Aethelflaed described by William is one who deserves praise not because she withstood invading Vikings but because she rejected the conjugal embraces of her husband. Aelred, however, was a traditionalist. It was evidently important to his historiographical project that Aethlflaed should be presented in her timehonoured role of warrior rather than as an exponent of chastity within marriage. Aelred includes Aethelflaed under the chapter allocated to Edward, her brother the king. He writes, Aethelflaed, the sister of the king, also added great brilliance. Although she was a woman by sex, she was more like a man in her spirit and virtus and she built towns in addition to those built by the king [. . .]. She herself fought and defeated the Welsh and she attacked and held Derby. She shone with such courage that she was called king by many people.54

This passage is difficult to interpret. To start, the reference to Aethelflaed as king is not as unusual as it first appears. There was already a medieval tradition of referring to certain women as ‘woman by sex but man by action’.55 In general, this regendering was considered necessary when women held political power. For example, research into the masculine titles given to some continental women in the tenth and eleventh centuries (titles such as dux and imperator) suggests that in these contexts masculine titles were necessary because it was in fact culturally impossible to conceive of women as political leaders. Thus, the regendering was a way of praising 52

‘Hec igitur domina tante potentie fertur fuisse, ut a quibusdam non solum domina uel regina, sed etiam rex uocaretur, ad laudem et excellentiam mirificationis sue’; ‘nomine digna uiri. / Te, quo splendidior fieres, natura puellam, / Te probitas fecit nomen habere uiri. / Te mutare decet, sed solam, nomina sexus.’ Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, v. 17 (p. 308). 53 Gesta regum Anglorum, ii. 126 (p. 198). 54 ‘Adjecit etiam decoris plurimum soror regis Aelfleda, sexu quidem femina, sed animo ac virtute plus viro, quae exceptis his quas rex aedificaverat urbes construxit [. . .]. Ipsa pugnavit contra Walenses et vicit, et Derebi expugnavit et cepit. Tantaque fortitudine emicuit, ut a pluribus rex diceretur.’ 723A. 55 See Betty Bandel ‘The English Chroniclers’ Attitude Toward Women’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 16 (1955), 113–18 (pp. 114, 117), and Janet L. Nelson, ‘Queens as Jezebels: The Careers of Brunhild and Balthild in Merovingian History’, in Medieval Women, ed. by Derek Baker, SCH Subsidia, 1 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell for the Ecclesiastical History Society, 1978), pp. 31–77 (p. 76).

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one individual woman and recognizing her individual achievements yet at the same time keeping the conventions of male and female roles firmly in place. This particular woman may be worthy and outstanding, but she was an exception. Thus she did not challenge the broader social conventions dictating the limits of possible female behaviour. On the contrary, by being quarantined outside the category of ‘woman’ or ‘queen’, she upheld that traditional view even more strongly. By their very inclusion in the historical record (by their inclusion as exceptions), these women marked out the limits of acceptable and taken-for-granted female behaviour in the context of royal power and authority. Aelred pursues the logic of unwomanly female behaviour further than his predecessors had. In his case a woman was like a man not just when she was a political leader but when she was a political leader who was also a warrior. Aethelflaed was originally introduced as the ‘sister of the king’, but Aelred soon points out that she was in fact akin to a man in spirit, precisely due to her military action. So, in this example, the gender role of female cannot incorporate participation in battle. However, once Aethelflaed has been termed ‘man’ (and with man being the logical exponent of military prowess), then her military action leads to the next logical step which is that people call her king. The premise on which this argument is founded is that a good king must necessarily be a good military leader. There is a similarity here with the earlier descriptions of Margaret and Matilda. Once again, a woman appears in the narrative not as a character in her own right but in order to highlight the qualities of the king. This occurs in two ways. First, Aethelflaed the warrior is used to demonstrate that good kings are good fighters. She is morally useful to the history precisely when she has been termed a king; ironically, then, Aethelflaed is in fact an example of good kingship. Second, the location of this anecdote within the Genealogia is significant. Aethelflaed the warrior king is juxtaposed against Edward the pacific king. Here Aelred anticipated the needs of a monastic readership more intent on extracting devotional use from this text than on reading a royal genealogy. Aethelflaed the warrior is contrasted to the king and so she brings Edward’s pacific virtues into sharper relief. Thus, all roads in Aelred’s mind lead to the description of ideal kingship, and women are used as a means to this greater end. In other words, simply because the biological sex of woman appears in the genealogy does not mean that the gender category of women is granted equal status. Thus far, the nation described by the Genealogia is still a masculine one. The women who featured most often in royal genealogies were, naturally enough, royal women—queens. But women who were not queens do appear in the Genealogia, provided they could be used to a greater genealogical or moral purpose. Specifically, it seems that if Aelred considered women (or, at least, some women) to be integral participants in the national history of the English people it was actually not because they were queens (reginae— wives of kings). After all, many wives of kings were omitted from the

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Genealogia. Rather, inclusion in Aelred’s version of English history depended more often on being the mother of a king. The logic that women should be included in genealogies predominantly due to their maternal status was strongest in the lay vernacular context. Here, stereotypes of good and bad women often centred around the woman’s activities as mother and nurturer.56 The nurturing element was frequently represented by images of breastfeeding which, importantly, returns us to the issue of nationalism. Here the breastfeeding mother could be invoked as a metaphor for national strength and security. The nurturing mother earned her place in the genealogy of the nation through her symbolic feeding of that nation. In the Genealogia it seems that motherhood was more important than queenship when it came to justifying inclusion of women in the text. A mother who was also a queen was best, but motherhood alone would suffice if necessary. For example, the next woman mentioned after Aethelflaed was not a queen at all but a mistress (she is described as the ‘most noble woman Egwina’), and she is included and named because she was the mother of Edward the Elder’s children.57 And these were not just any children; one of them, Adelstan, would become king. So here we can see that the genealogy is a highly streamlined mode of thought in which the guiding principle (discussion of men who would be kings) may sometimes necessitate discussion of women but that, beyond this, the experiences of women are not represented. The mistress Egwina did have other children besides Adelstan, but this aspect of her motherhood was clearly not a necessary component of the grand narrative of English kings and English nationhood. Hence it was not discussed. Next we read of Aedgiva who was Edward the Elder’s legitimate wife. All we learn about her is that she was queen and that she had seven children. The boys are mentioned first and are named (two of these boys eventually became kings), but only one of the four girls has a name. This is Edburga who chose to become a nun. The other daughters did not have names but they did have good marriages—one to the emperor of the Romans, one to the king of the Franks, and the other to the king of the Northumbrians. This is one of the few occasions where women outside the strict genealogy of the English kings are mentioned, but all four are still mentioned in relation to their marriages (one to God, three to men), so this confirms that this genealogical text is not the place to look if we want evidence concerning the broader activities of these women. Much of the Genealogia is quite descriptive, but this is in relation to the kings. The 56

Françoise Le Saux, ‘Paradigms of Evil: Gender and Crime in Layamon’s Brut’, in The Text and Tradition of Layamon’s Brut, ed. by Françoise Le Saux (Cambridge: Brewer, 1994), pp. 193–206, and Elizabeth J. Bryan, ‘Layamon’s Four Helens: Female Figurations of Nation in the Brut’, Leeds Studies in English, n.s., 26 (1995), 63–78 (p. 67). 57 723C.

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references to women are sparse, cursory, and functional, subordinate to the greater end of asserting the continuity of the kings of the English. Another area in which Aelred betrayed his gendered understanding of English history is through the women he omitted from the Genealogia. In keeping with other post-1066 chroniclers, Aelred was not interested in Edith or Emma.58 When he was writing this work, Aelred did have access to varied sources concerning the political and religious history of England and he often used them. Given this access to sources, it is helpful to investigate some of the silences in this text and to try to isolate any significance there for the broader question of women’s usefulness to Aelred’s historical project. After Edward the Elder’s mistress, wife, and daughters, no women are mentioned until the beginning of the eleventh century, under the chapter relating to King Aethelred the Unready. Here we read that Aethelred sent messengers to Normandy to seek Emma (the daughter of the duke of Normandy) as wife. Then ‘from Emma he had two sons, Edward [the Confessor, who later became king] and Alfred’.59 There was a lot more that could be said about Emma.60 First, evidence from illustrations and charters suggests that she played a strong role alongside Aethelred in the execution of royal duties. Because emphasis on Mary as Queen of Heaven was increasing during this period, terrestrial queens were able to argue for their consecrated positions on the basis that they, like Mary, were mothers of kings. (Cistercian monks in particular were quick to embrace this new understanding of Mary.61) As a result of this conflation between earthly queens and Mary the celestial queen, the role of queen as a consecrated consort to the king was strengthened in England from Emma’s period onward. Second, there was also the possibility that Aelred could stress Emma’s Norman origins. The whole point of the Genealogia was to insist that Henry, Duke of Aquitaine and Normandy and Count of Anjou, was also linked with the English kings. Emma was born in Normandy and was an early example of Norman influence in English royal affairs. More importantly, since she had a son who was king, she demonstrated that Norman blood was already a part of English kingship. And blood, biological descent, was apparently what mattered. 58

Edith disappeared from the post-1066 accounts and Emma ‘remained only as the passive link-woman of marriage politics’: Pauline Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith: Queenship and Women’s Power in Eleventh-Century England (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1997), pp. 15–22 (p. 15). 59 ‘Ex Emma deinde duos habuit filios, Edwardum et Alfredum, de quibus postea dicemus’, 730B. 60 On Emma’s activities, see Pauline Stafford, ‘Emma: The Powers of the Queen in the Eleventh Century’, in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe, ed. by Anne J. Duggan (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1997), pp. 3–26. 61 See Statuta, ann. 1134, XVIII (I, 17) in which the Cistercian General Chapter describes Mary in the new twelfth-century formulation as ‘queen of heaven and earth’. On the dating of this statute, see comments in Chapter 3 below.

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But the problem with Emma was that later she married the enemy. After Aethelred died, Canute of Denmark fought Aethelred’s successor, became king of England, and soon he and Emma were married. Emma and Canute had a son who also went on to become one of the Danish kings of England. But this negative aspect of Emma’s motherhood was not mentioned. The Genealogia was specifically a genealogy of the English kings, and it simply ignored the reigns of the Danish kings. That is, it simply leaves out three kings and over twenty-five years of royal history. Evidently, here, the imperative of combining Henry II’s continental lineage with the AngloSaxon lineage dictated the form of the rest of the genealogy. The potential advantage to be gained from Emma’s Norman background was evidently insufficient to outweigh her regrettable association with the regrettable Danes. Once again, marriage (that is, her relationship to the king’s body) was the woman’s greatest contribution to national history as it is presented in the Genealogia. Another example of this mentality is the later reference to Henry’s mother, Empress Matilda. In this second reference Matilda is no longer explicitly termed empress, as she had been at the beginning of the Genealogia. She is defined in the traditional genealogical manner, that is, according to her matrimonial status. According to this brief description, she is born of queen Matilda, she marries Henry the Holy Roman emperor, and then she marries Geoffrey the most noble count of Anjou. No more information is considered necessary since describing Matilda is not the goal of the Genealogia. Instead, discussing her is a means to the greater end of establishing the lineage and legitimacy of her son, Henry, the addressee of this work. Sometimes, then, women were useful to genealogies by virtue of their marriages but, as Emma’s case suggests, sometimes their marriages could also deflect the nation’s history from the right path and hence had to be overlooked. The next problematic marriage was the one between Edward the Confessor and Edith. The Genealogia had a nationalistic and reconciliatory goal but the reign of Edward could only be interpreted as a disaster. Furthermore, because the marriage was childless there was not even the hope that descendants might later make claims to the throne. Consequently, the Genealogia discusses Edward very summarily and makes no mention of Edith at all. The discussion concentrates on the machinations of other branches of the family and foreshadows Margaret and others who, in contrast to Edith, do play a later role in English genealogical history. By 1162 Aelred would be sufficiently interested in Edward’s piety to compose his Vita Edwardi. In this text he managed to describe the saint’s life and, also, continue the nationalist logic by arguing that Henry II was the cornerstone who bound the two peoples, English and Norman, together.62 But in the Genealogia 62 Aelred of Rievaulx, Vita S. Edwardi regis et confessoris, in PL vol. 195: cols 737–90 (cols 738–39).

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nationalist imperatives were dominant, and there was no room to combine them with other themes. Here Aelred was interested in describing only those people who could be linked directly with Henry. The Empress Matilda was useful to this goal and hence was described. Emma and Edith were not useful to this goal and hence were ignored. The discussion thus far has identified the areas in which the Genealogia upholds the traditional genealogical convention that women should be invoked only briefly and only when they are subordinated to the greater demand of asserting national continuity. However, once we start examining the representation of women who are not queens and not mothers a more complex picture develops, one in which the gender category of woman carries meaning of immediate relevance to Cistercian monks. Another way for women to appear in the medieval historiographical project was as biblical figures. A woman might be active like Martha, contemplative like Mary, or might resist adultery like Susannah. Here histories did not necessarily provide descriptions of real women or the real activities of these women but, rather, they offered stylized and moralistic examples of female behaviour. Although these depictions are often conventional, they are worth investigating since they are a common way in which medieval women did feature and participate in historiography by virtue of image and ideal. One woman who appears in the guise of a biblical model is the unnamed mistress of King Eadwig in the mid-tenth century. Eadwig’s reign was a disaster; there were rebellions and upheavals, and the people of Mercia and Northumbria eventually rejected him as king.63 Like Edward the Elder, Eadwig also had a mistress, but this one played a very different role in English history from Edward’s mistress. Aelred writes that Eadwig is a new kind of Herod who wastes himself in adultery with a woman who is herself a kind of Salome. This is a highly conventional description. The aim of this common image is not to furnish information about the individual woman in question but, instead, to suggest the immorality of Eadwig. The conventional image is followed by a description of the saintly Archbishop Dunstan and his wise counsel, a juxtaposition which brings the evils of Eadwig’s reign into sharper relief. Thus, the conventional ‘type’ (the adulterous woman) is actually employed as a means of telling the audience more about the king. This is the common pattern again: description of women subordinated to the greater imperative of description of kings. Another biblical woman, Esther, appears at the end of the Genealogia, when there is an extensive section devoted to Queen Matilda the grandmother of Henry. Having followed convention by introducing her in relation to her husband, Aelred then deviates from tradition and includes a lengthy anecdote (the longest description of a woman in the Genealogia) related solely to Matilda. It was not unusual for English chroniclers to 63

725D–726A.

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mention Matilda. Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury had done so and they had provided various models for Aelred to choose from in his depiction.64 Matilda was a highly public queen who had spoken at episcopal councils, who commissioned her own literature, who corresponded with Pope Pascal II and Anselm over church government, and who commanded large dower lands.65 All of these activities indicate a highly able woman. Some sources mentioned these public activities while others concentrated on the standard fact that Matilda was a genealogical link to former generations and to the glories of King Edward. Aelred, however, did not choose either of these options but instead concentrated on Matilda’s humility. Aelred mentions Matilda’s admirable glory, her devotion to divine offices, and most of all her humility. He then compares her to Esther and relates an anecdote whereby she washed and kissed the feet of lepers. When admonished that her husband Henry I would not want to kiss her now that she had kissed the lepers, Matilda piously replied that the feet of the eternal king were to be preferred to the mouth of a mortal king anyway.66 This is the second reference to Matilda in the Genealogia. The first was at the outset of the work where Matilda’s description confirmed the genealogical principle that women should be invoked only to effect a continuity between otherwise disparate members of a lineage. This was when Aelred mentioned the three women, Matilda, Matilda, and Margaret, as a means of connecting Henry with the Anglo-Saxon kings. But the second description at the Genealogia’s conclusion shows a different way in which women were considered useful to the genealogy of England—this time they were useful to the moral genealogy rather than the biological genealogy. The interesting part of the description is the comparison between Matilda and Esther. As the Book of Esther describes it, Esther was the Hebrew woman whose beauty led to her becoming queen of the Persians. Discovering that the king’s counsellor was planning to murder all the Hebrews, Esther took the forbidden step of entering the king’s chamber uninvited. She then convinced the king to arrange a banquet, at which she was able to unmask the plan and prevent mass murder.

64

Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, vii. 30 (pp. 462–63); William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, v. 393 (p. 715); William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella: The Contemporary History, ed. by Edmund King and trans. by K. R. Potter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 6–9. Orderic Vitalis also discussed Matilda: The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, X. 16 (V, 298). 65 Lois L. Huneycutt, ‘Proclaiming Her Dignity Abroad: The Literary and Artistic Network of Matilda of Scotland, Queen of England 1100–1118’, in The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women, ed. by June Hall McCash (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1996), pp. 155–74. 66 736A–D.

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Medieval commentators on queens had a range of reasons for invoking the image of Esther.67 Generally, Esther was praised for her role as intercessor, as the voice in the ear of the king who was thereby able to exert political influence. Sometimes she was mentioned in order to justify royal wealth, while at other times her famous prayer was invoked as an exemplary sermon for noblewomen. But Aelred did not focus on any of these motifs. He did mention the intercessory theme briefly, but he was more interested in comparing Matilda to Esther for two other reasons. First, he identified Matilda as ‘another Esther for our times’ because of her humility and her service to the disaffected when she looked after lepers.68 This accorded with the common medieval emphasis on Esther’s abasement and disregard for her looks and wealth. It was also a strongly Cistercian type of praise, confirming the practical spirituality in which physical care for one’s fellow monks was considered the most basic and most humane way of providing charity and remembering Christ’s humanity. The second reason for Aelred’s emphasis on Esther, I suggest, is that the Esther topos could be used to support the underlying genealogical imperative of the history; that is, it could be employed to confirm Henry’s genealogy. It may be that Aelred thought of Matilda as an Esther because she had ensured the continuation of her people, the Anglo-Saxon bloodline, just as the original Esther had ensured the continuation of her own people by preventing their murder. It was through Matilda that national continuity was ensured—she was part of the tripartite female link connecting Henry with the glories of past English kings. Thus, this description of Esther and the lepers presents in an edificatory and anecdotal style the same theme that had appeared more briefly at the beginning of the Genealogia—the theme that women played important roles in genealogies when they served to resolve discontinuity, to reinforce hierarchy, and to forge continuity between past glories and the present and future. The woman as wife of king and the woman as mother of king has a role in the text based solely on her family role. Occasionally, though, there are hints that her importance extends beyond this and is a power in its own right. Thus, after Matilda has washed the feet of a leper and furnished a useful moral example for others, she does in fact define the subsequent text. The next character in the Genealogia is not described as the sister or mother of a king but instead as the sister of Matilda. It is mentioned that the sister of this ‘most blessed’ Matilda, namely Maria, was given as wife to Count Eustace of Boulogne.69 No further information is given. Despite its brevity, 67 See Lois L. Huneycutt, ‘Intercession and the High-Medieval Queen: The Esther Topos’, in Power of the Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. by Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995), pp. 126–46. 68 ‘alteram nobis Esther nostris temporibus.’ 736B. 69 736D.

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this reference is important evidence of Aelred’s occasional preparedness to present women in the Genealogia in images other than the traditional image of linkage between disparate branches of the family tree. In this instance, Maria is introduced in relation to a woman, not in relation to a man. This is a rare example of a woman, Matilda, functioning as the genealogical point of departure and the point of reference for the next anecdote. Such a defining role given to a woman is highly unusual in medieval genealogies. Genealogical convention had not encouraged Aelred to devote such attention to a queen. Why then did he do it? It is likely that the increasing credit given to women at the end of the Genealogia is a product of peculiarly Cistercian concerns. It is true that Cistercian attitudes towards women are an infamously difficult area to investigate. Traditional scholarship has been preoccupied with identifying a single Cistercian view of women and this has necessarily led to difficulties. When using legislative sources, the official Cistercian attitude seems antagonistic. The Cistercians originated as communities of men only and, although many women set up religious houses according to Cistercian principles, the General Chapter was reluctant to allow these independent female communities to join the order.70 On the other hand, sources such as vitae and devotional treatises present a different picture. We know that in some contexts male Cistercians were eager to endorse, and even assume, conventionally female behaviours. This is apparent in the famous Jesus as Mother topos in which the abbot was compared to a nurturing mother in order to stress that authority should be complemented by love.71 Aelred was sympathetic to the idea of men and women’s spiritual equality. He had argued in the Speculum caritatis that charity should be extended to everybody, male and female. Following his strong attention to the Incarnation, Aelred argued that one could see everything that was best in Christian life in the people with whom one lived.72 This view that other people were integral to one’s spiritual journey would be stressed further in his later work, De spirituali amicitia. Here Aelred argued that there was to be no superior or inferior when it came to friendship relations between 70

The classic study is Sally Thompson, ‘The Problem of the Cistercian Nuns in the Twelfth and Early Thirteenth Centuries’, in Medieval Women, ed. by Baker, pp. 227–52. More recently, for the many women who independently followed Cistercian lives despite official disapproval, see any of the works by Constance Berman, for example, ‘Were There Twelfth-Century Cistercian Nuns?’, Church History, 68 (1999), 824–64. 71 Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), chap. 4. 72 For an introduction to this large field, see Marsha L. Dutton, ‘The Face and Feet of God: The Humanity of Christ in Bernard of Clairvaux and Aelred of Rievaulx’, in Bernardus Magister, ed. by John R. Sommerfeldt, CSS, 135 (Spencer, MA: Cistercian Publications; Saint-Nicolas-lès-Cîteaux, France: Cîteaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 1992), pp. 203–23.

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individuals.73 An important corollary of this belief was that Aelred was thereby able to invoke women as living examples of friendship just as easily as he invoked men—thus, he argued in De spirituali amicitia that male and female friends were equal. In his De institutione inclusarum and even in the ambiguous De sanctimoniali de Wattun Aelred provided still further examples of exemplary female friendships. Thus, of all the Cistercian writers, Aelred was especially inclined to use females as moral guides in his edificatory texts. When genealogy was understood as biological lineage, the Genealogia was a standard medieval text which needed women only rarely, as points of departure for highlighting the greater histories of the kings. But when genealogy was understood in a moral sense, Aelred’s preparedness to accept females as models for friendship meant that he was also prepared to include them as moral exemplars in the Genealogia. Here women such as Matilda played important roles as bearers of national identity in terms of moral inheritance. As presented by Aelred, Matilda’s qualities of humility and compassion could be emulated by anyone, male or female. Thus, as the Genealogia progresses it becomes more akin to Cistercian spiritual writings and thus more capable of incorporating images of women. In sum, the Genealogia’s images of women were usually derived from traditional images of women in royal genealogies but they were also occasionally derived from traditional images of women in Cistercian corporate life. Regarding the representations from genealogical tradition, here the gendered nature of the medieval nation was sufficiently strong that the biological category of woman was actually subordinated to the greater ideal of the masculine-gendered nation. But regarding the representations from Cistercian life, here the biological category of woman was representing an aspect of the nation in which the social constructions of women were considered exemplary. The Genealogia was therefore a multi-layered text which responded simultaneously to the expectations of different audiences and, in so doing, both reflected and created a ‘nation’ which was gendered both masculine and (occasionally) feminine.

Men and Women and the Timeless Nation There is a common thread to the Genealogia’s representations of kings and of women, and this thread takes us to the heart of the history’s meanings. The descriptions of kings concentrate on the kings’ capacities as church unifiers, their caritas, and their friendship. The descriptions of women indicate that women are annexed to English genealogical history only when 73

‘How beautiful it is that the second human being was taken from the side of the first, so that nature might teach that human beings are equal and, as it were, collateral, and that there is in human affairs neither a superior nor an inferior, a characteristic of true friendship.’ Spiritual Friendship, 1: 57 (p. 63).

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they are useful, and that they are useful predominantly as mothers and moral exemplars. The common feature of these representations—of men and of women—is that both are peculiarly timeless. Further, these representations are the mechanisms by which the Genealogia overall presents an image of English genealogical history that is powerful precisely because of this timelessness. This returns us to Benedict Anderson’s view of nationalism. As discussed earlier, Anderson’s argument is that, in so far as the pre-modern world enjoyed any sustained feelings of group solidarity, then this was not a true national imagining but, rather, a system of social linkages in which time was conflated and difference was de-emphasized. It seems that there is something to be said for Anderson’s model. Certainly, the Genealogia is a strong example of the medieval interconnection between king and time. To begin, it adheres to the common logic of the Mirror for Princes genre whereby the actions and successes of one king (or, in this instance, one lineage of kings) are deemed equivalent to the actions and successes of the English people more broadly. This goes beyond a cause and effect relationship; instead, it is a metonymic relationship in which everything the king does and stands for applies without alteration to the people of the English. Here the king fully represents the nation and, in a conceptual and textual sense, is the nation. It is in this sense that the Genealogia reflects and represents the united community spirit that Anderson sees as typical of the medieval world. None of this representation would have been possible without the logical link that was drawn between public and private actions in the medieval period. It is this link which means that the nation need not be defined by the deeds of its people in war nor by the widespread piety of its national monastic culture but, rather, by the localized activities of one man—the king. Here the collective and the individual combine. The community of the English people is represented satisfactorily, in its integrity, by the single person of the king. Another area in which the Genealogia reflects Anderson’s view of the medieval community is in its lack of attention to dating. On one occasion the narrative omits twenty-five years, when the Danish kings are conveniently excluded. This omission is made easier by the fact that dates are not mentioned anywhere in the work. It is apparent then that the Genealogia is not governed by chronological time but, rather, by the more cosmological thinking of Anderson’s formulation. The Genealogia denies the existence of discontinuity and change, both of which are integral components of the historical process in modern eyes. In many ways it does not describe change at all but, rather, stasis. Henry had had a particularly troublesome journey to political success, but the Genealogia colludes with Angevin mythology to deny this and to promote continuity and legitimacy instead. Rather than being tied to change, Henry’s genealogy is divorced from time and is effectively tied to the body of the king and, more precisely, to the unchanging institution of kingship. The Genealogia therefore presents an image of the nation that is premised on a rejection of discontinuities and an emphasis on timeless moral

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qualities. This is not a nationalism that is meant to involve all the people of England. Because the king’s private activities are sufficient to guarantee the people’s broader success, there is no requirement that the king must engage with all the people. Women, for example, are generally useful to the narrative of the nation only when they are mothers of kings or mirrors of good examples for kings. The Genealogia’s conception of the nation is thus a specific and localized, even elitist, one which is restricted to those who participate in this culture of literacy and historiography. It does not provide evidence of nationalism in our modern sense but, rather, evidence of a sense of communal identity and willed association with an identity that hinged around the body of the king and the timeless institution of kingship. Aelred’s Genealogia is a type of historiographical production in which the nation is presented in its most self-confident, unchallengeable, and, in most instances, most masculine form.

PART TWO After Aelred: 1167–1200 _______________

CHAPTER 3

Building Solid Foundations: Expanding the Definition of Historical Production

T

he death of Aelred in 1167 is often seen as a turning point in Cistercian literary production in England. At Rievaulx alone, there had been a flourishing literary school around the mid-century. Aelred, Maurice of Rievaulx, and Walter Daniel had all composed devotional works.1 Yet this literary activity seemed to cease in the second half of the twelfth century, apparently indicating that the English Cistercians were no longer committed to composing works of any great quality or quantity. The most frequently cited explanation for the Cistercians’ modest literary production is the order’s alleged antipathy to the written word and to scholarship in general. In introductory surveys of medieval religion, the Cistercians are traditionally portrayed as anti-intellectual and as non-participants in the intellectual re-awakenings of the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’. This argument has long been received wisdom and it is generally supported by the same pieces of evidence. For example, the famous Cistercian proscription against literary composition is always invoked. This states that ‘No abbot, monk, or novice is permitted to compose books, except by permission of the General Chapter’.2 Although opinions differ, the general consensus is that this legislation was pronounced by the General 1

On Maurice’s lost works see Frederick Maurice Powicke, ‘Maurice of Rievaulx’, EHR, 36 (1921), 17–29. On Walter Daniel’s lost works see Charles H. Talbot, ‘The Centum Sententiae of Walter Daniel’, Sacris Erudiri, 11 (1960), 266– 383 (pp. 268–74). 2 Statuta, ann. 1134, LVIII (I, 26); ‘Nulli liceat abbati, nec monacho, nec novitio libros facere, nisi forte cuiquam in generali capitulo concessum fuerit.’

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Chapter by the early 1150s at the latest.3 As all the Cistercian statuta were, it applied to every member of the order throughout Europe. It was renewed in 1202 in the order’s compilation of legislation, the Libellus definitionum, and then renewed again in 1237.4 All scholars who enter the debate over Cistercian learning traditionally open their arguments by referring to this proscription, arguing that it set the tone for the Cistercians’ pervasive antagonism towards learning and literature.5 This proscription and lack of literary interest contrasts starkly with the broader picture of historiographical activity in England in the second half of the twelfth century.6 During this period so many trends were flourishing simultaneously that it is impossible to describe the historiographical fashion in any single way. Although few people wrote history in the first half of Henry II’s reign, history writing revived in the 1170s. In the 1180s and 1190s it was even stronger, to the extent that this period can be termed something of a golden age of English historiography. Both periods are characterized by their variety. There were administrative historians, romance historians, and satirists such as Walter Map and Gerald of Wales. Other composers produced national histories, local histories, and ecclesiastical biographies. A common theme of most of these styles was their concentration on events in England. But all of this is considered outside the 3

Although Canivez dates this statute to 1134, it is commonly accepted that the earliest dates in Canivez are inaccurate: see, for example, Constance H. Berman, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 48–51, and Chrysogonus Waddell, ‘Toward a New Provisional Edition of the Statutes of the Cistercian General Chapter, c.1119–1189’, in Studiosorum Speculum: Studies in Honor of Louis J. Lekai, O. Cist, ed. by Francis R. Swietek and John R. Sommerfeldt, CSS, 141 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1993), pp. 389–420 (pp. 401– 02). Holdsworth redates the statute to 1119–52, while Berman argues for ‘fifteen or twenty years’ after 1134; Christopher J. Holdsworth, ‘The Chronology and Character of Early Cistercian Legislation’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture in the British Isles, ed. by Christopher Norton and David Park (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 40–55 (p. 52), and Berman, The Cistercian Evolution, p. 50. Even allowing for the later end of this period, it seems safe to state that the statute (or ‘ideal about practice’ as Berman calls it) was in existence by the mid-century. 4 Bernard Lucet, La codification cistercienne de 1202 et son évolution ultérieure (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1964), Dist. XV, chap. 4, pp. 171–72. 5 Other proscriptions are also invoked in this debate. At a date somewhere around 1175, the General Chapter forbade the composition of unauthorized treatises and sermon collections. Later, the study of canon law was forbidden, as was the study of Hebrew and the composition of certain types of poetry. See Statuta, ann. 1175, XXXI (I, 84); ann. 1188, VII (I, 108); ann. 1198, XXVIII (I, 227); ann. 1199, I (I, 232). 6 For the standard survey of English historiography during this period, see Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), chaps 11–14.

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mainstream of Cistercian interest, and Cistercian participation in these trends is generally considered to be desultory and inconsequential.7 The Cistercians’ perceived indifference towards written histories is usually exemplified by the story of how William of Newburgh came to write his Historia regum Anglicarum in the late 1190s. Newburgh was an Augustinian house close to Rievaulx and William was approached by abbot Ernald of Rievaulx to compose an English history. In his preface to the composition William provides a valuable snapshot of the historiographical culture at Rievaulx: I have received from your Holiness [Ernald] the letter in which you kindly allot to me the task of studying and recording those noteworthy events which have occurred in greater abundance in our day, so as to advance the knowledge and circumspection of posterity; and this in spite of the fact that in the revered community of your sons you have the resources of several men who could perform this work more aptly and gracefully. But, as I see it, your devoted wisdom has decreed that you should relieve your own sons of this task as they sweat in the performance of the service imposed by the rule, and you refuse to permit the leisure mercifully granted to my weakness to lie fallow.8

This preface is well known. John Taylor argues that, ‘in view of official Cistercian policy’ (that is, in view of the General Chapter’s proscription against literary production), Ernald did not want his monks to be involved in the historiographical enterprise.9 Whether or not modern commentators specifically refer to the General Chapter’s proscription, the common interpretation of this passage is that Rievaulx rejected scholarship after Aelred’s 7

See the comments in the standard survey, Christopher Holdsworth, ‘Learning and Literature of English Cistercians, 1167–1214, With Special Reference to John of Ford’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Clare College, Cambridge, 1960), p. 33. For another theory on why the Cistercians were (allegedly) uninterested in history, see Christopher J. Holdsworth, ‘John of Ford and English Cistercian Writing 1167– 1214’, TRHS, 5th series, 11 (1961), 117–36 (p. 117). 8 ‘Literas sanctitatis vestrae suscepi, quibus mihi studium et operam rerum memorabilium, quae nostris temporibus copiosius provenerunt, ad notitiam cautelamque posterorum conscribendarum dignatur ingerere, cum ex illo venerabili filiorum vestrorum collegio plures vobis suppetant qui hoc opus commodius valeant atque elegantius adimplere. Sed, ut video, pia prudentia vestra propriis filiis circa observantiam militiae regularis sudantibus in hac parte ducens parcendum, indultum misericorditer infirmitati meae otium non patitur esse otiosum.’ William of Newburgh, Historia regum Anglicarum, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. by Richard Howlett, RS, 82, 4 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1886), I, 3. The translation is from William of Newburgh, The History of English Affairs Book I, ed. and trans. by Patrick G. Walsh and M. J. Kennedy (Warminster, Wiltshire: Aris and Phillips, 1988), pp. 26–27. 9 John Taylor, Medieval Historical Writing in Yorkshire (York: St Anthony’s Press, 1961), p. 10. Gransden argues similarly, Historical Writing, p. 263.

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death and that this is why Ernald was forced to delegate the historiographical enterprise to William. This logic has been extended and used to explain Cistercian historical writing beyond the immediate context of Rievaulx and William of Newburgh. As Taylor has written more generally, referring to issues beyond the Ernald commission, ‘After the false dawn of Ailred’s work, Yorkshire Cistercians wrote little in the way of historical composition until the fourteenth century’, due, among other things, to the General Chapter’s prohibition.10 This statement represents and confirms the common view that Cistercian historical writing was adversely affected by two factors, the Cistercians’ allegedly ingrained anti-intellectualism and the more specific proscription against literary composition. Following this logic it has been traditional to argue that Cistercian historical writing in England came to a centrally commanded standstill between the death of Aelred and the end of the twelfth century. But another interpretation of Ernald’s commission is possible. Although Ernald did not want his own monks to write a history, there was evidently still sufficient historical interest at Rievaulx for Ernald to make sure that the job got done. When William of Newburgh modestly pointed out that there were monks at Rievaulx who could have written the work he demonstrates that Rievaulx had a high reputation for literary and historical activity. Moreover, even though Ernald seems to have prohibited any Cistercians from writing about history, he nevertheless oversaw an abbey which retained an interest in the related activities of thinking about history, finding out about history, and talking about history. William makes it clear that much of the material for his Historia was told to him by monks from Rievaulx. In short, even if the Rievallian Cistercians did not physically write history at the end of the twelfth century they were still closely linked with its production and consumption. This leads to a broader point. It is hard to escape the conclusion that the alleged prohibition against, and decline in, Cistercian history writing exists only because modern commentators have been looking for it. To start, it is worth pointing out that the legislation against composition does not in fact ban writing, it simply bans unauthorized writing. That is, it is not a proscription after all but more precisely a regulation. As the statute makes clear, book production was clearly permitted provided the General Chapter gave approval.11 To this extent, the statute actually endorses a culture of book production and simply emphasizes that the resultant literary culture must conform to the Cistercians’ strong dedication to the Benedictine Rule and the Rule’s commitment to obedience. The fact that the General Chapter was the approving agent meant that, when composition was eventually 10 Taylor, Medieval Historical Writing, p. 21, and, similarly, Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 287. 11 To repeat the statute: ‘Nulli liceat abbati, nec monacho, nec novitio libros facere, nisi forte [my emphasis] cuiquam in generali capitulo concessum fuerit.’

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approved, then the resultant composition carried the authority of the order’s highest legislative body. This does not suggest an order which dismissed the written word but, rather, one which was aware of the influence of words and which actively courted this influence—something that is not surprising when we remember the concerted revision of the constitutional and exordia documents that had characterized the 1150s. Further, early legislation from approximately 1119 to the early 1150s suggests that Cistercian houses were expected to have scriptoria.12 Other legislation governed which books were to be copied, how books were to be illuminated, and how monks were to behave while copying.13 None of this would have been endorsed in an order which prohibited book production. It is questionable then whether the ‘proscription’ or ‘prohibition’ against composition is really so very relevant to a discussion of Cistercian historical writing, notwithstanding previous arguments that it is. It is clear that a distinction needs to be made between the theory and the practice of Cistercian composition. A start has been made in reference to the Cistercians’ alleged anti-intellectualism, with many scholars pointing out that this anti-intellectualism was more the case in theory than in daily life.14 The same applies to historiography. If we expand the definition of historiographical production beyond the limits of original composition to include copying, borrowing, and buying historical texts then we can detect a strong and continuing Cistercian historiographical interest throughout the second half of the twelfth century. Close study of book collections provides good evidence for Cistercian historiographical participation. Since Cistercian novices joined their houses as adults there was always the possibility that they would bring their own books with them. This was the case with Hugh of York who donated books to Fountains in Yorkshire in 1134.15 This practice continued into the

12

Statuta, ann. 1134, LXXXV (I, 32). Holdsworth redates this statute to 1119– 52: ‘The Chronology and Character of Early Cistercian Legislation’, p. 52. As with all the 1134 statutes, Berman opts for 15–20 years after 1134: The Cistercian Evolution, p. 50. 13 For a survey of the relevant legislation see Christopher Norton, ‘Table of Cistercian Legislation on Art and Architecture’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture, ed. by Norton and Park, pp. 315–93. For discussion, see Anne Lawrence, ‘English Cistercian Manuscripts of the Twelfth Century’, in Cistercian Art and Architecture, ed. by Norton and Park, pp. 284–98 (pp. 284–89). 14 However, the fact that scholars are still compelled to rebut this charge indicates how strongly the image of Cistercian anti-intellectualism is entrenched in common perceptions of the order. See Colomban Bock, ‘Les Cisterciens et l’étude du droit’, ASOC, 7 (1951), 3–31, and Marie-Anselme Dimier, ‘Les premiers cisterciens étaient-ils ennemis des études?’, Studia Monastica, 4 (1962), 69–91. 15 For Hugh’s books (of unknown titles unfortunately), see Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii, in Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains, vol. I,

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thirteenth century, as witnessed by the example of the first abbot of the house of Newenham in Devon.16 As well as waiting for books to be donated to them, Cistercian monks also took the initiative to seek out and buy manuscripts. An unlikely source for this practice is Gerald of Wales’s description of the Cistercians at Strata Florida in Wales and the way in which they tricked him out of his book collection in the first decade of the thirteenth century.17 The monks said Gerald could pawn his books with them and redeem them later. At the last minute, however, they changed their minds and said that their Book of Uses actually forbade them from holding books in pawn but that it did permit them to buy books outright. As Gerald needed money quickly for travel expenses, he was forced to sell the books against his will. This infuriated him and may well explain why his writings are so critical of the Cistercians. Further, although Gerald refers to the books in general terms as ‘theological’, it seems that at least one of the books in question was historical.18 This suggests that the Welsh Cistercians were sufficiently enthusiastic about history that they engaged in a conscious practice of less than honest behaviour to acquire copies for their libraries. Although this incident occurred in Wales rather than in England, the reference to the Book of Uses indicates that this endorsement of book buying was official Cistercian policy. It therefore obtained in the English context as well. On other occasions book collections were developed through unstated means, probably through a mixture of purchase and donation. The latefourteenth-century history by Thomas Burton at Meaux abbey in Yorkshire mentions that books were being acquired under abbot Alexander (1197– 1210) some two centuries earlier.19 The abbot of Louth Park in Lincolnshire also made a conscious effort to build up his library’s collection early in the thirteenth century.20 Although the titles of these abbots’ acquisitions are unknown, it is possible that some historical works were included along with the more obvious devotional and liturgical works. This was certainly the ed. by John Richard Walbran, Surtees Society, 42 (Durham: Surtees Society, 1862), pp. 1–129 (p. 53). 16 David N. Bell, ‘Lists and Records of Books’, An Cist, 43 (1987), 181–222 (pp. 199–200). 17 Gerald mentions this in both his De rebus a se gestis (c. 1204–05) and Speculum ecclesiae (c. 1220); see Giraldi Cambrensis opera, ed. by John S. Brewer, James F. Dimock, and George F. Warner, RS, 21, 8 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1861–91), Book III, chap. 17 (I, 117); Dist. III, chap. 5 (IV, 152–56). 18 See Julian Harrison, ‘A Note on Gerald of Wales and Annales Cambriae’, Welsh History Review, 17 (1994), 252–55. 19 Chronica monasterii de Melsa: A fundatione usque ad annum 1396 auctore Thoma de Burton, abbate, ed. by Edward A. Bond, RS, 43, 3 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1866–68), I, 326. 20 Chronicon abbatiae de Parco Lude: The Chronicle of Louth Park Abbey, ed. by Edmund Venables, trans. by A. R. Maddison (Horncastle, Lincolnshire: Lincolnshire Record Society, 1891), p. 13.

