Anglo-Norman Studies XLIV: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2021 [44] 1783277130, 9781783277131

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ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XLIV PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2021

This volume has a particular focus on the interrelations between the various parts of north-western Europe. After the opening piece on Lotharingia, there are detailed studies of the relationship between Ponthieu and its Norman neighbours, and between the Norman and Angevin dukekings and the other French nobility, followed by an investigation of the world of demons and possession in Norman Italy, with additional observations on the subject in twelfth-century England. Meanwhile, the York massacre of the Jews in 1190 is set in a wider context, showing the extent to which crusader enthusiasm led to the pogroms that so marred Anglo-Jewish relations, not just in York but elsewhere in England; and there is an exploration of poverty in London, also during the 1190s, viewed through the prism of the life and execution of William fitz Osbert. Another chapter demonstrates the power of comparative history to illuminate the norms of proprietary queenship, so often overlooked by historians of both kingship and queenship. And two essays focusing on landscape bring the physical into close association with the historical: on the equine landscape of eleventh- and twelfth-century England, adding substantially to our understanding of the place of the horse in late Anglo-Saxon and early Anglo-Norman societies, and on the Brut narratives of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Laȝamon, arguing that they use realistic landscapes in their depiction of the action embedded in their tales, so demonstrating the authors’ grasp of the practical realities of contemporary warfare and the role played by landscapes in it. S. D. CHURCH is Professor of Medieval History at the University of East Anglia.

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES ISSN 0954-9927

Editor S. D. Church Editorial Board Laura Cleaver (School of Advanced Study, University of London) Lindy Grant (University of Reading) Mark Hagger (Bangor University) Leonie V. Hicks (Canterbury Christ Church University) C. P. Lewis (Institute of Historical Research, University of London) Elisabeth van Houts (Emmanuel College, Cambridge)

ANGLO-NORMAN STUDIES XLIV PROCEEDINGS OF THE BATTLE CONFERENCE 2021

Edited by S. D. Church

THE BOYDELL PRESS

© Editor and Contributors 2021, 2022 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2022 The Boydell Press, Woodbridge

ISBN 978–1–78327–713–1 hardback ISBN 978–1–80010–631–4 ePDF

ISSN 0954-9927 Anglo-Norman Studies (Formerly ISSN 0261-9857: Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies) The Boydell Press is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620-2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate

CONTENTS LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES EDITOR’S PREFACE LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ‘Avalterre’ and ‘Affinitas Lotharingorum’: Mapping Cultural Production, Cultural Connections and Political Fragmentation in the ‘Grand Est’ (The Allen Brown Memorial Lecture) Lindy Grant

vi viii ix

1

The Perspective from Ponthieu: Count Guy and His Norman Neighbour (The Des Seal Memorial Lecture) Kathleen Thompson

19

Wild, Wild Horses: Equine Landscapes of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (The Christine Mahaney Memorial Lecture) Robert Liddiard

35

Demons and Incidents of Possession in the Miracles of Norman Italy (The Marjorie Chibnall Essay Prize) Amy Devenney

55

Rulership, Authority, and Power in the Middle Ages: The Proprietary Queen as Head of Dynasty Anaïs Waag

71

Crusaders and Jews: The York Massacre of 1190 Revisited Christoph T. Maier

105

Poverty in London in the 1190s: Some Possibilities Alan Cooper

121

Landscapes of Concealment and Revelation in the Brut Narratives: Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Laȝamon Leonie V. Hicks and Michael D. J. Bintley

137

The Twelfth-Century Norman and Angevin Duke-Kings of England and the Northern French Nobility Heather J. Tanner

153

ILLUSTRATIONS AND TABLES Lindy Grant, ‘Avalterre’ and ‘Affinitas Lotharingorum’: Mapping Cultural Production, Cultural Connections and Political Fragmentation in the ‘Grand Est’ Fig 1. Lotharingia and its western border zones in the High Middle Ages

2

Kathleen Thompson, The Perspective from Ponthieu: Count Guy and his Norman Neighbour Fig. 1. North-eastern France showing places mentioned in the text. Copyright: Paul Stayt.

20

Fig. 2. Genealogy of the counts of Ponthieu c. 1000–1105. Copyright: Kathleen Thompson.

23

Robert Liddiard, Wild, Wild Horses: Equine Landscapes of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries Fig. 1. Distribution map of principal equine place-names down to the early thirteenth century. (Robert Liddiard)

37

Fig. 2. View over the Risborough gap in the northern Chilterns towards Horsendon, ‘Horsa’s hill or valley’. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Risborough was also the site of a major royal horse stud. (Robert Liddiard)

40

Fig. 3. Locations in which Domesday Book records horses in south-west England. (Robert Liddiard)

45

Anaïs Waag, Rulership, Authority, and Power in the Middle Ages: The Proprietary Queen as Head of Dynasty Table 1. Royal heiresses

72

Fig. 1. Urraca of León: the Jiménez Dynasty (León).

76

Fig. 2. Melisende of Jerusalem: the Rethel Dynasty.

85

Fig. 3. Empress Matilda: the Norman Dynasty.

90

Fig. 4. Petronila of Aragon: the Jiménez Dynasty (Aragon).

96

The publishers are grateful to the Allen Brown Memorial Trust for the generous provision of financial support towards the costs of this volume.

EDITOR’S PREFACE The forty-fourth Battle Conference of Anglo-Norman Studies again took place in the virtual sphere, and we owe a vote of thanks to the School of History at the University of East Anglia for allowing us to use their Zoom account. I would also like to record my gratitude for the enthusiasm with which the Battle community embraced the online platform. The format of substantial papers coupled with time to discuss them worked because those who attended embraced the opportunity to be involved fully in the conference. A notable success was the poster session for early career researchers, organized by Dr Leonie Hicks: all the participants were welcomed, and this contributed immensely to the good atmosphere which pervaded the three days of the conference. I also want to record my personal thanks and the thanks of the Allen Brown Memorial Trust to Professor Lindy Grant, who has stepped down from the Trust after more than two decades of service, most recently as its Chair. We have all benefited enormously from her expertise and her good sense, and also from her abiding friendship. Dr Laura Cleaver has kindly agreed to become a Trustee. Stephen Church January 2022

ABBREVIATIONS AD ANS ASC

ASC, trans. Swanton ASE BAR BL BM BnF Carmen CBA Dugdale, Monasticon Eadmer, HN EEA EETS EHR EME English Lawsuits Freeman, Norman

Archives départementales Anglo-Norman Studies Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, cited by year (corrected in square brackets if necessary) and manuscript; unless otherwise stated the edition is Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, ed. Charles Plummer, 2 vols, Oxford 1892–9 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. and ed. M. J. Swanton, London 1996 Anglo-Saxon England British Archaeological Reports London, British Library Bibliothèque Municipale Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy, Bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, Oxford 1999 Council for British Archaeology William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, new edn by Henry Ellis and Bulkeley Bandinel, 6 vols, London 1817–30 Eadmer, Historia novorum in Anglia, in Eadmeri Historia novorum in Anglia, et Opuscula duo; De Vita Sancti Anselmi et quibusdam miraculis ejus, ed. Martin Rule, RS 81, London 1884 English Episcopal Acta Early English Text Society English Historical Review Early Medieval Europe English Lawsuits from William I to Richard I, ed. R. C. van Caenegem, 2 vols, Selden Society, 106–7, London 1990–1 Edward A. Freeman, The History of the Norman Conquest of England, its Causes and its Results, 6 vols, 1st edn, Oxford 1867–79, revised edn, New York 1873–6

x Abbreviations GDB

Gesetze GND

Great Domesday Book, followed by the folio number, a or b (for recto or verso), cited from Domesday Book, seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi, 2 vols, London 1783, I, or from Great Domesday Book: Library Edition, ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine, Alecto Historical Editions, London 1986–92; followed in parentheses by the abbreviated county name and the entry number (substituting an oblique for a comma between the first and second parts) used in Domesday Book, ed. John Morris and others, 34 vols, Phillimore, London 1974–86 Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Felix Liebermann, 3 vols, ed. Liebermann, Halle 1903–16 The Gesta Normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, 2 vols, Oxford 1992–5 F. E. Harmer, Anglo-Saxon Writs, 2nd edn, Stamford 1989

Harmer, AS Writs Howden, Chronica Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, 4 vols, RS, Chronica 51, London 1868–71 Howden, Gesta Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi [now attributed to Roger of Howden], ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, RS, 49, London 1867 HSJ Haskins Society Journal Huntingdon Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People, ed. and trans. Diana Greenway, Oxford 1996 IE Inquisitio Eliensis, in Inquisitio Comitatus Cantabrigiensis [and] Inquisitio Eliensis, ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, London 1876 JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History JL Regesta pontificum romanorum ab condita ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum MCXCVIII, ed. Philipp Jaffé, Wilhelm Wattenbach, S. Loewenfeld, and others, 2 vols, Leipzig 1885–8 JMH Journal of Medieval History John of The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. R. R. Darlington and P. Worcester McGurk, II–III, Oxford 1995–8 KCD Codex Diplomaticus Aevi Saxonici, ed. J. M. Kemble, 6 vols, London, 1839–48 – cited by charter number LDB Little Domesday Book, followed by the folio number and a or b (for recto or verso), cited from Domesday Book, seu Liber Censualis Willelmi Primi, 2 vols, London 1783, II, or from Great Domesday Book: Library Edition, ed. Ann Williams and R. W. H. Erskine, Alecto Historical Editions, London 2000; followed in parentheses by the abbreviated county name and the entry number (substituting an oblique for a comma between the first and second parts) used in Domesday Book, ed. John Morris and others, 34 vols, Phillimore, London 1974–86

Abbreviations Letters of Lanfranc Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Malmesbury, Gesta regum Malmesbury, Historia novella MGH ODNB OED OMT RADN Orderic P&P PL Poitiers PR

Proc. Brit. Acad. Regesta

Regesta: William I Robertson, AS Charters RS

xi

The Letters of Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. and trans. Helen Clover and Margaret Gibson, Oxford 1979 William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum: The History of the English Bishops, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, 2 vols, Oxford 2007 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, 2 vols, Oxford 1998–9 William of Malmesbury, Historia novella: The Contemporary History, ed. Edmund King, trans. K. R. Potter, Oxford 1998 Monumenta Germaniae Historica Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, usually cited from online edn (www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/), with article number and date accessed Oxford English Dictionary Oxford Medieval Texts Recueil des actes des ducs de Normandie de 911 à 1066, ed. Marie Fauroux, Mémoires de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 36, Caen 1961 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols, Oxford 1969–80 Past & Present Patrologia cursus completus, series Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols, Paris 1844–65 The Gesta Guillelmi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. R. H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall, Oxford 1998 The Great Roll of the Pipe for [regnal year, king], Pipe Roll Society; except for 2–4 Henry II, ed. Joseph Hunter, London 1844; 1 Richard I, ed. Joseph Hunter, London 1844; 26 Henry III, ed. Henry Louis Cannon, London 1918 Proceedings of the British Academy Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum, 1066–1154, 3 vols, I, ed. H. W. C. Davis, Oxford 1913; II, ed. Charles Johnson and H. A. Cronne, Oxford 1956; III, ed. H. A. Cronne and R. H. C. Davis, Oxford 1968 Regesta Regum Anglo-Normannorum: The Acta of William I (1066–1087), ed. David Bates, Oxford 1998 A. J. Robertson, Anglo-Saxon Charters, Cambridge 1939 Rolls Series (Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages, Published under the Direction of the Master of the Rolls)

xii Abbreviations Sawyer, AS Charters

P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: an Annotated List and Bibliography, London 1968, and with a revised and updated version largely edited by S. E. Kelly, available at www.esawyer. org.uk/ SS Scriptores (in Folio) [in MGH] s.a. sub anno, annis (‘under the year, years’) s.v. sub verbo, verbis (‘under the word, words’) Tabularia Tabularia: Sources écrites de la Normandie medieval [online journal: www.unicaen.fr/mrsh/craham/revue/tabularia/] Telma Chartes originales antérieures à 1121 conservées en France, ed. C. Giraud, J.-B. Renault and B.-M. Tock, Nancy 2010: www. cn-telma.fr/originaux/ Torigni ed. Chronique de Robert de Torigni: Abbé du Mont-Saint-Michel, Delisle ed. L. Delisle, 2 vols, Rouen, 1872–3 Torigni ed. Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, Howlett ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols, Rolls Series, London, 1884–9, volume iv Torigni ed. The Chronography of Robert of Torigni, 2 vols, ed. Thomas N. Bisson Bisson, Oxford 2020 TRE tempore regis Eadwardi (‘in King Edward’s time’) TRHS Transactions of the Royal Historical Society TRW tempore regis Willelmi (‘in King William’s time’) VCH The Victoria History of the Counties of England [with county name], in progress Vita Eadwardi The Life of King Edward who Rests at Westminter, Attributed to a Monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow, 2nd edn, Oxford 1992 Wace, trans. The History of the Norman People: Wace’s Roman de Rou, Burgess trans. Glyn S. Burgess, Woodbridge 2004 Whitelock, AS D. Whitelock, Anglo-Saxon Wills, Cambridge 1930 Wills x [The form 1066 x 1087 indicates an uncertain date within the range]

The Allen Brown Memorial Lecture, 2021

‘AVALTERRE’ AND ‘AFFINITAS LOTHARINGORUM’: MAPPING CULTURAL PRODUCTION, CULTURAL CONNECTIONS AND POLITICAL FRAGMENTATION IN THE ‘GRAND EST’ Lindy Grant When Abbot Suger wanted the best goldsmiths for the great gold cross to stand before the shrine-altar at Saint-Denis, he found them in Lotharingia, probably the Meuse Valley.1 Suger’s view of Lotharingia was ambivalent. Politically, he saw it as threatening. The great and sprawling Roucy/Marle family he regarded as particularly dangerous, because like the other lords of those parts, they were related to the lords of Lotharingia: the danger was their ‘lotharingorum affinitas’.2 A century later, in the early 1240s, Isabelle, princess of France, refused to go through with an arranged marriage to the heir of the Emperor Frederick II, and fell seriously ill. In despair, her mother, Blanche of Castile, sent for advice to a holy woman in distant Avalterre – perhaps Nivelles in Brabant, where Blanche exercised some religious patronage. The holy woman’s advice was wise, though probably unwelcome: don’t pressure your daughter to marry against her will.3 These are two examples, a century apart, of those at the centre of Capetian France reaching out to a distant land – Avalterre, Lotharingia – for important cultural and religious capital. The term Avalterre or Avauterre occurs often in vernacular literature. It indicated the Lower Meuse Valley in northern Lotharingia, but, as in the will of Blanche of Castile’s nephew, Peter of Alençon, it might encompass neighbouring Hainault and comital Flanders. The peoples of Avalterre, Hainault and Flanders were often lumped together. A contemporary Flemish account of the Battle of Bouvines talks of ‘li Hainuier et li Flamenc et li Avalois’, coming from ‘Avalterre, et de Flandre et de Hainault et d’Artois et d’Ostrevant et d’Aroaise’.4 1

Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St-Denis and its Art Treasures, ed. and trans. by Erwin Panofsky, 2nd edition by Gerda Panofsky-Soergel, Princeton, NJ 1979, 58/9. I would like to thank Professor Frederique Lachaud and Professor Tom O’Donnell for their helpful suggestions and discussion, and Gordon Thompson for providing the accompanying map. Most of the research for this essay was done in Covid conditions, with less than ideal access to libraries. 2 Suger, Vie de Louis le Gros, ed. Henri Waquet, Paris 1964, 28/9: Lindy Grant, Abbot Suger: Church and State in Early Twelfth-Century France, Harlow 1997, 123–4. 3 Sean L. Field, Courting Sanctity: Holy Women and the Capetians, Ithaca, NY 2019, 1–2, 4, identifying what used to be read as ‘Nanterre’ as ‘Avauterre’. 4 Testament of Peter of Alençon, Paris, AN J403, no. 10, see Field, Courting Sanctity, 2–3, n.5. Charles Petit-Dutaillis, ‘Fragment de l’histoire de Philippe-Auguste Roy de France, Chronique en français des années 1214–1216’, BEC, 1926, 98–141, at 118, 130. See also John Baldwin, Aristocratic Life in Medieval France: The Romances of Jean Renart and Gerbert de Montreuil, 1190–1230, Baltimore, MD 1999, 41, and below, n. 70.

2

Lindy Grant

Fig. 1  Lotharingia and its western border zones in the High Middle Ages. Lotharingia and Flanders were indeed hot-houses for religious, cultural and intellectual ferment and production in the High Middle Ages. They were important generators and disseminators of religious and cultural innovation, within Capetian and, indeed, Anglo-Norman orbits. Many specialists – in literature, language, art history, religious history, and chivalric culture – have investigated this rich cultural production, but the approach has rarely been interdisciplinary. Where it has been interdisciplinary, it has been limited in topographical or temporal scope, emphasizing Lotharingia around the year 1000, and Lower Lotharingia/Avalterre/ Flanders in the later twelfth century.5 This essay explores aspects of this multifarious cultural production, and the multiple cultural connections of an area where polities were shifting and notoriously difficult to map, over the longue durée of the High Middle Ages. 5

Religion et Culture autour de l’an mil : Royaume Capétien et Lotharingie, ed. Dominique Iogna-Prat and Jean-Charles Picard, Paris 1990: Une Renaissance : L’art entre Flandre et Champagne, 1150–1250, Paris 2013.



‘Avalterre’ and ‘Affinitas Lotharingorum’

3

The area in question comprises the ghost of the Carolingian kingdom of Lotharingia.6 But, as with the elastic Avalterre, it is never just a matter of Lotharingia by itself. Historians of political and ecclesiastical institutions, and of societies and familial structures, have all found that observed phenomena cannot be confined to Lotharingia. Historians talk about ‘l’aire’ or ‘l’espace lotharingienne or ‘lotharingisches raum’ spilling over into Lotharingia’s western border zones, that is lands within the medieval kingdom of France – Champagne, northern Picardy, the Thièrache, Flanders, including Artois – the area that French historians call the ‘Grand Est’.7 In an attempt at topographical definition, a collection of essays on this inchoate area was published under the title Francia Media.8 Lotharingia and the western border zone were politically interlinked. The county of Hainault formed a political hinge between the county of Flanders and Lower Lotharingia. It was in Lower Lotharingia, and from 1076 a direct fief of the bishop of Liège. As a result of intermarriage, the counties of Flanders and Hainault were held jointly from 1191 until 1278. The extent of familial intermarriage between Lotharingia and its western borders, from the North Sea to the Vosges, emerges clearly in the Chronicle of Gilbert of Mons.9 Suger was correct in noting the interrelationship between the aristocracy of the Thièrache, Champagne and Lotharingia – as demonstrated in a genealogy produced at the abbey of Foigny in the 1160s.10 As for ecclesiastical institutions, the diocese of Cambrai was in the Empire, within Lower Lotharingia, but was a suffragen of Rheims, and was a double see with Arras in Flemish Artois until 1093. Important ‘French’ abbeys, like Saint-Remi at Reims and Saint-Bertin at Saint-Omer, had lands in the diocese of Liège.11

6

Simon Maclean, ‘Shadow Kingdom: Lotharingia and the Frankish World c. 850–c1050’, History Compass 11, 2013, 443–57. 7 Jens Schneider, ‘La Lotharingie était-elle une région historique?’, in Construction de l’espace au moyen âge : pratiques et representations, Paris 2007, 425–33. Thomas Bauer, Lotharingien als Historisches Raum: Raumbildung und Raumbewusstsein in Mittelalter, Cologne 1997. J.-F. Nieus, ‘Entre Flandre et Champagne : Cadres Politiques, économiques et religieux 1150–1200’, in Une Renaissance, 14, ‘axe-Flandre-Champagne grossi de ses flancs mosan et français’. Charles West, Reframing the Feudal Revolution: Political and Social Transformation Between Marne and Moselle, c.800–c.1100, Cambridge 2013, 11–13, 228–54. Dominique Barthélemy, Les deux âges de la seigneurie banale : pouvoir et société dans la terre des sires de Coucy (milieu XIe- milieu XIIIe siècles), Paris 1984, 69, ‘une zone interstitielle’. 8 De la mer du Nord à la Méditerranée : Francia media, une région au cœur de l’Europe (c.840–c.1050), ed. Michèle Gaillard et al., Luxembourg 2011, especially Michel Parisse, ‘Quelques réflexions à propos de la terminologie et de la géographie’, ibid., 1–7 : Michel Margue, ‘ «Nous ne sommes ni de l’une ni de l’autre mais les deux à la fois », Entre France et Germanie, les identités Lotharingiennes en question(s)’, ibid., 395–427. 9 Gilbert of Mons, Chronicle of Hainault, trans. Laura Napran, Woodbridge 2005, esp. 3–8, nos 2–7; 40, no. 35; 72, no. 89; 80, no. 100. See also Michel Parisse, Noblesse et chevalerie en Lorraine médiévale : les familles nobles du XIe au XIIIe siècle, Nancy 1982, 197–8, 223–26, and Michel Parisse, ‘Les hommes et le pouvoir dans la Lorraine de l’an mil’, Religion et Culture, 259–66, esp. 262–3. 10 ‘Genealogiae Scriptoris Fusniacensis’, MGH, SS, XIII, 253–56; see Barthélemy, Les deux ages, 126–8. 11 Jean-Louis Kupper, Liège et l’Église impériale aux XIe–XIIe siècles, Liège 1981, 378, n. 22: see also Bauer, Lotharingien, 312, 539.

4

Lindy Grant

Hydrography, landscape and communications blurred edges further. The meandering River Scheldt marked the north-eastern border between Imperial Lower Lotharingia and the kingdom of France, but provided no serious divide between the counties of Flanders on one side and Hainault on the other.12 The area had excellent communications. The Rivers Meuse and Moselle provided arteries from the kingdom of France to the Rhine. There were good roads, most of them Roman, notably the road system leading from Italy to the short crossing of the English Channel, through Burgundy, Champagne, Artois and Flanders, just skirting Lotharingia. But the landscapes were diverse. The flatter northern lands were distinguished by early urbanization and industrialization, whichever side of the Scheldt they lay. The more southerly lands were forested, accidented – the ‘needy Ardennes’, according to Abbot Wibald of Stavelot – less urbanized, more focused around scattered abbeys and aristocratic courts, and in that similar to adjacent areas of the French kingdom, the Thièrache, and eastern Champagne.13 Recent commentators on ‘space’, since the ‘topographical turn’, have dismissed Braudelian insistence on the importance of geophysical elements in the construction of identity as structural determinism.14 But the impact of thick forests, steep gorges and marshes, on both the actuality of mobility and the imagination should not be underestimated.15 The Lotharingian edge lies along and across the linguistic border zone between French and Germanic languages. Around 800, this border lay between the River Canche and Lille, but it shifted gradually east and north during the High Middle Ages.16 The editors of the collection of essays on Francia Media observed that the shadow of Lotharingia and its margins still hung over Western Europe in the later twentieth century, when the European Union recognized precisely this arc as an area of economic potential and problems, and dubbed it ‘the blue banana’ – a metaphor that was not available to medieval commentators.17 Contemporaries found definition as difficult as historians. In 1258, the pope declared that there was no clear border between the kingdom of France and the Empire.18 In 1309, the scholar John of Saint-Victor struggled to explain that Lotharingia used to mean the region from Brabant to the Rhine, and from the edges (the

12

Bauer, Lotharingien, 542–4. Kupper, Liège et L’église, 77–105; Gérard Sivery, L’économie du Royaume de France au siècle de Saint Louis, Lille 1984, 264–97. For Wibald’s comment, Das Briefbuch Abt Wibalds von Stablo und Corvey, MHG, Die Briefe der deutchen Kaizerzeit IX, ed. Martina Hartmann, Heinz Zatschek and Timothy Reuter, Hanover, 2012, vol. 1, 24–5, no. 13 (J62). 14 Schneider, ‘La Lotharingie était-elle une région historique’, 422–26, 432. 15 Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, La Flandre et les Flamands au miroir des historiens du royaume Xe-XVe siècle, Villeneuve d’Ascq 2017, 19; Isabelle Guyot-Bachy, ‘Quand et comment l’espace flamande s’est-il impose aux chroniqueurs du royaume de France (XIe–XIVe siècles)’, in Construction de l’espace, 131–45. 16 L. Milis, ‘The French Low Countries: Cradle of Dutch Culture’, in Religion, Culture, and Mentalities in the Medieval Low Countries, Turnhout 2005, 339–42, and L. Milis, ‘The Linguistic Boundary in the County of Guines: A Problem of History and Methodology’, ibid., 353–68. Serge Lusignan, ‘L’espace géographiques et langues : les frontières du français picard’, in Construction de l’espace, 263–74. Wolfgang Haubrichs, ‘La structuration linguistique de l’espace : Du bilinguisme à l’émergence des frontières’, in De la mer du Nord, 41–68, esp. 55–8. 17 Alain Dierkins, Michelle Gaillard and Michel Margue, ‘Avant-propos’, in De la mer du Nord, vii. 18 LTC, iv, no. 5439 : Jean Schneider, ‘Lotharingie, Bourgogne ou Provence? L’idée d’un 13



‘Avalterre’ and ‘Affinitas Lotharingorum’

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‘fines’) of Champagne to Liège, but that it now meant ‘from Vaucouleurs on one side, and from the Meuse towards France until the beginning of the diocese of Trier’ – not a description easily reduced to a map.19 From the later twelfth century, the Capetians tried to bring northern Lotharingia, especially Hainault and Brabant, within their sphere of influence: in which they were countered by the kings of England. From the later thirteenth century, the kings of France attempted to annexe uncertain western edges of the shadow kingdom into the kingdom of France. The political structures in the area were unstable and changing. By the early eleventh century, the emperors had shifted their attention from Lotharingia to the Middle Rhine and Saxony, not least because the early Capetians, unlike the late Carolingian kings of West Francia, had no intention of expanding to the east. Lotharingia itself had been separated into the dukedoms of Upper Lotharingia and Lower Lotharingia by 1048. The dukes of Upper Lotharingia, later known as Lorraine, had little political heft. The dominant political institutions there were the great bishoprics – the archbishopric of Trier, and its suffragans, Metz, Toul and Verdun. In the later twelfth century, the counts of Bar became increasingly prominent, helped, but ultimately hindered, by the uncertainty as to whether the county formed part of the Empire or the kingdom of France.20 In 1106, the emperor bestowed the title of duke of Lower Lotharingia on the counts of Louvain. They never succeeded in dominating their fellow Lower Lotharingian counts of Hainault, Namur and Luxembourg, and by 1200 usually called themselves dukes of Brabant.21 The bishopric of Liège was as weighty an institution as these lay polities, though between 1167 and 1238 it was held by affiliates of the Flanders-Hainault-Namur dynasty.22 The dioceses of Liège and Utrecht were suffragans of Cologne. Imperial Cambrai, with Flemish Thérouanne and Tournai, were suffragans of Reims. Historians have noted, throughout Lotharingia and its fringes, a deeper familial relationship between the church and the aristocracy than in Capetian France.23 The counts of Flanders and the counts of Champagne were princely dynasties which in the later twelfth century outshone the kings of France in wealth and cultural capital.24 Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders from 1168 to 1191, came close to building a dynastic ‘imperium’ in north-east France and Avalterre, comprising the counties of Flanders, Hainault, Boulogne and Vermandois, with Brabant closely linked, though it all fell apart when he died without offspring. In 1180, he had married his niece,

Royaume d’Entre-Deux aux derniers siècles du moyen âge’, in Liège et Bourgogne, Paris 1972, 24. 19 E. A. R. Brown, ‘Philippe le Bel s’est-il posé la question des frontières du royaume ?’, in Lyon 1312. Rattacher la ville au Royaume ?, ed. Alexis Charansonnet, Jean-Louis Gaulin and Xavier Hélary, Lyon 2020, 39–42. 20 Kupper, Liège et L’église, 166. 21 Nicholas Ruffini-Ronzani, ‘The Counts of Louvain and the Anglo-Norman World, c. 1100– c. 1215’, ANS XLII, 2020, 135–9: G. Croenen, ‘L’entourage des ducs de Brabant au XIIIe siècle’, in A l’ombre du pouvoir : les entourages princiers au Moyen Age, ed. J.-L. Kupper and A. Marchandisse, Liège/Geneva 2003, 277–93, and idem., ‘Regions, Principalities and Regional Identity in the Low Countries: The Case of the Nobility’, in Regions and Landscapes: Reality and Imagination in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. Peter Ainsworth and Tom Scott, Oxford 2000, 139–53. 22 Kupper, Liège et L’église, 185. 23 Parisse, ‘Les hommes et le pouvoir’, 264; West, Reframing the Social Revolution, 242–53. 24 Nieus, ‘Entre Flandre et Champagne’, 13–19.

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Isabelle of Hainault, to the young French king Philip Augustus, giving southern Flanders as her dowry. A series of succession crises brought most of comital Flanders under direct or indirect Capetian control in the early thirteenth century. This did not suit the Angevin kings of England. The wool trade engendered strong economic ties between England and Flanders, and the English kings had often, if not always, pursued alliances with the counts. From the later twelfth century, the French and English kings vied for the support of the competitive aristocracy of Flanders, the Thièrache and Avalterre – the Counts of Boulogne, Guînes, Saint-Pol, the lords of Béthune and Coucy, the counts of Hainault, Louvain/Brabant, and Namur. Between 1197 and 1218 the imperial succession was at issue. The English kings, Richard and then John, supported their nephew, Otto of Brunswick as emperor, while Philip Augustus supported the claims of the infant Frederick II. The lords, lay and ecclesiastical, of Lower Lotharingia, enticed with much English money, tended to support Otto of Brunswick. But the formidable Angevin alliance was defeated at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214.25 The elites of Lotharingia and its western fringes played from the start a prominent role in the Crusading movement, with Godfrey of Bouillon, nephew of the Duke of Lotharingia, regarded as the leader of the First Crusade. Religious and intellectual culture The earliest monastic reforms of the central Middle Ages – those of Gerald of Brogne at Gorze and Saint-Maximin at Trier in the earlier tenth century, and of Richard of Saint-Vanne at Verdun in the early eleventh – occurred in Lotharingia.26 In the early twelfth century, Lower Lotharingia and its western margins were a centre of Augustinian canonical reform, notably the Premonstratensian and Arrouaisian orders.27 St Norbert, the founder of the Premonstratensian order, came from Avalterre, the lower Meuse, and learnt French while studying at Laon. Although the Premonstratensian mother house was near Laon, at Premontré, where local French and German (Lotharingian) masons vied in building the church, the order’s centre of gravity lay in Lower Lotharingia, with major houses at Averbode and Floreffe, the necropolis for the counts of Namur.28 In the early thirteenth century, the beguine movement emerged in Lower Lotharingia and neighbouring Flanders, eventually, as we have seen, attracting the attention of Blanche of Castile.29 25

Eljas Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World 1066–1216, Cambridge 2012, 45–53; John W. Baldwin, ‘“Once there was an Emperor”. A Political Reading of the Romances of Jean Renart’, in Jean Renart and the Art of Romance, ed. Nancy Vine Durling, Gainesville, FL 1997, 45–83; Baldwin, Aristocratic Life, 32–46; Ruffini-Ronzani, ‘The Counts of Louvain’, 144–9; Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France, Berkeley, CA 1993, 14–54. 26 John Nightingale, Monasteries and Patrons in the Gorze Reform, Lotharingia c. 850–1000, Oxford 2001; Kupper, Liège et L’église, 359–61; Jean-Pol Evrard, ‘Verdun au temps de l’évêque Haymon (988–1024)’, in Religion et Culture, 273–8. 27 Kupper, Liège et L’église, 366–72. 28 ‘Vita Norberti’, MGH, SS, 12, 670–706, esp. 681, 682, 685 for the masons at Premontré, ‘quidam Teutonici erant, quidam Gallici’. 29 Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200–1565, Philadelphia, PA 2001, 2–48; John van Engen, ‘The Religious Women of Liège at the Turn of the Thirteenth Century’, in Medieval Liège at the Crossroads of Europe: Monastic



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Upper Lotharingia was a major locus of the early monastic reforms, but not of later innovations. The regular canonical movements and the religious women/ beguines first arose in Brabant, Hainault, and Flanders. The two are connected. Two of the most prominent and influential of the holy women of Avalterre, Marie of Oignies (1177–1213) and Juliana of Mont-Cornillon (1193–1258), were protected by Augustinian houses. Both movements were a counter to monasticism, focusing on living the Holy Life within the community or in pastoral service to the community, not in monastic isolation. Conditions were conducive to the encouragement of active female piety well before the beguine movement. Robert of Torigni records a religious woman, ‘de provincia Lotharingiae’ writing about prophecy to the Cistercian general chapter in the early 1150s.30 The monastic reform movements benefitted from imperial support.31 The regular canons and the holy women reflected the interests and patronage of an active and competitive aristocracy, alongside a vibrant, wealthy and educated urban society. Unsurprisingly, Avalterre proved fertile ground for the mendicant orders, especially the Dominicans, for whom Liège was an important base. The new feast of Corpus Christi emerged in the diocese of Liège, driven by Juliana of Mont-Cornillon and the Liège Dominicans, including the great scholar Hugh of Saint-Cher, who had been prior at Liège.32 Both the early monastic reforms, and the canonical and beguine movements, bled out of Lotharingia itself into Flanders and north-eastern France. Gerard of Brogne reformed Saint-Bertin at SaintOmer: Richard of Saint-Vanne reformed Saint-Vaast at Arras and Saint-Amand.33 Premontré’s mother house was in north-eastern France. Patterns of devotion to saints, especially Saints Amand, Vedast, Bertin and Sylvanus, overlapped between Lower Lotharingia, Flanders and its associated counties of Boulogne and Artois.34 Late tenth- and early eleventh-century Lotharingia was one of the liveliest intellectual centres in the medieval West.35 The scholars of Lotharingia benefitted from magnificent Carolingian libraries, at Metz, Toul, Verdun, Trier and Liège, replete with copies of classical texts, often bound with classical or copies of classical ivories on their covers, built up when Lotharingia was at the centre of Carolingian court culture under Charlemagne, Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald.36 Liège, Toul and Trier possessed Greek texts, and scholars, like Simeon of Sinai at Trier, who could

Society and Culture, 1000–1300, ed. Steven Vanderputten, Tjamke Snijders and Jay Diehl, Turnhout 2017, 339–70. 30 Torigni, ed. Delisle, vol. 1, 279; Van Engen, ‘The Religious Women’, 340–61; Simons, Cities of Ladies, 2–37. 31 Kupper, Liège et L’église, 375–9. 32 Judith Oliver, Gothic Manuscript Illumination in the Diocese of Liège, Louvain 1988, 37, 104–06; Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture, Cambridge 1991, 164–81. 33 Helena Vanommeslaeghe, ‘Wandering Abbots: Abbatial Mobility and Stabilitas loci in Eleventh Century Lotharingia and Flanders’, in Medieval Liège, 1–27, esp. 9–13. 34 Bauer, Lotharingien, 534–7, and maps 16 and 18. See also, Schneider, ‘La lotharingie’, 430. 35 Kupper, Liège et L’église, 375–80; Pierre Riché, ‘Education et Culture autour de l’an mil. La place de la Lotharingie’, in Religion et Culture, 279–83; Jean-Yves Tilliette, ‘Le Xe siècle dans l’histoire de la littérature’, in Religion et Culture, 93–98, and idem, ‘La poésie métrique latine’, in Religion et Culture, 103–9. 36 Parisse, ‘Les hommes et le pouvoir’, 265; Tilliette, ‘Le Xe siècle’, 95; Jean Vezin, ‘Les manuscrits en Lotharingie autour de l’an mil’, in Religion et Culture, 309–14, esp. 310. For ivory production at Trier, Metz and Echternach, c. 1000, Rhein und Maas: Kunst und Kultur

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read them. The Ottonian emperors were keen to emulate the early Carolingians. They, and the churchmen who supported them, like Archbishop Egbert of Trier, commissioned new manuscripts and new ivory book covers, keeping alive Carolingian traditions of manuscript production and ivory carving. Indeed, they had access to Byzantine ivories too.38 John, abbot of Gorze, was sent to Italy by Emperor Otto I to obtain copies of Aristotle’s works, and then, in 935, to Cordoba for three years to source copies of Arabic works on geometry and mathematics.39 By 1000, Lotharingia, especially Liège, was the preeminent centre for the mathematical arts in the West. Francon of Liège wrote the first treatise on the squaring of the circle. Ralph of Liège provides the first clear reference to an Arabic astrolabe in Christendom, in a letter of around 1025. From around 1030, a series of Lotharingian scholar churchmen, including Robert Losinga, Leofric of Exeter, Walcher of Malvern and Walcher of Durham, pursued careers in Anglo-Saxon England, laying the ground for English expertise in the Arabic mathematical arts and natural science.40 Upper Lotharingia – Trier, Metz, Toul and Verdun – peaked early. The great scholarly achievements there fed, and were fed by, the monastic reform movements at Gorze and Saint-Vanne, and by imperial interest in the area, which waned during the eleventh century. But Liège, its cathedral, and the monasteries of Lower Lotharingia, went from strength to strength. In the mid-eleventh century, Liège was described by one scholar as ‘the new Athens, flower of tripartite Gaul’. Bishop Odo of Bayeux sent his most promising clerks to study there.41 Alongside the mathematicians were renowned canon lawyers, like Alger of Liège and Bishop Otbert. The most famous Liège scholar was Rupert of Deutz, with whom Wibald of Stavelot studied. But Rupert died in 1129, and the intellectual brilliance of the Liège school died with him. Historians have argued that scholarship in Lotharingia was finished off by the Investiture Contest.42 The failure of the Liège school also coincides with the point at which the French cathedral schools, including Laon, lost out to the increasingly dominant 37

800–1400, 2 vols, Cologne 1972, I, 176–88; Jean-Pierre Caillet, ‘Metz et le travail de l’ivoire vers l’an mil’, in Religion et Culture, 315–37. 37 Riché, ‘Education et culture’, 278–81. 38 Michael Embach, ‘Kunst der Kirchen’, in Die Kaiser und die Säulen ihrer Macht: von Karl dem Grossen bis Friedrich Barbarossa, ed. Bernd Schneidmuller, Darmstadt 2020, 181–7, esp. 183–7, and catalogue, 250–60. For use of Byzantine ivories, see the cover of the Poussay Evangeliary, BnF Cabinet des manuscrits, ms lat 10514, in La France romane au temps des premiers Capétiens (987–1152), Paris 2005, 174–5, no. 122. 39 Giulia Barone, ‘Jean de Gorze, moine de la réforme et saint original’, in Religion et Culture, 31–8, esp. 36–7. 40 J. W. Thompson, ‘The Introduction of Arabic Science into Lorraine in the Tenth Century’, Isis 12, 1929, 184–93, esp. 188–91; Jennifer Moreton, ‘Before Grosseteste: Roger of Hereford and Calendar Reform in 11th and 12th Century England’, Isis 86, 1995, 562–86; M. C. Welborn, ‘Lotharingia as a Centre of Arabic and Scientific Influence in the Eleventh Century’, Isis 16, 1931, 188–99, esp. 191–2. 41 Riché, ‘Education et culture’, 280; Orderic, vol. 4, Book VIII, 118–19. 42 Kupper, Liège et L’église, 380–3; Evrard, ‘Verdun’, 278; Riché, ‘Education et culture’, 283; Christine Renardy, Les maitres Universitaires du diocèse de Liège. Repertoire Biographique 1140– 1350, Paris 1981, 17–18. But cf. Ortwin Huysmans, ‘The Investiture Contest in the Diocese of Liège Reconsidered: An Enquiry into the Position of the Abbey of Saint-Hubert and Saint-Laurent and the Canonist Alger of Liège (1091–1106)’, in Medieval Liège, 183–217, esp. 185–6.



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Paris. There were throughout fruitful interactions between the scholars from Liège, Trier, Metz, Toul and Verdun and Lotharingia’s western fringes, notably with Gerbert of Aurillac at Reims in the late tenth century, and with Anselm at Laon in the early twelfth. From the early eleventh century, Flemish abbeys which had been reformed from Lotharingia, including Saint-Vaast at Arras, Saint-Amand and Saint-Bertin, restocked their depleted libraries from Lotharingian sources.44 43

Ecclesiastical buildings and religious material culture Before the mid-twelfth century, imperial architectural traditions prevailed, as for instance at Verdun Cathedral, with its western choir and transept, or the mid-tenth-century comital chapel of Saint-Donatien at Bruges, based on Charlemagne’s chapel at Aachen. From the mid-thirteenth century, as elsewhere in Europe, the ‘more francigeno’, the French fashion associated with Louis IX and the SainteChapelle, drove all before it, as at the cathedral at Metz. In fact, the great building project of Reims Cathedral had already had an impact within Lotharingia from around 1230, as witnessed by the Liebfrauenkirche at Trier.45 However, Jean Bony identified a distinctive form of early thirteenth-century gothic which stretched in a great arc from southern England, through the Low Countries, Champagne and Burgundy, along the Lotharingian western border zone. He called it ‘Resistance to Chartres’; for its limited interest in gigantism, its complex passage-ridden interiors, accented with dark fake marble columns and shafts, made it the antithesis of the High Gothic which dominated Capetian France. Bony linked the architecture of his resistant eastern arc with the old Roman roads, leading from the short channel crossing to Rome.46 As Bony and others observed, the churches of Artois/Flanders and Avalterre were influenced by, and influenced, gothic architecture in England from c. 1150, not least in the use of the dark fake marbles like Tournai. Tournai – or local equivalents, like Purbeck – became widespread in England from the 1130s, perhaps owing to the Flemish connections of Stephen and Henry of Blois.47 Tournai marble lent itself to the production of objects such as tombs which were easily distributed by sea, notably to England. The iconography of commemoration was innovative and inventive in Flanders, Avalterre and Champagne, at a stage when most tombs carried little more than inscriptions. Surviving examples in England include the Tournai marble tombs for Bishop Alexander (d. 1148) at Lincoln, and his cousin, Bishop Nigel (d. 1169), at Ely. The former references Resurrection with a Tree of Jesse: the latter shows the bishop’s soul raised up by St Michael.48 The 43

Cf. Jay Diehl, ‘Masters and Schools at Saint-Laurent. Rupert of Deutz and the Scholastic Culture of a Liègeois Monastery’, in Medieval Liège, 168–9. 44 Diana Reilly, ‘Reims, Liège and Institutional Reform in the Central Middle Ages: Flavius Josephus as a Father of the Church’, in Medieval Liège, 141–5 on Liège, Reims and Flemish intellectual networks. Colette Deremble, ‘L’enlumineure’, in Nord Roman, Zodiaque 1994, 259–97, 300–06; La France romane, 312–18, catalogue nos. 237, 239, 240, 242. 45 Matthias Untermann, ‘Die Rheinischen Bischofskirchen im Hochmittelalter’, in Die Kaiser und die Säulen ihrer Macht, pp. 289, 295. 46 Jean Bony, ‘The Resistance to Chartres in Early Thirteenth-Century Architecture’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 20–1, 1957–8, 35–52. 47 Lindy Grant, Architecture and Society in Normandy, c. 1120–c. 1270, London 2005, 49–50, and 245, n. 14 for further references. 48 Jean-Claude Ghislain, ‘La production funéraire en pierre de Tournai à l’époque romane.

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resemblance to black marble gave even plain Tournai tombs a classical lustre. Mosaic and opus sectile, also signifiers of the antique, were sometimes employed, notably in a series of opus sectile tombs in the diocese of Liège between the late tenth and the late twelfth centuries. The dead heir to Count Robert of Flanders was commemorated in an early twelfth-century mosaic pavement at Saint-Bertin at Saint-Omer, in a resurrection programme featuring the ancestors of Christ.49 Commemorative imagery was unusually responsive to aristocratic demands. The ‘genealogical’ tomb, which underlined the prestigious dynastic heritage of the dead, emerged at the court of the Counts of Champagne, to be enthusiastically adopted by the counts of Brabant, then Flanders and Hainault. At a lesser aristocratic level, early thirteenth-century tomb imagery of knights brandishing drawn swords, very rare elsewhere, was frequent in Flanders and Lower Lotharingia.50 Metalwork is the art inextricably linked with Lotharingia. The Meuse Valley was an important centre – hence the term Mosan: it benefited from ample wood, sand, clay and running water, zinc, a key ingredient in bronze and brass, and easy supplies of copper.51 Mosan metalwork was distinguished by its technical accomplishment, using niello, subtle enamelling, both cloisonné and champlevé, often incorporating gems and ivory carvings.52 The earliest major surviving piece is the magnificent font commissioned for the cathedral baptistery at Liège between 1107 and 1118.53 Wibald, Abbot of Stavelot, and his brother and successor, Erlebald, employed at least five teams of metal-workers at the abbey of Stavelot between c. 1140 and 1180.54 The canon-artist Hugh d’Oignies produced several fine liturgical objects for Marie d’Oignies, at the behest of Jacques de Vitry, in the early thirteenth century.55 The most celebrated Mosan goldsmith was Nicholas of Verdun, famed for the altar for the Austrian Augustinian house of Klosterneuburg, dated 1181, the Virgin shrine for Tournai Cathedral, dated 1205 and for the Three Kings Shrine in Cologne Cathedral.56 Nicholas, as his toponym suggests, came from Upper Lotharingia, but this area appears to have been less productive of fine metalwork. The Moselle would have

Des dalles funéraires sans décoration aux œuvres magistrales du 12e siècle’, in Les Grands Siècles de Tournai, Tournai 1993, 115–208, esp. 142–95. 49 Hadrien Kockerols, Le monument funéraire médiévale dans l’ancien diocèse de Liège, 2 vols, Namur 2016, I, 80–9; Herve Oursel, ‘Les Mosaïques’, in Nord Roman, 240. 50 Anne McGee Morganstern, Gothic Tombs of Kinship in France, the Low Countries and England, University Park, PA 2000, 10–18, 27–33, 47–63; Kockerols, Le monument funeraire, I, 140–7. 51 Robert Halleux, ‘Les fonts baptismaux de Saint-Barthélemy et le travail du laiton au moyen âge’, in Etudes sur les fonts baptismaux de Saint-Barthélemy à Liège, ed. Genevieve Xhayet and Robert Halleux, Liège 2006, 239–65, esp. 247–52. 52 Christine Descatoire and Marc Gil, ‘Un siècle de création’, in Une Renaissance, 53. 53 Etudes sur les fonts. 54 Christine Descatoire, ‘L’abbaye de Stavelot et son rayonnement’, in Une Renaissance, 73–4, and catalogue, 57–61; Sophie Ballace, ‘Chef-Reliquaire du pape Saint-Alexandre’, in L’Œuvre de la Meuse I : Orfèvrerie Mosane XIIe et XIIIe siècle, ed. Philippe George, Liège 2014, 12–26. 55 Jacques Toussaint, ‘Le Trésor d’Oignies et ses avatars’, in L’Œuvre de la Meuse, II : Orfèvrerie Septentrionale (XIIe–XIIIe siècles), 32–42. 56 Laurence Terrier Aliferis, L’imitation de l’Antiquité dans l’art médiévale (1180–1230), Turnhout 2016, 51–81.



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provided equally appropriate conditions, and the importance of Trier and Verdun as centres of production in the later twelfth century may have been underestimated.57 Indeed, recent studies of Mosan metalwork and associated arts have questioned how much production should be located in the Meuse Valley. Once again it is the problem of Lotharingia and its borders, notably Flanders/Artois and Champagne, both of which probably became centres of the type of artistic production known as Mosan.58 Mosan – or Lotharingian – metalworkers needed access to the ingredients for bronze, brass and enamel – but they were, as Suger’s commission shows, renowned and mobile. Mosan metalwork was distinguished by its iconographic richness, featuring Old and New Testament typology, often spelt out, literally, with inscriptions or tituli.59 It was art designed by an educated elite, for an educated elite. In this it differs from Limoges metalwork, which eschews complex inscriptions, and indeed complex techniques, like cloisonné. The iconographical sophistication of Mosan metalwork, with multiple explicatory inscriptions, is found in other media from the Meuse – for instance the Floreffe Bible.60 Where it is found in manuscripts or stained glass in Flanders and Champagne, it can usually be associated stylistically with Mosan work, as for instance in the Redemption window from the cathedral of Chalons-en-Champagne.61 The iconographic sophistication doubtless reflects the intellectual heritage of the Liège school; Wibald of Stavelot had studied with Rupert of Deutz.62 Nevertheless, surviving works, apart from the Liège font, were produced when the school had lost its lustre. Mosan imagery is not only notably intellectual in character, it is also notably classical, both in iconography and style.63 Personifications, of virtues, vices or continents, abound. The figures on the Liège font suggest classical stylistic sources.64 By the late twelfth century, in the work of Nicholas of Verdun, the classicism is striking, and is often called the ‘Style 1200’. Lower Lotharingia, Flanders, and Champagne were clearly the crucible for it. From them it spread into Capetian France, also, remarkably fast, into Angevin England, as demonstrated by column figures from St Mary’s Abbey York from around 1190.65 What were these artists looking at? The great libraries and treasuries in the venerable monasteries and cathedrals of Lotharingia contained classical, Carolingian, Byzantine and Ottonian ivory book covers, and Carolingian and Ottonian manu-

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Willibald Sauerlander, ‘Antiqui et Moderni at Reims’, Gesta 42, 2003, 19–37; Descatoire and Gil, ‘Un siècle de Creation’, 46. 58 Sophie Ballace, ‘L’art Mosan vs l’art de la France du Nord’, in Une Renaissance, 37–43; Descatoire and Gil, ‘Un siecle de Creation’, 47. 59 Nigel Morgan, ‘Iconography’, in Rhein und Maas, II, 263–75; Clemens M. M. Bayer, ‘Les fonts baptismaux de Liège: qui les bœufs soutenant la cuve figurent-ils ? Etude historique et épigraphique’, in Etudes sur les fonts, 45–113. 60 BL ms Add 17737 and Add 17738: Rhein und Maas, I, 297. 61 Isabelle Lecocq, ‘Verrières: vitreries et vitraux mosans’, in L’art Mosan, Liège et son pays à l’époque romane du XIe au XIIIe siècle, ed. Benoit Van den Bossche, Liège 2007, 207–13, esp. 210–11. 62 Ballace, ‘Chef Reliquiare’, 23–5. 63 Terrier Aliferis, L’imitation de l’Antiquité, passim; Sophie Ballace, ‘Les influences antique dans l’orfèvrerie mosane’, in L’art mosan, 136–43. 64 Philippe George, ‘Les fonts de Liège: de l’art antique à l’art mosan: sources iconographique et stylistiques’, in Etudes sur les fonts, 211–35, esp. 215–23. 65 Terrier Aliferis, L’imitation de l’Antiquité, passim, for the spread of the classical style to England, 118–20.

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scripts preserving classical traditions. The best of the Ottonian work was at Trier, in the works produced for Archbishop Egbert, not least the Egbert Codex, and at Metz, both in Upper, not Lower, Lotharingia.66 Did the maker of the Liège font know the bronze statue of Charles the Bald, then in the treasury at Metz, now in the Louvre? It is widely accepted that Nicholas of Verdun had observed Roman statuary at Reims, and a Reliquary of St Berchaire at the abbey of Montier-en-Der, which incorporated two fine, and surviving, classical ivory plaques.67 In his sketchbook, Villard d’Honnecourt drew the tomb of a non-Christian – he calls him a ‘saracen’; but does not tell us where he found it. The many large-scale architectural Roman tombs surviving in the old Roman capital of Trier provide the most convincing match.68 Classical consciousness was certainly strong. Tenth- and eleventh-century monastic hagiographers in Trier stressed the city’s early Christian, classical past; while a twelfth-century poem on the city of Tournai, praises it as ‘Founded by noble men as if another Rome.’69 Aristocratic culture As a young knight on the make, William Marshall sought the best places to take part in tournaments. He found them: ‘En France e en Avalterre, /Parmi Heinnau et parmi Flandres’.70 Modern commentators on the tournament agree that Flanders, Brabant, Hainault and Picardy were favoured tournament sites; indeed, that the tournament probably emerged here. Unlike the kings of France and England, who often forbade tournaments on their lands, the counts of Flanders, especially Count Philip, actively encouraged them. The competitive and independent aristocracy of the area were enthusiastic participants.71 Gilbert of Mons praises Baldwin V of Hainault’s generous expenditure on courtly life and tournaments.72 Lambert of Ardres describes the post-tournament entertainment provided by Arnold II of Guines (d. 1220) for his court with tales of Roman emperors, Charlemagne, Arthur and the matter of Britain, and the Crusades.73 The aristocracies of Flanders, Champagne and both Lower and Upper Lotharingia, were prominent patrons of poetry and song. Many of them, including Huon of Oisy, Blondel of Nesle, Conon of Béthune, Henry III of Brabant, Theobald II of Bar, Theobald IV of Champagne and his daughter, Margaret, Duchess of Lorraine, were themselves renowned as poets and composers.74 Jean Renart, writing for patrons involved in the Imperial Succession struggle, 66

See above, n. 38. The Egbert Codex is Trier, Stadtbibliothek Cod.24. For Byzantine influence, see George, ‘Les Fonts’, 223–6 and Terrier Aliferis, L’imitation de l’Antiquité, 37–41. 67 Terrier Aliferis, L’imitation de l’Antiquité, 135–44, 56–7 for the Reliquary of Saint-Berchaire. 68 The Sketchbook of Villard d’Honnecourt, BnF ms fr. 19093, f. 6r. Terrier Aliferis, L’imitation de l’Antiquité, 34–7. 69 ‘De dignitate et antiquitate Urbis Tornacensis’, MGH SS 14, 357, ‘Nobilibus fundata viris velut altera Roma’; Klaus Krönert, ‘Between Identity, History and Rivalry: Hagiographic legends in Trier, Cologne and Liège’, in Medieval Liège, 49–68. 70 History of William Marshall, ed. Anthony J. Holden, vol. 1, London 2002, 78, lines 1518–19. 71 David Crouch, Tournament, London 2005, 2–11, 28; Oksanen, Flanders and the AngloNorman World, 114–44. 72 Gilbert of Mons, Chronicle of Hainault, 62, no. 68. 73 Lambert of Ardres, The History of the Counts of Guines and Lords of Ardres, ed. and trans. Leah Shopkow, Philadelphia, PA 2001, 130. 74 For their poems, Chansons des Trouvères: Chanter M’Estuet, ed. Samuel N. Rosenberg,



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was the first author to include song within the body of his romances, making song, for the first time, as Ardis Butterfield observes, ‘a literate art’.75 Appreciation of song was not confined to aristocratic circles. The city of Arras was an important centre of song, and confraternities of singers and musicians are recorded at Arras, Lille, Tournai, Cambria, Béthune and Valenciennes.76 Surprisingly, few of the surviving songs from the Grand Est are as overtly political as those of the Manceau Hugh de la Ferté or the Parisian Rutebeuf. Nevertheless, Conon of Béthune bemoaned the fact that the Queen of France, Adela of Champagne, and Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, found his Artesian French uncouth, while in the early 1250s, Count Theobald II of Bar, complained about the German-speaking lands (‘thyois pais’), where one had neither joy, consolation or laughter.77 One cannot overstate the importance of the later twelfth-century counts of Champagne and Flanders, Henry the Liberal, and Philip of Alsace, and their families as literary patrons. They encouraged vernacular romances from Chretien de Troyes; commissioned translations of religious texts, like the psalter commentary for Laurette of Alsace; and collected libraries – but they were great princes.78 In the thirteenth century, the dukes of Brabant also developed a reputation for literary patronage.79 What is surprising is the extent of literary patronage among smaller aristocratic fry. Count Baldwin of Guînes (1169–1206) commissioned translations of the Song of Songs, a life of St Anthony the Hermit, Aristotle’s’ Physics, and Solinus’ Wonders of the world, and employed a librarian to look after his precious books.80 In the early thirteenth century, Roger the Castellan of Lille commissioned from Waucher of Denan the Histoire Ancien jusqu’à César, drawn from the romances of Thebes, Aeneas, Troy and Alexander.81 Most literary production in Lotharingia/Avalterre, unlike the songs, was notably political in character, whether written in Latin or the vernacular. Gilbert of Mons and Lambert of Ardres were clerks (in Gilbert’s case, chaplain and chancellor) of the counts of Hainault and Guînes respectively: both wrote flattering Latin histories of their comital dynasties. The Anonymous of Béthune wrote in French for the

Hans Tischler and Marie-Genevieve Grossel, Paris 1995; Eglal Doss-Quinby, Songs of the Women Trouvères, New Haven, CT/London 2001, 28–30; for the Flemish and Lotharingian provenance of a high proportion of song manuscripts, ibid., 51–8. 75 Ardis Butterfield, Poetry and Music in Medieval France: from Jean Renart to Guillaume de Machaut, Cambridge 2002, 1, 18–22. 76 Butterfield, Poetry and Music, 133–6; Doss-Quinby, Songs, 22–3. 77 Chansons de Conon de Béthune Trouveur Artésien de la fin du XIIe siècle, ed. Axel Wallensköld, Helsingfors 1891, 223–4, no. 3; for Theobald, Chansons des Trouvères, 806–9, no. 192. 78 Mary Stranger, ‘Literary Patronage at the Medieval Court of Flanders’, French Studies 11, 1957, 214–29; The Twelfth Century Psalter Commentary in French for Laurette of Alsace, ed. S. Gregory, 2 vols, London 1990, I, 18–26; M.-G. Grossil, ‘La traduction Romane des Vies des Pères de Wauchier de Denan’, in Richesses Médiévales du Nord et du Hainaut, ed. J. C. Herbin, Valenciennes 2002, esp. 49–56; Theodore Evergates, Henry the Liberal, Count of Champagne, 1127–1181, Philadelphia, PA 2016, 86–99; idem, Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, 1145–1198, Philadelphia, PA 2019, 58–62. 79 Tracy Chapman Hamilton, Pleasure and Politics at the Court of France. The Artistic Patronage of Queen Marie of Brabant (1260–1321), Turnhout 2019, 39–45. 80 Lambert of Ardres, The History, 114–15; Grossil, ‘La traduction’, 57. 81 Aimé Petit, ‘Wauchier de Denain et la matière du Roman de Thèbes dans l’Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César’, in Richesses médiévales, 243–52; Spiegel, Romancing the Past, 53.

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entertainment of his patrons, the counts of Béthune, whose desperate balancing act, between the kings of France, the counts of Flanders and the kings of England, is reflected in the Anonymous’s subject matter and slant.82 The rambling, gossipy and often slapstick mid-thirteenth-century historical entertainments of Philip Mousques from Cambrai and the Minstrel of Reims are usually dismissed as fodder for an unsophisticated, perhaps urban audience – but they are intensely political, and should perhaps be treated as satire for the delectation of a politically knowing elite.83 The aristocracy of Lotharingia and its western marches were obsessed with their Carolingian lineage, and this was reflected in most historical writing, even by monastics, like Andrew of Marchiennes and Aubry of Trois-Fontaines, himself a Lotharingian from Metz. In the early tenth century, consciousness of Carolingian lineage had stiffened Lotharingian resistance to the Ottonians, who lacked Carolingian prestige.84 By the later twelfth century, especially in Flanders and Lower Lotharingia, it stiffened resistance to Capetian encroachment. Andrew of Marchiennes went so far as to observe, in his ‘Succint History of the Kings of the Franks’, that the son of Isabelle of Hainault, queen of Philip Augustus, would ensure the return of the kingdom to the line of Charlemagne, after the Capetians had usurped it by treason.85 Strikingly large numbers of genealogical texts were produced, including a series of genealogies of the counts of Flanders, and a short demonstration of the descent from Charlemagne of Godfrey of Bouillon – who featured at the centre of his own Crusade romance cycle as the Knight of the Swan.86 The Abbey of Anchin produced a late twelfth-century consolidated genealogy of the counts of Hainault, Boulogne, and Namur ‘de genere Karoli originem ducentum’, noting that the Capetians had gained the kingdom of France ‘through treachery’.87 In the 1260s, a genealogy of the dukes of Brabant claimed their descent from Charlemagne made them the legitimate heirs to the thrones of both France and Lotharingia.88 Six independent translations of the Pseudo-Turpin – a fantasy of Charlemagne’s campaign in Spain – were made in Flanders/Artois/ Hainault between 1200 and 1230. All, as Gabrielle Spiegel has demonstrated, were associated with aristocrats who either claimed Carolingian descent, or were close to those who did – Baldwin IV of Hainault, Yolande countess of Saint-Pol, Renaud of Boulogne, Michael III of Harnes, William, lord of Ponthieu, and Robert VII of Béthune. Most had reason to be wary of Philip Augustus – and all doubtless knew

82

Spiegel, Romancing the Past, 39, 225–36. Guyot-Bachy, La Flandre, 106; Lindy Grant, Blanche of Castile, Queen of France, London 2016, 21. 84 Ingrid Voss, ‘La Lotharingie : terre des rencontres Xe–XIe siècles’, in Religion et Culture, 267. 85 Karl-Ferdinand Werner, ‘Andreas von Marchiennnes und die Geschichtesschreibung von Anchin un Marchiennnes in der zweiten Hälfte des 12 Jahrhunderts’, Deutches Archiv 9, 1952, 402–63, esp. 410, 455–9; Guyot-Bachy, La Flandre, 57, 91, 117–18, and M. Schmidt-Chazan, ‘Aubri de Trois-Fontaines, un historien entre la France et l’Empire’, Annales de l’Est, 5th series, 36, 1984, 163–92. 86 ‘Flandria Generosa’, MGH, SS, 9, 313–34; ‘Genealogia Comitum Buloniensium’, ibid., 299–301. Godfrey of Bouillon was associated with the Swan Knight well before 1200, The Old French Crusade Cycle I, La Naissance du Chevalier au Cygne, ed. G. M. Myers, E. J. Mickel and J. Nelson, Tuscaloosa, FL, 1977, x. See also Guyot-Bachy, La Flandre, 49; Shopkow, ‘Introduction’, in Lambert of Ardres, The History, 20–4. 87 ‘Genealogiae Aquicinctinae’, MGH, SS, 14, 620–1. 88 Chapman Hamilton, Pleasure and Politics, 180–3. 83



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that the Capetians were becoming increasingly conscious of the thinness of their own Carolingian blood, and their position as usurpers of the west Frankish kingdom.89 If the Pseudo-Turpin fed the Carolingian fantasies of the aristocracy of Flanders and Avalterre, romances by Jean Renart and Gerbert of Montreuil, especially the former’s Guillaume de Dole, provided satirical romans à clef, for a sophisticated and politically engaged audience, who would recognize references to the struggle for the imperial succession of 1197–1218 between Otto of Brunswick, supported by Richard the Lionheart and King John, and the Swabians, supported by Philip Augustus. John Baldwin identified the patrons or dedicatees of these works as Marie of Ponthieu, Baldwin VI of Hainault and IX of Flanders, Hugh of Pierrepont, bishop of Liège, and Miles of Nanteuil, canon of Rheims, then bishop of Beauvais. All were, or were related to, Flemish, or Lower Lotharingian lords, who preferred Angevin to Capetian influence in Flanders and Hainault, and who supported Otto of Brunswick. A ‘Welf tonality’ has been recognized in Guillaume de Dole.90

It is impossible to separate Lotharingia from its western borderlands from a cultural perspective, just as it is from a political perspective. The aristocratic and ecclesiastical elites of Lower Lotharingia and Flanders were deeply intertwined by interfamilial marriages and alliances, and their cultural aspirations, preoccupations and strategies were correspondingly similar. The cultural relationship with Champagne and the Laonnois/Thièrache was slightly different, based on a long-established ecclesiastical and scholarly relationship between the churchmen of Lotharingia and Reims Cathedral, which was already active before 1000. Aristocratic affinities, as Suger noted, certainly existed, and by the mid-twelfth century drew this area too within the aristocratic culture of tournament and chivalric romance associated with Avalterre. The formative influence of Carolingian heritage was profound and pervasive. Carolingian intellectual heritage, carried in rich library collections, manifested itself in a sophisticated intellectual culture which comprised the mathematical and Greek scholars of Lotharingia around 1000, and the theological complexity of Mosan art works. Carolingian culture was, of course, an attempt at a renovation of Rome, and along with surviving Roman remains at Trier and Reims, it made Lotharingia/Flanders/Champagne the crucible of the overt classicism of the late twelfth century. In fact, classicism was pervasive, manifest in the Egbert Codex, the Liège font, and the use of mosaic and opus sectile for tombs, long before 1200. The aristocracy of Flanders, Avalterre and Champagne were imbued with a sense of their prestigious Carolingian blood-line, fed by histories, genealogies and romances produced for their edification or entertainment by monastic and clerical writers, and by minstrels. Their family prestige was set in stone in genealogical tombs. Their self-image as new Carolingians emerged in their ambivalent attitude to the Ottonian emperors, and informed their resistance to Capetian influence, in comital Flanders, most of which was within the kingdom of France, but also in 89

Spiegel, Romancing the Past, 11–54. Nancy Durling, ‘Introduction’, in Jean Renart, esp. 2–5; John Baldwin, Aristocratic Life in Medieval France, esp. 2, 32–46; Baldwin, ‘Once There was an Emperor’, 45–65. For Hugh of Pierrepont, Kupper, Liège et L’église, 182. The other romances are L’Escoufle and the Lai de l’Ombre by Jean Renart, and Roman de la violette by Gerbert of Montreuil. 90

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Hainault and Brabant, within the Empire. The result was a sophisticated elite, both lay and ecclesiastical, which valued cultural patronage, and appreciated the visual and verbal encoding of messages, political, social and religious. The intrinsic importance of this cultural production was enhanced by its connectivity – not least because Flanders, Avalterre and Lotharingia was a crossroads in a peripheral zone. Intermarriage with the houses of Hainault and Louvain/Brabant, from Isabelle of Hainault, Queen of Philip Augustus to Marie of Brabant, Queen of Philip III, brought manuscript painting, song, the romances, the chivalric traditions, and the beguines of Avalterre to the Capetian court. The cultural influence on England was perhaps more pervasive, with Lotharingian elements sometimes, but not always, mediated through Flanders. The influx of Lotharingian churchmen into England in the eleventh century established an insular tradition of study of science and mathematics, and English churchmen appreciated the literary theological iconographies of mosan metalwork and manuscripts. The use of dark Tournai marbles for architectural accents and tombs had no impact in Capetian France, but was formative in twelfth-century England. Just as Flanders and Lower Lotharingia came under political pressure from the kings of England and France, so it came under English and French cultural influence. There was continual traffic of scribes, artists and manuscripts between southern England, particularly Canterbury, and Flanders/Avalterre. But it was the pressure of French culture from the late twelfth century that could not be withstood. Lambert of Ardres boasted that the count of Guînes knew French, and that he owned books in French – a clear sign of cultural capital. Despite the linguistic divide, the language of the upper elite, of the greater aristocratic courts was always French.91 For all its ‘Welf tonality’ and Lotharingian topography, Guillaume de Dole sets up Capetian France as the standard by which wine, women and clothes should be judged.92 The Liège Dominicans were an innovative force, but they studied in Paris. By 1260, the ‘more francigeno’ was triumphant in architecture, sculpture and painting. Resistance to Chartres had been crushed. How far is this the cultural production of a political periphery, of an area which Suger saw as a dangerous space of uncontrolled aristocratic ‘affinities’? The political fragmentation provided a kaleidoscope of competitive cultural centres in the courts of the aristocracy and powerful, princely bishoprics, with no absolutely dominant centre. The courts of the counts of Champagne and Flanders, and rather later, Brabant, and of the bishops of Liège and Trier acted as drivers for a truculent less princely aristocracy around them. Political fragmentation did not just give edge to aristocratic cultural rivalry. It gave space to another player in cultural production – the cities and a wealthy and aspirational merchant class. Musical and song production, and the flourishing of women religious, owed as much to urban patronage as to aristocratic courtly patronage. Although Upper Lotharingia had lost its cultural, intellectual and religious vibrancy by the mid-eleventh century, Trier, Metz and Verdun continued to provide important reservoirs of classical cultural traditions, as is clear from the career of Nicholas of Verdun. Cultural – and familial – connections between Avalterre, Lower Lotharingia, and Upper Lotharingia continue to operate throughout the central

91

Milis, ‘The French Low Countries’, 348–50; Milis, ‘The Linguistic Boundary’. For French as an administrative language and ‘language of prestige’ in the thirteenth century, see Lusignan, ‘L’espace géographique’, 267–9. 92 Baldwin, Aristocratic Life, 37: Baldwin, ‘Once There was an Emperor’, 53.



