The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative

The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108

Medieval and Renaissance Authors and Texts Editor-in-Chief

Francis G. Gentry Emeritus Professor of German, Penn State University

Editorial Board

Teodolinda Barolini, Columbia University Cynthia Brown, University of California, Santa Barbara Marina Brownlee, Princeton University Keith Busby, University of Wisconsin-Madison Craig Kallendorf, Texas A&M University Alastair Minnis, Yale University Brian Murdoch, Stirling University Jan Ziolkowski, Harvard University and Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection

VOLUME 6

The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative

Edited by

Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The texts and contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, ms Laud misc. 108 : the shaping of English vernacular narrative / edited by Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch. p. cm. — (Medieval and Renaissance authors and texts, ISSN 0925-7683 ; v. 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-19206-5 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. English literature—Middle English, 1100–1500—Criticism, Textual. 2. English literature—Middle English, 1100–1500—Manuscripts. 3. Manuscripts, English (Middle) 4. Bodleian Library. Manuscript. Laud misc. 108. I. Bell, Kimberly K. II. Couch, Julie Nelson. III. Title. IV. Series. PR275.T45T49 2011 820.9’001—dc22 2010043091

ISSN 0925-7683 ISBN 978 90 04 19206 5 Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.

CONTENTS List of Figures ...................................................................................... ix Acknowledgments ............................................................................... xi List of Abbreviations .......................................................................... xiii List of Authors .................................................................................... xvii Introduction: Reading Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 as a “Whole Book” ....................................................... Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch

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PART ONE

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS PROVENANCE I. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: Contents, Construction, and Circulation .................................................. A. S. G. Edwards II. Talk in the Camps: On the Dating of the South English Legendary, Havelok the Dane, and King Horn in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 ..................................... Thomas R. Liszka III. “Very Like a Whale”?: Physical Features and the “Whole Book” in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 ..................................................................... Murray J. Evans IV. “Her Y Spelle”: The Evocation of Minstrel Performance in a Hagiographical Context ..................................................... Andrew Taylor V. Miscellaneous Masculinities and a Possible Fifteenth-Century Owner of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 ..................................................................... Christina M. Fitzgerald

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THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS TEXTS VI. A Text for Its Time: The Sanctorale of the Early South English Legendary ..................................................................... 117 Diane Speed VII. The Audience and Function of the Apocryphal Infancy of Jesus Christ in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 .................................................................. 137 Daniel T. Kline VIII. The Eschatological Cluster—Sayings of St. Bernard, Vision of St. Paul, and Dispute Between the Body and the Soul—in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 ... 157 J. Justin Brent IX. Genre, Bodies, and Power in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: King Horn, Havelok, and the South English Legendary ..................................................................... 177 Andrew Lynch X. The Early South English Legendary and Difference: Race, Place, Language, and Belief .................................................... 197 Robert Mills XI. The Magic of Englishness in St. Kenelm and Havelok the Dane ..................................................................................... 223 Julie Nelson Couch XII. “holie mannes liues”: England and its Saints in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108’s King Horn and South English Legendary ................................................ Kimberly K. Bell

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XIII. Somer Soneday: Kingship, Sainthood, and Fortune in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 .............. 275 Susanna Fein

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Epilogue: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 and Other English Manuscripts ................................................ 299 A. S. G. Edwards Bibliography ......................................................................................... Index of Manuscripts ......................................................................... General Index ...................................................................................... Figures ............................................................................. following

303 323 325 328

LIST OF FIGURES 1. Incipit to Havelok the Dane, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 204r 2. Ending of South English Ministry & Passion and a note in Latin, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 10v 3. Incipit to Infancy of Jesus Christ, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 11r 4. Ending of St. Lucy, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 60v 5. Incipit to Prologue of St. Thomas Becket, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 61r 6. Incipit to St. Thomas Becket, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 63r 7. South English Legendary Prologue (unique), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 88r 8. South English Legendary Prologue (unique), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 88v 9. Beginning of King Horn, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 219v 10. Incipit to Somer Soneday, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 237r 11. Two aphoristic poems in fifteenth-century hand and attestation of ownership, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 238v 12. William de Brailles, “Wheel of Fortune and the Story of Theophilus,” Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 330, no. 4

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This collection of essays is the culmination of several projects that began in 2003 at the Thirty-eighth International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where we discovered a mutual interest in reading Havelok the Dane in its Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L) context. Over the next three years, we mapped out and implemented a three-step research agenda—conference sessions, articles, and finally, this book—focused on the hagiographic and romance texts in L. In 2006, we held conference sessions at the Fortyfirst ICMS and at the Thirty-second Southeastern Medieval Association conference in Oxford, Mississippi, to gauge interest in the subject; in 2008, we published two complementary essays in Parergon on reading Havelok the Dane alongside the South English Legendary (SEL) in L. Our ongoing collaborative research on this late thirteenth-century vernacular manuscript, along with the contributions of numerous colleagues, has brought this book to fruition. Our interest in L, it seems, has been contagious. We are pleased that other scholars share a fascination with L, and our thanks must first be expressed to the contributors to this book. The collaborative nature of the project made high demands on everyone, and we are grateful for the contributors’ willingness to read others’ chapters as they refined their own. We thank Andrew Lynch for his investment in this project from the very beginning. We also thank Justin Brent, Dan Kline, and Tina Fitzgerald for endorsing this pursuit from its earliest rumblings in conference sessions and informal conversations. We are additionally grateful for the whole-hearted willingness of Andrew Taylor, Bob Mills, Diane Speed, and Murray Evans to sign on without knowing the editors. While everyone involved in this collection of essays offered invaluable advice throughout the entire process, we are especially grateful for the guidance, support, and feedback from Tony Edwards, Tom Liszka, and Susanna Fein. We are indebted to Tony for his being able and willing to do what was needed to realize the objectives of the book, namely, to examine and describe the manuscript specifically for this collection as well as to situate L within its larger cultural context in the epilogue; we also thank him for his excellent advice on miscellaneous matters, from the book’s title to input on several chapters. We

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thank Tom for the lending of his expertise on the physical features of the manuscript and on trends and conventions in SEL scholarship. And finally, we appreciate Susanna’s advice on our book proposal and her unfaltering confidence in the importance of this project. We also wish to thank Brill’s anonymous readers and board members for their thoughtful recommendations for revision: the collection is stronger as a result of their insights. We owe a special thanks to Marcella Mulder, Julian Deahl, and Mirjam Elbers, our Brill editors, whose patient, collegial direction and understanding have assured the success of this venture. This collection of essays would not have been possible without the willing and gracious help of Dr. Martin Kauffmann, Curator, Medieval Manuscripts, at the Bodleian Library. Not only did he allow a number of our contributors on several occasions to examine L, he also helped us, along with Tricia Buckingham and Jessica Suess in Imaging Services, with securing images of the manuscript. We appreciate their assistance, and we are grateful to the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, for granting us permission to publish fols. 10v, 11r, 60v, 61r, 63r, 88r, 88v, 204r, 219v, 237r, 238v from MS Laud Misc. 108. Kimberly Bell’s research on the manuscript was funded by Sam Houston State University’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs and the English Speaking Union, and she is grateful for their generous support. She also wishes to thank the members of her department for their support. Julie Nelson Couch’s research was supported by a research leave in 2007 for which she thanks Texas Tech University, her department chair, Sam Dragga, and the former Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Jane Winer. Julie is also grateful to the librarians at the Texas Tech University Library, especially Donell Callender, whose assistance has been invaluable in making available necessary resources, including a microform of L. We wish to express our gratitude to Beverly Hoke for her patient help with copy-editing and her willingness to be on-call for the final round of compiling and formatting. We would also like to thank friends and colleagues who have supported our scholarly efforts with ongoing encouragement and humor, including Meegan Kennedy, Alan Nelson, Colleen Brown Only, Carroll Nardone, Tracy Bilsing, Linda Cook, and April Shemak. Finally, and most importantly, we thank our families, Brent and Avalon, Robbie, Collin, and Henry Havelok, for their unflagging support, their endless patience, and their newfound abilities to make their own meals and put themselves to bed while we worked long hours on this project.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Allen, King Horn Allen, Rosamund, ed. “King Horn”: An Edition Based on Cambridge University Library MS Gg.4.27(2). New York: Garland Publishing, 1984. Bell, “Resituating Romance” Bell, Kimberly K. “Resituating Romance: The Dialectics of Sanctity in MS Laud Misc. 108’s Havelok the Dane and Royal Vitae.” Parergon 25, no. 1 (2008): 27–52. Conlee, Middle English Debate Poetry Conlee, John W., ed. Middle English Debate Poetry: A Critical Anthology. East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1991. Couch, “Defiant Devotion” Couch, Julie Nelson. “Defiant Devotion in MS Laud Misc. 108: The Narrator of Havelok the Dane and Affective Piety.” Parergon 25, no. 1 (2008): 53–79. Crane, Insular Romance Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986. D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL D’Evelyn, Charlotte and Anna J. Mill, eds. The South English Legendary. EETS, o.s., 235, 236, 244. 3 vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1956, 1959. Görlach, Textual Tradition Görlach, Manfred. The Textual Tradition of the South English Legendary. Leeds Texts and Monographs, n.s., 6. Leeds: The University of Leeds School of English, 1974. Guddat-Figge, Catalogue Guddat-Figge, Gisela. Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances. Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1976. Hall, King Horn Hall, Joseph, ed. “King Horn”: A Middle-English Romance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901. Hamelinck, “St. Kenelm” Hamelinck, Renee. “St. Kenelm and the Legends of the English Saints in the South English Legendary.” In Companion to Early Middle English Literature, edited by N. H. G. E. Veldhoen and H. Aertsen, 19–28. 2nd ed. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1995. Horstmann, ESEL Horstmann, Carl, ed. The Early South-English Legendary , or Lives of the Saints, I: MS. Laud, 108 in the Bodleian Library. EETS, o.s., 87. London: N. Trübner and Co., 1887. Reprint, 1987, 2000.

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Jankofsky, “National Characteristics” Jankofsky, Klaus P. “National Characteristics in the Portrayal of Saints in the South English Legendary.” In Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe, edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Timea Szell, 81–93. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108” Liszka, Thomas R. “MS Laud. Misc. 108 and the Early History of the South English Legendary.” Manuscripta 33, no. 2 (1989): 75–91. MED Middle English Dictionary. Edited by Robert E. Lewis, et al. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952–2001. Online version in Middle English Compendium. Edited by Frances McSparran. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000–. http://quod.lib .umich.edu/m/med/. NIMEV Boffey, Julia and A. S. G. Edwards. A New Index of Middle English Verse. London: The British Library, 2005. Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book Nichols, Stephen G. and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996. Readings in Medieval English Romance, Meale Readings in Medieval English Romance. Edited by Carol M. Meale. Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1994. Robinson, “Oxford: Bodleian Library MS. Laud misc 108” Robinson, P[amela] R. “Oxford: Bodleian Library MS. Laud misc 108.” In “A Study of Some Aspects of the Transmission of English Verse Texts in Late Mediaeval Manuscripts,” 225–28. B.Litt. St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, 1972. Robinson, “The ‘Booklet’ ” Robinson, Pamela. “The ‘Booklet,’ A SelfContained Unit in Composite Manuscripts.” Codicologica 3 (1980): 46–69. Samson, “The South English Legendary” Samson, Annie. “The South English Legendary: Constructing a Context.” In Thirteenth Century England I: Proceedings of the Newcastle Upon Tyne Conference 1985, edited by P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd, 185–95. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1986. Severs, Manual Severs, J. Burke, ed. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050–1500. Vols. 1–2. New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967. Smithers, Havelok Smithers, G. V., ed. Havelok. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987.

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Thompson, Everyday Saints Thompson, Anne B. Everyday Saints and the Art of Narrative in the South English Legendary. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2003. Turville-Petre, Alliterative Poetry Turville-Petre, Thorlac, ed. Alliterative Poetry of the Later Middle Ages: An Anthology. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1989. Turville-Petre, England the Nation Turvlle-Petre, Thorlac. England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

LIST OF AUTHORS Editors Kimberly K. Bell is Associate Professor of English at Sam Houston State University. Her research interests focus on the generic overlap between early Middle English romances and the texts collated with them. She has published articles and book chapters on Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britannie, Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas, and Virgil’s Aeneid. She was also co-editor of a collection of essays, Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages (2007). Her most recent article, “Resituating Romance: The Dialectics of Sanctity in MS Laud Misc. 108’s Havelok the Dane and Royal Vitae” (Parergon, 2008), explores the hagiographic features of Havelok as it is considered within the context of the lives of SS. Oswald the King, Edmund the King, Edward the Martyr, and Kenelm in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108. Julie Nelson Couch is Associate Professor of English at Texas Tech University. She specializes in Middle English literature and the modern reception of medieval literature. She has published on Havelok the Dane, Howard Pyle’s retellings of medieval legends for children, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur, apocryphal poetry, and miracle tales. In her most recent article on Havelok (Parergon, 2008), she begins the examination of manuscript context that continues in this book. Two recent articles, on Havelok (Chaucer Review, 2008) and on the Infancy of Jesus Christ (in Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature, 2006), indicate not only her scholarly interest in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 but also in childhood as a rhetorical category in Middle English narrative.

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list of authors Contributors

J. Justin Brent, Associate Professor of English at Presbyterian College, studies a variety of eschatological and post-mortem texts composed throughout the medieval period. His dissertation, The Legend of Soul and Body in Medieval England, focused on exchanges between souls and bodies in the afterlife, as manifested in three different genres— visions, sermons, and literary debates. Brent is currently working on a book-length study of the manuscript contexts and reception of soul and body texts in the high Middle Ages. A. S. G. Edwards is Professor of Textual Studies at De Montfort University. His main research interests lie in medieval and early modern literature, textual criticism, bibliography, and the history of the book. Edwards coauthored, with Julia Boffey, A New Index of Middle English Verse (2005). He also serves as General Editor of Index of Middle English Prose and Co-Editor of English Manuscript Studies. Edwards serves on the Advisory Boards of the Society for Early English & Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET), Early Modern Literary Studies, Middle English Texts, and the Council of Scottish Text Society. He has also been a Trustee of the New Chaucer Society, an editor of the Yale Edition of the Works of St. Thomas More, a member of the Editorial Boards of Text, Analytical & Enumerative Bibliography, and Review, and General Editor of Garland Medieval Texts. Edwards has held fellowships from the Canada Council Fellow and the Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada; he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a Leverhulme Research Fellow. Murray J. Evans is Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg. He has published articles on Malory’s Arthuriad and the Malory manuscript, Chaucer and post-modern literary theory, and the relevance of medieval manuscript studies to literary criticism. His book, Rereading Middle English Romance (1995), explores the importance of medieval manuscript collections to our understanding of individual romances and of romance as a genre. He has also published on student journals in literature classes, C. S. Lewis’s Narnia books, Piers Plowman, and Coleridge’s Opus Maximum. His book manuscript, Coleridge’s Sublime Rhetoric: System, Self, and the Trinity in the “Opus Maximum,” is under consideration for publication.

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Susanna Fein is Professor of English at Kent State University and Coordinator of the Ancient, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies Program. She specializes in Chaucer studies, alliterative verse, and manuscript collections of Middle English texts. She edits The Chaucer Review: A Journal of Medieval Studies and Literary Criticism and has served as a Trustee of the New Chaucer Society, as well as on the editorial boards of the TEAMS Middle English Texts Series and JEBS: The Journal of the Early Book Society. Her books include Moral Love Songs and Laments (1998), Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253 (2000), John the Blind Audelay, Poems and Carols (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 302) (2009), and My Wyl and My Wrytyng: Essays on John the Blind Audelay (2009). Most recently she has co-edited Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (2010). Christina M. Fitzgerald is Associate Professor of English at the University of Toledo, Ohio. She has published essays on the York and Chester drama cycles, Middle English linguistics, and teaching medieval literature with contemporary film. She is the author of The Drama of Masculinity and Medieval English Guild Culture (2007). She has also edited the York “Crucifixion” and “Last Judgment” plays and the York “Mercers’ Indenture” for the Broadview Anthology of British Literature: The Medieval Period (2010), and is a General Editor of the Broadview Anthology of Medieval Drama (forthcoming). Her current research involves conduct literature, manuscript culture, and mercantile readers. Daniel T. Kline is Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Graduate Program in English at the University of Alaska Anchorage. His primary research concerns children, violence, and ethics in late medieval England. Among other venues, he has published in Chaucer Review, College Literature, Comparative Drama, JEGP and Philological Quarterly, and he has chapters in the Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing (2003), Translating Desire in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (2005), Essays on Medieval Childhood (2007), and Levinas and Medieval Literature (2009). He edited Medieval Children’s Literature (2003), The Continuum Handbook of Medieval British Literature (2009), and is author/webmaster of The Electronic Canterbury Tales www.kankedort.net.

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Thomas R. Liszka is Associate Professor of English at Penn State University, Altoona College. He has co-edited a collection of essays titled The North Sea World in the Middle Ages: Studies in the Cultural History of North-Western Europe (2001) in which he has a chapter, “The South English Legendaries.” Liszka has published extensively on the South English Legendary (SEL), including a seminal essay on the physical features of Laud Misc. 108: “MS Laud. Misc. 108 and the Early History of the South English Legendary” (Manuscripta, 1989). Andrew Lynch is Professor in English and Cultural Studies at The University of Western Australia, and Director of the UWA Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. He has written extensively on later medieval English literature and its modern afterlives in Europe and Australia. He is currently involved in a joint Australian Research Council-funded project called “Medievalism in Australian Cultural Memory.” Robert Mills is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at King’s College London. He works at the interface between art history and literature—research that, to date, has mainly been concerned with representations of pain and punishment in the late Middle Ages. Other abiding interests include saints, gender and sexuality, literary theory, and translation. Publications include Suspended Animation: Pain, Pleasure and Punishment in Medieval Culture (2005), and (as co-editor) The Monstrous Middle Ages (2003), and Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight in Medieval Text and Image (2004); he also recently contributed the essay “Monsters and Margins: Representing Difference” to The History of British Art, 600–1600 (2008). He is currently working on visualizations of same-sex intimacy in medieval religious culture. Diane Speed is Dean and CEO of the Sydney College of Divinity (an ecumenical consortium for Higher Education in Theology) and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of English, University of Sydney. Her research publications have been concerned mainly with medieval romance, hagiography, biblical paraphrase, and Bede. Speed’s seminal article on “The Saracens of King Horn” was published in Speculum (1990). Her ongoing research addresses the Anglo-Latin

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Gesta Romanorum (an edition with Philippa Bright for Oxford Medieval Texts), the Otinel story (editions of the French and English texts and a translation of the Anglo-Norman), and transmission of the Bible in medieval England ca. 1200–1350. Andrew Taylor is Associate Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. He specializes on the history of leisure reading and of minstrel performance. He is the author of Textual Situations Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers (2002) and one of the editors of The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520 (1999). He is currently at work on a study of Richard Sheale, a sixteenth-century harper associated with the ballad “The Hunting of the Cheviot.”

INTRODUCTION: READING OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108 AS A “WHOLE BOOK” Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch By 1633, William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1633–1645) and Chancellor of Oxford University (1629–1641), had acquired a late thirteenth-century manuscript (with fourteenth- and fifteenth-century additions) that came to be called Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Miscellaneous 108 (L). Laud donated it with a large collection of manuscripts to the Bodleian Library in 1635.1 The greater part of Laud’s donations were cataloged as Laud Miscellaneous Manuscripts in contrast to sets classified as Laud Latin, Laud Greek, and Laud Oriental Manuscripts. As Thomas R. Liszka explains, those grouped into the Miscellaneous set landed there because of what they did not contain: texts in Latin, Greek, or Oriental languages.2 This process of classification was thus determined by language, not content. Nevertheless, the name “Laud Misc.” has branded L as essentially miscellaneous in content. The shelf name has historically skewed criticism toward assumptions of a lack of artistry and organization within this particular “miscellany.”3 This erroneous name persists, without any persuasive evidence for its relevance, as a critical marker of its contents. But this vernacular manuscript, unique in assembling, perhaps as early as 1280, such a large number of Middle English texts without the inclusion of French and Latin texts, is likewise exceptional in its absence of miscellaneity.

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Laud donated a total of 1,242 manuscripts to the Bodleian in four installments in 1635, 1636, 1639, and 1640–41. At least twenty languages are represented in the collection. See William Dunn MacCray, Annals of the Bodleian Library Oxford with Notice of the Earlier Library of the University, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1984), 83–88. Also visit http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/medieval/laud/laud.html. 2 See Thomas Liszka, Chapter Two in this volume. 3 Even in recent criticism, L is incorrectly referred to as “Laud Miscellany 108.” See, for example, the “Introduction” to “The Life of Saint Francis,” in Saints’ Lives in Middle English Collections, ed. E. Gordon Whatley, Anne B. Thompson, and Robert K. Upchurch (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), 257, and Lee C. Ramsey, Chivalric Romances (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 26.

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L bears singular importance to the field of medieval studies, for it preserves and anthologizes unique versions of a number of seminal medieval English texts that span a range of religious and secular genres. This manuscript is well-known for containing the earliest surviving copy of the Middle English collection of saints’ lives known as the South English Legendary (SEL), one that differs significantly from the “standard” version in content and organization.4 L also contains copies of the two earliest extant Middle English romances, the only complete copy of Havelok the Dane and the earliest known version of King Horn. Finally, the manuscript contains the only extant witness of the alliterative Wheel of Fortune poem Somer Soneday and some significant religious texts, including unique versions of the lyric poem Sayings of St. Bernard and the dream narrative Vision of St. Paul, and the earliest known copy in English of the Dispute Between the Body and the Soul. In addition to preserving these singular works, the collation of the texts in L suggests a purposeful and deliberate arrangement, revealing a prioritizing, perhaps on the part of an owner or compiler, of certain spiritual and political themes and concerns. L stands as a rare early example of a monolingual manuscript, all of its texts written in Middle English.5 In fact, the language of L turns out to be a defining component of its content and readership. In thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century England, English was still considered to be an essentially oral medium (in contrast to the perception of Anglo-Norman as a written vernacular), so that writing narratives in English was a deliberate and self-conscious choice.6 If writing in the English vernacular was not commonplace, assembling an anthology of narratives written entirely in English was especially unusual. As Anne B. Thompson explains, writing in English in the thirteenth century was

4 On the differences between the L and the standard SEL versions, see Manfred Görlach, Textual Tradition, esp. 6–90; see also Horstmann, ESEL, vii–xii. 5 The manuscript does contain a few Anglo-Norman glosses and French incipits, and Latin titles for the lives, indicating an assumed audience that was at least familiar with and perhaps fluent in French and Latin. See Andrew Taylor, Chapter Four in this volume. Manuscripts contemporary with L are more commonly bilingual or trilingual. See John Frankis, “The Social Context of Vernacular Writing in ThirteenthCentury England: the Evidence of the Manuscripts,” in Thirteenth Century England I: Proceedings of the Newcastle Upon Tyne Conference 1985, ed. P. R. Coss and S. D. Lloyd (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1986), 175–84, and A. S. G. Edwards’s Epilogue to this volume. 6 Thompson, Everyday Saints, 22. In her examination of writing in English during the thirteenth century, to which this discussion is indebted, Thompson also refers to the “self-conscious” elements found in English writings during this time.

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still considered a “new enterprise”; the majority of vernacular texts at this time were written in Anglo-Norman, the prestige vernacular during Henry the III’s reign (1216–1272).7 During this period, English could not boast of an unbroken written tradition in the same way that French or Latin could; though nearly everyone at all social levels spoke and heard English, English continued to be a language associated with peasants and illiteracy, “outside the tradition, political authority and social status which marked the community of French speakers and writers.”8 In a society where French was the language of power, writing in English was additionally a “political choice.”9 Thorlac Turville-Petre associates this political aspect specifically with a burgeoning sense of national identity in the late thirteenth century, an identity being consciously linked by barons and kings and writers to the use of English rather than French.10 The fact of writing in English emerges as an explicit theme in L: the SEL narrator points out regularly that he is translating holy Latin verse into English (e.g. 133.943; 355.344–46);11 he emphasizes that St. Thomas Becket is an “englische tale” (106.1); in St. Kenelm, a heaven-sent message can remain hidden from even the Pope himself because he cannot comprehend English (352.252–54); in St. Edmund of Abingdon, the saint speaks his dying words “on Englichs” (448.586). The narrator of Horn describes an Irish court that speaks English as the power language although its subjects, apparently, do not (1027–28),12 and the narrator’s “extravagantly hyper-alliterative” language in Somer 7 On Anglo-Norman language and literature, see Ian Short, “Introduction,” in his Manual of Anglo-Norman (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, Birkbeck College, 2007), 11–37. See also Ruth J. Dean, with Maureen B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional Publications Series 3 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999). 8 Thompson, Everyday Saints, 29. 9 Ibid., 39. Thompson argues further that the anonymity of early Middle English texts speaks to perceptions of the inappropriateness of English as a medium for written spiritual and historical communication, the anonymity lending an impression of orality to the written text as well as serving as a form of protection for the writers (39). 10 Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation, esp. 8–18. Turville-Petre discusses the Norman Yoke trope that characterizes early English writings, including the SEL. The “colonized” viewpoint that arises in English texts ties the medium—the English language—to a particular point-of-view that casts Norman lords against the English people. 11 All references to the L SEL are taken from Horstmann, ESEL, and are given parenthetically by page and line numbers. 12 This and subsequent parenthetical references to line numbers in Horn are from George McKnight, ed., King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, The Assumption of our Lady, EETS, o.s., 14 (1901; reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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Soneday reveals a self-conscious awareness of crafting his text in English.13 This ongoing commentary—explicit and implicit—on speaking, writing, and translating into (or out of) English participates in a wide-ranging, insistent validation of the language that persists in this English-only manuscript. Writing in English and declaring the efficacy of writing in English authorizes the language as a medium worthy of written communication, worthy even of imparting critical political and potent spiritual meaning. And communicating in English finally appears to be central to being English; what that identity entails is a theme that echoes through the entire manuscript. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, editors of the romances and the SEL were the first to take an interest in L. In 1826, Sir Frederic Madden re-discovered Havelok (thought to have been lost) in L and published an edition of it two years later for the Roxburghe Society; in 1868, W. W. Skeat re-edited Madden’s edition and published The Lay of Havelok the Dane: Composed in the Reign of Edward I, about A.D. 1280. In 1887, Carl Horstmann published the L SEL.14 In 1901, Joseph Hall published the L Horn in a parallel text edition with the other two versions found in Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg. IV 27 (2) and London, British Library, MS Harley 2253; that same year, George McKnight re-edited J. Rawson Lumby’s 1866 edition of Horn and added a transcription of the L version.15 Editions of the other texts in L also appeared in collections or in journals.16 In nearly all of these editions, preliminary descriptions of the physical

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Susanna Greer Fein, “The Early Thirteen-line Stanza: Style and Metrics Reconsidered,” Parergon 18, no. 1 (2000): 97–126 (102). 14 Horstmann also published editions of Infancy of Jesus Christ, Vision of St. Paul, Sayings of Bernard, and a number of the SEL lives in several journal articles. See 37 n.15 for full citations. 15 Earlier editions of Horn based on London, British Library, MS Harley 2253, and Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg. IV 27 (2) had appeared in the nineteenth century, including Joseph Ritson’s edition in 1802 (Ancient Engleish Metrical Romanceës [London: W. Bulmer], 2:91–155; revised by Edmund Goldsmid [Edinburgh: E & G Goldsmid, 1885], 2:99–146). 16 Somer Soneday was first edited by Frederic Madden, who titled it “Alliterative Poem on Fortune.” It appeared with no notes or appendices in Reliquiae Antiquae, ed. Thomas Wright and James O. Halliwell (London: W. Pickering, 1843), 2:7–9. Frederick Furnivall included a full transcription of the L Sayings in Minor Poems of the Vernon MS, EETS, o.s., 117 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1901), 511–22. The Dispute was edited several times in the nineteenth century, the most authoritative being Wilhelm Linow’s Þe Desputisoun Bitwen þe Bodi and þe Soule, Erlanger Beiträge zur englischen Philologie 1, pt. 1 (Erlangen: Bhöme, 1889).

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features of the L manuscript, such as hand, layout, collation, and dating, were included. The philological work carried out by nineteenthand early twentieth-century scholars laid the groundwork necessary for the future study of the L manuscript and the texts in it. However, for all of their pioneering work, these editors inadvertently established the guiding philological inquiry into the manuscript along generic lines; that is, descriptions of the manuscript were in service to the editors’ larger projects on either the SEL or the romances. Their division of texts into hagiography or romance in these early editions resulted in incomplete assessments of the manuscript context.17 Later generations of scholars have followed suit, yielding disparate romance and hagiographic strands of scholarship on L. Thus, for example, Gisela Guddat-Figge itemized and described L in her Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances, and Rosamund Allen and G. V. Smithers published editions on King Horn and Havelok respectively, with each including detailed manuscript descriptions. Meanwhile, Manfred Görlach included manuscript classification and description in his comprehensive and authoritative book on The Textual Tradition of the South English Legendary. In Chapter Two, Liszka outlines this generic divide in L scholarship: Since “SEL scholars have tended to cite only scholars from their own SEL camp and . . . scholars of . . . Havelok the Dane and King Horn have tended to cite only other scholars of the romances,” each camp has overlooked critical manuscript evidence uncovered by the other, maintaining the production of criticism along textual rather than codicological lines. Much romance- and SEL-centered scholarship initially left behind altogether the manuscript context in which these texts were read and listened to by a medieval audience. For instance, Havelok and Horn were classified early as “Matter of England” romances, with treatments of the poems typically beginning with acknowledgement of this classification rather than with their (hagiographical) manuscript context.18 In SEL

17 Horstmann’s 1887 edition of the SEL remains the only one to date, but several editions of the romances have been published in the twentieth century. 18 See for example, the “Introduction” to Four Romances of England: King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, Athelston, ed. Ronald B Herzman, Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1999), 1–2. Dieter Mehl discusses the limitations of the matiéres classification (The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries [London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968], 30–33).

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scholarship, the L SEL is viewed as idiosyncratic, acknowledged only in its relation to the later, “standard” version of the SEL.19 In recent scholarship, there has been a more focused investigation of the manuscript context of the L texts with critical attention being paid to the collation of these saintly and romance narratives. In this way, this particular history of scholarship is representative of medieval scholarship in general: whereas medieval manuscripts were initially viewed as inconvenient repositories of texts that needed to be extracted and edited, the manuscripts eventually became the objects of study themselves.20 In this critical moment that has been shaped variously by new historicism, reader-response theory, cultural studies, and “materialist philology,” an emphasis on manuscript context and on the possible writers and readers of manuscripts moves to the foreground.21 This companion book to L continues this trend. In the tradition of Susanna Fein’s Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253, Andrew Taylor’s Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers, Sylvia Huot’s The Romance of the Rose and its Medieval Readers, and Keith Busby’s two volume Codex and Context: Reading Old French Narrative in Manuscript, we re-evaluate the texts contained in L in light of the other texts collated with them.22 This book rests on the premise that L manifests evidence of a degree of intention in its compilation and readership.

19 For instance, in the introduction to their edition of the SEL (based on London, British Library, MS Harley 2277; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 145; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 43; and London, British Library, MS Cotton Julius D. ix), D’Evelyn and Mill acknowledge the importance of the L version only insofar as it anticipates the later versions: “In spite of its incompleteness and disorder it foreshadows the pattern and content of the later SEL,” (SEL, 3:15). Görlach views the L version as a hindrance to SEL scholarship: “The fact that a conflated and much corrupted manuscript like L is at the very beginning of the SEL tradition is the greatest problem for the reconstruction of the genesis of the collection” (Textual Tradition, 90). 20 For a thoughtful discussion of this history, see Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 10–25. 21 Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel use the term “materialist philology” (The Whole Book, 1–2). 22 Fein, ed., Studies in the Harley Manuscript (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000); Taylor, Textual Situations; Huot, The Romance of the Rose and its Medieval Readers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Busby, Codex and Context: Reading Old French Narrative in Manuscript (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002).

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Shifting our critical attention to the manuscript as “the central object of study,”23 we begin with the assertion that this early vernacular manuscript can and should be considered as a “whole book.”24 The notion of the manuscript as a “whole book” argues against the assumption of miscellaneity in a codex that contains diverse texts, assuming instead that an “organizing principle” informs the order and context of the book and points to a writerly or readerly agenda.25 Of course, with the addition of later poems, for example the fourteenth-century inclusion of three saints’ lives and Somer Soneday, the earlier organizing principle and its concomitant agenda may shift. As the “performative context” of the manuscript changes, so too does its range of possible meanings.26 Keith Busby explains that [w]hile many reasons may determine the choice of texts for inclusion in a manuscript and their order of presentation, the contents are usually not random. It is consequently illogical to suppose that texts appear in each other’s company as a result of hazard and happenstance.27

The manuscript, in other words, does not function as a “neutral vehicle.”28 As Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel explain, “the individual manuscript contextualizes the texts it contains in specific ways.”29 In the case of L, the saints’ lives should not be read only in modern, edited isolation from the romances, the centrally-positioned eschatological poems nor the final rhetorical vision of Fortune’s Wheel in Somer Soneday, for together the poems reflect a textual experience of anthology by early readers of L. Forgoing modern generic boundaries to read the manuscript as it was compiled can lead us to gain a more complex understanding of the texts in the manuscript and to conjecture the manuscript readers’ and listeners’ potential “horizon of expectations.”30 23

Busby, Codex and Context, 1:2. Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 170. 25 Ibid., 3. 26 Ibid., 2. Nichols and Wenzel marshal these definitions in their interrogation of the concept of the medieval miscellany. They promote the idea of studying the individual manuscript as a “historical artifact” for which one can draw conclusions about its agenda, context, and readership from its codicological features. See their introduction, 1–6. 27 Busby, Codex and Context, 1:367. 28 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 2. 29 Ibid. 30 Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 44. 24

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This companion book acknowledges and elaborates upon the concept of L as a whole book by offering inter-connected essays that focus on the physical, contextual, and critical intersections of L in a comprehensive examination of the manuscript. It is a collaborative effort by scholars who work on the physical features of the manuscript or on the texts contained within it. Part One, “The Manuscript and Its Provenance,” concentrates on the codicological and historical aspects of L. Part Two, “The Manuscript and Its Texts” brings such features as well as other literary considerations to bear on contextualized interpretation of the texts contained in the manuscript. Conceived as a whole book, these chapters engage in a critical conversation about the intertextual relationships among the L texts and address the manner in which the physical features of the manuscript reinforce and support such dialectic exchanges. Many agree, others do not, and of course, these investigations leave room for further study. We hope the questions and unresolved issues which punctuate the collection will lend themselves to continued productive study of L. Part One: The Manuscript and Its Provenance This book thus proceeds on the assumption that the medieval reading and listening audiences of L were more likely to have been influenced by juxtaposed texts rather than by strict definitions of genre. Hence, the physical make-up of the manuscript offers clues to understanding a medieval reception of the texts. Paleographical and codicological evidence indicates that the texts contained within the manuscript were intentionally ordered, as Liszka has suggested.31 The manuscript now contains five or six individual “booklets,” divided into two parts, with texts copied by four main scribes.32 Part A contains the first four or five booklets and includes the SEL, Vision of St. Paul, and the Sayings of St. Bernard, all copied in one hand (that of Scribe A), followed by the Dispute Between the Body and the Soul, copied in a contemporary but different hand (that of Scribe B). The last booklet, Part B, contains 31

Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 75–93. Pamela Robinson defines the booklet as a “self-contained unit” that is a “small but structurally independent production containing a single work or a number of short works” (“The ‘Booklet,’ ” 46). On the number of extant booklets in L, see Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 76–79 and 89–91; Robinson, “Oxford: Bodleian Library MS. Laud misc 108,” 225–26; and Allen, King Horn, 8. 32

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the two romances, both copied by Scribe C in a hand contemporary with those that transcribed the other booklets (Part A). The booklets were collated early in the manuscript’s history, as evidenced by the consecutive numbering of all of the texts in red crayon in a fourteenthcentury hand.33 This compiler added abbreviated Latin running titles to nearly all the saints’ lives in red crayon.34 Another rubricator also added incipits and explicits to several of the saints’ lives and to Havelok in red ink. In the late fourteenth century, Scribe D copied three more saints’ lives and Somer Soneday in a cursive hand on the remaining blank leaves of the romance booklet and an added gathering. Scribe D also renumbered the texts in the entire manuscript.35 The numbering of texts—twice—over an extended period of time signals the anthologizing impulse of at least two scribes. The successive numbering of religious and secular texts in the manuscript invites readers and listeners to read the texts consecutively and thus understand the romances and Somer Soneday as part of a continuum of saints’ lives and religious matter. Indeed, the rubricator who titled many of the lives in red ink titled Havelok as a vita: [Incipit] Vita Hauelok quondam Rex Anglie· Et Denmarchie (fig. 1), thereby indicating that at least one scribal reader understood Havelok as a continuation of the SEL.36 Moreover, the decoration of the manuscript, discussed in several chapters, indicates an overall desire for visual uniformity of the two sections.37 The collation of the texts in the manuscript and the additions of the late fourteenth-century scribe reflect a readerly engagement with, to quote Susanna Fein from Chapter Thirteen, “the book’s design as anthology.” In Chapter One, “Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: Contents, Construction, and Circulation,” A. S. G. Edwards offers a full description of the physical features of the manuscript, taking

33

This numbering is evident when examining the manuscript directly. See fig. 6 where the number is legible below the running title, and fig. 7 where the number can be seen in the right margin, thirty-one lines down. 34 See figs. 6, 7, the top and lower-right margins, and fig. 8, top margin. 35 See figs. 1, 7, top-right margins, figs. 3, 4, 8, and 10, top center margins, and fig. 9, left margin, next to opening of Horn. 36 On the use of vita as a term for a saint’s life, see Thomas D. Hill, “Imago Dei: Genre, Symbolism, and Anglo-Saxon Hagiography,” in Holy Men and Holy Women: Old English Prose Saints’ Lives and Their Contexts, ed. Paul E. Szarmach (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996), 35–50. 37 See A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One, Murray J. Evans, Chapter Three, Taylor, Chapter Four, and Susanna Fein, Chapter Thirteen in this volume.

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into consideration paleographic and codicological evidence. Thomas Liszka, in Chapter Two, “Talk in the Camps: On the Dating of the South English Legendary, Havelok the Dane, and King Horn in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108,” surveys the scholarship on the dating of the SEL and the romances; his survey revisits and contextualizes important early work on these texts while it reveals the high level of subjectivity often involved in the dating of the manuscript. In Chapter Three, “‘Very Like a Whale’?: Physical Features and the ‘Whole Book’ in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108,” Murray J. Evans examines the layout and decoration of titles, incipits, initials, display scripts, and numbering at the beginnings and endings of texts to argue that, taken together, these physical features allow us to register a cohesiveness of texts in the manuscript, while acknowledging their “‘unity in multeity.’” With Chapters Four and Five we move to considerations of provenance. In Chapter Four “ ‘Her Y spelle’: The Evocation of Minstrel Performance in a Hagiographical Context,” Andrew Taylor reconsiders the function of the minstrel evocations in Havelok and Horn and reaffirms that the manuscript is not a minstrel’s script. He finds instead that the manuscript evidence points to a “prosperous, sophisticated, and highly literate patron” who commissioned L from a bookshop in Oxford and who had a strong affiliation with East Anglia, where the story of Havelok was well-known. Christina M. Fitzgerald, in Chapter Five, “Miscellaneous Masculinities and a Possible Fifteenth-Century Owner of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108,” investigates the later fifteenth-century reception of L. She identifies the person named in the attestation of ownership found on the last folio of L as being one Henry Perveys, a fifteenth-century London draper. Fitzgerald argues that the evidence of Perveys’s ownership of the manuscript points to a community of men who were, to one extent or another, concerned with constructing an “appropriative” masculine, mercantile identity. Part One thus builds upon, expands, and re-evaluates long-standing (and often unresolved) critical and philological inquiries into L, while it offers new ways of interpreting the physical features of the manuscript, particularly in relation to manuscript planning and execution. It also emphasizes the need to recognize scholarly biases that often cloud important issues, and it explores historical clues left in the manuscript that might shed light on both early and later reception of the texts contained in L.

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Part Two: The Manuscript and Its Texts In addition to the historical and physical evidence of the manuscript, rhetorical evidence suggests further possibilities for reading across texts and genres. The “overlap between the textual lives of the ostensibly religious and the ostensibly chivalrous”—as exemplified in L—prompts us “to acknowledge what Jocelyn Wogan-Browne deems the ‘limited meaningfulness’ of generic distinctions that do not take into account the narrative structures, ‘social functions,’ and readers shared by romance and hagiography.”38 The chapters in Part Two demonstrate this intertextuality: the non-hagiographical religious poems, including the initial temporale poems, such as Infancy of Jesus Christ, and the interim eschatological poems engage, foreground, and develop particular themes found in the saints’ lives, romances, and Somer Soneday; the spiritual allusions found in Havelok and Horn come to the fore within the context of the manuscript, and certain narrative features in the saints’ lives tie them to reading expectations associated with romance.39 When, for example, Havelok is read within the framework of the L SEL’s royal lives of SS. Oswald, Edmund the King, Edward the Martyr, and Kenelm, the character King Athelwold of England emerges as a holy ruler, much like the four saint-kings, and prefigures the sanctity of the protagonist, while Havelok himself functions as a hero who shares more affinities with Christ and the saints than he does with chivalric heroes.40 Resituating Havelok in its hagiographical manuscript context also helps to explain the poem’s effusive, emotional narrator. When examined alongside the personal, prayerful narrator of the L SEL, the narrator of Havelok emerges as an instigator of affective, meditative response and thus aligns the poem with the manuscript’s devotional concerns and practices.41 These 38 Couch, “Defiant Devotion,” 53. Jocelyn Wogan–Browne, “‘Bet . . . to . . . rede on holy seyntes lyves . . .’: Romance and Hagiography Again,” in Readings in Medieval English Romance, Meale, 83–97 (83, 88). On the shared readership of romance and hagiography, see also Annie Samson, “The South English Legendary,” 192–95. 39 In “The Construction of the Nation in Medieval English Romance,” Diane Speed comments on the possible influence of each genre on the other in L, noting that the SEL “remind[s] us of the piety of [Havelok and Horn]” while the two romances enhance the “romance qualities of the [saints’ lives]” (in Readings in Medieval English Romance, Meale, 135–58 [143]). 40 Bell develops this contextualized reading of Havelok in “Resituating Romance.” 41 Couch elaborates this argument in “Defiant Devotion.”

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readings demonstrate how crucial it is to account for the manuscript context of these “Matter of England” romances which, although the narratives are surrounded by the spiritual agenda of hagiography in L, have been more often read as historical narrative (Havelok) or courtly romance (Horn).42 In Chapter Six, “A Text for Its Time: The Sanctorale of the Early South English Legendary,” Diane Speed illustrates the dominance of the SEL sanctorale within L, demonstrating how the other texts that are collated with the saints’ lives “read the sanctorale.” In each case Speed finds shared priorities concerning Christian history and the Church’s predominant role in that history and in the lives of the manuscript audience. The result is a cohesive “literary mythology.” Daniel T. Kline, in Chapter Seven, “The Audience and Function of the Apocryphal Infancy of Jesus Christ in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108,” finds that the theme of childhood explored in this temporale poem appears throughout the SEL and the romances: childhood serves to figure a particular historical sensibility wherein narratives of individual development enfold into and inflect universal and national versions of history. The importance of childhood links past to present and history to eternity. In Chapter Eight, “The Eschatological Cluster—Sayings of St. Bernard, Vision of St. Paul, and Dispute Between the Body and the Soul—in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 108,” J. Justin Brent addresses the poems following the SEL, showing how the three poems that originally closed the SEL narratives serve as transitional pieces from the hagiographical materials to the romances and Somer Soneday; the intervening poems highlight the themes of death and the afterlife found throughout the texts in the manuscript. Andrew Lynch, in Chapter Nine, “Genre, Bodies, and Power in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: King Horn, Havelok, and The South English Legendary,” opens the discussion of textual interactions

42 For readings of Havelok that emphasize its historical aspect, see Thorlac Turville-Petre, “Havelok and the History of the Nation,” in Readings in Medieval English Romance, Meale, 121–34; Christopher Stuart, “Havelok the Dane and Edward I in the 1290s,” Studies in Philology 93 (1996): 349–64; and Michael Faletra, “The Ends of Romance: Dreaming the Nation in the Middle English Havelok,” Exemplaria, 17 (2005): 347–80. See also Rosalind Field, “Romance as History, History as Romance,” in Romance in Medieval England, ed. Maldwyn Mills, Jennifer Fellows, and Carol M. Meale (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1991), 163–73. For readings of Horn that assume an emphasis on courtly or chivalric ideals, see D. M. Hill, “An Interpretation of King Horn,” Anglia 75 (1957): 157–72 and Ramsey, Chivalric Romances, 10–11 and 26–44.

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between the SEL saints’ lives and the romances. Lynch tracks the formal and thematic similarities and differences of these two primary L genres as he offers a survey of shared incident and characterization centered on “the heroic disposition of a special body” in the sanctorale and Havelok and Horn. In Chapter Ten, “The Early South English Legendary and Difference: Race, Place, Language, and Belief,” Robert Mills continues the comparison of the saints’ lives and romances by considering the “racial matrix” that emerges in the fantastical construction of difference. Manifestations of “linguistic, geographical, and religious alterity” link the sanctorale to the romances and conjure a (fragile) illusion of a uniform, “unified Christian body.” Julie Nelson Couch, in Chapter Eleven, “The Magic of Englishness in St. Kenelm and Havelok the Dane,” also attends to the fantastical aspect of narrative in her specific comparison of the SEL St. Kenelm to the romance Havelok. She analyses their similar figuration of a national entity, “Engelond,” as a vulnerable child heir who is fantastically redeemed. Both narratives typify a desire for an empowered Englishness found throughout the manuscript. In Chapter Twelve, “‘holie mannes liues’: England and its Saints in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108’s King Horn and South English Legendary,” Kimberly K. Bell brings Horn into the discussion of intertextuality as she explores how Horn and the L English saints’ lives rework hagiographic and romance conventions to appeal specifically to an English audience. As a result, the vitae encourage a reading of Horn as a saintly hero, while Horn develops and expands the SEL’s construct of England the nation by incorporating Ireland into its vision of Englishness. Susanna Fein investigates the manuscript’s final poem in Chapter Thirteen, “Somer Soneday: Kingship, Sainthood, and Fortune in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108.” Fein argues that the activities of the four L scribes prove that the poem’s placement at the end of the manuscript is intentional and that it, in fact, echoes, parallels, and develops themes found in all of the L texts. Ultimately, she maintains, Somer Soneday invites listening and reading audiences to contemplate how Fortune influences the lives of people from all social stations. While all the chapters in Part Two acknowledge, to a degree, the dominant influence of the sanctorale over the other L texts, each chapter brings distinct prevalences—history, piety, body, race, fantasy, England, Englishness—to bear on the literary and cultural meanings of L. In the “Epilogue: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 and other English Manuscripts,” A. S. G. Edwards closes the collection by placing this dynamic

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manuscript within the cultural and manuscript context of twelfth- and thirteenth-century England. He concludes that L “provides the most substantial early indication of the emergent status of the vernacular.” The attention to all social classes noted by Fein in Somer Soneday is characteristic of the texts throughout the manuscript. Not only are the noble invoked and dramatized in the L SEL, but also “þe children and þe wummen,” (477.529), “selie bonde-men” (444.477), the poor, the widowed. Likewise, the Havelok narrator includes all as he accounts for the whole kingdom of England: Erl and barun, dreng and þayn, Knict, bondeman, and swain, Wydues, maydnes, prestes, and clerkes.43

Unlike a manuscript that courts an elite audience, this vernacular manuscript evidences an attention to a broader spectrum of readers and listeners. The most obvious factor determining the audience of L is its use of English. Writing in this “spoken” vernacular suggests a lay audience for the manuscript.44 At the same time, the spiritual themes and forms that thread through the manuscript suggest a devout one. In fact, all of the L narrators urge prayer for the reader or writer’s personal salvation, positioning a prayerful stance as the natural response to reading or hearing each narrative. At the end of each narrated saint’s life and death, the addressee is enjoined to deploy the reading/hearing of each saint as a prayer for his or her soul: “Nou god graunti þat we mote with him [St. Wulfstan] : in þe Ioye of heouene beo” (77.232). In like manner, the narrators of Havelok and Horn also request God to lead the souls of the dead protagonists (Horn 1643–44) or the soul of the writer himself who has “þe rym maked” (Havelok 2999) to “heuene” (Horn 1644). Since these prayers shape reading or hearing the L narratives into a mode of spiritual practice, the devotional aspect of L supports O. S. Pickering’s hypothesis of a group of unlearned religious folk, such as novices or nuns or devout laywomen, for the early

43 Smithers, Havelok, lines 31–33. Subsequent parenthetical references will be to line numbers in this edition. The narrator repeats this type of list at least five times in the poem as he depicts an England (and Denmark) made up of all classes, ages, and genders. The similar line “Eorl, baron, knyȝht, and swein” is found in the SEL’s St. Mary Magdalene (477.512). 44 On the connection of English to a lay audience, see Thompson, Everyday Saints, 56, 193.

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SEL.45 Daniel Kline’s idea of an educational venue for children, Annie Samson’s notion of an early SEL readership of “regional gentry and perhaps secular clergy” and Andrew Taylor’s suggested East Anglian patron would also apply to the vernacular, non-liturgical, yet instructive and spiritual character of L.46 Samson’s supposition of a provincial gentry audience for the SEL accords with Susan Crane’s hypothesis of a baronial readership for early vernacular romances including Havelok and Horn; such localized audiences would also explain the political focus on illegitimate or oppressive rulers of England, especially evident in the Anti-Norman St. Wulfstan, but present throughout L.47 As Turville-Petre explains, writing in English at this time deliberately precludes a larger international audience that would be courted by the use of French or Latin. He considers the choice of English to be a nationalistic one, a choice to communicate directly and exclusively to those who identify themselves as English. What underlies the choice of English, according to Turville-Petre, is “the conviction that national sentiment is most properly expressed in English.”48 English speakers may know French and Latin as well, but only true Englishmen and women understand and use English.49 This idea takes on narratorial force in the revelatory scene in St. Kenelm, where only the English understand the holy writ sent from heaven (352.257–58).50 Such emphasis on English in L speaks to the interests of a localized audience, whether that be a group of nuns or the household of a rural gentry. As many of the chapters in this volume demonstrate, the L narratives are localized physically, spiritually, and politically, elaborating English settings, customs, landmarks, shrines, political events, and the English language itself. Of course, all of these suggestive possibilities of manuscript audience must remain only possibilities since we lack clear-cut evidence

45

O. S. Pickering, “The South English Legendary: Teaching or Preaching?” Poetica 45 (1996): 1–14 (6–12). 46 Samson, “The South English Legendary,” 187–94. See Daniel Kline, Chapter Seven, and Taylor, Chapter Four in this volume. 47 Crane, Insular Romance. See also Thompson, Everyday Saints, esp. 48–49, 56, 122, and 174–81 for the political bias of the SEL and further exploration of possible audiences of the anthology. On St. Wulfstan, see Robert Mills, Chapter Ten in this volume. Other lives, including those of SS. Thomas Becket, Dunstan, and Edmund of Abingdon, as well as the romance Havelok, also treat the theme of wrongful rulership. 48 Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 22. 49 Ibid., 20–21. 50 Couch analyzes this scene in Chapter Eleven in this volume.

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of the manuscript’s earliest listeners and readers.51 Nevertheless, these suggested audiences appear credible because of the consistent narratorial tone sustained through the codex. L offers a collection of stories “told” by a host of intimate, emotional, even at times folksy, narrators, indicating a lay and local reception.52 As Pickering notes, the predominance of narrative and “emotionalism” not only suggests such audiences as novices or laypersons but also argues specifically for a small group context.53 Both the religious and the secular narrators assume an audience who becomes directly involved with the narrative, interacting with it through their own prayers and other requested responses to the narratives, such as cursing in Havelok or agreement about the current state of affairs in a saint’s life. Thus what Joyce Coleman identifies as an “aural” context for the majority of medieval vernacular reading, that is, poems being read aloud to a small group of listeners, resonates with the manuscript’s consistent representation of reading as a collective experience.54 The eschatological poems and the final poem, Somer Soneday, also participate in and even heighten an audience obligation to respond to the texts in L, specifically with a penitential stance. The Dispute poem plants, in the middle of L between the lives and the romances, the stark image of the body of a dead knight, which “on a bere lay,” as its speakers, the body and its soul, debate the reason for its damnation.55 A similar dead body appears in the appended Somer Soneday, as the poem closes L with the picture of a king without power, whose “bare body” also lies on a bier at the base of life’s Wheel of Fortune.56 As Fein elaborates in Chapter Thirteen, these graphic images stir the audience to reflect “upon the mutable world and one’s inevitable exit 51 There is, however, substantial evidence for a possible fifteenth-century audience. See Christina M. Fitzgerald, Chapter Five in this volume. 52 On the tone of the narrators, see, for example, Klaus P. Jankofsky, “Personalized Didacticism: The Interplay of Narrator and Subject Matter in the South English Legendary,” Texas A&I University Studies 10 (1977): 69–77 and Thompson, Everyday Saints. Thompson analyzes the “folksy” narrator of St. Dunstan (120–21). 53 Pickering, “The South English Legendary,” 5–7. 54 Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). See also Couch, “Defiant Devotion,” for a reading of the interactive audience of L. The fact that the manuscript is relatively plain, with relatively minor flourishing, as Robert Adams noted in conversation, supports the idea of its being used as a text to be read aloud. 55 John W. Conlee, ed., Middle English Debate Poetry: A Critical Anthology (East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1991), 18–49, line 4. 56 Turville-Petre, Alliterative Poetry, 140–47, line 142.

introduction

17

from it,” inflecting the value placed upon worldly concerns found in both the SEL and the romances with a remembrance of eternity. As a whole, L evinces an interactive reader or listener who is urged to respond to the different narratives and outcomes with penitence, meditation, and prayer. In Chapter Eight, Brent explains how, in the eschatological poems, the emphasis falls on the “sanction of rest” and on penitential recollection of one’s sins rather than (as in other versions) on the torments of hell. The focus on a prescribed time of reflection for the already damned, the Sunday respite—on a time, in other words, of audience response—is further reinforced by the return to a summer Sunday in the last poem; thus, Somer Soneday, too, opens a space for serious reflection.57 Reading or hearing the entire manuscript as a coherent anthology, as was clearly done by Scribe B who brought closure to the SEL with the Dispute and Scribe D who added the final four texts at the end of the manuscript, serves a meditative function: reading, hearing and the penitence urged thereby becomes an exercise in spiritual preparation for death. Thus L as a whole may be seen as a Sunday moment, a Sunday book of life reflection.58 The penitential values espoused throughout L do not preclude the manuscript’s equal emphasis upon the political and social injustices of this world, especially as they manifest in the Christian nation of England, a political entity in this manuscript in which God is directly invested and actively involved. Spiritual practice and political concerns often conflate in the L hagiographical and romance narratives. The narrator of St. Wulfstan sees the current state of England as a result of the death of Edward “þe holie kyng” (72.58) in 1066, for soon after “Vnkuynde Eyres” [unnatural heirs] (73.90), “men of oþere londe” (73.93) under “willam bastard” (73.95) came into England. As the man of God, St. Thomas Becket stands with the poor and oppressed of England against the encroaching power of the king and his men (e.g., 117– 18.390–402). The Havelok narrator prays, invoking Christ’s resurrection of Lazarus, that Princess Goldeboru will see her oppressor hang for his abuse of her and usurpation of her throne.59 The spiritual conversation in the Dispute is just as concerned with lords who unjustly collect rents

57

On this last point, see Fein, Chapter Thirteen. The three poems added in a later hand on the last flyleaf, fol. 238, develop these themes of penitence, reflection, and fortune further. See Fitzgerald, Chapter Five, and Fein, Chapter Thirteen. 59 See Couch, “Defiant Devotion,” 70–72. 58

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as it is with the damnation of the soul. And the four kings mounted on Fortune’s Wheel in Somer Soneday are equally symbolic of their own political and spiritual state and of the lands they govern.60 Such conflations of spiritual and political topics lend ideological value to a construct of England. Many of the chapters in this book address such political and spiritual concerns in ways that, taken as a whole, offer a nuanced, at times polemical, at times fantastical, image of England that emerges as an entity of spiritual and political centrality in L. Because invested listeners and readers found much—spiritually and politically—upon which to ruminate and debate in L, this manuscript cannot be overlooked. In resituating the L texts in their manuscript context, we can recover—to a degree—a medieval understanding of genre and how it was perceived to be less rigid than we view it today; we can see what sorts of issues English medieval listeners and readers found pertinent to their lives, and we can appreciate, more fully, the artistry involved in the composition of texts long believed to be unworthy of scholarly attention.61 In short, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 may be an unpretentious, vernacular volume, copied on vellum without illustrations, but it emerges as an eminently useful anthology for understanding early Middle English culture.

60 For this and other reasons Somer Soneday was long categorized as a historical poem. Carleton Brown, for example, argued that it was written in commemoration of Edward II (“Somer Soneday,” in Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber, ed. Kemp Malone and Martin Rudd [Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1929], 362–74). Rossell Hope Robbins tacitly agreed by including it in his Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 98–102. Madden proposed that it was written for Richard II (“Alliterative Poem,” 7), and William Matthews later argued this point in The Tragedy of Arthur: A Study of the Alliterative “Morte Arthure” (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960), 206–207. For a different reading of the poem, see T. M. Smallwood, who argues that the poem does not commemorate any one particular figure but rather addresses the common universal theme of fortune (“The Interpretation of Somer Soneday,” Medium Ævum 42 [1973]: 238–43). 61 See, for example, Horstmann’s need to justify his edition of the SEL: “I know most Englishmen consider it not worth while to print all these Legends; I know they regard them as worthless stuff;” but, he continues, “If the present English public cannot see any merit in these Legends, it does not follow that there is no such merit” (ESEL, xi–xii). See also Derek Pearsall, who marvels at the popularity of Middle English romances: “From the point of view of literary and critical understanding, it is . . . difficult to understand why poems that are so bad according to almost every criterion of literary value should have held such a central position in the literary culture of their period” (“Understanding Middle English Romance,” Review 2 [1980]: 105–25 [105]).

PART ONE

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS PROVENANCE

CHAPTER ONE

OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108: CONTENTS, CONSTRUCTION, AND CIRCULATION A. S. G. Edwards Contents Arabic numbers preceding the entries below follow the early sequence of numerals inserted in the upper margins of L to indicate the sequence of content. In a few instances a single number encompasses what modern scholarship has established as two separate items. Arabic numbers within round brackets are the relevant numbers from NIMEV.1 fols. 1–10v:2 South English Ministry & Passion (2931.55); begins imperfectly; a fragmentary version of this poem. For details of contents, see O. S. Pickering, ed. The South English Ministry and Passion, ed. from St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS B.6, Middle English Texts 16 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984), 8–10. 9 fols. 11–22: SEL: Apocryphal history of Christ’s infancy, also known as Infancy of Jesus Christ (1550); Carl Horstmann, ed. Altenglische Legenden (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1875), 1–61. 10 fols. 23–29v: SEL: Holy Cross (3387); Horstmann, ESEL, 1–19. 11 fols. 29v–30v: SEL: St. Dunstan (2884); Horstmann, ESEL, 19–24. 12 fol. 31r–v: SEL: St. Augustine of Canterbury (2854); Horstmann, ESEL, 24–26. 13 fols. 31v–32v: SEL: St. Barnabas (2856); Horstmann, ESEL, 26–29. 14 fols. 32v–34: SEL: St. John the Baptist (2945); Horstmann, ESEL, 29–33. 8

1 Editors’ note: for the sake of consistency, titles to saints’ lives follow David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 5th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). 2 The first verse text is preceded by a single leaf containing a four-line inscription beginning “Ihesu mercy / Ihesu mercy” in a fourteenth-century hand. Laid into the leaf is a smaller sheet in a fifteenth-century hand beginning “These ben þe namys of seyntys lyfys þat makyn in | this booke. In primis seynt stevyn item seynt | luke item seynt valentyne . . .”

22 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 27 28 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

a. s. g. edwards fols. 34–38v: SEL: St. James the Great (2918); Horstmann, ESEL, 33–45. fol. 38v: SEL: St. Oswald (the King) (3036); Horstmann, ESEL, 45–46. fols. 39–41v: SEL: St. Edward the Martyr (2889); Horstmann, ESEL, 47–53. fols. 41v–46v: SEL: St. Francis of Assisi (2899); Horstmann, ESEL, 53–67. fols. 46v–47v: SEL: St. Alban (2842); Horstmann, ESEL, 67–70. fols. 48–50v: SEL: St. Wulfstan (3068); Horstmann, ESEL, 70–77. fols. 50v–52: SEL: St. Matthew (3017); Horstmann, ESEL, 77–81. fol. 52r–v: SEL: St. Leger (2958); Horstmann, ESEL, 81–83. fols. 52v–54: SEL: St. Faith (2897); Horstmann, ESEL, 83–86. fols. 54–55v: SEL: St. Ursula and Companions, also known as 11,000 Virgins (721); Horstmann, ESEL, 86–92. fols. 56–59: SEL: St. Catherine (Katherine) of Alexandria (2954); Horstmann, ESEL, 92–101. fols. 59–60v: SEL: St. Lucy (2961); Horstmann, ESEL, 101–06. fols. 61–87v: SEL: St. Thomas Becket, also known as St. Thomas of Canterbury (4171); Horstmann, ESEL, 106–75. [sic] fols. 87v–88r: SEL: Appendix to St. Thomas Becket (3064); Horstmann, ESEL, 175–77. fol. 88: SEL: Prologue (224); Horstmann, ESEL, 177–78. [sic] fols. 88v–89v: SEL: SS. Fabian and Sebastian (2896); Horstmann, ESEL, 178–81. fols. 89v–91: SEL: St. Agnes (2850); Horstmann, ESEL, 181–84. fols. 91–93: SEL: St. Vincent (3067); Horstmann, ESEL, 184–89. fol. 93r–v: SEL: St. Paul (3041); Horstmann, ESEL, 189–92. fols. 93v–94v: SEL: St. Brigid of Ireland (2871); Horstmann, ESEL, 192–93. fols. 94v–96: SEL: St. Agatha (2839); Horstmann, ESEL, 193–97. fol. 96r–v: SEL: St. Scholastica (3052); Horstmann, ESEL, 197–99. fols. 96v–104: SEL: St. Patrick and his Purgatory (3037); Horstmann, ESEL, 199–220. fols. 104–110: SEL: St. Brendan the Navigator (2868); Horstmann, ESEL, 220–40. fols. 111–115v: SEL: St. Nicholas (3033); Horstmann, ESEL, 240– 55. fols. 115v–116: SEL: St. Julian the Confessor (2949); Horstmann, ESEL, 255–56.

contents, construction, and circulation 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 55 56 57 58 59 60

23

[sic] fols. 116–117v: SEL: St. Julian the Hospitaller (2950); Horstmann, ESEL, 256–60. fols. 117v–121: SEL: St. Mary of Egypt (2990); Horstmann, ESEL, 260–71. fols. 121v–123v: SEL: St. Christopher (2878); Horstmann, ESEL, 271–78. fols. 124–127v: SEL: St. Dominic (2883); Horstmann, ESEL, 278– 88. fols. 127v–130: SEL: St. Theophilus (3266); Horstmann, ESEL, 288–93. fols. 130–131: SEL: St. George (2905); Horstmann, ESEL, 294–96. fols. 131–132: SEL: St. Edmund (the King) (2887); Horstmann, ESEL, 296–99. fols. 132–136v: SEL: St. Michael (3029); Horstmann, ESEL, 299– 311. fols. 136v–141: SEL: St. Michael: Part III (3453); Horstmann, ESEL, 311–22. fols. 141–47: SEL: St. Clement (2875); Horstmann, ESEL, 322–40. fols. 147–149: SEL: St. Laurence (2957); Horstmann, ESEL, 340– 45. fols. 149–153: SEL: St. Kenelm (2956); Horstmann, ESEL, 345–55. fols. 153–154v: SEL: St. Gregory the Great (2910); Horstmann, ESEL, 355–59. fols. 154v–155v: SEL: St. Cuthbert (2880); Horstmann, ESEL, 359–62. fols. 155v–156: SEL: St. Mark (3004); Horstmann, ESEL, 362–63. fols. 156–157: SEL: SS. Philip & James the Less (3048); Horstmann, ESEL, 364–66. [sic] fols. 157v–161: SEL: St. Bartholomew (2858); Horstmann, ESEL, 366–76. fols. 161–165v: SEL: St. Thomas (the Apostle) (3063); Horstmann, ESEL, 376–89. fols. 165v–166: SEL: St. Matthias (3026); Horstmann, ESEL, 389– 90. fols. 166–167: SEL: St. Sylvester (3053); Horstmann, ESEL, 391– 92. fols. 167–169v: SEL: St. Eustace (2894); Horstmann, ESEL, 393– 402. fols. 169v–174: SEL: St. John the Apostle (2932); Horstmann, ESEL, 402–17.

24 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

69 70

71 72 73 74 75

76

a. s. g. edwards fol. 174r–v: SEL: All Saints’ Day (184); Horstmann, ESEL, 418–20. fols. 175–179v: SEL: All Souls’ Day (201); Horstmann, ESEL, 420–31. fols. 179v–185: SEL: St. Edmund of Abingdon (2886); Horstmann, ESEL, 431–49. fols. 185–188: SEL: St. Martin of Tours (3005); Horstmann, ESEL, 449–56. fols. 188–190: SEL: St. Leonard (2959); Horstmann, ESEL, 456–62. fols. 190–197: SEL: Mary Magdalene (3159); Horstmann, ESEL, 462–80. fols. 197–198: SEL: St. Hippolytus (2915); Horstmann, ESEL, 480–83. fols. 198–199: Sayings of St. Bernard (begins imperfectly) (3310); Frederick J. Furnivall, ed. The Minor Poems of the Vernon Ms, EETS, o.s., 117 (London: Keagan Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1901), 511–22. fols. 199–200v: Vision of St. Paul (3089); Carl Horstmann, ed. Archiv 52 (1874), 35–38. fols. 200v–203: Dispute Between the Body and the Soul (351); John Conlee, ed. Middle English Debate Poetry: A Critical Anthology (East Lansing, MI: Colleagues Press, 1991), 20–49. fols. 204ra–219va: Havelok (1114); G. V. Smithers, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987). fols. 219va–228rb: King Horn (166); J. Hall, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901). fols. 228v–230v: SEL: St. Blaise (2866); Horstmann, ESEL, 485–90. fols. 230v–233v: SEL: St. Cecilia (2873); Horstmann, ESEL, 490– 96. fols. 233v–237: Life of St. Alexis (3156); Frederick J. Furnivall, ed. Adam Davy’s 5 Dreams about Edward II. Life of St. Alexius. Etc. EETS, o.s., 69 (London: N. Trübner and Co., 1878), 20–79. fol. 237r–v: “Somer Soneday” (3838); Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 98–102. fol. 238: Attributes of Virgin and Christ (496); Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 241. fol. 238v: 1 eight-line stanza (145); Robbins, ed. Secular Lyrics, 100. fol. 238v: Moral precepts; four long lines (477).

contents, construction, and circulation

25

Construction The physical forms in which these contents appear in L raise issues of some complexity. It is copied throughout on parchment leaves now measuring approximately 240 × 175 mm, after cropping during rebinding. Its material construction is not easy to establish. It seems now to comprise 243 leaves,3 and to indicate two broad divisions in its present construction, between fols. 1–203 (Part A) and fols. 204–238 (Part B), divisions marked by quire boundaries and scribal changes. Furthermore, it is likely that Part A was conceived as a series of discrete sections or “booklets.”4 Thus the first two items in the manuscript as it survives, nos 8 and 9, seem codicologically distinct, contained within quire boundaries (although 8 is likely the remnant of a much larger booklet containing the now missing items 1–7). There has been considerable debate about the number of possible booklets. It seems possible that several later sections were originally conceived as booklets, but there is no final agreement as to how many.5 Certainly the blank versos on fols. 22v (after the end of item 9) and 110v (after the end of item 36), seem to indicate booklet division, as does the space left on fol. 10v after the completion of item 8. Nor can the actual sequence of quires be satisfactorily established. The manuscript has been cropped and is tightly bound, making proper investigation impossible. In Part A, a few catchwords do survive on fols. 79v, 91v, 103v, 148v, 193v, 214v, 226v. Their distribution suggests that Part A of L was chiefly constructed in quires of 12. The collation for Part B also seems to have been chiefly in quires of twelve leaves, based on the evidence of catchwords. The scribal stints in L accord with these codicological divisions. There are two main scribes. In Part A, one Textura hand, possibly late 3 The number of leaves in the manuscript is a problem about which there seems little unanimity. The manuscript is now foliated “1–239” but “239” is a modern flyleaf. Two leaves are numbered “170A” and “170B.” A leaf is missing after fol. 200 and another after fol. 211. In addition, there are at least four stubs, three with visible text, between fols. 1–2, fols. 30–31, fols. 167–68. Another stub, with no visible text, occurs between fols. 231–32. 4 On booklets see Robinson, “The ‘Booklet.’ ” 5 For helpful discussion and a review of earlier views about the manuscript’s structure see Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” esp. 76–78, where he postulates five booklets, corresponding to fols. 1–10, 11–22, 23–55, 56–203, 204–237; that is, in the manuscript’s numbering: 8; 9; 10–23; 24–70; 71–76.

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thirteenth-century, wrote fols. 1–200v (Scribe A). Another Textura hand, probably early fourteenth-century, was the main scribe of Part B, copying fols. 204ra–228rb (Scribe C). The Dispute Between the Body and the Soul in Part A is copied in a different late thirteenth-century Textura hand on fols. 201–203v (Scribe B). In Part B, a fourteenthcentury Anglicana hand has added the additional saints’ lives on fols. 228v–237 and “Somer Soneday” (fol. 237r–v) (Scribe D), while the verses on fol. 238r–v are in three different fifteenth-century hands. The contents are generally set out in single columns, ruled for 44/45 lines; up to fol. 198, 26 lines down, pricking holes are visible whether the format is single or double columns. The absence of pricking holes and the change in format from single to double columns at this point suggest that the texts after this point in Part A were a later addition to the conception of the manuscript. This change in layout and pricking, it should be noted, coincides with the end of the sanctorale and beginning of the non-SEL poems. Pricking holes only recur later in Part B on fols. 231–37. There are a number of variations from the single column norm. Thus, fols. 11–22r are in double columns, as are fols. 60v, 198–199 and (in Part B) fols. 204v–222rb (Havelok and Horn). The shift to double columns on fol. 60v (with St. Lucy) is particularly curious. Here the verse is written as prose and exceeds the column boundary on fol. 60vb to squeeze in all the text (fig. 4). Since a new text begins at the top of fol. 61 (St. Thomas Becket), it is possible that the text ending on fol. 60v only became available after copying had already been undertaken for the next item. It is possible that fol. 60v also marks a booklet boundary. Such local questions of construction are aspects of fundamental problems posed by L, problems that cannot be fully resolved by the resources of codicology, palaeography, dialectology, and history. The first and most vexed of these problems has to do with origins. Where did L come from? Whence did it derive its contents? How did its SEL materials come to be conjoined with the romances the manuscript also contains? Our sense of L’s origins is almost wholly speculative. The first part of the manuscript, that which contains chiefly the SEL, has been variously dated between the last quarter of the thirteenth century and the first quarter of the fourteenth century.6 However, such dates are, of course, scribal, not compositional.

6 These are the parameters of the most recent account of the manuscript’s dating by Margaret Laing, Catalogue of Sources for a Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English

contents, construction, and circulation

27

The likely booklet construction of L and the intermittent variations in layout, particularly of the SEL part of L, could suggest that copying followed hard upon the piecemeal availability of exemplars; but while this may be a reasonable assumption, it is not, in itself, a secure basis for assumptions about the actual process or place of assemblage. It does seem that L contains the earliest extant attempt at a comprehensive SEL, a work that was circulating by about 1270–85.7 But the difficulties that follow from this are considerable. As Görlach points out: The fact that a conflated and much corrupted manuscript like L is at the very beginning of the SEL tradition is the greatest problem for the reconstruction of the genesis of the collection.8

Similarly the originating geographical point for L is not easy to establish. The only clue seems to be offered by dialect, which for the SEL has been tentatively localized dialectally to “W. Oxon.”9 Western England was a primary site of production for early major Middle English manuscripts, but generally further west than Oxfordshire. However the later texts in the manuscript, which include Havelok and Horn and a selection of SEL narratives, seem, again on dialectal grounds, to be localizable to Norfolk,10 another region that developed early traditions of vernacular copying. Yet dialect is only an indicator of scribal associations, not of the manuscript’s origins. Since the evidence of dialect difference between parts A and B of the manuscript is linked to scribal change it has been generally assumed that L as it is now constituted comprises two discrete manuscripts that

(Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1993), 136. Görlach, Textual Tradition, 88–89, dates the earlier part to “a 1300” and the later one to “c 1350–1400.” See Liszka, Chapter Two in this volume. 7 On the origins of the SEL see Görlach, Textual Tradition, 38. 8 Ibid., 90. 9 Görlach, Textual Tradition, 89; Laing, Catalogue of Sources, 137 (citing M. L. Samuels). 10 This is the view of R. Beadle, “Prolegomena to a Literary Geography of Later Medieval Norfolk,” Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts, ed. Felicity Riddy (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1991), 89–108 (103). Laing, Catalogue of Sources, offers a more complex analysis: “The language of the Havelok text is probably from W. Norfolk. The language of King Horn, which is in the same hand as Havelok, has a non-Norfolk substratum which [M. L. Samuels] considers to have characteristics pointing to an origin in SE Surrey, SW Kent or N Suffolk” (137). Such a range of geographically disparate possibilities may suggest the limitations of dialectal analysis. See also Angus McIntosh, “The Language of the Extant Versions of Havelok the Dane,” Medium Ævum, 45 (1976): 36–49, reprinted in M. Laing, ed. Middle English Dialectology: Essays on Some Principles and Problems (Aberdeen, UK: Aberdeen University Press, 1989), 224–36.

28

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were brought together at some later point in the fourteenth century. Such a conjoining might have been occasioned largely by pragmatic factors. The relative brevity of Part B, amounting to only thirty-five leaves, might have suggested to an early owner a conjunction with an adjacent larger one. But the collation might have been based on nothing more specific than a shared language (early Middle English) and literary form (verse). Evidently, however, some effort was made, early in its history, to give L a degree of formal coherence. One element in this effort, now partly obscured by later cropping, is the through numbering of contents in Arabic numbers in red crayon in the upper margin in an early hand, at a point when the manuscript was larger than it now is: the first surviving item is numbered “8”; probably several gatherings have been lost. These numbers seem to have been supplemented by running titles for each item, some apparently rubricated; probably cropping has destroyed the evidence of most of these.11 Another factor that could have contributed to the conjoining of the manuscripts is the presence of additional SEL items, SS. Blaise and Cecilia on fols. 228v–233v together with the non-SEL St. Alexis (fols. 233v–237) in Part B of the manuscript. Such a conjunction of related materials, quite different from the secular romances elsewhere in this section is not necessarily coincidental, especially given the evidence of rather piecemeal assemblage in the first section of the manuscript. The most substantial attempt to impose a degree of overall coherence on the manuscript is its decoration. Both Parts A and B are decorated throughout by one main flourisher who added decorated initials, thus imposing another degree of visual continuity on the contents of L. This circumstance indicates a more sustained and ambitious attempt to impose a sense of unity on the contents.12 Whether such an element of cohesion was envisaged from an early stage in the construction of the separate components of L is unresolvable. But it is worth being aware that the chronological interval that has been assumed to separate the two parts of the manuscript rests on palaeographical and dialectal criteria that do not provide very secure bases for dating. That the two parts of the manuscript suggest different scribal origins does 11

Such headings survive on fols. 87–91v, 115v; traces of such headings occur on fols. 61, 204v (figs. 6–8). 12 See Murray J. Evans, Chapter Three, Andrew Taylor, Chapter Four, and Susanna Fein, Chapter Thirteen in this volume.

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not mean they could not have been copied in the same place. And palaeography on its own can only rarely offer dating of a very approximate kind.13 The underlying question these problems raise is, of course, the motive for the creation of either the original components of L or of its final collected form. No external clues seem to exist to clarify either of these matters. One could speculate that at least Part A might have been produced in or for some western(ish) religious house, since a number of houses can be associated with SEL manuscripts.14 But it is not possible to go further. Circulation Similar difficulties exist in clarifying L’s subsequent history before it entered Archbishop Laud’s collection in 1633. A fifteenth-century (?) inscription on the verso of the final leaf gives the only indication of early ownership: “iste liber constat Henrico Perneys testantibus Iohanni Rede presbiteri William Rotheley et alijs” (fol. 238v, fig. 11). The names in this inscription have been held to suggest London associations largely by the determined attempt to read the form “Perneys” as “Perueys.”15 Henry Perueys is recorded as a draper there and still alive in 1476. A William Rotheley was several times warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company in the mid-fifteenth century and it has been argued that he “may well have known Henry Perueys” through their mutual connections with the Eyre family.16 On the other hand, the names may suggest some broad East Anglian connection. There were Rothleys in west Norfolk,17 and a “W. Rede” was a parish priest in

13 See, for example, L. C. Hector, The Handwriting of English Documents, 2nd ed. (London: Edward Arnold, 1966), 13. 14 See Görlach, Textual Tradition, 45–50 and Daniel Kline, Chapter Seven in this volume. 15 For such a reading, see Christina M. Fitzgerald, Chapter Five in this volume. The only earlier extended discussion of the justification for this reading of Perneys is by Smithers (Havelok, xiii–xiv); he contends that two minim nasal and vowel forms are indistinguishable in one of the verses on fol. 238. Even if this is so, the point seems irrelevant since these verses are in a different hand. The form as written is clearly “Perneys.” 16 For details see Smithers, Havelok, xiv, drawing on information supplied by Dr. A. I. Doyle. See also Fitzgerald, Chapter Five. 17 See Ralph Hanna III and A. S. G. Edwards, “Rotheley, the De Vere Circle, and the Ellesmere Chaucer,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 58 (1996): 11–35 (19–20).

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Wrangle, Lincolnshire, in the early sixteenth century.18 Such names could provide a link, albeit tenuous, with the East Anglian dialectal associations of Part B of the manuscript.19 The form of the inscription seems curious: John Rede, priest, William Rothley, and others warrant Perneys’s title to the manuscript. The form of words could signify that he acquired the manuscript when it was alienated from either a religious house or a parochial library and that this note was written to confirm his title. Conversely, such a form might suggest that the manuscript was being pledged by Perneys as security for a loan.20 The possible movement of L from devotional circles (of whatever kind) to mercantile ones is one final enigmatic aspect of its provenance. Clearly much about L resists full clarification. The circumstances of its genesis and assemblage can only be glimpsed shadowily through the physical details of the manuscript. One thing is clear: it is a manuscript of considerable historical and cultural importance to the study of early Middle English literature, as the following chapters demonstrate.

18 See N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), 223, 419. 19 See Taylor, Chapter Four. 20 On pledging books see Ernest A. Savage, Old English Libraries (London: Methuen, 1911), 98–102.

CHAPTER TWO

TALK IN THE CAMPS: ON THE DATING OF THE SOUTH ENGLISH LEGENDARY, HAVELOK THE DANE, AND KING HORN IN OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108 Thomas R. Liszka Noting what seemed to be a surprising degree of variety among the dates posited for the hagiographic and romance portions of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L),1 I once, informally, generalized that the South English Legendary (SEL) scholars, myself included, have tended to cite only scholars from their own SEL camp and that scholars of the romances Havelok the Dane and King Horn have tended to cite only other scholars of the romances—not only in attempting to date the manuscript that is so important to both our studies but

1 At conferences I have often heard “Laud Misc.” incorrectly expanded to “Laud Miscellany.” Among the first times I heard the error, the voice was my own. Falconer Madan and H. H. E. Craster explain that the bulk of the manuscripts donated by Archbishop Laud came to be known as the Laud Miscellaneous manuscripts after those manuscripts which came to be known as Laud Greek, Laud Latin, and Laud Oriental were separated from the rest of the collection, the first two about 1790 and the last about 1810–12 (A Summary Catalogue of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1922], 14). In other words, they were the codices not selected for those collections. The designation was confirmed with the publication of H. O. Coxe’s Laudian Manuscripts, Bodleian Library Quarto Catalogues (1858–85; reprint, R. W. Hunt, Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1973). Coxe uses “Codices Latini” and “Codices Miscellanei” as titles of his catalogue’s two parts. The principle of categorization may seem imprecise, especially as most of the “Miscellaneous” manuscripts are, in fact, in Latin. Madan and Craster explain that the selected Laud Latin manuscripts were biblical and classical in subject. But that distinction seems not to have been consistently followed. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Latin 31, for example, contains works by Augustine, Bernard, Jerome, and a life of St. Ignatius. On the other hand, many of the Laud Miscellaneous manuscripts, in Latin, are devotional, hagiographical, or liturgical. Language, however, was a surer principle. L would have been left among the “Miscellaneous” codices because it is primarily in English. It should further be noted that there are among the Laud Latin manuscripts (e.g. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Latin 86) those that might be described as miscellanies, and there are, indeed, manuscripts with a single item, and thus clearly not miscellanies, among the Laud Miscellaneous manuscripts (e.g., Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Laud Misc. 7, 36, 70, and 590). I suspect that some scholars’ assumptions that the manuscript is a miscellany are based on little more than this misinterpretation of “Misc.”

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also, more generally, in interpreting the works it contains, in particular when manuscript context is relevant. These tendencies, if real, would obviously be unfortunate, for each camp has much to learn from the other. Like most generalizations, I later found that mine was not entirely true. But here is a sample of its basis: in his 1977 article “The Date of Havelok,” George B. Jack cites Kenneth Sisam’s second edition of W. W. Skeat’s Havelok, Joseph Hall’s edition of Horn, and Max Deutschbein’s and Herlint Meyer-Lindenberg’s studies on the dating of Havelok, as well as other works on romance and the history of the period.2 Similarly, in his 1979 article “Additional Evidence for a More Precise Date of the ‘South English Legendary,’” Thomas J. Heffernan cites the discussions of the SEL’s date in Carl Horstmann’s edition of the L SEL text, Beatrice Daw Brown’s edition of The Southern Passion from the SEL, Charlotte D’Evelyn’s and Anna J. Mill’s later SEL edition, analyses of the SEL by Manfred Görlach, O. S. Pickering, Beverly Boyd, and Minnie Wells, and other works relevant to saints’ lives, liturgy, and history.3 It is not my purpose to censure these two scholars whose studies make significant contributions to their respective subjects, especially because doing so would be self-incriminating. In my own 1989 article “MS Laud. Misc. 108 and the Early History of the South English Legendary,” while I did cite Rosamund Allen’s edition of Horn and Gisela Guddat-Figge’s Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances, I overlooked G. V. Smithers’s edition of Havelok and any and all other editions of and articles on the romances.

2 George B. Jack, “The Date of Havelok,” Anglia 95 (1977): 20–33; W. W. Skeat and K. Sisam, eds., The Lay of Havelok the Dane, 2nd ed., rev. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915); Hall, King Horn; Max Deutschbein, “Die Haveloksage,” in Studien zur Sagengeschichte Englands (Cöthen, Verlag von Otto Schulze, 1906), 1:96–168; and Herlint Meyer-Lindenberg, “Zur Datierung des Havelok,” Anglia 86 (1968): 89–112. 3 Thomas J. Heffernan, “Additional Evidence for a More Precise Date of the ‘South English Legendary,’ ” Traditio 3 (1979): 345–51; Horstmann, ESEL; Beatrice Daw Brown, ed., The Southern Passion, EETS, o.s., 169 (London: Oxford University Press, 1927); D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL; Görlach, Textual Tradition; Manfred Görlach, ed., An East Midland Revision of the South English Legendary, Middle English Texts, 4 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1976); O. S. Pickering, “The Temporale Narratives of the South English Legendary,” Anglia 91 (1973): 425–55; O. S. Pickering, ed., The South English Nativity of Mary and Christ, ed. from MS BM Stowe 949, Middle English Texts, 1 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1975); Beverly Boyd, “A New Approach to the South English Legendary,” Philological Quarterly 47 (1968): 494–98; and Minnie E. Wells, “The South English Legendary in Its Relation to the Legenda Aurea,” PMLA 51 (1936): 337–60.

