Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain (Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe, 34) 9782503593883, 2503593887

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Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain

MEDIEVAL TEXTS AND CULTURES OF NORTHERN EUROPE

General Editor: Rory Naismith, University of Cambridge Editorial Board Elizabeth Boyle, Maynooth University Aisling Byrne, University of Reading Sharon Kinoshita, University of California, Santa Cruz Carolyne Larrington, University of Oxford Erik Niblaeus, University of Cambridge Emily V. Thornbury, Yale University

Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Volume 34

Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain

Edited by

Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN: 978-2-503-59388-3 e-ISBN: 978-2-503-59389-0 DOI: 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.122833 ISSN: 1784-2859 e-ISSN: 2294-8414 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper D/2022/0095/69

Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction: Ideas of Crusading and the Holy Land in Medieval Britain KATHRYN HURLOCK and LAURA J. WHATLEY

Chapter 1. (Visualising) Jerusalem in Early Medieval England MEG BOULTON

Chapter 2. Europe and the Holy Land in the British Branch of the Imago mundi Tradition NATALIA I. PETROVSKAIA

Chapter 3. Remembering and Mythologizing Richard: Translation and the Representation of the Crusader King in Latin and French Accounts of Richard I’s Expedition to the Holy Land MARIANNE AILES

Chapter 4. ‘As You Came from the Holy Land’: Medieval Pilgrimage to Walsingham and its Crusader Contexts ELISA A. FOSTER

Chapter 5. Bodies or Buildings? Visual Translations of Jerusalem and Dynastic Memories in Medieval England LAURA SLATER

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Chapter 6. Family, Faith, and Knights of the Holy Sepulchre in Late and Post-Medieval Wales KATHRYN HURLOCK

Chapter 7. Eleanor de Quincy and Imagined Crusading in the Lambeth Apocalypse (London, Lambeth Palace, MS 209) LAURA J. WHATLEY

Chapter 8. A Royal Crusade Chronicle: Visual Exempla in King Edward IV’s Royal Eracles (London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I) ERIN K. DONOVAN

Chapter 9. Refashioning Henry VIII as a Crusader King: Edward I, Crusading and Ideal Kingship in BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI KATHERINE J. LEWIS

Index

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225 257

List of Illustrations

Figure 1.1, p. 29. Adomnán of Iona, diagram of the Holy Sepulchre and its surroundings, De locis sanctis, ninth century. Vienna, Österreichische National­ bibliothek, Cod. 458, fol. 4v Figure 1.2, p. 30. Plan of crypts at Hexham and Ripon (after Brown, The Arts in Early England, ii: Anglo-Saxon Architecture Figure 1.3, p. 30. A corner of the central chamber of Ripon crypt Figure 4.1, p. 93. Plan of Walsingham Priory with site of the Holy House at ‘A’ Figure 4.2, p. 106. Badge of the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, c.  fourteenth century Figure 4.3, p. 109. Cross Section of the Red Mount Chapel, after an engraving by Edward Edwards in John Britton, The Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain, p. 72 Figure 4.4, p. 109. Ruins of Walsingham Priory with plaque marking the site of the Holy House at left Figure 5.1, p. 116. Exterior, Church of the Holy Sepulchre and St Andrew, Cambridge, c. 1130–1131 Figure 5.2, p. 116. Interior, Anastasis Rotunda, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem Figure 5.3, p. 121. Interior, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton, c. 1108–1122 Figure 5.4, p. 122. Exterior, Chapel of St Mary Magdalene, Ludlow Castle

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Figure 5.5, p. 125. Interior, Chapel of St Mary Magdalene, Ludlow Castle Figure 5.6, p. 125. Interior, Temple Church, London, c. 1158–1161 Figure 5.7, p. 126. Exterior, Temple Church, London, c. 1158–1161 Figure 7.1, p. 174. Virgin and Child with Kneeling Patron, Lambeth Apocalypse, c. 1260–1275. London, Lambeth Palace, MS 209, fol. 48r Figure 7.2, p. 178. Rider on the Red Horse, Lambeth Apocalypse, c. 1260–1275. London, Lambeth Palace, MS 209, fol. 5r Figure 7.3, p. 180. St. Christopher, Lambeth Apocalypse, c. 1260–1275. London, Lambeth Palace MS 209, fol. 40r Figure 7.4a–7.4b, p. 181. Miracles of the Virgin: St. Mercurius Legend, Lambeth Apocalypse, c. 1260–1275. London, Lambeth Palace MS 209, fol. 45v Figure 7.5, p. 183. Miracles of the Virgin: Arming St. George (or St. Mercurius?), Taymouth Hours, second half of the fourteenth century. London, British Library, Yates Thompson 13, fol. 154r Figure 8.1, p. 198. Master of the Getty Froissart, Heraclius Returns the True Cross to Jerusalem, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 16r. Figure 8.2, p. 209. First Assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius, Siege of Damascus, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 280v Figure 8.3, p. 210. Second Assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius, Richard I Disembarks in Palermo, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 450v Figure 8.4, p. 213. Second Assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius, Humiliation of Andronicus, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 420v Figure 8.5, p. 215. Second Master of the Flemish Boethius, Saladin’s Troops Capture King of the Latin Kingdom, Guy of Lusignan, and the True Cross, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 433v Figure 9.1, p. 227. London, British Library, Royal MS 18 B XXVI, fol. 2r

Introduction:

Ideas of Crusading and the Holy Land in Medieval Britain Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley

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rusading and western interaction with the Holy Land is often a contentious topic, not least because modern popular perception of this contact is that it was defined by violence, conquest, and religious persecution. In recent years the idea of the violent clash between Christianity and Islam has been widely appropriated by individuals and groups who seek to use the language of crusading and violence to further their own political ends and, though these ideas area almost always distorted, exaggerated, and based on wilful misunderstanding, they are unfortunately the ones that are dominant in popular discourse.1 The warfare and politics of crusading and the Holy Land is often touched on in modern media outlets and works aimed at a wider popular readership. Examples include Barack Obama’s comments on the crusades at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2015, Philip Jenkins’s The Great and Holy War (2014), or crusading symbols misappropriated by far-right groups since the attacks on the World Trade Center.2 But less is said of the medieval background to our current cultural understanding and memories of, and interactions with, crusading and the Holy Land. The reality, as those who study the crusades know, was different. The crusade movement concurrently formed dynamic international networks and disturbed 1  For contemporary interpretations of the meaning of the crusades, see Hinz and MeyerHamme, eds, Controversial Histories. 2  For the text of President Obama’s speech, see ‘Speech of Barack Obama’, The Obama White House Archive; Jenkins, The Great and Holy War.

Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, tcne 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 1–14 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.129226

2 Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley

geographic, cultural, religious, and social boundaries in the Latin East and western Europe. Because the most immediate zone for cultural and artistic exchange during the crusades was the Holy Land, it had long been the focus of historical, literary, and art historical scholarship examining issues of cultural and visual appropriation, assimilation, and even resistance.3 However, the remapping of Christian territory after the First Crusade (1095–1099), the establishment of transnational corporations (i.e. the military orders), and the reinvigoration of travel between East and West had a profound, yet surprisingly underexplored, bearing on the cultures of Europe. Indeed, much of the interaction between East and West engendered by the crusades led to powerful cultural and intellectual exchanges, social connections, and artistic borrowing. The aim of this volume then is to challenge the assumption that connections between Britain and the Holy Land in the Middle Ages were defined by the violent aspects of the crusades, and focus on the cultural rather than military or political impact of crusading and interaction with the Holy Land — real or virtual — in medieval Britain to encourage a reassessment of our engagement with this sometimes provocative subject. Using overlooked or understudied material, building on recent scholarship, and focusing on the domestic responses to crusading and ideas of the Holy Land, this volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to reveal the contributions that contact with the East made to the medieval British world-view. In particular, it intends to shed new light on the medieval British perspective on ideas such as masculinity and kingship, including elite behaviour; geographical and architectural perception of Jerusalem; sanctity and devotion not only to the Holy Land but also to the act of crusading; and familial or dynastic memories of the Holy Land. By bringing together leading scholars from such disciplines as art history, literary studies, and history, this volume looks anew at the influence of crusading and the Holy Land not simply on the politics, but on the art, architecture, literature, and elite culture of medieval Britain. It aims to provide a wider perspective of the cultural impact of the crusades on medieval Britain. Some of the material presented in this volume has been looked at before, but not in the context of crusading culture, whilst other material has been marginalized or entirely overlooked as a source for understanding the impact of crusading and the Holy Land in medieval Britain. The military, political, and logistical aspects of the medieval relationship between Britain and the Holy Land have been treated comprehen3 

For approaches to cultural and visual exchange during the crusades: Prawer, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem; Gibb, ‘The Influence of Islamic Culture on Medieval Europe’; Seidel, ‘Images of the Crusades in Western Art’; Morris, ‘Picturing the Crusades’.

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sively in scholarship, such as Simon Lloyd’s English Society and the Crusade, 1216–1307, Christopher Tyerman’s England and the Crusades, 1095–1588, Alan MacQuarrie’s Scotland and the Crusades, 1095–1588, Timothy Guard’s Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade: The English Experience in the Fourteenth Century, and Kathryn Hurlock’s Wales and the Crusades, 1095–1291 and Britain, Ireland and the Crusades, c. 1000–1300.4 So too have the military orders in Britain been studied at length, with several monographs and articles produced in recent years by Helen Nicholson, Simon Phillips, and Gregory O’Malley, among others.5 For many aspects of the British crusading experience, these remain the main texts for exploring the relationship between the constituent parts of Britain and the pan-European crusading movement. Christopher Tyerman, for example, examined the local dimensions and domestic contexts of crusading in England, spanning over five centuries of English history.6 Laying out the major themes in the book, he states that it concern[s] the extent to which crusading penetrated the ordinary workings of English life, in political discussions at the highest level, private behavior, the common law, the land market, the organization of armies, social mobility, and the fortunes of individual families and of whole communities.7

Tyerman moreover was interested in royal history. His work is sensitive to the shifting relationship between England’s kings and princes and the crusade movement, considering interactions between the kings of England and the papacy, the military orders, and envoys and rulers from both Europe and the Latin East. Tyerman’s study also included later English evidence related to the crusade movement, extending into the Tudor period and including the suppression of the Hospitallers in the 1580s. In contrast, Simon Lloyd’s significant contribution to the field focused closely on the crusading during the reigns of Henry III (1216–1272) and Edward I (1272–1307), which he believed mark the apogee of English involvement in the Latin East and the 4  Lloyd, English Society; Tyerman, England and the Crusades; McQuarrie, Scotland and the Crusades; Guard, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade; Hurlock, Wales and the Crusades; Hurlock, Britain, Ireland and the Crusades. 5  Nicholson, The Knights Templar on Trial as well as Nicholson’s numerous articles on the subject; Phillips, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England; O’Malley, The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue. 6  See also Tyerman, ‘Some Evidence of English Attitudes to the Crusade in the Thirteenth Century’; Tyerman, ‘The Holy Land and the Crusades of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’. 7  Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 7.

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‘business of the Cross’.8 First, he examined the promotion of the crusades in England, considering the roles played by different agents, the various types of promotional activities, the degree of exposure of various individuals to the crusading call, and the nature of support that was sought.9 He then turned to the nature of response to the crusading call by all factions of English society. The core of Lloyd’s study was centred on Henry III and Edward I’s highly personal responses to the crusade movement and to the history of their own crusading vows and agendas. Notably, there is a growing body of scholarship which moves beyond the political and military to look at the cultural connections between Britain and the Holy Land, and which considers relationships between crusading and the Holy Land and medieval British art and literature. In her 2003 Empire of Magic, for instance, Geraldine Heng traces the genesis of Arthurian romance back to narratives of the First Crusade.10 Dee Dyas’s expansive Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature, 700–1500 is an important reference for understanding medieval British ideas about the Holy Land and includes pioneering discussion of internal pilgrimage.11 Literary responses to crusading and the Holy Land more recently have been well served in a number of articles, and in two major studies. Suzanne Yeager’s 2008 study on Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative highlighted the ways in which crusading changed attitudes to Jerusalem in English writing, while Lee Manion’s Narrating the Crusades (2014) examined the influence of crusading on the literature of England from c. 1300–1604, and of the impact of that literature on English society.12 Similarly, Laura Ashe has written about the relationship between crusading and knighthood in her recent essay ‘The Ideal of Knighthood in English and French Writing, 1100–1230: Crusade, Piety, Chivalry, and Patriotism’.13 Historians of medieval art have considered myriad points of connection between visual culture and the crusade movement across Europe and the Mediterranean. The study of the art and architecture of the Latin Kingdom of 8 

See also Lloyd, ‘Gilbert de Claire, Richard of Cornwall and the Lord Edward’s Crusade’; Lloyd, ‘The Lord Edward’s Crusade’; Lloyd, ‘Political Crusades in England’. 9  Lloyd, English Society, p. 4. 10  Heng, Empire of Magic. 11  Dyas, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature. 12  Yeager, Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative; Manion, Narrating the Crusades. For other textual studies see Elias, ‘The Case of Anger in The Siege of Milan and The King of the Tars’. 13  Ashe, ‘The Ideal of Knighthood in English and French Writing, 1100–1230’. Also treated in Guard, Chivalry, Kingship, and Crusade.

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Jerusalem during the period of the Crusades — examination of crusader castles, crusader church building and rebuilding, and manuscripts and icons produced in crusader workshops in the Latin Kingdom — has long been at the centre of the field.14 Crusader art and architecture, of course, has the powerful distinction of being manufactured within the borders of the crusader states. Art historians also have explored representations of the crusades and crusaders in medieval visual culture, especially found in sculptural decoration and painting (both monumental and in manuscript illumination). Significantly, studies in this area tend to focus on works of art produced in France.15 Art historians likewise have explored the influence of crusade ideology, propaganda, and politics on works of art and architecture that were produced in western Europe but do not necessarily feature overt images of historical crusading or crusaders. These studies often explore the perceived impact of crusading on a single monument or object, and consider not only formal traits but also iconography, subject matter, historical context, and patronage. Adolph Katzenellenbogen pioneered this approach in his study of the Vézelay tympanum as an image of the First Crusade, for example, and Anne Derbes, Don Denny, Carra Ferguson, Maurice Keen, Elizabeth Lapina, Christoph Maier, and Linda Seidel have all suggested significant relationships between works of art produced in western contexts and crusading.16 Until recently, scholarly focus was more on crusading ideals and the formation of French visual culture and identity, largely ignoring or not fully acknowledging England’s physical and spiritual investment in the crusade movement and the Holy Land. One of the most significant contributions on France was Daniel Weiss’s 1998 book Art and Crusade in the Age of Saint Louis, which examined Louis IX’s artistic patronage in the 1250s through the lens of his 14 

There is substantial art historical and archaeological scholarship in this area: Boas, Crusader Archaeology; Boas, Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades; Kühnel, Crusader Art of the Twelfth Century; Folda, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land; Pringle, Secular Buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem; Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. 15  See Kenaan-Kedar and Kedar, ‘The Significance of a Twelfth-Century Sculptural Group’; Brown and Cothren, ‘The Twelfth-Century Crusading Window at the Abbey of Saint-Denis’. 16  Katzenenellenbogen, ‘The Central Tympanum at Vézelay’; Derbes, ‘Crusading Ideology and the Frescoes of S. Maria in Cosmedin’; Derbes, ‘A Crusading Fresco Cycle at the Cathedral of Le Puy’; Denny, ‘A Romanesque Fresco in Auxerre Cathedral’; Ferguson, ‘The Iconography of the Façade of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard’; Keen, ‘The Wilton Diptych’; Lapina, ‘The Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville in the Context of the First Crusade and the Reconquista’; Lapina, ‘La representation de la bataille d’Antioche (1098) sur les peintures murales de Poncé-sur-le-Loir’; Maier, ‘The Bible moralisée and the Crusades’; Seidel, ‘Images of Crusade in Western Art’.

6 Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley

active involvement in crusading and Holy Land politics. Weiss suggested that it was Louis IX’s ultimate desire to visually and symbolically unite the kingdom of France with that of David and Solomon in order to reveal the people of France as the rightful successors to the Jews and thus the Kingdom of God.17 Although Weiss’s book considered a number of case studies, he focused on a single patron with a specific goal in regard to the crusade movement. In this tradition, Harvey Stahl, Alyce Jordan, and Cecelia Gaposchkin also have considered connections between the crusade movement and King Louis’s artistic programmes in Paris, offering important evidence on the Sainte-Chapelle and illuminated manuscript commissions as powerful statements of Louis IX’s crusading devotion.18 Inspired by these studies on Frankish responses to the crusades, there certainly has been an uptick in art historical scholarship on the visual and material culture of crusading in England. Matthew Reeve’s 2006 article, ‘The Painted Chamber at Westminster, Edward I, and the Crusade’, for example, brought forth artistic evidence from England to the study of the visual culture of crusade in western Europe. He closely examined the culture of crusading during the reign of Edward I, and the influence of the crusades on the visual culture and patronage of the English royal court in the closing decades of the thirteenth century.19 Reeve interpreted the mural programme in the Painted Chamber at Westminster Palace as a direct reflection of Edward I’s crusading fervour. This study revealed the important ways in which the English murals participated in a ‘shared visual language of crusader culture in thirteenth-century Europe’.20 In this vein, Laura Whatley’s 2013 article ‘Romance, Crusade, and the Orient in King Henry III of England’s Royal Chambers’ traced the inspiration for wall paintings of Alexander the Great and the Battle of Antioch in Henry’s royal palaces to his crusading vows and literary tastes. Notably, unlike his son Edward, Henry preferred to participate in the crusades virtually, using monumental wall paintings as imaginative landscapes for mental or devotional 17 

Weiss, Art and Crusade in the Age of Saint Louis. See also Strayer, ‘France’. Stahl, Picturing Kingship; Jordan, Visualizing Kingship in the Windows of the SainteChapelle; Gaposchkin, The Making of Saint Louis; Gaposchkin, ‘Louis IX, Crusade and the Promise of Joshua in the Holy Land’. See also Carns, ‘The Cult of Saint Louis and Capetian Interests in the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux’; Hedeman, The Royal Image; Noel and Weiss, eds, The Book of Kings; Weiss, ‘Old Testament Image and the Rise of Crusader Culture in France’. 19  Reeve, ‘Painted Chamber’. On a closely related topic see Reeve, ‘The Former Cycle of the Life of Edward I at the Bishop’s Palace, Lichfield’. 20  Reeve, ‘Painted Chamber’, p. 198. Other important studies include, for example, Dunlop, ‘Masculinity, Crusading and Devotion’, and Glass, Portals, Pilgrimage and Crusade in Western Tuscany, both of which examine Italian material. 18 

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crusading.21 Likewise, John Munns and Debra Higgs Strickland’s essays in The Crusades and Visual Culture (2015) explore important artistic responses to crusading in Britain in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, respectively. Munns proposes important links between the crusades and cross-centred piety in England before 1189, and Strickland boldly categorizes the Westminster Psalter (c. 1200) as a ‘retrospective work of crusading art’ by rethinking the addition of a series of drawings to the manuscript, in particular the well-known image of the knight, in the mid-thirteenth century.22 Across all cultural forms, ideas of crusading and the Holy Land are less studied for Wales and Scotland, a fact reflected in the existing historiography and in the composition of chapters in this current volume. The Welsh material is less widely examined, though there has been an increase in the last decade: poetry and romance cycles translated into Middle Welsh were discussed in Hurlock’s Wales and the Crusades, while Natalia Petrovskaia’s Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient discussed ideas of the East in the context of the Welsh view of the world.23 Scottish and Irish studies are limited, almost entirely, to the late Middle Ages. Bovaird-Abbo’s work on the alliterative romance of Golagros and Gawane, in which King Arthur goes on pilgrimage to the Holy Land, shows that concern over the Ottoman threat in the East was prevalent in Scotland at the start of the sixteenth century and that this reflected James IV’s interest in the crusades; Mainer’s article on the translation of Cleriadus into Scots also made links between the Scottish king and the crusades.24 He also pointed out the lack of textual response to the crusades in general. This volume is timely because several research projects on the western responses to Jerusalem, medieval definitions of Europe, and key texts on the world in vernacular translation have begun in recent years. Such projects have changed the field of crusading studies in western Europe and our understanding of western responses to the crusade movement over the long Middle Ages. It draws on the research of established scholars who have published widely on aspects of crusade culture and the Holy Land in medieval Britain including 21 

Whatley, ‘Romance, Crusade, and the Orient in King Henry III of England’s Royal Chambers’. 22  Munns, ‘The Vision of the Cross and the Crusades in England before 1189’ and Higgs Strickland, ‘Looking Back’. 23  Hurlock, Wales and the Crusades, pp. 38–57; Petrovskaia, Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient. 24  Boviard-Abbo, ‘“Reirdit on ane riche roche beside ane riveir”’; Mainer, ‘Clariodus and the Translation of Dynastic Ideology’.

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some of this volume’s contributors (Marianne Ailes, Kathryn Hurlock, Natalia Petrovskaia, Laura Slater, and Laura Whatley), as well as highlighting the work of newly established scholars in this field. It also introduces work from projects in progress on aspects of this topic, which are at the forefront of current research. Natalia Petrovskaia’s paper draws on the NWO-funded project ‘Defining Europe in Medieval European Discourse’ and the recent Humbolt Foundation project ‘Delw y Byd’; Megan Boulton’s work materializes from the AHRC-funded ‘Imagining Jerusalem c. 1099 to the Present Day’ network; and Laura Slater’s ongoing work on visual responses to Jerusalem stems in part from her contribution to the ERC-funded project ‘SPECTRUM: Visual Translations of Jerusalem’. By drawing on the work of leading scholars, and of prestigiously funded projects, this volume will be able to explore the forefront of scholarship on responses to crusading and the Holy Land and the impact this had in medieval Britain. Including pre-crusading responses to the Holy Land, providing important studies on literary, visual, and historical expressions of crusader devotion, and finishing with discussion of late and post-medieval attitudes to association with the Holy Land and crusading, the chapters in this volume look at how both contacts with the East and factors within Britain changed cultural interpretations of the crusade movement and the Holy Land. They offer important insights into how the crusades and the desire to reclaim Jerusalem pervaded written and visual works of all genres, as people sought to understand the conflict in the Holy Land as well as the political ideology in medieval Europe, and on the creation and emulation of an ideal, as medieval men (almost exclusively) and women tried to fulfil the image of the model crusader or pilgrim by copying or commemorating the noble knight of literature or the pious ancestor of family memory, who made the journey to Jerusalem. Chapter 1 provides a foundational exploration of the representation, commemoration, and actualization of Jerusalem — both the earthly city and its heavenly counterpart — in medieval England before the period of the crusades. Meg Boulton’s essay investigates the influence and expression of cultural exchange(s) between Britain and the Holy Land between the sixth and tenth centuries, exploring material and immaterial visualizations of the Holy Land as presented through the early ecclesiastical texts, art, and architecture of AngloSaxon England. Both the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem were intrinsic parts of the Anglo-Saxon construction of sacred space during and post the conversion period following the Augustinian mission in 597. Drawing on ideas of the spatial, the temporal, the material, and the immaterial, Boulton examines the textual and visual forms of the (re)constructed Jerusalem found in medieval

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England before the crusades, exploring how the imagined spaces and subjects of both earthly and heavenly Jerusalem were made viscerally present for earthbound readers and viewers. Chapters 2 and 3 explore textual responses to the Holy Land and the crusades in Britain. Such textual accounts about the East tell us about how people in Britain understood the Holy Land and the people involved in its most significant events. Natalia Petrovskaia offers a textual study of the Imago mundi and its extended family of later vernacular translations and adaptations, focusing on the British branch of the tradition to explore how the British tradition reflected specific regional understanding of the world. The Imago mundi is one of the most important witnesses of medieval European geographical learning, and the comparative study of its various adaptations and translations and the changes they introduce throws new light on the variation in geographical perception in the differing cultural, linguistic, and political contexts in which translations and adaptations were written. Following this, Marianne Ailes examines the memorialization of an individual crusader, King Richard I, in vernacular and Latin texts in light of the political culture at the time of their composition. She considers the difference between remembering and commemorating, between eyewitness (or declared eyewitness) accounts, and accounts which made no such claim. She understands the representations of Richard in these texts as an example of mythmaking in progress, a process which begins even in the lifetime of Richard himself with the representation of Richard as epic hero in Ambroise’s account. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on cultural patronage and the influence of pilgrimage and crusading in mid-twelfth-century England. Elisa Foster focuses firstly on the foundation of the priory of Walsingham, site of the ‘Holy House’ of the Virgin, in East Anglia in 1147 by Geoffrey Fervaques before his departure on the Second Crusade. She suggests that Walsingham is unusual because it is both an example of a pilgrimage site and a crusader memorial. Walsingham quickly became an important site of devotion for both kings and crusaders after its foundation. Through the establishment of Walsingham Priory, Geoffrey was able to ensure the preservation and maintenance of the Marian site. This allowed Walsingham to become a place of actual pilgrimage and virtual crusade for centuries until its destruction during the Reformation. In the following chapter, Laura Slater closely examines the cultural patronage, crusading activities, and posthumous reputations of Sir Roger de Mowbray (d. 1189) and William de Warenne, third earl of Surrey (c. 1119–1148), and the devotional and political significances of recreated Jerusalem sites in a dynastic and commemorative context. In particular, as these men died in the East, their religious foundations of Byland Abbey, Newburgh Priory, and the Holy Sepulchre Thetford, are con-

10 Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley

sidered to determine the extent to which monumental translations of Jerusalem could fulfil the requirements of dynastic memory in the absence of a physical body. In Chapter 6, Kathryn Hurlock picks up the thread of dynastic crusader memory in Wales. Her essay looks at the ways in which contact with the Holy Land in the later Middle Ages might be remembered after the Reformation. Focusing on the Stradling family in south-east Wales, she considers their pilgrimage activities in the fifteenth century, the commemoration of those activities in the sixteenth century, and what this can tell us about identity — Welsh, Catholic, and gentry — aspirations, and family memory. In particular, it considers the association of the family with the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, and their desire to foster and promote links with a crusading past at a time when highlighting such connections made people a target for criticism. In Chapter 7, Laura J. Whatley proposes the ways in which dynastic crusade ambitions and a desire to participate in the crusade movement influenced the manuscript patronage and readership of noble women in thirteenth-century Britain. Her essay proposes a crusade context for the Lambeth Apocalypse, made between 1260–1275 for a female patron, mostly likely Eleanor de Quincy. This chapter seeks to understand the relationship between the illuminated Apocalypse, a series of illuminations added to the manuscript after its initial production, and Eleanor de Quincy’s devotion to crusading. Indeed, it considers the ways in which crusade ideology could be mapped onto the visual drama and salvific promise of the illuminated Apocalypse, and sheds new light on the English desire to possess the holy city of Jerusalem even if only virtually or spiritually through the illuminations. The final two chapters place sharp focus on crusading and royalty in England. In Chapter 8, Erin Donovan considers the Livre de Eracles manuscript made for King Edward IV in Bruges c. 1480 and the miniatures that accompany the crusader text. The Eracles was a revival of William of Tyre’s Latin crusade chronicle which re-envisioned the crusading past to suit a fifteenth-century audience. Her chapter explores how King Edward’s copy differs from the Burgundian Eracles tradition as it was produced with royal readership in mind. Donovan suggests that images of crusading and noble crusaders were used to reflect the thinking on kingship seen in such works as the ‘Mirrors of Princes’. In Chapter 9, Katherine J. Lewis explores the significance of King Edward I’s inclusion within the manuscript translation of parts of Walter of Guisborough’s chronicle, intended for King Henry VIII. This work portrays Kind Edward’s heroism and chivalric qualities, both in relation to earlier narrative depictions of his crusade, and to the political and cultural context within which it was created.

Introduction

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Lewis notes that Edward I’s crusade of 1270–1272 has rarely been the subject of detailed discussion, either in scholarship of his reign, or in scholarship of the crusades. Yet, as Michael Prestwich states, ‘Edward undoubtedly enhanced his reputation by taking part in the crusade’. Certainly, as Lewis’s essay suggests, Edward’s status as a crusader and his crusading exploits were of great interest both to contemporary chroniclers, and to those writing in later centuries. Indeed, it would seem that Edward’s crusading exploits in particular were being used to define kingship as late as the sixteenth century. Instead of allowing the cultural impact of crusading and the Holy Land in Britain to sit in the periphery of discussion, the contributions in this volume engage with different but often overlapping aspects of this topic in hopes of enriching discussion and broadening our understanding. Coverage across several centuries will also encourage the discussion of the development of the cultural response to crusading and the Holy Land. This will create a more cohesive picture of how and why medieval British culture responded to the Holy Land and the pan-European phenomenon of crusading.

Works Cited Ashe, Laura, ‘The Ideal of Knighthood in English and French Writing, 1100–1230: Crusade, Piety, Chivalry, and Patriotism’, in Writing the Early Crusades: Text, Trans­ mission, and Memory, ed. by Marcus Bull and Damien Kempf (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), pp. 155–68 Boas, Adrian J., Crusader Archaeology: The Material Culture of the Latin East (London: Routledge, 1999) —— , Jerusalem in the Time of the Crusades: Society, Landscape and Art in the Holy City under Frankish Rule (London: Routledge, 2001) Boviard-Abbo, Kristin L., ‘“Reirdit on ane riche roche beside ane riveir”: Martial Land­ scape and James IV of Scotland in The Knightly Tale of Golagros and Gawane’, Neo­ philologus, 98 (2014), 675–88 Brown, Elizabeth A.  R., and Michael  W. Cothren, ‘The Twelfth-Century Crusading Window at the Abbey of Saint-Denis’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 49 (1986), 1–40 Carns, Paula Mae, ‘The Cult of Saint Louis and Capetian Interests in the Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux’, Peregrinations, 2.1 (2006), 1–32 Denny, Don, ‘A Romanesque Fresco in Auxerre Cathedral’, Gesta, 25.2 (1986), 197–202 Derbes, Anne, ‘A Crusading Fresco Cycle at the Cathedral of Le Puy’, Art Bulletin, 73.4 (1991), 561–76

12 Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley

—— , ‘Crusading Ideology and the Frescoes of S. Maria in Cosmedin’, Art Bulletin, 77.3 (1995), 460–78 Dunlop, Anne, ‘Masculinity, Crusading and Devotion: Francesco Casali’s Fresco in the Trecento Perugian Contado’, Speculum, 76.2 (2001), 315–36 Dyas, Dee, Pilgrimage in Medieval English Literature, 700–1500 (Cambridge: Brewer, 2003) Elias, Marcel, ‘The Case of Anger in The Siege of Milan and The King of the Tars’, Comitatus, 43 (2012), 41–56 Ferguson, Carra, ‘The Iconography of the Façade of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1975) Folda, Jaroslav, The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1098–1187 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) Gaposchkin, M. Cecelia, ‘Louis IX, Crusade and the Promise of Joshua in the Holy Land’, Journal of Medieval History, 34 (2008), 245–74 —— , The Making of Saint Louis: Kingship, Sanctity, and the Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008) Gibb, Hamilton A. R., ‘The Influence of Islamic Culture on Medieval Europe’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 38 (1955), 82–98 Glass, Dorothy F., Portals, Pilgrimage and Crusade in Western Tuscany (Princeton: Prince­ ton University Press, 1997) Guard, Timothy, Chivalry, Kingship and Crusade: The English Experience in the Fourteenth Century (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013) Hedeman, Anne D., The Royal Image: Illustrations of the ‘Grandes chroniques de France’, 1274–1422 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) Heng, Geraldine, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003) Higgs Strickland, Debra, ‘Looking Back: The Westminster Psalter, the Added Drawings, and the Idea of “Retrospective Crusade”’, in The Crusades and Visual Culture, ed. by Elizabeth Lapina, April Jehan Morris, Susanna  A. Throop, and Laura  J. Whatley (Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 157–84 Hinz, Felix, and Johannes Meyer-Hamme, eds, Controversial Histories: Current Views on the Crusades, Engaging the Crusades, 3 (London: Routledge, 2020) Hurlock, Kathryn, Wales and the Crusades, c. 1095–1291 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011) —— , Britain, Ireland and the Crusades, c. 1000–1300 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2013) Jenkins, Philip, The Great and Holy War: How World War 1 Became a Religious Crusade (New York: HarperOne, 2014) Jordan, Alyce A., Visualizing Kingship in the Windows of the Sainte-Chapelle (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002) Katzenenellenbogen, Adolf, ‘The Central Tympanum at Vézelay: Its Encyclopedic Mean­ ing and its Relation to the First Crusade’, Art Bulletin, 26.3 (1944), 141–51 Keen, Maurice, ‘The Wilton Diptych: The Case for a Crusading Context’, in The Regal Image of Richard II and the Wilton Diptych, ed. by Dillian Gordon, Lisa Monnas, and Caroline Elam (London: Harvey Miller, 1997), pp. 189–96

Introduction

13

Kenaan-Kedar, Nurith, and Benjamin Z. Kedar, ‘The Significance of a Twelfth-Century Sculptural Group: Le retour du croisé’, in Dei gesta per Francos: Étude sur les croisades dédiées à Jean Richard, ed. by Michel Balard, Benjamin Z. Kedar, and Jonathan RileySmith (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 29–44 Kühnel, Bianca, Crusader Art of the Twelfth Century: A Geographical, an Historiographical, or an Art Historical Notion? (Berlin: Mann, 1994) Lapina, Elizabeth, ‘The Mural Paintings of Berzé-la-Ville in the Context of the First Crusade and the Reconquista’, Journal of Medieval History, 31 (2005), 309–26 ——  , ‘La représentation de la bataille d’Antioche (1098) sur les peintures murales de Poncé-sur-le-Loir’, Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 52 (2009), 137–58 Lloyd, Simon, ‘The Lord Edward’s Crusade, 1270–2: Its Setting and Significance’, in War and Government in the Middle Ages, ed.  by John  B. Gillingham and John  C. Holt (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1984) —— , ‘Political Crusades in England, c. 1215–17 and c. 1263–65’, in Crusade and Settle­ ment, ed. by Raymond C. Smail and Peter W. Edbury (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1985), pp. 113–20 —— , ‘Gilbert de Claire, Richard of Cornwall and the Lord Edward’s Crusade’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 30 (1986), 46–66 —— , English Society and the Crusade, 1216–1307 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988) MacQuarrie, Alan, Scotland and the Crusades, c. 1095–1560 (Edinburgh: Donald, 1988) Maier, Christoph T., ‘The Bible moralisée and the Crusades’, in The Experience of Crusading, i: Western Approaches, ed.  by Marcus Bull and Norman Housley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 209–22 Mainer, Sergi, ‘Clariodus and the Translation of Dynastic Ideology’, Viator, 44 (2019), 397–409 Manion, Lee, Narrating the Crusades: Loss and Recovery in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) Morris, Colin, ‘Picturing the Crusades: The Uses of Visual Propaganda, c. 1095–1250’, in The Crusades and their Sources: Essays Presented to Bernard Hamilton, ed. by John France and William G. Zajac (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 195–216 Munns, John, ‘The Vision of the Cross and the Crusades in England before 1189’, in The Crusades and Visual Culture, ed. by Elizabeth Lapina, April Jehan Morris, Susanna A. Throop, and Laura J. Whatley (Burlington: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 57–73 Nicholson, Helen J., The Knights Templar on Trial, 1308–1311: The Trial of the Templars in the British Isles (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009) Noel, William, and Daniel Weiss, eds, Book of Kings: Art, War, and the Morgan Library’s Medieval Picture Bible (London: Third Millennium, 2002) O’Malley, Gregory, The Knights Hospitaller of the English Langue, 1460–1565 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Petrovskaia, Natalia  I., Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient, Cursor mundi, 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) Phillips, Simon, The Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Late Medieval England (Wood­ bridge: Boydell, 2009)

14 Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley

Prawer, Joshua, The Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem: European Colonialism in the Middle Ages (New York: Praeger, 1972) Pringle, Denys, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A  Corpus, 2  vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 1998) —— , Secular Buildings in the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: An Archaeological Gazetteer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Reeve, Matthew M., ‘The Former Cycle of the Life of Edward I at the Bishop’s Palace, Lichfield’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 46 (2002), 70–83 ——  , ‘The Painted Chamber at Westminster, Edward  I, and the Crusade’, Viator, 37 (2006), 189–221 Seidel, Linda, ‘Images of Crusade in Western Art: Models as Metaphors’, in The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades, ed.  by Vladimir  P. Goss (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986), pp. 377–91 ——  , ‘Images of the Crusades in Western Art: Models as Metaphors’, in The Meeting of Two Worlds: Cultural Exchange between East and West during the Period of the Crusades, ed.  by Vladimir  P. Goss (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986), pp. 377–91 ‘Speech of Barack Obama’, The Obama White House Archive [accessed 1 December 2019] Stahl, Harvey, Picturing Kingship: History and Painting in the Psalter of St  Louis (University Park: Pennsylvanian State Press, 2008) Strayer, Joseph R., ‘France: The Holy Land, the Chosen People, and the Most Christian King’, in Medieval Statecraft and the Perspectives of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), pp. 299–314 Tyerman, Christopher, ‘The Holy Land and the Crusades of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries’, in Crusade and Settlement, ed. by Raymond C. Smail and Peter W. Edbury (Cardiff: University College Cardiff Press, 1985), pp. 105–12 ——  , ‘Some Evidence of English Attitudes to the Crusade in the Thirteenth Century’, in Thirteenth-Century England, i: Proceedings of the Newcastle upon Tyne Conference, ed. by Peter R. Coss and Simon D. Lloyd (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1986), pp. 168–74 —— , England and the Crusades, c. 1095–1588 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) Weiss, Daniel, Art and Crusade in the Age of Saint Louis (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer­ sity Press, 1998) —— , ‘Old Testament Image and the Rise of Crusader Culture in France’, in France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades, ed. by Daniel Weiss and Lisa Mahoney (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2004), pp. 3–21 Whatley, Laura Julinda, ‘Romance, Crusade, and the Orient in King Henry  III of England’s Royal Chambers’, Viator, 44.3 (2013), 175–98 Yeager, Suzanne, Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Chapter 1

(Visualising) Jerusalem in Early Medieval England Meg Boulton

T

his volume broadly explores English perspectives on Jerusalem through the lens of the crusades, but my research (while arguably Jerusalemic) concerns a period when, unlike during the crusades, travel to Jerusalem as a city was an extremely rare event, and the relationship with the city and its stories and spaces was experienced as more of an abstract and/or imagined construct than a lived reality. Nevertheless, a discussion of Jerusalem as understood in the context of early medieval Christian England is fundamental to understanding later material, as it provides a picture that indicates Jerusalem was a pervasive and visceral presence for the early English Church and its Christian community. As will be demonstrated below, the place of Jerusalem, both imagined and constructed, was a vital aspect of the English Christian milieu during the early medieval period, demonstrating a vivid and vital engagement with this city space in both its physical and metaphysical incarnations that predates the crusades by some hundreds of years.1 This chapter thinks about Jerusalem in early medieval England using three distinct but interconnected lenses: the extant textural descriptions of the city that were circulating in Insular ecclesiastical society; the ecclesiastical architecture which was understood to repli1 

For an introduction to early medieval England, its socio-political context(s), and its arts see Campbell, The Anglo-Saxons; Charles-Edwards, After Rome; Karkov, The Art of Anglo-Saxon England; Webster, Anglo-Saxon Art; The Making of England. Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors. Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, tcne 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 15–39 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.129227

16 Meg Boulton

cate and evoke the symbolic and eschatological sites of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem on English soil; and, finally, the symbolic forms of the monumental carved stone crosses that stood within the ecclesiastical landscape and were understood to recall and actualize the Christological spaces and stories that had played out in Jerusalem centuries earlier, as well as evoking the eventual, triumphal eschaton of the crux gemmata and so heralding and witnessing the end of time. By considering how Jerusalem (both as earthly city and heavenly kingdom) was imagined, visualized, and constructed as the early Church was established in England, this chapter acknowledges how the site of the Holy Land (its symbolic associations, and its metaphysical counterpart) was integral to the intellectual development and visual identity of the early English Church. Further, it suggests that this early relationship with Jerusalem perhaps pre-empted the tangible attachment to Jerusalem that could be said to inform crusader engagement with the city.2 Given the temporal and socio-political lacunae existing between the various and specific contexts of the pan-European crusades, powerfully seen and reflected in Anglo-Norman England, and that of the earlier milieu of AngloSaxon England it might seem to be somewhat of a disconnect to begin an account of an English relationship with the Holy Land in 597.3 However, it requires an understanding of the deep foundations of imaginative engagement with Jerusalem in order to fully appreciate the apocalyptic, exegetical, historical, and literary tropes that crusader ideology would later rely on.4 The coming of a late antique inflected Christian tradition to England from Rome is the starting point for this discussion of the various conceptualizations of Jerusalem circulating in early medieval England. It is both interesting and necessary to acknowledge that conceptual and cultural exchange(s) between the Holy Land and England began much earlier than the crusades, and indeed, that crusader ideology drew on a deep reservoir of engagement with Jerusalem circulating in early medieval England.

2 

For further reading on the centrality of Jerusalem to early religious thought as expressed in the medieval period see Kühnel, From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem. See also Between Jerusalem and Europe; Bartel, Bodner, and Kühnel, eds, Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place; Donkin and Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, and Galit, Kühnel, and Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem. 3  This is the date of the arrival of the Augustinian mission and thus of an institutionally informed Roman/Romanized Christianity in Kent. 4  For reading on this see Boulton and Hawkes, ‘Anglo-Saxon Church’.

(Visualising) Jerusalem in Early Medieval England

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From the outset of this discussion, it must be noted that engagement with Jerusalem in the early medieval Christian milieu is one that is physical and metaphysical; it is real and imagined. Moreover, is should be noted that the relationship between a Jerusalem that was real, and one that was realized, was fluid and mutable.5 The extant material evidence and textual sources surviving from the early medieval period show a complex set of relationships with both the physical, earthly Jerusalem as an earthly city, as understood through the texts and objects that perpetuate the Christological narratives that happened there, and also the metaphysical space of the heavenly city which was understood to echo its earthly counterpart, in a complex relationship of foreshadowing and symbolism. The various sources that depict and evoke Jerusalem for an ecclesiastical audience in England demonstrate a juxtaposition of the earthly and actual with the imagined and intangible, in a complex process which encompassed both an envisioned and an experiential encounter with the spaces and places of both the city and the concept of Jerusalem. Indeed, it is arguable that the twinned spaces of the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem were interlinked in the early English ecclesiastical imagination — not quite interchangeable, but certainly places and spaces that were each imagined and understood in terms of both itself and the other. Given the complexity of this shifting and multivalent relationship between these two sites of Jerusalem and its ubiquity within the material and textual culture of the Church, it is unsurprising that both the earthly and heavenly Jerusalem were intrinsic to the conceptualization and construction of sacred space more broadly in the spell immediately, during, and after the conversion period in England between the sixth to ninth centuries.6 While Jerusalemic tropes were a constant as the Church established itself in England, ideas of the Holy City were perhaps especially resonant in a post-conversion context, serving as models for the construction of sacred space as the Church articulated itself physically in England. It achieved this through new and innovative archi5  For selected scholarship on the physical and metaphysical Jerusalem in the Insular world (in addition to those mentioned in n. 3), see also O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places and ‘“Who, O Lord, Shall Live in your Tabernacle?”’. See also Boulton, ‘Bejewelling Jerusalem’; ‘Pearls before Paradise’, and ‘Pausing at the Threshold’. There are also numerous thematic references to this in the extraordinarily rich and far-reaching work of Jennifer O’Reilly, whose seminal and highly influential essays are currently being posthumously published in collection by Routledge. 6  See Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors; see also Boulton and Hawkes, ‘Anglo-Saxon Church’.

18 Meg Boulton

tectural and artistic forms which served to cement the Church and its associated symbolic identities and narratives — not least, the stone structures and crosses that are the focus of this discussion.7 This Jerusalemic model for the production of sacred space was extremely potent within the early English Church, partly because of the ecclesiastical narratives and histories held by the terrestrial city as a place and the significance of those Christological and apostolic narratives for the Christian community, and in part because of the meta-version of the sacred that was condensed in the image of the heavenly Jerusalem, which the earthly city was understood to echo. Indeed, reflecting this Jerusalemic centrality within the early English Church, a key aspect of the development of Christian visual culture in AngloSaxon England was the construction of visual ‘forma’ which were used to communicate and explore the complex theological relationships between the earthly Church and the heavenly kingdom it was understood to foreshadow. Many of these constructions were based on forms, structures, and stories found in the city of Jerusalem and then replicated in ecclesiastical structures across the Christian world.8 Such symbolic signifiers were achieved, in part, through the creation of material echoes of the city and its history and stories in the art and architecture of early medieval England. Jerusalem as both form and formula was repeatedly (re)presented, (re)constructed, and (re)built in early medieval England; its sites and its stories were (re)constructed and actualized through various visual structures inscribed upon the ecclesiastical landscape, most notably the architectural churches and monumental carved stone crosses of this milieu. These material manifestations were all mediated, as so often in this period, through a mixture of Continental styles and Insular innovation. This meant blurring and complicating the process of (re)constructing and (re) 7  For selected discussion of the symbolic influence of Jerusalem on ecclesiastical architecture see McClendon, The Origins of Medieval Architecture and Stalley, Early Medieval Architecture. In an Irish context, see Ó Carragáin, Churches in Early Medieval Ireland. See also: O’Loughlin, ‘Perceiving Palestine in Early Christian Ireland’, and ‘Adomnán’s Plans in the Context of his Imagining “the Most Famous City”’. 8  Discussion of such ideas of influential forms and forma can be found in O’Reilly, ‘Introduction’; Carruthers, The Book of Memory and The Craft of Thought. See also selected essays in the Hawkes and Boulton volume on the Codex Amiatinus All Roads Lead to Rome, including Boulton ‘From Cover to Cover’, pp. 39–48; Chazelle, ‘The Illustrations of the Codex Amiatinus and of Cosmas Indicopleustes’ Christian Topography’, pp. 11–26, and O’Loughlin ‘“Who, O Lord, Shall Live in your Tabernacle?”’, pp. 89–104. See also O’Brien, Bede’s Temple. The connections between symbolic architectural iterations and associations of ecclesiastical structures are usefully highlighted in Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals.

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telling the original spaces, structures, and narratives as they developed new forms in Insular society.9 This stylistic melting pot resulted in new and original English expressions of Jerusalem being fused with traditional understandings and iconographic forms of the city/space, whereby the two disparate sites of physical and metaphysical Jerusalem, and the different experiential and imagined encounters these produced for viewers, were linked by a set of iconographical constructs seen across text, architecture, and sculpture. These iconographies were all understood through the abbreviated iconographic figure of the Holy City in various narrative and symbolic forms. Most notably, these were the dimensions and form of the Holy Sepulchre; the scripturally inflected visions of the bejewelled city of heaven based on the accounts in Ezekiel and Revelation; the form and symbol of the cross of Christ (and its eschatological parallel, the Crux Gemmata); and the prefiguring agents of Tabernacle and Temple, which were reconstructed in both macro- and microarchitectural forms in the Insular world. Arguably, such expressions of the Holy City linked all the disparate sites of the Universal Church across the earth; it was, in turn, articulated and witnessed by the sites and spaces of individual architectural churches and ecclesiastical objects or structures across the medieval Christian world. These churches, which bespoke local ecclesiastical identities, as well as referencing the wider Universal community to which they belonged, included those of early medieval England, as well as the artworks they produced and housed. Ideas, tropes, and typologies of Jerusalem served to make present historical time and eschatological space from across Christian history within the early English Church through textual and visual (re)presentations of the past and future events and narratives of the Church — many of which were expressed through a connection with Jerusalem. Such processes occurred through an active engagement with place, space, and site, and the use of a type of constructed, codified ‘memory’ of Jerusalemic narrative(s) (even though these events were never directly experienced by medieval Christian communities), all set alongside medieval practices of exegetical and embodied viewing which enabled these imagined encounters with the Holy Land to be actualized for the early English Christians.10 In discussing this process, it is 9 

Such examples include the many stone churches built in early medieval England, although with some notable exceptions, only partial traces of these complex structures now survive, and most have been subsumed into later ecclesiastical structures. In many cases only a few stones or masonry fragments remain. See Harold McCarter Taylor and Joan Taylor’s indispensable threevolume work Anglo-Saxon Architecture. 10  See Pulliam, ‘Blood, Water and Stone’ and ‘Between the Embodied Eye and Living

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noteworthy that these Jerusalemic constructions served to recall Jerusalem, but also to offer it as an experience or set of experiences to be encountered by those who were not immediately familiar with its places and spaces. Thus, in a way, these motifs and objects served to both construct and remember Jerusalem in a process where familiarity stands in for experience. For the early English ecclesiastical community, the connection between the earthly Jerusalem and the codified, abbreviated space of the heavenly city was a universalizing device employed throughout the Church. This was understood to connect individual churches under the institutional and overarching umbrella of the Church. This connection was made explicit through the consistent and strategic (re)use of significant sites, spaces, and stories from Christian history and the Holy Land within, around, and upon the English ecclesiastical landscape, as discussed below. Such devices included textual accounts of journeys to Jerusalem, and its sites and structures, as well as (re)tellings of various narratives that happened there. This is prominently seen in the two texts of De locis sanctis circulating in the Insular world, written by Adomnán and Bede.11 Like the transmission of ideas of Jerusalem itself, the wider process of the transmission, translation, and (re)articulation of sacred spaces, sites, and narratives across the Christian world through textual narratives and visual cues and codes entailed a multiplicity of layered concepts and a network of shared associations. These were all employed in complex service of the Church’s larger eschatology. Such tropes and articulations enabled those far from the earthly city of Jerusalem to participate in its history and narratives, as well as being placed, through them, into closer proximity with the implicit, longed-for site of the eventual outcome for the Christian community: the heavenly city. The earthly city of Jerusalem was well known in an Insular context due to the circulation of De locis sanctis. This text was originally written by the Irish monk Adomnán, ninth abbot of Iona, and presented to King Aldfrith of Northumbria in 698. This text was later copied by Bede, whose version was widely circulated.12 Until relatively recently, De locis sanctis was thought to be based on the first-hand account of the Gaulish monk Arculf of his travels to the Holy Land. Thomas O’Loughlin has persuasively argued that the figure of World’. See also Boulton, ‘(Re)Viewing “Iuxta morem Romanorum”’; ‘Art History in the Dark Ages’, and ‘Looking down from the Rothbury Cross’. 11  Adomnán, De locis sanctis, ed. by Bieler; ed. and trans. by Meehan; Bede, De locis sanctis, ed. by Fraipont; ‘On the Holy Places’, trans. by Foley and Holder. 12  The Bedan version of De locis sanctis survives in at least forty-seven medieval manuscripts, see Laistner and King, A Hand-List of Bede Manuscripts, pp. 83–86.

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Arculf was a literary device, made up of composite sources, and employed in De locis sanctis in order to ‘personalize’ the text discussing the holy places, and to lend authority to Adomnán’s account of the city, which was written on Iona, at some remove from Jerusalem.13 O’Loughlin’s suggestion is highly plausible, although not universally accepted.14 However, whether a first-hand account or an Insular device employed to render the Holy Land more immediate to its (local) readership, the text nonetheless performs to vividly describe the sacred sites of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Palestine, Alexandria, and Constantinople for its readers. In this way it succeeds in closing the gap between the Insular world and these distant geographies, bringing the narratives that occurred there to an Insular audience through the medium of the (fictive) Gaulish bishop’s travels to those places, and his (invented) eyewitness account of them. Whether real or invented, it is nonetheless true that in the text of De locis sanctis, Adomnán explicitly claims that he obtained much of his information from Arculf, who had travelled around the eastern Mediterranean lands. In the text, Arculf returned ‘after many adventures’ with a first-hand account of the Holy Land, which he then related, from memory, to Adomnán: Arculfus sanctus episcopus gente Gallus diuersorum longe remotorum peritus locorum uerax index et satis idoneus in Hierusolimitana ciuitate per menses nouem hospitatus et loca sancta cotidianis uisitationibus peragrans mihi Adomnano haec universa quae infra craxanda sunt experimenta diligentius percunctanti et primo in tabulis describenti fideli et indubitabili narratio dictauit. (The holy bishop Arculf, a Gaul by race, versed in divers far-away regions, and a truthful and quite reliable witness, sojourned for nine months in the city of Jerusalem, traversing the holy places in daily visitations. In response to my careful inquiries he dictated to me, Adamnan, this faithful and accurate record of all his experiences.)15

Due in large part to this opening, scholars have categorized De locis sanctis as a first-hand pilgrimage account of one man’s journey to the Holy Land. However, 13 

O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, pp. 7, 18–19, 42–44, especially at 55–63. O’Loughlin’s reading of DLS has been challenged more recently, by scholars including Rodney Aist and by Robert Hoyland and Sarah Waidler in ‘Adomnán’s De locis sanctis and the SeventhCentury Near East’, the latter of which argues that Adomnán had information from an oral informant who had recently travelled in the Holy Land. While these scholarly discussions are noteworthy, I nonetheless remain persuaded by O’Loughlin’s argument of Arculf being a fictive device. 14  While  I follow O’Loughlin’s reading here, for an alternative reading see Aist, From Topography to Text. 15  Adomnán, De locis sanctis, ed. and trans. by Meehan, pp. 36–37.

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the recent argument that Adomnán wrote the text principally based on literary sources has transformed scholarly engagement with it. This new understanding of the text transforms it from a personal account of a physical journey to the Holy Land — bound up with ideas of experiential encounter and memory — to the construct of one. This shift is an interesting one, as it skews the presentation of the Holy Land in De locis sanctis from a physical encounter with the city to an imagined or constructed one. Moreover, it becomes an actualization of one, echoing the widespread typological experience of Jerusalem that was produced for and experienced by those Insular Christians encountering the text, and other such constructions of the Holy Land, including those evoked by architectural and material forms. However, despite the potential richness of this similarity between Jerusalem as an entity encountered/produced by both author and reader, if De locis sanctis is a text that is imagined, rather than replicating a lived, physical experience, it is an interesting choice to present the text as if it were based in the realities of travel, and thus, implicitly, experience. There were accounts of journeys to Jerusalem in this period, including those of Willibald which date to the 720s, written accounts of the fourth-century pilgrim Egeria which were recorded in the seventh century, and that of Bernard the Monk written in c. 867, which offer extensive descriptions of the city between 630 and 900. However, such physical journeys to Jerusalem were not the norm in this period, and virtual pilgrimages to the city were a more common way of encountering the holy sites.16 Crucially, neither Adomnán nor Bede — the authors of the principal textual vehicles for such imagined pilgrimages — ever travelled to Jerusalem, despite writing the authoritative accounts of the city and its places and spaces in this period. Interestingly, although the narrative of De locis sanctis is presented as a lived, physical reality, it is not an accurate (re)presentation of an encounter with the city as it would have been experienced by a visitor to the city itself. As Peter Darby and Daniel Reynolds point out in their study of Bede’s text, the DLS cannot, in any sense, be considered a guide to the City of Jerusalem for contemporary travellers, since the order in which Bede presents those sites to the reader does not make, and cannot ever have made sense as an actual physical journey. Such an exercise did, however, facilitate an important insight which may shed some light on the intentions of Bede’s text.17 16  For an account of more typical Anglo-Saxon pilgrimage as seen in Rome see in Izzi, ‘Anglo-Saxons Underground’. 17  Darby and Reynolds, ‘Reassessing the “Jerusalem Pilgrims”’. See also Aist, From Topog­ raphy to Text.

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This (dis)location of Jerusalemic sites as recognized by Darby and Reynolds is interesting, as De locis sanctis certainly carries an air of authority to its account of Jerusalem, and its details and layout function as a guide to virtual, if not actual, pilgrimage. Whilst the text of Bede’s De locis sanctis is heavily influenced by Adomnán’s original, as Darby and Reynolds point out, reading them side by side makes it clear that Bede thoroughly reordered the structure of his source. Adomnán’s account begins with a survey of Jerusalem’s walls, gates, and towers: De situ Hierusalem nunc quaedam scribenda sunt pauca ex his quae mihi sanctus dictauit Arculfus; ea uero quae in aliorum libris de eiusdem ciuitatis positione repperiuntur a nobis pretermittenda sunt. In cuius magno murorum ambitu idem Arculfus lxxxiiii numerauit turres et portas bis ternas, quarum per circuitum ciuitatis ordo sic ponitur. Porta Dauid ad occidentalem monis Sion partem prima numerator. Secunda porta uillae fullonis. Tertia porta sancti Stephani. Quarta porta Beniamin. Quinta portula, hoc est paruula porta; ab hac per grados ad uallem Iosafat discenditur. Sexta porta Tecuitis. Hic itaque ordo per earundem portarum et turrium intercapidines a porter Dauid supra memorata per circuitum septemtrionem uersus et exinde ad orientem dirigitur. (I now propose to write a little of what the holy Arculf told me concerning the site of Jerusalem, omitting the matter that is contained in the books of others about the position of that city. In the great compass of its walls Arculf counted eighty-four towers and six gates, their order in the circuit of the city being thus. The Gate of David at the west side of Mount Sion is the first, the second the gate of the fuller’s house, the third the gate of the holy Stephen, the fourth the gate of Benjamin: the fifth is a portula (a little gate, that is) from which steps lead down to the valley of Josaphat, and the sixth is the gate of Tecua. That is the order then when you make the circuit from the above-mentioned gate of David, northwards and then eastwards, through the spaces between the various gates and towers.) 18

In his reading of this passage, O’Loughlin links this choice to Psalm 48. 12–13 which commands: ‘Walk about Zion, go around her, count her towers, consider well her ramparts, view her citadels, that you may tell of them to the next generation’. He relates the writing and subsequent reading of De locis sanctis to an act of remembering the site of Jerusalem, but also an act of recounting, retelling, and perhaps also cognitively rebuilding the city, which would be in line with the function of the text to promote a virtual pilgrimage among its audience through an intimate and experiential meditation on the city and its 18 

Adomnán, De locis sanctis, ed. and trans. by Meehan, pp. 40–41.

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spaces.19 Adomnán’s account asks its reader to conceptually engage with the constructed and physical city space of Jerusalem from the outset. We, as readers of this text, and as witnesses of Arculf/Adomnán’s account are encouraged to (figuratively) walk around the city, to experience it as a built space, and encounter it as a physical environment (in our imagination). Through this reading-walking, we are prompted to consider the city from the outside-in.20 We map it in our minds, to dwell there and internalize it to the extent that we can then pass on this acquired, actualized knowledge of the city, remembering and retelling the narrative(s) of its stones and stories, as if we had been to its places and spaces, in a manner that echoes Adomnán’s own construction of the city in the text. As noted, De locis sanctis was somewhat rewritten by Bede in his version of the text. While he retained the topographical description of Jerusalem as a walled city as presented by Adomnán, also listing the gates of the city, he begins his version of De locis sanctis in the physical structure of the Martyrium, the basilica commissioned by Constantine to celebrate the ‘rediscovery’ of the True Cross by his mother Helena. In their discussion of De locis sanctis, Darby and Reynolds convincingly argue that while Bede’s description of the Martyrium is taken from Adomnán’s original, his structural reordering and pacing of the text deliberately establishes Golgotha and the Sepulchre as the central and twinned foci of the city. This decision effectively brings the sites of the Passion and Resurrection front and centre, producing a Christological narrative witnessed and memorialized both by the building of the Constantinian Martyrium and by Bede’s (re)constructed text of De locis sanctis itself, and so also by its readers — perhaps foregrounding an eschatological encounter with the city and its iconic spaces and objects. The connection and active (re)construction of the places of Jerusalem within Anglo-Saxon England and the early English imagination is also demonstrated by some of the surviving Old English material in the Vercelli Book, one of the four most significant verse manuscripts to survive from the Anglo-Saxon period, dating from the second half of the tenth century. One of these poems is Elene, composed by Cynewulf during the ninth century but only written down in the late tenth century.21 The Jerusalemic imagery presented in Elene takes the 19 

Translation of the Psalm taken from the New International Version; see also O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, p. 35. 20  For theoretical frameworks underpinning ideas of reader as writer see Barthes, ‘The Death of the Author’; and de Certeau ‘Walking in the City’. 21  Frank and Cameron, A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, p. 105. Although the date of the preservation of the poem is seemingly late in comparison to the other images, objects,

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form of an apocryphal account of the journey of Constantine’s mother Helena to the Holy Land in search of the True Cross, in order to return with it to Rome. It includes a passage that describes the construction of the Martyrium that is interesting to consider alongside the description in De locis sanctis: Heht hire þa aras eac gebeodan | Constantinus þæt hio cirican þær | on þam beorhhliðe begra rædum  | getimbrede, tempel dryhtnes  | on Caluarie Criste to willan, | hæleðum to helpe, þær sio halige rod | gemeted wæs, mærost beama | þara þe gefrugnen foldbuende | on eorðwege. […]ða seo cwen bebead cræftum getyde | sundor asecean þa selestan, | þa þe wrætlicost wyrcan cuðon | stangefogum, on þam stedewange | girwan godes tempel, […] Heo þa rode heht | golde beweorcean ond gimcynnum,  | mid þam æðelestum eorcnanstanum  | besettan searocræftum ond þa in seolfren fæt  | locum belucan. […]  Leort ða tacen forð, þær hie to sægon,  | fæder, frofre gast, ðurh fyres bleo | up eðigean þær þa æðelestan | hæleða gerædum hydde wæron | þurh nearusearwe, næglas on eorðan. | ða cwom semninga sunnan beorhtra | lacende lig. […] ða ðær of heolstre, swylce heofonsteorran | oððe goldgimmas, grunde getenge, | næglas of nearwe neoðan scinende | leohte lixton. (Constantine […] bid her to build a church there on the hillside for the benefit of them both, a temple of the Lord on Calvary as a pleasure to Christ and a succour to men, where the holy cross was found, the most celebrated of trees of which earth’s inhabitants have ever heard […] The queen then ordered men trained in their crafts to be severally sought, the best ones, those who knew how to build most exquisitely in stone-bondings, in order to prepare God’s temple upon that spot […] then she commanded that the Cross be encased in gold and intricately set with gems, with the noblest most precious stones, and then enclosed with locks in a silver casket […] Then as they looked on, the Father […] caused a sign in the form of fire to raise up from where […] those most noble nails were hidden in the earth. There suddenly appeared then a hovering flame brighter than the sun […] when from out of the darkness there, like the stars of heaven, or fine gems, near the bottom of the pit, the nails, shining from out of their confinement below, gleamed with light.)22

This section of the poem contains references to many of the tropes which reveal the way sacred space, particularly the iconic ideal of Jerusalem, was conceptualized in early medieval England. These include the use of sacred objects, sacred spaces, and texts discussed here, the poetic forms and language invoked in the poem (based on the oral tradition of transmission), speak to its probable earlier existence and indicates the prevalent hold Jerusalem had on the Anglo-Saxon imagination. For further discussion of Constantine’s vision of the cross, see e.g. Hawkes, ‘The Legacy of Constantine in Anglo-Saxon England’. 22  Elene, ed. and trans. by Bradley, ll. 1007–26; 1104–15, pp. 190–92; see also The Vercelli Book, ed. by Krapp, pp. 66–102.

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places, stone buildings constructed by craftsmen trained in a certain style of building, and the adornment of sacred structures. All of these find AngloSaxon parallels, a specific iteration of which is addressed below in the discussion of the Wilfridian crypt at Ripon. Returning to the text of De locis sanctis, Bede’s restructuring of emphasis within the text does a couple of things. Instead of the detailed experiential physical encounter with the city offered by the opening of Adomnán’s text Bede’s reader is invited to rapidly encounter the city from inside one of its major Christian monuments. By thus relocating the reader, Bede links our experience of the city much more immediately to a Christianized, Christological encounter.23 Through devices such as pilgrim texts Jerusalem was made present in the Insular world, and, once there, the symbolic identity of the city was consistently employed across the media of the early Church, used to recall and emphasize both the historic past and eschatological future. The churches of early medieval England were no exception. Jerusalem was a potent site that was systematically employed through various abbreviated symbolic forms (such as scale, or materiality) within the Church.24 This systematic use of the earthly Jerusalem allowed the early English Church to place itself within the established temporal and historical narratives of the Christian tradition. It could cement itself within the wider ecclesiastical narrative as typified by consistent, systemic allusion to and evocation of the sites, spaces, and stories of the Holy City.25 It has long been recognized that the churches of early medieval England, built of stone, brick, and glass ‘in the Roman manner’ by Augustine and his successors, are remarkable structures, despite the fact that these are now largely 23 

Moreover, it is noteworthy that this encounter is one which stresses a Constantinian connection to the city through the foregrounding of the Constantinian structure of the Martyrium. This romanitas is interesting, as arguably it has more to do with the construction and identity of an early English religiosity as (a)ny Jerusalemic original, as alongside the continued, monumental connection of the Holy Land to Christological events and narratives and objects in DLS, Bede’s wider oeuvre consistently emphasizes the Roman/Constantinian roots of the religious practice observed by Bede and the community at Wearmouth-Jarrow whose romanitas is constantly stressed in both contemporary and scholarly accounts. This type of sustained connection with Rome makes the suggested links between text and architecture as potent Jerusalemic signifiers for early medieval Christians explicit, as the textual tropes that are found in De locis sanctis are also found translated into innovative architectural originals in early medieval England; adapted and transformed into new symbols of Jerusalem that could be experienced by the English Christian community. 24  Boulton, ‘Bejewelling Jerusalem’ and ‘Pearls before Paradise’. See also O’Loughlin, Adomnán and the Holy Places, pp. xiv and more widely. 25  Boulton, ‘Looking down from the Rothbury Cross’.

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no longer extant.26 However, besides offering insight into the architectural, intellectual, and ecclesiastical climate of a now much fragmented milieu, they may also be understood as monumental archetypes that represent concepts of place and identity and of sacred space(s), such as Jerusalem. The associations produced by these structures and objects form mental constellations that are embedded in a nexus of interconnected sacred spaces, such as those connecting the Holy Land to the wider Christian community, or the foreshadowing ‘thin’ spaces that connect the earthly Church to the heavenly Jerusalem.27 Through such connections, the ecclesiastical structures of early medieval England serve to recall, establish, and actualize the architectural vocabulary of disparate places. Such places could be Rome or Jerusalem, as they both held intertwined cognitive identities for medieval Christians through their Constantinian connection, and through their ecclesiastical histories. At the same time, they provide multivalent experiential encounters with disparate geographical sites and sacred spaces understood to exist beyond the earth — namely the heavenly Jerusalem. Additionally, throughout the early Church, there was a clear understanding that the spaces of individual churches were deeply symbolic. This was true both in terms of their physical, architectural symbolism, and the intricate iconographies of their decorative visual programmes. Such programmes presented multilayered and multivalent iconographies that exist in symbolic symbiosis with the parallel space of the heavenly Jerusalem. Through their physical form and symbolic presence, earthly churches recalled and actualized the abstract and absent space of the heavenly city for those on earth, whether they were in Jarrow or Jerusalem. While associations with Rome (and so Constantine) as expressed through material and liturgical works lent authority to the English Church, largely determining its theological and visual identity, associations with Jerusalem arguably functioned in a slightly different manner for the early medieval Church. Less a matter of earthly authority and political power as with the imperial and ecclesiastical connections conjured by ideas of Rome, articulations of the more remote and idealized Jerusalem served to remind the earthly of the unearthly, 26 

See Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, i. 22–27, ed. by Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 68–79. See also, Hawkes, ‘Iuxta morem Romanorum’. Much of the romanitas associated with the structures of the Augustinian mission and the ensuing conversion of England can also be mapped onto the understandings around the imperial Constantinian buildings in Jerusalem, thus connecting the institutional legacies, personal narratives, and ecclesiastical histories though a shared set of material and symbolic referents and associations. 27  For discussion on such spaces and places see Eliade, The Sacred and Profane.

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the temporal of the a-temporal, and the present of the omnipresent. Jerusalem was the site of many of the historic foundational narratives of Christianity, the space of the religion’s most holy places, objects, and stories. It was the place where Christ died, was resurrected, and would reappear at the end of time. As a city space, Jerusalem served to witness, remember, and foreshadow all these acts and events outside their temporal horizons and physical events. Consequently, when it was reconstructed in other geographical places, for example, through its replicas and referents in early medieval England, Jerusalem came to symbolize not only its geographic original, but also the meta-site of the heavenly city, in part through Christological associations, and in part through the wider eschatological narratives which developed around the site: Passion, Resurrection, Second Coming. Although such Jerusalemic echoes are found throughout the early Church, a direct material replication of Jerusalem is perhaps most viscerally constructed in early medieval England in the space of the Wilfridian crypts at Ripon (and perhaps, to a lesser extent, the sister space at Hexham), as has been recognized by Richard Bailey.28 Bailey has convincingly argued that the crypt at Ripon is a representation of the Holy Sepulchre, by means of a comparative analysis of the measurements and form of the crypt space and the presence of the slab of stone in the corner of the crypt, which precisely replicates the directional (north-west) setting and dimensions of the stone/grave slab of the Sepulchre in Jerusalem (see Figs 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3). This Jerusalemic reading of the space, made possible in the first instance through analysis of the dimensions and symbolic scale of the central chamber of the Ripon crypt, is heightened and complemented by the probable relics it contained, with their potent ability to telescope space and time and to connect earth and heaven through their material presence.29 Moreover, the complex and twisting layout of the crypt would have convincingly amplified the effect of an imagined peregrination for the faithful using the space for veneration and, possibly, virtual pilgrimage. The space of the crypt is intriguing both in its form and its decoration. In the Anglo-Saxon imagination, there is overwhelming symbolic significance attributed to brightness and shining surfaces and objects as primarily understood to be linked to semantic fields of power and sanctity as demonstrated 28 

Bailey, Saint Wilfrid’s Crypts at Ripon and Hexham. For more see Brown, The Cult of the Saints and Hahn, Passion Relics and the Medieval Imagination. For the probable presence of relics on the crypt and a discussion of its space see Cramp ‘Northumbrian Churches’, particularly at pp. 153–62. 29 

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Figure 1.1. Adomnán of Iona, diagram of the Holy Sepulchre and its surroundings, De locis sanctis, ninth century. Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 458, fol. 4v (photograph: by permission of ÖNB).

in the material record. These associations arguably map onto secondary associations with the contemporaneous exegetical descriptions of the heavenly Jerusalem and Solomon’s Temple as described in the exegetical and visionary literature of the period (primarily found in Bede’s exegesis of De templo), both of which stress shining surfaces in their descriptions.30 This relationship, highlighted by Bailey in his study of the space, plausibly makes the trace presence of white plaster still discernible on the stone surfaces of the crypt at Ripon doubly suggestive. The chromatic symbolism of the plaster — its whiteness — alongside the architectural dimensions of the space, arguably emphasizes the connection between the Anglo-Saxon crypt and the metaphysical spaces and structures of Jerusalem, as evoked through the form and symbolic identity of the Sepulchre, and the possible allusion to the Temple. In this instance, while the dimensions of the chamber recall and actualize the space of the Tomb of Christ within the landscape of Anglo-Saxon England, this material manifesta30 

See n. 7.

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Figure 1.2. Plan of crypts at Hexham and Ripon (after Brown, The Arts in Early England, ii: AngloSaxon Architecture (image: public domain).

Figure 1.3. A corner of the central chamber of Ripon crypt (photograph: author).

tion of a Jerusalemic space is supported by the (heavenly) trope of brightness lent to the mural surfaces of the crypt; heaven, whose space was described as ‘habentem claritatem Dei: et lumen ejus simile lapidi pretioso tamquam lapidi jaspidis, sicut crystallum’ (having the glory of God, and the light thereof was like to a precious stone, as to the jasper stone, even as crystal),31 and the walls of which were ‘Et erat structura muri ejus ex lapide jaspide: ipsa vero civitas aurum mundum simile vitro mundo’ (of jasper stone: but the city itself pure gold, like to clear glass).32 Indeed, it may be further argued that the complex series of Jerusalemic references seen in the crypt (both earthly and heavenly) go beyond a mimetic (re)presentation of the Sepulchre, and that the subterranean space in fact forcefully manipulates space and time through its material (re)presentation. It cognitively mapped Jerusalem onto and into the Christianized AngloSaxon landscape through the (re)constructed form of the crypt/Sepulchre at Ripon, thus bringing a visualized place from De locis sanctis into material, real, and actualized form. 31  32 

Revelation 21. 11. Revelation 21. 18.

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Although an exceptionally complete and complex reference, the crypt at Ripon is by no means the only such Jerusalemic allusion found in early medieval England. They were spread widely through the structures, spaces, and objects of the Church. Nonetheless, it may demonstrate the manner in which the early Insular Church systematically (re)built Jerusalem within the material fabric of its own structures and spaces through the replication and actualization of the symbolic space(s) of the Holy City. Such architectural and visual parallels with Jerusalemic originals, albeit often less explicit than that of the Ripon crypt, were employed in both physical form and conceptual identity. Spaces, stories, structures, and forms associated with the Holy Land were thus arguably deliberately transplanted and (re)constructed by the Church as it established itself in England, transmitted in this Insular context in part through the accounts of the holy places created by Adomnán and Bede and in part through material copies and echoes constructed within the fabric of the English Church. The act of (re)creating and (re)constructing the Holy Land and the holy places in an Anglo-Saxon context is a complex one, as it leans on the replicated and repeated presence of symbolic form(s), recast in a new setting, but also requires the recognition of the constant metaphysical conceptual presence(s) that underpin these engagements with Jerusalem. Through potent and consistent acts of repetitive (re)construction, Jerusalem was remembered and (re)built in early medieval England, as demonstrated through the primary examples discussed here — those of text, crypt, and cross, although the examples discussed here are by no means exhaustive.33 Such (meta)/physical constructions may underscore the observations made by Darby and Reynolds concerning the new and emphatic relationship located in the sites and places of the Holy Land through the (relic) form of the cross and the centralized narrative of the Passion stressed in Bede’s retelling of Adomnán’s account of the holy places, which was seemingly deliberately constructed. Intriguingly, as Darby and Reynolds observe, the very last location described by Bede in his version of the text, Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, is also one with a connection to the cross.34 Again taking his cue from Adomnán, Bede tells us that this church housed three fragments of the True Cross. He effectively bookends his account of the holy places with two sites connected to the relic of the cross, and constructs ‘a new mental map of the holy places which is 33 

Tropes of (re)building and (re)constructing in a similar conceptual manner were also seen more widely across the Christian world, although these were often physically distinct from those found in Anglo-Saxon England. Bartel and Vorholt, Between Jerusalem and Europe. 34  See Chapter 19 of Bede’s De locis sanctis in ‘On the Holy Places’, trans. by Foley and Holder, pp. 24–25.