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Middle Ages. Upper Lotharingian literary production was limited to the darkly violent and uncourtly, but remarkably popular, cycle of Garin le Loherain. Although largely associated with Metz, important elements of the cycle were derived from histories of the abbey of Saint-Amand in Flanders.93 Why did Upper Lotharingia’s cultural liveliness fade, while Lower Lotharingia’s flourished? In the tenth century, Upper Lotharingia was the focus of political competition between the Carolingian kings of West Francia, and the Ottonian emperors. The emperors worked closely with the church – with the reformers of Gorze, and the episcopate, like Egbert of Trier, to burnish their image. But the Capetians shifted their focus to the Seine and the Loire, and the Ottonians to the central Rhineland and Saxony. In Upper Lotharingia, great churchmen, rather than the aristocracy, played the key role as patrons and supporters of cultural production. The apogee of episcopal cultural influence was in the eleventh century. Religious culture throughout Lotharingia suffered as a result of the Investiture Contest, but in Avalterre, unlike Upper Lotharingia, a competitive aristocracy, and to a lesser extent, a vibrant urban culture compensated. The apogee of courtly cultural influence came in the later twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Indeed, the apogee of Flemish and Lower Lotharingian cultural vibrancy and influence coincided with the period when the area was the centre of a political maelstrom, the space in which the conflict between the Angevins and the Capetians played out. Political conflict and political engagement were always, it seems, powerful drivers of Lotharingian cultural production.

93

Garin le Loherenc, ed. Anne Iker-Gittleman, 2 vols, Paris, 1996, esp. I, 30–4, 52–3; Jindrich Zezula, ‘Garin le Loherain et l’Abbaye de Saint-Amand’, Romania 91, 1970, 289–305.

The Des Seal Memorial Lecture, 2021

THE PERSPECTIVE FROM PONTHIEU: COUNT GUY AND HIS NORMAN NEIGHBOUR Kathleen Thompson For the British, ‘The Somme’ is a phrase that continues to resonate, but the name of the area where the waters of the River Somme reach the Channel is less wellknown. If the county of Ponthieu attracts our attention at all, it does so infrequently: the marriage of Mary Tudor to Louis XII at Abbeville; the battle of Crécy and, of course, the landfall of Harold Godwinson. In the twenty-first century the area that used to be the county of Ponthieu is located in the Hauts-de-France region, unevenly divided between the départements of Somme and Pas-de-Calais, but for 500 years from the year 1000 it enjoyed some autonomy. It was a small polity of around 5,000 square kilometres whose independent existence began as one of the comtés péripheriques, defined by Dominique Barthelémy. It is a matter of perspective whether Ponthieu is perceived as on the periphery of Normandy or that of Flanders, but it is in the struggles of those two powers that Ponthieu apparently had its origins and it is Ponthieu’s perspective on the eleventh century that forms the subject of this essay. The source which has shaped our understanding of Ponthieu is the history of the monastic community at St Riquier, a seventh-century foundation that lay more or less in the centre of the area. Sometimes called the Chronicon Centulense, because the original name for St Riquier was Centula, the history was written in the late eleventh century by the monk Hariulf.1 For Hariulf, Ponthieu had existed as the hinterland of his monastery and its abbots had been powers in the land. He recognized, however, a change in the closing years of the tenth century and he associates that change with the rise of one particular family, based in Abbeville, that held lay office with the monastery of St Riquier. In three widely spaced chapters of his fourth book, he describes not so much the emergence of Ponthieu, as the emergence of its ruling family. His narrative is one of seigneurial control through the exploitation of office-holding and ecclesiastical property. Although it is no more than the bare bones of a genealogy across four generations, it is a story with many parallels and has provided the framework in which historians have worked.2

Hariulf, Chronique de l’Abbaye de Saint-Riquier ve Siècle–1104, ed. Ferdinand Lot, Paris, 1894. Subsequent references to this work appear in the text as book number followed by chapter number, thus: 4.21. 2 Little has been written on the history of Ponthieu. For brief considerations: The ‘Carmen de Hastingae proelio’ of Guy, Bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. Catherine Morton and Hope Muntz, Oxford 1972, xxx–xxxv, 146–7; Carmen, xlii–liii. For passing remarks, Heather Tanner, Families, Friends and Allies: Boulogne and Politics in Northern France and England, c. 879–1160, Leiden 2004; Jean-Francois Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal entre Flandre et France: Saint-Pol, 1000–1300, Brussels 2005; Kathleen Thompson, ‘Being the Ducal Sister: the Role 1

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Fig. 1  North-eastern France showing places mentioned in the text. Copyright: Paul Stayt. It is helpful to begin, however, by exploring the prehistory of the lineage in some detail, beginning in the early years of the tenth century. In response to Scandinavian raids the Carolingian kings had fortified the hilly site of Montreuil at the mouth of the River Canche by around 900 to protect the great trading centre of Quentovic nearby, and a Carolingian count, named Helgaud, operated from the castle.3 He can be found at the side of both King Charles the Simple and King Ralph in the 920s,4 and many of Adelaide of Aumale’, in Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250: Essays for David Bates, ed. David Crouch and Kathleen Thompson, Turnhout 2011, 61–76. 3 David Hill et al., ‘Quentovic Defined’, Antiquity 64, 1990, 51–8; Simon Coupland, ‘Trading Places: Quentovic and Dorestad Reassessed’, EME 11, 2002, 209–32 for a suggestion that Quentovic continued to function throughout the tenth century. Josiane Barbier, ‘Du vicus de la Canche au castrum de Montreuil, un chaînon manquant: le fiscus d’Attin?’, in Quentovic. Environnement, Archéologie, Histoire, ed. S. Lebecq, B. Béthouart and L. Verslype, Lille, 2010, 431–57. 4 Recueil des Actes de Charles III le Simple, Roi de France 893–923, ed. Philippe Lauer, Chartes et diplômes relatifs à l’histoire de France 7, 2 vols, Paris, 1940–9, 1, no. CXII, 267–8;



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have seen him as an early tenth-century count of Ponthieu. He is never described as such in contemporary sources, however, and his remit, and that of his son, Herluin, who succeeded him, seems have been wider, extending along the coastal districts of Frankish kingdom.5 It may have extended less far than Helgaud and Herluin would have liked, however, for in the opening decades of the tenth century the Viking band that controlled the lands at the mouth of the Seine had been allowed to take over the apparatus of Carolingian government in Rouen under their leader Rollo.6 In these unsettled conditions it comes as no surprise that Hariulf should tell us the small settlement at Abbeville, near the mouth of the Somme, was taken from the monks of Saint-Riquier and a castle built there.7 What is surprising is that he places the appropriation in the late tenth century, and attributes it to the need to guard against barbarian incursions (propter barbarorum cavendos incursus 4.12), for no barbarian incursions are reported in the 980s and 990s. Perhaps, therefore, we should look rather earlier for the fortification of Abbeville to the period when the Normans were expanding their settlement northwards. By 925 there was a Norman outpost at Eu on the River Bresle, so the fortification of Abbeville and two other places at Albert and Domart, which Hariulf says were also taken from St Riquier, might have been a reaction to the Norman presence, particularly since in the mid-920s the recently arrived Normans had broken their treaty obligations and ravaged the Beauvaisis and Amiénois, roaming as far as Noyon before returning to Rouen.8 The power of the counts at Montreuil was eclipsed, as the tenth century passed, by that of the counts of Flanders and in the 950s the whole of the area that would become Ponthieu was under the domination of Count Arnulf I of Flanders,9 who removed the relics of the local saints, Walaric, founder of the monastery that later

Flodoard, Les Annales de Flodoard, ed. Philippe Lauer, Collection de textes pour servir à l’étude et à l’enseignement de l’histoire, Paris, 1904, 33; Pierre Bauduin, La Première Normandie xe–xie Siècles: sur les Frontières de la Haute Normandie: Identité et Construction d’une Principauté, Caen 2004, 146 n. 14. 5 Cartulaire de l’Abbaye de Landevennec, ed. A. de la Borderie, Rennes 1888, no. XXIV, 154–5: Haelcholdus comes, ejusque filius Herleuuinus testes. Helgaud assisted King Ralph to defeat a ship-borne raid at Fauquembergues (dép. Pas-de-Calais, cant. Fruges) and Herluin was active on King Louis’ behalf in Normandy; Flodoard, 33, 88. The mint at Rouen was apparently subject to the mint at Montreuil, quoted in Coupland, ‘Trading Places’, 218, no. 30. Hariulf thought that Helgaud was given access to the resources of the monastery at St Riquier, placing Helgaud’s lay abbacy sometime in the 860s (3.10) but, given that Helgaud was still an active warrior in 926, he can hardly have been lay abbot much earlier than 890. 6 For background, M. Hagger, Norman Rule in Normandy 911–1144, Woodbridge 2017, 45–67. 7 Abbeville makes its first recorded appearance in a list of St Riquier’s lands apparently dating from the early part of the ninth century (3.3) and archaeologists working in the town have observed no strata earlier than that century; Tahar Ben Redjeb, ‘Abbeville’, Revue Archéologique de Picardie numéro spécial 16: Archéologies des villes, 1999, 187–97, at 187. Eleventh-century charter evidence preserves the memory of the royal castle at Abbeville, Recueil des Actes de Philippe Ier, Roi de France, ed. M. Prou, Paris 1908, no. LXXIX. 8 Flodoard, 29–30. For the broader picture of Norman motives, Bauduin, La Première Normandie, 145–8. 9 Herluin lost his life in 945 at the king’s ill-advised parley with the Scandinavians of Bayeux; Dudo of Saint-Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. Eric Christiansen, Woodbridge 1998, 115–16. Herluin’s son, Roger, lost Montreuil in 948, failed to recover it in a campaign in 951, and last appears in Amiens in 957; Flodoard, 109, 131–2, 144.

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became St Valery, and Richer, the founder of St Riquier, to the abbey of St Bertin in Saint-Omer (3.22).10 The people of Ponthieu had, then, little reason to love the counts of Flanders, and it was only the unexpected death of Arnulf’s son that halted the Flemish advance southward. The Carolingian king, Lothar, recovered the Flemish counts’ most southerly acquisitions, among them Ponthieu, in 965 and entrusted them to Hugh, who was first duke, then king of the Franks and better known to posterity as Hugh Capet.11 It was the most northerly extent of Hugh’s influence and he must have recognized its potential vulnerability if the Flemish counts’ ambitions were renewed, for he set about establishing a firm presence in the area. He compelled the young count of Flanders, Arnulf II, to repatriate the relics of Richer and Walaric in 981 and Hariulf tells us (4.12) that he put a trusted man, also named Hugh, into the castle at Abbeville,12 while keeping control of the castle at Montreuil and the valley of the Canche for himself.13 We know nothing of the origins of Hugh of Abbeville. Hariulf is very clear that he was not a count, but was appointed advocate of St Riquier (4.12), which was a more limited role than that of ninth-century lay abbots and was usually given to someone who was locally based.14 According to Hariulf Hugh received rents,

10

Walaric (Valery) and Richer were removed respectively from the monasteries of Leuconay at Saint-Valery-sur-Somme and Saint-Riquier and taken to Montreuil. Hariulf inserts a story of Abbot Fulchericus’ temporary recovery of Richer, perhaps as the result of a campaign by Duke Hugh in 951 (3.22), before both saints were taken to St Bertin; Philippe Lauer, Le Règne de Louis IV d’Outremer, Paris 1900, 219. On St Bertin, Karine Ugé, Creating the Monastic Past in Medieval Flanders, York 2005, 19–43 and Edina Bozoky, ‘La Politique des Reliques des Premiers Comtes de Flandre fin du IXe siecle–fin du XIe Siecle’, in Les Reliques: Objets, Cultes, Symboles: Actes du Colloque International de l’Universite´ du Littoral-Côte d’Opale Boulogne-sur-Mer 4–6 Septembre 1997, ed. Edina Bozoky and Anne-Marie Helvétius, Turnhout 1999, 271–92. On relics as a means to anchor territorial power, Brigitte Meijns, ‘The Policy on Relic Translations of Baldwin II of Flanders 879–918, Edward of Wessex 899–924 and Aethelflaed of Mercia d. 924: a Key to Anglo-Flemish Relations’, in England and the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison 1876–1947, ed. David Rollason, Conrad Leyser and Hannah Williams, Studies in the Early Middle Ages 27, Turnhout 2010, 473–92. 11 J. Dunbabin, ‘The Reign of Arnulf II, Count of Flanders and its Aftermath’, Francia 16, 1989, 53–65, at 56; F. McNair, ‘The Young King and the Old Count: Around the Flemish Succession Crisis of 965’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 95, 2017, 145–62. 12 Count Bouchard, a close associate of Duke Hugh, held property in Ponthieu, including in Abbeville, and divested himself of it in 998, Catalogue des Actes de Robert II Roi de France, ed. W. M. Newman, Paris 1937, no. 10. 13 There has been some confusion about Montreuil in the eleventh century. Hagger, Normandy, 87, following Bauduin, 286, suggests that the Capetians gained control of it when Hugh Capet’s son, Robert, married Rozala Suzanne, the widowed countess of Flanders, in the late 980s. Richer, Histoire de France (898–995), ed. Robert Latouche, Les classiques de l’histoire de France au moyen age, 2 vols, Paris 1930–7, 2, 286 is quite clear however that Rozala received Montreuil ex dote, translated by Latouche as en douaire, as her dower from Robert. 14 On the distinction between lay abbots and lay advocates, Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 2nd edn, Oxford 2000, 118–19, and on legislation to insist the individual was locally based, Charles West, ‘The Significance of the Carolingian Advocate’, EME 17, 2009, 186–206, at 193. For another advocate, F. McNair, ‘Governance, Locality and Legal Culture: the Rise and Fall of the Carolingian Advocates of Saint-Martin of Tours’, EME 29, 2021, 201–24 and on another community’s relations with its advocate, Steven Vanderputten, ‘Individual



Count Guy and his Norman Neighbour

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Fig. 2  Genealogy of the counts of Ponthieu c. 1000–1105. Copyright: Kathleen Thompson. services and St Riquier’s cell of Forest-Montiers (4.12), and he implies that it was a new role for a new political climate. No date is given for the appointment of Hugh of Abbeville and, although Hariulf’s statement (4.12) that it was made by King Hugh would place it between 987 and 996, we should not overlook the possibility that the appointment was made considerably earlier than that.15 There was already an effective count along the River Somme at Amiens in the person of Count Walter and Hugh’s presence at Abbeville would have had the effect of further strengthening the king’s hold on the area. Hariulf also tells us (4.12) that Hugh of Abbeville received Hugh Capet’s daughter, Gela, as his wife, apparently as a means to maintain the political bond, and historians have in general been content to accept the marriage,16 but Gela is not known from other sources. Her name does not appear among Hugh Capet’s ancestors and is not reused among Hugh of Abbeville’s descendants. It is, moreover, uncomfortably similar to that of Gisela, the daughter of King Lothar of Lotharingia, who in the 880s was married to the king of the Danes, and of Charles the Simple’s daughter, Gisela, who, Dudo maintains, was married to Rollo,17 so we might conclude that Gela was Experience, Collective Remembrance and the Politics of Monastic Reform in High Medieval Flanders’, EME 20, 2012, 70–89, at 85. 15 Bauduin, La Première Normandie, 286 gives a date of 996, but I can find no evidence for the more precise date. 16 Pierre Bauduin suggested that the position of Hugh of Abbeville’s son, Enguerrand, might have been enhanced by his familial relationship with the Capetian kings, since through Gela’s marriage Enguerrand would be a nephew of King Robert II; Bauduin, La Première Normandie, 287. Others, including myself, have suggested that the union of Hugh Capet’s daughter and Hugh of Abbeville might have caused the consanguinity between William and Matilda of Flanders; Thompson, ‘Being the Ducal Sister’, 69–70. 17 Janet Nelson, ‘Normandy’s Early History since Normandy before 1066’, in Normandy and

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at best Hugh Capet’s illegitimate daughter or even a genealogical fiction of the late eleventh century.18 With Hugh’s son, Enguerrand, we move from the shadowy progenitor of the lineage to a figure who can be independently verified. In 1026–7 he witnessed a charter in the presence of King Robert II using the title of count, which implies royal approval for use of that title, and he is known to have had interests at Conteville, near Doullens, well to the east of Abbeville, which was perhaps a residue of the Carolingian count’s lands.19 The title may reflect additional responsibilities given to Enguerrand by the king. He seems, for example, to have exercised power in the Vimeu, the area between the Somme and the Bresle rivers, for when Gilbert of Brionne took 3,000 men into the region in the early 1030s, Enguerrand repelled the attack with serious losses on the Norman side.20 Duke Robert’s reconciliation of Enguerrand and Gilbert suggests Gilbert’s was a private enterprise, but at least one earlier Norman duke may have had designs in the Vimeu, fostering them through the ‘soft power’ of a marriage alliance with the lords of Saint-Valery.21 Within little more than thirty years the lay advocacy of St Riquier had apparently been transformed into a comital title and, with the new title, Count Enguerrand adopted another contemporary signifier of power; he founded a college of secular clerks.22 Lucien Musset describes the ‘grande vogue’ for such communities in Normandy in the eleventh century and Brigitte Meijns points out how helpful their personnel might be in the administration of a territory.23 Nearby models for Enguerrand included Notre-Dame d’Eu and Notre-Dame d’Auchy, though the dedication of Enguerrand’s foundation was to Wulfran, who had been archbishop of Sens.24

her Neighbours, 3–15, at 9–11. 18 Heather Tanner suggests that the marriage with Gela occurred before Hugh Capet became king in 987, because Hariulf refers to her as filia ducis rather than filia regis; Tanner, Families, 43, n. 105. If Gela was the mother of Hugh’s son and successor, Enguerrand, whom Hariulf (4.21) calls old by the time of his death in the mid-1040s, a marriage before 970 would be chronologically appropriate, making Enguerrand seventy years old around 1040. 19 Catalogue des Actes de Robert II, ed. Newman, no. 66; Conteville is not known to have been connected with St Riquier before Enguerrand’s donation there, so is unlikely to have been property he had received as lay advocate (4.6). 20 Orderic, 2, 12. 21 Bauduin, La Première Normandie, 305 reconstructs the reconciliation. Orderic, 3, 252 for the marriage of Gilbert the advocate of Saint-Valery and Papia, daughter of Duke Richard, where the duke is not further identified. Elsewhere he is called Ricardi iunioris in connection with this family Orderic, 5, 24, which has been taken to indicate Duke Richard III, but Papia’s name suggests that she was the daughter of Duke Richard II and his second wife, Papia. 22 MS BnF Latin 10113, Obituaire de la collégiale de Saint-Vulfran d’Abbeville, fol. 34: XI kal. Octobris. Obitus Ingeranni comitis, edificatoris hujus loci, quoted in Recueil des Actes des Comtes de Pontieu, ed. C. Brunel, Paris 1930, iv, n. 4. 23 L. Musset, ‘Recherches sur les Communautés de Clercs Séculiers en Normandie au XIe Siècle’, Bulletin de la Société des Antiquaires de Normandie 55, 1959/60, 5–38; B. Meijns, ‘Les Premières Collégiales des Comtes de Flandre, leurs Reliques et les Conséquences des Invasions Normandes (IXe–Xe Siècles)’, Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 85, 2007, 539–75, at 564. 24 John Howe, ‘The Hagiography of Saint-Wandrille (Fontenelle) Province of HauteNormandie (SHG VIII)’, in L’Hagiographie du haut Moyen Âge en Gaule du Nord: Manuscrits, Textes et Centres de Production, ed. M. Heinzelmann, Beihefte der Francia, 52, Stutt-



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More problematic is the story of Enguerrand’s assumption of comital title. Hariulf tells us that he killed the count of Boulogne and married his widow, adopting her title after the marriage (4.12). Stories of careers founded on marriage to powerful widows would have been familiar to Hariulf: Robert the Frisian, son of Baldwin V, count of Flanders, married Gertrude the widow of the count of Holland, for example, while Cnut had married Emma, the widow of King Aethelred of England. Even in the latter case, however, the new husband had not been directly responsible for the death of his bride’s husband. Heather Tanner concludes that the count of Boulogne in question was Baldwin, son of Count Arnulf of Boulogne and that the fighting, which she places around 1024, must have been caused by the acquisitiveness of one or other of the parties.25 Others have suggested that the killing took place as part of some other wider conflict and, given that there seems to have been no long-lasting enmity between the counts of Ponthieu and Boulogne, the suggestion is not unlikely. Whatever the circumstances, it is clear that Enguerrand, who was also the victor over the Normans in the Vimeu, was an effective warrior. Even as early as the opening years of the eleventh century there may well have been unease in Normandy about this new dynasty in Ponthieu. Dudo’s De moribus, written at the court of Richard II, duke of the Normans 996–1026, and reflecting the increasing ambitions of the Norman rulers, takes a firm line in its treatment of an earlier northern neighbour of the Normans.26 Dudo uses an episode involving Count Herluin of Montreuil that dates from 939 to demonstrate the upright qualities of the Norman ruler and the treachery of the Franks.27 Herluin had sought the help of the first Norman Duke William, known as Longsword, when Montreuil had been seized from him by the count of Flanders. After the castle is recovered, Dudo gives the Norman leader a lengthy speech which ends: I will be a willing and kindly helper, your defender against your enemies, a gentle listener to your complaints, an attentive comforter in your distress, as also a true bestower of the goods that you need.28

The speech is a manifesto of good lordship that contrasts with the treatment Herluin had received when he had asked for help from the duke of the Franks, Hugh the Great. It is also, however, a firm articulation of a client–patron relationship between Count Herluin and the Normans that, no doubt, Duke Richard II would have liked to enjoy with the rising counts of Ponthieu. To some extent circumstances conspired to enhance Enguerrand’s position. He lived on while more experienced rulers died around him. The powerful Count Walter of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin, who had accumulated widespread lands, had divided his holdings between his sons on his death in the early 1020s, Duke gart 2001, 127–92, at 153–60. On contemporary interest in Wulfran, E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Historiography and Hagiography at Saint-Wandrille: the Inventio et Miracula Sancti Vulfranni’, ANS 12, 1989, 233–51. 25 Tanner, Families, 79, where she references Thomas Macdonald’s view. 26 Other indications of the ‘self-glorification’ of Duke Richard II are outlined by Christiansen, Dudo, xxiv. 27 In 939 Count Arnulf seized Montreuil from Herluin, sending Herluin’s wife and family, whom he had captured, to the court of his cousin, King Athelstan, in England; Flodoard, 72. Herluin recovered it with the help of the Normans of Rouen, but Arnulf’s men continued to despoil his lands until eventually there was a pitched battle between the two; Flodoard, 74. 28 Dudo, chapter 205, 81.

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Richard II of Normandy died in 1026 and King Robert in 1031, while both the new King Henry and the young Duke Robert of Normandy took some time to establish themselves. By the 1030s Enguerrand was prominent among the powerful neighbours, whose support Duke Robert was careful to cultivate before he undertook his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Count Drogo of Amiens and the Vexin had been persuaded to accompany Robert, while a marriage alliance had been secured with Count Baldwin IV of Flanders, and Enguerrand’s presence at Duke Robert’s court shortly before Robert’s departure suggests his influential position.29 Enguerrand was still living in 1043 and had had ample time to raise and train a successor, his son, Hugh (4.7).30 Enguerrand had probably also arranged Hugh’s marriage to Bertha, the daughter of Guerinfridus, the castellan of Aumale on the upper reaches of the River Bresle between Normandy and the Beauvaisis, thus extending the family’s landed interests far to the south.31 Given that he lived on until 1043 it is likely, too, that Enguerrand made the marriage alliance between his granddaughter, whose name is unknown, and William of Arques, the younger halfbrother of Duke Robert II of Normandy.32 Hariulf tells us that Enguerrand ended his days after a long and successful career (4.21) but, by that time, the next generation was anxious to take possession of its inheritance. Enguerrand’s son, Fulk, who was a monk at St Riquier, had attempted to take control of the abbey during the extreme old age of Abbot Angelran (4.12), and the new count, another Hugh, already had adult children. This Hugh cannot have lasted long as count for by November 1047 he had been succeeded by his son Enguerrand [II]. Our first record of the new count dates from his appearance at an assembly at Senlis in May 1048, alongside the young Norman duke, William II, who was briefly to become, or indeed may already have been, his brother-in-law, for Enguerrand married Duke William’s sister, Adelaide.33 The marriage alliance suggests the importance attached to Normandy’s northern neighbour by Duke William and his advisers, since a familial link was already in existence, forged by the marriage of Enguerrand’s unnamed sister and William of Arques, the duke’s uncle.34 Duke William may have hoped to counterbalance his uncle’s links to Ponthieu but the attempt was unsuccessful, for in 1049 during the deliberations of the Council of Reims, which gave much attention to marriage among the elite, Enguerrand and Adelaide were found to be related within the prohibited degrees and the marriage was declared void. It was a disappointment for Duke William in his alliance-building, but a serious setback for the comital family of Ponthieu, since Adelaide had apparently been dowered with Aumale and the property remained in her hands.

29

David Bates, William the Conqueror, London 2016, 45–6; RADN, no. 80, dated 29 Nov. 1029–1035, but probably shortly before Robert’s departure. 30 Catalogue des Actes d’Henri I, Roi de France 1031–1060, ed. F. Soehnée, Paris 1907, no. 47, dated by the editor to 1036, since the act refers to the king, whose reign began in 1031, detaining the property for five years. 31 Bauduin, La Première Normandie, 299–305 analyses the origins of this lordship. Guerinfridus is an unusual name, but was prevalent in northern France and Flanders, see Werenfridus a deacon at Amiens, PL, 146, col. 1510. 32 Orderic interpolations in Jumièges, 2, 104. 33 Thompson, ‘Being the Ducal Sister’, 67, 69 and references. 34 Bates, William, 78–9 for William of Arques’ position.



Count Guy and his Norman Neighbour

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When William of Arques finally made a move against his nephew, Duke William of Normandy, in 1053, the new count of Ponthieu was involved in the fighting.35 William of Jumièges provides the earliest account. King Henry brought an army to relieve the siege that the duke had begun at his uncle’s castle of Arques. Enguerrand, whom Jumièges calls the count of Abbeville, was in that army and in the course of skirmishing with ducal soldiers besieging the castle Enguerrand lost his life on 23 October 1053.36 Hariulf passes quickly over Enguerrand’s death, but does attribute it to Norman trickery (Northmannorum dolo 4.22), a reference perhaps to the Norman battle manoeuvre of feigned retreat described by Jumièges. It was not a happy start for Enguerrand’s successor, his younger brother, Guy, who must have been a very young man in 1053, for he continued as count until 1100, and matters only got worse. Early in 1054, when King Henry organized a two-pronged attack on Normandy, Guy joined the campaign under the leadership of the king’s brother, Odo, but Odo’s forces were crushingly defeated at Mortemer, and Guy was captured.37 William of Poitiers suggests Guy was over-eager to avenge his elder brother and paid a high price for his rashness, being held for two years by Duke William at Bayeux.38 The precise chronology of these engagements in upper Normandy is unclear and we do not know when Arques eventually fell, but it is likely that the count of Arques and his wife, Guy’s sister, went into exile with the count of Boulogne because Guy was by then in captivity. The mid-1050s were then a period of disarray for the ruling family of Ponthieu. Duke William had already attempted to deprive St Riquier of a church in lower Normandy and pressure had been put on the monks to return some, if not all of the relics of Bishop Vigor of Bayeux which they held.39 Count Guy was now William’s prisoner and his imprisonment at Bayeux, presumably in the custody of William’s half-brother, Bishop Odo, may have been designed to focus attention on the need for Vigor’s relics there.40 Guy was to remain in confinement until his release was arranged in return for homage to Duke William and a promise to provide the service of a hundred knights wherever William commanded.41 It is hard not to see the hand of Guy’s uncle in this deal, for he already had a record

35

Bates, William, 129–33. Jumièges, 2, 104. Orderic’s account varies slightly in making the skirmishing between the duke’s advance guard rather than his siege team, and thus implying that Enguerrand was acting ahead of the king’s army; Orderic, 4, 84. For the date of Enguerrand’s death, MS BnF Latin 10113 Obituaire de la Collégiale de Saint-Vulfran d’Abbeville, fol. 37v, quoted in Pontieu, iv, n.7. 37 Orderic, 4, 88 names three lieutenants serving the king’s brother, Odo: Reginald of Clermont, Ralph of Montdidier and Guy of Ponthieu. Another brother, Waleran, may have been killed; Wace, trans. Burgess, 206, line 4907. Burgess suggests that this is a confusion and Wace intends Enguerrand. 38 Poitiers, 49. 39 RADN, no. 115; Hariulf 4.19 for the relics. In the late 1040s it is also likely that the ducal abbey of Fécamp was in negotiations to establish a priory at the newly restored Blangy-sur-Ternoise, beyond the northern reaches of Ponthieu; J.-F. Nieus quoted in Tanner, Families, 88, n. 78. 40 D. Bates, ‘The Character and Career of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux (1049/50–1097)’, Speculum 50, 1975, 1–20 at 19. 41 Orderic, 4, 88 and n. 5. The figure of one hundred knights is high and Marjorie Chibnall suggests it may be wrong. Perhaps it was simply intended to indicate all Ponthieu’s fighting forces, although Hariulf provides the names of a hundred fighting men, who were settled on St Riquier’s lands alone at an earlier period (3.3). The counts of Ponthieu would, as advocates 36

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of diplomatic activity. At the time he was an archdeacon in the diocese of Amiens and in 1049 he had undertaken a mission to Rome to present a legal plea on behalf of his bishop.42 The obituary of the archdeacon, who was also named Guy, says that he had a period of rule in Ponthieu, which may refer to a caretaker role during his nephew’s incarceration.43 It must have been a much subdued Count Guy who returned to Ponthieu in 1056. His humiliation at the hands of his southern neighbour, Duke William, was compounded by William’s alliance with Guy’s powerful northern neighbour, Count Baldwin of Flanders. Not only was Baldwin’s daughter married to Duke William but the count had a foothold uncomfortably nearby, since he held the advocacy of the abbey of Corbie in right of his wife, King Henry’s sister, Adela.44 We glimpse Count Guy again, with his uncle, Archdeacon Guy, at the end of the year at the Flemish court in Saint-Omer.45 There he joined a high-level gathering, which included Earl Harold Godwinson, whose Continental travels have been the subject of some speculation.46 Then, at last, towards the end of the 1050s there was some improvement in the family’s fortunes when Archdeacon Guy was elected bishop of Amiens in 1058. The following year Count Guy and his two uncles, the bishop and Abbot Fulk of Forest-Montiers, attended the coronation of King Henry’s young son, Philip, and in 1060, shortly before Henry’s death, Guy was in Paris where he witnessed the king’s restoration of Saint Martin des Champs.47 By the mid-1060s, then, Count Guy had been in office for a decade, two years of which had been spent involuntarily in Normandy. There was considerable and longstanding hostility on either side of the River Bresle. Within the last generation the Normans had invaded the Vimeu and Count Enguerrand and Count Guy had both taken part in invasions of Normandy. Further back in the tenth century there had been disruption caused by Scandinavian settlement and attempted dominance by the counts of Flanders. Guy’s obligation to provide Duke William with troops was a considerable potential burden, and his anxieties would have been in no way reduced by the arrival in Amiens in 1063–4 of Count Ralph of Valois. He was a man with a reputation for rapaciousness, who had become Guy’s neighbour on succeeding his cousin, Count Walter, and his boldness had even extended to marriage with the

of St Riquier, lead such forces and Count Enguerrand I certainly had sufficient resources to repel 3,000 men under Gilbert of Brionne in the 1030s. 42 Carmen, ed. Morton and Munz, xxxiii. 43 Gallia Christiana in prouincias ecclesiasticas distributa, 16 vols, Paris, 1715–1865, repr. 1970, 10, col. 1165: …cum obvenisset iure hereditario comitatus Pontivi… For Guy as bishop, Laurent Morelle, ‘Une Pièce Exceptionnelle du Chartrier de Corbie: la Charte de l’Abbé Foulque de 1064’, Bulletin de la Société Nationale des Antiquaires de France, séance de 2003 (2009), 222–3 and references. 44 L. Morelle, ‘Les Chartes dans la Gestion des Conflits (France du Nord, XIe-début XIIe siècle)’, Bibliothèque de l’école des chartes 15, 1997, 267–98, at 279. 45 P. Grierson, ‘A Visit of Earl Harold to Flanders in 1056’, EHR 51, 1936, 90–7; Bates, William, 147. 46 A. F. J. van Kempen, ‘The Mercian Connection, Harold Godwineson’s Ambitions, Diplomacy and Channel-Crossing, 1056–1066’, History 94, 2009, 2–10. 47 ‘Coronatio Philippi I seu Ordo qualiter is in regem coronatus est’, in Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, ed. M. Bouquet, new ed., Paris, 1869–1904, 11, 32–3; Catalogue des Actes d’Henri I, ed. Soehnée, no. 125. The witness list for the latter act appears in RHF 11, 606.



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king’s mother, Anne of Kiev. It was at this point that the patron and client relationship between William and Guy was put to the test by the arrival in Ponthieu, possibly early in 1064 or more likely in autumn 1065, of Earl Harold Godwinson.49 The incident has been much discussed and it is clear that, since the winner writes history, the version that has prevailed is Norman.50 The Williams, of Jumièges and Poitiers, portray Harold on a royally sanctioned mission to Duke William landing in Ponthieu, detained by Count Guy and then rescued by William’s exercise of power over the count. According to Poitiers Guy behaved appropriately (benemerito) in surrendering his prisoner and received gifts and rewards, but prayers and threats had been necessary to achieve this.51 This Norman version has three purposes: it shows a magnanimous William, puts Harold in William’s debt, and Guy in his place as William’s subordinate. What it does not do is explain what made Harold land in Ponthieu. The Bayeux Tapestry is following the Norman version of events when it depicts Harold’s ship on its way to Guy’s land and the detention of Harold at the point when he is wading ashore.52 The lower border, however, shows hunting scenes and Harold has loaded his hunting dogs at Bosham, so without already knowing the story, we might think this is a social call with hunting as its purpose. Harold, after all, had already met Guy at Saint-Omer some years before and, if we are to believe the Life of King Edward who rests at Westminster, Harold who had ‘carefully observed Frankish custom … was famous by name and reputation in that country’.53 It was forty years or more after the Conquest that the idea of Harold’s ship being blown off course emerged. It was perhaps at the back of Poitiers’ mind when he wrote his complex sentence about Harold preferring shipwreck to what actually happened to him and there may be a hint of such events in later Scandinavian tradition.54 Eadmer, however, is the first written authority to account for the landfall in Ponthieu in this way. He tells us that Harold went to ransom his brother and nephew, 48

48

Orderic, 2, 116–18; P. Feuchère, ‘Une Tentative Manquée de Concentration Territoriale entre Somme et Seine: La Principauté d’Amiens-Valois au XIe Siècle: Étude de Géographie Historique’, Le Moyen âge 60, 1954, 1–37, at 11–13; David Bates, ‘Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors: The Family of the Counts of Amiens, Valois and the Vexin in France and England during the 11th Century’, in The Sudeleys – Lords of Toddington, Manorial Society of Great Britain, 1987, 34–48, at 42; E. J. Ward, ‘Anne of Kiev (c.1024–c.1075) and a Reassessment of Maternal Power in the Minority Kingship of Philip I of France’, Historical Research 89, 2016, 435–53. 49 Harold’s involvement in the Welsh campaign from December 1063 to August 1064 leads to a redating of the journey to 1065 by Tom Licence, Edward the Confessor: Last of the Royal Blood, London 2020, 211, n. 33, 217–19, although this would not allow for the green corn encountered by Harold and William in the Breton campaign, as described by William of Poitiers; Bates, William, 192, n. 102 and references there. 50 Sources are reviewed in Bates, William, 192–8. 51 Poitiers, 68. Twelfth-century testimony tells us this was a manor on the River Eaulne, Wace, trans. Burgess, 222, line 5664. 52 Images may be found at sections 5–10: www.bayeuxmuseum.com/la-tapisserie-de-bayeux/ decouvrir-la-tapisserie-de-bayeux/explorer-la-tapisserie-de-bayeux-en-ligne/ 53 ‘Attentius ergo considerata Francorum consuetudine, cum ipse quoque apud eos non obscuri esset nominis et fame…’, The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster, Attributed to a Monk of Saint-Bertin, ed. and trans. F. Barlow, 2nd edn, Oxford 1992, 50–2. 54 F. Barlow, The Godwins: the Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty, London 2002, 75; Snorri Stuluson, Heimskringla, vol. 3, trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulks, London 2015, 103.

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who had been held by William since the early 1050s, but his ship, laden with valuables to cover the ransom, was blown off course and lost in the River Maye, one of the northern tributaries of the River Somme in Ponthieu.55 William of Malmesbury agrees with the notion of Harold being driven off course, although his information is by no means as specific as Eadmer’s in locating the landfall.56 The suggestion of shipwreck is perhaps surprising for Harold is represented in English sources as a more than competent seaman, who had commanded English fleets, but a gale might have driven him from his proposed course. A voyage beginning in Bosham is most likely to have had the Seine estuary as its intended destination, from where Harold could locate the duke and begin ransom negotiations.57 Shipwreck might account moreover for Harold’s arrest. All the sources assert that Harold was apprehended, which is not unlikely in the circumstances; for those who did not dock in the conventional way must surely expect some questioning.58 Writing in the early twelfth century, Richard of Ely described the enquiries made of Hereward when his ship foundered in the county of Guines.59 Although there is a contemporary assertion of support for seafarers at the port of Saint-Valery, the counts of Ponthieu and other lords of the seaboard from Flanders to Saint-Valery had traditionally held lagan, the right to wreckage, and Guy may have been eager to exercise it.60 What then are we to make of the arrival of Harold from Guy’s perspective? Either in the early months of 1064 when the seas were at their worst or in the autumn gales of 1065 a party of Englishmen fetch up on the coast of Ponthieu. Were they expected? Apparently not. Count Guy rode out to see them and then took Harold to Beaurain-Château (Belrem), where he held him. The information about Beaurain-Château is unique to the Tapestry narrative and it is a surprising location for a comital detention centre, because it was not Guy’s castle. Although Guy would later arbitrate disputes for the lords of Beaurain-Château, the lordship lay in the valley of the River Canche where King Philip maintained the royal interest.61 So in conducting Harold to a point beyond the farthest extremity of his county, Guy may have been escorting Harold to a port such as Wissant, where he

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Eadmer, HN, 6–8. Eadmer’s source may have been the Godwinist tradition at Christ Church, proposed in ‘Appendix 1: The Section of the E text Covering Edward’s Reign’, in Licence, Edward, 254–62. For the hostages, Licence, Edward, 154–5. 56 Malmesbury, Gesta regum, 1, 416 (book II, chapter 228). 57 I am grateful to Rebecca Tyson for discussing her doctoral work on the Anglo-Saxon kings as sea lords, and her sailing experience, with me. 58 Carmen, 4, lines 50–1. 59 ‘Gesta Herwardi incliti exulis et militis’, in Lestorie des Engles solum la translacion Maistre Geffrei Gaimar, ed. T. D. Hardy and C. T. Martin, RS 91, 2 vols, London 1888–9, 1, 339–404, at 353; H. M. Thomas, ‘The Gesta Herwardi, the English and their Conquerors’, ANS 21, 1999, 213–32. I am indebted to Liesbeth van Houts for drawing my attention to the echoes of Harold’s landfall in this work in which Hereward uses the name Harold. 60 Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste, ed. H. F. Delaborde and others, Paris 1916–79, 1, no. 395. The counts of Ponthieu had already abandoned lagan by 1191, the date of Philip’s act. 61 R. Rodière, ‘Essai sur les Prieurés de Beaurain et de Maintenay et leurs Chartes’, Mémoires de l’Académie des Sciences, Lettres et Arts d’Arras, 2e série, 34, 1903, 235–390, at 255; Recueil des Actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. V for Philip’s interests at Nampont; A. Fliche, Le Règne de Philippe Ier, Roi de France (1060–1108), Paris 1912, 40 for Queen Berthe’s dower and her abandonment at Montreuil.



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could embark for home, after his mission to ransom his relatives had been frustrated by the loss of his ship.62 The Tapestry’s next scene shows Guy’s court. The count sits on a raised seat with a sword in his hand reminiscent of Duke William’s ducal pose some scenes later. It seems unlikely that Guy would hold court in this way outside his lands at Beaurain-Cháteau, so it is possible that scenes have been inverted here, as they are later when William’s envoys arrive in Ponthieu before William has despatched them or King Edward is borne to burial before he dies. There may be artistic reasons why this order appealed.63 The scene shows Harold and Guy in conversation. The verb parabolant is interesting, for we might expect loquuntur or dicunt. It may indicate nothing more than contemporary linguistic change, but the word does have the secondary meaning of expounding by metaphor, which would explain the birds with twisted necks in the upper border.64 All is apparently not what it seems. A sword has been handed to Harold, possibly by the mixed group of English and Ponthevins behind him. Guy and Harold might almost be old soldiers discussing earlier campaigns or planning new ones. Then William got wind of Harold’s arrival. This is a weak link in the Norman narrative; Poitiers and Jumièges do not say how it happened. Both Eadmer and Malmesbury imply that Harold sent a local messenger, whom the Tapestry depicts with an English moustache, perhaps to convey that he comes from the English earl. He may be the furtive figure slipping away from Guy’s court or there may have been an informer, maintained there by Duke William. The furtive figure can be interpreted, however, as under instruction from the man standing behind the count and he may be leaving quietly, while Guy and his followers distract the earl in conversation. It is not inconceivable, indeed, that Guy told William of Harold’s arrival, a detail that was conveniently omitted by Poitiers and Jumièges from the Norman version of events but hinted at in the Tapestry by the furtive figure and the twisted birds’ necks above. Norman envoys then arrive in Ponthieu over a border scene of ploughing, sowing and harrowing perhaps implying the early months of the year or the seeding of a new enterprise, but the use of an ass for ploughing makes a mockery of the action. They are greeted by Count Guy who is dressed in a conspicuous garment and clutching a great war axe, a weapon that is always associated in the Tapestry with the English. The implication seems to be that Guy has been subverted by his English guest and overreached himself, while the border beneath Duke William despatching the envoys depicts the setting on of the hunting dogs that will take him down. The Tapestry’s provenance may have been English, but it is firmly following the Normans’ narrative in this portrait of a deluded count. In his final appearance

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Harold’s travel objectives were the subject of lively debate at the conference with suggestions including visits to King Philip, Count Baldwin, Count Ralph of Amiens and Count Eustace of Boulogne. 63 Shirley Ann Brown, ‘The Bayeux Tapestry: Why Eustace, Odo and William?’, ANS 12, 1989, 7–28 on the artistic licence of the ‘librettist’. 64 Knots in the necks of the birds in the upper border have been interpreted as ‘the strangulation of Harold’s prestige and ambition’ as he surrenders his sword, although Harold is unarmed in the previous scene and the sword’s restoration may be pictured; G. R. OwenCrocker, ‘Squawk Talk: Commentary by Birds in the Bayeux Tapestry?’, ASE 34, 2005, 237–54, at 253.

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in the Tapestry Guy’s foolishness is underlined by the mules’ ears that have been given to his horse. In practice, Count Guy had little room for manoeuvre; the threat from Normandy was very real. As the envoys gallop to Ponthieu, the Tapestry’s lower border shows a bear being baited, which exposes Guy’s real position. Duke William had recently annexed Maine and there was the ever-present reminder of Duke William’s ally, Count Ralph of Valois, recently installed as count of Amiens in place of Count Walter, who had died in William’s custody after unwisely attempting to assert his wife’s right to Maine.65 The Norman narrative of the duke’s prayers and threats to secure Harold’s release implies that Guy had some freedom of action and might have chosen not to deliver Harold, but it is a construct intended to show Guy as, in the words of one modern commentator, the ‘villain of the piece’.66 His conduct is presented as thoroughly reprehensible; he held Harold against his will; he had to be threatened in order to secure the release and finally he took rewards for delivering Harold. The Norman version implies that in the aftermath of William’s lengthy war in Maine Harold’s arrival prompted Guy to challenge the patron–client relationship, imposed on him in 1056, and it sets up events surrounding Harold’s landfall in Ponthieu as something of a test of strength between duke and count. In the end, according to the Norman narrative, it was Guy who blinked. Count Guy had then every reason to resent Norman power and he must have realized that he had had a lucky escape in 1056. He was, nevertheless, under an obligation to provide William with troops and, in 1066, when the Norman invasion fleet sailed from the Ponthevin port of Saint-Valery, there were Ponthevins among the expeditionary forces. Count Guy’s uncle, the bishop of Amiens, tells us as much in the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, in which he praises and possibly inflates the role of Guy’s brother, the noble heir of Ponthieu, Hugh, or Hectorides as the classically minded bishop called him.67 Count Guy himself held aloof.68 He must have had mixed feelings; he was hardly a friend of William and he may have had reservations about Harold’s position. He may well have known what Hariulf tells us, namely that Harold had sworn an oath to support Edgar Aetheling, who might easily have been accepted as king of the English as the recent accession of the child-king of the Franks, Philip I, had shown.69 Guy remained similarly detached in 1070, when Philip intervened in Flemish politics. The list of the contingents from across France that joined the king’s forces is lengthy and conspicuous for the absence of Ponthevins; perhaps they were still at the Conqueror’s disposal in England or Guy may have favoured Robert the Frisian, so King Philip had to make do with the moral support of Guy’s uncle, the ever dependable bishop of Amiens.70 In the final third of the eleventh century Guy would go on to be an early and important patron of the Cluniac order in northern France and in 1098 to receive the considerable compliment of being asked to bestow arms on King Philip’s young

65

Orderic, 2, 116, 312; Bates, ‘Lord Sudeley’s Ancestors’, 41. Bates, William, 197. 67 Carmen, 32–4. 68 Barlow speculated that Guy was uncomfortable with this use of the port; Carmen, lxi. 69 E. J. Ward, ‘Child Kings and the Norman Conquest: Representations of Association and Succession’, in Conquests in Eleventh-century England, 1016–1066, ed. L. Ashe and E. J. Ward, Woodbridge 2020, 331–52. 70 Fliche, Le Règne de Philippe Ier, 256. 66



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son and heir, the future Louis VI. He seems however never to have shaken off his deferential relationship to William. At Easter 1080 he made his one and only known appearance at the king-duke’s court and the timing is right for the third and final humbling of the count of Ponthieu.72 As we have seen, Hugh, the noble heir of Ponthieu, had had a good war, at least according to his uncle’s poem, and Bishop Guy had served as Queen Matilda’s spiritual adviser.73 William, however, apparently demanded more, for he seems to have enforced his lordly right to choose the husband of Guy’s daughter and heir, Agnes. Our information is derived from Orderic, who in the midst of one of his tirades about Robert of Bellême mentions that: 71

King William, who had a great regard for this man because of his love for his parents Roger and Mabel, arranged a marriage for him with Agnes, daughter of Guy count of Ponthieu.74

Robert and Agnes did not marry until around 1092 so Agnes is likely to have been born between 1075 and 1080, which is perfect timing for Guy to have been summoned to the ducal court in 1080 and informed of William’s plans for his daughter.75 It was a further indignity for Guy, both politically and personally, for charter evidence makes it clear that Guy and his wife had lost their son, Enguerrand, and the arrival of their daughter had been a cause of great joy.76 There was a long history of hostility and conflict across the areas that would develop into Normandy, Flanders and Ponthieu. As the Carolingian empire disintegrated and the Capetian family established themselves definitively as kings, a new political order was established in Ponthieu, based not on Montreuil, but on Abbeville, by a comital family which seems almost the blueprint for new men struggling to establish themselves in the margins of the greater powers. By the 1060s new political contours were in place. Although his descendants were to form a close relationship with the kings of France, Guy of Ponthieu never escaped the domination of that most dominant of personalities, William the Conqueror. There was no existential threat to Ponthieu, although there might have been to 71

For Guy’s foundation of St Peter and St Paul of Abbeville, Pontieu, nos IX, authorized by King Philip, Recueil des Actes de Philippe Ier, ed. Prou, no. LXXIX. For the knighting of Philip’s son, Pontieu, no. VII. 72 Regesta: William I, no. 235. 73 In the passage covering Matilda’s coronation in 1068, Orderic says that Guy ministered to her spiritual needs, but he does not say that Guy accompanied her to England and Guy does not appear in charters issued there. He was perhaps on hand during the months when Matilda ruled Normandy on her husband’s behalf; Orderic, 2, 214. 74 Orderic, 4, 158. 75 Cartulaire de Marmoutier pour le Perche, ed. P. Barret, Mortagne 1894, no. 13 (1092). The charter is authorized (auctorizaverant) by Robert of Bellême’s brothers, who were still his heirs at that point. 76 Pontieu, no. VI for the young Enguerrand. Brunel suggests that this act cannot predate 1079 because Robert of Ailly did not witness royal acts before that date. In 1079, however, Philip I gave St Martin des Champs to Cluny, so an act in favour of St Martin which does not mention Cluny ought to date from before 1079. In an act in favour of the abbey of St Josse-sur-mer, Guy refers to God’s great kindness in giving him a daughter, Agnes, by his wife, Ada, and recounts how he took them both to Saint-Josse to offer prayers and gifts for the daughter’s health; Pontieu, no X.

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the position of Guy’s family as counts, and he could not shake off the humiliating capitulation in 1056. Guy kept his oath to William at some cost to himself, which might explain his considerable reputation in the 1090s, but its consequences for others were calamitous.

The Christine Mahaney Memorial Lecture

WILD, WILD HORSES: EQUINE LANDSCAPES OF THE ELEVENTH AND TWELFTH CENTURIES Robert Liddiard The importance of horses to Anglo-Norman society needs little introduction.1 While the significance of the horse in eleventh- and twelfth-century warfare has tended to loom large in historiography, especially in the debate over the existence of the Anglo-Saxon ‘warhorse’, a by-product of scholarly attention in this area has been the welcome dismissal of the idea that the English beast was no more than a shaggy pony and its Norman counterpart only a thoroughbred.2 Far from being overshadowed by its continental neighbours, selective breeding of horses in England before 1066 is well-attested, as is the existence of specialized studs, raising the possibility that the kingdom may have been comparatively well-horsed.3 Without diminishing the potential importance of the Conquest to equine culture, the more recent tendency of historians not to unduly differentiate between the kind of horses found on both sides of the channel either side of 1066, provides a more balanced approach.4 In similar vein, this essay discusses the geography of horse breeding in England, principally in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. There are specific reasons why this period in particular might be worth exploring. Before 1200 the horse was becoming increasingly significant as a beast of agriculture and it became more so thereafter, drawing

1

I should like to thank Stephen Church for the invitation to speak at the Battle Conference and all those who generously supplied advice and references after the online session. Nicholas Vincent and especially Katy Cubitt provided much assistance during the period of library closures resulting from the pandemic. This essay is based on work undertaken as part of the ‘Warhorse’ project led by the University of Exeter, https://medievalwarhorse.exeter. ac.uk (Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK (AH/S000380/1) and Gary Baker, Alan Outram, Kate Kanne and Camille Vo Van Qui all provided specific references. All errors of fact and interpretation remain my own. 2 R. H. C. Davis, ‘Did the Anglo-Saxons have Warhorses?’, in Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph No. 21, ed. Sonia Chadwick Hawkes, Oxford 1989, 141–4; eadem, The Medieval Warhorse, London, 1989; Charles Gladitz, Horse Breeding in the Medieval World, Dublin 1997; for the pre-Conquest period specifically, Sarah Larratt Keefer, ‘Hwær Cwom Mearh? The Horse in Anglo-Saxon England’, Journal of Medieval History 22, 1996, 115–34; Jennifer Neville, ‘Hrothgar’s Horses: Feral or Thoroughbred?’, Anglo-Saxon England 35, 2006, 131–57. 3 Debby Banham and Rosamond Faith, Anglo-Saxon Farms and Farming, Oxford 2014, 79–80 drawing attention to the potential significance of place-name evidence; Campbell estimates a total of 162,500 working beasts in 1086; Bruce M. S. Campbell, ‘The Land’, A Social History of England 1250–1500, ed. Rosemary Horrox and W. Mark Ormrod, Cambridge 2006, 179–237, at 184. 4 Sally Harvey, ‘Horses, Knights and Tactics’, ANS 41, 2019, 1–22.

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speculation that improvements in breeding must have occurred, not least to increase numbers.5 The emergence in the late pre-Conquest period of middle-ranking ‘riding men’ whose position in society was determined in part by mounted service arguably drove a need for steeds of certain quality and fed rivalry among this particular social group: something reflected archaeologically in the widespread occurrence of decorative horse gear.6 It might be assumed that competition from below motivated the higher elite to differentiate their mounts from those of their inferiors and while the horse burials of the early and middle Saxon period attest that equestrianism on the part of the aristocracy was something of a constant, arguably the renewed interest in the material trappings of wealth in the late pre-Conquest period took this interest further.7 The perennial demands of warfare and hunting must also have fed a motivation for breeding.8 Perhaps more mundanely, the growing governmental sophistication of late Saxon England that rested in part on efficiency of communications may also have been a driver of change.9 The subject of horse breeding therefore touches upon a series of fundamental issues that shaped the development of eleventh- and twelfth-century society and this alone is perhaps a justification for attention. Equine place-names In a period when horse breeding is otherwise poorly documented, the evidence from place-names assumes some significance. Self-evidently, equine names mark locations where horses were important enough for a name to be coined, but in addition consideration of the wider environments in which these names occur may shed light on management strategies. Names relating to equines are relatively common, principally those deriving from OE hors ‘horse’ and stod ‘stud or herd of horses’ and their Scandinavian and Cornish equivalents, together with a smaller number that refer specifically to stallions, mares, colts, foals and, occasionally, to racing.10 Terms 5

J. Langdon, Horses, Oxen and Technological Innovation, Cambridge 1986, 22–79; Gladitz, Horse Breeding, 141. 6 J. Gillingham, ‘Thegns and Knights in Eleventh-Century England: Who was Then the Gentleman?’, TRHS 5, 1995, 129–53, at 139–41; James Graham-Campbell, ‘Anglo-Scandinavian Equestrian Equipment in Eleventh-Century England’, ANS 14, 1992, 77–89. 7 Chris Fern, ‘The Archaeological Evidence for Equestrianism in Early Anglo-Saxon England, c. 450–700’, in Just Skin and Bones? New Perspectives on Human–Animal Relations in the Historical Past, ed. A. G. Pluskowski, BAR International Series 1410, Oxford 2005, 43–71; Robin Fleming, ‘The New Wealth, the New Rich, and the New Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, ANS 23, 2001, 1–22. 8 R. H. C. Davis, ‘The Warhorses of the Normans’, ANS 10, 1988, 67–81; Gale R. OwenCrocker, ‘Hawks and Horse-trappings: the Insignia of Rank’, in The Battle of Maldon AD 991, ed. Donald Scragg, Oxford 1991, 220–37; Katharin Mack, ‘The Stallers: Administrative Innovation in the Reign of Edward the Confessor’, Journal of Medieval History 12, 1986, 123–34; breeding horses for food would seem to be unlikely as the consumption of horse meat does not seem to have been widespread in pre-Conquest England, albeit with some evidence for regional variation in dietary patterns; K. Poole, ‘Horses for Courses? Religious Change and Dietary Shifts in Anglo-Saxon England’, Oxford Journal of Archaeology 32, 2013, 319–33. 9 James Campbell, ‘Some Agents and Agencies of the Late Anglo-Saxon State’, in Domesday Studies, ed. J. C. Holt, Woodbridge 1987, 201–18; for mobility as a factor in successful rule, Andrew Fleming, ‘Horses, Elites … and Long-Distance Roads’, Landscapes 11, 2010, 1–20. 10 A. H. Smith, English Place-Name Elements, Parts 1–2, English Place-Name Society

Fig. 1  Distribution map of principal equine place-names down to the early thirteenth century. (Robert Liddiard)

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that refer to horses feature in both major and minor place-names, in the case of the former given to settlements or significant topographic features, and in the latter to fields, farms or boundary features. While a plentiful source of evidence, their analysis is, however, far from problem-free. Names may attest to the commonplace – an abundance of horses might make for a distinguishing feature – or the precise opposite – their rarity might make the place where they did exist distinctive. There are also potential ambiguities of meaning. The word stot for an unexceptional horse could also refer to cattle and there are difficulties in knowing whether use of Hengist and Horsa referred to the presence of horses or to a personal name. The chief difficulty lies with precise dating, as the first recorded occurrence of a horse name may reflect new circumstances, or an earlier association that may itself have long since ceased by the time the name appears in the documentary record. To at least militate against some of these difficulties, the following analysis (principally derived from the county volumes of English Place-Name Society) includes only those names where the element that relates to horses is secure and is also recorded prior to the early thirteenth century.11 A similar exercise was conducted by Hallam for names down to 1086, but a more thorough trawl and the longer chronology employed here have resulted in a much larger body of evidence. For the purposes of analysis these names have been mapped here and, while especially in the case of minor names, it cannot be thought of as definitive, it does permit a series of observations12 (Figure 1). The evidence shows that, when taken as a group, the majority of equine-related names are topographical, with the prefix relating to horses and compounded with a suffix that refers to the wider landscape context. Significantly, the latter usually references either wetlands, or one of what are often termed ‘marginal’ environments, specifically semi-open woodland, downland or heath. The close association between horse names and watery places is seen most readily where hors is compounded with eg ‘island’, resulting in Horsey ‘horse island’ which is found in Essex, on two occasions in Sussex, Norfolk and Somerset.13 An exceptionally early occurrence of the use of stod in a watery context is at Stodmarsh in Kent ‘the marsh for a stud of horses’, recorded in 675 and which stood at the confluence of the Great and Little Stour.14 In addition, there are also those names which

(hereafter EPNS), Cambridge 1956; evidence for major names summarized in V. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, Cambridge 2004; for minor names, P. Cavill, A New Dictionary of English Field-Names, Nottingham 2018, 215–16, 399; more specialist studies, Mary Atkin, ‘Viking Race-Courses? The Distribution of Skeið Place-Name Elements in Northern England’, Journal of the English Place-Name Society 10, 1977–8, 26–39; M. C Higham, ‘Medieval Horse Rearing in NW England’, Retrospect: The Journal of the Burnley and District Historical Society 21, 2003, 9–18. 11 The contents of the majority of those volumes are online: https://epns.nottingham.ac.uk/ 12 H. E. Hallam, ‘England before the Norman Conquest’, in The Agrarian History of England and Wales, vol. 2, 1042–1350, ed. H. E. Hallam, Cambridge 1988, 27–8. While equine names in general are far more numerous, in cases where they cannot be dated before the early thirteenth century they have been omitted from this analysis. This said, mapping equine names of all periods tends to reinforce, rather than change, the distributions. 13 P. H. Reaney, The Place-Names of Essex, EPNS 12, Cambridge 1935, 340–1; Allen Mawer and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Sussex Part 2, EPNS 7, Cambridge 1930, 444; LDB 180a; GDB 95a. 14 S. E. Kelly, ed., Charters of St Augustine’s Abbey, Canterbury and Minster-in-Thanet, Anglo-Saxon Charters 4, Oxford 1995, No. 6, 26–30.