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The following survey of studies on the dating of L and the SEL and romance texts within it, with some additional content summarized in the accompanying table,4 demonstrates the extent to which my generalization is valid, and points up some additional significant tendencies as well. A fair number of scholars have kept within their own generic camps, despite the texts’ shared physical context (even as a composite manuscript), thematic commonalities, and audience. A cursory look at the table reveals at least two resulting trends. There are much earlier dates posited for the composition of the romances than for the SEL and more variety in the dating of the manuscript by Havelok and Horn scholars and by early SEL scholars than by later SEL scholars. The survey revisits some excellent scholarship, but reveals some other, disturbing trends as well. Some scholars cite little or no evidence in support of the date they posit. And more significantly, some scholars—again myself included—seem to have allowed their interpretations of the work or preconceived notions as to its textual history to color unduly their statements about the date of L. In general, I will proceed chronologically except when necessary to keep various threads of the discussion together. The survey begins in 1828 with Frederic Madden’s publication of The Ancient English Romance of “Havelok the Dane.” It is a good starting point for a history in which individual personalities and interests sometimes blend into scholarly judgments, as inevitably they must. Madden’s introduction reflects his personal excitement at the romance’s rediscovery, and one cannot help but wonder if that excitement is in any way responsible for his characterization of the work as “ancient,” even in his edition’s title: The ancient English Metrical Romance of Havelok, which is now for the first time submitted to the press, was discovered by accident in a volume preserved among the Laudian Mss. in the Bodleian Library. Of its value, not only in a Glossographical point of view, or as an accurate

4 In Table 1, 48–49, I have listed the works of early scholars who provide the foundation for subsequent discussion whether or not they provide evidence to support their proposed dates, but I include the works of later scholars only if they have provided evidence or if their work is otherwise bibliographically significant. In addition to works discussed elsewhere in this essay, I have included the following works in the table: Beverly Boyd, “The Enigma of Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (ca. 1300),” Manuscripta 39 (1995): 131–36; Charlotte D’Evelyn, “The South English Legendary,” in Severs, Manual, 2:413–18; Charles W. Dunn, “Romances Derived from English Legends,” in Severs, Manual, 1:17–37; Robinson, “Oxford: Bodleian Library MS. Laud misc 108,” 225–28; and John Edwin Wells, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1400, 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1916).

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thomas r. liszka picture of the manners and customs of former times, but also as serving in a singular manner to illustrate the history and progress of our early poetry, there can be but one opinion, and on each and all of these accounts, it must certainly be considered as a highly interesting addition to the specimens we already possess of ancient English metrical composition.5

Of course, characterizing the work as “ancient” gives it something of an eminence among other romances and perhaps even invites comparison with national epics in Western literature. As to the actual date of this “ancient” work, Madden says it must predate two works that refer to it, Handelyng Synne and the Petit Bruit (which he puts at 1310). And he concludes: This will bring us to . . . the period assigned by our poetical antiquaries to the Romances of Sir Tristrem, Kyng Horn, and Kyng Alisaunder, and which we think Havelok, on very fair grounds, is intitled to claim. But as the language could not perceptibly change within twenty or thirty years, we should have no objection to fix its composition between the years 1270–1290.

Without citing supporting paleographical details, Madden dates the manuscript, on the basis of its “character” to “about, or a few years previous to, A. D. 1300.” And he says that the saints’ lives “were not written much earlier than 1290. but certainly not later.”6 No reason is given for his certainty about the 1290 limit. But this date becomes important in subsequent SEL studies in solidifying L’s position as the earliest SEL manuscript, especially after the work of Beatrice Daw Brown and Manfred Görlach, as detailed below. For now I will simply ask why saints’ lives written in 1292 or 1293, for example, could not appear in a manuscript written “about . . . 1300”? In support of his claim that the SEL was not written much earlier than 1290, he cites internal evidence from St. Edmund of Abingdon (also known as “the Confessor,” “of Pounteneye,” “the Bishop,” or “Rich”) and St. Dominic. “The former,” Madden states, “died in 1242. and was canonised in 1248.”; thus, the SEL would have to have been written after then. St. Dominic contains two additional significant ref-

5

Frederick [sic] Madden, ed., The Ancient English Romance of “Havelok the Dane”: Accompanied by the French Text: With an Introduction, Notes, and a Glossary, (London: W. Nicol, Shakspeare Press, for the Roxburghe Club, 1828), iii. 6 Ibid., xlix and lii.

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erences, the first of which has occasioned subsequent debate. Madden notes that St. Dominic is falsely stated to have died in 1281. This date, however, is corrected in three other (but all more recent) copies we have examined, (Laud. 463.7 Bodl. 779. and Ms. Vernon.) to the real time of his death, 1221. But as mention is made in the legend of the son of Simon de Montfort, slain at the Battle of Evesham in 1264. it is clear to us, that the anachronism was originally made through ignorance, and the alteration of the date has only made the blunder more apparent.8

The accurate 1264 allusion, of course, must be considered a terminus post quem. However, Madden’s assumption, which later scholars echo, that L had to be written after its erroneous 1281 date for the death of St. Dominic invites scrutiny. In L, the lines in question actually read: “he deide twelf hundred ȝer : and four score ȝer and on / Aftur þat ore louerd nam : of is moder flechs and bon” (fol. 127v).9 As a modern person used to seeing years represented in four digits, it is difficult for me to say with certainty how obvious the error in the words “four score” would have been to a hypothetical L scribe writing before the date that those three spelled out numbers add up to. More probably, a reader living before 1281 would have noticed it. But many scribal errors are largely attributable to a kind of tunnel vision out of which, if operative in this instance, the “twelf hundred ȝer” may have already passed before the “four score” was written. Indeed, that the scribe was thinking and looking ahead in the text rather than behind is implied by the probability that an eye-skip to the date in the next couplet was involved. There we are told “And endleue houndret ȝer : and four score ȝer and tene / Aftur þat ore louerd on eorþe cam : he bigan þe

7 If, in fact, Madden consulted three other manuscripts, he must have looked at London, British Library, MS Egerton 1993, rather than Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 463. The latter manuscript, though closer at hand to him in the Bodleian, does not have St. Dominic. 8 Ibid., lii–liii. 9 Compare 287.318–19 in Horstmann, ESEL. All references to the L SEL, not taken from the manuscript, are taken from Horstmann, ESEL, and are given parenthetically by page and line numbers. In addition to L, the mistaken date is given in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.25 (605), and London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 223. A correction of “four score” to some form of the word “twenty” is given in London, British Library, MS Egerton 1993, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 779, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a.1 (Vernon MS). A fragment of St. Dominic is preserved in Cambridge, University Library, MS Additional 2585(3); however, it does not have the lines in question.

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ordre ich wene.”10 (Further, if eye skip was involved, it is not necessary that “four score” was the reading in the scribe’s exemplar.) Moreover, to be consistent, Madden would need also to argue that no scribe writing at any date could have written these four lines, because they would have Dominic dying at age 91 if he had founded the Dominicans at birth, and at age 111 or later, if he had founded the order at any more probable age. But that error, obviously, was not caught. Thus, I am not convinced that a scribe writing before 1281 would necessarily have caught the “four score” for “twenty” error. Next, in survey, comes the Bodleian library catalogue of Laudian Manuscripts, completed by H. O. Coxe between 1858 and 1885. Coxe gives one date for the whole manuscript: “sec[ulum] xiv. ineuntis” [early fourteenth century]11—a date repeated as recently as 2000, by S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson in The Index of Middle English Prose.12 Coxe’s authority is, of course, important, but he cites no evidence to support his date. As another issue, what might “early fourteenth century” mean as a date? It might mean 1302—not too far away from, but necessarily later than, the late thirteenth century. However, modern SEL scholars like to place the hagiographical part of the manuscript as early as possible in the late thirteenth century. Or it could mean dates as late as 1330, which people might start to regard as “mid” century. Thus modern SEL scholars seldom cite Coxe. For his 1868 re-editing of Havelok, W. W. Skeat followed Madden’s lead by also referring to the date of the poem’s composition in his title, The Lay of Havelok the Dane: Composed in the Reign of Edward I, about A. D. 1280. In his book’s introduction, however, Skeat does not explain how he decided on 1280. Perhaps, it is simply an average of the 1270 to 1290 dates that Madden gave. Additionally, it may follow from the association of the poem with Edward’s reign that Skeat likewise highlights in his title. Edward became king in 1272, so by dating the poem “about A. D. 1280,” Skeat can appear to agree with Madden while avoiding the non-Edwardian dates of 1270 and 1271 that Madden allows. Curiously, despite his choice of title, Skeat says not a word about King Edward in his introduction. Nevertheless, arguing for and against a linkage of the poem to the tenor of Edward’s times becomes a staple of later Havelok

10

Compare 287.320–21 in Horstmann, ESEL. Coxe, Laudian Manuscripts, column 108. 12 S. J. Ogilvie-Thomson, Manuscripts in the Laudian Collection Bodleian Library, Oxford, handlist 16 of The Index of Middle English Prose (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 18–19. 11

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criticism.13 As to the date of the manuscript, Skeat says “The lays of Havelok and Horn are written out in the same handwriting, of an early date, certainly not later than the end of the thirteenth century”—back in a timeframe comfortable to many modern SEL scholars.14 From 1872 to 1887, Carl Horstmann published five separate and contradictory descriptions of L, some as parts of editions. One is an edition of Horn; the others are devoted to the SEL.15 And just as L’s unique SEL texts and readings and its arrangement of SEL items (appearing disorganized, yet having vestiges of order) have intrigued SEL scholars for the next century and a third, so has sorting out many of Horstmann’s statements about the manuscript and its SEL collection. In his first two publications, despite Skeat’s assertion, Horstmann said that the hand of Horn looks “etwas jünger” [somewhat younger or later] than the hand of Havelok.16 (I agree with Skeat that they look identical.) In 1872, Horstmann dated the Horn hand as “gegen das Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts” [approaching the end of the thirteenth century].17 And in 1887 he refines the date of both romances to “about 1290.”18 In his first two SEL publications, he said—no doubt influenced by Coxe— that the SEL collection is “aus der ersten Hälfte des 14. Jahrhunderts” [from the first half of the fourteenth century]—theoretically then as late as 1350!19 This is clearly the latest dating ever posited for the L SEL collection. It makes L’s section of romances older than its section of saints’ lives, and, if correct, would be much too late for Manfred Görlach’s analysis of the SEL’s early history, which today has become the starting point for its consideration. However, in 1875, without explanation, Horstmann backdated the manuscript by as many as 50 years, 13 See, for example, David Staines, “Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century Handbook for Princes,” Speculum 51 (1976): 602–23, and Christopher Stuart, “Havelok the Dane and Edward I in the 1290s,” Studies in Philology 93 (1996): 349–64. 14 W. W. Skeat, ed., The Lay of Havelok the Dane: Composed in the Reign of Edward I, about A. D. 1280, EETS, e.s., 4 (London: N. Trübner and Co., 1868), xxxv. 15 [Carl] Horstmann, “Die Legenden des Ms. Laud 108,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 49 (1872): 395–414; [Carl] Horstmann, ed., “King Horn nach Ms. Laud 108,” Archiv 50 (1872): 39–58; C[arl] Horstmann, ed., Leben Jesu, vol. 1, Leben Jesu, ein Fragment, und Kindheit Jesu (Münster: Friedrich Regensberg, 1873); Carl Horstmann, ed., Altenglische Legenden: Kindheit Jesu, Geburt Jesu, Barlaam und Josaphat, St. Patrik’s Fegefeuer (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1875); and Horstmann, ESEL. Horstmann also edited, without introductory discussion, the eschatological poems: “Die Sprüche des h. Bernhard und die Vision des h. Paulus nach Ms. Laud 108,” Archiv 52 (1874): 33–38. 16 Horstmann, “King Horn,” 39; Leben Jesu, 1–2. 17 Horstmann, “King Horn,” 39. 18 Horstmann, ESEL, x n. 1. 19 Horstmann, “Die Legenden des Ms. Laud 108,” 395; Leben Jesu, 1.

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to “c. 1300.”20 Finally, or seemingly so, in the introduction to his 1887 edition of The Early South-English Legendary, he backdates it another ten to twenty years: “It is the oldest of all existing MSS., and precedes MSS. Harl. and Ashm. by 10–20 years, being written about 1280– 1290,” adding “several authorities I have consulted agree with me in that date.”21 But then, in this same edition, at the head of the “List of Contents of the Several MSS.,” he gives L’s date as “c. 1285–95.”22 Much later, in 1964, Theodore Wolpers reports Horstmann’s date of the manuscript as “zwischen 1280/85 und 1290/95” [between those dates] without comment.23 Wolpers makes Horstmann’s final inconsistency appear sensible, when it is nothing of the sort. The studies discussed thus far can be regarded as foundational studies that take on importance, in part, because they are first. As has already been seen in the example of Ogilvie-Thomson, scholars have sometimes invoked their assertions without consideration of the evidence (or lack thereof) cited, or of contradictions among the assertions, or of subsequent scholarship. Let us turn now to studies specific to the romances, beginning with Havelok. In 1889, John W. Hales initiated the discussion of the references in that poem to Roxburgh as a rough marker of the northern boundary of England (in lines 139 and 265).24 Hales does cite the appropriate foundational studies. Indeed he frequently challenges Madden by name. However, he misrepresents Madden’s date for the poem, reporting it as “1280 or thereabouts,” when Madden had actually written “1270–1290.” It was Skeat who had given “about 1280” as Havelok’s date, but Hales says simply that Skeat “is content to follow so good an authority” as Madden’s. Hales focuses scholars’ attention on the references to Roxburgh, which had spent most of its history as part of Scotland, but became a part of England in 1296. That date becomes an “almost certain” terminus post quem for Hales. He also attaches importance to several other internal details which indicate probable composition after 1280: 1) The “suppression of robbers and the vigorous establishment of order” 20

Horstmann, Altenglische Legenden, x. Horstmann, ESEL, x. 22 Ibid., xiii. 23 Theodor Wolpers, Die englische Heiligenlegende des Mittelalters (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1964), 210–11. 24 All line references are from Smithers, Havelok. When necessary, I have converted or cross-referenced line numbers of scholars citing from other editions. 21

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(at lines 39–43 and 266–69), he asserts, must reflect Edward’s practice and, therefore, postdates the Statute of Winchester, 1285, and the Commissions of Trailbaston, 1292. 2) The incorruptibility of the law courts (line 1431) may reflect Edward’s measures of 1289, and Havelok’s injunction to spare neither clerk nor knight in judgments (line 2814) should be associated with “the decree and the writ of Circumspecte agatis, 1285.” 3) The poem’s references to the fyrd (lines 2549–57) should postdate the Statue of Winchester, 1285 again, and the enforcement of it in 1297. 4) The poem’s parliament at Lincoln (in and about lines 1000–07 and lines 1179–80) must be based on the real parliament which took place in Lincoln, with the Archbishop of York present, in 1301. And 5) Havelok’s and Goldeboru’s marital bliss probably reflects Edward’s and Eleanor’s, which would more likely be commemorated after Eleanor’s death in 1292. Considering all these points, Hales concludes “we have good reason for placing the composition of ‘Havelok’ nearer to the year 1300 than the year 1280.”25 The discussions, especially of the Roxburgh fortress and the parliament at Lincoln, have continued through subsequent scholarship. Madden had previously dismissed the importance of the only parliament held at Lincoln (which he put at 1300): If we could suppose that the author of the Romance alluded to this very parliament, it would reduce the period of the poem’s composition to a later date, than either the style, or the writing of the Ms. will possibly admit of. It is therefore far more probable the writer here makes use of a poetical, and very pardonable license, in transferring the parliament to the chief city of the county in which he was evidently born, or brought up, without any reference whatever to historical data.26

Responding to Madden’s reliance on “style” (though continuing to misrepresent Madden’s proposed 1270–1290 dates), Hales asks a question that has ramifications for scholars yet to be discussed in this essay: Now is our knowledge of palæography so precise and exact that any one could positively assert of any special document that it belongs certainly to 1280 rather than 1300?27

25 John W. Hales, “The Lay of Havelok the Dane,” The Athenæum no. 3200 (February 23, 1889): 244–45. 26 Madden, ed., Ancient English Romance, 191, note to verse 1006 (= line 1007 in Smithers, Havelok). 27 Hales, “Lay of Havelok,” 245. Hales also misreports Madden’s misdate of the parliament as 1303.

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Hales’s question as to the precision possible through paleographical dating is not only relevant to the aforementioned studies, but also, as will be seen, to those yet to be discussed. Furthermore, it is contemporary testimony that, as we may have assumed, Madden, Coxe, Skeat, and Horstmann were drawing on their experience with paleography in assigning dates, while, nevertheless, asking us rather to trust their authority than to consider any evidence they might identify. Building on the internal evidence Hales did identify, in 1903 Wilhelm van der Gaaf pointed out that there had been a parliament at Lincoln as early as 1226.28 Later, in 1906, Max Deutschbein showed that Roxburgh was English for a period as early as 1174. He then argued that the earliest English version of a Havelok story would be “auf das letzte Viertel des 12. Jarhunderts” [from the last quarter of the twelfth century], but the version which we have is from “einige Zeit jünger” [some time later].29 Although Deutschbein did not really do so himself, he seems to have prompted later scholars, notably Herlint Meyer-Lindenberg and George Jack, to argue for a very early date for the poem. In 1968, Meyer-Lindenberg argued that Havelok’s misfortunes reflect Prince Arthur’s at the hands of King John. The poem, then, must have been composed between 1203, the year of Arthur’s death, and 1216, the end of King John’s reign.30 Jack, in 1977, disputed that Havelok’s troubles reflect Arthur’s or that Arthur was a popular enough figure to inspire a romance, and, among other things, he points out that the poem’s parliament at Lincoln did not necessarily reflect a real one. Instead, picking up on a lesser point made by Meyer-Lindenberg, he points to the use of the name Birkabeyn for Havelok’s father. If it reflects the nickname, Birkibeinar, given to the followers of King Sverrir of Norway, who reigned 1184–1202, the poem must have been written no earlier than then. To determine a terminus ad quem, Jack follows Meyer-Lindenberg’s and earlier arguments that Havelok was a source for material in a version of Wace’s Brut, the earliest manuscript of which contains a chronicle ending in 1272. Thus, Jack concludes that “the composition of Havelok cannot be more precisely fixed than within a time between the late twelfth century and circa 1272.”31 28 W[ilhelm] van der Gaaf, “Parliaments Held at Lincoln (Havelok l. 1006)” Englische Studien 32 (1903): 319–20. Concerning line 1007 in Smithers, Havelok. 29 Deutschbein, “Die Haveloksage,” 165. 30 Meyer-Lindenberg, “Zur Datierung des Havelok,” 89–112. 31 Jack, “The Date of Havelok,” 20–33, esp. 33.

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Others have joined in the dispute as well, including Smithers, whose arguments seem now to have gained a general acceptance. Smithers argues for dates between 1295 (the date of an inquisition by Edward I in anticipation of a military muster which occurred on 17 March of that year, as did the muster in Havelok, in its fictional year (line 2560), and approximating the year of the second time Roxburgh was in England) or 1301 (the Lincoln parliament noted by Hales) and 1310 (the date of Rauf de Bohun’s version of Brut) for the composition of the poem.32 Smithers notes that the 1310 possibility leaves us with an uncomfortably narrow range of years within which to place it, given the fairly substantial textual history implied by the copy in MS. Laud Misc. 108.33

He is not explicit as to the problems created, but he dates the hand of the romance portion of the manuscript as “early fourteenth century.” To do so, he does not cite individual datable features, but rather identifies it as a “compact ‘textura’ hand” and places it in the context established by M. B. Parkes.34 In his date, he agrees with Coxe, but puts himself at odds with Madden, Skeat, and Horstmann (in the latter’s discussion of Horn). In 1901 two editions of Horn came out, by George McKnight and by Joseph Hall. Both cite Horstmann, but they do not agree with his date for the romances, or each other’s.35 McKnight says “The MS. [referring to its romance portion] . . . probably dates back to 1325,”36 and Hall dates the romance portion “not earlier than 1310 A. D.,” even though he says it is “by most authorities assigned to the last twenty years of the thirteenth century.” He does give “about 1290 A. D.” as his date for the SEL portion, in general agreement with the two dates

32 G. V. Smithers, “Four Notes on Hauelok,” in So meny people longages and tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to Angus McIntosh, ed. Michael Benskin and M. L. Samuels (Edinburgh: Benskin and Samuels, 1981), 191– 201, 203–06; and Havelok, lxiv–lxxiii. 33 Smithers, “Four Notes on Hauelok,” 201. 34 Havelok, xi–xii, where Smithers cites M. B. Parkes, English Cursive Book Hands 1250–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), xiii, xvii–xviii. 35 McKnight cites Horstmann’s edition of Horn (1872) and his Altenglische Legenden (1875) in George McKnight, ed., King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, The Assumption of Our Lady, EETS, o.s., 14 (1901; reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1998), xxix. Hall cites Horstmann’s edition of Horn, his “Die Legenden des Ms. Laud 108” (1872), his Leben Jesu (1873), and his ESEL (1887) (Hall, King Horn, viii–ix, xv). 36 McKnight, King Horn, xxviii.

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published by Horstmann in his ESEL.37 McKnight’s and Hall’s dates for the romance portion are apparently based on their opinions of the manuscript’s handwriting, but they offer no specific evidence to support them. And neither discusses the date of composition of the poem in any detail. It was eighty-seven years later, in 1988, before such analysis was to appear in print. Rosamund Allen notes that reference works, such as Severs’s Manual and the Middle English Dictionary, give for Horn a “long-accepted conventional dating of c. 1225,” based primarily on linguistic and stylistic information and a previously accepted date of Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg. IV 27 (2) which contains Horn. Though she mentions some later dates closer to the mid-thirteenth century, based on linguistic evidence too complicated to summarize here, Allen makes her own “case for dating the work after the de Montfort rebellion and the crisis of 1260–5,” in which context the work, with its tale of a threatened royal family and a usurper, might form a stern exemplum . . ., especially for those who supported de Montfort even after his defeat.38

More specifically, Allen argues for composition in the last quarter of the thirteenth century in or around London, which would have been royalist by that time, since they had been punished for receiving Simon de Montfort in 1263.39 This is an intriguing possibility in that it leads to an enjoyable irony after this “exemplum” is eventually bound up with an SEL collection containing St. Dominic. For as Thomas J. Heffernan has shown, the encomium for Simon de Montfort’s father in that vita, written in a location not too far from Evesham, might be a dangerous expression of sympathy for Simon himself.40 From this survey of the dates given for the romances, let us move back in time to Beatrice Daw Brown who, in her 1927 edition of the Southern Passion portion of the SEL, has given us the widely accepted

37

Hall, King Horn, ix. Rosamund Allen, “The Date and Provenance of King Horn: Some Interim Reassessments,” in Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph W. Wittig (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1988), 99–125 (102–03). The linguistic evidence is discussed on pages 105–19. 39 Ibid., 122. 40 Thomas J. Heffernan, “Dangerous Sympathies: Political Commentary in the South English Legendary,” in The South English Legendary: A Critical Assessment, ed. Klaus P. Jankofsky (Tübingen: Francke Verlag, 1992), 1–17. 38

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internal evidence for dating the composition of the SEL. She was the first to note the importance of a reference in St. Edmund of Abingdon to King Henry III, who died in 1272, in the past tense as no longer alive (445.506).41 (Possibly her attention to this legend had been directed by Madden who had considered the dates of St. Edmund’s death and canonization as evidence.) And in the Southern Passion she notes a reference to the Jews still living in England, a reference that would not be made after their expulsion in 1290. Within these termini, she states, “We shall not be far astray in assigning the composition of the Legendary, and inferentially that of the Southern Passion, to the decade between 1275 and 1285.”42 Brown’s 1272 and 1290 dates have received universal acceptance as termini post et ad quem for the SEL. However, I would issue some cautions, first with regard to 1272. The SEL is a collection of texts which evolved in a number of stages involving accretion, deletion, reorganization, and revision, often as source texts came to hand or as it was adapted for use in a new location. Sometimes, in a manuscript like L, it seems we are seeing these processes occurring right in front of us. Clearly, the cited line from St. Edmund of Abingdon was written after 1272, as probably was all of the vita. However, we cannot know how many SEL texts had been completed or how long work on various sanctorale or temporale texts had been ongoing before work on St. Edmund was begun. Certainly, the SEL portion of L had to have been compiled some time after 1272. But, other than St. Edmund, we cannot be certain that any of the individual texts it contains, including the Southern Passion, were composed after that date. (Brown also accepts Madden’s argument for 1281 as a terminus post quem which, as I have addressed, may be suspect.)43 Next, as to the 1290 terminus, clearly Brown is correct that that portion of the Southern Passion had to be written before that date; however, it does not follow that all SEL texts had to be composed by then. Moreover, the lines from the Southern Passion are not in L. The manuscript does contain a fragment of the Ministry and Passion poem which O. S. Pickering now considers a source of the Southern Passion. So its 1290 terminus correctly applies to the composition of 41

On fol. 184r. But compare D’Evelyn and Mill, where the absence of “þo” [then], as in several manuscripts, is probably not enough to negate Brown’s point (SEL, 2:508, line 494). 42 Brown, The Southern Passion, xi–xii. 43 Ibid.

44

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the Ministry and Passion as well as the composition of the Southern Passion.44 However, nothing would prohibit the L SEL compiler(s) from including a Ministry and Passion poem, lacking those lines, in the manuscript at any date after 1290. And, even for manuscripts containing the Southern Passion, 1290 must be taken as a terminus post quem for their compilation. Building on Brown’s work, in 1979, Heffernan argues to narrow the dates for the composition of the SEL to either 1276 or 1279. Tucked away in the middle of L is a brief prologue, which he, as others before him, interprets as the prologue intended for the original SEL collection.45 After its opening lines, descriptive of a collection, brief texts follow on Circumcision (1 January) and Epiphany (6 January), to start the cycle of the liber festivalis. Heffernan understands the references to the baptism of Christ and the wedding at Cana (178.11–16), not as embellishments of an Epiphany text, but as abbreviated allusions to gospel readings in the Sunday within the octave of the Epiphany and the second Sunday following the octave of the Epiphany. He therefore considers it a reasonable assumption that the lines were written in a year when there were only two Sundays, out of the possible five, following that first mentioned Sunday and Septuagesima—and there were two only twice within the 1275–85 range given by Brown, in 1276 and 1279.46 Whether intended or not, the picture Heffernan creates is of an SEL author calling on recent memory, rather than written sources, to develop material for the collection. If that was the case (and if the 1275–85 range is firm and if the L prologue is the original SEL prologue preserved), Heffernan’s case is convincing. A basic assumption in the SEL critical corpus, however, is that a variety of written sources were used at various times in its compilation, the Legenda Aurea, various breviary lives, and other standard vitae, to name a few. It seems unlikely, therefore, that an SEL author would not have had the gospel readings for all of the possible Sundays between Epiphany and Septuagesima somewhere near at hand, even if that author were actually 44 O. S. Pickering, ed., The South English Ministry and Passion, ed. from St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS B.6, Middle English Texts, 16 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984), 32–47. This is a reversal for Pickering, who previously considered the Southern Passion the source: see Pickering, “Temporale Narratives,” 445. 45 See Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 84 n. 5, for a summary of treatments of this prologue. See Horstmann, ESEL, 177–78, for a transcription. See figs. 7 and 8 for the text and placement. 46 Heffernan, “Additional Evidence,” esp. 349–51.

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writing in 1276 or 1279. Moreover, an author would have wanted to make references to all five Sundays’ gospels if the SEL were to have continued usefulness in future years. But since they were not, even though the lines of the L prologue are somewhat unclear, I fall back on the older connection of these events to the Epiphany. Indeed, we are told that the baptism “fel a twelfte-dai” (178.13) and that the wedding occurred “In þat dai a twelf-monþe” (178.15). I have also expressed elsewhere reservations about the assumption that the L prologue was the original SEL prologue and even that it was a misplaced prologue for the specific collection in L. Let us shift back to Manfred Görlach’s 1974 The Textual Tradition of the South English Legendary. Görlach conjectures that the SEL portion of L was compiled “a[nte] 1300” and that the romance portion was added “c. 1350–1400.”47 Görlach’s collations and sample collations of SEL texts gave us the basis for our current understanding of the relationship among the various manuscripts and the development of the SEL text. However, is it possible that his reconstruction of the SEL’s textual history has influenced his date for the SEL portion of L? Görlach posits an early collection, which he calls “Z” and a later redaction, “A”. “A” is basically the collection as it appears in most of the manuscripts, and is reflected in the D’Evelyn and Mill edition. L is critically important to Görlach’s analysis because it, with some few other manuscripts, preserves variant versions of some of the saints’ lives, which Görlach assumes were original “Z” texts, and because he also accepts the L prologue as descriptive of the original collection.48 Now, Görlach, Horstmann, D’Evelyn, and many other scholars before and after, including me, have described L as the earliest SEL manuscript and London, British Library, MS Harley 2277—a very important “A” manuscript, often referred to as the earliest orderly text—as the second oldest. MS Harley 2277 is almost universally dated circa 1300.49 Görlach, however, dates it “c 1300 or slightly later.”50 Thus, his date “a[nte] 1300” for L places it prior to MS Harley 2277 chronologically, as well as stemmatically. But is L, despite my own statements among others, really the oldest SEL manuscript? What does “about 1300” as an estimate really mean? (Hales’s question on the precision of

47 48 49 50

Görlach, Textual Tradition, 88–89. Ibid., 6–63. See the summary in D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL, 3:4 n. 3. Görlach, Textual Tradition, 84.

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the paleographical science comes to mind here.) Could not an estimate of “about 1300” allow for MS Harley 2277’s being written in 1280 or ’90? And, if so, could not a date “before 1300” for the SEL portion of L still allow the possibility that MS Harley 2277 is older? Suppose then that MS Harley 2277 were considered the oldest SEL manuscript rather than L. Might not a lot of opinions about the early SEL history change, even if Görlach’s stemma is not automatically negated? In my 1989 article, I accepted that L preserves evidence of “Z”. I went to the extreme of stating that L was “by ten years or more the oldest known South English Legendary (SEL) manuscript.”51 Others had said similar things before me. But I see now my claim was influenced highly, if subconsciously, by the desire to reinforce L’s privileged position in the SEL stemma. Ironically, one of the major thrusts of my argument there, based on my analysis of the manuscript’s make up, is that the L prologue should not be regarded as the “Z” prologue, announcing an original author’s intentions (which would preclude a collection beginning with temporale narratives—even though L begins with one). It occurs to me now that the possibility of a later date for L or an earlier one for MS Harley 2277 might further support my claim. And perhaps I would have even more evidence if I or other SEL scholars had paid more attention to Havelok and Horn studies, not only for the earlier dates that several of them suggest for the romance section, but also for a note tucked away in Rosamund Allen’s 1988 edition of Horn. It states that a forthcoming study by Linda Voigts and Sonia Patterson will show that the two parts of the manuscript, though by different hands, may have been decorated by the same hand and may have been produced in the same scriptorium.52 Although this study is not forthcoming, A. S. G. Edwards, Murray J. Evans, and Susanna Fein in Chapters One, Three, and Thirteen each argue, after their independent examinations of the manuscript, that the same flourisher’s decoration can be found in the two parts of the manuscript. The manuscript is now a composite. But it now appears that its composite portions had never really strayed far from each other during the time of their original production. If the works of L were not merely eventually sewn into the same codex but were produced by the same artists for similar audiences, how many reinforced commonalities would we

51 52

Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 75. Allen, King Horn, 11 and 103 n. 16.

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see that are the subject of this larger volume as a whole? This is a question addressed by many of the contributors to this volume. Additionally, SEL scholars, who have made no notice of the fact in print, might likewise have benefited (or perhaps have been amazed) by Smithers’s revelation that A. I. Doyle has found additional references to Henry Perueys, identified in L as an owner of the manuscript, and to William Rotheley, who testified to his ownership.53 The former was a fifteenth-century draper, and the latter a goldsmith and tax collector.54 This is important evidence concerning, among other things, the audience for the SEL collection and the romances. Havelok and Horn scholars might benefit from much SEL scholars have to offer as well. The two works have several essentials in common. It has been noted that Havelok’s miraculous tokens of sanctity and Horn’s Saracen adversaries might be responsible for those tales appearing in a manuscript, though composite, with tales of saints who experienced similar miracles and faced the same antagonists.55 The writer of the SEL’s Banna Sanctorum, though not in L, casts the saints’ lives as stories of true Christian knights and as comparable alternatives to the lying romances of Roland, Oliver, and Guy of Warwick (with Havelok and Horn not similarly chastised.)56 And scholars like Klaus Jankofsky for the SEL and Thorlac Turville-Petre for both the SEL and the romances, in addition to the authors of several of the chapters in this book, have explored a common concern with the Englishness of their respective subjects.57

53 See Christina Fitzgerald, Chapter Five in this volume, but see also A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One, who argues that the owner’s name reads ‘Perneys’ (see fig. 11 for the inscription). 54 Smithers, Havelok, xiii–xiv. 55 See Chapters Nine through Twelve in this volume. 56 D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL, 1:1–3, esp. lines 59–65 and the additional lines in the critical apparatus. The lines mentioning Roland, Oliver, and Guy of Warwick are found in the following manuscripts: London, British Library, MS Cotton Julius D.ix; London, British Library, MS Egerton 1993; Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS Oxford 431; London, Public Record Office MS C.47/34/1; London, Lambeth Palace, MS 223; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS McClean 128; and Winchester, Winchester College, MS 33. See also Thomas R. Liszka, “The First ‘A’ Redaction of the South English Legendary: Information from the ‘Prologue,’ ” Modern Philology 82 (1985): 407–13. 57 Klaus P. Jankofsky, “National Characteristics,” 81–93; Turville-Petre, England the Nation, esp. 59–70 and 143–55; and Thorlac Turville-Petre, “Havelok and the History of the Nation,” in Readings in Medieval English Romance, Meale, 121–34. See also Thompson, Everyday Saints, 21–57; and Chapters Nine through Twelve in this volume.

Madden

J. Wells

Brown

1916

1927

1901

Deutschbein

McKnight

1889

1906

Hales

1887

Hall

Horstmann (ESEL)

1875

van der Gaaf

Horstmann (Alt Leg)

1873

1903

Horstmann (Leben J)

1872

1901

Horstmann (Horn)

Horstmann (SEL)

1872

Skeat

1868

1858–85 Coxe

1828

90 1200 10

R(Hav) original

1170 80

20

40

?

50

R(Horn)

R(Hav) implied ?

30

60

S

MS

70

S

?

R

80

MS

MS MS

MS

R

MR

R(Hav) ? M

S

90

?

MR

M

10

R(Hav)

M

M

1300

MR

MS

MS

20

?

MR

?

30

40

?

50

‘S’ indicates the composition of the SEL, ‘R’ the romances taken together and ‘R (Hav)’ or ‘R (Horn)’ the romances taken separately. ‘M’ indicates the complete manuscript and ‘MS’ and ‘MR’ its SEL and romance parts individually. A line indicates a range of dates; a question mark at the end of a line indicates that a scholar does not specify where the range ends. A dot (•) indicates a definite date, and a square ( ) an approximate date.

Table 1. Dates given for the Laud Misc. 108 manuscript and the composition of the L texts

48 thomas r. liszka

D’Evelyn (Severs)

Robinson

Görlach

1970

1972

1974

Heffernan

Smithers (4 Notes)

Pickering (Ministry)

Allen (Horn) Smithers (Havelok)

Allen (Date & P)

Liszka

Boyd

Ogilvie-Thomson

1979

1981

1984

1984 1987

1988

1989

1995

2000

Guddat-Figge

Meyer-Lindenberg

1968

Jack

Dunn (Severs)

1967

1977

D’Evelyn (III: Intro)

1959

1976

Sisam/Skeat

1956

Table 1 (cont.)

1170 80

R (Hav)

90 1200 10

20

40

R (Hav)

R(Horn)

?

30

50

?

R(Hav)

60

70

?

••S

?

?

? ?

MS

M

M

MS

M

1300

?

MS M

MS MR R (Hav) or

?

10

R (Hav) or

MS & MR

MS

MS

90

R (Horn) MR

S

R (Hav)

?

80

?

M

?

20

?

30

?

40

50

talk in the camps 49

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Scholars from both camps have mutual concerns, concerns bound together as surely as the texts of this manuscript eventually were. Although I hope I have contributed to the discussion of the dates of these works and the manuscript, it has not been my purpose to resolve the issues I have surveyed. Readers, whether their primary concern is the SEL or one or both of the romances, can decide for themselves what they find more and less compelling. To be sure, there has been some good scholarship as well as some impressionistic and unsystematic work. But as we resolve to move forward systematically, an essential component of that system must be participation in the discussion of the manuscript as a whole. Scholars from both camps will benefit from discussions of our mutual concerns, not merely with the date of L, but with everything else associated with it.

CHAPTER THREE

“VERY LIKE A WHALE”?: PHYSICAL FEATURES AND THE “WHOLE BOOK” IN OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108 Murray J. Evans* Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel? Pol. By th’ mass, and ‘tis, like a camel indeed. Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel. Pol. It is back’d like a weasel. Ham. Or like a whale. Pol. Very like a whale. (Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2)1

Hamlet’s dialogue with Polonius about the debatable shapes of clouds can be an apt metaphor for codicological analyses of medieval manuscripts such as Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L). The manuscript has attracted considerable codicological attention, notably in the work of Thomas R. Liszka, Pamela Robinson, Gisela GuddatFigge, Rosamund Allen, and, in this collection, A. S. G. Edwards. This work poses modern readers of the manuscript with a number of challenges. While there is some agreement on the number and dates of hands and compilers, the timing of stages of compilation is not entirely clear. There is also the question of how we are to regard the contents of the manuscript generically. The material clues for attempting to answer these questions are the physical features of the manuscript. While there can be substantial agreement on the facts of these features, inferring their possible significances can land us back in Hamlet’s dialogue with Polonius. My interest in this chapter is in layout and decoration at the beginnings and endings of texts in the manuscript, including titles, incipits, large colored initials, display script, contemporary numbering,

* I am grateful to The University of Winnipeg for research and travel monies, which made the research for this essay possible. Thanks also to Dr. Martin Kauffmann of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, for his kind permission to examine L, and to Rebecca Widdicombe for her assistance in preparing the final copy of this chapter. 1 The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 1166.

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and blank folios.2 Taken together, these features (or their selective absence) not only modulate the distinctness or cohesion of texts in the manuscript, but the disposition of these features also aesthetically predisposes our sense of the larger structure of the manuscript, allowing us to register more tacitly its contours in a way distinguishable from its verbal contexts. Such an approach can valuably trouble our post-medieval conceptions of discrete texts and genres, including those concerning “romance” and “non-romance” texts. This essay, then, will let the physical features of L lead, in an exploration of selected cruces, toward the “unity in multeity” of this manuscript.3 I believe that thus being led by L’s physical features must proceed according to a few important axioms. First, it is important not to isolate particular features, such as major initials, as singly decisive.4 Second, a holistic review of features such as large initials, to the extent of the data for them in L, illustrates another truism of manuscript studies: that conclusions on the significance of manuscript features remain, by and large, permanently uncertain; that the relative and shifting plausibility of such conclusions requires what Charles Williams in another context calls the “quality of disbelief,” which encourages. . .the possibility of error. It hints ambiguity—nicely balancing belief and disbelief, qualifying each by the other, and allowing belief only its necessary right proportion of decisiveness.5

This condition puts considerable stress on the rhetoric of codicological arguments: indeed, much of the interest of such arguments is watching how their discourse accommodates uncertainty. Finally, this essay proceeds on a third conviction—enacted by this volume—that no one scholar can comprehend this whole collection: “the jigsaw puzzle we are all working on is so big that it may need the help of every eye to

2 Given the emphasis on visual features of L in this essay, I do not much pursue the content of incipits and explicits, opening and closing prayers, and narrative links or summaries, as I did in Rereading Middle English Romance: Manuscript Layout, Decoration, and the Rhetoric of Composite Structure (Montreal and Kingston: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1995). In Table 2, I note opening and closing prayers when they are associated with decoration. 3 For Coleridge’s use of the phrase, see “On Poesy or Art,” in “Biographia Literaria” by S.T. Coleridge, Edited with His Aesthetical Essays, ed. J. Shawcross (1907; reprint, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973), 2:262: “In order to derive pleasure from the occupation of the mind, the principle of unity must always be present, so that in the midst of the multeity the centripetal force be never suspended, nor the sense be fatigued by the predominance of the centrifugal force. This unity in multeity I have elsewhere stated as the principle of beauty.” 4 I address this feature in detail below. 5 Charles Williams, The Descent of the Dove: A Short History of the Holy Spirit in the Church (1939; paper reprint, London: Collins, 1963), 174.

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try to fit a piece in it.”6 In this light, then, after a proposed narrative of the compiling of L, I begin with attention to the sometimes puzzling variety of individual manuscript features in L. Then I will discuss particular cruces in the extent and kinds of decoration in relation to the structure of the whole collection. On this last point, I will pay special attention to zones of decoration corresponding to Sonia Patterson’s proposed stints of decorators in the manuscript, particularly the use of titles.7 In all, I will be concerned with the way L presents both as a whole collection, and also as one still on its way to some order not yet achieved, still enacting some untidy Plan B. Since the compilation of L apparently stretches across the fourteenth century, it is necessary to put these issues in context.8 While several chapters discuss the compilation of the manuscript in detail, the manuscript evidence for numbering and titles warrants closer examination. An early fourteenth-century compiler gathers the two sections of the manuscript (Parts A and B), numbers items in red crayon, and adds titles and explicits to most South English Legendary (SEL) texts (figs. 6–8). Since this earlier system of numbering in crayon exists from the opening of the extant manuscript into Horn, the compiling of all these items was complete by the time of the earlier numbering. A late fourteenth-century compiler renumbers in ink all these texts as well as four added ones: SS. Blaise, Cecilia, and Alexis, and Somer Soneday (figs. 1, 3–10).9 Since the ink used in the renumbering is the same of that of the last four items, this second compiler is also the fourth scribe (Scribe D), who added these four texts. This latter scribe may

6 A. I. Doyle, “Retrospect and Prospect,” in Manuscripts and Readers in FifteenthCentury England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study, ed. Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1983), 142–46 (146). See also Andrew Taylor, who explains that “[i]f we are to take as the individual concrete unit not the booklet or section but the entire codex, it will often defy our abilities as individual readers” (Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002], 207). 7 On Patterson’s study, which has not after all seen publication, see Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 83. My proposed main point here builds on my suggestion concerning “different, and more or less sophisticated, decorating conventions” in L (Evans, Rereading, 6). 8 For material in this paragraph, as well as some conflicting views, see Smithers, Havelok, xi–xiv; Evans, Rereading, 4–6; Robinson, “Oxford: Bodleian Library MS. Laud misc 108,” 225–28; Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 75–76; Allen, King Horn, 6–12; Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 29–32. For descriptions of the compilation of L, see Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch, Introduction, and A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One in this volume. Edwards regards the first scribe as “possibly late thirteenth-century” and the second as “late thirteenth-century” (25–26). See also Susanna Fein, Chapter Thirteen in this volume on the addition of the final quire and a “final flyleaf” as a “protective back cover—a sign of completion” (279). 9 Three fifteenth-century hands added three verse items on a flyleaf. See Edwards, Chapter One.

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also have been responsible for erasing many of the original numbers.10 Unfortunately, with evidence of erasures of the original numbering and cropping of folios,11 we must be cautious with the extant evidence since it is so obviously partial. With this larger narrative in mind, I turn to the use of individual features of decoration. First, how are we to regard the considerable variety in the use of some individual features of L? The variety of layout in titles, for example, is quite noticeable. Often titles appear to the right of opening lines in new items—as in the case of St. Agatha (item 33) at fol. 94v: “Vita Sancte Agathe”—rubricated and decorated by one or more medial punctus. In contrast, St. Vincent (item 30, fols. 91r–93r) begins with a marginal title boxed in red and in a smaller hand.12 There is also the matter of multiple titles, often with item numbering. At fol. 93r, for example, St. Paul has a rubricated title, “Vita Sancti Pauli,” flanked by medial punctus, from the end of the first line of text towards the margin, followed by “31” (in the later system of numbering); then an identically worded second title in the smaller hand is included in the border of the margin. A few titles are not freestanding but imbedded in rubricated incipits, as at fol. 166r: “Hic incipit vita / Sancti Silvestri.” This challenge of classifying a puzzling variety—or perhaps inconsistency— recurs for other manuscript features. For instance, there is only one rubricated external explicit—that is, one not included in the text proper— at fol. 22r, the end of the Infancy.13 A necessary acknowledgement of the delineating effect of titles, incipits, and explicits for items, then, needs to co-exist with how those features are also the product of different hands and stages of compilation.

10

Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 31. See Görlach, Textual Tradition, 89, on cropping of red running titles, with remains on fol. 61r (fig. 5). On signatures, Liszka’s careful examination of the manuscript under ultra-violet light must still be the standard (“MS Laud Misc. 108,” 84, and n. 22). 12 I have not counted it, or other occasional titles in this smaller hand, in Table 2 as titles proper. Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 31 n. 12, suggests that the later rubricated titles accompanying the new system of numbering were added by another hand, not the late fourteenth-century compiler. 13 Bell’s view that some combinations of title and prayer are the first numerator’s own kind of explicit is very suggestive (“Generic Convention and Transformation in Middle English Romance: The Manuscript Evidence in King Horn and Havelok the Dane” [PhD diss., Georgia State University, 2002], 63). I have not noted in Table 2 internal explicits, those not set off from, but in the body of the text, given my focus on more immediately visual features. 11

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The same dilemma regarding variety holds for large initials—usually blue with red filigree—and thus qualifies our ability to cite them, unequivocally on a par, as structural signs for the beginning of texts or groups of texts.14 First, the fact of large initials at the beginning of items needs to be seen in context. At fol. 11r, Liszka properly points out the large, ten-line initial I opening the Infancy of Jesus Christ (fig. 3).15 But the prominence and assumed structural force of the initial is qualified by the presence of similar initials, which do not open a new item, in the preceding item, the South English Ministry and Passion, where numerous large initials accompany the use of smaller two-line initials: • Fol. 1v has an A with a long marginal tail, eleven lines in all; the initial recurs twice on fol. 3r. • Fol. 4r has an eight-line Y, whose whole length is in blue decoration and not just red filigree. • On fol. 7v, there is a six-line A, on fol. 8v another seven-line A, then a six-line A on fol. 9r. • Fol. 9v has a nine-line I. Descenders in I initials can obviously often make them larger initials than some others, but this list confirms that long ascenders are not confined to such “tall” letters.16 After so many large initials in the first extant item, not only is the structural force of the opening I in the next item in a new quire not so strong, but since the Infancy likely marks the beginning of a new decorator’s stint (fols. 11–54),17 we are reminded of the importance of taking different decorating conventions into account so as to appreciate the significance of apparent differences in decoration across the collection.

14 Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 79, uses the number of indented lines of text as his measure of large initials, while I reckon initials according to their size in number of lines. These two approaches lead to some differences in selection of structurally significant initials. In Table 2, except in particular contexts, I usually do not record initials less than three lines tall at the beginning of items, since these are also quite common within some texts. Also, the distinction between title (scored 2) and long title (scored 3) is sometimes difficult to make consistently, but the larger point, as I argue below, concerns zones of decorated titles, and it is not affected by the occasional close judgment call on length of titles. 15 Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 77. 16 The same decorator as in the first quire, at fol. 141r, St. Clement, opens with a two-line S whose blue descender adds five more lines to the initial. 17 Allen, King Horn, 103–04 n. 16.

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There are so many qualifying features of L, then, that it is important to start with a couple of telling points for regarding the collection as some sort of whole. Allen cites unpublished work by Linda Voigts and Sonia Patterson asserting that similarities in decoration in the SEL and romance sections of the manuscript suggest that they may have been decorated in the same scriptorium.18 More specifically, the three late thirteenth-century flourishers worked in the following areas of the manuscript, reflected in different fonts in Table 2:19 First and main flourisher: fols. 1–10r, 56–160v, 204–226v (small caps) Second: fols. 11–54r, 161–169v (underlined) Third: fols. 174–199 (italic font)20

(I will call these flourishers Decorators 1, 2, and 3.) That the first and main flourisher decorated two SEL sections (one very long) as well as the later romance section of the manuscript provides powerful support for the contention that most of the volume was envisaged as a whole at the outset of its production (figs. 1, 5–9). The force of contemporary numbering, moreover, is also unifying. That the three additional SEL items (fols. 228v–237r) possess only the second system of numbering strongly suggests that the first numerator never had access to the last quire.21 More certainly, a later hand copied the last SEL items and Somer Soneday in this last quire. In all likelihood, then, the last quire was added in a discrete, later stage of compilation. Allen is also correct, however, in pointing out that traces remain of the first numerator in Horn at fols. 222r, 224r, 225r, and 227r (where the earlier 18

Allen, King Horn, 11 and 103 n. 16. Table 2 is a selective version of data tables used in Evans, Rereading, here concentrating on extant visual decorative features. The table includes legends for features and their descriptors. 20 Andrew Taylor, Chapter Four, and Fein, Chapter Thirteen in this volume also identify three flourishers. Patterson’s dating of the flourishers as late thirteenthcentury fits with Edwards’s proposed, late thirteenth-century dating of the first two scribal hands. That the matter of the decorators now needs a closer look is also clear from Edwards’s assertion in Chapter One that L is “decorated throughout by one main flourisher” (28). In this instance, there could be an even stronger case than mine for the distinguishing effects of different extents of decoration. In the possible event that decoration as copied from exemplars, its distinguishing effects in L itself would remain. While item 70, Dispute Between the Body and the Soul, is in a contemporary hand, it is not decorated. See Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 79, on how his hypothesis on rearranged quires would reunite flourishers’ stints. See also Allen, King Horn, 103 n. 16, where Voigts specifies that only Decorator 1 uses major initials; but see Table 2 for some qualification of this observation according to my definition of large initial. Voigts states that Decorator 1 evidently did the romance section but was not its scribe, in fact supplying “the wrong initials three times.” Decorator 2 uses paragraph marks differently from Decorator 1, and Decorator 3’s paragraph marks are drawn differently. 21 Allen, King Horn, 9; I correct her citing fol. 233v as the endpoint of three items. More specifically, the second system of numbering appears alone on many folio top centers: 228v–231r; 233v–234r; and 236v–237r. 19

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number 71 survives, although the item is subsequently renumbered to 72), as well as at fol. 228r. Her argument that the two parts therefore were already combined when the second numerator started work is a strong one, although the case for the evident, later participation of the first numerator would also stand, even if the parts had not yet then been combined.22 The common decorator in the SEL and romance sections and the force of contemporary numbering as well the contemporaneity of the earlier hands, mitigate the separating effect of successive stages of compilation. Indeed these are three of the strongest arguments for L being a whole book.23 There is nonetheless much evidence of considerable play in the larger apparent planning of the manuscript in its extant state.24 The Latin note in two additional hands at the end of the first quire (fig. 2), directing readers back to “the first book” where they will find more matter on the passion of the Lord, that is, to what is apparently “at least one of the lost temporale quires,” indicates either a misbinding or perhaps “an intentional change from the original plan of organization.”25 Liszka argues that there are final “fillers” at the end of previously compiled groups of texts, for example, in the St. Patrick and his Purgatory and St. Brendan the Navigator unit; and he also cites Görlach in affirming the addition of texts in the opening blank folios of some quires before texts already previously entered.26 What would become a prologue in other versions of the SEL, item 28 (fols. 88r–88v, figs. 7–8), is far from first place and remains undecorated. Liszka speculates that the L compiler “experimented” with at least three orderings of materials for the collection, which also involved the early separate existence of quires before decisions about final sequence were made, as well as the less 22 Cf. my less emphatic statement on numbering and cobbling together in Evans, Rereading, 5. 23 I will enlarge the context for this statement in my conclusion. 24 One such equivocal physical feature of L is the hair/flesh patterns in the membrane of the manuscript, first addressed by Bell, “Generic Convention and Transformation,” 56–59. She argues that quire structure in L works out from a “center” where the flesh sides of the central bifolium face one another. Departures from this practice in the manuscript generally—and in her view, repeatedly—indicate inserted singletons. Visual examination renders plausible, as well as intriguing, her analysis of Liszka’s quire 11 (fols. 114–124): that the quire proper is fols. 115–122, with one added bifolium (fols. 114/124) and an added singleton (fol. 123). While her analysis is preliminary and remains hypothetical, it deserves much more attention and debate. Further refinement of her work could indicate that the insertion of singletons was meant to remedy ad hoc planning of the manuscript contents, e.g., in cases where scribes ran out of room finishing texts, necessitating added singletons. In the meantime, I work with the collation in Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108.” See also his assertions on “the units [of SEL] which must remain intact,” if the extant ordering of quires resulted from “an error of binding or rebinding” (79); and on possible different periods of compiling (83–84). 25 Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 79. 26 Ibid., 84; Liszka cites Görlach, Textual Tradition, 89 and 249 n. 88.

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than calendrically ordered inclusion of various sources as they came to hand.27 His citing Horstmann on the presentation of the manuscript, then, is apt: it is a “collection in an unfinished state, in the way of progress, before its completion.”28 This condition of a collection still in play should inform, I think, most assertions on the manuscript as a whole book: this is the multeity of “unity in multeity.”29 This more random aspect of L need not be an occasion for analytical despair, however. It allows us, I believe, to de-center the importance of the relatively few coincidences of the end of an item and a quire in the manuscript: at fols. 10v, 22r, 55v, 160v, 203v, and 237v.30 Concentrations of visual physical features of the manuscript elsewhere, which I represent in Table 2 as scores for extent of decoration, should also alert us to L’s structural contours.31 What might we discover if we let the sometimes apparently ad hoc arrangement of the manuscript lead us to other cruces, for example—those that are decorated as we might expect openings of booklets to be, even though they are mid-quire? I turn now to both kinds of decorated contexts, the coincidences of the endings of quires and items, and the others.32 The first such coincidence at fol. 10v, at the end of the main decorator’s first stint, contains the Latin note indicating likely misbinding and lost material, mentioned above (fig. 2). There is no decorative fanfare at the end of item 8, the South English Ministry & Passion. The Infancy, the new item beginning the second decorator’s stint at fol. 11r, however, begins with a rubricated incipit and ten-line initial (fig. 3).33 It concludes at fol. 22r (at the next coincidence of end of item and quire) with a rubricated explicit, the only one in the manuscript, with red braid filling out the line, making this the most decorated item in the collection, with a score of 21 for extent of decoration in 27

Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 80–84. This is in keeping with one of his major theses, that “it was not the intention of the Laud compiler to produce a hierarchically organized text. Instead, he used various non-calendrically organized source collections either to supplement the calendrical sections or. . .to compile them” (82–83). 28 Horstmann, ESEL, x. 29 On a tolerance for apparent randomness in Coleridge’s “unity in multeity” belying some received notions of “organic unity” in his works, see for example Owen Barfield, What Coleridge Thought (London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 79 ff., 125, and passim. 30 In Table 2, the clustering of scores for visual manuscript features elsewhere than at these junctures also helps de-center their importance. 31 I arrive at the score for extent of decoration according to the following formula comprising scores for other manuscript features: title + incipit + (2 × opening display script) + (2 × initial) + explicit (external, only) + (2 × final display script). The statistic, in keeping with the approach of this essay, means to emphasize the visual impact of these features in a single measure. For more on extent of decoration, see Evans, Rereading, 34–37. 32 It bears repeating that Bell’s analysis involving the use of inserted singletons, if proved accurate, might further problematize where booklets begin. 33 Besides its double-column format, this piece is also distinguished by frequent red underlining and boxing of text, in effect précis for its sections.

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Table 2. In the third booklet beginning at fol. 23r, there is very little pronounced decoration after the five-line initial opening the first text in the booklet—Item 10, Holy Cross (fols. 23r–29v). Item 19 begins exceptionally at fol. 46v, where a blue paraph sets off its rubricated title, “Vita Sancti Albani,” placed between the end of the first line of text and the right-hand margin. The booklet, moreover, ends awkwardly at fol. 55v, where the last two lines of item 24, St. Ursula and Companions (11,000 Virgins), are crammed into the right-hand margin. So far, then, one single-item booklet is marked by noteworthy decoration, opening and closing, and two booklets are not. A new booklet begins at fol. 56r, the second (and long) stint of the main decorator (fols. 56r–160v), with what Liszka calls an “elaborate” three-line S beginning St. Katherine of Alexandria, containing four red-filled circles in its body.34 As Bell states, there is no real title for the piece. Instead, perhaps the decorator, in flourishing an inserted line, mistook it for a title.35 Or perhaps, as Liszka argues, the placing of the Katherine material was not the original plan but occurred after the Becket material was already in place.36 He also mentions the cramped text in the next item, St. Lucy. Written in single columns, the item finishes with crowded text at the bottom of fol. 60r, an emergency measure which necessitates adding line dividers for clarity; and the usual redflourished first letters at the middles of lines accordingly appear visually out of place. The ending of the piece spills over untidily onto all of fol. 60v, with further piling up of text into double columns and a concluding “amen” (fig. 4). This evidence could further support Liszka’s contention about the prior entry of the subsequent Becket material, leaving what was to be space for an originally intended transition from temporale to sanctorale items—a scheme abandoned with the insertion of the SS. Katherine and Lucy material.37 On the other hand, however, the opening of St. Lucy includes a rubricated title, a practice, as Table 2 indicates, that the main decorator continues for many of the texts in this booklet. And the item to follow, St. Thomas Becket, opens with a three-line initial and a French six-line rubricated incipit, in the space on the right between text and margin (fig. 5). These features, however, do not actually introduce the whole item, but instead predict that the material to follow will speak of St. Thomas Becket’s parentage. While there are also remains of a rubricated, cropped title/incipit at the top centre of the folio (which I score as a title in Table 2), the full incipit reads more like a rubric for the immediate narrative section 34 35 36 37

Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 80. Bell, in research notes shared with me. Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 80. Ibid.

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to follow, than like an incipit for the whole life. Something more like the real title appears belatedly at fol. 63r, mid-folio, where an incipit announces the beginning of St. Thomas, preceding on its own line, a three-line E with a fourteen-line tail (fig. 6). Although Liszka calls this the “capital beginning the Thomas Becket legend,”38 I believe that the decorative context is more complex if we expand our reading to a number of the signs, as I have done.39 This decoratively equivocal opening of St. Thomas, whether or not part of the original plan for the quire as Liszka argues, is not so orderly in relation to the previous two items in the booklet, as to be the measure of what a true opening for the quire should be. In such a context, where the scrambling seems fairly spread around, the decoration at the opening of St. Katherine may be as momentous as it gets: at worst, damage control; at best, what the processive ordering of the manuscript could bear. Indeed, in such a context, looking at the decoration across the three opening texts does collectively punctuate the opening of what proves to be a long booklet. Liszka in effect raises a critical question here: is a booklet comprising quires 6–18, that is, 149 extant folios, too long to fit even Robinson’s elastic definition?40 Happily there are reference points for a reply to this concern. Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.2.38 (religious and romance texts) contains two booklets—fols. 3r–160v and 161r–261v—one of which is larger than L’s; and Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91 (Thornton MS), a very roughly similar combination of texts, has one booklet, which contains most of its numerous romances, almost as long as this fourth booklet in L.41 In this light we might ask, how does subsequent decoration in the booklet, the rest of Decorator 1’s long stint, help us navigate its contents? Answering this question relates to various attempts to make some order of the SEL contents in the manuscript. Liszka has helpfully

38

Ibid. Edwards, Chapter One, divides item 27 St. Thomas Becket into two, both numbered 27: St. Thomas proper, fols. 61–87v, and a St. Thomas appendix, fols 87v–88r. Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 90, lists “St. Thomas Becket/Gilbert” (fols. 61r–63r) preceding “St. Thomas Becket” (fols. 63r–88r) under item 27. For item 27, Table 2 lists a “St. Thomas Prologue,” St. Thomas proper, and St. Thomas Appendix for the purposes of cataloguing the equivocal opening decoration of the first two and the unremarkable opening decoration of the last. Final decoration for all three is also unremarkable. 40 Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 78. In Evans, Rereading, 107–08, I summarize Robinson’s definition thus: “Robinson sees the booklet as a quire or collection of quires, selfsufficient in content, containing (when undamaged) a single, complete text or group of texts. Such a booklet, after a temporary separate existence, would often be bound with others into a composite manuscript book.” See Robinson, “The Booklet,” 46–69. My count of folios for this booklet in L includes the numbering of two folios as 170A and 170B. 41 See Evans, Rereading, Tables A9 and A15. 39

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represented and adapted multiple suggestions for the order of these texts, from Minnie Wells, Laurel Nichols Braswell, Thomas Heffernan, and Karen Bjelland, in his attempts to account for “rather large chronological leaps” in calendrical ordering that challenge proposed groupings.42 These results he displays in his appended table of information, showing calendrically and non-calendrically ordered units of texts; asterisks helpfully precede entries for items that are not in calendrical order. One might hope that the zones of rubricated titles and associated opening display script evident in Table 2 for this generously if unevenly decorated fourth booklet of L might coincide with some of these proposed groupings of texts. But the coincidences are at most only rough and/or intermittent, with one exception: the short grouping he proposes for Irish saints in items 35–36 (St. Patrick and his Purgatory and St. Brendan the Navigator), one of his suggested “national concentrations.”43 More persuasive is the possibility that these concentrations of rubricated titles bind calendrical and other topical groupings, visually patching the cracks between them.44 With reference to the categories on Liszka’s table and to decorative concentrations in Table 2, this possible binding effect pertains to the following calendrical items: St. Paul (item 31, fol. 93r–93v), St. Brigid of Ireland (item 32, fols. 93v–94v), and St. Agatha (item 33, fols. 94v–96r). Then skipping the brief item 34 (St. Scholastica, fol. 96r–96v), there are similar titles for St. Patrick and his Purgatory (item 35, fols. 96v–104r) and then the non-calendrical item 36 (St. Brendan, fols.104r–110r). This last item, the site of one of Liszka’s proposed quires whose opening content is added after subsequent content in the quire,45 ends at fol. 110r in the middle of a quire with “Amen” flourished in red. The rest of the recto and the whole verso is blank. Certainly, the force of these almost continuous titles visually mitigates the apparent disorderly arrangement of SEL items. The next zone of rubricated titles, from item 38 (St. Julian the Confessor, fols. 115v–116r) to item 41 (St. Dominic, fols. 124r–127v), binds a group of what Liszka designates as non-calendrical items—although they are as they stand in calendrical sequence. Next, item 47 (St. Clement, fols. 141r–147r) almost presents as a new decorative opening, with

42

Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 78. Ibid., 82. See also Liszka’s hypotheses about an alternate plan for L’s compiling, which would unite now separated stints of Decorator 1 and do the same for Decorator 2 (79). 44 See also Evans, Rereading, 72–73, where I argue that illustrations and scribal signature in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 61 may visually bind texts topically. 45 Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 77–78. Liszka is citing Görlach, Textual Tradition, 249 n.88. 43

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a two-line S, whose blue descender goes down five more lines; there are also a generous number of coloured initials in the text, some of them unusually large for their position. After an undecorated item 48 (St. Laurence, fols. 147r–149r), item 49 (St. Kenelm, fols. 149r–153r) opens Decorator 1’s last, long string of rubricated titles; its own title includes a third line in decorative minims. Rubricated titles on items finish out the quire.46 This decoration (and possibly that beginning item 47, St. Clement) not only decoratively punctuates the end of Decorator 1’s stint, but may also visually bind a group of Liszka’s calendrical and non-calendrical units—another case of what we have already seen above. Hence, decoration in this long section of the fourth booklet is noteworthy for several reasons. It is persistently generous in its extent. It may serve to help order visually for readers the evident disorder, or competing orders, in L’s SEL collection. Finally, Decorator 1 will return in the romance section of the manuscript; his decoration here in the fourth booklet will have implications for his subsequent stint there and our reading of it. Indeed, little major and no extended decoration intervenes before Decorator 1’s romance section. In Decorator 2’s second stint, from item 56 (St. Thomas the Apostle, fols. 161r–165v) to item 59 (St. Eustace, fols. 167r–169v), the only significant decoration is the rubricated incipit in item 58 (St. Sylvester, fols. 166r–167r). In Decorator 3’s stint to follow, from item 61 (All Saints’ Day at fol. 174r) to Item 69 (Vision of St. Paul, fols. 199r–200v), there is little notable decoration except a three-line H at the beginning of item 68 (Sayings of St. Bernard, fol. 198r–199r), the first non-SEL text since the extant opening of the manuscript. Another hand closes out the booklet in item 70 (Dispute Between the Body and the Soul, fols. 200v–203v), though with some red flourishing and rubricated lines on the last verso. This relative paucity of decoration casts into relief the more generous practices of Decorator 1, whose work—helpfully for our purposes—spans much of the extant manuscript, giving us two contexts in the SEL material as well as the romance section to ponder for structural significance. What in our knowledge of Decorator 1’s previous practices can help us understand his work in the romance section of the manuscript? First, there is the generous extent of decoration in relation to the other

46 This coincidence of end of item and quire at fol. 160v may deserve some more reflection, since it is the only such juncture in L that is not regarded as the end of a booklet (see, for example, Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 90–91), likely because of the topical continuity with subsequent items.

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two previous decorators in the manuscript so far. As Table 2 indicates, the score of 18 for extent of decoration for item 71 (Havelok the Dane, fols. 204r–219v) is the second highest of notable scores for items in the manuscript; only Infancy, the work of Decorator 2, has a higher score. The large three-line initial with which Havelok opens is followed by quite numerous large initials within the poem (fig. 1). It also opens with a cropped rubricated incipit and finishes at fol. 219v with “Amen,” whose enlarged letters are flourished in red ink and stretched out across the line, with red braiding in the intervening spaces (fig. 9). This great extent of decoration may suggest that for Decorator 1, Havelok is a prestige item in the collection. But there may be more to it than this. While much has properly been made of the text being called a “vita” (and thus a saint’s life) in its incipit, the decorator may also be singling it out as a romance. In Rereading Middle English Romance, I provide extensive statistical data, showing that “while romance and other items share similar features of layout and decoration, romances almost uniformly have higher proportions of their incidence and/or degree.” Furthermore, the data for the fifteen manuscript collections in my sample show that greater extent of decoration cannot be explained simply as pertaining either to texts in opening quires of booklets or to the length of texts. Rather, romances are more generously decorated than non-romance items.47 While such generalizations for a large sample of manuscripts do not necessarily apply to a much smaller sample, that is, the texts in L, it is possible that there is generic recognition of Havelok as a romance—even a homiletic romance—in its decoration beginning, finishing, and throughout the text.48 Next, item 72 (King Horn, fols. 219v–228r) opens with a large, unusually multi-colored 47

Evans, Rereading, 46–50. On the appropriateness of Havelok as a homiletic romance in a collection including SEL material, see Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 29–51; see also Julie Nelson Couch, Chapter Eleven in this volume. For generic implications of the compiling and decorating of Sir Isumbras as a homiletic romance, see Evans, Rereading, 51–82. Besides qualifications of my statistical generalizations already in Rereading, I would add the following cautions for L per se. L is one of the manuscripts in my original database of fifteen in Rereading, and so here I am in effect double-counting it, since it is already part of the general body of statistics I use for comparison. For the purposes of Rereading, moreover, I divided the SEL material into four groups, regarding each as one item; so that decision had an impact on the statistics for the whole database. A statistical analysis of decorative features in L in isolation from the other fourteen manuscripts would, however, be relatively insignificant because of the comparatively small sample of items, including only two romances for comparisons; and Horn is markedly less decorated than Havelok. In spite of these reservations, I believe that my statistics from Rereading still bear persuasively here. Indeed, a visual examination of my data on L in Table A14 of Rereading, for example, raises doubts that extent of decoration in L is a 48

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initial, four lines tall with an eleven-line tail (fig. 9); the much less decorative three-line H in the second column of the folio suffers by comparison, as do other two- to four-line blue initials that follow in the text. The poem ends at fol. 228r similarly to Havelok, with a spaced out “Amen,” stretching from margin to margin of the column, and in enlarged script with red flourishing, which also fills the bowl of the A in “Amen.” While the score for extent of decoration is only slightly higher than many non-romance items in Decorator 1’s earlier stints, there is a family resemblance between the two romances, particularly in their colored initials and decorated layout for “Amen.” Finally, to repeat, the presence of Decorator 1’s work this late in the collection remains one of the strongest arguments for its being one book. The final items of the manuscript, written by the last main and fourteenth-century hand, are, as already mentioned, written in the same ink as the second numbering system for texts in the manuscript. With this scribe comes a visually different decorating system. While we should acknowledge the small number of his texts for comparison, this system is rather more lavish than Decorator 1’s, as relative scores for extent of decoration in Table 2 indicate. Item 73 (St. Blaise, fols. 228v–230v) opens with a rubricated title and a three-line green S; it ends with red decoration on its “Amen” only. The centered red title for item 74 (St. Cecilia, fols. 230v–233v) begins immediately on the next line; to begin its text proper, there is a three-line red S. This and the green initial opening the preceding item are in marked contrast to the typical blue initials with red filigree previously in the manuscript. With no initials within, the text finishes with only “Amen” in display script. Again, item 75 (St. Alexis, fols. 233v–237r) begins with a centered red title on the very next line of the folio, followed after a space of three-to-four letters by an additional comment on the title line: “optima vita.” A two-line green initial opens the text; from fol. 234v to the end, the piece breaks into two columns, ending halfway down the first column of fol. 237r with no decorative fanfare. Finally item 76 (Somer Soneday, fol. 237r–v) has a rubricated incipit, with a spot for a one-line initial left blank (fig. 10). At its fifth line, the margin moves left to accommodate the new longer lines of the piece; there are some red bracketing and paraphs on fol. 237v. Two observations arise, then, in comparing this last system of decoration with Decorator 1’s preceding stint. First, the general appearance is more untidy, an impression reinforced by irregularities in the colored flourishing of first letters of first lines of text. Second, these

function of length; and Table 2 to this chapter does not establish that extent of decoration can simply be explained as greater at the beginning of booklets.

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final items nevertheless have decoration that resembles much of Decorator 1’s general practice: generous opening decoration combined with little in the way of final decoration (Decorator 1’s romances, excepted). Even with the obvious difference in scribal hand in this last section, the force of the new decorating system is enough on a par with that of the preceding romances to finish out the one book with what Liszka calls “an SEL appendix.”49 In conclusion, much of my discussion has been navigating what I have found to be a central contradiction of L: the countervailing forces of enclosing the manuscript into one book and of dissipating that order in an apparently recurrent expansion of successive, or unsuccessful plans for order—a tug of war surviving in the extant manuscript, “the productive power suspended, and, as it were, quenched in the product.”50 At the level of visual presentation on which I have chosen to concentrate, there is, across L, first, contemporary numbering in the same hand as the last main items 73–76; and second, the recurrence of Decorator 1’s stints almost to the end of the manuscript. These features are a significant, if partial, realization of the wholeness of the collection, complemented by other more intermittent physical evidence, particularly Decorator 1’s use of rubricated titles and usually modest final decoration of texts. In this context, the romances, perhaps Havelok in particular, stand out decoratively in the collection, with arguable evidence of their generic distinction here: a conclusion supported by the clear generic groupings of like items across the manuscript in general. The islands of continuous rubricated titles in the SEL texts may well, I have argued, bind calendrical and other topical groupings of these texts rather than identify single groupings; and the last main items added by the late fourteenth-century scribe continue the generous extent of decoration, if not the exact style, of his predecessor, Decorator 1. No doubt more can be said by the contributors to section two of this volume, as they deal with individual contexts of the manuscript. But in all, L arguably remains a whole book that also includes much apparent disorder. Those of us looking for patterns in physical features of the manuscript must reckon with this paradox. We do well to be content with what Nanki-Poo in Gilbert and Sullivan’s Mikado calls “modified rapture.” 49

Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 76. Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “On the Prometheus of Aeschylus,” in The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Shorter Works and Fragments II, ed. H. J. Jackson and J. R. de J. Jackson, Bollingen Series 75 (11 [II]), (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 1272. While Coleridge is here referring to body as a suspension of spirit, he exercises this style of thinking dynamically in polar opposites in all domains. My discourse of countervailing forces, contracting and expanding, is also indebted to Coleridge. 50

3R

3 6

21

2R

2R

6

2B

8 2

MANUSCRIPT FEATURES IN TABLE 2 Title Incipit Opening Display Script Initial Opening Prayer Final Prayer Explicit Final Display Script Blank Space Extent of Decoration Length (in pages)

2 = title, 3 = long title 1 = incipit, 2 = longer incipit 1 = flourishing 2 = some display script and/or decoration 3 = marked display script and/or decoration 1 = one- or two-line, 2 = three- or four-line, 3 = five-line or more 1 = “Amen” only, 2 = short, 3 = long 1 = “Amen” only, 2 = short, 3 = long 1 = explicit, 2 = explicit including title 1 = flourishing 2 = some display script and/or decoration 3 = marked display script and/or decoration 1 = small, 2 = medium-sized, 3 = blank page or more (range 0–21) (range 1–50)50

50 The score for length includes starting and closing pages. Thus, for example, an item that began in the middle of a folio and finished in the middle of its verso would be scored as 2.

Length (in pages)

2R

Extent of decoration

Closing display script & descriptor

2S

Blank space & descriptor

Explicit & descriptor

3B 3B

Opening prayer & descriptor

2R

Initial & descriptor

1R

Closing prayer & descriptor

Min & Pass Christ’s Infancy 2V Holy Cross St. Dunstan St. Augustine St. Barnabas St. John Bapt St. James Grt St. Oswald St. Edward Martyr St. Francis St. Alban 2R St. Wulfstan St. Matthew St. Leger St. Faith St. Ursula St. Katherine St. Lucy 2R

Opening display script & descriptor

10v 22r 29v 30v 31v 32v 34r 38r 38v 41v 46v 47v 50v 52r 52v 54r 55v 59r 60v

Incipit and descriptor

1r 11r 23r 29v 31r 31v 32v 34r 38v 39r 41v 46v 48r 50v 52r 52v 54r 56r 59r

Title & descriptor

Closing folio number

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Short title

Opening folio number

murray j. evans

Item numbering

66

20 24 14 3 2 3 4 9 1 6 11 3 6 4 2 4 4 7 4

Extent of decoration

Length (in pages)

14 15

5 50 2 2 3

2R 2R 2R

2R 2R 2R

2R 3R

2R 2R

2R 3R 2R 2R 2R

2R 2R 2R 2R 2R

6 6 6

2S

DESCRIPTORS FOR MANUSCRIPT FEATURES B C G Q R S V

Blank space & descriptor

91r 93r 93v 94v 96r 96v 104r 110r 115v 116r 117v 121v 124r 127v 130r

2B 2B

Closing display script & descriptor

89v 91r 93r 93v 94v 96r 96v 104r 111r 115v 116r 117v 121v 124r 128r

3R 3R

Explicit & descriptor

29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 38 39 40 41 42

2R 2R

67

Closing prayer & descriptor

88v 89v

2R 3V

Opening prayer & descriptor

88r 88v

Initial & descriptor

28

St. Thomas Prol St. Thom Becket St. Thomas Appendix Prologue Ss. Fabian/ Sebastian St. Agnes St. Vincent St. Paul St. Brigid St. Agatha St. Scholastica St. Patrick St. Brendan St. Nicholas St. Julian Conf St. Julian Hosp St. Mary Egypt St. Christopher St. Dominic St. Theophilus

Opening display script & descriptor

63r 87v 88r

Incipit and descriptor

Closing folio number

61r 63r 87v

Title & descriptor

Opening folio number

27 27 27

Short title

Item numbering

“very like a whale”?

Blue Multi-coloured Green Space left for initial but not filled in Rubricated With red decoration Rubricated title in incipit

1S

3

6 9 6 7 6 6 6

4 5 2 3 4 2 16 13 10 2 4 8 6 8 5

2R

3R 2R 2R 3R 3R 2R 2R

2R

2S

2S

3R 2R 2R 2R 2R 2R 2R

9 6 6 7 7 6 6

2R

8

MANUSCRIPT FEATURES IN TABLE 2 Title Incipit Opening Display Script Initial Opening Prayer Final Prayer Explicit Final Display Script Blank Space Extent of Decoration Length (in pages)

6 4 8

2 = title, 3 = long title 1 = incipit, 2 = longer incipit 1 = flourishing 2 = some display script and/or decoration 3 = marked display script and/or decoration 1 = one- or two-line, 2 = three- or four-line, 3 = five-line or more 1 = “Amen” only, 2 = short, 3 = long 1 = “Amen” only, 2 = short, 3 = long 1 = explicit, 2 = explicit including title 1 = flourishing 2 = some display script and/or decoration 3 = marked display script and/or decoration 1 = small, 2 = medium-sized, 3 = blank page or more (range 0–21) (range 1–50)

Length (in pages)

Extent of decoration

Blank space & descriptor

Closing display script & descriptor

Explicit & descriptor

Closing prayer & descriptor

2R 2B 2B 1B

2V

Opening prayer & descriptor

St. George St. Edmund (K) St. Michael St. Michael iii St. Clement St. Laurence St. Kenelm St. Gregory St. Cuthbert St. Mark St. Phil & St. Jas St. James St. Bartholomew St. Thom (Apost) St. Matthias St. Sylvester St. Eustace St. John Apost All Saints’ Day

Initial & descriptor

131r 132r 136v 141r 147r 149r 153r 154v 155v 156r 156v 157r 160v 165v 166r 167r 169v 174r 175r

Opening display script & descriptor

Short title

130r 131r 132r 136v 141r 147r 149r 153r 154v 155v 156r 156v 157v 161r 165v 166r 167r 169v 174r

Incipit and descriptor

Closing folio number

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61

Title & descriptor

Opening folio number

murray j. evans

Item numbering

68

3 3 10 10 13 5 9 4 3 2 2 2 7 10 2 3 6 10 3

2V 3R 3R 3R 2V

2R

1R

3R 3R 3R 3R 3R

2B 2C 2G 2R 1G 1Q

2R 3S 2S 2S

Blue Multi-coloured Green Space left for initial but not filled in Rubricated With red decoration Rubricated title in incipit

2S 2S 1S 1

1

Length (in pages)

1B 1Q

Extent of decoration

2B

DESCRIPTORS FOR MANUSCRIPT FEATURES B C G Q R S V

Blank space & descriptor

219v 228r 230v 233v 237r 237v 238r 238v 238v 238v

Closing display script & descriptor

204r 219v 228v 230v 233v 237r 238r 238v 238v 238v

Explicit & descriptor

71 72 73 74 75 76

Closing prayer & descriptor

200v 203v

69

Opening prayer & descriptor

199r 200v

Initial & descriptor

69 70

All Souls’ Day St. Edmund Abin St. Martin St. Leonard Mary Magd St. Hippolytus Sayings St. Bernard Vision St. Paul Dispute btw Body and Soul Havelok King Horn St. Blaise St. Cecilia St. Alexis Somer Soneday Attrib Virgin 8-1. stanza Owner inscriptn Moral prec

Opening display script & descriptor

179v 185r 188r 190r 197r 198r 199r

Incipit and descriptor

Closing folio number

175r 179v 185r 188r 190r 197r 198r

Title & descriptor

Opening folio number

62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Short title

Item numbering

“very like a whale”?

4

10 12 7 5 13 3 3

2 6

4 7

18 8 15 13 11 11

32 16 5 7 8 2 1 1 1 1

CHAPTER FOUR

“HER Y SPELLE”: THE EVOCATION OF MINSTREL PERFORMANCE IN A HAGIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT Andrew Taylor Herknet to me, gode men— Wiues, maydnes, and alle men— Of a tale þat ich you wile telle, Wo so it wile here and þerto duelle. Þe tale is of Hauelok imaked: Wil he was litel, he yede [went] ful naked. Havelok was a ful god gome; He was ful god in eueri trome [band of men]; He was the wicteste man at nede Þat þurte [might] riden on ani stede. Þat ye mowen now yhere, And þe tale ye mowen ylere, At þe biginig of ure tale Fil me a cuppe of ful god ale; And wile drinken, her Y spelle Þat Crist us shilde alle fro helle. Krist late us heuere so for to do Þat we moten comen Him to; And, wit þat it mote ben so, Benedicamus Domino! Here Y schal biginnen a rym; Krist us yeve wel god fyn [ending]! The ryme is maked of Hauelok, A stalworthi man in a flok. He was the stalworþeste man at nede Þat may riden on ani stede.1

The first twenty-six lines of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L) Havelok the Dane provide what is arguably the fullest evocation of the voice of a reciting minstrel in Middle English literature, as the speaker calls first for silence, then for a cup of ale, and finally for his 1 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 204r (fig. 1). For all quotations from the manuscript I have supplied modern capitalization, punctuation, and word division, and silently expanded abbreviations.

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audience to join him in praising God, while announcing his subject, the bravest (“wicteste”) and most stalwart of all men, no less than three times. The lines conjure up the quick-witted and full-throated wanderer, in market square or castle hall, as he claims his space and draws together his audience. It is not surprising that scholars once took such passages more or less at face value and classified Havelok as a “minstrel romance.” The category was never fully elaborated, however, and the question of whether Havelok was supposed to have been a copy of a script that a minstrel would have memorized or read aloud, or, alternatively, was based on a transcription of a minstrel’s performance was often left obscure.2 Neither possibility is at all likely. Anyone who has tried to work an unruly audience and gain its attention knows that opening patter must remain free. A minstrel might have to call for silence once, twice, or five times; the audience might respond to the hero’s name, or not; the call to join in pious blessing might or might not be well received. A minstrel could have memorized Havelok in its entirety (and such a feat of memorization would not have been extraordinary by medieval standards); a minstrel might have read aloud the body of the text or recited it from memory (although such extended recitation would have been extraordinary); but the one part of the text that a minstrel could not have used directly would have been the opening introduction. The introduction could have served, at most, as a model of the kind of patter that the minstrel might have used. The alternative explanation, that Havelok preserves a transcription of one particular oral performance, is equally unlikely. While committed oral-formulaists, notably Albert Lord, have perforce made recourse to hypothetical acts of transcriptions to explain how a fully and purely oral art manages to pass into writing, nothing we know about the transmission of high medieval vernacular poetry makes the

2 Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale refer to this passage as a “minstrel-prologue,” which gives “a good idea of the conditions under which the romance was read in public” in their notes to Middle English Metrical Romances (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964), 1:74. J. Zupitza also assumes that a minstrel was working from the written text in his note on Havelok (“20. Vers 2933,” Anglia 7 [1884]: 155), suggesting that because the L version of Havelok apparently skips twenty lines at this point, the manuscript might have been copied from that of a wanderer, who would have needed a book in such a small format. As John C. Hirsh notes, the error is more easily explained as “an almost classic case of eye-skip” (“Havelok 2933: A Problem in Medieval Literary History,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 78 [1977]: 339–49 [341]).