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Passion-centric’.35 This emphasis on the Passion, as understood through the form and presence of the Cross, is noteworthy, not just serving to construct and connect a new, explicitly Christological and salvific cartography of the Holy Land, but also perhaps underscoring the significance of the cross as both object and symbol of Jerusalemic Christian history and an eschatological locus which was subsequently replicated in early medieval England.36 The cross, as sign and symbol of Christ’s Passion and so also of the salvation offered by and through the Church, is a form that held vast ecclesiastical and liturgical significance.37 It also had a very specific resonance for the Insular Church, which developed the unique sculptural form of the monumental stone high cross.38 These crosses, which have various scholarly interpretations as to their meanings and functions, were quite literally planted in the soil of AngloSaxon England.39 Arguably, they serve to evoke the form and figura of the True Cross of Christ’s Passion, but also recall those monumental forms set up in the city spaces of the Holy Land which memorialized the Cross of the Passion, such as the great jewelled cross recorded as decorating the presumed site of the Crucifixion, around which the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was constructed, erected by the Emperor Theodosius II (r. 408–450). Thus, the monumental form of the stone high crosses seen across the Insular world evoke both the Cross of the Passion, and also its ensuing triumphal memorials. This association is underscored by the fact that the stone crosses of early medieval England are understood to have been painted in a way that may have made them resemble precious materials like metal and gems. They were also set with paste glass and/ or metalwork (particularly in the eyes of figures, birds, and beasts), thus further resembling the monumental metalwork memorial cross in Jerusalem, and also the shining bejewelled Crux Gemmata associated with the end of time.40 35 

Darby and Reynolds, ‘Reassessing the “Jerusalem Pilgrims”’. For recent discussion of the cross in early medieval England see Turner and Hawkes, eds, The Rood in Medieval Britain and Ireland; Jolly, Karkov, and Larratt Keefer, eds, Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England. 37  For discussion of the liturgical cross in early medieval England see Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the Rood. 38  See Hawkes, ‘Stones of the North’ and ‘A Sculptural Legacy’. See also Boulton, ‘(Re) Viewing “Iuxta morem Romanorum”’; ‘Art History in the Dark Ages’, and ‘Looking down from the Rothbury Cross’. For wider discussion see Bailey, England’s Earliest Sculptors and Karkov and Orton, eds, Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture. 39  Ideas of the significance of planting the cross in the Anglo-Saxon landscape have been recently discussed by Michael Bintley, Jane Hawkes, Catherine Karkov, and Colleen Thomas. 40  For the delicacy and sophistication of the paintwork on Anglo-Saxon objects, see, for 36 

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As encountered today, they are a fragmented corpus, but the surviving forms including the celebrated Ruthwell, Bewcastle, and Rothbury crosses serve to remind us that the stone crosses of early medieval England (and the Insular world more widely) carried deeply Jerusalemic resonances in their visual form and conceptual identity.41 The stories and places of the Passion recalled by their form and symbolic identity, remember, re-enact, and memorialize Christ’s crucifixion through their physical form and presence, as well as through the narrative scenes carved on their surfaces. The symbolic significances and resonances carried by the crosses which adorned the Insular landscape are aligned with the epistemological impulses which underlie Bede’s emphasis on the Passion in his version of De locis sanctis. This, in turn, symbolically leans on centralized Christological narratives of sacrifice, salvation, and eschatology. This device serves to transform encounters with the physical wonders of Jerusalem — spaces, places, objects, and monuments — into a wider presaging encounter with the sacred narratives and mysteries of the Church as understood and recognized through the places and objects which also witnessed the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. This is a powerful and strategic piece of (re)writing by Bede, which emphasizes the location (and thus the significance and symbolism) of the Passion firmly within the holy places of Jerusalem, and through the form of the crosses placed and housed there. The sources, function, and purposes of English stone crosses have been subject of much discussion, and they are generally agreed to be complex, multivalent objects, which present to the viewer various and simultaneous identities — performing as frame, form, symbol, sign, and vison. These stone crosses, therefore, are slippery and elusive shifting objects, capable of appearing as one thing and transforming, before the viewer, into another in a complex elision of material and identity, subject and object. They provide a dual symbolic identity of suffering and triumph, as well as a vision of a possible future salvation, acting as multifaceted and intricate devotional objects which enacted Jerusalemic narratives within the English ecclesiastical landscape. Indeed, these English crosses, all of which echo and evoke the True Cross, recast the wood of the cross of the Passion into new materials, namely carved and painted stone. They example, the Litchfield angel, as discussed by Warwick Rodwell, Jane Hawkes, Emily Howe, and Rosemary Cramp in ‘The Lichfield Angel’. 41  For a full account of the surviving corpus of Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture, including the carved stone crosses please see the various volumes of the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture.

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also perform as skeuomorphic echoes of the great jewelled cross in Jerusalem and of the triumphal vision of the Crux Gemmata (and thus act to signify the True Cross and to memorialize it, while also looking ahead as an eschatological construct). In this way they conflate the space(s) of Jerusalem and England, the True Cross and the sculpted rood, collapsing the temporal distance between these two forms, and the disparate spaces which housed and witnessed them.42 This sort of phenomena is part and parcel of Insular sculpture, which engages the viewer in a phenomenological manner, allowing for an active, cognitive repositioning of surface and subject, where the viewer is invited to meditate on the form of the cross and the various iconographic figures it presents — actualizing, and so witnessing them across time and space. This actualized encounter with Christ/cross produces a multivalent viewing encounter that transcends space, plane, and time between viewer and viewed object. It encouraged those looking at such surfaces to look beyond the fame of the monument, to look through it, to experience spaces that recede from the surface of the stone or penetrate out from it. These spaces exist beyond the represented and the real, oftentimes presenting visions of the place and peoples of heaven, or of the Christian past and Christological narratives, including the monumental evocation of the Passion constructed by the form of the monumental rood itself — all recognized and set within the glowing beacon of the carved, painted cross. For the Christian community of early medieval England, the forms of heavenly Church and earthly city (be it Rome or Jerusalem, Constantinople or Canterbury) were irrevocably bound up with each other, in a similar manner to that in which the heavenly Church was evoked by the earthly, material signifiers considered above. The wider identification of ecclesiastical structures and objects with the overarching, longed-for eschaton of the City of God (itself often conflated with the city and spaces of Jerusalem) allowed the disparate locations and articulations of the sacred to be united in the guise of the Universal Church. This construct negated any site-specificity, an ablation which was necessary to the Church as it attempted to spread across the known world. When it came to ‘(re)building’ the space of the C/church in early medieval England, Jerusalem was invoked through stylistic, formal, allusive, and metaphorical elements, transferred into new and innovative English forms, 42 

Thus, through a shift of material, these forms become a permanent, monumental memorial of and to the Passion, while their new material also carries additional signifiers, such as the political and institutional identity and permanence indicated by associations of stone and Rome, or the glittering material presence of jewels which could be argued to act as a symbol of the heavenly city through their abbreviated iconography. See Boulton, ‘“The End of the World as We Know It”’. See also Boulton, ‘Bejewelling Jerusalem’.

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such as the glowing, subterranean, sepulchral space of the relic-filled crypt at Ripon and the large stone crosses that evoked the True Cross and the liturgical drama of the Passion. In an era before travel to Jerusalem was commonplace, the concept of the city and concrete referents to its holy places were not only circulating in early medieval England but were also embedded within its ecclesiastical identity. The ecclesiastical architecture and artworks of England arguably functioned to remember, recall, and rebuild those of Jerusalem, restoring and reconstructing them through a series of layered material and conceptual references to the past, present, and future. Thus, Jerusalem as a site was constantly inscribed and rewritten into the ecclesiastical culture of early medieval England. This performative inscription is seen through the textual accounts of the Holy City which allowed for virtual pilgrimages and encounters with the spaces and stories of Jerusalem as well as through the physical forms of church and cross which also served to make Jerusalemic narratives and histories present for their English audience. Crucially, echoing the rewriting of De locis sanctis by Bede, it is through a consistent emphasis and encounter with the events of the Passion and Resurrection that Jerusalem is most frequently materialized; and through these stories that the spaces and events of the city that had witnessed and housed those events are also recalled. While these encounters with the earthly space of Jerusalem helped to foster a sense of connection with the central tenets of Christianity for the English, as they too became part of the story of the Church, they also acted as constant reminders that there was an ultimate, eschatological end to this narrative — reinforcing the underlying and longed-for presence of the heavenly city for those seeking the Jerusalemic city yet to come, including the later crusaders.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Resources Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 458

Primary Sources Adomnán, Adamnan’s ‘De locis sanctis’, ed. and trans. by Denis Meehan (Dublin: Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1958) —— , Adamnani de locis sanctis libri tres, ed. by Ludwig Bieler, in Itineraria et alia geographica, ed. by Ezio Franceschini, Robert Weber, and Paul Geyer, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965), pp. 183–234 Bede, De locis sanctis, ed. by Jean Fraipont, in Itineraria et alia geographica, ed. by Ezio Franceschini, Robert Weber, and Paul Geyer, Corpus Christianorum, series latina, 175 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1965), pp. 244–80 —— , Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, ed. by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors, Bede: Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969) ——  , ‘On the Holy Places’, trans. by W.  Trent Foley and Arthur  G. Holder, in Bede: A Biblical Miscellany, Translated Texts for Historians, 28 (Liverpool: Liverpool Uni­ versity Press, 1999), pp. 5–26 Elene, ed. and trans. by Sidney A. J. Bradley, in Anglo-Saxon Poetry (London: Phoenix, 1991), pp. 164–97 The Vercelli Book, ed. by George P. Krapp, Anglo-Saxon Poetical Records, 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932)

Secondary Works Aist, Rodney, From Topography to Text: The Image of Jerusalem in the Writings of Eucherius, Adomnán and Bede (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018) Bailey, Richard N., Saint Wilfrid’s Crypts at Ripon and Hexham (Newcastle: Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1993) —— , England’s Earliest Sculptors (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1996) Bartel, Renana, and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Between Jerusalem and Europe: Essays in Honour of Bianca Kühnel, Visualising the Middle Ages, 11 (Leiden: Brill, 2015) Bartel, Renana, Neta Bodner, and Bianca Kühnel, eds, Natural Materials of the Holy Land and the Visual Translation of Place, 500–1500, Routledge Research in Art History (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017) Barthes, Roland, ‘The Death of the Author’, in his Image, Music, Text (London: Fontana, 1977), pp. 142–48

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Boulton, Meg, ‘“The End of the World as We Know It”: The Eschatology of Symbolic Space/s in Insular Art’, in Making Histories: Proceedings of the Sixth International Insular Arts Conference, ed. by Jane Hawkes (Donington: Tyas, 2013), pp. 279–90 —— ,  ‘(Re)Viewing “Iuxta morem Romanorum”: Considering Perception, Phenomenology and Anglo-Saxon Ecclesiastical Architecture’, in Sensory Perception in the Medieval World: Manuscripts, Texts, and other Material Matters, ed. by Simon Thompson and Michael D. J. Bintley (Turnhout: Brepols, 2016), pp. 206–26 —— , ‘Art History in the Dark Ages: (Re)Considering Space, Stasis and Modern Viewing Practices in Relation to Anglo-Saxon Imagery’, in Stasis in the Medieval West?: Questioning Change and Continuity, ed.  by Michael  D.  J.  Bentley, Martin Locker, Victoria Symons, and Mary Wellesley (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 69–86 —— , ‘Bejewelling Jerusalem: Architectural Adornment and Symbolic Significance in the Early Church in the Christian West’, in Islands in a Global Context: Proceedings of the Seventh International Insular Arts Conference, ed. by Conor Newman, Mags Mannion, and Fiona Gavin (Dublin: Four Courts, 2017), pp. 15–23 —— , ‘Pausing at the Threshold: Space, Symbolism and Eschatology in Wilfrid’s Crypts’, in Architectural Representation in Early Medieval England, ed. by Hannah Bailey, Daniel Thomas, and Karl Kinsella, special issue Leeds Studies in English, n.s., 48 (2017), 21–42 ——  , ‘From Cover to Cover: (Re)presentations of Ecclesia and Eschatology in the Miniatures of the Codex Amiatinus’, in All Roads Lead to Rome: The Creation, Context and Transmission of the Codex Amiatinus, ed.  by Jane Hawkes and Meg Boulton, Studia traditionis theologiae, 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 39–48 —— , ‘Looking down from the Rothbury Cross: (Re)Viewing the Place of Anglo-Saxon Art’, in Insular Iconographies: Essays in Honour of Jane Hawkes, ed. by Meg Boulton and Michael D. J. Bintley (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2019), pp. 217–34 ——  , ‘Pearls before Paradise: Liminal Spaces, Precious Stones and Heavenly Waters in Early Christian Art’, in The Meaning of Water in Early Medieval England, ed. by Carolyn Twomey and Daniel Anlezark, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 47 (Brepols: Turnhout, 2021), pp. 145–65 Boulton, Meg, and Jane Hawkes, ‘The Anglo-Saxon Church in Kent’, in Places of Worship in Britain and Ireland, 300‒950, ed. by Paul S. Barnwell, Rewley House Studies in the Historic Environment, 4 (Donington: Tyas, 2015), pp. 92–188 Brown, G. Baldwin, The Arts in Early England, 2nd edn, 2 vols (London: John Murray, 1925–1956), ii: Anglo-Saxon Architecture Brown, Peter, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982) Campbell, James, The Anglo-Saxons (London: Penguin, 1991) Carruthers, Mary, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) ——  , The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) Charles-Edwards, Thomas, After Rome, Short Oxford History of the British Isles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)

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Chazelle, Celia, ‘The Illustrations of the Codex Amiatinus and of Cosmas Indicopleustes’ Christian Topography’, in All Roads Lead to Rome: The Creation, Context and Trans­ mission of the Codex Amiatinus, ed. by Jane Hawkes and Meg Boulton, Studia traditionis theologiae, 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 11–26 Cramp, Rosemary, ‘Northumbrian Churches’, in Places of Worship in Britain and Ireland, 300‒950, ed. by Paul S. Barnwell, Rewley House Studies in the Historic Environment, 4 (Donington: Tyas, 2015), pp. 153–69 Darby, Peter, and Daniel Reynolds, ‘Reassessing the “Jerusalem Pilgrims”: The Case of Bede’s De locis sanctis’, Bulletin for the Council for British Research in the Levant, 9.1 (2014), 27–31 de Certeau, Michel, ‘Walking in the City’, in his The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), pp. 91–110 Donkin, Lucy, and Hanna Vorholt, eds, Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Eliade, Mircea, The Sacred and Profane (London: Elsevier Health Sciences, 1959) Frank, Robert, and Angus Cameron, eds, A Plan for the Dictionary of Old English (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973) Galit, Noga-Banai, Bianca Kühnel, and Hana Vorholt, eds, Visual Constructs of Jerusalem, Cultural Encounters in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 18 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015) Hahn, Cynthia, Passion Relics and the Medieval Imagination: Art, Architecture, and Society (California: California University Press, 2020) Hawkes, Jane, ‘Iuxta morem Romanorum: Stone and Sculpture in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Anglo-Saxon Styles, ed. by Catherine Karkov and George Hardin Brown (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003), pp. 66–99 ——  , ‘The Legacy of Constantine in Anglo-Saxon England’, in Constantine the Great: York’s Roman Emperor, ed.  by Elizabeth Hartley, Jane Hawkes, Martin Henig, and Frances Mee, exhibition catalogue, Yorkshire Museum (York: York Museums Trust, 2006), pp. 104–14 —— , ‘A Sculptural Legacy: Stones of the North from the “Age of Wilfrid”’, in Wilfrid: Abbot, Bishop, Saint: Papers from the 1300th Anniversary Conference, ed. by Nicholas J. Higham (Donington: Tyas, 2013), pp. 124–35 —— , ‘Stones of the North: Sculpture in Northumbria in the “Age of Bede”’, in Newcastle and Northumberland: Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art, ed.  by Jeremy Ashbee and Julian M. Luxford (Wakefield: Maney, 2013), pp. 34–53 Hoyland, Robert, and Sarah Waidler, ‘Adomnán’s De locis sanctis and the Seventh-Century Near East’, English Historical Review, 129 (2014), 787–807 Jolly, Karen  L., Catherine  E. Karkov, and Sarah Larratt Keefer, Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies in Honor of George Hardin Brown (West Virginia: West Virginia University Press, 2008) Karkov, Catherine E., The Art of Anglo-Saxon England, Boydell Studies in Medieval Art and Architecture (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2016) Karkov, Catherine E., and Fred Orton, eds, Theorizing Anglo-Saxon Stone Sculpture (Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2003)

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Krautheimer, Richard, Three Christian Capitals: Topography and Politics — Rome, Con­ stan­ti­nople, Milan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992) Kühnel, Bianca, From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem: Representations of the Holy City in Christian Art of the First Millennium (Rome: Herder, 1987) Laistner, Max Ludwig Wolfram, and Henry Hall King, A Hand-List of Bede Manuscripts (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1943), pp. 83–86 Luisa, Izzi, ‘Anglo-Saxons Underground. Early Medieval Graffiti in the Catacombs of Rome’, in England and Rome in the Early Middle Ages: Pilgrimage, Art, and Politics, ed. by Francesca Tinti, Studies in the Early Middle Ages, 40 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 141–77 McClendon, Charles B., The Origins of Medieval Architecture: Building in Europe, 600–900 a.d. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005) O’Brien, Conor, Bede’s Temple: An Image and its Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Ó Carragáin, Éamonn, Ritual and the Rood: Liturgical Images and the Old English Poems (London: British Library, 2005) Ó Carragáin, Tomás, Churches in Early Medieval Ireland: Architecture, Ritual and Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010) O’Loughlin, Thomas, ‘Perceiving Palestine in Early Christian Ireland: Martyrium, Exegetical Key, Relic, and Liturgical Space’, Ériu, 54 (2004), 125–37 —— , Adomnán and the Holy Places (London: T&T Clark, 2007) ——  , ‘Adomnán’s Plans in the Context of his Imagining “the Most Famous City”’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (2012), 15–40 —— , ‘“Who, O Lord, Shall Live in your Tabernacle?”: The Map of the Tabernacle within the Life of the Monasteries of Wearmouth and Jarrow’, in All Roads Lead to Rome: The Creation, Context and Transmission of the Codex Amiatinus, ed.  by Jane Hawkes and Meg Boulton, Studia traditionis theologiae, 31 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 89–104 O’Reilly, Jennifer, ‘Introduction’, in Bede: On the Temple, trans. by Sean Connolly, Translated Texts for Historians, 21 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1995), pp. xvii–lv Pulliam, Heather, ‘Blood, Water and Stone: The Performative Cross’, in Making Histories: Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Insular Art, York 2011, ed. by Jane Hawkes (Stamford: Watkins, 2013), pp. 262–78 ——  , ‘Between the Embodied Eye and Living World: Clonmacnoise’s Cross of the Scriptures’, Art Bulletin, 102 (2020), 7–35 Rodwell, Warwick, Jane Hawkes, Emily Howe, and Rosemary Cramp, ‘The Lichfield Angel: A Spectacular Anglo-Saxon Painted Sculpture’, The Antiquaries Journal, 88 (2008), 48–108 Stalley, Roger, Early Medieval Architecture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) Taylor, Harold McCarter, and Joan Taylor, Anglo-Saxon Architecture, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965) Turner, Philippa, and Jane Hawkes, eds, The Rood in Medieval Britain and Ireland, c. 800 c. 1500 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2020) Webster, Leslie, Anglo-Saxon Art: A New History (London: British Museum Press, 2012) Webster, Leslie, and Janet Backhouse, eds, The Making of England: Anglo-Saxon Art and Culture, a.d. 600–900 (London: British Museum Press, 1991)

Chapter 2

Europe and the Holy Land in the British Branch of the Imago mundi Tradition Natalia I. Petrovskaia* Introduction It is something of a commonplace to say that to the medieval Europeans, the Holy Land was central not only in geographical terms, but also in cultural ones. The medieval European image of Jerusalem has been the subject of many recent studies, which have shown that it could carry a multitude of meanings and associations that could be, and were, used in constructing identity.1 As Bianca Kühnel observes, ‘What is peculiar to the relationship between Jerusalem and Europe is the continuity of Jerusalem’s presence and the extent of its share in the

*  This article presents some of the findings of the project ‘Defining “Europe” in Medieval

European Geographical Discourse’ (Utrecht University, 2017–2021) [accessed 9 April 2019]. The project was funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). 1  The bibliography is too vast to be reproduced here, but for references to the multitude of significances of Jerusalem in medieval European eyes, see, for instance, Yeager, Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative, pp. 1–2; Berriot-Salvadore, ‘Préface’, p. 9. For a study of the representation of Jerusalem in a cartographic context, see Baumgärtner, ‘Die Wahrnehmung Jerusalems auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten’, pp. 271–334.

Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, tcne 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 41–66 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.129228

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formation of European cultures’.2 The significance of the geographical aspect of the European perception of Jerusalem within this framework is particularly aptly illustrated by the metaphor of Jerusalem as the navel of the world, umbilius mundi, in geographical, historical, and fictional texts from medieval Europe (though these genre distinctions are modern), and the corresponding expression of this centrality in its central position in European world maps of the crusading period, the mappae mundi of the T-O type.3 The contrast between the centrality of the Holy Land and the marginality of European countries in the world-view expressed in these images and related texts have formed the focal point of a number of recent discussions.4 In particular, that in the medieval geographical discourse Britain was perceived as marginal whilst the Holy Land occupied a central place is a much-discussed topos.5 However, the contrast might be taken more broadly, for, as Michael Wintle observes in relation to the relative importance ascribed to Europe and Asia in the medieval cartographic T-O tradition: ‘these early maps do not laud Europe in any way; if anything it is Asia which has pride of place, being larger and at the top, honoured with the location of the rising sun and the Garden of Eden’.6 The objective of the present chapter is to present the interplay in the geographical descriptions of Jerusalem and the Holy Land on the one hand, and of the regions of Europe on the other, in texts of a single encyclopaedic tradition. As the title of this chapter suggests, its focus is on the British branch of the wide encyclopaedic tradition based on the twelfth-century treatise Imago mundi ‘Image of the World’ (also known as De imagine mundi ‘On the Image of the World’ or De imagine mundi libri tres ‘Three Books on the Image of the World’).7 By the ‘British branch’ here I mean the vernacular adaptations 2 

Kühnel, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places’, p. 243. Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, pp. 341–42. See also Akbari and Mittman, ‘Seeing Jerusalem’, pp. 122, 134. 4  See Akbari, Idols in the East, pp. 50–66; Lavezzo, Angels on the Edge; Bartlett, ‘Heartland and Border’, pp. 23–36. As Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Asa Simon Mittman observe, the orientation of medieval maps itself has also been interpreted as according extra significance to the Holy Land; see Akbari and Mittman, ‘Seeing Jerusalem’, p. 121. 5  See, in particular, the extensive discussion dedicated to the subject in Lavezzo’s Angels on the Edge. 6  Wintle, The Image of Europe, p. 165. 7  For editions of the text, see Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi, ed. by Flint, and De imagine mundi libri tres, ed. by Migne. The only translation into modern English currently available appears to be in Foster, ‘The Imago mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis’. 3 

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and translations based on this text produced and circulated in Britain (both in England and in Wales, in French, English, and Welsh). Despite the disparate origins of these adaptations and translations, the tradition discussed here shows a degree of continuity. The texts discussed range from the mid-thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth centuries.8 Despite their differences, these texts show a number of common trends, of which one is the relative stability in their rendition of the description of the Holy Land as found in the Imago mundi, compared to a relative fluidity observed in their descriptions of Europe. The present article provides a brief overview of the British branch of the Imago mundi tradition, followed by a discussion of the ways in which the stability in the description of the Holy Land in these texts contrasts with the fluidity in the descriptions of Europe. It will be suggested in the conclusion that this phenomenon might be explained through the application of the ‘three Orients’ theory, which proposes that the medieval conception of westward historical progression articulated in the translatio studii et imperii separated out the timeless and eternally important ‘biblical’ Orient, from the ‘historical’ Orient firmly located in the past, and, finally also from the ‘contemporary’ Orient of the present, which the process of translatio had left behind.9 The latter is absent from these texts, which focus on the ‘contemporary’ Europe, the description of which therefore is subject to being updated and therefore more susceptible to change.

The Imago mundi and its Adaptations The Imago mundi is commonly described as a twelfth-century encyclopaedia. While the anachronism of the term ‘encyclopaedia’ in relation to medieval texts is widely acknowledged, so is its usefulness as a category, and in this article I follow the established use of this label.10 I adopt the definition provided by Bernard Ribémont in his description of the ‘Encyclopedic model’ of writing, who observes that ‘Encyclopaedic writing implies a philosophical and theological question about the system of the world and/or the way in which it can 8 

For details, see the following section. For more on the ‘three Orients’ theory, see Petrovskaia, ‘Introduction’. 10  See, for instance, discussions in Ribémont, ‘On the Definition of an Encyclopaedic Genre’; Ribémont, ‘L’encyclopédisme médiéval’; Le Goff, ‘Pourquoi le xiiie siècle a-t-il été plus particulièrement un siècle d’encyclopédisme?’; Twomey, ‘Middle English Translations’, p. 331; Draelants, ‘Le “siècle de l’encyclopédisme”’, esp. pp. 82–85. For use of the term in relation to texts of the Imago mundi tradition, see also Brown, ‘The Vernacular Universe’, esp. p. 137. 9 

44 Natalia I. Petrovskaia

be apprehended through knowledge conditioned by its very organisational modes’.11 The Imago mundi and texts based on it follow this pattern, as they represent a systematic representation of knowledge concerning the world.12 The information presented in this group of texts is, as we shall see, partly adaptable to the circumstances of the texts’ circulation but nevertheless largely dependent on the original structure and organization of the material presented. The Imago mundi was composed by Honorius Augustodunensis (fl. c. 1090–c. 1140), an author as mysterious as he was prolific.13 The work has a tripartite structure. The first book concerns the physical world, the second the divisions of time, and the third is a historical text. It is the first of the three books that proved particularly popular in the medieval period. The text, which survives in over a hundred medieval manuscripts, was enormously influential in the Middle Ages and similar in popularity and extent of dissemination to Honorius’s other encyclopaedia, the Elucidarium.14 The Imago mundi was a widely popular medieval text, translated into several vernacular European languages, including Anglo-Norman, French, Spanish, and Welsh.15 The British tradition of this text forms a significant proportion of the surviving corpus, for not only did the Latin and French versions both circulate in the Insular context, but the text had found translation both into Anglo-Norman (twice) and into Welsh (also twice).16 It is also possible, 11 

Ribémont, ‘On the Definition of an Encyclopaedic Genre’, p. 54. For a different approach to the analysis of Imago mundi-type texts, see Luff, Wissen­ svermittlung im europäischen Mittelalter, esp. pp. 6–8. 13  For an overview of the discussions surrounding the authorship of the text, see Garrigues, ‘L’oeuvre d’Honorius Augustodunensis’, pp.  27–28. Online bibliographies for Honorius Augustodunensis and his works, including lists of manuscripts, are available at ARLIMA: Archives de littérature du moyen âge and, for the Imago mundi in particular at the entry for Imago mundi in the Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften database Repertorium. ‘Geschichtsquellen des deutschen Mittelalters’ [accessed 19 September 2018]. 14  See Dunphy, ‘Historical Writing in and after the Old High German  Period’, p.  210; Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi, ed. by Flint, p. 18. For more on the Elucidarium, see Lefèvre, Contribution, par l’histoire d’un texte, à l’histoire des croyances religieuses en France au Moyen Age; Flint, ‘The Original Text of the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis from the Twelfth Century English Manuscripts’; Gottschall, Das ‘Elucidarium’ des Honorius Augustodunensis. 15  A searchable database of all known manuscripts of the Imago mundi and its vernacular adaptations was produced in the course of the ‘Defining “Europe” in Medieval European Geographical Discourse’ project; see Petrovskaia and Calis, ‘Images of the World’. 16  For references to editions and discussions of the Anglo-Norman versions, see below. For 12 

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though not certain, that the text was composed by Honorius during his stay in England (possibly with St Anselm in Canterbury).17 The first adaptation of book i of Imago mundi into Anglo-Norman French, known as La petite philosophie, was produced towards the beginning of the thirteenth century (c. 1230).18 The second Anglo-Norman version was made on the basis of a French adaptation of the text (Pierre de Beauvais’s early thirteenth-century Mappemonde) in the fourteenth (or perhaps as early as the thirteenth) century under the title Divisiuns del mund or Divisiones mundi.19 Although this text is thought to be based on the Latin text and does seem to have used it at least partly, it appears to have largely copied the Mappemonde.20 Sometime in the thirteenth century, at least two translations of the Imago mundi into Welsh were produced independently of each other. These appear to have had a parallel circulation, and, indeed, can be found together (though not as consecutive texts) copied by the same hand in a large manuscript compilation of the end of the fourteenth century, the famous Red Book of Hergest.21 Finally, in 1480 William Caxton produced a translation of the Image du monde into Middle English as Mirrour of the World.22 the Welsh versions, see Delw y Byd, ed. by Petrovskaia; for discussions of the Welsh versions, see the introduction to this edition, and also Petrovskaia, ‘Delw y byd’; Falileyev, ‘Delw y Byd Revisited’. Information on the provenance and circulation of the texts is available on the ‘Images of the World’ manuscripts database. The Francophone texts are introduced briefly in Armstrong and Kay, Knowing Poetry, pp. 104–05. 17  Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi, ed. by Flint, pp. 8–9. There have also been suggestions that Honorius may have been an Englishman, or an Irishman; see La petite philosophie, ed. by Trethewey, p. liii n. 2; Reynolds, ‘Further Evidence for the Irish Origin of Honorius Augustodunensis’. 18  La petite philosophie, ed. by Trethewey; Twomey, ‘Medieval Encyclopedias’, p. 190. 19  Angremy, ‘La Mappemonde (I)’, p. 319; see also Hamilton, ‘Encore un plagiat médiéval’. Divisiones mundi, ed.  by Prior, pp.  33–62; Twomey, ‘Medieval Encyclopedias’, p.  190. See also Jostkleigrewe, ‘L’espace’, p.  372. For an edition of the Mappemonde, see Angremy, ‘La Mappemonde (2ème article)’. The thirteenth-century date was proposed by Alexander Bell in ‘Notes on Perot de Garbelei’s Divisiones mundi’. 20  On the relationship of this with the translation of Pierre de Beauvais, see Hamilton, ‘Encore un plagiat médiéval’ and Angremy, ‘La Mappemonde (I)’, pp. 331–35. 21  For more, see introduction to Delw y Byd, ed. by Petrovskaia. 22  He printed his text twice, and Norman F. Blake suggests that the reason may lie in the availability of woodcuts for reuse; Blake, William Caxton, pp. 111–12. The illustrations for the Mirror of the World were based on the illuminations of BL, MS Royal 19.A.ix (Bruges, 1464), the French text of which Caxton had translated for this edition; Blake, William Caxton, pp. 26, 110.

46 Natalia I. Petrovskaia

The Insular tradition of Imago mundi translations and adaptations appears to have been fairly continuous: from the production of the Latin Imago mundi text in the twelfth century, the continued copying of the text in England (the earliest surviving manuscripts of the Latin text are from the thirteenth century), to the translation of the text into Anglo-Norman and Welsh in the thirteenth century, the production of the Divisiouns du monde on the basis of Pierre de Beauvais’s adaptation in the fourteenth, and the Middle English edition by Caxton on the basis of the French adaptation at the end of the fifteenth.23 It is important to note that all of these Insular translations and adaptations of Imago mundi are based on different immediate sources: the two versions of the Welsh Delw y byd translate two versions of Imago mundi, the Divisiouns du monde adapts/translates the Mappemonde (itself an adaptation of Imago mundi), and the Mirrour of the World is in turn a translation of Gossouin de Metz’s adaptation of the Latin text. Nevertheless, there is a pattern in this sequence of readaptations and reappropriations. In each case, the source is positioned as an external authority. The Welsh texts translate the authoritative Latin, the Anglo-Norman text pretends to translate the authoritative Latin, and the comments of Caxton in relation to his French exemplar suggest a questioning attitude towards what would otherwise have been perceived as ‘authority’.24 These multilayered connections of the Imago mundi tradition with the Insular world have yet to be fully explored.25 It may be significant, however, that the period of the composition of the Imago mundi and its translation into Anglo-Norman and into Welsh corresponds to a floruit in cartographic production in England, characterized by a particularly ‘global perspective’.26 In the thirteenth century, when the Petite philosophie and Delw y byd were pro23 

There is furthermore some evidence for the continual circulation if not necessarily reading or use of the Imago mundi and related texts in an English context in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. For instance, copies of the Imago mundi can be found alongside those of Vincent de Beauvais’s Speculum maius and Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae in bequests to Merton College, Oxford, in this period, though, as Michael W. Twomey notes, there is no reference to these texts in reading lists for university curricula of the time; Twomey, ‘Towards a Reception History of Western Medieval Encyclopaedias’, p. 341. 24  See discussion below, pp. 56–57. 25  This phenomenon is of particular interest in the context of the similar trends observed in the production and dissemination of Honorius’s other encyclopaedic work, the Elucidarius, also apparently produced in England and showing predominantly English manuscript provenance for the earlier part of the manuscript tradition; for discussions and further bibliography, see, for instance, Marx, ‘An Abbreviated Middle English Prose Translation of the Elucidarius’. 26  Lavezzo, Angels on the Edge, pp. 46, 50.

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duced, some of the most famous and elaborate mappae mundi (world maps) were created in England.27 This also overlaps with the period of the flowering of medieval encyclopaedism (c. 1190–1260).28 This may well represent what Peter Damian-Grint describes as ‘The enthusiasm of twelfth-century audience for treatises translated into the vernacular on any subject, no matter how recondite (just as long as they were in verse, apparently)’.29 The enthusiasm of the Welsh audiences appears to have been for prose versions of texts, however, while the Francophone public preferred verse. Despite their apparent popularity in the medieval period, translated texts have traditionally attracted less scholarly attention, and often more criticism, than original compositions.30 The author of La petite philosophie, for instance, has been described as ‘un des plus mauvais écrivains que conaisse la littérature anglo-normande’ (one of the worst writers in Anglo-Norman literature), which may go some way towards explaining the relative scarcity of studies of this text.31 It may be well, however, in this instance, to take our cue from Seneca the Younger: ‘Numquam me in voce bona mali pudebit auctoris’ (I shall never be ashamed to go to a bad author for a good quotation), for reading and understanding these translated texts is necessary if we are to establish a full picture of the intellectual context of the period.32 The Welsh translation (or more correctly translations, since two translations at least were produced on the basis of two different versions of Imago mundi), Delw y byd, for instance, attests not only to the early circulation of Imago mundi manuscripts in Britain, but to interest in Wales in encyclopaedic and geographical material. A visual equivalent is found also in the Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3514 (Whitland, s. xiii2), which contains a mappa mundi on p. 53, and Oxford, Jesus College, MS  20 (s. xiv ex./xv), containing a related map on fol. 32v.33 Echoes of the geographical information carried in this text can be 27 

Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 306. Draelants, ‘Le “siècle de l’encyclopédisme”’, p. 81. 29  Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, p. 7. 30  For the invisibility of the translation in modern culture, see Lambert, ‘Medieval Translations and Translation Studies’, p. 4. 31  For the sentiment, see Vising, ‘Trethewey, W. H., La petite philosophie (Review)’, p. 95. See also Edwards, ‘Review’, p. 310. 32  Seneca, Ad Serenum, xi. 8, ed. by Basore, p. 258; translated in Seneca, Dialogues and Letters, trans. by Costa, p. 49. 33  Julia Crick identifies one of the scribes in the first manuscript as active c. 1266 and another 28 

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found in literary texts, such as poetry.34 While direct influence of Delw y byd on the poetic texts cannot be demonstrated, it provides the necessary context for understanding these references. It is not the purpose of the present enquiry to engage with criticism of style and language or to rehabilitate these translations as great literary productions, but rather to explore the information conveyed by these texts. The British vernacular translations and adaptations of the Imago mundi can provide us with the necessary context for understanding the worldview of authors working in Britain in that period. It would therefore be particularly interesting to examine their references to the Holy Land and Europe to see if any telling alterations to the text have been made.

Stability and Changes in La petite philosophie, Mappemonde, and Divisiones mundi The most striking aspect of the section of these texts dealing with the Holy Land is the stability of the description. The Petite philosophie follows the Imago mundi nearly verbatim in this section of the text.35 The minor variations, listed by Trethewey in his introduction, concern side comments on the regions discussed, e.g. comment in l. 798 on the conquest of Phoenicia for its treasure and in l. 830 on nobility of Samaria (‘Une realme de noble afeire’).36 Although, Pierre de Beauvais shortens the Europe and Africa sections considerably in his Mappemonde, as will be discussed in greater detail below, the section of the text concerning the Holy Land retains most of the information found in the Imago mundi, and the Divisiones, in this instance, follows suit. In their account of the history of Jerusalem and its name, of Samaria and Galilee, for instance, the Divisiones and Mappemonde are almost identical. The only exception to this is the mention of Pentapolis in the Divisiones (l. 745) between the reference to Galilee and the account of the mystical apples. The Mappemonde does not mention Pentapolis in this location. Pentapolis is, however, mentioned, as in the c. 1285, with the Imago mundi scribe active somewhat earlier than the 1266 scribe; Crick, ‘The Power and the Glory’, pp. 24, 33, 40. For the Oxford manuscript, see Huws, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts, pp. 43, 60. The Oxford manuscript is available in digital facsimile form online at [accessed 30 April 2019]. 34  See, for instance, the ‘Greater Song of the World’, in Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Haycock, p. 518. 35  La petite philosophie, ed. by Trethewey, p. 27. 36  For discussion, see La petite philosophie, ed. by Trethewey, p. liv n. 7.

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Divisiones, immediately after the references to Galilee, Nazareth, and Mount Tabor in the Imago mundi (i. 16).37 The lack of variation in the descriptions of the Holy Land in these texts might lead us to conclude that the translators simply followed their exemplar closely. This would fit with the general view of medieval encyclopaedias as conservative texts, focused on the transmission of established knowledge.38 However, a close investigation of other sections of the text, shows that this is not the case, and that only the descriptions relating to the Holy Land are fixed in nature. The European section of these translations shows a more fluid text. The description of Europe in La petite philosophie follows the Imago mundi relatively closely, retaining some elements removed by Pierre de Beauvais in the Mappemonde. Since the whole Europe section is rather extensive, we may concentrate on the chapter dedicated to Italy, which, for the Latin tradition of the text, has provided significant variants distinguishing between different versions of the text.39 The Petite philosophie retains the extensive description of the ancient cities of Italy symbolically linking them to animals: Rome to the lion, Brundisium to a stag, Carthage to a bull, and Troy to a horse.40 The information presented in the Latin text is reproduced without abridgment. The later Divisiones mundi, however, in a comparable passage, reduces the material considerably.41 It covers Europe in a few verses and condenses the information concerning Italy, France, Spain, and Britain. In comparing the two Anglo-Norman adaptations of the Imago mundi, their different origins and date must be kept in mind. The later text, Divisiones mundi, is based not on the Latin but on its French adaptation, and follows the Mappemonde of Pierre de Beauvais very closely throughout.42 Its treatment of Europe and Africa is curtailed compared to what we find in the Imago mundi, but the abridgement of these sections is the work of Pierre de Beauvais. As Anne Angremy notes, the corresponding chapters of the Imago mundi are barely recognizable in this text, which limits itself to listing a selection of regions 37 

Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi, ed.  by Flint, pp.  56–57. As pointed out by Prior in his edition of the Divisiones (p. 57), the description is very close to that found in Isidore’s Etymologiae, xiv. 3. 24–25. 38  See, for instance, Ribémont, ‘On the Definition of an Encyclopaedic Genre’, p. 49. 39  For discussion of the variants, see Petrovskaia, ‘Delw y byd’ and Petrovskaia, ‘La disparition du quasi dans les formules étymologiques des traductions galloises de l’Imago mundi’. 40  La petite philosophie, ed. by Trethewey, p. 36; cf. Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi, ed. by Flint, p. 61. 41  See quotation below, p. 50. 42  Hamilton, ‘Encore un plagiat médiéval’. See also references in n. 19 above.

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of Europe and Africa.43 The shorter treatment of these regions compared to Asia, however, appears to be part of a broader trend rather than a phenomenon unique to the Mappemonde, for a similar trend can be observed in the French adaptation of the Imago mundi produced by Gossouin or Gautier de Metz in 1245, the Image du monde.44 The Europe section of the Divisiones mundi, while short, does present some curious variations which bear further investigation. Most occur towards the end of the section, in the discussion of the regions from Italy to Britain. The text is reproduced below, alongside Pierre de Beauvais’s Mappemonde. The aberrations in both texts are underlined. Divisiones mundi (870–81), ed. Prior, p. 60 Italle aprés chet, U Tusce, une pais, siet, E Apuille e Hungrie, E aprés Lumbardie, E pus Venice e France, Ce sachet, sanz doutance, Aquitaine e Espaine E Gascoine e Britaine, Engletere, e Hymberne Ou plus de l’an yverne. Outre icele cuntrée Si est la mer gelée.

Mappemonde (875–86), ed. Angremy, p. 485 Itailles delés lui se siet Ou il païs de Tuce siet, Et Puillë aprée et Hongrie Et delés s’estent Lonbardie Et puis Venicë, et puis France. Einssi sïent par ordenance Aauitaine aprés et Espaigne, Et puis Terragone et Britaigne. Engleterre est de la sanz faille, Illande aprés et Cornouaille; Outre Illande, cele contree, Est por voir la mer engelee.

The reference to what appears to be Hungary (Hongrie) in both texts, should, following the Imago mundi, have been Imbria.45 The reference to Gascony in the Divisiones is somewhat more difficult to explain. The corresponding line in 43 

Angremy, ‘La Mappemonde (I)’, p. 324. Pierre de Beauvais also on occasion introduced information not present in the Imago mundi. Some of the instances of this are discussed below. A different example of an addition introduced by Pierre de Beauvais and maintained in the Divisiones mundi is discussed in Luca, The Chinese Language in European Texts, pp. 22–23. 44  Angremy, ‘La Mappemonde (I)’, p. 324. For the text of the Image du monde, see L’image du monde de maître Gossouin, rédaction en prose, ed. by Prior and ‘L’Image du monde, une encyclopédie du xiiie siècle’, ed. by Connochie-Bourgne. For discussions, see, for instance, ConnochieBourgne, ‘Pourquoi et comment réécrire une encyclopédie?’; Centili, ‘La seconda redazione in versi dell’Image du monde’; Petrovskaia, ‘Mythologizing the Conceptual Landscape’. 45  Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi, i. 26, ed. by Flint, p. 61.

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the Mappemonde refers to Terragone, which does feature in the Imago mundi. The order of countries in the Mappemonde list follows Honorius’s text accurately where Tarragona (a city in north-eastern Catalonia) features in the list of the six provinces of Spain at the end the chapter dedicated to Hispania (ch. 28), which is followed by the chapter on Britannia (ch. 29).46 The six provinces listed in Imago mundi are: Terracona (Tarragona, Catalonia), Kartago (Cartagena, Murcia), Lusitania (Roman province encompassing Portugal and neighbouring parts of modern Spain),47 Galicia, Betica (Roman province, corresponding roughly to modern Andalucía), and Tinguitania (uncertain, possibly the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana, corresponding roughly to modern Morocco). We will return to the question of why the Mappemonde retains only the reference to Tarragona below. Beyond the major aberrations, some minor variation between the two texts may be observed, such as, for instance, the use of Hymberne for Ireland in the Divisiones where Mappemonde uses Illande. While Hymberne is a derivation from the Latin form which seems to indicate a Latin source, Illande is the form traditionally used in the Chansons de geste tradition, and also in romances.48 Although a further study of the terminology used for Ireland in medieval French literature is needed before any firm conclusions can be drawn, one might tentatively suggest that the difference between the two texts here might indicate a desire to indicate affiliation with different traditions: that of Latinate learning in the Divisiones, which claims to be a translation from Latin sources, and that of the Francophone vernacular literary culture in the Mappemonde.49 46 

Honorius Augustodunensis, Imago mundi, i. 28, 29, ed. by Flint, p. 62. A marginal gloss identifies Lusitania as the region ‘in qua est Lisebona’ (in which Lisbon is) in at least one manuscript of the Imago mundi, Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66 (s. xii). Images of this manuscript are accessible on the Parker on the Web site at [accessed 4 April 2019]. For Anglo-Norman involvement in Lisbon, see Villegas-Aristizabal, ‘Norman and Anglo-Norman Participation in the Iberian Reconquista’, pp. 160, 166–68, 176–85. 48  See Langlois, Table des noms propres de toute nature compris dans les chansons de geste imprimées, s.v. Illande, Ilande, p. 359. Note that Hymberne or Hyberne is not attested in this list. In romances, the term Illande, occurs, for instance, in the First Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval/Le Conte de Graal (l. 5417); The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes, ii: The First Continuation, ed. by Roach and Ivy; quoted and translated in Busby, French in Medieval Ireland, p. 310. 49  There does not appear to be a full study dedicated specifically to the subject of the medieval names of Ireland in medieval French. For a similar study for the medieval German tradition, see Busch and Lange, ‘“Von Îbern und von Îrlant”’. For a more general examination of Ireland in 47 

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The stability of the description of the Holy Land, compared to the relative presence of variation in the description of Europe in the texts examined, suggests a difference in the treatment of the two regions in these geographical treatises. It may be relevant here that the Welsh translation of Imago mundi, Delw y byd, which otherwise follows the Latin quite closely throughout, substitutes Gwasgwin (‘Gascony’) for Aquitaine of the Latin text in the Europe section.50 I have previously suggested that this substitution, if it is the work of Welsh translators, may reflect first-hand knowledge of that region of France.51 The sequence in the thirteenth-century French Mappemonde retains the sequence of countries as in the Imago mundi, including the reference to Tarragona, and the fact that the Anglo-Norman Divisiones introduces the reference to Gascony, just as the Welsh text does, despite the fact that it is not in either of these translations’ exemplars, might not be coincidental. In the Divisiones, Gascony is mentioned alongside Aquitaine, and the sequence of countries can be read in the context of Plantagenet imperial ambitions. The sequence, ll. 876–79 is as follows: Aquitaine e Espaine E Gascoine e Britaine, Engletere, e Hyberne O plus de l’an yverne.52

As observed by Margaret Wade Labarge in her study of the English rule in Gascony, the terms Gascony and Aquitaine are largely synonymous and used interchangeably in most medieval chronicles.53 Whilst it is dangerous to read too much into word proximity in verse, the fact that the geographical text largely follows the sequence of place names in its exemplar suggests that the juxtaposition of Gascoine and Britaine is not accidental. Whilst from the point of view of modern understanding of geography this proximity does not lend itself to easy explanation, it acquires significance if we consider the countries in the list from the perspective of the Anglo-Norman political realm and realworld logistics: Gascony and Britain were linked directly by a sea route.54 It medieval French literature, see Busby, French in Medieval Ireland. 50  Quoted and discussed in Petrovskaia, ‘Mythologizing the Conceptual Landscape’, pp. 201–02. 51  Petrovskaia, ‘Mythologizing the Conceptual Landscape’, pp. 201–02. 52  Divisiones mundi, ed. by Prior, p. 60. 53  Labarge, Gascony, pp. 1, 5. 54  Labarge, Gascony, pp. 12–13.

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is tempting, though perhaps fanciful, to argue that this passage of the fourteenth-century Divisiones reflects contemporary concerns, and in particular the conflict of political interests between Britain and Spain (as part of the 1368 Franco-Castilian alliance) in Gascony.55 The fourteenth-century text of the Divisiones and the fourteenth-century date of the earliest Welsh manuscripts of Delw y byd bring us closer to the end of the Middle Ages and the watershed of literary production, the printing press. It is in printed form in the following century that the first English translation of the Imago mundi was produced.

William Caxton’s Mirrour of the World William Caxton’s Mirrour of the World (first edition 1480/81, second edition 1490) is one of only two translations of encyclopaedias into Middle English.56 Thirty-three copies are known to survive of the first edition, and nineteen appear to survive of the second.57 Unusually for early translations, we happen to have Caxton’s exact exemplar: British Library, MS 19.A.ix, the text of which he had translated and which he may have even owned.58 As Twomey points out, this gives us the immense advantage of comparing Caxton’s text with his exemplar, and as a result we can see that though, to quote Twomey’s words, ‘there is no perceptible stylistic difference between Caxton’s own prose and his translation of Gossouin’, he does signal switches by referring to himself.59 William Caxton, in his translation of Gossouin’s Image du monde, does not spend much time on Europe. The short description, corresponding to less than two pages in O. H. Prior’s edition, can be reproduced in full here: Syth we haue deuysed to you of Asye and of his contrees and regyons, I shal saye to you of Europe and his condicions shortly, ffor as moche as we may ofte here speke therof. The first partye of Europe is Romanye and a parte of Constantynoble, Trapesonde, Macedone, Thesalye, Boheme, Sapronye, Pyrre, & a moche holsom contre named Archade. In this contre sourdeth & spryngeth a fontayne in whiche men may not quenche brennyng brondes, ne cooles on fire and brennyng. 55 

Labarge, Gascony, p. 167. The other was John Trevisa’s translation of De proprietatibus rerum ‘On the Properties of Things’ by Bartholomeus Anglicus; Twomey, ‘Middle English Translations’, p. 332. 57  Jack, ‘Caxton’s “Mirrour of the World” and Henryson’s “Taill of the Cok and the Jasp”’. 58  Twomey, ‘Middle English Translations’, p. 335. 59  Twomey, ‘Middle English Translations’, p. 335. 56 

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In Archade is a stone whiche in no wyse may be quenchyd after it is sette a fyre tyl it be alle brent in to asshes. After Archade is the Royame of Denemarke, and thenne Hongrye, & sythe Hosterich; and thenne foloweth Germanye, whiche we calle Almayne, whiche conteyneth a grete pourprys toward thoccident, in whiche pourprys ben many grete & puissaunt Royaumes. In Allemayne sourdeth a grete flood & ryuere named Dunoe, the whiche stratcheth vnto in Constantynople, and there entreth in to the see; but erst it trauerseth vii grete floodes by his radour & rennyng, &, as I haue herd saye, the hede of this Dunoe begyneth on one side of a montayne, & that other side of the same montayne sourdeth another grete ryuer which is named the Riin and renneth thrugh Almayne by Basyle, Strawsburgh, Magnounce, Couelence, Coleyn, & Nemyng where fast by it departeth in to iiii ryuers & renneth thrugh the londes of Ghelres, Cleue and Holande, and so in to the see. And yet er this ryuer entre in to the see, he entreth in to another ryuer named the Mase, & than loseth he his name and is called the Mase, & mase depe xl myle longe in the see. In Europe is also Swauen, Basse Almayn, Ffraunce, Englonde, Scotland and Irlonde, and aboue this many other contrees whiche endure vnto the mount Jus; & thus moche space holdeth the partye of Europe.60

Here, Caxton follows the French text almost verbatim.61 The major digression is his addition of information on the Rhine and the Mosel, which is absent from the French text. This addition may well be Caxton’s own interpolation, marked, as his additions tend to be in this text, with a reference to himself (‘I haue herd saye’). The only additional information concerning Europe in Caxton’s Mirrour is presented in chapter xiiii, ‘Of dyuersytees that ben in Europe and in Affryke’, which lists marvels of the West, starting with the words: ‘We haue in thise parties many thinges that they of Asye and of Affrykehaue none’, setting Europe apart as a land of marvels, which also follows the French text closely.62 The following sentence begins, unsurprisingly, with a reference to Ireland, and indeed, according to O. H. Prior, the information in this chapter appears to have been taken directly from Gerald of Wales, Topographica Hibernica (i. 15, 28–31 and ii. 4, 5, 7).63 It must be noted, however, that while the ultimate source of the French text may indeed have been Gerald, Caxton simply translates the information given by Gossouin, apart from, once more, a single paragraph following 60 

The passage is quoted from William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, pp. 92–93. Compare the text of the French prose version in L’image du monde, ed. by Prior, p. 129. 62  William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, pp. 98–99. 63  William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, p. 98 n. 1. 61 

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on the description of St Patrick’s Purgatory, which refers to his own experience: ‘I have spoken with dyuerse men that haue ben therin’.64 This addition, according to Twomey, supplements a more subtle change worked by Caxton — a shift in the emphasis of the passage.65 The information Caxton gives in this passage is of some interest and it is reproduced here in its entirety: His may wel be that of auncyent tyme it hath ben thus as a fore is wreton, as the storye of Tundale & other witnesse, but I haue spoken with dyuerse men that haue ben therin. And that one of them was an hye chanon of Waterford whiche told me that he had ben therin v or vi tymes. And he sawe ne suffred no suche thynges. He saith that with procession the Relygious men that ben there brynge hym in to the hool and shette the dore after hym; and than he walketh groping in to it, where, as he said, be places and maner of cowches to reste on. And there he was alle the nyght in contemplacion & prayer, and also slepte there; and on the morn he cam out agayn. Other while in their shepe somme men haue meruayllous dremes. & other thyng sawe he not. And in lyke wyse tolde to me a worshipful knyght of Bruggis named sir John de Banste that he had ben therin in lyke wyse and see none other thyng but as afore is sayd.66

Caxton refers to two witnesses here: a canon of Waterford, and a knight from Bruges by the name of John de Banste. He also adds a reference to the ‘story of Tundale’. This is a reference to the story first recounted in the Visio Tnugdali (1149) by an Irish monk named Marcus.67 The text, although circulating primarily in Latin, enjoyed some considerable popularity, with adaptations into German, Dutch, and French.68 One translation was made for Margaret of Burgundy around 1475 and one wonders, given Caxton’s demonstrated connections to the library of the Burgundian court, whether that may not have been the source of his knowledge.69 The history of the representation of Ireland as a land of mirabilia has recently received thorough coverage in Keith Busby’s monumental study of the interrelationship of Ireland and Francophonia.70 It 64 

William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, p. 99. Twomey, ‘Middle English Translations’, p. 335. 66  William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, pp. 98–99. 67  For an overview of this text and its medieval impact, see Busby, French in Medieval Ireland, pp. 234–45. 68  Busby, French in Medieval Ireland, p. 239. 69  Busby, French in Medieval Ireland, p. 239. Caxton had enjoyed the patronage of Margaret of Burgundy; see Blake, ‘William Caxton’. 70  Busby, French in Medieval Ireland, esp. part II. 65 

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appears that the topos of the marvels of Ireland remained popular with audiences, prompting Caxton to expand on his text. After the section on Europe, Caxton then continues to discuss Africa in the following chapter (chapter xii). Following the French text, he lists Grece, Cypres, Sicily, Tuscany, Naples, Lombardy, Gascony, Spain, Catalunia, Galicia, Navarra, Portugal, and Aragon as parts of Africa.71 Uncharacteristically for Caxton, in a much-quoted and much-discussed phrase, he comments on this: ‘And how be it that the Auctour of this book saye that thise contrees ben in Affryke, yet as I vnderstonde, alle thise ben within the lymytes and boundes of Europe’.72 The comment concerning the European lands assigned to Africa is preceded by a less-frequently cited reference to the Holy land: After [Lybia] cometh the royamme of Surrye, Jherusalem and the contrey aboute. This is the holy londe where Our Lord Jhesu Cryst receyuid our humanyte and passyon, and where he roos fro deth to lyf. After thoppynyon of somme is that this holy londe longeth to Asye.73

As observed by O. H. Prior, the text’s editor, this last comment is not in Caxton’s French exemplar, and therefore we may consider it to belong to the same type of interpolation as the comment about European countries in Africa. Caxton is attempting to reconcile his exemplar with general categorizations familiar to him. These reattributions of countries and continents that so confused Caxton appear to be a stable feature of the Image du monde manuscript tradition, and have been extensively discussed.74 Oliver H. Prior suggested that, given that this apparent ‘mistake’ is present in all of the manuscripts of the Image du monde, it may have represented a perception of Africa ‘as merely a province of Europe’.75 Authorities Prior cites in illustration of this include Varro, Sallust, 71 

William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, p. 93. This transposition has been the subject of several studies. See Connochie-Bourgne, ‘Le cas de l’Image du monde’; Jostkleigrewe, ‘L’espace’, pp. 375–77; Petrovskaia, ‘Mythologizing the Conceptual Landscape’. 72  William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, pp. 93–94. For discussions, see, for instance, Roland, ‘“After poyetes and astronomyers”’, p. 140; and Cabré, ‘British Influence in Medieval Catalan Writing’, p. 40; Petrovskaia, ‘Mythologizing the Conceptual Landscape’, p. 200. 73  William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, p. 93. 74  William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, p. xvi. The passage is also discussed in Connochie-Bourgne, ‘Le cas de l’Image du monde’; Jostkleigrewe, ‘L’espace’; Jostkleigrewe, ‘Zwischen symbolischer Weltdeutung und erfahrungsbasierter Raumdarstellung’; Oschema, Bilder von Europa im Mittelalter, pp. 211–12; Petrovskaia, ‘Mythologizing the Conceptual Landscape’. 75  William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, p. xvi.

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Orosius, Gervase of Tilbury, and Ranulph of Hidgen.76 Chantal ConnochieBourgne proposes an alternative interpretation, suggesting that the rewriting was due to the influence of the crusades, and that its objective was to show a shrinking Christendom.77 Her argument is based on the identification of africains and sarrazins in medieval texts.78 According to this reading, regions placed in Africa would be identified as non-Christian.79 If this were the case, it would mark a point of divergence between the cartographic tradition of the mappae mundi and the geographic textual tradition of the Imago mundi, if David Woodward’s observation that the crusades had little impact on the contents of mappae mundi is accurate.80 The reorganization of the world by Gossouin is unusual for the era, as Jostkleigrewe observes.81 As we have seen here, it is not mirrored in the AngloNorman translation of the Imago mundi, nor in the Welsh, and it is not understood by Caxton. However, we must keep in mind that although Caxton was surprised by the ‘reorganization’, and so is the modern reader, this reaction may be the result of preconceptions on the part of the text’s audience rather than of an aberration on behalf of the author. Boundaries and borders between the various regions were much more fluid in the earlier tradition. One of such instances we have already observed in the twelfth-century Imago mundi, where the list of the regions of Spain includes Tinguitania, which most probably refers to the Roman province of Mauretania Tingitana. Geographically, this region corresponds to modern Morocco, and in the modern geographical conception this belongs to a different ‘continent’ than Spain — Africa rather than Europe. The ambiguity of what we perceive as intercontinental boundaries should not be so surprising if we take into account two facts.82 The first is that bod76 

With quotations of relevant passages in William Caxton, Mirrour of the World, ed. by Prior, p. xvi n. 2. See also comments in Oschema, Bilder von Europa, pp. 211–12. 77  Connochie-Bourgne, ‘Le cas de l’Image du monde’, pp. 91–93. See also discussion in Petrovskaia, ‘Mythologizing the Conceptual Landscape’, pp. 199–202, 206. 78  Connochie-Bourgne, ‘Le cas de l’Image du monde’, pp. 91–93. 79  This reading echoes Denys Hay’s thesis that the direct precursor of the modern concept of Europe was the medieval concept of Christendom; see his influential Europe: The Emergence of an Idea. 80  Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 304. See, however, his observations regarding increased centrality of Jerusalem on pp. 341–42. 81  Jostkleigrewe, ‘L’espace’, p. 377. 82  For a discussion of the concept of frontier in the medieval context, see Abulafia, ‘Introduction’.

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ies of water may not be necessarily seen as boundaries. Studies of the medieval Mediterranean, for instance, have demonstrated the sea should be regarded as a link rather than boundary.83 The second fact is that the notion of an intercontinental boundary itself is not as unambiguous or scientific as it might at first appear, as demonstrated by the ambiguous and fluid position of the Eurasian boundary.84 An alternative theory to Prior’s or Connochie-Bourgne’s was put forward more recently by Georg Jostkleigrewe, according to whom the reordering of the world in the Image du monde can be interpreted in the light of a ‘historiogeographical model’ ( Jostkleigrewe’s term), wherein Asia is the realm of the Old Testament, Africa corresponds to the New Testament, while Europe is the ‘continent of contemporary history’.85 This explains not only the reattribution that so puzzled Caxton but also the phenomenon of the attribution of Greece by Gossouin to all three continents: Compte tenu de cette dimension historique, la Grèce d’Alexandre le Grand, la Grèce de l’apôtre Paul et la Grèce des empereurs constantinopolitains sont des entités bien distinctes et, dans la logique d’une géographie historique médiévale, il est certainement possible de les attribuer à des continents différents.86

This not only explains the occurrence of Greece in descriptions of different regions of the world in this text, but can be read in tangent with ConnochieBourgne’s crusades-based explanation, if the conflict of cultures is perceived as lying in the past. The temporal distance is then reflected in artificial spatial distancing through the relabelling of regions. Jostkleigrewe’s theory fits particularly well with what we know of the medieval historio-geographical framework of translatio studii et imperii. The presence of the historical progression from east to west, commencing with the Earthly Paradise and culminating conventionally in the medieval author’s or cartographer’s own time and location, has been observed in mappae mundi.87 It is not surprising, therefore, to find it also in the corresponding textual forms.88 One 83 

See, for instance, Abulafia, The Great Sea. Wintle, The Image of Europe, pp. 37–38, 41–43. 85  Jostkleigrewe, ‘L’espace’, p. 377. 86  Jostkleigrewe, ‘L’espace’, p. 377. 87  See, for instance, the discussion in Edson, Mapping Time and Space; Licini, ‘A Full Image of a Cultural Space’. 88  In some manuscripts, such as Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66 (s. xii), the text of the Imago mundi is accompanied by mappaemundi; for discussions, see Woodward, 84 

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might regard this phenomenon through the prism of the three Orients theory, according to which the medieval representations of the Orient broadly fall into three categories: the ‘biblical’, ‘historical’ (which we might also term ‘classical’), and ‘contemporary’ Orients. Mapped onto the translatio studii et imperii trajectory, the biblical and the historical retain their significance, though located in the past.89 It is only the historical and biblical Orients, of which the first belongs firmly in the past and the second is timeless, that are described in these geographical texts, and it is worth noting that, pace Chantal-Bourgne, these geographical treatises do not make overt reference to the contemporary Orient (or any references to a crusading context).

Conclusion The contrast between the historical (biblical) past of the Holy Land and Jerusalem, virtually immutable in the medieval texts, and the changeable, and changed, descriptions of Europe, seems to echo the distinction observed in recent studies in relation to the Hereford mappa mundi.90 As Patrick Gautier Dalché has argued, medieval maps were fluid constructions, modifiable in response to the type of function they were intended to perform, whether exegetical historical, or cosmographical, but also subject to modification in response to ‘historical evolution’.91 I would venture to tentatively suggest here that the geographical texts of the Imago mundi tradition, being as they are the textual equivalent of such maps, were also adjustable in response to new developments, and that the differences between the various vernacular adaptations derived from the Imago mundi are the result of precisely this type of modification. The timelessness of the ‘biblical’ Orient ensured that descriptions of the Holy Land remained more stable than those of the ‘contemporary’ Europe. The depiction of Europe in these texts would be more likely to be influenced by current political events and, per‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 312 and Harvey, ‘The Sawley Map and Other World Maps in Twelfth-Century England’. 89  For a summary, see Petrovskaia, Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient, pp. 5–6. 90  See Mittman, ‘England Is the World and the World Is England’, p. 19, with reference to a conference presentation by Debra Strickland. For similar remarks, see also Woodward, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, p. 288. For a recent discussion of the Hereford mappa mundi and further bibliography, see de Wesselow, ‘Locating the Hereford Mappamundi’, esp. n. 4 on p. 199 for a bibliography of previous studies of the map. 91  Dalché, ‘Hic mappa mundi considerata est’, p. 509. For relationship between cartographic representations and the circumstances of production, see also Pinet, Archipelagoes, p. 32.