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case at Buildwas in Shropshire. As early as the mid-twelfth century, the monks at this abbey pursued a conscious policy of collecting books by donation, including some works which were definitely historical.21 Another less obvious area of Cistercian historiographical interest is the copying and dissemination of histories. We already know that continental Cistercians played an important role in this field in the second half of the twelfth century.22 The same applies with the English Cistercians who, as members of a new order only recently arrived in England, spent much of the second half of the twelfth century developing their library collections. Their libraries were being created from nothing and consequently there was great attention to copying and building up solid collections, of which historical works were a significant part. Even once we expand the definition of historical production to include works acquired but not written by the Cistercians, difficulties still remain. The details of Cistercian manuscript culture are complex and even Anne Lawrence, the pre-eminent scholar of English Cistercian manuscripts, has pointed out how much we still have to learn.23 This applies both to the actual manuscripts themselves and to the libraries in which they were housed and used.24 Two reasons account for this imprecision. The first concerns difficulties of dating. For the purposes of the following manuscript survey, I discuss historical manuscripts that have been dated to either the twelfth century or to the twelfth-to-thirteenth century. In practice this tends to mean manuscripts from the second half of the twelfth century, since the Cistercians did not arrive in England until 1128 and, further, little literary activity can be dated to the earliest decades of foundation. I do not discuss manuscripts that have been dated clearly to the thirteenth century since these are too late to fit into the immediate post-Aelredian period. A few manuscripts that have been dated with certainty to the outset of the thirteenth century are studied, but only for purposes of comparison or to 21 On donations to Buildwas, see Jennifer M. Sheppard, The Buildwas Books: Book Production, Acquisition and Use at an English Cistercian Monastery, 1165– c.1400 (Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, Bodleian Library, 1997), pp. lvi– lviii, xlix–l. 22 Bernard Guenée, Histoire et culture historique dans l’Occident médiéval (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1980), p. 285, and Mireille Schmidt-Chazan, ‘La chronique de Sigebert de Gembloux: Succès français d’une œuvre lotharingienne’, Les cahiers lorrains, 1 (1990), 1–26 (pp. 16–17). 23 ‘The study of Cistercian manuscripts is still a relatively new field.’ Anne Lawrence, ‘Cistercian Decoration: Twelfth-Century Legislation on Illumination and Its Interpretation in England’, Reading Medieval Studies, 12 (1995), 31–52 (p. 31). 24 ‘Very little is known about the contents of Cistercian libraries in England and Wales.’ Jean F. Preston, ‘Mixed Blessings: A Twelfth-Century Manuscript from Waverley’, in Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers: Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes, ed. by Pamela R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim (Aldershot, Hants.: Scolar Press, 1997), pp. 49–63 (p. 49).

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demonstrate how a twelfth-century trend continues. Given the dating difficulties, my aim is not to suggest any strict order or development of copying in the second half of the twelfth century. Rather, this survey presents a snapshot of those manuscripts which were copied or acquired during this period and which can therefore furnish evidence for the types of works the early Cistercians were sufficiently interested in to go to the trouble of adding to their collections. A second issue must also be borne in mind. We cannot always be sure that a particular manuscript was copied at a Cistercian abbey; perhaps it was copied elsewhere and acquired later. This is a difficult issue which applies to all manuscript studies from the Middle Ages. Consequently, there always remains the possibility that the physical copying of manuscripts was not conducted in the Cistercian abbeys under investigation. However, it is still possible to learn something valuable about Cistercian historiographical understandings even when a manuscript was copied elsewhere. Provided the ex libris mark is relatively early and we can therefore be assured that the Cistercian abbey acquired the manuscript in the period under investigation (twelfth and twelfth-to-thirteenth centuries), then this still indicates that Cistercian monks were sufficiently dedicated to the historical record to spend energy and expense acquiring copies of these histories. Examining histories acquired from other houses allows us to further our understanding of which histories were favoured by the English Cistercians, which histories were not favoured, and, in short, what kind of historiographical priorities the Cistercian monks held.

Library Collections — Lost Manuscripts and Surviving Manuscripts The Cistercian General Chapter did not order abbeys to keep library records until 1459. Surviving catalogues from the earlier centuries are therefore rare and arbitrary. In England only three houses seem to have catalogued their collections: Meaux in Yorkshire, Flaxley in Gloucestershire, and Rievaulx.25 The Meaux catalogue was compiled in the early fifteenth century and so is useless for this study. The mid-thirteenth-century Flaxley catalogue describes an abbey in which the interests were almost entirely theological. Among its eighty books only one historical work is listed.26 Given the abbey’s modest size and income, it seems that the Flaxley monks concentrated their efforts on acquiring essential works by Augustine, Gregory, 25

David N. Bell is the key researcher here. See ‘The Books of Meaux Abbey’, An Cist, 40 (1984), 25–83; ‘The Books of Flaxley Abbey’, An Cist, 43 (1987), 92– 110; ‘Lists and Records of Books’; The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians (London: British Library, 1992). 26 Bell, ‘The Books of Flaxley Abbey’, pp. 99, 102.

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Bernard of Clairvaux, and Hugh and Richard of St Victor rather than diversifying into historical matters. To this extent, Flaxley abbey was representative of many small abbeys of all orders. The Rievaulx catalogue is the most helpful of the three.27 It was probably compiled in the 1190s and was quickly followed by a second listing which is simply a shorter version of the first. The first catalogue is therefore the more helpful. It lists 225 titles which catered for a population of approximately 140 choir monks. Judging by the list, Augustine was the favourite author, followed by Gregory, Jerome, and Bede. There were also texts on law and medicine, a bestiary, and a lapidary. Because many of the works are now lost, we do not know when or where they were copied or when they arrived at Rievaulx. It has been suggested that most manuscripts were acquired or copied from the 1170s onwards.28 On the other hand, Aelred must have had access to a strong book collection by the 1140s when he began his writing career. At the very latest, the manuscripts in question had to have been at Rievaulx by the late twelfth century when the list was created. Although most of the works are devotional, the catalogue devotes one section to histories. These histories include classical, continental, and English texts. There was an ‘Hystoria ecclesiastica in uno volumine’, which probably referred to Eusebius’s history,29 and an ‘Historia Egesippi in uno volumine’, which was a Latin summary of Josephus’s De bello Iudaico.30 There was also Orosius’s Historia adversum paganos which was followed in the same manuscript by an important copy of Dares Phrygius’s De excidio Trojae historia.31 References to works by Josephus and Isidore continue this attention to classical and authoritative histories.32 The catalogue also includes histories of England. Henry of Huntingdon’s history is listed,33 as is an ‘Historia britonum in uno volumine’.34 The latter 27

The catalogue is published in Anselm Hoste, Bibliotheca Aelrediana, Instrumenta Patristica, 2 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1962), pp. 149–70, and Bell, The Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, pp. 87–137 (the latter is better for identifying titles). For emendations to Hoste’s identifications see also Bell, ‘Lists and Records of Books’, pp. 201–10. 28 K. A. J. Squire, ‘Aelred of Rievaulx: A Study of His Works and of Their Place in Cistercian Literature’ (unpublished B. Litt. thesis, Oxford, 1958), p. 5, n. 1. 29 No. 112 in Hoste’s catalogue, Bibliotheca Aelrediana (hereafter cited as ‘R’ with entry number). 30 R113. 31 R119. This manuscript survives as British Library, MS Royal 6 C VIII; see discussion later in this chapter. 32 R54; R77–78. 33 R114. This was probably copied or acquired early in Rievaulx’s history since Aelred had clearly been influenced by it when he composed his Relatio de standardo in the mid-1150s. 34 R116. Note that for the remainder of this chapter I refer to Nennius as the ‘author’ of the Historia Brittonum; this is simply for ease of reference.

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could have been either the work attributed to Nennius or else Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae. Both works were known as ‘Historia bri[t]tonum’ and, further, both were popular in other Cistercian houses. Various works by Bede, including his Historia ecclesiastica, De temporibus, Chronica minora et majora, and Vita Cuthberti were kept.35 Cistercian interest in saints’ lives and eremiticism was demonstrated by the possession of Reginald of Durham’s vita of Godric of Finchale.36 The catalogue also refers to continental works such as Hugh of St Victor’s Didascalicon (which discussed the relationship between biblical exegesis and history) as well as the generically titled ‘Historia de Ierusalem in uno volumine’ which in this instance referred to Fulcher of Chartres’s Historia Hierosolymitana.37 And finally, the catalogue also indicates that the Rievallian monks appreciated histories written by their own community members, namely Aelred. The catalogue lists a manuscript that included the Vita Edwardi, Genealogia regum Anglorum, Vita Niniani, and De sanctis ecclesiae Haugustaldensis.38 This manuscript survives today as British Library, Cotton MSS, Vitellius F III and it is important for two reasons. First, it is an important witness to the Rievallian dedication to history. The manuscript did not develop over time and have new sections added on gradually. Instead, it was planned and written from the outset as an integrated and specifically historical manuscript, thus indicating a strong attention to history at Rievaulx in the late twelfth century. Second, the fact that Aelred’s vitae of Edward and Ninian, his Genealogia regum Anglorum, and his account of the church at Hexham were all included in one manuscript provides good evidence that, in some instances at least, contemporary compilers and audiences conceived of Aelred’s historical writing as a corpus integral in itself and quite different from his spiritual works. There are two conclusions to be drawn from the Rievaulx catalogue. Although most of the listed manuscripts have not survived, we can still make the first point that the Rievaulx community in the last decade of the twelfth century was predominantly interested in patristic works of proven authority and devotional inspiration. The monks had conservative tastes and they concentrated on acquiring the necessary texts for their responsibilities in liturgy and lectio divina. This was their main priority. But second, they maintained a smaller but solid interest in history. This interest was focussed on English and classical history and only to a lesser extent on continental history. These preferences are confirmed by the surviving manuscripts as well. Because library catalogues often describe manuscripts that are lost, most evidential weight falls on the surviving manuscripts. Ker lists approximately 240 surviving volumes from English Cistercian houses, of which the 35

R104; R105; R109. R130. 37 R88; R115. 38 R43. 36

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bulk come from Rievaulx, Byland, and Fountains, all in Yorkshire, and Buildwas in Shropshire. Dating is difficult but manuscripts were certainly being made at Buildwas from the 1160s onwards, probably as part of a policy initiated by the abbot of the day.39 The same thing occurred at Rievaulx. Some surviving manuscripts from this house have been dated to the period 1140–70 and it is likely that they too were copied by the Cistercian monks themselves.40 These examples confirm Anne Lawrence’s argument that there was ‘considerable care, early in the life of these [Cistercian] houses, for the production and collection of manuscripts’.41 Concentrating specifically on twelfth-century manuscripts from the north of England, Lawrence has made some important observations.42 Overall, there are nearly seventy manuscripts which fit into this category. Byland leads at seventeen manuscripts, followed by Rievaulx and Fountains at fifteen each. Lawrence’s decision to concentrate on northern manuscripts only is a logical one since most surviving Cistercian manuscripts come from this area. Moreover, the northern manuscripts have their own illumination styles, quite separate from the styles of southern Cistercian houses, and they effectively form a class of manuscripts unto themselves. This domination by the northern houses will later prove significant when I examine the strong regional interest shown in the Cistercians’ histories, both in their original compositions and in their copied works. For England in general, there was no uniformity in twelfth-century library collections and manuscript acquisition. Some religious houses maintained a desultory interest in book collection and were barely influenced by the new Norman book trends. Their community members experienced little variation in reading habits between the late Anglo-Saxon period (when monks concentrated on devotional works and homilies) and the twelfth century. On the other hand, some houses were strongly influenced by the new Norman personnel and their reading habits. The cathedral priory of Rochester, for example, developed a library which included all the hallmarks of Norman book preferences: strong attention to patristic writers and disregard of pagan writings.43 The same priorities also obtained at Peterborough.44 39 Jennifer M. Sheppard, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Monastic Bindings and the Question of Localisation’, in Making the Medieval Book: Techniques of Production, ed. by Linda L. Brownrigg (Los Altos Hills: Anderson-Lovelace, 1995), pp. 181–98. 40 Lawrence, ‘English Cistercian Manuscripts’, p. 291. 41 Lawrence, ‘English Cistercian Manuscripts’, p. 297. 42 The two studies confined to the twelfth century are ‘English Cistercian Manuscripts’ and ‘Cistercian Decoration’. 43 Katharine Walker, ‘Rochester Cathedral Library: An English Book Collection Based on Norman Models’, in Les mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des XIe– e XII siècles, ed. by Raymonde Foreville (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1984), pp. 237–50. 44 Montague Rhodes James, Lists of Manuscripts Formerly in Peterborough Abbey Library, Supplement to the Bibliographical Society’s Transactions, 5 (London: Oxford University Press for the Bibliographical Society, 1926), pp. 7, 27–28.

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This variation in book preferences existed both between houses of different orders and between houses of the same order. For example, Benedictine library collections varied widely between houses, depending on a host of factors such as wealth, intellectual interests and training of personnel, and proximity to good exemplars. This diversity was present in all areas of the collections, including histories. Although many Benedictine houses participated in the historical revival prompted by the Norman Conquest, one community which did not was St Albans. Instead, St Albans’s greatest day for manuscript holdings would be the thirteenth century rather than the twelfth.45 Amidst all this lack of uniformity, the Cistercian libraries were more standardized than most. There were several reasons why they did not contain as much internal variation as the libraries of other orders. The earliest Cistercian statute concerning book production, certainly in existence by the mid-twelfth century, had stated that uniformity of texts should prevail throughout the order. A given collection of texts was essential for all houses and no diversity was allowed. These obligatory texts were the missal, the epistolary, the Bible, the gradual, the collectarium, the antiphonary, the Rule of St Benedict, the hymnary, the psalter, the lectionary, and the calendar.46 Another statute from a similar period repeated this concern with uniformity by commanding that no house could be established unless it first possessed copies of the missal, the Rule, the Book of Uses, the psalter, the hymnary, the collectarium, the lectionary, the antiphonary, and the gradual.47 In their similarity and insistence, these statutes (which scholars have dated anywhere from the early to the mid-twelfth century at the latest) set the tone for Cistercian bibliographic interests which would continue to be uniform and devotional. Case studies of continental libraries confirm this trend.48 They show that continental Cistercians had a strong interest in 45

Rodney Thomson, Manuscripts from St Albans Abbey 1066–1235, 2 vols (Hobart: University of Tasmania; Woodbridge, Suffolk: Brewer, 1982). 46 The heading for the statute is: ‘Quos libros non licet habere diversos.’ Statuta, ann. 1134, III, (I, 13). Holdsworth redates the statute to 1098–c. 1100, while Berman argues for 15–20 years after 1134; Holdsworth, ‘The Chronology and Character of Early Cistercian Legislation’, p. 52, and Berman, The Cistercian Evolution, p. 50. 47 Statuta, ann. 1134, XII (I, 15). Holdsworth argues that this statute is ‘early’: ‘The Chronology and Character of Early Cistercian Legislation’, p. 52. Norton, following Holdsworth, dates it to 1098–c. 1113, while once again Berman argues for 15–20 years after 1134: Norton, ‘Table of Cistercian Legislation’, pp. 319, 321, and Berman, The Cistercian Evolution, p. 50. 48 Natasa Golob, Twelfth-Century Cistercian Manuscripts. The Sitticum Collection (Ljubljana: Slovenskaknjiga; London: Harvey Miller, 1996), chap. 2; Jean-Paul Bouhot, ‘La bibliothèque de Clairvaux’, in Bernard de Clairvaux: Œuvres complètes, vol. I, Introduction générale: Bernard de Clairvaux, histoire, mentalités, spiritualité, Sources Chrétiennes, 380 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992), pp. 141–53; and Thomas Falmagne, ‘Opera omnia et indexation: L’utilisation du patrimoine patristique cistercien au XIIIe siècle’, Scriptorium, 50 (1996), 305–24.

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liturgical and patristic texts, coupled with a corresponding lack of interest in the mathematical, astronomical, and classical works which were gaining popularity among other communities in the twelfth century. The English Cistercians followed this lead. As Christopher Cheney has demonstrated, there are 240 surviving manuscripts which were written before about 1230, which seem to have belonged to an English Cistercian house at some point and, further, which may well have belonged to the Cistercian house before 1230. As one might expect, the collections are conservative, particularly in the smaller abbeys. Over four-fifths of volumes fall into the category of theology. Most are glossed biblical texts and commentaries, books necessary for the liturgy, and patristic works, especially those by Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory. Other popular texts were also devotional. These included sermons, meditations, hagiography, and miracle stories. When combined, these works provided a strong foundation for the Cistercians’ daily lectio divina. As a rule, the English Cistercians did not begin acquiring continental manuscripts until the 1170s.49 They showed little interest in new trends of philosophical thought and canon law and rarely copied or owned books treating the otherwise increasingly popular areas of legal studies or profane poetry. They were however interested in composing and copying their own works of spirituality, such as Aelred’s Speculum caritatis and other devotional works. But, if many of the Cistercian libraries in England are remarkable only for their conservatism, there is one feature which contradicts this trend. Although devotional works formed the bulk of Cistercian collections from the second half of the twelfth century into the thirteenth century, surviving manuscripts reveal what Cheney terms a ‘marked interest in historical narrative and biography’.50 Lawrence agrees that on the basis of surviving manuscripts ‘one branch of literary activity which does seem to have been generally accepted amongst the Cistercians was the writing of chronicles and saints’ lives’.51 The commonest examples of Cistercian historiographical interest in the second half of the twelfth century are standard national histories, shorter chronicles of England, ancient and classical histories, and universal and mixed histories.

49 Christopher R. Cheney, ‘English Cistercian Libraries: The First Century’, in his Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 328–45 (p. 335). 50 Cheney, ‘English Cistercian Libraries’, p. 344. As Cheney summarizes, the English Cistercians had a ‘lively curiosity’ for history (p. 359). 51 Lawrence, ‘English Cistercian Manuscripts’, p. 289.

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National Histories One of the most popular historians in any English medieval library was Bede, particularly during the twelfth century. In the immediate postConquest period Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica and vitae were popular for two reasons.52 They were ammunition for Benedictine monks hoping to assert a sense of communion with the glorious days of the Anglo-Saxon past. For monks of other orders they served as inspirations for the return of monasticism to northern England in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The Cistercians disregarded the first line of thinking. As their order was a new one they had no need to claim, and indeed no possibility of claiming, an Anglo-Saxon heritage. When they did wish to identify themselves with past glories they generally turned back to the desert and the Bible rather than to the immediate English past—this desert theme was in fact the guiding imperative of their official foundational documents, the Exordium parvum and Exordium Cistercii. On the other hand, Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica did interest them for the second reason. Stephen Harding, for example, seems to have been inspired by Bedan models of monasticism and abbatial responsibility when he formulated his influential models of Cistercian practice.53 These Bedan models referred to monasticism in the north in particular. The popularity of the Historia ecclesiastica in Cistercian houses, especially in the northern houses with their superior libraries, may therefore be due to the fact that the northern Cistercians saw in this history the seeds of the northern monastic revival which they had continued. The surviving Bedan manuscripts give an indication of Cistercian historical interests. They suggest that Cistercian monks were interested in combining different histories of England within single manuscripts, perhaps in order to build up their own personalized collections of local and national history. For example, Jervaulx in Yorkshire owned a twelfth-century manuscript which opens with Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica before including the abbot Cuthbert’s Epistola de obitu Bedae, Bernard of Clairvaux’s Vita Malachiae, and then concluding with an imperfect version of the Historia Brittonum.54 Another Cistercian manuscript which combines Bede with other English historians comes from Newminster in Northumberland. The monks here 52 Ralph H. C. Davis, ‘Bede after Bede’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. by Christopher Harper-Bill, C. J. Holdsworth, and J. L. Nelson (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1989), pp. 103–16. 53 Herbert E. J. Cowdrey, ‘ “Quidam Frater Stephanus Nomine, Anglicus Natione”: The English Background of Stephen Harding’, Revue bénédictine, 101 (1991), 322–40. 54 Oxford, St John’s College, MS 99; c.12; Neil R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, 2nd edn (London: Royal Historical Society, 1964), p. 105. As I have not seen this manuscript my discussion is based on catalogue descriptions.

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owned a twelfth-century manuscript which contained both the Historia ecclesiastica and a portion of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s introductory letter to the Prophetia Merlini.55 The decision to include this letter alongside such an authoritative historian as Bede suggests the willingness of the compilers to accept Geoffrey of Monmouth as a reputable writer of history and, even if the Cistercian monks did not perform the copying, at the very least we can state that the Cistercian readership would have been influenced by this decision. Another manuscript reflects the same acceptance of the Prophetia Merlini. Liège University Library MS 369C is a twelfth-century manuscript associated with the Yorkshire house of Kirkstall. Although there is disagreement over whether it was actually written at Kirkstall, it was certainly housed there by the late twelfth century.56 The manuscript contains a British chronicle with similarities to the Historia Brittonum, an incomplete copy of William of Jumièges’s Gesta Normannorum ducum, the Historia Brittonum, and Geoffrey’s Prophetia Merlini. The inclusion of the Prophetia Merlini in this historical dossier warrants discussion. The Prophetia text was completed before the rest of the Historia regum Britanniae and, although it was eventually incorporated into this history as Book 7, it still often circulated separately from it.57 Its subject matter is eclectic: among other things, the Prophetia Merlini describes a battle between two dragons, the future behaviours of such odd figures as the Lion of Justice and the Ass of Wickedness, as well as various astrological and apocalyptic events. Although these themes lie well outside the modern conception of history, prophecy was often considered a logical extension of history for medieval audiences. Since the important points of medieval history were the meanings and morals that could be drawn from certain facts, a history of the future was quite logical; it still responded to the basic urge to find greater meaning in the seemingly random ways of the world. Although this desire to find meaning in history was popular with all medieval historians, it was churchmen who embraced prophetic histories 55

British Library, Additional MS 25014; c.12; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 134, ascribed to Newminster with a question mark. The most thorough investigation of the manuscript, however, clearly asserts a Newminster provenance; Anne Lawrence, ‘The Artistic Influence of Durham Manuscripts’, in Anglo-Norman Durham: 1093–1193, ed. by David Rollason, Margaret Harvey, and Michael Prestwich (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1994), pp. 451–69 (pp. 458–59). 56 Liège University Library MS 369C; c.12, Kirkstall ex libris; M. Grandjean, Bibliothèque de l’Université de Liège: Catalogue des manuscrits (Liège: H. Vaillant-Carmante, 1875), no. 737, pp. 357–58. I have not seen this manuscript; my discussion is based on catalogue descriptions, as well as on Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 107, and Caroline D. Eckhardt, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Prophetia Merlini and the Construction of Liège University MS 369C’, Manuscripta, 32 (1988), 176–84. 57 The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. I, Bern Burgerbibliothek MS 568, ed. by Neil Wright (Cambridge: Brewer, 1984), pp. x–xii.

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most eagerly. This was the case with Geoffrey’s Prophetia, with monastic historians reacting the most favourably to the work and even including elements of it in their own compositions.58 The Kirkstall interest in the Prophetia places the Cistercian community within this broader trend of dedication to histories of the future. Even if the Kirkstall monks did not perform the physical copying, the fact that they took the effort to acquire and consult a manuscript containing the Prophetia testifies to a Cistercian interest in Geoffrey of Monmouth and in his prophecy in particular. In addition to Bede and Geoffrey of Monmouth, the early Cistercians were also interested in William of Malmesbury. This interest seems to have been strong from the first years of the order’s history in England; indeed, the earliest surviving copied chronicle from any Cistercian house in England is a copy of William’s Gesta regum Anglorum. This appears in a twelfth-century manuscript from Buildwas, which was probably made as a self-contained volume by the Buildwas monks as part of their earliest library campaigns in the 1160s to 1170s.59 It is significant that this early copied history concentrates on national English history, since this is a trend which would become the hallmark of the Cistercians’ later works. The Gesta regum Anglorum was William of Malmesbury’s most influential work, and the English Cistercians were similar to other orders in their interest in this composition. The library at Sawley in Yorkshire held a manuscript containing brief excerpts from Books I and II of this history. This is Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 139 which, as mentioned in Chapter 1, was housed at Sawley by the late twelfth or early thirteenth century.60 A twelfth-century copy which may have come from a Cistercian house appears in Oxford, All Souls MS 33, a manuscript which is possibly from Merevale in Warwickshire.61 Moving into the early 58

For the strong monastic interest in the Prophetia Merlini see Julia Crick, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth, Prophecy and History’, Journal of Medieval History, 18 (1992), 357–71. 59 Cambridge University Library, MS Ii.II.3, fols 1–290r, Buildwas ex libris; A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, 5 vols and index (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1856–67), III, no. 1736, p. 372. The most thorough investigation dates the manuscript to c. 1170; Sheppard, The Buildwas Books, cat. 8. 60 The relevant excerpts appear at §§15–18, fols 160r–63r. 61 Merevale ex libris. For a possible ascription to Merevale, see Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 130, and David N. Bell, An Index of Authors and Works in Cistercian Libraries in Great Britain, CSS, 130 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1992), p. 148. The new editors of the Gesta regum are less sure of its origins; William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, vol. I, ed. and trans. by Roger A. B. Mynors, completed by Rodney M. Thomson and Michael Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), p. xviii. They do note, however, that the Buildwas version I have already discussed (CUL MS Ii.II.3) is ‘almost certainly’ the parent of this copy, a state of affairs that might

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thirteenth century, there is a copy from Robertsbridge in Sussex which also survives.62 The monks at Byland in Yorkshire were also interested in William of Malmesbury, although not in his Gesta regum Anglorum. In the late twelfth century they produced an ornate version of the first four books of William’s Gesta pontificum Anglorum.63 This was a period during which the Byland monks were still far from settled in their community. They had moved site many times, they were engaged in difficult property disputes, and they were presumably in a financial position to copy only those works they considered especially important. It is significant then that they dedicated the effort to copying this historical work at a time when their bibliographical interest was overwhelmingly focussed on patristic works. As mentioned already, Geoffrey of Monmouth was also a popular author in Cistercian libraries. His work often appears in collections that were otherwise restricted to patristic or liturgical works, such as the collection at Roche in Yorkshire. Roche’s few surviving books are generally copies of Augustine, Ambrose, and Gregory. But in addition to these there is also a copy of the Historia regum Britanniae from the second half of the twelfth century.64 It is possible that Geoffrey’s history was known in Cistercian houses very soon after its composition. Geoffrey’s work was not only very popular very quickly throughout England but it was also popular among a range of different audiences. Henry of Huntingdon was a Latin-literate canon and historian; Walter Espec was a lay noble; and Dame Custance, Geffrei Gaimar’s patron, was a laywoman interested in vernacular translations of the history. These people all belonged to very different subcultures of Anglo-Norman England yet all of them were quick to embrace the Historia regum Brittaniae and find something in it that responded to their own interests and requirements. Given that Geoffrey’s history crossed the boundaries of gender and language soon after its composition, it is not surprising that it also crossed suggest a Cistercian provenance for Oxford, All Souls MS 33. As I have not seen this manuscript, my discussion is based on the published reports. 62 London, Private Collection MS 1; Andrew G. Watson, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain; Supplement to the Second Edition (London: Royal Historical Society, 1987), p. 58. As I have not seen this manuscript, my discussion is based on the published reports. 63 British Library, MS Harley 3641; c.12ex, Byland ex libris; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 23. See also A Catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: His Majesty King George III, 1808–12), III, 48. 64 New Haven, Yale University Library, Beinecke MS 590 (as I have not seen this manuscript, my discussion is based on the published reports); c.12ex+c.13in; Julia Crick, The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. III, A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Brewer, 1989), no. 128, pp. 210–11.

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boundaries between monastic and non-monastic life. It is in this context that we can appreciate the Cistercian familiarity with the Historia regum Britanniae. Thanks to an intriguing reference in Aelred’s Speculum caritatis we can be confident that stories about Arthur were already a part of Rievallian historical culture by the early 1140s. Aelred’s treatise contains a reference to novices who weep more easily over ‘fictitious tales of someone (I don’t know who) called Arthur’ than over pious books.65 There are a number of ways of interpreting this fascinating information. It is possible that the fictitious tales were known through court tales and word of mouth. And, certainly, Aelred had had a very worldly life before he joined the Cistercians and could be expected to be familiar with a great deal of popular culture. On the other hand, the Speculum caritatis was composed in 1142–43 and we know that Geoffrey’s history was already in circulation by this time. Indeed, Walter Espec had a copy at Helmsley near Rievaulx by 1139 at the latest.66 Given that Walter was the founder of Rievaulx, and was already in the habit of lending this copy of the Historia regum Brittaniae (as Geffrei Gaimar tells us), it is possible that he provided a copy for the monks at Rievaulx or perhaps for his good friend Aelred in particular. Further, as we already know, Aelred was sufficiently familiar with Walter’s habits and historical interests that he was able to write a realistic pen portrait of the man in his Relatio de standardo. Clearly, then, Aelred knew that Walter was an integral member of the growing northern lay historiographical culture, and this knowledge may well have included a familiarity with Walter’s personal copy of the Historia regum Britanniae. Alternatively, the fact that Aelred refers to novices as the ones most likely to be familiar with Geoffrey’s work perhaps suggests that Aelred was referring to the reading that his noble-born and literate novices would have engaged in before joining the monastery. Certainly, Aelred’s criticism in the Speculum caritatis would have been meaningless unless there was already a culture of Arthurian interest and knowledge among his monks. Unless the monks had at least heard of this new history and its tales, Aelred’s comment would have been pointless. Through a brief moralizing reference, Aelred has alluded to an Arthurian historiographical culture at Rievaulx about which we would love to know much more.

65

The Mirror of Charity, trans. by Elizabeth Connor, CF, 17 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990), II. 17. 51 (p. 199); ‘Nam et in fabulis, quae uulgo de nescio quo finguntur Arthuro, memini me nonnunquam usque ad effusionem lacrimarum fuisse permotum’: Liber de speculo caritatis, in Aelredi Rievallensis Opera omnia, vol. I (Opera ascetica), ed. by Anselm Hoste and Charles H. Talbot, CCCM, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1971), II, 51 (p. 90). 66 On Walter’s literary interests see Geffrei Gaimar, L’Estoire des Engleis, ed. by Alexander Bell, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 14–16 (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1960), lines 6441–50, and Ian Short, ‘Gaimar’s Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Liber vetustissimus’, Speculum, 69 (1994), 323–43 (pp. 337–38).

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Further possible interest in Geoffrey can be posited for the monks at Kirkstall. In addition to the combined manuscript containing Bede and Geoffrey’s Prophetia letter, discussed already, the community may have possessed a full copy of the Historia regum Britanniae. Durham, Ushaw College, MS 6 is a composite volume in which the Historia regum Britanniae appears along with Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum. The manuscript originally contained only Geoffrey’s text and this portion of the manuscript is dated to the second half of the twelfth century, while Henry’s text is dated to the late twelfth to early thirteenth century. Current suggestions are that the Galfredian text is definitely from the north of England and that it may have been kept in the Kirkstall library in the late twelfth century.67 Cistercian interest in the Historia regum Britanniae continued into the early thirteenth century. By the first half of the thirteenth century, the monks at Jervaulx had copied, or at the very least acquired, a version of this work.68 Although the manuscript as a whole does not include rubrics, the beginning of the Prophetia Merlini is clearly rubricated for ease of reference (fol. 20v). Thus, like the community at Kirkstall, the Jervallian monks also seem to have been interested in the Prophetia Merlini, although once again the reasons for this prophetic interest are unclear. Much of the Cistercians’ interest in English history can be explained more precisely as an interest in northern English history. This attachment is the result of several factors. Aelred, for example, had a strong dedication to his Northumbrian heritage and this sympathy was disseminated widely, thanks to the popularity of his writings. Other contributing factors were the northern concentration of the early Cistercian houses and the high reputation of both Bede and the Durham historians. This encouraged Cistercian writers of histories and hagiographies to concentrate on the northern heritage. For example, when early Cistercians praised their own monks they referred to them in Bedan terms and endorsed their northern priorities. Maurice, the second abbot of Rievaulx (1145–47), was known to his contemporaries as a ‘second Bede’ due to his exemplary learning and way of life.69 One of his 67 See Wilhelm Levison, ‘A Combined Manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Henry of Huntingdon’, EHR, 58 (1943), 41–51; Julia Crick, The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. IV, Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge: Brewer, 1991), no. 210, pp. 317–18; The Gesta Normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. by Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992– 95), I, ci; Bell, Index of Authors and Works, p. 64. As I have not seen this manuscript my discussion is based on published reports. 68 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 514; c.13; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 105; Falconer Madan and others, A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, 7 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1895–1953), II.1, no. 2184. 69 Walter Daniel, The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx, ed. and trans. by Frederick Maurice Powicke (London: Thomas Nelson, 1950), XXV (p. 33).

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two surviving works indicates that he maintained Bede’s devotion to northern saints. As the Rievaulx catalogue describes it, this was a composition ‘de translatione corporis S. Cuthberti’.70 Today this text survives embedded in the collection of miracle stories, the Capitula de miraculis et translationibus Sancti Cuthberti, which was composed by various monks at Durham in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries.71 As Maurice had been a member of the Durham community before joining the Cistercians he may have composed the Cuthbert treatise before he entered Rievaulx. However, the fact that the Rievaulx library gained and catalogued a copy of the work shows the extent to which the Cistercian community was interested in this northern saint and his history. In effect, the Cistercians simply took over the historical and hagiographical interests of their northern neighbours. Although it has not previously featured in discussions of Cistercian historical writing, Maurice’s composition on Cuthbert is therefore an important example of the way in which Cistercian monks’ earlier careers and writings influenced later Cistercian historiographical trends. The northern preoccupation was also common at Sawley, where in this instance it was combined with a Celtic preoccupation. As discussed in Chapter 1, it is clear that the Sawley monks were interested in written histories. However, a second point that is also clear is that the details of this interest are highly complex. There are difficulties in determining the dates at which manuscripts eventually housed at Sawley were added to the library. Another area of dispute is where the copying took place. For the moment the consensus is that the Sawley community did not copy manuscripts from scratch but, instead, acquired ready-made histories from Durham and then occasionally updated them.72 However, this simply raises the next question of when the acquisitions were made and when and to what extent the updates were conducted. Here the debates are still very much alive, and future discoveries may well alter current theories. In the light of this, it pays to proceed from the few accepted points. Regardless of where the relevant historical manuscripts were produced, they were certainly at Sawley by the late twelfth or early thirteenth century, the date of the Sawley 70

R99. Maurice’s composition is often mistakenly catalogued under Symeon of Durham’s works; it is printed in Symeonis monachi opera omnia, ed. by Thomas Arnold, RS, 75, 2 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1882–85), I, 229–61; II, 333–62. 72 Earlier arguments by David Dumville favoured Sawley copying, but these views are now in the minority; see ‘The Sixteenth-Century History of Two Cambridge Books from Sawley’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 7 (1977–80), 427–44. Opposing Dumville, see Bernard Meehan, ‘Durham Twelfth-Century Manuscripts in Cistercian Houses’, in Anglo-Norman Durham, ed. by Rollason, Harvey, and Prestwich, pp. 439–49. Although I also believe Dumville overestimates the degree of copying done by the Sawley monks, this does not invalidate the points he makes concerning the important role the Sawley monks played in preserving and transmitting historical texts. 71

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ex libris identifications. This in itself suggests a genuine historiographical culture at this Yorkshire abbey at this time. The Sawley monks were sufficiently interested in history to make sure they acquired histories even if they did not or could not produce them themselves. The strongest evidence for Sawley’s historical interest comes from two medieval manuscripts, which have since been split into three. The first is CCCC MS 139, the details of which have already been described. The second manuscript has been divided since the Middle Ages and now survives as Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66, pp. 1–114 and Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.I.27, pp. 1–40 and pp. 73–252.73 Including some twelfth-century sections as well as later thirteenth-century elements, it was written in stages. The contents of all three current manuscripts are mainly historical, with particular attention to the history of northern England. Among other things, CCCC MS 139 contains histories by Aelred, John and Richard of Hexham, Symeon of Durham, as well as a version of the Historia Brittonum. The relevant sections of CUL MS Ff.I.27 contain the De excidio Britanniae et conquestu by Gildas and the Historia Brittonum. Other elements, which appear in a block at pp. 73–220, show a Durham orientation. These include Bede’s De temporibus, Symeon of Durham’s Libellus de exordio (previously known as the Historia Dunelmensis ecclesie) with its continuations, the Historia de Sancto Cuthberto, a list of relics kept at Durham, Aethelwulf’s De abbatibus, and the poem De situ Dunelmi. The final manuscript, CCCC MS 66, is divided into various sections, of which only the first three are relevant to this discussion. The first is the famous mappa mundi which is renowned for its artwork. However, the fact that the manuscript opens with such expensive and colourful illumination makes one doubt from the outset that the work could ever have been produced in a modest Cistercian house such as Sawley.74 73 The standard theory is that CCCC MS 66 and CUL MS Ff.I.27 originally (in the twelfth century) formed a single manuscript. This manuscript seems to have been planned as a whole, although it may well have been executed in separate parts. See Montague Rhodes James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College Cambridge, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), I, no. 66, pp. 137–45; A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, II, 318–29, and Christopher Norton, ‘History, Wisdom and Illumination’, in Symeon of Durham: Historian of Durham and the North, ed. by David Rollason (Stamford: Shaun Tyas, 1998), pp. 61–105. Even Bernard Meehan, who has suggested that the two manuscripts may have been written separately, accepts that they were ‘combined at an early date into a single volume’ (‘Durham Twelfth-Century Manuscripts’, p. 444). 74 Sawley was founded in 1148 and experienced considerable difficulties until 1189 when intervention from the founder’s family secured its future; The Chartulary of the Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary of Sallay in Craven, ed. by Joseph McNulty, 2 vols, Yorkshire Archaeological Society Record Series, 87, 90 (Wakefield: Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1933–34), II, 128–29.

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Following the illumination, the second section features an imago mundi which is then followed by miscellaneous extracts on cosmography and also by geographical information from Pliny. This initial interest in geography and the natural world continues in the third section but is redirected to relate more closely to history and genealogy. The next items in the manuscript are a wheel of fortune and a genealogical table tracing from Adam through to Woden. Next comes a brief world history covering ancient glorious peoples, followed by another short history, this time focussed on English kings and a discussion of the English dioceses.75 From the fourth section onwards the manuscript turns away from historical matters. It is clear that the history the Sawley monks were interested in learning about was broad; it included English history (northern English history, around Durham, especially) and Celtic (particularly Welsh) history. Concentrating on glosses and later updates to the Historia Brittonum in CCCC MS 139, David Dumville has argued that this Welsh interest was unusually strong and that the Sawley monks seem to have kept returning to the Welsh sections to update them. This reworking occurred in waves, particularly in the 1160s and around 1200.76 Dumville suggests that there were two scribes at Sawley, both working around 1200, who added material of Celtic origin to the base copy of the Historia Brittonum. Other Celtic works were also popular at Sawley. For example, following the Historia Brittonum in CCCC MS 139 there is a Vita Gilde, composed by the twelfth-century Welsh writer Caradog of Llancarfan. Another Celtic source used at Sawley around 1200 was a Latin vita of Patrick that has since been lost. There was also Book I of Gildas’s De excidio Britanniae, which also featured in CUL MS Ff.I.27 at pp. 1–14. All of this suggests a consistent interest in combining Celtic historical material with the more traditional northern English histories. And even if the degree of copying performed by the Sawley monks was less than has been suggested, the manuscripts in question were undoubtedly still housed and read at Sawley. This indicates that the Cistercian community at Sawley was sympathetic to both Celtic history (particularly in its Welsh and Irish forms) and to English history (particularly in its northern, Durham-focussed, form). As well as northern histories, there are other English histories which appeared in Cistercian libraries. But these individual works were more varied and they were less popular. The Buildwas monks, who in the midtwelfth century were the first Cistercians to establish a scriptorium and program for increasing their book collection, continued their bibliographic interest into the next century. By the first half of the thirteenth century they 75

The world history appears at pp. 43–58 of the manuscript. The English history appears at pp. 68–98, while, for a listing, see Bell, Index of Authors and Works, p. 180. 76 David N. Dumville, ‘Celtic-Latin Texts in Northern England, c.1150–c.1250’, Celtica, 12 (1977), 19–49 (pp. 29–30, 43).