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picture of a scribe carefully copying the very words of a minstrel’s performance remotely plausible.3 Romantic antiquarians revered folk culture; medieval clerics did not. The culture of medieval Latin Christendom and of international court culture was, after all, sufficiently indifferent to minstrel recitation as to leave only the sketchiest record of actual performances. The courts of English kings, barons, and bishops were regularly entertained by the so-called “still” minstrels, those who played the harp or the viol or other stringed instruments and who must, on many occasions, have accompanied themselves in song, but almost nobody bothered to describe what the minstrels sang.4 That a writer might recompose a romance based on a performance or number of performances he had heard seems entirely likely; that he should have produced a reportatio of one, much less so. Given the difficulty of linking any specific medieval romance or its manuscript directly to a minstrel, those who study the Middle English romances have generally concluded that passages such as the opening of Havelok are neither scripts for a minstrel to perform nor recordings of a specific minstrel’s performance but rather evocations of a minstrel’s performance.5

3 Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales, ed. Stephen Mitchell and Gregory Nagy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 124 and 152. Lord makes a significant concession in “Perspectives in Recent Work on Oral Literature,” in Oral Literature: Seven Essays, ed. Joseph J. Duggan (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1975, 1–24), where he suggests that a writer who wishes to compose rapidly and has come in contact with oral traditional poetry “not only can write formulas, or something very like them, but normally does so” (18). 4 Thus, for example, of all the counties surveyed to date by the Records of Early English Drama, one of the very few moderately detailed accounts of an actual performance by a single singer or reciter is given by Humphrey Newton in his commonplace book, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Lat. Misc. c. 66, fol. 104r. In a section dated between 1513 and 1521, he notes that “Christophar parkynston sang a song of Thomas Ersholedon and þe queen of ffeiree,” that he also sang of several battles, and that he did “rehersyn” various prophecies. See Elizabeth Baldwin, Lawrence M. Clopper, and David Mills, eds. Cheshire, Including Chester (Toronto: The British Library and the University of Toronto Press, 2007), 2:829. 5 Dieter Mehl, The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), 7–8; Carol Fewster, Traditionality and Genre in Middle English Romances (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell & Brewer, 1987), 22–28; Nancy Mason Bradbury, “The Traditional Origins of Havelok the Dane,” Studies in Philology 90 (1993): 115–42 (esp. 127); and Ananya J. Kabir, “Forging an Oral Style? Havelok and the Fiction of Orality,” Studies in Philology 98 (2001): 18–48. For an opposing view, see G. V. Smithers, “The Style of Hauelok,” Medium Ævum 57 (1988): 190–218.

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King Horn, too, might be taken for a minstrel’s performance, but for rather different reasons. Here the direct evocation of the minstrel’s voice is limited to the first four lines: Alle ben he bliþe That to me wilen liþe! A song ich wille you singe Of Morye þe kinge.6

But the minstrel’s voice is invoked indirectly as well. In a crucial scene when Horn needs to gain access to the castle to rescue his beloved Rymenhild from the treacherous Fikenhild, he does so by disguising himself and his men as harpers and fiddlers: He gonne murye synge And makede here glewinge [harp playing] Þat Fykenyld myȝt yhere, And arkede [asked] wat hye were. Þen seyde hyt [weren] harperes Jogelours and fiþeleres. He [She] dude hem in lete At halle dore he sete. Horn set on þe benche His harpe he gan clenche. He makede Reynyld a lay, And Reymyld makede weylawey. (fol. 228r, lines 1467–78)

Here we have the image of wandering minstrels, those men who go from castle to castle as the spirit moves them and win ready access, even though they are complete strangers, those minstrels who, in the words of the late-fourteenth-century Emaré, “walken fer and wyde/ Her and þer in euery a syde/ In mony a dyuerse lond.”7 The strongest grounds for associating Horn with minstrels, however, lie in its form, both in its structure of repeated departure and return and its formulaic diction. Horn follows a familiar pattern, that of the so-called “return song,” in which the crucial stages are the hero’s return after long exile, the deceptive story he tells to test the worthy wife (or steward or son), the delayed recognition of the hero, which is finally brought about by a token such as a ring, and the hero’s even-

6 L, fol. 219v. Subsequent references to the L version of Horn will be given in parentheses by line number. 7 French and Hale, “Emaré,” in Middle English Metrical Romances, 1:424.

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tual restoration.8 Furthermore, as William Quinn and Audley Hall have shown, the recurring rhymes in Horn show a debt to the kind of well-established repertoire that would permit semi-spontaneous improvisation.9 Quinn and Hall go so far as to claim that more than eighty percent of the lines in Horn are “demonstrably improvised.”10 However, since the three surviving copies of Horn, despite numerous minor variations within each line, are of almost the same length and maintain a line-by-line correspondence with only occasional lapses, it seems that Horn had stabilized as a written text and that the formulaic language is evocative rather than functional.11 Regardless, the density of formulaic language is still striking. It would seem that when the romance was first composed, perhaps as much as seventy-five years before it was copied into L, Horn was drawing, with some precision, on a contemporary practice. For the readers of L two or three generations later, Horn’s style might still have been as evocative of minstrel performance as the first twenty-six lines of Havelok. But why should romance evoke the voice of the minstrel? Rosalind Field provides one possible answer when she writes “the romantic image of the minstrel is internalized into the romance genre to provide the audience with a sense of the past and community.”12 But the phrase “romantic image” raises a major difficulty. From Bishop Percy’s evocation of the medieval minstrels as “the genuine successors of the bards” in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, first published in 1765, the minstrel has exercised a fascination on Romantic philologists.13 As Richard Price observed, in his preface to his edition of Thomas Warton’s History of English Poetry, “Romance and minstrelsy were the

8 John McLaughlin, “The Return Song in Medieval Romance and Ballad: King Horn and King Orfeo,” Journal of American Folklore 88 (1975): 304–07: and Mark C. Amodio, Writing the Oral Tradition: Oral Poetics and Literate Culture in Medieval England (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), 194–96. 9 William A. Quinn and Audley S. Hall, Jongleur: A Modified Theory of Oral Improvisation and Its Effects on the Performance and Transmission of Middle English Romance (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982). 10 Quinn and Hall, Jongleur, 68. 11 Cambridge, University Library MS Gg. IV 27 (2), fols. 6r–13r, and London, British Library, MS Harley 2253, 83r–92v, described by Allen, King Horn, 2–6 and 12–15; and N. R. Ker’s introduction to the Facsimile of British Museum, MS. Harley 2253, EETS, o.s., 255 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965). 12 Rosalind Field, “Romance in England,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 168. 13 Thomas Percy, Reliques of Ancient English Poetry Consisting of Old Heroic Ballads, Songs, and Other Pieces of Our Earlier Poets, Chiefly of the Lyric Kind (Dublin, 1766), 1:xi.

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prominent characteristics of the middle ages.”14 According to standard accounts, however, the fascination with the primitive, the folk, and the bardic that emerges in the late eighteenth century is part of a specifically modern cultural movement, Romanticism, which is enmeshed in distinctly modern conditions, notably the scientific challenge to faith and the traumatic breach with the past caused by industrialization.15 What Bishop Percy, Sir Walter Scott, and Léon Gautier shared was a Romantic image of the minstrel. Whatever is being evoked in Havelok or in Horn or in the combination of the two in L cannot be that. A fuller sense of the kind of patron who commissioned L may clarify our understanding of its evocation of oral performance. To this end, I would like to explore three hypotheses about the manuscript. The first is that its patron was of a significantly higher social status than has often been suggested; the second is that the patron was from, or had ties to, East Anglia; the third is that the patron felt that the evocation of the minstrel’s voice in the two romances was an appropriate complement to the evocation of the preacher’s voice in the narration of the saints’ lives. Critics have often assumed that Havelok, with its robust hero who is not ashamed to work with his hands, its realistic depiction of a fisherman’s life, and its celebration of good King Athelwold, who made good laws for all people, was intended to appeal to a relatively popular audience. Charles W. Dunn holds that it is “aimed not at a courtly or learned audience but at the common people,” while John Halverson calls Havelok “entirely and essentially middle class” and “a peasant fantasy of class ambition and resentment.”16 W. R. J. Barron goes so far as to extend this to L itself, which he believes was intended for “an audience of limited sophistication anxious for instruction and moral edification.”17 But the manuscript tells a very different story. Its history is complicated, but it now seems clear that the South English Legendary

14 Thomas Warton, The History of English Poetry from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century (London, 1824), 1:14, quoted in Arthur Johnston, Enchanted Ground: The Study of Medieval Romance in the Eighteenth Century (London: Athlone, 1964), 4. 15 See, for example, Johnston, Enchanted Ground, 1–13, esp. Chapter Eight. 16 Charles W. Dunn, “Romances Derived from English Legends,” in Severs, Manual, 1:24; and John Halverson, “Havelok the Dane and Society,” Chaucer Review 6 (1971): 142–51 (150), emphasis in original. 17 W. R. J. Barron, English Medieval Romance (London: Longman, 1987), 54.

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(SEL), the three items that follow (Sayings of St. Bernard, Vision of St. Paul, Dispute Between the Body and the Soul) (booklets one through four), and the two romances found in the fifth booklet were intended to form a single book from the earliest stages.18 Since the fifth booklet is the work of a third hand, which does not appear elsewhere in the manuscript, and since it contains complete texts of the two romances, this booklet could theoretically have circulated independently, as could the others, but there is no evidence, such as rubbing of outer folios, to suggest that any of them did so. Furthermore, as Linda Voigts noted, “all the texts are written on gatherings with similar, if not identical, layout and decoration.”19 The clearest indication that the five booklets came from the same scribal workshop or network is the activity of the three flourishers. The main flourisher, who worked on much of booklet four and some parts of booklet one, also did all the flourishing in booklet five.20 As Kimberly K. Bell notes, “[s]oon after they were copied . . . all of the booklets were collated . . . in red crayon in an early fourteenth-century hand.”21 While this collation cannot be dated precisely, it could easily have been done in the original workshop itself. Judging from the work of the flourishers, L appears to have been produced in Oxford. This possibility is further supported by the language of the L scribe of the SEL, which M. L. Samuels locates as West Oxfordshire.22 (Of course a scribe who was originally from Oxfordshire could have ended up working almost anywhere and might even have preserved his native dialect in his new home. But, judging by their surnames, many of the late thirteenth-century Oxford

18 I draw here upon the analysis of Liszka in “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 75–91. Following Rosamund Allen, Linda Voigts, and Sonia Patterson, Liszka rejects the earlier conclusion of Manfred Görlach, in Textual Tradition, 88–90, that the romances were added at least fifty years later. See also A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One, and Murray J. Evans, Chapter Three in this volume. 19 Linda Voigts, “Bodleian Laud. Misc. 108: Decoration and Literary Text,” Abstract, Manuscripta 22 (1978): 23–24 (23). 20 Liszka refers to a forthcoming study by Sonia Patterson on the flourishing (79), but the project was never completed. Allen summarizes Patterson’s conclusions about L in her edition of Horn, 102–04 nn. 15–16. Patterson presents some of her work on Oxford flourishing in “Comparison of Minor Initial Decoration: A Possible Method of Showing the Place of Origin of Thirteenth-Century Manuscripts,” The Library: Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 5th ser., 27 (1972): 23–30, but with no direct reference to L. 21 Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 31. 22 Görlach, Textual Tradition, 89.

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scriveners did indeed come from the immediate area.)23 The careful layout of the volume, with its off-set initials and elegant flourishing (figs. 3, 5–9), resembles that found in copies of Anglo-Norman texts, both romances and popular religious works such as Grossteste’s Chasteau d’amour, that were being copied as early as the second quarter of the thirteenth century, handsome commercial ventures, many of them emanating from Oxford, where many of the scriveners were clustered along Catte street.24 If this is indeed the provenance of the manuscript, it suggests a great deal about the social status of the patron. The Oxford trade in vernacular texts appears to have been directed to men and women who were culturally sophisticated and socially and professionally ambitious. The owner of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 132/137, a collection of five booklets compiled in the mid-thirteenth century, is a case in point. An anonymous Berkshire lawyer assembled a collection which included professional material, such as legal formularies and notes on various assizes, Glanville’s legal treatise, the Anglo-Norman Roman d’Horn, and Grosseteste’s Chasteau d’amour.25 As M. B. Parkes suggests, this collection would seem to reflect the tastes of “a pragmatic” reader who was “looking beyond his obvious professional horizons,” and was keen to “rise in the world,” although we know of this reader only through his books.26 In the case of the roughly contemporaneous manuscript, 23 As Claire Donovan notes in her study of William de Brailes, the one early Oxford scrivener whose life can be traced in some detail, “It has been suggested that de Brailes came from the Warwickshire village of that name north of Oxford towards Stratford. . . . Many of the names of this community [of scriveners, parchmenters, and other members of the book trade] suggest that they came to Oxford from shorter distances such as Eynsham, Thame, Sandford, Dorchester. Some suggest more distant origins, such as Winchester, Derby, and Coventry” (The de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in Thirteenth-Century Oxford [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991], 206). 24 D. J. A. Ross discusses the copy of the Chanson d’Aspremont in London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 782 and of the Roman de toute chevalerie in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.9.34 as possible examples in “A Thirteenth-Century Anglo-Norman Workshop Illustrating Secular Literary Manuscripts,” in Mélanges offerts à Rita LeJeune, professeur à l’université de Liège, ed. Fred Dethier (Gembloux: Duculot, 1969), 1:689–94. On the development of commercial copying in Oxford, see Graham Pollard, “The University and the Book Trade in Medieval Oxford,” Beiträge zum Berufsbewusstsein des mittelalterlichen Menschen, Miscellanea Medievalia 3 (1964): 336–44, and Donovan, De Brailes Hours, 13–19; and on commercial copying in general, see Andrew Taylor, “Manual to Miscellany: Stages in the Commercial Copying of Vernacular Literature in England,” The Yearbook of English Studies 33 (2003): 1–17. 25 Robinson, “The ‘Booklet,’ ” 57, 64–67. 26 M. B. Parkes, “The Literacy of the Laity,” in Literature and Western Civilization, II, The Mediaeval World, ed. David Daiches and Anthony K. Thorlby (London: Aldus, 1972), 562.

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London, British Library, MS Harley 978, which ranges from cuttingedge polyphony to the lais and fables of Marie de France, and from Goliardic verse to a long celebration of Simon de Montfort, we do know something of the owner, William of Winchester, a monk from Reading Abbey. His scandalous life brought him into conflict with his bishop, and the record of that conflict, in addition to the evidence of two other books that William owned, testify to his energy, administrative ability, and cultural sophistication.27 What is striking about L, then, is that its relatively up-market format has been applied to English material, and English material in which the oral, traditional, and nationalistic elements are all so heavily stressed. As a rule, opening appeals, such as “oyez seignurs” or “listen lordings,” flatter readers by ascribing to them a higher social status than they actually have. In the case of L, however, the patron who commissioned the work was probably a good deal higher than just a “god man.” The French rubrics on folios 64r, 65v, 66r, and 66v and the marginal annotations in Horn suggest that the volume circulated among men and women who could read French, perhaps, as Allen suggests, “a later generation of the same Anglo-Norman lawyers and educated men who bought books like the Anglo-Norman Horn and Lais of Marie de France from Oxford bookshops.”28 I turn now to the second hypothesis, that the patron came from East Anglia. Some initial support for this hypothesis is offered by the origin and copying habits of the scribe of the romances. He must have worked in or near Oxford, either in the same shop as his colleagues or a little down the same street, or possibly, if he was moon-lighting, in the outlying area, but on linguistic grounds it seems clear that the scribe was originally from Norfolk. Angus McIntosh argues that “since the language of Havelok [which is essentially that of Norfolk] is much more dialectically pure than that of Horn [which is predominantly East Anglian but contains some more southern features]” it is “highly probable” that the scribe was “a Norfolk man.”29 Since the case for the unity of the manuscript and for its Oxford provenance had not yet been made when McIntosh published his assessment in 1976, he was not in position to consider the problem that the scribe was no longer 27

Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 110–21. 28 Allen, King Horn, 11. 29 Angus McIntosh, “The Language of the Extant Versions of Havelok the Dane,” Medium Ævum 45 (1976): 36–49 (36).

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in his original county. McIntosh consequently describes the scribe’s preservation of pure Norfolk English as if it were entirely natural. For the scribe, however, preserving his Norfolk English might have taken some effort. He would, presumably, have been conscious that his dialect marked him as something of an outsider and occasional figure of fun in Oxford.30 Furthermore, as Donald Sands notes, he was clearly more accustomed to copying Anglo-Norman texts and had difficulty with the palatal and velar fricatives, which he represented variously as th, ct, cht, t, and c, and also with the dental fricative, substituting t for th and vice versa.31 This minor awkwardness has important implications for book history. It suggests that L was written precisely at the moment when the demand for Middle English secular texts had just become large enough to support commercial copying and was attracting scriveners who had hitherto made their living copying texts in French and were only just learning how to handle English ones. It is also worth noting that the scribe did a better job of copying Havelok than of copying Horn. On his work on the latter, Allen is severe: The scribe is “a very careless copier, having the highest number by far of sheer mechanical errors. [He] does not seem to have been bothered by the need to produce ‘sensible’ copy; even his guesses are unintelligent and therefore obvious.”32 His work on Havelok, in comparison, while it is not devoid of careless spellings, such as lon for lond or we for well, is considerably better.33 Since the language of Horn is close enough to that of the scribe that he should have had no

30 For one of the classic examples of Middle English dialectical humor, see J. R. R. Tolkien, “Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale,” Transactions of the Philological Society (1934): 1–70. S. C. P. Horobin argues that many of Chaucer’s scribes understood the joke and even improved upon it by exaggerating the dialectical differences in “J. R. R. Tolkien as a Philologist: A Reconsideration of the Northernisms in Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale,” English Studies 82 (2001): 97–105. 31 Donald B. Sands, ed., Middle English Verse Romances (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966), 57. 32 Allen, King Horn, 61. It should be noted that Allen attempts to distinguish the errors that might be attributed directly to the L scribe from those that derive from the common ancestor of the L version and Harley 2253. Nevertheless, her judgment that the copyist of Horn is simply “careless” is at odds with the general accuracy of Havelok. It would seem that many of those errors in the copying of the Horn that are not derived from the common ancestor should actually be attributed not to the L scribe’s carelessness but rather to an immediate exemplar that was either inaccurate or difficult to read. 33 Sands, Middle English Verse Romances, 58.

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trouble copying it, the discrepancy suggests either that the scribe had a superior exemplar of Havelok or that he accorded it greater respect. The story of Havelok was especially popular in Norfolk and Lincolnshire. The town-seal of Grimsby, dated to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, shows three figures labeled Gryem, Habloc, and Goldeburgh, while the only other copy of the romance, the so-called Cambridge Fragments, Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 4407 (19), also comes from the area.34 The strongest evidence for an enthusiastic local tradition, however, comes from the Chronicle of Robert Mannyng of Brunne (modern Bourne in south Lincolnshire), in a passage in which Mannyng expresses shock that no written history tells of Havelok, Athelwold, and Goldeburgh: Bot I haf grete ferly [wonder] þat I fynd no man þat has written in story how Hauelok þis lond wan: noiþer Gildas, no Bede, no Henry of Huntynton, no William of Malmesbiri, ne Pers of Bridlynton writes not in þer bokes of no Kyng Athelwold, ne Goldeburgh, his douhtere, ne Hauelok not of told. Whilk tyme þe were kynges, long or now late, þei mak no menyng whan, no in what date. Bot þat þise lowed [uneducated] men vpon Inglish tellis, right story can me not ken þe certeynte what spellis. Men sais in Lyncoln castelle ligges ȝit a stone þat Hauelok kast wele forbi euerilkone [further than everyone]. & ȝit þe chapelle standes þer he weddid his wife, Goldeburgh, þe kynges douhter, þat saw [saying or legend] is ȝit rife, & of Gryme, a fisshere, men redes ȝit in ryme, þat he bigged [founded] Grymesby, Gryme þat ilk tyme. Of alle stories of honoure þat I haf þorgh souht [examined], I fynd þat no compiloure of him tellis ouht. Sen I fynd non redy þat tellis of Hauelok kynde, turne we to þat story þat we writen fynde.35

34 For the description of the seal, see W. W. Skeat, ed. The Lay of Havelok the Dane: Composed in the Reign of Edward I, about A.D. 1280. 2nd ed., rev. by K. Sisam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1915), xxi–xxii. Kimberly K. Bell is working on a revised transcription of the Cambridge fragments. On these, see W. W. Skeat, “A New ‘Havelok’ MS,” Modern Language Review 6 (1911): 455–57 and Smithers, Havelok, xiv–xvi. 35 Robert Mannyng of Brunne, The Chronicle, ed. Idelle Sullens (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1996), 2:519–38. The syntax at lines 527–28 is awkward. I take the lines to mean “[b]ut that is what these ignorant men tell in English; I cannot be sure this is a true story which tells a certainty” [or, “I cannot be sure that this story is a certain truth”]. On the range of meanings of “saw” at line 532, see Smithers, Havelok, 163.

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Mannyng is clearly contrasting local oral tradition, that of “lowed men,” with learned and written history. The reference to stories that men “redes ȝit in ryme” may seem puzzling, given Mannyng’s insistence that he has not been able to find any written sources for the story. Nancy Bradbury suggests, however, that the problem can be resolved by taking “rede” to mean “read out loud” or “relate” or “tell” (all well attested meanings of the word) and concludes that Mannyng is referring to “rhymed tales built on local legends.”36 Such rhymes would have been retold by a wide range of people; among them would have been gifted storytellers, professional or semi-professional entertainers, the same kind of people who would have known how to call for an audience’s attention and to draw upon conventional stories and formulaic language. We have, then, in Mannyng’s account some further evidence that the evocation of minstrel in L was not a literary fantasy or a nostalgic memory of a half-forgotten age but a reflection of a recognizable, current practice. We also have some indication of how well loved the story was among the people of East Anglia. The decision to incorporate it into a volume and the success (even care) with which its Norfolk dialect was preserved would have been calculated to appeal to a patron with a strong connection, whether by birth or marriage, with the region. Thorlac Turville-Petre has suggested that at this period, “The very act of writing in English is a statement about belonging.”37 If so, then both the scribe and the patron of Havelok might be taken to be making a statement about their sense of regional identity. The last hypothesis that I wish to consider is that it is more than just a coincidence that the two romances included in the manuscript both offer such powerful evocations of the minstrel’s voice, and that the patron saw a meaningful connection between the minstrel’s voice and the oral quality of the saints’ lives. Of course there is nothing unusual in combining romances and saints’ lives. Modern scholars have often noted how much the two genres have in common, and medieval writers concurred.38 The much-cited opening lines of The Wars of Alexander list saints’ lives, lays of love, stories of battles, and stories of wantonness as the basic kinds of after-dinner entertainment:

36

Bradbury, “Traditional Origins,” 123. Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 11. 38 See, for example, the comparison of hagiographic and popular romance in Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Saints’ Lives and Women’s Literary Culture c. 1150–1300: Virginity and Its Authorizations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 96–100. 37

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When folk ere festid & fed, fayn wald þai here Sum farand [pleasant] þinge eftir fode to fayn[en] [please] þare hertis, Or [Before] þai ware fourmed on fold or þaire fadirs oþir. Sum is leue to lythe þe lesing [praising] of sayntis Þat lete þaire lifis be lorne for oure lord sake, And sum has langinge of lufe lay[e]s to herken, How ledis [men] for þaire lemmans has langor endured. Sum couettis & has comforth to carpe & to lestyn Of curtaissy, of knyȝhode, of craftis of armys, Of kyngis at has conquirid & ouircomyn landis; Sum of wirschip, iwis, slike as þam wyse lattis [who think themselves wise] And sum of wanton werkis, þa þat ere wild-hedid; Bot if þai wald on many wyse, a wondire ware it els, For as þaire wittis ere wiþin, so þaire will folowis.39

Following a similar notion of what constitutes appropriate and popular material for public reading, numerous miscellanies bring together romances and saints’ lives, a combination Gisela Guddat-Figge finds “pleasantly instructive and edifyingly entertaining.”40 The combination is common; it might even seem innocuous. The “A” prologue to the SEL (which, of course, is not found in L) suggests a more competitive relation, in which the saint’s life emulates the style and themes of the romance in order to maintain its hold on a potentially fickle audience: Men wilneþ muche to hure telle ∙ of bataille of kynge And of knyȝtes þat hardy were ∙ þat muchedel is lesynge [lying] Wo so wilneþ muche to hure ∙ tales of suche þinge Hardi batailles he may hure ∙ here þat nis no lesinge Of apostles & martirs ∙ þat hardy kniȝtes were Þat studeuast were in bataille ∙ & ne fleide noȝt for fere Þat soffrede þat luþer men ∙ al quik hare lymes totere.41

39 Hoyt N. Duggan and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds., The Wars of Alexander, EETS, s.s., 10 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 1. 40 Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, 23. Two of the most extensive examples of such collections are Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a.1 (Vernon MS), which contains the SEL, King Robert of Cicyle, and The King of Tars, and Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck MS). Other examples include Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff.2.38; Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.3.1; Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91; London, British Library, MS Add. 36983; London, British Library, MS Harley 2253; Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 8009; and Dublin, Trinity College, MS D.57. 41 D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL, 1:3, lines 59–65. In Severs, Manual, 2:413 and 556, D’Evelyn puts the total number of manuscripts preserving the SEL at fifty-one (not counting those which contain only a single item), of which sixteen contain the

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Recounting melodramatic adventures in a popular idiom, the saints’ lives do indeed provide stories of “hardi batailles” and steadfast endurance, and they too present themselves as “tales” that men wish to hear, texts that are delivered by a well realized human voice.42 This mingling of the two genres, however, is actually far from innocuous. It problematizes the fundamental claim to truth of the saint’s life and associates it with morally corrupting feasting of a kind repeatedly condemned by church councils. Worse still, for a cleric to draw on the minstrel’s art runs afoul of a symbolic opposition that can be traced back to the early Church’s hostility to pagan Rome and Saint Paul’s condemnation of turpiloquium, the foul and idle speech that mocks the creative force of the logos. As Maria Dobozy notes, in church councils of the high Middle Ages, “While minstrelsy is considered a disgraceful practice as such, when clerics perform it, it is sacrilege.”43 Yet preachers did draw on the minstrel’s art and the possibility of serving as a ioculator dei was promoted not just by the crowd-pleasing Franciscans but also by the austere Bernard of Clairvaux.44 If the compilation of saints’ lives and romances can be seen as a harmless packaging of pious but undemanding material for an unsophisticated audience, it can also be seen as an instance of one of medieval Christianity’s more charged contradictions. In this context, it is worth considering one of the couplets from the prologue to Havelok: “And wile drinken, her Y spelle / Þat Crist us shilde alle fro helle.” The syntactical connection is puzzling, and it in turn opens up the question of which of several possible meanings should be given to “spelle.” If “spellen” is taken to mean “tell a story orally or in writing”

prologue. Of all the manuscripts containing SEL, L is presumed to be the oldest, but see Thomas R. Liszka, Chapter Two in this volume. 42 The extensive play of oral formulas and storytelling patterns was once accepted as direct evidence that the material was to be delivered orally, that is, in the form of a sermon, but these features are now more often considered to be evocative. See, in particular, Annie Samson, “The South English Legendary,” 185–95. 43 Maria Dobozy, Remembering the Past: The Medieval German Poet-Minstrel in Cultural Context (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005), 66. 44 Jean Leclercq, “ ‘Ioculator et saltator’: S. Bernard et l’image du jongleur dans les manuscrits,” in Translatio studii: Manuscript and Library Studies Honoring Oliver L. Kapsner, O .S. B., ed. Julian G. Plante (Collegeville, MN: St. John University Press, 1973), 24–48.

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(MED 2a), then the first line would seem to complete the thought.45 This is the interpretation given by most editors, which they often reinforce by the insertion of a comma after “spelle.” In this reading, however, the second line hangs awkwardly, a subordinate clause with no governing verb. The syntax is easier if we take “þat” as a conjunction, “so that” or “with the result that,” in which case, “[t]he cause-effect grammatical structure invokes a salvific mechanism.”46 In support of this reading, one might note that “spellen” can also mean to preach, as it does in Ormulum, which mentions the “læredd [learned] folc þat spelleþ uss off Goddes hallȝhe lare [holy lore],” and that “speller” is a standard term for preacher. The two lines can certainly be taken together more easily if “spelle” is given something of this sense of preaching or speaking of religious matters or even praying.47 Whatever grammatical order is imposed upon the two lines, the juxtaposition is striking. The minstrel, ale cup in hand, at the beginning of his recitation links his performance with benediction and salvation.48 The context of L adds credibility to his claim, but at some risk to the respectability of the SEL. The evocation of the minstrel’s voice in both Havelok and Horn has long served as a point of reference for the history of popular English romance. Placing this evocation in the context of L as a whole, a manuscript that appears to have been a purposeful commission from a prosperous, sophisticated, and highly literate patron, with a strong interest in the oral traditions of East Anglia, gives this evocation added force. The codicological context suggests at least three things. The first is that the image of a minstrel reciting to a community of English listeners was one that could appeal to a reader of higher social status,

45 For the use of “spelle” to refer to “oral narratives with limited scope and immediate impact,” see Paul Strohm “Storie, Spelle, Geste, Romaunce, Tragedie: Generic Distinctions in the Middle English Troy Narratives,” Speculum 46 (1971): 348–59 (353). 46 Couch, “Defiant Devotion,” 64. 47 In late Middle English the gerund “spelling” begins to be associated with magical charms, although the earliest usage attested by the MED is in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, where Medea seduces Jason “with spellinge of hir charmes” (spelling(e (ger.(1)) (a)). 48 As Couch notes, “Benedicamus Domino” is a versicle, that is, “the first half of a prayer chanted by a priest or deacon and answered by a choir or congregational response (the second half). . . . The audience of the poem would automatically recognize the versicle and be apt to offer aloud the corresponding response—Deo Gratias!” (“Defiant Devotion,” 64–65).

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someone who might also have enjoyed courtly or learned texts, and French romances as well as English ones, but who found a particular solace in being inscribed into a fictional East-Anglian commons of “good men.” The second is that there may be a significant degree of verisimilitude to the image of minstrel recitation as it is found in Havelok. If Mannyng is to be relied on, and people in the area around Lincoln did indeed recite rhymes of Havelok, Goldeburgh, and Grim, then whoever commissioned L would surely have made the effort to listen to them. What Havelok offers, then, is an evocation of traditional oral recitation that is plausible enough to appeal to someone who has actually heard such recitation. To take this position is not to return to the older view that the text of Havelok more or less corresponds to a particular minstrel’s performance. Rather it is to suggest that some elements of Havelok’s fictional evocation of minstrel recitation corresponded to actual oral practice. Of course the question remains which ones, but if one accepts this line of argument Havelok’s status as a witness to oral tradition (however indirect and problematic a witness) is enhanced. Finally, the codicological context lends to the minstrel’s voice something of the moral authority of the preacher. Havelok presents itself as a text that preserves communal memories and strengthens communal values, and does so by using a manner of telling that is traditional, dignified, and moral. This is what the narrator must work to establish in the poem’s opening lines. In the context of L, however, the narrator’s voice does not need to make itself known; when it takes up the Uita Hauelok its listeners and readers have already come to know it as a sympathetic and pious guide; a voice that can both tell and spell.

CHAPTER FIVE

MISCELLANEOUS MASCULINITIES AND A POSSIBLE FIFTEENTH-CENTURY OWNER OF OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108 Christina M. Fitzgerald On the final flyleaf (fol. 238) of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L) are written three poems, each in a fifteenth-century hand.1 On fol. 238r appears a four-line poem of biblical prophecy, beginning “By holde merueylis a mayde ys moder” (NIMEV, 496). In a different hand on the verso are two short poems of moral or conduct-related advice, one beginning “[A]llas diceyte þat in truste ys now” (NIMEV, 145), and the other beginning “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame” (NIMEV, 477). Between those last two poems is an attestation of ownership (fig. 11). It begins, “Iste liber constat” in one hand, then, in a later hand (dated c. 1450–75 by A. I. Doyle), over an erasure, it reads, “Henrico Perueys, testantibus Iohanni Rede presbitero, Willelmo Rotheley, et aliis.”2 These three poems and the statement of ownership are generally noted and recorded in recent editions of texts in the manuscript or in scholarly work on the manuscript as a whole.3 However, they have received little critical attention beyond the descriptive kind, largely because they are perceived by modern scholars, with reason, as not belonging to the

1 Rosamund Allen saw two hands at work here, one writing the verses on fol. 238r and at the top of fol. 238v, and one writing the poem at the bottom of fol. 238v; but G. V. Smithers distinguishes the hand on fol. 238r from the one on fol. 238v, which he sees writing both poems there (Allen, King Horn, 8; Smithers, Havelok, xii). Susanna Fein, Chapter Thirteen in this volume follows Smithers, as do I. 2 Smithers, Havelok, xii, citing Doyle. As Smithers notes, the minims of the v in “Perveys” might represent an n, but he also points out that the u in “truste” and “turnyng” on the same folio, in “[A]llas diceyte þat in truste ys now,” look the same as the v in “Perveys” (xiii–xiv). As I will discuss in more detail below, this potential confusion between v and n merely leads to the same family name being represented in modern print in two different ways, either Perveys or Perneys, but does not actually produce two different possible family names for the L owner. I follow Smithers in using the spelling Perveys throughout this chapter. A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One in this volume reads the name as “Perneys.” 3 Smithers, Havelok, xii; Allen, King Horn, 8; Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 91.

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“manuscript proper.”4 But as Sîan Echard writes, “every form in which a text is manifested is an appropriate object of study, and the signs of passage from one condition to another need to be examined.”5 Though seemingly marginal afterthoughts, the additions found on fol. 238, and the ways they converse with other texts in the manuscript, have much to tell us about circulation and reception of texts, and about the textual practices of late medieval vernacular readers, particularly men of the urban mercantile classes. My purpose in this chapter is three-fold: first, to demonstrate that the “Henrico Perveys” of the attestation can be confidently identified with Henry Perveys, London draper, as Smithers surmised;6 second, to argue that the additions to the final folio reorient the manuscript’s fifteenth-century identity and meaning—for Perveys and for us—to that of a mercantile collection, one especially concerned with the processes of maintaining a mercantile masculine identity; and third, to show that one of the flyleaf poems, “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame,” places L in a textual network of similar manuscript collections created or added to in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, many of which were owned by mercantile men and concerned with instruction in mercantile masculine identity.7 The Henry Perveys named in the ownership attestation must certainly be the London draper and son of John Perveys, London mayor. The coincidence of the uncommon names Henry Perveys and William Rotheley being associated together, as well as the dating of the hand over the erasure to the fifteenth century, point to this identification.8 The surname Rotheley appears only six times in the public records in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; only two of those Rotheleys are Williams, one from a yeoman family in Dartford, the other a goldsmith in London.9 The instances of Perveys in the public records of the fifteenth century are more numerous because John Perveys, fishmon-

4

Fein, Chapter Thirteen, 388. Sîan Echard, “House Arrest: Modern Archives, Medieval Manuscripts,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30 (2000): 185–210 (186). 6 Smithers, Havelok, xiv. 7 In the seventeenth century L belonged to Archbishop William Laud (1573–1645). See Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch, Introduction in this volume. 8 Smithers, Havelok, xii. 9 This fact is also noted by Ralph Hanna III and A. S. G. Edwards in “Rotheley, the De Vere Circle, and the Ellesmere Chaucer,” Huntington Library Quarterly, 58 (1996): 11–35 (19). 5

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ger, was a sheriff and mayor of London; but Henry Perveys appears much less frequently and is almost always identified as either a draper or as the son of John Perveys, mayor, or else is otherwise identifiable as the same man.10 At times in these records, as in the L ownership attestation, the name “Perveys” could be read as “Perneys,” and some print editions of the records transcribe it as such.11 But in all cases it is clear that the Perveys or Perneys family is one and the same family. And as I will show later, both Henry Perveys and William Rotheley had connections to the wealthy and well-known Eyre family, whose head, Simon Eyre, was a draper and mayor of London, famed for having built a magnificent granary at Leadenhall and, later, for being the fictionalized protagonist of Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday.12 Although the Eyre family name is more common, the only Simon Eyre to appear in the records from the time period is the famous draper and mayor of London. The evidence thus strongly points to Henry Perveys, London draper, as the Henry Perveys named in L. Henry Perveys’s father, John, former mayor of London, died in 1434, leaving his son, still in apprenticeship, without a male guardian. But Henry was no poor London orphan of the Dickensian kind; John left Henry and his brother £200 each, and, upon their mother’s death,

10 These are the records I have consulted: R. R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Letter Books of the City of London A–L (London: John Edward Francis, 1899–1912); A. H. Thomas and P. E. Jones, eds., Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls 1324–1482 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924–61); R. R. Sharpe, ed., Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, 1258–1688 (London: Corporation of the City of London, 1889–90); the electronic databases of British History Online (http:// www.british-history.ac.uk) and The National Archives (http://www.nationalarchives .gov.uk); London, Corporation of London Records Office, Common Council Minute Books, Journals 3–7 (microfilm, currently held at the London Metropolitan Archives); London, Drapers’ Hall MS+140, Wardens’ Accounts 1413–41, and MS+403, Wardens’ Accounts 1475–1509; London, Goldsmiths’ Hall MS 1518, Minute Book A+a, and MS 1520, Minute Book A; and Lisa Jefferson, ed., Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths: Wardens’ Accounts and Court Minute Books of the Goldsmiths’ Mistery of London, 1334–1446 (Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2003). The one record I have found that does not identify Henry Perveys by his father or his occupation as a draper—item C 1/33/212 in the National Archives at Kew—nevertheless associates Perveys with property in Croydon. Since John Perveys bequeathed his son property there (as will be discussed), this is likely the same Henry Perveys. 11 For example, it is printed as “Perneys” in the editions of the Calendar of Letter Books, but in the Calendar of Wills, it is printed as “Perveys.” 12 Caroline M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People, 1200–1500 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 55. Thomas Dekker, The Shoemaker’s Holiday, ed. R. L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999).

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Henry and his brother inherited various properties in the City of London; additionally, Henry received lands and tenements at “Biggyng” in the parish of Croydon, while his brother was bequeathed a manor at Benchesham in Croydon.13 Unfortunately, no record notes when L or any other book entered Henry’s hands, so it is unknown whether the book was bequeathed to Henry, purchased, or given as a gift. While he was not in danger of becoming a truly abject orphan, Henry and his experiences might have been more like the hero of the L Havelok the Dane (fols. 204r–219v) and Havelok’s experiences if not for the homosocial network of liveried aldermanic guildsmen looking out for one of their own. As Barbara Hanawalt shows, London’s laws for orphans—legally defined as children who had lost their free (that is, citizen) parent, usually the father—“reinforced horizontal ties rather than…vertical, patrilineal ones,” and thus “London citizens came to rely increasingly on guild brothers or masters to act as surrogates for themselves in rearing their orphans.”14 Thus, although Henry’s mother seems to have still been alive on the death of her husband, according to John Perveys’s will, the responsibilities for Henry’s social upbringing and well-being fell conventionally to the men of status within the social circle to which the Perveyses belonged. As Shannon McSheffrey explains, “in medieval English practice the father was the guardian of the children of a marriage, and fatherless children were orphans. After a citizen father’s death, paternal duties, along with custody of the children’s inheritance, passed to the City in the persons of the mayor and aldermen.”15 In 1437, three years after John Perveys’s death, Henry Perveys was an apprentice for John Selby, vintner, and was asked in an appearance before the Common Council whether Selby had arranged a marriage for Perveys. Perveys replied that Selby had not, but the “uxor magister” had put forth “filia magister” as a match; however, Perveys testified that he had not yet entered into a marriage contract (“non contraxit”).16 In the same day’s minutes, Simon Eyre is recorded

Will of John Perveys, Sharpe, Calendar of Wills, 496. Barbara Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 90–91, 96. 15 Shannon McSheffrey, Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006), 106. This practice became the norm by 1276, according to C. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 268. 16 Court of Common Council Minutes, City of London Records Office (CLRO), 14 June 1437, Journal 3, fol. 201v. Also cited in C. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 271–72. 13 14

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as taking on Henry Perveys as his own apprentice, “ad salvus custod,” for his safe-keeping.17 Since Eyre is officially noted as taking Perveys into his guardianship three days earlier, it is possible that Eyre removed him from his prior apprenticeship because of a lack of proper care.18 Although the Selbys’ plan to marry Perveys to their own daughter was not an unusual one, it might have been potentially exploitative and coercive if the Selbys were using it in any way to raise their estate or take advantage of Perveys’s orphan state.19 However, other than the fact of Eyre’s role as Perveys’s guardian and his intervention in the matter of Perveys’s apprenticeship, the records reveal little of their relationship. Since Perveys did become a full member of the Drapers’ Company, it can be assumed that Eyre fulfilled his duty as master to Perveys’s apprentice, but the quality of that relationship cannot be known. But just as the evil stewards of Havelok the Dane certainly did not fulfill their roles of guardianship, the men of mercantile London also did not always live up to ideals of community and fellowship. In Perveys’s case, he and his brother seem not to have acquired all the lands entailed upon them by their father and through their mother, at least not until John Perveys’s co-feoffes (others who are granted use of the land) released their interest in the properties, as recorded in the will of William West, dated 17 July 1442, and enrolled 18 October 1465.20 Although not quite the disenfranchisement that Godard enacts on Havelok, such an incident nevertheless suggests that in the absence of the father and clear claims to inheritance, even a son of a liveried guildsman and mayor could have his rights held in contention or could be dispossessed. That these properties did not seemingly pass to the Perveys men until the death of interested parties, and were not rectified in any other civic or legal channel (at least not as far as records show), demonstrates the influence and power, for better or worse, of the homosocial structures of mercantile London over individual lives, and the contingencies of individuals’ social positions—contingency and instability taken up, as we shall see, in the poem on the back flyleaf of L.

17

Common Council Minutes, CLRO, 14 June 1437, Journal 3, fol. 201v. CLRO, 14 June, 1437, Journal 3, fol. 201v. 19 C. Barron recounts just such a case, right before discussing Perveys’s situation with the Selbys. The other case regards Nicholas Mokking, who “came to court in 1354 and complained that his guardian had appropriated his property and taken money to marry him off to Margery Malewayn” (London in the Later Middle Ages, 271). 20 Will of William West, Calendar of Wills, Part 2, 552. 18

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Aside from the issues arising from his father’s death, Henry Perveys seems to have led a seemingly uneventful but prosperous life, leaving his children well situated, at least from what surviving records tell us. Unlike his father, he never became a warden of his company, a sheriff, or mayor of the City. He appears only once in the surviving records of the Drapers’ Company, paying his debt towards the expenses of the ceremonial annual riding of the mayor to Westminster to take his oath of office in 1475–76.21 From the will of John Dun, Mercer, dated 16 May 1476 and enrolled 22 June 1484, we learn that Henry Perveys had three children, John, Thomas, and Elizabeth, and that Elizabeth married the gentleman Richard Ive.22 According to the nineteenthcentury genealogist Percival Boyd, who compiled a genealogy for every known historical member of the Drapers’ Company, Henry’s son Thomas married a woman named Johanne, died in 1509, and is commemorated on a brass in Godalming, Surrey, where his surname is spelled Purvoche.23 William Rotheley, one of the witnesses of Perveys’s ownership of L, appears much more frequently in the records of the Goldsmiths’ Company and in civic and county records. Unfortunately, what the records do not address directly is his social or affective relationship to Perveys. What they do tell us is that in 1466 Rotheley was a guarantor of the estate of Thomas Eyre, son of Simon, guaranteeing that Thomas’s orphaned son would receive his inheritance.24 Thus Simon Eyre may be the link between Perveys and Rotheley. Moreover, there are entries throughout both the Drapers’ and Goldsmiths’ records of gold items made for or repaired for the drapers, suggesting a regular relationship between the companies. One such record appears in a 1480–81 entry in the drapers’ books, listing numerous items purchased from the goldsmiths for various ceremonial and presentational uses, including four gilded “garlandes pris” and eight “scocheons.”25 And as they were both wealthy companies, their members would have moved in the same aldermanic circles. Additionally, Rotheley was probably about

21

Drapers’ Hall MS+403, Wardens’ Accounts 2:1475–1509, fol. 7v. Will of John Dun, Calendar of Wills, Part 2, 586. 23 Boyd’s handwritten genealogies are kept in the archives of the Drapers’ Company. Originally loose-leaf, they are now bound in multiple volumes in alphabetical order by family name. Perveys’s genealogy appears under his name in the P volume. My thanks to Penny Fussell, Archivist of the Drapers’ Company, for access to these records. 24 Calendar of Letter Books, Letter Book L, 64. 25 Drapers’ Hall MS+403, Wardens’ Accounts 2, fol. 20r. 22

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the same age as Henry Perveys, as the former entered apprenticeship in 1435, when Perveys was still an apprentice himself.26 Perhaps their apparent connection in the L ownership attestation marked a friendship as well as more formal ties. Although Rotheley’s immediate relationship to Perveys is unknown, the Goldsmiths’ Company’s records provide evidence for his association with record keeping and witnessing in general. In 1444, the Goldsmiths’ Company, under the wardenship of Rotheley, William Walton, William Bismere, and William Porter, began a new record-keeping program in a large register now known as Minute Book A. At the beginning of this register, the following assertion of its purpose was recorded: For as moche as the oolde Recordes of Acomptis made in time past by the good pollitique rule of oure eldres remaynth not of record but be put in oblivion because they were writen in smale quayers & in other strowis [cf. scrowes (MED): scraps] of no value. Therfor William Walton William Bismere William Porter and William Rotheley then beynge Wardeins dide so ordeine this booke to write therynne yearly the particuler Acomptes of the Wardeins for the time beyng to thentent that alle suche acomptes as shull be yeerly made may be the moore opynly knowyn and remayne of Recorde withynne the Crafte of Goldsmythes for evermore, the whiche book was yeven by William Boston Goldsmyth to the said feleship for the same entent.27

In this opening statement of the Goldsmiths’ Minute Book A, Rotheley and the other wardens present themselves and the company to which they belong as taking a particular interest in books (for “smale quayers & . . . other strowis” are “of no value”), record keeping, and bearing witness, and assert the connection of all of these interests to public, social identity, as a means of being “opynly knowyn.” And in witnessing Perveys’s ownership of L, Rotheley also aids in making “opynly knowyn” Perveys’s possession of and identification with a book. Like the description of the register’s purpose, the ownership inscription assumes an audience, even if a limited one, in which one’s identity and reputation as a book owner may circulate.

26 London, Goldsmiths’ Hall, MS 1518, Minute Book A+a (reprint, Jefferson, Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, 471–72 [161]). I am grateful to the librarian of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, David Beasley, for access to the Goldsmiths’ records. 27 Goldsmiths’ Hall MS 1520, Minute Book A (reprint Jefferson, Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, xvii [7]).

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There is one other name, “Iohanni Rede presbitero”—as well as an “et aliis”—noted in the attestation of ownership of L (fig. 11). Unfortunately, the name John Rede or Reed is too common to be able to trace accurately in the surviving records, and so far I have not found a priest of that name associated with either Drapers’ or Goldsmiths’ Company, or with the parishes they most often frequented, though I did find that Rotheley was buried in the south part of the Grey Friars’ church on Newgate Street.28 Given that information, one wonders if Rede was a priest who served the Grey Friars. But he may just as likely have been a Company chaplain or a parish priest. Regardless of his particular association, Rede’s presence and the explicit identification of him as a priest seem to serve an important symbolic function in this ownership attestation. To my knowledge, no other statements of a layman’s ownership of a vernacular manuscript include a priest as a witness; only those manuscripts belonging to clergymen identify owners or witnesses by their religious occupations. Perveys’s claim of ownership seems almost ceremonial and sacred in nature, and at the very least, an act made with a certain degree of solemnity and authority. The presence of multiple witnesses—Rotheley, Rede, and the anonymous “et aliis”—lends additional gravity to Perveys’s claim. The majority of ownership attestations in manuscripts simply claim “Iste liber constat . . .” or “Iste liber pertinet. . . .” When any witness is present, a single witness is most common, and the statement of ownership is phrased thus: “Iste liber constat/ pertinet . . . teste . .;” for example, London, British Library, MS Harley 116 reads: “Iste liber constat Willelmo Bygar teste Roberto holte” (fol. 2*). Multiple witnesses seem relatively infrequent; to date, I have seen only two such cases in two very different types of manuscripts. One example is in a manuscript of Latin theological texts: Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 629. On a flyleaf is the following fifteenth-century inscription: “Iste liber constat [name erased and illegibly replaced] testantibus Ro. Wood, J. Bret, Rob. Hale, J. Lane, J. Foster, et multis aliis. Also: Thomas Lage.”29 The other manuscript, London, British Library, MS Add. 39758, is the Chronicle and Chartulary of the Abbey of Peterborough, largely compiled and written by the monk Walter de Wytillesey, ca. 1321–29. On fol. 299v, 28

C. L. Kingsford, The Grey Friars of London (Aberdeen, UK: Aberdeen University Press, 1915), 125, 142; retrieved electronically from British History Online, http:// www.british-history.ac.uk/source.aspx?pubid=466. 29 M. R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Gonville and Caius College (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1908), 2:478–80.

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a later inscription attests: “liber Fratris Rogeri Bird ex dono domini roberti Kirkton abbatis anno domini mlocccccoxx testibus Fratre Francisco Lecestre et Willelmo Browene.”30 What, then, does the seriousness of the witness to ownership of L, a vernacular manuscript, with its multiple witnesses and the presence of a priest, suggest about the relationship of the owner to the texts contained within it and to the “whole book”?31 It is my contention that in conferring ownership on Perveys, Rotheley in a sense “dubs” him a man and a free citizen, recognizing his existence and status as one who owns, but “dubs” him through the power of the city oligarchy, not the crown. In also witnessing it, John Rede confers clerical authority, a sense of the self as spiritual and moral being. And meanwhile, the manuscript itself, a compilation of religious narratives, romances, and moral texts, some of which blur those lines considerably, produces its own kind of “compilation masculinity,” one that shifts across and among knightly, clerkly, mercantile, and craft masculine identities. Although historian Ruth Mazo Karras has influentially argued that late medieval culture delineates separate and distinct masculinities for knights, clerks, and craftsmen, I contend that L, in its individual narratives and in their juxtaposition with one another, seeks constantly to merge those distinctions, to compile them into one sense of masculinity.32 Thus, in the gravitas of Perveys’s claim to ownership, in the presence of witnesses both secular and religious, Perveys seems to use the manuscript to perform a cultural centrality for mercantile masculinity, appropriating to it religious, romantic, and moral vernacular literatures and their models of masculinity. Furthermore, the way in which Rotheley and the priest Rede stand in witness to the attestation (and possible transfer) of ownership of the book, and thus to Perveys’s identity as owner and reader, mimics the many scenes of homosocial coming-of-age and granting of masculine identity and power—to orphans and otherwise—in the texts of the manuscript. As I will show, the contents of the manuscript and the book itself as object thus mediate, circulate, and produce mercantile manhood as a “compilation masculinity” integral to late medieval culture.

30

British Library Manuscripts Catalog Online. MS Add. 39758, http://www.bl.uk/ catalogues/manuscripts. 31 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 170. 32 Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), passim.

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As Lee Patterson has written, late medieval London merchants were a “class in search of a legitimizing ideology,” and more than a few scholars have seen that search manifest itself in the acquisition of literary manuscripts, including texts as diverse as devotional texts, conduct manuals, and romances.33 Moreover, historian Anna Dronzek argues that the self-fashioning definitions of medieval mercantile ideology overlapped with ideas of masculinity, creating a class identity that was also a gender identity.34 In the combination of romantic, devotional, and moral texts of L, the ideology to which the manuscript contributes is an acquisitive one that takes elements from a variety of masculine ways of being. Perhaps the solemnity of the association of this manuscript with Perveys also manifests an appropriative desire for the authority of both court and church and constructs an idea of masculinity that is dependent on and compiled from public homosocial relationships between a variety of men. The manuscript figures as a token of masculinity, not only as a physical object itself but also as the medium of narratives which provide ethical models for its mercantile readers. In Havelok, for example, a series of moments involving swearing on or reading a book speaks to the ways L might have functioned as conduit and token of a compilation masculinity. As Havelok and Goldeboru make their way to Denmark to reclaim Havelok’s royal birthright, Havelok disguises himself as a merchant. In this guise, Havelok encounters the Danish Earl Ubbe. When Earl Ubbe finally recognizes Havelok as the true heir to the Danish throne, he dubs him a knight, so that Havelok will be of the appropriate class and status to receive the kingship once Godard

33 Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), 330; see also Claire Sponsler, Drama and Resistance: Bodies, Goods, and Theatricality in late Medieval England (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 54–57; Kathleen Ashley and Robert L. A. Clark, “Medieval Conduct: Texts, Theories, Practices,” in Medieval Conduct, ed. Kathleen Ashley and Robert L. A. Clark (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), 1–22; Anna Dronzek, “Gendered Theories of Education in Fifteenth-Century Conduct Books,” in Medieval Conduct, 135–59. 34 Anna Dronzek, “Manners, Models, and Morals: Gender, Status, and Codes of Conduct Among the Middle Classes of Late Medieval England” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota, 2001). Although Karras does not explicitly make this point, she does argue that for urban merchants and craftsmen, “full manhood required maturity, independence, and financial success” (From Boys to Men, 107). Since that was also the idealized goal of the mercantile and craft professions, the class position and the gender ideal become inextricably intertwined. This is Dronzek’s argument.

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is overthrown. But first Ubbe commands the Danish lords to fall to Havelok’s feet and swear him fealty: O bok ful grundlike [solemnly] he swore Þat he [they] sholde with him halde, Boþe ageynes stille and bolde Þat euere wo[l]de his bodi dere. Þat dide hem o boke swere.35

Immediately following the fealty oaths sworn “o boke,” Ubbe dubs Havelok: Hwan he hauede manrede and oth Taken of lef and of loth Vbbe dubbede him to knith. (2313–15)

Swearing “o boke” here and elsewhere in Havelok represents a ceremony which produces homosocial, public relationships through the mediation of a book (likely the Bible here), just as the relationship between Perveys and Rotheley is recognized and inscribed by and in a book, and made sacred with the witness of a priest. Given that Havelok came to Ubbe disguised as a merchant, after having moved up, so to speak, through social ranks from orphan to fisherman to carter to cook’s apprentice, this scene might have specifically appealed to the orphaned draper Perveys, son of a fishmonger, and may have inspired the solemnity of the attestation inscription. The scene also marks the homosocial bond between Ubbe and Havelok, since Ubbe procures the acts of fealty it represents; that bond was previously negotiated through Ubbe’s concern for Havelok’s wife Goldeboru’s safety (in a homosocial triangle Eve Sedgwick would surely have noticed).36 But now the relationship is mediated not through the triangulation of the feminine, but in the absence of it. Where the swearing on and transfer of books are concerned, it is a distinctly masculine world. Perhaps even more significant, the dubbing scene is followed by a celebration that includes conspicuous public reading and consumption

35 Smithers, Havelok, lines 2308–12. Subsequent citations of Havelok are from this edition and are given parenthetically by line number. 36 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985, reprint, 1992), passim. Sedgwick argues that affective relationships between men, particularly as depicted in the English novel, but also in earlier literature, are negotiated and expressed indirectly through shared relationships with and desire for a woman.

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of “romanz” (2328). It is striking that such “romanz-reding on þe bok” (2328) immediately follows physical activities such as “buttinge with sharpe speres” and “wrastling with laddes, putting of ston” (2323, 2325), music from “harping and piping” (2326), and games such as “leyk of mine, of hazard ok” [backgammon and dice] (2327). Although “buttinge with sharpe speres” might be construed as jousting, and backgammon perhaps suggests a courtly game, wrestling, harping, piping, and playing dice call to mind the activities of the middle classes—such as Chaucer’s Miller, or the “riotoures thre” of the Pardoner’s Tale37— and also the activities that guildsmen and civic authorities worried about attracting the time and energy of apprentices and journeymen.38 In other words, the activities of this romance celebration look partly like the urban middle class world of Perveys and that world’s pastimes. Furthermore, that the phrasing is remarkably like swearing on the book, and follows it, imbues the public reading “on the bok” with more weight. Through this meta-narrative moment, the mercantile owners of the book are themselves participating in a knightly, homosocial culture, for they are, by proxy, also “romanz reding on the bok” with the characters. Thus they are made part of a masculine knightly community, interpellated (in the Althusserian sense) as subjects into the text’s social structures and ideology,39 constructed and recognized as men of worship while the knightly world simultaneously plays at the merchants’ own pastimes. The knights look just like them, the merchant readers. Throughout the narrative, the Havelok text suggests the necessity of the various classes in forming the good king; here, the meta-narrative move makes the merchants always already part of the knightly culture.40 Finally, the celebration scene is swiftly followed by 37 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Pardoner’s Tale, 6.601. In his portrait in the General Prologue, the Miller is noted for being adept at “wrastlynge” (1.548), while the “yonge folk” of the Pardoner’s Tale “haunteden folye, / As riot, hazard, stywes, and taverns / Where as with harpes, lutes, and gyternes, / They daunce and pleyen at dees bothe day and nyght” (6.464–67). All citations are from The Riverside Chaucer, gen. ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). 38 Hanawalt cites a “typical” contract for apprenticeship from the period—this one for the London Merchant Tailors in 1451—in which the apprentice agrees “not to play at dice, tables, or checkers or any other unlawful games” (Growing Up in Medieval London, 134). “Tables” and “checkers” may also suggest backgammon. 39 Louis Althusser, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards an Investigation),” in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, intro. Frederic Jameson, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001), 85–126. 40 As Roy Liuzza writes, “As Havelok crosses the boundaries of class in his journey from king to cook’s boy and back again, his progress expresses, in Susan Crane’s words,

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yet another act of “sweren on the bok” (2372), this time by the men who swear to enact revenge against the traitorous steward Godard who betrayed Havelok as a child. The framing of the “romanz reding” with these two episodes of swearing oaths of homosocial fealty is significant. The repetition of the swearing/reading “on the book”— reproduced by Perveys, Rotheley, and Rede—produces romance readers as continuous and metonymic with those swearing oaths of fealty to a king and a class of men. It is not difficult to imagine why Havelok might appeal in general to mercantile readers; as Roy Liuzza remarks, “the action of Havelok takes place in a world which contains both consumers and producers, rulers and subjects, and is therefore economic and political,” and “money and commerce are important considerations in the poem.”41 For decades prior to Liuzza’s writing, critics noted the multiplicity of classes represented and have suggested its appeal to or origins in one of those classes. Derek Pearsall called Havelok “the genuine expression of popular consciousness,” while Dieter Mehl found no reason to doubt that “the poem is addressed not to a courtly, but to a middle-class audience.”42 John Halverson saw the poem as “entirely and essentially middle-class…a peasant fantasy of class ambition and resentment.”43 Much later, Robert Levine, partly in response to Halverson, revisited the issue of audience and authorship, and argued that the virtuous peasant myth was most often used by writers for aristocratic audiences.44

an ‘ideology of cohesion’ in which all classes contribute to and benefit from a peaceful and properly-maintained kingdom” (“Representation and Readership in the Middle English Havelok,” JEGP 93 [1994]: 504–519 [517]), citing Crane, Insular Romance, 47. Putting this crossing of class boundaries in context of the idea of the nation, Michael Faletra argues that Havelok suggests “a broader vision of a single, unified England. . . an England, in short, that in its self-recognition of interclass unity has begun to imagine itself as a nation” (“The Ends of Romance: Dreaming the Nation in the Middle English Havelok,” Exemplaria 17 [2005]: 347–380 [353]). 41 Liuzza, “Representation and Readership,” 509, 511. 42 Derek Pearsall, “The Development of Middle English Romance,” Medieval Studies 27 (1965): 91–116, reprinted in Studies in Medieval English Romance: Some New Approaches, ed. Derek Brewer (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1988), 11–36 (18–19); Dieter Mehl, The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), 166–67; both cited in Liuzza, “Representation and Readership,” 505. 43 John Halverson, “Havelok the Dane and Society,” Chaucer Review 6 (1971): 142–51 (150), emphasis in original. 44 Robert Levine, “Who Composed Havelok for Whom?” Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992): 95–104 (99–100). See Andrew Taylor, Chapter Four in this volume who argues for a prosperous patron of L.

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Although Havelok does seem to reflect “the concerns of a relatively broad social spectrum,” it was nevertheless, he argues, “written for an audience for whom power was both a possibility and a habit.”45 Although Liuzza, like Levine, rejects Halverson’s thesis and finds the identification of subject matter and audience “deceptively simple,” he nevertheless concludes that “Havelok validates bourgeois experience by assuming its perspectives, interests, and values as a social and literary norm. . . .[B]y mirroring the world of its audience the text sanctifies it.”46 But of course, as Liuzza allows, the appeal of a text to its audience or their identification with it is not necessarily that transparent or simple. And Havelok is likely not the sole key to L’s meaning in mercantile contexts; rather, the very heterogeneous quality of the texts of L may have generated mercantile interest in it. Mercantile identity was itself hard to categorize. Despite the centrality of the London mercantile class to the city’s and the crown’s economics, in the late medieval imagination the mercantile man was still largely a liminal figure—neither one who fought nor prayed, nor one who worked in the traditional sense, and somewhere between free craftsman and gentleman. As D. Vance Smith writes: Merchants appear in none of traditional schemes by which the occupations of the world are divided into three estates. . . . Merchants are often represented as literal transgressores crossing over, and collapsing, the boundaries of societies, cities, and bodies. Some sermon writers, indeed, present the marginal figure of the merchant as the greatest threat . . . to the integrity of modern society itself.47

The very language of marginality that Smith associates with merchants is itself medieval in origin. In the B-text of Piers Plowman, William Langland literally and figuratively places merchants “in þe margyne” (B.7.18) of the “pardoun a pena & a culpa” (B.7.3) purchased for Piers by Truth.48 As Smith notes, this is the only use of the Middle English word “margyne” in such a figurative as well as literal sense,49 but its

45

Levine, “Who Composed Havelok for Whom?” 103, 104. Liuzza, “Representation and Readership,” 506, 518. 47 D. Vance Smith, Arts of Possession: The Middle English Household Imaginary (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 129–30. 48 Citations of Piers Plowman from William Langland, The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS, o.s., 28 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1900, reprint, 1968). 49 Smith, Arts of Possession, 144. 46

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freshness for Langland perhaps enlivened its equal aptness for describing the position of merchants in the popular imagination. The texts of L seemingly deal with clearer categories of men and ways of being but actually abound in representations of identities as liminal as the mercantile man. Just to give a few brief examples: King Horn’s adventures (fols. 219v–228r) take place almost entirely at borders, and he frequently travels between what seems to be Britain and Ireland;50 the saints of the South English Legendary (SEL) are themselves liminal figures, representing states of being still in this world but also, simultaneously, already granted access to heaven;51 in St. Patrick and his Purgatory (fols. 96v–103v), Purgatory itself—a spiritual liminal space—opens up for view; Havelok is generically liminal, suggesting enough of the saint’s life that a fourteenth-century rubricator (using red ink) labeled it the Vita of Havelok, King of England and Denmark (fol. 204r, fig. 1); meanwhile St. Eustace (fols. 167r–169v) is so much like a romance that its story gets retold elsewhere as the romance Sir Isumbras.52 Finally, the alliterative poem Somer Soneday (fols. 237r–v) consists almost entirely of a complex collection of liminal spaces and identities into which a fifteenth-century mercantile reader might project himself. Somer Soneday, along with the three short pieces added on the back flyleaf of the manuscript, together provide a comment on the earlier content of the manuscript. All are late additions to the manuscript, though only the short pieces were added in the same era that Perveys owned it. Still, Somer Soneday, added in a late fourteenth-century hand, suggests some later reader or owner adapting the collection for his own tastes and uses.53 Together these later additions also suggest one way mercantile readers like Perveys might have received and interpreted these texts, particularly, as I will show, through their use

50 Technically, Britain is never named, but we assume that Westernesse and Sudenne are in Britain, since they seem to be geographically close to Ireland in the narrative. See Diane Speed, “The Saracens of King Horn,” Speculum 65 (1990): 564–95, and Kimberly K. Bell, Chapter Twelve in this volume. On the liminal settings of Horn, see also Sebastian Sobecki, “Littoral Encounters: The Shore as Cultural Interface in King Horn,” Al-Masāq 18, no. 1 (2006): 79–86. 51 On the liminality of the saints, see Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 52 Thompson, Everyday Saints, 98–102. 53 Smithers, Havelok, xii.

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of the figure of Fortune’s Wheel, or more generally, the idea of worldly instability and mutability. In Somer Soneday, the narrator, perhaps a courtly man, perhaps not, occupies a series of liminal and marginal spaces—such as the boundaries of forests and river banks—as well as an ambiguous identity in between the courtly hunting group he follows and the fortunes of the kings he sees in a vision of Fortune’s Wheel. He never joins the hunting group, nor do the circumstances of the kings on the wheel seem to apply directly to him. One group leads him to the other, but he belongs to neither. As noted earlier, merchants also occupied a state of in-betweenness in late medieval culture. Because of their wealth, the crown was often dependent upon merchants in the fifteenth century, yet merchants could still stand largely outside of the political fortunes of the crown.54 Such wealth could qualify a man for knighthood, but a successful merchant, wishing to survive the upheavals of crown politics, might go out of his way to refuse elevation to the knightly class and the further responsibilities it entailed.55 And yet many of these same men, having refused knighthood (preferring a fine instead), nevertheless sometimes represented themselves and their wealth in knightly or courtly images. For example, John Gifford of Essex, who refused knighthood in 1344, was nevertheless represented as a knight on his monumental brass.56 Thus, late medieval merchants were truly middle men, occupying a threshold between the city of guildsmen from which they came and the court and crown who needed their financial and political support, and whose styles the merchants aped. Merchants’ middling status in late medieval culture opens up the possibility for Perveys’s identification with the Somer Soneday narrator’s position in between and outside of the courtly worlds he observes. Other details of the poem might have opened it up to a mercantile audience in particular. It is telling that Fortune is called a “whelwryȝth” in the poem.57 Turville-Petre understands this as an unusual expression for one who turns a wheel—apparently also used in the “Awntyrs of Arthur”58—but if a reader chooses, he might read the compound

54

C. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages, 14. Smith, Arts of Possession, 26–27. 56 Smith, Arts of Possession, 32, fig. 6. 57 Turville-Petre, Alliterative Poetry, 142, line 63. Further citations of Somer Soneday will be to this edition and will be parenthetical by line number. 58 Turville-Petre, Alliterative Poetry, 144 n. 63. 55

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literally and see Fortune as the skilled maker of her wheel, thus associating her with the middle class world of the trades. Moreover, what the falling king specifically loses, according to the narrator, is “maistri” (130)—mastery. This word, too, potentially associates the world of the poem with craftsmen and merchants, for the goal of an apprentice like Perveys was to become a master in his craft and to gain mastery of his self and his world through that occupational success.59 Both “wright” and “mastery” have more general meanings, of course, but their specific uses and meanings in guild culture might have nevertheless resonated with men like Perveys. This poem also suggests a re-reading and appropriation of texts like Havelok and Horn that potentially inverts their literal narrative trajectory. Rather than reading those texts as the inevitable triumph of the good and noble over misfortunes and enemies, Somer Soneday and the short poems at the end of the L manuscript throw their reflective light on the beginnings of these romances, on their titular heroes’ respective falls into misfortune.60 This re-reading suggests a complexity missed by W. R. J. Barron when he surmised twenty years ago that L’s supposedly miscellaneous collection might have appealed “to an audience of limited sophistication anxious for instruction and moral edification.”61 In Somer Soneday, the narrator witnesses the conventional figures on Fortune’s Wheel speak of their positions and how the wheel must inevitably turn. The poem seems to end abruptly, as if cut off, ending with the description of the “caytif” on the bottom of the wheel as “A bare body in a bed, a bere ibrouth him by, / A duk drawe to þe deþ wiþ drouping and dare [cowering and trembling]” (129, 131–32). As Fein reconsiders in Chapter Thirteen, that abruptness once thought of as the sign of missing lines may actually be seen as part of the poem’s or manuscript’s design; that ending “expresses the bleak finality of moral existence, an apt closure for both poem and manuscript.”62 Or, I would add, this was at least the poem as the manuscript’s owners perceived it, with its final focus on the fallen figure on the wheel. Similarly, the single poem on fol. 238r (NIMEV, 496), a four-line set of rhyming Old and New Testament paradoxes and prophecies written in a

59 60 61 62

Karras, From Boys to Men, 109. Fein makes a similar point in Chapter Thirteen. W. R. J. Barron, English Medieval Romance (London: Longman, 1987), 54. Fein, Chapter Thirteen, 293.

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fifteenth-century hand,63 begins with the prophecy of the virgin birth from Isaiah, but ends with a line attributed to Philippians 2 which echoes in its diction and imagery the “hiȝ” and “lowe” of the rotation of Fortune’s Wheel. In their entirety, these four lines read: Byholde merueylis: a mayde is moder; Here sone her fader ys and broder Lyfe fawȝt wiþ deþe, and deþe is slayne. Most hiȝ was lowe; he styȝe agayne.

Isaye vij Isaye ix Osee [Hosea] xiij Philipen[es] ij.64

The word “styȝe” is paradoxical, as it can mean either ascend or descend (MED, stīen) as Christ both descended to earth and ascended to heaven, and will descend—or come—again; the ambiguity of the tense of this third person singular form, “styȝe,” potentially signifies either, or all, a historic past, a present occurrence, or an anticipated future action, thus embodying the temporal paradoxes of Christian theology. It further suggests that those who have fallen will ascend again (in heaven), as did Christ, or else repeats the idea that the high will be low (cf. Matthew 23:12 and Luke 14:11), and that the revolution of Fortune’s Wheel continues without fail into the spiritual realm from the material world.65 On the opposite side of this leaf, fol. 238v, framing the attestation of ownership, are two more short poems (fig. 11). The first (NIMEV, 145), called “Deceit II” by Rossell Hope Robbins, written in a fifteenthcentury hand different from the hand on the recto,66 reads: [A]llas diceyte þat in truste ys nowe, [D]uble as fortune, turnyng as a balle, [B]rotylle at assayº lyke þe rotyn bowe,º

brittle in performance / rotten bow

[W]ho trustith to truste ys redy for to falle.

63

Smithers, Havelok, xii. Smithers’s transcription, Havelok, xii. 65 The last line of the poem is not explicitly citing a specific verse in Paul’s Letter to the Philippians, Chapter 2, but likely summarizing the idea of verses 8–9: “He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. / For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names” (Douay Rheims Bible). Or perhaps the poet/writer of these lines meant also to invoke Christ’s claim that “whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled, and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted,” here cited from Matthew 23:12 (Douay-Rheims Bible), but also found in Luke 14:11. It is also an oft repeated theme in both the Old and New Testaments, which may account for the somewhat confused attribution here. 66 Smithers, Havelok, xii. 64

miscellaneous masculinities [S]uche gyleº ys in trust almost ouer-alleº [T]hat yn poynteº a man no frende fynde shalle; [W]herfore beware of trust, after my devise;º [T]rust to þi-selfe and lerne to be wyse.67

105 deceit / almost completely in no way opinion

The poem equates the deceptive brand of the so-called “trust” of the poet’s current day to “fortune, turning as a balle,” warning that “[w]ho trustith to truste ys redy for to falle.” As a remedy, the poem urges the addressee to “[t]rust to þi-selfe and lerne to be wyse.” There is a mildly paradoxical lesson here, for it asks the reader to observe and learn from the object lessons of the world (not to mention the “devise” of the poetic voice, especially in the imperative final couplet), but then to withdraw from that world and trust only in oneself—a self shaped by experiences of the world and by social reading and textual communities. “Trust no one,” the poem advises, “except, in this case, me.” In context of the ownership attestation witnessing the horizontal, homosocial bonds of mercantile citizens of London, this advice is additionally ironic. Finally, the remaining short poem of advice and moral guidance (NIMEV, 477), written in the same fifteenth-century hand as “Deceit II,”68 reads as follows: Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame leste þou be founde in þe same [L]ove god and drede shame & so in worship kepe þi name [H]e ys wise and wel itau3t canº bere an horne & blow it nau3[t] who can Better ys to suffer and fortune abide [T]han hastyly falle & soyenlyº slide.69 suddenly

Like “Deceit II,” the poem traces conflicting urges. On the one hand it expresses the desire to win “worship” in the social sphere, but on the other it suggests a warning against tooting one’s own horn. The last couplet obliquely belongs to a type of poetry advising readers to manage wealth well, to save for times of trouble, thus implying the

67 Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 100. Robbins’s edition, reproduced here, presents the presumed first letters in each line in brackets because trimming of the manuscript has cut off those letters. 68 Smithers, Havelok, xii. 69 This transcription is mine. The brackets mark characters that have been cut off from later trimming—at the beginning of the lines—or else have been obscured by discoloration and wear over time (the presumed final –t in “nauȝt”). Superscript abbreviations have been expanded and noted in italics, but I reproduce the lines as they are placed on the page, the first three couplets as single lines.

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interchangeability of wealth and scarcity, at once devaluing wealth and also marking its necessity. And as I will discuss in more detail below, although neither this poem nor “Deceit II” specifies speaker or addressee, they nevertheless share sentiment and content with a body of advice poetry imagined as given man to man, in particular, from father to son. Certainly the imperative aspect in both of these poems creates the illusion of an authoritative speaker, and the poems’ brevity suggests worldly experience crystallized into the most relevant advice. Such poems also recall the Boethian advice of Chaucer’s occasional verse, particularly “Truth” (also known as the “Balade de Bon Conseyl”), which in one manifestation was addressed to his friend and fellow, “Vache.”70 In “Truth” Chaucer advises his friend to “Rule wel thyself, that other folk canst rede” (6) and to “Tempest thee nought al crooked to redresse, / In trust of hir that turneth as a bal” (8–9), and warns that “The wrastling for this world axeth a fal” (16). Such Boethian sentiments about Fortune were by no means uncommon, and I don’t mean to suggest that the anonymous poets of the poems in the L manuscript or Perveys were necessarily reading Chaucer, although “Deceit II” recalls the image of Fortune turning like a ball.71 But Chaucer’s occasional verse shares with these short poems on L’s final page a sense of moral and social purpose and points to the ways in which poetry functions in the social relationships between men and their position in a wider social structure and material world. Furthermore, the falling fortunes and misplaced trust as treated in these poems recall Havelok’s and Goldeboru’s respective betrayals at the hands of their kingdoms’ stewards, as well as Horn’s various exiles through fortune and deceit. And perhaps these poems also go so far as to suggest an extra-narrative fall from fortune for each of these characters as they inevitably die as their own royal parents did, whether through violence or simply the ineluctable process of time.72 It seems, then, that the late additions to the manuscript ask the merchants who owned it to model themselves on the self- and social-governance of

70

Geoffrey Chaucer, “Truth,” The Riverside Chaucer, 653. One poem that shares lines with L’s “Be þou nauȝt to bolde”—a poem from London, British Library, MS Add. 37049 (NIMEV, 558)—also explicitly shares lines with Chaucer’s “Lak of Steadfastness,” so the Chaucerian connection is in some cases direct, if not here. 72 Fein also makes this point in Chapter Thirteen. 71

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good kings and heroes, but not on the fortunes of such figures; that is, they should recognize the fictionality of happy endings, particularly in the romances. It asks the mercantile readers to see themselves as existing in an unstable world as well as a liminal space. The biblical paradoxes and the emphasis on the instability of this world in the later poems might be pointing the mercantile readers toward the saints’ lives as models, even as saints are ultimately inimitable. Collectively these texts also suggest perhaps that the mercantile classes, because of, not despite, their liminality, are superior to their lay contemporaries in classes seemingly above them, for the merchants have readier access to the saints and other pious figures as models precisely because they have not risen as high on Fortune’s Wheel as kings and queens have, as Havelok, Goldeboru, Horn, and Rymenhild have. The formerly noble and royal saints of the SEL, having taken up their spiritual lives, largely turn their backs on their material fortunes, marking them as similarly socially liminal figures. It is “better to suffer” through fortune and maintain equilibrium than to rise to the heights of kings, queens, and heroes. And as we shall see, that particular couplet is the one most often found in other manuscripts, many of them merchantowned. Thus the manuscript does the ideological work of forging a sense of mercantile masculine identity as superior to any other—at least superior to other lay identities—but also, therefore, urges a satisfaction with that liminal place in the social structure as the enabling aspect of that superiority. Moreover, in the situation of Perveys’s name and ownership between two moral poems on the back flyleaf—whether or not Perveys added them himself, and whether or not the poems or his inscription came first73—Perveys is interpellated into and recognized as belonging to a mercantile textual community that trades in moral poetry and the moralization of existing poetry. The final folio of L thus re-orients and re-situates both the manuscript (as object) and its literary contents. It does so by enfolding L into a matrix of other manuscripts through which moral poetry circulates in the form of interchangeable couplets traded and exchanged across a body of poetry made up entirely of such rhyming couplets and frequently appearing in books owned by

73 Both poems and the portion of the inscription added over the erasure are in fifteenth-century hands, but two different ones (Smithers, Havelok, xil–xiii, following Doyle). There is no way to confirm whether one or the other belongs to Perveys.

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merchants and the lower gentry. Their interchangeability lies in their exact equivalence to other such couplets: any couplet of moral or proverbial content might be used on its own or in any sized collection of couplets. One is as good as the next, and they are found throughout vernacular manuscript culture in the late Middle Ages and early modern period. Three quarters of the final poem in L—“Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame”—consists of such interchangeable couplets, which appear in identical form or close variation in at least six manuscripts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Of those manuscripts, three are known to have been owned by merchants, and it is those manuscripts that this chapter will address. As we will see, a number of the poems that share lines with “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame” are explicitly imagined as advice from father to son or man to man and are often self-consciously associated with wisdom derived from books and reading. Together they comprise a textual network and also self-referentially speak of the importance of textual communities in forming individual identities. The first couplet of “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame” appears in two other manuscripts, London, British Library, MSS Harley 2252 and Add. 37049.74 MS Harley 2252, which I will focus on here, is a commonplace book—in the broadest sense of that term, a book of mixed contents recorded by the owner himself for edification or practical use—and it was owned and partly compiled in the early sixteenth century by London citizen, mercer, and bookseller John Colyns. The manuscript includes romances, practical texts, lyric poetry, annals, and other items.75 On fol. 3 appears an eighty-five-line poem in two columns, consisting of forty-one couplets and one triplet, beginning “At owur begynnynge god be owur spede” and addressed from a father to his

74 MS Add. 37049 is a Carthusian manuscript produced in the north of England in the third quarter of the fifteenth century. The limits of space preclude me from discussing it and its relation to “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame” in detail here, but for a book-length study of the texts and images of this extraordinary manuscript, see Jessica Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness: Private Devotion and Public Performance in Late Medieval England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007). 75 See the manuscript description in the British Library Manuscripts Catalog Online (http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts), MS Harley 2252. For more on this manuscript and its social and historical contexts, see David R. Parker, The Commonplace Book in Tudor London: An Examination of BL MSS Egerton 1995, Harley 2252, Landsdowne 762, and Oxford Balliol College MS 354 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998).

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son (NIMEV, 432).76 Lines 17–18 read “Be not to bold for to blame, / leste þou be found in the same,” showing only slight variation from the L poem. Given that Colyns compiled this part of the book himself,77 the mercantile interest in this advice and other counsel like it found in the rest of the poem is clear. Indeed, the lines shared with the L poem are preceded by these lines: “Spend no manus good in vayne, / for borowurd thynge wyll home Agayne. / gyve thow trewe weyghte, mete & measure, / And then shall grace with the Indure” (13–16). The lines move swiftly from a literal management of goods and assets and one’s financial relations with others to a metaphor of economy and measure for the integrity of the self. This is what Smith identifies as the “arts of possession,” the textual and imaginary management of the excesses of the self and household. As he writes One has to know where to draw the line between the work necessary to keep possessing the oikos [household] and the exchange of surplus for its own sake, or where to draw the line between the expenditure necessary to maintain one’s status—the important condition of belonging in the medieval social world—and . . . frivolous waste.78

Together with the shared lines of the L poem, this excerpt of NIMEV, 432, like the rest of the poem, creates an imperative to manage status, integrity, and identity—particularly concerning relations among men (“no manus good,” the address from father to son, the concern for “blame”)—in language resonant of mercantile culture. The final couplet of “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame” is the one most commonly found in other manuscripts, appearing in MS Add. 37049 in the same poem (NIMEV, 558) where we find also the first couplet of the L verse, and also in Windsor, St. George’s Chapel, MS E.1.1; London, British Library, MS Harley 665; and Oxford, Balliol College, MS 354.79 The latter is most pertinent here for its connection

76 MS Harley 2252, fol. 3; edition: F. J. Furnivall, ed., Queene Elizabethes Achademy, EETS, e.s., 8 (London: N. Trübner and Co., 1869), 68–70. 77 From the MS Harley 2252 description, British Library Manuscripts Catalog Online: the manuscript “comprises two booklets (ff. 54–85, 86–133v) bound together with texts copied by John Colyns.” 78 Smith, Arts of Possession, 21. 79 The poem on fol. 95r of Windsor Castle, St. George’s Chapel, MS E.1.1, shares a NIMEV number (432) with the MS Harley 2252 poem discussed above; however, the St. George’s Chapel, MS E.1.1 poem is much shorter, consisting of only four couplets. It is edited and printed by M. R. James, “The Manuscripts of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor,” The Library: A Quarterly Review of Bibliography, 4th ser., 13 (1933): 55–76 (74).

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to mercantile culture. The London citizen and grocer Richard Hill collected and compiled individual short texts in the manuscript that is now Balliol, MS 354. As in the other manuscripts just noted, it reworks the final couplet of “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame” into another short poem, this one a twelve-line poem warning against the fickleness of Fortune, “Who so off welth takyth non hede” (fol. 160r / page 341).80 The poem displays a particularly mercantile, economic interpretation of the dangers of Fortune and the necessity of being prepared for her fickleness: Who so off welth takyth non hede, He shall fynd defawt in tyme of need. This world is mvtable, so seyth sage, Therfor gader in tyme, or þou fall to age. In welth be ware of woo, what so þe happes, & bere þe evyn for drede of after-clappes [late, unexpected misfortune]. Fortune ys variant, ay tornyng her whele, He ys wyse þat ys ware or he harm fele. Better yt ys suffer, & fortune to abyde, Than hastely to clyme, & sodeynly to slide. Know or þou knyte, & then þou mayst slake, Yff þou knyte or þou know, than yt ys to late.81

Like the L poem with which it shares lines, this poem is not explicitly imagined as a father’s advice to his son; however, Hill’s children’s names are inscribed in his book (fol. 17r–v), and John Hill, Richard’s eldest son, inherited ownership of it.82 The book might have served as a kind of primer or schoolbook, very literally instructing Hill’s son in mercantile masculinity and how “he” might be “wyse” and “ware.” James mistakenly transcribes “hastely” as “lietely” in the couplet “Better it is for tyme to abyd / Then hastely to clym and sodenly to slyd” (lines 3–4). The poem of MS Harley 665 (fol. 281r) consists of two couplets (NIMEV, 513) and presents the shared lines as “Better it is tarye and fortoun to abyd / Then hastely to clymbe and sodenly to slide” (my transcription). 80 Carleton Brown and Rossell H. Robbins, Index of Middle English Verse (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1949), item 4137. This item has been deleted from NIMEV presumably for the manuscript’s early sixteenth-century date and because the poem is also indexed in W. A. Ringler, Jr., Bibliography and Index of English Verse in Manuscript 1501–1558 (London: Mansell, 1992), item 1974. 81 Roman Dyboski, ed., Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems, from the Balliol MS. 354, Richard Hill’s Commonplace-Book, EETS, e.s., 101 (1908, reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1937), 139. 82 Dyboski, Songs, Carols and other Miscellaneous Poems, xiii–xv; Janine Rogers, “Courtesy Books, Comedy, and the Merchant Masculinity of Oxford Balliol College MS 354,” Medieval Forum 1 (2002), http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/Volume%201/ Rogers.html (no pagination).

