Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900-1300 9782503596860, 250359686X

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Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300

INTERNATIONAL MEDIEVAL RESEARCH Volume 26 Editorial Board Axel E. W. Müller, University of Leeds — Executive Editor John B. Dillon, University of Wisconsin, Madison Richard K. Emmerson, Manhattan College, New York Christian Krötzl, University of Tampere C. P. Lewis, University of London Pauline Stafford, University of Leeds / University of Liverpool with the assistance of the IMC Programming Committee Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book.

Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300

Edited by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis

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

© 2022, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2022/0095/2 ISBN 978-2-503-59686-0 eISBN 978-2-503-59687-7 DOI 10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126098 ISSN 2294-8783 eISSN 2294-8791 Printed in the EU on acid-free paper.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations

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Preface

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Introduction Curating the Past in the Central Middle Ages Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis15

Broad Themes From Lake Constance to the Elbe: Rewriting a Reichenau World Chronicle from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century Roman Deutinger39 The Careful Look: Historical Culture in Gaeldom c. 1100 Patrick Wadden67 Rewriting Histories in Medieval Caucasia Nikoloz Aleksidze101 Rewriting History at the Court of the Komnenoi: Processes and Practices Maximilian Lau121

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Comparisons Rewriting the Past: Monastic Forgeries and Plausible Narratives Robert F. Berkhofer III151 Rewriting English History for a High Medieval Republic of Letters: Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, and the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century Jaakko Tahkokallio169 Writing History on the Order of the Hautevilles: Geoffrey Malaterra and William of Apulia’s Accounts of Guiscard’s Expedition to Constantinople (1081–1082) Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel195

Case Studies Women in the D Chronicle: Writing and Rewriting the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles Pauline Stafford225 Æthelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor in William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon: Two Sides of the Same Coin? Alheydis Plassmann243 Selfhood and Perspective in Orderic Vitalis’s Rewriting of English History C. P. Lewis269 Rewriting a History of Castilian Dominance in the Age of the Separation of the Crowns of León-Castile (1031–1252) Kyle C. Lincoln295 Thirteenth-Century Memories of the Normans in the Mediterranean in the Estoire de Tancrède de Hauteville Gregory Fedorenko315 Indexes C. P. Lewis335

Abbreviations

BL London, British Library BnF Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MGH SS Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum separatim editi RAG Ghent, Rijksarchief

Preface

The project embodied in this book originated at sessions of the Leeds International Medieval Congress (IMC) in 2012 and 2013, organized by the present editors and sponsored by the Battle Conference and the Haskins Society. In 2012 we had two sessions which focused exclusively on the AngloNorman world and had not yet homed in on rewriting as the main theme. The session abstract noted that our understanding of narrative sources written in the Anglo-Norman world had been doubly transformed in recent years, by the continuing publication programme of the Oxford Medieval Texts series and increasingly interdisciplinary approaches. The focus of the papers was on ‘how authors writing in Latin thought of what they were doing as history, and how consequently they shaped their histories’, and the overall aim was to ‘open up a discussion of the norms of historical writing in the twelfth century’. The two sessions, the discussions around them, and continuing conversation after the congress convinced us that rewriting as a form of historical endeavour required particular attention. We knew that rewriting was prevalent during the Anglo-Norman renaissance of history-writing in the first half of the twelfth century, and wanted first of all to define more precisely what rewriting was, and to explore whether similar ways of addressing the past were common in other parts of Europe around the same time. Hence, for the 2013 IMC we arranged a more ambitious and wide-ranging set of four sessions. Again quoting from the abstract, we wanted to ‘explore how medieval writers of history across a range of genres shaped their understanding of the past, including recent events, and the history of more distant times’, and we were ‘especially concerned with how existing historical writings were refashioned to suit current purposes’. We widened the geographical scope from England and Normandy to take in Norman Italy, the Latin East, Germany, Scandinavia, Byzantium, and Armenia. Meanwhile, back in the Anglo-Norman world, important conferences on the Anglo-Norman historians Orderic Vitalis (Durham, 2013) and William of Malmesbury (Oxford, 2015) fed us with further ideas about rewriting.1 The prospect of a book first twinkled in the immediate aftermath of the 2013 IMC, partly through the encouragement of scholars who had attended the sessions but had not given papers. The present book grew from the IMC sessions, though as it happens it includes only four of the papers more or less as



1 Rozier, Roach, Gasper, and van Houts, eds, Orderic Vitalis; Thomson, Dolmans, and Winkler, eds, Discovering William of Malmesbury.

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read there, with another two of the Leeds participants offering different papers here. We built on the Leeds sessions by commissioning new chapters to cover different historical genres, writing in Latin, Greek, and several vernaculars, and a geographical breadth that extends to England, Ireland, Normandy, Flanders, Germany, Spain, southern Italy, the Latin East, Byzantium, Armenia, and Georgia. There are obvious gaps: southern France, Scandinavia, the Slav territories, Hungary. Some are absent from this book because as we read and thought around the topic it became clear that some European societies were not so invested in rewriting history in our period, but also pragmatically to keep the book to a reasonable length. We have deliberately chosen to exclude Arab historical writing, while acknowledging that its rewritings offer fruitful comparisons for the future or for other hands.2 We started with a set of rather open-ended questions about the extent of rewriting, its chronological and geographical limits, the circumstances in which rewriting happened, the identity of authors, patrons, and audiences, ‘competitive’ or ‘emulative’ rewriting (that is, did rewriting cause further rewriting?), perspective and focus, and more. In the end we think it unwise to offer definitive answers to such wide-ranging questions. Every rewriting had its own purpose, scope, and effect. By broadening our scope, however, we have begun to see greater detail in the possible answers. We are conscious that the essays which follow, and the thoughts that they have stimulated for the introductory essay, are only a small start in opening up the topic further. We have incurred many debts of gratitude along the way. The authors have been unfailingly patient, supportive, and collegial as the project has come to completion. Natascha Domeisen assisted with translation from German. Axel Müller as Executive Editor of the series editorial board and Guy Carney of Brepols have been very helpful. Two anonymous readers for Brepols made constructive comments on individual papers and the overall shape of the book. Greg Fedorenko gave invaluable help with the final pre-submission checking. Mark Winkler, Emily’s father, designed the cover image.

The IMC Sessions of 2012 and 2013 Contributors’ affiliations are given as at the time of the congress concerned. 2012: Writing and Rewriting History in Conquest England – Courtnay Konshuh (Winchester), ‘The Notion of Treachery in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle during Æthelred’s Reign’ – Pauline Stafford (Liverpool and Leeds), ‘Women in the D Chronicle: Writing and Rewriting the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles’

2 Bora, Writing History in the Medieval Islamic World.

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– Ilya Afanasyev (Oxford), ‘“Saint lignage”: Hagiography and Norman Genealogy in 12th-Century England’ 2012: Ways of Writing History in the Anglo-Norman World – Emily A. Winkler (Oxford), ‘Rewriting Invasion Narratives in TwelfthCentury England’ – Daniel Roach (Exeter), ‘The Construction of the Historia Ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis’ – Anne Lawrence-Mathers (Reading), ‘“The Dreamer and the Dream”: Royal Dreams and their Context in the Chronicle of John of Worcester’ 2013: Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages I: Appropriating the Past for the Present and the Future – Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn (Bergen), ‘From Transient Memory to the Permanence of History: William of Malmesbury and the Augustinian Tradition of Memory’ – Steven Biddlecombe (Exeter), ‘Recapitulation: The Evolution of the History of the First Crusade’ – Jaakko Tahkokallio (Helsinki), ‘History Instructing the Prince — To Do What?’ II: The Languages of History – Ilya Afanasyev (Oxford), ‘Reusing the Terms Britanni and Britones in the Twelfth Century: A Few Exceptions’ – Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel (Caen), ‘Geoffrey Malaterra and William of Apulia: Between History and Literature’ – Sverre Bagge (Bergen), ‘Latin and Vernacular Historiography in Scandinavia: Is There a Connection between Language and Historical Interpretation?’ III: Redefining Rulership – Emily A. Winkler (Oxford), ‘Anglo-Norman Kings and Conquerors: Do the Winners Write the Histories?’ – Maximilian Lau (Oxford), ‘Heroic History: Interpreting the Portrayal of Emperor John II Komnenos’ – Alheydis Plassmann (Bonn), ‘German Emperors in the Works of Otto of Freising and William of Malmesbury’ IV: When Kingdoms End and Empires Fall – Tara L. Andrews (Leuven), ‘Settling into Exile: Aristakes of Lastivert, Matthew of Edessa, and the Armenian Transition from Kingdom to Diaspora’ – Greg Fedorenko (Cambridge), ‘Thirteenth-Century Memories of the Normans in the Mediterranean in the Estoire de Tancrède de Hauteville’ – Pauline Stafford (Liverpool and Leeds), ‘Response’

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Works Cited Secondary Works Bora, Fozia, Writing History in the Medieval Islamic World: The Value of Chronicles as Archives (London: Tauris, 2019) Rozier, Charles C., Daniel Roach, Giles E. M. Gasper, and Elisabeth van Houts, eds, Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016) Thomson, Rodney M., Emily Dolmans, and Emily A. Winkler, eds, Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017)

Introduction

Emily A. Winkl e r a nd C. P. Lew is

Curating the Past in the Central Middle Ages

Narrative texts were long a privileged favourite child in the large family of source materials available to medievalists, and they came back into favour when the linguistic turn in historical scholarship directed attention towards authorial agency — what it was that writers of history in the Middle Ages were trying to do with words. In recent years interest in history-writing has continued to swell, and library shelves are now crowded with books of many kinds: synoptic overviews, new editions, conference proceedings on individual histories and historians, and monographs on topics within the broader field. The reasons for proliferation are not hard to find. On the one hand, new editions of particular histories not only have things to say about the writing they embody, but offer enticing prospects for further work. The key example for us here — and indeed how we came to the topic of rewriting — is the explosion of interest in the historical writing of England in the first half of the twelfth century, detonated by a long series of new editions in the Oxford Medieval Texts series. It might be worth dwelling for a moment on the shape of this particular field. A slightly arbitrary top ten of the most informative narrative sources for the period of the Norman Conquest is the Encomium of Queen Emma, the Life of King Edward, the Song of the Battle of Hastings (usually called the Carmen), and the works of William of Poitiers, William of Jumièges, John of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury (Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum), and Orderic Vitalis. When Antonia Gransden published her immensely useful and wide-ranging survey of Historical Writing in England in 1975, only the three least bulky of the ten were available in modern English editions: the Encomium (1949), the Life (1962), and the Carmen (1972), with Poitiers in a French edition (1952). Several of the others were already a glimmer in the eye (R. R. Darlington’s for John of Worcester, Sir Roger Mynors’s for Gesta regum, Diana Greenway’s for Huntingdon), and Orderic more than glimmered, since Marjorie Chibnall had already published Dr Emily A. Winkler  •  ([email protected]) is Principal Investigator of an AHRC-funded research project on medieval historical writing. She is a Research Fellow at St Edmund Hall and the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford. C. P. Lewis  •  ([email protected]) is a Senior Fellow at the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 15–35 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126744

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two of an intended six volumes. For the moment, however, the other core narrative texts for Conquest England had to be consulted in editions of 1914 ( Jumièges), the 1870s and 1880s (Malmesbury and Huntingdon), and even earlier ( John of Worcester 1848–1849; Orderic 1838–1855). Then, in short order between 1975 and 2000, all but one of the older texts were replaced by OMT editions (Gesta pontificum following in 2007), while the three outriders were themselves updated in a second or wholly new edition or by a substantial supplementary introduction. Since 2007 scholars have wanted only the introductory volume to John of Worcester, and the field has been transformed. The boom in secondary work on Anglo-Norman historical writing is hardly surprising. Alongside materials to work on (‘materials’ including authoritative editorial introductions), a second factor propelling work on medieval history-writing in recent years has been the confluence of the narrative turn in medieval history with the historiographical turn in medieval literary studies. The details of both flows and how they acted upon one another would be worth exploring on another occasion. The result was a blending of historical and literary approaches to narrative texts which has lit up our understanding. As a result, a long list of sub-topics has been spun off the central theme and come under close and revealing scrutiny.1 To mention only the most mainstream sub-topics, there is now a sizeable literature which covers the different genres employed to address the past;2 the rhetorical strategies of authors;3 the many reasons for writing history;4 and the patrons and audiences of historical writing.5 The phenomenon of retelling a story has received extensive treatment in the social sciences too: retelling forms the basic substance of conversation, is a way of experiencing memory, and how it is done may have legal implications.6 In literary studies, rewriting has been claimed as a medieval aesthetic, whereby ancient books were seen to invite a response from future readers and writers, and as a feature of translation and a process of transmission and reinterpretation.7 The literary discourse on rewriting often emphasizes novelty, both in manner — style and strategy, technique and technology — and in the idea that it was meant to do something new, modern, and current for readers. For the late Middle Ages and into the early modern era, the world of print and publishing has proved fertile for students of rewriting, for example

1 Recent surveys include Foot and Robinson, eds, The Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii: 400–1400; Lake, ‘Current Approaches to Medieval Historiography’. 2 Guenée, ‘Histoire et chronique’. 3 Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History. 4 Lake, ‘Authorial Intention in Medieval Historiography’. 5 Tyler, England in Europe. 6 See the introduction to Gülich, Lucius-Hoene, Pfänder, and Schumann, eds, Wiedererzählen, pp. 19–20. 7 Griffin, Transforming Tales, pp. 8, 10–11.

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in considering the renewal of Arthurian romance for a new readership.8 In another view, the rewriting of medieval romance generally was an enterprise in making meaning for contemporary interests.9 The authors and editors of a recent collection on the theme of rewriting examine medieval histories and romances written largely in French, stressing the demands of the present as motive for rewriting: the changing historical claims and assertions of modernity in late medieval French prologues, for example, or the need to rewrite Arthurian material to attract new readers in France and Italy.10 There is a paradox here: for literary scholars, rewriting affirms a text, a tradition, or an identity — yet it is the newness that makes rewriting interesting to modern scholarship. Such literary studies have much to offer our concerns here. They confirm from a different direction that the activity of sharing a narrative anew is worthy of study, as a feature of both human behaviour and textual criticism. Indeed, we think rewriting is exciting from a specifically historical point of view because it lets us look into the relationship between authors and the written works they recreated. About this, in our era, we think there is more to say. A premise underlying this book is that at the most basic level we can usefully distinguish three modes of history-writing in the Middle Ages: new composition (typically concerning recent events);11 turning oral tradition into written form (often concerning the deep past); and rewriting. Our concern is with rewriting history, which we believe has hitherto not, or not adequately, been considered separately and in the round. We define rewriting by a practical test: an account of some part of the past already exists and is known to an author who chooses not to replicate it by simply copying it out, but instead recasts it in some way. Rewriting can happen at any scale from an episode to an entire historical work. By rewriting, a new author addresses new circumstances. The key difference is a change in perspective, though there can also be changes in genre, language, sequence of events, causation, the agency of historical actors, the parallels offered, the morals drawn, the facts included, and so on. Our definition is deliberately loose: we did not want to strangle the subject by imposing too tight or contestable a definition at the outset, but rather work towards a better understanding. The three modes of history-writing that we identify overlapped and merged in interesting ways, as for example in the earliest accounts of the First Crusade,12 and throughout the chapters which follow one can see individual authors shifting between modes while writing a single text. Historical accounts of peoples, too, commonly passed between modes as they were taken up by 8 Taylor, Rewriting Arthurian Romance, p. 5. 9 See, e.g., Leitch’s introduction to Archibald, Leitch, and Saunders, eds, Romance Rewritten, p. 4. 10 Kullmann, ‘Le métadiscours’; Predelli, ‘Réécriture de la matière chevaleresque’. 11 For which see Cleaver, Illuminated History Books. 12 John, ‘Historical Truth and the Miraculous Past’.

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new authors. A case in point is the much-studied sequence of histories which cumulatively told the story of the Normans of Normandy. Their first historian, Dudo of Saint-Quentin, wrote down and reshaped the earlier legends and oral traditions which had come down to his day (c. 1000) and which had never before been committed to writing; in the early twelfth century William of Jumièges and Robert of Torigni reworked Dudo’s written history to tell the story in different ways, as well as writing more recent sections from scratch, bringing the history of the Normans down to contemporary times. Rewriters of history were explicitly engaging with and modifying versions of the past which possessed some level of authority precisely because they were already written down. Such a notion of authority was important even when it was ignored or bypassed. That is one of the reasons why Geoffrey of Monmouth, composing what became the most widely read history book of the Middle Ages, claimed that it was merely a translation into his own homely Latin of the consecutive and orderly narrative found in ‘a certain very ancient book in the British language’ (quendam Britannici sermonis librum uetustissimum) given him by Walter, archdeacon of Oxford.13 Geoffrey’s modest claim to be a mere translator slyly cloaked a work of astonishing inventiveness which was not a rewriting of anything. In the context of authority — given to the present as an inheritance from the past — we have found it helpful to explore an analogy between medieval attitudes towards written history and interaction with other inheritances, whether material things (such as artefacts) or intangibles (such as traditions) or indeed with memory, ostensibly intangible but often a memory of things or linked to some material thing.14 The analogy centres on the idea of curation. Artefacts, traditions, and memories were undoubtedly curated in the Middle Ages: preserved, valued, shared, and made available to others, but also purposefully altered while doing those things. Curation implies accepting a sense of responsibility to whatever is curated. Rewriters were in a sense curating the past and acknowledging a sense of responsibility to it. The imperatives were to keep the past whole and meaningful, to prevent its being degraded or lost, and to make it available to the present. This is a more old-fashioned sense of curation than the modish current meaning of merely assembling a collection, in the way that a master fromagier might curate a selection of fine artisanal cheeses. Alongside a narrowing of focus to one of three modes of history-writing, we have sought in this book to widen the scope to different kinds of ‘history’, broadly defined. The past was of interest not only to ‘historians’ in a narrow definition but also to annalists and chroniclers, writers of regnal and family

13 Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Historia regum Britannie, i, ed. by Wright, p. 1; Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. by Thorpe, p. 51. 14 Van Houts, Memory and Gender; van Houts, ed., Medieval Memories; Roach, ‘The Material and the Visual’.

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histories, monks defending the lands and privileges of their houses (including the drafters of charters and the compilers of cartularies), writers of saints’ Lives, and authors of both ‘serious entertainment’15 and the most frivolous of nonsense.16 The rewriting of saints’ Lives, which we have not tried to incorporate (but see Aleksidze), has its own enormous historiography as well as fresh methodological perspectives from literary studies.17 Rewriting implies observable differences between a received historical text and its onward transmission. Sometimes the earlier version survives, even the individual manuscript used by a rewriter. In such circumstances, and in some cases even where the means of direct comparison is unavailable, differences can be calibrated against other rewritings. The smallest changes in lexis and grammar can betray shifts in emphasis and new preoccupations, whether deliberate or subconscious. Larger verbal alterations, especially additions and subtractions of whole passages, are even more revealing. A catalogue of possible changes would run from directly reproducing the given text, through close translation into a new language (Geoffrey of Monmouth’s bogus claim), to minor alterations of wording or emphasis, to various forms of summary and précis, to the radical reformulation of a complete history. Examples in the chapters which follow show that the range of rewriterly intervention is large and the varieties of technique almost infinite. Whenever we can tell that a writer has read a version of history and decided to write it differently, the promise is there that we can approach close enough to catch our rewriter not only in the act of writing history but in thinking about history too. We have outlined the intellectual origins of this project, and given a brief working definition of what rewriting is and who undertook it. This introductory article is divided into three further parts that explore key questions about rewriting. First, how and why: here, we consider the means and motives of rewriting, and argue that the idea of curating the past better reflects the activity than the notion of ‘using’ the past. Second, where and when: where in Europe did rewriting happen, and to what extent was it a phenomenon of these four centuries? Third, we conclude with a reflection on phenomenology: the experience of rewriting as both endeavour and activity.

Why Rewrite? How Rewrite? Modern explorations of the act and the art of rewriting history work from ‘how’ to ‘why’. That is to say, we can only start by observing what medieval authors rewrote, before exploring their motivations. At the time, of course,

15 Partner, Serious Entertainments. 16 Walter Map, De nugis curialium, ed. and trans. by James, Brooke, and Mynors; Smith, Walter Map. 17 Goullet, Écriture and the review of it by Julia Smith.

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motive (why rewrite?) preceded method (how rewrite?). Reasons for rewriting history clearly abounded. Authors rewrote history if they thought that things had happened for reasons other than those given in the existing histories, or if they wanted their readers to think so (Lau, Plassmann). They rewrote if they had new questions about the course of history. They rewrote if they thought contemporary readers could not understand existing sources in their current form or language (Aleksidze). They rewrote if they were asked or paid to do so by a patron. They rewrote if they wanted to create an authoritative version of history, and if they had the creativity and the ambition or daring and confidence to do so (Berkhofer). Or, they might rewrite if they doubted the honour of an earlier writer’s ambition in the same endeavour. Sometimes they rewrote to educate a new audience about what happened in the past and why, and they might add moral lessons that had had become available with the benefit of longer hindsight (Tahkokallio, Plassmann, Lucas-Avenel). More pragmatically, they rewrote after discovering a new version of events, or a conflict between versions, in the belief that they were responsible for setting the record straight and communicating it clearly (Lucas-Avenel). To rewrite, one must possess an account already written. Rewriting sometimes started literally with annotations in the margin of an existing text (Stafford). Autograph manuscripts can show complex rewriting of the author’s own earlier words. But most rewriting started with a fresh sheet of parchment alongside a page already full of another’s historical efforts. Much medieval writing about the past was a collective or team endeavour, even if only in the restricted sense that authors of new texts worked with scribes and copyists, drew information from colleagues and contacts, and submitted first drafts to persons in authority or with greater knowledge.18 Deliberate rewriting was also collaborative with unwitting collaborators, that is, the authors of earlier versions of history, who had no say in how their words on the page were followed, ignored, recast, or dismantled and reassembled. The why and how of rewriting come into a different light if we consider attitudes towards biblical history. The Vulgate could not be replaced or removed, but it could be put to other purposes (Lincoln) and it could be supplemented. Treasured biblical narratives were rewritten, expanded, and deepened in new genres. Where we have a rich vernacular literary culture, as in Anglo-Saxon England and Ireland, but otherwise rarely in the West in the earlier part of this period, we see biblical history being put to multiple new uses in, for example, Old English poetry. Such works as the poems based on biblical texts and stories preserved in the Junius 11 manuscript were supplementary to the bible: they did not intend to replace it but to open up its treasures to vernacular audiences.19 In similar vein, writers from John of Fécamp to Wace explored the lives of Jesus, his family, and his comrades in accounts that, if

18 Íslendingabók [and] Kristni Saga, trans. by Grønlie, pp. xi–xii, 3. 19 Fulk and Cain, A History of Old English Literature, pp. 106–19.

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devotional in nature and emotional in content, were nevertheless set in what was considered an historical past.20 Christ, moreover, was the anchor of all secular history because of the dating system by years from the incarnation or, alternatively in our period, the passion (Deutinger). These were texts which treated the bible as a source of edifying historical stories and took the scriptural text as the starting point for new forms of history-writing, but they never sought to rewrite the bible. The bible itself was canonical (even though it was not read in a single canonical version in the central Middle Ages), and could only be glossed. Glossing represents an impulse to add something to a text which holds back from tampering with the original because of its perceived status. Scriptural commentary, the writings of the Church Fathers, and canon law were also glossed, and glossed cumulatively; but secular history resisted glossing because of its infinite capacity to undergo rewriting. Using the Past … for What?

Over the last fifty years an abundant scholarship on medieval historiography has frequently stressed the idea that writers used and reused the past for present purposes.21 Such rewriting took many forms. Genealogies were adjusted to serve contemporary political agendas, highlighting a ruler’s lofty ancestry or impressive connections. Monks forged documents, even whole histories, to claim legal precedence, to counter ephemeral existence, and to persuade the king that they merited patronage.22 The idea of using the past can seem obvious. But in many cases the act of rewriting had the effect of silencing the voices of the past: how could the mute dead protest? No one could come along and say: ‘I don’t remember it that way’. We should not imagine that rewriters were insensitive to that difficulty. On the contrary: those whom we might now condemn as the most shameless forgers might have really believed that the past they were offering was true. Talking now about the ‘uses’ of the past can imply a merely functionalist explanation for rewriting, but the evidence is seldom so conclusive. It was not simply that the past was a tool to maintain the present, and the present alone the real business of the day. The present was also a good opportunity to do something about the past. The linguistic turn in history took medievalists in a rather different direction from those attractive to early modernists and modernists. Medievalists already had to pay close attention to the nuances of language in their texts and documents because they were in an unfamiliar language, though the systematic and intense source criticism (Quellenkritik) characteristic of earlier 20 Bestul, Texts of the Passion. 21 For example, Fentress and Wickham, Social Memory, esp. pp. 144–72; Lambert and Weiler, eds, How the Past was Used; Hen and Innes, eds, The Uses of the Past; note also the medieval element in the HERA network’s programme for 2016–2019, ‘Uses of the Past’: www.heranet. info/projects/hera-2016-uses-of-the-past/. 22 For example, The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. and trans. by Searle.

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scholarship had placed too much trust in the veracity and accuracy of the sources. The linguistic turn hence took much of its force from a reaction to that approach. It sensibly drew attention to writers’ stylistic choices, and showed the inseparability of form and content. As a result, we can better understand what writers were doing. But perhaps the turn has gone too far. In establishing a power relationship in which the writer alone has agency, and the past as it was present to him has none, we have in effect a silent past. More intuitively, the past was clamorously present to medieval authors intent on interpreting it. The linguistic turn has encouraged scholars to use a language about narrative which artificially privileges the idea that rewriters imposed and superimposed their own agendas on a past which was malleable, unresisting, and wholly adaptable. Agendas are not the same as motivations. The assumption of use or agenda can obscure what our medieval writers thought they were doing. How many would have given credit to the idea that they were ‘using’ the past for a present purpose? In their eyes, the past was not necessarily the victim of present political purposes (not least because it is unclear that writing a less favourable account of someone would have been dangerous). In the words of Gerald of Wales, the past was a treasure that merited sharing. To share it well, it had to be displayed well — selected, repaired, polished, and recommunicated. It had to be managed. In our words, it had to be curated. Rewriting to Curate the Past

We argue, then, that writers rewrote, first and foremost, to curate the past. They rewrote on behalf of the past, and many of them had the vision to conceive of new ways in which that might be possible. What happened, the way it happened, and why it happened were all of concern, and many of these writers sought to get it right. Rewriting was often a response to a conviction that previous versions were inadequate or incomplete, or that they left out part of the story. It offered an opportunity for those writers who had the right balance of frustration with previous versions and confidence in their ability to do better. Curating the past — just as much as other forms of curation — involves choosing what to include and to exclude; it involves thinking about media and display, and their effect on communication; it happens only through probing the interface between present thinking and past knowledge. Curating is the visible, active part of a much larger root system of reasoning. It is intelligent. The idea of curating captures the essence of rewriting, because it differs both from mere preservation of the text (making as accurate a copy as possible); and from continuing a text into the future. There were stories that needed to be rewritten as collections, just as digital collections require the vigilance and management of active curation in the twenty-first century. There was a pragmatic, as well as a visionary, side to rewriting: what needed to be done to keep the past alive and retain the ability to communicate it? The past is kept alive by changing it in line with the needs of the present, not by leaving

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it alone. This may be a more general pre-modern and pre-‘scientific’ view of the relationship between past and present. There was only one past which could not be curated in this way — biblical history, because biblical time was constant. Otherwise, the authority of written accounts of past times was open for reinterpretation. The chroniclers, forgers, and authors who appear in this book were not modifying existing accounts of the past exclusively to legitimize or to impose a way of thinking. They might equally have rewritten the past because they thought their predecessors had got it wrong, perhaps at least in part because they had inadequate information. With more versions or conflicting accounts now at hand, they thought they had a responsibility to the past. How far those motivations were honest is a matter for debate and will differ case by case, but this book shows even from a small selection of rewriters that they approached the given past with different motivations, many of which are ill-served by the idea that they wrote with a fixed agenda. In the view of rewriters, curation restored ease of access to history’s great treasures and its moral gems. The past might have present uses, but rewriting could also permit viewing from new angles: planting oneself inside, looking outwards (Wadden); recognizing the influence of one’s gaze on the past over how one writes about it (Lincoln); and reflecting on one’s widening temporal distance from the thoughts and events one’s predecessors had described and tried to explain (Fedorenko). Patrons and audiences are important too. Rewriters were not repurposing the past primarily for themselves alone, but as members of monastic or other communities, as servants of commissioning patrons, as persons hopeful of future patronage, and so on. Curating the past also facilitated the writing of what we might call customized histories. Sometimes a history might be written for one person. The Anonyme Kaiserchronik, a version of Frutolf ’s chronicle and its sequel commissioned by and dedicated to Emperor Henry V, is one such example (Deutinger). The newly widowed Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I of England, took the book with her when she returned to Normandy as her father’s heir in 1125. It never circulated further. But it says something about the personal and sentimental reasons for rewriting this particular work of history, and perhaps in this case, for rereading it. Matilda may have felt responsible for the book. Soon to embark on a new marriage and later a bid for the English throne, she had a book that connected her intimately to her own private version of the past. Was history rewritten only by the victors? That hackneyed claim is still made in academic as well as popular history.23 The answer: Of course not. Not least because history was and is about much more than winning and losing (Stafford). Nor was it always obvious to medieval writers what winning meant: a single victory on the battlefield by the enemies of Christendom 23 Discussed by Cleaver, Illuminated History Books.

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could be set against not only hoped-for and actual counter-victories but also the ultimate victory of Christ. Much of the most extensive rewritings of history discussed in the chapters that follow came about when new conflicts and new accords shifted the tectonic plates of history, so as to give writers a new vantage point entirely different in time, space, and perspective from any original winners or losers (Lincoln).24

Where and When Did Rewriting Occur? The Geography of Rewriting

In situations where conquest uprooted existing cultures thoroughly in language, religion, and culture, there could be no rewriting of the past in the senses which this book explores. Rewriting is about how authors dealt with and negotiated continuities in the history of a territory or a people or some other entity, not discontinuities. This is most obvious in the central Middle Ages all along the interface between the Christian and Muslim worlds. In Sicily, for example, Arab writers during the period of Muslim rule in the tenth and eleventh centuries sought to understand the island in its own terms as an Islamic society, not as some kind of continuation of Byzantine history there.25 We might make an exception to our rule for Crusader Jerusalem. The preceding period of Muslim rule was no part of the new history that was written, but the historians of the Latin kingdom were not writing on a blank slate, because they imagined their new society to be the direct successor of earlier Christian dominion of the Holy Land under the Romans and Byzantines. This book shows that rewriting happened in many places throughout western Christendom, in the Roman (Byzantine) Empire in the east, and in the Christian kingdoms of the Caucasus. Whether it happened in more recently converted regions like Scandinavia and east-central Europe is more difficult to determine. In Scandinavia, the practice of rewriting is hard to identify before the thirteenth century, since writing itself came late and little historical written material survives until that period. The written Icelandic sagas of the thirteenth century had much in common with contemporary vernacular genres of romance and chronicle elsewhere in the West, and they projected contemporary concerns about such matters as the power-relations of chieftains and free farmers, or the rising tide of Norwegian influence, on to their version of the past, but the sagas were a first writing of the rich Icelandic oral traditions in verse and prose, not a rewriting as we understand it.26 None

24 Winkler, ‘Imagining the Medieval Face of Battle’. 25 Granara, Narrating Muslim Sicily, esp. pp. 1–34. 26 There is a helpful introduction to the genre in Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga.

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the less, we can see even in Iceland that the dawning of Christian history in the narrative of conversion first set down in writing by Ari Þorgilsson was itself rewritten from different perspectives in both Iceland and Norway in later times, in new histories which shifted the emphasis towards the role of the Norwegian king in one case, or particular Icelandic families in others, or, again, as a recognizably European form of ‘missionary history’.27 Ari himself falls outside our remit, but the lively debate on how selective he was in using oral evidence encourages us to recognize that the interactions of medieval historians with the received past involved similar issues whether that received past was in written or oral form. Rewriting literate histories and the first-time inscription of tradition are in any case not always strictly separable. In Norman southern Italy much historical effort was put into setting down oral tradition in writing (Lucas-Avenel). This was not rewriting in the sense of updating an existing account of recent events, but it did involve a self-conscious rewriting of ancient histories to recast them in relation to new deeds by the Normans. There was a continuum rather than a sharp break between inscribing oral tradition and rewriting written text, and another between rewriting the distant and the recent past. The writers whom Lucas-Avenel describes rewrote and adapted classical stories — taken from histories which were familiar to educated authors even though they were not their own histories — to serve a new historical function. Here, rewriting pasts other than their own allowed medieval historians to curate their own histories more effectively. Rewriting occurred in places not covered in this book, such as Poland.28 The same is true of Wales if we remind ourselves that a text such as the Book of Llandaff is a work of historical writing: a rich broth of saints’ Lives and charters stirred up to make a persuasive historical account of a new diocese.29 Examples of rewriting could be multiplied for places which we do cover, such as Flanders.30 The message is clear: rewriting history was a feature just as much of small polities with a restricted corpus of histories as of large ones with many, and it happened across the core areas of both western and eastern Europe and in places physically distant from the core. Ireland was full of rewriting, even though it was especially remote culturally because of its unusual early investment in a vernacular inaccessible to outsiders. In Wales, the tradition of rewriting gained so much momentum in our period — not least because of the verve with which vernacular writers reincorporated the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth — that it developed what Owain Wyn Jones calls a vernacular

27 Íslendingabók [and] Kristni Saga, trans. by Grønlie, p. vii. We are grateful to Prof. Judith Jesch (Nottingham) for drawing our attention to Ari’s prologue and for a helpful discussion. 28 Von Güttner-Sporzyński, ed., Writing History in Medieval Poland. 29 Davies, The Book of Llandaf. 30 Ugé, Creating the Monastic Past; Vanderputten, ‘Individual Experience’.

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‘Welsh historical continuum’ by the fourteenth century.31 Although it followed its own cultural patterns — such as the grouping of historical mnemonics in thematic threes, rather than organizing them chronologically — Welsh historical writing in the central Middle Ages occurred within a European context.32 The Welsh were not simply looking backwards, or indeed forwards, but outwards (compare Wadden on Ireland), and with a clear awareness of the historical vantage point from which they sought to access the past. The chapters here offer multiple models for how rewriting worked in different regions. The Chronology of Rewriting

Rewriting, in any form, is an intervention in the past. Given the many reasons for rewriting, it is worth asking when and why it was absent. It is not obvious that there would be a perceived need or desire to rewrite if an event or era was thought to have been duly covered by a knowledgeable writer, as the work of copyists shows. Sometimes, there were simply no texts to rewrite. But what about when the choice existed? Writers chose not to rewrite when they were satisfied not only with the research of their predecessors, but also with the way in which history was written. One reason for not rewriting was simply the lack of written accounts — supplementary to or corrective of what already existed — to warrant asking whether existing history needed to be revised. Some of the most famous writers and rewriters of early medieval history, such as Gregory of Tours and Bede, did not hesitate to highlight their difficulties in finding things out.33 In his work later known as Historia Francorum, Gregory lamented the lack of authors with the ability to write about the past in prose or poetry good enough to do it justice. Here, the task was to find someone up to the job. Bede claimed that he had gathered everything he could for the Historia ecclesiastica, rewriting Gildas and other earlier texts as necessary. His quest was to find material and information to write about in the first place. Both their prefaces have elements of rhetorical modesty, but we should take seriously what they say about their authors’ primary concern, which was not the revision of existing written materials as such, even if it involved some rewriting. Another reason for not rewriting was when writers thought that a certain history had already been written as well as it could be. It was rare to rewrite the history of classical Rome, since the perception in the Middle Ages was that it had already been done well by authors like Sallust who were in a position to know. Repurposing Roman history for present needs was more likely

31 Jones, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth and Welsh Historical Writing’; Jones, ‘Brut y Tywysogion’; Jones and Pryce, ‘Historical Writing in Medieval Wales’. 32 Weiler, ‘Historical Writing in Europe’. 33 The classic study is Goffart, The Narrators of Barbarian History; for responses, Murray, ed., After Rome’s Fall.

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to take the form of retelling a good story to illustrate a moral. Walter Map and Gerald of Wales, master story-tellers both, have some great retellings of gobbets of Roman history. Rewriting is also absent where the focus was on continuing an existing history. Wanting to continue where another hand had left off implies some respect for the integrity of the earlier work, militating against rewriting. Continuations are a feature throughout the Middle Ages, a well-known early example being Jerome’s continuation of Eusebius’s Chronicle from 325 down to his own time. But it had particular prominence in the later Middle Ages. The prime concern of continuators was seamlessless and conformity with existing style, casting their own work as adding to a larger endeavour so as to enlarge the content of written history without taking any new stance on the received past. With those factors in mind, then, we argue that rewriting was a feature of the central Middle Ages and not of the earlier or later Middle Ages. Historians before the turn of the millennium had a marked perspective which looked back in time towards Rome, as Chris Wickham has argued persuasively.34 In its earliest phases, Augustine used the city of Rome as a model for understanding the world, and Orosius saw the whole of history as a series of conflicts between pagans and the Christians of the Roman Empire. The earliest Christian historians were influential throughout the period, and they had a view of the past that was universal and universalizing in a sophisticated way. The Carolingian Renaissance after 800 only deepened the sense that the past was a Roman and Christian past. The best-educated writers mused philosophically on the parallels between God’s creation of the world, and the capacity of written history to create a world in the mind. That sense of the unity of word and world survived into the twelfth century, for example in William of Malmesbury.35 Rewriting was of course not the only way in which history was written in the centuries between 900 and 1300. A widespread concern with rewriting did not mean that there was no copying. In England, the growing interest in Bede is the most obvious example. All the Anglo-Norman historians of the earlier twelfth century plundered the Historia ecclesiastica, rewriting it for their own purposes, but there was also a tidal wave of straight copies of Bede which washed beyond England and Normandy to France and Germany.36

34 Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome, esp. the conclusion. A similar point was made by Hay, Annalists and Historians, pp. 1–62. For excellent introductions to early medieval historical writing, see Hen and Innes, eds, The Uses of the Past; Tyler and Balzaretti, eds, Narrative and History; Scharer and Scheilbelreiter, eds, Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter. 35 McKitterick, Perceptions of the Past, pp. 7–18; Winkler and Dolmans, ‘Discovering William of Malmesbury’. 36 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. by Colgave and Mynors, pp. xlii–lxx; Davis, ‘Bede after Bede’.

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In the same period writers began to discuss the terms on which writing and rewriting happened in the past, and to question the assumptions and motivations of earlier writers. There were also innovations of form in history-writing. Galbert of Bruges, for example, wrote a fascinating day-by-day account of contemporary events in Flanders which rivals modern works of historiography in its immediacy and in its interest in events as they unfolded in a short breath of real time.37 Galbert’s history was in effect reportage, from his own observations and from the first-hand testimony of others, and he was aware of the difference between his own historical method and that of classical writers who unquestioningly accepted accounts that were not first-hand.38 The point is that a novel form came about because an aspiring historian was thinking hard about how to do history. Among other new forms, our period saw new kinds of universal chronicles (Deutinger), the earliest attempts at history-writing in several vernaculars, and the rise of fiction as a way to imagine unknown, alternative, or inner historical realities.39 A fiction set in the past is also a kind of rewriting, and it is well established that fiction and history, not always distinct categories as in a modern bookshop, often overlapped and were deployed in each other’s service.40 Invented stories could expand on and deepen an existing account, but they could also crowd out the alternatives. We see this in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s claim to have written a fuller and better history of the Britons than William of Malmesbury or Henry of Huntingdon, even though their overlapping claims were in many ways much closer than they may appear (Tahkokallio).41 We should be wary of any tendency to downplay the idea that things changed in the twelfth century and dispense altogether with the idea of a twelfth-century renaissance: new thoughts, and an intriguing dexterity of expression, are evident in the rewriting from this period. In the thirteenth century, in some parts of Europe, the concerns of historians began to shift again, and the direction was away from rewriting. A growing volume of information about the past meant that writers endeavoured to organize the mass of historical knowledge that they already possessed, rather than to reshape it. There were also better networks to put new contemporary historical knowledge into wider circulation. Further, a tide of information about the present in some senses swamped the past. News about recent events circulated at all geographical levels, including internationally.42 There was so much contemporary material to include that efforts went into comprehending

37 Compare the structure adopted by Jones, ‘The Overthrow of Maximilien Robespierre’. 38 Galbert of Bruges, De multro, traditione, et occisione gloriosi Karoli, ed. by Rider; Galbert of Bruges, The Murder of Charles the Good, trans. by Ross. 39 Ashe, Fiction and History in England; Ashe, ‘1155 and the Beginnings of Fiction’. 40 Morse, Truth and Convention; Otter, Inventiones; Stein, Reality Fictions; Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History. 41 See e.g. Winkler, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Britons’. 42 Birkett, ‘News in the Middle Ages’.

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what was new rather than rewriting what was thought already serviceable. Writers like Matthew Paris and his contemporaries worked hard to classify, quantify, and organize information.43 Furthermore, an interest in universal history and papal power meant that there was less motivation to rewrite the specifically local past in a partisan fashion (Deutinger). The new content was set as continuations of existing histories, adding material about the recent past to the end of existing chronicles, rather than expanding upon the entries from the past. History written in that manner was still a refashioning of the past, but with the particular spin of showing how the past as it had been passed down was connected to a particular version of the present. At one level it was just another way of connecting past and present, very different from what could be attained by rewriting, but historians were still soldering the join between past and present with great care. Rewriting was not a primary motivation when existing chronicles were seen as authoritative in both form and content. Later medieval chroniclers, for example, tried to give form to national identity, often by proving and buttressing the longevity of national institutions. This happened in ways not encountered in the central Middle Ages, when identities were as much ‘regnal’ as ‘national’.44 As Chris Given-Wilson has observed of late medieval England, some considered chronicles ‘a form of proof ’.45 That applied to distant times as much as to the recent past. The late medieval interest in the authenticity of history-writing acted against any urge to rewrite. Chronicles were read not to enjoy a curated and treasured past but to procure evidence to support a political claim. Medieval historians who worked to that imperative by adding to an existing text were in effect selecting a piece of the past, or a way of reporting it, which they felt to be intrinsically more authentic for not being rewritten. Keeping older history intact also meant that it could be presented in a form with which others, supporters and antagonists alike, were already familiar. The philosophical weight of such an approach to the past has some similarities with how historical texts are edited today: authenticity is preserved by curating the text as it has come down, not by rewriting or conflating different manuscript versions. The rare occasions nowadays when an editor offers a conflated text in a form which cannot be shown ever to have existed have to be specially justified as ‘an unnatural textual act’.46 Editors now tend not to privilege firstness or ideal texts, but rather to look outwards from each stage of the evolution of a text, and consider simultaneously both authorial intent and readerly reception at each stage. The idea is to honour what specifically was written and read at successive given moments in history.

43 Weiler, ‘Historical Writing and the Experience of Europeanization’. 44 Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, esp. pp. 250–331. 45 Given-Wilson, Chronicles. 46 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, 10: The Abingdon Chronicle, ed. by Conner, p. [vii].

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The Phenomenology of Story-Telling: Who Are We, and Where Are We? There were clear changes across the central medieval centuries in how historians presented ‘our’ story. What changed was who ‘we’ were thought to be, and which groups in the past (distant or recent) were seen as part of ‘our’ identity now (Lewis). Rewriting Norman history, for example, was a continuous process in which we can discern a definite interest in the same events and people over time, but for different reasons (Fedorenko). Interest in Norman history as purely Norman faded after 1204 when Normandy was absorbed politically into France, for all that it retained its own cultural identity. How Norman history was rewritten after that watershed reveals that local concerns about culture — now positioning Norman identity as a type of French identity — came to replace a politicized interest in the history of an independent duchy. Comparing rewritings enable us to see a shift from top-down (political) to bottom-up (cultural) perspectives. A shift to more localized concerns is also evident, but for different reasons, in the rewriting of what we must now surely call the (plural) Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (Stafford).47 In other words, rewriters of history were necessarily thinking about the ‘who’ of the past, but they also thought about where they themselves were positioned in relation to the past, figuratively of course, and also literally. Anglo-Saxon historians were aware that ‘we’ had travelled to Britain from Angeln and Saxony. Matters of perspective mattered (Aleksidze, Lincoln, Wadden), and historians were keenly aware of the fact. Rewriting, however, as against original composition, enabled writers to adopt a different stance. El Cid’s domination of the lion with his gaze (that is, Castile dominating León) offers an interesting illustration of the participation of an observer in events (Lincoln). So too could rewriters command the past with their gaze. The Castilian rewriters were directly involved in the past, with a vested interest in ‘standing against ignoble acts’. For them, accepting an account on the basis of authority was not enough, nor did they take a purely passive view of the evidence of the past, simply as evidence. The essays here stress not the mere existence of evidence for history, but the active participation and thinking of the historians and rewriters who used it. Twelfth-century chronicles laid emphasis on the fact that the courage of kings as leaders had to be observed to be a real virtue;48 likewise, evidence for the past had to be observed to give true access to the past. Curation of history — in the sense we understand it — made this possible. Lincoln’s choice of ‘parallax’ and ‘trajectory’ to explain the position of the rewriter helps us to see rewriting as something spatial and measurable. There is an important point to be made here about ‘authority’ (auctoritas). The earliest explorers of historical writing as a topic in its own right believed

47 See also Brooks, ‘“Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s)” or “Old English Royal Annals?”’. 48 Winkler, Royal Responsibility.

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that medieval historians deferred to the authority of previous written accounts, especially about the deep past.49 In fact the rewriters of history treated in this book implicitly questioned the basis of the authority previously attributed to earlier authors and earlier histories; often they overrode authority and did something completely new and experimental. As the following chapters show, we can sometimes see rewriting as a form of political propaganda seeking to occlude truth, yet at the same time it was also writing a history of the world in a new frame, based on reconsidered evidence and recalibrated angle of vision, rather than on prior stances and editions of the evidence. The difference was in the desired end. The end might be the words only: the text as an end in itself. Or it might be a clarified, curated view of the past — both as to what had happened (res gestae) and as to how what had happened was to be understood and absorbed intellectually and morally (res cogitatae) — using words both as the integument of meaning and as a conduit of communication. The form of the text, then, was not sacred. These were not writers who would have thought in terms of the linguistic turn. Writers could get at reality, and by rewriting they thought they could do so from a new vantage point. By curating the past, they could reveal more of its facets than the earlier writing whose form, sense, content, and even reasoning they altered. Auctoritas is a well-recognized criterion for writers of history in the Middle Ages: the authority of the written word, notable in Scripture but also as set down by the esteemed prior recorders of history, often led to faithful copying or to emulation in matters of ambition and style, as in the case of Bede, or to extensive excerpting in the case of Gregory of Tours.50 Yet exactly what was authoritative could and often did change when history was rewritten. The nature of auctoritas differed. In the central Middle Ages, rewriters often showed an interest in the authority of past events, not limiting themselves to the authority of past writers and past words. In those cases, authority resided in history itself, not in prior historiography, and that history is what they sought to recover by rewriting.

Works Cited Primary Sources The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, 10: The Abingdon Chronicle, a.d. 956–1066 (MS C, with reference to BDE), ed. by Patrick W. Conner (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996) Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969)

49 Notably Tout, ‘The Study of Mediæval Chronicles’, p. 420. 50 Contreni, ‘Reading Gregory of Tours’.

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The Chronicle of Battle Abbey, ed. and trans. by Eleanor Searle (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) Galbert of Bruges, De multro, traditione, et occisione gloriosi Karoli comitis flandriarum, ed. by Jeff Rider, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 131 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994) ———, The Murder of Charles the Good, trans. by James Bruce Ross (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960) Geoffrey of Monmouth, The Historia regum Britannie, i: Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 568, ed. by Neil Wright (Cambridge: Brewer, 1985) ———, The History of the Kings of Britain, trans. by Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966) Íslendingabók [and] Kristni Saga: The Book of the Icelanders [and] The Story of the Conversion, trans. by Siân Grønlie, Viking Society for Northern Research Text Series, 18 (London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2006) Walter Map, De nugis curialium: Courtiers’ Trifles, ed. and trans. by M. R. James, rev. by C. N. L. Brooke and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983) Secondary Works Archibald, Elizabeth, Megan G. Leitch, and Corinne Saunders, eds, Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance. A Tribute to Helen Cooper (Cambridge: Brewer, 2018) Ashe, Laura, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) ———, ‘1155 and the Beginnings of Fiction’, History Today, 65.1 ( Jan. 2015), 41–46 Bestul, Thomas H., Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996) Birkett, Helen, ‘News in the Middle Ages: News, Communications, and the Launch of the Third Crusade in 1187–88’, Viator, 49 (2020), 23–61 Brooks, Nicholas, ‘“Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s)” or “Old English Royal Annals?”’, in Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford, ed. by Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds, and Susan M. Johns (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012), pp. 35–48 Cleaver, Laura, Illuminated History Books in the Anglo-Norman World, 1066–1272 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018) Contreni, John J., ‘Reading Gregory of Tours in the Middle Ages’, in The World of Gregory of Tours, ed. by Kathleen Mitchell and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 419–34 Davies, John Reuben, The Book of Llandaf and the Norman Church in Wales (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003) Davis, R. H. C., ‘Bede after Bede’, in Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. Allen Brown, ed. by Christopher Harper-Bill, Christopher J. Holdsworth, and Janet L. Nelson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1989), pp. 103–16 Fentress, James, and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992)

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Foot, Sarah, and Chase F. Robinson, eds, The Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii: 400–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Fulk, R. D., and Christopher M. Cain, A History of Old English Literature (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) Given-Wilson, Chris, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London: Hambledon and London, 2004) Goffart, Walter, The Narrators of Barbarian History (ad 550–800): Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, Bede, and Paul the Deacon (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) Goullet, Monique, Écriture et réécriture hagiographiques: Essai sur les réécritures de Vies de saints dans l’Occident latin médiéval (VIIIe–XIIIe s.) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005) Granara, William, Narrating Muslim Sicily: War and Peace in the Medieval Mediterranean World (London: Tauris, 2019) Griffin, Miranda, Transforming Tales: Rewriting Metamorphosis in Medieval French Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) Guenée, Bernard, ‘Histoire et chronique: nouvelles réflexions sur les genres historiques au Moyen Âge’, in La chronique et l’histoire au Moyen Âge, ed. by Daniel Poirion (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1984), pp. 3–12 Gülich, Elisabeth, Gabriele Lucius-Hoene, Stefan Pfänder, and Elke Schumann, eds, Wiedererzählen: Formen und Funktionen einer kulturellen Praxis (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2015) Hay, Denys, Annalists and Historians: Western Historiography from the Eighth to the Eighteenth Centuries (London: Methuen, 1977) Hen, Yitzhak, and Matthew Innes, eds, The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) John, Simon, ‘Historical Truth and the Miraculous Past: The Use of Oral Evidence in Twelfth-Century Latin Historical Writing on the First Crusade’, English Historical Review, 130 (2015), 263–301 Jones, Colin, ‘The Overthrow of Maximilien Robespierre and the “Indifference” of the People’, American Historical Review, 119 (2014), 689–713 Jones, Owain Wyn, ‘Brut y Tywysogion: The History of the Princes and TwelfthCentury Cambro-Latin Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal, 26 (2014), 209–28 ———, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth and Welsh Historical Writing’, in A Companion to Geoffrey of Monmouth, ed. by Joshua Byron Smith and Georgia Henley (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 257–90 Jones, Owain Wyn, and Huw Pryce, ‘Historical Writing in Medieval Wales’, in Medieval Historical Writing: Britain and Ireland, 500–1500, ed. by Jennifer Jahner, Emily Steiner, and Elizabeth M. Tyler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 208–24 Kempshall, Matthew, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011)

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Kullmann, Dorothea, ‘Le métadiscours sur la réécriture dans les prologues épiques’, in Réécritures: regards nouveaux sur la reprise et le remaniement de textes, dans la littérature française et au-delà, du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance, ed. by Dorothea Kullman and Shaun Lalonde (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015), pp. 97–133 Lake, Justin, ‘Authorial Intention in Medieval Historiography’, History Compass, 12 (2014), 344–60 ———, ‘Current Approaches to Medieval Historiography’, History Compass, 13 (2015), 89–109 Lambert, Peter, and Björn Weiler, eds, How the Past was Used: Historical Cultures, c. 750–2000 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) McKitterick, Rosamond, Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006) Morse, Ruth, Truth and Convention in the Middle Ages: Rhetoric, Representation, and Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991) Murray, Alexander C., ed., After Rome’s Fall: Narrators and Sources of Early Medieval History. Essays Presented to Walter Goffart (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998) Otter, Monika, Inventiones: Fiction and Referentiality in Twelfth-Century English Historical Writing (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996) Partner, Nancy F., Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977) Predelli, Maria, ‘Réécriture de la matière chevaleresque: du grand roman courtois de France au “cantare” populaire d’Italie’, in Réécritures: regards nouveaux sur la reprise et le remaniement de textes, dans la littérature française et au-delà, du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance, ed. by Dorothea Kullman and Shaun Lalonde (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2015), pp. 254–74 Reynolds, Susan, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) Roach, Daniel, ‘The Material and the Visual: Objects and Memories in the Historia ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis’, Haskins Society Journal, 24 (2012), 63–78 Ross, Margaret Clunies, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010) Scharer, Anton, and Georg Scheibelreiter, eds, Historiographie im frühen Mittelalter (Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1994) Smith, Joshua Byron, Walter Map and the Matter of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017) Smith, Julia M. H., review of Monique Goullet, Écriture et réécriture hagiographiques: Essai sur les réécritures de Vies de saints dans l’Occident latin médiéval (VIIIe–XIIIe s.) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), in Early Medieval Europe, 16 (2008), 241–43 Stein, Robert M., Reality Fictions: Romance, History, and Governmental Authority, 1025–1180 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006) Taylor, Jane H. M., Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France: From Manuscript to Printed Book (Cambridge: Brewer, 2014)

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Tout, T. F., ‘The Study of Mediæval Chronicles’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 6 (1921–22), 414–38; reprinted in The Collected Papers of Thomas Frederick Tout, with a Memoir and Bibliography, 3 vols (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1932–34), iii, 1–26 Tyler, Elizabeth M., England in Europe: English Royal Women and Literary Patronage, c. 1000–c. 1150 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017) Tyler, Elizabeth M., and Ross Balzaretti, eds, Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006) Ugé, Karine, Creating the Monastic Past in Medieval Flanders (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2005) Vanderputten, Steven, ‘Individual Experience, Collective Remembrance and the Politics of Monastic Reform in High Medieval Flanders’, Early Medieval Europe, 20 (2012), 70–89 van Houts, Elisabeth, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900–1200 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999) ———, ed., Medieval Memories: Men, Women and the Past, 700–1300 (Harlow: Longman, 2001) von Güttner-Sporzyński, Darius, ed., Writing History in Medieval Poland: Bishop Vincentius of Cracow and the Chronica Polonorum (Turnhout: Brepols, 2017) Weiler, Björn, ‘Historical Writing and the Experience of Europeanization: The View from St Albans’, in ‘The Making of Europe’: Essays in Honour of Robert Bartlett, ed. by John Hudson and Sally Crumplin (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 205–43 ———, ‘Historical Writing in Europe, c. 1100–1300’, in The Chronicles of Medieval Wales and the March: New Contexts, Studies and Texts, ed. by Ben Guy, Georgia Henley, Owain Wyn Jones, and Rebecca Thomas (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), pp. 33–67 Wickham, Chris, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (London: Allen Lane, 2009) Winkler, Emily A., Royal Responsibility in Anglo-Norman Historical Writing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) ———, ‘William of Malmesbury and the Britons’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. by Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Dolmans, and Emily A. Winkler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 189–201 ———, ‘Imagining the Medieval Face of Battle: The “Malfosse” Incident and the Battle of Hastings, 1066–1200’, Historical Research, 93 (2020), 2–22 Winkler, Emily A., and Emily Dolmans, ‘Discovering William of Malmesbury: The Man and His Works’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. by Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Dolmans, and Emily A. Winkler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 1–11

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Broad Themes

Roman Deutinge r Tra n sl at e d fro m t h e G er m an by

N atas cha D omeisen an d Emily  A. Wi n k l e r

From Lake Constance to the Elbe: Rewriting a Reichenau World Chronicle from the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Century

The universal chronicles of the Carolingian era only achieved regional importance in a few locations in eastern Francia, where they moreover did not inspire extensive imitation. The aspiring German realm of the tenth and eleventh centuries thus knew no tradition of all-encompassing universal chronicles. Although a relatively large number of monasteries and abbeys followed the tradition of keeping short annals, often found as marginalia in Easter tables, none of these collections of disjointed, note-like entries followed a consistent or comprehensive form of presentation, even though in individual cases, like St Gall, they developed into continuous records of contemporary events. When an unknown monk on the Isle of Reichenau on Lake Constance commenced writing a new universal chronicle in 1040, he therefore could not refer back to any direct sources, which meant that he had to rely on established ‘classics’ of the genre by Jerome and Bede. This chronicle of the Reichenau monks has not come down to us in its original form. Although its existence was inferred by Harry Bresslau as early as 1877,1 it has become possible to reconstruct its configuration to a greater extent only in recent years.2 Opening with the birth of Christ, the chronicle offers only meagre insights into the history of the Roman emperors and their later Frankish and German successors, most of the time stating no more than their period of rule. For that



1 Bresslau, ‘Hermann von Reichenau’. For all subsequently named works see in general Wattenbach, Holtzmann, and Schmale, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen; Wattenbach and Schmale, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen; Dunphy, ed., Encyclopedia; Deutinger, ‘Lateinische Weltchronistik’. 2 Pokorny, ‘Das Chronicon Wirziburgense’, pp. 451–76. Roman Deutinger  •  ([email protected]) is a Research Assistant at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, Munich, for the online repertory ‘Geschichtsquellen des deutschen Mittelalters’ (Historical Sources of the German Middle Ages). Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 39–65 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126745

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matter, the chronological frame is not the years since the incarnation (anni domini), but the duration of the reigns. The chronicler drew on a few older standard works, such as the Chronicle of Eusebius in its Latin translation by Jerome, its later continuation by Prosper of Aquitaine, and the Roman history of Jordanes. Down to 724, the Chronica maiora by the Venerable Bede served as a main source, which is why a certain Anglo-Saxon influence can be noted in the entries. On reaching the end of Bede’s chronicle, the composer abruptly left the progression of eastern Roman emperors and Anglo-Saxon kings and henceforth concentrated fully on Frankish and Alemannic history. The textual basis for the subsequent section was the Annals of Reichenau, St Gall, and the abbey of Einsiedeln, whereas an annalistic record from far-off Hildesheim formed the basis of the most recent section covering the period to 1040. The universal chronicle of Reichenau was something very different from a masterpiece of historical writing. Its discoverer, Harry Bresslau, characterized it as ‘ein ganz rohes, in der Chronologie oft verwirrtes Excerpt’ (a quite raw excerpt, often confused in its chronology).3 Effectively, for this type of chronicle, a short sentence sufficed to summarize a whole year; some years remained without an entry. The chronicle’s main focus was almost exclusively the deeds of emperors and kings, and some passages consisted only of simple regnal lists. The primary aim of the compiler was, it seems, to establish a continuous chronology of rulers, beginning with the birth of Christ and continuing down to the present day, rather than to offer a recollection of historical events. The chronicle must have dissatisfied the monks of the Reichenau themselves, because after only a few years, apparently in 1043, they began to revise it. Drawing on different, readily available sources, an editor supplemented the chronicle’s information on the history of the popes, the Merovingian kings, England, and the abbeys of Reichenau and St Gall. In order to cover pre-Christian history as well, he prepended an excerpt taken from the Chronica maiora of the Venerable Bede, which was a treatise on history from the Creation until the reign of the Emperor Domitian. That this addition produced an overlap in content with the actual chronicle must have slipped the compiler’s attention until it was too late. The revision contains a relatively large number of entries on the history of the bishops of Constance and the two abbeys at Lake Constance, which in the nineteenth century provided a reason to call the work the ‘Swabian universal chronicle’ (Chronicon Suevicum universale). More accurate is the term that emerged later, ‘Reichenauer Kaiserchronik’ (Reichenau Imperial Chronicle),4 because the history of emperors and kings constituted the centrepiece of the account. The material was still organized according to the years of rule; nevertheless, the incarnation years were consistently noted at periodical intervals after the year 1000. The chronicle has come down to us in different manuscripts, nowhere in its own right, but



3 Bresslau, ‘Hermann von Reichenau’, p. 575. 4 Duch, ‘Das Geschichtswerk’, p. 188.

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only in a strange mixture with the later Reichenau Chronicles, in which it is hardly discernible.5 Because it appears to offer little in terms of content for the modern historian, there is still no complete edition today.6 Since the revisions for that edition comprised only additional historical information, soon afterwards — 1048 at the latest — the Reichenau monk Hermann the Lame (d. 1054) drafted a universal chronicle of an innovative design, but based on that extended version.7 He had previously studied computus intensively, and even created improved chronological tables based on his own astronomical observations, writing various treatises on the subject.8 In modern times even the creation of the Reichenau Imperial Chronicle has occasionally been attributed to him and interpreted as a kind of preliminary basis for his later work. But the design as well as the chronology of the two works differ in many instances, which leaves the attribution very insecure.9 Hermann’s aim was to assign each historical event in the Christian era to a definite date, and conversely, to allocate to every year since the birth of Christ at least one corresponding event. Unlike his two Reichenau predecessors, who consulted only a few familiar chronicles, he used a large number of historical works and integrated their information into the chronological framework of the Imperial Chronicle. It was not always easy to obtain precise dates from his sources, which was one of Hermann’s main objectives. Despite his considerable efforts in this regard, he achieved only limited success. From the beginning, Hermann’s Chronicle followed a consistent annalistic approach, and for the first time introduced a continuous and unbroken record of the incarnation years. The horizon of his perception was certainly universal in scope, according to his contemporaries’ understanding, as the main emphasis lay on the two universal authorities of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, namely the Roman Empire and Christianity, the latter increasingly represented by the Roman popes. However, the Chronicle also provided comprehensive coverage of the formation of various kingdoms during the Migration Period — by no means a self-evident feature of a universal chronicle. Frankish history and, later, German history began to dominate only in the eighth century, such that the geographical horizon of the work narrowed as the chronicle progressed. This structural narrowing fitted the content: beginning in 724, the chronicle also interwove Reichenau’s concerns, and ultimately we even encounter autobiographical information about Hermann and his family.



5 Duch, ‘Das Geschichtswerk’, pp. 192–98; Robinson, ‘Die Chronik’, pp. 88–94. 6 From 768 in Chronicon Suevicum universale, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 61–72; for the older part only Sichard, En damus chronicon and Wurstisen, Germaniae historicorum illustrium, both with attribution to Hermann the Lame. 7 Herimanni Augiensis Chronicon, ed. by Pertz; Eleventh-Century Germany, trans. by Robinson, pp. 1–20; Goetz, ‘Das Geschichts- und Weltbild’. 8 Borst, ‘Ein Forschungsbericht’; Warntjes, ‘Hermann der Lahme’. 9 Buchner, ‘Der Verfasser’; Schmale, ‘Die Reichenauer Weltchronistik’, pp. 132–49.

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The difference from the Reichenau Imperial Chronicle lies both in Hermann’s significantly improved chronology, which he achieved by making critical comparisons of different sources and by consulting astronomical calculations, and in the unmatched abundance of information in his Chronicle. However, this meant that the length of individual annals varied, depending on how much information was available for a specific year in Hermann’s sources. This difference is particularly evident in the treatment of contemporary history: where the annual records of the Imperial Chronicle were consistently laconic until the end, Hermann’s presentation of the eleventh century became more comprehensive, finally evolving into a continuous, detailed report of contemporary events, which terminated only when Hermann’s death on 24 September 1054 finally took the quill from his hand. Compared with its two predecessors, the Chronicle of Hermann the Lame represents a very sophisticated work; nevertheless, only a few copies survive. The much sparser Swabian universal chronicle achieved more success: even one of Hermann’s Reichenau students, Berthold (d. 1088), used his master’s work only for the years 1044 to 1054 in writing his own chronicle; for the earlier years, he employed the shorter Swabian universal chronicle. Berthold’s only independent achievement was his continuation of the work until the year 1080. The same can be said of the revision undertaken by the monk Bernold of St Blasien in the Black Forest soon thereafter, who wrote continuous entries until his death in the year 1100.10 The noteworthy feature of the Reichenau universal chronicle is not its somewhat simplistic content, but rather its immense influence far beyond the Lake Constance region, throughout medieval Germany. A copy of the original, unedited version entered the possession of the Austrian abbey of Melk in an unknown way — perhaps through St Blasien.11 This codex, still preserved, states explicitly that in 1123 a monk compiled a universal chronicle, in the form of concise annals from the birth of Christ, based almost entirely on the Reichenau model.12 The main difference is that the monk from Melk disregarded regnal years, from the outset noting exclusively the years since the birth of Christ. The only content-related additions were a few dates relating to the life of St Coloman (d. 1012), the patron saint of Melk abbey. Only at the end of the source text did the new chronicle become independent, even so still following its model in rarely including more than one or two short remarks each year. Although he did not completely abandon emperors and kings, the author increasingly focused his attention on events in the south-east of the German realm and on his own convent, starting with the transformation 10 Die Chroniken Bertholds von Reichenau und Bernolds von Konstanz, ed. by Robinson (only from 1054 onwards). Cf. Eleventh-Century Germany, trans. by Robinson, pp. 20–41, 41–57 (Berthold). 11 Schmale, ‘Die Reichenauer Weltchronistik’, p. 155 and after. 12 Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 391; Annales Mellicenses, ed. by Wattenbach; Schmale, ‘Die österreichische Annalistik’, pp. 148–53.

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of the collegiate chapter into a Benedictine monastery in 1089. The scribe for 1123 then wrote down only the next short annal for 1124, but planned far ahead: he added all the dates until 1300, and in so doing predetermined a modest space of two lines for every subsequent annal entry. More than a hundred different scribes filled this space with entries in the following years until 1564, far beyond the monk’s intended 1300, and even made additions to pre-1300 annals.13 The importance of the Melk Annals lies not in their historical content, which almost always exists in better and more detailed form in other sources, but in their vast impact on twelfth-century rewriting. Almost every Austrian abbey and chapter of canons adopted the Melk Annals during the twelfth century and used them as the foundation for their respective chronicles. Each made specific additions and continuations about the history of their own convent, and the manuscripts reveal that these chronicles were often combined with other historiographical works. As a result, a variety of customized chronicle compilations emerged, but it remained the case that for the first millennium, material from the Reichenau universal chronicle provided the core of the narrative.14 Another copy of the original Reichenau Chronicle was sent on a journey soon after its creation, and in the long run had an even greater impact. It was a slightly shortened copy, which moved to another place — possibly Regensburg — where it was continued until 1057. The existence of this revised version was unknown until a few years ago; its text has been transmitted solely in a modern copy, and due to the provenance of this manuscript in the collection of André Duchesne (1584–1640), it was given the provisional title ‘Chronicon Duchesne’.15 Here the Reichenau Chronicle was only sporadically fitted with content-related additions, which were taken in turn from two older chronicles with a wide remit: a chronicle compilation from the eighth century that goes to 741, and the Historia Romana by Paul the Deacon (d. 799). Only many years later was the work supplemented with annalistic addenda, the most recent dating to the year 1210.16 However, long before this continuation, a revision of the ‘Chronicon Duchesne’ was undertaken, known under the title ‘Chronicon Wirziburgense’, although it is not certain that it actually originated at Würzburg: Bamberg would be more likely.17 In this adaptation, the chronicle was given a short

13 Auctarium Mellicense, ed. by Wattenbach. 14 Lhotsky, Quellenkunde, pp. 173–203; Schmale, ‘Die österreichische Annalistik’, pp. 155–95; Haider, ‘Die schriftlichen Quellen’, pp. 35–40; Beihammer, ‘Die alpenländische Annalengruppe’. 15 BnF, Collection Duchesne 49, fols 234r–56v; cf. Pokorny, ‘Das Chronicon Wirziburgense’, pp. 71–93. 16 Pokorny, ‘Das Chronicon Wirziburgense’, pp. 494–99. 17 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Cod. K 504, fols 171r–86v; Chronicon Wirziburgense, ed. by Waitz; cf. Schmale, ‘Die Reichenauer Weltchronistik’, pp. 151–55.

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prologue on pre-Christian history since the creation of the world, which — like the chronicle itself — consisted of little more than an enumeration of biblical patriarchs, Persian kings, and the diadochi until Gaius Julius Caesar, with corresponding regnal years and a few historical dates. In the Christian era, the dating still followed the rulers’ regnal years; only after 639 did the incarnation year accompany the accession of a new monarch. In terms of content, the tenures of the bishops of Würzburg were recorded systematically, and only a few short remarks on different matters were added, such that the work’s essential character was left unaltered. The ‘Chronicon Wirziburgense’, like its source, ends in 1057, and was apparently compiled shortly after that year. At the beginning of the twelfth century, it was used as the template for a new chronicle in the abbey of St Alban at Mainz, which at its core represented nothing but a shortened version of the ‘Chronicon Wirziburgense’. Its entries were merely supplemented with the tenures of the bishops of Mainz; at any rate, the Mainz chronicler applied a consistent enumeration of incarnation years. His work survives only in a shorter version that runs from 687 until 1101, meaning we cannot gain a precise insight into its original extent and organization.18 Even more obscure is the nature of a chronicle originating at the abbey of Harsefeld in lower Saxony: only a fragment of an evidently shortened copy originating in the fourteenth century is known, and even this fragment was burned during the Second World War.19 Nonetheless, it is apparent that the Harsefeld chronicler referred to a copy of the ‘Chronicon Wirziburgense’ (probably from the abbey of Ilsenburg near the Harz), and unlike his colleague at Mainz, he adopted the Chronicon’s model of regnal years to structure his material. It was not until 1107, after the death of Emperor Henry IV, that he switched to the enumeration of incarnation years. The surviving Harsefeld fragment continues to 1131, meaning it could not have been composed earlier. Consequently, the chronicle is one of the last witnesses for the use of the Reichenau materials in a form not far removed from the original. All these successive revisions of the Reichenau universal chronicle, first written in 1040, intervened only slightly in the original text, since they consisted mainly of a few added details. Moreover, each individual revision received no appreciable reception, as they are only transmitted in one or two manuscripts, and only in subsequent revisions. They are far exceeded in importance by the work concluded in 1099 by the monk Frutolf (d. 1103) at the Bamberg abbey of Michelsberg, the most comprehensive and best conceived universal chronicle of its time.20 The chronicle survives today in an autograph copy, but 18 BnF, MS lat. 4860, fols 91r–93r; known as Annales S. Albani Moguntini, but under the misleading title Annales Wirziburgenses, ed. by Pertz. 19 Annales Rosenveldenses, ed. by Pertz; Nass, Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, pp. 305–08. 20 Jena, Thüringische Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS Bos. q. 19; under the title Ekkehardi Chronicon universale, ed. by Waitz; only the final part from 1001 in Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken, ed. by Schmale and Schmale-Ott, pp. 48–120; Schwarzbauer,

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because for a long time only later revisions of it were known, it was dubbed ‘Chronicon Urspergense’ or attributed to Ekkehard of Aura. It was not until 1896 that Harry Bresslau was able to identify the actual author.21 Frutolf intervened more extensively in the structure of the original Reichenau universal chronicle than did all of its redactors mentioned above. Above all he treated pre-Christian history in great detail not encountered before; as a result, this part constitutes almost a third of the entire work. After a short computistic prologue, the narrative begins with the creation of the world. Following Jerome’s example, Frutolf counted regnal years continuously (beginning with the Assyrian King Ninus) and presented different eras in tabular form. Depending on the number of kingdoms, we encounter up to nine parallel columns. From the birth of Christ onwards, besides the incarnation years, only the regnal years of the Roman emperors were counted. Consistent with the theory of translatio imperii — explicitly formulated as such in this chronicle — the Roman, followed by the Frankish, and finally the German realm takes centre-stage. Frutolf not only collected historical data, but also tried to reconcile the various chronologies. This is particularly evident in his association of the date of Christ’s birth with other notable points on the timeline: year 42 of the Emperor Augustus’s reign, the 28th year since the conquest of Egypt, the 3962nd year since the creation of the world according to the Hebrew bible, year 5201 according to the Greek Septuagint, the 2306th year after the Flood, the 2014th year after Abraham’s birth, the 1509th year after the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, the 1031st year after the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, the 519th year since its re-erection, the 751st year since the foundation of Rome, and the third year of the 194th Olympiad (itself a period of four years). The original Reichenau universal chronicle determined the birth of Christ with evidently fewer dates, and generally followed Bede’s model, listing only the 42nd year of Augustus’s reign, the 28th year since the conquest of Egypt, the 752nd year since the foundation of Rome, the third year of the 193rd Olympiad, and the 3952nd or 5197th year since the creation of the world. The comparison between these figures demonstrates that Frutolf did not rely entirely on his sources to align the eras, but instead conducted new independent calculations. Frutolf was clearly unaware that only two generations before, Hermann the Lame had pursued the same goal of compiling an improved and extended version of the Reichenau universal chronicle. For the Sixth Age (sexta aetas), the time after Christ’s birth, Frutolf filled in the chronological frame provided by the ‘Chronicon Wirziburgense’ with additional entries adopted from the chronicles of Jerome, Jordanes, Orosius, and Bede. He thus employed a corpus quite similar to that of the

Geschichtszeit; McCarthy, ‘Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle’; Chronicles of the Investiture Contest, trans. by McCarthy, pp. 15–41. 21 Bresslau, ‘Die Chroniken des Frutolf von Bamberg’.

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Reichenau compiler, but extracted more dates from these chronicles than did his predecessor. In doing so, he took a critical approach, as he explicitly noted inconsistencies between his sources, leaving to the reader the decision as to which version should be regarded as true. For later years, it seems that Frutolf collected all sources he could manage to obtain, such as the Royal Frankish Annals, Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne,22 Widukind’s History of the Saxons,23 the Histories of Richer of Reims (whose autograph copy he still had in Bamberg),24 and many more. Nevertheless, the ‘Chronicon Wirziburgense’ remained his most important (and, at times, his only) source of annalistic entries for the period until its end in 1057. It is unclear where Frutolf acquired his information on the subsequent period to 1099; apparently he had access to an extended version of the ‘Chronicon Wirziburgense’.25 Unlike the generally concise entries in the Reichenau universal chronicle, the single annals in Frutolf ’s chronicle vary in length from the beginning. Depending on the sources available to the author, the entries encompassed up to a few pages, or only a single line, some years lacking annals altogether. Furthermore, the narrative is interrupted by longer historiographical digressions on Alexander the Great, the early popes, the origin of the Franks, the history of the Goths, the Amazons, the Huns, the Lombards, and the Saxons, as well as Charlemagne. On those topics Frutolf had so many detailed sources at his disposal that he deemed it appropriate to break away from purely annalistic sequencing. In addition, the chronicle contains a short characterization of each Roman emperor at the beginning of the account of his reign, this too being a deviation from the annalistic scheme. In the effort to include as much information as possible, Frutolf accepted that his work might appear rather inconsistent on the whole, especially as he frequently adopted the exact wording — and thus the style — of his sources. With the addition of pre-Christian history, the improved chronology, and a wealth of historical information, Frutolf brought his universal chronicle to a whole new level compared to the original Reichenau core. However, the chronicle never came into circulation in its original form (as finished in 1099), but was revised multiple times over only a few years.26 The first revision was made during Frutolf ’s own lifetime: a fellow monk at Michelsberg copied it into a codex containing various treatises on music, astronomy, and arithmetic (that is, a collection on the scholarly quadrivium). First he copied the entire ‘Chronicon Wirziburgense’, followed by the latest part of Frutolf ’s chronicle, beginning with the accession of Henry IV in 1057. Finally, he extended the accounts with a report on the years 1098–1101 mainly focused on the events 22 Tischler, Einharts Vita Karoli, pp. 807–36. 23 Die Sachsengeschichte, ed. by Lohmann and Hirsch, p. xliii. 24 Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS Hist. 5; Richer von Saint-Remi, ed. by Hoffmann, pp. 8–10. 25 Pokorny, ‘Das Chronicon Wirziburgense’, pp. 83–86. 26 Schmale, ‘Überlieferungskritik und Editionsprinzipien’, now outdated by Chronicles of the Investiture Contest, trans. by McCarthy; McCarthy, The Continuations.

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of the First Crusade. Since Frutolf had already reported some of this, the editor had to rewrite completely the entries for 1098 and 1099.27 In doing so, by combining two existing works and specific rewriting, the editor created a new universal chronicle from the creation of the world to his own time. In this regard he was quite akin to Berthold von Reichenau who, twenty years before, had extended the Swabian universal chronicle, first with the historical accounts of Hermann the Lame and then with his own continuation. A short time later, apparently in 1106, a second revision took place, which still can be traced back to Frutolf ’s original manuscript.28 Until recently, Abbot Ekkehard of Aura was considered to be the author of this revision, but the attribution is extremely questionable. At best we can say it was another monk at Michelsberg. This writer had participated in the Crusade of 1101–1102 and wrote a detailed account of his experiences. His second main theme is the change of dominion in 1105: in portraying Henry IV as a tyrannical ruler and the chief culprit in the papal schism, the editor welcomed the accession of Henry V, whom he thought capable of resolving the disputes between the Empire and the popes. Thus Frutolf ’s political tendencies are reversed, since Frutolf had always sided with Henry IV in the conflicts between emperor, popes, and domestic German opponents. Three Michelsberg monks worked together to adapt this account of events from 1098 to 1106 as a continuation to Frutolf’s original chronicle. To that end they partially crossed out or completely erased Frutolf ’s last entries, overwriting them with new text — ‘rewriting’ in its literal sense — and inserted leaves containing new text. Shortly thereafter, an editor transformed this rewritten original of Frutolf ’s chronicle and its continuation to 1106 into a new chronicle, mainly by inserting several entries from the universal chronicle of Sigebert of Gembloux (d. 1112) and by continuing the narrative until 1113. It is not certain whether this revision happened at Michelsberg too; in any case, it must have occurred at Bamberg. This Frutolf-Sigebert chronicle did not survive, but can be inferred from two subsequent revisions. The first one, like the Frutolf revision of 1106, was formerly attributed to Ekkehard of Aura; today it is known as the ‘Anonyme Kaiserchronik’ (Anonymous Imperial Chronicle). It was commissioned by Henry V and dedicated to him, apparently on the occasion of his marriage to Matilda of England in 1114.29 It is not clear who received the imperial commission for the production, but it was most likely Bishop Otto of Bamberg

27 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Cod. K 504, fols 171r–97v (digital pre-edition by Marxreiter, pp. xi–xv); McCarthy, The Continuations, pp. 124–28. 28 Digital pre-edition by Marxreiter, pp. xvi–xxvi; Chronicles of the Investiture Contest, trans. by McCarthy, pp. 44–56; McCarthy, The Continuations, pp. 128–35. 29 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 373; only the dedicational epistle, end of Book ii, and Book iii in Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken, ed. by Schmale and Schmale-Ott, pp. 212– 64 (digital pre-edition by Hartmann, pp. xii–xxxviii); Dale, ‘Imperial Self-Representation’; Chronicles of the Investiture Contest, trans. by McCarthy, pp. 56–66; van Houts, ‘Marriage as Inspiration’; McCarthy, The Continuations, pp. 212–23.

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(1102–1139), a former court chaplain of Henry IV, who belonged to the inner circle of Henry V’s political advisors. The dedication copy for Henry, which is still preserved today in its original form, was certainly not written in Otto’s own hand, but in that of one of his Bamberg clerics. It is noteworthy that, whereas the wording of the text remained almost exactly the same in those sections borrowed from Frutolf, the design of this chronicle changed almost completely. It departed both from the horizon of universal history and from a strictly annalistic structure, and was divided into three books. The first book was concerned with the history of the Franks since the fall of Troy, the second with the history of the emperors from Charlemagne to Henry IV, the third with the reign of Henry V. The narrative concluded by describing the wedding of Henry V and Matilda in 1114. The author thus related the history of the Roman emperors not to its actual beginning with Augustus, but rather to the connection between the Roman Empire and the Teutonici — which started, according to the author, with Charlemagne.30 Moreover, the entire history of Christian salvation, which had played an important role in all previous revisions of the Reichenau Imperial Chronicle and in Frutolf ’s work, was completely ignored. Here, history was narrated solely as prehistory aiming towards a particular present; it was relevant only insofar as it related to Henry V, the Roman emperor of Frankish descent. In contrast to most of the other versions treated to this point, the ‘Anonymous Imperial Chronicle’ received no further reception. The reasons, however, are immediately apparent. On the one hand, its unusual design shows that it was tailored entirely for a specific recipient; on the other hand, the fate of the presentation copy is responsible. The Empress Matilda carried it with her when she returned to England in 1125 after the death of her first husband Henry; in any case, it is clear that the book was in England as early as the end of the twelfth century.31 There was, however, no audience for an imperial chronicle of this kind in England, and so the chronicle made no further impact. Another editor of the Frutolf chronicle was more successful: the former Bamberg monk Ekkehard (d. after 1125?), who had become the first abbot of the newly founded abbey of Aura on the Saale north of Würzburg, a foundation of Bishop Otto of Bamberg. Abbot Erkembert of Corvey (1107–1128) directed his wish for a universal chronicle to Ekkehard, who responded to this request by sending a new version of the Frutolf chronicle to Corvey in 1116 or 1117.32 Like the author of the ‘Anonymous Imperial Chronicle’, he apparently did not have

30 Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken, ed. by Schmale and Schmale-Ott, p. 212 (digital preedition by Hartmann, p. 2): ‘Cum igitur tota intentio huius libri tam Romani imperii quam Teutonici regni deserviat honori, quorum regnorum coniunctio cepit a Karolo Francigena, necessarium duximus tam nobilissimę gentis, que habilis inventa est ad procreandos dominos Romanę potentię, altius originem repetere’. 31 Dale, ‘The Provenance’. 32 Ekkehardi Chronicon universale, ed. by Waitz, pp. 33–265 (version G/E); only the years 1106–1116 in Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken, ed. by Schmale and Schmale-Ott, pp. 268–332.

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Frutolf ’s autograph copy to hand, but rather the revision that had expanded the work to include content from the chronicle by Sigebert of Gembloux. Ekkehard undertook his task without making substantial amendments to the text, merely omitting the historiographical digressions and arranging the material into five books. The first book ranged from the creation of the world to the foundation of Rome, the second to the birth of Christ, the third to Charlemagne, and the fourth to the accession of Henry V; the fifth recounted the history of this emperor. However, unlike in the Imperial Chronicle, the rearrangement of the material is purely a superficial reframing, perhaps for the sake of clarity. Ekkehard did not intervene in the structure of his source, and it is not even certain if it was he who added the entries on the events of the latter years. The manuscript tradition does not offer secure evidence, especially since in the surviving manuscripts the text of this version is always combined with another adaptation of the Frutolf chronicle. This new revision, dating to 1125, is usually attributed to Ekkehard of Aura as well, although the manuscripts do not state his name. The basis for his revision was the unaltered Frutolf chronicle kept to 1106, to which the annals from Ekkehard’s chronicle to 1114/1116 were added first, and subsequently a continuation covering the period to Henry V’s death in 1125.33 In any event, even if Ekkehard was not the author, this revision and its additions originated in his Bamberg environment, perhaps from the abbey of Münsterschwarzachupon-Main, as a few site-specific entries appear only in this particular branch of transmission.34 Noteworthy is the polemic against Henry V, which stands in stark contrast to his positive reputation in all previous versions. Also in Frutolf and Ekkehard’s Bamberg circle was Heimo (d. 1139), a canon at the chapter of St Jakob and, as he attested himself, a former student of Frutolf. He did not produce a simple revision of the chronicle, but compiled a computistic work with the title ‘De decursu temporum’ (On the Passing of Times), with the main objective of offering an improved chronology and a solution to the dating problems raised by Frutolf ’s work.35 Heimo did not structure his accounts chronologically but thematically: he discussed the age of the world, the successive dominions of the ancient empires, the reigns of the Roman emperors retrogressing from the present back to Justinian (527–565), and the pontificates of the popes, compiling his results in tabular form at the end. For example, in addition to many corrections of detail, he concluded that 3992 years had passed between the creation of the world and

33 Ekkehardi Chronicon universale, ed. by Waitz, pp. 33–265 (version B*); only the years 1117–1125 in Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken, ed. by Schmale and Schmale-Ott, pp. 334–76; Chronicles of the Investiture Contest, trans. by McCarthy, pp. 74–81; McCarthy, The Continuations, pp. 166–82, 223–32. 34 Schmale, ‘Überlieferungskritik und Editionsprinzipien’, p. 119 and after; McCarthy, The Continuations, pp. 178–81. 35 Heimo von Bamberg, De decursu temporum, ed. by Weikmann; Verbist, Duelling with the Past, pp. 251–339.