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haps most importantly, the author’s self-position in relation to the translatio studii et imperii. One might read the ‘marvels of Europe’ addition in Caxton’s Mirrour of the World as an indication of the historicization of Europe, suggesting that Europe was becoming as much of a historical past as Asia was.92 The fact that descriptions of the Holy Land itself, by contrast, remain strikingly stable, attests to the inertia of the tradition. It has been observed before that medieval geographical texts tended towards an antiquarian representation of the world, which already at the time of production was distinctly outdated. The Imago mundi is a striking example, referring to the various regions not by their twelfth-century designations but by the names of Roman provinces. The evidence presented above suggests that this antiquarian nature of the material is a particular characteristic, within at least the texts of this tradition, of descriptions of some but not of all parts of the world: the Holy Land but not consistently Europe.93 The changes made to the material examined here by the adaptators or translators, and their attitude to their sources is typical of the attitudes observed by Karen Pratt in her study of medieval translators.94 Yet, despite seemingly following closely the authority of their respective exemplars (and we must note that the exemplar, whether real of claimed, is always an external, Continental or Latin, authority) these translations subtly alter their texts in ways that help inform our understanding of their cultural circumstances. In many ways, what they show us is unsurprising. The stability of the representations of the Holy Land, for instance, is exactly what recent research on the subject has led us to expect of texts that guide spiritual, armchair pilgrimages. The contrast between the fixed nature of these descriptions and the fluidity of the descriptions of Europe suggests a contrast in the attitude towards these regions. Jostkleigrewe’s interpretation, placing the Holy Land in the past and Europe in the present, prompts us to read these geographical texts in the context of the historical framework of translatio studii et imperii. I would suggest that the Holy Land descriptions are stable because they describe the past (historical Orient and biblical Orient) while those of Europe are not because they refer to the medieval present, and the present is still in the process of formation. 92  For a discussion of the interrelation between history and geography in medieval texts, see, for instance, Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences, p. 83, with reference to the influential early study by Wright, The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades, p. 127. 93  It is interesting that scepticism of his description of accounts of St Patrick’s purgatory discussed above is reminiscent of the tone of some of the pilgrimage accounts to the Holy Land, a similarity which perhaps merits further exploration. 94  Pratt, ‘Medieval Attitudes to Translation and Adaptation’.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Resources Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 66 (s. xii) Exeter, Cathedral Library, MS 3514 (Whitland, s. xiii2) London, British Library [BL], MS Royal 19.A.ix (Bruges, 1464) Oxford, Jesus College, MS 20 (s. xivex./xv)

Primary Sources The Continuations of the Old French Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes, ii: The First Continu­ ation, Redaction of Mss EMQU, ed. by William Roach and Robert H. Ivy, Jr. (Phila­ delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950) Delw y Byd: A Medieval Welsh Geographical Treatise, ed. by Natalia I. Petrovskaia (Cam­ bridge: Modern Humanities Research Association, 2020) Divisiones mundi, ed. by Oliver H. Prior, in Cambridge Anglo-Norman Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1924), pp. 34–62 Honorius Augustodunensis, De imagine mundi libri tres, ed.  by Jacques-Paul Migne, Patrologiae cursus completus: series latina, 172 (Paris, 1895), cols 115–88 —— , Imago mundi, ed. by Valerie I. J. Flint, Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du moyen Âge, 49 (Paris: Vrin, 1982) L’image du monde de maître Gossouin, rédaction en prose: texte du manuscrit de la Biblio­ thèque nationale, fonds français, n° 574 avec correction d’après d’autres manuscrits, ed. by Oliver H. Prior (Lausanne: Payot, 1913) ‘L’Image du monde, une encyclopédie du xiiie siècle. Édition critique et commentaire de la première version’, ed. by Chantal Connochie-Bourgne (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris, Sorbonne, Paris IV, 1999) Legendary Poems from the Book of Taliesin, ed. by Marged Haycock (Aberystwyth: CMCS Publications, 2007) La petite philosophie: An Anglo-Norman Poem of the Thirteenth Century; Text with Intro­ duction, Notes and Glossary, ed.  by William  H. Trethewey, Anglo-Norman Texts, 1 (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1939) Seneca the Younger, Ad Serenum: de tranquillitate animi, in Seneca: Moral Essays, ii, ed. by John  W. Basore, Loeb Classical Library, 254 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932), pp. 202–85 —— , Dialogues and Letters, trans. by Charles D. N. Costa (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1997) William Caxton, Caxton’s Mirrour of the World, ed. by Oliver H. Prior, Early English Text Society, extra series, 110 (London: Kegan Paul, 1913)

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Secondary Works Abulafia, David, ‘Introduction: Seven Types of Ambiguity, c. 1100–c. 1500’, in Medieval Frontiers: Concepts and Practices, ed. by David Abulafia and Nora Berend (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 1–34 —— , The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, Idols in the East: European Representations of Islam and the Orient, 1100–1450 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009) Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, and Asa Simon Mittman, ‘Seeing Jerusalem: Schematic Views of the Holy City, 1100–1300’, in Aspects of Knowledge: Preserving and Reinventing Traditions of Learning in the Middle Ages, ed. by Matilina Cesario and Malte Urban (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 116–41 Angremy, Annie, ‘La Mappemonde de Pierre de Beauvais (I)’, Romania, 104 (1983), 316–50 [accessed 3 October 2018] —— , ‘La Mappemonde de Pierre de Beauvais (2ème article)’, Romania, 104 (1983), 457–98 ARLIMA: Archives de littérature du moyen âge [accessed 14 September 2018] Armstrong, Adrian, and Sarah Kay, with Rebecca Dixon, Miranda Griffin, Sylvia Huot, Francesca Nicholson, and Finn Sinclair, Knowing Poetry: Verse in Medieval France from the ‘Rose’ to the ‘Rhétoriqeurs’ (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011) Bartlett, Robert, ‘Heartland and Border: The Mental and Physical Geography of Medieval Europe’, in Power and Identity in the Middle Ages: Essays in Memory of Rees Davies, ed. by Huw Pryce and John Watts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 23–36 Baumgärtner, Ingrid, ‘Die Wahrnehmung Jerusalems auf mittelalterlichen Weltkarten’, in Jerusalem im Hoch- und Spätmittelalter: Konflikte und Konfliktbewältigung — Vorstellungen und Vergegenwärtigungen, ed.  by Dieter  R. Bauer, Klaus Herbers, and Nikolas Jaspert (Frankfurt: Campus, 2001), pp. 271–334 Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, database, Repertorium. ‘Geschichtsquellen des deutschen Mittelalters’ [accessed 19 September 2018] Bell, Alexander, ‘Notes on Perot de Garbelei’s Divisiones mundi’, Philological Quarterly, 10.1 (1931), 36–46 Berriot-Salvadore, Evelyne, ‘Préface’, in Le mythe de Jérusalem du Moyen Âge à la Renais­ sance, ed. by Evelyne Berriot-Salvadore (Paris: Publications de l’Université de SaintÉtienne, 1995), p. 9 Blake, Norman F., ‘William Caxton: His Choice of Texts’, Anglia: Journal of English Philology, 83 (1965), 289–307 —— , William Caxton and English Literary Culture (London: Hambledon, 1991) Brown, Katherine  A. Brown, ‘The Vernacular Universe: Gossuin de Metz’s Image du monde, translatio studii, and Vernacular Narrative’, Viator, 44 (2013), 137–58 Busby, Keith, French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French: The Paradox of Two Worlds (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017)

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Busch, Nathanael, and Patrick Lange, ‘“Von Îbern und von Îrlant”: Ireland in Middle High German Literature’, in ‘A Fantastic and Abstruse Latinity?’: Hiberno-Continental Cultural and Literary Interactions in the Middle Ages, ed.  by Wolfram  R. Keller and Dagmar Schlüter, Studien und Texte zur Keltologie, 12 (Münster: Nodus, 2017), pp. 183–204 Cabré, Lluís, ‘British Influence in Medieval Catalan Writing: An Overview’, in England and Iberia in the Middle Ages, 12th–15th Century: Cultural, Literary, and Political Exchanges, ed. by María Bullón-Fernández, The New Middle Ages Series (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 29–46 Centili, Sara, ‘La seconda redazione in versi dell’Image du monde: una riscrittura didattica’, Cultura neolatina, 66 (2006), 161–206 Connochie-Bourgne, Chantal, ‘Le cas de l’Image du monde: une encyclopédie du xiiie siècle, ses sources antiques, l’apport médiéval’, in La transmission des connaissances techniques: tables rondes Aix-en-Provence, avril 1993-mai 1994, ed. by Marie-Claire Amouretti and Georges Comet, Cahier d’histoire des techniques, 3 (Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence, 1995), pp. 87–98 —— , ‘Pourquoi et comment réécrire une encyclopédie? Deux rédactions de l’Image du monde’, in Discours et savoirs: encyclopédies médiévales, ed. by Bernard Baillaud, Jérôme de Gramont, and Denis Hüe, Cahiers Diderot, 10 (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1998), pp. 143–54 Crick, Julia, ‘The Power and the Glory: Conquest and Cosmology in Edwardian Wales (Exeter Cathedral Library, MS 3514)’, in Textual Studies: Cultural Texts, ed. by Elaine Treharne and Orietta da Rold (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), pp. 21–42 Dalché, Patrick Gautier, ‘Hic mappa mundi considerata est: lecture de la mappemonde au Moyen Age’, in Itinerari del testo per Stefano Pittaluga, ed. by Cristina Cocco, Clara Fossati, Attilio Grisafi, Francesco Mosetti Casaretto, and Giada Boiani, Pubblicazioni del D.AR.FI.CL.ET. ‘Francesco della Corte’, 3rd ser., 254, i (Genoa: Dipartimento di Antichità Filosofia e Storia, 2018), pp. 495–515 Damian-Grint, Peter, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999) Draelants, Isabelle, ‘Le “siècle de l’encyclopédisme”: conditions et critères de définition d’un genre’, in Encyclopédire: formes de l’ambition encyclopédique dans l’Antiquité et au Moyen Âge, ed.  by Arnaud Zucker, Collection d’études médiévales de Nice, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 81–106 Dunphy, Graeme, ‘Historical Writing in and after the Old High German Period’, in German Literature of the Early Middle Ages, ed.  by Brian Murdoch (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2004), pp. 201–25 Edson, Evelyn, Mapping Time and Space: How Medieval Mapmakers Viewed their World (London: British Library, 1997) Edwards, Bateman, ‘Review: An Anglo-Norman Poem of the Thirteenth Century’, Modern Philology, 37 (1940), 309–14 Falileyev, Alexander, ‘Delw y Byd Revisited’, Studia Celtica, 44 (2010), 71–78 Flint, Valerie I. J., ‘The Original Text of the Elucidarium of Honorius Augustodunensis from the Twelfth Century English Manuscripts’, Scriptorium, 18 (1964), 91–94

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Foster, Nicholas Ryan, ‘The Imago mundi of Honorius Augustodunensis’ (unpublished master’s thesis, Portland State University Department of History, 2008) Garrigues, Marie-Odile, ‘L’œuvre d’Honorius Augustodunensis. Inventaire critique’, Abhand­­ lungen der Braunschweigischen Wissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft, 38 (1986), 7–138 Gottschall, Dagmar, Das ‘Elucidarium’ des Honorius Augustodunensis: Untersuchungen zu seiner Überlieferungs- und Rezeptionsgeschichte im deutschsprachigen Raum mit Ausgabe der niederdeutschen Übersetzung, Texte und TextGeschichte, 33 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1992) Hamilton, George L., ‘Encore un plagiat médiéval: la Mappemonde de Pierre de Beauvais et les Divisiones mundi de Perot de Garbelai’, in Mélanges de linguistique et de littérature offerts à M. Alfred Jeanroy par ses élèves et ses amis (Paris: Droz, 1928), pp. 627–38 Harvey, Paul D. A., ‘The Sawley Map and Other World Maps in Twelfth-Century England’, Imago mundi, 49 (1997), 33–42 Hay, Denys, Europe: The Emergence of an Idea (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1957) Huws, Daniel, Medieval Welsh Manuscripts (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales, 2000) Jack, R. D. S., ‘Caxton’s “Mirrour of the World” and Henryson’s “Taill of the Cok and the Jasp”’, The Chaucer Review, 13 (1978), 157–65 Jostkleigrewe, Georg, ‘L’espace entre tradition et innovation. La géographie symbolique du monde et son adaptation par Gossouin de Metz’, Actes des congrès de la Société des historiens médiévistes de l’enseignement supérieur public, 37e congrès, Mulhouse, 2006: construction de l’espace au Moyen Âge: pratiques et représentations (2006), 369–78 ——  , ‘Zwischen symbolischer Weltdeutung und erfahrungsbasierter Raumdarstellung. Die Geographie des europäischen Raumes bei Rossuin von Metz, Rudolf von Ems, Brunetto Latini und anderen volkssprachlichen Autoren’, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 91 (2009), 259–95 Kühnel, Bianca, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places: The Holy Landscapes’, in Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, ed. by Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (London: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2012), pp. 243–64 Labarge, Margaret Wade, Gascony: England’s First Colony, 1204–1453 (London: Hamil­ ton, 1980) Lambert, José, ‘Medieval Translations and Translation Studies: Some Preliminary Consi­ derations’, in Science Translated: Latin and Vernacular Translations of Scientific Treatises in Medieval Europe, ed. by Michèle Goyens, Pieter De Leemans, and An Smets (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2007), pp. 1–10 Langlois, Ernest, Table des noms propres de toute nature compris dans les chansons de geste imprimées (Geneva: Slatkine, 1974) Lavezzo, Kathy, Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature, and English Com­ munity, 1000–1534 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006) Lefèvre, Yves, Contribution, par l’histoire d’un texte, à l’histoire des croyances religieuses en France au Moyen Âge, Bibliothèque des Écoles françaises d’Athènes et de Rome, 180 (Paris: De Boccard, 1954)

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Le Goff, Jacques, ‘Pourquoi le xiiie siècle a-t-il été plus particulièrement un siècle d’encyclopédisme?’, L’enciclopedismo medievale, ed. by Michelangelo Picone (Ravenna: Longo, 1994), pp. 23–40 Licini, Patrizia, ‘A Full Image of a Cultural Space: The Sawley Mappa mundi as a Global Memory Hypertext’, in Grenze und Grenzüberschreitung im Mittelalter: 11. Symposium des Mediävistenverbandes vom 14. bis 17. März 2005 in Frankfurt an der Oder, ed. by Ulrich Knefelkamp and Kristian Bosselmann-Cyran (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2007), pp. 470–89 Luca, Dinu, The Chinese Language in European Texts: The Early Period, Chinese Literature and Culture in the World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Luff, Robert, Wissensvermittlung im europäischen Mittelalter, Texte und Geschichte, 47 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999) Marx, C. William, ‘An Abbreviated Middle English Prose Translation of the Elucidarius’, Leeds Studies in English, 31 (2000), 1–53 Mittman, Asa Simon, ‘England Is the World and the World Is England’, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 9 (2018), 15–29 Oschema, Klaus, Bilder von Europa im Mittelalter, Mittelalter-Forschungen, 43 (Ostfildern: Thorbecke, 2013), available online at Petrovskaia, Natalia I., ‘Delw y byd: une traduction médiévale en gallois d’une encyclopédie latine et la création d’un traité géographique’, Études celtiques, 39 (2013), 257–77 —— , ‘La disparition du quasi dans les formules étymologiques des traductions galloises de l’Imago mundi’, in La formule au Moyen Âge, ed. by Élise Louviot, Atelier de recherches sur les textes médiévaux, 15 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 123–41 —— , ‘Introduction’, in her Medieval Welsh Perceptions of the Orient, Cursor mundi, 21 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. xxi–xxxv ——  , ‘Mythologizing the Conceptual Landscape’, in Landscape and Myth in NorthWestern Europe, ed. by Matthias Egeler, Borders, Boundaries, Landscapes, 2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2019), pp. 195–211 Petrovskaia, Natalia I., and Kiki Calis, ‘Images of the World: Manuscripts Database of the Imago Mundi Tradition’, online at [accessed 26 January 2021] Pinet, Simone, Archipelagoes: Insular Fictions from Chivalric Romance to the Novel (Min­ neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011) Pratt, Karen, ‘Medieval Attitudes to Translation and Adaptation: The Rhetorical Theory and the Poetic Practice’, in The Medieval Translator, ii, ed. by Roger Ellis (London: Centre for Medieval Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, 1991), pp. 1–27 Reynolds, Roger E., ‘Further Evidence for the Irish Origin of Honorius Augustodunensis’, Viviarium, 7 (1969), 1–7 Ribémont, Bernard, ‘L’encyclopédisme médiéval: de la définition d’un genre à son évolution sur la pertinence des notions d’apogée et de décadence’, in Apogée et déclin: actes du colloque de l’URA 411, Provins, 1991, ed. by Claude Thomasset and Michel Zink (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1993), pp. 27–68 —— , ‘On the Definition of an Encyclopaedic Genre in the Middle Ages’, in Pre-modern Encyclopaedic Texts: Proceedings of the Second COMERS Congress, Groningen, 1–4 July 1996 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 47–61

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Roland, Meg, ‘“After poyetes and astronomyers”: English Geographical Thought and Early English Print’, in Mapping Medieval Geographies: Geographical Encounters in the Latin West and Beyond, 300–1600, ed. by Keith Lilley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 127–51 Twomey, Michael W., ‘Medieval Encyclopedias’, in Medieval Christian Literary Imagery: A Guide to Interpretation, ed. by Robet E. Kaske (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), pp. 182–215 —— , ‘Towards a Reception History of Western Medieval Encyclopaedias in England before 1500’, in Pre-modern Encyclopaedic Texts: Proceedings of the Second COMERS Congress, Groningen, 1–4 July 1996, ed. by Paul Binkley (Leiden: Brill, 1997), pp. 329–62 ——  , ‘Middle English Translations of Medieval Encyclopedias’, Literature Compass, 3 (2006), 331–40 Tzanaki, Rosemary, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the ‘Book’ of Sir John Mandeville (1371–1550) (London: Routledge, 2003) Villegas-Aristizabal, Lucas, ‘Norman and Anglo-Norman Participation in the Iberian Reconquista c. 1018–c. 1248’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Nottingham, 2007) Vising, Johan, ‘Trethewey, W. H., La petite philosophie (Review)’, Medium Aevum, 9 (1940), 95–96 Wesselow, Thomas de, ‘Locating the Hereford Mappamundi’, Imago mundi, 65 (2013), 180–206 Wintle, Michael, The Image of Europe: Visualizing Europe in Cartography and Iconography throughout the Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) Woodward, David, ‘Medieval mappaemundi’, in The History of Cartography, i: Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. by David Woodward and John Brian Harley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 286–370 Wright, John K., The Geographical Lore of the Time of the Crusades: A Study in the History of Medieval Science and Travel in Western Europe (New York: American Geographical Society, 1925) Yeager, Suzanne M., Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Chapter 3

Remembering and Mythologizing Richard: Translation and the Representation of the Crusader King in Latin and French Accounts of Richard I’s Expedition to the Holy Land Marianne Ailes

‘O

n that night the king could not sleep, and he commanded to bring the book of records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king’ (Esther 6. 1). King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther read the chronicles of his reign presumably not just as a cure for insomnia, but to remind himself of the deeds of the past.1 History, as recorded in the chronicles, mattered. There are many ways in which we record and memorialize the past, making our recollection (and interpretation) of the past visible. The editors of the Cambridge History of the Book note in their foreword that ‘oral tradition, manuscripts, printed books and those other forms of inscription and incision such as maps, music and graphic images, have a power to report […] on human experience and the events and thoughts which shaped it’.2 Of these artefacts historians have generally privileged different forms of written text, though for the

1  Thought to be King Xerxes from the fifth century bc, Smith’s Bible Dictionary [accessed 3 January 2022]. 2  Barnard, McKitterick, and Willison, eds, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, p. iii.

Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, tcne 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 67–90 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.129229

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medieval period at least there was an ongoing interaction between the oral and the written: oral traditions fed into written text and the written was often read aloud, performed. As a site of both memory and commemoration the written text, unlike the funerary monument, a more visible and concrete form of commemoration, was both portable and malleable; it was also translatable, both in terms of geographic location and language. In this chapter I will examine the intersection between the act of remembering what has actually been experienced and that of memorialization or commemoration, the active will to ‘remember’ in a particular way. Both may lead into a process of mythologization and of deliberate memory construction and thence into collective or ‘social’ memory.3 My focus is on the crusader king par excellence, Richard the Lion-Heart. The mythologized image of Richard I, king of England 1189–1199, would dominate the ideas of crusading not just in England but across Europe in the Middle Ages and beyond. His image contrasts with that of his father, Henry II (1154–1189) praised by the chronicler Ralph of Diceto for his commitment to his kingdom, a commitment which prevented him from going on crusade.4 As John Gillingham has noted of Richard, ‘There can have been few kings who have been so lavishly praised by contemporary historians and so fiercely criticised by modern ones’.5 How is it that a sovereign whom many now consider to have been so neglectful of his own realm has been remembered as the archetypal Boys’ Own hero-king?6 For Richard I there were a number of texts written in England, or by men with him (or claiming to be with him) on campaign, which both remembered 3  Maurice Halbwachs formulated the theory of collective memory in Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire and La mémoire collective, translated into English as The Collective Memory. Halbwachs’s work was nuanced and given a less positivist cast in the work of James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory from whom I take the term ‘social memory’. See also Burke, ‘History as Social Memory’; substantial extracts of this are published in Olick and others, eds, The Collective Memory Reader, pp. 188–92. 4  John Gillingham has noted that ‘few contrasts have been so deeply entrenched in the historiography of English kingship as that between father and son, lawyer-king and soldier-king’, ‘Conquering Kings’, p. 106; in this essay Gillingham argues against the ‘conventional modern contrast’. On the twelfth-century chronicler Ralph of Diceto see Staunton, The Historians of Angevin England, ch. 4, pp. 67–87. 5  Gillingham, ‘The Art of Kingship’, p. 95. 6  ‘No other English king has shown so little interest in his realm or so little concern for its welfare as did Richard […] Nor, it is only fair to add, has any other English king been so idolised by his people, both during his lifetime and afterwards’, Richard of Devizes, Chronicle, ed. and trans. by Appleby, p. xii.

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and commemorated him. Scholarship often separates Latin and vernacular accounts; here they are considered together. I focus on two French language texts, Ambroise’s Estoire de le guerre sainte (c. 1194–1199) and the mid-thirteenth-century Crusade and Death of Richard I, and on the closely related Latin narratives: in each case we are dealing with a process of translation — a process which, allied to the editing role of the scribe, is, I argue, integral to the mythologization of Richard.7 The cultural historian Peter Burke has pointed out that ‘written records are not innocent acts of memory, but rather attempts to persuade, to shape the memory of others’.8 These written accounts in French and Latin were an important part of a process which transformed the remembrance of the deeds of the Lion-Heart (a nickname found in Ambroise’s account) into the enduring image of a crusader king. With each of these pairs of texts we are exploring the process of ‘transmission, translation and transformation’, a process inherent in much medieval textual culture, and most visible in the case of inter-lingual translation.9 While the general assumption is made that ‘the point of translation is to make a text accessible to its readers who lack the requisite skills to read the original’, 10 this is only part of the story, part of the process of translation, which could also be about appropriation, about integrating something from the source culture into the target culture. As Wallis and Wisnovsky have stressed, this is a creative process, the medieval translator having a licence to adapt which was far more liberal than many modern translators would recognize.11 The choice of language, particularly in multilingual medieval England, was in itself part of the process of creation of text.12 The expression of the constructed record through the two main lan7 

Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, ii: The Translation, trans. by Ailes, notes by Ailes and Barber; on the date see ii, p. 3. See also Ambroise, L’Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. by Croizy-Naquet. Crusade and Death of Richard, ed. by Johnston; Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, i: Itinerarium pergrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. by Stubbs; trans as The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. by Nicholson. Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. by Stubbs; Roger of Wendover, Liber qui dicitur flores historiarum, ed. by Hewlett, trans. as Flowers of History, trans. by Giles. 8  Burke, ‘History as Social Memory’, in Olick and others, eds, The Collective Memory Reader, p. 189. 9  See Wallis and Wisnovsky, Medieval Textual Cultures; their project, based at McGill University, centres on the transformation of more ancient material in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic texts, but the underlying principle that translation in its wider sense is at the core of much medieval cultural activity, is relevant for this study. 10  Allaire, ‘Literary Evidence for Multilingualism’, p. 151. 11  Wallis and Wisnovsky, Medieval Textual Cultures, p. 1. 12  For more discussion of medieval translation see Hardman and Ailes, The Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 14–31.

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guages of culture in England at the time created a more extended reading community, thus also increasing the collective aspect of the remembrance.

The Texts: Sources and Translations Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte is a poem of some twelve thousand lines, written in rhyming couplets, and preserved in one fairly complete (but corrupt) manuscript and in two fragments.13 It was written in the Norman dialect of French and all manuscript witnesses are Insular. It is, arguably an act of remembrance. If we accept his claim to be an eyewitness on the Third Crusade as a noncombatant in the train of Richard the Lion-Heart — as I do — then Ambroise is both actively remembering his version of the past and committing his account to parchment as an act of memorialization.14 His text is closely related to the Latin Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi. The Itinerarium in its entirety is a composite text with a number of sources, but I am concerned here with the section known as IP2, written sometime in the first quarter of the thirteenth century.15 This was in all likelihood largely a translation of Ambroise, but this part of the Itinerarium also contains supplementary material which may have come from a better copy than the extant manuscript of Ambroise or from other sources.16 This does not preclude the possibility that Richard de Templo, the presumed author of this part of the Itinerarium, was also an eyewitness, drawing upon his 13 

The complete MS is BAV, Reg. lat. 1659; the Keio fragment is held at the University of Tokyo, Rare books lib 170X.9.11 and published by Colker, ‘A Newly Discovered Manuscript Leaf of Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte’; on Trinity College Dublin, MS 11325 see Pezzimenti, ‘Due “nuovi” manuscritti antichi dell’Estoire de la guerre sainte (TCD 11325 e BAV Reg. Lat. 1659)’. 14  On the possible identification of author as a chaplain at the royal court see Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, ed. and trans. by Ailes and Barber, ii, pp. 1–3; Croizy-Naquet agrees that the text has the flavour of a clerical production rather than the work of a jongleur (see Ambroise, L’Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. by Croizy-Naquet, pp. 50–58); she discusses the complexity of the notion of an eyewitness (pp. 65–83). Gaston Paris, the first editor of the text, considered that he was probably a jongleur or entertainer because of his knowledge of popular epic tales: Ambroise, L’Estoire de la guerre sainte par Ambroise, ed. by Paris, pp. vi–xii. 15  On the composite structure of the Itinerarium see The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. by Nicholson, pp. 6–10; on the date of IP2 see p. 11. 16  I agree here with Nicholson, The Chronicle of the Third Crusade (trans. by Nicholson, pp. 6, 12), who considers the Latin text to draw upon the French text rather than the other way round, a theory which seems to have derived from a bias on the part of some early historians against the authority of a vernacular text (see Das Itinerarium, ed. by Mayer, and in particular Edwards, ‘The Itinerarium regis Ricardi and the Estoire de la guerre sainte’).

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own recollection as well as written sources.17 We are more familiar with translation from Latin into the vernacular, making text accessible to those not literate in Latin, but translation from French into Latin, though less studied, was not unknown, and chroniclers often drew on multiple sources. As Helen Nicholson, who has translated the Itinerarium, noted, the chronicler worked by ‘combining material from various sources; translating word-for-word, but sometimes rather carelessly, adding his own analysis and inserting his own memories and experiences as appropriate’.18 Given the instability of medieval manuscript texts in general, it is not difficult to posit a lost version of Ambroise, a text from which both the Estoire and the Itinerarium and all surviving text witnesses are descended, without denying them the status of eyewitness accounts. The second fragment of Ambroise’s account (TCD, MS 11325), gives us a text which is metrically more accurate than that in the Vatican manuscript; the existence of even a fragment of a better text highlights the faults in our only extant ‘complete’ manuscript witness, and we cannot know whether there are also lacunae in the Vatican manuscript containing material which is also found in the Itinerarium. Both the Latin and the French texts are acts of remembrance, purporting to recall, at least in part, events in which the authors had participated.19 The Crusade and Death of Richard I is an anonymous Anglo-Norman prose account of the Third Crusade written sometime around the middle of the thirteenth century and surviving in two near-identical manuscripts.20 The writer’s primary source is the Chronica of Roger of Howden but he also uses Roger of Wendover and possibly also Matthew Paris.21 R. C. Johnston’s edition indicates in the notes where he is close to any particular Latin source. As we will see the translator here both transfers the sense from Latin into French and edits different source texts together. As such he is at once translator, redactor, and chronicler. 17 

The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. by Nicholson, pp. 6–7. The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. by Nicholson, p. 14. 19  Nicholson argues that there is every indication that the author of the Itinerarium probably was, as he claimed, on the crusade himself, The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. by Nicholson, p. 13. 20  The title was created by its editor, Ronald C. Johnston, who rejected other titles, such as the seventeenth-century title Tractatus de bello sacro or Johan Vising’s title Crusade of Richard 1, because they ignored the section at the end, calculated by Johnston as about one twelfth, which follows Richard after the Crusade until his death. The entry in Vising, Anglo-Norman Language and Literature, p. 66; see also Dean and Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature, p. 38. On the manuscripts Dean, ‘An Essay in Anglo-Norman Palaeography’. 21  On the sources see The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, pp. xii–xv; see also Johnston, ‘An Anglo-Norman Chronicle of the Crusade and Death of Richard I’. 18 

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Remembrance and Rhetoric We find remembrance inscribed into the declared function of both Ambroise and the Itinerarium. Ambroise begins by telling us this is a story which ‘should be told’, that is, which should not be forgotten.22 He makes clear to the reader when he was not in fact an eyewitness, or where he does not remember. As Peter Damien-Grint has pointed out, this admission of ignorance on the part of a chronicler lends more authority to the rest of this text.23 Such sections of the narrative are not, then, part of Ambroise’s active memory but are part of his act of memorialization. He also includes in direct discourse a lengthy address made to King Richard, reminding the king of deeds of the past and using the act of memory to encourage future valour. News has arrived that England is not in a good state: Richard’s brother Count John is being wooed by the French king Philip Augustus, and ‘if he did not soon return the land he held would soon be taken from those to whom he had entrusted it’.24 Richard is considering his action — whether to finish the task he has begun in the Holy Land or return to his kingdom — when a chaplain, named by Ambroise as William of Poitiers, passes by. He tells the king how the army are critical of him for considering returning to England. He continues for ninety-three lines of highly rhetorical rhyming couplets. Each section begins ‘remember’: Reis, remembre tei des granz honors | Que Deus te at en tanz lius faits (ll. 9569–70) (King, remember the great honour God has accorded you in many places) Reis, recorde tei que l’en conte, Quant je to vit de Peitiers conte (ll.  9574–75) (King, remember what was said of you when I saw you as Count of Poitiers) Reis, remembre des granz tençons (l. 9580) (King, remember the great quarrels) Reis remembre tei de l’aventure (l. 9584) (King, remember the adventure).25

22 

Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, ed. and trans. by Ailes and Barber, i, edition l. 10; translation in ii, p. 29. 23  Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, pp. 166–68. 24  Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, ed. and trans. by Ailes and Barber, i, edition ll. 9429–31; translation in ii, p. 159. 25  Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, ed. and trans. by Ailes and Barber, i; translation in ii, p. 161.

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And so on. This follows a biblical model, when the complaining children of Israel are reminded of how God brought them out of Egypt and supplied them with their needs.26 Remembrance is core in Jewish practice and biblical teaching: the people of Israel ritually enact events from their history in ritual such as the Passover and Purim and Christians retain this practice in the Eucharist where the liturgy, in most Christian denominations, exhorts the faithful to ‘do this in remembrance of [Christ]’. Such rituals often include a recounting of the deeds to be remembered.27 They serve a number of purposes, reminding those being addressed of God’s goodness in the past, while at the same time reinforcing their collective identity, whether Jewish or Christian. As for the Jews ‘the need to remember overflowed inevitably into actual historical narrative’, so in the same way during the Middle Ages historical narrative as recounted (constructed) by chroniclers both encapsulated memory and shaped it.28 The unidentified (possibly fictive) chaplain, William of Poitiers, repeats the biblical injunction addressing Richard. Through this figure Ambroise gives us within his text a mise-en-abime of the narrative, recalling what has happened to the crusaders to date, ascribing their survival to God, and urging on the king an act of remembrance which then becomes a commemorative text for the readers and listeners. This speech echoes the function of the text as a whole — an act of remembrance which may also be a spur to action. In the Itinerarium, the rhetoric is similar but with even more direct apostrophizing to the king: ‘Domine rex, memento quanta tibi fecerit Deus […] Rex recordare quod, cum esses comes Pictaviæ […] Rex, memento magnarum contentionum […] Rex, memento’ (Lord king, remember how much God has done for you […] O king recall how, when you were count of Poitou […] O king remember the great struggles).29 It continues (‘Rex, memento […] Rex, memento’). The author of the Itinerarium also explicitly evokes the idea of deeds that are worthy of being remembered at the close of his text (at least according to one manuscript):

26 

Deuteronomy 7. 18, 8. 2, 8. 18. On the demand that Israel remember see Yerushalmi, Zakhor, pp. 5–26; the title ‘zakhor’ means ‘remember’ in Hebrew; see also Valensi, ‘From Sacred History to Historical Memory and Back’. 27  On the link between ritual and recitation see Yerushalmi, Zakhor, pp. 11–12. 28  Yerushalmi, Zakhor, p. 12. 29  Itinerarium peregrinorum, ed. by Stubbs, p. 362; book v, ch. 45; The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. by Nicholson, p. 323.

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Igitur deficiente digne dicendorum adhuc materia, stilum ulterius duximus suspendendum, donec pro magnificis forte gestis ubi cujus nomen sonat, Dei gratia, quae prædicabili reputentur digna memoria, conseatur merito resumendus articulus. (Therefore, as there is no more material worthy of eloquence, we have decided to suspend our pen from further writing until it is judged that this work should be resumed in order to tell more of the magnificent deeds thought worthy of praiseworthy memory, in which his name resounds by the grace of God.)30

These two closely related texts thus consciously inscribe both remembering and commemorating into their chronicles, not just in the sense of recalling, but recalling in a way which shapes the narrative both to exalt the king, and to demonstrate that God is in control. I have demonstrated elsewhere how Ambroise exploits the rhetorical forms and forms of discourse of the chanson de geste turning Richard into an epic hero.31 Richard de Templo is doing the same thing in his Latin account, using forms of repetition which would be familiar to readers of Latin histories, thus making the prose both more impactful when read, but also easier to commit to memory. The importance of rhetoric as a fundamental of medieval chronicle writing has long been recognized. Indeed, Matthew Kempshall argues for the complexity of the writing of history in the Middle Ages, precisely ‘through its interweaving of […] rhetorical principles with other historiographical traditions, drawn from ancient history, chronography and the Bible’.32 Rita Copeland, in a seminal study of medieval translation, explores the translations of Chaucer and Gower as ‘rhetorical invention’, and this is a useful concept as we consider how these medieval chronicle translations were adapted and appropriated in translation through the use of rhetoric.33 In everyday life we use memory to create identity (collectively and indi­ vidually).34 As cultural historians of the Middle Ages, we cannot escape this awareness, part of the legacy of Maurice Halbwachs. It was, to quote the historian of Jewish historiography, Yosef Yerushalmi, ‘the abiding merit of Maurice Halbwachs […] to have insisted to psychologists and philosophers alike that 30 

Itinerarium peregrinorum, ed. by Stubbs, p. 450; The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. by Nicholson, p. 390. 31  Ailes, ‘Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade’, pp. 37–47. 32  Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, p. 536. 33  Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages. 34  On the complex dialectic between memory and identity see Burke, ‘History as Social Memory’. For a very different perspective see Megill, ‘History, Memory, Identity’, a substantial extract of which is reproduced in Olick and others, eds, The Collective Memory Reader, pp. 193–97.

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even individual memory is structured though social framework’.35 Our personal memories are also interfered with (perhaps enriched or embellished) by what others have said about the same event. We use memory to give meaningful structure to what has happened to us but, to quote Yerushalmi again, ‘only the group can bequeath a transpersonal memory’.36 Our medieval eyewitness chroniclers are, in that sense, the vehicles for the bequest, the conveyers of that ‘transpersonal memory’, shaping their remembered narrative, whether consciously or not, creating in their writings a memorial which can then be an act of commemoration and which itself created a collective memory which is part of the process of myth-making. With the Crusade and Death of Richard I, we see this process going one step further: an eyewitness account, the Latin chronicle of Roger of Howden, is turned into an act of commemoration through the process of translation by an anonymous Anglo-Norman writer, some two generations later. Roger of Howden accompanied Richard on his crusade from the time he left Marseilles on 7 August 1190 to the fall of Acre in July 1191. He then returned to England.37 He wrote up his notes first as an independent record of events, the Gesta Henrici, then incorporated his account into his Chronica, with revisions made on the basis of other information; in doing so he embellished and enriched his own memory with the accounts of others.38 The Crusade and Death was to a large degree a translation of Howden’s chronicle, but Howden was not his only source. Some sections of the poem are derived from Roger of Wendover or Matthew Paris, whose accounts are very similar, Matthew Paris having incorporated into his Chronica Maiora the work of his predecessor at St Albans.39 Johnston, the editor of the text, designates the author a compiler, rather than a chronicler, and noted, that he ‘could have taken this [additional] material to supplement and enliven his abridgement and popularization of 35 

Yerushalmi, Zakhor, p. xv. Yerushalmi, Zakhor, p. xv. 37  ‘apparently as part of a group sent by Richard to warn about Philip’s supposed plans to attack the Angevin lands’, Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, ed. and trans. by Ailes and Barber, ii, p. 14. 38  The Gesta Henrici was formerly considered to be the work of Benedict of Peterborough. Ambroise, The History of the Holy War, ed. and trans. by Ailes and Barber, ii, p. 14; Gillingham, ‘Roger of Howden on Crusade’; Gransden, Historical Writing in England, pp. 222–26 and Corner, ‘The Gesta Henrici Secundi and Chronica of Roger Parson of Howden’. Johnston was mistaken in thinking he had not been in the Holy Land, ‘An Anglo-Norman Chronicle’, p. 275. 39  Johnston, ‘An Anglo-Norman Chronicle’, pp. 276–77 and in the introduction to the edition, The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, pp. xii–xv. 36 

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Howden’s chronicle dealing with the same theme’.40 The procedure of translation combined with collating material from different sources is not unusual in medieval translation: it is found, for example, in the Middle English fragment The Song of Roland which brings together material from the PseudoTurpin Chronicle and from the French Chanson de Roland.41 It can be linked to the method of medieval chroniclers, collating material from different sources which may be combined with their eyewitness testimony, a method used in the composition of the Itinerarium. As Nicholson comments, this was ‘the normal procedure for historical writing in his day’.42 Johnston’s implied distinction between a ‘compiler’, what could be called a second order writer, and a ‘chronicler’, is thus a false one. What our translators are doing is extending the standard practice of historical writing into the practice of translation, collating and translating at the same time. The non-eyewitness account of the Crusade and Death of Richard I has been largely ignored and dismissed as adding nothing to our understanding of the crusades, which is largely true, but it can add to our understanding of both medieval translations and how the memory of the crusades turned into commemorative myth. The Anglo-Norman redactor begins by drawing on another account, that of Roger of Wendover, finding here, as Johnston noted, ‘a much more literary and even flowery start for his chronicle’.43 In traditional chronicle style the redactor first gives the date: ‘Lan de l’Incarnacion Nostre Seignur Jhesu Crist mille cent quatre vyntz et septisme’ (In the year of our Lord 1187).44 He then provides the context — rather dramatically, drawing extensively on Roger of Wendover’s account of 1184. Here is Roger of Wendover: Contigit hac tempestate, ut Salaadinus, Soldanus Damasci, subjugatis omnibus regibus Saracenis in finibus totius orientis, ita ut diceretur rex regum et dominus dominantium, cum ei obedirent omnium gentium nationes, adjiciens ergo ut universam sibi Christianitatem subjugaret, intrante Julio mense, Jordanem transivit.45 (At the time Saladin, Sultan of Damascus, had subdued all the Saracenic kings throughout the east, so that he may truly be called King of Kings and Lord of 40 

The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, introduction, p. xiv. Hardman and Ailes, The Legend of Charlemagne, pp. 250–52. 42  The Chronicle of the Third Crusade, trans. by Nicholson, p. 13. 43  The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, p. 48. 44  The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, p. 1. 45  Roger of Wendover, Liber qui dicitur flores historiarum, ed. by Hewlett, p. 133. 41 

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Lords and now proposing to subdue all Christendom also, he passed the river Jordan at the beginning of July.)46

And here the French translation: Aprés qe Saladin, Soudan de Damas, avoit conquis et mis en subjeccion plusours roialmes sarraziens es parties de l’orient, si prist talent et purpos de guerroier et destruire trestouz les cristiens de la terre Seinte, de Egipte, et Surrie, et aussint touz les autres roialmes et paais parmy le monde q’en Jhesu creeront ou la ley cristiene tenoient, mettre a declin et subversion, au fin qe par usurpacion de seignurie et pruesce de sa persone se poeit en estil nomer Roi de Rois et Seignur de Sires; et si passa le flum Jordan et la terre de Promission gasta, et qanqe il trova contresteant sa volenté fist destruire et gaster et mettre au feu e flaume.47 (After Saladin, sultan of Damascus, had conquered and subjected many Saracen realms in the Orient, he decided to fight against and destroy all the Christians of the Holy Land, Egypt, and Syria, and also to bring down all the realms and lands in the world where they believe in Jesus or hold the Christian faith, in order, by usurping the lordship and by his personal prowess to be able to style himself King of Kings and Lord of Lords; and he passed the river Jordan and laid waste to the Promised Land, and wheresoever he was opposed to destroy and lay waste and put to fire and flame.)

The Anglo-Norman translator has transferred material from one part of his source to another and elaborated it. Even a brief glance tells the reader that the Anglo-Norman text is longer, though it is possible to match some sections word for word (highlighted in bold). It is elaborated by developing ‘subdue all Christendom’ which becomes more personalized by the change to ‘Christians’ and the use of the double intensifier trestouz which could be translated ‘absolutely all’; ‘subdue’ (subjugaret) becomes the stronger ‘destroy’ (destruire); it is not enough for him to list place names — he also adds a long clause to include every Christian realm. One detail may suggest that the Anglo-Norman writer’s source here was Matthew Paris, whose text is almost identical at this point but who continues to describe Saladin’s route and add the detail that, having laid waste to Neapolis, he ‘burnt it down’.48 The Anglo-Norman does not have the 46 

Roger of Wendover, Flowers of History, trans. by Giles, p. 55. The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, p. 1. 48  Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed.  by Luard, ii, p.  321. ‘He [Saladin] crossed the Jordan, devastated the land around the castle of Kerak, which was called by the ancient name the rock [Petra] of the desert, laid waste [to it] and gathered up provisions. Then crossing over to Neapolis, he plundered the town and afterwards burnt it down.’ I would like to thank Dr Edward Sutcliffe for help with the translation. 47 

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extra details of places mentioned by Matthew Paris, but we do find in both texts the specific idea of a conflagration; this might, however, have been added independently by both authors as it is a fairly obvious way to elaborate on the destruction wreaked by Saladin. From Wendover or Paris come the biblical echoes: ‘rex regum et dominus dominantium’, translated as ‘Roi de Rois et Seignur de Sires’. The French writer also used rhetorical techniques of elaboratio, developing Roger of Wendover’s already emotive text: he adds the ‘Promised Land’ to the River Jordan, and gave two different forms of the emotive term: gasta/gaster (to lay waste). The source is further elaborated with common rhetorical devices: doublets and binomials — ‘prist talent et purpos de guerroier et destruire’; ‘roiaulmes et paais’, ‘declin et subversion’, ‘seignurie et pruesce’, ‘destruire et gaster’. There is also some alliteration in these binary structures, which might suggest he was writing a text he expected to be read aloud. He further borrowed from Roger of Wendover an error regarding the death of the Master of the Templars, who then turns up alive in his next section, a danger of collating different sources.49 This suggests that (as was the case in some chansons de geste), narrative cohesion was less his business than rhetorical effect. He paints a word picture of Saladin, a dark image of a destroyer; to do so he transposes Roger’s description from 1184 to 1187 and uses the kind of rhetoric common in vernacular texts to develop it. While rhetorically elaborating, the Anglo-Norman chronicler considerably abbreviated his source overall by cutting the narrative. Johnston was highly critical of his redactor, describing this process by terms such as a ‘drastic excerption’, ‘savagely excerpted’, ‘a colourless summary’, though he also conceded that ‘the translator is capable of efficient précis’ — and it is true that sometimes there can be a lack of cohesion as a result of the redactor’s work.50 In chapter 23, for example, Richard’s bride Berengaria just appears, with no preparation.51 His aim was one of economic narration, firmly placing the deeds of Richard at the centre 49 

‘Le Meistre du Temple de Jerusalem et sessante frere ove grant fuison e plenté de cristiens […] fist tuer’ (The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, ch. 1, p. 1, Johnston’s notes p. 48) (he had killed […] the Master of the Temple of Jerusalem and sixty brothers, with a great many Christians) (all translations from the Crusade and Death author’s own). 50  The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, notes pp. 49, 56, 57; Johnston, ‘An AngloNorman Chronicle’, p. 267. 51  In the same section he tells of the loss of some ships, which took place off Cyprus, but in the Anglo-Norman text it reads as though they were just off Rhodes. These and other infelicities are pointed out by Johnston in his notes.

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of his tale, thereby casting as positive a light as possible on the king.52 To this end he often simply expunged any tale which did not redound to Richard’s glory. For example, he did not translate Roger of Howden’s account of the dying king Henry II cursing his sons, nor the condemnatory statement that the dead king’s body bled in the presence of Richard, an incident which would appear to blame Richard for his father’s death.53 Similarly, he later (in chapter 51) omitted Fulk de Neuley’s rebuke to Richard, found in Howden, in which he evoked the three allegorical daughters of the king: cupiditas, luxuria, and superbia.54 These are quite clearly and consistently not random changes to the source text. Some of the Anglo-Norman chronicler’s abbreviations were highly criticized by the editor; for example, Johnston described chapter 28, Richard’s arrival at Acre as ‘a hasty and unsatisfactory summary’.55 However, it is only unsatisfactory if the reader is looking for accurate details; in such a context the emphasis and exaggeration of Philip Augustus’s relative inactivity, the omission of the fact that Richard borrowed Philip’s engineers, leaving his war machines exposed to the attacks of the Saracens, become important. If the purpose of the paragraph is, as Johnston noted, ‘a special piece of pleading for the compiler’s hero’, then it is not unsatisfactory at all.56 For some of these alterations the editor assumes another source, a more ‘popular’, less learned, one, and there may have been one, but it is not necessary to assume they are not the work of the redactor himself.57 In one case, he kept an anecdote but transformed it from a negative depiction of the king, to a narrative endowing Richard with positive attributes. Roger of Howden’s text brings no credit to the king. Roger recounts how in September 1190, on his way to Medina, the king, passing through a small town, heard the sound of a hawk and simply entered the building where the bird was, and took it. Not surprisingly the local population, angered by this, start to attack the king with sticks and stones, one going so far as to draw his knife. The king used the flat of his sword (so at least did not attack a peasant with the sharp blade which would hardly have been a noble deed) to defend himself, but the sword broke. The king then had to throw stones, like a child, or indeed like the local peasants attacking him, in order to escape. The king had 52 

The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, p. 32, especially n. 1. The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, notes p. 49. 54  Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. by Stubbs, iv, pp. 77–78; The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, notes p. 72. 55  The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, p. 60. 56  The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, p. 60. 57  The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, notes on ch. 19, p. 55. 53 

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to flee ignominiously.58 The Anglo-Norman writer transforms this seemingly insignificant event into a rather touching tale. When the king hears the hawk, he becomes nostalgic, being ‘comforted by this and thought of the pleasures of his own land, and it weighed upon him that he did not have the hawk’. He then ‘put it on his fist in a courtly manner’ which ‘filled him with joy’. The king is presented here in a very human way, with the addition of positive attributes, the adverb courtoisement, ‘in a courtly manner’, and the emotion lez, ‘joy’. The somewhat unseemly brawl with the peasants which follows is then transformed with the use of adjectives which might be used in a romance or chanson de geste, the king ‘molt ert hardiz, vistz et legiers’, he is very ‘bold, fast and light’. The Anglo-Norman writer goes on to make explicit that the king uses his sword to strike the peasants not to kill them, because he is too noble to kill peasants. The inadequacy of the sword which breaks, becomes an indication of his strength; the stones he then uses are now specifically grantz (big), so perhaps more worthy weapons. Finally, the king leaves in order rather than disorder.59 58 

‘Vicesima secunda die Septembris, rex Angliæ recedens de Melida cum uno solo milite, transivit per villam quandam parvam; et cum transisset, vertit se ad domum quandam, in qua audivit accipitrem, et intrans domum cepit illum; quem cum dimittere noluissent, rustici multi undieque adcurrentes impetum fecerunt in eum cum lapidibus et fustibus; et cum unus illorum cultellum suum in regem extraxisset; rex eum cum lato gladii sui verberans, gladium suum fregit, et alios lapidibus obruit, et sic vix evadens a manibus eorum, venit ad prioratum.’ Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. by Stubbs, iii, pp. 54–55. (On the twenty-second day of September [1190], the king of England, departing from Melida with a single knight, passed through a certain small town, and after he had passed through turned towards a certain house in which he heard a hawk, and entering the house took hold of it. On his refusing to give it up, numbers of peasants came running from every quarter, and made an attack on him with sticks and stones. One of them then drew his knife against the king, upon which the latter giving him a blow with the flat of his sword, it snapped asunder, whereupon he pelted the others with stones, and with difficulty making his escape out of their hands, came to a priory) (trans. p. 157). 59  ‘D’illoeqes passa le Roi ove un soul chivaler par une petite villette, si oist un esperver crier en une meson, dont il estoit molt confortez, et commencea penser des envoisures et deduitz de son paais, et molt lui poisa qu’il n’eust l’esperver, si se ferist ignelement dedeinz la dite meson et prist l’espervier et le mist courtoisement au poigne, dont molt feust lez. Mes les vileins de la ville, qant ils savoient qu’il eust l’esperver apporté, si avoient ils grant despit et isseront de checune part ove bastons et grantz peres et lui escrierent durement et doneront grantz coups, des queux un treit son cotel et voleit avoir feru le Roi. Mes le Roi, qe molt ert hardiz, vistz et legiers, saillist d’une part et d’autre et treit le bon branc et ferist au destre et au senestre si grantz coups qe nul des vileins le poent sustenir, einz lour covient tresboucher et chaier a la terre, et nepurquant, le Roi lour ferist molt grevousement de son espee, car son corage, qe tant ert gente n’avoit cure vileins tuer, einz batre et rechacer a meson par force. Mes tant ferist du dit espei, q’il ne se poeit tenir entiers, einz debrusa par force, si est tant irrez qe a poi s’en rage des ditz vileins; si prist grantz peres, dont il y avoit

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Johnston, unwilling to accept any real degree of independent thought on the part of the redactor, noted that while ‘this adventure of the hawk corresponds in outline with the story told in H[owden] […] it is so different in spirit and language that a different source must be postulated’.60 There may have been a different, now lost, source, but it could also have been elaboration on the part of the translator. The Anglo-Norman writer, explaining that the sound of the hawk reminded Richard of happier times and just putting the hawk on his wrist gives him joy, gives a reason for Richard’s strange behaviour where Roger of Howden gives no explanation.61 The positive adverbs and adjectives regarding Richard, courtoisement, hardiz, vistz et legiers contrast with the vileins. Finally, rather than escaping with difficulty, he takes his hawk and departs. This is one instance of the transformation of the ‘eyewitness’ account (albeit of an incident which does not sound realistic). Such relatively small changes alter the tenor of the whole, presenting an image of Richard which is at once human (he is homesick) and mythologized (he is courtly and noble). In this the prose text resembles Ambroise’s account which likewise shows Richard as human, with vulnerabilities, but also as a hero of renown. We have noted that where no source can be found, Johnston assumes a lost source, yet few, if any, of these additions require great powers of invention. It is worth pausing briefly at one such addition, a description of Richard as king after his return to England: assez, et rendist les vileins si fort estour qu’ils chaieront a la terre tout desconfitz; mes plusours s’en fuirent sanz defense plus faire. Le Roi prise son esperver et departist d’illoeqes’ (The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, p. 14, ch. 16). (From there the king passed with one single knight through a small town; he heard there a hawk cry out from a house and he was comforted by this and thought of the pleasures of his own land, and it weighed upon him that he did not have the hawk; at once he went into the said house and took the hawk and put it on his fist in a courtly manner; this filled him with joy. But the peasants of the town, when they heard that he had taken the hawk, came from every direction with sticks and large stones and shouted at him and struck blows; one of them drew a knife and wanted to strike the king. But the king, who was very bold, fast and light, leapt from one place to another and drew his good sword, striking to the right and to the left such blows that they fell to the ground, nonetheless the king struck them grievously with his sword but his nature was too noble for him to want to kill peasants, only to beat them back to their houses by force. But he stuck so much with the said sword that the sword could not take it and broke, he was so angry against these peasants; then he took large stones, of which there were plenty, and gave such a fight to the peasants that they fell to the ground. The king took his hawk and left.) 60  The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, p. 14 n. 7. 61  Henry Riley, the nineteenth-century translator of the Latin text, hints that Richard may have behaved in this way because ‘for a churl to keep a hawk was contrary to the rules of chivalry’, Roger of Howden, The Annals of Roger de Hoveden, trans. by Riley, ii, p. 157 n. 87.

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Si vint en Engleterre et ousta Johan, son frere, de touz les honurs et terres qu’il lui avoit doné, et establit sa terre en pees par bones lois et juggements q’il fesoit, mellant toutefoiz merci ove droiture. (And so, he came to England and deprived John his brother of all the lands and honours that he had given him and established his land in peace, through good laws and judgements, mixing always mercy with justice.)62

In some ways this sentence is unremarkable enough. Indeed, it recounts what must have been a fairly dramatic turn of events (at least for John) in a fairly prosaic and matter of fact way. What he evokes here, however, is Richard as a model king, fulfilling the medieval ideals of the rex iustus.63 The language is not ornate, but he does use the kind of binary structures we have seen elsewhere in his elaborations with ‘honurs et terres’, ‘bones lois et juggements’ and ‘merci ove droiture’. Although these are rather clichéd we can see how rhetoric is used to build up this favourable picture of Richard. Both the author of the Itinerarium and the anonymous Anglo-Norman redactor, therefore, use the tools their potential readership would be familiar with, such as rhetorical patterns of repetition and reinforcement, to build on the shared (actual) memory — the process of remembering — found in eyewitness chronicles and thus contribute to a collective memory which will create a myth of Richard the Lion-heart and the Third Crusade.

The Chronicles, Translation, and the Reading Community Michael Staunton, in a recent study of the Historians of Angevin England looking specifically at Latin historiography of the period, notes that while France had developed a kind of official historiography promoting the status and ambitions of the king. Nothing like that happened in England […] Instead such writers as Howden were very well informed about public affairs and highly engaged with politics, but did not act as mouthpieces for the English kings, and seldom expressed strongly partisan or controversial positions of their own.64 62 

The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, p. 43. Boutet, Charlemagne et Arthur ou le roi imaginaire, pp. 73–94. 64  Staunton, The Historians of Angevin England, ch. 3, p. 52. He puts the Latin historiography of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries into the context of an Insular tradition with its roots in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle ‘writing history in a way that praised past achievements and supported the continued fortunes of a king or dynasty’ (p. 51). 63 

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This is perhaps generalizing from the particular case of Roger of Howden and one might (as John Gillingham does) take issue with the idea of Roger of Howden as a kind of ‘retired administrator of the second class’.65 If we add into the picture the Insular French chronicles then we find an even richer tapestry. These French writers are no more mouthpieces of the king than are their Latin brethren, but Ambroise and our anonymous Anglo-Norman prose chronicler are also far from the ‘administrative historian’ evoked by Staunton; they are also not writing an official history in the style of the French Grandes chroniques. At the same time, the mythologization of a king is particularly significant in the creation of identity through social memory in the context of a national identity in development, and where polity is not identical to linguistic identity.66 So far I have examined four texts written in the higher status languages of England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but in due course, for the myth of Richard to expand, it was important that it was also expressed through Middle English, the language of the majority of the inhabitants of England. By around 1300 the legend of Richard was recast into a romance, Richard Coeur de Lion, complete with a mysterious mother who flies away when forced to attend mass.67 What the Richard Coeur de Lion romance demonstrates is the next stage in the process of mythologization. In the well-known Auchinleck manuscript the romance proper is preceded by a prologue which explains why the tale is being redacted in English. The author notes that clerks have their Latin books (ll. 7–8) and ‘Romaunce make folk of Fraunce | Of kniȝtes ƿat were in destuance…of Alisander & Charmeyn’ (ll. 10–11, l. 15), but as ‘lewed’ men have no French it is appropriate to tell ‘of douȝti kniȝtes of Inglond’ (l. 28) and of those doughty knights in particular ‘Of a king douhti of ded, | King Richard, ƿe werrour best | ƿat men findeƿ in ani gest’ (ll. 30–32).68 Thorlac Turville-Petre reads this as a poem that ‘expresses the 65 

John Gillingham is here quoting Barlow, ‘Roger of Howden’, p. 360; see Gillingham ‘Roger of Howden on Crusade’, p. 142. 66  The development of national identity is, of course, a complex subject which we cannot begin to address fully here. A useful exploration of the changing interaction between language, literary culture, and identity in thirteenth-century England can be found in Turville-Petre, England the Nation. 67  For an edition see the Auchinleck manuscript project: [accessed 14 March 2019]. For details see the Database of Middle English Romance: [accessed 14 March 2019]; the fantastic beginning of the legend is missing in the version copied into the well-known Auchinleck manuscript Glasgow, National Library of Scotland, Adv. MS 19.2.1. 68  Turville-Petre, England the Nation, p. 122.

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vindictive nationalism of an insecure people, humiliated at home and belittled by those of more learning and higher education abroad’.69 For Turville-Petre this is a text where the ‘ideal of Christian chivalry becomes […] an exhibition of vengefulness, savagery and xenophobic aggression’.70 If this is the case, there is no evidence of such sentiments in the earlier Latin and French chronicles, though they do not hide the tension between Richard and Philip Augustus. Turville-Petre goes on to demonstrate that in thirteenth-century England we are, in fact, not yet at a point where languages can be used to define a nation, but in a context rather of three languages ‘in harmony, not just side by side, but in symbiotic relationship, interpenetrating and drawing strength from one another; not three cultures but one culture in three voices’.71 Though the Middle English romance is considerably later, the interaction of the languages is clear for Latin and French in the voices of our four chronicles. Here we have translation between Latin and French in both directions, with each tradition enriched by the presence of the other. The processes of translation in these chronicles are at the adaptation end of the translation spectrum, in a way that is more dynamic even than the ‘sense for sense’ translation; our texts take the matter of their source(s) and create something new with it, more like Cicero than Jerome.72 This underlines a different understanding of what it meant to translate. The ‘success’ of a medieval translation is not to be derived from an assessment of it as ‘a transmitter of meaning’ in the sense of its ‘ability to keep faith with the “original” from which it derives’, as noted by Emma Campbell and Robert Mills.73 In this we would disagree with Johnston whose notes seem to approve ‘faithful translation’ or places that are ‘closely translated’ without challenging the validity of ‘faithfulness’ as a value judgement in medieval secular translation practices.74 There is here no ‘hierar69 

Turville-Petre, England the Nation, p. 124. Turville-Petre, England the Nation, p. 124. 71  Turville-Petre, England the Nation, p. 180. 72  On Ciceronian principles whereby the translation of Latin texts is ‘a springboard for the invention of new and better speeches’ see Venuti, ‘Foundational Statements’, p. 13; Cicero was, however, more interested in rhetorical form than in content. The concept of a ‘sense for sense’ translation goes back at least as far as St Jerome who discusses where it is appropriate to translate ‘word for word’ (Scripture) and where it should be ‘sense for sense’; Jerome’s ‘Letter to Pammachius’ translated by Kathleen Davis is published in the Translation Studies Reader, pp. 21–30; the prefaces to his translations are available in English online at [accessed 14 March 2019]. For an analysis of Jerome see Venuti, ‘Genealogies of Translation Theory’. 73  Campbell and Mills, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. 74  The Crusade and Death, ed. by Johnston, e.g. p. 60. 70 

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chy of original and copy’.75 All our translators are creating something new. They are taking the model with which they are familiar, whereby a chronicler would collate information from different sources, and applying this model to the process of translation. In the case of the Itinerarium, one of those sources may have been his own eyewitness experience, while the Anglo-Norman redactor of The Crusade and Death of Richard I collates diverse written sources into his translation. These translators are not to be treated as second-rate, nor the translation as a ‘second order phenomenon’ simply because they are not created from nothing, any more than the great thirteenth-century chronicler Matthew Paris should be criticized for having incorporated Roger of Wendover’s chronicle into his own.76 It is worth reminding ourselves that ‘medieval translations are far from homogenous’, no more so than modern translations.77 In Peter Damian-Grint’s discussion of the importance of translation in the emerging vernacular historiography of the twelfth century, he stresses that ‘interpretation [was] seen as a necessary part of shift from one language to another’, apparently placing medieval translation on the hermeneutic side of the (now) conventional division of translation into the instrumental and the hermeneutic.78 Indeed Copeland had herself evoked the Augustinian identification of the modus inveniendi with the modus interpretandi but, in her discussion of Chaucer and Gower, goes on to discuss the process of rhetorical appropriation.79 Such rhetorical adaptation leads in the case of our chronicles to the invention of something new. Damian-Grint goes on to discuss the claim to a fidelity of translation made by Thomas of Kent in his Roman de toute chevalerie: La verité ai estrait, si l’estorie ne ment. | N’ai sez faiz acreu, çoe vus di verreiement,/ Mes beles paroles i ai mis nequedent. | N’i ai acreu l’estoire ne jo n’i ost nient; | Pur pleisir as oianz est un atiffement. (I have drawn out the truth, as the history does not lie. I have not added to his deeds, I tell you truly; but I have put in fair words. I have not added to the history nor have I taken anything from it; embellishment is for the pleasure of the listeners.)80 75 

Campbell and Mills, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. Campbell and Mills, ‘Introduction’, p. 3. For a discussion of this see Galbraith, Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris. 77  Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation, p. 55. 78  Damian-Grint, The New Historians, p. 20; Venuti ‘Genealogies of Translation Theory’. 79  Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation, p. 179. 80  Thomas of Kent, The Anglo-Norman Alexander (Le Roman de toute chevalerie), ed. by Foster and Short, also published with a translation into modern French by Catherine Gaullier76 

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With the repeated emphasis that the translator has added nothing but ‘fair words’, Thomas seems to be arguing for a model of translation of which both Cicero and Jerome would have approved. Our chroniclers could not have made such a claim. Damian-Grint goes on to point out (as we have also noted) that ‘the collation and compilation of various texts […] is a normal part of the process for medieval translators and adaptors’, but without making that link which I think is key, between the process of creating a chronicle through compiling different sources, and that of translating a chronicle while at the same time drawing upon different sources.81 The translation theorist, Lawrence Venuti, discusses the ethnocentricity which he perceived to be at the heart of much modern translation, whereby the source text is assimilated into the culture of the translated text by a process of assimilation.82 The context of medieval translation, or at least of these medieval translations, is different. The linguistic cultures are different in that they have their own literary and rhetorical traditions, and the translators harness these, but they belong to the same geographical zone and context. The process is perhaps closer to Marianne Lederer’s model of ‘Interpretive Translation’ than the assimilation practice observed by Venuti. The Interpretive model constructs a process of translation whereby, the source text having first been understood, the next stage is one of ‘deverbalizing its linguistic form and then expressing in another language, the ideas grasped and the notions felt’.83 We find in our medieval chronicles a large enough number of close verbal echoes, often with etymologically related words, that for our texts it is necessary to add the caveat that the process of ‘deverbalization’ is not complete. On the other hand, this theory, which seems to sweep aside as irrelevant the distinction made between instrumental and hermeneutic translation, may fit better a context where the different languages are found side by side, and are in constant contact with each other. As Campbell and Mills have observed, medieval translation thus becomes an ideal locus to challenge what could be considered a ‘stigmatization of translation’.84 Bougassas (Paris: Champion, 2003), cited in Damian-Grint, The New Historians, p.  20. Translation into English from Damian-Grint, The New Historians, p. 21 n. 98. 81  Damian-Grint, The New Historians, pp. 22–23. 82  Venuti, ‘Translation, Community, Utopia’; this is discussed in Campbell and Mills, ‘Introduction’, p. 4. 83  Lederer, Translation, p. 1. I am grateful to Dr Carol O’Sullivan for drawing my attention to Lederer’s work. 84  Campbell and Mills, ‘Introduction’, p. 4.

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The redactor of the Anglo-Norman Crusade and Death of Richard I exploits to some degree the rhetoric and skills of a more accessible literature — that of the non-clerical chansons de geste and early French language chronicles — to reinforce memorably his narrative of Richard I and his crusade. The author of the Itinerarium on the other hand, presents his work in the idiom of the scholar. The role of the translators here is indeed one of building community, and of building a reading community across a linguistic division within one polity, one country; it is not here a case of a ‘community with foreign cultures’ in Venuti’s terms, but of a single community with a plurality of voices.85 The use of both the vernacular and the learned voice of Latin extended the potential readership and turned the act of remembering Richard and his crusading into one of commemoration, and the development of a myth which was to be remarkably persistent.

85 

Venuti, ‘Translation, Community, Utopia’, p. 469, quoted and discussed in Campbell and Mills, ‘Introduction’, p. 4.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Resources Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reg. lat. 1659 Dublin, Trinity College Dublin, MS 11325 Glasgow, National Library of Scotland, Auchinleck manuscript project [accessed 14 March 2019] —— , Auchinleck manuscript, Adv. MS 19.2.1 Tokyo, University of Tokyo, Rare books lib 170X.9.11 (Keio fragment)

Primary Sources The Chronicle of the Third Crusade: The ‘Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi’, trans. by Helen Nicholson, Crusade Texts in Translation (Farnham: Ashgate, 1997) Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I, i: Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, ed. by William Stubbs (London: Longman, 1864) The Crusade and Death of Richard I, ed. by Ronald C. Johnston (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1961), available online at [accessed 13 March 2019] Ambroise, L’Estoire de la guerre sainte par Ambroise, ed.  by Gaston Paris, Document inédits sur l’Histoire de France (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1897) —— , The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s ‘Estoire de la guerre sainte’, 2 vols (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2003), i: The Text, ed. by Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber; ii: The Translation, trans. by Marianne Ailes, notes by Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber —— , L’Estoire de la guerre sainte, ed. by Catherine Croizy-Naquet (Paris: Champion, 2014) Das Itinerarium: Eine zeitgenössische englische Chronik zum dritten Kreuzzug in ursprünglicher Gestalt, ed. by Hans E. Mayer (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1962) Jerome, ‘Letter to Pammachius’, trans. by Kathleen Davis, in Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 21–30 Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. by Henry R. Luard, Rolls Series, 57, 5 vols (London: Longman, 1872–1883) Richard of Devizes, The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, ed. and trans. by John T. Appleby (London: Nelson, 1963) Roger of Howden, The Annals of Roger de Hoveden, trans. by Henry Riley, 2 vols (London: Bohn, 1853) —— , Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. by William Stubbs, Rolls Series, 4 vols (London: Longmans, 1868–1871) Roger of Wendover, Flowers of History, trans. by John Allen Giles (London: Bohn, 1849) —— , Rogeri de Wendover Liber qui dicitur Flores historiarum ab anno Domini MCLIV: annoque Henrici Anglorum regis secundi primo, ed.  by Henry G.  Hewlett (London: HMSO, 1886)

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Thomas of Kent, The Anglo-Norman Alexander (Le Roman de toute chevalerie), ed.  by Brian Foster and Ian Short, 2 vols (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1976–1977)

Secondary Works Ailes, Marianne J., ‘Ambroise’s Heroes of the Third Crusade’, in Writing War: Medieval Literary Responses to Warfare, ed. by Corinne Saunders, Françoise Le Saux, and Neil Thomas (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp. 29–48 Allaire, Gloria, ‘Literary Evidence for Multilingualism: The Roman de Tristan in its Italian Incarnations’, in Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World, ed. by Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 145–53 Barlow, Frank, ‘Roger of Howden’, English Historical Review, 65 (1950), 352–60 Barnard, John, David McKitterick, and Ian R. Willison, eds, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, 7 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012–2019) Boutet, Dominique, Charlemagne et Arthur ou le roi imaginaire (Paris: Champion, 1992) Burke, Peter, ‘History as Social Memory’, in Memory: History, Culture and the Mind, ed. by Thomas Butler (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 97–113 Campbell, Emma, and Robert Mills, ‘Introduction: Rethinking Medieval Translation’, in Rethinking Medieval Translation: Ethics, Politics, Theory, ed. by Emma Campbell and Robert Mills (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 1–20 Colker, Marvin L., ‘A Newly Discovered Manuscript Leaf of Ambroise’s Estoire de la guerre sainte’, Revue d’histoire des textes, 22 (1992), 159–67 Copeland, Rita, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) Corner, David, ‘The  Gesta Henrici Secundi  and  Chronica  of Roger Parson of Howden’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, 56 (1983), 126–44 Damian-Grint, Peter, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999) Dean, Ruth, ‘An Essay in Anglo-Norman Palaeography’, in Studies Presented to M. K. Pope (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1939), pp. 79–87 Dean, Ruth, and Maureen Boulton, Anglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to Texts and Manu­­ scripts (Oxford: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1999) Edwards, John G., ‘The Itinerarium regis Ricardi and the Estoire de la guerre sainte’, in Historical Essays in Honour of James Tait, ed. by John G. Edwards, Vivian H. Galbraith, and Ernest F. Jacob (Manchester: Butler & Tanner, 1933), pp. 59–77 Fentress, James, and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) Galbraith, V. H., Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris (Glasgow: Jackson, 1944) Gillingham, John, ‘Roger of Howden on Crusade’, in Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century (London: Hambledon, 1984), pp. 141–53 —— , ‘Conquering Kings: Some Twelfth-Century Reflections on Henry II and Richard I’, in Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century (London: Hambledon, 1994), pp. 105–18

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——  , ‘The Art of Kingship: Richard  I, 1189–99’, in Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and War in the Twelfth Century (London: Hambledon, 1994), pp. 95–103 Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England, c. 550–c. 1307 (London: Routledge, 1974) Halbwachs, Maurice, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (Paris: Alcan, 1925) —— , La mémoire collective (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950) —— , The Collective Memory, trans. by Francis J. Ditter, Jr. and Vida Yazdi Ditter (New York: Harper & Row, 1980) Hardman, Phillipa, and Marianne Ailes, The Legend of Charlemagne in Medieval England: The Matter of France in Medieval English and Anglo-Norman Literature (Cambridge: Brewer, 2017) Johnston, Ronald C., ‘An Anglo-Norman Chronicle of the Crusade and Death of Richard I’, in Studies in Mediaeval French Presented to Professor A. Ewart (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), pp. 259–78 Kempshall, Matthew, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011) Lederer, Marianne, Translation: The Interpretive Model, trans. by Ninon Larché (Man­ chester: St Jerome, 1994) Megill, Allan, ‘History, Memory, Identity’, History of the Human Sciences, 11 (1998), 37–62 Middle English Romance [accessed 14 March 2019] Olick, Jeffrey K., Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, and Daniel Levy, eds, The Collective Memory Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Pezzimenti, Sara, ‘Due “nuovi” manuscritti antichi dell’Estoire de la guerre sainte (TCD 11325 e BAV Reg. Lat. 1659)’, Critica del testo, 16 (2013), 105–54 Smith’s Bible Dictionary [accessed 3 January 2022] Staunton, Michael, The Historians of Angevin England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) Turville-Petre, Thorlac, England the Nation: Language, Literature and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) Valensi, Lucette, ‘From Sacred History to Historical Memory and Back: The Jewish Past’, History and Anthropology, 2 (1986), 283–305 Venuti, Lawrence, ‘Translation, Community, Utopia’, in Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 482–502 —— , ‘Genealogies of Translation Theory: Jerome’, Boundary 2, 37.3 (2010), 5–28 —— , ‘Genealogies of Translation Theory: Jerome’, in Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 483–502 —— , ‘Foundational Statements’, in Translation Studies Reader, ed. by Lawrence Venuti, 3rd edn (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 13–20 Vising, Johan, Anglo-Norman Language and Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1923) Wallis, Faith, and Robert Wisnovsky, Medieval Textual Cultures: Agents of Transmission, Translation and Transformation (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016) Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1982)

Chapter 4

‘As You Came from the Holy Land’ Medieval Pilgrimage to Walsingham and its Crusader Contexts Elisa A. Foster

I

n 1147, crusader Geoffrey de Favarches left instructions for the foundation of Walsingham Priory in East Anglia upon his departure:

Gaufre de Fauarches omnibus fidelibus ecclesie sancte que est in Christo salute Notum sit vobis me dedisse et concessisse deo et Sancte marie et Edwino clerico meo ad ordinem religionis quem ipse providerit institutiendum pro salute anime mee et parentum et amicorum meorum in perpetuum elemosinam capellam quam mater mea fundavit in Walsingham in honore perpetue virginis marie una cum possessione ecclesie omnium sanctorum ejusdem villae et omnibus pertinentis suis tam in terris quam in decimis et redditibus et humagiis et omnibus rebus quas predictus edwius possedit die qua ego iter ierosolimitanum suscepi. (Geoffrey de Favarches to all the faithful of Holy Church which is in Christ, Greeting. Be it known to you that I have given and granted to God and to Saint Mary and to Edwin my clerk for the institution of a religious order which he himself will provide, for the health of my soul and that of my parents and friends, in perpetual alms, the chapel which my mother founded in Walsingham in honour of the Ever Virgin Mary, together with the possession of the church of All Saints in the same village and all its appurtenances both of lands and tithes and rents and hom-

Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, tcne 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 91–114 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.129230

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ages which come into the possession of the aforesaid Edwy on the day when I have undertaken the journey to Jerusalem.)1

This priory was established soon after in 1153 and became an important house of Augustinian canons (Fig. 4.1). Yet, as Geoffrey confirms, there was already a religious building in what was officially called Little (Parva) Walsingham — a small chapel dedicated to the Virgin founded by his mother.2 While Geoffrey’s desire to build a priory at this site is unknown, care and oversight of his mother’s chapel must have been important enough to mention it in the charter. As such, this chapel is widely presumed to be the ‘Holy House’ of Walsingham, a replica of the Virgin’s home in Nazareth, and a site of intense Marian pilgrimage during the Middle Ages. Walsingham thus presents an unusual example of a Marian pilgrimage site (the Holy House) and crusader donation (the priory) in medieval England. As a copy of the site of the Annunciation, the Holy House at Walsingham was closely associated with the Incarnation of Christ, making it an especially attractive pilgrimage destination for expectant or infertile women. By the mid-thirteenth century, the chapel also housed the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, to whom the faithful gave precious donations of gold, jewels, and other items. There was also a third reason to visit Walsingham: to venerate its most precious and unusual relics: foremost a vial of the Virgin’s milk, said to have been transported to England from Constantinople during the Second Crusade, a fact the further added to the pilgrimage site’s crusader connections. Part of the popularity of the Walsingham pilgrimage was the result of substantial patronage from nearly every English monarch from the late twelfth century up to Henry VIII, who famously walked barefoot to the Marian sanctuary early in his reign before later ordering the shrine, statue of Our Lady, and its priory destroyed in 1538.3 Despite this destruction, the pilgrimage to Walsingham was revived in the nineteenth century, and the town is now a destination for Catholic and Anglican pilgrims in the United Kingdom, supported by two separate shrines.4 1 

BL, Cotton MSS, Nero E. vii, fol. 7r. See also, ‘Medieval Documents’. 2  Little Walsingham is meant to distinguish itself from the neighbouring Great Walsingham, which, though bigger in size, was less historically and religiously significant. All references to Walsingham (as it is often most simply called) refer to the sites in Little Walsingham. 3  ‘The Acknowledgement of Supremacy 1534’ and ‘Surrender of Walsingham Priory 4 August, 30 Henr. VIII., a.d. 1581.1’. Documents and translations available from the Walsingham Shrine Archive Online [accessed 22 January 2021]. 4  The Anglican shrine was founded by Alfred Hope Patten in 1931. The Catholic shrine,

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Figure 4.1. Plan of Walsingham Priory with site of the Holy House at ‘A’. Reproduced after Warner, ‘Walsingham Priory’, p. 115 (image: public domain).

Given the particular circumstances of the foundation of both the priory and chapel at Walsingham, it is perhaps unsurprising that the site was venerated as a sort of biblical counterpart on English soil during the later Middle Ages. An anonymous poem dating to c. 1495 most commonly known as the ‘Pynson Ballad’ not only declares that Walsingham is the ‘newe Nazareth’ but that the whole of England is ‘called in every realm and region | The Holy Land, Our Lady’s Dowry’.5 This notion that Walsingham afforded England’s great dowry and earned its right to be called the Holy Land reverberated in the cultural memory of the site, even beyond its destruction. Perhaps most famously, Sir Walter Ralegh’s 1593 poem begins, ‘As you came from the holy land | Of Walsinghame, | Met you not with my true love | By the way as you came?’6 Here, Ralegh remembers not only Walsingham and its connection to the Holy Land but also the sigfounded in 1896 and known as the ‘Slipper Chapel’, is not in Walsingham, but about a mile away, in a small hamlet called Houghton le Dale. The two sites share a common web address: [accessed 3 January 2022]. 5  Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library, 1254 (STC 25001). Reproduced from the Walsingham Shrine Archive [accessed 22 January 2021]. 6  ‘The Ralegh Ballad’, reproduced at [accessed 22 January 2021].

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nificance of the pilgrimage route that has come to be called the ‘Palmers’ Way’, a reference to the tradition of pilgrims to Jerusalem carrying a palm back with them from their pious journey. The tragic and fantastic history of Walsingham has therefore allowed Walsingham to continue to be an important site not only for Marian pilgrimage but also for imagining the Incarnation of Christ. By at least the fifteenth century, then, Walsingham had gained an association as a place one could travel to if the Holy Land itself was not possible, a phenomenon Stella Singer has called ‘mimetic pilgrimage’.7 Yet how and when did this association first arise? Foremost, the geographical isolation of Walsingham — far removed from London or even other important English pilgrimage sites at Canterbury or Durham — influenced its Nazarene allusions. As will be argued below, while King Henry III (r. 1216–1272) likely augmented (or perhaps even originated) Walsingham’s association with Nazareth, architectural references to the Holy Land permeated throughout East Anglia along the pilgrims’ path to the shrine before Henry’s reign. Furthermore, the purpose and impact of both the pilgrimage to and shrine at Walsingham changed over the course of the Middle Ages, allowing it to become simultaneously a place of imaginative or virtual pilgrimage to Jerusalem and real pilgrimage to Walsingham, both of which benefited from the crusader context of the site. This dual purpose of pilgrimage to Walsingham likely began with Henry III, whose beleaguered reign meant that the king never went on crusade despite his vows to take up the cross several times. To remedy this situation, Henry’s procurement of the Holy Blood relic for Westminster Abbey has been often understood as a means of competing with his political rival, Louis IX of France, whose crusading efforts allowed him to acquire many precious relics from the Holy Land for France, most notably the Crown of Thorns.8 Henry’s Westminster and Louis’s Sainte-Chapelle housed these important biblical relics but, as this study argues, Walsingham offered the English king an unusual opportunity. The Holy House was not a relic but a replica, a site that could bring Nazareth to England, and therefore the Holy Land (both in its biblical past form and present site of crusader warfare) to Henry. Indeed, Henry’s interest in biblical replicas is evident in his planned family mausoleum at the Temple Church in London, widely considered to be based on the rotunda design of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.9 7 

Singer, ‘Walsingham’s Local Genius’, esp. p. 25. Vincent, The Holy Blood. 9  Records for Henry’s intention to be buried at Temple Church (unrealized, entombed in Westminster), can be found in Calendar of the Charter Rolls Preserved in the Public Records Office, i: Henry III, ed. by Maxwell Lyte, p. 135 and pp. 210–11. For a recent study on Henry’s 8 

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Despite this more famous project, the replica of the Holy House at Walsingham offered not only a connection to a different site in the Holy Land but also purportedly dated to the reign of Edward the Confessor, thus tying Walsingham more closely to Henry’s ambitious rebuilding of Westminster to house the shrine of his sainted exemplar.10 For Henry, then, Walsingham was a place where the contexts of crusade and pilgrimage merged. But later in the Middle Ages, as the desire for crusading waned, Walsingham became more publicly understood more as a virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land of biblical times (rather than at present), linked not only to the legend of the Holy House but also to surrounding monuments with biblical antecedents in East Anglia.

The Holy House of Walsingham: Between Invention and Imitation Before turning to the role of Henry III at Walsingham, the complicated history and dating of the chapel or ‘Holy House’ at the site must first be addressed. If the original chapel at Walsingham founded by Geoffrey de Favarques’s mother was indeed the famed Holy House, the 1147 date of the chartulary would strongly suggest that the chapel itself could only date to the beginning of the twelfth century at the earliest.11 J. C. Dickinson’s careful study has convincingly argued that Richeldis, the purported ‘Anglo-Saxon’ founder of the Holy House, was actually the Lady of Walsingham Manor from around 1130, at which time the shrine was most probably first built.12 Despite this credible documentation, the Holy House’s foundation date is officially celebrated as 1061. This date is not rooted in archaeological or documentary evidence but rather appears in the opening lines of the aforementioned anonymous ballad printed around 1495 and likely written thirty years earlier, the only copy of which survives in the Pepys Library at Magdalene College at the University of Cambridge.13 Known as the Pynson Ballad after planned rebuilding of the choir for his mausoleum and change in burial location see, Stewart, ‘A Lesson in Patronage’. 10  For Henry’s rebuilding campaign at Westminster and his political motivations, see Lewis ‘Henry III and the Gothic Rebuilding of Westminster Abbey’, p. 168. 11  See further discussion in Dickinson, The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, pp. 5–7. 12  Dickinson, The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, pp. 3–9. See also Rear, ‘The Problem of 1061’. 13  Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library, 1254 (STC 25001). Reproduced from the Walsingham Shrine Archive [accessed 22 January 2021].