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Moreover, for its original audience, such a poem might have carried with it the assumptions of a fatherly voice dispensing advice to a son or sons, since lines 1–4 here also appear as lines 23–26 in the long poem of fatherly counsel from John Colyns’ book, MS Harley 2252, discussed above. It is worth noting, too, that the similar long poem in MS Add. 37049, the Carthusian manuscript briefly mentioned above, shares a couplet with this poem from Hill’s commonplace book; the first couplet of the poem from Hill’s book is rendered in the MS Add. 37049 poem as “Who so in welthe take no hede / Sal fynde defawte in tyme of nede” (fol. 85v, 61–2). Another book containing a verse from the L poem that may have been a primer instructing a young man is Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D 328, once owned by Walter Pollard, a late fifteenthcentury citizen of Plymouth from a mercantile family.83 Among the manuscript’s collection of unrhymed proverbs appears the third couplet of “Be þou nauȝt to bolde,” regarding not blowing one’s horn; here it is not part of a large poem but stands on its own as proverb 48, written as one line of English, followed by a variation in Latin (fol. 142r): “He ys wyse and wel y-taȝth þat beryth a horne & blow hym noȝth. / Doctus portare qui sit cornu neque flare.”84 Although it is not known whose hand wrote the proverbs, it is not impossible that it was Pollard himself.85 His book may have originally belonged to him as a youth, thus making this book a literal work of instruction for a young man.86 In addition to the couplet Pollard’s book shares with L’s “Be þou nauȝt to bolde,” there is another connection to L: coincidentally, the “horne” couplet follows a proverb whose English version appears in Havelok. In Pollard’s book, the proverb (number 47) reads: “Wold’ syne makyth new shame. / Sepe nouum vetera faciunt peccata pudorem” (fol. 142r).87 In Havelok, the line appears as “Old sinne makes newe shame” (2462). It is certainly not unusual to find proverbial sayings in narrative poems such as Havelok, but the confluence of

83 Sanford B. Meech, “A Collection of Proverbs in Rawlinson MS D 328,” Modern Philology 38 (1940): 113–132 (113). See also Sponsler, Drama and Resistance, 54. 84 Meech, “A Collection of Proverbs,” 121. 85 Meech, “A Collection of Proverbs,” 113, citing personal correspondence with J. R. Liddell of the Bodleian Library. 86 Nicholas Orme regards the manuscript as a one of a group of “fifteenth-century school notebooks” (Medieval Children [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001], 146, 352 n. 58). 87 Meech, “A Collection of Proverbs,” 121.

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proverbial writing in the later additions of L and other manuscripts with similar readers and owners suggests a middle class or mercantile way of reading that emphasizes moral and practical wisdom. What is more, though many of these proverbs have a general applicability, many others still are either expressed with masculine pronouns or deal explicitly with men’s roles as fathers, sons, or husbands, as in proverb 68: “Sepe probat natus de qua sit stirpe creatus. / Sygge [says] fader, sygge sonne.”88 The moral couplets of “Be þou nau3t to bolde to blame” not only circulated in other manuscripts, but seem also to have inspired a later, unknown reader to make his own moralizing mark in a margin of L. A couplet very similar to the type that makes up all the poems connected more directly to “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame” appears on its own in L in the left margin of St. Michael on fol. 132v in a late sixteenth-century hand; it reads, “He that to wronges and angere is thrall / Ever his wyte hath no power at all.” Thus, the later additions to L that seemingly do not belong to the “manuscript proper” nevertheless shape an even later reader’s perception of the use and meaning of the manuscript to the extent that he, too, adds a moral couplet to the margins of the manuscript. Together the collection of manuscripts described here, each one with poems sharing interchangeable couplets with “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame,” and some sharing lines with each other, suggests L’s connection to a network of texts and readers larger and more dynamic than previously thought. It puts L into a textual community of real and imagined counselors and advisees, particularly men, across time and space. In addition, for those manuscripts to which the poems discussed were added later, and for those like Hill’s and Colyns’s books which were compiled by their owners, the web of interchangeable couplets suggests a social pattern of mercantile readers shaping manuscript collections—whether from scratch or in retrospect—to their profit and purposes, particularly in imagining, memorializing, and creating their social self and identity—even as such identities thus reveal themselves to be as interchangeable as the couplets shaping them. They suggest readers actively involved in their own placement in literary and mercantile networks as readers, shapers, and, especially, traders of texts and manuscripts. For L, this activity re-orients the manuscript as

88

Meech, “A Collection of Proverbs,” 124.

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inextricably part of this late medieval and early modern reading and collecting culture, and it reshapes the texts in it in terms of mercantile men’s ethical and moral reading practices. Those practices are at once social and outwardly directed and, paradoxically, also acts of privatization and inward-turning. In the circulation of these couplets, they act as conduits for the readerly relationships between mercantile London readers across time, linking their manuscripts in a masculine reading culture of the late Middle Ages and early modern period. And yet the couplets themselves and the poems in which they are incorporated urge readers repeatedly and insistently to turn away from the instability of the social and material and instead only “[t]rust to þi-selfe and lerne to be wyse” (“Deceit II,” 8). In this way the couplets trace the contradictions and complications of mercantile masculinity itself, marking its inescapable social and ethical components even as they simultaneously express anxieties about the liminal and unstable position of mercantile men in worldly structures of status and power. Thus, like many of the L texts, the moral poems, inscribed as they are in the flyleaves and margins of the manuscripts and tied to a network of interchangeable couplets, suggest the liminal or socially diffuse identity of individual mercantile men and mercantile masculinity more generally. Finally, the manuscript itself serves as a go-between among the mercantile men of the ownership attestation, Perveys and Rotheley, and among the collectors of the interchangeable couplets; it is also a gobetween connecting their mundane world and the moral, imaginative, and spiritual worlds of the manuscript’s texts. In the acknowledgement of ownership to which the attestation witnesses, the manuscript becomes the token through which male, public, homosocial relationships are signified. That this exchange is solemnized by witnesses which include a priest, and that the manuscript is a collection of romance, moral, and devotional texts whose margins, liminal spaces, and interstices nevertheless suggest the presence of mercantile audiences and readers, suggest the ways in which merchants might have actively used texts as objects and ideas for self-fashioning purposes, for creating a compilation masculinity.

PART TWO

THE MANUSCRIPT AND ITS TEXTS

CHAPTER SIX

A TEXT FOR ITS TIME: THE SANCTORALE OF THE EARLY SOUTH ENGLISH LEGENDARY Diane Speed* Any literary text is not only a product of its time but also a message for its time. Exploring a text from either point of view will involve a study of the text in relation to its context. The purpose of this chapter is to identify ways in which the sanctorale of the South English Legendary (SEL), found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L), functions as a text for its time. It does so through a study of the text in relation to aspects of its context, for which its codicological environment affords the most immediate evidence beyond the text itself. The process of compilation apparent in L points to a series of broadly thoughtful rather than haphazard acts, whereby each textual item in the codex is effectively some kind of comment on what the other texts meant to the various compilers and what the compilers expected the texts they were dealing with to mean to their target readerships. The textual interconnectedness scholars have already found disallows any possibility that these texts were bound in a single volume for no other reason than to prevent small units of parchment from going astray. The late thirteenth-century sanctorale is plainly by far the longest of all the L texts and also, arguably, the base text to which all else was added, with the special exception of the preceding temporale that went with this sanctorale to constitute the late thirteenth-century SEL. Yet both the temporale and the other L texts may be understood to offer implicit readings of the late thirteenth-century sanctorale from the various historical moments at which they became associated with it. A text’s inevitable reflection of its culture and its intended impact on its culture, interrelated as they are through their shared concern with context, may be regarded as issues caught up in the one meta-issue of the text’s literary mythology. In the mid-twentieth century, Roland

* I am grateful for permission of the Bodleian Library over the years to consult the manuscript in situ and for the provision of a microfilm for checking.

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Barthes in particular drew attention to the “mythology” of literary texts,1 and this discursive concept has been fundamental to much literary criticism since that time. Commonly, “literary mythology” refers to the ideologies an author articulates in a literary text that has originated with him or her, whatever the particular form of it in question (for example, whatever edition), and whatever its intertextual references to other, pre-existing texts—directionally normative ideologies that both belong to the text’s cultural ethos and participate in the ongoing construction of that ethos. Developed as a concept primarily related to modern literature, in which “the text” is typically regarded unproblematically as a single entity with a single author, literary mythology is nevertheless a useful lens through which to approach a study of both the medieval codex that is the subject of this book, and the sanctorale of the SEL that is its dominant component text, precisely because investigation of either through this lens immediately poses questions that identify a characterizing range of problematics. The processes by which the L sanctorale was composed and its parts ordered in the codex as it now stands were complex and remain less than certain. Undoubtedly, however, the history of the L sanctorale is layered, even as the history of the whole codex is layered, and each stage of compilation of the sanctorale, on the one hand, and the codex, on the other, represents the construction of a particular literary mythology. In order to address the literary mythology of the L sanctorale we must be clear about which stage in its development we are addressing, in respect of the text in itself and by extension in respect of the inferences to be drawn from its association with other texts in the codex. The immediate question is which items actually comprise the L sanctorale. The late thirteenth-century sanctorale brings together sixty sanctorale texts celebrated on fixed feasts of the ecclesial year, including legends of men and women deriving variously from the biblical, early-church, and medieval world; all of these legends appear in some form, albeit in different orders, in other SEL manuscripts. After five other texts, two further standard SEL legends, SS. Blaise and Cecilia, were added in about a century later, and at the same time their scribe added a third, non-standard legend—not otherwise found in SEL manuscripts—that of St. Alexis. Whereas SS. Blaise and Cecilia

1

Roland Barthes, Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (London: Vintage, 1972; originally published, Paris: Édition du Seuil, 1957), passim.

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display the standard SEL versification of loosely septenary couplets, which were well established as a medium for English verse narrative by the late thirteenth century, St. Alexis is written in tail-rhyme stanzas, which came into use rather later (in the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries) as a medium for English verse narrative.2 By dint of their inclusion at this stage all three later legends may be viewed as texts of and for that later time, as distinct from the time of the earlier sanctorale block. If, however, the reader approaches the L sanctorale as a representation of the standard composition, the first two of the later legends will at once be identifiable as belonging to the sanctorale of the SEL.3 From yet another point of view, the third legend, though not properly part of the SEL as that has regularly been defined in modern scholarship, was apparently considered by the St. Alexis scribe-compiler to be an acceptable addition to the SEL. In the mid-fifteenth-century SEL of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 779, over a quarter of the legends are unique and yet treated by modern scholars as belonging to the SEL.4 The L sanctorale, it appears, was understood by the later scribe to be a dynamic text open to ongoing development. There is, arguably, no “right” definition of the bounds of the sanctorale—what those might be thought to constitute will depend on the terms of a particular study. A further question is how the sanctorale is related to the other L texts. For a start, even if all of the three later legends are disallowed, the late thirteenth-century sanctorale alone clearly dominates the present-day codex, in respect of both volume and position. The temporale, occupying the first twenty-two folios of the presentday codex, and its companion sanctorale, occupying the next one hundred and seventy-six folios, together occupy fols. 1r–198r (most of that

2 Details of the occurrence of particular legends in the SEL manuscripts may be found in Görlach, Textual Tradition: St. Blaise, 143–44; St. Cecilia, 205–06; tabulated details with no reference to St. Alexis, 306–09. For the development of the tailrhyme stanza and its use for English verse narrative see Rhiannon Purdie, Anglicising Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2008), esp. 13–65. 3 These two are included in Horstmann’s ESEL, whereas St. Alexis is not. This situation affords a normative reading of the L sanctorale from and for Horstmann’s conservative late nineteenth-century context. 4 For MS Bodley 779, see Görlach who describes it as “the most comprehensive SEL collection” and dates it no later than 1450; thirty-seven legends out of one hundred and thirty-five are unique to this manuscript (Textual Tradition, 75–77). I am grateful for the permission of the Bodleian Library to consult this manuscript in situ and for the provision of a microfilm for checking.

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page), in quires 1 to 18, the two written in the one hand. Because the various items that constitute the remainder collectively occupy only forty folios, these texts together account for over four-fifths of the whole codex; and the late thirteenth-century sanctorale alone accounts for almost three-quarters of the codex by sheer volume. The numbering of the extant texts, a process undertaken on two separate occasions in the course of the fourteenth century, indicates that seven temporale items have been lost from the beginning at a post-medieval stage, in that the two temporale items beginning the extant codex are numbered 8 and 9 (fig. 3).5 It is not now possible to know how long the full temporale would have been, but the presence of seven more temporale items would obviously have made the late thirteenth-century SEL as a whole even more dominant in respect of volume. Again, apart from the two preceding temporale items that are equally parts of the one SEL, the late thirteenth-century sanctorale is positioned at the head of the codex. Datable to ca. 1280–1300, and considered the earliest of all sixty-two known copies of the SEL,6 the late thirteenth-century temporale and sanctorale were also written out at least as early as any other text in L. Yet L is a compilation whose various parts were brought together at certain times, regardless of when those parts were individually written out. In chronological terms, the late thirteenth-century SEL may further be identified as the base text of the codex, to which all others have been added.7 A modern scholar may choose to address the seman-

5 Items from the temporale to the end of the Dispute Between the Body and the Soul were numbered in the early fourteenth century (see fig. 6, below the running title, and fig. 7, thirty-one lines down in the right margin), and this numbering was confirmed in the numbering of the extant codex as a whole in the late fourteenth-century (figs. 1, 3–10). The first seven items were lost after the mid-fifteenth century. See Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 31. See also Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch, Introduction, and A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One in this volume. 6 For a date of ca. 1280 see Thomas R. Liszka, “The South English Legendaries,” in The North Sea World in the Middle Ages: Studies in the Cultural History of NorthWestern Europe, ed. Thomas R. Liszka and Lorna E. M. Walker (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), 243–80 (243); for a date of ca. 1300 see Görlach, Textual Tradition, 89. On the vagaries of dating, see also Thomas R. Liszka, Chapter Two in this volume. For the number of manuscripts now known, see Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor, and Ruth Evans, eds., The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280–1520 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 196. 7 For details of the compilation, see especially Thomas R. Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 75–91. The manuscript has been described by editors of its various sections; see

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tic relationship of the L texts to each other from a perspective of the present moment, comprehending them simultaneously, but from an historical point of view the order in which they were brought into association with each other will, potentially, affect our understanding of them as texts of and for their respective times. That the late thirteenth-century temporale and sanctorale together constitute the base text of the codex is evident from the manner in which the remaining texts follow.8 The unused space at the end of the sanctorale in quire 18, from the bottom of fol. 198r to fol. 203v, is occupied by the three non-SEL religious texts written consecutively without folio breaks. The first two, the Sayings of St. Bernard and the Vision of St. Paul, are both written by the SEL scribe (Scribe A)9 with no more than a larger initial S between the two (fol. 199r, col. 2), in line with his practice when moving from one sanctorale item to the next. They are attached to the end of the sanctorale where it finishes, on the same folio, and it is likely that these texts will offer readings of the sanctorale with which the same scribe has just been engaged. The third text, Dispute Between the Body and the Soul, beginning half-way down fol. 200v, is copied by Scribe B; in theory, it, too, may offer a reading of the sanctorale, though it may more immediately offer a reading of the preceding text or texts.10 In the case of these three texts the scribes are equally the compilers. The two romances, Havelok the Dane and King Horn, follow (fols. 204r–228r) in quires 19–21, Horn beginning immediately after the end of Havelok without a break (fol. 219v, halfway down col. 1, fig. 9).11 The two, copied by Scribe C, begin a new quire and appear to have pre-existed as a booklet before being attached en bloc to the former part of the codex. It might just be possible to see Havelok, or the two romances together, as the base text of the codex, to which the preceding quires were added. Quite apart from the relative bulk of the SEL, or of the sanctorale alone, however, this was most unlikely to have

especially Smithers, Havelok, xi–xvi. For a recent overview of the scholarship see Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 29–32. 8 See Bell and Couch, Introduction, and Edwards, Chapter One for detailed discussions of the codicological and paleographic features of L. 9 For the distinction between the four main hands in the manuscript and the hands of other minor items see Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 76. 10 See J. Justin Brent, Chapter Eight in this volume for a reading of these three poems. 11 On this point, see Kimberly K. Bell, Chapter Twelve in this volume.

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been the perception of the compiler who brought the two sections of the codex together. Adding some quires to others in the manuscript culture of the day typically meant adding to the end, not the beginning, except when a now-preceding text was written in later on in a space clearly left blank amongst earlier items. This compiler, who may or may not have been identical with the actual scribe of the romances, had a booklet containing two good romances in need of a suitable home, and he placed them in one that was already established, a very substantial volume with compatible texts in it. The person who copied in the extra saints’ legends after the romances (Scribe D) gave a clear implicit judgment on the matter in doing so. The remainder of quire 21 and quire 22, fols. 228v–237v, contain, in a distinctly later hand dated to the late fourteenth century, SS. Blaise, Cecilia, and Alexis, followed by the poem Somer Soneday (fig. 10). Whether Scribe D, who was also the compiler of these texts, regarded the two pious romances, with their somewhat saintly heroes, as a mere variation on the theme of the sanctorale or as a clear interruption to it, his appendix to the late thirteenth-century sanctorale, enclosing the romances from both sides in a kind of parenthesis, strongly suggests that he regarded the sanctorale, or the SEL as a whole, as the main text. 12 It has been argued that each of the two temporale items belonged to one booklet and that its sanctorale belonged to two further booklets, the second of these containing also the three non-SEL religious items, while the whole of the rest of the codex all belonged to one last booklet.13 If this booklet scheme or another like it is valid, it would underline the dominance and primacy of the late thirteenth-century SEL. None of the other texts as copied into L has influenced the production of the late thirteenth-century Legendary (the temporale does not influence the sanctorale, it introduces it). The late thirteenth-century SEL is thus in a different position from that of the romances, whose meaning in the context of the codex was being constructed when they were physically brought into association with the SEL. What any of the other texts may do, however, is to offer implicit medieval readings of the SEL. Such readings, arguably, highlight matters that would have

12 Quire 23, the last in the codex, contains three short poems in other late hands, using both sides of fol. 238. See Christina M. Fitzgerald, Chapter Five, and Susanna Fein, Chapter Thirteen, in this volume for readings of these poems. 13 For the booklet scheme see Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” passim.

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held particular significance for contemporary readers and presented them with a normative understanding of who they were and should be. Implicit readings of the sanctorale by the other main texts of the codex are argued below, with a more extensive discussion, in the space available, of those included by the scribe-compiler of the late thirteenth-century SEL. The Temporale Reads the Sanctorale It has been said that the subjects of temporale narratives encompass “everything non-hagiographical from the Creation to Doomsday.”14 The temporale items associated with the SEL, however, are primarily associated with the lives of Christ and Mary (the one exception being a poem on Rogationtide), and the focus of both extant temporale texts in L is the person of Christ. Of course, the nature of the lost temporale items is unknown; but, underlined by the extant concentrated focus on Christ himself, the very presence of the temporale, leading into the sanctorale, makes a major statement about the literary mythology of the sanctorale. Questions of detail concerning the extant order of items in the temporale and the late thirteenth-century sanctorale, I would argue, do not problematize this larger claim. The main questions of detail are as follows. The present order of the temporale, in which the first item, the Ministry and Passion, referring to the last part of Christ’s earthly life, precedes the second item, the Infancy of Jesus Christ, referring to the beginning of his earthly life, is obviously not chronological. It has been suggested that Infancy may have been added to the temporale as an afterthought, because it appears to have been composed separately from the SEL: first, unlike the Ministry and Passion, which is written in the usual septenary couplets of the sanctorale, Infancy is written in loosely tetrameter couplets; second, Infancy is one of only three temporale items found in SEL manuscripts that appear in only one manuscript;15 and third, unlike the rest of the SEL, it has been translated from French.16 14 O. S. Pickering, “The Temporale Narratives of the South English Legendary,” Anglia 91 (1973): 425–55 (427). 15 In having a different meter from the SEL norm and this one unique appearance in SEL manuscripts, Infancy may be compared with St. Alexis. Both compilers involved, separated by about a century, evidently regarded the SEL as an open text. 16 For the observation that, unlike the SEL proper, Infancy is a translation from French, see Pickering, “The Temporale Narratives of the South English Legendary,” 453.

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The issue of chronological order in the temporale is mirrored in the issue of calendrical order in the sanctorale. The sanctorale begins at codex item 10 with the Holy Cross, celebrated on 3 May, and ends at item 67 with St. Hippolytus, celebrated on 13 August. The legends in between are in a sequence that is disorderly in calendrical terms, except for occasional limited calendrical groupings, possibly reflecting the fact that some of the first compiler’s exemplars as they came to hand were organized calendrically, others not. It has been persuasively argued, on the basis of physical features of the manuscript, that the compiler was actually revising his sanctorale program as he went along, hoping to rearrange his collection of legends later into a fully unified scheme, but failing to do so by the time he ceased compiling.17 At an early stage, for example, he may have intended, after a prologue including a transition from the temporale, to begin with St. Thomas Becket (now item 27), whose feast is celebrated on 29 December (figs. 5–6). In this case concluding the temporale with Infancy, with its implicit foregrounding of Christmas on 25 December, might have seemed logical. On the other hand, the first legend in the sanctorale as it now stands, the Holy Cross, would have provided a logical segue from the Ministry and Passion.18 A short Prologue unique to L (item 28) proposes a collection of saints’ legends following the order of the ecclesial year beginning with the Circumcision of Christ on 1 January. This Prologue does not come at the beginning, however, but follows St. Thomas Becket in the same quire, possibly included less on account of the scheme it outlines than because it headed brief notes on a series of feast days for dates following 29 December: 1, 6, and 20 January (figs. 7–8).19 17 Details of a likely pattern of revision, apart from possible misbinding in one or two places, are cogently argued by Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” passim. In relation to the present study, Liszka’s main conclusions are (i) that booklet 3, containing quires 3–5, which begins the extant sanctorale, is probably misplaced and should come after quire 14, within booklet 4; (ii) that St. Thomas Becket, currently the third legend of booklet 4, was probably intended to stand first in the sanctorale after some kind of introduction or transition from the temporale; (iii) that SS. Katherine and Lucy now preceding it were squeezed into that space subsequently; and (iv) that the short Prologue appearing straight after the long legend of St. Thomas and suggesting an intentional calendrical program beginning at 1 January was a relatively late addition and may or may not have been intended to determine a full-scale revision. 18 For these two possible links between temporale and sanctorale see Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 80–81. For another reading suggested by the extant order, see below. 19 For this view of the L Prologue see Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 81–82. For another view, see Daniel T. Kline, Chapter Seven in this volume.

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The extant order of the parts of the late thirteenth-century SEL could hardly represent a final plan on the part of the scribe-compiler. In the case of Chaucer’s equally unfinished Canterbury Tales, however, we are familiar with the idea that a lack of firm information about the intended order of the parts (and other textual details) need not prevent larger understandings of the nature of the text, and a similar approach, I suggest, is appropriate here. The temporale of the SEL differs from the sanctorale in that its narratives do not constitute a more or less standard body of material.20 The placement of temporale items is also variable. SEL manuscripts usually place their temporale narratives in amongst their hagiographical narratives through the ecclesial year to expound, variously, fixed feasts such as Circumcision and Epiphany and movable feasts such as Lent and Easter: these texts have been described as “expository” items, in distinction from “narrative” items grouped together like those in the L temporale.21 Placement of “expository” temporale items in amongst hagiographical items is evident, for example, in the four manuscripts on which the D’Evelyn and Mill edition of the SEL is based, including London, British Library, MS Harley 2277, which is dated only a little later than L.22 Like these manuscripts of the SEL, the contemporary Latin Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine, dated 1252–70, which was the most widely disseminated of medieval legendaries, also intersperses its temporale items amongst its sanctorale items.23

20

These and further comments on the nature of the temporale are particularly indebted to the work of O. S. Pickering: “The Temporale Narratives,” passim; “The Expository Temporale Poems of the South English Legendary,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s., 10 (1978): 1–17; and his editions, The South English Nativity of Mary and Christ, ed. from MS BM Stowe 949, Middle English Texts, 1 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1975), and The South English Ministry and Passion, ed. from St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS B.6, Middle English Texts, 16 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984). 21 For the distinction see Pickering’s articles “The Temporale Narratives,” passim, and “The Expository Temporale Poems,” passim. 22 For the date of MS Harley 2277, see D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL, 3:4, and similarly Görlach, Textual Tradition, 84. MS Harley 2277 is used by D’Evelyn and Mill as the base for items missing from the main manuscript used, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 145. The other manuscripts used are Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 43, and London, British Library, MS Cotton Julius D.ix. 23 For an edition of the Legenda see Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, Vulgo Historia Lombardica Dicta, ed. Theodor Graesse, 3rd ed. (1890; reprint, Osnabrück: Otto Zeller, 1969); for an English translation see Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). For this dating see Barbara Fleith, Studien zur Uberlieferungsgeschichte der lateinischen “Legenda Aurea,” Subsidia Hagiographica 72

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The arrangement in L, with “narrative” temporale items preceding the whole sanctorale, is the less common one both in SEL manuscripts and in general legendary practice; temporale items precede the sanctorale in only five other SEL manuscripts.24 But the arrangement in L has implications for the way either medieval or present-day readers might read the sanctorale. In chronological terms, events in the earthly life of Christ, or earlier times, obviously precede events in the lives of the saints of the church that arose from the Christ event. A program like that in L, in which a separate, agglomerated temporale precedes the sanctorale, draws particular attention to the chronological movement of world history from the past to the present time of the writer and reader, with Doomsday ahead, in linear time. A program like that in MS Harley 2277, on the other hand, in which individual temporale matters are presented in amongst the sanctorale, draws more attention to the recurrent movement of time through the ecclesial year, one year after the other, in cyclical time. The difference is a matter of emphasis. An informative analogue to the L program is to be found in a short poem known variously as the Trinity Poem on Biblical History and Salvation History, or Heilsgeschichte.25 This poem, composed in the South Midlands somewhat to the east of Worcester, is preserved in one manuscript compiled in the Worcester area ca. 1255–1260 (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.14.39). The extant copy is thus close in place and time to the original composition of the SEL, in Worcester ca. 1270–85.26 The biblical poem is also written in septenaries, though in quatrains rather than couplets. The first three hundred and twentyfour lines trace the history of the world more or less lineally through key episodes from Creation to Pentecost. The remaining twenty-five

(Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1991), 12–16; Fleith refers to 1,042 Legenda Aurea manuscripts. 24 Liszka, “The South English Legendaries,” esp. 248–51. 25 The former title is provided by Laurence Muir, “Translations and Paraphrases of the Bible, and Commentaries,” Severs, Manual, 2:401. The latter title is that given in the only viable published edition of the poem, by Karl Reichl, in his study and edition of the manuscript, Religiöse Dichtung im englischen Hochmittelalter: Untersuchung und Edition der Handschrift B.14.39 des Trinity College in Cambridge, Müncher Universitäts-Schriften, Philosophische Fakultät, Texte und Untersuchung zur Englischen Philologie, 1 (Munich: Fink, 1973). For the provenance of the manuscript, see Angus McIntosh, M. L. Samuels, Michael Benskin, Margaret Laing, and Keith Williamson, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Middle English (Aberdeen, UK: Aberdeen University Press, 1986), with Guide (1987): grid reference 7721, mapped 4, p. 335. 26 Görlach, Textual Tradition: on provenance, see 32–37; on the date, see 37–38.

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lines, however, seem at first to move to a chronological account of the saints of the early church, but actually move to a list of saints that clearly follows the ecclesial year, albeit in sections that do not constitute a single block. The poem outlines the biblical narrative in an essentially linear way, yet expresses the outcome of the main events as they pertain to the real time of its individual readers in terms of the cycle of the ecclesial year.27 The L SEL mirrors the Trinity Poem, as both texts move easily from linear into cyclical time, both also tolerating a cycle of legends that references, without perfectly relating to, the ecclesial year. In both texts the whole Christian story is firmly grounded in the Christ event before readers are invited to embrace life in the church through participation in its regular feasts. In terms of the theological concept of salvation history, based on an essentially linear concept of time, the lives of the saints in the SEL, like the list of saints in the Trinity Poem, express the working out of the Christ event in subsequent history—just as the lives of key biblical ancients express the preparation for the Christ event on which salvation history hinges.28 The L SEL makes only limited reference to the Old Testament period, but insofar as it does so the argument for an underlying theme of salvation history is reinforced. As the text stands, relatively extended Old Testament reference occurs, appropriately, in the first item of the extant sanctorale, Holy Cross. An account of Helena’s discovery of the Cross is followed by a retrospective account of its legendary history from its origins in the tree from which Adam infamously ate: from Adam and Seth (5–7.135–229), to Moses (8.230–42), David (8–9.243–74),

27 For the poem’s time scheme see Diane Speed, “From Vulgate to Vernacular: Creation and Fall in Early Middle English Texts,” The Medieval Translator 10 (2007): 45–62 (46–47). 28 Salvation history has often been adduced in explorations of medieval literature, recognized as present in its essence even if the concept (Heilsgeschichte) was articulated and popularized in the twentieth century by theologian Oscar Cullmann: see especially his Christ and Time: The Primitive Christian Conception of Time and History, trans. Floyd V. Filson, rev. ed. (London: SCM Press, 1962), and Salvation in History, trans. Sidney G. Sowers (London: SCM Press, 1967). The better known Banna Sanctorum Prologue in other SEL manuscripts, which, it has been argued, is essentially an amplification of the short Prologue that appears in L, speaks explicitly of the coming of Christ as a warrior king as heralded by the prophets and patriarchs. For an argument that it is based on the Prologue found in L, see Thomas R. Liszka, “The First ‘A’ Redaction of the South English Legendary: Information from the ‘Prologue,’ ” Modern Philology 82 (1985): 407–13. For the text of the Banna Sanctorum see D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL, 1:1–3, lines 23–38.

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and Solomon (9–10.275–300), through a summary overview of events to Christ (10.301–07), and so on to the crucifixion of Christ (10.308–14), a summary overview of events to Constantine and Helena (10–11.315–34), and the vision of Constantine (11.335–56).29 The rest of the narrative speaks of events after Helena’s discovery. That this linear narrative is particularly concerned with the Old Testament period as preparation for Christ is made explicit in a pithy typological observation introducing the section on Adam and initiating the whole historical recollection: Þorouȝ a treo we weren fur-lore : and furst i-brouȝt to grounde, And þoruȝ a treo to liue i-brouȝt : i-hered beo þulke stounde! (5.135–36)30

What commands the reader’s attention here is the coincidence of historical connection (the tree literally generating the cross) with poetic effect (the rhetorical antithesis articulating the salvific recapitulation), which demonstrates the divine Poet-Creator of all things at work on his “economy of salvation.”31 Typology, involving the recognition of a conceptual connection between a former and a latter event, in biblical terms an Old Testament and a New Testament event, is readily accommodated within linear salvation history: the typological observation here does not counter the literal narrative, it merely adds a further dimension to its significance. That the tree that became the cross is the pivotal connection between the Old and New Testament period draws particular attention to the quintessential message of salvation

29 Parenthetical references to the L SEL are taken from Horstmann, ESEL, and are given parenthetically by page and line numbers. 30 The story was widespread in the medieval period: see, for example, Esther C. Quinn, The Quest of Seth for the Oil of Life (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962), passim. The typology of the tree and the cross is implied both in the Sarum Breviary’s In Inventione Sanctæ Crucis and in the Sarum Missal’s Good Friday liturgy, Feria VI. In Parasceue: see, respectively, Francis Procter and Christopher Wordsworth, eds., Breviarium ad Usam Insignis Ecclesiae Sarum, Fasc. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1886), cols. 273–82 (276), and J. Wickham Legg, ed., The Sarum Missal Edited from Three Early Manuscripts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916), 109–15 (113). 31 See Ephesians 1.10: Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam, 5th ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1977). The soteriological concept of “recapitulation” appears to have been first articulated by Irenaeus in the second century in his Adversus Haereses. See Irénée de Lyon: Contre les Hérésies, Livre III, ed. and trans. into French, F. Sagnard, Sources chrétiennes 34 (Paris: Cerf, 1952), 3.18.1. For medieval use of the concept see Brian Murdoch, The Recapitulated Fall: a Comparative Study in Medieval Literature, Amsterdamer Publikationen zur Sprache und Literatur 11 (Amsterdam: Rodophi, N.V., 1974).

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history; that the narrative movement occurs largely in leaps from one key moment to another echoes the identifying generic pattern of salvation history. The L sanctorale not only may but probably should be understood in light of the temporale. The saints’ legends are to be understood as a God-given continuation of the Christian story that alone gives real meaning to the world, and they bring that story to bear on the life of the reader for his or her ultimate benefit. This the lives have the potential to effect insofar as they provide overall information about salvation through the narrative of church history; in the case of most legends, explicit information about the availability of saintly intercessors (for example, St. Oswald the King [46.43–45], St. Alban [70.105–06], and St. Julian the Hospitaller, [260.149–54]); and, pervasively, an implicit invitation to the reader to respond with a moral application of exemplary matter to his or her own life. The Non-SEL Religious Texts Read the Sanctorale Both the Sayings of St. Bernard and the Vision of St. Paul may be understood to offer a retrospective reading of the sanctorale on the part of the scribe-compiler of all three texts. Invoking and providing material associated with two prominent saints, the Sayings and the Vision amplify the sanctorale and point to the scribe’s own understanding of the sanctorale he has been compiling as, to some extent, an open text. Each of them also engages with and adds weight to particular discourses identifiable in the sanctorale. No legend of St. Bernard appears in any manuscript of the SEL, but his legend is standard in texts of the Legenda Aurea,32 and he had undoubtedly exerted a profound influence on the medieval church and its actions in the world.33 The Sayings are a moralistic memento mori that strongly privileges the next life over the present life and abstinence over indulgence. Within the L sanctorale St. Bernard appears

32 It is legend 94 in the Legenda Aurea edition, and its position is confirmed by Fleith, Studien, detached list headed “Das Normalcorpus,” accompanying ch. 2.5, 30–37. 33 A brief account of St. Bernard and other saints may be found in David Hugh Farmer, The Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). For his political activities in relation to the Crusades see Christopher Tyerman, Fighting for Christendom: Holy War and the Crusades (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 48, 96–97, 126, 129–30.

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in St. Francis of Assisi, famous for his rejection of the privileged life to serve God. Bernard is identified there as “a guod scholer,” who became the first to join the Franciscan order (58.154–55). Since Bernard of Clairvaux (ca. 1090–1153) had died before Francis of Assisi (1181–1226) was born, the claim is not only untrue but impossible. This makes the point that, in the popular imagination, saints with similar concerns might easily enough rub shoulders; that historicity might be a less important ideal than emotional appeal; that what mattered was the reader’s subjective embracing of the church’s heroes. It also inherently articulates the ideal enterprise of the church as a united one, in which monks (Bernard) and friars (Francis) work together for the greater cause. The Sayings explicitly affirm Bernard’s characterization in the legend of Francis and perhaps, at the same time, suggest an ideal of behaviour amongst religious and articulate a broader normative value system. For anyone aware of St. Bernard’s historical leadership in the crusading movement, mention of his name might, in addition, affirm a recurrent discourse in the sanctorale, a normative ideology of a partnership between church and state in which the church dominates the state. Examples of positive behaviour on the part of kings are to be found in St. Dunstan: Bishops Dunstan, Athelwold, and Oswald work in partnership with various English kings; St. Dunstan is the “conseiller” of two kings (20.50, 21.71); King Edgar joins with the Archbishop of Canterbury to appoint Dunstan Bishop of Worcester (21.74–75) and with the pope to appoint Dunstan Archbishop of Canterbury (22.90– 91); Dunstan proceeds to strengthen Christendom in England and uphold “þe riȝtes of holi churche” (22.93–94). Again, in St. Oswald, King Oswald upholds Christendom “with al is pouwer” (45.3) and requests the missionary assistance of Aidan, so that through their joint efforts the whole land becomes “stable” (45.12). A striking example of negative behaviour on the part of a king is to be found in the legend of St. Thomas Becket, as St. Thomas is murdered when he refuses to submit to King Henry II. St. Thomas declares that God does not want holy church to be “onder fote” (163.1995) and is willing to die for “þe riȝtes of holi churche” (166.2083). Afterwards, the king repents and seeks absolution from the pope, who sends two cardinals to assist him (170–71.2237–45): that is, the king finally acknowledges his own need for the church and thereby places himself in submission to it. Unlike St. Bernard, St. Paul is the central figure of one of the legends in the sanctorale: item 31, St. Paul. The Vision of St. Paul, how-

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ever, is concerned less with the figure of St. Paul himself than with the after-world that is presented though his eyes. The Visio Pauli was, in fact, the foundational text for depictions of heaven and hell that so gripped the imagination in the Middle Ages.34 The eschatological focus brings the prospect of divine judgment dramatically before the reader, effectively with an urgent invitation to apply to himself or herself the exemplary lessons presented through the preceding saints’ legends— this life should be so lived as to ensure the best outcome in the next life. Thematically the Vision has something in common with sanctorale item 35, St. Patrick and his Purgatory. The scribe-compiler of the late thirteenth-century temporale and sanctorale effectively glosses his own main project by adding to it one instructional item and one further narrative item that go together to direct the reader to take to heart the lessons of the preceding legends. In each case the message is associated with a saint of particularly strong authority. The Sayings constructs the church as a strong and purposeful institution that should be heeded, and the Vision constructs the human state in the after-world as more important than the human state in this world, most obviously because it is forever. For a good personal outcome in the afterlife one should heed the teaching of the church in this life. The sanctorale is thus read by its own scribe-compiler as a means to a salvific end. The third of the three non-SEL religious texts, the Dispute Between the Body and the Soul, is included by a different scribe-compiler (Scribe B). Focussed again on the afterlife, it alludes particularly to the Vision that immediately precedes it and supports the message of that text. At the same time, it also keeps before the reader the eternal destinations of the saints and their foes as recounted in the late thirteenth-century sanctorale, and thus offers a further, if less immediate, reading of the sanctorale. The Romances Read the Sanctorale By dint of their heading the distinct second part of the codex that was apparently brought into juxtaposition with the first part through some

34 J. K. Elliott, introduction to The Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Pauli) in his volume of translations, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 616–20 (616).

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association of ideas, the two romances are likely to yield a fresh yet significant reading of the late thirteenth-century sanctorale. Since Chapters Nine through Twelve in this volume address the intertextual relationship between the SEL and the romances and significant work on the subject has already appeared, however, I offer only brief comments here. First, the saintliness of Havelok in particular is strongly related to his kingship, as he grows into the mold of the saintly King Athelwold and succeeds to his throne of England.35 Horn supports the church at all points, though he is not as clearly likened to a saint as Havelok is. The romances reinforce the sanctorale’s myth of functional partnership between church and state, defining one of the necessary roles of kingship as unreserved support of the church.36 Second, these romances retelling stories pertaining to the so-called “Matter of England” have been associated with an English national consciousness emerging in the later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries,37 and several studies of the SEL have identified a similar concern in it.38 These studies generally refer to the edition of the SEL by D’Evelyn and Mill, but one of the base manuscripts for that edition,

35 Havelok’s succession and the historical resonances of Athelwold are addressed in my essay “Havelok’s Predecessor,” in Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature and Translation: Studies for Keith Val Sinclair, ed. Peter Rolfe Monks and D. D. R. Owen, Litterae Textuales (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 176–93 (187–91). On Havelok and his kingship see also Bell, “Resituating Romance,” passim. 36 On Havelok’s support of the institution of the church, see Julie Nelson Couch, Chapter Eleven in this volume. For more on Horn as a type of saint and his relationship to the Church, See Bell, Chapter Twelve. 37 See Diane Speed, “The Construction of the Nation in Medieval English Romance,” in Readings in Medieval English Romance, Meale, 135–57 (144–57). 38 Building on his earlier “Entertainment, Edification, and Popular Education in the South English Legendary,” Journal of Popular Culture 11 (1977): 706–17, Klaus P. Jankofsky emphasized the preoccupation of the sanctorale with realistic details that underline familiar Englishness: “National Characteristics,” 81–93. See also Speed, “The Construction of the Nation,” 143–44; Hamelinck, “St. Kenelm and the Legends of the English Saints,” 19–28; Lesley Johnson and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “National, World and Women’s History: Writers and Readers of English in Post-Conquest England,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 92–121 (105–08); Wogan-Browne, Watson, Taylor, and Evans, eds., The Idea of the Vernacular, 195–96; Jill Frederick, “The South English Legendary: Anglo-Saxon saints and national identity,” in Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 29 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000): 57–73; Thompson, Everyday Saints, 46–57.

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MS Harley 2277, is close in time to L,39 a priori allowing that much of what has been said may be relevant also for the L sanctorale. The late thirteenth-century sanctorale includes amongst its sixty original hagiographical texts, fourteen legends concerning English and insular saints, plus two legends responsible for bringing the Roman church to the island (altogether, roughly a quarter of the total): SS. Dunstan, Oswald, Edward the Martyr, Alban, Wulfstan, Ursula and Companions, Thomas Becket, Brigid of Ireland, Patrick and his Purgatory, Brendan the Navigator, Edmund the King, Kenelm, Cuthbert, and Edmund of Abingdon, plus SS. Augustine of Canterbury and Gregory the Great. It is articulated in English as the language of mass communication, at a time when it might have been written in French or Latin for a rather different target readership; the verse form of the septenary is English, with a qualitative rather than a quantitative metre (like the French), and the rhetoric is simple or natural rather than learned, communicating with a potentially broad readership. In these aspects of its matter and its form the late thirteenth-century sanctorale may be identified as a text at least partly concerned with the construction of the nation. Third, as with the amplification of the sanctorale in the three religious items, so with the attachment of the romances to the SEL-dominated first part of the codex: the implication is that the sanctorale is open to ongoing amplification not only in the form of further actual SEL items but also in the form of materials expressing related concerns in other narrative modes. The Later Legends and Somer Soneday Read the Earlier Sanctorale The relationship of the three later legends to the late thirteenth-century sanctorale has been outlined above.40 Scribe D appears to have added his items to the Havelok-Horn booklet after that was attached to the larger preceding section of the codex, for he seems to demonstrate awareness of the identity of the SEL legends as such when he adds to them the further SEL legends of SS. Blaise and Cecilia he has before him in another exemplar. Manuscripts of the SEL span the period from ca. 1300 (or a shade earlier) to ca. 1450, and the sanctorale as it

39 40

For this manuscript see above, 125. See above, 119.

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is characterized by these additions speaks of the ongoing significance of the larger text for the late fourteenth-century generation. From this point of view, the intention of Scribe D was evidently to provide the fullest version of the SEL sanctorale he could. His further addition of the non-standard St. Alexis, however, makes it clear that, whatever the extent of the standard SEL text as far as he knew it, he did regard it as an open text, to which other relevant material could justifiably be added. As observed earlier, it is a moot point whether or not to regard St. Alexis as actually part of the SEL. The final inclusion, however, is generically distinct from the legends to much the same extent as the romances. Somer Soneday is a short allegorical poem recounting a waking vision of Fortune and, apparently, revealing the death of a king. The poem brings the romances’ accounts of past kings into the present of Scribe D and his readers, effectively showing that even essentially fictional kings from happily-ever-after-land, just like the more recognizable historical kings referred to in the sanctorale, will one day meet their end, and thereby suggesting that this world, perceived from either an ideal or a real perspective, should not be one’s primary concern.41 Somer Soneday does not engage with the sanctorale’s historical discourse of church-state relationships, but its memento mori motif may call to mind what I have argued is the ultimate salvific purpose of the sanctorale, as well as the Sayings of St. Bernard, the Vision of St. Paul, and the Dispute Between the Body and the Soul. This attempt to read the L sanctorale as a text for its time, through examination of the readings of the sanctorale afforded by its neighbour texts in the codex, has made it clear that from the end of the thirteenth to the end of the fourteenth century the sanctorale was perceived as dominating the codex and determining its overall flavor. It was understood, moreover, as an open and dynamic text, to which were added other texts whose compilation appears, to a greater or lesser extent, to have been inspired by such elements of the late thirteenth-century sanctorale as held particular significance for the various scribes and compilers. The dominance of the sanctorale in the codex textually constructs the dominance of the church in the world, which is arguably the key

41 See Fein, Chapter Thirteen, and Fitzgerald, Chapter Four in this volume for more extensive readings of Somer Soneday.

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normative myth advanced not only by the sanctorale but also, ultimately, by the codex as a whole. Regardless of the fact that individual saints may have been martyred by anti-church forces, the church is always victorious. It is the individuals who are true members of the church who will have a good eternal outcome, and the only human institution to survive into the after-world will be the church. Individual saints in the after-world, including martyrs, are either explicitly or implicitly available to the living faithful as intercessors, imbuing this world with a heavenly presence more efficacious and enduring than any purely earthly power. The sanctorale recounts the history of the church on the basis of the Christ event, which is recalled throughout and first narrated, very briefly, in the first legend, Holy Cross, following its introduction in the preceding temporale. The texts following the late thirteenth-century SEL through the rest of the codex express the nature of the church as always growing. The open-endedness of the sanctorale in the codex is matched by the open-endedness of the church, at one level in this world, at another level, in the after-world. In practical terms, the reader is reminded from time to time that the present world is ultimately less important than the after-world of eternal salvation or damnation; memento mori appears as a recurrent motif in other L texts, reinforcing the historical thrust of the sanctorale with invitations to reflect on and appropriate the message of that history. The lesson of memento mori in L depends on accepting that individuals should heed the teaching of the church, which is made possible by engagement in church life, as instituted particularly in the feasts of the ecclesial year. Two related discourses that inform the sanctorale overall, namely, the proper relationship between the universal church and the secular state, on the one hand, and the way that relationship plays out in the English state, on the other hand, are retrospectively highlighted by concern with similar discourses in other L texts. The L sanctorale, the L SEL as a whole, and the codex at large set out materials that educate readers in the history of the faith and ways in which they may participate in the community of faith, the church. The L Prologue explicitly refers to saints’ lives as texts “men redez in holi churche” (177.4). The message of the sanctorale is that its readers are in need of salvation and may access this through the church that has produced the saints they will do well to imitate and call on as intercessors. One historical phenomenon that contributed significantly to the shaping of the thirteenth century was the Fourth Lateran Council

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of 1215, whose decrees were implemented and established over the following decades. This Council emphasized the need for more effective provision of education in the faith (Constitutions 10 and 11) and made it imperative for individuals to reflect on their own moral state through the institution of annual confession to one’s own priest (Constitution 21).42 Both matters relate essentially to the personal salvation of the individual and the church’s role in this, which is the focal concern of the L sanctorale. To this end, it is important that the reader should have absolute confidence in a church that is strong and united. The strength and unity of the church, together with acceptance of its authority by rightminded national leaders as by ordinary people, is, arguably, the essential literary myth set out in the L sanctorale.

42

For the Latin text and English translation of the Constitutions of Lateran IV see Norman P. Tanner, ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. 1, Nicaea I to Lateran V (London and Washington, DC: Sheed and Ward and Georgetown University Press, 1990), 227–71.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE AUDIENCE AND FUNCTION OF THE APOCRYPHAL INFANCY OF JESUS CHRIST IN OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108 Daniel T. Kline The educational reforms of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) led to the widespread dissemination of Latin and vernacular religious works, including hagiographical collections like the South English Legendary (SEL). Traditionally, scholars have debated whether SEL originated in a Dominican or Franciscan context, for both orders emphasized education and preaching, but the SEL seems to fit better the Franciscan penchant for encyclopedic compendia, affective spirituality, vernacular compositions, didactic import, and wide-ranging exempla.1 The Franciscan ability to meld lyricism with didacticism also accords well with recent studies that see in SEL’s genre-crossing tendencies a range of entertainment, dramatic, and pedagogical purposes and that suggest a diverse lay-ecclesiastical audience.2 In addition to its simple diction, unadorned style, abbreviated episodes, first-person dialogue, colloquial usages, and keen attention to local English saints and national concerns,3 the SEL is entertainingly didactic, a “dramatization,” according

1

John V. Fleming, “The Friars and Medieval English Literature,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 349–75 (357). Minnie Wells argues for a Franciscan compiler in “The Structural Development of the South English Legendary,” JEGP 41(1942): 320–44 (323–27). 2 More recent studies include O. S. Pickering, “The South English Legendary: Teaching or Preaching?” Poetica 45 (1996): 1–14; Gregory M. Sadlek, “Laughter, Game, and Ambiguous Comedy in the South English Legendary,” Studia Neophilologica 64 (1991): 45–54; Karen Bjelland, “Defining the South English Legendary as a Form of Drama: The Relationship Between Theory and Practice,” Comparative Drama 22 (1988): 237–43; Annie Samson, “The South English Legendary,” 185–95; Klaus P. Jankofsky, “Entertainment, Edification, and Popular Education in the South English Legendary,” Journal of Popular Culture 11, no. 3 (1977): 706–17; and Klaus P. Jankofsky, “Personalized Didacticism: The Interplay of Narrator and Subject Matter in the South English Legendary,” Texas A&I University Studies 10 (1977): 69–77. 3 E. Gordon Whatley, General Introduction to Saints’ Lives in Middle English Collections, ed. E. Gordon Whatley, Anne B. Thompson, and Robert K. Upchurch (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), 1–18.

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to Klaus Jankofsky, that simplifies complicated theological issues and hagiographical concerns, and directly engages the audience through emotional appeal.4 These same features can suggest not only a lay or uneducated audience, as Jankofsky and others argue, but also, potentially, the inclusion of children in the listening group. While it is clear that the mature form of SEL ultimately followed the structure of the liturgical year, the SEL of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L), considered the earliest extant version, is a rather more disheveled composition whose disorder upsets the putative developmental history of the SEL traditions. Carl Horstmann’s 1887 edition included only the saints’ lives, or sanctorale; he omitted the temporale, or scriptural section, which survives as the acephalous Ministry and Passion (MP) and the Infancy of Jesus Christ, eventually publishing Infancy in a separate edition.5 Horstmann voiced the still-common consensus that L “shows the [SEL] collection still in an unfinished state, in the way of progress, before its completion.”6 L is viewed as early, unique, and idiosyncratic in the development of the SEL traditions, rather more evocative and charming than theologically rigorous; in the same way that children are often seen as undeveloped, incomplete adults, so too the L SEL is considered embryonic and unformed. In effect if not also in execution, the L SEL is considered a childlike text. However, rather than denigrating these compositional characteristics, I argue that L’s distinctiveness inheres in exactly this element of childlikeness. Beginning with Infancy, a poem unique in the SEL traditions in that it depicts apocryphal incidents from the childhood of Jesus, the L SEL sensitizes readers (or auditors) to the social, temporal, and theological complexities of childhood within broader historical and theological currents, and Infancy’s inclusion suggests a mixed audience of children and adults in a broad-based pedagogical context, quite like the learning situations depicted in the poem itself. In this chapter I consider Infancy’s purposeful relationship to the sanctorale, one that develops a different historical sensibility than the standard form of the SEL. First, I examine L’s distinctive, acephalous 4

Jankofsky, “Entertainment,” 709. Horstmann, ESEL. Thomas R. Liszka notes that in previous studies Horstmann considered MP and Infancy with the other legends, “as one continuous work” (“The South English Legendaries,” in The North Sea World in the Middle Ages: Studies in the Cultural History of North-Western Europe, ed. Thomas R. Liszka and Lorna E. M. Walker [Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001], 243–80 [251]). 6 Horstmann, ESEL, x. 5

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temporale section in relation to SEL traditions generally and consider Infancy’s relationship to the fragmented MP. Next, I consider the structure and function of Infancy and its connection to the sanctorale, specifically the appearance of a previously unanalyzed “table of contents” at the end of Infancy. Finally, I trace notions of temporality in L’s unique use of the legend of Holy Cross and then in a group of English saints that appear in the sanctorale. For too long the L SEL has been viewed as—and has steadfastly resisted the identity of—a recognizable “stage” in the development of the SEL traditions because it does not follow the calendrical year of feast days. However, rather than dismiss L’s unique structure as simple disorder, I conclude that the manuscript is marked by “temporal hybridity,” or heterogeneous, historical sensibilities that move “beyond narratives of originary and initial subjectivities” to capture “those moments . . . that are produced in the articulation of cultural differences.”7 Literary critics rightfully point to gender as a preeminent site of cultural difference, but readers (and auditors) coming to L are equally confronted in Infancy, L’s opening text, with the complexities of “age” and the strangeness of aging or temporal change within a historical continuum. Infancy embodies contending, overlapping, and sometimes disparate temporal affiliations that later SELs subsume to create a calendrically regularized, ecclesiastically normative textual identity. Infancy and the Problem of the L Temporale Unique in the SEL tradition, Infancy represents a distinct genre apart from its inclusion in the L temporale. Reaching back to the late second century, apocryphal infancy gospels fill the gap in the canonical gospels between Jesus’ birth and his reappearance at age twelve with legendary stories. Earliest are the Protevangelium of James (PJ) and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT).8 The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (PsM) (also known as Liber de Infancia Salvatoris) incorporates PJ and IGT and, most importantly for the medieval period, recounts Mary’s

7

Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 2. Of the ancient sources, the IGT provides much of Infancy’s content, though Infancy also includes episodes originally seen in Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic infancy gospels. The IGT is not to be confused with the Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas, which is commonly called a “gnostic” text. 8

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miraculous birth and virtuous life as well Jesus’ childhood exploits.9 De Navitate Mariae, an amplification of the opening chapters of PJ as expressed in PsM, is later included in Jacob de Voragine’s Legenda Aurea (who also drew upon PsM throughout) and thus was spread throughout Europe.10 Infancy likely is related to the Anglo-Norman Les Enfaunces de Jesu Crist and to the Old French Evangile de l’Enfance, but, according to Maureen Boulton, the relationship is complicated and probably indirect.11 As documented in the Fasciculus Morum, a fourteenth-century preaching handbook, Franciscans were acquainted with apocryphal episodes from Jesus’ life, often through intermediary sources like Martin von Troppau’s Chronica Pontificum et Imperatorum (ca. 1275).12 The apocryphal nature of the stories of Jesus’ childhood likely makes Infancy better suited for exemplary or pedagogical purposes rather than for doctrine or theology. The L compiler apparently deemed it appropriate to attach Infancy to the L temporale, so its inclusion must be purposeful. Addressing Infancy’s relationship to the temporale requires examining three important issues: (1) the probable prior (complete) form of the L temporale; (2) the structure and contents of the “standard” SEL temporale; and (3) the potential function of Infancy in the current (fragmented) form of the L temporale.

9 See Oscar Cullman, “Infancy Gospels,” in New Testament Apocrypha, rev. ed., Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. R. Wilson (Louisville, KY: Westminster / John Knox Press, 2003), 1:414–69. See also J. K. Elliott’s A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives (Leiden: Brill, 2006) for different apocryphal infancy traditions, including several Irish texts (vii–xix). See also David R. Cartlidge and J. Keith Elliott, Art and the Christian Apocrypha (London: Routledge, 2001). 10 See “De nativitate domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum carnem,” Legenda aurea, Vulga Historia Lombardica Dicta, 2nd ed., Theodor Grässe (Lipsiae: Impensis Librariae Arnoldianae, 1850), 39–47. For a translation, see “The Birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ According to the Flesh,” in The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1:37–43. Voragine retains much of the apocryphal material related to Mary’s birth and youth but little related to Jesus. At least three other stanzaic Middle English infancy gospels have been preserved (in London, British Library, MSS Harley 2399, Harley 3954, and Add. 31042), though Infancy comes from a separate textual tradition. See Mary Christine Dzon, “The Image of the Wanton Christ-Child in the Apocryphal Infancy Legends of Late Medieval England” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 2004), 81–126. 11 Maureen Boulton, ed., Les Enfaunces de Jesu Crist (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1985), 16–17, 28–29 and Maureen Boulton, ed., The Old French “Evangile de l’Enfance” (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984). 12 Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook, ed. and trans. Siegfried Wenzel (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989), 239–21.

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As to the first question and the possible original structure of the incomplete L temporale, the first text (MP) is numbered 8, the second text (Infancy) is numbered 9 (fig. 3) by two medieval hands, and this numbering appears “to represent the remains of Laud’s original temporale section.”13 Thomas Liszka takes this numbering as evidence that the L temporale originally contained seven items, now lost, that likely combined narrative (possibly a History of the Old Testament and texts devoted to the lives of Mary and Christ) and expository festial texts (explicating particular feasts). O. S. Pickering speculates that L may have originally possessed four expository temporale texts (Septuagesima, Lent, Easter, and Rogationtide) and at least three temporale narratives, with the expository texts gradually being absorbed into the mature form of the liturgically structured SEL sanctorale.14 Alternatively, L’s original temporale may have resembled Cambridge, St. John’s College, MS B.6 (28) and its full temporale of seven texts. Of course, these theories are teleologically determined, presupposing a final calendrical and liturgical structure to the SEL. However, as Pickering reminds us, even applying the term SEL and dividing L into temporale and sanctorale is itself an academic artifact imposed from other sources.15 As to the second question, the structure and contents of the SEL, there is no “standard” form of the SEL temporale, although the D’Evelyn and Mill edition of the SEL creates that impression. Pickering identifies sixteen different SEL temporale texts, divided into narrative and expository types.16 The expository poems deal with liturgical feasts and fasts, while the narratives deal with religious history. Of course, no manuscript contains even a majority of these poems, but all surviving SEL temporale narratives derive from this group of sixteen, presented in a variety of arrangements.17 In total, six of the sixteen temporale poems include the childhood of Mary and/or Christ, and nine SEL manuscripts contain some version of the nativity of Mary

13

Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 76. O. S. Pickering, “The Expository Temporale Poems of the South English Legendary,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s., 10 (1978): 1–17 (14). 15 O. S. Pickering, “The Temporale Narratives of the South English Legendary,” Anglia 91 (1973): 425–55 (426). Only the much later Cambridge, St. John’s College, MS B.6 preserves the temporale and sanctorale structure with titles. 16 Pickering, “Temporale Narratives,” 427. 17 Wells, “Structural Development,” 320–44. 14

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and/or Christ.18 Although an apocryphal nativity gospel survives in the SEL traditions only in L, Infancy overlaps in content with at least six of the typical narrative temporale poems.19 As to the third question, the relationship of Infancy to L’s currently fragmented temporale, Infancy’s current placement must be examined in relation to its potential function. Given that MP currently appears in quire 1 and Infancy in quire 2, I assume with Liszka that these quires were misbound at some point and that Infancy should be placed prior to the MP.20 Transposing quire 2 (Infancy) with quire 1 (MP) therefore puts the texts in historical order and provides material for a rough chronological overview of Jesus’ life and ministry. This nascent, hypothetical L “Life of Christ” overlaps items 2 through 6 in Liszka’s reconstruction from Cambridge, St. John’s College, MS B.6, and coincides with at least six of sixteen of Pickering’s expository temporale poems. Liszka’s model, St. John’s College, MS B.6, actually features a parallel sequence, the Nativity of Mary and Christ (NMC) and MP (formerly called the “Long Life of Christ”). Like NMC, Infancy opens with canonical material from Matthew 2 (the massacre of the innocents, the flight into Egypt) and concludes with the Wedding at Cana (John 2). MP picks up the biblical narrative with John the Baptist and continues through the disciples’ post-resurrection activities. The L MP, lacking the opening, picks up at line 874 (with Jesus healing a blind man) and ends with accounts of Jesus’ resurrection.21 Together, then, Infancy and the complete L MP represent the raw source materials for a life of Jesus. Although this project seems not to have been carried out, Pickering notes that the L MP represents “a first working-through of the material” and served as a source for later temporale poems like the Southern Passion.22 Episodes from Jesus’ infancy and childhood begin to appear in universal histories like Cursor Mundi, but Infancy

18

O. S. Pickering, The South English Nativity of Mary and Christ, ed. from MS BM Stowe 949, Middle English Texts, 1 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1975), 34. 19 In addition to Pickering’s “The Temporale Narratives” and “The Expository Temporale Poems,” see his “Three South English Legendary Nativity Poems,” Leeds Studies in English, n.s., 8 (1975): 105–19. 20 I draw this conclusion from Liszka’s analysis in “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 76. 21 O. S. Pickering, ed., The South English Ministry and Passion, ed. from St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS B.6, Middle English Texts, 16 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984), 113–62. 22 Ibid., 22. In fact, Pickering argues that the MP “was probably written as a sequel to The Nativity of Mary and Christ (NMC),” the earliest narrative temporale poem, and the MP “is similarly the earliest Passion narrative of the [temporale] group” (32).

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fills a historical gap in Franciscan devotional texts like the PseudoBonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi (ca. 1300). As Kathryn A. Smith writes, “The expansion of lay literacy and the growing emphasis in medieval religion on the humanity of Christ as expressed through increased devotion to his Infancy doubtless influenced the resurgence of interest in the Infancy miracles.”23 The Childhood of Jesus and Infancy Between the canonical touchstones of the Nativity and Jesus in the Temple, Infancy dramatizes Jesus’ miraculous life from birth to age twelve, noting his age at particularly important points in the narrative (age two implied at line 37, age five at 301, age six at 951, age seven at 1130, age eight at 1282, and age twelve at 1688).24 Although frequently objectionable, Jesus’ behavior charts a believable life-course for a medieval boy whose father practices a trade. If we naturalize Jesus’ actions by looking beyond the supernatural elements, we find that from birth to age five Jesus attends to his mother’s wishes as well as her emotional and physical needs. From age five to age seven, Jesus plays in the water, fashions things from clay, runs and jumps across hills, makes boyhood friends and sometimes enemies, irritates the neighbors, and goes to school—though always to the consternation, and sometimes to the fatal detriment, of his school masters. Finally, from ages seven to twelve, Jesus helps his father, his family, and his community, though he is still incorrigible at school. Infancy ends with Jesus and his family at a communal wedding feast, as the poem is sutured back into the canonical gospel narrative. Throughout, Jesus miraculously heals playmates whose accidents recall the injuries typically noted in medieval coroners’ rolls: falls, household and work-related accidents, drowning, animal attack, parental neglect.25

23 Kathryn A. Smith, Art, Identity, and Devotion in Fourteenth-Century England: Three Women and Their Books of Hours (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 273. 24 The two-year-old boys killed by Herod are mentioned at line 37, though Jesus himself is not named. Parenthetical references to Infancy are taken from Carl Horstmann, ed., Altenglische Legenden (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1875), 1–61, and are given by line numbers. 25 For childhood deaths, see especially Barbara A. Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) and Ronald C. Finucane, The Rescue of the Innocents: Endangered Children in Medieval Miracles (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997).

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At the same time, this narrative of temporal change paradoxically depicts a boy who is also “Louerd ful of vertu [power]” (2) and “Jhu verrei god” (16).26 As Infancy struggles to represent the dual nature of the child Jesus, it also reveals two opposing temporal sensibilities: the first a developmentally recognizable representation of childhood in bodily and behavioral change and the second a theologically-grounded representation of divine trans-temporality (“Bi fore Abraham ich was,” says child Jesus [547]). Infancy’s structure is essentially an imbrication in which social conflict propels Jesus from behavioral immaturity to maturity and simultaneously in which progress depicts a child shaped by the vicissitudes of local culture to a savior propelled toward a divine, supra-historical mission. Infancy balances the incidents in Jesus’ life from birth to age six (1–1129) against the events from age seven to Cana (1130–1854). The poem’s center subsists in Jesus’ sixth year, that key transition from infantia to pueritia in medieval conceptions of childhood which marks the individual’s burgeoning rationality and personal accountability.27 In the poem’s first half, Jesus generally plays like a child and in the second usually works like a youth. From birth through age five, Jesus runs, jumps, climbs, fights, and gets his playmates into (sometimes mortal) trouble. All the while, Joseph bears the brunt of Jesus’ irresponsibility while his mother constantly redirects his behavior, intervenes in the discord he causes, and pleads for him to right the wrongs he has committed. During his sixth year, Jesus’ impulsively childish behavior moderates and indicates a growing sense of social responsibility, for at age seven boys began to take on additional duties like going to song or grammar school or being contracted to become an apprentice or be married at a later date. Joseph’s pushing Jesus out of the home at age seven suggests the medieval practice of sending a son out to learn a trade or be raised as a page in another household.28

26 Julie Nelson Couch sees in Infancy the interplay between potentia dei absoluta and potentia dei ordinata in the rhetorical space of Jesus’ apocryphal childhood (“Misbehaving God: The Case of the Christ Child in MS Laud Misc. 108 ‘Infancy of Jesus Christ,’ ” in Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth D. Kirk, ed. Bonnie Wheeler [New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2006], 31–43 [33]). 27 For the Ages of Man tradition, see John A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 28 On medieval apprenticeship, see Barbara A. Hanawalt, Growing Up, 129–54 and Ruth Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003), 109–50.

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In Infancy’s second half, Jesus (from ages seven to twelve) no longer simply plays and acts as a child. Instead he now dyes clothing, works in his father’s shop (miraculously stretching a miscut piece of wood), encounters beasts in the wilderness, talks with his elders, diffuses potential conflict, heals a peer, and feasts with his extended family. An episode near the end of the poem illustrates Jesus’ maturing sense of responsibility to his community and improved relationship with Joseph (1656–79). In a place of honor, Jesus now feasts with family and kin, the same folks who had threatened Jesus and Joseph earlier (873). Infancy initially depicts Jesus as a fully divine though irascible and immature child, but the structure and narrative momentum of Infancy shows how the childish, impulsive, and human Jesus develops into the mature, composed, and wise Christ, fulfilling his responsibilities to his human mother and foster father, his community, and his heavenly father.29 Infancy provides the blend of theological exploration and domestic commonplace that leads a medieval reader, particularly children and youth, into the meditative, affective, and self-examining consciousness of Franciscan texts like the Meditationes Vitae Christi which call for readers and auditors to enter the text imaginatively and to see themselves as participants in the narrative, thus rendering permeable the boundary between past and present.30 Reflecting the doubling techniques so prominent in the L romances, Infancy also depicts parallel events in Jesus’ childhood, allowing readers and auditors to reassess continually Jesus’ changing responses to related situations as he grows physically and develops emotionally.31 Twice Jesus plays on a sunbeam (613–78, 1051–1129), and twice he fetches water from a well (613–78, 947–84). However, Infancy’s most important repetitions consist in Jesus’ four trips to school (twice at age five, once at age eight, and once at age twelve); that is, two before and two after the transition from infantia to pueritia. On the five-year-old Jesus’ first day at school (479–556), he amazes Master Zachary (479–80)

29 Compare Infancy to the first chapters of Nicholas Love’s early fifteenth-century translation of the Bonaventurian Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ in The Mirror of the Blessed Life of Jesus Christ, ed. Michael G. Sargent (Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 2004), 15–51. 30 See Couch’s account of affective, devotional reading in L in “Defiant Devotion,” 57–62. 31 See Susan Crane, Insular Romance, for an analysis of doubling in Havelok (87– 88) and Horn (24–27).

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with his exposition of prophecy. The Jews believe the young Jesus mad as he pronounces, “Bi fore Abraham ich was” (547), but the masters disperse when “ihu with resun heom gan felle” (556). On his second school day (751–870), the five-year-old Jesus remains stubbornly silent in the face of “Maister leowy þe wise” (758), who eventually strikes Jesus in anger (789–80). In response, Jesus lectures the schoolmaster on the Alef, Bet, Gimmel, and Dalet—the very foundations of language upon which the schoolmaster’s knowledge is based—because “He þat me teiȝte is al weldinde; / He and ich with oute departing / Beothþ al on in alle þing” (812–14). This time, the encounter with the schoolmasters ends with Jesus prophesying his own death and filling the leaders with dread “For is [his] signes and for is vertu” (870). On the eight-year-old Jesus’ third day of school (1432–1545), he attends to his books (1433) with “a Maister kete [harsh] and beld [presumptuous]” (1439). When the master challenges Jesus to “telle a non ȝwat Alef seide” (1441), Jesus remains silent before asking the schoolmaster first to explain the Beth. This earns Jesus a blow to the head, for which the master is struck dead by Jesus’ word. But rather than simply sowing dissension as before, Jesus’ subsequent preaching “of þe holie gost” (1497) brings a different schoolmaster to repentance. On the twelve-year-old Jesus’ fourth and final school day (1680–1707), a re-envisioning of Jesus in the temple (Luke 2) as a classroom encounter, Jesus’ mastery of the masters is complete: “With questiones . . . [he] heom ouercam” (1687). This final schoolroom episode marks a significant departure. In the first three cases, the child Jesus teaches the learned adults, confirms his insight with a demonstration of power, and then leaves the Jewish teachers dead or in disarray. Here, taking his place among the masters instead of driving them away, Jesus remains engaged in dialogue for three days (1689–90). As a twelve-year old, Jesus now disputes with his opponents academically rather than striking them dead physically. More than just a puer senex, Jesus is both human and divine.32 He is not outside of history but firmly embedded within and affected by it. Subject to interpersonal relationships, Jesus is shaped by culture. In contrast to the naïve conception of childhood as joyous, innocent, and carefree, Infancy shows that childhood itself—even for the Son of God—can be socially disruptive and culturally unsettling. It is a time of contention and negotiation, a crucial period of temporal and

32

See Burrow, Ages, 109–14, for an overview of the puer senex trope.

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developmental complexity, rather than simply a transitional moment on the way to adulthood. A “Table of Contents” Linking Infancy to the Sanctorale The centrality of the school room likewise confronts Infancy’s youthful audience members with their own pedagogical demands and personal limitations, inviting continued reflection upon the paradox of the child savior. Calling for moral self-examination, Infancy ends with a prayer that affectively and functionally links the poem to the sanctorale through a previously unnoticed “table of contents” indicating what— or rather who—appears in the following section.33 This functional (or perhaps categorical) schema internal to Infancy (and repeated later in St. Thomas Becket) never satisfactorily settles into the calendrical or hierarchical organization typical of the later SEL. It does, however, lead the reader to reconsider Jesus’ childhood and to emulate the saintly figures of the sanctorale. At the same time, it suggests an alternative structuring principle for the SEL to follow. At Infancy’s conclusion, the narrator enjoins the readers to pray: To is Moder Seinte Marie We schullen euerechone crie, Þat heo us graunti hire loue deore Boþe in heouene and eke here. Aungles and þe Apostles alle With guode herte bidde we schulle, And Martyrs and þe confessours, Þat huy beon ore socour. Virgines and alle þat seruieth god Bidde we with milde mod Þat huy beren so oure erende To Jhu criste al weldinde. (1835–46, emphasis added)

Mary is, of course, a protagonist in Infancy and the great intercessor for medieval Christians; but what is crucial here is the specific categorical or functional listing of other exemplary Christian servants here at the very end of Infancy, at the transition from the temporale to the sanctorale:

33 Couch independently makes the same observation, though to different ends, in “Defiant Devotion,” 61–62.

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angels, apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins.34 These individuals comfort, serve, and intervene on our behalf before “Jhu criste al weldinde” (1846), and they all appear subsequently in the sanctorale: apostles (St. James the Great, St. Bartholomew); martyrs (St. Alban, St. Nicholas); confessors (St. Dominic, St. Edmund of Abingdon); virgins (St. Faith, St. Lucy); and angels (in St. Gregory the Great and St. Thomas Becket), to name just a few. Like an opening bookend, Infancy not only foregrounds these exemplary figures’ faith, but it sensitizes the reader to consider how they came to be holy. Even if MP originally intervened between Infancy and the sanctorale, readers attuned to Jesus’ youthful antics in Infancy might still note similar patterns of childhood piety and youthful difficulty that ultimately yield socially responsible and theologically laudatory behavior in the sanctorale. The L sanctorale continues Infancy’s motif of temporal and youthful change by foregrounding narrative (and thus historical connections) across the history of saints rather than disengaging the saintly vitae from their personal histories and placing them in an abstracted and teleologically determined calendrical order. It emphasizes a narrative sense of development through (individual) age and (historical) ages rather than collapsing historical particularity under ecclesiastical or theological categories. The L sanctorale’s unique opening embodies this differing historical sensibility. Whereas the “standard” SEL begins with the Banna Sanctorum, a programmatic statement of the SEL’s purpose to “Tell ichell bi reuwe of ham / as hare dai valþ [their feast-day falls] in þe ȝere,”35 the L sanctorale opens with Holy Cross, a narrative that reaches back to Eden and ultimately “forward” into England’s recent past.36 Holy Cross begins with St. Helena, Constantine’s

34 This prayer is unique to Infancy and is not found in the other three Middle English stanzaic apocryphal infancy gospels (London, British Library, MSS Harley 2399, Harley 3954, and Add. 31042). 35 D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL, 1:3, line 66. 36 The standard SEL calendrical opening is as follows: Banna Sanctorum, Prologue, Circumcision, Epiphany. Concerning Holy Cross, Richard Morris, Legends of the Holy Rood, EETS, o.s., 46 (London: N. Trübner and Co., 1871), is the locus classicus. See also Brian Murdoch, The Apocryphal Adam and Eve in Medieval Europe: Vernacular Translations and Adaptations of the “Vita Adae et Evae” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Catherine E. Karkov, Sarah Larratt Keefer, and Karen Louise Jolly, eds. The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2006); Barbara Baert, A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image, trans. Lee Preedy (Leiden: Brill, 2004); and Antonina Harbus, Helena of Britain in Medieval Legend (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2002).

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mother, finding the True Cross, which then allows the story to return to the fall of humanity and trace its consequences for Adam and Eve, their sons, and the world. Readers learn the origin of the rood tree through Seth’s vision of Jesus in the Garden as a “luyte [little] ȝong child” in swaddling clothes, who will bring the “eoyle of milce [oil of mercy] / ȝwane þe tyme ifuld is, / to smeorie [anoint] þare-with and bring of pine [out of woe]: þine fader and alle his” (7.209, 215–16).37 The L sanctorale’s first episode turns the reader’s attention back to the child Jesus, this time in the Garden of Eden, linking Jesus’ temporal development as a human child (in Infancy) with his eternal salvific mission (in Holy Cross). In this vision of the “luyte ȝong child,” the angel gives Seth three seeds (7.218) to place under Adam’s tongue when he is buried, from which three evergreen sprigs grow (7.228); as the narrative progresses, Moses sees the trinity in the three branches (8.233), and David brings the three saplings to Jerusalem where they join into a single tree (8.255–57). The tree is cut for use in Solomon’s Temple, but it is “a fote to schort” (9.284), recalling the youthful Jesus’ miracle in Infancy. Discarded and buried, the tree gives rise to a healing, freshwater spring, whereupon floating to the surface it is chosen to fashion the cross “ore louerd þaron to hongue” (10.312). The L Holy Cross presents, in effect, the prehistory of the cross—its childhood and youth, if you will—within a static, typological depiction of its place in Christian history. Holy Cross simultaneously locates the eternal and universal within a precise historical moment embedded in the text itself, and like Infancy it melds a historical and developmental focus with an extra-temporal perspective. Time simultaneously unfolds and collapses back upon itself as the story of the Holy Cross proceeds. It traverses time from the most distant historical past (the fall of humanity) to an almost absurd moment in the contemporaneous present—a contemporary nun who neglects to bless her salad (“letuse,” 18.598). Immediately following Holy Cross in L but deferred until much later in the D’Evelyn and Mill edition (item 41), the first true hagiography of the sanctorale, the tenth-century Anglo-Saxon confessor St. Dunstan invokes Infancy for a reader logically, thematically, and temporally and initiates an emphasis on native English saints.38 When St. Dunstan’s 37

All references to the L SEL are from Horstmann, ESEL, and are given parenthetically by page and line number. 38 The L sanctorale’s first text (Holy Cross, item 10), a combination of the Discovery of the Cross (3 May) and the Exaltation of the Cross (14 September), is put off until

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pregnant mother enters church on Candlemas, all the lighted wicks are extinguished; however, his mother’s is reignited, indicating “þat of þulke holi child : þat was in hir wombe þere / Al enguelond scholde beo iliȝt” (20.19–20). All present then relight their candles from hers. Derived from Luke 2:22–40, Candlemas traditionally marked the end of Advent and celebrated the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple as well as the Purification of the Virgin, thus associating Dunstan’s prenatal holiness to Jesus’ birth. Dunstan’s piety continues through his youth at Glastonbury, where he learns the rudimentary prayers of medieval children, “his pater noster and crede. / Þat child wax and wel i-þevȝ [did well]” (20.23–24), exactly as required by Lateran IV. L’s first saintly vita both recalls Jesus’ infancy and draws particular attention to English saints even as it joins English religious history to the wider story of salvation history through its linkage to Holy Cross. Initiated in Infancy and continued through the opening of the sanctorale, L’s emphasis upon youth and childhood appears most strongly in a sequence of three male saints of, or relevant to, England. The lives of SS. Kenelm, Gregory the Great, and Cuthbert form a sequential, thematically unified trilogy whose stories invoke childhood, pedagogy, contemporary history, and national identity as essential ingredients in the evangelization and continued political achievement in England. The legend of the boy king St. Kenelm is one of the most fully developed childhood episodes in the sanctorale. Made king at age seven, Kenelm is supported by one sister (Borewenild) and undermined by another (Quendrith). Loved by his nurse Woluene, Kenelm ultimately is killed by his tutor (in league with Quendrith). Kenelm’s youthful innocence is his primary claim to piety, but his political position secures his worth.39 In St. Gregory, the saint’s famous encounter with English youth (“swete children þreo” [356.21]) in Rome, forges a relationship between childhood innocence and theological mission. Stunned by their beauty, St. Gregory is told, “ ‘Englische huy beoth : of Engelonde i-nome, / And swuch is þe kuynde of alle þe men : þat of þat lond doz

much later and separated into three separate feasts in D’Evelyn and Mill’s standard sequence: Early History and Invention of the Cross (item 38), St. Quiriac (item 39), and the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (item 63), which is itself composed of four short exempla: (a) Miracle of the Struck Crucifix, (b) Miracle of the Bleeding Crucifix, (c) Miracle of the Jew Saved by the Sign of the Cross, (4) Miracle of the Careless Nun—the one who forgets to bless her meal. 39 For an analysis of St. Kenelm and his function as an English child martyr in L, see Julie Nelson Couch, Chapter Eleven in this volume.

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come’ ” (356.25–26), and Gregory’s famous pun (English = angels) has echoed since (356.27–31). Strictly speaking, Gregory is not an English saint, but his placement with SS. Kenelm and Cuthbert indicates his importance to English history.40 Prevented from evangelizing England himself because he is selected pope, Gregory sends St. Augustine to England instead, for a “lond fol of so fair folk : þat auȝten beo Engles i-fere!” (356.36). The narrator thanks Gregory, stating “þat he is nouþe in heouene : with Aungles i-fere” (359.115). The tale conveys a compelling symbolic completeness: The angelic English children compel Gregory to evangelize England, and Gregory’s efforts through St. Augustine allow the pagan English to embrace Christendom and to become angels themselves, with whom Gregory now abides in heaven. Gregory’s attraction to the young English “angels” initiates the historical process that makes England a Christian nation, and an attentive reader sees the English themselves as the angels of Infancy’s “table of contents.” The third in this saintly trilogy, St. Cuthbert, is also lauded in his youth, but he resists at first, preferring to play with his fellow “ȝounge children . . . atþe bal” (359.4), until a little child “ne þouȝte þreo ȝer old” (359.5) sweetly upbraids him because of his frivolous games (359.8–10). Initially more interested in his playmates, Cuthbert finally heeds the child’s tearful rebuke to eschew “ ‘swuche idele games . . . / Ȝwane god hath i-porueid [appointed] þe’ ” to divine service (359.21–22). Unlike the child savior in Infancy who begins working at age seven, the eight-year-old Cuthbert still wastes his time playing rather than working to achieve his saintly calling. Learning that the tiny interlocutor is an angel (360.24), Cuthbert repents of his childish pastimes and “setten [applies] him to lore [learning]” (360.27). This sequence of saints presents youthful auditors with examples of childhood devotion and reticence for their contemplation, and even a “late bloomer” like Cuthbert finally chooses learning and devotion over games and amusement. The sequence of SS. Kenelm, Gregory, and Cuthbert shows the importance of childhood, together recalling Infancy’s “table of contents,” bringing to mind pious role models for youthful readers, and connecting childish reticence to national identity and youthful trials to salvation history. Childhood piety, national history, and Christian martyrdom find their highest expression in St. Thomas Becket, L’s longest vita at 2,478

40 For a further discussion of the relationship between SS. Gregory and Augustine and England, See Kimberly K. Bell, Chapter Twelve in this volume.

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lines. Like the other English saints whose holiness begins in their youth, “þat child [Becket] heo [his mother] setten to lore : are [before] it were seue ȝer eld (112.195–96). The L sanctorale not only presents St. Thomas Becket’s childhood but also explicates his pious father’s life and relationship to his pagan mother before she converts and conceives Becket, “pris-martyr of engelonde” (110.142). After Becket’s martyrdom, a monk in Jerusalem has a miraculous vision in which Becket is escorted into heaven: Fair was þat processioun : þat a-ȝen him cam gon Of Aungles and of patriarks : and of apostles al-so, Of Martirs and of confessours : and of virgines þer-to. heo nome alle þeos holi soule : And bi-fore ore louerd sone brouȝten hire with Ioye and blisse : ase he sat in is throne. (172.2300–04, emphasis added)

Significantly, this passage in the sanctorale brings Infancy to mind in two important ways. First, St. Thomas presents the same goodly lineage—the same functional, hagiographical categories—as the “table of contents” at end of Infancy (1839–46). That sequence is repeated here in L’s preeminent hagiography in exactly the same order (angels, apostles, martyrs, confessors, and virgins), providing a type of closing to Infancy’s opening bookend, but with a twist: Becket’s legend adds “patriarchs” to the procession (2301), ultimately associating Becket with St. Peter (172.2310). Peter is, of course, the greatest disciple of all, the first head of the Church, and progenitor of the institution Becket died to defend. Becket’s hagiography thereby ranks Canterbury as a seat of Christendom on a par with Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Rome, and Jerusalem and integrates the English church and its saints into the broad sweep of Christian history. It is only after St. Thomas’s vita (item 27) that L transitions for the first time from the end of the calendar year (with Becket’s 29 December feast day) to the beginning of the New Year and the standard SEL opening.41 In other words, the “official” L sanctorale begins once the history of Christianity in England culminates in Becket’s martyrdom. Although historically removed by more than two centuries, Becket’s sainthood is nonetheless temporally present in L, and his human devel-

41 D’Evelyn and Mill argue that the so-called “third opening” to the Becket legend (“Engelond glad þov beo . . . ,” 112.203) is “an interruption and leads to the repetition of statements about the young Thomas” (SEL, 1:23), while I suggest that these are not heedless repetitions but a deliberate strategy.