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owned a copy of William of Newburgh’s history77 while, by the same date, Rievaulx would own a manuscript of Roger Howden’s Chronica.78 This Howden manuscript is an important early version of the history and was possibly written at Durham.79 If so, it is an example of the strong system of manuscript exchange between northern monastic houses, as represented also by the Durham-Sawley connection. There were of course historical works known and used by twelfthcentury Cistercians that are now lost. For example, Byland owned many of Hugh of St Victor’s works, including a twelfth-century copy of his Didascalicon, a work containing commentary on historical theory.80 Another lost work was produced by a certain ‘William of Rievaulx’. Ralph Higden, writing in the first half of the fourteenth century, lists ‘Wilhelmus Rievallensis’ as one of his historical sources. Although he provides no dates and no further information, the placement of this William after Alfred of Beverley and Geoffrey of Monmouth but before Gerald of Wales and John of Salisbury suggests a twelfth-century author.81 The temptation is to equate this William with the William mentioned by Richard of Hexham. Writing in the mid-twelfth century, Richard may have been referring to the same man when he mentions that William, the first abbot of Rievaulx (d. 1145), was one of a number of monks who had helped preserve the perpetual memory of the Hexham church.82 We know that abbot William had strong literary interests, since he had served as Bernard of Clairvaux’s secretary and scribe. On the other hand, Richard need not necessarily have been referring to a written history; there were liturgical, sculptural, and artistic means by which a memory could be preserved. In either event, it is clear that historical interest and production was strong in twelfth-century Cistercian houses, even if some of the evidence is no longer retrievable. 77

London, Lambeth Palace MS 73; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 14, and Montague Rhodes James and Claude Jenkins, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace. The Mediaeval Manuscripts, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930–32), no. 73 (I, 117–20). As I have not seen this manuscript my discussion is based on published reports. 78 London, Inner Temple, MS 511.2; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 159; Bell, Index of Authors and Works, p. 131. As I have not seen this manuscript my discussion is based on published reports. 79 David Corner, ‘The Earliest Surviving Manuscripts of Roger of Howden’s Chronica’, EHR, 98 (1983), 297–310. 80 London, British Library, Additional MS 38816. The only surviving parts of this manuscript are the fly-leaves, fols 18–20. See Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 22, and Bell, ‘Lists and Records of Books’, pp. 189–90. 81 Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden monachi Cestrensis, ed. by Churchill Babington, RS, 41, 9 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1865–86), I, 24. 82 Ricardus prior Hagustaldensis de statu et episcopis Hagustaldensis ecclesiae, in The Priory of Hexham, Its Chroniclers, Endowments, and Annals, ed. by James Raine, Surtees Society, 44 (Durham: Surtees Society, 1864), I, 1–62 (p. 55).

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Some lost histories cannot be dated. A seventeenth-century catalogue description mentions that British Library, Cotton MSS, Galba A III was a Fountains manuscript which contained a history of King Stephen. But the manuscript was partially burnt in 1731 and then completely destroyed in 1865.83 Although it is possible that this was a twelfth-century work, there is no evidence to argue one way or the other. All we can say for sure is that the history belonged to Fountains abbey at some point in the Middle Ages. This is one of the many Cistercian historical works that remains little more than a tantalizing shadow. No doubt there were many more. To summarize thus far, it is worth repeating that the Cistercian libraries in the twelfth century were being created from nothing and that the order itself was still consolidating its place within the English monastic landscape. The main characteristic of the histories copied and kept in Cistercian libraries at this time is that they are histories of England. Thus, we can argue that the Cistercians in England saw knowledge and possession of the English past as an important component of their monastic consolidation. Although initially dependent on their French mother houses for recruits and legislative documents, the Cistercians in England were quick to see their historical identity as linked with England. Familiar with the official exordia documents since the reissuings of the 1150s, the English monks now took the opportunity to look beyond the immediate history of their order. Having succeeded in the initial tasks of finding suitable locations, good agricultural lands, and donors, and after getting their building programs under way, the English Cistercians in the second half of the century began consolidating themselves in a different fashion, establishing themselves in the English literary landscape as well as the physical landscape. This is a crucial piece of evidence for the way in which the monks fashioned their sense of communal identity; they chose not to continue looking to the continent but, instead, to incorporate themselves within the broader historical traditions of their new country. This refashioning of identity would not have been possible had there not been strong networks of manuscript exchange between the new Cistercian abbeys and the older Benedictine communities from which they acquired their historical exemplars. This is not the place to labour the point, since Anne Lawrence in particular has completed excellent studies of manuscript sharing in the north of England. Although many details remain unclear, the overwhelming conclusion is that Cistercian houses were strongly dependent

83

See Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library 1696 (Translation of Thomas Smith, Catalogus librorum manuscriptorum bibliothecae Cottonianae), ed. by Colin G. C. Tite (Cambridge: Brewer, 1984 [1696]), p. 61, and ‘Report from the Parliamentary Committee appointed to view the Cottonian Library, 1732’, appendix B, ‘Account of Manuscripts, etc., destroyed or injured’, also published by Tite in an unpaginated section at the end of the book.

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on exemplars from Durham Cathedral Priory.84 By the middle of the twelfth century Durham had an extensive library numbering 450 volumes.85 The library was unique in northern England and it was the natural place to seek manuscripts if, like the Cistercians and the other new communities in the north, monks and canons were creating their libraries from nothing. New foundations needed books for liturgy, for teaching, and for lectio divina, and Durham was the logical place to seek exemplars of these essential devotional works. Durham was particularly attractive given that some members of the early Cistercian houses had in fact commenced their religious lives there and, as in the case of personnel at Rievaulx, continued to maintain personal connections. The same dependence applied in the historiographical as well as liturgical context, particularly given Durham’s strength as an historiographical centre.86 For example, the three copies of the Historia Brittonum which were eventually housed in Cistercian libraries were in fact old copies from Durham, made expendable when the Durham community members updated their own version of the Historia.87 This testifies as much to the strength and continual updating of the Durham historical collection as it does to the necessarily weaker position of the new Cistercian houses, not so much creating their own historical productions as dependent on the offerings of others. Significantly, Durham-inspired features do not appear in manuscripts from southern Cistercian houses.88 From this we can conclude that there was no uniform practice of Cistercian manuscript production and acquisition throughout England. Rather, trends were localized. Cistercian monks in the twelfth century were establishing their libraries from bare beginnings 84

Studies include Roger A. B. Mynors, Durham Cathedral Manuscripts (Durham: Oxford University Press for Durham Cathedral, 1939); Lawrence, ‘English Cistercian Manuscripts’; Lawrence, ‘The Artistic Influence of Durham Manuscripts’; Anne Lawrence, ‘A Northern English School? Patterns of Production and Collection of Manuscripts in the Augustinian Houses of Yorkshire in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Yorkshire Monasticism. Archaeology, Art and Architecture, from the Seventh to Sixteenth Centuries, ed. by Lawrence R. Hoey, The British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions, 16 (Leeds: W. S. Maney, 1995), pp. 145–53; and Meehan, ‘Durham Twelfth-Century Manuscripts’. 85 This figure is based on the library list compiled in the mid part to third quarter of the twelfth century, listed in Durham Cathedral Library, MS B.IV.24 and published in Catalogi Veteres Librorum Ecclesiae Cathedralis Dunelm. Catalogues of the Library of Durham Cathedral, ed. by Beriah Botfield, Surtees Society, 7 (London: J. B. Nichols and Son and William Pickering, 1838), pp. 1–10. See also Mynors, Durham Cathedral Manuscripts, p. 2. 86 On the Durham historiographical culture, see the essays edited by Rollason in Symeon of Durham. 87 The manuscripts are CCCC MS 139; Liège, University Library MS 369C; and CUL MS Ff.I.27. 88 Lawrence, ‘The Artistic Influence of Durham Manuscripts’, p. 466.

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and they drew on personal contacts wherever possible. This drew the northern houses to Durham, a path also pursued by northern Augustinians and Benedictines. Durham’s manuscripts were already widely disseminated in the north of England and it was convenient for the Cistercians to use them as exemplars. They did not rely on other English Cistercian houses and only after the 1170s did they begin to turn to their Cistercian brethren on the continent. Rather, proximity to a good source of manuscripts was more important than Cistercian affiliation. This influenced the types of histories the Cistercian monks copied and acquired. English history was the focus at Durham, with northern history in particular given great attention. Popular authors included Bede, William of Malmesbury, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and, in particular, Nennius and the Durham historians. These became the favoured authors in Cistercian houses as well.

Shorter Chronicles of England Although most Cistercian historical activity between the death of Aelred and the end of the twelfth century involved manuscript copying and acquisition of authoritative English historians, there was still some original composition. This took the form of additions to previous histories. Short chronicles and standardized genealogies of ancient and biblical history were taken by the Cistercian monks and updated with references to contemporary affairs, especially affairs concerning English royalty. In this way past histories were customized to suit the needs of the late-twelfth-century audiences. The most important original Cistercian chronicle from this period was written at Rievaulx. It is entitled ‘Chronica de Anglia’ and it treats the years 162 to 1125, surviving in a manuscript originally dating from the late twelfth century.89 The chronicle is an account of England and its Christian history. Opening with the rubric ‘Incipiunt quedam cronica de Anglia’, it goes on to describe the arrival of the English followed by the arrival of Augustine. It also discusses the bishops of York, Aidan, and the church at Lindisfarne. Direct quotations from Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica appear near the beginning when episcopal history and conversion histories of the various kingdoms are discussed. Further information comes from John of Worcester’s chronicle. William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum is also quoted directly as a source for various religious establishments such as Candida Casa. The chronicle is generally structured according to bishops 89

British Library, Cotton MSS, Vitellius C VIII, a composite manuscript which was brought together in the sixteenth century. The chronicle folios under discussion (fols 6–22) were originally part of British Library, MS Royal 6 C VIII from Rievaulx (discussed later in this chapter). The history is only partially edited; see Ungedruckte Anglo-Normannische Geschichtsquellen, ed. by Felix Liebermann (Strasbourg: Karl J. Trübner; London: Trübner and Co., 1879), pp. 15–24.

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and dioceses, probably following William’s lead in the Gesta pontificum. Themes treated include the establishment of various bishoprics such as Hereford and Salisbury, the primacy dispute between Canterbury and York, and the careers of holy men such as Paulinus and Oswald. From the eleventh century royal history is treated in greater depth, and the chronicle concludes with a spare description (little more than a list) of the current King Henry I’s genealogy. The simultaneous use of John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury provides helpful information concerning the historical culture at Rievaulx. The Rievaulx catalogue does not list a copy of the Gesta pontificum. Indeed, of all the English Cistercian houses, the only one which seemed to possess a copy of this text in the twelfth century was the nearby house at Byland.90 The community at Rievaulx may have borrowed this copy or, possibly, the monks may have participated in the northern practice of sharing manuscripts between different orders that has already been discussed. The Augustinian house of Bridlington owned a twelfth-century copy of the Gesta pontificum (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 357, fols 1–79) and we know that in other instances Bridlington and the northern Cistercian houses shared manuscripts.91 The Rievaulx chronicle is both a combination and an abbreviation of the histories of John of Worcester and William of Malmesbury. It could not have been compiled with only cursory access to these works. Instead the compiler was dependent on long and continual reference back to these works as he extracted and rearranged his information. The fact that this work could have been created in the first instance suggests a dedication to history and to the acquisition of historical manuscripts at Rievaulx in the second half of the twelfth century. Another brief chronicle appears in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 146 (B.4.32). The bulk of this manuscript is devoted to Bede, including his commentary on Genesis. At the end however is a listing of English kings and saints which fills up the recto and verso of a single folio.92 Despite its brevity, some discussion of this chronicle is warranted. The chronicle comes from Rievaulx’s daughter house at Wardon in Bedfordshire. As we know, there was already a Cistercian interest in lists of kings, demonstrated best at Rievaulx by Aelred’s Genealogia regum Anglorum. This short chronicle from Wardon presents a similarly selective version of royal history. Written in one sitting, and covering the period from Adam to 1162, it skips at the beginning from Christ’s period to the martyr death of King Edmund in the tenth century. It then proceeds through Eadred and Eadgar 90

British Library, Harley MS 3641. Lawrence, ‘A Northern English School?’. 92 Wardon ex libris, c.12/13, esp. fols 157r–v; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 193. See also Montague Rhodes James, The Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge. A Descriptive Catalogue, 4 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1900–04), I, 173–74. 91

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before mentioning St Aethelwold and St Edward the martyr. The Danish invasions and the coronation of Canute are mentioned, in contrast to the elimination of Danish history from Aelred’s Genealogia. The chronicle then continues by combining royal history, a brief mention of crusade, and references to natural disasters and marvels. The increasing mention of weather and famine as the chronicle progresses indicates the way in which a royal history was gradually customized to represent local concerns as it dealt with periods within living memory. Further interest in English royal history appears in a late-twelfth-century manuscript from Rufford abbey, another daughter house of Rievaulx, this time in Nottinghamshire. Overall, British Library, Cotton MSS, Titus D XXIV has been described memorably as a ‘farrago which defies brief description’.93 It conforms to the miscellany style which was popular in Cistercian houses and it is best known for its hagiographical poems. Other elements include epitaphs of prominent English and continental Cistercians, hymns, and moralizing pieces more generally. However, it also includes two historical works among its diverse entries: a short chronicle of English history from William the Conqueror to 1195 and a list of Roman emperors from Augustus to Arcadius and Honorius.94 The chronicle is structured around royal history. It moves from 1066 to 1100 and the death of King William II at the hands of Walter Tirel. Like Aelred’s earlier Genealogia, it follows the logic that the history of the English is best represented by the history of their kings and for this reason it rarely strays from royal history. The final example of an original historical composition is Serlo of Fountains’s seventy-line poem on the Battle of the Standard.95 Since Serlo is said to have lived for a century, dating the poem is understandably difficult. But the work must have been completed by 1160–1200 since it survives in CCCC MS 139 (fols 134v–35r). Like the prose histories already mentioned, the poem concentrates on royal and national deeds as the most suitable topics for the historical record. Serlo glories in the victory of the small English army and invokes biblical precedents for this stunning success. Even more than Aelred’s Relatio, this poem describes the enemy as barbarians. The Picts behave like beasts, they have tails, they eat raw meat, and in general they betray all the conventional signs of brutishness. There is no religious theme to soften the accusation of barbarism. The religious significance of the standard goes unmentioned, as does Archbishop Thurstan’s role in the battle. Overall, this poem is an aggressive claim for the cultural 93

Cheney, ‘English Cistercian Libraries’, p. 336. These entries commence at fols 6, 13; Rufford ex libris, c.12ex; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 164. See also Bell, Index of Authors and Works, p. 176, and A Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Cottonian Library deposited in the British Museum (London: His Majesty King George III, 1802), p. 316. 95 For an edition, see Jan Öberg, Serlon de Wilton. Poèmes latins (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1965), pp. 7–9. 94

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superiority of the southern English army in the face of a perceived ‘other’— the Scots and Picts. To this extent, it offers an important continuation of the nationalistic mentality which was behind so much of English historiography in the mid-twelfth century.

Ancient and Classical Histories The fact that Serlo chose poetry over prose reminds us of the varied historical activities engaged in by the twelfth-century Cistercians. Historiographical participation might involve copying older English histories or writing new ones, composing histories in prose or composing them in poetry, and borrowing or permanently acquiring histories produced elsewhere. Another sign of historical activity was the copying of ancient histories. Current thinking has it that the popularity of ancient history in the twelfth century varied according to institutional context. In the monastic context, it has been argued that twelfth-century ecclesiastical historians disregarded ancient history in general and disregarded Greek history in particular.96 In the scholastic context, modern commentators remind us that the twelfth century was one of increasing compilation and systematization. They argue that in this century many works of Roman history were copied, along with other works, to form quarries of historical knowledge which were useful as future reference works.97 There was therefore a difference of approach based on whether a compiler’s allegiances were monastic or academic. Although the English Cistercians always gave preference to their liturgical and devotional interests, their embrace of the classics is important. Contrary to what might be expected from the binary monastic-scholastic model just mentioned, the Cistercians were monastic writers who copied works of Greek history but who were also interested in Roman history. Consequently, they demonstrate that a classical interest was not confined to scholastic centres. Further, contrary to popular trends, Cistercian copies of classical historians generally feature the entire texts rather than the more common excerpts and florilegia.98 In all these ways Cistercian monks were 96 Marc-René Jung, ‘L’histoire grecque: Darès et les suites’, in Entre fiction et histoire: Troie et Rome au Moyen Age, ed. by Emmanuèle Baumgartner (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle, 1997), pp. 185–206 (pp. 192–93). 97 Lars Boje Mortensen, ‘The Texts and Contexts of Ancient Roman History in Twelfth-Century Western Scholarship’, in The Perception of the Past in TwelfthCentury Europe, ed. by Paul Magdalino (London: The Hambledon Press, 1992), pp. 99–116 (p. 115). 98 Birger Munk Olsen, ‘La diffusion et l’étude des historiens antiques au XIIe siècle’, in Mediaeval Antiquity, ed. by Andries Welkenhuysen, Herman Braet, and Werner Verbeke, Medievalia Lovaniensia, Series 1/Studia 24 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1995), pp. 21–43 (p. 41).

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important contributors to the maintenance and dissemination of classical knowledge in twelfth-century England. The best example of combined Greek and Roman interest is a latetwelfth-century manuscript from Rievaulx, British Library, MS Royal 6 C VIII.99 This opens with Orosius’s Historia adversum paganos before moving on to Dares Phrygius’s De excidio Trojae historia. Dares’s history breaks off towards the end although it is continued in British Library, Cotton MSS, Vitellius C VIII (the manuscripts were originally one; they have been split apart since the Middle Ages). This interest in Dares’s history is significant. The Trojan story was a flexible one and, in the twelfth century in particular, several versions of the tale became available, with Dares’s being the most popular.100 The reasons for this popularity are unclear. Interest in the classics in general may have been part of the general diversification of reading interests which took place in England following the Norman Conquest. But, even so, Rievaulx embraced classical works more eagerly than many other houses. The library catalogue records a Sinonima Ciceronis, a list of synonyms believed to be by Cicero; a ‘Rethorica in uno volumine’, which was probably either Cicero’s De inventione or the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium; two volumes of Priscian, the Priscianus magnus and the Priscianus de constructionibus; an ‘Expositio libri Donati grammatici’; and an ‘Ysagoge Porphirii in cathegorias Aristotilis et alii libri dialectici in uno volumine’.101 All these works combined to form an interest in the trivium that was particularly pronounced at Rievaulx.102 Yet this broader interest in ancient writers in general does not explain why Dares’s version of the Trojan story was favoured over that of other ancient historians. A possible reason for the De excidio’s particular popularity was the fact that it followed the traditional rule of historicity—recourse to authoritative testimony. Best known through Isidore of Seville’s statements, eyewitness testimony was the preferred source of historical information for traditional medieval historians and their audiences.103 Dares’s frequent references to eyewitnesses gave his history an image of authenticity that was particularly 99

Rievaulx ex libris, c.12ex; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 159. See also George F. Warner and Julius P. Gilson, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Old Royal and King’s Manuscripts in the British Museum, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1921), I, 145–46; Bell, Index of Authors and Works, p. 108. 100

Jung, ‘L’histoire grecque’, and Olsen, ‘La diffusion et l’étude’, p. 22. R160, R161, R154, R155, R77, R163. 102 Olsen, ‘La diffusion et l’étude’, p. 77. 103 Isidore’s advice was that ‘things seen are published without lying’; ‘quae enim videntur, sine mendacio proferentur’, Isidore of Seville, Isidori Hispalensis episcopi etymologiarum sive originum, ed. by Wallace Martin Lindsay, Series Scriptorum Classicorum Bibliotheca Oxoniensis, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911), vol. I, I. xli. 2. 101

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timely in the mid- and late twelfth century, a period when Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history and French vernacular prose and poetry were challenging and redefining the basis of traditional historical writing in England. Thus the Cistercians’ interest in copying and owning Dares’s history may indicate their desire to follow the conventional rules of historiographical authorization by favouring an author who was widely accepted as a guarantor of historicity. Dares was not just copied by the Rievallian Cistercians. On the continent the Cistercian Hélinand of Froidmont included sections of the history in his universal chronicle written in the early thirteenth century, indicating the continued Cistercian interest in this classical history. Thus the Rievallian interest aligns these English Cistercians with the historiographical preferences of the Cistercian order more broadly. With their interest in ancient history the Rievallian Cistercians were part of a broader trend embracing all Cistercian houses, whether on the continent or in England.

Universal and Mixed Histories Many manuscripts from Cistercian abbeys contain a mixture of historical material covering biblical, ancient, and English history. A good example is Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 27 (B.1.29) from Buildwas.104 Its earliest entries included Jerome on the Song of Songs and some glossed Pauline letters. These entries were written in the eleventh century and so could not possibly have been produced at Buildwas. By the 1160s, however, Buildwas was a strong centre of manuscript production and so the manuscript’s later entries were presumably added there. Following the Jerome and Pauline entries the twelfth-century contributions are more historical in focus. Cistercian interest in classical history is demonstrated by the inclusion of excerpts from Justinus’s Epitome historiarum Philippicarum. Notes on both Chronicles and the Books of Kings also feature, in keeping with the Cistercians’ devotion to these historical books of the Bible.105 Following these were brief chronicles on the kings of Israel and Judah and then on the Maccabees and Herod. World and English history was the next area of attention, with a chronicle covering the period from Adam to the Saxon

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c.11–13in; several hands, Buildwas ex libris; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 14, and James, Western Manuscripts in the Library of Trinity College, I, 33–36. On the historical works only, see Bell, Index of Authors and Works, p. 176. 105 On Cistercian commitment to copying out the historical books, see Walter Cahn, ‘The Structure of Cistercian Bibles’, in Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture, vol. III, ed. by Meredith Parsons Lillich, CSS, 89 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987), pp. 81–96.

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invasion.106 This was a conventional world history onto which was grafted a brief discussion of English affairs at the end. The narrative traced Adam’s descendants, turned to the building of Rome and descriptions of its emperors, and then moved through the persecutions and martyrdoms to discussions of Constantine and St Anthony in the desert. Thereafter it was a mixture of imperial history and monastic and synodal history before it turned abruptly to the arrival of the ‘gens Anglorum sive Saxonum’ in their three ships. After this chronicle the manuscript returns to ancient history, with a chronicle of the Ptolomies followed by an account of various Greek and Jewish historical figures, with emphasis on Alexander. A similar interest is demonstrated in two other manuscripts, one from Byland (British Library, Cotton MSS, Cleopatra B IV107) and one from Sawley (CCCC MS 66108). Both contain copies of the same brief chronicle covering the period from creation to the reign of Henry I. Following the translatio imperii model, the chronicle includes conventional references to glorious peoples of the past before concluding abruptly in the present day. The Egyptians are discussed, as are Greeks such as Plato and Aristotle. As in the chronicle from Buildwas, the narrative passes through the kingdoms of the Babylonians, the Persians, and the Syrians before including standard references to Alexander, Herod, the persecutions of the church, and Constantine. Once it progresses into the Christian era the work takes on a Germanic tone, with attention paid to an archbishop of Cologne and a duke of Bavaria. At the end the chronicle is customized for an English audience by reference to King Henry and Matilda. Textual similarities between all these universal histories indicate that the monks at Buildwas and Byland shared manuscripts. Although the details of this relationship are unclear it is important to note the mutual dependence and shared historical interests assumed by these textual similarities. The third history, we need to remember, was probably written not at the Cistercian house of Sawley but at Durham. This Durham history may well have been the prompt which encouraged Cistercian monks to continue their interest in universal history. On the other hand, the Buildwas example demonstrates that the Cistercians were more than capable of producing their own histories. These points indicate both an interest in history writing within individual Cistercian monasteries and a preparedness to share manuscripts between Cistercian monasteries. This is in contrast to the conclusion drawn earlier in this chapter. With standard histories of England by Bede, William of Malmesbury, and other authoritative authors, the Cistercians looked to non-Cistercian houses such as Durham for their exemplars. For shorter universal and mixed histories, however, they took the initiative to 106

This appears at fols 132r–34v, although James has it listed at 131–34v. fols 22–29, c.12, Byland ex libris; Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, p. 23; Bell, Index of Authors and Works, p. 176. 108 The chronicle appears at pp. 43–58 of the manuscript. 107

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share both the historical interest and manuscripts among themselves. This was one area of historical interest that was more self-sufficiently Cistercian. When modern commentators think of medieval chroniclers they often focus on the famous names, the original composers such as Aelred of Rievaulx. But at the same time that Aelred was writing, and indeed throughout the remainder of the twelfth century, the Cistercians in England would copy and acquire many more histories than they would compose themselves. Their original histories are short, conventional, and understandably less well-known than Aelred’s works. Many of the Cistercians’ acquired histories were focussed on the history of northern England. This results both from the location of the major Cistercian houses themselves— Rievaulx, Byland, Fountains, Sawley, Jervaulx, Roche, and Kirkstall were all Yorkshire houses and these were the ones most active in library acquisition—and also from the strength of nearby historiographical centres such as Durham. Other histories, including the copied ones, are more broadly national in emphasis, something which aligns the Cistercians firmly with the broader trends of English history writing in the second half of the twelfth century, as Gransden has identified such trends. The national focus also indicates that the English Cistercians (who were at this stage still only recent arrivals from France) saw knowledge and possession of the English past as an important component of their establishment in the English literary, ecclesiastical, and social landscapes. All of this reaffirms the strong link between Cistercian historiography and national identity presented by Aelred’s histories. To repeat, it is true that in the late twelfth century the Cistercians were developing library collections which were conservative and conventional. But there were advantages in being conservative. In the context of historiography, the Cistercians’ conservatism meant that the monks built up collections which were focussed on authoritative and influential authors, particularly key authors of English national history.

PART THREE Foundation Histories and Invented Tradition, 1200–1220s _______________

Prologue

The Cistercian Order

I

t seems logical to assume that the attention to building up copies of English histories would have provided the Cistercians with firm foundations for writing national histories of their own. But the English Cistercians did not immediately take advantage of these resources. When they next turned their attention to history it was not to build on the foundation of national history that had been established in the second half of the twelfth century. Instead, in the early thirteenth century the Cistercians turned inwards and wrote highly localized foundation histories. There were several reasons behind this redirection of historiographical energy, all related to Cistercian affairs on the continent. At an institutional level, the European Cistercians of the early thirteenth century were preoccupied with collecting and codifying their legal documents. The key result of this imperative was the Libellus definitionum of 1202, a comprehensive compilation of Cistercian practices in which essential documents such as the Usus conversorum and Instituta generalis capituli were combined for easy access.1 Reissued in 1220, the Libellus was arranged clearly and methodically according to theme, hence ensuring that the book would 1 For text see Bernard Lucet, La codification cistercienne de 1202 et son évolution ultérieure (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1964). For background, see Jean A. Lefèvre and Bernard Lucet, ‘Les codifications cisterciennes aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles d’après les traditions manuscrites’, ASOC, 15 (1959), 1–22 (pp. 14–16). As Constance Berman reminds us (The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), p. 222), this compilation was widely disseminated throughout the whole order.

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present unambiguous and easily accessible information. Manuscripts containing the Exordium parvum and Exordium Cistercii were also copied frequently in the early thirteenth century,2 providing further indications that the Cistercian order was engaged in a program of codifying and disseminating its key institutional practices. While these standardized corporate documents would have helped ensure uniformity within the order, there was the added advantage that they spoke to outside critics as well. At the end of the twelfth century, as James France has so memorably put it, the whole Cistercian order seems to have been ‘gripped by a kind of cognitive insecurity’.3 Possibly reflecting on the continued increase and success of the order, possibly engaged in the reassessment and re-evaluation that strikes all communities at some stage in their histories, or possibly responding directly to outside criticism, the result is that the early-thirteenth-century Cistercians engaged in a spontaneous Europe-wide historiographical campaign. Their chosen texts were exempla collections and foundation histories. Although different in form, both kinds of documents encouraged Cistercians of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries to return to their origins. Starting with the exempla collections, the most important continental text was Conrad of Eberbach’s Exordium magnum Cisterciense. This was begun at Clairvaux in 1177–93 and then completed at Eberbach between 1206 and 1221.4 This dual heritage meant that it drew on both French and German Cistercian custom, although its influence would ultimately be even wider. It was composed from a perspective of insecurity and, indeed, from a belief that Cistercian standards were falling prey to negligentia and decline.5 Although it is not a chronological history, the Exordium magnum does bear witness to a clear historical consciousness, evidenced through a series of exempla, miracle stories, and visions from the lives of past monks. First, it incorporates Cistercian history within Christian history more broadly and shows how this new monastic order is the culmination of centuries of Christian monasticism. Second, the Exordium magnum is a particularly local history, in which all the best virtues of Cistercian life are exemplified by the monks of Clairvaux. This follows a tradition of localized exemplary literature which had been developing at Clairvaux since the 1170s6 and 2 For examples, see Jean de la Croix Bouton and Jean-Baptiste Van Damme, Les plus anciens textes de Cîteaux (Achel, Belgium: Abbaye Cistercienne, 1974), pp. 27–30. 3 James France, ‘Cistercian Foundation Narratives in Scandinavia in Their Wider Context’, Cîteaux, 43 (1992), 119–60 (pp. 135, 160). 4 Conrad of Eberbach, Exordium Magnum Cisterciense sive Narratio de initio Cisterciensis Ordinis, ed. by Bruno Griesser, CCCM, 138 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994 [sic pro 1997]). 5 On negligentia, see Conrad of Eberbach, Exordium Magnum Cisterciense, I, ix. 6 Two earlier collections are Herbert of Clairvaux’s Liber Miraculorum, written between 1178 and 1181, and John of Clairvaux’s collection from the 1170s. On the

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which was about to become popular in Germany through the composition of Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum (1219–23).7 The Exordium magnum suggests that the best aspects of Cistercian history can be found among pious monks and resourceful abbots at home. And this is not just at any home but, rather, the order’s two main homes, Clairvaux and Cîteaux. As we will see, the two strands of this historical consciousness will recur in English Cistercian histories of the same period. The other example of Cistercian historiographical writing at this time was the foundation history. Again, this trend arose almost instantaneously in Cistercian houses throughout Europe at the turn of the thirteenth century.8 In Denmark, in around 1200, Øm Abbey produced a foundation history which was similar in many ways to the Exordium parvum.9 It opened with the same defensive phrases, and the history as a whole was directed both to the benefit of the Cistercian monks themselves and at detractors of the order. As with the Libellus definitionum which was being compiled at the same time, the aim was legal: to clarify the house’s privileges and to provide future monks with authorization for their claims to land. Other Scandinavian houses such as Sorø and, later, Ryd also produced annals which looked back to the abbeys’ origins. Legal motivations were once again in force, as historians at Sorø and Ryd looked to their allegedly golden pasts in order to propagandize during periods of uncertainty concerning the extent of their rights and privileges. Both the exempla collections and foundation histories composed in continental Cistercian houses encouraged Cistercians of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries to return to their origins. This was a part of the texts’ overall functions as community autobiographies. In other words, just as individual men and women compose their autobiographies, so too communities possess impulses to formulate and promote their identities and to present the results both to their own members and to the world at large.

Liber Miraculorum, see the incomplete edition, Herberti, Turrium Sardiniae archiep., de miraculis, at PL vol. 185: cols 1271–1384, and Michael Casey, ‘Herbert of Clairvaux’s Book of Wonderful Happenings’, CS, 25 (1990), 37–64. On John, see Brian Patrick McGuire, ‘A Lost Clairvaux Exemplum Found: The Liber visionum et miraculorum Compiled under Prior John of Clairvaux (1171–79)’, An Cist, 39 (1983), 27–62. 7 Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogus miraculorum, ed. by Joseph Strange, 2 vols (Cologne, 1851; repr. Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966). 8 See Brian Patrick McGuire, Conflict and Continuity at Øm Abbey. A Cistercian Experience in Medieval Denmark (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1976), pp. 21–22, 24; Beverley Mayne Kienzle, ‘Pons de Leras, a Twelfth-Century Cistercian’, Cîteaux, 40 (1989), 215–25; Piotr Górecki, ‘Rhetoric, Memory, and the Use of the Past: Abbot Peter of Henryków as Historian and Advocate’, Cîteaux, 48 (1997), 261–94; and France, ‘Cistercian Foundation Narratives’. 9 McGuire, Conflict and Continuity at Øm Abbey, chap. 3.

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One of the commonest ways by which such a formulation of identity is effected is through the ‘invention of tradition’. Investigations of medieval historiography have always stressed the degree to which histories served to create community identity. This is particularly common at present.10 However, although recent studies have drawn insights from research into collective and social memory, there has been a reluctance on the part of medievalists to appropriate the terminology of these memorial debates wholesale. Some medieval studies refer to ‘social memory’ while others use ‘imaginative memory’.11 Following the pioneering work of Maurice Halbwachs, ‘collective memory’ is still invoked, although frequently with reservations since the model assumes a distinction between history and memory that is now questioned.12 It is in reference to the insufficiencies of all these models that I feel ‘tradition’ (or, more specifically, ‘invented tradition’) carries a clear advantage. The generic term ‘tradition’ has varied and often conflicting meanings and connotations.13 Although it is often applied to collective beliefs and practices which are oral, unconscious, and anonymous, tradition may in fact comprise any content and form. The only requirement is that the material be passed down through time, specifically through a period of several 10 There have been any number of excellent studies, in a range of contexts; see, for example, Gabrielle M. Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Amy Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995); Cassandra Potts, ‘Atque unum ex diversis gentibus populum effecit: Historical Tradition and the Norman Identity’, A-NS, 18 (1995), 139–52; Michelle R. Warren, History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain, 1100–1300 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); and Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997). 11 On social memory, see Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) and, in the medieval context, James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1992), chap. 4. Maurice Halbwachs provided the model for collective memory; for a medieval study drawn from this model, see Rosamond McKitterick, ‘Constructing the Past in the Early Middle Ages: The Case of the Royal Frankish Annals’, TRHS, 6th series, 7 (1997), 101–29. Remensnyder explicitly rejects social and collective memory in favour of imaginative memory (Remembering Kings Past, pp. 1–7). For a good appraisal of research, see Susan A. Crane, ‘Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory’, American Historical Review, 102 (1997), 1372–85. 12 Indeed, although Shopkow, for example, does not explicitly invoke much theory from recent memorial discussions, even she notes this opposition (History and Community, p. 5, n. 10). 13 For a good survey of the different connotations and meanings subsumed under the term ‘tradition’, see Edward Shils, Tradition (London: Faber and Faber, 1981), pp. 12–21.

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generations. Invented traditions, however, are different. As the term suggests, they are self-conscious creations and can be asserted and promoted just as easily as their alleged opposite, modernity. In Eric Hobsbawm’s words, they are ‘responses to novel situations which take the form of reference to old situations, or which establish their own past by quasi-obligatory repetition’.14 The aim of invented tradition is to erase inconsistencies between past and present, and its strength lies in the power of assertion. As Brian Stock has pointed out for the medieval context, ‘Traditions may not be very old, and they can be invented for economic or political motives. Yet, for traditionalism to work, they must be perceived as belonging to the past.’15 Recognizing the malleability of tradition allows us to appreciate how continuity is in fact created and asserted; that is, tradition is designed and invented precisely to erase inconsistencies between past and present. For the purposes of this study there are two important points to make about the invention of tradition. The first is that invented traditions tend to focus on origins. The originary moment granted an authority to a certain community or organization that was unavailable otherwise. All the strengths and possibilities of the community were concentrated in the single moment of origins and, importantly, this potential was promised to the later members of the group. By concentrating on glorious origins, one therefore ascribed equivalent glory to the descendants. The second point is that traditions seem to be created more frequently during periods of social change and, further, during periods of conflict. This is particularly relevant to the Cistercians who clearly experienced a crisis and redirection at the beginning of the thirteenth century.16 The following chapters will indicate that the historiographical enterprise was one means by which the Cistercians tried to smooth over inconsistencies and facilitate the creation of a cohesive community. And they did this by the standard tactic of recourse to origins—that is, by the creation of foundation documents. In short, the Cistercian foundation histories are classic examples of invented tradition, the assertion of a continuity which accommodates and smooths over circumstantial change. 14

Eric Hobsbawm, ‘Introduction: Inventing Traditions’, in The Invention of Tradition, ed. by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1–14 (p. 2). This book remains the classic introduction to the field. 15 Brian Stock, ‘Tradition and Modernity: Models from the Past’, in Modernité au moyen âge. Le défi du passé, ed. by Brigitte Cazelles and Charles Méla (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1990), pp. 33–44 (p. 35). 16 For thorough investigations of this crisis of identity and urge for reform, see the numerous works by Brian Patrick McGuire; for example, ‘Structure and Consciousness in the “Exordium Magnum Cisterciense”: The Clairvaux Cistercians after Bernard’, Cahiers de l’institut du moyen âge grec et latin, 30 (1979), 33–90, and ‘The Meaning of Cistercian Spirituality: Thoughts for Cîteaux’s Nine-Hundredth Anniversary’, CSQ, 30 (1995), 91–110.

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The English Historiographical and Political Order Political events naturally affected the kinds of histories that were being composed in England in the years around 1200. But whereas the politics prompting Aelred’s earlier histories were the high culture politics of kings, legitimacy, and nationalism, here the politics were decidedly more local. By far the most common historiographical products at the time were the local histories, and these were particularly common in the south.17 They were predominantly foundation histories of monasteries and they were produced by both pre-Conquest foundations and post-Conquest ones. In both instances the impetus was legal and defensive. In a society becoming more dependent on written confirmation of law and customs, it was increasingly necessary to have written proof of landholdings and privileges. This proof was necessary at the immediate level, at the level of everyday politics where, for example, one monastery would assert its rights over the rights of a neighbouring monastery. Grand national histories were not necessary in these contexts; instead, shorter narratives were sufficient, provided they contained adequate legal backing for the given claims. The resulting histories frequently adhere to the mixed ‘charter-chronicle’ format and, in Gransden’s words, many of them are in fact ‘little more than inflated cartularies’.18 These preceding qualities are usually ascribed to histories from the south. The local histories from the north have far fewer characteristics ascribed to them. Gransden points out that northern histories were less concerned with litigation and were more pious in tone than the southern ones.19 One of the aims of the following study is to investigate this bipartite distinction—to investigate whether it applies in the case of the Cistercian histories or, perhaps, whether some of Gransden’s southern qualities can also be detected in the northern Cistercian histories. There were four foundation histories composed by the Yorkshire Cistercians around the turn of the thirteenth century: the Fundatio domus Bellelande, the Fundacio Jorevallis, the Fundacio abbathie de Kyrkestall, and the Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii. However, given that the Byland and Jervaulx histories survive only in incomplete seventeenth-century copies, they have been omitted from this study.20 17 For the standard survey, see Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), chaps 13–14. 18 Gransden, Historical Writing, p. 272. 19 Gransden, Historical Writing, pp. 270, 286–87. 20 This is not to say that the Byland and Jervaulx histories cannot provide useful information to modern scholars, but simply to say that they are more informative for seventeenth-century antiquarians’ beliefs than for the medieval beliefs I am investigating here. The histories are infamously difficult to investigate; for the best study, see Janet Burton, ‘The Abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx, and the Problems of the English Savigniacs, 1134–1156’, in Monastic Studies. The Continuity of Tradition II, ed. by Judith Loades (Bangor: Headstart History, 1991), pp. 119–31.

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The Narrative Order One of the reasons we continue to read medieval chronicles today is because we can still learn from them. To this extent, we are not so different from our medieval counterparts—we are still reading these histories because they are useful and edifying and can assist us in our present concerns, precisely the same motivations that obtained centuries ago. But while the motivations may be the same, the types of questions we ask are continually changing. At the moment, it is common to look for guidance in these works for how medieval scholars today can tackle some of their discipline’s most perplexing current concerns, particularly in reference to the besieged position many medievalists feel they inhabit within the broader academy. That is, in many ways medieval histories have been ‘rehabilitated’ in order to serve a very immediate political function—in contrast to a generation ago, these texts are no longer criticised as frustratingly vague or inaccurate but, instead, are respected for the ways in which they can inform us about relevant topics in literary and epistemological studies. Such are the cycles of academic fashion. For example, it has recently been suggested that the enormous range and variety of topics, forms, and genres in medieval historiography betrays a pluralist and decentred approach to knowledge which is the hallmark of what we know today as postmodernism.21 As presented by John Ward, this particular medieval version of postmodernism is important because it managed to succeed where we today fail. Although it respected difference, this medieval postmodernism simultaneously managed to retain a sense of overarching meaning. That is, it has been suggested that medieval histories managed to combine ‘meaning with multi-centeredness’.22 In ecclesiastical histories, this juggling of two seemingly contradictory imperatives was made possible because ‘meaning’ was separated from ‘fact’. Facts lay at the literal level of deeds and events while the significance or meaning of history existed on the allegorical level and was available for retrieval only through exegetical interpretation. Because these two levels were completely separate it was possible for a medieval history to be comprised of a collection of varied and seemingly unrelated events yet contain, at the allegorical level, a consistent overall message. In this way, difference and uniformity coexisted. In other words, historiographical interpretation which was based on exegetical practice encouraged medieval audiences to accept both change and continuity. Although thought-provoking, the idea of a proto-postmodern medieval historiography will not be pursued here.23 In its premise, this debate has 21 John O. Ward, ‘ “Chronicle” and “History”: The Medieval Origins of Postmodern Historiographical Practice?’, Parergon, n.s., 14 (1997), 101–28. 22 Ward, ‘ “Chronicle” and “History” ’, p. 126. 23 For more on medieval historiographical ‘postmodernism’, see my response to Ward in ‘Meaning and Multi-Centeredness in (Postmodern) Medieval Historiography: The Foundation History of Fountains Abbey’, Parergon, n.s., 16 (1999), 43–84.