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Richard Pynson, royal printer to Henry VII, the text recounts the legend of Richeldis de Faverches, a widow who, in the year ‘A thousande complete syxty and one | The tyme of sent Edward kyng of this region’ was taken to Nazareth in a dream where she encountered the Virgin Mary who told her to build a replica of her house upon her return to England. Although the measurements of the house were specific, exactly where the house should be built was more ambiguous. After builders struggled to fit the house together, Richeldis prayed to the Virgin for help and found the house moved some two hundred paces away and perfectly assembled, suggesting that it was the work of angels rather than men. This account clearly bears similarities to the more famous Holy House of the Virgin in Loreto, Italy, whose legends report that the Virgin’s actual house (rather than a replica) was literally transported from Nazareth to Italy around 1290. Nevertheless, like the Pynson Ballad, no mentions of such miraculous origins are known at Loreto until the fifteenth century.14 It has been widely suggested that the Pynson Ballad likely sought to establish the Holy House’s specifically Anglo-Saxon origins under the reign of Edward the Confessor, thus increasing the site’s importance to burgeoning English nationalism in the later Middle Ages.15 As Simon Coleman’s many studies on Walsingham past and present have demonstrated, these imagined origins serve as an intriguing pre-modern example of Hobsbawm and Ranger’s concept of an ‘invented tradition’ wherein historical facts are deliberately manufactured later to aid in the cohesion of group or national identity. 16 As such, Walsingham retains this date in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary because the legend of Walsingham has become as much a part of the story of Walsingham as the site itself.

14 

Carroll, ‘Pilgrimage at Walsingham on the Eve of the Reformation’. For the history and controversy of the Holy House at Loreto see, Vélez, The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto, see esp. comparison to Walsingham at pp. 180–81. See also Dickinson, The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, pp. 105–07. 15  For a longer analysis and literature pertaining to this topic see, Waller, Walsingham and the English Imagination. 16  Hobsbawm and Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition, pp. 1–2. For studies by Simon Coleman see, Coleman and Elsner, ‘Tradition as Play’; Coleman, ‘Pilgrimage to “England’s Nazareth”’; ‘Mary on the Margins?’. For an extended overview on Walsingham and the concept of ‘invented tradition’ see, Janes and Waller, ‘Introduction’.

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Henry III: Absent Crusader, Actual Pilgrim Whatever the true origins of the chapel at Walsingham, it is clear that the site did not become a pilgrimage shrine of national importance until the reign of Henry III (r. 1216–1272). While little documentation survives (apart from monetary donations) as to the purpose of Henry III’s visits to Walsingham, it could be argued that the national recognition of the pilgrimage site’s links both to the crusades and the Holy Land begins with his reign. As the nephew of the great crusader king of England, Richard I, Henry knew that a zeal for crusading was an important part of the Plantagenet legacy and endeavoured to preserve this ideal throughout his reign. In fact, he pledged to take up the cross three times: in the first year of his minority in 1216, again as king in 1250, and for the last time at the end of his reign in 1271. However, despite these declarations of the king’s dedication to the crusader cause, all of these vows went unrealized due to ongoing political and military conflict that directed Henry’s time and attention to France rather than the Outremer.17 In contrast to crusading, Henry made at least eleven pilgrimages to Walsingham during his lifetime. His first visit occurred at the end of his minority in 1226, just a year before he would gain full control of the government. Walsingham does not appear to have been a pilgrimage site of major significance at this time, and indeed, Henry’s ultimate destination on this particular journey was Bromholm Priory (Bacton, Norfolk). On this visit, he granted both priories at Walsingham and Bromholm the right to hold a market and a fair on the vigil and Feast of the Holy Cross, with the latter also permitted another one on the day after the feast as well.18 This feast day commemorates the dedication of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which contains the sites of the Crucifixion and Entombment of Christ, discovered by Saint Helena in the fourth century. While a relic of the Holy Cross brought more visitors to Bromholm than Walsingham on this day, Henry likely understood the significance of both sites’ connection to the Holy Land and therefore the king could have bolstered the connections between Walsingham and Bromholm by way of royal patronage.19 Indeed, Henry was undoubtedly interested in such analogies to biblical sites later in his reign, most notably in his initial (but ulti17 

Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade, pp. 198–232, esp. p. 221. Lloyd reads these conflicts as problematic for Henry but not as intentional excuses for his failure to organize a crusade. See also Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 111. 18  Rotuli litterarum clausarum in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. by Hardy, p. 105. 19  Schmoelz, ‘Pilgrimage in Medieval East Anglia’, pp. 30–32.

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mately unrealized) desire to be buried in the rotunda of New Temple Church in London, a significant site of the Knights Templar in Britain, whom Henry financially supported during his reign.20 Despite Henry III’s marked interest in appropriating the Holy Land on English soil, East Anglia was rife with biblical associations before Henry’s reign, so the king’s initial patronage of and interest in Walsingham must also be understood in this context. Many monuments in the region recalled biblical locations. For example, upon his departure for the Second Crusade in 1147 (on which he died), William III of Warrene obtained a dedication for a new priory at Castle Acre, located about seventeen miles from Walsingham along the main pilgrimage route from London.21 At this time, the name Acre would have certainly inspired mental connections to the crusades as the famous port city in the Kingdom of Jerusalem that was brought under Christian control during Baldwin’s reign in 1104. Around this time, William also founded the priory of the Holy Sepulchre at Thetford, whose order of Augustinian canons was founded by 1113 in Jerusalem in order to receive pilgrims coming to visit the tomb of Christ.22 Such significance could not have been lost on the priests at Thetford as their same small order was also affiliated with the more famous Church of the Holy Sepulchre, called the ‘Round Church’, in Cambridge (c. 1130) that took the supposed circular form of the tomb itself.23 These monuments signal the extent to which East Anglia was an especially appropriate setting for such architectural allusions to the life and death of Christ, especially during a time of crusade. Furthermore, two preceptories of the Hospitallers and four of the Templars were founded in East Anglia by at least 1240 but likely in the twelfth century, thus providing local sites from which to fund the holy war abroad.24 The region of East Anglia was thus deeply connected to the crusades in Britain by the time Henry took the throne and even more importantly, its landscape had become a virtual Holy Land through its many monumental and 20 

Griffith-Jones and Park, eds, The Temple Church in London. Rawcliffe, Harper-Bill, and Wilson, eds, East Anglia’s History, p. 36. 22  William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vi.2, p. 728. 23  Hundley, ‘The English Round Church Movement’. Though the Round Church takes a circular form like the Anastasis of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, it has been widely argued that a medieval architectural ‘copy’ need not be exact, as would be the case for many of the monuments related to Holy Land sites in Norfolk. See Richard Krautheimer’s seminal essay ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Medieval Architecture”’. For further information on recreated sites see, Kühnel, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places’. 24  Harper-Bill, ‘Searching for Salvation in Anglo-Norman East Anglia’, p. 37. 21 

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topographical references to biblical sites. Given Henry III’s interest in such connections between his reign and biblical precedents, East Anglia may have been an intriguing place to engage in pilgrimage for the young king, before he turned his energy and expenses towards the Holy Blood relic and rebuilding of Westminster. By bestowing both Bromholm and Walsingham the right to run a market and fair during the Feast of the Holy Cross early in his reign, Henry furthered this connection. Effectively, he allowed English pilgrims traveling between these sites to associate the Holy House, the scene of Christ’s Incarnation, with the site of his death on the same pilgrimage route and within thirty miles of each other. After this initial visit, Henry came to Walsingham fairly regularly (in 1229, 1232, 1235, 1238, 1242, 1245, 1248, 1251, 1256, and finally at the end of his life in 1272). He also gave large gifts of wax and tapers to the chapel even more frequently than these visits, the largest of which equalled some one hundred pounds of wax and five hundred tapers to be offered at the shrine on the Feast of the Assumption.25 These visits and gifts surely demonstrate Henry’s sustained devotion to Walsingham, but it is also important to note that his donations to the Virgin of Walsingham often coincided with military pursuits. As Nicolas Vincent’s astute study of Henry’s dedication to the Virgin Mary has shown, the king’s pilgrimages to Walsingham were carefully calculated.26 Most significantly, Henry visited the shrine several times on or near 25 March, the Feast of the Annunciation.27 This date was, of course, particularly important at Walsingham for its association with this event, and Henry used this link strategically to further his military ambitions. For example, it was at Walsingham where Henry first issued his call to arms to fight in France on the Vigil of the Annunciation in 1242.28 Though Henry’s military engagements in Gascony were not a call to crusade, per se, they are often cited as the reason Henry could not depart for the Holy Land. Indeed, Henry made numerous attempts to remedy his unrealized vow by asking the Holy See to substitute a crusade to the Holy Land for one in Spain (alongside Alfonso X) or Sicily, implying that Henry was amenable to a loose interpretation of crucesignatus.29 25 

Dickinson, The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, p. 18. Vincent, ‘King Henry III and the Blessed Virgin Mary’. 27  Vincent, ‘Henry III and the Blessed Virgin Mary’, pp. 133–34. For the 1251 visit, see Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, ed. by Maxwell Lyte, p. 425. 28  Vincent, ‘Henry III and the Blessed Virgin Mary’, p. 134. 29  Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade, pp.  221–26. See further discussion in García, ‘Henry III, Alfonso X of Castile and the Crusading Plans of the Thirteenth Century (1245–1274)’. 26 

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While these earlier donations and pilgrimages to Walsingham might suggest Henry’s nascent relationship with idea of virtual pilgrimage, he does not fully connect it to his crusading mission (or lack thereof ) until later in his reign. In particular, Henry’s 1250 vow to go on crusade once more was met with scornful scepticism. As Matthew Paris relates, news of his crusading plans in 1252 were largely viewed as disingenuous by his subjects, who questioned Henry’s military prowess, calling him a ‘petty king, untaught in military discipline, who has never galloped a horse in battle, wielded a sword and brandished a spear’.30 What the king lacked in military expertise, however, he evidently made up for through his fervent piety. Henry’s visits to Walsingham around the year 1250 thus took on a special meaning that helps to reveal the king’s ambitions for and dedication to the East Anglian shrine in relation to his crusading vows. Most significantly for this study, Henry made an important pilgrimage to Walsingham a year after his crusading vow in 1251. Though he had been to Walsingham many times before, this visit marks the second time he stayed in Walsingham on the Feast of the Annunciation and the first time since his new vow. Upon his arrival, Henry granted a fair be held on the Feast of the Nativity.31 Clearly, this decree would have been connected with Walsingham’s Holy House, linking it not only to Nazareth and the Annunciation but to the site of Christ’s birth in Bethlehem. In effect, Henry’s patronage increased Walsingham’s association with the ancient Holy Land and the contemporary holy war. The year 1251 also saw numerous donations made to Walsingham — the most in any single year — including silver candlesticks and an ‘embroidered chasuble of red samite’ costing more than a similar donation to Westminster and other churches in the same year.32 Given this attention to Walsingham in the year after his controversial vow, it could be argued that Henry sought to compensate for failure to depart for the crusades by bringing the Holy Land to England. While Henry’s pilgrimages to Walsingham could not wholly substitute for his crusader vows, participating in a sort of imagined or ‘virtual’ crusade was 30 

‘Quae spes rationabilis istum erigit regulum, qui nunquam militari edoctus disciplina in Martio certamine equum admisit, gladium eduxit, hastam vibravit, aut clipeum ventilavit, ut triumphet, ubi capto Francorum rege occubuit militia Gallicana? aut in qua confidit temeritate terras transmarinas potenter adquirere, quas possessas nequit retinere?’ Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. by. Luard, v, p. 335. Quoted in David Carpenter, ‘Henry III and the Sicilian Affair’, The Fine Rolls of Henry III Online [accessed 22 January 2021]. 31  Calendar of the Charter Rolls Preserved in the Public Records Office, i: Henry III, ed. by Maxwell Lyte, p. 354. 32  Calendar of the Liberate Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, iii, ed. by Stevenson, p. 354.

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not an unusual strategy for Henry. As Laura J. Whatley has demonstrated, Henry’s patronage of the no longer extant wall murals depicting scenes of Alexander the Great and the Battle of Antioch in his royal palaces allowed him to create exotic places which she has also described as a ‘virtual crusade’ within England.33 Indeed, it has been suggested that medieval crusading could be undertaken affectively through devotional intention or suffering, allowing the participant to share the crusading experience without a journey East.34 Moreover, the concept of a ‘crusade’ could be applied broadly in some cases, extending to military interventions sanctioned by the Church.35 In both cases, Henry’s engagement with the crusading cause was vicarious but deliberate — a calculated strategy that allowed the famously pious king to replace physical motion for spiritual emotion in the name of the cross. Henry’s affinity for virtual crusade also had political dimensions. Despite the rather evident implausibility of his vows, Henry’s continued insistence on his dedication to the crusader cause in March of 1250 could also be understood as a reaction to Louis IX’s reported successes in the Holy Land.36 Equally, Henry’s artistic and religious patronage not only seemed to have been linked to the concept of virtual crusade but competitive crusade between supposed Christian allies.37 Although Louis’s victories had actually come to an end in that same year at the Battle of Al Mansurah, news of his capture would not have reached England until August of 1251.38 If Henry were to match his rival’s accomplishments, namely as crusader king par excellance, he would need to satisfy both the French king’s crusading efforts and his procurement of important relics from the Holy Land. Most notably, Henry’s acquisition of the Holy 33 

Whatley, ‘Romance, Crusade, and the Orient in King Henry III of England’s Royal Chambers’. 34  Lester, ‘A Shared Imitation’; Yeager, ‘The Siege of Jerusalem and Biblical Exegesis’; and Yeager, Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative. 35  Riley-Smith, What Were the Crusades? 36  This reading of Henry’s intentions has also been proposed by José Manuel Rodríguez García, see ‘Henry III, Alfonso X of Castile and the Crusading Plans of the Thirteenth Century (1245–1274)’, p. 101. For further information on the rivalry of Henry III and Louis IX beyond the crusades see, Jordan, A Tale of Two Monasteries; Carpenter, ‘The Meetings of Kings Henry III and Louis IX’. Other theories are based on the commentary of Matthew Paris, who suggested that Henry’s ambitions to go to the Holy Land were never sincere and instead were more mercenary, linked to gaining further ecclesiastical tithes. See Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 112. 37  Whatley, ‘Romance, Crusade and the Orient’, p. 188. 38  Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 112.

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Blood for Westminster Abbey is thought to have been directly influenced by Louis’s relic collection.39 At Walsingham, Henry’s desire to compete with Louis required more creativity. Significantly, evidence that the chapel at Walsingham was understood as the house of the Virgin Mary during Henry’s reign is scant. Instead, it is the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham that appears to have been the initial object of veneration at the site. As depicted upon the twelfth-century seal of the priory of Walsingham, this statue likely took the form of an Enthroned Madonna with the Christ Child upon her lap.40 It was certainly present from January of 1246, when Henry III allocated 20 marks to make a ‘golden crown’ to be placed ‘on the head of the image of St Mary of Walsingham’.41 So while Henry’s veneration of the Virgin of Walsingham is clear thanks to these account records, the Holy House itself is, to the best knowledge of this author, never mentioned in extant documents pertaining to his reign. If Henry used Walsingham as another means of engaging in competition with Louis IX, one would expect the site’s origins in the Holy Land to have been established. But there is another solution: the lack of any substantial visual or textual evidence connecting Walsingham with the Holy House of the Annunciation prior to Henry’s reign also suggests that the legendary origins of the site may have been developed (or fabricated) in conjunction with the king’s motives. While the chapel at Walsingham was likely extant in the twelfth century, it may well have been simply a holy chapel that was reinvented as the Holy House during Henry’s reign to encourage both biblical and crusader connections. In particular, two early gifts to the priory deserve further consideration on this subject. On 3 July 1232, Henry gave the prior of Walsingham forty oak trees for work on the church.42 Henry’s donation is perhaps unsurprising on its own, given his steadfast dedication to the protection of the royal forests. But two years later, in 1234, the king also gave the priory twenty oak trees ‘to make a certain building [camera]’.43 This exact building is unknown, but it is an intriguing 39 

Vincent, The Holy Blood, p. 9. Image available https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Lady_of_Walsingham#/media/ File:Walsinghamseal.jpg [accessed 22 January 2021]. 41  Calendar of the Liberate Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, iii, ed. by Stevenson, 1246, p. 18. 42  Dickinson, The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham, p. 18. See also Calendar of Patent Rolls of Henry III (1225–1232), ed. by Maxwell Lyte, p. 488. 43  ‘De quercubus datis.—Mandatum est P. de Rivall’ quod habere faciat priori de Walsingham x. quercus in bosco regis de Colecestr’ et alias x. quercus in foresta Novi Castri super Tynam ad quandam cameram faciendam, de dono regis. Teste rege apud Castelacre, xviij. die Februarii. Per P. de Rivall’’. See Calendar of Charter Rolls of Henry III (1231–1234), ed. by Maxwell Lyte, 40 

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entry in the king’s accounts. Could this wood have gone towards the renovation (or even initial construction) of the Holy House in order to amplify the status of Walsingham under Henry’s reign? It is indeed clear that the Holy House was famously made of wood (owing to its purported Anglo-Saxon construction) while the rest of the priory was generally of stone construction. Indeed, the house itself was encased in a larger stone structure in the mid-fourteenth century under Prior John Snoring, creating an ambulatory space for the ever-growing number of pilgrims flocking to the shrine. Unfortunately, the destruction of the priory as well as further documentation from Henry’s accounts makes this suggestion speculative at best; however, it remains that Henry was deeply invested in the spiritual and physical maintenance of Walsingham throughout his reign unlike any king before him. In any case, the idea that the chapel at Walsingham was a copy of the Holy House at Nazareth gained popularity during Henry’s reign and continued to do so through his son King Edward I’s many visits to the site as well. Being so, the Holy House of Walsingham might have also been known to Louis XI. The French crusader king was famously the patron of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris (c. 1248), which was built to house the Crown of Thorns, a much-coveted relic he had purchased from his cousin, Baldwin II, during his crusade to the Holy Land in 1238. While the little shrine at Walsingham cannot genuinely be compared to the grandeur of the Sainte-Chapelle, the two do bear something in common: Walsingham not only boasted the replica of Holy House, but also a precious and unusual relic — a vial of the Virgin’s milk, an object which is recorded in the 1297 accounts of Edward I, and was likely present before this time.44 Like Sainte-Chapelle (and unlike Henry’s more commonly cited architectural corollary, Westminster Abbey), then, the Holy House (or, sainte maison) was itself an architectural reliquary that held a precious relic from the Holy Land. In contrast, while the Sainte-Chapelle illustrated the vanguard architectural style of the French monarchs, the Holy House’s fabric was ultimately fabricated (both as an Anglo-Saxon monument and an ancient biblical one). This sort of duality between relic and replica might have appealed to the French monarch, but in the end, given the large scale, expense, and grandeur of the Sainte-Chapelle, it is quite unlikely that Louis XI would have viewed the house in Walsingham as anything more than a mere curiosity. p. 379. Although ‘camera’ most often refers to a room, Dickinson has translated it as a ‘building’. Given the fact that the chapel was likely a single room, this word might be interchangeable or at least flexible in this instance. 44  BL, Add. MS 7965, fol. 7r, as cited in Farris, ‘The Pious Practices of Edward I’, p. 186.

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More than Sainte-Chapelle, then, Henry’s devotion to Walsingham is better understood in concert with his (albeit much more substantial) patronage of Westminster. John Twyning has pointed to this connection between Henry’s favoured sites, claiming that the employment of the English Decorated style at Westminster and Walsingham (in the case of the latter, as evidenced from fourteenth-century pilgrimage badges) helped to build a sense of a national style –– an architecture that was both opposed to the French Rayonnant and connected to the pre-Norman English past.45 Twyning’s argument is intriguing but his assessment that ‘Westminster is rather an exemplar of the Decorated English’ demands revision.46 While Westminster might be considered the beginnings of the so-called Decorated style for some historians, it certainly was not fully developed at the time of Henry III, instead owing much of its character to the architecture of the French court, especially Reims Cathedral.47 While Henry’s artistic influence could still be plausible, it remains that the Holy House at Walsingham was most likely not built in a contemporary architectural style in order to suggest its older, Anglo-Saxon date. Pilgrimage badges and the later Slipper Chapel from c. 1380 might be representative of the English Decorated style but they do not serve as evidence for the original structure at Walsingham. Despite Twyning’s incongruous argument, his notion that the two sites might have been more closely connected than assumed merits further scrutiny. Indeed, it seems a remarkable coincidence that Walsingham rose from relative obscurity as a key pilgrimage site during Henry’s reign through an origin story that highlighted two of the king’s chief interests: the glorification of Edward the Confessor and virtual travel to the Holy Land. Most importantly, the Holy House’s status as a replica, rather than a genuine relic, may have actually supported the notion of virtual pilgrimage. If the chapel at Walsingham was conceived as the Holy House by the mid-thirteenth century, it was a miraculous recreation, a perfect copy of a holy place, the site of the Incarnation. Never boasting to be the Holy House of the Virgin as Loreto did, the Walsingham shrine was a reproduction; by its very nature, it was meant to be vicarious. Furthermore, as Twyning has argued, the fact that the Holy House was a replica, rather than a literal relic from the Holy Land, actually lent itself to the crusader cause. Its provenance was undisputed, tied rather to ideas of English nationalism (and its Anglo-Saxon past). In this way, he argues, 45 

Twyning, ‘Walsingham and the Architecture of English History’. Twyning, ‘Walsingham and the Architecture of English History’, p. 169. 47  For more on the style of Westminster see Brieger English Art; Jansen, ‘Lambeth Palace Chapel, the Temple Choir, and Southern English Gothic’; and especially, Binski, Becket’s Crown, p. 69. 46 

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Pilgrimage to ‘England’s Nazareth’ then, became a real trip to the Holy Land precisely because it was not a journey to a site derived from a real piece of the Holy Land. It could invoke a crusade; it could inspire a crusade; it could legitimate a crusade; and consequently, it could be and was a crusade. And a crusade is always as much or more about the country left behind than about the campaign ahead.48

For Henry, then, the Holy House at Walsingham was more than just a place of pilgrimage, it allowed him another way to participate in the royal patronage of crusading.

Late Medieval Walsingham: England’s Nazareth Walsingham’s popularity as a Marian pilgrimage site was only beginning under Henry’s reign. As the pilgrimage to Walsingham increased in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, was its crusader context still important to the faithful? Both pilgrims’ textual accounts and extant visual evidence, predominately in the form of badges, suggest that later medieval pilgrims were either unaware of the priory’s foundation by a crusading knight or this historical fact was simply overshadowed by the tremendous popularity of the story of Richeldis and the Holy House. For example, numerous pilgrimage badges from Walsingham dating to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries feature a gabled house depicting the scene of the Annunciation within it, indicating not only that the connection between Walsingham and biblical Nazareth was certainly celebrated by this time but that it was the reason to visit the site (Fig. 4.2). To be sure, by the time the Pynson Ballad was published around 1495, Walsingham was hailed as the epicentre for the Holy Land that was England. There is no mention of Geoffrey de Farvaches in the ballad; the crusader and his priory vanished from the narrative at Walsingham, at least in popular literature. Moreover, Our Lady of Walsingham is venerated with several epithets evoking the Holy Land at the poem’s close: O gracyous Lady, glory of Jerusalem, Cypresse of Syon and Joye of Israel, Rose of Jeryco and Sterre of Bethleem, O gloryous Lady, our askynge nat repell, In mercy all wymen ever thou doste excell, Therfore, blissed Lady, graunt thou thy great grace To all that the devoutly visyte in this place. 48 

Twyning, ‘Walsingham and the Architecture of English History’, pp. 174–75.

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To visit Walsingham and to venerate Our Lady there was to go to the Holy Land and step in the footprints of the Virgin. While the shrine never claimed to be more than a replica, the distance between simulacrum and original, and thereby, Nazareth and Norfolk, became negligible. This interchangeability between copy and original, and moreover, loose interpretation of the ‘copy’ itself has been often explored in medieval architecture, with special attention to biblical monuments such as the Holy Sepulchre.49 Accordingly, Walsingham became a site of virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land at a time when travel to the Middle East was increasingly more difficult under Muslim control, as well as a real site of English pilgrimage, in that it was still very Figure 4.2. Badge of the Shrine of Our Lady at Walsingham, c. fourteenth much under the patronage and protection of century. The British Museum, 1989, the monarchy. As Eamon Duffy has argued, 0113.2 (photograph: © The Trustees of English pilgrimage did not so much have a the British Museum). liminal character as a local one, except for large national pilgrimages such as Walsingham and Canterbury.50 Yet these pilgrimage sites also provided distinct differences despite their national appeal. If Canterbury was the essence of English pilgrimage with a celebrated English saint at its centre, Walsingham offered a Marian site connected less to English history as to biblical memory, a fact that allowed it to become both a national pilgrimage site but also a remote and localized one. It did not, however, likely retain its significance to the crusades given the specific context of Henry III’s motivations and the waning popularity of taking up the cross during the later Middle Ages. Perhaps most surprisingly, the legend of the Holy House is also discussed (with a healthy dose of scepticism) by the unlikely pilgrim, Desiderius Erasmus, whose cynical and fictionalized accounts of the pilgrimage to Walsingham were 49 

See especially Richard Krautheimer’s seminal essay ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Medieval Architecture”’, at n. 23. For copies of the Holy Sepulchre see, among others, Krinsky, ‘Representations of the Temple of Jerusalem before 1500’; Ousterhout, ‘The Church of Santo Stefano’. 50  Duffy, ‘The Dynamics of Pilgrimage in Late Medieval England’, p. 166.

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based on real visits in 1512 and 1524. Ironically, his accounts provide the best source of information on the pilgrimage to Walsingham in its final years. 51 Erasmus notes, for example, the tremendous amount of glistening donations left to the statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, an image he describes as ‘remarkable neither for size, material, or execution’.52 The house itself was equally unimpressive with an unfinished brick exterior and unglazed windows — yet perhaps this simple facade increased the credibility of the chapel’s miraculous construction. Clearly unpersuaded by ‘Falsingham’, Erasmus nevertheless appears to have no knowledge of any history of the priory and does not mention the improbable date of the house itself, which must have been widely circulated by the time of his visit. In any case, by the time of its destruction, Walsingham, at least for English Catholics, was mourned in terms of its loss not only of the site, but as a part of the Holy Land. Most famously, a poem sometimes attributed to Philip Howard, the earl of Arundel, colloquially known as the ‘Wrackes of Walsingham’ laments at its ruined state, reminiscing that it was once ‘that Holy Land […] where palmers did throng’.53 This specific reference to ‘palmers’ in the poem equates those pilgrims venturing to Walsingham with the original ‘palmers’ or pilgrims who had returned from the Holy Land, thus deepening the site and by virtue, the whole of England, to the biblical East in English cultural memory beyond the physical destruction of Walsingham. So by the end of the Middle Ages, Walsingham was a place of virtual and real pilgrimage, but it ceased to be meaningfully associated with medieval crusading efforts — those connections had been too far removed and too little remembered. Instead, the crusader context of late medieval Walsingham must also be considered in the setting of its greater geography. As detailed above, many important religious foundations in East Anglia related to both the crusades and the Holy Land, yet many of these were built before the reign of Henry III. However, there is one fifteenth-century monument that best demonstrates the interconnectivity of the built landscape and the appeal of virtual pilgrimage around Walsingham in its later years. The site is the Chapel of St Mary on the Mount, now best known as Red Mount Chapel, built from 1483–1485 by Robert Currant for the Benedictine prior of Lynn (William Spynke), located in King’s Lynn, twenty-five miles north of Walsingham.54 It was a highly venerated site from its inception, with 51 

Erasmus, ‘Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake’. Erasmus ‘Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake’, p. 24. 53  Many versions of this text exist. See ‘The Arundel Ballad’. 54  Pitcher, ‘The Red Mount Chapel’, p. 17. 52 

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roll records from 1485–1486 totalling over £231, second only in East Anglia to the shrine of St Etheldreda at Ely.55 Though a pilgrimage site in its own right, the chapel’s connection to the Walsingham shrine is clear. It housed a statue thought to be a copy of Our Lady, and the top storey of the chapel reveals devotion to the Virgin of Walsingham through ample medieval remnants of Marian graffiti, such as sketches of the Holy House. Based on this evidence, the chapel is widely believed to have functioned as a wayfaring point to the Marian pilgrimage site.56 The Red Mount Chapel itself is also thought to reference the biblical site of Calvary. Built upon a small hill, the chapel takes the form of an octagon. It is covered in brick and stone dressing and divided into a lower and upper chapel, with two entries on the western facade (Fig. 4.3). The lower chapel was thus accessed from the mount itself. Upon entering this chapel, one must stoop low through a passageway, then ascend up to the upper chapel via a narrow staircase and finally descend once more to exit. Based both on its octagonal shape and the sensory experience of descending and ascending, the chapel is thought to be an evocation of the Holy Sepulchre.57 The Red Mount Chapel was thus a site of real and virtual pilgrimage that prepared visitors to Walsingham and extended the biblical metaphor beyond the site itself. Walsingham was now part of a journey, a spiritual crusade of life over death, wherein one physically struggled in order to get to the Holy Land of Nazareth. In this way, though the memory of crusading was perhaps not as critical as it was for Henry III, late medieval Walsingham could have remained a place for ‘crusading’ as part of a virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While the 1061 date of the Holy House remains a critical ‘selling point’ for the throngs of pilgrims and tourists that frequent Walsingham in the present day, glimpses of its multiple histories still resonate. Susan Signe Morrison has suggested that Walsingham is a sort of ‘keeping place’, a term Jonathan Bordo has described as a site where the past is not kept in the past but rather lived in the present.58 It keeps memory alive because of the destruction of the site, and this loss has allowed the fabrication of its history to persist. Walsingham, as we 55 

Schmoelz, ‘Pilgrimage in Medieval East Anglia’, p. 196. Schmoelz, ‘Pilgrimage in Medieval East Anglia’, p. 196. 57  Pitcher, ‘Red Mount Chapel’, p. 25. See also Marks, Image and Devotion in Medieval England, pp. 203–04. Late medieval sites sometimes added this sensory aspect to copies of biblical sites. See Gelfand, ‘Sense and Simulacra’. 58  Morrison, ‘Waste Space’, p. 63. 56 

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Figure 4.3. Cross Section of the Red Mount Chapel, after an engraving by Edward Edwards in John Britton, The Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain, p. 72. (image: public domain).

Figure 4.4. Ruins of Walsingham Priory with plaque marking the site of the Holy House at left (photograph: author).

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know it today, has thus become a pastiche of replicas — of shrines (Catholic and Anglican) and statues of Mary (Catholic, Anglican, and Orthodox) but significantly, not of the Holy House itself. The site remains untouched next to the ruins of Walsingham Abbey, save a small plaque commemorating the space (Fig. 4.4). What is now a site of memory for the destroyed site and its venerated Virgin of Walsingham began as a place that embodied both real and virtual pilgrimage. For monarchs like Henry III, Walsingham represented Nazareth past — that is, biblical Nazareth — and Nazareth present, the one that was now under attack from religious enemies. Walsingham thus became Henry’s way of participating in crusading by way of pilgrimage. As East Anglia became in and of itself a site of virtual pilgrimage to the Holy Land during the Middle Ages, marked by sites like the Round Church in Cambridge and later, Red Mount Chapel, the memory of the crusading origins of Walsingham faded in favour of its roots in Anglo-Saxon nationalism, and especially its connection to biblical Nazareth. The pilgrimage to Walsingham thus became a spiritual and mental ‘crusade’ of the death and life of Christ, ending at the site of his Incarnation at Walsingham. As such, Walsingham preserved its status as ‘England’s Nazareth’ not only through evoking a virtual pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but also through underscoring the crusader contexts — both real and metaphorical — of the real pilgrimage in England.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Resources Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library, 1254 (STC 25001), Walsingham Shrine Archive Online  [accessed 22 January 2021] London, British Library [BL], Cotton MSS, Nero E. vii

Primary Sources ‘The Acknowledgement of Supremacy 1534’, Walsingham Shrine Archive Online [accessed 22 January 2021] ‘The Arundel Ballad’, Walsingham Shrine Archive Online [accessed 22 January 2021] Calendar of Charter Rolls of Henry  III, ii: 1231–1234, ed.  by Henry C.  Maxwell Lyte (London: HMSO, 1905) [accessed 22 January 2021] Calendar of Patent Rolls of Henry  III, ii: 1225–1232, ed.  by Henry C.  Maxwell Lyte (London: HMSO, 1903) [accessed 22 January 2021] Calendar of the Charter Rolls Preserved in the Public Records Office, i: Henry  III, a.d. 1226–1257, ed. by Henry C. Maxwell Lyte (London: HMSO, 1903) Calendar of the Liberate Rolls of the Reign of Henry  III, iii: a.d.  1245–1251, ed.  by William Henry Stevenson (London: HMSO, 1936) Close Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, vi: 1247–1251, ed. by Henry C. Maxwell Lyte (Lon­ don: HMSO, 1922) Desiderius Erasmus, ‘Pilgrimage for Religion’s Sake’, in Pilgrimages to Saint Mary of Walsingham and Saint Thomas of Canterbury, ed. by John G. Nichols (London, 1849), pp. 1–75 Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. by Henry R. Luard, Rolls Series, 57, 5 vols (London: Longman, 1872–1883) ‘Medieval Documents’, Walsingham Shrine Archive Online [accessed 22 January 2021] ‘The Ralegh Ballad’, Walsingham Shrine Archive Online [accessed 22 January 2021] Rotuli litterarum clausarum in Turri Londinensi asservati, ed. by Thomas Duffus Hardy (London, 1833) ‘Surrender of Walsingham Priory 4 August, 30 Henr. VIII., a.d. 1581.1’, Walsingham Shrine Archive Online [accessed 22 January 2021] William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vi.2 (London, 1693)

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Secondary Works Binski, Paul, Becket’s Crown: Art and Imagination in Gothic England, 1170–1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004) Brieger, Pieter, English Art, 1216–1307, Oxford History of English Art, 4 (Oxford: Clar­ endon, 1957) Britton, John, The Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain: Represented and Illustrated in a Series of Views, Elevations, Plans, Sections, and Details, of Ancient English Edifices; With Historical and Descriptive Accounts of Each, iii (London: M. A. Nattali, 1835) Carpenter, David A., ‘The Meetings of Kings Henry III and Louis IX’, Thirteenth Century England, 10 (2005), 1–30 —— , ‘Henry III and the Sicilian Affair’, The Fine Rolls of Henry III Online [accessed 22 January 2021] Carroll, Michael P., ‘Pilgrimage at Walsingham on the Eve of the Reformation: Spec­ ulations on a “Splendid Diversity” Only Dimly Perceived’, in Walsingham and Eng­lish Culture: Landscape, Sexuality, and Cultural Memory, ed. by Dominic Janes and Gary Waller (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 35–48 Coleman, Simon, ‘Pilgrimage to “England’s Nazareth”: Landscapes of Myth and Memory at Walsingham’, in Intersecting Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage and Tourism, ed.  by Ellen Badone and Sharon  R. Roseman (Bloomington: University of Illinois Press, 2004), pp. 52–67 —— , ‘Mary on the Margins? The Modulation of Marian Imagery in Place, Memory, and Performance’, in Moved by Mary: The Power of Pilgrimage in the Modern World, ed. by Anna-Karina Hermkens, Willy Jansen, and Catrien Notermans (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 17–32 Coleman, Simon, and John Elsner, ‘Tradition as Play: Pilgrimage to “England’s Nazareth”’, History and Anthropology, 15 (2004), 273–88 Dickinson, John C., The Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni­ versity Press, 1956) Duffy, Eamon, ‘The Dynamics of Pilgrimage in Late Medieval England’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. by Colin Morris and Peter Roberts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 164–77 Farris, Charles H.  D.  C., ‘The Pious Practices of Edward  I, 1272–1307’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London, 2013) García, José Manuel Rodríguez, ‘Henry III, Alfonso X of Castile and the Crusading Plans of the Thirteenth Century (1245–1274)’, in England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III, ed. by Björn Weiler and Ifor W. Rowlands (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 99–120 —— , ‘Henry III, Alfonso X of Castile and the Crusading Plans of the Thirteenth Century (1245–1274)’, in England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III, ed. by Björn K. U. Weiler and Ifor W. Rowlands (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), pp. 99–120 Gelfand, Laura D., ‘Sense and Simulacra: Manipulation of the Senses in Medieval “Copies” of Jerusalem’, Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies, 3 (2012), 407–22

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Griffith-Jones, Robin, and David Park, eds, The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010) Harper-Bill, Christopher, ‘Searching for Salvation in Anglo-Norman East Anglia’, in East Anglia’s History: Studies in Honour of Norman Scarfe, ed. by Carole Rawcliffe, Christopher Harper-Bill, and Richard Wilson (Rochester, NY: Boydell and Brewer, 2002), pp. 19–39 Hobsbawm, Eric J., and Terence O. Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) Hundley, Catherine E., ‘The English Round Church Movement’, in Tomb and Temple: Re-imagining the Sacred Buildings of Jerusalem, ed. by Robin Griffith-Jones and Eric Fernie (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018), pp. 352–75 Janes, Dominic, and Gary Waller, ‘Introduction: Walsingham and English Culture: Land­ scape, Sexuality, and Cultural Memory’, in Walsingham and English Culture: Landscape, Sexuality, and Cultural Memory, ed. by Dominic Janes and Gary Waller (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 1–20 Jansen, Virginia, ‘Lambeth Palace Chapel, the Temple Choir, and Southern English Gothic: Architecture of c. 1215–1240’, in England in the Thirteenth Century, ed. by William M. Ormrod (Stamford: Watkins, 1991), pp. 95–99 Jordan, William Chester, A Tale of Two Monasteries: Westminster and Saint-Denis in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) Krautheimer, Richard, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Medieval Architecture”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), 1–33 Krinsky, Carol H., ‘Representations of the Temple of Jerusalem before 1500’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 33 (1970), 1–19 Kühnel, Bianca, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places: The Holy Landscapes’, in Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, ed. by Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 243–64 Lester, Anne E., ‘A Shared Imitation: Cistercian Convents and Crusader Families in Thirteenth-Century Champagne’, Journal of Medieval History, 36.4 (2009), 353–70 Lewis, Suzanne, ‘Henry  III  and the  Gothic Rebuilding  of Westminster Abbey: The Problematics of Context’, Traditio, 50 (1995), 129–72 Lloyd, Simon, English Society and the Crusade, 1216–1307 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988) Marks, Richard, Image and Devotion in Medieval England (Phoenix Mill: Sutton, 2004) Morrison, Susan Signe, ‘Waste Space: Pilgrim Badges, Ophelia and Walsingham Remem­ bered’, in Walsingham and English Culture: Landscape, Sexuality, and Cultural Memory, ed. by Dominic Janes and Gary Waller (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 49–66 Ousterhout, Robert G., ‘The Church of Santo Stefano: A “Jerusalem” in Bologna’, Gesta, 20.2 (1981), 311–21 Pitcher, David, ‘The Red Mount Chapel, King’s Lynn’, in King’s Lynn and the Fens: Medi­eval Architecture and Archaeology, ed. by John McNeil, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 30 (2008), 17–27 Rawcliffe, Carole, Christopher Harper-Bill, and Richard Wilson, eds, East Anglia’s History: Studies in Honour of Norman Scarfe (Rochester, NY: Boydell and Brewer, 2002)

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Rear, Michael, ‘The Problem of 1061’, in Walsingham: Richeldis 950; Pilgrimage and History (Walsingham: R. C. National Shrine Pilgrim Bureau, 2012), pp. 173–90 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, What Were the Crusades?, 4th edn (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2009) Schmoelz, Michael, ‘Pilgrimage in Medieval East Anglia: A Regional Survey of the Shrines and Pilgrimages of Norfolk and Suffolk’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of East Anglia, 2017) Singer, Stella A., ‘Walsingham’s Local Genius: Norfolk’s New Nazareth’, in Walsingham and English Culture: Landscape, Sexuality, and Cultural Memory, ed.  by Dominic Janes and Gary Waller (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 21–33 Stewart, Zachary, ‘A Lesson in Patronage: King Henry III, the Knights Templar, and a Royal Mausoleum at the Temple Church in London’, Speculum, 94.2 (2019), 334–83 Twyning, John, ‘Walsingham and the Architecture of English History’, in Walsingham in Literature and Culture from the Middle Ages to Modernity, ed. by Dominic Janes and Gary F. Waller (Abington: Routledge, 2016), pp. 165–83 Tyerman, Christopher, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) Vélez, Karin Anneliese, The Miraculous Flying House of Loreto: Spreading Catholicism in the Early Modern World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019) Vincent, Nicholas, The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Blood Relics of Westminster and Hailes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) —— , ‘King Henry III and the Blessed Virgin Mary’, Studies in Church History, 39 (2004), 126–46 Waller, Gary, Walsingham and the English Imagination (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011) Warner, Rev. James Lee, ‘Walsingham Priory, a Memoir Read at the Meeting of the Institute in Cambridge, June, 1854: With an Account of Recent Discoveries’, Archaeological Journal, 13.1 (1856), 115–33 Whatley, Laura J., ‘Romance, Crusade, and the Orient in King Henry  III of England’s Royal Chambers’, Viator, 44 (2013), 175–98 Yeager, Suzanne M., ‘The Siege of Jerusalem and Biblical Exegesis: Writing about Romans in Fourteenth-Century England’, Chaucer Review, 39.1 (2004), 70–102 —— , Jerusalem in Medieval Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)

Chapter 5

Bodies or Buildings? Visual Translations of Jerusalem and Dynastic Memories in Medieval England Laura Slater*

A

cross medieval and early modern Europe could be found what Bianca Kühnel has termed ‘Holy Landscapes’: monuments and landscape ensembles that recreated the Christian holy places of Jerusalem and elsewhere through architectural imitation, visual representation, devotional furnishings, and liturgical ritual.1 A famous English example is the c. 1113–1131 Church of the Holy Sepulchre and St Andrew in Cambridge (Fig. 5.1), founded by a still-obscure Fraternity of the Holy Sepulchre.2 Heavily restored in the nineteenth century, the original church contained a round nave supported by eight columns, with a circular outer ambulatory and a small adjoining chancel or apse. The combination of architectural forms recreated the centrally planned Anastasis Rotunda in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem  

* My thanks to Dr Glyn Coppack for kind permission to use his photographs of Ludlow Chapel. 1  Kühnel, ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places’; Kühnel, ‘Jerusalem between Narrative and Iconic’. 2  Chronicon abbatiæ Rameseiensis, a sæc X. usque ad an. circiter 1200, ed. by Macray, no. 285; Essex, ‘Observations on the Origin and Antiquity of Round Churches’; Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, England, ii, no. 44, pp. 255–57; Gervers, ‘Rotundae Anglicanae’, p. 373. Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, tcne 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 115–148 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.129231

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Figure 5.1. Exterior, Church of the Holy Sepulchre and St Andrew, Cambridge, c. 1130–1131 (photograph: author).

Figure 5.2. Interior, Anastasis Rotunda, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem (photograph: author).

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(Fig. 5.2), originally supported by eight piers and twelve columns symbolic of the Resurrection and the twelve apostles.3 Simultaneously relic of Christ’s Passion, future site of the events to come in Revelation, and symbol of the eternal heavenly kingdom, the earthly city of Jerusalem defied all medieval distinctions of space, place, and time.4 The routine presence of relics from the Holy Land in European translations of its holy places enabled these buildings to connect directly with their otherwise inaccessible prototypes. Recreated Jerusalem sites were visited not as inauthentic replicas, but as real and meaningful transferences of a uniquely translatable place.5 Like their ‘originals’ in Palestine, European translations of Jerusalem were above all places of memory: spaces where the sacred events of the Bible were recalled and liturgically re-enacted, and their significance for salvation of mankind underlined.6 Local translations of the Holy Land offered a safe and familiar environment for remembering and re-experiencing the Passion of Christ.7 Yet the spatially bounded ‘memory work’ that took place within these local commemorative environments carried a political as well as emotional and devotional logic.8 This paper examines recreated Jerusalems as sites of dynastic rather than biblical memory, exploring this monumental tradition in the context of the commemoration of English crusaders, and the pride, fears, and anxieties of their kin. It will discuss the cultural patronage, crusading activities, and posthumous reputations of four twelfth-century English crusaders: Simon de Senlis, earl of Northampton and Huntingdon (d. c. 1111–1113); the Marcher baron Gilbert de Lacy (fl. 1133–1163), William de Warenne, third earl of Surrey (c. 1119–1148), and the northern magnate Sir Roger de Mowbray (d. 1189). Going on crusade offered both spiritual glory and earthly fame to its participants. The First Crusaders were identified with the Israelites and the

3 

Ousterhout, ‘The Church of Santo Stefano’, p. 313 for their symbolic meaning ; also Ousterhout, ‘Sweetly Refreshed’; Krautheimer, ‘Introduction’. 4  Kühnel, From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem, pp. 74–78; Schein, Gateway to the Heavenly City, pp. 2–5, 109–41. 5  Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, pp.  51–61; Kühnel, ‘Jerusalem between Narrative and Iconic’, pp. 111–12. 6  Ousterhout, ‘Sweetly Refreshed’, pp. 162–66. 7  Bale, Feeling Persecuted, p. 121. 8  Gregor, Haunted City, pp.  9–10; for the wider political significances of European Jerusalem translations: Slater, ‘Imagining Place and Moralizing Space’.

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Maccabees, and celebrated in more secular terms as chivalric heroes.9 Crusaders who died in the East were rapidly assumed to have died in martyrdom.10 The extreme dangers and hardships of life on crusade confirmed its role as a spiritually cleansing penance.11 In preparation for their departure, crusaders made conscious efforts to reach a state of grace.12 The settlement of debts, legal disputes, and social conflicts prior to travel could help raise cash for the journey, protect estates and economic interests, and secure the safety of dependents left behind.13 Just as importantly, these activities catered to fighters’ spiritual needs, removing potential sources of spiritual damage that might contribute to the failure of their crusade.14 To further minimize the risks of their time in Outremer, crusaders could make special gifts and requests for intercessory prayer to an ancestral religious foundation if one existed, establish a new religious house if desired, and tour holy shrines to commend themselves to a saint’s protection.15 Nor was this conduct confined only to the period before departure. During the Siege of Damietta in 1218, John de Lacy, later earl of Lincoln, endowed a series of properties to the church of All Saints in Pontefract in West Yorkshire, intended to enlarge the church’s burial ground and construct a charnel house, with a chapel above dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre and Holy Cross.16 He may have been seeking divine favour at a crucial moment in the fighting. It is unknown if the chapel at Pontefract was ever built, but its unusual dual dedication would have enabled a direct, ‘substitutional’ or typological connection to the Holy Land, placing the building firmly within the ‘Holy Landscapes’ tradition.17 Crusaders who safely returned home were received in festive adventus ceremonies by the religious house(s) they were connected with, usually involving prayers of 9  Tyerman, England, pp. 22–24, 27–28; Riley-Smith, First Crusade, pp. 41, 91–92, 99–100, 111–19, 121–22, 129; Riley-Smith, ‘State of Mind’, p. 71; Paul, Footsteps, p. 26. 10  Riley-Smith, ‘Death on the First Crusade’; Riley-Smith, First Crusade, pp.  116–18; Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, pp. 42–44; Paul, Footsteps, pp. 137–39. 11  Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West, p. 246; Tyerman, England, pp. 62, 158–59. 12  Riley-Smith, ‘State of Mind’, p. 83. 13  For the importance of paying off debts: Lloyd, English Society and the Crusade, pp. 155, 162–63; for the dangers, Tyerman, England, pp. 208–17. 14  Lloyd, English Society, pp. 155–61; Riley-Smith, ‘State of Mind’, p. 72. 15  Lloyd, English Society, p. 157; Riley-Smith, First Crusade, p. 128. 16  Lloyd, English Society, p. 161; Riley-Smith, First Crusade, p. 123. For John de Lacy: Slater, ‘Finding Jerusalem in Medieval Pontefract’. 17  Nagel and Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, pp. 51–61.

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thanksgiving for their safe return, the bestowal of gifts and relics from the East, and additional endowments.18 For those who did not accompany him on crusade, the prospect and/or reality of a fighter’s death and burial far away had to be prepared for.19 Reports of a crusader’s death could be difficult to verify. Ida of Hainault, wife of Count Baldwin II of Hainault, travelled to the East herself in the hope of finding her husband, killed in a Turkish ambush near Nicaea in 1098.20 Lost, unburied, and desecrated bodies were a routine aspect of crusading warfare and an element that was disturbing to all participants.21 As Nicholas L. Paul has explored, the absence of a physical body shattered the extended and elaborate rituals surrounding aristocratic death, in which the body of the deceased, laid to rest alongside their ancestors, acted as a local site for and projection of dynastic power, identity, and continuity.22 Aristocratic women, especially widows, had a special obligation to ensure familial commemoration and the preservation of dynastic memory.23 Nurith Kenaan-Kedar’s examination of monumental commemorations to returning or departed crusaders underscores the role played by widows such as Aigeline of Bourgogne or Blanche of Navarre in their construction.24 It was common for several family members to travel on crusade at the same time, with parents, children, and siblings banding together.25 While potentially aiding the recovery and proper Christian burial of fallen crusaders, and even the possible return of their bodies to Europe,26 the tradition of crusading with one’s kin would have undoubtedly contributed to the anxieties of those at home, should the hopes of an entire dynasty be wiped out in a single campaign. Those left behind had limited options for solace and spiritual 18 

Lloyd, English Society, pp.  157–58; Paul, Footsteps, pp.  123–25. Kenaan-Kedar, ‘Commemoration’, p. 91. 19  Paul, Footsteps, pp. 134–70. 20  Riley-Smith, First Crusade, p. 124; Paul, Footsteps, pp. 151–52. 21  Paul, Footsteps, pp. 135–40. 22  Paul, Footsteps, pp. 140, 149–64. 23  Van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, pp.  93–120, 141–42; Paul, Footsteps, pp. 164–70; Lester, ‘What Remains’. For female crusading activities: Riley-Smith, First Crusade, pp. 88, 121, 131; Nicholson, ‘Women on the Third Crusade’; Maier, ‘The Roles of Women in the Crusade Movement’; Edgington and Lambert, eds, Gendering the Crusades; Nicholson, ‘Women’s Involvement in the Crusades’. 24  Kenaan-Kedar, ‘Commemoration’, pp. 95, 97–98, 101; Paul, Footsteps, pp. 145–49. 25  Riley-Smith, First Crusade, pp. 44–45; Riley-Smith, ‘State of Mind’, pp. 81–82. 26  Paul, Footsteps, pp. 139, 150, 158–61 on the costs and difficulties of repatriating bodies.

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comfort. Without a body or known burial site, there could be no liturgical commemoration for the deceased.27 In these circumstances, the crusade might be associated not with spiritual glory and noble prowess, but with devastating loss.28 I propose that monumental recreations of Jerusalem formed part of the efforts made by English crusaders and their families to ensure that in the event of their deaths, and even in the absence of their physical bodies, their souls would still be prayed for and their memory preserved on earth. The fama of their heroic deeds in the East would be communicated instead by buildings that recalled the holy city of Jerusalem. By inviting devotional recollection of the original empty tomb of Christ, local recreations of the Holy Sepulchre may have rendered the absence of any physical remains less disturbing. And by reminding others of the crusading sacrifices made by an absent founder or dynastic figurehead, these buildings could still solicit the prayers of the faithful in the same way as a more conventional tomb or monumental effigy. The resolution of contemporary and later dynastic anxieties surrounding the fates of lost crusaders may thus have been an important contributory factor in the choices made by cultural patrons prior to their departure for the East, and specifically in their decision to recreate Jerusalem at home. I also suggest these buildings acquired longer-term dynastic value. By expressing and commemorating family commitment to the crusades so publicly, monumental recreations of Jerusalem could amplify the honour and renown of the wider dynasty. To construct a monumental translation of Jerusalem was always an exceptional form of devotional expression. The majority of known or extant English recreations of Jerusalem take the form of circular-naved ‘round churches’ institutionally connected to the Holy Land via military orders such as the Templars, Hospitallers, and Lazars.29 These will not be discussed in this paper. Although fewer in number, English round churches associated with personal patron(s) consistently have a direct connection with the crusades. It is also notable that these patrons rarely, if ever, chose to be buried in their recreations of the Christian holy places. The c. 1108–1122 Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northampton (Fig. 5.3) has been traditionally attributed to the patronage of Simon I de Senlis, earl of Northampton and Huntingdon (d. c. 1111–1113), recorded in a twelfth27 

Paul, Footsteps, p. 164. Paul, Footsteps, p. 135. 29  Sloane and Malcolm, Excavations at the Priory of the Order of the Hospital of St John Jerusalem, Clerkenwell, London, pp. 4–5. 28 

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century text connected to Crowland Abbey to have made one successful journey to Jerusalem, and to have died in France shortly after departing for the East a second time. 30 Captured and ransomed by the French when fighting in the Vexin in 1098, Simon did not join the First Crusade. He probably made his journey to Jerusalem in the first or second decade of the twelfth century.31 I have argued elsewhere that Simon’s wife, Matilda (d.  1131), may have played a significant role in the church’s construc­tion. 32 What­ ever the original patronal dyna­mics between husband and wife, the Nor­ thampton Holy Sepulchre would Figure 5.3. Interior, Church of the Holy have served as a resonant architecSepulchre, Northampton, c. 1108–1122 tural frame for any relics or souvenirs (photograph: author). from Jerusalem that Simon brought back from his first travel.33 Not only did the circular form of the nave and outer ambulatory of the church recall the Anastasis Rotunda in Jerusalem, but the estimated dimensions of the nave (58 feet/17.678 m in diameter) brought it within close range of the dimensions (67 feet/20.422 m in diameter) of the ‘original’ Jerusalem site.34 (Re)construction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Northampton enabled Simon to lay public claim to the prestige attached to the First Crusaders as exemplary Christian heroes, informing a wider public of his heroic pilgrimage(s) to the Holy Land and perhaps commemorating his 30  Chroniques, ed. by Michel, ii, p. 126: ‘post multos annorum circulos, vexillo crucis insignitus, peregre proficiscens, Jerosolimam adiit’ (after many years, having been marked by the banner of the cross, setting out abroad, he visited Jerusalem). 31  Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. and trans. by Waquet, pp. 8–9. Paul, Footsteps, p. 105 interprets the text as referring to the First Crusade. 32  Slater, ‘Translating Jerusalem to Anglo-Norman Lordship’. 33  For the transfer of relics Riley-Smith, First Crusade, pp. 122–23; Tyerman, England, p. 23; Paul, Footsteps, pp. 99–103. 34  Cox and Serjeantson, A History of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, p. 33.

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Figure 5.4. Exterior, Chapel of St Mary Magdalene, Ludlow Castle, Ludlow (photograph: Dr Glyn Coppack. Used by kind permission).

active part in its continued defence.35 Simon also built Northampton Castle and founded a Cluniac priory in the town, dedicated to St Andrew.36 Located minutes from both of these sites, all built in the town centre, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Northampton would have formed another Senlis ‘showpiece’, adding to the splendour and magnificence of the caput of Simon’s newly acquired English estates. Simon arrived in England only in the reign of William Rufus and gained his estates via his marriage to Matilda, a substantial heiress.37 Even by post-Conquest standards, he was not an established English landowner. 35 

Tyerman, England, pp. 22–24, 27–28 for the importance of crusading to one’s reputation. Chroniques, ed.  by Michel, ii, p.  124; for St  Andrew’s Priory, William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, pp. 185–96. 37  Barlow, William Rufus, pp. 93, 172–73; Serjeantson, ‘The Origin and History of the de Senlis Family, Grand Butlers of France and the Earls of Northampton and Huntingdon’, pp. 504–09 assigns him an arrival date of c. 1089; Strickland, ‘Senlis, Simon (I) de, Earl of Northampton and Earl of Huntingdon’. 36 

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Symbolic possession of Jerusalem would have reinforced the power and status of the Senlis family in the region. A dynastic founder-figure who had proved himself against ‘pagan’ enemies in the Holy Land was by implication both justified in holding Northampton, and militarily capable of doing so. Replicating the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northampton further articulated the sacred and virtuous nature of Simon’s Christian lordship over the locality. Unlike his son and heir, Simon I de Senlis was not buried in Northampton.38 Dying in France not long after beginning his second journey to Jerusalem, he was buried at his supposed ancestral foundation of La Charité-sur-Loire, an important Cluniac priory in the Nièvre.39 Simon’s wife Matilda, later married to David I of Scotland, was buried alongside her second husband in Dunfermline Abbey in Fife. Although bodily absent from Northampton, Simon would have been remembered in the prayers of the monks of St Andrew’s. There may be another connection here to the Holy Land. St Andrew, apostolic patron saint of Constantinople, became a close spiritual patron of the First Crusaders, appearing in multiple visions during their gruelling journey to Jerusalem.40 The dual dedication of the Cambridge Round Church to the Holy Sepulchre and St Andrew, and the geographic proximity in Northampton of St Andrew’s Priory and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, both at least partially founded by Simon I de Senlis, suggests an enduring attachment to the saint by the earliest generations of English crusaders. The c. 1125–1150 round chapel of St Mary Magdalene at Ludlow Castle in Shropshire (Fig. 5.4) has been traditionally connected to the patronage and later crusading activities of the Marcher landowner Gilbert de Lacy.41 Ludlow Castle was built by Gilbert’s father, Roger de Lacy, who was disinherited and banished from England in 1096. The vast Lacy barony in Herefordshire and Shropshire passed to Gilbert’s paternal uncle, Hugh de Lacy of Weobley, who died without heirs sometime between 1108 and 1115.42 It was then granted to Payn fitzJohn, a household servant and familiares of Henry I. He was married to Sybil de Lacy, Gilbert’s cousin, daughter of Agnes de Lacy, the sister of 38 

Simon II de Senlis was buried in St Andrew’s Priory, Northampton. Chroniques, ed. by Michel, ii, p. 126; William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, p. 190; Burton, Monastic Order, pp. 6, 56. 40  Riley-Smith, First Crusade, pp. 105–07. 41  Coplestone-Crow, ‘Anarchy in Herefordshire’, p. 35; Coppack, ‘The Round Chapel of St Mary Magdalene’, p. 150. 42  Coplestone-Crow, ‘Anarchy in Herefordshire’, p. 2; Coplestone-Crow, ‘Payn FitzJohn’, p. 171; Wightman, Lacy Family, pp. 172–75. 39 

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Roger and Hugh.43 From the death of Henry I, Gilbert de Lacy began pressing his direct claim to Ludlow via inheritance, his hand strengthened by the death of Payn fitzJohn in 1137.44 Initially, he was unsuccessful. Although he briefly seized control of the castle, it was besieged and returned to King Stephen of Blois by 1139.45 Sybil was married in 1138 to a Breton knight in the entourage of Stephen, Joce or Jocelyn de Dinan, again transferring control of Ludlow to her husband.46 After many years of struggle during the wars between Stephen and the Empress Matilda, Gilbert finally regained control of Ludlow Castle, by 1150 if not earlier.47 Recording his participation in an unsuccessful attack on Bath in 1138, the Gesta Stephani characterizes him as ‘vir prudens et in omni militari actione providus et operosus’ (a man of judgement, and shrewd and painstaking in every operation of war).48 By 1161, he had become a preceptor of the Templars at Tripoli and is last recorded fighting in the Holy Land in 1163.49 There is no record of where or when he died. His family made sure that Gilbert’s memory was preserved in his homeland: the deaths of Gilbert and his son were commemorated on 10 November at Hereford Cathedral.50 Ludlow Chapel is a distinctive building, for detached stone castle chapels are rare in medieval England. There are only three other known examples and the round form of Ludlow is unique.51 Supported by a low stone bench that runs the circumference of the nave, the interior of the chapel contains a blind wall arcade decorated with an alternating pattern of bead moulding and chevron 43 

Coplestone-Crow, ‘Payn FitzJohn’, p. 171. Coplestone-Crow, ‘Payn FitzJohn’, p. 171; Coplestone-Crow, ‘Anarchy in Herefordshire’, pp. 3–4. 45  Coplestone-Crow, ‘Anarchy in Herefordshire’, pp.  3–7; Coplestone-Crow, ‘Payn FitzJohn’, p. 180. 46  Coplestone-Crow, ‘Foundation to Anarchy’; Coplestone-Crow, ‘Anarchy in Here­ fordshire’, p. 6. 47  Coppack, ‘Round Chapel’, pp. 145–54; Coplestone-Crow, ‘Foundation to Anarchy’; Gervers, ‘Rotundae Anglicanae’, p. 370; Lewis, ‘Lacy, Gilbert de’; Wightman, Lacy Family, pp. 187–88. 48  Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. by Potter, with Davis, pp. 58–59. 49  Lewis, ‘Lacy, Gilbert de’; Wightman, Lacy Family, p. 189. 50  Lewis, ‘Lacy, Gilbert de’; Rawlinson, The History and Antiquities of the City and Cathedral Church of Hereford, p. 28: ‘Obitus Gileberti de Laci, dedit terram quatuordecim solidorum & X denariorium Herefordensi Ecclesie & filii eius Roberti’ (The death of Gilbert de Lacy and his son Robert. He gave to the church of Hereford land [worth] 14 shillings and 10 pence). 51  Coppack, ‘Round Chapel’, p. 145. 44 

Bodies or Buildings

Figure 5.5. Interior, Chapel of St Mary Magdalene, Ludlow Castle, Ludlow (photograph: Dr Glyn Coppack. Used by kind permission).

Figure 5.6. Interior, Temple Church, London, c. 1158–1161 (photograph: author).

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126 Laura Slater

(Fig. 5.5). This echoes the (heavily restored) blind wall arcading decorated with pointed arches, billet-ornament, and grotesques found at arcade level in the outer nave aisle of the c.  1158–1161 Temple Church in London (Figs 5.6 and 5.7).52 Both buildings may have been evoking the rich decoration of the interior of the Anastasis Rotunda through this feature. If constructed prior to Gilbert de Lacy’s departure for the Holy Land, the chapel at Ludlow would have consciously anticipated his activities in the East. However, the building is difficult to date. There is no documentary evidence for its construction and even its dedication Figure 5.7. Exterior, Temple Church, London, may be erroneous. The dedicac. 1158–1161 (photograph: author). tion to Mary Magdalene is first recorded in the historically confused thirteenth-century romance Fouke le Fitz Warin, which ascribes the chapel’s construction to Joce de Dinan.53 The building itself has been dated on stylistic grounds to the second quarter of the twelfth century, with Glyn Coppack assigning it to ‘no earlier than the 1120s or 30s’.54 If dated c. 1125–1150, Joce de Dinan, Sybil de Lacy, and Gilbert de Lacy could all be plausible patrons of the chapel. In the absence of new evidence, the issue cannot be clarified here. Seeking to identify a single, prime mover behind any work of medieval art and architecture also risks obscuring the complex realities of medieval artistic patronage. 52 

Wilson, ‘Gothic Architecture Transplanted’, p. 35. Coppack, ‘Round Chapel’, p. 145; Fulk Fitz-Warin, Histoire, ed. by Michel, p. 19: ‘Joyce de Dynan leva matin; e s’en ala à sa chapele dedenz son chastel, qe fust fet e dedié en l’onour de la Magdaleyne’ ( Joyce de Dynan rose in the morning; and he went into his chapel inside his castle, which he had built and dedicated in honour of the Magdalene). 54  Coppack, ‘Round Chapel’, p. 150. 53 

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Rather than springing to life solely as the result of an individual act of religious or artistic inspiration, the commissioning, financing, and maintenance of any medieval work of art or architecture was more often the result of communal efforts over an extended period. The financial investment and impetus provided by a work’s initiating patron could be supported by numerous further individual donations, with projects revised and transformed as these succeeding interests saw fit.55 Approaching the construction of Ludlow Chapel from a wider dynastic perspective may be a more useful way to understand it. Dynastic considerations weighed heavily on this landowner, for Gilbert evidently departed on crusade only after he had fully secured the future of his dynasty. In addition to regaining his father’s estates, he produced at least two sons, Robert (d. before 1166) and Hugh (d. 1186, first lord of Meath), by an unknown wife. And although Joce de Dinan was compensated for his loss of Ludlow by the award of lands in Berkshire in 1154, Gilbert seems to have waited until after Joce’s death in 1160 before he finally departed for Outremer.56 With his dynastic obligations now fulfilled, Gilbert may have turned to ensuring his own salvation. The Gesta Stephani records how in 1145, repenting of the great suffering that he had caused, William of Dover went to Jerusalem to expiate his sins, doing ‘multa et gloriose agens’ (many glorious deeds) against the enemies of the Christian faith before dying a blessed death in the Holy Land.57 Perhaps feeling similarly burdened by sin after his long campaign to recover his patrimony, Gilbert de Lacy’s self-imposed exile to the Holy Land could be understood in the same light. Yet as celebrated and commemorated by the unusual architectural form of Ludlow Chapel, his crusading journey gained wider significance. Through the successive marriages of Sybil, the Lacy family had retained some form of continuous hold on Ludlow Castle, and a familial presence in the locality, throughout the early twelfth century. Gilbert’s attempts to win back Ludlow Castle

55 

Luxford, The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, pp. xii–xiii. Coplestone-Crow, ‘Anarchy in Herefordshire’, p. 33. 57  Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. by Potter, pp. 178–79: ‘malorumque et afflictionum, quae in populo immiseranter exercuerat, poenitens, sacra Hierusalem pro peccatis expiandis loca petiit, ibique, contra obstinaces fidei Christianae adversarios viriliter multa et gloriose agens, feliciter tandem interfectus occubuit’ (Translation, p. 178: Then, repenting of the woes and the sufferings that he had pitilessly brought on the people, he went to the holy places of Jerusalem to expiate his sins, and there, after manfully doing many glorious deeds against the persistent enemies of the Christian faith, at last he was killed and died a blessed death). See also pp. 190–91 for Philip of Gloucester’s vow to go to Jerusalem. 56 

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were even supported by Sybil’s father, Geoffrey Talbot (d. 1140).58 Continuity of tenure at a knightly level strengthened his claims: many of the honour’s enfeoffed knights in England and Wales continued to be military tenants on Lacy lands in Normandy, and so held lands from Gilbert de Lacy and Payn fitzJohn simultaneously.59 There may have been considerable local sympathy for the legitimacy of Gilbert’s rights as heir. At both Northampton and Ludlow, the replication of the greatest Christian shrine in the Holy Land would have endowed a relatively newly (re)acquired, highly prized caput of the family’s estates, and their lordship over the locality, with some of Jerusalem’s unique spiritual status and charismatic power. It may be significant that the Lacy family kept the four manors closest to Ludlow castle in demesne: Stanton Lacy (which included Ludlow Castle and town), Onibury, Aldon, and Stokesay, making up a substantial ‘castlery’.60 Since Gilbert de Lacy chose not to be buried in the ancestral lands that he had worked so hard to recover, the distinctive appearance of Ludlow Chapel may have been intended to have wider, long-term value from the start. First, it may have preserved the memory of Gilbert de Lacy’s individual, crusading imitatio Christi. Due to his sacrifices in the East on behalf of and in imitation of Christ, there would be no physical tomb ‘at home’, a point that would be reinforced by any liturgical remembrance made at Ludlow on his behalf. Second, the chapel would have commemorated the collective contribution to the defence of the Holy Land made by Gilbert’s immediate family. Crusading travel was a severe tax on capital, resources, and family security, automatically making ‘the business of the cross’ a communal, dynastic enterprise.61 Colin Veach suggests the early death of Gilbert’s son Robert may have been a result of the heir accompanying his father on crusade.62 In this context, I suggest the role played by Gilbert de Lacy’s unknown wife in the construction and completion of the chapel merits serious consideration. As at Northampton, its unusual circular form may have been designed to provide an appropriate frame for any relics or ‘crusade memorabilia’ later sent to England by Gilbert or his son.63 If built c. 1125–1150, the final ‘completion’ of the chapel, through the installation of 58 

Coplestone-Crow, ‘Anarchy in Herefordshire’, pp.  3–5; Coplestone-Crow, ‘Payn FitzJohn’, p. 180. 59  Coplestone-Crow, ‘Payn FitzJohn’, p. 178. 60  Coplestone-Crow, ‘Payn FitzJohn’, pp. 175–76. 61  Tyerman, England, pp. 188–89, 208–17. 62  Veach, Lordship in Four Realms, p. 25. 63  Paul, Footsteps, pp. 90–133.