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the birth of Christ, unlike the Reichenau chronicler who followed Bede the Venerable’s 3952 years, or Frutolf ’s 3962. Moreover, Heimo calculated that the usual counting of the incarnation years did not date from Christ’s birth, but from his passion, concluding that the missing thirty-three years could be traced to a transmission error during the reign of Emperor Justin I (518–527). Later chroniclers, however, did not follow Heimo in this view, and abided by the established chronology that Frutolf had developed one generation earlier. Heimo began his work in 1135 and presented it in a second version shortly before his death in 1139. In doing so, he provided a temporary conclusion to the Bamberg universal chronicles, even if his chronography was continued at Bamberg until 1180 by short annals.36 The universal chronicles that emerged during the following decades in Germany all ceased to refer back to the simple Reichenau Chronicle tradition, which had come to an end with the ‘Chronicon Wirziburgense’ and the chronicle from St Alban. Instead, these universal chronicles relied on the extended chronicle type provided by Frutolf and his Bamberg editors. In northern Germany, the reception was mainly based on the copy that Ekkehard had sent to Corvey, whereas in the south, editors continued to use the structurally similar versions of 1106 and 1125. Frutolf ’s chronicle experienced a rather unconventional revision during the 1140s by Bishop Otto of Freising (d. 1158). His work, completed in 1146 and encompassing eight books, bears the title ‘Historia de duabus civitatibus’ (History of the Two States).37 As is apparent in its title, it did not follow the formal structure of an annalistic chronicle, but instead formed a historical narrative focusing on a specific subject: the antagonism between theocracy (civitas dei) and the secular state (civitas mundi) as developed by the Church Father Augustine at the beginning of the fifth century as a model for the understanding of world history. The first special feature of this work is that Otto not only was inspired by this model, like other chroniclers, but also explicitly chose to use it as a fundamental principle for arranging his work. The second noteworthy element is his effort to follow the antagonism historically, beyond Augustine, into his own time, and even from the world’s beginning to its end. Because in his imagination the end of the world would take place exactly as written in prophetic biblical scripture, he could give an account at the conclusion of his work of the end of time, marking the final triumph of the good theocracy over the evil earthly state. The Augustinian model was extended by Otto of Freising not only chronologically, but also in relation to its content. For Augustine, the theocracy was purely a celestial-outerworldly sphere, a perfect state that could never be achieved on earth, existing only in heaven. He attributed all manifestations of secular rule to the evil worldly state, among them the Roman Empire, because

36 Annales Babenbergenses, ed. by Pertz, p. 4; Müller, Die Annalen und Chroniken, pp. 225–29. 37 Ottonis episcopi Frisingensis Chronica, ed. by Hofmeister; cf. Goetz, Das Geschichtsbild Ottos von Freising; Ehlers, Otto von Freising.

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his own experience showed it to be a non- or even anti-Christian state that had long fought and persecuted Christianity. For Otto of Freising, on the other hand, the Roman Empire still existed according to the familiar idea of translatio imperii, and thus could not be entirely evil. After all, Christianity had been the Empire’s dominant religion since the fourth century, and the Roman emperor the official protector of the Roman Church. Of course, the empire could not be a perfect theocracy, but at least it was a civitas permixta, in which the vices of the worldly state were neutralized as far as possible through the influence of the theocracy. The necessary prerequisite for this civitas permixta, though, was harmonious co-operation between the Church and worldly power, which had come to an abrupt end with the investiture controversy. But if the impending end of the Roman Empire as civitas permixta was threatened after the separation of Church and state in Otto’s own time, then according to the doctrine of the Four Universal Kingdoms of Daniel, the end of the world was imminent. Thus Otto located himself and his contemporaries at the very end of history. Ultimately, Otto of Freising cannot be deemed simply an historical chronicler, even though his ‘Historia de duabus civitatibus’ contains much historical information and is an outstanding source for the history of the twelfth century. In contrast to other chroniclers, Otto rather understood himself to be an interpreter of history who wanted to infer a deeper meaning from the course of historical events. His preoccupation with history, its ups and downs, and the recurring fight between good and evil — in which good does not always prevail — left Otto with a rather pessimistic view of the world. He suffered in his own present, especially from the constant wars in which he and his bishopric were repeatedly involved. This is why his work contained the clear message not to involve yourself in this earthly game and not to please mankind, but to concentrate all your efforts on God — the aim of all history. Aptly, he was called a moralist, whose demand for a fundamental contempt for the world constituted a ‘depressiven Außenposten im wissenschaftlichen Optimismus der Frühscholastik’ (outpost of depression in the scholarly optimism of early scholasticism).38 In spite of its peculiar form, which completely deviated from the usual structure of universal chronicles, Otto’s work spread quickly in southern Germany and attracted even more attention during the age of Humanism.39 Burchard (d. 1231), provost of the Premonstratensian monastery at Swabian Ursberg, achieved much less success with his universal chronicle.40 Only a few later manuscripts survive, only one of them complete. Burchard explained his objectives precisely in two prologues. First, he wanted to simplify the

38 Ehlers, Otto von Freising, p. 265. 39 Schürmann, Die Rezeption. 40 Die Chronik des Propstes Burchard, ed. by Holder-Egger and von Simson; Wulz, Der spätstaufische Geschichtsschreiber; Oberweis, ‘Die Weltchronik’, 44–69.

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tabular layout of the pre-Christian part of Eusebius or Jerome’s chronicle, as these were ‘highly complex but of little use’.41 Second, he wanted to portray ‘the deeds of kings, especially those of the Roman Empire’,42 like the many before him who had written ‘about empires and emperors and the events of the times’.43 But for the most part Burchard’s work was little more than a literal copy of Frutolf ’s chronicle in the version running to 1125. Burchard only skipped the first part, down to the beginning of the Assyrian Empire; otherwise, he only slightly shortened his source text or made sporadic minor amendments. After a brief review of the Salian dynasty, Burchard added his own history of the Roman kings from Lothar III to Frederick II, ending in 1230. Analogous to Frutolf ’s scheme, the treatment of individual rulers was divided into an historical overview (gesta) and an annalistic account (anni). The portrayal of contemporary events was very detailed and testifies to its author’s extensive education and broad interests. At the same time, however, it is evident that Burchard was not ultimately concerned with recording universal history, but rather with embedding his own accounts into a universal frame. Consequently, he granted much more space to the history of his own time than did the Reichenau chronicler or Frutolf of Michelsberg. This tendency had already emerged in the preceding Bamberg-Frutolf revision: Burchard did not cause the imbalance between accounts of world history and contemporary history, but he substantially reinforced it. Of course, only those readers who shared Burchard’s concern with the history of their own time would find it as interesting as he; for others, it was hardly relevant. This may be the reason why his chronicle had a decidedly weak impact. Far more successful was the revision produced one generation after Burchard by Abbot Hermann (d. 1275) from the Bavarian Benedictine abbey of Niederaltaich. He had a copy of the chronicle in the version to 1106, which had probably been copied directly from Frutolf ’s Bamberg autograph at the beginning of the thirteenth century. Niederaltaich had been a proprietary monastery of the bishops of Bamberg since 1152, which meant that Niederaltaich monks had the opportunity for regular visits to the episcopal see. This copy already contained a series of additional entries, mostly on the history of Niederaltaich itself.44 Hermann not only inserted historical notes in the margins, but also instructed a scribe to copy the contemporary passages from Otto of Freising’s ‘Historia de duabus civitatibus’ — a copy of which was

41 Chronik des Propstes Burchard, ed. by Holder-Egger and von Simson, p. 2: ‘multa difficultas et modica videtur inesse utilitas’. 42 Chronik des Propstes Burchard, ed. by Holder-Egger and von Simson, p. 3: ‘Nos vero, sicut fuerit voluntas in celo, de nostro proposito explebimus gesta regum maximeque Romani imperii’. 43 Chronik des Propstes Burchard, ed. by Holder-Egger and von Simson, p. 1: ‘De regnis et regibus et gestis temporum multi scripserunt varia hec descriptione prosequentes’. 44 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 413; Auctarium Ekkehardi Altahense, ed. by Jaffé, pp. 360–65; Müller, Die Annalen und Chroniken, pp. 21, 25–28.

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available at Niederaltaich45 — into the codex to continue the narrative to 1146. Immediately afterwards, the same scribe inserted Hermann’s own annals: a detailed account of the history of Germany, especially Bavaria, down to 1265. Until his abdication in 1273, Abbot Hermann dictated other annalistic reports to various scribes every year. A canon of the cathedral chapter of Regensburg called Eberhard, who was born in Niederaltaich and had apparently taught at the monastic school there, later continued the annals until the year 1305.46 Hermann’s annals are still today highly valued as a source for the history of the thirteenth century, since their author was an attentive and well-informed observer of his time. Nevertheless, this cannot mask the fact that his chronicle in its entirety was a mere makeshift assembled from disparate parts, and did not follow a uniform structure. Like Burchard of Ursberg, Hermann’s history of his own time formed the core of his interest; Frutolf ’s universally oriented chronicle therefore served mostly as an introduction to his own narrative. Hermann’s work became the most important basis for all Bavarian historical writing of the later Middle Ages, both in annalistic as well as in historiographic terms. However, the complete work as provided in the Niederaltaich manuscript was received nowhere, only the later parts written by Hermann and Eberhard themselves. As a result, the underlying core material from the Reichenau universal chronicle can no longer be traced in these later works. Apparently, it proved too universal for the Bavarian authors of the late Middle Ages.47 Frutolf ’s universal chronicle had less impact in central Germany than it had in the south,48 although several copies of the work were produced there. The version extending to 1125 was copied in a monastery in Thuringia (probably Reinhardsbrunn): it contained further additions, mainly from the universal chronicle of Lampert of Hersfeld (d. after 1081), along with an extension to 1137. This version was soon thereafter copied again in the abbey of St Peter at Erfurt, where it received further additions.49 A little later, at the abbey of Altzella in Saxony, a copy of the Frutolf chronicle was continued to 1169 by drawing on other annalistic works.50 Moreover, Frutolf ’s chronicle was repeatedly used as a source for the composition of new historical works in eastern Saxony, but this can no longer be regarded as ‘rewriting’, merely as simple reception.

45 Later at Strasbourg, burned in 1870; Nass, ‘Heinrich der Löwe oder Heinrich XIII’. 46 Hermanni Altahensis annales, ed. by Jaffé, pp. 381–408, the sequel of Eberhard (pp. 408–20, 591–600); cf. Müller, Die Annalen und Chroniken, pp. 5–80, 81–408 (on Eberhard); Holzfurtner, ‘Hermann von Niederaltaich’. 47 Müller, Die Annalen und Chroniken; Glaser, ‘Geschichtsschreibung’. 48 Nass, Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, pp. 80–82. 49 Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Memb. I 92; S. Petri Erphesfurtensis auctarium, ed. by HolderEgger; Holder-Egger, ‘Studien’, pp. 725–35; Werner, Die Gründungstradition, pp. 31–43. 50 Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, MS Dresd. J. 48; Chronici Ekkehardi continuatio brevis, ed. by Holder-Egger.

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In western Germany, Frutolf ’s chronicle only gained attention relatively late. In the abbey of Siegburg near Cologne a chronicle was created in the 1170s, known as ‘Chronica regia Coloniensis’ as it presents itself decidedly as a chronicle of the Roman kings and emperors, even stating this explicitly (regia cronica) at one point.51 This chronicle is only known through later revisions, which do not clearly reveal the author’s intended chronological scope. Given its main theme, the chronicle probably began neither with the creation of the world nor with the birth of Christ, but with the reign of Augustus. Down to 1106 it was nothing other than a slightly changed copy of Frutolf ’s chronicle, followed by a copy of the annals from Paderborn to 1144, and then by an independent continuation which was completed at the latest in 1177. About twenty years later a copy of this Siegburg Chronicle reached the diocesan see of Cologne, where it was continued to 1199, and afterwards extended to 1220 in a single stroke. Only this edition is preserved, in a single manuscript that transmits an incomplete text.52 However, we can reconstruct the original extent with the aid of a revision from the Westphalian Premonstratensian monastery at Cappenberg. This manuscript added a few comments on the history of the Cappenberg church and its founders in the earlier section, but otherwise did not alter the text of its precursor.53 In the abbey of St Pantaleon at Cologne, a revision of the ‘Chronica regia’ was composed in 1237, which survives in an almost contemporary copy.54 Compared with the Siegburg original, the text here was significantly extended, apparently because the compiler sought to reject the fixation with the deeds of Roman emperors and kings in favour of presenting a real universal chronicle. Thus he began his chronicle with an account of pre-Christian history and the creation of the world, composed of excerpts from the ‘Historia scholastica’ of Peter Comestor, the Roman History of Justinus, and the ‘Historia adversus paganos’ by Orosius, as well as other sources. Although individual passages of the text are assembled from these sources, the collection and design as a whole was an original idea. Its attention is focused mainly on the sequence of the Four Universal Kingdoms. Not until Augustus did the chronicler begin to follow Frutolf ’s account, available to him in the form of the ‘Chronica regia Coloniensis’. He extended the text in some passages, drawing on a few more sources, and cut his source where it seemed too long-winded, mostly in the parts taken from the annals of Paderborn. Subsequently, he continued the entries down to his composition year of 1237, maintaining the focus on the history of the Holy Roman Empire. 51 Chronica regia Coloniensis, ed. by Waitz, p. 99; Groten, ‘Klösterliche Geschichtsschreibung’. 52 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnham 1586 (= A1 in Chronica regia Coloniensis, ed. by Waitz). In addition, there are short excerpts in Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 302. 1 Extrav. (= A3). 53 Trento, Biblioteca comunale, W 3382 (= A2 in the edition of the Chronica regia Coloniensis). 54 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 74. 3 Aug. 2° (= B1 in Chronica regia Coloniensis, ed. by Waitz).

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His work was revised again a little later, apparently at Cologne, and certainly outside his own monastery; this revision survives in two copies.55 Here the interventions were minimal: the text from St Pantaleon was occasionally shortened in the Frutolf section, but the twelfth- and thirteenth-century parts remained mostly unaltered; at most, the wording was changed without intervention in content or substance. Unlike his predecessor, the editor apparently did not attach great importance to giving his work an individual aspect. Nor did he add a continuation; his work ends, like its source, in 1237. In northern Germany, Frutolf ’s chronicle became known mostly in the form that Ekkehard of Aura had sent to Corvey in 1116/1117.56 A generation later, the work was edited into a new chronicle extending to 1144, either at Corvey or at the nearby see of Paderborn. This chronicle, introduced by the name ‘Annales Patherbrunnenses’, does not survive, so it is difficult to determine to what extent the source was incorporated. Indeed, the text can only be reconstructed for the most recent passages not taken from Ekkehard’s chronicle.57 At about the same time a copy of the Corvey exemplar was produced in the abbey of Berge near the see of Magdeburg; soon afterwards, additional historical notes on the history of the abbey and the archbishops of Magdeburg were inserted in the margins of the manuscript.58 From this copy, the ‘Annales Magdeburgenses’ were drawn up in the 1170s; beginning with the birth of Christ, they offered a shortened version of Ekkehard’s chronicle extending to the tenth century, while occasionally supplementing it with material from other sources. It is not until the entries for the tenth century that the range of sources broadened, and the history of the archdiocese of Magdeburg (founded in 968) came to the fore, whereupon the compiler abandoned Ekkehard as the main source.59 Even at the court of Duke Henry the Lion (d. 1195) in Brunswick, Ekkehard’s chronicle was used as the basis for a new historical work. Only later excerpts of this work survived, however, meaning that we can gain only a rough idea of its original extent.60 Moreover, the work of Frutolf and Ekkehard was still used in several other histories of northern Germany, among them the ‘Reichschronik’ (Imperial Chronicle) by the Anonymous of Magdeburg who

55 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 521, and Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, MS 467 (= C1/C2 in Chronica regia Coloniensis, ed. by Waitz). 56 Nass, Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, pp. 80–84. 57 Reconstruction in Die größeren Annalen von Corvey, pp. 37–72; cf. pp. 8–34; Schmale, ‘“Paderborner” oder “Korveyer” Annalen?’; Nass, Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, pp. 209–14. 58 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS lat. fol. 295; cf. Nass, Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, pp. 72–74. 59 Hanover, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, MS XIX 1105; Annales Magdeburgenses, ed. by Pertz; cf. Nass, Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, pp. 179–82. 60 Annalium s. Aegidii Brunsvicensium excerpta, ed. by von Heinemann; Nass, ‘Geschichtsschreibung’.

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is traditionally known as ‘Annalista Saxo’.61 But for him, as for others, Frutolf ’s chronicle was only one source among many. A rather peculiar change was made to Ekkehard’s chronicle by a canon from the Premonstratensian monastery at Pöhlde, situated in the southern foothills of the Harz.62 His ‘Pöhlde annals’ — more precisely, ‘Pöhlde’s universal chronicle’ — survive in their original form. They start with a prologue emphasizing the importance of the chronicle of Eusebius and its Latin revision by Jerome, as well as its continuation by Hydatius, for the production of a precise chronology — a chronology often distorted by later chroniclers’ incorrect calculations.63 Consequently, copyists of the work were admonished to read carefully in order to avoid misleading future readers.64 The prologue concluded with a description of the world borrowed from the Imago mundi by Honorius Augustodunensis, and was followed by the chronological account. This began with the creation of the world and, for the earlier part to 1125, mainly followed the chronicle of Ekkehard. Like its source, it placed the idea of the translatio imperii at the core of its design. But the Pöhlde annals differed conspicuously from their source and other contemporary universal chronicles in the frequent interlacing of prophecies, omens, and miracles, as well as anecdotes about the German kings that gave the work an unflattering characterization as ‘Sagenchronik’ (The Fabulous Chronicle).65 Yet these insertions, whose fictional character is mostly clear from today’s perspective, were by no means mere fables. Rather, they usually contained a moral message, thereby giving the entire work an ethical dimension that points to an intention beyond the familiar task of recounting historical events. Albert (d. 1264), the abbot of the Benedictine abbey of St Mary at Stade upon Niederelbe, who had to resign from his office in 1240 and entered the Franciscan order, was one of the last north German chroniclers to base his work on Frutolf ’s chronicle, and consequently on the core of the Reichenau material. His universal chronicle, which he began shortly after 1256 and continued to that year, was overshadowed by his apparent feeling of bitterness

61 Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, ed. by Nass. 62 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 633; Annales Palidenses, ed. by Pertz, with corrections by Waitz, ‘Reise nach England’, p. 29; cf. Goetz, ‘Konstruktion der Vergangenheit’; Lehner, Prophetie, pp. 106–28. 63 Annales Palidenses, ed. by Pertz, p. 51: ‘Plurimi enim libri in augmento vel diminutione numerorum, in transpositione vel omissione nominum, aut cum ab alio gesta alteri attribuuntur, in tantum a considerantibus variati inveniuntur, ut vix sit aliquis qui concordet cum altero. Quorum auctores computationibus suis fidentes […] a directo tramite deviaverunt’. 64 Annales Palidenses, ed. by Pertz, p. 51: ‘Scriptores quoque, qui librarii dicuntur, studiose attendant, ut inventam veritatem sua diligentia conservent; quia ut dicit sanctus Ieronimus, saepe vicium scriptoris imponitur auctori, et sciant iudici vero se negligentia debitores, quorum vitio veridicus auctor falsificatur et posteris via erroris et contentionis aperitur’. 65 Wattenbach, Die Jahrbücher von Pöhlde, p. vii.

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over his forced resignation.66 In the prologue he lamented the wickedness of his own times, and emphasized — not unlike Otto of Freising — the moralistic effect of engaging with history: readers and listeners should ‘benefit from the kindness of the good and be cautious through the wickedness of the bad’.67 Consequently Albert did not show interest in computistic matters: ‘Who is confused by contradictions in dates may calculate the correct year himself ’.68 The historical account, which began with the creation of the world, followed Frutolf ’s chronicle even in the use of synoptic tables. Frutolf ’s work provided the chronological framework to 1106 and the bulk of the historical information, to which only a few other entries from different sources were added. Unlike most of the other Frutolf redactions, however, Albert of Stade focused not so much on imperial history as Church history. Accordingly, he paid less attention to the sequence of the Four Universal Kingdoms than to the six world eras of salvation history. In Christian times, Church history was condensed into the history of the Roman popes, and therefore it might seem appropriate that seemingly foreign elements were inserted into the universal chronicle: a catalogue of popes and a route description for a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem. Albert’s particular interest is in the history of northern Germany and the Baltic, which is increasingly evident in the part he composed himself. We can perceive how little the Roman-German Empire of the thirteenth century, with its Swabian-Sicilian rulers, was deemed a factor of universal importance by this north German chronicler. Albert of Stade’s universal chronicle survives in only one manuscript, a fourteenth-century copy, which presented a shortened version of the original. The manuscript also included a continuation to 1324, which was obviously composed by a Franciscan at Lübeck, and focused heavily on the history of the city and its surroundings.69 Earlier, at the end of the thirteenth century, the complete version of Albert’s chronicle (then still in existence) had been revised again. This chronicle largely retained the universal scope of the source, even though it did not begin until the birth of Christ and its selection of Albert’s entries (ultimately derived mainly from Frutolf) often seems arbitrary. In a sense, the author approached the original meagre core of the Reichenau material once more, but he strove neither for a consistent history of the emperors nor for a clear focus on Church history. In the most recent parts of the chronicle, extending to 1265, he focused attention on events in the duchy

66 Annales Stadenses, ed. by Lappenberg (a partial edition); complete edn: Chronicon Alberti, abbatis Stadensis, ed. by Reineccius; Maeck, ‘Vom Benediktinerabt zum Minderbruder’; Maeck, Die Weltchronik des Albert von Stade. 67 Annales Stadenses, ed. by Lappenberg, p. 284: ‘Ideo ergo gesta scribuntur hominum, ut lectores auditoresque de bonorum bonitate proficiant, et de malorum malitia cauti fiant’. 68 Annales Stadenses, ed. by Lappenberg, p. 284: ‘Unde reor non incongruum, ut de annorum veritate ipse sibi calculet perfecte, quem annorum contrarietas coegerit dubitare’. 69 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 466 Helmst; Annales Lubicenses, ed. by Lappenberg.

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of Holstein and the city of Hamburg. Whether the chronicle really originated in Hamburg, as the common (but not original) title ‘Annales Hamburgenses’ indicates, remains uncertain.70 The chronicle was drastically shortened in a later work, known as the ‘Annales Hamburgenses brevissimi’. In these annals, only a few pieces of information on the history of Hamburg were borrowed from the source, for which reason the narrative began only in 751. Although practically no word in this text originated other than from its source, we can no longer discern the focus of the original on universal history.71 The Hamburg annals can therefore be said to conclude the development of the Reichenau universal chronicle. They are, however, not the only dead end, since between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, a tree with many branches had grown from this root. What was created around 1040, on the Isle of Reichenau on Lake Constance, was a simple chronology of the Roman emperors from Augustus to Conrad II, with the main events of their respective reigns. Soon after it emerged, this Reichenau core material was supplemented and revised several times at its place of origin. The most thorough of these reworkings took place in the Chronicle of Hermann the Lame, which remains one of the most sophisticated historiographical achievements of the eleventh century. However, this work received little attention in subsequent years, whereas the less ambitious revisions achieved greater success. With only slight alterations, the Reichenau core material was introduced into Austrian annalistic writing, forming the basis of the narrative down to the end of the Middle Ages. At the abbey of Melk, it was even continued until the year 1564. For its further reception, it was decisive that the monk Frutolf of Michelsberg at Bamberg used the Reichenau Chronicle as the basis for his own universal chronicle. With its extension to include the time before the birth of Christ, its improved chronology, and its wealth of information, this chronicle surpassed all contemporary universal chronicles of its time, which explains its fulminant success in the subsequent two hundred years. Within only a few years, Frutolf’s chronicle was revised several times at Bamberg itself, and copies of the different versions soon spread to different parts of Germany, where they became the subject of new revisions. In part, these revisions were simple continuations, as in the case of Burchard of Ursberg or Hermann of Niederaltaich, both of whom hardly intervened in the original text. More frequently, Frutolf’s original text was shortened and at the same time supplemented with region-specific entries, thereby embedding the compilers’ own local histories into the course of universal history. From time to time, Frutolf’s account formed the basis of historical works of a totally different character: Heimo of Bamberg wrote a treatise on computus to rectify Frutolf’s chronological contradictions; Otto of

70 Annales Hamburgenses, ed. by Reuter; Weiland, ‘Zur Quellenkritik der Sachsenchronik’. 71 Annales Hamburgenses brevissimi, ed. by Reuter. The same applies to the Annales Bremenses, ed. by Jaffé, an excerpt from the chronicle by Albert von Stade with a main topic similar to the Annales Hamburgenses brevissimi.

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Freising used it as a starting point for his moralistic-theological reflections on the eternal fight between good and evil in the world. Thus everyone who created a new revision of the Reichenau universal chronicle from the eleventh until the thirteenth century tailored the chronological material to his own requirements. Last but not least, we must attend to one further fact: whereas for over two hundred years in the whole of Germany, from Lake Constance to the Elbe, people worked with the material of the Reichenau Chronicle almost everywhere, the same material received no reception beyond the German realm. This absence can be best explained by the chronicle’s design as a history of the Roman emperors and their successors, the German kings. According to the theory of translatio imperii, the Salians and Staufens saw themselves as direct successors of the Roman emperors of Antiquity, their realm as the continuation of the Roman Empire, and therefore, according to exegetical tradition, as part of the divine plan for salvation that directed all of world history. Building on this idea, chroniclers within the German realm formed the wish to embed their own history and the present era in a universal context; whereas outside Germany, the need of chroniclers to locate themselves in the context of the Roman Empire was understandably not a priority. On the other hand, the same awareness of translatio imperii meant that universal history came to be understood primarily as the history of the Frankish and German kings, to the exclusion of anything beyond that political framework. Only in the course of the thirteenth century did the Roman Empire begin to lose its appeal as the sole determining factor in world history even within the German realm. For the perception of history in the following centuries, it is significant that the papacy emerged as a paramount determining factor to rival the emperors in the writing of universal history, a trend clearly evident in the ‘Chronicon pontificum et imperatorum’ by the Dominican Martinus Oppaviensis (d. 1278) and the ‘Flores temporum’ (c. 1290). Existing in hundreds of manuscripts, these two works achieved a success that far surpassed even the quite remarkable impact of the Reichenau universal chronicle.72 In the new era, in which the popes rather than the German kings represented the universal power par excellence, there was no more need for the rather simple catalogue of emperors created at Reichenau in 1040 — a framework which, in its exclusive focus on the Roman-German Empire, now represented an outdated view of history.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Bamberg, Staatsbibliothek, MS Hist. 5 Berlin, Staatsbibliothek Preußischer Kulturbesitz, MS lat. fol. 295

72 Mierau, Die Papst-Kaiser-Chroniken.

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Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale Albert Ier, MS 467 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 373 Dresden, Sächsische Landesbibliothek, MS Dresd. J. 48 Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Ashburnham 1586 Gotha, Forschungsbibliothek, Memb. I 92 Hanover, Niedersächsische Landesbibliothek, MS XIX 1105 Jena, Thüringische Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek, MS Bos. q. 19 Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, Cod. K 504 Melk, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 391 Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 633 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Duchesne 49 ———, MS fonds latin 4860 Trento, Biblioteca comunale, W 3382 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Reg. lat. 521 Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 413 Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bibliothek, Cod. Guelf. 74. 3 Aug. 2° ———, Cod. Guelf. 302. 1 Extrav ———, Cod. Guelf. 466 Helmst Primary Sources Annales Babenbergenses, ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in MGH SS 10 (1852), p. 4 Annales Bremenses, ed. by Philipp Jaffé, in MGH SS 17 (1861), pp. 854–58 Annales Hamburgenses, ed. by Friedrich Reuter, in Scriptores minores rerum SlesvicoHoltsatensium (Kiel: Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1875), pp. 397–430 Annales Hamburgenses brevissimi, ed. by Friedrich Reuter, in Scriptores minores rerum Slesvico-Holtsatensium (Kiel: Universitätsbuchhandlung, 1875), pp. 430–34 Annales Lubicenses, ed. by Johann Martin Lappenberg, in MGH SS 16 (1859), pp. 411–29 Annales Magdeburgenses, ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in MGH SS 16 (1859), pp. 105–96 Annales Mellicenses, ed. by Wilhelm Wattenbach, in MGH SS 9 (1851), pp. 484–535 Annales Palidenses, ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in MGH SS 16 (1859), pp. 48–96 Annales Rosenveldenses, ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in MGH SS 16 (1859), pp. 99–104 Annales Stadenses, ed. by Johann Martin Lappenberg, in MGH SS 16 (1859), pp. 271–374 Annales Wirziburgenses ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in MGH SS 2 (1829), pp. 238–47 Annalium s. Aegidii Brunsvicensium excerpta, ed. by Lothar von Heinemann, in MGH SS 30/1 (1896), pp. 6–15 Auctarium Ekkehardi Altahense, ed. by Philipp Jaffé, in MGH SS 17 (1861), pp. 360–65 Auctarium Mellicense, ed. by Wilhelm Wattenbach, in MGH SS 9 (1851), pp. 535–37

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Chronica regia Coloniensis (Annales maximi Colonienses), ed. by Georg Waitz, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum 18 (Hanover: Hahn, 1880) Chronici Ekkehardi continuatio brevis a. 1125–1169, ed. by Oswald HolderEgger, in Monumenta Erphesfurtensia saec. XII. XIII. XIV, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum 42 (Hanover: Hahn, 1899), pp. 68–71 Chronicles of the Investiture Contest: Frutolf of Michelsberg and his Continuators, trans. by T. J. H. McCarthy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014) Chronicon Alberti, abbatis Stadensis, a condito orbe usque ad auctoris aetatem, ed. by Reinerus Reineccius (Helmstadt: Lucius, 1587) Chronicon Suevicum universale, ed. by Harry Bresslau, in MGH SS 13 (1881), pp. 61–72 Chronicon Wirziburgense, ed. by Georg Waitz, in MGH SS 6 (1844), pp. 17–32 Die Chronik des Propstes Burchard von Ursberg (Burchardi praepositi Urspergensis Chronicon), ed. by Oswald Holder-Egger and Bernhard von Simson, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum 16 (Hanover: Hahn, 1916) Die Chroniken Bertholds von Reichenau und Bernolds von Konstanz, 1054–1100, ed. by Ian S. Robinson, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum, new series 14 (Hanover: Hahn, 2003) Ekkehardi Chronicon universale, ed. by Georg Waitz, in MGH SS 6 (1844), pp. 33–210 Eleventh-Century Germany: The Swabian Chronicles, trans. by Ian S. Robinson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2008) Frutolfs und Ekkehards Chroniken und die anonyme Kaiserchronik, ed. by FranzJosef Schmale and Irene Schmale-Ott (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972); digital pre-print editions by Benedikt Marxreiter, MGH SS 33/2, and Martina Hartmann, MGH SS 33/3, available on MGH website (https://www.mgh.de/en/digital-mgh/digital-resources-mghsections) Heimo von Bamberg, De decursu temporum, ed. by Hans Martin Weikmann, MGH Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte, 19 (Hanover: Hahn, 2004) Herimanni Augiensis Chronicon, ed. by Georg Heinrich Pertz, in MGH SS 5 (1844), pp. 67–133 Hermanni Altahensis annales, ed. by Philipp Jaffé, in MGH SS 17 (1861), pp. 381–420 Ottonis episcopi Frisingensis Chronica sive Historia de duabus civitatibus, ed. by Adolf Hofmeister, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum 45 (Hanover: Hahn, 1912) Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo, ed. by Klaus Nass, in MGH SS 37 (2006) Richer von Saint-Remi: Historiae, ed. by Hartmut Hoffmann, in MGH SS 38 (2000) Die Sachsengeschichte des Widukind von Korvei, ed. by Hans-Eberhard Lohmann and Paul Hirsch, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum 60 (Hanover: Hahn, 1935) S. Petri Erphesfurtensis auctarium et continuatio chronici Ekkehardi, ed. by Oswald Holder-Egger, in Monumenta Erphesfurtensia saec. XII. XIII. XIV, MGH SS rerum Germanicarum 42 (Hanover: Hahn, 1899), pp. 23–44 Sichard, Johann, En damus chronicon divinum plane opus eruditissimorum autorum (Basel: Petrus, 1529), fols 167v–200v

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Secondary Works Beihammer, Alexander, ‘Die alpenländische Annalengruppe (AGS) und ihre Quellen’, Mitteilungen des Instituts für österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 106 (1998), 253–327 Borst, Arno, ‘Ein Forschungsbericht Hermanns des Lahmen’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 40 (1984), 379–477 Bresslau, Harry, ‘Hermann von Reichenau und die sogenannte Epitome Sangallensis’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 2 (1877), 566–96 ———, ‘Die Chroniken des Frutolf von Bamberg und des Ekkehard von Aura’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 21 (1896), 197–234 Buchner, Rudolf, ‘Der Verfasser der Schwäbischen Weltchronik’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 16 (1960), 389–96 Dale, Johanna, ‘The Provenance of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 373’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 14 (2008), 33–50 ———, ‘Imperial Self-Representation and the Manipulation of History in TwelfthCentury Germany: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 373’, German History, 29 (2011), 557–83 Deutinger, Roman, ‘Lateinische Weltchronistik des Hochmittelalters’, in Handbuch Chroniken des Mittelalters, ed. by Gerhard Wolf and Norbert H. Ott (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 77–103 Duch, Arno, ‘Das Geschichtswerk Hermanns von Reichenau in seiner Überlieferung’, in Berno und Hermann von Reichenau als Musiktheoretiker, ed. by Hans Oesch (Bern: Haupt, 1961), pp. 184–203 Dunphy, Graeme, ed., Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2010) Ehlers, Joachim, Otto von Freising, Ein Intellektueller im Mittelalter: Eine Biographie (Munich: Beck 2013) Glaser, Hubert, ‘Geschichtsschreibung’, in Handbuch der bayerischen Geschichte, ii, ed. by Andreas Kraus, 2nd edn (Munich: Beck, 1988), pp. 841–60 Goetz, Hans-Werner, Das Geschichtsbild Ottos von Freising: Ein Beitrag zur historischen Vorstellungswelt und zur Geschichte des 12. Jahrhunderts, Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, Beiheft 19 (Cologne: Böhlau, 1984) ———, ‘Konstruktion der Vergangenheit: Geschichtsbewußtsein und Fiktionalität in der hochmittelalterlichen Chronistik, dargestellt am Beispiel der Annales Palidenses’, in Von Fakten und Fiktionen: Mittelalterliche Geschichtsdarstellungen und ihre kritische Aufarbeitung, ed. by Johannes Laudage (Cologne: Böhlau, 2003), pp. 225–57 ———, ‘Das Geschichts- und Weltbild der Chronik Hermanns von Reichenau’, in Hermann der Lahme: Reichenauer Mönch und Universalgelehrter des 11. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Felix Heinzer and Thomas Zotz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2016), pp. 87–131

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Groten, Manfred, ‘Klösterliche Geschichtsschreibung: Siegburg und die Kölner Königschronik’, Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter, 61 (1997), 50–78 Haider, Siegfried, ‘Die schriftlichen Quellen zur Geschichte des österreichischen Raumes im frühen und hohen Mittelalter’, in Die Quellen der Geschichte Österreichs, ed. by Erich Zöllner (Vienna: Österreichischer Bundesverlag, 1982), pp. 26–49 Holder-Egger, Oswald, ‘Studien zu Thüringischen Geschichtsquellen V’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 21 (1896), 685–735 Holzfurtner, Ludwig, ‘Hermann von Niederaltaich und die Anfänge der bayerischen Landesgeschichtsschreibung’, in Studien zur bayerischen Landesgeschichtsschreibung in Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Festgabe für Andreas Kraus zum 90. Geburtstag, ed. by Alois Schmid and Ludwig Holzfurtner, Zeitschrift für bayerische Landesgeschichte, Beiheft 41 (Munich: Beck, 2012), pp. 95–115 Lehner, Hans Christian, Prophetie zwischen Eschatologie und Politik: Zur Rolle der Vorhersagbarkeit von Zukünftigem in der hochmittelalterlichen Historiografie, Historische Forschungen, 29 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2015) Lhotsky, Alphons, Quellenkunde zur mittelalterlichen Geschichte Österreichs (Graz: Böhlau, 1963) McCarthy, T. J. H., ‘Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle, the Schools of Bamberg, and the Transmission of Imperial Polemic’, Haskins Society Journal, 23 (2011), 51–70 ———, The Continuations of Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle, MGH Schriften, 74 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2018) Maeck, Gerda, ‘Vom Benediktinerabt zum Minderbruder: Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung Alberts von Stade’, Wissenschaft und Weisheit, 63 (2000), 86–135 ———, Die Weltchronik des Albert von Stade, ein Zeitzeugnis des Mittelalters: Studien zur Geschichtsschreibung Alberts von Stade (Norderstedt: Books on Demand, 2001) Mierau, Heike Johanna, Die Papst-Kaiser-Chroniken des Spätmittelalters (2006), at

Müller, Michael, Die Annalen und Chroniken im Herzogtum Bayern, 1250–1314, Schriftenreihe zur bayerischen Landesgeschichte, 77 (Munich: Beck, 1983) Nass, Klaus, ‘Heinrich der Löwe oder Heinrich XIII. von Bayern? Zum Widmungsgedicht des Straßburger Codex 88’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 50 (1994), 603–10 ———, ‘Geschichtsschreibung am Hofe Heinrichs des Löwen’, in Die Welfen und ihr Braunschweiger Hof im hohen Mittelalter, ed. by Bernd Schneidmüller, Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien, 7 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1995), pp. 123–61 ———, Die Reichschronik des Annalista Saxo und die sächsische Geschichtsschreibung im 12. Jahrhundert, MGH Schriften, 41 (Hanover: Hahn, 1996) Oberweis, Michael, ‘Die Weltchronik des Propstes Burchard von Ursberg: Staufische Reichspolitik in universalhistorischer Perspektive’, Analecta Praemonstrensia, 87 (2011), 44–69

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Pokorny, Rudolf, ‘Das Chronicon Wirziburgense, seine neuaufgefundene Vorlage und die Textstufen der Reichenauer Chronistik des 11. Jahrhunderts’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 57 (2001), 63–93, 451–99 Robinson, Ian S., ‘Die Chronik Hermanns von Reichenau und die Reichenauer Kaiserchronik’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 36 (1980), 84–136 Schmale, Franz-Josef, ‘Überlieferungskritik und Editionsprinzipien der Chronik Ekkehards von Aura’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 27 (1971), 110–34 ———, ‘“Paderborner” oder “Korveyer” Annalen?’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 30 (1974), 505–26 ———, ‘Die Reichenauer Weltchronistik’, in Die Abtei Reichenau: Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte und Kultur des Inselklosters, ed. by Helmut Maurer (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1974), pp. 125–58 ———, ‘Die österreichische Annalistik im 12. Jahrhundert’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters, 31 (1975), 144–203 ———, Die größeren Annalen von Corvey (Annales Corbeiensis [sic] maiores), Abhandlungen zur Corveyer Geschichtsschreibung, 8 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1996) Schürmann, Brigitte, Die Rezeption der Werke Ottos von Freising im 15. und frühen 16. Jahrhundert, Historische Forschungen, 12 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1987) Schwarzbauer, Fabian, Geschichtszeit: Über Zeitvorstellungen in den Universalchroniken Frutolfs von Michelsberg, Honorius’ Augustodunensis und Ottos von Freising, Orbis mediaevalis, 6 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 2005) Tischler, Matthias M., Einharts Vita Karoli: Studien zur Entstehung, Überlieferung und Rezeption, i, MGH Schriften, 48/1 (Hanover: Hahn, 2001) van Houts, Elisabeth, ‘Marriage as Inspiration for the Writing of History’, in Historical and Intellectual Culture in the Long Twelfth Century: The Scandinavian Connection, ed. by Mia Münster-Swendsen, Thomas K. Heebøll-Holm, and Sigbjørn Olsen Sønnesyn (Durham: Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2016), pp. 13–30 Verbist, Peter, Duelling with the Past: Medieval Authors and the Problem of Christian Era, c. 990–1135 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010) Waitz, Georg, ‘Reise nach England und Frankreich im Herbst 1877’, Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 4 (1879), 9–42 Warntjes, Immo, ‘Hermann der Lahme und die Zeitrechung. Bedeutung seiner Computistica und Forschungsperspektiven’, in Hermann der Lahme: Reichenauer Mönch und Universalgelehrter des 11. Jahrhunderts, ed. by Felix Heinzer and Thomas Zotz (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2016), pp. 285–321 Wattenbach, Wilhelm, Die Jahrbücher von Pöhlde, 2nd edn, Die Geschichtschreiber der deutschen Vorzeit, 61 (Leipzig: Dyk, 1894) Wattenbach, Wilhelm, Robert Holtzmann, and Franz-Josef Schmale, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter: Die Zeit der Sachsen und Salier, 3 vols (Cologne: Böhlau, 1967–1971)

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Wattenbach, Wilhelm, and Franz-Josef Schmale, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter: Vom Tode Kaiser Heinrichs V. bis zum Ende des Interregnum, i (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976) Weiland, Ludwig, ‘Zur Quellenkritik der Sachsenchronik’, Forschungen zur deutschen Geschichte, 13 (1873), pp. 157–98 Werner, Matthias, Die Gründungstradition des Erfurter Petersklosters, Vorträge und Forschungen, Sonderband, 12 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1973) Wulz, Wolfgang, Der spätstaufische Geschichtsschreiber Burchard von Ursberg: Persönlichkeit und historisch-politisches Weltbild, Schriften zur südwestdeutschen Landeskunde, 18 (Stuttgart: Müller and Gräff, 1982) Wurstisen, Christian, Germaniae historicorum illustrium […] tomus unus (Frankfurt: Heredes Andreae Wecheli, 1585)

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Patrick Wadden*

The Careful Look: Historical Culture in Gaeldom c. 1100

The vernacular literature of medieval Ireland is often characterized as ‘backward looking’. This period witnessed the writing and rewriting of a variety of texts of different genres concerned with depicting past events, from annals and chronicles to sagas and origin legends. Too often, however, this characterization is taken as a reference to the mentality of the authors and scribes to whom we owe the survival of this rich textual tradition. Those who composed and copied these texts were not vestiges of an ancient, oral culture, more attuned to the mindset of the heroic age of the pre-Christian past than to that of their own time; rather, they belonged to a local branch of a European, Christian learned culture. They were outward-looking as much as backward-looking. They shared their interests, sources, and methods in common with their contemporaries in Britain and elsewhere in Europe; while their immediate concerns were frequently local, their methods, approach, and general frame of reference were not.1 What marks the Gaelic historiographical tradition of this period off from that in much of the rest of Europe is not the nature of the material so much as the language in which it is written. The tradition of writing about the past in the vernacular stretches back at least to the seventh century in Ireland.2





* Early versions of this chapter were presented as papers at the Annual International Haskins Society Conference at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in November 2017 and at the annual meeting of the Celtic Studies Association of North America hosted by the University of California – Los Angeles in March 2018. I am grateful to all those who offered their comments and suggests on both occasions, especially Dr Thomas O’Donnell, Dr Brendan Kane, and Professor Huw Pryce. 1 This point is made with sensitivity and clarity by Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The Peripheral Centre’. I am very grateful to Professor Ní Mhaonaigh for providing me with a copy prior to publication. 2 See the early poems on the history of the Laigin, for example: Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae, i, ed. by O’Brien, pp. 1, 4–7, 334; Carney, ‘The Dating of Archaic Irish Verse’, pp. 46–47; Carney, ‘Three Old Irish Accentual Poems’, p. 73. On literacy in early Ireland, and the development of the vernacular, see Johnston, Literacy and Identity. Patrick Wadden  •  ([email protected]) is an Associate Professor of History at Belmont Abbey College, NC, and an Associate of the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 67–100 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126746

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Beginning in the ninth century, Gaelic gradually began to eclipse Latin as the primary language of composition in many historical genres.3 Many texts written during this period survive only in manuscripts of significantly later date, but this study will focus primarily on examples extant in manuscripts of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These survive only from Ireland, but that does not mean that their constituent texts all originated there. The character of the literary language of the time — referred to as Middle Irish or Middle Gaelic — means that it is often impossible to tell whether specific texts originated in Ireland or in other Gaelic-speaking areas, such as Scotland or the Isles. For example, although Lebor Bretnach, the Middle Gaelic translation of Historia Brittonum, survives only in Irish manuscripts, Thomas Clancy has argued that it was written in Scotland around the middle of the eleventh century.4 The Duan Albanach (Scottish Poem), a verse history of Scotland from its first inhabitation until the eleventh century, appears, on the other hand, to have been written in Ireland.5 Both of these points could be debated, but that only reinforces the idea that what we are dealing with is essentially a single Gaelic cultural province extending across the Irish Sea.6 Medieval Gaelic scholars wrote about the past in a great variety of genres, indicative of the numerous complex ways in which they engaged and interacted with it. In approaching this material, so diverse in form and content, it is useful to consider the concept of historical culture, as recently described by Peter Lambert and Björn Weiler. In their formulation, historical culture includes ‘the totality of means and media by which societies, groups and individuals engaged with the past and expressed their understanding of it […] not only the production of works engaging with the past, but also their uses and reception’.7 It is not possible in the space available to engage with all surviving manifestations of historical culture from the time and place under discussion, but it is my intention to demonstrate something of the breadth of relevant material with the goal of gaining some insight concerning the intellectual and cultural framework from which it emanated. Specifically, I wish to highlight the apparent concern for accuracy and consistency across a



3 For an overview, see Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The Literature of Medieval Ireland’, pp. 40–41. This change is evident in the annals, for which see Dumville, ‘Latin and Irish’. For a suggestion regarding possible political development underlying the linguistic change, see CharlesEdwards, Early Christian Ireland, pp. 592–99. 4 Clancy, ‘Scotland’. 5 ‘The Duan Albanach’, ed. and trans. by Jackson, pp. 128–29; Zumbühl, ‘Contextualizing the Duan Albanach’. 6 Middle Gaelic was not the only vernacular used in Ireland or in the territory that now comprises Scotland during this period, but discussion of texts in Old Norse or other languages lies beyond the scope of this study. An idea of the linguistic variety that then existed in what would become Scotland can be seen in the collection of poems translated into English in The Triumph Tree, ed. by Clancy. 7 Lambert and Weiler, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1, 8. The quotations come from the portion written by Lambert, ‘What is Historical Culture?’.

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range of representations of the past and how this might reflect broader trends in historical interpretation within the learned culture of Europe. Perhaps the most famous examples of history-writing in medieval Ireland are the surviving annal collections. Annals are contemporary or near contemporary records of events listed under the year they occurred.8 All surviving annal collections are based on the same source, the so-called Chronicle of Ireland that ended in the early tenth century.9 Thereafter, there seem to have been separate centres of recording in Armagh and Clonmacnoise, though they appear to have had recourse to some of the same sources, perhaps as a result of scholarly collaboration in the middle of the eleventh century.10 One representative of the Clonmacnoise group, the Annals of Tigernach, though it survives only in a fourteenth-century manuscript, is named for the scribe likely responsible for transcribing the text of the annals prior to his death in 1088, after which they were updated regularly until the late 1170s.11 Just four years after Tigernach’s death, another monastic scribe in Munster compiled a set of annals from older sources. This compilation, known as the Annals of Inisfallen, survives in his eleventh-century hand, to which later generations of annalists added until the fifteenth century. The usual fodder in all these collections is obituaries of kings and leading clerics, recorded briefly and frequently without context, but these are sometimes accompanied by other information, such as the gift of a camel made by the king of Scotland to the king of Ireland in 1105.12 The fact that events are often listed without context — without reference to motives behind reported wars or murders, for example — can give the impression that these are the accounts of detached, disinterested observers. This is not the case; the monasteries in which the annals were kept were political partisans and their perspectives are reflected in the biases of their records, as will be discussed further below. The eleventh century witnessed the development of a new genre of historical writing. Dynastic chronicles sometimes developed from annals, or used annals as a source and framework around which to construct a narrative history of a particular king or dynasty.13 Perhaps the earliest example of the genre is the so-called Ossory Chronicle. This survives only embedded within a seventeenth-century copy of a now-lost collection known as the Fragmentary Annals of Ireland. At the heart of this chronicle is an account of the wars of Cerball mac Dúnlaing (d. 888), king of Osraige (Ossory), against the vikings. Its glorification of Cerball was probably intended to

8 For a recent discussion of the origins of Ireland’s annals, see Ó Cróinín, Early Medieval Ireland, pp. 8–15. 9 The Chronicle of Ireland, trans. by Charles-Edwards. 10 Evans, The Present and the Past. 11 The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. by Stokes, ii, 420 (s.a. 1088): ‘Huc usque Tigernach scribsit ocht ar ochtmogait quieuit’. 12 The Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. by Mac Airt, s.a. 1105. 13 Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Cogad Gáedel re Gallaib’.

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reflect well on his descendant and successor Donnchadh mac Gilla Pátraic, during whose reign it was likely written.14 The most famous example of the genre, however, is Cogad Gaedel re Gallaib (The War of the Gaels with the Vikings), a vehemently nationalist account of the viking wars with a special focus on the role of Brian Bóraime (Brian Boru) in bringing them to an end at the battle of Clontarf.15 This chronicle appears to have been written in the first decade of the twelfth century, during the reign of Muirchertach Ua Briain, Brian’s great-grandson.16 Various foreign influences on its form and content have been detected, including echoes of Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Crusading ideology.17 These dynastic chronicles also share characteristics with the contemporary work of Norman historians, including Dudo of SaintQuentin and William of Jumièges, who forged what became known as the ‘Norman myth’.18 In its depiction of Brian’s dynasty as especially pious while at the same time possessing unmatched martial prowess, Cogad attempts to construct something akin to the Norman myth for them.19 These chronicles’ accounts of relatively recent events are generally distinguished from sagas set in the more distant past, frequently either the prehistoric or early historic periods. The most famous of these is Táin bó Cúailgne (The Cattle-Raid of Cooley), in which the supreme Irish hero, Cú Chulainn, single-handedly defends the province of Ulster against an invading army comprising the men of the rest of Ireland bent on stealing a prized bull.20 The earliest references to the Táin appear in seventh-century poetry, and much of the tale as it was handed down to later generations seems to have existed by the ninth century.21 Two recensions survive in twelfth-century manuscripts.22 These sagas are prized examples of early Irish literature, but they were apparently valued by contemporaries also as records of historical events.23 The events depicted in the Táin, for example, were believed to have occurred around the time of Christ’s life and death, the occurrence of which

Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, ed. and trans. by Radner, pp. xxii–xxv. Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, ed. and trans. by Todd. Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The Date’. Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Pagans and Holy Men’, p. 150; Ó Corráin, ‘Caithréim Chellacháin Chaisil’, p. 69; Flanagan, ‘High-Kings’, p. 916. 18 Davis, The Normans and their Myth. 19 Wadden, ‘Some Views of the Normans’, pp. 31–35. 20 On the use of the term ‘saga’, rather than ‘tale’ or other alternatives, see O’Connor, ‘Irish Narrative Literature’, pp. 6–9. 21 The Laud Genealogies, ed. by Meyer, pp. 305–07. See also Ó hUiginn, ‘The Background’, pp. 58–61. Kelleher has argued that it reflected political events in Louth at the beginning of the ninth century: ‘The Táin’. For an elaboration and refinement of this view, see Ó Riain, ‘The Táin’, pp. 31–38. On date, see also Kelly, ‘The Táin’, pp. 88–89. 22 Táin bó Cúailnge: Recension i, ed. and trans. by O’Rahilly; Táin bó Cúalnge: From the Book of Leinster, ed. and trans. by O’Rahilly. 23 Toner, ‘The Ulster Cycle’; Poppe, Of Cycles; Poppe, ‘Literature as History’; Sims-Williams and Poppe, ‘Medieval Irish Literary Theory’, esp. pp. 302–09. 14 15 16 17

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is noted in the related narrative concerning the death of the king of Ulster, Conchobar mac Nessa.24 Sagas of this sort were not new in this period, as previously noted. There were certain developments within the genre during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, however, one of which was the introduction of saints as central characters alongside the kings who were generally the primary focus. This partial blending of saga and hagiography can be seen in two twelfth-century texts concerned with Muirchertach mac Erca, a figure of dubious historicity who supposedly ruled Ireland in the early sixth century. In Aided Muirchertaig meic Erca (The Violent Death of Muirchertach son of Erc) and the text known as Do feartaib Cairnich (On the Miracles of St Cairnech), the focus is very much on the king’s interaction with his kinsman St Cairnech.25 More traditional hagiography continued to be written throughout this period also. Most of these compositions are in the vernacular, and some were given homiletic form.26 A vernacular Life of St Columba was composed in the late eleventh or twelfth century, for example.27 There are also Latin Lives, some of which survive because they were transported out of Ireland. These include a Life of St Máedóc of Ferns, which was transmitted to Wales probably in the eleventh century, and a Life of St Monenna of Killeevy, which was acquired from Ireland by the abbot of the English monastery at Burton-on-Trent in the second quarter of the twelfth century.28 One characteristic of the Lives of this period is their inclusion of detailed genealogical material concerning their subjects.29 These saints’ genealogies were also collected independently.30 Many of the individuals who feature in the sagas also appear in a variety of other texts that can be categorized under the collective title senchas, translated roughly as ‘historical tradition’.31 Senchas na relec (The Historical Tradition of Burial Places) claims to identify the burial places of heroes of the distant past.32 Dindshenchas (Historical Tradition of Places) discusses the origins of place-names.33 And the Banshenchas (Historical Tradition of Women) purports to record the marriages of important women.34 Interest in dynastic histories and identities is also apparent in the great collections of genealogical

24 Aided Conchobuir, ed. and trans. by Meyer. 25 Aided Muirchertaig meic Erca, ed. by Ní Dhonnchadha; Do Feartaib Carnich, ed. and trans. by Todd. 26 Herbert, ‘Latin and Vernacular Hagiography’, pp. 344–45. 27 Herbert, Iona, Kells, and Derry, pp. 218–43 (text), 248–65 (translation) (pp. 229–36, 255–65). 28 Herbert, ‘Latin and Vernacular Hagiography’, pp. 347–48. 29 Ó Riain, ‘Irish Saints’ Genealogies’. 30 Corpus genealogiarum sanctorum Hiberniae, ed. by Ó Riain. 31 For a discussion of the broad and multiple meaning of this term, see Byrne, ‘Senchas’. 32 Senchas na Relec in so, ed. and trans. by O’Donovan. 33 The Metrical Dindsenchas, ed. and trans. by Gwynn; The Prose Tales in the Rennes Dindshenchas, ed. and trans. by Stokes; The Bodleian Dindshenchas, ed. and trans. by Stokes; The Edinburgh Dindshenchas, ed. and trans. by Stokes. 34 The Ban-shenchus, ed. and trans. by Dobbs.

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material found in two twelfth-century manuscripts, the Book of Leinster and Rawlinson B. 502.35 These collections are on a massive scale, containing the names of tens of thousands of individuals from hundreds of population groups great and small, from across the Gaelic world, and covering both the historic and the prehistoric periods. Among the pedigrees, there are also to be found vignettes about the origins of specific groups and the relationships that existed between them. The national scope of these genealogical collections is shared by the closely related national origin legend, Lebor gabála Érenn (Book of the Taking of Ireland).36 This work has been compared with Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum because of its concern with ‘the unity, the identity and the ethnic homogeneity of a people’.37 It blends biblical, patristic, and other historical traditions to create an origin legend for the Irish that establishes their place among the nations of the world. The production of this work was a vast undertaking probably involving collaboration between numerous scholars over the course of the eleventh and early twelfth centuries, by the end of which there existed two distinct recensions and an abbreviated version.38 As Lebor gabála’s editor pointed out, the surviving versions of the text represent the blending of two distinct narratives: one an account of the various invasions of Ireland down to the coming of the Gaels, the other a history of the Gaels from their origins to the occupation of the island.39 Helen Fulton has recently pointed out that these two narratives represent two different forms of history that coexisted in the medieval period. One was Christian in inspiration, based on Scripture and the writings of figures including Eusebius and Augustine. According to this perspective, history was linear; it began with Creation and would end with the Final Judgement. The other, cyclical model, which focused on the rise and fall of individuals and groups, whether cities or gentes, may be traced back at least as far as Herodotus. It had been legitimized for Christians by Boethius’s claim that fate might raise and lower the fortunes of individuals and kingdoms within God’s providential plan.40 In Lebor gabála, the cyclical nature of the story of the prehistoric invasions and settlements of Ireland adheres to the Boethian model, while the account of the wandering of the Gaels is of the Augustinian-biblical sort, focused on the linear history of a single people directed by Providence. 35 Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae. For crucial discussion of the nature of this material, see Ó Corráin, ‘Creating the Past’. 36 Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. and trans. by Macalister. For an overview of the text, see Carey, The Irish National Origin-Legend. On the significance of the genealogical framework to this origin legend, see Carey, The Irish National Origin-Legend, p. 10; Ó Corráin, ‘Creating the Past’, p. 203. 37 Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. by Greenway; Davies, ‘The Peoples of Britain and Ireland’, p. 20. 38 Scowcroft, ‘Leabhar gabhála’. For discussion of the kind of collaboration that might lie behind this work, see Herbert, ‘Crossing Historical and Literary Boundaries’, pp. 92–96. 39 Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. and trans. by Macalister, i, pp. xxv–xxviii. Compare Carey, The Irish National Origin-Legend, pp. 5–7. 40 Fulton, ‘History and Historia’, pp. 47–51.

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Lebor gabála Érenn is sometimes found in the company of texts with a similar interest in the origins of peoples but which do not focus explicitly on the Gaels. One of these, the universal history known as the Irish Sex aetates mundi, opens with a list of questions that highlights the author’s interest, not only in the chronology of the six ages, but in the identity and reigns of the kings of each age, the geographical divisions of the world, and especially the origins of peoples and languages.41 This is sometimes found in the company of Middle Gaelic translations of histories of the other Insular peoples, including both Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica — sadly now surviving only in fragmentary form — and the Historia Brittonum.42 Accounts of the origins and history of the Picts are also associated with this material.43 Clancy has suggested that these texts formed a dossier of historical material covering the origins and early histories of the peoples of Britain that circulated in eleventh- and twelfth-century Ireland.44 Although it does not survive in manuscripts of our period, the previously mentioned Duan Albanach appears to be related to Lebor gabála and to have been composed around this time.45 It shares a common structure with that part of Lebor gabála that recounts the settlement of Ireland in successive waves. The interest in the histories of the peoples of the neighbouring island demonstrated by the existence of these texts is just one way in which the historiography of this period can be said to be ‘outward looking’.46 Another indication of this outward orientation is the existence of a group of Middle Gaelic translations and adaptations of classical texts. As Ralph O’Connor recently observed, during this period ‘Irish scholars’ intensely learned engagement with the classical tradition flowered into a remarkable literary movement which is still little known outside the field of Celtic studies’.47 Togail Troí (The Destruction of Troy), based on Dares Phrygius’s De excidio Troiae, might have been first adapted into Gaelic in the tenth century; two surviving recensions, one of which survives in the twelfth-century Book of Leinster, are eleventh- or twelfth-century works.48 Scéla Alaxandair (The Alexander Saga)

41 The Irish Sex aetates mundi, ed. and trans. by Ó Cróinín, pp. 67 (text), 110–11 (translation). 42 A Middle-Irish Fragment, ed. by Bergin; Leabhar Breathnach, ed. and trans. by Todd, pp. 168–75; Lebor Bretnach, ed. by van Hamel. 43 This material, though extraneous to Historia Brittonum, has been incorporated into some recensions of Lebor Bretnach and is presented as such in the most recent edition: Lebor Bretnach, ed. by van Hamel, pp. 5–6, 8–14; Leabhar Breathnach, ed. and trans. by Todd, pp. 120–67. 44 Clancy, ‘Scotland’, p. 99. 45 Zumbühl, ‘Contextualizing the Duan Albanach’. 46 So far as I am aware, Carey was the first to refer to Irish scholars as both backward- and outward-looking: King of Mysteries, pp. 10, 22. 47 O’Connor, ‘Irish Narrative Literature’, p. 3. His overview of medieval Gaelic adaptations (pp. 13–15) is the key source for the following list. The essays collected in this excellent volume represent some of the new ways in which scholars are engaging with this material at present. 48 Togail Troí, ed. and trans. by Stokes; Mac Eoin, ‘Das Verbalsystem’, p. 202.

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possibly has a similar textual history — a lost tenth-century version having potentially been used in the creation of the extant eleventh-century text.49 The eleventh and twelfth centuries also likely witnessed the writing of Imtheachta Aeniasa (The Adventures of Aeneas), loosely based on the Aeneid,50 In cath catharda (The Civil War), adapted from Lucan’s Bellum civile,51 and Togail na Tebe (The Destruction of Thebes), based on Statius’s Thebaid.52 These texts cast light on the literary tastes of medieval Irish scholars, but they were valued in their time also for the information they provided regarding past events.53 For example, the opening of Imtheachta Aeniasa is careful to set the narrative in the context of earlier events, and the story ends with the assertion that Aeneas was the ancestor of the kings of Rome and rulers of the world.54 This might have had particular interest for eleventh-century Irish scholars, who thought of contemporary German emperors as ‘kings of the world’.55 The text also includes information about the origins of place-names and the ancestry of named individuals in a manner comparable with the Irish sagas.56 The relationship between these adaptations of classical narratives and the Irish sagas has been a matter of debate in recent years.57 Medieval Irish scholars certainly perceived a connection between the story of Troy and the Táin; the twelfth-century poem Clann Ollaman uaisle Emna (The Children of Ollam are the Nobles of Emain) explicitly compares the characters and events of the Táin with those of the story of Troy. The warriors of Ulster are called Tro-fhian fhír na hÉireann (the true Trojan band of Ireland), and individuals among them are paralleled with Priam, Aeneas, and Alexander/ Paris.58 Accounts of both the Trojan and the Ulster wars, Togail Troí and the Táin respectively, can be found in the same twelfth-century manuscript, the Book of Leinster. Michael Clarke has argued that parallels between the two reflect a conceptual relationship between them: ‘In both cases the narrative aims to arrive at the authoritative version of the events of an ancient war, one pivotal to the Matter of Rome and the other to the Matter of Ireland’.59 Setting

49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

Die irische Alexandersage, ed. and trans. by Peters. Imtheachta Æniasa, ed. and trans. by Calder. In Cath Catharda, ed. and trans. by Stokes. Togail na Tebe, ed. and trans. by Calder. O’Connor, ‘Irish Narrative Literature’, pp. 19–21; Myrick, From the De excidio Troiae historia, pp. 70–71; Poppe, A New Introduction, pp. 5–17, 27–30; Clarke, ‘An Irish Achilles’; Miles, Heroic Saga, pp. 95–99. Imtheachta Æniasa, ed. and trans. by Calder, pp. 2–5, 200–01. The Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. by Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, s.a. 1023; The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. by Stokes, s.a. 1023. See, for example, Imtheachta Æniasa, ed. and trans. by Calder, pp. 6–7, where the pedigree of Priam’s wife and the origin of the name of Ænaedes in Thrace are given. Clarke, ‘An Irish Achilles’; Poppe, ‘The Matter of Troy’; Fulton, ‘History and Historia’; Miles, Heroic Saga. Clann Ollaman uaisle Emna, ed. and trans. by Byrne. Clarke, ‘An Irish Achilles’, p. 244.

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these events from Ireland’s distant past alongside those of Troy added prestige and authority to local history, ‘in which the wars of our heroic ancestors are echoed in those of older nations in world history’.60 One reason for thinking about sagas and the vernacular adaptations of classical texts as having been considered historical accounts is because of the existence of what is commonly known as the ‘Irish world chronicle’.61 Essentially an attempt to backfill the annals, thus providing a narrative of history beginning with Creation and continuing through to the authors’ present, the earliest surviving copy is in one of two originally distinct twelfth-century manuscripts now bound together as Rawlinson B. 502.62 It has been edited as the opening section of the Annals of Tigernach. In constructing this history, use was made of a variety of sources, including Eusebius and Bede’s Chronica maiora, to synchronize events from the Christian past with those of ancient Greece and Rome. Episodes from Ireland’s prehistoric past, frequently those related in the sagas, were added to this record. For example, the assumption of the kingship of Ulster by Conchobar mac Nessa and the cattle-raid of Cooley are synchronized with the war between Mark Antony and Augustus and the birth of the Virgin Mary.63 This is just one example of the variety of ways in which Irish scholars of this period sought to synchronize events from Ireland’s past with those of Greek, Roman, and biblical Antiquity.64 Another was undertaken by the composers of a significant body of surviving historical poetry. Peter Smith has shown that the composers of these poems became increasingly concerned with matters of chronology during the course of the tenth and eleventh centuries.65 Perhaps the best-known practitioner of this literary form is Flann Mainistrech, who composed poems on the history of both Irish kingdoms and world kingship.66 Upon his death in 1056, Flann was granted the title ‘eminent lector and master of the historical lore of Ireland’ in the Annals of Ulster.67 Another leading historical poet, Gilla Cóemáin mac Gilla Samthainne, was

60 Clarke, ‘An Irish Achilles’, pp. 244, 251. 61 The title was coined by O’Rahilly, Early Irish History, pp. 235–59. The origins of this material are debated. McCarthy, The Irish Annals, argues that contemporary record-keeping in Ireland lies behind at least some of the material. For an important critique of this argument, see the review by Evans in Medieval Review [online] (accessed 21 January 2018). It seems likely that the text was created in Clonmacnoise between the late tenth and the mid-eleventh century: Dumville, ‘Ulster Heroes’; The Chronicle of Ireland, trans. by Charles-Edwards, i, 3. 62 Ó Cuív, comp., Catalogue of Irish Language Manuscripts, i, 162–66, 181–82. 63 The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. by Stokes, i, 35–40. 64 See Clancy, ‘Gaelic Literature’, p. 640. 65 Smith, ‘Early Irish Historical Verse’. 66 ‘Poems by Flann Mainistrech’, ed. and trans. by MacNeill; ‘Middle-Irish Poems on World Kingship’, ed. and trans. by Mac Airt. 67 The Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. by Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, s.a. 1056: ‘aird-fer leighinn 7 sui senchusa Erenn, in uita eterna requiescit’. Tigernach (The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. by Stokes, ii, 289, s.a. 1056) was equally lavish in his praise, describing Flann as

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a slightly later contemporary of Flann. His 1072 poem Annálad anall uile (All the Annal-Writing Heretofore) synchronizes one of the early waves of settlement of Ireland recorded in the Lebor gabála with events in the history of ancient Israel such as the life of Abraham.68 Synchronisms also appeared in prose, such as the predominantly vernacular, probably eleventh-century Adam primus pater fuit.69 Some of the vernacular sagas themselves also make statements synchronizing the events they depict with those of Christian history.70 Lebor gabála likewise synchronizes Irish events with biblical and Trojan history.71 By synchronizing these events and documenting them alongside one another in the same record, the compilers of the Irish world chronicle were asserting their equivalent status as historical events. The fact that they could be synchronized with one another demonstrated that the historicity of the cattle-raid of Cooley and other episodes from Ireland’s past was on a par with that of the Trojan war and the history of ancient Israel as recorded in the Old Testament. Most of the texts discussed so far are extant in one or more of the three oldest surviving vernacular manuscripts, all of which date from the twelfth century: Lebor na hUidre (The Book of the Dun Cow) was written in the monastery of Clonmacnoise around the year 1100;72 Rawlinson B. 502 was written in a monastic centre somewhere in Leinster — possibly Glendalough — around 1120;73 and the second half of the twelfth century witnessed the writing of the Book of Leinster, also known as the Book of Oughaval from the monastery where it was written.74 Note that all are monastic products; the historical culture of Gaeldom in the eleventh and twelfth centuries was a monastic culture. All three manuscripts include older material, some of it dating back centuries, as well as texts first written shortly before their inclusion

68 69 70 71 72

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‘ughdar Gaidhel etir léighind 7 tsenchus 7 filidecht 7 airchedal’ (author of the Gaels both, in literature and history and poetry and versification). See further Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Flann Mainistrech’; John Carey, ‘Flann Mainistrech’ (accessed 19 December 2017). Gilla Cóemáin, Annálad Anall Uile, ed. and trans. by Smith, pp. 192–93 (Partolón’s invasion), 210–11 (dating of poem to 1072). Adam primus pater fuit, ed. by MacCarthy. See, for example, Scéla Mucce meic Dathó, ed. by Thurneysen, p. 6, where the events depicted are dated to three hundred years before the birth of Christ. For example, Lebor Gabála Érenn, ed. and trans. by Macalister, iii, 34–35. For a diplomatic edition of the manuscript, see Lebor na hUidre, ed. by Best and Bergin. Ó Concheanainn, ‘Textual and Historical Associations’. For recent discussion, see Lebor na hUidre, ed. by Ó hUiginn. The manuscript (Dublin, Royal Irish Academy, MS 23 E 25) can be viewed online (accessed 19 December 2017). No diplomatic edition of the manuscript exists, but a facsimile of sections has been published: the manuscript can be viewed online (accessed 19 December 2017). Ó Riain has argued for a Glendalough provenance: ‘The Book of Glendalough’. This has been disputed by Breatnach, ‘Rawlinson B.502’ and ‘Manuscript Sources’. For Ó Riain’s response to Breatnach, see ‘Rawlinson B502’. For a diplomatic edition, see The Book of Leinster, ed. by Best and others.

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in these codices.75 The contents of all three manuscripts are, broadly speaking, concerned with the past, and it is possible to think of them as repositories of historical material relevant to their writers’ times and situations. They are not the same sorts of repositories as those compiled in contemporary England as monasteries sought to protect their landholdings in the wake of the Norman Conquest, but they were repositories nonetheless.76 Looking at the contents of these manuscripts as reflections of contemporary concerns, it is possible to appreciate further their compilers’ interests in specific topics.77 The earliest of the three, Lebor na hUidre, opens with an account of universal history in the Irish Sex aetates mundi before shifting focus to the Insular world with a version of Lebor Bretnach. Though no longer extant due to damage and loss of leaves, it appears that Lebor Bretnach was originally followed in the manuscript by a version of Lebor gabála Érenn.78 The progression from the universal history of the Sex aetates mundi to the history of the inhabitants of Britain and then to the origin legend of the Gaels and the history of Ireland can be understood as an effort to set Irish history in broader context; the implicit message is that Irish history is part of a larger story, that of salvation history.79 Amra Coluim Cille (The Eulogy of Colum Cille), a lament for one of Ireland’s early saints, comes next, thus bridging the gap between the pre-Christian and the Christian periods. Much of the rest of the manuscript is filled with sagas, though more explicitly religious texts also appear. Some of these, including Fís Adamnáin (The Vision of Adomnán), Scéla Laí Brátha (Tidings of Doomsday), and Scéla na Esérgi (Tidings of the Resurrection), reflect a keen interest in eschatology, as Elizabeth Boyle has recently discussed.80 Catherine McKenna and Gregory Toner have also identified an interest across several texts in the death, salvation, or damnation of individuals from Ireland’s pre-Christian past.81 This is a reminder that medieval scholars saw history as ending, not in their own time, but at Judgement Day; their history could be forward- as well as backward-looking. A colophon to the text of Aided Nath Í (The Violent Death of Nath Í) in Lebor na hUidre describes the practical process of compiling sources undertaken by two eleventh-century scholars: ‘Fland tra 7 Eochaid eolach hua Cérin is iat ro thinsolat so a llebraib Eochada hui Flandacan i nArd Macha 7 a llebraib

75 On the ways in which texts of different genres were studied, adapted, and ‘used’ in medieval Ireland, see the essays collected in Boyle and Hayden, eds, Authorities and Adaptations. 76 For the dossiers of historical material collected by English monasteries, see Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition’, pp. 246–56. 77 This has been undertaken in relation to the Book of Leinster by Schlüter, History or Fable?, who has identified it as an artifact of cultural memory specifically concerned with the history of the locality in which it was written and the rulers of the region. 78 Oskamp, ‘Notes’, esp. pp. 117–18. 79 Oskamp, ‘The Yellow Book’, esp. p. 114. 80 Boyle, ‘Eschatological Themes’, esp. pp. 129–30. 81 McKenna, ‘Angels and Demons’; Toner, ‘History and Salvation’.

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Manistrech 7 asna lebraib togaidib archena’ (It was Flann and Eochaid eolach ua Céirín who assembled this from the books of Eochaid ua Flannacáin in Armagh and from the books of Monasterboice, and from other excellent books).82 It is interesting to note that Marianus Scotus used the same Gaelic verb to describe his own compilatory activity in the production of his universal chronicle; the phrase Moel Brigte clausenair romtinol (Máel Brigte, inclusus, gathered me [the Chronicle] together) can be found embedded within a poem at the end of his chronicle.83 Marianus, alias Máel Brígte, left Ireland in 1058 and settled in Mainz, where he wrote his Chronicle.84 He wrote on the Continent with a Continental audience in mind, hence his use of Latin. His work was influential, being used by Sigebert of Gembloux and John of Worcester in the production of their own chronicles.85 For these reasons, it is easy to identify Marianus as part of the European historiographical tradition while thinking of his contemporaries in Ireland who wrote in the vernacular as pursuing a distinct enterprise. Yet, as Máire Ní Mhaonaigh has pointed out in an important recent study, Marianus received his early training in Ireland prior to his departure and shared his approach — and some of his sources — with his compatriots at home.86 Writing about the compilers of Lebor na hUidre, David Greene commented that ‘Their main interest was the senchas, that mixture of Irish and Christian tradition, which they believed in as implicitly as they did the Bible; they were not interested in what we now would call literature. […] [They] were after facts’.87 The parallel drawn here between the scholars’ attitude toward Irish history and that recorded in Scripture will be discussed further below. For now, it is necessary to point out that while the compilers of Lebor na hUidre certainly understood the sagas and other texts included in their manuscript as representations of past events, they did not accept uncritically everything they read in their sources. They were concerned not only with copying texts but with establishing their historicity through critical engagement with them. Gregory Toner has noted that many of the notes and emendations made to Lebor na hUidre texts in the period shortly after it was first written demonstrate a scholarly concern with historical detail and accuracy.88 The authors of these additions and emendations to the manuscript were ‘interested in establishing 82 Lebor na hUidre, ed. by Best and Bergin, ll. 2919–24. On compilatio, see Burnyeat, ‘Córugud and compilatio’; Burnyeat, ‘Wrenching the Club’. 83 Ó Cuív, ‘The Irish Marginalia’, p. 46. This corresponds with the Latin phrase Marianus, inclusus, congregavit found earlier in the text. The following passage is heavily indebted to Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The Peripheral Centre’. 84 Marianus Scottus, Chronicon, ed. by Waitz. 85 Nothaft, ‘An Eleventh-Century Chronologer’, pp. 461–62; Lawrence-Mathers, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 256–57. 86 Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The Peripheral Centre’. 87 Greene, ‘Leabhar na hUidhre’, p. 67. 88 Toner, ‘Scribe and Text’. It has recently been proposed that the hand previously identified as H actually represents six distinct hands: Duncan, ‘The Palaeography of H’.

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“facts”, often using textual comparison as a foundation for establishing what happened; the presentation of contrary and/or alternative facts about the past; and attempts to reconcile contradictory accounts […] to create a plausible account of the past’.89 Evidence of this can be seen in the addition of details such as names and locations not reported in the main body of texts, or by amendment of texts to ensure consistency. In one instance, the identification of the burial place of King Conaire Mór as reported in Togail bruidne Da Derga (The Destruction of Da Derga’s Hostel) was altered in light of the information presented in Senchas na relec. One or more of the same scribes whose hands have been detected among the notes discussed by Toner were also apparently responsible for the addition of notes to the text of the Irish world chronicle in Rawlinson B. 502.90 This concern with consistency is apparent across numerous texts of this period. One example can be observed in the Irish Sex aetates mundi. In his concern to provide a comprehensive account of the origins of the races into which mankind was divided, the author included two accounts of the origins of the monstrous races. The first of these associates the monsters with Cain son of Adam.91 Later in the text, however, a second version describes them as the descendants of Cham son of Noah. In a comment on this second account, the author condemns the former version, which he specifically associates with the Gaels, as inaccurate and unorthodox, and asserts his preference for the orthodox version which was possibly derived from recently acquired Frankish sources:92 ‘Conid hé-sin bunad na torothur 7 ní do síl Chaín dóib, amal ad-fiadat Goídil, ar níro-mair dia síl-side iar ṅdílinn, ar rop hé fochonn na dílenn do bádud clainni Caín’ (That, then, is the origin of the monsters, and they are not of the race of Cain, as the Gaels say, for none of his line survived the Deluge, because the very purpose of the Deluge was to drown the race of Cain).93 In a similar vein, the translator of Lebor Bretnach, the Irish version of Historia Brittonum, made certain alterations to his text in order to make it internally consistent and to forge closer agreement between it and other histories. The Latin text included two versions of the origin legend of the Britons, the first linking them with Rome and Troy, the second tracing their ancestry to Japheth son of Noah via the so-called ‘Frankish table of nations’.94 The original author of the Historia included the second of these accounts almost begrudgingly,

89 Toner, ‘Scribe and Text’, p. 108. 90 Best, ‘Palaeographical Notes’. Duncan ‘The Palaeography of H’, p. 50, has cast some doubt on Best’s identification, but has not dismissed it. 91 The Irish Sex aetates mundi, ed. and trans. by Ó Cróinín, pp. 71 (edition), 113 (translation). 92 For discussion, see Clarke, ‘The Lore of the Monstrous Races’, pp. 24, 39–43. 93 The Irish Sex aetates mundi, ed. and trans. by Ó Cróinín, pp. 79 (edition), 119 (translation). 94 Historia Brittonum, §§ 7, 10 (Trojan legend), 17 (Frankish table of nations), ed. and trans. by Morris, pp. 59–60, 63 (edition), 18–19, 22 (translation).

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describing it as a digression from the story he began with the Trojan legend.95 The Gaelic translator reversed this order of preference and gave priority to the version involving the Frankish table of nations.96 Additionally, rather than repeating the original text’s claim that Hengist and Horsa, supposedly the leaders of the first band of Anglo-Saxons to arrive in Britain, traced their ancestry to Geta, ‘qui fuit, ut aiunt, filius Dei: non ipse est Deus deorum, amen, Deus exercituum, sed unus est ab idolis eorum, quod ipsi colebant’ (who, they say, was a son of god; not the God of Gods, amen, the God of Hosts, but one of the idols they worshipped), the Irish translator made them descendants of Saxus son of Negua, thus linking them into the universal genealogy of mankind through the Frankish table of nations and also providing a more orthodox and consistent account of the origins of European peoples.97 The Frankish table of nations as they encountered it in Lebor Bretnach made an impact on Irish scholars and immediately became a popular source among Irish historians. It was incorporated into Lebor gabála Érenn and the Irish Sex aetates mundi as well as being used as a source for numerous other texts, from the prose synchronism Adam primus pater fuit to the Duan Albanach.98 The alterations made to Lebor Bretnach and the subsequent extension of the theory of origins depicted in the Frankish table of nations across a broad section of contemporary Irish historiography demonstrates the growing authority of this tract, but it also reflects a concern with consistency shared among members of the learned classes. This concern with historical accuracy was not only expressed in relation to texts with a more obviously historical outlook such as the Sex aetates mundi or Lebor Bretnach. In fact, the most explicit statement of it is in the famous Latin colophon at the end of the Book of Leinster version of the Cattle-Raid of Cooley: Sed ego qui scripsi hanc historiam aut uerius fabulam quibusdam fidem in hac historia aut fabula non accommodo. Quaedam enim ibi sunt

95 Historia Brittonum, ed. and trans. by Morris, p. 63: ‘redeam nunc ad id de quo digressus sum’. Dumville, ‘Historia Brittonum’, pp. 409–10. 96 Lebor Bretnach, ed. by van Hamel, pp. 2–3: ‘Britania insola a Britone filio Iscon dicta est .i. o Britan mac Isicon rehainmniged Inis Bretan. No adberad araile is o Britus rohainmniged .i. in cet-chonsol robai ac Romanchaib’ (The island of Britain is named from Brito son of Iscon, that is, the island of Britain is named from Britan son of Isicon. Or others say it is named from Britus, that is, the first consul of the Romans [my translation]). 97 Historia Brittonum, ed. and trans. by Morris, p. 67 (my translation); Lebor Bretnach, ed. by van Hamel, pp. 42–43: ‘Hors 7 Eigis da mac Guectilis meic Giuti meic Guitechtai meic Gutai meic Uodein meic Frelab meic Reauilb meic Findi meic Freann meic Balcall meic Gota meic Uanli meic Saxi meic Negua meic Alani … meic Iathfeth’ (Hors and Eigis, two sons of Guectilis, son of Guite, son of Guitechta, son of Guta, son of Woden, son of Frelab, son of Reaulb, son of Finn, son of Freann, son of Balcall, son of Gota, son of Uanli, son of Saxus, son of Negua, son of Alanus … son of Japheth [my translation]). 98 Wadden, ‘The Frankish Table of Nations’.

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praestrigia demonum, quaedam autem figmenta poetica, quaedam similia uero, quaedam non, quaedam ad delectationem stultorum.99 But I who have copied this historia or, more accurately, fabula, do not give credence to certain things in this historia or fabula. For certain things in it are the illusions of demons; certain are poetic fictions; certain are plausible, others not; certain are for the entertainment of fools.100 The author of this colophon distanced his comment from the text he had just copied: visually by leaving a gap on the page and linguistically by writing in Latin rather than the vernacular. His critical assessment deployed the language of rhetoric, as Pádraig Ó Néill has demonstrated.101 But his critique, rather than dismissing the Táin as unhistorical, actually reinforces the idea that it was usually understood as an accurate portrayal of past events by asserting that there were certain aspects of the narrative which he believed detracted from its truth-value. As Ó Néill pointed out, the author of this colophon was addressing what he perceived as the Táin’s failings as historia in the same manner that his English contemporary, William of Newburgh, criticized the fabulous elements in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae. For William, these were ‘fabulas […] ex priscis Britonum figmentis sumptas […] per divinationum praestigias’ (fables from ancient fictions of the Britons acquired by means of the illusions of divinators).102 The question of how to assess the more fantastical elements of the sagas elicited more than one response. The version of Serglige Con Culainn (The Wasting Sickness of Cú Chulainn) found in Lebor na hUidre ends with the following assessment of the narrative’s account of Cú Chulainn’s encounters with otherworldly beings from the síd: Conid taibsiu aidmillti do Choin Chulaind la h-áes sidi sin. Ar ba mór in chumachta demnach ria cretim, 7 ba hé a méit co cathaigtis co corptha na demna frisna doínib 7 co taisféntais aíbniusa 7 díamairi dóib, amal no betis co marthanach. Is amlaid no creteá dóib. Conid frisna taidbsib sin atberat na h-anéolaig side 7 áes side.103 So that is a destructive image shown to Cú Chulainn by the people of the síd. For demonic power was great before the [coming of the] Faith, and such was its extent that demons would battle bodily with humans, and would show them delights and secrets, as if they were lasting. It is thus that they were believed in. And the ignorant call those people síde and áes side.104 99 100 101 102 103 104

Táin Bó Cúailgne: From the Book of Leinster, ed. and trans. by O’Rahilly, p. 136. Translation from Ó Néill, ‘The Latin Colophon’, p. 269. Ó Néill, ‘The Latin Colophon’. See also Miles, Heroic Saga, pp. 1–6. William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, ed. by Howlett, i, 12. Serglige Con Culainn, ed. by Dillon, p. 29. Translation from Boyle, ‘Eschatological Themes’, p. 117.

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Here the more fantastical aspects of the story are rationalized rather than dismissed. Nonetheless, the comment serves to demonstrate the same concerns as the colophon to the Táin. This concern with accuracy is therefore apparent across numerous texts and genres and can be said to have been characteristic of the historical culture of the Gaelic world during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Richard Southern famously argued that the explosion of historical writing that occurred in England in the decades either side of 1100 was sparked by the crisis that the Norman Conquest represented for the English, especially the Benedictine monasteries established under the old regime.105 The battle of Hastings did not register as a crisis in Ireland in the way that it did in England; in fact, it barely registered at all. While the battle of Stamford Bridge was reported in several Irish historical sources, the exploits of William the Conqueror and his followers only attracted attention once they began to impinge on Welsh and Scottish affairs.106 Máire Herbert has argued, however, that the viking wars constituted for Ireland something like the sort of crisis that the Norman Conquest represented for England. Her proposal is that the intense warfare of the tenth century caused monasteries to put their books in storage and precipitated a hiatus in scholarly activity. The reopening of textual repositories at the end of the tenth century, after a major victory was won against the Hiberno-Scandinavians of Dublin and the Isles in 980, provided an opportunity for scholars to re-engage with the past and sparked this great period of historical writing.107 The new wave of scholarship after 980 identified by Herbert was characterized by its concern with recovering the Irish past by making older Irish material — in both Latin and the vernacular — available to a contemporary audience: ‘it was texts which were recovered, reshaped, and reappropriated that were the main begetters of texts’.108 The fervour of those who copied and adapted older material during this period, she surmised, ‘seems to reflect a heightened consciousness on the part of the Irish literati that texts provided access to a past which needed to be recovered, not for its own sake, but because of its necessity for present and future’.109 Herbert identified some evidence for a gap in the historical record during the tenth century, and it does appear that scribes of this period recognized the existence of a linguistic gulf between themselves and the authors of some of the older texts they copied.110 Even allowing for the fact that the interruption of scholarly activity might not have been uniform across Gaeldom, however,

105 Southern, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition’. 106 See, for example, The Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. by Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, s.a. 1072. Davies, The First English Empire, pp. 4–5; Wadden, ‘Some Views of the Normans’. 107 Herbert, ‘Crossing Historical and Literary Boundaries’. 108 Herbert, ‘Crossing Historical and Literary Boundaries’, p. 101. On the use medieval Irish scholars made of older textual material, see the essays collected in Boyle and Hayden, eds, Authorities and Adaptations. 109 Herbert, ‘Crossing Historical and Literary Boundaries’, p. 98. 110 Herbert, ‘Crossing Historical and Literary Boundaries’, p. 96.