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refer to places where horses were presumably deliberately watered or where animals congregated, as at Horsepool in Cheshire, or where water could be crossed as at Horsforth in Yorkshire.15 A small number of more specific horse names also reference water, as in the case of Hinksey in Berkshire ‘stallion’s or Hengest’s island’ adjacent to the Thames at Oxford.16 By contrast upland locations are referred to at Horsendon ‘horse/Horsa’s hill’ in Oxfordshire, Stottesdon in Shropshire ‘hill of the stud/horseman’s hill’, while the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records that in 835 Egbert of Wessex defeated a Danish-Cornish army at Hengestes dune ‘stallion hill’.17 But by far the most important subgroup of names are those that refer to woodland or heath, especially those that incorporate the suffix leah ‘clearing’ and so denote a semi-wooded environment, with Horsley ‘horses clearing’ and Studley ‘clearing for the stud of horses’ common as a major and minor name, and found in some two dozen cases across ten English counties.18 Names also denoting woody areas in which horses were present include Horswald in Suffolk, ‘upland horse wood’, Rossett Green in Yorkshire, ‘horse wood’, and probably Horseheath in Cambridgeshire, ‘horse heath’.19 Without suggesting an overly rigid or binary classification, in respect of the wider environments in which they occur, the majority of equine place-names tend to fall into one of these broad categories. The significance of place-names, especially for those names incorporating hors, is that they are suggestive of the presence of semi-feral horses or as distinct places associated with the management of probably large, free-ranging groups. Such an observation would explain the frequency of the topographic features such as islands, hills, higher ground and wooded clearings. Moreover, the name elements themselves tend to relate more to areas and the few instances of habitative suffixes such as tun or thorpe that concern settlement, would strengthen the impression of roaming populations.20 Given the tendency for topographic names to have been coined in the early or middle Saxon period, it follows that, in broad terms, at least a proportion of these names attest to the presence of equine herds in these places at early date.21 Such a suggestion would seem particularly apt in the case of wetlands. The ‘horse islands’ at Horse Eye and Horsey in Sussex lay within the larger expanse of the Pevensey Levels, which in the tenth century was a tidal estuary and the ‘islands’ in question probably periodically cut off by sea water.22 A similar situation probably

15

GDB 269a; GDB 379a. S. E. Kelly, ed., Charters of Abingdon Abbey Parts 1 and 2, Anglo-Saxon Charters 7–8, Oxford 2000–01, No. 9, 44. 17 M. Gelling, The Place-Names of Oxfordshire, EPNS 23, Cambridge 1953, 144; M. Gelling, The Place-Names of Shropshire Part 1, EPNS 62, Nottingham 1990, 284–5; date corrected to 838, the battle took place either at Mortenhampstead in Devon or more likely at Gunnislake; R. Higham, Making Anglo-Saxon Devon: Emergence of a Shire, Exeter 2008, 64. 18 EPNS volumes, note 11, above, passim. 19 LDB 383a; A. H. Smith, The Place-Names of the West Riding of Yorkshire Part 5, EPNS 34, Cambridge 1961, 117; P. H. Reaney, The Place-Names of Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely, EPNS 19, Cambridge 1943, 108. 20 The only habitative name of note is ‘stead’ and is not particularly common, as at Horsted ‘Horse Place’ in Kent; A. Campbell, ed., Charters of Rochester, Anglo-Saxon Charters 1, Oxford 1973, No. 24, 27–8. 21 M. Gelling, Signposts to the Past, 2nd edn, Chichester 1988, 106–29. 22 Allen Mawer and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Sussex Part 2, EPNS 7, Cambridge 16

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Fig. 2  View over the Risborough gap in the northern Chilterns towards Horsendon, ‘Horsa’s hill or valley’. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Risborough was also the site of a major royal horse stud. (Robert Liddiard) existed at Horsey in Norfolk, at the lower reaches of the River Thurne and Horsey in the Somerset Levels was within the tidal reach of the River Parrett and probably intermittently waterlogged.23 Documentary evidence pertaining to horse breeding in such areas is scattered, but does exist, as in the Vita Herewardi, where Hereward obtained a mare and a colt from an island in Frisia, while the ten horses at Burmarsh in Romney marsh that formed part of a marriage agreement in 1016x1020 is also suggestive of breeding in a wetland context.24 While not suggesting a straightforward comparison, the idea of semi-feral horse populations in areas of late Saxon wetland finds modern analogy in the management of horses in areas such as the Camargue and the existence of genuinely feral herds in island contexts.25 These are environments where horses do well, in that they are able to consume salt marsh vegetation and cold brackish water is a natural antiseptic that provides benefits for the maintenance of lower limbs and hooves. In addition, access to fresh water is crit1930, 444; L. F. Salzmann, ‘The Inning of Pevensey Levels’, Sussex Archaeological Collections 53, 1910, 32–60. 23 T. Williamson, The Norfolk Broads: A Landscape History, Manchester 1997, 74–6; S. Rippon, Landscape, Community and Colonisation: The North Somerset Levels During the 1st to 2nd Millennia AD, CBA Research Report No. 152, York 2006. 24 M. Swanton, ‘The Deeds of Hereward’, in Medieval Outlaws: Ten Tales in Modern English, ed. Thomas H. Ohlgren, Stroud 1998, 12–60, at 34; Robertson, AS Charters, 2nd edn, No. 77, pp. 150–1. 25 Robin B. Goodloe et al., ‘Population Characteristics of Feral Horses on Cumberland Island, Georgia and their Management Implications’, Journal of Wildlife Management 64, 2000, 114–21.



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ical to breeding herds, especially for mares during periods of lactation, all of which makes the appearance of elements pertaining to water in place-names unsurprising.26 More inland, there is a noticeable tendency for equine names to occur at junctures in topography where lowlands meet uplands or on the fringes of larger expanses of what was originally woodland or grazing, as at Horsendon in Buckinghamshire which lies in the Risborough Gap where the Chilterns meet the Midland Plain, or Horsmonden in Kent on the northern edge of the Kentish Weald (Figure 2).27 Here if the names in question were coined early and referred to semi-feral populations, then the latter were likely roaming over the relatively large adjacent area of woodland or down. In such cases, the actual place-name became attached to the periphery simply because of the absence of permanent settlement in the hinterland. While good quality pasture is desirable for breeding, the dry vegetation of lighter soils, be it on downland, heath or moorland, is also eminently suitable for equine grazing and so along with wetlands, the appearance of horse place-names in such areas is entirely rational.28 The existence of semi-feral herds does not, however, mean that the stock was unmanaged, and it is probable that at least a proportion of the horse place-names represent points of exploitation. In those cases where locations are analogous to those identified for the more closely studied cattle vaccaries, the name probably marks the location of a horse farm.29 One such example is Horsley in Surrey, which lies on the dip slope of the Surrey Hills and first mentioned in 871x889, and here the respective settlements of East and West Horsley sit at the heads of two tributary valleys of the River Wey and the ‘strip’ form of their parish boundaries is suggestive of links between the pasture resources of the uplands and those of the lower ground.30 Moreover, the more general occurrence of place-names on the margins of large or upland grazing together with those pertaining to wetlands, raises the possibility that naming patterns were in part derived from transhumance networks.31

26

The benefits of water in equine care were known by the mid-thirteenth century, albeit on account of preventing bad humours; see Hieronymus Molin, ed., Jordani Ruffi Calabriensis Hippiatrica, Padua 1818, 6; for more modern assessments of the benefits, Melissa R. King, ‘Principles and Application of Hydrotherapy for Equine Athletes’, The Veterinary Clinics of North America: Equine Practice 32, 2016, 115–26. 27 Allen Mawer and F. M. Stenton, The Place-Names of Buckinghamshire, EPNS 2, Cambridge 1925, 169; Watts, Dictionary, 318. 28 C. López López et al., ‘Diet Selection and Performance of Horses Grazing on Different Heathland Types’, Animal 11, 2017, 1708–17; eadem et al., ‘Comparative Foraging Behaviour and Performance Between Cattle and Horses Grazing in Heathlands with Different Proportions of Improved Pasture Area’, Journal of Applied Animal Research 47, 2019, 377–85. 29 Continental comparisons of horse management are instructive here; Hans-Jürgen Nitz, ‘Settlement Structures and Settlement Systems of the Frankish Central State in Carolingian and Ottonian Times’, in Anglo-Saxon Settlements, ed. D. Hooke, Oxford 1988, 249–73; for vaccaries, A. J. L. Winchester, ‘Hill Farming Landscapes of Medieval Northern England’, in Landscape: the Richest Historical Record, ed. D. Hooke, Birmingham 2000, 75–84. 30 N. P. Brooks and S. E. Kelly, ed., Charters of Christ Church Canterbury Parts 1 and 2, Anglo-Saxon Charters 17–18, Oxford 2013, No. 96, 809–18; John Blair, Early Medieval Surrey, Stroud 1991, 32–3. 31 A. Everitt, Continuity and Colonisation: The Evolution of Kentish Settlement, Leicester 1986; M. Gardiner, ‘The Changing Character of Transhumance in Early and Later Medieval England’, in Historical Archaeologies of Transhumance across Europe, ed. Eugene Costello and Eva Svensson, London 2018, 109–19.

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One seemingly clear-cut example of such a situation is Horsham in Sussex, first mentioned in 947 as an outlying pasture of the estate of Washington fifteen miles to the south.32 Such cases demonstrate that the use of names more commonly associated with the seasonal grazing of cattle, sheep and pigs such as Cowden, Shipley and Swinley respectively also extended, albeit to a more limited extent, to horses. Here it is worth noting that transhumance might also be the origin of other ‘horse’ names, especially as they relate to crossing water; in the case of the extensive former heath to the north of Norwich, the topographical context suggests that Horsford was a fording point for a herd on the way to the adjacent grazing area of Horsham (St Faiths), rather than just a place where a single horse could cross the river.33 While there are significant areas of comparison between hors and stod names in terms of the wider environments referenced, an important point of contrast is that stod was far more frequently compounded with the suffix fald (fold/enclosure) or haga (hedge/enclosure) resulting in studfold ‘enclosure for a stud/herd of horses’ in a way that was much rarer for hors.34 The possible role of the studfold in horse breeding is discussed below, but from its appearance in charter bounds, the studfold was, as the name suggests, a physical structure that evidently could be important enough for it to be incorporated into a place-name. An added significance of the term is that in some half a dozen cases it gave its name to a Hundred in a way that ‘horse’ did not. 35 Here too there is the possibility that in some cases naming was a legacy of transhumance with such places connected with seasonal movement, the meeting of the hundred court presenting possibilities for breeding and the chance to mix bloodstock, as well as opportunities for horse racing or fighting. In cases where studfold became a major place-name, there is some, albeit slight, evidence that they represented early sites of exploitation associated with larger, especially ecclesiastical, estates. Studfold in Hertfordshire lay only a short distance from the major centre at Hitchin; Statfold in Staffordshire was a prebend of Litchfield, while the Studley in Yorkshire was held by Ripon.36 But whatever its precise status, the studfold seems to have been related more to settlement, rather than large areas and so may have had a more specific purpose connected with breeding.37 In summary, place-name evidence does not show all areas where equine management occurred, nor give a precise chronological framework, but it does suggest that possibly from early date wetlands and particular ‘marginal’ uplands were places in which horse rearing was regionally significant. By extension the evidence also points to localities where it was less important, such as the heavy going of the Midland

32

Kelly, Abingdon, No. 40, 168. LDB 155a. 34 This pattern is clearest for major names, but ‘horse enclosure’ does occur as a minor name, but only in a limited number of cases, such the horsa gehaeg at Tangmere in Sussex in the tenth century; Brooks and Kelly, Charters of Christ Church, No. 3, 271–83. 35 John Baker, ‘The Toponymy of Communal Activity: Anglo-Saxon Assembly Sites and their Functions’, in Names in Daily Life: Proceedings of the XXIV ICOS International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, ed. J. T. I. Donada, Barcelona 2014, 1498–1509. 36 T. Williamson, The Origins of Hertfordshire, Hatfield 2010, 101–2, 119–25; M. W. Greenslade, ed., ‘Litchfield: Churches’, in A History of the County of Stafford, 14, London 1990, 134–55; D. A. Woodman, ed., Charters of Northern Houses, Anglo-Saxon Charters 16, Oxford 2012, No. 7, 139–48. 37 Della Hooke, Anglo-Saxon Landscapes of the West Midlands: The Charter Evidence, BAR British Series 95, Oxford 1981, 228–9. 33



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and East Anglian clays. While horse breeding in these distinct areas was no doubt a sensible and utilitarian exploitation of ‘marginal’ land, at the same time it also represented a more considered agrarian practice that paired specific environments with suitable stock. Such a conclusion is supported by two other points of evidence. Firstly, the place-name signature of cattle is almost identical and as bovates and equines are compatible grazers it is suggestive of co-management or similar rearing strategies in similar environments.38 Secondly, the evidence from place-names as it relates to the geography of horse breeding dovetails neatly with that of Domesday Book. Domesday Book Domesday provides quantitative information about numbers and location of horses at a point in time in a way that the place-name evidence does not.39 Domesday is only a partial record however, with horses not recorded at all across large parts of the kingdom and unsystematically elsewhere. The majority of references are found in Little and Exon Domesday, but neither text is internally consistent and detailed examination of the relevant entries show that the information recorded and terminology employed is far from uniform.40 Where it does exist, however, the evidence gives the impression that England was seemingly well horsed and with a variety of types, with eleven separate terms used to describe some 4,500 beasts.41 The most numerous are those described as runcinus and on the manors in which they are found chiefly listed in ones or twos. It is unclear if these were rounceys in the sense of how the name was used by the thirteenth century and it has been suggested that they might be light pack or draft animals; in any event they were evidently not of the highest status.42 In addition were beasts described as equos, which are again chiefly recorded in small numbers on manors, but with the suggestion of a superior status to the rouncey which they frequently appear alongside. In Norfolk and Suffolk the additional appellation ‘at the hall’ is frequently given for these animals, a designation suggestive of messenger or carrier duties or a horse that was used in the conduct of manorial business and here it is noticeable that these entries tend to be found on hundredal manors, or large manors listed first in their respective hundreds.43 When consideration is given to the incomplete nature of the Domesday record, it is the quantity of horseflesh in England at the time of the survey that is worthy of note. That Domesday was recording only demesne stock can only heighten the impression

38

Andrew Margetts, The Wandering Herd: The Medieval Cattle Economy of South-East England c.450–1450, Macclesfield 2021; Gladitz, Horse Breeding, 148. 39 For discussion of the Domesday evidence as it relates to horses, see Kerry Cathers, ‘An Examination of the Horse in Anglo-Saxon England’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Reading 2002, 335–80. 40 There is the suspicion that more consistent recording of horses on the lands of specific Tenants in Chief is related to the submission of their own returns; in Somerset, for example, the majority of ‘wild’ horses are found on manors belonging to the bishop of Coutances, Robert of Mortain and William of Mohun; see H. C. Darby and R. Welldon Finn, The Domesday Geography of South-West England, Cambridge 1967, 206. 41 Cathers, ‘Examination’, 367. Statistics minus Great Domesday given in H. C. Darby, Domesday England, Cambridge 1977, 164. 42 Keefer, ‘Hwær Cwom Mearh’, 132. 43 LDB 138a, 228b, 259a.

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that there must have been areas in which horse breeding formed a significant part of the regional economy and which served as centres of production.44 Such wider schemes of horse management are evidenced by Domesday’s use of a small number of other terms: equa (mare), equa indomita (unbroken mare) and equa sylvatica/silvestris (woodland/wild mare).45 In comparison to other horses, relatively large heads of stock are often recorded, sometimes into the hundreds, and so is indicative of herd organization and breeding, as at Wereham in Norfolk where there were twenty-eight mares and twenty-five foals TRW.46 While it is possible that these differences in nomenclature reflected specific variations in management regimes, such an idea should not be pushed too far as mapping the respective distributions shows that ‘wild’ and ‘unbroken’ mares often lie side by side in the same kind of places, which suggests that differences in Domesday’s terminology are more apparent than real.47 While the precise meaning of the terms employed remains elusive, what is significant here are the kind of places in which these animals are recorded in Domesday, not least because they bear comparison with the evidence from place-names. Here differences in terminology matter less; rather, it is the distribution of hooves on the ground and the environments in which they are found that is of interest. In Norfolk and Suffolk groups of mares are associated with significant areas of heath, most notably on the edge of Breckland, with some 220 wild mares recorded at Hockham, sixty-three mares at Tottington in Norfolk and thirty-one wild mares at Mildenhall in Suffolk.48 Clusters of horses are also associated with wetlands, most notably in the area of what is now the northern Broads and around what in the eleventh century was the estuary of the River Thurne, where there is also a ‘horse island’ place-name.49 A slightly different watery environment, that of the Norfolk Fen edge and the lower reaches of the Rivers Ouse and Wissey, also see spikes in numbers, such as the twenty-six wild mares at Stow Bardolph (Figure 3).50 In the south-west there are the expected clusters of manors with horses in uplands such as Bodmin Moor and while there are fewer occurrences overall, large numbers of stock are also recorded on the fringes of Exmoor, where there were seventy-two wild mares at Lynton, 104 unbroken mares at Brendon and thirty-six unbroken mares at neighbouring Cutcombe.51 The Domesday evidence also draws attention to less obvious uplands where horse breeding was clearly a feature of the local economy, such as the Blackdown hills on the Devon/Somerset border where a total of twenty-four wild mares were recorded at the neighbouring manors of Mohuns Ottery and Combe Raleigh.52 Wetlands also feature prominently with sixty unbroken mares, the second

44

Levels of horse keeping by the peasantry may have been higher than on demesnes, even in 1086; Langdon, Horses, 79. 45 Darby, Domesday Geography, 337; Gladitz, Horse Breeding, 143–5; Keefer, ‘Hwær Cwom Mearh’, 132–3. 46 LDB, 230b. 47 The only instance in Domesday of wild and unbroken mares together is at Cutcombe in Somerset, but here use of both terms probably relates to entries for the main and sub-holding respectively, rather than indicating two different management regimes; GDB 95b; Exon 357b1 (www.exondomesday.ac.uk/), hereafter EDB. 48 LDB178a, 174a, 288b. 49 LDB 134a, 148a, 179b, 180a. 50 LDB 206a. 51 EDB 402a1, 337a1, 357b1. 52 EDB 348a1, 348b1.

Fig. 3  Locations in which Domesday Book records horses in south-west England. (Robert Liddiard)

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highest total of such horses in Exon, recorded at Long Ashton in Somerset towards the lower levels of the Avon and spikes in numbers are seen in similar locations for other major rivers, such as at Musbury near the mouth of the Axe in east Devon.53 But by far the most significant area and which on the Domesday evidence must have been a major horse pasture ground was the Somerset Levels and its tributary rivers, with cumulatively significant numbers of stock either on the marshland islands or scattered around the rim.54 The significance of the Domesday evidence is that the areas where large numbers of horses are recorded are also the kind of environments referenced by place-names. Similarly, there is a tendency for manors on which higher horse numbers occur to sit on or close to margins of wider areas of grazing or at junctures of topography and here the stock was no doubt simply being recorded at the manor into which resources was deemed to lie, with grazing taking place over the larger adjacent area of ‘waste’. Domesday also permits a degree of comparison between the distributions of different types of horse. The distribution of rounceys is greater than those of herds of mares, which is suggestive either of a smaller-scale network of manorial or peasant level breeding, or that the manors on which mares are recorded acted as areas of production that supplied the horses recorded elsewhere. While impossible to prove either way – in all likelihood, both situations probably occurred – the balance probably lies towards the latter. The distribution of foals in Essex, the only shire where foals are recorded in any number, is more even across the county, but with a noticeable bias in favour of the margins, such as the wetlands along the Thames at Tilbury and areas of later forest such as Writtle, the latter significantly also the site of a baronial stud in later centuries.55 Such evidence would support the idea that a ‘flow’ of animals from breeding areas to markets or specific manors familiar to later centuries was already in existence by the eleventh; at Lewes in Sussex the borough was the setting for horse dealing by the time of Domesday, a chance refence to the final link in what was probably a much longer supply chain.56 One of the characteristics of the horse trade throughout the Middle Ages was the movement of beasts over long distances and when the provenance of purchased animals starts to become clear in the early thirteenth century, it confirms that horses were often sourced from relatively far-flung locations; in 1210–11 the manors of the Bishopric of Winchester in Hampshire were stocked with foals and ‘woodland horses’ purchased from Wales.57 At this point it is worth noting the small quantity of documentary evidence for horse studs in pre-Conquest England, which confirms the picture of horse breeding taking place in the same kind of environments under discussion here. Troston in Suffolk lay on the edge of the Breckland heaths; Ongar in the western part of Essex much of which later became designated as forest; Coldridge lay on the Wiltshire downs, as did Faccombe Netherton, one of the possible locations for the wild horses mentioned in

53

EDB 143b2, 313a2. Some locations are also candidates for possible early transhumance networks, such as Rodney Stoke, which lies at the foot on the Mendips but also borders the Somerset Levels; EDB 137a2. 55 LDB 42a; for the later stud, TNA E101/99/27 (Accounts of John de Redmere, 11–17 Edward II). 56 GDB 25b. 57 N. R. Holt, ed., The Pipe Roll of the Bishopric of Winchester, 1210–1211, Manchester 1964, 15, 30. 54



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the mid-tenth-century will of the high-ranking widow Wynflead. In addition, one of the few archaeological identifications of a possible pre-Conquest horse farm, in this case associated with a large enclosure at Walkhampton in Devon, lies in a similar context on the fringes of Dartmoor.59 While the evidence for horse breeding areas becomes more disjointed after 1086, it confirms the picture of management in the same kind of environments and serves to fill in the geographical gaps for the places where we might suspect horses were being bred earlier, but for which the evidence is unforthcoming. In 1067 the Conqueror granted to Westminster the tithe of two hundred unbroken horses, the exact whereabouts of which are unknown, but was probably on the heaths around what is now Richmond and Wimbledon to the south-west of London as Domesday records a man keeping the king’s forest mares at Kingston.60 Before 1093 Ivo Taillebois granted a tenth of his foals at Spalding in Lincolnshire to Spalding Priory, suggesting that the wetlands in what is now Holland Fen was then a horse breeding ground.61 In the 1120s Peterborough Abbey had eleven unbroken mares with their foals in a similar Fenland location at Glinton in Northamptonshire.62 At some point before 1159 Adam fitz Waine granted to the monks of Mount Bretton Priory in Yorkshire the tithe of colts grazing on his demesne wherever he had herds of mares, suggesting that he had pockets of horses spread across his upland estates.63 Where numbers of stock are recorded they confirm Domesday’s picture of large breeding herds, such as the pasture for eighty mares granted to Byland Abbey by the Mowbrays in 1172 at Nidderdale in the Yorkshire Dales.64 The totality of evidence therefore points to towards the idea that from the tenth to the twelfth centuries horse breeding was both widespread and concentrated in particular environments, principally a range of ‘marginal’ wetlands, uplands and wooded grazing. Of significance here is that in the post-Conquest period the latter areas in particular were favoured by elites for the creation of deer parks, in which their horse studs were typically located. In the mid-twelfth century Hugh Peverill granted to Christchurch Priory the tithes of foals and horses from his stud at Ermington on the edge of Dartmoor, which almost certainly lay within the baronial park.65 At Burstwick in Holderness, in 1119 the count of Aumale granted tithes that included the ‘colts of my horses’, indicating that the Humber estuary was already by that date a centre of breeding, with Burstwick park, first mentioned in the twelfth century, becoming 58

58

Whitelock, AS Wills, No. 13, 33; No. 31, 83; No. 20, 61; No. 3, 15; for Wynflead, see Katherine Weikert, ‘Of Pots and Pins: The Households of Late Anglo-Saxon Faccombe Netherton’, in The Middle Ages Revisited: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Medieval Southern England Presented to Professor David A. Hinton, ed. B. Jervis, Oxford 2018, 57–70. 59 Rosamond Faith and Andrew Fleming, ‘The Walkhampton Enclosure (Devon)’, Landscape History 33, 2012, 5–28. 60 Regesta: William I, No. 290, 324; GDB 36a. 61 N. Sumner, ‘The Countess Lucy’s Priory? The Early History of Spalding Priory and its Estates’, Reading Medieval Studies 13, 1988, 81–103, at 85. 62 T. Stapleton, ed., ‘Liber Niger Monasterii S. Petri de Burgo’, in Chronicon Petroburgense, Camden Society 47, London 1849, 163. 63 W. Farrer, ed., Early Yorkshire Charters 3, Edinburgh 1916, No. 1666, 321. 64 D. E. Greenway, ed., Charters of the Honour of Mowbray 1107–1191, Oxford 1972, No. 54, 42–43. 65 Katharine A. Hanna, ed., The Christchurch Priory Cartulary Hampshire Records Series 18, Winchester 2007, 285, No. 908.

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a well-documented stud from the mid-thirteenth.66 In short, when it comes to the environments in which horses were bred, it is difficult to see the Conquest at all, let alone the status of 1066 as any kind of watershed; rather, the evidence is of specific environments serving as places for horse breeding over the long-term. Equine management If there were specific environments in which horses were bred, then this does not necessarily mean that management arrangements were the same or remained static; more likely that they were the settings for a range of stock rearing strategies.67 It is possible that in the early and middle Saxon periods especially in upland areas with low population densities and large areas of grazing, genuinely feral herds were exploited by letting wild stallions run with mares and desired animals drawn off as required. More likely, however, given that horses are not especially fecund and improvement of stock almost impossible in such an arrangement, more managed schemes especially at elite level were the norm. By way of comparison, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, horse breeding in forests took the form of rounding up otherwise itinerant herds at designated times of the year, corralling animals into parks where the stock was separated and designated animals were drawn off for use elsewhere. It was also on such occasions that selected stallions covered mares in small purpose-built enclosures, after which the herd was released back into the forest and the cycle repeated, with the whole process involving hundreds of animals.68 While it cannot be proved, there is the strong likelihood that similar practices operated in pre-Conquest England and as places where horses were corralled provide an explanatory context for at least some of the equine place-names and also probably the location of at least some of the Domesday mares recorded on manors at the edge of forests and wastes. At the same time, it is probable that sitting alongside such ‘forest’ regimes were those that involved the exploitation of herds of dedicated brood mares. That ‘wild’ mares are recorded in Domesday at all, together with their appearance in wills as heritable, demonstrates that at least some herds were not so wild that they could not be quantified, divided up or bequeathed; rather, it evidences their status as a productive, and valuable, resource. The idea that breeding herds were subject to more considered management is also suggested by the laws of Alfred where a fine for the ‘stealer of stud horses’ is recorded, which implies mares, rather than stallions, and also by the rank of individuals who possessed them; the wild horses at Ashburton bequeathed by Aelfwold bishop of Crediton, are unlikely to have been a collection of diminutive ponies roaming free over neighbouring Dartmoor.69 More likely here are situations where horses were still wandering over distances, but that breeding 66

Farrer, Early Yorkshire, No. 1304. 30–1; Barbara English, The Lords of Holderness, 10861260: A Study in Feudal Society, Oxford 1979, 87. 67 Davis, Medieval Warhorse, 38–42 discusses methods of horse breeding with the implicit suggestion of chronological development; more likely is that his stages 2 and 3 operated concurrently throughout the Middle Ages. 68 As was the case at Duffield Frith in the 1320s: TNA E101/100/11mm, 1v–2v (Particulars of the account of William de Birchover). 69 ‘The Laws of Alfred’, in English Historical Documents 1 c.500-1042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, London 1955, No. 33, 372–80, Clause 9.2; D. Hooke, Pre-Conquest Bounds of Devon and Cornwall, Woodbridge 1994, 186.



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arrangements were contrived, with a stallion left to run with a herd of brood mares within a discrete or bounded area. Evidence for such regimes is provided by the appearance of equine-related features in pre-Conquest charter bounds. A horse farm is suggested at Horsington in Somerset, significant itself as an unusual occurrence of an equine habitative place-name, and in the 950s at the neighbouring estate of Henstridge ‘the ridge where stallions are kept’ the first marker in its bounds was a horse pool.70 At Tarrant Hinton in Dorset in 935, the horsedich, was part of the estate boundary on what is now Launceston Down and suggestive of an area where a breeding herd was at pasture.71 If ‘stod’ specifically referenced a herd of stud mares, then the clearances on the edge of wastes are again conceivably the origin of the place-name Studley and so relate to places where horses were pastured alongside a stallion. At Lottisham in Somerset the stud clearing ‘stodleghe’ recorded charter bounds of 842 are suggestive of a block of grazing set aside for equine use and stood adjacent to the ‘bulls abode’, which not only references cooperative grazing, but as the bull is a breeding animal, it suggests that the ‘studley’ had a similar function, but for horses.72 In terms of the propagation and improvement of stock the key element arguably was the stallion. The wild horses of Domesday were not the individual animals referenced separately in wills, such as the black stallion bequeathed to Abbot Aelfsige by Athelstan Aetheling around 1015, or the high value horses found in law codes.73 Such prime beasts were difficult to obtain and were highly prized for their breeding potential. Gerald of Wales famously related that Robert of Bellême went to great pains to obtain horses from Spain, which Gerald believed some of the best horses Powis in his own time were descended.74 It is, however, difficult to judge the extent to which specialist equine management undertaken by elite for the purposes of improvement dovetailed with that associated with forests and wastes. It is entirely possible that there was a degree of separation, with breeding taking place at estate centres; at Burton abbey in 1114, there was stud at the abbey itself, with wild horses on their wider estate at Whiston in Penkridge, on the edge of Cannock Chase, suggesting a bifold arrangement of elite ‘stud’ and more vernacular ‘forest’ management seen in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.75 But given the comments by Gerald which imply interbreeding between the Bellême imported and native stock on their border estates, it can probably be assumed that in many cases suitable mares were drawn off from existed populations and utilized as breeding animals or that stallions were introduced to existing stock when the forest mares were corralled during the breeding cycle. When the actual mechanics of elite breeding is first seen, it clearly shows stallions being taken to parks in forest areas in order to cover mares. In 1130 Swein the king’s shield bearer took a stallion to Gillingham (almost certainly

70

S. E. Kelly, ed., Charters of Shaftesbury Abbey, Anglo-Saxon Charters 5, Oxford 1996, No. 18, 73–6. 71 Ibid., No. 9, 35–9. 72 S. E. Kelly, ed., Charters of Glastonbury Abbey, Anglo-Saxon Charters 15, Oxford 2012, No. 18, 311–17. 73 For discussion, see Keefer, ‘Hwær Cwom Mearh’, 125–8. 74 L. Thorpe, ed., Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales, London 1978, 201. 75 Charles G. O. Bridgeman, ed., ‘The Burton Abbey Surveys’ Collections for a History of Staffordshire, William Salt Society 41, Birmingham 1916, 212, 228; it is tempting to link these horses to the bequest of ‘a hundred wild horses’ made by Wulfric Spot in the early eleventh century; P. H. Sawyer, ed., Charters of Burton Abbey, Anglo-Saxon Charters 2, Oxford 1979, No. 29, 53–6.

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Gillingham park) to cover the mares. This is obviously a sign of selective breeding and the fact that this was undertaken by a major household official is probably an indication that high quality horses for royal use were the intended outcome.76 Evidence that elite beasts could be of greater stature than run of the mill horses, and so potentially change aspects of conformation via breeding in the manner suggested by Gerald of Wales, is also provided by skeletal remains. The most recent and comprehensive assessment of excavated bone evidence suggests that most horses in the eleventh and twelfth centuries were 12–14 hands high, but of significance here are the small number of animals that were of 14–15 hands and which have been excavated from post-Conquest castles and so suggestive of elite ownership.77 These are most likely candidates for the classic Norman thoroughbred, but there is little reason to believe that English elites lacked such mounts, especially as both historical and genetic evidence suggests that Arab bloodstock was appearing in England prior to the Conquest.78 This scientific evidence would not only seem to confirm that specialized breeding programmes were undertaken, but also their existence on some scale. Whatever the exact motivation, then, as now, the propagation of a bloodline or aspects of conformation was determined by how successfully the selected stallions covered specific mares. It is in this context that the studfold, especially as it existed as a piece of estate infrastructure, may have assumed some significance. As explained above, the term studfold appears in a variety of contexts and so is unlikely that its meaning or function was the same in each case. But whatever a studfold was, it was not simply where horses were kept and was evidently different to the kind of place described as a horse croft (horsacrofte) in the mid-tenth century at Wick Episcopi in Worcestershire.79 Previous discussions of the term studfold have drawn attention to its occurrence in relation to prehistoric earthworks or post-Roman enclosures and suggested that the name was coined because such places resembled the kind of horse enclosures found elsewhere.80 If so, then the name may not provide evidence for the geography of horse breeding, only examples of figurative naming. While such naming is highly likely, as is the idea that older enclosures could be re-tooled for the purposes of equine management, elsewhere the use as a term for a functioning horse enclosure seems secure. This seems to be the case where studfolds appear in environments in which animal rearing was already a feature, as at Grimley in Worcestershire, where the ‘old stud fold’ in 969 was next to the king’s old haga, an enclosure associated with stock management.81 That the studfold was a place into which animals were funnelled is suggested by Blewbury in Berkshire which was described in 944 as

76

Judith A. Green, ed., The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Thirty First Year of the Reign of King Henry I, Pipe Roll Society, New Series 57, London 2012, 10. 77 Carly Ameen et al., ‘In Search of the “Great Horse”: A Zooarchaeological Assessment of Horses from England (AD 300–1650)’, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 32 (2022), 1247–57; in general, the archaeological evidence confirms that there was a range in the height of horses, but also that the trend towards arguing for all horses being of small stature should be resisted. 78 Keefer, ‘Hwær Cwom Mearh’, 125–8; A. Fages et al., ‘Tracking Five Millenia of Horse Management with Extensive Genome Time Series’, Cell 177, 2019, 1419–35. 79 D. Hooke, Worcestershire Anglo-Saxon Charter-Bounds, Woodbridge 1990, 286–90. 80 O. G. S. Crawford, ‘Place-names and Archaeology’, in Introduction to the Survey of English Place-Names, ed. Allen Mawer and F. M. Stenton, EPNS 1, Pt 1, Cambridge 1924, 143–64, at 150–2. 81 Hooke, Worcestershire, 115–18.



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having a hurdled ditch on the approach. The use of the term ‘fold’ and the figurative link to prehistoric earthworks place the emphasis on the enclosure element and in 956 the ‘stud ditch’ was referred to at Corfe in Dorset.83 Archaeologically, the closest evidence for the nature of such an enclosure is at Stotfold in Bedfordshire, where excavations have revealed the possible studfold to which the place-name refers.84 Here a large circular enclosure fossilized in the historic field pattern is probably the ‘fold’ itself, within which excavations have revealed a smaller and sub-rectangular enclosure of mid-to late Saxon date from which pieces of late Saxon horse gear have been recovered, suggesting that it was functioning into the tenth century. It may be that this, smaller, feature is in fact the studfold, but the two ideas are not mutually exclusive; it is possible that the arrangement was an enclosure within an enclosure, with certain activities taking place within the smaller space and others in the more substantial remainder. How typical such arrangements may have been is unclear but it may have been a major example of its kind; especially as it seems to have ceased to function after 950 yet still gave it name to the settlement. In sum the evidence suggests that the studfold was most likely a ditched or fenced enclosure that at its largest may have served as a place into which stock from a wider area were corralled and separated. It may also have been the place where stallions were introduced to mares in order to facilitate effective covering. This latter interpretation may also explain the existence of the Waernan festen, ‘the stronghold of stallions’ in the bounds of Creedy near Crediton in Devon.85 If this was a place where mares were covered then it was a stronghold in a metaphorical sense, or it may have been a pen where such feisty beast was corralled but in any event it seems to prefigure the documented stallion enclosures at later royal studs, such as that constructed in the 1290s at Woodstock in Oxfordshire.86 If this interpretation of the function of a studfold is accepted, then its appearance as a feature in charter bounds is important as it not only attests to their status as a piece of estate infrastructure, but confirms that efforts to improve stock were widespread. 82

Conclusion This essay has made an argument for some long-term continuities in the environments in which horse breeding took place down to 1200 and stressed the tendency for evidence relating to horses to occur on the margins of those areas usually referred to as wastes. The significance of such edge locations has been noted before, significantly in the large proportion of known meeting places of Anglo-Saxon councils

82

Gelling, Signposts, 198; eadem, The Place-Names of Berkshire, Part 3, EPNS 51, Cambridge 1976, 758–61. 83 Kelly, Shaftesbury Abbey, No. 19, 77–80. 84 The full excavation report and interpretation is in preparation; W. Keir, Albion Archaeology, personal communication; John Blair, Building Anglo-Saxon England, Oxford 2018, 320–2. 85 Hooke, Devon and Cornwall, 86–99, for discussion of the term stronghold, see John Baker, ‘The Language of Anglo-Saxon Defence’, in Landscapes of Defence in Early Medieval Europe, ed. John Baker, Stuart Brooks and Andrew Reynolds, Turnhout 2013, 65–90. 86 A. P. Baggs et al., ‘Blenheim: Park to 1705’, in A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 12, Wootton Hundred (South) Including Woodstock, ed. Alan Crossley and C. R. Elrington, London 1990, 439–48.

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within, or on the fringes of later forests.87 The role of hunting on these gatherings is well known and so might suggest that English horse improvement prior to 1066, if not motivated for the kind of cavalry warfare seen on the continent, may have been connected to the demands of the chase; King Edmund’s mount that miraculously came to a halt at the edge of Cheddar Gorge in 943 was one capable of sustaining a prolonged pursuit of a stag that speaks of improved stock on an equal par with its post-Conquest counterparts.88 Historians of deer parks have tended to stress the motivations behind imparkment as the preservation of game reserves and the lordly appropriation of timber and grazing resources, but it is worth pointing out that the environments in which the Saxon and Norman aristocracy hunted were also those where horse breeding took place. That major deer parks became the site of horse studs is therefore perfectly logical. Such a situation, it is also worth noting, would have been entirely familiar to incoming Normans as in their homeland studs tended to lie in similar geographical contexts.89 Moreover, if imparkment represented the concentration into one place of the rights and resources that pertained over a wider area, then it brings the connection between horse and park closer. Without suggesting that park creators imparked horses, something of a shared setting is apparent in Domesday Book, which records only two kinds of ‘woodland’ beast: those of the chase, presumed to be deer, and horses. The link is also seen in those cases where deer parks incorporated an equine place-name, as in the Bishop of Winchester’s the twelfth-century Merdon ‘mare’s hill’ park at Hursley ‘mare’s clearing’ in Hampshire.90 From the late thirteenth-century documentary survival permits the royal stud network to be seen in sharp focus for the first time. In southern England, the core of this network was made up of seven constituent parks: Windsor, Woodstock, Cornbury, Guildford, Odiham, Risborough and Rayleigh.91 All were significant places in the pre- and post-Conquest period and most lay on the edge of a forest or chase. In two cases, horse keeping can pushed back to the early thirteenth century. At Odiham in Hampshire, the park was first recorded in the early 1130s, with the earliest specific mention of stock in 1224 when constable of Windsor castle Engelard de Cigogné was permitted to take his horses and cattle from the park.92 At Rayleigh in Essex, the first suggestion of a stud is in 1220 when Hubert de Burgh gifted horses to the king, with the park itself that of Swein of Essex mentioned in 1086 and that this was also an early stud site is suggested topographically by its location on the junction between the Rayleigh Hills and the wetland of the Thames estuary.93 It was within

87

Graham Jones, ‘A Common of Hunting? Forests, Lordship and Community before and after the Conquest’, in Forests and Chases of Medieval England and Wales c.1000–c.1500, ed. John Langton and Graham Jones, Oxford 2010, 36–67, at 59. 88 Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge, ed., The Early Lives of St Dunstan, Oxford 2012, 49. 89 Davis, ‘Warhorses’, 77–9. 90 R. Coates, Hampshire Place-Names, Southampton 1993, 96–7. 91 N. Neilson, ‘The King’s Hunting and His Great Horses’, in The English Government at Work, 1327–1336, ed. J. F. Willard and W. A. Morris, vol. 1, Cambridge, MA 1940, 435–44. 92 T. D. Hardy, ed., Rotuli Litterarum Clausarum in Turri Londinensi Asservati, 2 vols, Record Commission, London 1833–44, Vol. 1 (1833), 585. 93 Magnus Alexander and Susan Westlake, Hadleigh Castle, Essex, Earthwork Analysis: Survey Report, English Heritage Research Department Report 32, Portsmouth 2009, 33; LDB 43b.



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this stud network that the crown bred beasts destined for military use in the household and so it would not be unfair to say that the cradle of the English warhorse of the Hundred Years’ War were the deer parks of the early twelfth century. In more general terms, the eleventh and twelfth centuries were those that preceded what is taken to have been a significant growth in numbers of horses during the thirteenth as their use in agriculture increased. A consideration of the areas in which horses were raised permits two observations. Firstly, the growth in numbers may not necessarily be as large as has sometimes been assumed as it seems probable that growth took place from an already significant base. Secondly, the longer-term history of these environments is one of slow, but more sustained exploitation; from seasonal to permanent grazing, from transhumance to permanent pasture.94 The place-name evidence for studfolds which ranges from hundred names to estate infrastructure would seemingly refer to such a process. The ‘marginal’ environments in which horses were bred were increasingly subject to division and enclosure, albeit never entirely. In the case of horse breeding, closer management, even in small units, may cumulatively have served to aid efficiency. At Pilton on the edge of the Somerset Levels in 1201 Glastonbury abbey pastured six mares, six foals, three fillies and a colt of two years old and two foals of one year; even allowing for movement of stock, an impressive return that speaks of effort to ensure mares were successfully covered on a regular cycle.95 Around 1190 a grant to Basedale priory, in Westerdale in the North Yorkshire moors, included pasture for a range of stock including that for twenty cows and a bull; eleven swine and a boar; five mares and stallion, a small unit suggestive of ensuring a return.96 If the idea of continuity of environment, but increased return, has any merit then those places with high concentrations of horses in Domesday would also be centres of production in the better documented thirteenth century. In Breckland, this would certainly appear to be the case where Blackbourne Hundred in west Suffolk on the edge of the Brecks had one of the greatest proportions of draught horses to be found anywhere in the country and the region as a whole fed a wider hinterland with horses of all kinds.97 Evidence for longer-term trends in exploitation is also suggested by a comparison between the locations of horse breeding in the sixteenth century and the places discussed here, which shows a remarkable coincidence.98 In turn, this history stretched back not just to the pre-Conquest period, but probably much earlier.99

94

A. Margetts, ‘The Hayworth: A Lowland Vaccary site in South-East England’, Medieval Archaeology 61, 2017, 117–48. 95 N. E. Stacy, ed., Surveys of the Estates of Glastonbury Abbey c.1135–1201, Oxford 2001, 249. 96 W. Farrer, ed., Early Yorkshire Charters, 1, Edinburgh 1914, No. 565, 444–5. 97 M. Bailey, Medieval Suffolk, Woodbridge 2007, 80–1. 98 P. Edwards, The Horse Trade of Tudor and Stuart Horse England, Cambridge 1988, 23. 99 D. Miles et al., Uffington White Horse and its Landscape. Investigations at White Horse Hill, Uffington, 1989–95 and Tower Hill Ashbury, 1993–4, Oxford Archaeology, Thames Valley Landscapes Monograph 18, Oxford 2003, 78.

The Marjorie Chibnall Essay Prize

DEMONS AND INCIDENTS OF POSSESSION IN THE MIRACLES OF NORMAN ITALY Amy Devenney After a lot of time, the wife of one of our fellow citizens, named Rosie in the vernacular, possessed by a demon, was led to the tomb of the saint. With the wickedest demon violently harassing her, she was uttering many curses several of which concerned blessed Nicholas the Pilgrim. With many present, including the noble archbishop, the demon withdrew from her.1

Thus Adelferius described one of the miraculous healings attributed to the saint Nicholas of Trani in his account of the saint’s life and miracles written in the late 1090s. Demonic possession of individuals, such as the one of Rosie above, remained a central feature of demonic activity throughout the medieval period. Many incidents of possession and exorcism miracles can be found in the Bible, such as Christ casting out the unclean spirit from a man in the synagogue at Capernaum.2 Following these Biblical precedents, during the Middle Ages it was believed the saints, as intercessors and like the apostles, had the same exorcising ability as Jesus. The custom of bringing possessed people to the shrine of the saints was established during Late Antiquity, as their relics were understood to have the power to expel the malevolent spirit and continued into the medieval period.3 Therefore, exorcism miracles frequently number among the healing miracles collected at saints’ shrines. However, they are not the most commonly occurring miracle within these collections, nor are they found in all collections.4 1

‘Post multum temporis, cuiusdam nostril concivis uxor, vernaculo nominee Rossula, daemonio tenta, ad sancti ducitur tumulum. Cumque eam pessimus daemon instanter fatigaret pluraque execranda eiusdem ore loqueretur, nonnulla etiam de b. Nicolao Peregrino proferret, multis praesentibus, ab ea discessit. Quam ante praeclari archiepiscopi conspectum Dominus eius libertati donavit.’, Adelferius, ‘Vita Obitusque Sanctissimi Nicolai Peregrini Confessoris Christi’, in Santi monaci e santi eremiti: Alla ricercar di un modello di perfezione nella letteratura agiografica dell’Apulia normanna, ed. Oronzo Limone, Galatina, 1988, 151–8, at 157. 2 Mark 1:23–27; Luke 4:33–35. Other well-known cases of possession within the Gospel accounts are Christ casting seven demons out of Mary Magdalen (Luke 8:2) and the Gerasene demoniac (Matthew 8:29–34; Mark 5:1–9; Luke 8:26–39). Although exorcism miracles appear in seven cases in the New Testament accounts of Matthew, Mark and Luke, there is only one account of an involuntary spirit possession to be found in the Old Testament, that of King Saul. 3 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity, London 1981, 106–13. 4 André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge 2005, 468; Pierre-André Sigal, ‘Maladie, Pèlerinage et Guérison au XIIe siècle. Les Miracles de Saint Gibrien à Reims’, Annales, Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 24, 1969, 1522–39, at 1527.

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Early historians working on cases of possession in collections of miracles have repeatedly attributed these accounts to incidents of mental illness. Both Finucane and Sigal categorized the freeing of demoniacs as miraculous cures of mental affliction.5 Similarly early scholarly discussion on medieval madness often suggested that contemporary belief in the origin and cause of such conditions was dominated by demonological ideas.6 However, such generalizations can prevent us from learning more about the nuances of incidents of possession in the medieval period: how and why such states were seen as health issues which could be healed by a saint. By examining holistically incidents of possession together with states of unreason within the context of health, this investigation builds on recent studies. The physical symptoms of possession were similar, and in some cases the same, as the symptoms of incidents classified as conditions of madness; that is illnesses of the imaginative and rational faculties that affected the cognitive functions of the brain. Using Byzantine saints’ lives, Horden has shown that in some cases where these symptoms are described, possession could be identified. In others, they could be identified as medical conditions of madness.7 Such conditions were occasionally given the generic term of ‘madness’ (amentia/insania), however for medieval observers this was predominantly recognized as a behavioural pattern associated with other conditions such as frenzy (frenesis), mania (mania) and melancholy (melancholia).8 Although early-modern thinkers often used ‘madness’ to refer more exclusively to a medical problem, making it an illness rather than a symptom, people suffering from such a condition continued to be taken to shrines in some areas of Europe for relief even after the Reformation.9 Recent analysis of canonization processes by Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and work by Laura Ackerman Smoller on the canonization process of Vincent Ferrer has also argued that the signs for these two types of illnesses were so similar it was often difficult to distinguish between the two in the later Middle Ages.10 Other recent scholarship, such as the work of KatajalaPeltomaa, Anne Bailey, Catherine Rider and Claire Trenery, has started to consider these links and examine the relationship between conditions of madness and inci-

5

Pierre-André Sigal, L’Homme et le Miracle dans la France Médiévale, Paris 1985, 236; R. C. Finucane, Miracles and Pilgrims: Popular Beliefs in Medieval England, New York 1995, 107–9. 6 Gregory Zilboorg, A History of Medical Psychology, New York, 1941, 130–3. 7 Peregrine Horden, ‘Responses to Possession and Insanity in the Early Byzantine World’, Social History of Medicine 6, 1993, 177–94, at 185–6. 8 Claire Trenery and Peregrine Horden, ‘Madness in the Middle Ages’, in The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health, ed. G. Eghigian, London 2017, 62–80, at 66. 9 Leigh Ann Craig, ‘The History of Madness and Mental Illness in the Middle Ages: Directions and Questions’, History Compass 12, 2014, 729–44, at 732; Elizabeth Mellyn, ‘Healers and Healing in the Early Modern Health Care Market’, in The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health, ed. G. Eghigian, London 2017, 83–100, at 84, 93; David Lederer, Madness, Religion and the State in Early Modern Europe: A Bavarian Beacon, Cambridge 2006, 119. 10 Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Demonic Possession as Physical and Mental Disturbance in the Later Medieval Canonization Processes’, in Mental Dis(Order) in Later Medieval Europe, ed. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Susanna Niiranen, Leiden 2014, 108–27, at 108–9; Laura Ackerman Smoller, ‘A Case of Demonic Possession in Fifteenth-Century Brittany: Perrin Hervé and the Nascent Cult of Vincent Ferrer’, in Voices from the Bench: the Narratives of Lesser Folk in Medieval Trials, ed. M. Goodich, New York 2006, 149–76, at 162–6.



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dents of possession, and has suggested that while incidents of madness and possession did overlap they were not synonymous categories.11 Historians examining possession alongside conditions of madness have, using canonization proceedings, primarily concentrated on the later Middle Ages and the early-modern period or for the long-twelfth century geographically been concerned with the northern regions of Europe. To accept the findings of these existing studies as relevant to southern Italy would not take into account geographical diversity, cultural difference and chronological change. Norman Italy lay at the intersection of the Arabic, Latin and Byzantine world and its tumultuous history of conquest had created a distinct society. During the twelfth century, multilingual and multicultural communities of Latin Christians, Greek Christians and Muslims lived, for the most part, tolerantly side by side. The geographical position of the kingdom also granted it an important position in maritime trade and travel to the Arabic world and the East. These distinct characteristics of the region facilitated the development of Salerno and the surrounding area as an important place of intellectual medical learning and a centre held in high esteem for its practical medicine. The multilingual population made the Latin translation of the Greek and Arabic texts, arriving through the kingdom’s trade links outside Europe, and the transmission of their contents through Latin Europe possible. The strong connections with communities outside of Europe also contributed to the development of practical medicine through the importation of new techniques, knowledge and ingredients. Therefore, using a collection of miracula from twelfth-century southern Italy, the aim of this investigation is to analyse the language and the descriptions employed in the miracle narratives to understand how malevolent spirits were used as an explanation or identified as the cause of the illness in the miracle collections. How were such cases conceptualized and how did the demon physiologically upset the well-being of the individual? What was the relationship between the demoniac, the demon that possessed them and the saints that cured them in such cases? This investigation tries to explore and answer these questions, and through comparison with other areas of Europe determine whether there is anything particularly distinctive about the understanding of possession within Norman Italy. An extensive body of hagiographical works was produced in southern Italy during the long twelfth century and offers a unique opportunity through which to explore the social and cultural experience of demonic possession in southern Italy. This investigation draws on a body of seven hagiographical texts composed between c. 1080 and c. 1200, all of which were written in the mainland provinces of the twelfth-century kingdom of Sicily. Three of the sources, recording civic saint cults (all of which were from Apulia), were written by a cleric of the church: the texts pertaining to the saints Nicholas of Trani; Maurus, Pantaleone and Sergius of Bisce-

11

Sari Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘“A Good Wife?” Demonic Possession and Discourse of Gender in Late Medieval Culture’, in Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. M. Muravyeva and R. M. Tovio, New York 2013, 73–88, at 74; Anne Bailey, ‘Miracles and Madness: Dispelling Demons in Twelfth-Century Hagiography’, in Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, ed. S. Bhayro and C. Rider, Leiden 2017, 235–55; Claire Trenery, ‘Demons, Saints, and the Mad in the Twelfth-Century Miracles of Thomas Becket’, in Demons and Illness from Antiquity to the Early-Modern Period, ed. S. Bhayro and C. Rider, Leiden 2017, 339–56; Catherine Rider, ’Demons and Mental Disorder in Late Medieval Medicine’, in Mental Dis(Order) in Later Medieval Europe, ed. Sari Katajala-Peltomaa and Susanna Niiranen, Leiden 2014, 47–69.

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glie. A further text, pertaining to the cult of Cataldus of Taranto, is also included in the selection of texts relating to civic saints; however, this text was composed by a learned layman, Berlengarius.13 An additional three sources, each of monastic provenance (mainly from Campania), recording the lives of several religious men: William of Vercelli, Mennas of Caiazzo; and the first four abbots of Cava: Alferius, Leo, Peter and Constable, will also be used.14 12

Possession as a physical affliction Within Christian thought, demons were believed to have the natural ability to possess an innocent victim’s body and it was commonly understood that demons could enter the body through holes, in particular the mouth. In his Dialogues, Gregory the Great recounts the story of a nun who was possessed by the Devil after eating some lettuce but forgetting to bless it.15 The belief in demons entering the body through the mouth remained constant into the central Middle Ages. The Montecassino chronicler told the story of how a farmer in Apulia was possessed by a devil after drinking to quench his thirst, and the Monreale scene depicting the exorcism performed by St Castrensis shows the demon leaving the victim from his mouth.16 However, once in the body the malevolent spirit remained in the viscera, and was unable to enter and thus blemish the soul: the soul remained intact even though the body was possessed. With the soul unaffected by the possessing demon, such a possession was not believed to be sinful, therefore the victim was innocent.17 Not long afterwards in the same country in which blessed Castrensis was living, a spiteful enemy [hostis] seized a man. As the demon left the man’s body, compelled by the man of God’s command, it immediately exclaimed: ‘I cannot oppose your orders, but tell me where I should go.’ And the Saint replied: ‘You will not be able to go anywhere except into the abyss of the sea.’ Then the trembling demon was compelled to leave.18 12

Adelferius, Vita Nicolai Peregrini; Amandus, ‘In Translatione Sancti Nicolai Peregrini Confessoris Legenda’, in Santi monasci e santi eremiti: Alla ricercar di un modello di perfezione nella letterature agiografica dell’Apulia normanna, ed. Oronzo Limone, Galatina 1988, 159–68; Amandus, Inventio, Translationes, et Miracula SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis, et Sergii, Acta Sanctorum July, VI, Paris 1868, 359–71. 13 Berlengarius, Historia Inventionis et Translationis S. Cataldi, Acta Sanctorum May, II, Paris 1866, 569–74. 14 ‘Vita et Obitus Sancti Guilielmi’, in Scrittura agiografica nel Mezzogiorno Normanno: La vita di San Guglielmo da Vercelli, ed. Francesco Panarelli, Lecce 2004, 3–52; H. Hoffmann, ‘Die Translationes et Miracula Sancti Mennatis des Leo Marsicanus’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 60, 2004, 441–81; Vita Quatuor Priorum Abbatum Cavensium, ed. L. Matteri-Cerasoli, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 6 (v), Bologna 1941 [henceforth VQPA]. 15 Gregory the Great, The Dialogues of Gregory the Great. Book II: Saint Benedict, trans. by Myra L. Uhlfelder, Indianapolis, IN 1967, 18. 16 ‘Eodem preterea tempore quidam rusticus in partibus degens Apulie dum siti estuaret, ad Bibendum perrexit. In quem mox diabolus ingrediens eum vexare crudelissime cepit’, in Chronica Monasterii Casinensis, ed. H. Hoffmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores, xxxiv, Hanover 1980, iii. 38, 414; Otto Demus, The Mosaics of Norman Sicily, London 1949, image 110B. 17 Nancy Caciola, ‘Mystics, Demoniacs, and the Physiology of Spirit Possession in Medieval Europe’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, 2000, 268–306, 279–85. 18 ‘Non multo post ex eisdem finibus, in quibus b. Castrensis habitabat, quemdam malignus



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The twelfth-century mosaic of the Miracles of St Castrensis at Monreale is a pictorial representation of the above miracle ascribed to the saint in an earlier vita. St Castrensis became bishop of Capua after being exiled from Africa by the Arian Vandals in the fifth century. Although the dating and authorship of the vita is problematic and many doubts remain, Domenico Mallardo has argued that it is highly probable that it was composed by a Benedictine monk from Capua in the eleventh or twelfth century.19 The miracle is the only one attributed to the saint and recounts the healing of a demoniac. These kinds of stories, and especially their descriptions of the affliction, reveal much about the nature and experience of demonic possession as understood in the twelfth century. Demons were believed to have actually entered the body and would often settle in the viscera; however, they could lodge themselves wherever there was room inside the body and could sometimes even be identified as a lump just under the surface of the skin. Such a possession was understood as physical and identifiable within the body.20 The account of the miracle performed by Castrensis refers to the saint forcing the demon out and describes how ‘it left the man’s body’, indicating that the demon possessing the man was thought to be dwelling within him.21 Only on the expulsion of the demon was the man healed. Likewise, the cure of the servant Peter by Nicholas of Trani, was described as when the demon ‘left behind the vessel it had entered’, reflecting the invasive and bodily experience of possession.22 Such ideas about the nature of demonic possession can also be found in the case of Andrew who was troubled by a demon. After travelling from Flanders to Trani in search of a cure, he slept beside the altar of Nicholas and was freed from the invading spirit. With the intervention of the saint, the demon vexing him withdrew, and suddenly Andrew became ‘whole again’.23 Within the context of possession involving the literal entry into the body, the idea of becoming whole again upon being restored to health could refer to the demon physically exiting the body, and the body becoming complete again, unfractured by the demonic spirit. Other miracle narratives also attest to the understanding of possession being a bodily affliction. Although not all the accounts have as explicit descriptions as the cases of Peter, Andrew and the anonymous man healed by Castrensis, the language

hostis arripuit hominem, qui dum ex praecepto viri Dei compelleretur, ut exiret, protinus exclamavit: Praeceptis tuis contraire nequeo: sed jube, quo eam. Et Sanctus: Non sit tibi aditus, nisi in profundum abyssi. Tunc temebundus daemon compulsus exiit’, in Vita S. Castrensis Episcopi, Acta Sanctorum February, II, Paris, 523–9, at 528. 19 E. A. Gitto, ‘Santi africani venuti dal mare nell’agiografia campana alto medievale: la passio S. Prisci e la vita S. Castrensis tra storia e tradizione letteraria’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Università di Bologna 2013; Domenico Mallardo, San Castrese: vescovo e martire nella storia e nell’arte, Naples 1957, 31–2. The vita is found in three sixteenth-century manuscripts: Corsiniana 883 ((fol. 153–62, 162v–163v); Codice H6 (fol. 173–83); Codice H7 (fol. 260–9v). The latter two are found in the Biblioteca Vallicelliana and the former in the Biblioteca dell’Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei e Corsiniana. 20 Nancy Caciola, ‘Mystics, Demoniacs, and the Physiology of Spirit Possession’, 282–3; Nancy Caciola, Discerning Spirits: Divine and Demonic Possession in the Middle Ages, London 2003, 41. 21 ‘qui dum ex praecepto viri Dei compelleretur, ut exiret’, Vita S. Castrensis, 528. 22 ‘et infra noctis vigilias vas quod invaserat relicturum’, Amandus, Translatio Nicolai Peregrini, 162. 23 ‘subito effectus integer’, Adelferius, Vita Nicolai Peregrini, 157.

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used to recount the supplicant’s experience of being troubled by a malign spirit often has associations with the invasion or entry of the body. In most cases the terms employed are derivatives of the verbs invadere or possidere, both of which have associations with entering and seizing.24 An unidentified religious woman, invaded by a spiteful spirit, was brought to the church of Cataldus; a woman cured during the translation of the Bisceglie saints was said to have been possessed for a long time by three hostile spirits; and five woman cured by the same saints were said to have been taken possession of by filthy spirits.25 Another verb used to describe the demon physically entering its victim is tenere, as in the case of Rossula, which has associations with holding, possessing and occupying.26 Neither of these verbs is used in the miracle of Anastasia from Mottola who, after travelling to the tomb of Nicholas of Trani and sleeping beside it, received a vision in which she heard a voice instructing her to rise for she had been freed from the demon who had been troubling her.27 However, the spirit bothering her is described as superirruens.28 This participle adjective originates from super (with extra force) + irruere (to rush, force one’s way into, invade, make an attack upon) suggesting that the demon was believed to have forced itself into Anastasia with force.29 Nancy Caciola, while examining the understanding and manifestation of divine and demonic possession in the human body, has suggested that the interpretation of the physical and literal invasion of the body by the malign spirit is demonstrated by the metaphor of the body as a fortification under siege which was often employed in discourses on demonic possession, particularly since the term was used to refer both to demonic possession and to military sieges.30 None of these miracles, which clearly identify the supplicant as having been entered by the demon, has any description of the invading supernatural agent. This lack of physical descriptions of the malign spirit is not unique to southern Italian hagiography. Trenery has demonstrated that the absence of portrayals of demons and their methods of entering their victims is also found in English hagiography composed in the long twelfth century (1075–1225).31 Such an absence is also notable in the miracles of Sainte Foy written in Conques in the late eleventh century. The miracles recounting the healing of a man possessed by an unclean spirit at the church of Campagnac and of a possessed peasant healed at Conques contain no account of the supernatural entity.32 The neglect of a depiction of the invading agent

24

invadere, J. F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus, Leiden, 1976, 554; possidere, Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis, 817. 25 ‘malignus enim eam invaserat spiritus’, Historia di S. Cataldi, 570; ‘mulier quaedam daemoniaca liberata est: nam tres iniqui spiritus, qui eam diu possederant’, Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 368; ‘mulieri quinque spiritibus immundis obsessae’, Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 367. 26 ‘cuiusdam nostri concivis uxor, vernaculo nomine Rossula, daemonio tenta’, Adelferius, Vita Nicolai Peregrini, 157. 27 ‘daemonio est liberata’, Adelferius, Vita Nicolai Peregrini, 157. 28 ‘quam nequissimus superirruens spiritus crudeliter vexabat’, Adelferius, Vita Nicolai Peregrini, 157. 29 Inrruo, Charlton Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary Founded on Andrews’ Edition of Freund’s Latin Dictionary, Oxford 1966, 1003. 30 Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 42. 31 Trenery, ‘Demons, Saints, and the Mad’, 347. 32 The Book of Sainte Foy, translated with an introduction and notes by Pamela Sheingorn, Philadelphia, PA 1995, 27, 224, 227.



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by the author may not be unintentional, as it would ensure the focus of the miracle and the audience is on the saint and their power. Therefore, although demons could assume a myriad of forms, perhaps in their natural form they were not ‘seen’ as anything but merely understood as an existing but abstract supernatural entity. Physical possession by a malign spirit was often accompanied by clearly visible symptoms such as convulsions, violently striking out or verbally assaulting those standing by, blaspheming God and the saints, twisted facial expressions, abnormal powers, abhorrence of sacred objects and the inability to rest.33 These behaviours were often also interpreted as symptomatic of medical conditions such as frenzy, mania and melancholia ̶ such understandings will be discussed in greater detail below. However, not all demoniacs would suffer from each of these symptoms all of the time, as different demons could cause different symptoms. In her survey of multiple miracle collections from England, Trenery has demonstrated that fury and violence were common symptoms of demoniacs, and that this was often represented textually and pictorially through the demoniac being bound or restrained. Therefore, the description of a local man cured by Alferius, Abbot of Cava (c. 1020–50), as ‘restrained by iron’ would have indicated to the audience that he had probably been violently striking out, possibly injuring himself or others.34 The description of the actions of Peter, healed by Nicolas of Trani, clearly indicates that the demon was driving him to try to harm others, which had led to him being restrained and bound, reducing him to shouting abuse and insults.35 The other symptoms of the demoniacs in southern Italy recorded by the authors are blasphemy, physical convulsions and the inability to rest. Although the invading spirits were unable to tarnish the soul which controlled the actions, it was believed they were still able to influence the victim’s behaviour. Once inside the body, although outside the soul, the demon was able to disrupt the human spirit’s (spiritus) control over the senses and its role in passing messages between the body and soul, thus seemingly giving the demon control of the victim.36 The description of the symptoms suffered by the victims also attests to the demon within being directly responsible for, and controlling, the actions of the demoniac. In many of the accounts the demon is directly identified as the subject of the active verbs and the victim as the object. For example, the demon would throw the youth from Corato to the ground and roll him around, while the woman freed from the demons during the translation of the Bisceglie saints was also released from their

33

Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Demonic Possession as Physical and Mental Disturbance’, 109; Robert Bartlett, Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things: Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation, Princeton, NJ 2013, 383–9; Trenery and Peregrine Horden, ‘Madness in the Middle Ages’, 68. 34 VQPA, 7. 35 ‘Tunc rabiem spuma prodidit, et a diro vectore possideri morsus et concussio dentium patefecit. Domum ducitur coarctatus, qui quos non potest manibus morsibusve laedere, verbis lacessit.’ Amandus, Translatio Nicolai Peregrini, 162. 36 Caciola, ‘Spirit Possession’, 284.

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shaking. Likewise, the demons are said to have harassed, tormented and exhausted the five women also cured by the Bisceglie saints.38 In addition to the pathological symptoms that the authors record the supplicants as experiencing, they also emphasize their suffering as the demons unceasingly tormented them. Many twelfth-century hagiographical accounts recount the victim inflicting harm on others, a parallel with the behaviour of the Gerasene demoniac in the Bible, and reflecting the antisocial nature of the affliction.39 For example, Matilda of Cologne, cured by Thomas Becket, is described by Benedict of Peterborough as violently killing her own baby and attempting to suffocate a small child in the cathedral when she was filled with a demon; and a young man who lived with bands of Gascons ‘railed at those trying to restrain him’ before he was cured by the Virgin after vising her shrine at Rocamadour.40 However, in the southern Italian miracles, with the exception of Peter, none of the other victims are specifically identified as injuring or attempting to injure others. The emphasis is instead on the harm and hurt they inflict on themselves. The descriptions are very powerful, such as that of Andrew who convulsed on the ground while semi-conscious, beat his head against the marble pavements and foamed at the mouth.41 The youth from Corato is described as being continuously thrown to the ground and rolled around by the demon, which terrified the onlookers and Anastasia of Mottola was continuously shaking and had bloodied her hair.42 The accounts of the cures of these demoniacs also attests to the understanding of the physical nature of possession in the Middle Ages. In each case the healing of the individual is described as the demon ‘leaving’ or ‘withdrawing’ from the possessed individual. On coming to the tomb of Nicholas of Trani, Andrew of Flanders was cured when the demon tormenting him withdrew, while the demoniac brought to Cava was healed when the unclean spirit was cast out.43 Rosie of Trani was also cured by the saint when the demon withdrew from her.44 Two miracles from the south Italian hagiography contain signs of delivery from possession through the physical expulsion of material. The three spirits that had possessed the woman, cured during the translation of the Bisceglie saints, left her with flowing blood and 37

37

‘Cornitanus juvenis quidam ad infantia possessus a daemonio fuerat, quem solebat in dies saepe in terram prosternere, etterrorem cunctis inspicientibus cum stupor incutere: volvebat enim elidens robusum ephebum, sensum obtundens, rationis vim aferens, feritatem bestialem immittens.’, Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 367; ‘Mulier quaedam daemoniaca liberata est: nam tres iniqui spiritus, qui eam diu possederant’, Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 368. 38 ‘statim daemonia aestuant; mulierem miseram torquent, vexant, laniant et prosternunt’, Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 367. 39 Matthew 8:29–34; Mark 5:1–9; Luke 8:26–39; Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 37–48. 40 Benedict of Peterborough, ‘Miracula Sancti Thomae Cantuariensis’, in Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. James Craigie Robertson, 7 vols, London, 1875–85, II (1876), 23–298, at 208–9; Marcus Bull, The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour: Analysis and Translation, Woodbridge 1999, I.5 (104). 41 Adelferius, Vita Nicolai Peregrini, 157. 42 Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 367; Adelferius, Vita Nicolai Peregrini, 157. 43 ‘daemonem abscessisse’, Adelferius, Vita Nicolai Peregrini, 157; ‘immundum spiritum eiecit’, VQPA, 7. 44 ‘Daemon …. ab ea discessit’, Adelferius, Vita Nicolai Peregrini, 157.