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many affinities with the ‘Carolingian Renaissance’ and ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’ debates in their most basic forms—that is, the medieval period apparently justifies attention only when it can be proved to demonstrate an idea or mentality previously thought to be an invention of the ‘modern world’. This is not an issue I intend to pursue. On the other hand, though, there is one aspect of this debate which can potentially redirect us from contemporary anxieties about the relevance of medieval studies to a renewed and deeper understanding of the ways in which medieval historical writings suggested meaning—this is Ward’s reference to the epistemological strategies by which medieval historiography could assert both sameness and difference. The relationship between these two seemingly opposite themes is clearly a highly complex one and, indeed, the ways in which medieval histories accommodated these two themes are possibly as various and as individual as the histories themselves. But, given my interest in the question of continuity and change, it is worth investigating whether employment of an exegetical model can provide insights into the English Cistercian histories and whether (and how) these histories managed to present images of variety subsumed to overriding continuities. It is important to be clear just what kind of exegetical interpretation is being invoked here. It is not a strict model of biblical exegesis. The degree to which this practice was applied to non-scriptural works in the Middle Ages is rightly the subject of ongoing debate.24 Sensibly then, Ward’s exegetical model is a very broad and general one. Ward refers to the fact that, ‘ “Meaning” was encountered at the allegorical exegetical level, the level of “interpretatio” ’, thus indicating his preference for allegory over other exegetical strategies of interpretation.25 In this use of ‘allegory’ to refer to all the levels of non-literal significance, Ward follows a long tradition (best exemplified by literary references to the generic term ‘typology’) in which, unless scholars are engaged specifically in biblical identifications of exegetical antitypes and types, they are happy to refer to allegorical, tropological, and anagogical interpretations collectively since all refer to the realm of the non-literal (frequently, indeed, the term ‘allegory’ is used to cover the entire three).26 The common point is that all these models locate meaning away from the literal level. 24

In the case of historiography, commentators often invoke the comments of Hugh of St Victor on exegesis and historical interpretation, yet the degree to which Hugh’s ideas influenced other writers of history is generally assumed rather than demonstrated. For Hugh’s endorsement of the historical level, see The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor, trans. by Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), VI. 3, and Hugh of St Victor, ‘De Tribus Maximis Circumstantiis Gestorum’, trans. in Mary J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), appendix A. 25 Ward, ‘ “Chronicle” and “History” ’, p. 108. 26 For example, literary scholars refer to ‘typology’ in a deliberately broad sense to refer to the second stratum of the four-fold system of scriptural exegesis (that is,

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In a way none of this is new. Scholars have been arguing for generations that medieval histories contained hidden levels of meaning. In fact, this was often considered one of medieval historiography’s shortcomings, since these levels invariably expressed such unfashionable priorities as seeking the judgement of God in history, identifying cycles in history, and so on. But there is a fundamental difference between simply identifying non-literal evocations of meaning in histories and, on the other hand, arguing that these evocations are based on the principle of exegetical interpretation. There are two premises of exegetical reading practices. First, while typological or allegorical readings should never contradict the literal significance, they must also provide meanings and solutions which cannot be provided by the literal level. The second point is that the exegetical analysis must provide meaning and coherence to the wider text as a whole and not just to isolated passages. It is clear that a medieval history which can be analysed according to these two criteria is a fundamentally different history, one with much greater complexities of meanings, than a history which simply presents some of its themes through fables, parables, or metaphors. Following the recent interest in medieval histories which follow these two criteria,27 when I conduct non-literal readings in the following chapters this is on the understanding that the histories in question permit interpretation according to these more refined and dual criteria of non-literal presentation of meaning, rather than according to the less specific demands of fable, parable, or metaphor. To repeat, the aim here is not to argue that a reading practice based strictly on biblical exegesis was applied to medieval histories. Rather, it is to argue that a reading practice which honoured the two basic principles of exegesis was applied to medieval histories. This means that although the specific interpretive strategies of allegorical, tropological, and anagogical interpretations may not have been applied to medieval histories, the understanding that non-literal forms of meaning could, first, provide meanings and solutions unavailable at the literal level and, second, provide insights by which the entire text could be made more meaningful most definitely were applied to medieval histories. Given then that the point at issue is simply medieval histories’ attention to the non-literal, I will be referring to ‘allegorical’ levels of meaning rather than to ‘exegetical’ levels of meaning—this is sufficiently precise for my purposes and it also avoids the problem caused by invoking a strictly biblical term in an historiographical context.

to refer collectively to the three senses of allegorical, tropological, and anagogical interpretations); James J. Paxson, ‘A Theory of Biblical Typology in the Middle Ages’, Exemplaria, 3 (1991), 359–83. 27 For a good recent investigation of historiography according to the three exegetical models of the literal, allegorical, and tropological, see Shopkow, History and Community, chap. 2.

CHAPTER 4

Resolving Uncertainty: The Fundacio abbathie de Kyrkestall

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he Fundacio abbathie de Kyrkestall recounts the events by which the Cistercian abbey at Kirkstall, in modern-day Leeds, was founded.1 The narrative states that in 1147 Henry de Lacy donated lands at Barnoldswick to the abbot of Fountains. The traditional number of twelve monks plus prior was dispatched to the new site. But the land did not prove suitable and so in 1152 the monks transferred to a new site which had been given to them by a group of hermits. Here they finally found solitude and were ready to establish what would become the successful Cistercian community of Kirkstall. Unfortunately, however, they continued to experience problems with their land and the early history of the community was characterized by ongoing lawsuits and challenges to landholdings. Before investigating the history, certain peculiarities of composition warrant discussion.2 The Fundacio as a whole deals with the period from foundation in 1147 to the early fourteenth century. Given that the surviving manuscript copy was written in one continuous hand in the fifteenth century,3 the narrative is naturally presented as a seamless story. But 1

Fundacio abbathie de Kyrkestall (hereafter Fundacio), ed. and trans. by E. Kitson Clark, in Miscellanea, Publications of the Thoresby Society, 4 (Leeds: Thoresby Society, 1893), pp. 173–208. Translations are my own. On the abbey’s medieval history, see Guy D. Barnes, Kirkstall Abbey, 1147–1539, Publications of the Thoresby Society, 58/128 (Leeds: Thoresby Society, 1984). 2 For more on dates and authorship, see my ‘Cistercian Historical Writing in England, 1150–1220’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Melbourne, 1999), pp. 168–70. 3 The history survives in one manuscript only, a composite paper volume from Kirkstall (Oxford, Bodleian, Laud MS, Misc. 722), written in a variety of fifteenthcentury hands (although the Fundacio itself was written in a single hand). For

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internal differences of style suggest that the history was not compiled in one sitting but instead incorporates several layers of tradition. The earliest layer provides a full account of the foundation of the abbey and the careers of the first five abbots, covering the period from 1147 to 1210. 4 The likeliest date for the composition of this first section is the beginning of the thirteenth century, probably in around 1210. The commencement of the abbey’s coucher book around this time indicates that the Kirkstall community was definitely taking steps to record its charters during this period. This urge to record the past was probably prompted by the abbey’s increasing security and success. After difficult early years, by the early thirteenth century the abbey had a firm foothold in the institutional landscape, its buildings were erected, and its site was finally secured for the future. Following its expansion in the second half of the twelfth century, and in keeping with the concurrent trend of Cistercians on the continent, the monks now possessed the time, resources, and interest to compose a foundation history. Lexical analysis suggests that the author of the first section was probably Hugh of Kirkstall, the named author of the Fountains Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii, whom we know was writing in the early 1200s. Given that Hugh wrote the Fountains history, it would seem logical that he was also in a position to write this first section describing the history of his own abbey. For my purposes, this first section is the most important component of the Fundacio and other sections will not be discussed.5 This section is certainly short, but it can still tell us many things about Cistercian invented tradition and, in particular, the ways in which motifs of space and place were the Cistercians’ favoured elements of this invented tradition.

Mapping Institutional History through Space Let me begin with a confession: in many ways the Kirkstall history is an unremarkable foundation history. It pays detailed attention to the role of the lay patrons and in this it is much like many other histories of its age. It is more distinctive, though, for the type of devotional culture that it stresses; in particular, for the ways in which it equates foundation with a certain type physical description and contents, see The Kirkstall Abbey Chronicles, ed. by John Taylor, Publications of the Thoresby Society, 42 (Leeds: Thoresby Society, 1952), pp. 17–18. 4 For the full Fundacio see fols 129–37. For the earliest section see fols 129–32v. On the stages of composition, see E. Kitson Clark, ‘The Foundation of Kirkstall’, in Miscellanea, pp. 169–72 (p. 170) and Taylor, The Kirkstall Abbey Chronicles, p. 31. 5 Following the section to 1210 there is a brief list of abbots before the amplified narrative then resumes at 1287. More than half the history is devoted to the period 1287 to 1304 and it is likely that the account was compiled early in the fourteenth century by someone with direct knowledge of the events described.

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of devotional practice which is exhibited overwhelmingly through the monks’ relationship with the land. And this relationship with the land is not a neutral or value-free one. Rather, the success (or otherwise) of the religious house can be gauged precisely through the process in which it acquires and uses land. The narrative focus in the Fundacio is the land, but the narrative meaning goes beyond the land. The land is only the stage on which more important elements of Cistercian identity are presented. And land is an effective stage because tropes concerning land were so easily read by the Cistercian textual community. Precisely because land motifs already imparted meaning to Cistercian audiences, they could then be employed to perform larger tasks such as pointing to the idealized Cistercian view of its own corporate identity. What we find in the Fundacio is that land is frequently contested. Contestation over land is clearly important on the literal level. After all, in a physical sense a monastery cannot put down solid foundations and build its buildings with any confidence until it has clear rights to its land. But, more than this, in the Fundacio it is through debates over land that readers discover what it really is that defines the orthodoxy of this community. In this sense, then, we can read space as a corollary of something much larger—what it means to engage in Cistercian devotion in the early thirteenth century. The first example of contested space relates to the misunderstanding whereby the monks had been given land by Henry de Lacy which was not in fact Henry’s to give away.6 The monks were unaware of this problem and proceeded to erect buildings according to Cistercian custom. They had an abbot ordained and the archbishop of York granted and approved the land. The monks were obviously under the impression that they had a legitimate right to their lands and so had no compunction about pulling down a local church, in plain view of the furious parishioners, when they felt that noise from local services was interrupting their work and prayer. This led to litigation, which the monks won. But the success was short-lived. War-time raiders stole provisions, floods ruined crops, and the monks were forced to fight poverty for six years. Concerned about the monks’ poor food and clothing, Alexander the abbot was contemplating relocation to richer pastures. However, he could not arrive at a solution on his own. Instead, it required a chance meeting with a group of hermits to direct him and the monks to their ultimate success. While passing through a valley Alexander met a group of brethren in religious habits leading hermits’ lives. Fascinated, he enquired about their manner of life and was repaid with a lengthy anecdote from their spokesman. The anecdote told by the hermit Seleth is a major section of the history.7 It is the Fundacio’s only example of direct speech and the vividness of this speech works to promote the exemplary features of eremitical life. Seleth 6 7

Fundacio, pp. 174–75. Fundacio, pp. 176–78.

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says that he was directed to his current life by a vision. He lived alone in a valley, ate only roots and herbs, and was then joined by others seeking a similar life. This spontaneous community of hermits owned nothing individually and the members acquired the little they needed by the work of their own hands. Theme by theme, the hermit recounts all the standard virtues of eremiticism that were being propounded during the twelfth-century monastic reforms. By extension, the hermit’s appearance in the narrative indicates that a peaceful future will succeed the monks’ disruptive past. Seleth’s speech redefines the land and transforms it into a hermit’s space. This transformation is necessary because it sets the basis for the later orthodoxy of the Kirkstall monks. By reminding the readers that these monks were, first of all, inspired in their custom by a hermit, the Fundacio emphasizes that these Cistercian monks draw from the best of the desert tradition. This is the essential basis of the monks’ orthodoxy and, once this is established, any later modifications by the Kirkstall community are less problematic. As we know, the community did not of course end up following the strict hermits’ life. Instead, the standard Cistercian balance between individual and community was drawn, with the abbot foreshadowing this at the outset: ‘Gently he began to warn the brethren about the health and progress of their souls, putting before them the danger of their individual wills [. . .], calling them to greater perfection and a better form of observance.’8 The stock nature of this warning reminds us that Cistercian monks held many beliefs in common with other monastic orders of the day and, hence, that their new foundations were in some respects not so radical after all, a conservative theme which the Cistercians understandably wished to stress. The eremitical theme had already been employed in another Cistercian foundation history, Byland’s foundation history, composed in 1197. On this occasion, the Byland monks were taken in by a hermit at a critical point when they were homeless.9 But this earlier reference to the hermitage had been incidental to the narrative and seems to have been invoked simply to cover up for lack of information. The aim of the Byland narrative was to have the monks established in their cenobitic community at Byland as quickly as possible. Eremiticism was not integral to this message and it was described simply to account for an otherwise embarrassing gap in the historical record. The Kirkstall history, however, treats eremiticism as something 8

‘Cepit igitur leniter monere fratres de salute et profectu animarum suarum propenens eis proprie voluntatis periculum [. . .], suadens eos ad maiorem perfectionem et meliorem formam religionis’, Fundacio, pp. 177–78. 9 ‘[Roger de Mowbray] misit eos ad dompnum Robertum de Alneto quondam monachum de Whiteby qui tunc temporis vitam ducebat heremiticam apud Hode.’ Byland, Historia fundationis [also known as Fundatio domus Bellelande], in William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. by John Caley, H. Ellis, and B. Bandinel, 6 vols in 8 (London: Joseph Harding, 1817–30), V, 349–54 (p. 349). As discussed in the Prologue, this text survives only in a seventeenth-century copy. However, there is no reason to doubt that these words were in the original; the main changes of the seventeenth century appear to be in the ordering of the text.

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more positive in its own right, since it is through being exposed to this eremitical example that the monks are prompted towards both greater perfection and a better religious life. Returning to the issue of space, we can state that the monks’ entrance into the hermits’ space is the catalyst for their future monastic successes. Thus we see the overwhelming tendency of the Fundacio to define Cistercian identity via concepts and imagery drawn from spatial debates. Other spatial invocations are also common. Here it helps to remember that the semantic field of medieval geography was often structured around words of sensibility. Land was not a passive object but, rather, engendered strong feelings in the individuals and communities located among it. This led to land being described in the following ways: as aptus, amoenus, congruus, and perspicuus, and as locus amoenus and eremum.10 The Kirkstall Fundacio includes multiple references to these last two terms. The topos of the locus amoenus had been used by ecclesiastical writers since Antiquity.11 Initially it was part of a broader trend whereby the church in general was defined in terms of paradisiacal imagery. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, the imagery was generally used for monasteries only. Cistercian usage was therefore not unique. On the other hand, the Cistercians’ strong preparedness to identify spiritual meanings in the natural world meant that they invested the term with greater meaning than had previous writers. Cistercian interest in the natural world is a fascinating topic. It seems that Cistercians saw in the natural world correlations with the divine harmonies that they hoped for in paradise.12 Following this, the ‘taming’ of the land from secular to religious uses was akin to the soul’s journey back to God. Another way of looking at the evidence is to posit that Cistercians considered the hand of God (nature) to be more important than the hand of humanity. This explains why Cistercians were always more inclined to praise the site of a monastery over its buildings. The brief foundation history section in Walter Daniel’s Vita Aelredi is a good example of this. It features a description of Rievaulx’s physical setting which contains all the 10 See Monika Otter, ‘Gaainable Tere: Symbolic Appropriation of Space and Time in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Vernacular Historical Writing’, in Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Exploration and Imagination, ed. by Scott D. Westrem (New York: Garland Press, 1991), pp. 157–77 (pp. 161–62), and Amy Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past: Monastic Foundation Legends in Medieval Southern France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), chap. 2. The classic study of deserts and gardens is George H. Williams, Wilderness and Paradise in Christian Thought (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1962), chaps 1–2. 11 Giles Constable, ‘Renewal and Reform in the Religious Life’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable with Carol D. Lanham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 37– 67 (pp. 48–51 and references therein). 12 Martha G. Newman, The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), chap. 3, esp. p. 72.

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standard elements of continental Cistercian foundation narratives.13 The prevailing theme is that a successful foundation results from God’s favour and not from humanity’s actions. Walter Daniel praises the natural virtues of the site (the pleasant valley, the murmur of the river, the rustle of the trees) but he does not mention the buildings. It is because of God’s work (nature) not people’s work that this valley can be described as a ‘kind of second paradise’ for the Rievallian monks. The Seleth anecdote confirms this Cistercian mentality in which the beauty of nature was considered a window onto the divine. We read that Seleth’s eremitical community had been established in a ‘certain valley, which was then wooded and shady’.14 Regardless of whether or not this valley truly was wooded and shady, it is important to note that these terms were the standard means by which Cistercians in this period referred to their favoured places.15 Valleys were always fertile and sweet-smelling, rivers were always fresh and sparkling, and meadows were always fertile and sunny. The language of the Kirkstall history reflects and confirms this Cistercian dedication to the spiritual power of the locus amoenus. Indeed, there was a causal link between the perceived beauty of the location and its suitability to house the Cistercian community; it was precisely because of the site’s beauty that Alexander began to make his enquiries into the spiritual lives of these hermits.16 Having listened to Seleth’s description of his inspirational vision and current life with the other hermits, Alexander once again assessed the virtues of this life in terms of space. He began to reflect on the site, its conditions, the pleasant character of the valley, the river flowing past, and whether these features would permit the construction of monastic buildings.17 Satisfied that the location was ‘pleasant enough’,18 Alexander then decided that buildings should be constructed. For this he returned to the patron Henry de Lacy and requested assistance for moving to the place which, once again, he referred to as ‘very suitable and

13 Walter Daniel, The Life of Ailred of Rievaulx, ed. and trans. by Frederick Maurice Powicke (London: Thomas Nelson, 1950), VI (pp. 12–13). 14 ‘Et contigit tempore quodam ut iterum agens pro negociis domus sue transiret per vallem quamdam tunc temporis memorosam [sic] et umbrosam et nomen vallis Airedale.’ Fundacio, p. 176. 15 On valleys and names, see Jean-Baptiste Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primitive: mythe ou réalité?, Cîteaux Studia et Documenta, 3 (Achel, Belgium: Éditions sine Parvulos, 1986), pp. 87–133. On images of cultivation and fruitfulness more generally, see Newman, The Boundaries of Charity, pp. 89–96. 16 ‘Delectatus loci amenitate diuertit ad eos siscitans ab eis de modo viuendi et forma sue religionis.’ Fundacio, p. 176. 17 ‘Audiens hec abbas cogitare secum cepit de situ loci et circumstanciis eius, de vallis amenitate et aqua ibidem preterfluente, de siluis adiacentibus ad fabricas erigendas.’ Fundacio, p. 177. 18 ‘Et visum est ei quod locus satis amenus est.’ Fundacio, p. 177.

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pleasant’.19 Thus, in 1152, the monks overcame their first major disruption by moving to Kirkstall, incorporating many of the hermits into their order, and exploiting the spiritual rewards of this ‘pleasant place’. It is here that the Fundacio incorporates the next territorial term— eremum. At first glance this seems to contradict the initial deference to pleasant places. Whereas the land has just been described as pleasant and agreeable, now it is referred to as a wasteland. It is a ‘wooded place, useless for crops, a place almost destitute of good things except for timber and stones and a pleasant valley with a river which flowed down its centre’.20 The monks have to pick up their axes and cut the woods and turn up the fallow ground. Finally, they make the place habitable, bring the thickets under control, and cultivate the soil so that it flourishes with crops.21 In addition to making the crops thrive, there is also a causal relationship between this good treatment of the land and good spiritual outcomes for the monks. Hard work in the fields translates not only into multiplied crops but also multiplied brethren and possessions, linked causally in the very next sentence of the text.22 To understand the use of the locus amoenus and eremum imagery it pays to investigate foundation histories beyond the Cistercian context. One way in which site functions in foundation histories is to serve as what is known as the medium of revelation.23 This is to say that the inherent sanctity of a site is what justifies or ‘explains’ the establishment of a new community. The given site was already, timelessly, sacred and it was simply a matter of this sanctity being pointed out (perhaps by a holy intercessor such as the hermit Seleth) and then the new foundation could be established with full confidence in its authority. The desire to confer an inherent and timeless sanctity onto a landscape was widespread in the foundation accounts of all monastic orders. Benedictine monks asserted the continuity of their monastic traditions by claiming that they were re-founding pleasant (amoenus) old monastic sites that had been abandoned or destroyed. Because they lived and prayed on the same site as past communities, current Benedictine communities could claim legitimate association with these groups. Here, a genealogical relationship was asserted. The new community claimed itself as heir to the 19

‘inuenisse se locum valde accomodum et amenum.’ Fundacio, p. 178. ‘locum nemorosum et frugibus infecundum, locum bonis fere destitutum preter ligna et lapides et vallem amenam cum aqua fluminis que vallis medium preterfluebat.’ Fundacio, p. 179. 21 ‘Arrepto igitur ferro succiderunt siluas et noualia sibi nouantes cum filiis Effraym fecerunt sibi locum ad habitandum et spineta condensa ad cultum redigentes auaram glebam letis frugibus luxuriare cogebant.’ Fundacio, p. 179. 22 The preceding passage continues: ‘Et vidit dominus labores eorum et benedixit eis et multiplicati sunt in breui numero fratrum et nomine possessionum.’ Fundacio, p. 179. 23 Remensnyder, Remembering Kings Past, pp. 44–50 for what follows. 20

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earlier one and, hence, claimed for itself a ready-made history. Thus continuity of landholding was used by Benedictines as a strategy for arguing the greater case of continuity of their monastic heritage. The Fundacio indicates that English Cistercians argued for the timeless sanctity of place in a different way. A preliminary difficulty presented itself due to the fact that the Cistercians were not re-establishing old foundations but were instead creating new ones. It was therefore impossible for them to benefit from the past monastic associations of particular sites. So the Cistercians invoked the sanctity of place in a different fashion. They could not claim that their chosen sites had previously been monastic sites, so instead they claimed that they had previously been desert-like sites of eremitic solitude. This claim was successful for two mutually enhancing reasons. As well as according with the traditional eremum motif, reference to deserts and hermits also made sense within the Cistercian tradition. As with the locus amoenus, the desert here was metaphoric rather than literal, not so much a physical place as an image imbued with significance for the Cistercians’ interior spiritual journeys. (Indeed, archaeological and economic studies have demonstrated that many Cistercians did not settle in wild and uncultivated desert lands at all but, rather, in areas already developed and closely linked with human activity.24) The reason the desert image had such power is because it came from one of the Cistercians’ oldest corporate sources, the Exordium parvum.25 As mentioned already, this proto-foundation history describes the beginning of the Cistercian order. In doing so it includes a section on the departure from Molesme and the subsequent arrival at Cîteaux. Cîteaux is presented as a site where thick woods and thorny hedges have kept people out and where the only inhabitants are wild beasts. But the pioneering Cistercian monks found this solitude to be exactly what they were looking for and so proceeded to cut down the woods and thorns, before building their monastery. This is precisely the model the Kirkstall history follows. By describing the Kirkstall monks and their actions in terms already employed for the original Cistercians, the Fundacio presents Kirkstall as a second Cîteaux. Thus the importance of land in this passage is paramount, for it is the theme through which Kirkstall’s alleged equivalence to Cîteaux is presented. By featuring the Exordium parvum’s common language of the desert, and by introducing this language into the history of Kirkstall, the Fundacio does two things. It tells thirteenth-century audiences 24 Robert A. Donkin, ‘Settlement and Depopulation on Cistercian Estates During the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Especially in Yorkshire’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 33 (1960), 141–65, and Constance H. Berman, Medieval Agriculture, the Southern French Countryside, and the Early Cistercians. A Study of Forty-Three Monasteries (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1986), chap. 2, repeated in Berman’s more recent study, The Cistercian Evolution: The Invention of a Religious Order in Twelfth-Century Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), esp. p. 24. 25 Exordium parvum, III, in Waddell’s ‘practical edition’ in NLT, pp. 421–22.

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that Kirkstall has origins as orthodox as the origins of the order’s premier house and it also tells them that the clearest way this orthodoxy can be demonstrated is through the correct use of, and relationship towards, the land. There were many other ways to assert Kirkstall’s legitimate incorporation in the Cistercian family—for example, adherence to the Benedictine Rule, emphasis on spiritual friendship or charity—therefore the fact that territorial imagery was invoked indicates how very strongly Cistercians defined their identity in spatial terms and, also, how very clearly the Fundacio is a history both deriving from and speaking to the particular needs of its particular Cistercian audience. But taming the land for crops was not the last of the monks’ tasks. There was still the ongoing problem of gaining proper rights to the site. Once again the Kirkstall monks discovered that they were living on contested land. On this occasion the claimant, the Earl of Norfolk, actually succeeded at court in having the monks dispossessed, although the Fundacio is understandably reticent about this point.26 The history does become more forthcoming when it discusses the arrangement whereby the monks gained the land back again. Paraphrases of charters are included, pointing to the happy fact that the Earl of Norfolk was subsequently persuaded by King Henry to grant this land to the monks in pure and perpetual alms. With both the taming of the land and the rights to the land ensured, the history now states that the monks are truly confirmed in their authorized use of space. This confirmation is demonstrated by their construction of permanent monastic buildings, that is, by their imposition of order on the land. On the earlier site the monks betrayed their doubts over the land by their decision to build only in wood. However, their decision here to build in stone represented a statement of faith in this new site. By this means the landscape was permanently incorporated into the community’s historical memory, just as firmly as historical deeds and events were. The rebuilding section may well have carried an additional meaning. It is possible that the Fundacio’s audiences would have recognized this section as an allegory of the historiographical enterprise. Medieval authors and readers were familiar with the concept of history as a foundation stone. This came from their study of biblical exegesis, whereby architectural images were frequently employed in order to stress the interdependency of all four means of explicating a biblical text. 27 It is true that the Kirkstall history is a very unreflective work and that the author does not articulate his views on the historical enterprise. On the other hand, however, the causal links in the text provide some clues. In so far as we can posit a connection between the building theme and the Fundacio’s theory of historiography more broadly, it is that the sight of the beautiful land is the prompt which eventually creates this historical record. There could be no history in the first instance 26

Fundacio, p. 180. Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 4 vols (Paris: Aubier, 1959–64), I. 2, 481 for architectural imagery. 27

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if space had not been available—both physical space for the monks to move to and historiographical space for the Fundacio to fill. Here ends the first thematic section of the Fundacio. To summarize, the narrative centres around questions of land and, more precisely, around questions of contested land. The hermit Seleth provides a foretaste of the spiritual rewards a pleasant and agreeable location can provide, but these rewards have to be earned. In the Fundacio land is initially owned by somebody else or it is overgrown and requires cultivation. The readers know when the Kirkstall monks have finally won their rewards because the monks quickly formalize their possession of this land by constructing their stone buildings, that is, by inscribing Cistercian identity onto the land in Yorkshire.

Mapping Institutional History through Individuals Having established the monks’ claims to the land, the history now changes focus to concentrate on the abbots. Here we read the standard portraits of devout abbots which were common in the chronicles of all monastic orders. The first portrait concerns abbot Ralph Haget and commences with standard references to this venerable abbot who was a man of piety and holiness and a lover of justice and other commendable things.28 Unexpectedly, though, the portrait then deviates into criticism of Ralph’s improvidence. Although he had a good will, Ralph did not appreciate the slender resources of the abbey and he spent unwisely, resulting in increasing debt for the abbey. These disruptions are narrative doublets to the trials which had occurred earlier in the history when the monks had been forced to fight for their possession of land. Significantly, these trials multiplied and were reflected in challenges to the monks’ spiritual cohesion. ‘Many tribulations arose, quarrels without, fears within, mortality of herds, dispersal of possessions, lack of basic goods, and failure of produce.’29 The reference to quarrels without and fears within was a standard way of alluding to a monastic community which had lost its way. To this extent, whether such difficulties truly were experienced is less relevant than the message which was being presented in such an unambiguous fashion. One hardship leads to the next. Thus it is not surprising that after these stock phrases have prepared the readers for the image of a faltering community then once again we read of challenges to the monks’ lands. After this, however, the locus of the disruption changes. Next time the dissent is internal, as the monks turn on abbot Ralph and blame him not only for the loss of their grange (which had in fact been dispossessed) but also for the removal of the community’s chalice and gospels. 28

Fundacio, pp. 181–83. ‘Increuerunt ei tribulaciones multe foris pugne, intus timores, mortalitas pecorum, distraccio possessionum, rei familiaris inopia, et amone [sic] defectus.’ Fundacio, p. 182. 29

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The next abbot is a complete contrast and this contrast helps illuminate the intended moral of the story. The abbot is named Lambert, and Lambert passed four decades in delightful and exemplary non-involvement in worldly activities: Having passed forty-two years in religious life, he never conducted any administration of outside affairs, but always leading a cloistered life he sat with Mary at the feet of the Lord to hear his word. [. . .] In those days there was peace among the brothers, harmony with the neighbours, enough temporal possessions, and a holy rivalry of religion in spiritual things.30

After this section, the history continues to be structured around abbots rather than events. Following the principle of the gesta abbatum, the history uses each section to present a didactic message. Many of these depictions include standard items of praise, common to outstanding monks and holy men of all periods and places. Abbot Turgisius, for example, mortified his body, possessed only one set of clothing, and ate sparingly.31 Some of Turgisius’s other practices, however, were more specifically Cistercian, such as his tendency towards excessive affectivity and weeping. Overall, though, the characteristics of the abbots remain subordinate to the ongoing story of the abbey’s difficult relationship with the lay aristocracy. Arguments over land persist and it is perhaps fitting that the initial section of the Fundacio concludes at 1210 with yet more land being relinquished by the abbey. Although the general aim of the foundation history was to present as smooth an image of foundation as possible, it is certainly possible to detect moments of conflict. Indeed, the main plot elements of the Fundacio concern disruptions to the community which, invariably, took the form of disruptions to the community’s landholding. In the first part of the narrative the disruptions came from beyond the monastery, in the form of noisy parishioners and litigious noblemen. This first period of so-called ‘double discomfort’ at Kirkstall persisted for six years. During this time the monks were plagued by both brigands and poor crops, and endured severe poverty as a result. In the second part of the narrative the disruptions came from within, in the form of an improvident abbot and rebellious monks. But on both occasions the disruptions were followed by resolution. First, the good counsel of a hermit solved one of the community’s problems and, second, later problems were solved by the wise decisions of exemplary abbots who emulated the standard Cistercian model of the retiring Mary rather than the outgoing Martha.

30

‘quadraginta duos annos habens in religione, nullam unquam in rebus exterioribus agebat administracionem set claustralem vitam semper ducens sedebat cum maria secus pedes domini ut audiret verbum illius. [. . .] Fuit in diebus illius pax inter fratres, cum vicinis concordia, sufficiencia in temporalibus, in spiritualibus pia emulacio religionis.’ Fundacio, p. 184. 31 Fundacio, pp. 185–86.

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It may seem odd that the Fundacio includes so many negative images of the Kirkstall community. The incident of the monks tearing down a parish church and expelling the local inhabitants is, rightly enough, presented to reflect badly on the monks. Similarly, the financial excesses of abbot Ralph and the poor discipline of the monks at this time are also depicted openly and unambiguously. There are two points to make about this. First, it was clearly not necessary for the Kirkstall community to read a uniformly successful and changeless record of its past. Rather, the important point was that uncertainty should eventually be resolved into certainty, that change should be used and refashioned so that it worked toward a greater consistency and stability of Cistercian identity. And, second, it may be that this interaction between the static and the changing can best be described in terms of ‘tradition’. Whereas modern scholars have been debating for generations whether the Cistercian order arose fully formed as the brainchild of the abbot Stephen Harding, it seems that medieval Cistercians were happy to accept both development and static excellence in their past; certainly, the emplotment of the Kirkstall history suggests this. Changes in land use nonetheless pointed to a greater continuity of Cistercian community. Likewise, changes and disruptions in individuals’ behaviour also combined to present the larger argument concerning what the desirable Cistercian characteristics should be. Both these uses of change accord with the dictates of ‘tradition’. The strength of the notion of tradition is that it allows one to accept change as a constitutive element of a greater continuity. Thus, the Fundacio’s process of temporary disruptions which in fact work towards the return of changelessness is the same process known today under the terminology ‘invention of tradition’. As I have pointed out already, the invention of tradition generally occurs during periods of uncertainty. This certainly applies to the Kirkstall situation. The testimony of the Fundacio itself indicates that the early years of community formation were not easy and, further, it suggests why the normative influence of this foundation history may have been especially welcome. That is, the very fact that there was so much change and upheaval at the outset was precisely the reason why a history explaining and smoothing over such change needed to be written. With so much variety, uncertainty, and upheaval in the Cistercian community, the ‘invention’ of a singular and uniform history which could be embraced by all monks would have served a useful role in community formation and cohesion. It is important to remember here that Cistercian novices always joined the order as adults, bringing with them their own experiences and vastly different memories of the outside world. In such an environment the creation of a new uniform group identity was particularly necessary, hence the strong emphasis placed in Cistercian novitiates on the regularization of conduct and affectivity. Here we move beyond the realm of invented tradition to the related area of collective memories and their creation. Although differences in perspective and terminology certainly exist, as a consensus position it can be stated that there is currently a focus on the ways in which collective memory and

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history are assimilated into and feed off each other.32 Rather than an inevitable progression from natural memory to self-conscious history, it now seems more likely that there is a mutual influence between both creations, with each affecting and in turn drawing from the other. This argument is pertinent to the Kirkstall history. The history draws on idealized images which are allegedly the direct memories of monks yet which are in fact examples of invented tradition (for example, the alleged early dedication to uncultivated places and to the hermit’s life—neither of these descriptions accurately described the ‘realities’ of the site on which Kirkstall was established or the customs the monks initially followed). These images then take on lives of their own and, by their inclusion in the history, become part of the order’s community memory. It is not only the case then that present interests dictate how one perceives the past. This is certainly true and it is one of the first points made about medieval historiography in any context. What is less frequently pointed out, however, is that this perceived past is then thrown back into the pool of available reference points and can then influence the interpretation of present and future events. In the Cistercian context these images become explanatory mechanisms in their own right, the benchmark standards against which present and future Cistercian behaviour is to be judged. In other words, past behaviour is ordered and granted meaning by its alleged correspondence to desirable yet, literally speaking, invented characteristics. Importantly, this tactic seems to have been what the Cistercian audiences wanted. Soon after the Fundacio was composed, another Cistercian history was also emplotted with an emphasis on particular Cistercian philosophies and practices. The Fountains Narratio would embrace and extend the same themes, likewise explaining Cistercian history in terms of these invented images of hermits, deserts, and beautiful places.

32 For a good statement of this position, see Keith Michael Baker, ‘Memory and Practice: Politics and the Representation of the Past in Eighteenth-Century France’, Representations, 11 (1985), 134–64 (p. 157). Likewise, from a medieval perspective, see Patrick Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 10–12. These authors deviate from Halbwachs, who argued that collective memory and history were quite separate.

CHAPTER 5

The Literal and the Allegorical: The Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii

T

his chapter continues the investigation into the ways in which continuity and change are related to each other in the historiographical record. It argues that these two concepts could coexist in the story of Fountains’s past because the Fountains foundation history suggested a universalist interpretation of the past which remained optional rather than imposed. In pursuing the narrative strategies by which this multiplicity of meanings was facilitated, I will concentrate on two of the most maligned of medieval historiographical practices (wholesale adherence to exemplary sources; discrete, paratactic, and seemingly non-connected anecdotes) and will suggest that, ironically, these apparent contradictions and dichotomies contain within them significant opportunities to investigate how medieval histories functioned. Two points will be made. First, the Fountains history will be presented as a narrative which encourages the broad kind of allegorical reading practices introduced already. Second, the concentration on allegory will be identified as the strategy by which the Fountains history manages to combine meaning and multi-centredness; that is, as the strategy by which it reconciles continuity and change in the historical record. The chapter therefore argues that it was through employing a multivalent narrative order that the novelty of the Cistercian order could be reconciled with the medieval period’s traditional preference for stability and tradition.

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The Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii Fountains abbey was founded in extraordinary circumstances.1 In 1132 Cistercian monks visited the Benedictine community of St Mary’s at York. Their holiness inspired a reform movement at St Mary’s which led to the monks’ departure and establishment of a new foundation according to Cistercian custom at Fountains. Before long Fountains was the leading Cistercian house in England. At home, numerous requests for burial from lay people indicate the perceived spiritual successes of the abbey while, abroad, Fountains’s abbots were commissioned by the papacy to investigate miracles for canonization proceedings. By the end of the twelfth century Fountains owned substantial urban property and in the early thirteenth century it began exporting the wool for which it would become famous. However, when King John demanded large sums from the Cistercians in 1210 even rich houses such as Fountains suffered.2 These financial exactions were a major backdrop to the abbey’s historiographical campaign which began in the early thirteenth century. The Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii in comitatu Eboracensi treats the first ninety years of Fountains’s history. It was written by the monk Hugh of Kirkstall, probably over an extended period between 1205 and 1226; that is, after Hugh had already written the Kirkstall history.3 Clearly well known in the Yorkshire Cistercian community for his historical writings, Hugh wrote the Narratio at the request of Fountains’s abbot John. His stated aim was to show ‘by whose authority and in what way our holy mother, the church of Fountains, over which by God’s grace you [abbot John] now preside, was first founded’.4 Even in these conventional

1 On the following see Joan Wardrop, Fountains Abbey and Its Benefactors 1132–1300, CSS, 91 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1987), pp. 11–23, 263– 70, 280–81. 2 For the Cistercians’ financial affairs, see Lawrence Arthur Desmond, ‘The Statute Legislation of Edward I and its Effect upon the English Cistercians to 1399’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Fordham University, 1967), pp. 1–32. 3 There seem to have been three stages of activity; 1205/6, 1212 or slightly thereafter, and then from 1212 until 1226. Research on the Narratio has been dominated by Derek Baker. On dating, see his ‘The Genesis of English Cistercian Chronicles. The Foundation History of Fountains Abbey I’, An Cist, 25 (1969), 14– 41 (pp. 34–40), and ‘The Genesis of English Cistercian Chronicles. The Foundation History of Fountains Abbey II’, An Cist, 31 (1975), 179–212 (p. 179, n. 1). 4 ‘ut succinta narratione in acta redigerem quo auctore vel ordine [illa mater] nostra sancta, scilicet Fontanensis ecclesia, cui Deo disponente inpresentiarium praesidetis, suae fundationis sumpserit originem’, Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii, in Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains, vol. I, ed. by John Richard Walbran, Surtees Society, 42 (Durham: Surtees Society, 1862), pp. 1–129 (p. 1) (hereafter Narratio). Translations are my own. Note that the upper right corner of the manuscript roll is damaged; the words in square brackets were added

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words it is possible to detect certain Cistercian priorities. The motivation seems to have been to demonstrate the propriety and authority of the abbey’s genesis and monastic customs, something which would have anticipated the needs of multiple audiences. In the immediate sense, monks of the home monastery could consult the Narratio for edificatory information concerning their territorial foundations as well as their spiritual foundations. But at the same time the history was aimed at potential antagonists from other monastic houses. In particular, it was a pre-emptive defence against possible challenges to Fountains’s lands and possessions. This identifies the Narratio as one of the many Cistercian textual productions of the period around 1200 (comprising both foundation histories and exempla literature) which were prompted by the Cistercians’ need to confirm their early years and to defend their practices in the light of external opposition. Manuscript survivals indicate that the Narratio was not very popular in the medieval period.5 In fact, of all the eight surviving manuscripts, the earliest belongs to the fifteenth century and the others are antiquarians’ copies. While such late dates are not ideal, it does appear that the earliest copy, on which the Surtees Society edition is based, is close to the original, save for some differences towards the end. The fact that neither this text nor the Kirkstall history gained wide medieval readership indicates that the needs these foundation histories addressed were highly localized ones—they were a far cry from the broad national interests of Aelred’s compositions. The Narratio is divided into two books. The first proceeds from 1132 to 1139 and deals with the monks’ break from St Mary’s and the setbacks involved in setting up the new monastery of Fountains. Their misguided on good authority by Walbran, after investigating all extant manuscripts; see Narratio, p. 1, n. 1. 5 Manuscript study is not a feature of this investigation; for more, see my ‘Cistercian Historical Writing Writing in England, 1150–1220’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Melbourne, 1999), pp. 188–89. The earliest surviving manuscript is Trinity College, Cambridge, MS 1104 (O.1.79), which is an incomplete fifteenth-century copy from Fountains of an earlier manuscript. For more see Baker, ‘Genesis of English Cistercian Chronicles I’ and ‘Genesis of English Cistercian Chronicles II’. These articles are based on Baker’s important theses; L. G. D. Baker, ‘Studies in the Narratio de Fundatione Fontanis Monasterii’ (unpublished thesis, Oxford, 1961), and ‘The Narratio de Fundatione Fontanis Monasterii in Comitatu Eboransi’, 2 vols (unpublished thesis, Oxford, 1966). Through manuscript studies, Baker examines the reliability of both the Narratio and the incorporated letter of Thurstan, with the aim of elucidating early Cistercian history and the characteristic features of twelfth-century reformed monasticism in general. His conclusion is that the Narratio is ‘not what it claims to be’ and, hence, that it is not possible to use it as a transparent source concerning the early Cistercian years. As will become clear, my interests are significantly different from Baker’s. Note that Baker’s second thesis included a new edition of the Narratio. However, given that the Surtees Society text is more accessible and that Baker’s alterations are very few, I refer in this discussion to Walbran’s edition.