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opment and spiritual odyssey mirrors England’s political and religious lineage. Perhaps even more importantly, Infancy and Becket’s vita are associated texts, according to manuscript evidence. Although Liszka doubts that Infancy was part of the SEL’s “original plan,” it is clear that one scribe (Scribe A) copied Infancy, the incomplete MP, and the complete sanctorale (items 8–67).42 Furthermore, in a parallel too specific to be only chance, Becket’s legend and Infancy are the only L two poems to feature French incipits, indicating their probable French exemplars.43 Given that the earliest and most important English Franciscans were trained in Paris, and texts like the SEL appear related to the Franciscan educational and homiletical program, the L SEL potentially represents a didactic experiment, an instrument of pastoral outreach and instruction tied to the mandates of Lateran IV to instruct lay and clergy, male and female, young and old in the rudiments of the faith, rather than a categorically and calendrically shaped schema. Infancy, Temporal Hybridity, and Didactic Coherence In the Statutes of Salisbury (1217–19), Bishop Richard Poore followed Lateran IV’s call for a vigorous new educational program with instructions for priests and parents “to instruct children (or have them taught) in the tenets of the faith in small groups or even one on one.”44 In the 1281 Council of Lambeth, John Pecham, the Franciscan Archbishop of Canterbury, issued Ignorantia sacerdotum, which called for priests to instruct the laity four times yearly in English concerning the rudiments of the faith.45 Even then, according to Leonard

42 Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 79, 76. Liszka speculates that the Infancy may have been “admitted to the manuscript as a Christmas narrative in the sanctorale rather than as part of the temporale as it now appears” (80); however, Infancy could be considered an advent story only in the most indirect sense since the birth of Jesus occupies only a few lines. 43 Becket’s legend is headed: “Ici poez oyer coment seint Thomas de Kaunterbures nasqui. e de quev manere gent de pere e de Mere” (fig. 5, Horstmann, ESEL, 106); it has a second opening on fol. 63r: “Hic Isci Comence la vie seint Thomas Erceeueske de Kaunterbury” (fig. 6, Horstmann, ESEL, 112); Infancy is headed “Jci comence le enfaunce ih’u crist” (fig. 3, Horstmann. Altenglische Legenden, 1). 44 See Marjorie Curry Woods and Rita Copeland, “Classroom and Confession,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 376–406 (390). 45 The basic teachings were to include the Fourteen Articles of Faith, the Ten Commandments, the Two Precepts of the Gospel, the Seven Works of Mercy, the Seven Deadly Sins, the Seven Principle Virtues, and the Seven Sacraments: “XIIII Fidei

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Boyle, Ignorantia sacerdotum was more syllabus or outline than pastoral manual.46 Even incomplete, the L temporale envisions a full narrative of Jesus’ historical life that includes his immediate genealogy, birth, childhood and youth, ministry, and apotheosis. The L SEL then represents collaboration and contestation in the development of a medieval English religious practice that has not been fully integrated into the disciplinary, calendrical regularity of the missal. These contending views of history, as well as the separation of narrative and exposition, were not merged until Jacobus de Voragine in his Legenda Aurea “inserted the movable feasts into the cycle of saints’ lives approximately at the places indicated by the church calendar, thus in effect turning them artificially into fixed feasts.”47 Not only did the Legenda Aurea cement the hagiographies temporally in place, it also united saintly narratives with explicit doctrinal exposition—the Ignorantia sacerdocum with the SEL. To return to the questions with which I opened this essay, I would like to consider once again the structure and function of the Infancy poem, its relationship to temporale and sanctorale as well as the rest of the manuscript, in terms of the thematics of childhood and the hybrid historical sensibility created across the texts. L’s tendency to include childhood as an essential part of hagiographical identity and national history and its penchant to incorporate the thematics of childhood across multiple genres and texts permits competing temporal sensibilities to emerge. Thinking of the temporale as a temporal history of Christ juxtaposed against the sanctorale allows two conceptions of Christian history to contest one another—although the sequence of events in the historical life of Christ do not change (for they are fixed in the past), the Church commemorates and celebrates them annually (as they vary each year). The L narratives favor the specific history of particular individuals, such as St. Thomas Becket, who are themselves embedded in articulos; X. Mandata decalogi; duo Præcepta evangelii, videlicet, geminæ charitatis; et VII. etiam Opera misericordiæ; VII. Capitalia peccata, cum sua progenie; VII. Virtutes principales; ac etiam VII. Gratiæ sacramenta” (Lay Folks’ Catechism, ed. T. F. Simmons and H. E. Nolloth [Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., 1901], 21). 46 Cited in Woods and Copeland, “Classroom and Confession,” 396. See Leonard E. Boyle, “The Oculus Sacerdotis and Some Other Works of William of Pagula,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 5 (1955), 81–110 (82) as well as Boyle’s “The Fourth Lateran Council and Manuals of Popular Theology,” in The Popular Culture of Medieval England, ed. Thomas J. Heffernan (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), 30–43. 47 Pickering, “The Expository Temporale Poems,” 2–3.

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precisely articulated family and national histories, and the L sanctorale demonstrates how these particular historical individuals contributed to the development of corporate (or national) histories. Established in Infancy, L’s poetics of childhood introduces readers to the complexities of medieval childhood and the necessity for moral self-examination, a tendency that continues into the sanctorale and ultimately reaches the two romances. Throughout Havelok and Horn, parallels in action, characterization, and theme—especially the centrality of childhood in the construction of personal and national identity—links the romances to the sanctorale and ultimately to Infancy. These multiple senses of history—temporal and transhistorical, linear and recursive, personal and corporate—have broadly didactic, though different, values. Jesus’ youthful antics in Infancy are not so much models to imitate as they are object lessons for instruction. On one hand, the temporale presents the divine model whose life is worthy to emulate; on the other, the sanctorale presents the stories of those who have adapted the divine model successfully to their specific circumstances and then scatters their exemplary lives in four rough groups across the calendar year. Nonetheless, Infancy extends from the precocious, childish divinity rooted in the past to the stories of those who emulate Jesus and serve the Church in the hagiographies up to the present day. The romances then depict Havelok and Horn as vulnerable children, persecuted and displaced, who, like Jesus in Infancy, actively shape their histories as they are shaped by history.48 Conversely, Infancy brings the importance of childhood into the English medieval present, carrying mythic, transhistorical structures into dialogue with historical accounts to provide the raw materials for the construction of an English Christian identity. Rather than an anomaly, Infancy is central to L’s alternative conception of religious history and reveals how childhood becomes a figure for articulating pastness while simultaneously demonstrating the continual immediacy of the past within the present.

48 See Julie Nelson Couch, “The Vulnerable Hero: Havelok and the Revision of Romance,” Chaucer Review 42 (2008), 330–52.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE ESCHATOLOGICAL CLUSTER—SAYINGS OF ST. BERNARD, VISION OF ST. PAUL, AND DISPUTE BETWEEN THE BODY AND THE SOUL—IN OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108 J. Justin Brent Mediating the South English Legendary (SEL) and the romances of Havelok the Dane and King Horn in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L) are three didactic poems—Sayings of St. Bernard (fols. 198r–199v), Vision of St. Paul (fols. 199r–200v) and Dispute Between the Body and the Soul (fols. 200v–203r)—whose contents have attracted little interest among scholars of the manuscript. These didactic works invite easy dismissal in part because of their brevity, and in part because they are invented with little apparent originality. Instead, scholars of the manuscript have been more interested in, on the one hand, the order and rearrangement of items in the SEL1 and, on the other, the relationship of the romances to the SEL.2 To both of these issues, the three eschatological poems are directly relevant because of their physical position in the manuscript and the thematic common ground they find with the more prominent items in the manuscript. While the cluster apparently departs thematically from the content of the SEL collection, the first two items (Sayings and Vision) are in the same hand as the SEL material. Along with the Dispute (copied in a unique, contemporary hand) they constitute the final items of the vast fourth booklet, which also contains most of the SEL material.3 Additionally, Dispute shows a persistent concern with the genre of romance and thus reaches out to the works in the second half of the manuscript. All three poems, moreover, stem from a remarkably

1 The history of this controversy has been summarized by Thomas R. Liszka, who believes that more than one system of ordering informs the arrangement of SEL items in L (“MS Laud Misc. 108,” 75–76). 2 See Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, 283; Allen, King Horn, 11–12. 3 See A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One in this volume, Görlach, Textual Tradition, 88–89, and the table in Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 89–91.

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well-developed textual tradition. They appear in several other Middle English manuscripts, suggesting both a broad appeal and widespread cultural influence. By studying the literary traditions of each poem, we can find evidence that collectively they played a structural role in L, and that perhaps the manuscript as a whole, in spite of its missing leaves, later additions, and various hands, was at one or more points assembled with a plan. Sayings, Vision, and Dispute all belong to a body of Middle English homiletic poetry that focuses on death—the uncertainty of its arrival, the horrors of putrefaction and eternal torment, and consequently the necessity of immediate and regular prayer, almsgiving and penance.4 Many fit neatly into the category of medieval lyric and are edited in the anthologies of Carleton Brown and Thomas Duncan,5 though a few have a narrative framework that develops out of traditional legends or visions. In terms of structure, all of the death poems have a plastic, aggregative quality. The memento mori and contemptus mundi themes, for example—such as the three fears of dying, the signs of death, the three enemies of man, the ubi sunt and quid profuit formulas, and a variety of ironic antitheses—tend to crop up in other homiletic poems where they are almost never developed into sustained meditations. Their cumulative effect, therefore, tends to be admonitory rather than meditative: they rarely venture far from the context of the pulpit, and indeed many of them are found within collections of sermons.6 Within this larger tradition of death poems, we can also identify a subset of poems called, for lack of a better name, the Tradition of Body and Soul. These works focus specifically on the separation of soul from

4 See Rosemary Woolf, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), 67–114; Hildegard L. C. Tristram, “Stock Descriptions of Heaven and Hell in Old English Prose and Poetry,” Neophilologische Mitteilungen 79 (1978): 152–84; Takami Matsuda, Death and Purgatory in Middle English Didactic Poetry (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 278; Vincent Gillespie, “Moral and Penitential Lyrics,” in A Companion to the Middle English Lyric, ed. Thomas G. Duncan (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2005), 68–95. 5 Carleton Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 312; Carleton Brown and G. V. Smithers, eds., Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century, 2nd ed., rev. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952), 365; Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939), 236–58; and Thomas G. Duncan, ed., Medieval English Lyrics, 1200–1400 (London: Penguin Books, 1995), nos. 24–33. 6 For the close relationship of lyrics and sermons, see Siegfried Wenzel, Verses in Sermons: “Fasciculus Morum” and its Middle English Poems (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1978) and Siegfried Wenzel, Preachers, Poets, and the Early English Lyric (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), 272.

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body and the aftermath of this fearful divorce. They tend to involve relatively long speeches, sometimes paired in an antithetical structure, at other times isolated as a single address of the soul to its body.7 The dramatization of this unnatural divorce can be traced from the debates of the High Middle Ages all the way back to visions of the early Christian church, and perhaps even earlier.8 Certainly, it is common to find in Middle English manuscripts concentrations of moral lyrics, such as those found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a.1 (Vernon MS) and London, British Library, MS Harley 2253. Even more frequently we find the lyrics combined with other prose tracts of various lengths into what Takami Matsuda calls eschatological florilegia, where lyrics are grouped with longer moral treatises or other homiletic ancillaries.9 A few manuscripts gather together more than one work from the body and soul tradition.10 All three of the poems in question, for instance, appear in the Vernon MS though not together as a group, and several other manuscripts include two of the three together.11 But the three poems in question, all to some extent indebted to the body and soul tradition, are clustered together only in L. Here they collectively give voice to overwhelming anxiety about the moment of separation of soul from body, yet also exploit this fear in order to promote the appropriate penitential response. This eschatological cluster offers an admonitory pause between the hagiographical and romance material, a pause that both elaborates on themes visited in the SEL and anticipates themes of fortune and closure found at the end of L. In order to appreciate

7 For important studies of this tradition, see Théodor Batiouchkof, “Le débat de l’âme et du corps,” Romania 20 (1891): 1–55, 513–78; Hans Walther, Das Streitgedicht in der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters (Munich: Beck, 1920), 63–88; and Rudolph Willard, “The Address of the Soul to the Body,” PMLA 50 (1935): 957–83. 8 See Louise Dudley, The Egyptian Elements in the Legend of Body and Soul (Baltimore, MD: J. H. Furst Company, 1911), and Mary Ursula Vogel, Some Aspects of the Horse and Rider Analogy in the Debate between the Body and the Soul (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1948), vi, 114. 9 Matsuda, Death and Purgatory, 122. 10 Most notably, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS 323. See Karl Reichl, Religiöse Dichtung im englischen Hochmittelalter: Untersuchung und Edition der Handschrift B.14. 39 des Trinity College in Cambridge, Müncher Universitäts-Schriften, Philosophische Fakultät, Texte und Untersuchung zur Englischen Philologie, 1 (Munich: Fink, 1973), 1:552. 11 Manuscripts containing the Dispute and Vision include London, British Library, MSS Add. 37787 and 22283; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86, and MS Harley 2253 contain the Sayings and the Vision; Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck MS) contains both the Sayings and the Dispute.

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this penitential pause, it will be worth visiting briefly the sources and textual tradition responsible for the three poems in this penitential cluster. Sayings of St. Bernard The Sayings consists of a series of conventional statements about the fragility and vileness of mortal existence, the immanence of death, and the importance of preparing for the hereafter. The poem develops the popular theme of the three enemies of man (the World, the Flesh and the Devil) who seek to distract mankind from the path of salvation, and it concludes with a well-known ubi sunt passage that seems to have circulated separately as well.12 The poem fits more neatly into the tradition of Middle English lyrics on death than the other two works in this cluster, whose narrative features align more closely with the romances that follow. Entirely conventional in its treatment of death,13 Sayings is one of a handful of Middle English lyrics loosely based on the Pseudo-Bernardian Meditationes piissimae de cognitione humanae conditionis. This prose meditation in fifteen chapters was extremely popular in Western Europe and is certainly the most well known of the St. Bernard apocrypha.14 Developing the idea of ascent to God through self-knowledge, the Meditationes addresses a monastic audience and devotes much of its discussion to the inward search for divine salvation. The Middle English derivatives, on the other hand, focus almost exclusively on the admonitory sections of this work— 12

See Gillespie, “Moral and Penitential Lyrics,” 71. See Matsuda, Death and Purgatory, 117. On the poem’s variegated style, see Woolf, The English Religious Lyric, 108–09, who notes its “astringency” (108); and Michael P. Kuczynski, who is more complimentary of the poem’s “violent mixture of styles” (“An ‘Electric Stream’: The Religious Contents,” in Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The Scribes, Contents, and Social Contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253, ed. Susanna Fein [Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000], 123–61 [145]). 14 For discussion of its influence on the continent, see R. Bultot, “Les Méditationes Pseudo-Bernardines sur la connaissance de la condition humaine. Problémes d’histoire littéraire,” Sacris Erudiri: Jaarboek voor Godsdienstwetenschappen 15 (1964): 256–92 (256). Joseph B. Monda cites several manuscripts in England containing the Meditationes (“A Critical Edition of the ‘Sayings of Saint Bernard’ ” [Ph.D. diss., University of Colorado, Boulder, 1968], 26 n. 3. An English translation can be found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C 894 (fols. 74r–86v), as well as in its sister manuscript, London, British Library, MS Royal 17.C.xviii (fols 89v–104v). London, British Library, MS Harley 2388 (fols. 36v–37), contains a short prose treatise based on the first few books of the Meditationes. See Matsuda, Death and Purgatory, 116–17. 13

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chapters two, three, twelve, and thirteen. Thus, the Middle English Sayings lacks the contemplative speculation that characterized its source. Rather than self-knowledge, Sayings emphasizes the futility of worldly pursuit. Nevertheless, it follows the Meditationes fairly closely in denigrating things of this world. Sayings’ four most prominent themes— the corruption of the body, the altercation between body and soul, the three enemies of man, and the ubi sunt—are based on passages within the Meditationes. All four, moreover, are thoroughly developed in the debate that concludes the eschatological cluster in L.15 Yet a few common death themes present in the poem do not appear in the Meditationes. One is the antithetical turns of fate demonstrating that man’s life is but a “feble wynd”: Nov þu art wrong, nov þu art ryȝht, Nou þou art heuy, nou þu art lyȝht, Þou lepest also a ro; Nov þu art sik, nou þou are coueret [recovered], Nov þou art riche, nou þu art pouere— Ne is þis much wo? (37–42)16

Similar expressions of Fortune’s fickle nature abound in the penitential lyrics,17 particularly with respect to Fortune and her wheel. Moreover, the present example creates an interesting parallel with the Wheel of Fortune topos so eloquently developed later in the manuscript in Somer Soneday.18 Sayings closes with another commonplace theme not found in the Meditationes—the miles Christi topos, reminiscent of Ephesians 6:11–17, which encourages readers to “tak þe rode to þi staf” (175). Imagined as a weapon in spiritual battles, this staff

15 See Conlee, Middle English Debate Poetry, 18–49. The ubi sunt and three enemies of man motifs appear at lines 17–56 and 393–432. For discussion of the ubi sunt theme, see Etienne Gilson, Les Idées et les lettres (Paris: J. Vrin, 1900), 9–38; J. E. Cross, “‘Ubi Sunt’ Passages in Old English—Sources and Relationships,” in Vetenskaps-Societetens i Lund Årsbok (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1956), 23–44. For the three enemies, see Siegfried Wenzel, “The Three Enemies of Man,” Mediaeval Studies 29 (1967): 47–66. 16 Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., The Minor Poems of the Vernon Ms., EETS, o.s., 117 (London: Keagan Paul, Trench and Trübner, 1901), 511–22; this and subsequent references will be given parenthetically by line numbers. 17 See Gillespie, “Moral and Penitential Lyrics,” 90 n. 36. 18 Cf. the end of the old king’s speech in Somer Soneday: “fikel is fortune, nou fer fro; / here wel, here wo, / here knyth, her kyng, her caytif” (Turville-Petre, Alliterative Poetry, lines 126–28). For further discussion of Fortune in L, see Christina M. Fitzgerald, Chapter Five, and Susanna Fein, Chapter Thirteen in this volume.

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becomes a means of defense and counter-attack to the three enemies of man described earlier. The idea was a favorite of monastic treatises and appears quite frequently in the soul and body tradition.19 The four major death themes in the L Sayings—the corruption of the body, the altercation between body and soul, the three enemies of man, and the ubi sunt—are noteworthy because of their resemblance to those developed in the L Dispute. In both works, for instance, the horror of a decaying body, whose only purpose is to nourish worms, serves to trivialize the pursuit of worldly prosperity. Sayings opens with this sentiment and with it sets the tone for the entire poem: “Seint bernard seith in his bok / Þat man is worm and wormes cok [food]” (1–2). The Dispute employs the food-for-worms motif far more artfully, limiting its sentiment to the quarrelsome soul.20 Both the Sayings and the Dispute in L, moreover, extensively develop the three enemies of man—where the World, Flesh, and Devil conspire to overthrow the vigilance of mankind. Finally, both poems develop an impressive ubi sunt passage and regularly stress the opposition of soul and body. Individually, none of these coincidences is terrifically significant, but cumulatively they suggest that their positioning in L—separated only by the Vision of St. Paul—could not have been accidental. They frame the intervening Vision with dualistic admonition. While the Sayings introduces these four ideas as scenes of penitential meditation, the Dispute brings them to life in a dramatic conflictus that admonishes and prepares readers for the romances to come. In addition to L, Sayings appears in five other manuscripts—Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Digby 86, Add. E.6 (R), the Vernon MS, MS Harley 2253, and the Auchinleck MS, the latter containing only the final ubi sunt of the poem. Of these, the L version bears the closest relationship to MS Harley 2253, which omits two of the same stanzas as L toward the end of the poem. Most significantly, the L version inserts four unique stanzas in the middle of the ubi sunt section:

19 See John Justin Brent, “The Legend of Soul and Body in Medieval England” (Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2001), 105–9 for a discussion of the fusion of these two themes. 20 See in particular lines 41–8, though the body’s impending decay is noted frequently and indeed acknowledged by the body (152–60). All citations are from Conlee, Middle English Debate Poetry, and will be given parenthetically by line number.

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ȝware beoz þulke [those] þat couþen [knew how to] so wel With vnriȝhte and wrongliche echdel Winne rentes and londes And nolden nouȝht here beon aknowe Þat it was unriȝhtfulliche heore owe [own] For þe worldes schonde [harm]. Þulke [these] þat deiden on orþe [earth] here And wonnen ouȝht in swuch manere Londes oþur rente Forsoþe isegge it eou to wisse Huy ne connez neuere in heuene bisse [bliss] Ake in helle huy schullen stunte [abide] Þei huy ligge sike longue And in heore dez [death] bedde þienchez mid wrong To þulke þing we come Fain huy wolden [wish] hadden huy space Ake manie nabbez þer to no grace To ȝelden aȝein eftsone Þare seith þe bok apliȝht [plenty] Þat eorl ne baroun cler ne knyȝht Bacheler ne sweyn Noþing ne mouwe huy with onriȝht In þis manere habbe no wiȝht Bote huy it ȝelden aȝein. (133–56)

Although somewhat clumsy in their articulation, these lines combine an impulse for matching crime and punishment with a warning about late repentance.21 Both ideas accord well with the graphic tortures described in the Vision on the one hand and the Dispute’s satirical enumeration of aristocratic vices on the other.22 The warning against late repentance, moreover, is a staple of the Body and Soul Tradition.23 Both works spell out consequences for those who fail to 21

Monda briefly discusses the element of social protest in these four stanzas, but it is difficult to find support in L for his reading (“Critical Edition,” 60ff.). On the other hand, if the lines represent Scribe A’s attempt to delineate otherworldly consequences for sins of this world, then the Sayings moves thematically much closer to the topic of the Vision, which appears next in L. 22 The soul in the Dispute, for instance, accuses the body of neglecting the poor (61–68). The old man from the L Vision, who traditionally was a negligent bishop, here is punished for theft of property and stinginess. 23 For instance, a widely copied Pseudo-Isidore homily introduces the soul’s address with a discussion of late repentance. The homilist imagines the reasoning of a tardy repentant—“Juvenis sum & tempus habeo mundo frui; cum ad senectutem uenero, penitentiam agam [I am young and have time to enjoy this world; when I arrive at

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repent, and the dreamer at the end of the Dispute counsels all who are with sin to repent and show contrition (622). The four stanzas in question bring the Sayings inexorably closer in purpose to the subsequent works in the manuscript, thereby making explicit the connection between sins and their wages. It seems possible therefore that the A scribe modified his exemplar of the Sayings to create greater continuity with what follows. Vision of St. Paul The Vision claims to be an account of St. Paul’s journey to hell, where he witnesses a variety of sinners being tortured for crimes that are delineated by his guide, the Archangel Michael. Like the Sayings, the versified Vision is based on a prose Latin source—the fourth redaction of the Visio Pauli. This redaction is a significantly abbreviated descendant of a third-century Greek original, whose shape is most accurately reflected in an eighth-century Latin version.24 The fourth redaction served as a source for virtually all of the vernacular translations of the Vision, including the six versions in Middle English, which nevertheless differ significantly from one another. 25 Even when two versions

old age, I will repent]”—and then sternly cautions his listeners against such reasoning: “Fratres, non decipiat vos ista prava securitas, sed semper diem mortis ante oculos habeamus cum timore et vera poenitentia [Brothers, do not let this warrantless security deceive you, but always have the day of your death before your eyes with fear and true penance]” (J. P. Migne, Patrologiæ Cursus Completus, Series Latina, 83 [Paris: Garnieri Fratres, 1891], col 1224). See Brent, “Legend of Soul and Body,” 104–05, for discussion of this homily’s manuscript context. 24 For the long version, see Theodore Silverstein and Anthony Hilhorst, eds., Apocalypse of Paul: A New Critical Edition of Three Long Latin Versions (Genève: Patrick Cramer, 1997). For a discussion of the redactions, see Theodore Silverstein, Visio Sancti Pauli: The History of the Apocalypse in Latin Together with Nine Texts (Baltimore, MD: Waverly Press, 1935). The best edition of the fourth redaction is found in H. Brandes, ed., Visio S. Pauli: ein Beitrag zur Visionslitteratur mit einem Deutschen und zwei lateinischen Texten (Halle: Niemeyer, 1885), 76–80. See 34–37 for his discussion of Redaction IV and 58–62 for his discussion of the English versions. 25 Two are in prose—London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 487 (late twelfth century), and London, British Library, MS Add. 10036 (late fourteenth century). The other three versified versions are an early couplet version (MS Digby 86 and Jesus, MS 29; NIMEV, 3828), the Vernon MS couplet version (NIMEV, 1898), and the Audelay stanzaic version (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 302; NIMEV, 3481). See Severs, Manual, 2:452–53 and 645–46. Silverstein, Visio Sancti Pauli, 97–98 n. 54 indicates that Lambeth, MS 487, is based on Redaction III but with noteworthy parallels to Redaction IV. Yet the sequence of torments, notably the fiery wheel and increased

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are similar enough to suggest a close textual relationship, we often find instances of improvisation, omission, or rearrangement. Such is the case with versions in Oxford, Jesus College, MS 29 and MS Digby 86, both of which extemporize freely at the end of certain sections, even though they are immediately based on the same Anglo-Norman source.26 The remaining translations, however, are unrelated and suggest through their diversity the ad hoc nature of their composition.27 It seems quite possible that the version in L was composed to follow the Sayings. Both poems share a six-line stanza rhyming aabccb and are laid out in two columns, unlike the works that precede and follow, which are in single columns and offer different rhyme schemes. L offers the only Middle English versification of the Vision in six-line stanzas, and it shows even greater freedom than others in adapting the fourth redaction. Thematically speaking, the Sayings and the Vision share a condemnation of worldly pursuits, a celebration of the power of penance, and a fascination with soul and body.28 Whereas the long Latin Visio provides a tour of both heaven and hell, the fourth redaction focuses on the torments of hell—for example, souls hanging in trees at the portal to hell, a fiery wheel, a bridge over number of “plage,” as well as the overall preoccupation with the Sunday Respite, suggests in my opinion a much stronger relationship with Redaction IV. 26 For editions, see “The XI Pains of Hell,” in Richard Morris, ed., An Old English Miscellany, EETS, o.s., 49 (London: N. Trübner and Co., 1872), 147–55; and Carl Horstmann, “Nachträge zu den Legenden: II. Zu S. Paul’s Vision von der Hölle aus Ms. Digby 86,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 62 (1879): 403–06. To my knowledge, the Anglo Norman source remains unknown, though see Ruth J. Dean, with Maureen B. M. Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, Anglo-Norman Text Society, Occasional Publications Series, 3 (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999), nos. 553–55 for three similar versions. R. C. D. Perman discusses the two closest analogues and prints one of them (no. 554) (“Henri d’Arci: The Shorter Works,” in Studies in Medieval French, Presented to Alfred Ewert in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962], 279–321). See also D. D. R. Owen, The Vision of Hell: infernal journeys in medieval French literature (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1970), 51–55. 27 Thus, a few historians interested in the genesis of purgatory have noted its encroachment into rescensions of the Vision. Audelay’s versification, for instance, warns that sins must be punished “In erþ, in purgatore, or ellis in hel . . .” (Morris, “XI Pains,” 217, line 221). And in the sixth redaction, which appears in two ninth-century MSS with strong Irish connections, Paul secures the release of his parents from hell, and they presumably are led to heaven. See Claude Carozzi, Le voyage de l’âme dans l’au-delà, d’après la littérature latine : Ve–XIIIe siècle, Collection de l’École française de Rome, vol. 189 (Rome: École française de Rome, 1994). 28 The L Vision, or a close variant of it, apparently was a source for parts of the version of St. Patrick and his Purgatory in the Auchinleck MS. See Robert Easting, ed., Saint Patrick’s Purgatory, EETS, o.s., 298 (London: Oxford University Press, 1991), li–liv.

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a burning river, a furnace with seven plagues, and a pit with seven seals. It also preserves two features that play an influential role in the body and soul tradition. One is Paul’s appeal to Christ on behalf of the damned. As a result of this appeal, Christ grants a weekly reprieve from hell to all the damned, commonly known as the Sunday Respite.29 The second is the deportation of two souls: one sinful, one blessed, recently departed from their bodies. These two scenes set the stage for the encounter of soul and body for the rest of the Middle Ages, delineating the moment when the soul addresses its body (that is, after separation or on subsequent Sundays) and the accusatory nature of the exchange. The Respite and Deportation scenes are made especially prominent in the L version by omitting many of the torments in the Latin redaction (e.g., the fiery wheel, the tantalizing fruit, and the pit of worms and snakes). These two scenes, moreover, offer the most striking evidence of kinship between the Vision and Dispute in L. Although different from one another, the rest of the Middle English versifications of the Vision show more interest in Paul’s journey through hell. Thus the MS Digby 86 and Jesus, MS 29 versions are entitled “The Eleven Pains of Hell”; they omit both the Sunday Respite and the deportation scenes and provide a fairly faithful list of torments with very little narrative. In contrast, the L version preserves the dominical focus of the homiletic fourth redaction: Seue dawes [days] aren þat men callez. Þe sonenday is best of alle. Þanne aungles habbuz heore pley. Alle þe sunfole [sinful] soules wicke Þat beoz in hell pine þicke. Huy restez hem þat ilke day.30

This opening stanza provides a homiletic statement of theme, which Paul’s tour will reinforce by way of explanation. Interestingly, the focus is not on the excruciating pains of hell (as in Jesus, MS 29, MS Digby 86, and Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 302), nor on Paul 29 The Sunday Respite refers to the apocryphal belief that all damned souls are liberated from hell on Sundays, thanks to St. Paul’s appeal on their behalf. For further discussion of the origins of the Sunday Respite, see Willard, “Address of the Soul to the Body,” 957–83. 30 Carl Horstmann, “II. Die Vision des h. Paulus,” in “Die Sprüche des h. Bernhard und die Vision des h. Paulus nach Ms. Laud 108,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 52 (1874): 35–38 (35). This edition has no line numbers; this and all subsequent references will be by page numbers and given in parentheses.

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and Michael’s appeal for mercy (as in the Vernon MS and the prose versions). Rather, the emphasis is on the damned souls who “restez hem that ilke day.” The change in focus draws attention away from the devastating consequences of sin in the afterlife and towards the otherworldly sanction of rest, as if inhabitants of hell were modeling behavior for the living. To be sure, the fourth redaction also shows an unusual preoccupation with Sunday observance, and some of the homiletic versions, such as the one in London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 487, are amplified with extensive paeans to Sunday.31 But among versified versions, the L Vision stands alone in focusing so much attention on the circumscribed time–“fram Saturday non to þe monen moruwe” (38) rather than on torments whose scope extends throughout eternity. This brief respite, although relatively trivial in the overall course of damnation, was crucial in body and soul literature, since it provided a popular occasion for staging a soul’s address or, by the twelfth century, a debate between body and soul. By positioning the soul’s speech during the respite, an author would imbue the soul with firsthand experience of hell, rather than leaving it to speculate about the horrors that await it. The postponement of encounter also allowed time for decomposition of the body, which became a favorite topic of the tradition. One of the earliest vernacular versions of the debate indicates that the dreamer’s vision took place “Une samedi par nuit [one Saturday night],” soon after the story’s protagonist was released from hell.32 Similarly, the soul from the Visio Philiberti, the Latin source for the L Dispute, indicates that he has firsthand knowledge of hell.33 The Vision, thus, in all its redactions and versifications,

31 The long Latin version featured an annual respite rather than a weekly one. In changing from annual to weekly, the fourth redaction shows the influence of the Sunday Letter or Sunday Lists, whose contents sought to elevate the importance of Sunday worship. For a discussion of this transition, see Willard, “Address of the Soul to the Body,” 957–83. See also Clare A. Lees, “The ‘Sunday Letter’ and the ‘Sunday Lists,’ ” Anglo-Saxon England 14 (1985): 129–51. 32 Dean, Anglo-Norman Literature, no. 692. The text, edited by Hermann Varnhagen, appears in the appendix of Wilhelm Linow, ed., Þe Desputisoun Bitwen þe Bodi and þe Soule (Erlangen: Böhme, 1889), 120–89. 33 See Thomas Wright, The Latin Poems Commonly Attributed to Walter Mapes (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1841), 103, lines 232–33. While the Dispute seems to take place immediately after death—the soul anticipates the body’s burial on the following day—there are other signs that significant time has elapsed. Most notably, worms have made an inn of the body, which now sends out a “wikke wef [stench]!” (248). As Rosalie Osmond has suggested in Mutual Accusation: Seventeenth-Century Body and Soul Dialogues in their Literary and Theological Context (Toronto: Uni-

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created a means for combining the horrors of the grave with those of infernal torment, all within a dramatically unified narrative. The driving force behind this unification was the Sunday Respite, which created a plausible context for the two kinds of horror to intersect. The L version omits and rearranges many of the torments that form the bulk of the fourth redaction, but it is careful to match specific sins with all of the enumerated torments. As a result, the poem is constantly referring back to the world of the living, where other versifications are more preoccupied with otherworldly torment.34 Moreover, the L Vision pays unusual attention to sinners who failed to repent, all of whom reside in the deepest pit of hell. Some are infidels who after being converted were given “hosel [eucharist] and shrift / And sethþe wolden mis bi leue” (37). Amidst the fire with seven-colored flames, we find those who For heore sunnes [sins] no penaunce Hey nolden don no cheuisaunce [atonement] Ne neuere wicke hede a blinne [cease]. (37)

Paul also sees women covered with pitch and tortured by dragons for having slain their children, but their unwillingness to repent seems equally significant: Ne sethþe huy nolden atþe laste. For heore sunnes o day faste. Ne to Ihu crist a bouwe [kneel]. (37)

The L version thus brings penance to the forefront repeatedly during the climax of Paul’s tour, where other versions are more interested in the graphic details of suffering. Penance receives further emphasis when Paul and Michael petition Christ for a respite, as well as in the prayer to Christ that concludes the Vision. Following his tour of hell but before his petition for respite, Paul looks above and sees “ane soule þare heo fleiȝh / Among feondes seouene. / þat bodi was ded þat ilke day” (37). An angel convinces the soul to stay put and produces a charter enumerating all of its sins.

versity of Toronto Press, 1990), xiii, 60, the poets of the debate tradition were much more interested in the drama of the speeches than in the consistency of their poem’s temporal setting. 34 See for instance the MS Digby 86 version in Horstmann, “Nachträge,” 403–06; and the Jesus, MS 29 version in Morris, “XI Pains,” 147–55.

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Judgment having been served, a group of fiends takes custody of the soul and escorts it to hell: Þat wrechche soule huy bounden faste. A feond in his necke hire caste. And bar hire into helle. He ste hire into þe put. Also deope ase any feond sit. His pruyde huy maden doun falle. (37)

The stanza provides two interesting additions to the fourth redaction: the fiend cast around the damned soul’s neck and the observation that pride brought about its downfall.35 Both contribute to the overall horror of the soul’s situation, but they also draw the scene closer to what we will see in the Dispute’s deportation scene. There, the devils make it abundantly clear that pride brought about its downfall. They stab the soul in its heart “þat was so fol of pride”; they dress it in a burning devil’s cape in mocking disdain of its former “worldly wedes”; they fasten on it a helmet with spearing hasps; and finally, as a reminder of its chivalric excess, they mount the soul on a “corsid devil . . . as he scholde to þe tornement” (538–46). Clearly, the soul’s abduction in the debate is described with far more detail and satirical delight, but the changes to the Vision create greater continuity between the two.36 The possibility that the L poet composed this version of the Vision must remain speculative, as must the suggestion that he changed the abduction scene in a manner that anticipates that of the debate. But the general similarity of the scene, as well as the hortatory function it played, indicates that the Vision plays an important intermediary role in this cluster. It continues the admonitory theme and metrical pattern of the Sayings and introduces the catalytic moment of dramatic tension—when soul separates from body—that will receive more capable articulation in the debate that follows.

35 It is worth noting that the L Vision also places fiends around the neck of a usurer (76) and dragons and fiends around the necks of women who slay their children (157–58). 36 The fact that in the Vision the fiend rides the soul, rather than the other way around, deprives the scenes of perfect consistency, but it is perhaps a necessary change given the Vision’s humorless presentation.

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j. justin brent Dispute Between the Body and the Soul

In the Dispute, the narrator falls asleep on a wintry evening and sees a soul rebuking its recently departed body. The rebuke initiates a series of accusatory exchanges between soul and body, culminating in the arrival of devils that torment the soul and drag it off to hell. With seven extant versions, the Dispute is the most popular debate in Middle English.37 Modern scholars call it the best of the vernacular body and soul debates, routinely praising its incorporation of the rhythms and colloquialisms of English.38 It is loosely based on the influential Latin Noctis sub silentio brumali,39 which is one of the most popular Latin poems of the twelfth century. The Noctis was copied into more than 160 manuscripts across Europe and inspired translations into numerous vernaculars.40 The Middle English Dispute, however, is not a translation of the Noctis so much as a free paraphrase, and most studies of the Middle English poem have emphasized aspects of its individuality—the reordering of stanzas, the departures reflecting popular Christianity, and its connection to other body and soul debates, particularly the Old French Une samedi par nuit and the Latin Royal Debate.41

37 The other six extant versions are found in the following manuscripts: the Auchinleck MS (fols. 31vb–35ra stub); Vernon MS (fols. 286rc–87rc); Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 102 (fols. 136r–39v); London, British Library, MS Royal 18.A.x (fol. 61v); London, British Library, MS Add. 22283 (fols. 80va–c [verses 1–198 only]); and London, British Library, MS Add. 37787 (fols. 34r–45v). In Desputisoun, Linow provides an edition of MSS Auchinleck, L, Vernon, and Digby 102, with notes on MS Royal 18.A.x. For editions of MS Add. 37787, see Nita Scudder Baugh and John Northwood, eds., A Worcestershire Miscellany (Philadelphia, PA: Bryn Mawr College, 1956), 44, and Thomas J. Garbáty, ed., Medieval English Literature (Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1984), 603–19. 38 See Linow, Desputisoun, 19; Robert W. Ackerman, “The Debate of the Body and the Soul and Parochial Christianity,” Speculum 37 (1962): 541–65; Michel-André Bossy, “Medieval Debates of Body and Soul,” Comparative Literature 28 (1976): 144–63; Karl Reichl, Religiöse Dichtung, 341–42; and Conlee, Middle English Debate Poetry. 39 Also known as the Visio Philiberti. For editions, see Theodor Georg von Karajan, ed., Frühlingsgabe für Freunde älterer Literatur (Vienna: Mösle & Braumüller, 1839), 85–150; Edélestand Du Méril, Poésies populaires latines antérieures au douzième siècle (Paris: Brockhaus et Avenarius, 1843), 217–30; and Wright, Latin Poems, 95–106. 40 See Walther, Das Streitgedicht, 63–74 and 211–14, who lists 131 manuscripts containing the debate. Neil Cartlidge, “In the Silence of a Midwinter Night: A ReEvaluation of the Visio Philiberti,” Medium Ævum 75 (2006): 24–45, notes the existence of at least thirty-five more manuscripts containing the debate. 41 Linow, Desputisoun, 10–15, in particular, cites the influence of Une samedi, but he was unaware of the Latin Royal Debate, which Heningham has argued served as

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The earlier Latin debates, in spite of the grim novissima that give shape to their speeches, were innovative in striving to intermingle admonition with humor, whether through juxtaposing excessive worldliness with its otherworldly wages, through dramatic posturing of either soul or body, or through the generic self-referentiality of the soul’s speeches. In all of them, the soul’s initial speech is modeled rhetorically after speeches of the address tradition, where the body has no opportunity to reply.42 The soul of these early debates seems to think it can rant without reply, scapegoating the body with impunity.43 When the body raises its head and indeed does reply, we are led to believe that this feat is nothing short of miraculous.44 Its reply, moreover, is devastatingly rational and clearly takes the soul by suprise: “a quo didicisti / verba tam acerrima quae jam protulisti?” (Whence did you learn the harsh words you just now brought forth?).45 The Middle English Dispute preserves this introductory development, but the soul replies to the body with far less courtesy: . . . Bodi, be stille! ȝwo haþ lered þe al þis wite, þat giuest me þese wordes grille [harsh] þat list þer bollen [swollen] as a bite [leather bottle]? (201–04)

Here as elsewhere, the Middle English poet exchanges polysyllabic for monosyllabic, regulated meter for plosive alliteration, and careful reasoning for ad hominem attack. The Dispute poet was not the first to invert courtly conventions and fuse them with the grim reminders of decay, but he demonstrates an innovator’s passion for this satirical art. Courtly idioms of beauty, such as “briȝt on ble [of complexion],” “semly for to se” and “comli for to cussen” are sapped of all

a source for the French debate. See Eleanor Kellogg Heningham, ed., An Early Latin Debate of the Body and Soul (Menasha, WI: George Banta, 1937), 25–36. 42 The address tradition appears in Latin and Old English homilies that circulated in monastic circles. See Albert E. Hartung, ed., Manual of Writings in Middle English, 1050–1500 (New Haven: Connecticut Academy of the Arts and Sciences, 1972), 3:691–92 and 845–47. 43 At the end of the soul’s initial speech in the Noctis, it says, “nescis ad opposita respondere credo [You don’t know how to reply, I believe],” Wright, Latin Poems, 98, line 92. 44 In the Royal Debate, the event is called a “mirabilia” (Heningham, 69, line 1455). 45 Noctis 100, lines 144–45. In the Royal Debate, the soul at this point abandons its discussion with the body and sacrilegiously turns its ire towards God.

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light-hearted idealism and placed within a context that is at once comic and macabre: Ne nis no leuedi briȝt on ble, Þat wel weren i-woned of þe to lete [allow], Þat wolde lye a-niȝth [at night] bi þe. Þu art vnsemly for to se, Vncomli for to cussen suwete, Þu ne hauest frend þat ne wolde fle, Come þou3 stertlinde [rushing] in þe strete! (249–56)

The delicate and sophisticated bedside manner of courtly lovers, thus, yields to nightmare when placed as it is here in the context of death and the afterlife. Of the seven extant versions of the Dispute, L provides the earliest and arguably the most authoritative copy.46 In the manuscript it is visibly distinct from the two preceding poems, which are laid out in two columns and are copied by the SEL Scribe—Scribe A. Since the romances were copied by a third scribe, Scribe C, it is clear that Scribe B contributed only one work to the manuscript.47 There is one feature unique to L that is particularly suggestive of Scribe B’s agency; it involves the three enemies motif, already discussed with respect to the Sayings. Whereas other versions of the Dispute place the following stanza in the soul’s discussion of penance and spiritual healing, L postpones it to the beginning of the soul’s three enemies discussion:48 Ho may more trayson do Or is [his] loverd betere engine [deceive], Þan he þat al is trist is to, In and ouȝt as ovne hyn [servant]? Ay seþþe [since] þou3 was þriuen [thrifty] and þro [strong],

46

Such is the opinion of Conlee, Middle English Debate Poetry, 19. Unfortunately, there is a missing folio following 200v that deprives the L Dispute of 135 verses. We can be sure that the leaf was lost after copying, rather than missing from an earlier source, since the poem in L breaks off awkwardly in the middle of the soul’s ubi sunt speech and continues abruptly with the body’s self-defense. 47 Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, 252. See also Edwards, Chapter One in this volume. Linow provides a table that illustrates the important variations of the Dispute exemplars (Desputisoun, 5–7). 48 In the other versions, the body, according to the soul, ignored its plea for penance, turning instead to its passion for hunting. After the inserted stanza, cited above, the soul indicates that wild game may now “renne / And lien under linde and lef, / And foules flie bi feld and fenne / Siþin þi false herte clef” (241–44).

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Mittis [might] ded i alle mine, To porveȝe þe rest and ro, And þou3 to bringe me in pine. (385–92)

This stanza’s emphasis on treason and ensnaring (“engine”) provides an appropriate introduction to the three enemies motif. Explaining how the Body (that is, the Flesh) was in a position to exploit the soul’s trust, the stanza casts the body as the group’s enabler, the one who allowed the other two to gain a foothold. And when the crimes of the three enemies are subsequently delineated, the body’s treachery and conspiracy seem to go hand in hand. It seems possible that the transposition of the treason stanza is the work of the B Scribe, who was already aware of the three enemies motif in the Sayings and sought to lend greater prominence to this connective theme. The L Dispute also bears important connections to the Vision, which immediately precedes it in the manuscript. Most notably, the Soul from the Dispute articulates a very common ineffabile topos concerning the number of torments to be endured in hell. The most basic features of this topos consist of a vast group of individuals, tallying the number of infernal torments, often over a lengthy period of time, and coming nowhere close to the actual number of torments: Þei3 [though] alle þe men nou3 [now] vnder mone To demen weren sete on benche, Þe schames þat vs schullen be done Ne schuldin haluen del biþenke. (38)

The general form of this expression can be traced back to early versions of the Visio Pauli as well as to the sixth book of Virgil’s Aeneid.49 Most important for this discussion, a very similar construction appears at the end of the L Vision, thereby providing further evidence of coherence in this cluster: Ake þei a þousand tounguen were echdel. I maked of Ire and of stiel. And cou þe speken and spelle. And hadden i sete in studijngue.

49 H. Rushton Fairclough, ed. and trans., Virgil, Vol 1: Eclogues, Georgics, Aeneid I–VI. Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), esp. lines 625–27. C. D. Wright notes that Virgil’s ineffabile is a variation on an ancient theme. See The Irish Tradition in Old English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 146.

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j. justin brent Fram þe worldes bi guynnigue. Þe peynes ne miȝhten huy telle. (241–47)

The coincidences between the Vision and the Dispute therefore extend beyond the topic of death, beyond the separation of soul from body, and beyond the threat of infernal torments. Even their rhetorical devices suggest that the two poems were intentionally placed side by side. What we have seen with the three enemies and ubi sunt passages is equally true for the ineffabile topos: the Dispute dramatizes the commonplaces of death rehearsed earlier in the didactic cluster. It furnishes them with new vitality and energy, clarifying how vital and relevant they are to everyone. With regard to the works following the Dispute, it is of singular importance that the deceased individual in the Dispute is identified from the outset as a “mody knyȝt” (5). His chivalric lifestyle is ridiculed regularly in the speeches of the soul, and the final abduction scene, where the soul is mockingly armed and mounted on a devil (529–68), reminds us once again of the deceased’s station in life. Of equal importance is his fondness for hunting, a proverbially favored pastime of knights. The enumeration of hunting accessories (33–40) and game animals (241–8) creates an image of worldly extravagance that justifies the soul’s punishment. They also invite comparison to the description of the hunt at the beginning of Somer Soneday, where dogs are barking and deer are fleeing. In both poems, hunting serves to introduce the theme of worldly prosperity followed by death and decay.50 But we need not skip to the end of the manuscript to discuss the relevance of the Dispute. Chivalry, we must remember, receives a more idealized portrait in the romances of Havelok and Horn, which follow the debate in the manuscript. The heroes of both romances are fairly pious figures, but they nevertheless are secular heroes whose chief accomplishments lie in recovering what was rightfully theirs through inheritance.51 The knight of the Dispute, in contrast, has lost 50 Meditations on death often open in the style of the chanson d’aventure, with a protagonist who is out hunting. See for instance, The Parliament of thre ages (Conlee, Middle English Debate Poetry, 99–138), the fifteenth-century lyric In a noon-tiid of a somers day (Duncan, Medieval English Lyrics, no. 95), and Somer Soneday, which appears at the end of L. For more on the parallels between the Dispute and Somer Soneday, see Fein, Chapter Thirteen. 51 See A. V. C. Schmidt and Nicolas Jacobs, eds. Medieval English Romances, Part One (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980), 7–8; Allen, King Horn, 104 n. 17; and Smithers, Havelok, lvi–lxiv.

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everything to his false heirs, who will give nothing back to ameliorate his condition (97–104). The stern admonition that the Dispute concludes with certainly changes the way the romances are read. One is tempted to imagine a compiler who sought to place the romances within a larger salvific framework, wherein the heroes’ final fortunes are no longer final. The didactic cluster that precedes these romances defines the limits of fortune that Havelok and Horn can experience: they, like all of us, are subject to an inevitable fall, yet one that ironically introduces the potential for redemption. Redemption, at any rate, is the explicit concern of the debate at its conclusion. The awakened dreamer models a penitential response to the horrifying events just witnessed: To Ihesus Crist with mild mod ȝerne I kalde and lokede ay, ȝwan þo fendes hot fot Come to fette [fetch] me away I þonke Him þat þolede deth, His muchele merci and is ore Þat schilde me fram mani a qued [harm], A sunful man as I lai þore. Þo þat sunful ben, I rede [give] hem red [counsel] To schriuen hem and rewen sore: Neuere was sunne i-don so gret Þat Cristes merci ne is wel more. (613–24)

Because we imagine the dreamer to be experiencing the debate much as we are, his response to the horror—looking to Christ in mild manner, thanking him for his suffering and mercy, recollecting one’s own sinful state—is clearly intended to provide a model for us. His final advice merely reinforces the act’s efficacy. Referring to the conclusion of the Sayings and the Vision, we find that both also conclude with a prayer that models a response to the horrors witnessed.52 That of the Sayings asks that Mary “Help us sunnes for to fleon / þat we moten þi sone i seon” (184–85), and that of the Vision ask Christ for “miȝhte and space . . . þat we moten þine face i seo” (249–51).53 While not explicitly penitential, both emphasize the means for coming face

52

If one includes Paul’s appeal to Christ on behalf of the damned, the Vision contains two closing prayers. 53 For an interesting discussion of the ways these closing prayers anticipate the final work in the manuscript, Somer Soneday, see Fein, Chapter Thirteen.

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to face with Christ. They offer a release from the vicarious suffering of otherworldly punishment and point toward the more explicit model of penance offered at the end of the Dispute. From the preceding discussion, we might extrapolate two important conclusions: first, that our own generic categories did not serve as mental boundaries in the minds of the L compilers, and second, that the three poems in question bear a generic and thematic coherence suggesting that they play one or more specific functions within the manuscript. Such clustering as we find in the didactic poems appears elsewhere in L, namely in the SEL material.54 The fact that so many themes cross the divide between hagiography and romance reminds us that generic categories are not water-tight: the knight Owein who travels to Saint Patrick’s Purgatory resembles a questing hero more than a suffering saint; Paul’s successful petition on behalf of the damned adds a hagiographical element to his vision; and Horn kills Saracens and rebuilds churches in a manner reminiscent of saints.55 Amidst these interwoven themes in L, we find this didactic cluster constantly asserting its importance. Death, the afterlife, and the fate of body and soul are more than a pivotal transition in the manuscript; they mark the transitional moment in human destiny, which perhaps explains the cluster’s mediating position in the manuscript. They offer readers a negative alternative to the vitae described in the SEL, and by bringing the afterlife to the foreground, they make it impossible to enjoy the romances on purely secular terms.

54 For example, Laurel Nichols Braswell notes that items 52–60 in the L SEL comprise a group of apostles and that 23–36 and 32–34 make up two series of virgin-martyrs (“The ‘South English Legendary’ Collection: A Study in Middle English Religious Literature of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries” [Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1964], 38–9). Liszka has noted concentrations of apostles in items 13–21, confessors in items 63–65, English saints in items 11–20, and Irish saints in items 35–36 (“MS Laud Misc. 108,” 82). Moreover, many of the most prominent themes in this religious cluster appear elsewhere in L, including souls fleeing to heaven (items 34, 45), encounters with angels and/or demons (items 15, 35, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 45, 51, 55, 63, 64, 66, 74), tortures reminiscent of Paul’s Vision (items 35, 43, 48, 56), a Sunday respite from hell (item 36), knights, hunting and punishment for worldly excess (items 35, 38, 59, 64, 67, 76), and, most notably, visions (items 11, 17, 18, 23, 24, 27, 34, 41, 45, 51, 52, 56, 60–63, 71, 72, 76). 55 See Edward E. Foster, Three Purgatory Poems (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), 115–16, who notes several reasons for considering Owain a romance hero. The saintly qualities in Horn are noted by Allen, King Horn, 12; see also Andrew Lynch, Chapter Nine, and Kimberly K. Bell, Chapter Twelve in this volume.

CHAPTER NINE

GENRE, BODIES, AND POWER IN OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108: KING HORN, HAVELOK, AND THE SOUTH ENGLISH LEGENDARY Andrew Lynch I Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 108 (L) is without illustrations, but in medieval terms it does not lack “images” or fail to engage “imagination,” the faculty that allows humans to “see” things in the mind that are not actually present to the senses. Both as a source and an imaginative stimulus, medieval reading was a means of vividly bringing things to mind, connecting impressions received in the imaginative chamber or “cell” at the front of the mind, the “mind’s eye,” to material stored at its rear in the chamber of memory. Describing this process, Mary Carruthers cites Richard de Bury’s conceit that through the act of reading, the truth of books passes through the eyes into “the vestibule of common sense and the atriums of the imagination,” so that it can enter “the bedchamber of the intellect . . . , laying itself down in the beds of memory, where it cogenerates . . . the eternal truth of the mind.”1 Effective understanding relied on an existing repository in the memory which a reader or listener could use to “illustrate” mentally the story, sermon, or meditational work they were experiencing.2 Medieval practice encouraged the use of reading both to stock memory and to unlock its contents, stimulating benign “deliberative imagination,” an imaginative experience assisted by reason.3 In the course of this process, a controlled textual recombination of materials could occur, mixing one set of images with another to create a further form, as 1 Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 38. 2 See V. A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1984). 3 Carruthers, The Book of Memory, 53.

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when the crucified, wounded Christ of memory is re-presented to the imagination as a knight who fights in a trial by combat as champion for his beloved, the soul of humankind.4 The recombination could also work intra-textually, as in Langland’s Piers Plowman, where the already traditional Christ-knight figure is further strikingly resembled to others previously encountered in Langland’s narrative—the Good Samaritan of the gospels and his own creation Piers.5 My discussion here concerns how the co-existence of examples of two identified genres in L, “saint’s life” and “romance,” might be understood. I explore the possibility that through the associated functions of memory and imagination, L offered its readership opportunity and encouragement to connect and re-connect these varied contents in ways that created new significances. In particular, I consider aspects of the potential imaginative traffic between three vernacular texts, the “romances” King Horn and Havelok the Dane, and the South English Legendary (SEL). Drawing on a range of textual examples, I first consider differences and similarities between these neighboring narrative genres, in an attempt to understand their formal and thematic resources more fully, along with their various methods of engaging audience sympathy. The analysis then comes to center more particularly on the narrative thematics of the bodies of heroes and martyrs, as mediated in each case by differing generic features and demands. In the romances of L, the heroes’ ups-and-downs extend over a long period of growth from childhood to maturity, divided into lengthy episodes. In the martyrs’ vitae, I argue, the protagonists’ bodily fortunes of torment, disintegration, and reconstitution form a different but related version of these heroic “adventures.” Like the romance hero, the martyr has a singular childhood and earns an undying memory, but through a different story, centered on a short, intense series of torments. The differences between generic method preserve a vital similarity: these are all stories about the establishment, re-establishment, or defense of a political and religious power whose superiority is “proved”—simultaneously tested and displayed—by the heroic disposition of a special body.

4

See Rosemary Woolf, “The Theme of Christ the Lover-Knight in Medieval English Literature,” Review of English Studies, n.s., 13 (1962): 1–16. 5 William Langland, Piers Plowman, ed. George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson (London: Athlone Press, 1975), Passus XVIII, lines 10–26.

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II It is uncertain how and why the two parts of L had been combined by the early fourteenth century, or what the combination signified to readers. It may have resulted because the original scribes or an early owner identified Horn and Havelok as saintly.6 Mixing of genres in manuscript materials was quite a common practice. Several other anthologies included SEL material with romances.7 Manuscript compilers were sometimes unsure just where to put romance items. The romance Robert of Sicily is copied in the “entertainment section” of one Cambridge manuscript8 but treated as an exemplary tale in other collections. In Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a.1 (Vernon MS), it bears the moral heading “King Robert of Cicyle, Hou pride did him begyle.”9 The famous Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91, ca. 1430s (Thornton MS), brings together numerous English romances and a prose life of Alexander with much didactic, mystical, and lyrical material in both English and Latin. Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck MS) contains both romances and saints’ lives, and London, British Library, MS Harley 2253, is a trilingual manuscript containing saints’ lives, political, religious, and secular poems, dream visions, and Horn, among other texts. Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg. IV 27 (2) combines Horn and Floriz and Blauncheflur with The Assumption of Our Lady.10 The frequency of such combinations reminds us that genres are critical constructions after the fact of writing rather than strict blueprints for authors, compilers or readers to follow. The form of the generic contract between author and audience is always variable, and apparent generic slippage can be signaled even in a single-text manuscript. The outlandish narrative Sir Gowther, whose hero begins as a

6

Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, 283. For descriptions of the manuscript collation and history see Ibid., 6–12; Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108”; Smithers, Havelok, xi–xiv; Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch, Introduction, and A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One in this volume. 7 Julia Boffey, “Middle English lives,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 610–34 (620). 8 Cambridge, University Library, MS Ff. 2.38. 9 Frances McSparran, ed., Octovyan, EETS, o.s., 289 (London: Oxford University Press, 1986), 61 n.1. 10 George H. McKnight, ed., King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, The Assumption of Our Lady, EETS, o.s., 14 (1901; reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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devil-spawned mass murderer of clergy, concludes in a British Library manuscript with the words explicit vita sancti.11 Gowther’s story has a spectacular enjoyment of both sin and repentance that makes it hard to classify. It can be treated as one of the late-medieval romances of repentant knights,12 or likened to earlier legends of great sinners turned saints, such as SS. Mary Magdalene, Paul, and Mary of Egypt, all of whom feature in the L SEL. In either case, generic classification does not remove the complexity of the reading experience. Julia Boffey considers that L’s mixture of religious and secular matter would have appealed to “readers and perhaps listeners” in search of “pious edification” but “who on other occasions might wish to divert themselves with romances.”13 An example of this kind of compilation is the fourteenth-century Vernon MS, inscribed “Salus anime: sowle hele [soul’s health],” above the table of contents.14 The rubric vouches for the spiritual value of everything between the covers, presumably offering the romance items as “moral exempla” consistent with the other items.15 Another approach to L’s generic mixture is taken by Kimberly K. Bell, who in a recent essay argues that “the hagiographic texts collated with Havelok the Dane dictate the audience’s horizon of expectation for understanding the romance.”16 Havelok’s virtues—chastity, piety, meekness, and charity—match those of the English saint-kings, Oswald, Edmund, Kenelm, and Edward (the Martyr), whose legends are included in L. The saints’ lives, in Bell’s reading, encourage an audience to think of the manuscript’s various kinds of exemplary biography as interrelated—not in all respects, as if following a fixed generic pattern, but in some specific emphases, as in the nature of good young kings. Perhaps the same process also worked in reverse. Readers may also have been encouraged to associate some of Havelok’s special characteristics— strength, loyalty, and popularity—with the saint-kings. St. Edmund, for instance, is “Swyþe fair knyȝt and strong . . . and hardi;” like Havelok, he

11

London, British Library, MS Royal 17.B.xliii. See Andrea Hopkins, The Sinful Knights: A Study of Middle English Penitential Romance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). 13 Boffey, “Medieval English lives,” 620. 14 Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, 275. 15 Ibid., 276. 16 Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 32. See also Diane Speed, “The Construction of the Nation in Medieval English Romance,” in Readings in Middle English Romance, Meale, 135–58 (143), quoted in Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 28. 12

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is left “al one” to his fate and is brave in his distress.17 Whilst the narrative does not credit Edmund with the physical deeds of a Havelok, the manuscript association of the two lives may lend him something of Havelok’s physical strength and back up the impression of him as a “strong knight,” along with his more obvious likeness to Christ. In this way the narrative builds up both the audience sympathy and the exemplarity necessary to “sacred biography.”18 Another feature noted in the manuscript mixing of saints’ lives and romances is the frequent overlap of narrative incident between genres, part of what Frances McSparran calls a “blurring of categories and . . . homogenization of different literary kinds.”19 SEL’s St. Eustace, for instance, is full of motifs found in romances and tales of princes.20 These include: a mysterious stag—in this case a figure of Christ—which draws the hero into adventure while out hunting; family separation by pirates and wild beasts; a period of lowly disguise (Eustace becomes a hayward) redeemed by military service; scenes of recognition and family reunion. Then suddenly ensues a conventional story of martyrdom in which St. Eustace and his family are burned to death and gain heaven for refusing to worship idols. The figure of the Roman Emperor, Eustace’s overlord, features in two personae: Trajan is the proud sponsor of the hero’s chivalric prowess, Hadrian his angry persecutor. Eustace, or Placidas as he is called in his pre-Christian life, has always been a rebel of conscience, just waiting to assert his religious difference and the worthlessness of pagan beliefs, yet the story cannot resist honoring his deeds in battle for the pagan empire. Such a narrative fleshes out the hint about knighthood given in St. Edmund the King. It shows not only that elements of romance might be read as edifying, but also that ideas of moral edification in the community that produced the SEL could not easily ignore the prestige of heroic deeds of arms. The project of English vernacular religious narrative in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, perhaps beginning as a monastic “outreach” opening up holy material to the non-Latinate, called for

17 Horstmann, ESEL, 297–98.5, 32, and 41. Subsequent references will be given in parentheses, by page and line number. 18 For a discussion, see Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 18–22. 19 McSparran, Octovyan, 60–61. 20 See Thompson, Everyday Saints, 87–113 (98–102 on St. Eustace).

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some accommodation to lay culture.21 This accommodation may have occurred even when the vernacular text was not originally intended for use outside religious houses. Wealthier medieval households, whether monastic or secular, often had much in common, including close family ties,22 and may have responded similarly to “exemplary biography,”23 in romance or hagiographical form. Readers were likely prepared to accept that ideas of heroic virtue could be translated into the terms of differing but compatible genres. I am not suggesting that one should read the vernacular romance and hagiographical items of L as evidence of a shared paradigm of conception and composition. Rather, they are separate but related works whose contrastive juxtaposition in the manuscript allows interesting didactic and affective outcomes. Through the different opportunities engendered by their varying forms and emphases, in conjunction with the overlapping structural and thematic features they share, the three texts offer one another broadening, complementary and provocative contexts, even a potential for reflexive critique. Each operates confidently within its own parameters, as if no other method of utterance or composition existed—the most SEL admits to is a selectivity about miracle stories—but read in company with the others each reveals its distinctive powers and limitations. They are simultaneously distinct and inter-reactive works, whose compatibility does not make them identical, whose differences do not preclude commonalities. It has been noted that Horn and Havelok differ considerably from each other in content, style, and discursive emphases.24 Generally, discussion of medieval English romance has always been complicated by competing systems of classification based on content, theme, form, and sub-genre, such as “bachelor-knight romances,” “love romances,” “tail-rhyme romances,” or “Breton lays.” Behind the problem lies a difficulty in deciding whether the stylistic effects of poetic form or the selection and structure of narrative incidents take precedence in molding a reader’s main impressions. We face a similar difficulty in grouping and comparing the vernacular narratives of L alongside each

21 Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, “ ‘Bet . . . to . . . rede on holy seyntes lyves . . . ’: Romance and Hagiography Again,” in Readings in Medieval Romance, Meale, 83–98 (86). 22 Ibid., 85. 23 Ibid. 24 See John Finlayson, “King Horn and Havelok the Dane: A Case of Mistaken Identities,” Medievalia et Humanistica, n.s., 18 (1992): 17–45.

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other. Horn and Havelok probably seem more alike in this manuscript context than they would in others. In contrast to the slow seven-stress clang of the SEL’s rhyming couplets, their quicker, shorter couplets make them seem roughly similar, but there is a significant formal difference between them. Horn has approximately two stresses per line, and Havelok approximately four stresses. Havelok consequently has more space for development of a sense of interior reflection and affect in particular episodes, whilst Horn is pared down to narrative essentials, more dependent on externalization of feeling and stark action to realize the emotive potential of individual scenes. Less obviously, because of their greater uniformity in verse form and poetic style, the saints’ lives in the L SEL also show wide variety, understandably so, since they have different original sources, kinds of lives to describe, and ideological needs of meaning. The term “hagiography” is too limited to cope with the SEL’s broad anthology of vita-types. There is no single or simple way to compare the SEL with L’s secular stories, but in each case the narrative offers the exemplary biography as a marvel and a source of pleasure and comfort to those of good will. Like Horn and Havelok, the SEL’s saints are prodigies of virtue, extraordinary beings, yet they too remain approachable and communicative figures who center a strong sense of community pride. Their exploits on behalf of the true religion educate and gratify an audience of well-willers who can identify themselves as stakeholders in the grace the saints have won for the church militant. In terms of narrative content, structure, and emphasis, though not in style, the variety within the SEL is far greater than that between Horn and Havelok, ranging from a simple story like the martyrdom of St. Vincent to much fuller, quasi-historical lives—SS. Dunstan, Thomas Becket, Edmund of Abingdon, along with some general didactic matter. St. Vincent’s life displays one main point, the militant embrace of torment for God’s sake. It has virtually no historical context, simply a place (Spain), a persecuting king (Dacian), and a willing victim/victor. Vincent reproves bishop Valentine for not speaking boldly enough to his torturers, then goes on to give an example of aggressive suffering himself. The story literalizes to the point of humor Vincent’s insatiable appetite for the pain of martyrdom, which to him is “game,” “Ioye,” and “gleo” (185.21–22). He is the equivalent, in martyrological terms, of the diehard old warrior who rejoices when war is declared, as in Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Heimskringla. After the saint has worn out teams of tormentors, and survived all manner of deaths, Dacian is

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reduced to trying the complete opposite of his previous tactics: Vincent is laid in a luxurious feather bed, and only then does he “mildeliche” expire (188.133). Attempts to dispose of his corpse are miraculously unsuccessful. The story does virtually nothing except to repeat the utter intransigence of Vincent (alive and dead) and the comic anger and frustration of Dacian. At the end, it reflects only on the degree of suffering described: “Men nusten [knew not] neuere martyr non : þat hadde more torment / Ne þat with som pine ouer-come nas : bote þe gode man seint vincent” (189.175–76). At the other end of the SEL’s narrative scale come SS. Thomas Becket and Edmund of Abingdon. Becket’s vita gives a thorough and connected account of Becket’s parentage, his birth and earlier career, and his long falling-out with King Henry II. The story blends romance or chanson de geste elements—the story of how Gilbert Becket met and married a Saracen wife has some parallels in Sir Ferumbras, for instance—with a detailed tracing of Becket’s progress towards his end through time and place. A large cast of characters and speaking parts is introduced through descriptions of specific meetings; the political and psychological motivation for their behavior is discussed in detail that rivals a modern novel. Far more than an example of robust suffering is at stake. Whilst the conventions of martyrdom narrative push the story towards a generic resemblance—imitation of Christ, demonization of opponents, public testimony, triumph over secular powers, miracles of preservation, efficacy of relics—the overall effect of the story, the outcome of its more varied and ambitious emphases, differs hugely from that of a simple martyrdom like St. Vincent’s. Yet it is still a martyrdom, and therefore its main currency is still courage and suffering. Even in cases where the saint is not a martyr, like St. Edmund of Abingdon’s, the SEL’s account plays up the theme of bodily and emotional suffering for the rights of Holy Church, now threatened by another Henry, and the same sense of willing victimage that Becket exemplified (445.514).25 St. Thomas Becket himself appears in a vision to lend St. Edmund moral support.

25

See C. H. Lawrence, “Edmund of Abingdon [St Edmund of Abingdon, Edmund Rich] (c.1174–1240),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, online ed. (Oxford University Press, 2004), http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/8503: “The notion of [Edmund’s] exile was inserted into the hagiographical tradition by Edmund’s

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St. Edmund’s career might seem on the surface quite removed from ordinary audience sympathies and from thematics of embodiment. His birth is miraculously clean; as a child he refuses to play games, preferring to pray; he fasts and self-mortifies to the point of complete habituation; mystically espoused to the Virgin Mary, he remains spotlessly chaste always and beats a would-be lover with a stick. Yet the narrative humanizes its reaction to Edmund by humorously acknowledging the great difference between him and sinners of everyday life—unfaithful husbands (434.99–100) and sexually willful girls (435.125–26). The focus is domestic, on Edmund’s mother and siblings, and on his relations with university, monastic, and episcopal households. We are told the detailed location of the family tombs and of miracles (435.139–44, 436.160–64, 441.359–62), and emphasis is placed on Edmund’s preaching and pithy utterances in English, along with his compassion for poor bond-laborers (444.477–78). Even his miracles are homely, to spare sermon audiences from showers of rain (441–42.359–90), in the same practical and inventive spirit with which he helps a poor widow evade the heriot tax (445.479ff.). Although the narrative marvels in vague terms at Edmund’s academic learning, he is treated, more than Becket is, as a homely English figure in a Norman world, even more of an outsider in the politics of court and chapter. The nature of Edmund’s sanctity is revealed in ways that exceed the limits of SEL’s usual adversarial plot, where the victim triumphs over incorrigibly “luþer” enemies. Edmund has less extreme dangers to face from external opponents than Becket had, so his adoption of the earlier saint’s self-mortifications—hair shirt and fasting—makes up an even greater proportion of his suffering. Although he boldly defends the church’s rights and excommunicates wrong-doers, Edmund’s main strategy is to wait patiently for God to amend the problems. Like Havelok, he is a humble and self-reliant figure, faithful to his promise, reluctant to take power or to come into conflict, poor (through his great charity), kind-hearted, and concerned with earning his keep. In response to Henry III’s threats, his first reaction is simple: . . . ȝif þou me drifst out of þi lond : an oþur red ich can [I have another plan]:

chaplain, Eustace of Faversham, a Canterbury monk, who wished to liken his master to St Thomas of Canterbury.”

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andrew lynch Ich can rede [lecture] at parys : ase ich are þis habbe i-do, And þare-with winne me mete i-novȝ : and cloþingue al-so. (446.520–22)

Despite the changed circumstances, and the acknowledgment that this poverty, unlike Havelok’s, is willful, Edmund’s mind-set under Henry’s tyranny is like Havelok’s under Godrich’s—unillusioned, frankly aware of material needs, inured to deprivation, concerned with subsistence more than thoughts of victory. Upon hearing Godrich’s plan to force him to marry, Havelok reacts: Hwat sholde Ich with wif do? J ne may hire fede ne cloþe ne sho ... J ne haue hws, Y ne haue cote, Ne I ne haue stikke, Y ne haue sprote [shoot], J ne haue neyþer bred ne sowel [sauce].26

The narrative of Edmund’s controlled death in exile, centered on his dedication to Christ, is one of SEL’s most affecting conclusions. In his quieter mode, Edmund reaches a state of mind like Vincent’s, in which closeness to Christ is the source of all “ioye” and “game,” transforming bodily suffering. What Vincent demonstrates through torments and pugnacious speech, Edmund shows through making a perfect communion, and in an oblique saying “on Englichs”: “ ‘Men seggez þat game goth in wombe : ake i segge game goth in heorte’ ” (448.586–87). Through his homely vernacular, Edmund’s cultivation of bodily suffering and extreme abstinence as pleasure communicates, perhaps beyond the comprehension of the monks at Pontigny, with a lay English audience. Thematically, joy in the sufferings of the body links Edmund with the martyred Vincent, but at the same time his humility and resilience also resemble him to to Eustace, who patiently lives fifteen years as a hayward “þat he miȝte in treunesse : his liflode be-ȝite [earn his livelihood]” (396.120), and especially to Havelok. Although Edmund is not obviously a man of action, Havelok’s story comes closer to his in emotional timbre than to Vincent’s or Eustace’s, and the resemblance helps to show how in his own clerical sphere the mild Edmund is also “stif and studefast” (446.536), as Becket urges him to be. Apparently opposite types of life in L turn out to have important

26 Smithers, Havelok, lines 1138–1144. Subsequent references will be given in parentheses, by line number.

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features in common, as mediated through the different demands of their respective life-genres. III The early church martyr lives of the L SEL, such as those of SS. Faith, Katherine of Alexandria, Lucy, Agnes, Agatha, Laurence, and Bartholomew, also seem strongly linked by common interests with the exiled-prince stories of L. They follow a narrative pattern which partly replicates that of the L romances, but in an inverted generic form. These are not distinctively English narratives, like those of SS. Kenelm, Oswald and Edmund; they have a very long textual tradition which predates the vernacular romance texts that they accompany in L. Yet like Horn and Havelok, these martyr-stories are all structured as political narratives through the special prominence they give to the nature and disposition of heroic bodies. Whether the protagonists are overcoming enemies or suffering at their hands, the narrative of their corporeal journey registers where true power lies, through signs of divine origin, providential preservation, and ultimate heavenly endorsement. In Horn and Havelok the bodily signs of early specialness are very explicit. As a child, Horn is preserved by an amazing, possibly Christlike,27 physical beauty that forbids his Saracen captors to kill him outright. Horn’s beauty, like that of the rest of creation, from which it is made discursively inseparable, reflects the goodness of God: Feyrer child ne micte ben born. Ne reyn ne micte upon reyne, Ne no sonne by schine. ... Whit so any lili flour, So rose red was hys colur.28

Similarly, young Havelok is marked for preservation and greatness by a supernatural light that streams from his mouth when asleep, and a king-mark on his shoulder that proves his lineage. When other

27 See Susan Dannenbaum [Crane], “ ‘Fairer bi one ribbe / Þane eni man þat libbe’ (King Horn C315–16),” Notes and Queries 28 (1981): 116–17. 28 McKnight, King Horn, lines 10–16. Subsequent references to the L version of Horn will be given in parentheses, by line number.

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earthly signs of true kingship and rule are taken away, these divinely given marks of specialness remain, along with a personal charisma that makes all but the very bad spontaneously “love” these young men wherever they go. In the early martyr-stories, the special qualities of the young saints are also made widely known, a feature shared with un-martyred saints with edifying childhoods such as SS. Dunstan and Edmund of Abingdon. Since the point of a martyrdom narrative is to prove Christian triumph through death, not through ordinary earthly survival, in that context such qualities encourage hostility and lead to trouble rather than guard against it. So, word of St. Faith’s holiness spreads so wide (83.1–4) that in Diocletian’s persecution she is the “furst i-souȝt” (84.23); St. Katherine’s precocious scholarship—she is a master of all the seven arts (92.3–4)—sets up a disputation about idols with Maxentius and his wise men that leads to her martyrdom; St. Lucy is denounced to the judges by her pagan spouse after she vows virginity and gives away her dowry to the poor (102–03.50–73); St. Agnes’s beauty attracts the son of the “Constable” of Rome, and her virtuous refusal of him incites his father to commit her to tortures (181–82.7–43); the “Duke” of Sicily knows young Agatha is Christian but out of pity for her beauty tries to save her from punishment; he pays a bawd to corrupt her morals and lead her from the faith (193– 94.1–18). The beauty of the young martyrs is not purely a transcendent sign of virtue, incidental to their bodily trials; it is also a plot device to bring on the confrontation in which suffering is converted into victory. In the process of generic inversion, what preserves the young princes of secular narrative seems to destroy the martyrs, but only as a prelude to their ultimate perfection. Cynthia Hahn speaks of the “two aspects of pictorial hagiography— historical and conventional, diachronic and synchronic.”29 Notably, the SEL saints have an eternal aspect that transcends this world, as we see in contemporary images that show saints wearing haloes at every stage of their lives, as if always endowed with the heavenly identity they later gain. It is typical of most SEL saints—there are some convertite exceptions—to be exceptionally holy throughout their lives. That feature applies to martyrs and non-martyrs alike. St. Wulfstan is “. . .

29 Cynthia Hahn, Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 29.

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[s]wiþe holi man . . . al his lif ” (70.2), and even as a child prefers church to playing (70.4). St. Dunstan is attended by a miracle while still in the womb (19–20.1–20) and as a boy “[t]o þe world he nam luyte ȝeme [took little heed] : for to alle godnesse he drouȝ” (20.25); St. Edmund of Abingdon’s spotless birthing (431.9–12) is a token of both his own holiness and his mother Mabel’s. St. Cuthbert’s conversion to holy life comes while he is still “a ȝong child” (359–60.1–28 [3]). Although later suffering and conflict may further reveal these men’s sanctity, it is evident from a young age, as also with both the young virgin martyrs of SEL and the male heroes Horn and Havelok. In their appropriate ways, both the young martyrs and the young secular heroes of L are also precociously bold. Martyr stories offer much potential for shock and humor when, as often, youth speaks disrespectfully to age, female contradicts male, and the subject scorns the secular authorities. St. Katherine is typical in confronting the Emperor with no respect for his person: “ ‘Sire Aumperur,’ þis Maide seide : ‘let þi fole þouȝt, / For þov nast non more ȝwile to spille [time to waste] : þane speken embe [about] nouȝt’ ” (97.163–64). Horn’s speech-acts often pay as little regard to normal courtesy. Like his deeds of arms, they are a direct form of support or opposition, making the politics of the story plain to readers, and predicting the future course of the narrative. While still an exiled wanderer, Horn sits “on his cheyere” (1353) like a king and makes things clear to his father-in-law, King Aylmar: “ ‘kyng so longe, / My tale þou honderstonde” (1355–56). Horn explains on his wedding day that he will not consummate the marriage until after he has regained his own kingdom. Like a haloed saint, he already has the authority and the peremptory boldness of the perfected self he will later become. Aylmar, who has just attempted to marry his daughter to another man, is given to know where his allegiance must lie from now on, and is, as it were, “re-converted” to Horn’s cause, after being led into false belief by an evil counselor (Fikenild). Horn then continues to confirm by physical prowess against enemies the supreme status he has claimed in bold speech, just as a martyr’s endurance of suffering will validate the bold words he or she has spoken. In both legends and romances, the unusual virtue of the protagonist is offset by contrasted figures, but in ways which distinguish the various genres and sub-genres involved. In SEL’s stories of the childhoods of male non-martyrs, it is other (ordinary) children whom they surpass. In the case of young female virgin martyrs, a gender element enters:

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the opponents of SS. Faith, Lucy, Katherine, Agatha and the rest are almost all male—evil emperors and judges, angry fathers, or would-be husbands and in-laws. The threat posed is frequently sexual, whether explicitly in forced marriage, denudation, bodily torments, accusations of whoredom, or attempted prostitution, or implicitly in the general demeanor of male authority figures, who alternate between bestial rage—“burstinde in grete wrathþe” (83.14), “neihȝ wod” (85.56)— and quasi-erotic cajolements: “ ‘haue reuþe of þi noble bodi : þat is so fair and hende!’ ” (96.155). In Horn gender and sex also operate in distinguishing the hero’s special quality. While the treacherous Fikenild provides an obvious counterpart to loyal Athulf, young Rymenhild is the figure who best shows up Horn’s constancy to his mission. Her “wild,” passionate wooing of him (or the man she thinks is him [390]) contrasts with Horn’s better understanding of priorities: before he can marry her and consummate love, he must regain and re-establish his own kingdom of Suddene. The elemental purity in Horn’s description as a fifteen-year-old, where his utter distinction from all others is first established (9–18), is also seen in his ability to put his love for Rymenhild in a broader strategic context of duty. Horn will not return her love (“don after þi lore,” [472]) until she gives Athulbrus gifts to make him influence Aylmar to make him a knight, and he has proven himself in combat. The hero’s apparently unromantic terseness and the narrative’s bent towards the demands of the broader action do not represent a lack of emotional investment; they are this story’s code for deep emotion itself, as understood in relation to a lifetime mission. Horn speaks formally and only as he needs to; his speeches explain or predict action, or are actions themselves, performative utterances— praying, demanding fealty, claiming rights, plighting troth. Rymenhild must wait seven years for Horn, and he may seem to bring her to mind mainly when her inheritance from Aylmar is at risk through a rival suitor. That might make one think that just as Horn disguises himself as a merchant, a pilgrim, a beggar, and a minstrel to gain entry to various courts, he has also disguised himself as a lover to gain entry to Aylmar’s power and wealth. At times Horn seems quite distracted from love by his various duties as king: Horn let sone werchen Chapeles and cherchen; Bellen he did ryngen, And prestes messe syngen. He sowte hys moder oueralle, Wit inne eueriche walle.

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.... Croune he gonnen werie, And makede festes merye. Murye he þere wroute; Reymyld hit aboute [suffered for that]. (1481–192)

It looks like neglect, but Horn’s bond with Rymenhild can only be deeply significant if it can co-exist with maintaining his regnal rights and duties: regaining power, restoring his family, fostering religion, bringing peace and prosperity to his land. His ability to deliver as a knight and king, his success in action, is offered as a large part of what makes him a “true” lover. Like a martyr who seems unnaturally to prefer pain to pleasure, but who has his eye on the heavenly joys to come, Horn reacts to present situations in ways that those without his vision see as unnatural, without “ruth.” But viewed long-term, Horn’s will to regain Suddene and his deep loyalty to family and people vouch for an intensity in the relation to Rymenhild, one which lies behind the brief moments of externalization of his love for her, through the memorial ring, premonitory dream, tears, cryptic and disguised communications, and minimal love utterances. Horn’s love for Rymenhild is always bound up with situations that affect his long-term kingship: delicate relations with Aylmar and his steward; tests of Rymenhild’s loyalty; Athulf ’s and Fikenild’s contrasted behaviour as Rymenhild’s guardians. As a sign of its political context for love, the poem does little to differentiate the love of kinsman from the love of lady or wife. Athulf is mentioned on several of the occasions which intimately connect hero and heroine. Athulf takes Horn’s place in the first wooing scene, is also given a magic ring, and like Rymenhild laments Horn’s absence in song. Like Rymenhild, Athulf weeps at Horn’s parting, and Athulf and Horn, like Rymenhild and Horn, are full of “joy” at their reunion. The poem’s construction of its audience works along the same lines: the poem’s beginning and ending wish well to “all” who sympathize with Horn. Horn and Havelok have something in common with everyone who must endure the ups-and-downs of this life and persist to the end, just as in the SEL the implied audience can sympathize with the trials of saints because they too live in a world continually beset by demonic assaults (e.g., 306–11.216–390), and strive towards the same difficult goal of salvation. Temporale sections of the L SEL, such as All Souls’ Day (62), along with the many visions, interventions, and miracle stories in the legends, literalize in their exempla the vital bonds between ordinary parishioners, souls in purgatory, and

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perfected saints that make the living and the dead one body. Simple human actions of prayer and charity regularly mobilise supernatural forces. The dead buried in a churchyard rise with weapons to protect a clerk from assault by thieves, because he has said his “De profundis” for them (425–26.173–90). A knight sees his alms-deeds for the sake of a friend embodied as men in white clothing who bear up the dead man’s soul as it crosses the slippery bridge to the meadow of salvation, while sins embodied as men in black attempt to drag it down to destruction (426.193–214). Prayer is vital to Horn’s success also. Though his wanderings may appear to be the result of fortune, or inspired by the urgent messages he receives, we can also see in them a pattern of divine favor; he is sustained throughout by his mother’s prayers, which draw down on him the special protection of Christ. Godhild’s prayers indicate the importance of spiritual agency in this text, but it is a spirituality which is not distinguished at all from the hero’s normal ambitions as a Godfearing secular monarch, who from his childhood has been specially commissioned by Christ, and who quickly assumes an anti-“Saracen” agenda. Similarly, despite surface appearances, there is also a political practicality to the lives and divine loves of the SEL saints. Superficially, they may seem other-worldly in outlook, apparently unlike the practical romance heroes. As brides of Christ, the virgins reject pollution by earthly spouses; whereas Horn plans to marry eventually, and Havelok, notably unlike a virgin martyr, gives in to Godrich’s threats because he is alone and afraid and thus takes Goldeboru to wife (Havelok, 1148–155). As servants of God rather than the crown, the SEL’s bishops defy the agendas of earthly monarchs. Its martyrs invert normal earthly reactions, and paradoxically rejoice in physical pain, like St. Laurence, who claims that the coals on which he is roasted cool him down, but will bring his enemies to the fire of hell (344.164–65). Nevertheless, as that last remark hints, the passio of the martyr is usually made as full of earthly triumphs as of otherworld consolations. They are not content with their own suffering. As we see throughout in Horn and Havelok, though by different means, the saintly heroes act powerfully on their enemies, either to convert, or to destroy and bring to damnation. A process which begins with the secular power’s attempt to “turn the thought” of the saint, as the SEL habitually puts it, ends like the romances with the “false” and anti-Christian forces shamed, stripped of authority and rendered powerless, anticipating the time and place of the story’s utterance, after Christian law has already

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ruled for centuries. Like the romances of the returning princes, these are not merely individual edifying cases, but back-stories of “how the west was won” to its contemporary religious form. Along the way to the final triumph, the SEL’s martyrs’ lives signal their this-worldly political nature through violent narrative elements of speech and action that weaken respect for the “luþer” secular powers in the story. The justice’s or emperor’s initial attempts at verbal persuasion, soon followed by threats, are met with extreme scorn by the martyr. A battle of words is fought and won before the higher testimony of bodily suffering crowns the verbal statement. In this period of the narrative, onlookers and even accusers may be overcome with admiration and converted. Idols and diabolical false gods are broken and debunked. The corporal and capital powers of the state are mocked, both before and after the saints’ deaths: beforehand through the comic device of the failed torment, in which fire will not burn, lions will not bite, and no amount of deaths can silence the saints until they are ready; then after death, when the holy body resists burning or crushing, insisting on a Christian sepulchre that will allow its relics to be worshipped and to work miracles in the future, right up to the time of writing. The bodily relics powerfully connect the time of utterance and reception of the story with the time of its narrative setting, just as in Horn and Havelok the narrator enlists the present audience’s good will for long-dead heroes. The saints’ earthly lives continue unabated after death through intercession, apparitions and veneration at shrines. The dead saint’s earthly body is understood as no mere husk for the soul, but its true interpreter to those in this life. In a didactic interpolation, the SEL explains that in all corpses the mortal “inferior souls” (in liver and heart) give clear signs of whether the immortal “superior soul” (in the brain) is saved or damned (St. Michael, Part III, 320–22.736–803). While romances measure secular heroism by the ability to assert physical force on others, saints’ lives rate their protagonists by the amount of bodily suffering they absorb. And yet, in this very respect each form carries a trace of the other: the ability to absorb suffering often characterizes the romance hero, as Havelok’s sorely wounded body testifies (2053–56), and a martyr’s enemies often receive severe physical punishments, fragmentation and dispersal, just as Horn’s and Havelok’s traitors do. Fikenild is drawn to pieces; Godard is flayed alive, dragged to the gallows and hanged in chains. Pagan attempts to disperse the bodies of the saints through laceration and disintegration

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have quite the opposite effect, when the re-gathered fragments become immediate and long-term centers of power for the Christian community. This theme of reversal with interest has its equivalent in the romances, when pagan or treacherous usurpation stimulates the exiled hero not only to regain his father’s kingdom but to spread his influence far wider. To make that point, Horn puns on the hero’s name: Horn him goth snille [quick] Bi dales an bi hulle; And þoruuth eche toune Horn him shilleþ [resounds] soune. So shal þi name springe Fram kinge to kinge, And þi fayrnesse þoru out westnesse, And stregþe of þine honde þoruouth euerich londe. (221–230)

Readers are given a premonition that through the connections made in his enforced wanderings Horn will come to control and influence a far greater area than his father possessed, as he finally does (1621– 44).30 Similarly Havelok, disguised and unknown, is given a prophetic dream in which his body stretches its power over England as well as Denmark, a consequence of the enforced marriage to Goldeboru; the plots of Godrich and Godard serve ultimately only to empower him more. As in the martyr legends, the “luþer” hostile powers—soon to be shown as no powers at all—were always doomed to be frustrated and destroyed through their own actions. In the romances, each story’s end brings the loyal to a happy reward and deals out conventional tortures to the oath-breakers. When the secular power is itself false, as in the SEL’s martyrdoms, the torments for treachery given to the faithful are to be understood in the same way, but the result is inverted. Pagan emperors and kings call those who refuse to honor the official “maumetes” [idols] “traitors” because, like St. Eustace, they have previously held secular office, or, like St. Bartholomew, they have converted others to the new “law,” or because they have simply opposed the “true” state religion. As apparent oath-breakers and blasphemers, the martyrs are alleged to have offended both divine and human law, and need to be justified by 30 For further discussion of Horn’s expanding sphere of power, see Bell, Chapter Twelve in this volume.