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there appears plenty of evidence to counter the idea that there was a major break in scholarly output. For example, several poems survive ascribed to Cináed ua hArtacáin, who was accorded the title ‘chief-poet of Ireland’ upon his death in 975.111 One of these, Fianna bátar in Emain (The Warriors who Dwelt in Emain), is a catalogue of graves of famous warriors from Ireland’s past.112 He also composed several dindshenchas poems, at least one of which was commissioned by Ólafr Sigtryggsson, alias Amlaíb Cúarán, the Hiberno-Scandinavian king of Dublin.113 In other words, the presence of Scandinavians was not necessarily a deterrent to historical writing. Betha Adamnáin, the vernacular Life of St Adomnáin, ninth abbot of Iona and hagiographer of St Columba, was edited by Herbert and Pádraig Ó Riain. They suggest a date of composition in the late 950s or early 960s.114 Saltair na rann (The Psalter of Quatrains), preserved in Rawlinson B. 502, is also potentially a tenth-century composition.115 It has been suggested that it was written by Airbertach mac Coisse (d. 988).116 It relates in verse form ‘the full sweep of Christian and sacred history’.117 Collectively, this evidence suggests that there was no significant break during the tenth century in the scholarly tradition of engaging with the past. Neither does it appear that attempts to engage with and interpret older Irish texts were the main inspiration behind the historical enterprise of the eleventh century. The adaptation of earlier texts, historical and other, was a constant theme in medieval Irish scholarship.118 But so was engagement with new sources, as they became available. As noted above, Togail Troí and Scéla Alaxandair were both potentially adapted into Gaelic for the first time in the tenth century. And by the middle of the eleventh, Historia Brittonum was influencing a whole variety of other texts, especially via the popularity of the Frankish table of nations. Another possible explanation for the intensification of engagement with the past in the eleventh century, also proposed by Herbert, relates it to

111 Annals of Ulster, ed. and trans. by Mac Airt and Mac Niocaill, s.a. 975. Tigernach (The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. by Stokes, II. 230, s.a. 975) calls him the ‘chief poet of the northern half of Ireland’. On Cináed, see Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘Cináed Ua hArtacáin’; Carey, ‘Cináed ua hArtacáin’ (accessed 19 December 2017). 112 ‘On the Deaths of Some Irish Heroes’, ed. and trans. by Stokes. 113 Achall ar aicce Temair, in The Metrical Dindsenchas, ed. and trans. by Edward Gwynn, i, 46–53. On Ólaf ’s adoption of and adaptation to Irish culture and society, see Woolf, ‘Amlaíb Cuarán’. 114 Betha Adamnáin, ed. and trans. by Herbert and Ó Riain, pp. 4–8. Herbert also considers the mid-tenth century a likely date for the completion of the vernacular Vita tripartita of St Patrick: ‘Latin and Vernacular Hagiography’, p. 341. 115 The Saltair na Rann, ed. by Stokes. Sections of the text have been translated in The Irish Adam and Eve Story, ed. and trans. by Greene and Kelly, and in Carey, King of Mysteries, pp. 98–124. 116 Mac Eoin, ‘The Date and Authorship’. 117 Carey, King of Mysteries, p. 97. 118 Boyle and Hayden, eds, Authorities and Adaptations.

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contemporary political circumstances.119 The rise of Brian Boru in the final decade of the tenth century, and his eclipse of his rival, Máel Sechnaill mac Domnaill, in the early years of the eleventh, represented the overturning of long-established power structures.120 With Máel Sechnaill’s demotion the Uí Néill, the conglomeration of dynasties to which he belonged, lost their claim to be the dominant kings in Ireland after nearly three centuries. By rending apart the image and aura of invincibility that had grown up around them, Brian paved the way for other challengers, so that the century and a half after his death in 1014 was characterized by warfare between rival claimants to the kingship of Ireland.121 Erich Poppe noted that the similarities between Togail Troí’s account of the Greek invasion of Troy and the assault on Ulster by the other provinces of Ireland depicted in the Táin allowed for ‘an equation of the political situation of the Trojan War with that of the Irish pentarchy around the time of Christ’.122 It seems distinctly possible that observers of the merry-go-round of inter-provincial warfare between kings competing for supremacy in twelfth-century Ireland might have seen in contemporary affairs reflections of events in both ancient Troy and the Ireland of the Táin. The description of Agamemnon in Imtheachta Æniasa as airdríg (high-king) of the Greeks, the equivalent to the title for which Irish kings competed, might have strengthened this comparison.123 Interestingly in this regard, participants in the provincial warfare of this period were sometimes compared with figures from both Trojan and Irish history. For example, the Annals of Tigernach laud a Connacht king who died in 1067 as ‘Cú Chulainn of the Gaels’,124 while Murchad son of Brian Boru was described in Cogad Gaedel re Gallaib as ‘the matchless, ever-victorious Hector of the many-nationed, heroic children of Adam’.125 The changes and uncertainties precipitated by the collapse of the Uí Néill hegemony might have led some to seek solace in the past; it certainly caused others to seek justification there for their claims in the present. There is a general interest in the unity of the people of Ireland apparent across a wide array of historical texts. This is most obviously the case with Lebor gabála, but the interest shown in the history of peoples more generally — from the Anglo-Saxons and the Britons to the Assyrians and Medes — in texts such as the Sex aetates mundi, the translations of Bede and Historia Brittonum, and Flann Mainistrech’s poems on world kingship also reflects it. But it is the

119 120 121 122 123 124 125

Herbert, ‘Crossing Historical and Literary Boundaries’, p. 99. For a recent survey of this period of Brian’s career, see Duffy, Brian Boru, pp. 92–164. Flanagan, ‘High-Kings’; Byrne, ‘The Trembling Sod’. Poppe, ‘The Matter of Troy’, p. 269. Imtheachta Æniasa, ed. and trans. by Calder, p. 2. The Annals of Tigernach, ed. and trans. by Stokes, ii, 407 (s.a. 1067). Cogadh Gaedhel re Gallaibh, ed. and trans. by Todd, pp. 166–67. Elsewhere (pp. 186–89) he is also compared with heroes from ancient Ireland. For detailed discussion of this comparison in broader intellectual context, see Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The Metaphorical Hector’.

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history of the kingship of Ireland that is the key concern of so many of the histories written during this period. The Uí Néill claim to have ruled Ireland almost without break since the time of St Patrick had little basis in reality. While occasionally a king had succeeded in subjecting most or all of the island to his sway, this was only ever a loose and temporary form of political overlordship. Nonetheless, when the Uí Néill hegemony was broken and competition for the kingship of Ireland became intense, the past became a malleable resource for all those who sought to justify their claims. Where historical precedent supported contemporary aspirations, it could be dragged into service; where no appropriate precedent existed, it could be invented. It was certainly the case that many texts written during this period, across multiple genres, served these purposes. The Uí Brian were particularly adept at turning history to their advantage to bolster political aspirations that might be accused of lacking adequately deep roots. The emergence of the dynasty to which Brian Boru belonged as claimants to the kingship of Munster long held by their rivals, the Eóganachta, was justified through the creation of a genealogical link between the two groups and the invention of a tradition that they had previously alternated in the kingship.126 Perhaps blunter was the manner in which Brian’s ascent to the kingship of Ireland was justified. Though they frequently offer little or no explicit moral judgement regarding the events they report, the annals were not politically neutral. The Annals of Inisfallen, which have been described as a ‘court chronicle for the descendants of Brian [Boru]’, asserted the existence of precedent for his seizure of the kingship of Ireland.127 In the entry for 721, the annalist retrospectively claimed that the then king of Munster Cathal mac Finguine had won the kingship of Ireland in that year, thus becoming one of four named kings of Munster to have achieved that feat before Brian.128 Brian was not a usurper, but the latest in a long line of Munster kings who had contended for the kingship of the island. Within a few generations, Brian’s success had become a means of justification for his descendants. ‘The War of the Irish and the Vikings’ is generally thought to have been written when Brian’s great-grandson, Muirchertach Ua Briain, 126 Corpus genealogiarum Hiberniae, i, ed. by O’ Brien, pp. 206–08; Ó Corráin, ‘Celtic Narrative Tradition’, p. 143. 127 Hudson, Prophecy of Berchán, p. 94. 128 The Annals of Inisfallen, ed. and trans. by Mac Airt, s.a. 721: ‘Indred Breg la Cathal mc. Finguine, rí Muman; ocus is iar sein dorónsat síd ocus Fergal mc. Maíl Dúin, rí Temrach, 7 giallais Fergal do Chathul. Ar it hé .u. ríg ro gabsat Herind iar cretim do Muimnechaib, .i. Oengus macc Nad Fraich 7 a mc., .i. Eochaid, qui Hiberniam rexit .xuii. annis, ocus Cathal mc. Finguine ocus Feidlimmid macc Crimthain ocus Brian mc. Cennetich’ (The harrying of Brega by Cathal son of Finnguine, king of Mumu, and after that he and Ferga son of Mael Dúin, king of Temuir, made peace; and Ferga submitted to Cathal. For these were the five kings of the Munstermen who ruled Ireland after the [introduction of the] Faith, viz. Aengus son of Nad Fraích, and his son, i.e. Eochaid who ruled Ireland for seventeen years, and Cathal, son of Finnguine, and Feidlimid; son of Crimthann, and Brian, son of Cennétig).

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was at the peak of his power in the early twelfth century. It certainly would have reflected well on the younger man, and would have helped justify his claim to the kingship of Ireland, to have been associated with his ancestor’s glorious victory over viking invaders at the battle of Clontarf in 1014.129 It might have been especially useful to be associated with a military victory of this sort when Muirchertach’s position as the dominant king in Ireland and his growing influence throughout the Irish Sea world was threatened by the arrival in the region of Magnus Barefoot in 1102.130 In the example of the Annals of Inisfallen cited above, history’s message for the eleventh- or twelfth-century audience was spelled out relatively clearly. But this was not always the case. The eleventh-century text Echtra mac nEchach Muigmedóin (The Adventures of the Sons of Eochaid Mugmedóin) was almost certainly written from the perspective of the Uí Néill in response to the threat posed by Brian’s rise.131 It survives in several versions from this period. One, in verse form composed by Cúán ua Lothcháin, was almost certainly written to support the claims of Máel Sechnaill Mór mac Dommaill.132 This narrative describes the relationship between the Uí Néill and their allies in Connacht in historicist terms through an account of the adventures of their ancestors, the sons of Eochaid Mugmedóin. The events depicted, including an encounter with an otherworldly woman representing the sovereignty of Ireland, were intended to bolster the supremacy of the Uí Néill, descendants of Níall son of Eochaid, over supposedly related royal dynasties in Connacht, the descendants of Níall’s brothers, at a time when Máel Sechnaill needed their support to assert his claim to the kingship of Ireland.133 In the late twelfth century, this tale was adapted to assert that kingship had reverted from Níall to his brother Brión. This version, renamed Tairnic in sel-sa ac Síl Néill (The Time of the Uí Néill is at an End), was intended to support and legitimize the claims of the contemporary Úa Conchobair kings of Connacht, descendants of Brión, to authority over the Uí Néill and the rest of Ireland.134 Another twelfth-century text depicted a circuit of Ireland undertaken by Muirchertach mac Néill (d. 943) in order to demonstrate his wide authority; it has been interpreted as referring to and justifying a similar circuit undertaken by another Uí Néill claimant to the kingship of Ireland, Muirchertach mac Lochlainn (d. 1166).135 It was not only political change for which justification in the past was sought. Ecclesiastical reform and the changing relationship between kings

129 Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The Date’. 130 Wadden, ‘Brian Bóraime’. 131 The Death of Crimthann son of Fidach, ed. and trans. by Stokes; Echtra mac Echdach Mugmedóin, ed. and trans. by Joynt. Ó Corráin, ‘Legend as Critic’, pp. 31–33. 132 On Cúán and his poetry, see Downey, ‘The Life and Work’. 133 Ó Corráin, ‘Celtic Narrative Tradition’, pp. 144–46. 134 A Poem Composed for Cathal Croibhdhearg Ó Conchubhair, ed. and trans. by Ó Cuív. See also Ó Corráin, ‘Legend as Critic’, p. 35; Ní Mhaonaigh, ‘The Literature of Medieval Ireland’, p. 44. 135 Ó Corráin, ‘Muirchertach mac Lochlainn’.

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and the Church also found expression in writing about the past.136 Caithréim Cellaig (The Triumph of Cellach), alternatively known as Beatha Cheallaig (The Life of Cellach), reports sixth-century events involving St Ciarán of Clonmacnoise and various Connacht kings, although it anachronistically inserts characters who lived in the seventh century.137 The eponymous Cellach enters the monastic life at Clonmacnoise, but leaves when the opportunity to claim the kingship arises; his later return to ecclesiastical life, this time as bishop of Killala, comes about due to the political opposition he faced as king. Even then, he does not settle, but spends much of his time in Clonmacnoise before becoming a hermit. He is then killed at the instigation of his political rival, a death previously ordained by St Ciarán when Cellach abandoned his monastic vocation. That his death is followed by miracles informs the audience that he had achieved saintly status despite his irregular path. In relation to this text, Herbert commented that the sketchy record of sixth-century Irish history was infinitely malleable by a twelfth-century writer. It could be elaborated into a series of meaningful stories which endowed past events with coherence and causal relationship. Yet literary inventiveness could be combined with the interpretation of events. A past could be evoked which was shaped by the present, and which legitimized the aspirations of the present.138 In this instance, sixth-century events were endowed with significance for a twelfth-century audience concerned with the progress of Church reform in Connacht. Cellach’s career could be held up as a sign of the continuing relevance and acceptability of the traditional modes of ecclesiastical organization at a time when the establishment of episcopal structures and the introduction of foreign religious orders were sweeping away much of what had preceded them. Aided Muirchertaig maic Erca has also been interpreted as reflecting twelfth-century ecclesiastical concerns. In this text, Muirchertach abandons his wife for an otherworldly woman in opposition to the advice of St Cairnech. This appears to echo ongoing debates regarding the relationship between kings and the Church during the twelfth-century Reform, not least regarding the matter of marriage.139 Many more examples of texts commenting on contemporary political and religious developments and debates could be found among the sagas and the hagiography of the period.140

136 On transformations in the Irish Church during the twelfth century, see Flanagan, The Transformation of the Irish Church. 137 Caithréim Cellaig, ed. by Mulchrone. For the date, alternative name, and important further discussion, see Herbert, ‘Caithréim Cellaig’. 138 Herbert, ‘Caithréim Cellaig’, pp. 331–32. 139 Herbert, ‘The Death of Muirchertach mac Erca’. 140 Herbert, ‘Latin and Vernacular Hagiography’, pp. 342–46; Wadden, ‘Do fearaib Cairnich’; Doherty, ‘The Transmission of the Cult of St Máedhóg’.

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Modern scholars now routinely read medieval Irish representations of past events in light of the historical context within which they were written. But only recently has the case been made clearly that medieval Gaelic scholars also interpreted accounts of the past as possessing a message relevant to their present. Erich Poppe has highlighted the importance of a text called Airec menman Uraird maic Coisse (The Stratagem of Urard mac Coise) as providing insight into ‘medieval authors’ understanding of the appropriate interpretative mode for decoding texts’.141 This eleventh-century tale tells the story of a tenth-century poet, Urard mac Coise, whose lands were despoiled by raiders. Urard therefore repaired to the court of the king of Tara, where he recited one of the many stories in his repertoire. This story within the story was about a poet whose lands had been despoiled by raiders and who received compensation from his king for his losses. Urard having completed the story within the story, an angel appeared and identified the characters in it with individuals in the poet’s own time.142 The king got the message, and provided Urard with compensation. The author, to quote Poppe, in the consciously learned and literary discourse of his text, uses this convention [the intervention of the angel] to legitimate a specific reading of the narrative, namely its applicability to the author’s present, […] and the in-tale is thus authorized to be understood as an exemplum for appropriate present conduct on the basis of a past model.143 The tale within the tale, Orgain cathrach Maíl Milscothaig (The Destruction of Máel Milscothach’s Fort), is presented as one of a long list of tales in Urard’s repertoire, others of which include Táin bó Cuailgne and Togail Troí.144 We can take it, therefore, that the story invented by Urard was intended to be understood by the king as comparable with those accounts of historical events. In taking action based on what he had heard, the king demonstrates that the Irish sagas were understood as relevant to the audience’s present, in other words as possessing allegorical or tropological meaning in addition to their historical value.145 This was not a new idea. Isidore of Seville had written that one function of historia was ‘the instruction of the present’.146 And Bede 141 Airec Menman Uraird maic Coisse, ed. by Byrne; Poppe, ‘Reconstructing Medieval Irish Literary Theory’, pp. 44–45. For the date, and the possibility that Urard was the composer, see Mac Cana, The Learned Tales, pp. 36–37. 142 On the appearance of angels as a device to legitimize medieval Irish narratives, see Nagy, Conversing with Angels. 143 Poppe, ‘Reconstructing Medieval Irish Literary Theory’, p. 47. 144 Airec Menman Uraird maic Coisse, ed. by Byrne, p. 44. 145 Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha referred to the ‘function of exemplarity’ shared by saintly and secular heroes who served as idealized models of behaviour for members of the audience: ‘Medieval to Modern’, p. 2. 146 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, i. 43: ‘praeterita hominum gesta ad institutionem praesentium’; Sims-Williams and Poppe, ‘Medieval Irish Literary Theory’, p. 306.

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had asserted that one purpose of his Historia ecclesiastica was to instruct his audience regarding good and bad behaviour.147 As Toner recently pointed out in a discussion of history-writing in Lebor na hUidre, writing history was a religious act, an attempt to reveal God’s plan through an examination of the unfolding of Providence.148 Behind the ephemera of human affairs, medieval Irish historians sought understanding of this plan. Sacred history had long been thought of in these terms. As Scripture, it could be interpreted on historical, allegorical, moral, and anagogical levels; it could be understood as foreshadowing later events and as providing exempla for behaviour in the present. In the early decades of the twelfth century, Hugh of St Victor advised his students that an accurate understanding of history, including knowledge of the person (persona), the business done (negotium), the time (tempus), and the place (locus) was a prerequisite for the pursuit of deeper understanding of Scripture: ‘Nor do I think that you will be able to become perfectly sensible to allegory unless you have first been grounded in history’.149 Recent work by Sigbjørn Sønnesyn has highlighted the extent to which twelfth-century historians applied aspects of exegetical thought, particularly moral and ethical interpretation, to secular history as they sought to edify their audience by providing exempla of good and bad behaviour.150 Such moral, or tropological, interpretation was accompanied also by typological or allegorical reading as ‘the notion of real events as figurae of other real events seems to have led to an increased focus on historical events’.151 But just as Hugh of St Victor had insisted on the necessity of accurate understanding of sacred history prior to attempting to discern spiritual meaning, the belief that secular history, too, could be read on deeper levels seems to have raised concerns about the accuracy of representations of the secular past: ‘it was only through knowledge of what actually happened that any spiritual transcendent meaning might be discovered’.152 In Airec menman Uraird maic Coisse, the intercession of an angel justified interpretation of the story within the story as an exemplum in the narrative present. If the past more broadly, and the Gaelic past specifically, was to be subjected to this kind of interpretation, then accuracy of detail was just as significant as when dealing with Scripture. Synchronizing the events of Ireland’s

147 Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. by Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 2–3. 148 Toner, ‘History and Salvation’, p. 132. 149 Hugh of St Victor, Didascalicon, ed. by Buttimer, vi. 3; trans. by Taylor, pp. 135–36. See also Hugh of St Victor, De tribus maximis circumstantiis gestorum, ed. by Green; trans. by Carruthers. 150 Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury. 151 Sønnesyn, ‘Eternity in Time’, p. 92. 152 Sønnesyn, ‘Eternity in Time’, pp. 92–93. See also Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, p. 271, where he links William’s concern with historical accuracy with his desire to provide moral teaching.

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past with those of the Old Testament and classical Greece and Rome, and establishing accuracy and consistency across accounts of the past were the means by which Gaelic scholars extended to their history the same legitimacy, allowing it to be read — like Scripture — on both the literal-historical level and the typological or allegorical. The message of the Stratagem of Urard mac Coise — ‘that a tale is not just a tale about the past, but has some application to the present’153 — was true for all representations of the past that comprised Gaelic historical culture, and necessitated that great care was taken to ensure their accuracy and consistency.

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———, ‘Literature as History/History as Literature: A View from Medieval Ireland’, in Literature as History/History as Literature: Fact and Fiction in Medieval to Eighteenth-Century British Literature, ed. by Sonja Fielitz (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007), pp. 13–27 ———, ‘The Matter of Troy and Insular Versions of Dares’s De excidio Troiae historia: An Exercise in Textual Typology’, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachwissenschaft, 19 (2009), 252–99 Schlüter, Dagmar, History or Fable? The Book of Leinster as a Document of Cultural Memory in Twelfth-Century Ireland, Studien und Texte zur Keltologie, 9 (Münster: Nodus, 2010) Scowcroft, R. Mark, ‘Leabhar Gabhála, Part i: The Growth of the Text’, Ériu, 38 (1987), 81–142 Sims-Williams, Patrick, and Erich Poppe, ‘Medieval Irish Literary Theory and Criticism’, in The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, ii: The Middle Ages, ed. by Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnston (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 291–309 Smith, Peter J., ‘Early Irish Historical Verse: The Evolution of a Genre’, in Ireland and Europe in the Early Middle Ages: Texts and Transmission/ Irland und Europa im Früheren Mittelalter: Texte und Überlieferung, ed. by Próinséas Ní Chatháin and Michael Richter (Dublin: Four Courts, 2002), pp. 326–41 Sønnesyn, Sigbjørn Olsen, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012) ———, ‘Eternity in Time, Unity in Particularity: The Theological Basis of Typological Interpretations in Twelfth-Century Historiography’, in La typologie biblique comme forme de pensée dans l’historiographie médiévale, ed. by Marek Thue Kretschmer (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), pp. 77–95 Southern, R. W., ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, iv: The Sense of the Past’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 23 (1973), 242–63 Toner, Gregory, ‘The Ulster Cycle: Historiography or Fiction?’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 40 (Winter 2000), 1–20 ———, ‘Scribe and Text in Lebor na hUidre: H’s Intentions and Methodology’, in Ulidia, 2: Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Ulster Cycle of Tales, Maynooth, 24–27 June 2005, ed. by Ruairí Ó hUiginn and Brian Ó Catháin (Maynooth: An Sagart, 2009), pp. 106–20 ———, ‘History and Salvation in Lebor na hUidre’, in Lebor na hUidre, ed. by Ruairí Ó hUiginn, Codices Hibernenses Eximii, 1 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2015), pp. 131–53 Wadden, Patrick, ‘Some Views of the Normans in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Ireland’, in The English Isles: Cultural Transmission and Political Conflict in Britain and Ireland, 1100–1500, ed. by Seán Duffy and Susan Foran (Dublin: Four Courts, 2013), pp. 13–36 ———, ‘Do fearaib Cairnich, Ireland and Scotland in the Twelfth Century’, Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium, 33 (2014), 189–213

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———, ‘The Frankish Table of Nations in Insular Historiography’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 72 (Winter 2016), 1–31 ———, ‘Brian Bóraime, the Insular Viking World and the Battle of Clontarf ’, Medieval Dublin, 16 (2017), 144–69 Woolf, Alex, ‘Amlaíb Cuarán and the Gael’, Medieval Dublin, 3 (2002), 34–43 Zumbühl, Mark, ‘Contextualizing the Duan Albanach’, in Cànan & Cultar/ Language and Culture, ed. by Wilson McLeod, James E. Fraser, and Anja Gunderloch, Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig, 3 (Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2006), pp. 11–24

Nikoloz Aleksidze

Rewriting Histories in Medieval Caucasia

Introduction: Rewritings and their Contexts Medieval Georgian and Armenian writing underwent a long history of rewriting. In changing rhetorical and ideological circumstances, late antique historical and hagiographic narratives were constantly readapted, and served the purpose of legitimizing, explaining, or challenging the current state of affairs. In a few cases, thanks to parallel sources, translations, and intertextual references, the history of rewriting is documentarily attested, and one is able to track the evolution of an individual text through changing historical and rhetorical discourses. In most cases, however, the belief that history has been rewritten is based on circumstantial evidence, and is the only plausible explanation of the otherwise complicated textual history of a particular account or narrative tradition. The aim of the present chapter is to identify several historical and rhetorical contexts within which previous narratives were rewritten and adapted to the demands of a particular age, either by monastic and religious authorities or within dynastic history-writing. Medieval Caucasia was fertile ground for rewriting histories. The religious controversy over Chalcedon that started in the sixth century, continued throughout the entire Middle Ages. In the sixth and seventh centuries the Armenian and Georgian ecclesiastical elites clashed over the correct interpretation of the nature of Christ. The Georgian Church adopted Chalcedonianism, whereas the Armenian Church, while formally adhering to non-Chalcedonianism, experienced a few more centuries of doctrinal uncertainties.1 Political, theological, and ethnic antagonisms conceived in the sixth century contributed to the creation



1 The process is described in detail in an epistolary corpus known as the Book of Letters, a collection of letters exchanged between the Armenian and Georgian Church hierarchs, which led to the Schism between the two Churches. The collection too has been dramatically edited over the centuries, heavily distorting the original voices of the participants. On this collection, see Schmidt, ‘Die armenische “Buch der Briefe”’. Nikoloz Aleksidze  •  ([email protected]) is Professor of the History of Religion and Political Thought at the Free University of Tbilisi. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 101–119 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126747

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and continuous re-creation of antagonizing group identities in Caucasia. By the early eleventh century, the Georgian Church and its monasteries took further steps towards ‘Byzantinization’, which resulted in an even more ardent religious zealotry. Anti-Armenian theological polemic went hand-in-hand with anti-Armenian history-writing, while history was interpreted through the lens of theological casuistry, and theological implications intermingled with quasi-historical traditions. The same is true of Armenian writing, where volumes were written for the purpose of combating Chalcedonian Georgians on both theological and historiographical fronts. Therefore, by the year 1000 history became an essential tool of memory wars in Caucasia. In the eleventh century the Georgian Bagrationi dynasty united the kingdom of Georgia. As a result, a new and complex royal court was formed. Georgia’s kings wore Byzantine honorific titles, and the court culture too was modelled on Constantinopolitan fashion. The Bagrationi royal house increasingly adopted Byzantine royal imagery. Court and dynastic historians appeared who rewrote earlier royal chronicles to serve the new ideology of the ruling elites. The Bagrationi dynasty, which used to be of proud Iranian ancestry, now wished to distance themselves from their Iranian origin, and to create a new Byzantine imagery of kingship. With the unification and consolidation of the Georgian kingdom, the aristocracy and royal house became actively involved in the patronage of new monastic establishments in Georgia and abroad. By the eleventh century, old Georgian monastic colonies in Palestine and Sinai lost their relevance, and Georgian monks were more drawn towards the Balkans and Anatolia, where Georgian aristocrats, often turned monks, founded a number of monasteries. A monastery was founded by Gregory Pakourianos (Bakourianisdze) in Bulgaria, George Prokhorios founded a large monastery of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, and the Čordvaneli brothers, monk John and general Tornikios, founded the Iviron monastery on Mount Athos. This signalled a radically new era in Georgian writing whereby almost the entire Georgian corpus was rewritten to suit the new demands of Orthodoxy. It was within these broad contexts that the most notable rewritings of history were undertaken. A unifying pattern underpinning these multiple rewritings was necessary to sustain a certain imagined continuity between the experienced time and the times of the foundations. Rewriting effectively served the purpose of erasing the traces of discontinuity within the teleological understanding of ethnic or ecclesiastical history, or of ascertaining that a community’s orthodox doctrine and practice had always been the same since the foundation of Christianity. Similar attempts took place on smaller scales, where monastic establishments attempted to discover sound connections with the foundational times and figures from Antiquity. Meanwhile, and crucially, royal chronicles strove to maintain similar continuity in their representation of the ruling dynasty, and to discover the primordial and perpetual existence of the political and ideological identity of the royal house. In practically all instances discussed below, rewriting was motivated by an attempt to resolve a certain historical and mnemonic tension. This constant tension between

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the past and the present, the pull of orthodoxy and heterodoxy in uncertain times, and uncertainties with regard to identity inevitably resulted in a constant need to rewrite, adapt, and adopt earlier narratives.

Methodological Problems Armenian and Georgian writing was shaped during the fifth century ce. In the fifth century, Scripture was translated into both languages and liturgical books were compiled. Throughout the next two centuries, Armenians and Georgians actively engaged in history-writing. Late antique Armenian literature developed into a particularly rich historical corpus which subsequent medieval tradition considered as foundational to Armenian identity. These corpora narrated the foundation of Christian Armenian culture, of the national Church and patriarchal succession, the spread of Christianity, the formation of the cult of saints, and all those events that, from the medieval point of view, had laid down the fundamentals of the Christian Armenian nation.2 Although Georgian writing was also formed in the fifth century, and was from its origin thoroughly Christian, its historiographical corpus evolved slowly in comparison with Armenia. The earliest surviving narratives from the fifth to the seventh century are sporadic, and constitute hagiography and accounts of martyrdom. The scarcity of literary production persisted until the ninth century when the picture changed dramatically and one is able to observe a certain outburst in Georgian literary production. Judging by the surviving material, it may appear that it was only then that the Georgians produced a corpus of writing comparable to that of the Armenians.3 Both the Armenian and the Georgian materials present a methodological problem about dating these extensive corpora. Late antique and early medieval Armenian narratives have survived in considerably later manuscripts, often over a millennium younger than the alleged date of composition of a particular narrative, having thus undergone over a thousand years of textual history.4 The question that naturally arises is the extent to which these sources can be trusted as largely genuine. Are we to expect that the corpora that were instrumental to medieval Armenian identity-discourse survived intact, and were not rewritten or adapted more than a few times before the early modern period? The Georgian corpus, while sharing similar problems, opens further questions. The seventh-century conflict between the Armenian and Georgian

2 For an overview, see van Lint, ‘The Formation of Armenian Identity’. 3 For a comparative study of the two historiographic traditions, see Thomson, ‘The Writing of History’. 4 For example, the earliest complete manuscript of Koriwn’s Life of Maštoc‘ dates to the seventeenth century. Koriwn was a fifth-century author who described the life and work of the creator of the Armenian alphabet, Maštoc‘. For a critical study, see Winkler, Koriwns Biographie.

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Churches and the relative absence of securely dated pre-ninth-century sources, has led scholars to believe that in Late Antiquity the Georgians were united with the Armenians in anti-Chalcedonianism, and that only in the seventh century did they radically switch sides. Consequently, it is believed that the sudden and rather dramatic elaboration of literature one or two centuries later, rather than being a novelty, is effectively an indication of a large-scale rewriting and adaptation of older texts for doctrinal, literary, or ideological reasons.5 The past was inconvenient, thus it had to be erased or rewritten. Attempts have been made to peel back the literary production of this period in order to discover traces of repression or suppression of unacceptable details from previous versions. The question remains, however, whether it is possible to identify rewritings of history on the basis of anything other than circumstances. And if so, does not this judgement produce a circular argument, whereby rewriting is deduced from a particular historical context which then becomes the basis for further conclusions about the historical era in question?

Two Times of Caucasian History In their attempts to maintain unity between the ‘foundations’ and the present, medieval Armenian and Georgian historical writing developed the idea of two times, where the experienced past and the present are juxtaposed with illo tempore, that is, with the foundational era of Armenian and Georgian cultures. Narrating the foundation of Christian cultures and nations was supposed to explain or legitimize the contemporary state of affairs; when continuity failed, however, histories were rewritten. In the Armenian case, the traditional narrative of the evangelism and conversion of Caucasia came into sharp contrast with current realities. Based on fifth-century historical accounts of Agathangelos and others, the Armenian Church claimed that Armenia’s evangelists Gregory the Illuminator, Maštoc‘, and others also evangelized Georgia and the rest of Caucasia, and the two lands thus shared their orthodox past, but contemporary Georgians seemed to be entirely oblivious of this fact: they were Chalcedonian and condemned Armenians as heretics. Thus, the past and the present were in conflict: the past had not resulted in the present. The purpose of historical writing was therefore to sustain a fluent transition between the two times, and to remove all the inconsistencies between them. Consequently, rewriting largely affected the classical or foundational texts of medieval Armenian and Georgian grand narratives in attempts to harmonize the two times of history. The idea of two times is particularly transparent in the historical conceptualization of the Church Schism outlined above. The Schism became a

5 See, for example, Rapp, ‘Christian Caucasian Dialogues’, p. 170.

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remarkably popular motif in Armenian writing, and remained as a constant reminder of the apostasy of the Georgians from the true faith. In medieval polemic, when the chasm between the Armenian non-Chalcedonian and Georgian Chalcedonian Churches became ever more dramatic, accompanied by political and ethno-religious tensions, the Schism was often evoked as the terminus after which the Georgians ‘rebelled’ against the Armenians, rejected their superiority, and adopted ‘Roman’ diphysitism. The Schism became a major impetus for subsequent rewriting, both of individual texts and in reimagining grand narratives.6 In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Armenian author Bishop Uxtanēs of Sebasteia and the Georgian Katholikos Arseni of Sapara produced their visions of what had allegedly happened three centuries earlier, and thus standardized Armenian non-Chalcedonian and Georgian Chalcedonian visions of the pre-Schism past.7 Uxtanēs’ vision and perception of the Schism, based on his interpretation of seventh-century documents, became a dominant narrative in the Armenian corpus, as it conveniently explained the contemporary political status quo in Caucasia. For Uxtanēs, the Schism was not merely an event in history, but rather an interpretive tool, which was supposed to explain or justify the current state of affairs. The Schism, as outlined by Uxtanēs, acted as a separator of the two times: the time of unity among the Caucasian Churches before the Schism, and the time of separation. Such a perception of two times in Caucasian history also affected the interpretation of some crucial aspects of the pre-Schism past. This was, most importantly, a vision of the foundations of Christianity, perhaps the most important identity-making discourse in medieval Caucasia. Armenian authors increasingly perceived the Schism as a departure from common apostolic foundations, which resulted in a need to inflate and conflate the narrative of these foundations. Uxtanēs accomplished this through reimagining some pre-Schism literary traditions by incorporating them into the Schism discourse.8 Thus, Uxtanēs’ narrative continued, the current anomalous state of affairs, whereby there was no religious unity in Caucasia, was the result of the undermined natural order of things that existed prior to the Schism. Armenian elites consequently required a formulation of new narratives of the foundations of Christianity in their cultures: a pre-Schism interpretation of events. As the framework for a grand narrative, it was thus the conversion of Caucasia that underwent perhaps the longest and most complex history of rewriting.

6 For a brief overview, see Mahé, ‘La rupture arméno-géorgienne’; also Rapp, ‘Christian Caucasian Dialogues’. 7 For Uxtanēs’ edition, see Bishop Ukhtanes of Sebastia, History of Armenia, Part ii, trans. by Arzoumanian. For Arseni’s text and study, see Aleksidze and Mahé, ‘Arsène Sapareli’. 8 A notable example is the case of St Queen Šušanik, who was a common Armeno-Georgian saint in late antique Caucasia, whose life and death, however, Uxtanēs readily appropriated as an argument against the Georgians.

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The subsequent history of one particular text offers a vivid example of rewriting motivated by attempts to adapt a classical text for a contemporary audience. The central source that recounted the foundation and spread of Christianity in Armenia is the Life of Gregory the Illuminator, attributed to a fifth-century author, Agathangelos. The narrative is a standard account of Armenia’s conversion and was the main source and reference point for all later Armenian historians. It is equally exceptional that Agathangelos was the only text produced in late antique Caucasia that was translated into several languages, with the cult of Gregory the Illuminator far transcending the limits of Armenia. Such a foundational narrative of Armenian identity-making was, understandably, subject to a seemingly endless process of rewriting and adaptation to current political and rhetorical needs.9 The memory of Gregory the Illuminator became particularly central to the Armenian national narrative, because Gregory, according to Agathangelos, was the illuminator (that is, the bringer of enlightenment) of all Caucasian lands, not just Armenia. Throughout the medieval Armeno-Georgian antagonism, it was essential for Armenians to retain the memory of Gregory as the convertor of Georgia too. Consequently, in multiple versions of the Life of Gregory, the depiction of Gregory’s missionary activity differs dramatically, and one is even able to trace the addition of disputed border dioceses to his evangelical activities. The details largely depend on when and how an individual Armenian author or editor perceived the extent of Armenia’s historical influence in any given era. While in some (and perhaps earlier) versions, Gregory served as an illuminator of Armenia proper, in other versions his missionary activity stretched to other Caucasian and near-eastern lands, culminating in the famous thirteenth-century version where Gregory and Pope Silvester divided virtually the entire Christian world between them.10 The Georgian account of conversion had a certain ambivalence towards its Armenian counterpart. It both entered into dialogue with the Armenian tradition, and provided a sharp contrast. According to the seventh-century historical and hagiographic narrative The Conversion of Georgia, Georgia was converted through the effort of a captive holy woman called Nino.11 The tradition was in time amplified and became widely popular. Although the Conversion of Georgia retained some protagonists from Agathangelos’s narrative, it also directly contradicted the Armenian account in a crucial aspect: Iberia (that is, Georgia) was converted by St Nino, with no reference to St Gregory. The Armenian Agathangelos, on the other hand, knew nothing of St Nino. The Georgian account poses even more problems, as while the traditional dating and authorship of the Armenian accounts is more or less

9 For a combined and comparative translation of all the versions of Agathangelos, see The Lives of Saint Gregory, trans. by Thompson. 10 The Letter of Love and Concord, ed. and trans. by Pogossian. 11 The Wellspring of Georgian Historiography, ed. and trans. by Lerner.

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secure, the Georgian account of the Conversion is anonymous and grossly pseudepigraphic, being attributed to the alleged witnesses of Nino’s life. As a result, due to the radical disagreement between the Armenian and Georgian accounts, scholars have suggested that the surviving Georgian version may indeed be testament to a dramatic rewriting of the original composition, whereby the Armenian component was gradually suppressed, and in time erased altogether.12 This claim, however, is based on scholars’ expectation of rewriting, rather than being supported by the sources. Besides, even a brief look at medieval Georgian historical writing suggests that suppression of the Armenian component within the Georgian narratives is far less evident than once believed.13 While in certain cases histories were rewritten for the purpose of setting in stone one tradition against a conflicting narrative, such as Agathangelos and St Nino, in other cases rewriting served to integrate two traditions. The History of the eighth-century Armenian historian Movsēs Xorenac‘i is perhaps the most compelling example. This great authority of the Armenian historical tradition attempted to bring the Georgian and Armenian narratives of conversion together. Movsēs utilized as his source the most authoritative Agathangelos, but he was also well aware of the Georgian tradition, which he had gathered from Greek sources, namely from the Armenian adaptation by Socrates Scholasticus. Movsēs, however, wished to rewrite the standard Roman and Greek narrative that originated from Rufinus’s Ecclesiastical History, and altered entire passages of the original with the aim of integrating the Georgian narrative into the grand Armenian story. Thus, while he copied and pasted the entire chapter of Iberia’s conversion from Socrates into his History, he also rewrote the same chapter so that the conversion appeared to be supervised from Armenia, instead of Constantinople, and directed by Gregory the Illuminator through Nino.14 Furthermore, and most curiously, he directed his readers to Agathangelos, where he claimed that one could read all this, even though nothing of the kind can be found in any of the multiple versions of Agathangelos. This final detail may be an indication that even such foundational texts as Agathangelos were much less standardized, and that seemingly standard texts in practice allowed a great degree of fluidity, being transmitted orally as well as in writing. While the core message of Agathangelos remained standard, other interventions into the text were perfectly acceptable as long as they were rhetorically and ideologically sound.15

12 Rapp, Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography, p. 124. 13 Explored more fully in Aleksidze, The Narrative of the Caucasian Schism. 14 Movses Khorenats‘i, History of the Armenians, trans. by Thomson, p. 111; Socrate de Constantinople, Histoire ecclésiastique, ed. by Maraval and Périchon, p. 21. 15 One of the most notable examples is the thirteenth-century Armenian version of the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, where the passages referring to the Georgians are entirely rewritten for the same polemic and mnemonic purpose. For the Armenian adaptation, see Schmidt, ‘Die zweifache armenische Rezension’.

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By the turn of the millennium, the Armenian and Georgian Churches had accumulated a long history of polemic. Irreconcilable theological stands were amplified by an experience in religious antagonism that made dialogue between the two theological standpoints virtually impossible. Minor theological differences were exaggerated by oral and written histories, infused with invective and offensive anecdotes. For example, the story of the Fast of the Catechumens, the Arajavork‘ in Armenian, which was an ancient practice retained by the Armenian Church and originally also observed by the Georgians, was associated with Armenian ‘evil’ practices. A quasi-historical invective was spread in Georgia and other Chalcedonian milieux, where Araj was a dog that belonged to the arch-heretic Peter Fuller. In response, the Armenians blamed the Georgians for the murder of a certain Armenian Bishop Peter during the Schism in the seventh century, a claim based entirely on an intentional misinterpretation of the original sources.16 In the thirteenth century the Armenian scholar Mxit‘ar Goš accused history-writing of adding fuel to the fire of religious polemic.17 Meanwhile, far from Caucasia, another Armenian patriarch, Nersēs the Gracious, polemicized with the Byzantines and attempted on numerous occasions to avoid confusion between garbled historical traditions and matters of doctrine.

Sustaining Continuity In sharp contrast to Armenian historical writing, when it comes to the Georgian perception of the Schism and the state of affairs pre-Schism, what we encounter is utter silence. The period is entirely omitted — or perhaps has been removed — from the historical narratives. Both cultures understandably saw the ecclesiastical Schism as an apostasy from the true faith: for Uxtanēs, the Georgians had rejected and forgotten Armenian superiority, whereas according to the Georgian perception, the Armenians had temporarily broken off from the ‘oecumenical’ Church. Arseni effectively utilized all relevant Armenian sources to write a Georgian — or rather Chalcedonian — version of what happened. It is noteworthy that his primary mission was to sustain an impression of continuity in the Christian history of Georgia. In his version of events, what had happened in Armenia was not necessarily a dramatic derailing to non-Chalcedonianism, but rather a choice that certain leaders of the Armenian Church had to make under duress, squeezed between the Romans and the Sasanians. Apart from Arseni, who ironically gathered all his sources from the Armenian tradition, medieval Georgian literature preserved no memory of the Schism, and indeed, did not allow any such transitional moment in

16 On this, see Aleksidze, ‘Three Heretical Men and a Dog’. 17 See Aleksidze, ‘Let Us Not Obstruct the Possible’.

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its vision of history. The reason for this may indeed be that whereas the Armenian tradition needed to inflate the importance of the Schism in order to explain the heterodoxy of the Georgians and retain the memory of Armenian cultural and political dominance in the region, in the Georgian narrative the Schism occupied no meaningful place. According to the Georgian narrative, conversion happened once and in the fourth century, by St Nino, so that no transition from heterodoxy to orthodoxy was admissible. Moreover, while late antique and medieval Armenian writing was permeated with accounts of doctrinal controversies, with opposition to Nestorians and Chalcedonians becoming a major hallmark of early Armenian writing, nothing of this kind occurred in the Georgian tradition. While Armenian historians zealously strove to retain their vision of the pre-Schism state of affairs in cultural memory, Georgian narrative texts and hagiographic accounts of the same period are all but silent about the Chalcedonian question. Thus, rewriting in the Armenian tradition was motivated by an attempt to explicate the current state of affairs and to justify the radical mismatch between their vision of the foundation of Christian Caucasian cultures. This was achieved through the radical conceptualization of the Schism as a watershed event between the two times. The Georgian motivation for rewriting histories, however, was the exact opposite — to create a harmonious and uninterrupted flow from the legendary past to the present, where the Schism was, understandably, non-existent. To return to the methodological question posed in the introduction, can we safely assume that the relative silence of late antique Georgian sources is due to a wide-scale rewriting when the Georgians attempted to codify their Orthodox Chalcedonian salvation history? A methodological mistake that scholars often make in their quest for Georgian rewritings is to identify the ‘Armenian component’ with the supposed ‘non-Chalcedonian’ period of Georgian Church history. That is to say, it is assumed that in their attempts to whitewash their religious history, Georgians would have rid themselves of those parts of their histories that included the Armenians. This, however, is factually untrue, as translations from the Armenian, including Armenian accounts of conversion, continued through the next millennium. It was not that an Armenian component had to be rewritten; what had to change was the point of view. For example, while Arseni of Sapara used Armenian sources for his account of the Caucasian Schism, and did not reject the Armenian version of the foundation of Christianity in Caucasia, he rewrote the famous tropes of classical Armenian writing, such as the visions of the Armenian patriarchs Sahak and Gregory, and presented them as foreknowledge of the Armenian apostasy.18 Arseni’s motivation was therefore not to eject Armenians from Georgian history, but rather to maintain that his Georgian Chalcedonian timeline of history was the correct one, and that it was anti-Chalcedonianism 18 Aleksidze and Mahé, ‘Arsène Sapareli’, p. 48.

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that represented novelty and heresy in Caucasia, whereas Chalcedonian Orthodoxy was the legitimate heir of the common foundations. A Georgian hagiographical corpus from the ninth century is the most outstanding example of such a possibility, and the usual suspect for conscious rewriting. The Lives of the Syrian Fathers is a collection of accounts detailing the lives and occasionally the martyrdoms of Syrian fathers who allegedly arrived in Georgia in the sixth century and founded monastic colonies all over the land. The ethnic and religious identity of the fathers has been a matter of debate throughout the last century of scholarship, and different solutions have been proposed. One strand in the scholarship believes that they were non-Chalcedonian monks who fled Justinian’s persecutions, and found safe haven in remote and friendly Georgia, whereas others, especially contemporary Georgian scholars, believe that they were staunchly Chalcedonian, and that it was largely due to their mission that by the end of the sixth century eastern Georgia had become decidedly Chalcedonian.19 The truth, however, is that none of the surviving versions of the Lives is remotely concerned with their denominational belonging; it is as if someone had methodically erased anything suggesting a doctrinal issue. Indeed, such doctrinal aloofness in a period of dramatic religious strife across the entire Near East and Caucasia does raise suspicions. The staggering silence is one of the main reasons why the Lives of the Syrian Fathers are considered adaptations of much earlier narratives, the core of which must have appeared soon after the death of each individual Syrian father. The tenth-century editor of the corpus, Patriarch Arseni, whose work survives, explicitly pointed out that he used earlier narratives that he had collected from the monasteries founded by the fathers. A close reading of some of these texts occasionally betrays intimate knowledge of the political state of affairs under the Sasanians, revealing their original late antique composition. Other than surprising knowledge of the historical state of affairs, one episode from the Life of David Gerejeli, one of the earliest Syrian fathers and the founder of the David-Gareja desert monastery, has been identified as a sign of intentional rewriting. At one point in the narrative, the venerable David decides to travel on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He reaches the Mount of Olives, but immediately realizes that he is unworthy to enter the Holy City. Instead, he collects three stones and takes them with him to Georgia. The Patriarch of Jerusalem sees in a dream that someone has taken three stones from the Holy City. He wakes up, and sends soldiers to retrieve the stones. The soldiers manage to take two stones from David, but he succeeds in hiding the third and reaches Georgia with it. Korneli Kekelidze has speculated that the original reason for David’s inability to enter the Holy City was his anti-Chalcedonianism, and this was how it was presented in the original account. The version that survives is a reimagining by the tenth-century author, who retained the episode but 19 For a brief discussion, see Rapp, The Sasanian World, pp. 100–03.

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stripped it of its polemical implications.20 Indeed, it is a common topos in late antique non-Chalcedonian writing to refer to Jerusalem as occupied by the heretics.21 This argument for rewriting may be far-fetched, and justified by a modern horizon of expectations, but historical inaccuracy in the narratives can only be explained by attempts to suppress inconvenient components of the earlier narrative. The quest for uninterrupted continuity became a major literary and political project a century after Arseni’s reimagination and the compilation of the Lives of the Syrian Fathers.

Byzantinizing the Tradition If suppression of the non-Chalcedonian period of history by early medieval Georgian narratives remains speculative, rewriting of earlier narratives became in the eleventh century a major project that spanned practically all literary genres. Effectively, it was then that an overt movement is attested towards removing all doubts regarding Georgia’s orthodox history and heritage. The challenge was to write an uninterrupted history of Georgian Orthodoxy where the ethno-religious concept of Georgianness would be inextricably tied to Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. The process was spearheaded mostly by two men on Mount Athos, St Euthymios and George the Hagiorites.22 In the twelfth century, Ephrem the Lesser of the Holy Mountain in Syria and his companions took this process to a new level, resulting in what we now know as the Hellenophile period of Georgian writing. All three of them undertook a monumental project of entirely rewriting, editing, and retranslating earlier translations and original compositions. Essentially, the entire literature of Christian Georgia was rewritten.23 Older liturgical books stemming from Jerusalem and the Holy Land were abandoned and Constantinopolitan ones were adopted, old translations of patristic writings were vigorously rewritten, and hagiography was retranslated. In many cases rewriting was justified by the attempt to reach maximum closeness with the Greek original, or to retranslate texts that had earlier been translated through a third medium, and thus effectively to Byzantinize Georgian literature. The ultimate goal was to emulate the original, mostly Greek, texts in their preciseness and Orthodoxy. Naturally, the texts that were rewritten were not historical accounts, but removing linguistic

20 See discussion in Kekelidze, ‘The Question of the Arrival of the Syrian Fathers’. 21 This has been pointed out in the original Armeno-Georgian correspondence of the early seventh century that allegedly led to the Schism. 22 On the Athonite fathers and their literary movement, see, among many others, Gippert, ‘The Georgian Hagiorites’. 23 This process is, among others, narrated in their hagiographic accounts. See The Life and Citizenship of George the Hagiorite, trans. by Grdzelidze.

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inconsistencies from earlier theological and ecclesiastical texts was equated to removing the blemish of heresy from Georgia’s Church history. This zeal to rewrite was largely a result of the head-to-head contact of Greek and Georgian monks which was inevitably accompanied by ethnic tensions. The Byzantines felt uncomfortable with a Georgian presence in their monastic establishments. Suspicious of the orthodoxy of the Georgians, who spoke a wildly unintelligible language, they severely challenged the legitimacy of their Church’s independence. In the twelfth century, anxieties were therefore renewed among the Georgians over the nature of the foundation of the Caucasian Churches and the continuity of Orthodoxy among the Caucasian nations. In these rhetorical circumstances a historical justification of the continuous existence of Georgian Chalcedonian Orthodoxy became a necessity. For this purpose, Ephrem the Lesser produced a historical manual for Georgian monks which was in effect a set of ready-made answers to the Byzantine allegations.24 The short account is a summary of Georgia’s Church history, where the episodes and claims serve the purpose of justifying its raison d’être. This new standard salvation history began in apostolic times and claimed perpetual orthodoxy for the Georgian Church down to the present time. Both Ephrem and the Athonite fathers were developing the idea of Georgia’s spiritual superiority over the Byzantines, justified through an ecclesiastical history which, unlike the Constantinopolitan Church, had never experienced heresy. Ephrem’s manual effectively prescribed an historical essentialist and teleological association of Chalcedonian Orthodoxy and Georgianness. Ephrem’s guidelines for how to reimagine Georgia’s history permeated other genres of Christian writing. In due course, among other literary trends, Georgians adopted the Byzantine metaphrastic tradition, the largest Byzantine project of literary rewriting. Originally initiated by Symeon Metaphrastes, the purpose of metaphraseis was to embellish earlier hagiographical accounts by adding scriptural passages, expanding the details from the saint’s life and generally creating a more ornate narrative.25 The Georgians too were drawn by the metaphrastic tradition, and as a result almost all earlier hagiographical accounts were rewritten in a metaphrastic fashion. Unlike the Byzantine tradition, however, the Georgian metaphrastic movement had another aim — to adapt earlier hagiographical accounts to the emerging contemporary ethno-religious discourse. Ultimately this served the purpose of creating stronger bonds between a historic saint and his ethnic and communal identity. One of the most blatant examples of rewriting histories for the purpose of sustaining this imagined continuity of Orthodoxy is the Georgian version of the Life of Peter the Iberian, originally composed by John Rufus in the fifth century in Syriac. It is not certain, however likely, that the Georgian Life

24 Ephrem Mcire, The History of the Conversion of the Georgians, ed. by Bregvadze. 25 On Symeon, see Högel, Symeon Metaphrastes.

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was a rewriting of an earlier Georgian original, perhaps late antique in date. Nevertheless, it certainly served the purpose of entirely reimagining the life and work of this prominent fifth-century Palestinian Georgian monk. In the original narrative Peter is presented and hailed as a champion of the anti-Chalcedonian movement, but the Georgian makes him an ardent Chalcedonian, who even attended the council of Chalcedon. Peter’s rhetorical role in this narrative is to assert a continuous and essentialist association between Chalcedonian Orthodoxy and Georgianness, a concept that was on the one hand challenged by the Byzantines, and on the other undermined by the supposed non-Chalcedonian period in Georgian Church history.26 Thus, the Life of Peter is both ardently Chalcedonian and thoroughly patriotic, taking care to refer systematically to Peter’s Georgian origin. In the introductory chapter, the author makes sure to stress: და რამეთუ ვინაჲთგან ექადაგა ქადაგებაჲ იგი წმიდისა ქრისტეს სახარებისაჲ წმიდისა და დიდებულისა ქრისტეს მოციქულისა ანდრიას მიერ ქუეყანასა მას ქართლისასა […] და უკუანაჲსკნელ მიივლინა წმიდაჲ დედაჲ ნინო კერძოსა ერთსა ქუეყანისა მისვე ქართლისასა ქრისტეს ღმრთისა მიერ, და ისწავეს ღმრთის-მსახურებაჲ, და ჰრწმენა წმიდაჲ სამებაჲ და ნათელ-იღეს სახელსა ზედა წმიდიდა სამებისასა ქადაგებითა მით წმიდათა მოციქულთაჲთა, მიერითგან არღარა ოდეს მიდრეკილ არს ქუეყანაჲ იგი ქართლისაჲ წმიდისა და მართლისა სარწმუნოებისაგან, არცა მივდრკეთ უკუნისამდე მადლითა-ვე წმიდისა სამებისაჲთა და მეოხებითა ყოლად წმიდისა დედოფლისა ღმრთისმშობ[ე]ლისაჲთა და სასოჲსა მის მფარველისა ჩუენისაჲთა.27 For the teaching of the Holy Gospel of Christ was taught by the holy and great apostle of Christ, Andrew, on this land of Kartli […]. Finally, it was the holy mother Nino who was sent by Christ God to a certain place of the same land of Kartli. And they learned to worship and to have faith in the Trinity and they were baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity through the teaching of those holy apostles, since then the land of Kartli has never averted from the true faith, and we too shall never avert by the grace of the Holy Trinity and the intercession of the all-holy Queen, the Mother of God, our hope and protectress. The assertion that ‘never have the Georgians averted from the true faith’ constitutes the core of the narrative and the reason for rewriting, whereby each episode of Georgia’s history reaffirms this grand and central claim. 26 This is perhaps similar to what Goullet calls transvalorisation of saints in hagiographic rewritings: Écriture et réécriture. 27 The Life and Work of Our Holy and Blessed Father Peter the Georgian, ed. by Abuladze, pp. 215–16.

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Another frequently rewritten narrative is the Life of Hilarion the Iberian, which reveals a similar pattern of metaphrastic rewriting. Originally composed probably on Mount Athos, the Life was rewritten soon afterwards with explicit insertions of the ‘new’ purpose that the Life envisaged. As with the Life of Peter, here too an introduction was added, summarizing in a few paragraphs the conversion of Georgia in the times of Constantine, and asserting Georgia’s perpetual Nicene and Chalcedonian Orthodoxy. Just like Peter, not only is Hilarion an exemplum of an excellent Christian, but his new role is to reaffirm the continuity of Orthodoxy among the Georgian people, something that was entirely absent in the purportedly original version.28 Similar hagiographical accounts, while originally created for more specific purposes, were later reimagined as parts of the grand Christian narrative, where Lives of saints served the purpose of sustaining this narrative. While Georgian monks on Athos and in Syria were devising a grand narrative of Georgia’s ecclesiastical history and elaborating upon its apostolic origins, the old story of the Life of Nino was reimagined once again in a metaphrastic fashion.29 Τhe twelfth-century metaphrastic version of the Life of Nino told an expansive story. As in the rewritten Lives of Peter and Hilarion the Iberian, here too a lengthy introduction and contextualization was provided. The narrative takes off with the original mission of the apostle Andrew the First-Called to Georgia, elaborates upon the legend of Georgia being the lot of the Mother of God, invokes all the relics of Christ that have been allegedly translated to Georgia, and places Nino in this grand context, where she inherits and confirms all these earlier signs of conversion and thus initiates the new Orthodox history of Georgia. After recounting the story of Nino, the narrative finishes with yet another reassurance that at no point in history have the Georgians experienced heterodoxy. The author juxtaposed this claim with a dramatic history of heresies among the Greeks from the Arians to the Iconoclasts, underlining the tendency of his age to deliver counter-allegations against the Byzantines in contrast to the uninterrupted Orthodoxy of the Georgians. The metaphrastic Life of Nino transcended all other similar narratives in its ethno-religious patriotism and essential rewriting of all histories. Such a reimagination of the Life of Nino for a particular historical context was merely one of over half a dozen rewritings of her Life beginning from Late Antiquity. Earlier, in the eleventh century, Leonti of Ruisi integrated his own redaction of the Life of Nino into his edition of the Life of Georgia, incorporating Nino into the larger story of the Georgian kings. As Stephen Rapp has demonstrated, Leonti removed the final part of the Lives of the Kings and inserted the Life of Nino in its place.30 Nino is not here a mere nun or a refugee, nor is her past life surrounded by a veil of obscurity.

28 The Life and Work of Our Holy and God-Bearing Father Ilarion, ed. by Abuladze. 29 The Life and Work of Our Holy and Blessed Mother Nino, ed. by Abuladze. 30 Rapp, The Sasanian World, pp. 105–69.

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The new Nino is presented as the daughter of a great general of the Roman army, whose importance is further heightened by the claim that he converted the whole of western Europe when he was commissioned by the emperor to subdue rebels in France. Nino has evolved from the obscure and anonymous slave girl of the late antique histories into a queen and a national saint.31 The new Nino is thoroughly political, integrated into the Georgian body politic, and with other saints such as Peter and Hilarion reaffirms its diachronic and synchronic Orthodoxy. In the twelfth century, when the cult of Queen Tamar was expanding, and the tradition of the Mother of God was becoming particularly popular, the modest earlier story of a slave girl who found refuge in the valley of Iberia no longer resonated with listeners. The history of the new Nino was the history of the Georgian royal house. The movement towards creating a new sense of continuity stemmed equally from Georgian monastic circles in Byzantium and the royal court, the latter including both dynastic historians and patriarchal scholars. Most likely in the eleventh century a certain Bishop Leonti of Ruisi produced a compilation and edition of what is now known as the Life of Georgia (Kartlis Cxovreba). The History is essentially the story of the Georgian royal houses from the beginning of kingship in Georgia until recent times. It starts with the biblical ethnarchs of the Caucasian peoples, carries on with the foundation of the kingdom of Iberia after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and continues the story of the Georgian kings all the way to the conversion of Iberia with the insertion of a newly edited Life of Nino. This is followed by the Life of King Vakhtang the Wolf-Head, reaching all the way to the Bagrationis’ assumption of power. Although originally thought a single unitary creation, it is now well established that the corpus is a collection, often artificial and crude, of several independent and substantially earlier historical narratives. Traditionally, the entire corpus was dated to the eleventh century and was attributed to Bishop Leonti. Recently, however, it has been convincingly argued that at least two parts, the Lives of the Kings and the Life of Vakhtang Gorgasal, are earlier and can be dated to c. 800. Stephen Rapp and others have pointed out the Sasanian nature of these narratives and the Sasanian imagery that they dimly reveal.32 Leonti created a single narrative by heavy manipulation of several independent accounts, thus creating an idea of continuity of kingship in Georgia, specifically of the Bagrationi dynasty. Recently, sound attempts have been made to identify earlier strata in the corpus and to single out the several stages of rewriting. Rapp’s recent monograph on late antique Georgian sources for Sasanian history, apart from other virtues, is an excellent analysis, if a trifle hypothetical, of the rewriting

31 A classic study of the evolution of the cult of Nino with reference to the development of Georgian group identity can be found in Tarchnišvili, ‘Die Legende der heiligen Nino’; for a more recent study, see also Martin-Hisard, ‘Jalons pour une histoire’. 32 For a summary of main arguments, see Rapp, The Sasanian World, pp. 353–71.

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that the constituent parts of the Life of Kartli may have undergone between its Sasanian and Bagratid periods. Rapp’s aim is to deconstruct the highly complicated text that we have come to know as the Life of Georgia in order to reveal the earliest layers that were essentially based on Iranian oral epics. With the advent of the Bagrationis in 700, these narratives were radically rewritten with the new Bagrationi ideology, and were finally rewritten and codified into a single continuous narrative by Bishop Leonti in the eleventh century. Rapp argues that a substantial portion ‘if not all’ of the Lives of the Kings has been rewritten: Most if not all treatments of subsequent Christian K‛art‛velian kings were reframed, substantially revised, and in some cases wholly supplanted by new accounts. […] The Iranic imagery originally applied to the Chosroids was amputated either by Archbishop Leonti Mroveli in the mid-eleventh century, an interpretation I accept, or by the author-editors who assembled the extant Life of Kings and Life of Vaxtang around the year 800. At any rate, pauses in coverage between the ninth and eleventh century were rectified over the entire span, and accounts of more recent periods were appended […] with a new historiographical outlook oriented more towards the emergent Byzantine Commonwealth. The notion of Iranic hero-kings has been diminished, and the historian never uses the associated terms bumberazi, goliat‛i and […]. Thus, the lack of Iranic imagery in pre-Bagratid historiography is not limited to Leonti Mroveli’s editorial efforts. […] In the early ninth century the displacement of Iranic K‛art‛velian kingship was already under way. Its outright eviction would come under the royal Bagratids.33 The Life of Georgia indeed had a much longer history of rewriting than discussed here. It was heavily edited in early modernity to suit emerging nationalistic anxieties, and was earlier translated into Armenian and significantly rewritten.34 The codification of the narrative, however, was accomplished by Bishop Leonti at the peak of Bagrationi power in Caucasia. By the twelfth century the standard narratives of Georgia’s Church history and its royal history had been synchronized and incorporated into the rhetorical arsenal of the ruling secular and ecclesiastic elites.

Conclusion Medieval Caucasian narrative sources, I believe, illustrate a principal motivation for rewriting in the production and reproduction of identities and understandings of continuity. In cases such as Movsēs Xorenac‘i attempts were

33 Rapp, The Sasanian World, p. 365. 34 For the Armenian rewriting, see Thomson, Rewriting Caucasian History.

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made to integrate a rival (Georgian) narrative of Caucasia’s conversion into Armenia’s grand narrative, by making the Georgian counterpart a sub-plot of ‘true history’, not its opposite. While the Georgian sources are silent, one may carefully deduce that at around the same time late antique Georgian narratives were being readapted to the current demands of Orthodoxy. The reimagination of Georgia’s history as a perpetual affirmation of Nicene and Chalcedonian Orthodoxy became a particularly important project when Georgian monks confronted their Greek colleagues. In all these cases attempts were made to create an idea of rigid and sustainable continuity between the foundations of Georgian Christianity and present experience. Meanwhile, with the consolidation of the Georgian royal house, the court historians who were also bishops, such as Leonti, were effectively Byzantinizing the Georgian ruling dynasty. As demonstrated by Leonti’s work, the rewriting of ecclesiastical narratives, including hagiography, and royal chronicles was a synchronized effort to emulate their Byzantine rivals in Orthodoxy. In this last context, the path that rewriting took was essentially away from narrating the history of Georgia as being ‘as Orthodox as Roman’ to being ‘more Orthodox than Roman’. The quest for rewritten histories can therefore be a rewarding enterprise, but it may also be methodologically challenging. Often, the silence of the sources compels scholars to seek explanation in large-scale and methodological rewritings that erased or silenced earlier literary production. Often, however, modern national perceptions are projected on medieval writing, and a modern horizon of expectations is imposed upon a medieval text. In attempts to reveal traces of rewriting, one ought not to be lured into a teleological interpretation of sources, even if rewriting may seem to be the only plausible explanation of the otherwise bewildering muteness of the sources.

Works Cited Primary Sources Bishop Ukhtanes of Sebastia, History of Armenia, Part ii: History of the Severance of the Georgians from the Armenians, trans. by Z. Arzoumanian (Fort Lauderdale: Zaven Arzoumanian, 1985) Ephrem Mcire, უწყებაჲ მიზეზთა ქართველთა მოქცევისასა [The History of the Conversion of the Georgians], ed. by Tamar Bregvadze (Tbilisi: Sakartvelos ssr mecnierebata academia, 1959) The Letter of Love and Concord, ed. and trans. by Zaroui Pogossian (Leiden: Brill, 2010) The Life and Citizenship of Our Holy and Blessed Father George the Hagiorite by George the Minor, trans. by Tamara Grdzelidze, in Tamara Grdzelidze, Georgian Monks on Mt Athos: Two Eleventh-Century Lives of Hegoumenoi of Iviron (London: Bennett and Bloom, 2009)

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ცხორებაჲ და მოქალაქობაჲ წმიდისა და ნეტარისა მამისა ჩუენისა პეტრე ქართველისაჲ [The Life and Work of Our Holy and Blessed Father Peter the Georgian], in Monuments of the Georgian Hagiographic Literature, ii, ed. by I. Abuladze (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1967) ცხორებაჲ და მოქალაქობაჲ და ღუაწლი წმიდისა და ღირსისა დედისა ჩუენისა ნინოჲსი [The Life and Work of Our Holy and Blessed Mother Nino], in Monuments of the Georgian Hagiographic Literature, ii, ed. by I. Abuladze (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1967), pp. 7–52 ცხოვრებაჲ და მოქალაქეობაჲ წმიდისა და ღმერთშემოსილისა მამისა ჩუენისა ილარიონ ახლისაჲ [The Life and Work of Our Holy and God-Bearing Father Ilarion the New], in Monuments of the Georgian Hagiographic Literature, ii, ed. by I. Abuladze (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1967), pp. 208–48 The Lives of Saint Gregory: The Armenian, Greek, Arabic, and Syriac Versions of the History Attributed to Agathangelos, ed. and trans. by Robert W. Thomson (Ann Arbor: Caravan, 2010) Movses Khorenats‘i, History of the Armenians, trans. by R. W. Thomson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978) Socrate de Constantinople, Histoire ecclésiastique (Livres I–VII), ed. by P. Maraval and P. Périchon (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 2004–2007) The Wellspring of Georgian Historiography: The Early Medieval Historical Chronicle, The Conversion of Kartli and The Life of St Nino, ed. and trans. by Constantine B. Lerner (London: Bennett and Bloom, 2004) Secondary Works Aleksidze, Nikoloz, ‘Let Us Not Obstruct the Possible: Dialoguing in Medieval Georgia’, in Dialogues and Debates from Late Antiquity to Late Byzantium, ed. by A. Cameron and N. Gaul (London: Routledge, 2016), pp. 167–83 ———, ‘Three Heretical Men and a Dog: The Oral Narratives of the Caucasian Schism’, in Tradition and Transformation: Dissent and Consent in the Mediterranean, ed. by M. Mitrea (Kiel: Solivagus, 2016), pp. 130–49 ———, The Narrative of the Caucasian Schism: Memory and Forgetting in Medieval Caucasia (Leuven: Peeters, 2018) Aleksidze, Zaza, and Jean-Pierre Mahé, ‘Arsène Sapareli, Sur la séparation des Georgiens et des Arméniens’, Revue des Études Arméniennes, 32 (2010), 59–132 Gippert, Jost, ‘The Georgian Hagiorites and their Impact on the Center of Georgian Eruditeness’, in Georgian Athonites and Christian Civilization, ed. by D. Muskhelishvili (New York: Nova, 2013), pp. 75–83 Goullet, Monique, Écriture et réécriture hagiographiques: essai sur les réécritures des vies des saints dans l’occident latin médiéval (VIIIe–XIIIe s.) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 183–99 Högel, Christian, Symeon Metaphrastes: Rewriting and Canonization (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 2003)

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Kekelidze, Korneli, ‘საკითხი სირიელ მოღვაწეთა კართლში მოსვლის შესახებ (კულტურულ-ისტორიული პრობლემა))’ [‘The Question of the Arrival of the Syrian Fathers in Georgia (A Cultural and Historical Problem)’], reprinted in his Etiudebi, i (Tbilisi: Metsniereba, 1956), pp. 19–50 Mahé, Jean-Pierre, ‘La rupture arméno-géorgienne au début du VIe siècle et les réécritures historiographiques des IX–XI siècles’, in Il Caucaso: cerniera fra culture dal Mediterraneo alla Persia (Secoli IV–XI), ed. by O. Capitani, Settimane di studio del centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 43, 2 parts (Spoleto: Presso la Sede del Centro, 1996), ii, 927–61 Martin-Hisard, Bernadette, ‘Jalons pour une histoire du culte de sainte Nino (fin 4e–début VIIIe s.)’, in From Byzantium to Iran: Armenian Studies in Honour of Nina G. Garsoïan, ed. by J.-P. Mahé and R. W. Thomson (Atlanta: Scholars’ Press, 1997), pp. 53–78 Rapp, Stephen H., ‘Christian Caucasian Dialogues: Glimpses of ArmenoK‘art‘velian Relations in Medieval Georgian Historiography’, in Peace and Negotiation: Strategies for Coexistence in Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. by Diane Wolfthal (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 163–78 ———, Studies in Medieval Georgian Historiography: Early and Texts and Eurasian Contexts (Leuven: Peeters, 2003) ———, The Sasanian World through Georgian Eyes: Caucasia and the Iranian Commonwealth in Late Antique Georgian Literature (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014) Schmidt, Andrea, ‘Die armenische “Buch der Briefe”: Seine Bedeutung als quellenkundliche Sammlung für die christologischen Streitigkeiten in Armenien im 6./7. Jh.’, in Logos: Festschrift für Luise Abramowski, ed. by H. C. Brennecke, E. L. Grasmuck, and C. Markschies, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft, 67 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1993), pp. 511–33 ———, ‘Die zweifache armenische Rezension der syrischen Chronik Michaels des Grossen’, Le Muséon, 109 (1996), 299–321 Tarchnišvili, Micheil, ‘Die Legende der heiligen Nino und die Geschichte des georgischen Nationalbewußtseins’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 40 (1940), 48–75 Thomson, Robert W., Rewriting Caucasian History: The Armenian Adaptations of the Georgian Chronicles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) ———, ‘The Writing of History: The Development of the Armenian and Georgian Traditions’, in Il Caucaso: cerniera fra culture dal Mediterraneo alla Persia (Secoli IV–XI), ed. by O. Capitani, Settimane di studio del centro Italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, 43, 2 parts (Spoleto: Presso la Sede del Centro, 1996), i, 493–521 van Lint, Theo M., ‘The Formation of Armenian Identity in the First Millennium’, Church History and Religious Culture, 83 (2009), 252–78 Winkler, Gabrielle, Koriwns Biographie des Mesrop Maštoc‘ (Rome: Pontifico Instituto Orientale, 1994)

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Maxi m ilian Lau

Rewriting History at the Court of the Komnenoi: Processes and Practices

The major historical sources for mid-twelfth-century Byzantium share the deficit of being written many years after the events they describe, with the reign of Emperor John II Komnenos (1118–1143) in particular being given sparse treatment. In using histories such as those by Niketas Choniates and John Kinnamos to understand the twelfth-century empire and its neighbours, the question as to what these historians used as their own sources is thus a crucial one. They are, however, not our only windows on this era, as there is also a large volume of court texts in the form of occasional poems, imperial orations, and letters written for specific events as they occurred. Upon closer examination, we find indications that these court texts were based upon campaign communiqués from the Emperor and his command, and yet these court texts provided one of the key sources of information for the later histories. Accordingly, the twelfth-century court of the Komnenoi saw a multi-layered practice of routinely rewriting history as it occurred — a practice that the Komnenoi used in an attempt to legitimize and increase their own authority, and which the chroniclers then used to have events serve as evidence for what they saw as the meanings in history. In the twelfth century, in the wake of the invasions and civil wars that characterized late eleventh-century Byzantium, such messages would have been particularly needed as the empire found its feet once again in the face of new challenges from both Latin and Muslim rivals. I argue in this chapter that the twelfth-century Komnenian court depicted history as a continuum, whereby events in the biblical, classical, and more recent past were all part of the same divinely inspired order of the world, and the Komnenoi were the latest iteration that would restore that world order. This being so, the meanings of history included both the practical, to outline the Emperor’s political programme in terms of historical precedent and to legitimize that programme, and the theo-philosophical, whereby this plan was the God-ordained world order designed to be the role of the Roman Empire.

Maximilian Lau  •  ([email protected]) is an Adjunct Professor of History at Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, and a Research Associate at St Benet’s Hall, University of Oxford. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 121–147 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126748

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The court texts illustrated and clarified such meanings by deploying older history in support of these messages, and by rewriting history to suit contemporary purposes. Where the texts make gratuitous use of biblical, classical, and more recent historical similes, they are not only using standard rhetorical tropes to flatter the current Emperor and his regime, but are also making specific comparisons that elucidate how they themselves understood events, the Weltanschauung of the imperial court, and their intended goals. This chapter will thus first outline the process of rewriting events, before going into more detail about the practices used in rewriting, drawing from the use of biblical, classical, and recent history of Byzantium. As a medieval Byzantine case study, this chapter will focus on John II Komnenos’s intended eastern conquests in a region rich in biblical, classical, and more recent historical parallelism, and where there is considerable debate as to what exactly John intended.1 I will first explore the process of rewriting history, before outlining these practices, so that the value of understanding the process is underscored and can be used for broader studies.

Processes of Rewriting History across Twelfth-Century Byzantium We are fortunate to have the process whereby battlefield communiqué became a rhetorical production explained in both a letter and a poem concerning John’s later campaign to Cilicia and Syria in 1137–1138. The process whereby rhetors propagated news of imperial victory is described in a letter by the court rhetor John Italikos to John’s logothetes tou Dromou (logothete of the post), Stephen Meles.2 Italikos mentions how he heard a letter from the Emperor and knew the words were by Meles, such was their eloquence describing the battles and deeds of the Cilician campaign.3 Of note is the fact that officially these letters were from the Emperor, even if actually ghost-written by Meles. Italikos then says how he went to the ‘platform of the didaskaloi’ to pass on







1 The debate particularly revolves around whether John truly intended to annex Antioch to the empire, as Lilie advocates, or was more interested in ceremonial recognition of his imperial status rather than physical domination, as suggested by Harris. Between the two comes Parnell, who sees incorporation of Antioch as the goal, but argues that incorporation did not necessarily exclude the Latin princes. For overviews, see Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, pp. 122–23; Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, pp. 81–86; Parnell, ‘John II Comnenus’, pp. 149–53; Magdalino, The Empire, pp. 38–41; Papageorgiou, ‘John II Comnenos’, p. 15. 2 After Alexios’s reforms the position ceased to head an entire department, and took on a role more akin to a press secretary responsible for official communications. Thus he would have been the main handler of communications with the emperor while he was on campaign: Magdalino, The Empire, p. 229. 3 ‘Τούτων εἰς κοινὴν ἀκοὴν ἀναγινωσκομένων, ἐβόων αὐτός’ ‘Μέλητος γνώσκω τὴν γλῶσσαν λαλοῦσαν’: Italikos, ‘Τῷ λογοθέτῃ τοῦ δρόμου τῷ Μέλητι’, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, p. 232.

rewriting history at the court of the komnenoi: processes and practices

such deeds.4 We are fortunate to have his very oration also preserved, during which he mentions that giving orations such as this was his public service (δημοσιεύων) — that is, reporting the news of the Emperor’s struggles to fire up the people in support of the regime.5 Further details about the practice of converting reports into court rhetoric come from Theodore Prodromos, who boasts in his Poem XIX that though many were working on poems for the Emperor, only he had finished, suggesting that speed of propagation was important to the Emperor.6 Basilakes takes the other tack, explaining in his oration that by celebrating John’s deeds in a grander style he will make those achievements even greater.7 This point is also made by Italikos, who noted that Meles ‘[…] surrounds greatness with greatness […] | Through your golden tongue the deeds of the Emperor are related’. Italikos then mentions that he and his associates debated which was the more wondrous, John’s deeds or the quality of the words describing them, proving how the latter were just as important as the former to the intelligentsia of Constantinople.8 An important point to take from this is that style is, if anything, more significant than content for these rewritings. It is, however, noteworthy that such propagation of recent events was not merely aimed at those who would comprehend and appreciate such a high register of Greek, but could actually comprise separate texts aimed at specific audiences, thus including less elite sections of society. In the case of John’s capture of Kastamon in 1133, there are four major rhetorical works by Theodore Prodromos that survive, and which also evidence a decisive textual link to the later histories.9 With the Byzantine court and wider citizenry being as much a social and cultural organization as a political and bureaucratic one, the information sent home was converted into the form of poems to









4 ‘Ἐναύλους τοίνυν ἔχων τὰς τοιαύτας ἐγὼ φωνὰς καὶ προσιζήσασαν τὴν ὅλην ἁρμονίαν ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, ἀνῆλθον ὡς εἶχον εὐθὺς ἐπὶ τοὺς τῆς διδασκαλίας ὀκρίβαντας καὶ ὧν ἐνεφορήθην λόγων πρὸς ἄλλους ἐπλήρουν καὶ μετωχέτευον τὰ σὰ ῥεύματα ἐπὶ τὸν λαόν’. 5 ‘Πᾶσα μὲν γλῶσσα καὶ στόμα πᾶν ἐπὶ σοὶ κεκίνηται, βασιλεῦ, ἀλλ ̓ ἐγὼ τῶν ἄλλων θερμότερος. Καὶ σὺ μὲν κατέσυρας τὰς πόλεις Συρίας. ἐγὼ δὲ τὰς ἀκοὰς τῶν ἀκροατῶν ὑπὲρ τῶν εἰς ταύτας ἀγώνων καὶ ὥσπερ αὐτοὺς δημοσιεύων εἰς τοὺς ἐμοὺς ἀνῆγον ὀκρίβαντας καὶ τοῦ ῥεύματος τὸ σφοδρὸν ἐκεῖθεν αἰσθάνομαι ἢ ἐκ Μινουκιανοῦ τε καὶ Νικαγόρου’: Italikos, ‘Λόγος βασιλικὸς εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Ἰωάννην’, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, p. 257. 6 Prodromos, Poem 19, ll. 1–10, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 7 ‘Ἀλλά μοι δός, ὦ ἄριστε αὐτοκράτορ, ἃ σὺ τότε τοῖς ἔργοις ἐφιλοσόφησας, | ταῦτα νῦν ἐπεισκυκλῆσαι τῷ λόγῳ φιλοτιμότερον, ἵν᾽ᾖ μοι καὶ | ὑψηλότερον τοῦ τε λόγου τὸ ἐπεισόδιον καὶ τῶν σῶν μεγαλουργημάτων τὸ πρόᾳσμα’: Basilakes, 54, ll. 19–22, in Orationes, ed. by Garzya. 8 ‘μεγάλοις μέγεθος περιτέθεικας … | τῇ χρυσῇ σου γλώττῃ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ αὐτοκράτορος ἀφηγούμενος’; ‘Οὐκ εἴχομεν ὅ τι θαυμάσομεν πότερον τῶν ἔργων τὸ μέγεθος ἢ τῶν λόγων τὴν εὐμουσίαν, τὸν αὐτουργὸν τῶν κατορθωμάτων βασιλέα ἢ τὸν συγγραφέα τῶν ἔργων, τὸν ἀθλητὴν ἢ τὸν κήρυκα’: Italikos, ‘Τῷ λογοθέτῃ τοῦ δρόμου τῷ Μέλητι’, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, p. 232. 9 Prodromos, 3, 4, 5, and 6, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. For this section, see Lau, ‘The Power of Poetry’.

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be digested by the court and people, with specific forms of poetry directed towards different audiences, specifically, the high style of hexameter for the elites, and the dekastich to be sung by deme choirs to a wider audience, such as in the hippodrome or along a processional route, as at the triumph held in 1133.10 Additionally, Prodromos’s Poems V and VI are of the same metre, implying either multiple poems for the same event, or indeed that there were multiple events to celebrate John’s victory, which would provide yet more opportunities to convey John’s power to those who did not hear the demes or understand the poetry at the triumph. It is, however, on these sources that Choniates and Kinnamos based their later histories, with both authors using much the same language and details. Present across all three sources are the silver chariot with the icon of the Mother of God sitting in it, the Emperor carrying a cross on foot, the people’s celebration, and the decoration of the streets with cloths.11 Thus, when it comes to the debate about what John intended to conquer, or reconquer, in the Middle East, Choniates’ unequivocal statements that John had a ‘burning desire to unite Antioch to Constantinople’, must be seen as a central part of a continuum with policies that are articulated through the rewriting of history in court sources during or shortly after the eastern campaign.12 By examining the rewritten history in these court texts, the source for Choniates’ history can be clearly identified.

Rewriting Old Testament ‘History’ The first set of allusions that enunciate the Emperor’s plans for conquest in the Levant come from the use of biblical parallels from the Old Testament, a history that bears some further explanation about its relationship with Byzantium. Scholarship on the Old Testament in the Byzantine period has been growing in recent years, epitomized by the volume edited by Nelson and Magdalino.13 Scholars have become increasingly aware of the association of Constantinople as the New Jerusalem, its inhabitants as the chosen people tested by the Arabs in the early period, and (after the fall of Constantinople in 1204) parallels made with the Babylonian exile, to mention the topics of a few of the papers contained within this excellent and much-needed volume. However, and this is particularly apparent when reading the introduction to the volume, there has been far less discussion of the twelfth century during the Komnenian reconquest, which this part of my chapter seeks to remedy.14 10 Magdalino, ‘The Triumph of 1133’. 11 Prodromos, 5 and 6, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner; Kinnamos, Epitome, ed. by Meinike, pp. 13–14; Choniates, Historia, ed. by Van Dieten, pp. 18–19. 12 Choniates, Historia, ed. by Van Dieten, p. 39. 13 Magdalino and Nelson, eds, The Old Testament. 14 Magdalino and Nelson, eds, The Old Testament, pp. 1–38.

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One of the salient features of the use of the Old Testament in the court rhetoric of John’s reign is that it makes heavy use of Deuteronomistic material. Noth argued in a classic work that the biblical books of Deuteronomy — Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and I and II Kings — were largely the work of a single historian writing during the Babylonian exile. He argued that this historian’s narrative goal was to explain the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah on account of their failure to enact the will of YHWH, but held out hope for a restoration of Judah.15 More recently, Römer has argued that the books were written in three stages.16 He identifies the first stage as being under Josiah, the second as during the Babylonian exile, and the third in the Persian period; all this material was composed between the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel to Assyria in 721 bc and the return from the Babylonian exile in 539 bc. According to the biblical account, the united kingdom of Israel had split after the northern tribes refused to accept Solomon’s son Rehoboam as their king sometime around 1000–900 bc. A major theme is the faithfulness of the southern kingdom of Judah, based in Jerusalem, to Yahweh, illustrated when the northern kingdom of Israel fell to the Neo-Assyrians. In this period, one of the main tropes that developed was that God had chosen a righteous remnant to remain while God’s enemies defeated his wayward children, and that remnant would eventually be restored to their full inheritance.17 Such a message would have resonated strongly with the twelfth-century Roman Empire, which had lost much of its territory during the crises that followed the battle of Manzikert, the civil wars, and the passage of the First Crusade. The extent to which the rhetors depicted the Romans as the new chosen people is discussed further below, but for this specific parallel, the major argument is that the literati of John’s court used this Deuteronomistic parallel to full effect, employing specific figures and events from this section of the bible in a way which suggests they may have been using the biblical Prophets as true books of prophecy that were describing their own time. An exemplar for this material is Theodore Prodromos’s historical Poem 17. This poem is a dekastische, written to be sung at a public occasion, perhaps on the ceremonial departure of the Emperor to go campaigning against the Turks. Its title tells us the poem will explicitly use ‘prayers taken from all the prophets’, hence the poem is a chance for Prodromos to demonstrate both his own scriptural learning, and how Scripture can be deployed to support the Emperor’s current political goals.18 When Prodromos opens a poem with ‘Ὁρῶν παραταττόμενον κατὰ Περσῶν σε πάλιν | καὶ κατὰ τῶν ἐξ Ἰσμαὴλ

15 Noth, The Deuteronomistic History. Subsequent studies identified a similar theology in some of the Prophets, particularly Jeremiah. 16 Römer, The So-Called Deuteronomistic History. 17 For biblical references, see in particular: Isaiah 1. 25–26; 11. 10–11; Jeremiah 23. 3–4; Amos 5. 14–15; Micah 4. 6–7. Compare Meyer, ‘Remnant’. 18 Prodromos, Poem 17, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner, title: ‘Δεκάστιχοι πρὸς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα κῦρ Ἰωάννην τὸν Κομνηνὸν στρατεύσαντα καὶ πάλιν κατὰ Περσῶν εὐκτήριοι ληφθέντες ἀπὸ πάντων τῶν προφητῶν’.