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phlegm from her ears. Similarly, at the shrine of Nicholas of Trani, Peter was shown to have been freed from the unclean spirit by vomiting blood.46 During the Middle Ages a successful exorcism could be indicated by an object being vomited from the victim’s mouth. By the later centuries the victim was often described as vomiting forth black blood or other black material, and this ejection of material was considered concrete proof of demonic possession and subsequent delivery by the saint.47 However, earlier accounts do not restrict the object ejected to being blood or black material, but include a variety of objects such as a toad, a hairy worm or a red rock together with a leaf.48 It is uncertain whether in these cases the objects represented the demons being ejected or whether they simply indicated the restoration of health to the individual. However, in the case of the southern Italian miracles it appears clear that the emission of blood and phlegm was a sign to witnesses that the individual had been cured and restored to health. The healing of the possessed woman during the translation of the Bisceglie saints is described as follows: ‘a certain demonic woman was freed. For the three hostile spirits, which had possessed her for a long time, left behind certain proof with abundantly flowing blood and phlegm coming out through her ears.’49 The healing of Peter is described thus: ‘around the cry of the cockerel, the man of God, aided by prayers, threw out the unclean spirit and revealed the creature of God to be free from the invader by the vomiting of blood’.50 There was, therefore, physical proof of the restoration of health and the successful healing by the saint. Possession by a demon was therefore seen as a very physical experience in twelfth-century southern Italy. The spirit was actually believed to have entered the victim’s body and remain there until it was thrown out. From its residence within the body, the demon could affect the behaviour and mental abilities of its victim. The cure of this affliction and the healing of the individual occurred only with the physical removal of the supernatural being. 45

Possession and conditions of madness Catherine Rider has recently argued that the boundary between the two conditions possession and madness was often blurred, and there was often no consensus amongst physicians as to the cause of such a condition during the late Middle Ages. Although contemporary medical texts tended to focus on humoral imbalance as the cause of mental disturbance, some texts did discuss and consider the possibility that demons could be directly responsible, while others suggested that demons were indirectly responsible as they could upset the balance of the humours.51 Rider has primarily drawn her information from the section on epilepsy in the Pantegni Prac45

Amandus, Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 368. Amandus, Translatio Nicolai Peregrini, 162. 47 Katajala-Peltomaa, ‘Demonic Possession as Physical and Mental Disturbance’, 123–5. 48 Caciola, Discerning Spirits, 41. 49 ‘mulier quaedam daemoniaca liberate est: nam tres iniqui spiritus, qui eam diu possederant, per aures egressi, certa indicia sanguinis et flegmatis abundanter fluentis reliquerunt.’, Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 368. 50 ‘Cum subito, circa galli cantum, vir Dei orantibus affuit, immundum spiritum eiecit et Dei creaturam ab invasore liberam fuisse sanguinis vomitu patefecit.’, Amandus, Translatio Nicolai Peregrini, 162. 51 Rider, ‘Demons and Mental Disorder’, 47–69. 46

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tica V, which identifies several possible causes of epilepsy including demons. The Pantegni (or Complete Art of Medicine) was written by the Persian physician Alī ibn al-’Abbās al-Majūsī (d. 994), also known by his latinized name Haly Abbas, and adapted and translated by Constantine the African during the eleventh century. By the thirteenth century, the Pantegni comprised ten books of Theoretica and ten books of Practica. Work by Monica Green and her colleagues has shown that the ten-book version of the Pantegni Practica cannot be found in any twelfth-century complete copies: there is only textual evidence of the complete Pantegni Theoretica, and Books I, II and IX of the Practica circulating in twelfth-century Europe.52 It may be possible to suggest that the knowledge and material from the other books of the Practica could have been circulating independently, however there is no evidence for this: therefore it is speculation. Therefore, we must look to other medical texts to further understand the medical ideas concerning possession and conditions of madness that were circulating in twelfth-century southern Italy. Bartholomaeus, a teacher at the medical school in Salerno during the mid-twelfth century, wrote the Practica, or The Practice of Medicine, probably during the second half of the twelfth century. The treatise was divided into two: the first half concentrated on the knowledge needed to preserve health and the second concerned the curing of sickness and included an examination of diseases from head to toe.53 In addition to the Pantegni, Constantine the African also translated the Viaticum in the late eleventh century from Ibn al-Jazzār’s Zād al-mūsafir. This was a short medical compendium, aimed at travellers or as a quick reference tool for city-dwellers, which mixed practical and theoretical knowledge of conditions from head to toe.54 These two books are known to have been circulating in southern Italy during the twelfth century. Green has evidence of fourteen surviving copies of the former and thirty-seven of the latter; she has also documented witnesses to the texts in contemporary catalogues or booklists which cannot be connected to the extant MSS, giving her four further mentions of the Practica and eight of the Viaticum.55 A third book, Gariopontus’ Passionarius Galeni, is also known to have been in use and appears to have been very popular during the twelfth century as there are fifty-two extant copies, and ten witnesses to it.56 None of these books associate demonic possession with conditions of madness such as frenzy, mania, melancholy and epilepsy. The only mention of demonic interference is in the Passionarius ,which states that the common people call epileptics demoniacs; however, the rest of the discussion by the author on the condition, representing current medical thought, does not include demonic possession as a cause for the illness.57 This suggestion of what the common people believed to be the cause, must be treated with caution as such an expression

52

Monica Green, ‘The Re-creation of Pantegni, Practica, Book VIII’, in Constantine the African and ‘Alī ibn Al-‘Abbās Al-Mağūsī: The Pantegni and Related Texts, ed. Charles Burnett and Danielle Jacquart, Leiden 1994, 121–60, at 144. Green has now documented no fewer than fifty-one copies to have been circulating in the twelfth century. 53 ‘Practica dividitur in duo, in scientiam conservatuam sanitatis et curativam egritudinis’, Bartholomaeus, ‘Practica Magistri Bartholomari Salernitani’, in Collectio Salernitana, ed. Salvatore De Renzi, V vols, Naples, 1852–9, IV, 1856, 321–406, at 321. 54 Green, ‘The Re-creation of the Pantegni’, 131. 55 Monica Green, ‘Medical Books’, in The European Book in the Twelfth Century, ed. Erik Kwakkel and Rodney Thomson, Cambridge 2018, 277–92 (table 1). 56 Ibid. 57 ‘quos vulgus demoniacos dicit’, Passionarius, fol. IIIv.



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was often used by writers to differentiate their own intellectual milieu from those of people they consider to be lower status. Frenzy was believed to have been caused by an abscess in the brain or in the membrane of the brain in the frontal area of the head, which upset the natural coolness of the brain, and was accompanied by acute fever.58 The location of the humoral or anatomical abnormalities determined the nature of the illness.59 In the Middle Ages, the Galenic brain was divided into three sections: the frontal, which processed information from the senses; the central, which formed the images received from the frontal lobe into concepts and judgements; and the back of the brain, which stored memories. There was also an Aristotelian theory of the brain which theorized that it acted together with the heart to control the body. In this argument the brain’s natural coolness tempered the natural heat of the heart and played an essential role in the ‘heart-brain’ system as the centre for sensation and movement.60 Although this model, found in Aristotle’s De Partibus Animalium, re-emerged during the wave of translations of Arabic texts during the twelfth century it is unclear how well known the work was in southern Italy in the twelfth century, whereas the work of Galen is well attested in southern Italy, notably through the translation activity at Montecassino. Other symptoms of frenzy identified by Bartholomaeus are: a quickened pulse, strength in the limbs, quickened movement in the face and eyes, and it was noted that it often caused sufferers to act insanely, requiring restraint.61 To alleviate the condition, the Practica advised a number of techniques such as the application of leeches to the nose in order to draw blood, if the individual’s health allowed, and also encouraged a cold diet, such as breadcrumbs soaked in water.62 Both treatments aimed to lower the temperature of the head and restore coolness to the brain, thus returning health to the individual. Mania was an infection of the rational section of the brain (the central lobe of the brain) and could be caused from too much red choler (yellow bile) or blood. Bartholomaeus notes that although many of the symptoms of mania are similar to those of frenzy, such as a quickened pulse, and was often accompanied by loss of reason, there is one vital difference. Those afflicted with mania did not suffer from the fever while those with frenzy were never without.63 For those with mania cold and wet foods should be consumed such as lettuce or lamb.64 Again these instructions were aimed at restoring the balance of the humours. As always, the signs and symptoms, and prescriptions for curing these conditions of madness vary slightly according to the author. However, those found in Bartholomaeus’ Practica are among the most indicative of contemporary knowledge in southern

58

‘Est autem frenesis apostema in cerebro vel in meningis cerebri anterioris partis capitis cum acuta febre’, Bartholomaeus, 371. 59 Horden and Trenery, ‘Madness in the Middle Ages’, 66. 60 Charles G. Gross, ‘Aristotle on the Brain’, History of Neuroscience 1, 1995, 245–50, at 247–9. 61 ‘Pulsus velox et spissus, fortitude membrorum, veloz conversion vultus et occulorum.’; ‘Magis insani ligentur fortiter’, Bartholomaeus, 374–5. 62 ‘Adponantur etiam sanguisuge in summitate nasi cum calamo ne petatur cerebrum’, ‘Dieta eorum sit frigida, ut mica panis lota in aqua’, Bartholomaeus, 374–5. 63 ‘Mania est infectio rationalis cellule cum despientia; que infection vel est ex colera rudea, vel ex sanguine’; ‘Differt autem a frenesi, quia frenetici nunquam sine febre sunt.’, Bartholomaeus, 375. 64 ‘Horum autem dieta debet esse frigida, et humida, ut lactuca […..], agnellina’, Bartholomaeus, 375.

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Italy because, as demonstrated above, they are known to have been circulating during the twelfth century. This demonstrates that contemporary medical knowledge ascribed madness, as a symptom, to specific conditions, which were distinct from cases of demonic possession. Close examination of the miracle narratives strengthens the idea that possession by a supernatural entity and conditions of madness were seen, in twelfth-century southern Italy, as different illnesses, but with similar symptoms. None of the accounts of miracles relating to internal possession examined in the previous section included medical terminology relating to madness, such as insania, furor, melancholia, mania, nor did they refer to mental alienation (mentis alienatio); a generic term for mental illness often used in miracle stories.65 Two of the miracles do describe the invading demon as affecting the mental capabilities of the victim; however, neither uses medical terminology, and in both cases the individual’s loss of reason is attributed to the physical presence of the demon within their body.66 A further three miracles in the collections surveyed by this study do relate to conditions of madness; that is, they contain medical terminology identifying a condition associated with madness. These three miracles reflect contemporary medical thought and present the condition as distinct from possession. They are found in three different miracle collections and are by different authors; two of these (those of the collections pertaining to Cataldus and William of Vercelli) also include cases of internal possession. William of Vercelli is beseeched by the father of a lunatic; Cataldus is recorded as healing a madwoman; and after being entreated by a mother, Mennas heals her demented son following Nicholas of Bari’s refusal to heal him.67 These three cases all present the affliction of the individual as being different from possession: there is no mention of demonic interference; there is no description of any physical signs or symptoms, such as disorderly behaviour; and their condition is simply stated using medical terms: lunatica, phrenetica and demens. There is only a brief mention in the miracle ascribed to William of Vercelli of the daughter being beset by tiredness. The description of the cure also suggests that these conditions were conceived differently to demonic possession. The cure of the demonically possessed supplicant is conceptualized as the demon leaving the body and the individual being freed from the invading spirit, whereas the cure of those who are described as suffering from a condition of madness are described as their health being restored (redditus/restitutus).68 This term is also used when referring

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Bailey, ‘Miracles and Madness’, 238. ‘Cornitanus juvenis quidam ad infantia possessus a daemonio fuerat, quem solebat in dies saepe in terram prosternere, etterrorem cunctis inspicientibus cum stupor incutere: volvebat enim elidens robusum ephebum, sensum obtundens, rationis vim aferens, feritatem bestialem immittens.’, Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 367; ‘dum servus cuisdam, Petrus nomine, navicula duceretur, piscantionis exercitio deditus, eum daemon invasit mentemque priorem expulit’, Amandus, Translatio Nicolai Peregrini, 162. 67 William of Vercelli: ‘Eodem quoque tempore, quidam lunaticam filam habebat.’, Vita S. Guilielmi, 24; Cataldus of Taranto: ‘Primum itaque miraculum, quo translationis suae vigilias illustravit, fuit in quadam muliere paupercula, de villa Lellani, longo phrenetica tempore’, Historia di S. Cataldi, 570; Mennas: ‘Mulier quędam ex Lambardię finibus habeb dementem filium’, Miracula S. Mennatis, 476–7; de Gaiffier, ‘Translations et Miracles de S. Mennas’, 28–9. 68 William of Vercelli: ‘Eius vota Deus ab alto prospectans, ita est beati viri meritis sue filie salutis dona largitus ut ea’, Vita S. Guilielmi, 24; Cataldus: ‘et ad tumbam lacrymales preces 66



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to those cured of other physical conditions such as blindness and impairment. As these conditions of madness were understood in terms of humoral imbalance, this vocabulary may be in recognition of the equilibrium of the humours of the individual being restored to health. The separation of demonic and non-demonic discourses in the miracles from southern Italy is in sharp contrast with the miracle accounts from England. Trenery’s recent work and an article by Bailey have shown the ambiguity in the explanation for disorderly behaviour in the miracle accounts, as demonic interference and/or mental conditions could be used.69 Bailey has demonstrated how insania and furor, and other medical terms for conditions associated with mental disorders, started to be increasingly used alongside demonic possession, with hagiographers mixing and matching demonic and non-demonic aetiology.70 Trenery has found similar results to Bailey in the miracles ascribed to Thomas Becket, but also showed that the language used to demonstrate the individual had been cured of their condition, often redditus or restitutus, was used indiscriminately between cases of demonic madness and other mad supplicants within English hagiography.71 By contrast, in the Italian miracles this term is reserved specifically for those suffering from medical conditions of madness or other conditions such as blindness and impairment. It is possible to suggest that the differences in how demonic possession and conditions of madness were understood in England and Norman Italy was a result of different levels of transmission and dissemination of contemporary medical theory throughout the societies of the two regions. During the twelfth century, central Apulia, particularly around the centres of Bari and Trani, was heavily populated with flourishing urban communities. Between the Murge plateau and the coast was a fertile strip of land, which held a dense network of cities. Many of the cities, such as Trani, were found dotted along the coast, but there was also another chain of settlements, such as Bitonto, which were about five to eight miles inland. Charter evidence demonstrates the close and frequent contact between these urban centres, and their vibrant coastal economy.72 Many of the cities in central Apulia also had strong international links particularly with the Holy Land during the twelfth century as they became important ports for the pilgrim and crusader traffic as well the trade of goods. The old Roman roads (the Via Appia, Via Latina, Via Popillia and Via Traiana) which were travelled frequently by pilgrims moving between Rome and the Holy Land, also made travel between central Apulia and Salerno, a centre of both practical and theoretical medicine, easily possible. A number of the miracle narratives identify the presence of medici within towns such as Trani, Ostuni and

fundens, saluti pristinae fuit celeriter restituta’, Historia di S. Cataldi, 570; Mennas: ‘subito inter eundum filius eius salvatus est et menti sanissime redidtus’, Miracula S. Mennatis, 476–7; de Gaiffier, ‘Translations et Miracles de S. Mennas’, 28–9. 69 Claire Trenery, ‘Miracles for the Mad: Representations of Madness in English Miracle Collections from the Long Twelfth Century’, unpublished doctoral thesis, University of London 2016; Bailey, ‘Miracles and Madness’. 70 Bailey, ‘Miracles and Madness’. 71 Trenery, ‘Demons, Saints and the Mad’, 350. 72 Jean-Marie Martin, La Pouille du VIe au XIIe siècle, Rome 1993, see especially chapter 7; Paul Oldfield, City and Community in Norman Italy, Cambridge 2009; Patricia Skinner, ‘Room for Tension: Urban Life in Apulia in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, Papers of the British School at Rome 66, 1998, 159–76.

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Bitonto. Therefore, it seems plausible to suggests that after training at Salerno such practitioners settled within urban centres to practise and in doing so disseminated their knowledge and understanding to the wider community. In contrast, twelfth-century England was sparsely populated with largely rural communities, often focused on subsistence farming. Although there were a number of urban centres, such as Durham, York and London, they were not as numerous, as populous nor as closely situated as those in southern Italy. The settlements were also widely distributed throughout the country with poor communications between them due to the terrain and poorly maintained state of the disused Roman roads.74 There were however, ties with Norman Italy and Monica Green has demonstrated the transmission of Salernitan medical texts to England through the large presence of medical literature in the monastic houses and cathedral libraries.75 Trenery’s work has built on this and demonstrated that the acquisition of such medical texts occurred at different paces and an awareness of specific texts cannot by assumed across English monasteries. Using the miracles of Thomas Becket, by the two monks Benedict of Peterborough and William of Canterbury, she has also shown that level of medical knowledge varied within a monastery.76 Thus, it appears that medical knowledge and understanding may have had limited transmission and dissemination in Norman England, perhaps explaining the ambiguity in aetiology for disorderly behaviour in the miracles of Norman England. 73

Conclusion This study has demonstrated that demonic forces were a cause of worry for individuals and their communities as they were able to upset the well-being of an individual. It has been shown that communities of southern Italy visualized and understood incidents of possession as unfortunate afflictions caused by the unwanted invasion of the body by external supernatural agents. The demoniac of southern Italy is portrayed as an innocent victim of internal possession by an evil spirit. Unfortunate in their condition, the individual is depicted as being unceasingly tormented by physical symptoms caused by the demon disrupting the human spirit’s (spiritus) control from within. In many of the accounts the victim is supported and cared for by their community: the supplicant is taken to the shrine and the saint is invoked on their behalf by the community. The only cure was the physical removal of the evil spirit prompted by the power of the saint. Distinctions emerge between the understandings of conditions of madness and incidents of possession. The evidence from contemporary medical texts and hagiographical accounts suggest they were seen as separate conditions, albeit often with very similar symptoms. Both were understood to be physiological conditions which presented similar patterns of behaviour; however, they were considered to have very distinct aetiologies. Possession was due to an external supernatural agent invading 73

Historia di SS. Mauri, Pantaleonis et Sergii, 364, 366–7; Historia di S. Cataldi, 571, 573. Edward Miller and John Hatcher, Rural Society and Economic Change 1086–1348, Abingdon 1978, 2. 75 Monica Green, ‘Salerno on the Thames: The Genesis of Anglo-Norman Medical Literature’, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England, c. 1100–c. 1500, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, Linne Mooney, Ad Putter and David Trotter, York 2009, 220–31, at 221. 76 Trenery, ‘Miracles for the Mad’, 307–8. 74



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the body, whereas conditions of madness were due to humoral or anatomical abnormalities in the brain which caused physical symptoms. This distinction of the two conditions in southern Italy is in contrast to the understanding of the two conditions in twelfth-century England, where the two often have overlapping aetiologies.

RULERSHIP, AUTHORITY, AND POWER IN THE MIDDLE AGES: THE PROPRIETARY QUEEN AS HEAD OF DYNASTY1 Anaïs Waag Between 1109 and 1328 – when the direct Capetian line was extinguished and women were unequivocally bared from the French throne – a total of sixteen royal women asserted claims or were acclaimed to the thrones of Aragon, Castile and León, England, France, Jerusalem, Navarre, Scotland, and Sicily, with varying degrees of success.2 In chronological order, they were: Urraca of León-Castile (d. 1126), Melisende of Jerusalem (d. 1161), Empress Matilda (d. 1167), Petronila of Aragon (d. 1173), Sibylla of Jerusalem (d. 1190), Isabella I of Jerusalem (d. 1205), Constance I of Sicily (d. 1198), Maria of Montferrat (d. 1212), Isabella II of Jerusalem (d. 1228), Berenguela of Castile (d. 1246), Sancha (d. 1243) and Dulce (d. 1248) of León, Constance II of Sicily (d. 1305), Juana I of Navarre (d. 1305), Margaret of Norway (d. 1290), and Juana II of Navarre (d. 1349). Notably, only three of these fifteen claims were unsuccessful: Matilda’s claim to the English throne (1135–48), Sancha and Dulce of León’s joint claim to the Leonese throne (1230), and Juana II of Navarre’s claim to the French throne (1316 and 1328). In the Middle Ages, dynastic contingency led to female succession within European hereditary monarchies. What is less evident is the how, why, and when female succession and female royal rulership were experienced.3 As rulers positively sanc-

1

I would like to thank Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo, Paula Del Val Vales, Louise Wilkinson, and the members of University of Lincoln’s Medieval Studies Research Group reading group for their helpful suggestions and comments on the following article, as well as the attendees of the 2021 Battle Conference for Anglo-Norman Studies for their many suggestions on my original presentation. I am especially grateful to the editor of this volume, Stephen Church, for his valuable suggestions and comments, and for our discussions on this topic. 2 This chapter is based on my current research project ‘Female Royal Rulership in Theory and Practice: Queens Regnant, 1109–1328’, funded by a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship. The project uses the life experiences and political careers of medieval royal heiresses as case studies to examine the earliest female claims to medieval royal thrones across Western Europe and the Mediterranean. 3 This is less evident in large part because scholarship has only recently begun to ask these questions. Of note is the perception that female accession to the throne was primarily – and more easily – realized in south-western European kingdoms, as well as the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. Nonetheless, the political, legal, and cultural contexts which enabled these apparently more accommodating views towards female royal succession and rulership are yet to be comprehensively and comparatively examined, especially when compared with those more northern kingdoms which also experienced female rulership; this is what my Leverhulme research project aims to do. See Amalie Fößel, ‘The Political Traditions of Female Rulership

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tioned by God, those heiresses who ascended royal thrones were allegedly the equivalent to a king. And yet, the reality of medieval attitudes towards female rule meant that women’s power, in practice, was not quite on par with that of a king. My larger research project, of which this article represents a portion, examines the reality of female rule, by means of a systematic and comparative examination of the life experiences and political careers of the sixteen women who sought to claim the title of queen in their own right, rather than as the wife of a king. To do so, the project considers their position, perception, and actual power, how these claims to medieval royal thrones were handled, the circumstances within which these women succeeded and failed to achieve their claims, and the political traditions which played a role in these developments. The present article focuses on the position and perception of the first four women within my project to assert claims to royal thrones: Urraca of León-Castile, Melisende of Jerusalem, Empress Matilda, and Petronila of Aragon. As near contemporaries who exercised royal power, the life experiences and political careers of Urraca, Melisende, and Matilda have often been considered comparatively. Within such studies, Petronila, largely perceived to have had no political role within her kingdom, is referenced as an example of contemporary female royal inheritance but excluded from any significant comparisons between the other three queens with regards to the exercise of power and authority. The purpose of this article is to bring Petronila firmly into the conversation, and to proffer a fresh examination of these four women as a ‘first generation’ of female royal claimants.4 Doing so will illustrate how, despite each heiress’ varying experiences of royal power, all four women were accepted by their contemporaries as the heads of their respective dynasties and as legitimate holders and transmitters of dynastic power. Table 1  Royal heiresses. Royal Heiress

Claimant to/regnant of

Spouse

Urraca of León-Castile (c. 1079–1126)

Kingdom of León-Castile (r. 1109–26)

(1) Raymond of Burgundy (2) Alfonso I, king of Aragon

Melisende of Jerusalem (c. 1105–61)

Kingdom of Jerusalem (r. 1131–53)

Fulk V, count of Anjou

Empress Matilda (c. 1102–67)

Kingdom of England (claimant 1135–48)

(1) Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor (2) Geoffrey V, count of Anjou

Petronila of Aragon (1136–73)

Kingdom of Aragon (r. 1137–64)

Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona

Sibylla of Jerusalem (c. 1159–90)

Kingdom of Jerusalem (r. 1186–90)

(1) William of Montferrat (2) Guy de Lusignan

Constance I of Sicily (1154–98)

Kingdom of Sicily (claim. 1189/r. 1194–8)

Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor

in Medieval Europe’, in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, ed. Judith Bennett and Ruth Karras, Oxford 2013, 68–83, at 75–7. 4 The four women examined in this article are not the first to assert claims to a royal throne in the Middle Ages, but they are the first to do so within Latin Christendom in the context of changing inheritance patterns in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. I refer to them as a ‘first generation’ because they asserted the four earliest claims within my research project’s timeframe, and were close contemporaries whose lives overlapped and, at times, intertwined.



The Proprietary Queen as Head of Dynasty Royal Heiress

Claimant to/regnant of

Spouse

Isabella I of Jerusalem (1172–1205)

Kingdom of Jerusalem (r. 1190/2–1205)

(1) Humphrey IV of Touron (2) Conrad of Montferrat (3) Henry II of Champagne (4) Aimery, king of Cyprus

Maria of Montferrat (1192–1212)

Kingdom of Jerusalem (r. 1205–12)

John of Brienne

Isabella II of Jerusalem (1212–28)

Kingdom of Jerusalem (r. 1212–28)

Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor and king of Sicily

Berenguela of Castile (c. 1180–1246)

Kingdom of Castile (r. 1217–46)

Alfonso IX, king of León

Sancha (c. 1191–1243) and Dulce (c. 1194– 1248) of León

Kingdom of León (claim. 1230)

N/A

Constance II of Sicily (c. 1249–1305)

Kingdom of Sicily (claim. 1268/r. 1282–1305)

Peter III, king of Aragon

Juana I of Navarre (1273–1305)

Kingdom of Navarre (r. 1274–1305)

Philip IV, king of France

Margaret of Norway (1283–90)

Kingdom of Scotland (r. 1286–90)

N/A

Juana II of Navarre (1312–49)

Kingdom of Navarre (claim. 1316/r. 1328–49)

Philip, count of Évreux

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Kingdom of France (claim. 1316–28) Teresa, countess of Portugal (c. 1080–1130)

County/kingdom of Portugal (claim. 1117–30)

Henry of Burgundy

Before examining each heiress in turn, it is worth noting the circumstances which enabled women to ascend a throne within the patriarchal society of medieval Latin Christendom.5 A male ruler was always preferred, but in default of a male heir, both legal (law, custom, and precedent) and situational factors could help, or hinder, an heiress’ claim to the throne.6 In the case of this essay’s ‘first generation’ of royal heiresses, it is the situational factors that are of particular interest, as in the twelfth 5

This study is concerned with royal heiresses, though it should be noted that the study of queenship and the exercise of female power goes hand and hand with the study of noblewomen. A comparison between royal and aristocratic heiresses is beyond the scope of the present article, but such a comparison can unveil important similarities and differences. Jessica Koch’s doctoral thesis on royal heiresses makes comparisons with aristocratic heiresses, and suggests that royal heiresses ‘faced different obstacles to their rule than their aristocratic counterparts and that, because of their royal status, they were able to overcome complications that aristocratic heiresses could not’; Jessica Koch, ‘A Comparative Study of Urraca of León-Castile (d.1126), Melisende of Jerusalem (d.1161), and Empress Matilda of England (d.1167) as Royal Heiresses’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Cambridge University 2018, at ii. 6 Elena Woodacre, ‘Obstacles and Opportunities for Female Power and Sovereignty’, in Geschlecht macht Herrschaft. Interdisziplinäre Studien zu vormoderner Macht und Herrschaft, ed. Andrea Stieldorf et al., Bonn 2021, 319–39 and The Queens Regnant of Navarre: Succession, Politics, and Partnership, 1274–1512, Basingstoke 2013, 23–4.

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century royal succession and inheritance laws were still fluid and more susceptible to being affected by situational factors.7 The terminology of queenship also deserves attention. A woman most commonly became queen by marrying the king. But what about those women who claimed the title of queen in their own right? Such queens are qualified as queens regnant: women who ‘governed in their own right [… and …] exercised “kingly power” or “regal power”’.8 Unlike a queen consort, who exercised royal power delegated to her from her spouse, a regnant exercised royal power she inherited from her father (or royal predecessor). Yet not all royal heiresses who ascended the throne or exercised independent royal power can be considered a queen regnant. In fact, of the four women examined here, only Urraca and Melisende were inaugurated rulers, and only Urraca exercised power as sole ruler.9 Matilda undoubtedly exercised royal power, but she did not do so as a legitimately crowned ruler. And while Petronila claimed her title ‘queen of Aragon’ by hereditary right, she does not appear to have exercised much royal authority – certainly not in the manner of her three contemporaries. Therefore, given that ‘queen regnant’ is not an effective catch-all, I propose the term ‘proprietary queen’ to identify all queens who claimed their title by hereditary, rather than marital, right – including queens regnant.10

7

Indeed, situational factors could override legal factors even when these were well established: Juana II of Navarre’s claim to Navarre was disregarded by her uncles in both 1316 and 1322, despite the fact that the Fueros of Navarre declared that the child of the previous king, whether male or female, was preferred over said king’s siblings, even if they were male. And while the Navarrese protested this double usurpation, Juana II was not offered the throne until after her uncle Charles’s death in 1328. For more on Juana’s claims to France and Navarre, see Woodacre, Queens Regnant, 51–75. See also Craig Taylor, ‘The Salic Law, French Queenship, and the Defense of Women in the Late Middle Ages’, French Historical Studies 29(4), 2006, 543–64; Eliane Viennot, ‘L’invention de la loi salique et ses repercussions sur la scene politique de la Renaissance’, in Le genre face aux mutations. Masculin et féminin du Moyen Âge à nos jours, ed. Luc Capdevila, Sophie Cassagnes, Martine Cocaud, Dominique Godineau, François Rouquet and Jacqueline Sainclivier, Rennes 2003, 181–90, and La France, les femmes et le pouvoir, vol. 1: L’invention de la loi salique (V–XVIe siècle), Paris 2006. 8 Theresa Earenfight, ‘Without the Persona of the Prince: Kings, Queens and the Idea of Monarchy in Late Medieval Europe’, Gender & History 19(1), 2007, 1–21, at 1. 9 I have refrained from using the term ‘crowned’ ruler here as Christian Iberian rulers rarely practised coronation and anointing rituals in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Castilian and Leonese kings, who had practised both rituals in isolation, introduced the practice of self-coronation in the fourteenth century. In Aragon, the joint ritual of unction and coronation was introduced in 1204. Navarrese kings were elevated through ritual acclamation and the act of physically being elevated on shields. Contemporary sources are silent on enthronement rituals in Portugal, but it is possible coronation and unction rituals were practised in isolation, like in Castile and LeÓn. Oaths, from the king to his kingdom and from the kingdom to the king, played an important role throughout the Peninsula. Nuria Silleras Fernández, ‘Creada a su imagen y semejanza: la coronación de la Reina de Aragón según las Ordenaciones de Pedro el Ceremonioso’, Lusitania Sacra 31, 2015, 107–25; Jaume Aurell, ‘The Self-Coronations of Iberian Kings: A Crooked Line’, Imago Temporis, Medium Aevum 8, 2014, 151–76; Carmen Orcástegui Gros, ‘La coronación de los reyes de Aragón. Evolución político-ideológica y ritual’, in Homenaje a Don Antonio Durán Gudiol, Zaragoza 1995, 633–47; José Manuel Nieto Soria, Fundamentos ideológicos del poder real en Castilla (siglos XIII–XVI), Madrid 1988. 10 In Spanish, a queen regnant is known as a ‘reina titular’ and a ‘reina proprietaria’, that



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Sources show that contemporaries similarly struggled with terminology and how best to describe or address a proprietary queen. This is because secular power was primarily considered in masculine terms, with the act of ruling requiring ‘active, vigorous, and “masculine” virtues’ such as strength, steadfastness, and wisdom.11 Thus, medieval commentators often used highly gendered language to urge or praise the actions of women in positions of power.12 Bernard, abbot of Clairvaux, does just this in a letter to Melisende of Jerusalem following the death of her husband, within which he urges her to ‘act as a man by doing everything you have to do “in a spirit prudent and strong.” … so that all may judge you from your actions to be a king rather than a queen’.13 The conception of secular rule in masculine terms was similarly held by women themselves: both Urraca and Matilda appear to have deliberately presented themselves as ‘kings’ rather than as ‘queens’. In a charter to Archbishop Gelmírez of Santiago, Urraca promised to be his ‘faithful lady and friend, as a good king to his good archbishop’.14 Furthermore, Urraca appears to have used ambiguous titles in her coinage: one of her coin types, minted in Toledo, bears the inscription ‘URACA RE’, possibly leaving ‘RE’ deliberately open to interpretation as either rex or regina.15 Matilda appears to have gone a step further and minted a series of coins known to historians as the ‘rex Matilda’ type coins, each bearing one of two inscriptions, ‘REX AN’ (Rex An[glorum]) and ‘IM : REX : AN’ (I[mperatrix] M[atilda] Rex An[glorum]);16 there is certainly nothing ambiguous about the use of ‘rex’ here. In using male titles, Urraca, Melisende, and Matilda were not alone.17 It is nonetheless important to note that power in the Middle Ages was

is a queen who has been named to occupy the throne, which belongs to her by proprietary right. These seem to me much more apt terms for the queens of this study, as they highlight a queen’s hereditary claim without tying said claim to the exercise of royal power. However, because in English a ‘titular’ monarch is a monarch who possesses few actual powers, I have opted for identifying the women of this study as ‘proprietary queens’. 11 Lois L. Huneycutt, ‘Female Succession and the Language of Power in the Writings of Twelfth-Century Churchmen’, in Medieval Queenship, ed. John Carmi Parsons, New York 1993, 1998, 189–201, at 200. 12 Medieval commentators also used gendered language to censor or condemn the actions of such women; Huneycutt, ‘Female Succession’, 200. 13 Translation is Huneycutt’s, ‘Female Succession’, 199. 14 Therese Martin, Queen as King. Politics and Architectural Propaganda in Twelfth-Century Spain, Leiden 2006, 178, citing text originally published in Irene Ruiz Albi, La reina doña Urraca (1109-1126): Cancillería y colección diplomática, San Isidoro 2003, 552–3. 15 Martin, Queen as King, 177–8; see also F. Alvarez Burgos, Catálogo de la moneda medieval castellano-leonesa, siglos XI–XV, Madrid 1998, 16–21. For more on Urraca’s coins, see Manuel Mozo Monroy, ‘Las más raras labras de Doña Urraca: acuñaciones de Correinado (1117–1126)’, Gaceta numismatica 191, 2016, 63–80 and Antonio Roman Valdés, ‘Notas sobre las acuñaciones medievales leonesas: primeros escritos conocidos y las emisiones de Doña Urraca’, Revista Numismática OMNI 10, 2016, 56–73. 16 Johanne Porter, ‘A New Coin Type of the Empress Matilda?: the “Rex Matilda Cross Moline Type”’, British Numismatic Journal 89 (2019) and Stephen Church, ‘Succession and Interregnum in the English Polity: The Case of 1141’, HSJ 29, 2017, 181–200. 17 Beatrice of Lorraine (c.1020–76) and her daughter Matilda of Tuscany (c.1046–1115) both used the title of, and were addressed as, duke of Tuscany. For a joint letter from Beatrice and Matilda, see Die Urkunden und Briefe der Markgräfin Mathilde von Tuszien, ed. Elke Goez and Werner Goez, Hanover 1998, 78–9, doc. 18. See also Penelope Nash, Empress Adelheid

Fig. 1  Urraca of León: the Jiménez Dynasty (León).



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not solely considered in masculine terms: rulers were equally urged to develop those more ‘feminine’ virtues, such as prudence, wisdom, patience, and compassion – and a successful ruler knew to make use of both ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ virtues.18 Urraca of León-Castile Born circa 1079/80, Urraca of León-Castile was the eldest legitimate child of Alfonso VI of León-Castile (c. 1040–1109), born to his second wife Constance of Burgundy (1048–93).19 Alfonso fathered five other children: two legitimate daughters, Sancha (c. 1102–25) and Elvira (c. 1103–35) with his fourth (or possibly fifth) wife Isabella (d. 1106/07), and three illegitimate children, daughters Elvira (c. 1079–c. 1157) and Teresa (c. 1080–1130) with the Leonese noblewoman Jimena Muñoz, and his only son, Sancho Alfónsez (c. 1093/5–1108) with the Muslim princess Zaida (c. 1070–c. 1107).20 Urraca was Alfonso VI’s sole legitimate child until 1102, and eldest legitimate child thereafter. She married Raymond of Burgundy (c. 1070–1107) sometime before or in 1090, and they were granted the lordship of the kingdom of Galicia.21

and Countess Matilda: Medieval Female Rulership and the Foundations of European Society, New York 2017, 179–85. 18 Huneycutt, ‘Female Succession’, 200–1. 19 What follows is an overview of Urraca’s life and reign. For more detailed studies, see Martin, Queen as King, ed. María del Carmen Pallares Méndez and Ermelindo Portela Silva, La reina Urraca, Donostia 2006; Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castile Under Queen Urraca, 1109–1126, Princeton, NJ 1982. Two Spanish-language studies of Urraca have been recently published: José María Manuel García-Osuna y Rodríguez, Urraca I de León: primera reina y emperatriz de Europa, León 2020 and Angel Gordo Molina and Diego Melo Carrasco, La reina Urraca I (1109–1126): la prática del concepto de “imperium legionense” en la primera mitad del siglo XII, Gijón 2018; however, Pallares and Portela’s monograph remains the preeminent study on Urraca within Spanish historiography. Elements of Urraca’s reign and life have been subject to academic study since the nineteenth century, particularly within Spain. She remains a relatively unknown queen outside of the Peninsula, though Reilly’s 1982 study did much to bring her to the attention of scholars within the Anglophone world; it remains authoritative, within both Spanish and English historiography. Urraca’s surviving documentary collection has also been subject to study, including Ruiz Albi, La reina Doña Urraca; Manuel Recuero Astray, María Angeles Rodriguez Prieto, and Paz Romero Portilla (eds), Documentos medievales del reino de Galicia: Doña Urraca (1095–1126), A Coruña 2002; Cristina Monterde Albiac, ed., Diplomatario de la reina Urraca de Castilla y León (1109–1126), Zaragoza 1996. For more on Alfonso, see Bernard F. Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065–1109, Princeton, NJ 1988. 20 Alfonso’s many marriages and wives have been the subject of various studies over the decades; see Teresa Martiala Sacristán y Fernando Suárez Bilbao, ‘Infantas y reinas en la corte de Alfonso VI’, in Alfonso VI: Imperator totius Hispanie, ed. Fernando Suárez Bilbao and Andrés Gambra Gutiérrez, Madrid 2010, 129–203; Georges Martin, “Hilando un reinado. Alfonso VI y las mujeres”, e-Spania 10, 2010; Julio Pérez Llamazares, ‘Zaida’, Hidalgo 9, 1955, 273–80. 21 There is no definitive record of Urraca and Raymond’s marriage. Instead, we must rely on Alfonso VI’s surviving documents: reference to Raymond’s status as Alfonso’s son-in-law and Urraca’s status as Raymond’s wife appear for the first time in documents issued in 1190; see Andrés Gambra Gutiérrez, Alfonso VI, doc. 104 and doc. 108. See also Ángel Gordo

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Together, they were at various times perceived to be Alfonso’s likely successors to the kingdom of León-Castile, with the expectation that Raymond would exercise royal power in right of his wife.22 The birth of Sancho Alfónsez, though illegitimate, was cause for some concern for the couple, more so over the next decade as it became increasingly clear that Alfonso was unlikely to have a legitimate male heir to leave his kingdom to. Raymond and Urraca’s unease was not unfounded: Alfonso appears to have formally recognized Sancho as his son in 1103.23 While Alfonso did not simultaneously designate Sancho his heir in 1103, Sancho’s formal recognition was perceived as a first step towards such a decision. That Raymond perceived Sancho Alfónsez as a threat to his chances of ruling the kingdom of León-Castile is evident in the existence of an enigmatic document known as the pact of succession.24 As it survives, the text is a brief note to Abbot Hugh of Cluny which includes a copy of oaths which Raymond and his cousin Henry of Burgundy (c. 1066–1112) had mutually sworn ‘as Hugh has bid them’.25 Each man swears to faithfully support the other: Henry will help Raymond obtain the kingdom of León-Castile, and in exchange, once on the throne, Raymond will grant him Galicia. Historians have long debated when exactly the pact was agreed, with dates ranging from 1095 to 1107.26 Bernard Reilly has argued that it must be dated

Molina, ‘La infanta Urraca y Raimundo de Borgoña, condes de Galicia’, Revista de Humanidades 37, 2018, 243–59. 22 Urraca and Raymond’s status as Alfonso VI’s successors is largely determined by their ever-increasing presence, from 1193, within Alfonso’s diplomas and chancery documents, often appearing immediately after the king himself; Julia Montenegro, ‘La crisis sucesoria en las postrimerías del reinado de Alfonso VI de León y Castilla: el Partido Borgoñón’, Estudios de Historia de España xii, 2010, 369–88, at 374, citing Andrés Gambra, Alfonso VI: cancellería, curia e imperio, 2 vols, San Isidoro 1997, vol. 2, 316–17, doc. 123 and 362–4, doc. 141. See also Reilly, Alfonso VI, 240 and 247–52. 23 There is no official record of Sancho Alfónsez’s formal recognition as Alfonso’s son, but his sudden appearance within chancery documents from 1103 suggests such recognition; Montenegro, ‘La crisis sucesoria’, 377–8. 24 The original manuscript document has not survived, rather it comes to us through a seventeenth-century edition made by Lucas d’Archery, see Specilegium sive collection veterum aliquot scriptorium qui en Galliae bibliothecis delituerant, III, Paris 1675, 122. Ruiz Albi provides further details and a translation of the text in ‘Cancillería y documentos de Raimundo de Borgoña y la infanta Urraca’, in Fernández y Gambra, Alfonso VI, 205–41. See also Pierre David, ‘Le pacte successoral entre Raymond de Galice et Henri de Portugal’, Bulletin hispanique 50, 1948, 275–90 and Charles Julian Bishko, ‘Count Henrique de Portugal, Cluny, and the Antecedents of the Pacto Sucessório’, Revista Portuguese de História 13, 1971, 155–88. 25 Reilly, Alfonso, 251. 26 Reilly notes that this range of dates is assigned by the document’s most recent editor, Rui de Azeviedo; Reilly, Alfonso, 250. Montenegro, who dates the document to 1103, notes that two of its editors, Lucas d’Achery and J. Saenz de Aguirre assigned it the ‘impossible’ date of 1093; Montenegro, ‘La crisis sucesoria’, 376, footnote 16. In her translation of the document, Ruiz Albi tentatively dates it to 1105, but does not offer an explanation as to why; Ruiz Albi, ‘Cancillería y documentos’, 238, doc. 22. Vicente Ángel Álvarez Palenzuela similarly dates the document to 1105, connecting it to the birth of Alfonso Raimúndez; Vicente Ángel Álvarez Palenzuela, ‘Las cuestiones eclesiásticas y su influencia en la política de Alfonso VI’, in Fernández and Gambra, Alfonso VI, 303–20, at 313–14. Charles Julian Bishko argues that the document itself was produced between 14 May and 22 September 1105, though believes the



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between December 1094 and July 1095, and sees Alfonso’s decision to marry Henry of Burgundy to his illegitimate daughter Teresa and to grant them the county of Portugal as the king’s attempt to divide the Burgundian cousins and counter the threat they posed.27 More recently, Julia Montenegro has argued that the pact should be dated to 1103, following Sancho Alfónsez’s formal recognition as Alfonso VI’s son, stating that it was only at this point that the potentially conflictive situation which arose from his birth in 1093/5 gave way to a true succession crisis.28 Montenegro goes on to argue that the disappearance of a number of magnates from documents in the aftermath of 1103 could suggest there was a degree of support for Raymond among the nobility, noting it likely had more to do with opposition to the nomination of a young child as heir and the potentially dangerous consequences this could have for the kingdom, which faced a growing Almoravid threat. In 1103, Sancho Alfónsez would have been no more than ten years old, while Alfonso was over sixty.29 If we accept this dating, the possibility that there was not only support, but preference, for Raymond of Burgundy over Sancho Alfónsez among the magnates is relevant when considering contemporary perceptions of Urraca as a member of the royal family and potential head of the dynasty. While all parties involved likely expected Raymond to exercise royal power, they would similarly agree he could only claim to do so by right of his marriage to Alfonso’s eldest legitimate child. This suggests that, at least prior to Sancho Alfónsez’s formal designation as heir to the throne, magnates perceived the eldest legitimate daughter of the king to have just as much a claim – if not more – as head of the dynasty as the illegitimate (albeit recognized) son of the king. A number of significant events took place between Sancho Alfónsez’s recognition as Alfonso’s son and Urraca’s accession to the Leonese-Castilian throne. First, in April or May 1107, Sancho was formally recognized by the realm as Alfonso’s heir, thus displacing Raymond and Urraca as potential successors.30 Just months later, in September 1107, Raymond of Burgundy died, leaving Urraca a widowed mother of two at the age of twenty-seven. Notably, following Raymond’s death, Alfonso confirmed Urraca as the ruler of Galicia, which would only pass to her son, the infant Alfonso Raimúndez (1105–57), at her death or remarriage.31 The most consequential event, however, was the death of Sancho Alfónsez on

intentions behind it were discussed as early as late 1104; Bishko, ‘Count Henrique de Portugal’, 188. Pierre David dates the document between 1105 and 1107; David, ‘Le pacte successoral’, 290. 27 Reilly, Alfonso, 251–4. 28 Montenegro’s dating is in line with that of most Spanish and Portuguese historians, the majority of whom date the pact to the final years of Alfonso’s reign. See above, note 26. 29 Montenegro, ‘La crisis sucesoria’, 377–80. Reilly, on the other hand, notes that the pact failed to secure wide support; Reilly, Alfonso, 328. 30 Sancho Alfónsez confirmed a charter on 14 May 1107 as ‘made king-elect by his father’; Reilly, Alfonso, 325 and 340. There is some debate over whether Alfonso did or did not marry Sancho Alfónsez’s mother, Zaida, so as to legitimize their son and ensure his acceptance as heir. See Andrés Gambra Gutiérrez, ‘¿Fue Zaida la cuarta esposa de Alfonso VI?’, in Homenaje al profesor José Antonio Escudero, 2 vols, Madrid 2012, 1098–1098. 31 The Historia Compostelana, a contemporary chronicle which focuses on the deeds of Diego Gelmírez, first archbishop of Compostela and is concerned with establishing Alfonso Raimúndez’s (the future Alfonso VII) right to rule in Galicia, states that following Raymond of Burgundy’s death, Alfonso VI granted his grandson ‘the unconditional right to inherit the rule of the province of Galicia’, thus indirectly confirming that Urraca had become the province’s ruler. This is evident in her charters issued in the aftermath of Raymond’s death; Reilly, Alfonso VI,

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29 May 1108 at the Battle of Uclés, which suddenly left the kingdom without an adult male heir to the throne. The battle, fought between Leonese-Castilian Christian forces, led by Sancho Alfónsez, and Almoravid forces, led by Tamin ibn-Yusuf, governor of Granada, was part of the Almoravid’s ongoing offensive to retake Toledo – which they had lost to Alfonso VI in 1085.32 The defeat at Uclés provoked an immediate (and enduring) military crisis: the battle cost Alfonso and his kingdom not only its designated heir, but also seven of the realm’s magnates, men who were lords along the kingdom’s ever-changing eastern and southern frontiers.33 The defeat also provoked a political crisis. With Sancho Alfónsez’s death, three possible heirs remained: Urraca, the king’s eldest legitimate child but a woman; Alfonso Raimúndez, Urraca’s son, the king’s grandson and only legitimate male descendent but a child of about three; and Henry, count of Portugal, the king’s son-in-law and the senior male member of the royal family but whose claim was undeniably tarnished by his wife’s illegitimate status.34 Alfonso eventually proclaimed Urraca his heir, though he did not do so until May 1109, a whole year after the death of Sancho Alfónsez.35 However, he appears to have begun negotiations for her second marriage, to Alfonso I, king of Aragon and Navarre (c. 1074–1134), in the autumn of 1108.36 In León-Castile, designation as heir was an

342–3. See also Ermelindo Portela Silva, Diego Gelmírez (c.1065–1140): el báculo y la ballista, Madrid 2016 and Emma Falque Rey (ed.), Historia Compostellana, Turnhout 1988. 32 For a detailed account of the battle, see Reilly, Alfonso VI, 348–50. See also John E. Slaughter, ‘De nuevo sobre la batalla de Uclés’, Anuario de estudios medievales 9, 1974/79, 393–404; Ambrosio Huici Miranca, ‘La batalla de Uclés y la muerte del Infante Don Sancho’, Tamuda: revista de investigaciones marroquíes 2, 1954, 259–88. 33 For more on both the military and political crisis provoked by this defeat, see Reilly, Alfonso VI, 352–6. 34 Despite Teresa’s illegitimate status, her and her husband occupied a prominent position at Alfonso VI’s court. Following Alfonso’s death, the couple had ambitions not only to retain independent rule over their county of Portugal but also to rule the kingdom León-Castile themselves. Following Henry’s death, Teresa retained control over Portugal, eventually proclaiming herself as queen of Portugal – though their son Afonso Henriques is generally regarded as the first reigning monarch of an independent Portugal; Miriam Shadis, ‘Unexceptional Women: Power, Authority, and Queenship in Early Portugal’, in Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100-1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate, ed. Heather Tanner, Cham 2019, 247–70; Maria Rosario Ferreira, ‘Urraca e Teresa: O Paradigma Perdido’, in In marsupiis peregrinorum. Circulación de textos e imaxes arredor do Camiño de Santiago na Idade Media, ed. Esther Corral, Florence 2010, 201–14; Gregoria Cavero Domínguez, ‘Teresa Alfonso, infata y reina de Portugal, a través de la historiografía y las crónicas Castellanoleonesas de su época’, in Fundamentos medievales de los particularismos hispánicos: IX Congreso de Estudios Medievales, León 2005, 411–26. 35 Urraca was proclaimed Alfonso VI’s heir in Toledo, in the presence of ‘almost all of the nobles and counts of Spain’, according to the author of Las crónicas anónimas de Sahagún, who claims that he witnessed the event; Reilly, Alfonso, 362. No documentary evidence for her designation as heir survives, in the manner it does for Sancho Alfónsez. 36 Reilly, Urraca, 52. Rebecca Andrés Laso has noted that existing historiography emphasizes that Alfonso VI chose Alfonso I so as to unite the peninsular Christian kingdoms, but argues that the foremost problem that the marriage sought to resolved was in fact that of the Almoravids, while also noting that the marriage would further distance the crown from Leonese-Castilian nobility and that Alfonso VI likely appreciated that Alfonso I was more



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important factor in determining succession to the throne; for Alfonso, it ensured that his (previously illegitimate) son and later his daughter were accepted as his successors. Designation also allowed rulers such as Alfonso VI’s father, Fernando I of León (c. 1015–65), to associate his multiple sons with the multiple kingdoms under his control; thus, his eldest son, Sancho II (1036/8–72), would succeed his father in Castilla, his second son, Alfonso VI, would succeed in León, and his youngest, García II (1041/3–90), would succeed in Galicia.37 Urraca’s son Alfonso VII similarly designated his son eldest son Sancho (1134–58) as his successor in Castile, and his second son Fernando (1137–88) as his successor in León.38 A husband seems to have been a key prerequisite for the magnates of a realm to accept a female heir to the throne, with the expectation that he would rule in right of his wife, or at the very least perform those male duties associated with kingship that a woman could not so readily perform.39 Chief among the duties it was believed a queen could not readily perform was physically leading her army into battle, though Urraca’s own participation in warfare throughout her reign suggests that the opposition to women’s participation in warfare was more theoretical than practical.40 Precisely because of the expectation that an heiress’ husband would rule, his selection could prove extremely divisive. This was the case regarding Alfonso VI’s selection of Alfonso I as Urraca’s husband. While the Leonese king, with the support of his advisors, saw Alfonso I as a much needed experienced military leader whose presence would also counterbalance court factions, and also saw a union with one of

dangerous as a neighbour than as a ruler within the kingdom; Rebeca Andrés Laso, ‘El matrimonio de Urraca I de León-Castilla con Alfonso I de Aragón y Pamplona. La carta de arras premonitoria del fracaso conyugal’, Intus-Legere: Historia 2(1), 2008, 25–42, at 28–9. 37 Designation, however, did not guarantee that the successor would retain their control over their kingdom. Following Fernando I’s death, his sons soon turned on each other. Sancho II was the first to successfully reunite all three of his father’s kingdoms in 1072, though his murder that same year saw Alfonso VI succeed to all three kingdoms; Reilly, Alfonso, 14–24. It must be further noted that female succession in Castile and León was only fully regulated and fixed with Alfonso X’s Siete Partidas. With regards to later female succession within Castile and León, Miriam Shadis has noted how later kings ‘had the great men and clerics of the realm, as well as representatives of the towns, swear fealty to their daughters in the Cortes’, and that, for good measure, ‘they confirmed their daughter’s positions in their documentary practices’; Miriam Shadis, ‘Women, Gender, and Rulership in Romance Europe: the Iberian Case’, History Compass 4(3), 2006, 481–7, at 482. 38 Miriam Shadis, Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages, New York 2009, 2. 39 Koch, ‘A Comparative Study’, 22–9, 62–3 and 85–100. 40 For more on Urraca’s military role and participation, see Martin, Queen as King, 188–91 and Charles Garcia, ‘Le pouvoir d’une reine: l’image d’Urraque Ire (1109–1123) dans les Crónicas anónimas de Sahagún’, e-Spania 1, 2006; for the role and participation of medieval Iberian queens more broadly, Yolanda Guerrero Navarrete, ‘Las mujeres y la Guerra en la edad media: mitos y realidades’, Journal of Feminist, Gender and Women Studies 3, 2016, 3–10 and Reyna Pastor de Togneri, ‘Mujeres y la Guerra feudal: Reinas, señoras y villanas. León, Galicia, Castilla (siglos XII y XIII)’, in Las mujeres y las guerras. El papel de las mujeres en la guerras de la Edad Antigua a la Contemporánea, ed. M. Nash and S. Tavera, Barcelona 2003, 52–72. On medieval women and war more broadly, see Sophie Harwood, Medieval Women and War: Female Roles in the Old French Tradition, London 2020; and Helen Nicholson, ‘Women on the Third Crusade’, JMH 23(4), 1997, 335–49.

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the kingdom’s long-standing enemies as a diplomatic victory, his magnates largely opposed the match.41 Part of this opposition was due to the fact that Urraca and Alfonso I were related within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, but mostly it was due to widespread outrage and anxiety over the likely displacement of Alfonso Raimúndez, Urraca’s son by her first husband, from the line of succession should Urraca and Alfonso I have any sons.42 Alfonso VI of León-Castile died less than two months after proclaiming Urraca his heir, and before her marriage to Alfonso I of Aragon had taken place. Despite ongoing opposition, Urraca proceeded with the marriage negotiations though, significantly, she was recognized as queen and ruler of León-Castile before the marriage took place.43 Married in October 1109, the couple had separated by May 1110 and, despite several reconciliations, the marriage was annulled by 1113.44 While the match had been particularly advantageous for Alfonso I, for Urraca it had meant a loss of authority.45 Once the marriage was annulled, Urraca recovered her authority, retaining and exercising sole rulership over her kingdom until her death in 1126.46 Urraca’s reign was not without conflict. Indeed, she faced a number of challenges throughout her reign: from her magnates, from her brother-in-law, Henry count of Portugal, and from her sister, Teresa, following Henry’s death in 1112.47 But these challenges were not too different from those faced by her father and, ultimately, had less to do with her gender than they did with her position as ruler. Urraca clearly

41

In their opposition, magnates and prelates sought to advance one of their own, count Gomez González, as their choice for Urraca’s husband, though to no avail; Reilly, Urraca, 52–5 and Alfonso VI, 357–8. Andrés Laso notes that opposition to the marriage was solely among Leone-Castilian nobles, as the marriage was much more beneficial for Alfonso I than for Urraca, allowing him to access the Leonese imperial title; Andrés Laso, ‘El matrimonio de Urraca’, 33. See also Pallares and Portela, Urraca, 61–9. 42 The marriage agreement negotiated between Urraca and Alfonso later that year stipulated than any children they might have would inherit both kingdoms, displacing Alfonso Raimúndez from the Leonese line of succession; Reilly, Urraca, 63–4. The marriage contract survives as two documents: Alfonso I’s carta de arras, and Urraca’s carta de donación, which sought to clarify the bases upon which each ruler’s power rested; Andrés Laso, ‘El matrimonio de Urraca’, 25–42. See also Ángel Gordo Molina, ‘“Vos me teneatis ad honorem sicuti bonus vir debet tenere suam bonam uxorem.” Urraca I de León y Castilla (1109–1126) y Alfonso I de Aragón y Pamplona (c1063/73–1134). Pacto matrimonial, violencia, abandono y legitimidad de reina heredera y proprietaria’, Intus-Legere: Historia 11(1), 2017, 5–20; and José María Ramon y Loscertales, ‘La sucesión del rey Alfonso VI’, Anuario de Historia del Derecho Español 13, 1936–41, 36–99. 43 On 22 July 1109, Urraca confirmed a privilege of the church of León, and her intitulatio reads ‘Urraca, by the will of God (dei nutu) queen of all Spain’; Reilly, Urraca, 56–7. 44 The marriage’s failure led to almost immediate and ongoing conflict between the two kingdoms; Reilly, Urraca, 87–118. 45 The imbalance of power between the spouses is evident through Alfonso I’s regular use of the title of imperator, which he continued to use until 1117. See above, note 41. For more on the title imperator hispaniae, see Hélène Sirantoine, Imperator Hispaniae. Les ideologies imperials dans le royaume de León (IXe–XIIe siècles), Madrid 2012. 46 Urraca had a long-lasting relationship with count Pedro González de Lara (d. 1130), with who she had two children, though she appears to have deliberately chosen to remain unmarried and retain royal power and authority in her own hands; Martin, Queen as King, 7. 47 Andrés Laso, ‘El matrimonio de Urraca’, 27.



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exercised sole rulership within her kingdom, and she understood her position as that of a king – as seen in the previously mentioned 1121 charter in which she promised the Archbishop Gelmírez of Santiago that she would be to him ‘a faithful lady and friend, as a good king to his good archbishop’. That Urraca retained sole rulership until her death is particularly important when considering she had a son. Alfonso Raimúndez himself does not seem to have directly and openly challenged Urraca for power, though he was certainly a rallying point for those who opposed Urraca’s rule, particularly within Galicia.48 In 1116, Urraca sought to counter this threat by granting Alfonso the titular rule of the Trans-Duero and Toledo and placing him under the tutorship of her ally the Archbishop Bernard of Toledo. That Urraca retained control over her realm until her death makes clear that – her son’s presence notwithstanding – she remained the accepted head of her dynasty. Whether this would have remained the status quo as Alfonso Raimúndez matured cannot be known. In the aftermath of his accession to the throne, however, Alfonso VII engaged in a sustained effort to remove his mother’s reign from the annals of history.49 The effects of this damnatio memoriae persisted for centuries and have only recently been subject to closer examination.50 As a result of this re-examination, Urraca has been restored to her rightful position as ruler of León-Castile, rather than simply a lynchpin between the reigns of Alfonso VI and Alfonso VII. Melisende of Jerusalem Born circa 1105/09, Melisende was the eldest daughter of Baldwin II of Jerusalem (c. 1075–1131) and his wife, the Armenian princess Morphia of Melitene (d. 1126/7), though at the time of her birth her parents were the count and countess of Edessa.51 48

Chief among Alfonso Raimúndez’s champions was bishop (and later archbishop) Gelmírez (c. 1069–c.1140), who acted as young Alfonso’s tutor until 1117. In 1111 Gelmírez had in fact crowned Alfonso Raimúndez, aged just five at the time, as king of Galicia (one of the very rare examples of pre-thirteenth century Iberian coronations), so as to set him up in opposition to his mother, then in León. In 1116, Urraca succeeded in removing Alfonso Raimúndez from Gelmírez’s control and placed him in Toledo, in the care of her staunch ally the Archbishop of Toledo; Martin, Queen as King, 10 and 110–11. For more on Urraca and Gelmírez’s relationship, see María Carmen Pallares and Ermelindo Portela, ‘La reina Urraca y el obispo Gelmírez. Nabot contra Jezabel’, in Os Reinos Ibéricos na Idade Média. Livro de Homenagem ao Professor Doutor Humberto Carlos Baquero Moreno, vol. 2, ed. Luis Adão da Fonseca, Luis Carlos Amaral, Maria Fernando Ferreira Santos, Porto 2003, 957–62. As we shall see below, Melisende of Jerusalem was challenged by her son Baldwin III, with whom she shared co-rulership of Jerusalem, for sole rulership. Despite enjoying widespread support, Baldwin eventually defeated her, and Melisende withdrew from active political participation, though she retained political influence within her son’s court. 49 Ana Rodriguez, ‘De olvido y memoria. Cómo recordar a las mujeres poderosas en Castilla y León en los siglos XII y XIII’, Arenal: revista de historia de mujeres, 2018, 274 and 278 and Pallares and Portela, Urraca, 11–12. 50 Janna Bianchini, ‘A Mirror for a Queen? Constructions of Queenship in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century León-Castile’, JMH 45(4), 2019, 432–56; Ángel Gordo Molina and Diego Melo Carrasco, ‘El mito que hace historia. Urraca I de León (1081–1126) en la historia compostellana (c.1107–1149)’, Historia 396, 8(2), 2018, 91–118; Ferreira, ‘Urraca e Teresa’, 201–14; Martin, Queen as King, 4–24; Reilly, Urraca, chapter 12, 352–70. 51 What follows is an overview of Melisende’s life and reign. For more detailed studies,

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When Baldwin I of Jerusalem (1060s–1118) died childless, he left his kingdom to his eldest brother Eustace III of Boulogne (c. 1050–c. 1125), stipulating that if Eustace did not come to claim the kingdom, his kinsman Baldwin of Bourcq – the future Baldwin II – should be elected king.52 According to William of Tyre, the magnates and prelates of the kingdom were divided, some arguing in favour of Baldwin’s immediate election to avoid a prolonged interregnum, others arguing that they had to wait.53 In the end, soon after the departure of an embassy to inform Eustace on his inheritance, Baldwin was consecrated king of Jerusalem.54 Melisende was, at this time, thirteen years old. Despite the fact that Morphia bore him only daughters, Baldwin does not appear to have attempted to repudiate and replace his wife.55 The throne of Jerusalem had, until that point, been ascended through a combination of hereditary claim and election: the first ruler, Godfrey of Bouillon – who had refused the title of king – had been elected

see Erin Jordan, ‘Corporate Monarchy in the Twlfth-Century Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Royal Studies Journal 6(1), 2019, 1–15; Jaroslav Folda, ‘Melisende of Jerusalem: Queen and Patron of Art and Architecture in the Crusader Kingdom’, in Reassessing the Roles of Women as Makers in Medieval Art and Architecture, ed. Therese Martin, Leiden 2012, 429–77 and ‘Images of Queen Melisende in William of Tyre’s History of Outremer: 1250–1300’, Gesta 32, 1993, 97–112; Margaret Tranovich, Melisende of Jerusalem: The World of a Forgotten Crusader Queen, London 2011; Helen A. Gaudette, ‘The Spending Power of a Crusader Queen: Melisende of Jerusalem’, in Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe, ed. Theresa Earenfight, New York 2012, 135–48; and Hans E. Mayer, ‘Studies in the History of Queen Melisende of Jerusalem’, Dumbarton Oaks 26, 1974, 95–182. Melisende has more often been studied together with the four subsequent queens regnant of Jerusalem; see Hayley Basset, ‘Regnant Queenship and Royal Marriage Between the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Nobility of Western Europe’, in A Companion to Global Queenship, ed. Elena Woodacre, Amsterdam 2018, 39–52; Alan V. Murray, ‘Women in the Royal Succession of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (1099–1291)’, in Mächtige Frauen?: Königinnen und Fürstinnen im europäischen Mittelalter (11.-14. Jahrhundert), ed. Claudia Zey, Ostfildern 2015, 131–62; Deborah Gerish, ‘Royal Daughters of Jerusalem and the Demands of Holy War’, Leidschrift Historisch Tijdschrift 27(3), 2012, 89–112; Sarah Lambert, ‘Queen or Consort: Rulership and Politics in the Latin East 1118–1228’, in Queens and Queenship in Medieval Europe: Proceedings of a Conference Held at King’s College London, April 1995, ed. Anne J. Duggan, Woodbridge 1997, 153–69; Bernard Hamilton, ‘Women in the Crusader States: The Queens of Jerusalem’, in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker, Oxford 1978, 143–74. Melisende also appears prominently in studies of the Crusader Kingdoms more broadly; see Malcolm Barber, The Crusader States, New Haven, CT 2014; Natasha R. Hodgson, Women, Crusading and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative, Woodbridge 2007; Murray, The Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A Dynastic History 1099–1125, Oxford 2000; Deborah Gerish, ‘Ancestors and Predecessors. Royal Continuity and Identity in the First Kingdom of Jerusalem’, ANS 20, 1998, 127–50; Mayer, ‘Wheel of Fortune: Signorial Vicissitudes under Kings Fulk and Baldwin III of Jerusalem’, Speculum 65, 1990, 860–77. 52 Barber, Crusader States, 117–18; Murray, Dynastic History, 120–7. See also Murray, ‘Baldwin II and his Nobles: Baronial Factionalism and Dissent in the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 38, 1994, 60–85, and ‘Dynastic Change or Dynastic Continuity? The Accession of Baldwin II and the Nobility of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’, Medieval Prosopography 13(1), 1992, 1–27. 53 Hans E. Mayer, ‘The Succession to Baldwin II of Jerusalem: English Impact on the East’, Dumbarton Oaks 39, 1985, 139–47, at 139, citing William of Tyre. 54 Murray, Dynastic History, 120–3. 55 Basset, ‘Regnant Queenship’, 39.