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abbot will not let the monks leave; they leave anyway; they gain the support of archbishop Thurstan of York; they have land granted to them but as yet possess no monastic buildings; thus, they live under an elm tree as an independent monastic community until cold weather forces them to seek incorporation in the Cistercian order. This inevitably leads to negotiations with Bernard of Clairvaux. Yet another famine still awaits them but Bernard’s support is the turning point for their eventual institutional success. The monks soon attract lay donors, who are the key to their success in financial terms, and the first book then concludes on a high note with descriptions of the various daughter houses founded by Fountains—tangible, genealogical evidence of the house’s maturity and success. The Narratio’s second book deals with everything that came later; ostensibly, then, the more secure history of a community reaping the rewards of its early sacrifices. Structurally, Book II is centred around the abbots and their respective periods of office and, chronologically, it proceeds from the start of the second abbot’s reign in 1139 and concludes during the abbacy of the tenth abbot, John, who was elected to office in 1220. Earlier commentators on the Narratio have concentrated on identifying sources. Thus, it has been pointed out that the first book is not drawn from the recollections of a one-hundred-year-old eyewitness monk, as Hugh of Kirkstall claims, but instead is derived from well-known Cistercian documents.6 These documents include letters from both France and England as well as Cistercian vitae from the continent and the important Cistercian legislative or exordia documents, also from the continent. Given that previous scholars have identified which particular sources were used, the next task is to suggest how and to what ends these sources might have been employed.

The Narratio, Book I The theme of the Narratio’s first book is the development from chaos to monastic harmony. But more than this, the monastic harmony that is presented is a characteristically continental Cistercian one. All the sources, all the plot devices, and all the metaphors were drawn from well-known corporate documents and so already carried meaning for the Cistercian order in its widest sense. These narrative elements served to present Fountains as an orthodox member of a wider monastic enterprise, a member which based its sense of identity not on its incorporation in an English nationalist regionality (as, on one level, Aelred of Rievaulx had argued in the 1150s) but rather on its incorporation in the pan-European reach of the Cistercian order as a whole. One way Hugh of Kirkstall stressed the authority of Fountains was by employing authoritative Cistercian letters as sources. Such a strategy 6

Baker, ‘Genesis of English Cistercian Chronicles I’.

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equated the Yorkshire house with the successes of the relevant Cistercian models, all by the process of association. While some letters were abbreviated for inclusion, occasionally a letter was incorporated wholesale, as in the case of the letter from Thurstan to William of Corbeil, the papal legate and archbishop of Canterbury. In this letter Thurstan defends the breakaway monks along the lines that all they ever wanted to do was live according to the truth of the Benedictine Rule. The letter claims to have been written in 1132 but was probably composed ten or so years later.7 It already had a strong and independent textual life before the Fountains history was written and had been popular for over seventy years as a proto-foundation history in its own right.8 It defends the innovations of the Fountains monks and essentially bypasses recent Benedictine history in order to assert a greater and more direct continuity with the early medieval followers of the Rule and, indeed, with the early desert monks. This account of origins had already made an impression at Fountains before Hugh composed the Narratio, as witnessed by the fact that two manuscripts incorporating the letter were either written at or housed at Fountains in the late twelfth century.9 The aim of Thurstan’s letter seems to have been to present Fountains as the Cîteaux of the north. As Thurstan describes it, the St Mary’s monks were inspired by the same desires as the monks who founded Cîteaux. They complained that the Rule had been poorly observed and that a renewal of religious life was necessary; they were concerned about their profession and their vows and they sought a stricter life; and they wanted more manual labour, less dependence on revenues and tithes, and, in general, to be poor with the poor of Christ. All these demands had been articulated in the same terms in the 1110s to 1140s in the continental Cistercians’ historical cum legislative origin texts, the Exordium parvum and Exordium Cistercii.10 We see then that, in the 1140s, Thurstan wanted to equate Fountains with the pre-eminent continental houses of the order and, further, that by including this letter in the Narratio Hugh of Kirkstall confirmed that this myth of origins was still one which carried meaning for English Cistercians into the thirteenth century. 7 A detailed manuscript examination has been conducted by Janet Burton, who suggests a date around 1140; Janet Burton, verbal communication, July 1996. While it is possible the letter is a later forgery, the important point for this investigation is that the letter was certainly considered genuine when it was included in the Narratio in the thirteenth century. 8 It existed in two forms, the long and the short; see Denis Bethell, ‘The Foundation of Fountains Abbey and the State of St. Mary’s York in 1132’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 17 (1966), 11–27, and Baker, ‘Genesis of English Cistercian Chronicles I’, p. 17. 9 Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 209; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 139. 10 See, for example, Exordium Cistercii, I, and Exordium parvum, I, II, III, XV, in Waddell’s ‘practical editions’ in NLT, pp. 399–401, 418–22, 434–37.

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Another contemporary Fountains manuscript provides further evidence that the Fountains monks recognized, accepted, and went out of their way to emphasize the putative links between their foundation and the first Cistercian foundation of Cîteaux. This is the late-twelfth-century manuscript, Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 209, one of the two Fountains manuscripts apart from the Narratio which contains a version of Thurstan’s letter. Significantly, this manuscript features a unified section at its end which includes copies of the exordia documents followed immediately by the long version of Thurstan’s letter.11 Such a conscious juxtaposition of documents suggests that the Fountains copyists and audiences were aware of the force of the continental exordia documents and that they were eager to align their house’s history with the glorious past of the order as a whole. It is worth mentioning here that at this time Fountains was also using another type of historical text—architecture—to make the same point. In about 1211 the monks at Fountains commenced an extension of the presbytery which was modelled directly on the nine altars of Clairvaux.12 Thus, in tangible and physical architectural matters, as well as in conceptual and literary matters, Fountains was engaging in a conscious project to align itself with the order’s two greatest houses—Clairvaux and Cîteaux—and, hence, with all that was best in the continental Cistercian heritage. Dependence on the Cistercians’ authoritative exordia documents occurs elsewhere in the Narratio and, indeed, is apparent from the outset. As described already, Hugh writes in the preface that he wishes to discuss the authority and manner in which Fountains was established. He then adds immediately that he also intends to discuss ‘in what way that vine, blessed by God, grew in a place of horror and vast solitude, and spread itself abroad, stretching out its branches as far as the sea, and its shoots to the outer nations’.13 To medieval Cistercians reading or hearing this preface, this quotation would evoke two themes. The first was the idea of the fruitful vine. As the Kirkstall history indicated, Cistercians were already sympathetic to horticultural imagery as a literary technique. Likewise, their spiritual treatises featured metaphors which equated the monastery with paradise, with gardens, and with beauty in general. There was a tendency among religious writers of all orders in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries to describe the contemporary renewal and rebirth of religious life in terms drawn from

11

Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 209, fols 90–98. Note that as I have not seen this manuscript, my discussion is based on published reports. 12 Glyn Coppack, Fountains Abbey (London: B. T. Batsford and English Heritage, 1993), p. 59. 13 ‘[qualiter illa vin]ea Domini benedicta in loco horroris et [vastae] solitudinis sic creverit, sic se dilataverit, extendens palmites suos usque ad mare et propagines [suas ad ex]teras nationes.’ Narratio, p. 2. On words in square brackets, see n. 4 above.

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nature.14 Descriptions of natural beauty and harmony suggested divine harmony and in particular gave a foretaste of the paradisiacal garden. This was a common logic, not confined to Cistercians. But for Cistercian audiences the vine imagery in the Narratio suggested more specific meanings over and above this. The vine was already a widespread way of conceiving of the Cistercian order, thanks to the inclusion of the imagery in William of StThierry’s influential Vita prima Bernardi. According to this vita, Bernard of Clairvaux’s entry into Cîteaux was responsible for extending the reach of the Cistercian vine to new and distant lands.15 Thus, when Hugh of Kirkstall employs imagery which was already famously associated with Bernard and the monks at Cîteaux, he suggests that Fountains abbey is an English Cîteaux. In a kind of historiographical typology, Cîteaux is the figura of the new Fountains, just as it was in the incorporated letter from Thurstan. Hence Fountains gains, by association, the accumulated history of Cîteaux and the continental Cistercians. Book I concludes with reference to three of Fountains’s eight daughter houses. Although the houses are presented in chronological order according to date of foundation, chronology does not seem to be the linking mechanism that Hugh considers the most important. In fact, dates are not even mentioned and it is necessary to look outside the text to medieval (or modern) reference works to discover the chronological progression. For Hugh, the link between the three houses is that all these new foundations confirm the spreading vine of the Fountains house. It is the metaphor which provides the connection, and this metaphor alone is sufficient to convey meaning to the medieval Cistercian audiences. In fact this gestational metaphor is bursting with fecundity and there are even anticipatory references to daughter houses of daughter houses: Thus Newminster had its beginnings. This was the first branch which our vine put out; this was the first swarm which spread out from our hive. The holy seed took root in the soil and, being effectively cast into the bosom of the fertile earth, it grew to a great size, and a fruitful harvest sprang up from a few grains. This newly founded house rivalled its mother’s fertility. The house conceived and brought forth three daughters, namely Pipewell, Sawley, and Roche.16

14

Giles Constable, ‘Renewal and Reform in the Religious Life’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable with Carol D. Lanham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 37–67. 15 William of St-Thierry and others, Sancti Bernardi vita et res gestae libris septem comprehensae, in PL vol. 185: cols 225–642, at Book I, chap. 4, part 19 (col. 237C). The image is drawn from Vulgate Psalm 79. 12. 16 ‘Sic se habuit Novi Monasterii initium. Hic primus palmes quem vinea nostra expandit: hoc primum examen quod ex nostro apiario evolvit. Semen sanctum solo coaluit, et quasi fertilis terrae gremio injectum, excrevit in cumulum, et de paucis granis surrexit seges copiosa. Domus, siquidem, de novo fundata, foecunditatem

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The following chapter uses the same imagery for the newly founded Kirkstead. ‘God added blessings to our Fountains and spread out the vine which he had planted’, and then the monks of Louth Park, the third foundation, ‘in the sweat of their brow planted this vine of ours’.17 It may seem self-evident that the Narratio should have asserted Fountains’s particular lineage and authority, since this was part of the generic requirement of the foundation history. But there is more at stake than this. To begin, it seems that the Cistercians were interested in familial and symbolic genealogy to a great extent, probably more so than other orders were.18 It is important then to ascertain the way in which this interest was articulated. And next, although it is an unremarkable metaphor in itself, the vine metaphor is important because whenever it is invoked it links Fountains with the broader aims of the Cistercian enterprise as a whole, as these aims were depicted in the most authoritative of all the Cistercians’ continental vitae, the Vita prima Bernardi. The imagery permits Fountains to grow by association with all that has been achieved under the banner of the Cistercian order. The second theme which evoked the Cistercians’ authorized continental documents was the reference to the biblical ‘place of horror and vast solitude’.19 This particular invocation was popular during the eleventh- and twelfth-century monastic reforms and, although not confined to the Cistercians, reached a peak of usage with this order.20 The Exordium parvum of the 1110s and 1140s had presented an early sign of this mentality when it had referred to the ‘desert-place called Cîteaux’,21 thus stressing the extent to which the early Cistercian reformers equated their enterprise with retreat from the world and, indeed, the extent to which their self-definition was based on earlier desert imagery which was itself older than Christianity. Soon the terminology was made more precise, with the notion being incorporated into other official Cistercian documents. Probably the earliest, matris suae emulata est. Concepit et peperit de se tres filias, faciens Pipewellam, Salleiam, et Rupem.’ Narratio, pp. 60–61. 17 ‘Et addit Dominus ut benediceret Fontibus nostris, et dilataret vineam quam ipse plantavit’, ‘in sudore vultus sui hanc nostram vineam plantaverunt’, Narratio, pp. 61, 68. For the last invocation of this vine image see the final, glorious depiction of Fountains at the end of the history; Narratio, pp. 127–28. 18 See David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 247. 19 ‘in loco horroris et vastae solitudinis’, Deuteronomy 32. 10. 20 Jean-Baptiste Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primitive: mythe ou réalité?, Cîteaux Studia et Documenta, 3 (Achel, Belgium: Éditions sine Parvulos, 1986), pp. 121–24. 21 ‘ad heremum quae Cistercium dicebatur alacriter tetenderunt’; Exordium parvum, III, in NLT, p. 421.

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and certainly the most influential, use of the specific ‘place of horror and vast solitude’ reference occurred in the mid-1130s in the Exordium Cistercii, where it was applied to Cîteaux.22 Other references appeared in the Vita prima Bernardi, where the imagery was now applied to Clairvaux, and in Bernard’s correspondence.23 With such influential precedents, the trend did not take long to spread to England. Besides Hugh’s use in the Narratio, the quotation appears in two documents from Lincolnshire, namely in the brief foundation narrative from Kirkstead and in an anonymous vita from Louth Park.24 The strength of the ‘horror and vast solitude’ phrase lay in its power to link the Cistercians with the desert monks of early monasticism. Thus, its power was not in its originality but in its familiarity. This preference for tradition over novelty is an important characteristic of the way in which Cistercian histories asserted and sustained meaning. Indeed, the Narratio ensures that the Yorkshire monks’ alignment with the desert monks is one of the most memorable points presented to the reader. Adhering to the dearly held Cistercian myth of desert origins, the history claims that the urge for the desert was present and articulated from the outset of the Fountains enterprise. Dissatisfied that they were living far from the spirit of the Rule, certain monks from St Mary’s longed for the desert and for labour with their hands.25 Although it is now recognized that the earliest Cistercians definitely did not define themselves in terms of the desert, the historiographical fiction that they had was already popular in Cistercian circles by the time Hugh was writing, thanks to its inclusion in a variety of documents including the exordia.26 By invoking this desert myth Hugh perpetuated the preferred Cistercian belief in purity of origins and the assertion that all early Cistercian foundations, be they in England or on the continent, had always been united by their dedication to the wilderness. 22

‘tandem desiderio potiti Cistercium devenerunt, locum tunc scilicet horroris et vastae solitudinis’; Exordium Cistercii, I, in NLT, p. 400. 23 Vita prima Bernardi, Book I, chap. 5, part 25 (PL vol. 185: col. 241D); Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. by Jean Leclercq, H. Rochais, and C. H. Talbot, 9 vols (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–77), ep. 118, (VII, 298). 24 On Kirkstead, see William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. by John Caley, H. Ellis, and B. Bandinel, 6 vols in 8 (London: Joseph Harding, 1817–30), V, 418; on Louth Park, see Charles H. Talbot, ‘The Testament of Gervase of Louth Park’, ASOC, 7 (1951), 32–45 (p. 40). 25 ‘Vivebant pro modo et consuetudine paternarum suarum traditionum [. . .] longe tamen citra praeceptum regulae’, ‘Tota aviditate suspiratur ad heremum, ad laborem manuum’, Narratio, pp. 5, 6. 26 The link with the desert became integral to Cistercian self-definition in 1160– 90; Auberger, L’unanimité cistercienne primitive, pp. 124–27, 133, and Benedicta Ward, ‘The Desert Myth: Reflections on the Desert Ideal in Early Cistercian Monasticism’, in One Yet Two: Monastic Tradition East and West, ed. by M. Basil Pennington, CSS, 29 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1976), pp. 183–99.

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To summarize Book I: the book is a rather laboured description of the problems endured by the monks from St Mary’s on the way to their ultimate security as Cistercian monks of Fountains. The book contains a variety of narrative styles and, further, these narrative styles carry different types of meanings. Letters, such as the letter of Thurstan (and letters of Bernard not discussed here), were included in their entirety to further the plot and, relatedly, to augment the work’s authority.27 They provided additional information on events already discussed or, occasionally, broke the flow of the narrative to assume material not fully explained until later. The references to the continental exordia, however, functioned by means of invocation and reminiscence. They do not further the plot in the sense of providing new anecdotes; rather, they suggest the framework in which the rest of the history might be read, the prism through which the history overall might be read, reread, and dwelt upon. Because the Cistercians were an excellent example of a unified textual community, open to the cohesive power of written texts, one can assume that these invocations would have been widely recognized. As Brian Stock has formulated it, using Cistercian monks as examples, in fully articulated textual communities themes disseminated by authoritative texts are made available to all members of the community, not just to those who compose the texts or read them.28 The community is united by its common appreciation of these motifs and the motifs become part of the broader cultural mentality. In this way the text becomes a source of meaning around which the community is organized. The Bible is understandably the text which suggested most common meanings to Cistercian monks. But other powerful texts which were known to all monks and interpreted in common ways, particularly following their widespread dissemination in the 1150s, were the continental exordia documents. Of course, as with all examples of allegorical meanings, one could still read the Narratio perfectly well without recognizing its allusions to the broader continental themes. The progression of the plot—the first, literal, level—was sufficiently clear to provide a workable history in its own right. But an extra layer of meaning was permitted should the audience detect this allusion. Indeed, if the Cistercian audiences were approaching this text fresh from their exegetical reading, then they may well have believed that this second level of meaning was the more important one, in effect the one worth aspiring to. In the Narratio’s case, this extra layer of meaning was enormous—an invocation of the whole continental authority of the 27

Hugh the narrator intervenes in the history to assert that Thurstan’s letter should be included precisely because it contributed to the greater evidence of the work’s truth; ‘Extat adhuc epistola ejusdem, quam utique ad majorem veritatis evidentiam, huic narrationi nostrae censuimus inserendam.’ Narratio, p. 10. 28 On the Cistercians as an ‘outstanding example of a “textual community” ’, see Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 405.

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Cistercian order, as it had been represented in letters and exordia documents—thus creating a metaphorical link between Fountains and the two most important continental houses, Cîteaux and Clairvaux. This raises an important point about diversity in medieval historiography. The umbrella of medieval historiography could cover a bewildering array of topics, forms, and genres—vernacular chansons de geste, Romance poems, Latin epics, prose and verse biographies, fabulous histories such as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of the kings of Britain, and sober and sensible histories such as William of Malmesbury’s histories of England. When modern commentators refer to the plurality and diversity of medieval historiography, examples such as these are frequently invoked.29 But in addition to the point that medieval historiography was diverse because it could accommodate many different histories (each exhibiting different forms, genres, and meanings), the Narratio shows that a single history could contain internal diversity as well. On the literal level the Narratio was a chronological story of the development of a new monastery. This story was standard and traditional and no different from the scores of foundation narratives composed by all the medieval monastic orders in all countries and all periods. On the metaphorical level, however, there was an entirely different story of vines and deserts and this story was uniquely Cistercian. Here then is a history with internal diversity, a history which can be appreciated according to different reading practices but which, importantly, does not impose its meanings. The history works smoothly on either level and its range and variety of meanings remains available to the audience but always completely optional.

The Narratio, Book II It does have to be stated that not all scholars of historiography would grant such narrative complexity to medieval histories, nor would they grant the concomitant skills at narrative analysis to medieval historians and their audiences. Some, for example, suggest that medieval historians’ tendency to relate events in discrete and seemingly random series (once famously referred to as the compulsion to relate ‘just one thing after another’30) was the result not of a conscious strategy for ordering and suggesting meaning but, rather, of a conceptual and literary inability to do anything else.31 29

These examples come from John O. Ward’s comments on the plurality of medieval historiography: ‘ “Chronicle” and “History”: The Medieval Origins of Postmodern Historiographical Practice?’, Parergon, n.s., 14 (1997), 101–28 (pp. 122–23). 30 Vivian H. Galbraith, ‘Good Kings and Bad Kings’, History, n.s., 30 (1945), 119–32 (p. 119). 31 On parataxis as representing ‘a generalized inability, or humble reluctance, to order experience’, as ‘an artistic and intellectual vacancy’, see Nancy F. Partner,

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Others suggest that short, isolated episodes would have been well-suited to refectory reading and thus that medieval histories were never intended to be read with overall themes in mind, although this would not necessarily have prevented their being read this way.32 The second book of the Narratio is useful to study in light of these points since it features the classic paratactic structure of short, undated, and seemingly unrelated episodes. In the following examination I will hold to the premise that modern readers need to be attuned to the processes by which medieval histories might have been read. Following this, I suggest that meaning is not confined to the linear details of Fountains’s foundation but exists also in the non-linear fashion of allusion and reminiscence; that is, I argue that another layer of meaning is available to the reader when allegorical interpretation is employed. To this end, I reject the suggestion that the digressive medieval narrative necessarily results from historical and literary incompetence. Instead I follow an approach which draws analogies between written histories and the visual arts, stressing the ways in which respondents can still impose meaning on these juxtaposed images by ‘filling in the gaps’ between them and thus recognizing the implicit and juxtaposed connections.33 The introduction to the Narratio promised a world of order and harmony. But, as indicated already, the history includes significant evidence of difficulties and disharmony. In the first book this was shown by exterior threats such as poor weather and famine. The second book features a narrative doublet to this theme, only this time the problems are interior: mutinies against the abbot, arson, and refusals to accept abbatial elections. This is part of the history’s general change of focus, from place to people, from Book I to Book II. The first book concentrated on the monastery’s place in the wider world (its authoritative equivalence to Cîteaux; its identity as inhering in the group) while the second book favours the monastery’s interior life and suggests that its spiritual foundations inhere in individual monks. This attention to individuals furnishes a similar model to the genealogical imagery apparent in the first book. But whereas the genealogy of the first book invested continuity in the biological inheritance of ‘The New Cornificius: Medieval History and the Artifice of Words’, in Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Historiography, ed. by Ernst Breisach (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp. 5–59 (p. 18). 32 Roger D. Ray, ‘Medieval Historiography through the Twelfth Century: Problems and Progress of Research’, Viator, 5 (1974), 33–59 (p. 41). 33 On filling in the gaps, see Robert Alter, The Art of Biblical Narrative (New York: Basic Books, 1981), chap. 7, esp. on the differences between linear logic and narrative logic. For Alter, the ‘montage’ style of biblical narrative logic was chosen by ancient writers since it enabled them to ‘embrace the abiding complexity of their subjects’ (p. 154); that is, in my terminology, the montage style enabled them to combine difference and overarching meaning within the one narrative. Karl F. Morrison makes similar points in his History as a Visual Art in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 25–28, 92–104.

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monastic family ties (mother house to daughter house, vine to vine), ecclesiastical continuity results in this instance from the transmission of divine grace from one exemplary abbot to the next. Both books, then, describe Fountains by a kind of genealogy, by the logic that the strengths of the past will continue into the future. Genealogy seems to be a powerful logic in this text precisely because it is not confined to the past. The invocation of genealogy seems to reflect a mentality at Fountains in which foundation is a story of past, present, and future rather than just a history of the past. The first anecdote of Book II is a warning to avoid dissent. An explicit link is made between this theme and the themes of Book I. Now that the monastery’s external and physical status in the landscape is secure, the next step is to maintain constancy and avoid internal change (that is, avoid murmuring and rebellion). Descriptions of Fountains’s final five daughter houses occur next, furnishing further confirmation of the success which, ideally, accompanies such monastic constancy. But soon the monks at Fountains are beset by problems. Relatives of a debarred archbishop burn down the church in protest against Fountains’s role against their kinsman. Next, an unsuccessful mutiny breaks out against the abbot. Structurally, these examples of rebellion are presented as a discrete and self-contained section of the history that is important in its own right. This narrative demarcation of the rebellion is effected by the return of the narrator’s voice. Hugh intervenes in the narrative and claims that he will now no longer depend on the recollections of his one-hundred-year-old witness but, instead, will continue the history himself by virtue of his own authoritative eyewitness knowledge.34 Hugh’s personal appearance in the history had occurred once before this, at the beginning of Book II, when he asserted his authority to write by mentioning that his story came from the mouth of the old man. On both occasions, Hugh employs standard historiographical truth claims to defend a switch of gear in his history. Thus, the employment of these authorizing strategies is a signal to the audience that Hugh is about to embark on a particularly important section of his history. And, certainly, the work now changes. Now the history is comprised of a series of undated and discrete events which follow on one from another but which could equally well have been included elsewhere in the history. That is, these are the classic short and seemingly unrelated episodes that are often cited as one of medieval historiography’s alleged shortcomings. But, once again, it is precisely these difficult areas that most demand analysis. If Hugh could have included these events anywhere, why did he place them where he did? Is there any significance (that we can retrieve) in his choice, or in the ways in which such a series of anecdotes might have been read? It was not unknown for miracle descriptions to appear at the end of foundation histories, since this placement permitted continual updating of the history as more miracles came to hand. This may be one reason why the Narratio concludes 34 Narratio, pp. 116–17. For the remainder of the history, Hugh is either eyewitness or hears the news directly from the participants.

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with the stories it does. But, again, the miracle stories which appear in the Narratio demonstrate very particular kinds of devotion and miracles. Why then are these particular miracles the ones that are included? On close inspection, these events which are so disparate in their details seem nonetheless to present a persistent theme. In contrast to the disorder of the previous section this section is characterized by the order of prayer. Henceforth, Book II is a classic advertisement for the particular kind of timeless, meditative prayer in which the Cistercians specialized. This involves a generic shift as the work takes on the tone of the moral exemplum, a genre which we know was especially popular among continental Cistercians at this time. Hugh incorporates these exemplary elements within the history with no discussion or explanation. These non-dated, almost ahistorical events are included as self-evidently legitimate components of the work. By raising these themes Hugh appears to suggest that the monks of Fountains have initiated a period of miracles which is at least the equal of that which occurs anywhere else in the Cistercian world. Like the contemporary Exordium magnum Cisterciense, and like Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum, both composed by continental Cistercians, the Narratio describes contemporary miracles in order to assert that its contemporary English Cistercians were worthy spiritual successors to their forefathers. Each anecdote raises a devotional trend which is clearly and characteristically Cistercian.35 The first story describes an individual lay brother who encourages someone to join the order. The emphasis here is on learning via the book of experience rather than through gratuitous book learning, a very strong Cistercian priority. The next anecdote depicts the overwhelming sweetness of the eucharist which, again, was an affective way of describing experience that was especially popular among Cistercians. And a following tale describes an abbot and the vision of the Trinity that he saw while praying the office and which, in distinctive Cistercian memorial tradition, he remembered—re-called and re-meditated on—whenever he felt his faith tested. The function of exempla in medieval histories has drawn a range of assessments. These assessments have often been prompted by broader arguments related to the major historiographical debates of the day. For example, in the 1970s, when medieval historiography was still often described as a naive form of writing which lacked a sense of cause and effect, Gabrielle Spiegel countered this view by suggesting that the exemplum served as a kind of historiographical causal agent, as a way of asserting historical meanings which could be applied to past, present, and future.36 More recently, exempla have been investigated in relation to the question of historiographical definitions. That is, scholars investigating the perennial question of the differences between history, fable, estoire, and so on have argued that the presence of exempla in written histories is a helpful guide to 35

On the following, see Narratio, pp. 118–22. Gabrielle M. Spiegel, ‘Political Utility in Medieval Historiography: A Sketch’, History and Theory, 14 (1975), 314–25 (pp. 320–21). 36

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distinguishing between these subsets of the historical genre, even suggesting that it is only by including exempla that histories can move beyond the literal sense of chronology in order to assert deeper meanings.37 Regardless of the different interpretations, the one point that is agreed is that exempla tales are certainly not just meaningless fillers in the historiographical record; instead, it is precisely by means of the exempla that many of a history’s themes are most persuasively presented. In the case of the Fountains Narratio, the strength of the short exempla tales was their capacity to speak to individual monks. They suggested an historical meaning which in this instance was not corporate but, rather, individual; it is from the exempla stories that the individual monks seem best able to draw lessons from history. In Book II the piety of individual monks is now much greater than in the previous book, notwithstanding the earlier description of disputes and monks owning private property. In Book II Fountains is still presented as a community of the highest propriety and the early incidents of disruption are not presented as compromises to the community. In a way, these threats are the necessary ‘others’ for success to shine through. After all, there had always been this tension in the work, as demonstrated by the exterior travails overcome in Book I. It is important to recognize the different but complementary methods by which the difficulties are overcome in the two books. Disunity and rupture were averted in the first book by means of the literal, physical foundation of the monastery, by finally getting the monastery built. Disunity and rupture were averted in the second book by allegorical spiritual foundation, represented in the edificatory exempla tales. In both books change was accepted as a component of a greater continuity. And the important point here for critics of medieval historiography is that this relationship between the two books (the literal, foundational meaning of history being succeeded by the more allegorical meaning) is a classic example of how many medieval literary theorists said the written text should be approached.38 The two books are perfect examples of the confirming, complementary ways by which medieval histories suggested meanings without those meanings necessarily being tied to facts.

37

Marius M. Woesthius, ‘ “Nunc ad historiam revertamur”: History and Preaching in Helinand of Froidmont’, Sacris Erudiri, 34 (1994), 313–33. 38 See, most famously, Hugh of St Victor’s prescriptions; The Didascalicon of Hugh of St. Victor, trans. by Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), VI. 3. For more medieval proponents of this approach, see MarieDominique Chenu, Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century, ed. and trans. by Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 165–67.

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Multiple Genres and Multiple Meanings One of the most pressing issues facing any historian, medieval or modern, is the question of combining meaning with multi-centredness, of imposing a guiding structure on one’s account of the past while still allowing the fullest range of different voices to be heard. It is helpful to investigate how medieval writers managed this juggling act, how they managed to respect difference while still retaining guiding threads to their compositions. The mechanism which allowed Hugh of Kirkstall to suggest overarching meaning while maintaining diversity was the distinction he permitted between facts (the events, the res gestae) and meaning. The literal level of the history existed in the chronological progression of the plot and, to be sure, this offered a suitably comprehensible narrative in its own right. However, the Narratio’s greater suggested meaning (the equation of Fountains with the grand continental houses, Cîteaux and Clairvaux) took place at the optional level of allusion and allegory. It is worth stressing here that this approach honours the two fundamental principles of exegetical reading practices. First, while not contradicting the literal reading, the allegorical reading provides meanings and solutions which cannot be provided by the literal level. The second point—that the analysis provides meaning and coherence to the wider history, rather than to isolated passages alone—is additional confirmation of the justification and usefulness of this multilayered investigation of the Narratio. The internal diversity both within and between the Narratio’s two books is the mechanism by which both continuity and change were imposed on Fountains’s history. Simply at the literal level of facts and deeds, the story of Fountains’s past is one of change. More than this, the change is definitely negative—it involves disruption, setbacks, and internal dissent. But on the allegorical level, all the references here serve to incorporate Fountains within the wider unity of the continental Cistercian family as it was known through the reassuring examples in the exordia documents—through the vine and desert motifs. These timeless and effectively universal examples provided the framework in which to read the specific, everyday events of Fountains’s establishment and development. Thus, in combination, these two layers of meaning impute a stability to a past which was, on the level of events, more accurately characterized by innovation, disruption, and difficulties. Another point to be made from the Fountains history is that an overarching meaning still need not be prescriptive. As suggested above, the Fountains history could be read quite profitably without the audience accepting, or even recognizing, the argument that Fountains was an English Cîteaux. Similarly, the Narratio could still be appreciated as an account of great monastic deeds even if the exegetical link between the literal meaning of Book I’s (physical) foundation and the allegorical meaning of Book II’s (spiritual) foundation was not identified. That is, the history could be read, enjoyed, and accepted as a meaningful account of past deeds even when it was read simply on the literal level. This was because its meanings

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remained discretionary and non-exclusive. On the other hand, although the Narratio’s two books can be read and understood discretely, their medieval meanings (specifically, their Cistercian meanings) are certainly confirmed and compounded when the books are read together and their Cistercian tropes identified. Another point arises once we recognize the range and variety of the Fountains history. This relates to the question of genre and how so many different generic styles can coexist peacefully within a single medieval text. Attention to genre has long been a popular scholarly field, although more within the field of medieval literature than in historiography. Research into this field has been further encouraged by acceptance of the postmodernist tenet that literary presentation constitutes or ‘makes’ the historical past. That is, if they are all literary in origin then what is the difference between romances, genealogies, and histories? This is one of the issues currently occupying commentators on medieval historiography and the focus is clearly on comparisons between histories and other written texts. The Fountains history suggests, however, that it is also helpful to look within histories for clues to what genre meant in medieval historical thought. Obviously this carries the risk of pre-empting the result, of defining the qualities of the ‘history’ in advance. But this does not seem to be a problem with the Narratio. The Fountains text is presented as a straight history and it has no features that move even close to romance or epic, for example. The few occasions on which it was used as a source in other medieval texts suggest that later writers also conceived of it in terms of the chronicle/history framework.39 This clear embeddedness in the historical genre is itself very important. For this shows us that different literary forms—the legal text (the exordia), the letter (Thurstan’s and Bernard’s letters), the genealogy (references to daughter houses and the vine metaphor), and the exemplum (Book II’s moral tales)—all of which had strong medieval traditions in their own right, could combine and that medieval writers and audiences knew they could combine to form a resultant text that was never anything other than a perfectly readable and generically unremarkable history. It has long been accepted that charters and invented speeches were integral components of the medieval history, yet scholars have found it more difficult to identify the relationships between other types of text and the written history. Yet it is precisely due to its employment of a range of narrative styles that the Narratio develops its characteristic plurality of meaning. Hence, if we locate the success of medieval histories in their diversity we will clearly need to look in more detail at the literary mechanisms which facilitated such a diversity in the first place.

39

The Narratio was a major source for the early part of abbot Greenwell’s Chronicle of the Abbots, a history compiled by the abbot of Fountains between 1442 and 1471; Walbran, Memorials of the Abbey of St Mary of Fountains, I, 130–53.

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Accepting that medieval historiographical practice was meaning-oriented rather than fact-oriented means that seemingly random, unrelated, and even anachronistic anecdotes might in fact work towards a greater unity of meaning. This had clear advantages for the Cistercian order. One of the most difficult of all historiographical tasks is how to superimpose a continuity of meaning onto a past characterized by a diversity of facts. This was particularly relevant for the Cistercians—they were always torn between their constantly avowed raison d’être, which was the faithful return to an unchanged Benedictine custom, and the patent fact that they had initiated many new monastic practices along the way. As mentioned in the Introduction, Lesley Johnson has produced an insightful examination of the specific ways in which change and continuity are treated in the English historiographical record. Studying non-monastic historians, she has demonstrated that change could be accepted as an essential part of the story of medieval foundations, genealogies, and, especially, etymologies.40 The Fountains Narratio permits us to argue further. It suggests that, while rupture and continuity need not always be opposing forces, this was only possible when change was subsumed to a story of a greater continuity. That is, the narratives do not function as ‘authenticating ventures’ (to use Johnson’s term) in spite of their examples of discontinuity, but because of their examples of discontinuity. To this extent then, the imperative for a continuous link between past and present does persist, it is simply that continuity has been redefined to incorporate a certain degree of flux and instability. The way in which the Narratio redefined continuity was by separating fact from meaning. This enabled difference and continuity to coexist peacefully in the historical record, without contradiction. Moreover, the distinction between fact and meaning was further enhanced by the use of different literary styles. As a result, the Fountains history permitted reconciliation of the nostalgic quest for continuity with the intellectual recognition of change, and it used internal diversity of both literary style and exegetical layers of fact and meaning to do it.

40

Lesley Johnson, ‘Etymologies, Genealogies, and Nationalities (Again)’, in Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. by Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson, and Alan Murray, Leeds Texts and Monographs New Series, 14 (Leeds: University of Leeds, School of English, 1995), pp. 125–36.

PART FOUR National History Writing, c. 1220 _______________

Prologue

The Cistercian Order

S

ome of the trends influencing institutional and devotional Cistercian life at the turn of the thirteenth century persisted for the next two decades, if not beyond. As we have seen, when the foundation histories were composed in the early thirteenth century the General Chapter was preoccupied with codifying past legal practice. This had resulted in the dissemination of the first edition of the Libellus definitionum in 1202. Moving into the 1220s, the same interests continued. A second edition of the Libellus was produced in 1220, once again reflecting the desire to unify past practice for future reference. This urge to organize went from strength to strength and it would result in further reissues of the Libellus in the 1230s and 1250s.1 As well as this interest in organizing their own order, the continental Cistercians in the 1220s were enthusiastic participants in the organization of Christendom more broadly. Here we move from the areas of Cistercian life that were stable between 1200 and 1220 to the areas in which change can be detected. Participation in international affairs, best exemplified by the Cistercians’ role fighting heresy, signals the beginning of a change in Cistercian corporate life. Although they had always immersed themselves in crusade and in broader theological debates beyond the monastery, Cistercians from the late 1210s onwards took to this activity with extra energy. There were still other areas in which Cistercian life moved into a new era in around 1220. From 1218 the Cistercians in England began emerging 1 Bernard Lucet, Les codifications cisterciennes de 1237 et de 1257 (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1977).

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from a period of financial exaction. For the first fifteen years of the century they had endured financial demands from King John and their affairs had fluctuated between good and bad fortune.2 Now, however, they enjoyed fairer taxation under Henry III. Modern scholars have taken evidence such as this to posit the 1220s as a turning point for the Cistercian order as a whole. Depending on their priorities, commentators have labelled this period as either the beginning of decline or as a turn for the better. In the first formulation, the years 1220 to around 1240 mark the end of a golden age and the onset of the period when the order lost its dynamism and when its economy began altering to the extent that the Cistercians began to resemble other orders, in some areas at least.3 This view is clearly premised on the now discredited ‘ideals versus reality’ argument. But regardless of whether scholars draw positive or negative inferences, the suggestion that the period 1220–1240 witnessed significant economic, educational, and organizational changes in the Cistercian order is not in dispute.4 While Cistercian corporate life in the two periods 1200 and 1220 had elements of both similarity and difference, Cistercian historiography between these two ages had clearly changed. Between the 1210s and the early 1230s the focus moved away from the internal and local interests of the exempla collections and foundation histories. Now Cistercians turned their gaze outwards and produced histories of international affairs. These fall into two categories: crusading histories by authors such as Gunther of Pairis and Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay and encyclopaedic histories by authors such as Hélinand of Froidmont and Aubri of Trois-Fontaines. The crusading interest has been well studied by Alfred Andrea, who posits a fascination with eastern life ‘which was distinctly, but not uniquely, Cistercian’.5 More recently, the encyclopaedic histories have drawn attention due to their inclusion of exemplary sections which seem to function as teaching and preaching aids in the fight against heresy.6

2

Lawrence Arthur Desmond, ‘The Statute Legislation of Edward I and Its Effect upon the English Cistercians to 1399’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Fordham University, 1967), pp. 28–31. 3

René Locatelli, ‘Rappel des principes fondateurs de l’ordre cistercien. Aux origines du modèle domanial’, in L’espace cistercien, ed. by Léon Pressouyre (Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1994), pp. 13–26 (pp. 14, 22–23). 4 See, for example, the comments in Louis J. Lekai’s authoritative survey of the order, The Cistercians — Ideals and Reality ([n.p.]: Kent State University Press, 1977), pp. 77–79. 5 Alfred J. Andrea, ‘The Historia Constantinopolitana: An Early ThirteenthCentury Cistercian Looks at Byzantium’, An Cist, 36 (1981), 269–302 (p. 275). 6

See, for example, E. L. Saak, ‘The Limits of Knowledge: Hélinand de Froidmont’s Chronicon’, in Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts, ed. by Peter Binkley (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 289–302.

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In England, Cistercian historical thought and re-creations of the past took many forms. Building campaigns in the early thirteenth century were a way for the Cistercians to show their attachment to past ages as they recreated Roman, continental, and other styles in their architectural designs.7 Poetry was another medium used to commemorate the past. By 1218 Matthew of Rievaulx had composed poems on contemporary continental and English history, concentrating on the Third and Fourth Crusades and the effects of the Interdict on English monasticism.8 He also composed eulogies of Rievaulx’s abbots and injected these with a strong sense of local tradition. The few prose histories written by English Cistercians in the 1200s through to the 1220s are well known but not particularly well studied. They include Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum and the annals of Waverley and Margam. The consensus is that these works retained an insular emphasis and that even when they claimed wide fields of interest the focus was still one of ‘regional patriotism’ in which the greatest attention was paid to issues of direct relevance to the local Cistercian communities.9 The apparently local nature of these histories has encouraged scholars to study them as though they were foundation histories and to consider them most useful for the select pieces of information they convey concerning the early years of the monasteries in question.10 Certain sections and subsections of the histories have occasionally been examined but there is no tradition of investigating these histories in their entirety. In the following study, therefore, I move away from past practices and will instead focus on the complex ways in which Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum exhibits a combination of local, national, and, in particular, international interests.