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ἐκτείνοντα τὸ δόρυ’ (Seeing you draw up in battle order against the Persians again | And readying your spears against the get of Ishmael),19 he is doing far more than merely using a classicizing term ‘Persians’ for the Turks or ‘the get of Ishmael’ for Muslims. The ‘get of Ishmael’ and the ‘Persians’ are enemies of the people of God from opposite ends of ancient Israelite history, and thus the Emperor drawing up in battle against them ‘again’ is not only a reference to his latest campaign, but a call to arms for God’s anointed (referenced in the next verse in a paraphrase of Psalm 88 (lxx). 21–22) to once more face God’s enemies.20 Indeed, in a twelfth-century context, using the idea of the children of Ishmael confronting the children of Isaac is particularly apt as it reflects the religious and political closeness of Christianity and Islam, and the basileus and the caliph, and their competing claims to universal authority. That John is the Lord’s favoured is made clear with judicious paraphrasing of Psalm 90 in the next verse, and though much of it merely emphasizes how John is favoured by God, there is a deft reworking of the psalm towards the end: ὁ γὰρ θεός σε ῥύσεται, καθ᾽ἃ Δαυὶδ προλέγει, ἀπὸ παγίδος θηρευτῶν καὶ λόγου ταραχώδους, σκιάσει δέ σε θαυμαστῶς τοῖς τούτου μεταφρένοις καὶ τοῖς ἀγγέλοις ἑαυτοῦ δεσποτικῶς κελεύσει διαφυλάσσειν σε καλῶς ἐν πάσαις ταῖς ὁδοῖς σου. ἐπὶ χειρῶν ἀροῦσι σε, μήποτε καὶ προσκόψης. ἑῴου βασιλίσκου δὲ καὶ δυτικῆς ἀσπίδος καὶ λέοντος μεσημβρινοῦ καὶ δράκοντος ἀρκτῴου τὸ κράτος ἄκρῳ τῷ ταρσῷ βασιλικῶς πατήσεις. God shields you, as David foretold, from the traps of hunters and turbulent words, your back is covered by his marvelous canopy and the angels themselves are ordered by the master to guard you carefully, virtuous in all your ways. Raise your hands, never stumbling. Prince of the east and shield of the west and lion of the south and dragon of the north the highest ruler treading imperially upon his soles.21

19 Prodromos, Poem 17, ll. 1–2, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 20 For Ishmael as the son of Abraham and Hagar, see Genesis 16–17, 20. His supposed descendants, the Ishmaelites, are identified with the Midianites who sell Joseph to Egypt, and are listed as enemies of Israel in Psalm 83. Compare Knauf, ‘Ishmael’ and ‘Ishmaelites’. Under Cyrus the Great, Persia replaced Babylon as the Mesopotamian hegemon, and part of the old kingdom of Judah was reconstituted as the Persian province of Yehud. On this period, see essays in Lipschits and Oeming, eds, Judah and the Judeans. 21 Prodromos, Poem 17, ll. 62–70, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner; Psalm 90. 12: ‘ἐπ᾽ ἀσπίδα καὶ βασιλίσκον ἐπιβήσῃ | καὶ καταπατήσεις λέοντα καὶ δράκοντα’ (You shall walk over the asp and basilisk [cobra] | and tread [on] the lion and the dragon).

rewriting history at the court of the komnenoi: processes and practices

John is thus described as literally fulfilling the prophecy of Psalm 90 in spreading the empire out over its enemies personified as these animals. Thus far, the poem has articulated a general programme of expansion, rather than specifics, but then it turns to the obscure prophet Habakkuk: Καλῶ καὶ σὲ τὸν Ἀββακοὺμ τὸν βλέποντα τὸν μέγαν συνάρασθαί μοι τῆς εὐχῆς τῆς εἰς τὸν βασιλέα καὶ προφοιβάσαι τρόπαια καὶ προχρηστηριάσαι καὶ προειπεῖν τὸν ὄλεθρον τοῖς ἀλαζόσι Πέρσαις. ἰδοὺ κινήσω καθ᾽ὑμῶν τοὺς μαχητὰς Ῥωμαίους, τοῖς ἵπποις τούτων ἁλτικὰς ἐνθήσομαι δυνάμεις ὑπὲρ ὁρμὴν παρδάλεων καὶ λύκων Ἀρραβίας, καὶ γαῦρον ἐξιππάσονται καὶ δράμονται μακρόθεν καὶ πετασθῶσι κατὰ γῆς τῆς σοβαρᾶς Περσίδος ὡς ἀετὸς ὀξύρροπος καὶ πρόθυμος εἰς βρῶσιν. I call you Abbakum the great seer joining me in prayer to the Emperor and predicting the future trophies and giving oracles and foretelling the ruin of the vagabond Persians. See you arise against us, the warrior Romans, with those horses good at leaping holding might in their hearts urging on the Arab leopards and wolves, and exulting in riding horses and driving from afar and the violent Persians spread over the land as the eagle turns quickly and eagerly for meat.22 The prophet Habakkuk/Abbakum is only twice mentioned by name, and then only in the Hebrew bible (Habakkuk 1. 1 and 3. 1). The book attributed to him (in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments) consists of five oracles concerned with the rise of Chaldean Babylon, though he is also mentioned in the Greek additions to the Book of Daniel.23 In these oracles, Habakkuk compares the coming Chaldean horsemen to various animals, so that the parallelism with the Turks becomes obvious in Prodromos’s passage reflecting Habakkuk 1. 5–11, as shown above. Though the parallel is mixed by Prodromos adding in the terms Persians and Arabs, ahistorical to Habakkuk, his updating of the verse to fit John’s contemporary situation is made clear in the next stanza: ‘Μάνθανε, γῆ

22 Prodromos, Poem 17, ll. 71–80, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 23 This is found both in the original Codex Chisianus Septuagint text, and the standard Theodotion version, and relates the story of ‘Bel and the Dragon’, where Habakkuk is transported by God from Judea to the lion’s den in Babylon to bring food to Daniel: Daniel 14. 23–28. This story associated Daniel and Habakkuk with the warrior saints George and Demetrios in Byzantium, adding another dimension to the appropriateness of this parallel for a ‘warrior emperor’ such as John: Pitarakis, Les croix reliquaries, pp. 178–79.

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Χαλδαϊκὴ καὶ γῆ Βαβυλωνία | καὶ χῶρος Αἰθιοπικὸς καὶ γῆ Μαδιηναία’ (Learn, land of Chaldea and land of Babylonia | and the country of Ethiopia and the land of Madiina).24 This references the borders of the biblical world, with the often interchangeable Chaldea and Babylon meaning the north and east, while the Islamic heartland of Medina is added to Ethiopia for the south. This phrase may therefore be saying that just as the Chaldean horsemen took over Babylon, so too have the Seljuk horsemen taken over Baghdad as the new Babylon; Baghdad was located c. 50 miles north of ancient Babylon (outside modern Hillah). Equally, Ethiopia is the usual Septuagint translation of the Hebrew Kush, prominent in the Prophets and II Kings because in the eighth and seventh centuries bc Egypt was ruled by the twenty-fifth dynasty of Kushite/Nubian origin, while by the twelfth century much of the south was under Islamic rule.25 The mix of Israelite history with that of the eleventh and twelfth centuries thus makes the whole thing seem a continuum of conflict where the role of the chosen people and their enemies was as it had always been; thus deliverance and the restoration of the promised land will eventually come, as it did once before. This is made plain by Prodromos’s poem. The idea of continuum — of everything happening again as it did before — will, aptly, recur throughout this chapter. For the moment I turn to the use of the Old Testament to articulate the recapture of specific territory rather than the defeat of peoples who had occupied an unspecified territory belonging to God’s chosen people. The following paraphrase is from the Book of Amos, another minor prophet who was from the southern kingdom of Judah but preached in the northern kingdom of Israel, a contemporary of Isaiah and Hosea in the eighth century bc. As a side note, Amos following Habakkuk is not the chronological order of the Septuagint, suggesting perhaps that political allusions had a primacy over biblical precedent: Ἀμὼς ἀκρέμον προφητῶν, καὶ σὺ συμπάρεσό μοι καὶ ‘τἀδε λέγει κύριος ὁ παντοκράτωρ’ λέγε πῦρ ἄσβεστον ἀποστελῶ περὶ τὰ τείχη Γἀζης, καὶ καταφλέζει σύμπαντας αὐτῆς τοὺς θεμελίους, ἐξολοθρεύσει παντας δὲ κατοίκους τῆς Ἀζώτου· σὺν τούτοις ἄρδην ἀπολεῖ καὶ τοὺς Ἀσκαλωνίτας· ἀπάξω δὲ τὴν χεῖρα μου πρὸς τέρματα Περσίδος, καὶ πάντες οἱ κατάλοιποι βαρβάρων ἀπολοῦνται, Amos, branch of the prophets, you descend down with me and ‘thus says the Pantokrator’26 he says: 24 Prodromos, Poem 17, ll. 91–92, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 25 Smith, ‘Ethiopia’. 26 Used in the Greek bible as a translation for what we usually translate as ‘Lord of Hosts’ in English, from YHWH Saboath, but with added resonance for John because of the monastery he founded dedicated to Christ Pantokrator. For the monastery, see the Pantokrator typikon, in Italikos, Lettres, ed. by Gautier; Kotzabassi, ed., The Pantokrator Monastery.

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you send unquenchable fire around the walls of Gaza, and burn together all their foundations, destroy all the inhabitants of Azotus: together taken away utterly and destroyed and the Ascalonians: you bring back from the boundaries of Persia, and destroy utterly all the remaining barbarians left.27 This passage contains the same mix of biblical past and twelfth-century present, with the use of the ethnonym ‘Persians’, who, to repeat, did not exist when Amos wrote, but most of the rest of the passage is pure quotation from Amos 1–2. It is thus an exemplary part of the idea of continuum, as these rhetors appear to be intentionally blurring the distinction between past and present, and, even more specifically, different parts of history. Such an effect makes it easy for John to appear as the latest in a series of rulers, as successful as his predecessors. Building upon this, it is significant in that among this general exhortation for the Emperor to conquer his enemies, Prodromos has chosen to use specific references to the Palestinian littoral. These include references to ‘fire around the walls of Gaza’, Azotus, which is the Greek bible’s name for biblical and modern Ashdod, just north of Gaza, and ‘the Ascalonians’ in reference to Ashkelon, which is between Ashdod and Gaza. This passage comes towards the end of the poem, in the context of what appear to be future plans, and it was written just before John’s grand campaign of 1137 to the east, where he conquered Cilicia and some towns in northern Syria, and almost incorporated the crusader principality of Antioch into the empire.28 We know through a letter found in the Genizah archive which a Jewish doctor of Seleukeia wrote to his relatives in Egypt, that he had asked some of John’s generals to bring him medical textbooks from cities they captured, mentioning Damascus in particular. Thus John’s aims for his eastern expedition appear to have been ambitious, to say the least.29 Another rhetorical text, an imperial oration by Basilakes written after that campaign, includes a passage equating John’s Islamic enemies with the various enemies of the Israelites in the Deuteronomistic period, with John defeating them as a new David and Moses: Ἐγώ σε καὶ Ἀὼδ ἀμφιδεξιώτερον ἀποφαίνομαι· μόνον ἐκεινος ἕνα τύραννον Μωαβίτην ἀπέκοψε, σὲ δ᾽ ἀνέστησε κύριος, καὶ ἡμᾶς, τὸν αὐτοῦ κλῆρον, δι᾽ ἁμαρτιῶν ἐρριμμένους ἐπὶ γῆς ξυνανέστησε. καὶ σὺ πολλοὺς καθεῖλες δυνάστας καὶ ἐπὶ πολλῶν κεφαλὰς ἀνόμων ἔβαλες θάνατον. ἐκπεπόρθηταί σοι καὶ ὅσον Ἀσσύριον βάρβαρον, καὶ Δαυὶδ ἐγώ σε 27 Prodromos, Poem 17, ll. 131–38, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 28 For overviews of this campaign: Magdalino, The Empire, pp. 37–38; Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, pp. 117–35; Birkenmeier, The Development of the Komnenian Army, pp. 48, 85–92; Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, pp. 80–92; Parnell, ‘John II Comnenus’, pp. 149–60. 29 Goitein, ‘A Letter from Seleucia’.

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τοῦτο τὸ μέρος τίθεμαι· ὡδήγησας μὲν ἡμᾶς ἐπὶ γῆν τὴν μακαρίαν, τὴν ἐπηγγελμένην, καὶ οὐδ᾽ ἐνταῦθα Μωσέως ἀποφέρῃ τὰ δεύτερα. εἰς τοῦτον I show forth Ehud around my right hand: that one sole Moabite tyrant I cut off, raising up the Lord, and for my part, cast the same lot, casting failures that stand upon the earth, and you take down many rulers and on many impious heads you cast death. He has pillaged so much from the barbarians of Assyria, and I David place this part before you: singing indeed of the blessed on earth, the herald, and not bear away from here the second Moses.30 Taking this all together, the use of the Old Testament implies that just as the righteous remnant of Judah would one day reunite the entire the kingdom of Israel, so too will the righteous Roman remnant one day reunite the Roman Empire, and, specifically, will restore the actual Holy Land of the Levant to the empire in addition to the ‘Persian’ occupied lands of Anatolia. Such a political message articulated for audiences, both elite and otherwise, that John was not only actively pursuing such a policy, but in the process was restoring history to ‘the way it should be’, as it had been before, in the continuum of past and present events. Equally, regardless of his actual success, the fact that he was even embarking on such a project would bolster his domestic support because it put him on ‘the right side of history’, evidencing how such historical rewriting was linked to contemporary politics.

Rewriting Classical and More Recent History Such a conclusion might seem ambitious, were it based on the biblical parallels alone, but it is reinforced by how the political rewriting of history also drew on the classical and more recent past. As might be expected, the obvious comparison for any rhetor to make for an emperor campaigning east was Alexander the Great. Some of the allusions to Alexander are general, as when John’s troops named only him and Alexander as rulers who had done such great deeds: καὶ στρατιὴ σύμπασα ὑπέρβιος Αὐσονιήων παύσατό τ᾽ἐκ καμάτοιο καὶ ἄμπνυτο, ᾆσμα δὲ λέξε ‘Ῥώμη ὀψιγένεθλε πόλις, πολίων βασίλεια, Ῥώμη Κωνσταντινιάς, ἁγνῆς κλῆρος ἀνάσσης, τίς ποτέ τοι Γάγγρην μετενείματο; τίς ποτ᾽ἀνάκτων τοῖσιν ἐπ᾽ἠελίοις καὶ Κασταμόνος πόρεν ἀρχήν; τίς τοι ἑῴου ἔκαμψεν ἀκαμπέος αὐχένος ὕψος,

30 Basilakes, Λόγος εἰς τὸν ἀοίδιμον βασιλέα, in Orationes, ed. by Garzya, p. 71.

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δμωὰς βαρβαρίδας δὲ μεγακρατέας πόρεν ἀρχούς, ἄτερ Ἀλεξιάδαο Ἰωάννου βασιλῆος; τῷ κε μακροὺς λυκάβαντας ἀρώμεθα, Αὔσονες υἱοί’. and all the army together, the overwhelming strength of the Ausones ceased from toil and recovered, their song goes: ‘Younger city of Rome, Queen of Cities, Rome of Konstantine, pure land of Lords, who now possesses both you and Gangra? Which lord now gives you the east and Kastamon to rule? Who is it that the East bends its high neck to, who takes barbarian leaders of great strength as slaves, who apart from Alexander and Emperor John? To you long years we pray, sons of the Ausones’.31 Most of the comparisons, by contrast, make specific contemporary political points; they are not merely ceremonial rhetorical praise of the Emperor, but elucidate his political programme and aid him in securing legitimacy for it. The best example of this for the Levant concerns the siege of Shaizar in 1138. Relating events through the prism of our surviving sources, we can ascertain that after a lightning conquest of Cilicia in 1137, John’s army arrived at the gates of Antioch. There he made an agreement with Prince Raymond that they would campaign together against the Islamic polities of Syria, principally Aleppo, and that Raymond would be given Aleppo as a perpetual fief under John, while Antioch would be handed over to John’s direct control.32 Over the winter of 1137–1138 John went north to defend Edessa from the Danishmendids, and there extracted the allegiance of Count Joscelin II, and so in 1138 he and the two crusader rulers began capturing the cities of Syria with a view to isolating Aleppo.33 This strategy started well, with Buz’ah, Al-Atarib, Kafartab, and Nistrion all falling with minimal effort, given to the Latins as proof of John’s good faith. Shaizar, however, proved much more difficult on account of its heavy fortifications on a mountain bluff and the protection given to it by the river Orontes. The situation was exacerbated by the reluctance to fight of John’s Latin allies, who were described by William of Tyre as playing dice in their tents

31 Prodromos, Poem 8, ll. 283–92, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 32 Magdalino, The Empire, pp. 38–41; Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, pp. 222–23; Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, pp. 81–85; Parnell, ‘John II Comnenus’, pp. 149–53. 33 This expedition is often excluded by sources and scholars who focus on John’s campaign against Antioch and the Muslims of Syria, and thus skip straight to the next year: William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. by Huygens, ii, 674 (xv. 1); Choniates, Historia, ed. by Van Dieten, p. 27; Kinnamos, Epitome, ed. by Meinike, p. 19; Chalandon, Jean II Comnène, p. 134; Harris, Byzantium and the Crusades, p. 83; Magdalino, The Empire, pp. 37–41; Parnell, ‘John II Comnenus’, p. 153. It is, however, described at length by Matthew of Edessa, Chronicle, trans. by Dostourian, pp. 238–39, and included in the analysis of Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, pp. 118–19 note 95, 125 note 117.

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while the fifty-year-old Emperor was on the front line in bloody street-bystreet fighting, described as such by both Christian and Islamic accounts.34 Though John took the city, he decided to negotiate rather than to assault the citadel. Most historians have seen this outcome as a loss, and have regarded the focus of the Greek sources on the treasure given to buy John off as mere window-dressing to cover up a failure.35 The list of treasure supposedly included loot from the battle of Manzikert, a cross of Parian marble commissioned by Constantine the Great, horses, herd animals, silks, gold, and more. More telling is the inclusion of hostages and an annual payment,36 which show that John had instituted a client relationship with Shaizar, replicating the way that Byzantine authority had been exercised in the Aleppo region in the eleventh century.37 The picture is clarified by the imperial oration of Italikos on this campaign, where he likens the situation to that of Alexander and Porus of Paurava after the battle of Hydaspes in 326 bc: Παραστησάμενος οὖν τὸν βάρβαρον, αὖθις ἀφίης ἐλεύθερον καὶ τὸν Ἀλέξανδρον ἐνταῦθα μιμῇ χαρίζῃ τὴν πόλιν μετὰ τὴν νίκην τοῖς νικηθεῖσι καὶ σὸν ἐκνίκημα ποιησάμενος, οὐκ ἀποδίδως, ἀλλὰ δίδως αὐτὴν τοῖς βαρβάροις, ἅπερ ἐκεῖνος εἰς Πῶρον δέδρακε‧ τῆς γὰρ βασιλείας αὐτὸν ἀφελόμενος, πάλιν βασιλέα χειροτονεῖ‧ ζῆλος οὖτος ὁ σὸς Ἀλεξάνδρειος. Οὐ γὰρ φθονεῖς ἑτέροις Therefore having come before the barbarian, he immediately gave [him] freedom and here he imitated Alexander: you favour the city with victory by prevailing and from your accomplished victories, not giving up, but giving it to the barbarians, which was done for Porus: taking his kingship away from him, you elect him king again: this is your emulation of Alexander.38 34 William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. by Huygens, ii, 675 (xv. 1). 35 Magdalino, The Empire, p. 41; Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, pp. 127–28; Parnell, ‘John II Comnenus’, p. 154; Tonghini, Shayzar I, p. 51. 36 Choniates, Historia, ed. by Van Dieten, pp. 30–31; Kinnamos, Epitome, ed. by Meinike, p. 20; Italikos, 43: Λόγος βασιλικὸς εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Ἰωάννην, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, pp. 264–65; Basilakes, Λόγος εἰς τὸν ἀοίδιμον βασιλέα, in Orationes, ed. by Garzya, p. 71; Prodromos, Poem 11, ll. 177–80, 191–200, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 37 For Aleppo in the eleventh century, see Canard, Histoire de la dynastie, pp. 831–38; Farag, ‘The Aleppo Question’; Haldon, The Palgrave Atlas, p. 72. For a general bibliography and outline of the imperial eastern frontier in the tenth and eleventh century, see Beihammer, ‘Strategies of Diplomacy’, esp. p. 371 note 1. 38 Italikos, 43: Λόγος βασιλικὸς εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Ἰωάννην, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, pp. 263–64.

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The battle of Hydaspes in 326 bc was one of Alexander’s most costly victories, but the resistance shown by Porus impressed Alexander so much that he made him a satrap in his empire, incorporating the Punjab and opening up India to Greek influences.39 Italikos here claims that John had taken the kingship from the barbarian, then made him king again for not bearing ill-will towards the empire, for John was standing up as a ‘guardian of all’ and sought to ‘fasten by persuasion rulers from every side’ to him, to quote from the next stanza.40 Thus this classical paradigm establishes what John was attempting to do in Syria, both for his contemporaries and indeed for us today: the Holy Land was marked for actual reconquest, but Aleppo and eastern Syria were intended for client rulers, as they had been in the previous century. To return to Jerusalem and the Levant: the same oration by Italikos uses both biblical and classical paradigms in describing John’s intentions. He is hailed as a new Moses and Joshua, bringing his people to the Promised Land, but more specifically when Italikos is describing John holding court in Antioch: Ἐντεῦθεν οἱ τῶν Φοινίκων ἄρχοντές σοι καθυποτάττονται καὶ πόρρωθεν ἐμβἀλλουσι δεξιάν. Ἐντεῦθεν ὁ τῆς Ἐδέσσης τοῦ σοῦ συντάγματος γέγονε καὶ δόρυ κραδαίνειν ὑπὲρ σοῦ βούλεται. Ἐντεῦθεν ὁ τῆς Αἰλίας, μελίαν χαλκόστομον τῶν χειρῶν ἀπορρίψας, προσκυνεῖ σου τὸ ἄκρον τοῦ δόρατος καὶ, τὴν στεφάνην τῆς κεφαλῆς ἀποθέμενος, παραχωρεῖ σοι μόνῳ τοῦ διαδήματος | καὶ τοῦ τῆς βασιλείας ὀνόματος Hence the Phoenician Lords are subject to you from afar when you use your right hand. Hence Edessa’s lance shakes at your wish, and its troops became yours. Hence Aelia Capitolina, hands throwing down ashen spears and trumpets, make obeisance to you as highest, laying aside the lance and the crown, he steps aside for you alone of the diadem and the name of the Emperor he deems worthy.41 Italikos is here using the term Phoenician to mean the crusader lords, since the Roman province of Phoenicia, north of Palestine, included both Antioch and Tripoli; both cities are mentioned in another of Prodromos’s poem as supporting the Emperor. The stanza also has Edessa’s troops becoming John’s, as indeed they did the following year, and then, significantly, uses ‘Aelia’ for Jerusalem. This was its Roman name after the Jewish rebellion was brutally put down by Hadrian, and so is a clear reference to earlier Roman rule over 39 Rogers, Alexander, p. 200. 40 Italikos, 43: Λόγος βασιλικὸς εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Ἰωάννην, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, p. 264. 41 Italikos, Λόγος βασιλικὸς εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Ἰωάννην, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, pp. 260–61.

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the city, to parallel its supposed submission to John. To clarify: I do not argue that the crusader kingdom of Jerusalem actually gave its allegiance to John at this time. It is, however, significant that in 1142 an embassy involving three of the kingdom’s highest officials acclaimed John as Roman Emperor.42 I suggest that Jerusalem acknowledged John’s technical overlordship, at least when he was in the region with his army, and that John’s eventual plan was to make such acknowledgement permanent. John’s programme was articulated in particular through the endemic rewriting of history, and so we find causes for war against the ‘Persians’ not only in recent troubles, but rooted in revenge for deeds committed as far back as Xerxes, invader of Greece in 480 bc, who famously demanded an offering of earth and water from the Greek cities as a symbol of their obedience to him. In the following lines we see John seizing the river Halys in revenge for a cup of water, and the ‘vast lands’ of Paphlagonia in exchange for a cup of earth: Ξέρξης ὁ Πέρσης, βασιλεῦ, ὁ τὰ πολλὰ κομπάσας κοτύλην μίαν ὕδατος καὶ χὠματος ἑτέραν αἰτήσας ἐκ τῆς καθ᾽ἡμᾶς οὐκ ἔλαβεν Ἑλλάδος σὺ δέ, μεγαλουργότατε τῶν πάλαι βασιλέων, ρὴν ὕβριν ἀμειβόμενος τῆς ἀσελγοῦς Περσίδος ἀντὶ κοτύλης ὕδατος ὅλον λαμβάνεις Ἅλυν, ἀντι μικροῦ δὲ χώματος ἀπειροπλέθρους χώρους, Xerxes the Persian, Emperor, the one of many boasts one cup of water and the other of earth he asked from us [in order to] not seize Greece: but you, performer of the greatest deeds of emperors of long ago, exchanging the sheep for the wanton violence of brutal Persians against a cup of water you took the whole Halys, against small amount of earth you take hold of vast lands.43 Prodromos equated John on the same eastern campaign with Croesus, who also campaigned across the Halys. The verse is in a higher register of Greek, and so perhaps was intended for a more educated audience. Croesus famously asked an oracle what would happen if he did campaign, and had the answer that ‘a great empire would fall’ — his own, since he was subsequently defeated

42 This embassy consisted of Anselm, bishop of Bethlehem, Rohard, castellan of Jerusalem, and Geoffrey, abbot of the Temple of the Lord (who was well versed in Greek), and they conveyed King Fulk’s happiness that John was considering visiting the city, but that he could not possibly support his army, and so he could only bring ten thousand men with him as an escort, emphasizing how great John’s forces were in the region: William of Tyre, Chronicon, ed. by Huygens, ii, 703 (xv. 21). 43 Prodromos, Poem 5, ll. 71–77, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner; Lau, ‘The Power of Poetry’.

rewriting history at the court of the komnenoi: processes and practices

and his kingdom fragmented. John, however, was guided by the blessed Virgin rather than a demonic oracle, and met with success: Κροῖσος τὸν Ἅλυν διαβάς, ὡς λέγουσιν οἱ λόγοι, τὴν ἑαυτοῦ κατέλυσε μεγάλην ἐξουσίαν ἁπατηθεὶς τῷ δαίμονι καὶ τῷ χρησμῷ τῷ πλάνῳ τὸ σὸν δὲ νῦν στρατόπεδον, σκηπτοῦχε τροπαιοῦχε, πεζῆ τὸν Ἅλυν διαβὰν καὶ κατ᾽ἐχθρῶν ὁρμῆσαν ἀρχὴν κατέλυσε πολλήν, ἀλλὰ τὴν τῆς Περσίδος οὐ γὰρ ἐθάρρησε χρησμοῖς οὐδὲ λοξαῖς μαντείαις, ἀλλὰ τῆς θεομήτορος τῇ θείᾳ συμμαχίᾳ καὶ τῇ πρὸς τὸν παντάνακτα πίστει τοῦ βασιλέως, καὶ τῆς Περσίδος ἔκαμψε τὸν ὑψηλὸν αὐχένα. Croesus crossed the Halys, as tell the tales, but his own authority was destroyed being deceived by the demon and by the deceiving oracle: you now camp, sceptre bearing [and] triumphant, on foot you crossed the Halys and charged against enemies your power destroyed many, but the Persian one: he was not of good courage, you had no oracles and no ambiguous divination, but the inspired alliance with the mother of God and with the all ruling faith of the Emperor, he bent the lofty necks of the Persians.44 Similarly when John campaigned against the Danishmendids and the rebel Constantine Gabras of Trebizond he was depicted as a new Pompey (who campaigned against King Mithrades of Pontus), surpassing both him and Julius Caesar. The passage paraphrases Caesar’s famous veni, vidi, vici: Ἐκεῖνο τὸ τοῦ Καίσαρος τοῦ Ῥώμηθεν ἐκείνου, ἐκεῖνο τὸ τοῦ Καίσαρος τῆς πρὸς Φαρνάκην μάχης ταῖς βίβλοις πάλαι προμαθὼν νῦν καθορῶ τοῖς ἔργοις. ἧλθες γὰρ ἅμα, βασιλεῦ, ἧλθες ἐς τὴν Περσίδα, εἰδες ἐλθὼν ἐνίκησας, πάντα κοινῶς τὰ τρία. οὐκ ἧλθες μὲν τὸ πρότερον, εἶα κατεσκοπήσω οὐδ᾽εἶδες, εἶτα δέδρακας τὰς ἀπορρήτους νίκας ἀλλ᾽ἅμα πάντα συνελὼν ἐλθεῖν ἰδεῖν νικῆσαι. τίς ἐξ αἰῶνος ἤκουσε τοιαύτην εὐκληρίαν; That man, that one of the Roman Caesars, that man of the Caesars who battles the Pharnakes [people of Pontos]

44 Prodromos, Poem 5, ll. 151–60, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner.

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with the ancient books he now perceives what was learned beforehand by deeds. You come at once, Emperor, you come to Persia, you see, in coming, you conquer, all three done in common. you did not come first, then examine: you did not see, then do an unspeakable victory: but at once seized all together: to come to see to conquer. Who have you heard from this age who gained such land?45 General allusions to eastern conquerors are all but omnipresent in the rhetorical texts examined here, which often provide outline lists of classical figures whom John surpassed. Here is a representative sample of two passages from the Syrian campaign oration by Basilakes: ἀλλ᾽οὐχὶ σύ γε ὁ σωτὴρ ὁ τροπαιοῦχος ὁ πολιορκητής· ἀλλ᾽ὑπὲρ τὸν Μακεδόνα ἐτόλμησας, ἀλλ᾽ὑπὲρ τὸν σωτῆρα Πτολεμαῖον τοὺς αὐτὸς αὐτοῦ διεφυλάξω καὶ περιέσωσας, ἀλλ᾽ὑπὲρ τὸν πολιορκητὴν Δημήτριον ἐπολιόρκησας τὸ βάρβαρον. Ὑπὲρ τὸν Ῥωμαῖον Μάρκελλον ἔχεις τὸ φιλοκίνδυνον, ὑπὲρ τὸν Θηβαῖον Πελοπίδαν τὸ εὐμήχανον, ϋπὲρ τὸν Ἐπαμεινώνδαν καὶ καταστρατηγεῖς καὶ σῷζειν τοὺς κατεστρατηγημένους ἐσπούδακας. τοῦτό σου τὸ πρᾶον, But not you the Saviour and Trophy-Winner and taker of Cities: for you are above the courage of Macedon, beyond Ptolomy the Saviour, the guardian and keeper himself, and above the City-Taker Demetrios, in taking the cities of barbarians. Beyond the Roman Marcellus the adventurous, beyond the Theban Pelopidas the inventive, beyond Epaminondas and his generalship, saving the zealotry of his generalship. You are this easily.46 Such lists are thus used on a basic level to praise the Emperor and display the rhetor’s erudition. In them, we also see classical paradigms mixed with those of the more recent past, with an acute awareness that these lands had once been Roman. This once more highlights the continuum of history from biblical times through the classical past to John’s own day, which legitimized his imperial regime as eternal and divinely ordained, and John himself the latest in the series of heroes. Though such comparisons are always to be taken with a grain of salt, the arch-propagandists of the twentieth century made similar

45 Prodromos, Poem 11, ll. 181–89, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 46 Basilakes, Λόγος εἰς τὸν ἀοίδιμον βασιλέα, in Orationes, ed. by Garzya, pp. 55–56 and 60 respectively.

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comparisons for political gain, Adolf Hitler being cast as the latest heroic German ruler on the model of Arminius, Martin Luther, Frederick the Great, Bismarck, and Hindenburg, highlighting both his supposed inspiration as a ruler, and his supposed legitimacy to rule.47 Thus again, such comparisons serve both a legitimizing purpose for the domestic audience, as well as articulating John’s intentions in the east both for the rhetor’s contemporary audience, and for us. These historical similes work hand-in-hand with biblical and classical allusions. One of the features is the use of the term ‘Ausones’ along with ‘Roman’ and ‘Christian’ as ethnonyms. ‘Ausones’ is a term with a long history, having been used by the classical historians Livy and Diodorus Siculus as a Greek form of ‘Aurunci’ to describe the people of central Italy. In Greek poetry of the first century ad it became a term for all Italians, for example in Dionysus Periegetes.48 Its resurrection as a term in this period could be compared with the revival of the term ‘Albion’ in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a poetic term for Britain by both British and French poets such as William Blake and Augustin-Louis de Ximénès: in both cases a vibrant literary culture went hand-in-hand with an imperial rise.49 Basilakes uses phrases which name all three identifiers for the empire, such as: ‘πολλοῦ γε τοῦ χρόνου, Χριστὲ βασιλεῦ, οὐκ οἶδεν Εὐφρατη | Αὐσόνιον ἄνακτα, οὐ Ῥωμαϊκὴν ἵππον ἐδέξατο’ (for a long time, Christian Emperor, the Euphrates has not known an Ausonian lord, not received a Roman horse).50 Prodromos goes so far as to call the empire the Ausonarchoumene in the same breath as talking about the new lands of Rome: ‘οὓς ὑπομένεις ὑπὲρ γῆς τῆς Αὐσοναρχουμένης, | οὓς ὑπὲρ τοὺ σχοινίσματος τῆς νέας πάσχεις Ῥώμης’ (which stands firm upon the earth of the land of the Ausonian Empire, | which stands firm upon the new lands of Rome).51 Both texts referred to John’s Cilician and Syrian conquests. Further to this, we have a rare use of the term ‘Byzantine’ alongside ‘Roman’ in a passage where Prodromos was extolling the virtues of conquest, again with both biblical and classical allusions: καὶ πάλιν ἐφιππάζεται μάχην Ἰσμαηλῖτιν καὶ τοῖς τροπαίοις τρόπαια προστίθησι καὶ νίκας. ὡς χαρισθείης, βασιλεῦ, Ῥωμαίοις εἰς αἰῶνας. Ἐξάπλου σου τοὺς σχοινισμούς, γῆ Βυζαντίς, ἐξάπλου, μὴ φείση σου τῶν αὐλαιῶν κατὰ τὴν προφητείαν ἀπόγραφε σὺν Ἰταλοῖς καὶ Σύροις καὶ Λατίνοις καὶ σὺν Ἰσαύροις τοῖς πικροῖς καὶ σὺν παισὶ Κιλίκων

47 See in particular Winkler, Arminius, pp. 97, 115–17. 48 For an overview, see Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium, esp. pp. 63, 221, 303, 355, 374. 49 Blake, Jerusalem; de Ximénès, Poésies, 160. The latter coined the term ‘perfidious Albion’ in the poem specified. 50 Basilakes, Λόγος εἰς τὸν ἀοίδιμον βασιλέα, in Orationes, ed. by Garzya, p. 65. 51 Prodromos, Poem 11, ll. 46–47, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner.

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τοῖς χθὲς ὑποταγεῖσι σοι καὶ δουλαγωγηθεῖσι καὶ τουτουσὶ τοὺς νεαλεῖς ἀπὸ Περσίδος δούλους. and again he marched away to battle with the Ishmaelites and made them hand over their greatest trophies and victories. Thus you show favour, Emperor, to the Romans in this age. Expand your lands, Byzantine earth, expand, lest you draw back the curtains according to the prophets: you write of Italians and Syrians and Latins and Isaurians and sorrowing sons of Kilikia, of their subjugation to you yesterday and enslaving these newly caught Persian slaves.52 To clarify: using the terms ‘Ausones’ and ‘Byzantine’ in this way in no way portrays John as something new, or as something different from the Romans. The terms are in fact ultra-classicizing, if not purely mythological, and so should be seen as enhancing his place in the continuum of historical memory. Italikos specifically paints John as the rescuer of ancient Roman cities: ‘δι᾽ ὦν τὰς ἀνέκαθεν πόλεις Ῥωμαίων πάλαι προηρπαγμένας ἐπανασῴζεις, καὶ οἶά τις θεὸς ἀπό τινος αἰμαλωσίας πολυχρονίου πάρει ταύτας ἀναρρυόμενος’ (Who does not marvel thither at accomplishing the struggles, snatching away and lifting up from above the cities of the Romans of old, and rescuing these as a god from ancient captivity?).53 In the same oration he notes the Greek past of the Syrian city of Shaizar: ἀπὸ τοῦ Χάλεπ — πολλάκις γὰρ ἐπιφέρω καὶ τοὔνομα, ὅτι πολλῶν ἡμερῶν ἐνταῦθα Ῥωμαίων σκῆπτρον οὐκ ἐθεάσατο ἥλιος — τῷ Σέζερ ἐπαφῆκας τὸ στράτευμα, ἤντινα πόλιν ἑλληνίζοντες εἴποιμεν Λάρισσαν‧ ἔστι γὰρ τῆς Κασιώτιδος χώρας τὸ κράτιστον. from Aleppo — for many times the name is laid upon it, for many days here the sceptre of the Romans has not seen the sun — the expedition is discharged at Shaizar, a city which those who speak Greek call Larissa: for it is the strongest place in the country of the Kasiotis.54 Similarly for Cilicia, Basilakes’ oration references the men of Tarsus’s Christian heritage through St Paul, and how, in the place ‘where Paul drew breath’ they should once more accept a lawful Emperor: 52 Prodromos, Poem 11, ll. 128–36, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 53 Italikos, 43: Λόγος βασιλικὸς εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Ἰωάννην, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, p. 251. 54 Italikos, 43: Λόγος βασιλικὸς εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Ἰωάννην, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, p. 263.

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ὅσοι μὲν οὖν ἔτι Κίλικες ἀρχαιοπολῖται καὶ αὐτόχθονες ὑπελείποντο (Κελτικου θυμοῦ φαίη τις ἂν ἴχνια καὶ λείφανα πολλά), οὖτοί σε ἀσπασίως ἐδέχοντο. τὸ γὰρ τῆς Ὡς εὖ γε ὑμῖν τοῦ βουλεύματος, ὡς εὖ γε τοῦ σκέμματος, ἄνδρες Ταρσεῖς, ἄνδρες Παύλου πατριῶται καὶ ὁμοπόλιδες. ἦ που τοῦτο ὑμῖν Παῦλος ἔπνευσε, βασιλείαν ἔννομον ἀνόμου βασιλέως ἀλλάξασθαι καὶ ἐπὶ Χριστὸν κύριον μεταφοιτῆσαι καὶ μεταβαλεῖν· ὡς ὄντως Παύλου καὶ τοῦτο τὸ κήρυγμα καὶ τῆς ῾ἁποστολικῆς᾽ἐκείνης καὶ φιλοκάλου ῾ψυχῆς᾽ καὶ τοῦτον ἐγὼ τὸν ἆθλον τίθεμαι.55 How great still [are] Cilicia’s ancient citizens and remaining natives (the anger of the Kelts made known a trace, but many remained), these received us with a warm welcome. Your design was well, and so well the question, men of Tarsus, men of the same city and countrymen of Paul. Where Paul drew breath, take again lawful imperial emperor the lawless place, and resort to Christ the Lord and change to him: as being Paul and this the proclamation of that apostle and a soul fond of honour I hold the prize. The ‘lawful emperors’ of this passage are not a general allusion, but specific emperors who campaigned in the east, highlighting how John will, like them, restore rightful Roman rule over the region as part of the continuum of the historical divine plan for the order of the world. Although comparisons with Constantine might be considered de rigueur for any emperor, in this instance there is a specific historical reference, since the young Constantine campaigned as a tribune against the Persians in Syria in 297 under Diocletian, and in Mesopotamia in 298–299 under Galerius, in addition to planning further campaigns before he died against Shah Shapur in 336–337.56 Hence a reference such as this by Prodromos: Ὦ τάχος ἀπειροταχὲς ἀμάχου βασιλέως, ὦ δρόμος ἀεικίνητος ὑπὲρ ἡλίου δρόμον. χθὲς ἐκ Συρίας τῆς ἁβρᾶς, χθὲς ἀπὸ Κιλικίας, ἐκ Φέρεπ Χάλεπ Καφαρτῶν, αὐτῆς ἐκ Βαβυλῶνος ἀνέζευξεν ὁ βασιλεὺς ἐπὶ τὴν Κωνσταντίνου O swift, boundlessly fleet unconquered Emperor, O perpetual race over the course of the sun.

55 Basilakes, Λόγος εἰς τὸν ἀοίδιμον βασιλέα, in Orationes, ed. by Garzya, pp. 57–58. 56 Lenski, The Cambridge Companion, p. 60; Fowden, ‘The Last Days of Constantine’, pp. 146–48.

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Yesterday from beauteous Syria, yesterday from Kilikia, from Ferep, Chalep, and Kafarton, the same from Babylon the Emperor rivals Konstantine.57 Thus, this is no idle ‘John is like Constantine’ comparison, but makes a specific use of historical memory in order to highlight his intended conquests on a practical level, and at a more theo-philosophical level to legitimize his rule as the latest iteration of emperors chosen by God to pursue deeds in this region. So, too, references to Herakleios, famous for his Persian campaign that retook Jerusalem and the eastern provinces, where we have a reference to the stelae that he set up in the region: Ὤ δρόμημα περιφανὲς μεγίστου βασιλέως ὢ πόσην ἔτεμες ὁδὸν καὶ μέχρι ποῦ προῆλθες καὶ μέχρι ποῦ κατέπηξας Ῥωμαϊκὴν σημαίαν σὺ τάχα μέχρι καὶ στηλῶν ἐλάσεις Ἡρακλείων καὶ φθάσεις ὑπὲρ Γάδειρα καὶ Θούλην ὑπερδράμεις καὶ καταδούπους τοὺς δεινοὺς καὶ καταράκτας Νείλου O great Emperor, your course is seen all round: what quality of road is cut and as far as where does it go and as far as where do the Roman standards go quickly one after another? Quickly marching as far as the steles of Heraklios and your deeds going beyond Gades and Thule and the first terrible cataract of the Cataracts of the Nile.58 This section is also significant in alluding to the Emperor’s travel as far as Gades, Thule, and the first cataract of the Nile — also named as the ends of the earth in the Alexiad — while situating his possible conquests in the Levant and Syria. There are also references to tenth- and eleventh-century Byzantine rulers, from a comparatively recent era of imperial reconquest in the region: Αὐτὸς μὲν οὖν, ὤ βασιλεῦ, ἐξιππάσ πρὸς Κίλικας διὰ | τῶν τεμπῶν Παμφυλίας ὁδεύσας, ὅθεν Ἀλέξανδρος ἐκεῖνος κατὰ Περσίδος ἤλασε πρότερον, καὶ καθάπερ τις ἀετὸς ὑφιπέτης ἐπὶ τὰς τῶν ὀρῶν κορυφὰς μετὰ ῥοίζου πολλοῦ φερόμενος, τὸν Κιλίκιον Ταῦρον περιεπόλευες, οἶά τινας νεβροὺς καὶ πτῶκας τοὺς ἐκεῖσε βαρβάρους περιπαπταίνων. Ἔνθα δὴ καὶ τὸν βασιλίσκον Λέοντα κατελάμβανες Therefore I myself, O Emperor, rode to Cilicia travelling through the vales of Pamphylia, wherefore that Alexander

57 Prodromos, Poem 11, ll. 51–55, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 58 Prodromos, Poem 19, ll. 122–27, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner.

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drove the Persians before him, and just as a high-flying eagle on the tops of the mountains bearing much rushing, going around the Cilician Taurus, which fawns and hares peer around that barbarian place. There indeed the imperial Leo conquered.59 This extract from Italikos references not only Alexander, but also an Emperor Leo, who in the context of a poem about Cilicia must be equated with Leo V, known as the Wise, from the late ninth and early tenth century, who specifically recaptured Tarsus, just as John was doing.60 In a letter to the megas domestikos John Axouch during the early stage of that campaign, Italikos refers not only to Alexander and Caesars in general, but also to an Emperor Basil: Ἀπεκρύψατε τοῖς ἀμετρήτοις ἀγῶσι τοὺς Ἀλεξάνδρους ἐκείνους καὶ τοὺς Καίσαρας‧ ὀκνῶ γὰρ εἰπεῖν Βασιλείους τινὰς βασιλεῖς καὶ τὸ ἐν μάχαις περιβόητον Φωκᾶ γένος καὶ μετ᾽ ἐκείνους γεγόνασι, θερμότατοι τοῖς πράγμασιν ἐπιθέμενοι Those immense struggles of Alexander and those of the Caesars are eclipsed: I shrink from mentioning Emperor Basil and the battles of the famous Phokas family and what happened after them, adding to fresh deeds.61 This is almost certainly Basil II, who successfully campaigned against the Fatimids, laid siege to Tripoli, installed a garrison at Shaizar, and conducted operations more or less exactly where John did in the same region.62 Many members of the Phokas family fought in this region and even in the vicinity of Jerusalem, but particularly here the reference is likely to be to Emperor Nikephoros II Phokas, who campaigned against Aleppo and reached Tripoli.63 All these sources build up to the message that John was attempting to put the empire back on the track where it had been in the early eleventh century, in the seventh century, and indeed in specific classical and (invented) biblical pasts, since John was but the latest iteration of the agent of God’s historical plan for the empire in the region. When far-off locations such as Gades and Thule are mentioned, they refer to how far news of the Emperor’s deeds spread, or how far his enemies ran, and not to actual conquest, as indeed in these two extracts: ‘πέρα Γαδείρων ἄπιτε, περάσατε τὴν Θούλην’ ([the Persians] 59 Italikos, 43: Λόγος βασιλικὸς εἰς τὸν αὐτοκράτορα Ἰωάννην, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, pp. 247–48. 60 Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State, p. 466. 61 Italikos, 37: Πρὸς τὸν μέγαν δομέστικον, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, pp. 223–24. 62 Holmes, Basil II, esp. pp. 246–351. 63 Treadgold, A History of the Byzantine State, p. 948.

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depart beyond Gadeira, they pass Thule);64 and ‘καὶ πέρα Γαδείρων, εἰ βούλει, καὶ εἰς Ἰνδοὺς καὶ τὰ ἐπέκεινα Θούλης’ (and beyond Gadeira, if you wish, and to India and beyond Thule).65 The latter is from a letter from Italikos to the Emperor, accepting service as John’s ambassador to Rome, which says that he will serve with his words as far as necessary in a general sense. Other references to Middle Eastern locations are far more specific. In this longer section of Basilakes’ oration on John’s eastern campaign, the rhetor fulfils his role of illustrating the Emperor’s policies and legitimizing imperial authority, in an opening which names the Emperor as the ‘Archegeometros’ (Arch-Surveyor) who uses his sword to define the boundaries of the empire: Ἐντεῦθεν αἴρεις τὸ ξιφος καὶ ὡσεί τις ἀρχιγεωμέτρης ὡς ἀπὸ κέντρου τοῦ θεοσδότου σου λάχους καὶ διαστήματος κύκλον περιγράφειν ἐπιχειρεῖς, ὡς μὲν μέγαν ὡς δὲ κάλλιστον· καὶ δὴ πολλὰ πολλάκις καὶ γραμμῇ περιῆξας ὡς ὑπὸ γραφεῴ τῷ δόρατι. καὶ ὑπὸ τούτῳ σου τῷ θαυμαστῷ διαγραμματι | μυρία τῶν ἐπὶ δυσμαῖς ἀλλοφύλων ξυνεκάμπτετό τε καὶ περιήγετο. Ἐλείπετο δή σοι καὶ Ἀσίαν χειρώσασθαι καὶ τὰ τῆς γραμμῆς ἐπισυνάξαι λειπόμενα, ἵν᾽ᾖ σοι καὶ τὰ τῆς βασιλικῆς γεωμετρίας ὁλοτελῆ τε καὶ ἄρτια καὶ ὁ κύκλος ἀρτίκυκλος. Hence seize the sword and just as an Arch-Surveyor as from your God-given point put your hand to drawing a line with intervals around your allotted portion, as great as the most fine: and indeed many and often put the line of the stroke in motion as if drawn by a pen. And under this, your amazing diagram many western foreigners bow together and you lead. Indeed he leaves you and masters Asia and gathers together the lines left over, when to you the imperial geometry is both quite complete and proper and the circle becomes an exact circle.66 The ‘arch-surveyor’ completes the great design in ‘mastering Asia’. Indeed, his strategy derived from the earliest days of Rome itself: Ταρκύνιος τὴν πάλαι Ῥώμην ἀπέξεσε καὶ Τύλλιος ἐκεῖνος δύο λόφους | τῇ πόλει προσέθηκε. σὺ δ᾽ ἄν μοι δοκῇς ἐκεῖνα τὰ τοῦ Παιανιέως αὐχήσειν παρὰ πολὺ δικαιότερα· ‘῾οὐ λίθοις ἐτείχισα᾽ τὴν ἐμὴν Ῥώμην οὐδὲ λόφοις ἐγώ, ὁὐδ᾽ ἐπὶ τούτοις μέγιστον τῶν ἐμαυτοῦ φρονῶ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ ὁ ἐμὸς τειχισμὸς ὅπλα καὶ βέλη καὶ ἵπποι, ὅλα ἔθνη βαλλόμενα καὶ ὑποκύπτοντα.

64 Prodromos, Poem 4, l. 197, in Historische Gedichte, ed. by Hörandner. 65 Italikos, 23: ‘Au Basileus’, in Lettres, ed. by Gautier, p. 174. 66 Basilakes, Λόγος εἰς τὸν ἀοίδιμον βασιλέα, in Orationes, ed. by Garzya, p. 54.

rewriting history at the court of the komnenoi: processes and practices

ταῦτα προὐβαλόμην ἐγὼ τῆς βασιλίδος τῶν πόλεων· τούτοις τὴν ἐμὴν Ῥώμην ἐτείχισα· ἐπὶ τούτοις καὶ γέγηθα καὶ τρέφω τι καὶ φρονήματος’. ἀλλὰ γὰρ ῾δεῦτε καὶ ἴδετε τὰ ἔργα τοῦ θεοῦ, ἃ ἔθετο τέρατα ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ἀνταναιρῶν πολέμους μέχρι᾽ Εὐφράτου καὶ Τίγρητος· δεῦτε καὶ σύνετε It is said that Tarquin and Tullius the long-ago Romans made custom the two boundaries of the city. You suppose to me that the boasting paeans concern much justice: ‘“building a wall not with stones” my Rome is not ridged, nor is this the great thing I am minded to do, but my wall-building is of weapons and missiles and horses, whole nations striking and succumbing. These I have laid before the Queen of Cities: these are the walls of my Rome: on these I have rejoiced and fostered and had feeling for’. But for come hither and see the deeds of God, who worked wonders upon the earth cancelling wars as far as the Euphrates and the Tigris.67 Basilakes goes on to make the argument that it was campaigning that kept Rome safe, regardless of successful conquests. He almost certainly took that position because John’s plans had gone awry, as he had failed to take Aleppo because of the riots in Antioch, and had been recalled to defend the Anatolian frontier and thus had to leave Syria early.68 Equally, however, John had supposedly ‘cancelled war as far as Mesopotamia’, a reference to Psalm 46, where God’s wonders on earth cancelled war: thus he had moved forward with the grand design even if he had not yet accomplished it by conquering the region. This rhetorical strategy again puts John in the tradition of his biblical, classical, and more recent predecessors, and thus although he had not yet attained full success on the ground, the empire’s eventual resumption of rule over the region was assured as long as Roman emperors continued to work towards the divine plan for history.

Conclusion This rhetorical material makes clear that court dialogue was advocating the reconquest of those areas of the Middle East that had been ruled from Constantinople in the previous century. Such rule aligned with specific biblical and classical exemplars as well as the more recent historical empire of God’s

67 Basilakes, Λόγος εἰς τὸν ἀοίδιμον βασιλέα, in Orationes, ed. by Garzya, pp. 70–71. 68 Lilie, Byzantium and the Crusader States, pp. 130–31.

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chosen people, the Romans. Such aims were expressed coherently through a redeployment of three different historical exemplars, finding expression in the history-writing of Choniates and Kinnamos when they rewrote already rewritten historical poems for their own chronicles. It is less clear in the later rewritings that these court sources were deliberately blurring the boundaries between past and present, and in particular between different sections of the past. The purpose was to present the imperial programme of reconquest as part of a continuum, whereby even though imperial rule had faltered on many previous occasions, it had always been restored by agents acting on behalf of the divine plan for the world. For Kinnamos and even more for Choniates, writing over forty years later, such an articulation was no longer viable. Kinnamos would not have been popular at court, to say the least, if he had highlighted Emperor Manuel I Komnenos’s defeat at the battle of Myriocephalon in 1176 and his failed invasions of Italy and Egypt, which drew attention to his inability to follow the divine plan. Choniates witnessed decline under the Angeloi emperors and then the disastrous sack of Constantinople by the armies of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and developed a new paradigm to explain why the order of the world, the taxis, had been upended. His biblical parallel was the Babylonian captivity, and he located the source of failure in the slow corruption of the Komnenos and Angeloi dynasties across the twelfth century.69 John Komnenos’s court rhetors, however, could liken his plans to those predecessors in a way which bolstered the legitimacy of his regime as the latest in a long line of rulers who had acted as he had. Indeed even outside Constantinople it can be seen that other rhetors also saw in John the potential for the restoration of the previous theo-geopolitical order in the Levant.70 Rewriting was thus undertaken both to articulate the eternal divine plan for Roman rule in the region on a philosophical level, and to inform elite and non-elite audiences that John was carrying out this plan, so as to bolster his domestic legitimacy. The implications of the rewriting of history to meet these objectives require historians of this period to understand both the political dynamic between the court and those writing, and how they redeployed history in support of that dynamic. Although modern historiography has moved beyond looking for the divine in historical events, we must never lose sight of the fact that these writers were looking for precisely that. Far from getting in the way of our analyses, God’s purpose should be factored into research in order to better understand both how political actors operated, and how history was written and rewritten. In the particular case of twelfth-century Byzantium, the empire was striving to confront new rivals and reclaim its previous hegemony after the troubles of the eleventh century. By careful scrutiny of

69 Kaldellis, Hellenism in Byzantium, pp. 75–99. 70 Lau, ‘The Dream Come True?’.

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how events were set down at the time in court sources, and subsequently how they were refashioned in the chronicles, we can attempt to take the political pulse of the time and see how those immediately following understood the development of history.

Works Cited Primary Sources Nikephoros Basilakes, Nicephori Basilacae Orationes et epistolae, ed. by Antonio Garzya (Leipzig: Teubner, 1984) Niketas Choniates, Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. by Jan Louis van Dieten (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975) Michael Italikos, Michel Italikos, Lettres et discours, ed. by Paul Gautier (Paris: Institut français d’études byzantines, 1972) John Kinnamos, Ioannis Cinnami Epitome rerum ab Ioanne et Alexio Comnenis gestarum, ed. by A. Meineke (Bonn: Weberi, 1836) Matthew of Edessa, Armenia and the Crusades, Tenth to Twelfth Centuries: The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa, trans. by Ara Edmond Dostourian (Belmont: National Association for Armenian Studies and Research, 1993) Theodore Prodromos, Theodorus Prodromos, Historische Gedichte, ed. by Wolfram Hörandner (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1974) William of Tyre, Willelmus Tyrensis Archiepiscopus, Chronicon, ed. by R. B. C. Huygens (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986) Secondary Works Beihammer, Alexander, ‘Strategies of Diplomacy and Ambassadors in ByzantineMuslim Relations in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’, in Ambassadeurs et ambassades au cœur des relations diplomatiques: Rome–Occident Médiéval– Byzance, ed. by Audrey Becker and Nicolas Drocourt (Metz: Université de Lorraine, 2012), pp. 371–400 Birkenmeier, John W., The Development of the Komnenian Army, 1081–1180 (Leiden: Brill, 2002) Blake, William, Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (London: [n. pub.], 1804–1820) Canard, Marius, Histoire de la dynastie des H’amdanides de Jazira et de Syrie (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1953) Chalandon, Ferdinand, Jean II Comnène, 1118–1143, et Manuel I Comnène, 1143–1180, 2 vols (Paris: Picard, 1912; repr. New York: Franklin, 1971) Farag, Wesam, ‘The Aleppo Question: A Byzantine-Fatimid Conflict of Interests in Northern Syria in the Later Tenth Century’, Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies, 14 (1990), 44–60

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Fowden, Garth, ‘The Last Days of Constantine: Oppositional Versions and Their Influence’, Journal of Roman Studies, 84 (1994), 146–70 Freedman, David Noel, ed., The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992) Goitein, S. D., ‘A Letter from Seleucia (Cilicia), Dated 21 July 1137’, Speculum, 39 (1964), 298–303 Haldon, John, The Palgrave Atlas of Byzantine History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) Harris, Jonathan, Byzantium and the Crusades (London: Hambledon, 2003) Holmes, Catherine, Basil II and the Governance of Empire (976–1025) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) Kaldellis, Anthony, Hellenism in Byzantium: The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) Knauf, Ernst A., ‘Ishmael’ and ‘Ishmaelites’, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 512–20 Kotzabassi, Sofia, ed., The Pantokrator Monastery in Constantinople (Boston: De Gruyter, 2013) Lau, Maximilian, ‘The Power of Poetry: Portraying the Expansion of the Empire under John II Komnenos’, in Landscapes of Power: Selected Papers from the XV Oxford University Byzantine Society International Graduate Conference, ed. by Maximilian Lau, Caterina Franchi, and Morgan Di Rodi (Oxford: Lang, 2014), pp. 195–214 ———, ‘The Dream Come True? Matthew of Edessa and the Return of the Roman Emperor’, in Dreams, Memory and Imagination in Byzantium, ed. by Bronwen Neil and Eva Anagnostou-Laoutides (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 160–79 Lenski, Noel, ed., The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Lilie, Ralph-Johannes, Byzantium and the Crusader States, 1096–1204, trans by J. C. Morris and Jean E. Ridings (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) Lipschits, Oded, and Manfred Oeming, eds, Judah and the Judeans in the Persian Period (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2006) Magdalino, Paul, The Empire of Manuel I Komnenos, 1143–1180 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) ———, ‘The Triumph of 1133’, in John II Komnenos, Emperor of Byzantium: In the Shadow of Father and Son, ed. by Alessandra Bucossi and Alex Rodriguez Suarez (Farnham: Ashgate, 2016), pp. 53–70 Magdalino, Paul, and Robert Nelson, eds, The Old Testament in Byzantium (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010) Meyer, Carol L., ‘Remnant’, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 669–71 Noth, Martin, The Deuteronomistic History, 2nd edn (Sheffield: JSOT, 1991) Papageorgiou, Angeliki, ‘John II Komnenos and his Era (1118–1143)’ (unpublished PhD thesis, National Capodistrian University of Athens, 2010)

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Parnell, D. A., ‘John II Comnenus and Crusader Antioch’, in Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict, ed. by Thomas F. Madden, James L. Naus, and Vincent Ryan (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 149–57 Pitarakis, Brigitte, Les croix-reliquaires pectorales byzantines en bronze (Paris: Picard, 2006) Rogers, Guy MacLean, Alexander: The Ambiguity of Greatness (New York: Random House, 2004) Römer, Thomas C., The So-Called Deuteronomistic History: A Sociological, Historical, and Literary Introduction (London: T. & T. Clark, 2005) Smith, R. Payne, ‘Ethiopia’, in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. by David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), pp. 665–66 Tonghini, Cristina, Shayzar I: The Fortification of the Citadel (Leiden: Brill, 2012) Treadgold, Warren, A History of the Byzantine State and Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997) Winkler, Martin M., Arminius the Liberator: Myth and Ideology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015) de Ximénès, Augustin-Louis, Poésies révolutionnaires et contre-révolutionnaires, 2 vols (Paris: Libraire historique, 1821)

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Robe rt F. Be rkhof e r III

Rewriting the Past: Monastic Forgeries and Plausible Narratives

Medieval monks deployed narratives, documents, and objects to promote particular understandings of their collective past. Such house histories were often rewritten or retold as local conditions changed, and such rewriting or retelling was frequently tied to specific events in the present or very recent past. In consequence, these house histories are a moving target for medieval historians interested in reconstructing what actually happened. On the other hand, such rewritings are very useful sources for studying monks’ ideas or beliefs about what their past should have been. This article will consider how monks in the eleventh and twelfth centuries rewrote their pasts for present and future purposes. It will do so by focusing on ways texts were modified, and especially how medieval monks used forged charters in conjunction with narratives to rewrite histories of their house. Since such (re)visioning of the past tended to be embedded in local circumstances, and so can only be understood in context, it will explore a particular case: the monastery of St Peter’s, Ghent, in the 1030s. However, to demonstrate that the connections between forgeries and historical writing were not unique to St Peter’s, it will also offer a comparison to a house at a different place and time: Christ Church, Canterbury, around the turn of the twelfth century. Understanding how medieval monks rewrote their pasts in house histories involves at least two kinds of written sources: forged charters and narratives with some historical element. Both kinds require some explanation. I will treat forged charters first, since they have been understood variously by scholars. For medievalists, the modern term ‘forgery’ has broad meaning: it includes not just frauds and fakes intended to deceive, but potentially any document containing unoriginal elements or later modifications regardless of the reason. It has become a technical term, especially in the discipline of history, referring to a text (or object) which is not what it claims to be. This technical meaning derives directly from the modernist paradigm of historical methods developed in Germany from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Robert F. Berkhofer III  •  ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of Medieval History at Western Michigan University. His research interests include forgery and historical writing in England, France, and Flanders. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 151–167 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126749

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One influential example was Ernst Bernheim’s manual of historical method of 1889, which became a touchstone of German handbooks on history. Bernheim provided a careful definition of Fälschung, but more tellingly, began his section on historical criticism with the question: ‘Is the source really what it purports to be?’ (Ist die Quelle wirklich das, wofür sie sich auggibt?).1 For Bernheim, and later scholars following his lead, a ‘forgery’ was a source which purported to be something it was not. But creating such a definition led to further difficulties, such as how reliable such sources would be for creating a valid interpretation of the past. Diplomatists, who specialize in studying charters, have devoted the most time and energy to analysing forgeries, and still do not always agree on how to define them. For instance, the standard Vocabulaire internationale de la diplomatique, which provides its terms in five languages (French, English, German, Italian, and Spanish) and equivalences in seven other Romance and Slavic languages, offers nine different, overlapping definitions related to forgery.2 In general, there has been a strong tendency among historians to regard forged charters (however defined) as poor evidence. The present work, however, departs from the modernist paradigm of history because it does not dismiss forgeries as bad evidence, rather it sees forgeries as good evidence for the shared ideas and practices of their medieval creators. Thus, by accepting forgeries as legitimate evidence of the medieval writing process, it seeks a new framework for understanding the historical writings of medieval people and, thus, their sense of the past. In particular, I am interested in how medieval monks used forged charters in conjunction with the second type of source: narratives with a historical element. I say ‘narratives with a historical element’ because the texts I treat were not called ‘histories’ by their medieval creators, and had multiple functions, such as commemoration and devotion, or even record-keeping, but at least some historical element. One needs to be careful about this because there was a medieval Latin word for (and concept of) history: historia. The problem is not the lack of a word, but rather that the concept/practice which historia expressed was not the same as the modern, professional understanding of ‘history’ as structured knowledge, or as a discipline. Modern scholars seeking to define medieval historical writing often point out that historia was not considered scientia (a coherent area of knowledge, such as ‘rhetoric’) in the Middle Ages, rather it was only a type of narratio and, so, not fundamentally analytic at all. For the Romans, historia was part of rhetoric, as adapted from the Greek tradition and elaborated by orators such as Cicero and Quintilian. However, after the collapse of the western Roman Empire, rhetoric was often 1 Bernheim, Lehrbuch der historischen Methode, p. 390. See pp. 330–31 for the definition of Fälschung: ‘Wenn eine Quelle ganz oder au einem Teile sich für etwas anderes ausgibt, als sie tatsächlich ist, sei nun überhaupt gar nicht historisches Material oder sei sie es in anderer als der vorgeblichen Weise, so haben wir es mit Fälschung, bezw. partieller Fälschung oder Verunechtung zu tun; die Quelle ist gefälscht, bezw. verunechter’. 2 Cárcel Ortí, ed., Vocabulaire.

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viewed more restrictively by medieval educators, as being the art of composing letters (ars dictaminis) or sermons (ars praedicandi).3 Frequently, historia was instead regarded as part of grammar (another branch of the trivium of writing arts), under which it is found in Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, a quasi-encyclopaedic reference work, which was the distortive but most widely used transmitter of classical terms and concepts for medieval readers. In consequence, historical writing was influenced by ideas of both rhetoric and grammar in the high Middle Ages.4 Isidore of Seville’s definition of historia as narratio rei gestae (a narrative of things done) is frequently cited as a touchstone for the medieval understanding of ‘history’ by scholars specializing in medieval historiography.5 Likewise, literary scholars have made much of Isidore’s contrast between historia and fabula, which relates events which never could have happened. But this reductive dichotomy omits key distinctions Isidore himself made. Importantly, in his chapter devoted to ‘kinds of history’, Isidore’s initial binary division is modified in favour of a tripartite distinction as follows: Item inter historiam et argumentum et fabulam interesse. Nam historiae sunt res verae quae factae sunt; argumenta sunt quae etsi facta non sunt, fieri tamen possunt; fabulae vero sunt quae nec factae sunt nec fieri possunt, quia contra natura sunt. And history, ‘plausible narration’ (argumentum), and fable differ from one another. Histories are true deeds that have happened, plausible narrations are things that, even if they have not happened, nevertheless could happen, and fables are things that have not happened and cannot happen, because they are contrary to nature.6 From a (post)modern perspective, this division (historia, argumentum, fabula) is intriguing because it was based on how each type of narrative represented the past and (implicitly) the truth-value of that representation. What I propose is that one can treat many of the medieval narrative sources modern scholars tend to label ‘histories’ as belonging to Isidore’s second category: plausible narrative (or argumentum) about the past. I would suggest that such an approach is useful, because it helps explain how forged or interpolated charters were deployed by medieval composers, since they complemented other texts to produce a given argumentum. As mentioned above, these issues about forgeries and plausible narratives will be explored through two examples, drawn from the monasteries of

3 Camargo, Ars dictaminis; Kienzle, The Sermon. 4 Kempshall, Rhetoric, esp. pp. 121–38, explores these influences in depth. 5 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, ed. by Lindsay, i. 41. 1; The Etymologies, trans. by Barney and others, p. 67. For a historian’s treatment of Isidore’s definition, see Deliyannis, ed., Historiography, pp. 2–4, and compare Kempshall, Rhetoric, pp. 123–24. 6 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, i. 44. 5; The Etymologies, trans. by Barney and others, p. 67.

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St Peter’s, Ghent, and Christ Church, Canterbury. These examples were chosen because both houses have extensive surviving archives from the eleventh and twelfth centuries which contain numerous forged charters, as well as historical writings which incorporated them. I will begin with St Peter’s, which is less well known to most readers, and will be treated in greater detail.

Forgeries and Plausible Narrative at St Peter’s, Ghent Early in the abbacy of Wichard (1034/1035–1058), many charters of the monastery of St Peter’s were summarized in a codex, the Liber traditionum.7 The compilation of the Liber traditionum was done with tendentious purpose, and many of the charters contained substantial and intentional alterations (usually regarded as forgeries). These charters were complemented by short narrative sections and, taken together, they supported a particular (hi)story of the monastery. The story as written, and perhaps told within and outside the monastery, offered a partisan view of the monastery’s past. In terms of context, perhaps the single most important feature of the local environment in the eleventh century was the existence of another monastery at Ghent, dedicated to St Bavo. St Peter’s and St Bavo’s were close together in a critical physical location: the confluence of two of the most important rivers in Flanders, the Scheldt and the Lys. The church of St Bavo had existed from the earliest times, had been plundered by Viking attacks in 851 and 879, and was refounded as a monastery by Count Arnulf I and Gérard of Brogne in 946/947; thereafter, it remained in fierce competition with the monks of St Peter’s for spiritual prestige in the count’s eyes and for local resources.8 This competition between the two houses at Ghent helps explain many features of the (hi)story related by the Liber traditionum. In addition to the competition between the two houses at Ghent, another important context was ongoing attempts at reform by Abbot Wichard in the 1030s, and the legacy of previous reforms at Ghent. Wichard became a monk at St Peter’s in 995. He later served under Abbot Rotbold, who became ill and resigned his functions in 1028, whereupon the abbacy was given by Count Baldwin IV (988–1037) to the great Benedictine reformer Richard of SaintVanne (1029–1032), at which time Wichard became provost of the monastery (and presumably absorbed some of the reform ideas of Richard). For the complex links between these reforms at St Peter’s and St Bavo’s, the work

7 Ghent, Rijksarchief [hereafter RAG], fonds Sint-Pietersabdij, 2de reeks 2bis, fols 19r–102v. For a traditional edition, see Liber traditionum, ed. by Fayen. The analysis below is based on the manuscript, but the edition will be cited for reader convenience as well. 8 The tangled early history of the two houses is still being unravelled and most of the works before circa 1980 may only be used with caution. Brief overviews exist in Verhulst and Declercq, ‘Early Medieval Ghent’, pp. 37–59, and Declercq, ‘Heiligen, Lekenabten en Hervormers’.

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of Steven Vanderputten is now the best guide.9 Wichard was elected abbot in 1034, according to the final lines written in the primary hand of the Liber traditionum.10 Wichard then tried to deal with a difficult territorial problem: loss of control over the lands east of the Scheldt, which lay in the Empire.11 Territory was only one of his problems, as the mid-tenth-century reforms initiated by Count Arnulf I left a problematic legacy.12 In particular, Wichard sought to ‘restore’ lands to the monastery and obtain new confirmations to ensure a firm foundation for a reformed religious life. To this end, he supervised a first recension of the Liber traditionum, with its dossier of charter-copies (interpolated in various useful ways) in 1034–1036. Thus prepared, he made his claims (and perhaps brought relevant charters) before Emperor Conrad II in 1036 and King Henry I of France in 1038 in order to obtain confirmations.13 This successful campaign was then incorporated in the cartulary’s perfected compilation by 1042.14 Thus, the composition of the cartulary took shape in these years under Wichard’s direction. The Liber traditionum was designed as a unified work, and here I will address only a small part of it. I will focus on the part narrating the reforms of Count Arnulf I and Gérard of Brogne around 941.15 These events had been previously described in a booklet (called the Liber traditionum antiquus by Georges Declercq) written just before the re-establishment of St Bavo’s in 946/947.16 However, the composer of the eleventh-century Liber traditionum used hindsight to revise this older source for contemporary purposes. Of course, some themes could be recycled, such as an emphasis on the regularity of monastic life at Ghent and the priority of St Peter’s over St Bavo’s as the locus of that tradition. But the Liber traditionum added new themes, such as the sanction of the diocesan bishop, the presence of particular relics at St Peter’s, a link with the comital dynasty, and early confirmations of lands and rights. Much of its attention focused on the deeds of Count Arnulf, who as patron of the house occupied a central place in its history. Moreover, St Peter’s archive had an original single-sheet charter of Arnulf from 8 July 941,

9 Vanderputten, Monastic Reform, pp. 124–30. 10 RAG, fonds Sint-Pietersabdij, 2de reeks 2bis, fol. 89v (Liber traditionum, ed. by Fayen, p. 105), which provides a date of 31 May 1034. 11 For an overview of the county’s formation, see Nicholas, Medieval Flanders, pp. 39–55. Also useful are Dunbabin, ‘The Reign of Arnulf II’, and Koch, ‘Het Graafschap Vlaanderen’; the classic accounts are Dhondt, Les origines de la Flandre, and Ganshof, La Flandre. 12 For Gérard’s reforms, see Dierkens, Abbayes et chapitres, pp. 220–47, esp. pp. 232–38 for Ghent. See also Mohr, Studien zur Klosterreform. 13 Conrad II (1036): Diplomata Belgica, ed. by Gysseling and Koch, i, 105–06; Conradi II diplomata, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 313–15, with commentary by Koch, ‘Diplomatische Studie’, in Diplomata Belgica, ed. by Gysseling and Koch, i, 92, 98–99, 112; Henry I (1038): Diplomata Belgica, ed. by Gysseling and Koch, i, 196–99. 14 Vanderputten, Monastic Reform, p. 127. 15 Arnulf ’s deeds treated in RAG, fonds Sint-Pietersabdij, 2de reeks 2bis, fols 64v–74v. 16 Declercq, Traditievorming en Tekstmanipulatie.

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which became the cornerstone around which an elaborate story was built. Such genuine grants were rare and valuable and so Abbot Wichard would have wanted to make maximum use of it. Therefore, it was carefully copied into the Liber traditionum, but also framed with many supporting fraudulent texts, in order to present an interpretation most favourable to the abbot and monks of St Peter’s. Even though Count Arnulf was a prime mover in the reform of 941, having invited Gérard of Brogne to reform St Peter’s, the Liber’s story did not begin with the Count’s charter. Rather it began with the desired moral, evident in the title of this section: ‘Ratio quomodo ejectis canonicis monachii restituti sunt in pristinum in monasterio sancti Petri Blandiniensis coenobii’ (An account of how, canons having been ejected, monks were restored to the community of St Peter’s as the pristine monastery had been).17 The placement of a letter of Bishop Transmar of Noyon from 947 at the head of the five entries drove home this message. This letter contained Transmar’s supposedly ‘reliable’ relation of a speech (in the presence of Count Arnulf), which reinforced key details of the refoundation legend. It was corroboration that the ‘pristine’ foundation (in pristinum) had consisted of monks (not clerks), who had observed the rule of St Benedict.18 Such details justified the ‘restoration’ of monks by Gérard of Brogne and they gave St Peter’s a thoroughly regular monastic pedigree. Remembering Bishop Transmar also had added utility for the composers of the Liber traditionum, for he was the alleged author of a 942 confirmation of a basilica of St Peter’s located (we are told) in portu Gandensi (but oddly dedicated to St Bavo). Of course, this invention asserted the dominance of the supposedly older foundation over its purportedly younger rival. Moreover, Transmar’s blessing imparted the sanction of an ordinary bishop to reform arrangements which had actually originated with Count Arnulf. The insistence at every turn of the regularity of the monks of St Peter’s (and their canonical sanction) was anticipatory insurance if the religious at St Bavo’s protested this reinterpretation of the past. Indeed, the polemics of Transmar’s letter were not those of his time, rather they were informed by the bitter rivalry between St Peter’s and St Bavo’s, which had arisen in the later tenth century and continued into the eleventh century. Indeed, Transmar’s letter was a forgery confected in Wichard’s time (c. 1035), perhaps based on a lost confirmation charter of St Bavo’s and also the charter of Arnulf I of 8 July 941, from which it borrowed the witness list and subscriptions.19 17 RAG, fonds Sint-Pietersabdij, 2de reeks 2bis, fol. 64v (Liber traditionum, ed. by Fayen, p. 54). 18 Such assertions about ‘pristine’ foundations were an important theme in the eleventh century, see Ladner, ‘Terms and Ideas of Renewal’, p. 18. My thanks to William North for this reference. 19 Koch, ‘De Dateringen’, p. 164; Oorkondenboek van Holland en Zeeland, ed. by Koch, i, 56–57, no. 33; see also Verhulst, ‘Note sur deux chartes’, p. 13 note 4. For problems with Transmar’s acts, see Huyghebaert, ‘Quelques chartes épiscopales fausses’, and below.

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These episcopal forgeries were supplemented by other creative writing. Two royal charters following Transmar’s letter — of Louis IV d’Outremer (950) and Lothair (966) — were portrayed as confirmations of Count Arnulf’s arrangements, which they enumerated in detail. These charters have been subjected to intensive scrutiny by diplomatists, but are almost certainly fraudulent, insofar as they provide overly specific information about lands and reinforce the refoundation myth. The Louis IV charter made the dubious equation of the monastery in the castrum of Ghent (near the ancient site of St Bavo’s) with Blandinium, and also stressed the regularity of the new monks and their need for support.20 The Liber traditionum copy is the oldest surviving version, and it may have been based on various tenth-century originals and/or derived from prior versions created during the late tenth-century struggle with St Bavo’s. Many of the enumerated domains appear in subsequent documents in the Liber traditionum. The Lothair charter of 966 seems to have been fabricated in the tenth century, during the contentious time of Abbot Womar (953–980). Womar seems to have been prior under Gérard of Brogne from 945 and to have succeeded him as regular abbot in 953, although Count Arnulf remained lay abbot throughout his life.21 As Steven Vanderputten has explained, Womar played host to Dunstan, future Archbishop of Canterbury, in 956–957 during his exile, and close relations between Canterbury and Ghent were maintained after Dunstan returned to England.22 Womar also became regular abbot of St Bavo’s in 957, after the disastrous brief rule of Abbot Wido I, Gérard of Brogne’s nephew. As Geoffrey Koziol has described, Womar immediately set about ‘humiliating’ the monks of St Bavo’s, including blatantly erasing the name of their former abbot and substituting his own into their foundation charter, as a means of making their subordination apparent.23 Thus, Womar was regular abbot of both houses at Ghent when Count Arnulf died and for much of the succeeding generation, though resentment between the houses lingered. Although the events of his abbacy are difficult to sort out, scribes at both houses may have had access to charters in each other’s archives to use as models. Indeed, there are multiple charters of Lothair (ranging from genuine originals to complete fabrications) for both St Peter’s and St Bavo’s, including two parallel grants on 5 May 966.24 However, the Liber traditionum copy (St Peter’s) was a forgery, probably fabricated in the tenth century before St Bavo’s achieved its independence in 981, using two sources for inspiration:

20 Recueil des actes de Louis IV, ed. by Prou and Lauer, pp. 82–88, no. 36. A better edition, discussing the various interpolations and providing entry to the daunting diplomatic tradition, is Verhulst, ‘Kritische Studie’. 21 For Womar’s career, see Vanderputten, Monastic Reform, pp. 46–47; Monasticon Belge, ed. by Berlière and others, vii (1), pp. 101–02, which must be used with caution. 22 Vanderputten, ‘Canterbury and Flanders’. 23 Koziol, The Politics of Memory, pp. 391–98. 24 Recueil des actes de Lothaire et de Louis V, ed. by Halphen and Lot, pp. 58–62, no. 25 (St Peter’s), pp. 62–66, no. 26 (St Bavo’s).

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the genuine St Bavo’s charter of 966 and a less specific charter of Lothair of 22 February 964 for St Peter’s.25 The goal was to ‘improve’ the settlement reached between Lothair and the dying Arnulf in 964, which had only reaffirmed the immunity of St Peter’s and restored some abbatial lands.26 The purpose of these forged charters was to lay down the property, judicial, and ecclesiastical rights of St Peter’s according to the divisions effectively formed by the Lys and the Scheldt; that is, to insist that the lion’s share had been given in 941 by Count Arnulf to St Peter’s before St Bavo’s was re-established in 946/947.27 This would give St Peter’s more control over lucrative properties and trade near the port. Consequently, the eleventh-century composer of the Liber traditionum, Abbot Wichard, omitted an original of 964 from his compilation (which survived in the archives until the eighteenth century, when it was copied) and substituted the ‘improved’ 966 charter, as it fitted the story he wished to tell better. In so doing, he profited from his predecessors’ prior textual manipulations. Suspiciously, the corresponding passage defining St Bavo’s rights in its genuine charter of 966 has been scratched out.28 After these four entries, only then was Count Arnulf’s charter of 941 copied. The actual reform of St Peter’s begun by Count Arnulf I had focused on the material restoration of support for the monks, especially the old Carolingian mensa conventualis. Given what came before, one might rightly question the accuracy of this copy in the Liber traditionum. However, an original single-sheet version of Count Arnulf ’s charter survives.29 This charter, from St Peter’s archives, has been viewed as suspicious in various ways because of its crucial position in both the tenth-century (Liber traditionum antiquus) and eleventh-century (Liber traditionum) stories of reform at St Peter’s. It has been subject to close scrutiny by diplomatists, because it is also the oldest surviving original act of the counts of Flanders.30 The charter itself appears to be genuine in script, form, and many (but not all) external features. The 25 Verhulst, ‘Note sur deux chartes’, p. 17: ‘L’argument central de notre raissonnement est la probabilité que la charte de Lothaire de 966 pour Saint-Pierre-de-Gand (HL 25 – Diplomata Belgica 63) soit un faux, fabriqué encore au Xe siècle et avant l’indépendence de Saint-Bavon (981)’. 26 Verhulst, ‘Note sur deux chartes’, p. 17: ‘Le but de ce faux aurait été de créer un titre royal pour certains biens de Saint-Pierre ne figurant pas encore dans le charte de 964 et acquis ou revendiqués par elle postieurement à cette date’. For further refinements see Declercq, Traditievorming en Tekstmanipulatie, pp. 233–51. 27 Verhulst and Declercq, ‘Early Medieval Ghent’, pp. 57–58: ‘In these charters the property and judiciary, as well as the ecclesiastical rights of St Peter’s in Ghent are for the first time defined very precisely along territorial lines formed by the course of the Lys and the Scheldt, and limited to the area between the two rivers’. 28 Verhulst and Declercq, ‘Early Medieval Ghent’, p. 58, make this point. 29 Original: RAG, fonds Sint-Pietersabdij, charters, no. 18; Diplomata Belgica, ed. by Gysseling and Koch, i, 143–46, no. 53. Facsimile in Album belge de la diplomatique, ed. by Pirenne, plates 2 and 3. 30 Most notably Sabbe, ‘Étude critique’. See Diplomata Belgica, ed. by Gysseling and Koch, i, 144 for further bibliography.

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content, which at first blush seems overly favourable to the monastery, may be partially explained by beneficiary redaction or the influence of Gérard of Brogne — especially the pious justifications of Arnulf ’s restitutions and the early history of the monastery. Its content was (relatively) faithfully copied in the Liber traditionum and provided the basis of later land claims between the two rivers, as well as early proof of the possession of certain relics. The codex’s copy also included a notice from the dorse of the charter, namely an exchange of the lands restored in it for others. Although little modification occurred in the copying, there are signs of small but significant manipulations of the original charter itself. For instance, the dorsal notice was added by an eleventh-century hand.31 A false seal was attached to the act, probably in the eleventh century, as it was added after the dorsal notice was completed.32 Thus, the genuine tenth-century charter was renovated in the time of Abbot Wichard (when perhaps a seal became desirable to assert greater authenticity), probably for presentation to authorities for confirmation, such as the young Count Baldwin V, who inherited in 1037. This 941 act was the touchstone for the most important patron of the house (Count Arnulf) and so it had to be situated in the Liber traditionum accordingly. It had to be framed carefully to persuade the current count (and sceptical rivals at St Bavo’s) of St Peter’s view of the past. So, it was introduced by fraudulent texts (Transmar’s letters and the royal confirmations) to insist that it was sanctioned by all relevant authorities.33 Moreover, later acts were interpolated in order to seem to proceed logically from it — at least in regard to particular landholdings. In addition, several lines were allocated on the page before it for an appropriately grandiose title, though it was never added.34 A subsequent notice about Arnulf, essentially a summary of his 964 testament, provided important material restorations to the brothers, including some lands of the mensa abbatialis. But it also assured the continued connection of the comital dynasty to St Peter’s as a burial place. Arnulf’s father, Count Baldwin II, had been the first count entombed at St Peter’s (928), followed about a decade later by his wife, Elftrudis. Arnulf chose to continue this practice for his own burial, and this connection between the counts and St Peter’s was renewed in subsequent generations, through the mid-eleventh century. Arnulf himself came to be venerated as the restaurator or reparator of the monastery.35 Thus, St Peter’s became the monastery most favoured by the counts of Flanders.

31 Printed in Diplomata Belgica, ed. by Gysseling and Koch, i, 143, no. 53, with indications of dates for various parts of the notice. 32 Bautier, ‘Le cheminement du sceau’, p. 147: ‘Or son sceau offre un type de majesté […] à mes yeux, il est absolument évident qu’il s’agit d’un faux patent, sans doute du milieu du XIe siècle’. Bonenfant, Cours de diplomatique, i, 66–67, summarizes earlier debate. 33 Compare Declercq, Traditievorming en Tekstmanipulatie, pp. 207–21. 34 RAG, fonds Sint-Pietersabdij, 2de reeks 2bis, fol. 71r. This space corresponds to those used for titles of other acts, such as those quoted above. 35 Verhulst and Declercq, ‘Early Medieval Ghent’, p. 53.

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Reinforcing such ties, to preserve spiritual prestige in the eyes of the ruling dynasty, was another important purpose of the Liber traditionum. Taken together, the five entries were forward-looking, even as they reshaped the past. Arranged around the (mostly) genuine refoundation charter of 941, they were all intended to provide the reader of the Liber traditionum with initial links in what would become chains of confirmations. Bishop Transmar’s letters linked to later episcopal, and eventually papal, confirmations. The royal charters of Louis and Lothair foreshadowed later royal (and imperial) confirmations. Arnulf ’s charter announced future close ties to the comital dynasty. Although placed within a story of the house’s past, they were written out with their desired endpoints firmly in mind (new confirmations to be achieved in Wichard’s time). Demonstrating these chains of confirmation was one of the principal goals of the perfected Liber traditionum.

Forgeries and Plausible Narrative at Christ Church, Canterbury By the second generation after the Norman Conquest (1089–1109), the Christ Church scriptorium was undertaking and completing significant new works. The flourishing production of liturgical manuscripts is well known, as is the output of hagiographic narratives.36 An Anglo-Norman cartulary of Christ Church, perhaps begun earlier, was also compiled.37 Only a few of these new works might be considered ‘historical’ in a narrow sense, but some were, and they are of great significance for modern scholars, for instance the bilingual Latin-English version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (the ‘F’ version).38 As a set of annals this work was a step beyond cartularies in terms of overt historicizing of the past. Indeed, it became much easier to produce historical works at Christ Church in this period, because there were attempts to organize written materials after the arrival of Lanfranc.39 The archives of single-sheet charters

36 Webber, ‘Script and Manuscript Production’, p. 150: ‘The main phase of book production at Christ Church occurred in the generation after Lanfranc’. See also Gameson, ‘English Manuscript Art’. 37 For a reconstruction of the content, see Fleming, ‘Christ Church Canterbury’s AngloNorman Cartulary’ (edn pp. 109–52) [hereafter ‘Christ Church Cartulary’]. Fleming, who produced a composite edition of the cartulary from a concordance of the three later manuscripts, argued for an earlier period of initial compilation, from c. 1073 to 1083, most likely before the Domesday Inquest of 1086–1087. Charters of Christ Church, ed. by Brooks and Kelly, i, pp. 58–72 and 95–99, analyses the cartulary also, arguing for composition from c. 1089 to 1110, though acknowledging a maximum range of 1073–1120. The cartulary will be treated at length in my forthcoming book. 38 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, ed. by Baker. See Jorgensen, ‘Rewriting the Æthelredian Chronicle’. Of course, by the 1110s, Eadmer’s Historia novorum in Anglia had been begun. 39 For the best history of the archive, see Charters of Christ Church, ed. by Brooks and Kelly, i, pp. 39–84.