Fig. 2  Melisende of Jerusalem: the Rethel Dynasty.

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by a council. His death just a year later caused a brief succession crisis, though he was soon succeeded by his brother and designated heir, Baldwin of Boulogne, then count of Edessa, who was anointed and crowned as king Baldwin I, leaving the county of Edessa to Baldwin of Bourcq.56 The latter Baldwin’s election as king depended in part on his status as a kinsman of the previous two kings, though the fact that he was in the kingdom at the time of his predecessor’s death helped sway support in his favour.57 So, while no king of Jerusalem had thus far been succeeded by their own child, precedent had established that a familial connection to the previous ruler was valuable, while physical presence within the kingdom was essential.58 Baldwin II’s attempt to establish dynastic continuity was only a novelty inasmuch as he sought to do so through his child, and specifically though a daughter – Melisende. While Baldwin II did not officially recognize Melisende as heir to the kingdom until 1128, when her marriage to Fulk V of Anjou (c. 1089/92–1143) was being negotiated, she had been largely regarded as Baldwin’s successor following his accession to the throne.59 Indeed, before pursuing a marriage for his daughter, Baldwin made sure to secure the consent of his magnates to Melisende’s designation as heir, and together they settled on Fulk as the candidate to approach as her marriage partner; the embassy which set out in 1127 to secure Fulk’s assent to the match did so with the intention of securing not only a husband for Melisende but a king for Jerusalem.60 An exceedingly young kingdom, Jerusalem did not yet have an established tradition with regards to heir designation and succession.61 Melisende’s designation as her father’s heir was undoubtedly important, but of much more consequence in securing her succession was the magnates’ consent to both her designation and her marriage. Unlike the case of Urraca, for whom there is no documentary evidence of her status as her father’s heir, there is documentary evidence of Melisende’s status as heir: as negotiations for her marriage were underway, Baldwin began to associate Melisende with his royal authority, issuing documents in her presence and identi-

56

Barber, Crusader States, 61–2 and Murray, Dynastic History, 89–93. Murray, Dynastic History, 124–7. 58 Within the historiography, Baldwin I and Baldwin II are often described as cousins, though the exact relationship between the two is not so clear. Indeed, it is still somewhat unclear just how important the idea of ‘blood relation’ between rulers was to the nobles of Jerusalem or how crucial the familial connection between the two Baldwins was in determining the latter’s succession. Rather, it is the late twelfth-century chronicler William of Tyre, writing in the 1170s and 1180s, who emphasizes the centrality of family; Murray, Dynastic History, 171–5. On William of Tyre and his portrayals, see Peter W. Edbury and John G. Rowe, William of Tyre: Historian of the Latin East, Cambridge 1988, and also Andrew D. Buck, ‘William of Tyre, Femininity, and the Problem of the Antiochene Princesses’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 70(4), 2019, 731–42; Gerish, ‘Royal Daughters’. I am grateful to Simon Thomas Parsons for discussion on this. 59 Mayer, ‘English Impact’, 139–40. 60 Mayer, ‘Melisende’, 100–1 and ‘English Impact’, 141. 61 Writing on the constitutional tabula rasa of Outremer, Murray notes how ‘the early Frankish principalities lacked established political traditions and precedents’, ‘Royal Succession’, 158. Baldwin I had been recognized as Godfrey’s heir prior to their departure for the Holy Land, while Baldwin himself only designated his brother Eustace as his successor (and recommended Baldwin of Bourcq if the former refused) on his deathbed; Murray, Dynastic History, 91–2 and 118–19. 57



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fying her as ‘Melisende daughter of the king and heir to the kingdom of Jerusalem’.62 Hans E. Mayer has convincingly argued that this action was meant to assure Fulk of Melisende’s status and claim to the throne, and thus of Fulk’s own claim to royal authority in right of his future wife.63 That the selection of an heiress’ husband could prove divisive has already been noted. This, however, was not the case when it came to choosing Fulk of Anjou as Melisende’s husband. As an outsider who was also known by the aristocracy of Jerusalem, his selection ensured no single faction was advanced over another within the kingdom; even more enticing was the promise of a capable ruler who brought a large retinue of fighting men to the kingdom, which was chronically short of both men and money.64 It was only after Fulk and Melisende ascended the throne in 1131 that Fulk proved divisive with the native nobles.65 No marriage agreement between Fulk and Melisende survives, but it seems likely that Fulk anticipated that he would be given sole rulership over Jerusalem.66 On his deathbed, however, Baldwin called Fulk, Melisende, and their infant son Baldwin (1130–63) to his side and designated all three of them as co-rulers. There does not seem to be a particular incident that may have directly led to Baldwin’s decision, and historians have long debated the possible explanations.67 Nonetheless, Baldwin’s explicit designation of Melisende as co-ruler, together with her husband and son, provided her with a clear and undeniable claim to and position of royal authority within the kingdom – in her own eyes as well as those of the native nobility, as we shall see. William of Tyre tells us that, soon after Melisende and Fulk’s accession to the throne of Jerusalem, Hugh II of Le Puiset, count of Jaffa, led a revolt against Fulk.68 William describes the rebellion as stemming from familial disputes – he alludes to rumours circulating at the time regarding an improper relationship between Melisende and Hugh – but Mayer has shown that the revolt was political in nature, a reaction to Fulk’s attempt at introducing a new ‘conception of royal power’ that the nobles of the kingdom opposed, as well as promoting his Angevin men to important royal positions at the expense of the native barons.69 It is here that Baldwin II’s explicit designation of

62

Hans E. Mayer, Die Urkunden der lateinischen Könige von Jerusalem, 4 vols, Hanover 2010, vol. 1, docs 105 and 109. 63 Mayer, ‘English Impact’, 143–5 and ‘Melisende’, 143–6. 64 Fulk had undertaken a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1120, where he had maintained ‘at his expense a force of one hundred knights for a year’. Mayer, ‘English Impact’, 141. 65 Hans E. Mayer, ‘Angevins versus Normans: The New Men of King Fulk of Jerusalem’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 133, 1989, 1–25. 66 This is assumed largely from Fulk’s attempt to exclude Melisende from government in the aftermath of their accession to the throne; Jordan, ‘Corporate Monarchy’, 5–6; Murray, ‘Royal Succession’, 140–1; Mayer, ‘Melisende’, 110–11 and 146. 67 Mayer was the first to argue that Baldwin II ‘changed’ his agreement with Fulk so as to safeguard the rights of his grandson and namesake, and to protect Melisende’s status as heir, lest Fulk attempted to repudiate her while keeping the throne; Mayer, ‘Melisende’, 100–2. Bernard Hamilton disagreed with Mayer, arguing instead that Fulk and Melisende were joint-heirs from their marriage; Hamilton, ‘Queens of Jerusalem’, 149. More recently, Erin L. Jordan has taken Hamilton’s argument further, arguing that Baldwin II had, from the start, ‘recognised in corporate monarchy an ideal political configuration for the challenges presented by governing in the Latin East’, Jordan, ‘Corporate Monarchy’, 2–3. 68 Mayer, ‘Melisende’, 102, citing William of Tyre. 69 Mayer, ‘Wheel of Fortune’, 865 and ‘Melisende’, 102–13. See also Jordan, ‘Corporate

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Melisende as co-ruler was key: in excluding her from power, Fulk was perceived by the nobility as attempting to alter the succession settlement made by Baldwin, which obliged Fulk to share government with Melisende.70 Intrinsically connected was the issue of patronage: in favouring his Angevin men while also refusing Melisende a role in government, Fulk closed off access to positions of power for the native nobility.71 Thus, Melisende became a focal point of the barons’ opposition, and her acceptance as such makes it clear that she was perceived as the natural and legitimate head of the dynasty.72 Importantly, though Hugh’s revolt failed, it produced tangible change: in the aftermath of the revolt, once Melisende and Fulk were reconciled, Melisende had a clear and consistent role in the government of the realm, as demonstrated by her consistent presence within royal charters thereafter.73 In November 1143, Fulk died in a hunting accident. A month and a half later, on Christmas Day 1143, Melisende was inaugurated alongside her son Baldwin III, where the latter was anointed and consecrated and both were crowned.74 Baldwin III was just thirteen at the time, and Melisende assumed full control of the realm, exercising sole rulership throughout the 1140s.75 The power dynamics between mother and son have been subject to debate over the years: earlier scholarship tended to see Melisende’s position in the 1140s as that of regent and placeholder until Baldwin reached his majority – and therefore saw her refusal to hand over power once he did as an usurpation, a desperate attempt to cling to power.76 Recent scholarship more readily acknowledges Melisende as a ruler in her own right, recognizing that as a designated co-ruler she had just as much claim to legitimate rule over the kingdom as Baldwin III, as well as a proven track record of effective rulership.77

Monarchy’, 6–8 and Murray, ‘Baldwin II’, 79–85. 70 Murray, ‘Baldwin II’, 80. 71 Presenting the revolt as an issue of patronage, Mayer agues that the revolt had less to do with preserving Melisende’s position as co-ruler than it did with opposing Fulk’s deliberate attempt to upset the previous distribution of power within the kingdom, and that the barons merely championed Melisende’s cause so as to ‘cover their own class interests by a veneer of legality’; Mayer, ‘Angevins versus Normans’, 3–4. The two causes, however, need not be mutually exclusive. Indeed, Mayer himself later notes that Melisende and the barons’ fate ‘were inseparably linked’. 72 In discussing the dynastic element of the revolt, Murray argues that it was, in part, aimed at ‘safeguarding the rights of the dynasty’, and that Hugh’s leading role in the revolt was due to his status as Melisende’s cousin and his position as senior male guardian of the rights of the Rethel dynasty; Murray, ‘Baldwin II’, 81–1. Notably, Melisende’s sister Alice of Antioch also acted as a focal point for local baronial opposition to Fulk; see Thomas Asbridge, ‘Alice of Antioch: A Case Study of Female Power in the Twelfth Century’, in The Experience of Crusading. Volume 2: Defining the Crusader Kingdom, ed. Peter Edbury and Jonathan Phillips, Cambridge 2003, 29–47. 73 Murray, ‘Royal Succession’, 142. For Melisende’s presence in Fulk’s charters, see Mayer, Die Urkunden, Fulko, docs 131–5, 138–9, 141–3, 145–6 and 149. 74 Simon John, ‘Royal Inauguration and Liturgical Culture in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1099–1187’, JMH 43(4), 2017, 485–504, at 496. 75 William of Tyre writes that with Fulk’s death, the kingdom passed ‘by hereditary right’ to Melisende; John, ‘Royal Inauguration’, 496, citing William of Tyre. 76 Mayer, ‘Melisende’, 110. On the use of gendered language in earlier scholarship, see Jordan, ‘Corporate Monarchy’, 10 and footnotes 18 and 37. See also Gerish, ‘Royal Daughters’. 77 Hamilton, ‘Queens of Jerusalem’, 152–4.



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More importantly, this scholarship has emphasized the extensive support Melisende continued to enjoy among the Church and the nobility as Baldwin challenged her for sole rulership.78 Ultimately, Baldwin succeeded in his claim to sole rulership over Jerusalem, though he and Melisende were soon reconciled and she retained a position as advisor within his government.79 As a recognized heir and designated co-ruler, Melisende faced challenges from both her husband and her son. Yet on both occasions she counted with significant support from the Church and the kingdom’s nobility. That so many were willing to side with Melisende, first over her husband and later over her son, suggests that throughout her reign she was widely perceived and accepted as the legitimate head of the dynasty – even over her son, who as the dynastic male ruler was supposedly preferable to a female ruler. Empress Matilda Born in 1102, Matilda was the eldest legitimate child and only daughter of Henry I of England (c. 1068–1135), and his first wife Matilda of Scotland (1080–1118).80 In 1109 she was betrothed to Henry V of Germany (1081/6–1125), and a year later 78

Jordan has noted the significance of Melisende and Baldwin III’s swift reconciliation; see Jordan, ‘Corporate Monarchy’, pp. 10–15. See also Murray, ‘Royal Succession’, 142–3; Gerish, ‘Royal Daughters’, 108–10; Hamilton, ‘Queens of Jerusalem’, 153. 79 Jordan, ‘Corporate Monarchy’, 13–15. 80 What follows is an overview of Matilda’s life and reign. For more detailed studies, see Lynsey Wood, ‘“The Very Next Blood of the King”: Legitimisation and Adaptation of the Law of Female Succession in English History’, in Dynastic Change: Legitimacy and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Monarchy, ed. Ana Maria S. A. Rodrigues, Manuela Santos Silva, Jonathan W. Spangler, Abingdon 2020, 21–42; Jitske Jasperse, ‘Manly Minds in Female Bodies: Three Women and their Power through Coins and Seals’, Arenal: revista de historia de mujeres 25(2), 2018, 295–321; E. M. C. van Houts, ‘Queens in the Anglo-Norman/Angevin Realm 1066–1216’, in Zey, Mächtige Frauen?, 199–224; Fiona Tolhurst, Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Translation of Female Kingship, Basingstoke 2013; Wood, ‘Empress Matilda and the Anarchy: The Problem of Royal Succession in Medieval England’, History Studies (Limerick) 11, 2010, 26–37; Jim Bradbury, Stephen and Matilda: The Civil War of 1139–53, Stroud 2009; Charles Beem, The Lioness Roared: The Problems of Female Rule in English History, Basingstoke 2006; Marjorie Chibnall, Piety, Power and History in Medieval England and Normandy, Aldershot 2000; Carolyn Anderson, ‘Narrating Matilda, “Lady of the English”, in the Historia Novella, the Gesta Stephani, and Wace’s Roman de Rou: The Desire for Land and Order’, Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History 29, 1999, 47–57; Chibnall, ‘The Empress Matilda and Her Sons’, in Medieval Mothering, ed. J. C. Parsons and B. Wheeler, Abingdon 1999, 279–94; Chibnall, The Empress Matilda: Queen Consort, Queen Mother and Lady of the English, Oxford 1999; Jean A. Truax, ‘Winning Over the Londoners: King Stephen, the Empress Matilda and the Politics of Personality’, HSJ 8, 1996, 42–62; Chibnall, ‘Women in Orderic Vitalis’, HSJ 2, 1990, 105–21. Matilda also features prominently in studies of Stephen of Blois and the civil war, see Edward King, King Stephen, New Haven, CT 2010; George Garnett, Conquered England: Kingship, Succession, and Tenure (1066–1166), Oxford 2007; David Crouch, The Reign of King Stephen, 1135–1154, Harlow 2000; Jim Bradbury, Stephen and Matilda, The Civil War of 1139–53, Harlow 2000; King, ‘Stephen of Blois, Count of Mortain and Boulogne’, EHR 115(461), 2000, 271–96; King (ed.), The Anarchy of King Stephen’s Reign, Oxford 1994; R. H. C. Davis, King Stephen, 1135–1154, London 1990.

Fig. 3  Empress Matilda: the Norman Dynasty.



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she left for her soon-to-be husband’s court. Aged just eight at the time, Matilda was immediately crowned queen of Germany, but did not marry Henry V until 1114, at the age of twelve. Matilda spent these four years in the care of Bruno, the archbishop of Trier (d. 1124), during which time she prepared for her future life as queen of Germany, learning the business of government, as was expected of German queens and empresses.82 In the years immediately following Matilda’s marriage, Henry I sought to ensure that his sole legitimate son, William Adelin (1103–20), would inherit both the kingdom of England and the duchy of Normandy.83 By the early twelfth century, primogeniture had not yet been a deciding factor in accession to the English throne: William the Conqueror had been succeeded in England by two sons, William II and Henry I, neither of whom were the eldest living.84 Indeed, there were many factors which could determine succession in the English polity, of which designation as heir was just one.85 Ultimately, it was the act of the anointing and coronation ritual that turned a member of the royal family into king of England, as Henry I knew all too well.86 To ensure his dynastic pretensions, Henry associated William Adelin with his royal authority by having him attest to royal documents from the age of ten; in 1115, William received the homage of the Norman barons, and a year later that of the English barons.87 Henry’s careful planning was thwarted by William Adelin’s unexpected death in 1120. Suddenly, Henry was without a legitimate male heir of his own blood. The nearest male heir with the strongest claim was now William Clito (1102–28), the son of Henry’s eldest brother Robert Curthose (c. 1051–1134), who already had support among some of the Norman barons, as well as the favour of King Louis VI of France (1081–1137).88 As his first wife had died in 1118, Henry promptly took a second wife, Adeliza of Louvrain (c. 1103–51), though she did not bear Henry any children.89 However, Henry’s hope to leave his kingdom to his direct descendants was revived when Henry V of Germany died in 1125, leaving Matilda a young, childless widow of twenty-three. By late 1126 Matilda was back in England, and her father immediately took steps to secure her acceptance as his (potential) heir by 81

81

Chibnall, Matilda, 15–17. Chibnall, Matilda, 22–5. 83 John Le Patourel, ‘The Norman Succession, 996–1135’, EHR 86(339), 1971, 225–50, at 244–5. 84 Dominik Büschken and Alheydis Plassmann, ‘Stephen of Blois: Legitimizing Succession, Idoneity, and Inheritance’, in Norm, Normabweichung und Praxis des Herrschaftsübergangs in transkultureller Perspektive, ed. Tilmann Trausch, Bonn 2019, 401–30, at 407–9. 85 Designation as heir could play a role in determining the outcome of a succession, but this was not always the case. Other factors at play were hereditary right (that is, descent from William the Conqueror), baronial support, and seizure of the crown and treasury; the French king’s approval, as well as the Papacy’s could shape a succession as well. Büschken and Plassmann, ‘Stephen of Blois’, 402–4. 86 Büschken and Plassmann, ‘Stephen of Blois’, 408–9. 87 William also did homage to King Louis, who accepted him as heir to the duchy. Acceptance from the French king was crucial to ensure William’s succession to Normandy; Le Patourel, ‘Norman Succession’, 244–5. 88 Recognizing William Clito as his heir was unacceptable for Henry I, as it would deny his own right to both England and Normandy; Le Patourel, ‘Norman Succession’, 245. See also King, Stephen, 28–9 and Crouch, Stephen, 26–8. 89 King, Stephen, 28. 82

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the English and Norman barons. First, in early January 1127, Henry had the prelates and barons present at his Christmas court give oaths of allegiance to Matilda, in which they swore to ‘defend her loyally against all others if she outlived her father and he left no legitimate son’.90 Next, Henry set about arranging Matilda’s second marriage. This was a pressing issue, given the sudden revival of William Clito’s fortunes: already openly recognized as the duke of Normandy by Louis VI, he had married a kinswoman of the queen of France in January 1127 and had been made count of Flanders in March, following the murder of the previous count, Charles the Good, earlier that month.91 Henry’s choice of husband for Matilda was Geoffrey of Anjou (1113–51), the son of Fulk V of Anjou – Melisende’s soon-to-be husband and the soon-to-be king of Jerusalem.92 Beyond providing Matilda with a much-needed husband to ensure her claim to the throne, Henry saw the alliance with Anjou as a useful tool to help secure her claim against that of William Clito.93 It seems that Matilda initially opposed the match, though she eventually acquiesced and the pair were married in spring of 1128.94 The marriage’s start was inauspicious, and Matilda soon left Anjou for Normandy, where she remained until 1131.95 That autumn, Henry brought her back to England, where a great council decided that she was to be sent back to her husband. It was at this council that Matilda received oaths of fealty from all those who had not previously given one, and renewed oaths from those who had.96 Following their reunion, Matilda and Geoffrey appear to have found a way a way to make things work: their first son, Henry, was born in 1133, soon followed by their second son, Geoffrey, in 1134.97 Matilda was, in fact, pregnant with her third child when Henry I died in Normandy on 1 December 1135.98 News of the king’s death spread, and when it reached Stephen of Blois, count of Boulogne (1092/6–1154) – Henry I’s nephew and Matilda’s cousin – he acted quickly and decisively: he crossed the Channel, was acclaimed king by the citizens of London, and then immediately set out to Winchester, where his brother

90

Chibnall, Matilda, 50–4, quoting John of Worcester at 51–2. See also King, Stephen, 29–32 and Crouch, Stephen, 24–5. 91 Crouch, Stephen, 26–7 and Chibnall, Matilda, 54–5. 92 These marriages were largely arranged in tandem; Chibnall, Matilda, 38 and 56–7. For the impact of the English marriage negotiations on those in Jerusalem, see Mayer, ‘English Impact’. 93 King, Stephen, 31–2; Crouch, Stephen, 28; Le Patourel, ‘Norman Succession’, 245–6. 94 Matilda undoubtedly saw Geoffrey, a mere count ten years her junior, as beneath her status. It is unclear how much support there was for the match among the English and Norman magnates, though there was clearly some anxiety over what Geoffrey’s role as ruler would be. Chibnall notes that, at the time of the marriage, the Angevins and Normans were not yet traditional enemies, while Crouch points to the disastrous effect Geoffrey’s succession to England and Normandy would have had on Theobald IV of Blois’ independence. Crouch, Stephen, 29, King, ‘Stephen of Blois’, 290–1; Chibnall, Matilda, 54–6, and Le Patourel, ‘Norman Succession’, 246. 95 Chibnall, Matilda, 57–9. 96 The great council took place in Northampton on 8 September 1131. Importantly, this second round of oaths were sworn to Matilda after her marriage, and they were sworn to her only, indicating the barons were prepared to accept her despite her marriage to Geoffrey; King, ‘Stephen of Blois’, 290 and Chibnall, Matilda, 59–60. 97 Chibnall, Matilda, 57–61. 98 Chibnall, Matilda, 67.



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Henry, bishop of Winchester (c. 1096–1171), helped him to secure not only the royal treasury, but the throne and his acceptance as king by those magnates present.99 Within three weeks of Henry’s death, Stephen had been anointed and crowned king of the English. Matilda was not able to react as quickly with regards to the English throne. In the immediate aftermath of her father’s death, she did manage, with Geoffrey, to swiftly secure the Norman castles which were her dowry and establish a firm foothold along the Norman border. But she was unable to advance further, and not solely because Geoffrey was forced to return to Anjou to quell an uprising.100 In the weeks immediately following Henry’s death it is clear that, even before Stephen secured the English throne, there was a pervasive lack of acceptance for Matilda as her father’s successor among the Anglo-Norman aristocracy. As Stephen worked to secure the throne in England, leading magnates in Normandy, including those who had been with Henry at the time of his death, decided to offer the duchy to Theobald of Blois (1090–1152), the count of Blois, Champagne, and Brie, Henry’s nephew, and Stephen’s older brother. However, when news reached them of Stephen’s coronation, they decided (with Theobald’s consent) to offer Normandy to Stephen, so as to ensure ‘they served under one lord’.101 Matilda only emerged as a viable rival candidate to the throne as a result of growing discontent among Stephen’s magnates.102 Indeed, dissatisfaction with Stephen as king seems to have led to the first great defection to Matilda’s camp: that of her illegitimate brother Robert of Gloucester (c. 1090–1147). A multitude of factors undoubtedly led to Robert’s defection, his progressive loss of influence within the realm likely chief among them.103 Nonetheless, he took great pains to defend his actions as both moral and religious, and made a point of issuing a formal act of defiance.104 Of particularly relevance to this article is Robert’s familiarity with the book of Numbers, the fourth of the five books of the Jewish law, which includes a favourable pronouncement made by Moses on female inheritance.105 It is notable

99

This is a simplified version of events. For a comprehensive account, see Crouch, Stephen, 30–41; King, Stephen, 41–53; King, ‘Stephen of Blois’, 292–5. For a discussion of the way information was collected, marketed and spread through Anglo-Norman society, see J. O. Prestwich, ‘Military Intelligence under the Norman and Angevin Kings’, in Law and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honour of Sir James Holt, ed. G. Garnett and J. Hudson, Cambridge 1994, 1–30. 100 Crouch, Stephen, 33–4 and Chibnall, Matilda, 66–8. 101 Orderic Vitalis, cited by Crouch, Stephen, 33, King, ‘Stephen of Blois’, 295, and Chibnall, Matilda, 66. Narrative accounts of Henry’s deathbed, written after Stephen secured the throne, give conflicting versions of how Henry disposed of his realm: Malmsbury reports he affirmed Matilda as his successor (but did not want Geoffrey to rule with her, due to a frontier dispute), while the anonymous author of the Gesta Stephani claims that the king changed his mind and released his men from their oaths to accept Matilda; Crouch, Stephen, 30–3 and Chibnall, Matilda, 64–6. 102 Central to this growing discontent was Stephen’s (mis)management of Normandy and Wales; Crouch, Stephen, 50–71. See also Chibnall, ‘Normandy’ and Crouch, ‘The March and the Welsh Kings’, in King, The Anarchy, 93–115 and 255–89. 103 King, Stephen, 86–7; Crouch, Stephen, 74–83 and Chibnall, Matilda, 74. 104 Of central importance in Robert’s renunciation of homage were the oaths sworn to support Matilda during Henry I’s reign, both his own and Stephen’s; Crouch, Stephen, 75–6. 105 We know of Robert’s familiarity with this pronouncement from a letter Gilbert Foliot,

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that Matilda’s succession rights, so readily overlooked by all in the immediate aftermath of Henry’s death, became relevant once more among those displeased with Stephen’s rule. This is not to suggest that Matilda’s rights as Henry’s designated heir and sole surviving legitimate child were not relevant. They were the foundation of both her own claim to the English throne and that of her son Henry when he took it over in 1148 – at least until he was designated Stephen’s heir.106 But her rights were not the deciding factor for those who, at various points leading up to and during the civil war, decided to join her party – with the possible exceptions of Robert of Gloucester and, later, Brian fitz Count.107 Broadly speaking, support for Matilda stemmed more from opposition to Stephen and, following her party’s capture of the king at the Battle of Lincoln and in the leadup to her coronation in 1141, from political expediency.108 Robert’s decision to declare for his sister in May 1138 enabled Matilda, for the first time, to seriously challenge Stephen for the English throne. Constrained until that point to hers and Geoffrey’s foothold in Normandy, Robert’s support provided Matilda with both a secure base in England and the military strength needed to assert her claim;109 she backed this armed challenge with an appeal to the papal court to overturn their recognition of Stephen as king.110 Matilda arrived in England in September 1139, and thus began a nine-year struggle to secure her claim to the throne. Within just eighteen months, Matilda appeared on the verge of achieving her claim: on 2 February 1141 her army won the battle of Lincoln and captured Stephen. In the aftermath of her victory, Matilda entered negotiations with Henry, bishop of Winchester, papal legate, and Stephen’s brother, to secure the Church’s support for her accession to the throne.111 By 8 April they had

abbot of Gloucester, sent to Brian fitz Count, lord of Wallingford and one of Matilda’s staunch supporters. Written c. 1143/44, Gilbert notes that ‘in the last chapter of the Book of Numbers, you find that which we often heard quoted by the earl of Gloucester: Zelophehad was a jew of the tribe of Manasseh who had many daughters and no son. It seemed to some that women ought not to succeed to their father’s goods, disqualified by their sex. The Lord devised a law because of this case – that everything their father owned should come entire to the daughters of Zelophehad.’ However, Crouch notes that the point of contention in this chapter was not whether the daughters should succeed, but rather should they be allowed to marry outside the tribe, thus taking their father’s land away; Crouch, Stephen, 76 and David Crouch, ‘Robert, earl of Gloucester, and the daughter of Zelophehad’, JMH, 11(3), 1985, 227–43. 106 For more on the treaty of Winchester, by which Henry was recognized as Stephen’s heir, see King, Stephen, 279–93, Crouch, Stephen, 270–80, and J. C. Holt, ‘1153: the Treaty of Winchester’, in King, The Anarchy, 291–316. 107 Even in the case of Matilda’s most steadfast supporters, her inheritance rights were one of several factors, as evidenced by the fact that none championed her claim to the throne in 1135; Crouch, Stephen, 121–32 and Chibnall, Matilda, 75–87. See also H. W. C. Davis, ‘Henry of Blois and Brian fitz Count’, EHR 25, 1901, 297–302. 108 Crouch, Stephen, 168–88 (on Matilda’s failures) and 189–212 (on Stephen’s failures). 109 Crouch, Stephen, 107–10 and Chibnall, Matilda, 74. 110 Pope Innocent II had already sent Stephen a letter in 1136, approving his elevation to the throne. Matilda sent her appeal to the papal court in early 1139, and the matter was discussed at the second Lateran Council, which opened on 4 April 1139. Ultimately, Innocent was unwilling to rule against an anointed ruler. For a fuller account of the proceedings, see King, Stephen, 101–5. 111 Stephen Church has argued that the two-month period between Stephen’s capture on 2



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reached an agreement, by which she was received as ‘Lady of the English’ – an interim title to use ahead of her coronation as queen regnant – and accepted as monarch-designate and, importantly, she assumed royal control over the realm.112 However, on the intended day of her coronation, 24 June 1141, Matilda was forced to flee London, and soon thereafter Stephen’s forces – led by his wife, Queen Matilda (c. 1105–52) – captured Robert of Gloucester at Winchester. By November 1141 both sides agreed to a prisoner exchange, Stephen for Robert.113 Though she recovered her chief supporter and deputy, Matilda was unable to replicate her earlier success. Over the next six years, the two sides remained at odds, with Stephen and Matilda each holding and exercising full royal authority within the regions under their respective control, the former as king of the English, the latter as Lady of the English.114 In 1147 Robert of Gloucester died, and the following year Matilda formally renounced her claim in favour of her son, Henry (1133–89), who would become King Henry II of England in 1154.115 Matilda is the only heiress of this generation who was not able to fully realize her claim to her father’s throne. In the immediate aftermath of Henry I’s death, the Anglo-Norman aristocracy clearly did not recognize her as an acceptable successor to her father. What role her gender played in this initial rejection cannot be definitively determined, though the problems which her rule posed with regards to government – chief among them, the potential role of her (widely disliked) husband – would likely have counted against her. Nevertheless, contemporary sources do not give Matilda’s sex as a direct reason for barring her from the throne.116 And by the late 1130s, Matilda’s claim to the throne began to receive support among the aristocracy, with her supporters emphasizing the hereditary nature of her claim.117 That Matilda failed to be crowned as queen regnant is less important here than the fact that throughout the civil war she was recognized and accepted by many as the legitimate head of the Anglo-Norman dynasty. Even more significant is that in 1141 she was widely accepted across the English realm as both head of her dynasty and monarch-designate, notably by Henry, bishop of Winchester, and, crucially, by King Stephen himself.118 Such widespread recognition may have waned following Stephen’s release, but her supporters continued to view her as the rightful dynastic head until she renounced her claim in favour of her son.

February and Matilda’s formal reception as domina Anglorum and monarch-designate on 8 April should be considered as an interregnum. See Church, ‘Succession and Interregnum’, 181–200. 112 Church, ‘Succession and Interregnum’, 188–91. 113 This is a very abridged version of the events. For a full account, see King, Stephen, 115; G. Garnett and J. Hudson, 74; Crouch, Stephen, 107–88; and Chibnall, Matilda, 88–115. 114 For a full account of events, see King, Stephen, 175–235; Crouch, Stephen, 189–229; and Chibnall, Matilda, 115–41. 115 For a full account of events, see Crouch, Stephen, 230–91, and Chibnall, Matilda, 143–61. 116 Huneycutt, ‘Female Succession’, 194–5. 117 Even Stephen’s camp recognized the hereditary nature of Matilda’s claim. Those defending Stephen’s claim at the Lateran Council sought to invalidate Matilda’s claim to the throne by hereditary right, arguing that Henry I’s marriage to Matilda of Scotland was unlawful, and therefore the empress was illegitimate and unable to claim the throne; King, Stephen, 102–3. 118 Church, ‘Succession and Interregnum’, 189, citing Malmsbury.

Fig. 4  Petronila of Aragon: the Jiménez Dynasty (Aragon).



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Petronila of Aragon Born in 1136, Petronila was the only child of Ramiro II of Aragon (1086–1157) and his wife Agnes of Poitou (c. 1105–59).119 In 1134, Alfonso I of Aragon and Navarre (the erstwhile husband of Urraca of León-Castile, and Petronila’s uncle) died, willing his kingdoms to the Knights Templar, the Hospitallers, and the Knights of the Holy Sepulchre.120 His magnates refused to accept his wish and instead elected a king of their own choice: the Aragonese chose Alfonso’s younger brother Ramiro, while the Navarrese elected another relative, García Ramírez.121 Ramiro’s election – which he accepted – was controversial, as he was a monk who had entered the church as a child; indeed, Innocent II refused to recognize his election.122 Nonetheless, Ramiro promptly married Agnes of Poitou, who just a year later, in August 1136, gave birth to their daughter, Petronila.123 Ramiro immediately set about arranging Petronila’s betrothal to Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona (c. 1114–62), to whom he gave his infant daughter in marriage together with his kingdom, then returned to monastic life.124 119

Petronila of Aragon is a notably understudied queen. Elements of her life and reign are examine, in their own right, in just three articles: Sophie Hirel-Wouts, ‘Cuando abdica la reina … Reflexiones sobre el papel pacificador de Petronila, reina de Aragón y condesa de Barcelona (siglo XIII)’, e-Spania 20, 2015; Joan Bassagoda and Nonell, ‘La Reina Petronila en la catedral de Barcelona’, in El món urbà a la Corona d’Aragó del 1137 als decrets de Nova Planta: XVII Congrés d’Història de la Corona d’Aragó, vol. 3, ed. Salvador Claramunt Rodríguez, Barcelona 2003, 73–80; and William C. Stalls, ‘Queenship and Royal Patrimony in Twelfth-Century Iberia: The Example of Petronila de Aragón’, in Queens, Regents and Potentates, ed. Theresa M. Vann, Dallas, TX 1993, 49–61. In sharp contrast, her marriage to Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona, and the transfer of royal power from her father to her husband has been subject to extensive study, see below, note 124. Succession to the Aragonese throne, and the place of women within the succession, have also received attention, notably: Adela Mora Cañada, ‘La succession al trono en la Corona de Aragón’, in El territori i les seves institucions historiques. Actes de les Jornades d’Estudi (1997, Ascó), ed. Josep Daura Serrano, vol. 2, Barcelona 1999, 547–66; Cristina Segura Graíño, ‘Derechos sucesorios al trono de las mujeres en la Corona de Aragón’, Mayurqa: revista del Departament de Ciències Històriques i Teoria de les Arts 22(2), 1989, 591–600; and Alfonso García Gallo, ‘La sucesión del trono en la Corona de Aragón’, Anuario de historia del derecho español 36, 1966, 5–188. 120 For more on Alfonso I’s will, see A. Forey, ‘The Will of Alfonso I of Aragon and Navarre’, Durham University Journal 42, 1980, 59–65 and Elena Lourie, ‘The Will of Alfonso I, “El Batallador”, King of Aragon and Navarre: A Reassessment’, Speculum 50(4), October 1975, 635–51. 121 Damian J. Smith, ‘The Men Who Would Be Kings. Innocent II and Spain’, in Pope Innocent II (1130-43): The World vs the City, ed. John Doran and Damian J. Smith, London 2016, 181–204, at 186–7 and Lourie, ‘Alfonso I’, 635. 122 Innocent II’s refusal was not solely because Ramiro II was a monk, but also because the Papacy wished to uphold the terms of Alfonso I’s will. This refusal affected both Aragon and Navarre, leading to questions of legitimacy surrounding both dynasties – indeed, no pope would recognize kings of either kingdom for several decades; Smith, ‘The Men Who Would Be Kings’, 188–90. See also Szabolcs de Vajay, ‘Ramire II le Moine, roi d’Aragon, et Agnès de Poitou, dans l’histoire et dans la légende’, in Mélanges offerts à René Crozet à l’occasion de son soizante-dixième anniversaire, vol. 2, ed. Pierre Gallais and Yves-Jean Rion, Poitiers 1966, 727–50, at 740–2. 123 de Vajay, ‘Ramire II le Moine’, 739–40. 124 Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó (ACA), Cancelleria, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, carpeta 35, doc. 86. The nature of the transfer of power from Ramiro II to Ramon Berenguer IV has been subject to extensive study, notably Josep Serrano Daura, ‘La donació de Ramir II d’Aragó a

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Despite her elite status, little is known about Petronila’s life. Following her betrothal to Ramon Berenguer, it is likely that she was raised at her future husband’s court in Barcelona, though there is no definitive proof of her whereabouts until 1150;125 she only reappears in documentary sources in 1150, when she married Ramon Berenguer at the age of fourteen.126 Petronila does not appear in any of her husband’s documents, and does not seem to have played an active role within her husband’s government, either in his own county or in her kingdom. When Ramon Berenguer died in 1162, Petronila, just twenty-four years old, was not part of her young son’s regency government (Alfonso II was five years old at the time) and in 1164 she formally abdicated the throne of Aragon in his favour.127 She reiterated this abdication in her final will and testament, dictated shortly before her death in 1173.128 Petronila’s experience as proprietary queen is particularly useful when examining contemporary – and modern – perceptions of and attitudes towards female rulers. Though significantly younger than Urraca, Melisende, and Matilda, Petronila was their contemporary. Still, she is a notably understudied queen. While biographies have been written about Urraca, Melisende, and Matilda, none have been published thus far for Petronila. Within these biographies authors often reference Petronila as a contemporary example of female royal inheritance, but only draw significant comparisons between the other three queens with regards to the exercise of power and authority. This in likely because Urraca, Melisende, and Matilda were proprietary queens who all actively claimed and asserted their rights to rule and to wield their royal power and authority, whereas Petronila did not – at least not in the

Ramon Berenguer IV de Barcelona de 1137 i la institució del “casamiento en casa”’, Estudis històrics i documents dels arxius de protocols 15, 1997, 7–14 and Antonio Ubieto Arteta, Los esponsales de la reina Petronila y la creación de la Corona de Aragón, Zaragoza 1987. Serrano and Ubieto are on separate ends of a (still ongoing) debate regarding the role of the Aragonese juridical institution known as the ‘casamiento en casa’ (which, very broadly speaking, means an heir’s spouse is adopted into their marital family), which Ubieto believes applies to Petronila and Ramon Berenguer’s marriage but Serrano refutes. It seems to me that this debate is more about supporting claims to Aragonese versus Catalan political supremacy within the medieval Crown of Aragon, and its persistence today is fed, in part, by ongoing tensions between ‘Spanish’ and ‘Catalan’ history and interpretations of the Iberian Peninsula’s medieval past. This debate has been dominated by law historians; for a recent overview, see Cristian Palomo, ‘A propòsit de les teories de la creació de la Corona d’Aragó mitjançant el casamiento en casa i l’extinció del llinatge barceloní el 1137’, Revista de Dret Històric Català 17, 2018, 11–58. Lastly, within this debate, Petronila and Ramon Berenguer’s marriage, and Ramiro II’s handover of power to his future son-in-law are central, but Petronila herself is largely ignored, as are her surviving documents. 125 It is the sixteenth-century historian and chronicler Jerónimo Zurita who suggests that Petronila grew up at her future husband’s court; Jerónimo Zurita, Índice de las gestas de los reyes de Aragón, ed. Ángel Canellas, Zaragoza 1984, 112. 126 Though Petronila herself does not issue a document until 1152, reference to her wedding can be found in Aragonese notarial documents from September 1150, which are dated to ‘the year when the count of Barcelona took as wife the queen, daughter of the king Ramiro’; Antonio Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Aragón: creación y Desarrollo de la corona de Aragón, Zaragoza 1987, 170–1. 127 Stalls, ‘Queenship’, 55–7, and Ubieto Arteta, Historia de Aragón, 188–200. For Petronila’s abdication charter, see Liber Feudorum Maior, ed. Francisco M. Rosell, Barcelona 1945, doc. 17. 128 Liber Feudorum Maior, doc. 18.



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manner or on the scale of her contemporaries. But Petronila did wield and assert her royal power and authority; she just did so on a very limited number of occasions and solely in relation to the Aragonese succession. That she did, however, shows that her contemporaries acknowledged that she possessed the inherent power and authority of rulership and, more importantly for the purpose of this article, that she was acknowledged as the legitimate head of the Aragonese dynasty. Petronila’s limited exercise of power must be understood within its contemporary contexts. First, within the context of twelfth-century Aragonese succession law, which was still in a relative state of flux. Since Aragon’s inception as a kingdom in 1035, the royal succession had been regulated by royal wills, with the ruler dictating in their final testament who would succeed them on the throne and who could be called up in the named successor’s place – though this designation had to secure the approbation of the magnates and reflect customary practices.129 Significantly, each royal will only regulated the succession of the ruler who issued it, not all successions to come. With time, certain principles were to become fixed, but in 1137, when Ramiro II sought to settle his succession, only one royal will had thus far dealt with the question of female succession, that of Ramiro II’s grandfather, the founder of the kingdom, Ramiro I (before 1007–63).130 Ramiro I’s will allowed for his daughter’s succession, though only if all her brothers predeceased her and none left surviving sons; it also stipulated that it would be her husband who would rule the kingdom in her right.131 This stipulation has been largely interpreted as definitively establishing that, in Aragon (and Navarre), women could inherit the regnum but not the potestas, which could only be exercised by men.132 This seems to me an interpretation shaped more by knowledge of later Aragonese attitudes to female succession (that is, that women could transmit claims to the throne to their sons but could not themselves succeed, per the decision of the Compromise of Caspe in 1412), than by consideration of eleventh- and twelfth-century succession practice.133 Indeed, as Adela Mora Cañado has pointed out, Ramiro I’s will

129

Alfonso I’s decision to will his kingdoms to the military orders did not adhere to Aragonese succession practices, nor did it have magnate support; Segura Graiño, ‘Derechos sucesorios’, 594. 130 Mora Cañada, ‘La sucesión al trono’, 550–1. 131 Furthermore, she could not succeed to the throne if she were to remain unmarried. Mora Cañada, ‘La sucesión al trono’, 553–4 and García Gallo, ‘Derecho sucesorio’, 66. 132 For this interpretation, see María Jesus Fuente Pérez, ‘¿Reina la reina? Mujeres en la cúspede del poder en los reinos hispánicos en la Edad Media (siglos VI–XIII)’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma. Serie III, Historia Medieval 16, 2003, 53–71; Segura Graiño, ‘Derechos sucesorios’, 593–4; García Gallo, ‘Derecho sucesorio’, 66–70. A similar ambiguity towards women’s ability to inherit potestas can be found within the kingdom of Navarre (a product of Aragon and Navarre’s shared history), until the arrival of the House of Champagne in the 1234 and the codification of the Fueros of Navarre, which led to a shift towards absolute primogeniture; Woodacre, Queens Regnant, 21. 133 For the Compromise of Caspe, see Flocel Sabaté Curull, ‘El compromiso de Caspe: ¿Ruptura dinàstica o modelo de estado?’, in Ruptura i legitimació dinàstica a l’edat mitjana, ed. Flocel Sabaté Curull, Lleida 2015, 279–90, and García Gallo, ‘Derecho sucesorio’, 83–7. It is noteworthy that around the same time as the Crown of Aragon was denying women the right to inherit the throne directly, the power and authority of the Aragonese queen consort grew increasingly as a result of her frequent designation as lieutenant; Lledó Ruiz Domingo, ‘“Del qual tenim lloch”. Leonor de Sicilia y el origen de la lugartenencia femenina en la Corona de Aragón’, Medievalismo 27, 2017, 303–26.

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sought to settle his own succession and, within the context of contemporary Aragonese succession law, how he chose to do so did not immediately become a set rule, as evidenced by all subsequent royal wills, which sought to settle that ruler’s succession in whichever manner seemed most appropriate to them at that time.134 This is not to say that how Ramiro I settled female succession within his own will did not establish a precedent. But that should not be understood as the sole reason for Petronila’s limited exercise of power. Indeed, other factors to bear in mind are Petronila’s age at the time of her father’s retirement and her betrothal, the possibility that she was raised from infancy at her future husband’s court (rather than with and by her parents), the twenty-plus-year age gap between herself and her husband (who has been administering his own lands for almost twenty years and her kingdom for over a decade by the time that they were married), and the fact that her father chose to renounce royal power and authority and return to his monastic life, and her mother similarly retired to Fontevraud Abbey.135 There is no way of knowing whether or not these situational factors had any effect in determining Petronila’s exercise of power – nor indeed her own understanding of women’s exercise of royal power – but it would be careless to dismiss them entirely. The limited occasions in which we see Petronila wielding royal authority makes it clear that her contemporaries acknowledged that she possessed the inherent power and authority of rulership and that she was acknowledged as the legitimate head of the Aragonese dynasty. Just three documents issued in Petronila’s name have survived, all three relating to succession to the Aragonese throne. The first document is the will Petronila made in 1152, when she was about to give birth to her first child. In it, Petronila wills the kingdom of Aragon to her unborn child, should it be a son, though stipulates he will only inherit the kingdom upon her husband Ramon Berenguer’s death; should the child be a girl, she leaves her kingdom in its entirety to her husband, excluding their daughter and stipulating only that he arrange for her an honourable marriage.136 Many have pointed to Petronila’s exclusion of her future daughter from the Aragonese throne as further evidence that women were denied the right to rule, while failing to appreciate that, in doing so, Petronila was settling her own succession in the exact same manner as her predecessors had settled theirs – i.e. in whichever manner she deems most appropriate for the next generation.137 These authors similarly overlook the fact that Petronila’s own son Alfonso II included provisions for female succession when settling his own succession.138 In 1164, two years after Ramon Berenguer’s death, Petronila formally abdicated the kingdom of Aragon in favour of her son, Alfonso II.139 Because Alfonso was recognized as king of Aragon immediately following his father’s death in 1162, Petronila’s abdication has often been dismissed as a mere formality and as further evidence that she had no claim to power within the kingdom.140 Once again, there is a failure to appreciate that,

134

Mora Cañado, ‘La sucesión al trono’, 554. de Vajay, ‘Ramire II le Moine’, 742–8. 136 Liber Feudorum Maior, doc. 16. 137 García Gallo states that the exclusion of female heirs was affirmed ‘totally and absolutely’ by Petronila herself in this will; García Gallo, ‘Derecho sucesorio’, 68–9. 138 García Gallo, ‘Derecho sucesorio’, 70. For the inclusion or exclusion of female succession in subsequent royal wills (1196–1347), see 71–3. In 1347, Peter IV (1319–87) attempted, and failed, to have his daughter Constance (1343–63) recognized as his heir over his brothers; 73–9. 139 Liber Feudorum Maior, doc. 17. 140 García Gallo, ‘Derecho sucesorio’, 69–70. One notable exception here is José María Lacarra 135



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through the act of abdicating, Petronila can be seen exercising independent royal power and authority.141 Two additional points seem relevant here. First, that following Ramon Berenguer’s death, Petronila was required to ratify his will, which designated their son Alfonso as his successor, suggesting that her agreement was necessary for it to be fully valid with regards to the Aragonese succession.142 Second, it is worth considering further why Petronila was required to abdicate at all, and why she only did so two years after her husband’s death. As Alfonso II was just five at the time of his father’s death, a regency government was put in place for him, of which Petronila does not appear to have been a part. William C. Stalls has suggested that Alfonso’s regency council might have wanted her ‘to transfer her authority over Aragon to Alfonso, [so] that [they] might govern the kingdom’, though he does not offer an explanation as to why they might not have done so earlier.143 I do not yet have a plausible explanation to suggest, but it seems curious that this two-year delay has not received more attention. What is clear is that Petronila’s abdication was deemed necessary by her contemporaries, and therefore should not be dismissed as a mere formality. That her abdication was deemed necessary can be further surmised from Petronila’s final will and testament, which she made orally on her deathbed in 1173. Significantly shorter than her first will, Petronila is similarly concerned with the disposition of her kingdom in this final will, granting ‘to lord Alfonso, her son, king of Aragon, her whole kingdom of Aragon in its entirety’.144 The document’s conciseness is most likely due to the fact that, though just sixteen years old at the time (and still considered a minor), by 1173 Alfonso had nonetheless been king of Aragon for over ten years; as such, Petronila was not so much laying out her own succession as she was ratifying her earlier abdication. Once again it is apparent that Petronila’s abdication – and her confirmation of this abdication on her deathbed – was deemed necessary by her contemporaries. Ramiro II’s final will does not survive, but it is perhaps worth considering Petronila’s reiteration of her abdication in relation to his documents relating to the handover of power in 1137 to Ramon Berenguer IV: after detailing the scope of his donation of the kingdom of Aragon, together with his daughter, to Ramon Berenguer, Ramiro II goes on to add that, should Petronila die without issue, Ramon Berenguer would hold the kingdom freely and without hindrance ‘after [Ramiro II’s] death’.145

y de Miguel, ‘Alfonso II el Casto, rey de Aragón y conde de Barcelona’, in VII Congreso de Historia de la Corona de Aragón, 3 vols, Zaragoza 1963, vol. 1, 95–120, at 112–13. 141 This can be similarly seen in studies of the reign of Berenguela of Castile, c. 1180–1246, who ruled Castile as queen regnant from 1217 to 1246 and who elevated her son as king of Castile with her when she ascended the throne. Berenguela’s decision was chiefly interpreted as an abdication, though recent scholarship has shown that this was not the case. Shadis, Berenguela, 14–15 and 98–9; Janna Bianchini, The Queen’s Hand: Power and Authority in the Reign of Berenguela of Castile, Philadelphia PA, 2012, 140–1. 142 Ramon Berenguer died in Italy, dictating his last wishes to a member of his court present with him. It is this oral testament that Petronila later ratified at an assembly at Huesca; Stalls, ‘Queenship’, 56–7 and Liber Feudorum Maior, doc. 494. 143 Stalls, ‘Queenship’, 56. 144 Beyond this, she simply ‘left her body to the be buried in the see of Barcelona’ and she ‘ordered her household to wear whatever was appropriate to their position’; Liber Feudorum Maior, doc. 18. 145 ACA, Cancelleria, perg. Ramon Berenguer IV, carpeta 35, doc. 86. This particular clause regarding Ramon Berenguer’s claim to the kingdom should Petronila die is central to the ongoing debate over the transfer of power from Ramiro to Ramon Berenguer, see above, note 124.

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It would seem that, their abdications notwithstanding, both Ramiro II and Petronila retained claims to the kingdom of Aragon which they only fully relinquished in death – hence the need for Petronila to reiterate her abdication in her final will. As Cristina Segura Graiño has noted, the limited preservation of sources during Petronila’s reign does not allow us to reach any definitive conclusions about the legal position of proprietary queens in Aragon.146 Petronila’s own position as ruler within the kingdom was not equal to that of her father or her son, nor even her husband. But she clearly had a role to play within the kingdom, and particularly with regards to ensuring her son’s succession to her dynasty’s throne – Alfonso II was king of Aragon because his mother was queen of Aragon, not because his father had ruled and administered the kingdom. To that end, Petronila was undoubtedly accepted by her contemporaries as head of the Aragonese royal dynasty. Petronila’s experience as a royal heiress and proprietary queen is both intriguing and challenging. In comparison with other such queens, her political career was minimal, and she clearly did not exercise power and authority in the same way Urraca, Melisende, and Matilda did. I do not believe it can be said that Petronila’s experience was solely the result of legal constrains within Aragonese law towards female rulership – Aragonese succession law and the place of women within it was yet to be definitively fixed. Had the circumstances been different, perhaps Petronila would have found herself testing the (largely theoretical) constraints on female rulership, much like her three contemporaries did. Instead, we see her on the fringes of royal power, fulfilling the important and necessary role that was required of her, but not asserting herself beyond that. It is an interesting exercise to consider if this was because her husband refused her any role within his government, or if she was perhaps uninterested in exercising power. Petronila certainly appears aware of the authority she held and understood the important role she played to ensure her natal house’s dynastic continuity. But she also grew up away from her royal parents, whom it is worth remembering chose to renounce royal power and authority for a monastic life. The more one studies her reign and life, the more one wonders about those medieval women who, in fact, were not interested in the direct exercise of their power, but rather saw their role of supporting their husband and family as the best way for them to contribute to the preservation of their dynasty’s position in power.147 While this supportive role of royal women has not been entirely overlooked, the field of medieval queenship has tended to prioritize those women who, like Urraca, Melisende, and Matilda, tapped into the power they were undeniably entitled to. The historiographical focus on the latter type of queen has demonstrated that medieval women in positions of power was the norm, not the exception.148 But it is also why a queen like Petronila has remained largely excluded from the comparative and biographical studies of those queens regnant who were also her contemporaries as proprietary queens.

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Segura Graiño, ‘Derechos sucesorios’, 596. This same idea came up in a session in the Kings and Queens 10 conference (July 2021), where Theresa Earenfight and Miriam Shadis brought up the idea of a woman’s ‘invisible labour’ – though only invisible in the sense that it is underappreciated and undervalued by modern scholars, and was very much visible to these women’s contemporaries. 148 As Heather Tanner, Laura L. Gathagan and Lois L. Huneycutt write in their ‘Introduction’, an extensive and ever-growing body of work has demonstrated that ‘elite women in positions of authority in the central medieval period were expected, accepted, and routine’. Heather J. Tanner, Laura L. Gathagan, and Lois L. Huneycutt, ‘Introduction’, in Tanner, Medieval Elite Women, 1–18, at 2. 147



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Conclusion When considering the place of gender within medieval rulership, it is widely agreed that, for medieval elites, status was more important than gender. That said, there were nonetheless actions and behaviours that were perceived as masculine and others that were perceived as feminine. Queens regnant are particularly fascinating here because they largely sought to wield power in the manner that their fellow male rulers did, rather than – or as well as – in the manner contemporary queens consort did. This was certainly the case with Urraca, Melisende, and Matilda. But what of those proprietary queens, like Petronila, who had a more passive political role, who could not or did not attempt to wield power as their male contemporaries did? Bringing Petronila into the picture highlights that not all proprietary queens were assertive and active queens regnant who wished, or indeed had the capacity, to exercise political power within their kingdoms. And this raises further questions about medieval women’s own attitudes towards power and authority, and how we – as historians – think about and conceive of these women’s own attitudes. This essay has shown the contemporary but distinct life experiences and political careers of the ‘first generation’ of proprietary queens: Urraca of León-Castile, Melisende of Jerusalem, Empress Matilda, and Petronila of Aragon. Its particular innovation has been to bring Petronila into a comparison from which she has been largely excluded, and to examine the four women who make up this ‘first generation’ not as queens regnant who did or did not exercise royal power (as they have traditionally been studied), but as proprietary queens who were accepted by their contemporaries as the heads of their respective dynasties. To examine each queen’s unique experience comparatively – Urraca’s success as queen regnant and sole ruler of León-Castile; Melisende’s success as queen regnant and co-ruler of Jerusalem alongside her husband and then her son; Matilda’s success in exercising royal power despite her inability to be crowned queen regnant; and Petronila’s successful political participation, despite her apparent lack of success as a queen regnant – highlights how all four proprietary queens played similarly important roles within their kingdom, though these similarities might be less tangible to historians today than they were to their contemporaries in the twelfth century. Indeed, in examining these four queens’ experiences comparatively, this article has also highlighted the usefulness of, and opportunities offered by, comparative study, especially comparison beyond exact like-for-like subjects (or themes); in this particular case, such a comparison shows that in the twelfth century there was widespread acceptance in Christian Europe of royal women’s rights of rulership, even if the nature and exercise of that rulership varied from queen to queen. Exactly how this widespread acceptance evolved over the centuries is a question my broader research project hopes to answer. The general success of the sixteen royal heiresses considered in my wider study suggests that such acceptance continued. Political circumstances sometimes demanded that female inheritance be disbarred, such as when the Valois dynasty came to power in France. Here, in order to prevent Edward III of England making real a seemingly better claim to the kingdom of France than his Valois rival, Philip VI, the political community of France disallowed inheritance of the French crown through the female line and thus the exercise of power by queens regnant. The example shows that the right of women to rule was not accepted by all and for all time. Women’s claims on rulership were always open to challenge should the political circumstances

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demand it. There are avenues for further research which have fallen outside the scope of the present article. The comparative examination at the heart of this study has been largely historiographical in nature, and the conclusions drawn can certainly be further advanced through a deeper study of the surviving primary sources relating to these women’s lives and political careers, both documentary and narrative. Closer comparative studies of these proprietary queens’ relationships with their husbands, with their sons and heirs, and with their various children more broadly would all undoubtedly produce further insight into their lives and political careers. So would a closer comparative study of the changing perceptions over the centuries of all four women as both proprietary queens and successful, or failed, queens regnant. And lastly, future research by myself and others should examine Petronila of Aragon’s life and reign in its own right, separate from that of her father, her husband, and her son. 149

149

For a comparative study of female claims to royal thrones beyond 1328, see Armin Wolf, ‘Reigning Queens in Medieval Europe: When, Where, and Why’, in Parsons, Medieval Queenship, 169–88.

CRUSADERS AND JEWS: THE YORK MASSACRE OF 1190 REVISITED Christoph T. Maier Except for the general expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, the York massacre of 1190 is arguably the most momentous and disruptive event in the history of the relationship between Christians and Jews in medieval England. Contemporaries, both Christian and Jewish, in England and elsewhere remarked on the enormity of the massacre in which around one hundred and fifty people are estimated to have died. As a subject of historiography, the York massacre can be framed in different contexts. First of all, there is the wider history of the relationship between Christians and Jews in twelfth-century England. Secondly, there is the more immediate context of the late twelfth century which witnessed an increasing hostility towards Jews in England. Thirdly, there is a crusading context. The York massacre took place during the preparatory phase of the Third Crusade, in which the English King Richard I played a leading role. This makes sense because, since its beginnings at the end of the eleventh century, the crusade movement carried with it a potential for anti-Jewish violence which intermittently led to pogroms against Jews perpetrated by crusaders. The York massacre of 1190 can, in fact, be understood as a typical example of the structural violence with which the crusading movement confronted European Jewry. It is this third frame, that is the connections between crusading and the York massacre, which will be the focus of this article. The Dobson legacy In his foundational study published in 1974, Barrie Dobson clearly acknowledged the influence of the crusades on the York massacre. In his explanation, the period of the Third Crusade was the first time that English Jews were directly affected by the anti-Jewish tendencies of the crusades, in contrast to Jewish communities in France and Germany which had already been targets of crusader violence during the First and Second Crusades.1 Dobson’s view was that ‘the massacres of the Jewish communities at York and elsewhere during early 1190 were unquestionably the product of the peculiar political and emotional tensions released by Richard I’s departure on the Third Crusade’.2 His explanation of the anti-Jewish violence was based on developments ‘set in a national and indeed international context’, which he considered to be the product of ‘an increasing papal obsession with the dangers to Christian souls of intercourse with the Jews’.3 But rather than exploring the specific 1

R. B. Dobson, The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190, York 1974, 17–19. 2 Ibid., 18. 3 Ibid., 18–19.

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crusading context of the 1180s, Dobson deflected from it by postulating an overarching sphere of anti-Jewish sentiment which subsumed the crusade. This is not to say that Dobson was not aware of, nor did not acknowledge, the role which antiJewish feelings whipped up in the context of the crusade played in the events of 1189/90. But crusaders ultimately played a marginal role in Dobson’s explanations. For him, the ‘real villains’ of the York massacre were ‘a prominent group of local Yorkshire nobiles’ who staged ‘a conspiracy of indebted and pitiless landlords’ against the Jewish moneylenders of York.4 Dobson’s assessment was the twin product of the availability of specific sources and of a typical 1970s historiographical approach which mutually reinforced each other. His analysis was primarily based on William of Newburgh’s chronicle and on information from the Pipe Rolls which detailed the financial dealings between the York Jews and their Christian debtors. The hard economic and administrative evidence from the Pipe Rolls was ideally suited to a type of explanation which championed material and economic structures as the basis for understanding societal relationships and conflicts.5 In his 1999 article ‘Crusades, Martyrdoms, and the Jews of Norman England, 1096–1190’, Robert Stacey largely followed Dobson’s lead.6 His argument takes into account the conflicts between royal and local authorities as well as the uncertainties arising from the perceived incompatibility of the royal protection of Jews and the widespread religious fervour condemning them. But ultimately for Stacey, too, anti-Jewish violence during the Third Crusade was predicated on the crusaders’ need of finance and more fundamentally on the general debt crisis involving the leading nobility and the Jewish moneylenders of northern England. ‘The crusade,’ in Stacey’s words, ‘did not create these hostilities and resentments’; rather they were caused by ‘a complicated mixture of anti-Jewish prejudice and hostility; of sadism, greed, carnival and riot; of economic resentment and regional hostility; of political rivalry; and of protest against the crown’s relationship to Jews and Jewish moneylending’.7 The most prolific of recent historians of medieval Jewry in England, Robin Mundill, has not specifically written about the anti-Jewish massacres of 1189/90. He briefly touched upon them in his The King’s Jews, acknowledging that ‘[t] here can be no doubt that the 1190 massacres were partially caused by the financial pressures of the preaching of the crusade’ and that ‘[i]n 1190 Jew hatred was heightened by a surge of religiosity that accompanied crusading as well as a feeling of insecurity that accompanied the start of a new reign’. Mundill mentioned the participation of crusaders in the massacres as reported by the narrative sources, in particular Ralph de Diceto and William of Newburgh, but offered no conclusive assessment of the overall significance of the crusader elements involved in the massacres.8

4

Ibid., 33. Dobson largely confirmed his earlier findings in [Richard] Barrie Dobson, ‘The Medieval York Jewry Reconsidered’, in The Jews in Medieval Britain. Historical, Literary and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Patricia Skinner, Woodbridge 2003, 145–56, at 147. 6 Robert C. Stacey, ‘Crusades, Martyrdoms, and the Jews of Medieval England, 1096–1190’, in Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, ed. Alfred Haverkamp, Sigmaringen 1999, 233–51. 7 Ibid., 250. 8 Robin R. Mundill, The King’s Jews. Money, Massacre and Exodus in Medieval England, London 2010, 42, 75–81. 5



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In the proceedings of the 2010 York conference dedicated to the York massacre of 1190, Joe Hillaby presented a survey of the anti-Jewish attacks of 1189/90.9 Like Mundill, Hillaby mentioned that the two principal chroniclers of these events attributed a central role to crusaders during the attacks. However, he did not really probe further into the crusader background as reported by Ralph de Diceto and William of Newburgh.10 Here, as well as in other contributions to the same volume, an interpretive pattern emerges. Following the lead of the medieval chroniclers, modern historians of the York massacres acknowledge the participation of crusaders in the anti-Jewish attacks of 1189 and 1190, but, like Dobson, with one exception, they tend to marginalize the importance of the crusading element.11 Alan Cooper sums up his assessment of the wider context of the massacres in the following words: ‘Extreme financial demands, fast societal change, economic strain, and an increasingly unforgiving governmental machinery created a country that was angry, anxious and divided against itself.’12 In contrast, Paul Hyams’ exploration of the relationship between Jews and Christians in twelfth-century England emphasizes the religious conditioning of social relations and attitudes between the two groups. Hyams’ reading, however, is primarily based on cultural concepts of trust and faith; the mechanisms, the institutions and the religious mentalities of crusading, if mentioned at all, do not play a significant role.13 This financially focused well-established representation of the York massacre of 1190 almost logically follows from the way in which the event has been studied by specialists and it ultimately owes much to the pioneering work of Barrie Dobson. The topic which dominates is that of the economic and financial relationship between Jews and Christians. In an attempt to counterbalance these traditional explanations, this essay gives the York massacre its own genesis and dynamic in the context of the disruptive atmosphere created by the Third Crusade. Crusade historians and the York massacre So far crusade historians have not given the York massacre of 1190 much attention.14 Christopher Tyerman briefly discussed the York massacre in the context of the preparations for the Third Crusade in England, pointing out that crusaders took an active part in the attacks on Jews and the plunder of their belongings. In his words, ‘motivated by a misguided notion of serving God and the cross, [they] began looting 9

Joe Hillaby, ‘Prelude and Postscript to the York Massacre: Attacks in East Anglia and Lincolnshire, 1190’, in Christians and Jews in Angevin England. The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts, ed. Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson, York 2013, 43–55. 10 Hillaby, ‘Prelude and Postscript’, 55. 11 The exception is Nicholas Vincent who acknowledges the theme of crusade as an important underlying factor in the construction of Newburgh’s narrative. Nicholas Vincent, ‘William of Newburgh, Josephus and the New Titus’, in Christians and Jews in Angevin England, 57–90, at 78–9. 12 Alan Cooper, ‘1190, William Longsword and the Crisis of Angevin England’, in Christians and Jews in Angevin England, 91–105, at 105. 13 Paul Hyams, ‘Faith, Fealty and Jewish “Infideles” in Twelfth-Century England’, in Christians and Jews in Angevin England, 125–47. 14 Iain Dyson is presently preparing a PhD thesis on Yorkshire and the Crusades 1095–1400 at the University of Leeds. His research may well reveal further important aspects of the crusading context of the York massacre.