7 Joe Hillaby, ‘ “The House of Houses”: The Cistercians of Dore and the Origins of the Polygonal Chapter House’, Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, 46 (1989), 209–45. 8 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS latin 15157, fols 35–129, esp. fols 43v–44v, v 46 –48v, 106v–09v, 111r–v, 131r. For a selection of Matthew’s compositions (mainly poetry, but occasionally prose) see André Wilmart, ‘Les mélanges de Mathieu préchantre de Rievaulx au début du XIIIe siècle’, Revue bénédictine, 52 (1940), 15–84. 9 In Christopher Cheney’s words, ‘Some, indeed, purport to be annals of general history, but their compilers emphasize local events, as at Coggeshall, Waverley, and Margam’: ‘English Cistercian Libraries: The First Century’, in his Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), pp. 328–45 (pp. 339–40). For the same argument see Christopher J. Holdsworth, ‘John of Ford and English Cistercian Writing 1167–1214’, TRHS, 5th series, 11 (1961), 117–36 (p. 131). 10 See, for example, Guy N. Hartcher, ‘Coggeshall Abbey: The First Hundred Years’, Journal of Religious History, 12 (1982), 125–39, which employs the Chronicon Anglicanum to construct a picture of the abbey’s early years.

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The English Historiographical and Political Order The key feature of English historical writing in the early thirteenth century was the proliferation of annals.11 This proliferation persisted over the period 1200–c. 1220 which, on generous terms, is the period of the Chronicon Anglicanum’s composition. Hence, despite the lack of a single date for the chronicle’s composition, it is still legitimate to investigate the Chronicon in the light of this annalistic theme. Annals in the early thirteenth century were informed by a range of political influences. Indeed, this very mixture of local and international affairs is one of their defining characteristics. No longer feeling compelled to write the exclusively national history that was common in the mid-twelfth century, English writers of history now combined the most local information with details of the Crusades and Christendom more broadly. Politically, there were developments in royal affairs which influenced historical writing at this time. In the late 1210s, following King John’s death, Louis of France and baronial supporters of his claim to be king of England had controlled key centres in southern England. Although the regency of William the Marshal brought some focus to the English cause, even the English victory of 1217 did not guarantee security for the English kingship under the minor Henry III. Henry’s second coronation in 1220 confirmed his situation somewhat, but rebellion and uncertainty continued to dog the English political context, certainly until 1223 when Pope Honorius III deemed Henry to be in control of the kingdom and, indeed, until Henry’s minority ended in 1227. This political culture directly informed history writing, in the sense that it reconfigured what was meant by ‘national’ and ‘international’. Unlike in the mid-twelfth century, English nationalism was not a unity to be opposed proudly against Celtic otherness; rather, there were class divisions now patently obvious within this English nation. Tensions were apparent in the international context as well— England was certainly brought into contact with French influences but, at the same time, the fact that this contact was one of military conflict also confirmed how very separate these two kingdoms were. In such a situation, there was a range of options available to writers of English history, a range of possible ways in which they might combine national and international unity and dissent in their historical productions. The histories produced in the 1220s were often composed by multiple authors who were generally anonymous. Although we do not know the names of these predominantly annalistic authors, the very fact that so many different compilers worked together to the same ends indicates a wide historiographical interest that is no less important for its anonymity. The annalistic revival affected all monastic orders. Annals were produced by the 11 Antonia Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), chap. 15, esp. p. 318.

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Cistercian houses of Margam, Waverley, and Stanley, while other annals were produced at Southwark, Merton, Dunstable, Worcester, Bury St Edmunds, Hyde, and elsewhere.12 The main characteristic of these annals is that many were based on the same sources, thus indicating that historical information at this time was shared between different houses of different orders. Most of the modern scholarship is devoted to unravelling how the various annals are related to each other and what their ultimate sources might be. The extent to which the Cistercians contributed to this wider enterprise still needs investigation.

The Narrative Order Given that the major genre of English history writing around the 1220s was the annal, it is worth investigating the features of annals more closely. The first and most difficult question is: What exactly is an annal? Defining the characteristics of the medieval annal, chronicle, and history is a complex issue, well beyond my aims here. Other commentators, however, have paid considerable attention to this question and have traditionally considered the study of terminology to be the most fruitful area of investigation. This has resulted in an extensive modern commentary on what medieval authors might have meant by such terms as historia, chronicon, annales, estoire, and so on.13 In my view, however, a concentration on definitions alone 12

Gransden, Historical Writing, chap. 15 (pp. 331–39). For studies see Martin Brett, ‘The Annals of Bermondsey, Southwark and Merton’, in Church and City 1000–1500. Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke, ed. by David Abulafia, Michael Franklin, and Miri Rubin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 279–310; Christopher R. Cheney, ‘Notes on the Making of the Dunstable Annals, A.D. 33 to 1242’, in Essays in Medieval History Presented to Bertie Wilkinson, ed. by Thayron A. Sandquist and M. R. Powicke (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), pp. 79–98; Noel Denholm-Young, ‘The Winchester-Hyde Chronicle’, EHR, 49 (1934), 85–93; Moses Tyson, ‘The Annals of Southwark and Merton’, Surrey Archaeological Collections, 36 (1925), 24–57. 13

See Michael McCormick, Les annales du haut moyen âge, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975), pp. 11–13, for the difficulties in defining history, chronicle, and annal. The tradition of distinguishing genres has been strong in French and German scholarship. See Bernard Guenée, ‘Histoires, annales, chroniques. Essai sur les genres historiques au Moyen Age’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 28 (1973), 997–1016, and HansWerner Goetz, ‘Die “Geschichte” im Wissenschaftssystem des Mittelalters’, in Funktionen und Formem Mittelalterlicher Geschichtsschreibung. Eine Einführing, ed. by Franz-Josef Schmale (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985), pp. 165–213 (pp. 172–94). More recently, see Peter Damian-Grint, ‘Estoire as Word and Genre: Meaning and Literary Usage in the Twelfth Century’, Medium Aevum, 66 (1997), 189–206.

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cannot provide full insights into the types of meanings and functions an historical text carried for its audiences. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, in any case, there are a host of varying and contradictory medieval definitions for the annal, chronicle, and so on. It is certainly helpful to be aware of the force of medieval definitions, since the kinds of definitions that different modern scholars favour carry important consequences for the kinds of analyses they then pursue. But the bulk of scholarly activity and the greatest possibilities for new insights into medieval historiography do not currently lie in this field. A more important stream of analysis derives from Hayden White’s investigations into the nature and functions of narrative. This stream represents a crucial change from investigating the form of annals alone to investigating the ways in which form bears meaning. That is, the standard twentieth-century approach was to define a medieval annal predominantly by its form—it was a brief, linear composition arranged year by year which did not necessarily include causal links between its entries. The history, in contrast, has traditionally been defined by its narrative amplitude. This definitional distinction fed easily into the perennial debate concerning the relative literary strengths of histories, chronicles, and annals, with the annal’s lack of definite closure being considered a weakness.14 Note, however, that neither of the two definitions concentrated primarily on the ways in which the texts suggested meaning but, rather, identification of the respective literary forms was an end in itself. More recently, White and others have investigated how texts suggest and sustain historical meaning. White has argued that all written accounts of the past (even those with the sparest linear and chronological forms—the annals) are still emplotted.15 Events in ‘real life’ never happen in a readymade ‘beginning-middle-end’ format; rather, the historian has to impose this guiding structure onto deeds from the past and this imposition occurs just as frequently in bare annals as it does in amplified literary histories. Events might be presented according to certain tragic, ironic, comic, or romantic plot structures, and the particular structure chosen determines the selection of past events, how those past events are presented, and, hence, how history can be known. Following this logic, writing history becomes an essentially literary project in which emplotment, a text’s structural characteristics, is much more than form. It is in fact the vehicle of that text’s meanings. Various commentators on medieval historical writing have 14 For a survey of why earlier scholars considered the annal’s chronological structure to be an incomplete means of presenting meaning, see Lucian Hölscher, ‘The New Annalistic: A Sketch of a Theory of History’, History and Theory, 36 (1997), 317–35 (pp. 317–18). 15

The famous example is White’s analysis of the eighth-century Annals of St Gall: ‘The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality’, Critical Inquiry, 7 (1980), 5–27 (pp. 11–20).

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accepted this logic eagerly, arguing that even the most basic (the most allegedly artless) section of the medieval annal—its strict chronological structure—is also a self-consciously authorial creation, bound by all the author’s spoken and unspoken priorities.16 But despite the preceding arguments for the constructed, literary, and artful nature of the annal (and, of course, of the chronicle and history), it is true that annals are still often regarded as the poor cousins of the historiographical hierarchy. The unavoidably patchwork nature of many of these texts forces modern commentators to question the degree to which themes can be identified within these works. That is, even if one agrees that a medieval annal does contain its own narrative coherence, there is still the difficulty of knowing how to recognize this coherence. Even the most sympathetic critic can be stymied here. This problem is not confined to annals. Variety and even contradiction of themes and emphasis could feature in the most amplified of histories, particularly when these histories were subsequently rearranged or left unfinished. This patchwork nature seems to militate against any formal literary analysis of these medieval historical texts. This raises what I feel is the core issue for commentators reading medieval annals in the light of White’s arguments. While it is true that many histories and annals are so internally diverse as to make it impossible to seek logical connections among all the constituent sections, nonetheless this does not mean that the work in question is totally devoid of linkages between its separate entries. The point at issue then, and the focus of my investigation, is the way in which the process of narrativization occurs, not the way in which a final, unified, coherent narrative product may or may not result. The two are quite different things. In the former we can identify significance in the way in which an attempt at internal coherence is made, even when this attempt may not entirely succeed. The fact that the urge to narrativize experience persists even where results are uncertain or partial seems to indicate that the desire for order, meaning, and pattern in the past is something intrinsic to the historical understandings of a range of communities, regardless of their period or place. In the English context the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle has drawn the most commentary in this regard.17 16

On the implications of White’s arguments for the distinction between the medieval annal and history, see Suzanne Fleischman, ‘On the Representation of History and Fiction in the Middle Ages’, History and Theory, 22 (1983), 278–310 (pp. 291–95). For recent reflections on White’s influence on historians, not confined to medievalists, see Nancy F. Partner, ‘Hayden White (and the Content and the Form and Everyone Else) at the AHA’, History and Theory, 36 (1997), 102–10, and the articles in History and Theory, 37 (1998). 17 Cecily Clark, ‘The Narrative Mode of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle before the Conquest’, in England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. by Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 215–35, and, specifically on Hayden White, Richard P. Horvath, ‘History, Narrative, and the Ideological Mode of the Peterborough Chronicle’, Mediaevalia, 17 (1994), 123–48.

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By investigating the way in which this narrativizing urge is also manifest in Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum my priority then is to comment on an issue of relevance to commentators on medieval and modern historiography equally.

CHAPTER 6

Meanings in the Borders: Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum

W

ith the Chronicon Anglicanum the focus of Cistercian historiography moves away from the Yorkshire heartland. The Chronicon Anglicanum is a national history of England which covers the period 1066 to 1224.1 For convenience, the work as a whole is attributed to Ralph of Coggeshall, although it seems that only the section from 1187 onwards is Ralph’s original contribution. Ralph was abbot of the Cistercian abbey of Coggeshall in Essex and he probably wrote the history between about 1200 and the 1220s.2 The early parts of the Chronicon are brief, derivative, and annalistic, but from 1187 onwards the work provides a strongly narrative treatment of the Third and Fourth Crusades and the relationships between the English kings Richard and John on the one hand and Philip II of France, the papacy, and the English barons on the other. Much of the Chronicon’s testimony from the 1190s onwards is independent and this accounts for the history’s importance for such themes as King John’s reign and Cistercian involvement in the crusades. The history has a complicated manuscript tradition.3 In brief, the earliest version of the history appears in British Library, Cotton MSS, Vespasian

1 Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. by Joseph Stevenson, RS, 66 (London: Longman and Co., 1875), 1–208 (hereafter CA). Translations are my own. 2 Most scholars date the history approximately rather than definitely. Antonia Gransden states that the history was written ‘soon after John’s death’ (Historical Writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), p. 318). 3 For a detailed discussion, see D. A. Carpenter, ‘Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall’s Account of the Last Years of King Richard and the First Years of King John’, EHR,

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D X, an early-thirteenth-century manuscript written and updated over an unspecified period.4 Most of the text has been dated to the first quarter of the thirteenth century, with some work completed both before and after this period. Frequent changes of hand and ink reflect a process in which the Chronicon was updated every so often as new information came to light. Although there are too many changes of hands to enable one to use the term ‘autograph’ literally, nonetheless a guiding hand has been identified which has been posited as Ralph’s. The manuscript is therefore accepted as Ralph’s working copy. For the purposes of this discussion, the manuscript history is important only in so far as it raises the issue of the Chronicon’s three subsections.5 Changes of hand and vellum frequently occur at the same places as changes of sources. Moreover, the same changes (particularly at the years 1187 and 1206) also correspond to changes in the themes treated and in the narrative amplitude of the history. The fact that so many changes converge on the same points suggests that the history is comprised of various subsections, more or less discrete works eventually combined into one. The first section is short and annalistic and treats the period 1066 to 1186. Ralph of Coggeshall was not the original author of this section but was simply the re-copier of a pre-existing set of annals. The second section is the longest, comprising over half the work and treating the years 1187 to 1205. Here the work becomes a more expansive narrative in the tradition of a history rather than an annal, describing national issues as they are manifest in the deeds of Kings Richard and John, and also including details of the crusades. Further indications that this is a new section are the employment of new written sources and the introduction of oral testimony. The text itself states that Ralph was author from 1187 onwards and it is in this second section that we can speak of Ralph as author in our modern sense. The third section covers the period 1206 to 1224 and it is a complex section which is not completely understood. The section commences with a single interpolated folio which treats the years 1206 to 1212 and which is a reversion to the annalistic style found at the outset of the Chronicon. From 1213 the Chronicon returns to a fuller narrative. But the history now seems 113 (1998), 1210–30 (pp. 1212–14). The most comprehensive treatment of the Chronicon, Guy N. Hartcher’s dissertation, also discusses the manuscript: ‘Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum: An Investigative Analysis’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1979), chap. 3. 4 BL, Cotton MSS, Vespasian D X, fols 46–131v. The two other contemporary manuscripts are London, College of Arms, MS Arundel XI, and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS latin 15076. 5 The question of the subsections, along with the question of source identification, is the focus of Hartcher’s work, ‘Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum’. As will become clear, I have drawn on some of Hartcher’s interest in the Chronicon’s sources yet I do not share his interest in establishing Ralph of Coggeshall’s objectivity or accuracy.

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to be the product of a different attitude towards history. It begins to pay close attention to France, which is at odds with the English interests earlier in the work. It also features many undated anecdotes, thus suggesting that certain stories have been saved up and included en masse at the end of the Chronicon. Multiple hands are used for this section and they change backwards and forwards frequently. There is no standard folio format but instead margin widths change and a folio initially prepared with wide margins for the annalistic style of recording history is just as likely to be written over in a more narrative style.

Seeking Narrativity in Compiled Histories The Chronicon is clearly a difficult work to untangle, overwhelmingly due to its compiled, seemingly ad hoc, composition. Given that the hands and writing styles change so often, suspicions have been voiced that the Chronicon is nothing more than an artless annalistic composition, featuring random changes of historical theme and guiding principle. And it is certainly true that the Chronicon as we have it is a work of many layers. Like many medieval histories it was never really finished; it remained useful and relevant for many years and was consulted and updated in several historiographical campaigns. An important point to realize about unfinished histories like this is that the process of revision inevitably erases evidence. For example, the earlier stages of Ralph’s contribution and the initial additions and emendations he would have made have now been lost to our view. What we have been left with is a frozen point along the long process of historical production. This is not unusual. Histories in medieval England rarely existed in a single form or definitive version. Manuscripts were altered and were often distributed throughout the country in various versions, frequently the products of different teams of authors rather than the creations of single authors. Additions were made over erasures, to the extent that even the principal manuscript might be a palimpsest which was never finished once and for all but was always a work in progress. The Chronicon Anglicanum is one of these histories. Throughout the twentieth century the standard approach towards such segmented and composite histories was to define them according to their form alone: they were brief, linear annals. But inevitably the field has become more complex following the investigations of Hayden White. In fact, far from being a problem, the compiled nature of the Chronicon is a crucial part of this chapter’s argument. While past investigations have segmented the Chronicon in order to extract its crusading information or its royal information, here I investigate the perennial question of whether an annalistic, segmented, or composite history might still contain within it a type of narrativity in the form of a consistent (if not universal) theme. In pursuing this question I focus on three strategies employed by Ralph of Coggeshall for adding meaning to English history. These strategies all

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appear in parts of the Chronicon that are in various ways additions to the popular narrative of English history as it was known from traditional sources. This is the imposition of meaning into the borders, the squeezing of new meanings into a received version of history, in such a way that these meanings extend across the borders and so influence the ways in which the rest of the Chronicon is understood. All three strategies involve a selfconscious deviation from the standard sources with which Ralph was provided, a self-conscious attempt by Ralph to impose a new meaning onto the traditional image of English history. We will see that these additions spoke directly to the interests of the local Cistercian community. Thus, although the Chronicon is known more as a national history than as a specifically Cistercian history, it is clear that it was customized to appeal to specifically Cistercian interests. When the received version of the past was not sufficiently unified, when it was not presented in the way that the Cistercian audience could best grasp, then this prompted Ralph of Coggeshall to create his own more cohesive narrative.

Marginal Additions 1066–1186: Aids to Memory The first mechanism by which meaning was added to the Chronicon appears in the annalistic section from 1066 to 1186. Due to its brevity, this section has been relatively ignored in the past. And, granted, the opening annals of the Chronicon are unremarkable. Events are reported briefly, causes are rarely mentioned, and the link between events appears to be not so much thematic as chronological. Point leads to point simply on the basis of year leading to year rather than on the basis of a concern for narrative smoothness. All of this characterizes the first twenty modern pages of the Chronicon as a standard and unexceptional medieval annal. However, the annalistic sections are not as naive as all this. First, they depend on the Margam annals as a source. Second, and more important, this Margam information occurs as marginal additions in the annalistic section of 1066 to 1186 only; it does not appear in the narrative body of the rest of the history. This indicates that the Chronicon was reviewed after access to the Margam annals had been acquired. Given the handwriting, Ralph is the most likely candidate for including these additions. He turned to investigate the Margam annals after the first draft of the Chronicon Anglicanum had been completed and then apparently decided that the history as it stood could be improved; that is, that its meanings could be brought to the fore more clearly through additions and rearrangements of its narrative order. Margam was a Welsh Cistercian abbey with a strong interest in the historical record. The monks there were sufficiently dedicated to English and British history to acquire an historical manuscript featuring William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum and Historia Novella as well as

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Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae.6 William’s works were then used as sources for the abbey’s own creation, the annals of Margam, which were composed in the early thirteenth century.7 These annals betray a strongly post-Conquest understanding of insular history, beginning at 1066 before ending abruptly at 1232. Although the Margam annals deal with a variety of political themes, Ralph of Coggeshall raided them for one theme only—natural and supernatural events. Thus we read in the Chronicon Anglicanum of a comet that appeared in 1097 and of a wondrous sign that appeared in the sky in 1104.8 The next marginal addition refers to another comet and this too is in the Margam text.9 Likewise with the next addition, a report of the drying up of the Thames.10 Another addition refers to the shipwreck and death of Prince William. The entry had been made initially in the body of the history but a final note is added to it which comes from the Margam annals and which states the precise date as well as the fact that the victims’ bodies were never found.11 Yet another event taken from the Margam annals refers to an earthquake which occurred in 1132.12 Although entries concerning natural phenomena are common in medieval annals, this should not blind us to their importance. These passages are not just meaningless descriptions of the weather. Instead, it was common in medieval chronicles for natural events to function as signs for greater themes in the history. One way of interpreting these events is to invoke the medieval view that nature was God’s instrument; therefore, events in nature were directed by God’s hand just as political and social events were. Accordingly, floods and fires were just as historically meaningful as political and social events. Indeed, given the medieval receptiveness to signs and the preparedness to interpret signs for their hidden meanings, natural events and wonders could be even more meaningful than overt events. They were particularly useful during periods of political and social upheaval. Since they worked on the level of suggestion and allusion, natural events could be invoked as implicit codes by which meaning was suggested, hence bypassing the need for any dangerous and explicit political statements. All of these potential uses of natural events and wonders were well understood by the Cistercians. For monks accustomed to biblical exegesis and its emphasis on allegory, seeking meaning through signs was a natural reading strategy to adopt. 6

British Library, Cotton MSS, Royal 13 D II; c.12. Annales de Margan, in Annales Monastici, ed. by Henry Richards Luard, RS, 36, 4 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1864), I, 3–40. 8 CA, pp. 3–4; Annales de Margan, p. 6; CA, p. 5; Annales de Margan, p. 8. 9 CA, pp. 5–6, s.a. 1106; Annales de Margan, p. 9. 10 CA, p. 7, s.a. 1114; Annales de Margan, p. 9. 11 CA, p. 8, s.a. 1120; Annales de Margan, p. 10. 12 CA, p. 9; Annales de Margan, p. 13. 7

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The fact that entries concerning natural phenomena, and indeed only entries concerning natural phenomena, were chosen from all possible entries in the Margam history suggests not only that the Chronicon’s early annalistic section was being remade but also that it was being remade with priority given to the particular meanings that references to natural phenomena could encourage. Here it is helpful to invoke a second interpretation of medieval natural events. This is Brian Stock’s point about ‘harmonization of change’ in medieval historiography and, indeed, in wider medieval thought in general.13 Stock’s argument provides another model for interpreting the frequent juxtapositions in histories whereby physical disasters such as floods often appear alongside political disasters. Following the principle of causality, medieval authors and audiences seemed to view both anecdotes as linked by this harmonization—both anecdotes pointed to the same long-term effects of change. Following this model, modern-day distinctions between the scientific and the superstitious do not carry weight. Rather, the similarity of meaning between the anecdotes is more important than their differences of form. A third reason why natural events could infuse histories with meaning so successfully was because they were so readily memorable. As Leah Shopkow has put it, because physical disasters and poor weather persist so strongly in people’s memories they can be employed by historians as ‘temporal anchors’ for other, undated, phenomena.14 That is, even if one forgets the date of a donation or the commencement of a building program, one will still remember whether it occurred before or after the great famine or flood. This suggestion has important implications for the study of annals. It reminds us that disasters are recorded with an eye to the future, not just with an eye to the past. They are recorded as reminders for a future date when memory will have become less sure. This suggests that annals were not artless records of what attracted one’s attention in the present but, rather, that they were compiled with a more long-term view. In other words, their compilers paid particular attention to the best ways in which information should be arranged so that its meanings would be clear and would remain clear in the future. And compilers recognized that linking social developments with natural and supernatural events was a reliable way of ensuring this. Ironically, then, a seemingly naive entry such as a reference to the Thames drying up may actually be an entry which corresponds to the way people naturally remember, the way they naturally arrange their own histories and invest their pasts with meaning. Thus, by choosing to add entries concerning natural phenomena to the Chronicon’s margins, Ralph of 13

Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 456–72. 14 Leah Shopkow, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1997), p. 198.

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Coggeshall has in fact added the particular entries which can best turn the disjointed past into a smooth and comprehensible narrative. Most of the Chronicon’s natural wonders and disasters gain significance when analysed according to these three theories. The first addition, the comet in 1097, appears just after a reference to the crusaders leaving for Jerusalem and just before a reference to their success in capturing Antioch. This is an excellent example of how a natural wonder foreshadowed (and in literary terms ‘caused’) the crusaders’ success. The comet which appeared in 1106 also signals a wider community meaning. In this instance, the entry highlights the success of King Henry in Normandy. It immediately follows a reference to Henry and his burning of Bayeux and his acquisition of Caen from his brother Robert. Just after the comet reference the greater political message is made clear when we read that Robert was imprisoned and that from that day onwards all of Normandy was subject to King Henry. In this instance the natural wonder is a signpost to the particular political conclusion that the audiences are being encouraged to draw: that Henry’s possession of Normandy is the highlight of this period of history and the event towards which all others point. Besides the natural wonder additions which came from the Margam annals, the 1066–1186 annals also contain marginal additions which derive from other unknown sources, both written and oral. The main criterion for selection here seems to have been that the events be of relevance to the Cistercian order. For example, under the year 1098 a reference was made to the beginning of the Cistercian order.15 This was quite a late addition and appeared in neither of the other thirteenth-century manuscripts of the Chronicon. This suggests that the original Vespasian manuscript remained in use, was continually important to the Cistercian community at Coggeshall, and was updated with increasingly Cistercian entries and meanings over many years. Another addition responded simultaneously to both the natural wonders imperative and the imperative to include Cistercian material. Here it is reported under the year 1125 that a fountain of blood erupted in the territory of Gyssic four days before the feast of John the Baptist.16 This fountain continued to flow all summer, stopping only at nones on Saturdays. As well as bearing the ambiguously portentous significance of the natural disaster, this event also demonstrated traces of the wonderful and the marvellous, themes which would persist throughout the Chronicon. To conclude this discussion, we can confirm that the first section of the Chronicon Anglicanum is essentially an annalistic account from 1066 to 1186. However, after it was written Ralph consulted other sources, notably the Margam annals, and added marginal material concerned with two themes. These were material of interest to Cistercians and, especially, reports of natural wonders. The presence of these additions is significant for two reasons. First, the addition of the natural wonders provides an insight 15 16

CA, p. 4. CA, p. 8; Annales de Margan, p. 12.

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into the vision of history at this time. These wonders were ways of adding significance to the political events with which they were coupled. They therefore show that meaning was continually added to the Chronicon. The marginal additions serve as prompts, suggesting that the history should be read with greater attention to specifically Cistercian concerns. Second, the fact that this added meaning was presented in a form which was easily retrievable by human memory (natural phenomena) is strong evidence that the Chronicon’s narrative was being quite deliberately ‘improved’. The narrative was being turned (albeit slowly) into one more readily apprehensible by later audiences, and it was more apprehensible because it included aids to the readers and more internal links between entries.

Narrative Additions 1187–1205: Cistercian Themes In this section the emphasis is on narrative sections which do not appear in any of the Chronicon’s sources and which can be assumed to be narrative additions. The same principle applies here as pertained to the marginal additions in the 1066–1186 section. Given that sources covering the full chronology of English affairs were already available (John of Worcester’s Chronicon ex chronicis, Roger Howden’s Chronica, among others), the fact that Ralph chose to cut up the integrated narrative and include his own narrative additions permits insights into what may be termed the historical mentality and interests of the author and his intended audiences. Because these episodes were consciously grafted onto the traditional narrative of English history, as it was received through standard sources, they provide clues to Ralph’s favourite themes. The placement of these additions and the ways in which they are juxtaposed against the rest of the history also indicates the strategies employed by Ralph in unifying the narrative of English history. Importantly, the usefulness of these anecdotes extends beyond the boundaries of each individual addition; the strength of the additions is that they assert a narrative cohesion through which, ideally, the rest of the Chronicon overall can be understood. Many of the additions concentrate on elements relevant to Cistercians. The first addition concerns Joachim of Fiore and his vision of history.17 Here the Chronicon deviates temporarily from its standard historical sources in order to discuss Joachim in a way which is both unique to the Chronicon and also representative of Cistercian interests. Despite the fact that Joachim had once been a Cistercian, Ralph of Coggeshall did not labour this point. Instead, what seems to have interested Ralph was Joachim’s ideas about history. The episode is introduced by the common historical phrase hac tempestate and it consists of two sections. 17

CA, pp. 67–70. On Ralph and Joachim, see Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 12–14. The Joachimite text in question is the Expositio in Apocalypsim.

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The first concentrates on Joachim’s interpretation of the Apocalypse.18 We read that, ‘ut aiunt’, Joachim’s interpretation was the product of divine wisdom and certainly not the product of literary study.19 The anecdote then summarizes Joachim’s description of the Seven Seals, their openings, and their correspondence to moments in history; that is, their correspondence to persecutions in human history. Ralph’s focus here is church instability, threat, and the Antichrist, a focus which follows Joachim’s own preoccupation with crisis in human history. Periods from history are mentioned when they feature heresy and alleged deformity. The ‘most impious sect of Mahumet the haeresiarch’ has infected the Arabs and Saracens, as well as practically all of Asia, Africa, and Spain.20 Arius had been similarly inspired by the devil. The present day corresponds to the persecution of the fifth seal and this persecution is deemed to have begun with Saladin. The passage then states that the sixth persecution featuring the Antichrist will begin in 1199, clearly echoing a pre-1199 source. Although Joachim devoted attention to all the component sections of human history, Ralph’s summary concentrates most on the fifth and sixth persecutions. Ralph’s major interest, then, was in contemporary history and, specifically, in the ways in which contemporary affairs were overwhelmed by doom and persecution. A corollary of this dedication to events from the recent past was a dedication to events in the near future. That is, Ralph of Coggeshall recognized and reiterated Joachim’s conflation of past history and future history. Knowledge of the past brought knowledge of the future as well since, according to Joachim, history flows in repetitive streams. Ralph was particularly interested in this point and he included an accurate summary of Joachim’s theory of concord between the Old and New Testaments.21 By tracing the correspondences between these two streams of history it was possible to map out the future. Although Ralph’s summary is not the first English account of Joachim’s teachings,22 it is the first to concentrate on the two-fold pattern of history. This suggests then that the theorization of historical development was something that Ralph pursued on his own 18

CA, pp. 67–68, 69–70. Note that the Rolls Series edition splits this anecdote into two sections; in the Vespasian manuscript, however, the text runs straight on, at fols 69r–v. 19 ‘qui quamdam expositionem super septem visiones Apocalypsis edidit, accepta divinitus, ut aiunt, sapientia, cum fere esset prius illiteratus.’ CA, p. 67. 20 ‘Arabum atque Sarracenorum surrexit principatus, qui omnes impiissima secta Mahumeti haeresiarchae infecti sunt, qui vi armata maximas Asiae partes, et jam fere totam Asiam cum tota Africa, ac maximam partem Hispaniae occupantes’, CA, p. 69. 21 ‘quamdiu duravit lex circumcisionis, solo praecepto prius data et post scripto confirmata, tamdiu durabit gratia Evangeliza’, CA, p. 67. 22 ‘Benedict’ of Peterborough and Roger Howden preceded him; Morton W. Bloomfield and Marjorie E. Reeves, ‘The Penetration of Joachism into Northern Europe’, Speculum, 29 (1954), 772–93 (p. 775).

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initiative. In keeping with the Cistercians’ earlier interest in the Prophetia Merlini, Ralph’s discussion of Joachim seems to be part of a broader trend by the English Cistercians to accept prophecy as an important part of their historiographical culture. The second section of the Joachim entry describes the meeting in Rome between Joachim and the Cistercian abbot Adam of Perseigne.23 As in the first section, the main points at issue are the means by which Joachim received his information and the details of the Antichrist’s forthcoming arrival among humanity. Adam asks whether it is by prophecy, prediction, or revelation that Joachim knows future events. Joachim replies that none of these suggestions is correct; he acquires his knowledge by the God-given spirit of intelligence. And, as for the Antichrist, Joachim mentions that he is alive and well and living in Rome. The dramatic impact of these astounding statements is heightened by the use of direct speech, something quite rare in the Chronicon. This literary technique works to highlight the second part of the entry, complementing the first part which had discussed Joachim’s writings on the stream of history and on exegesis in history. For modern readers, these comments on the historical process are particularly welcome since the Chronicon overall is a generally unreflective history which otherwise does not include comments on theories of history, methods of history, or historical sources. It pays now to return to the opening phrase of the Joachim episode—hac tempestate. The two sections of the episode betray two confirming interests. First, there was emphasis on the persecutions and, in particular, the persecutions as represented by Saladin, by Islam, and by heresy in general. Second, there was interest in how Joachim came by his knowledge of the future: through prophecy, prediction, or revelation, or, as Joachim insisted, through a God-given spirit of intelligence? In combination, these two points emphasized that God was the source of all historical information (past, present, and future) and that the kind of information that was most valued was information concerning perceived heresies and threats to the integrity of the Christian church. This accounts for why Joachim was discussed hac tempestate, ‘at that [particular] time’ in the narrative. The previous entry in the Chronicon discussed the Saracen incursions into Spain in 1195. This preceding example of a threat to Christianity obviously provided a suitable context for reference to Joachim and his prophecies. We can see then that the addition of the Joachim episode adds meaning to the Chronicon by enhancing the narrativity of the text, by creating thematic links across and between different entries. This episode, which did not appear in Ralph’s sources, served to strengthen a particular theme of the Chronicon, with this theme being the danger and malignity of heresy and Islam. Immediately after the Joachim episode the Chronicon features another original section—the section on visions. The first vision is entitled, simply, 23 CA, pp. 68–69. This section appears in the margin of the Vespasian manuscript, fol. 69v.

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‘Concerning the Vision of a Monk’.24 The opening sentence, however, identifies this vision as the popular vision of the monk of Eynsham. This vision had occurred in 1196 in the Benedictine monastery of Eynsham near Oxford. A simple and unexceptional monk named Edmund had asked God to show him where sinners were punished. One night, he was led out of his sleeping body by saintly intervention and was taken to the three places for punishment of sinners. Here he saw people of all ages and ranks who were afflicted with differing physical punishments depending on the degree and kind of their sins. Afterwards he related his vision to his fellow monks and this was then written down by Adam of Eynsham for the education of others.25 But although vision literature was increasingly popular in England in the early thirteenth century, the Eynsham vision was initially treated with scepticism. This led Adam to return to his narrative and preface it with fifteen chapters defending the authenticity of the monk’s vision and accusing unbelievers of infidelity. This preliminary section contains important information concerning medieval notions of proof and authenticity in visions and in reported stories more broadly. But the version of the Eynsham vision that appears in the Chronicon Anglicanum does not betray any of these misgivings about the event’s veracity. This might have been because Cistercians at this time were more dedicated to vision literature than Benedictines were and, hence, were more prepared to accept the visions as historically true.26 Moreover, Cistercians were probably the most enthusiastic adherents of the new doctrine of purgatory at this time.27 In the light of this, Ralph’s description of the vision required no invocation of external authorization. It is a faithful although short summary of Adam’s account, occupying a mere one modern page. The main point it concentrates on is the distinction between the three loci of punishment and the respective sufferings one might expect in these places. A strong sense of immediacy is presented, with the monk looking upon a multitude of people of all ages, conditions, and states in each of these 24

CA, pp. 71–72. For an edition of The Vision of the Monk of Eynsham see Eynsham Cartulary, ed. by Herbert Edward Salter, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford Historical Society, 1908), II, 257–371. 26 For visions composed by Cistercians see Carl Watkins, ‘Doctrine, Politics and Purgation: The Vision of Tnúthgal and the Vision of Owein at St Patrick’s Purgatory’, Journal of Medieval History, 22 (1996), 225–36, and Robert Easting, ‘Purgatory and the Earthly Paradise in the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii’, Cîteaux, 37 (1986), 23–48. 27 Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. by Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984 [1979]), p. 168. See also Brian Patrick McGuire, ‘Purgatory, the Communion of Saints and Medieval Change’, Viator, 20 (1989), 61–84 (pp. 75–78). Although some of Le Goff’s points have since been modified, there is still general acceptance that the Cistercians were strong proponents of purgatorial ideas. 25

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locations. This interaction identifies the episode as a particularly Cistercian one since Cistercian vision stories typically stressed the ways in which the living and the dead remained part of the same monastic community and communicated with each other through sight, voice, and other senses.28 The summary concludes by referring readers to ‘the book in which the aforesaid visions are written down’ if they should require fuller information.29 Clearly, then, this section of the Chronicon was written after the composition of the Eynsham vision. Nonetheless it does not take advantage of the authorizing strategies which were incorporated in that particular vision. Nor does it use the authorizing techniques of visions more generally. Usually in this period, a vision would be guaranteed on the basis that it was similar to other visions composed by recognized Christian authorities.30 But in so far as Ralph authorized his tale at all it was by pointing out the probity and good character of the monk who had experienced the vision.31 He commenced his tale with this point, and this characterization evidently formed an authorizing framework more meaningful to his Cistercian audiences than deferring to the authority of older written texts. A later statement, in which the monk’s truthfulness was invoked as a contributing reason for the vision being accepted, also confirms the determining role played by individual and personal qualities in whether or not a broader historical event was authorized.32 Significantly, this statement also suggests that it was through the personalized process of relating the vision to the other monks that the vision was ultimately endorsed, at least in Ralph of Coggeshall’s mind. Written proof did not confirm the truth of the story; rather, telling the story to the monastic community satisfied all Cistercian demands for authorization. The fact that Ralph concentrates on the monk’s relation of the vision, rather than the writing down of the vision, reflects specifically Cistercian priorities. It betrays the wider Cistercian dedication to sharing experiences with one’s fellow brethren, something which was itself based on the order’s commitment to the enactment of charity and to learning from the example of others. Following Caroline Walker Bynum’s investigations, scholars traditionally seek evidence for this mentality in spiritual treatises and 28 Jean-Claude Schmitt, Les revenants: Les vivants et les morts dans la société médiévale (Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1994), pp. 151–58. 29 ‘Sed quisquis modum et ordinem visionum istarum, necnon et qualitatem tormentorum pro qualitate criminum, et personarum potentium cognitionem, gestum, et habitum, atque diversas mansiones beatorum plenius desiderat, legat libellum in quo praedictae visiones diligenter exaratae sunt’, CA, p. 72. 30 Aaron J. Gurevich, ‘Oral and Written Culture of the Middle Ages: Two “Peasant Visions” of the Late Twelfth–Early Thirteenth Centuries’, New Literary History, 16 (1984), 51–66 (pp. 63–64). 31 ‘Quidam monachus exstitit in Enigsamensi coenobio, juvenis quidem aetate sed morum probitate senior’, CA, p. 71. 32 ‘Postmodum autem visiones suas relatu dignas, quas veraciter conspexerat et memorie diligenter tradiderat, fratribus reverenter ac seriatim enarravit.’ CA, p. 71.

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sermons.33 But the emphasis on setting examples and acting as a teacher to one’s peers is also evident in historical sources such as the Chronicon. The Chronicon’s version of the Eynsham story concludes by stating that the monk related his vision point by point and in detail to all his brethren. This was not simply a visionary topos. It also represented the concern that all members of the given community should learn from the event in question, a standard Cistercian argument. Overall, the Chronicon’s particular retelling of this vision is an important witness to the Cistercians’ dedication to oral story telling, something Ralph managed to stress even when the medium of doing so was the written history. Thus, although the Chronicon is a written history, it contains within it an endorsement of the oral means of disseminating historical information. Just as I have stressed that earlier Cistercians participated in historiography through copying and acquiring other communities’ historical manuscripts, so this incident reflects a Cistercian belief that participation in historiography could occur even when the written word was ignored altogether. The second vision added to the series of the Chronicon’s narrative was the vision at the Cistercian abbey of Strafleur in Wales.34 Here we read that a monk experienced a certain wonderful vision featuring three angels who were burning incense at the altar during lauds. One of the angels threw some incense ash into the monk’s mouth. In ecstasy and out of his mind, the monk was borne away by the angel towards the east. Here he stayed for a day and a night experiencing various revelations, although for all this time his body remained in the monastery’s infirmary. Although the Chronicon’s vision stories have never been studied collectively, it has been remarked in passing that they appear to be either ‘purely conventional inserts’ or else ‘genuine interludes for edification’.35 In both cases, however, it has been considered impossible to detect any pattern to their insertion; the suggestion is that they were simply inserted in random places of the Chronicon. But although the internal narratives of the episodes make no reference to dates, both the preceding visions are still included in the Chronicon under precise years, 1196 for Eynsham and 1202 for Strafleur. On both occasions this brings a halt to an otherwise smoothly flowing story. At 1196 the main theme of the history was the international politics of Richard, while in 1202 the Chronicon was treating the suspenseful issue of whether or not King John would have his nephew Arthur blinded and castrated. The fact that such integrated narratives are broken up in order to include these visions indicates the importance of the visions to the greater history and, also, the importance of adhering to the demands of chronology even at the expense of the plot’s continuity. (The Eynsham vision, it will be remembered, did occur in 1196, while we have no other confirming 33

Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), chap. 2. 34 CA, p. 141. 35 Hartcher, ‘Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum’, pp. 94–95, n. 9.