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were being endorsed as they were stored for future reference, though particularly significant ones still remained in proximity to the altar or to carefully guarded treasures. Likewise, information about the church’s revenues, including records (and testimony) gathered for the Domesday Inquest concerning the estates of the archbishop and the monks, were assembled in the so-called Domesday monachorum, around 1089–1096.40 Therein, the monastic chapter’s holdings were listed as a group, in a work which some scholars have theorized was intended as a companion to the cartulary.41 The relationships between these projects and the cartulary are not fully clear because we lack a contemporary manuscript of the cartulary, but collectively they represent a dramatic increase in the scope of attempts to organize pre-existing documents. Here I want to focus on the bilingual F-version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and its sources. Although earlier Canterbury works may have had Bede’s Historia ecclesiastica lying behind them, they did not make direct use of Bede. On the other hand, the F-Chronicle, especially its Latin version, made extensive use of Bede. Furthermore, Bede was adapted by the F-scribe in ways which showed specific monastic preoccupations, for example changing the annal describing Augustine’s mission to the English to indicate that Pope Gregory sent monks specifically, rather than just clerics.42 It was important to get the ‘story’ straight, from an Anglo-Norman monastic perspective, which valued regular (i.e. Benedictine) foundation. More significantly, the Christ Church cartulary and F-Chronicle were closely related. Indeed, several of the F-Chronicle’s Latin annals derive either from the Anglo-Norman cartulary itself or from documents it used as sources. Moreover, these borrowings were specific fabrications, including, among others: a 694 privilege of Wihtred about the liberty of Kentish monasteries; the alleged confirmation of that privilege by Æthelbald of Mercia in 742; the synodal decree (dated 798 in the cartulary) citing papal authority on why laymen should not be heads of ecclesiastical establishments; and even the favourable version of Cnut’s privilege for the port of Sandwich, reported under Latin annals for 1029 and 1031.43 Thus, some of the cartulary’s most tendentious claims were imported into the Chronicle, particularly into its Latin version, to assert an interpretation of the Anglo-Saxon past usable in the Anglo-Norman present. In some cases, the interaction may have been more dynamic. One can detect a little bit more about how the Wihtred privilege was fabricated, because of the survival of the early eleventh-century pseudo-original that both works used as a

40 Canterbury, Dean and Chapter, MS E.28, fols 1–7v; The Domesday monachorum, ed. by Douglas; see pp. 3–4 for Douglas’s remarks about dating. 41 Gibson, ‘Normans and Angevins’, p. 49; compare Charters of Christ Church, ed. by Brooks and Kelly, i, pp. 60–61, esp. the remarks about size, ruling, and initials, though the lack of an original copy of the cartulary impedes any direct proof. 42 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, ed. by Baker, pp. lv–lvi, no. 65. 43 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, ed. by Baker, pp. lvii–lviii, no. 70. Note that two were in the main text and two were later additions: p. lviii, no. 71.

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source.44 Although the pseudo-original stressed the bishops’ and archbishops’ ability to elect and confirm abbots, abbesses, priests, and deacons, both the cartulary and the F-Chronicle inflated phrases to insist that the metropolitan archbishop (metropolitan […] archiepiscopi, that is, Canterbury) elected and confirmed bishops (episcopos). The editor of the F-Chronicle, Peter Baker, argued these interpolations were made (in both works) in response to the investiture disputes after 1099.45 The pseudo-original had focused on the liberties of Kentish monasteries (in the 1030s when the nascent monastic community was asserting itself), whereas the two later works stressed liberties of archbishops. Like the cartulary, the F-Chronicle also drew on archival documents or copies from gospel books. These may have included the account of the expulsion of clerics for monks in the Æthelstan Gospels contained in the ‘refoundation charter’ of Æthelred, though this had only an indirect influence if it was used.46 Although one could overstress the relation of the F-Chronicle to previous Christ Church materials, it is no stretch to say that the F-Chronicle was a more direct attempt to historicize the past than the cartulary was. Indeed, the F-Chronicle’s main purpose (or at least one of its major purposes) was to create a history of the Anglo-Saxon past, especially a new Latin version, whereas the cartulary also stressed commemorative or liturgical functions.47 Yet major themes (of monastic origin, of ecclesiastical liberty, of preserving the monastic life and even particular properties) appeared in both, since they drew on shared house traditions. Of course, the F-scribe had his own contemporary concerns, such as the dispute over investiture between Henry I and Anselm, which indicate a date of compilation for the F-Chronicle c. 1100–1107.48 Moreover, the well-known hand of the F-scribe wrote at least two other important documentary forgeries, both of which appeared in the Anglo-Norman cartulary. One was a genuine writ of Edward the Confessor, of which all but the first three lines were erased and rewritten, though the original seal was retained.49 This rewriting of Edward’s writ was carried out by the F-scribe. It

44 The Electronic Sawyer, no. 22 [hereafter S + number]; BL, Stowe Charter 2; Charters of Christ Church, ed. by Brooks and Kelly, i, pp. 316–19, nos 8 (pseudo-original), 8A (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle F version), 8B (cartulary version). 45 See Baker’s reasoning, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, pp. lxxvi–lxxviii. 46 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, ed. by Baker, p. lviii, no. 72. For gospel book copies, see Charters of Christ Church, ed. by Brooks and Kelly, i, pp. 53–58. 47 Baker (The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, pp. xxviii–xxix, no. 39) highlighted this evidentiary value of the F-Chronicle: ‘But our estimate of “historical value” also depends on our finding a good fit between what we want from a text and what the text actually has to offer us […]. F has yet a further claim on our attention: if we want to know what the Anglo-Saxon past looked like from early twelfth-century Canterbury, there is no more valuable source’. 48 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, ed. by Baker, p. lxxvi, no. 100. 49 S 1088; BL Campbell Charter xxi.5; Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. and trans. by Harmer, no. 33 and plate 1; Facsimiles of English Royal Writs, ed. by Bishop and Chaplais, no. 3 and plate 3; Charters of Christ Church, ed. by Brooks and Kelly, ii, pp. 1197–1200, no. 179. See also The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, ed. by Baker, p. xxiii, no. 26.

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included a crucial pluralizing to make the king’s grant not just to the archbishop personally but also to the chapter, as Nicholas Brooks has explained.50 Another document in the hand of the F-scribe was a pseudo-original grant of land at Saltwood (Kent) written over an erased charter on a fragment of parchment.51 This was the same grant as the one given in the cartulary by Haldene (presumably for hall-thegn) Scearpa to support the monks.52 Besides any formal criticism one might offer of the pseudo-original, the land at Saltwood was one of the properties subject to dispute at the famous trial of Penenden Heath in 1072, by which Lanfranc attempted to recover/acquire lands granted to laymen after the Conquest (in this case, Hugh de Montfort).53 In 1088, Hugh held Saltwood of the archbishop, but retired as a monk to Bec. The Saltwood estate came into Archbishop Anselm’s possession after the death of Hugh’s second son (the heir of his English lands), and the archbishop subsequently gave it to the monks, as recorded in Domesday monachorum.54 The F-scribe — like the compilers of the Anglo-Norman cartulary — was more than willing, in Peter Baker’s words, to ‘tailor the past to fit the requirements of the present’.55 Although the exact sequence of these mutual influences might not ever be fully unravelled, they point to concerted, interrelated activities in the 1090s and after. Of course, the problems of the present were ever-shifting and as new concerns arose, interpolations, additions, and even inventions were employed to adjust the story as needed or useful.

Conclusions I chose my two examples because they illustrate larger points about monastic rewriting of the past in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The St Peter’s case was a cartulary with connecting text sections, not usually regarded as a ‘narrative’ source. In the Canterbury case, the F-Chronicle was annalistic, but still a step away from historia in a formal sense. Of course, interpretations of the past were deployed in the Middle Ages through many media: written, oral, and material. There was no accepted, authoritative written genre of ‘history’ yet — or even if one argues there was, it was still only one among many ways of explaining the past. One should not underestimate the profound importance of oral tradition, memory, or material culture in reinterpreting the past. But

50 Brooks, ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury’, pp. 50–53; Charters of Christ Church, ed. by Brooks and Kelly, i, pp. 50, 146–47. 51 S 1221; BL Cotton Charter x.11; Facsimiles of Ancient Charters, ed. by Bond, iv, no. 17; Charters of Christ Church, ed. by Brooks and Kelly, ii, pp. 1098–1104, nos 152 and 152A. 52 ‘Christ Church Cartulary’, ed. by Fleming, pp. 140–41, no. 69. 53 Cooper, ‘Extraordinary Privilege’. 54 See The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, ed. by Baker, p. xxiii, no. 26, esp. note 47; The Domesday monachorum, ed. by Douglas, pp. 93 (text), 69–70 (analysis). 55 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F, ed. by Baker, p. lxxix, no. 103.

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in regard to writing, and especially rewriting the past, we should not separate so-called documentary sources (charters and cartularies) from narratives, for this was not a strong distinction to those monks we are studying. They were flexible and creative in their rewriting, and just because their methods of interpreting the past are different from modern historical practice, this does not mean they were any less persuasive or influential at the time. Perhaps it is no surprise that monks at Ghent and Canterbury were seeking to rewrite the past. Some might argue this is the very nature of historical writing itself. However, what I would stress is that they were rewriting the past in order to create plausible narratives — what Isidore called an argumentum. And, of course, what they hoped for and aspired to, was for these plausible narrations to become recognized and approved by religious and secular powers, and thereby, to become authoritative. Thus, they were constantly rewriting the past, seeking to produce the most convincing argumentum, which might, if authorized, become the most accepted historical interpretation. So, monastic rewriting of the past was not just about rewriting history, if by history we mean medieval narratives which were labelled historia or those in which the historical function was their primary purpose. Indeed, stories about, or interpretations of, the past were deployed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries through various media, including charters we regard as forged and cartularies we regard as non-narrative. These attempts to rewrite the past, however, do make sense as argumentum, plausible narratives, through which monks sought to promote their own interpretations of their pasts. It is through this intermediate — and admittedly, messy — category between historia and fabula — that I believe we can best understand their efforts.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Canterbury, Dean and Chapter, MS E.28 Ghent, Rijksarchief, fonds Sint-Pietersabdij, 2de reeks 2bis, fols 19r–102v ———, fonds Sint-Pietersabdij, charters, no. 18 London, British Library, Campbell Charter xxi.5 ———, Cotton Charter x.11 ———, Stowe Charter 2 Primary Sources Album belge de la diplomatique: recueil de fac-similés pour servir à l’étude de la diplomatique des provinces belges au moyen âge, ed. by Henri Pirenne (Brussels: Vandamme and Rossignol, 1909) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, viii: MS F: A Semi-Diplomatic Edition, ed. by Peter S. Baker (Cambridge: Brewer, 2000)

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Anglo-Saxon Writs, ed. and trans. by F. E. Harmer (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1952) Charters of Christ Church, Canterbury, ed. by N. P. Brooks and S. E. Kelly, AngloSaxon Charters, 17–18, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Conradi II diplomata, ed. by H. Bresslau, MGH Diplomatum regum et imperatorum Germaniae, iv (Hanover: Hahn, 1909) Diplomata Belgica ante annum millesimum centesimum scripta, ed. by M. Gysseling and A. C. F. Koch, 2 vols (Brussels: Belgisch Inter-Universitair Centrum voor Neerlandistiek, 1950) The Domesday monachorum of Christ Church Canterbury, ed. by David C. Douglas (London: Royal Historical Society, 1944) The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters [revised version of Peter H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968)] Facsimiles of Ancient Charters in the British Museum, ed. by E. A. Bond, 4 vols (London: British Museum, 1873–1878) Facsimiles of English Royal Writs to a.d. 1100 Presented to Vivian Hunter Galbraith, ed. by T. A. M. Bishop and P. Chaplais (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957) Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae (Isidori hispalensis episcopi etymologiarum sive originum libri XX), ed. by W. M. Lindsay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1911) ———, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, Oliver Berghof, and Muriel Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Liber traditionum Sancti Petri Blandiniensis, ed. by Arnold Fayen, Oorkondenboek der Stad Gent / Cartulaire de la ville de Gand, 2nd series, Chartes et documents, 1 (Ghent: Meyer-Van Loo, 1906) Monasticon Belge, ed. by Ursmer Berlière and others, 8 vols in 15 (Bruges: Desclée, 1890–1993) Oorkondenboek van Holland en Zeeland tot 1299, ed. by A. C. F. Koch, 5 vols (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970–1988) Recueil des actes de Lothaire et de Louis V, rois de France (954–87), ed. by Louis Halphen and Ferdinand Lot (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1908) Recueil des actes de Louis IV, roi de France (936–54), ed. by Maurice Prou and Philippe Lauer (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1914) Secondary Works Bautier, Robert-Henri, ‘Le cheminement du sceau et de la bulle des origines mésopotamiennes au XIIIe siècle occidental’, in Robert-Henri Bautier, Chartes, sceaux et chancelleries: études de diplomatique et de sigillographie médiévales, 2 vols (Paris: École des chartes, 1990), i, 123–66 Bernheim, Ernst, Lehrbuch der historischen Methode und der Geschichtsphilosophie: mit Nachweis der wichtigsten Quellen und Hilfsmittel zum Studium der Geschichte, 5th–6th edn (Leipzig: Duncker, 1908) Bonenfant, Paul, Cours de diplomatique, 2 vols, 2nd edn (Liège: Desoer, 1947–1948)

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Brooks, Nicholas, ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury and the So-Called Introduction of Knight-Service into England’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 34 (2011), 41–62 Camargo, Martin, Ars dictaminis: ars dictandi, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, 60 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1991) Cárcel Ortí, María Milagros, ed., Vocabulaire internationale de la diplomatique, 2nd edn (Valencia: Universitat de València, 1997) Cooper, Alan, ‘Extraordinary Privilege: The Trial of Penenden Heath and the Domesday Inquest’, English Historical Review, 116 (2001), 1167–92 Declercq, Georges, ‘Heiligen, Lekenabten en Hervormers: De Gentse Abdijen van Sint-Peters en Sint-Baafs tijdens de Eerste Middeleeuwen (7de–12de eeuw)’, in Ganda & Blandinium: De Gentse Abdijen van Sint-Pieters en Sint-Baafs, ed. by Georges Declercq (Ghent: Snoeck-Ducaju and Zoon, 1997), pp. 13–40 ———, Traditievorming en Tekstmanipulatie in Vlaanderen in de Tiende Eeuw: Het Liber Traditionum Antiquus van de Gentse Sint-Pietersabdij (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1998) Deliyannis, Deborah Mauskopf, ed., Historiography in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2003) Dhondt, Jan, Les origines de la Flandre et de l’Artois (Arras: Centre d’études régionales du Pas-de-Calais, 1944) Dierkens, Alain, Abbayes et chapitres entre Sambre et Meuse (VIIe–XIe siècle): contribution à l’histoire religieuse des campagnes du haut moyen âge, Beihefte der Francia, 14 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1985) Dunbabin, Jean, ‘The Reign of Arnulf II, Count of Flanders, and its Aftermath’, Francia, 16 (1989), 53–65 Fleming, Robin, ‘Christ Church Canterbury’s Anglo-Norman Cartulary’, in AngloNorman Political Culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Proceedings of the Borchard Conference on Anglo-Norman History, 1995, ed. by C. Warren Hollister (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), pp. 83–155 Gameson, Richard, ‘English Manuscript Art in the Late Eleventh Century and its Context’, in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints, and Scholars, ed. by Richard Eales and Richard Sharpe (London: Hambledon, 1995), pp. 95–144 Ganshof, François-Louis, La Flandre sous les premiers comtes (Brussels: La Renaissance du Livre, 1944) Gibson, Margaret T., ‘Normans and Angevins, 1070–1220’, in A History of Canterbury Cathedral, ed. by Patrick Collinson, Nigel Ramsay, and Margaret Sparks (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 38–68 Huyghebaert, Nicholas-Norbert, ‘Quelques chartes épiscopales fausses pour SaintPierre au Mont Blandin à Gand forgées aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles’, Bulletin de la commission royale d’histoire, 148 (1982), 1–90 Jorgensen, Alice, ‘Rewriting the Æthelredian Chronicle: Narrative Style and Identity in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F’, in Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Language, Literature, History, ed. by Alice Jorgensen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 113–38

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Kempshall, Matthew, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011) Kienzle, Beverly Mayne, The Sermon, Typologie des sources du moyen âge occidental, 81–83 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000) Koch, A. C. F., ‘De Dateringen in het “Liber traditionum sancti Petri Blandiniensis” van Omstreeks 1035’, Bulletin de la commission royale d’histoire, 123 (1958), 137–90 ———, ‘Het Graafschap Vlaanderen van de 9de Eeuw tot 1070’, in Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden: Middeleeuwen, ed. by D. P. Blok, A. Verhulst, H. P. H. Jansen, R. C. van Caenegem, A. G. Weiler, and W. Prevenier, 4 vols (Haarlam: Fibula Van-Dishoeck, 1980–1982), i, 354–83 Koziol, Geoffrey, The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The West Frankish Kingdom (840–987) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012) Ladner, Gerhard B., ‘Terms and Ideas of Renewal’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Robert L. Benson, Giles Constable, and Carol D. Lanham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 1–33 Mohr, Walter, Studien zur Klosterreform des Grafen Arnulf I von Flandern: Tradition und Wirklichkeit in der Geschichte des Amandus-Kloster, Medievalia Lovaniensia, 22 (Louvain: Louvain University Press, 1994) Nicholas, David, Medieval Flanders (London: Longman, 1992) Sabbe, Étienne, ‘Étude critique sur le diplôme d’Arnoul Ier, comte de Flandre, pour l’abbaye de Saint-Pierre à Gand (941, juillet 8)’, in Études d’histoire dédiées à la mémoire de Henri Pirenne par ses anciens élèves, ed. by F. L. Ganshof, E. Sabbe, and F. Vercauteren (Brussels: Nouvelle société, 1937), pp. 299–330 Vanderputten, Steven, ‘Canterbury and Flanders in the Late Tenth Century’, Anglo-Saxon England, 35 (2006), 219–44 ———, Monastic Reform as Process: Realities and Representations in Medieval Flanders, 900–1100 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2013) Verhulst, Adriaan, ‘Kritische Studie over de Oorkonde van Lodewijk IV van Overzee, Koning van Frankrijk, voor de Sint-Pietersabdij te Gent (20 augustus 950)’, Bulletin de la commission royale d’histoire, 150 (1984), 272–327 ———, ‘Note sur deux chartes de Lothaire, roi de France, pour l’abbaye de SaintBavon à Gand’, Bulletin de la commission royal d’histoire, 155 (1989), 1–23 Verhulst, Adriaan, and Georges Declercq, ‘Early Medieval Ghent between Two Abbeys and the Count’s Castle’, in Ghent: In Defence of a Rebellious City, ed. by Johan Decavele (Antwerp: Mercator, 1989), pp. 37–59 Webber, Teresa, ‘Script and Manuscript Production at Christ Church, Canterbury, after the Norman Conquest’, in Canterbury and the Norman Conquest: Churches, Saints, and Scholars, ed. by Richard Eales and Richard Sharpe (London: Hambledon, 1995), pp. 145–58

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Jaakko Tahkokallio

Rewriting English History for a High Medieval Republic of Letters: Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, and the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century

Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum and William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum were part of a wider flourishing of Latin and French historical composition in twelfth-century England, which Richard Southern saw as a reassessment of identity necessitated by the break of the Norman Conquest.1 More recently, Laura Ashe has underlined the distinctiveness of English historiographical culture (in Latin and French) in comparison to the wider milieu of twelfth-century Francophone Europe.2 While these interpretations are certainly not without explanatory value, other scholars have put the emphasis differently, underlining how at least the great Latin histories of the period were equally consequences of the cultural connections which the Conquest created or strengthened. The importance of the wider literary context of the so-called twelfth-century renaissance was crisply pointed out by James Campbell in an article published in 1986, and more recently Rodney Thomson’s and Sigbjørn Sønnesyn’s studies, on William of Malmesbury in particular, have contributed to our understanding of the centrality of classical Latin culture in English twelfth-century historiography.3 The classical influences on Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum have not been subjected to quite as extensive studies but have nevertheless been astutely discussed by his editor Diana Greenway.4 In what follows, I will for my part argue in support of the idea that Henry’s and William’s rewritings of the English past resulted as much from the Conquest-instigated integration of English literary culture into that of Continental Europe as they did from a particular insular situation. Whereas

1 Southern, ‘Aspects iv: The Sense of the Past’, pp. 246–49. 2 Ashe, Fiction and History, p. 3. 3 Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’, pp. 211–12; Thomson, William of Malmesbury; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury; Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae uitae institutum’, esp. pp. 121–64. 4 ‘Introduction’, in Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, pp. xxxiv–xl. See Greenway, ‘Authority, Convention and Observation’. Jaakko Tahkokallio  •  ([email protected]) is a Senior Researcher at the National Library of Finland. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 169–194 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126750

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Thomson has focused on William’s classical learning and Sønnesyn on William’s synthesis of classical and Christian moral thought, my emphasis will be on the wider framework of written culture within which William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon operated. My essay will begin by trying to place Henry’s and William’s literary achievements in the context of writing and reading history in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. I will examine the numbers of surviving manuscripts of several historiographical works and discuss, in a fashion that must be considered very preliminary, the development of audiences for historical writing in north-western Europe. Against this backdrop, I will then examine the nature of Henry’s Historia Anglorum and William’s Gesta regum Anglorum as literary productions. While equally ambitious secular histories had occasionally been written before, the dissemination of such works had usually been very limited, whereas Historia Anglorum and Gesta regum Anglorum both reached a rather wide audience. I suggest that their success was largely a function of the expansion of the Latin-educated elite and the classicization of the Latin curriculum. It appears to me that both writers also knew, or assumed, that they operated within an international framework of literary culture, a kind of res publica litterarum, in which Latin texts could speak to both ecclesiastical and secular elites, and in which literary careers could be made. Significantly, both Historia Anglorum and Gesta regum Anglorum were built around the idea of history offering moral education for those who wielded secular power. While both Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury began their works from the same vantage point — instructing a political player in ethics by way of the ancients — they nevertheless wrote about the use of political power very differently and also drew different moral lessons from the stories they narrated. I will look at the literary careers and contexts of both authors, and make some suggestions about how and why they ended up writing in the way they did. My approach could thus be described as chronologically backwards. I start from their reception, move to the content of the works, and finally arrive at the circumstances of their writing. I would wish to underline that the whole essay has the nature of a preliminary exploration and I do not intend my interpretations of these writers to replace views that have been proposed before. I will, however, argue that the so-called twelfth-century renaissance is a crucial context for understanding both why these literary works were created and why they became relatively popular.

The Demand for Historical Narratives in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: Looking at the Numbers of Manuscripts Our understanding of how interesting medieval audiences found various literary works is based primarily on the numbers of their surviving manuscript copies. Examining these figures is a well-established scholarly exercise, and it will be undertaken here too, but it is obviously not without caveats which are perhaps too

Rewriting English History for a High Medieval Republic of Letters

rarely addressed. First, the chances of a manuscript’s survival are clearly affected by the genre of the text(s) it contains. Perhaps the clearest example of this is the poor survival rate of liturgical manuscripts,5 but elementary educational texts also survive in relatively few copies, probably reflecting the level of wear and tear to which they were exposed.6 Second, it can be reasoned that a manuscript’s economic value, correlating with its size and the quality of the craftsmanship, must also have affected its chances of survival, and there are some data to support this intuitive conclusion.7 Third, we know that manuscript repositories in different regions have faced varying destinies, though I am not aware of any systematic comparative work on the topic. The fourth and probably the most important factor is the manuscript’s age. Each century, manuscripts are destroyed in various ways, and the longer the manuscript exists the more hazards it faces.8 In light of these caveats, however, it appears very unlikely that the overall picture of relative popularity provided by an examination of the number of manuscripts will be faulty when we are dealing with works of the same genre surviving in manuscripts of roughly similar format from the same period.9 In what follows, I shall limit the comparison to about two centuries (c. 1000–1200) and to historical works composed in Europe north of the Alps. Within these parameters, the numbers of copies should function as indicators of the contemporary popularity of the works. Henry’s and William’s histories survive in numbers that are very similar, forty-five and thirty-six respectively. Nineteen manuscripts of Gesta regum and thirteen of Historia Anglorum date from the twelfth century or around 1200. While these figures may look modest if compared to those of the most famous contemporary history, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum (225 manuscripts, of which c. 70 are from the twelfth century), a comparison with similar historical works written in the immediately preceding era suggests something quite different.10 5 In England, for instance, only c. 90 from the estimated 40,000 missals existing c. 1400 survive. See Morgan, ‘Books for the Liturgy’, p. 291. 6 The relatively low numbers of copies known of Donatus’s grammar and Disticha Catonis are probably examples of this phenomenon. See the numbers of manuscripts counted in Holtz, Donat, for Disticha Catonis, Olsen, L’étude des auteurs classiques latins; and compare to the numbers of surviving copies of texts used in more advanced stages of the medieval Latin course, presented in Tahkokallio, ‘The Classicization of the Latin Curriculum’. 7 Bozzolo and Ornato, ‘La production du livre manuscrit’, pp. 75–79; Tahkokallio, ‘The Classicization of the Latin Curriculum’, pp. 150–51. 8 For discussion of the mathematical principles, see Buringh, Manuscript Production, esp. pp. 234–37; Cisne, ‘How Science Survived’ (with Declerq, ‘Comment’); Peynson and Peynson, ‘Treating Medieval Manuscripts’. 9 The problems of survival have received less analytical discussion than they deserve. For some observations, see Tahkokallio, ‘Manuscripts as Evidence’. 10 For Geoffrey of Monmouth manuscripts, see Crick, The Historia regum Britanniae, iii: A Summary Catalogue; Crick, ‘Two Newly Located Manuscripts’; Tahkokallio, ‘Update to the List’. After the publication of the latest update article, bringing the count of manuscripts to 224, a further early fourteenth-century copy was auctioned at Christie’s in London (2015, Sale 1568) and bought by Trinity College Dublin.

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Writing a literarily complex narrative of secular history had certainly not been a guaranteed way of having a bestseller over the previous two centuries. Between the late tenth and early twelfth century, several German writers in particular produced comparably ambitious historical narratives with a secular political focus. These informative and often engaging narratives, such as Widukind of Corvey’s Res gestae Saxonicae, Thietmar of Merseburg’s Chronicon, Wipo’s Gesta Chuonradi, Lambert of Hersfeld’s Annales, and the anonymous Vita Heinrici IV have understandably become pets of modern scholarship.11 However, it is striking how few early manuscripts of them survive. Of Res gestae Saxonicae, there is one copy pre-dating 1100, one from the twelfth century, and three later ones.12 Thietmar of Merseburg’s Chronicon survives in one manuscript pre-dating 1100 and another later one,13 while the earliest manuscript of Wipo’s Gesta Chuonradi dates from the end of the sixteenth century.14 Lambert of Hersfeld’s Annales is known from one medieval copy, of the eleventh century,15 and the anonymous Vita Heinrici IV similarly exists in one copy, from the early twelfth century.16 Of these texts, the classicizing and literarily ambitious Res gestae Saxonicae and Lambert of Hersfeld’s Annales are perhaps particularly close in style to Henry’s and William’s works. The low numbers of their manuscripts are noteworthy given that the content of these works should have been of interest to readers over a much more populous geographical area than Britain. Moving over from the Empire to France, Normandy, and Britain, the eleventh-century picture remains similar. In France, there was steady copying of universal chronicles, and some new works in the same genre were composed and acquired popularity, Sigebert of Gembloux’s continuation of EusebiusJerome most prominently. However, proper histories of secular matters were few and not widely read. The Historiarum libri quinque of Rodulf Glaber (c. 980–c. 1046) survives in one eleventh-century manuscript, which is in part autograph.17 Aimoin of Fleury’s Historia Francorum (c. 998) is known to survive in five copies, of which one is dated to the turn of the tenth and eleventh centuries and one to the twelfth, the rest being later.18 The Chronicle of Adémar of Chabannes (989–1034) had a slightly more impressive record,

For instance, Bagge, Kings. Widukind of Corvey, Rerum gestarum saxonicarum, ed. by Waitz and others, pp. xxx–xxxviii. Thietmari Merseburgensis episcopi chronicon, ed. by Holtzmann, pp. xxxiii–xxxix. Wiponis opera, ed. by Bresslau, pp. xlix–l. At the same time, there are at least seven early modern witnesses: Lamperti monachi Hersfeldensis opera, ed. by Egger, pp. xlvii–lxviii. 16 Vita Heinrici IV, ed. by Eberhard, p. 3. 17 BnF, MS lat. 10912. The other manuscripts are from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Frassetto, ‘Rodulf Glaber’. 18 Archiv der Gesellschaft, 7, ed. by Pertz, pp. 554–56. Since this list leaves some ambiguities about the dates (and indeed shelfmarks) of the manuscripts, I give my interpretations of the copies mentioned and their dates here: Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 599 2:o (s. x/xi); BL, Harley MS 3974 (s. xii); Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 755 (s. xiii); BnF, MS lat. 5925 (s. xiv); BnF, MS lat. 5925A (s. xv). 11 12 13 14 15

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surviving in thirteen manuscripts, of which three date from the eleventh and six from the twelfth century.19 In Normandy, the literarily ambitious creations discussing the Norman Conquest appear to have received very limited circulation. There is one surviving medieval manuscript of Carmen de Hastingae proelio and none at all of Gesta Guillelmi.20 The earlier Historia Normannorum by Dudo of Saint-Quentin succeeded better, with two manuscripts surviving from before c. 1100, and ten from the twelfth century or the beginning of the thirteenth.21 Dudo’s story was also picked up by William of Jumièges in his Gesta Normannorum ducum (c. 1050–1066), which became one of the few successful eleventh-century historical compositions, existing in one eleventh-century and twenty twelfth-century copies.22 Nevertheless, it is important to note that most surviving copies of relatively widely circulated eleventh-century historical works — by Dudo, William of Jumièges, and Adémar of Chabannes — date from the twelfth century. Were it not for this slightly later copying, we would not consider them successful at all. Indeed, I would suggest that the fortunes of Dudo, William of Jumièges, and Adémar of Chabannes reflect the expansion of and change in the readership of historical works taking place at the turn of the eleventh and twelfth centuries. That such a development was going on is suggested, beyond how the numbers of surviving manuscript copies change, by the multiple rewritings of the eye-witness history of the First Crusade known usually by the name of Gesta Francorum (c. 1100). Within a decade or so of its composition, Guibert of Nogent’s Gesta Dei per Francos (in or before 1112), Robert the Monk’s Historia Iherosolimitana (c. 1107–1108), and Baldric of Bourgueil’s Historia Hierosolimitana (after 1107) all recast this narrative, and all gave the same reason: the Gesta’s conspicuous and disturbing lack of literary style. Baldric of Bourgueil did not mince words: nescio quis compilator, nomine suo suppresso, libellum super hac re nimis rusticanum ediderat; ueritatem tamen texuerat, sed propter inurbanitatem codicis, nobilis materies uiluerat; et simpliciores etiam inculta et incompta lectio confestim a se auocabat. I do not know what compiler […] had published this exceedingly inelegant book about the topic. He had written down the facts, but by his lack of style had vilified noble material. Even honest men were immediately turned away by the rude and uncultivated style.23

19 Ademari Cabannensis opera omnia: Chronicon, ed. by Bourgain, Landes, and Pon, pp. xiii–xxiv. 20 Guillaume de Poitiers, Histoire de Guillaume le Conquérant, ed. by Foreville, pp. l–liii. 21 Pohl, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum, pp. 34–108. 22 Van Houts, Gesta Normannorum ducum. Indeed, Gesta Normannorum ducum is one of the two historical compositions at present included in the (admittedly rather incomplete) FAMA database, the other being Landolphus Sagax, Historia romana, with four eleventh-century and eleven twelfth-century copies, counted from Mortensen, ‘The Diffusion of Roman Histories’. 23 Baldric of Bourgueil, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. by Biddlecombe, p. 4.

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Robert the Monk and Guibert of Nogent expressed very similar judgements.24 Gesta Francorum was written in simple Latin, but these statements tell us as much about the cultural expectations of the history-reading public in northern France at the beginning of the twelfth century as they do about the Gesta. The standard of Latin had risen remarkably. Guibert of Nogent himself reflected on this development in a famous passage, noting how it had been next to impossible to find a decent grammarian in his youth (the 1060s), while vagrant clerics skilled in Latin were now (c. 1115) widely available.25 Likewise, in the prologue to his Historia Hierosolimitana, Baldric of Bourgueil noted that ‘in our days there was a great multitude of Ciceros and Sallusts’, even though no one, according to him, wanted to write a decent history of the Crusade, which was what Baldric set out to do.26 In brief, grammatical education, for which there was an increasing demand in several sectors of society, was more widely available than before. As importantly, the content of higher Latin education had been transformed. Whereas the elements of Latin were probably learned with the Psalter and simple religious texts, as had been the case previously, the advanced study of Latin was no longer based on late antique Christian poetry, which had dominated the early medieval curriculum. Both manuscript and narrative evidence indicates that by c. 1100 the grammar course, which was at the heart of cathedral-school education, was about reading the pagan classics.27 Consequently, those men who wrote and read Latin histories were now familiar with a large number of classical Latin texts and set their standards accordingly. That Guibert of Nogent, Robert the Monk, and Baldric of Bourgueil were by no means lone snobs is well demonstrated by the resonance which their histories immediately found. Guibert of Nogent’s Gesta Dei per Francos was the least successful of these compositions, but even it exists in eight copies, of which seven date from the twelfth and one from the thirteenth century.28 Baldric of Bourgueil’s Historia Hierosolimitana survives in twenty-three manuscripts, of which eight

24 Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, ed. by Kempf and Bull, p. 3: ‘quia series tam pulcre materiei inculta iacebat et litteralium compositio dictionum inculta vacillabat’. Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, ed. by Bongars, p. 10: ‘Erat siquidem eadem historia, sed verbis contexta plus aequo simplicibus, et quae multotiens grammaticae naturas excederet, lectoremque vapidi insipidate sermonis saepius exanimare valeret. Ea plane minus eruditis, nec de locutionis qualitate curantibus, ob illius novae relationis amorem satis opportune videtur’. 25 Guibert de Nogent, Histoire de sa vie, ed. by Bourgin, pp. 12–13: ‘Erat paulo ante id temporis, et adhuc partim sub meo tempore tanta grammaticorum charitas, ut in oppidis prope nullus, in urbibus vix aliquis reperiri potuisset, et quos inveniri contigerat, eorum scientia tenuis erat, nec etiam moderni temporis clericulis vagantibus comparari, poterat’. 26 Baldric of Bourgueil, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. by Biddlecombe, p. 3: ‘Sed quoniam diebus nostris magna erat Salustiorum et Ciceronum copia; qui tamen huic otio non ignobili assidere uellet, sterilis imminebat inopia’. 27 For an exploration of the change of the textual basis of Latin education, see Tahkokallio, ‘The Classicization of the Latin Curriculum’. 28 Sweetenham, ‘Guibert de Nogent’.

Rewriting English History for a High Medieval Republic of Letters

are dated to the twelfth and thirteen to the thirteenth century in the handlist of the recent edition.29 However, these datings are mostly from catalogues, some of which are very old. Three manuscripts dated to the thirteenth century which I have examined seem quite clearly to date from the twelfth.30 My suspicion is that the list may contain other similar mistakes and, at the very least, it appears safe to push the number of twelfth-century copies up to eleven. Compared to the numbers of eleventh-century copies of historical works examined previously, even Guibert’s (seven) and Baldric’s (eleven) twelfth-century figures are relatively high. Both, however, pale beside Robert the Monk’s work, surviving in eighty-one copies, of which thirty-four are from the twelfth century.31

Rewriting the English Past for Twelfth-Century Elites: Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury in their Literary Context The literary climate of post-Conquest England was rapidly changing in a way that echoed the Continental high medieval renaissance.32 Historical writing followed suit. While British writers and readers had shown even less interest in literarily ambitious history than their Continental counterparts during the three centuries preceding the Conquest,33 in the first half of the twelfth century a large number of writers composed long narratives in (at least relatively) high-quality Latin, discussing both the English and more broadly British pasts.34 Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury were central figures of this surge, and they had both received a highly classicizing education. Henry had studied in Lincoln with Aubin of Angers, who himself had probably been a student of Marbod of Rennes.35 Henry was widely familiar with classical authors and before he turned to writing history he had already composed an impressive amount of poetry, something he kept on producing even though historical prose probably became his main literary pursuit later in life. Henry’s poetry in particular demonstrates his close affinity to the

29 ‘Introduction’, in Baldric of Bourgueil, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. by Biddlecombe, pp. lxxvii–ci. 30 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reg. lat. 631; BL, Stowe MS 56; BnF, MS lat. 5135. 31 Numbers counted from Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, ed. by Kempf and Bull, pp. lxv–lxxiv. 32 For overviews, see Thomson, ‘England and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’; Thomson, Books and Learning. 33 The situation is summarized in Campbell, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views’, pp. 215–16. 34 In addition to William and Henry, the period witnessed the activities of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Eadmer, Simeon of Durham, John of Worcester, and the anonymous author of Gesta Stephani. See, for example, Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, pp. 157–58; Brett, ‘John of Worcester’, pp. 101–04. 35 ‘Introduction’, in Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, pp. xxix–xxx.

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classicizing Loire poets — Marbod of Rennes, Hildebert of Lavardin, Baldric of Bourgueil — whose works he knew well.36 How William of Malmesbury received his education is less clear — Glastonbury Abbey and the Canterbury houses are possibilities — but his exceptionally wide range of Latin learning has been thoroughly documented by Rodney Thomson. William’s main influences were Virgil and Cicero, but he had first-hand familiarity with some fifty classical and late antique writers.37 It is widely agreed that an intimate knowledge of the pagan classics was integral to the literary styles of Henry and William. However, I would argue that admiration of the classical tradition affected their literary activities in a manner that was more comprehensive, even though some previous scholars have seen little classical influence in twelfth-century historiography apart from matters of style. Haskins, for instance, did not see the classical revival affecting historical writing much at all,38 and even Peter Classen’s update to Haskins’s take on historical writing, published in 1982, allowed only for stylistic influence: ‘Even in the twelfth century, the relationship to early Christian historiography lives on, while the classical authors — as in earlier periods — prove to be little more than stylistic models’.39 In contrast, scholars such as Richard Southern and Matthew Kempshall have emphasized the indebtedness of medieval historiography to classical traditions, pointing out not only the significance of classical Latin texts generally as models of literary style, but also the specific importance of classical historical and rhetorical works as providing patterns of thought and expression for historians throughout the early and high Middle Ages. Kempshall emphasized the continuities of the longue durée whereas Southern’s seminal essay underlined the rise of classical influence in the post-Carolingian period, with Einhard’s Vita Karoli, Widukind of Corvey’s Res gestae Saxonicae, and Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum ducum as his main Continental examples, and the eleventh-century Encomium Emmae and Vita Sancti Edwardi representing England.40

36 ‘Introduction’, in Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, pp. xxxiv– xxxvi. Henry’s Herbal is also rich in classical allusions: Rigg, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’s Herbal’, pp. 221–22. 37 For William’s education, see Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 4–5; for his reading, pp. 10–11, 40–75, 202–14. For his classical influences, see also Haahr, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Roman Models’; Schütt, ‘The Literary Form’. 38 Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, p. 224: ‘Curiously enough, classical influence, so marked in other phases of twelfth-century literature, scarcely shows itself in history’. 39 Classen, ‘Res Gestae’, p. 387). The full passage seems now still more of an oversimplification: ‘Historical writing in the twelfth century directly and uninterruptedly continued the historiography of the early Middle Ages, the origin of which goes back not to classical Antiquity but to early Christianity. Even in the twelfth century, the relationship to early Christian historiography lives on, while the classical authors — as in earlier periods — prove to be little more than stylistic models. All of this was already shown by Haskins and needs no further discussion’. 40 Southern, ‘Aspects i: The Classical Tradition’, pp. 183–93.

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While I think that the overall picture provided by Kempshall and Southern is entirely correct, I would like to focus attention here on the early twelfth-century situation, and to suggest that Henry of Huntingdon’s and William of Malmesbury’s literary achievements were closely tied to the particular literary and educational context of that moment. The way in which Henry’s and William’s works differed from Southern’s examples in their substance and reception illuminates the wider trends. Unlike Widukind’s Res gestae Saxonicae and, as we have seen, many other ambitious writers of the tenth and eleventh centuries, their works received substantial circulation. Again, unlike Vita Karoli, Encomium Emmae, Vita Sancti Edwardi, and Historia Normannorum ducum, they were not panegyrical texts: William’s and Henry’s audiences were not expected to find celebration of their forefathers or of a single exemplary figure. Rather, both authors were committed to the classical idea of the purpose of history as a source of moral education for people active in the domain of secular politics. As regards William of Malmesbury, this is certainly not a novel idea. Sigbjørn Sønnesyn’s studies have demonstrated that William’s vision of the whole purpose of history, nothing less, was built around the concept of history as a medium of moral improvement as it was defined in the classical tradition of rhetorical and grammatical education.41 But I wish to suggest two extensions. First, that William’s decision to write in this mode did not result primarily from his own exceptional classical learning, but reflected tastes and ideals widely shared in his literary context. Second, that Henry’s history was essentially a product of the same cultural circumstances, and that its motives, if not its execution, were similar. Let us examine the two writers a little more closely. That history is useful in teaching proper moral behaviour in the secular world is indeed the explicit starting point of both Historia Anglorum and Gesta regum Anglorum. This claim is made in the introductory letters that William composed for his Gesta, addressing Empress Matilda and Robert of Gloucester, and its implications and its seriousness have been discussed thoroughly by Sønnesyn.42 In his letter to Robert of Gloucester, William made clear his idea of history functioning as a moral speculum in which Robert could see his own virtues.43 When addressing Empress Matilda, he was even more explicit:44 Solebant sane huiusmodi libri regibus siue reginis antiquitus scribi, ut quasi ad uitae suae exemplum eis instruerentur aliorum prosequi 41 Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury; Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae uitae institutum’, pp. 121–64. 42 Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 99–105. 43 ‘Suscipe ergo […] opus in quo te quasi e speculo uideas, dum intelliget tuae serenitatis assensus at te summorum procerum imitatum facta quam audires nomina’: William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. by Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, pp. ii–iii (Ep. iii. 3). 44 See also the papers in Thomson, Dolmans, and Winkler, eds, Discovering William of Malmesbury, esp. Winkler and Dolmans, ‘Discovering William of Malmesbury’, and Sønnesyn, ‘Lector amice’.

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triumphos, aliorum uitare miserias, aliorum imitari sapientiam, aliorum contempnere stultitiam. In the old days books of this kind were written for kings or queens in order to provide them with a sort of pattern for their own lives, from which they could learn to follow some men’s successes, while avoiding the misfortunes of others, to imitate the wisdom of some and to look down on the foolishness of others.45 In other words, William wrote with the expectation that learning would inform political action. As William promoted the circulation of his work, he not only sent copies to Robert and the Empress, but he furthermore stated that the work had originally been commissioned by Queen Matilda (d. 1118). While the precise nature of this assignment cannot be known, it appears unlikely that William would simply have invented such a claim and quite probable that Matilda had shown at least some interest in such a project. The importance of the ladies of the royal family as patrons of literature in eleventh- and twelfth-century English contexts has been well established,46 but it bears underlining that a publishing strategy targeting female aristocrats had previously been neither common nor successful with historical works. True enough, Widukind of Corvey had dedicated at least a part of his Res gestae Saxonicae to Mathilda (d. 999), daughter of Otto I (912–973), but the differences in circumstance are once again illuminating.47 Mathilda was Abbess of Quedlinburg, not a secular person, the prologue primarily appealed to the commemorative significance of the work (as celebrating the deeds of Mathilda’s relatives), and the text apparently almost failed to have any circulation. Dedications to kings and dukes were slightly more common in the late tenth and eleventh centuries, but certainly not abundant. As regards the comparable late tenth- and eleventh-century secular histories, Wipo’s Gesta Chuonradi was addressed to Emperor Henry III (1016–1056),48 and William of Jumièges dedicated his work to William the Conqueror. Wipo’s work did not become widely read, whereas William of Jumièges did find a substantial readership, although this seems to have happened primarily in the twelfth century, not during the patron’s lifetime. In the letter to Empress Matilda, William of Malmesbury mentioned how historical works designed to instruct kings and queens morally had been written in ancient times (antiquitus). Whether he thought this had been the practice in classical Antiquity, or just in any times long gone, is not clear (and not made any clearer by William’s reference to ‘kings and queens’), but 45 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. by Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, pp. 6–9 (Ep. ii. 4). See also the words, similar in content, addressed to Robert of Gloucester: pp. 11–13. 46 Van Houts, ‘Latin Poetry’. 47 Widukind of Corvey, Rerum gestarum saxonicarum, ed. by Waitz and others, pp. 1–2. 48 Wiponis opera, ed. by Bresslau, pp. 3–4.

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the statement is compatible with contemporary ideas about the revival of classical grammatical education and literary learning, and the relationship of such academic competence to secular rule. It was in this period that royal literacy became the expectation, and also that many members of the upper aristocracy received at least some Latin education.49 Furthermore, the idea of making learned, academic knowledge available to secular magnates figures, for instance, in the prefaces of early romance literature.50 Ideally, if not necessarily in practice, twelfth-century courts themselves were conceived as schools of manners and morals.51 William of Malmesbury wrote in multiple genres and for multiple audiences, some works probably written for circulation in familiar monastic circles, but it is obvious that he thought there existed also a wide non-monastic, in part lay, in part female, audience interested in Latin historical writing. To judge by the success of his Gesta regum, this was no pure fantasy. According to Rodney Thomson, William saw Antiquity ‘as a total civilization, differentiated from his own and superior to it in learning and culture, and he sought to recapture at least its compatible values, as far as possible, by preserving and disseminating its literary Nachlass’.52 It does not seem far-fetched to suggest that he also wished to see a resuscitation of the (assumed) classical situation, in which academic learning informed secular political leadership. In the preface to his Historia Anglorum, Henry of Huntingdon wrote about the moral benefits of historical writing in even more explicit and classicizing terms than William: Cantor siquidem et Crisippus, circa morum doctrinam philosophantes, multis codicibus desudarunt, Homerus autem uelut speculo eliquans prudentiam Vlixis, fortitudinem Agamemnonis, temperantiam Nestoris, iusticiam Menelai, et econtra imprudentiam Aiacis, debilitatem Priami, intemperantiam Achillis, inuisticiam Paridis, honestum et utile, et his contraria, lucidius et delectabilius philosophis historiando disseruit. Whereas Crantor and Chrysippus sweated to produce many volumes of moral philosophy, Homer showed, as clearly as in a mirror, the prudence of Ulysses, the fortitude of Agamemnon, the temperance of Nestor, the justice of Menelaus, and on the other hand, the imprudence of Ajax, the feebleness of Priam, the intemperateness of Achilles, the injustice of Paris, and in his narrative he discussed what is right and proper more clearly and agreeably than the philosophers.53 49 See, for example, Galbraith, ‘The Literacy’; Turner, ‘Miles Literatus’. 50 See, for instance, the prologues of Benoit de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie, ed. by Baumgartner and Vielliard, p. 40, and Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, ed. by Méla and Collet, pp. 291–92. 51 Jaeger, The Envy of Angels, pp. 292–324. 52 Thomson, William of Malmesbury, p. 10. 53 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, pp. 2–3.

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While this list of classical examples is followed by a series of Christian exemplary figures (introduced with the remark ‘But why do we linger among strangers?’), it is practical, secular virtues which are discussed in both lists. Just like William, Henry too presents historical writing as a stage for human characters, whose virtues and vices the reader should observe, imitate, or abhor, in a fashion that is very similar to how classical works in general and Sallust’s prefaces in particular frame the purpose of history.54 The evidential value of prologues of medieval historical works has been variously interpreted, some scholars emphasizing their stereotypical nature, and others giving them more credence as genuine (if usually non-comprehensive) declarations of the authors’ intentions.55 Indeed, I would side with Antonia Gransden’s encapsulation: ‘it seems best to treat them [prologues] with caution, but notwithstanding to take them seriously’. In both William’s and Henry’s case, the ethical theme given prominent place in the prefatory material appears an integral motif in the substance of the work as well, which supports the idea that these prologues can be taken more or less at their face value. In William’s case in particular, the ethical content of the Gesta regum is remarkably well in line with what the prefatory letters suggest. For William, the reader is certainly educated by giving him a seat in a theatre of human action. Reading history, he can see the vices and virtues of men and women of the past, contemplate them, and learn from them. This happens in a way that, with its focus on human character rather than God’s judgements or rewards, is entirely in harmony with how history was thought to instruct in the classical tradition.56 However, whereas the declared intentions of William and Henry are similar and similarly classicizing, the ethical content of Henry’s Historia Anglorum is of a rather different outlook. As Nancy Partner has underlined, Henry’s Historia and other prose works, most famously the Contemptus mundi letter, communicate a deeply religious world view, emphasizing the futility of all earthly endeavours.57 While Henry’s introduction speaks eloquently about the various virtues and vices exemplified in histories, in terms that are very similar to those used by ancient Roman authors, in practice he judges the protagonists of his work — the English kings — from a perspective that 54 Sallust’s description (De bello Iugurthino, § 4) of how illustrious men said they were inspired by the imagines patrum is particularly apposite: ‘Nam saepe ego audivi Q. Maximum, P. Scipionem, praeterea civitatis nostrae praeclaros viros solitos ita dicere, cum maiorum imagines intuerentur, vehementissime sibi animum ad virtutem accendi. Scilicet non ceram illam neque figuram tantam vim in sese habere, sed memoria rerum gestarum eam flammam egregiis viris in pectore crescere neque prius sedari, quam virtus eorum famam atque gloriam adaequauerit’. See also Smalley, ‘Sallust in the Middle Ages’. 55 The primary account of prologues to historical works remains Simon, ‘Untersuchungen zur Topik de Widmungsbriefe’. For a concise overview, see Gransden, ‘Prologues’. 56 Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 70–95; Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae uitae institutum’, pp. 40–50, 121–64. 57 Partner, Serious Entertainments, pp. 11–48.

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could be described as narrowly Christian. Only rarely, and very briefly, does he commend any king for capable secular administration. When he does so, the passages usually come straight from Bede, and often at the same time underline the fleeting nature of such secular improvements. Take as an example Henry’s (and, effectively, Bede’s) final assessment of King Æthelberht (d. 616): Hic uir maximus et eximius inter cetera bona genti sue decreta iudiciorum scripsit. At uero post mortem Ædelberti, Ædbald filius eius infidelis uxorem patris duxit. Unde multi ad priorem uomitum redierunt. Rex tamen crebra mentis uesania puniebatur. This very great and distinguished man, among other benefits he conferred on his people, wrote a code of laws. But after Æthelberht’s death, his heathen son Eadbald married his father’s widow. Because of this, many returned to their former vomit. The king was punished, however, by frequent fits of madness.58 Reading Historia Anglorum, one comes quickly to the conclusion that its main lesson is that a ruler should devote as much time and energy as possible to religion. Henry set his standards high in this. Some of the kings who were active in the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons are naturally given a positive review.59 However, even in the conversion stories it is the churchmen who are the real heroes, and often the king under whose rule the conversion nominally happened is hardly mentioned in the narrative.60 As regards kings, most of Henry’s praise, and certainly the highest praise, is reserved for those who renounced their thrones and took a pilgrimage to Rome, like Cædwalla and Ine, or retired to monasteries, like Æthelberht of Mercia, Cenred, Ceolwulf, and Cynewulf.61 In places it seems that only the last deed of their life — conversion from the world — would matter. While the secular rule of Cædwalla, Ine, or Æthelbert is not described in a particularly positive tone — Cædwalla especially being characterized as cruel — Henry’s final assesment is still very laudatory.62 58 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, pp. 166–67 (iii. 20). 59 Æthelberht: Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, iii. 1–13 and esp. 20 (pp. 138–61, 166–69); Edwin: iii. 24–29 (pp. 172–81); Earpwald and Sigeberht of East Anglia: iii. 30–33, 43 (pp. 180–87, 200–01); Oswald: iii. 33–40 (pp. 184–97). 60 The conversion of Essex is mentioned as taking place under Sigberht, who in fact hardly appears in the story (Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, iii. 14–23, pp. 160–71); compare the marginal roles of Earpwald and Sigeberht in the conversion of the East Angles (iii. 30–33, pp. 180–87), Cynegils with the West Saxons (iii. 37, pp. 190–93), Peada with the Middle Angles (iii. 41, pp. 196–99), and Æthelwold with the South Saxons (iii. 49–50, pp. 204–09). 61 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, ii. 39; iii. 49; iv. 3–5, 10 (pp. 128–29, 206–09, 214–17, 228–29, 236–37) (Cædwalla); iv. 6–10 (pp. 218–29) (Ine); ii. 38; iii. 47–48; iv. 7 (pp. 126–27, 204–05, 220–23) (Æthelred and Cerdic); iv. 16 (pp. 235–39) (Ceolwulf); iv. 21, 24 (pp. 249, 252–55) (Cynewulf). 62 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, iv. 7, 10 (pp. 220–23, 226–29).

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Henry’s descriptions of the monk-kings — Ceolwulf and Cynewulf in particular — based closely on Bede, are certainly the most positive portrayals of any Anglo-Saxon, Danish, or Norman kings, perhaps apart from William I, to whom I will return later. For Henry, the best of all English kings was indeed Ceolwulf, according to Henry an avid reader of Bede’s History, who ‘took his example of that history written by the blessed man’ and followed the six saintly Anglo-Saxon kings who had taken the monastic habit.63 This story, with its reference to Ceolwulf ’s conclusions from Bede’s work, seems in itself a rather explicit statement about what history was supposed to teach, as Partner has pointed out.64 To exaggerate only a little, the most important lesson that Henry’s Historia had to offer to a secular prince was that he really should stop being one as quickly as possible. William of Malmesbury had a much more optimistic view about secular political life. For him, a king could make a difference, and his value was measured by his virtues and his deeds in this life.65 To illustrate the contrast between Henry and William, we may look at their descriptions of King Alfred’s reign. Henry gives a tediously detailed chronicle of political ebbs and flows, battles won and lost, but devotes almost no space to describing the king, his characteristics, actions, or decisions. Not a word is said about Alfred as a promoter of learning. The epitaph summarizing his reign is a manifesto on the futility of earthly pursuits. It has a clear message: the king’s undeniable virtue brought him glory, but even more it brought him endless trouble and labour, and so he lived ‘clothing always stained with sweat, and dagger always stained in blood’.66 William, in contrast, states explicitly that he does not wish to take his reader to the ‘impenetrable labyrinth’ of Alfred’s labours but will only summarize the most important points. He then relates at substantial length a few chosen episodes from Alfred’s life, such as make evident his good character.67 William does not just list the king’s virtues, but makes them manifest in his narrative. For instance, in the part discussing Alfred’s later battles against the Northmen, it is clear that the king’s abilities are a crucial factor behind English success: The barbarians, having suffered losses in battles overseas, pursued the invasion with less energy, while the English, inspirited by experience in fighting and the encouragement of their king, were readier not only to resist but to take the offensive. The king was actively engaged in every emergency, his mere appearance with his well-known virtue being enough to terrify the other side and reinforce his own; single-handedly he would

63 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, iv. 16 (pp. 234–39). 64 Partner, Serious Entertainments, pp. 30–31. 65 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’, pp. 150–54, 156–59. 66 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, v. 13 (pp. 298–99). 67 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. by Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, ii. 121–24 (pp. 180–97).

Rewriting English History for a High Medieval Republic of Letters

lead a charge against the enemy, and single-handed stiffen a wavering battle-line […]. After flight he was generally irresistible, for he became more circumspect from the recollection of defeat, more bold from his burning for vengeance.68 Indeed, the whole of William’s narrative is an illustration of the king’s virtuousness and wisdom, and he finishes up with a long and detailed description of what he terms the king’s ‘remarkable and praiseworthy inner life’,69 on which Henry is completely silent. He speaks at length about Alfred’s administrative reforms and about the benefits they brought to his subjects. Whereas for Henry the whole of Alfred’s life is a monument to the futility of all earthly pursuits, for William it is a royal life well lived and well suited to inspire others. Oswald offers another example illustrating the fundamental differences between Henry and William in understanding history’s edificatory role. Oswald is the Anglo-Saxon king that Henry comes closest to approving of for his political actions. Oswald, according to him, ‘achieved for his soul, as well as for his kingdom, more than any of his predecessors’ — a passage following Bede almost verbatim.70 Yet even here the contrast with William, who of course shares Henry’s positive evaluation of Oswald, is instructive. For Henry, Oswald’s great military victory over Cædwalla was a fruit of his faith and religiosity. To prepare for the battle, Oswald sets up a cross with his own hands and makes his troops pray for the help of God.71 William, on the other hand, sees Oswald’s preparations in a more practical light. He had gathered ‘from every possible source such an army as he could’, and then encouraged his men to do battle ‘with the assurance that they must conquer or die without a thought of flight’. Oswald also touched their martial pride by claiming that it was disgraceful for the English to be in a situation in which they were ‘struggling against the British on such unequal terms as to be forced to fight for their lives against men whom they had been used to challenge freely for the sake of glory’.72 Clearly this

68 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. by Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, ii. 122.1 (pp. 186–89). 69 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. by Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, ii. 122. 1 (p. 188): ‘Verum inter haec miranda et insigni preconio prosequeda uita regis interior’. 70 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, iii. 36 (pp. 190–91): ‘ut mente proficiebat ita et regno plusquam omnes maiores eius’. 71 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, iii. 34 (pp. 186–89). 72 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. by Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, i. 49. 2–3 (pp. 70–71). The full passage: ‘Cum enim quantulumcumque exercitum undecumque conflasset, his sermonibus in bellum excitauit, ut aut uincendum sibi commilitones aut moriendum nossent, nichil de fuga meditantes, exprobrandi pudoris rem uentilari allegans, Anglos cum Britannis tam iniquo marte confligere ut contra illos pro salute decertarent quos ultro pro gloria lacessere consuessent; itaque libertatem audentibus animis et effusis uiribus asserant; ceterum de fugae impetu memoriam nullam’.

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is a warrior king speaking to his men, not just a saint. Compare Henry’s version of Oswald’s battle speech: Flectamus omnes genua et Deum omnipotentem uiuum ac uerum in commune deprecamur, ut nos ab hoste feroci ac superbo sua miseratione defendant. Scit enim quia iusta pro salute gentis nostre bella suscipimus. Let us all kneel down and pray together that the living, true, and Almighty God may in His mercy defend us from the fierce and proud enemy. For He knows that we have undertaken a righteous war to save our people.73 In William’s work, the victory is likewise described as the result of a capable king acting together with the church — by divine inspiration, yes, but not necessarily by way of miraculous divine intervention: ‘adeo alteri omnibus uiribus consumptis ulterius respirare non ausi, alteri sacra religione cum regis magnanimitate consentiente in immensum prouecti’ (One side lost all their strength, and never dared to breathe again; the other, with its union of true religion and a generous-hearted king, was prodigiously increased).74 For William, Alfred and Oswald as men, in their characteristics and deeds, are what is important. Although many of Alfred’s and Oswald’s achievements were of course related to fostering the Christian religion, there is no structural difference from how a Roman historical work would have described a ruler and his deeds. William’s kings are exemplary rulers because of the way they put their virtuous individual human nature in the service of the community. The contrast to Henry’s kings, whose occasional exemplarity lies in their denunciation of the importance of earthly business and in putting their fate in God’s hands, could not be clearer. However, while Henry’s pessimism over the possibilities of royal action to do much good, and the consequent lack of interest in secular virtues, holds for almost all Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman kings, there are some cracks in the picture. First, William the Conqueror, cast in the role of God’s avenger, is given a more comprehensive treatment, in which the various sides of his character are discussed in a relatively balanced way. Precisely at the end of William I’s reign, Henry even explicitly returns to the topic of his prologue: the power of history to instruct by showing exemplary human figures. He includes a brief description of William’s moral stature, introduced by the following words: ‘De cuius regis potentissimi uita, bona perstringenda sunt et mala, ut a bonis sumantur exempla, et a malis discatur cautela’ (The good and evil must be briefly outlined from the life of this most mighty king, so that examples may be taken from the good and caution may be learned from

73 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, iii. 34 (pp. 186–89). 74 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. by Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom, i. 49. 3 (pp. 70–71).

Rewriting English History for a High Medieval Republic of Letters

the evil).75 The same notion is repeated at the end of the character summary.76 Second, Henry II as treated in the very last parts of the last version of the History, written shortly after the king’s accession, is given a much more positive treatment than usual, probably in hope of patronage or at least acceptance.77 Finally, and perhaps most importantly, there is a very clear difference between how the kings ruling over England (with William I and Henry II as partial exceptions) and the Roman emperors are depicted. It must immediately be noted that the Roman part of Henry’s Historia is not of quite the same shape or origin as the rest. Henry first composed his narrative of the English kings, and then, a few years later, added the so-called laudes of the Roman emperors, greatly amplifying his description of the Roman era. Furthermore, Henry took most of its content directly from Paul the Deacon’s Historia Romana (mistakenly attributing these passages to Suetonius). Nevertheless, the descriptions of the emperors were apparently inserted into the archetype, becoming an integral element of the whole and found in all subsequent versions of the work.78 Even though they were briefer and derived more directly from an earlier source than his treatment of the English kings, they were the first element of the work that medieval readers encountered in the manuscripts. Their tone is strikingly different from Henry’s depiction of the reigns of the kings of England. The Roman emperors are evaluated throughout on the basis of how successful their rulership was in its secular consequences. They manifest a varying array of virtues (some also occasional vices) and overall appear as far more competent rulers than the English kings. See, for example, the description of Trajan: Hic est ille qui causa iusticie oculum sibi et oculum filio eruit. Quem Gregorius ab inferis reuocauit. Intelligite, igitur, legentes, quanti sit iusticia, que nec infidelem tam perfectum amatorem sui relinquere potuit desolatum. Laus Traiani ex Suetonio: ‘Traianus inusitate ciuilitatis et fortitudinis Daciam subeegit, et ea que circa Danubium sunt […]. Gloriam tamen militarem, ciuilitate et moderatione superauit, Rome et per prouincias, equalem se omnibus exhibens. Amicos salutandi causa frequentans, uel egrotantes uel cum festos dies habuissent, conuiuia cum eisdem indiscreta uicissim habens, sepe in uehiculis eorum sendes, nullum senatorum ledens, nil iniustum ad augendum fiscum agens. Liberalis in 75 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, vi. 38 (pp. 404–05). 76 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, vi. 39 (pp. 406–07): ‘Vos igitur qui legitis et uiri tanti uirtutes et uicia uidetis, bona sequentes et a malis declinantes, pergite per uiam directam que ducit ad uitam perfectam’. 77 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, x. esp. x. 32–40 (pp. 760–77). At this stage in the composition of his Historia, Henry of Huntingdon also censored some of his most severe criticism of Henry II’s grandfather Henry I: Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, pp. 168–69. 78 ‘Introduction’, in Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, pp. lxvii, lxxxix–xc.

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cunctis, publice priuatimque ditans omnes et honoribus augens quos uel mediocri familiaritate cognouisset. Orbem terrarum edificans, multa inmunitates ciuitatibus tribuens. Nichil non tranquillum et placidum agens, ade ut omni eius etate unus senator damnatus sit, atque is tamen per senatum, ignorante Traiano’. This is the man who for the sake of justice plucked out his own eye and his son’s eye. The man whom Gregory called back from hell. You who read this should understand, therefore, that justice is such that it cannot forsake as lost even the unbeliever, if he gives it his complete love. In praise of Trajan, from Suetonius: ‘Trajan, a man of unusual humility and fortitude, subdued Dacia, and the lands near the Danube […] [a long list of conquests follows] but his humanity and moderation exceeded his military renown, and he showed himself equable to all, at Rome and throughout the provinces. He visited friends to pay his respects when they were sick or on festive occasions, frequently having informal parties with them, often sitting in their carriages, injuring none of the senators, doing nothing unjust to increase the treasury. He was generous to everyone, enriching all publicly and privately, and advancing in honours even those he knew only moderately well. He erected buildings throughout the whole world, and granted many privileges to cities. He did nothing that was not peaceful or gentle, so that during all his time only one senator was condemned, and that was done by the senate without Trajan’s knowledge’.79 Indeed, Henry himself suggests that he inserted the laudes precisely to make this contrast between the English kings and the emperors visible: ‘non pigeat laudes eorum perstringere, ut Christianos principes nostros, si moribus non pudeat illis equiparari, saltem pudeat deteriores eis inueneri’ (so that our Christian princes, if they are not ashamed to have their conduct placed on an equal footing with these rulers, may at least feel shame to have it worse).80 Perhaps significantly, in the reign of the divine avenger William I, we find, for the first time after the Romans, a description of military and political activity in which the king’s own actions and decisions are instrumental in bringing about success.81 Furthermore, William also gives the first lengthy

79 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, i. 25 (pp. 44–47). 80 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, i. 15 (pp. 36–37). 81 William’s long pre-battle speech, Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, v. 28 (pp. 388–93). In the battle of Hastings, William instructs his people to simulate flight (vi. 30, pp. 392–93): ‘Docuit igitur dux Willelmus’; and to shoot their arrows ballistically (vi. 30, pp. 394–95): Docuit etiam dux Willelmus uiros sagittarios’. Similar examples can be found throughout the narrative about William. Compare the descriptions of Caesar leading the invasion of Britain: i. 12 (pp. 30–33). Most of the Romans are praised not in Henry’s own original words, but with lengthy quotations from Paul the Deacon’s Roman history (which Henry usually introduces as ‘Suetonius’).

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and rhetorically ambitious battle speech since Julius Caesar.82 Henry’s descriptions of William I and the Roman emperors evince that he could write about emperors and kings setting an example for secular rulership, but that he chose not to do so for the Anglo-Saxon and most Anglo-Norman kings. One is bound to wonder if the differences between how Henry and William described the English kings — their virtues and vices and the influence of these on the passage of history — reflected closely their own careers. William was ‘by choice a careerless man’, as Rodney Thomson has put it, when comparing William’s use of classical material to that of John of Salisbury.83 William probably hoped that his secular history would be read by men and women of power, and that it would instruct them in their rulership, but as a monk he had few personal gains to be made, apart from literary fame. Henry of Huntingdon’s position, in particular his relationship to the royal court, was entirely different. This has become adequately understood only relatively recently, thanks to the editorial work and accompanying research by Diana Greenway and the consequent analysis of his poems by John Gillingham. Greenway has suggested, on the basis of the content of Henry’s history, that he was frequently present in the court, at least in 1122–1123.84 Gillingham’s analysis of the chronology of composition of Henry’s poems, which he later inserted also into Historia Anglorum, has drawn attention to the remarkable cluster of poems centred on the court: Queen Matilda’s epitaph (1118), the celebration of Henry I’s victory at Brémule (1119), a lament for the disaster of the White Ship (1120), and the poem in praise of Henry I’s second wife Adeliza (1121), which ends in a line that must be interpreted as a request for patronage.85 Gillingham has also identified three persons who had close affinities with the court and could have given Henry access to it: Robert Bloet, bishop of Lincoln (d. 1123), Robert’s son Simon, dean of Lincoln and a well-established courtier, and King Henry’s illegitimate son Richard (d. 1120 in the wreck of the White Ship), who was part of Bloet’s household. Furthermore, in 1122, the last year of his life, Bishop Bloet and his son Simon fell out of favour at court and Simon was even imprisoned for a time. This coincides with the end of Henry’s court poems and with the earliest possible start date for the composition of Historia Anglorum, 1123, when its commissioner Alexander was appointed to the see of Lincoln.

82 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, vi. 29 (pp. 388–93). Caesar’s speech is found at i. 13 (pp. 32–35). On the speeches in Henry’s work, see Greenway, ‘Authority, Convention and Observation’, pp. 109–10. 83 Thomson, William of Malmesbury, p. 12. 84 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, pp. lii–liii. 85 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Greenway, vii. 30 (pp. 462–63); vii. 31 (pp. 464–65); vii. 32 (pp. 466–67); vii. 33 (pp. 468–69); Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’, pp. 163–64. The ending of the poem to Adeliza: ‘Non puduit modicas de magnis dicere laudes, | Nec pudeat dominam te, precor esse meam’.

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Had Henry hoped that he could become a court poet and intellectual, instructing the men of power with ancient wisdom, as John of Salisbury became later on?86 Was it primarily the failure of such a career that set him writing about history in a way that denounced earthly business and the courtly world? It does not seem impossible. After the time he was possibly expelled from court, his course was to remain on a strictly ecclesiastical career. Perhaps inadvertently, Henry would have been following a well-established classical precedent in turning to writing about history after failing to participate in its making. Several twelfth-century writer-intellectuals who made their mark in secular poetry or philosophy in their youth turned to religion in their advanced years. How much one could hope for — economically, intellectually, and spiritually — from immersion in secular literary learning must have been a question that others asked themselves at the time. William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon aspired to reach leading political figures with their historical writing and, unlike most writers of similar histories before, the number of surviving manuscript copies of their works suggests that they succeeded in finding at least some kind of an audience. Whether secular lords were in fact a significant part of that audience is difficult to assess. The experiences of Gerald of Wales, more than half a century later, would suggest that it was difficult to market Latin works to lay princes. As he wrote in the preface to his Journey through Wales, ‘Sed quia principibus parum literatis et multum occupatis, Hibernicam Anglorum regi Henrici secundo Topographiam, ejusdemque filio, et utinam vitiorum non succedaneo, Pictavensium comiti Ricardo Vaticinalem Historiam, vacuo quondam quoad accessorium illud et infructuoso labore peregi’ (I completely wasted my time when I wrote my Topography of Ireland for Henry II, King of the English, and the companion volume, my Vaticinal History, for Richard of Poitou, his son and successor in vice).87 Gerald was sorry that poets and historians of his time did not have the ear of rulers like they used to in Virgil’s days. Instead, he claimed, Sed quoniam nonnulli viri magni, quos vidimus et novimus, quibus literae nauseam creant, libros egregios eis oblatos statim in scriniis recondere, et tanquam perpetuo carceri trader et retrudere solent [a] number of famous men, whom I have met and who are known to me personally, show such contempt for literature that they are in the 86 This is certainly how John of Salisbury saw himself later in the twelfth century. In Thomson’s apt formulation, referring to and inspired by Liebeschütz, Medieval Humanism, John of Salisbury modelled himself on ‘the Senecan or Ciceronian model of the virtuous, articulate public man who speaks and writes to instil moral sense into his country’s rulers’: Thomson, William of Malmesbury, p. 12. 87 Gerald of Wales, Itinerarium Kambriae, ed. by Dimock, p. 7; Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales, ed. by Radice, trans. by Thorpe, p. 67.

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habit of immediately locking up in their cupboards the excellent works which I present to them, condemning them, as it were, to perpetual imprisonment.88 We cannot be sure whether Henry and William did much better in reaching an aristocratic audience, but they may have been operating at a particularly good time for writing Latin histories targeted (also) at secular lords. The Latin classics had become widely used at schools, the use of writing in administration was expanding steadily, and literary education was becoming more clearly than before an element in the education of the upper aristocracy.89 Literature in Norman French was emerging, which seems to indicate that the aristocracy had started to have a wider interest in participating in literary culture than previously, but it was not as yet an established medium. The situation was in this respect very different for Gerald of Wales, who wished that someone would translate his works into French so that they would be more widely read. According to Gerald, Walter Map had repeatedly said to him that Gerald could not hope for much reward for his Latin writings, since lettered princes, once common, had disappeared from the world.90 A brief look outside English history shows that at the end of the eleventh and during the first half of the twelfth century, king-centred political narratives in classicizing Latin were also produced about other kingdoms and their rulers, and often managed to find at least some circulation. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum is the closest parallel, and by far the most popular such work, but one may think as well of the works of Otto of Freising (d. 1158) and the historians of Norman Italy, Geoffrey Malaterra and William of Apulia, from the very end of the eleventh century.91 Likewise, as we have seen, some slightly older works, such as those of Dudo of Saint-Quentin and William of Jumièges, also received increasing circulation in this period. Then again, relatively little similarly ambitious, classicizing, ruler-centred Latin historiography was written from the second half of the twelfth century onwards, with the notable exceptions of William of Tyre (c. 1130–1185) and Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1160–post-1208). This change in historical writing coincides with a change in the focus of education, increasingly dominated by scholastic theology at the expense of grammar and rhetoric. It may be just a coincidence, but it is nevertheless an interesting one that the last two classicizing twelfth-century historians, William of Tyre and Saxo, both studied in France but wrote for audiences that can be considered 88 Gerald of Wales, Descriptio Kambriae, ed. by Dimock; Gerald of Wales, The Journey Through Wales, ed. by Radice, trans. by Thorpe, p. 214. 89 Galbraith, ‘The Literacy’; Turner, ‘Miles Literatus’. 90 Gerald of Wales, Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. by Dimock, pp. 410–11. 91 Malaterra shows heavy influence of Sallust in particular: see Lucas-Avenel, ‘Les sallustianismes’. See also Wolf, Making History, pp. 145–46 and 164–68. The twelfth century did not see similarly ambitious secular-minded history written in southern Italy; the works related to the history of Roger II are either overt propaganda with a religious tone, or fairly simple chronicles: ‘Introduction’, in Roger II, trans. by Loud, pp. 52–62.

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provincial. In the rising north-western intellectual heartlands of Latin Christendom, dominated by the scholarly capital of Paris, the Latin history bestsellers of the thirteenth century tended to be encyclopaedic universal or national chronicles, of which Vincent of Beauvais’s Speculum historiale is the most famous example. At the same time, secular narrative history was more and more often written in the vernacular, first in poetic form but soon in prose as well. It is debatable whether Haskins’s idea of a renaissance remains a useful shorthand cultural description for the twelfth century.92 It appears, however, indisputable that the way in which Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury rewrote English history was influenced both by classical literature and by ideas about what literary culture had been in Antiquity. The hope that Latin literature would be useful to a wide educated audience, including men and women active in secular political life, was an instrumental motivation behind their writing of secular histories. That works of such nature succeeded in finding a contemporary audience, in some contrast to how ambitious Latin historians had been read over the two previous centuries, supports the idea that an interest in classical literary traditions was widely shared at the time.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Copenhagen, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, MS GKS 599 2:o London, British Library, Harley MS 3974 ———, Stowe MS 56 Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley MS 755 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fonds latin 5135 ———, MS fonds latin 5925 ———, MS fonds latin 5925A ———, MS fonds latin 10912 Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Reg. lat. 631 Primary Sources Ademari Cabannensis opera omnia, pars 1: Chronicon, ed. by P. Bourgain, Ruth Landes, and Georges Pon, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, 129 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999) Archiv der Gesellschaft für ältere deutsche Geschichtskunde, 7, ed. by G. H. Pertz (Hanover: Hahn, 1839)

92 For the limitations and problems of the concept, see Noble, ‘Introduction’, in European Transformations, ed. by Noble and van Engen, esp. pp. 2–4; Ribémont, La ‘Renaissance’, pp. 9–10; Melve, ‘The Revolt of the Medievalists’.

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Baldric of Bourgueil, Historia Ierosolimitana, ed. by Steven Biddlecombe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014) Benoit de Sainte-Maure, Le Roman de Troie, ed. by Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Françoise Vielliard (Paris: Librairie générale, 1998) Chrétien de Troyes, Cligès, ed. by Charles Méla and Olivier Collet, in Chretien de Troyes, Romans (Paris: Librairie génerale française, 1994), pp. 285–494 Gerald of Wales, Descriptio Kambriae, ed. by James F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vi, Rolls Series, 21 (London: Longmans 1868) ———, Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. by James F. Dimock, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, v, Rolls Series, 21 (London: Longmans, 1867) ———, Itinerarium Kambriae, ed. by James F. Dimock, in Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, vi, Rolls Series, 21 (London: Longmans, 1868) ———, The Journey Through Wales and The Description of Wales, ed. by Betty Radice, trans. by Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978) Guibert de Nogent, Gesta Dei per Francos, ed. by J. Bongars, in Recueil des historiens des croisades: historiens occidentaux, iv (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1879) ———, Histoire de sa vie, ed. by Georges Bourgin (Paris: Librairie Alphonse Picard et fils, 1907) Guillaume de Poitiers, Histoire de Guillaume le Conquérant, ed. by Raymonde Foreville (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1952) Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. by Diana Greenway (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) Lamperti monachi Hersfeldensis opera, ed. by Oswald Holder-Egger, in MGH SS 39 (1894) Robert the Monk, Historia Iherosolimitana, ed. by D. Kempf and Marcus G. Bull (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2013) Thietmari Merseburgensis episcopi chronicon, ed. by Robert Holtzmann, in MGH SS Nova series 9 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1935) Vita Heinrici IV. imperatoris, ed. by Wilhelm Eberhard, in MGH SS 58 (1899) Widukind of Corvey, Rerum gestarum saxonicarum libri tres, ed. by G. Waitz, K. A. Kehr, P. Hirsch, and H.-E. Lohmann, in MGH SS 60 (1935) William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. by R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) Wiponis opera, ed. by Harry Bresslau, in MGH SS 61 (1915) Secondary Works Ashe, Laura, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Bagge, Sverre, Kings, Politics and the Right Order of the World in German Historiography, c. 950–1150 (Leiden: Brill, 2002) Bozzolo, Carla, and Ezio Ornato, ‘La production du livre manuscrit en France du Nord’, in Carla Bozzolo and Ezio Ornato, Pour une histoire du livre manuscrit au Moyen Âge: trois essais de codicologie quantitative (Paris: CNRS, 1980), pp. 15–121

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Brett, Martin, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. by R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 101–26 Buringh, Eltjo, Manuscript Production in the Latin West (Leiden: Brill, 2012) Campbell, James, ‘Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past’, in James Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London: Hambledon, 1986), pp. 209–28 Cisne, John L., ‘How Science Survived: Medieval Manuscripts’ “Demography”, and Classic Texts’ Extinction’, Science, 307 (2005), 1305–07 Classen, Peter, ‘Res Gestae, Universal History, Apocalypse: Visions of the Past and Future’, in Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, ed. by Robert L. Benson, Giles Constable, and Carol D. Lanham (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), pp. 387–417 Crick, Julia C., The Historia regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, iii: A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts (Cambridge: Brewer, 1989) ———, ‘Two Newly Located Manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae’, Arthurian Literature, 13 (1995), 151–56 Declerq, G., ‘Comment’, Science, 310 (2005), 1618 Frassetto, Michael, ‘Rodulf Glaber’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy and Cristian Bratu (Leiden: Brill, 2010), p. 1289 Galbraith, V. H., ‘The Literacy of the English Medieval Kings’, Proceedings of the British Academy, 21 (1935), 201–38 Gillingham, John, ‘Henry of Huntingdon: In his Time (1135) and Place (Between Lincoln and the Royal Court)’, in Gallus Anonymous and his Chronicle in the Context of Twelfth-Century Historiography from the Perspective of the Latest Research, ed. by K. Stopk (Kraków: Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2010), pp. 157–72 Gransden, Antonia, ‘Prologues in the Historiography of Twelfth-Century England’, in England in the Twelfth Century: Proceedings of the 1988 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. by Daniel Williams (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1990), pp. 55–81 Greenway, Diana, ‘Authority, Convention and Observation in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 18 (1995), 105–21 Haahr, J. G., ‘William of Malmesbury’s Roman Models’, in The Classics in the Middle Ages, ed. by A. S. Bernardo and S. Levin (Binghampton: State University of New York at Binghampton Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1990), pp. 165–73 Haskins, C. H., The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1955) [first published 1927] Holtz, Louis, Donat et la tradition de l’enseignement grammatical: étude sur l’Ars Donati et sa diffusion (IVe–IXe siècle) et édition critique (Paris: CNRS, 1981) Jaeger, C. Stephen, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950–1200 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994) Liebeschütz, Hans, Medieval Humanism in the Life and Writings of John of Salisbury (London: Warburg Institute, 1950)

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Loud, Graham A., ‘Introduction’, in Roger II and the Making of the Kingdom of Sicily: Selected Sources, trans. by Graham A. Loud (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012) Lucas-Avenel, Marie-Agnès, ‘Les sallustianismes de Geoffroi Malaterra’, in L’historiographie medieval normande et ses sources antiques (Xe–XIIe siècle), ed. by Pierre Bauduin and Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel (Caen: Centre Michel de Boüard – CRAHAM, 2014), pp. 277–306 Melve, Leidulf, ‘“The Revolt of the Medievalists”: Directions in Recent Research on the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, Journal of Medieval History, 32 (2006), 231–52 Morgan, Nigel, ‘Books for the Liturgy and Private Prayer’, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, ii: 1100–1400, ed. by Rodney Thomson and Nigel Morgan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 291–316 Mortensen, Lars Boje, ‘The Diffusion of Roman Histories in the Middle Ages: A List of Orosius, Eutropius, Paulus Diaconus, and Landolfus Sagax Manuscripts’, Filologia mediolatina, 6–7 (1999–2000), 101–200 Noble, Thomas F. X., ‘Introduction’, in European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, ed. by Thomas F. X. Noble and John van Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012) Olsen, Birger Munk, L’étude des auteurs classiques latins aux XIe et XIIe siècles: T. 4. P. 2, La réception de la littérature classique, manuscrits et textes (Paris: CNRS, 2014) Partner, Nancy, Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth-Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977) Peynson, N. D., and L. Peynson, ‘Treating Medieval Manuscripts as Fossils’, Science, 309 (2005), 698–99 Pohl, Benjamin, Dudo of Saint-Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: Tradition, Innovation and Memory (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2015) Ribémont, Bernard, La ‘Renaissance’ du XIIe siècle et l’encyclopédisme (Paris: Champion, 2002) Rigg, A. G., ‘Henry of Huntingdon’s Herbal’, Medieval Studies, 65 (2003), 213–92 Schütt, Marie, ‘The Literary Form of William of Malmesbury’s “Gesta Regum”’, English Historical Review, 46 (1931), 255–60 Simon, Gertrud, ‘Untersuchungen zur Topik de Widmungsbriefe mittel-alterlicher Geschichtsschreiber bis zum Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts’, Archiv für Diplomatik, 4 (1958), 52–119; 5–6 (1959–1960), 75–153 Smalley, Beryl, ‘Sallust in the Middle Ages’, in Classical Influences on European Culture, a.d. 500–1500, ed. by R. R. Bolgar (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 165–75 Sønnesyn, Sigbjørn, ‘“Ad bonae uitae institutum”: William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Bergen, 2007) ———, ‘Lector amice: Reading as Friendship in William of Malmesbury’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. by Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Dolmans, and Emily A. Winkler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 153–63 ———, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012)

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Southern, R. W., ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, i: The Classical Tradition from Einhard to Geoffrey of Monmouth’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 20 (1970), 173–96 ———, ‘Aspects of the European Tradition of Historical Writing, iv: The Sense of the Past’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, 23 (1973), 243–63 Sweetenham, Carol, ‘Guibert de Nogent’, in Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle, ed. by Graeme Dunphy and Cristian Bratu (Leiden: Brill, 2010) Tahkokallio, Jaakko, ‘The Classicization of the Latin Curriculum and “the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century”: A Quantitative Study of the Codicological Evidence’, Viator, 46 (2015), 129–53 ———, ‘Manuscripts as Evidence for the Use of Classics in Education, c. 800–1200: Estimating the Randomness of Survival’, Interfaces, 3 (2016), 28–45 ———, ‘Update to the List of Manuscripts of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae’, Arthurian Literature, 32 (2015), 187–203 Thomson, Rodney, Books and Learning in Twelfth-Century England: The Ending of ‘Alter Orbis’ (Walkern: Red Gull, 2006) ———, ‘England and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, Past and Present, 101 (1983), 3–21 ———, William of Malmesbury, revised edn (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003) Thomson, Rodney M., Emily Dolmans, and Emily A. Winkler, eds, Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017) Turner, R. V., ‘“Miles Literatus” in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century England: How Rare a Phenomenon?’, American Historical Review, 83 (1978), 928–45 van Houts, Elisabeth M. C., Gesta Normannorum ducum: Een Studie over de Handschriften, de Tekst, het Geschiedwerk en het Genre (Groningen: [E. M. C. van Houts], 1982) ———, ‘Latin Poetry and the Anglo-Norman Court 1066–1135: The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio’, Journal of Medieval History, 15 (1989), 39–62 Winkler, Emily A., ‘England’s Defending Kings in Twelfth-Century Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal, 25 (2013), 147–63 Winkler, Emily A., and Emily Dolmans, ‘Discovering William of Malmesbury: The Man and his Works’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. by Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Dolmans, and Emily A. Winkler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 1–11 Wolf, Kenneth B., Making History: The Normans and Their Historians in EleventhCentury Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995)

Marie- Agnès Lucas- Avene l*

Writing History on the Order of the Hautevilles: Geoffrey Malaterra and William of Apulia’s Accounts of Guiscard’s Expedition to Constantinople (1081–1082)

The most important accounts of the conquest of southern Italy by the Normans are William of Apulia’s Gesta Roberti Guiscardi and Geoffrey Malaterra’s De rebus gestis Rogerii comitis, along with Amatus of Montecassino’s Historia Normannorum.1 William of Apulia composed his epic poem late in 1095, and Geoffrey Malaterra wrote his prose history between 1098 and 1101. William probably never had the opportunity to become acquainted with Geoffrey’s work, and neither knew Amatus’s Historia, written around 1080.2 Amatus was a monk of the rich abbey of Montecassino, headed by Abbot Desiderius (the future Pope Victor III), who played a key role in the establishment of the Normans in the South. Amatus was therefore very well placed to provide an account of events down to 1078, the year that Prince Richard of Capua died and the closing point of the Historia. Both William of Apulia and Geoffrey Malaterra wrote for patrons among the ruling Hauteville family, of Norman origins. William dedicated his poem to Roger Borsa, Duke of Apulia, Calabria, and Sicily, and son of Robert Guiscard and the Lombard Princess Sichelgaita, and to Pope Urban II; Geoffrey was commissioned by Guiscard’s brother Roger of Hauteville, Great Count of





* I would like to thank Hala Annani for her revision of the English translation of this article. 1 Guillaume de Pouille, La Geste de Robert Guiscard, ed. and trans. by Mathieu [henceforth William of Apulia, citing book and line numbers]; William of Apulia, The Deeds of Robert Guiscard, trans. by Loud (consulted August 2019); Geoffrey Malaterra (first two books): Geoffroi Malaterra, Histoire du Grand Comte Roger, i: Livres i & ii, ed. and trans. by LucasAvenel, with second volume in preparation; for the whole text: De rebus gestis Rogerii, ed. by Pontieri; The Deeds of Count Roger, trans. by Wolf; the extracts from Book iii quoted below present emendations to the text published by Pontieri. 2 Aimé du Mont-Cassin, Ystoire de li Normant, ed. by Guéret-Laferté; Storia de’ Normanni, ed. by de Bartholomaeis; Amatus of Montecassino, trans. by Dunbar and Loud. Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel  •  ([email protected]) is HDR Senior Lecturer in Latin Language and Literature at the Université de Caen Normandie (CRAHAM – UMR 6273). Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 195–221 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126751

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Calabria and Sicily. Both authors themselves probably had northern origins. William was perhaps a Norman, as suggested by his forename and by the origin of both known medieval manuscripts of his poem.3 He had no doubt been living in southern Italy for long enough to become well informed about the conquest of Apulia and the intrigues of the court of Constantinople, perhaps in part from written sources now lost. Geoffrey was a Benedictine monk of Sant’Agata abbey in Catania. He claimed that he came from ‘the other side of the Alps’, and may have originated in the Perche or the region of Châteaudun, south of Normandy. After travelling through Italy, he settled in Sicily shortly before writing De rebus gestis Rogerii, using oral testimony as a source.4 Both authors celebrated the Normans through the Hauteville family and praised the relationship between the Hauteville princes and the papacy.5 That celebratory motive gives their work historical and literary value. Like many other medieval historians (including the imperial biographers and especially the Norman historians close to power), William and Geoffrey rewrote history as received, and elaborated a scholarly rhetoric which combined narrative with argument in order to preserve the memory of past events and serve the glory of their princes and the moral elevation of their readers. They exemplify a process described by Matthew Kempshall, whereby history-writing ‘developed an intimate connection with each of the three basic categories into which rhetoric had been traditionally divided according to those areas of public life which it was designed to service: demonstrative or epideictic rhetoric […]; legal or judicial rhetoric […]; and deliberative rhetoric’.6 William of Apulia claimed in his prologue to be renewing the genre of epic poetry, and indeed held to traditional lines. Geoffrey Malaterra announced in letters addressed to Anger, bishop of Catania, and the clergy of Sicily that he had been ordered to tell the deeds of the Great Count Roger in the tradition of ancient writers. Both thus chose to place their work in a continuing tradition of ancient epic or historiography, claiming to recount recent history by renewing the topics or conserving the purposes of their models. Their prefatory material (prologue and letters) invites scholars in medieval history and Latin literature to read the texts together, considering them both as literature and as historical sources, in order to understand what writing the Hautevilles’ deeds represented for William and Geoffrey.7 Until now, a historical point of view has always been preferred, though a few scholars have



3 A Mont Saint-Michel manuscript, now Avranches, Bibliothèque municipal, MS 162; and a lost manuscript from Bec-Hellouin used by Jean Tiremois for the editio princeps (1582): Mathieu, ‘Le manuscrit 162 d’Avranches’, p. 126, for the suggestion that the Avranches manuscript was a copy of the Bec manuscript, commissioned by Robert of Torigni. 4 Lucas-Avenel, ‘Le récit de Geoffroi Malaterra’, pp. 171–74. 5 Lucas-Avenel, ‘Le récit de Geoffroi Malaterra’; Bouet, ‘Les Normands’. 6 Kempshall, Rhetoric, pp. 137 (quotation), 256–59 (Norman historiography). 7 Compare Tyler and Balzaretti, eds, Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West.