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Jewish property in commercial centres such as King’s Lynn and Stamford’ before ‘[t]he violence reached a ghastly climax at York in mid-March’.15 Robert Chazan quoted the York massacre as an example of crusader violence against Jews after the cataclysmic events of the First Crusade.16 In my own 1999 article on ‘Crusade Propaganda and Attacks against Jews in the Late Twelfth and the Thirteenth Centuries’, I briefly described the York massacre as evidence for the coincidence of intensified crusade propaganda and anti-Jewish violence.17 A detailed analysis of the York massacre of 1190 from the perspective of crusade history has so far not been attempted. While taking into account the general fabric of Jewish–Christian relations at the end of the twelfth century in England and especially at York, an explanation of the York massacre of 1190 must focus on the special circumstances which caused this event. It is the contention of this article that these special circumstances were to a large extent caused by the Third Crusade which was being promoted in England at the time. The massacre of 1190 was a typical pogrom, being a violent, eruptive and disruptive event in which members of the majority Christian population attacked the minority group of Jewish inhabitants. Being episodic, pogroms are caused by special circumstances of time and place. They are specific events which transcend the dynamics of everyday life and only last for a relatively short period of time. Even if pogroms are an expression of the underlying conditions governing the relationship between the minority group of victims and the majority group to which the attackers belong, understanding these underlying conditions is not always sufficient for explaining the pogroms. The York massacre in fact followed an established tradition of crusader attacks against Jews which began during the First Crusade and by 1190 reached back nearly a century.18

15

Christopher Tyerman, God’s War. A New History of the Crusades, Cambridge, MA 2006, 438. See also Christopher Tyerman, England and the Crusades 1095–1588, Chicago, IL 1988, 192. Christopher Tyerman, How to Plan a Crusade. Reason and Religious War in the High Middle Ages, London 2015, 209. 16 Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade, Berkeley, CA 1987, 189–91. 17 Christoph T. Maier, ‘Crusade Propaganda and Attacks against Jews in the Late Twelfth and the Thirteenth Centuries’, in Uluslararasi Haçli Seferleri Sempozyumu, ed. Türk Tarih Kurumu, Ankara 1999, 213–26, at 218–19, 222–3. 18 For crusader violence against Jews in the time of the First and Second Crusades, see the ground-breaking study by Chazan, European Jewry, passim. See also Robert Chazan, The Year 1096. The First Crusade and the Jews, Philadelphia, PA 1996, and God, Humanity, and History. The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives, Berkeley, CA 2000. Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘The First Crusade and the Persecution of the Jews’, in Persecution and Toleration, ed. William J. Shiels, Oxford 1984, 51–72. There are several pertinent articles to be found in Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, especially Robert Stacey’s article (see above note 6). See also Robert Chazan, ‘From the First Crusade to the Second: Evolving Perceptions of the Christian-Jewish Conflict’, in Jews and Christians in Twelfth Century Europe, ed. Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen, Notre Dame, IN 2001, 46–62. Robert Chazan, ‘The Anti-Jewish Violence of 1096: Perpetrators and Dynamics’, in Religious Violence between Christians and Jews. Medieval Roots, Modern Perspectives, ed. Anna Sapir Abulafia, Basingstoke 2002, 21–43. Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘Christian Violence and the Crusades’, ibid., 3–20. Rebecca Rist, Popes and Jews, 1095-1291, Oxford 2016, 101–35. For crusader violence against Jews after the twelfth century, see Gerd Mentgen, ‘Kreuzzugsmentalität bei antijüdischen



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Promoting the Third Crusade An understanding of the crusader context of the York massacre must focus on two main aspects. Firstly, the preparations and propaganda for the Third Crusade in England, which created a public atmosphere in which religious feelings ran high and which could easily spill over into aggressive and sometimes violent behaviour by individuals and in particular by crusaders. Secondly, crusade propaganda broadcast during this time, although focused on the fight against Muslims in the Holy Land, bore the potential to provoke aggression and violence against all kinds of enemies of the faith, including Jews. Public awareness of the crusade in England was probably at an all-time high in the run-up to the Third Crusade. When the news of the disastrous defeat of the Christian army in the Holy Land by the forces of Saladin at Hattin reached Europe in October 1187, the European public was greatly alarmed; Pope Urban III was even said to have died of shock.19 In response, many great nobles took the cross, Richard the Lionheart being the first to do so, and three kings, Frederick Barbarossa, Philip II of France and Henry II of England, all pledged to lead a crusade to the Holy Land. After Henry II’s death in July 1189, his successor, Richard, not only took over the throne but also the leadership of the crusade.20 A frantic campaign took place in England for the recruitment of crusaders and for the collection of financial subsidies in the very short time between Henry II’s taking of the cross in January 1188 and Richard’s departure in December 1189. The concerted efforts of the king and the pope meant that thousands of crusaders from all walks of life and from across England and Wales were recruited. Numbers are as ever unreliable when it comes to medieval sources but estimates range between five and ten thousand and possibly even more crusaders being persuaded to commit themselves to the enterprise.21 Crusaders were recruited in various ways. Pope Gregory VIII ordered the preaching of the cross throughout Europe. Although we know little about the organization of the papal recruitment campaigns for the Third Crusade, preaching activities of prominent churchmen were reported by chroniclers.22 The prime example is the preaching tour of Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury through Wales in the spring of 1188 during which, according to Gerald of Wales who accompanied the archbishop, as many as three thousand people took the cross.23 King Richard also offered financial incentives to crusaders by offering exemption from the crusading Aktionen nach 1190’, in Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, 287–326. Maier, ‘Crusade Propaganda and Attacks against Jews’. 19 Helen Birkett, ‘News in the Middle Ages: News, Communications, and the Launch of the Third Crusade, 1187–1188’, Viator 49(3), 2018, 23–61. Sylvia Schein, Gateway to the Heavenly City. Crusader Jerusalem and the Catholic West (1099–1187), Aldershot 2005, 159–87. Penny J. Cole, ‘Christian Perceptions of the Battle of Hattin (583/1187)’, Al-Masaq 6, 1993, 9–39. 20 Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 57–9. For the Third Crusade generally, see Tyerman, God’s War, 375–474. 21 Tyerman, England and the Crusades, 64–85. 22 For the preaching of the Third Crusade, see Penny J. Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades to the Holy Land, 1095–1270, Cambridge, MA 1991. Jean Flori, Prêcher la croisade xie–xiiie siècle. Communication et propaganda, Paris 2012, 153–78. 23 Kathryn Hurlock, Wales and the Crusades c.1095–1291, Cardiff 2011, 58–91. Peter Edbury, ‘Preaching the Crusade in Wales’, in England and Germany in the High Middle Ages in Honour of Karl J. Leyser, ed. Alfred Haverkamp and Hanna Vollrath, Oxford 1996, 221–33. See also Cole, Preaching the Crusades, 74–9.

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tithe which was being levied throughout the kingdom as well as advancing financial subsidies from the collected tithe for those who took the cross. Further legal benefits were offered by the pope and in turn guaranteed by the king, in particular deferment of debt payments and exemption from prosecution in secular courts. It would have been difficult for anyone not to notice the clerics preaching the cross, royal agents collecting the crusading tithe, and the presence of a steadily increasing number of crusaders appearing in public throughout the realm. They all spread the word about the new crusade to the Holy Land and variously challenged people by persuasion, by force and by example to participate or financially contribute to the king’s crusade. No texts specifically written for the preaching of the Third Crusade have survived that are comparable to the model sermons and preaching treatise of later crusades.24 Apart from the papal letters, almost the only indication as to the contents of the propaganda broadcast by crusade preachers comes from theological treatises which touch upon a number of crusade-related topics, such as Henry of Albano’s Tractatus de peregrinante civitate Dei or Peter of Blois’ De Hierosolymitana peregrinatione acceleranda and his Exhortatio ad eos qui nec accipiunt nec praedicant crucem.25 In addition, there are some very rare descriptions of crusade sermons or fragments thereof in chronicle reports.26 However, the most reliable guide to the content of crusade propaganda spread by the clergy is no doubt Pope Gregory VIII’s letter Audita tremendi addressed to all potential participants of the crusade on 29 October 1187, with which the pope officially launched the Third Crusade.27 This letter would have been used by crusade preachers throughout Europe as the basis of their recruitment campaigns.28 Penny

24

One of Alain of Lille’s sermones de cruce, possibly originating in a sermon preached on 14 September 1189, mentions the topic of crusade; but there are no indications that this text had anything to do with the recruitment of crusaders; see Matthew Phillips, ‘The Thief’s Cross: Crusade and Penance in Alain of Lille’s Sermo de cruce domini’, Crusades 5, 2006, 143–56. Also Flori, Prêcher la croisade, 171–3. For thirteenth-century crusade sermon texts, see Christoph T. Maier, Crusade Propaganda and Ideology. Model Sermons for the Preaching of the Cross, Cambridge 2000; Miikka Tamminen, Crusade Preaching and the Ideal Crusader, Turnhout 2018. 25 Henry of Albano, ‘Tractatus de peregrinante civitate Dei’, PL 204, cols 251–404. Peter of Blois, ‘De Hierosolymitana peregrinatione acceleranda’, PL 207, cols 529–34 and ‘De Hierosolymitana peregrinatione acceleranda’, ibid., cols 1057–70. For these, see Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades, 68–74 and Flori, Prêcher la croisade, 162–70. 26 The only full chronicle report of a crusade sermon concerns the preaching of Bishop Henry of Strasbourg in December 1187 in the Historia peregrinorum; see Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzugs Kaiser Friedrichs I., ed. Anton Chroust, MGH Scriptores rerum Germanicarum, new series, 5, Berlin 1928, 122–4. For an English translation, see The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa: The History of the Expedition of Emperor Frederick and Related Texts, trans. Graham A. Loud, Farnham 2010, 141–3. For the fragmentary reports of Baldwin of Canterbury’s preaching in Wales in 1188, see above note 23. 27 PL 202, cols 1539–42 and Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzugs Kaiser Friedrichs I., 6–10. For an English translation and a commentary on the text, see Crusade and Christendom. Annotated Documents in Translation from Innocent III to the Fall of Acre, 1187–1291, ed. Jessalynn Bird, Edward Peters and James M. Powell, Philadelphia, PA 2013, 4–19. For the different versions of Audita tremendi, see Thomas W. Smith, ‘Audita tremendi and the Call for the Third Crusade Reconsidered, 1187–1188’, Viator 49(3), 2018, 63–101. 28 For the use of papal letters in crusade preaching generally, see Christoph T. Maier, ‘Ritual,



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Cole has called Audita tremendi ‘perhaps the most emotive of all crusade bulls’.29 It tells at great length how Saladin defeated the Christians at Hattin and how this humiliation was crowned by the loss of the relic of the True Cross. The pope challenged his audience to join in the grief over this defeat, to mourn it openly and to do penance as a way of placating God. Potential crusaders were encouraged to embark on a journey of spiritual conversion, moral reform, penance and self-sacrifice. Pope Gregory expected genuine religious devotion, a comprehensive moral commitment and a personal dedication to God’s cause from those joining the crusade. The propaganda activities promoting the Third Crusade took on forms and dimensions not previously seen. The idea that crusading required more than just a military effort was mirrored in a number of theological writings. For example, the treatises by Henry of Albano and Peter of Blois mentioned above as well as Ralph Niger’s De re militari promoted penance and moral conversion as a prerequisite for a successful crusade.30 This thinking was based on the conviction that Christian society in general was responsible for regaining God’s favour, without which it would be impossible to recapture the Holy Land. Moral conversion was to be enhanced by liturgies that were performed during regular church services and at specific events, including sermons preached for the support of the crusade. These liturgies were made mandatory by Pope Gregory VIII in 1187 and were a new feature in the promotion of the crusade.31 Roger of Howden described in some detail how the pope’s instructions were played out in the liturgy of daily services at St Paul’s in London.32 The centre piece was the singing of Psalm 78 (Deus venerunt gentes), used in the context of the Holy Land Crusade since the First Crusade, in which God’s help was invoked to avenge the outrages committed by God’s enemies who invaded the Holy Land.33 Along with this and other liturgical sequences, a principal prayer (Omnipotens sempiterne Deus) was sung, which also asked for God’s favour and assistance for the upcoming fight of the Christian armies.34 In addition to the liturgies performed during public church services, monastic communities

What Else? Papal Letters, Sermons and the Making of Crusaders’, JMH 44, 2018, 333–46. See also Michael Lower, The Barons’ Crusade: A Call to Arms and Its Consequencesm Philadelphia, PA 2005, 120. Jessalynn Bird, ‘Papal Bulls, Paris Masters and Crusade Preaching, ca. 1187–1221’, JMH 49, 2023, forthcoming. 29 Cole, The Preaching of the Crusades, 63. 30 See above note 25. For Ralph Niger, see Radulfus Niger, De re militari et tripici via peregrinationis Ierosolimitane, ed. Ludwig Schmugge, Berlin 1977. See also Schmugge’s introduction, ibid., 23–74. 31 For this, see Christoph T. Maier, ‘Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, JEH 48, 1997, 628–57, at 631–3. M. Cecilia Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons. Liturgy and the Making of Crusade Ideology, Ithaca, NY 2017, 195–201. Jessalynn Bird, ‘Rogations, Litany, and Crusade Preaching: The Liturgical Front in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’, in Papacy, Crusade, and Christian–Muslim Relations, ed. Jessalynn Bird, Amsterdam 2018, 155–93. 32 Howden, Gesta, vol. 2, 53–4 and Howden, Chronica, vol. 2, 359–60. 33 Penny Cole, “‘O God, the Heathen have Come into Your Inheritance” (Ps. 78, 1): The Theme of Religious Pollution in Crusade Documents, 1095–1188’, in Crusaders and Muslims in Twelfth-Century Syria, ed. Maya Shatzmiller, Leiden 1993, 84–111. Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons, 196–8. 34 Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons, 198–9.

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were asked to include similar intercessory prayers into their own daily liturgies.35 Even more so than the travelling crusade preachers and the royal tax collectors, the performance of daily liturgies in churches throughout the realm served as a constant reminder to large portions of the population of the urgency which the ecclesiastical and the secular authorities attached to the upcoming crusade. By joining in these liturgies, everybody could actively contribute to the crusading effort whether or not he or she took the cross. The frantic efforts to organise a crusade in such a short period of time led to emotionally charged moments. Arnold of Lübeck claimed that the main purpose of the papal measures was to ‘incite all to zeal against the impious and towards vengeance for the Holy Blood’.36 Crusade sermons and liturgical interventions were meant to elicit such emotional response from audiences.37 The Historia peregrinorum described the effect of one of Henry of Strasbourg’s sermons in 1187 thus: ‘After these words the devotion of all, which had previously seemed to be sleeping, was roused. Pious tears welled up from contrite hearts. Many counts and barons, and many thousands of knights and footmen hastened together to receive the cross.’38 By the same token, Gerald of Wales told how during Baldwin of Canterbury’s preaching tour of Wales in 1188, audiences responded enthusiastically, at one event almost crushing the archbishop when rushing forward to receive the cross.39 Circumstances and arrangements of recruitment events were often chosen to increase the emotional impact. One famous instance reported in the context of the Third Crusade was said to have involved a banner sent for recruitment purposes from the Holy Land to Europe, where it was displayed in several cities. It allegedly showed the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and a Muslim rider whose horse was urinating on Christ’s tomb.40 Such pictures and accompanying sermons highlighting alleged Muslim atrocities were meant to generate outrage and thirst for vengeance.41 The surge of religious emotion was particularly intense during religious feast days.42 A Hebrew account describing the anti-Jewish atmosphere in Germany after the news of the defeat at Hattin mentioned how Jews came under attack in the Mainz area during the imperial Easter diet in 1188.43 Lent in particular was a time of fast and penitence

35

Maier, ‘Crisis, Liturgy and the Crusade’, 632–3. Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons, 199–201. Arnold of Lübeck, ‘Chronica’, MGH SS, 100–250, at 169: ‘[…] incitans omnes in zelum impiorum et ad ultionem sanguinis sancti’. 37 Maier, ‘Ritual, What Else?’, 342–5. 38 Quellen zur Geschichte des Kreuzzugs Friedrichs I., 124: ‘His dictis cunctorum quasi prius dormitans excitatur devotio, de cordibus compunctis erumpunt lacrime pietatis. Comites et barones plurimi necnon et multa milia tam equitatum quam peditum ad suscipiendum crucis signaculum catervatim accurrere.’ The translation is from The Crusade of Frederick Barbarossa, 143. 39 Gerald of Wales, ‘De rebus a se gestis’, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, ed. John S. Brewer et al., 8 vols, RS 21, London 1861–91, vol. 1, 1–122, at 75. See also Gerald of Wales, ‘Itinerarium Cambriae’, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vol. 6, 3–154, at 83. 40 Behâ Ed-Dîn, ‘Anecdotes et Beaux Trait de la vie du Sultan Youssouf (Salâh ed-Dîn)’, Receuil des Historiens des Croisades. Historiens Orienteaux 3, Paris 1884, 181. 41 For the theme of vengeance in crusader rhetoric, see Susanna A. Throop, Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 1095–1216, Farnham 2011. 42 See also Gaposchkin, Invisible Weapons, 199. 43 Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgung während der Kreuzzüge, ed. Adolf 36



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in commemoration of the Lord’s passion. Crusade preaching was often targeted at the Lenten season as people focussed on penitence and redemption.44 Considering the religiously charged atmosphere created by crusade propagandists, it comes as no great surprise that during the Third Crusade in England some crusaders became involved in attacks against Jews. Crusade historians have repeatedly demonstrated that the ideology of the crusades carried with it the potential for violence against Jews.45 Violence against Jews occurred despite the fact that the official crusade message from the popes never targeted the Jews explicitly and despite the fact that church authorities usually condemned crusader violence against Jews. The fact that individual crusaders nevertheless engaged in anti-Jewish pogroms is largely based on the convertibility of the crusade message. In generic ideological terms, crusades fought against an enemy of the faith for the defence of Christ and the Church. Even though each individual crusade was proclaimed by the papacy against a specific enemy of the faith – in the case of the Holy Land crusades the Muslims of the Levant – the appeal was primarily issued to individuals to become crucesignati, Christian holy warriors signed with the cross. Becoming a crucesignatus meant fighting enemies of Christ and the Church, while at the same time earning salvation for one’s own soul. From as early as the First Crusade some crusaders interpreted this role as involving a personal choice as to which enemies of the faith they should target. A famous early example told by Orderic Vitalis concerns the count of Maine, Hélias de la Flèche, who had taken the cross for the First Crusade. Instead of going to the Holy Land, he decided to fight against his secular enemies at home, whom he also considered to be enemies of Christ and thus legitimate targets of his own personal crusade.46 The same basic mechanism was at work during many anti-Jewish pogroms committed by crusaders. Attacking Jews during the preparatory phases of crusade campaigns against Muslims was a way for some crusaders to express and enact their roles as Christian holy warriors: the Jews at home were simply the first enemies of the faith that they came across.47 This mechanism of crusaders singling out Jews as legitimate targets of their mission to fight the enemies of the faith can also be detected during the preparatory phases of the Third Crusade in England.

Neubauer and Moritz Stern, Berlin 1892, 216–18. See also Robert Chazan, ‘Emperor Frederick I, the Third Crusade, and the Jews’, Viator 8, 1977, 83–93. 44 Jessalynn Bird, ‘Preaching the Crusades and the Liturgical Year: The Palm Sunday Sermons’, Essays in Medieval Studies 30, 2014, 11–36, esp. 12–14. Ead., ‘Rogation, Litanies and Crusade Preaching’, 158–68. Maier, Preaching the Crusades, 108–9, 133–4. 45 See the literature mentioned in note 18. Also Throop, Crusading as an Act of Vengeance, 97–107. 46 This is discussed in Christoph T. Maier, ‘Pope Innocent III and the Crusade Revisited’, in Religion as an Agent of Change. Crusades – Reformation – Pietism, ed. Per Ingesman, Leiden 2016, 55–74, at 59–65. 47 For this, see also Christoph T. Maier, ‘Konflikt und Kommunikation: Neues zum Kreuzzugsaufruf Urbans II.’, in Jerusalem im Hoch-und Spätmittelalter. Konflikte und Konfliktbewältigung – Vorstellungen und Vergegenwärtigungen, ed. Dieter Bauer, Klaus Herbers and Nikolas Jaspert, Frankfurt 2001, 13–30, at 27–9. Maier, ‘Pope Innocent III and the Crusades Revisited’, 64–5.

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Crusaders and the English pogroms of 1189/90 Of the many crucesignati who were recruited for the Third Crusade, or for that matter for any other crusade, only a small minority got involved in anti-Jewish violence. Time, setting and circumstance played a decisive role in creating situations in which crusaders attacked Jews. It is, therefore, necessary to take a closer look at the events which led to the anti-Jewish pogroms in England at the end of 1189 and the beginning of 1190 and in particular the York massacre in March 1190. The first in a series of anti-Jewish attacks happened in London during the festivities for the coronation of Richard I in September 1189. The incident was mentioned in Ralph de Diceto’s and Richard of Devizes’ chronicles as well as in the Gesta regis, but it was William of Newburgh who gave a detailed description and also made the connection with the crusade.48 His account clearly suggests that the attacks against the Jews in London was a spontaneous incident which grew out of a dispute over the admission of a number of prominent Jews – among whom were two prominent members of the Jewish community at York – to the coronation celebrations. Some of the Christian celebrants at the coronation turned against the Jews trying to join the festivities, attacking them with batons and stones, killing some of them. After this initial clash the situation escalated into a full-scale riot. Christian mobs began looting Jewish properties, burning down Jewish houses and killing Jews or forcing them to convert to Christianity. The atmosphere was emotionally charged, uncontrolled and frantic to such an extent that some of the attacking Christians even ended up fighting each other over the distribution of the loot. Ranulf de Glanville, the royal justiciar sent to stop the riots, was unable to calm things. The riots only died down on the second day. Commenting on the London pogrom, William of Newburgh concluded: This hitherto unheard-of occurrence in the royal city, and this destruction, so emphatically begun, of that unbelieving race, and this novel confidence of the Christians against the enemies of the Cross of Christ, distinguished the first day of the reign of that most illustrious king Richard; evidently presaging the promotion of Christianity in his days, not only according to the rule, by which doubtful events are rather to be explained for the better than for the worse, but also according to the most apt interpretation; for what does it signify more suitably, if it signifies anything, than that the destruction of that blasphemous race ennobled equally the day, and the place, and his consecration as king, and that in the very commencement of his reign the enemies of the Christian faith began to grow weak, and to fall around him?49 48

Ralph de Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, in The Historical Works of Master Ralph de Diceto, Dean of London, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, RS 68, London 1876, vol. 2, 3–174, at 69. The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, ed. John T. Appleby, London 1963, 3–4. Howden, Gesta, 83–4. William of Newburgh, ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett, 4 vols, RS 82, London 1884–9, vols 1–2, at vol. 1, 294–8. For William of Newburgh’s portrayal of Jews generally, see M. J. Kennedy, ‘“Faith in the One God Flowed Over You from the Jews, the Sons of the Patriarchs and the Prophets”: William of Newburgh’s Writings on Anti-Jewish Violence’, ANS 25, 2002, 139–52, and John D. Hosler, ‘Henry II, William of Newburgh, and the Development of English Anti-Judaism’, in Christian Attitudes to Jews in the Middle Ages, ed. Michael Frassetto, London 2007, 167–82. 49 William of Newburgh, ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’, 297–8: ‘Hoc eatenus inaudito regiæ civitatis eventu, et egregie inchoato perfidæ gentis exitio, et nova Christianorum contra



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The reference to the Jews as ‘the enemies of the Cross of Christ’ squarely puts the London pogrom into the context of the crusade, which was Richard I’s most urgent endeavour at the beginning of his reign. William of Newburgh interpreted the attacks against the Jews in London as foreshadowing Richard’s programme for the ‘promotion of Christianity’, it ‘ennobled’ the first day of his reign and signalled his future victory over the ‘enemies of the Christian faith’. Even though William did not report the actual participation of crucesignati in the London pogrom, his comments thus suggested a strong connection between the Third Crusade that was being planned and preached in England at the time and the attack against the Jews on the day that Richard I, the crusader king, was crowned. The actual participation of crusaders in attacks against Jews is mentioned in several incidents in England between the coronation riots of September 1189 and the York massacre of March 1190. Earlier studies of the pogroms have obscured, and thus also downplayed, the participation of crusaders because of a misunderstanding of the terminology used in the principal narrative accounts. Both Ralph de Diceto and William Newburgh used the Latin peregrinus viz. peregrinatio to refer to crusaders and crusade. Both words were in fact standard terms used for crusaders or crusade at the end of the twelfth century.50 There is little doubt that Ralph de Diceto referred to crusaders in his account of the anti-Jewish pogroms. He introduced the passage about attacks on Jews in his Ymagines Historiarum by saying that ‘throughout England many who were hastening to proceed to Jerusalem decided first to attack Jews before fighting the Saracens’; he specifically mentioned the pogroms at Norwich, Stamford, York and Bury St Edmunds and added: ‘Wherever Jews were found, they were killed by the hands of the crusaders (manibus peregrinantium) unless they were saved by the help of the authorities.’51 The meaning of peregrini as crusaders is confirmed by the adaptations made by Roger of Wendover

inimicos crucis Christi fiducia, insignitus est regni illustrissimi regis Ricardi dies primus, plane non tantum juxta regulam qua jubentur ambigua in melius potius quam in deterius derivari, verum etiam juxta significationem aptissimam Christianæ in diebus ejus promotionæ præsagus. Quid enim aptius portendit, si quid portendit, quod regiæ consecrationis ejus diem pariter et locum blasphemæ gentis nobilitavit exitium, quod in ipso regni ejus exordio hostes Christianæ fidei coeperunt juxta eum cadere et infirmari?’ The translation is taken from William of Newburgh, ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’, in The Church Historians of England, trans. Joseph Stevenson, 5 vols, London 1853–8, vol. 4, 397–672, at 577. 50 James A. Brundage, Medieval Canon Law and the Crusader, Madison, WI 1969, passim and esp. 30–1. Ernst-Dieter Hehl, ‘Kreuzzug – Pilgerfahrt – Imitatio Christi’, in Pilger und Wallfahrtstätten in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, ed. Michael Matheus, Stuttgart 1999, 35–51, esp. 37–9. Giles Constable, ‘The Terminology of Crusading’, in idem, Crusaders and Crusading in the Twelfth Century, Farnham 2008, 349–51. Walker Reid Cosgrove, ‘Crucesignatus: A Refinement or Merely One Term among Many?’, in Crusades – Medieval Worlds in Conflict, ed. Thomas F. Madden, James L. Naus and Vincent Ryan, Farnham 2010, 95–107, esp. 100–1. 51 Ralph de Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, 75–6: ‘Multi per Angliam, tendere Jerosolimam properantes, prius in Judæos insurgere decreverunt quam invaderent Sarracenos. […] Ubicumque reperti sunt Judæi manibus peregrinantium percussi sunt, nisi municipalium eruebantur auxilio.’ Ralph did not, incidentally, condone the attacks commenting that ‘wise men’ were thought not to approve of the killings in accordance with Psalm 58 (59): ‘Slay them not [lest my people forget].’ See also Jeremy Cohen, ‘Christian Theology and Anti-Jewish Violence in the Middle Ages: Connections and Disjunctions’, in Religious Violence between Christians and Jews, 44–60, at 47–50.

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and Matthew Paris who included Ralph de Diceto’s passages in their own chronicles. Both substituted crucesignati for peregrini.52 The confirmation of the central role which crusaders played in the pogroms comes from William of Newburgh’s chronicle, which as noted is the only narrative text to describe the attacks in any detail. Earlier translations of Newburgh’s chronicle gave peregrini juvenes, the Latin term used in the descriptions of the pogrom in King’s Lynn in January 1190, as ‘stranger-youths’.53 Just as Ralph de Diceto used peregrini to mean crusaders in the passage mentioned above, so William of Newburgh’s passage in fact refers to young people who had taken the cross. Newburgh described how some Jews in King’s Lynn allegedly attacked a member of their own community who had converted to Christianity. The convert fled to a church and with people there called for help. Upon this, a crowd of townsfolk gathered at the scene, but they were wary of getting involved since the king had issued an order to protect the Jews after the incidents at London in September. However, a group of young crusaders (peregrini juvenes) who had come to King’s Lynn to buy supplies (quorum illuc multitudo negotiandi gratia venerat) had no such qualms. They attacked the Jews, killed many of them and plundered their properties.54 Immediately after the attack, the young crusaders left King’s Lynn by ship, thus avoiding being apprehended by the royal officers. Conveniently, according to Newburgh, the people of King’s Lynn later blamed the attacks on the departed crusaders.55 A very similar pattern emerges from William of Newburgh’s account of the Stamford pogrom of 7 March 1190.56 Again young crusaders who were passing through the town were said to have started the violence against the Jews. As in King’s Lynn, the crusaders in question seem to have come to purchase supplies at the Lenten fair that was taking place in Stamford at the time. According to William, the ‘young crusaders’ (juvenes qui signum crucis dominicum Ierosolymam profecturi susceperant) were of the opinion that Jews were ‘enemies of the cross of Christ’ (inimici crucis Christi) and that it was therefore right to steal Jewish money to finance their crusade; they were in fact convinced that they were doing this as a part of their service for Christ (arbitrantes itaque obsequium se præstare Christo si hostes eius impeterent). Also, as in King’s Lynn, some of the townsfolk joined in the attacks

52

Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum. The Flowers of History, ed. Henry G. Hewlett, 3 vols, RS 84, London 1886–9, vol. 1, 176. Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. Henry R. Luard, 7 vols, RS 57, London, 1872–83, vol. 2, 358. 53 William of Newburgh, ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’, trans. Joseph Stevenson, vol. 4, 564. 54 Ibid., 309: ‘Cum forte quidam ex eorum superstitione ad Christianam esset fidem conversus, ejus tanquam desertoris et prævaricatoris sanguinem sitientes, quærebant opportunitatem malitiæ consummandæ, raptisque quodam die armis aggressi sunt transeuntem: porro ille in ecclesiam proximam se recepit. Nec quivere sævientes, sed pervicaci furore et impetu eandem ecclesiam oppugnare cœperunt, ut effractis foribus profugum ad pœnam extraherent. Ingens eorum qui erant in eadem ecclesia clamor attolitur. Christianum sonoris vocibus auxilium flagitatur. Clamor et fama Christianum populum accendunt: qui cominus erant, ad clamorem, et qui eminus, ad famam amarti accurrunt. Et loci quidem incolæ propter metum regium remissus agebant: porro peregrini juvenes, quorum illuc multitudo negotiandi gratia venerat, superbos belligerantes fortius impetebant.’ 55 Ibid., 310: ‘Peregrini juvenes præda onusti repetitis navibus, ne quam forte a ministris regiis sustinerent quæstionem, celeriter abierunt. Loci vero incolae, cum propter hoc discuterentur a regiis, in peregrinos, qui jam abierunt, factum refuderunt.’ 56 The exact date is given in Ralph de Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, 75.



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once the crusaders had taken the initiative. And again, the crusaders escaped prosecution by moving on quickly.57 The pogrom at Stamford, just as the one at York a few days later, took place during Lent, which was, as has been mentioned, a time of heightened religious sensitivities and expectations. An atmosphere of increased religious fervour is further reflected in William of Newburgh’s account of the Stamford attacks when he reported a somewhat bizarre story which followed the pogrom. One of the escaping crusaders was said to have been declared a martyr by popular acclaim after he was robbed and murdered on route. Following an old woman’s visions, people flocked to his tomb in expectation of miracles, causing the local bishop to step in and abort the illicit cult.58 Lent clearly favoured extreme forms of religious devotion and led to ritualized forms of violence against Jews.59 Lent evidently also spurred crusaders on to give full expression to their identity as fighters against the enemies of Christ. For some crusaders this meant legitimately robbing and killing Jews. According to William of Newburgh’s account, the attacks against Jews in the early months of 1190 developed their own dynamic. After the pogroms at King’s Lynn and Stamford, as well as a similar incident at Norwich in February mentioned by Ralph de Diceto,60 people in Lincoln, having heard of the attacks, felt encouraged to proceed against their own Jewish community. However, nothing much came of these plans since the Jews of Lincoln fled into the protection of the royal precinct.61 It seems likely they had been warned by news from elsewhere, but there also do not seem to have been crusaders present at Lincoln who might have incited townspeople in the way they did at King’s Lynn and Stamford. At York a similar dynamic came to bear in mid-March, but this time with a disastrous outcome for the Jewish community. According to William of Newburgh’s account, a number of people from in and around York seized the opportunity of the anti-Jewish atmosphere which was spreading through the realm. Contrary to the townspeople of Lincoln, however, they seem to have been better prepared and more thoroughly organized. William of Newburgh described them as conspirators (conjurarunt adversos Judæis) set to proceed in stark contravention to the king’s orders for the protection of Jews. Among the conspirators were people of higher rank

57

William of Newburgh, ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’, 310–11: ‘Post hæc apud Stanfordiam novi adversus Judæos turbinis motus surrexit. Cum enim ibidem Quadragesimali tempore solemnes nundinæ agerentur, juvenes, qui signum dominicum Ierosolymam profecturi susceperant, ex diversis provinciis multitudo supervenit, indignans quod inimici crucis Christi ibidem habitantes tam multa possiderent, cum ipsi ad tanti itineris sumptus minus haberent, et ab eis tanquam injustis possessoribus extorquendum duxerunt, quod susceptæ peregrinationis necessariis usibus applicarent. Arbitrantes itaque obsequium se præstare Christo si hostes eius impeterent, quorum bonis inhiabant, audacter irruerunt in eos, nemine vel ex loci incolis vel ex iis qui ad nundinas venerant tantis se ausibus opponente, nonnullis vero etiam cooperantibus. Cæsi sunt aliquot ex Judæis, ceteri vero intra castellum recepti ægre evaserunt. Expilatæ sunt domus eorum et magna vis pecuniæ capta. Prædones cum sui operis emolumento abierunt, nullusque eorum propter hoc studio disciplinæ publicæ sustinuit quæstionem; […].’ 58 Ibid., 311–12. 59 See Gerd Mentgen, ‘Der Würfelzoll und andere antijüdische Schikanen’, Zeitschrift für Historische Forschung 22, 1995, 1–48, at 14–19. 60 Ralph de Diceto, ‘Ymagines Historiarum’, vol. 1, 75. 61 William of Newburgh, ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’, 312. See also Hillaby, ‘Prelude and Postscript’, 48–9.

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(nobiliores) who were heavily indebted to Jewish moneylenders and were suffering great financial difficulties. These conspirators were joined and supported by local crusaders (qui signum Dominicum acceperant) who welcomed the opportunity to loot from Jews to finance their expeditions and who were not afraid of recriminations as they were set to leave the town to join the crusade.62 The pogrom started with two nocturnal attacks on the two richest Jewish households during which money was stolen, people killed and houses set ablaze.63 During these attacks, which were set a few days apart, the situation escalated. The planned and carefully targeted assaults by the conspirators and the crusaders attracted a mob of townspeople who joined in. They initially looted what was left after the nocturnal attacks and then turned the pogrom into an extended and chaotic spree of theft, violence, murder and forced conversion which lasted for several days. While the Jews took refuge in the royal castle, the situation escalated further.64 More and more people from in and around York joined the action and ended up besieging the Jews. Prominent among them were artisans and young people. The atmosphere was one of frenzy and mob violence. Clerics also took part, in particular one Premonstratensian friar who allegedly egged people on to attack the ‘enemies of Christ’ (hostes Christi) and himself took part in the fighting, later becoming the only Christian to be killed during the attacks.65 After several days, the siege ended when the defending Jews set the tower on fire, some committing suicide and others surrendering to the besiegers promising conversion to Christianity; most of the latter were, however, murdered by the original group of conspirators who were still leading the Christian mob.66 William of Newburgh closes his account of the York massacre by telling how the conspirators forced the wardens of the cathedral to surrender the documents which the Jewish moneylenders had deposited there, thus destroying the evidence of their indebtedness. In a final remark, William pointed out that shortly after the events of

62

William of Newburgh, ‘Historia Rerum Anglicarum’, 313–14: ‘Rege vero postmodum in partibus transmarinis constituto, conjurant adversos Judæos Eboracenses provinciales plurimi; eorum, cum ipsi egerent, opulentiam non ferentes, et sine ullo Christianæ scrupulæ perfidum sanguinem prædarum cupidine sitientes. His auctores ad audendum fuere quidam nobiliores impiis fœneratoribus in multam summam debitores; quorum nonnulli, cum proaccepta pecunia prædia illis propria apposuissent, grandi inopia premebantur; quidam vero cautionibus propriis obligati, ad satisfaciendum regiis fœneratoribus a fisci exactoribus urgebantur; quidam etiam ex illis qui signum Dominicum acceperant, jamque in procinctu Ierosolymitanæ profectionis erant, tanto facilius impelli potuere ut ex præda hostium Domini suscepti pro Domino itineris sumptus juvarent, quanto minus propter hoc quæstionem aliquam arrepto jam itinere formidarent.’ 63 Ibid., 314–15. 64 Ibid., 314–15: ‘Prædonibus autem cum tanti ausus emolumento dilapsis, facto mane, vulgus promiscuum irruit, diripuitque in diversis speciebus et multiplici subellectile prædonum ignisque reliquias. Tunc demum qui Judæos prius invisos habuerant, cum conjuratis, nullo publici vigoris respectu habito, manifeste et profusa licentia in eos debacchari cœperunt, nec eorum substantiis jam contenti, cunctis extra arcem inventis aut sacri baptismatis aut extremi discriminis optionem dederunt. Denique baptizati nonnulli, ficte se, ut mortem evaderent, Christianis aggregarunt: sine misericordia vero trucidati sunt qui sacramentum vitæ vel ficte recipere detrectarunt. Dum hæc agerentur, multitudo quæ in arcem confugerat in tuto agere videbatur.’ 65 Ibid., 315–18. 66 Ibid., 318–22.



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the pogrom, those among the conspirators who had taken the cross left York in order to escape any investigation of the events.67 Two important points emerge from William of Newburgh’s narrative of the attacks on Jews at King’s Lynn, Stamford, and York. Firstly, the presence (or absence) of crusaders played a decisive role in sparking open violence against Jews in England in 1189/90. In King’s Lynn, Stamford and York crusaders were among those responsible for initiating the attacks. In King’s Lynn and Stamford, the presence of crusaders was crucial because the townspeople only joined the violence and turned the attacks into pogroms after crusaders from outside had made a start. In contrast, in Lincoln, where no crusader presence was reported, the townspeople on their own were reluctant to use violence and the attacks did not turn into an all-out pogrom. The second point William of Newburgh made concerns the fact that the crusaders who initiated the violence against Jews quickly left the scenes of the pogroms in order to escape investigation and punishment. It seems that crusaders were less concerned to act against the royal orders protecting the Jews which had been issued after the London massacre. This was certainly not only because, being on route to crusading, they made it difficult to be apprehended by the authorities. What William of Newburgh did not mention is that crusaders must also have felt that they could afford to disregard royal orders because they were, at least in theory, exempt from prosecution in secular courts on account of the legal privileges awarded to crusaders by the pope.68 This suggests that the mindset of crusaders clearly predisposed them towards attacking Jews as enemies of the faith and that the geographic mobility and the legal privileges granted to crusaders probably lowered their threshold for violating laws protecting Jews. Conclusion There is little doubt that there was a significant crusader context to the York massacre of 1190. The pogrom at York was part of a series of similar incidents which took place between late summer 1189 and spring 1190 during the frantic preparations for the Third Crusade in England which led to a public atmosphere in which highly charged religious sentiments focused on the fight against the enemies of the faith came to the fore. This crusade context in turn provided a breeding ground for anti-Jewish violence. As the pogroms became more numerous at the beginning of the year 1190, the individual events began feeding off each other. Having heard of attacks against Jews elsewhere, people were encouraged to devise their own plans for proceeding against Jewish communities. In doing so, the ideology of the crusade provided a motive and a pretext for crusaders to attack Jews as a way of financing their crusades through theft and for debtors of Jews to extricate themselves from their indebtedness. All of these elements played a role in the York massacre of March 1190. Without the Christian defeat at Hattin, without the English king’s commitment to join the crusade, without the frantic propaganda campaigns in support of the crusade and without the presence of many who had taken the cross across England the conditions which allowed the York massacre to be planned and 67

Ibid., 322: ‘Quibus actis, illi ex conjuratis, qui signum Domini acceperant, ante omnem quæstionem iter propositum arriperunt: ceteri vero in provincia sub quæstionis formidine remanserunt.’ 68 Brundage, Canon Law and the Crusader, 160–5, 170–4. For England in particular, see Tyermann, England and the Crusades, 217–28.

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to be enacted would not have existed. In other words, without the Third Crusade the York massacre of 1190 would probably not have taken place. This does not mean that the traditional view of the York massacre as being a consequence of the fragile relationship between the Jewish moneylenders of York and their debtors is in any way invalid. But it does put that relationship into its proper perspective because it clearly forms the backdrop against which the pogrom took place. The fragile relationship between Christians and Jews was the dry tinder into which the crusading spark fell to combust into the massacre of 1190. If we want to comprehend why the massacre happened in the first place and why it happened when it did, the context of the Third Crusade is indispensable. Jews, the people of York and those who owed money to the Jewish moneylenders generally got along with each other during normal times. It was certainly not a relationship that was unproblematic but it was one that worked reasonably well to the benefit of both sides for decades before and after the massacre of 1190. There was no obvious reason why this relationship should turn into a violent slaughter of Jews unless external reasons provided an impetus and an excuse. In 1190 this impetus was the frantic atmosphere and the public discourse feeding on the ideology of crusading, which was impacting English society with unprecedented force during the preparatory phase of the Third Crusade.69

69

Many thanks to Cathy Aitken (Basel) for proof-reading and commenting on this text.

POVERTY IN LONDON IN THE 1190s: SOME POSSIBILITIES Alan Cooper My starting point, as it has been for much of my work of the last decade, is the short and sad life of William fitz Osbert.1 He was a Londoner who went on the Third Crusade. He came home, fell out with his family, grew a shaggy beard that earned him the nickname ‘Longbeard’ and began haranguing the rich about the way they were treating the poor. He briefly travelled to Normandy to complain to his fellow crusader, the king, about what was going on. Finally, in April 1196, the city authorities in London were so alarmed that they moved against him, at which point he killed one of the men sent to arrest him, fled for sanctuary to the church of St Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside, was smoked out, taken to the Tower, condemned, dragged through the city, and hanged. His revolt – if it is right to call it that, and I do not think it is – was abortive and apparently futile, his life a sad waste. He has generally been dismissed by historians as uninteresting or even slightly amusing.2 I would prefer, however, to see the moment in 1196 as one of those moments – much like the much better documented Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 – that allows us to see beneath the surface of medieval society. If we are to take William fitz Osbert seriously, as I believe we should, then it is essential that we answer the question: who were the poor that he claimed to speak for? Or to put it another way, what was the experience of poverty in the 1190s? These are the questions I will attempt to answer in this short essay. I would first note that there are obvious obstacles to answering these questions: we stand in the 1190s right on the cusp of the documentary revolution that transforms the way we write the history of medieval England. The court rolls, chancery records,

1

I would like to express my thanks and appreciation to Stephen Church, Director of the Conference, Caroline Palmer, Honorary Secretary of the Allen Brown Memorial Trust, and all the members of the committee for the invitation to speak and all their hard work in taking the conference online during the COVID-19 pandemic. For those of you reading this footnote in 2068, please know that the conference was held via a ghastly medium called ‘Zoom’, but the above-named made it work splendidly. 2 This story has been told in many books, mostly, however, in passing; see, for example, Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, New Haven, CT 1986, 83–4; Christopher N. L. Brooke, London, 800–1216: The Shaping of a City, Berkeley, CA 1975, 48–9. The only works particularly on Longbeard are G. W. S. Barrow, ‘The Bearded Revolutionary’, History Today 19 (10), October 1969, 679–87; John McEwan, ‘William FitzOsbert and the Crisis in London in 1196’, Florilegium 21, 2004, 18–42; and my ‘1190, William Longbeard, and the Crisis of Angevin England’, in Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York 1190 Massacre, Narratives and Contexts, ed. Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson, York 2013, 91–105.

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municipal records, etc. that have allowed scholars such as Barbara Hanawalt and Carole Rawcliffe to do wonderful reconstructions of everyday life in the cities in a later period are, at best, in their most rudimentary stage in the 1190s.3 I will, however, start with the sources for William fitz Osbert himself, and then proceed to some remarks about poverty in general, before focusing on the circumstances of the 1190s, discussing the evidence on London in particular, and finally offering some possibilities about William fitz Osbert and poverty. Let us begin with the sources for William, partly because we are all more comfortable when we are grounded in the sources, and partly because there is an important preliminary point to make. The sources on William fitz Osbert’s protests in London in the 1190s are difficult in that they show the usual hostility to those who might upset the ruling class and the status quo, setting out to cast William’s actions in the worst possible light, to the point of inventing obvious falsehoods against him. They are also uninformed on key points, and they contradict each other. They do all agree, however, that the main issue was conflict between rich and poor. There are four main sources, all writing very soon after the events they describe: Ralph de Diceto, the dean of St Paul’s Cathedral; Gervase of Canterbury; Roger of Howden; and William of Newburgh.4 Ralph de Diceto explains that ‘there was bad feeling and conflict in the city of London between rich and poor [divites et pauperes] concerning the apportionment of the taxes payable to the treasury according to everyone’s means, which, as many maintained, was often made unequally’.5 Ralph also describes how in the aftermath of the suppression of William’s movement the ‘middle class [mediae manus]’ gave hostages and ‘the poor [pauperes] gave adequate satisfaction according to their means’,6 which suggests the movement had considerable support across the classes. Gervase of Canterbury, who is more concerned with the role of Hubert Walter, his archbishop, in the events, does not make the opposition between dives and pauper, but he does say that ‘day and night the richer people [ditiores] of the city protected themselves with arms and vigilance for fear of being killed by the common people (vulgi)’.7 Gervase does strangely call William fitz Osbert himself a ‘poor little man [humuncionem pauperculum]’,8 a phrase out of keeping with the other sources’ descriptions of William. The northern sources, Roger of Howden and William of Newburgh, are not independent – Newburgh was reading Howden.9 As John Gillingham has argued, Newburgh came to a completely different conclusion about the events in London because his opinions were shaped by an eye-witness, Philip of Poitou, then bishop

3

Barbara A. Hanawalt, The Ties That Bound: Peasant Families in Medieval England, New York 1986; idem, Growing Up in Medieval London: The Experience of Childhood in History, New York 1993; Carole Rawcliffe, Urban Bodies: Communal Health in Late Medieval English Towns and Cities, Woodbridge 2013. 4 The sources for the events of April 1196 can be found most conveniently collected in English Lawsuits, II, 687–94. 5 English Lawsuits, II, 692. 6 English Lawsuits, II, 693. 7 English Lawsuits, II, 692. 8 English Lawsuits, II, 691. 9 John Gillingham sums up his argument thus: ‘“Howden re-written and re-interpreted” is how I would characterize and essence of Newburgh’s history’; ‘Two Yorkshire Historians Compared: Roger of Howden and William of Newburgh’, HSJ 12, 2002, 15–37 at 25.



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-elect of Durham, who was a close associate of Hubert Walter. But Howden and Newburgh are both unequivocal in their belief that the conflict was one of rich and poor. Roger says ‘strife originated amongst the citizens of London, for not inconsiderable aids were imposed more often than usual because of the king’s imprisonment and other incidents, and in order to spare their own purses the rich [divites] wanted the poor [pauperes] to pay everything’.11 Hence William fitz Osbert ‘was driven by his thirst for justice and equity and became the spokesman for the poor [pauperum advocatus]. He wanted everyone, rich and poor [dives quam pauper], to contribute to the general business of the city according to his chattels and wealth.’12 William of Newburgh, whose account is the longest, most detailed, and most hostile, adds various psychological and personal motivations to William’s actions, but even he agrees that the essential dispute was between rich and poor. He says William ‘made himself champion of the poor citizens against the insolence of the rich [pauperum civium contra insolentiam divitum]… strenuously maintaining – and he was very eloquent – that on the occasion of the every royal edict the rich [divites] spared their own fortunes [fortunis] and because of their power [potentiam] placed the whole weight on the poor [pauperibus] and defrauded the royal treasury of a large sum’.13 We are told that ‘by clandestine ways and poisonous rumours among the common people [plebem] he reviled the rich and powerful [divitum et potentum] for their insolence, treating them with indignity and, inflaming the poor and mediocre [inopesque et mediocres] to an immoderate love of freedom and happiness, he influenced many of them and tied some to himself… Thus a mighty conspiracy arose in London fed by the zeal of the poor [pauperum] against the insolence of the powerful [potentum].’14 Moreover, ‘he started at every meeting as if he were acting for the common poor [pro plebe pauperum]’.15 According to Newburgh, Hubert Walter addressed ‘the common people [plebem]’16 and tried to win them over. But William proclaimed himself ‘the saviour of the poor [salvatorem pauperum]’. Here Newburgh warms to his theme and puts a rather unlikely speech in William’s mouth: ‘You will joyfully draw water from the sources of the Saviour… The saviour of the poor [salvator pauperum] am I and you, the poor [pauperes], have suffered under the hard hand of the rich [divitum].’17 In describing the aftermath of William’s death, Newburgh talks about the deception of ‘common people [plebem]’18 and finally about the ‘multitude of rustics [rusticam multitudinem]’19 from outside the city as well as the ‘silly mob [vulgus… insulsum]’20 who came to venerate William fitz Osbert as a martyr. It has long been established that the word pauper is a word in flux in the Middle Ages:21 it can be set in opposition to potens, a powerful person, so that pauper would 10

10

John Gillingham, ‘The Historian as Judge: William of Newburgh and Roger of Howden’, EHR 119, 2004, 1275–87, at 1278–87. 11 English Lawsuits, II, 693. 12 English Lawsuits, II, 693. 13 English Lawsuits, II, 687. 14 English Lawsuits, II, 688. 15 English Lawsuits, II, 688. 16 English Lawsuits, II, 689. 17 English Lawsuits, II, 689. 18 English Lawsuits, II, 690. 19 English Lawsuits, II, 691. 20 English Lawsuits, II, 691. 21 Bronisław Geremek, Poverty: A History, Oxford 1994, 21.

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denote someone powerless. It was a favourite word of St Jerome who uses it forty-four times in his translation of the Psalms alone. It is also instructive to see what the translators of the King James Bible did with the word: it is variously translated as an adjective or noun meaning ‘oppressed’,22 ‘afflicted’,23 ‘meek’,24 ‘humble’,25 ‘needy’,26 and ‘poor’.27 In the later Middle Ages, pauper takes up its opposition to dives, a wealthy person, so that it has the modern English meaning of pauper, that is to say someone without means, without money. The sources about William fitz Osbert, whatever else they may disagree on or chose to obfuscate, all agree that the arguments in London in the 1190s were about money. The pauperes were being asked to provide cash that they did not have. We should not be surprised then to find pauper being set in opposition to both potens and dives: not only was the word changing its nuances at this time, but the reality of what it meant to be a pauper was changing: in an increasingly commercial, cash-based economy, to be without money was to be powerless. If we may borrow Amartya Sen’s notion of ‘capabilities’ when assessing poverty – do individuals have the capability to live their life as they would want?28 – then the distinction between pauper as powerless and pauper as penniless drops away. To be without money in a moneyed economy is to be powerless. To discuss poverty is to discuss relationships of power. My passing evocation of Amartya Sen may serve as a segue into some general remarks concerning poverty. I have over the last few years sampled much literature on poverty of other periods – while in no way mastering the huge literature at all. There is good inspiration to be found on work on the later Middle Ages, particularly that of Bronisław Geremek on late medieval Paris, observing the ways in which people who live on the margins of society become trapped in an underclass because of misfortune or criminality or both.29 Or the work of Sharon Farmer, also on Paris, which emphasizes the effect that gender had on the way poverty was regarded and experienced.30 For London itself, the works of the great nineteenth-century social reformers Henry Mayhew, Edwin Chadwick, and Charles Booth have been thought-provoking, especially because Mayhew recorded the voices of the poor, preserving for us sentiments that come close at times to what the voices of the medieval poor might have been like.31 Finally, works of journalism, activism, and fiction from the contemporary

22

Psalms 9:10 [King James Version]. Psalms 22:24, 25:16, 88:15, 102:1. 24 Psalms 22:26. 25 Psalms 9:12, 10:12, 10:17, 69.32. 26 Psalms 9:18, 11:5, 40:17, 69:6, 72:12, 82:3, 86:1, 109:32. 27 Psalms 9:18, 10:2, 10:8, 10:9, 10:10, 10:14, 34: 6 (‘poor man’), 37:14, 49:2, 68:10, 69:29, 69:33. 72:2, 72:4, 72:12, 74:19, 74:21, 82:4, 107:41, 109:31, 112:9, 113:7, 135:15, 139:12. In addition, in Psalm 79:8, the phrase ‘pauperes facti’ is translated as ‘brought low’, and in Psalm 11:4, the translators chose to omit the word or at least to collapse it into the phrase ‘children of men’. 28 Amartya Sen, Development as Freedom, Oxford 1999, 74–6. 29 Bronisław Geremek, The Margins of Society in Late Medieval Paris, trans. Jean Birrell, Cambridge 1987. See also his general survey Poverty: A History, Oxford 1994. The best general book on poverty in the Middle Ages remains Michel Mollat, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, New Haven, CT 1986. 30 Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology, and the Daily Lives of the Poor, Ithaca, NY 2002. 31 The work of all three of these authors can be found in various forms: selections from Mayhew’s massive work can be found most conveniently in Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, ed. Victor Neuburg, Harmondsworth 1985; Chadwick’s work appears 23



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world have been helpful. Poverty, in a few words, can be described as a condition of powerlessness and insecurity, in which the smallest personal accident or distant change in the world economy can lead to ruination that cannot be escaped. Leaving aside the discourse of deserving and undeserving poor that seems to recur in some way throughout history, the life of the poor is that of continuous work, or – to put it another way – endless hustling just to survive. The poor again in every society are the objects of contemptuous language, humiliation, and fear. Corruption falls disproportionately hard on the poor. Poverty causes the greatest harm to those dislocated by forced or unforced migration that takes people away from whatever social support home may offer. In all of these aspects, age, sex, and gender are crucial: the same individual may fall quickly from relative security to absolute desperation, and members of the same family will experience poverty differently. I will confess it has been tempting to assert that what I have just described is simply the definition of poverty, so that to find a reference to poverty is to find these characteristics. In other words, it has been tempting to fill in the gaps in our sources by reading in poverty from different periods. That, of course, leads only to a circular argument. So, instead, I propose to use these more modern exemplars of what poverty means to those experiencing it to ask questions of our twelfth-century sources, expecting to find some of the same issues arising. And, as I have argued elsewhere, the circumstances of the 1190s were ones that suggest that there would have been considerable poverty.33 England was a wealthy country, but the economy was going through some short-term difficulties that may have been especially difficult for the poor. An expanding and accelerating trade network was creating wealth for the merchant class, and the ruling class was eager to secure its share of that wealth. The rural economy was increasingly monetarized, promoting a land market that favoured the fortunate and probably dislocated many of the less fortunate. England was also in the middle of a period of long-term inflation – inflation hits the poor harder than the rich in terms of day-to-day survival. At the same time, it was a country in the grips of corruption and taxation. As is well known, Richard I’s priority on becoming king was to raise money as fast as possible, so he allowed unscrupulous men to buy offices from which they hoped to turn a quick profit. Taxation to pay for the crusade and then taxation to pay for Richard’s ransom imposed heavy burdens. While long-term growth was taking place, the mid-1190s was a period of heavy rains, bad crops, and, consequently, hunger – it is at least worth wondering whether these short-term conditions caused migrants to 32

(without his name on the cover) as Report to Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an Inquiry into Sanitary Conditions of the Labouring Population of Great Britain, London 1842; and some of Booth’s work may be found most recently and beautifully in Charles Booth’s London Poverty Maps, [no editor named], London 2019. 32 To name a select few that have been particularly provocative: Sen, Development as Freedom; Irene Khan, The Unheard Truth: Poverty and Human Rights, New York 2009; Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, New York 2012; Owen Jones, Chavs: the Demonization of the Working Class, London 2011; Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco, Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, New York 2012; Jacob Holdt, American Pictures: A Personal Journey through the American Underclass, Copenhagen 1985; Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance, New York 1996. 33 For this paragraph, see Cooper, ‘1190, William Longbeard and the Crisis of Angevin England’, especially 99–105.

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flee towards the wealth of London. The king was absent for most of this time, but the desperate might have been attracted by the prospect of charitable largesse from the households of the great.34 Our sources reflect these tough times. William of Newburgh says: Moreover, the hand of the Lord lay heavy on the Christian people at this time, as the insanity of the princes was destroying the lands alongside pestilence and famine… Indeed, the famine, produced by unseasonable rains, had for several years vehemently worn down the people of France and England, but with kings raging between themselves, it increased more than usual. And when the impoverished common people were dying everywhere from starvation, there followed in famine’s footsteps a very cruel pestilence, as if the air had been corrupted by the corpses of paupers, which hardly spared those for whom food was plentiful, but did shorten the long agony of hunger for the poor.35

Roger of Howden simply says ‘by these and other vexations, whether justly or unjustly, all England from sea to sea has been reduced to destitution’.36 Turning at last towards London, let me set the scene by quoting an oft-quoted passage from Richard of Devizes’s chronicle, written in the 1190s; he claims to repeat the advice given to a young traveller: when you reach England, if you come to London, pass through it quickly, for I do not like that city at all. All sorts of men crowd together there from every country under the heavens. Each race brings its own vices and its own customs to the city. No-one lives in it without falling into some sort of crime… Do not associate with the crowds of pimps; do not mingle with the throngs in eating-houses; avoid dice and gambling, the theatre and the tavern. You will meet more braggarts there than in all of France; the number of parasites is infinite. Actors, jesters, smoothskinned lads, Moors, flatterers, pretty boys, effeminates, pederasts, singing and dancing girls, quacks, belly-dancers, sorceresses, extortioners, night-wanderers, magicians, mimes, beggars, buffoons: all this tribe fill all the houses.37

We should not, of course, take this at face value: Richard was both commending his own city of Winchester and casting antisemitic aspersions on the fictitious Jewish speaker. But does give us a sense of the bewilderment the growing city was causing and also – a point to remember – how crowded the city was. 34

See Hilda Johnstone, ‘Poor-Relief in the Royal Households of Thirteenth-Century England’, Speculum 4, 1929, 149–67; Johnstone notes the contrast between King John’s charitable donations to atone for spiritual obligations missed, which amounted to quite a lot, and the even more spectacular donations of his more pious son. She also notes that where and when sources exist, we can see that it was not just royal households that gave such alms (165). See also Sally Dixon-Smith, ‘The Image and Reality of Alms-Giving in the Great Halls of Henry III’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association 152, 1999, 79–96. I am grateful to Stephen Church for this suggestion and the references, as I am for several others in this essay. 35 William of Newburgh, Historia rerum anglicarum, in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett, RS [82], II, London 1885, 484. 36 Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, RS [51], IV, London 1871, 62. 37 Richard of Devizes, The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of King Richard the First, ed. John T. Appleby, London 1963, 65. (To all of which I can only say: ‘gracious me, I miss London!’).