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proofs that it is the accusers and their gods who are false. There is no such need in Horn and Havelok. Execution simply makes an unpitied end of the traitors, showing the king’s right to dispose of their bodies. But when, for instance, the SEL’s St. Bartholomew is flayed alive, pity is encouraged—“Alas, hou miȝten huy habben þe heorte? : alas, þe deolfulle pine!” (374.248)—and the same moment also triggers Christian resurgence: “louerd, muche is þi miȝte : ase þov scheoudest þare bi þine hine [servant]!” (374.249). After Bartholomew’s death, the faithful flock to his tomb; his persecutor, King Astriages, is driven mad by news of its miracles and dies miserably, “tormented” by the devil himself (374.263–66). Later pagan attempts to bury the body at sea in a coffin of lead, or to scatter its remains in separate places, a common medieval practice with traitors, are miraculously overcome. Using the same thematics as the romances, the legend radically inverts the symbolic logic of Bartholomew’s punishment. Most of the SEL’s legends are set in a distant past, but because the Legendary seeks to channel the saints’ heavenly power into present historical needs, it binds them together into a long view of earthly history. Reading the detailed, quasi-historical and much more recent St. Thomas Becket in the SEL context, one is invited to find a resemblance between the pagan secular powers in the early church period and the English monarch with whom Becket fell out, especially between their respective endings. The final stages of St. Thomas Becket dwell on the later sufferings and dynastic problems of Henry II, “þis seli oldeman [poor old man],” as he is called (173.2333), the rebellion and early death of his children, and the horrible ends of Becket’s killers, despite their spectacular repentance. The flesh rots from William Tracy’s bones, and he dies, with gruesome irony, tearing and dispersing his own body: Wit is hondene he to-drouȝ al-so : his flesch atþe laste, pece and oþur al a-brod : a-wei fram him he caste. (175.2389–90)

Meanwhile, through the power of his shrine-cult and miracles (175–77. 2405–56), the dead, celibate saint ironically “lives” and propagates on earth, in pointed contrast with the secular enemies of the church whose rights he has defended. Becket acts as St. Bartholomew does, and as Horn and Havelok do: punishing enemies, rebuilding the church’s power, and extending influence over wide areas. Saints and secular heroes alike are figures who connect the Christian world across time and place. In their concluding doxologies, the romance memorials of Horn

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and Havelok, as in a saint’s officium, draw their implied audience into a unity of worship that grounds its present being, the “us” of the narration, on the basis that the hero’s bodily actions have founded. I am not arguing that Horn and Havelok would easily have been read as saints’ lives in the later medieval period, certainly not as typical legends of the SEL. These stories’ enthusiastic, detailed interest in all sorts of secular interactions—love, feasting, work, deeds of arms, marriage, the varieties of fish Grim catches—should have made it clear that they were not. Yet they had much more in common with L’s SEL than a general tendency to edification and exemplarity, some crossgeneric incidents, or a penchant for virtues like piety and chastity. If they seemed sympathetically, as well as literally, “bound up” with the SEL, one reason for that was a shared understanding of the human body as register of heroic power—a shared understanding, but differing in its narrative reflexes according to generic demands.

CHAPTER TEN

THE EARLY SOUTH ENGLISH LEGENDARY AND DIFFERENCE: RACE, PLACE, LANGUAGE, AND BELIEF Robert Mills It has often been remarked how the South English Legendary (SEL) contributes to an emerging discourse of nation.1 SEL manuscripts contain a relatively high proportion of tales devoted to Anglo-Saxon saints, whose patriotic Englishness is sometimes emphasized, and this interplay between language, territory, politics, and piety may be encoded as a mode of stark contrasts, pitting English saintly protagonists against foreign invaders. In St. Wulfstan, for instance, England the nation is represented by way of contrast with its Norman nemesis. As well as incorporating a somewhat partisan account of the battle of Hastings, which describes William of Normandy as a “bastard” (not simply, one suspects, in the legal sense), the legend contains an apocryphal story of St. Wulfstan’s successful attempt to retain his bishopric in Worcester after the accession of William to the English throne. Cast in the guise of a persecuted but inviolable victim, Wulfstan faces his tormentors, William and Archbishop Lanfranc, in a confrontation that is highly reminiscent of the trial scenes in SEL martyrdom legends.2 The early version contained in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L), considered the oldest SEL manuscript by at least a decade, arguably accentuates this nationalistic discourse more forcefully than subsequent redactions: in lines left out from later accounts of Wulfstan’s encounter with William, the narrator announces that St. Edward the Confessor’s death in 1066 caused “gret reuþe [pity] . . . to al engelond : 1 See Diane Speed, “The Construction of the Nation in Medieval English Romance,” in Readings in Medieval English Romance, Meale, 135–57; Jill Frederick, “The South English Legendary: Anglo-Saxon saints and national identity,” in Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 29 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 57–73; Renee Hamelinck, “St. Kenelm,” 21–30; Jankofsky, “National Characteristics,” 81–93; Thompson, Everyday Saints, 21–57; Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 60–67. 2 St. Wulfstan, in D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL, 1:10–12.

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so weilawei þe stounde! [accursed be the hour] / For straunge men þere comen sethþe [after] : and brouȝten enguelond to grounde.”3 Famously, L also pays compliments, albeit indirectly, to Simon de Montfort, the celebrated leader of a baronial revolt against Henry III who was slain at the battle of Evesham in 1265. De Montfort’s father— also called Simon—is mentioned repeatedly in the legend of St. Dominic, founder of the order of preaching friars, where he is commended as “þe guode Erol” (279.49) who battles it out against heretics.4 These “tweye guode Men” (279.46), St. Dominic and Simon, are presented as the odd couple of Christian piety, “þe on with his prechingue, / Þe oþur with strencþe of bataille” (279.47–48), wiping out falsehood wherever they find it and saving the world from “grete sune [sin]” (282.159). The political significance of these quasi-hagiographic references to Simon senior in the Dominic legend is thinly veiled and, as Thomas Heffernan has suggested, “should be read as referring to the son.”5 In Chapters Eleven and Twelve in this volume, Julie Nelson Couch and Kimberly K. Bell consider further elements in the L hagiographic texts that draw attention to this discourse of nation, especially through the production of political fantasies of Englishness. This chapter considers one particular dimension of L’s nationalizing ethos: how do ideas of national identity overlap with the other sites of difference, such as race, place, language, and religion, that underwrite the SEL’s vision of Christian selfhood? From the perspective of the medieval church, the Christian body was not subject to racial difference in a morphological or biological sense: as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen has argued, “the body of the other always carried that burden on its behalf.”6 Certain features of L narratives seem to bear this insight out: there are indications that physiology, anatomy, skin colour, and other medico-scientific notions of embodiment did contribute to constructions of difference in

3

St. Wulfstan, in Horstmann, ESEL, 72.59–60. Unless noted, all subsequent references to the L SEL will be made to Horstmann, ESEL, and given parenthetically by page and line number. 4 The historical Simon de Montfort senior did indeed assist St. Dominic in crushing heretics in the Midi; he was killed in 1217 at the siege of Toulouse. See Thomas J. Heffernan, “Dangerous Sympathies: Political Commentary in the South English Legendary,” in The South English Legendary: A Critical Assessment, ed. Klaus P. Jankofsky (Tübingen, Germany: Francke, 1992), 1–17 (10). 5 Heffernan, “Dangerous Sympathies,” 13. 6 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “On Saracen Enjoyment: Some Fantasies of Race in Late Medieval France and England,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 31 (2001): 113–46 (116).

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thirteenth-century England, but those signifiers were always caught up in a network of other differences, such as language, belief, and location, that left the “good” Christian body itself without race. Those who did not live up to the ideal (Saracens, Jews, pagans, Normans) were abjected—presented as antibodies to the sacred body—and could be physically differentiated as a consequence; in its most extreme forms, this language of difference drew upon a rhetoric of monstrous deformity, whereas in L factors such as linguistic, geographical, and religious alterity tend to predominate.7 Thus the lines dividing race (supposedly biological) from ethnicity and religion (supposedly cultural) were, at the very outset, imprecise; the nationalist tendencies of the SEL need to be viewed against the backdrop of this particular racializing nexus. Further, reading the early SEL from the vantage point of difference offers a perspective on the ideological projects within which the “whole book” of L participates:8 representations of racial, religious, and ethnic alterity in other texts such as King Horn and Havelok the Dane can be seen to interact with, and fundamentally shape, divisions between self and other in the SEL sanctorale, offering new ways of engaging with the generic distinctions (for example between hagiography and romance) that characterize this so-called miscellany.9 To help orient the reader, the chapter considers four dimensions in turn—territory, belief, language, body—that contribute to what might be termed L’s racial matrix; but my argument turns on the fact that what appear, within an individual example, to be discrete differentiating factors (location, faith, speech, physiology) turn out, when considering the manuscript as a whole, to be bound up inextricably with one another. This racist imaginary subtends what seems on the surface to be an essential unity: a corpus Christianum, in which all the manuscript’s readers are presumed to share. But it also conjures up, as a corollary, a more fragile, internally divided world: a place where an archbishop of “mixed race” origins can reach the pinnacle of holiness; where non-Christians express a fervent desire to join the Christian throng; or where the enemy turns out to be within. Since L is written

7 For deployments of monstrous rhetoric in representations of non-Christians, see Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003). 8 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 170. 9 See Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch, Introduction, and Thomas R. Liszka, Chapter Two in this volume on the (mis)use of this term for L.

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wholly from the point of view of Christian selfhood, we never hear the voices of the other that underwrite this universal vision: difference is a fantasy that so eclipses truth in the SEL that even basic distinctions such as those between paganism and Islam, or between a classical past and a medieval present, regularly come unstuck. This is a study of difference as projection, not minority history, and it is L’s ideological remit that is at issue. Territory At the outset, it is worth remembering that by the time the L version of SEL was collated in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, the nation to which all Christians imagined themselves belonging— loving, defending, even fighting to the death for—was in many ways Christendom. Not only was the western church unified doctrinally by this period, with set rites and standards of worship sanctioned by the papacy in Rome, but Christianity itself often assumed the characteristics of an ethnic or quasi-ethnic identity. Notions of the Christian race (Christiana gens) or Christian people (populus Christianus), some of which persist to this day, were first encountered in the High Middle Ages: in some respects, creedal status and racial discourse combined to produce a transnational identity that superseded other kinds of cultural division.10 The crusades were especially influential in contributing to the construction of an identity that transcended linguistic, national, and territorial barriers, so much so that chroniclers of the first crusade sometimes commented explicitly on the fact: the German historian Ekkehard of Aurach, in the early twelfth century, rejoices in his Universal Chronicle at how, in the year 1095, “through the marvellous and unexampled working of divine dispensation, all these members of Christ, so different in speech, origin, and nationality, were suddenly brought together as one body [in unum . . . corpus] through their love of Christ.”11 Complementing this vision of a corpus Christianum was

10 Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change 950–1350 (Harmondsworth, UK: Allen Lane, 1993), 243, 250–52. 11 “Mira autem et inestimabili divinitatis dispensatione tot Christi membra, linguis, tribubus et nationibus differentia, subito in unum Christi caritate conglutinati coaluerunt corpus.” Ekkehardi Chronicon Universale, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores, 6, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz (Hanover: Hahn, 1844), 213; trans., James Harvey Robinson, Readings in European History (Boston: Ginn, 1904), 1:317. For other

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the idea of a Christian homeland, Christendom, which from the late eleventh century increasingly assumed territorial as well as abstract meanings. Partly the result of a newly expansionist outlook, this sense of Christendom as a geographically locatable entity combined with notions of a Christian race and Christian corpus to produce a sense of national belonging; Christendom’s defining opposite, its territorial as well as moral other, was heathendom, which was perceived as being inhabited by an undifferentiated mass of Godless infidels.12 Early SEL texts enter into this binary spirit directly: they combine concepts of Christendom as a state of mind—an abstract entity that anyone who defines themselves as properly Christian (that is to say, within the confines of Latin orthodoxy) can be said to “have”—with ideas of Christendom as a land, a place with material boundaries. As he is being scourged, St. Alban thanks God that he is able, through his torments, to arrive at “þe stat of cristindom” (69.54), while the apostle St. Matthew, in the process of converting heathens in Ethiopia, persuades the king of Ethiopia’s own daughter to take a vow of chastity and “ȝaf [gave] hire cristinedom” (80.80); in St. Christopher, having effected the conversion of the knights sent to imprison him, the saint is asked by the pagan ruler to “leten beo [abandon] is cristindam” (276.160) while the poor knights themselves, who announce to the king that “Cristindom we habbez itake,” are punished by having their heads cut off (276.164–66). Yet these ideas of Christendom as a belief system one can “itake” or leave, or a “stat” to which one aspires, coexist with images of Christendom as a land with dimensions and borders. In St. Dominic, the legend that directly follows St. Christopher, St. Dominic’s mother has a dream that she carries within her womb a beast, the “faireste in any lond” (278.7), which holds in its mouth a burning brand that burns so brightly that it lights up “al cristine-dom” (278.10): “And so wide so was cristinedom : And þare was so deork so nyȝt / þe brond in þe bestes Mouþe : hire þouȝte ȝaf gret liȝt” (278.11–12). St. Bartholomew effects conversions in “þe londe of Inde [India]” (367.7) with the assistance of an angel who makes visible the devil within the local idols: the martyr, we are told, “ȝeue heom cristindom. / So þat al þat ilke lond : to cristine-dom was i-brouȝt þo [then]” (372.196–97).

contemporary commentary on the supra-national characteristics of the crusade, see Bartlett, Making of Europe, 260–61. 12 Bartlett, Making of Europe, 253–55.

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Christendom, in this context, retains its abstract meaning but also conveys territorial associations: Bartholomew’s intervention transforms the “lond,” a word which in Middle English has the dual sense of “land” and “realm” or “country.” Perhaps the most explicit reference to a territorialized Christendom appears in St. Mary Magdalene, which includes an extended sequence about a rich Saracen couple whom St. Mary encounters when she, along with other Christians, has been driven out of Judea. The Saracen prince and queen undergo various trials in which they receive Mary’s advice and spiritual assistance: tragically separated from his wife and newborn child, whom he was forced to abandon on a rock during a pilgrimage to Rome in which they hoped to be christened, the prince finally makes it to the sacred city where he meets St. Peter himself, who escorts him to various pilgrimage sites in the holy land. When the prince asks whether Peter will baptize him, the holy man announces that he and his fellows “schalt with-outen cristindom : wienden [go outside Christendom] into þine londe,” where they, along with “muche folk al-so of þine contreye” (475.450, 455), will be christened anon. Christendom is both an abstract entity in this scene (something that the Saracen prince must do “with-outen”) and geographically circumscribed (a place one leaves behind). At the same time, it is presented as an ever-expanding territory, which widens each time a new cluster of converts joins the happy throng. The prince and his wife’s glorious homecoming, which culminates in their baptism by Bishop Maximus, has miraculous repercussions: as well as St. Mary Magdalene, and her siblings Martha and Lazarus, there to greet the homecoming pair are “Sarazins, and þe Giwes some [some of the Jews]” (477.514), who are presumably among the many women and children “in þe londe” who subsequently “nomen [took up] cristindom” (477.529-30). “Þo al þat lond cristine was,” the narrator announces, “and al þat folc þare-inne” (477.539), demonstrating how ideas of a Christian “folc” and “lond” combine to produce a sense of Christendom as both territorially and ethnically distinct. In the Prologue to a slightly later version of the SEL in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 145, this imagery of Christendom is extended further: Christian martyrs are described as “our Lourdes knyȝtes . . . þat schadde hare blod for Cristendom,” and Christ himself is represented as the king of this Christian nation, an epic hero battling against the “luþer [evil] men” who threaten to destroy “is [his] riȝte.” “Wel aȝte [ought] we louie Cristendom,” the narrator declares,

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in a manoeuvre designed to make readers connect the suffering bodies of martyrs and Christ with the body of the church.13 The L sanctorale does not contain such an elaborate preamble. Its own, extremely brief prologue starts at the bottom of a leaf (fol. 88r, see figs. 7–8) in the middle of the eighth quire, between St. Thomas Becket and the short St. Fabian legend, and it presents the book as a collection of the lives of holy men, told in calendrical order. The odd positioning of the L prologue, well after the beginning of the sanctorale sequence, and the fact that the texts are only partially arranged in calendar order, suggest that the makers were still experimenting with different ways of organizing the material; the thematic groupings that do exist in the manuscript (apostles, virgin martyrs, English saints) may well reflect the use by compilers of non-calendrically organized sources.14 As such, it is possible to speculate that the Corpus Christi, MS 145 redactor, having a better sense of overview, incorporated the new prologue as part of an effort to sharpen the SEL’s message of a universal church. Christendom quite literally becomes a nation to die for in Corpus Christi, MS 145, with its own army, laws, and king, and its borders are circumscribed by the presence of a constantly shifting cast of evil enemies. Although L is not framed by such an explicit statement of militant Christian unity, references to Christendom in individual SEL narratives participate in a comparable universalizing trend. Yet there are other ways in which L texts generate links between territory, race, and ethnic difference, and a view of the manuscript as a whole book allows this configuration to come better into focus. Questions have been raised about the identity of the Saracens of Horn, with critics traditionally assuming that the word sarazin is a catch-all term that applies here to Scandinavian or Danish invaders. Nonetheless, convincing arguments have also been put forward that they have more in common with the Saracens of French chansons de geste, where they are generally identified as people from the Islamic world.15 We

13 Prologue, in D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL, 1:3, 1.19–20, 2.23, 3.57. For more detailed analysis of the Cambridge, Corpus Christi, MS 145 prologue’s ideological message, see Robert Mills, “Violence, Community and the Materialisation of Belief,” in A Companion to Middle English Hagiography, ed. Sarah Salih (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2006), 87–103 (91–94). 14 Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108.” 15 For a summary of the arguments for and against the “Scandinavian view,” see Diane Speed, “The Saracens of King Horn,” Speculum 65 (1990): 564–95. Speed makes the case for the connection with chansons de geste, but the Scandinavian theory persists.

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shall return in due course to other features that underscore the identity of L’s sarazin foes as Saracens of Islam, but for now it is worth noting the symbolic interplay between land and sea in the manuscript, which maps onto divisions between Saracen and Christian. In Horn itself, this dialectic of land and sea colors the entire poem. Horn characterizes the inhabitants of Westernesse, the place where he lands after his exile from his native Suddene, as “londiſche menne,” and his own people are described as “lond folc” by the Saracens who invade Suddene in the opening lines.16 The Saracen invaders themselves, by contrast, are thoroughly outlandish—aliens who ride the waves, with no particular place they call home. Although the Saracens who murder Horn’s father, King Murry, cannot bear to slay the adolescent Horn and his companions there and then, they condemn the youths to a rudderless boat with the expectation that they will drown. This sets up a binary contrast, which equates sea with death and land with life; at the interface between them is the shore or “stronde,” where Horn fights all his battles. Only when the hero finally masters the power of the sea is he able to recapture his usurped heritage—the land denied him in his youth—and it is at this point that his own liminality ceases, and the shore to which he repeatedly returns finally gets transformed into a stable boundary.17 Significantly, a similar pattern emerges in some of the sanctorale legends in L, where “londe” is strongly associated with stability, homeliness, identity, and life, and “se” with danger, displacement, nonidentity, and death. Paralleling the theme of exile-and-return in the L romances are saints’ legends in which a conflict over land rights assumes importance, or where a secure purchase over both land and sea signals moral superiority. In St. Mary Magdalene, for instance, becoming Christian is rendered explicitly as a process of coming home. The parallels with romance conventions in this legend are signalled in the opening lines: the audience is asked to “Lustniez nouþe to mi speche : wise and vnwise, ȝongue and olde” (462.2), an oral mode of delivery that sets up a horizon of expectations very similar to Havelok, which

Most recently, see Leona Cordery, “The Saracens of Middle English Literature: A Definition of Otherness,” Al-Masāq 14, no. 2 (2002): 87–99. 16 Hall, King Horn, 647, 47. Subsequent references to line numbers will be to Hall’s edition of the L version of Horn and will be given in parentheses. 17 Sebastian Sobecki, “Littoral Encounters: The Shore as Cultural Interface in King Horn,” Al-Masāq 18, no. 1 (2006): 79–86; Crane, Insular Romance, 31–32.

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likewise asks its addressees to “Herkneth to me, gode men, / Wives, maidnes, and alle men.”18 The yarn that the St. Mary Magdalene narrator subsequently spins likewise conjures up the same spirit of adventure, exile, and return encountered in the L romances. St. Mary is born into landed wealth, her parents coming from “riche kunne [kin], / Of bolde kyngus and of Quienes” (463.23–24); but after being waylaid by her fleshly desires, from which she subsequently repents, she is expelled from her homeland along with the other apostles. Initially it is the Jews who parallel the Saracens of Horn, by denying Christians their birthright: Aftur ore louerdes passione : in þe þrittenþe ȝere Giwes weren proute [proud] and grimme : olme and of luþere chere [cruel and of evil disposition], Seint steuene to deþe huy stenden [stoned] : þat was ore louerd ful deore, And manie Men huy flemden [banished] : þat cristes limes [Christ’s limbs] were; Non Apostle ne moste liue [is permitted to live] : in Giwene [Jewish] londe, Alle huy weren of [from] londe i-driue [driven away] : with wrathþe and nyþe and onde [anger and spite and envy]. (466–67.163–68)

The phrase “huy weren of londe i-driue” is reminiscent of a similar expression used in Horn, at the moment when the hero confronts in battle the “pagan” who at the outset had killed his father.19 Although in St. Mary Magdalene itself, Judea is explicitly figured as the Jews’ “londe,” much space is devoted at the beginning of the legend to delineating the landed wealth of Mary’s parents. This is especially highlighted in a passage describing the way in which they divide “heore londes” between their three children, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus: To Marie bi-lefde [was bestowed] : þe castel Magdale, Þare-fore Maudeleyne : formest i-cleoped was heo [she was first called]; Lazarus hadde þat haluen-del [half ] : of al Ierusalem, Of wodes and fieldes and of sart [cleared land] : al-mest to bedlehem; Martha was i-feoffed [endowed] : with þe Betanie [Bethany] And al-so with genezarez [Genezareth] : bote [unless] þe bok us lie. (463.43–48)

18

Havelok the Dane, in Middle English Verse Romances, ed. Donald B. Sands (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966), 1–2. Subsequent line references to this edition will be given in parentheses. 19 Horn’s blood rises when he sees the pagan “Þat drof hym out of londe” (899).

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This detailed description of Mary and her siblings’ territorial heritage implies that the holy land is by rights Christian, albeit avant la lettre, and that the “luþer” Jews who expel Christian believers following Christ’s passion are denying them their inheritance. The passage reads like a legal charter, authorized by “þe bok,” laying out Mary and her family’s claim to all the places that would have been associated, in the minds of thirteenth-century readers, with the holy land: Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Bethany, and the land of Genezareth.20 There are also parallels with Horn in the manner in which the expulsion is effected in St. Mary Magdalene. Just as in the romance it is the protagonist Horn who is set adrift in a boat by the evil Saracens to face the elements, in a ship “[w]it uten ſeyl and roþer” (without sail and rudder) (198), in the saint’s life it is St. Mary and her siblings who are “in A schip i-pult [set adrift] : with-outen ster [rudder] and ore” (467.175).21 Miraculously the fleeing Christians come ashore at Marseille, where they unfortunately find no one who can give them shelter; they could turn back to face the Jews, but a new enemy now emerges when Saracens enter the fray. Shivering on the porch of an old house, the Christians know of nowhere else to stand: Bote huy hadde gret schame and teone [distress] : and giwes with [against] heom to fiȝhte. Þare huy duelden al þat nyȝht : forto it was day a-moruwe [until it was the next day]. Þe sarasins heom boden [bade] fiȝht : to echen heore soruwe. Alle þe Men þat fram þe se : þuder [to that place] weren i-come, Huy nusten ȝwodere [They did not know to what place] huy miȝhte fleo : for-þi huy weren i-nome [therefore they were taken]. Huy weren i-hote ope lyf and lime : Iesu crist fur-sake [commanded on their life and limb to forsake Jesus Christ], And, with þretningue [threatening] and with strif : to heore false godus take. (467.192–98)

Seeing this error, Mary makes a speech condemning Saracen religion, and it is at this point that the rich Saracen prince and his wife take 20

On Genezareth, see Mark 6:53. The imagery of evildoers setting Christian bodies adrift on the ocean waves, but ultimately failing in their efforts, also has parallels with the motif of pagan authorities putting the bodies of martyrs out to sea in an attempt to deny them burial. See, for instance, St. Vincent, where the saint’s corpse is thrown out to sea but miraculously fails to sink: the evil king Dacian laments that “[w]e ne mowe him neuere ouer-come : quik ne ded, a-watere ne a-londe” (189.164). 21

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center stage, lured by the holy woman’s “prechingue” (468.229). After some strong words from Mary, the Saracen couple agree to give food and shelter to the Christian refugees and even consent to converting, on condition that God grants them a son. Having conceived their first child, the pair then decide to embark on their own adventures on the high seas by travelling to Rome to become pilgrims. As in Horn, the sea is figured as a place of extreme danger: the Saracen ruler is reluctant to let his queen accompany him on the journey, since she is now miraculously with child (as a result of Mary’s intervention); although the woman does end up joining him on the ship, after a terrible storm she dies in childbirth. The ominous phrase “Þe se bi-gan to flowen” (472.351), which signals the beginning of the storm in the Magdalen legend, also appears in Horn, where it likewise invokes the physical challenge of the sea: the lines “Þe ſe bigan to flowen / And horn faſte to rowen” appear in the poem at the point when Horn is first set adrift on a boat by the Saracens (125–26). In the saint’s life, too, imagery of the shore as a mediating zone between land and sea, Christian and nonChristian, assumes prominence: when the prince again sets foot on the “stronde” (475.468) of the rock where he had previously abandoned his wife and child during the storm, he is overjoyed to find the family alive, saved by the intervention of Mary. It is after this that the couple return to Marseille to “nomen cristindom” (477.530) and to Christianize “þat lond” (477.539). Coming ashore means coming home, and that homeland is coextensive with Christendom. Language If the early SEL maps ethnic, moral, and creedal difference onto ideas of home and territory, then these differences also resonate linguistically. Although thirteenth-century England was a trilingual culture (Latin, French, and English) and within the English language itself there was much dialectical variation, the SEL tends to polarize the relationship between different vernaculars by associating English with sanctity and Anglo-Norman French with evil. Although L is for the most part a monoglot manuscript, brief French phrases appear in a number of sanctorale items, where they are generally spoken by tormentors. This is especially the case in the lives of the Latin martyrs, the early Christians who have corresponding Latin passiones. Obviously it is anachronistic to have French-speaking classical pagans, but the SEL compilers were

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working with different concepts of authenticity. Moreover, because the audience is assumed to be primarily English-speaking, only the most routine phrases are employed: SS. Alban, George, and Bartholomew are all confronted by pagan Justices who address their victims simply with the phrase “bel amy” (dear friend) (68.33; 294.17, 25; 373.214), and the devil whom St. Christopher serves for a time (in his mission to seek out the highest lord in the world) calls him “Beu sire” (dear sir) (272.38) and “Beu frere” (dear brother) (272.41). We encounter a similar phenomenon in twentieth-century mainstream cinema, where the bad guys get marked linguistically as other, whether through foreignsounding accents or snippets of alien vocabulary. Likewise, for the sake of comprehensibility, the SEL enemies continue to speak primarily in English; just a few stock phrases are enough to convey a sense of linguistic alterity. Occasionally the saints mimic the language of the other: when, in a miracle appended to St. James the Great, the devil addresses a sinner he is tempting as “beau frere” (44.334), James himself begins his reply with “Bel amy” (44.354). Yet it is evident that the saint is using the phrase ironically, since he follows it up with a fierce condemnation of the fiend’s “tricherie” (44.355).22 Some legends play up the Francophone qualities of evil with recurring outbursts of French: St. Theophilus tells of a rich but unlucky cleric who, with the help of a Jewish go-between, makes a pact with the devil to win back his wealth. The devil repeatedly addresses him as his brother: “Certes, beau frere,” he says, “Saunz faille [without fail], beu frere”; “Ov [yes], beu frere” (289.44, 47, 55). It is tempting to link these occasional allusions to linguistic otherness with the SEL’s anti-Norman sentiments. If the speech of wicked pagan rulers and devils is inflected with a “foreign” accent, the narrators also sometimes draw attention explicitly to the Anglophone qualities of saintly speech: St. Edmund the King has the martyred king cry out “Here, here, here” (299.81), to draw attention to the location of St. Edmund’s decapitated head, but the Corpus Christi, MS 145 version adds the detail that the head spoke out “al on Englisch.”23 Although L does not include this particular remark, it does incorporate an analogous episode in which the death-place of another Anglo-Saxon martyr, 22

Another saint who uses French vocabulary is St. Thomas Becket, who sometimes uses the phrase bev frere—notably when he is addressing the soldiers who have come to assassinate him. See, for example, 163.1993, 164.2005, 164.2016. 23 St. Edmund the King, in D’Evelyn and Mill, SEL, 2:514.79.

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St. Kenelm, is announced specifically in English: the pope receives a letter that was “puyr on Englisch i-write” (352.259), coming straight “fram ore louerdes honde” (353.266). Whereas French has associations with evil in the manuscript, English itself is seen as the perfect vessel for the transmission of God’s word.24 One martyr who was, historically speaking, of Norman birth and ancestry is radically re-branded in the early SEL, so that he becomes, in Anne B. Thompson’s words, “a kind of de facto Englishman.”25 Although the incipit to St. Thomas Becket in L is in French (Ici poez oyer coment seint Thomas de Kaunterbures nasqui. e de quev manere gent de pere e de Mere), the first line of the legend calls it “þis englische tale” (106.1, fig. 5), and the story that follows takes up a good fifteen percent of the entire sanctorale. In what follows, St. Thomas Becket’s French-speaking heritage is subjected to a double erasure: not only is his father introduced as thoroughly rooted in England—“ ‘Of engelonde ich am, and cristine Man . . . / Mi name is Gilbert beket : of Londene þe cite’ ” (107.34–35)—but his mother is originally “of heþenesse” (106.5), the daughter of a powerful emir or “Amiral,” who captures Gilbert while he is crusading in the holy land. Although the myth of Becket’s heathen mother has proved popular into modern times, providing the starting point for numerous novels and plays, in all likelihood the historical Gilbert married a Norman bride, possibly a woman called Matilda from Caen.26 Readers of the British newspaper the Daily Mail, which in 2001 listed Becket among one hundred of the nation’s “Great Britons” because he represented the “existence of a national conscience that had been shaped by Christianity,” would perhaps be surprised by the story of his oriental heritage, but they would certainly identify with the early SEL’s efforts to nationalize the

24 Hamelinck, “St. Kenelm,” 29; Frederick, “South English Legendary,” 63–64; Thompson, Everyday Saints, 46. For a detailed analysis of this scene, see Julie Nelson Couch, Chapter Eleven in this volume. 25 Thompson, Everyday Saints, 50. On the legend’s efforts to present Becket as a defender of the English nation and its people, see also Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 62–64. 26 Frank Barlow, Thomas Becket (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), 10–13. Modern reworkings of the legend include Jean Anouilh’s 1959 play Becket. Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century retellings of the myth of Becket’s Saracen mother are discussed in Paul Alonzo Brown, “The Development of the Legend of Thomas Becket” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1930), 41–50.

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legend’s protagonist.27 Of interest in the present context, however, is the way in which motifs of language shape the heathen mother episode: the difference between heathendom and Christendom is explicitly expressed in linguistic terms. In the holy land itself, linguistic barriers present no obstacle to the developing relationship between St. Thomas Becket’s father Gilbert and the Amiral’s daughter. Although not explicitly articulated by the narrator, the assumption is that, during the two-and-a-half years in which he has been imprisoned by the Amiral, Gilbert has undergone a degree of assimilation himself. The Amiral sets Gilbert above his fellow prisoners, even inviting him to dine by his side, and when the daughter herself secretly visits Gilbert in prison she has no problems communicating with the object of her desire. In response to her initial question about whether he would be prepared to die for his lord’s love, for example, Gilbert answers that he would gladly do so “for-to saui [defend] mi cristine-dom” (107.37), and this is enough to turn the daughter’s heart toward him: she replies that she herself will undertake Christendom “for þe loue of þe,” on condition that “þou a-non aftur-ward : treweliche weddi me” (107.39–40). Gilbert’s initial reaction to her proposal is somewhat surprising: afraid that his admirer is a double agent who will inform on the prisoners, he and his fellows decide, for fear of the “traison of þat womman” (107.46), that they are best off fleeing, and they effect an escape that very night. Unable to take her seriously, perhaps influenced by misogynistic conventions of wily femininity, their escape keeps the divide between self and other firmly in place. Reconciliation can only happen on home turf: undeterred by Gilbert’s swift departure, the daughter herself decides to follow her beloved to England. She is apparently guided in this mission by God himself, who not only acts as her “lodes-man” (navigator) but also makes sure that she is accompanied by “men þat onder-stoden hire langage” (108.54–55). It is at this point that the woman’s linguistic alterity is emphasized: finding her way to London, she cannot speak English and as a result gets treated as a kind of circus freak, someone people gawp at in the streets: 27

Lawrence James, “100 Great Britons,” Daily Mail (December 29, 2001). Conversely, BBC News Magazine conducted a poll in 2006, in which Becket came second in a list of “worst Britons.” See Sean Coughlon, “Saint or Sinner,” BBC News Magazine, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4663032.stm.

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Ne heo ne couþe speke ne hire bi-seo [Neither could they speak nor look at her] : bote ase a best þat a-strayed were Þare-fore on hire gapede alday : swyþe muche folc þere [many people there gaped at her all day], boþe Men and wommen : and children suyþe fale [very many]— for hire continaunce was wonderful : and hire speche no Man ne couþe þare [no person there knew her speech]. (108.65–68)

Depicting the Amiral’s daughter as a stray animal dehumanizes her just enough to underscore the sense of alienation that her English-less existence generates. But what makes her stand out from the crowd— her disorientation—is encircled with desire: it is her looks, her “continaunce,” that provoke such “wondringue” (108.73). This represents not the kind of out-and-out otherness that makes monsters of its subjects, but a more intimate alterity, both familiar and strange, one that straddles a line between Christian self and non-Christian other. Wandering the city streets, the Amiral’s daughter eventually finds Gilbert’s house, and Gilbert himself tells a group of bishops, “þe beste of Engelonde” (109.95), the story of his time “in heþenesse” (109.99). The bishop of Winchester thinks the woman’s journey is nothing short of miraculous: he is of the opinion Þat hit was al þoruȝ godes grace : þat heo was so fer i-come, Out of hire owene londe so fer : þat heo þoru miseise ne hadde i-be nome [that she had not been seized with discomfort]; For heo ne couþe language non [she did not know any language] : with men for-to speke, With ȝwan [whom] heo miȝte i-winnen hire : herboruwe [lodging] and drinke and mete. (109–10.111–14)

Although the text is clear that “Gilberd couþe [knew] hire language” (110.135) and so is able to translate, for the benefit of the bishops, her desire to swap conversion for marriage, baptism itself (which the bishops all oversee) effects a linguistic as well as spiritual conversion: the daughter is given a Christian name. The daughter’s former moniker, like “hire language” (110.135), is consigned to a hazy non-identity: it has no real substance, since as the narrator admits, of “hire heþene name ne j nouȝt telle [I tell nothing]” (110.139). Conversely her new name, Alisaundre, confers her with identity and life. No longer a stray beast, Christendom has given her a linguistic home, and it is this miraculous elimination of her heathen alterity that provides the setting for Alisaundre’s conception of a future saint and martyr.

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In the story of Gilbert’s imprisonment and the daughter’s conversion, St. Thomas Becket contains motifs of exile and return that resonate across the entire manuscript. Indeed, within the legend itself, this is a structure that finds echoes in the subsequent instances of banishment and reconciliation that pepper St. Thomas Becket’s life as an archbishop. But the “wonderful” aspects of Becket’s parentage—what might be celebrated, with hindsight, as his mixed race heritage—are ultimately effaced by a successful effort to foreground assimilation. Not only does the Amiral’s daughter assume the name of Christian selfhood, but she also occupies the role of an archetypal Christian mother, educating her child in moral welfare. Thus, in the life proper, the narrator announces how she would “al day rede” (112.211) to Becket, as well as offer him spiritual advice. No longer different at all from other Christian women, Alisaundre represents a kind of conversion that is total and all-encompassing: she now serves as an ideal role model for Christian mothers and teachers. Belief Initially the story of St. Thomas Becket’s heathen mother represents ethnic fissures as linguistic, but ultimately they are imagined in religious terms: Christian baptism is presented as a force that eradicates other forms of difference, by assimilating the subject within the body of the universal church. This equation of conversion with cultural assimilation, monotheism with monolingualism, shows how difference is indeed the burden of the other in SEL narratives. Christians are people “like us,” and those who differ culturally only register as fully human when they turn to God. Moreover distinctions between different non-Christian groups are also thoroughly blurred, so that the enemies of the church in the SEL sanctorale are, to some extent, interchangeable. What are inhabitants of heathendom in the L version of the Becket narrative become in later manuscripts Saracens, and in one fifteenth-century redaction in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawl. poet 225 (formerly Bodleian 14716), they are cast as “Iewes,” with Gilbert Becket being placed in captivity in “Iewry.”28 These substitutions register a persistent ideological strategy in SEL narratives: one enemy is the 28 This version is printed as Appendix A in Brown, “Development of the Legend,” 262–68.

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same as the next, insofar as its existence shores up the impregnability— and simultaneous violability—of the church. But these displacements generate omissions and even distortions. Those who oppose the saint are “luþere,” and sometimes this is enough to satisfy the requirements of the narrative: in the L version of St. Edmund the King, the two princes who take the saint into captivity, Hubba and Hinguar, are simply described as “Twey [two] princes of an oþur lond : þat weren in luþere þouȝte” (297.7). The fact that the evil duo presumably hailed from Denmark, but that the SEL fails to draw attention explicitly to their Danish heritage, may be related to the text’s manuscript context: another, much lengthier text which represents Scandinavian military might—Havelok—places Danish national interests on a par with those of England and extols the virtues of a thoroughly Christian Danish hero.29 (The idea that L may be involved in actively playing down the specific identities of certain enemies adds further weight to the suggestion that the Saracens of Horn are not simply preconquest Danes or Vikings under another name.) Underplaying the identity of the enemy is one thing; misrepresenting it completely is another. This is especially the case when the SEL compilers turn their hand to representing different belief systems, notably Islam. We have seen how sarazin is an ethnically charged category in L: it refers to a people strongly associated with the dangers of the sea, invaders of Christian lands, a folk living in far-flung places. Additionally, moreover, it conveys religious alterity: in Horn the justification for fighting the Saracen enemy is their faith, paganism; and variations on the term paynim appear at least as many times in the L version of the poem as the term sarazin.30 The invaders of Suddene are motivated by a specific hatred of Christians: they announce that they have come to slay “al þat god leuet on” (48) and are also described destroying churches. Evidently, these pagans are defined more by what they do not like than what they do: we receive no images of actual

29 In this respect, the L version of St. Edmund the King represents a marked contrast to the Anglo-Saxon version included in Ælfric of Eynshams’s Lives of Saints, written in the late tenth century, when the Danish threat was immediate: Ælfric refers explicitly to the Danish context. See “Passion of St. Edmund, King and Martyr,” in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS, o.s., 114 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966), 2:315–34. 30 The invaders are labelled sarazin six times (42, 614, 623, 648, 1360, 1420), paynim eight times (45, 63, 84, 87, 189, 832, 836, 1357), and heþene once (155). In addition, they are described as hundes [hounds] (91, 627, 906, 912, 914), as I discuss below, 218.

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pagan customs. This rather hazy sense of Saracen-pagan religion is brought into sharper focus in the lives of several Latin martyrs in the early SEL, where pagan tormentors are represented consistently as idolaters, swearing by a god called Mahun and inviting their victims to give up Christ in order to worship maumates. In each instance, these “heathen” idols are ultimately weak. Thus in the life of St. Vincent, King Dacian asks “ ‘Mahun, ȝware [where] is þi miȝte?’ ” (187.101), accuses the saint of defeating the idol’s power with his “wichchinge” (187.102), and finally gives up with the statement “ ‘Alas, we beoth nouþe ouer-come : I-ne can þenche [think] non more; / Ovre godes ne helpez us nouȝt : þat alle þing habbeth to wolde [have dominion over all things]’ ” (188.120–21). In this instance the idol is simply ineffective and the saint’s imperviousness to torment is what lays Mahun’s weakness bare; in St. Bartholomew the saint takes direct action by driving the devil from King Pollimius’s chief idol: “ ‘Draweth a-doun ouwer [your] Maumat,’ ” he cries, “ ‘ant to-brekez him al-to nouȝte [smash him into nothing]’ ” (371.146). Deeply angered by the devotion shown to “false godes” in Marseille, St. Mary Magdalene herself preaches a bold message to the city’s inhabitants against Mahun and company: “ ‘Ne bilieuez nouȝht opon Mahun : ne on teruagaunt, is fere [Termagant, his companion], / For huy beoth boþe deue and doumbe [deaf and dumb] : and huy ne mouwen [cannot] i-seo n i-here’ ” (468.205–6).31 Mahun is a Middle English variation on the name of the Muslim prophet, Mohammed, and the plural form maumates, used in the SEL as a generic term for idols, is derived from a French version of the prophet’s name, mahomet.32 It is twisted enough that Mohammed gets represented in these texts as an idol, one among a number of “gods”; but the fact that aspects of Islamic faith are being projected, knowingly or otherwise, onto classical pagans perpetuates the belief that non-Christians lack internal variation, even across vastly different times and places. Confronted with the rise of Islam after the seventh century, medieval Christian authors tended to shoehorn Muslims into pre-established categories of religious difference—Jews, pagans, and 31 Other L texts making reference to Mahun-worshipping pagans include SS. Katherine, George, and Cecilia; references to maumates appear in SS. Christopher, Philip and James the Less, Thomas the Apostle, and Blaise. “Termagant” was the name given to a god supposedly worshipped by Muslims, but bears no relation to actual Muslim belief or practice: he appears as god of the Saracens throughout the Chanson de Roland. 32 See the entries for Mahoun and maumet in MED.

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heretics—rather than acknowledging traits specific to their belief system. This is why, despite the explicit rejection of idolatry in Muslim doctrine, the prophet gets reconstituted as an idol in medieval Christian polemic: a complex of biblical and patristic texts condemning idolatry provided the yard stick against which all subsequent departures from Christian doctrine could be measured.33 As with the Saracens of Horn, this phenomenon needs to be seen against the backdrop of chansons de geste, where the alignment of Saracens with classical Roman idolaters offered a contemporary spin on the early Christian passiones, which represented martyrs engaged in a conflict between pagan error and Christian truth.34 Not all Christian thinkers acceded to this portrait: some individuals did acknowledge Muslims as monotheists.35 Indeed increasingly, as more reliable information about Islam began to circulate, authors dressed Mohammed in the clothes of an arch-heretic and represented Islam as an “abominable sect.” But the vision of “pagan” Saracens persisted all the same: crusader chronicles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries almost always justify the struggle with Saracens as an effort to eliminate paganism, as if Islam is some kind of throwback to the religion of ancient Rome.36 Pagan, Saracen, heathen, maumate-worship—in the signifying system that underpins L’s conception of a universal church, each term contributes to, and overwrites, the definition of the next. It is a circular logic that produces polarities rather than fine distinctions: what we are left with is a binary message about who is wrong and who is right. Haunting these conceptions of Saracen paganity is the figure of the biblical Jew, who occasionally appears in the guise of Christ-killer, albeit in passing. Thus in St. Bartholomew “þe giwes” are specifically singled out as the ones who gave the Lord his “deþes wounde” (370.136) on Calvary. St. Mary Magdalene, with its references to the “grimme” Jews of the holy land, extends the claim by blaming them for the deaths of Stephen and other apostles (466–67.164–66). The reiteration of this kind of thinking, banal as it may seem, sowed the seeds of a number of antisemitisms in the later Middle Ages, including ritual murder and 33 John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 1–18. 34 Ibid., 105–34. For the presentation of Saracens in chansons de geste more generally, see Lynn Tarte Ramey, Christian, Saracen and Genre in Medieval French Literature (New York: Routledge, 2001). 35 See, for example, Guibert of Nogent, discussed in Tolan, Saracens, 110. 36 Ibid., 135–69.

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host desecration accusations. L does not include the tale of the Jewish boy, a saint-like convert who is thrown into an oven by his evil father but miraculously saved by the Virgin Mary’s intervention, among the miracles appended to St. Theophilus: this particular story first makes its appearance in English in the Corpus Christi, MS 145 SEL.37 However L does identify the Jew as the evil agent in the life of St. Theophilus itself: it is the Jew’s execution by burning that prompts St. Theophilus to change his ways and tear up his contract with the devil, spurred on by the Virgin’s offer of mercy (290–92.83–142). The early SEL also includes, in fragmentary form, another miracle in St. Nicholas, about a Jew who, having entrusted his “god” (goods/goodness) to a statue of St. Nicholas, proceeds to scourge the statue like a martyr when the “god” gets stolen; Nicholas’s intervention causes the Jew to convert, once the thieves see the pain that the Jew’s acts of beating are causing to the saint (253–54.449–81).38 Jews, like Saracens, were fantasy figures in these texts, appropriated for their literary value: we learn very little about historical Muslims or Jews, or about their beliefs, from these representations. Their significance in L is functional, a channel through which Christian power can assume material form. Body The matter that ultimately gives substance to Christian institutions, that makes them realizable as such, is corporeal. Christ’s sufferings on the cross provided a model for the afflictions of the martyrs who followed in his footsteps; these sufferings contribute a felt-quality, a vibrant materiality, to the institution whose rights they uphold.39 Represented,

37 For a discussion of earlier and later analogues, see Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), 7–28. 38 The SEL in L also contains another miracle in which a Jewish moneylender is converted, though in this instance it is a Christian man who cheats the Jew who is presented as “luþere.” See St. Nicholas, 349–50.326–60. For a more detailed discussion of the Jewish boy and statue-beating miracles in Corpus Christi, MS 145, see Mills, “Violence,” 96–98. For an overview of Middle English antisemitisms, see Anthony Bale, The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms, 1350–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 39 I am drawing here on Elaine Scarry’s argument about the appropriation of the felt-attributes of pain away from the body as a means of substantiating abstract ideologies or cultural constructs. See Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 13–14, 124–27.

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like the English nation, as a body under threat—a body analogous, in its potential for suffering, to the bodies of the saints themselves—this church is simultaneously sublime: inviolable, pure, and whole.40 The apparent indestructibility of the martyrs, their imperviousness to the torments that would surely, in naturalistic terms, bring about immediate death, contributes to this paradoxical coincidence of vulnerability and strength. Thus St. Bartholomew gets beaten with “grete staues” (374.239), crucified upside down (374.242–43), and finally the tormentors “liet huylden is fel al fram is flechs [flayed his skin all from his flesh] : al quik [alive] with kene [sharp] knyue” (374.246). After all that, one might imagine death being the inevitable conclusion; but as with numerous other SEL martyrs, it is only beheading that finally kills him. These fantasies of incessant violence are not simply gratuitous: they are designed to highlight the martyr’s sublimity. If, like the martyr, Christendom is a body that is both invincible and constantly under threat, it is also an entity one can identify with, love, even fight to the death for (literally so in the context of the crusades). In Havelok, we see a similar pattern. Havelok is constantly threatened with violence, notably as a boy when he and his sisters are imprisoned by the traitor Godard: in a gruesome scene in which the sisters’ throats are slashed and their bodies cut to pieces, Havelok himself narrowly escapes a similar fate only to be handed over to Grim and Grim’s wife Dame Leve, who, not knowing his true identity, throw him down so he cracks his head. What finally saves him is the sublime aura that infuses his body—his shining birthmark—which produces the necessary recognition that he is the Danish heir. Himself a virginal figure (“Of body was he maiden-clene” [995]), it is easy to see why Havelok’s story is included in a manuscript dominated by hagiography: the hero may as well be a saint, in his role as the long-suffering but invincible embodiment of his nation.41

40 See Couch, Chapter Eleven on the English nation being figured as the vulnerable body of a child heir. 41 For analyses of Havelok’s vulnerable childhood body, through which he lays claim, in adulthood, to the body politic (and through which, in turn, he authorizes his sovereignty and quasi-sanctity), see Julie Nelson Couch, “The Vulnerable Hero: Havelok and the Revision of Romance,” Chaucer Review 42 (2008): 330–52, and Donna Crawford, “The Vulnerable Body of Havelok the Dane,” Medieval Forum 1 (2002), http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/Volume%201/Crawford.html. For further discussion of Havelok as hagiographic romance, see Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 26–51, and Couch, Chapter Eleven.

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The bodies of enemies in L sit at the opposite end of the spectrum from sublime, sacred bodies. Indeed, they are not even human bodies at all, to the extent that the readers’ sympathies are directed elsewhere. In Havelok itself, the fate of the usurper Godard is to be “all quick flawen [flayed alive]” (2476), and the execution is described in a cold, distanced fashion: Sket [quickly] cam a ladde with a knif And bigan right at the toe For to ritte [cut] and for to flo [flay] So it were goune or gore [as if it were a gown or garment]. And he [Godard] bigan tho for to rore [roar] That men mighte thethen [thence] a mile Here him rore that fule file [foul wretch]! (2493–99)

Godard’s sufferings animalize him, transforming him into a beast without language; unlike martyrs, who frequently talk during their tortures, all he can do is “rore.” As if any ambiguity remains, the narrator follows this with a blunt directive to the reader: “Datheit who recke! [A curse on him who grieves!] He was fals” (2511). St. Bartholomew suffers a similar fate under the command of the idolatrous King Astriages: he too is flayed alive. But in this instance the narrator encourages opposite sentiments: “Alas, hou miȝten huy habben þe heorte? : alas, þe deolfulle pine [doleful pain]!” (374.248). While sympathy for the saints’ sufferings coexists with a recognition of their ultimate sublimity (invariably after death, miracles occur at their tombs), the enemies go mad and die, and end up in hell, with no one to mourn their passing. This is the sorry fate of Astriages and his advisers, who when they visit Bartholomew’s tomb to see what all the fuss is about, get tormented by the devil and die there “ase for-lorene [forlorn] wrechches” (374.266). If the difference between sinners and saints maps onto the terrain separating abject from sublime, there are features of the abject antibody— the sacred enemy—that deserve consideration from the standpoint of the medieval racial matrix mentioned at the outset. We have already seen how, at the point of death, evildoers are transformed into bestial nobodies, but they are also viewed through such a lens in life. In Horn, Saracen invaders are described as “hundes” (e.g., 627, 906), dogs, and some are also endowed with monstrous proportions: at Christmas a “geaunt” comes in, “armed of paynime” (831–32). This association between giants and Saracens probably has its roots in the chansons de geste, where “giant” (in Old French jaianz or gaiant) sometimes refers

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to a specific race of Saracens.42 Moreover the figure of the gigantic Saracen also features in the L sanctorale: St. Christopher himself was originally an enormous “saracen : in þe londe of canaan,” twenty-four feet tall, “þicke and brod [stout] i-nouȝ” (271.1–3). But unlike his evil twins in Horn, who want to use their strength to wreak havoc, Christopher is a gentle giant, who just wants to serve a higher power. Like Gilbert Becket’s heathen girlfriend, whose difference is marked out linguistically, Christopher represents the kind of intimate alterity that combines monstrous embodiment with Christian spirit; aligned with other saintly superheroes in his imperviousness to torture (despite his size, the four hundred archers who shoot arrows at him fail to hit their target), Christopher’s monstrous, corporeal distinctiveness is eventually overwritten by his subjection to the tortures that martyrs inevitably undergo. In other narratives, the contrast between good and evil gets written onto bodies in starker terms: in Horn the Saracens are described toward the end of the poem as “lodlike [ugly] and blake” (1360), a phrase that could be interpreted both literally and figuratively.43 But in St. Bartholomew there is no ambiguity about the colour of evil. Testing the pagan idols of King Pollimius, the saint enlists the help of an angel to reveal the devil behind the mask: the demon appears in the guise of a . . . grislich man : þat al for-broide [distorted] were And swarttore þane euere ani blouȝman [swarthier than any black man] : with foule farinde chere [foul unseemly countenance]; A scharp face he hadde and al for-kroked [crooked] : his berd atelich [horrible] and long, Eiȝene brode al brenninde [wide eyes all burning] : red and swart [dark] a-mong (372.175–78).

Here somatic difference (swarthy skin, crooked features, burning eyes) combines with humoral theories of corporeal deficiency to produce a vision of evil that is all body and no spirit.44

42

Speed, “Saracens,” 577–80. In keeping with chansons de geste convention, Speed believes the phrase refers to the Saracens’ black skin. See ibid., 580–81. 44 The balance of humors—blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm—was routinely tied to climatic conditions: it was believed that the great heat of the extreme south was liable to draw people’s blood to the surface, producing, among other things, dark and coarsened skin, as well as melancholic temperament. For a general discussion of the links between humoral theory, climate, and physiology, see Strickland, Saracens, Demons and Jews, 35–39. 43

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This last example is unusual when compared with other markers of difference in the manuscript. Only rarely is difference written quite so starkly on the body in early SEL narratives: it is the devil, a kind of ur-monster, that provides the excuse for trading in an explicitly corporealized racial discourse, which compares demonic appearance with that of a “blouȝman.”45 But viewed as one component in a bigger picture, it is clear that L’s racial matrix encompasses a much broader field than embodiment alone. Analytically, the categories grappled with in this chapter—race, ethnicity, religion, nation, territory, language—are not easy to prise apart. Just as each text in L bears comparison with its colleagues, committing readers to a mode of intertextual engagement that views saints’ lives through the lens of romance or plays off one saint’s life against another, distinctions such as race and nation are interdependent concepts, subject to “multiple category overlap.”46 This is a signifying network that renders non-Christian others landless, speechless, even nameless; they are condemned to an existence always less than fully human. On one level, within this climate of stark polarities, there is room for ambivalence: figures such as St. Thomas Becket’s mother and St. Christopher are in some senses “close” others, caught between the alterity they wish to transcend and the sameness to which they ultimately aspire; Becket’s own provenance, as the son of a father “of engelonde” and a mother originally “of heþenesse,” is fundamentally hybrid. But the non-Christian who, like Becket’s mother, converts, finally exemplifies a Christendom that extends its boundaries outward only by eradicating the differences it encounters. This process of erasure is predicated on notions of a unified Christian body, a vision of sameness that tends to overshadow the more “local” or particular meanings attached to individual SEL legends. A perspective on the whole book offers a means of unravelling those universal claims, by bringing into focus the structures that undergird them: it reveals the mechanisms of repetition, analogy and overlap by which the fantasy of Christian unity is constructed in the first place. Just as SEL narratives play off against one another, so too do they interact with the other texts in L with which they are bound—showing how the manuscript itself, by performing an illusion of coherence and

45 For the correspondence perceived between demons and black Africans, see Strickland, Saracens, Demons and Jews, 79–93. 46 Cohen, “On Saracen Enjoyment,” 134.

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wholeness, contributes to the materialization of the Christian corpus. Beneath this apparent unity, however, it is possible to find areas of crossover between “Christian” and “non-Christian,” as well as differences within Christian fantasies of sameness—opening up a critical space for comprehending the constructedness of that vision.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE MAGIC OF ENGLISHNESS IN ST. KENELM AND HAVELOK THE DANE Julie Nelson Couch* A child protagonist and specific plot details in St. Kenelm in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108’s (L) South English Legendary (SEL) strike a remarkable parallel to the L romance, Havelok the Dane. In both poems, the young protagonists are the rightful kings of countries, Kenelm of Mercia in England and Havelok of Denmark and England (by his marriage to Goldeboru, daughter of the late English king), and both are ousted by internal enemies, Kenelm’s own sister and Havelok’s and Goldeboru’s entrusted guardians. Though the similarities in plot and characterization are evident, the different endings of the two narratives—martyrdom for one prince and a long reign for the other—cause them to be read in terms of different generic parameters: the vita elevates the death of Kenelm as God’s victory over Kenelm’s assassins while Havelok’s life, his happy romance ever-after, re-establishes the rightful, God-sanctioned kingship of England and Denmark. Nevertheless, though the ends diverge, the means converge: both poems set the most vulnerable protagonist, a child, against the worst kind of enemy, a treacherous caregiver; and both exact vengeance upon the traitors while exalting the young hero who is, by the grace of God, triumphant. The similarities described above would not necessarily be worth noting apart from a particularly distinctive complex of pathos and political fantasy which drives both narratives. Not only do both Havelok and St. Kenelm center on a vulnerable protagonist, but both poems also situate that character within a consciously-constructed and foregrounded England. In these parallel tales, a vulnerable child-king figures England as an imperiled spiritual, political, and linguistic entity. In other words, vulnerable childhood and a notion of Englishness * I wish to thank Kimberly K. Bell for her willingness to read numerous drafts of this essay. This essay would not have been possible without her positive and helpful feedback.

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become aligned. And, ultimately, in both tales, a vulnerable England, which encompasses a notion of English language, is fantastically vindicated and empowered. The glorified martyr Kenelm and the restored King Havelok sanctify English language and England by making English / England indispensable—to spiritual welfare in one narrative and to secular welfare in the other. The prominence of England in these poems fantasizes social and spiritual validation for a non-courtly, nonecclesiastic vernacular identity, highlighting a desire for an empowered Englishness found throughout the L manuscript. Like numerous other poems in the L SEL and along with King Horn, the romance Havelok and St. Kenelm thematize England and Englishness. The significant number of English saints found in the L SEL has been well-documented. Of the sixty original sanctorale texts extant in the L SEL, ten are of English saints and two additional ones, SS. Augustine of Canterbury and Gregory the Great, dramatize the conversion of England.1 The trend of appending historic and more contemporary English lives to collections of ancient and continental lives began with the Latin legendaries of the eleventh century, which Rosalind Love describes as a “gradual modernization and anglicization of the originally Continental (possibly Flemish) ‘Cotton-Corpus legendary.’”2 By the twelfth century, these compendiums had increased to multivolume affairs and more English saints, including St. Kenelm, were added to the collections. Love remarks “that the multi-volume legendary came to be an essential part of the library of almost every religious house” in England.3 Though no direct influence can be confirmed, the SEL appears as a vernacular manifestation of these Latin collections.4 The

1 Five additional lives also have links to England. For details, see Diane Speed, Chapter Six and Kimberly K. Bell, Chapter Twelve in this volume. On the SEL emphasis on a national English identity, see Thompson, Everyday Saints; Turville-Petre, England the Nation; Hamelinck, “St. Kenelm and the Legends of the English Saints,” 19–28; Jankofsky, “National Characteristics,” 81–93; Jill Frederick, “The South English Legendary: Anglo-Saxon saints and national identity,” in Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 29 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 57–73. 2 Rosalind C. Love, ed., Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives: Vita S. Birini, Vita et miracula S. Kenelmi and Vita S. Rumwoldi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), xxiii. 3 Ibid., xxviii. 4 The earliest SEL collections are usually dated to the last quarter of the thirteenth century; extant in over sixty manuscripts, the elastic anthology maintained a widespread popularity through the fourteenth century. On the SEL tradition, its lack of

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L SEL is considered by most critics to be the earliest extant version; it remains distinct from the later versions due to its smaller number of legends, its lack of calendrical order, and its more blatant anti-Norman partisan voice.5 The SEL can also be grouped with a number of other early Middle English instructional and politicized texts intended to draw English readers and listeners to sober reflection upon spiritual matters.6 The spiritual never lies far from the political in these early Middle English texts.7 Indeed, one of the overriding threads guiding the compilation of the “whole book” of L is an investment in the construction of an English identity as a historical-spiritual phenomenon.8 A sense of an English historical identity cuts across (modern) generic lines in L, planting English saints—including Anglo-Saxon kings, but also postConquest political figures such as St. Thomas Becket, and as recent a figure as St. Edmund of Abingdon (d. 1240)—as well as the “romance” kings Havelok and Horn, and thereby England, at the center of a grand, Christian history of the world.9 In L, a comprehensive vision of God at work in worldly affairs emerges from a spiritual-political interlace that

known sources, including the negligible influence of the Legenda Aurea on the early SEL, see Görlach, Textual Tradition, 1–5; 21–31. Annie Samson contends that such a collection as the SEL is a result of the rise in vernacular religious material after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 (“The South English Legendary,” 185–95 [194–95]). See also Speed, Chapter Six and Daniel Kline, Chapter Seven in this volume. Thompson dates the SEL to ca. 1270 (Everyday Saints, 28). 5 See Görlach, Textual Tradition, 38, 88–90. On the anti-Norman and anti-French stance in the L SEL, see Thompson, Everyday Saints, 48–49 and Robert Mills, Chapter Ten in this volume. 6 These texts include the Ormulum, Cursor Mundi, Robert Manning’s Handlying Sinne and Chronicle. See Thompson, Everyday Saints, 36–46. 7 For example, Cursor Mundi, a Middle English poem contemporary with L, offers a scripturally-based history of the world. On its political consciousness about England and its use of English, see Thompson, Everyday Saints, 36–39. 8 Nichols and Wenzel, The Whole Book, 170. 9 Speaking of the SEL, Turville-Petre states, “[h]ere the nation of England takes its central place within a universal Christian family guarded by a community of saints,” England the Nation, 61. See 61–67 for his description of the SEL as a narrative of English church history. See Hamelinck, “St. Kenelm,” 19–23, for a similar depiction: she reads the narrative strung by the SEL English saints’ lives as one that “relate[s] the history of the English church from the time when Christianity was first brought to England by St. Augustine up to the thirteenth century when the SEL was composed.” Such a project, of positioning England as a culminating point in Christianized history, can be traced back to the earliest historians of an imagined totality conceived alternately as Britain and as England, including Bede, King Alfred, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon, and William of Malmesbury, among others. Each staked out a central place in Christian world history for the island.

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characterizes the entire codex.10 The English saints and heroes who punctuate L stand out as much for their spiritualized political courage as for the special favor of God they possess. The narrative of England and its saints begins early in the collection with St. Dunstan who, we learn in the first half-line, “was of enguelonde” (19.1).11 With this narrative, the reader is thrust into a realm of English abbeys, priests, bishops, and their crucial dealings with English kings, a narratorial arena that serves in the SEL as the stage for God’s intervention in the world. St. Dunstan’s worthiness as a founder of abbeys and ultimately as Archbishop was duly recognized by the good English kings, Edmund and Edgar, who “louede wel holi churche” (21.63). In instructive contrast, the ill-advised King Edwin harmed Holy Church by banishing Dunstan. The saint himself remains steadily holy through both acknowledgement and expulsion. The narrator explains Dunstan’s holiness in political terms: “Þe cristindom of Enguelonde : to guod stat he drovȝ” (22.93). The narrator also contextualizes Dunstan’s work for the “riȝtes of holi churche” by naming the other English saint-bishops in office at that time, St. Athelwold and St. Oswold: “Þeos twei Bischopes with seint Dunston : weren al at one rede, / And Edgar þe guode king” (22.94, 99–100). Together these formidable holy English men exercise their holiness in a political manner: banishing evil clerics, bestowing their positions and property upon “guode men,” founding forty-eight abbeys “in Enguelonde” (22.102–06). What begins with St. Dunstan, the political story of England as a place where Holy Church flourishes under saintly bishops despite occasional obstruction from its kings, continues in what is by far the largest life in the L SEL, St. Thomas Becket. This 2,478-line life occupies the center of the collection with an extremely detailed political drama of the conflict between Church and Crown. Archbishop Thomas

10 Hamelinck, “St. Kenelm,” 20, and Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 62–66, note that political relations between kings and the Church supply a major point of interest in the SEL. On the political emphases of the SEL, see also Thompson, Everyday Saints, esp. 175–181. The overlap between the political and spiritual is also evident in Havelok and Horn as critics have noted. On Havelok, see Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 41; and Couch, “Defiant Devotion,” 53–79. On Horn, see Bell, Chapter Twelve. 11 This and all subsequent references to the L SEL are taken from Horstmann, ESEL, and are given parenthetically by page and line number. In L, the first extant sanctorale item is Holy Cross; St. Dunstan is the second. See A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One in this volume for a description of the manuscript.

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aligns the Church with the English people and ultimately England itself against a grasping Norman King Henry II.12 Toward the end of the collection, St. Edmund of Abingdon continues this narrative; as Archbishop from 1234 to 1240, St. Edmund serves as recent history for L readers, who may have been alive under the reign of Edmund’s nemesis, King Henry III (d. 1272).13 St. Edmund completes an image of an enfolded, overlapping history of saintly personages that keep England anchored within God’s will. For instance, Edmund is born on the feast day of St. Edmund the King (431.8–9). Additionally, the narrator explicitly parallels Archbishop Edmund’s quarrels with King Henry III with the struggle between Archbishop Thomas Becket and King Henry II (445.507–508). The narrative threaded through L makes the political power struggles of England a spiritual issue, a spiritual conflict between Holy Church and temporal kings. In the vernacular SEL then, emphases on the saints’ connections to England play a predominant role in the narratives.14 England as the setting, as the place where the narrative and its audience reside, comes into fuller view when the conventional prefaces of Latin lives are omitted. For example, the Latin lives of St. Dunstan begin with writer-focused prefaces which include modesty topoi, discussion of other versions, assurance of pure motivations, and the reliability of their authorities on the subject.15 The preface to the Anglo-Latin Life of St. Kenelm functions similarly to promote its subject with mention of reliable sources, documentary evidence and widespread reputation of the cult.16 In contrast, the English St. Kenelm, like St. Dunstan and the other SEL English saints, opens already within the imaginary of England. With the exception of St. Thomas Becket, all ten of the English saints introduce the saint as “of ” or “in” “England” in the first lines of the poem. St. Thomas also invokes England: the first part of

12

See Thompson, Everyday Saints, 50–51, and Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 62–64, for readings of the SEL St. Thomas Becket that detail the narratorial alignment of St. Thomas with the people and England against the king and his bishops. 13 On the date of L, see Thomas Liszka, Chapter Two and A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One in this volume. On St. Edmund’s possible contemporaneity with the SEL writer and readers, see also Thompson, Everyday Saints, 51, and Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 65. 14 On this point, see also Bell, Chapter Twelve. 15 William Stubbs, ed. Memorials of Saint Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury (London: Longman & Co, 1874). See, for example, the prologues of Osbern and Eadmer, 69–71, 162–64. 16 See below, 233–35.

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the life is introduced as an “englische tale” (106.1) while the second part begins with a direct address to England: “Engelond, wel glad þov beo” (112.203). Adding Havelok to the anthology of saints’ lives further reinforces the manuscript’s emphasis on England as the center of political narrative and spiritual worth. Though Havelok himself is a Dane, the poem’s central setting, in regard to both action and emotion, is England. Havelok escapes his evil guardian by fleeing to England, he grows up in England, marries in England, and after regaining his own royal position by defeating the Danish usurper, returns to England to restore it to its proper rulership, himself and his wife, the English Queen Goldeboru. As Kimberly K. Bell notes, the manuscript layout itself underscores the narrative’s emphasis on the setting of England: the rubricator gave Havelok the title “of England and Denmark,” not only putting England first but also pushing Denmark to the end of the heading after an extended braid so that “Havelok’s rule over Denmark appears only as an afterthought” (fig. 1).17 Havelok also continues the Church-State emphasis established by the English saints of the L SEL.18 Havelok, like the English saints, explicitly promotes the institutions of the Church. Havelok’s first act upon returning to England as a king is to found a priory of monks in honor of his foster father Grim, uniting good governance of England with tangible support of the Church, in the manner of the English saints: “A priorie to seruen inne ay/ Jesu Crist til Domesday.”19 Havelok’s church service contrasts usurper Godrich’s subversive manipulation of religious rhetoric. Directly after Havelok lands at Grimsby and establishes the abbey, Godrich arouses his army with inflammatory images of a heathen Havelok coming to seize the priory (not found it), burn their churches, and kill their wives and children: Lokes hware here at Grimesbi His uten-laddes [foreign men] here comen, And haues nu þe priorie numen [taken]— Al þat euere mithen he finde,

17

Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 41. In Chapter Six, Speed discusses the L SEL’s prevailing “ideology of a partnership between church and state in which the church dominates the state” and sees this emphasis continued in the romances (130). 19 Smithers, Havelok, lines 2523–24. Further references to Havelok will be to this edition and will be given parenthetically by line numbers. 18

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He brenne [burns] kirkes and prestes binde; He strangleth monkes and nunnes baþe [both]. ... And helpes me and yuself baþe, And slos upo þe dogges swiþe! (2580–85; 2596–97)

Godrich paints a sensational picture of Havelok binding priests and strangling holy men and women. Calling the Danish army “uten laddes” and “dogges,” Godrich makes use of familiar rhetoric about (heathen) Vikings in an attempt to demonize Havelok.20 Of course his efforts only serve to demonize Godrich further as a deceitful usurper of what belongs to Goldeboru, Havelok, and the English people, and as one who exploits the issue of protection of the Church to do so. The Havelok narrator carefully separates the usurper of the English throne, Godrich the Earl of Cornwall, from his forced subjects in terms of national identity; they, not he, are the ones identified as the “English” when he coerces their allegiance: “And alle þe Englis dede he swere/ Þat he shulden him ghod fey beren: (254–55, emphasis added). This separation between the English and Godrich is consistent through the poem. When Godrich compels his subjects to fight Havelok, Godrich’s men are identified as the “English” against the earl: Þe Englishe þat herde þat, Was non þat euere his bode sat, For he him [the earl] dredde swiþe sore, So runci spore, and mikle more. (2567–70, emphasis added)

The English men are oppressed by their leader as the nag [runci] fears the spur; under his oppressive rulership they are reduced to a pack of workhorses rather than being treated as his fellow knights. Without the rightful king, the English subjects fall vulnerable to and are oppressed by their illegitimate ruler. The English remain in such a position until the rightful king and queen, Havelok and Goldeboru, are restored to power. In recounting the news that Godrich hears of Havelok and Goldeboru returning to regain her crown, the narrator transitions from Havelok as the King of Denmark, to Havelok as the restorer of England. Godrich learns:

20 On Havelok’s “revisionist view of the Vikings” see Thorlac Turville-Petre, “Havelok and the History of the Nation,” in Readings in Medieval English Romance, Meale, 121–34 (131–33).

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julie nelson couch Þat Hauelok was king of Denemark, And ferde [army] with him, strong and stark Comen Engelond with-inne, Engelond al for to winne, And þat she þat was so fayr, Þat was of Engelond rith eir, Was comen up at Grimesbi. (2535–41)

The accumulating repetition of “England” in this passage provides smooth entry of Havelok into English identity through the position of his wife as the “rightful heir.” Much of the validation of Havelok as the rightful heir of England comes from his saintly qualities and divine tokens of his identity. Havelok possesses the romance attributes of being the strongest and most handsome of all, but it is his saintly and divine features that link him to his “fellow” saints in L and confirm his right to rule England. His royal identity is regularly revealed by a divine light beam, which emanates from his mouth when he sleeps, and a cross-shaped birthmark on his shoulder.21 Havelok is also blessed with a prophetic dream that foretells his rule over Denmark and England, and, during the same night, an angel explains who he is to his new wife Goldeboru. Light, a cross, a vision, an angel—these motifs recall similar revelatory episodes in the saints’ lives. St. Kenelm has a dream that foretells his martyrdom, for instance, and an angel feeds St. Francis of Assisi and his friars (348–49.114–128; 60.220–22). All in all, Havelok behaves more like a saint than a chivalric knight.22 The narrator emphasizes his modesty and charity rather than his prowess. As a youth who “[o]f alle men was . . . mest meke,” he works humbly, fetching water, meat, and kindling, and plays with children, rather than jousting in tournaments (946, 933–45, 950–55). Havelok also bespeaks saintliness in his ability to marshal the power of God. For example, Havelok goes first and foremost to pray in church “[o]r he dide ani oþer dede,” that is, before he sets out from England to win Denmark (1357). He implores 21 One of the most common motifs in a saint’s life is a column of light arising from the (dead) saintly body (Love, Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, xciii and 62 n. 3). For example, a pillar of light reveals the whereabouts of St. Edward the Martyr’s body (50.107–08). The same sign marks St. Kenelm’s body in the Latin versions. 22 That Havelok is generally more saintly than chivalric, more akin to his manuscript SEL neighbors than the chivalric counterparts he is often grouped with in modern anthologies has been argued in Bell, “Resituating Romance,” and Couch, “Defiant Devotion.”

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the “Louerd, þat al weldes” to have mercy on him, to avenge him of his foe, Godard, and to grant him safe passage across the sea (1360–64, 1376–83). He seals his request not only with a heartfelt twenty-fiveline prayer but also with lying prostrate before the Cross, weeping, and giving an offering (1358–91). Havelok’s ascent to kingship is paved with prayer, gifts to the Church, and signs of divine sanction. Thus, in accord with the English saints in particular, Havelok continues in the vein of providing religious, edifying, dramatic Christian history, which is drawn in this manuscript as a history of England. In addition to fitting in generally with the English saints of the L SEL, Havelok specifically continues and echoes the emotional resonance of the English child martyr Kenelm. In these poems, the terrified, oppressed English—the common “folk” in St. Kenelm, the “pack-horses” in Havelok—converge in the image of a vulnerable yet legitimate heir.23 In other words, the defenseless yet rightful child-king functions as a figure of the fragile state of his people, territory, and language, that is, of England.24 St. Kenelm and Havelok each offer a child protagonist and align this vulnerable figure with particular ambivalences and desires about Englishness and English rule. St. Kenelm of England St. Kenelm is one of the Mercian saints cultivated with other AngloSaxon royal saints in the hagiographical revival that occurred soon after the Norman Conquest. According to Love, the cult of Kenelm began or was revived in Winchcombe in 969, a commemoration concomitant with the revival of the monastic community there. A Latin liturgy and a longer Latin life of St. Kenelm was composed in that community sometime between 1066 and 1075 under the regime of the first Norman abbot of Winchcombe. Initially localized to Winchcombe and Worcester, the life of St. Kenelm reached England more broadly

23 On vulnerability as the defining feature of the child hero Havelok, see Julie Nelson Couch, “The Vulnerable Hero: Havelok and the Revision of Romance,” Chaucer Review 42 (2008): 330-52. 24 Turville-Petre names these three—“territory, people, language”—as the “criteria” Middle English writers use to define the nation of England (England the Nation, 14).

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in the multivolume Anglo-Latin legendaries of the twelfth century and then in the late thirteenth century, in the vernacular SEL.25 The L SEL life tells of a seven-year-old prince who becomes king of Mercia upon the death of his father, King Cenulf. His sister Quendrith is jealous of his power and plots to kill him. Her first attempt with poison does not succeed as God’s grace protects the young innocent. St. Kenelm has a prophetic dream of standing at the top of a world tree which his closest friend suddenly chops down; Kenelm turns into a dove and flies into heaven. Kenelm’s beloved nurse interprets the dream as a portent of Kenelm’s murder and ascension into heaven. As foretold, Quendrith enlists the aid of Kenelm’s tutor, Askebert, in her plan to murder Kenelm. Askebert takes his charge into the forest, ostensibly to hunt. Kenelm continues to receive divine communication: awaking from a nap he was taking while Askebert was digging his grave, Kenelm informs his tutor that God does not will that he kill him there but elsewhere. He hands Askebert a staff and they continue on. When Askebert sets the staff in the ground, it miraculously grows into an Ash tree, indicating the spot of Kenelm’s martyrdom. Askebert beheads him and buries him in a secret place. Kenelm’s sister takes over England and forbids anyone to utter Kenelm’s name. The people “weren so sore a-gaste” of the Queen and her edict (351.208). Time passes and people forget about Kenelm. Two miracles reveal the location of the holy body: a widow’s white cow which sits in a particular spot everyday and a holy writ brought by dove to the pope at Rome. After a conflict between two shires who both want the body, the people of Gloucestershire take up the body and nobly enshrine it. Kenelm’s sister attempts to curse her brother’s body but the curse

25 Love, Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, xi–xlviii, lxxxix–cxxxix. Love gives a comprehensive survey of the history of the commemoration of St. Kenelm, examining not only the extant Latin lives but also evidence of his cult in liturgical calendars, service books, and in churches dedicated to him. Anglo-Saxon dynasties formed powerful identities around the pragmatic sanctification of their own royal family members. Love discusses the practice “ ‘saintly cousinhood,’ ” that is, in Anglo-Saxon royal lines, “sanctity runs in the family” (xlvii–xlviii). On this tendency of royal families sanctifying their own, see also Susan J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), esp. 234–52; and D. W. Rollason, “The Cults of Murdered Royal Saints in Anglo-Saxon England,” Anglo-Saxon England 11 (1983): 1–22. See Alan Thacker, “Kings, Saints, and Monasteries in Pre-Viking Mercia,” Midland History 10 (1985): 1–25 (8–12) on the specific history of Mercian royal saints. Thacker traces the political motivations behind the flourishing group of Mercian royal cults.

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rebounds on her: her eyeballs burst out. She soon dies a foul death and is thrown into a ditch.26 There are two recensions in the Anglo-Latin tradition, a shorter breviary verse, extant in one manuscript, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 367 (ca. 1050–75), and a longer vita et miracula (hereafter vm) with appended miracles ascribed to the martyred St. Kenelm, extant in eight manuscripts.27 The earliest complete version of vm is found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 368 and is dated to ca. 1150–75.28 The older and longer of the two Middle English SEL versions is found in L, and with slight differences in ten other SEL manuscripts. This L version relates more closely to the Latin vm than to the shorter and later Middle English accounts, although there are distinct differences between the L version and vm in framing and emphasis, as discussed below.29 The Anglo-Latin vm begins with a preface that formally introduces St. Kenelm with a précis of his life and passion: Kenelm, who is wellknown “in tota Anglia” (throughout all of England), is an “innocent” martyr whose sanctity has been proven by a column of light, a miraculous letter which has been read “per totam patriam” (throughout the

26 The SEL plot is essentially the same as the plot of the Latin life. Differences, some of which are discussed below, are found in narrative details pertaining to the dream, the staff, the occurrences following the beheading, the cow’s eating habits, the time that elapses between the cow’s actions and the revelation in Rome, and with what the Pope does with the writ. For the Latin text, see Love, Three Eleventh-Century AngloLatin Saints’ Lives, 49–89. 27 Ibid., xc and cxxi–cxxxvi for a detailed survey of the manuscripts of the AngloLatin versions of St. Kenelm. 28 Ibid., cxxiv–cxxvii for a description of this manuscript. 29 The much shorter Middle English version found in the later Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a.1 (the Vernon MS) and London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 223, differs greatly from both the L version and the Latin vm. As Görlach points out, the two Middle English versions share no “single line in common” (Textual Tradition, 179–180). This version is only 84 lines long in the Vernon MS (86 in Lambeth MS 223) and recounts a skeletal plot that quickly moves from one brief action to the next. For example, Kenelm is out ‘hunting’ with his master by line 10, and the master immediately beheads Kenelm while he is asleep. The poem omits the dream, all dialogue, the ash tree, and the conflict over the body, retaining only the dove-flown writ and the widow’s cow. The cow episode is disproportionate in this short poem, taking up seventeen lines. The cow episode is also set off with a romance invitation: “listen, if you wish to know it . . .” (line 51 in the Vernon MS). This version does not forget to punish Quendrith with bursting eyes and adds her falling and breaking her neck. For editions of these poems, see Rurik von Antropoff, “Die Entwicklung Der Kenelm-Legende” (Ph.D. diss., Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelm-Universität, 1965), xxxviii–xliii.

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land), and many other miracles.30 The urgent promotion of the saint that begins with definite statements of widespread reputation continues with a claim of reliable sources and name-dropping: in addition to his immediate source, Wulfine (who himself was a disciple of St. Oswald), the writer names three other Anglo-Saxon saints, SS. Dunstan, Aethelwold, and Oswald, as witnesses to the truth of Kenelm’s potent saintliness. (Notably, this cluster of Anglo-Saxon saints are linked together early in the Anglo-Latin hagiographical tradition.) The narrator’s insistence on St. Kenelm’s validity continues as he claims even broader, international fame for Kenelm’s vita (known in Paris) and notes that Queen Eadgyth (d. 1075) herself possessed “preclara indicia,” (documents of proof ) in regard to Kenelm (50–53). The narrator also mentions that the life was known in vernacular (“Anglica”) story and song, and remarks that miracles continue to accrue at his shrine so that “rebellatrix obstinatia” (the rebel Obstinacy) herself cannot denigrate the truth of his sainthood (50–53). The vm preface is clearly concerned, perhaps defensive, about establishing St. Kenelm as a credible saint and initiator of a cult, possibly because confirmation for the story is not provided by Anglo-Saxon or Mercian history. Neither Kenelm nor his sisters appear in the AngloSaxon Chronicle which does include the reign of King Cenwulf and his death in 821.31 Other records suggest that there may have been a son of King Cenwulf of Mercia who died during his father’s reign, but he plays a minor, largely undocumented role in the royal politics of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.32 The daughter Cwenthryth, Quendrith in the SEL narrative, is historical but not historically evil; she served as an abbess in Mercia. Despite the paucity of historical

30 I am using Love’s collated edition (Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives), based on MS Douce 368, for my analysis of the vm: pages 50–89 (50–51). The English translations are Love’s. Hereafter, references will be to this edition and will be given parenthetically by page numbers. 31 Love, Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, lxxxix. 32 The Mercian king, Cenulf, established as Kenelm’s father in the narrative, ruled from 796 until his death in 821. A Cynehelm is mentioned in at least one document as an heir of Cenulf. The name is found in other charters as well, including one establishing his demise by 812. If the latter refers to the king’s son, his death occurred during his father’s reign. Cenulf ’s brother, Ceolwulf, ascended the Mercian throne after Cenulf ’s death and after he was deposed, his sister Cwenthryth (Quendrith, in the SEL text) was the only heir left of that lineage. She was an abbess with power over several abbeys who came into conflict with Archbishop Wulfred over control of her lands. See Thacker, “Kings, Saints, and Monasteries,” 8–9.