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also been interested in the literary value of the works, as noted by Vito Sivo.8 Combining the two ways of questioning the texts can help us to understand them better, especially by linking the authors’ choices of historical facts to the reasons why they composed their works. The very act of writing involved reflection on events and thus some kind of ‘rewriting’. Such reflection was filtered through two stages in composition — understanding and representation — and through the authors’ willingness to respond to their prince’s command. Both William and Geoffrey provide much information of value to the modern historian who is interested in facts and chronology. Although they share many points in common, their differences cannot be ignored, and ought to push us in two directions. First, they urge us not to limit our purpose to simply trying to fill the lack of information in one text from the other. Many scholars have shown the limitations of this ‘méthode philologico-combinatoire’ (a term borrowed from the Italian medievalist Arsenio Frugoni), and Pierre Toubert highlighted the particular difficulties in applying it to Geoffrey and William.9 Second, we should try to explain why differences exist between the two texts. Different sources could be considered as a prime explanation: they were mostly oral, even if William may also have used some old Lombard annals no longer extant. Both William and Geoffrey were writing contemporary history and had good knowledge of the facts, but different informants would have told them different things, influencing what they wrote. But the overall coherence of each work, as to characters and facts, also reflects personal choices and probably constraints imposed by their prince or their milieu. Indeed, by selecting one fact rather than another, or omitting some detail rather than some other, the authors could present the events in the way most likely to respect their prince’s recommendations. In appealing to ancient authorities, William and Geoffrey did more than expose a medieval cliché: they linked their historical purpose of memorializing the prowess of their heroes to a literary and aesthetic dimension. Their aim was to write with the same requirements as ancient historians and orators,10 who always wished to tell the truth with art and to edify their readers.11 Alongside other elements such as literary tradition, the specific genre of choice (epic poem or narrative), and their own culture and erudition, the features and tools at William’s and Geoffrey’s disposal depended on their patron and intended audience, whether the prince’s



8 Bisanti, ‘Composizione, stile e tendenze’; Lauletta, ‘Allusioni intertestuali’; Sivo, ‘Éléments classiques et chrétiens’; Lucas-Avenel, ‘Rome’; Lucas-Avenel, ‘La poésie’; Lucas-Avenel, ‘Les sallustianismes’; Cantarella, ‘La rivoluzione delle idee’; Cantarella, La Sicilia e i Normanni; Cantarella, ‘La fondazione della storia’; Capitani, ‘Motivazioni peculiari’; Oldoni, ‘Mentalità ed evoluzione’; Toubert, ‘La première historiographie’; Wolf, Making History. 9 Toubert, ‘La première historiographie’, pp. 20–22. 10 Kempshall, Rhetoric; Berkhofer, above. 11 Compare Kempshall, Rhetoric, pp. 243–45.

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court or future generations. Both authors were inspired by pagan authors of Antiquity who were among the most widely read writers in the Middle Ages: Sallust for Geoffrey, Virgil and Lucan for William. It is not surprising that their historical project was linked to a willingness to glorify their protagonist and to undertake the moral education of readers by showing them exemplary actions.12 Christian readers found in Virgil and Sallust a certain way to celebrate the same virtues that matched their own subject matter: the cardinal virtues — prudentia, justitia, temperantia, and fortitudo — as well as misericordia, largitas, patientia, clementia, and pietas. By mixing narrative and argumentative speech (in order either to praise or to legitimize the elevation of their protagonist), William and Geoffrey also sought the same aesthetic rules as their Christian and medieval models, authors such as Jerome, Augustine, Orosius, Isidore, and Bede. They exalted the virtue of a hero elected by divine providence so as to attest the might of God. In their works we can see how they conceived the utility of writing history, and what they hoped to transmit in accordance with the instructions of their prince and pope, or in their honour. Since the two authors gave much similar information and because each of their works is strongly coherent, instead of using multiple extracts, I will base my study on a single long episode: Robert Guiscard’s first expedition to the Balkans and the conquest of Durazzo in 1081–1082. This will facilitate a comparison of how they ‘made history’, by demonstrating processes and literary tools. William of Apulia’s poem is composed of five books and Malaterra’s account is divided into four books; the extract I have chosen involves more than three quarters of William’s Book iv, and chapters 13–14 and 24–29 of Malaterra’s Book iii. After a brief discussion of the concordances and differences in their narration of events, I will reveal the ‘deliberative’ aim of the two texts, namely that the purpose of writing a historia which faithfully recorded historical facts was strictly linked to demonstrating the legitimacy of the Hautevilles’ rise to power.13 William and Geoffrey often provide similar information which can further be compared with the testimony of the Byzantine historian Anna Comnena, daughter of the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, in her Alexiad.14 William was in general better informed than Malaterra about the Byzantine court, and some scholars have argued that he used a source also available to Anna Comnena.15

12 For example, Geoffrey’s second letter: Histoire du Grand Comte Roger, ed. and trans. by Lucas-Avenel, i, 122; William of Apulia, ed. and trans. by Mathieu, p. 61. 13 On telling the truth and using demonstrative rhetoric: Kempshall, Rhetoric, p. 165 and after; on Malaterra: Histoire du Grand Comte Roger, ed. and trans. by Lucas-Avenel, i, 28; LucasAvenel, ‘Ecrire la conquête’, esp. pp. 165–66. 14 Anne Comnène, Alexiade, ed. and trans. by Leib. For Robert’s expedition to Constantinople: i, 36–61, 138–50 (i. 10–16; iii. 12; iv. 1–3); Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, pp. 213–19; Taviani-Carozzi, La terreur du monde, esp. pp. 389–449. 15 William of Apulia, ed. and trans. by Mathieu, pp. 38–46.

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William and Geoffrey followed a common narrative of events, both addressing each of the following points: 1. Guiscard decided to undertake an expedition after a pseudo-Michael VII came to him announcing that he had been dethroned as Byzantine Emperor, and that Guiscard’s daughter (betrothed to Michael’s son) had been imprisoned. Guiscard had given his daughter in marriage to Michael’s son in the hope of guaranteeing access to Byzantium and subsequently to the throne. 2. Guiscard gathered his forces in Otranto and prepared a fleet. 3. He sent a first fleet to Corfu. 4. He sailed from Otranto and took the island of Corfu. 5. He arrived at Durazzo, where locals called for the Emperor’s help. 6. The Venetians came to support Durazzo. 7. The Normans experienced their first defeat in a naval battle against the Venetians. 8. Emperor Alexius arrived near Durazzo; the Normans prevailed over him but he escaped. 9. The Normans seized Durazzo, following its betrayal by Dominic. If William and Geoffrey’s overall treatment was similar, there were also many differences in facts stated. I give here two important examples, the first about point 3. In William’s account we learn that Guiscard’s fleet disembarked at Corfu, terrified the inhabitants, and invaded the island; Geoffrey says that Guiscard’s knights did not dare to attack Corfu because of the presence of numerous inhabitants, and withdrew without fighting. The second example concerns points 6 and 7. According to Geoffrey, the arrival of the Venetians immediately provoked a naval battle. The Normans would have won if the enemy had not, through cunning, asked for a truce and promised to surrender the next day. While the Normans were prematurely celebrating their victory, the Venetians skilfully prepared to resume hostilities and thus managed to fool Robert’s fleet and seize Durazzo. In William’s poem, by contrast, the Venetians were never threatened at sea, and it was rather Guiscard’s Dalmatian sailors who feared a fight against the Venetian ships. We notice that Malaterra, by choosing not to conceal the Venetian victory, found a way to lay the blame for it on their duplicitous cunning. Then, after the second naval battle, in which each army destroyed one ship — the Venetians by stratagem (artificiose), the Normans by force — Malaterra could conclude by underlining the opposite characters of the belligerents through chiasmus.16 William’s poem always praised Guiscard for his courage and determination, whatever the difficulties. Far from making the naval defeats at Durazzo his fault, William showed they

16 Malaterra, iii. 26 (Pontieri, p. 73, ll. 21–23): ‘Sicque, damno contra damnum composito, pari ultione facilius fertur. Nostris itaque exhorrescentibus dolum ipsorum, ipsis autem strenuitatem nostrorum, certamen utriusque [Pontieri: utrimque] diremptum quieuit’.

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were due to Venetian experience and to Dalmatian and Ragusan weakness and fear.17 The differences between William and Geoffrey are not always easy or even possible to interpret or explain, but both authors obviously used events to reveal character — in terms of praise or castigation — and to explain the outcome by characterizing protagonists or peoples. Moral characterization, along with the action of divine providence, was thought one of the most useful ways to explain and justify the res gestae (discussed further below). Malaterra was much more specific about dates than William, for example in starting chapter 13 with the ablative Eodem anno (In that year), and chapter 24 with a precise month, anno Dominicae incarnationis MLXXXI, mense Maio (in the year of the Lord’s incarnation 1081, in the month of May). Like many medieval historians,18 William did not give dates much importance: he just followed the chronological sequence of events, allowing flashbacks to put them into perspective, and showing how they were related. William and Geoffrey both had good knowledge of the local place-names of Guiscard’s campaign, though sometimes gave conflicting information about the places that Guiscard occupied. According to William, the Norman army first seized Corfu (city and island) and Vonitza (in the Gulf of Arta), before heading toward Durazzo, whereas Geoffrey reckoned that Robert reached the port of Herico and ravaged in the mouth of the Vojussa river, then set off to Cassiope (Casopoli) in the north of Corfu and seized the whole island of Corfu, before going on to Valona, Canna (next to Valona), and Durazzo. Both authors agreed on the fact that after overcoming Alexius’s army, Guiscard made a fortification for the winter on the Devol river, but Geoffrey named the watercourse ‘the river of demons’ (fluvium Daemoniorum) and said that Guiscard called his fortification ‘Guiscard’s mount’ (mons),19 adding that, after taking Durazzo, the Normans also seized Kastoria before returning to Apulia. William was much better informed about people’s names and roles than Malaterra. Malaterra mentioned only three non-Norman characters: the Emperors Michael VII and Alexius, and the Venetian Dominic. William, in addition to the names of five Emperors (Michael and Constantine [Doukas], Romanus [Diogenus], Nichoferus [sic, for Nikephorus], and Alexius) and two of their enemies (Basilachius and Brienus), had perfect knowledge of the identities of the men responsible for the government of Durazzo (Georgius [Monomachatus] and Georgius Palaiologus) as well as knowing about Basil (Mesopotamites), who was sent by Alexius to Butrinto against Guiscard, and the Venetian Dominic. There are many other differences of historical detail between the two authors. Unlike William, Malaterra described (among other things): the construction of the Norman fleet (in a chapter written in verse, containing

17 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 297–306. 18 Mathey-Maille, Écritures du passé, pp. 22–25. 19 Pontieri, p. 74, ll. 17–18.

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some technical terms);20 the ‘Greek fire’ used by the Venetians during naval combat;21 and the two-pronged spear of the Varangians.22 To conclude: the differences between the two authors cannot always be explained; they are not specific to the episode of the conquest of the Balkans but characterize their work as a whole;23 and in general, William’s abundant information on the Byzantines proves he had a better knowledge of Byzantine affairs than Geoffrey, while Geoffrey was more accurate about chronology. Beyond mere factual detail there are significant differences between what we might call the argumentative discourse of the two works. Geoffrey Malaterra sought above all to legitimize the Great Count Roger’s accession to power, and to show the connection with divine providence.24 William of Apulia represents the Norman conquest of southern Italy led by Robert Guiscard as God’s plan from the very first line of Book i.25 In both works, the figure of Guiscard was magnified through his expedition to the Balkans, and both — as we shall see — placed a deliberate focus on the link between that episode and the conflict between the papacy and Emperor Henry IV, in which Guiscard took a decisive role. I will discuss three elements in order to clarify the point that the authors’ narrative choices had an intrinsically argumentative scope 20 Malaterra, iii. 14 (Pontieri, p. 65, ll. 31–35): ‘Anchora conflatur; clavorum forma paratur. | Compago navis tegitur superaddita clavis. | Obducunt imas alii lanugine rimas | Atque picem liquidam properant superaddere quidam. | Vela suunt [Pontieri: sinunt] isti, studium dant funibus isti’. (An anchor is forged, a mould for nails prepared. | These very nails are used to fasten the joints of a ship. | Other craftsmen cover the cracks with down, | And hasten to add some liquid pitch. | Some prepare the sails, others dedicate themselves to the ropes.); The Deeds of Count Roger, trans. by Wolf, p. 145. 21 Malaterra, iii. 26 (Pontieri, p. 73, ll. 17–20): ‘Sed illi, artificiose ignem quem Graecum appellant, qui nec aqua extinguitur, occultis fistularum meatibus sub undas [Pontieri: undis] perflantes, quandam navem de nostris, quam cattum nominant, dolose inter ipsas liquidi aequoris undas comburunt’ (But the Venetians, using hidden pipes, spread artificial fire, the sort called ‘Greek fire’ which water cannot extinguish, onto the sea, and they treacherously set fire to one of our ships, of the type called a ‘catt’, as it floated on the waves) (trans. by Loud). 22 Malaterra, iii. 27 (Pontieri, p. 74, ll. 3–4): ‘caudatis bidentibus, quibus hoc genus hominum potissimum utitur’ (with two-pronged spears in the handling of which the Varangians are experts); this translation preferable to that of The Deeds of Count Roger, trans. by Wolf, p. 158. 23 For the chronological details in Malaterra, compare Histoire du Grand Comte Roger, ed. and trans. by Lucas-Avenel, i, 31–38. 24 On this point see in particular Malaterra, ii. 1, 1 (Pontieri, p. 29, ll. 13–18): ‘Elegantissimus igitur juvenis comes Calabriae, Rogerius, cum apud Regium cum fratre duce, tota Calabria debellata, moraretur, Siciliam incredulam audiens et, brevissimo mari interposito, ex proximo intuens, ut semper dominationis avidus erat, ambitione adipiscendi eam captus est, duo sibi proficua deputans animae scilicet et corpori si terram idolis deditam ad cultum divinum revocaret et fructus vel redditus terrae, quos gens Deo ingrata sibi usurpaverat, ipse in Dei servitio dispensaturus temporaliter possideret’. See also Histoire du Grand Comte Roger, ed. and trans. by Lucas-Avenel, i, 68–80. 25 William of Apulia, i. ll. 1–5: ‘Postquam complacuit regi mutare potenti | Tempora cum regnis, ut Graecis Apula tellus | Iam possessa diu non amplius incoleretur, | Gens Normannorum feritate insignis equestri | Intrat, et expulsis Latio dominatur Achivis’.

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which aimed to celebrate Duke Robert Guiscard: first, the Duke’s loyalty and devotion to the Pope; second, the circumstances that justified taking up arms against the Byzantine Empire; and third, the moralization of historical discourse by opposing the vices and virtues of the personalities involved. We shall see that these elements, although set out differently by William and Geoffrey, suggest that they shared common beliefs about the legitimacy of the Hautevilles to govern southern Italy. One important contrast is in their attitudes to Robert himself.

Robert Guiscard as the Pope’s ‘fidelis’ Although Book iv of William of Apulia’s poem is mostly dedicated to the expedition to the Balkans, it evokes the good relationship between Duke Robert Guiscard and Pope Gregory VII at the very beginning and end. Indeed William mentioned almost nothing of the long period of discord between the Duke and the Pope. There is only a brief mention at the start of the book of the Pope’s anger because of Guiscard’s siege of Benevento (December 1077 to April 1078), during which he excommunicated him in March 1078, though the point is to emphasize Guiscard’s readiness to ask for forgiveness and the Pope’s immediate acceptance.26 The poet added that Gregory VII promised Guiscard the Roman monarchy, and was careful to report immediately afterwards that Gregory excommunicated Henry IV. At the end of the same book, after seizing Durazzo and victory over the Emperor Alexius Comnenus, Robert hastened to rescue the Pope from imprisonment in Rome. The purpose of the book is clear: it is to show how the Duke became so powerful. Hence he was portrayed as the only supporter of a pope under threat from Henry, and as leading an army which overcame the forces of two emperors within a few months. Malaterra’s selection of events was different but the goal was the same. He omitted Guiscard’s excommunication and rewrote the narrative to suggest that he had always maintained an excellent relationship with the Pope, even though he ignored his difficulties when he set off to Corfu. Later, Robert was quick to answer the Pope’s call and returned to Italy to deliver him from his prison.27 Chapter 29 ends with the terror that Guiscard inspired in all the

26 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 16–23; Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, pp. 204–06. 27 Malaterra, iii. 33 (Pontieri, p. 77, ll. 25–29): ‘Dux vero, quamvis ad id quod coeperat intendere omnibus utilitatibus in animo praeferret, tamen calamitatem sanctae Matris Ecclesiae audiens et dominum suum, sub quo omnia quae habebat possidere se cognoscebat, in tantum angustiari, fidem datam et legalitatem suam servans, maluit sua, quamvis cara, ad tempus postponere et sanctae Dei [Pontieri: Matris] Ecclesiae vel domini sui necessitatibus inservire’ (Although the Duke had placed above all other interests the project in which he was committed, however, when he learned that the Holy Mother Church was persecuted and his lord, whom he knew was the lord of all his possessions, was faced with such difficulties,

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Eastern Empire and the imperial city itself (‘Timor ejus totum imperium usque ad ipsam regiam urbem temere faciebat’), while we learn in chapter 37 how Henry fled from Rome as Guiscard approached. The specific details included in William’s poem amplified his core message. Guiscard’s decision to prepare an expedition to the Balkans immediately follows two pieces of information: first, that Guiscard and the Pope signed a treaty of perpetual peace; second, that Guiscard ordered the building of Salerno Cathedral, dedicated to St Matthew.28 Robert’s faith in the banner of St Peter (given by the Pope) and St Matthew was rewarded when he attacked Alexius’s troops: ‘Et meritis sancti, cuius fabricaverat aedes, | Mathaei fidens, non diffidenter in hostem | Irruit, atque ferox obsessa non procul urbe | Commisit bellum. Superatur Alexius’ (relying on the merits of St Matthew, to whom he had built a church, he scurried after the enemy without fear, and engaged a fierce battle near the besieged city. Alexius was defeated).29 The juxtaposition of the reconstruction of the cathedral church of St Matthew with the reconciliation with the Pope appears as a proof of Robert’s loyalty to the Church, and is also used as a narrative element to explain later the victory over Alexius. The events of Book iv are ordered linearly and presented as a succession of facts which echo each other and take argumentative value — thanks to connections made by the author — to give the Duke the image of a Christian prince, loyal to God and to the pope. These details are absent from Malaterra’s account, but he specifies that Robert’s army heard Mass and received communion in the morning before the battle,30 and their victory appeared as a sign of the divine plan. For both authors, the selection and organization of information had a clear meaning: Guiscard’s victory was a sign of God’s favour in return for his piety. Guiscard was aware of that, exhorting his men before the battle: ‘Cum

respecting the given faith and the law that he had fixed, he preferred to put aside for a time his projects, though they were dear to him, and serve the holy Church of God and his lord in adversity). 28 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 66–72 (Mathieu, pp. 206–07): ‘Hoc prudens comperto papa favorem | Curat habere ducis, succurrat ut ipse labori | Promptus ad arma suo, vires et deprimat hostis. | Pacis perpetuae Beneventi foedere pacto, | Gregorius Romam remeavit, duxque Salernum. | Hac, Mathaee, tibi construxit in urbe decoris | Aecclesiam miri […]’) (Having learned this, the wise Pope takes care of getting the favour of the Duke, in order that, ready to take up arms, he rescues him and slaughters the forces of the enemy. Having concluded a treaty of perpetual peace in Benevento, Gregory returned to Rome and the Duke to Salerno. In this city, Matthew, he had built for you a church of remarkable beauty). 29 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 410–13 (Mathieu, p. 226). 30 Malaterra, iii. 27 (Pontieri, p. 73, ll. 37–39): ‘Mane autem facto, dum [Pontieri: dux] ipse […] omnesque nostri surgentes cum summa devotione hymnos Dei cum missarum celebratione audiunt, presbyteris compunctive confitentes’ (In the morning, while the Duke and all our people are listening with great devotion to hymns addressed to God during the celebration of the Mass, confessing to priests with compunction). Other examples: Malaterra, ii. 9 (Pontieri, p. 32, l. 10), ii. 33 (Pontieri, p. 42, ll. 30–32).

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nisi de coelo nulli victoria detur’ (No one gets the victory but by Heaven).31 By placing the Duke, a papal vassal, as equal in rank to the two emperors, or even higher, Malaterra and William equated the Duke’s achievements with the papal cause: the Pope’s decision to entrust Guiscard with the defence of the Church’s rights coincided with the will of divine providence. That is true even though the two authors presented the circumstances of the Duke’s expedition in different terms.

The Circumstances and Rationale of the Expedition: A ‘Just War’? Guiscard’s motives for conquering the Balkans were not explained in the same terms by William and Geoffrey. The poet foregrounded the injury that the Greeks inflicted on Robert through his daughter; whereas Geoffrey used the pseudo-Michael VII to underline the contrast between the characters of Robert and the Greeks. William’s poetic art consisted in his choice of specific figures and terms to present the conquest as a ‘just war’: Dedecus illatum genero prolique repulsae Sedibus augustis non sollicitudine parva Cor ducis accendit. Gravis haec iniuria multis Esse videbatur ducis: hanc desiderat ultum Ire. […] The shame inflicted on his son-in-law and daughter, who had been expelled from the imperial court, awakened in the heart of the Duke a sense of worrying concern. Many saw it as a serious contempt brought against the Duke: he wanted revenge for it.32 These lines are connected by sounds, enjambments, and prosodic choices: alliteration in p (prolique repulsae, parva) and d (dedecus, sedibus, sollicitudine, ducis, accendit); successive enjambments which draw attention to the assonance in i (sedibus augustis […] | […] ducis accendit […] multis | […] ducis); and the parallel structure of hexameters, which begin with a dactyl followed by a spondee and a long syllable before the caesura, or in which the first three hemistiches correspond with terms or syntagms of two or three syllables. All this work makes a particular link between the term dedecus (shame), used by William to refer to the removal of Michael’s son and Guiscard’s daughter, and subject of the verb accendit, and the words sedibus and cor ducis. The shame inflicted on the daughter was felt strongly by the Duke himself, and that personal feeling soon gave place to a political dimension by substituting

31 William of Apulia, iv. l. 354 (Mathieu, p. 222). 32 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 73–77 (Mathieu, p. 208).

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dedecus with gravis […] iniuria, and by assigning to many people (multis) this new vision of contempt. In this way, the revenge sought by Guiscard found an immediate justification. This was a ‘just war’, the repair of injustice (hanc [iniuriam] […] ultum), according to the concepts defined by Augustine (following Cicero), which inspired many historians in the Middle Ages: ‘justa […] bella […] ulciscuntur […] injurias’.33 A similar phraseology, again inspired by Augustine — as noticed by Graham Loud — was used by Gregory VII in the letter he sent to the bishops of southern Italy to ask them to encourage their people to join Robert’s army.34 No matter whether William was aware of this letter or not: he probably wanted to legitimate the Duke’s decision in terms that coincided with the Church’s policy. In addition, the sentence about the Duke’s will (hanc desiderat ultum | Ire) is very short and highlighted by the enjambment of Ire: it creates a sharp break in an unusual place, the better to suggest Robert’s determination, in contrast with the Byzantine Emperor, who is introduced in the very next sentence as ‘An old man’ (Senex quidam). Further, William related how an impostor claiming to be Michael VII encouraged Guiscard to open hostilities with the aim of replacing the Emperor. Malaterra also mentioned the false Michael and noted that Guiscard used him as propaganda among the people of southern Italy, but did not attempt to justify the expedition by presenting it as legitimate revenge. His aim was actually quite different, as the following long passage shows. The sentences are numbered for ease of reference: [1] Eodem anno Graecus quidam sub nomine Michaelis, imperatoris Constantinopolitani, ad ducem in Apuliam venit, auxilium expetens ad palatium recuperandum, a quo, ut dicebat, fraude suorum in die sancto Parasceve dejectus fuerat monachusque violenter fieri compulsus, hoc solo criminis35 objecto quod filiam ducis filio suo nuptui acceperat. [2] Ipse quoque filius, ne spes aliqua recuperandi palatii vel de ducta uxore36 procreandae propaginis reservaretur, turpiter eunuchizatus, usque ad exitum vitae exilio religatus est, alio in loco expulsi in palatio subrogato quem nec aliqua — vel extrema — antiquorum imperatorum linea ad

33 Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, ed. by Zycha, 6. 10: ‘iusta autem bella ea definiri solent quae ulciscuntur iniurias’. Russell, The Just War; Russell, ‘Love and Hate’, p. 112, note 16. The concept of ‘just war’ had been already studied by Cicero, De officiis, ed. by Winterbottom, i. 11. 35: ‘quare suscipienda quidem bella sunt ob eam causam ut sine iniuria in pace uiuatur’. 34 Das Register Gregors VII, ed. by Caspar, p. 524: ‘Notum esse prudentiae vestrae non dubitamus gloriosissimum imperatorem Constantinopolitanum, Michahelem videlicet, ab imperialis excellentiae culmine indigne potius et malitiose quam iuste aut rationabiliter esse deiectum’. Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, p. 210, underlined the significance of the words ‘indigne potius et malitiose quam iuste aut rationabiliter’. 35 Pontieri: crimine. 36 Pontieri: deductae uoris.

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id hereditatis jure gentium invitaverat. [3] Timebant denique Graeci ne, si ex nostrae gentis uxore heredes procreati in palatio subcrescerent, occasio liberius illuc accedendi nostrae genti daretur et gens, deliciis et voluptatibus potiusquam belli studiis ex more dedita, nostrorum strenuitate subjugata conculcaretur. [4] Ipsam ducis filiam reclusam diligenti custodia observabant, ne forte, si alicui potenti nuberet, quia hereditali imperatori nupta semel in palatio coronata fuerat, ab ipso cui nuberet aliqua hereditas per ipsam in palatio proclamaretur. [5] Michael itaque a monasterio in quo monachus coactus erat, habitu ejecto, ut dicebat, profugus in Apuliam veniens, a duce imperiali honore susceptus, per omnes civitates Apuliae sive Calabriae processionibus et imperialibus pompis ex edicto ejusdem ducis accuratissime obsecundabatur.37 [6] Et hoc quidem totum ex industria dux faciebat, non quod animum eum in palatio restituendi haberet. [7] Audierat nempe generum suum eunuchizatum; unde, spe suscipiendi38 de filia parentis39 cui palatium jure hereditali competeret amissa, ad hoc intra40 se nitens tacitus agebat, ut sub nomine Michaelis, quibusdam sibi faventibus, Graecis facilius debellatis, cum ad palatium usque perventum foret, vi coronam cum sceptro et imperialibus ornamentis pervadens ipse imperator fieret. [8] Promittens tamen se sibi auxilium laturum […] [1] In that same year a Greek came to the Duke in Apulia, claiming to be Michael, the Emperor of Constantinople, and seeking his help to recover the palace from which, so he said, he had been driven out on Good Friday through the disloyalty of his men and forced by violence to become a monk; the only reason for this had been because he had agreed to the marriage of the Duke’s daughter to his son. [2] To prevent his son from having any hope either of regaining the palace or of begetting offspring from the wife he had married, the boy had shamefully been made a eunuch and sent into lifelong exile. Another man had been installed in the palace in his place, but he had not been selected from one or other of the families descended from the ancient emperors, to whom the dignity belonged by hereditary right. [3] The Greeks, however, were afraid that if heirs who were born from a wife from our race were to grow up in the palace, then an opportunity would be created for our people to come there freely; and a people who were customarily devoted to luxuries and self-indulgence rather than to warlike exercises would be trampled under foot by the valour of our men and made their subjects. [4] They were careful to keep the Duke’s daughter shut away under strict guard to prevent her marrying any powerful man. Since she had once been married to the hereditary 37 38 39 40

Pontieri: obsecundatur. Pontieri: suscipiendae. Pontieri: parentis prolis. Pontieri: inter.

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Emperor and had worn a crown in the palace, some hereditary right to that palace might be claimed by the person to whom she was married. [5] Michael, however, had, or so he claimed, left the monastery in which he had been forced to become a monk, abandoned his habit and fled to Apulia. On his arrival there he was received by the Duke with imperial honours, and on the Duke’s order was meticulously greeted with the imperial processions and ceremonies throughout all the towns of Apulia and Calabria. [6] The Duke was doing all this quite deliberately, but not because it was his intention to restore him to the palace. [7] He had undoubtedly heard that his son-in-law had been made a eunuch; hence the chance of having children by his daughter, to whom the palace would belong by hereditary right, had been lost. He was in fact making this effort with the secret intention that when, acting in Michael’s name and with the help of the latter’s supporters, the Greeks had easily been defeated and he had reached the imperial palace, he would seize the crown, scepter, and imperial regalia and make himself emperor. [8] However he promised that he would aid Michael […]41 Malaterra reported firstly in an indirect form, then with the interpolated clause ‘as he said’, Michael’s plea to Guiscard to ‘help […] recover the palace […] from which he had been driven out on Good Friday through the disloyalty of his men and forced by violence to become a monk’ [1].42 The pretended innocence of the character contrasted with his own ignominy, because the only charge against him was to have married his son to the Duke’s daughter. In the next three sentences, we learn that the Greeks condemned Michael’s son to exile and castration — an act qualified by the adverb ‘shamefully’ — in order to prevent him from resuming the palace or having sons; and that the replacement Emperor could not claim any relationship, however remote, with the lineage of the emperors [2]. This information (which corresponds with William’s except for Constantine being made a eunuch) was presented at the beginning as if stated by Michael himself, and used by Malaterra to dramatize his character. From the second sentence, however, he eliminated all marks of indirect speech, and placed the facts and the Greeks’ intentions under his own historical authority, without removing marks of modalization: his condemnation of the crimes committed by the Greeks is strongly expressed. As usual, Malaterra appears as omniscient narrator, and obviously had a twofold purpose. On one hand, he marked his distance from the facts reported by the pseudo-Michael through the phrase ut dicebat placed at the beginning of the chapter and repeated in the fifth sentence: the reader understands that he must be wary of this alleged Emperor. At the same time, it allows him to

41 Malaterra, iii. 13 (Pontieri, pp. 64, l. 24 to p. 65, l. 13) (trans. by Loud). 42 On the date: Mathey-Maille, Écritures du passé, pp. 22–25.

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denounce Byzantine treachery from the mouth of a Greek. On the other hand, when he gives information about the children or condemns the Greeks’ fears and intentions, he takes responsibility himself and presents the facts and the characters’ feelings as historical truth. This is underpinned by his recurrent use of the structure ne with subjunctive in sentences 2, 3, and 4. By aligning his moral picture of the characters with the events that really occured, the historian made them both historical truth. Both De rebus gestis Rogerii and the Gesta Guiscardi repeatedly denounced Greek pusillanimity, as did many Latin chronicles of the time, following Isidore of Seville’s calling them ‘fickle’ (leves) in his Etymologies: they were weak and corrupt people, void of the moral qualities necessary to win in war and dominate people. Those qualities were exemplified by the Normans (as already pointed out in Normandy by Dudo of Saint-Quentin and William of Jumièges), and animated in Italy by Guiscard’s strenuitas.43 The continuity of similar images of the Greeks from Isidore’s time onwards shows that historians continued to attest to the harmony between the truth of events and the truth of character. While Greek pusillanimity had become a cliché, Guiscard’s virtue was the very subject matter for both William and Geoffrey, but there was an important difference between them in relation to Guiscard’s motivations. Malaterra immediately pointed out that Guiscard’s sole purpose in receiving Michael was to obtain the imperial crown for himself. William, by contrast, sought to legitimate Robert’s intentions by representing the expedition as a ‘just war’. Malaterra did not mention the Duke’s anger or desire for revenge; he made no mention here of ‘just war’: it was a war of conquest born from the Duke’s unfulfilled ambitions [6 and 7]. Malaterra rewrote history in this episode in order to base his argument on an opposition between Greek weakness and Robert’s courage, characteristics inspired respectively by traditional and newer portraits of the Greeks and Normans. This way of writing provided Malaterra with good explanations for Norman successes and Greek setbacks, and put his account in accordance with a sense of history that glorified the Hautevilles. His justification of the expedition is nevertheless not as positive as William’s.

The Moral of the Story: Vices and Virtues For William, as for Geoffrey, history was a series of actions conducted by characters whose decisions could depend either on their own quality or that of their people (gens). Whereas Greeks were mostly weak, Lombards treacherous, and Saracens impious, Normans were brave. The general character of a gens was sometimes illustrated by the personality of a single figure, mostly their

43 Loud, ‘The Gens Normannorum’, pp. 109–10; Lucas-Avenel, ‘La gens Normannorum’, pp. 238–39.

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leaders, whose decisions could be reasoned or related to their feelings.44 But whereas the poet merely used the logical and chronological succession of the facts to explain causes, Geoffrey composed long sections to describe the characters concerned. Within the limited frame of verse, William often noticed a unique and evocative feature that justified some action or other: a recurring reminder of Guiscard’s courage was enough to explain the outcome of a problem. William joined Geoffrey on this point; even if their style is different, both authors radically contrasted the weakness of the Greeks with Guiscard’s force, as Amatus of Montecassino had done previously. Robert’s tenacity and stubbornness were always exemplary in hardship and when he had to overcome many hurdles. Those qualities are a leitmotiv in the story, often represented by a paratactical sentence structure,45 making a contrast between Guiscard and his enemies. For example, when Alexius, as Emperor, tried to reconcile Robert and divert him from his project, William replied: ‘Sed mens ducis ardua nescit | Cedere proposito’ (But the defiant spirit of the Duke knew not how to abandon a project);46 later, while the situation was advantageous to Alexius, the shipwreck did not turn Guiscard away from his project: ‘[…] Missum sibi gaudet Alexius hostem. | Dux47 tamen a coeptis, ubi comperit affore tempus, | Noluit avelli […]’;48 then, a third time, when the Venetian fleet managed to seize some vessels, William immediately added: ‘Non hoc terretur ducis imperterrita casu | Mens aliud meditans […]’ (But this misfortune did not shake the intrepid spirit of the Duke: he conceived another plan).49 By their repetition, these clichés can be identified as a narrative tool: they help the poet to restart the account and explain in very simple terms why the Duke never gave up; at the same time, they were obviously in the service of a panegyric speech. Thus, the Duke’s capacity never to be discouraged but to change his plans according to the circumstances — that is, his opportunism — ensured his victory; indeed, after his men fled to the sea before Alexius’s army, and when they managed to escape from the danger and join the Duke, Guiscard changed all his plans (said William), and urged his men to rush on the enemy: his exhortation, coupled with trust in God and St Matthew, acted as the decisive elements that granted him victory.50 Being more interested in the circumstances of the battles than in the battles themselves, William gave no further information on the confrontation, so that the outcome and the victory were extremely sudden: ‘[…] non diffidenter in hostem | Irruit, atque ferox obsessa non procul

44 Loud, ‘The Gens Normannorum’; Lucas-Avenel, ‘La gens Normannorum’. 45 Auerbach, Mimésis, esp. p. 119. 46 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 158–59 (Mathieu, p. 212). 47 Georges Monomachatos, Duke of Illyricum. 48 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 229–31 (Mathieu, p. 216). 49 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 308–09 (Mathieu, p. 216). 50 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 383–412 (Mathieu, pp. 224–26).

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urbe | Commisit bellum. Superatur Alexius, atque | Terga dedere sui […]’.51 The juxtaposition of the two actions (commisit […] Superatur), placed after Guiscard’s exhortation, suggests with great efficiency that the Norman victory depended entirely on the leader’s virtues of force, eloquence, and faith.52 We can observe the same process in other accounts of battle composed by the poet: he developed details concerning preparation for battle, gave the reader some clues to predict the outcome — such as the disproportionately small number of the Normans’ forces — and finally added a sudden and decisive element that reversed the odds in favour of the Normans, whose valour offset their small numbers. The account of the battle itself is ousted, while the enemy’s flight occupies several lines, as, for example, in the battle of Olivento in 1041.53 In William’s account of the Balkan expedition, only Alexius escapes from the common Greek trait of weakness, and William devoted to the Byzantine general a portrait of a few lines (quite rare in the poem), in which he recognized his outstanding qualities: Astuta ratione vigens et strenuus armis. Pectore clarus erat clarisque parentibus ortus. Annos iste suae plures aetatis ab ipso Flore iuventutis primaevo duxit in armis; Si quid oportebat fieri grave, non dubitabat. Clever mind, fearless in battle, famed by his valour and born of famed parents, he spent most of his life under arms in the first flush of youth. He shrank from no difficult undertaking if the holy Roman empire ordered it.54 In the lines following this portrait, we learn how he overcame two enemies of the empire, Basilachius and Brienus, one by force, the other by cunning. William concluded: ‘Impiger et cautus sic victor Alexius hostes | Imperii multos armis superavit et arte’ (Indefatigable and shrewd, Alexius won the victory, overcoming many enemies of the empire by force and skill).55 This flashback is no mere digression but has a prominent position in the poet’s narrative economy, since it announces the difficulty of Guiscard’s undertaking in facing an enemy with the same qualities of bravery and intelligence in war as himself. After making that point, any account of the expedition would have to show why, despite Alexius’s qualities, victory went to the Normans. Their leader’s virtues were the same as Alexius’s but could be celebrated for reaching their highest point in two successive events: Guiscard defeated the Emperor by force, and seized Durazzo by cunning. William applied this conclusion:

51 52 53 54 55

William of Apulia, iv. ll. 411–14 (Mathieu, p. 226). William of Apulia, iv. ll. 398–424 (Mathieu, p. 226). William of Apulia, iv. ll. 254–88 (Mathieu, pp. 112–14). William of Apulia, iv. ll. 82–87 (Mathieu, p. 208). William of Apulia, iv. ll. 120–21 (Mathieu, p. 210).

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‘Sic sibi Dirachium dux subdidit, atque quod armis | Vincere non potuit, victoria subiugat artis’ (So the Duke secured Durazzo for himself. Being unable to conquer it by force of arms alone, he secured victory through a stratagem).56 Guiscard was thus presented as a man who had the qualities of an epic hero, able to carry out any undertaking: by his eloquentia, he helped fugitive Normans to become as heroic as himself;57 by his prudentia, his capacity to forecast events (here: catus, sagaciter), he took the opposite part of those who seemed temerarii;58 by his pietas, he had divine favour;59 and by his fortitudo, he demonstrated his determination, an inner strength that could be subsidiary to his physical strength.60 By using a flashback, the poet underlined what was, according to him, the linearity of history, and by celebrating Guiscard’s virtues in the same order as Alexius’s he showed how power passed from one hand to another by divine providence, as he had announced at the very beginning of the poem. Geoffrey Malaterra, writing in prose, largely contextualized the facts at his disposal by developing long sentences, using connective proposals, absolute ablatives, affixed participles, and other tools which helped him to characterize the feelings and emotions of the protagonists. This characterization was a way of explaining the causes of events and a means of affecting the reader. In writing this way, he followed the principles of ancient rhetoric laid down by Cicero and Quintilian that combined docere and movere in order to convince the audience, principles which had inspired earlier Christian authors such as Augustine and Gregory the Great. The education of believers’ emotions had been one of the most important issues in earlier collections of exempla.61 At outstanding instance in Malaterra is his long chapter 24. It carries important factual information throughout, including the date, the place where the fleet gathered, the number of vessels sent to Durazzo as scouts, the disproportion in size of the forces, Guiscard’s arrival, and the capture of Corfu, Valona, and Canna. But Malaterra deployed his talent as a writer less in military reportage

56 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 502–03 (Mathieu, p. 230); trans. by Loud, p. 56. 57 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 131–32 (Mathieu, p. 210): ‘[…] sed verba minantia blandis | Dux addens precibus, multos properare coegit’; iv. ll. 401–06 (Mathieu, p. 226): ‘Gaudet adesse suos, et paucis vocibus illos | Dux prior hortatur, solum tutamen in armis | Affore conclamans, et si dant terga Pelasgis, | Quemque trucidandum pecorino more minatur; | Captivis vitam morti praenunciat aequam. | His hortamentis accendit corda suorum […]’. 58 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 347–50 (Mathieu, p. 222): ‘Et quid opus facto sit consulit. Effera quorum | Mens erat, audaci dimittere castra quibusdam | Consilio placuit, venientibus indubitanter | Hostibus occurrens ut terreat impetus illos’; iv. ll. 356–60 (Mathieu, pp. 222–24): ‘Nil ineundo tamen temerarius esse volebat | […] catus unde sagaciter omnes | Ordinat ante suos, et quaeque paranda coaptat’. 59 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 407–10 (Mathieu, p. 226). 60 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 158–59 (Mathieu, p. 212): ‘[…] mens ducis ardua nescit | Cedere proposito’; iv. ll. 229–30 (Mathieu, p. 216): ‘[…] Missum sibi gaudet Alexius hostem. | Dux tamen a coeptis, ubi comperit affore tempus, | Noluit avelli’. 61 Corbin, Courtine, and Virello, eds, Histoire des émotions, esp. pp. 169–73.

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than in describing characters and feelings, and it was in characterization — ‘the combination of character with intent’ — where the justification of events most often resided.62 What is striking in this chapter is the author’s insistence on contrasting Robert’s feelings (extremely determined and sure of victory) with those of his men (filled with fear) and Corfu’s inhabitants (seized with terror). Thus, Guiscard’s scouts were terrified by the multitude of Corfu’s people to the point that they did not even dare to disembark. This was an obvious way of showing the Duke’s steadfast resolution despite the numerical disadvantage, since demonstrating his resolution is the very heart of the chapter.63 Describing the Duke as exilaratus and willing to set out when his scouts reported that the island was peaceful, he contrasted Guiscard’s state of mind with the fear felt both by those who stayed behind and by those who accompanied him. Malaterra emphasized the tears of those who remained, and the tremors of those who left, as if overwhelmed by fever, heads bowed in a gesture reminiscent of Virgil’s expression uultum demissa (used of Dido addressing the newly landed Trojans).64 The author then switched from narrative to the argumentative mode in order to prove that the undertaking was unique: Nam quantae audaciae cujusve militaris strenuitatis dux iste fuerit, cum per multa ejus exercitia satis abundeque clareat, etiam si reliqua omnia sileant, ex hoc potissimum indubitanter annotari potest: denique,65 cum tam populosum imperium tamque copiosum imperatorem totve millia hostium pauca manu spe subjugandi bello lacessere tentatum ire praesumebat, ipse armatae militiae non amplius quam66 mille tricentos milites secum habuisse ab his67 qui eidem negotio interfuerunt attestatur. As highly regarded as he was for his many previous exploits, if none of these were ever mentioned again, that fact that he even dared to challenge such a populous empire, with such a rich emperor, supported by so many thousands of enemy troops, attests to his undeniable audacity and vigour. And to do so with such a small force of his own, having in his army no more than 1300 knights, as those present have testified!68

62 Kempshall, Rhetoric, pp. 177–78. 63 Malaterra, iii. 24 (Pontieri, p. 71, ll. 16–21): ‘Dux itaque plurimum exilaratus, copiis navibus introductis, festinus cum omni classe transfretare [Pontieri: transmeare] accelerat, pluribus ex remanentibus amicis, quibus Apuliam Calabriamque procuratum delegaverat, timore eum et qui cum ipso abibant amittendi usque ad ipsa lachrimarum indicia quas affectus pietatis exprimebat dolentibus, quibusdam vero ex his [Pontieri: iis] qui cum ipso proficiscebantur timore tam horribili ad quod intendebant [Pontieri: intendebat] inceptus — ac si febrium typo gravarentur [Pontieri: congravarentur] — vultibus demissis [Pontieri: militibus demisse] trementibusֹ’. 64 Virgil, Aeneid, i. 561, in Opera, ed. by Mynors. 65 Pontieri: quod. 66 Pontieri: plusquam. 67 Pontieri: eis. 68 Malaterra, iii. 24 (Pontieri, p. 71, ll. 21–26); trans. by Wolf, pp. 153–54.

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Malaterra seems to adopt an objective point of view: he used logical connectors (nam, denique), impersonal structures (satis abundeque clareat; ex hoc potissimum indubitanter annotari potest), and he proved his point by the testimony of men who participated in the adventure. But in fact his account contains a great deal of subjectivity, which appears in the employment of intensives and superlatives (quantae audaciae; multa; potissimum; tam […] tamque […] totve; amplius quam), in the development of oppositions (cum […] multa […] etiam si reliqua omnia; totve millia hostium pauca manu), and ternary rhythm (tam […] tam […] tot): all these stylistic devices were among his usual tools for rewriting history, and he used them here to inspire the reader’s admiration for Guiscard’s extraordinary virtues. The ensuing long sentence depicts Guiscard’s state of mind, which was driven by ‘the innate rage in his heart’. This ferocitas was one of the characteristics of the Hauteville family and especially Guiscard (in both Geoffrey’s and William’s work). In other circumstances he knew how to tame it,69 but here it reached such a pitch that it blinded him: Porro ei copias viresque quas res ipsa tempusque quantum ad numerum oculorum intuitu minus sufficienter administrabat, ipsa ejus animo innata militaris ferocitas — ac si plus ipsis hostibus necessariis copiis abundaret — sufficienter supraque70 eum habere in mente repraesentabat. So although the troops and forces that he disposed for this undertaking and in these circumstances were visibly inadequate in numbers, because of the innate rage in his heart at war, he considered that he had enough and even more, as if he were better provided with the necessary troops than his enemies themselves.71 Malaterra expresses a kind of protest against the crazy expedition, since the Duke’s only motivation was his desire to become emperor. He did not legitimize this conquest with the sort of words he used about Roger’s conquest of Sicily. In that episode, the author made it clear that the conquest of a Muslim island followed the Count’s decision and was conducted for his own benefit, but placed at the service of God. Further, whereas Roger adopted an attitude entirely consistent with Christian precepts,72 Guiscard, although showing some devotion, had no purpose other than to satisfy his thirst for domination, and there was nothing to match the thanksgivings that Roger multiplied after his victories. By remaining silent on this point, Malaterra represented the men differently. Although he chose in Book iii to show that Robert was the Pope’s protector and held unparalleled power that met the divine plan, he

69 For example, Malaterra, ii. 24 (Pontieri, p. 37, ll. 29–30): ‘leoninam ferocitatem, quae sibi quasi quodam modo innata erat, in agninam transferens mansuetudinem’. 70 Pontieri: itaque. 71 Malaterra, iii. 24 (Pontieri, p. 71, ll. 26–29). 72 Lucas-Avenel, ‘Le récit de Geoffroi Malaterra’; Sivo, ‘Éléments classiques et chrétiens’.

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reserved the possibility of suggesting in Book iv that after Guiscard’s death Count Roger exceeded his brother in wisdom and was the Hauteville through whom greater things could be accomplished. Guiscard’s feelings are opposed to his men’s in the passage which follows, where Malaterra juxtaposes antithetical words to paint feelings on the faces of characters (minus hilares, laetum vultum), and the hero is distinguished by his ability to restore their courage. We can notice the original structure formidolosa aestimatio in the following sentence: ‘suorumque animos […] ad militaris exercitus73 pericula tentanda quae formidolosa aestimatio dehortabatur promptiores reddebat’).74 As in William’s poem, Malaterra does not individualize Guiscard’s opponents: all are equally marked by fear of him, a fear which guides all their decisions: Porro cives, ducis adventu audito praesentiaque nimium territi, viribus suis naviter diffidentes, deditione de se ipsis facta, ejus ditioni cum ipsa urbe subduntur. Castrum etiam quoddam, urbe haud procul situm quod Canna dicebatur, a praesentia ducis timore languidum — et eo maxime propter quod Avalona, quae bellicis copiis se abundantior erat, deditionem facta — haud secus subditur. The citizens, hearing of the Duke’s arrival, were terrified, and, lacking the strength to resist, they surrendered and subjected themselves and their city to his dominion. A certain fortress called Canna, that lay not far from the city, also found itself rendered helpless with fear by the presence of the Duke, especially after Avlona, which was more abundant in military supplies, had surrendered. Canna was subjected in the same manner.75 Malaterra singles out only Alexius among the Greeks, but despite the multitude of his army, he is terrified at the defeat of his mercenaries and chooses flight rather than fight.76 Malaterra’s narrative thus gave greater prominence to the painting of feelings than to the narrative of actions. No doubt the victories were exemplary, but they only made sense when they were illuminated by a careful examination of the soul or heart of the characters involved. His historical method went beyond an argumentative construction of panegyric to involve an aesthetics of the genre. This way of writing history also appears not only in the contrast between the feelings of Robert and the other Normans, but extends to the representation of Alexius’s allies. Malaterra used their feelings, too, to dramatize his account and to give a moral example which would instruct the reader. Among the Byzantines’ allies, only the Varangians and the Venetians had the strength to worry the Normans.

73 Pontieri: exercitus secum. 74 Malaterra, iii. 24 (Pontieri, p. 71, ll. 30–33). 75 Malaterra, iii. 24 (Pontieri, p. 72, ll. 6–10); on the emendations to this sentence: Desbordes, ‘Nouvelles notes critiques’, pp. 139–40, note 72. 76 Malaterra, iii. 27 (Pontieri, p. 74, ll. 11–12): ‘territus fugam potius quam certamen eligit’.

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The strongest element of dramatization in Malaterra’s account lies in his depiction of the Varangians. At the outset, they called on the Emperor to launch an attack; when the Norman army managed to repel them, their flight was evoked in a powerful picture so as to arouse fear. Those unable to get into a church climbed on to the roof, which collapsed under their crushing weight and suffocated those who had taken refuge inside. Malaterra related the scene with a succession of verbs that described each element of the disaster, so that the reader could make a mental picture: Cum ecce quaedam acies nostra, ex adverso illis sub nudo latere prorumpens, forti congressu sauciatos et ab incepto deterritos in fugam coegit; qui versus ecclesiam sancti Nicolai, quae ibi contigua erat, vitae asylum expetentes, dum alii, quantum capacitas permittebat, subintrant, alii tanta multitudine tecta superscandunt ut pondere ipsa tecta dissoluta cum subruuntur,77 illos qui subintraverant opprimentes, collisi pariter suffocarentur. But one of our squadrons attacked them on their unprotected flank and this gallant attack forced them, wounded and terrified by the assault, to flee towards the church of St Nicholas which was nearby. Looking to save their lives, some of them, indeed as many as could fit in, entered the church, while others from this great multitude clambered onto the roof which then collapsed under their weight, thus hurling them on top of those down below. In the crush both groups were suffocated.78 Even if some of the details in Anna Comnena’s account were completely different (for example, the church was dedicated to St Michael rather than St Nicholas, and it was burned by the Normans rather than collapsing under a crush),79 it is certain that some oral tradition of the episode had spread widely. Malaterra chose to record it probably because of its evocative power, and also because it allowed him to emphasize the ardour of the mercenaries in contrast with the cowardice of the Greeks, about whom we do not even know if they launched a single arrow in the battle. Unlike the Varangians, the Venetians were characterized by deceit and greed. In both Malaterra’s and William of Apulia’s version of events, Dominic betrayed his own Venetian people, a betrayal which allowed Duke Robert to take Durazzo. Malaterra’s account is divided into three parts: the first occupies half the chapter and states the circumstances that allowed Guiscard to take the city; the second is the story of the entry into the city and the consequent panic of the inhabitants; and the third and shortest covers the inhabitants’ vain attempt to resist and their capitulation after three days of fighting. The characterization of Dominic in the first part is typical of Malaterra’s writing in that he uses some reminiscences of Sallust previously applied to other 77 Pontieri: consubruantur. 78 Malaterra, iii. 27 (Pontieri, p. 74, ll. 5–10) (trans. by Loud). 79 Anne Comnène, Alexiade, ed. by Leib, i, 160 (vi. 4).

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characters known for their duplicity and greed.80 Guiscard’s whole talent was knowing how to appreciate and discreetly take advantage of his pseudo-ally’s deceit, waiting to be corrupted. Here more than elsewhere in the Balkan expedition, the author pointed to a moral: at the height of the action, when Guiscard set up ladders on the walls and Dominic launched the ropes, Malaterra interrupted the narrative to instruct his reader by a quotation from Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy: Et quia sicut scriptum est: ‘Nullus perniciosior hostis est ad nocendum quam familiaris inimicus’,81 ab ipso qui intueri82 debuerat libera facultate urbem prorumpendi hostibus concessa […] And since, as it is written: ‘There is no enemy more able to do you injury than an enemy within’, the opportunity to break into the city was given to the enemy by the man who ought to have been its defender.83 Despite some differences between William and Geoffrey at this point, they passed a similar judgement on the characters involved and on what could be learned from the event. For William of Apulia, the Venetians were treacherous (‘malefida Venetica […] | Agmina’),84 and Dominic was the ‘domestic enemy’ of Matthew’s Gospel.85 Where Malaterra quoted Boethius, William referred to the well-known verse of the Gospel merely by using the word domesticus: […] Veneticus omnis Arma capit, praeter quos ille domesticus hostis Roberto monitis allexerat; All the Venetians took up arms, except those whom their domestic enemy had brought to Robert with his encouragement.86

80 Malaterra, iii. 28 (ed. Pontieri, p. 74, ll. 23–29): ‘Erat autem, ea tempestate, apud Duracium Veneticus [Pontieri: Venetianus] quidam, nomine Dominicus, nobilis [Pontieri: nobili] genere, cujus providentiae major turris ad tuendum delegata erat. Hujus animum dux, quadam collocutione inter se habita [Pontieri: habita inter se], frivolum [Pontieri: frivola] aliquantisper dignoscens, aliquando sed rarius per se, aliquando autem per alios, ne forte fraus ab aliis inter ipsos componi depraehenderetur, attentans, diversis circumventionibus [Pontieri: conventionibus] de traditione urbis sollicitare [Pontieri: procurare sollicite] coepit. Animus vero cupiditate aeger, ut a promittentibus avaritiae luxuria admiscetur, facile corruptus, a bono honestoque proposito proclivis in deterius dilapsus est’. Sallust, Bellum Iugurthinum, ed. by Watkiss, 29. 1: ‘Sed ubi Iugurtha per legatos pecunia temptare, bellique quod administrabat asperitatem ostendere coepit, animus aeger auaritia facile conuorsus est’; Lucas-Avenel, ‘Les sallustianismes’, p. 297. 81 Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae (in The Theological Tractates, ed. and trans. by Stewart and Rand), iii. pr. 5. 14: ‘Quae vero pestis efficacior ad nocendum quam familiaris inimicus?’. 82 Pontieri: vi tueri. 83 Malaterra, iii. 28 (Pontieri, p. 74, ll. 36–38). 84 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 495–96 (Mathieu, p. 230). 85 Et inimici hominis, domestici eius: Matthew 10. 36; same phrase in Micah 7. 6. 86 William of Apulia, iv. ll. 486–88 (Mathieu, p. 230).

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We can see in these three lines how the poetic art of rhetoric underlines the association between the Venetians and perfidy. William wanted the reader to remember this point particularly: the assonant words Veneticus omnis | […] domesticus hostis are placed at the end of lines to create an unusual rhyme that is not so frequent in the poem; and besides reminding readers of the biblical verse, the adjective domesticus echoes, by paronomasia (a rhetorical figure much appreciated by medieval authors) the name of the character Dominicus. The apparent simplicity of epideictic speech common to William and Geoffrey, driven by their desire to show the legitimacy of the Hautevilles’ rise to power and the coincidence of their princes’ choices with papal policy during the complex context of the Gregorian Reform, was actually based on well-thought-out choices. The two authors did not just select information, but elaborated a scholarly composition, by which the writing of past events fitted the memoria of the protagonists, among whom a few were still alive, and matched the representation they wanted to transmit to following generations. They organized their text according to their chosen genres, and created links that ensured the consistency of the history related in their accounts with a certain and sometimes specific vision of the characters involved. All this is particularly well revealed when they provide different versions of a single episode. The characterization of the protagonists played a key role in establishing these links: their virtues and vices were used as tools to restart and revive the narrative or to explain the facts. Indeed, they appear as both the starting point and the finale of the narration in each. Geoffrey, probably even more than William, liked to draw his characters’ feelings and emotions and to mark their strengths or weaknesses. William used poetic resources and provided​​ a few short portraits, but perhaps he was more concerned with illustrating contradictory characters and explaining the facts by their place and order in the narrative. Both writers, however, tend to show how the vices and virtues of individual protagonists and peoples always matched events: the global coherence of their stories, as much as their demonstrative speech, is based on this effort. It would be premature to conclude that they adopted exactly the same language, because William’s praise of Robert Guiscard was stronger than Malaterra’s. But, whatever the differences in their panegyric intentions, they wrote history without ever dissociating their historical narrative from argumentative speech. Each author was steeped in a personal vision of the events, combined with the quite similar teaching they had probably received. They found the models they needed in both Ancient and Christian stories — the figure of betrayal, the domesticus hostis, as well as the weakness of the Byzantines. They also created (or participated in the creation of) a new picture of Guiscard’s virtues and ambitions inspired by recent events, or rather by how they understood events to fit with divine providence — once again according to the teaching of Christian models. This requirement could, as we have seen, lead to omissions (Guiscard’s excommunications) or falsifications (Guiscard’s very good relations

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with the Pope), but they did not produce either fiction or, perhaps, argument as defined by Isidore.87 Rather they fed a necessary rewriting of the history of recent events, with the aim to tell, to keep fresh in memory, and to promote what they probably considered the faithful representation of the past.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Avranches, Bibliothèque municipal, MS 162 Primary Sources Amatus of Montecassino, Storia de’ Normanni di Amato di Montecassino, ed. by Vincenzo de Bartholomaeis, Fonti per la Storia d’Italia 76 (Rome: Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo, 1935) ———, Amatus of Montecassino: The History of the Normans, trans. by P. N. Dunbar and G. A. Loud (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004) ———, Aimé du Mont-Cassin, Ystoire de li Normant: édition du manuscrit BnF fr. 688, ed. by Michèle Guéret-Laferté (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2011) Anne Comnène, Alexiade (règne de l’empereur Alexis I Comnène 1081–1118), ed. and trans. by Bernard Leib, 3 vols and index (Paris: Société d’Édition ‘Les Belles Lettres’, 1937–1945) Augustine, Quaestionum in Heptateuchum libri VII, ed. by Joseph Zycha, Corpus Scriptorium Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, 28, part 3 (Vienna: Tempsky, 1895) Boethius, The Theological Tractates of Boethius and The Consolation of Philosophy, ed. and trans. by H. F. Stewart and E. K. Rand, revised edn (London: Heinemann, 1973) (Cicero) M. Tullius Cicero, De officiis, ed. by M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994) Geoffrey Malaterra, De rebus gestis Rogerii Calabriae et Siciliae comitis et Roberti Guiscardi ducis frater eius, auctore Gaufredo Malaterra monacho benedictino, ed. by Ernesto Pontieri, Rerum italicarum scriptores 5, 1 (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1927–1928) ———, The Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily and of his Brother Duke Robert Guiscard by Geoffrey Malaterra, trans. by Kenneth Baxter Wolf (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005) ———, Geoffroi Malaterra, Histoire du Grand Comte Roger et de son frère Robert Guiscard, i: Livres i & ii, ed. and trans. by Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2016), also available at , with second volume in preparation

87 Compare Berkhofer, above.

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Das Register Gregors VII., ed. by E. Caspar, in MGH Epistolae 4: Epistolae selectae 2 (Berlin: Weidmann, 1920–1923) (Sallust) C. Sallustius Crispus, Bellum Iugurthinum (The Jugurtha), ed. by L. Watkiss (London: University Tutorial Press, 1971) (Virgil) P. Vergil Maro, Opera, ed. by R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980) (William of Apulia) Guillaume de Pouille, La Geste de Robert Guiscard, ed. and trans. by Marguerite Mathieu, Istituto siciliano di studi bizantini e neoellenici: Testi e monumenti: Testi 4 (Palermo: Lavagnani, 1961) ———, The Deeds of Robert Guiscard, trans. by G. A. Loud, PDF online in University of Leeds, Medieval History Texts in Translation https://ims. leeds.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2019/02/William-of-Apulia.pdf (consulted 23 November 2021) Secondary Works Auerbach, Erich, Mimésis: La représentation de la réalité dans la littérature occidentale, trans. by C. Heim (Paris: Gallimard, 1946) Bisanti, Armando, ‘Composizione, stile e tendenze dei Gesta Roberti Wiscardi di Guglielmo il Pugliese’, Archivio normanno-svevo, 1 (2008), 87–132 Bouet, Pierre, ‘Les Normands: le peuple élu’, in Les Normands en Méditerranée dans le sillage des Tancrède, ed. by Pierre Bouet and François Neveux (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 1994), pp. 239–52 Cantarella, G. M., ‘La rivoluzione delle idee nel secolo XI’, in Il papa ed il sovrano: Gregorio VII ed Enrico IV nella lotta per le investiture, ed. by G. M. Cantarella and D. Tuniz (Novare: Europìa, 1985), pp. 7–63 ———, La Sicilia e i Normanni: Le fonti del mito (Bologna: Pàtron Editore, 1989) ———, ‘La fondazione della storia nel regno normanno di Sicilia’, in L’Europa dei secoli XI e XII fra novità e tradizione: sviluppi di una cultura, Miscellanea del Centro di studi medievali, 12 (Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1989), pp. 171–96 Capitani, O., ‘Motivazioni peculiari e linee costanti della cronachistica normanna dell’Italia meridionale: secc. XI-XII’, in Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze dell’Istituto di Bologna, Classe di Scienze morali, Rendiconti, 65 (1977), 59–91; translated as ‘Specific Motivations and Continuing Themes in the Norman Chronicles of Southern Italy in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries’, in The Normans in Sicily and Southern Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pp. 1–46 Corbin, Alain, Jean-Jacques Courtine, and Georges Vigarello, eds, Histoire des émotions, i: De l’Antiquité aux lumières (Paris: Seuil, 2016) Desbordes, O., ‘Nouvelles notes critiques sur les deux premiers livres de la chronique de Geoffroi Malaterra’, Kentron, 21 (2005), 111–59 Gazeau, Veronique, Pierre Bauduin, and Yves Modéran, eds, Identité et ethnicité: concepts, débats historiographiques, exemples (IIIe–XIIe siècles), Tables rondes du CRAHM, 3 (Caen: Publications du CRAHM, 2008) Kempshall, Matthew, Rhetoric and the Writing of History, 400–1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011)

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Lauletta, M., ‘Allusioni intertestuali nel Prologus dei Gesta Roberti Wiscardi di Guglielmo il Pugliese’, Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, 35 (2003), 179–83 Loud, G. A., ‘The Gens Normannorum: Myth or Reality?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 4 (1981), 104–16 and 204–09 ———, The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (London: Longman, 2000) Lucas-Avenel, Marie-Agnès, ‘La gens Normannorum en Italie du Sud d’après les chroniques normandes du XIe siècle’, in Identité et ethnicité: concepts, débats historiographiques, exemples (IIIe–XIIe siècles), ed. by Veronique Gazeau, Pierre Bauduin, and Yves Modéran, Tables rondes du CRAHM, 3 (Caen: Publications du CRAHM, 2008), pp. 233–64 ———, ‘Le récit de Geoffroi Malaterra ou la légitimation de Roger, grand comte de Sicile’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 34 (2011), 169–92 ———, ‘La poésie au service du panégyrique dans la chronique de Geoffroi Malaterra’, in La lyre et la pourpre: poésie latine et politique de l’antiquité tardive à la Renaissance, ed. by N. Catellani-Dufrêne and J.-L. Perrin (Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012), pp. 99–115 ———, ‘Rome: grandeur et décadence d’après Geoffroi Malaterra’, in Le mythe de Rome en Europe: Modèles et contre-modèles, ed. by J. C. D’Amico, A. TestinoZafiropoulos, Ph. Fleury, and S. Madeleine (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2012), 55–72 ———, ‘Les sallustianismes de Geoffroi Malaterra’, in L’historiographie médiévale normande et ses sources antiques, ed. by Pierre Bauduin and Marie-Agnès LucasAvenel (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2014), pp. 277–306 ———, ‘Ecrire la conquête: une comparaison des récits de Guillaume de Poitiers et Geoffroi Malaterra’, in People, Texts and Artefacts: Cultural Transmission in the Medieval Norman Worlds, ed. by David Bates, Edoardo D’Angelo, and Elisabeth van Houts (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2017), pp. 153–70 Mathey-Maille, Laurence, Écritures du passé: histoires des ducs de Normandie (Paris: Champion, 2007) Mathieu, M., ‘Le manuscrit 162 d’Avranches et l’édition princeps des Gesta Roberti Wiscardi de Guillaume d’Apulie’, Byzantion, 24 (1954), 111–30 Oldoni, Massimo, ‘Mentalità ed evoluzione della storiografia normanna fra l’XI e il XII secolo in Italia’, in Ruggero il gran conte e l’inizio dello stato normanno (Rome: Centro di ricerca pergamene medievali e protocolli notarili, 1977), pp. 143–78 Russell, Frederick H., The Just War in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975) ———, ‘Love and Hate in Medieval Warfare: The Contribution of Saint Augustine’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 31 (1987), 108–24 Sivo, Vito, ‘Éléments classiques et chrétiens dans l’historiographie normande: le portrait du Grand Comte Roger par Geoffroi Malaterra’, in L’historiographie médiévale normande et ses sources antiques, ed. by Pierre Bauduin and MarieAgnès Lucas-Avenel (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2014), pp. 239–74

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Taviani-Carozzi, Huguette, La terreur du monde. Robert Guiscard et la conquête normande en Italie: mythe et histoire (Paris: Fayard, 1996) Toubert, Pierre, ‘La première historiographie de la conquête normande de l’Italie méridionale (XIe siècle)’, in I caratteri originari della conquista normanna: diversità e identità nel Mezzogiorno (1030–1130), ed. by Raffaele Licinio and Francesco Violante (Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 2006), pp. 15–49 Tylor, Elizabeth M., and Ross Balzaretti, eds, Narrative and History in the Early Medieval West (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006) Wolf, Kenneth Baxter, Making History: The Normans and their Historians in Eleventh-Century Italy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995)

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Case Studies

Pauline Stafford

Women in the D Chronicle: Writing and Rewriting the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles

The rewriting of English history in the century or so after 1066 is well recognized.1 Among the primary sources for that rewriting were the vernacular chronicles, usually grouped together under the appellation ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. That term covers a group of texts produced from the end of the ninth century until the mid-twelfth. These texts are rarely considered in their own right as part of that great English historiographical flowering, which is treated as a Latin phenomenon. Yet they continued to be written and rewritten after the Norman Conquest. This chapter will make a small contribution to filling that gap. The vernacular chronicles are our major narrative sources for the tenth and eleventh centuries. They were also the product of those centuries, written and rewritten then. The second aim of this chapter is to focus more attention on this. I will use D’s annals on women as a way into understanding the growth and development of Chronicle D and to follow some of the writing and rewriting of that chronicle. Finally the chapter will explore the use of vernacular chronicles in the decades after the Norman Conquest, both within the vernacular tradition itself, and in Latin, paying specific attention to John of Worcester. D’s women will be used as a focus for these questions. They provide clues to all this — though tantalizing ones. The group of texts known as ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ are primarily concerned with kings and their doings; collectively or singly they show very little interest in women. One of them, however, stands out in this respect. The Old English vernacular chronicle, now commonly known as Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D, is remarkable for its coverage of women. That includes a number of entries on tenth-century women found in no other vernacular chronicle. Chronicle D was produced at some date in the mid to late eleventh century, perhaps close to the archbishops of York. The last work on it was done after 1079, the



1 See most recently Brett and Woodman, eds, The Long Twelfth-Century View, esp. Brett, ‘Introduction’. Pauline Stafford  •  is Professor Emerita, University of Liverpool, and Visiting Professor, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 225–241 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126752

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latest dated annal. I have argued elsewhere that it grows out of the ‘house chronicle’ of the York archbishops.2 It is one of seven surviving vernacular chronicles, now designated by the letters A to G. That designation suggests they are manuscripts of a single chronicling enterprise, namely ‘THE Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’. Their history, though interconnected in some way, is far more complicated.3 D is part of a tradition of vernacular chronicling in England which dates back to the end of the ninth century, to the court of King Alfred and the Old English chronicle produced there. Chronicles in this tradition all grew out of Alfred’s in some way; and various of them were collated, or borrowed from each other at different stages of their development. In that sense the notion of a common enterprise is justified. But it is a tradition which also produced distinct chronicles, of which D is one. Behind that distinct chronicle lies a complex earlier evolution. Chronicle D, like all the vernacular chronicles, is an annalistic text. Its material is organized year by year not thematically. Unlike chronicles or histories which have a thematic structure, texts of this nature very readily grow and develop. They are open-ended and can be added to or continued by extra annals or groups of annals. They lend themselves to collation with other texts, especially but not exclusively those with a similar year-by-year organization. New material can also be added through annotation in the form of interlineations or marginalia. These processes are typical of annals, which may thus go through many stages of development. Those stages are, however, hidden when annals survive only in a manuscript which is a fair copy of a late stage of that growth. This is the case with D.4 The initial assumption about D’s women might be that they signal either an author or a source, or a continuation, with a significant interest in recording women. Given the way that texts like this develop, however, it would be unwise to assume that D’s annals on women are the result of any single authorial decision to include such material. They are just as likely — indeed more likely — to result from the sort of cumulative development outlined above, the product of the long evolution which lies between Alfred’s chronicle and our surviving D. The way a text like this develops means that the same set of factors will not explain all the annals attentive to women. Different annals and sets of annals with such details may come from different sources or different stages of development, and require different explanation.



2 Stafford, ‘Archbishop Ealdred’. Full discussion now in Stafford, After Alfred, esp. pp. 233–67. 3 Stafford, ‘The Making of Chronicles’; Stafford, After Alfred. 4 Description of the manuscript in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: MS D, ed. by Cubbin, pp. ix–xv [hereafter ASC MS D]. It is in two hands up to a point within the annal for 1016, and presumably once extended in that hand to some point beyond that. Annals 1016–1052 were substituted in the later eleventh century, see ASC MS D, ed. by Cubbin, p. xii. From annal 1052 onwards, the manuscript is in a variety of hands. It was thus a fair copy up to the 1016 annal. There is a significant change of ink and hand at 1060/1061: ASC MS D, ed. by Cubbin, p. xiv; Guimon, ‘The Writing of Annals’, pp. 142–43.

Wo m e n i n t he D Chro ni c le

Thus, for example, there are more women mentioned in D’s annals than in either Chronicle C or Chronicle E. But D has much more material in general than either of these other two texts for the periods they all cover. The simple reason for this is that stages in the development of D involved comparing and collating chronicles like C and E.5 Thus one reason it has more women is because it has combined annals on women shared with both these chronicles. We need not invoke a late eleventh-century attempt to feminize English history to explain this. D, for example, contains some details of early Northumbrian queens, details which are shared by Chronicle E. In both cases these derive from a lost vernacular chronicle, the so-called ‘Northern Recension’.6 That text lies behind Chronicles E and D; it was used at some stage in the development of each of them. That ‘Northern Recension’, in turn, got its information from another lost text, an early ninth-century set of annals, the so-called York Annals, and from Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, via a process of collation which combined these with Alfred’s original chronicle. D’s annals for the early tenth century have much on Æthelflæd, daughter of King Alfred and Lady of the Mercians. These annals are also found in Chronicle C, derived from another lost chronicle now known as BC, which lies behind our existing Chronicles B and C.7 One of BC’s distinguishing features was a set of annals which are numbered for the first three decades of the tenth century, and which centre on the activity of a woman, Æthelflæd. This set has been termed the ‘Mercian Register’ and also the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’ on the basis of this subject matter. It points to a continuation of Alfred’s vernacular chronicle which differed from those now found in Chronicles A and G.8 These annals are the source for both Chronicle C and Chronicle D’s material on women in the early decades of the tenth century. Yet the briefest of comparisons indicates that D’s women are not simply a product of collating chronicles like C and E. D, for example, contains a very long annal for 1067 covering the life of Queen Margaret of Scotland. This is the longest annal concerned with a woman in any of the vernacular chronicles, and one of the longest annals on an individual in any of them.9 Chronicle C is not the source; it ends in 1066. Nor is it found in this form in E, which has

5 For D’s collation, see ASC MS D, ed. by Cubbin, pp. liii–lv. It is not suggested that the collated texts were Chronicle C or E as we now have them. For D’s complex development, see Stafford, After Alfred, at, for example, pp. 163–69, 233–67. 6 On which see Two of the Saxon Chronicles, ed. by Earle and Plummer (1889 edn) [the edition normally used is that of 1892–1899], ii, pp. cxiv–cxv; ‘Introduction’, in The Peterborough Chronicle, ed. by Whitelock; Dumville, ‘Textual Archaeology’; Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 106–34. 7 Two of the Saxon Chronicles, ed. by Earle and Plummer, ii, pp. lxxviii–lxxix, where what I have called BC is labeled Γ; Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 78–105. 8 Discussed in more detail and with full references in Stafford, ‘The Annals of Æthelflæd’. 9 Further discussion of this annal in Stafford, ‘Noting Relations’.

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an annal for this year linked to that in D. As we now have it, D’s 1067 annal seems to belong to the very last stages of that chronicle’s development. It is one of several annals which show an interest in Scottish affairs. It is an important clue to the interests and possibly the location of the final scribes of Chronicle D. As we shall discover, even the women D shares with C and E point to diverging development of these chronicles. D’s annals on women require careful individual study. They have been filtered through several stages of composition and selection, with very different agendas and contexts. For the purposes of this chapter, I will focus attention on a small group of annals in D — those on women numbered to the mid-tenth century. When studying the evolution of texts like this, comparison, narrow focus, and differences, even minor ones, can be instructive. D’s mid-tenthcentury women are no exception. The mid-tenth century is very thin in all the vernacular chronicles. D has the fullest account of these years. That full account includes a number of references to women: the capture of Wulfrun at Tamworth under 943; the death of Æthelflæd of Damerham, daughter of Ealdorman Ælfgar, and queen of King Edmund, in 946; the birth of Kings Eadwig and Edgar to St Ælfgifu in the annal for 955; the separation of King Eadwig from his wife, another Ælfgifu, by Archbishop Oda, under 958; and the marriage of King Edgar to Ælfythe (recte Ælfthryth) under 965. This is not a huge haul; but in the thin coverage of the mid-century it stands out. None of these references is in either Chronicle E or C. The first assumption or hypothesis would be that behind D here lies a text which contained all these women. That would have been composed — or annotated — by someone who, for whatever reason, was interested in women. Given what we know about annals, that person need not have been working in the mid-tenth century itself. Indeed, there are telltale signs of retrospective writing — like the sanctity of Ælfgifu — which are unlikely to be strictly contemporary. But there are also indications that the author or authors of at least some of these annals was probably not too distant in time from events. Two of these women are identified by relationship to their fathers, ealdormen who died in the mid to later tenth century.10 How long would such details have been remembered? How long would such details have been not only remembered but seen as significant enough to be used for identification? There is a prima facie argument that the composition of some of these annals belongs no later than the early eleventh century. The date range for composition — or annotation — would be mid-tenth to early eleventh century. There is another reference to women in the later tenth-century annals, also found in D alone. This is an addition to the annal for 975 on the mistreatment of widows. Chronicle D shares the bulk of this annal with Chronicle E. Both here rely on the Northern Recension or a continuation of it for an account of 10 Ælfgar is Ælfgar 9, and Ordgar is Ordgar 5 in PASE (consulted 11 December 2017).

Wo m e n i n t he D Chro ni c le

the events which followed the death of King Edgar. But it is D alone which adds this reference to widows and their treatment, part of its intensification of the picture of the breakdown of order after Edgar’s death. Eadweard, Eadgares sunu, feng to rice 7 sona on þam ilcan geare on hærfest æteowde cometa se steorra 7 com þa on ðam æftran geare swyðe mycel hungor 7 swyðe mænigfealde styrunga geond Angolcynn. On his dagum for his iugoðe, Godes wiþærsacan Godes lage bræcon Ælfere ealdorman [het towurpon swyðe manig munuclif] 7 oþre manega 7 munucregol myrdon 7 mynstra tostæncton 7 munecas todræfdon 7 Godes þeowas fesedon þe Eadgar kyning het ær þone halgan biscop Æþelwold gestalian 7 wydewas bestryptan oft and gelome 7 fela unrihta 7 yfelra unlaga arysan up siððan 7 aa æfter þam hit yfelode swyðe 7 on þam timan wæs eac Oslac se mæra eorl geutod of Angelcynne. Edward, son of Edgar, succeeded and in that same year at harvest-time the star, comet, appeared, and in the following year there came a very great famine and very many sorts of disturbances across England/ Angelcynn. In his days because of his youth God’s enemies broke God’s law Ealdorman Ælfere [ordered very many monasteries destroyed] and many others and they obstructed monastic life and destroyed minsters and dispersed the monks and put God’s servants to flight that King Edgar had previously ordered the holy Bishop Æþelwold to found and they frequently robbed widows and many wrongs and more evil illegalities arose after and ever after that it got much worse and also at that time Oslac the celebrated eorl was exiled from England/Angelcynn. [DE 975; italicized words are in D only; words in square brackets in E only] That reference touches on a topic, widows and their protection, which we know was dear to the heart of a very famous character from late Anglo-Saxon England, namely Wulfstan II, bishop of London 996–1002, bishop of Worcester and archbishop of York 1002–1016/1023.11 Wulfstan was politically prominent from the 990s onwards, markedly so after his promotion to York in 1002. The addition is part of a section added to the 975 annal in D only, in Wulfstan’s style, distinctive but, unfortunately for our purposes of identification, eminently imitable. The addition was made later than 975.12 The treatment of widows was a live political issue c. 1000. It crops up in a group of charters of the 990s, themselves linked to a rethinking of kingship,

11 Hollis, ‘The Protection of God’, esp. p. 450. Wulfstan resigned Worcester in 1016, but kept York until his death. Among the extensive work on Wulfstan note Townend, ed., Wulfstan, and for his political role, Roach, Æthelred. 12 The cult of Edward the Martyr, of which this annal might be considered a reflection if not a part, was developing from the 990s if not before: see Keynes, ‘The Cult of King Edward’. The 975 annal, even in the form shared with E, is not contemporary: see below for discussion of John of Worcester.

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including its responsibility for widows.13 Similar rethinking was also the context for two saints’ Lives produced about now, those of Archbishops Dunstan and Oswald. Both include reference to King Eadwig and his wife Ælfgifu, explicitly to the separation in the Vita Oswaldi. That separation is also noted in Chronicle D but in no other vernacular chronicle.14 Here, then, is a possible key to our mid-century annals, and a possible context if not author to explain their inclusion in Chronicle D if not their composition. Wulfrun, Æthelflæd, and Ælfthryth were all significant widows of the second half of the tenth century. Æthelflæd made a will at this date leaving extensive lands. These included a bequest to Glastonbury of one of its most valuable estates, Damerham, the very place by which she is identified in the 946 annal.15 Wulfrun founded or refounded the community at Wolverhampton in the later tenth century. In some charters of the 990s, her son Wulfric, a prominent counsellor at the court of King Æthelred, and himself a monastic founder of Burton Abbey, is identified by a matronymic: Wulfrun’s son.16 Queen Ælfthryth, Edgar’s widow and King Æthelred’s mother, was an important player in 990s politics. She reappears as a charter witness at this date, in a context which suggests she was acting as a guardian of the royal children, but also that her landed interests, like theirs, had become a contemporary question.17 Is this, then, the neat and instructive explanation of these entries in D? They belong c. 1000. They reflect concerns with widows current at that date, concerns linked both to the real importance of some great landed widows at this time, but also to a rethinking of kingship about now. Archbishop Wulfstan is a likely candidate responsible for their inclusion in the chronicle which lies behind D at this point. We could go further, and suggest that some of them started life as marginal annotations or interlineations, possibly in Wulfstan’s own hand, to his own manuscript of the Northern Recension. The 965 annal on Queen Ælfthryth, and the 975 comment on widows both occur in a section of annals common to D and E, i.e. a section which once formed part of the Northern Recension which lies behind both. But these two comments on women are unique to D. They look thus like additions to a copy of the Northern Recension. We know that Wulfstan was a compulsive annotator of manuscripts.18 Are these

13 Stafford, ‘Political Ideas’. 14 Vita S. Oswaldi, ed. and trans. by Lapidge, p. 12; B’s Vita Dunstani refers to Eadwig’s lechery, but does not name the women or admit that one was Eadwig’s wife: The Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. and trans. by Winterbottom and Lapidge, pp. 66–70. 15 On Damerham, Abrams, Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury, pp. 104–07. Æthelflaed’s will is dated 962 × 991, probably after 975. 16 The Electronic Sawyer, nos 878 and 877 [hereafter S with number]. 17 Stafford, ‘Political Ideas’, esp. p. 72. 18 Wulfstan tended to annotate manuscripts in his possession, sometimes arguably to signal ownership: Ker, ‘The Handwriting’; Heslop, ‘Art and the Man’, pp. 282–84, 308.

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references to women his own personal additions, in the case of widows, on a topic dear to his own heart, made in his own copy of the Northern Recension? Archbishop Wulfstan’s own copy of the Northern Recension would be flagged as a stage in the evolution of our Chronicle D. A link to Wulfstan would fit with other evidence which associates D’s development with the York archbishops.19 These annals would be witness to a particular stage of vernacular chronicle writing, which is part of D’s history, and they would provide important clues about the date and perhaps one driving force behind that writing. But the study of chronicles like these is beset with pitfalls for the unwary. They are complex beasts, whose development allows for any number of potential stages and interventions, of writings and rewritings, lying behind the texts which now exist. There are certainly strong grounds for seeing Wulfstan’s hand at work here, and for identifying a (now-lost) chronicle linked to him c. 1000. But were all these women Wulfstan’s additions? We should keep open other possibilities. So far I have treated D’s mid-tenth-century annals on women as a group, implying they have a single explanation. But that grouping is mine, on the basis of subject matter and peculiarity to Chronicle D. We cannot check in the manuscript to determine whether they were all originally the work of a single scribe or scriptorium. In large part Chronicle D is a mid to later eleventh-century fair copy of an earlier chronicle. All the annals numbered to the tenth century were copied together in a later hand. Palaeographical evidence for additions and continuations prior to the mid-eleventh century, their date or place, has thus been lost. As in the case of Wulfstan’s possible interventions, our only evidence is textual and contextual. That evidence may point in different directions, as is apparent if we pursue D’s annal for 943. This records the capture of Wulfrun at Tamworth. Wulfrun was, as already indicated, an important later tenth-century widow, and one whose memory was still green in the 990s — a candidate, certainly, for Archbishop Wulfstan’s interest. But she was also a member of a significant Mercian family, active in the central decades of the tenth century — and a woman.20 There may be other ways to explain her appearance in Chronicle D. Chronicle D’s tenth-century annals share material with E via their common use of the Northern Recension. They also share material with Chronicle C, including material on a woman, Æthelflæd, daughter of King Alfred and Lady of the Mercians. The ultimate source here seems to be the Mercian Register or ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’, a text with an unusual interest in Mercia and a woman.21 Could these also be the source for the annal on another Mercian

19 Above, note 2; Wormald, How Do We Know So Much? 20 Charters of Burton, ed. by Sawyer, pp. xxxviii–xl; Sawyer, ‘The Charters of Burton’. 21 Discussed in more detail and with full references in Stafford, ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’ and Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 64–70.