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Peter of Blois in a letter to the pope around 1200 describes London as a city of 120 churches and 40,000 inhabitants – none of whom were helping him at all.38 Derek Keene accepts this figure for the population as broadly correct.39 Cities are parasites on the countryside, unable to support themselves without immigration. In a slightly later period, it is possible to see that London was sucking most of its newcomers from the East Midlands and Norfolk, both of which were populous regions in their own right.40 Migrants to cities may come out of desperation or out of dreams of a better life, but they are highly vulnerable to the city’s diseases, entering without immunity into a more complex disease pool and a thoroughly filthy physical environment.41 They also lose what social safety net their own village and parish might provide. Our most direct evidence for the disease and hardship encountered by these new Londoners and others is archaeology. Our richest source in this regard is the extraordinary cemetery of St Mary Spitalfields which was excavated between 1998 and 2001 by the Museum of London, leaving more than 10,000 skeletons to be analysed by the paleo-osteologists in the museum’s Centre for Human Bioarchaeology.42 The results are, of course, extremely complicated. If nothing else, for our purposes, it is worth noting that the cemetery predated the Hospital of St Mary Spital that was founded on the site in 1197, and that even after that date the cemetery was not used solely to inter the poor – it was also the resting place of those religious who served at the hospital. Nevertheless, with broad brushstrokes, it can give us some sense of the health of the population at the end of the twelfth century. Crudely put, London in the second half of the twelfth century was an unhealthy place and getting unhealthier. In short, the health of the London poor in the period looks rather like that of London in the fifteenth century, when the population had been reduced by the plague. Between 1200 and 1350, London was to grow unhealthier still as it became still more crowded. Of the twelfth-century skeletons, roughly one-in-four were for individuals who did not live to be eighteen years old. Roughly another 20 per cent would then die in the 18–25 range, and 28 per cent between 26 and 35, and 22 per cent between 36 and 45. Fewer than 5 per cent lived to be over 45. Women died younger than men on average.43 Male height was approximately 5’6”, shorter than that of men in contemporary cemeteries elsewhere.44 The archaeologists take us through the various conditions affecting the population, including broken bones, but one may stand for all: tuberculosis, for which rates were approximately as high in the

38

PL, vol. 207, 442–3. Derek Keene, ‘Medieval London and its Region’, London Journal 14, 1989, 99–111, at 107. 40 Keene, ‘Medieval London and its Region’, 103. 41 Robin Fleming, ‘Bones for Historians: Putting the Body back into Biography’, in Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Frank Barlow, ed. David Bates, Julia Crick and Sarah Hamilton, Woodbridge 2006, 29–48 at 41–3; Mary Lewis, ‘A Comparison of Health in Past Rural, Urban and Industrial England’, in The Environmental Archaeology of Industry, Symposia of the Association for Environmental Archaeology 20, Oxford 2003, 154–61. 42 Brian Connell, Amy Gray Jones, Rebecca Redfern and Dan Walker, A Bioarchaeological Study of Medieval Burials on the Site of St Mary Spital: Excavations at Spitalfields Market, London E1, 1991–2007, MOLA Monograph 60, London 2012; see also Christopher Thomas, Barney Sloane and Christopher Phillpotts, Excavations at the Hospital of St Mary Spital, London, MOLA Monograph 1, London 1997. 43 Connell et al., Bioarchaeological Study, 29, table 11. 44 Connell et al., Bioarchaeological Study, 36, 167. 39

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twelfth-century graves as in the later ones. The authors conclude that ‘it is possible that the actual crude rate of tuberculosis at St Mary Spital was nearer 30.9%… of the population’.45 When one remembers how crowded the city was becoming in this period, the thought of such high rates of tuberculosis is a frightening one: the sound of hacking coughs must have been a constant one in London’s poorest places. All in all, it is simplest to conclude in Robin Fleming’s words: ‘It is only when we look at the statistics provided by the bones of the early medieval dead that we come face to face with just how dire life in our period was; how sick, how sad and how short.’ And it is worth remembering that Professor Fleming in that article was looking at rural cemeteries from the early Middle Ages and cautions that high-medieval towns would have been worse still.46 How can we move from the skeletons to the lived experience? We do not have the voices of the poor, but we can, I believe, observe in London in the 1190s what I can only call – for want of a better word – a conversation about poverty. Of course, there had been attention paid to the poor before – the injunction to help the poor is a biblical one and we should not be surprised to find it throughout the Middle Ages – but in the 1190s it was happening with greater vigour. People were asking the question: ‘what should be done about poverty?’ It is possible that the riots that accompanied Richard’s coronation in 1189 helped bring the question to the fore. These riots were first and foremost pogroms against London Jews sparked by rumours about what was going on at the coronation banquet and a general feeling that the crusading king would approve of attacks on non-Christians. This pogrom turned into general rioting, burning, and looting, in which the ‘common people of the city of London [plebs civitatis Londoniae]’,47 ‘the common people with arrogant eye and insatiable heart [plebs superbo oculo, et insatiabli corde]’,48 or ‘the unruly mob in a fury [indisciplinata cum turbine turba]’49 grabbed their chance to even the disparities they saw between wealthy and less wealthy, defying royal efforts to reimpose order. Perhaps this mob was encouraged by the propaganda surrounding Richard’s coronation: ‘The age of gold returns/’ one song tells us, ‘The world’s reform draws nigh/ The rich man now cast down/ The pauper raised on high.’50 William of Newburgh tells us that the involvement of the households of those nobles visiting London for the coronation made it impossible to do proper justice.51 Regardless of whether this unresolved incident was the first time the authorities in London were forced to see the divisions in their city, we can see a conversation continuing in the 1190s. Four separate efforts to found hospitals for the poor suggest an urgency to this conversation.52

45

Connell et al., Bioarchaeological Study, 114, figure 144, and 155. Fleming, ‘Bones for Historians’, 47 and 41–4. 47 The Chronicle of the Reigns of Henry II and Richard I, ed. William Stubbs, RS [49], London 1867, II, 84 (i.e., the earlier annals composed by Roger of Howden that he later expanded into his chronicle). 48 Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. William Stubbs, RS [51], III, London 1870, 12. 49 William of Newburgh, Historia rerum anglicarum in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. Richard Howlett, RS [82], I, London 1884, 295. 50 Quoted in John Gillingham, Richard I, New Haven, CT 1999, 108. 51 William of Newburgh, Historia, I, 299. 52 On the founding of hospitals, see Sethina Watson, ‘City as Charter: Charity and the Lordship of English Towns, 1170–1250’, in Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400–1500: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space, ed. Caroline Goodson, Anne E. Lester, and Carol Symes, Farnham 2010, 235–62; Watson notes that ‘in a number of sizeable towns across the country, 46



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The first foundation was St Bartholomew’s in Smithfield. St Bartholomew’s owes its foundation to the semi-mythical Rahere in the 1120s.53 The priory and the poor of the hospital attached to it received a charter from Henry I in 1133. The Foundation Book written later in the century tells the story of the saintly Alfune, who had founded the church of St Giles Cripplegate and in his old age came to help Rahere by going from door to door in the neighbourhood seeking alms for the poor of the hospital. A dispute occurred, however, between the hospital and the priory which came to a head in 1197 when it was argued before the bishop of London. On the surface this seems a simple matter of authority with the priory claiming the right to appoint the proctor of the hospital, usually from among the canons of the priory, the right to approve or disapprove of any transfer of land by the proctor, and the right to audit the accounts of the hospital. There is enough in the dispute, though, to suggest that the efficacious functioning of the hospital on behalf of the poor was also at stake. For example, the master of the priory claims the right to approve the permanent grant of food and clothing to any poor person. The bishop confirmed this right in 1197, but within a few years the hospital was again appealing for more freedom from the priory’s oversight and the dispute was not settled until the 1220s. Behind this dispute may have lain a fundamental argument about the purpose of the priory and its hospital: was it a pilgrimage church supporting a community of canons or was it more properly a hospital devoted to the poor? In the 1190s it seems to have been urgent to the brothers of the hospital that they be allowed to do their work without interference. The second foundation was the other great hospital north of the river, St Mary’s, Spitalfields, the very same hospital the cemetery of which provides our principal archaeological data. It was founded in 1197.54 There is not much to be said about this foundation, except that it was a substantial one and that it was deliberately situated on one of the major roads leading out of the city. St Bartholomew’s in Smithfield and St Mary’s outside Bishopsgate stood therefore at points where the two major roads from the north entered the city: roads that were later known as the Great North Road and the Old North Road, and later still as the A1 and A10.55 Migrants from the

burgesses established hospitals at precisely the time when their political liberties were extended’ which would suggest a different motive for the activity in London to be described here. For a well-documented French example of a foundation of right around the same period, see Adam J. Davis, ‘The Economic Power of a Hospital in Thirteenth-Century Provins’, in Center and Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medieval World in Honor of William Chester Jordan, ed. Katherine L. Jansen, G. Geltner and Anne E. Lester, Leiden 2013, 121–34. 53 For this paragraph, see ‘Hospitals: St Bartholomew’, in A History of the County of London, I, London Within the Bars, Westminster and Southwark, ed. William Page, London 1909, 520–25: British History Online, accessed 27 October 2021, www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/ london/vol1/pp520-525; E. A. Webb, The Records of St. Bartholomew’s Priory and St. Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, I, Oxford 1921, 37–55: British History Online, accessed 27 October 2021, www.british-history.ac.uk/st-barts-records/vol1/pp37-55. 54 ‘Hospitals: St Mary without Bishopsgate’, in A History of the County of London, I, London Within the Bars, Westminster and Southwark, ed. William Page, London 1909, 530–35: British History Online, accessed 28 October 2021, www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/london/vol1/pp530535 ; ‘The Priory of St Mary Spital’, in Survey of London, XXVII, Spitalfields and Mile End New Town, ed. F. H. W. Sheppard, London 1957, 21–3. British History Online, accessed 28 October 2021, www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol27/pp21-23. 55 Watson sees such foundations as expressions of our lordly power: ‘Unsurprisingly, then, baronial hospitals were frequently located at the gates which saw the greatest traffic… On

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Midlands would pass these hospitals and the hospitals may have been where poor migrants ended up. I am also trying hard to resist using the phase ‘shanty towns’,56 but we know that London had filled its walls by 1200 and was in-filling in the thirteenth century,57 and we know from later records that people were paying to sleep in the porches of churches.58 The new, dislocated migrants must have gone somewhere (I am very suspicious of those early-modern maps with green fields right outside the city walls)59 and that it is possible that the hospitals were founded close to the dwellings of the poor.60 The third foundation was more controversial, so much so that it never came into being. It involved one of our chroniclers, Ralph de Diceto. As dean of St Paul’s since 1180 he had been reorganizing the administration of the chapter, and one step was the appointment of an almoner. One of the canons, however, Henry of Northampton, took the possibly radical step of granting three houses next to the cathedral on the north side to be a hospital for the poor (‘hospitale in quo maneant et sustententur pauperes’), probably in the first years of the 1190s.61 Reading between the lines, this donation seems to have forced the issue of how alms should be distributed, in particular how much should go directly to the indigent of the city and how much could be used in

heavily trafficked entrances, these substantial houses marked the town as a destination and constituted the first statement of its lordship and administration. Welcoming the poor, sick and traveller, they may have been directed at those without rather than those within the town, and at a regional rather than a local audience’; Watson, ‘City as Charter’, 255. The London hospitals do not seem to have served this function, as far as I can tell. 56 Archaeological evidence of crude, rudimentary dwellings is obviously scarce by its very nature; there are hints, however, of remains around various towns and cities; see, for example, the possible evidence of habitation outside the walls of Ipswich before the land in question was officially settled by the town authorities in the thirteenth century and the evidence of a poor suburb outside the walls of Dublin in the twelfth century: Preston Boyles, The Hold, Ipswich: Archaeological Monitoring/Excavation Report, Ipswich 2020, 5, 119; Linzi Simpson, ‘The Contribution of Development-Led Archaeology to Our Understanding of the Medieval Urban Archaeology of Dublin’, Archaeology Ireland 31, 2017, 33–7, at 36: www.jstor.org/ stable/90014382. My thanks to Sarah Spooner for these references. 57 Derek Keene, ‘A New Study of London before the Great Fire’, Urban History Yearbook 11, 1984, 11–21, at 15. 58 Hanawalt, Growing Up in Medieval London, 27. 59 And William fitz Stephen is surely winking at his audience when he rhapsodizes about the gardens and pastures all around the city. 60 I am inclined to see the placement of such dwellings as entirely practical, but Keith Lilley’s work on the mystical landscape of the city may be instructive too: if the city represents the City of God, then to be excluded from it is more than just a nuisance; Keith D. Lilley, ‘Cities of God? Medieval Urban Forms and their Christian Symbolism’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29, 2004, 296–313, especially 307–8. 61 Early Charters of the Cathedral Church of St Paul, London, ed. Marion Gibbs, Camden Third Series 58, London 1939, no. 132 and 308 (quotation from 308). Gibbs dates these charters to c. 1180 to c. 1192; two other charters (nos 131 and 162), however, concerning the grants to the poor by the same Henry, which are dated c. 1192–8, suggest that it was in the years either side of 1192 that Henry was active in this project. Charter 132 records the gift as ‘omnes domos meas iuxta ecclesiam beati Pauli versus aquilonem’; 308 talks of ‘totum managium suum cum curte circumquaque adiacente’, all of which makes the gift sound like a substantial one indeed.



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supporting poor scholars who were part of the cathedral community. The hospital never came into being.62 It is not difficult to imagine why: the proposed hospital would have been right next to the cathedral but near the top of the busiest and most prosperous street of the city, Cheapside; the idea of the poorest in society being drawn into the ecclesiastical and commercial heart of the city may have made some people squeamish.63 The pre-existing hospitals in London were outside the walls: those of St Katharine by the Tower, east of the city;64 of St Giles-in-the-Fields, by tradition a leper hospital founded by Queen Matilda, wife of Henry I, to the west of the city;65 and St Bartholomew’s, as discussed above, to the north of the city. This proposed hospital would therefore have been sited counter to tradition and practice.66 Moreover, such a location would have put the hospital adjacent to the site of the Folkmoot, the traditional meeting-place of the Londoners. William fitz Osbert used the Folkmoot to browbeat the city fathers, and it is tempting to imagine him gesturing at the site of the proposed hospital and asking what had become of the money. The fourth and final foundation is different, and it makes a connection between poverty in London and the Crusades. During the Crusade, a priest from London made a vow to establish a chapel and a cemetery at Acre dedicated to St Thomas Becket. This story is told by Ralph de Diceto and the details are important.67 First, Ralph tells us that the vow was taken after the siege had begun while the priest was on his way to the Holy Land. The timing, the priest’s origin in London, and the dedication of the chapel all suggest that the vow was taken when the Londoners’ ship nearly foundered in a storm in the Bay of Biscay, and, as Roger of Howden tells us, St Thomas appeared to the pilgrims and promised them safe passage.68 Ralph de Diceto also compares the priest to Tobit. In the Book of Tobit, Tobit tells us that he ‘gave many alms to my brethren, and gave my bread to the

62

Early Charters, ed. Gibbs, xxxvii; Kathleen Edwards, The English Secular Cathedral in the Middle Ages: A Constitutional Study with Special Reference to the Fourteenth Century, Manchester 1967, 240; Derek Keene, ‘From Conquest to Capital: St Paul’s c. 1100–1300’, in St Paul’s: The Cathedral Church of London, 604–2004, ed. Derek Keene, Arthur Burns, and Andrew Saint, New Haven, CT 2004, 23. None of Gibbs, Edwards, or Keene explains the failure of the scheme beyond noting two charters (nos 144–5) leasing the houses out with the proceeds going to the almonry. 63 Watson notes how early hospitals – both for lepers and the poor – were removed to the margins: Watson, ‘City as Charter’, 237. To this day, one hears complaints about the provision of facilities for the homeless close to tourist sites or wealthy neighbourhoods. 64 ‘Hospitals: St Katharine by the Tower’, in History of the County of London, I, ed. Page, 525–30: British History Online, accessed 27 October 2021, www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/ london/vol1/pp525-530. 65 ‘Church of St Giles-in-the-Fields’, in Survey of London, V, St Giles-in-The-Fields, Part II, ed. W. Edward Riley and Laurence Gomme, London 1914, 127–40: British History Online, accessed 27 October 2021, www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol5/pt2/pp127-140. 66 Again, I suspect that the conversation here was largely practical, but Miri Rubin’s suggestion that religious processions in English towns connected the periphery to the centre may be important here: it is possible that the idea of moving the poor to the centre violated some conscious or unconscious sense of proper urban order; Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture, Cambridge 1991, 267–8; Lilley, ‘Cities of God?’, 306. 67 Ralph de Diceto, The Historical Works, II, RS [68], London 1876, 80–1; The Crusade of Richard I, 1089–92, trans. T. A. Archer, London 1900, 114–15. 68 Chronica magistri Rogeri de Houedene, ed. Stubbs, III, 12.

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hungry, and my clothes to the naked: and if I saw any of my nation dead, or cast about the walls of Nineve, I buried him’.69 The charitable act of burial appears to have been the first impulse once the London priest encountered the realities of the siege of Acre; Ralph tells us that in the new cemetery and others like it 124,000 bodies were buried in the course of a year. The new house did also, however, extend ‘special care’ to the poor. The foundation was the basis of the hospital order and subsequently military order of St Thomas of Acre, or St Thomas of Acon as it was to be called in London. Later generations unsurprisingly associated its establishment with Richard the Lionheart as well as Hubert Walter. By the 1220s or so, the Order had acquired property for a hospital on Cheapside, almost opposite St Mary-le-Bow, and came to have a prominent role in civic ceremonial, thus keeping London’s proud connection to the crusades in the minds of its people. Its foundation on the crusade, its mission to succour the poor, and its connection to London through its founder probably led to it contributing to the conversation about poverty long before the Order relocated its headquarters to the city. The house from early days considered itself to have been underendowed at its foundation by accident and started appealing for support in the West. We know for certain that it was receiving grants by the early thirteenth century.70 Such appeals would have kept the memory of the siege of Acre alive in the minds of Londoners: a memory of crusader suffering alleviated by the rich coming to the aid of the poor. Indeed, we know letters were returning from the Holy Land during the crusade71 – our chronicler Roger of Howden was one person who returned to bring news72 – and one piece of news that would have returned was that of the death of the archbishop of Canterbury and the subsequent efforts of his eventual successor, Hubert Walter, to provide relief for the poor in the crusader camp.73 This kind of story would have begged the question of the status of the poor back home. Read individually, none of these foundations suggest very much, but read together they suggest a vigorous conversation about the plight of the poor and how that plight should be tackled. That is the context for William fitz Osbert’s actions, and the general agreement of the sources that his was a movement in favour of the poor against the rich is further evidence that such a conversation was taking place. Hospitals might give relief to the dying, but they did not alleviate the suffering of those crushed by unjust exactions. Indeed, I should express a methodological frustration I have at this point that the history of poverty can become the history of charity: charitable institutions obviously generate records and therefore are more available to us.

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Tobit 1:16–17. A. J. Forey, ‘The Military Order of St Thomas of Acre’, EHR 92, 1977, 481–503, at 486–7. 71 See a letter home from the siege of Acre written by a clerk of Archbishop Baldwin in 1190, translated in Crusade of Richard I, trans. Archer, 17–19: the letter notes sadly that ‘the lesser folk are in want and find no one to help them’. 72 John Gillingham, ‘Writing the Biography of Roger of Howden, King’s Clerk and Chronicler’, in Writing Medieval Biography, 750–1250: Essays in Honour of Professor Frank Barlow, ed. David Bates, Julia Crick and Sarah Hamilton, Woodbridge 2006, 207–20, at 210. 73 When King Richard wrote from captivity in Germany to the monks of Canterbury requesting that they elect Hubert as archbishop, he stated ‘the whole world well knows to what pains and perils the venerable Hubert, bishop of Salisbury, exposed himself and his men in the land overseas, for the sake of God’s name and the relief of the East, and how many services he performed pleasing to God and all Christendom and ourselves’; quoted in Cheney, Hubert Walter, 39. 70



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But I am not sure they get us much closer to the plight of the working poor – those who do not fit into the perennial false dichotomy of deserving and undeserving, but who work all the time and are still poor. Moreover, we should not imagine that the conversation in London, if I am right that there was one, was always a charitable one: the demeaning language used by William of Newburgh, in particular, calls the people ‘stupid’ and ‘silly’, in a way that conjures the disfiguring aristocratic gaze towards serfs described by Paul Freedman or the myriad petty and worse humiliations of Catalan peasants recounted by Thomas Bisson.74 This language gets us closer to the usual conversation about the poor. Nevertheless, my final piece of evidence is more optimistic. At the start of John’s reign, London again had to pay to have its status confirmed. The city again taxed its people. This time, however, if a collection from laws from the early thirteenth century is to be believed, the authorities may have learnt their lesson. The laws lay out a graduated system of taxation, with aldermen and those owning stone houses paying more, those with less paying less, until we get to those who can swear that they have less than 12d. in the world, who seem by context to be exempt.75 William fitz Osbert may have made his point, even in death. What to make of all this? Let me turn to the ‘possibilities’ of my title, and offer three possible interpretations of William fitz Osbert’s career and relationship to London’s poor, and try to see if that tells us anything about the experience of poverty in the 1190s. The first possibility is the most obvious and the unhappiest. William may simply have been a broken man, traumatized by his crusading experience, who in the years after developed something of a messianic complex. Indeed, William may have been one of the English crusaders who visited Jerusalem, and the Holy City still has a strange effect on some visitors. That William was deranged is certainly what William of Newburgh would like us to believe, portraying him as a false Christ. He has William fitz Osbert say: ‘I am the saviour of the poor. You paupers who have experienced the heaviness of rich men’s hands, drink from my wells the waters of the doctrine of salvation, and you may do this joyfully; for the time of your visitation is at hand. For I will divide the waters from the waters. The people are the waters. I will divide the humble from the haughty and treacherous. I will separate the elect from the reprobate, as light from darkness.’ Newburgh adds ‘with a mouth speaking great things, and with horns like a lamb, he spoke like a dragon’,76 a reference to the second beast of Revelations 13, which speaks words of deceit and causes all, rich and poor, to be marked.77 These words are hard to interpret. In the form we have them they were really composed by William of Newburgh and put into William fitz Osbert’s mouth. The simplest thing would be to dismiss them altogether. As

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Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant, Stanford, CA 1999, especially chapters 6 and 7; Thomas N. Bisson, Tormented Voices: Power, Crisis, and Humanity in Rural Catalonia, 1140–1200, Cambridge, MA 1998, especially 127–36. See also John H. Kautsky, The Politics of Aristocratic Empires, Chapel Hill, NC 1982, esp. 200–01, for good comparative thoughts about the incomprehensibility of peasants to aristocrats. 75 Mary Bateson, ‘A London Municipal Collection of the Reign of John’, EHR 17, 1902, 480–511, at 508–9; W. Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages [I], Cambridge 1890, 542–3; Barrow, ‘Bearded Revolutionary’, 686–7. 76 English Lawsuits, II, 689. 77 Revelation 13:11–17.

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Nicholas Vincent has shown in another context, Newburgh likes to borrow from Josephus,78 and Josephus is fond of a false prophet. But, as I shall discuss below, there is enough in the words he attributes to William fitz Osbert to make it seem likely that he is preserving some elements of the truth despite himself. Even if it is true that William fitz Osbert was unbalanced, it is worth asking what triggered his mania when he returned to London. The Third Crusade had called for Christian unity and the succouring of the poor. It is not unreasonable to suppose that poverty in London was obvious, in considerable contrast to the new wealth of the city. The main theme of my current project is the way William fitz Osbert serves as an example of the rhetoric and the message of the crusades – a kind of supercharged Christianity – came home. A person suffering from psychological trauma can become stuck within a moment in time, unable to shake free of memories: the failure of London to act as the crusaders had done and share the burdens equally might have been enough to break William. Instead, the Third Crusade was derided at home for failing to take Jerusalem.79 London liked to say it had ‘no king but the mayor’, rejecting the crusading hero.80 And in the early months of 1196, inquests were taking place to try to find those who had failed to fulfil their crusading vows because of poverty.81 A crusader might find much to rebel against in London. Nevertheless, in this interpretation, William fitz Osbert is a sad figure: someone suffering from mental illness with whom the authorities did not know how to cope. Their attempt to arrest him set off a manic episode with tragic consequences for all concerned. The second possibility is more cheerful, but may be entirely fanciful. It requires me to make a comparison to a contemporary of William fitz Osbert on the Continent. Raimondo Palmario, Raymond Palmer, or Raymond the Pilgrim, was a citizen

78

Nicholas Vincent, ‘William of Newburgh, Josephus and the New Titus’, in Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts, ed. Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson, York 2013, 57–90, esp. 69–78. 79 See Ambroise’s confused and livid peroration: ‘Just as the martyrs who leave this world suffer different martyrdoms for God, so, if I dare say it, did those who undertook this pilgrimage suffer in different ways, endure different events. But many ignorant people say repeatedly, in their folly, that they achieved nothing in Syria since Jerusalem was not conquered. But they had not inquired properly into the business. They criticize what they do not know and where they did not set their feet. We saw it who were there; we saw this and knew it, who had to suffer, we must not lie about others who suffered for the love of God, as we saw with our own eyes. So I dare to say, in the hearing of those who were there, that some one hundred thousand men died there, because they did not lie with a woman, men who held to the love of God and would not have died without such abstinence. I also dare to say, to pledge, that more than three thousand died of illness and of famine at the siege of Acre and in the town. The valiant men who had their chaplains and listened to the offices [of God], such as a bishop or a holy archbishop, and who died in such a life, caught by illness which spread there, they will be at the right hand of God in the heavenly City of Jerusalem, and such people with the good they acquired, conquered that other Jerusalem’; The History of the Holy War: Ambroise’s Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, trans. Marianne Ailes and ed. Malcolm Barber, Woodbridge 2003, II, 192. 80 The use of this tagline by William fitz Osbert’s brother was the cause of William’s split with his family; Rotuli curiae Regis: Rolls and Records of the Court held before the King’s Justiciars or Justices, ed. Francis Palgrave, London 1835, I, 69. 81 Cheney, Hubert Walter, 131–2 and note. See also Nicholas Orme and O. J. Padel, ‘Cornwall and the Third Crusade’, Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall, 2005, 71–7.



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of Piacenza in northern Italy in the second half of the twelfth century. He went on several pilgrimages, including the most prestigious ones in the medieval world, to Rome, Santiago, and Jerusalem, enduring both near death from illness at sea83 and the insistence of his mother on coming along.84 Eventually, he was in Rome, sleeping with the poor in a portico of St Peter’s, when Christ appeared to him and told him to stop going on self-indulgent pilgrimages, but instead to return to Piacenza and make himself useful by looking after the poor.85 This Raymond did, building a hospital, but also, importantly, serving as an advocate for the poor in court cases and arbitrating disputes, using his status as a pilgrim and moral suasion to change the minds of the powerful.86 Could William fitz Osbert have played such a role in London? It is, as I said, a somewhat fanciful reading, but not entirely. William, like Raymond, had status as a pilgrim, someone who had seen the world, including quite possibly Jerusalem. William, we are told, spoke for the poor at public meetings and convened his own; he travelled to Normandy to appeal to the king and the king took him seriously enough to appoint someone to look into his claims; and in the moment of crisis he fled to the church of St Mary-le-Bow, a church under the special jurisdiction of the archbishop of Canterbury – that is to say, Hubert Walter, the justiciar – as if he believed his cause right and within the law. Moreover, there are – again – the problematic words that William of Newburgh puts into his mouth: Newburgh has him speak of a ‘visitation’ and ‘drawing water’,87 metaphors of good governance and sustenance that may, behind Newburgh’s hostility, reflect a genuine programme of reform. My third possibility turns dark again in a hurry. William fitz Osbert’s death is surrounded by anxieties. First, William sought sanctuary in St Mary-le-Bow, but the archbishop ordered fires to be set to smoke him out. It may sometimes seem to the casual reader that sanctuary only existed in the Middle Ages to be violated, as it seems to happen all the time, but our witnesses were troubled by this event, especially Gervase of Canterbury, who represents the voice of the cathedral chapter of Canterbury who would eventually include this outrage in their charges levied against Hubert Walter before the pope.88 After their summary conviction at the Tower, William and his associates were dragged by horses through the city. Two of our sources add the detail that William was hanged in chains. And Gervase uniquely adds that before he was hanged ‘his flesh was demolished and spread all over the pavement’.89 All in all, this is a new, more barbarous form of execution: the first examples of hanging, drawing, and quartering come from the 1230s and 1240s, and the punishment did not achieve its full form until the 1280s.90 Ralph de Diceto adds that they were dragged to Tyburn. If this is right, they were the first people to be executed there. It is four miles 82

82

The Life is most conveniently found in translation in Saints and Cities in Medieval Italy, trans. Diana Webb, Manchester 2007, 62–92. 83 Saints and Cities, transl. Webb, 69–70. 84 Saints and Cities, transl. Webb, 67–8. The story puts that of St Augustine and St Monica in a new light. 85 Saints and Cities, transl. Webb, 76–7. 86 Saints and Cities, transl. Webb, 80–3. 87 English Lawsuits, II, 689. 88 C. R. Cheney, Hubert Walter, London 1967, 99–100. 89 English Lawsuits, II, 692. 90 Pollock and Maitland, II, 500–501 and note; J. G. Bellamy, The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages, Cambridge 1970, 23.

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from the Tower to Tyburn, and if they really were dragged, they can scarcely have been alive by the time they were hanged. Presumably, Tyburn was chosen because Smithfield, the usual place of execution, was too close to the centre of the city and too close to the homes of the poor to risk execution there. All of this innovation suggests that the authorities really did not know what to do with William. He was a bizarre new kind of threat to them. And our sources seem to be struggling with the same problem: they want to accuse him of sedition or heresy, but nothing really seems to stick. I would like to suggest the solution to this anxiety is offered by Michel-Rolph Trouillot in his Silencing the Past.91 Sometimes, he suggests, the voices of the past do not know what they are looking at: they are seeing something new and they do not have the language to encompass it. The result is silencing – if something cannot be described, did it exist? William fitz Osbert, as a protestor for the rights of the urban poor, may have been silenced because those in authority did not understand the phenomenon that he represented. These three possibilities take us back to the original question: what can we say about poverty in London in the 1190s? First, simply put, it existed. There was genuine urban poverty in London. People lacked the basic necessities for living. More than that, this poverty was visible: whether it was on the streets, in the porches of churches, or at the city gates, the poor were there for people to see. Rather like his more famous saintly contemporaries on the Continent, such as Francis and his companions, William fitz Osbert was someone who did not look away. Second, the extent of this visible poverty seems new. The extreme reactions of the city authorities to William’s challenge suggest that people were dealing with a phenomenon with which they were not familiar. The two simultaneous responses should not surprise us: dramatic acts of charity on a new scale, and furious, terrified violence, crushing the voice of protest. Time and again the unfortunate in medieval society would be met by this combination of pity and loathing. But the particular circumstances of the 1190s – high political drama and renewed economic distress coinciding with a passionate discourse stirred up by the crusades about the vital necessity of Christian neighbourliness and comradeship – could only end in violence. The lasting image of poverty in that decade should be the foolish poor, chased from the gibbet where they sought a relic of someone who tried to give them a voice.

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Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Boston, MA 1995, esp. 90–107.

LANDSCAPES OF CONCEALMENT AND REVELATION IN THE BRUT NARRATIVES: GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH, WACE AND LAȜAMON Leonie V. Hicks and Michael D. J. Bintley Increasing attention has been paid in recent years to the role of landscape, environment and place in the De gestis Britonum and two vernacular translations and adaptations, Wace’s Roman de Brut and Laȝamon’s Brut.1 This essay builds on that work by considering the ways in which landscapes are re-presented across these works in various contexts pertaining to concealment, whether planned and considered, such as ambushes, or out of necessity, such as when we find armies making a tactical retreat, or routed and in flight. The process of adapting and translating landscapes in these works, as we hope to demonstrate, offers interesting ways of understanding how these authors were making sense of physical and textual landscapes in their own writing and in their sources. We have chosen to examine several episodes that operate in this way, drawing on archaeological methods that stress the shifting nature of the landscape in accordance with temporality and seasonality, and which recognize that the landscape is not a static backdrop, but is an active presence which interacts in complex ways with weather and the time of day, not to mention human activity.2 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum became very popular from the moment it was completed in the mid-twelfth century. It survives in various versions in 225 manuscripts and was widely translated and adapted into different vernaculars. It is generally accepted that the civil war of the mid-twelfth century between Empress Matilda and her cousin King Stephen provides the context for Geoffrey’s

1

Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain, ed. and trans. M. D. Reeve and N. Wright, Woodbridge 2007 [hereafter Geoffrey]: we follow Reeve’s suggestion, at lix, that this work should be known as De gestis Britonum. Wace’s Roman de Brut: A History of the British: Text and Translation, ed. and trans. J. Weiss, Exeter 1999 [hereafter Wace, Brut). References to Laȝamon are taken from the Caligula MS version of the Brut: Laȝamon: Brut, Edited from British Museum MS. Cotton Caligula A. ix and British Museum MS. Cotton Otho C. xiii, ed. G. L. Brooks and R. F. Leslie, 2 vols, Early English Text Society, OS 250, 277, London 1963–78 [hereafter Laȝamon]; those which appear in the ‘Arthurian’ portion of the poem are cross-referenced with the Caligula MS edition: Laȝamon’s Arthur: The Arthurian Section of Laȝamon’s ‘Brut’ (Lines 9229–14297), ed. and trans. W. R. J. Barron and S. C. Weinberg, Harlow 1989. For recent work on landscape, see notes 7–10 below. 2 E.g. M. Johnson, Ideas of Landscape, Oxford 2006; C. Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape: Places, Paths, and Monuments, Oxford 1994. See L. V. Hicks, ‘The Landscape of Pilgrimage and Miracles in Norman Narrative Sources’, in Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World, ed. K. Hurlock and P. Oldfield, Woodbridge 2015, 177–93, at 180–6 for how these methods can be applied to medieval written sources.

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narrative of the rise and fall of kings and peoples.3 He had certainly completed the work, dedicated to Matilda’s half-brother, Robert of Gloucester, by 1139 when Henry of Huntingdon was amazed to find a copy of it in the library of the abbey of Le Bec.4 The conflict continued until the treaty of Wallingford in 1153 which recognized Matilda’s son Henry as Stephen’s heir. He became king in 1154 and a year later Wace completed his Norman French verse version of De gestis Britonum, known today as the Roman de Brut, which he presented to the Angevin court. This text, also incorporating information from Bede and elsewhere, was substantially the basis for Laȝamon’s Brut, whose specific date is not our focus in this essay, but which might have been completed anywhere between the death of Henry and the later thirteenth-century contexts of the two surviving Brut manuscripts.5 This range similarly allows for composition of Laȝamon’s text during a time of anxiety over the succession and civil war at the end of John’s reign. The editors of the Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth note the dearth of ecocritical research into Geoffrey’s work and the collected essays in that volume pay little attention to the environment.6 By contrast, comparative studies across the three texts considered here have begun to focus on ideas of landscape and human interactions with it, in particular the work of Arielle McKee and Saba Pirzadeh.7 Glimpses of the importance of landscape, although not the central theme of her research, can be seen in Françoise Le Saux’s analysis of Wace’s poetical form, notably in his use of anaphora and isocolon.8 Monika Otter developed ideas from the work of Antonia Gransden and Richard Southern that stressed the importance of verisimilitude and a grounding in the landscape of, particularly, twelfth-century English historical writing. Otter shaped these ideas around the concept of inventiones, arguing that ‘topography or the spatial setting, seems to be an unusually prominent concern’.9 Her use of inventiones has resonances with our theme of concealment although

3

Among others, see: P. Dalton. ‘The Topical Concerns of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britannie: History, Prophecy, Peacemaking, and English Identity in the Twelfth Century’, Journal of British Studies 44, 2005, 688–712, at 694, 704; John Gillingham, ‘The Context and Purpose of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain’, ANS 13, 1991, 99–118, at 101; Weiss, in Wace’s Roman de Brut, xvii. 4 Huntingdon, Book VIII, 558–9: ‘Letter to Warin the Breton’. 5 Barron and Weinberg in Laȝamon’s Arthur suggest the ‘opening decades of the thirteenth century’ to have been the latest likely date of composition (xii). F. Le Saux, Laȝamon’s Brut: the Poem and its Sources, Cambridge 1989, dates the poem to before the accession of Henry III in 1216, at 11. 6 J. B. Smith, ‘Introduction and Bibliography’, in A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. G. Henley and J. B. Smith, Leiden 2020, 1–28, at 4. 7 A. C. McKee and S. Pirzadeh, ‘Arthurian Eco-conquest in Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace and Laȝamon’, Parergon 34(1), 2017, 1–24. 8 F. H. M. Le Saux, A Companion to Wace, Cambridge 2005, 104–06: anaphora refers to the repetition of the initial word on successive lines; isocolon is ‘the repetition of syntactical structures within those lines themselves’. 9 M. Otter, Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical Writing, Chapel Hill, NC 1996, 2 and also chapter 2 that focuses on Geoffrey of Monmouth. A. Gransden, ‘Realistic Observation in Twelfth-Century England’, Speculum 47(1), 1972, 29–51; R. Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing: 4. The Sense of the Past’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 23, 1973, 243–63, at 256: ‘Their whole effort was anchored in the countryside and in the defence of a long established way of life.’



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she perhaps overstates the hagiographical link brought into English historiography by continental clerics after the Norman conquest. Along with more recent work by Kenneth Tiller, her emphasis on literary form and referentiality, however, has resulted in the landscape being relegated to the margins, rather than taking centre stage as both she and Tiller suggested.10 In addition, the importance of land and environment in historical writing was not a development of the twelfth century, nor of English historiography, but is present in much earlier histories stretching back to late antiquity as well as in Norman historiography.11 This article recentres the landscape and reconnects these three texts with the broader Norman and Anglo-Norman historical tradition. In what follows, we consider the ways in which all three writers make use of elements of the landscape that permit concealment and revelation in the construction of their narratives. We begin by examining ambushes that take place in woods and wooded valleys, considering temporality as much as topography, before moving on to woods and high places that function as places of refuge for civilians. As well as civilians, places like these and other, subterranean, spaces allow the concealment of armed men both in retreat and in triumphant return. These retreats are a matter of strategic necessity in some cases, but a place of refuge, as we will see, can swiftly become a space of entrapment. Finally, we address some complex cases in which Geoffrey, Wace, and Laȝamon take into consideration the entanglement of various elements, showing acute awareness of the connection between humans, the landscapes through which they move, and other environmental factors. Ambushes in woods and wooded valleys In setting up ambushes, sight lines were crucial for these writers. Concealment was not just achieved by hiding behind trees, but by thinking about the wider landscape in the context of matters such as temporality. During Brutus’ war with the Greeks, he captures the king’s brother Antigonus and uses him as a bargaining chip by forcing Anacletus, captured at the same time, to betray the king into an ambush and so break the siege of Brutus’ stronghold. Anacletus is to go to the Greeks and say to the sentinels that he has hidden Antigonus among the bushes in a wooded valley, but can bring him no further due to his fetters. Anacletus was to lead them to that place and at this point, Brutus and his men are to spring the trap and kill the Greeks.12 There are several ways in which considerations of visibility and concealment are apparent in these authors’ construction of their landscapes. Firstly, the ambush is described as taking place in a wooded valley,13 with Laȝamon adding that ‘wes þe wei holh 7 long, þa clude weren stronge’ (‘the road was deep and long, and the cliffs were steep’).14 The ambush also takes place at night. Concealment thus acts in 10

K. Tiller, Laȝamon’s Brut and the Anglo-Norman Vision of History, Cardiff 2007. See for example, A. H. Merrills, History and Geography in Late Antiquity, Cambridge 2005. The importance of landscape as a historical actor is present in Norman historiography from Dudo of Saint-Quentin onwards: De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae ducum, ed. J. Lair, Mémoires de la Société des antiquaires de Normandie 3rd ser. 3.2, 1865, 5–317; Dudo of St Quentin, The History of the Normans, trans. E. Christiansen, Woodbridge 1998. 12 Geoffrey, 13–15, I.11–12; Wace, Brut, 12–13, lines 403–40; Laȝamon, 20, lines 380–6. 13 Geoffrey: ‘convallem nemorum’ (‘wooded valley’), 13–15, I.11; Wace, Brut, 12–13: ‘une valee’ (‘a valley’, line 406), ‘le bois’ (‘the wood’, line 408). 14 Laȝamon, 20, line 382. 11

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several ways that emphasize the importance of sight lines. One level of obscurity is provided by the landscape: a wood contains no clear line of sight from one end to another.15 We can assume that the ambush takes place when the trees and shrubs are in leaf to provide extra cover and soften shadows. The valley also constrains visibility, especially in Laȝamon’s account, with the steep sides funnelling vision and implying differences in height between the Trojans lurking in ambush and the Greeks following the path into the wood. Night-time obviously provides an additional level of obscurity, blurring shadows; unless the moon were very full, it would be hard to distinguish between a bush and an armed man. Although Wace largely follows Geoffrey, he adds a significant detail in that Brutus tells Anacletus to report that he cannot bring Antigonus out of the wood because he, Brutus, was having it watched: ‘pur mei ki faz les bois garder’ (‘for I am having the wood watched’).16 Combined with the narrowing and obscuring of sightlines through the landscape, and through time, Wace thus adds a third level by suggesting to the Greeks that Brutus has a vantage point from which he can observe and control his enemies’ movements. As Matthew Bennett has shown, focusing primarily on the Roman de Rou, Wace had excellent knowledge of tactics and warfare in general.17 The vocabulary used in this episode, particularly by Geoffrey, is also instructive in thinking about Brutus’ use and control of the landscape. We have seen that Geoffrey describes the location of the ambush being in a ‘convallem nemorum’ and in a ‘silva’. Silva suggests this is managed woodland, rather than waste, and the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources similarly indicates that nemus also implies woodland used as a resource.18 In his Etymologies, however, Isidore writes that nemus means a grove and gives the term pagan associations by saying it relates to the divinity (numen) of the idols that pagans set up there.19 A default, and reasonable position would be to argue that Geoffrey varies his terminology in this episode to avoid repetition. However, we argue it is equally plausible that he chooses to vary his sylvan lexis here to account for the broader range of ways in which Brutus dominates his enemies. Woodland is both resource and sacral location, in which Brutus manages to control territory in a seemingly impossible situation. The helplessness of the Greeks, emphasized by Brutus’ control of the captives, is thus mirrored by his ability to manipulate these features of the landscape in the Greeks’ own territory. Concealment and control of landscape arising in desperate circumstances is also apparent in the description of Brutus’ struggles in Gaul. Once again finding himself besieged, this time by the Gauls, Brutus falls back on ambushes in woods. This time, his ally Corineus conceals himself and part of the army within a wood, ready

15

As Field has argued, it is as reasonable to expect woodland battles in historical accounts as it is to find them in mythology; see P. J. C. Field, ‘Arthur’s Battles’, Arthuriana 18(4), 2003, 3–32, at 14. 16 Wace, Brut, 10–11, line 394. 17 M. Bennett, ‘Wace and Warfare’, in Anglo-Norman Warfare: Studies in Late Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman Military Organization and Warfare, ed. M. Strickland, Woodbridge 1992, 230–50. 18 Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, https://logeion.uchicago.edu/nemus, accessed 1 November 2021. 19 The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. S. A. Barney et al., Cambridge 2006, 341. In Book I Geoffrey refers to ‘saltus ac nemora’ (‘glades and woods’, 19–20) through which Brutus and his men pass before reaching the abandoned city where they find the abandoned temple of Diana.



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to attack the Gauls from the rear, thereby offering vital support to Brutus in the ensuing battle.20 Geoffrey once again uses the word nemus, suggesting an association between landscape and the Gaulish ruler as well as a contrast between the grove and the future city of Tours. The city itself, described as a civitas, stressing its importance and centrality in Brutus’ campaign, was named for his nephew Turnus, who killed 600 Gauls before being cut down himself. The Trojan construction of an urban settlement, as opposed to the woodland, serves as a metonym for the transfer of power from Gauls to Trojans marked by their imposition of a city in the landscape. Laȝamon goes further: Brutus, in setting out from his castle, takes on the power of one of the woodland’s most ferocious symbolic beasts: he ‘wes on-bolgen swa bið þa wilde bær wenne hundes hine bistondeð i þon wode-londe’ (‘enraged just like the wild boar when the hounds surround him in the woodland’).21 This comparison between Brutus and the boar here highlights the complexity of hunting an animal – or human commander – in their own territory. Elsewhere in Geoffrey and Wace, McKee and Pirazdeh, in their discussion of Arthur’s boar hunt, note how it complicates ‘the king’s relationship to and mastery of the wilds’.22 The tables are similarly turned here; sometimes you hunt the boar, and sometimes the boar hunts you – and this particular boar knows this territory much better than his attacker. In both these episodes – Brutus in Greece and Gaul – the end result is not Brutus settling in the territory of those he has defeated, but instead moving on in his wanderings until he reaches Britain. For Wace, of course, these wanderings would be repeated in the Roman de Rou, drawing on the Norman Latin historiographical tradition of Rollo’s meanderings around northern Europe before settling in his promised land of Normandy.23 Brutus, as he is presented in these histories, is a capable commander, and the prowess he demonstrates through victories, and the ability to escape tight situations along the way, reveals his capabilities through the shrewd manipulation of the landscapes through which he passes, but he has not yet arrived at the landscape his descendants are destined to inhabit; this has not yet been revealed to him, even though Britain is described in Geoffrey’s text as a promissa insula.24 The lack of revelation does contrast with the Norman tradition in which Rollo, another capable commander, is guided to Normandy by a dream interpreted by a Christian captive. Providential explanations were also provided by the historians of the Normans in southern Italy, notably Amatus of Montecassino,

20

Geoffrey, 27, I.20; Wace, Brut, 26–7, lines 980–94; Laȝamon, lines 843–55. Laȝamon, 44, lines 850–1. On-bolgen is an interesting description here, and one well established in OE scholarship as marking a blurring of lines between the human and the non-human in terms of ferocity, both being swollen with fury. The word’s second element appears in the word gebolgen, for example, which is used of Beowulf (line 1539), Grendel (line 723), and the dragon (line 2220, 2304) in Beowulf to indicate swelling rage: R. D. Fulk, Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles, eds, Klaeber’s Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg, 4th edn, Toronto 2009. On OE and early ME in Laȝamon’s Brut more generally, see J. DavisSecord, ‘Revising Race in Laʒamon’s Brut’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 116(2), 2017, 156–81. 22 McKee and Pirzadeh, ‘Arthurian Eco-conquest’, 10–11. 23 Wace, Roman de Rou, trans. by G. S. Burgess with the text of A. J. Holden and notes by G. S. Burgess and E. van Houts, St Helier 2002, 10–21, II: lines 1–402 following Dudo, De moribus and trans. History of the Normans, book 2. 24 Geoffrey, 26–7; P. Russell, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Classical and Biblical Inheritance’, in Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, 67–104, at 72. 21

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who viewed the Normans as a chosen people and Apulia as a land of milk and honey akin the biblical promised land.25 In book three, Geoffrey of Monmouth tells of Belinus and Brennius, two warring brothers who eventually make peace through the intervention of their mother and who then go on to invade France and fight against the Germans and Romans. Once again, Geoffrey and his translators make use of valleys as a means of concealing troops: in this case Belinus marches to the aid of his brother on discovering the Romans have broken their agreement and are planning to intercept him.26 Although all the authors agree that an ambush took place in a valley, Wace sets the episode at night and Geoffrey during the day.27 Geoffrey has the Romans catch sight of Belinus’ army as their arms glitter in the sun.28 Taken by surprise, the Romans are massacred, with the battle only coming to an end as darkness falls. In contrast, Wace sets the ambush on a clear night with fine weather ‘cum en esté’ (‘as if in summer’, line 2997), where it is moonbeams rather than sunlight that catches their weapons. Laȝamon follows suit, without making mention of shining weapons. In both accounts the ensuing massacre continues into the day, stretching on to the following evening, when those left alive flee to other valleys. Both Wace and Laȝamon emphasize the stillness of Belinus and his men in comparison with the movement of the Romans through the wood. At the heart of these versions is a lesson that treachery cannot be concealed, whether by day or by night. The Romans had deserted the brothers and gone to the assistance of the Germans, prompting Brennius to march on Rome. In turn, the Romans changed tack, from helping the Germans to intercepting Brennius. Belinus, wise to this, ambushed the Romans in turn. For Geoffrey, the weapons of Belinus’ army, glittering in the sun while his troops lie concealed, bring the Romans’ treachery into a harsh and revealing light. For Wace, the nature of that treachery is revealed in the creeping about in the night, with daylight bringing the result – a massacre – into sharp relief. Wace is sensitive to temporality and uses contrasts between night and day, concealment and revelation in other parts of his corpus to emphasize dirty deeds. In his later work, the Roman de Rou, there are several examples of those who act treacherously towards the Normans described as fleeing by night. One will suffice here. Arnulf of Flanders, who was responsible for the murder of William Longsword, Duke Richard I’s father, fled the siege of Rouen in 946 by night, having encouraged Louis IV d’outremer and Otto I to attack the city.29 The disruption Arnulf’s retreat caused, amplified by it happening under the cover of darkness, resulted in elements of the army forsaking their tents and hiding

25

Amatus of Montecassino, Ystoire de li normant, ed. Michèle Guéret-Laferté, Paris 2011, 250–1; The History of the Normans, trans. P. N. Dunbar and ed. G. A. Loud, Woodbridge 2004, 50; P. Bouet, ‘Les Normands: le nouveau peuple élu’, in Normands en Méditerranée dans le sillage des Tancrède, ed. P. Bouet and F. Neveux, Caen 1994, 239–52, at 245–6. 26 Geoffrey, 56–7, III.43; Wace, Brut, 76–7, lines 2981–3026; Laȝamon, 146–8, lines 2812–19. 27 Geoffrey: ‘uallem’ (‘valley’, 57); Wace, Brut: ‘Clere la nuit’ (‘Clear the night’, 76–7, line 2998); ‘Belin el val se reconsa’ (‘Belin hid himself in a valley’, 76–7, line 3000); Laȝamon: ‘mucele bæche’ (‘great valley’, line 2815). 28 Geoffrey: ‘Et cum uallem armis hostium fulgere prospexissent, confestim stupefacti arbitrati sunt Brennium Senonesque Gallos adesse’ (‘When they saw the hostile weapons glittering in the valley, they were instantly amazed, thinking that it was Brennius and the Senones from Gaul’, 56–7, III.43). 29 Wace, Rou, 88–9, II: lines 3491–525.



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in the woods. Some ‘thieves and rascals’ took advantage of the situation to steal equipment, horses and clothing. Here Wace provides an important commentary on the nature of crime. He notes that some of the thieves did not live long enough to enjoy the profits of their robbery and that ‘a enviz se pout onques felonnie celer’ (‘crime has always been concealed with difficulty’).30 In the context of a failed siege, led in part by Arnulf of Flanders, it is likely that Wace was drawing a direct link between the petty theft of equipment and Arnulf’s much larger crime in causing the death of William Longword. Arnulf’s flight could not be concealed either, further underlining his perfidy. Just as in the example from the Brut given above, daybreak reveals the abominable deeds of Arnulf and his allies as the retreating soldiers are cut down by Norman and Breton forces. The brightening of the day meant that no refuge could be found, even in ditches or hedges: what was once concealed was now revealed and could no longer remain unseen. Places of refuge for civilians As well as sites of ambush, woods and high places could become places of safety for civilians, such as the people whom Brutus leads to settle in new lands, peasants fleeing battles, and Britons retreating in response to Saxon incursions. These episodes suggest connections between people and territories as well as providing opportunities to reflect on qualities of rulership and, perhaps custody and control of the land as it passes from the control of one group to another.31 Prior to ambushing the Greeks using Antigonus as bait, in the episode referred to above, Brutus had, according to Geoffrey, gathered together all the survivors of Troy who were impressed by his military prowess. In alliance with Assaracus, who was trying to gain possession of castles left to him by his father, Brutus fortified the castles and placed the people in the woods for safety.32 For Geoffrey this was not just a physical withdrawal from city to nature, but a comment on Pandrasus’ leadership and rule. Because Pandrasus was so unjust, the Trojans preferred to turn their backs on their former nobility and civic life and instead seek to maintain their freedom in the wildness of the forest; this is emphasized by Geoffrey’s comparison of the people to beasts, preferring meat and grass over delicacies and a life of servitude.33 Wace adds the detail that Brutus had ‘viande e robe’ (‘clothes and food’, line 223) brought in, as if to stress the difference between a leader who is aware of his responsibility to the people and one who is not.34 In this episode, then, the Trojan people are being concealed prior to their departure for other lands and, ultimately, Britain. Pandrasus’ refusal to be a good lord and to allow them to go freely brings devastation. Given the depth of these authors’ biblical knowledge, parallels with Exodus and Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites leave Egypt are inescapable. This providential theme links the writing of the Brut tradition back to the wider Norman historiographical tradition of the eleventh and twelfth centuries that viewed the Normans as a kind of chosen people searching for their promised land, whether that be Normandy or Apulia.35 30 31 32 33 34 35

Wace, Rou, 88–9, II: line 3517. See, for example, Le Saux, Companion to Wace, chapters 5–6; Tiller, Laymon’s Brut, 19. Geoffrey, 9, I.8; Wace, Brut, 6, lines 213–24; Laȝamon, 10–12, lines 213–21. Geoffrey, 9, I.8. Wace, Brut, 6, line 223. See discussion above.

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Elsewhere, Wace uses the plight of civilians in his account of the giant, Dinabuc, to emphasize the impacts of the havoc he causes at Mont Saint-Michel, using the island as his stronghold. Wace presents a wholly imagined topography here in his description of the people’s flight that contrasts with plausible landscape descriptions in other works, notably the Roman de Rou, which also features a description of the area around Mont Saint-Michel.36 In utter fear of the giant, the peasants, including women and children, gather their belongings and animals before seeking shelter in mountains, woods, forests and the wilderness.37 Wace deliberately exaggerates the terrain here to emphasize the hostile environment the giant has created in previously habitable country: Mult veïssiez les païsanz Maisuns vuider, porter enfanz, Femes mener, bestes chacier, Es munz munster, es bois mucier. Par bois e par deserz fueient E encor la murir cremeient. Tute esteit la terre guerpie, Tute s’en ert la gent fuïe (You could see peasants all leaving their houses, carrying children, leading women, hustling animals and climbing mountains or hiding in woods. They fled into forests and wilderness, still fearing to die even there. The whole land was abandoned, all its people fled.)38

Although the people are terrified of venturing into unknown and fearful places, this is still preferable to living under the tyranny of the giant. There is no good order here, only waste and terror. Neither Geoffrey nor Laȝamon provide this detail of the people retreating, instead focusing on Arthur’s battle with the giant. Wace was conscious of the effects of poor rulership and bad lordship on a region as reflected in parts of his later poem the Roman de Rou and knew areas of Normandy well that had been badly affected by the wars between Henry I and Robert Curthose, for example, Caen and Bayeux.39 Similar scenes appear elsewhere across these three works. The retreat of the Britons into places of perceived safety takes place towards the end of Geoffrey’s book XI. Here, in an ironic echo of the arrival of Brutus and the Trojans, the Britons are forced to flee overseas as plague and famine ravage the island.40 Wace notes that some Britons stayed and retreated to the mountains and forests.41 Laȝamon’s account emphasizes the terrible conditions in which the Britons found themselves, 36

Wace, Rou, 300–01, III: lines 9499–530. Wace, Brut, 284, lines 11309–16. 38 Wace, Brut, 284–5, lines 11309–16. 39 Wace received his basic education in Caen before returning to that city as a ‘clerc lisant’ after time spent in further study in the Ile-de-France. He was later rewarded with a prebend in Bayeux by Henry II. He provides unique information on the fighting and politics around Bayeux and Caen at the end of Robert Curthose’s reign as duke: E. van Houts, ‘Wace as Historian’, in Family Trees and the Roots of Politics, ed. K. Keats-Rohan, Woodbridge 1997, 103–32, at 105, 108; repr. in E. van Houts, History and Family Traditions in England and the Continent, Aldershot 1999, essay X. 40 Geoffrey, 276–81, XI.203–7. 41 Wace, Brut, 369, lines 14707–18. 37



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fleeing ‘in-to wuden’ (‘into the woods), and ‘cluden’ (‘caves’), where they rely on the woods for food, reduced to living ‘bi deoren’ (‘like wild beasts’) and dependent on tree roots for sustenance (lines 15915–18). This retreat, for all three writers, marks the point at which rule in Britain finally passes to the Saxons, with Cadualadrus receiving a vision in which God makes it quite clear that he has lost his kingdom. Instead of Cadualadrus’ people returning to the land, the Saxons summon their relatives from Saxony and begin to settle. The deliberate concealment of civilians or their retreat into hidden places allows these authors to reflect on the providential nature of the history they were writing, whether that was the mythical Trojan origins of the Britons or a more explicit Christian rendering of the prophecies of Merlin. Certainly, in the final example, Geoffrey makes it plain that the Britons were no longer worthy to rule the land. Legitimacy had passed to another group. This same theme is clear in other history writing connected with Norman and Anglo-Norman territories: William of Apulia shames the Normans into action by emphasizing how wrong it was for the effeminate Greeks to hold Apulia, while William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon wrote about the successive invaders, each replacing the previous, ruling well for a time before being supplanted by successors who restored cultivation, urban life and so on. Retreats and returns Concealment in woods is also used by Geoffrey, Wace, and Laȝamon to show a people biding their time in the hope or expectation of a shift in fortunes. This is very much the case on Constantinus’s journey from Totnes to Silchester, where he is acclaimed king, in the course of which he and his men gather the Britons who had previously fled.42 Here, Geoffrey notes only that the Britons had been dispersed, whereas Wace writes that they poured ‘des boschages e des muntaines’ (‘out of the woods and mountains’).43 Laȝamon goes further, once again choosing an animal metaphor to describe the Britons, who are dwelling in pits and the earth where: ‘heo hudden heom alse brockes’ (‘they hid themselves like badgers’, line 6397), as well as living ‘i wude i wilderne, inne hæðe 7 inne uærne’ (‘in the woods and the wilderness, in heath and in fern’, line 6398). None might be found living openly outside of a castle or a stronghold. It is only with the appearance of Constantinus that these dug-in forest dwellers emerge, leaping ‘ut of þan wuden swulf hit deor weoren’ (‘out of the wood as if they were deer’, line 6402–3), and coming ‘ut of munten’ (‘out from the mountains’, line 6402). The picture is one of a people closely tied to the land springing forth from a place of refuge to acclaim a new king and reclaim their land. Similarly, the Britons reassemble when Aurelius Ambrosius and Uther Pendragon land, also at Totnes, to take revenge on Vortigern. Geoffrey tells us that they had previously been scattered; Wace and Laȝamon take this further, once again, by writing that they returned from the mountains and woods into which Hengist had forced them. The wilderness from which the Britons stream forth to join Constantinus’s march is contrasted with the location of his assassination, to which a Pict draws the king aside on the pretext of a confidential conversation.44 Geoffrey notes that this murder 42 43 44

Geoffrey, 118–19, VI.93; Wace, Brut, 162–3, line 6424–32; Laȝamon, 332, lines 6389–403. Wace, Brut, 162–3, line 6431. Geoffrey, 118–19, VI.93.

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took place in a virgultum, which Wright translates as ‘thicket’. This area could be what we might think of as a thicket, perhaps a rather overgrown shrubbery or a tangle of brambles. However, the Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources notes alternative meanings of an enclosed plantation, orchard or coppice.45 Certainly Wace uses the term vergier, an orchard in his translation and adaptation of Geoffrey’s work.46 Although not hidden, Constantinus is certainly isolated and secluded, drawn away from his followers. Wace comments: Se Constentin lunges regnast Tute la terre en amendast, Mais trop murut hastivement (‘Had Constantine reigned for a long time, he would have set right the whole land, but he died too soon’)47

We suggest that translating virgultum as a cultivated or managed area, like an orchard, would be preferable to reading this as a thicket. This emphasizes the partial restoration of the land and people who have moved from hiding in mountains to cultivation and good governance. Setting the assassination of the king where plants are deliberately cultivated underlines the enormity of the action. Like the felling of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream-tree in the Book of Daniel, this portends the future destruction of natural resources.48 In considering broader connections with eleventh- and twelfth-century historical culture, the link between city and hinterland as a sustaining force was well understood in writing about conquest and warfare. In his account of the siege of Troia, for example, Amatus of Montecassino noted the close association between the city and its environs as Robert Guiscard’s siege prevented the harvest.49 For Wace the act of treachery was not just the assassination of the king, but the halting of this restoration. There is precedent for this kind of comparison in earlier historical writing to express the relationship between the centre and the periphery through viticultural metaphor. Gildas, in his De Excidio Britanniae (c. 24) borrows from the biblical vision of Obadaiah to compare the ruined towns and destroyed churches of post-Roman Britain with pillaged fields and vineyards, perhaps pointing towards the relationship between these towns and the agricultural hinterlands essential to their economic life.50 Strategic retreat in the heat of battle The manipulation of natural sites to turn them into places of concealment and fortification is demonstrated at various points in the De gestis Britonum and its successors, particularly in the case of Cassibellaunus’s attempts to defend against Roman invasion.51 In Geoffrey’s narrative, after being ambushed by Androgeus, 45

Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, https://logeion.uchicago.edu/virgultum, accessed 1 November 2021. 46 Wace, Brut, 162–3, line 6463. 47 Wace, Brut, 162–3, lines 6455–67. 48 Daniel 4:1–18. 49 Amatus, Ystoire de li normant, 392; History of the Normans, 135. 50 Discussed in M. D. J. Bintley, Settlements and Strongholds in Early Medieval England: Texts, Landscapes, and Material Culture, Turnhout 2020, 33. 51 Geoffrey, 76–81, IV.62; Wace, Brut, 116–17, lines 4583–607; Laȝamon, 222–4, lines 4280–308.



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Cassibellaunus flees up a ‘mons in cacumine saxosus densum coriletum habens’ (‘hill with a rocky summit thickly covered with hazel trees’), and thus its own natural defences.52 The rocks and steep hill provide protection and cover for the Britons to launch attacks down the hill. Wace provides extra detail about how Caesar is able to force a resolution: he places tree trunks on the path and surrounds the hill with armed men. In contrast, Laȝamon notes how the British fell trees to fortify their position further. He describes the hill as being ‘swiðe hæh’ (‘very high’, line 4338), and well enclosed with ‘cludes of stan’ (‘lumps of stone’, line 4339), but also notes that ‘hasles þer greowen’ (‘hazels grew there’, line 4338). There is more than a suggestion here, as they build up their fortifications with ‘stoken 7 mid stanen’ (‘stocks and stones’, line 4341), that the pliable spring of these trees is plashed into effective walls, a means of defence noted in the Bella Gallica penned by Caesar himself.53 There are parallels with this episode elsewhere. Whereas Hengist had forced the Britons to flee to inaccessible places, in due course it was the Saxons who found themselves pursued to woods by Arthur and Hoel in the aftermath of the battle of Lincoln.54 Having faced a massacre, the Saxons attempted a last stand in Colidon Wood (Celidon in Wace). In Geoffrey’s account they are successful at holding off and indeed killing the Britons, using the trees as shields. Wace omits this detail, but all three writers include Arthur ordering the trees to be cut down to form a barricade in order to keep the Saxons contained in the wood. Geoffrey’s account is relatively sparse, noting only that the trunks of the trees were placed around it as a barricade. Wace and Laȝamon clearly have a much better sense of how this was accomplished: Wace writes of a thick barrier of interwoven branches – trees crossing and interconnected by their limbs. Laȝamon, though more sparing, looks beyond Geoffrey’s trunks and follows Wace in the connections of this green wall, punning on the homonyms for truly and treely: ‘treo uppen oðer, treo-liche faste’ (‘one tree upon another, truly fast’).55 For the Saxons, lacking adequate provisions, what had seemed a place of refuge became a place of terror. McKee and Pirzadeh argue that Arthur’s manipulation of the landscape in this way, involving a degree of surveying, demonstrates his superiority over the Saxons.56 It is more than that. Wace and Laȝamon again show the interplay of concealment and revelation: the Saxons hide, but are seen and contained.

52

Geoffrey, 78–9, lines 216–17. In his discussion of the Nervii, Caesar notes that because of this tribe’s lack of cavalry, they ‘teneris arboribus incisis atque inflexis crebisque in latitudinem ramis enatis et rubis sentibusque interiectis effecerant, ut instar muri hac saepes munimenta praeberent, quo non modo non intrari, sed ne perspici quidam posset’ (‘cut into young saplings and bent them, so that by the thick sprouting of horizontal boughs, and through interweaving brambles and thorns, they made it so that these hedges served in the manner of walls as fortifications, which were not only impenetrable, but which might not even be seen through’); Caesar: The Gallic War, ed. and trans. H. J. Edwards, Loeb Classical Library, 72, Cambridge, MA 1917, 112 (c. 2). 54 Geoffrey, 196–7, IX.145; Wace, Brut, 230–1, lines 9171–200; Laȝamon, 538, lines 10331–40. 55 MnE ‘tree’ and ‘truth’ may a common origin in Proto-Germanic *trewan, the latter (*trewwaz) deriving from the former and perhaps containing a sense of fixity as secure as a tree in its roots. Though this would have been unknown to speakers of Old and Middle English, it is nevertheless an idea that occasionally appears in guises such as this. Vladimir Orel, A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden 2003, 409–10. 56 McKee and Pirzadeh, ‘Eco-conquest’, 5–6. 53

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The irony of these narratives is that Cassibellaunus and Arthur are forced to destroy resources in order to protect the land instead of building or seeking a fortification. Laȝamon has Cassibellaunus fell the hazels to increase the strength of the natural fortifications on top of the hill. Arthur turns the wood itself into a siege castle. He can only do this, however, by destroying part of the land. Geoffrey uses the word nemus again which would suggest managed resources. Arthur is not felling wildwood, but sacrificing valuable timber, food, or grazing, so as to protect the wider land and people. Might this, perhaps, hint at the fall of the kingdom once again? Complex cases There are also examples in these three narratives in which control over concealment and revelation takes place in a much more complex fashion. For the most part, the examples so far considered have been reactive: commanders or armies retreating into inaccessible places or civilians fleeing in the face of danger. However, in some other instances Geoffrey, Wace and Laȝamon also provide details of advance planning that reflects control of the landscape and of time. During the war between Aurelius and Hengest, the latter plans to ambush the former by concealing his soldiers.57 Aurelius is aware of this tactic, and Geoffrey and Wace tell us that, on reaching the plain, Aurelius spots Hengest’s forces and is able to position his own troops on the hills and in the woods to cut off the enemy retreat, with Laȝamon saying the same but making no mention of hills.58 Although Hengest eventually withdraws to Conisborough, Aurelius’ cavalry provides the Britons with an advantage by dispersing the Saxons. Wace and Laȝamon largely follow Geoffrey, but Wace makes it explicit that some of Aurelius’ men remain on the plain to engage the Saxons in battle,59 while Laȝamon adds extra detail that solidifies Aurelius’ control of the landscape and turns Hengest’s attempts to conceal his own troops on its head. Laymon is specific about the numbers of Welsh and Scots troops involved in this arrangement (10,000, in each case), and has Aurelius send the Welsh ‘to wude’ (‘to the woods’, line 8168), while the Scots take up positions to meet Hengest’s men ‘bi stiȝen 7 bi straten’ (‘by pathways and roads’, line 8168). Even more intriguingly, his sheltroun, or sceld-trume of chosen men, his most noble champions, is disguised ‘swulc hit weoren an hær wude’ (‘as if it were a gloomy wood’, line 8171) – the use of hær, derived from OE har, usually used to denote grey, here suggests a wild and overgrown gloomy wood.60 Rather like Birnam Wood on its way to Dunsinane in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, these men are 57

Geoffrey, 164–5, VIII.121. Geoffrey, 164–5, VIII.121: ‘Demetas in collibus, Venedotos in prope sitis nemoribus locauit’ (‘He positioned the Demetae on the hills and the Venedoti in nearby woods’); Wace, Brut, 194–5, lines 7719–20, 7723–4: ‘Des Gualeis ad fait dous compaines; / Les uns fist ester es muntaines, […] Les altres fist el bois ester, / E l’entree del bois guarder’ (‘He separated the Welsh into two companies, and placed one in the mountains […] The others he positioned in the woods, guarding the entrance to the wood’). Laȝamon, 424, line 8165–67: ‘Ten þusend Walisce; he to wude sende /ten þusend Scottes; he sende bi-halues / þe hæðene to imete; bi stiȝen 7 bi straten’ (‘He sent ten thousand Welsh to the woods, and sent ten thousand Scots by highways and byways to meet the heathen’). 59 Wace, Brut, 194–5, lines 7727–8: ‘Les altres fist el champ descendre, / Pur bien ester, pur bien defendre’ (‘He made the others go down into the field, to stand fast and mount a good defence’). 60 Laȝamon, 424. 58



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clearly camouflaged. In this way, then, Aurelius both figuratively and literally blends his men into the surrounding landscape, demonstrating his command of the territory and strengthening the association between his rule, his military power, and the physical landscape he is defending. It is perhaps significant that Geoffrey once again chooses to refer to this wood as a nemus in his account, which as we have already seen, suggests woodland as a resource, rather than wild wood. Although Laȝamon modifies this, therefore, by likening the disguise of his chosen men to a wild wood, we can read the passage in this light as referring to the deployment of resources in a different fashion. Here, Aurelius carefully manages the balance between the human and natural resources of his lands in such a way that he can disguise the true form of both men and trees. Control of landscape in relation to concealment and revelation is particularly apparent in episodes relating to Arthur’s battles with the Romans, echoing the ease with which other commanders, notably Duke William II of Normandy, could operate in enemy territory, as described by other Norman chroniclers such as William of Poitiers. During the duke’s campaigns on the southern borders of Normandy, Poitiers noted ‘so that you may know how safely he operated in enemy territory, he sometimes went out hunting’.61 In Geoffrey’s description of Arthur’s campaign following his defeat of the giant at Mont Saint-Michel, the king sets off in the direction of Autun, searching for the emperor. On reaching the River Aube, Arthur discovers that the emperor is not far away and so makes camp in such a way that his army is able to scout from and retreat to it as necessary. As a good commander always seeks to avoid battle where possible, Arthur sends envoys to the emperor’s camp, making the polite suggestion that the Romans might like to leave Gaul. Gawain had beheaded the emperor’s nephew, Gaius Quintillius, after the latter had insulted the Britons, causing the Romans to pursue them. What follows, although in the end a British retreat, demonstrates Arthur’s ability as a commander in controlling territory and determining the best place to camp. The Britons turn on their pursuers and kill several before both sides approach a wood out of which stream 6,000 Britons who had hidden there to support the envoys. Further Roman reinforcements arrive in turn, forcing back the British. Rather than retreating directly back to the camp, Arthur’s men wait until the paths narrow, and turn back on their enemies at points where the line has to funnel, allowing them to pick off their pursuers. Eventually, the Britons take many prisoners and bring them back to the camp. Wace’s version of this episode is much expanded to include more of the conversation between the envoys. He also notes that Arthur builds a fort on the Aube, rather than just making camp, and emphasizes the disorder that follows Quintillius’ death.62 The Romans are taken by surprise and cannot make an orderly pursuit, instead chasing the Britons: Ke par chemin, ke par chaumei, Ci dui, ci trei, ci cinc, ci sis, Ci set, ci oit, ci noef, ci dis.63

61

‘Sane, ut intelligas quam secure in terra hostili agitaret, interdum venatur’: Poitiers, 24–5. See discussion in L. V. Hicks, ‘The Concept of the Frontier in Norman Chronicles: a Comparative Approach’, in Norman Expansion: Connections, Continuities and Contrasts, ed. K. J. Stringer and A. Jotischky, Farnham 2007, 143–64, at 154. 62 Wace, Brut, 292–7, lines 11609–792. 63 Wace, Brut, 296–7, lines 11761–92.