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objects associated with Gilbert or Robert’s crusade, could have been carried out as part of his wife’s efforts to honour her husband’s and son’s memory. Objects from the Holy Land were frequently preserved and exhibited in castral chapels and proprietary collegiate churches, deliberately preserved in a familial context to sustain the memory of crusading ancestors and act as sites for prayer.64 Finally, architectural citation of Jerusalem elevated both the lordship of the Lacy family and the territory of their caput, recasting Ludlow as terra sancta protected and defended by crusading warriors. Signifying the nobility, renown, and chivalric prowess of the wider Lacy family through continued visual association with the crusade, the striking visual form of the chapel upheld their right to hold Ludlow Castle and the surrounding area in the strongest spiritual terms. According to medieval interpretations of Ezekiel 5. 5 (‘Thus saith the Lord God: This is Jerusalem, I have set her in the midst of the nations, and the countries round about her’) and Psalm 73. 12 (‘he hath wrought salvation in the midst of the earth’), Jerusalem was located in the geographic centre of the world. There is a consistent pattern, and an obvious political and dynastic logic, in Anglo-Norman landowners such as Simon de Senlis and Gilbert de Lacy relocating Jerusalem to the centre of their own landed worlds. The practice characterized their landed tenure as a matter of salvific importance, as urgent and vital as continued Latin Christian control over the Holy Land. John de Lacy’s potential Jerusalem translation at Pontefract in 1218 was also intended for the caput of this branch of the family’s estates. Yet while an important administrative centre, Pontefract was not a personal or family burial site.65 At his death in 1240, John de Lacy was buried alongside his father in the choir of the Cistercian abbey of Stanlaw in Cheshire.66 The consistent absence of burials in English Jerusalem translations forms a striking contrast with Continental practice, where burials in recreated Jerusalem sites are attested from an early date.67 It is possible that the absence of a lordly body or tomb at a dynastic caput became more explicable when visually placed in a context that encouraged devotional recollection of the ultimate empty tomb in Jerusalem. The living spiritual presence of Christ found a secular substitute in the continuing physical presence in the locality of the Senlis or Lacy families. As a result of 64 

Paul, Footsteps, pp. 95–98, 115–23. Slater, ‘Finding Jerusalem’, p. 212; for Pontefract’s status as a lordly caput see also Burton, Monastic Order, p. 56. 66  Vincent, ‘Lacy, John de’. 67  Krautheimer, ‘Introduction’, pp.  3–4; Stolzenburg, ‘Bestattungen ad sanctissimum’, pp. 89–107. 65 

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these factors, Ludlow Chapel may never have been perceived to have a single, personal patron. Instead it could have been approached, at the level of both construction and reception, as a concrete physical expression of collective crusading heroism by the wider Lacy dynasty.68 A less direct form of architectural translation of Jerusalem was established by William de Warenne, third earl of Surrey (c. 1119–1148).69 Unlike Gilbert de Lacy, he was a loyal follower of King Stephen. His early military record was undistinguished: he was recorded as one of the ‘turgidos adolescentes’ (hot-headed youths) who deserted the king while on campaign in Normandy in 1137, and he again deserted the field in panic at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141.70 Warenne would have still been a young man at the time, for he only succeeded to his estates around 1138, and his military abilities did improve.71 The Warenne dynasty already had an ancestral foundation, the Cluniac priory of St Pancras at Lewes in East Sussex, endowed c. 1081–1083 by William’s grandparents as a result of an aborted pilgrimage to Rome. 72 Between 1087–1089, William  I de Warenne founded the priory of Castle Acre in Norfolk as a Cluniac dependency of Lewes. And in 1104, Lewes acquired a further daughter house in Norfolk, the priory of St Mary’s, Thetford. It was founded by Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, in commutation of a vow of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.73 The historical connection of St  Mary’s Thetford with the Holy Land may help account for the decision by William III de Warenne to found an Augustinian priory dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre in Thetford, on lands gifted to him by Stephen, barely three hundred metres (0.2 miles) from the site St Mary’s Thetford had moved to in 1114.74 William III’s new priory was 68 

Vincent, ‘Lacy, John de’. Chandler, ‘Warenne’. 70  Chandler, ‘Warenne’; Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, vi, pp. 486–87, 542–43; Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. by Howlett, iv: The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni, pp. 140 (at the Battle of Lincoln), 148 (fighting on Stephen’s behalf in Normandy). 71  Chandler, ‘Warenne’. In 1138, gifts were jointly granted to Lewes Priory by William III and his mother, Isabel: Chartulary, i, ed. by Salzman, p. 29. 72  Burton, Monastic Order, p. 6; Lewis, ‘Warenne, William de’, rejects the traditional 1077 foundation date of Lewes Priory. 73  Burton, Monastic Order, p. 56; ‘Houses of Cluniac Monks’. 74  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v.2, pp. 728–29; Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, vi, pp. 146–47 n. 1. 69 

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staffed by the order of Augustinian canons established in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem by 1114.75 Aside from the questionable wisdom of placing two religious houses in such close proximity, and so in intense competition for resources and patrons, William’s choice of religious order was an unusual one. Thetford was one of the earliest religious houses of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre to be founded in England.76 The first English house dedicated to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre was the c. 1109–1112 priory of St Sepulchre in Warwick. The Warwickshire antiquary John Rouse credited the priory’s initial foundation to Henry de Beaumont or Newburgh, first earl of Warwick.77 His son Roger completed the priory’s establishment in the 1120s.78 Roger had married William III’s sister Gundreda sometime before 1135.79 He was an unimpressive figure to some of his contemporaries, the Gesta Stephani dismissing him as among the ‘viri molles et deliciis magis quam animi fortitudine affluentes’ (effeminate men whose endowment lay rather in wanton delights than in resolution of mind).80 Yet William’s foundation of Thetford may have been partly inspired by his brother-in-law’s example. Sometime between 1138 and 1153, Roger made an unspecified grant to St Mary’s Thetford, suggestive of his interest in the area.81 The earls of Warwick were also generous patrons to the Templars.82 In addition to his own foundation at Thetford, William granted the Templars 40s. a year from the rents of Lewes Priory.83 Unlike the extant buildings discussed so far, there is no evidence that St  Sepulchre’s Priory at Thetford recreated the architectural forms of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. As with John de Lacy’s intended chapel for 75 

William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v.2, p. 728; ‘Houses of Austin Canons’. It is difficult to estimate how many houses of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre were established in England. Sister houses at Thetford, Winchester, and ‘Wentbryg’, alongside ‘many other places’ are recorded by John Rous, Historia regum Angliae, ed. by Hearne, pp. 139–40; also William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v.1, pp. 602–03. 77  John Rous, Historia regum Angliae, ed. by Hearne, pp. 139–40. 78  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v.1, p. 602; Earldom of Warwick, ed. by Crouch, pp. 88–89 nos 43–44 for grants by Roger to St Sepulchre’s Warwick. 79  Crouch, ‘Roger, Second Earl of Warwick’. 80  Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. by Potter, pp. 118–19; Crouch, ‘Roger, Second Earl of Warwick’. 81  Earldom of Warwick, ed. by Crouch, p. 80 no. 35. 82  Earldom of Warwick, ed. by Crouch, p. 24. 83  Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. by Clay, viii, p. 94 no. 46 (datable only 1138–1147). 76 

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Pontefract, the house may have been connected to Jerusalem by dedication alone. It was visited by William Worcestre in the 1480s, where he recorded that: ‘The church of the canons of the Holy Sepulchre at Thetford is 90 paces [gradus] long and the nave is 15 paces wide’.84 The surviving rectangular nave is an aisle-less ruin, standing to a height of six metres and entered today by an eighteenth-century doorway set into the east wall. There are remains of a possibly thirteenth-century string course running across the nave, but otherwise the building cannot be dated. Archaeological investigation aimed at uncovering the plan of the east end of the church revealed the walls of a rectangular south transept, and concluded that the church was laid out on a simple, aisle-less cruciform plan with north and south transepts.85 On Palm Sunday 1146, William III took the cross at Vézelay alongside Louis VII of France, a distant cousin, and his half-brother Waleran, count of Meulan.86 He departed on the Second Crusade in June 1147.87 Irrespective of his brother-in-law’s potential influence on his choice of institution, William almost certainly founded Thetford as part of his spiritual preparations for the crusade. Copies of the priory’s early charters record William’s gift to ‘Deo et sanctissimo Sepulchra’ (God and the most holy Sepulchre) of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre of Thetford, founded ‘pro amore Domini nostri Jhesu Christi, ac sui sanctissimi Sepulchri, pro remissione peccatorum meorum, et pro salute animae Willelmi comitis patris mei […] matris meae Isabellae, et fratrum meorum Radulphi Warenniae, et Reginaldi Warenniae’ (for the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, and his most holy tomb, for the remission of my sins and for the health of the souls of earl William my father […] Isabella my mother, and my brothers Ralph and Reginald).88 The focus on Christ and the Holy Sepulchre echoes some of the themes of the April–June 1147 sermon preached by Peter the Venerable to encourage recruitment for the Second Crusade. 89 He conflated imitatio Sepulchri and imitatio Christi, exhorting his audience to adopt the maxim: ‘I will imitate this sepulchre of his, in that just as his body was held 84 

Itineraries [of ] William Worcestre, ed and trans. by Harvey, pp. 162–63. Hare, ‘The Priory of the Holy Sepulchre, Thetford’. 86  Chandler, ‘Warenne’; Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry  II and Richard  I, ed. by Howlett, iv: The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni, p. 152; Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Arnold, p. 279. 87  Chandler, ‘Warenne’. 88  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, vi.2, p. 729; Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. by Clay, viii, pp. 93–94 (no. 45). 89  Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, pp. 81–82. 85 

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in the middle of the earth, I will hold in my heart […] his eternal memory’. 90 William III’s founding gifts to the priory included two fairs to be held on the Feast of the Invention of the Cross and the Exaltation of the Cross.91 The True Cross rediscovered by Arnulf of Chocques, first Latin patriarch of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, was the most sacred relic of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, preceding crusading armies into battle alongside the relic of the Holy Lance found at Antioch.92 As a result, the feasts of the Cross were strongly associated with the crusades and the Holy Land. William’s charter also recommends the priory to the protection of ‘palmiferis fratribus meis’ (my brother pilgrims).93 William’s choice of house and order, devotional foci, and reference to fellow-pilgrims all strongly suggest that Thetford was founded after Easter 1146, when William was already crucesignatus. His gifts to the Templars may have been made in the same context. He did not forget to grant land to Lewes Priory before departing: ‘in the year in which I went to Jerusalem [1147]. In which year I made this gift [land at Rottingdean] for the welfare of my soul and of my father William and of all our relatives’.94 An earlier, c. 1140 grant to Lewes Priory by William for ‘the welfare of my soul and of my ancestors, my father William and my mother Isabel’ invoked ‘God and his holy apostles Peter and Paul and St Pancras’.95 The shift in his devotional priorities and patron saints suggests a new personal commitment to the Holy Land. The Thetford and Lewes charters confirm the role played by the wider Warenne family in ensuring that William was fully prepared, both materially and spiritually, for the crusade ahead and its potential dangers. William’s brother Reginald de Warenne was left in charge of his estate in his absence.96 More clearly than in the extant sources for the Senlis and Lacy families, we see a collective dynastic effort on behalf of the Holy Land. No previous male member of the Warenne family is recorded as crucesignatus. In such an illustrious Anglo-Norman dynasty, participants in the Conquest and indeed kin of the Conqueror, this may have become a potential embarrassment; a gap in the family’s honour that William III was anxious to rectify when the opportunity 90 

Purkis, Crusading Spirituality, p. 82. William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, vi.2, p. 729. 92  Folda, Crusader Art, p. 18. 93  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, vi.2, p. 729. 94  Tyerman, England, p. 198; Chartulary, i, ed. by Salzman, p. 37. 95  Chartulary, i, ed. by Salzman, p. 64. 96  Chandler, ‘Warenne’; Chartulary, ii, ed. by Salzman, p. 25; Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. by Clay, viii, pp. 97–98 (nos 49, 50). 91 

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to join the Second Crusade presented itself. The Gesta Stephani records the enthusiasm with which the new call to arms was received in England.97 In addition to providing William III with spiritual aid for his journey, the foundation of a new Warenne house dedicated to the Holy Sepulchre, staffed by the same canons as in Jerusalem, would have permanently communicated and commemorated the commitment of the Warenne family to the defence of the holy places, a dedication exemplified by the departure of their heir. Although the Warenne caput and family burial place was in Lewes, the family’s concentration of lands in East Sussex was matched by extensive holdings across East Anglia, especially in Norfolk. Again, there may have been a local propagandic value to the establishment of the house: as an individual memorial to William III’s crusade, and as an enduring reminder of crusading support and involvement on the part of the Warenne dynasty. There is a striking absence in the early documentation for St Sepulchre’s Thetford: William III’s conjugal family. Remarkably, there is no mention in William’s charters of his wife, Ela (d. 1174), daughter of Guillaume Talvas, count of Ponthieu.98 Nor is there any reference to William’s only child and heir, Isabel de Warenne (d. 1203). William III’s grants to Lewes Priory frequently mention the souls of his parents and ancestors, but never refer to his wife or child.99 By contrast, a c. 1150 grant to Lewes from Reginald was made ‘for the welfare of my soul and of my wife Adalize and William my son and my daughter’.100 One wonders if William’s marriage was unhappy. I noted above that he left his brother, Reginald, in charge of the honour of Warenne rather than his wife. As William was one of five children, the risk of his own death on crusade did not threaten the wider Warenne dynasty with extinction. Yet to depart for the Holy Land with only a single, female heir did leave his own, individual bloodline in a potentially precarious position. The risk to crusaders’ wives and daughters of forced and/or disparaging marriages in their absence was very real.101 We can surmise that William III trusted his natal family to safeguard his wife and daughter, but it remains possible that he was not overly concerned for their welfare. St Sepulchre’s Thetford was later supported by 97 

Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. by Potter, pp. 192–93. Chandler, ‘Warenne’. 99  Chartulary, i, ed. by Salzman, pp. 29 (a joint grant with his mother Isabel), 37 (‘my father and of all our relatives’), 62 (‘for the soul of my father and mother’), 63 (‘my father and my relatives [parentum]’), 64 (‘my ancestors, my father William and my mother Isabel’). 100  Chartulary, i, ed. by Salzman, p. 41. 101  Tyerman, England, p. 211. 98 

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Isabel’s second husband, Hamelin. 102 Confirming William  III’s grants, he granted a third fair on the Feast of the Holy Sepulchre.103 Isabel de Warenne became a longstanding patron of Lewes Priory, the eventual burial place of herself and Hamelin. Her grants to Lewes mention the welfare of her own soul, her husband’s, ‘the souls of all my ancestors’ and ‘all my heirs and successors’.104 Yet there is no evidence for any interest in her father’s house at Thetford, or any mention of her father’s memory.105 William III did not survive the Second Crusade. Odo of Deuil’s De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem first records him as among the men mourning the wounded and dead in their familia, as Louis’s army travelled with difficulty through the territories of the Byzantine Empire.106 Reaching Laodicea in January 1148, the crusaders were again ambushed by the Turks. Odo records forces on either side of the River Maeander harassing the army as they marched towards the city.107 At the Battle of Mount Cadmus, Geoffrey of Rancon, leading the vanguard of the French army, pitched a swift camp at the head of the mountain ‘regis immemores, qui tunc ultimos conservabat’ (unmindful of the king, who at that time was protecting the rear guard), while the rest of the army became stuck, unprotected, on the path to the summit.108 In consequence: Turci vero et Greci […] in partem alteram congregantur […] In nostram partem transeunt, quia primos iam non timent et postremos adhuc non vident. Feriunt et sternunt, et vulgus inerme pecudum more cadit aut fugit. […] [Louis VII] ultimos penetrat et mactantibus paenultimos viriliter obviat […] Turba liberata fugit […] loco suo morti obiciens regem et comites […] In hoc rex parvulum sed gloriosum perdidit comitatum regale. (The Turks and Greeks […] thronged against the other part of our army […] They crossed against us, since they no longer feared the vanguard and did not yet see the rear guard. They thrust and slashed, and the defenceless crowd fled or fell like sheep.109 […] [Louis VII] pushed through the rear-guard and courageously checked 102 

Johns, ‘Warenne, Isabel de’. She married William of Blois, younger son of King Stephen in 1148 and Hamelin in 1164; Van Houts, ‘The Warenne View of the Past’, p. 115. 103  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, vi.2, pp. 728–29. 104  Chartulary, i, ed. by Salzman, p. 66. 105  Houts, ‘Warenne View of the Past’, p. 114 notes her warm relations with her mother. 106  Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, pp. 54–55. 107  Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, pp. 108–09. 108  Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, pp. 114–17 (116–17). 109  Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, pp. 116–17.

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the butchery of his middle division  […] Freed by the knights’ efforts, the mob fled […] and exposed the king and his comrades to death in their stead […] During this engagement the king lost his small but renowned royal guard)110

Louis VII was discovered after nightfall by his baggage train.111 William III is named as among the royal company missing after the battle.112 It is unclear how quickly or clearly this information reached the Warenne family. A royal chaplain to Louis VII, Odo of Deuil returned to France with him in 1149 and succeeded Suger as abbot of St Denis.113 Virginia Gingerick Berry estimated his text was composed in early 1148.114 Surviving in a single manuscript from Clairvaux, it does not seem to have circulated widely.115 Although news of the losses at Laodicea would have reached Europe relatively quickly, the confused and chaotic scenes on Mount Cadmus were not conducive to the transmission of clear information regarding the fates of individual crusaders. Later English chroniclers, such as John of Hexham, were confident that William died in the East.116 Yet Reginald de Warenne seems to have remained uncertain, or at least desperately hopeful, of his brother’s fate: a charter made around 1147/48 to the burghers of Lewes expressed that hope that God willing, his brother would return to confirm it likewise; if not, Reginald would do his best to ensure that Isabel de Warenne’s first husband should make them the same grant.117 A charter concerned with the land grant of Rottingdean expressed similar hopes for the earl’s return, this time in the name of Jesus Christ.118 It was not to be. The 110 

Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, pp. 118–19. Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, pp. 118–21. 112  Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, pp. 122–23. 113  Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, p. xv. 114  Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, p. xxiii. 115  Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici, ed. and trans. by Berry, pp. xxxii–xxxiii. 116  Symeon of Durham, Historia regum, ed. by Arnold, ii, p. 319: ‘Periit in hac profectione Willelmus de Waren comes, a paganis interceptus, qui custodiam posteram Christiani exercitus observabat’ (Earl William de Warenne died on this journey, having been intercepted by the pagans. He protected the rear guard of the Christian army); Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. by Howlett, iv: The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni, p. 221. Chandler, ‘Warenne’ states that rumours of William’s survival reached both Reginald de Warenne and John of Hexham, but I have been unable to trace her exact source. Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Arnold, p. 279 notes the death of ‘multi de gente Anglorum’ (many of the English people) in Louis’s army; Annales monastici, ed. by Luard, ii: Annales monasterii de Waverleia, pp. 231–32. 117  Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. by Clay, viii, p. 98; Chartulary, ii, ed. by Salzman, p. 25. 118  Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. by Clay, viii, p. 97: ‘Sciatis itaque quod si dominus Jesus 111 

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brief dynastic history that accompanies the Lewes chartulary, copied and compiled around 1444, records that William III ‘died 13th January 1148 the fifth year of his earldom being unfinished. He signed himself with the sign of the Holy Cross and set out for the Holy Land and there died and was buried’.119 The canons of St Sepulchre’s Thetford would have ensured that William’s memory as crucesignatus was similarly honoured in Norfolk, again preserving ancestral memories of crusading piety and prowess for future generations. Finally, I will consider a keen crusader who did not seek to recreate Jerusalem. The northern magnate Sir Roger de Mowbray (d. 1188) had a chequered political career in England, although he was often unlucky in his military engagements. As a youth, he fought on behalf of Stephen at the Battle of the Standard in 1138.120 In 1141, Mowbray fought for Stephen at the Battle of Lincoln and was captured by Ranulf II, earl of Chester and Robert, earl of Gloucester. He married Alice de Gant, the daughter of a Lincolnshire baron, soon afterwards. By Alice, he had at least two sons, Nigel and Robert. Mowbray seems to have spent most of Stephen’s reign raiding and fighting in the north of England. In 1174, he joined the unsuccessful rebellion of Henry the Young King against Henry II. Jordan Fantosme’s chronicle, an Anglo-Norman verse narrative of recent events written in the 1170s repeatedly praises his military prowess, calling him ‘mult saveit de guerre’ (exceedingly skilled in warfare) and ‘un noble guerreur’ (a noble warrior), amongst other accolades.121 In addition to his military prowess, Mowbray was notably pious. He may have founded a nunnery at Villers-Canivet in Normandy.122 He made numerous generous grants of property to other religious houses, especially the Templars. In 1185, they earned over £30 per annum from lands granted by Mowbray.123 In 1138, he and his mother Gundreda de Gournay founded Byland Abbey as a Savignac house dedicated to the Virgin.124 The first monks of Byland Christus dominum comitem Warenn[ie] reduxerit bene faciemus eum hoc idem concedere’ (May you know therefore that if the lord Jesus Christ leads earl Warenne back, we will rightly concede this same [agreement]). 119  Chartulary, ii, ed. by Salzman, pp. 15, 19. For the date of the extant chartulary, Char­ tulary, i, ed. by Salzman, p. xvii. 120  I draw on Thomas, ‘Mowbray’ throughout the following. 121  Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. by Howlett, iii, pp. 285, 314–15, 357, 365; Jordan Fantosme, Chronicle, ed. and trans. by Johnston, pp. 70–71, 98–99, 101–03, 110–11, 136–37, 144–45 (pp. 98–99 l. 1320, pp. 144–45 l. 1946). 122  Thomas, ‘Mowbray’. 123  Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, ed. by Greenway, pp. 183–85; Thomas, ‘Mowbray’. 124  Thomas, ‘Mowbray’; Symeon of Durham, Historia regum, ed. by Arnold, ii, p. 289:

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were refugees from Furness and Calder. The c. 1197 Historia fundationis records Gundreda as the first to help and provide for the abbey, while her son was still underage.125 Like many religious houses, the abbey’s early years were unsettled.126 First based in Hood, close to Gundreda’s castle at Thirsk near Northallerton, in 1142 the house became a Cistercian one and moved to Byland, later known as ‘Old Byland’, on land that formed part of Gundreda’s dower.127 Almost opposite the great Cistercian monastery of Rievaulx, the monks moved to ‘New Byland’ in Stocking in 1147, finally shifting even nearer Coxwold in 1177 and to the site known today as Byland.128 Barely two miles away was Mowbray’s second great foundation, the Augustinian priory of Newburgh, founded in 1142.129 As his military and religious enthusiasms indicate, Mowbray was a natural miles Christi. Like William III de Warenne, he accompanied Louis VII on the Second Crusade (1147–1149).130 Mowbray was continuing a dynastic tradition: his maternal grandfather, Gerard de Gournay or Gournai, lord of Gournay-enBray, travelled with his wife, Edith de Warenne, on the First Crusade and later went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1104.131 Since Aelred of Rievaulx refers to Mowbray in 1138 as joining the army against the Scots while only a boy, he was clearly still a young man when he travelled to the East.132 The Second Crusade ‘fundata et facta est illa inclita abbatia Sanctae Mariae de Bechlanda ante nativitatem Domini a nobili viro Rogerio de Molbreio, qui eam praediis et possessionibus magnisque pasturis et silvis optime fundavit’ (The renowned abbey of St Mary of Byland was founded and established before the nativity of the Lord by the noble man Roger of Mowbray, who excellently endowed it with estates and holdings and great fields and woods); William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, pp. 346, 349–54; Burton, ‘Settlement of Disputes’, p. 68. 125  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, p. 350; Burton, ‘Settlement of Disputes’, p. 67. 126  Burton, ‘Settlement of Disputes’, pp. 67–68 gives a full account. 127  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, pp. 345–46, 350–51; Burton, ‘Settlement of Disputes’, p. 68. 128  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, pp. 345, 351; Burton, ‘Settlement of Disputes’, p. 68. 129  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, vi.1, pp. 318–21; Burton, ‘Settlement of Disputes’, p. 68. 130  Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, ed. by Greenway, p. xxxi; Thomas, ‘Mowbray’. 131  Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, v, pp. 34–35, 58–59; Thomas, ‘Mowbray’. 132  Thomas, ‘Mowbray’; Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. by Howlett, iii, pp. 182–83: ‘ut etiam Rogerum de Mulbrai, adhuc puerulum, exercitui interesse fecissent’ (so that they had made even Roger of Mowbray, still a young boy, part of the army).

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may have been his first opportunity to do so: not only after his capture in 1141, but following his marriage and the production of two sons, the future of the Mowbray dynasty was now secure. Mowbray’s father, Nigel d’Aubigny, died in 1129 and his mother as late as 1154.133 Gundreda’s active role in the foundation of Byland suggests a close working partnership between mother and son.134 Gundreda may have encouraged her son to follow the crusading example of her own father, and surely aided Roger in safeguarding his interests before departing. The 1147 date of the removal of the monks of Byland to ‘New Byland’ is significant: it is possible that a longstanding monastic grievance was resolved shortly before Mowbray’s departure, perhaps as a final spiritual ‘insurance policy’.135 The Historia fundationis records that this took place before Roger departed for his estates in Normandy.136 Elsewhere, its author (Philip, the third abbot) notes that the resolution of other monastic quarrels with local landowners left Mowbray free to depart ‘ex parte occidentali’ (to eastern parts).137 A charter of around 1146 to the Cistercian abbey of Garendon in Leicestershire requested their prayers for his forthcoming pilgrimage.138 Assembled following the fall of Edessa in 1144, the Second Crusade was a humiliating disaster, yet Mowbray managed to win glory and renown. Repeatedly praising him as a noble man, the chronicler John of Hexham records his victory in single combat against ‘quodam pagano tyranno’ (a certain pagan tyrant).139 Mowbray may have inspired his kin to travel to Palestine, for his cousin, William d’Aubigny, first earl of Arundel, went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem from 1155–1158.140 Mowbray’s charters suggest that he took part in 133 

Thomas, ‘Mowbray’. William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed.  by Caley, v, pp.  348, 350, 353; William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, vi.1, p. 320 records a gift to Newburgh made ‘pro anima patris mei Nigelli, et matris meae Gundredae, et pro salute mea, et uxoris meae Adeliz’ (for the soul of my father Nigel, and my mother Gundreda, and for the health of my [soul] and [the soul of ] my wife, Adeliza). 135  Lloyd, English Society, p. 160. 136  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, pp. 346, 351–52. 137  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, p. 352. 138  Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, ed. by Greenway, p. 116 no. 155; also p. 126 no. 174, and pp. 118–19 nos 160, 161, a charter by his son. 139  Thomas, ‘Mowbray’; Symeon of Durham, Historia regum, ed. by Arnold, ii, p. 319: ‘Promeruit celebrem gloriam Rogerus de Mulbrai, singulari certamine de quodam pagano tyranno triumphans’ (Roger of Mowbray earned glorious renown, triumphing in a single combat concerning a certain pagan tyrant). 140  White, ‘Aubigny, William’. He was the son of William d’Aubigny (d. 1139), brother of Roger’s father Nigel d’Aubigny (d. 1129). 134 

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the crusade led by Philip of Flanders in 1177, raising money from Fountains Abbey in aid of his future journey to Jerusalem.141 In spring 1186, however, he returned to Jerusalem for the second or third time, by now aged around sixtyfive.142 Roger of Howden records the continued presence of Roger de Mowbray and Hugh de Beauchamp in the Holy Land in the service of God.143 Mowbray was captured at the 1187 Battle of Hattīn, ransomed by the military orders the following year, and died shortly afterwards.144 Unlike the patrons discussed so far in this essay, Mowbray did not recreate Jerusalem at home either before or after any of his travels to Palestine. Instead, he placed his trust in the spiritual Jerusalem of the reformed monastic cloister. Mowbray was evidently a conscientious founder, ably supported by his mother, who was honoured by the monks of Byland as joint fundatrix.145 The Historia fundationis is naturally focused on documenting the campaigns of the monks of Byland to secure their rights, possessions, and even their status as Cistercians (necessitating a personal visit by Mowbray to the Cistercian general chapter sometime between 1147 and 1154, possibly on his return from the Second Crusade).146 The absence of details of Mowbray’s biography or crusading activity in Abbot Philip’s gesta abbatum suggest that the founder’s travels to Palestine did not impact the abbey unduly. In other genres of historical record, of course, the monks of Byland preserved dynastic memories more carefully: a genealogy of the Mowbray family with a Byland provenance states Mowbray’s role in founding Byland and 141 

Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, ed. by Greenway, pp. xxxi–xxxii, 83–85 nos 111, 112, ‘dedit Rogerio in adiutorium itineris sui Ierosol’ cxx marcas’ ([the abbey] gave to Roger 120 marks in aid of his journey to Jerusalem) (83), 126 no. 174, 248 no. 388; Thomas, ‘Mowbray’. 142  Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, ed.  by Greenway, p.  xxxii; Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. by Stubbs, ii, p. 318. 143  Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. by Stubbs, ii, p. 316. 144  Roger of Howden, Chronica, ed. by Stubbs, ii, p. 325: ‘captus fuit Rogerus de Mulrai, quem in anno sequenti fratres Hospitalis et Templi redemerunt de manu paganorum; qui paulo post obiit. Et in eodem praelio Hugo de Bello Campo interfectus est’ (Roger of Mowbray was captured, whom in the following year the brothers of the Hospital and the Temple redeemed from the hands of the pagans; who shortly afterwards died. And in the same battle, Hugh de Bello Campo was killed). 145  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, p. 346. 146  Thomas, ‘Mowbray’; William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, p. 353: ‘nobilis vir dominus Rogerus de Molbray fundator Bellelandae aliquando tempore capituli generalis una cum duce Burgundiae in Cistercium venit’ (The noble man Lord Roger of Mowbray, founder of Byland, at some time came with the duke of Burgundy to one of the general chapters in Citeaux).

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many other holy places. Afterwards: ‘Hic cruce signatus ivit in terram sanctam, et captus à Saracenis, redemptus fuit per militiam templi, et mortuus in terra sancta, sepultus est apud Sures’ (Signed with the cross he went to the Holy Land, and was captured by Saracens, was ransomed by the Knights Templar, and died in the Holy Land; he was buried at Sures [Tyre]).147 The genealogy also records that Mowbray’s eldest son followed the example of his father by joining the Third Crusade with Richard I.148 Yet a Mowbray genealogy preserved at Mowbray’s other foundation of Newburgh, a few miles away, narrates an alternative history of Roger de Mowbray’s crusading heroics.149 After his capture at Hattīn and ransom by the Templars, the author continues that, wearied by many battles, Mowbray returned to England. On his journey home, he came across a dragon fighting with a lion, in a valley called Saranell. He killed the dragon and the lion followed him to England to his castle at Hood. Mowbray lived for a further fifteen years in England, died at a good old age, and was buried at Byland in an arched recess in the wall of the chapter house on the southern side, near his mother Gundreda. A sword marked in stone was depicted upon his tomb.150 The same 147 

William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, p. 346; Gilyard-Beer, ‘Grave of Roger de Mowbray’, p. 62 n. 5. 148  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, v, p. 346 and for the same account in a Newburgh genealogy: William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, vi.1, p. 320: ‘obiit in mare Graeco, et projectus fuit in mare’ (He died in the Greek sea and was thrown into the sea). Nigel actually died in Acre in 1191 and was buried at sea: Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, ed. by Greenway, p. xxxii; Thomas, ‘Mowbray’; Paul, Footsteps, pp. 156–57. 149  I draw on Gilyard-Beer, ‘Grave of Roger de Mowbray’, p. 62 throughout this paragraph. 150  William Dugdale, Monasticon, ed. by Caley, vi.1, p. 320: ‘Tunc ipse Rogerus, cruce signatus ivit in Terram Sanctam, et ibi in magno praelio captus à Saracenis, redemptus est per militiam Templi; et diversis praeliis fatigatus reversus est in Angliam, et in suo itinere invenit draconem cum leone pugnantem in valle quae dicitur Saranell, percussitque draconem usque ad mortem, et secutus est eum leo in Angliam usque ad castellum de Hode; vixitque postea xv. Annos, et mortuus est senectute bonâ, et sepultus in Ballalanda in quadam fornace in muro capituli ex parte australi juxta matrem suam Gundredam, et supra sepulchrum ejus depictus est gladius lapide insignitus, ubi nemo positus est in praesentem diem’ (Then Roger, having been signed with the cross, went to the Holy Land, and there, having been captured in a great battle by the Saracens, was redeemed by the knights of the Temple; and wearied by different battles, returned to England. And on his journey he found a dragon fighting with a lion in the valley which is called ‘Saranell’. He beat the dragon to death, and the lion followed him to England all the way to his castle of Hood. He lived for fifteen years afterwards and died at a good old age, and he was buried in Byland in a certain vault in the wall of the chapter house on the southern side, next to his mother Gundreda, and above his tomb a sword was depicted, marked in stone where no one [else] has been placed to the present day); Gilyard-Beer, ‘Grave of Roger de Mowbray’, p. 62.

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motif of the rescued and faithful lion (drawn from the Arthurian romance Yvain) was applied to the crusaders Gouffier of Lastours and Gilles de Chin.151 Roy Gilyard-Beer has ably assessed the evidence for the various graves discovered at Byland and erroneously identified as Mowbray’s from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.152 He concludes: ‘One is left with the strong suspicion that […] some time after the beginning of the fourteenth century, feeling that the lack of a founder’s grace impaired the prestige of their house’, the monks of Byland embarked on some retrospective commemoration of their founder, succeeding to the degree that the canons of Newburgh ‘were impelled to insert a revised story of de Mowbray’s later years in their genealogy’.153 Most interesting to me is how memories of Mowbray’s crusading heroics had become confused at Byland and Newburgh as early as the fourteenth century, in contrast to the accurate, if brief account of William III’s crusade included in the Lewes chartulary compiled around 1444. The special value and utility of William III’s foundation at St Sepulchre’s Thetford, an institution strongly focused on the Holy Land through its dedication, personnel, and fairs, becomes apparent. At both Byland and Newburgh, there were no strong institutional connections or visual references to Jerusalem, in contrast to St Sepulchre’s Thetford, Ludlow Chapel, or the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Northampton. Did a weaker substitutional connection to Jerusalem make it more difficult to accept the lack of a founder’s grave? St Sepulchre’s Thetford may not have recreated the Holy Sepulchre in its exterior architecture, but its seal depicted the resurrected Christ rising from his tomb.154 Like the round forms of Ludlow and Northampton, such permanent and prominent devotional reminders of Jerusalem may have made it easier to accept the absence of lordly burials. While the fama of Mowbray’s crusading heroics clearly endured in garbled form, the primary expectation in later medieval Yorkshire seems to have become that Mowbray should have, would have, and indeed finally did return ‘home’, to his final resting place in his own foundation. Local institutional priorities appear to have overridden the special spiritual status of the Holy Land in a way made impossible by the distinctive architectural forms of Northampton and Ludlow, or the strikingly Jerusalem-focused institutional character of St Sepulchre’s Thetford. However difficult it may have been to gain accurate information about the fates of crusaders in the East, the one-way jour151 

Paul, Footsteps, pp. 85–86. Gilyard-Beer, ‘Grave of Roger de Mowbray’, pp. 61–66. 153  Gilyard-Beer, ‘Grave of Roger de Mowbray’, p. 66. 154  ‘Houses of Austin Canons’. 152 

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neys made by Gilbert de Lacy and William III de Warenne were at least remembered as such at home. Of all the crusaders examined in this essay, Roger de Mowbray travelled the most frequently to the Holy Land and gained perhaps the greatest contemporary renown, singled out for individual praise by John of Hexham and Roger of Howden. Yet his decision not to recreate Jerusalem at home may have undermined local and dynastic preservation of his crusading memory in the longer term.

Conclusion Monumental recreations of Jerusalem associated with an individual crusader could commemorate and communicate the fama of personal crusading heroics both to the wider locality, and to future descendants of the same family. By directly recalling the empty tomb of Christ in Jerusalem, these structures reassured local audiences that in the absence of a physical body, and its associated prayers and liturgical commemorations, a crusader such as Simon I de Senlis, Gilbert de Lacy, or William III de Warenne had still attained his just heavenly reward. They eloquently and tangibly expressed the crusader’s personal imitatio Christi and imitatio Sepulchri. Local translations of Jerusalem also powerfully contributed to dynastic memories. They could be the product of collective, familial as much as individual crusading patronage, initiated and/or guided to final completion by the mothers, wives, and kin of the absent miles Christi. Such buildings became an enduring memorial to the communal efforts made by the wider Senlis, Lacy, Warenne, or Mowbray families on behalf of the Holy Land. Recreating the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in some form at home helped elevate a local noble caput to the status of terram sanctam, conflating Jerusalem ‘in the midst of the nations’ (Ezekiel 5. 5) with the centre of a family’s landed power. Through visual association with the Holy Land, the continued tenurial presence of the family in a specific region could be recast as a struggle with the status of holy warfare. Jerusalem could be usefully incorporated into local and dynastic political agendas in twelfth-century England. It could also be overridden by them, as the later revision of local memories of Roger de Mowbray’s crusading activity that took place at Byland Abbey and Newburgh Priory shows. Ensuring both crusading success and effective later remembrance of these heroics, feats which would secure a family’s Christian honour and noble renown for generations to come, was a delicate spiritual and political balancing act.

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Works Cited Primary Sources Annales monastici, ed. by Henry R. Luard, Rolls Series, 36, 5 vols (London: Longman, 1864–1869) Charters of the Honour of Mowbray, 1107–1191, ed.  by Diana  E. Greenway (London: British Academy, 1972) The Chartulary of the Priory of St Pancras of Lewes, i, ed. by Louis Francis Salzman, Sussex Record Society, 38 (Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1932) The Chartulary of the Priory of St Pancras of Lewes, ii, ed. by Louis Francis Salzman, Sussex Record Society, 40 (Lewes: Sussex Record Society, 1934) Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. by Richard Howlett, Rolls Series, 82, 4 vols (London: HMSO, 1884–1889) Chronicon abbatiæ Rameseiensis, a sæc X. usque ad an. circiter 1200: in quatuor partibus; partes I., Ii., Iii., iterum post Th. Gale, ex chartulario in Archivis Regni Servato, pars Iv. nunc primum ex aliis codicibus, ed. by William Dunn Macray, Rolls Series, 83 (London: HMSO, 1886) Chroniques Anglo-Normandes: recueil d’extraits et d’écrits relatifs à l’histoire de Normandie et d’Angleterre pendant les xie et xiie siècles; publié, pour la première fois, d’après les manuscrits de Londres, de Cambridge, de Douai, de Bruxelles et de Paris, ed. by Francisque Xavier Michel, 3 vols (Rouen, 1836–1840) Early Yorkshire Charters, ed.  by Charles Travis Clay, 9  vols (Wakefield: Yorkshire Archaeological Society, 1935–1949) Fulk Fitz-Warin, Histoire de Foulques Fitz-Warin, ed. by Francisque Xavier Michel (Paris: Silvestre Librarie, 1840) Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. by Kenneth Reginald Potter, with R. H. C. Davis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976) Henry of Huntingdon, Henrici Archidiaconi Huntendunensis Historia Anglorum, ed. by Thomas Arnold, Rolls Series, 74 (London: Longman, 1879) Itineraries [of] William Worcestre: Edited from the Unique MS Corpus Christi College, Cam­bridge, 210, ed. and trans. by John H. Harvey (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969) John Rous, Joannis Rossi antiquarii warwicensis Historia regum Angliae: e codice MS in Biblio­theca Bodlejana descripsit, notisque & indice adornavit, ed. by Thomas Hearne (Oxford, 1745) Jordan Fantosme, Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. and trans. by Ronald Carlyle Johnston (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981) The Newburgh Earldom of Warwick and its Charters, 1088–1253, ed. by David Crouch (Stratford upon Avon: The Dugdale Society, 2015) Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969–1980) Otto of Deuil, De profectione Ludovici VII in orientem, ed. and trans. by Virginia Gingerick Berry (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948)

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Symeon of Durham, Symeonis monachi opera omnia: Historia regum, ed.  by Thomas Arnold, Rolls Series, 75, 2 vols (London: Longman, 1882–1885) Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. and trans. by Henry Waquet (Paris: Champion, 1929) William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, ed. by John Caley, 6 vols (London: Longman, 1817–1830)

Secondary Works Bale, Anthony, Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages (London: Reaktion, 2010) Barlow, Frank, William Rufus (London: Methuen, 1983) Burton, Janet E., ‘The Settlement of Disputes between Byland Abbey and Newburgh Priory’, The Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 55 (1983), 67–72 —— , The Monastic Order in Yorkshire, 1069–1215 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) Chandler, Victoria, ‘Warenne, William de, Third Earl of Surrey [Earl Warenne]’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Coplestone-Crow, Bruce, ‘Payn FitzJohn and Ludlow Castle’, Shropshire History and Archaeology: Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological and Historical Society, 70 (1995), 171–83 ——  , ‘From Foundation to Anarchy’, in Ludlow Castle: Its History & Buildings, ed.  by Ron Shoesmith and Andy Johnson (Little Logaston: Logaston, 2000), pp. 23–28 ——  , ‘The Anarchy in Herefordshire’, in Malcolm Thurlby, The Herefordshire School of Romanesque Sculpture (Woonton: Logaston, 2013), pp. 1–36 Coppack, Glyn, ‘The Round Chapel of St Mary Magdalene’, in Ludlow Castle: Its History & Buildings, ed. by Ron Shoesmith and Andy Johnson (Little Logaston: Logaston, 2000), pp. 145–54 Cox, J.  Charles, and Robert Meyricke Serjeantson, A  History of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Northampton (Northampton: William Mark, 1897) Crouch, David, ‘Roger, Second Earl of Warwick (d.  1153)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Edgington, Susan B., and Sarah Lambert, eds, Gendering the Crusades (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001) Essex, James, ‘Observations on the Origin and Antiquity of Round Churches; and of the Round Church at Cambridge in Particular. By Mr James Essex, F.A.S. Read May 24, 1781’, Archaeologia, 6 (1782), 1637–38 Folda, Jaroslav, Crusader Art:  The Art of the Crusaders in the Holy Land, 1099–1291 (Aldershot: Lund Humphries, 2008) Gervers, Michael, ‘Rotundae Anglicanae’, in Évolution générale et développements régionaux en histoire de l’art: actes du XXIIe Congrès international d’histoire de l’art, ed. by György Rózsa, 3 vols (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1972), i, pp. 359–76

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Gilyard-Beer, Roy, ‘Byland Abbey and the Grave of Roger de Mowbray’, The Yorkshire Archaeological Journal, 55 (1983), 61–66 Gregor, Neil, Haunted City: Nuremberg and the Nazi Past (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008) Hare, John N., ‘The Priory of the Holy Sepulchre, Thetford’, Norfolk Archaeology, 37 (1979), 190–200 ‘Houses of Austin Canons: Priory of the Holy Sepulchre, Thetford’, in A History of the County of Suffolk, ii, ed. by William Page (London: Victoria County Histories, 1975), pp. 109–11 [accessed 3 January 2022] ‘Houses of Cluniac Monks: The Priory of St  Mary, Thetford’, in A History of the County of Norfolk, ii, ed. by William Page (London: Victoria County Histories, 1906), pp. 363–69 [accessed 3 January 2022] Johns, Susan M., ‘Warenne, Isabel de, suo jure Countess of Surrey (d. 1203)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Kenaan-Kedar, Nurith, ‘Pictorial and Sculptural Commemoration of Returning or Departing Crusaders’, in The Crusades and Visual Culture, ed.  by Elizabeth Lapina, April Jehan Morris, Susanna A. Throop, and Laura J. Whatley (Abingdon: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 91–104 Krautheimer, Richard, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Medieval Architecture”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 5 (1942), 1–33 Kühnel, Bianca, From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem: Representations of the Holy City in Christian Art of the First Millennium (Freiburg: Herder, 1987) ——  , ‘Jerusalem between Narrative and Iconic’, in Jerusalem as Narrative Space: Erzählraum Jerusalem, ed.  by Annette Hoffman and Gerhard Wolf (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 105–26 —— , ‘Virtual Pilgrimages to Real Places: The Holy Landscapes’, in Imagining Jerusalem in the Medieval West, ed. by Lucy Donkin and Hanna Vorholt, Proceedings of the British Academy, 175 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 243–64 Lester, Anne E., ‘What Remains: Women, Relics and Remembrance in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History, 40 (2014), 311–28 Lewis, C.  P., ‘Lacy, Gilbert de (fl. 1133–1163)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) —— , ‘Warenne, William de, First Earl of Surrey [Earl Warenne]’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Lloyd, Simon, English Society and the Crusade, 1216–1307 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988) Luxford, Julian M., The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300–1450: A Patronage History (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2005) Maier, Christoph T., ‘The Roles of Women in the Crusade Movement: A Survey’, Journal of Medieval History, 30 (2004), 61–82

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Morris, Colin, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Nagel, Alexander, and Christopher S. Wood, Anachronic Renaissance (New York: Zone, 2010) Nicholson, Helen J., ‘Women on the Third Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History, 23 (1997), 335–49 ——  , ‘Women’s Involvement in the Crusades’, in The Crusader World, ed.  by Adrian  J. Boas (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 54–67 Ousterhout, Robert G., ‘The Church of Santo Stefano: A “Jerusalem” in Bologna’, Gesta, 20 (1981), 311–21 —— , ‘“Sweetly Refreshed in Imagination”: Remembering Jerusalem in Words and Images’, Gesta, 48 (2009), 153–68 Paul, Nicholas L., To Follow in their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012) Purkis, William J., Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c. 1095 – c. 1187 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008) Rawlinson, Richard, The History and Antiquities of the City and Cathedral Church of Hereford (London: E. Curll and R. Gosling, 1717) Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ‘Death on the First Crusade’, in The End of Strife, ed. by David W. Loades (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1984), pp. 14–31 —— , The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (London: Continuum, 1986; repr. 2003) —— , ‘The State of Mind of Crusaders to the East, 1095–1300’, in The Oxford History of the Crusades, ed. by Jonathan Riley-Smith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 66–90 Royal Commission on Historical Monuments, England: An Inventory of the Historical Monu­ ments in the City of Cambridge, 2  vols (London: Royal Commission on His­torical Monuments, 1988) Schein, Sylvia, Gateway to the Heavenly City: Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099–1187) (Burlington: Aldershot, 1998) Serjeantson, Robert Meyricke, ‘The Origin and History of the de Senlis Family, Grand Butlers of France and the Earls of Northampton and Huntingdon’, Northampton and Oakham Architectural and Archaeological Society: Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers, 31 (1912), 504–09 Slater, Laura, ‘Finding Jerusalem in Medieval Pontefract’, Northern History, 51 (2014), 211–20 —— , ‘Imagining Place and Moralizing Space: Jerusalem at Medieval Westminster’, British Art Studies, 6 (2017) ——  , ‘Translating Jerusalem to Anglo-Norman Lordship’, in Projections of Jerusalem in Europe: A Monumental Network, ed.  by Bianca Kühnel, Renana Bartal, and Neta Bodner (forthcoming) Sloane, Barney, and Gordon Malcolm, Excavations at the Priory of the Order of the Hospital of St John Jerusalem, Clerkenwell, London (London: Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2004)

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Stolzenburg, Xenia, ‘Bestattungen ad sanctissimum: Die Heiligen Gräber von Konstanz und Bologna im Zusammenhang mit Bischofsgräbern’, in Bischöfliches Bauen im 11. Jahrhundert, ed.  by Jörg Jarnut, Ansgar Köb, and Matthias Wemhoff, Mittelalter Studien, 18 (Munich: Fink, 2009), pp. 89–107 Strickland, Matthew, ‘Senlis, Simon (I) de, Earl of Northampton and Earl of Huntingdon (d.  1111–1113)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Thomas, Hugh M., ‘Mowbray, Sir Roger de (d. 1188)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Tyerman, Christopher, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) Van Houts, Elisabeth M. C., Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Basing­ stoke: Macmillan, 1999) ——  , ‘The Warenne View of the Past 1066–1203’, in Anglo-Norman Studies  XXVI: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2003, ed. by John Gillingham (Woodbridge: Boy­ dell, 2004), pp. 103–122 Veach, Colin, Lordship in Four Realms: The Lacy Family, 1166–1241 (Manchester: Man­ chester University Press, 2015) Vincent, Nicholas, ‘Lacy, John de, Third Earl of Lincoln (c.  1192–1240)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) White, Graeme, ‘Aubigny, William d’ [William de Albini, Known as William d’Aubigny Pincernal], First Earl of Arundel’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Wightman, Wilfred E., The Lacy Family in England and Normandy, 1066–1194 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1966) Wilson, Christopher, ‘Gothic Architecture Transplanted: The Nave of the Temple Church in London’, in The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art, ed. by Robin Griffith-Jones and David Park (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010), pp. 19–44

Chapter 6

Family, Faith, and Knights of the Holy Sepulchre in Late and Post-Medieval Wales Kathryn Hurlock Introduction In 1590, Sir Edward Stradling (d. 1609) of St Donat’s in the Vale of Glamorgan commissioned three painted panels to commemorate members of his family which now hang on the north wall of the chancel of St Donat’s church. One depicted Sir Edward himself with his wife, Agnes Gage; the second his grandparents, Edward Stradling and Elizabeth Herbert; the final one his great-grandparents, Thomas Stradling (d. 1480) and Jenet Mathew (d. 1534). Each couple is depicted kneeling in prayer, facing one another. Each couple is dressed in the fashions of the time in which they lived; Sir Edward (d. 1535) is wearing armour, perhaps in reference to his elevation to the Knighthood of the Bath. Above them are their respective family arms, while the boards commemorating Edward and Elizabeth, and Thomas and Jenet, also show their children kneeling in prayer.1 On the board of Thomas and Jenet, Sir Edward had added the following inscription referring to Thomas’s father, Harry (or Henry) Stradling: 1 

The images are accessible online, but were not available for publication. Cardiff, NMW, A(L) 803, Sir Edward (1529–1609) and Lady Agnes Stradlinge (1547–1624), [accessed 28 October 2019]; Cardiff, NMW, A(L) 804; Sir Edward (d.  1535) and Lady Elizabeth (d.  1513) [accessed 28 October 2019]; Cardiff, NMW, A(L)805, Thomas (d. 1480) and Elizabeth Stradlinge (d. 1533) [accessed 28 October 2019]. 2  Jones, ‘Knights of the Holy Sepulchre’, p. 20. 3  Forey, ‘The Emergence of the Military Order in the Twelfth Century’, p. 175. 4  Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West, p. 337.

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involved applicants proving four degrees of nobility in their ancestry.5 Dubbing as a knight was a status symbol, and one that was recognized across Europe. Whilst familial interest in crusading ancestors has received considerable attention in the historiography, this chapter focuses specifically on the desire to associate medieval ancestors with knighthood at the Holy Sepulchre among the families of Wales and the Welsh March.6 It argues that the interest in the order shown in late medieval Glamorgan, and in particular by the influential Sir Edward Stradling, impacted on early modern Cambro-Catholic families, for whom an ancestor who could claim knighthood at Jerusalem was a marker of status at a time when lineage, gentility, and faith were of great importance to the Welsh gentry. It uses, for the first time, Welsh genealogies from the sixteenth century onwards, as well as the visual culture of early modern Wales, to explore how claims relating to medieval ancestry, crusading, and membership of the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre among the gentry were a subtle expression of their Catholic faith, firstly in the post-Reformation period, and later after the Emancipation of Catholics in the nineteenth century. Welsh and Marcher families had their medieval ancestry augmented in the light of these changes, continuing the long tradition of altering genealogies in Wales referred to by Ben Guy as ‘pedigree growth’, when medieval genealogical tracts were altered to reflect changing political requirements.7 In this way Welsh Catholic families used memories of medieval Jerusalem, real or imagined, to create a distinct identity, different from their English neighbours, but one which tied them to co-religionists across Europe.

The Stradlings of St Donats The Stradling family of St Donat’s in the Vale of Glamorgan were advenae, settlers who came to Wales as part of the waves of Anglo-Normans and English who settled across the country. Their origins are obscure, but they probably came to England in the service of the Savoyard Otto de Grandison (d. 1328), and settled at St Donat’s during the reign of Edward I when Peter de Stradling married its heiress, Joan. Over the following century they firmly established their position in south-Walian society, and that of the West Country, by inter5 

Felix Fabri, trans. by Steward, i, pp. 608–21. Cassidy-Welch, ed., Remembering the Crusades and Crusading; Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps. 7  Guy, ‘The Earliest Welsh Genealogies’. 6 

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marrying with other gentry families, extending estates across Glamorganshire and into the West Country.8 Peter de Stradling was custodian of Neath Castle in 1296–1297, and his son Edward took over the patronage of the Cistercian abbey of Neath and granted the monks the advowson of St Donat’s church. Intriguingly given their later interest in the Holy Land, it was probably under Edward’s patronage that the abbey was decorated with floor tiles depicting Saladin and Richard I.9 By the end of the fourteenth century they were becoming one of the most important families in south Wales. At some point in the last years of Richard II’s reign (1377–1399), but certainly before 1407, William Stradling went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land.10 His son Edward reputedly went on pilgrimage in 1453, dying at Jerusalem. William’s grandson, Harry Stradling, undertook the pilgrimage to Jerusalem via Rome in 1476, his detour to ensure that he secured a pardon for his wife, Elizabeth, from the pope. His letter home to her from Rome accompanying the pardon survives, relating his experiences in Rome and advising her that he was hoping to continue his journey east to Jerusalem via Venice.11 According to the Rev. Gamage, he also wrote an account of his trip to Jerusalem which later found its way home to St Donat’s, presumably after his death at Famagusta in 1476. It included poems in Latin, Welsh, French, and Italian to the Holy Sepulchre, and was kept in the family library with his letter to Elizabeth.12 His written account functioned as a guide — both practical and spiritual — but it served another role in the family as a memorial for Harry Stradling within the private sphere of his family. In this way his widow Elizabeth, as the work’s recipient, served as keeper of the family memory of Jerusalem, something which she could have passed on to her son Thomas on whose board the family’s pilgrimage activities are recorded.13 Though subsequent generations of the 8 

Griffiths, ‘The Rise of the Stradlings of St Donat’s’. Rhys Merrick (d.  c.  1586), the genealogist and historian, wrote to Sir Edward in December 1574 to ask to borrow the register, which he had already seen at St Donat’s. Stradling Correspondence, ed. by Traherne, p. 168; the seal matrix is referred to in Edward Stradling’s (d. 1535) will. Thomas, ‘The Stradling Library at St Donat’s’, p. 404. 10  Hurlock, Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage, pp. 114–16; he is identified as a ‘chivaler’ in 1399 and 1400, though there is no indication of where the knighthood was obtained: Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry IV, i: 1399–1401, p. 289; Calendar of Fine Rolls, Henry IV, xii: 1399–1405, p. 3; Merrick, Morganiae archaiographia, ed. by James, p. 43; Powell, A Historie of Cambria, p. 138. 11  Cardiff, West Glamorgan Archives, RISW GGF 3. 12  ‘Extract of a Letter from the Rev. E. Gamage to Llywelyn ab Ifan, Nov 12, 1726’, ed. by Williams, p. 90. 13  For discussion of the role of women and crusading memory, see Lester, ‘What Remains’. 9 

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family did not go to Jerusalem, they remained interested in local pilgrimage, perhaps taking over patronage of the Marian shrine at Penrhys in the Rhondda in the early sixteenth century.14 In none of the contemporary evidence is there reference to any of these men securing knighthood at the Holy Sepulchre, though at least one from Glamorgan did in the fifteenth century, as did one man from north Wales in the sixteenth. Sir Hugh Johnys (d. c. 1485) is commemorated in a memorial brass of c. 1510 which used to be in St Mary’s church, Swansea. In the inscription, Sir Hugh is described being ‘made knight at the holy sepulcre [sic] of oure lord ihū crist in the city of Jerusalem the xiii day of August the yere of our lord gode MXXXxlj’.15 It also relates his service fighting for the emperor of Constantinople against the ‘Turkis and sarsyns’. Another possible Knight of the Holy Sepulchre was Sir John Morgan of Tredegar, whose lost tomb in St Woolos’s in Newport was once decorated with a shield bearing a cross, supposed to be a reference to his knighthood. He certainly adopted the cross on his personal seal following his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, as it was referred to by the poet Gwilym Tew in his verse on Sir John’s pilgrimage.16 In the sixteenth century, Richard Clough of Denbighshire (d.  1570) also attained knighthood in Jerusalem. Richard, a Protestant merchant active on the Continent, was lamented by the poet William Cynwal (d.  1587/88), who referred to his knighthood and pilgrimage, incorporated the badge of knighthood into his own arms and into the stained-glass windows at his house at Bachegraig, and chose to have it depicted on a portrait painted in c. 1550, possibly in Antwerp.17 It is also possible that Hugh Holland, who went to Jerusalem at the start of the seventeenth century was a knight, though as Thomas Fuller put it in the 1660s, ‘he was not made, or he would not own himself ’ as such when he returned to England.18 It could be that he was knighted and declined to use the 14 

Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, ii, ed. by Lake, pp. 503–05 ll. 61–62. The brass was lost in the Blitz of 1941, but rubbings survive from the nineteenth century. Lewis, Welsh Monumental Brasses, pp. 42–43. 16  ‘Syr Sion a’r Groes a rei sel. [The Cross upon his Seal]’. For the full text of the poem, see Thomas, ‘Sir John Morgan of Tredegar’, pp. 40, 42; Hartwell-Jones, Celtic Britain and the Pilgrimage Movement, p. 146. 17  Aberystwyth, NLW, Portrait Collection, No. 99233549802419; late eighteenth-century engraving by James Basire, London, National Portrait Gallery, D25450 and D33536; Pennant, Tours in Wales, ed. by Rhys, ii, p. 135; for William Cynwal’s elegy, see Burgon, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, ii, pp. 372–74. 18  Fuller, The History of the Worthies of England, ed. by Nichols, ii, p. 567. 15 

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title in England as it would not have been looked on favourably by Elizabeth I (r. 1533–1603), a factor which seems to have prevented Richard Clough’s use of it even though he proudly displayed his connection to the order in Wales. Sir Edward Stradling’s claim in 1590 to have ancestors who were Knights of the Holy Sepulchre was not extraordinary, though it was unusual in Wales to commemorate them in the way that he did by including information about them on painted memorial panels. His decision to do so stemmed from his interest in the status of his family, their faith, and his fascination with genealogy and history. It was also part of wider work to promote his family and status: after he inherited St Donat’s from his father, Sir Edward expended considerable time and money in developing the estate, accumulating one of the most important libraries in early modern Wales.19 Late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Welsh members of the gentry were fascinated by their own genealogies, real or invented, and expended considerable energy having them researched and drawn up to prove their gentle status, or praised in poetry.20 In his discussion of Glamorgan gentry, Glanmor Williams described: ‘The passionate interest of the Welsh in genealogy, their intense pride in their pedigree, and their acute sensitivity on the subject were all a source of amusement to their English contemporaries’.21 Sir Edward was little different. He fabricated an account of ‘The Winning of the Lordship of Glamorgan’ (c. 1561–1566), in which he claimed his ancestors were among the twelve knights to accompany Robert FitzHamon in his conquest of Glamorgan.22 His decision to focus on heraldry in these images, and to include the information about knighthood, was all about emphasizing the Stradling family status as members of the gentry. Esteemed reputation was one of the five main ‘patrilineal features’ that defined the concept of gentility in the bardic culture of late medieval Wales and early modern Wales.23 This was particularly important for Edward who 19 

Edward paid for the printing of 1250 copies of his Grammar in 1592, wrote an account of the Norman conquest of Glamorgan which, though historically inaccurate, proved very influential after it was incorporated into the first published history of Wales, David Powel’s Historie of Cambria (1584); Thomas, ‘The Stradling Library at St Donats’; Whittle, ‘The Tudor Gardens of St Donat’s Castle, Glamorgan, South Wales’. 20  Jones, ‘The Gentry of East Glamorgan: Welsh Cultural Dimensions, 1540–1640’, pp. 16–17. 21  Williams, ‘Glamorgan Society, 1536–1642’, pp. 77–78. 22  Powell, The Historie of Cambria, pp. xxiv–xxv. 23  Jones, The Welsh Gentry, p. 23. The other features are a country seat, land and property, family archives, and direct line of descent or hereditary title.

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was praised by contemporaries for ‘maintaining his reputation above all else’, the archdeacon of Brecon commenting in 1580 ‘yow p’fer yo’r credite before yor owne p’vate wealth’ (you prefer your credit before your own private wealth).24 Edward was also singled out for putting ‘the peace of a religious conscience before the ‘p’vise pelf of this transitory worlde’.25 In 1592, in his Cambrobrytannicae Cymraecaeve Linguae Institutiones et Rudimenta to his patron Sir Edward, Siôn Dafydd Rhys (1534–c. 1609), he celebrated him for being ‘yr ydych yn hyglod ar gyfrif eich hynafiaid ac mae gennych eich lle yn sedd eich hynafaid’ (renowned on account of your ancestors and you have your place in your ancestors’ seat).26 He went on to praise him for his humanity and genius, his education and sense of community, all virtues aspired to by the early modern gentleman. As part of highlighting his family lineage, Sir Edward chose to develop the family mausoleum at St Donat’s which had been started in the wake of the closure of the Dominican friary in Cardiff in 1537, when Thomas Stradling’s (d. 1480) remains had been removed to the chancel of St Donat’s. Later in 1573, the remains were moved once again to the new Stradling Chapel at St Donat’s.27 The paintings Sir Edward commissioned would provide memorials to family members whose remains had been moved, but by including references to the pilgrims Edward and Harry, who had died in Jerusalem and Famagusta respectively, he was also providing a memorial for relations buried overseas. He included the memorial depicting himself and his wife, despite the fact that they were both still alive, to signify his place in the family scheme. Yet the status of Knight of the Sepulchre must have held some particular importance for Sir Edward because he did not choose to highlight other honours bestowed on his ancestors: Sir Edward (d. 1535) was dubbed Knight of the Bath in 1513, but no mention is made of that on Edward’s memorial board. Undertaking the Jerusalem pilgrimage was a sign of social prestige in the late Middle Ages, and the desire to commemorate it in various ways, both visual and written, was not uncommon. The beneficial impact on social status was 24 

Stradling Correspondence, ed. by Traherne, p. 90. Stradling Correspondence, ed. by Traherne, p. 90. 26  Rhagymadroddion a Chyflwyniadau Lladin, ed. by Davies, p. 75. 27  Thomas Stradling’s memorial records his removal from the Dominican friary to the chancel, and then to the Stradling chapel. Sir Edward Stradling’s (d. 1535) memorial board relates how he was buried in the chancel in 1536 but translated to the chapel by his nephew, another Edward Stradling, in 1573. His wife’s remains had already been moved from the Merthyr Mawr (where she had died in 1513) to the church in 1536. 25 

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limited for those with titles, but for the middling rank of men, those members of the gentry without title, Jerusalem pilgrimage, and more specifically knighthood at the Sepulchre, had the potential to distinguish them from their peers. Moreover, few men were made knights in fifteenth-century Wales, so to claim that the family had knightly ancestors from that time marked them out as the elite. The Stradlings, as some of the leading men of Glamorgan, would thus want to highlight such an honour.28 Finally, Sir Edward’s interest in family genealogy and status, and in remembering family members who had been to Jerusalem, was given fresh impetus in the year before these memorial boards were produced. Though Sir Edward and Agnes Gage had been married since 1567, they had no children and so the Stradling estate was due to pass to Edward’s great-nephew, John Stradling. In 1589, John’s father died leaving him with only a silver salt cellar by way of inheritance in the full expectation that the St Donat’s legacy would provide for him instead. Perhaps mindful of the end of his direct line, and reminded of it by the death of John’s father, Sir Edward sought to commemorate his ancestors and remind Sir John of his ancestry.

Catholicism in Reformation Wales Reference to knighthood in Jerusalem by Sir Edward was also a subtle way of showing his religious conviction. In the late sixteenth century, Wales had quite a reputation as a bastion of the Old Faith with particular concentrations of recusant families in south-east and north-east Wales. In late 1575, William Allen claimed that in addition to several parts of northern England, Catholicism continued ‘throughout ancient Britain — Wales as they call it — [where] cities and populous towns are less corrupted’.29 In 1605, when Bishop Robert of Hereford (1603–1617) raided Monmouthshire homes in his search for Jesuit priests, he ‘found houses full of alters [sic], images, books of superstition, reliques of idolatry, but left desolate of men and women’ who had ‘fledd into Wales’.30 The protection afforded to Catholics, and specifically to the Jesuit mission, was boosted by the fact that Edward Somerset, fourth earl of Worcester (1550–1628), a major 28 

Van Herwaarden, Between Saint James and Erasmus, p. 306; Williams, ‘The Political and Administrative History of Glamorgan’, p. 166. 29  ‘Dr Allen to Father Everard Mercurian on the Conversion of England, Anon. s.d.l.; Probably Rome, 1575–6’, p. 63. 30  London, TNA, SP 14/14, fol. 116r, quoted in Thomas, ‘The Society of Jesus in Wales’, p. 575.

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landowner of lands in Wales and the border, gave the Jesuits estates.31 Only three years before Sir Edward had the memorial boards painted, an Act had stipulated that recusants had to pay a fine of £20 per annum, something that few, if any, could afford. Sir Edward Stradling was sympathetic to the strain it placed on his friends, apparently undervaluing the estate of William Griffith of Llanvithyn in 1587 so that he paid less than the Act demanded.32 His sympathy to Catholics may have reflected the strong Catholic faith of the rest of his family. His father, Sir Thomas Stradling, was a well-known Catholic who was appointed to search out heretics by Mary I in 1557.33 Under her sister, Elizabeth I, he spent time in the Tower of London for the promotion of a miraculous cross that appeared in a storm-damaged tree on the St Donat’s estate in 1559. It was soon resorted to by eager pilgrims, and four drawings of it, commissioned by Sir Thomas and distributed for the benefit of those who could not visit in person, reached the Continent and the papal court.34 A poem was composed in its honour.35 He was eventually released, but the criticism his overt Catholicism attracted perhaps suggests one reason why he was not chosen for commemoration when his son ordered the panels to his forebears, and to himself, to be painted in 1590. Whether or not he was a practising Catholic is not known, but by the mid-sixteenth century adherence to Catholicism had become synonymous with Welsh identity, Protestantism viewed as an ‘English’ idea, as ffydd Saeson (the faith of the English), and as such would have complemented Sir Edward’s fervent interest and pride in Welsh history. These views were tempered somewhat under Elizabeth I, but feelings against the English imposition of the reformed religion was so strong in some parts of Wales that in the early seventeenth century, the poet Edward Dafydd composed a work to stimulate rebellion against it.36 Moreover, the choice of design for the Stradling memorial — images of couples kneeling in prayer — was a pre-Reformation style that was firmly Catholic 31 

Thomas, ‘The Society of Jesus in Wales’, p. 579. Pugh, ‘William Griffith of Llanvuthyn’, p. 14. 33  Calendar of Patent Rolls, Philip and Mary, iii: 1555–57, pp. 281–82. 34  Cardiff, Central Library, Hafod MS 6, fols 106r–107r is a Catholic work in Welsh which includes the image. 35  For a discussion of the miracle, see Law, ‘The Miraculous Cross of St Donat’s’; Williams, ‘The Miracles at St Donat’s’; Clark, ‘The Cross at St Donat’s’. Calendar of State Papers Domestic, ed. by Lemon, p. 177; for the depositions taken at St Donat’s in 1561: London, TNA, SP 12/17, fols 41r–42r; TNA, SP 12/17, fol. 39r–v. 36  Gruffydd, ‘Awdl Wrthyrfelgar gan Edward Dafydd’. 32 

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in context.37 Its location in the chancel of St Donat’s church means that it would have been displayed in a largely private space, the church being used by the family and members of the Stradling household. It was similar to the more ornate and overtly Catholic memorial to the Towneley family in Lancashire (c. 1601), but lacked the more religious imagery of that work, perhaps because that would have been a step too far for the conformist Edward.38 The form was unusual for Wales, but it could be found in Herefordshire where the recusant Margery de la Downes (d. 1598) and her husband George were commemorated in a similar way in Bishops Frome church.39 Family faith was also highlighted in this work, the coat of arms on the memorial showing the Stradling descent from the Turbevilles, an ‘outstanding recusant family’ at the time.40 The Stradling family’s faith suggests another reason for Edward’s desire to refer to the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre in his commemorations: Continental influences. In the late sixteenth century, there was a fashion for commemorating Jerusalem pilgrims in the Low Countries where some of Edward’s siblings had gone into exile. Here there was a clear trend for commemorating Jerusalem pilgrims and knighthood at the Holy Sepulchre in portraits, stained glass, and memorial works, and it is not inconceivable that information about this particular style of commemoration found its way to Edward either through family communiques, or from the exiled Catholic community in the Low Countries.41 Thus the unusual memorial may have been influenced by the style of the Low Countries via the Anglo-Welsh Catholic community in exile, and used as a way to remind John Stradling and others of the lineage of the Stradling family at a time when the inheritance of the estate was passing away from the main line, and to underscore the ways in which the Catholic faith of the Stradlings was so under threat. Three of Edward’s own siblings lived in exile abroad so that they could practice their faith. His younger brother David (b. 1537) lived in the Low Countries, and at one time went to Madrid to train as a priest.42 His sister Damascine (or Damascene, whose name itself signalled the devotion of her 37 

Badham, ‘Kneeling in Prayer’, p. 58. Badham, ‘Kneeling in Prayer’, pp. 58–59. 39  Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls, ed. by Bowler and McCann, p. 5. 40  Jones, ‘Tudor Glamorgan and the Historian’, p. 26. 41  John Gage wrote to Edward from Liege expressing his concern that letters were not safely arriving with him. Stradling Correspondence, ed. by Traherne, p. 220. Hugh Owen of the Llyn Peninsula functioned as the Catholic intelligencer in the Low Countries. See Loomie, The Spanish Elizabethans, pp. 53–93. 42  Pugh, ‘William Griffith of Llanvuthyn’, p. 9. 38 

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family to the Holy Land) settled in Louvain as maid of honour to the duchess of Feria ( Jane Dormer (d. 1612), as was) in the household which became the ‘base for the Catholic exiles’ before she moved with her mistress to Spain.43 Jane (or Gwenllian), another sister, also lived abroad.44 Edward chose not to go into exile, head as he was of his family’s estates, and was to all appearances loyal to the English crown, even reporting information of a Catholic plot to the Council in the Marches.45 That he did so no doubt reflected a desire to maintain his position without drawing the wrath of the authorities down for his possible adherence to Catholicism. Having been an active MP in two Marian parliaments, he retired to his Welsh estates with the accession of Elizabeth I where, though he was conformist, he was no reformer. Wales actually had a strong Catholic presence at this time, and was seen as ‘the stronghold of the Catholics’ throughout the sixteenth century, several commentators complaining about the Welsh reluctance to surrender their Catholic practices and even, according to the Spanish ambassador writing in 1543, threatening to kill any preachers sent into Wales.46 The adherence to traditional Catholic practices by Welshmen and women who considered themselves members of the Established Church was not, by any means, unusual, as a substantial number continued to engage in practices that were synonymous with Catholicism, such as the veneration of holy wells, or the use of commemorative cross-slabs which had fallen out of favour in England, particularly in south-east Wales.47

The Influence of the Stradlings The identification of three generations of the Stradling family as Knights of the Holy Sepulchre by Sir Edward Stradling, the development of the library at St Donat’s under his guidance, and his widely respected position as a scholar and genealogist may account for the marked increase in the numbers of Knights of the Holy Sepulchre appearing in Welsh genealogies in the early seventeenth 43  Orofino, ‘Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt’, p.  145; Stradling Correspondence, ed. by Traherne, pp. 342–48. 44  Stradling Correspondence, ed. by Traherne, p. 221. 45  Orofino, ‘Coelum non animum’, p.  150. For the letter in which Edward Stradling reported a Catholic plot to the Council of the Marches in May 1578, see Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs, ii, ed. by Hume, p. 579. 46  Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Vatican Archives, i, p. 389. Froude, History of England, vi, p. 190. 47  Gray, ‘Post-Medieval Cross Slabs in South-East Wales’.

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century. Men with an interest in history and genealogy regularly wrote to Sir Edward for assistance, or asked to borrow books; the library he amassed in his lifetime ‘became at once the envy and the quarry of many historians and antiquarians in both England and Wales’.48 According to Antony Wood, he was known ‘for his eminent encouragement of learning and learned men, and for his great expense and indefatigable industry in collecting together several monuments and ancient manuscripts of learning and antiquity’.49 His ability to determine genealogies that enhanced the prestige of his contemporaries was sought out by Sir William Cecil, who appealed to Sir Edward to bring him his pedigree (which Edward had traced, erroneously, to Robert FitzHamon (d. 1107) and the first Normans in Glamorgan), which then inspired Sir William to claim origins in Glamorgan and the Welsh March.50 Gervase Babington, bishop of Llandaff (c. 1550–1610), also wrote to him to ask for guidance on his own writing, whilst Sir Nichols Poynz of Tockington appealed for his aid in verifying his family history in 1584.51 When Henry Vernon was researching his own pedigrees, he wrote to Sir Edward because he had been ‘informed there remayne in yor handes dyvers pedigrees and notes’.52 In about the same year that Sir Edward commissioned the panels at St Donat’s, a pedigree of Welsh families identified John Carne of Nether Gwent (c. 1300–1350) as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.53 Two branches of his direct descendants were among the leading Catholic gentry of south Wales. Thomas Carne of Ewenny (c. 1538–1603) was identified as a Catholic on a list drawn up for Mary Queen of Scots in 1574, and accused of failing to engage in Anglican worship by the bishop of Llandaff three years later.54 On the Nash branch of the family, Thomas’s niece Jane married the Catholic William Griffith of Llanvithyn (c. 1545–1605).55 But there were also links between the Carne and Stradling families: when William Griffith went into exile on the Continent in the early 1570s he joined a group of Catholics that included Edward Stradling’s younger 48 

Lewis, ‘The Literary History of Glamorgan from 1550 to 1770’, p. 594. Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis, ed. by Bliss, ii, col. 50. 50  Merrick, Morganiae archaiographia, ed. by James, p. 150. 51  Stradling Correspondence, ed. by Traherne, pp. 277, 284–85. 52  Stradling Correspondence, ed. by Traherne, pp. 288–89. 53  BL, Add. MS 18114, c. 1590. See also BL, MS Harl. 5835, a book of English and Welsh pedigrees, c. 1610. 54  Ryan, ‘Diocesan Returns of Recusants for England and Wales’, p. 94. 55  Burke, A  Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, iv, p. 480. 49 

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brother, David, and in 1587 when William Carne was fined for his recusancy, it seems that Edward Stradling, in his capacity as local commissioner, undervalued William’s estates so that he paid a lower fine.56 More significantly, Sir Edward Stradling had a hand, together with Sir Edward Mansel, in securing the patent for a heraldic visitation of Wales in 1585 for the Welsh poet and genealogist Lewys Dwnn (d. 1616), and consulted him and others for his research.57 Between then and 1614 he collected pedigrees of Welsh families in his capacity as deputy herald-at-arms for Wales. Lewys Dwnn was the first to describe Aaron ap Bledri, lord of Cilsant, as ‘Marchog Bed Crist’ and Elidir Ddu as ‘marchog o grefydd’ and ‘marchog o Rods’.58 He also identified Harry Salusbury as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.59 Dwnn disclosed that he got the information about another knight, Owen Perrot, from some unidentified records held by George Owen of Henllys, whose driving ambition (according to Francis Jones), was ‘to prove that he was a blood descendent of the Norman Martins, the first Lords Marcher of Cemes’, the lordship which his father had bought in 1543.60 He was the first man to compose a corpus of Pembrokeshire families. As part of his methodology, he wrote to gentry families in the county asking them for information on, among other things, church memorials which might account for the identification of Aaron as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, as his reputed effigy in Llangattock church was identified as such.61 There was also a link between the Perrots and the Stradlings which might account for the influence of one family on another, as Owen Perrot was the patron of several churches in Pembrokeshire of which a William Stradling, a younger brother of the Stradlings of St Donat’s, was the incumbent and with whom Perrot had ‘a particularly close relationship’.62 The interest in recusancy in the sixteenth century might also explain the belief, without basis, that two members of the Salusbury (or Salisbury) family were Knights of the Holy Sepulchre. Thomas Salusbury of Lleweni went to Oxford, where he apparently joined the Babington plot against Elizabeth I.63 56 

Pugh, ‘William Griffith of Llanvithyn’, pp. 9, 13. Dwnn, Heraldic Visitations, ii, p. 7; Williams, ‘Glamorgan Society, 1536–1642’, p. 80. 58  Dwnn, Heraldic Visitations, i, pp. 65, 114. 59  Dwnn, Heraldic Visitations, ii, p. 331. 60  Dwnn, Heraldic Visitations, ii, p. 257. See also Charles, George Owen of Henllys, p. 111; Jones, ‘An Approach’, p. 379; Robinson, ‘Knighted Welsh Landowners, 1485–1558’, p. 524. 61  Fenton, Tours in Wales, ed. by Fisher, pp. 74–75. 62  Turvey, ‘Priest and Patron’, pp. 17, 19. 63  Roberts, ‘The Renaissance in the Vale of Clwyd’, p. 55. 57 

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Several other individuals were identified as Knights of the Holy Sepulchre by works written at around the time Lewys Dwnn was composing his Heraldic Visitations. Glover’s 1580 Visitation of Cheshire named Steven Bamville, grandson of Alexander de Strouton, the steward of Earl Ranulph of Chester (d.  1237), as a ‘Knight of Jerusalem’, and claimed that Steven’s brother Alexander was ‘slaine in the Holy Land’.64 John Williams, an obscure man who apparently invented several of the genealogies in this work,65 claimed that Cyllin Ynfyd (d. c. 1100), probably from Anglesey, was a knight in his Llyfr Baglan (c. 1600–1607) even though at the time Cyllin reputedly lived there is no firm evidence that men were dubbed knights of this order in Jerusalem.66 Another cluster of men identified as Knights of the Holy Sepulchre appears in the Golden Grove Book of Pedigrees. The Golden Grove Book was transcribed under the patronage of Edmund Pryce of Rhydyberne (c. 1692–1774) from pedigrees drawn up by William Lewes of Llwynderw (1651–1722). Lewes probably based them on the pedigrees of David Edwardes.67 Francis Jones argued that the Golden Grove Book was ultimately based on the Protheroe MSS which are in the handwriting of George Owen of Henllys (d. 1613) and, that following his death, they were copied and extended by George William Griffith (d. 1653).68 The Golden Grove book identifies two more Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, Griffith ab Eilidir Goch of Carmarthenshire (c. 1200) and Tudor ap Grono of Montgomeryshire (c. 1250). David Edwardes of Rhydgorse was also responsible for drawing up the west Wales pedigrees, later added to by William Lewes and Hugh Thomas, that listed Elidur Ddu as a knight.69 One of the most intriguing individuals associated with knighthood at the Holy Sepulchre at this time was a member of the Stedman family of Strata Florida, the former Cistercian abbey in mid-Wales, who had settled there in the early 1570s. According to the Dale Castle MS (c. 1709), a man called Stedman, son of the ‘duke of Arabia’, had been banished and found his way 64 

The Visitation of Cheshire in the Year 1580 Made by Robert Glover, ed.  by Rylands, pp. 212–13. 65  Jones, ‘An Approach’, p. 377. 66  Llyfr Baglan, ed. by Bradney, p. 301. This book also refers to John Pye of The Mynd in Herefordshire who went on pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem in the fifteenth century. It refers to him doing the ‘24 acts of Chivalry’ but does not explicitly say he became a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, ibid., p. 57. 67  Jones, ‘An Approach’, pp. 462–63. 68  Jones, ‘An Approach’, pp. 458–59. 69  Jones, ‘An Approach’, p. 460.