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woman, Wulfrun? ‘Cherchez la femme’ is once again productive — and once again underlines D’s differences from, as well as similarities to, Chronicle C. The ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’ are found in our surviving Chronicles B and C, and something like them was clearly used at some point in D’s evolution. But D’s source was not identical to that found in B or C. Crucially, it continued beyond B and C — and thus their common source BC — in annals for the mid-920s. Both B and C, and thus BC, end abruptly in the middle of the annal numbered 924: Here Edward king died among the Mercians [on Myrcum] at Farndon and Ælfweard his son died very soon after at Oxford and his body lies at Winchester and Æthelstan was chosen king by/of the Mercians [of Myrcum] and was consecrated at Kingston and he gave his sister Chronicle D alone ends this annal ‘ofsae [? over the sea] to the son of the king of the Old Saxons’. D then has two extra annals, again not in B or C, with details of the agreement between Æthelstan and Sihtric, king of the Northumbrians, at Tamworth, where Æthelstan gave Sihtric his sister [s.a. 925], and of the death of Sihtric and the bringing of the kings of ‘this island’ under Æthelstan’s rule at Eamont Bridge [s.a. 926]. D’s extra material here is evidence that its source was not Chronicle C nor yet the earlier BC which lies behind both B and C. A different, but connected, chronicle, though probably still in the BC family, is indicated. Its extra material contains two more references to women: to the marriages of two of King Æthelstan’s sisters. Were my concern here with all D’s material on women, these could be pursued further. The 924 annal, for example, is proof that these annals cannot be strictly contemporary. The marriage between Æthelstan’s sister and Otto, son of Henry, king of the Saxons, did not take place until 929/930, and even negotiations for it are unlikely as early as 924. In the current context, however, it is the continued — unusual — interest of Chronicle D’s source here in women which should be remarked. That source apparently dried up after the 926 annal — most of Æthelstan’s reign is blank in Chronicle D as in B and C. But did the version which went into Chronicle D’s development continue? Did the annal on the Mercian woman, Wulfrun, found in D alone, also come from this lost source, a text which was already concerned with women and with Mercia? Did Wulfrun come into D not as a result of Archbishop Wulfstan and political interest in late tenth-century widows, but as a result of D’s use of this source? Is this woman in D evidence for the continuation, in however attenuated a form, of at least one text of the Mercian Register into the mid-tenth century? Perhaps, as we shall see, the evidence of John of Worcester would argue against that. Whatever D’s history and sources, the chronicle we now have was in existence by c. 1100. By whatever route these annals on mid-tenth-century women came into Chronicle D, they were there in the fully collated chronicle which existed by the later eleventh century. They were thus potentially

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available to post-1066 chroniclers. We find these same women, or some of them, in, for example, John of Worcester’s Latin Chronicon ex chronicis, and also in Chronicle F. Did they derive them from Chronicle D itself? Pursuing that question provides more clues to the writing and rewriting of vernacular chronicles and English history through to the early twelfth century. It also returns us to the questions about D’s own earlier sources and development, to the writing and rewriting which that had involved. Chronicle F and John’s Chronicon are products of two of the major centres of post-1066 historical writing, Canterbury, especially Christ Church, and Worcester.22 In each case, pre-1066 English history was being made available to a non-English-speaking audience, with substantial use of the vernacular chronicles to achieve that end.23 Working at Worcester in the early decades of the twelfth century, John compiled a Latin chronicle, using among other sources one or more Old English vernacular texts. F is one of the last vernacular chronicles and simultaneously a translation of it for Latin readers. F is an annalistic Old English chronicle, in which each annal is provided with an — often rather loose — Latin translation. John takes his story through into the twelfth century itself. F is now defective. Its original ending is lost, and the manuscript ends abruptly in the middle of the annal for 1058.24 All the evidence, however, points to the making of Chronicle F at Christ Church Canterbury c. 1100.25 Chronicle F’s base text was something like the surviving Chronicle E. Its scribe/author also had access to Chronicle A, and perhaps, as we shall see, Chronicle D. John’s sources were clearly varied, and the precise vernacular chronicles he used remain currently unclear.26 D’s women, however, raise significant doubts about John’s relationship to Chronicle D itself. Chronicle F has some of the same women as D. Thus it has reference to St Ælfgifu, mother of Kings Eadwig and Edgar s.a. 955 and to Edgar’s marriage to Ælfthryth s.a. 965. However, F has none of the annals found in the Mercian Register, as in either BC or D. Nor does it have D’s annals on Wulfrun or Æthelflæd of Damerham, or D’s addition on widows. A meagre haul. Yet these parallels with D are a significant argument for contact between the maker of F and a chronicle like D, probably D itself. They also underline

22 Dumville, ‘Some Aspects of Annalistic Writing’, on Canterbury with special reference to the vernacular chronicles there. On Worcester, see Brett, ‘John of Worcester’. See also Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 268–96. 23 On John’s use of the vernacular chronicles, see Darlington and McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis”’; The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. by Darlington and McGurk, iii, pp. xx– xxvi. For F’s use of other vernacular chronicles, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: MS F, ed. by Baker, pp. xxix–xlvi [hereafter ASC MS F]. 24 ASC MS F, ed. by Baker, pp. xv–xvi. 25 ASC MS F, ed. by Baker, pp. xvi–xxiv. 26 We await David Woodman’s forthcoming Introduction to the edition by Darlington and McGurk for further elucidation.

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how far the maker of the F-Chronicle was rewriting English history within the framework of the annalistic vernacular tradition. The scribe/author of Chronicle F used D, or something very like D, at a late stage of his work. A small group of his mid-tenth-century annals point strongly in this direction. They include the annals on St Ælfgifu and on Edgar’s marriage to Ælfthryth, daughter of Ealdorman Ordgar. This small group of annals were added to F by its author as late annotations. They are all in the same ink. They contain errors resulting from failure to immediately notice duplication, which may point to hasty work.27 The group also includes the driving out of Dunstan, then an abbot but later Archbishop of Canterbury (F and D s.a. 957) and the name of the murderer of King Edmund (F s.a. 948, D s.a. 946).28 F’s reliance on D or something very like D for this group is suggested not only by these parallels, but also by their shared date for the marriage to Ælfthryth, 965, which differs from John of Worcester’s 964.29 There is some room for doubt over whether Chronicle D was ever at Canterbury after 1066.30 This common material, however, locates it as part of the historiographical interchange and ferment after 1066, of which Canterbury was such an important centre. Whether at Canterbury itself, or elsewhere, the scribe/author of F had access to Chronicle D or something closely akin to it.31 But Chronicle F does not have all D’s women. This may indicate that his source was not D itself. But just as likely, the scribe/author of Chronicle F was selecting, editing, and thus producing his own story. Chronicle F’s author was an epitomizer. Where we can check him against his source he tended to omit and include in ways which suggest, for example, that ‘the deaths and successions of bishops and kings’ were more important to him than ‘battles and conquests’, and that ecclesiastical affairs were sometimes preferred to secular.32 His lack of the ‘Annals of Æthelflæd’ would chime with this assessment: the military doings of a long-dead daughter of Alfred may have been of little interest. By contrast, the saintly mother of King Edgar, and that king’s own wife Ælfthryth, would have appealed to him. These inclusions may also suggest that F’s scribe/author was influenced by some of the narratives of tenth-century England which were developing 27 ASC MS F, ed. by Baker, pp. xliv–xlv, lxxv. 28 The difference in date here is a result of the existing date of F’s base annal, taken from Chronicle E, to which the annotation was made. 29 S 725 (ad 964) is probably associated with the marriage. 30 A leaf from a Canterbury manuscript, the ninth-century MacDurnan [Máel Brigte mac Tornáin] Gospels, is pasted on at the end of Chronicle D. Dumville felt this indicated that D was at Canterbury in the twelfth century, ‘Some Aspects’, p. 53. Brooks and Kelly see the addition as being made in the early modern period in the library of Robert Cotton: Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, ed. by Brooks and Kelly, i, 86. 31 This is not the place to marshal all the evidence on contact between D and Canterbury. But note that some post-1066 annals in D and E (the latter at that date a Canterbury chronicle) are closely related: Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 252–55. 32 Jorgensen, ‘Rewriting the Æthelredian Chronicle’, pp. 121, 127.

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after 1066. These narratives glorified King Edgar, and Edgar’s saintly mother fits them, as arguably does mention of his wife. Chronicle F lacks another royal wife, Æthelflaed of Damerham, King Edmund’s queen, recorded in D. Neither she, nor Edmund, played a role in these later stories. One of them, however, centred on Edgar’s queen, Ælfthryth, casting her as a villain.33 F’s description of Ælfthryth in the 965 annal hints at a judgement which fits with this. Where D calls her cwen (queen), F has gebeddan, the more sexualized, and thus less complimentary ‘bedfellow’. In his inclusions and omissions of women, was F’s scribe affected by the developing stories of pre-1066 England? Did he play his own small part in constructing them? It would be unwise to exclude the last vernacular chronicles from the rewriting of pre-1066 history. One recognized participant in that rewriting is John of Worcester. As its description indicates, his Chronicon ex chronicis was made from the collation of many sources.34 John had almost all D’s mid-tenth-century women, lacking only Wulfrun, Æthelflæd of Damerham, and D’s 975 reference to widows. Prima facie that confirms D as his source. The absences, however, are a warning. Closer examination reveals a more complex picture, revealing more about John’s many sources, hinting at lost writings of tenth-century history which lie behind his work, and raising questions about Chronicle D itself. Unlike Chronicle F, John had much on Æthelflæd, Lady of the Mercians. But Chronicle D was certainly not his source here. The evolution of D had involved an attempt to collate the Annals of Æthelflæd with others covering her brother, King Edward the Elder. That collation was itself a rewriting of early tenth-century history. It had omitted some material now found only in the fuller version which survives in Chronicles B and C and was thus in the tenth-century BC. John of Worcester clearly had access to and used that fuller version.35 However, John, unlike Chronicles B and C (and thus BC) but like D, continues the story into the annals for 924–26. Like D he takes his tale to the triumph at Eamont Bridge, and includes the marriage of King Æthelstan’s sister to Sihtric, king of Northumbria. John may have been collating something like BC with the longer D version. Alternatively, he may simply have had independent access to the longer version which had also gone into D’s making. In the latter case, he would confirm that the Annals of Æthelflæd, or a continuation of them, continued to annal 926 — a longer version which both he and Chronicle D used.

33 Wright, The Cultivation of Saga; Bell, ‘Gaimar and the Edgar-Ælfthryth Story’; Fenton, ‘The Tale of Queen Ælfthryth’. 34 John describes his own work thus, for example as ‘hec chronicarum chronica’ s.a. 1118: The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. by Darlington and McGurk, iii, 142, where he also remarks on the work of one of the other Worcester monks involved in the enterprise, Florence. 35 For example, John has the building of Sceargete and Bridgnorth s.a. 913, Eddisbury s.a. 915, and Chirbury, Weardbyrig, and Runcorn s.a. 916 (The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. by Darlington and McGurk, ii, 366, 370, 372) — all in B and C, not in D; John has evidence of closeness to BC’s Old English wording, see for example the building of Tamworth s.a. 914 deique auxilio (Chronicle, ii, 368); compare Chronicle C s.a. 913 Gode forgyfendum.

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D and John differ, however, in the end of the 924 annal. Where D specifies that Æthelstan gave his sister ‘over the sea to the son of the King of the Old Saxons’, John makes no reference to this marriage under 924. Yet he clearly knew of it — referring to it no fewer than five times, including naming the husband, Otto, and their son, Liudolf.36 That marriage bulks larger in John’s writing of tenth-century history than in any surviving vernacular chronicle. What was his source or sources? His use of Marianus’s chronicle would have alerted him to Otto, perhaps leading him to add the detail of the English marriage by way of elaboration. But this will not explain all his references. John, or his source, took pride in this marriage. It features in his eulogy of King Edgar under annal 959. But his references are unlikely to be post-Conquest elaborations resulting, for example, from the rewriting of Edgar. The knowledge is sufficiently specific and detailed and is largely irrelevant to the post-Conquest tales. It argues for an earlier source. Worcester would have been well placed to provide one. Two tenth-century bishops of Worcester were in a position to know of the marriage, and its outcomes. Oswald, bishop of Worcester 961–992, was present in Rome in 972 for the crowning of Otto’s son (from a different marriage). Even more significant, Coenwald, bishop of Worcester 928/929–957/958, had accompanied Æthelstan’s sister Eadgyth on her journey to Saxony c. 929/930.37 Continued Worcester interest in her fate and that of her descendants is more than likely. Was that interest preserved in the lost Worcester chronicle? There is strong evidence for that lost chronicle, covering at least part of the tenth century, and for John’s use of it.38 Were these references to the marriage and its outcomes also among its contents? Did it stretch back into coverage of the earlier tenth century?39 Consideration of that lost text will need to take this marriage and records of it into account.40 John’s shared interest in Chronicle D’s tenth-century women reveals far more than any simple use of D as a source. His treatment of Ælfthryth underlines this. He shares D’s notice of her marriage to Edgar, and her origin

36 s.a. 901 in his details of Edward the Elder’s family (Chronicle, ii, 354), and again s.a. 936 (ii, 392), à propos Otto’s accession s.a. 936 (ii, 392), s.a. 955 in relation to the death of their son Liudolf (ii, 405), in the eulogy of King Edgar s.a. 959 (ii, 412), and s.a. 982 in connection with the death of Liudolf ’s son (ii, 432). 37 On Oswald in Rome in 972, see Leyser, ‘The Ottonians and Wessex’, pp. 96–97; for some questions, see Vita S. Oswaldi, ed. and trans. by Lapidge, p. 102 note 39. For Coenwald, Georgi, ‘Bischof Koenwald’. 38 Michael Lapidge has suggested that behind Byrhtferth’s Vita and John of Worcester lies a lost chronicle: ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, esp. pp. 76–78. 39 Lapidge postulated a coverage from the mid-tenth-century annals on. But that is merely because his comparative control for the lost chronicle’s content, namely the Vita of Archbishop Oswald, covers this period. A chronicle which extended back into the early tenth century is perfectly possible, as is one whose coverage was wider than the events which the Vita shared with it. 40 See Stafford, After Alfred, pp. 135–48.

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as daughter of Ealdorman Ordgar, though he places this under 964 not 965. Was he still using a different chronicle here? Is that lost chronicle itself somehow intertwined in the history of D? John’s material on Ælfthryth is, however, much fuller than D’s or F’s, and more explicitly judgemental than the latter. John has two other references to Ælfthryth, in both of which he accuses her of the murder of her stepson, King Edward the Martyr.41 John’s likely source here was William of Malmesbury.42 John is witness to the growing vilification of the queen at which Chronicle F may have hinted. John relied on vernacular chronicles. But his rewriting of tenth-century history was more thoroughgoing than any of them. John has most of D’s women, but not all. He lacks three references unique to D: Wulfrun, Æthelflæd of Damerham, and the 975 widows. An argument for selection and omission, persuasive in the case of Chronicle F, is much less so here. John of Worcester’s chronicle shows a passion for details about individuals; his omission of a royal wife would be especially unlikely. John’s relationship to Chronicle D and its development needs careful handling. Not only does he show no evidence of knowledge of these women, but there must also be questions about his access to the material that D’s later tenth-century annals took from the Northern Recension. From annals 959 to c. 980 Chronicle D’s source was a continuation of the Northern Recension, shared with Chronicle E, but in D’s case with extra material, including the 965 and 975 annals on women. John either ignored or did not have this Northern Recension continuation, though his annals are somehow connected to it.43 He had, for example, a more annalistic, possibly earlier, version of the 970s. In DE John’s separate annals became a lengthy and retrospective commentary (s.a. 975). In D’s case the 975 annal was also elaborated, including the reference to widows, most likely by Wulfstan of Worcester and York. These women raise serious doubts about John’s access to Chronicle D, both as that chronicle now survives but also in the earlier forms out of which D developed. John also lacks D’s elaboration of Queen Margaret of Scotland.44 The earlier forms of D included a source/chronicle which had these women, described in ways which suggest composition c. 1000 and association with Wulfstan of Worcester and York. It would be intriguing, to say the least, if that

41 The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. by Darlington and McGurk, s.a. 978 (ii, 428) and s.a. 1043 (ii, 538), concerning the foundation of Amesbury by her, ‘sancti Eadwardi interfectrix, causa penitentie’. 42 Darlington and McGurk identity the Gesta pontificum as the source: The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ii, 538 note 1; see also above, pp. 000–00. 43 John lacks DE 966, on Thored and DE 969 on Gunner. He has an assessment of Edgar s.a. 959 which differs from that in DE, including the fact that John has positive comment on Edgar’s links to Otto I, whereas DE takes the opportunity to criticize Edgar’s love of foreigners. The possibility that John’s source is here in dialogue with DE cannot be discounted. 44 Further discussion of this annal in Stafford, ‘Noting Relations’.

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source/chronicle or its later successor, D, was not known to John — raising questions not only about John’s sources, but about D’s own development, and the geographical location of that. The story of the writing of vernacular Anglo-Saxon chronicles from the early tenth to twelfth centuries is fraught with uncertainties. Study of Chronicle D’s women cannot resolve them, but it underlines the need to pursue that story. It directs attention to the lost chronicles which were made and continued between Alfred’s original and the chronicles which now survive: the Northern Recension, BC, the Annals of Æthelflæd, the elusive Worcester chronicle. The collation of new chronicles, but also continuation, writing, rewriting, and annotation were part of the vernacular tradition long before 1066. D’s women may point to the role of bishops in all of this. They underscore the dynamic vernacular historiographical tradition which the term ‘The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’ glosses over. The vernacular chronicles were major sources for post-1066 historical writing. But as detailed study of John of Worcester has showed, we must be wary in our identification of which chronicles were being used, and ready to allow post-Conquest chronicles to throw light on the lost texts and sources of tenth- and eleventh-century England. The vernacular chronicles are Cinderella texts in the study of post-1066 historiography, and the coverage of these women in Chronicle F suggests that they were, indeed, far less thoroughgoing in their rewriting of earlier history than, for example, John of Worcester. The power of genre and traditions are questions here in their own right. But these chronicles were, nonetheless, part of that rewriting, and of the story of historiographical ferment sparked by conquest. They need to be invited to the ball.

Works Cited Primary Sources The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, 6: MS D, ed. by G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, 8: MS F: A Semi-Diplomatic Edition, ed. by Peter S. Baker (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004) Charters of Burton Abbey, ed. by P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 2 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1979) Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, ed. by N. P. Brooks and S. E. Kelly, AngloSaxon Charters, 17–18, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2013) The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. by R. R. Darlington and P. McGurk, trans. by Jennifer Bray and P. McGurk, ii–iii (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995–1998) The Early Lives of St Dunstan, ed. and trans. by Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2011)

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The Electronic Sawyer: Online Catalogue of Anglo-Saxon Charters [revised version of P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters: An Annotated List and Bibliography (London: Royal Historical Society, 1968)] The Peterborough Chronicle: The Bodleian Manuscript Laud Misc. 636, ed. by Dorothy Whitelock, Early English Manuscripts in Facsimile, 4 (Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1954) Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel, with Supplementary Extracts from the Others, ed. by John Earle and Charles Plummer, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1889; new edn 1892–1899) Vita S. Oswaldi, in Byrhtferth of Ramsey, The Lives of St Oswald and St Ecgwine, ed. and trans. by Michael Lapidge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2009), pp. 1–203 Secondary Works Abrams, Lesley, Anglo-Saxon Glastonbury: Church and Endowment (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1996) Bell, A., ‘Gaimar and the Edgar-Ælfthryth Story’, Modern Language Review, 21 (1926), 278–87 Brett, Martin, ‘John of Worcester and his Contemporaries’, in The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern, ed. by R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), pp. 101–26 Brett, Martin, and David A. Woodman, eds, The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015) Darlington, R. R., and P. McGurk, ‘The “Chronicon ex Chronicis” of “Florence” of Worcester and its Use of Sources for English History before 1066’, AngloNorman Studies, 5 (1982), 185–96 Dumville, David N., ‘Some Aspects of Annalistic Writing at Canterbury in the Eleventh and Early Twelfth Centuries’, Peritia, 2 (1983), 23–57 ———, ‘Textual Archaeology and Northumbrian History Subsequent to Bede’, in Coinage in Ninth-Century Northumbria, ed. by D. M. Metcalf, British Archaeological Reports, British Series, 180 (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1987), pp. 43–55 Fenton, Kirsten A., ‘The Tale of Queen Ælfthryth in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum’, in Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford, ed. by Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds, and Susan M. Johns (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012), pp. 49–60 Georgi, Wolfgang, ‘Bischof Koenwald von Worcester und die Heirat Ottos I. mit Edgithe im Jahre 929’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 115 (1995), 1–40 Guimon, Timofey V., ‘The Writing of Annals in Eleventh-Century England: Palaeography and Textual History’, in Writing and Texts in Anglo-Saxon England, ed. by Alexander R. Rumble, Publications of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 5 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2006), pp. 137–45

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Heslop, T. A., ‘Art and the Man: Archbishop Wulfstan and the York Gospelbook’, in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. by Matthew Townend (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 279–308 Hollis, Stephanie, ‘“The Protection of God and the King”: Wulfstan’s Legislation on Widows’, in Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference, ed. by Matthew Townend (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), pp. 443–60 Jorgensen, Alice, ‘Rewriting the Æthelredian Chronicle: Narrative Style and Identity in Anglo-Saxon Chronicle MS F’, in Reading the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Language, Literature, History, ed. by Alice Jorgensen (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 113–38 Ker, N. R., ‘The Handwriting of Archbishop Wulfstan’, in England before the Conquest: Studies in Primary Sources Presented to Dorothy Whitelock, ed. by Peter Clemoes and Kathleen Hughes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 315–31 Keynes, Simon, ‘The Cult of King Edward the Martyr during the Reign of King Æthelred the Unready’, in Gender and Historiography: Studies in the Earlier Middle Ages in Honour of Pauline Stafford, ed. by Janet L. Nelson, Susan Reynolds, and Susan M. Johns (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2012), pp. 115–25 Lapidge, Michael, ‘Byrhtferth and Oswald’, in St Oswald of Worcester: Life and Influence, ed. by Nicholas Brooks and Catherine Cubitt (London: Leicester University Press, 1996), pp. 64–83 Leyser, Karl, ‘The Ottonians and Wessex’, in Communications and Power in Medieval Europe: The Carolingian and Ottonian Centuries, ed. by Timothy Reuter (London: Hambledon, 1994) [first published 1983], pp. 73–104 PASE: The Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England, Roach, Levi, Æthelred the Unready (London: Yale University Press, 2016) Sawyer, P. H., ‘The Charters of Burton Abbey and the Unification of England’, Northern History, 10 (1975), 28–39 Stafford, Pauline, ‘Political Ideas in Late Tenth-Century England: Charters as Evidence’, in Law, Laity and Solidarities: Essays in Honour of Susan Reynolds, ed. by Pauline Stafford, Janet L. Nelson, and Jane Martindale (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 68–82 ———, ‘“The Annals of Æthelflæd”: Annals, History and Politics in Early TenthCentury England’, in Myth, Rulership, Church and Charters: Essays in Honour of Nicholas Brooks, ed. by Julia Barrow and Andrew Wareham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), pp. 101–16 ———, ‘Archbishop Ealdred and the D Chronicle’, in Normandy and its Neighbours, 900–1250: Essays for David Bates, ed. by David Crouch and Kathleen Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 135–56 ———, ‘Noting Relations and Tracking Relationships in English Vernacular Chronicles, Late Ninth to Early Twelfth Century’, in The Medieval Chronicle, 10, ed. by llya Afanasyev, Juliana Dresvina, and Eric S. Kooper (Leiden: Brill, 2016), pp. 23–48

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———, ‘The Making of Chronicles and the Making of England: The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles after Alfred’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series 27 (2017), 65–86 ———, After Alfred: Anglo-Saxon Chronicles and Chroniclers, 900–1150 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020) Townend, Matthew, ed., Wulfstan, Archbishop of York: The Proceedings of the Second Alcuin Conference (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004) Wormald, Patrick, How Do We Know So Much About Anglo-Saxon Deerhurst? (Deerhurst: Friends of Deerhurst Church, 1993) Wright, C. E., The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (London: Oliver and Boyd, 1939)

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Æthelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor in William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

If we look at the flourishing of English historiography in the twelfth century, William of Malmesbury is only one of many authors who thought about the past.1 The unique situation in England after the Conquest meant that historians had several options to rewrite the past of their nation: they could tie English history to the British past like Geoffrey of Monmouth did,2 they could look at the history of Normandy and the Norman dukes, aligning the history of the English kings to their Continental biological ancestors like Robert of Torigni or Wace did,3 or they could incorporate the Anglo-Saxon/English tradition to align the kings of their time to their predecessors in the realm of England. Each of these options had its own advantages and repercussions. Linking British history and English history meant a close association with Rome; portraying English history as an extension of Norman history meant that history followed the outline of a genealogical or family history; while tying Anglo-Saxon to Anglo-Norman history meant an emphasis on the community and political history. William of Malmesbury chose to write a history of the kings of England, and he was not the only one to do so. Nevertheless, nowhere else can we find contemplation about kingship and community in such depth as in his Gesta regum. As for the reasoning behind his attempt at national history,



1 In general, on the use of the past see the thorough studies by Goetz, ‘Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit’; Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung. 2 Aurell, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History’. 3 Van Houts, ‘Historical Writing’; Shopkow, History and Community; Bates, The Normans and Empire, pp. 51–63. Alheydis Plassmann  •  ([email protected]) teaches in the Department of Early Modern History and Rhineland Regional History at the University of Bonn. Her research covers Normans and Anglo-Normans, criticism of rulers, and lordship acquired by marriage. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 243–268 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126753

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we find one explanation in William’s account of how he planned to treat the Conqueror: De Willelmo rege scripserunt, diuersis incitati causis, et Normanni et Angli. Illi ad nimias efferati sunt laudes, bona malaque iuxta in caelum praedicantes; isti pro gentilibus inimicitiis fedis dominum suum proscidere conuitiis. Ego autem, quia utriusque gentis sanguinem traho, dicendi tale temperamentum seruabo: bene gesta, quantum cognoscere potui, sine fuco palam efferam; perperam acta, quantum suffitiat scientiae, leuiter et quasi transeunter attingam, ut nec mendax culpetur historia, nec illum nota inuram censoria cuius cuncta pene, etsi non laudari, excusari certe possunt opera. King William has been taken as their subject, under the spur of differing motives, by authors both Norman and English. The Normans in their enthusiasm have overpraised him, and his good and bad deeds alike have been lauded to the sky; the English, inspired by national enmities, have savaged their lord with foul calumnies. For my part, having the blood of both nations in my veins, I propose in my narrative to keep a middle path: his good deeds, so far as they have come within my knowledge, I will publish unadorned; his misdeeds I will touch on lightly and as it were in passing, so far as is needed to make them known. Thus my history will not be accused of falsehood, nor shall I be passing sentence on a man whose actions, even when they do not merit praise, at least almost always admit of excuse.4 Looking at this quotation from William of Malmesbury one can easily understand how he has become one of the most popular medieval writers among modern historians.5 His remarks on William the Conqueror seem to prove that he surpassed his contemporaries in being aware of his own shortcomings and aiming for an ‘impartial’, almost ‘modern’ account. Nevertheless, William is far from forbearing to take sides. His apparent aloofness just serves the purpose of making him seem more trustworthy.



4 William of Malmesbury, Gesta regum Anglorum, ed. and trans. by Mynors, Thomson, and Winterbottom [henceforth WM, GR], i, pp. 424–25 (iii. preface). There is an abundance of literature on William of Malmesbury. Thus I name only a few that will be cited in the following footnotes: Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae uitae institutum’, reworked as Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury (p. 198 on this passage); there are many studies by WM’s editors, for example Thomson, William of Malmesbury; see also Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury on Kingship’; Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury, King Henry I and the Gesta regum Anglorum’; on his attitude of superiority: Gillingham, ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’. This passage has repeatedly been taken as evidence for William of Malmesbury’s unbiased opinion on the Normans, but in later works, William was more sceptical about the Normans or at least more open with his scepticism: Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 206–09; Thomson, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Diatribe’. Part of my argument has been published in German: Plassmann, ‘Bedingungen und Strukturen’. 5 On this tendency to claim William as ‘one of our own’: Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae vitae institutum’, pp. 10–22; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 1–4. Gillingham, ‘Civilizing the English?’; Hayward, ‘The Importance of Being Ambiguous’.

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Although he told his readers that he wanted to avoid falsehood, his works still have a didactic purpose, as discussed in detail by Sigbjørn Sønnesyn.6 Even though William portrayed the former kings of England with their good and bad characteristics, his account is still subordinate to his own idea of kingship, as we shall see.7 Since William wanted to write a ‘national’ history following the tradition set by Bede,8 he could use the Anglo-Saxon kings as historical examples, not just as individuals, but for the mechanisms of history as a whole. It is therefore interesting to see how he arranged the events he told us about within an overarching idea about how rule worked, and how he used the past subtly to instruct his readers. The acts of kings in the past, even if immoral, had an impact in William’s time, and the kings of William’s time could model their behaviour after considering the good and bad examples of Anglo-Saxon kings. Success and failure depended on the same conditions that were valid in William’s time, or at least this is what William thought.9 Looking at the examples given, a reader of William’s Gesta regum Anglorum and his other historical works could get a clue of what instigated the failure and success of kings and how success could be repeated and failure avoided. William rigorously subjected the events of the Anglo-Saxon past to a didactic pattern. By rewriting stories found in his Anglo-Saxon sources, and by interpreting them in the prism of his own ideas, he managed to draw a new pattern of history that concurred with his ideas. Fortunately, we have many of the sources William used for his Gesta regum and thus we can see how he differs from his predecessors’ tales. It is worth noting that William took liberties when he rewrote history, more moulding the events of the past into his own pre-existent pattern than just updating the wording by carefully changing only a few lines. If one looks at the use of Bede, for example, it is clear that William substantially rearranged the given structure of Bede’s telling of the past and yet stayed very close to Bede’s general idea of history, while his contemporary Henry of Huntingdon almost never changed Bede’s wording and yet gave his tales a different meaning.10 Thus, although both worked with the tradition at hand, their methods differed considerably. The pattern for William’s idea of successful rule will be looked at in detail by taking two Anglo-Saxon kings as examples who are positioned at opposite ends of the scale, at least for William: Æthelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor.

6 Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 70–95. 7 Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury on Kingship’. 8 WM, GR, i, pp. 14–15 (i. preface): ‘Vnde michi cum propter patriae caritatem, tum propter adhortantium auctoritatem uoluntati fuit interruptam temporum seriem sarcire et exarata barbarice Romano sale condire; et, ut res ordinatius procedat, aliqua ex his quae sepe dicendus Beda dixit deflorabo, pauca perstringens, pluribus ualefatiens’. On Bede’s influence: WM, GR, ii, p. 14 and after; Plassmann, ‘Bede’s Legacy’. 9 On this see also Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’. 10 On this: Plassmann, ‘Bede’s Legacy’.

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While from a modern point of view it has long been established — albeit not necessarily truthfully11 — that Æthelred must be an example of an unsuccessful ruler, it is not altogether evident that Edward was a successful one. In William’s eyes he was so, because in his times peace reigned in England: ‘Denique eo regnante nullus tumultus qui non cito comprimeretur, nullum bellum forinsecus, omnia domi forisque quieta, omnia tranquilla’ (Thus during his reign there was no civil strife that was not soon suppressed, no foreign war; at home and abroad all was peace and quiet).12 Inner peace as a precondition for the king’s subjects to focus on a moral and Christian life is the measure of a successful ruler, and many different parameters could get in the way of a peaceful reign. There are several factors contributing to the success of a king’s rule that are elaborated by William, and they will be addressed systematically. First, I want to outline the conditions at the beginning of a reign that influenced the possibilities and chances of successful rule. William thought that the situation at the beginning of a reign could be crucial. Then I want to show which methods of rule William identified as effective. Then these methods of rule will be set into the context of royal virtues and morally good rule as they were traditionally understood at that time. At the end we will take a close look at how the conditions that were present at the beginning of a king’s rule, alongside his methods in rule, resulted in successful kingship.

Conditions of Rule William’s Gesta draws attention to the fact that a king’s success might depend on circumstances at the beginning of his rule that were beyond his capacity for interference and change. There are several examples with different outcomes: Ecgfrith, king of Mercia, tried to turn the rudder after the tyranny of his father Offa, but although he was very generous to churches, he could not escape the divine judgement that was the logical consequence of his father’s sins.13 In this William clearly followed the interpretation of events that had been set out already by Alcuin.14 He quoted the Anglo-Saxon at Charlemagne’s court in his judgement on Ecgfrith and told his readers so. Æthelred the Unready is for William an even better example of the importance of circumstances at the start of a reign. The ill-fated rule of Æthelred began with an almost

11 In general on the negative reputation, see Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’; Roach, Æthelred. 12 WM, GR, i, pp. 348–49 (ii. 196). 13 WM, GR, i, pp. 136–39 (i. 94): ‘Ille, sedulo paternae immanittais uestigia declinans, priuilegia omnium aecclesiarum quae seculo suo genitor attenuauerat prona deuotione reuocauit […] seua mors uernantis aetatis florem messuit, unde Osberto patritio Albinus: “Non arbitror quod nobilissimus iuuenis Egferthus propter peccata sua mortuus sit, sed quia pater suus pro confirmatione regni eius multum sanguinem effudit”’. 14 WM, GR, ii, p. 66, on William’s use of Alcuin.

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unsurmountable handicap: ‘Creditum et celebriter uulgatum quod propter eius in Eduardum insolentiam multo post tempore tota patria seruitutem infremuisset barbaricam’ (It is believed, and a widely popular view, that it was through her [Ælfthryth’s] cruelty to Edward [Æthelred’s half-brother] that the whole country, for a long time after, groaned under the barbarian yoke).15 It was the sin of the stepmother who murdered Edward in order to ensure the succession of her own son that incriminated the reign of Æthelred. According to William, the troubled times of Æthelred were foretold in general by a dream of King Edgar the peaceable16 and in particular by Archbishop Dunstan of Canterbury: Haec dicit Dominus Deus: non delebitur peccatum ignominiosae matris tuae et peccatum uirorum qui interfuerunt consilio illius nequam, nisi multo sanguine miserorum prouintialium; et uenient super gentem Anglorum mala qualia non passa est ex quo Angliam uenit usque ad tempus illud. Thus saith the Lord God: the sin of your shameful mother and the sin of the men who shared in her wicked plot shall not be blotted out except by the shedding of much blood of your miserable subjects, and there shall come upon the people of England such evils as they have not suffered from the time when they came to England until then.17 Having already had a bad start in life,18 Æthelred himself did not really improve on the situation, if we believe William. William gives us ample proof that Æthelred was lazy and not the most able battle commander.19 Although William found the implication of Æthelred’s mother in Edward’s murder already in his sources, it has long been noted that he delivered an even bleaker outlook on Æthelred than the hapless king’s contemporaries.20 Nevertheless Æthelred, in William’s view, was not entirely to blame, since William conceded the adverse conditions of his reign: Veruntamen multa michi cogitanti mirum uidetur cur homo (ut a maioribus accepimus) neque multum fatuus neque nimis ignauus in tam tristi pallore tot calamitatum uitam consumpserit. Cuius rei causam si quis me interroget, non facile respondeam, nisi ducum defectionem ex superbia regis prodeuntem. But I have devoted much thought to this, and it seems to me extraordinary that a man who was, as we learn from our forebears,

15 16 17 18

WM, GR, i, pp. 266–67 (ii. 162). WM, GR, i, pp. 250–55 (ii. 154). WM, GR, i, pp. 268–69 (ii. 164). WM, GR, i, pp. 268–69 (ii. 164): William also tells us that Æthelred was beaten almost to death by his mother while still a child. 19 WM, GR, i, pp. 272–75 (ii. 165). See further below. 20 WM, GR, ii, p. 144 and after.

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neither a great fool nor excessively cowardly should pass his life in the dismal twilight of so many calamities. If anyone were to ask me the reason for this, I should not find it easy to answer, unless it was the disloyalty of his chief nobles, arising from the pride of the king himself.21 The difficult situation grew worse due to the king’s and the nobles’ behaviour, but the situation was already found wanting in the beginning. A very close parallel can be found in the next book of Gesta regum, where the upheavals against the German Emperor Henry IV are attributed not only to his misgovernance, but also to exceptionally adverse conditions, which led William to be equally puzzled as in Æthelred’s case.22 The wording is different, but in both cases William concedes that neither Æthelred nor Henry IV was ignavus (cowardly). The rule of Harold and Stephen is pictured in the same vein, as Emily Winkler has argued, even if the word ignavus does not occur.23 William depicted a similarly difficult initial situation at the beginning of Edward the Confessor’s reign. Though there was no murder of his immediate predecessor, Edward could only succeed by making major concessions to the nobility: he was raised as king only by the support of Godwine of Wessex and had to pay the price: ‘Nichil erat quod Eduardus pro necessitate temporis non polliceretur’ (In the need of the moment there was nothing Edward would not promise),24 as William puts it. The Confessor suffered the Godwine family and married Godwine’s daughter, but was deeply unhappy. William even claims that Edward lived in chastity just to spite his father-in-law.25 So, does William see kings just as victims of their situation, and does he think they have no agency to change the originally unhappy circumstances? Or can kings come to terms with the initial conditions of their reigns? It is interesting to search for William’s take on methods that have an impact on the situation. It is not through pious acts that the king can make a difference, but by interacting with his nobles he can ensure peace within his realm.

21 WM, GR, i, pp. 276–77 (ii. 165). 22 WM, GR, i, pp. 520–21 (iii. 288): ‘Illa fuit tempestas qua Henrici, de quo inter gesta Willelmi locutus sum, miserabile et pene funestum per quinquaginta annos Alemannia ingemuit imperium. Erat is neque ineruditus neque ignauus, sed fato quodam ab omnibus ita impetitus ut rem religionis tractare sibi uideretur quisquis in illum arma produceret’. See Plassmann, ‘German Emperors’. 23 Winkler, ‘England’s Defending Kings’. 24 WM, GR, i, pp. 352–53 (ii. 197). On Edward in William’s Gesta regum see also Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae vitae institutum’, pp. 284–88; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 189–93. On Edward: Barlow, Edward the Confessor; Mortimer, ed., Edward the Confessor; Licence, Edward the Confessor. 25 WM, GR, i, pp. 352–55 (ii. 197): ‘Nuptam sibi rex hac arte tractabat, ut nec thoro amoueret nec uirili more cognosceret; quod an familiae illius odio, quod prudenter dissimulabat pro tempore, an amore castitatis fecerit, pro certo compertum non habeo’.

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Incentive Methods: Generosity, Accessibility, and Clemency First, we will look at incentive methods as put down by William. The king can cause the nobles to work according to his ideas by a system of rewarding in advance. For this, a king has to be generous with his ample goods. Being generous means walking a fine line, according to William, since it can be overdone in one way or the other. Generally, the king can forge a bond with his followers by being generous. When he acquires loot, he must behave correctly and distribute it to his followers and the Church, as William observed in the case of King Æthelstan: Hoc enim uir ille animo imperauerat suo, ut nichil opum ad crumenas corraderet, sed omnia conquisita uel monasteriis uel fidelibus suis munificus expenderet. In hoc thesaurus paternos, in hoc uictoriarum suarum titulos tat uita euacuabat. He had made it a principle to accumulate no wealth for his own pocket, but to spend all that he got generously on monasteries or on his loyal followers: these were the objects on which he used throughout his life to lavish his inherited treasure and the proceeds of his victories.26 In Æthelstan’s case William’s source is unknown, so we cannot know whether this interpretation was William’s own idea.27 At the very least, however, William thought it worthwhile to make royal generosity a recurrent theme. Generosity might not just come from a generous heart, but could also be politically shrewd or even necessary, as William made clear in the case of William the Conqueror: Nam ille pro timore inimicorum prouintias suas pecunia emungebat, qua impetus eorum uel tardaret uel etiam propelleret, persepe, ut fit in rebus humanis, uiribus cassatis fidem hostilem premio pigneratus. For it was fear of his enemies that drove him to squeeze the money from his provinces, with which either to slow up their attacks or even to drive them off entirely; very often, as happens in human affairs, when strength failed he secured the loyalty of his opponents by largesse.28 Generosity might turn the tide in a crisis, as happened when William Rufus bought the loyalty of Roger de Mortimer and thus prevented Roger’s

26 WM, GR, i, pp. 214–15 (ii. 134). On the role of money: Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, pp. 159–77. 27 WM, GR, ii, pp. 116–18. 28 WM, GR, i, pp. 508–09 (iii. 280); see also Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae vitae institutum’, pp. 306–11, esp. p. 310; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 197–212, esp. p. 212. On the Conqueror: Bates, William the Conqueror.

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defection to his rival Robert Curthose,29 or when King Stephen, after taking possession of the late Henry I’s treasure, managed, at least at first, to quell rebellion.30 But generosity is a fine line, and not an easy one to walk. When generosity is taken to excess it becomes extravagance and has severe repercussions. On the one hand extravagance empties the king’s coffers, and on the other hand the nobles become greedy. For William of Malmesbury, Robert Curthose was the prime example of extravagance: ‘Porro ille, quasi cum Fortuna certaret utrum plus illa daret an ipse dispergeret’ (In fact the duke […] had a competition with Fortune whether she could give him more than he could throw away).31 In the end Robert was unable to keep his promises, and his malcontent subjects in Normandy turned to his younger brother Henry.32 Money in William’s narrative usually features in his description of the courts of the Anglo-Norman kings, and only rarely comes up in Anglo-Saxon times. Apart from Æthelstan, there are only two further examples from pre-Conquest times, both of them negative, albeit in different ways. Vortigern, the British king who made a fatal mistake by inviting the Saxons to Britain, showed extravagance and indulged in his own pleasures.33 That Vortigern was a bad king was well established in historical tradition,34 but it is significant that William of Malmesbury linked his vices to the mishandling of money, a detail not mentioned before. William further noted one other example of financial miscalculation in the pre-Conquest period. He described Harold Godwineson not as extravagant but as tight-fisted: ‘Haroldus, triumphali euentu [the battle of Stamford Bridge] superbus, nullis partibus predae commilitones dignatus est; quapropter multi, quo quisque poterat dilapsi, regem ad bellum Hastingense proficiscentem destituere’ (Harold, inflated by this triumphant result, did not deign to share any part of the booty with his fellow-soldiers, with the result that many, 29 WM, GR, i, pp. 546–47 (iv. 306): ‘Seorsum enim ducto magnam ingessit inuidiam, dicens libenter se imperio cessurum si illi et aliis uideatur quos pater tutores reliquerat. Non se intelligere quid ita effrenes sint; si uelint pecunias, accipiant pro libito; si augmentum patrimoniorum, eodem modo prorsus quae uelint habeant. Tantum uideant ne iuditium genitoris periclitetur, quod si de se putauerint aspernandum, de se ipsis caueant exemplum; idem enim se regem qui illos duces fecerit’. 30 William of Malmesbury, Historia novella, ed. by King, trans. by Potter, pp. 30–31 (i. 17): ‘Habebat […] rex [Stephen] immensam uim thesaurorum, quos multis annis auunculus [Henry I] aggesserat’; WM, GR, i, pp. 40–41 (i. 21): ‘Denique multos etiam comites, qui ante non fuerant, instituit, applicitis possessionibus et redditibus quae proprio iure regi competebant’. 31 WM, GR, i, pp. 704–05 (iv. 389). On Curthose: Aird, Robert Curthose, arguing that Robert’s generosity was not out of scale in comparison with his contemporaries. 32 WM, GR, i, pp. 704–07 (iv. 389). 33 WM, GR, i, pp. 20–21 (i. 4); Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae vitae institutum’, p. 266 and after. 34 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. and trans. by Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 48–49, 52–53 (i. 14–15); Nennius, Historia Brittonum, ed. and trans. by Morris, p. 69 (cap. 37); Plassmann, Origo gentis, pp. 68, 97 and after. WM, GR, ii, p. 18 for William’s dependence on Bede.

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slipping away as each best could, abandoned their king as he set off for the battle of Hastings).35 It certainly drives home the point that Harold made this mistake before the fateful battle of Hastings. This explanation seems to be an interpretation by William, since we cannot find it in any of the contemporary sources on Hastings. Other historians claimed that Harold had not enough time to rally all his troops.36 Generosity is the outward sign of a king’s central virtue of accessibility or kindliness which smooths his dealings with the nobles. In his preface to Gesta regum William of Malmesbury praised the affability of David of Scotland: ‘Amamus ergo in uobis quod dicitur, quia sitis alloquio dulcis, accessu non difficilis, cui sit naturale uultus benignitate trepidos inuitare, fastum regii supercilii morum comitate premere’ (So what we love in you is that you are, they say, so mild in address, so easy of access, with a natural kindliness of mien which encourages the diffident and a characteristic courtesy which does away with the haughty air of royalty).37 There are positive examples for kindliness from before the Conquest: King Brihtric of Wessex was friendly, unless the vigor regni was involved;38 Ida of Northumbria tempered his regia severitas with friendliness;39 and King Æthelstan discarded his pride when he dealt with his subjects.40 While there are numerous examples of money-management both negative and positive, kindliness is usually just alleged. Only in the case of Edward the Confessor did William tell his readers about an actual event which showed the king’s virtue. He mentioned how the Confessor refrained from punishing a man who disrupted his hunting.41 This underlines the rarity of this characteristic and helps to single Edward out as extraordinary. The reverse of accessibility is not mentioned often, but in Rufus’s case William noted that he refused petitioners, jested about them, and succeeded in combining unfriendliness with abasement.42 Accessibility, like generosity, has to be applied sparingly in William’s view, because it becomes dangerous if overdone. Edward the Confessor overdid it, if we believe William: ‘quia ita se mansuete ageret ut nec uiles homunculos uerbo ledere nosset’ (he was so gentle, and could not bring himself to utter

35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

WM, GR, i, pp. 422–23 (ii. 228. 11). WM, GR, ii, p. 216. WM, GR, i, pp. 2–3 (Epistola i). WM, GR, i, pp. 58–59 (i. 43). WM, GR, i, pp. 60–61 (i. 44). WM, GR, i, pp. 214–15 (ii. 134). WM, GR, i, pp. 348–49 (ii. 196). William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum, ed. and trans. by Winterbottom and Thomson [henceforth WM, GP], i, pp. 118–19 (i. 48. 5); WM, GR, i, pp. 556–57 (iv. 312). For further examples of William Rufus’s jests: WM, GR, ii, p. 276. On William Rufus in the Gesta regum: Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae vitae institutum’, pp. 311–27; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 213–27.

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a harsh word against even the lowest of mankind).43 No wonder then that Godwine of Wessex thought Edward’s threat of royal wrath to be idle and refrained from punishing the inhabitants of Canterbury as the king had instructed.44 William even claimed that Godwine and his sons mocked the Confessor’s mildness.45 Edward the Confessor’s rule had been successful despite the fact that generosity is not mentioned as among his attributes and his kindliness seems to have bordered on naiveté. William asserts that this was due to two factors: ‘Erat interea eius apud domesticos reuerentia uehemens, apud exteros metus ingens; fouebat profecto eius simplicitatem Deus, ut posset timeri qui nesciret irasci. Sed quanuis uel deses uel simplex putaretur, habebat comites qui eum ex humili in altum conantem erigerent’ (At the same time he was idolized by his court, and much feared by foreign princes; it was God who protected his singleness of heart and thus, though never angry, he could still inspire respect. Yet, idle or innocent though he might appear, he had ministers who could second his efforts to rise higher in the world).46 The ambition of Godwine of Wessex was reined in by Leofric, if we believe William.47 Although William heavily used the Vita Edwardi for his sections on Edward,48 nevertheless this interpretation seems to be his. Thus, Edward did not display generosity or kindliness in the right dose, but the intervention of God put that straight. Clemency is the enhancement of friendliness, and a ruler could imitate Christ by being forgiving. Nevertheless, through all the Gesta regum William knew only of examples where clemency had bad results. He criticized Robert Curthose for forgiving offences — ‘Offensarum igitur erat immemor, culparum quatenus non deberet remissor’ (He was, then, a man with no memory for wrongs done to him, and forgave offences beyond what was right)49 — and claimed that Earls Edwin and Morcar were forgiven by William the Conqueror only to rebel again.50 Thus, Edward the Confessor was the only king whose mildness did not do harm, while generosity and accessibility in the right measure served the realm well. It is telling that for Æthelred, on the other side of the scale, William neither mentioned that he used these incentive methods nor that he overdid them. The reader could see what the positive results of generosity and accessibility were without William going so far as to use an unsuccessful ruler as an example of methods that had a positive connotation.

43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

WM, GR, i, pp. 348–49 (ii. 196). WM, GR, i, pp. 358–59 (ii. 199): ‘paruipendente regis furorum quasi momentaneum’. WM, GR, i, pp. 350–51 (ii. 196). WM, GR, i, pp. 348–49 (ii. 196). WM, GR, i, pp. 348–49 (ii. 196). WM, GR, ii, p. 206. WM, GR, i, pp. 704–05 (iv. 389). WM, GR, i, pp. 468–69 (iii. 252): ‘sepe etiam capti, plerumque se dedire, sed miseratione iuuenilis decoris et gratia nobilitatis impune dimissi’.

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Punitive Methods: Warfare, Murder, and Stern Justice If generosity and accessibility are the carrot for the nobles to get them in line, there is also the stick of punitive measures. Since one of the most important tasks of the king is to defend his people, courage is an important royal virtue. It is also a characteristic that can ensure the stability of the king’s rule, as William of Malmesbury exemplified in his narrative of William the Conqueror, whose courage helped him to overcome the troubled times of his minority.51 William Rufus was lauded for his courage.52 Nevertheless, courage is not important in itself, rather it is important that the king wins his wars and that his subjects know that he is likely to emerge as victor. In the case of Henry I, William of Malmesbury attributed his fortune to tactical wisdom, which is just as good an attribute if it leads to the same results as courage.53 The same can be said about blatant brutality. Although William does not recommend it, he still gives examples for brutal acts by kings that solved a problem and thus had a constructive result. King Oswiu murdered his predecessor (a fact that William took from Bede), and afterwards was able to rule in peace.54 Another story about King Edgar is even more telling: Edgar took the opportunity of a hunt to get rid of a rival whose wife he wanted: Vbi cum filius occisi nothus familiari usu superuenisset, et a rege interrogatus esset, qualiter ei talis uenatio placeret, respondisse fertur: ‘Bene, domine, rex: quod tibi placet michi displicere non debet’. Quo dicto ita tumentis animum mansuefecit ut nichil carius in uita sua post haec haberet quam iuuenem illum, tirannici facti offensam in patrem sedulitate regia in filium alleuans. When the bastard son of the dead man approached familiarly, and the King asked him how he liked this kind of hunting, he is said to have replied: ‘I like it well, your Majesty; what pleases you ought not to displease me’. These words so calmed the King’s anger that thereafter

51 WM, GR, i, pp. 434–37 (iii. 234). See also Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae vitae institutum’, p. 295 and after; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, p. 199; on the minority: Bates, ‘The Conqueror’s Adolescence’; Bates, William the Conqueror, pp. 49–90. 52 WM, GR, i, pp. 550–51 (iv. 309). 53 WM, GR, i, pp. 744–45 (v. 412): ‘Quapropter sapientia nulli umquam modernorum regum secundus, et pene dicam omnium antecessorum in Anglia facile primus, libentius bellabat consilio quam gladio; uincebat, si poterat, sanguine nullo, si aliter non poterat, pauco’. On Henry’s wars: Green, Henry I, pp. 224–31. On Henry I in William’s work: Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae vitae institutum’, pp. 327–49; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 227–47; Weiler, ‘William of Malmesbury, King Henry I and the Gesta regum Anglorum’. 54 WM, GR, i, pp. 76–77 (i. 50): ‘Ita Oswius, integri regni compos, nichil non postea molitus est quo existimationem suam purgaret, quo maiestatem augeret, atrocis facti offensam probitate posteriorum uirtutum imminuens’. WM, GR, ii, p. 46.

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he had as much affection for the young man as for anyone in his whole life, lightening the guilt of his despotic action against the father by his kingly care for the son.55 It is noteworthy that we cannot pinpoint William’s sources here.56 William of Malmesbury put forward a similar and well known as well as often quoted case at the beginning of Cnut’s reign. Cnut ordered the murder of Eadric Streona, a troublesome noble, who is styled as the person mainly responsible for the troubled reign of Æthelred the Unready. It is exactly this murder which enabled Cnut afterwards to rule in peace and for the benefit of all.57 The exception of useful murder to get rid of rivals or troublemakers is, not surprisingly, to be found in the time of Æthelred the Unready, who murdered two northern nobles in the manner of a tyrant, and with disastrous results. Æthelred was after their lands.58 From our point of view there is little difference ethically between Edgar, who murdered for lust after a woman, and Æthelred, who murdered for lust after lands, but for William the outcome was different. The impact of a murder depends entirely on the acceptance of the King’s actions by his nobles. In William’s eyes the defection of the nobles from Æthelred was caused by the King’s pride, and not because of his dangerous tyrannical behaviour in forcing nobles from their possessions by murdering them.59 William of Malmesbury does not usually condone murder, and prefers his kings not to act with open brutality but with the rigour of a judge. For this he gives examples from the Norman kings: William the Conqueror bided his time to dispose of Archbishop Stigand of Canterbury, until he could legally remove him with the help of the pope.60 Henry I punished the nobles who were reluctant to accept him as king after Rufus’s death, but he waited until he had legal weapons in hand.61 Consequently, William of Malmesbury wanted his kings to rein in the greed of the nobles for influence at court as well as sometimes for the crown itself, but outright brutality was always only the last resort. What could happen if the nobles acted unimpeded? William answered the question with

55 WM, GR, i, pp. 258–59 (ii. 157). 56 WM, GR, ii, p. 137 and after. 57 WM, GR, i, pp. 320–23 (ii. 181). WM, GR, ii, p. 170. A similar case in WM, GR, i, pp. 314–15 (ii. 180): the murder of Uhtred. Williams, Æthelred the Unready, pp. 70–72 on Eadric Streona. 58 WM, GR, i, pp. 310–11 (ii. 179): ‘causa cedis ferebatur quod in bona eorum inhiauerat’. WM, GR, ii, p. 162. 59 WM, GR, i, pp. 276–77 (ii. 166): ‘ex ducum defectionem superbia regis prodeuntem’. 60 WM, GP, i, pp. 48–49 (i. 23). On Stigand: Smith, ‘Archbishop Stigand’. On the singularity of this explanation: WM, GR, ii, p. 36 and after. William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, ed. and trans. by Davis and Chibnall, pp. 160–61 (ii. 33), at least tells us of the Conqueror’s cautious approach to deposing Stigand. 61 WM, GR, i, pp. 716–17 (v. 394).

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two historical examples. In the old kingdom of Northumbria, the strife for the crown had cost so many lives that nobody wanted to become king any more.62 This might have been an interpretation that helped explain the scarce or even non-existing evidence William found for Northumbria,63 but it is telling for William’s aim to let history adhere to a meaningful pattern that he was looking for an explanation in this direction. The other example is again Æthelred the Unready. William does not claim that he was unable to control his nobles, but names two who were especially troublesome, Wulfnoth and Eadric, the one turning openly traitor and the other in secret accord with the Danish enemy.64 Thus, Æthelred’s incapacity as king is stressed by giving two vivid examples of how personal greed undermined his authority. If the kings took drastic measures to ensure peace and stability, William does not automatically judge them. His judgement depends on the circumstances. The king has to act with caution and moderation, whether as a generous and friendly ruler, or as a stern and sometimes even brutal master. If he does not exaggerate either by overdoing it or by being too reluctant, the nobles can easily accept the king’s actions. In the case of the punitive methods, William took Æthelred as an example, how the king should punish his greedy nobles, and how he should not act randomly against his nobles for his own aims. In Edward the Confessor’s case, William mentioned that everyone who stood against him at his elevation was exiled, but concealed the instigator of exile by presenting it in the passive mode.65 William cautiously claimed justification for Queen Emma’s fall from grace and her son Edward the Confessor’s seizure of her treasure, in Emma’s behaviour towards him, while at the same time admitting that he found proof for her saintly behaviour.66 William clearly states that the Confessor was in the right to punish corrupt judges when he became aware of their misbehaviour, which allegedly had been ignored by Godwine and his sons.67 William elaborates especially on the case of Godwine of Wessex and his fall from favour in 1051, where the picture is even more ambiguous than with Emma. William equally blames all the parties involved: the Norman faction at court, who vied for influence and enraged the English nobles, in particular the house of Godwine; the king, who did not (and perhaps did not want to) acknowledge Eustace’s of Boulogne guilt; and finally Godwine, who did not realize the seriousness of the king’s anger.68 Thus, the conflict between Edward

62 WM, GR, i, pp. 106–09 (i. 72–73). 63 WM, GR, ii, p. 58 on the scarcity of the sources. 64 WM, GR, i, pp. 270–77 (ii. 165). Eadric is also to blame for incurring the wrath of the Danish King Swein by putting his sister to death: WM, GR, i, pp. 300–01 (ii. 177). 65 WM, GR, i, pp. 352–53 (ii. 197). 66 WM, GR, i, pp. 350–51 (ii. 196). 67 WM, GR, i, pp. 350–51 (ii. 196). 68 WM, GR, i, pp. 354–63 (ii. 198–99). On this see also Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 188–91.

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the Confessor and Godwine is staged as a complex story and the blame is divided equally among all parties. In this case William again stressed his difficulties in finding the truth,69 and thus shows the mutual dependence of king and nobles for the success of a reign. William is subtly stressing that the complex interactions of king and nobles and the functioning of the system are the responsibility of all the actors involved. It is revealing how William depicts Godwine’s death. Godwine tempted his fate by provoking God’s interference. He tried to gain Edward’s trust by claiming to be innocent of Alfred’s murder, and choked on a morsel of food. ‘Denique Deum monstrasse quam sancto animo Goduinus seruierit’ (And in the end it was God who showed with what integrity Godwine served his king),70 as William comments. Thus, for William the question is not really whether Godwine was responsible for Alfred’s murder,71 but whether Godwine’s commitment to the kingdom was found wanting. He relates Godwine’s death before he disentangles the complex story of the temporary falling out between Edward and the Godwines; although he is very cautious in partitioning the guilt, the reader already knows the ultimate outcome and can form his own opinion on Godwine. Thus, in the case of Edward the Confessor it is God who intervened and the saintly King was not forced into any drastic actions. It is clear from his extraordinary treatment that William did use the saintly King as an example, but cautioned against taking the exceptional interference of God for granted in other cases.

Traditional Royal Virtues How does this all interact with the traditional royal virtues? Should we not expect that any virtuous king is successful? For William of Malmesbury this is only true in the negative case: an immoral king will end in disaster, sometimes only for himself and sometimes for his people as well. Vices lead to punishment. Again, we find examples in the Anglo-Saxon period: the British King Vortigern lost his realm because of his vices;72 Eadbald of Kent married his former stepmother and fell into apostasy, consequently losing his father’s supreme position.73 William took both examples from Bede, who had already condemned the two kings. A further example is Edgar’s predecessor King Eadwig, whose clash with Dunstan was written up in the pre-Conquest Lives of the Bishop.74 Eadwig’s deplorable conduct throughout his short reign, 69 WM, GR, i, pp. 356–57 (ii. 198). 70 WM, GR, i, pp. 354–55 (ii. 197). The sancto animo might have been meant ironically. 71 WM, GR, i, pp. 336–37 (ii. 188): William relates rumours on Alfred’s death which insinuated that Godwine was the main culprit. 72 WM, GR, i, pp. 20–21 (i. 4). 73 WM, GR, i, pp. 30–31 (i. 10); WM, GR, ii, p. 23 and after. 74 WM, GR, ii, p. 131 and after.

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even on the very day of his consecration as king (when he abandoned the coronation feast for the pleasures of the bedroom and his mistress, and had to to be dragged back by Dunstan), led to his early death,75 a pattern of vice and punishment which suited William of Malmesbury’s purposes very well. In the Anglo-Norman period, it was Robert Curthose who paid the price for his vice. He was too lazy to accept the daunting task of ruling the kingdom of Jerusalem. He returned to Normandy and settled down to enjoy his life, but instead was punished for his delinquency.76 Laziness is also Æthelred’s vice: William paints a vivid picture of the king ‘strenuus et pulchre ad dormiendum factus’ (active and well-built for slumber), who finds himself unable to rise beyond the point of leaning on one elbow. An army lacking the leadership of an able general is doomed to fail.77 Yet sometimes the occasional sin — as opposed to vice — may not have dire consequences. King Edgar abducted a nun, but apparently was forgiven after seven years of penitence.78 Whether a king’s sins were followed by disaster depended on the circumstances or on whether morally dubious behaviour was due to a lapse in self-control or inclination and habit. Sin as opposed to vice could be redeemed. On the other hand, virtues do not necessarily lead to success. There is only one case of a virtuous king whose reign is successful and that is Edward the Confessor. Edward almost led the life of an angel — ‘inter regni negotia uiuebat angelum’ (he lived amid the business of the realm an angel’s life) — except for his preference for hunting.79 William of Malmesbury explained the peace of his reign as the result of God’s favour for such an outstanding king. It is remarkable that Edward is depicted as the only king who is both

75 WM, GR, i, pp. 236–39 (ii. 147): ‘Ipse quippe die quo in regem sacratus fuerat, frequentissimo consessu procerum, dum de rebus seriis et regno necessariis inter eos ageretur, e medio quasi ludibundus prorupit, in triclinium et complexum ganeae deuolutus. Fremere omnes facti uerecundiam, et inter se mussitare; solus Dunstanus iuxta nominis sui firmitatem nichil regale supercilium ueritus, lasciuientem iuuenculum uiolenter e cubiculo abstraxit et, per Odonem archiepiscopum pelicem repudiare coactum, perpetuum sibi inimicum fecit’. On Dunstan’s image in the twelfth century: Robertson, ‘Dunstan and Monastic Reform’. 76 WM, GR, i, pp. 702–03 (iv. 389): ‘Ita Rotbertus, Ierosolimam ueniens, indelebili macula nobilitatem suam respersit, quod regnum, consensu omnium sibi utpote regis filio delatum, recusarit, non reuerentiae, ut fertur, contuitu sed laborum inextricabilium metu. Veruntamen patriam regresso, in qua licenter se delicatis uoluptatibus inseruiturum putauerat, affuit pro hac culpa, credo, Deus misericorditer ubique seruiens et omnes eius dulcedines amarissimis offensionibus offuscancs, sicut consequenti scripto palam fiet’. On this episode: Weiler, ‘The rex renitens’, p. 1 and after. On Robert Curthose on crusade: Aird, Robert Curthose, pp. 153–90. 77 WM, GR, i, pp. 272–75 (ii. 165). See also the depiction of Vortigern, WM, GR, i, pp. 20–21 (i. 4); and the offer of Gyrth to Harold to take over the fight against William, WM, GR, i, pp. 452–53 (iii. 239). I thank Emily Winkler for alerting me to these examples. 78 WM, GR, i, pp. 258–59 (ii. 158). WM, GR, ii, p. 138, also taken from the Life of Dunstan. 79 WM, GR, i, pp. 404–07 (ii. 220).

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morally good and moderately successful. Edward is thus not aligned in the usual pattern of kings, but that does not mean that William ‘did not attempt to give the reign a pattern’.80 There is simply no other case where virtue and success fall into line. The kings in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum are not patterned in an easily understandable dichotomy (a morally good king equals peace; a morally bad king equals unrest and war). Instead the benchmark for a good king is the success of his rule, which does not entirely depend on his virtue. The ground on which William’s judgement is laid is not the king’s own virtue, but the overall furthering of Christian life under his reign. And only peace — acquired by whatever means possible — can ensure that the king’s subjects can pursue a Christian life.

Counsel for the King: The Role of the Nobles What conditions, then, apart from a good measure of generosity and punishment, define the path to successful kingship? How does the king know how to act? For William of Malmesbury this is obvious. The king has to listen to counsel,81 and there no one better for counselling the king than the clerics and especially the bishops. The prime example is Dunstan of Canterbury and King Edgar: ‘Felitia tunc fuere tempora, habentia presulem qui nichil infra dictum faceret, regem qui sedulus edictis presulis intenderet’ (Those were happy times, when we had a bishop who did as he said and a king who listened intently to the bishop’s words).82 It is quite clear that the relationship of Dunstan and Edgar foreshadows that of Lanfranc and William the Conqueror as well as that of Anselm and Henry I — within certain limits. This is a clear indication that William indeed thought that the conditions for successful rule had been the same in Anglo-Saxon times as in the present. In the Gesta pontificum a bishop took care that the king did not raise too many taxes,83 while Anselm’s death immediately resulted in the deterioration of Henry I’s rule.84 The king has to listen to counsel, and there are negative examples of kings who did not listen to the bishops — the result always being to the detriment of the king. King Eadwig’s horrible end has already been mentioned. Nevertheless, it is the duty of the bishops to counsel the king even if the king is immune to counsel, as was the case with Æthelred the Unready: ‘Ibi abbates et episcopos, qui nec in tali necessitate dominum suum deserendum putarent, in hanc conuenit sententiam’ (There he [Æthelred] addressed the abbots and bishops 80 81 82 83 84

Rodney Thomson at WM, GR, ii, p. 206. Kemp, ‘Advising the King’. WM, GP, i, pp. 36–37 (i. 18. 6). WM, GP, i, pp. 384–85 (iii. 115. 19): Ealdred of York admonished William I. WM, GP, i, pp. 188–89 (i. 63. 1) (only in version β): ‘Et profecto si Diuinitas Anselmi uitam diutius Angliae conseruaret, numquam ille tanto quanto postea se uolutabro dedecoris immergeret, nec alios inuolui sineret’.

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who even in such a crisis had thought it their duty not to desert their lord, to the following effect).85 Nevertheless, the bishops are not just servants of the kings in this regard. William of Malmesbury vehemently rejected King Stephen’s idea that bishops were meant to be servants of the crown.86 The bishops serve the king only as an intermediary tool for the peace of the realm. The king’s obligation to listen to his bishops is just one side of the coin. William took his most vivid example for the dual aspect of counsel from a German source. He used a vision of Charles III the Fat to drive home his point, that the bishops had a duty to correct the king: Ibi inueni pontifices patris mei et auuunculorum meorum; quos cum pauens interrogarem quid tam grauia paterentur tormenta, responderunt michi: ‘Fuimus episcopi patris tui et auunculorum tuorum, et dum debuimus illos et populum illorum de pace et concordia ammonere et predicare, seminauimus discordias et incentores malorum fuimus; unde nunc incendimur in istis tartareis suplitiis et nos et alii homicidiorum et rapinarum amatores’. There I [Charles the Fat] found prelates who served my father and my uncles; and when I asked them in terror why they suffered such grievous torments, they replied: ‘We were bishops of your father and your uncles, and while it was our duty to teach and to preach peace and concord both to them and to their people, we sowed discord instead and fomented evil. For this we are now consumed in these hellish punishments, and with us others who loved murder and robbery’.87 Being open to counsel can be assisted by being open to learning, which will help the king to gain additional perspectives. William of Malmesbury again gives Anglo-Saxon examples88 as well as a Norman one: ‘rex illiteratus asinus coronatus’ (a king unlettered is a donkey crowned) are the words he puts into Henry I’s mouth.89 Successful rule is for William of Malmesbury not just a question of a morally good ruler. In this William seems to have a unique look on history. Successful rule is rather a question of the right conditions. The king has to rein in the nobles with generosity as well as by threat of punishment and the occasional carrying through of his threats; his nobles and bishops must curb their ambitions for the sake of the common good, and give good counsel; 85 WM, GR, i, pp. 302–03 (ii. 177). 86 William of Malmesbury, Historia novella, pp. 56–57 (ii. 27): ‘Rogerius itaque captus sit non ut episcopus, sed ut regis seruiens, qui et procurationes eius amministraret et solidatas acciperet’. In the next chapter Roger argues against this: pp. 56–57 (ii. 28). 87 WM, GR, i, pp. 164–65 (ii. 111). On this see also Thomson, William of Malmesbury, p. 148 and after; WM, GR, ii, p. 85. 88 WM, GR, i, pp. 80–81 (i. 52): Aldfrith; i, pp. 82–83 (i. 54): Ceolwulf is idoneus because of his learning. 89 WM, GR, i, pp. 710–11 (v. 390).

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and the king has to listen to them. If these conditions are met, it is not so important either that the king is morally beyond reproach or whether there are external enemies.

Good Rule vs. Successful Rule A morally good king is to be lauded and admired, but he is not by necessity a successful ruler, Edward the Confessor being the exception. William’s stress on the extraordinary quality of this feature of the Confessor means that he wanted his readers to realize that God’s intervention could not be counted upon. He concedes that Edward had deficiencies in his practices of rule, but they were compensated for by his nobles and by God’s favour. Such happy circumstances are not a natural given whenever a morally good king rules, which in any case happens only very rarely. The ruler’s success is defined by his handling the instruments of rule in the right way and within the boundaries of moderation. The aim of his rule is peace within the realm. The king’s abilities (not his virtues) and the circumstances of his time can result in a peaceful reign. If the realm is at peace, the bishops can attend to their duty of correcting the Christian people, including the king. The king therefore does not have to be an example of virtue, but at least he has to be inclined towards the virtue of listening to his clerical counsellors. On the other hand, kings who are dissolute have no chance to accomplish peace. As William shows by his examples, the occasional sin does not stand in the way of success, but inclination to vice does. This very interesting and unique concept of history shows that William wanted to present history as a complex and difficult subject. He still wanted his readers to learn from history, but he did not want them to come to rash conclusions. William proves his points by examples from the Anglo-Saxon and Norman past: Ine of Wessex is the first king to rule well, with Aldhelm at his side.90 Alfred the Great is another example of successful rule,91 as is Edgar.92 The ‘teamwork’ of Edgar and Dunstan foreshadows the almost co-rule of William the Conqueror and Lanfranc93 as well as the good relationship of Henry I

90 Ine of Wessex was counselled by Aldhelm: WM, GR, i, pp. 48–51 (i. 35); Ine was a respected king who at the end of his life abdicated to search for salvation: WM, GR, i, pp. 52–55 (i. 36). On Ine: Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae vitae institutum’, p. 252 and after; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, p. 159 and after. 91 WM, GR, i, pp. 180–93 (ii. 121–22). On Alfred: Abels, Alfred the Great; Reuter, ed., Alfred the Great; on Alfred’s treatment in William of Malmesbury: Whitelock, ‘William of Malmesbury’; Sønnesyn, ‘Ad bonae vitae institutum’, pp. 260–63; Sønnesyn, William of Malmesbury, pp. 166–69. 92 Above. 93 WM, GP, i, pp. 90–97 (i. 42. 6, version β). See also Winterbottom, ‘A New Passage’. On Lanfranc: Bates, William the Conqueror; Cowdrey, Lanfranc, pp. 185–96.

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and Anselm.94 These kings are not examples for morally good kings, but for successful kings. While not all their actions might pass moral judgement, nevertheless their rule lies at the foundation of comparatively peaceful times. Thus, the successful ruler becomes a good ruler not in the sense that he himself becomes good, but in the sense that his rule is good for everybody else in the realm. This overall reasoning seems to stand behind William’s choice of sources and stories. The fact that Æthelred has some vices thus tips the scales toward unsuccessful rule, but it is not the underlying reason. The reason for the troubled reign of Æthelred is the king’s failure to work together with his nobles, who — as can be seen by the case of Eadric Streona — also carry their share of guilt for the dismal situation. Edward’s virtues, on the other hand, are not what makes his reign successful. The nobles acting on behalf of the common good render Edward’s reign a success and his virtues are a bonus on top of peaceful times. Thus, William aims not only at the king, but at the whole community of the realm. William stresses that even under the reign of a bad king or an unsuccessful ruler the obligation for the bishops and the nobles to try for the best are still valid. For William, there is no excuse to opt out of trying.

William in Comparison with the Traditional Virtues in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia How unusual William’s outlook on the past is, can be easily underlined if we compare his outlook on examples from the past with that of his contemporary Henry of Huntingdon. Henry also set out to rewrite the history of England after the model of Bede,95 but for him writing history involved putting together examples which would advance the reader’s efforts to lead a virtuous life: Sic etiam in rebus gestis omnium gentium et nationum, que utique Dei iudicia sunt, benignitas, munificentia, probitas, cautela et his similia, et contraria, non solum spirituales ad bonum accendunt, et a malo repellunt, sed etiam seculares ad bona sollicitant et in malis minuunt. Yes, indeed, in the recorded deeds of all peoples and nations, which are the very judgements of God, clemency, generosity, honesty, caution

94 WM, GP, i, pp. 182–85 (i. 60). 95 Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. and trans. by Greenway [henceforth HH, HA], pp. 6–7 (Prologue): ‘Tuo quidem consilio Bede uenerabilis ecclesiasticam qua potui secutus historiam’. On Henry’s use of Bede: Greenway, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and Bede’. On Henry in general see Greenway’s preface to her edition; Greenway, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Manuscripts’; Greenway, ‘Authority, Convention and Observation’; Roling, ‘Der Historiker als Apologet der Weltverachtung’; Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’.

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and the like, and their opposites, not only provoke men of the spirit to what is good and deter them from evil, but even encourage worldly men to good deeds and reduce their wickedness.96 For some virtues, even pagan emperors might set an example. In his catalogue of Roman emperors Henry never fails to mention particular recommendable habits: Emperor Trajan, for example, never misses an opportunity to be generous, just, and pliable, and thus deserves admittance to heaven, even if he was a pagan.97 Christian kings must be committed to the salvation of their own soul. For Henry the foremost duty of kings is to seek after their soul’s salvation. The only safe way to accomplish this is through abdication of the crown.98 Henry names seven kings of Anglo-Saxon times who pursued that path and won the crown of heaven after they retired from public life to live in a monastery or make a pilgrimage to Rome.99 It is significant that Henry put together seven such kings, repeating the number of Bede’s kings who held power (imperium) over Britain.100 Henry thus juxtaposes his own idea of the vanity of earthly glory and power against a history praising the fleeting successes of mighty kings. King Edgar, whose lapses in royal judgement William of Malmesbury does not pass over, is in Henry’s history a king who sought after heaven with Dunstan’s help.101 The ‘hunting accident’ that William of Malmesbury put in his tale is not to be found in Henry, although he might have known about it.102 If there is a mighty king like Cnut, Henry strives to point out that God is even mightier. The famous episode of Cnut making a spectacle of himself by ordering the waves to stop is in fact a lesson for Cnut’s nobles.103 If one reads Henry cautiously, it is quite clear that Cnut was well aware of the outcome of his shouting at the incoming flood and that he wanted to demonstrate his utter lack of power in the face of God’s might.

96 HH, HA, pp. 4–5 (Prologue). 97 HH, HA, pp. 44–47 (i. 25). In the letter to King Henry, pp. 532–33 (ch. 92), Henry of Huntingdon claims that he was also uini potor. 98 HH, HA, pp. 222–23 (iv. 7): ‘Imitamini ergo, reges, horum duorum regum felicissiman strenuitatem […]. Qui diademata, uxores, urbes, cognatos et omnia relinquentes, multis milibus idem faciendi exemplum fuerunt. […] O Deus bone, quis nunc etiam igne sancti spiritus accensus exempla regum illorum et uere regum sequatur’; pp. 228–29 (iv. 10): ‘Vos etiam qui reges non estis, reges predictos imitemini, ut celi reges efficiamini. Si enim cum illi maiora reliquerint, uos minora relinquere nolueritis, sancti reges predicti uestre dampnationis iudices erunt’. 99 HH, HA, pp. 234–39 (iv. 16). 100 Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, ed. and trans. by Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 148–51 (ii. 5); Plassmann, ‘Bede’s Legacy’. 101 HH, HA, pp. 106–07 (ii. 23) on Edgar’s place in the series of English kings; pp. 318–23 (v. 24–26) on Edgar’s life; pp. 322–23 (v. 26) verses about Edgar, where Henry claims: ‘Septriger Eadgarus regna superna petit’. 102 It seems to have been known widely: WM, GR, ii, p. 137 and after. 103 HH, HA, pp. 366–69 (vi. 17); on this episode Roling, ‘Historiker als Apologet der Weltverachtung’, p. 165.

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The vanity of everything is a recurrent theme in Henry’s history.104 For Henry, kings turn out to be good or bad according to their vices and virtues, which have direct and sometimes even immediate consequences either for the king or his people. Sigeberht of Wessex was killed by a swineherd after having warped justice numerous times.105 Earl Godwine of Wessex choked to death before Edward the Confessor’s eyes after he had carelessly lied about his involvement in the murder of Edward’s brother.106 Godwine’s son Tosti was punished with exile for a misdeed and was killed shortly thereafter, as had been foreseen by the saintly King Edward.107 William Rufus’s hunting accident was the logical result of his maltreatment of the Church.108 The drowning of William Ætheling on the White Ship was the consequence of sodomy.109 The list could be continued. But the most interesting case is the different tale Henry that made of Æthelred the Unready’s reign. His reign was such a disaster because God was looking for a way to punish the errant English. He put the scourge of the Viking assaults in the same vein as conquest by the Normans, by assembling a list of scourges for Britain of which the Vikings and the Normans are part. Æthelred’s abilities do not contribute at all to the foregone result of his reign, which was orchestrated by the divine will.110

104 HH, HA, pp. 78–79 (ii. 1); pp. 100–01 (ii. 18); pp. 136–37 (ii. 40); Letter to Henry I: pp. 556–57 (ch. 177). In the letter to Walter, pp. 586–89 (ch. 2), Henry told how the favour of kings was useless in the face of death. On Henry’s contempt of the world: Roling, ‘Historiker als Apologet der Weltverachtung’. 105 HH, HA, pp. 244–45 (iv. 20): ‘Ecce manifestum Dei iudicium!’. 106 HH, HA, pp. 378–79 (vi. 23): ‘Deus autem uerax et iustus audiuit uocem proditoris’. 107 HH, HA, pp. 382–83 (vi. 25): ‘Rex [Edward the Confessor] autem pernitiem eorum iam appropinquare predixit, et iram Dei iam non differendam’. 108 HH, HA, pp. 446–47 (vii. 22): ‘Iure autem in medio iniusticie sue prereptus est’. 109 HH, HA, pp. 466–67 (vii. 32): ‘Qui omnes, uel fere omnes, sodomitica labe dicebantur, et erant irretiti’. Similarly, in the letter to Walter, pp. 592–95 (ch. 5), where William Ætheling is named as an example of a pampered rich young man whose hopes for the future are rendered futile by God’s intervention. On the White Ship disaster: Green, Henry I, pp. 164–67. 110 HH, HA, pp. 274–75 (v. prologue): ‘Cur autem tanto furore Dei iusticia in eos exarserit, causa hec est. […] Inmisit ergo Dominus omnipotens, uelut examina apium, gentes crudelissimas, que nec etati nec sexui parcerent, […] qui ab exordio regni Aedelwulfi regis usque ad aduentum Normannorum Willelmi regis, ductu ducentis triginta annis, terram hanc desolauerunt. Qui etiam nonnumquam ex affinitate Britannie Dei uindices’; pp. 324–25 (v. 27): ‘Inde Dominus iterum ad iram promotus et plus solito irritatus, genti pessime malum inextricabile conferre cogitauit’; pp. 338–39 (vi. 1): ‘Genti enim Anglorum, quam sceleribus suis exigentibus disterminare proposuerat, sicut et ipsi Britones peccatis accusantibus humiliauerant, Dominus omnipotens dupplicem contricionem proposuit et quasi militares insidias adhibuit. Scilicet ut hinc Dacorum persecution seuiente, illinc Normannorum coniunctione accrescente, si a Dacorum manifesta fulminatione euaderent, Normannorum inprouisam cum fortitudine cautelam non euaderent’. See also pp. 346–47 (vi. 5): that the English navy is stolen is due to God’s actions (‘Illusit autem eos Deus’) and pp. 362–63 (vi. 15): King Cnut is the tax collector the English deserve (‘Dignum igitur exactorem Dominus iustus Anglis imposuit’). On the motif of the English sins and their

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Another telling difference between William and Henry is their handling of examples for practices of rule such as bribery and donations. William gave concrete examples of how the generosity of kings helped pour oil on troubled water and pacified nobles prone to rebellion, but Henry only claimed that some kings were generous, without ever recounting a particular situation.111 Henry ascribed affability and friendliness to kings even less often than William.112 Murder and tyranny, however, Henry treated more elaborately.113 The difference between William and Henry and their outlook on history and the past can be best seen by looking at their treatment of William the Conqueror: ‘De cuius regis potentissimi uita, bona perstrigenda sunt et mala, ut a bonis sumantur exempla, et a malis discatur cautela’ (The good and evil must be briefly outlined from the life of this most mighty king, so that examples may be taken from the good and caution may be learned from the evil).114 For Henry, the Conqueror’s deeds can be used as an example for the reader, either to emulate or to avoid. The reader’s judgement does not depend on whether he has Norman or English origins. Henry located English history and the Anglo-Saxon past firmly in the history of salvation. Deeds of kings and peoples incur the wrath of God or are rewarded by God’s favour, while William tells his readers about a complex interdependence of kings and nobles where the king’s virtues are just one factor in peaceful rule and not in themselves decisive. This, however, does not mean that William did not think within the pattern of salvation history. Kings’ activities have repercussions for the personal salvation of their subjects by providing a peaceful realm, or failing to do so. The ultimate purpose of a peaceful realm serves the history of salvation, since only then can the king’s subjects strive after a Christian life. William did not draw this picture by simply aligning a string of exemplary kings in the past, but nevertheless he arranged his history according to the pattern of salvation history that he had deduced from the Anglo-Saxon past. William supported this interpretation of history with examples that he found in his sources, and sometimes even went beyond that by adding his own musings and tales. Even the order in which William presented events might have helped guide interpretation, as in the case of the tale of Edward and Godwine. William might have collected many stories from the Anglo-Saxon past, but he rigorously edited and aligned them for his own purposes.

111 112 113 114

subsequent punishment by the Normans: Williams, The English and the Norman Conquest; Thomas, The English and the Normans, pp. 88–90; Plassmann, Die Normannen, p. 176 and after. On Henry’s sense of identity: Gillingham, ‘Henry of Huntingdon’. Particularly long-dead rulers like Trajan or Theodosius: HH, HA, pp. 44–47 (i. 25) (Trajan), pp. 66–69 (i. 43) (Theodosius), but also Harthacnut, pp. 370–71 (vi. 20). HH, HA, pp. 220–21 (iv. 6): King Wihtred of Kent arranged with King Ine of Wessex pacifica supplicatione. HH, HA, pp. 328–29 (v. 29): Æthelred ordered a blinding; pp. 340–41 (vi. 2): Æthelred ordered the murder of the Danes; pp. 362–63 (vi. 15): Cnut established himself with brutality; pp. 370–73 (vi. 20): the murder of Alfred, the Confessor’s brother. HH, HA, pp. 404–05 (vi. 38).

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Conclusions In some respects, William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum aligns well with the heightened interest in the past that characterized English historiography in the twelfth century. He can be grouped with several other historians who decided to connect their present with the specifically Anglo-Saxon past, in contrast with the other options of British or Norman pasts. I would argue that this option for the Anglicization of the Anglo-Norman kings shows that William was foremost interested in educating his audience about the community of the realm. In his intent to disclose a pattern in the Anglo-Saxon past he is comparable to other historians who did the same, like Henry of Huntingdon. I would argue, however, that William has a unique take on the complicated connectedness of royal virtues, methods of rule, participation of the nobles (especially the bishops), and how it all tied in with the occasional visible history of salvation. Taking Æthelred the Unready and Edward the Confessor as examples, we can distinguish a set of factors that contribute to the success of a king. First, the conditions as set at the beginning of the reign have an impact on how easy or difficult it is to reach the perfect style of ruling. Second, the king himself has an arsenal of methods of rule: incentive measures like generosity, kindliness, and accessibility — each to be used with moderation — and punitive measures like justice, punishment, and murder — equally to be used with moderation. Third, there is a connection between virtue and success, but it is not clear-cut. The occasional sin — which has of course to be redeemed — does not hinder an overall successful rule. Last, there is the interaction of king and nobles, the importance of counsel, and the commitment of the nobles to the common good. All these must come together in an intricate web to achieve a rule that is not only successful, but also good, and it is only for Edward the Confessor that it all falls into place.