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information for the Strafleur incident.) The early thirteenth century was a period when the Cistercian order was actively encouraging the dissemination of miraculous stories and visions to all its members throughout Europe.36 This was achieved orally and publicly by sanction of the General Chapter and, as indicated by these visionary anecdotes, it was also achieved historiographically by the independent composition of stories such as Ralph of Coggeshall’s. The final narrative addition in this section on Cistercian devotional mentality is the story of the disappearing dinner guests.37 Included under the year 1201, the story was related by Robert, the lay brother who had been in charge of Coggeshall’s guest house. One day he entered the guest house and saw approximately nine men sitting there, all of whom seemed dressed as Templars. After some polite disagreement as to where these self-effacing men would eat dinner, Robert departed to speak to the abbot. On his return, the men had disappeared and the gatekeeper reported that no one resembling the men had gone in or out that day. The moral of this story is not explicit. Indeed, Ralph confesses to some uncertainty when he writes that the identity and disappearance of the men remains a mystery even at the time of writing. On one level the narrative echoes the description of the Eynsham vision. Once again Ralph abides by the historiographical requirement to establish the authority of the witness and to cite eyewitnesses whenever possible. Beyond this, the anecdote has other functions. It reminds the audience of the monastic obligation of hospitality. Even though the events are mysterious, the lay brother comes out of the story well; he fulfilled his obligations for hospitality and was well on his way preparing food before he realized the men had disappeared. The fact that the witness is a lay brother is also important. This lay brother was not only a good witness and a good host but he was also a classic personification of exemplary Cistercian qualities. Ralph writes that there is no doubt about the lay brother’s testimony, since everyone knows his life and conscience. Further, Robert the lay brother spoke about his experience in a simple manner, used few words, and avoided all ostentation in both words and deeds. Following the principle of sermo humilis, it was of course desirable for medieval members of all religious communities to speak in this modest manner. But this was particularly relevant to Cistercians who were strong admirers of simplicity in thought and words. Moreover, it was common in the Cistercians’ exempla literature of the first few decades of the thirteenth century to employ lay brothers as models for good behaviour; their successes and failures were to be followed or shunned by the Cistercian community more broadly.38 This tale, then, fits into a recognizable

36

Statuta, ann. 1232, V (II, 101). CA, pp. 134–35. 38 Megan Cassidy, ‘Non Conversi sed Perversi: The Use and Marginalisation of the Cistercian Lay Brother’, in Deviance and Textual Control: New Perspectives in 37

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Cistercian tradition of exemplary literature which would have been understood by the Chronicon’s immediate audience. Ralph highlights the importance of this story by including a final editorial intervention in praise of the lay brother. In summary, the passage serves two functions. It fulfils the historiographical requirement to furnish a witness and it presents such a witness as an example of desirable Cistercian qualities such as hospitality, modesty, and simple speech. The Templar tale was part of Coggeshall abbey’s recent oral memory and obviously appears in none of the Chronicon’s sources. Because it is a later addition to the traditional story of English history that had been handed down via written sources, it is valuable evidence for the local Coggeshall understanding of history. With this tale, and with the vision stories from Eynsham and Strafleur, we have seen that when historical anecdotes were created at Coggeshall they were particularly Cistercian and devotional in their focus. When Ralph took the opportunity to include extra stories in the stream of history he did not choose more anecdotes about the king or about bishops. Instead, he turned to local stories which contained strong overtones of all the interpersonal qualities that Cistercians sought to emulate—simplicity of speech, humility, the sharing of visions and news with one’s fellow brethren, and hospitality. These qualities were important to all monastic orders but they were especially dear to the Cistercians. In these brief anecdotes the Chronicon Anglicanum indicates that Cistercian histories displayed many of the edifying characteristics more usually attributed to the order’s sermons or saints’ lives.

Narrative Additions 1187–1205: Wonder Tales, Heresy, and Sanctity After treating the preparations for the Fourth Crusade, the Chronicon stalls the chronological progression of history at 1199 and includes six undated episodes.39 The first four are wonder tales while the last two concern heresy and piety. In the Vespasian manuscript they are written in a new hand, thus suggesting if not a radical departure from the earlier themes then at least that the end of the previous section was seen as a natural break in the history. The stories do not appear in any of the Chronicon’s identified sources. Nor, in the case of the wonder tales, are there any linguistic dependencies on other English wonder accounts. The following points proceed from the premise that these tales are self-conscious additions to the narrative from which broader points about Ralph of Coggeshall’s approach to history writing can be inferred. Medieval Studies, ed. by Megan Cassidy, Helen Hickey, and Meagan Street (Melbourne: Department of History, University of Melbourne, 1997), pp. 34–55. 39 CA, pp. 117–28.

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The first wonder story concerns a wild man who was dragged naked out of the sea by fishermen. His human status was never in doubt but nonetheless it was most definitely the subject of admiratio, of wonder. We are told that all the man’s limbs suggested the human species, but that he had straggly hair that seemed to have been ripped out, a pointy beard, and various other physical oddities. Furthermore, he ate raw fish, he could not talk, and when he was taken to church he displayed no signs of belief or veneration, neither genuflecting nor bowing his head before sacred objects. He often returned for a swim in the sea and seemed to taunt those watching from the shore. He remained in the custody of a knight for two months, but the story ends with him fleeing back to the sea and never being found again. The second story follows on immediately. This concerns a brother and sister who were discovered next to the opening of a pit. Like the man from the sea, they too ‘looked in appearance like other humans in the shape of their limbs’; however, they differed from ‘all other mortals’ due to their green skin.40 There are further similarities between their otherness and the otherness of the sea-man. Again, they were locked out of the civilizing aspects of language; in this case, they could talk but no one could understand them. Like the sea-man, their attitude to food was uncivilized; they would not eat bread, the most basic food, but instead survived solely on beans. Following the precedent set in the sea-man story, the issue of veneration and belief occurs again. Although the boy eventually dies from a fit of languor, the girl begins eating other foods besides beans, loses her green tinge, and is finally confirmed in her normality by being ‘re-born’ through the sacrament of baptism.41 This rebirth evidently propels her automatically into conventional and orthodox life among the community. The narrative now skips to the present day to state that the girl has lived for many years in the prosaic and unexceptional manner of a true member of the wider community. Thus, the lack of any defining characteristics about her recent life is precisely the proof of her incorporation into the normality of local society, at least in the eyes of Ralph of Coggeshall the writer. The third tale is briefer. It is in fact several incidents combined into one, with the common theme being the presence of giants. There seems to be no moral and no aim beyond the mere imparting of information. First, we learn that huge teeth from a giant have been found on a nearby seashore in Essex. Then in Yorkshire a giant’s skull has also been found. Next we learn that the giants are present in Wales as well. A young man has been seen who was extraordinarily tall, possessed long and thick fingers, yet who had been deprived of all his strength in adolescence. Finally, and in Wales again, unusually large footprints surrounded by scorch marks had also been detected.

40

‘qui formam omnium membrorum caeteris hominibus similem habebant, sed in colore cutis ab omnibus mortalibus nostrae habitabilis discrepabant’, CA, p. 118. 41

‘Quae postmodum sacri baptismatis lavacro regenerata’, CA, p. 119.

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The fourth story concerns a multilingual spirit which appeared to the family of a knight. Although the story is entitled ‘Concerning a Fantastic Spirit’, it is primarily dedicated to corporeality and unusual bodies rather than to spirits and it thus continues the theme of the preceding stories. This spirit is visible and invisible at whim. We are told that although the spirit cannot normally be seen, it can most definitely be heard and felt. It speaks with the voice of a one-year-old child, mentions that its name is Malekin, and proceeds to speak Latin to the chaplain and English to the rest of the family. Initially the family members were frightened by these disembodied speeches but soon they were accustomed to her ridiculous acts and words and so spoke confidently and familiarly with her and asked her many questions. As Ralph interjects, truly this is wondrous and worthy of laughter, all this talking, speech, and words.42 On one occasion only was the spirit seen. After much pleading by a maid, the spirit agreed to become visible but only provided the maid swore that she would not touch or hold her. The now very corporeal spirit (who eats and drinks) confesses that she is really a human changeling, that she was whisked away from her mother while working in a field, has spent at least seven years as a spirit, and now has only another seven years to wait before she can return to her former cohabitation with men and women. This, abruptly, is the end of the story and the end of the wonder tales. The Chronicon now continues with two recent stories from France, concerning heresy and piety, before proceeding with the main narrative, the story of the Fourth Crusade with particular focus on Innocent III and the Cistercians. A representative view has it that the first four stories ‘display an interest in the unusual (one might almost say the fantastic) which appears nowhere else in the chronicle. The stories are all of exotic happenings’.43 The suggestion here is that the stories were merely light-hearted entertainment: ‘Ralph has put these narratives together with no regard to their strict chronology [. . .] presumably because they are all “wonder” stories included for interest’s sake rather than for their negligible historical importance.’44 It is true that these four stories are all wonder tales. On the other hand, however, there is more that can be said about the stories besides the fact that they are exotic and interesting. Recent attention to wonders has indicated that the period from 1180 to 1320 witnessed an increase in stories of ghosts, monsters, marvels, and miracles.45 This was a period during which the theory and practice of admiratio was a common subject of literary discussion. Although the reasons for such an increase are still being 42

‘Mira et risui digna et agebat et loquebatur, et aliquoties aliorum occultos actus detegens.’ CA, p. 121. 43 Hartcher, ‘Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum’, p. 183. 44 Hartcher, ‘Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum’, p. 184. 45 Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Wonder’, American Historical Review, 102 (1997), 1–26, including a comprehensive bibliography.

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investigated, it is clear that these tales can provide valuable insights into medieval minds—they indicate what was familiar to medieval audiences, what puzzled them, what frightened them, and what they wanted to explain. Before using these wonder stories as social documents, however, it is important to stress that the concept of ‘wonder’ is a broad one and that the term admiratio covers a range of medieval attitudes. For example, Caroline Walker Bynum’s analysis has emphasized that the theories of wonder held by theological writers were different from those held by writers of sermons and edification which were different again from those held by writers of histories and more entertaining works.46 Because the differences are subtle, one needs to pay close attention not only to context but to the precise terminology employed in order to gain an understanding of the meanings these wonders carried for the authors and audiences in question. The reason the Chronicon Anglicanum’s wonder stories have not gained the attention they deserve is, perhaps ironically, due to the wealth of other wonder episodes from the same period. Ralph’s contemporaries such as William of Newburgh, Gervase of Tilbury, Walter Map, and Gerald of Wales all wrote wonder tales which are well known today. It pays to add Ralph to this collection since there are in fact tantalizing links between these other authors’ and Ralph of Coggeshall’s wonders. For example, William of Newburgh (who wrote twenty years earlier than Ralph, at the other end of England) also has a version of the green children story—one with no linguistic similarities whatsoever with Ralph’s.47 Gervase of Tilbury came from Essex (near Coggeshall) and, as we will see, he was definitely a source for other sections of the Coggeshall history. Finally, Walter Map and Gervase both include a story with vague similarities to the wild man from the sea episode (although, once again, the Coggeshall version is linguistically independent).48 Although much work remains to be done on the relationships between all these authors and their texts, it is clear that the Chronicon Anglicanum is an important, but so far under-utilized, source for understanding the wonder story subculture in the south of England in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. 46

Bynum, ‘Wonder’, pp. 7–14. William of Newburgh, Historia regum Anglicarum, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. by Richard Howlett, RS, 82, 4 vols (London: Longman and Co., 1886), I, 82–84. The two stories do not seem to be textually linked and, since none of the surviving Historia Anglicarum manuscripts comes from near Coggeshall, there is no evidence that Ralph ever read or had access to William’s earlier version. 48 Walter Map, De nugis curialium. Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. and trans. by Montague Rhodes James, rev. by C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), Dist. IV, chap. 13; Gervase of Tilbury, Otia imperialia, in Scriptores Rerum Brunsvicensium, ed. by Gotfried Leibnitz, 2 vols (Hanover: Nicolaus Foerster, 1707–10), Dist. II. 12 (I, 921.) Other than the basic fact of a man living in the sea there are no links, either linguistically or plot-wise, between these accounts and the Chronicon’s story. 47

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To return to the Chronicon, we can see that the language chosen by Ralph places these four stories firmly within the milieu of the wonder tale. At the outset of the first story, before anyone knows anything about the seaman and his habits, the man is dragged in to the local lord for the purposes of admiratio, of wonder.49 This admiratio seems to involve both openmouthed curiosity at something unusual and, more than this, the attempt to make sense of the curiosity as well. The second story, the green children, continues with the same terminology and with the same unspoken approach to the wonderful. The opening words mention that ‘another similarly wondrous thing occurred in Suffolk’.50 Following this, the precise word admiratio comes into play and, again, this word and attitude are invoked at the beginning of the incident, before the secrets of this young couple are revealed. In this instance, once again the first step is that the wondrous is taken somewhere in order to be ‘wondered at’.51 So it seems as though, in Ralph’s conception of history, admiratio is an initial reaction, always mentioned at the start of an episode. It does not point to a resolution or end of an anecdote but, rather, to the beginning of a chain of events in which codes of behaviour are apparently well (albeit tacitly) understood. For example, the inspection and understanding of the wonderful seems to have been the preserve of the local elite; while the wild man was dragged across to a castellan for admiratio, the boy and girl are led to a knight for the same purposes. The emphasis on admiratio concludes with the giant stories. The giant teeth had been seen by the monks at Coggeshall and everyone agreed that they were fully worth wondering over.52 Less frequently, when Ralph employs wonder adjectives as opposed to wonder nouns, these usages also locate the anecdotes in the mainstream of wonder discussions. Thus, we read of the unaccustomed (insolitum) and the truly wonderful (mirum), both of which were popular terms in contemporary discussions of wonder. The giant footprints left in the Welsh fields were of unaccustomed length while the garrulousness of Malekin the spirit was in itself wonderful and worthy of laughter.53 As mentioned above, Bynum has isolated three wonder discourses—the theological-philosophical, the homiletic and edificatory, and the historical and entertaining. Each of these features a singular understanding of why something is wonderful and what lessons one can draw from such a wonder. Not surprisingly, the Chronicon’s approach most resembles the approach of 49

‘qui castellano praedicto traditus prae admiratione’, CA, p. 117. ‘Aliud quoque mirum priori non dissimile in Suthfolke contigit’, CA, p. 118. 51 ‘Hi igitur ad domum domini Ricardi de Calne cujusdam militis, adducti prae admiratione, apud Wikes, inconsolabiliter flebant’, CA, pp. 118–19. 52 ‘et satis admirando contrectavimus’, CA, p. 120. 53 ‘apparuerunt in quadam herbosa planitie vestigia humana insolitae longitudinis’; ‘Mira et risui digna et agebat et loquebatur, et aliquoties aliorum occultos actus detegens.’ CA, pp. 120, 121. 50

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historical and entertaining literature. One of the features of this approach was the belief that wonders should be tested, and that only if an event genuinely escaped the rules of natural evidence (as those rules were understood by fallible humans) could it be accepted as a true wonder. This increasing interrogation and criticism of wonder tales has been identified among other late-twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century British writers.54 Richard of Devizes is the best example here: writing in the 1190s, Richard was increasingly committed to the ‘naturalistic’ approach to history, a commitment which entailed a corresponding criticism and sometimes scepticism of natural wonders. Indeed, in Richard’s case, a so-called wonderful event was included in the historical record only if its ‘wonderful’ elements could be eliminated; that is, by demonstrating that the event had in fact derived from a natural cause in the first place. Another interpretation of the same evidence is that, since late-twelfth-century writers were fully aware that histories should now contain the ‘natural’ and the ‘proven’, whenever they did elect to include wonders in their histories then this was part of a conscious campaign to reject the new historiographical conventions and, in Monika Otter’s terms, to ‘test the limits of referentiality’.55 This testing involved a playful, yet deadly serious, showing up and exploitation of the increasing tensions between fiction and history. To deliberately include elements of potential fiction was to push generic boundaries at a time when both Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history and the rise of lay vernacular writing had thrown the components of the traditional and ‘veracious’ history into question. Other scholarly debates have also located significance in the degree to which wonders were accepted or questioned by medieval writers of history. Some commentators see wonders as manifestations of a broader trend, starting in the twelfth century, in which Europe was flooded with a range of new literary genres. Termed the ‘emancipation of story’, this phenomenon involved the dissemination of written stories, jokes, fabula, gossip, and compilations of sayings as well as the more specific wonder stories.56 Following this, a logical next step has been to investigate the relationships between different literary genres. Here it is important to note that two of the most debated of all historiographical questions (the differences between romance and history; the roles of truth and fiction in histories) have always included discussion of wonder tales. In both instances, scholars have recognized that

54

Nancy F. Partner, Serious Entertainments. The Writing of History in TwelfthCentury England (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977), chap. 6. 55 Monika Otter, Inventiones: Fictions and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical Writing (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), chap. 3, esp. p. 94. 56 Geoffrey Thomas Shepherd, ‘The Emancipation of Story in the Twelfth Century’, in Medieval Narrative. A Symposium, ed. by Hans Bekker-Nielsen (Odense: Odense University Press, 1979), pp. 44–57.

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the way in which a medieval historian treats wonders is a crucial guide to that writer’s understanding of the historical enterprise more broadly. In the case of romance literature and the question of medieval literary genres, the way in which a medieval author deals with wonders is often considered a guide for whether one should categorize the work in question as a history or a romance. The suggestion here is that the more a work includes wonderful elements then the more it aligns itself with romance and distances itself from history.57 This argument is clearly premised on a modern understanding of history, one which is strictly chronological. Given this premise that history is necessarily committed to a linear presentation of time, any appearance of non-dated (and, effectively, timeless) wonder tales necessarily removes the tales from the preserve of history and places them among romance. The role of wonders in demarcating the ‘truthful’ from the ‘fictional’ elements of a history is also an important one. Various authors at the turn of the thirteenth century were preoccupied with the question of veracity and felt compelled to explain supernatural events by natural means. William of Newburgh, for example, paid great attention to the green children and whether it was legitimate to invoke them as useful models for his audience. Reading the story eight hundred years later it is still possible to detect the uncertainty this story provoked in William. He wrote that the story was important not so much for its oddity or rarity but for the hidden things it signified.58 But despite his best efforts, and despite the testimony of credible witnesses, William confessed himself unable to determine the hidden significance of the events and he all but disavowed the story.59 Thus, for William of Newburgh, the identification of a wondrous event was not an end in itself. Because the aim was to discover an event’s greater meaning (its ‘hidden significance’) this meant that admiratio always necessitated further action and existed in tandem with an investigation. This was not unique to William of Newburgh, but was a feature of historiographical (as opposed to scholastic or hagiographic) references to wonder in general at this time. But if Ralph of Coggeshall was sympathetic to this questioning approach it was to a limited extent only, and he was easily discouraged. At the 57

More so than commentators on historiography, students of medieval romance have investigated this issue of wonders; Ad Putter, ‘Finding Time for Romance: Mediaeval Arthurian Literary History’, Medium Aevum, 63 (1994), 1–16; Paul Zumthor, Langue, texte, énigme (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1975), pp. 237–48. 58 Discussing why the green children and wonder stories in general were important, William wrote, ‘Mira vero hujusmodi dicimus, non tantum propter raritatem, sed etiam quia occultam habent rationem.’ Historia regum Anglicarum, I, 84–85. 59 ‘But an explanation of the green children, who are said to have come out of the earth, is more hidden and the frailty of our intelligence is incapable of tracking it down.’ ‘Porro puerorum illorum viridium qui de terra emersisse dicuntur, abstrusior ratio est, quam utique nostri sensus tenuitas non sufficit indagare.’ Historia regum Anglicarum, I, 87.

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conclusion to the sea-man story he attempted to analyse what made the wondrous so different from everything else. But he concluded that ‘it was not easy to tell’ whether this had been a mortal human or some evil spirit hiding in the body of a drowned man. The reason this was not easy to tell was because ‘so many wondrous things (miranda) are told of so many events like this’.60 Thus, for Ralph, understanding these events was important but, perversely, the very preponderance of wondrous events was an impediment to the knowledge towards which admiratio should ideally have led. Ralph was ultimately happy then to leave the wondrous unexamined. While William of Newburgh and other contemporary writers distinguished between histories on the basis of their distinctions between the natural and the supernatural (and then went on to express doubts when the necessary evidence was not forthcoming), Ralph of Coggeshall did not. Neither does he seem to have been at all interested in ‘test[ing] the limits of [literary] referentiality’ by consciously including what he knew to be fictional and therefore unhistorical stories; indeed, he does not seem to have identified any generic difference in the first place between the moral tales and the standard political and chronological tales of his history. Certainly, he did not feel the need that William of Newburgh had felt to articulate these generic differences more categorically. What does all this mean? It does not mean that Ralph of Coggeshall was a poor historian; it does however mean that he was not an innovative one in the tradition of William of Newburgh. In keeping with the Cistercians’ participation in other literary genres and in learning in general, Ralph was a conservative historian. His view on wonders aligned him with the traditional view that had persisted throughout the twelfth century. Although modern commentators often concentrate on the innovative historians to argue that philosophies of history were changing in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, the Chronicon Anglicanum is a reminder that this period was more one of coexistence between different historiographical theories and practices than of wholesale replacement of one by the other. The Chronicon’s lack of self-conscious criticism also pertains to the second area concerning the romance and history division. While other contemporary authors may have been more up to date on the perceived differences between romance and history (and, more importantly, on the correct authorizing claims to invoke in each instance), Ralph of Coggeshall was a more conservative historian, either unaware of or uninterested in this new textual debate. He betrayed none of the doubts over generic admixture that seem to have plagued other writers, but instead was quite prepared to include wonderful elements in his history without feeling the need to defend either their ‘naturalism’ or their difference from romance. To this extent, Ralph of Coggeshall was an unreflective historian who was more interested in practice than in theory. Unlike the other British 60 ‘non facile diffiniri potest, maxime quia tam multa miranda a tam multis de hujusmodi eventibus narrentur’, CA, p. 118.

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writers William of Newburgh, Walter Map, Gerald of Wales, and Gervase of Tilbury, Ralph never discusses the definition of miracle, marvel, wonder, phantasm, and so on, opting instead for more practical discussions. This interest in the practical and the tangible appears in the descriptions of the physical and social effects of the four wonder episodes. Ralph concentrates on the ways in which these wonders are still working in the local community in the present day (at the time of composition). For example, the story of the green children leaps suddenly into the present to point out that the girl had been kept on for many years in the household of a knight. Having been baptized and lost her green colouring, the girl is no longer the same kind of wonder that she had been earlier. Instead, she is a physical and tangible relic of the wondrous who continues to influence her immediate peers for an unspecified period of time. She therefore represents the persistent, practical impact of the wondrous on society, not the theoretical impact of the wondrous. The next question to ask is what function these four stories played within the overall narrative of the Chronicon. At a basic level, why were the stories included in the history in the first place? Studies of folk-tale motifs can posit links between some of the episodes and other similar medieval anecdotes (such as the links between the green children and William of Newburgh’s discussion), but these links remain on a general level. All they tell us is that Ralph and William had both somehow heard about and been interested in a similar story concerning green children. On the other hand, identifying a common folk-motif as root to these stories tells us nothing about how the stories were used in the histories in question or what their broader meanings were. In the Chronicon’s case, what do the wonder tales mean, not with reference to universalizing folk-tale motifs, but with reference to this particular chronicle and its themes? This is a difficult question to answer and any responses must be suggestive at best. Nonetheless it is significant that in the Chronicon the continuing influence of wonderful events on local communities always involved some sort of change. In a sense this is self-evident since, by definition, the wondrous was a place where ontological categories had been disregarded and where borders of everyday meaning had been crossed. But we can go further to stress that every one of the four stories here involves changes of the human body. A man from the sea who looked physically normal in most respects but not in others; children who looked normal except for their green skin; bones and teeth which were recognizably normal except for their huge size; a spirit who could cross the seemingly fixed human boundaries of age and corporeality—all of these episodes feature people who had an apparent similarity to the human species yet whose unusual physical differences were codes for (and corollaries of) their more threatening social differences. Recent investigations have emphasized that medieval wonder was a broad response which might involve a range of emotional states—dread,

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playful delight, solemn astonishment, and so on.61 Although it is a sober note to raise, it is worth pointing out that in the Chronicon’s case the wondrous was always linked with the frightening and was a prelude to community insecurity. We read that the wild man had taunted the fishermen and made them feel uneasy. Likewise, although traces (some teeth and a skull) of giants were found on beaches, the living and integral giants had gone undetected. This accentuated the insidious way in which they had managed to move among the community. Finally, the family visited by Malekin the spirit was initially deeply frightened by her constant talking. The four episodes are memorable stories in themselves but they are simultaneously signs for something else, something else suggesting uncertainty and unease. The next tale in the Chronicon is also concerned with people who appear to be normal members of the general community yet who cross borders and evoke fear by their presence both inside and outside the community—that is, with heretics. This then leads to a broader issue—the links between the Chronicon Anglicanum’s localized investigation of human corporeality and its greater, underlying, dedication to the integral body of Christians in a wider sense. Thus, these four wonder anecdotes open up the bigger question of how one kind of alterity is represented by another, of how bodily difference functions as a sign of social difference. This comes to a head in the Chronicon’s next two anecdotes. Following on from the story of Malekin the talkative spirit is the Chronicon’s best-known story, the story referred to in the Vespasian manuscript as ‘Concerning the Superstition of the Publicani’, although more often known today as the Witch of Rheims story.62 The story opens by drawing an immediate connection with the wonder tales. At the start of the anecdote we read that when the error of certain heretics was flourishing, ‘a certain wonderful [strange, unnatural] thing occurred in Rheims’.63 This use of the by now familiar wonder terminology encourages audiences to consider this anecdote in tandem with the four preceding stories and it is in this juxtaposition that the meanings of all the episodes are confirmed and compounded.64 Significantly, the particular wonder term invoked here, prodigiosus, was a part of the wonder lexicon which referred specifically to the more freakish and unsettling nature of the unusual. The four earlier anecdotes all centred around a version of the wondrous that was frightening and worrying and this continues with the Rheims story. The invocation of insidious wonders, as opposed to more benign wonders, is important. As 61

Bynum, ‘Wonder’, pp. 15, 21. ‘de superstitione Publicanorum’, CA, pp. 121–25. 63 ‘prodigiosum quiddam in urbe Remensium’, CA, p. 122. 64 This makes the question of whether Ralph was the original author of the episode, as opposed to a later modifier, irrelevant—it is the placement of the stories in the overall narrative that gives them their added power and meaning. 62

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investigations into the prodigious natures of monsters have demonstrated, freakish appearances are often included in medieval texts during times of social upheaval. Here, the monster, marvel, or prodigious object functions as a code for deeper social crises.65 In the Chronicon’s case the prodigious object was one old woman infected by the plague of heresy. But this single woman represented the wider threat of heresy in general. The marvellous story began conventionally enough when a ‘hot-blooded youth’ (Gervase of Tilbury, in fact) propositioned a girl standing alone in a vineyard. Rejecting the advance, the girl made various comments that led Gervase to suspect she was ‘one of that most impious sect of Publicani, who at that time were being hunted out everywhere’.66 The local archbishop then appeared, seized the girl, and learnt from her the name of her mistress. Once captured, this mistress employed ‘perverse interpretation’ to twist scriptural passages to her own ends. Her knowledge of scripture was so thorough that the only solution was to imprison her and her young charge as well. As they stubbornly refused to admit error, both women were ordered to be burnt. At the last minute, however, the older mistress drew a ball of string from her person, threw it out the window, and was carried away by evil spirits in the mould of Simon Magus, never to be seen again. The girl, however, could not be swayed from her beliefs by either reason or reward and was therefore burnt. The story concludes with a selective and conventional description of the Publicani’s beliefs and practices. According to this description the Publicani defer baptism until the age of understanding; they reject prayers for the dead; they abandon milk and all foods that are products of coition; they reject purgatory and argue that the soul goes immediately to rest or damnation; they reject the Old Testament; they are country-folk and ‘therefore’ cannot be swayed by rational argument or scriptural texts; and they choose to die rather than be converted. When Ralph of Coggeshall wrote this passage the Cistercians had been fighting heresy for approximately eighty years.67 In the 1140s Bernard of Clairvaux had travelled to southern France and preached against the heretical Henry of Lausanne and his followers. Two sermons in Bernard’s Song of Songs commentary were also dedicated to the question of heresy, this time in relation to the heretics of Cologne. On both occasions Bernard’s priority was not to describe the activities of the heretics accurately—like 65 See the essays in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). 66 ‘Quod audiens magister Gervasius intellexit protinus hanc esse de illa impiissima secta Publicanorum, qui illo in tempore ubique exquirebantur.’ CA, p. 122. 67 Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Cistercians, Heresy, and Crusade in Occitania, 1145–1229: Preaching in the Lord’s Vineyard (York: York Medieval Press; Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 2001), esp. chap. 3 onwards, and Martha G. Newman, The Boundaries of Charity: Cistercian Culture and Ecclesiastical Reform (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), chap. 9.

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many writers, he conflated different heresies into one—but to stress the danger of secrecy. He argued that precisely because heretics were hidden then they were necessarily a threat to the unity of Christendom and so must be identified and rooted out. A second Cistercian involvement against heresy occurred thirty years later when the abbot of Clairvaux travelled to southern France to preach against Waldensians and Cathars. Once again the alleged secrecy of heretics was an important concern. All of this suggests that the Cistercian order was defined by strong attention to the differences between orthodoxy and unorthodoxy. It had fought heresy for most of its own history and this would continue to characterize the time of Ralph’s historical career. The Albigensian Crusade was called in 1208 while, in 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council articulated the attack against heresy in broad terms applicable to all Christians. More specifically, in 1204 Innocent III had already placed the mission against heresy with the abbot of Cîteaux and, therefore, effectively with the order as a whole. This responsibility was accepted eagerly in England, although not always with any hope for success. In 1206 John of Forde, a Cistercian from Devon, articulated a wider pessimism when he lamented that ‘now we find this heresy sending its roots deep and wide into the towns, castles and surrounding countryside of France, even to Italy, and spreading out its branches’.68 Like Bernard, John of Forde included this comment in one of his sermons on the Song of Songs, indicating that both continental and English Cistercians saw heresy as something which carried large devotional implications and which should be brought to the attention of broader Cistercian audiences through their devotional reading. The Cistercians were not just concerned with stamping out heresy among others. Their legislative statuta betray a concern that heretics might be residing within the order itself and that older Cistercian practices might in fact be heretical.69 The Cistercian fight against heresy was therefore both internal and external, directed at both Cistercian community members themselves and at wider Christendom. This combination of motivations was expressed in historical writings. Hélinand of Froidmont, for example, began writing his world history in 1211, a period when fear of Cathar infestation was high. The resultant Chronicon included many exempla tales which, while seeming to be digressions from the historical narrative, were in fact highly charged arguments against the errors of the Cathars.70 This work was therefore more 68 John of Ford [sic pro Forde], Sermons on the Final Verses of the Song of Songs VI, trans. by Wendy Mary Beckett, CF, 46 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1984), sermon 85: 3, p. 29. 69 For discussion, see Derek Baker, ‘Heresy and Learning in Early Cistercianism’, in Schism, Heresy and Religious Protest, ed. by Derek Baker, SCH, 9 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), pp. 93–107. 70 E. L. Saak, ‘The Limits of Knowledge: Hélinand de Froidmont’s Chronicon’, in Pre-Modern Encyclopaedic Texts, ed. by Peter Binkley (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 289–302.

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than just a wide-ranging universal history with fascinating stories; it was also an educational tool and textual arsenal which used exempla to provide all the historical material that a Cistercian might need in order to refute Cathar error, both in public preaching and in private meditation. Other Cistercian historians argued similarly. Writing in Champagne in the 1230s, Aubri of Trois-Fontaines produced a chronicle that was strongly linked to the order’s preaching program.71 It was filled with exempla that could be extracted from the historical narrative and used as set pieces in preaching against heretics. The same approach featured in Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus miraculorum, where once again a set of exempla from the opening decades of the thirteenth century was used to attack the Albigensian heresy.72 By the early thirteenth century, then, Cistercian history writing on the continent was a polemical tool that taught Cistercians and wider audiences what to follow and what to avoid. And, in the early thirteenth century, the main practice that histories urged people to avoid was the practice of heresy. In light of this, it is not surprising that Ralph of Coggeshall added the Publicani story to the traditional account of English history that he had received via his array of sources. He, Hélinand, and Aubri all represent the Cistercian corporate mentality that rejected heresy, and all three men used historical writing as a means of promoting this message and inspiring reform. In this instance, then, the Chronicon Anglicanum is in accordance with contemporary continental Cistercian historiographical themes of internationalism just as much as with contemporary English historiographical trends of political chronology, occasional international affairs, and annalistic representations of the past. The Chronicon’s next anecdote is the story of Alpais of Cudot and this continues the call for reform.73 Born to a poor family in Orléans, Alpais led an obedient life caring for her father’s cows. Her love of justice and charity was evident from youth and God chose to mark her out by afflicting her with ulcers and a pestilent stench. After wasting away from disease, Alpais received a vision of the Virgin and was cured. She then refused all food and gained fame due to her miraculous fasting. According to different reports, this fasting lasted between thirty and forty years. The local archbishop wanted to supply her with attendants and build a canon’s house and pilgrimage centre, all of which Alpais rejected. She died after a period of 71 A. B. H. Nitert, ‘Matière de France and the World Chronicle of Aubri de Trois-Fontaines’, in Aspects de l’épopée romane. Mentalités. Idéologies. Intertextualités, ed. by Hans van Dijk and Willem Noomen (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995), pp. 409–18. 72 Jacques Berlioz, ‘Exemplum et histoire: Césaire de Heisterbach (v.1180– v.1240) et la croisade albigeoise’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes, 147 (1989), 49–96. 73 CA, pp. 125–28. On Alpais, see Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, 2 vols (Brussels: Socii Bollandiani, 1898–99, 1900–01), nos 306–07.

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languor and her body was visited by people of all ranks, from the highest to the lowest. Alpais is known today because of her inedia (refusal of food). This follows Caroline Walker Bynum’s research into the ways in which medieval female sanctity was linked to and manifested by the body.74 Medieval attention, however, came to Alpais for a variety of reasons in addition to her inedia. She was famous both before and after her death in 1211. She was the subject of various vitae and short descriptions, several of which were composed by Cistercian writers such as Caesarius of Heisterbach, Aubri of Trois-Fontaines, and Robert of Auxerre. The earliest vita was composed at some stage between 1181 and 1211 by an anonymous Cistercian monk who had known Alpais and who focussed on Alpais’s visions and spiritual teachings.75 Other writers concentrated on her lack of food, thus representing the growing interest in holy inedia that Bynum has identified. Ralph of Coggeshall’s account is not dependent on any of the surviving vitae. But in his account he too saw Alpais’s inedia as the most worthy feature about her. Indeed, this dismissal of food was the first thing Ralph said about Alpais after he mentioned her name at the outset of the discussion. The terminology he used suggests that Ralph viewed Alpais’s fasting not simply as a step towards God but as a holy and miraculous activity in itself. Twice Ralph referred to Alpais’s ‘miraculous fasting’.76 In Ralph’s account, Alpais did not need to do anything else to acquire her miraculous reputation; fasting alone was sufficient. While other biographers stressed Alpais’s visions as evidence for her sanctity, Ralph includes only two of these. These are the vision of the Virgin which results in Alpais’s cure and then precipitates her fasting, and a vision (just before Alpais’s death) of the Crucifixion. Significantly, these visions occur either before or after the section of the narrative which deals with Alpais and the miraculous. They are not then integral to the miraculous nature of the Alpais tale. It is significant that the Chronicon’s first five wonder stories are succeeded by a story in which the most obvious emphasis is on the miraculous. Ontological categories are often understood more clearly when they are contrasted against other terms. That is, a concept can be explained indirectly by the process of explaining what it is not. This was a common 74 Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). This work contains many passing references to Alpais. 75 Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur, editio novissima, 69 vols in 70 (Paris: Victor Palmé, 1863–1940), November, vol. II, part 1, November 3, pp. 167– 209. Elisabeth Stein’s newer edition of the same manuscript refers briefly to the Coggeshall version: Leben und Visionem der Alpais von Cudot (1150–1211). Neuedition des lateinischen Textes mit begleitenden Untersuchungen zu Autor, Werk, Quellen und Nachwirkung, ScriptOralia, 77 (Tübingen: Gunter Narr, 1995), pp. 80–83. 76 ‘fama celebris de miraculoso ejus jejunio’; ‘fide facta archiepiscopo de tam miraculoso jejunio’, CA, pp. 126, 127.

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practice in medieval wonder and marvel discussions. Here, marvels and miracles were discussed in tandem, with the aim of distinguishing more clearly between the two by the processes of comparison and contrast. Because both marvels and miracles were unusual and unaccustomed (insolitum), sometimes it was difficult to be sure of the differences. But by 1200 these differences were well defined, in theory at least.77 Although miracles and marvels might both incite admiratio, miracles contravened the law of nature and were produced by God’s power alone while marvels remained clearly in accordance with the laws of nature. In the case of marvels, it was simply that humans were ignorant of the relevant laws of nature and therefore wondered at the results. By succeeding the wonder stories with the Alpais miracle story, Ralph encouraged his readers to compare all the anecdotes and to draw links between them. This was already what many readers of wonders would be inclined to do, given the strong degree to which miracula and mirabilia were associated in contemporary minds. Here it is important to note that the Alpais story does employ wonder terminology. Significantly, however, the terminology is used in the negative. That is, Ralph writes that ‘it was not a wonder’ that Alpais was held so long in the thrall of the vision of Christ.78 This reference to what was not wonderful, what was not unaccustomed, encourages the audience to consider complete immersion in affective experiences to be completely normal and desirable. This indicates the very strong Cistercian mentality lying behind the Alpais narrative addition. On the other hand, as we have seen concerning the Fountains Narratio, layers of meanings in medieval histories did remain optional. Authors may well prepare the ground for allegorical and associative readings, they may well suggest to their readers that the particularly monastic and Cistercian responses of Alpais were ‘not wonderful’, but a history would never gain readers if it was not interesting to read at its most basic level—the literal. In the case of the Chronicon, the Publicani episode and the Alpais story are intriguing in their own right. For modern scholars, they provide valuable evidence for the Cistercian rejection of heresy and the Cistercian devotion to pious living. For medieval readers, even if they were read in isolation with no attention to their accumulated wonder meanings, these tales would still have furnished useful moral examples for the Chronicon’s Cistercian audiences. For example, the Alpais story included reference to suitable poverty, specifically Cistercian kinds of visions (of Christ and of the Virgin), and adherence to the rule of charity. All of these themes were important to monasticism in general but they were particularly important to Cistercian spirituality. It is possible to argue further for the possible reception of these anecdotes. This further meaning can be gained if all six stories are reflected on in tan77

For various medieval authors distinguishing between miracula and mirabilia, see Bynum, ‘Wonder’, pp. 4–5 and p. 8, n. 31. 78 ‘Non fuit autem mirum si tanta eam commotio diu tenuit’, CA, p. 128.

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dem. To begin, the Vespasian manuscript provides some brief clues as to how these episodes might have been read. Although the manuscript has many changes of scribal hands, both the Publicani and Alpais stories were initially written by the same hand. This suggests that they were considered to share some kind of thematic or source unity to warrant their being copied together at the same time. Greater evidence for their confirming meanings comes from the thematic links and narrative doublets between the stories. Every bad practice in the heresy tale is remedied by its equivalent good practice in the Alpais description. For example, whereas the girl in the Publicani story was virginal for all the wrong and heretical reasons, Alpais was a correct and sacratissima virgo. The girl at Rheims abstained from milk and all foods which were products of coition because she adhered to the false beliefs of the Publicani. Alpais, however, abstained from food because she was being sustained by the food of Holy Communion. The girl at Rheims was stubborn and she (and in particular her mistress) spoke through error and perversity. Alpais, however, was humble and spoke only to insist that she desired to hide away from pilgrims and from the pomp of the world. This contrast between the two women is reiterated when Ralph includes a personal comment on the nature of martyrdom. He writes that the Publicani girl may well have looked like a martyr but that, really, she was far removed from the Christian ideal. Granted, she did not cry out when burnt. But here the similarity with martyrs ended. Martyrs die because they are steadfast and constant but members of this wicked sect choose to die because they do not want to be converted from error. For this and other reasons the girl was far from the martyr ideal that Alpais represented so well. The separate edificatory meanings of the Publicani and Alpais stories combine to present a powerful argument for the importance of orthodox devotional practices. Both the heretical practices that one should condemn and the pious practices that one should praise were manifest most readily in the site of the human body. The description of the Publicani’s beliefs stressed elements related to the body—questions of what one put into the body (food), how one reproduced the body (sex), and what happened to the body after death (the soul and purgatory). Alpais, too, was defined in relation to her body; in this case, in relation to its remarkable survival without food. These two descriptions of bodily activities were different manifestations of the same late-twelfth- and early-thirteenth-century debate over the nature of the self. In particular, did human nature comprise a body/soul unity, in which the body sinned and accrued merit in tandem with the soul, or was the soul alone the basis and essence of the self? The theological orthodoxy at this time was one which granted a necessary role to the body as well as to the soul.79 Scholastic authors and monks investigating this issue generally focussed on the question of resurrection. Because the soul was seen as 79 Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), pp. 135–36, 163–76.