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to Jerusalem at the time of the Third Crusade. There he impressed Richard I, was made a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and returned to England where he married a Joan Tatshal. Ten generations later, his descendants in the Stedman family acquired Strata Florida Abbey in Cardiganshire.70 There is no contemporary evidence for a Stedman on the Third Crusade, but it appears to have been widely believed in the late sixteenth century because reference to Sir John Stedman, sheriff of Cardiganshire in 1580, and his association with the duke of Arabia, appears in Dwnn’s Heraldic Visitation.71 The story may have come not from genealogical fact, but from the romantic play Common Conditions (1576), which opens with a character called ‘Sedmond’ being expelled from the court of the duke of Arabia.72 It seems probable that the Stedman family, seeking more illustrious origins, used this story to claim descent from the duke of Common Conditions rather than because of any adherence to Catholicism, the emphasis seemingly on the ‘fact’ that they were descended from a duke more than anything else. The inclusion of a reference to knighthood at the Holy Sepulchre could have been an assumption made by later genealogists who erroneously associated the Third Crusade with knighthood.73

Catholicism or Traditionalism? Sir Edward Stradling’s influence as an antiquarian and genealogist was just one part of the coincidence of influences which led to the identification of so many Knights of the Holy Sepulchre in Wales in the decades around c. 1600. Religion may also have had a part to play, as most of these named individuals were ancestors of families which were still practising Catholics in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. For these families, a pilgrim or crusading ancestor, and particularly one who had secured knighthood at the Holy Sepulchre, lent a degree of social prestige; in naming them, Welsh and Marcher families could claim the same illustrious background as one of the leading families of Glamorgan. 70 

Dale Castle Book of Pedigrees in the hand of Iaco Dewi ( James Davies, 1648–1722): Aberystwyth, NLW, MS 14214B. See also Aberystwyth, NLW, Peniarth MS 156, showing the pedigrees of gentry families. 71  Dwnn, Heraldic Visitations, i, p. 19; Phillips, List of the Sheriffs of Cardiganshire, p. 8. 72  Five Anonymous Plays, ed. by Farmer, p. 186. 73  ‘H. F. F.’ suggested that the Stedmans of Strata Florida held on to it because they had ‘what may be called a superstitious reverence for their old faith’. H. F. F., ‘Catholic “Survivals” in Wales’, p. 33. It seems, however, that the new owners of Strata Florida did not support Catholicism as so many gentry families in Wales did at this time. Cunnane, ‘Ceredigion and the Old Faith’, p. 6.

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There was another resurgence of interest in claiming medieval ancestry which included Knights of the Holy Sepulchre in the nineteenth century, perhaps encouraged by the growing emancipation of Catholics in Britain and Ireland, which culminated with the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829.74 John Burke’s 1838 Genealogical and Heraldic History identified a number of individuals believed to have achieved knighthood during, and as a result of, the crusades: Sir Aron [sic] ab Rhys ab Bledri, lord of Kil Saint [Cilsant], and knight of the Sepulchre, who went with Richard Coeur de Lion to Palestine against the infidels […] During the crusades, and after, Wales seems to have supplied its quota of knights to the order of the Grand Cross. Their names occurred occasionally in MS. Pedigrees, such as Sir Grufydd ab Elidyr Goch (Rufus), Sir Harry Ddu (Niger) [Salisbury], Sir Matthew Caradog of Swansea, knight of Rhodes; Sir John Rudd, of the family of Rudds of Aberglasney […] who had been governor of Ystrad Meyrig [sic] castle.75

Several of these names were those from Dwnn’s Visitations or the Golden Grove Book, but I know of no other reference to Matthew Caradog as a Knight of Rhodes.76 Though there is no supporting evidence for John Rudd’s participation in the crusade movement, it is plausible that he joined the Third Crusade in response to Archbishop Baldwin’s 1188 preaching tour of Wales, though there is no evidence that he became a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.77 It was also in another edition of Burke’s, his Landed Gentry of 1847, that Madoc ap Caradoc was first described as a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.78 Two Welshmen descended from Madoc Caradoc were also identified with this title — Madoc ap Meurig and his grandson Griffith Gethin, apparently knighted by Richard II — but not in Burke’s book. They are first listed in the Genealogy of the Earls of Landaff (c. 1895), a work that reportedly traced the genealogy of the Irishman Francis, second earl of Llandaff (d. 1833) back to his origins in south Wales.79 It was written for Arnold Harris Matthew (1852–1919), a conflicted Catholic, ordained in 1877 in Scotland but eventually consecrated into the ‘Old Catholic Church’ in 1908. He claimed that he was the fourth earl of Llandaff of Thomastown through descent of his grandfather, and began 74 

For the revival of Catholicism in the wake of the Act, see Heimann, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England, pp. 6–9; Walsham, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain, pp. 177–206. 75  Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic History, p. 382. 76  Carmarthenshire Archives, GB 0211 CAWDOR, Golden Grove Book, p. 197. 77  Hurlock, Wales and the Crusades, p. 85. 78  Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry, ii, p. 844. 79  Matthew, The Genealogy of the Earls of Landaff, pp. 18, 21.

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to use the title on the death of his father in 1894, something the Genealogy sought to prove.80 The work is error-laden, and the dating in the genealogies makes some parts of it impossible to reconcile, while Clark’s Limbus patrum actually claimed that Griffith Gethin received his knighthood in Ireland.81 The Genealogy also included Ieuan ap Seisyllt (c. 1100–1150), another supposed knight, who was first identified in the antiquarian G. T. Clark’s Limbus patrum (1866).82 There is no reference to their knighthood before the nineteenth century, and it is clear that the Genealogy was a work produced only to support the familial fantasies of Arnold Matthew.

Conclusion There is little if any contemporary evidence for medieval membership of the order among the Welsh elite, with the possible exceptions of Sir Hugh Johnnys and Sir John ap Morgan of Tredegar, though there is no doubt that in the sixteenth century Sir Richard Clough was knighted in Jerusalem. What can be said with certainly is that in the late sixteenth century, Sir Edward Stradling chose to have his pilgrim ancestors commemorated as Knights of the Holy Sepulchre, a designation which had no surviving contemporary evidence, but which seems to have been widely accepted. The social position of the Stradling family, Sir Edward’s influence on the study of history and genealogy of Wales, and his family’s adherence to Catholicism (both in Wales, but also on the Continent), arguably prompted other Catholic gentry families to identify ancestors who were Knights of the Sepulchre in their own genealogies, the designations finding their way into the works of Dwnn and others. The Welsh had shown comparatively little interest in the crusading movement during its heyday (c. 1095–1291), due in large part to its strong association with the English crown.83 For that reason, claiming a crusading ancestor did not have quite the same resonance for the Welsh as it did for others in Europe. Claiming an ancestor who was a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, however, had a particular significance for the Welsh and for some of the advenae families of Wales for two reasons. The first was that, in a country with comparatively 80  Burke, A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire, p. 361; ‘Who Is Earl of Llandaff ?’, p. 6; Edmonds, ‘Mathew, Arnold Harris’. 81  Clark, Limbus patrum, p. 7. 82  Clark, Limbus patrum, pp. 7–8. 83  Hurlock, Wales and the Crusades, passim.

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few medieval knights and reliant on the English king for that honour, knighthood in Jerusalem offered an internationally recognized and illustrious alternative. The second is that in late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Wales, it differentiated the Welsh and the descendants of advenae in Wales from the ‘English’ Reformation which, due to the coincidence of its coincidence with the Act of Union in 1536, was associated with the English crown. Creating the idea that they had ancestors who were knighted for the most pious of devotional acts in the Middle Ages — pilgrimage or crusade to Jerusalem — was a way of signalling difference, and created a separate identity for these Welsh and advenae families. Later genealogical works, particular in the nineteenth century when there was a revival of interest in all things medieval, identified further members of the knighthood, though again the Catholic faith, both at the turn of the seventeenth century and in the nineteenth, appears to have played a role in stimulating the fabrication of knightly ancestors. Though the source materials for works like Burke’s Landed Gentry are often only vaguely alluded to, the emphasis on medieval family history and genealogy of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the legacy of the genealogies produced at that time, can be seen in the entries for families claiming an ancestor who was a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Resources Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales [NLW], Portrait Collection, No. 99233549802419 —— , MS 14214B —— , Peniarth MS 156 Cardiff, Cardiff Central Library, Hafod MS 6 Cardiff, National Museum of Wales [NMW], A(L) 803, Sir Edward (1529–1609) and Lady Agnes Stradling (1547–1624) [accessed 28 October 2019] —— , A(L) 804, Sir Edward (d. 1535) and Lady Elizabeth (d. 1513) [accessed 28 October 2019] —— , A(L) 805, Thomas (d. 1480) and Elizabeth Stradlinge (d. 1533) [accessed 28 October 2019] Cardiff, West Glamorgan Archives, RISW GGF 3 Carmarthen, Carmarthenshire Archives, GB 0211 CAWDOR London, British Library [BL], Add. MS 18114

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—— , MS Harl. 5835 London, National Portrait Gallery, D25450 —— , D33536 London, The National Archives [TNA], SP 12/17

Primary Sources Calendar of Fine Rolls, Henry IV, xii: 1399–1405 (London: HMSO, 1931) Calendar of Patent Rolls, Henry IV, i: 1399–1401 (London: HMSO, 1903) Calendar of Patent Rolls, Philip and Mary, iii: 1555–57 (London: HMSO, 1938) Calendar of State Papers Domestic: Edward, Mary and Elizabeth, 1547–80, ed. by Robert Lemon (London: HMSO, 1856) Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Vatican Archives, i: 1558–1571 (London: HMSO, 1916) Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs, Preserved Principally in the Archives of Simancas, ii, ed. by Martin A. S. Hume (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) ‘Dr  Allen to Father Everard Mercurian on the Conversion of England. Anon. s.d.l.; Probably Rome, 1575–6’, in Catholic Record Society: Miscellanea, vii, Publications of the Public Record Society, 9 (London: Aberdeen University Press, 1901), pp. 63–69 Dwnn, Lewys, Heraldic Visitations of Wales and Part of the Marches, between the Years 1586 and 1613, under the Authority of Clarencieux and Norroy, Two Kings at Arms, ed. by Samuel Rush Meyrick, 2 vols (Llandovery: William Rees, 1846) ‘Extract of a Letter from the Rev. E. Gamage to Llywelyn ab Ifan, Nov 12, 1726’, in The Doom of Colyn Dolphyn: A Poem, with Notes Illustrative of Various Traditions in Glamor­­ ganshire, ed. by Taliesin Williams (London: Longman, 1837), p. 90 Felix Fabri (c.  1480–1483 a.d.), trans. by Aubrey Steward, 2  vols (London: Palestine Pilgrims’ Text Society, 1896) Fenton, Richard, Tours in Wales (1804–1813), ed. by John Fisher (London: Bedford, 1917) Five Anonymous Plays, ed. by John S. Farmer, Early English Drama Society (Guildford: Traylen, 1908) Fuller, Thomas, The History of the Worthies of England, ed.  by John Nichols, new edn, 2 vols (London: Rivington, 1811) Gwaith Lewys Morgannwg, ii, ed. by A. Cynfael Lake (Aberystwyth: Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2006) Llyfr Baglan: or The Book of Baglan, Compiled between the Years 1600 and 1607, ed. by Joseph Alfred Bradney (London: Mitchell Hughes and Clarke, 1910) Merrick, Rhys, Morganiae archaiographia: A  Book of the Antiquities of Glamorganshire, ed. by Brian L. James, i (Barry Island: South Wales Record Society, 1983) Pennant, Thomas, Tours in Wales, ed. by John Rhys, 3 vols (Caernarvon: H. Humphreys, 1883) Powell, David, The Historie of Cambria, Now Called Wales (London: Ralf Newberie and Henrie Denham, 1584) Recusants in the Exchequer Pipe Rolls, 1581–1592, ed. by Hugh Bowler and Timothy J. McCann, Catholic Record Society Publications, 71 (London: Catholic Record Society, 1986)

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Rhagymadroddion a Chyflwyniadau Lladin, 1551–1632, ed.  by Ceri Davies (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1980) Ryan, Patrick, ‘Diocesan Returns of Recusants for England and Wales 1577’, in Publications of the Catholic Record Society: Miscellanea, xxii (London: Catholic Record Society, 1921), pp. 1–114 Stradling Correspondence: A Series of Letters Written in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, ed. by John M. Traherne (London: Longman, 1840) The Visitation of Cheshire in the Year 1580 Made by Robert Glover, Somerset Herald, ed. by John Paul Rylands (London: Harleian Society, 1882) Wood, Antony, Athenae Oxoniensis: An Exact History of All the Writers and Bishops Who Have Had their Education in the University of Oxford: To Which Are Added the Fasti or the Annals of the Said University, ed.  by Philip Bliss, 4 vols (Oxford: Rivington, 1813–1820)

Secondary Works Badham, Sally, ‘Kneeling in Prayer: English Commemorative Art, 1330–1670’, The British Art Journal, 16 (2015), 58–72 Burgon, John William, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 2  vols (London: Robert Jennings, 1849) Burke, Bernard, A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland, 2 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1847) —— , A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire, new edn (London: Harrison, 1866) Burke, John, A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, 4 vols (London: Henry Colburn, 1838) Cassidy-Welch, Megan, Remembering the Crusades and Crusading (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017) Charles, Bertie G., George Owen of Henllys: A Welsh Elizabethan (Aberystwyth: National Library of Wales Press, 1973) Clark, George T., ‘The Cross at St Donat’s’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, 3rd ser., 11 (1865), 33–48 ——  , Limbus patrum Morganiae et Glamorganiae: Being the Genealogies of the Older Families of the Lordships of Morgan and Glamorgan (London: Wyman, 1886) Cunnane, James, ‘Ceredigion and the Old Faith’, Ceredigion: Journal of the Ceredigion Antiquarian Society, 12 (1994), 3–34 Edmonds, Stephen, ‘Mathew, Arnold Harris (1852–1919)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 10 January 2013 Forey, Alan J., ‘The Emergence of the Military Order in the Twelfth Century’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985), 175–95 Froude, James A., History of England: From the Fall of Wolsey to the Defeat of the Spanish Armada, vi (London: Longmans, Green, 1887)

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Gray, Madeleine, ‘Post-Medieval Cross Slabs in South-East Wales: Closet Catholics or Stubborn Traditionalists?’, Antiquaries Journal, 96 (2016), 207–40 Griffiths, Ralph Griffiths, ‘The Rise of the Stradlings of St Donat’s’, Morgannwg, 7 (1963), 15–47 Gruffydd, R. Geraint, ‘Awdl Wrthyrfelgar gan Edward Dafydd’, Llên Cymru, 5 (1959), 155–63 Guy, Ben, ‘The Earliest Welsh Genealogies: Textual Layering and the Phenomenon of “Pedigree Growth”’, Early Medieval Europe, 26 (2018), 462–85 Hartwell-Jones, G., Celtic Britain and the Pilgrimage Movement (London: Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion, 1912) Heimann, Mary, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995) Herwaarden, Jan van, Between Saint James and Erasmus: Studies in Late-Medieval Religious Life-Devotions and Pilgrimages in the Netherlands (Leiden: Brill, 2003) H. F. F., ‘Catholic “Survivals” in Wales’, Bye-gones Relating to Wales and the Border Counties ( January–March 1901), 33–34 Hurlock, Kathryn, Wales and the Crusades, c. 1095–1291 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011) —— , Medieval Welsh Pilgrimage, c. 1100–1500 (New York: Palgrave, 2018) Jones, E. Gareth, ‘Tudor Glamorgan and the Historian’, Morgannwg, 18 (1974), 12–30 Jones, Francis, ‘An Approach to Welsh Genealogy’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of the Cymmrodorion (1949 for 1948), 303–466 —— , ‘Knights of the Holy Sepulchre’, Journal of the Society of the Church in Wales (1979), 11–33 Jones, J.  Gwynfor, ‘The Gentry of East Glamorgan: Welsh Cultural Dimensions, 1540–1640’, Morgannwg, 37 (1993), 8–39 —— , The Welsh Gentry, 1536–1640, 2nd edn (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2016) Law, T. G., ‘The Miraculous Cross of St Donat’s’, English Historical Review, 1.3 (1886), 513–17 Lester, Anne E., ‘What Remains: Women, Relics and Remembrance in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History, 40 (2014), 311–28 Lewis, Ceri W., ‘The Literary History of Glamorgan from 1550 to 1770’, in Glamorgan County History, iv, ed. by Glanmor Williams (Cardiff: Glamorgan County History Trust, 1974), pp. 535–639 Lewis, John M., Welsh Monumental Brasses: A Guide (Cardiff: National Museum of Wales, 1974) Loomie, Albert, The Spanish Elizabethans: The English Exiles at the Court of Philip  III (New York: Fordham University Press, 1963) Matthew, Murray Alexander, The Genealogy of the Earls of Landaff of Thomastown, County Tipperary, Ireland (London: Simpkin, 1895) Morris, Colin, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Orofino, Anna Maria, ‘Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt: David Stradling (1537–c.  1595) and his Circle of Welsh Catholic Exiles in Continental Europe’, Recusant History, 32 (2015), 139–58

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Paul, Nicholas L., To Follow in their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012) Phillips, John Roland, A List of the Sheriffs of Cardiganshire, from a.d. 1539 to a.d. 1868 (Carmarthen: Morgan & Davies, 1868) Pugh, Frank H., ‘William Griffith of Llanvuthyn: A Glamorgan Recusant’, Morgannwg, 30 (1986), 8–19 Roberts, Enid P., ‘The Renaissance in the Vale of Clwyd’, Flintshire Historical Society (1954–1955), 52–63 Robinson, W. R. B., ‘Knighted Welsh Landowners, 1485–1558: Corrigenda’, Welsh History Review, 19 (1998–1999), 517–25 Thomas, D. R., ‘Sir John Morgan of Tredegar’, Archaeologia Cambrensis (1884), 35–45 Thomas, Graham C.  G., ‘The Stradling Library at St  Donat’s, Glamorgan’, National Library of Wales Journal, 24 (1986), 402–19 Thomas, Hannah, ‘The Society of Jesus in Wales, c. 1600–1679: Rediscovering the Cwm Jesuit Library at Hereford Cathedral’, Journal of Jesuit Studies, 1.4 (2014), 572–88 Turvey, Roger K., ‘Priest and Patron: A Study of a Gentry Family’s Patronage of the Church in South-West Wales in the Later Middle Ages’, Journal of the Welsh Ecclesiastical Society, 8 (1991), 7–19 Walsham, Alexandra, Catholic Reformation in Protestant Britain (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016) Whittle, Elisabeth, ‘The Tudor Gardens of St Donat’s Castle, Glamorgan, South Wales’, Garden History, 27 (1999), 109–26 ‘Who Is Earl of Llandaff ?’, Western Mail, 13 October 1898, p. 6 Williams, David, ‘The Miracles at St Donat’s’, The Welsh Review, 6 (1947), 33–38 Williams, Glanmor, ‘Glamorgan Society, 1536–1642’, in Glamorgan County History, iv, ed. by Glanmor Williams (Cardiff: Glamorgan County History Trust, 1974), pp. 73–141 Williams, Penry, ‘The Political and Administrative History of Glamorgan, 1536–1642’, in Glamorgan County History, iv, ed.  by Glanmor Williams (Cardiff: Glamorgan County History Trust, 1974), pp. 143–201

Chapter 7

Eleanor de Quincy and Imagined Crusading in the Lambeth Apocalypse (London, Lambeth Palace, MS 209) Laura J. Whatley

T

he Lambeth Apocalypse (London, Lambeth Palace, MS 209) was made in England, perhaps at St  Albans or Canterbury, between 1260 and 1275.1 The manuscript is a densely and lavishly illustrated copy of the Book of Revelation and includes excerpts from the popular ninth-century allegorical commentary by Berengaudus.2 The Lambeth Apocalypse was produced at a time when luxury illuminated Apocalypse manuscripts were especially popular among noble and royal readers in England. It is one of about twenty deluxe Apocalypse manuscripts that survive from the mid-thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries, and the analysis and reception of these English Apocalypses has been the subject of numerous studies.3 Most scholars contend 1 

Morgan, Lambeth Apocalypse; Lewis, Reading Images, esp. pp. 296–309; O’Hear, Contrasting Images of the Book of Revelation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Art, esp. pp. 11–42; Morgan, ‘The Lambeth Apocalypse’, pp. 166–67; Kumler, Translating Truth, pp. 76–90. 2  On the history, popularity, and use of the commentary: Visser, Apocalypse as Utopian Expectation. There is some dispute regarding the identification of Berengaudus and the dating of the commentary; many accept him as a late eleventh-century writer. See Lobrichon, La Bible au Moyen Âge, pp. 125 n. 58, 193 n. 36; Morgan, ‘Illustrated Apocalypses of Mid-ThirteenthCentury England’, p. 5. 3  See Emmerson and Lewis, ‘Census and Bibliography of Medieval Manuscripts Containing Apocalypse Illustrations’. Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, tcne 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 171–187 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.129233

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that the texts and images in each manuscript must be interpreted in terms of contemporary historical events and personal or familial concerns.4 The illuminated Apocalypse was a lens through which the medieval viewer perceived and acknowledged his or her own temporal reality. Indeed, the specialized nature of the illuminated Apocalypse can be compared to the devotional content of Books of Hours. The majority of English illuminated Apocalypses can be linked to female patronage and readership (Nigel Morgan identified twelve in the corpus) and therefore our understanding of select manuscripts must be gendered.5 In the thirteenth century, these female Apocalypse owners also tended to be courtly women who either had taken the cross to crusade for the Holy Land or were members of revered crusading dynasties in England. This certainly was the case with the Lambeth Apocalypse, and its pictorial and textual content therefore can be understood as a dynamic and martial crusade allegory. In her foundational study of English Apocalypse manuscripts Reading Images, Suzanne Lewis briefly explored the idea of a spiritual pilgrimage or crusade in the illuminations of the Lambeth Apocalypse; indeed, she broadly suggested in her book that the life of St John and his experience of Revelation on Patmos could readily be experienced as a spiritual crusade or pilgrimage by all of its medieval readers.6 This essay seeks to build upon Lewis’s work on crusading in illuminated Apocalypse manuscripts by fleshing out and further analysing the Lambeth Apocalypse’s specific crusader context and content in relation to its female owner.7 The text of the Book of Revelation in the Lambeth Apocalypse is in Latin and is accompanied by seventy-eight half-page, framed illuminations. Gold leaf is used throughout, enriching and dramatizing the manuscript’s content. 4  Most notably in the work of Suzanne Lewis, ‘Giles de Bridport and the Abingdon Apocalypse’; ‘Tractatus adversus Judaeos in the Gulbenkian Apocalypse’; ‘The Apocalypse of Isabella of France’; Reading Images, pp. 205–336. See also Coote, ‘The Crusading Bishop’; Bartal, Gender, Piety, and Production in Fourteenth-Century English Apocalypse Manuscripts. 5  Morgan, Lambeth Apocalypse, p. 96. The twelve thirteenth-century English illuminated Apocalypses with female patrons: Trinity Apocalypse (Cambridge, Trinity, MS  R. 16.2); Lambeth Apocalypse (London, Lambeth Palace, MS 209); Abingdon Apocalypse (BL, Add. MS 42555); Douce Apocalypse (Oxford, Bodleian, MS Douce 180); Cambridge Fitzwilliam Apocalypse (Mus. Mclean 123); Oxford New College Apocalypse (MS 65); British Library (BL, Royal MS 15. D.II); Corpus Christi College Apocalypse (Cambridge, Corpus Christi, MS 20); Oxford Bodleian (Seldon Sp. 38); Burckhardt-Wildt Apocalypse (New York, Morgan Library, MS M. 1071.1–2). 6  Lewis, Reading Images, pp. 274–75. 7  This article is a pendant to my study of the Trinity Apocalypse: Whatley, ‘Crusading for (Heavenly Jerusalem)’.

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Beyond the seventy-eight illuminations that accompany the Book of Revelation, the Lambeth Apocalypse has a full-page frontispiece and an appended cycle of two gatherings of illustrations at the end (mostly line and ink wash paintings with gold leaf accents). These images are mutually didactic and devotional in nature. Although executed by some of the same artists as the Apocalypse cycle, the gatherings likely were completed at a slightly later date.8 These illustrations range from full-page depictions of Christ and the saints to allegorical, annotated illustrations such as the Shield of Faith. It also contains two concise narrative sequences from the Miracles of the Virgin, the rather popular Theophilus legend, and the more obscure miracle of St Mercurius. Overall, the Lambeth Apocalypse has more illuminations — visual material — than its contemporaries, such as the Douce Apocalypse (c. 1265–1270; Oxford, Bodleian, MS Douce 180), and thus could have operated more like a picture book. Notably, in one of the added illuminations, the patron or owner of the Lambeth Apocalypse was represented and can be identified with some certainty. This allows for a nuanced understanding of the manuscript’s dense collection of illuminations in relation to the values and concerns of the specific viewer. On folio 48r, there is a noble woman kneeling before a monumental Virgin and Child enthroned set within a church framework (Fig. 7.1). The figure is situated within the margin of the page, and she is clutching a bound book in her hands. Although the book is open, her eyes and thus devotions are fixed on the Virgin and Child. The Virgin tenderly holds Christ, bowing her head to touch his, and she carefully cups a small dove in her right hand. This illumination functions as both an owner portrait and a devotional image, which emphasizes the reader’s salvation through reading and prayer in relation to the book. It also would have provided a pictorial space where the reader could truly enter her manuscript. The woman wears a concealing wimple and veil on her head, signifying her marital status, and she wears an over-garment and undergarment that are blazoned with heraldry, indicating her aristocratic status and lineage. The arms decorating her cloak (gold diamonds on a red field) are those of the De Quincy, earls of Winchester, and the arms on her undergarment (straight horizontal lines alternating with horizontal wavy or nebuly lines) are the arms of the Ferrers, earls of Derby. The woman depicted therefore is likely a Ferrers lady who married a De Quincy or a De Quincy lady who married a Ferrers before the date of the manuscript’s production.9 Margaret de Quincy (c. 1218–1280) 8  9 

See Morgan, Lambeth Apocalypse, pp. 49, 83–85. This is thoroughly explored in Morgan, Lambeth Apocalypse, pp. 72–82.

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Figure 7.1. Virgin and Child with Kneeling Patron, Lambeth Apocalypse, c. 1260–1275. London, Lambeth Palace, MS 209, fol. 48r (photograph: by permission of Lambeth Palace Library).

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married William III de Ferrers, fifth earl of Derby, in 1238, and Eleanor de Ferrers (c. 1236–1274), one of William III’s daughters from a previous marriage, married Roger de Quincy, second earl of Winchester, in 1252. As Morgan notes, these two ladies were quite extraordinarily both each other’s stepmother and stepdaughter.10 The Ferrers and De Quincy families were very much interconnected in the thirteenth century through landholdings and indeed marriage. Based on the visual prominence of the De Quincy arms in the illumination, it is usually accepted that they were the arms of the woman’s husband rather than her father. This would suggest that the woman depicted is thus Eleanor de Quincy (née Ferrers), countess of Winchester. Notably, both the Ferrers of Derby and the De Quincy of Winchester had long been active in the crusade movement.11 Successive generations of both families took the cross and participated in crusade expeditions to the East — these were noble English crusading dynasties. For instance, William Ferrers, son (or brother) of the first Ferrers earl, accompanied Robert, duke of Normandy, on the First Crusade and fought at his side at the Siege of Nicaea, and Earl William I joined the Third Crusade, dying at the Siege of Acre in 1190.12 Saer de Quincy, the first earl of Winchester and Roger de Quincy’s father, joined the Fifth Crusade in 1219 and participated in the Siege of Damietta. He fell ill during the campaign and was buried in Acre.13 Roger had accompanied his father on this crusade expedition. Eleanor de Quincy certainly would have recognized the prestige that crusading brought to both her and her husband’s families. Of note, several years after Roger’s death in 1267, Eleanor married Roger de Leybourne, sheriff of Kent, who first assumed the cross during the reign of Henry III in 1252 and would accompany Prince Edward to the Holy Land in 1270.14 There is no direct evidence that Eleanor de Quincy herself assumed the cross or intended to go on a crusade expedition to the Holy Land. Likewise, there is a dearth of historical information about Eleanor’s literary, devotional, or artistic tastes that would shed light on her patronage of and engagement with the Lambeth Apocalypse. Nevertheless, it is clear that many of her family members, both through blood and marriage, were devoted and celebrated crusaders in England, many of whom were active in the crusade movement in 10 

Morgan, Lambeth Apocalypse, p. 76. Evans, ‘The Ferrers Earls’. 12  Evans, ‘The Ferrers Earls’, p. 71. 13  Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp. 136–37. 14  Cf. Jobson, The First English Revolution, pp. 163–64. 11 

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the thirteenth century, most notably her second husband who was preparing to go on crusade in the late 1260s around the time of the manuscript’s creation. The correlation between apocalyptic speculation and the crusade movement was established long before Eleanor de Quincy owned her illuminated Apocalypse. As Jay Rubenstein notes, ‘In the 1090s, as far as anyone could tell, God (or Satan) has loosed Antichrist on the world. The enemies of Gog and Magog has broken through the gates behind which Alexander the Great has imprisoned them’.15 Thus, from the launch of the First Crusade, the expulsion of the pagans from the Holy Land was associated with the arrival and defeat of Antichrist, and the crusaders were viewed as agents who would help usher in the Last Days.16 Notably, in the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent would link the crusades with the Apocalypse by connecting Islam to the apocalyptic forces of evil described in the Bible. In his bull Quia maior, issued April 1213, Innocent identified Muhammad with the beast of the Apocalypse in hopes of inspiring men to join the Fifth Crusade: ‘A certain son of perdition, Muhammad the pseudo-prophet arose. Through worldly enticements and carnal delights he seduced many people away from the truth’.17 Pope Innocent made sense of Islam for his thirteenth-century audience by connecting the religion and its practitioners with the apocalyptic powers described in Revelation.18 Following suit, the mendicant friars often invoked the Book of Revelation and apocalyptic or judgement themes in their model sermons for preaching the cross.19 Over the course of the thirteenth century, participation in the crusade movement was being redefined, starting with Pope Innocent III’s agenda to reform the crusade movement in relation to his plans for the Fifth Crusade between 1211 and 1213. In Quia maior (1215), Innocent shifted the focus of crusade promotion from the noble and knightly classes to the lay population.20 Quia maior was a preaching document that offered a systematic guide for preaching the cross.21 As St Albans chronicler Matthew Paris noted in his Chronica majora 15 

Rubenstein, Armies of Heaven, p. xii. See Andrea, ‘Innocent III, the Fourth Crusade, and the Coming Apocalypse’, p. 97. See Guibert of Nogent’s version of Pope Urban II’s speech at Clermont: The Deeds of God through the Franks, trans. by Levine, pp. 42–44. 17  Quoted in Tolan, Saracens, p. 194. See also Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, pp. 104–09. 18  Tolan, Saracens, p. 194. See also Uebel, ‘Unthinking the Monster’, p. 268. 19  See Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology. 20  For Quia maior, Studien zum Register Innocenz’ III, ed. by Tangl, pp. 88–89. 21  Riley-Smith, First Crusade, pp. 118–19. 16 

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under the year 1249, ‘Praedicantes igitur pro negotio cruces honines cujuscunque aetatis, sexus, vel conditionis, vel valoris, immo etiam valitudinarios vel valitudinarias’ (Preaching on behalf of the cross, they [the Franciscan preachers] bestowed that symbol on people of every age, sex and rank, whatever their property or worth, and even on sick men and women).22 One of Quia maior’s central goals was to expand participation in the crusade movement to include individuals with neither the intention nor the financial means to go on crusade to the Holy Land. Pope Innocent agreed to grant deferment, commutation (the performance of another penitential activity in place of the original vow), and redemption (release from vow by money payment) for crusading vows that could not be fulfilled through active military duty. He gave those who could not participate in military campaigns to the East the opportunity to play an active role in the business of the cross; they could redeem crusade vows for money, support the crusade financially in return for indulgences, or perform regular communal liturgies and processions for intercession in aid of the crusade. All of these encouraged the performance of crusading at home. To borrow Christoph Maier’s idiom, Pope Innocent III ‘relocated’ the crusade movement from the theatres of war to the home front in the form of masses, liturgies, processions, prayers, intercessions, and donations for the Holy Land. Under Innocent III, it was acceptable, even preferable, to locally crusade for the Holy Land through a range of pious activities, both public and private. Innocent’s new crusade policies certainly had an impact on female crusade interests and the nature of their participation in the movement. Although women did go on crusade to the Holy Land, after the Battle of Hattīn in 1187 papal crusade policy sought to define women’s roles in the promotion and recruitment of crusading. Pope Innocent actually encouraged women to take the cross — to become a crucesignata — but with the restriction that they should redeem the vow through personal devotions or fiscal support. Women’s enthusiasm for crusading was being stimulated, but women could only ‘wield the spiritual and fiscal weapons of holy war’ (even if the woman in question ultimately went on crusade to the Holy Land with her husband).23 The Lambeth Apocalypse, with its dynamic illuminations accompanying the text of Revelation as well as its appended cycle of devotional illustrations at the end, would have provided a unique opportunity for Eleanor de Quincy 22  Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. by Luard, v, p. 73; trans. in English History, trans. by Giles, ii, p. 309. 23  Rousseau, ‘Home Front and Battlefield’. See also, Maier, ‘The Roles of Women in the Crusade Movement’.

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Figure 7.2. Rider on the Red Horse, Lambeth Apocalypse, c. 1260–1275. London, Lambeth Palace, MS 209, fol. 5r (photograph: by permission of Lambeth Palace Library).

to imagine and participate in various aspects of crusading. The miniatures that accompany the Book of Revelation in Lambeth are filled with dramatic scenes of warfare, single combat, and siege tempered by thirteenth-century dress, armour, weaponry, and heraldry — that is, the trappings of courtliness and chivalry.24 For instance, on folio 5r the Rider on the Red Horse was portrayed in contemporary chain mail and a red surcoat blazoned with two lions rampant (Revelation 6. 3–4; Fig. 7.2). He holds out his sword, a reminder that he was sent to take peace from earth. Notably, the section of the Berengaudus commentary that was included alongside the biblical verses stresses that the men of earth shall kill each 24

Such pictorial references to thirteenth-century dress and visual culture were not specific to the Lambeth Apocalypse; indeed, most of the illuminated Apocalypses in the corpus have cast aspects of apocalyptic warfare in contemporary terms to varying degrees. Cf. O’Loughlin Bérat, ‘Romance and Revelation’.

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other: ‘Thus God took peace from the earth when he separated just men from wicked men in mind, not body. And that they should kill one another. For those from whom peace is taken away, a consequence is that one should be killed by another’.25 As noted above, the Lambeth Apocalypse contains an abridged — that is, curated — version of the Berengaudus commentary, and so the passages selected should be understood as particularly meaningful or telling. This passage certainly seems to offer justification for holy war between good and evil, an interpretation that is anchored by the contemporary knightly rider. Eleanor de Quincy rather specifically was invited into the miniature on folio 15v, which depicts the Woman in the Wilderness and the War in Heaven (Revelation 12. 7–12). The scene depicts the Woman (identified as Mary in the Berengaudus commentary) after she has fled the seven-headed dragon. She is shown seated in the wilderness watching as the great battle between St  Michael and his angels and the dragon and his followers takes place in heaven. St Michael and his divine soldiers, wielding spears and holding heraldic shields, will defeat the dragon and cast him out of heaven. The Woman has her head veiled and she holds up an open book in her right hand, certainly linking the Woman to Mary, the ideal reader.26 The book gives the Woman authority as she witnesses the war, and it also provides an important visual link between the Book of Revelation and Eleanor de Quincy’s book-bearing portrait before the Virgin and Child; beyond her ownership of the book, it suggests Eleanor’s powerful authority as a witness to Revelation. Eleanor is both the reader of the book and the woman in the book. Indeed, the Woman in the Wilderness bearing the book should be considered a spiritual surrogate for Eleanor de Quincy, allowing the illumination to function as a didactic mirror.27 In this specific illumination, as outlined in the Berengaudus commentary, the Woman witnesses the defeat of the dragon (the devil or Satan), who was cast out of heaven.28 This also means that Eleanor was witness to the defeat of the dragon, through her penitent devotions. This sets up a system of participation in Revelation through vision and prayer much like the system Quia maior established for spiritual participation in the crusade movement. The owner portrait of Eleanor de Quincy, quite significantly, does not come at the beginning of the Lambeth Apocalypse — that is, it does not preface the 25 

Translated in Morgan, Lambeth Apocalypse, p. 142. On Mary depicted with a book, Miles, ‘The Origins and Development of the Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation’; Linton, ‘Reading the Virgin Reading’. 27  See Kumler, Translating Truth, p. 83. 28  Morgan, Lambeth Apocalypse, p. 176. 26 

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Figure 7.3. St. Christopher, Lambeth Apocalypse, c. 1260–1275. London, Lambeth Palace MS 209, fol. 40r (photograph: by permission of Lambeth Palace Library).

Book of Revelation. It was bound with the illustrations added to the end of the manuscript. Specifically, it appears between the Miracles of the Virgin and a miscellany of devotional or moralizing images of Christ and the saints. Due to this position, Lewis suggested that Eleanor de Quincy should be understood as having just completed reading the Book of Revelation (see Fig. 7.1).29 The opening certainly makes clear that the image of Eleanor de Quincy holding her manuscript before the Virgin and Child does directly relate to the Apocalypse cycle. The facing folio (47v) features a full-page illustration of St John writing the Book of Revelation on the island of Patmos. The image of St John, seated on an ornate chair and writing in a codex, resembles Evangelist portraits, and yet this full-page illustration did not serve as a frontispiece to the Apocalypse either. This opening — St John on Patmos and Eleanor de Quincy before the Virgin and Child — suggests a clear and intentional correspond29

Lewis, Reading Images, p. 282. Morgan suggests that perhaps the Lambeth Apocalypse was made for someone else and then acquired by Eleanor de Quincy, who added images with personal meaning including the owner portrait. Morgan, Lambeth Apocalypse, p. 73.

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Figure 7.4a–7.4b. Miracles of the Virgin: St. Mercurius Legend, Lambeth Apocalypse, c. 1260–1275. London, Lambeth Palace MS 209, fol. 45v (photograph: by permission of Lambeth Palace Library).

ence between the illuminated Apocalypse and the added pictorial content that follows. The first illustration in the appended folia features a full-length depiction of St Christopher carrying the Christ Child (Fig. 7.3). As Lewis notes, St Christopher was venerated in the Middle Ages as the patron saint of travellers and wayfarers, whose protection was invoked particularly by pilgrims and crusaders. She goes on to convincingly suggest that his placement as the first of the appended images sets up the viewer for a spiritual or devotional journey through the remaining content and thus towards salvation.30 I would add that St Christopher’s placement directly after the Apocalypse cycle also would have 30

Lewis, Reading Images, p. 275.

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provided Eleanor de Quincy a holy figure to offer thanks to after safe passage through the often-harrowing vision of the End of Days. One of the most important and engaging stops on Eleanor’s imagined ‘journey’ through the appended content is on folio 45v, depicting one of the Miracles of the Virgin (Figs 7.4a and 7.4b). Both the miracle and its dramatic depiction in the manuscript invoke a sense of heroism, chivalry, and pious warfare or crusading. The miniature presents, in two registers, the legend of St Mercurius, a third-century soldier and martyr, who was beheaded and entombed at Caesarea.31 St Mercurius was celebrated for the role he played in the death of Julian the Apostate (r. 361–363), the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire. Although a member of the Constantinian dynasty, Julian was anti-Christian in his policies and wanted to reaffirm Roman pagan religion and culture. On his way to fight the Persians, Julian passes through Caesarea, where he has religious conflict with Basil, bishop of Caesarea. As the legend recounts, Julian vowed to return and destroy the city, and so Basil and the people of Caesarea pray to God for protection. Basil has a vision of a lady (often identified as the Virgin Mary) who resurrects, arms, and sends St Mercurius into battle against Julian. In most versions of the legend, Bishop Basil visits St Mercurius’s tomb and discovers his arms missing, only to reappear the next day covered in blood. Shortly thereafter, a messenger arrives in Caesarea and announces the mysterious death of Julian by an unknown assailant on the battlefield. The story of St Mercurius was known in England as early as the eleventh century and was further disseminated in the thirteenth century in anthologies of Miracles of the Virgin.32 Notably, St Mercurius also played a heroic role in a legend of the First Crusade. In both the Gesta Francorum and the Gesta Dei per Francos, St Mercurius appears alongside St George and St Demetrius at the crusaders’ siege of Antioch in 1098. The miraculous arrival of the three ‘holy helpers’ sends the Turkish army into flight and allows the crusader army to successfully capture the city.33 In the top register of the Lambeth illumination, the Virgin stands at the centre of the composition wearing a striking gold cloak and crown over a simple gown and veil — her prominence and nobility easily capturing the attention of a viewer. She is handing full mail armour to the saint, who sits erect in his sarcophagus. 31 

On the life of St Mercurius, Walter, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition, pp. 101–08. 32  See Hibbard Loomis, ‘The Saint Mercurius Legend in Medieval England and in Norse Saga’; Shaw, ‘A Dead Killer?’; Der Nersessian, ‘Two Miracles of the Virgin in the Poems of Gautier de Coincy’. 33  Shaw, ‘A Dead Killer?’, p. 5.

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Certainly, it is not simply his hands that will be used in battle against Julian the Apostate but his fully armoured body. Above St Mercurius, an angel has emerged from the heavens with a shield and banner both emblazoned with a red cross. The red cross on white ground was a widely used crusade emblem in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. For instance, the Templars fixed a red cross to their tunics as a symbol of their willingness to suffer martyrdom to protect the Holy Land, and the crusaders who participated in the joint campaign of Philip  II and Henry  II adopted the red cross as their official insignia. The use of the red cross in the Lambeth Apocalypse was not exceptional. One finds a similar appearance in the slightly later Queen Figure 7.5. Miracles of the Virgin: Arming St. George (or St. Mercurius?), Taymouth Hours, Mary Apocalypse (c.  1300–1325; second half of the fourteenth century. London, BL, Royal MS 19 B XV), for examBritish Library, Yates Thompson 13, fol. 154r ple, in the image of the Rider on the (photograph: by permission of the White Horse with his followers, British Library Board). who were portrayed as miles christi. The red cross on white ground also was associated with St George, a military saint as well the future patron saint of England, who was often depicted as a crusader in later medieval art. Indeed, it is possible that the illumination in the Lambeth Apocalypse is conflating the lives or images of St Mercurius and St George, a possible trend in England supported by works like this sequence of bas-de-page images in the Taymouth Hours (c. 1325–1335; BL, Yates Thomas, MS 13). It features the Virgin resuscitating and arming a figure labelled ‘George’ in the margins (Fig. 7.5).34 On the left side of the Lambeth illustration, a noble horse waits to carry St Mercurius into battle and a second angel appears bearing a helmet and sword from God. 34 

Cf. Kathryn Smith, The Taymouth Hours, who suggests that Philippa of Hainaut, wife of Edward III, commissioned the manuscript for the king’s younger sister, Eleanor of Woodstock.

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In the bottom register, a packed composition conveys the violent reality of warfare and the miraculous nature of Julian’s death. On the left, the Virgin stands behind a mounted St Mercurius, supporting his effort, while the hand of God emerges from the clouds directly above the saint. St Mercurius marches across a field littered with bloody and mangled fallen soldiers. Although the scene features an army of ‘Romans’, it reads more like a single combat between St Mercurius and Emperor Julian, which was a common configuration in scenes of crusader combat. One could compare the illumination, for example, to the single combat between King Richard I and Saladin portrayed on the Chertsey Tiles of the 1250s. On the far right, spilling into the border, Julian has already been pierced through with St Mercurius’s spear. He is turned backwards away from the saint and his horse is collapsing under his shifting weight. Julian has been defeated, vanquished. In the field between St Mercurius and Julian, the artist included a large scimitar, a backsword associated with the East, and the caparison of Julian’s horse is blazoned not with ancient Roman imagery but with the head of a demon or devil. Has St Mercurius slayed a pagan Roman emperor or someone far more sinister and contemporary? Overall, Eleanor de Quincy likely would have understood St Mercurius’s legendary defeat of Julian the Apostate within the context of Muslim threats to the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, including coastal cities like Caesarea. The Lambeth Apocalypse was made in the aftermath of the fall of Jerusalem to the Turks in 1244, the failure of the Seventh Crusade to even make it to Jerusalem, the arrival of Mongol hordes in Egypt and the Levant around 1260, and King Louis IX’s call for the Eighth Crusade in 1267, a campaign in which Prince Edward of England and his wife, Eleanor of Castile, participated. What makes the inclusion of the St Mercurius narrative in the Lambeth Apocalypse so interesting, however, is not just its association with holy war but also its pictorial emphasis on and treatment of the role of the Virgin Mary in relation to the female viewer. As outlined above, crusading was by and large promoted as a male activity but one that required the enthusiastic support of women, whether on the battlefield or the home front. The Virgin Mary is responsible for transforming St Mercurius into a crusader, giving him God’s armour, and providing both spiritual and physical support — she stands behind him with her hand on his arm — for Mercurius in combat. Indeed, she is on the battlefield, even if only as a divine apparition. Ultimately, this rich and dramatic image must have offered Eleanor de Quincy a mode of crusade participation perhaps secondary but closely related to the spiritual crusade engendered by the Apocalypse cycle itself.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Resources Cambridge, Corpus Christi College Library, MS 20 Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Mclean 123 Cambridge, Trinity College Library, MS R. 16.2 London, British Library [BL], Add. MS 42555 —— , Royal MS 15. D.II —— , Yates Thomas, MS 13 London, Lambeth Palace Library, MS 209 New York, Morgan Library, MS M. 1071.1–2 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 180 —— , Seldon Sp. 38 Oxford, New College Library, MS 65

Primary Sources Guibert of Nogent, The Deeds of God through the Franks: A  Translation of Guibert de Nogent’s ‘Gesta Dei per Francos’, trans. by Robert Levine (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997) Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. by Henry R. Luard, Rolls Series, 57, 5 vols (London: Longman, 1872–1883) ——  , Matthew Paris’s English History, trans. by John  A. Giles, 3  vols (London: H.  G. Bohn, 1893) Studien zum Register Innocenz’ III, ed. by Georgine Tangl (Weimar: Böhlau, 1929)

Secondary Works Andrea, Alfred J., ‘Innocent III, the Fourth Crusade, and the Coming Apocalypse’, in The Medieval Crusade, ed. by Susan J. Ridyard (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004), pp. 97–106 Bartal, Renana, Gender, Piety, and Production in Fourteenth-Century English Apocalypse Manuscripts (London: Routledge, 2016) Bérat, Emma O’Loughlin, ‘Romance and Revelation’, in Thinking Medieval Romance, ed. by Katherine C. Little and Nicola McDonald (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 134–52 Cole, Penny, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270 (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America, 1991) Coote, Lesley, ‘The Crusading Bishop: Henry Despenser and his Manuscript’, in Prophecy, Apocalypse, and the Day of Doom: Proceedings of the 2000 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Nigel Morgan (Donington: Tyas, 2004), pp. 39–51 Der Nersessian, Sirarpie, ‘Two Miracles of the Virgin in the Poems of Gautier de Coincy’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 41 (1987), 157–63

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Emmerson, Richard, and Suzanne Lewis, ‘Census and Bibliography of Medieval Manuscripts Containing Apocalypse Illustrations, c. 800–1500’, Traditio, 65 (1984), 337–79 Evans, Michael R., ‘The Ferrers Earls of Derby and the Crusades’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 44 (2000), 69–81 Hibbard Loomis, Laura, ‘The Saint Mercurius Legend in Medieval England and in Norse Saga’, in Philologica: Malone Anniversary Studies, ed. by Thomas A. Kirby and Henry B. Woolf (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1949), pp. 132–43 Jobson, Adrian, The First English Revolution: Simon de Montfort, Henry  III, and the Barons’ War (London: Bloomsbury, 2012) Kumler, Aden, Translating Truth: Ambitious Images and Religious Knowledge in Late Medieval France and England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011), pp. 76–90 Lewis, Suzanne, ‘Giles de Bridport and the Abingdon Apocalypse’, in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton Symposium, ed.  by Mark Ormrod (Martlesham: Boydell and Brewer, 1986), pp. 107–19 —— , ‘Tractatus adversus Judaeos in the Gulbenkian Apocalypse’, The Art Bulletin, 68.4 (1986), 543–66 ——  , ‘The Apocalypse of Isabella of France: Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS  Fr. 13096’, The Art Bulletin, 72.2 (1990), 224–60 ——  , Reading Images: Narrative Discourse and Reception in the Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Apocalypse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) Linton, David, ‘Reading the Virgin Reading’, in The Book and the Magic of Reading in the Middle Ages, ed. by Albrecht Classen (New York: Garland, 1999), pp. 253–76 Lobrichon, Guy, La Bible au Moyen Âge (Paris: Picard, 2003) Maier, Christoph T., Crusade Propaganda and Ideology: Model Sermons for Preaching the Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) ——  , ‘The Roles of Women in the Crusade Movement: A  Survey’, Journal of Medieval History, 30.1 (2004), 61–82 Miles, Laura Saetveit, ‘The Origins and Development of the Virgin Mary’s Book at the Annunciation’, Speculum, 89.3 (2014), 632–69 Morgan, Nigel, The Lambeth Apocalypse, Manuscript 209 in Lambeth Palace Library: A Critical Study, with a contribution by Michelle Brown (London: Miller, 1990) —— , ‘Illustrated Apocalypses of Mid-Thirteenth-Century England: Historical Context, Patronage, and Readership’, in The Trinity Apocalypse, ed.  by David McKitterick (London: The British Library, 2005), pp. 3–22 ——  , ‘The Lambeth Apocalypse’, in The History of British Art, 600–1600, ed.  by Tim Ayers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 166–67 O’Hear, Natasha F. H., Contrasting Images of the Book of Revelation in Late Medieval and Early Modern Art: A Case in Visual Exegesis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusade and the Idea of Crusading (Philadelphia: Uni­ versity of Pennsylvania, 1986) Rousseau, Constance M., ‘Home Front and Battlefield: The Gendering of Papal Crusading Policy (1095–1221)’, in Gendering the Crusades, ed. by Susan B. Edington and Sarah Lambert (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2001), pp. 31–44

Eleanor de Quincy and Imagined Crusading in the Lambeth Apocalypse 187 Rubenstein, Jay, Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (New York: Basic Books, 2011) Shaw, Philip, ‘A Dead Killer? Saint Mercurius, Killer of Julian the Apostate, in the Works of William of Malmesbury’, Leeds Studies in England, n.s., 35 (2004), 1–22 Smith, Kathryn, The Taymouth Hours: Stories and the Construction of Self in Late Medieval England (London: British Library, 2012) Tolan, John V., Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) Tyerman, Christopher, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) Uebel, Michael, ‘Unthinking the Monster: Twelfth-Century Responses to Saracen Alterity’, in Monster Theory: Reading Culture, ed. by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 264–91 Visser, Derk, Apocalypse as Utopian Expectation (800–1500): The Apocalypse Commentary of Berengaudus of Ferrières and the Relationship between Exegesis, Liturgy and Icono­ graphy (Leiden: Brill, 1966) Walter, Christopher, The Warrior Saints in Byzantine Art and Tradition (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) Whatley, Laura J., ‘Crusading for (Heavenly Jerusalem): A  Noble Woman, Devotion, and the Trinity Apocalypse (Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.16.2)’, in Devotional Interaction in Medieval England and its Afterlives, ed. by Elisa A. Foster, Julia Perratore, and Steven Rozenski, Art and Material Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, 12 (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 49–79

Chapter 8

A Royal Crusade Chronicle: Visual Exempla in King Edward IV’s Royal Eracles (London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I) Erin K. Donovan

T

he French crusade chronicle known as the Livre d’Eracles (hereafter Eracles) was popular in the Latin East as well as in western Europe and was frequently illustrated, especially in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in France.1 The lack of extant manuscripts produced after the early fourteenth century suggests that interest in the text and perhaps crusading itself was in decline until the mid-fifteenth century in the duchy of Burgundy, where both experienced a focused Renaissance of sorts among individuals associated with the Burgundian court. A copy of the Eracles was gifted to the Burgundian library, a copy each was made for the courtiers Jean V of Créquy, Louis of Gruuthuse, and Wolfert VI of Borssele, and a copy was made for the English king, Edward  IV.2 The English king’s manuscript, Royal MS  15 E I, 1 

This article is largely based on chapter 4 of my Ph. D. dissertation, ‘Edward IV of England and London, BL, Royal MS 15 E I’, in ‘Imagined Crusaders: The Livre d’Eracles in FifteenthCentury Burgundian Collections’, pp. 160–204 (pp. 330–56, figs 4.1–4.43). Some of the ideas herein were also developed in an earlier article, ‘A Royal Crusade History: The Livre d’Eracles and Edward IV’s Exile in Burgundy’. 2  Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 9045, Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 483 F, BnF, MS fr. 68, and Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, MS 85, respectively. Another Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, tcne 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 189–223 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.129234

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stands apart from the others. Conscious of their royal audience, the artists who painted Edward  IV’s Eracles manuscript heightened a selection of the manuscript’s miniatures, elevating the chronicle to become a visual ‘Mirror of Princes’, at times prioritizing such polyvalent visualizations over the crusade narrative itself. This paper will show how, by examining these visual narratives in the context of the manuscript’s text, the king’s other illuminated manuscripts, and the corpus of illuminated Eracles manuscripts. Although the subject of a renewed fifteenth-century crusade had a mixed reception throughout Europe, the Burgundian duke, Philip the Good (r. 1419–1467), was one of the most adamant secular supporters of the crusade, often assisting the papal efforts through provisions of soldiers, boats, and money.3 Philip was interested in leading a crusade to the Holy Land throughout his reign, but he became more urgently involved in campaigning for one after the fall of Constantinople, whereas, after the fourteenth century, both France and England were more focused on the Hundred Years’ War and its aftermath.4 In 1430, Philip established a chivalric order, the Order of the Golden Fleece, and invited crusade enthusiasts to join the order and to speak to its knights on the subject.5 In the order’s statutes, the knights were charged to ‘pout deffendre, maintenir ou restablir la dignité, estat et liberté de nostre mère saincte Église’ (defend, maintain, or reestablish the dignity, state and liberty of our mother holy Church).6 The knights of the order were bound to take up the cross if ever Philip decided to do so himself.7 In 1444–1445, Philip had already sent Burgundian ships against the Ottomans in the Black Sea, and in 1451 he presented his crusade plan to the Order of the Golden Fleece, though never managed to mount the actual crusade.8 non-Burgundian illustrated fifteenth-century manuscript of the text was commissioned by the Echevin of Rouen — BnF, MS fr. 2629. 3  Vaughan, Philip the Good, p. 397. 4  Moodey, Illuminated Crusader Histories, pp. 126–48; Vaughan, Philip the Good, p. 218. 5  Scholars have pointed out that the order was as much a political tool to inspire loyalty to the duke in his nobles of disparate territories as it was a group dedicated to the reclamation of the Holy Land. Vaughan, Philip the Good, pp. 57, 296; Tyerman, God’s War, p. 860; Pastoureau, ‘Un nouvel ordre de chevalerie’, pp. 65–66; Paviot, ‘L’ordre de la Toison d’or et la Croisade’, pp. 72–73. 6  Paviot, ‘L’ordre de la Toison d’or et la Croisade’, p. 71. 7  Vaughan, Philip the Good, p. 57. 8  In 1464, he announced that his son Anthony, the Grand Bastard of Burgundy, would launch the anticipated crusade, though Anthony and his company were forced to return home shortly after setting out, due to the plague. Tyerman, God’s War, p. 861; Moodey, Illuminated

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Among the four owners of Flemish Eracles manuscripts, Jean of Créquy was the most implicated in Philip the Good’s crusade programme and was one of the knights of the Golden Fleece that Philip sent to the Holy Land.9 All the other owners were also knights of the order, but were younger by far, being of Duke Charles the Bold’s generation. Between the time that Jean V of Créquy’s Eracles was made in the 1440s and King Edward IV’s was made c. 1480, the crusading ideal had changed, becoming less a reality and more a romantic notion, even a construct onto which to project more local and immediate political ideas. The Eracles’s illumination cycles of this era, especially that of Edward IV’s manuscript, manifest this relative shift in connection to Philip the Good’s crusade project over time.10 Despite the fact that King Edward IV owned a Flemish Eracles crusade chronicle, he was not involved in the Burgundian crusade culture like the other noble Eracles owners.11 The historical evidence suggests that the English king did not share Duke Philip the Good’s enthusiasm to take on a new crusade. Tyreman notes that he may have been preparing to send archers to Burgundy to aid Philip’s crusade preparations, and he did ‘authorize a crusade grant when Pius  II  […] announced the papal alliance with Burgundy and Venice’ (19 October 1463).12 On the other hand, around the time that Edward’s Eracles was created, the Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II (r. 1451–1481) were advancing quickly on western territories, unsuccessfully trying to besiege Rhodes in 1480 and sending a force to Otranto, Italy in the same year. Neither attempt elicited a response from Edward.13 Additionally, he was not an active member of the Order of the Golden Fleece, having been admonished in both 1478 and 1481 for not wearing the order’s collar and not sending a proxy to its chapter meeting.14 Thus, we must look beyond a straightforward zeal for crusading to understand Edward IV’s Eracles and its dense pictorial cycle. Crusader Histories, pp. 117, 165–69, 227; Vaughan, Philip the Good, pp. 370–72. 9  De Smedt, ed., Les Chevaliers de l’Ordre de la Toison d’or au xve siècle, pp. 51–53 (Schnerb). 10  For further detail on the other owners of Eracles manuscripts and the books themselves, see: Donovan, ‘Imagined Crusaders’. 11  See also, Donovan, ‘A Royal Crusade History’, pp. 17–19. 12  Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 318; Paviot, ‘Burgundy and the Crusade’. 13  Riley-Smith, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades, p. 255; Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp. 304–10, 321–22. 14  Payne and Jefferson, ‘Edward  IV’, p.  194. A  presentation scene of Jean de Wavrin’s Anciennes et nouvelles chroniques d’Angleterre (BL, Royal MS 15 E IV, fol. 14r) pictures Edward wearing the collar of the Golden Fleece. Bruges-based artists familiar with the collar’s presenta-

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The French Eracles text is based on William of Tyre’s Latin crusade history, the Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, composed between 1167 and 1184 in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. In the early thirteenth century, an anonymous person translated William’s text into Old French, adding to the end of the Historia a history written by a contemporary called Ernoul that continued through the year 1231 and integrating additional original material.15 This is the basis of the text that is copied into Edward IV’s Eracles.16 Although William of Tyre aimed his Latin text to warn western leaders of the danger in which the Holy Land found itself during his lifetime, Bernard Hamilton suggests that the Old French translation changed his urgent plea into a pleasant ‘chivalresque epic’, while John H. Pryor describes it as a ‘prose version of a chanson de geste’.17 Thus, the Eracles is an entertaining, romantic literary escape — as is the text of Edward IV’s manuscript, which contains the full continuation to 1231.18 tion on the order’s members painted this manuscript. Thus, the collar’s inclusion may have been less at the request of Edward and more due to the habits of the artists; Tyerman, God’s War, pp. 886–87. 15  The Eracles is so-called because the text begins with the story of the Emperor Heraclius who returned the True Cross to Jerusalem in 628. There are seventy-one extant manuscripts of the French translation of William of Tyre with various continuations; Hamilton, ‘The Old French Translation of William of Tyre’, p. 111; Folda, ‘The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the History of Outremer by William of Tyre’, i, p. 11; Babcock and Krey, ‘Introduction’, i, p. 41; Edbury, ‘New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre’, pp. 108–09 and ‘The French Translation of William of Tyre’s Historia’, p. 69; and Pryor, ‘The Eracles and William of Tyre’, pp. 270–93. 16  The French text of the Eracles is published in Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs, ed. by Paris; Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, pp. 3–702; L’Estoire de Eracles empereur, pp. 1–481. English translations include: William, Archbishop of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, trans. by Babcock and Krey; The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury; and Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century, trans. by Shirley. 17  Hamilton, ‘The Old French Translation of William of Tyre’, p. 112; Pryor, ‘The Eracles and William of Tyre’, p. 293. 18  This continuation is also used in the fifteenth-century, Flemish volumes belonging to Wolfert VI of Borssele and Louis of Gruuthuse. The fourth and earliest manuscript, belonging to Jean V of Créquy (Amiens, BM, MS 483 F), contains a longer historical addition referred to as the Acre continuation because it was originally composed in the city of Acre in the Latin Kingdom in the thirteenth century; Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century, trans. by Shirley, p. 2. For the most part, the variations in the texts of the continuations do not affect the scenes selected for illustration in the Eracles manuscripts, as each shares the same text until the year 1229, with Edward IV’s Eracles manuscript extending slightly longer. On the textual recension,

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The general illumination history of the Eracles has been well discussed by Jaroslav Folda, but I offer a summary here to provide a context for Edward IV’s volume.19 There are fifty-seven extant copies of the Eracles in French, of which forty-four are illustrated. Of those illustrated, six were made in the fifteenth century and eleven were made in Flanders.20 Illuminations for the Eracles were typically positioned at the beginnings of its major textual divisions, or books, of which there are twenty-two in William of Tyre’s original text and twelve possible additional continuation books.21 Another possibility was to position the miniatures at other points in the text to which the manuscript’s painters would like to draw attention, which is the case in Edward IV’s copy, allowing for a density of illumination at both important textual moments, as well as at book divisions. The overwhelming majority of scenes in the overall corpus of illuminated Eracles manuscripts express the general themes of a chronicle such as battles and sieges, coronations, marriages, and deaths. Edward IV’s manuscript, like the other fifteenth-century Flemish copies, includes such typical illuminations as well as a number of more specific narratives passed down through the Gothic illumination tradition,22 like the prince of Antioch and count of Edessa playing games rather than fighting with the Byzantine emperor at the Siege of Shayzar,23 and Raynaud of Châtillon torturing the patriarch of Antioch by hanging him naked from a tower covered in honey so that he was attacked by bees.24 However, the fifteenth-century group, and especially Edward IV’s Eracles, also constructs completely new and unique iconography to represent see Edbury, ‘The French Translation’; Folda, ‘Manuscripts of the History of Outremer by William of Tyre’. 19  Folda, ‘The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the History of Outremer’. 20  Twenty-three are from the thirteenth century and fifteen are from the fourteenth. Twenty-three illustrated examples were made in France, seven in the Holy Land, two in Italy, and, possibly, one in England. 21  Thirty-four Eracles manuscripts use this approach, including Amiens, BM, MS 483 F, Brussels, BrB, MS 9045 and BnF, MS fr. 68. 22  Gothic Eracles copies circulating in the Burgundian territories included one that was in the library of the dukes of Burgundy by the 1467 inventory (Brussels, BrB, MS 9492–93, Hainaut, c. 1292–1295), one in the library of the abbey of St Bertin in St Omer (Boulogne-surMer, BM, MS 142, Acre, c. 1287), and another, many of the illuminations of which have been cut out, was in the abbey of St Vaast in Arras (Arras, BM, MS 651, Picardy, c. 1300), the last two of which entered their libraries at unknown dates. 23  Book xv, ch. 1. 24  Book xviii, ch. 1.

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narratives of newfound interest. Their artists added new details to traditional iconography to create fresh approaches to established stories. In addition, the miniature cycles of these Flemish Eracles amplify certain themes and characters by visually linking them through iconography or by including multiple miniatures to provide them a fuller narrative arc, as this paper will show below with Edward IV’s volume.

BL, Royal MS 15 E I — A Royal Book Royal MS 15 E I was made in the decade following Edward IV’s five-month exile in Flanders (1470–1471), when he was hosted by Louis of Gruuthuse in The Hague and Bruges.25 Indeed, Edward IV’s Eracles differs from those made for the Burgundian nobles because it is far more densely illuminated, allowing the artists to include a greater depth of visual storytelling, and most importantly because it is a distinctively royal book that propagandistically portrays ideal visions of kingship.26 According to John Lowden, a royal book is made for a ruler, to be used by a ruler, contains images of a ruler, and thus projects ‘an image of kingship’.27 Following this definition, Edward IV’s Eracles is distinctively royal. It was made specifically for the English king’s use, his royal armorials mark it as his possession, and its extensive illumination cycle pictures both positive and negative historical examples of kingship, which set forth royal archetypes for his edification and even participate in his Yorkist propaganda. This book’s artists thus elevated its crusade-based historical illustrations into complex political narratives that were highly relevant for Edward’s own time. While in exile, Edward IV was penniless and unable to commission works of art. However, after his victorious return to the throne in 1471, he regained the full resources of his realm, and over time built a manuscript collection that became the basis for the royal library.28 He commissioned most of his manu­ 25  For a detailed account of Edward IV’s activities while in exile and a critique of the historical sources for these facts, see Visser-Fuchs, ‘“Il n’a plus lion ne lieppart, qui voeulle tenir de sa part”’. 26  Royal MS 15 E I is illustrated with fifty-four miniatures. The rest of the Burgundian fifteenth-century group contain the following numbers of illuminations: Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, MS fr 85 — thirty-eight; BnF, MS fr 68 — twenty-six; Brussels, BrB, MS 9045 — twenty-seven; and Amiens, BM, MS 483 F — twenty-two. 27  John Lowden’s conception is further nuanced to consider whether the manuscript is made for use by the court as well, from within or outside the court, in ‘The Royal/Imperial Book and the Image or Self-Image of the Medieval Ruler’, pp. 214, 216. 28  For more on Edward IV’s library, consult the following studies: Backhouse, ‘Founders of

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scripts between the 1470s and his death in 1483.29 There are twenty-one volumes dating from this period that can be explicitly linked to Edward IV’s patronage through heraldic evidence, including his Eracles manuscript, Royal MS 15 E I.30 There are around thirty more that are thought to have been his commissions though they lack his heraldic identifiers. Edward’s collecting choices fell well in step with other English monarchs; he chose, for the most part, extensively illuminated, French manuscripts.31 Like the other fifteenth-century patrons of Eracles manuscripts, he frequented a few Bruges-based artists for his commissions, particularly the Master of Edward IV and the Master of the White Inscriptions.32 His interests tended toward ancient and contemporary histories that provided historical lessons.33 Although many scholars have suggested that Louis of Gruuthuse inspired Edward IV’s interest in collecting large, luxury, history manuscripts during Edward’s exile, others have shown that Louis had not yet begun his collecting activities at the time of Edward IV’s visit.34 Nevertheless, the two men did tend to collect the same types of history manuthe Royal Library’; ‘Memorials and Manuscripts of a Yorkist Elite’; and The Illuminated Page, pp. 178–79, 196, 202; Drimmer, ‘The Visual Language of Vernacular Manuscript Illumination’, particularly i, pp. 166–205; Kekewich, ‘Edward IV, William Caxton, and Literary Patronage in Yorkist England’; McKendrick, ‘La grande histoire César’; ‘Lodewijk van Gruuthuse en de Librije van Edward IV’; ‘The Romuléon and the Manuscripts of Edward IV’; and Doyle, ‘Edward IV’, pp. 192–225; Ross, Edward IV, p. 153; Vaughan, Charles the Bold, p. 64. 29  Wijsman, Luxury Bound, p. 361. McKendrick puts a more restrictive time span on the king’s collecting activities, c. 1479–1480 in ‘The Romuléon and the Manuscripts of Edward IV’, p. 164. 30  McKendrick, ‘A European Heritage’, p. 56; Drimmer, ‘Visual Language’, pp. 181–82. McKendrick also notes that fifteen out of the twenty-one manuscripts that can be attributed to Edward IV’s patronage were histories in ‘The Romuléon and the Manuscripts of Edward IV’, p. 165. 31  McKendrick, ‘A European Heritage’, p. 56. 32  McKendrick, ‘A European Heritage’, p. 59 and Doyle, ‘Edward IV’, p. 192. 33  Edward IV is thought to have perhaps collected such lesson-filled historical texts with the intention of providing his son Edward with a proper education, the sources for which were read to him as he ate. McKendrick, ‘A European Heritage’, pp. 58–59; Drimmer, ‘Visual Language’, p. 182; Doyle, ‘The Old Royal Library’, pp. 85, 89 n. 190; Smeyers, ‘Flemish Miniatures for England’, p. 248. For more on the details of the prince’s education, see: Orme, ‘The Education of Edward V’, pp. 123–24. 34  Wijsman, Luxury Bound, p. 360; Drimmer, ‘Visual Language’ pp. 183–84. Other scholars point out that it also may have been Edward IV’s sister Margaret of York, Charles the Bold’s wife, who influenced Edward’s interest in Flemish manuscripts. Backhouse, The Illuminated Page, p. 178.

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scripts, and Louis at times gave his own manuscripts to the king.35 The men also often used the same artists, many of whom painted Edward IV’s Eracles.36 It is possible that Edward commissioned his Eracles after seeing Louis’s copy. The text in Edward’s manuscript shares a common textual source with Louis’s.37 However, the cycle of illuminations in Edward IV’s manuscript is far larger than Louis’s and thus contains visual content unrelated to or not included in Louis’s cycle.38 It is possible that Edward’s interest in the Eracles text was piqued through his relationships with Louis of Gruuthuse and Jean V of Créquy, but it took a different form. Although Edward’s Eracles manuscript does share some iconography with the examples owned by these men, this study shows that it was greatly elaborated upon and tailored specifically for the king’s interest in histories, offering him royal visual exempla. If neither Edward IV’s actions nor the surviving contents of his library manifest an abiding interest in the crusades, what is then the context for understanding his Eracles? Although Edward may have learned about the text from his Burgundian court connections, the expanded illumination cycle was planned specifically for the king’s gaze. It will become clear that, albeit full of illustrations of crusade battles and dynastic successions, the manuscript contains a subset of illuminations that demonstrate its function as a royal book; these were intended to communicate a vision of kingship to its royal patron 35  This is evidenced by Louis’s overpainted arms and devices in some volumes, for example Flavius Josephus’s Antiquités et Guerre des Juifs (London, Sir John Soane’s Museum, MS 1, fol. 140r). McKendrick, ‘A European Heritage’, p. 56 and ‘Painting in Manuscripts of Vernacular Texts’, pp. 309–11, cat. no. 87. BL, Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, MS 224; Smeyers, ‘Flemish Miniatures for England’, p. 248. McKendrick examines the issue of Louis of Gruuthuse’s instrumentality, or rather, as he argues, the lack thereof, in Edward’s building of his collection in ‘Lodewijk van Gruuthuse en de Librije van Edward IV’. 36  McKendrick notes Louis may have been trying to promote the Flemish illuminators he so often commissioned to the king due to a downturn in demand in Flanders for illuminated manuscripts in ‘A European Heritage’, p. 56. 37  The text found in these two manuscripts is distinct from those found in the other fifteenth-century examples. Edbury, ‘The French Translation of William of Tyre’s Historia’, p. 93. Smeyers argued that the two men both owned manuscripts that shared similar text and illustrations, evidence that Louis of Gruuthuse ‘acted as an intermediary in their acquisition’, in ‘Flemish Miniatures for England’, p. 248. 38  The two manuscripts share thirteen scene selections in common, but do not always approach the illustration of these scenes in the same way. These commonalities arise at books viii. 1; ix. 2, 9; xi. 1; xii. 4; xiii. 4, 6; xiv. 1; xv. 1; xvi. 3; xix. 1; xx. 1; xxxiii. 14; xxiii. 55–58; xxv. 8–9. This list shows that in many cases the commonalities are found at book incipits.