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facts, the vm fleshes out a tale of martyrdom while its preface takes pains to reassure its readers of the historical and spiritual veracity of the life of Kenelm. In the context of the SEL, St. Kenelm does not need such an endorsement as found in the vm preface. The Middle English St. Kenelm reveals no anxiety about the truth of the matter—the verity of a saint is a given in a late vernacular collection that is assumed to originate from Latin sources and thriving cults. St. Kenelm begins not with promotion of the saint but with promotion of a place, England. The writer appends an extended catalog describing and extolling the five kingdoms of England that existed “bi olde dawe” (346.19). This geographical, political, and ecclesiastical portrait of England enlarges the figural scope of the vita of a Mercian prince to all of England. The expansion of Mercia to England operates from the first lines of the poem. Like most of the SEL lives, St. Kenelm begins with a concise précis that marks the characteristic features of this saint: Seint Kenelm, þe ȝongue kyng : þat holi martyr is, he was kyng in Engelond : of þe Marche of Walis. (345.1–2, emphasis added)

Young, king, martyr, England—these are the defining aspects of St. Kenelm. Note that 2a gives an impression that Kenelm may be the King of England, before restricting that notion in 2b to one portion of it (Mercia). The restriction however does not hold as the poem swells from praise of Kenelm’s father to praise of all the kings of England. The narrator recalls that there were five kings in England at that time, a political fact that merges into a geographical depiction of the size and number and names of England’s rivers (9–19).33 Then, starting with Mercia, he itemizes the shires and bishoprics in each of the five kingdoms. Much of this survey is drawn directly from William of Malmesbury’s list of bishoprics which comprise chapters 99–104 of his Gesta Regum.34 The inventory in St. Kenelm, however, does not follow the same order: where the Gesta begins with Kent, St. Kenelm, understandably begins with a description of Mercia that emerges out of the 33 This geographical description recalls the opening geographical praise of Britain in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannie. (The “Historia Regum Britannie” of Geoffrey of Monmouth I: Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS. 568, ed. Neil Wright [Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1985], 2–3). 34 R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, eds. William of Malmesbury: Gesta Regvm Anglorum, The History of the English Kings, vol. 1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).

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exaltation of Kenelm’s father, King Cenulf. The St. Kenelm narrator ultimately uses the survey as a stage upon which to highlight past England as an ideal England wherein great saintly kings ruled the different kingdoms of England “in þat time” (346.46). These include St. Edmund of East Anglia and St. Oswald of Northumbria; both receive laudatory mention as the narrator ties them explicitly to English geography, England’s myriad districts, and its very particular political configurations of territories and bishoprics. This tie between saintly kingship and the land anticipates the extended discourse on England which headlines Havelok. In that poem, the narrator begins his tale proper in England, not Denmark (though Havelok is the prince of Denmark), creating an idyllic, very particularized picture of a well-governed, peaceful England that also existed “bi are-dawes” (27). This England blossomed under the ideal, saintly, and just King Aþelwold, the father of Goldeboru who will marry Havelok, thus making Havelok the rightful heir, or “son,” to Aþelwold’s kingdom.35 The L Havelok also, like St. Kenelm, expands from a provincial setting to all of England. The Middle English poem expands what was a story of infighting between English territories in the earlier Anglo-Norman versions of Havelok to a story about the rightful rulers of England as a whole, reinforcing the theme of England that sounds throughout L.36 A key feature of the Englishness of the St. Kenelm preface is the bond forged with a present English audience. In Kenelm, the (idealized English) past is always being materialized in the present as the narrator relates an English past as seen in its landmarks and buildings, to a present sense of an audience’s English identity. Specifically, the narrator conjures the rhetorical presence of a current audience in England who know the whereabouts of these shrines and who commune via these narratives directly and intimately with their own English saints. Kenelm’s father “yet” lies in Winchcombe Abbey that “yet” stands (345.5–6). Such explicit links between a saintly past and its present landmarks still visible to all occurs throughout the SEL. For example, 35 See Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 38–40, and Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 147–48, for discussions of how this lengthy encomium works to emphasize Havelok as a tale of England. 36 The earlier Anglo-Norman versions include the account found in Geoffrey Gaimar’s L’Estoire des Engleis (ca. 1135–1140) and the anonymous Lai D’Haveloc (ca. 1190–1220). See Alexander Bell, ed., Le Lai D’Haveloc and Gaimar’s Haveloc Episode (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925).

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when the narrator tells of St. Edward the Martyr going into the woods “in deorsete” to hunt, he allows himself an aside in regard to the present dismal state of those woods: “Fair wode þare was þulke tyme : ake nouþe heo is al a-doune, / Bote þornes and þunne boskes” (but now it is all cut down, / (now) only thorn-trees and thin bushes) (48.42–44). As the St. Kenelm narrator describes the England of old, the narrator moves seamlessly from past to present: “Enguelond was guod and long” shifts to “Engelond long is” in the next line (345.10–11, emphasis added). In England what was then is now, a sentiment that structures this geographical description of England.37 Hence, in St. Kenelm, when the narrative proper begins, it carries the image, the rhetorical weight, of a particularized, concretized England that is royal, ecclesiastical, saintly, and importantly, conveys a sense of currency for L’s early audience. The extended preface which presents a historical vista of England frames St. Kenelm as a narrative about England, about a holy person martyred in England for political reasons, like St. Oswald, and while still an innocent, like St. Edward the Martyr. In other words, the function of this frame is not obscure: it provides a very specific horizon of meaning—England.38 In this hagiographical context, the extended description of England reinforces the other, shorter references to England found throughout the L SEL and establishes a link to Havelok based on representation of and narratorial desire for an ideal English territory and governance. Kenelm also links to Havelok more directly: St. Kenelm, like Havelok, is a royal vulnerable child with an indirect, but deliberately constructed relation to a deliberately constructed entity of England. St. Kenelm the Vulnerable In St. Kenelm, as in Havelok, Englishness is tied to the heightened vulnerability of a child-king. In the Latin vm, St. Kenelm is already presented as a vulnerable child: the narrator refers to his “tender age” (etatula) and to his being “euo paruulum” (little in years) (54–55).

37 This present connection with the past reappears in Havelok as well: Havelok’s foster father Grim founds the (actual) English town of Grimsby, “Þat of Grim yet haues þe nauen [name]” and which “shulen men callen it ay,” (2530; 748, emphasis added). 38 On a text’s horizon of meaning, see Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982).

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As in L, Kenelm’s nurse calls him “‘fili mi dulcissime’” (my sweet son) (56–57). Moreover, the wicked tutor pretends to be entertaining Kenelm as a caretaker would a child, taking him into the forest “quasi oblectandum” (as if to delight him) with his father’s favorite pastime of hunting (58-59). At the same time, however, the Latin St. Kenelm is set apart, unassailable from the beginning with emblematic images of light, biblical allusions, and iconic status. Kenelm is immediately removed from ordinary humanity with a divine image of brightness: the boy is “illustrante superna gratia amabilis Deo et hominibus” (illumined by heavenly grace, pleasing to God and men) (54–55). He is also immediately made a figure of Christ: being “endowed by God” with spiritual gifts so that “he seemed . . . a son of divine adoption.”39 From the beginning—thus eliminating any narratorial anxiety about his welfare or the salvific outcome—the Latin Kenelm functions explicitly as a puer senex, little “sed animo ac pietate magnificum” (yet eminent in mind and holiness) and as a predetermined martyr, a “Dei hostia” (sacrificial victim of God) (54–57). Even the pathos which accompanies his beheading functions aesthetically rather than affectively in the Latin versions: Kenelm catches his own head, an act which is meant to offer, “uelut lilium aut demessa rosa” (just as a lily or a plucked rose), a pleasurable image to the Lord (60–61). The exquisite images of the flowers serve in a way similar to an illuminated image of the martyrdom, enhancing the beauty of the purity of the martyr and his ultimate sacrifice to the lord.40 This Kenelm is always more a saint than a child. As others have noted, the translation of Latin lives into Middle English marks a shift to dramatic narratives full of suspense and dialogue, away from the static aspect of biblical allusion and homiletic style.41 Without the scaffolding of overt typology and stylized pathos, St. Kenelm’s vulnerability in the Middle English version assumes more dramatic force, operating within the forward movement of the story.

39

“Preuentus a Deo” and “apparebat filius diuine adoptionis” (54–55). In the illuminated initial that begins St. Kenelm in MS Douce 368, St. Kenelm sits on a high cushion holding a lily in his right hand, perhaps a sign of his own head that he will hold at his martyrdom. A Heimann, “A Twelfth-Century Manuscript from Winchcombe and Its Illustrations. Dublin, Trinity College, Ms. 53,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtald Institutes 28 (1965): 86–109 (108–09). 41 On the issue of style, see Thompson, Everday Saints, and Manfred Görlach, “The Legenda Aurea and the Early History of the South English Legendary,” in Legenda Aurea: sept siécles de diffusion, ed. Brenda Dunn-Lardeau (Montréal: Bellarmin, 1986), 301–16. 40

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In other words, Kenelm being a child is explicitly made a motivating factor within the plot in the L poem. The narrator says, for example, that Kenelm, at age seven, was made king after his father’s death, “alþei he ȝong child were” (347.84, emphasis added). The “although” requires a response of incredulity at the fact of Kenelm taking up the mantle of royalty at so young an age, without assurances of his iconic status at this point. This comment engenders anxiety on the part of the reader in regard to Kenelm’s vulnerability as a young king rather than consolation in regard to his status as holy martyr. From the opening of the life to Askebert’s hasty burial of St. Kenelm’s body (345–350.1–192), the saint is referred to as “young,” “child,” or “young child” twenty-seven times. In contrast, Kenelm is referred to as young, child, boy, or lad only ten times in the Latin Preface and Passion (chapters 1–8). More often, Kenelm is referred to in ways that sublimate his child status, such as “innocentem” or “ut agnus ductus ad uictimam” (lamb led to the slaughter) (50–51, 58–61). In the Middle English version, the references to Kenelm as a child convey anxiety, casting him as a vulnerable target threatened by his sister’s political ambition and jealousy rather than framing him as a symbol of innocence. Kenelm being young is what motivates Quendrith to consider that she should have the realm instead of him: “heo i-saiȝ þat hire ȝungue broþer : þat nas nouȝt of seue ȝer, / kyng was i-mad of al þat lond . . . / to him heo hadde gret onde [ill-will]” (348.89–91a). It is his age, “barely seven years old,” that makes Kenelm a plausibly vulnerable king in the Middle English version. In this way, Kenelm shares more with the protagonist of Havelok than he does with the Latin rendition of the saint. Like Kenelm, Havelok’s age makes him vulnerable to his guardian Godard who kills Havelok’s two sisters and almost kills Havelok in order to be king of Denmark.42 The fact that the orphaned heirs are so young (the girls are not yet three years old) makes the change to an illegitimate government possible. St. Kenelm’s vulnerability works within the plot, ensuring a plausible scheme for his entrusted tutor, Askebert, to assassinate him. The Middle English poem elaborates the tutor setting up the scheme by

42 Smithers notes that the Middle English poet has made Havelok older than the two-year-old child he is in the French versions by making him articulate when he pleads for his life with Godard. Havelok talking to his would-be-murderer recalls seven-year-old Kenelm, who talks to his murderer as well. On Havelok’s age and its similarity to Kenelm’s age, see Smithers, Havelok, xxxvii.

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using the word play twice in a context known to the reader as deceptive. One day, the tutor suggests he take “þis child” hunting “to pleiȝen him” (349.147–48). So they go to the woods “ase it were heom for-to pleie” (349.150). Stressing the deception inflicted upon a child using the idea of play echoes in the brutal scene in Havelok, when Godard pretends to play with Havelok’s sisters—“Al so it were upon hiis gamen/ Al so he wolde with hem leyke” (as if it were a game, as if he would play with them) (468–69)—and then cuts theirs throats, a scene unique to the L Havelok.43 St. Kenelm’s vulnerability is accentuated in the Middle English poem not only by its role in the plot but also by the juxtaposition of more powerful adults. In refrain fashion, the phrase “this child” is matched by “luþere [evil] quene” or “luþere soster,” or “luþere man” (348.101; 350.195, 165). While the Latin Kenelm is shielded by holy figuration, the Middle English Kenelm seems swallowed by the power of the adults surrounding him. Even “good” adults participate in highlighting St. Kenelm’s lack of defenses. Such is his “norice, þat him hadde i-fed : and with hire milk forth i-brouȝt” (349.133), a loving adult who interprets his dream for him. The nurse’s speech with its terms of endearment envelops the vulnerable child with tangible succor. The narrator stresses how much she loved “that child” in word and deed. When the nurse realizes what Kenelm has dreamt, her endearments increase; “mi child, mi swete heorte . . . / Alas, mi child, mi swete fode [child]” (349.140–41). Kenelm is explicitly swathed in the recollection and present reality of the maternal care of his nurse, further highlighting his characterization as a vulnerable child by invoking parental emotion in the reader. The most powerful “adult” and agent in the L poem, as it turns out, is God. After St. Kenelm has already been placed in the vulnerable child position—“this yongue child”—by his wicked sister’s attempt to poison him, God intervenes in the narrative, His presence not previously indicated: “Ore louerdes miȝte was so muche” that the poison does not affect Kenelm (348.100). In this instance, God functions as another adult, as a dramatic agent who acts within the narrative to protect Kenelm and ultimately to transform Askebert’s act of murder into an achievement of martyrdom. This active role played by God contrasts the intrinsic nature of the situation conveyed in vm, where 43 See Alexander Bell, Le Lai D’Haveloc, for the Anglo-Norman versions. Later accounts also do not contain this scene. See Smithers, Havelok, xxii–xxx.

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Kenelm inherently, always already possesses a salvific holiness. It is through the active will of God that Kenelm becomes a martyr. After Askebert leads Kenelm into the woods, it is “ore louerd” who gives the “child” the great desire to sleep (349.151–52). After he awakes and cannot at first find Askebert who is digging a pit in which to cast his body, it is “ore louerd” who gives Kenelm his speech to Askebert: “Þou trauailest . . . a-boute nouȝt : and þine ȝwyle þout dost spille [you waste your time], For in ane oþure stude [place] i schal deie : ȝware hit is godes wille; And þoruȝ tokningue of þis ȝeorde [staff ] : þou schal wel i-seo Þare al þi wille þou miȝt do : þat ich i-martred beo [where you may do all of what you will, with the result that I will be martyred].” (349.159; 350.161–64, emphasis added)

Kenelm’s speech transfers the premeditated murder into God’s hands; in other words, God usurps Quendrith’s and Askebert’s control of the events to transform the murder into a martyrdom. Kenelm states that he will only be killed where God wills. The italicized half-lines above are repeated as one line directly after Askebert beheads Kenelm: he smites off his head there “where it was God’s will that he should be martyred” (350.185–86). The will of God serves as an active narratorial force in the poem rather than being presented as a static given that God is in control.44 Ultimately, it is the child’s vulnerability, combined with his rightful position as king, that makes St. Kenelm worthy of martyrdom. This criteria for martyrdom contrasts other saints who are worthy because of the holy habits they establish in their childhood. St. Nicholas is the ultimate exemplar of that tradition, who, as soon as he was born, began “to beo guod and clene” (240.7). He would nurse only once on Wednesdays and Fridays, and when he was older, he went to church instead of playing (240.8–12). Even when compared to young St. Edward with whom St. Kenelm shares a similar plot and fate (King Edward is killed by his wicked stepmother), Kenelm is not extolled for his virtues like St. Edward is. Though “þe guodnesse of þis ȝoungue king : ne may no man telle,” the narrator attempts it, devoting over six lines

44 On God as an agential subject in Middle English saints lives, see Evelyn Birge Vitz, “La Vie De Saint Alexis: Narrative Analysis and the Quest for the Sacred Subject,” PMLA 93 (1978): 396–408. In contrast to God’s active role in the L St. Kenelm, there is a clear absence of God-agency in the more homiletic vm where events appear predetermined and referential.

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to detailing Edwards’s virtues, which include meekness, fairness, chastity, and wisdom, among other admirable qualities (47.13–18). Edward is portrayed more as a young bachelor knight than a child, one who can already go out hunting on his own. Moreover, this young king is already active politically: obeying St. Dunstan’s counsel, supporting the poor, keeping England in peace. This young saint is portrayed as an ideal king rather than as a seven-year-old prey. Kenelm is not portrayed as an especially holy child like Nicholas nor an ideal king like Edward. The bulk of his holiness consists of being a vulnerable child who is the rightful king. In this way, Kenelm anticipates the more elaborated child Havelok whose vulnerability also creates a political and spiritual susceptibility to wrongful seizure of power. Reading Havelok against St. Kenelm Codicological evidence points to an early and deliberate collation of the L SEL with the romances.45 Such intentional anthologizing makes connections between Havelok and the SEL texts all the more plausible, providing the possibility that Havelok was influenced by St. Kenelm and/or vice versa. The examples discussed above make apparent that Havelok parallels key aspects of St. Kenelm’s plot. Like St. Kenelm, Havelok is a boy-prince whose vulnerability as a child heir drives the plot.46 The elaborated scenes of Havelok as a vulnerable child are unprecedented in the earlier versions of the story. Little Havelok being starved, witnessing his guardian cutting his sisters’ throats, or being thrown against a wall resonate more with the victimized child martyr, Kenelm, than with conventional romance heroes.47 The child king’s vulnerability registers a nation’s instability, that is, England’s instability. Both poems present an unstable, vulnerable Eng-

45 In Chapter Four of this volume, Andrew Taylor conjectures that L was written and assembled upon commission in a commercial bookshop. See also Bell and Couch, Introduction, and Edwards, Chapter One, on the collation of the manuscript. 46 Havelok’s vulnerability as a child is mirrored by Goldeboru’s as a female. The sole heir of England, Goldeboru is also mistreated by her evil guardian Godrich. Godrich tries to deprive her of her throne by marrying her to a thrall (Havelok, as it turns out). 47 On Havelok’s vulnerability as a child protagonist, see Couch, “The Vulnerable Hero.” On the pathos associated with this vulnerability, see also Nancy Mason Bradbury, Writing Aloud: Storytelling in Late Medieval England (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 94–97.

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land, one that remains open to a grasp of power by false pretenders because of the young age of the rightful heirs. By being narrated as a matter of a child’s vulnerability, this instability accrues an emotional valence; the sense of political injustice is felt via the vulnerability of the deposed child-heir. The death of the father, signifying loss of power and security, is the first step toward vulnerability in both St. Kenelm and Havelok. The vulnerability also includes an absence of the mother and an immediate need for trustworthy foster care.48 Such an absence of the maternal intensifies the focus upon the orphan of a great king, the stand-in for the dead king’s kingdom, who/which is left especially susceptible to political conquest. 49 In both poems, the political opponents are dramatized as natural, plausible enemies of children: evil guardians and an envious sibling.50 And, in each case, the political problem of a child king is “solved” through the intimate problem of child care, rather than through public acts. St. Kenelm’s and Havelok’s loyal guardians are not the ones legally assigned to care for the royal children and are not tied to the power of social class: Kenelm’s nursemaid, not his royal sister nor his assigned, trusted tutor, provides him needed love and accurate prophecy, while Havelok is reared lovingly by serfs, fisherman Grim and his wife Leve. In both cases, these apolitical foster parents give the young protagonist the needed spiritual or physical sustenance to face his mission; in both cases the nurture of these caregivers advances the restoration of proper rule to England. And that care is proffered by the “people” rather than by those in power, a tacit rendering, perhaps, of fantastical empowerment. At the very least, the poems envision the vulnerability of a nation in terms of

48 In other SEL lives where the mother is mentioned, her death signals an immediate vulnerability on the part of the child saint. See, for example, St. Edward the Martyr and St. Thomas Becket. The former gains an envious stepmother while the latter has to leave school because his father will not support his studies (113.219). As the Becket narrator opines, “For þat child þat is modur for-leost : is help is muche bi-hinde” (113.220). 49 Goldeboru’s mother is also not mentioned, making Goldeboru, the imprisoned maiden heir the stand-in for England. Donna Crawford also argues that the vulnerable body of Havelok represents the vulnerable national body. “The Vulnerable Body of Havelok the Dane,” Medieval Forum 1 (2002), http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/ Volume%201/Crawford.html. 50 And, an envious stepmother is the evil guardian in St. Edward the Martyr. In medieval society, guardianship of children could be precarious. See Christina Fitzgerald, Chapter Five in this volume and Barbara Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 89–107.

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a child who needs attentive and loving care. The focus on a national fragility is mediated through the affective figure of a child and his grasping, conniving enemies rather than through a straight political history. The Magic of Englishness Not only do St. Kenelm and Havelok anchor their narratives in an idealized England that materializes as an intimate mesh of all social classes, Church, and divinely-sanctioned leadership, but also, and perhaps more significantly, the narratives manifest a desire for such an England. It is this rhetorical desire for a particular national and linguistic identity that fuels the fantastical aspect of these familialspiritual-political dramas. Fantasy is often discussed primarily in relation to medieval romance or the modern fantasy genre. Speaking of the romance genre, Geraldine Heng has defined fantasy in terms of “the structure of desire” which utilizes an “economy of pleasure,” though other ideological agendas always underlie the pleasurable narrative thrust of desire that is consummated by magic in romance, or, I contend, miracle, in a saint’s life.51 When fantasy is operative in a narrative, desire is not limited to its ostensibly orthodox fulfillment. Narrative, due to its inevitable movement, albeit toward a tangible endpoint, commonly exceeds orthodox desire for salvation or, in romance, for earthly power. Other, extraneous desires can power medieval narrative. In the case of both St. Kenelm and Havelok, a desire for an English-based communal identity that holds earthly and sacred power obtains in the narratives. This desire contributes to a collective desire that operates in L to imagine a communal English identity. The fact that the two poems in question share a framing emphasis on England is not the only aspect that points up this desire for an English identity. More significantly, it is how that construct of England works within the fantastical machinations of narrative as an object of desire. In both poems England appears initially as a nation at risk, as the “damsel in distress” who needs saving. Specifically, this threatened England is figured as a murdered child (St. Kenelm) or, 51 Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), 3–5.

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in the case of Havelok, an almost-murdered and fleeing child paired with an oppressed female heir. The threat comes from the inside, from England’s own internal enemies who betray their fellow countrymen’s trust and wage war on both spiritual and political planes. The internal threat to political and spiritual stability is a theme that winds through the entire codex, from St. Thomas Becket’s campaign against the overreach of King Henry II, St. Edmund of Abingdon’s stand against King Henry III, to the best friend betrayer of Child Horn. Devout readers and listeners of L could make the connection between the various political and spiritual enemies who all attack from within a sacred, trustworthy space.52 Making the threat internal amplifies the instability of the political-spiritual entity, creating an image of a besieged national identity. As is typical in romances, the restoration, the help for the entity in distress comes from the outside—the hero from Arthur’s court as it were. In St. Kenelm and Havelok too, help for an imperiled England, to save its saints and royalty from internal enemies, comes from heroes outside England: from the pope in Rome and Havelok from Denmark. In Havelok, the hero himself, the child fleeing from the usurper, is the outsider. He not only restores England to its rightful ruler, Queen Goldeboru and himself as her husband, but he also aligns himself with England in ways that permanently shift his identity to an English one. Though Havelok and his foster father Grim may have initially been non-English, by the end they become England itself. Danish fisherman Grim becomes the eponymous founder of Grimsby, England where Havelok establishes the priory in Grim’s honor. Danish prince Havelok “becomes” England by being the rightful King of England, the symbol of England as the head of the political body. Help for St. Kenelm and his England also first appears outside England, specifically in Rome, the nucleus of Christianity. However, this outside salvation from heaven, which materializes in Rome, can be accessed only through the conduit of English language and English men who alone understand that language. When all in England fail to remember Kenelm except for the white cow, God sends a dove to the Pope at Rome when he is standing at mass before St. Peter’s altar. The dove carries in its mouth a writ which “schon wel briȝte” with letters

52 On the readers of L as affective readers who would make such connections between the L texts, see Couch, “Defiant Devotion.”

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all in gold (352.250). Amazingly, the “writ” is in English, a language the pope cannot understand.53 The narratorial use of suspense here adds to the sacred reputation being granted the English language. The narrative builds to the climax, that is, the message being in English (352.247–54): First, the dove places the “luyte writ” on the altar; the dove returns to heaven. The writ’s luster is described. Then, the pope thanks God; the people thank God; the pope takes the shining writ and opens it. The next line is devoted to explaining how the pope (the most literate person) cannot read nor understand it; the next line finally divulges the reason—because the pope “ne couþe englisch non : and on englis it was i-write” (could not read English and it was written in English). This heaven-sent golden-lettered English writ has been somewhat prepared for in the Middle English poem. When St. Kenelm was about to be beheaded, he began singing a psalm that “men singuth : in holie churche,” that is, “‘te deum laudamus’” (350.179–80). The narrative then begins to move toward the beheading: “Riȝt ase he seide an holi vers,” but then the narrator interrupts the action to discuss the issue of language, returning to the intense moment by repeating “riȝt ase he . . . þat fers i-seid” two and a half lines later (350.181, 184). In the intervening passage, the narrator notes that the holy verse “was and is” written in Latin “as [are] alle þe oþure,” that is, all holy verses (350.182). The narrator has stopped to display his awareness of language difference, showing that he is educated and not only knows Latin but also recognizes its importance, especially its sanctity. At the same time, he does not hesitate to translate the “holi vers” into English: “. . . and þe englisch so is þis / “Þe faire compaygnie of Martyrs : louerd, herieth þe” (350.182b–83). Before the story arrives at the miraculous note in English sent from heaven to the Pope, the narrator has already transferred the holiness of Latin into an English phrase. At the very least, the digression reveals an uppermost concern with the relation between language and holiness and how English can play a role. And, such a self-conscious moment draws attention to the role English is playing in the communication of holiness through this vernacular collection of saints’ lives.

53 This English couplet flown from heaven to the Pope in Rome is the most ancient feature of the St. Kenelm tradition. See Love, Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, cxvii–cxix.

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The psalm episode, in which holy Latin is translated into English anticipates the glorious significance of a message in English being carried by a snow-white dove from God to the Pope. In this case, it is English, not Latin, which must be translated for the Pope and his congregants to understand the divine message. This divine message can only be revealed by “men of Engelonde” who knew what it said “þo heo i-heorden it rede” (when they heard it read) (352.257–58). This moment, so dependent upon the knowledge of English to make the sacred known yet acknowledging the perception of English as primarily an oral language, exhibits the liminal space where English resides.54 In this momentary amalgamation of fantasy and linguistic reality, English strides the boundary between being a spoken language of an illiterate people—the entrenched, given perception—and a written language that can convey holiness. In this instance, English is a holy writ straight from God, and yet must be spoken to be understood. This instance also functions meta-narratorially, highlighting the selfconsciousness of this English language manuscript.55 Ultimately, the plot emphasis is on the need of the English to remember their own true king. The writ reads: “ ‘In klent covbache kenelm, kyngues sone, lijth onder ane þorne, is heued him bi-reued’ ” (352.261). This call to remembrance is inextricably intertwined with language: to remember the rightful, assassinated king is to “remember,” to reassert the English language. Because the English subjects have not remembered (the forgetting of allegiance is a chosen people trope), they require the miraculous intervention of God and his pope to do so. But what God, the pope, and the magic of narrative do is redirect the focus of sanctity back onto the English—a language, a people, and a kingdom—making England, not Rome, the central place of spiritual worth. In the scene, the banner from heaven written in English is called a “holie writ” and is taken seriously by the Pope, as if it were in Latin (352.256). In most instances

54 In the vm, the writ is read out by the Englishmen. The Latin version is not as preoccupied with this issue of language except perhaps from an opposite angle, that is, retaining the sanctity of Latin over English: only the Latin, not the Middle English version of this English writ is included in most of the vm manuscripts. See Love, Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives, cxvii–cxix. 55 See Thompson, Everyday Saints, on the perceived inferiority of the English language generally in English texts written in the thirteenth century and specifically in the SEL. As a result, the use of English in these texts is deliberate, self-conscious, and political (28–9, 55–7). See also Bell and Couch, Introduction.

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of its usage in Middle English, “holie writ” refers specifically to the Bible, Scriptures, or to authoritative Christian writings, such as those by the Fathers, which makes its use here for this Middle English couplet all the more remarkable.56 English holds the ecclesiastical power of Latin in this scene. Without delay, the narrator claims that the writ became one of the noblest relics found in the church of Rome “and ȝeot it is al-so” (352.263). The Middle English narrator explains further that the writ was immediately put into safekeeping and held as a “gret relike” (352.262–63). The narrator continues to exclaim its holiness, reiterating why it is so holy. The preoccupation with the holy writ lasts for eight lines following its spoken translation, suggesting, perhaps, an insistent tone about this English writ. The narrator reflects: So it ouȝte wel [be a noble relic] ho-so it under-stode : fram ȝwanne Þat it come : For ȝwane it out of heouene cam : fram ore louerdes honde, ȝwat noblere relike miȝte beo? : I-ne can non onder-stonde. (353.265–67)

The narrator explains that the writ should of course be considered a great relic once it is understood that it came from our Lord’s hand! The narrator extends his proofs in the next lines, explaining how the Pope instituted a St. Kenelm’s day which they hold highly in Rome with “heiȝ feste” (353.268–69). England, its saint and its English language relic, has infiltrated the Holy See and become something solemnly celebrated at the center of holiness. England has become the most holy Other embraced at the heart of God-in-the-world. By the time the narrator has moved the action back to England where they find the body according to the indications given in the writ, that writ has become firmly established as the “writ…of rome” (353.282).57 This gesture culminates a desire for an England that comprises potent, sacred English, reversing fantastically the inferior position English holds at the time, vis-à-vis French and Latin. The heaven-sent 56 See “Holi Writ (n.)” in MED. In the L St. Nicholas, the narrator explains how, in his studies, the young St. Nicholas took “to guodespelles ant to holi writes : and alle oþere bokes for-sok” (240.16). In that context, gospels and holy writings are perceived as equivalent and are set against all other, that is, secular, writing. 57 There is no equivalent episode in the Latin vm: there the attention immediately turns from the letter to the English citizens’ revelation of what has occurred in England in regard to St. Kenelm; the pope immediately sends the actual letter to England to ensure the proper translation of the martyr, not to preserve the letter itself (66–67). The letter then drops from the narrative.

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English writ sanctifies English, making it a consecrated, God-given language flown to the Pope himself and made a relic of the Holy See at Rome. The damsel-in-distress England fantastically becomes her own hero; the sacred power of the English language saves her and, perhaps more importantly, evinces a narratorial desire for such power attributed to the English language. In St. Kenelm then, it is not just England as a politically and spiritually valid space that is constructed, but it is also the English language that is transformed by being imbued with Latinate sanctity. Making English a “holy writ” promotes its role from one of mere necessity to entertain the “lewed” “þat þe Latyn no Frankys con” to a salvific role; reading St. Kenelm, reading all these lives in English; iterating the prayers in English at the end of each life, holds spiritual, saving power.58 Seen in a political context, granting English such a divine role in a vita makes for a great defense of the use of one language instead of or alongside of another. The fantastical, expanded climax which follows for the English writ is made comprehensible by manuscript context. The fact that all of L’s texts are in English serves to sanction this narratorial moment. Except for two explicits in French, the majority of French words have been put into the mouths of the antagonists, the luþer persecutors of the saints.59 In this manuscript context where many English saints are included and their English roots highlighted, where French epithets are put in the mouths of the luþer men, the Englishness of St. Kenelm takes on a political thematic valence. To become this sanctified language in this fantastic narrative, English must first become Romanced, so to speak, or Exoticized, that is, taken outside its mundane, inferior existence, and revealed anew as a shining, golden, heaven-sent script. In this scene, English functions as the language of the Other, the Unknown in a faraway place (Rome) that must be experienced first as exotic and then restored to an established place. The narrator makes reading English necessary to recover the identity, explicitly the body of St. Kenelm. English must be deciphered to elicit the miracle, in romance terms: to culminate the adventure.

58 The quotes are from Robert Manning of Brunne, The Chronicle, ed. Idelle Sullens, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 153 (New York: State University of New York at Binghamton, 1996), lines 6, 8. On the power invested in reading the SEL prayers, see Couch, “Defiant Devotion.” 59 See Robert Mills, Chapter Ten and Thompson, Everyday Saints, 51–54.

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In comparable fashion, Havelok makes England the Other place that the hero must go to forge his identity. After he escapes from Denmark to England, England becomes Havelok’s childhood and then final home. In Havelok, England is ultimately re-appropriated as the central place of the restored rightful rule of the hero Havelok. The romance ending finds Havelok the Dane and Goldeboru reigning in England for the next twenty years while Denmark is left in the hands of Earl Ubbe.60 In both St. Kenelm and Havelok, England, first figured as a vulnerable child, via the machinations of fantasy, becomes the core of identity and power. These romance movements that first exoticize and then centralize England and English speak to a consistent agenda underlying the entire manuscript. Narrative maneuvers found in L romances and saints’ lives work to ennoble and sanctify England as an entity, geographically, historically, spiritually, and linguistically to be reckoned with. Ecclesiastical and political disempowerment registers as vulnerability, as a child or maid or country that needs saving, that needs the fantastical machinations of romance and saints’ lives; and the fantastic saving device turns out to be . . . England itself. These poems afford a fantasy of empowerment for a particular construct of England as a place, a right-ruled people, and a language. Romance and hagiographical narrative provide a space for this kind of anxiety and this kind of fantastical resolution of anxiety. Fantasy enables a resolution that represents the community of writers and readers of L acknowledging their own innate, inherited, God-given power of identity and defining that identity in terms of Englishness. In both St. Kenelm and Havelok, England is represented initially as a vulnerable entity: as a child king, which needs rescue from internal spiritual and political enemies, and which is gloriously reinstated by a host of generic apparatuses: God, miracle, fantasy, and ultimately, Englishness all appear just in time to save, sanctify, and glorify the English.

60 See Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 38–41 for further details of the English focus in Havelok.

CHAPTER TWELVE

“HOLIE MANNES LIUES”: ENGLAND AND ITS SAINTS IN OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108’S KING HORN AND SOUTH ENGLISH LEGENDARY Kimberly K. Bell* A consideration of the early Middle English romance King Horn visà-vis the hagiographic texts collated with it (the South English Legendary [SEL]) in its earliest known manuscript copy, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L), opens the romance to wider interpretive dimensions for modern audiences accustomed to reading the poem in isolation or with other Middle English romances.1 Horn follows directly after Havelok the Dane in L, and while scholars have discerned clear hagiographic connections between Havelok and saints’ lives,2 Horn is more often understood in terms of its quintessential

* I wish to thank Martin Kauffmann at the Bodleian Library for permission to examine L on several occasions and the library staff for their generous assistance and advice. Research was funded by grants from the English Speaking Union and Sam Houston State University’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs: I am grateful for this support. I also wish to express my gratitude to Julie Nelson Couch and Thomas R. Liszka for reading all or portions of this essay; as always, their advice has been invaluable. 1 Horn survives in two other manuscripts: Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg. IV 27 (2) (ca. 1300) and London, British Library, MS Harley 2253 (ca. 1340s). Although traditionally MS Gg. IV 27 (2) has been thought to contain the oldest extant version of Horn, Rosamund Allen has persuasively argued that L, in fact, contains the earlier version (“The Date and Provenance of King Horn: Some Interim Reassessments,” in Medieval Studies Presented to George Kane, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1988), 99–125. On the date of MS Harley 2253, see N. R. Ker, Facsimile of British Museum, MS. Harley 2253, EETS, o.s., 255 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965). 2 A. V. C. Schmidt and Nicolas Jacobs, for example, recognize that “Havelok has a humility which links him more with the saint figures [than romance heroes]”; they go on to note that this “would explain why the poem might appeal to a clerical collector of saints’ legends [as collated in L]” (Havelok the Dane, in Medieval English Romances, Part One, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt and Nicolas Jacobs [New York: Holmes and Meier, 1980], 1:37–122 [8]); Allen calls the romance “a kind of saint’s life” (King Horn, 12). See also Diane Speed, “The Construction of the Nation in Medieval English Romance,” in Readings in Middle English Romance, Meale, 135–57; Bell, “Romance Resituated,” 27–51; Henk Aertsen, “Havelok the Dane: A Non-Courtly Romance,” in Companion

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role in the history of Middle English romance than in terms of its affinities with hagiography.3 But, as with Havelok, the reading and listening audience’s “horizon of expectations” in regard to Horn is also dictated by the manuscript’s dominant genre of hagiography.4 Horn, surrounded as it is by the SEL, participates in the shared priorities of this L anthology, particularly in its imagined construct of the spiritual and cultural power of England. In this manuscript context, Horn (like Havelok) becomes another heroic English saint; the fictional world of the romance, moreover, influences our understanding of the SEL, for it expands the lives’ collective vision of England by incorporating Ireland into its image of a unified nation. Therefore, reading Horn as it is collated with the English vitae in L develops and enhances the theme of Englishness found throughout the manuscript. The physical make-up of the manuscript encourages the reading of Horn through the lens of hagiography.5 The activities of the compiler who numbered the SEL texts and romances and titled nearly all of the vitae, and the later Scribe D who renumbered the texts, including the romances and his added three saints’ lives and Somer Soneday (and who possibly erased most of the earlier compiler’s numbers),6 effectively signal to listeners and readers that the texts in L are understood to be in a particular, consecutive order. Moreover, by adding more saints’ lives after the romances, Scribe D effectively integrated the secular romances into the spiritual sphere of the SEL and eschatological poems.7 Accordingly, Havelok and Horn can both be interpreted as

to Early Middle English Literature, ed. N. H. G. E. Veldhoen and H. Aertsen, 2nd ed. (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1995), 29–50; Dieter Mehl, The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), 161–72; and Julie Nelson Couch, Chapter Eleven in this volume. 3 See, for example, Donald B. Sands: Horn “can be viewed as the prototypic Middle English romance, it can be taken as the most instructive example of the shift of Middle English prosody from the old accentual norm to the French-inspired syllabic norm, and it can serve as a veritable catalogue of traditional romance motifs” (Middle English Verse Romances [New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1966], 15); see also Carol Parrish Jamison, who bases her definition of romance on it (“A Description of Medieval Romance Based Upon King Horn,” Arthuriana 1, no. 2 [1991]: 44–58). 4 Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 44. 5 See Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch, Introduction, and A. S. G. Edwards, Chapter One in this volume for more detailed discussions of the collation and anthologizing of the L texts. 6 Evidence of erasure is seen on most of the folios in the manuscript. 7 Edwards’s comment in Chapter One that the entire manuscript was decorated

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the continuation of the saints’ lives and subsequent religious matter (Sayings of St. Bernard, Vision of St. Paul, and Dispute Between the Body and the Soul). The rubricator who added titles in red ink apparently viewed Havelok as a continuation of the saints’ lives, for he titled it a vita: [Incipit] vita Hauelok quondam Rex Anglie· et Denmarchie (fig. 1). Horn seems to fall under that rubric as well, for it immediately follows Havelok, twenty-nine lines down in the first column on the verso side of fol. 219 (fig. 9). Horn has no title, its opening signaled only by a four-line initial letter A, resulting in a smooth transition from Havelok’s “vita” to Horn’s. L, therefore, creates a hagiographic horizon of expectation for listening and reading audiences to understand Horn as another kind of saint’s life. Holy Men in a Holy Land: England and its Saints The SEL is markedly different from earlier Latin and Anglo-Norman vitae. The saints whose lives comprise the bulk of the L SEL hail from several countries—Italy, Judea, Britain, Spain, Greece—and are historically situated in periods ranging from the days of Christ to the mid-thirteenth century. Collectively, these lives fulfill the primary purpose of hagiography by offering listeners and readers examples of exemplary virtue and models of perfect Christian behavior to be imitated and admired.8 Typically, in modeling the saints as exempla, the hagiographer was less interested in presenting the details of an individual’s life and more interested in delivering a moral message. As Thomas Heffernan explains, Although [saints’] lives were written under different circumstances at different times about individuals from vastly different social backgrounds, the conservative ethos of the genre . . . tends to play down differences while extolling socially accepted paradigms of sanctity.9

by one main flourisher offers further codicological evidence for the integration of the romances into the SEL (28). 8 Manfred Görlach, “Middle English Legends, 1220–1530,” in Hagiographies: histoire internationale de la litérature hagiographique latine et vernaculaire en Occident des origines à 1500, ed. G. Philippart (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1994–2006), 4:437. 9 Sacred Biography: Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 14.

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In other words, saints’ lives tend to be presented as universal rather than particular. In contrast to the conventional accounts of saints, the SEL contains features that are distinctively vernacular. Klaus Jankofsky details such characteristics, including a simplification of theological-dogmatic and hagiographic problems; an explanatory, interpretive and didactic expansion of subject matter; a process of concretization through the creation of enlivening dialogues . . . i.e., dramatization; [and finally, they entail] a process of acculturation, the adaptation of essentially Latin sources to an English audience.10

Jankofsky identifies these elements as intentional modifications used to create a particular “flavor and mood” that he calls “Englishing.”11 Such reworking of hagiographical conventions also reveals a purpose beyond style (as Jankofsky also notes): the SEL shows a vested interest in creating an overarching image of England that possesses a singular type of holiness, a sanctity that is political and distinctively English. Nowhere are these changes more evident than in the vitae of the English saints and in those lives directly concerned with England. The SEL clearly shows, as many have pointed out, a special emphasis on the lives of the English saints.12 Of the sixty sanctorale texts in the L SEL, ten are lives of English saints:13 SS. Dunstan, Oswald the King, Edward the Martyr, Alban, Wulfstan, Thomas Becket, Edmund the King, Kenelm, Cuthbert, and Edmund of Abingdon, while two more lives, SS. Augustine of Canterbury and Gregory the Great, place prime importance on England. Finally, the three Irish texts, St. Patrick and his Purgatory (a tale that recounts a knight’s spiritual journey near St. Patrick’s Abbey on the saint’s feast day), St. Brendan the Navigator, 10 Klaus P. Jankofsky, “Legenda Aurea Materials in the South English Legendary: Translation, Transformation, Acculturation,” in Legenda Aurea, sept siècles de diffusion, ed. Brenda Dunn-Lardeau (Montréal: Bellarmin, 1986.), 317–29 (320). 11 See also Jankofsky, “National Characteristics,” 82–83. 12 See in particular Jankofsky, “National Characteristics,” 82–83, and his “Entertainment, Edification, and Popular Education in the South English Legendary,” Journal of Popular Culture 11 (1977): 706–17. See also Jill Frederick, “The South English Legendary: Anglo-Saxon saints and national identity,” in Literary Appropriations of the Anglo-Saxons from the Thirteenth to the Twentieth Century, ed. Donald Scragg and Carole Weinberg, Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 29 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 57–73; Renee Hamelinck, “St. Kenelm,” 19–28; and Thompson, Everyday Saints, 46–57. See also Diane Speed, Chapter Six, and Couch, Chapter Eleven in this volume. 13 This total number does not include the two SEL texts, SS. Blaise and Cecilia, added by Scribe D; although St. Alexis (the third item added by Scribe D) is not part of the SEL tradition, Susanna Fein convincingly argues that Scribe D evidently viewed it as belonging to the L hagiographic collection; see Chapter Thirteen in this volume.

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and St. Brigid of Ireland also have links with England.14 True to form, the ten English saints’ lives include several types of saints—hermits, monks, confessors, and (mostly) martyrs—whose piety in demeanor, word, and deed offer a complete image of sanctity. Yet unlike more conventional saints’ lives, including the non-English vitae in L, the English vitae are grounded in the specificity of English history. They include references to and details of place, including the names of regions and kingdoms in England (Northumbria, Essex, Gloucester, Wessex, Kent, the March of Wales) as well as names of towns and shires (Corfe, Dorset, Wareham, Shaftesbury, Eglesdon, Maserfield, Edmundsbury, Westminster, Winchcombe, Canterbury); they also include geographical details (the size of England and the number of rivers that flow through it [345–46.10–18]) and distances in miles.15 St. Edward the Martyr, for example, goes hunting three miles away from Corfe castle in the woods of Dorset by Wareham (48.48); he is buried in Shaftesbury twenty miles from Wareham (52.178). The lives recount historical events such as the Battle of Hastings (St. Wulfstan), the Scandinavian invasions (St. Edward the Martyr), and the conflict between King Henry II and his sons (St. Thomas Becket). They include specific days and years on which momentous events occur (St. Thomas Becket is enshrined on Tuesday, 7 July; St. Edmund of Abingdon dies in 1242).16 They detail English laws and customs.17 Such prolific, specific details found exclusively in the English vitae add a historical level to the fundamental spirituality of the English lives that is largely absent in the other vitae.18 As a result, the SEL English lives deviate from the universalizing tendencies found in hagiography, so much so, Jankofsky argues, that their historicity

14 St. Ursula and Companions is also connected with England, as the protagonist is engaged to a British prince who converts and is martyred along with Ursula and 11,000 other virgins, and SS. Dominic and John the Apostle include specific references to English historical figures and events. 15 This and all subsequent citations of the L SEL are taken from Horstmann, ESEL, and are given parenthetically by page and line number. 16 “He deide twelf hundred ȝer : and to and-fourti” (448.600). The saint actually died in the year 1240. 17 The latter are elaborated as part of the narrative in St. Thomas Becket (122– 24.555–622). See Jankofsky, “National Characteristics,” 84–85, and Frederick, “The South English Legendary,” 86–87. 18 The non-English vitae, for example, do not generally include specific references to language, speech, or acts of translation, nor do they usually include details about geography and time. See Andrew Lynch’s discussion of the narrative treatment of St. Vincent in Chapter Nine in this volume, for example.

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anchors them “in reality and lends them, to a certain degree, the character of historical narrative, if not historical documentation.”19 The transformation of the abstract, generalizing trend found in hagiography into specific and concrete elements brings the English lives to the foreground of the SEL. The focus on the English lives is most clearly seen in the intimate relationship fostered among the saints, audience, and place. Most of the non-English vitae in L open with a proclamation of the saints’ exemplary Christian virtues—for example, St. Barnabas is “guod” and “hiende,” and is “I-Martred . . . for godes loue” (26.1–2); St. Agnes, “þat holi Maide . . . wel ȝong heo bi-gan / to serui god al-miȝti” (181.1–2); and St. Julian the Hospitaller is “stalewarde and strong” and “louede wel cristindom” (256.2). Fewer than half of these lives open by identifying saints with a particular city, region, or country. On the other hand, all of the insular lives establish their saints’ sanctity while making it a point to associate them with English cities and/or England itself. Some simply state facts: St. Dunstan “was of enguelonde” born (19.1); St. Edward the Martyr “was kyng of Enguelonde” (47.1); St. Oswald “of þe on ende of enguelonde / King was, ase þulke tyme bi-feol : in northþ-homber-londe” (45.1–2); but several others make special note of the location: St. Alban “was here of Enguelonde, / I-martred” (67.1–2); St. Wulfstan “bischop of wyrecestre : was here of engelonde / Swiþe holi man” (70.1–2); St. Edmund the King was “i-bore here bi este / In þe on ende of Engelonde [i.e., Suffolk]” (296.1–2); and St. Cuthbert was born “here in Engelonde” (359.1, emphases added). Taken as a whole, these opening lines in the English vitae create a historical and holy relationship between the saints, exemplary Christians who lived and died “here” in England, and the audience members, who are presently reading and listening to the lives “here” in England, with the land itself serving as the site of the sacred bond between saints and audience. St. Thomas Becket reinforces this relationship among saints, audience, and England: calling the vita “þis englische tale” (106.1), the narrator not only calls on the English people but also on England itself to rejoice in the martyr’s death: “Engelond, wel glad þov beo” he declares, “for one Mannes deþe” (112.203–204).20 This vita is not simply another saint’s 19

Jankofsky, “National Characteristics,” 84. Although he was a Norman, in the SEL, Thompson argues, Becket becomes a “kind of de facto Englishman”: “In broadly political terms, he is . . . the true representative of England and Englishness” (Everyday Saints, 50–51). 20

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life; rather, it is a sanctified tale of England. Such self-conscious and deliberate attention placed on English history, geography, and audience helps to make the English lives and England itself central to the collection of saints’ lives in L as a whole. This centrality is especially evident in the SEL version of the Christianization of England that comprises the main theme of SS. Augustine and Gregory. St. Gregory opens with a brief description of the saint’s exemplary piety and his appointment as Cardinal (355–56.1–18), but St. Gregory’s virtues have more to do with his role as the “apostle of Engelonde” (358–59.97, 116) than with his status as Cardinal and later, as pope. In the vita, Gregory determines to convert the English after his legendary encounter with three pagan English children in the Roman marketplace. When he is prevented from fulfilling his mission and subsequently is chosen pope, Gregory elects St. Augustine to preach Christianity in England in his place (356–58.19–79). At this point, the vita digresses from Gregory’s life altogether to detail Augustine’s success in England (358.80–97) before giving a brief description of a miracle attributed to Gregory (358–59.106–111) and closing with a reiteration of the saint’s role in the conversion of England (359.112– 117). In the two earliest known versions of Gregory’s life, the Liber beati et laudabili viri Gregorii pape urbis Rome de vita atque virtutibus, written at Whitby, and Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica (both composed in the eighth century), the Christianization of England is an important chapter in the saint’s life, but it is only one of many incidents.21 In contrast, the SEL version of the vita makes England, not the saint, the subject: over half of St. Gregory (seventy of 117 lines) is devoted to the saint’s love for England and the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons. In this short account, the words “England” and “English,” or direct references to them (for example, “þat lond” [356–57.26, 27, 29, 89] and “þe men” [356–57.26, 29, 87]) occur thirty-five times. As the vita progresses, the third-person narration gives way to the first person: “þe men” of England become “us” (358–59.98, 100, 101, 113): the

21 The Earliest Life of Gregory the Great, by an Anonymous Monk at Whitby, trans., Bertram Colgrave (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1968), 90–104. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, in Baedae Opera Historica, trans. J. E. King, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962), 1:184–203 (2:1). Jacobus de Voragine, in his Legenda Aurea, only mentions in passing the story of the children in the marketplace and Gregory’s desire to Christianize England (The Golden Legend of Jacobus de Voragine, trans. William Granger Ryan [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993], 177–90.

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narrator rejoices in the “bone [boon] of seint gregori” that “sende us in-to engelonde : þe lawes of cristindome” (358–59.96, 113). Gregory’s life thus becomes absorbed into the English lives, becoming another tale of England.22 St. Augustine is also brought into the sphere of the L English lives. Essentially an expansion of the digression found in St. Gregory, St. Augustine sharpens the focus on England and the English people. As in the English lives, the vita emphasizes the connection between the saint and England, opening with the announcement that Augustine “cristendom : brouhte in-to Engelonde” (24.1), and, as in St. Gregory, repeated references to “Engelond” are made (seven times in the first twenty-two lines). The life recounts St. Augustine’s successful conversion of King Aethelbert and the rest of the English and his appointment as first archbishop of Canterbury. In this respect, it follows the Latin analogues. Unusually though, the point of view comes primarily through Aethelbert’s eyes rather than Augustine’s. In the earlier Latin versions, including Bede’s vita and Augustine’s life in the Legenda Aurea, for example, the narrative focus remains on Augustine and his conversion efforts, and Aethelbert is only one of the many people who are converted by the saint.23 But in the SEL version, Aethelbert’s embrace of Christianity is the subject of the narrative, as we witness the king’s conversion being dramatized in his own words. Aethelbert first expresses curiosity when he learns of Augustine’s message (told to him through an interpreter and reported by the narrator): “ ‘Goode tiþinges,’ he seide, ‘mot hit beo : þat heo me habbeþ i-brouht’ ” (24.30). He then shows caution as he decides to wait to see “þat it sothþ were” (if [salvation] is [the] truth) (25.57); he finally converts when he sees that Augustine’s ministry is “guod”: “ ‘To longue,’ he seide, ‘ich habbe abide [waited] : ar [before] ich þis vnder-stod’ ” (26.75–76). Aethelbert is the only figure whose speeches are included; as Jankofsky points out, “[t]he protagonist [St. Augustine] . . . is not given a single line of direct speech.”24 Here, Aethelbert, not Augustine, functions as the agent who is personally aligned with the audience. Such a stylistic shift downplays Augustine’s conversion activities and drives home to the audience instead “the momentous implications of the coming of Christianity 22

See also Daniel T. Kline, Chapter Seven in this volume. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, 1:100–74 and 1:204–18, (1:23–33; 2:2–3); de Voragine, Golden Legend, 131–37. 24 Jankofsky, “Legenda Aurea Materials,” 322. 23

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to England.”25 At the same time, Aethelbert’s reasoned, positive, and patient response to Augustine’s message casts the English, though they are still heathens, in a favorable light: even before they become Christians, they possess an innate grace; they are, as Gregory exclaims, “swuch folk auȝte in heouene” (such folk [who] ought [to be] in heaven) (356.32). In elaborating the conversion of an English king, the SEL makes Aethelbert stand for all of England. In both SS. Augustine and Gregory, Aethelbert is the king of England, not a king of England, in Kent, as found in the historical record. In St. Augustine, the monk determines to preach “[t]o þe kyng Aþelbert, þat was þo : kyng of Engelonde” (24.23), and the narrator of St. Gregory reports that St. Augustine “wende to þe kingues court : and so he prechede þere, / þat þe king and alle is men : sone i-baptizede were” (358.80–81). Through the baptism of Aethelbert and his people, all of England is baptized: on returning to Rome, Augustine tells St. Gregory “hou alle þe men of engelonde : cristin-dom nome [took]” (358.87). Thus, the SEL establishes a direct link between Rome (the seat of the Church) and England, the nation personally chosen by Pope Gregory to be converted and the one successfully Christianized by Augustine. Such subtle revisionist strategies lend to England a special sense of authority: Christianity in England is the continuation of Christianity in Rome. Through this use of the translatio studii topos, whereby the authority and (Christian) culture of Rome is transferred to England, the SEL places England and its saints on par with the more ancient Christian nations. Not only do English saints belong in a collection of international saints, they are the focus of it. The shifting of England to the center of the SEL reveals a purpose beyond that of moral instruction and edification. Within this re-envisioned and sanctified England, the country is united historically and politically (through Aethelbert and the other SEL kings who ruled in England by Dei gratia), religiously (through SS. Augustine and Gregory), and linguistically (through the SEL itself). This vernacular anthology therefore provides a comprehensive image of England as a national, Christian entity.26

25

Ibid. On nationhood in the SEL, see Turville-Petre, England the Nation, esp. Chapter One. See also Diane Speed, Chapter Six, Robert Mills, Chapter Ten, and Couch, Chapter Eleven in this volume. 26

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The SEL’s re-envisioned nation of England in a collection concerned with English lives and written in English, distinguishes it from earlier hagiographies: the SEL is clearly intended for a reading or listening English audience. As such, it invites the audience to recall, contemplate, and explore its own unique and chosen place within the history of the Christian world. The SEL therein constructs a sense of English self-identity, one that is sanctified, holy, and singular. The emphasis on the English lives in the SEL shapes the audience’s horizon of expectations when reading and listening to the adjacent romances. Within this manuscript context, Horn and Havelok, two texts that also concern England, can be understood as two more English saints’ lives that address and develop the SEL themes of Englishness and nationhood. Another “holie mannes liue”: Saint Horn27 Within the context of the particular type of English saintliness established by the L SEL, the Englishness of Horn comes to the fore. In addition to the fact that it is composed in English (instead of in Anglo-Norman), Horn’s condensed style of narrative action also bespeaks a characteristic English concern with external entities—God and country—over self-reflective emotion. The emphasis on action stands in sharp contrast to the psychologically intricate, solemnlypaced narratives of the French romances, including the much earlier Anglo-Norman Romance of Horn (RH [ca. 1170]).28 A “full-fledged romance,”29 RH is over 5,000 lines long, composed in laisses of about twenty alexandrine lines each. While Susan Dannenbaum [Crane] identifies differences between Anglo-Norman romances and their Old French contemporaries,30 RH is nonetheless full of “descriptions of

27

This citation is taken from the L prologue (fol. 88r–v; Horstman, ESEL, 177.1). The three extant Middle English versions of Horn all share a common ancestor, along with RH, though Diane Speed notes that “it is not impossible that King Horn is derived from both the Romance [RH] and another account” (“The Saracens of King Horn,” Speculum 65 (1990): 564–95 [567]). 29 George McKnight, ed. King Horn, in King Horn, Floriz and Blauncheflur, The Assumption of our Lady, EETS, o.s., 14 (1901; reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1998), viii–ix. First edited by J. Rawson Lumby, 1866. 30 “Anglo-Norman Romances of English Heroes: ‘Ancestral Romance’?” Romance Philology 35 (1982): 601–08. Judith Weiss states that RH is “[i]ncontestably the finest of Anglo-Norman romances” (Four Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman Romances [London: J. M. Dent, 1992], x). 28

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rich adornments, of feastings, of battles, of games, and of tournaments quite in the manner of the contemporary romances current in France and in Norman England,” and it provides the interiority of character and motive, characteristic of its Old French counterparts.31 The Middle English Horn, however, composed in just over 1,500 lines of short two-, three-, and four-stress rhyming couplets, offers a “rapid, actioncentered narrative,” stripped of narratorial introspection and courtly detail.32 Significantly, the plot in the Middle English version centers on the public arena of battle: the romance opens with invading Saracens killing the hero’s father, overrunning his kingdom of Suddene, and casting Horn adrift with his twelve companions. Horn encounters Saracen forces three more times when he fights on behalf of Kings Aylmar of Westernesse and Thurston of Ireland, and later when he avenges his father’s death and reclaims his kingdom. The two love interests in Horn, Rymenhild and Hermenyl (Reynild in MSS Gg. IV 27 [2] and Harley 2253), primarily serve to further the martial ambitions of the hero and to solidify his kingdom.33 Horn’s attention to the development of the protagonist’s social identity as hero, avenger, and king shifts the importance of the narrative onto external public entities, specifically England and God, and away from private experiences of love and self-awareness typically treated in romance.34 As a result of such stylistic, structural, and linguistic changes to the Horn tradition, Horn emerges as something new,35 a hybrid romance tailored specifically to an English audience that was increasingly becoming 31

McKnight, King Horn, viii–ix. Crane, Insular Romance, 27. For a detailed discussion of the variety in meter, see Hall, King Horn, xlvi–l; see also Sands, Middle English Verse Romances, 16; and Walter Hoyt French, Essays on “King Horn” (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1940), 23–35. See also Andrew Taylor, Chapter Four in this volume. 33 Although the courtly love motif in RH is not as developed as it is in contemporary Old French romances, it still follows the conventions of love in its treatment of Horn’s relationship with his two love interests Rigmel and Lemburc. On the treatment of this theme in RH, see M. K. Pope, ed. The Romance of Horn, Anglo-Norman Text Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955, 1964) 1:8–10; and M. Dominica Legge, AngloNorman Literature and its Background (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), 96–104. 34 Horn exemplifies how the French romance genre becomes more fluid in its generic boundaries when adapted into English. For example, the incipit to Horn in MS Harley 2253, Her bygynneþ þe geste of kyng Horn (fol. 83r), underscores the romance’s preference for martial action over the theme of courtly love by emphasizing Horn’s heroic deeds. But see Andrew Lynch, Chapter Nine in this volume, who argues instead that the theme of love is integral to the protagonist’s tale of deeds. 35 Sebastian Sobecki describes the poem as “transitional” (“Littoral Encounters: The Shore as Cultural Interface in King Horn,” Al-Masāq 18, no. 1 (2006): 79–86 (80). 32

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aware of the need to articulate its own national (and linguistic) identity.36 When read or listened to alongside the English saints in L, Horn clearly shares certain affinities with the saints. He is “fayr,” “strong,” “bold,” “boneyres” (debonair), and “of witte wisest” of his twelve companions (17, 99, 968, 188);37 these traits are typical of the romance hero, of course, but they are conventional characteristics of the saints, too. St. Edward the Martyr, “þe ȝungue,” (47.1), is also “fair of flechs,” “[d]e-bonere for-to speke with,” and “wis of conseil” (47.14–16), and it is these qualities, in addition to his more recognizable virtues of meekness, chastity, and goodness (47.13–16), that allow us insight into his particular sanctity as a martyred boy-king. St. Wulfstan, while “mildeliche” in manner (74.125, 75.140, 76.80) is simultaneously “þe cuyndeste [truest] englische man : þat was of enie manhede” because he speaks “baldeliche” (73–74.105–06) to the usurper “willame Bastard” (72.63) when the conqueror attempts to strip him of his bishopric; Wulfstan courageously puts his words into action (and forces William to seek forgiveness) when he drives his crosier into St. Edward the Confessor’s marble tomb so forcefully that no one but he can withdraw it. Such exceptional abilities, looks, and virtues of these saints and others place them above other humans and help to shape them into exemplars of Christian faith to be admired and emulated. In Horn’s case, it is his superlative beauty that sets him apart. As the narrator informs us from the very beginning, his looks surpass those of any other human: “Feyrer child ne micte ben born” (10), he says, and there “[w]as noman him yliche / Bi none kinges riche [kingdom]” (19–20). While Horn’s fairness is compared with nature—he is “[w]hit so any lili flour, / So rose red was hys colur” (15–16)—it also transcends nature: “Ne reyn ne micte upon reyne, / Ne no sonne by schine” (There is none no fairer than Horn upon whom the rain rains or sun shines) (11–12). Horn’s flawless features reflect his physical and spiritual perfection, particularly in the context of L. As Andrew Lynch explains,

36 An audience, nonetheless, who would have likely been familiar with AngloNorman romances, perhaps even versions of the Horn story as found in RH. The two Anglo-Norman annotations to L’s Horn, found on fols. 222v and 223v, attest to a multi-lingual audience. The changes to romance found in Horn would be even more apparent to such a listener or reader. See Andrew Taylor, Chapter Four, on the possibility of an L patron belonging to a social class familiar with Anglo-Norman. 37 This and all subsequent references are to McKnight’s edition of Horn and are given parenthetically by line numbers.

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in L, “Horn’s beauty, like that of the rest of creation, from which it is made discursively inseparable, reflects the goodness of God.”38 In L, Horn’s beauty is also directly connected to Christ. Like St. Kenelm, whose youth, innocence, and kingly status afford him Christ’s protection, making him impervious to the “poysun, strong i-nouȝ” his treacherous sister gives him (348.97), so, too, the youthful, innocent, and princely Horn is divinely shielded from harm at the hands of the bloodthirsty Saracens in Sudenne, who are prepared to torture and murder Horn and his companions (“Þo hundes wolde slon, / And some him wolde flon” [91–92]). But while the reason for Kenelm’s singularity is assumed (he is, after all, the subject of a vita), the narrator of Horn makes the reason for his protection clear: the pagans stay their hands because of “hornes fayrede” (93). Here, the narrator credits Christ with the creation of Horn’s physical perfection, stating immediately after Horn falls into “peynims honde[s]” (87) but right before the Saracens are moved to pity that “[m]iche was his fayrhede, / So ihesu him hauede made” (89–90). In Horn, his divinely created beauty is another expression of God’s intervention in the secular world as found in the saints’ lives. In L, Horn’s perfection assumes even more explicit Christological significance. His physical virtues are directly linked with his unusual somatic quality: his body shines. In the opening lines of the romance, the narrator lists, among Horn’s other perfections, his shining “[b]rict so euere any glas” (brighter than any glass) (14), and when the Saracens in Sudenne look upon him, they note that he is not only “swiþe kene” but also “swiþe scene,” (97–98, emphasis added), “so beautiful” in the sense of shining (OE scêne; scīene=sheen).39 Later, we learn that his body’s radiance is literal. When the hero first enters Rymenhild’s bower, suddenly “[o]f [from] þat fayre wihcte [person] / Al þe halle gan licte [began to light up]” (405–06). This emanation of light sets Horn apart from most romance heroes but aligns him with saints such as St. Edward the Martyr, whose body is discovered in a dark wood by a pillar of light (50.107–08) and is later found emitting rays of light from his tomb (52.189–90), St. Kenelm, who dreams of a tree with so

38

Chapter Nine, 187. King Aylmar describes Horn and all of his twelve companions as being “[o]f bodi swiþe schene” (177), but Horn is the “fayrest” of them (187). (The twelve companions serve as another explicit association with Christ and his twelve disciples, including one who, like Judas, will betray Horn.) 39

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many “berninde wex [candles] and laumpes” that no other tree “schon so briȝte” (348.119–20), and St. Gregory, whose appointment as pope results from a miraculous shaft of light shimmering down on his body (357.65–73).40 It more directly recalls the saintly romance hero Havelok, out of whose mouth a light, bright as “a sunne-bem,” issues forth while he sleeps.41 In the L vitae (including Havelok), these bright lights signal God’s will made manifest on earth; in the context of L, Horn’s shining body aligns him with Christ.42 Horn’s body also signifies God’s desire for earthly, Christian justice. When Horn arrives in Ireland, he offers an assumed name, “Cubert” (Cutberd in MS Gg. IV 27 [2]), an alias not found in the Anglo-Norman analogue RH nor in the Middle English version found in MS Harley 2253.43 Horn’s pseudonym invokes the name of St. Cuthbert (Cudbert), whose life appears in the L SEL. St. Cuthbert was of English descent but had religious and cultural ties with Ireland through his life-long tenure at Lindisfarne monastery, founded by the Irish monk St. Aidan of Iona (at the express invitation of St. Oswald), where St. Cuthbert lived as a hermit and was later promoted as prior and bishop. St. Cuthbert, who died in 687 and whose remains rested at Lindisfarne until they were translated to Durham in the tenth century, was among the most popular saints in England, in part because he was “considered a protector of both his community and ‘his people.’ ”44 St. Cuthbert’s role as guardian fulfills an important social function of the saints: as Dominic Marner explains, 40 Noticing that Horn’s perfect physique includes his possessing a full set of ribs, Susan Dannenbaum [Crane] sees Horn’s beauty as mirroring that of both Adam and Christ (“ ‘Fairer bi one ribbe / Þane eni man þat libbe’ [King Horn C315–16],” Notes and Queries 28 [1981]: 116–17); for other religious images and Christological symbols in Horn, see Liam Purdon, “King Horn and the Medieval Trope of Christ the Lover-Knight,” Proceedings of the PMR Conference at Villanova 10 (1985): 137–47 and Georgianna Ziegler, “Structural Repetition in King Horn,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 81 (1980): 403–08 (405 n. 4). 41 Smithers, Havelok, line 593. For a discussion of the light shining in Havelok’s mouth as a sign of sanctity, see Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 44–46. See also John C. Hirsh, “Religious Attitudes and Mystical Language in Medieval Literary Texts, An Essay in Methodology: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Havelok, Lay la Freine,” in Vox Mystica: Essays on Medieval Mysticism in Honour of Valerie Logario, ed. Anne Clark Bartlett and T. H. Bestul (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1995), 15–25 (18–19). 42 In Chapter Thirteen, Fein discusses a similar association of the shining hero with Christ in St. Alexis. 43 In these versions, Horn’s alias in Ireland is Godmod, meaning “courage in God” or “good in courage.” Thanks to one of Brill’s readers for pointing this out. 44 Dominic Marner, St. Cuthbert: His Life and Cult in Medieval Durham (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 20.

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Saints were important figures in the Middle Ages, not simply because they acted as spiritual role models for the people and performed curative and other miracles, but also because they helped in forming a sense of unity and cohesion to regional and even national communities.45

In the case of St. Cuthbert, just his mere physical presence in life and death serves as a “fascinating example of the way in which the corporeal presence of a saint somehow helps sanctify a geographical region and affirms and strengthens its boundaries.”46 Horn’s actions as defender of the faith, as “Cubert,” enhance his role as spiritual protector of the land and people. When the Saracens challenge the Irish, Thurston chooses Horn before his two sons to defend his kingdom, and after Horn defeats the Saracen giant, he is in the forefront of the slaughter of the fleeing pagans. His corporeal presence, like that of St. Cuthbert himself, ensures the safety of Christian people in Ireland as well as in Suddene and Westernesse. Thurston and his sons recognize the protection Horn’s mere physical presence provides them. As Beryld tells his father right after he first meets Horn, Tak hym þi lond to werye [protect] Ne schal hym noman derye [injure] He hys þe fayreste man Þat euere in þis londe cam. (839–42)

The appearance of Horn’s shining, beautiful body signals, without question, holy protection for Ireland. Meaning “the famous and bright one” (OE cuð = to know; beorht = bright), the name “Cubert” recalls the descriptions of Horn’s physical brightness, his divine brilliance now inextricably part of his identity. His real name itself, reminiscent of the mythical horn of plenty and Christian symbol for the grail,47 binds the hero Christologically to his identity as Cubert, the bright one whose fame will sound like a horn and be known throughout the world as King Aylmar predicts (220–30). In moving throughout Ireland as a shining Christian warrior, the disguised Horn transforms the land into a site of holiness. In the guise of Cubert, Horn fashions himself into another revered (English) saint, retaining the centrality

45

Ibid., 10. Ibid., 16–17. 47 John Speirs, Medieval English Poetry: The Non-Chaucerian Tradition (London: Faber and Faber, 1957), 187–88. 46

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of the English saints in the SEL.48 Even after he sheds his assumed identity, he remains in name, deed, and body a saintly figure and holy warrior wherever he goes—in Suddene, Westernesse, and Reynes— imbuing these kingdoms also with a type of sanctity. While Horn’s physical attributes invite the audience to associate him with Christ and the saints, his public actions as hero and later, as king, specifically align him with the royal SS. Oswald and Edmund the King. Like the other L saints, SS. Oswald and Edmund are exemplary Christians who live (and die) in imitatio Christi, but they differ from all of the other types of saints in L because their personal goodness is linked directly with their public personae and enacted politically through their “protection of the faith, patronage of the church, the exercise of iustitia, and the attainment of pax through military and political dominion.”49 Edmund, King of Suffolk, is a well-established ruler who possesses superlative Christian virtues—he is “[m]eoke” and “milde” and “ful of milce”—that are expressed paradoxically through warrior-like, public qualities of character: he is a “[s]wyþe fair knyȝt” who is both “hardi and quoynte” (297.5–6). Oswald, “þe holie king” of Northumbria, displays his personal piety by spreading Christianity throughout his kingdom and performing charitable deeds (45.1). The connection between their personal holiness and public personae is emphasized in the vitae: both the saints and their English lands are targeted for destruction because of the kings’ piety: pagans invade Northumbria when they learn of Oswald’s Christian charity: “His bone [charity] was fole wel i-heord : for it bi-feol atþe laste / Þat heþene men come in-to is lond: and weorreden on him wel faste” (46.29–30); likewise, the Danes ravage Northumbria and East Anglia before they hunt down, torture, and slay Edmund because they “heorde muche tell” of his “guodnesse” (297.17). These exemplary Christians achieve martyrdom by confronting the pagans in defense of their Christian kingdoms: Edmund 48 Other compelling connections between Horn and the saints exist: Cuthbert’s followers wandered with the saint’s remains for seven years (including a failed attempt to go to Ireland) before settling at Chester-le-Street, near Durham, invoking an interesting parallel between the saint’s seven years in exile with Horn’s; the well-known fact that St. Cuthbert’s remains were re-interred at Chester-le-Street with the head of St. Oswald the King invites a tenuous but intriguing historical connection linking these saints with Horn. 49 Susan J. Ridyard, The Royal Saints of Anglo-Saxon England: A Study of West Saxon and East Anglian Cults (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 81. The only other two royal saints in L, SS. Kenelm and Edward the Martyr, are martyred when they are young.

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offers himself up for sacrifice in imitatio Christi, while Oswald dies on the battlefield. The kings serve as both rulers and protectors of their kingdoms, their holy bodies intimately tied to England itself. Their actions place them in a select group of saints: not only do they belong to the most exclusive category of sainthood as martyrs, they are also the only two saints in the entire L SEL who are royal saints and holy warriors.50 Horn also explicitly expresses his Christian piety in his public actions against the heathens. Like the pagans in the royal vitae, the Saracens are intent on dominating Christian lands: as they tell Horn’s father King Murry in the opening action of the poem, “Þi lond folc we wilen slon / And al þat god leuet on [and all who believe in God]” (47–48); true to their word, they slay the king, seize Suddene, “felle” churches, “quelle” the people (65–66), and expressly forbid survivors from practicing Christianity (81–82). The same pagans later invade Ireland and issue a challenge to King Thurston’s court on Christmas day, stating that whichever side wins in combat will claim “Al þis lond” (870). As in Suddene, the pagans’ challenge is clearly and “explicitly devised to determine the fate of the Christian nation.”51 With Horn’s continued success against the pagans, Georgiana Ziegler recognizes him “as a new champion of Christian order.”52 But in this manuscript context, Horn is specifically cast into the role of protector of an actual Christian kingdom, much like SS. Oswald and Edmund. In L, Horn’s social identity is synonymous with the preservation of Christian power—for which Oswald and Edmund also strive—and its restoration.53 Once Horn destroys the Saracens in Suddene, his first act as king is to reestablish Christianity by ordering men to “werchen / Chapeles and cherchen; / Bellen he dide ryngen, / And prestes messe syngen” (1481–84). Horn extends pax throughout the rest of the world of the romance by appointing select people to rule over Ireland, Reynes, and Westernesse, 50 On martyred warrior kings of England, see John Edward Damon, Soldier Saints and Holy Warriors: Warfare and Sanctity in the Literature of Early England (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), esp. Chapter Two. See also W. M. Spellman, Monarchies 1000–2000 (London: Reaktion, 2001), esp. Chapter Four. 51 Speed, “Saracens,” 578. 52 For Ziegler, Horn’s association with Christian order is part of his “initiation” phase as he matures as a hero (“Structural Repetition,” 405–06). 53 Horn’s father, King Murry, also acts as a holy warrior, his actions as a Christian fighting pagans continuing the horizon of expectations created by the SEL royal saints. King Athelwold in Havelok plays a similar role in establishing Havelok as a saint. See Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 38–42.

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thereby ensuring that a Christian peace will flourish on earth. In the L hagiographic context, Horn, as defender of the Christian world, acts as another royal saint who, like Edmund and Oswald, is also a holy warrior; however, as martyrs, Edmund and Oswald serve humanity from heaven as intercessors, but their kingdoms are destroyed and overrun by pagans. In contrast, Horn, through his military victories, is able to mete out justice and restore peace in the secular world in a way that the other L holy warriors cannot. Holy Lands: The Expanding Realm of England As the collation of Horn with the L SEL influences the audience’s horizon of expectations of the romance, so, too, does Horn lend a deeper meaning to the saints’ lives. The hero’s martial adventures continue the SEL’s focus on England and the saints, while offering the spectacle of earthly victory the saints’ lives cannot provide. But Horn’s saintly actions in Ireland also open the romance to historical dimensions that inform the SEL. The fact that Ireland is the only unambiguous historical setting in Horn distinguishes it from the other locations. By serving as the geographical marker for the audience to identify the other regions in Horn with England (and, perhaps Scotland),54 it draws the

54 Scholars have long tried to discover any correspondences between the three fictional places and exact historical locations, particularly in relation to Ireland. Ronald Herzman, Graham Drake, and Eve Salisbury list the proposed locations for Suddene, including “the Isle of Man . . . Sussex, Cornwall, South Devon, Roxburgh, and/or the land of Suðdene [in northern Europe] as in Beowulf ” (Four Romances of England [Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1999], note to line 142). McKnight credibly dismisses the possibility of Suddene’s location in northern Europe, arguing that “neither the proper names of the story, nor the phonology of the word Suddenne itself, support this view” (King Horn, xviii). Citing the findings of H. L. W. Ward, who contends that Suddene is in Dorsetshire, and Francisque Michel, who claims the name “may refer collectively to Surrey and Sussex,” McKnight concludes that “[w]hichever of these views is the true one, we may be reasonably certain that the Suddenne in the mind of the composer of K. H. lay on the south coast of England” (King Horn, xix). Joseph Hall places it in Cornwall (King Horn, lv). The historical locations of Westernesse and Reynes, too, are equally difficult to identify, but scholars agree that they should be understood to be in mainland Britain: Ward identifies Westernesse as Cornwall, and McKnight tentatively agrees, stating that it could also be in Devonshire (King Horn, xx). William Henry Schofield places it in the Wirral peninsula (“The Story of Horn and Rimenhild,” PMLA 18 [1903]: 1–83). Oliver places all three locations in Scotland (“King Horn and Suddene,” PMLA 46 [1931]: 102–114). In RH, Horn is from Suddene and travels to Bretaigne and Westir, identified as England, Brittany, and Ireland respectively (see McKnight, King Horn, xviii).

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audience’s attention to the romance’s connection with the historical world. Such a strategy is not unheard of, for as Crane reminds us, “the insular romances deal with the historical world just as surely as they reflect on and liberate themselves from the world.”55 Horn has been traditionally classified as a “Matter of England” romance because it likely hearkens back to pre-Conquest English heroic tales.56 It is possible that Horn retains vestiges of an early Horn tradition that treated a relationship between England and Ireland. Medieval Irish historian Marie Flanagan details the extensive political ties binding Ireland and England before the Norman conquest of 1066: members of prominent families, including Harold Godwinson, his brother Leofwine, and Aelfgar, earl of East Anglia, regularly sought asylum in Ireland in the mid-eleventh century, where they raised fleets of Irish soldiers and mercenaries and launched attacks on England in attempts to reclaim their properties and titles.57 It is possible that Horn’s exile in Ireland, where he, too, raises an army of Irish mercenaries to save his love interest Rymenhild and later take back his own kingdom of Suddene, could be a vague recollection of one of the many times that exiled historical figures returned to England with Irish armies. But it is also possible that Horn treats, in a fictional way, more recent political events. The date of the composition of Horn has been traditionally placed ca. 1225,58 but Rosamund Allen puts it much later, to the 1270s, suggesting that “the poem may have been reworked from traditional matter to present a straightforward political message” praising King Edward I: “An old tale of a prince returning to claim his kingdom after fighting Saracens would have particular poignancy” in

55 Crane, Insular Romance, 2. For other historical readings of Horn, see Matthew Hearn, “Twins of Infidelity: The Double Antagonists of King Horn,” Medieval Perspectives 8 (1993): 78–86; and Allen, “The Date and Provenance of King Horn,” 99–125 (discussed below). 56 Other “Matter of England” romances include Havelok, Bevis of Hamptoun, Athelstan, Guy of Warwick, Richard Coer de Lion, and Gamelyn. 57 Marie Therese Flanagan, Irish Society, Anglo-Norman Settlers, Angevin Kingship: Interactions with Ireland in the Late Twelfth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 58–61. Other prominent political exiles included Harold Godwinson’s sons and a number of Welsh exiles, including Gruffydd ap Llewelyn. See Flanagan, Irish Society, 61–69. 58 Allen offers two reasons for the early date of 1225 for Horn: “one is the apparently early stage of development of phonology, syntax, and metrical form in the poem; the other, presumably, is a tacit acceptance of the date previously assigned to MS C [MS Gg. IV 27 (2)], namely 1250/1260” (“The Date and Provenance of King Horn,” 103).

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a time when Edward had come home from the crusades on the death of his father to be crowned King of England.59 Horn might also be glorifying Edward in another way. Shortly after 1066, England began expansionist activities into Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. The colonization of Ireland, particularly in the southern and eastern regions, began in earnest in the mid-twelfth century, when Henry II became overlord of Ireland, and was completed about one hundred years later.60 By the mid-thirteenth century, the English monarchy exhibited a “confident expansiveness” to create “a new political order” specifically in Ireland “based on English standards.”61 Edward I continued to expand English hegemony over the British Isles, and in 1275, according to medieval historian Robert Rees Davies, he seemed to be on the brink of establishing a high kingship.62 Although the poem only affords the audience a glimpse into the seven years Horn spends in Ireland, what information we do receive is telling. When the exiled Horn first steps onto the shores of Ireland, the sons of the Irish king courteously greet him (817–20), accompany him to their father’s hall, and ask Thurston to take Horn into his service (838–42); the king gladly takes him in (844–850). The courtly behavior of Thurston’s court is similar to that of the other kings: Murry courte-

59 Allen, “The Date and Provenance of King Horn,” 122. See also Allen, King Horn, 113–14 n. 93, where she notes that the “linguistic environment of the mid 13c, when English was being adopted as an official language, might be more likely to produce KH.” 60 For comprehensive analyses of England’s political relationship with and dominance over Ireland (and the rest of the British Isles), see Robin Frame, The Political Development of the British Isles 1100–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), and R. R. Davies, The First English Empire: Power and Identities in the British Isles, 1093–1343 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). Although these early expansionist activities into Ireland were begun primarily by the Anglo-Normans and Welsh, by the time the colonies were established in the mid-thirteenth century, they were regarded as Anglo-Irish. Davies discusses two reasons for this: while Irish annalists and scribes noted the nationality of various invaders (as French, English, Welsh, etc.) in the twelfth century, “in the process of colonization and settlement, it was the English who were the numerically dominant and critical group, regardless of the role played by non-English personnel in the leadership, momentum, and documentation of the movement”; moreover, “during the course of the twelfth century, and at an accelerating pace, the sense of a separate Norman or French identity among the ruling elites of England wilted, to be replaced by a single, undifferentiated English identity. That identity became raucously strident during the thirteenth century” (The First English Empire, 144–45). In other words, both the Irish and the English regarded the settlements as Anglo-Irish. 61 Davies, The First English Empire, 169. 62 Ibid., 168.

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ously greets the Saracens and even dismounts to face them after they tell him that they will slay his people (43-44); and Aylmar receives Horn and his companions with “[w]ordes wel swiþe mild” (174). In courtly behavior and customs, Thurston’s court is no different from those of Westernesse and Suddene. More significantly, the poem also implies that the people in Thurston’s court, unlike the natives in Ireland, speak English. No mention is made of a language barrier between Horn and the members of the Irish royal house; in contrast, when Rymenhild’s messenger encounters Horn in a forest near the Irish court, he laments that he cannot find the hero, in part because he cannot understand the people’s speech: “Ich neuere myȝt of reche [I will never be able to find (him)] / Whit no londisse speche [Without (knowing) the native language]” (1027–28).63 Thurston’s court presumably speaks a different language (English) from those in the surrounding areas (Gaelic). Through the apparent common cultural and linguistic ties Thurston’s court shares with the other kingdoms in the romance, it might be a fictionalized representation of one of the several Anglo-Irish colonies in Ireland. Davies describes the extensive English communities in Ireland in the thirteenth century that for reasons of security, status, privilege, and ethnic pride . . . sedulously cultivated their distinctive and exclusive Englishness. They had doubtless stood apart from the natives in language and culture from early days, [and they conformed] in so far as possible to the paradigm of lordship, exploitation, and power prevalent in England.64

If Thurston’s court is a representation of an Anglo-Irish colony, this could explain its being, in essence, a replica of those in Westernesse and Suddene; it could also legitimize Horn’s position as potential heir to the throne through Thurston’s proposed marital alliance between Horn and Hermenyl. In a historical sense, then, Horn might be addressing England’s relationship with the Anglo-Irish in the latter half of the thirteenth century. If the poem is invoking contemporary events, Horn’s adventures in Ireland might be promoting Edward’s desire for English dominion over the British Isles. In Ireland, Horn serves as a champion for the Irish, even before Thurston’s sons are slain, and he is later invited to

63 64

This reference to a language barrier is not found in MS Gg. IV 27 (2). Davies, The First English Empire, 154.