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incomplete without the body, this resulted in an elevation of the status of the body and, hence, the argument that the body must be resurrected in its integrity. Influential Cistercians such as Bernard promoted this view of bodily integrity strongly. There were two debates which extended logically from this adherence to the resurrection of a stable and integrated body. The first relates to heretics.80 Since the official view was that the body would be resurrected entire and perfect, it was considered logical to accuse heretics of favouring putrefaction, change, and dismemberment. The allegation of certain practices does not mean that heretics always indulged in them, but simply that the allegation itself was sufficiently powerful to ‘create’ a group of outsiders. In the case of heretics and the body, a common accusation was that heretics denied the resurrection of the body. Other accusations following on from this include their alleged denial of purgatory, their disrespect for proper burial, and their disbelief in prayers for the dead. On all occasions the heretics allegedly treated bodies with disregard. The body, then, was the prime site of attack by heretics’ opponents. The second debate which grew out of contemporary interest in bodily integrity relates to hagiography and edifying writing in general. Here we see that edificatory stories such as vitae consistently emphasize the stability of the holy body.81 In early-thirteenth-century miracle collections and vitae it was common to include miracles of bodies that did not decay, of bodies that smelt wonderfully sweet, and of bodies that were not subject to the usual degeneration caused by time and physical activity. These miracles were overwhelmingly associated with holy women rather than with holy men. There were many ways in which female spirituality in the high and late medieval period was more somatic than that of men.82 One way was manifest on the level of female action. Here women talked and wrote about their own bodies, they denied their own bodies certain comforts, and they opened their bodies up to extreme experiences of pleasure and pain. These actions were at the same time appreciations of Christ’s humanity as well as appreciations of women’s physical experiences. Another way in which interest in female bodily experiences was manifest was at the level of male commentary and interpretation. Since medieval biological theories held that women’s bodies were more changeable than men’s it was considered a greater miracle for women to have been spared the usual processes of decay or of bodily demands (such as eating) in general. In light of this, it is significant to note the great thirteenth-century increase in miracles of female inedia and freedom from post-mortem decay. By praising the female body

80

Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, pp. 214–20. Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body, pp. 220–25. 82 For a classic introduction, see Caroline Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), esp. chap. 6. 81

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that was free from corruption and fragmentation, hagiographers betrayed just how strongly the church hierarchy was anxious about this corruption. The Chronicon Anglicanum juxtaposes these two debates, one after the other, just as theologians writing in around 1200 juxtaposed them. This suggests that the two arguments concerning bodily fragmentation and resurrection were linked conceptually in Ralph’s mind and that he wished this link to be recognized by his audience. It is true that the debate concerning resurrection is not articulated specifically in the Chronicon. On the other hand, the Chronicon is a work of history rather than a treatise on theological matters. The way in which it participates in broader doctrinal issues is through reflection of the status quo rather than through articulation of new theological positions. Thus, when the Chronicon invokes heretics as examples of bad users of the body and inedic saints as examples of good users of the body it reflects the broader bodily debate occurring in Europe in the early thirteenth century. To this extent, then, the Chronicon features both a conventional understanding of bodily integrity and a conventional representation of this theme through recourse to debates concerning heretics and inedic saints. Even if he had not been following Bernard and other Cistercians in thinking about the finer points of resurrection, there were other less theologically complex reasons why Ralph might have used bodily imagery in the four English wonder stories and the two succeeding French stories. It was after all a common literary trope to employ the human body as a metaphor for the wider social community, in church and state circles equally.83 The principle was that every member of the community had his or her role to play in the same way that every member of the human body did. The ideal was that the various members would work together harmoniously, under the rule of the ‘head’, for the greater good of the entire body. Thus, the argument was clearly a conservative one which favoured social conformity and integrity and discouraged members from abandoning their allocated social roles. In the thirteenth century this metaphor was invoked by church thinkers (who naturally posited the church as ‘head’) as a means of encouraging order among the laity. Significantly for this discussion, this was often in response to various heretical fractures which were splitting church unity apart during this early-thirteenth-century period. It was particularly common among the Cistercian order to think of the church as a united moral body in this way.84 83 The classic account is Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957). The clearest pronouncement of the metaphor before Ralph of Coggeshall’s period was in chap. 5. 2 of John of Salisbury’s Policraticus, written in 1159: Policraticus: Of the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footprints of Philosophers, ed. and trans. by Cary J. Nederman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 84 Newman, Boundaries of Charity, pp. 2, 233.

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Having established that this body metaphor promotes normative social ideals, especially in relation to orthodoxy and heresy, it is possible to understand the significance of occasions when the metaphor is inverted—that is, occasions when bodily abnormality and the breaking of bodily categories are stressed. If a well-ordered and healthy physical body represents a harmonious social community, then a physical body that is abnormal and inexplicable points to a society which is also prone to tension and disintegration. Because wonders and monsters blur and challenge the boundaries between the normal and the abnormal body, they are particularly effective metaphors for this kind of social change and insecurity. And, once again, this literary attention to bodily abnormalities was particularly strong in the years around 1200.85 Monsters, werewolves, spirits, and other objects challenging the conventions of the stable human body were invoked as metaphors for the unstable social body. This was the case in the Chronicon. Like the wild man from the sea who could not talk but could only signify, all the Chronicon’s references to the human body point beyond the literal to a wider potential of meaning. Once we are alert to the metaphorical significance of bodily irregularities it is possible to link the four wonder tales and the latter two tales. The six stories appear en masse in the Chronicon and they delay the chronological progression of the history in the process. At first glance, they may appear to have been placed indiscriminately in the history, perhaps as the kind of ‘entertainment’ that previous commentators have suggested. But the preceding investigation has identified a link between the stories. This link is thematic and associative rather than chronological or geographical. Indeed, the broad geography that is covered (in particular in the giant stories which treat Essex, Yorkshire, and Wales) suggests that the theme is definitely not meant to be localized but, rather, relevant to all places. In the first four stories transgressions of human bodily form induced anxiety in the communities among whom the wonders had appeared. In the last two stories the metaphor of individual bodily otherness was made more explicit by being translated into the body of Christian believers more broadly. After the wonder stories had described residual unease about the consequences of bodily transformation the reasons for this unease were revealed in the heresy tale. The Publicani’s desecrations of the body were the worst possible manifestations of all the bodily mistreatment described in earlier episodes. This story was the nadir, an example of how apparently ordinary people (indistinguishable from others at first glance) could undermine the Christian community if one were not vigilant. This was a warning for how difference could install itself, bodily, among the community and precipitate social upheaval. Following this argument, it is not surprising that the Alpais narrative is the final element of this set of moral tales. For the virtues of Alpais are the glorious resolution to all these stories. Her ideal bodily behaviour 85 On dating, see Caroline Walker Bynum, ‘Metamorphosis, or Gerald and the Werewolf’, Speculum, 73 (1998), 987–1013 (p. 1013).

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restores the community and protects it from the possible subversion that had been alluded to in the earlier episodes. And so these six tales of the Chronicon, tales which are commonly treated as light entertainment, are in fact united by their treatment of a common theme. The theme is the threat posed by outsiders to the unity of the Christian community while the means by which this theme is presented is the metaphor of bodily integrity and transformation. Having recognized the importance of this theme it is not surprising to find the six tales sandwiched in the Chronicon within the narrative of the Fourth Crusade. Crusade descriptions were the descriptions par excellence of Christian integrity and of looming threats to that integrity. And the Fourth Crusade was the crusade in which Cistercian involvement was by far the greatest. When Ralph of Coggeshall added six original tales to his received narrative he made an attempt at thematic consolidation and unity. This continued a tactic introduced earlier in the history. All three kinds of additions in the Chronicon— the marginal additions, the narrative additions, and the wonder additions— worked to suggest and provide a greater degree of narrative unification and cohesion for the history and, hence, to facilitate the extent to which the past could be appropriated by an audience accustomed to thinking in terms of Cistercian narratives. For it is significant that these additional layers of narrative meaning were all especially Cistercian ones—the advocacy of visions, the sharing of stories for the benefit of others, devotion to the Virgin, attention to humility and simplicity in speech, commitment to monastic hospitality, and, above all, the reminder that the integrity of the body of Christians must be protected at all costs. None of these topics was present in the Chronicon’s sources; they were added in order to produce, in Hayden White’s terms, a coherent social centre of Cistercian meaning which had been lacking in the original sources. Cumulatively, these topics worked to suggest an overall narrative unity which endorsed Cistercian corporate identity and Christian wholeness and orthodoxy. All of this is helpful evidence for the underlying theme of this chapter and, indeed, of other parts of this study as well—that is, the strong extent to which medieval writers of history conceived of the past in terms of narrativity. They deferred to a seemingly universal desire to present the past, in all its randomness, not as a series of discrete episodes but as a broader narrative bound by thematic continuities. As we have seen, Cistercian authors were particularly eager to impute a narrative stability to the past, precisely because the history of their own order was characterized by the opposing logics of continuity and change. Ralph of Coggeshall was not entirely successful in his attempts at narrative cohesion; the marginal amplification and interlacing in the first ‘borderline’ area of the history was, to modern eyes at least, a messy attempt at imposing additional meaning and narrative unity onto the events of history that had already been recorded. Other Cistercian writers chose other strategies. Aelred was able to effect unity, in one way at least, by making the same English past readily apprehensible by two quite different audiences, lay and monastic. In the two

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foundation histories Hugh of Kirkstall managed to subsume change to the more flexible motif of tradition. Although using different techniques, all these authors exploited the capacities of one order as a means of explaining another order. The Cistercian monastic order was new, various political orders were new, and it was by creating new narrative orders that such novelty could be both incorporated into a broader unity and represented by the written word.

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inishing points are always arbitrary points on a line. This is especially pertinent when discussing historiography since the very subject matter of histories deals with beginnings, continuities, and re-beginnings. Many medieval chronicles and annals were continued, modified, and adapted, precisely because their new authors realized that time marched on and historiographical interests and needs were changing. Cistercian historical writing did not cease with Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum. In 1219 the monks at Waverley in Sussex finished copying out earlier annals of English history and began adding their own annals which they maintained year by year until at least 1291. In the 1230s monks at Abbey Dore in Herefordshire did likewise, borrowing annals from another Cistercian house, Grace Dieu in Monmouthshire, to serve as their model. Thirteenth-century manuscript copies of earlier histories also demonstrate the continued participation of English Cistercians in the historiographical enterprise. But there are good reasons for concluding this study in around 1220. In keeping with the tradition of dividing Cistercian history into various ages, the 1220s have been seen as the end of an era. Although some of the markers of this turning point have become so commonplace as to seem little more than conveniences (for example, the ‘rise of the mendicants’ is commonly invoked to explain a whole host of thirteenth-century changes), nonetheless there is no need to jettison these markers altogether; there is still explanatory force in these commonplace arguments. For example, Cistercian life in England did change when the mendicants arrived and, more generally, the 1220s is a satisfactory decade in which to identify changes in both English Cistercian life and English historiographical practice more broadly.

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In this study I have presented close readings of five Cistercian histories while simultaneously arguing on three additional levels. On the first level, I have demonstrated that Cistercian histories from England both reflect and contribute to Cistercian institutional, devotional, and historiographical developments on the wider continental scale. In the mid-twelfth century, Cistercians in general were just beginning to formulate their theories on friendship and charity; Aelred’s histories provide useful complements to the more strictly spiritual works on these topics, while also complementing the exordia documents’ more legalistic enunciations of Cistercian customary practice. By around 1200, Cistercians on the continent were writing foundation accounts, and so too were the Cistercians in Yorkshire. By the 1220s Cistercians on the continent were assuming a more international outlook and were defining themselves in relation to Christian communities beyond the local regions, a practice maintained by Ralph of Coggeshall. And in all three periods the Cistercians’ historical/legal interests, as represented by their reissuings of exordia or legal compilations, corresponded precisely to the dates at which the historiographical interest was demonstrated by their English brethren. On the second level, we have seen that Cistercian histories usually fit into the mainstream of historical writing in England although, occasionally, slight deviations from standard trends obtained. For example, Aelred’s histories conform to the broader pattern in which mid-century historiography was focussed on the nation and, indeed, was the prime mechanism by which the constituent elements of that English nation were advertised. Beyond this, Aelred’s view of history diverged from contemporary historians’ in the ways in which it incorporated women into the genealogy of English history. The later foundation histories also feature elements of conformity and divergence from the wider English trends. They do fit into wider English trends for legalistic and charter-based histories, although they differ in the sense that they are northern histories which exhibit characteristics allegedly more common in the south. This has implications for the question of regionalism and historiography: indeed, the foundation histories force us to reassess precisely what the term ‘local’ means in reference to English historiography in the first place. While these foundation histories are local in a geographic sense, they are universal in a spiritual sense. Both the Kirkstall and Fountains works align the histories of their respective houses with the broader continental Cistercian enterprise, and they do this through their use of sources. No English source texts were used but, rather, authoritative Cistercian letters, exordia documents, and metaphors were all taken from continental sources. This betrays a belief that all works of the Cistercian order were equally relevant and that the history and exemplary anecdotes of continental houses were valid for houses in England. By the power of association, by the power of metaphor and Cistercian tropes, it was possible to locate Kirkstall and Fountains within the mainstream of continental Cistercian history.

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The fact that the preferred foundational moment for the English Cistercians lay on the continent, outside English history, has implications for the perennial question of historiography and English nationalism. In the 1150s, Aelred’s histories concentrated on historical events occurring on the national level and manifest in the deeds of kings. Library acquisitions in the second half of the twelfth century continued this trend. Historical manuscripts featured authoritative national historians such as William of Malmesbury and Bede, and often carried a northern English focus in particular. But by the turn of the thirteenth century the locus of historiographical interest had constricted from the national to the local level. Now the dominant historical production was the foundation history and these histories included only res gestae from the home monasteries. There was evidently no need for Cistercian audiences to read about national historical deeds in these instances. The unique way in which the foundation histories negotiated issues of the local and the universal suggests that in this instance we are better off detecting the Cistercians’ preferred identity as inhering in the group, in the Cistercian familia, rather than in the nation. Clearly, this contrasts with the national preoccupations of Aelred’s histories and the library acquisitions as well as with the international focus of Ralph of Coggeshall’s work, elegantly highlighting that Cistercian historical texts could be placed at the service of a range of political imperatives and orders of the medieval period. Moving specifically to Ralph’s Chronicon Anglicanum, this was simply one of many annals being produced in England in the early thirteenth century, but it was unique in the way in which it was able to link otherwise discrete local, national, and international events under the unifying umbrella of Cistercian-focussed narrative additions. Now the outlook broadened to incorporate England within the Christian world at its widest. In particular, the Chronicon Anglicanum argued that it was incumbent on all Christians to ensure that the integral body of believers was not fragmented by heresy. This final history, then, presents a message that Cistercians are encouraged to disseminate outside the Cistercian abbey, in contrast to the foundation histories whose didactic models were intended to be applied within the home monasteries only. All the histories examined in this investigation worked towards the creation of a corporate Cistercian identity, an identity which often started at the local level but which extended to the creation of a broader ideal Cistercian community. At the same time, however, the texts can tell us more—they demonstrate that history writing in England was both dependent on, and a contributor to, particular social and political orders. With these texts we see the separate yet simultaneous ways in which histories reflected and contributed to the interests of a new medieval monastic order while also reflecting and contributing to the interests of new social and political orders represented by the rising lay aristocracy, the socially mobile Angevin dynasty, and an ever-expanding Christendom with its crusading and anti-heretical imperatives. Finally, the texts also provide new understandings of historiographical method, the third of my levels of analysis. As well as

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emphasizing the different ways in which the historical text can support different political agendas, all these Cistercian histories have proved helpful case studies in investigating some of the most pressing methodological questions facing scholars of historiography in the early twenty-first century. As I pointed out in the opening studies of Aelred, it is important to distinguish between intention and reception. That is, while all the histories in this study contained various models for how the Cistercians should participate in local or wider Christian affairs, the fact remains that the texts actually gained very few readers beyond the Cistercian order. In other words, the stories these histories told usually remained at the local level. This was probably a result of the narrative techniques employed. When the histories advocated ideal communities they did so by the repeated use of the Cistercian tropes of desert and vine, taken from the authoritative exordia, and by the references to Cistercian exempla and visions. The fact that these elements were so strongly aligned with the Cistercian order may explain why only Aelred’s Genealogia gained a significant readership beyond the Cistercian order; it may be that the desert and the exempla stories simply did not speak to the interests of non-Cistercian audiences. Ironically, Aelred (always seen as a very Cistercian and very monastic writer) actually gained the widest non-Cistercian audiences of any of these Cistercian historians. Although his histories were strongly infused with such Cistercian themes as charity, friendship, and virtue, they simultaneously responded to the noble and royal interests of the day, hence facilitating their (modest) copying and reading by non-Cistercian audiences. It remains now to return to what I have described as one of the most intriguing issues in historiographical scholarship—that is, the extent to which medieval historiography served to impose continuity on the past, to effect conflation, and to efface differences under a veneer of seamlessness. The claim that medieval histories functioned in such a fashion has the status of received wisdom in many circles. This is often part of the larger argument that medieval thinkers masked change as a return to the status quo. But, as the investigations of Cistercian foundation histories have shown most clearly, while the argument that medieval historians sought continuity in their images of the past is certainly true, it also requires significant refinement. In some instances, histories did assert an inviolable continuity between past and present, even where such continuity was questionable at best. For example, when Aelred wrote for an exterior audience such as the incoming king Henry he glossed over discontinuities. The requirements of the lay genealogy were that it should glorify ancient and continuous lineage and, therefore, Aelred presented a picture of smooth royal transition, ignoring the changes that had disrupted royal succession in England in the past century. The Relatio de standardo featured a highly complex narrative structure, in which a certain theme was emphasized only to the extent that it carried meaning for both Cistercian monastic and lay noble audiences. This convergence of themes meant that even quite separate audiences would nonetheless find something in the text which accorded with their own

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community memories and images of themselves, hence emphasizing continuity of, for example, monastic foundation or Norman prowess, rather than fragmentary difference. Ralph of Coggeshall’s Chronicon Anglicanum showed a similar approach to the question of change in the historical record. As Aelred had done in the Genealogia, Ralph tried to smooth over difference. His resulting text did differ from the Genealogia in the way it achieved this. The Genealogia asserted its historical message through manipulating the traditionally maleonly focus of genealogies to include female protagonists and also through claiming a moral continuity of Cistercian character traits. The Chronicon Anglicanum manipulated the structural level of the narrative, with its many textual additions serving as narrative glues designed to bind the discrete sections of this compiled history together. These narrative additions still did not turn the Chronicon into a completely unified history which presented a single set of preoccupations—the Chronicon was always a work in progress and its interpolated folios and changes of scribal hands inevitably introduced new themes into the work—but, rather, the additions are important evidence that the attempt at thematic unity was undertaken. The three sets of additions are frozen snapshots, they are evidence of the process by which added meaning was introduced into this history. For this reason, the marginal additions concerning natural phenomena, the narrative additions concerning theories of history and visions, and the narrative additions concerning wonders and miracles are all significant examples of what Hayden White and others have identified as the urge to add meaning to the past by ordering experience in the form of narrative. All of these strategies are quite different, yet they work to the same end of refashioning the past so that it accords with a contemporary preference for similarity rather than difference. Perhaps surprisingly, the foundation histories had the same function. Here the Cistercian producers of history employed more unusual tactics, more unusual mechanisms for imputing security and continuity to what was in reality a highly volatile Cistercian past. But they still did argue for continuity. Thus, what this study has shown is that there were many ways in which continuity might be presented, even, paradoxically, through the acknowledgement of rupture. When writing for their own communities rather than for outside patrons, Cistercian authors were not shy about including evidence of change and disruption. In fact, they faced these problems head on. Both the Kirkstall and Fountains foundation histories featured initial hardships overcome by the monks. Obstacles such as mutinies against abbots, changes of site, abbatial improvidence, and bankruptcy all seem to have been accepted as integral elements of the communities’ histories. In these histories it seems that a certain degree of change did not necessarily compromise the essential continuity of the houses’ territorial and spiritual heritages. The links in the chain were flexible and could be pulled and tested without necessarily rupturing into discontinuity.

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In light of the above, I have found it most helpful to talk about the Cistercians’ quest for tradition rather than their quest for continuity, since tradition is a concept that openly accommodates change. The strength of invented tradition is that it deals with both change and continuity—it subsumes change to a greater and, importantly, self-consciously created continuity in order to erase inconsistencies between past and present. The Fountains history did this on various levels. First, it raided official Cistercian legal documents and letters and invented the tradition of Fountains as a model official community following the model communities of Clairvaux and Cîteaux (which were themselves invented via the exordia documents). Second, the Fountains that we read of in the Narratio sprouts monastic offshoots like a hot-house grapevine and, importantly, these monastic daughter houses are included in the text precisely at points where they can serve as counter images to nascent dissent. And the third area, in which typical Cistercian devotional techniques are employed to counter potential conflict, is an even clearer example of the mollifying potential of the carefully structured historical text. Both the Kirkstall and Fountains histories were the classic examples of histories which suggested over-arching meanings while simultaneously respecting difference and multiplicity. They made cases for a continuity which nonetheless concedes, and perhaps even depends on, disruption, uncertainty, and change. This acceptance of both stability and rupture is in keeping with the Cistercians’ approach to community life more broadly. In their application of the Benedictine Rule, in their approach to the liturgy, in their interaction with the lay economy, indeed in their break from Molesme and from the black monks in the first place—in all these areas Cistercian monks were aware of the need for change and continuity, for diversity and unity. Sometimes the order’s official attitude to these twin features was an ambivalent one—with this ambivalence a feature of what commentators have termed the ongoing ‘invention’ of the order over the first century—but this very uncertainty and ambivalence reminds us that the Cistercians saw all too clearly the coexistence of flux and fixedness in their past. Writing and reading history also meant recognizing that change and continuity tend to travel together. Modern commentators may well be perplexed by the ongoing ‘invention’ of the Cistercian order over the first century, but the medieval authors and audiences of historiography seem to have had no such concerns about change. The medieval Cistercians knew that change need not mean dissimulation or inconsistency. In the English context, invention was not an attempt to deny change and development over the course of Cistercian history; on the contrary, invention was a means of accepting the presence of both change and continuity in the historical record. The English Cistercians recognized not simply that change and continuity are related but, further, that once change is faced up to it can then be interpreted in such a way that it is not antagonistic to continuity. In the hands of the English Cistercian historians, change can even be considered an essential component of continuity.

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Manuscripts This list includes only manuscripts I have personally consulted. Manuscripts discussed in Chapter 3 but not personally investigated are described in more detail in the relevant sections of that chapter. CAMBRIDGE Cambridge University Library Ff.I.27 Ii.II.3 Corpus Christi College 66 139 Trinity College 27 (B.1.29) 146 (B.4.32) 1104 (O.1.79)

Cotton Vitellius F III Harley 3641 Royal 6 C VIII Royal 13 D II College of Arms Arundel XI

LONDON British Library Additional 25014 Additional 38816 Cotton Cleopatra B IV Cotton Titus A XIX Cotton Titus D XXIV Cotton Vespasian D X Cotton Vitellius C VIII

PARIS Bibliothèque nationale latin 15076 latin 15157

OXFORD Bodleian Library Bodley 514 Laud Misc. 722

YORK York Minster XVI.I.8

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Index

Abbey Dore, annals 215 admiratio scholarship on 195–6 terminology 197, 200–1, 207 see also wonders Aedgiva, mother of kings 78 Aelred of Rievaulx De institutione inclusarum 67, 85 De sanctimoniali de Wattun 50, 67, 85 De sanctis ecclesiae Haugustaldensis 100 De spirituali amicitia 68, 84–5 Eulogium Davidis 58–9 and friendship 68–9, 84–5 Genealogia regum Anglorum Chapter 2 passim, 100, 117–8 see also Genealogia regum Anglorum readers of 218 Relatio de standardo Chapter 1 passim, 68, 108, 118 see also Relatio de standardo scholarship on 44 Speculum caritatis 36 n. 14, 38, 45, 66, 68 n. 35, 84, 103, 108 Vita Edwardi 80, 100 Vita Niniani 100 and women 84–5 writings of 31, 62, 91, 111, 123

Aethelflaed, ‘Lady of the Mercians’ 75–7 Aethelwulf 111 affective theology, Cistercians and 10, 13–4, 36, 61–2, 164 Albigensian crusade 204 Alexander, abbot of Kirkstall 139, 142 allegory 133–5, Chapter 5 passim Alpais of Cudot 205–8, 211–2 ancient history, audiences of 119–20 Anderson, Benedict 27, 55–7, 86 Anglo-Norman identity 43 Anglo-Norman nobility, and literacy 33, 37 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 8, 74, 75 annals 174–5, 175–7 architecture, and historiography 173 Arthurian literature, and Cistercians 108 Athelstan, King 64–5 Aubri of Trois-Fontaines 172, 205, 206 autobiography, communal 129–30 Bede 100, 104–5, 111, 116 Benedictine Rule 4, 13, 26, 39, 61–2, 102, 145, 155, 220 Benedictines, and history writing 8–9

240

Bernard of Clairvaux 20, 25, 37, 38, 62, 64, 104, 154, 159, 203–4 biblical figures, women as 81–3 body 201, 208 female sanctity and 209–10 and heretics 209–10 as metaphor 202, 210–1 and soul 208–9 Bridlington priory 117 Buildwas abbey library collection 96–7 manuscripts of 106, 112–3, 121–2 Burton, Thomas, abbot of Meaux 51, 96 Byland abbey foundation history 132, 140 manuscripts of 101, 107, 113, 117, 122 Caesarius of Heisterbach 206 Dialogus miraculorum 129, 164, 205 Canute, King 80 Capitula de miraculis et translationibus Sancti Cuthberti 110 Caradog of Llancarfan 112 Carta caritatis 21–2, 66 Celts, as ‘others’ 27, 44–5, 118–9, 174 charity, Cistercians and 23, 64, 65–7, 145 children, green 194, 196, 197, 199 Chronicon Anglicanum and annals 182–6 and the body 201, 202, 208–12 Cistercian themes 186–93, 212 and heretics 202–5, 207–10 Ralph of Coggeshall Chapter 6 passim, 217 and romance 198–9, 200 subsections of 180–1 and truth in histories 198–9 and wonders 193–202 Cicero 5, 32–3, 120 Cistercian order anti-intellectualism of 6, 91, 95 and crusading histories 172 and desert ideal 39, 144–5, 158–9 and encyclopaedic histories 172 English manuscripts of 97–8 and foundation histories 129

and heresy 171, 203–5 ideals versus reality 10, 172 in the 1150s 19–26 in 1200, 127–31 in the 1220s, 171–3 libraries of 7, 49, 51, Chapter 3 passim literary proscription 6–7, 91–5 and the natural world 141–2, 156–9 and oral stories 190–1 and secular leaders 62 and women 84 Cîteaux 21, 22, 23, 129, 144, 155–6 Clairvaux 21, 23, 129, 156, 159 classical history audiences of 119–20 and English Cistercians 119–21 Conrad of Eberbach, Exordium magnum Cisterciense 128–9, 164 continuity versus change 10–3, 147– 8, 166, 168, 218, 219, 220 crusading histories 172 Custance, Dame 11, 107 customary of Cistercians 22, 25 Danes, in English chronicles 80, 86, 118 Dares Phrygius, De excidio Trojae historia 99, 120–1 De bello standardii, see Aelred of Rievaulx, Relatio de standardo De excidio Britanniae, see Gildas De excidio Trojae historia, see Dares Phrygius De gestis regis Stephani et de bello standardii, see Richard of Hexham De institutione inclusarum, see Aelred of Rievaulx De obsessione Dunelmi 50 De sanctimoniali de Wattun, see Aelred of Rievaulx De sanctis ecclesiae Haugustaldensis, see Aelred of Rievaulx De situ Dunelmi 111 De spirituali amicitia, see Aelred of Rievaulx De statu et episcopis Hagustaldensis ecclesiae, see Richard of Hexham desert ideal 39, 144–5, 158–9

Index

Deuteronomy 32. 10 pp. 158–9 Dialogus duorum monachorum, see Idung of Prüfening Dialogus miraculorum, see Caesarius of Heisterbach Didascalicon, see Hugh of St Victor Dominicans, and history writing 6 Dunstan, Archbishop 67–8 Durham cathedral priory as historiographical centre 8, 49, 113, 114–6 manuscripts of 114–6, 122 Eadmer, Historia novorum 8, 74 Eadwig, King 67–8, 81 Ecclesiastica officia 22 Edgar, King 65 Edith, Queen 80–1 Edward the Confessor 80 Egwina, mother of king 78 Emma, Queen 79–80, 81 encyclopaedic histories 172 Eremum 143 Ernald of Rievaulx 93–4 Esther topos 81–3 Estoire des Engleis, see Geffrei Gaimar Eulogium Davidis, see Aelred of Rievaulx Eusebius 99 exegesis, and historiography 133–5, Chapter 5 passim exempla 128–9, 163–5 function in histories 164–5 exordia documents 23–6, 95, 114, 216, 220 Exordium Cistercii 24–6, 104, 128, 155, 159 Exordium magnum Cisterciense, see Conrad of Eberbach Exordium parvum 24–6, 104, 128, 129, 144, 155, 158 eyewitnesses, importance of 120–1, 163 Eynsham, vision of monk 188–91 Flaxley abbey, library catalogue 98–9 folk-tale motifs 201 foundation histories, popularity of 129

241

Fountains abbey 38, 39, 49, 152 equated with Cîteaux 155, 157 equated with Clairvaux 156 library collection 95 manuscripts of 114 Franciscans, and history writing 6 friendship 68–9, 84–5 Fulcher of Chartres 100 Fundacio abbathie de Kyrkestall, Chapter 4 passim, 216 spatial themes 138–46 Geffrei Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis 8, 11, 12, 33, 43, 70, 108 Genealogia regum Anglorum Aelred of Rievaulx Chapter 2 passim, 219 and charity 65–7 contents of 58–9, 60 and friendship 67–9 and kings 61–70 and queens 72–4 and textual reception 69–70, 85 and time 57, 86 and women 70–85 genealogies and Cistercians 39–40, Chapter 2 passim, 117 definition of 57 qualities of kings in 60 and Trojan origins 60–1 and women 71–2, 78 genealogy as biological inheritance 85, 156–8 as moral inheritance 85, 163–5 General Chapter of Cistercians 6–7, 19–20, 21, 24, 98, 171 and statuta 22, 94–5 Geoffrey of Monmouth 8 Historia regum Britanniae 43, 99– 100, 107–9, 121, 182–3 Prophetia Merlini 105–6, 109 Gerald of Wales 92, 96 and wonders 196, 201 Gervase of Tilbury 203 and wonders 196, 201 Gesta Normannorum ducum, see William of Jumièges Gesta regum Anglorum, see William of Malmesbury giants 194, 197

242

Gildas, De excidio Britanniae 111, 112 Grace Dieu abbey, annals 215 Gransden, Antonia 6, 9, 10, 123, 132 Gunther of Pairis 172 hagiography 5 Hélinand of Froidmont 121, 172, 204–5 Henry II 57, 79 as literary patron 59–60 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum 8, 12, 35, 42, 44, 51, 62–3, 70, 75–6, 82, 99, 107, 109 Henry de Lacy 137, 139, 142 Herbert of Clairvaux, Liber Miraculorum 128 n. 6 heresy 209 Cistercians and 171, 203–5 Hexham priory 49 historia 4 see also historiography, definition of Historia adversum paganos, see Orosius Historia Anglorum, see Henry of Huntingdon Historia Brittonum 50, 99–100, 104, 105, 111, 112, 115 Historia de Sancto Cuthberto 111 Historia Dunelmensis ecclesie, see Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio Historia Johannis prioris Haugustaldensis ecclesie xxv annorum, see John of Hexham Historia novorum, see Eadmer Historia regum, see Symeon of Durham Historia regum Anglicarum, see William of Newburgh Historia regum Britanniae, see Geoffrey of Monmouth historiography and authorization 120–1, 190–1 and Celtic focus 110–2 and continuity versus change 10–3, 147–8, 166, 168, 218, 219, 220 definition of 3–5, 175–6 see also historia distinction from literature 28 English 2, 8–9, 26–8, 52–3, 62, 92–3, 132, 174–5

and epistemological strategies 133–5, 176–7 and exegetical analysis 133–5, Chapter 5 passim as foundation stone 145 and gender 28, 70–1 and narrative styles 167 and nationalism 2, 26–7, 37, 43–7, 52–3, 56–7, 71, 114, 123, 174, 216–7 and natural events 183–6 and northern England focus 109–12 scholarly trends in 2–3, 28–9, 133– 5, 175–8 and wonders 193–202 Hugh of Kirkstall 138, 152 Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii, Chapter 5 passim, 138 see also Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon 100, 113 Hugh of York 95 Idung of Prüfening, Dialogus duorum monachorum 13, 23 n. 14 inedia 206 Innocent III, Pope 204 Instituta generalis capituli 22, 127 invented tradition 129–31, 148, 218– 9 see also tradition Isidore of Seville 5, 49, 99, 120 Jervaulx abbey foundation history 132 manuscripts of 104, 109 Joachim of Fiore 186–8 John of Clairvaux 128 n. 6 John of Forde 204 John of Hexham 111 Historia Johannis prioris Haugustaldensis ecclesie xxv annorum 50 John of Worcester 8, 75, 116–7 Johnson, Lesley 11–2, 27, 168 Josephus 99 Kirkham priory 40, 52 Kirkstall abbey foundation history, see Fundacio abbathie de Kyrkestall

Index

land disputes 139, 145, 146 manuscripts of 51, 105, 109 Kirkstead abbey, foundation history 159 Knights Templar 192–3 Lambert, abbot of Kirkstall 147 lay brothers 192–3 Leland, John 52 Libellus definitionum 92, 127–8, 129, 171 Liber Miraculorum, see Herbert of Clairvaux library collections, English 101–2 see also Cistercian order, libraries of in loco horroris 158–9 Locus amoenus 141–3 Louth Park abbey 159 library collection 96 Malcolm, King 66–7 Malekin the spirit 195 manuscripts Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.I.27, pp. 111–2 Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ii.II.3, p. 106 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66, pp. 111–2, 122 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 139, pp. 49–51, 106, 111–2, 118, 155 n. 9 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 27, pp. 121–2 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 146, pp. 117–8 Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 1104, p. 153 n. 5 Durham, Ushaw College, MS 6, p. 109 Liège, Liège University Library, MS 369C, p. 105 London, British Library, Additional MS 25014, pp. 104–5 London, British Library, Additional MS 38816, p. 113 London, British Library, Cotton MSS, Cleopatra B IV, p. 122 London, British Library, Cotton MSS, Galba A III, p. 114

243

London, British Library, Cotton MSS, Titus A XIX, p. 51 London, British Library, Cotton MSS, Titus D XXIV, p. 118 London, British Library, Cotton MSS, Vespasian D X, pp. 179–80 London, British Library, Cotton MSS, Vitellius C VIII, pp. 116– 7, 120 London, British Library, Cotton MSS, Vitellius F III, p. 100 London, British Library, MS Harley 3641, pp. 107, 117 n. 90 London, British Library, MS Royal 6 C VIII, p. 120 London, British Library, MS Royal 13 D II, pp. 182–3 London, College of Arms, MS Arundel XI, p. 180 n. 4 London, Inner Temple, MS 511.2, p. 113 London, Lambeth Palace, MS 73, pp. 112–3 London, Private Collection, MS 1, pp. 106–7 New Haven, Yale University Library, Beinecke MS 590, p. 107 Oxford, All Souls, MS 33, p. 106 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 357, p. 117 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 514, p. 109 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 722, p. 138 n. 3 Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 209, pp. 155 n. 9, 156 Oxford, St John’s College, MS 99, p. 104 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS latin 15076, p. 180 n. 4 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, MS latin 15157, p. 173 n. 8 York Minster, MS XVI.I.8, pp. 48–9 Margam abbey annals 173, 183–6 historiographical culture 182–3 Margaret, Queen (St) 73–4 Marvels, see wonders Matilda, Empress 73–4, 80–1

244

Matilda, Queen 73–4, 81–4, 85 Matthew of Rievaulx 173 Maurice of Rievaulx 91, 109–10 Meaux abbey 51 library collection 96, 98 memory and Cistercians 36–7 collective 148–9 and history 35–7 terminology of 130 Merevale abbey, manuscripts of 106 miracles, and wonders 206–7 Mirror for Princes 61, 86 Narratio de fundatione Fontanis monasterii and Cistercian tropes 154–61 and exempla 161–6 Hugh of Kirkstall Chapter 5 passim, 216 narrative, and emplotment 176–7, 181–2 narrativization Chapter 6 passim national chronicles, and English Cistercians 116–9 national histories, and English Cistercians 104–16 nationalism, medieval 55–7 see also historiography, and nationalism natural events, in historiography 183–6 natural world, Cistercians and 141– 2, 156–9 Newenham abbey, library collection 95–6 Newminster abbey 157 manuscripts of 104–5 Norman myth 41–4, 57 Øm abbey 129 Orderic Vitalis 74 Orosius, Historia adversum paganos 99, 120 parataxis 151, 161–5 Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay 172 Pipewell abbey 157 prophecy 105–6, 109 Prophetia Merlini, see Geoffrey of Monmouth public actions, and private actions 61–2, 64–5, 86

Publicani 202–3, 205, 208, 211 purgatory, Cistercians and 189 Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, Chapter 6 passim see also Chronicon Anglicanum Ralph Haget, abbot of Kirkstall 146 Ralph Higden 113 reception theory 48 regendering of women 76–7 Reginald of Durham 100 Relatio de standardo Aelred of Rievaulx Chapter 1 passim authorial intention 32–7 and friendship 68 manuscript dissemination 48–52 and nationalism 43–7 and saints 46–7 textual reception 37–47, 218–9 Richard of Devizes 9 and wonders 198 Richard of Hexham 111 De gestis regis Stephani et de bello standardii 44, 50, 70 De statu et episcopis Hagustaldensis ecclesiae 113 n. 82 Rievaulx abbey 37–8 and historiographical culture 93–4, 108 library catalogue 49, 99–100, 110 literary culture 91 manuscripts of 101, 113, 116–7, 120–1 Robert of Auxerre 206 Robert Bruce 32, 34–5, 68 Robertsbridge abbey, manuscripts of 106–7 Roche abbey 157 manuscripts of 107 Roger of Howden, Chronica 113 romance, and historiography 198–9, 200 Rufford abbey, manuscripts of 118 Ryd abbey 129 Savigniacs 25 Sawley abbey 157 and historiographical culture 49– 51, 110–2 manuscripts of 49–51, 106, 122

Index

sea, man from 194, 196, 197, 199– 200 Seleth the hermit 139–40, 142, 143 Serlo of Fountains, poem on the Battle of the Standard 118–9 solus cum solo motif 66 Sorø abbey 129 Southern, Richard W. 8, 26–7 spatial themes, in historiography 138–46 Speculum caritatis, see Aelred of Rievaulx St Mary’s abbey, York 38, 50, 152, 159 Stephen Harding 104 Strafleur abbey 191–2 Strata Florida abbey 96 Symeon of Durham 110 n. 71 Historia regum 50 Libellus de exordio 111 Thurstan, Archbishop of York 46, 118 letter of 50, 155–6 tradition 130, 148 see also invented tradition Trojan history 120 see also genealogies, and Trojan origins truth, in histories 198–9 ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’ 8, 91, 134 two swords, argument of 64 universal histories, and English Cistercians 121–3 Usus conversorum 22, 127 vine imagery 156–8 visions 188–93 Vita Aelredi, see Walter Daniel Vita Edwardi, see Aelred of Rievaulx

245

Vita Gilde 112 Vita Niniani, see Aelred of Rievaulx Vita prima Bernardi, see William of St-Thierry Vita Thurstini 51 Walter Daniel 91 Vita Aelredi 58, 141–2 Walter Espec 32–7, 40–1, 42, 44, 107, 108 Walter Map 92 and wonders 196, 201 Wardon abbey, manuscripts of 117– 8 Waverley abbey 20, 38 annals 173, 215 White, Hayden 176–7, 181, 219 William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum ducum 105 William of Malmesbury 8, 12, 43, 106–7 Gesta pontificum Anglorum 107, 116–7 Gesta regum Anglorum 62–3, 76, 82, 106–7, 182 Historia Novella 82 n. 64, 182 William of Newburgh Historia regum Anglicarum 9, 93– 4, 112–3 and wonders 196, 199, 201 ‘William of Rievaulx’ 113 William, abbot of Rievaulx 113 William of St-Thierry, Vita prima Bernardi 157, 158, 159 Witch of Rheims, see Publicani women, in genealogies 70–85 wonders 185, 193–202 and human body 201, 211–2 terminology 197, 200–1, 202, 207