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through but also beyond the crusading lens, and especially within the political context of the king’s triumphant, post-exile, return to England. Edward’s Eracles manuscript was made c. 1475–1480 in Bruges.39 Illustrated with fifty-four miniatures, it contains the most extensive illumination cycle of the six fifteenth-century examples (the fifth largest of all extant William of Tyre manuscripts). The Ghent-Bruges based Master of the Flemish Boethius and his atelier collaborated on its paintings with the Master of the Getty Froissart and the Master of Edward IV.40 Planned specifically for the king’s gaze, this artistic team created an Eracles that is distinctive in its status as a royal book. The manuscript’s wide-ranging illuminations picture both positive and negative historical examples of rulers, which are divorced from their customary foundational texts: collections of historical exempla such as saints’ lives and Mirrors of Princes. The visual cycle even twists the manuscript’s crusade content in certain cases, in order to reflect positive royal behaviour or to provide historical lessons

39 

Janet Backhouse dates the manuscript to between 1479–1480 in Bruges, as does the BL’s Online Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts. Backhouse, The Illuminated Page, pp. 178, 202; BL, Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts. Scot McKendrick dates it between 1475–1480 in Illuminating the Renaissance, pp. 309–11, cat. no. 87. 40  BL, Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts; McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance, pp. 295, 309–11, cat. no. 87. The Royal Eracles manuscript is constructed from sixty-two quires, with a general distribution of one miniature per quire. The collation of the quires is as follows: 18, 27, 3–298, 306, 31–618, 622. There are two miniatures in each of quires 10, 13, 17, 44, 45, and 48. In these cases, the same artist painted both miniatures, except perhaps in quire 10 where one may be painted by one of the assistants to the Master of the Flemish Boethius (fol. 74r) and the other by the Master himself (fol. 77r). The first assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius painted the following quires: 5–8, 10 (fol. 74r), 11, 13, 15–17, 21, 36(?) (fols 32v, 47r, 51r, 56r, 74r, 85r, 98v, 101v, 116r, 122r, 128v, 134r, 162v). The Master of the Flemish Boethius painted the following: 9, 10 (fol. 77r), 12, 14, 18–20, 22, 24–25, 31(?), 33, 56(?) (fols 69v, 77r, 91r, 108v, 137v, 150v, 155v, 170r, 185r, 192v, 241r, 259r, 438r). The second assistant painted the following quires: 23, 27, 29, 34–35, 37–50, 53, 55, 57 (fols 177v, 209r, 224v, 266r, 273v, 293v, 300r, 308r, 317v, 321v, 330v, 335r, 342r, 347r, 353r, 357r, 365v, 368v, 375v, 377r, 383r, 393r, 420v, 433v, 450v). The Master of the Getty Froissart painted the frontispiece in quire 3 (fol. 16r), and the Master of Edward IV painted the miniature in quire 51 (fol. 404v). McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance, pp. 310–11, cat. no. 87.   The Master of the Flemish Boethius collaborated with the Master of Edward IV on Paris, BA, MS 5082–83, a manuscript made for Wolfert VI of Borssele, and BnF, MS lat. 4804. The second assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius, who painted most of the second half of the Eracles manuscript, also worked with the Master of Edward IV on BL, Royal MS 15 E III. The Master of Edward IV was known to collaborate with the Master of the Getty Froissart as well, as evidenced in Los Angeles, JPGM, MS Ludwig XIII 7.

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Figure 8.1. Master of the Getty Froissart, Heraclius Returns the True Cross to Jerusalem, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 16r (photograph: by permission of the British Library Board).

for the monarch, using examples of both good crusading kings and negative archetypes of bad Christian rulers and their downfalls. We know Edward IV was the intended audience for the Eracles because the frontispiece bears the crowned royal arms of England, surrounded by the Garter, in which is written the Order of the Garter’s motto Honi soit qui mal y pense (fol. 16r, Fig. 8.1). In the right border stands a flag with the royal arms, the Yorkist badge of the rose-en-soleil, and the English royal motto: Dieu et mon droit.41 The manuscript was hence claimed for use by the king of England through the inclusion of his heraldic devices and arms. 41 

Folda, ‘The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the History of Outremer’, i, pp. 510–11 n.  10; McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance, pp.  310–11, cat. no.  87; Backhouse, Illuminated Page, p. 202; Donovan, ‘A Royal Crusade History’, pp. 2–4.

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In addition to featuring English royal arms, the frontispiece greeted its royal patron with a visual narrative that was consciously tailored to the royal gaze, offering a positive example of leadership from which several fruitful interpretations could spring. It portrays the story of the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, who brought the True Cross back to Jerusalem on 21 March 630 ce, after his victory over Chosroes II in Persia.42 Although the First Crusade did not begin until 1096, William of Tyre included Heraclius’s triumph as a prehistory of the Christian struggle with Islam from its start in the 620s. William’s original text and its Old French translations simply note that Heraclius was victorious in Persia over Chosroes and that he returned the Cross to Jerusalem. Without many exciting details from William of Tyre to work with, Heraclius is only visualized in Edward’s and three other Eracles manuscripts in the entire corpus. Royal MS 15 E I’s frontispiece visually expands William of Tyre’s brief mention into a powerful story.43 The Master of the Getty Froissart painted the illumination in two scenes. In the background (Fig. 8.1), the emperor carries the True Cross proudly on horseback, before a city gate, on which stands an angel brandishing a sword. In the foreground, the grey-bearded Heraclius stands barefoot in his underclothing, with the Cross over his shoulder. At right, a member of Heraclius’s entourage seeks entry into the gated Holy City. The source for this scene in Edward’s manuscript is not an inherited iconographic tradition. Only one earlier Eracles manuscript includes the angel confronting Heraclius (BnF, MS fr. 9082, fol. 25r, Rome, 1295).44 In that Gothic illumination, Heraclius, on a white horse in the foreground, carries the Cross over his shoulders with his army behind him and an imperial flag flying over their heads. The gate to the city of Jerusalem is closed before them and an angel 42 

Book i, pt. 1. William, Archbishop of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, trans. by Babcock and Krey, i, pp. 60–61; Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs, ed. by Paris, i, pp. 1–3; Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, pp. 9–11. Anatole Frolow includes several historical citations of Heraclius’s activities involving the True Cross, in ‘La relique de la vraie croix’, pp. 91 n. 1, 60, 63, 189–92. For more on the True Cross in this period, see Frolow, ‘La vraie croix et les expéditions d’Heraclius en Perse’. Frolow suggests that Heraclius’s campaigns were ‘veritable crusades’, taken under the ‘principle even of holy war’, in ‘La relique de la vraie croix’, p. 91 n. 1. 43  See also, Donovan, ‘A Royal Crusade History’, pp. 4–7. 44  Folda noted BnF, MS fr. 9082 as an influence for the illumination in Edward’s manuscript in ‘The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the History of Outremer’, i, pp. 483–84, 511 n. 11. Other scenes in the Eracles corpus that include Heraclius include: BnF, MSS fr. 2628, fol. 1r; fr. 2824, fol. 1r; fr. 9082, fol. 25r; fr. 9083, fol. 10r; fr. 24209, fol. 10v; fr. 22495, fol. 9r; Paris, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, mem. et doc. 230bis, fol. 2r; and BAV, MS Reg. Lat. 737, fol. 1r.

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stands on top of the city gate. The artist did not include his humble entry that follows in the narrative. There is no trace within the provenance history that would put this manuscript, made in Rome in the thirteenth century, near the Flemish atelier that produced Edward’s Eracles, so iconographic transmission between the two is unlikely. Heraclius is also featured in two other fifteenthcentury Eracles manuscripts, BnF, MS fr. 68, fol. 1r, in which he is enthroned, and Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, MS fr. 85, fol. 2r, showing him ordering the rebuilding of the churches of Jerusalem. Although William of Tyre mentioned that Heraclius returned the Cross to Jerusalem, he did not mention the angel, so the chronicle text is not the source of this miniature either. Instead, these scenes derive from Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend, a popular collection of saints’ lives.45 In the fourteenth century, Jean de Vignay translated the Latin Golden Legend into French as the Legende dorée (c. 1333–1334).46 It was also translated into English, in verse in the South English Legendary (c. 1290), and into prose in both the fifteenth-century Gilte legend and in William Caxton’s Golden Legend (printed 1483).47 Caxton, who was in the king’s employ, used a French manuscript copy to create his printed translation (BL, Stowe MS 50).48 Ricardus Franciscus, who also worked for Edward  IV, copied an extant English manuscript (BL, Harley MS  4775, c. 1470). Both examples were relatively contemporary with Edward’s Eracles manuscript.49 45 

Jacobus used a Latin legend, the Reversio Sanctae Crucis (also known as the Exaltatio Sanctae Crucis and hereafter as the Reversio), as a source for his chapter concerning Heraclius (ch.  CXXXVII). Pohlsander, ‘Helena, Heraclius, and the True Cross’, p.  24; Baert, ‘The Spreading’, p. 194. See also, Baert, ‘Heraclius and the Persians’, p. 140. 46  Barbara Baert notes there are thirty-nine extant manuscripts of the French Legende dorée, of which twenty-nine are illuminated, in ‘The Spreading’, p. 202. 47  Edward IV’s reign is most contemporary with Caxton’s edition of the Golden Legend, the king having died the same year Caxton published his work, and so it is a reasonable comparative text to use to understand the form of the Heraclius legend when Edward IV’s manuscript was painted. Caxton’s printed copy was folio sized and encompassed 449 folia. Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea, trans. by Caxton; Rutter, ‘William Caxton’, p. 457; Baert, ‘The Spreading’, p. 203 n. 25; Boureau, ‘Golden Legend’. Caxton’s English translation was based on his critical study of Latin, French, and English copies. See: Butler, ‘Legenda aurea — Légende dorée — Golden Legend’, pp. 50, 76, 91, 147. For a twentieth-century critical analysis of Caxton’s translation, see Jeremy, ‘Caxton’s Golden Legend and Voragine’s Legenda aurea’. 48  Butler, ‘Legenda aurea — Légende dorée — Golden Legend’, p. 50. 49  Drimmer, ‘Visual Language’, pp. 191–92 and n. 81; Kekewich, ‘Edward IV, William Caxton, and Literary Patronage in Yorkist England’.

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In Caxton’s Golden Legend, Heraclius returns the True Cross to Jerusalem and tries to enter the city through the gate by the Mount of Olives. He approaches on horseback, outfitted in imperial garb but finds the city gate is miraculously bricked up and that he is unable to pass. The Angel of the Lord appears and tells him that to gain access, he must enter like Christ: humbly, barefoot, and in poverty. Heraclius heeds the angel, removes his imperial clothing and shoes, and dismounts from his horse. He humbly carries the Cross to the gate, where he is finally allowed access. The iconography of Heraclius and the True Cross is often found in devotional contexts as a traditional legend for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross. Prayer books that contain the Hours of the Cross sometimes use the Heraclius iconography. The contemporary Blackburn Hours portrays the first part of the narrative, notably painted by the Master of Edward IV, one of the artists who worked on Edward’s Eracles. The miniature emphasizes the emperor’s sin of pride, showing Heraclius approaching the city gate in full imperial regalia and the angel denying him entry.50 The illumination faces the Crucifixion with Christ carrying the Cross in its bas-de-page, juxtaposing Christ’s humility in the Passion with Heraclius’s impious imperial entry. The use of the independent Golden Legend text to construct this more complex frontispiece for the Eracles indicates that Edward IV’s artists, libraire, and/ or Edward himself were familiar with the Golden Legend’s text. The miniature’s intertextuality, in which both the artist and the viewer bring a knowledge of multiple texts to construct its meaning, demonstrates the complexity of communication visually embedded in this miniature.51 The visual message is not simply an illustration of the text or a message of Christian crusade victory. It foregrounds the humility of Heraclius’s second attempt at entering Jerusalem to emphasize his having learned humble, Christian leadership. When considered within the contemporary historical context, this frontispiece betrays an even greater level of complexity, as a historical exemplum of a good ruler. The Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, in reclaiming Jerusalem for Christianity and returning the True Cross to the Holy Sepulchre, rectified the disorder that preceded his arrival. After the angel chastised him, he entered humbled and even more Christ-like. The parallel in this portrayal of Heraclius to Edward’s own victorious homecoming after his five-month exile is evident. 50  Blackburn, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Hart MS 20884, fol. 34r, c. 1480–1490. The Heraclius miniature opens the Hours of the Cross. McKendrick, Illuminating the Renaissance, pp. 342–43, cat. no. 98. 51  Lewis, ‘Narrative’, pp. 96, 101 n. 72.

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Returning humbled from Flanders, Edward restored his proper rule and order in England, just as Heraclius reinstituted Christian rule in Jerusalem. Scholars like Scot McKendrick and Joshua O’Driscoll have shown that imperial themes were used to demonstrate political arguments about Edward’s era in his other commissions. The king was particularly drawn to texts that dealt with imperial Roman history like the Grande histoire César (BL, Royal MS 17 F ii, Bruges, 1479) and the Romuléon (BL, Royal MS 19 E v).52 Using literary and visual narratives to compare Edward to figures like Emperor Augustus, who brought peace to Rome, Edward’s return from exile was actively promoted among his supporters as a newly peaceful era. Edward  IV’s contemporaries echoed such propaganda. The Abbot of St Albans, John Whethamstede, stated that Edward ‘would reign “more happily than Augustus and better than Octavianus”’.53 McKendrick proposes that the textual figure of Augustus in the César stands as a positive parallel to Edward because of his role in ending the ‘civil war and bring[ing] of peace to the land’.54 The Grande histoire César’s (BL, Royal MS 17 F ii) text recounts the histories of the emperors from Caesar to Augustus to Frederick II and includes Heraclius.55 That text also relates that Heraclius killed Chosroes II and returned the Christian people and the True Cross to Jerusalem. McKendrick posits that these textual additions were possibly a new revision of the Roman history made specially to suit Edward IV’s contemporary, Yorkist propaganda. If, in the Grande histoire César, Edward actively promoted himself using the imagery of the Roman empire, then that propaganda also included the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius’s restoration of the True Cross. In fact, Royal MS 15 E I contains the highest proportion of miniatures explicitly featuring Byzantine emperors of all the fifteenth-century Eracles manuscripts, with five. Various Byzantine emperors are shown throughout the manuscript, including at the Siege of Shayzar (fol. 241r), receiving the king of the Latin Kingdom at both Antioch (fol. 321v) and Constantinople (fol. 368v), and the downfall of the evil Emperor Andronicus (fol. 420v). Thus, one interpretation of the Heraclius frontispiece 52 

McKendrick, ‘A European Heritage’, p. 59; O’Driscoll in McKendrick, Lowden, and Doyle, eds, Royal Manuscripts, pp. 192, 200 (cat. no. 50). 53  Sutton and Visser-Fuchs, ‘Chevalerie’, p. 116. 54  Hurlet and Vervaet, ‘Augustus’, trans. by Baboukis; McKendrick, ‘La grande histoire César’, p. 122; Drimmer, ‘Visual Language’, pp. 185–86. 55  The César manuscript is securely attributed to Edward IV’s collection through a colophon (fol. 353v) and Edward and his sons’ heraldic identifiers, dated to 1479. McKendrick, ‘La grande histoire César’, pp. 110, 114, 129.

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is that it represents the intentional adaptation of a positive imperial figure, Heraclius, as a conscious, contemporary, political metaphor for Edward IV’s restoration of his realm and that it is the first of a group of imperial images with a similar resonance.

Edward IV’s Eracles as a Mirror of Princes Besides operating as a royal book with propagandistic messaging, the illustrations in Edward IV’s Eracles also function as a collection of visual, royal, public exempla — the kind of ‘public exempla’ that Larry Scanlon categorizes as historical narratives that ‘address […] issues of lay authority’ and ‘public matters’ in a political way.56 Exempla are typically found in Mirrors of Princes, or Fürstenspiegel, didactic texts that were meant to instruct rulers in morals and governance and were, especially in the fifteenth century, decidedly political in scope.57 Such texts include examples of both good and bad rulers. Good exempla model how to best reign and negative public exempla demonstrate ideal rulership through historical examples of what behaviour to avoid.58 An additional interpretation for the Heraclius frontispiece in Edward IV’s Eracles is that it functions as royal hagiography in the tradition of the Life of Charlemagne. As a strong example of a royal, saintly warrior that was accessible to a royal audience in the late Middle Ages, Cynthia Hahn discusses the Life of Charlemagne and analyses the thirteenth-century, gilded reliquary shrine reliefs at Aachen.59 In Charlemagne’s Life, a holy intercessor, St James, appears to the emperor and commands him to rid his tomb at Compostela of Muslims. Charlemagne then wages his holy battle, prays for the dead, receives forgiveness for his sins, and receives the relic of the Crown of Thorns.60 In a twelfth-century version of his Life, he even apocryphally travels to Constantinople as a pilgrim.61 The hagiographic iconography of Charlemagne continues into the later Middle Ages. French King John II the Good’s Grandes chroniques de France 56 

Scanlon, ‘The Public Exemplum’, p. 81. Mattéoni, ‘Mirrors of Princes’; Scanlon, ‘The Public Exemplum’, p. 82. 58  Scanlon, ‘The Public Exemplum’, p. 81; Speake and LaFlaur, ‘Sententia’. 59  Hahn, ‘Lay and Royal Saints’, pp. 235–36, fig. 103. 60  Hahn notes Charlemagne is no longer considered to be a saint in today’s church, but was canonized in 1165 and was thought of as an exemplar of royal sanctity, Hahn, ‘Lay and Royal Saints’, pp. 235–36, 387 n. 93. 61  Latowsky, Emperor of the World, p. 209. 57 

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(BL, Royal, MS 16 G vi, Paris, c. 1332–1340) came into the English royal library between 1447 and 1535, when the Richmond Palace inventory was performed, opening the possibility that it was in Edward IV’s library (though there is no evidence to that effect).62 In this royal, fourteenth-century example, the saintly iconography of Charlemagne is mixed with scenes of Charlemagne at war. He is portrayed baptizing Saxons (fol. 130v) and welcoming pilgrims (fol. 152v). Most importantly, he is portrayed receiving the divided relic of the Crown of Thorns (fol. 159r) and witnessing a nail from the True Cross healing the sick (fol. 161r). Like Charlemagne, Heraclius was not a canonized saint, but he was treated with an elevated liturgical status as a part of the legend dedicated to the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross.63 The portrayal of Heraclius entering Jerusalem in humility with the True Cross is an exemplary archetype of ideal Christian kingship. Heraclius accomplished exactly what the western crusaders following him in later eras sought to do; he restored order to Jerusalem’s holy places and to the city itself. The Golden Legend emphasizes how Heraclius learned and performed the virtue of humility through his removal of his imperial garb and shoes, and that his humble approach to the Holy City was modelled after Christ’s Passion.64 This humility is the true subject of the frontispiece’s iconography, with its two scenes showing the intercessory Angel of the Lord instructing the emperor and then Heraclius humbly complying.65 This iconographic choice forces the 62 

McKendrick, Lowden, and Doyle, eds, Royal Manuscripts, p. 384 (cat. no. 136); BL, Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts. 63  In fact, the Latin sermon that is contemporary with the Reversio (see n. 15 above on the Reversio), the Sermo, refers to Heraclius throughout as ‘most blessed’. In the Reversio and the Golden Legend texts, however, he is referred to as a ‘most Christian prince’ and ‘ryght deuoute kyng’ but not as a saint. Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility’, Reversio § 10, p. 185 and Sermo §  10, p.  197; Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea sanctorum, trans. by Caxton, fol. CLXXXv. 64  In the Golden Legend: ‘whanne the kynge of heuen wente to his passion by this gate | he was not arayed lyke a kynge | ne on horseback | but cam humbly uppon an asse | in showing the example of humylyte’, Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea sanctorum, trans. by Caxton, fol. CLXXXv. In the Reversio, ‘When the king of the heavens, the Lord of all the earth, entered through this gate on his way to fulfilling the mysteries of the passion, he did not appear in purple or shining diadem, nor did he ask for a strong horse to carry him, but sitting on the back of a humble donkey, he left his servants a paradigm of humility’. Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility’, Reversio § 16, pp. 187, 189. 65  Borgehammar, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility’, pp. 166–67.

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viewer into thinking of Heraclius as a pious emperor and associates the miniature more with the legend of the Exaltation of the Cross than with the historical, imperial slayer of Persians. In comparison, the Blackburn Hours’ representation of Heraclius in full imperial regalia emphasizes the emperor’s secular pride. Edward IV’s Eracles’s foreground scene of Heraclius is more akin to the Blackburn Hours’ Christ figure than its Heraclius. Thus, the Eracles’s artist purposefully shifted focus away from the prince’s status as a warrior and towards a portrayal of the ruler as virtuous, in the case of the Heraclius frontispiece, demonstrating his humility. There are additional parallels between Hahn’s example of Charlemagne as an archetype of a royal saint and the Eracles Heraclius image. First, the focus on Heraclius’s entry into Jerusalem shows the emperor performing a pilgrimage to the Holy City expressly to return the Cross to its proper location in the Holy Sepulchre and to restore the city’s churches and holy places.66 This imperial journey parallels Charlemagne’s campaign to Compostela to restore the tomb of St James to Christian hands.67 Furthermore, Heraclius, as portrayed in the Eracles frontispiece, is visited by the Angel of the Lord, as Charlemagne is visited by a holy intercessor, St James.68 Heraclius carries the relic of the Cross as Charlemagne receives the relic of the Crown of Thorns.69 All of this is not to suggest that the artist intended to show Heraclius as a saint. If that were so he would be haloed.70 Rather, the Master of the Getty Froissart used the visual vocabulary of royal saints’ lives to clearly display Heraclius in the most pious and exemplary light. Here, Heraclius is not simply a historical emperor who performs a good deed. He is a positive royal exemplar, and the artist uses the authority of the Golden Legend exemplum to portray Heraclius as a devout prince, humbly returning the Holy Land to its proper 66 

Hahn, ‘Lay and Royal Saints’, pp. 249, 387 n. 93; in his speech launching the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont in 1095, Pope Urban II explicitly encourages the Christians of the West to save the Christians of the East, restore the Cross, and return the holy places of Jerusalem to Christian hands: Guibert de Nogent, Historia, trans. by Krey, pp. 36–40. Writing a century later, William of Tyre’s History alludes to Urban’s language in explaining Heraclius’s role in returning the True Cross to Jerusalem and restoring the holy places (see also n. 13). 67  Hahn, ‘Lay and Royal Saints’, p. 249. 68  Hahn, ‘Lay and Royal Saints’, p. 235. 69  Hahn, ‘Lay and Royal Saints’, p. 236. 70  As he is, for example, alongside St Helena before the gates of Jerusalem in the Retable of the Holy Cross, painted by Miguel Ximénez and Martin Bernat (Museo de Zaragoza). Pohlsander, ‘Helena, Heraclius, and the True Cross’, pp. 37, 39, 42, fig. 8.

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state. Considering that Edward IV was known to employ propaganda that cast him as an imperial restorer of peace, as convincingly argued by McKendrick, it is possible to interpret the iconography of royal hagiography embedded in the Heraclius illumination as using the Golden Legend’s exemplary authority to further elevate Edward himself, in its parallel with his humble reclamation of his realm after his exile and his restoration of peace.71

Chronicles as Exempla Collections Exempla allowed readers to judge the actions of their rulers by the standards set in the past. At their most powerful, rulers used the moral authority of exempla to legitimate their own actions through propaganda, as already shown with Edward IV.72 As such, exempla are not constrained only to collections of saints’ lives and Mirrors of Princes. In writing about thirteenth-century vernacular histories, Gabrielle Spiegel suggests that medieval histories are basically exempla collections intended to be morally instructive.73 Kings were their most appropriate audience, as they would have been best prepared to receive instruction from them.74 Historians constructed their narratives to most directly relate to the ruler for whom they were writing and at times to even support the political purposes of that ruler.75 Edward’s Eracles chronicle was not composed in his era, but its illuminations were. The artists who illustrated such histories were also capable of embedding visual exempla in their illuminations that had contemporary resonance. Of course, the Eracles miniatures illustrate the events from the chronicle. However, they can also be understood as visual exempla due to their intertextual relationships with other collections of exemplary figures, such as the Golden Legend and the Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, and due to the artists’ manipulation of their compositions to reflect an idealized version of kingship to the English king. Derived from his familiarity with other historical exempla and their visual cycles, Edward would have been able to bring a broadened understanding to his reading of the Eracles’s illuminations. 71 

Spiegel, ‘Historical Thought’, pp. 84–86. Spiegel, ‘Historical Thought’, pp. 84–86. 73  Spiegel, ‘Political Utility’, p. 89. 74  Spiegel, ‘Political Utility’, p. 89. 75  Spiegel, ‘Historical Thought’, pp. 93, 95. 72 

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First, the artists constructed positive visual portrayals of imperial (evoking Edward’s imperial propaganda) and English military strength, presenting scenes differently than the text to omit negative outcomes or redirect the viewer’s interpretation. For example, the Eracles shows Emperor John II Comnenus (r. 1118–1143) besieging Shayzar in April 1138 (fol. 241r).76 In the text, the emperor’s army encircled the city and battered it with siege machines that flung enormous stones, which successfully broke down Shayzar’s fortified walls, but failed to capture the city.77 Eventually the imperial army was able to gain control of the suburbs outside the city walls, causing the inhabitants inside the walls to ask for a truce and the lord of Shayzar, Machedolus, to offer to pay John II Comnenus to raise the siege. Rather dishonourably, the emperor accepted the lord’s offer of money and abandoned the blockade. The Master of the Flemish Boethius painted the two-column opening miniature of book xv, representing the Emperor John II Comnenus during the Siege of Shayzar.78 The emperor stands crowned at left in golden armour, observing the siege underway. His camp is labelled ‘Imperator’ (emperor) on the flowing, red battle standard that waves before him.79 The imperial presence is quite powerful through the employment of the labelled imperial standard and the extremely tall, strongly posed emperor. The miniature represents imperial power working to restore order in Christian territories, obfuscating the end of the episode in which the emperor raises the siege in exchange for payment. Such a portrayal of strong imperial leadership (and a clear omission of the unfortunate details of the conclusion) provides Edward IV an additional opportunity for positive imperial self-imagining. The next example is the Siege of Damascus, which took place during the Second Crusade in 1148 (fol. 280v, Fig. 8.2) and which the crusader armies 76 

Book xiv, pts 26, 28–30 and book xv, pts 1–5. William of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, trans. by Babcock and Krey, ii, pp. 88, 91–102; Guillaume de Tyr et ses Continuateurs, ed. by Paris, ii, pp. 39–53; Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, pp. 650–65. 77  Shayzar is the ancient city of Sizara, in northern Syria. Mango, ‘Shayzar’. 78  The rubric reads: ‘Comment lempereur de constantinoble assiega cesaire de son maintieng ou dit siege. Et comment il se partit du siege de cesaire sans prendre la ville’ (How the emperor of Constantinople besieged Caesarea [Shayzar] and held the aforementioned siege with his own hand and how he left the Siege of Caesarea without having taken the city). 79  The Siege of Shayzar is also pictured in the Eracles manuscripts belonging to Louis of Gruuthuse and the library of the Burgundian duke. Louis of Gruuthuse’s manuscript is the most similar to Edward IV’s, portraying John II directing the siege. The Brussels example does not explicitly include the emperor but does portray a siege underway. BnF, MS fr. 68, fol. 214r and Brussels, BrB, MS 9045, fol. 168r.

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lost.80 The text reads that there were three battalions involved in the siege led by their respective rulers: King Baldwin of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem,81 King Louis of France, and finally Conrad, the Holy Roman Emperor.82 The first assistant of the Master of the Flemish Boethius painted, on the right, the army of the Holy Roman Emperor carrying the imperial standard of the double-headed eagle on a gold ground (again, infusing an imperial presence into the visual cycle). The emperor is crowned, wears golden armour, and displays the imperial eagle on his back. In the bottom left, the French battalion carries the French standard: the fleur-de-lys emblazoned on a blue ground. The crowned French king to the far-left wears golden armour and holds a shield, also bearing the French insignia. In the upper-left corner, the final battalion should be led by the king of the Latin Kingdom, who would wear the armorial insignia of his realm, a golden cross between four gold crosses on a white background. Instead, the artist includes a battalion holding a red and gold shield and standard evoking, although not replicating, the English blazon.83 The text in the manuscript itself correctly lists the king of the Latin Kingdom at the head of the lead battalion (fol. 280v). This same artist rendered multiple scenes of armies in the manuscript, but none contain specific armorials identifying the participants as he did in this scene. This scene is not pictured in any of the other fifteenth-century Eracles manuscripts. Although historically this battle ended in defeat for the crusader army, the miniature, much like the aforementioned siege at Shayzar, elides the unhappy ending to the episode, focusing on the opportunity to show three princely divisions of the crusader army in an intimidating pre-siege muster. The additional alteration of the historical participants hints at English military colours, positively reinforcing the idea of 80 

See also, Donovan, ‘A Royal Crusade History’, pp. 14, 16–17. In the text he is referred to as ‘le Roy d’oultremer’, fol. 280v. 82  After first attacking in the orchards outside of Damascus, the crusader army was encouraged to move their camp to a more vulnerable side of the city, which they did. Unfortunately, thereafter they ran out of food and drink resources and decided to withdraw from the siege altogether, making the entire engagement a loss. Book xvii, pts 1 and 3. William, Archbishop of Tyre: A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, trans. by Babcock and Krey, ii, pp. 184–93; Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs, ed. by Paris, ii, pp. 138–39 and 141; Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum, pp. 758–59, 761–63. 83  The rubric does not include mention of the particular armies involved, reading: ‘De la scituation de la cite de damas et comment les crestiens assaillirent premierement les jardins dicelle ville’ (About the situation of the city of Damascus and how the Christians first attacked the gardens of this town), fol. 280r. My transcription and translation. 81 

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Figure 8.2. First Assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius, Siege of Damascus, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 280v (photograph: by permission of the British Library Board).

English royal military engagement alongside the most important European rulers — the emperor and the French king. In a strong visual parallel to both the Heraclius frontispiece’s composition and to the idea of Edward returning from exile to his throne, the manuscript’s final miniature specifically shows an English king happily passing through city gates.84 The second assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius painted the crowned King Richard I about to enter the city gates of Palermo behind members of his army, with ships filled with additional soldiers (fol.  450v, Fig. 8.3). The chronicle recounts that on his way to his crusade, Richard landed in Palermo because he wanted to winter with the king of France, Philippe II Augustus, with whom he was great friends.85 The artist here, however, did not 84 

The rubric for this scene reads: ‘Comment le roy dangleterre auecques grant nauie arriua en la cite de palerne. Et comment il alla a meschines deuers le roy de france’. See also, Donovan, ‘A Royal Crusade History’, pp. 14–15. 85  Book xxv, pt. 8. L’Estoire de Eracles empereur, pp. 146–48; The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury, pp. 93–94.

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Figure 8.3. Second Assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius, Richard I Disembarks in Palermo, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 450v (photograph: by permission of the British Library Board).

include the French king, who was typically included in earlier Eracles manuscripts to emphasize the amity between the two rulers.86 With the omission of the friendly meeting between the two rulers, Edward IV was left with a final miniature in his book in which the armed, crowned king of England freely passes through city gates, supported by his army. This illumination is at its base an important portrayal of Richard I as a role model for an English crusading 86 

For example, in BnF, MSS fr. 2827, fol. 234r and fr. 2754, fol. 198r. Paris, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères, mem. et doc. 230bis, fols 189v and 196v, also show the interaction. The only fifteenth-century manuscript to include the scene is Louis of Gruuthuse’s Eracles, in which Richard I stands on a platform between two boats and is about to disembark in Palermo, and in which, again, the king of France is not present (BnF, MS fr. 68, fol. 417r). In Louis’s example, Richard is crowned and wears armour that implies the English armorial blazon, half-blue and half-red with gold impressions of fleur-de-lys on the blue and illegible gold decoration on the red. Although the iconography of the miniature in Edward’s manuscript is related to that in Louis’s, it seems to me that the artists would not have missed the opportunity to reproduce the English heraldic devices present in Louis’s example if they were looking at the earlier illumination when making the Edward’s copy. Folda noted that Louis’s manuscript was a possible model for the London miniature. Folda, ‘The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the History of Outremer’, i, pp. 487, 491.

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king on his way to the Holy Land. Moreover, it begs the question of whether it was intended to further support the idea of Edward passing through the gates back into England freely, with the full support of his army, to return peace to his land. Mirrors of Princes also included negative exempla that inverted ideal rulership to instruct kings on what behaviour to avoid. For Larry Scanlon, Giovanni Boccaccio’s De casibus virorum illustrium is the ultimate negative exemplum text.87 In Edward IV’s era, this text was often read in adaptations, such as Laurent de Premierfait’s Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes and John Lydgate’s Fall of Princes.88 Such texts portray historical kings who failed to reach the royal moral ideal in a series of famous downfalls.89 The Eracles artists evoked such texts by illustrating figures well-known from such collections. Sonja Drimmer has demonstrated the wealth of Edward’s collection of such texts, especially translations of Boccaccio, like the Fall of Princes (Philadelphia, Rosenbach Museum and Library, MS 439/16) and the Des cas (BL, Royal MS 14 E v, Bruges, c. 1480).90 The illuminations in the latter copy of the Des cas vividly underscore the punishments meted out to evil leaders.91 Also painted by the Master of the Getty Froissart, Royal MS 14 E v includes Edward’s royal arms and devices (fol. 5r) and is contemporary with his Eracles. The frontispieces of both display the same mis-en-page, with the same hand at work in the borders and decorated initials. A miniature in Edward’s Eracles that shares much with the Des cas tradition is the portrayal of the famously evil Byzantine Emperor Andronicus I Comnenus (r.  1183–1185), who overthrew the imperial regent Alexius Comnenus, the Protosebastos and murdered Manuel  I Comnenus’s young heir, Alexius II Comnenus (r. 1180–1183) in 1183.92 The Eracles text recounts that after usurping the throne, Andronicus blinded and disfigured the rest 87 

Scanlon, ‘The Public Exemplum’, p. 81. Scanlon, ‘The Public Exemplum’, pp. 120–22. 89  Scanlon, ‘The Public Exemplum’, pp. 126–33. 90  Drimmer, ‘Visual Language’, pp. 206–27. 91  The Master of the Getty Froissart, the frontispiece artist in the Eracles, was one of the artists who worked in the Des cas manuscript along with the Master of the White Inscriptions, who often worked with the rest of the members of the team that made the Eracles, and perhaps the Master of the London Wavrin. Deirdre Jackson in McKendrick, Lowden, and Doyle, eds, Royal Manuscripts, p. 222 (cat. no. 61). 92  The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury, pp. 19–20; L’Estoire de Eracles empereur, pp. 20–22. 88 

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of the imperial family and raped the empire’s nuns and noble daughters.93 Afterwards, the people of Constantinople rallied around a distant relative of Manuel I, named Isaac, and crowned him as Emperor Isaac II at Hagia Sophia (r. 1185–1195; 1203–1204).94 Isaac captured Andronicus and forced him to wear a crown of garlic while riding backwards, naked, on a donkey.95 After, Andronicus was delivered to the women of Constantinople, who ate him raw. The miniature in Edward’s book focuses on the humiliation of Andronicus as the punishment for his many evils (fol. 420v, Fig. 8.4).96 Although the artist avoids portraying regicide and does not paint Andronicus nude as the text describes, he is posed backwards on the donkey, holding its tail. Andronicus’s head is clearly crowned with white garlic stalks, which frame his head and drape around his shoulders, like a collar for a knightly order (perhaps a reference to the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece). He is publicly paraded through the centre of town.97 This episode was not exclusive to Eracles manuscripts. Several fifteenth-century copies of the Des cas include the tale of Andronicus’s rise to power and unseemly death. The Des cas thoroughly lists all of Andronicus’s many evils, 93 

The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury, p. 20; L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur, pp. 20–22. The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury, p. 21; L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur, pp. 20–22. 95  The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury, pp. 21–22; L’Estoire de Eracles Empereur, pp. 20–22. 96  This miniature, which the second assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius painted, represents a scene from the fourteenth chapter while being positioned in the sixth chapter. L’Estoire d’Eracles Empereur, pp. 20–22; The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury, p. 22. 97  The scene also closely follows the abbreviated description in the rubric, which describes the scene as: ‘Comment kayrsac se fist couronner empereur de constantinoble. Adroines qui se disoit empereur couronna dune treche dã puis le fist monter sur une anesse tenant parmy la ville la que de la ditte anesse en sa main. Aps fut livre aux femmes de costantinoble qui le mengerent tout creu’ (Andronicus who called himself emperor crowned with a braid of garlic then made to mount an ass, taking the aforementioned ass in his hand among the town. After he was delivered to the women of Constantinople who ate him raw).   In contrast to Edward’s manuscript, Louis of Gruuthuse’s Eracles, which also visualizes Andronicus being humiliated on the ass wearing the crown of garlic, brings the emperor’s dismemberment and consumption by the women of Constantinople (BnF, MS fr. 68, fol. 385r) to the forefront. Folda notes that MS fr. 68 is a possible model for this miniature. Folda, ‘The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the History of Outremer’, i, pp. 487, 491.   Similar subject matter is also treated in two Gothic Eracles examples but in very different ways. BnF, MS fr. 2630 portrays a moment not yet discussed, when Isaac has Andronicus blinded in one eye before being placed on the ass (fol. 227v) and MS fr. 22497 shows only the women of Constantinople eating him (fol. 106r). 94 

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Figure 8.4. Second Assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius, Humiliation of Andronicus, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 420v (photograph: by permission of the British Library Board).

including those contained in the Eracles, and offers an independent account of his divesting the nobility of Constantinople of their wealth.98 All of his crimes compromise the dignity of the imperial throne.99 This loss of dignity was accentuated by the humiliations enacted upon him by the people of Constantinople, including the passage of a law that allowed the people to do or say anything they wanted to him, as well as parading him through the streets, putting out his eyes, and the aforementioned crown of garlic while riding an ass with his face turned toward the throngs of citizens.100 Illuminated copies of the Des cas feature Andronicus’s downfall as especially worthy of illustration. Other examples expressly portray his humiliation on the ass with the crown of garlic in a manner similar to that in Edward IV’s 98 

Giovanni Boccaccio, Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, trans. by de Premierfait (of Giovanni Boccaccio, De casibus virorum illustrium), ix. 11, fol. CCLXXXr–v. 99  Giovanni Boccaccio, Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, trans. by de Premierfait, ix. 11, fol. CCLXXXv. 100  Giovanni Boccaccio, Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, trans. by de Premierfait, ix. 11–12, fols CCLXXXv–CCLXXXIr.

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Eracles.101 Notably, Andronicus is also found as an evil ruler in Edward IV’s Des cas (BL, Royal MS 14 E v, fol. 477v).102 In that miniature, he is nearly nude and is being dragged up a scaffold. The Des cas text and illumination tradition thus link to the portrayal in Edward IV’s Eracles. Edward IV’s own copy implies his knowledge of the narrative and thus his ability to read the Andronicus miniature in the Eracles through the lens of the Des cas as a negative exemplum. Another episode that is mentioned in Boccaccio’s text and that also appears in Edward’s Eracles is the terrible crusader loss at the Battle of the Horns of Hattīn, at which Saladin, sultan of Egypt and Syria, and his army routed the crusaders and captured both the True Cross relic and Guy of Lusignan, king of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem on Saturday, 4 July 1187 (fol. 433v, Fig. 8.5).103 As the sultan advanced through the Latin Kingdom’s territories in late June of that year, King Guy had been counselled both to refuse to battle with Saladin and to fight him head on.104 After equivocating, he finally decided to march against the invading army, but Saladin’s forces halted his advance.105 Trying to escape annihilation, the crusader forces moved to the Horns of Hattīn, an area protected by ruins of ancient walls.106 Ultimately weakened by thirst, they could not fend off the enemy’s final attacks.107 Following this defeat, Saladin ultimately took Jerusalem the following October.108 The text of the Eracles underscores that King Guy hesitated and took bad advice regarding his choice

101 

For example, BnF, MSS fr. 229, fol. 372r (c. 1435–1440, Master of the Vienna Roman de la Rose), fr. 236, fol. 205r (first half of the fifteenth century, Dunois Master), and Paris, BA, MS 5193, fol. 378r (painted for Jean sans Peur, c. 1409/10). 102  The Master of the White Inscriptions and the Master of the Getty Froissart both painted this manuscript. 103  See also, Donovan, ‘A Royal Crusade History’, pp. 9–12; the second assistant to the Master of the Flemish Boethius painted the illumination, which represents book xxiii, pt. 40, from the anonymous continuation text, L’Estoire de Eracles empereur, pp. 62–66; The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury, pp. 45–47. 104  Tyerman, God’s War, p. 368. The events at Hattīn are discussed thoroughly from the Muslim’s historian’s perspective in Lyons and Jackson, ‘Hattīn’. 105  Tyerman, God’s War, p. 369. 106  Tyerman, God’s War, pp. 369–71. 107  Tyerman, God’s War, p. 371. 108  Saladin’s taking of Jerusalem is portrayed in the manuscript’s next miniature (fol. 438r), implying, perhaps, a causal relationship between the loss at Hattīn and the resulting defeat in the Holy City. Tyerman, God’s War, pp. 372, 274.

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Figure 8.5. Second Master of the Flemish Boethius, Saladin’s Troops Capture King of the Latin Kingdom, Guy of Lusignan, and the True Cross, Bruges, c. 1480. London, British Library, Royal MS 15 E I, fol. 433v (photograph: by permission of the British Library Board).

to march on Saladin’s forces and presents Guy’s bad and indecisive leadership as the cause of his downfall.109 The army of the Latin Kingdom often brought the Cross relic into battle with them to remind them of ‘God’s support and the promise of victory’.110 Its loss at Hattīn was felt widely across the West, as a ‘spiritual catastrophe’.111 The Eracles text picks up on the devastation of Guy’s defeat when it describes author William of Tyre’s personal opposition to the election of Bishop Heraclius (r. 1180–1190/91) as patriarch of Jerusalem. The text quotes William as saying, ‘I have found in a book that an Eraclius brought the Cross from Persia and 109 

The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans by Edbury, p. 45; L’Estoire de Eracles empereur, p. 62. Tyerman, God’s War, p. 371. 111  Tyerman, God’s War, p. 371; Riley-Smith, ‘Peace Never Established’, pp. 92–93. Even Muslim historians remarked on the depth of grief felt by the crusaders upon the loss of the Cross at Hattīn. For example, according to Ibn al-Althir (xi. 351–55), Imad Ad-Din, Saladin’s secretary, stated that the loss of the Cross was a calamity that ‘none of them [the Christians] would survive’. Gabrieli, Arab Historians of the Crusades, pp. 74, 81–82. 110 

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placed it in Jerusalem and an Eraclius will take it from Jerusalem and in his time it will be lost’.112 It was during Heraclius’s reign as patriarch that the Cross was lost on the battlefield. Bishop Heraclius himself cites its loss as one of the many sorrows to befall the Kingdom of Jerusalem in a letter to Pope Urban III (r. 1185–1187).113 The Hattīn miniature in Edward IV’s Eracles portrays King Guy, crowned in a golden suit of armour, on the left; enemy soldiers bind his hands and neck. On the right, one of Saladin’s soldiers irreverently uses the inverted Cross relic as a weapon, smashing a dead soldier below. The artist here powerfully captures the military and spiritual losses to the crusader army and explicitly shows Guy’s personal downfall through his capture.114 The rare portrayal of the moment Guy of Lusignan, the True Cross, and the Kingdom of Jerusalem are seized in the Eracles could therefore be understood as a clear negative royal model. The defeat was indeed so profoundly catastrophic that Boccaccio’s Des cas includes Guy of Lusignan in its list of great men fallen from grace. Boccaccio described Guy as having shamed the great and heroic reputation of Godefroy of Bouillon by allowing Saladin to chase him from his territory all the way to Cyprus and then to Sicily.115 Representations of this scene in the Des cas tend to show either Saladin chasing Guy of Lusignan or Guy sailing away in a boat to Cyprus, for example in a copy painted by the Bedford Master and collaborators (BnF, MS fr. 226, fol. 260r, c. 1415–1420) or in the copy owned by Anthony, the Grand Bastard of Burgundy (Paris, BA, MS 5192, fol. 324v, c. 1460–1470). Thus, the Eracles’s rare portrayal of the moment Guy of Lusignan is captured, along with the True Cross and Kingdom of Jerusalem, could have been understood similarly to the examples in the Des cas. Though the Des cas images show the aftermath of all of these events, King Guy fleeing in cowardice, the Eracles shifts the focus to the moment his downfall originally occurred at Hattīn. Furthermore, as elegantly expressed by William of Tyre’s quote above, 112  The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury, pp. 42–43; L’Estoire d’Eracles Empereur, p. 58; cited in Spinka, ‘Latin Church of the Early Crusades’, pp. 122–23. 113  The Conquest of Jerusalem, trans. by Edbury, pp. 158, 162–63; trans. from Papsturkunden für Kirchen im Heiligen Lande, ed. by Hiestand, pp. 324–27. 114  The rubric reads, ‘D’une bataille que le roy guy de Iherusalem eut contre Salhadin ou ledict roy fut prins et presque tous les barons La vraye croix perdue’. (Of a battle in which King Guy of Jerusalem was against Saladin, where the aforementioned king was taken and nearly all the barons and the True Cross were lost), fol. 433v. 115  Giovanni Boccaccio, Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, trans. by de Premierfait, ix. 15, fol. CCLXXXIIIr.

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the frontispiece miniature valorizing the return of the True Cross to Jerusalem and the miniature mourning its loss at Hattīn make a strong pair of opposite exempla, clarifying the theme of ideal Christian rulership through each miniature’s visual support or inversion of that idea. Edward  IV’s Eracles manuscript represents a departure from the copies made for Burgundian nobility, due to the density of its illuminations, narrative diversity of its pictorial cycle, and its status as a royal book. The artists who made the Eracles and planned its visual cycle were conscious of its royal readership and of the tradition of Mirrors of Princes. Due to this special audience, they were able to create illuminations that highlighted English military engagement, for example featuring Richard I entering the city of Palermo. They also interwove complex images that gained resonance from an understanding of multiple texts that they used to expand or gloss the Old French translation of William of Tyre. This intertextuality allowed several miniatures, such as the Heraclius frontispiece, to emerge as particularly effective portrayals of an ideal vision of kingship, even, perhaps, as self-conscious elements of Edward IV’s self-promoting propaganda. They touted Edward as having reclaimed his territory and having restored peace in it, as Heraclius did for Jerusalem. Intertextual readings made possible by this visual cycle also allowed the king to interpret the miniatures as a series of positive and negative exempla, through visual linking to texts such as the Golden Legend and Des cas. Through such associations, the crusade history was associated with other visual collections of historical public exempla offering royal lessons on rulership. Edward IV, as an educated and engaged reader, would have been able to make these associations to construct the complex exemplary meanings offered by the illustrations of royalty within his royal crusade chronicle. Thus, rather than simply functioning as a chronicle intended to help Edward IV understand both past and contemporary crusading concerns, his Eracles manuscript offers a lens on governance, with historical examples that were drawn from the crusades but were meant to guide him to see himself as and to become an ideal leader.

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Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Resources Amiens, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 483 F Arras, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 651 Blackburn, Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Hart MS 20884 Boulogne-sur-Mer, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 142 Brussels, Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, MS 9045 —— , MS 9492–93 Città del Vaticano, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reg. Lat. 737 Geneva, Bibliothèque de Genève, MS fr 85 London, British Library [BL], Royal MS 15 E I —— , Royal MS 15 E III —— , Royal MS 15 E IV London, Sir John Soane’s Museum, MS 1 (Flavius Josephus’s Antiquités et Guerre des Juifs) Los Angeles, John Paul Getty Museum [ JPGM], MS Ludwig XIII 7 Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal [BA], MS 5082–83 —— , MS 5193 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF], MS fr. 68 —— , MS fr. 229 —— , MS fr. 236 —— , MS fr. 2628 —— , MS fr. 2629 —— , MS fr. 2630 —— , MS fr. 2754 —— , MS fr. 2824 —— , MS fr. 2827 —— , MS fr. 9082 —— , MS fr. 9083 —— , MS fr. 22495 —— , MS fr. 22497 —— , MS fr. 24209 —— , MS lat. 4804 Paris, Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, mem. et doc. 230bis

Primary Sources Giovanni Boccaccio, Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, trans. by Laurent de Premierfait (of De casibus virorum illustrium), Boccace des nobles maleureux: Imprimé nouvellement à Paris (Paris: Antoine Vérard, 1494) The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Third Crusade: Sources in Translation, trans. by Peter W. Edbury (Burlington: Ashgate, 1998)

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Crusader Syria in the Thirteenth Century: The Rothelin Continuation of the History of William of Tyre with Part of the ‘Eracles’ or ‘Acre’ Text, trans. by Janet Shirley (Brookfield: Ashgate, 1999) L’Estoire de Eracles empereur et la conqueste de la terre d’Outremer, c’est la continuation et l’estoire de Guillaume, arcevesque de Sur; Continuation de Guillaume de Tyr de 1229 à 1261, dite du manuscrit de Rothelin, Recueil des historiens des croisades: Historiens occidentaux, 2 (Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 1859) Guibert de Nogent, Historia quae dicitur Gesta Dei per Francos, trans. by August. C. Krey, in The First Crusade: The Accounts of Eyewitnesses and Participants (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1921), pp. 36–40 [accessed 11 March 2021] Guillaume de Tyr et ses continuateurs, texte français du xiiie siècle, ed. by Paulin Paris, 2 vols (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1879–1880) Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum a tempore successorum Mohameth usque ad annum Domini 1184: l’estoire de Eracles, empereur, et la conqueste de la terre d’Outremer, c’est la translation et l’estoire de Guillaume, arcevesque de Sur, Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens occidentaux, 1 (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1844) Jacobus de Voragine, Legenda aurea sanctorum, sive Lombardica historia: The Golden Legend, trans. by William Caxton (Westminster: William Caxton, between 20 November 1483 and March 1484) Papsturkundenz für Kirchen im Heiligen Lande, ed.  by Rudolf Hiestand (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1985) William, Archbishop of Tyre, A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, trans. and annotated by Emily Atwater Babcock and August C. Krey, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943)

Secondary Works Babcock, Emily Atwater, and August C. Krey, ‘Introduction’, in A History of Deeds Done beyond the Sea, trans. and annotated by Emily Atwater Babcock and August C. Krey, 2 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1943), i, pp. 3–52 Backhouse, Janet, ‘Founders of the Royal Library: Edward IV and Henry VII as Collectors of Illuminated Manuscripts’, in England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by David Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1987), pp. 23–42 —— , The Illuminated Page: Ten Centuries of Manuscript Painting (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) —— , ‘Memorials and Manuscripts of a Yorkist Elite’, in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Colin Richmond and Eileen Scarff, Historical Monographs Relating to St George Chapel, Windsor Castle, 17 (Leeds: Maney, 2001), pp. 151–60 Baert, Barbara, A Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image, trans. by Lee Preedy (Leiden: Brill, 2004) BL, Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts [accessed 10 March 2021]

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Borgehammar, Stephan, ‘Heraclius Learns Humility: Two Early Latin Accounts Composed for the Celebration of exaltatio crucis’, in Millenium: Jahrbuch zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr.; Yearbook on the Culture and History of the First Millennium c.e., vi (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2009), pp. 145–201 Boureau, Alain, ‘Golden Legend’, in Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, ed. by André Vauchez (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 620–21 Butler, Pierce, ‘Legenda aurea — Légende dorée — Golden Legend. A Study of Caxton’s Golden Legend with Special Reference to its Relations to the Earlier English Prose Translation’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 1899) Donovan, Erin K., ‘Imagined Crusaders: The Livre d’Eracles in Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Collections’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2013) —— , ‘A Royal Crusade History: The Livre d’Eracles and Edward IV’s Exile in Burgundy’, Electronic British Library Journal (2014), article 6, 1–20 Doyle, Kathleen, ‘Edward IV: Founder of the Old Royal Library’, in Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, ed.  by Scot McKendrick, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle (London: British Library, 2011), pp. 192–225 ——  , ‘The Old Royal Library: “A Great Many Noble Manuscripts Yet Remaining”’, in Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, ed. by Scot McKendrick, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle (London: British Library, 2011), pp. 66–93 Drimmer, Sonja, ‘The Visual Language of Vernacular Manuscript Illumination: John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (Pierpont Morgan MS M. 126)’, 2 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis, Columbia University, 2011) Edbury, Peter, ‘The French Translation of William of Tyre’s Historia’, Crusades, 6 (2007), 69–105 —— , ‘New Perspectives on the Old French Continuations of William of Tyre’, Crusades, 9 (2010), 101–13 Folda, Jaroslav, ‘The Illustrations in the Manuscripts of the History of Outremer by William of Tyre’, 3 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 1968) —— , ‘Manuscripts of the History of Outremer by William of Tyre: A Handlist’, Scriptorium, 27 (1973), 90–95 Frolow, Anatole, ‘La vraie croix et les expéditions d’Heraclius en Perse’, Revue des études byzantines, 11 (1953), 88–105 —— , La relique de la vraie croix: Recherches sur le développement d’un culte’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, Institut français d’études byzantines, 1961) Gabrieli, Francesco, Arab Historians of the Crusades, Routledge Revivals (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2009) Hahn, Cynthia, ‘Lay and Royal Saints: Kings and Nobles’, in her Portrayed on the Heart: Narrative Effect in Pictorial Lives of Saints from the Tenth through the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 235–36 Hamilton, Bernard, ‘The Old French Translation of William of Tyre as an Historical Source’, in The Experience of Crusading, ii: Defining the Crusader Kingdom, ed. by Peter Edbury and Jonathan Phillips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 93–112

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Hurlet, Frédèric, and Fredrik Vervaet, ‘Augustus’, trans. by Johanna M. Baboukis, in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome, ed.  by Michael Gagavin, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford Reference, 2012), pp. 333–44 Jeremy, Sister Mary, ‘Caxton’s Golden Legend and Voragine’s Legenda aurea’, Speculum, 21 (1946), 212–21 Kekewich, Margaret, ‘Edward  IV, William Caxton, and Literary Patronage in Yorkist England’, Modern Language Review, 66 (1971), 481–87 Latowsky, Anne A., Emperor of the World: Charlemagne and the Construction of Imperial Authority, 800–1229 (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2013) Lewis, Suzanne, ‘Narrative’, in A Companion to Medieval Art, ed.  by Conrad Rudolph (Malden: Blackwell, 2006) Lowden, John, ‘The Royal/Imperial Book and the Image or Self-Image of the Medieval Ruler’, in Kings and Kingship in Medieval Europe, ed. by Anne Duggan (London: King’s College London Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1993), pp. 213–40 Lyons, Malcolm C., and David E. P. Jackson, ‘Hattīn’, in Saladin: The Politics of the Holy War, ed.  by Malcolm C. Lyons and David E.  P. Jackson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 255–66 Mango, Marlia M., ‘Shayzar’, in Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium, ed.  by Alexander  P. Kazhdan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005–) Mattéoni, Olivier, ‘Mirrors of Princes’, in Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, ii, ed. by André Vauchez, rev. edn (Oxford: Oxford Reference, 2012), pp. 959–60 McKendrick, Scot, ‘La grande histoire César and the Manuscripts of Edward IV’, in English Manuscript Studies, 1100–1700, ed. by Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths, ii (London: British Library, 1990), pp. 109–38 ——  , ‘The Romuléon and the Manuscripts of Edward IV’, in England in the Fifteenth Century, ed. by Nicholas Rogers, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, 4 (Stamford: Watkins, 1994), pp. 149–69 ——  , ‘Painting in Manuscripts of Vernacular Texts, circa 1467–1485’, in Thomas Kren and Scot McKendrick, with Maryan W. Ainsworth, Mari-Tere Alvarez, Brigitte Dekeyzer, Richard Gay, Elizabeth Morrison, and Catherine Reynolds, Illuminating the Renaissance: The Triumph of Flemish Manuscript Painting in Europe (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2003), pp. 309–11, cat. no. 87 —— , ‘Lodewijk van Gruuthuse en de Librije van Edward IV’, in Lodewijk van Gruuthuse: Mecenas en Europees diplomaat, ca. 1427–1492, ed. by Maximiliaan Martens (Brussels: Lang, 2010), pp. 153–59 —— ‘A European Heritage: Books of Continental Origin Collected by the English Royal Family from Edward III to Henry VIII’, in Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination, ed. by Scot McKendrick, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle (London: British Library, 2011), pp. 43–65 McKendrick, Scot, John Lowden, and Kathleen Doyle, eds, Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination (London: British Library, 2011) Moodey, Elizabeth J., Illuminated Crusader Histories for Philip the Good of Burgundy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012)

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Orme, Nicholas, ‘The Education of Edward V’, Bulletin of the Institute of the Historical Research, 57 (1984), 119–30 Pastoureau, Michel, ‘Un nouvel ordre de chevalerie’, in L’ordre de la Toison d’or de Philippe le Bon à Philippe le Beau (1430–1505): idéal ou reflet d’une société?, ed.  by Pierre Cockshaw and Christiane Van den Bergen-Pantens (Brussels: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 1996), pp. 65–66 Paviot, Jacques, ‘L’ordre de la Toison d’or et la Croisade’, in L’ordre de la Toison d’or de Philippe le Bon à Philippe le Beau (1430–1505): idéal ou reflet d’une société?, ed. by Pierre Cockshaw and Christiane Van den Bergen-Pantens (Brussels: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 1996), pp. 71–74 ——  , ‘Burgundy and the Crusade’, in Crusading in the Fifteenth Century: Message and Impact, ed. by Norman Housley (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), pp. 70–80 Payne, Ann, and Lisa Jefferson, ‘Edward IV: The Garter and the Golden Fleece’, in L’ordre de la Toison d’or de Philippe le Bon à Philippe le Beau (1430–1505): idéal ou reflet d’une société?, ed.  by Pierre Cockshaw and Christiane Van den Bergen-Pantens (Brussels: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique, 1996), pp. 194–97 Pohlsander, Hans A., ‘Helena, Heraclius, and the True Cross’, Quidditas, 25 (2004), 15–41 Pryor, John H., ‘The Eracles and William of Tyre: An Interim Report’, in The Horns of Hattīn, ed. by Binyamin Z. Kedar ( Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 1992), pp. 270–93 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ‘Peace Never Established: The Case of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th ser., 28 (1978), 87–102 —— , ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) Rutter, Russell, ‘William Caxton and Literary Patronage’, Studies in Philology, 84 (1987), 440–70 Ross, Charles Derek, Edward IV (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974) Scanlon, Larry, ‘The Public Exemplum’, in his Narrative, Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 81–134 Smedt, Raphaël de, ed., Les Chevaliers de l’Ordre de la Toison d’or au xve siècle: notices biobibliographiques publiées sous la direction de Raphaël de Smedt, 2nd edn (Frankfurt: Lang, 2000) Smeyers, Maurits, ‘Flemish Miniatures for England’, The Low Countries: Arts and Society in Flanders and the Netherlands, a Yearbook (1995–1996), 240–50 Speake, Jennifer, and Mark LaFlaur, ‘Sententia’, in Oxford Essential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002) Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘Political Utility in Medieval Historiography’, in The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), pp. 83–98 ——  , ‘Historical Thought in Medieval Europe’, in A Companion to Western Historical Thought, ed. by Lloyd Kramer and Sarah Maza (Malden: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 78–98 Spinka, Matthew, ‘Latin Church of the Early Crusades’, Church History, 8.2 (1939), 113–31

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Sutton, Anne F., and Livia Visser-Fuchs, ‘“Chevalerie…in som partie is worthi forto be comendid, and in some part to ben amendid”: Chivalry and the Yorkist Kings’, in St  George’s Chapel, Windsor, in the Late Middle Ages, ed.  by Colin Richmond and Eileen Scarff (Windsor: Maney, 2001), pp. 107–33 Tyerman, Christopher, England and the Crusades, 1095–1588 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) —— , God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2006) Vaughan, Richard, Charles the Bold: The Last Valois Duke of Burgundy, 2nd edn (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002) —— , Philip the Good: The Apogee of Burgundy, 2nd edn (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002) Visser-Fuchs, Livia, ‘“Il n’a plus lion ne lieppart, qui voeulle tenir de sa part”: Edward IV in Exile, October 1470 to March 1471’, Publication du Centre européen d’études bourguignonnes (xive–xvie s.), 35 (1995), 91–106 Wijsman, Hanno, Luxury Bound: Illustrated Manuscript Production and Noble and Princely Book Ownership in the Burgundian Netherlands (1400–1550), Burgundica, 16 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010)

Chapter 9

Refashioning Henry VIII as a Crusader King: Edward I, Crusading and Ideal Kingship in BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI Katherine J. Lewis

A

king writes to the pope in extravagantly passionate terms, dedicating the resources of his kingdom as well as his own body and blood to the service of a recently announced crusade. He will provide an army of twenty thousand foot soldiers and a fleet of seventy ships crewed by an additional fifteen thousand men. The king even promises that if his fervently longed-for heir is born before this impressive force sets out, he will lead it himself. This last detail is the best clue to the identity of the author: Henry VIII (1491–1547), writing to Leo X (1475–1521) in August 1519.1 In October 1518 a treaty of universal peace had been signed in London. This forged peace between England and France, very much on English terms.2 Significantly, the treaty was explicitly couched in terms of the universal peace long considered essential to a successful crusade against the Ottomans, thus hijacking the crusade project which Leo had been developing for several years.3 Selim I’s (1470–1520) recent conquests of Syria and Egypt and Turkish raids in southern Italy had given fresh impe-

1 

Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum, ed. by Martène and Durand, iii, pp. 1297–99; for discussion Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 105–07. 2  Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 70–74. 3  Setton, ‘Pope Leo X and the Turkish Peril’. Crusading and Ideas of the Holy Land in Medieval Britain, ed. by Kathryn Hurlock and Laura J. Whatley, tcne 34 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 225–255 BREPOLS PUBLISHERS 10.1484/M.TCNE-EB.5.129235

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tus to longstanding fears about their terrible potential.4 Pageantry celebrating the treaty featured a tableau representing the universal peace, which was challenged by a Turkish character.5 A tourney followed between forces represented as Turkish and Christian. The Christians presumably won, although the surviving account does not record the result. This essay explores the role of crusading as a dimension of Henry’s kingship, via analysis of a crusading anthology (now British Library, Royal MS 18 B XXVI) almost certainly written for Henry at around the time of the Treaty of London and his ardent letter to Leo X (Fig. 9.1). The manuscript forms part of a substantial body of texts produced across Western Europe as a response to the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans in 1453 and their subsequent advances in Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.6 Crusade texts in a range of genres continued to be written well into the 1500s, with authors regularly drawing on the inspirational example of previous crusading heroes as part of their exhortations.7 Moreover, these were informed not only by current events, but also by established norms prescribing hierarchies based on social status, religion, ethnicity, and gender, among other categories of identity.8 However, this manuscript has received little scholarly attention.9 This is likely because, as we shall see, its contents are mostly derivative translations of earlier texts. However, the fact of their translation at this time and in this format constitutes vital evidence for the repackaging of earlier crusaders and crusade narratives for a later audience, and thereby sheds invaluable light on the meaning and function of crusading in early sixteenth-century England.10 The existence of 4 

Housley, Later Crusades, pp. 118–50. ‘Venice: October 1518’, ed. by Brown; Anglo, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy, pp. 126–36. 6  Housley, Later Crusades, pp. 383–93. 7  For discussion of English literary examples Rouse, ‘Romance and Crusade in Late Medi­ eval England’; Manion, Narrating the Crusades. 8  Lewis, ‘…doo as this noble prynce’, pp. 311–28. 9  A Lytell Cronycle, ed.  by Burger, pp.  xxxii–xli provides the only previous discussion. Manion makes passing reference to it, Narrating the Crusades, p. 151, but no other studies of Henry VIII and crusading mention it. My own knowledge of the manuscript derives from Mary Noyes Colvin’s brief account of it in the preface to her edition of William Caxton, Godeffroy of Boloyne, pp. xvi–xvii, xvi–xvii. 10  The ensuing analysis aligns itself methodologically with existing studies of the memorialization of the crusades, e.g. Paul and Yeager, eds, Remembering the Crusade; Cassidy-Welch and Lester, eds, Crusades and Memory; see also Bale, ‘Introduction’, p. 1 for the importance of 5 

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this anthology reveals that the currency of crusading was maintained into the sixteenth century not only by diplomatic and military considerations, but because crusading continued to serve as a widely recognized measure of manhood and honour.11 Analysis of this hitherto neglected manuscript therefore enables further elucidation of Henry  VIII’s engagement with crusading at around the time it was written and underlines the persistent significance of crusading as an indispensable aspect of kingship and chivalry.12 Following a more detailed examination of the manuscript’s contents discussion Figure 9.1. London, British Library, will focus on the account it Royal MS 18 B XXVI, fol. 2r provides of Edward I’s cru(photograph: by permission of the British Library Board). sade, and the messages this conveys about ideal kingship. Then the political and cultural setting within which the manuscript was produced will be explored in order to further an appreciation of how Henry VIII’s self-fashioning as an avid would-be holy warrior helped buttress his standing as both king and man in the first decade of his reign. The manuscript is of paper comprising 256 folia, measuring 303 × 210 mm, written in a single hand of the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century (see considering ‘the idea of the crusade—the crusade as an aesthetic and cultural form—alongside its historical practice’ (emphasis in original). 11  Mesley, ‘Chivalry, Masculinity and Sexuality’; Hodgson, Lewis, and Mesley, eds, Crusading and Masculinities, passim. 12  Housley, Later Crusades, pp. 394–420.

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Fig. 9.1).13 It was evidently created as a composite work and begins with a preface introducing its purpose and contents: To the honour of almyghty god and to accomplisshe your high commaundement as towchyng the passage of an army and hoste of pylgrymes by your highnes blessedly to be purposed and conducted ayenst infideles for the recouery of the holy lande (halowed by the mooste precious encarnation, pilgrimage, and passion of our lorde Ihesu Cryste our redemptor which lande by many yeres passed hathe ben and yet is contynued in the hands and possession of the auncient enemyes of our faith the miscreants and infideles), here ensuyth a treatie made vnder correccion apon the passages of sundrye prynces and faithfull people of right noble and blessed memorie breuely extracted of sundrye histories for precidentes in this behalf diuidet in .v. bokes: wherof the fyrst is of the pylgrymage of Robert Duc of Normandye, fadre of William, Kyng and Conquerour of Englonde. The seconde is of the generall passage of Crysten prynces, wherof Godefrey Duc of Buillon was chief. The third bok is of the passage of Richard, kyng of Englonde, the fyrst called Richard, Cure de Lyon and other; the fourth boke is of the passage of Edwarde, [fol. 2v] Duc of Guyon son of Kynge Henry, the third of that name kyng of Englonde, which after his fadre was kyng in lykewyse and named Edwarde the Fyrst after the Conquest. And the vth boke is apon the treatie of Frere Haiton, Lorde of Corc cosyn germayne of the kyng of Armenye entitled the Floure of Histories of the Est.14

The anthology is clearly written and set out, with some calligraphic embellishments, and while its appearance is attractive, it has a utilitarian quality. Each of the five parts of the manuscript has a table of contents, listing chapter headings. There is a running title identifying the subject of that part at the top of every page. At the end an index has been included in another hand.15 Most of the reference terms are personal names but some other terms are employed as well, for example ‘discordes’, ‘disobedience’, ‘exortacions for the holy land’, and ‘subsidies for the holyland’.16 Apparently shortly after its creation the text was corrected in places to clarify the sense, correct spelling, and add in missing words. The 13 

BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 1 is a piece of parchment on which the manuscript’s owners left their names and some other annotations and has been bound with the manuscript. The gatherings begin at fol. 2. See A Lytell Cronycle, ed. by Burger, pp. xxxii–xxxiii for a more detailed description of the manuscript. 14  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 2r–v. In quoting from the manuscript, I have expanded scribal abbreviations such as ‘per’ and ‘pro’ and added punctuation and capitalization. I am very grateful to Kathleen Neal for her palaeographical advice. 15  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 230r–256r. 16  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 237r–v; fols 238r–239r; fols 246r–247v; fol. 253v.

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preface indicates that the translations were created expressly for this manuscript, presumably by the writer who addresses ‘your highnes’. Although there is no way of confirming this, not least because the writer does not give their name. However, the writer will be referred to as the manuscript’s author throughout. While it mostly constitutes translations of existing texts its compilation was, nonetheless, a creative process, designed to meet specific political and ideological objectives, as we shall see.17 The brief account of Robert I, duke of Normandy (1000–1035) focuses exclusively on his pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1035 (he died in Nicaea on the return leg of the journey).18 The author cites as his source ‘the Cronicles of Normandy’ and this is Wace’s Roman de Rou, written in the 1160s–1170s.19 One might have expected Robert Curthose (c. 1051–1134), to have featured in the manuscript as he was one of the leading nobles who participated in the First Crusade.20 The appearance instead of Robert I is testimony to the notion of crusading as a form of pilgrimage.21 After the fall of Acre in 1291 pilgrimage, as an actual and imagined experience, was crucial in nourishing the aspiration both to visit Jerusalem and to bring it back under Christian rule.22 Indeed, the preface refers to a ‘hoste of pylgrymes’ making up part of the planned enterprise. Godfrey of Bouillon (1060–1100) was one of the leaders of the First Crusade and elected ruler of Jerusalem after the city had been taken in 1099.23 He was much lauded in the later Middle Ages as one of the Nine Worthies.24 The author states: ‘The chapters of the second parte of this treatie, contenyng the generall pas17 

For further discussion of multi-text manuscripts, the manifold processes leading to their production, and the functions which they served see Connolly and Radulescu, Insular Books. 18  Robert: BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 3r–6r. 19  Wace, The Roman de Rou, ed. by Holden, trans. by Burgess, pp. 168–73 for original text with facing page translation. 20  Aird, Robert Curthose, pp. 153–90. A later hand has underlined Robert’s name where it appears on fol. 10v as one of the leaders of the First Crusade. 21  Purkis, Crusading and Spirituality, pp. 59–85; Hurlock and Oldfield, eds, Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World. 22  Bale, ‘God’s Cell’. 23  John, Godfrey of Bouillon. 24  Lewis, ‘…doo as this noble prynce’, pp. 315–17; 319–22. The Nine Worthies constituted three pagan leaders (Hector, Alexander the Great, and Julius Caesar), three Jewish leaders ( Joshua, David, and Judas Maccabeus), and three Christian leaders (Arthur, Charlemagne, and Godfrey of Bouillon) who were collectively regarded as exemplary embodiments of chivalric accomplishments by the later Middle Ages.

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sage wherof Godfrey of Buillon was chief, [are] extracted of the Bok of Conquest of Ierusalem and of the ixth book of the ix worthies in frenche’.25 The ‘Bok of the Conquest of Ierusalem’ is the Eracles, a French translation and continuation of William of Tyre’s Latin chronicle, originally written in the 1170s and early 1180s.26 The account of Godfrey is the longest item in the manuscript and is independent of William Caxton’s translation of the Eracles, published as Godeffroy of Boloyne (1481).27 Caxton’s translation made the details of Godfrey’s life much more familiar to an English readership. This may explain why the author of the compilation manuscript does not give their account of Godfrey an individual preface; his relevance to the anthology was self-explanatory. Like Caxton’s Godeffroy it is a translation of the first nine books of the Eracles.28 However, unlike Caxton the author moves the biographical material about Godfrey, which William of Tyre originally placed after his account of the First Crusade, to the beginning of the text.29 Thus the emphasis is squarely on Godfrey from the very start, rather than his prominence emerging as the narrative of the First Crusade progresses. The manuscript then focuses on two crusading kings of England: Richard I (1157–1199) was one of the leaders of the Third Crusade (1189–1192), Edward  I (1239–1307) went on crusade just prior to becoming king of England in 1272.30 The accounts of both kings are given original prefaces by the author.31 The preface to Richard cites ‘the Cronicles of Englond intitled Cronica Walteri de Guysburn and […] the Cronicles of Normandye’.32 Walter 25 

BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 6v. 26  Handyside, The Old French William of Tyre. There is no modern critical edition of the complete Eracles. See also Erin Donovan’s chapter in this volume. 27  Godfrey: BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 6v–86r. William Caxton, Godeffroy of Boloyne, ed. by Colvin. 28  William of Tyre’s original chronicle covers the reign of Godfrey’s successors down to Baldwin IV (1161–1185) and some versions of the Eracles continue the narrative into the thirteenth century. There were at least two copies of the Eracles in the royal library so it is possible that the author was given access to one of these: BL, Royal MS 15 E I and BL, Royal MS 17 F V. Although the author claims also to have consulted the ‘ixth book of the ix worthies in frenche’ the text is essentially a translation of the Eracles. However, perhaps such a book was used to corroborate details, or else is mentioned to lend further authority to the text. 29  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 9r–10v. 30  Richard: BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 86v–129r, Edward: BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 129r–143r. 31  Richard’s preface, BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 86v–88v; Edward’s preface, BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI fol. 129r–v. 32  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 88v.

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of Guisborough was an Augustinian canon who wrote around the turn of the fourteenth century and his chronicle is also the source for the manuscript’s account of Edward.33 The author has created original chapter divisions, thirtytwo for Richard and ten for Edward.34 Guisborough’s chronicle is chiefly valued by modern historians for its original account of Edward I’s reign, especially its northern perspective on his Scottish campaigns. He used Roger of Howden’s chronicle for the reign of Richard, but his portrayal of the king also constitutes, in places, an original narrative evolution of Richard’s legendary status.35 Richard’s crusade played a key role in maintaining his status as an exemplary king and national hero in the later Middle Ages.36 For example, the popular Middle English romance Richard Coeur de Lion was printed twice by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1509 and 1528.37 Thus by the time the English manuscript was created Richard’s status as a focus of national pride was firmly established, and readers would likely already have been somewhat familiar with his crusading exploits. Nonetheless the author summarizes these in the preface, concluding that Richard was: ‘the prynce mooste renowned in honor prowesse and noble corauge allwey applied to enhaunce the churche of Criste’.38 Henry himself encountered the narrative of Richard’s crusading at an early age. His tutor, John Skelton, used a manuscript containing the late thirteenth-century La chronique d’un ménestral de Reims, a history of the Third Crusade, to educate Henry in the 1490s.39 Skelton later gifted the manuscript to Henry, after Henry’s accession.40 33 

Taylor, ‘Guisborough [Hemingford, Hemingburgh], Walter of ’. The author does not explicitly cite Guisborough in the preface to Edward but the accounts of both kings are close translations of Guisborough’s text. It is not clear what the ‘Cronicles of Normandye’ is, or what it contributes, again, perhaps it is mentioned to enhance the text’s reliability. 34  Walter of Guisborough, Chronicle, ed. by Rothwell, pp. 79–144 for Richard’s reign (the author of the compilation only translates the passages about Richard’s crusading); pp. 204–13 for Edward’s crusading. See also n. 98 below. 35  E.g. his account of Richard’s death bed, Walter of Guisborough, Chronicle, ed.  by Rothwell, pp. 141–44. 36  Gillingham, Richard I, pp. 7–9; Libbon, ‘The Invention of King Richard’, pp. 127–38. 37  Richard Coer de Lyon, ed. by Larkin. 38  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 88v. 39  This is now Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 432. With thanks to David R. Carlson for drawing this manuscript to my attention and providing me with a copy of his article discussing the pedagogical annotations which Skelton made to the text while using it to teach the young Henry, ‘John Skelton’s Autograph Verse Annotations on the Chronique of the Minstrel of Reims for Prince Henry’s Education’. 40  Carlson, ‘John Skelton’s Autograph Verse Annotations’, p. 168.