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take the kingdom through its female heir. Although Horn ultimately rejects the offer, returning instead to his betrothed Rymenhild, he arranges in the end for his noble fellow and closest companion Ayol (Athulf in the other two surviving manuscripts) to marry Hermenyl (1633–35) and, presumably, assume the kingship once Thurston passes. Ayol is not only Horn’s closest friend, he is also Horn’s subject. The fact that he is a mirror image of Horn himself, and yet simultaneously inferior to him in every way, symbolizes the particular subordinate relationship Ireland (or part of it) will have with Suddene.65 Horn also installs an ally as king in Aylmar’s kingdom of Westernesse. After defeating Fikenhild (who has treacherously tried to force Rymenhild to marry him), Horn places Arnoldin, Ayol’s cousin, as Westernesse’s future king (once Aylmar dies) but instructs the knights and barons to pay tribute to Arnoldin immediately (they “[d]ude hym alle utrage [trewage, i.e., tribute]” [1618]).66 In an apparently deliberate expansionist move, Horn then invades the kingdom of Reynes, and, after killing King Modi, the antagonist who first tried to marry Rymenhild, he grants the kingdom to his old tutor, Athulbrus, who also served Horn (1626).67 Horn’s strategic placement of allies and subjects in Westernesse, Reynes, and Ireland, regardless of their exact historical geographical parallels, gives Horn complete control over those whom he has personally chosen to rule the kingdoms: as a result, he extends his dominion over kingdoms far beyond the borders of Suddene.68 In this fictional text, Horn becomes a high king in a way Edward I aspired to be.69

65 On Ayol being identical in looks with Horn, see lines 305–06 and 313–14. When Rymenhild mistakes him for Horn, Ayol quickly points out that Horn is far superior to him. The fact that Rymenhild gives Horn and Ayol identical rings also underscores their likeness (331–37). 66 In MSS Gg. IV 27 (2) and Harley 2253, Horn chooses Arnoldin for his “meoknesse” (1616), and it is the king himself, not the knights, who must pay Arnoldin tribute (1618). 67 Horn’s proactive move against Modi is telling, particularly since Horn has already exacted revenge on him by attacking him and making him “blody” (1332) when Modi had attempted to force Rymenhild into marriage. This specific reference to the attack on Modi is unique in L. 68 In RH, Horn only gives one kingdom, Westir (Ireland), to an ally. 69 On historical links between Havelok and Edward I’s rule, see David Staines, “Havelok the Dane: A Thirteenth-Century Handbook for Princes,” Speculum 51 (1976): 602–23; and Christopher Stuart, “Havelok the Dane and Edward I in the 1290s,” Studies in Philology 93 (1996): 349–64.

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In the context of L, then, Horn expands the SEL’s imagined construct of nationhood to include Ireland. But it seems that the message is not merely one of English cultural and political dominance, as was the case historically. Horn leads an Irish army first into Westernesse to prevent, through warfare, the marriage between Rymenhild and King Modi and later into Suddene to regain his kingdom (1464). The Irish are without question vital to Horn’s success. Notably, Horn does not treat them as mercenary troops; rather, they are “hys folc” (1099, 1464), “hys knyȝtes” (1382, 1540, emphases added), who have replaced Horn’s “xij feren [companions]” (21). Horn, therefore, reenvisions the SEL’s concept of an English nation to include Ireland as a partner in England’s well-being. Such a fantastic construct was not part of historical reality: as Turville-Petre remarks, [t]here was no question that the Anglo-Irish were English in constitutional terms, yet the English made no effort to include them in their vision of the nation, and rejected them by calling them “Irish.”70

In Horn, rather than being a derogatory term, the word “Irish” connotes bravery: twice the “Hyrische men” are described as being “so wyȝte [brave]” (1081, 1301). They become part of the body politic of Suddene and subjects of King Horn. Horn thus offers its audience a fantasy of English unification brought together by (saint) Horn.71 Horn’s embrace of the Irish also brings two of the Irish sanctorale poems, St. Patrick and his Purgatory and St. Brendan the Navigator, more fully into the SEL’s sphere of English sanctity. The knight who enters St. Patrick’s purgatory (traditionally named Sir Owain) served under King Stephen (200.39), and St. Brendan, we are told, was “here of ovre land [i.e. England]” (220.1). With the collation of Horn and the L SEL, the connection between the Irish sanctorale and the idea of Englishness is further developed. The texts collated in L therefore provide the reading and listening audience with an image of a bigger, more powerful, more holy England, a country that ultimately looks to Ireland in the west in its definition of

70

Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 143. In this way, Horn recuperates the Irish the way Havelok recuperates the Danes. On the treatment of the Danes in Havelok, see Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 143–55; see also Thorlac Turville-Petre, “Havelok and the History of the Nation,” in Readings in Medieval English Romance, Meale, 121–34 (131–33). 71

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nationhood rather than to the continent. Overall, the saints’ lives and romances of L prioritize Englishness, reflecting a thirteenth-century desire to promote, delineate, and define a stable English nation. With Horn, the scope of Englishness expands, creating a political fantasy of a larger, more saintly England.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

SOMER SONEDAY: KINGSHIP, SAINTHOOD, AND FORTUNE IN OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108 Susanna Fein When Carl Horstmann edited the South English Legendary (SEL) in 1887, he observed that unraveling “this mass of materials” and discovering “the relation of the principal MSS.” will “require more brains, the brains of several generations to come, before every question relative to this collection can be decided.”1 The medieval volume upon which he based his edition was the composite book Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L), preserving the earliest version of the SEL. In the present volume of essays, here we are, several generations later and with many brains, carrying out multiple investigations of this singular manuscript in order to elucidate further its valuable contents, its history of making by accretive process, and its signs of use by medieval readers. This book warrants such an extensive collaborative effort because its hagiographic and romance contents are supremely important. When these texts are viewed in toto, as this volume invites us to do, their internal correspondences emerge in quite interesting ways, that is, in ways little noticed when individual works are edited or when texts are viewed in generic isolation from one another. My specific purpose here is to examine Somer Soneday, an alliterative poem in thirteen-line stanzas and the text that ends the whole book. It is the last item in the manuscript proper, for the three snippets of verse that appear after it are each inscribed by later hands (probably two) on the last flyleaf (fol. 238r–v).2 Written by the manuscript’s fourth hand (that of Scribe D), the one that also copies SS. Blaise, Cecilia, and

1

Horstmann, ESEL, vii. See fig. 11 for 238v. On the two hands inscribing verse on fol. 238, see Smithers, Havelok, xii. Smithers’s description of L (xi–xiv) supersedes earlier descriptions that posited one hand (e.g., Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, 282–84) or three hands (e.g., Allen, King Horn, 6–12 [10]). Further discussion of these items appears in Christina M. Fitzgerald, Chapter Five in this volume. See also nn. 42–44, below. 2

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Alexis (fols. 228v–237v), Somer Soneday is an engaging one-hundredthirty-three-line poem of vivid narrative and dialogue. It paints a wandering narrator’s allegorical encounter with Fortune’s Wheel, upon which spin four kings who speak their parts in sequence according to the Formula of Four: Regnabo (“I will reign”), Regno (“I reign”), Regnavi (“I have reigned”), and Sum Sine Regno (“I am without reign”).3 Readers of Middle English alliterative verse have long appreciated this lyric’s metrical virtuosity and have judged it a worthy example of the stanzaic tradition.4 No other poem of the style appears in L, and so the manuscript itself merits only minor mention in analyses of the distribution and survival of alliterative verse.5 More crucially, in the critical history of Somer Soneday, no one has done a sustained study of its placement in L. Somer Soneday’s last position and rather messy copy on fol. 237ra–v has made it seem little more than an afterthought in the book, with tangential connection to the saints’ lives copied before it in the same hand, and even less to the preceding items copied by various other hands (fig. 10). A discriminating look, however, affirms that its placement is deliberate and meant to offer more than a passing comment upon the codex. Somer Soneday is added to L to cap the

3 The appearance of this iconographic tradition in Somer Soneday (NIMEV, 3838) was first explained by T. M. Smallwood, “The Interpretation of Somer Soneday,” Medium Ævum 42 (1973): 238–43. The poem has been edited four times: (1) Frederic Madden, ed., “Somer Soneday,” in Reliquiae Antiquae, ed. Thomas Wright and James O. Halliwell (London: W. Pickering, 1843), 2:7–9; (2) Carleton Brown, ed., “Somer Soneday,” in Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber, ed. Kemp Malone and Martin B. Ruud (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1929), 362–74; (3) Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), 98–102 (no. 38); and (4) Turville-Petre, Alliterative Poetry, 140–47. All citations of the poem in this essay are from the Turville-Petre edition, by line number. A modernized version of Somer Soneday appears in John Gardner, trans., The Alliterative Morte Arthure, The Owl and the Nightingale, and Five Other Middle English Poems (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971), 155–58, 263–64. 4 See, for example, Thorlac Turville-Petre, “ ‘Summer Sunday,’ ‘De Tribus Regibus Mortuis,’ and ‘The Awntyrs off Arthure’: Three Poems in the Thirteen-Line Stanza,” Review of English Studies, n.s., 25 (1974): 1–14; Susanna Greer Fein, “The Early Thirteen-Line Stanza: Style and Metrics Reconsidered,” Parergon 18, no. 1 (2000): 97–126 (108–10, 118–23); Christine Chism, Alliterative Revivals (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 260–62; and Derek Pearsall, Old English and Middle English Poetry (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977), 185, 295. 5 See, for example, A. I. Doyle, “The Manuscripts,” in Middle English Alliterative Poetry and Its Literary Background: Seven Essays, ed. David Lawton (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1982), 88–100 (89).

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whole book with a reflective statement upon how Fortune touches the lives of all—saints, kings, and ordinary people. The making of L, from Ministry and Passion (the acephalous first text, with other texts missing before it) to Somer Soneday, appears to have taken place as an accretive process over a period of roughly a hundred years, from the late thirteenth century to the late fourteenth century. Buttressed by the work of Pamela R. Robinson, Rosamund Allen, and many others, Thomas R. Liszka provides a useful description of how the manuscript is composed of five booklets, and he shows how likely it is that a few quires of the SEL (those comprising Booklets 3 and 4) were rearranged as original intentions evolved to later ones. Focusing on the older portion of the manuscript (Booklets 1 to 4), Liszka suggests that some SEL quires “probably remained apart when the compiler was changing his mind as to how the collection should be organized,” and that the result seen there “is one in which the processes of collecting and arranging material were ongoing.”6 What is pertinent for my purpose is that in this process of accretion and change we may identify two discrete acts of compilation: (1) The earlier compilation of Booklets 1–4 containing the temporale and sanctorale texts copied by Scribe A and the Dispute Between the Body and the Soul added by Scribe B (fols. 200v–203v); and (2) The later compilation created by adding Booklet 5, containing the romances (copied by Scribe C) and added saints’ lives and Somer Soneday (copied by Scribe D) (fols. 204r–237v).7 Thus we have, at least, two distinct compilers: Compiler 1, who was concerned with the make-up of the SEL and is the subject of Liszka’s investigation; and Compiler 2, who numbered all the texts (including, evidently, seven missing from the front of the manuscript), so that the items of the first compilation are enumerated 1 [text missing] to 70 [Dispute], and those of the second are enumerated 71 [Havelok] to 76 [Somer Soneday] (figs. 1, 3–10).

6 Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 84. For the booklet structure of L, see Allen, King Horn, 6–12; and Robinson, “Oxford: Bodleian Library MS. Laud misc 108,” 225–28. I am grateful to Kimberly Bell for supplying me with this portion of Pamela Robinson’s thesis. 7 My delineation of four scribal hands is derived from Smithers, Havelok, xi–xiv (which he devised in consultation with A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes). The sequential copy of Scribes A, B, and C often leads scholars to assume that their respective activities occurred over a space of time, with substantial intervals between their actions. Guddat-Figge offers another view, however, when she characterizes the first three hands as “roughly contemporary Anglicana book-hands” (Catalogue, 282).

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The ink used for the enumeration matches that used for the final four works, so this compiler can be readily identified as Scribe D.8 But did Scribe D, working at the end of the fourteenth century, actually attach Booklet 5 to Booklets 1–4? It seems very likely that there was an intermediary step of compilation. The manuscript bears the hands of three identified flourishers, and, interestingly, the same hand that adorned SEL quires 6–14 also adorned the Havelok/Horn quires 19–20 (figs. 1, 5–9).9 Beyond this provocative detail, there exists an older numbering system that collates Booklets 1–4 with Booklet 5. The individual items in L bear numbers in crayon that run from the first surviving item (number 8) to King Horn (figs. 6–8); at some later point Scribe D replicated these numbers and extended them through to the end of Booklet 5 (applying them to the texts he had copied). The evidence taken together—that is, the shared flourisher and the manner in which the first numeration runs from the opening of L to Horn— suggests, therefore, an intervening point of compilation during which the romance-bearing Booklet 5 was added to the SEL Booklets 1–4.10 The act of joining them together could have occurred fairly soon after the copying of the romances. To finish the Havelok and Horn sequence, Scribe C required more parchment beyond quire 20, and so he added quire 21, which consists of only five leaves (six others having been cancelled). To complete Horn, he used up only fols. 227r–228r of the new quire, leaving the blank space that Scribe D later filled up (after a column left blank on fol. 228va) with SS. Blaise and Cecilia. The latter text needed more parchment, so Scribe D added another quire, this time of six leaves

8

Smithers, Havelok, xiii. Analysis of the work by the flourishers of L was undertaken by Sonia Patterson and Linda Voigts. Portions of their results are reported in Allen, King Horn, 103–04 n. 16; and Liszka, “MS Laud Misc. 108,” 79, 89–91. See also O. S. Pickering, ed. The South English Ministry and Passion, ed. from St. John’s College, Cambridge, MS B.6, Middle English Texts, 16 (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1984), 8–9. The study of the flourishers, largely by Patterson (as confirmed in conversation with Prof. Voigts), has not been published. My own unsystematic examination of the flourished initials leads me to suspect that Patterson’s conclusions—as reported at secondhand by Liszka—are accurate. Compare, for example, the ornamentation style of the following initials: E (fol. 63r, in quire 6, fig. 6), H (fol. 64v, in quire 6), S (fol. 104r, in quire 10), H (fol. 206r, in quire 19), and H (fol. 220r, in quire 20). For a detailed discussion of the activities of the flourishers, see Murray J. Evans, Chapter Three in this volume. 10 On the two sets of numeration, see Robinson, “Oxford: Bodleian Library MS. Laud misc 108,” 225–26; Allen, King Horn, 11; and Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 30–31 nn. 10–12. I am grateful to Prof. Bell for providing me with a pre-publication copy of this article. 9

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(quire 22). On these folios he finished St. Cecilia, added St. Alexis (in a new six-line meter), and then inscribed Somer Soneday on both sides of the last leaf (fig. 10).11 That Scribe D inserted the SEL legends of Blaise and Cecilia demonstrates his active engagement with the earlier portion of the manuscript.12 Scribe D recognized the book’s basic nature as a sanctorale. It is possible, therefore, that the second compilation described above represents two steps: (a) quires 19–21 (containing the two romances and blank space) were attached to the SEL at the point of Scribe C’s activity; and (b) quire 22 was later attached by Scribe D as part of his process of continuation and enumeration. One more physical detail provides a clue as to when the whole book was put together. The final flyleaf (fol. 238) was added by wrapping vellum around quire 22 and cropping it before fol. 232r so that now only a strip remains there (fig. 11).13 The quire was then sewn to the preceding quires. So to create this protective back cover—a sign of completion—a compiler (most likely Scribe D) simultaneously attached the final quire to the book. Amid this intricate, somewhat indefinite reconstruction of events, two salient facts stand out as relevant to the process that placed Somer Soneday at the end of L: namely, the way in which the manuscript ends twice, once after the SEL collection, and again after the romance collection. After Scribe A completed the SEL texts of Booklets 1–4, he rounded them off with two moralistic poems in six-line stanzas (a new meter), copied in double columns (a new layout)—Sayings of Saint Bernard 14 and Vision of Saint Paul 15—wisdom and warning from the saints that bear on the conduct of one’s daily life. Then Scribe B came

11 Whether fol. 237 was originally the last leaf or the penultimate leaf is a matter of dispute in Somer Soneday criticism. Several have read the poem as cut off and completed on a succeeding, lost leaf, an argument I have supported on stylistic grounds. For a summary of this issue, see Fein, “The Early Thirteen-Line Stanza,” 109. This critical view has not, however, been reflected in analyses of the manuscript’s physical collation, where generally quire 22 is assumed to be complete. 12 See Görlach, Textual Tradition, who calls the work of Scribe D “the SEL appendix” (89). Horstmann included these two legends, labeled “Appendix,” in his L-based edition of the SEL (ESEL, 485–96 [items 73–74]). 13 Smithers, Havelok, xiii. Similarly, a stub remaining after fol. 203v indicates the removal of a previous back cover that existed after The Dispute Between the Body and the Soul. 14 NIMEV, 3310; Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., The Minor Poems of the Vernon Ms., EETS, o.s., 117 (1901; reprint, Millwood, NY: Kraus, 1987), 511–22. Subsequent citations of this text are given by line number from this edition. 15 NIMEV, 3089; Carl Horstmann, ed., “II. Die Vision des h. Paulus,” in “Die Sprüche des h. Bernhard und die Vision des h. Paulus nach Ms. Laud 108,” Archiv

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along after an apparent interval and provided an even more definitive ending on last things, the Dispute.16 The poem continues the visionary mode of St. Paul’s experience in hell, only now with an everyman narrator and a spirited disquisition upon the unsettling fact of death. The witnessing of a corpse on a bier—“Vor sothe I sauȝ a selly syt [wondrous sight], a body on a bere lay” (2)—opens Dispute with the same stark image that will later close Somer Soneday: “ȝeth I say soriere [Next I saw a sorrier man], sikyng ful sare, / A bare body on a bed, a bere ibrouth him by” (131–32). In Dispute, the poor wretch’s soul is doomed to hell, where no saint can pray for him,17 a pointed detail after the SEL. The final scene of demons gruesomely tearing at the doomed sinner and carrying him off demonstrates what will happen to sinners and nonbelievers, but not, reassuringly, to saints or to those who faithfully honor them and the offices of the Church. The second endpoint in L is Somer Soneday, which follows not just the romances but all the preceding accumulated matter. Scribe D constructs a new conclusion after he has appended SS. Blaise and Cecilia and added St. Alexis in a new meter and format. St. Alexis is composed in the six-line stanza and set in the two-column layout (like the earlier Sayings and Vision). Then, in last position, Somer Soneday brings everything to an end by calling for reflection upon the mutable world and one’s inevitable exit from it. Scribe D’s act of providing these addenda illustrates an engaged reader-scribe’s practice of accretive, literate response, a practice that had already been on display in Scribe B’s addendum, Dispute. And the process carries on, however diluted, on fol. 238, where there appear three additional verse responses from two fifteenth-century readers (fig. 11). The practice of concluding a book as if it is to be read as an anthology— and as if a reader might naturally be asked to reflect upon last things as he closes the book—may be seen elsewhere with the inclusion of a poem that is (not coincidentally, I think) one of the closest metrical

für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 52 (1874): 35–38. Subsequent citations of this text are given by line number from this edition. 16 NIMEV, 351; Thomas Wright, ed., The Latin Poems Commonly Attributed to Walter Mapes (1841; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1968), 334–46. Subsequent citations of this text are from this edition. For a detailed discussion of the correspondences among these three poems in L, see J. Justin Brent, Chapter Eight in this volume. 17 This line (unnumbered in Wright’s edition) appears at the base of The Latin Poems, 337. Wright replicates the lines as they appear in L. In John W. Conlee’s edition, Dispute is set in eight-line stanzas; see his Middle English Debate Poetry, 42, line 461.

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analogues to Somer Soneday. This poem is Three Dead Kings—entitled De tribus regibus mortuis by a scribe—an alliterative poem in thirteenline stanzas that establishes the first of three endings in the Audelay manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 302 [ca. 1426]).18 The fifteenth-century Shropshire chaplain and poet John the Blind Audelay is by all signs the compiler of this book, which is mainly an anthology of his own verse. Three Dead Kings is not, however, thought to be one of Audelay’s own compositions; it is, rather, a poem set in his book as meditative adornment, drawn from an older store of verse to which Audelay had access.19 Its placement at the end of MS Douce 302 causes the book to close in reflection of last things, specifically here, with a verbal sign of the Three Dead and the Three Living, icon of mortal encounter with death.20 A concluding line of Three Dead Kings makes the claim that this poem was inscribed on a wall: “on the woȝe [wall] wrytyn þis was” (141). Walls in churches or other well-frequented spaces may in fact have provided a medium for the poem’s distribution, for the motif (accompanied sometimes by verses) is a common visual subject for larger-than-life paintings in medieval English parish churches and private chapels.21 A similar monitory sign was the Wheel of Fortune—or its transmuted form the Wheel of the Ages—a regular subject for such display. It represents a small leap to conjecture that these brilliant alliterative poems might once have been

18

NIMEV, 2677; John the Blind Audelay, Poems and Carols (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 302), ed. Susanna Fein (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2009), 216–22, 321–33. On how this poem operates as part of the meditative closing structure of the anthology, see my “Death and the Colophon in the Audelay Manuscript,” in My Wyl and My Wrytyng: Essays on John the Blind Audelay, ed. Susanna Fein (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2009), 294–306 (300–301). 19 Another glimpse of this older store of verse is offered by the companion poem that precedes Three Dead Kings: the alliterative Paternoster in eleven-line stanzas, evidently derived from the same exemplar (Audelay, Poems and Carols, 216–18, 317–21). On the linkage of these poems, see Ad Putter, “The Language and Metre of Pater Noster and Three Dead Kings,” Review of English Studies, n.s., 55 (2004): 498–526; and Fein, “Death and the Colophon,” 300–301. 20 Susanna Greer Fein, “Life and Death, Reader and Page: Mirrors of Mortality in English Manuscripts,” Mosaic 35 (2002): 69–94 (87–91). 21 Ashby Kinch, “Image, Ideology, and Form: The Middle English Three Dead Kings in Its Iconographic Context,” Chaucer Review 42 (2008): 48–81 (66); Fein, “Life and Death,” 87; and Anthony S. G. Edwards, “Middle English Inscriptional Verse,” in Texts and Their Contexts: Papers from the Early Book Society, ed. John Scattergood and Julia Boffey (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1997), 26–43 (30–32).

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inscribed beside didactic wall paintings22 or that they offered aids for private meditation beside illustrations in manuscripts. The first initial O of Somer Soneday, which is absent in the L copy (“[ ]pon a somer soneday se I þe sun”, fig. 10) could have created an opportunity, in an ornate presentation, to draw Fortune’s wheel at the head of the poem.23 Somer Soneday and Three Dead Kings both treat strikingly familiar, confrontational images beset with moral meaning, and both evoke these images in memorable detail: iconic figures engage in dialogues that are directed, in large part, at a reader-cum-viewer. The medieval practice of adding new material, that is, “fillers,” to blank spaces in existing books (or, in this case, booklets) may lead scholars to relegate the new material to secondary status, because it appears to be extraneous to an “original” purpose. Liszka’s study is illuminating in regards to L because it suggests a scheme of arrangement and filled-in blank spaces that remained relatively open even as the SEL was being copied by a single scribe, with a plan for ordering matter that changed as he worked. Scribe B’s addition of Dispute demonstrates considered judgment in executing an end to the collection. We cannot know who planned this addition. Was it Scribe A, Scribe B himself, or another person who oversaw the production of Booklets 3 and 4? What is evident is that the insertion is not mere filler, but a well-planned ending. The subjects of this poem and of Somer Soneday—the soul’s outcome at moment of death and the ever-mutable world governed by Fortune—are both of the kind that provide com22 Smallwood suggests this possibility in “The Interpretation of Somer Soneday,” 241. Such a painting exists on the quire wall of Rochester Cathedral, where it survived destruction because it was hidden behind a pulpit. Though partially missing, it seems to depict the Formula of Four (www.rochestercathedral.org/virtual-tour/08a.asp). A mural of the seven ages of man covers the north wall of Longthorpe Tower (Northants.); see Elizabeth Sears, The Ages of Man: Medieval Interpretations of the Life Cycle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), fig. 78. On other treatments of the image, see Howard R. Patch, The Goddess Fortuna in Mediaeval Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1927); and Philippa Tristram, Figures of Life and Death in Medieval English Literature (New York: New York University Press, 1976), esp. fig. 19. 23 An example of an illustrated Middle English poem with the Formula of Four occurs in London, British Library, MS Royal 17.B.xvii (ca. 1330–70). Unfortunately, the illustration was not drawn in, but its intended space remains, surrounded by its lyric gloss: “As men may se here propurly & fynde / In a purtreyd figure ymagynde: / [space for illustration] / In whilk figure is a quene stondande / with a whele, foure kinges aboute turnande . . .” (Carl Horstmann, ed., Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and His Followers [London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1895–96], 2:70–71; quoted by Smallwood, “The Interpretation of Somer Soneday,” 239).

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mentary on texts of broader scope and point a moral message directly at a reader. Beyond the copying of Three Dead Kings in the Audelay manuscript, there are other examples of this practice. A good instance is Robert Thornton’s insertion of The Sinner’s Lament between the prose Life of Alexander and the alliterative Morte Arthure. This brief moral song, when put in such a context, elicits contemplation of great men fallen from grace to disgrace.24 It creates a meditative space in London, Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91, one meant perhaps to accompany an illustration that was never executed. And its message cuts to the bone: as an impassioned warning from a damned soul, its rhetoric is meant to move and chasten the individual medieval Christian reader. Somer Soneday is similarly a lyrical event calculated to complement and elicit reflection upon items that have come before it in L. Its opening evokes the aristocratic world of secular romance: on a summer Sunday a narrator rises early with the sun, gets dressed quickly, and voyeuristically tags along behind an elegant hunting party. The participants consist of graceful lords and ladies, accompanied by servants, greyhounds, and other dogs bred for sport, and there is soon a boisterous scene of deer-hunt: Kenettes questede to quelle [bayed for the kill] Al so breme [clearly] as any belle, Þe deer daunceden in þe delle Þat al þe downe denede [resounded]. (10–13)25

While the frightened deer “dance,” the dogs bay in musical harmony, seeking to “quelle” this beautiful prey. It is a scene of sparkling, natural, gaming delight. In courtly ambience and visual display, it is closer to a late fourteenth-century romance setting, such as is found in

24

This poem seems to have had a popular life. It is frequently inserted into manuscripts to provide comment upon surrounding texts. See my discussion and edition of The Sinner’s Lament (NIMEV, 172): Susanna Greer Fein, ed., Moral Love Songs and Laments (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1998), 361–94 (365–71). On the implicit relationship of Alexander and Morte Arthure, a juxtaposed kingship pair following the turn of Fortune’s Wheel, see Phillipa Hardman, “Windows into the Text: Unfilled Spaces in Some Fifteenth-Century English Manuscripts,” in Texts and Their Contexts, 44–70 (67–68). 25 Turville-Petre and Robbins disagree on the reading daunceden in line 12; Robbins instead reads daunteden, ‘subdued’ (Historical Poems, 98). The noise of the scene rings in the surrounding lines, however, which suggests that Turville-Petre is correct to interpret the ambiguous letter as a c rather than a t.

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, than to the more elementally gritty worlds of Havelok and Horn. But this scene of regal humanity in self-assured dominance over nature is soon revealed to be illusory. Fortune governs all living creatures. The narrator comes to a stream, discovers a boat, crosses over—“So passede I þe pas priuely to pleye” (27)—and suddenly finds himself witnessing the game of Lady Fortune, who skillfully spins her enormous wheel with its four kingly riders. The narrator feels directly threatened by this “blisful burde” (57) should he dare reveal her secrets (46–51), but he promises nonetheless to whisper (“roune”; 52) them. Thus does the narrator conspire to share with the reader dark truths about the world’s untrustworthiness. These truths come in the form of those he witnesses on the wheel and their sequenced utterances, in accord with the Formula of Four. The formula is preserved as a set of simple couplets in a Fasciculus morum preaching tag: [Regno:] [Regnavi:] [Sum Sine Regno:] [Regnabo:]

“Kinge i sitte, and loke aboute, To morwen y mai beon wiþoute.” “Wo is me, a kinge ich was; Þis world ich louede bote þat, ilas!” “Nouth longe gon I was ful riche; Now is riche and poure iliche.” “Ich shal beo kinge, þat men shulle seo, When þou, wrecche, ded shalt be.”26

In Somer Soneday the first rider (Regnabo) is a happy aspirant, intending to claim the crown of the rider at the apex. The second rider (Regno) sits in splendor at the highest point, his legs crossed at the knee, wearing a crown and bragging “How I regne wiþ ring, / Richest in ryȝth [most noble in authority]” (98–99). The third one (Regnavi) has lost his “diademe of dyamans” (112), and he complains that he is now “a caytif acast” (121). The fourth and final rider (Sum Sine Regno) 26 NIMEV, 1822; Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Political, Religious, and Love Poems, EETS, o.s., 15 (1866; reprint, Bungay, Suffolk: Richard Clay, 1965), 251. This lyric appears in the fourteenth-century Fasciculus morum amid notes for a Latin sermon on avarice (Siegfried Wenzel, ed. and trans., Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher’s Handbook [University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1989], 332–33). Near it appears another English lyric on fortune: “The lade dame Fortune is both frende and foo. / Of pore hoe maketh riche and ryche of pore also. / Hee [She] turneth woo to wele and wele also to woo. / Ne trust noght to his [her] word, þe whele turneth so.” Both of these lyrics bear notable likenesses—in wording and situation—to Somer Soneday. See too the vivid description of Dame Fortune and her wheel in The Pricke of Conscience, ed. Richard Morris (Berlin: A. Asher, 1863), 36 (lines 1273–86).

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rests beneath the wheel, already become a “bare body in a bed, a bere ibrouth him by,” and drawn “to the deþ wiþ drouping and dare [suffering and grief]” (132–33). The poem (and, with it, L) closes with this succinct, voiceless image of a body dying—or already dead—and ready for the bier. Fortune as an omniscient moral theme is of course pertinent to romances such as Havelok and Horn. Both begin with their heroes as young princes who are cast out of their heritages and must then work their way back to their rightful stations and realms. These are tales of well-born yet unfortunate men who thoroughly earn their eventual happiness, accoutered with crown, kingdom, queen, and loyal subjects. Both are exiled in youth, and, through adventures that circle away from home and back, they avenge dead fathers who were wronged, while they grow in physical strength and consolidate political power. Each romance ends with the hero at the apex of Fortune’s worldly wheel, so to speak. It is thus not difficult to associate the message of Somer Soneday with the royal adventurers Havelok and Horn. Although the romances depict only their ascents, not their eventual falls to death, the fates of their fathers at the beginning of each romance underline the cyclical nature of human lives.27 Moreover, the representation of heroes growing from a vulnerable childhood to a powerful manhood reflects the ages aspect basic to the iconography. The Wheel of Fortune represents, most elementally, the movement of humans through time and the natural cycle of growth and decline. It is intriguing, furthermore, to consider some of the ways in which Somer Soneday provides comment upon the saints’ legends of the South English Legendary (SEL). To begin, there is Lady Fortune’s “wonderful whel” (60). The narrator’s marvelous encounter is a ferly, an instance of romance magic, but what this “wifman wiþ a wonder whel” (34) inflicts is real-world pain and suffering. Her wheel is an instrument of torture, invariably cruel. Thus it belongs in kind with the wheels that tortured St. George, St. Laurence, and most famously, St. Katherine: Þo was þe Aumperur so wroth : þat he was neiȝ i-swowe [insane]. Four ȝweles of Iren he let fullen [had equipped]: with rasores. kene I-nowe,

27 King Birkebeyn is dead by line 402, which is merely sixty lines into the narration of Havelok’s story (Smithers, Havelok, 13–14). The death of King Murray in the other romance occurs at line 60 (Allen, King Horn, 128).

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susanna fein And with ginne [deceit] heom makede tuyrne a-boute : þe tweien on þat on half opward, Þe oþur tweine euene heom a-ȝein [set evenly beside them]: In þat oþur half a-done-ward, Þat, ho-so [whoever] bi-twene were : In none half ne miȝte him wende Þat þe rasores nolden al is [his] flechs : to-drawen and to-rende. (98.221–26)28

In this legend an avenging angel from God prevents the torture on four wheels from taking place: Þis Aungel with a drawe swerd: þe ȝweoles al-to-hev [utterly destroyed], Þat þe peces a-boute flowen : ase corn ȝwane man it sev [when one cuts it], And smot of [down] þis luþere [wicked] men : wel harde to þe grounde; Four þousend þ[er]e weren a-slawe: In a lutel stounde [brief instant]. (98–99.229–32)

After this divine destruction of the wheel along with many wicked men, Katherine lives on to convert the empress and several of the emperor’s minions, all of whom are then martyred. When Katherine then refuses to become the next empress, the emperor has her beheaded, in a moment that becomes blessed because it leads the saint to her spiritual wedding. God welcomes her as spouse, and from her wound flows white milk instead of blood (100.288–91). The shattered wheels in Katherine’s legend become an oblique sign of the inversion of worldly events in a saint’s life. This saint does not mount the allegorical Wheel of Fortune in normal fashion. Her death, when it does eventually occur, binds her to Christ. Saints live their lives in reverse of the normal mortal pattern. In around 1240 William de Brailles, an Oxford-based illustrator, depicted the inverted ways of a saint’s life by means of a stunning psalter illumination of the Wheel of Fortune (fig. 12).29 In this intricately compartmented circular image, Lady Fortune is seated at the center, spinning the wheel, with the Formula of Four depicted at the cardinal points. Reproducing this image, Elizabeth Sears describes the Latin scrolls attached to the four riders: An ascending figure, youthful, says, “I am borne again to the stars.” A seated king announces, “I exalt on high.” A falling figure complains,

28

This and all subsequent references to the L SEL are taken from Horstmann, ESEL, and are given parenthetically by page and line number. For the torture by wheel of St. George, see 295.53–56, and of St. Laurence, 343.100. 29 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 330, no. 4.

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“Reduced, I descend.” At the bottom a recumbent individual, hands clasped, says, “Lowest, I am ground by the wheel.”30

Between each of these riders (who are set in medallions) are drawn three more figures—twelve in all—who play out the Wheel of Life, the progression of each generation from birth to death. This sequence sweeps upward and clockwise from the bottom. Its first member is a swaddled infant held by his mother and greeted by a woman with a scroll: “Incipit rota fortune” (Here begins the Wheel of Fortune). Sears notes that “by showing that man is subject to the whims of fortune from infancy, William de Brailles extended the lesson to encompass the whole of the earthly life.”31 But the meanings embedded in this splendid illumination are not limited to the superimposed wheels of fortune and the ages. Another sense emerges in the upside-down pattern of a saint’s life. De Brailles drew an intermediary third circle between the outermost circle of human life and the innermost wheel-hub, where Lady Fortune propels the spinning movement. This intervening circle depicts the life of a saint—here, St. Theophilus. In this sequence the bishop-saint makes a pact with the devil at the lowest point of his earthly existence (depicted at the base of the wheel), but through repentance and Mary’s intervention, he gains release from this bargain and dies a saintly death (depicted at the apex of the wheel). Thus by showing that a saint’s death is his/her highest point of fulfillment, in contradistinction to the life of ordinary mortals, de Brailles “was able to draw a contrast between the life of the worldly man and the life of a man of God.”32

30 Sears, Ages of Man, 145 and fig. 86. On the motif of the wheel of the ages, see also Mary Dove, The Perfect Age of Man’s Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 67–100; and John A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 45–47, 90–91. Another fine early fourteenth-century English illustration of the Formula of Four on Fortune’s Wheel exists in the Holkham Bible (ca. 1327–40), fol. 1v; see Michelle P. Brown, introduction to The Holkham Bible: A Facsimile (London: The British Library, 2007), 31. 31 Sears, The Ages of Man, 146. 32 Sears, The Ages of Man, 146. Compare the exposition by the author of The Pricke of Conscience: “Haly men thogh[t] þis lyf bot wast [worthless], / Þarfor þair yhernyng til [yearning for] God was mast; / . . . / Þai yherned þe ende of þair lyf days, / . . . / Melius est dies mortis / quam dies nativitatis [The day of death is better than the day of one’s birth]” (in Morris, Pricke, 60, lines 2184–85, 2188, 2190–91).

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The Wheel of Fortune is therefore not merely a figure of mutability in the world, but one of broader scope, encompassing the way mortal lifespans are to be interpreted, that is, within a Christian notion of all souls in time, against a backdrop of eternity. In L, Scribe D appended the SEL martyrologies of Blaise and Cecilia and next, before Somer Soneday, St. Alexis in six-line stanzas. Read in terms of de Brailles’s reverse-cycle for saints, this final choice of legend is fascinating. There may well be a planned linkage between the two last texts, for there are strong suggestions that the scribe yokes them as companions. St. Alexis is the son of a Roman lord named Eufemian, a man known for the great charity he offers to poor men. Bereft of children, he and his wife pray to Jesus for a son. The prayer is answered, St. Alexis is born, but his life takes a willful path modeled so closely on the biblical Jesus that it turns the worldly wishes of his parents inside-out.33 When they select a bride for him, he seals her in a spiritual union (in a manner similar to the preceding Saint Cecilia and her husband Valerian), explaining to his new wife how they are to live as Christ-like virgins: he preched hire wiþ al his myȝth: Of s[i]nne ȝe scholde hauen no plyȝth, Bote kepe hire [your] maydenhod; & of iesu, þat mayde [virgin] clene, In whom was neuere wen [stain] I-sene, ȝe scholde habbe hire mede [your reward]. (61–66)34

St. Alexis then quietly departs from Rome by sea. He dwells seventeen years in self-exile, living as a beggar; meanwhile his father, mother, and wife bewail his absence. The more St. Alexis suffers, the more he thanks Jesus. Eventually, through a miracle of Mary, others recognize St. Alexis’s blessedness, and he is asked to live in a church.

33 The model presented here undoubtedly derives from Jesus’ injunction to observe the seven works of mercy (Matt. 25:31–46), declaring his identification with the beggars and the infirm: “I say to you, as long as you did it not to one of these least ones, neither did you do it to me.” An overview of the Alexis legend, its theme of renunciation, and its French textual history, is provided by Janice M. Pinder, “Transformations of a Theme: Marriage and Sanctity in the Old French St Alexis Poems,” in Shifts and Transpositions in Medieval Narrative: A Festschrift for Dr. Elspeth Kennedy, ed. Karen Pratt (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1994), 71–88. 34 NIMEV, 3156; Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Adam Davy’s 5 Dreams about Edward II. The Life of St. Alexius. Etc., EETS, o.s., 69 (London: N. Trübner and Co., 1878), 17–79 (29). Citations of this text are given by line number from this edition. The L version of St. Alexis appears elsewhere in three other manuscripts, including Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. a.1 (Vernon MS).

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Now publicly recognized as a holy man, St. Alexis feels he must again depart. New sea-wanderings—directed by Jesus (251)—lead him back to Rome, where St. Alexis’s family does not know who he is. He mingles with the beggars and makes an appeal to his father to be brought into his household: Resceyue me into þin halle, þere þine pore men ben alle, & graunte me þe mete [food]! And I schal preye nyȝth & day for þi sone þat is awey, þat Iesu crist him þe gete [restore him to you]. (277–82)

The result is that, at the midpoint of this legend (as told in the L version), St. Alexis lives in disguise in his father’s house, abject, abused by the servants, and gladly serving “Iesu, heuene kyng, / In al þat he can” (305–06). He is the son come home but living solely in imitation of God’s son. Even as he can see the deep grief of his parents and wife, he will not assuage it by revealing himself, choosing instead to exist as an object of charity, as if the son the parents had prayed for can only be realized through physical denials and sacrifices, that is, in constant re-enactments of Christ’s life. After seventeen years of this existence, St. Alexis wills his own death, or—as the hagiographer terms it—his wending to “Iesu crist, godes sone”: At þe seuenteþe ȝeres ende, he wiste he scholde hennes wende, þoru grace of þe holy gast, To Iesu crist, godes sone, In blisse of heuene ay forto wone [dwell], In þe lif þat euere schal last. (325–30)35

Alexis’s identity becomes public only when he is dead. At the moment of death, which occurs on a Sunday (338), a heavenly voice calls out and draws many people and three dignitaries (two emperors and the pope) to Eufemian’s “In” (388), thus analogizing the saint’s death to Christ’s Nativity, which attracted shepherds and Magi. In the inverted logic of a saint’s life, dying betokens birth/rebirth. Alexis’s father then discovers the corpse of the unknown beggar: “he fond him ded whan 35 The number seventeen appears to have significance in the L version of St. Alexis. The poem has 102 six-line stanzas (seventeen times six).

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he com þare, / his face, þer it lay on bere, / As sonne schinede bryȝth” (406–08). Having gone to Jesus in heaven, Alexis’s face shines like the sun, allowing the hagiographer to detonate a confluence of felicitous puns—the sun/God’s son/Eufemian’s son—in this critical scene of discovery.36 Alexis clutches a letter, “a skript” (409), which neither father nor emperor may release from his dead grip, but his hand opens upon a touch from the pope. The letter confirms his identity, and Alexis’s parents and wife lament anew in the presence of the son who willed his own better path to happiness. His mother’s grief-stricken utterance is especially telling: “þou myȝtest han ben a greth lording, / & honured als a kyng, / ȝif it hadde ben þi wille” (511–13). He might have been a king of high repute, but chose to be an anonymous beggar. Thus does St. Alexis invert the normal values of secular family romance: its climactic moment has St. Alexis’s selfhood expressed not as a rejoining with his family and restoration of an earthly position, but as his ultimate success in finding the correct exit: having always been dead to their worldly ways, he is now reunited with them by his own terms—as the “holy body on a bere” (557). For nearly half the legend (343–612), Alexis is a corpse. As St. Alexis moves toward its conclusion, the saint’s body is borne in procession, entombed in gold, and made a relic. All of this action occurs on a Sunday, the day on which he dies, until his body has lain in state for a week, and then his bones are entombed on the following Sunday. The author offers a closing prayer: Nou Iesu crist þoru þe preyer of þat cors seint I tolde ȝou her, ȝif þi wille it be, Graunte vs alle god endyng, And in heuene a wonyng! Amen, par charite. (607–12)

36 Note the curious likeness here to Havelok and Horn, who are each singular in how they illuminate their surroundings. See, for example, Horn, lines 10–15, 391–90, on the hero’s fairness (Allen, King Horn, 124, 154), and Havelok, lines 589–93, on the miraculous light that emanates like a “sunne-bem” from his royal mouth (Smithers, Havelok, 20). On the hagiographical valence of light imagery in Havelok, see, especially, Bell, “Resituating Romance,” 44–46. It is interesting to consider that Havelok might model Christ-like heroism in ways similar to St. Alexis; as Bell notes, “the journey in Havelok is . . . related to the saints’ quests for heavenly perfection found only through torment, affliction, and humility” (43). On Horn’s shining body, see Kimberly K. Bell, Chapter Twelve in this volume.

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The goal for all is heaven, to dwell with Jesus, as St. Alexis’s exemplary tale instructs. St. Alexis displays the counter-clockwise motion of a saintly life on the Wheel of Fortune. While parents, wife, and friends observe the normal desires of human society—the joys of birth and marriage, the sorrows of privation and death—the saint sees everything through a reverse lens and proves his sanctity by doing so. His compass is set by the example of Jesus, God’s son, in this hagiographic romance that redefines filial duty. Eufemian is a good man of charity, whose ordinary desire for a son is ultimately selfish and misdirected. His true sons are the beggars he serves, who are the embodiment of Christ himself. The filial theme is emphasized in the many evocations of “Iesu crist, godes sone,” in the many ironies of disguise, as well as in the occasional pun. One of these in the L version occurs when Eufemian admits St. Alexis-as-beggar to his house: “he grantede him to cloþe & fede, / & bad his men he scholde him lede / To his hous as sone” (292–94, emphasis added). The Vernon MS version reads “al sone” [quickly]. In L, the phrase conveys a clear pun on “son.” The deathbed scene of father viewing his unknown son, whose face shines like the sun, is another such moment. And the denouement of a ritualistic week in honor of the miracle, from Sunday to Sunday, further underlines the legend’s holy theme of filial sacrifice. What has not been recognized in the scholarly literature on Somer Soneday is how St. Alexis provides a revelatory context for the alliterative poem. That they are sequenced as companions becomes an inescapable deduction. The alliterative poem begins “[O]pon a somer soneday se I þe sonne.” This line is cryptic in the sense that it may allude to Christ in the sun that rises on the Sabbath, while it twice embeds the word sone in its music. As I have discussed elsewhere, Somer Soneday is unusual among lyrics like it in the alliterative tradition because it fails to moralize its narrative overtly or to preach something about God.37 Instead, this opening introduces a nexus of circular, cyclical imagery—the sun, the course of the day, the week, the seasons, perhaps even the opening initial O—that is to be realized materially in Fortune’s Wheel.38 What has not been noted before now 37

Fein, “The Early Thirteen-Line Stanza,” 119–20. In the opening of his refrain lyric That now is hay some-tyme was grase (NIMEV, 3531), John Lydgate similarly uses the sun as a figure for mutability: “Ther is full lytell sikernes / Here in this worlde but transmutacion, / The sonne by þe morowe 38

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is that this first line also hearkens backward, toward the preceding St. Alexis, legend of a saintly son.39 From the Sunday death and Sunday entombment of St. Alexis’s holy body, the reader transitions to a secular summer Sunday, finds refreshment in a scene of sportsmanship, and then encounters the allegorical sign of his/her own worldliness. In the context of L as a whole, the ending supplied by Scribe D appears to be as calculated and appropriate to a sanctorale as was the ending supplied by Scribes A and B. In addressing the question of how Somer Soneday ends at the bottom of the last verso of L, I have previously argued that the final stanzas of the poem are lost. After undertaking this new analysis of the lyric in its manuscript context, I feel that the question of completeness deserves a fresh review of the evidence. Is the text of Somer Soneday whole? I earlier made the case for loss of text based on analogies of Somer Soneday to other poems that match it in formal terms: the circular structure of most chansons d’aventure; the alliterative tradition of ending poems like this with echoes of the first line; the possibly numerical patterning of the poem (with crowned kingship at the one-hundredth line); and the metrical oddity of its “final” five-line stanza. In this depiction of the Formula of Four, Sum Sine Regno does not speak, as he does in other lyric representations of the formula. It seems that his speech should come next, and that after the four traditional speeches, there would have been an epilogue to conclude the adventure and moralize upon Fortune and God.

gyvyth bryghtnes, / But towardes eve his bemes gon downe, / And thus all thynge, be revolucion, / Nowe ryche, now pore, now haut, now base, / By resemblaunce to myn opynyon, / That now is heye some tyme was grase” (lines 1–8; Henry Noble MacCracken, ed., The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, EETS, o.s., 192 [London: Oxford University Press, 1934], 809–13 [809]). Lydgate depicts the Wheel of Fortune at lines 35–36 of this lyric. 39 It is notable that the Formula of Four appears in a sermon on voluntary poverty in the fourteenth-century Fasciculus morum, thus offering a contemporary analogue to this linkage of a beggar saint (by Christ’s example) to the image of Fortune’s wheel: “Behold then our king [i.e., Christ], as if he were demoted and deposed from his kingdom and become a beggar in a foreign country. Thus there was fulfilled in him the saying of the king who sits on a chair on the wheel of Fortune, written in a circle around him as follows: I rule, I shall rule, I once ruled, I am without kingdom [in the Latin original: Regno, regnabo, regnavi, sum sine regno], as if Christ were saying: Though in heaven I have ruled from all time, and continue and shall do so in the future, bodily here on earth however I am without kingdom, for ‘my kingdom is not of this world’ ” (Wenzel, Fasciculus Morum, 387).

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It may be, however, that reading Somer Soneday too strictly within its literary traditions—that is, alliterative poetry and lyrics on fortune— to determine its completeness renders too partial a judgment. Its interpretation must also be balanced with a clear understanding of its role and placement in the manuscript. Nothing in the codicological assessments of L to date—at least nothing of which I am aware—suggests any physical evidence for a lost leaf after fol. 237. The ending of Somer Soneday on death, that is, the body-on-a-bier image, expresses the bleak finality of mortal existence, an apt closure for both poem and manuscript. Moreover, as I have noted, it memorably matches the dominant motif of the Dispute, the last text in the compilation of Booklets 1–4. Somer Soneday’s opening evocations of the sun/Son and Sunday provide, moreover, a fascinating modulation of theme from the preceding St. Alexis, making the linkage of these two texts seem more than mere coincidence. To these correspondences may be added a few more, which are highly intriguing, and which cumulatively begin to make Somer Soneday seem a remarkably apt, aesthetic rounding-off of the whole manuscript—almost, indeed, a poem composed for the occasion. Scribe D’s sensitivities to the SEL are evident in his appendage of SS. Blaise and Cecilia; here he exhibits the discriminating alertness of an avid collector and consumer of saints’ lives. Furthermore, his sensitivities to the original closure made by Scribe A (Sayings and Vision) are evident in his final insertion of another six-line stanzaic work St. Alexis. An attentive reader will soon see many more provocative correspondences. The climactic portion of Sayings brings one to an ubi sunt recitation—“Wher beþ hue [they] þat by-foren vs were, / Lordes, ledyes, þat hauekes [hawks] bere, / Haden feld & wode?” (121–23)40—that is, to the figure of nostalgic loss that includes tableaus of noble hunting and other signs of human dominance, such as begin the Somer Soneday adventure. And Sayings concludes on the desire to see God’s “sone,” with sound-plays on the consonantal likeness of “sunnes” [sins], “sone,” and “seon”: Marie, moder, houene-quen, Þou canst, and miȝht, and owest to ben Ore help aȝein þe feonde:

40 See, too, Brent’s discussion in Chapter Eight on how the hunt motif becomes an afterlife contrapasso in the eschatological cluster of poems in L.

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Thus does the author of Sayings (L version) evoke Fortune and the world’s mutability, and then he points to the permanence of heaven and the hoped-for sight of the Son’s radiant face. The Vision follows, issuing its warning on the dire tortures of hell as witnessed by St. Paul, guided by St. Michael, but its overarching focus is upon how God graciously grants to damned sinners a respite from pain once a week, that is, on Sunday. This poem opens: Seue dawes [days] aren þat men callez. Þe sonenday is best of alle. Alle þe aungeles habbuz heore pley. Þat beoz in helle pines þike [Those stuck in hell’s pains]. Huy restes hem [They gain relief] þat ilke day. (1–6, emphasis added)

The action of the poem concludes with a general appeal—from Paul, Michael, and a thousand angels—to Jesus for the respite. The prayer is answered: “He yaf heom remedie with oute soruwe. / Fram Saturday non to þe monen [Monday] moruwe. / For to beon on bounde [unbound]” (223–25). Gratitude bursts forth to Jesus “Marie sone” (230). And this L version of Vision ends, like Sayings, with the fervent hope of seeing the face of Jesus in heaven (253–58). It could be coincidental that a text about the sanctified significance of Sunday—as the day of grace for sinners—occurs in the same manuscript as Somer Soneday. But what, then, besides a sense of planning could account for the remarkable counter-effect evident in the way that the next poem, Dispute, begins? The first line of Dispute conjures a wintery night: “Als I lay in a winteris nyt, in a droukening bifor the day.” In stark contrast, Somer Soneday—the closure-counterpart to Dispute in the second compilation—brings winter to summer, darkness to light, and dying to promised resurrection: “[O]pon a somer soneday se I þe sonne / Early risinde in þe est ende.” In the entire context of Sayings, Vision, Dispute, and St. Alexis—that is, all the non-SEL and non-romance addenda—one can hardly help but hear anticipation in this opening line of Somer Soneday. It echoes with desire for the hoped-for heavenly vision of the face of Jesus, Son of God. Gathering together the results of this study, then, I am led to conclude that the successive additions by a quartet of scribes over a period of a hundred years, with acts of compilation that significantly enlarged

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the book at least two times, were, in L, always deeply engaged with the already-existing contents and always judiciously integrated into the overall shape of the book. Indeed, the remarkable correspondences between the endings of Compilation 1 and Compilation 2 suggest that a strongly sympathetic response to the book’s design as anthology remained alive even a century after Scribe A copied the legends of the SEL. The annexation of Havelok and Horn inverts the wheels of life and fortune exhibited everywhere in the saints’ lives, where kingship is hardly without meaning (indeed, several saints are kings, and many more kings, emperors, and governors are persecutors).41 The linkages between Somer Soneday and the preceding works in six-line stanzas, and Dispute (the ending by Scribe B), are, I must say, rather surprising finds. One almost wants to posit that Scribe D was copying in his Anglicana hand texts somehow damaged in the original manuscript and needing to be replaced, though this hypothesis would be contradicted by the best date estimate for Somer Soneday (that is, post-1350). Or else to posit, more surprisingly, that someone composed the pairing of St. Alexis and Somer Soneday as a late fourteenth-century conclusion to L. Once these texts were set in place, a temporale of Christ’s life and mission spans the manuscript. There are, according to G. V. Smithers’s assessment (backed up by A. I. Doyle and Malcolm Parkes), two final hands in L, Scribes E and F, both from the fifteenth century. Though their activity on the back flyleaf (fol. 238r–v) cannot be counted as part of the manuscript proper, they do demonstrate an engagement with content that is similar to, if less sophisticated than, the activities of Scribes B and D. Opposite to Somer Soneday, on fol. 238r, appear four Bible-based paradoxes, rhymed as verse: By holde merueylis [marvels] a mayde ys moder / Isaye vij Here sone her fader ys & broder / Ysaye ix Lyfe fawȝt with deþe & deþ is slayne / Osee [Hosea] xiij Most hiȝ was lowe he styȝe [rose] agayne / Philipenses ij42

41 Bell, “Resituating Romance,” pursues a similar argument when she demonstrates how certain hagiographical elements in Havelok align it with the SEL contents of L. 42 NIMEV, 496. The transcriptions of the lyrics on fol. 238 are my own. Compare A. I. Doyle, as reported in Smithers, Havelok, xii; Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 241; and Allen, King Horn, 8.

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The reader who wrote this snippet into the book records the prophecies and paradoxes at the core of Christian doctrine, and the last one implicitly glosses the alliterative Fortune poem: Christ, who was most high, was most low in the world (like a saint), yet he rose again. Sum Sine Regno is dead, but Jesus is risen, offering new meaning to the wheel’s movements: life fought with death, and death is slain. On the backside of fol. 238, the outer cover, there are two more verse comments, now by Scribe F (fig. 11). He too reacts to Somer Soneday, with his responses tending to be aphoristic. The first lyric consists of eight pentameter lines that rhyme ababbbcc. Its subject is a commonplace—how one must not trust in the world—and the first four lines implicitly figure Fortune’s Wheel: [A]llas diceyte þat in truste ys nowe Duble as fortune turnyng as a balle [B]rotylle at assay [when tested] lyke þe rotyn bowe Who trustith to truste ys redy for to falle. (1–4)43

And the second lyric is a set of proverbs on daily life, four in all, each a rhymed couplet. The last of these proverbs is about fortune: Better ys to suffre and fortune abide [T]han hastyly falle & soþenly slyde. (7–8)44

43 NIMEV, 145; Robbins, Secular Lyrics, 100–101 (no. 108). While Robbins claims that the three lyrics on fol. 238r–v are written by the same hand (262), Smithers’s list of contents distinguishes the hand appearing on the recto from the hand copying the verses found on the verso (Havelok, xii). 44 NIMEV, 477. Its first proverb, “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame leste þou be founde in þe same” (lines 1–2), occurs embedded in “Proverbs of Good Counsel,” lines 17–18 (NIMEV, 432; Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., Queene Elizabethes Achademy, EETS, e.s., 8 [London: N. Trübner and Co., 1869], 68–69). The proverb on fortune (lines 7–8, quoted here) appears elsewhere. It is embedded in a lyric of “good advice” (NIMEV, 4137): “Better yt ys suffre, & fortune to abyde, / Than hastely to clyme, & sodeynly to slyde” (lines 9–10); Roman Dyboski, ed., Songs, Carols, and Other Miscellaneous Poems, from the Balliol MS. 354, Richard Hill’s Commonplace-Book, EETS, e.s., 101 (1908; reprint, Millwood, N.Y.: Kraus Reprint, 1975), 139 n. 109. It there follows a couplet on Fortune’s Wheel: “Fortune ys varyant, ay tornyng her whele, / He ys wyse þat ys ware or he harm fele” (lines 7–8). The proverb is also found as marginalia in a late sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century hand: “Better it is fortoun to abyd / Than hastilie to clim and sudenly to slyd” (see John Barbour, The Buik of Alexander, ed. R. L. Graeme Ritchie, STS, n.s., 17 [Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1925], 1:xviii).

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This couplet constitutes the “last word” in L. As a response to Somer Soneday, and to Somer Soneday’s response to the rest of the contents, its succinct brevity captures the sufferance of saints who abide fortune, the sudden falls of those who aspire to take on the world, and the wisdom for everyday life that this book offers to the medieval reader.

EPILOGUE: OXFORD, BODLEIAN LIBRARY, MS LAUD MISC. 108 AND OTHER ENGLISH MANUSCRIPTS A. S. G. Edwards There is some value in trying, however briefly, to situate Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108 (L) in the wider context of the emerging English manuscript culture of the later thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries. To attempt to do so is not without considerable problems: we lack any very precise sense of L’s dating or its site (or possibly sites) of production or whether any deliberate compilational principles obtained in its assemblage.1 Any comments about L’s historical significance are inevitably constrained by the uncertainties that surround these questions. But some tentative observations seem possible. As it stands,2 L is the earliest surviving substantial collection of Middle English verse.3 Occasional bi- or tri-lingual collections of materials, contemporaneous or (possibly) slightly earlier than L do survive that include substantial chunks of Middle English verse. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86, for example, contains a sequence of twentytwo English poems (fols. 119–206), including the Life of St. Eustace, the Sayings of St. Bernard, the Proverbs of Hending, Dame Sirith, the Dispute Between the Body and the Soul and various religious lyrics. This manuscript has been dated to between 1272–82 and seems westerly, likely Worcester, in origin. Oxford, Jesus College, MS 29, part II, has another sequence (fols. 144–95), almost wholly in Middle English verse, mainly lyrics but including the Poema Morale and the Owl and the Nightingale. It dates from the later thirteenth century and is also westerly in origin, probably Gloucestershire or Herefordshire. To these can be added Oxford, Bodleian Library, Add. E.6 (R), a roll containing the Sayings of St. Bernard, The Fifteen Signs of Judgement,

1

On these questions, see Introduction, Chapters One through Four, and Chapter Thirteen in this volume. 2 The qualification here is that L lacks a possibly substantial opening section. 3 For information on early Middle English verse manuscripts, I am reliant on Margaret Laing, Catalogue of Sources for a Linguistic Atlas of Early Medieval English (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1993).

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and a verse exposition of the Lord’s Prayer; it dates probably from the late thirteenth century and cannot be localized. In contrast to these fairly modest assemblages of what are generally fairly short poems, L provides the most substantial early indication of the emergent status of the vernacular, at least in regions most distant from Anglo-Norman culture.4 Another distinctive feature of L is its emphasis on narrative, both religious and secular. Once again, there are few manuscripts that seem comparable with it in terms of size and content. One fragmentary manuscript from the same period as L is worth noting since it does hint at related forms of compilation. Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg. IV 27 (2) combines romance texts, King Horn and parts of Floris and Blauncheflour, with part of a saint’s legend, the Assumption of Our Lady. MS Gg. IV 27 (2) is localizable dialectally to West Berkshire. These seem to be the only early monolingual Middle English compilations that survive.5 This is not a large haul, and offers little in the way of parallels to L in size and subject matter. The paucity of this other material emphasizes the distinctiveness of L among early Middle English verse manuscripts in its conjunction of an extensive early South English Legendary (SEL) collection with two complete romances.6 Indeed, it is the only manuscript to combine the SEL with romances apart from the later fourteenth-century Vernon manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, Eng. poet. a.1).7 4 For a recent general overview of vernacular culture in the early Middle English period see sections I and II of the chapter on “Vernacular literature and its readership,” by Tony Hunt, Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain: Volume II: 1100–1400, ed. Nigel Morgan and Rodney M. Thomson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 367–90. 5 Other early manuscripts that contain single works might be noted: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Junius 1 (the Ormulum); the Edinburgh, Royal College of Physicians, MS of Cursor Mundi; and the two manuscripts of Layamon’s Brut, London, British Museum, MS Cotton Caligula A.ix, part I, and London, British Museum, MS Cotton Otho C.xiii. 6 It is worth noting two manuscripts not discussed above. Cambridge, King’s College, MS 13 contains the unique copy of William of Palerne together with the SEL, but these works occur in unrelated manuscripts only subsequently conjoined in their modern collocation. Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 622 has been sometimes held to include part of the SEL together with Titus and Vespasian and Kyng Alisaunder (see Guddat-Figge, Catalogue, 285–86); but this is incorrect; see Görlach, Textual Tradition, 28. 7 On the Vernon romances see A. S. G. Edwards, “The Contexts of the Vernon Romances,” in Essays on the Vernon Manuscript, ed. Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 1990), 159–171.

epilogue

301

In this respect L embodies a range of compilational interests that, to some degree, anticipates tendencies that become more pronounced a little later in the fourteenth century. The Auchinleck manuscript, Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, MS Adv. 19.2.1, similarly combines booklets of religious verse, including saints’ lives, with secular romance narratives. The difference is, of course, that in L it is the saints’ lives that predominate, whereas in Auchinleck, it is romances. This difference very likely reflects temporal or geographical factors. Auchinleck was produced in London in the 1330s or 1340s and seems to indicate a pronounced metropolitan demand for romance translations from Anglo-Norman. But, for all their differences in content and emphasis, both Auchinleck and L share a crucial formal element: they are both entirely written in English verse. L can be seen, then, as perhaps the earliest harbinger of what was to become the emergent vernacular literary culture that developed over the course of the fourteenth century, a cultural evolution that culminated in the remarkable efflorescence of so-called “Ricardian” poetry. L is, of course, very different from the sophisticated, often metropolitan, literary culture than had emerged in England by the last quarter of the fourteenth century. It is wholly provincial in its derivations. And by the end of the century the verse it contained already seemed rather provincial and old fashioned to the urban reader.8 But a contemporary reader finds its verse lively and its social and political concerns relevant. L’s historical significance is clear, as is its general neglect, which this volume does much to repair.

8

Of the twenty-four major SEL manuscripts (apart from L) listed by Görlach (Textual Tradition, 73–106) none can be linguistically associated with the London area. Only three of these manuscripts are dated clearly to the fifteenth century: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 779, Cambridge, University Library, MS Add. 3039, and Oxford, Winchester College, MS 33A. Several others are dated to ca. 1400 or possibly slightly later: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 463; Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS McClean 128; London, Lambeth Palace, MS 223; St John’s College, MS Cambridge 228; London, British Library, MS Cotton Julius D.ix; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Add. C.38 and the various fragments of one manuscript now Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Add. C.220, and MSS London, British Library, Add. 10301 and Add. 10626. But palaeographical criteria on their own do not permit of much precision for dating. All the manuscripts of Havelok and Horn are, of course, thirteenth or fourteenth century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY The following list of primary and secondary works cited includes manuscript descriptions and library catalogues. Those sources that include a description of L or a discussion of its physical features are noted with an asterisk. Primary Sources Ælfric of Eynsham. Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. Edited by W. W. Skeat. Vol. 2. EETS, o.s., 114. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. Allen, Rosamund, ed. “King Horn”: An Edition Based on Cambridge University MS Gg.4.27(2). New York: Garland, 1984.* Audelay, John the Blind. Poems and Carols (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 302). Edited by Susanna Fein. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2009. Baldwin, Elizabeth, Lawrence M. Clopper, and David Mills, eds. Cheshire, Including Chester. Toronto: The British Library and the University of Toronto Press, 2007. Barbour, John. The Buik of Alexander. Edited by R. L. Graeme Ritchie. Vol. 1. STS, n.s., 17. Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1925. Baugh, Nita Scudder and John Northwood, eds., A Worcestershire Miscellany. Philadelphia, PA: Bryn Mawr College, 1956. Bede. Baedae Opera Historica. Translated by J. E. King. Vol. 1. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962. Bell, Alexander, ed. Le lai d’Haveloc and Gaimar’s Haveloc Episode. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925. Benson, Larry D., gen. ed. The Riverside Chaucer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987. Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam. 5th ed. Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1977. Boulton, Maureen, ed. Les Enfaunces de Jesu Crist. London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1985. ——, ed. The Old French “Evangile de l’Enfance.” Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1984. Brandes, H., ed. Visio S. Pauli: ein Beitrag zur Visionslitteratur mit einem Deutschen und zwei lateinischen Texten. Halle: Niemeyer, 1885. Brown, Beatrice Daw, ed. The Southern Passion. EETS, o.s., 169. London: Oxford University Press, 1927. Brown, Carleton, ed. English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953. ——, ed. Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939. ——, ed. “Somer Soneday.” In Studies in English Philology: A Miscellany in Honor of Frederick Klaeber, edited by Kemp Malone and Martin B. Ruud, 362–74. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1929. Brown, Carleton, and G. V. Smithers, eds. Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century. 2nd ed., rev. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952. Calendar of Letter Books of the City of London A–L. 11 vols. Edited by R. R. Sharpe. London: John Edward Francis, 1899–1912. Calendar of Plea and Memoranda Rolls 1324–1482. 6 vols. Edited by A. H. Thomas and P. E. Jones. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924–61. Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London, 1258–1688. 2 vols. Edited by R. R. Sharpe. London: Corporation of the City of London, 1889–90.

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INDEX OF MANUSCRIPTS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 145: 6n, 125n, 202–03, 208, 216 MS 367: 233 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum MS McClean 128: 47n, 301n MS 330, no. 4: 286n, fig. 12 Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College MS 629: 94 Cambridge, King’s College MS 13: 300n Cambridge, St. John’s College MS 28 (B.6): 141, 142 MS 228 (K.5): 301 Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.14.39: 126 MS O.9.34: 78n MS R.3.25: 35n Cambridge, University Library MS Add. 2585 (3): 35n MS Add. 3039: 301n MS Add. 4407 (19): 81 MS Ff.2.38: 60, 83n, 179 MS Gg. IV 27 (2): 4, 42, 75n, 179, 251n, 261, 264, 269n, 271n, 272n, 300 Dublin, Trinity College MS D.57: 83n Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland MS Advocates 19.2.1 (Auchinleck): 83n, 159n, 162, 165n, 170n, 179, 301 MS Advocates 19.3.1 (Heege): 83n

MS Add. 10301: 301n MS Add. 10626: 301n MS Add. 22283: 159n, 170n MS Add. 31042: 140n, 148n MS Add. 36983: 83n MS Add. 37049: 106n, 108–11 passim MS Add. 37787: 159n, 170n MS Add. 39758: 94–95 MS Cotton Caligula A.ix: 300n MS Cotton Julius D.ix: 6n, 47n, 125n, 301n MS Cotton Otho C.xiii: 300n MS Egerton 1993: 35nn, 47n MS Harley 116: 94 MS Harley 665: 109–10 MS Harley 978: 78–79 MS Harley 2252: 108–11 passim MS Harley 2253: 4, 75n, 80n, 83n, 159, 162, 179, 251n, 261, 264, 272n MS Harley 2277: 6n, 45–46, 125–26, 132–33 MS Harley 2388: 160n MS Harley 2399: 140n, 148n MS Harley 3954: 140n, 148n MS Royal 17.B.xvii: 282n MS Royal 17.B.xliii: 180n MS Royal 17.C.xviii: 160n MS Royal 18.A.x: 170n London, Drapers’ Hall MS+140, Wardens’ Accounts 1413–41: 89n MS+403, Wardens’ Accounts 1475–1509: 89n, 92 London, Goldsmiths’ Hall MS 1518, Minute Book A+a: 89n, 93n MS 1520, Minute Book A: 93

Edinburgh, Royal College of Physicians MS (Cursor Mundi): 300n

London, Lambeth Palace Library MS 223: 35n, 47n, 233n, 301n MS 487: 164–65n, 167

Lincoln, Cathedral Library MS 91 (Thornton): 60, 83n, 179, 283

London, Public Records Office MS C 47/34/1: 47n

London, British Library MS Add. 10036: 164n

Manchester, Chetham’s Library MS 8009: 83n

324

index of manuscripts

Oxford, Balliol College MS 354: 109–10, 296n Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Add. C.38: 301n MS Add. C.220: 301n MS Add. E.6 (R): 162, 299–300 MS Ashmole 43: 6n, 125n MS Bodley 779: 35, 119, 301n MS Digby 86: 159n, 162, 164n, 165–66, 168n, 299 MS Digby 102: 170n MS Douce 132 (and 137): 78 MS Douce 302: 164n, 166, 281 MS Douce 368: 233, 234n, 238n MS Eng. poet. a.1 (Vernon): 35, 83n, 159, 162, 164n, 167, 170n, 179–80, 233n, 288n, 291, 300 MS Junius 1: 300n MS Lat. Misc. c. 66: 73n MS Laud Latin 31: 31n MS Laud Latin 86: 31n

MS Laud Misc. 7: 31n MS Laud Misc. 36: 31n MS Laud Misc. 70: 31n MS Laud Misc. 108: see General Index MS Laud Misc. 463: 35n, 301n MS Laud Misc. 590: 31n MS Laud Misc. 622: 300n MS Rawlinson C 894: 160n MS Rawlinson D 328: 111 MS Rawlinson poet 225: 212 Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS Oxford 431: 47n Oxford, Jesus College MS 29: 165, 299 Winchester, Winchester College MS 33: 47n, 301n Windsor, St. George’s Chapel MS E.1.1: 109

GENERAL INDEX “[A]llas diceyte þat in truste ys now” (eight-line stanza), 24, 69, 87–88, 101–08 passim, 296 All Saints’ Day, 24, 62, 68 All Souls’ Day, 24, 69, 191–92 angels, 148–49, 151–52, 168, 176, 201, 219, 230, 286, 294 Apocryphal infancy gospels, 139–40 Attributes of Virgin and Christ, 24, 69, 87–88, 101–04 passim, 295–96 Banna Sanctorum (“A” Prologue), 47, 83–84, 127, 148, 202–03 “Be þou nauȝt to bolde to blame” (moral precepts), 24, 69, 87–88, 101–12 passim “Better ys to suffre and fortune abide” (moral precepts), 24, 105, 296–97 “By holde merueylis a mayde ys moder / Isaye vij,” See Attributes of Virgin and Christ body(ies)/corporeality, 158–76 passim, 178, 184, 186, 193–96, 216–21, 263–66 booklets. See Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: compilation of child(ren): in medieval England, 89–91; as characters 149–55 passim, 237–45; Christ as, 138, 140, 143–47, 149, 155 Christian belief / baptism, 44–45, 202, 211–16, 259 Christian identity / body, 198–200, 220–21, 263–66 compilation masculinity, 95–113 passim decoration. See Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: physical features of dialect, 26, 27, 29–30, 77–80, 82, 300 Dispute Between the Body and the Soul, 16–18, 24, 131, 134, 157–76 passim, 280, 282–83, 293–95 East Anglia, 29–30, 76, 79, 82, 85–86, 236, 266, 269 Edward I (King of England), 36–41 passim, 269–73 11,000 Virgins. See St. Ursula and Companions

Englishness. See England; nationalism England, the English, 15, 27, 38–39, 42–43, 197–99, 235–37, 255, 301 and Christianity, 17–18, 131–32, 135, 150–53, 155, 223–31, 237, 247–48, 250, 252, 254, 256–60 passim, 264–65, 266–67; relation to fantasy, 244–50, 252 and Ireland, 268–73; aligned with vulnerable childhood, 223–24, 232, 237, 242–44, 250. See also nationalism eschatological cluster. See individual titles English, Middle English, 1–4, 14–15, 28, 79–80, 133, 179, 185, 207–12 passim, 224, 238, 245–50, 259, 260, 271 flourishers. See Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: physical features of Fortune (Wheel of ): 16–18, 101–07 passim, 110; 159, 161, 175, 178, 276–97 passim. See also Somer Soneday Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, 135–36, 137, 150, 153, 225 hagiography: as genre, 5, 11–12, 130, 134–36, 176, 177–96 passim, 199, 224–27, 238, 253–56 Havelok the Dane: 4, 9, 14–17, 24, 27, 63, 69, 79–82, 96–101, 111, 155, 183, 185–86, 191–92, 194, 204–05, 213, 218, 239–40, 260; date of, 31–34, 36–41, 48–49; characteristics of minstrel performance in, 71–73, 75–76, 84–86; political themes in, 178, 195, 223–25, 228–30, 236, 250; sanctity in, 11–12, 47, 132, 174–75, 179–81, 230–31, 251–53, 264; hero as signifying body, 187–88, 193, 196, 217, 242–45; and (Wheel of) Fortune, 103, 106–07, 285, 295 history(ies), concepts of, 154–55, 195 Holy Cross, 21, 59, 66, 124, 127–29, 135, 139, 148–49, 150 homosocial relationships. See compilation masculinity identity. See compilation masculinity; nationalism Ignorantia Sacerdotum, 153–54

326

general index

imperialism, English, See King Horn: as promoting English imperialism Infancy of Jesus Christ, 21, 66, 123–24, 137–56 Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda Aurea, 44, 125, 129, 140, 154, 257, 258 King Horn, 2, 3–5 passim, 11–12, 24, 26, 27, 53, 56–57, 63–64, 69, 79, 80–81, 101, 155, 178–79, 182–83, 190–92, 195, 199, 203–07 passim, 213, 218–19, 278, 300; date of, 31–34, 37, 41–42, 46, 48–49; characteristics of minstrel performance in, 74–76, 85–86; hero as signifying body in, 187–88, 193–94, 196; political themes in, 132, 224–25, 260, 268–74; sanctity in, 14–17 passim, 47, 132, 176, 189, 192, 251–53, 262–68; as quintessential Middle English romance, 251–52, 260–62; and (Wheel of) Fortune, 103, 106–07, 174–75, 285, 295 Laud, William (archbishop of Canterbury), 1, 29, 31 Legenda Aurea. See Jacobus de Voragine Lent, 125, 141 Lincoln, 39–40, 41, 86 Lincolnshire, 30, 81 London, 29–30, 42, 88–113 passim, 210–11 manuscripts cited. See Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108; Index of Manuscripts medieval reading practices, 177–78 memento mori motif, 129, 134–35, 158 mercantile masculinity. See compilation masculinity Ministry and Passion, 21, 43–44, 55, 58, 66, 138–39, 141–42, 148 minstrel performance, 71–76, 79, 82–86 nationalism, 2–4, 15, 47, 79, 82, 99, 132–33, 150–55 passim, 197–200, 223–24, 225, 229–30, 236, 244–45, 250, 252, 254, 259–62, 271–74. See also England; English Nativity of Mary and Christ, 141–42 Norfolk, 27, 29–30, 79–82 passim ownership, attestations of, 29–30, 69, 87–95 passim, 104–13 passim. See also Laud, William; Perueys, Henrico

Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 108, 4–6; as anthology (see as whole book); audience of, 8, 17–18, 180, 183, 186, 191; children as audience of, 138, 145, 147, 151, 153, 155; English as audience of, 208, 227, 236–37, 256–57, 260–62, 273–74; mercantile audience of, 88, 100–03, 106–13; mixed audience of, 14–16; compilation of, 8–9, 25–29, 45–46, 53–69 passim, 76–78, 107–26 passim, 134, 140–42, 152–53, 157–58, 203, 252–53, 277–80, 282, 288, 292–97; contents of, 2, 11–12, 21–24, 87, 127–30, 135–36, 157, 159, 162, 165–69, 172–73, 176, 178–96 passim, 199–221 passim, 224, 254, 273; date of, 31–50 passim; historical context of, 299–301; incorrectly called “miscellany”, 1, 31; language of (see English); physical features of, 9–10, 25–30, 37, 41, 46; 51–69; 77–79, 80–81, 88, 101, 118–22, 252–53, 277–78; provenance of, 26–27, 29–30, 47, 76–86, 87–113 passim; as a whole book, 7–8, 17, 52–69 passim, 157–58, 225–26, 252–53, 276–77, 279–83, 294–95 Perneys, Henrico, 29–30. See also Perueys, Henrico Perueys, Henrico (London draper), 47, 87, 87–113 passim. See also ownership, attestation of physical features. See Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: physical features of Prologue (L SEL prologue), 22, 44–46, 57, 67, 124, 127, 135, 203 race discourse, 197–221 passim Rede, John, 29–30, 87–99 passim. See also ownership, attestation of romance(s): as genre, 4–5, 11–12, 63, 65, 75–76, 82–86, 131–32, 174–76, 178–83, 193–96, 199, 204–05, 220, 244–50, 251–52, 260–62, 268–69, 285, 290. See also Havelok the Dane; King Horn Rogationtide, 123, 141 Rotheley, William, 29–30, 47, 87–113 passim. See also ownership, attestation of Roxburgh, 38–40, 41, 268 St. Agatha, 21, 54, 61, 67, 187–88, 190 St. Agnes, 22, 67, 187–88, 256

general index St. Alban, 22, 59, 66, 129, 148, 201, 208, 256 St. Alexis, 24, 64, 69, 118–19, 133–34, 280, 288–95 St. Augustine of Canterbury, 21, 66, 224, 257–59 St. Barnabas, 21, 66, 256 St. Bartholomew, 23, 68, 148, 187, 194–95, 201–02, 208, 214–15, 217–19 St. Blaise, 24, 28, 64, 69, 118–19 St. Brendan the Navigator, 22, 57, 61, 67 St. Brigid of Ireland, 21, 61, 67, 273 St. Cecilia, 24, 28, 64, 69, 118–19 St. Christopher, 23, 67, 201, 208, 219–20 St. Clement, 23, 61, 68 St. Cuthbert, 23, 68, 150–51, 189, 264 St. Dominic, 23, 34–36, 42, 61, 67, 148, 198, 201 St. Dunstan, 21, 66, 130, 149–50, 183, 188–89, 226, 227, 234, 242, 256 St. Edmund of Abingdon, 3, 24, 34–35, 43, 69, 148, 183–87, 188–89, 225, 227, 245 St. Edmund (the King), 11, 23, 68, 180–81, 208, 213, 245, 256, 266–67 St. Edward the Martyr, 22, 66, 236–37, 241–42, 243, 255, 256, 262–63, 266 St. Eustace, 23, 62, 68, 101, 181, 186, 194 St. Fabian, 22, 67, 203 St. Faith, 22, 66, 148, 187–88, 190 St. Francis of Assisi, 22, 66, 129–30, 230 St. George, 23, 68, 208, 285 St. Gregory the Great, 23, 68, 148, 150–51, 224, 257–60, 264 St. Hippolytus, 24, 69 St. James the Great, 66, 68, 148, 208 St. James the Less. See St. Philip St. John the Apostle, 23, 68 St. John the Baptist, 21, 66 St. Julian the Confessor, 22, 61, 67 St. Julian the Hospitaller, 23, 67, 129, 256 St. Katherine (Catherine), 22, 59, 66, 187–90 passim, 285–86 St. Kenelm, 3, 15, 23, 62, 68, 150–51, 180, 208–09, 223–24, 227, 230–50, 263–64 St. Laurence, 23, 62, 68, 187, 192, 285–86 St. Leger, 22, 66 St. Leonard, 24, 69 St. Lucy, 22, 26, 59, 66, 148, 187–88, 190 St. Mark, 23, 68 St. Martin of Tours, 24, 69 St. Mary Magdalene, 14, 24, 69, 180, 202, 204–07, 214–15 St. Matthew, 22, 66, 201 St. Matthias, 23, 68

327

St. Mary of Egypt, 23, 67, 180 St. Michael, 23, 68 St. Michael, Part III: 68, 193 St. Nicholas, 22, 67, 148, 216, 241–42, 248 St. Oswald (the King), 22, 66, 129, 130, 256, 266–68 St. Patrick and his Purgatory, 22, 57, 61, 67, 101, 176, 254, 273 St. Paul, 22, 54, 61, 67, 130, 180 St. Philip and St. James the Less, 23, 68, 214 St. Sebastian, 22, 67 St. Scholastica, 22, 61, 67 St. Sylvester, 23, 54, 62, 68 St. Theophilus, 23, 67, 208, 216 St. Thomas (the Apostle), 23, 62, 68, 214 St. Thomas Becket (St. Thomas of Canterbury), 3, 17, 22, 59–60, 67, 124, 130, 148, 151–53, 184, 195, 208, 209–12, 220, 226-27, 243, 245, 255, 256–57 St. Ursula and Companions (11,000 Virgins), 22, 59, 66, 255 St. Wulfstan, 14–17 passim, 22, 66, 188–89, 197–98, 262 St. Vincent, 22, 54, 67, 183–84, 186, 206, 214 Saints, 101, 107, 135, 183, 191, 195, 208, 253, 262, 264–66, 286; types of, 147–48, 152, 176, 188–90, 192–93, 203, 255, 267 Sanctorale. See South English Legendary. See also individual titles Sayings of St. Bernard, 4, 24, 62, 69, 77, 129–31, 134, 157–59 passim, 160–64, 165–76 passim, 279, 293–94 Simon de Montfort, 35, 42, 79, 198 Somer Soneday, 3–4, 7, 13, 16–18, 24, 69, 101–03; 133–34, 161, 174; 275–97. See also Fortune South English Legendary, 137–43; date of, 27, 31–50 passim; in L, 2, 4–6, 14–15, 21–24, 60–62, 76–77, 117–36 passim, 147–53, 154–55, 178–96 passim, 197–221 passim, 224–27, 235–37, 252, 253–60, 268, 277–80, 300. See also England; English; nationalism. See also individual titles South English Ministry and Passion. See Ministry and Passion temporale. See South English Legendary. See also individual titles territory. See England; race discourse

328

general index

Three Dead Kings (De tribus regibus mortuis), 281–83 ubi sunt motif, 160–63, 293 versification: “[A]llas diceyte þat in truste ys now,” 296; Havelok the Dane, 183; Infancy of Jesus Christ, 123; King Horn, 183, 261; Ministry and Passion, 123; St. Alexis, 119;

Sayings of St. Bernard, 165; South English Legendary, 119, 133; Vision of St. Paul, 165 Vision of St. Paul, 24, 62, 69, 129–31, 134, 157–59 passim, 163, 164–69, 173–76 passim, 279–80, 294 vitae. See individual titles William de Brailles (de Brailes), 78, 286–88

figures

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illustrations

1

Figure 1 Incipit to Havelok the Dane, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 204r

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2

illustrations

Figure 2 Ending of South English Ministry & Passion and a note in Latin, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 10v

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illustrations

3

Figure 3 Incipit to Infancy of Jesus Christ, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 11r

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4

illustrations

Figure 4 Ending of St. Lucy, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 60v

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illustrations

5

Figure 5 Incipit to Prologue of St. Thomas Becket, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 61r

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6

illustrations

Figure 6 Incipit to St. Thomas Becket, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 63r

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7

Figure 7 South English Legendary Prologue (unique), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 88r

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8

illustrations

Figure 8 South English Legendary Prologue (unique), Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 88v

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9

Figure 9 Beginning of King Horn, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 219v

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10

illustrations

Figure 10 Incipit to Somer Soneday, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 237r

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illustrations

11

Figure 11 Two aphoristic poems in fifteenth-century hand and attestation of ownership, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108, fol. 238v

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12

illustrations

Figure 12 William de Brailles, “Wheel of Fortune and the Story of Theophilus,” Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, MS 330, no. 4