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Wace also makes it explicit that it was Arthur who had stationed reserve troops in the wood, sending out six thousand knights as scouts and to help the envoys if needed: Pur les bois e les vals cerchier E pur la cuntree espier (to search the woods and valleys and to spy out the country)

This action demonstrates his control of the landscape.64 In this account the Romans counterattack, and it is the woods that provide succour to the Britons, rather than narrowing paths. As they are forced back to the wood, they are able to pick off the Romans by dragging them inside the trees where, presumably, fighting is more difficult. Accounts of the landscape are more sparse in Laȝamon’s account of this episode; the Romans approaching on their way from Langres catch sight of sixty thousand of Arthur’s men set out across ‘alle þa dales’ (‘all the hillsides’) and ‘alle þa dunes’ (‘all the downs’, line 13653). There is mention of a wood, but its role in the action, so far as we can tell, is unclear. Laȝamon writes that ‘þe keiser isah þæne king fare þer he was bi wude scaȝe’ (‘the emperor saw the king fare where he was by the edge of the wood’, line 13959). Even the subject of the pronoun seems uncertain here – is it the king or the emperor? In all three narratives this engagement sets up the much larger battle between the Britons and the Romans in which Arthur is eventually victorious, but at great cost, losing several key nobles. The legitimacy of Arthur’s cause is underlined: Geoffrey notes that it was God’s will that he should defeat the Romans who had withheld their tribute and who had previously unjustly ruled Britain. Of course, Arthur’s prolonged absence eventually brings about the destruction of his own kingdom by his nephew Modred. Conclusions The landscapes of concealment and revelation considered in this essay demonstrate the diverse approaches that these writers adopted in reading, adapting, and translating physical and textual environments. They raise questions concerning the proper exercise of power and control over landscapes, natural resources, and their human inhabitants. They show that various elements of landscape can, in different circumstances, serve as places of refuge and defence for civilian and military populations, and the importance of mastering such knowledge for effective governance and military success. And beyond this, they reveal practical contemporary understanding of the importance of topography and sightlines in military contexts, and in some instances reflect the lived experience of moving armies through different environments by day and by night. As we have shown, an awareness of the practicalities of concealment and revelation in the landscape is also enhanced by further reflection on their authors’ various concerns (practical, religious, imaginative, etc.). Ultimately, reflection on these contexts also allows for more nuanced readings of

64

Wace, Brut, 298, lines 11883–4.



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their individual approaches to the vocabulary and terminology used to author these landscapes in the mind’s eye. Although all three authors undoubtedly had local knowledge, the landscapes presented in these texts are imagined topographies that allow the exploration of ideas relating to a circle of war and prosperity in which land and resources, both human and natural, were key. All three demonstrate a sophisticated awareness of landscape as a changing, fluid entity connected with time and season, which allowed the chroniclers to manipulate it as a tool for bringing certain themes into sharp relief. Geoffrey, Wace and Laȝamon were writing a history of the Britons that fitted the model of, or at least provided close parallels with, the history of other peoples, particularly the Normans, and should be studied in greater depth alongside the Norman historical tradition. These were not, however, straightforward narratives of inevitable Norman supremacy. If the Normans were the latest group who had settled in England and Wales (and as the twelfth century went on, increasingly Ireland), they might not be the last. The moral warnings of these texts, emphasized in much recent scholarship of the histories, are stark: the behaviour of kings and their people could render them ineligible to hold their land. Bad kings and bad people led to bad management of land and resources, and the eventual loss of both. It is possible, therefore, that these authors were writing not just to align themselves to the ruling dynasty, but to warn that dynasty of what would happen if it did not maintain unity and govern well in the aftermath of the civil war. This could be seen to follow William of Jumièges’ underlying message, as argued by Mark Hagger, that the Normans would achieve more together as a community, and should seek to maintain and build on that.65 This theme of community deserves fuller consideration in Geoffrey and his successors. Each of these authors used their landscapes to hide or illuminate aspects of history that emphasized what happened when things went wrong. Perhaps the starkest image in the passages examined here, is that of the moonlight catching the arms and armour of Belinus’ army, lurking in the woods. What has been concealed is revealed in the harsh moonlight, just as unseen deeds of treachery will be revealed through the pens of historians.

65

M. Hagger, Norman Rule in Normandy 911–1144, Woodbridge 2017, 15.

THE TWELFTH-CENTURY NORMAN AND ANGEVIN DUKE-KINGS OF ENGLAND AND THE NORTHERN FRENCH NOBILITY Heather J. Tanner Between the late ninth/early tenth and again in the eleventh century, English kings utilized marriage alliances, gifts, and ecclesiastical ties with northern French nobles to defend their lands against the attacks from the Northman and to enhance their wider prestige.1 In turn, men like Arnulf II of Flanders, Hugh the Great, and Richard I of Normandy drew upon these ties as part of their own efforts to influence regional and regnal affairs.2 This ‘northern’ strategy continued and became an increasingly important practice after 1066. As dukes of Normandy (and after the mid-twelfth century, rulers of Greater Anjou, Brittany, and Aquitaine), the twelfth-century English kings governed disparate states and ruled nobles who enjoyed cross-channel estates. Their counties and kingdom were not a single, unified empire or administrative unit; however, the Anglo-Norman and Angevin kings drew upon their various resources to preserve all that they had acquired. To defend their territories in France, the duke-kings made use of northern French nobles to limit the Capetian kings’ efforts to enhance their effective power and authority in the region. This northern strategy also aided the Angevin duke-kings against the alliances and assistance that Louis VII and Philip II offered to those who had disagreements with their rulers. In the twelfth-century context, the counts of Boulogne, Flanders, Guines, St Pol, and Ponthieu employed the English dukekings’ friendship to defend their independence of action and expand their power and status. The Anglo-Norman and Angevin duke-kings used this northern strategy with notable success throughout the twelfth century; however, Philip II of France used it more effectively against John.

1

Philip Grierson, ‘The Relations between England and Flanders before the Norman Conquest’, TRHS 23, 1941, 71–113, esp. 83–91 and 95–100; Sheila Sharp, ‘England, Europe, and the Celtic World: King Aethelstan’s Foreign Policy’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 79(3), 1997, 197–220; Veronica Ortenberg, ‘“The King from Overseas?” Why Did Athelstan Matter in Tenth-Century Continental Affairs’, in England and the Continent in the Tenth Century, ed. David Rollason, Conrad Leyser and Hannah Williams, Turnhout 2010, 211–36; Sheila Sharp, ‘The West Saxon Tradition of Dynastic Marriage’, in Edward the Elder, 899–924, ed. N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill, London 2001, 79–88. 2 Simon MacLean, ‘Cross Channel Marriage and Royal Succession in the Age of Charles the Simple and Aethelstan (c. 919–930)’, Medieval Worlds: Comparative & Interdisciplinary Studies 2 (2015), 26–44; Heather J. Tanner, Families, Friends, and Allies: Boulogne and Politics in Northern France and England, c. 879–1160, Leiden 2004, 30–2, 79–82, 89–92; James Campbell, ‘England, France, Flanders and Germany in the Reign of Ethelred II: Some Comparisons and Connections’, in Essays in Anglo-Saxon History, London 1986, 191–207, esp. 197–201.

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Building upon his father’s enlistment of Flemish and Picard nobles in the 1066 conquest of England, Henry I worked throughout his reign to recruit the active support or neutrality of the northern French nobles. In 1101, he entered into an Anglo-Flemish alliance, which was renewed again in 1110.3 The renewal included private money fiefs to Flemish nobles as well. As Eljas Oksanen, and others, have argued, the treaty provided Henry with mercenaries and circumscribed the Flemish military contributions available to the French royal host. In 1101, it also cut off a source of aid to his brother and rival, Robert Curthose, duke of Normandy. In 1102, Henry regained the allegiance of Eustace III of Boulogne, restoring the Honour of Boulogne and negotiating his marriage to Mary of Scotland, Henry’s sister-in-law. Henry also arranged the marriage of Manasses II of Guines to his daughter, Emma of Tancarville, between 1106 and 1110, and in 1112 restored to William Talvas, count of Ponthieu, the Norman lands that he had confiscated from William’s rebellious father, Robert of Bellême.4 In the face of the hostility of Baldwin VII of Flanders and the neutrality of his successor, Charles the Good, Henry negotiated the marriage of his nephew, Stephen of Blois, to Matilda, heiress of the county of Boulogne in 1125. Louis VI, who had successfully asserted his control over the Ile-de-France as well as enjoying the allegiance of Raoul IV, count of Vermandois-Valois-Amiens,5 sought to limit the Anglo-Norman royal alliances in the region with the marriage of Marguerite of Clermont to Count Charles and the nomination and royal military support of William Clito as Charles’ successor between 1125 and 1127. Although hard-pressed by Louis VI at times, the ties to the northern French nobles aided Henry’s ability to defeat the Capetian king, not only in the wars of 1109–13 and 1116–19, but also during the contested succession to Flanders between 1125 and 1127.6 When Stephen and Matilda succeeded to the English throne, they were thoroughly aware of the significance of Henry’s northern strategy. Although Thierry, count of Flanders, maintained a neutral stance in the English civil war of 1139–53, Flemish mercenaries were an important component of Stephen’s army. Stephen and Queen Matilda drew upon their Boulonnais comital ties to their neighbours to maintain their hold on England.7 The counts of St Pol and Guines, as well as Hainaut, supported their cause. Like their uncle, Stephen and Matilda strengthened their alliances through marriages – they arranged the marriage of Beatrice, heir and countess of Guines, first to Aubrey III de Ver in 1139, and after the dissolution of that marriage, to Baldwin of Ardres, their seneschal in Boulogne. Stephen and Matilda were less lucky with securing the support of William Talvas and his son, Guy, count of Ponthieu. William’s allegiance was to the Angevin count and his son

3

Pierre Chaplais, ed., Diplomatic Documents Preserved in the Public Records Office, London 1964, nos 1–2; E. M. C. van Houts, ‘The Anglo-Flemish Treaty of 1101’, ANS 21, 1998, 169–74. 4 Orderic, 4:158 and Kathleen Thompson, ‘Robert of Bellême Reconsidered’, ANS 13, 1991, 268–9 and Kathleen Thompson, ‘William Talvas, Count of Ponthieu, and the Politics of the Anglo-Norman Realm’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. David Bates and Anne Curry, London 1994, 171–2. 5 A. Moreau-Neret, ‘The comte de Vermandois, Raoul de Crépy et Péronelle d’Aquitaine, soeur de la Reine Aliénor’, Mémoires de la Fédération de la Société d’histoire et d’archéologie de l’Aisne 18, 1972, 82–116. 6 Tanner, Families, Friends, 184–9. 7 Tanner, Families, Friends, 187–90 and 218–28.



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moved into Louis VII’s sphere of influence, aided in part by Stephen’s alliance with Hugh of St Pol, who sought to expand into Ponthevin territory.8 Louis VII sought to expand his authority into the region by fostering good relations with Thierry of Flanders and the marriage of his sister Constance to Eustace IV of Boulogne. He tried to curtail the growing power of Henry fitz Empress, now count of Normandy and Anjou, through his Norman campaign of 1151–52 which he fought with a coalition of the counts of Flanders, Boulogne, St Pol, and Ponthieu. Although the campaign was unsuccessful, Louis’ efforts highlight the significance of the allegiance of these nobles in the manoeuvring for power between the English and French kings. As Jean Dunbabin has argued, Louis VII followed a policy of patience and guile in his interactions with Henry fitz Empress after 1152. His initial focus was to weaken his and Eleanor’s hold on Aquitaine through the marriage of his sister Constance to the count of Toulouse and encouraging Geoffrey, Henry’s younger brother, in his aspirations to become the count of Anjou.9 Henry fitz Empress continued his predecessors’ strategy of securing friendly, or at least neutral, ties with the northern French nobility. He and Stephen had met with Count Thierry and Countess Sybilla of Flanders in Dover in 1154 and they visited Henry in Rouen in 1156.10 At this time, Henry renewed the traditional money fiefs associated with the Anglo-Flemish treaties, and his aunt Sybilla received one as well.11 He worked to gain the goodwill of William (son of Stephen and Matilda), count of Boulogne and Stephen’s followers by honouring the Treaty of Winchester’s stipulations regarding William’s inheritance of the Honours of Boulogne, Eye, and Lancaster. Henry also sought to maintain cordial relations with William’s sister, Marie, abbess of Lillechurch, and their uncle, Henry, bishop of Winchester. In 1155, Henry confirmed Marie’s ownership of the manor of Lillechurch and honoured Marie and Bishop Henry’s petition to grant the deanery of St Martin-le-Grand to her cousin, William de Sully.12 In 1156, Henry arranged to have Marie become abbess of Romsey, a distinguished house with long-standing ties to her maternal kin.13 In the same year, Henry also made two grants to the Hospital of St-Inglevert in Wissant, a gift and confirmation to Faversham Abbey, and granted the merchants of St Omer a licence to live and sell goods in London.14 By early 1155, the counties of Guines and Saint-Pol had come under Thierry of Flanders’ mouvance.15 In addition, Thierry positioned his

8

Thompson, ‘William Talvas’, 174–8. Guy’s mother was Louis VII’s cousin. W. L. Warren, Henry II, Berkeley, CA 1973, 65. 10 Eljas Oksanen, ‘The Anglo-Flemish Treaties and Flemish Soldiers in England, 1101–1163’, in Mercenaries and Paid Men, ed. John France, Leiden 2008, 269. 11 Chaplais, Diplomatic Documents, no. 3, 11. 12 Nicholas Vincent, The Letters and Charters of Henry II King of England 1154–1189, 7 vols, Oxford 2021, 1: 281 #284 (men of Boulogne); 3: 151–2 #1498 (Lillechurch), 3: 285–6 #1650 (St Martin-le-Grand), 4: 468–9 #2373, 5: 280–2 #2875 and #2876 (St Inglevert Hospital) 6: 164 (Faversham). 13 David Knowles, C. N. L. Brooks and Vera M. London, Heads of Religious Households in England and Wales 940–1216, Cambridge 1972, 219; Matthew Paris, Chronica majora, ed. Henry Luard, 7 vols, RS, London 1872–83, 2: 216. 14 Letters and Charters, v. 3 #1650 and v. 5 #2875 and 2876. 15 Beatrix, countess of St Pol, had died in 1146 without heirs; her cousin, Arnulf, castellan of Gent and Flemish curialis, inherited the county. Hugh III of St Pol’s death in 1144 or 1145 produced a contested succession which allowed Thierry, in the absence of Queen Matilda 9

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heir to extend the family’s authority southward with Philip’s marriage to Elisabeth of Vermandois (whose dowry was Amiens) and his daughter Marguerite’s betrothal to Raoul IV, count of Vermandois-Valois, in 1155. The sources are silent about any grants made by Henry to establish direct positive ties with the counts of St Pol, Guines, or Ponthieu in the late 1150s. John of Ponthieu was engaged in a conflict with the lord of St Valery and thus more focused on his own county. Having laid the foundations for the retention of the Boulonnais and northern French alliance, Henry fitz Empress spent 1157 and 1158 dealing primarily with Scotland and Wales. In the summer of 1158, Henry shored up his relationship with Louis VII with the betrothals of his eldest son Henry to Louis’ daughter Margaret, whose dowry was the contested Vexin.16 The French king then sanctioned Henry’s intervention in Brittany to recover Nantes and reconciled the English king with Theobald of Blois-Chartres, brother of King Stephen.17 Having successfully re-established royal and ducal control in England and Normandy and the subordination of Brittany, Henry turned to asserting his wife’s claims on the county of Toulouse in 1159. The campaign put in jeopardy his recent rapprochement with Louis VII, whose sister Constance (Eustace of Boulogne’s widow) was countess of Toulouse and mother of the heirs.18 Henry led a large army into the region in the summer of 1159. Louis went to Toulouse to defend Constance and her family, and his influence in the region, while his brothers attacked the Norman border lands. Louis’ presence stymied Henry’s main goal, but he did recover the county of Quercy. One of the casualties of the campaign was William, count of Boulogne and Mortain and earl of Surrey, who died in October 1159 returning from Toulouse. Upon his return to Normandy, Henry regrouped. He strengthened the Norman borders by ravaging the Beauvais in retaliation for the attacks of Louis’ brothers, Henry, bishop of Beauvais, and Robert, count of Dreux. Then he renewed arrangements with Louis for their children’s marriage. Next Henry turned to dealing with the loss of the Boulonnais count in his network of northern allies. In early 1160, Henry arranged the marriage of Marie, the heiress of Boulogne, to Matthew of Flanders.19 From the surviving charter and pipe roll evidence, it appears that Marie renounced her claims on the Honours of Eye and Lancaster but was recognized as the heir to a portion of the Honour of Boulogne and the county of Mortain.20 Neither Matthew nor Henry consulted Matthew’s father, Thierry, who was furious

(countess of Boulogne), to intervene to divide Hugh’s lands between his sons, Enguerrand and Anselm; Jean-François Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal entre Flandre et France. Saint-Pol, 1000–1300, Brussels 2005, 93–4. 16 Warren, Henry II, 71–2. 17 Warren, Henry II, 76–7. 18 Warren, Henry II, 85–8. 19 Torigni ed. Howlett, 4: 207; Materials for the History of Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. J. C. Robertson, 8 vols, London 1877–9, 3: 328–9 and 4: 332; Ralph de Diceto, The Historical Works of Ralph Diceto, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, RS, London 1876; rpt 1963, 1: 303; Matthew Paris, 2: 216; Gilbert of Mons, The Chronicle of Hainaut, trans. Laura Napran, Woodbridge 2005, 52. 20 There is evidence that Marie and Matthew held at least part of the Honour of Boulogne, the lands in Essex and Hertfordshire, see: PR 7 Henry II, 66, 67, and 69; PR 8 Henry II, 11 (Colchester), 47 (Surrey), 71–2 (Essex). between 1168 and 1173; Henry confirmed Marie and Matthew’s possession of Exning (a Boulogne estate); PR 14 Henry II, 14; 15 Henry II, 93, 16 Henry II, 2; 17 Henry II, 2; 18 Henry II, 23; Diceto 1:373.



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and promptly invaded Boulogne and Lens. In March 1161, father and son were reconciled. Thierry gained Marie’s county of Lens as well as overlordship over Boulogne; Henry acquired significant estates in England and sustained his northern alliance system. Although Marie and Matthew kept her county of Boulogne, they wielded less regional power than their predecessors. Henry’s actions in 1159 and 1160 prompted Louis to reassess his strategy in dealing with his mighty vassal and fellow king.22 After the death of his second wife, he immediately married Adela of Blois, and betrothed his daughters Marie and Alix to Theobald of Blois’ heirs, Henry of Champagne and Theobald V of Blois.23 In response, Henry fitz Empress connived to get papal support for the immediate marriage of his son to Margaret of France, thereby securing his control of the Vexin during their minority.24 Henry spent the next couple of years primarily in Normandy, bringing the Norman nobles more thoroughly under his authority.25 Mending fences, Henry renewed the alliance with Thierry of Flanders and his son Philip in 1163.26 As Oksanen has argued, the significance of this treaty was to affirm, cross-generationally, the ties between England and Flanders, rather than its military-financial details.27 Henry certainly hoped to win over young Philip of Flanders and affirm his friendship with Matthew and Marie of Boulogne, as well as re-establishing the money fiefs for the Flemish lords, including the counts of Guines.28 Thierry’s position was strengthened, with Boulogne, Guines, and St Pol under his overlordship, and Vermandois, Valois, and Amiens as his daughterin-law’s inheritance. The spread of Flemish power southward and Henry’s alliances circumscribed Louis VII’s effective authority in Picardy, although he retained the loyalty of both the Flemish and Ponthevin counts. Between 1164 and 1166, Henry faced conflict with Thomas Becket and his circle, as well as problems with the Welsh and the Bretons.29 Louis allowed Becket to stay in France, but Philip of Flanders and Matthew were more active in their support. Henry confiscated the Boulonnais lands in England and Normandy, but not those of the count of Guines.30 Louis encouraged the Welsh and their Scottish allies in their military actions against the English king, as well as those of the Bretons. In 1166, Henry sought to renew good relations with Marie and Matthew; he promised them £1,000 p.a. to compensate for Mortain.31 In the same year, the pipe rolls reveal that 21

21

Sigebert of Gembloux, MGH SS 6:397; Ralph de Diceto, 2: 303; Lambert of Waterloos, ‘Annales Cameracenses’, MGH SS 16:533. There was no protest made by Marie’s kinsmen or men. Pharamus of Boulogne was supportive; J. H. Round, ‘Pharamus of Boulogne’, The Genealogist 12, 1896. 22 Warren, Henry II, 88. 23 Warren, Henry II, 89–90. 24 Warren, Henry II, 90. 25 Warren, Henry II, 90–7. 26 Chaplais, Diplomatic Documents, no. 3; Eljas Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World 1066–1216, Cambridge 2012, 35. 27 Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 68. 28 Chaplais, Diplomatic Documents, no. 3, 11. 29 Warren, Henry II, 99–100. 30 Between 1164 and 1178, Ralph Brito held the Honour of Boulogne: PR 11 Henry II through PR 25 Henry II. 31 The Historical Works of Gervase of Canterbury, ed. William Stubbs, London 1879, 203; Duggan, Correspondence, 1: 542–6, no. 112 and 1: 550, no. 113; Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 37.

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Anselm, count of St Pol, was holding three manors in Essex and Henry fitz Empress had arranged his marriage to Eustacie, the former countess of Essex.32 Henry’s gifts and promises to his northern French allies were in vain. Marie and Matthew raised a large fleet to threaten the English coast, and Matthew, Philip of Flanders, and Louis VII attacked Henry in the Vexin in 1167.33 In 1168, Marie wrote directly to Louis VII to warn him that Henry fitz Empress’s envoys had been favourably received by Frederick I of Germany.34 Henry’s successes on the battlefield, as well as Richard de Lucy’s defence of the English coast, prompted the counts of Boulogne and Flanders to enter into negotiations with the English king. Henry granted Marie and Matthew the royal rents from Kirton, Exning, and Bampton, worth £326 per annum, and restored most of the revenues from Mortain. He granted Philip of Flanders £60 per annum from the royal revenues.35 In return, Matthew, at Henry’s request, used his forces to attack John, count of Ponthieu. In response, Constance, Louis’ sister and Marie’s former sister-in-law, made a claim in the papal curia in 1168 that Boulogne was her dower.36 The Boulonnais countess and her husband successfully rebuffed Constance’s claim. Louis agreed to a truce by the end of 1168.37 The war demonstrated the importance of the northern nobility in the power manoeuvring between the English and French kings, but it also convinced Henry to reduce Louis VII’s concerns about the threat posed by a unified inheritance of his territories to French royal authority and power. Henry fitz Empress stipulated that his eldest son Henry, Louis’ son-in-law, would inherit England, Normandy, and Anjou; Richard would inherit Poitou, and Geoffrey would inherit Brittany, and both Henry and Richard would hold their French lands directly from the French king. In addition, Richard was betrothed to Alix, Louis’ daughter.38 In return, Louis tried to reconcile Henry with Thomas Becket and the rebels. Louis, while not losing any ground among the northern nobility, had not made any inroads on asserting greater authority over them. This was in part due to the English king’s use of new gifts and confirmations to fortify relations with the counts of Boulogne, Guines, and St Pol. In 1169, Henry granted the royal manor of Duckford in Kent to Anselm of St Pol.39 The conflict between Ponthieu and St Pol was quieted with the 1170 marriage of Anselm’s daughter Beatrix of St Pol to Count John.40 By 1170, Henry fitz Empress

32

Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal, 99 and J. H. Round and W. R. Powell, ‘The counts of St Pol in Essex and Kent’, Essex Archaeology and History 26, 1996, 194. 33 Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 37. 34 RHGF 16:144, no. 187. 35 PR 16 Henry II, 2, 48, 99, 131, and 134; Torigni ed. Howlett, 4: 238; Daniel Power, The Norman Frontier in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, Cambridge 2004, 351; and Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 38. John remained allied with Louis, angered by Henry’s 1166 seizure of his southern Norman lands. 36 Migne, v. 200, no. CDXCVI; William W. Clark, ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered: The Patronage of Constance de France’, in Magistra Doctrissima. Essays in Honor of Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Dorsey Armstrong, Ann W. Astell and Howell Chickering, Kalamazoo, MI 2013, 202 and n. 11–12. 37 Jean Dunbabin, ‘Henry II and Louis VII’, in Henry II. New Interpretations, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent, Woodbridge 2007, 58–9. 38 Warren, Henry II, 109. 39 Vincent, Letters and Charters 1: 430–1 #429 (Anselm). 40 Round and Powell, ‘The Counts of St Pol’, 195 and Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal, 99.



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gave Marie and Matthew an additional £60 per annum from Dunham (Notts.).41 Henry remained on good terms with Philip of Flanders, who now also governed Vermandois and Amiens with his wife, Countess Elisabeth. The English king’s patronage had increased the northern nobles’ wealth and affirmed their importance in the kingdom’s power structures. Having settled relations with Louis and his northern neighbours, Henry fitz Empress sought to resolve the situation in Toulouse. Henry’s negotiations were clever in the Poitevin context; however, they infuriated his wife and elder sons.42 Louis VII eagerly acted in support of his son-in-law, the Young Henry, and their formidable coalition included Queen Eleanor and the counts of Boulogne, Flanders, St Pol, Ponthieu, Blois, and Champagne.43 The Young Henry had promised Matthew the county of Mortain and the Honour of Eye, in addition to the manor of Kirton-in-Lindsey (not just the revenue), and promised Philip the earldom of Kent.44 In response, Henry fitz Empress confiscated all the northern French lords’ lands during the conflict. Philip and Matthew played a key role in the Norman campaign, where Matthew was fatally wounded at the siege of Driencourt (December 1173). In the 1174 peace negotiations with Louis, Henry agreed to restore all the rebels’ confiscated lands; thus, Hugh of St Pol, Baldwin of Guines, and Philip of Flanders received back their English lands and rents.45 Henry did not restore to Ida, countess of Boulogne, the lands he had granted her parents and Ralph Brito continued to have custody of the Honour of Boulogne. At a separate meeting in April, Philip of Flanders formally released the Young Henry from his promises, presumably including those made to Matthew of Boulogne on behalf of Ida.46 The strategic and economic importance of the Flemish alliance also meant that Henry fitz Empress restored the money fief of 1,000 marks and later pledged a sum of money ‘for the soul of Matthew, count of Boulogne’ to knights in the defence of Jerusalem.47 In the face of Henry’s alliances in northern France, Louis sought to counteract Henry’s influence and expand his own. In 1177, he sent envoys to the Flemish court offering to arrange the marriages of Ida of Boulogne and her sister.48 Henry, catching wind of the delegation, counter-offered his aid in finding bridegrooms for the girls. Philip, now pursuing a more cautious policy, politely declined both kings.49 While Philip journeyed to the Holy Land (1177–9), Louis pursued the restoration of Berry, Auvergne, and the Vexin through papal appeals. Henry the Young King spent a fair amount of time participating in tournaments in Flanders, Picardy, and Hainaut. In addition to gaining a glittering reputation, the future

41

PR 14 Henry II (1167–1168), 14, 60, 95, 205. Matthew Strickland, Henry the Young King, 1155–1183, New Haven, CT 2017, 121–9. 43 Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, ed. & trans. R. C. Johnston, Oxford 1981, 4. Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 39; Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta regis Henrici Secundi, ed. William Stubbs, 2 vols, London 1867, 1: 43; Gervase of Canterbury, 243; Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal, 101; Strickland, Henry the Young King, ch. 8. 44 Howden, Gesta 2: 46 and 1: 44 states that the honour of Eye was promised to Hugh Bigod. 45 Strickland, Henry the Young King, 215; Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 46; Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal, 102. 46 Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 41. 47 Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 41; Strickland, Henry the Young King, 216. 48 Strickland, Henry the Young King, 234. 49 Pierre Petot, ‘Le mariage des vassales’, Revue historique de droit français et etranger 56, 1978, 40–5. 42

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English duke-king was further establishing his ties to the northern French lords and providing evidence of good lordship to knights who could serve as paid soldiers in his forces. As Matthew Strickland has argued, he also participated in the political and military affairs in England.50 In both sanctioning the young king’s tournament activity and governmental participation, Henry fitz Empress was providing his son with the connections and skills to be a successful king. In addition, it allowed him to build a relationship with the future French king, his brother-in-law, Philip. Both Philip of Flanders and the Young Henry were at the tournament where the young prince got lost in the forest and the court feared for his death. Both men joined Louis on a swift pilgrimage to Becket’s shrine and both played key roles in the November 1179 coronation of Philip. Philip of Flanders’ ascendancy in Louis VII’s court, his guardianship of the newly anointed king, and his governance with his wife of Vermandois, Amiens, and Valois, aroused the hostility of Queen Adela and her brothers, the counts of Blois and Champagne. It also concerned the Young Henry, future duke of Normandy, who cultivated Philip II’s friendship. Between 1181 and 1185, northern France was dominated by the issue of overlordship of Picardy and in the Angevin duke-kings lands, the struggles of Henry fitz Empress and his sons over the inheritance of his territories. Philip II sought to first control Picardy and encouraged the divisions among Henry fitz Empress’ sons. To secure his power in Picardy and to gain influence with the future king, the Flemish count arranged the marriage of his niece, Isabella of Hainaut, to Philip II in spring 1180. Alarmed by his dominance, Queen Adela and his uncles opposed the marriage, despite the generous dowry of the Artois.51 Their opposition led Philip II to seize control of the government. The queen and her brothers sought Henry fitz Empress’s aid, who with his eldest son negotiated a peace among the parties. The Flemish count received the traditional money fief of £1,000 after rendering homage to Henry fitz Empress.52 That same year, Philip arranged the marriages of his Boulonnais nieces – Ida was married to the heir of the count of Guelders and Matilda to the heir of the duke of Brabant. Philip thereby continued to control Boulogne as well as securing the northern regions of Flanders and his eastern borders. By 1181, Philip II was chafing at the Flemish count’s tutelage and his power in the north; he encouraged Raoul de Coucy to go to war with the Flemish count. The Flemish count, supported by Hugh of St Pol, Stephen of Sancerre, and Marie of Champagne, was hard pressed by Raoul, who had the support of the Young Henry and Philip II, both of whom sought to circumscribe the Flemish count’s power. Once again, Henry intervened at the Flemish count’s behest and a peace followed.53 The death of Elisabeth, countess of Vermandois-Amiens and Flanders, in March 1182 initiated the next round of the conflict. Philip II, arguing that he was the rightful heir, rejected the Flemish count’s claim to govern his wife’s lands until his own death. With no decisive victories on either side, the two Philips turned to the English king to mediate a truce; the Flemish count retained lifetime

50

Strickland, Henry the Young King, ch. 11. Strickland, Henry the Young King, 264–6 and Heather J. Tanner, ‘Elizabeth and Eleanor of Vermandois: Succession and Governance in Vermandois, Valois, and Amiens’, Medieval Prosopography 34, 2019, 104–05. 52 Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 42. 53 Tanner, ‘Elisabeth’, 106–7. 51



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control of Vermandois and Valois, while Philip II received Amiens and a 14,000 livres Chalon relief.54 Vermandois-Amiens-Valois were not the only contested succession and conflict in 1182. The Young Henry, frustrated by his father’s refusal to hand over part of his inheritance to govern directly, sought to take Aquitaine. He had gained the allegiance of some of the lords unhappy with Richard’s rule and war broke out among Henry II’s sons in February 1183.55 The Young Henry called upon his northern French stipendiary knights to join him and sent his wife to Philip II’s court.56 Although initially supporting the Young Henry and Geoffrey, Henry II joined Richard’s forces in late February 1183 and called upon Norman, Picard, and Flemish troops to fight with him.57 The French king sent forces to aid the Young Henry. After Easter 1183, Henry fortified Dover and the coastal cities, fearful that Philip II would take the opportunity to draw the northern nobles against him in Normandy.58 The English king was in Limoges when he received the news of his eldest son’s death on 11 June 1183; by August he had wrapped up the war. As Henry II put affairs in order in his French lands, he rewarded Philip of Flanders’ neutrality by negotiating his marriage to Matilda of Portugal, which took place in August 1183.59 Gearing up to defend his control of Vermandois, in 1183, Philip also arranged his recently widowed niece Ida’s second marriage, this time to the duke of Zähringen, thereby retaining de facto control of Boulogne. The Flemish count’s dower arrangements for his new bride (which included part of the Artois) triggered renewed warfare with Philip II shortly after Easter 1184. The French king’s forces were significant.60 The Flemish count and the archbishop of Cologne travelled to England to secure Henry fitz Empress’ support, but he offered only to negotiate a resolution. His forces stretched too thin, Philip of Flanders accepted the Peace of Boves (1185) that Henry helped to arrange. The French king gained western Vermandois, and affirmed his control of the county of Amiens and his children’s rights to the Artois. Philip of Flanders retained eastern Vermandois during his lifetime.61 Between 1186 and 1189, the dynamics of power in northern France were shifting toward the French king. The Flemish count’s authority had been pushed northward by the Treaty of Boves and was further curtailed by the 1186 return of his niece, Ida, after the death of her second husband, to govern Boulogne. The king now governed Amiens and western Vermandois in his own right, and his cousin Eleanor governed Peronne and Valois. John of Ponthieu, no friend of Henry fitz Empress, was a loyal vassal. The count of St Pol had married Yolande of Hainaut, Queen Isabella’s aunt, in 1178, giving the French king a further foothold in the region. Building upon these successes, Philip openly supported Henry’s disaffected sons, Geoffrey of Brittany and Richard of Poitou.62 Geoffrey’s death in 1186 led Philip II to demand custody of his under-age

54

Tanner, ‘Elisabeth’, 107; Gislebert, Chronicle, 83. Strickland, Henry the Young King, ch. 13. 56 Strickland, Henry the Young King, 287. 57 Strickland, Henry the Young King, 293–6; the counts of St Pol and the Ponthevin dapifer continued to hold their English lands and thus seem to have remained neutral in this conflict; PR 30 Henry II, 144, 152. 58 Strickland, Henry the Young King, 300–01. 59 Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 42. 60 Tanner, ‘Vermandois’, 109. 61 Gislebert, Chronicle, 100–01. 62 John Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, Berkeley, CA 1986, 20–2. 55

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children and Brittany, their inheritance.63 He also demanded that Richard cease his attacks on the lands of Raymond of Toulouse and threatened to invade Normandy if Henry fitz Empress did not comply. He also reopened the question of the Vexin and insisted that Richard marry Alix, his half-sister. The French king then invaded Berry and Henry gathered a large army to counterattack; however, a papal delegation negotiated a truce so that the two kings could prepare to go on crusade. Henry II’s refusal to openly recognize Richard as heir to all his territories allowed Philip II to play upon Richard’s fear of John’s ascendancy and to enforce his authority over his vassals in central and southern France.64 In 1188, Richard, frustrated by the delays, broke the truce by attacking the count of Toulouse. Both kings gathered large armies – the count of St Pol joined the French host – and the papal legates tried to negotiate another truce, but Henry wanted a long-term resolution. The Flemish count, supported by other French magnates, advocated for peace, but sent a contingent of soldiers to serve Henry in Normandy. Henry II rejected Philip II’s peace terms in November 1188. Richard joined the French king in his campaign against Henry, who retreated, and, demoralized by the news of John’s defection, agreed to Philip II’s peace terms. Richard, eager to set off on crusade, immediately went to work settling the affairs of England, part of which was to offer forgiveness to all who had fought against him and for his father.65 Like Richard, the counts of Flanders, St Pol, and Ponthieu were primarily concerned with preparations for the Third Crusade, as was the French king. Philip II, however, did bring back into his fold Renaud de Dammartin, who had fought for Henry fitz Empress, offering the restoration of his paternal inheritance of Dammartin.66 After his coronation on 3 September, Richard sailed to Calais to reaffirm the Anglo-Flemish alliance, as well as to rebuild English royal influence in the region. The English lands of the counts of St Pol and Guines were restored – they had been confiscated in 1188; however, Countess Ida of Boulogne did not receive her family’s English lands and Richard granted Mortain to his brother John in 1189.67 Shortly before his departure in 1190 Philip of Flanders’ niece disrupted the regional power dynamics. Ida married Renaud de Dammartin, rejecting her uncle’s preferred suitor, Arnulf, heir to the county of Guines. Seeking to preserve his authority to the south of his county, Philip ousted Ida and Renaud from Boulogne, recognized Ida’s sister Matilda, duchess of Louvain as its countess and assigned her husband, Henry, as its procurator.68 Philip then departed on crusade, joined by the count of St Pol and other Flemish and Picard nobles. Renaud and Ida, however, defeated her brother-in-law and resumed control of her county in 1191. Count Philip’s death at Acre in 1191 relieved the couple of a second conflict, as they enjoyed the support of the new countess, Marguerite, and her husband Baldwin V, count of Hainaut. Upon the French king’s return from the Holy Land in December 1191, Ida and Renaud swore, separately,

63

Warren, Henry II, 613. Warren, Henry II, 616–23. 65 For the counts of St Pol and Guines, see: PR 2 Richard I, 146, 151–2. For Aubrey and son Renaud de Dammartin, see Richard I, ed. Joseph Hunter, London 1844, 108 and History of William Marshall, ed. A. J. Holden, trans. S. Gregory, and with historical notes by D. Crouch, 3 vols, London 2002, 1: 477–8 (lines 4399–9404). 66 Henri Malo, Un Grand Feudataire Renaud de Dammartin et la Coalition de Bouvines, Paris 1898, 23. There was also a betrothal, perhaps a marriage, to Philip’s cousin Marie de Châtillon. 67 PR 2 Richard I, 146, 151,152. 68 Gislebert of Mons, MGH SS 18: 403–04; 406–07. 64



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their homage to Philip Augustus. Philip attempted to take advantage of Richard’s absence to take control of his sister Alix, and her dowry of the castle of Gisors, and the counties of Aumale and Eu, but did not insist when the Norman seneschal refused his demands. The death of Philip of Flanders in 1191 changed the political dynamics of northern France. Ida’s aunt and uncle, Marguerite and Baldwin, now controlled Flanders as well as Hainaut and Namur. Ida’s former stepmother, Eleanor, ruled Peronne and Valois, while the king controlled Vermandois, Amiens, and the Artois. Boulogne returned to direct royal overlordship. John of Ponthieu’s death at Ephesus in 1191 left Ponthieu governed by an under-age heir, William, and his mother Beatrix of St Pol. News of Richard’s capture on his return from the Holy Land in December 1192 sent his brother John hotfooting it to Alençon in January 1193 to secure his succession to the duchy and kingdom. Rejected by men loyal to Richard, John sought Philip’s support. Philip offered John his sister Alix and all of Richard’s lands, French and English, and then assembled an army to sail from the Boulonnais port of Wissant.70 The dowager queen Eleanor’s defence of the Kentish coasts and John’s failure to secure the king of Scots’ support led Philip II to use the army to attack Gisors, which he took along with the counties of Aumale and Eu. He and John worked together to prevent Richard’s release; however, Queen Eleanor succeeded in ransoming him.71 With Richard’s return in 1194, Philip, in preparation for Richard’s retaliation, sought to shore up his relationship with Hugh of St Pol who had served under Richard in the Holy Land after the French king’s departure, by granting him three places near Paris ‘for his faithful service’.72 Similarly, Richard made a gift to Ter Doest, in February 1194, to affirm the alliance with the count of Flanders-Hainaut.73 Restored in England and formally reconciled with John, the English king retained all John’s lands, including Mortain, until May 1195.74 Between the spring of 1194 and 1199, Richard fought to regain what Philip II had taken during his captivity. The northern French counts were key in the political machinations and warfare between the English and French kings between 1195 and 1214. Renaud of Boulogne, Baldwin IX of Flanders-Hainaut, William of Ponthieu, and Hugh of St Pol campaigned with Philip II against Richard in 1195 and 1196.75 The French king sought to strengthen his authority in Picardy through two marriages – one, between his close friend Gaucher de Châtillon and Elisabeth, heiress of St Pol in 1195, and the other, his sister Alix and William count of Ponthieu in 1196.76 The marriages mutually fortified the French king’s alliance system as Hugh of St Pol was William of Ponthieu’s maternal uncle and a regular of the Ponthevin court.77 69

69

Malo, Un grand, no. 23 and 24. Alexandre Teulet et al., Layettes du Trésor des chartes, Paris 1866, 1: 167–8, no. 392. 70 S. D. Church, King John: And the Road to Magna Carta, New York 2015, 58. 71 Church, King John, 59. 72 Round and Powell, ‘The Counts of St Pol’, 195. 73 Acta of Henry II and Richard I, ed. J. C. Holt, Richard Mortimer and Nicholas Vincent, 2 vols, Kew 1986, #223. 74 Church, King John, 61. 75 Howden, Gesta 3: 301. 76 Recueil des Actes de Philippe Auguste, ed. M. J. Monicat and M. J. Boussard, 3 vols, Paris 1966, II, no. 508; Howden, Gesta 3: 303. 77 Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal, 110.

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Richard, keenly aware of the importance of the Flemish–Picard alliances, worked to win the allegiance of the counts of Boulogne and Flanders-Hainaut. He instituted a trade embargo, but dangled the carrot of the reinstitution of the traditional AngloFlemish money-fief, and played upon their concerns over growing French royal power in the region.78 These inducements won Richard the allegiance of the counts of Flanders, Boulogne, Guines, and St Pol. Renaud and Baldwin, with the aid of troops sent by Ida’s sister Matilda of Brabant, took the Artois from the French king.79 Matilda arranged the marriage of her seven-year-old daughter, Marie, to Richard’s nephew, Otto of Brunswick, and carried the royal sword at Otto’s coronation.80 Soon thereafter, Philip negotiated a two-year truce. Shortly before the truce’s end (April 1198), Philip exacted his revenge on Renaud and Hugh of St Pol for their defection. He burned Hesdin and devastated the southern Boulonnais lands.81 The two men were forced to sue for peace. Although Hugh, henceforth, remained loyal to Philip, Renaud soon re-joined Richard’s coalition and remained allied to John, after Richard’s death (April 1199).82 In return, John recognized Renaud’s family’s lands in Normandy and made gifts to Renaud, Thibaut, count of Bar (Renaud’s cousin) and the other Flemish lords.83 The French king continued to pit the Angevin family members against one another. He accepted Arthur of Brittany’s allegiance and recognized his claim on Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Poitou, and Normandy. John spent the next twelve months securing his control over his father’s lands and the alliances of the northern counts to strengthen his position vis-à-vis Philip. Baldwin of Flanders accepted the renewal of the AngloFlemish money fief and alliance; Renaud of Boulogne also remained an ally, and John secured the necessary support in Poitou. He then met Philip at Le Goulet where they came to terms (May 1200). As part of the agreement, John traded his alliances with Flanders, Boulogne, and Guines for Philip’s recognition of him as Richard’s heir and the abandonment of his nephew Arthur’s cause.84 The counts of Flanders

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Oksanen, Flanders and the Anglo-Norman World, 47; Church, King John, 66; F. de Reiffenberg, Monuments pour servir… Namur, 8 vols, Brussels 1844–74, I, no. 10 and 11; Chaplais, Diplomatic Documents, no. 7; William Marshall, 2: 34–7; Anonymous de Béthune, ed. L. Delisle, 759. Richard’s money played an important role. The Norman Exchequer roll of 1198 reveals that Renaud got 500 marcs silver and 108 sterling pounds, Hugh IV of St Pol 500 marcs and recovered the demesne revenues of Dartford, and Baldwin of Hainaut 160 livres. PR 9 Richard I (25, 26, 32, 81, 206) and 10 Richard I (44, 111, 165, 189, 194, 198, 201, 204) reveal the restoration of the northern counts’ English lands. 79 Baldwin, 90; Malo, 57; Georges Smets, Henri I duc de Brabant, 1190–1235, Brussels 1908, 84; Howden, Gesta, 4: 20; Gervase 1: 544. 80 Smets, Henri I, 86. 81 Malo, Un grand, 58. 82 Nieus, Un pouvoir comtal, 112; Malo, Un grand, 59; Ralph of Coggeshall, MGH SS 27: 352. In addition, Richard won over Baldwin II, count of Guines; Howden, Gesta, 4: 54. With his old friend William Marshall, the Boulonnais count supported John’s elevation to the English throne. Renaud, Baldwin, count of Guines, and Henry, duke of Brabant, all swore homage to John, and he recognized their rights to their English possessions at his coronation at Westminster (27 May 1199). 83 Annales de Winton, MGH 24:72. Dunham, Benton and Kirketon for Renaud (PR 45, 46). See Malo, 61–2 for gifts and confirmations for other Flemish lords. Rotuli de Normandie, 45, 50, and 51. Malo, 68–9. 84 Church, King John, 77. Philip kept the Artois and the lordship over Boulogne. Baldwin



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and Guines quickly came to terms with the French king; however, Renaud and Ida held out until Christmas 1200.85 By August 1201, Philip had allowed Renaud to inherit his father’s county of Dammartin.86 In addition, the king sought to cement their loyalty by offering a betrothal between his son Philippe and their daughter, Matilda (both children were a little over a year old).87 The departure of the crusaders in April 1202 – Baldwin of Flanders-Hainaut, Louis of Blois, Hugh of St Pol, and many of the other northern nobles – gave Philip II the advantage to move against John, joined by the counts of Boulogne and Ponthieu.88 William of Ponthieu was an important commander and Renaud’s military skills were a significant factor in the French king’s successful war in Normandy between 1202 and 1204. Renaud led the army that took the county of Aumale by late May. The count and king joined forces and took the castle of Mortemer (c. 4 June).89 Renaud played a notable role in the siege of Château-Gaillard (September 1203– March 1204).90 The French king rewarded Renaud handsomely, granting him the counties of Mortain, Aumale (jointly held with his brother Simon), and Mortemer.91 The acquisition of Normandy, Greater Anjou, and Poitou further strengthened the French king’s position vis-à-vis the northern nobles, as did the loss of Baldwin of Flanders, Louis of Blois, and Hugh of St Pol to the Fourth Crusade. Philip enjoyed the loyalty of his brother-in-law William of Ponthieu, Baldwin II of Guines, Gaucher, count of St Pol, as well as Renaud of Boulogne. The young heiresses of Flanders-Hainaut, Jeanne and Marguerite, were first given into the wardship of their

received St Omer and Aire, and the lordship over the counts of Guines. Things were chaotic enough in May 1200 that John offered Renaud, Ida, and their daughter Matilda refuge in England; Malo, Un grand, piéces justificatives, no. 42. Teulet, I, no. 578. Philip gained the county of Evreux, all the Vexin (except Les Andelys castle), and three lordships in Berry. John was recognized as count of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Poitou, and overlord of Brittany. By agreeing to this, John had violated his treaty with Renaud which stated that neither was to make peace with Philip without the other’s agreement; Malo, Un grand, no. 37. John also promised not to aid Baldwin or Renaud if they rebelled against Philip; nor help his nephew, Otto, unless the French king agreed. 85 Malo, Un grand, 66–7; ‘Lettres d’Etienne de Tournai’, HFG 19: 283. Lambert d’Ardres, The History of the Count of Guines and the lords of Ardres, ed. and trans. Leah Shopkow, Philadelphia, PA 2001, 115–17. 86 Malo, Un grand, 71. 87 Teulet, Trésor, I, 226 and Malo, Un grand, pièces justificatives, no. 46. 88 Gervase 2: 93. 89 Malo, Un grand, 73; Rotuli lit. pat, 9b; PR 4 John I 47, 48, 49; Rot. Normannie 45 and 46, 50, 51; Rot. lit. claus. 1, 10b, 11. This prompted John to confiscate Renaud’s English fiefs and ordered William Marshall to distribute his Norman lands. 90 In a surprise night attack, ordered by William Marshall, Renaud with the aid of William de Barres and Gaucher de Châtillon, held the bridge against the English soldiers from the isle of Bernieres; Malo, Un grand, 76–7. In late October, the French king rewarded Renaud’s service with the demesnes of Bellencombre and Meuler; Malo, Un grand, 79 and pièces justificatives, no. 49; Church, King John, 125–8. 91 Malo, Un grand, pièces justificatives, nos 51–4. As counts of Aumale, Renaud and Simon became the standard bearers for the Norman dukes. In 1206, Raoul de Dammartin received the lands formerly held by Marguerite de Tosny in Pont-Saint-Pierre, Rumilly, Pistres, and the forest of Loneboël. In the same year, Simon was granted the castle of St-Jacob, Beuvron (formerly held by Guy de Thouars). Cart. Norm. 1085 and 141.

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uncle Philip of Namur, and then brought to the royal court at Paris. In 1208, Philip II rewarded Renaud’s loyalty by allowing his brother Simon to marry his niece, Marie, heiress of Ponthieu. 92 In addition, royal bailli governed the Artois. As Philip strengthened his authority and power in the north of France, John spent the years between 1204 and 1208 focused on securing England and Poitou and seeking allies in Germany.93 He also allowed the counts of Guines and St Pol to collect the revenues from their English lands.94 With the election of his nephew Otto IV as the German king in March 1209, John sent Eustace le Moine and Hugh de Boves as emissaries to Renaud and the northern nobles. Philip promptly demanded that Renaud, William, count of Ponthieu, and three other local nobles swear not to meet with Eustace or Hugh.95 He and Renaud reissued the betrothal agreement between their children in the same year.96 Rumours that William king of Scotland was allying with Philip II prompted John to campaign in Scotland in 1209. In 1210, he quelled a rebellion in Ireland and in 1211 one in Wales. Between 1209 and 1212, there is no surviving evidence that the northern French nobles were allowed to collect the revenues from their English lands. Philip II’s opposition to Otto of Brunswick led him to support Frederick II as king of Germany, and led his German allies – Louis, count of Looz, William, count of Holland, and Henry, duke of Brabant – to join John’s coalition. This heightened Philip’s concern to maintain the loyalty of the Picard and Flemish nobles. His actions, between 1210 and 1212, alienated first the count of Boulogne and then the count of Flanders. He insisted that Renaud renegotiate the marriage arrangements between their children, and shortly after the second revision, the two ten-year-olds were wed in May 1210.9971 This triggered the stipulation that Matilda’s dowry (most of the family’s Norman lands) was to be turned over to royal control on 1 October 1211, a move that worried and angered Renaud. In 1211, Renaud’s cousin, Catherine, countess of Clermont, became embroiled in a conflict 98 with Philip, bishop of Beauvais (a royal cousin). Renaud sought to help Catherine and began refortifying Mortain castle. Philip accused Renaud of disloyalty and demanded that Mortain castle be surrendered by 8 September 1211 as security for his fidelity or be judged in default. Renaud’s attempts to discuss his actions under a safe conduct were rejected and the king seized all his and Ida’s lands. Philip moved swiftly to hold the north. He granted Boulogne to his son Louis. Then he organized the marriage, in January 1212, of Jeanne, countess of Flanders, to Ferrand of Portugal. With the loyalty of the counts of Ponthieu, St Pol, and

92

Malo, Un grand, pièces justificatives, no. 57, 58, 60. Recueil des Actes Philippe, no. 953 (August 1206); Baldwin, 337. Gaston Dept, Le influences anglaise et française dans le comté de Flandre au début du XIIIe siècle, Gent and Paris 1928, 47–9, 66–8, 75–86; Malo, Un grand, 103–05; Chronicon d’Andres, RHFG 18:574 and 602. 93 Malo, Un grand, 135–6 and Church, King John, chs 7–9. Malo notes that John sent money to Arnulf de Caieu and wrote to Robert of Bethune, castellan of Bergues and Hugh de Cresec between 1206 and 1208 to win their allegiance. He also granted Baldwin of Aumale lands in England equivalent to what he had lost in France and negotiated a marriage with a daughter of William Marshall. 94 PR 7 John, 112 and 121; PR 8 John, 47; PR 9 John, 30 and 143; PR 10 John, 96 and 169. 95 Malo, Un grand, pièces justificatives, no. 75. 96 Malo, Un grand, pièces justificatives, no. 73. 97 Malo, Un grand, pieces justificatives, LXXIII. 98 Malo, Un grand, 139. Catherine and Philip were at odds over the lordship of several castles on their mutual border.



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countess of Valois, and his own control of Vermandois, Amiens, and Artois, he felt secure enough to authorize his son to detain the newly married couple and wrest control of the cities of Aire and St Omer (which Jeanne’s father had secured with the Le Goulet treaty). This action and the prominence of royal bailli in the region alienated many of the local nobles. In May 1212, Renaud, Ida, and Simon left Bar and sailed to England to formally ally with John. The treaty was signed on 4 May 99 1212, with Ida as hostage of Renaud’s and Simon’s good faith. Renaud became one of the leaders of John’s northern coalition against Philip II.100 King John sent Renaud, William Longsword, and Hugh de Boves to aid Ferrand, count of Flanders, after the French king attacked him (May 1213). Louis and Philip were hard pressed in the region, but they were supported by William, count of Ponthieu and Gaucher, count of St Pol. Philip II prevailed at Bouvines (27 July 1214), but only after defeating Renaud who fought to the bitter end. He and Ferrand were captured and imprisoned.101 Countess Jeanne was allowed to rule Flanders, albeit under tight royal supervision. Ida remained exiled and Boulogne 102 in Prince Louis’ governance. Until 1214, the English kings routinely and successfully used money fiefs, land grants, and marriage alliances to secure the support or neutrality of the Flemish and Picard nobles in their conflicts with the Capetian kings and defence of their French lands. Unlike the Anglo-Norman kings, the Angevin kings did not pursue an alliance with the Ponthevin counts; however, the counts of Boulogne, St Pol, and Guines received royal patronage. Each side benefitted – the nobles gained wealth and power to maintain their autonomy as they played each side for favour. The Norman and Angevin duke-kings of England secured their French lands and autonomy, thereby allowing them to better retain the allegiance of their nobles with lands on both sides of the Channel. The importance of this policy is reflected in the renewals of the Anglo-Flemish money fief and the routine reversion of lands (or compensatory revenues) to the counts of St Pol and Guines throughout Henry fitz Empress’s, Richard’s, and John’s reigns, after a conflict in which they sided with the French king. The counts of Boulogne were also part of this strategy but their relations with the Angevin kings were complicated by the size of the Honour of Boulogne and claim on county of Mortain. The Angevin kings retained the Honour but offered other lands and revenues in compensation. The

99

Malo, Un grand, 144–6. The hostages were to be freed on Ash Wednesday 1213, but John extended the period until 1217. 100 Renaud and William Longsword were actively recruiting in Lotharingia. Although Henry I of Brabant was allied with John, his son Henry had married the French king’s daughter Marie, widow of Philip of Namur, in April 1213; Smets, Henri I, 122, 124–5. Thibaut de Bar joined John’s coalition. Renaud approached Ferrand and Jeanne of Flanders in 1212 about allying with John; they initially refused, but they sought from Philip II the restoration of St Omer and Aire at the council at Soissons (April 1213). When Philip refused, Ferrand defied the king and prepared to defend Flanders as part of John’s coalition; Charles Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur la vie et le regne de Louis VIII (1187–1223), Paris 1894, 40–2. 101 Malo, Un grand, chs 10–11; for translations of the contemporary Latin chronicle accounts of the battle, see Georges Duby, The Legend of Bouvines. War, Religion and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Catherine Tihanyi, Cambridge 1990, 192–220. Ferrand remained at the Louvres until 1231; Renaud died in Peronne in 1227. 102 Malo, Un grand, 226.

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new grants reverted to the Boulonnais countesses and their husbands when they were allied with the English kings; however, the English kings never kept their promise concerning Mortain. The Capetians kings initially did not have the wealth or lands to compete, but Philip II learned well from Henry fitz Empress. Through marriages, grants, wardships, and his wife’s dowry of Artois, Philip II acquired sufficient power to disrupt the northern strategy of the English kings. The lure of crusading, for Richard and the northern French nobles, created an opening for Philip II who then exploited John’s weaknesses to dominate northern France. The loss of Normandy in 1204 and the battle of Bouvines in 1214 consolidated Philip’s dominance over the northern French nobility that continued under the next two Capetian kings.

CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES For details of all previous volumes please go to www.boydellandbrewer.com. An asterisk after a title indicates the R. Allen Brown Memorial Lecture. Volume 39 (2017) Christopher Clark, Why Do Battles Matter? Julie Barrau, From Conquest to Commonwealth: Cross-Channel Circulation of Biblical Culture in the Anglo-Norman World Laura Cleaver, Documentation, Forgery and the Making of the Chronicle of Battle Abbey (British Library, MS Cotton Domitian A II) F. P. C. de Jong, Rival Schoolmasters in Early Eleventh-Century Rouen with Special Reference to the Poetry of Warner of Rouen (fl. 996-1027) Brian Golding, Remembering the Battle of Hastings: Memorialization, le Souvenir Normand, and the Entente Cordiale Simon Keynes, Earl Harold and the Foundation of Waltham Holy Cross (1062) Tom Licence, Edward the Confessor and the Succession Question: A Fresh Look at the Sources Brigitte Meijns, England and Flanders Around 1066: The Cult of the English Saints Oswald and Lewinna in the Comital Abbey of Bergues Thomas O’Donnell, The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio: Politics and the Poetics of 1067 Alheydis Plassmann, England and Germany: Two Perspectives Élisabeth Ridel, Les préparatifs nautiques de la Conquête: un héritage viking? Les mots ont la parole... Christopher Whittick, Battle Abbey and the Vellomaniacs – Locating the Monastic Archive Ann Williams, Of Danes and Thegns and Domesday Book: Scandinavian Settlement in eleventh-century Berkshire Volume 40 (2018) Nicholas Vincent, English Kingship: the View from Paris, 1066–1204* 2017 C. P. Lewis, Audacity and Ambition in Early Norman England and the Big Stuff of the Conquest* 2016 Mathieu Arnoux, Ressources et croissance dans le monde anglo-normand: sources et hypothèses James Barnaby, Becket vult: the Appropriation of St Thomas Becket’s Image during the Canterbury Dispute, 1184–1200 Dominique Barthélemy, La Bataille de Bouvines reconsiderée Scott G. Bruce, Abbot Peter the Venerable’s Two Missions to England (1130 and 1155/1156) Francis Gingras, La production manuscrite anglo-normande et la Bible d’Herman de Valenciennes: usage et réception d’un livre vernaculaire (XIIe–XIVe siècles) Frédérique Lachaud, Ralph Niger and the Books of Kings

Anne E. Lester, From Captivity to Liberation: the Ideology and Practice of Franchise in Crusading France Amy Livingstone, ‘Daughter of Fulk, Glory of Brittany’: Countess Ermengarde of Brittany (c.1070–1147) Fanny Madeline, The Idea of ‘Empire’ as Hegemonic Power under the Norman and Plantagenet Kings (1066–1204) Emily Joan Ward, Child Kingship and Notions of (Im)maturity in North-Western Europe, 1050–1262 Thomas N. Bisson, Note: A Micro-Economy of Salvation: Further Thoughts on the ‘Annuary’ of Robert of Torigni Volume 41 (2019) Sally Harvey, Horses, Knights and Tactics* 2018 Sabina Flanagan, Baldwin of Forde, Bartholomew of Exeter and the Authorship of the Liber de sectis hereticorum et orthodox fidei dogmata Hazel Freestone, Evidence of the Ordinary: Wives and Children of the Clergy in Normandy and England, 1050–1150 Tom Lambert, Anthropology, Feud, and De obsessione Dunelmi Aleksandra McClain and Naomi Sykes, New Archaeologies of the Norman Conquest Nicholas L. Paul, An Angevin Imperial Context for the Amboise-Anjou Narrative Programme Charlotte Pickard, The Noble Leper: Responses to Leprosy in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries David Pratt, Royal Taxation and Written Record in Eleventh-Century England and Ninth-Century West Francia Richard Purkiss, Early Royal Rights in the Liberty of St Edmund David Roffe, Castle Construction, Conquest and Compensation Lucia Sinisi, Four Scenes from the Chanson de Roland on the Façade of Barletta Cathedral (Southern Italy) Linda M. A. Stone, ‘The Jews are our Donkeys’: Anti-Jewish Polemic in TwelfthCentury French Vernacular Exegesis Volume 42 (2020) Catherine Cubitt, Reassessing the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready* Ann Williams, The Art of Memory: The Posthumous Reputation of King Harold II Godwineson Emma Cavell, Women, Memory and the Genesis of a Priory in Norman Monmouth John Gillingham, The Sins of a Historian: Eadmer of Canterbury, Historia Novorum in Anglia, Books I–IV Mark Hagger, Angevin Rule in the West of Normandy, 1154–86: The View from Mont-Saint-Michel Fraser McNair, ‘A girly man like you can’t rule us real men any longer’: Sex, Violence and Masculinity in Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum Charles C. Rozier, Compiling Chronicles in Anglo-Norman Durham, c. 1100–30 Nicolas Ruffini-Ronzani, The Counts of Louvain and the Anglo-Norman World, c. 1100–c. 1215 Danica Summerlin, England, Normandy and the Ecclesiastical ‘New Law’ in the Later Twelfth Century

Volume 43 (2021) Martin Aurell, Joan of England and Al-ʿÂdil’s Harem: The Impossible Marriage between Christians and Muslims (Eleventh–Twelfth Centuries) Rachel E. Swallow, The Forests and Elite Residences of the Earls of Chester in Cheshire, c. 1070–1237 Gareth Williams, The Coinage of Harold II in the Light of the Chew Valley Hoard Gabriele Passabì, ‘Fitting the Missing Tile’: Universal Chronicle-Writing and the Construction of the Galfridian Past in the Continuatio Ursicampina Laura L. Gathagan, ‘Audi Israel’: Apostolic Authority in the Coronation of Mathilda of Flanders Charles Insley, Between the Ribble and the Mersey: Lancashire before Lancashire and the Irish Sea Zone Christopher Norton, The Helmet and the Crown: The Bayeux Tapestry, Bishop Odo and William the Conqueror Max Lieberman, Knighting in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries Richard E. Barton, Enquête, Exaction and Excommunication: Experiencing Power in Western France, c. 1190–1245