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The final work is Hetoum’s La Fleur des histories de la terre d’Orient for which the author also provides a preface.41 Hetoum (c. 1240–c. 1310/1320) was a member of the Armenian Hethumid dynasty which ruled over the Kingdom of Cilicia. The preface explains that the text was compiled by Hetoum in 1307 at the command of Clement V (c. 1264–1314) and outlines the contents of the four books which comprise Hetoum’s history. The first describes the land of Asia and the kingdoms and peoples into which it is divided; the second lists the kings and emperors who had ruled in Asia from the birth of Christ onwards; the third provides a history of ‘the Tarters’ (i.e. the Mongols), including their origins, how they acquired the land which now makes up their lordship, and the identity of their current ruler; the fourth ‘spekyth of the passage of the holy land how they that oughte to make the passage to conquere the said land oughte to behaue theim from the begynnyng ento the ende’.42 This fourth book of Hetoum is an exhortation to princes to liberate the Holy Land, on the grounds that there is peace in Europe, while the enemies of Christianity in both Syria and Egypt are currently badly ruled and occupied fighting the Mongols. Hetoum advises both princes and popes that never before have circumstances contrived so favourably, and that this opportunity must not be wasted. Then practical advice is offered as to the ideal number of troops and ships to commit to the endeavour, as well as helpful directions to the Holy Land.43 Hetoum’s history thus forms part of a wider oeuvre of recovery literature written in the wake of the fall of Acre in 1291.44 The preface to Hetoum, similarly to the general preface above, states that the work was translated ‘to accomplysh your high commaundement’ while explaining that the state of the Eastern lands which it describes has much changed in the two hundred years that have passed since its composition.45 Thus the manuscript was created in the early sixteenth century. The circumstances outlined at 41 

Hetoum’s preface, BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 143r–144v. A Lytell Cronycle, ed. by Burger, pp. x–xxix. 42  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 144r. 43  The fourth book: BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 205r–228v. Burger reproduces edited extracts from the manuscript’s version of Hetoum as an appendix, A Lytell Cronycle, ed. by Burger, pp. 164–202. 44  Schein, Fideles crucis, pp. 200–18. Hetoum’s history was popular well into the sixteenth century, its contents evidently resonating with current circumstances and the ongoing Ottoman threat. Another English translation was printed by Richard Pynson ‘by the commaundement’ of Edward Stafford, duke of Buckingham (A Lytell Cryonycle, ed. by Burger, pp. 3–85 for a full edition). Its publication was likely connected to Buckingham’s 1520 announcement that he planned to go on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Davies, ‘Stafford, Edward’. 45  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 143v.

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the outset of this essay make it fairly certain that the ‘highnes’ addressed in the preface is Henry VIII and that it was compiled around the time of the Treaty of London.46 Norman Housley states: ‘the crusade as a serious military venture aroused more publicity and discussion in the years 1517–1520 than it had for decades’, noting that part of the evidence for this is ‘the proliferation of crusade tracts’ produced in those years.47 This manuscript belongs to that extensive corpus. It can also be compared to other crusading anthologies which were designed for kings of France as a response to their expressions of dedication to crusade projects. For instance, a manuscript containing three chronicles of the First Crusade was presented to Louis VII by a knight who had been a participant, before Louis embarked on his own campaign in 1147 (now known as the disastrous Second Crusade).48 Another well-known crusading compilation contains the romance of Alexander alongside Marco Polo’s travels, an account of Louis IX’s crusading exploits, and some practical texts concerning warfare abroad and passage to the Holy Land. Several of these latter texts were French translations created by the Hospitaller Jean de Vignay, who is depicted presenting the book to a king.49 It was almost certainly created for Philip VI, who had taken the cross in 1333. Maureen Quigley observes that ‘Philip VI could find within this manuscript an affirmation of his role as leader of the proposed crusade through connections with romantic / historic leaders and contemporary travellers’.50 The same can be said of Henry VIII in relation to the contents of the English compilation. In this respect the comprehensive accounts given of Richard and Edward’s crusading are especially apposite. The fact that these are straightforward translations of Guisborough’s chronicle, and thus add nothing new to our knowledge of either king partly explains why they have not previously been analysed. But it is vital to note that the wealth of information which the manuscript provides about the kings’ conduct on crusade would have been new to the vast majority of readers in early sixteenth-century England. The level 46 

Cf. A Lytell Cronycle, ed. by Burger, pp. xxxiii, xxxvi. Housley, Later Crusades, p. 126. 48  Rubenstein, ‘Putting History to Use’. With thanks to William Purkis for this reference. 49  This is BL, Royal MS 19 D I. The depiction of de Vignay, clad in Hospitaller habit, appears on fol. 136r. 50  Quigley, ‘The Visual Vernacular’, p. 195. Another anthology containing Vegetius’s De re militari alongside crusading treatises was compiled for Philip’s predecessor Charles IV, who had taken the cross in 1323 and again in 1326, Rouse and Rouse, ‘Context and Reception’. See also BL, Cotton MS Otho D II made for Charles VI in the early fifteenth century and subsequently in the possession of Jacquetta of Luxembourg, mother of Elizabeth Woodville. 47 

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of detail given about both Richard and Edward is not paralleled in any other contemporary historical narratives written in English. We shall now explore the messages about crusading and kingship which are promulgated to a wider audience via the account of Edward. Space does not permit consideration of both kings here so Edward has been chosen because, as we shall see, his exploits would have been least well known to contemporary readers. Edward took the cross in 1268 and set out in the summer of 1270, joining Louis IX’s expedition in Tunis, only to discover that the French king had died.51 As a result, the other leaders agreed a truce with the local emir and departed for Sicily, intending to sail from there to the Holy Land the following spring. But, in the event, Edward was the only one who did so, arriving in Acre in May 1271. This was despite having been informed in February that his father, Henry III, was very ill and being asked by the government to return to England. This indicates Edward’s determination to fulfil his vow, apparently inspired by Louis’s example. Edward stayed in Acre for over a year, fighting against Mamluk forces under the command of Sultan Baibars. This served to maintain Acre and surrounding area for the Kingdom of Jerusalem but did not make any territorial advances. In May 1272, a ten-year truce was agreed between the Kingdom and Baibars. Edward was angered by this and a perception that he was obstructing the truce probably explains the attempt made on his life by an assassin in June, who stabbed him with a poisoned knife. Edward killed his attacker and, following surgery on the wound, recovered from the effects of the poison. This became the most famous episode of his crusade, serving to elevate perceptions of his dedication to holy war, as well as showcase his bravery and fortitude. Edward left Acre in September and travelled back to England via Italy, France, and Gascony. Henry III died in November 1272, but Edward did not hurry home, arriving in England in August 1274. It is generally agreed by modern historians that the enhancement which the crusade provided to Edward’s international standing, both during his lifetime and posthumously, was its only palpable achievement.52 A poem written on Edward’s accession to the throne refers to him as shining like a new Richard: ‘Thus the Britons have a double claim to honour, by the wars of Edward equally 51 

For full accounts of Edward’s crusading from which the following précis has been drawn see Lloyd, ‘The Lord Edward’s Crusade’; Lloyd, English Society; Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 66–85; Beebe, ‘Edward I and the Crusade’; Summerson, ‘Lord Edward’s Crusade (act. 1270–1274)’. The most recent examination of Edward’s kingship is King and Spencer, eds, Edward I, although as the focus of this collection is Edward’s reign it does not include discussion of his crusade. 52  E.g. Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 66, 79–81; Tyerman, England and the Crusades, pp. 124–33.

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and by the valour of Richard’.53 Although Edward never went on crusade again, crusading formed a central aspect of policies later in his reign, especially in the 1280s (he took the cross again in 1287) and early 1290s.54 He was clearly viewed by several popes and others as the paramount hope for the recovery of Jerusalem. A poem written to mourn his death dramatizes Pope Clement V receiving the news very sorrowfully, lamenting: ‘Jerusalem, thou hast i-lore | The flour of al chivalerie’.55 Edward’s crusading and what this was felt to reveal about him continued to be recounted in later medieval England. For example, the Brut summarizes his crusade thus: Sir Edward his [Henry III’s] sone, ƥat was the ƥe best knyȝt of ƥe world of honour, was ƥo in the Holy Land, and gete ƥere Acres. And in [that] contre he bigate in Dame Alianore his wif, Johne of Acres his doughter, ƥat aftirward was countesse of Gloucestre. And he made in ƥe Holy Land soche a viage, ƥat alle ƥe world spok of his knyghthode, & euery man drade him, hye and lowe, ƥrouȝ-out al Cristendome, as ƥe s[t]ory of him telleƥ, as afterward ȝe shul here more openly.56

There is no detail here about what Edward actually did on crusade, just one brief half a sentence conveying the inaccurate impression that Edward had recovered Acre.57 As much space is given to the birth of his daughter Joan in Acre (which may be because she was a direct ancestress of the fifteenth-century Yorkist line). The emphasis instead is on what the crusade did for Edward’s reputation; the proof it provided of his pre-eminent and internationally acknowledged chivalric prestige. The Brut is an account of Britain’s history from its legendary origins up to the later fifteenth-century present and was the most popular secular work in medieval England.58 It was published by Caxton as Chronicles of England in 1480 and by 1528 had appeared in thirteen editions. The Brut is therefore an invaluable source for gauging both knowledge and understanding of domestic and inter53 

Political Songs, ed. by Wright, p. 128. The poem goes on to relate Edward’s crusade, pp. 130–32. 54  Prestwich Edward I, pp. 326–33. Reeve, ‘The Painted Chamber at Westminster’, argues that the decoration of the painted chamber was an expression of Edward’s later crusade plans, although see Binski, ‘The Painted Chamber at Westminster, the Fall of Tyrants and the English Literary Model of Governance’, for an alternative view. 55  Political Songs, ed. by Wright, pp. 246–50 (p. 249). 56  The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed. by Brie, p. 178. 57  ‘gete’ meaning ‘to acquire’ with the sense of booty. 58  There are at least 181 surviving manuscripts of the Middle English version, many copies also exist in Latin and Anglo-Norman to a total of around 250, Matheson, The Prose Brut.

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national events among later medieval English readers. Caxton also published the Polychronicon in 1482, a universal history containing a substantial account of English events, originally written by Ranulph Higden in the mid fourteenth century, and then translated into English by John of Trevisa in 1387. This gives only passing reference to Edward’s crusade stating that ‘[Edward] ƥe kynges eldest sone, and his wyf, wente to ƥe Holy Land’, later noting ‘Edward, kyng Henries sone, come out of ƥe Holy Land into Engelond ƥe secounde day of August’.59 There is no indication of what Edward actually did in the Holy Land. It appears that the details of Edward’s exploits did not appear in historical narratives written in later medieval England.60 This contention is supported by the observations of Robert Fabyan in his popular and influential Newe Cronycles of England and Fraunce (1513).61 His account of Edward’s crusade is brief, but it does, nonetheless, provide a full account of Edward’s movements, including his defence of Acre against Baibars and the attempt on his life.62 Fabyan concludes: ‘sir Edwarde in his policies & manfull actes so honourably behauyd hym that he neuer dyd suche acte in all his lyfe folowynge: albeit that after he dyd many of great honoure’.63 So Edward’s crusade is here presented as the zenith of his achievements. Fabyan further explains: Of this honour of this marcyal knyght I haue shewed the lenger rehersall for somoche as I fynde it testifyed of the Frenshemen, the which I knowe well by their other Cronycles that they make of Englysshe prynces must be of great auctorytie, or ellys by theym it shuld nat so specyally haue ben noted; and more I am assured that if a Frenshe prynce had deseruyd suche a generall preyse, it shuld haue ben set out & articuled euery act therof, y it shuld haue conteyned a large werke, and the specialties therof declared to theyr moste lawde and honoure.64

59 

These quotations are from Trevisa’s translation, upon which Caxton based his edition, Polychronicon, pp. 257, 261. 60  This is with respect to compositions in English, details were available in Latin narratives still circulating and being copied at this time, but most literate lay people could not read Latin. 61  Robert Fabyan, New Chronicles, ed. by Ellis; Boffey, Manuscript and Print in London, pp. 162–204. 62  Robert Fabyan, New Chronicles, ed. by Ellis, p. 367. 63  Robert Fabyan, New Chronicles, ed. by Ellis, p. 367. 64  Robert Fabyan, New Chronicles, ed. by Ellis, p. 367.

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So Fabyan found out about Edward’s crusading activities from his French rather than his English sources.65 This further supports the contention that the details of Edward’s crusading were not well known in England at this time. It seems likely, therefore, that Walter of Guisborough’s chronicle was chosen as a source text by the author of the crusading anthology because of the depth of coverage it offered about Richard, and especially Edward, as crusaders. Guisborough’s chronicle provides one of the most detailed accounts of Edward’s foray into holy warfare. In comparison to the other contemporary or near contemporary accounts it offers a much more dramatic and compelling narrative of events, including direct speech.66 These qualities have led to doubts about its reliability, Michael Prestwich judging : ‘in general Guisborough’s account of the crusade leaves much to be desired’.67 He and others still make use of the account, but Guisborough has received little attention from modern historians outside studies of Edward I.68 Notwithstanding modern reservations, Guisborough’s chronicle enjoyed a certain popularity with later medieval and early modern readers. It survives in at least ten manuscripts, some created in the fourteenth century but showing evidence of ownership and use in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, while three were made in the sixteenth century.69 One of these was probably copied for Archbishop Parker, and it was also used by the antiquarian John Leland, as well as being a source for Holinshed’s Chronicles (first published in 1577).70 Thus the crusading anthology forms part of wider late medieval and early modern interest in Guisborough’s chronicle. The circumstances of the Treaty of London and Henry’s profession of support for a crusade provide fertile ground for a reawakening of interest in Edward as crusader, which explains his inclusion in the manuscript. But it was surely also included because it had the novelty value of being unfamiliar, especially in comparison to accounts of Richard. 65 

English sources here denotes sources produced in England, only some of which were in English. 66  Among the chief accounts upon which modern historians discussing Edward’s crusade draw are the chronicles of Thomas Wykes and William Rishanger and the Flores historiarum, e.g. Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 66–85. 67  Prestwich, Edward I, p. 79. 68  With thanks to Chris Given-Wilson for his thoughts on this point. 69  Walter of Guisborough, Chronicle, ed. by Rothwell, pp. xii–xiii. 70  Walter of Guisborough, Chronicle, ed. by Rothwell, pp. xiii–xv. Substantial portions of Guisborough’s account were reproduced in Henry Knighton’s later fourteenth-century chronicle, including the account of Edward’s crusade, Henry Knighton, Chronicon, ed. by Lumby, i, pp. 257–66.

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The preface sets the scene by summarizing Edward’s adventures, the ‘gret victories [he] had ayenst the enemies of oure faith’ are noted, and the text continues ‘after trewce taken bitwene the Cristiantis and the Soldan this Edward returned wt grete honor and with a blessed purpose to retorne wt in the tyme of this truce’.71 Edward did not actually return, but the author explains that the pope appointed him as: the chief and mooste effectuell ayde that shulde by had for the holy land and for as muche as by the grace of almyghty god he reigned as king of England contynuyng alwey in hys good purpose to retorne an other passage to the holy land it semeth moste convenient that the iiijth parte of this treatie be intitled and named the passage of Edward Duc of Guyon.72

The author then lists the ten chapter headings. The key theme which emerges is Edward’s peerlessness.73 The other rulers whom Edward meets in Tunis are named in chapter 2 as Philip [IV], king of France, Charles [of Anjou], king of Sicily, the King [Theobald II] of Navarre, and the King [ James I] of Aragon. Edward’s superiority to them is introduced by the preface which states that after the sojourn in Sicily, ‘this Edward Duc of Guyon oonly […] proceded in this voiage and no moo of theim passed the royalme of Scicilie apon that voiage’.74 This is developed at greater length in chapter 2. Edward is critical of the decision to make a truce with the emir, saying, ‘Dere lords, be not wee assembled here and haue taken apon us the crosse of oure Lorde? And we ought not to compone with them, god forbede we shuld so do’.75 Edward points out that they have the opportunity to go on to Jerusalem and ought to take it. But the other rulers reply that the agreement has already been reached and they 71 

BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 129v. BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 129v. Edward is referred to as ‘Duc of Guyon’ throughout and also in the running title. Guyenne was originally part of Aquitaine but from 1259 became a separate territory and in fact was under French control until Philip III relinquished it to Edward I at the Treaty of Amiens in 1279, Prestwich, Edward I, p. 316. So this was not a title which Edward held while on crusade. The duchy was later held by Edward III and remained part of the English crown until 1451. Given Henry VIII’s French ambitions perhaps the author chose this title for Edward I as a nod to English ancestral claims in France. 73  In what follows I am not interested in whether this account of Edward is ‘true’ (i.e. whether it accurately conveys what he really did on crusade or how it compares to other narrative accounts), but only in the portrait of Edward which it paints for an early sixteenth-century audience and the implications of this. 74  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 129v. 75  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 132r. 72 

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cannot breach it, so they will sail to Sicily for the winter and proceed to Acre in the spring. ‘Edward was displeased with this counseill, wherefore he gaue non assent vunto this composicion, ne toke any parte of the evill goten goods, but made good chere to the kynges and couerd his displeasure’.76 The rectitude of Edward’s position here is confirmed by an act of God. The other rulers set sail from Tunis as soon as the wind allows, so eager to leave that they abandon more than two hundred of their men who are left: crying and wailing for the grete drede of deth, which they must nedes haue recevid right sone yf they had remained there. Edward moved with pytie percyving their cryes and lamentaciones went to land ayen, and sent them all afore hym aborde his shippes.77

Edward’s compassion is a dimension of his chivalry and presents a stark contrast to the selfish neglect and lack of good lordship displayed by the other rulers. The moral rectitude of Edward’s attitude to the truce and actions in rescuing the men is then confirmed by an act of God. Once the whole fleet has reached Sicily and moored at Trapani ‘a mervelouse grete storme’ suddenly arises in the night, destroying two hundred ships which were still fully laden with men, horses, and armour and, crucially ‘with all the aforesaid evill goten tresour’, all of which sinks to the bottom of the sea.78 But Edward’s twentythree ships are all unscathed, no men or goods are lost ‘god saved all hys goodes because he assented not to this evill counseill’.79 Whereas the other rulers wake up the next morning to the horrifying sight of countless drowned men and horses washed up on the beach, ‘for the which they sorrowed, and no merveile [wonder]’.80 This catastrophe is identified as the reason why the other rulers all decide to return to their own countries and Edward alone journeys on to Acre. Chapter 3 describes two examples of Edward’s military campaigns in the area around Acre. On one occasion he leads seven thousand men to take Nazareth, killing all the enemies he finds there, and slaying many more who harry his forces as they returned to Acre. The second instance occurs around the time of the Feast of the Nativity of John the Baptist, when Edward learns that a detachment of ‘Sarrasens’ have come to ‘Cakehowe [Qaqun]’ so he marches 76 

BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 132r. BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 132r. 78  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 132v. 79  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 132v. 80  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 132v. 77 

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against them, kills a thousand, putting the rest to flight, ‘and wanne there grete praye [plunder]’.81 This is all we get of Edward’s military experiences. The bulk of the account of his time at Acre is given over to the attempt on his life, which takes up chapter 5. It begins: ‘The fame of Edwarde encressed so that he was meruelouslye dradde amonges the enemyse of the Crosse of Cryste’.82 They hatch a plot by which ‘the grete prynce of Jaspes’ pretends that he wishes to convert to Christianity and sends a messenger four times between himself and Edward to negotiate this. The messenger is ‘of them which were nourished in the high mountaigne of a nacion named assassine’.83 He visits for a fifth time with a knife so well concealed in his girdle that Edward’s attendants do not find it when they search him. He is allowed into Edward’s presence to deliver his letters. Because of the great heat Edward is clad only in a tunic, sitting on his bed, while his attendants stand at a distance. The assassin strikes, under cover of retrieving another letter from his girdle. The account proceeds dramatically: sodenly he drew oute a knyf envenomed and smote at the body of Edwarde as he satt, and as Edward caste up his hand to bere of the stroke he was greuously wounded in the arme and smote so this messangere with his fote that this messanger fell to therthe. And so hastely he toke the knyf oute of the hand of the messanger that he wounded hym self therwith in the forhed. And anon he thryst it into the body of this messanger and slew him.84

Edward’s attendants rush up to aid him. Although the messenger is already dead Edward’s harpist smashes him so hard upon the head with a trestle that his brain falls out. Edward admonishes him for striking a dead man in this way, implicitly because this is dishonourable conduct. While the immediate danger is passed, the poison which has entered Edward’s body still poses a grave threat. The Master of the Temple gives Edward a potion to drink, and surgeons administer to him, but within a few days ‘they sawe the flesh wex blak’.85 The surgeons whisper amongst themselves, which causes the people to fear the worst. When Edward realizes this he says: ‘What is [it] that ye mustre [mutter]? May I not be helyd? Say vnto me the trouthe with-

81 

BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 133v. BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 134v. 83  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 134v. 84  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 135r–v. 85  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 135v. 82 

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out drede!’86 An English surgeon replies, telling Edward ‘thow may be cured but thow muste suffre hard thynges’, Edward replies, ‘yf I suffer will thow not promise me to be made hole?’87 The surgeon promises, on pain of his own head, to which Edward replies, ‘I commit me therefore to the, do what so euer thow wyll’. The surgeon first instructs that two men whom Edward trusts should lead away his wife, Eleanor, ‘so that her lorde se her not vnto the tyme that I shall saye vnto you that she shall come to hys presence’.88 They take her out ‘wepyng and waylyng and said “forsothe Lady, it is lasse hurt that thow wepe than all the royalme of Englond shulde wepe”’.89 Eleanor’s tears and cries highlight just how grave the situation is. Notwithstanding the promises of the surgeon Edward’s life was still hanging in the balance. The fact of Eleanor being taken out intimates that the operation to ‘kut awey the blacke ded fleshe’ would be both painful and gruelling for Edward and not something he would wish her to witness either for her sake, or his own.90 We are given no more details of the operation, only that, once it is complete, the surgeon promises Edward that he will be healed and on horseback again within fifteen days, and so it transpires: ‘the people merveled and thanked oure Lorde’.91 When the sultan hears that Edward has fully recovered ‘he might scarsely bileve it’ and sends three of his great princes to assure Edward that this ‘treason’ was not done at his command or by his knowledge.92 Although not convinced Edward treats them well and a truce is agreed, after which Edward leaves Acre. The assassination attempt and Edward’s response to it forms the centrepiece of the account, and is also the longest of the ten chapters. It testifies to Edward’s astonishing physical capacity, both in fighting off his attacker and in undergoing excruciating treatment, highlighting his great resolution, courage, and magnanimity. The fact that Edward made a full recovery is underlined in chapter 7 when, while en route back to England, he fights the Little Battle of Chalons, defeating the earl of Chalons who, we are told, was one of

86 

BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 135v. BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 136r. 88  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 136r. 89  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 136r. The story that Eleanor sucked out the poison is a later addition, Parsons, Eleanor of Castile, pp. 29–30. 90  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 136r. 91  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 136v. 92  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 136v. 87 

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many men in France who ‘envyed the fame of Edward’ and ‘envied his glorye’.93 This encounter (which happened in Savoy in 1273) begins as a tournament, but quickly descends into a pitched battle. The English were outnumbered but holding their own. The earl fights in single combat with Edward but after a protracted engagement realizes ‘he couthe no thyng prevayle ayenst Edwarde with his sworde’.94 So, with great fury, he resorts to grabbing Edward round the neck, trying to drag him off his horse, declaring ‘I woll haue bothe thy horse and the!’ but Edward ‘disdaynyng thise words smote his horse with the spurrse and by that means therle was plucked from his owne horse and hong styll abowte the nekk of Edwarde, which anon caste hym from hym to therth’.95 Seeing that their opponents were behaving dishonourably and not observing the conventions of a tourney Edward instructs his followers to spare no man and eventually wins, after ‘grete effusion of blode’.96 The earl, for his conduct, was not permitted to surrender to Edward, but was humiliatingly made to yield to a mere ‘bacheler knyght’. This incident further showcases Edward’s unparalleled physique and prowess, and his superiority to other men, who have to stoop to underhand means to try and best him. If Henry VIII did ever read this manuscript this episode would surely have appealed to him, especially for its articulation of the superiority of English manhood over French.97 The final three chapters about Edward contain material from later in his reign.98 Chapter 8 describes the fall of Acre in 1291. Chapter 9 discusses the financial grant, the disme, which Nicholas IV made to Edward in order to fund a new crusade. The words of the grant itself are left in the original Latin rather than being translated.99 This chapter actually ends on a negative note: having explained that the disme was collected and stored in monasteries, we are told that ‘the kyng toke by force oute of thise monasteries this dismes, redy brought in for iij yeres,

93  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 137r–138v. This was Peter, count of Chalons, see Prestwich, Edward I, p. 85. 94  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 137v. 95  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 138r. 96  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 138v. 97  Like Henry Edward was a keen jouster and participated frequently in tournaments both in England and on the Continent before becoming king, Prestwich, Edward I, pp. 34, 60. 98  Walter of Guisborough, Chronicle, ed. by Rothwell, pp. 228–32. As with the account of Richard the author thereby adapts Guisborough’s text, focusing only on passages relevant to crusading. 99  BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 140v–141r.

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and yet nether past in this voyage noe kept his promise [to go on crusade]’.100 The account of Edward concludes with chapter 10 relating Nicholas IV’s ‘lettre of lamentation […] apon the captiuitie of Cristen people in the Holy Land’.101 This chapter is actually the opening section of Nicholas’s papal encyclical Dirum amaritudinis calicem issued on 12 August 1291 after the fall of Acre, calling for a crusade to be organized in response. Again this is given in the original Latin. This portion of text, and the grant mentioned above, were originally copied by Guisborough from papal missives.102 The fact that they were left untranslated may indicate that the author was aware of their status as papal missives, rather than compositions of Guisborough’s, and thus felt it more appropriate to leave them in Latin. Hetoum’s history, also written as a response to the fall of Acre, follows, which serves to emphasize the link between the two: Acre was lost and is still lost, along with the rest of the Crusader States. Edward was the last English king to go on crusade there but did not complete his vow.103 Thus a new campaign must be launched in order to recover it. This framing renders the manuscript’s choice of contents both coherent and pointed. Fundamental to the account of Edward is the emphasis placed on his absolute dedication to crusading. Moreover, going on crusade enables Edward to display a range of properties crucial to high status manhood, and to kingship. Not only was Edward willing to travel to the Holy Land when other rulers would not, he risked his life in the process, sustaining a wound that should have been fatal, yet from which he quickly recovered without impairment. The attempt on Edward’s life thus accentuates his fortitude, building on the earlier chapters to provide confirmation of his peerlessness. His hegemonic status is further confirmed by his conduct and victory at Chalons. Moreover, Edward enjoyed conspicuous divine favour, God preserving first his fleet, and then his life. Thus, while Edward may not have achieved anything in military or strategic terms of benefit to Christian sovereignty or security in the area, from an early sixteenth-century perspective the fact that he had endeavoured to do so was praiseworthy and inspiring. Edward’s exploits provide abundant illustration of his distinction and singularity as both man and king. The manu100 

BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 141r. BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 141v. 102  Lloyd, English Society, p. 39 on Guisborough and other chroniclers drawing directly on the encyclical as ‘ready-made narratives of events’. 103  Edward’s crusade and the attempted assassination accredited to Baibars is mentioned by Hetoum, BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 211v. 101 

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script renders him, like Godfrey and Richard, an exemplar of virtue, courage, and prowess, determined to defend and further Christendom. However, while Edward’s efforts were heroic, even he left the job unfinished, thus the crusading baton is passed to his descendant. Therefore, in the final part of this essay we will consider the significance and utility of these models of crusade leadership to Henry VIII at around the time of the Treaty of London. The crusading anthology may actually have been written in response to a ‘high commaundement’ from Henry (or from Wolsey, on Henry’s behalf ). The author repeats the claim made in the general preface that they are writing ‘to accomplish youre high commaundement’ in the preface to Hetoum.104 Significantly, the same term, ‘commaundement’, is used twice to describe Clement’s commission of the history from Hetoum.105 The fact that the author states it was ‘made under correccion’ implies someone checking and endorsing its contents.106 If it was written to royal order, it was likely intended for publication in order to promulgate Henry’s dedication to the crusading cause. The preface claims that there were plans afoot for an actual crusade: ‘the passage of an army and hoste of pylgrymes by your highnes blessedly to be purposed and conducted ayenst infideles for the recouery of the holy lande’, which resonates with what Henry had outlined to Leo. If there was a plan to print the manuscript, the commission would surely have gone to Richard Pynson, who had, by 1518, been king’s printer for over a decade.107 Another possibility is that it was written by someone looking for royal patronage, in the knowledge that there was government interest in a crusade. This would be akin to what happened later in the reign with authors writing pro-Reformation tracts that would serve Henry’s interests, and presenting them to Cromwell in the hope of financial remuneration.108 Whatever the circumstances of the manuscript’s creation there is no evidence that either Henry or Wolsey ever saw it, or of it

104 

BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 143r. BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 2v and fol. 143r. This is also the term Pynson used in relation to the duke of Buckingham, n. 44 above. 106  The same phrase ‘wherfore under correccion’ (BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 88r) is used in the preface to Richard when the author explains their choice of subject for the third book. The fact that the manuscript was corrected and then an index was added may indicate further stages of work preparatory to publication. 107  Neville-Sington, ‘Pynson, Richard’. 108  The career of printer and translator William Marshall provides an example: Ryrie, ‘Marshall, William’. With thanks to Tim Thornton for advice on this point. 105 

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being printed.109 But regardless of whether Henry commissioned, read, or even knew about it, the manuscript’s existence and its address to him are still highly significant for a number of reasons. Crusading, as an ethos if never an experience, had currency and value for Henry as a facet of the heroic, martial brand of kingship he was determined to embody and to project internationally. Dale Hoak contends that ‘Henry VIII’s obsession with war is central to an understanding of his reign’.110 This obsession forms a pivotal context against which to understand the attraction that crusading held for him around the time of the manuscript’s creation. Henry succeeded to the throne at the age of seventeen, on the cusp of manhood and endowed with the impressive frame and dashing good looks of his maternal grandfather, Edward IV.111 Henry’s kingship was bellicose from the outset: he revived the manufacture of armour, ships, and guns.112 He possessed all the qualities that could enable him to be a very successful military leader, and craved the experience of warfare as a means of asserting both his kingship and his maturity. War with France, the quintessential combat arena for medieval English kings, was immediately on the agenda.113 Henry also participated enthusiastically in the well-established medieval chivalric culture of tournaments and was an extremely accomplished jouster.114 Tournaments were not only spectacular displays or mere ‘games’ but still constituted vital training for warfare at this time and participation in them was a crucial measure of elite masculinity.115 Henry imitated rulers such as James IV of Scotland 109  The ownership inscriptions are seventeenth century, including a Richard Hanslepp whose name appears on BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fols 1r and 2r. He may be the Richard Hanslepp who had two thirds of his property sequestered in 1651 on the grounds both that he had supported Charles I and that he was a papist, Calendar, Committee for the Advance of Money, ed. by Everett, ii, p. 1078. Another inscription on BL, Royal MS 18 XXVI, fol. 2r records that the manuscript was given by Richard Hanslepp on 21 August 1656 to John Theyer. Theyer was a keen collector of medieval manuscripts and his collection was purchased by Charles II in about 1681, thus forming part of the Royal collection donated to the British Museum by George II. I am very grateful to Audrey Thorstad for researching the manuscript’s owners. 110  Hoak, ‘The Legacy of Henry VIII’, p. 64. 111  Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 13–14. 112  Rimer, Richardson, and Cooper, Henry VIII. 113  Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 21–40. 114  Anglo, Spectacle, pp. 108–23. 115  Levitt, ‘The Construction of High Status Masculinity through the Tournament and Martial Activity’.

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(1473–1513) and the Emperor Maximilian (1459–1519) who employed chivalry as a means of affirming their political mastery.116 Another manifestation of chivalric culture at Henry’s court is the conspicuous number of chivalric texts in both manuscript and print which were produced in the early years of his reign. Many of these are, or draw on, medieval texts. For example, sometime between June 1513 and autumn 1514 an English life of Henry V was produced and dedicated to Henry by an anonymous author.117 This provides a prior instance of explicit parallels being drawn between the exploits of a medieval ruler and Henry VIII’s current policy comparable to the crusading anthology. The preface offers Henry V as a model to Henry VIII, in the knowledge of Henry VIII’s intention to go to war with France, expressing the hope that the text would inspire the king to imitate ‘the noble and chivalrous acts of this so noble, so virtuous, and so excellent a Prince, which so followed, he might […] attain to like honour, fame, and victorie’.118 Henry V’s example is explicitly appropriated to advance Henry’s military and propagandist interests, and, as with the crusade anthology, may have been intended for publication. Certainly in 1513 Pynson printed an edition of John Lydgate’s Troy Book, originally commissioned by Henry V while Prince of Wales in 1412. Pynson’s edition preserves the prologue and envoy which acclaims Henry V as the epitome of knighthood and virtue.119 A few years after the crusading anthology was written, in 1523, Pynson published John Bourchier, Lord Berners’s translation of Froissart’s late fourteenth-century Chroniques. At this time Henry had allied with Charles V against France and planned a further campaign there. Berners states this translation was made at Henry’s request and identifies it as a guide to famous English feats of arms, proclaiming: ‘What pleasure shall it be to the noble gentylmen of Englande | to se | beholde | & rede: the highe enterprises | famous actes | and glorious dedes | done and atchyued by their valyant aunceytours?’120 So the crusading anthology forms part of a wider corpus of chivalric, didactic texts in English produced in the first decade or so of Henry’s reign, which have recourse 116  Gunn, ‘Chivalry and the Politics of the Early Tudor Court’, p. 108; Terjanian, ed., The Last Knight. 117  First English Life, ed. by Kingsford. 118  First English Life, ed. by Kingsford, p. 4. Davies, ‘Henry VIII and Henry VI’, pp. 235–62. 119  John Lydgate, The hystorye, sege and dystruccyon of Troye (Short Title Catalogue (2nd edn) 5579) accessible online via Early English Books Online. 120  John Bourchier, Chroniques. Published in 2 volumes (STC (2nd edn) 11396 and 11397) accessible online via Early English Books Online. Kane, ‘An Accident of History’; Berners also translated other medieval texts Boro, ‘Lord Berners and his Books’.

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to medieval exemplars in order to inspire prowess in contemporary men and thereby aim to further his foreign policy projects. Thus, politically, militarily, and culturally Henry was self-consciously shaping and performing his kingship along the familiar lines established by his admired medieval forebears.121 The contemporary historian Polydore Vergil recounted Henry’s eagerness to go to war with France in 1513, and describes him justifying this course of action to his council as follows: it behoved him to enter upon his first military experience in so important and difficult a war in order that he might, by a signal start to his martial knowledge, create such a fine opinion about his valour among all men that they would clearly understand that his ambition was not merely to equal but indeed exceed the glorious deeds of his ancestors.122

Indeed, Steven Gunn declares that Henry ‘fought in the shadow of his ancestors, those warrior-kings who looked down at him from the portraits at Richmond Palace, for an honourable place in the history of his country and the annals of prowess’.123 Gunn also states that in going to war with France Henry sought to capitalize on what S. B. Chrimes characterized as the ‘unspectacular but substantial strength’ attained by Henry VII’s diplomatic and thus unheroic foreign policy.124 Gunn further states: ‘That strength had no independent existence; it had to be demonstrated among the powers of Europe’.125 The same can be said for Henry’s manhood. As C. G. Cruickshank observed, Henry’s war with France was inevitable as a means of proving himself as master of war ‘[o]therwise he was but half a man’.126 Similarly Christopher Tyerman observes that, for Edward I, crusading was a means of ‘asserting his independence and establishing his international reputation’.127 Despite its scant achievements Henry’s French campaign of 1513 played a vital role in shaping the rest of his 121  James Raymond argues that in pursuing warfare abroad ‘Henry and his court were more heavily influenced by the medieval traditions of chivalry and honour than notions of a “balance of power”’. Henry VIII’s Military Revolution, p. 14. See also Gunn, ‘French Wars’, pp. 40–41. 122  Quoted and discussed by Richardson, ‘Boys and their Toys’, pp. 195–96. 123  Gunn, ‘French Wars’, p. 47. 124  Gunn, ‘French Wars’, p. 45. 125  Gunn, ‘French Wars’, p. 45. 126  Cruickshank, Army Royal, p. 1. It is worth noting that Henry’s masculinity (except in relation to his marriages) has been little explored. Although notable exceptions are Richardson, ‘Boys and their Toys’, and String, ‘Projecting Masculinity’. 127  Tyerman, England and the Crusades, p. 125.

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reign.128 Nor was Henry’s determination to enter the international military arena simply an ambitious young man’s vainglorious ego trip. There were sound political and ideological reasons for Henry to project the image of himself as a warrior leader; it was a major tactic for ensuring England’s standing and security on the international stage.129 Plus, in pursuing war, especially with France, Henry was meeting the expectations of his subjects for whom it was a matter of national pride that their ruler should aspire to be a magnificent conqueror. Vergil observed that Henry was ‘not unmindful that it was his duty to seek fame by military skill’.130 Another key factor in Henry’s pursuit of war is his position as part of a triumvirate of young rulers who all came to power within a few years of each other, the other two being Francis I of France (1494–1547, acceded 1515) and Charles V (1500–1558, king of Spain from 1515, Holy Roman Emperor from 1519). Competition between the three has often been identified as the driving force in European politics in the early sixteenth century.131 Like Henry, Francis and Charles were demonstrably keen to emulate the achievements of their famous forebears and promoted chivalric culture at their courts.132 An important context for Henry’s interest in crusading and the creation of the manuscript is his failed attempt to become Holy Roman Emperor. Following the death of the Emperor Maximilian in January 1519, Charles and Francis were vying for the imperial crown and both were promised English support, but then in May 1519 Henry suddenly threw his own hat into the ring.133 This may simply have been an attempt to confuse the issue and undermine both Charles and Francis, but the prospect of becoming emperor was clearly attractive to Henry, even if he knew it was not likely that he would succeed. Significantly, both Charles and Francis, as part of their campaigns, emphasized their fervent commitment to crusading against the Turks, underscoring the central role which crusading continued to play in discourses of ideal rulership.134 Charles won the contest,

128 

For an overview of Henry’s warfare across his reign Gunn, The English People at War. Gunn, ‘French Wars’ pp. 45–47. 130  Quoted by Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p. 23 n. 2. 131  Richardson, Renaissance Monarchy. 132  Richardson, ‘Boys and their Toys’, pp. 195–99. 133  Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 98–105. 134  Housley, Later Crusades, p. 125. For Maximilian’s own crusading aspirations Housley, ‘Crusading Responses to the Turkish Threat’. 129 

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being elected emperor in June 1519, and, perhaps as a direct result, a couple of months later Henry wrote to Leo, promising to organize a crusade. Lucy Wooding states: ‘The various initiatives from the years between 1518 and 1521 seem to suggest that Henry at this time was hungry for glory, but that he was not sure where it might best be found’.135 She discusses Henry’s ‘startlingly enthusiastic avowal’ to Leo as an example of one such initiative, making the important observation that ‘Henry was inclined to see the endorsement of religion as a route to self-glorification’.136 Henry was still writing enthusiastically to Leo X about the planned crusade at the end of 1519.137 But the death of Maximilian and the subsequent election of Charles V had changed the balance of power in Europe with implications for foreign policy and diplomacy. In 1520 Henry’s attention turned back to the French, culminating in the famous Field of the Cloth of Gold in June of that year and was at war with France again in 1522.138 Moreover, news of the death of Selim in September 1520 was met with relief in Europe and the perceived urgency of launching a crusade dissipated (in the short term at least). The genuine quality of Henry’s commitment to crusading has generally been queried by modern historians.139 Asserting support for crusading was a politically and diplomatically useful position for Henry to adopt at certain times, and he never actually organized a crusade in the end.140 However, it does not follow that his crusading aspirations and fervent dedication to these, as expressed to Leo, were always counterfeit. The fact that Henry dropped crusading from his foreign policy does not preclude the possibility that he was, for a while, sincerely dedicated to it in principle.141 Besides which, the time and effort which it took to create the manuscript suggests that governmental commitment to crusading was serious. Or that this was the impression under which 135 

Wooding, Henry VIII, p. 108. Wooding, Henry VIII, p. 109. 137  Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p. 106. 138  Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 74–96. 139  E.g. Housley, Later Crusades, p. 446 ‘the crusade enthusiasm expressed early in his reign by Henry VIII was typical of the empty offers which many of Europe’s rulers became adept at making’. 140  Individual Englishmen did go on crusade in this period e.g. Sir John Wallop, fighting Muslim forces in North Africa in 1516–1518, Bryson, ‘Wallop, Sir John’. 141  Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, p. 106 ‘perhaps this letter was more than a diplomatic device, perhaps it represented a momentary, but sincere, impulse of an impetuous and maybe bored man’. 136 

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its author was working, or the impression that the compilation was designed to achieve. Regardless of the reality or otherwise of Henry’s commitment to a crusade, the manuscript anthology and its positioning of him as a crusade leader is still invaluable for what it tells us about the ideological and didactic function of crusading at this time. Its central message is that the best way to combat the encroaching Ottomans and recover Jerusalem is a crusade led by kings, emulating the example of the rulers whose crusading exploits it relates. It locates Henry’s planned crusade and Henry himself, within a well-established register of exemplary royal crusading endeavour, with a tailor-made emphasis on the crusading activities of English rulers: Richard and Edward. Consequently, the manuscript provides important further evidence for perceptions of the continuing applicability of medieval models of kingship in the early sixteenth century. It underlines that crusading was part of Henry’s duty not just as a king, but as a king of England. It was not only a religious duty, but a matter of manhood and honour that he should imitate the ‘precidentes’ and achievements of his forebears in this respect.142 This makes manifest the continuing status of crusading as one of the defining properties of English kingship in the early sixteenth century, and as a powerful enabler of elite masculine identity more generally. However, Henry himself, who was well educated and intellectually engaged, did not actually need a manuscript such as this to explain the importance of crusading, both for its own sake, and as a means of enhancing his kingship. It is very often impossible to know for sure whether texts with a didactic import, dedicated to individual kings, were ever actually read by them. However, the address to a king within them was very useful nonetheless. It intimated that he was receptive to such material and the directions it offered about the benchmarks which defined his office and its duties, and the norms of personal conduct (drawn from ideals of masculinity), which were expected of him as he discharged these.143 Additionally, as already discussed, it seems likely that the contents of the crusading anthology were predominantly aimed at a wider audience. In common with other propagandist narratives produced at this time, the manuscript would have served to rationalize and justify the king’s foreign policy to its readers. In relating the achievements of earlier crusade leaders, and inculcating national pride via the dauntless activities of Richard and Edward, it also provided a historical and moral register within which they could place Henry and his crusade. The manuscript highlights the benefits that will accrue from 142  143 

See Donovan’s chapter for manuscripts of the Eracles as mirrors for princes. Lewis, Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England, pp. 17–19.

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Henry’s crusade. Not only the obvious spiritual ones which would be shared across Christendom, but also the resultant augmentation to Henry’s reputation and thus to his international authority, which would benefit them specifically as his English subjects. Perhaps Henry never really intended to fund a crusade, let alone lead one. Nonetheless positioning himself, or being positioned, as the heir to crusading heroes, especially kings of England, was an excellent fit for his other preoccupations and policies. He, and whoever wrote the manuscript, clearly recognized the potential of crusading as part of a wider raft of rhetorical tactics for enhancing both his and England’s standing on the international stage.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Resources Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 432 [accessed 3 January 2022] London, British Library [BL], Cotton MS Otho D II [accessed 3 January 2022] ——  , Royal MS  15 E I [accessed 3 January 2022] —— , Royal MS 17 F V [accessed 3 January 2022] —— , Royal MS 18 XXVI ——  , Royal MS  19 D I [accessed 3 January 2022]

Primary Sources The Brut or the Chronicles of England, ed.  by Friedrich W.  D. Brie, Early English Text Society, original series, 136, 138 (London: Kegan Paul, 1906, 1908) Calendar, Committee for the Advance of Money, ed. by Mary Anne Everett, 3 vols (London: HMSO, 1888) The First English Life of King Henry the Fifth, ed.  by Charles L.  Kingsford (Oxford: Clarendon, 1911) Henry Knighton, Chronicon Henrici Knighton vel Cnitthon, monachi Leycestrensis, ed. by Joseph Rawson Lumby, 2 vols (London: Rolls Series, 1889–1895) John Bourchier, Chroniques, 2 vols (London: Richard Pynson, 1523) (STC (2nd edn) 11396 and 11397), accessible online via Early English Books Online

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John Lydgate, The hystorye, sege and dystruccyon of Troye (London: Richard Pynson, 1513) (Short Title Catalogue (2nd edn) 5579), accessible online via Early English Books Online A Lytell Cronycle, ed. by Glenn Burger (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1988) The Political Songs of England, ed. by Thomas Wright (London: Camden Society, 1839) Richard Coer de Lyon, ed. by Peter Larkin (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2015) [accessed 3 January 2022] Robert Fabyan, The New Chronicles of England and France, ed. by Henry Ellis (London: Rivington, 1811) ‘Venice: October 1518’, in  Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, 38 vols (London: HMSO, 1867), ii: 1509–1519, ed. by Rawdon Brown, pp. 461–72, accessed via British History Online  [accessed 3 January 2022] Veterum scriptorum et monumentorum historicorum, ed. by Edmond Martène and Ursin Durand, 9 vols (Paris, 1724–1733) Wace, The Roman de Rou, ed. by Anthony J. Holden, trans. by Glyn S. Burgess (St Helier: Société Jerisaise, 2002) Walter of Guisborough, The Chronicle of Walter of Guisborough, ed. by Harry Rothwell, Camden Society, 3rd ser., 89 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1957) William Caxton, Godeffroy of Boloyne; or, The Siege and Conqueste of Jerusalem, ed. by Mary Noyes Colvin, Early English Text Society, extra series, 64 (London: Kegan Paul, 1893)

Secondary Works Aird, William M., Robert Curthose Duke of Normandy, c. 1050–1134 (Woodbridge: Boydell) Anglo, Sydney, Spectacle, Pageantry, and Early Tudor Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) Bale, Anthony, ‘God’s Cell: Christ as Prisoner and Pilgrimage to the Prison of Christ’, Speculum, 91 (2016), 1–35 —— , ‘Introduction’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Crusades, ed. by Anthony Bale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 1–8 Beebe, Bruce, ‘Edward I and the Crusade’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of St Andrews, 1971) Binski, Paul, ‘The Painted Chamber at Westminster, the Fall of Tyrants and the English Literary Model of Governance’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 74 (2001), 121–54 Boffey, Julia, Manuscript and Print in London, c.  1475–1530 (London: The British Library, 2012) Boro, Joyce, ‘Lord Berners and his Books: A New Survey’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 67 (2004), 236–49

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Bryson, Alan, ‘Wallop, Sir John (b. before 1492, d. 1551), Soldier and Diplomat’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 Carlson, David R., ‘John Skelton’s Autograph Verse Annotations on the Chronique of the Minstrel of Reims for Prince Henry’s Education’, Neophilogus, 99 (2015), 167–74 Cassidy-Welch, Megan, and Anne E. Lester, eds, Crusades and Memory: Rethinking Past and Present (London: Routledge, 2015) Connolly, Margaret, and Raluca Radulescu, eds, Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Cruickshank, Charles G., Army Royal: Henry  VIII’s Invasion of France, 1513 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969) Davies, C. S. L., ‘Henry VIII and Henry VI: The Wars in France’, in The End of the Middle Ages? England in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries, ed. by John L. Watts (Stroud: Sutton, 1998), pp. 235–62 —— , ‘Stafford, Edward, Third Duke of Buckingham (1478–1521), Magnate’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 Gillingham, John, Richard I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) Gunn, Steven, ‘The French Wars of Henry VIII’, in The Origins of War in Early Modern Europe, ed. by Jeremy Black (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1987), pp. 28–51 —— , ‘Chivalry and the Politics of the Early Tudor Court’, in Chivalry in the Renaissance, ed. by Sydney Anglo (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1990), pp. 107–28 —— , The English People at War in the Age of Henry VIII (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) Handyside, Philip, The Old French William of Tyre (Leiden: Brill, 2015) Hoak, Dale, ‘The Legacy of Henry VIII’, in Henry  VIII and his Afterlives: Literature, Politics, Art, ed. by Mark Rankin, Christopher Highley, and John N. King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 53–72 Hodgson, Natasha R., Katherine J. Lewis, and Matthew M. Mesley, eds, Crusading and Masculinities (London: Routledge, 2019) Housley, Norman, The Later Crusades, 1274–1580: From Lyons to Alcazar (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992) —— , ‘Crusading Responses to the Turkish Threat’, in The Crusades and Visual Culture, ed. by Elizabeth Lapina, April Jehan Morris, Susanna A. Throop, and Laura J. Whatley (London: Routledge, 2015), pp. 201–22 Hurlock, Kathryn, and Paul Oldfield, eds, Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2018) John, Simon, Godfrey of Bouillon: Duke of Lower Lotharingia, Ruler of Latin Jerusalem, c. 1060–1100 (London: Routledge, 2017) Kane, Georg, ‘An Accident of History: Lord Berners’s Translation of Froissart’s “Chronicles”’, The Chaucer Review, 21 (1986), 217–25 King, Andy, and Andrew M. Spencer, eds, Edward I: New Interpretations (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2020)

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Levitt, Emma, ‘The Construction of High Status Masculinity through the Tournament and Martial Activity in the Later Middle Ages’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2017) Lewis, Katherine J., Kingship and Masculinity in Late Medieval England (London: Rout­ ledge, 2013) ——  , ‘“…doo as this noble prynce Godeffroy of boloyne dyde”: Chivalry, Masculinity and Crusading in Late Medieval England’, in Crusading and Masculinities, ed.  by Natasha  R. Hodgson, Katherine  J. Lewis, and Matthew  M. Mesley (London: Routledge, 2019), pp. 311–28 Libbon, Marisa, ‘The Invention of King Richard’, in The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives, ed. by Susanna Fein (York: York Medieval Press, 2016), pp. 127–38 Lloyd, Simon, ‘The Lord Edward’s Crusade 1270–1272: Its Setting and Significance’, in War and Government in the Middle Ages, ed. by John Gillingham and James C. Holt (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1984), pp. 120–33 —— , English Society and the Crusade, 1216–1307 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988) Manion, Lee, Narrating the Crusades: Loss and Recovery in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) Matheson, Lister M., The Prose Brut: The Development of a Middle English Chronicle (Tempe: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998) Mesley, Matthew M., ‘Chivalry, Masculinity and Sexuality’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Crusades, ed.  by Anthony Bale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 146–63 Neville-Sington, Pamela, ‘Pynson, Richard (c. 1449–1529/30), Printer’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 Parsons, John Carmi, Eleanor of Castile: Queen and Society in Thirteenth-Century England (London: MacMillan, 1995) Paul, Nicholas, and Suzanne Yeager, eds, Remembering the Crusade: Myth Image, and Identity (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2012) Prestwich, Michael, Edward I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) Purkis, William J., Crusading and Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c.  1095– c. 1187 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008) Quigley, Maureen, ‘The Visual Vernacular: Illustrating Jean de Vignay’s “Crusade” Translations’, in The Crusades and Visual Culture, ed.  by Elizabeth Lapina, April Jehan Morris, Susanna  A. Throop, and Laura  J. Whatley (London: Routledge, 2015), pp.  185–200 Raymond, James, Henry  VIII’s Military Revolution: The Armies of Sixteenth-Century Britain and Europe (London: Tauris Academic Studies, 2007) Reeve, Matthew M., ‘The Painted Chamber at Westminster: Edward I and the Crusade’, Viator, 37 (2006), 189–221 Richardson, Glenn, Renaissance Monarchy: The Reigns of Henry  VIII, Francis  I and Charles V (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2002) —— , ‘Boys and their Toys: Kingship, Masculinity and Material Culture in the Sixteenth Century’, in The Image and Perception of Monarchy in Medieval and Early Modern

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England, ed. by Sean McGlynn and Elena Woodacre (London: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), pp. 183–206 Rimer, Graeme, Thom Richardson, and John P. D. Cooper, eds, Henry VIII: Arms and the Man, 1509–2009 (Leeds: Royal Armouries, 2009) Rouse, Mary, and Richard Rouse, ‘Context and Reception: A Crusading Collection for Charles IV of France’, in Courtly Arts and the Art of Courtliness, ed. by Keith Busby and Christopher Kleinhenz (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp. 105–80 Rouse, Robert, ‘Romance and Crusade in Late Medieval England’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of the Crusades, ed.  by Anthony Bale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 217–31 Rubenstein, Jay, ‘Putting History to Use: Three Crusade Chronicles in Context’, Viator, 35 (2004), 131–68 Ryrie, Alec, ‘Marshall, William (d. 1540?), Printer and Translator’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 Scarisbrick, John J., Henry VIII (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) Schein, Sylvia, Fideles crucis: The Papacy, the West and the Recovery of the Holy Land, 1274–1314 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) Setton, Kenneth M., ‘Pope Leo  X and the Turkish Peril’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 113 (1969), 367–424 String, Tatiana, ‘Projecting Masculinity: Henry VIII’s Codpiece’, in Henry VIII and his Afterlives: Literature, Politics, Art, ed.  by Mark Rankin, Christopher Highley, and John N. King (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 143–59 Summerson, Henry, ‘Lord Edward’s Crusade (act. 1270–1274)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 22 September 2005 Taylor, John, ‘Guisborough [Hemingford, Hemingburgh], Walter of (fl. c. 1290–c. 1305), Chronicler and Augustinian Canon’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 23 September 2004 Terjanian, Pierre, ed., The Last Knight: The Art, Armor and Ambition of Maxmilian  I (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019) Wooding, Lucy, Henry VIII (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015)

Index

Aachen: 203 Aaron ap Bledri: 161, 164 Acre: 79, 239, 241 fall of (1291): 229, 242, 243 Siege of (1190): 175 Adomnán, 20–21 De locis sanctis: 20–24 Africa, descriptions of: 56–57 Alexander Bamville: 162 Alexius Comnenus, Byzantine Emperor: 211 All Saints, Pontefract (Yorkshire): 118 Ambroise, Estoire de la guerre sainte: 69, 70–71, 72 Andrew, St: 123 Andronicus I Comnenus, Byzantine Emperor: 202, 211–14, 213 Antioch, Siege of (1098): 182 Apocalypse manuscripts, 172–73 Architecture, as memory aid: 35 Arculf: 20–21 Art, as memory aid: 35 Augustus, Emperor: 202 Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury: 164 Baldwin, king of Jerusalem: 208 Battle of Hattin (1187): 140, 141, 177, 214, 217 Battle of Mount Cadmus: 135 Bede, De locis sanctis: 20, 22–23, 24, 25, 26, 31–32 Bedford Master: 216

Berengaria, wife of Richard I: 78 Berengaudus commentary: 178, 179 Blackburn Hours: 201, 205 Book of Revelation: 176 Bromholm Priory (Norfolk): 97, 99 Burgundy, court of: 189 Byland Abbey (Yorkshire): 137–38, 140–41 Canterbury Cathedral (Kent): 34, 45, 94, 106, 171 Cardinal Wolsey: 244 Castle Acre (Norfolk): 98, 130 Catholicism, Welsh: 151, 156, 157 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor: 76, 203–04, 205 Charles of Anjou, king of Sicily: 238 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor: 246, 248, 249 Chosroes II: 199, 202 Christ: 99, 100, 110, 128, 129, 132, 201, 232 depictions of: 102, 142, 173, 180, 181, 201, 205 tomb of: 98, 120, 142, 143 Christopher, St: 180, 180, 181–82 Churches, early medieval: 26–27 Clement V, Pope: 232, 235 Conrad III, Holy Roman Emperor: 208 Constantinople: 202 fall of (1453): 226 Cross, stone: 16, 18, 32–33 stone high: 32–34

258

Index

Cross, True Feasts of the: 133, 201, 204, 205 Hours of the: 201 nail from: 204 relic of: 205 Crusade, and death of Richard I: 69, 71–76, 85, 87 and homefront: 177 and family: 119, 175–76 and martyrdom: 118 Fifth: 175, 176 First: 2, 3, 5, 121, 138, 175, 176, 182, 199, 229, 230, 233 preparations for: 118 return from: 118–19 Second: 91, 92, 98, 132, 133, 135, 138–39, 207, 233 Third: 72, 73, 163, 164, 175 Crusaders, as agents of the Apocalypse: 176 bodies of: 119 commemoration of: 119–20 death of: 119 Cyllin Ynyfd: 162

Edward Somerset, fourth earl of Worcester: 156–57 Edward Stradling (d. 1609): 149, 154, 159, 161, 163, 165 Edward Stradling: 149, 152, 155 Edward the Confessor, king of England: 95 Eleanor de Quincy, countess of Winchester: 175, 177–78, 179–80, 182, 184 donor portrait of: 179–80 Eleanor, Queen of England: 241 Elene: 23–24 Elidir Ddu: 161 Elizabet Herbert: 149 Elizabeth I, Queen of England: 157 Elizabeth Stradling: 149, 152 Eracles: 193, 197, 203–06

Damascine Stradling: 158–59 Damascus, Siege of (1148): 207–08, 209 David Edwardes: 162 Delw y Byd: 47–48 Demetrius, St: 182 Desiderus Erasmus: 106–07 Devotion, as substitute for crusade: 101 Durham: 94

Gate of David: 23 Genealogies: 150, 154, 159–61, 162, 165 Geoffrey de Favarches: 91 George Owen of Henllys: 161, 162 George William Griffith: 162 George, St: 182, 183–84 Gervase Babington, bishop of Llandaff: 160 Gilbert de Lacy: 117, 123–24, 126–29, 143 Giovanni Boccacoi: 211 Glamorgan, conquest of: 154, 160 Godfrey of Bouillon, king of Jerusalem: 216, 229–30 Golden Grove Book of Pedigrees: 162 Golgotha: 23 Griffith ab Eilidir Goch: 162, 164 Griffith Gethin: 164, 165 Gundreda de Gournay: 137–39 Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem: 214–15, 216 Hagia Sophia (Constantinople): 31 Harry (or Henry) Stradling: 149–50, 152, 155, 161 Harry Ddu: 164 Helen, mother of Constantine, builds church: 23, 24, 25

East Anglia, and biblical associations: 98–99 Edmund Pryce of Rhydyberne: 162 Edward I, king of England: 3, 151, 228, 230–31, 234, 249 and comparison with Richard I: 234–35 crusade of: 175, 227, 233, 236, 237, 238–43, 248 crusading fleet of: 239 crusading policies of: 235, 243 poisoning of: 240–41 pilgrimage to Walsingham: 103 Edward IV, king of England: 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 198, 210, 214, 245 exile of: 193, 201–02, 203, 209 library of: 204 patronage of: 194–97, 200

Felix Fabri: 150–51 Field of the Cloth of Gold (1520): 249 Fountains Abbey (Yorkshire): 140 Francis I, king of France: 248 Francis, second earl of Llandaff: 164 Froissart, Chroniques: 246

Index Henry II, king of England: 68, 79, 137, 183 and crusading plans: 100, 106 Henry III, king of England: 3, 95, 228, 234 and patronage of Westminster Abbey: 104 and pilgrimage to Bromholm Priory: 97, 99 and the Holy Blood relic: 94 and Walsingham: 94, 97, 99, 100 vows to take the Cross: 97 Henry V, king of England: 246 Henry Vernon: 160 Henry VII, king of England, foreign policy of: 92, 227, 246, 248 Henry VIII, king of England: 225, 226, 231, 233, 244–45, 247, 248–50 Henry, the Young King: 137 Heraclius, Emperor of Byzantium: 199–200, 201, 202, 204–06 Heraldry: 154, 161, 173, 178 Hetoum: 232–33 Holy Sepulchre: 19, 23, 28, 143 canons of the: 131, 137 chapel of at Pontefract: 118 church of the (Cambridge): 98, 110, 115–17, 123 church of the (Northampton): 120–23, 128, 142 Knights of the: 149–66 poems to: 152 priory of the (Thetford): 98, 130–31, 132–33, 134–35, 137, 142 Honorius Augustodunensis: 44 Hugh Holland: 152 Hugh Johnys: 153, 165 Ida of Hainault: 119 Ieuan ap Seisyllt: 165 Imago Mundi: 42–53, 57, 59–60 Innocent, Pope, and crusade reform: 176, 177 Ireland, descriptions of: 54–56 Isaac II, Byzantine Emperor: 212 Isabel de Warenne: 134, 135 James I, king of Aragon: 238 James IV, king of Scotland: 245 James, St: 203, 205 Jarrow: 27 Jean de Vignay: 200

259

Jean V of Créquy: 189, 191, 196 Jenet Mathew: 149 Jerusalem: 10, 17, 19, 26, 31, 120, 199, 204, 205 and memorialisation: 120–21 and sacred space: 16 as a heavenly city: 16, 17, 20, 27, 28, 34 n. 42. as an abstract place: 15 as an experience: 20 as navel of the world: 42 fall of (1244): 184 foundation narratives and: 28 gates of: 23 translations of: 117, 143 Joce de Dinan: 124, 126, 127 John ap Morgan of Tredegar: 153, 165 John Carne of Nether Gwent: 160 John de Lacy, earl of Lincoln: 118, 129, 131 John II Comnenus, Emperor of Constantinople: 207 John II the Good, king of France: 203 John Lydgate: 211, 246 John of Acre: 235 John of Trevisa: 236 John Rudd: 164 John Stedman: 163 John Whethamstede: 202 John, brother of Richard I: 82 John, St: 172, 180 Julian the Apostate: 182, 183, 184 Lambeth Apocalypse, dating of: 184 Leo X, pope: 225, 249 Lewes Priory (Sussex): 130, 131, 133, 134, 135 Lewys Dwnn, genealogist: 161, 162, 163, 164, 165 Little Battle of Chalons (1273): 241 Loreto, Holy House of: 96 Louis de Gruuthuse: 195 Louis IX, king of France: 94, 102 crusade of: 101, 103, 233 Louis of Gruuthuse: 189, 194, 195, 196 Louis VII, king of France: 132, 135–36, 138, 208, 233 Louis XI, king of France: 103 Madoc ap Caradoc: 164 Madoc ap Meurig: 164

260

Manuel I Comnenus, Byzantine Emperor: 211, 212 Mappa Mundi: 42 Maps: 42 Margaret de Quincy: 173–74 Mary I, Queen of England: 157 Mary Magdelene, chapel of (Ludlow Castle): 123–29, 130, 142 Master of Edward IV: 195, 197, 201 Master of the Flemish Boethius: 197, 207, 208, 209, 210 Master of the Getty Froissart: 197, 198, 199, 205, 210 Master of the White Inscriptions: 195 Matthew Caradog: 164 Matthew Paris: 71, 75, 77, 78, 85, 100, 176–77 Matthew, Arnold Harris: 164–65 Maximilian, Holy Roman Emperor: 245, 248 Medina: 79 Mehmed II: 191 Memorialisation: 149, 154, 155, 157, 158–59 as evidence for status: 161 Memory: 108, 110, 117 Mercurius, St: 173, 181, 182, 183, 184 Michael, St: 179 Middle English: 83 Miracles of the Virgin: 173, 181, 182 Mount of Olives: 201 Mount Sion: 23 Nazareth: 49, 93, 94, 96, 100, 103, 105–06, 108, 110, 239 Virgin Mary’s home in: 92 Neath Abbey (Glamorgan): 152 Neath Castle (Glamorgan): 152 Newburgh, Priory of (Yorkshire): 9, 141, 142, 143 Nicholas IV, Pope: 242–43 Nicholas Poynz of Tockington: 160 Order of the Golden Fleece: 190, 191, 212 Ottomans, crusade against the: 225 Our Lady of Walsingham, statue of: 102 Our Lady’s Dowry: 93 Owen Perrot: 161

Index Passion of Christ: 24, 28, 31, 32–33, 34, 34 n. 42, 35, 117, 201, 204, 228 Philip Augustus, king of France: 72, 79, 84, 183 Philip Howard, earl of Arundel: 107 Philip II Augustus, king of France: 209 Philip IV, king of France: 238 Philip of Flanders, crusade of (1177): 140 Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy: 190, 191 Pilgrimages: 92, 93–94, 153 mimetic: 94, 104–05 virtual: 100, 101, 104, 107 Pontefract (Yorkshire): 129, 131–32 Prince Edward, see Edward I, king of England Queen Mary Apocalypse: 183 Quia maior, papal bull (1213): 176–77 Ranulph Higden, chronicler: 236 Raynaud of Châtillon: 193 Recusancy: 157, 161, 169 Red Mount Chapel, King’s Lynn (Norfolk): 107–10 Relic, relics: 28, 31, 35, 92, 94, 101–02, 103, 117, 119, 121, 128, 133 of the Crown of Thorns: 94, 103, 203, 204, 205 of the Holy Blood: 94, 99 of the Holy Lance: 133 the True Cross: 94, 97, 103, 133, 204, 205, 214, 215–16, 217 the Virgin’s milk: 92, 103 Remembrance: 72–73, 74–75 Rhodes, Knight of: 164 Siege of (1480): 191 Ricardus Franciscus: 200 Richard Clough of Denbighshire: 152–53, 165 Richard Coeur de Lion: 83, 231 Richard I, king of England: 68, 72, 74, 79–81, 87, 97, 163, 164, 209–11, 228, 230–31, 234, 237, 249 and combat with Saladin in art: 152, 184 as rex iustus: 82 as role model: 210–11 attacked by peasants: 79–80 Richard II, king of England: 152, 164

Index Richard Pynson, printer: 93, 96, 105, 244, 246 Richeldis de Faverches: 95–96, 105 Rider on the Red Horse: 178 Rider on the White Horse: 183 Ripon, crypt at (Yorkshire): 26, 28–31, 35 River Jordan: 77, 78 Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy: 229 Robert Fabyan: 236–37 Robert I, duke of Normandy: 228, 229 Robert, bishop of Hereford: 156 Roger de Leybourne: 175 Roger de Mowbray: 117, 137–42, 143 Roger de Quincy: 175 Roger of Howden: 71, 75, 79, 81, 82–83, 140, 143, 231 Roger of Wendover: 71, 75, 76, 78, 85 Rome: 16, 25, 27, 33, 34, 130, 152, 200, 202 Saer de Quincy, earl of Winchester: 175 Sainte-Chapelle: 6, 94, 103, 104 Saladin: 76–78, 152, 184, 214–15, 216 Selim I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire: 225–26, 249 Shayzar, Siege of (1138): 193, 202, 207, 207 n. 79, 208 Shield of Faith: 173 Sicily: 56, 216, 234, 238, 239 Proposed crusade to: 99 Siege of Damietta (1218): 118, 175 Simon de Senlis, earl of Northampton and Huntingdon: 117, 120–23, 129, 143, 151 Siôn Dafydd Rhys: 155 Solomon’s Temple: 29 St Albans Abbey: 75, 171, 176, 202 St Donat’s (Glamorgan): 149, 152, 155 library at: 159, 160 miracle of: 157 St Mary’s (Theford): 130 St Sepulchre, priory of the (Warwick): 131 Stedman family: 162–63 Stephen, king of England: 123, 124, 130, 137 Steven Bamville: 162 Stradling family, in exile: 158–59, 160–61 Stradling family: 151–53 Strata Florida Abbey (Ceredigion): 162–63

261

Taymouth Hours: 183 Templar Church, (London): 94, 98, 126 Templars: 98, 120, 124, 131, 133, 137, 141, 183 master of the: 78 The Golden Legend: 200, 201, 204, 205, 206, 217 Theobald II, king of Navarre: 238 Thomas Carne of Ewenny: 160 Thomas Salisbury of Lleweni: 161 Thomas Stradling: 149, 157 Tournaments: 241–42, 245 Translation, as process: 69–70 theories of: 84–87 Treaty of London (1518): 226, 233, 237 True Cross: 23, 24, 25, 31, 199, 200, 201, 204 See also Relic, relics Tudor ap Grono: 162 Urban III, pope: 216 Vercelli Book: 24 Virgin and Child: 173, 174, 179, 180 Votives and donations: 99, 100, 107 and military activity: 99 Walsingham Priory (Norfolk): 91–92, 95–96 and invented traditions: 96 as a second Nazareth: 93–94, 105, 110 as pilgrimage substitute: 94, 100–01, 106 Holy House: 92, 95–96, 100, 102–03 Our Lady of: 92 Slipper chapel: 104 Walter of Guisborough, chronicler: 230–31, 237 Walter Ralegh: 93 War in Heaven: 179 Westminster Abbey (London): 94, 95, 99, 100, 102, 103–04 Westminster Palace (London): 6 William Allen: 156 William Carne: 161 William Caxton: 45, 200, 201, 230, 235, 236 Gold Legend: 200 Mirrour of the World: 45, 53–59 William Cecil: 160 William Cynwal: 152

262

William d’Aubigny, first earl of Arundel: 139 William de Warenne, third earl of Surrey: 9, 98, 117, 130, 132–37, 142, 143 William Ferrers, crusader: 175 William Griffith of Llanvithyn: 160–61 William I de Ferrers, earl of Derby: 175 William I, king of England: 228 William III de Ferrers, earl of Derby: 175 William Lewes of Llwyndrew: 162 William of Tyre: 192, 193, 199, 200, 215, 216, 230 William Stradling: 149, 152 Wolfert VI of Borssele: 189 Woman in the Wilderness: 179 Women, and crusade support: 8, 177 as patrons: 10, 172, 173, 174 as preservers of dynastic tradition: 119 encouraged to take the cross: 177 Wynkyn de Worde: 231

Index

Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field. Titles in Series Drama and Community: People and Plays in Medieval Europe, ed. by Alan Hindley (1999) Showing Status: Representations of Social Positions in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Wim Blockmans and Antheun Janse (1999) Sandra Billington, Midsummer: A Cultural Sub-Text from Chrétien de Troyes to Jean Michel (2000) History and Images: Towards a New Iconology, ed. by Axel Bolvig and Phillip Lindley (2003) Scandinavia and Europe 800–1350: Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence, ed. by Jonathan Adams and Katherine Holman (2004) Anu Mänd, Urban Carnival: Festive Culture in the Hanseatic Cities of the Eastern Baltic, 1350–1550 (2005) Bjørn Bandlien, Strategies of Passion: Love and Marriage in Old Norse Society (2005) Imagining the Book, ed. by Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson (2005) Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe: Decline, Resistance, and Expansion, ed. by Paul Freedman and Monique Bourin (2005)

Grant risee?: The Medieval Comic Presence / La Présence comique médiévale. Essays in Honour of Brian J. Levy, ed. by Adrian P. Tudor and Alan Hindley (2006) Urban Theatre in the Low Countries, 1400–1625, ed. by Elsa Strietman and Peter Happé (2006) Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts, ed. by Kathy M. Krause and Alison Stones (2006) The Narrator, the Expositor, and the Prompter in European Medieval Theatre, ed. by Philip Butterworth (2007) Learning and Understanding in the Old Norse World: Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross, ed. by Judy Quinn, Kate Heslop, and Tarrin Wills (2007) Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular Manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the Sixteenth Century, ed. by Wendy Scase (2007) Parisian Confraternity Drama of the Fourteenth Century, ed. by Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox (2008) Broken Lines: Genealogical Literature in Medieval Britain and France, ed. by Raluca L. Radulescu and Edward Donald Kennedy (2008) Laments for the Lost in Medieval Literature, ed. by Jane Tolmie and M. J. Toswell (2010) Medieval Multilingualism: The Francophone World and its Neighbours, ed. by Christopher Kleinhenz and Keith Busby (2010) The Playful Middle Ages: Meanings of Play and Plays of Meaning. Essays in Memory of Elaine C. Block, ed. by Paul Hardwick (2011) Emilia Jamroziak, Survival and Success on Medieval Borders: Cistercian Houses in Medieval Scotland and Pomerania from the Twelfth to the Late Fourteenth Century (2011) Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250: Essays for David Bates, ed. by David Crouch and Kathleen Thompson (2011) Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East-Central, and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), ed. by Ildar H. Garipzanov (2011) Multilingualism in Medieval Britain (c. 1066–1520): Sources and Analysis, ed. by Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter with the assistance of Amanda Hopkins (2013) The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Joyce Coleman, Markus Cruse, and Kathryn A. Smith (2013)

Stefka Georgieva Eriksen, Writing and Reading in Medieval Manuscript Culture: The Translation and Transmission of the story of Elye in Old French and Old Norse Literary Contexts (2014) Keith Busby, French in Medieval Ireland, Ireland in Medieval French: The Paradox of Two Worlds (2017) Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France: Studies in the Moving Word, ed. by Nicola Morato and Dirk Schoenaers (2019) Colmán Etchingham, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Norse-Gaelic Contacts in a Viking World (2019) Crossing Borders in the Insular Middle Ages, ed. by Aisling Byrne and Victoria Flood (2019) The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies, and Texts, ed. by Ben Guy, Owain Wyn Jones, Georgia Henley, and Rebecca Thomas (2020) Making the Profane Sacred in the Viking Age: Essays in Honour of Stefan Brink, ed. by Irene García Losquiño, Olof Sundqvist, and Declan Taggart (2020) The Cult of Saints in Nidaros Archbishopric: Manuscripts, Miracles, Objects, ed. by Ragnhild M. Bø and Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (2022)