Works Cited Primary Sources Bede, Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum (Ecclesiastical History of the English People), ed. and trans. by Bertram Colgrave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum (The History of the English People), ed. and trans. by Diana Greenway (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996) Nennius, Historia Brittonum, ed. and trans. by John Morris (London: Phillimore, 1980) William of Malmesbury, Gesta pontificum Anglorum (The History of the English Bishops), ed. and trans. by M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2007)

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———, Gesta regum Anglorum (The History of the English Kings), ed. and trans. by R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998–1999) ———, Historia novella (The Contemporary History), ed. by Edmund King, trans. by K. R. Potter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) William of Poitiers, Gesta Guillelmi, ed. and trans. by R. H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) Secondary Works Abels, Richard, Alfred the Great: War, Kingship and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England (London: Longman, 1998) Aird, William M., Robert Curthose: Duke of Normandy c. 1050–1134 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008) Aurell, Martin, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, Haskins Society Journal, 18 (2007), 1–18 Barlow, Frank, Edward the Confessor (London: Yale University Press, 1997) Bartlett, Robert, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000) Bates, David, ‘The Conqueror’s Adolescence’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 25 (2002), 1–18 ———, The Normans and Empire (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) ———, William the Conqueror (London: Yale University Press, 2016) Cowdrey, H. E. J., Lanfranc: Scholar, Monk, and Archbishop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Gillingham, John, ‘The Beginnings of English Imperialism’, in The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), pp. 3–18 [reprinted from Journal of Historical Sociology, 5 (1992), 392–409] ———, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Twelfth-Century Revival of the English Nation’, in The English in the Twelfth Century: Imperialism, National Identity and Political Values (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000), pp. 123–44 [reprinted from Concepts of National Identity in the Middle Ages, ed. by Simon Forde, Lesley Johnson, and Alan V. Murray (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1995), pp. 75–101] ———, ‘Civilizing the English? The English Histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research, 74 (2001), 17–43 Goetz, Hans-Werner, ‘Die Gegenwart der Vergangenheit im früh- und hochmittelalterlichen Geschichtsbewußtsein’, Historische Zeitschrift, 255 (1992), 61–97 ———, Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewußtsein im hohen Mittelalter (Berlin: Akademie, 1999) Green, Judith, Henry I: King of England and Duke of Normandy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) Greenway, Diana A., ‘Henry of Huntingdon and the Manuscripts of his Historia Anglorum’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 9 (1986), 103–26

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———, ‘Henry of Huntingdon and Bede’, in L’historiographie médiévale en Europe, ed. by Jean-Philippe Genet (Paris: CNRS, 1991), pp. 43–50 ———, ‘Authority, Convention and Observation in Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 18 (1995), 105–21 Hayward, Paul, ‘The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Innuendo and Legerdemain in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum Anglorum’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 33 (2010), 75–102 Kemp, Ryan, ‘Advising the King: Kingship, Bishops and Saints in the Works of William of Malmesbury’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. by Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Dolmans, and Emily A. Winkler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 65–79 Licence, Tom, Edward the Confessor: Last of the Royal Blood (London: Yale University Press, 2020) Mortimer, Richard, ed., Edward the Confessor: The Man and the Legend (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2009) Plassmann, Alheydis, Origo gentis: Identitäts- und Legitimitätsstiftung in früh- und hochmittelalterlichen Herkunftserzählungen, Orbis mediaevalis: Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters, 7 (Berlin: Akademie, 2006) ———, Die Normannen: Erobern — Herrschen — Integrieren (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2008) ———, ‘Bedingungen und Strukturen von Machtausübung bei Wilhelm von Malmesbury und Heinrich von Huntingdon’, in Macht und Spiegel der Macht: Herrschaft in Europa im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert vor dem Hintergrund der Chronistik, ed. by Norbert Kersken and Grischa Vercamer, Deutsches Historisches Institut Warschau Quellen und Studien, 27 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2013), pp. 145–71 ———, ‘Bede’s Legacy in William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon’, in People, Texts and Artefacts: Cultural Transmission in the Medieval Norman Worlds, ed. by David Bates, Edoardo d’Angelo, and Elisabeth van Houts (London: Institute of Historical Research, 2017), pp. 171–92 ———, ‘German Emperors as Exemplary Rulers in William of Malmesbury and Otto of Freising’, in Discovering William of Malmesbury, ed. by Rodney M. Thomson, Emily Dolmans, and Emily A. Winkler (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), pp. 139–52 Reuter, Timothy, ed., Alfred the Great: Papers from the Eleventh-Centenary Conferences (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003) Roach, Levi, Æthelred the Unready (London: Yale University Press, 2016) Robertson, Nicola, ‘Dunstan and Monastic Reform: Tenth-Century Fact or Twelfth-Century Fiction?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 28 (2005), 153–67 Roling, Bernd, ‘Der Historiker als Apologet der Weltverachtung: die Historia Anglorum des Heinrich von Huntingdon’, Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 33 (1999), pp. 125–68 Shopkow, Leah, History and Community: Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1997)

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Smith, Mary Frances, ‘Archbishop Stigand and the Eye of the Needle’, AngloNorman Studies, 16 (1993), 199–219 Sønnesyn, Sigbjørn Olsen, ‘“Ad bonae uitae institutum”: William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Bergen, 2007) ———, William of Malmesbury and the Ethics of History (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2012) Thomas, Hugh M., The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity 1066–c. 1220 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) Thomson, Rodney M., William of Malmesbury, revised edn (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003) ———, ‘William of Malmesbury’s Diatribe against the Normans’, in The Long Twelfth-Century View of the Anglo-Saxon Past, ed. by Martin Brett and David A. Woodman (Farnham: Ashgate, 2015), pp. 113–21 van Houts, Elisabeth, ‘Historical Writing’, in A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World, ed. by Christopher Harper-Bill and Elisabeth van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003), pp. 103–21 Weiler, Björn, ‘The rex renitens and the Medieval Ideal of Kingship, ca. 900–ca. 1250’, Viator, 31 (2000), 1–42 ———, ‘William of Malmesbury on Kingship’, History, 90 (2005), 3–22 ———, ‘William of Malmesbury, King Henry I and the Gesta regum Anglorum’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 31 (2008), 157–76 Whitelock, Dorothy, ‘William of Malmesbury on the Works of King Alfred’, in Medieval Literature and Civilization: Studies in Memory of G. N. Garmonsway, ed. by D. A. Pearsall and R. A. Waldron (London: Athlone, 1969), pp. 78–93 Williams, Ann, The English and the Norman Conquest (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995) ———, Æthelred the Unready: The Ill-Counselled King (London: Hambledon, 2003) Winkler, Emily A., ‘England’s Defending Kings in Twelfth-Century Historical Writing’, Haskins Society Journal, 25 (2013), 147–63 Winterbottom, Michael, ‘A New Passage of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta pontificum’, Journal of Medieval Latin, 11 (2001), 50–59

C. P. Lewis

Selfhood and Perspective in Orderic Vitalis’s Rewriting of English History

The other chapters in this volume amply illustrate the point that the rewriting of history was always undertaken from a particular perspective, both in the physical sense that an author wrote from a location in space and time, and from an intellectual or moral position.1 Rewriting happened with a purpose and often from an ideological standpoint, but such perspectives can be tantalizingly out of reach. Authors might be reticent about themselves, and when they were more forthcoming, it was often only briefly, in the prologues, prefaces, and letters to patrons that it was normal to publish with a work of history. One author of the central Middle Ages about whose perspective a great deal can be said was the monk Orderic Vitalis (1075–c. 1142), whose lengthy and sprawling Ecclesiastical History (Historia ecclesiastica) is such a rich source for the affairs of the Anglo-Norman realm.2 Orderic rewrote history in multiple ways and his practice as an historian has been much studied.3 Rather than tracking his treatment of older historical works, this chapter probes one aspect of Orderic’s sense of self — his Englishness — as a means of better understanding his motivations for rewriting English history in order to shape it in a particular way. A few words are needed at the outset to place in context the relatively limited attention that Orderic gave to English history. Orderic was unusual

1 I am pleased to acknowledge with gratitude the audience’s comments on a very early version of this paper read at the Orderic Vitalis conference in Durham in 2013, and Emily Winkler’s helpful suggestions on a more recent draft. 2 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall [text and translation henceforth cited as Orderic]; Orderic’s Books i and ii can only be read in full in Orderic Vitalis, Historiæ ecclesiasticæ libri tredecim, ed. by Le Prévost, i, 5–460. 3 Notably by Chibnall, ‘Orderic Vitalis and Saint-Évroul’, in The Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, i, pp. 29–39, and ‘The Ecclesiastical History’, i, pp. 45–115; Hingst, The Written World; Rozier, Roach, Gasper, and van Houts, eds, Orderic Vitalis; Roach, ‘The Material and the Visual’; Rozier, ‘Repairing the Loss’. C. P. Lewis  •  ([email protected]) is a Senior Fellow at the University of London’s Institute of Historical Research. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 269–293 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126754

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among historians of the period in giving his work a title, but it hardly does the finished work justice. His Ecclesiastical History started as a modest house-history of his own monastery of Saint-Evroul, on the southern borders of Normandy, but as he worked, Orderic became interested in the wider scene; his history grew and grew, spreading by stages to include the entire history of the Norman people in Normandy, England, southern Italy, and the Holy Land, brought down to recent times. At a late stage in composition he widened its already ambitious scope by inserting two books at the beginning, making the story of Saint-Evroul start with the Life of Christ and an outline of papal history. Orderic himself made much of the fact that his history was the first writing of the story of his monastery, but it also involved several other features: a rewriting of Norman history, a selective approach to English history (focused on Norman achievements and Saint-Evroul’s connections), and an appropriation of other writers’ histories of the Normans in southern Italy and the Holy Land. The ways in which he repurposed the past shifted over the lengthy period he was working. Writing history on such an ambitious scale required Orderic to use very many different historical sources — his editor Marjorie Chibnall identified over a hundred4 — and the way he employed them was necessarily diverse. He seems to have had some key texts always to hand but had evidently merely glanced at others. When he could, he ransacked libraries elsewhere for source material, and as he accumulated information he compared different versions of the past and assessed their veracity. Sometimes he copied out existing histories verbatim, at other times only made excerpts. In his own writing he identified some of his sources precisely and engaged closely with their authors, but at other times made only tangential allusions to what underlay his own work. Throughout he spliced together information which reached him from different provenances. Orderic’s historical method and practice as an historian thus involved every conceivable type of rewriting, from almost straight copying, through excerpting and summary, to new composition from old materials. Among his fresh composition we can usefully distinguish further, between his approaches to contemporary history and to historical events. For recent history, he blended his own direct knowledge of events and people with first-hand information from participants and observers. Where he had no direct knowledge of more distant events and could not have spoken to anyone who had, his method had to be creative in other ways: one characteristic feature was the lengthy invented speeches and dialogues which he put into the mouths of historical personages.5 Orderic Vitalis was born to a French priest and his English wife ten years after the Norman Conquest in or near Shrewsbury, the chief borough of the marcher county of Shropshire; he died a senior Benedictine monk in the

4 The Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, i, 48–77, with details of his quotations and allusions at i, 217–21; ii, 371–72; iii, 369–70; iv, 357–58; v, 383–84; vi, 559–60. 5 Chibnall, ‘The Ecclesiastical History’, pp. 79–84.

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Norman marcher monastery of Saint-Evroul around 1142, in the years of unrest and local wars when the duchy was slipping out of King Stephen’s control and into the hands of Count Geoffrey of Anjou.6 Despite those long years in Normandy, Orderic is usually seen as distinctly if incompletely English, an Anglo-Norman historian comparable in background and sympathies with Henry of Huntingdon and William of Malmesbury, to be spoken of in the same breath as Eadmer of Canterbury, the anonymous Peterborough chronicler, John of Worcester, and Symeon of Durham, meaningfully comparable also with Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gaimar, and Wace.7 The group picture of Anglo-Norman historians is potentially larger still, but we can crop it to show only four central figures, leaving Orderic alongside William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and John of Worcester. Their lives overlapped; they wrote ambitious Latin prose histories on a large scale; and they knew (or at least, knew of) one another. The big difference is that Orderic spent his entire life from the age of ten in Normandy, while the others were firmly rooted in England. William, Henry, and John — despite their forenames of Continental origin — were plainly English in all kinds of meaningful senses, given that English monks and clerks of their generation often had Norman or French fathers and spoke French as a first language.8 Orderic’s Englishness was far more attenuated: to not much more than his maternal ancestry, his place of birth and childhood, his self-presentation as Vitalis the Englishman, and an interest in the events, saints, and people of England. All those aspects of his identity apart from his place of birth, however, need to be qualified. First, his maternal ancestry is presumed rather than proven. Second, ‘Vitalis the Englishman’ could be the label that others applied to him when he first arrived at Saint-Evroul, rather than a name willingly chosen for himself. Third, his interest in England and English history was never at the centre of his concerns as a writer of history. The last point is obvious but worth stressing. Orderic’s great work was an ecclesiastical history on a broad canvas, not a history of England or the English kings. If it was not an ecclesiastical history of the whole world, then it covered a formidably wide part of it. It was above all a history of ‘our’ ecclesiastical world, so that what Orderic conceived of as ‘ours’ and ‘us’ is vital. This foregrounds his sense of identity and the interplay between Orderic’s outer and inner lives: his identity was constructed in the way that all identities are, but it could only be fashioned from and within the circumstances that life had dealt him. Monastic chronicler-historians were self-effacing, and in one sense Orderic hardly inserts himself at all into the narrative. He was not an historical actor

6 For a recent account of Stephen’s loss of Normandy, see Hagger, Norman Rule, pp. 179–83. 7 Gransden, Historical Writing in England, pp. 136–85; Briggs, ‘History, Story, and Community’, pp. 401–05. 8 The issues are explored, with a very full guide to further reading, in Thomas, The English and the Normans, esp. pp. 200–35.

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in the events he described, certainly not in the world-historical dramas of the Norman Conquest or the First Crusade, but neither in the affairs of Normandy and its southern march, and not even in the domestic affairs of the monastery. Orderic does not appear in his own stories about Saint-Evroul’s abbots, patrons, friends, and enemies, though it is hard to believe that a monk who rose in seniority as the years went by, the abbey’s historian, librarian, and cantor, was not deeply involved in its affairs.9 Despite the historian’s formal absence from his history, an ‘I’ (ego) is nonetheless present throughout the Ecclesiastical History: as its writer. Orderic strove to give a powerful sense of his role as the shaper of this work, starting in the Prologue, and repeatedly thereafter. He especially makes his presence and his agency as author known when there was some shift in the main source that he was using. When in Book iv he reached the end of William of Poitiers’s Gesta Guillelmi (The Deeds of William), for example, he explained (here paraphrasing): ‘I have followed his history in brief — I have not tried to include everything — now I shall record later events because I reckon that my juniors will want to read this in exactly the same way that I myself lapped up earlier histories’. Orderic’s explanation of the attractions of a powerfully told historical story loops around a string of first-person singular verbs in both past and future tenses: ‘I have abridged’ (breuiter […] secutus sum), ‘I have not tried’ (nec […] conatus sum), ‘I shall record’ (notabo), ‘just as I gladly read’ (sicut ego […] libenter reuoluo).10 Again, in Book vi, at the end of his account of St Evroul himself, Orderic drew attention to his own labour as an historian. Paraphrasing again: ‘I have sought out facts about the life of St Evroul from chronicles and written them down; now I’ll tell you some things that I’ve learned not from written sources but from oral traditions’. Again the passage is about the processes of writing history, and about the intellectual work of the author, and this time draws attention not only to Orderic as author but to his readers: ‘I have eagerly rummaged (rimatus hausi) […] I have briefly noted [these facts], wishing to satisfy my reader (lectorique meo satisfacere uolens breuiter annotaui) […] Now I turn back (Nunc regredi) […] to [facts] which I have learned not from writing but from the words of old men (quae non scripto sed seniorum relatione didici)’.11 I have given just two examples of Orderic’s insertion of himself as author from literally hundreds. The density of his self-reference is apparent in his use of first-person verbs. Although most of the dozens in Book iii, for example, function simply to remind the reader that the author has mentioned something earlier, Orderic also apologizes for digression, promises greater detail to come, makes claims for the veracity of his first-hand knowledge, inserts other

9 Rozier, ‘Orderic Vitalis as Librarian’. 10 Orderic, ii, 260–61. 11 Orderic, iii, 282–83.

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references to the historian’s craft, and very occasionally professes ignorance or a reluctance to name persons who had acted discreditably.12 Three passages are worth quoting more fully, since they show Orderic reflecting upon his work as an historian with a characteristic blend of the modesty that was required of monastic authors with an undertow of pride in his own research and writing, and with his expansive sense of belonging to a larger community of historians past, present, and future. The first is about Duke William, his wife Matilda, and their children: Skilful historians (dicaces hystoriographi) could write a memorable history of these great men and women […]. We (Nos), however, who have no experience (non insistimus) of the courts of the world, but spend our lives (incumbimus) in the daily round of the cloisters, will briefly note what is relevant to our (nobis) purpose, and return (redeamus) to our chosen topic.13 The second is a direct reference to research methods: I am happy to mention (indidi) these books [by Marianus Scotus and Sigebert of Gembloux] in this record […]. I saw (uidi) one of them at Worcester in England and the other at Cambrai in Lorraine. It was kindly shown to me (michi) by Fulbert, the worthy abbot of St Sepulchre’s.14 The third is the closing passage of Book iii, which Orderic wrote over an erasure, perhaps after second thoughts about what it was appropriate to say when what had been concluding remarks were turned into the opening statement of a new book.15 And now, worn out, I sigh (anhelo) for rest; and am moved (dispono) to bring to an end this first book of the History of the Church, in which my pen has faithfully recorded (deprompsi) the doings of lords and learned men of my own age and neighbourhood. In the following books I will tell more (disseram) of King William, and will record (referam) without distortion the chances and changes of English and Normans alike […].16 The insistently present ‘I’ of the Ecclesiastical History — as Orderic is keen to remind us time and again — is a conscientious, widely read, experienced, and

12 Orderic, ii, 14 (retulimus, prædiximus), 18 (audiuimus), 20 (retulimus), 28 (occupor, cogor, edisseram, promisi), 30 (digressi sumus, redeamus), 40 (tetigimus), 44 (nescimus), 52 (nolo), 54 (explicabo), 56 (diximus), 58 (retulimus), 76 (meminimus), 86 (diximus), 102 (recolo), 106 (diximus), 112 (diximus), 114 (loquimur), 116 (diximus), 124 (ostendimus), 128 (uidimus), 130 (redeamus), 132 (diximus), 144 (retulimus), 150 (nequeo, cupio, retulimus), 154 (retulimus), 156 (inseram), 166 (tetigimus, festinaremus, perstrinximus, inseruimus), 168 (attolimus, diximus). 13 Orderic, ii, 104–05. 14 Orderic, ii, 188–89. 15 Orderic, ii, 188–89 note 2. 16 Orderic, ii, 188–89.

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highly skilled historian used to working with both written and oral sources, who observes the proprieties of authorial modesty but is acutely conscious of being a member of a larger community of historians.

Authorial Identity Orderic’s identity can best be explored by starting with the outer circle of belonging. Who did he identify as ‘we’, that is, when he was not simply using an authorial plural? The splendid index verborum that accompanies Marjorie Chibnall’s edition of the Ecclesiastical History allows a modest beginning on a very large task.17 Orderic occasionally employed the unusual plural noun nostrates and the related adjective nostras in senses which arguably go deeper than just ‘ours’, the first referring to ‘our people, our men’, the latter meaning ‘of our country, native’. Nostras is a perfectly respectable Classical Latin word, and nostrates simply its nominative plural used as a noun. Orderic used them infrequently, only seventeen times altogether, when the unambiguous patria (‘native land, homeland, country’) occurs eighty-six times. A clear majority, eleven of the seventeen, come in Book v, where Orderic took them over directly from Baldric of Bourgueil’s crusade history to indicate the Frankish army of the First Crusade; nonetheless, Orderic had made a deliberate choice to retain the word.18 Baldric was a man of the Loire valley: born in the county of Anjou, abbot of the Angevin house of Bourgueil for almost thirty years (1079–1106) and then bishop of the eastern Breton diocese of Dol for another twenty-odd (1107–1130). Full Angevin commitment to the Crusades came only after Baldric’s time,19 but Baldric himself had a strong and natural sense of identification with the French contingents on the crusade. It is plain that Orderic too, from his monastic and Norman perspective, thought that the crusade army was ‘us’.20 Otherwise he used the term sparingly, meaning the Normans,21 or ambiguously the French more widely, as when he wrote of the papal schism that the Cluniacs ‘are particularly respected and obeyed among the monks of our country’ (inter nostrates monachos).22 The contrast between ‘us’ (meaning the Normans) and others is most pointed when in connection with the Life of St Guthlac he held up the value of studying the holy deeds of the Anglo-Saxons, ‘little as these things are known to us’ (nostratibus). The juxtaposition of ‘them’ and ‘us’ here is the more telling for the reception by a plainly stated ‘us’ of edifying information about a wildly 17 Orderic, i, 246–386. 18 The Historia Ierosolimiana of Baldric of Bourgueil, ed. by Biddlecombe; Orderic, v, 48–49, 56–57, 68–69, 102–03, 118–19, 158–59, 272–73, 328–29, 334–35, 374–75 (twice). 19 Riley-Smith, The First Crusaders; Parsons, ‘The Inhabitants of the British Isles’. 20 Roach, ‘Orderic Vitalis and the First Crusade’. 21 Orderic, ii, 360–61; iii, 124–25. 22 Orderic, vi, 420–21.

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exotic-sounding ‘them’. Chibnall translated the relevant phrase by a rather bland ‘the Angles and Saxons of England’, but the actual words that Orderic used were unsettlingly strange: ‘the overseas Saxons or English’ (genitive plural transmarinorum Saxonum uel Anglorum).23 Orderic’s use of nostrates and nostra opens a small window on his sense of belonging to larger groups. What is needed now is a complete reading and analysis of the Ecclesiastical History for its ‘us-ness’: every ‘us’, every ‘ours’, and every first-person plural verb. That is a project for another time. This chapter instead examines an aspect of Orderic’s identity by looking at his England and his Englishness from two standpoints: what he knew about England, and what he felt about it. Another facet of his English identity — his diminishing proficiency in the English language as he grew older in Normandy — has been expertly tracked elsewhere.24 Any distinction between knowledge and sentiment is bound to be somewhat artificial. What Orderic told his readers about English history was conditioned in part by what he was able to find out: by his research methods, his reading of William of Poitiers, the ways in which he chose to abbreviate or enlarge upon that earlier history, his research trip to England (visiting Crowland, Thorney, and Worcester) and what he gathered and digested into writing there, his collection of oral testimony at Saint-Evroul from named or identifiable individuals such as Robert of Rhuddlan’s brother and Orderic’s fellow monk Arnold, and the historical and current political knowledge that could be gleaned from the constant background chatter about the world, the news and rumour and gossip and misinformation generated by the comings and goings of monks and lay visitors, across Saint-Evroul’s spreading transnational social network. Orderic was able to cast a wide net, but sometimes we can identify specific conduits for information about affairs in England. In 1081, for example, Abbot Mainer and the monks Drew de Neufmarché and Roger de Warenne (both of them once knights in the household of Earl Hugh of Chester) visited King William, Archbishop Lanfranc, and unspecified others in England, and they must have come back to Saint-Evroul full of English news.25 That was before Orderic’s time, but he came to know the two older men well in later years. Roger was a monk for forty-six years and Drew for perhaps as long; they were from extended aristocratic families, and in Orderic’s time they must have received a regular flow of English news from their Anglo-Norman kinsmen in contacts that were too commonplace ever to be noticed. News and gossip from England did not necessarily in themselves make good history. Orderic filtered them for relevance and reliability. The cases where he demonstrably got things wrong show the limits of research through oral testimony. There is a larger point too. What Orderic knew was determined only in part by the

23 Orderic, ii, 324–25. 24 Faulkner, ‘Orderic and English’. 25 Orderic, iii, 118–19, 226–33.

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possibilities and constraints of his research methods; it was also shaped by what he wanted to know about England and the course of English history — or at any rate, by what he wanted to tell his readers, that is, first and foremost his abbot and his fellow monks. The connection between knowledge and sentiment also worked the other way round: what Orderic felt about England and Englishness was given form by what he knew.

Orderic’s Knowledge of England I shall start with what Orderic knew about England and how he knew it. It is a significant feature of his mental mapping that England was more solid for him as an historical topic the further back he went towards the time of his childhood. Two features of his cognitive landscape can be isolated, though they are related: chronological imbalance and the range of topics that interested him. The depth of treatment that he accorded to English affairs was very lopsided between earlier and later periods, but with a renewed quickening of detail in the most recent times. It can be measured, though with some hesitation because of the difficulties in distinguishing what we should count as English and as Norman affairs, intrinsic to the bipartite nature of the Anglo-Norman realm. Another difficulty is Orderic’s method of presentation, in which telling his readers about an event or a person in a firmly English context could lead into a digression or explanation which was not about England at all (and vice versa). The following observations depend on counting lines of Latin text in Chibnall’s edition, widening the scope beyond England to include Orderic’s modest and always related discussion of affairs in Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and Man. The details should not be relied on too heavily, but the larger picture is clear and striking. There are almost 5200 lines on insular affairs. By reign, almost 60 per cent is on events in the time of William I; a little over 25 per cent on William II; and the remaining 15 per cent on Henry I and Stephen, down to the conclusion of the Ecclesiastical History in 1141. In other words, 85 per cent of what Orderic has to say about England and the other kingdoms of the islands is on the period 1066–1100 (thirty-four years), and only 15 per cent on the slightly longer period 1100–1141 (forty-one years). If we adjust the figures to make them proportionate to regnal years and this time work backwards, there are fewer than twenty lines per regnal year after 1100; five times that density for William II’s reign (over 100 lines per year); and half as much again for William I (150 lines per year). That impression needs one important qualification. Orderic’s treatment thickens again for English events in Stephen’s reign; in fact there is almost exactly as much text about the six years of Anarchy after 1135 as for the thirty-five years of Henry’s reign; and the density of treatment by lines per regnal year is six times (63 against 10). There is a strong presumption that the violence and misery of recent times led Orderic to think more about England as he approached the present day.

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The point of transition between fuller and less full treatment can in fact be pinned down to one particular episode of disorder, the rebellion of 1101–1102 in favour of Robert Curthose, rather than to the accession of Henry I as such. That leads me to Orderic’s chief topics of interest in English history, which he reported most fully and to which he had evidently devoted most effort in research. They comprised: the deeds of the Anglo-Norman earls and barons of the Welsh marches (the group to which his father’s patron Earl Roger of Shrewsbury belonged); the English part of the Saint-Evroul story, its patrons, friends, and endowments; and the affairs of the handful of Benedictine houses that had a connection of some kind with Saint-Evroul. Under the last heading, he tracked the progress of Crowland, Thorney, and Shrewsbury. It is interesting that although it seems that he visited Worcester on his only visit to England in 1119–1120, the cathedral priory does not feature among his favourite topics — precisely because there was no other connection with Saint-Evroul. The insular content of the Ecclesiastical History thus accords with the essentially diptychal nature of Orderic’s work: it was a house-history of the rise and progress of Saint-Evroul, conjoined with a regnal history of affairs in the secular world, specifically covering the Anglo-Norman realm and more particularly the wretchedness brought upon the people by the misdeeds of wicked men. Bleak times are indeed another area of surpassing interest to Orderic. His longest continuous passage of general insular history is the 616 lines devoted to the sufferings and rebellions of the English in the period 1067–1070 in Book iv. This is twice as long as the next longest passage, the 304 lines near the opening of Book xi about the pro-Curthose rebellion of 1101–1102. There are other significant passages about rebellions: Earl Morcar 1071; the three earls 1075; Bishop Odo 1082; Curthose’s supporters 1088; and Robert de Mowbray 1095. Orderic was also keen to report on battles fought on English soil, bracketed by Hastings in 1066 and Lincoln in 1141; and on attacks from overseas: the Danish threat to England in 1085–1086; the Norse attack on Anglesey in 1098; the Norse threat to Ireland in 1103. Orderic was not the first or last historian to think that war, invasion, and rebellion are what make history, especially a history of the calamitous worldly events which in the Ecclesiastical History are always antiphonal to the story of Saint-Evroul and its friends.

Orderic’s Feelings about England I want to move now to how Orderic felt about England, what it meant to him, and how far his sense of being English complemented or competed with other aspects of his identity. I start with names, and then consider one aspect of his identification with England. Our sense of Orderic’s Englishness is distorted by what we call him. Modern Anglophone historians refer to him as Orderic, using the English name that in reality he surrendered at the age of ten. It would be even more obvious if we

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used a normalized spelling and a contemporary English pronunciation, and called him Ordric with a palatalized |ch|. Orderic himself Latinized the name as Ordricus (not Ordericus). He knew why he had been given that name: it was the name of the English priest who baptized him in the font at St Eata’s church in Atcham, four miles from Shrewsbury.26 After his arrival at Saint-Evroul in 1085, however, our historian was not Ordric but Vitalis. If addressed in French rather than Latin he was Vitel or Viel. Despite the exchange of names, he shows a certain pride in linking his baptismal and monastic names in the incipit and explicit of Book iv of the Ecclesiastical History: ‘Ordric Vital’ at the start, and ‘Vital Ordric, priest and monk’ at the end. Curiously, the latter comes with the adjective Vticensis and not Angligena,27 Utica being the Latin name of the Ouche, which was at one and the same time the name of the river on which Saint-Evroul was sited, its region, and a forest.28 ‘Orderic the Englishman’, then, styled himself ‘Ordric Vital (or Vital Ordric) the Ouchian’. The change of name from Ordric to Vital was not — or not primarily — a shift of language from English to Latin, or from the Insular to the Continental name-stock. It was a cultural change from secular to monastic. Vitalis was Ordric’s name in religion, and from 1085 his only true name. Orderic also, and repeatedly, called himself Vitalis Angligena, and on one occasion just Angligena (literally ‘the English-born’) without his personal name. He did so most poignantly when writing about the pivot of his life — the moment when he was sent away from his family to the monastery of Saint-Evroul29 — but also on four separate occasions when referring to himself in the third person as an author. The specific context is as the author of verse epitaphs for Earl Waltheof, John of Reims, Avice d’Auffay, and Robert of Rhuddlan.30 Perhaps the name seemed especially apposite for a poet and in the formal context of establishing his authorship of verses which when seen in situ at Crowland and Saint-Evroul would be anonymous.31 It staked a claim, and did so as a monk of English birth, named from a saint of the early universal Church. Twelfth-century verse was a medium in which selfhood was revealed and performed in complex and interesting ways,32 and Orderic was keen to be included and remembered in the community of Latin poets too. Nonetheless it is hard to be sure how carefully Orderic chose Angligena to describe himself, over the simpler Anglicus, ‘English-born’ rather than ‘English’, or even whether the choice was his own rather than a nickname given to him by his teacher or the other boys when he first came to the monastery. Angligena ought to mean, literally, ‘born in England’, and in Orderic’s usage it 26 Orderic, iii, 6–7. 27 Orderic, ii, 190–91, 360–61. 28 Beaurepaire, Les noms des communes, p. 155. 29 Orderic, iii, 6–7. 30 Orderic, ii, 350–56; iii, 168–69, 256–57; iv, 144–45. 31 Debiais and Ingrand-Varenne, ‘Inscriptions’. 32 Otter, ‘Sufficientia’.

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did almost exclusively signify exactly that. If it was his own adoption, perhaps it was a proud claim to be more truly English (English-born) than those who were English merely by residence or landownership or office-holding. Unfortunately for that idea, Orderic also applied the adjective angligenus to William Rufus, who was certainly not born in England.33 Orderic employed Angligena and Angligenus sparingly but did not reserve them for his own personal use, using them seven times for others, against the five for himself. He applied it to three individuals: Abbots Wulfketil and Waltheof of Crowland, and the Canterbury historian Eadmer; and four times for the native English as a gens (‘people’) or some sub-set of them. In nearly every case there seems some particular point in his using Angligena rather than Anglicus or some other word. So: the English-born Abbot Wulfketil was hated by the Normans;34 the English-born Abbot Waltheof succeeded the French Abbot Geoffrey;35 English-born Eadmer is mentioned as the chaplain and companion of the not English-born Archbishop Anselm;36 native-born English kings are contrasted with the ‘tyrants from Denmark and Norway’ who supplanted them, the comparison here being both geographical and moral, true kings as against tyrants;37 and in a fine rhetorical passage, Orderic gives a speech to the 30,000-strong English army which turned out in 1088 to support their legitimate King William II against Curthose’s followers: Orderic has them urge the King to resist the rebels by telling him to ‘Study the histories of the English, and you will find that English-born men are always loyal to their princes’ (Sollerter Anglorum rimare historias; inueniesque semper fidos principibus suis Angligenas).38 Loyalty to properly constituted authority was a thread running through the Ecclesiastical History. Orderic used other words and phrases at least as often as Angligena to indicate or underscore Englishness, notably natione Anglicus, ‘an Englishman by birth’, as for John of Worcester, Abbot Ingulf of Crowland, Eadmer, and Bede.39 Gens — the root in Angligena — and natio are functionally equivalent in drawing attention to the fact of belonging to a native people; but still, it is striking that Orderic never called himself natione Anglicus, since perhaps by his own reckoning he was not, being a child of mixed French and English parentage. Englishness, expressed by Angligena or (natione) Anglicus, often stood in explicit contrast with non-English identity: English kings versus tyrants from Denmark and Norway, Abbot Wulfketil an Englishman hated by the Normans,

33 Orderic, iv, 78–79; Barlow, William Rufus, p. 3. 34 Orderic, ii, 344–45. 35 Orderic, ii, 350–51. 36 Orderic, v, 206–07. 37 Orderic, ii,  340–41. 38 Orderic, iv, 126–27. 39 Orderic, i, 130–31 (Bede); ii, 186–87 ( John), 344–45 (Ingulf); v, 252–53 (Eadmer), 300–01 (Bede).

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the English Abbot Waltheof as successor to the Frenchman Abbot Geoffrey from Orléans, English Eadmer and Italian Anselm,40 Bede the Englishman first lined up with the non-English historians Eusebius, Orosius, and Paul the Deacon (the last explicitly identified as Cassiniensis, ‘from Monte Cassino’), and later compared with Gildas the Briton (Brito).41 When he used Angligena for himself, however, the word stands in simple apposition to his name; there is never a contrast with some other non-English person. We should conclude that Angligena was not merely descriptive but his byname, self-adopted or given by the brethren of Saint-Evroul. The latter is the more likely, for what ten-year-old boy sent to school in a foreign land would choose to stand out from the crowd? Orderic probably had Angligeneity imposed upon him. As a schoolboy nickname, it may even have served to diminish his Englishness rather than underline it: the other oblates and their master, knowing something of Orderic’s father, may have thought of Orderic as a boy from a French family who had happened to be born overseas.42 Orderic’s self-fashioning (distinct from his acquisition of nickname and new forename at Saint-Evroul) was arguably less as an Englishman — or at any rate an English-born man — than as a Mercian. It is rather extraordinary that the son of a French father born in Shropshire in 1075 should create a Mercian identity for himself, and the impulse has not hitherto been sufficiently explored for the light it sheds on how Orderic conceived and shaped his identity.43 Orderic’s direct reference to his own Mercianness comes in the preface to Book v, addressed to his abbot and written probably in 1127. The book treats mainly of the history and traditions of the monastery of Saint-Evroul. Completing it, and preparing it for presentation to Abbot Warin, seems to have been a moment when Vitalis felt himself to be most English. He identifies himself as ‘I who came here from the remote parts of Mercia as a ten-year-old English-born boy’ (ego de extremis Merciorum finibus decennis Angligena huc aduectus).44 The wording ‘remote parts of Mercia’ is Chibnall’s translation of a phrase which literally referred to Mercia as a borderland: ‘the far borders of the Mercians’ better captures the way Orderic located his origins in a marcher district. He thus gave himself a specific Mercian marcher identity rather than settling for ‘the far borders of the English’. The larger context of the preface to Book v — a long one, as prefaces go — helps to explains Orderic’s concern with his own outsider status. The preface starts with the necessity of avoiding sloth as a justification for the work now introduced. Then follows a long account about this work of history which 40 Orderic, ii, 340–41 (kings and tyrants), 344–45 (Wulfketil), 350–51 (Waltheof); v, 206–07 (Anselm and Eadmer). 41 Orderic, i, 130–31; v, 300–01. 42 For the sociological aspect of school nicknames, see Morgan, O’Neill, and Harré, Nicknames, esp. pp. 69–97. 43 For his father, see van Houts, ‘Orderic and his Father’. 44 Orderic, ii, 6–7.

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conflates the affectation of modesty normal for prefaces with an underlying sense of Orderic’s pride in his achievement. Orderic submitted to Abbots Roger and Warin in undertaking the task and has written a ‘modest account’ or ‘little book’ (opusculum), a word that he applies repeatedly to his spreading twelve-book Ecclesiastical History.45 He had undertaken the task only because it had not already been done, by way of performing a service to the monastery. The preface goes on to tell us that Orderic had come to Saint-Evroul as a young boy from a distant land; an ignorant stranger from another people placed among local men who knew about its history; here, he contrasts himself, barbarusque et ignotus, with callentes indigenae (knowledgeable natives). The phrase barbarusque et ignotus is layered with meaning: barbarus could be taken to mean ‘foreign’, ‘uncultured’, or even ‘unintelligible’ (which if little Ordric only spoke English he certainly would have been, though he likely had some schoolboy Latin too); ignotus worked both ways: the boy was unknown at Saint-Evroul, and he himself knew nothing about it. The words could be understood either way and Orderic presents us with a young Ordric who was both one and the other. His outsider’s ignorance and the monks’ native knowledge are framed in the sentence by a further contrast between himself as Angligena and them as Normanni; moreover, this outsider is commissioned by Abbot Roger ‘to write an account of the deeds of the Normans for Normans to read’ (Normannorum gesta et euentus Normannis promere scripto). He is able to do this because he has been guided by God (inspirante Deo) and indeed with God’s help (opitulante Deo) has already written two books of history. The preface thus far reads on the surface as impeccably and commendably modest. But there is a boastful sub-text: before Orderic came, the monks of Saint-Evroul were all too eager to read about the deeds of their abbots and brethren and the patient accumulation of its property, but none was willing to put himself to the hard graft of writing down the abbey’s traditions: ‘the exacting task (edax cura) of investigating past events’. Translating edax cura as ‘exacting task’ underplays the force of edax, which in Classical Latin signified something voracious or rapacious, like a devouring fire. Orderic was making a large claim — and a believable one — about the troubles he had taken in researching and composing his history, consuming years of his life. Even more significant for his positioning of himself at the centre of his historical writing is his choice to begin Book v, the history of the monastery of Saint-Evroul, in 1075, the year in which he himself was born. The monk’s identification with his monastery is complete, but it involved a recalibration of self as one who first came there as a boy ‘from the far borders of the Mercians’. From the borderland of Mercia to the borderland of Normandy, he twisted together his twin identities as a boy of Mercia and a monk of the Ouche.

45 Orderic, i, 130–31, 178–79, 198–99; ii, 166–67, 322–23, 338–39; iii, 6–7 (twice), 96–97, 210–11, 218–19, 264–65, 292–93, 302–03; iv, 56–57, 190–91; v, 6–7 (twice); vi, 382–83. Rarely used for works by other authors: i, 150–51; ii, 188–89, 270–71; iii, 68–69.

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The self-reference in the preface to Book v is not the only time that Orderic introduces Mercians and Mercian identity into his history. From a handful of references, we can discern that he knew something of Mercia both as a kingdom in pre-viking times and as an earldom in the years immediately before the Norman Conquest.46 We can start with the later period, still vivid and raw for the English families of the earlier 1070s among whom he was brought up in Shropshire. Orderic is sparing in his use of the word Mercians for the pre-Conquest earls, a family about whom he was in fact not especially well informed when he strayed from his written sources, for instance in his confusion of the real founder of Coventry abbey, Leofric, with his son Ælfgar.47 Orderic made Ælfgar the founder along with his ‘wife’ (actually his mother) Countess Godiva. When Orderic visited England in 1119–1120 the Benedictine monastery at Coventry was the principal seat of the ‘Mercian’ bishop formerly at Lichfield and briefly at Chester, though at that moment vacant.48 Orderic evidently knew next to nothing of the traditions of a house which in his boyhood had been the premier monastery of his local diocese. Nonetheless he referred to Bishop Robert de Limésy at his death in 1117 as bishop of the Mercians.49 Orderic’s confusion about the Mercian earls’ foundation at Coventry did not prevent him from being a huge fan of Earl Ælfgar and his sons Edwin and Morcar, on what seems no evidence at all. He drew attention variously to their high birth and physical beauty, and asserted that they were well loved by the people, zealous in the service of God, and generous friends to clerks and monks and the poor. He egged the pudding most richly on the subject of their good looks: remarkably handsome (pulchritude, twice) — fair (elegans) — most beautiful (formosissimus).50 Perhaps the young Ordric at Shrewsbury had been a little starry-eyed at the stories he overheard in the early 1080s about the two, rather older, lost boys of the Mercian dynasty, Edwin ten years dead, Morcar languishing as a captive, first in Normandy and later at Winchester.51 For Orderic, the trait that most distinguished the earls was their loyalty. Edwin was loyal to King Harold (who had married his sister), but then submitted to William and was driven to rebellion only by Norman greed, later seeking the king’s pardon. Orderic’s passage is a piece of special pleading for the Mercians, unconvincing as historical explanation. Orderic’s enthusiasm for the Mercians comes especially to the fore in his account of the Ely campaign in 1071, where he made a sustained comparison between Morcar’s virtues and the vices of the king’s evil advisers: essentially the Earl

46 The real Mercia has an enormous secondary literature, including Dornier, ed., Mercian Studies; Stafford, The East Midlands; Gelling, The West Midlands; Brown and Farr, eds, Mercia; Baxter, The Earls of Mercia. 47 Orderic, ii, 216–17; Hunt, ‘Piety, Prestige or Politics’; Baxter, The Earls of Mercia, pp. 153–63. 48 Lewis, ‘Communities’; Coventry and Lichfield, ed. by Franklin, p. xxxvi. 49 Orderic, vi, 316–17. 50 Orderic, ii, 138–39, 194–97, 214–19, 256–59. 51 Orderic, ii, 260–61; Baxter, The Earls of Mercia, pp. 270–80.

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acted simpliciter, the king fraudulenter. The passage is worth a precis which draws attention to the contrast: ‘King William, ill-advisedly relying on evil counsellors (consilio prauorum male usus), brought great harm to his reputation by treacherously (fraudulenter) surrounding the noble (inclitus) Earl Morcar in the Isle of Ely, and besieging a man who had made peace with him and was neither doing nor expecting any harm.’ — Messengers ‘infamously proposed treacherous terms (dolosam conditionem nequiter pepigerunt) […] he in his simple honesty (simpliciter) believed these false stories (falsis allegationibus) and peacefully (pacifice) led his men out of the island to seek the king.’ — Morcar was captured and imprisoned — ‘When the fair youth (formosissimus iuuenis) Edwin learned of this’ he determined to avenge him but was betrayed and killed, and when the news of his death spread, ‘Normans and French alike joined the English in mourning and lamenting him as though he had been a close friend or kinsman (uelut socium seu cognatum)’ — for he came of pious parents (fuerat ex religiosa parentela natus), had devoted himself to good works (multisque bonis deditus), and was ‘so handsome that few could compare with him (corporis pulchritudine in multis milibus eminebat) […], a generous friend (benignus amator) to clergy and monks and to the poor.’ — King William was moved to righteous tears when he heard of the betrayal of this Mercian earl (Merciorum consul), and exiled the men responsible when they brought him Edwin’s head.52 Orderic tells us all this without saying explicitly that Edwin was earl of the Mercians until the very end, after Edwin has been betrayed and murdered, where that extinguished identity comes with universal mourning and the special grief and anger of the king himself. This passage is the peroration of Orderic’s adaptation of William of Poitiers, and a hinge between the military events of the conquest, where he rewrites Poiters, and his own newly written history of the Norman settlement, where he recounts the distribution of land triggered by the fall of Edwin and Morcar. The following section starts: Rex Guillelmus deiectis ut diximus Merciorum maximis consulibus, Eduino scilicet interfecto, et Morcaro in uinculis constricto; audiutoribus suis inclitas Angliæ regiones distribuit, et ex infimis Normannorum clientibus tribunos et centuriones ditissimos erexit. After King William had defeated the leading Mercian earls as I have related — Edwin being dead and Morcar languishing in prison — he divided up the chief provinces of England among his followers, and made the humblest of the Normans men of wealth, with civil and military authority.53

52 Orderic, ii, 256–59. 53 Orderic, ii, 260–61.

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The personal significance of this passage for Orderic is that it provides the context for the arrival of his own father among the Norman settlers in Mercia. Just as elsewhere he started the history of Saint-Evroul in the year of his own arrival in the world, here he started his account of the Normans in England with his father’s arrival in Shropshire. Orderic begins with the settlement of the Welsh marches: Herefordshire first, then Cheshire, then Shropshire, with much fuller detail for Shropshire than the others. He names only two of the settlers in Herefordshire (William fitzOsbern and Walter de Lacy), and only three from Cheshire (Hugh d’Avranches, Robert of Rhuddlan, and Robert of Malpas), but ten from Shropshire: Roger de Montgomery; his men Warin the Bald, William Pantulf, Picot, Corbet and his sons Roger and Robert; and Montgomery’s three learned clerks Godebald, Odelerius (Orderic’s father), and Herbert. Orderic then leaves the marches to catalogue Norman settlers in other regions, quite fully but now naming only leaders and not followers.54 The greater depth of naming on the border makes the point that Orderic’s Mercia was chiefly its north-western section and specifically Cheshire and Shropshire. Three times he locates the passage of war through the region by specifically naming Mercia. At the conclusion of the Pennine winter campaign of 1070–1071 King William ‘at last brought his army safely to Chester and suppressed all risings throughout Mercia with royal power’ (in tota Merciorum regione motus hostiles regia ui compescuit).55 That passage was based on the lost final portion of William of Poitiers’s Gesta Guillelmi, from where probably came the topographical precision in the sequence of events that followed: the king built and garrisoned castles at Chester and Stafford, stood his army down at Salisbury, and celebrated Easter at Winchester. But the reference to Mercia is surely Orderic’s gloss. In the surviving portion of the Gesta Guillelmi, Poitiers named almost a dozen different places in England where the events he described took place, but only two English districts: Kent (Cantium) in connection with Dover, and Yorkshire (Eboracensem pagum) as the location of battles in 1066. Poitiers had no interest in the regions of England for their own sake, never identified English earls by their titles, and never mentioned Mercia.56 Orderic’s two other uses of Mercia to locate military events can be taken together and more briefly. In 1098 King Magnus of Norway’s attack on Anglesey was first met by men ‘from the province of the Mercians’ (de regione Merciorum) and then was countered by the two Earls Hugh (Hugh d’Avranches and Hugh de Montgomery) who ‘had the chief power in the province of the Mercians’ (quibus Merciorum precipue regio subiacet), and raised an army from their 54 Orderic, ii, 260–67. 55 Orderic, ii, 236–37. 56 The Gesta Guillemi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. by Davis and Chibnall, esp. pp. 112–13 (Yorkshire), 164–65, 182–83 (Kent). The places mentioned (in order of first appearance, with the number appearances where multiple) are Southampton, Dover (4), London (5), Isle of Ely, Hastings (3), Pevensey (2), Romney, Canterbury, Wallingford, Barking, and Winchester.

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counties (comitatus) of Chester and Shrewsbury.57 In 1102 Henry I led an army into ‘the province of the Mercians’ (in regionem Merciorum) to besiege Bridgnorth, on the banks of the Severn in Shropshire.58 Regio, for Orderic, was a multi-purpose designation without any one specific meaning. He used it over two hundred times. To judge from his practice in Book xii, which covered the contemporary history of Normandy between 1118 and 1131 and so reflects the author’s instincts about what counted as a regio at the time he was actually writing the Ecclesiastical History, the term spanned the full range from specific provinces to the broadest of generalities. A regio was most often the district around a particular town or fortress, though of vague definition, but occasionally something larger: Orderic had Henry I in invented speech refer to his insular kingdom as transmarina regio. A region might lie, undefined with any precision, along the Seine, or between the Seine and the sea, or across the frontier between Normandy and France. Very occasionally a regio was something much more specific: the Vexin (regio Vilcassina), the Ouche (regio Vticensis), or Normandy itself (regio Neustriae).59 The word was handy in England, where prouincia generally meant a shire or county in so tight a sense that it could hardly be applied to some larger or less specific territory. Note also that Orderic wrote not of Mercia as such but of the regio of the Mercians, though without ever calling them a people (gens). In that regard it is interesting that his most expansive use of regio in Book xii describes men with particular territorial designations (Burgundians, Auvergnats, Parisians, Laonnois, and half a dozen others) plundering the countryside even in their own lands (in suis etiam regionibus).60 Orderic’s Mercia, then, was chiefly Shropshire and Cheshire — where his own father had settled and married and where his fellow monks the former knights of the earl of Chester’s household had rampaged about the countryside — but he twice extended it to include places far to the east of the Welsh marches, in the districts occupied by the vikings in the ninth century and whose Mercian attachments, by Orderic’s time, were long in the past. Both times the Mercian label was drawn up from the well of Orderic’s deep interest in Crowland abbey, itself a function of his connection with Abbot Geoffrey (1109–c. 1124): not only had Geoffrey been admitted a monk at Saint-Evroul as an adult in the 1080s (Orderic arrived aged ten in 1085) and served as prior, but also he was an Orléannais like Orderic’s father.61 Orderic claimed St Guthlac for the Mercians: his father was ‘of the stock of Icel, a Mercian lord’ (ab origine Icles eri Merciorum), and people flocked to him for healing 57 Orderic, v, 222–23. 58 Orderic, vi, 24–25. 59 Orderic, vi, 186–87 (frontier), 192–93 (twice, inc. Seine and sea), 196–97, 204–05, 218–19 (along the Seine), 220–21 (Vexin), 226–27 (Normandy), 240–41, 250–51 (Ouche), 264–65, 286–87 (Henry I), 294–94, 304–05, 314–15, 346–47, 348–49, 356–57. 60 Orderic, vi, 244–45. 61 Orderic, ii, 346–51; iv, 336–37.

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miracles from ‘the nearby districts of the Mercians’ (de proximis Merciorum finibus) as well as the remote parts of Britain.62 Orderic’s ultimate source for Guthlac was the Latin Life by Felix which he abbreviated for Abbot Geoffrey, which noted that Guthlac was descended from Icel and that his father was of ‘distinguished Mercian stock’ (de egregia stirpe Merciorum) ‘whose dwelling […] was in the district of the Middle Angles’ (cuius mansio in Mediterraneorum Anglorum partibus).63 The Middle Angles meant nothing to Orderic, who instead emphasized that the locale where St Guthlac worked his miracles was the territory of the Mercians. John of Worcester, by contrast, was quite happy to write about the Middle Angles as a people distinct from the Mercians.64 Crowland and the historical stories associated with it were a touchstone of Englishness for Orderic, in a way that allows us to see his identification of Mercia with England. Note his repeated stress on Englishness in a passage on the miracles which took place at the tomb of Earl Waltheof at Crowland. The Earl had been executed by William I in 1076 but the miracles started decades later, and only after the Orléannais Abbot Geoffrey had been succeeded by the English-born (Angligena) Abbot Waltheof, brother of Gospatric, from the high nobility of the English (de magna nobilitate Anglorum); as miracles grew daily more frequent the monks asked Orderic (Vitalis Angligena) to compose an epitaph for the tomb. Orderic’s epitaph continues the theme of national identity, identifying Waltheof’s father Earl Siward as Danish-born (Danigenae) and Waltheof as having been condemned by Norman judgement (iudicibus Normannis), but the Englishness of Waltheof and the monks of Crowland who nurtured his cult is implicit rather than stated.65 Orderic appreciated the need to present Waltheof ’s Englishness differently on a public monument in an English monastery from how it might appear in a manuscript history addressed foremost to his French abbot and fellow monks in Normandy. The Mercian earldom was a bright memory when Orderic was a boy in Shropshire, but had faded to shadow by the time he was writing his Ecclesiastical History. In that light, making himself as Mercian as Guthlac could be read as a love simply of the old names and saints of the English regions rather than nostalgia as such. There are hints of the same archaizing tendency in his vocabulary elsewhere for the regions of England. Orderic has a solitary reference to ‘the men of Deira’ (Deiri), apparently meaning Yorkshire but coupled with the overlapping ‘Transhumbrian peoples’ (transhumbranae gentes), which must mean the Northumbrians north of the Tees rather than literally everyone north of the Humber (which included the men of Deira). The phrase appears in the speech which Orderic put in the

62 Orderic, ii, 324–25, 333–34. 63 Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. by Colgrave, pp. 72–75; Roberts and Thacker, eds, Guthlac. 64 The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. by Darlington, McGurk, and Bray, ii, 102–03. 65 Orderic, ii, 350–51.

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mouth of William I as he lay dying in September 1087. Orderic introduces the set-piece like this: the king ‘thus eloquently uttered a speech worthy of memory for all time’ (allocutionem perenni memoria dignam […] eloquenter sic edidit). The eloquence was of course Orderic’s, and what he hoped would be remembered for all time would be his own artful words. The speech is indeed nicely crafted. It mentions the Deirans and Transhumbrians by way of explaining that it was their treachery in supporting the invasion of Swein of Denmark which caused King William’s destruction of the North.66 Earlier in the speech, Orderic has William catalogue his enemies, both among the hostile neighbouring peoples who had always failed to overcome him, and among the rebels in the English kingdom. The two groups make an instructive contrast. Normandy’s neighbours are listed as Bretons, Angevins, French, Flemings, English, and Manceaux (Britones et Andegauenses […] Franci atque Flandrenses […] Angli et Cenomannenses),67 a comprehensive enough list. Across the sea, the king had endured perilous conflicts against Exonians, Cestrians, Northumbrians, Scots, Welsh, Norwegians, and Danes (contra Exonios, Cestrenses et Nordanhimbros, contra Scotos et Gualos, Nordwigenas et Dacos),68 a list which moves outwards geographically from English rebels at three extremities of the kingdom (Chester, Exeter, and Northumbria), to enemies further afield but still within Britain (Scots and Welsh), to enemies who attacked the island kingdom from overseas (Norwegians and Danes). It locates English rebels at two cities, Exeter and Chester, where Orderic had given details of earlier rebellions gathered from William of Poitiers; it pointedly does not say that the Mercians rebelled against their king. The map of historic English regions in Orderic’s head also featured Northumbria, mentioned a few times, especially when referring to its early kings and more recent earls,69 but also, anachronistically, as the region in which York lay in the time of Henry I. Orderic must have written the last passage from oral reports, since it concerns the expedition of monks from Saint-Evroul to England in December 1122 to seek Henry I’s approval for the election of Warin as abbot.70 More strangely, a digression on English monastic history in Book iv (sparked by a passage on King William I’s wise appointments of abbots to English houses) alluded in passing to the martyrdom of Edmund, King of the East Angles, and to the conquests of King Alfred, weirdly identifying him not as King of the West Saxons but by their former name of the Gewisse (Elfridus Gewissorum rex).71 Orderic himself tells us that he wrote this lengthy

66 Orderic, iv, 94–95. 67 Orderic, iv, 88–89. 68 Orderic, iv, 90–91. 69 Orderic, ii, 188–89 (King Edwin), 218–19 (Archil, potentissimus Nordanhimbrorum), 344–45 (Earl Siward); iv, 50–51 and 128–29 (Earl Robert de Mowbray). 70 Orderic, vi, 324–25. 71 Orderic, vi, 240–41.

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digression by summarizing from earlier annals,72 and Chibnall identified his sources as Bede, John of Worcester, and possibly a Life of St Oswald.73 The name Gewisse was in fact already obsolete in Bede’s day and had only a brief afterlife as an antiquarian revival in a handful of West Saxon royal charters of the mid-eighth century.74 Orderic will have known that Bede had said that the West Saxons ‘in early days were called the Gewisse’ (antiquitus Geuissae uocabantur), referring (at the moment of their conversion) to a distant pagan past,75 and had continued to call them the Gewisse on occasion well into the Christian period.76 But he must have taken the idea that Alfred was King of the Gewisse from John of Worcester’s Chronicon ex chronicis, where the annal for 871 gives Alfred, ‘King of the Anglo-Saxons’ (Angulsaxonum rex), a genealogy which goes back through ‘Gewis (after whom the Britons named the whole of his people Gewisse)’ (Geuuis, a quo Brytones totam illam gentem Gewis nominant).77 John had himself taken the genealogy word for word from Asser’s Life of King Alfred.78 Such usages are congruent with Orderic’s more frequent use of ‘Albion’ as a synonym for England, a name which he found in Bede and which Bede said plainly was an older name of the island of Britain; Orderic used it without embarrassment for England alone, though not in any programmatic way.79 Orderic made no systematic or even extensive use of outdated names for English provinces, but it is clear that he liked to think of Shropshire and Cheshire and the Fens around Crowland — the three parts of England that for various reasons he knew best — not just as parts of historic Mercia, but as still Mercian in his own times, certainly during his days as a child in and around Shrewsbury and even during his adolescence and adulthood in Normandy. It was a pretence. He must have been aware from his researches into the history of the previous fifty years, and still more after his own visit to England in 1119–1120 that England was a land of shires (prouinciae), also known as counties (comitatus), plus unshired Northumbria. Thus when he mentioned the great earthquake that had struck a few weeks before his visit (and surely still the subject of lively interest), he naturally thought of its effects as cracking the walls of churches over ‘four counties […] Chester and Shrewsbury, Hereford and Gloucester, and the adjoining shires’ (.iiii. 72 Orderic, vi, 246–47. 73 Orderic, vi, 240 n. 1. 74 Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England, p. 21 n. 1; Walker, ‘Bede and the Gewissae’; Yorke, Wessex, pp. 32–64, 171–73; Charters of Malmesbury, ed. by Kelly, nos 12, 19; Charters of Bath and Wells, ed. by Kelly, no. 27. 75 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. by Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 232–33. 76 Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. by Colgrave and Mynors, pp. 236–37, 380–85, 522–23. 77 The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. by Darlington, McGurk, and Bray, ii, 260–63. 78 Asser’s Life of King Alfred, ed. by Stevenson, pp. 2–3; Alfred the Great, trans. by Keynes and Lapidge, pp. 67, 229. 79 The usage fully explored by Hingst, The Written World, pp. 51–69.

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comitatus […] Cestra et Scrobesburia, Herforda et Gloucestra, eisque adiacantes prouinciae).80 Even so, whereas the Peterborough chronicler reported the tremors as most severe in Gloucestershire and Worcestershire,81 Orderic drew attention by name to all four counties along the Welsh border, again revealing his marcher identity.

Conclusion Orderic’s sense of self can be explored around a number of polarities, all of which originated with his displacement as a boy from England to Normandy. He was a priest’s son who became a monk, and an exile who identified more with his place of exile than his place of origin. He recognized in himself a motherless child whose mother was the Church, and an exiled son who had male mentors and guides throughout his life in the monastery, as all monks did, and whom he listed in the Epilogue to the Ecclesiastical History. At the most fundamental level of naming, he was baptized Ordric and professed Vitalis. So widely read and imaginative an historian as Orderic would see continuities in those very changes: God had guided him from the far reaches of Mercia to the southern frontiers of Normandy; preserving a cultural memory of Mercia was somehow part of his larger task of recording and sustaining the traditions of Saint-Evroul.82 Orderic’s world was a world of gentes,83 a word which he himself deployed frequently and in varied contexts. But how was Orderic to place himself in such a world? It seems that he never came to a definitive answer, and he may have thought the question irrelevant: at his profession a monk left the mundane world of gentes for the higher world of the people of Christ. Nonetheless, for himself, Orderic paired an occasional and particular sense of Englishness with an adopted Normanitas. The two were not evenly balanced. ‘We Normans’ is much more to the fore in the Ecclesiastical History than ‘I a Mercian’, and whereas the Normans clearly were a gens, he never used that word for the Mercians. Orderic’s self-ascribed Mercianness was a variety of Englishness, and it is interesting to see that an adopted Mercian identity could embody Englishness in ways which foreshadow the articulation of regional with national identity in much later periods, as in the way that the first county historians of early modern England performed their Englishness and their gentry status

80 Orderic, vi, 316–17. 81 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: MS E, ed. by Irvine, p. 120; The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. by Whitelock, p. 186. 82 For cultural memory: Pohl, ‘One Single Letter Remained’. 83 Reynolds, ‘Medieval origines gentium’; Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities, pp. 250–331; for the particular case of the Normans: Davis, The Normans and their Myth; Loud, ‘The “gens Normannorum”’.

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by writing the history of their own counties,84 or how in the later nineteenth century the regional identity of any part of England, adorned with stories from its past, could stand in for Englishness as a whole.85 Orderic Vitalis, then, was an Angligena whose nostrates were the Normans; and an ‘I’ who was primarily the monastic chronicler of Saint-Evroul. In the end, neither his Angligeneity nor his adopted Normanity (nor the balancing act between them) provides the key to unlock his identity. His most highly developed sense of selfhood was as a monastic historian possessed of exceptional skills, not least as a consummate rewriter of other histories to serve his own purposes. As such it was individualistic in being rooted in his practice as the historian of and at a particular monastery, cutting through the idea that identity can only be realized in an individualistic way in modern, or at best early modern, times and conditions.86 It was, in fact a place-based and practice-based selfhood which had surprising similarities to other such senses of the self which have been documented in quite different locales, social groups, and indeed centuries.87 Orderic’s rewriting of history involved, in a small way, the rewriting of his own identity.

Works Cited Primary Sources Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources, trans. by Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1983) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, trans. by Dorothy Whitelock with David C. Douglas and Susie I. Tucker (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1961) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, VII: MS E, ed. by Susan Irvine (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004) Asser’s Life of King Alfred, together with the Annals of Saint Neots, ed. by William Henry Stevenson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1904) Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, ed. and trans. by Bertram Colgave and R. A. B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969) Charters of Bath and Wells, ed. by S. E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 13 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2007) Charters of Malmesbury Abbey, ed. by S. E. Kelly, Anglo-Saxon Charters, 11 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 2005)

84 Broadway, ‘No Historie So Meete’. 85 Readman, Storied Ground. 86 For example, Taylor, Sources of the Self; Mascuch, Origins of the Individualist Self; Seigel, The Idea of the Self. 87 For example, Herbert, ‘Gender and the Spa’.

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The Chronicle of John of Worcester, ed. and trans. by R. R. Darlington, P. McGurk, and Jennifer Bray, ii and iii (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995–1998) Coventry and Lichfield, 1072–1159, ed. by M. J. Franklin, English Episcopal Acta, 14 (Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1997) The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–1980) Felix’s Life of Saint Guthlac, ed. and trans. by Bertram Colgrave (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956) The Gesta Guillemi of William of Poitiers, ed. and trans. by R. H. C. Davis and Marjorie Chibnall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998) The Historia Ierosolimitana of Baldric of Bourgueil, ed. by Steven Biddlecombe (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014) Orderic Vitalis, Historiæ ecclesiasticæ libri tredecim, ed. by Auguste Le Prévost, 5 vols (Paris: Julius Renouard, 1838–1855) Secondary Works Barlow, Frank, William Rufus (London: Methuen, 1983) Baxter, Stephen, The Earls of Mercia: Lordship and Power in Late Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) Beaurepaire, François de, Les noms des communes et ancienne paroisses de l’Eure (Paris: Picard, 1981) Briggs, Charles F., ‘History, Story, and Community: Representing the Past in Latin Christendom, 1050–1400’, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii: 400–1400, ed. by Sarah Foot and Chase F. Robinson with Ian Hesketh (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 391–413 Broadway, Jan, ‘No Historie So Meete’: Gentry Culture and the Development of Local History in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006) Brown, Michelle P., and Carol A. Farr, eds, Mercia: An Anglo-Saxon Kingdom in Europe (London: Leicester University Press, 2001) Davis, R. H. C., The Normans and their Myth (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976) Debiais, Vincent, and Estelle Ingrand-Varenne, ‘Inscriptions in Orderic’s Historia ecclesiastica: A Writing Technique Between History and Poetry’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. by Charles C. Rozier, Daniel Roach, Giles E. M. Gasper, and Elisabeth van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016), pp. 127–44 Dornier, Ann, ed., Mercian Studies (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1977) Faulkner, Mark, ‘Orderic and English’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. by Charles C. Rozier, Daniel Roach, Giles E. M. Gasper, and Elisabeth van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016), pp. 100–26 Foot, Sarah, and Chase F. Robinson, eds, The Oxford History of Historical Writing, ii: 400–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) Gelling, Margaret, The West Midlands in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1992)

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Gransden, Antonia, Historical Writing in England, c. 550 to c. 1307 (London: Routledge, 1974) Hagger, Mark, Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017) Herbert, Amanda E., ‘Gender and the Spa: Space, Sociability and Self at British Health Spas, 1640–1714’, Journal of Social History, 43 (2009–2010), 361–83 Hingst, Amanda Jane, The Written World: Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009) Hunt, John, ‘Piety, Prestige or Politics: The House of Leofric and the Foundation and Patronage of Coventry Priory’, in Coventry’s First Cathedral: The Cathedral and Priory of St Mary, ed. by George Demidowicz (Stamford: Paul Watkins, 1994), pp. 97–117 Lewis, C. P., ‘Communities, Conflict and Episcopal Policy in the Diocese of Lichfield, 1050–1150’, in Cathedrals, Communities and Conflict in the AngloNorman World, ed. by Paul Dalton, Charles Insley, and Louise J. Wilkinson (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011), pp. 61–76 Loud, G. A., ‘The “gens Normannorum”: Myth or Reality?’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 4 (1981), 104–16, 204–09 Mascuch, Michael, Origins of the Individualist Self: Autobiography and Self-Identity in England, 1591–1791 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Morgan, Jane, Christopher O’Neill, and Rom Harré, Nicknames: Their Origins and Social Consequences (London: Routledge, 1979) Otter, Monika, ‘Sufficientia: A Horatian Topos and the Boundaries of the Self in Three Twelfth-Century Poems’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 35 (2012), 245–58 Parsons, Simon Thomas, ‘The Inhabitants of the British Isles on the First Crusade: Medieval Perceptions and the Invention of a Pan-Angevin Crusading Heritage’, English Historical Review, 134 (2019), 273–301 Pohl, Benjamin, ‘“One Single Letter Remained in Excess of All His Sins …”: Orderic Vitalis and Cultural Memory’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. by Charles C. Rozier, Daniel Roach, Giles E. M. Gasper, and Elisabeth van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016), pp. 333–51 Readman, Paul, Storied Ground: Landscape and the Shaping of English National Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) Reynolds, Susan, ‘Medieval origines gentium and the Community of the Realm’, History, 68 (1983), 375–90 ———, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997) Riley-Smith, Jonathan, The First Crusaders, 1095–1131 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Roach, Daniel, ‘The Material and the Visual: Objects and Memories in the Historia ecclesiastica of Orderic Vitalis’, Haskins Society Journal, 24 (2012), 63–78 ———, ‘Orderic Vitalis and the First Crusade’, Journal of Medieval History, 42 (2016), 177–201 Roberts, Jane, and Alan Thacker, eds, Guthlac: Crowland’s Saint (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2020)

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Rozier, Charles C., ‘Orderic Vitalis as Librarian and Cantor of Saint-Évroul’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. by Charles C. Rozier, Daniel Roach, Giles E. M. Gasper, and Elisabeth van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016), pp. 61–77 ———, ‘Repairing the Loss of the Past: The Use of Written, Oral and Physical Evidence in the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis (c. 1113–42)’, Historical Research, 92 (2019), 461–78 Rozier, Charles C., Daniel Roach, Giles E. M. Gasper, and Elisabeth van Houts, eds, Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016) Seigel, Jerrold, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) Stafford, Pauline, The East Midlands in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1985) Stenton, F. M., Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971) Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) Thomas, Hugh M., The English and the Normans: Ethnic Hostility, Assimilation, and Identity, 1066–c. 1220 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) van Houts, Elisabeth, ‘Orderic and his Father, Odelerius’, in Orderic Vitalis: Life, Works and Interpretations, ed. by Charles C. Rozier, Daniel Roach, Giles E. M. Gasper, and Elisabeth van Houts (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016), pp. 17–36 Walker, H. E., ‘Bede and the Gewissae: The Political Evolution of the Heptarchy and its Nomenclature’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 12 (1956), 174–86 Yorke, Barbara, Wessex in the Early Middle Ages (London: Leicester University Press, 1995)

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Kyle C. Lin coln*

Rewriting a History of Castilian Dominance in the Age of the Separation of the Crowns of León-Castile (1031–1252)

‘Good men, what’s this, what’s going on?’ ‘O honoured lord, our lion’s free!’ My Cid leaned up on his elbow, rose to his feet, And with his cloak on his shoulder went walking toward the beast. The lion, when he saw him, was so sorely afraid, That he stopped and bent his head, And my Cid, Don Ruy Díaz, took hold of his mane And walked him back to his cage. Cantar de Mio Cid, ll. 2295–991

Consider the following: few characters in medieval Iberian history cut as dramatic a path as Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, better known by his Arabicizing



* The research for this paper was funded, in part, by a 2014 grant from the Spanish Ministerio de Cultura, Educación y Deporte. The author wishes to express his gratitude to Edward Holt and Miguel D. Gómez, for their thoughtful comments on drafts of this chapter, which surely improved it far beyond the author’s own merits. Two conventions are employed in this chapter for ease of reference. I distinguish between Christian ‘Spain’ (i.e. Hispania) and Muslim al-Andalus (i.e. al-Άndalus), with the adjectival forms included, to prevent an overproliferation of separate kingdoms and their demonyms and assorted terms. Second, I have generally employed modern Spanish historians’ usage for personal names, in order to better facilitate lateral inquiries by interested readers. 1 Translation adapted from The Song of the Cid, ed. by Raffel, p. 159. The Old Castilian text presents just as dominating a portrait of Rodrigo Díaz: ‘— Ya señor honrado, rebata nos dio el león. — | Mio Çid finca el cobdo, en pie se levantó, | El manto trae al cuello e adeliñó pora’l león. | El león, quando lo vio, assí envergonçó, | ante mio Çid la cabeça premió e el rostro fincó’. Kyle C. Lincoln  •  received his PhD from Saint Louis University in 2016. His research examines medieval Castile and religious histories. Most recently, he has taught at Norwich University (VT, USA) and Oakland University (MI, USA). Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 295–314 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126755

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epithet, el Cid (fl. 1075–1098).2 Few chroniclers cast as decisive a narrative shadow as the early thirteenth-century chronicler Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, archbishop of Toledo (r. 1209–1232).3 While the young Archbishop Rodrigo was only beginning his career as one of the first of the great Castilian propagandists, the Castilian scribe Pere Abbat was recording (c. 1207) one iteration of the Cantar de mio Cid, long and rightly held to be the first great medieval Castilian Spanish epic.4 The episode that opens the third book of the Cantar — the Cid’s domination of a lion, recently sprung from its cage in the castle of Valencia — seems to metaphorically embody the changing political landscape of its age. In the scene, a living, breathing lion threatens two young Leonese noblemen, the Infantes de Carrión, who were married to the Cid’s daughters; the young men are frightened of the lion; the commotion wakes the Cid. Laughing at the Infantes’ timidity, the Cid quickly dominates the lion with his gaze, and hauls it by the scruff of its neck back to its cage.5 For a contemporary Castilian audience, the scene was more than just a foreshadowing of the rift between el Cid and his sons-in-law: the imagery of a daring, experienced general dominating a lion was a frank representation of Castilian political dominance over a Leonese kingdom that had struggled to assert its co-equality with neighbouring Christian kingdoms. The parallel betrays what has long been held as something of a sea-change in the political and cultural orientation of the western Iberian kingdoms in the period. From the emergence of a newly independent Castile under Fernando I in the early eleventh century to the final combination of the kingdoms of León and Castile under Fernando III in the early thirteenth century, the fortunes of the two kingdoms waxed and waned considerably.6 The individual events that comprised the history of that tension, however, appear far less complicated in the early thirteenth-century sources. This chapter considers the ways in which early thirteenth-century Castilian sources reworked Castilian history to alter the historical Iberian past to fit the ambitious agenda of the Castilian monarchy. In doing so, it takes as its point of comparison the known and knowable realities of a sample of historical events, contrasting them with how





2 The best English-language analysis of the place of el Cid in contemporary events is Barton, ‘El Cid’. 3 Lucy Pick’s biography of Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada’s multi-religious understanding has done much to illuminate his career beyond the cynical portrait often painted by Linehan or Reilly: Pick, Conflict and Coexistence; Linehan, The Spanish Church, pp. 1–53; Linehan, History and the Historians, pp. 313–412; Reilly, ‘Alfonso VIII’, pp. 439–41. 4 For an overview of the Cantar de Mio Cid’s place in the canon of Iberian literature: Fletcher, The Quest for El Cid. 5 For the episode in question, see above. 6 The most accessible accounts of the back-and-forth of this period are Barton, A History of Spain; Reilly, The Medieval Spains; Reilly, The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain; Linehan, Spain, 1157–1300.

R e w r i t i n g a H i s to ry o f Cast i li an D o mi nan ce

they were presented by thirteenth-century Castilian chroniclers.7 Although it presents a decidedly Castilian view of the tensions between León and Castile, it does so with the aim of presenting a kind of parallax calculation between the historically accurate and the historiographically presented realities, in order to better interrogate the ways in which events in the central medieval past were employed strategically by Castilian historians working at the end of the central Middle Ages. Although an extensive survey of the many differences between historical events and the propagandistic use of those occasions would surely fill volumes, this study will consider a few instances that demonstrate the breadth of the reshaping of Iberian history to fit Castilian ambitions in the thirteenth century. First, the diplomatic relationships between the Leonese and Castilian monarchies, when separated, provide the clearest instance of the retrofitting of a shared Spanish past to fit a Castilian agenda at work in the early thirteenth century. Second, the untimely deaths of leading members of the Castilian royal family — Sancho II and the Infante Fernando — in unfortunate circumstances showed the ways in which even the most difficult of political results were smoothed over by a refashioning of events to fit a perceived destiny in the person of a reunified monarchy. Although they are but two instances of the differences between historical events and their depictions by early thirteenth-century chroniclers, they do provide a set of data to which we can fit a hypothetical trajectory of the ways in which the Castilian and Leonese past was reworked to fit a specifically Castilian agenda by early thirteenth-century Castilian chroniclers. In doing so, they present a way in which other studies can reflect on the ways that the same chroniclers shaped their inherited Iberian past.

‘One with my Sons, Kings Sancho and Fernando’ At his death in 1157, Alfonso VII was the pre-eminent political figure in his world. Titled in his charters as the ‘Emperor of All the Spains’, the old King’s court included his Portuguese vassal-king (Afonso Henriques), his vassal the Catalan Count of Barcelona (Ramón Berenguer IV) and the Count’s wife the Queen of Aragon (Petronilla), a trio of Muslim potentates turned ta’ifa kings called Alfonso’s friends (Sayf al-Dawla of Zaragoza, Ibn Ḥamdin of Córdoba, and Ibn Mardanish of Murcia), and a host of troubadours and

7 Over two decades ago, Linehan observed that the use of both earlier and near-contemporary chronicles by Rodrigo made him one of the most significant influences on the Alfonsine histories, which in turn shaped the histories written in León-Castile for much of the later medieval period: Linehan, ‘On Further Thought’. Even if, as Linehan notes, the influence of Lucas’s work remained significant, the importance of Rodrigo’s work is tangible in the many instances where the Primera crónica general employs the citation phrase ‘segun el arzobispo’ or ‘como el arzobispo dize’.

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bishops from both sides of the Spanish-Andalusi border.8 Yet, despite all of these potentates it was Alfonso’s two sons — styled ‘Sancho, King of Castile and Nájera’ and ‘Fernando, King of León and Galicia’ — who were the first to confirm his charters, though neither of them had reached the age of majority.9 The division of their father’s kingdom was peaceful, but it would later be called ‘this unhappy partition’ as a prelude to a gathering storm.10 The cohesive unit presented by the charters may well be a legal fiction employed by Alfonso VII’s chancery, but the two brother cadet kings were at peace so long as their father lived. After his death, conflict boiled over almost immediately. The treaty of Sahagún, solemnized in 1158, represented a formal declaration of the détente between the two brothers, now Fernando II of León (r. 1158–1187) and Sancho III of Castile (r. 1158).11 Although their paternal aunt, Sancha Raimundez, continued to control a host of cities and territories along the border between the two kingdoms, nothing short of an act of God appears to have prevented the brothers from falling into wars for dominance between themselves.12 A fever struck Sancho III down after ruling as King of Castile for little more than a year.13 That turn of fate would prove fortunate

8 Alfonso VII was the last Iberian monarch to employ the Hispanic imperial title, although there was a considerable tradition behind his usage: Sirantoine, Imperator Hispaniae; Fernández Conde, ‘Alfonso VI’. On Alfonso’s political situation at his death: Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla, pp. 90–135. There were numerous troubadours at the Emperor’s court over the course of his reign: de Riquer, Los trovadores. In addition to the numerous bishops from his own kingdom, the presence of Mozarabic bishops from Andalusi sees at Alfonso’s court, particularly, demonstrates the broad reach of his cortes: Fita, ‘Obispos mozárabes’. 9 Alfonso’s charters begin this practice in the late 1140s and early 1150s: Los cartularios de Toledo, ed. by Hernández, pp. 65–116; Documentación de la catedral de Burgos, ed. by Garrido Garrido, pp. 226–39; Documentación de la catedral de Palencia, ed. by Abajo Martín, pp. 99–120; Documentación medieval de la catedral de Segovia, ed. by Villar Garcia, pp. 95–99. It should be noted that, as the oldest, Sancho appears for some time before his brother. During their period jointly confirming their father’s privileges, the two men were listed first amongst the nobles from either side of Alfonso VII’s kingdom. 10 Juan de Soria so lamented the division of the kingdom that he juxtaposed it with the death of the Emperor: Juan of Osma, Chronica latina regum Castellae, ed. by Brea, p. 41, l. 14. 11 González, El reino de Castilla, ii, 79–82. 12 Sancha Raimundez was Alfonso VII’s older sister and thus the aunt of both Fernando II of León and Sancho III of Castile. She controlled a border region called the Infantazgo, a kind of dower slush-fund of territories designed to provide unmarried royal women with an income befitting their stature. The influence wielded by the royal women who held the Infantazgo has (finally) received significant scholarly attention: Martin, ‘Hacia una clarificación del Infantazgo’; Bianchini, ‘The Infantazgo’; Henriet, ‘Deo votas’; Rodríguez López, ‘Dotes y arras’. 13 The Anales Toledanos I record that he died on 31 August 1158 (‘Murió el Rey D. Sancho, fillo del Emperador, el postrimer dia Dagosto, era MCXCVI’), a fact which the Anales Toledanos III confirm, and Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada seems to suggest that his death was a sudden shock to the Castilian court, given the tone of the passage: Anales Toledanos, ed. by Flórez, p. 395; Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie, ed. by Fernández Valverde, p. 236 (vii. 14, ll. 47–53). Only the later Primera cronica general noted that King

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for Fernando II of León, but in turn the pendulum swung the other way for his son Alfonso IX of León (r. 1188–1230). The events that broke out after the death of Sancho III demonstrate the difficult circumstances that pervaded the divisions of Alfonso’s empire and engendered conflict between León and Castile. Fernando II quickly intervened to thwart the attempts of the Castilian nobility and of Archbishop Celebruno of Toledo to protect the kingdom of Castile and preserve Castilian control over the orphaned toddler-king Alfonso VIII of Castile (r. 1158–1214).14 Fernando II took over much of Castile, and, after attaining his majority and marrying into an alliance with the Plantagenet empire, Alfonso VIII only resecured his control of key border regions after considerable effort in the 1170s.15 By the time Fernando II of León died in 1188, his nephew Alfonso VIII of Castile had more than regained his footing, conquering Cuenca and also founding the new city of Plasencia to block Leonese advances into Extremadura.16 Alfonso VIII proceeded to so thoroughly embarrass his younger cousin Alfonso IX (r. 1188–1230), by forcing him to kiss his hand at their first official meeting, that afterward animosity between the two kings was nearly constant.17 Alfonso IX was almost always outmatched by his older cousin, and invaded Castile after the Castilian king’s disastrous defeat at Alarcos, only to be rebuffed by Castile’s other peninsular allies.18 The invasion, coupled with later events leading up to the Crusade of Las Navas de Tolosa, so soured relations between the two kingdoms that an incestuous marriage alliance was the only solution either party could devise, and even then, Queen Berenguela of Castile (r. 1217) appears to have had the upper hand in a marriage that seems to have only further salted the Leonese king’s wounds so greatly that he would later try to disinherit his children born to

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Sancho was ill (‘Pues enffermo este muy noble rey don Sancho, et ordenada en todas las cosas su postremeria assi como conuinie a tan noble et tan alto et tan complido rey, et fechos todos los offiçios que al buen cristiano conuienen en su acabamiento, fino’): Primera crónica general de España, ed. by Menéndez Pidal, p. 667, ll. 39–45. The several modern scholarly narrations of the minority of Alfonso VIII disagree on very little of substance: González, El reino de Castilla, i, 172–80, 663–84; Martínez Díez, Alfonso VIII, pp. 25–40; Linehan, History and the Historians, pp. 279–80; Linehan, Spain, 1157–1300, pp. 24–32. Celebruno of Toledo, Pedro Pérez of Burgos, and the Count de Lara were all at the forefront of the Castilian defence: Serrano, El obispado de Burgos, ii, 71–72. On Alfonso’s marriage alliance to Henry II of England via Eleanor Plantagenet and its lasting implications, see Lincoln, ‘Una cum uxore mea’; Cerda, ‘The Marriage of Alfonso VIII’. On the recapture of the Infantazgo region by Alfonso VIII, see Bianchini, ‘The Infantazgo’; Lincoln, ‘Beating Swords into Croziers’. Palacios Martín, ‘Alfonso VIII y su política de frontera’; Powers, ‘The Early Reconquest Episcopate’. This episode is dealt with in more detail below. Alfonso IX was excommunicated for the attempted invasion, and Pope Celestine III encouraged the Portuguese king to crusade against the Leonese. A timely relief effort led by the Aragonese appears to have driven back Alfonso IX and ended his attempt to swallow up Castile with help from the Almohad Caliph Abū Yūsuf Yaq’ūb al-Manṣur.

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Berenguela.19 The period of León and Castile’s separation, from the death of Alfonso VII in 1157 to the annexation of León by Fernando III in 1230, appears to be a story of Castilian superiority. Though this narrative appears something of a fait accompli, the weaving of the story by Castilian authors smacks far more of post hoc, ergo propter hoc. Diplomatic relations between León and Castile in the aftermath of Alfonso VII’s death were, from the very start, bound to be difficult: sibling rivalry alone ensured that much. Adding to the difficulties experienced by the personalities of the two brothers were the inherent challenges of both primogeniture and political alignments. Fernando II of León was supposed to have received the submission of the king of Portugal, but Afonso Henriques had other plans.20 Sancho III was supposed to receive the submission of the Navarrese king (instead he accepted a Navarrese princess as his bride) and the parias payments from several Muslim āmīrs who were holding out against the newly arrived Almohads in al-Andalus.21 Sancho received a castle’s worth of spoils; Fernando was left grasping for a lion’s share; neither king had enough power to dominate the other de facto and conflict appears to have been brewing as soon as their father had been interred. The two kings met to sign their first peace treaty — couched as a treaty of friendship, but likely a pre-emptive measure aimed at preventing open war — at the royal monastery village of Sahagún in the early summer of 1158, after Sancho III had already ensured the aid of Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona and king-consort of Aragón.22 Narrative sources differ on what happened next, despite the amicability expressed in the treaty. Linehan has already aptly paraphrased Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada’s portrayal of the early conflict between the two sons of Alfonso VII: Fernando arriving for the treaty of Sahagún ‘smelling like the farm’ and Sancho standing tall and noble.23 Juan de Soria’s Chronicle, too, noted that the two kings presented different portraits — Sancho was ‘a glorious future king’, Fernando married incestuously — but the brevity of Juan’s account passed over the treaty of Sahagún.24 However, both Rodrigo and Juan de Soria were decidedly pro-Castilian: Rodrigo was the Castilian archbishop of Toledo, and Juan de Soria had been the Castilian 19 Shadis, Berenguela of Castile, pp. 108–15; Bianchini, The Queen’s Hand, pp. 180–207. 20 Lay, The Reconquest Kings of Portugal. 21 On the marriage of Sancho III to Blanca of Navarra, see Lincoln, ‘Una cum uxore mea’. 22 The treaty with Ramón Berenguer is dated to February 1158, while the Sahagún treaty bears the date 23 May 1158: González, El reino de Castilla, ii, 66–67, 79–82. 23 Linehan, Spain, 1157–1300, pp. 8–9; Linehan, ‘On Further Thought’, pp. 423–24. 24 Juan de Soria describes Sancho glowingly: ‘itaque omnes qui nouerant eum sperabant per ea, que ante gesserat, et per ea, que de nouo agrediebatur, quod futurus esset rex uirtuosus’. Urraca of Portugal, according to Juan de Soria, ‘non poterat esse uxor legitima [Fernandi] cum atineret ipsi in tercio gradu secundum computationem canonicam’. The specificity of Juan’s calculations reads like an indictment of a criminal rather than an account of a king: Juan of Osma, Chronica latina regum Castellae, ed. by Brea, pp. 41 (ch. 8, ll. 6–8), 43 (ch. 10, ll. 17–20).

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chancellor prior to his appointment to the episcopate of Osma and Burgos. Counterbalancing the portrait of Fernando II as a bumbling Leonese bumpkin was the portrait offered by the more favourable episcopal chronicler, Lucas of Túy, who depicted Fernando as ‘strenuous in arms, victorious in war, pious on all fronts, benign, liberal, and shining forth with generosity’.25 It is not surprising, in this light, that Lucas of Túy passed over the events of May 1158 and the treaty of Sahagún without any mention whatsoever.26 The treaty of Sahagún, therefore, may have well been an effort in good faith by both kings to secure peace in their father’s domain, but its depiction in Castilian sources was meant to show that the kingdom of León was outdated, rustic, and unambitious, while the kingdom of Castile was ready to meet its military and political obligations with gusto. Whether such a depiction is accurate or not, the scene at Sahagún in 1158 was mirrored by a similar affair in 1188 at Carrión at the first official meeting between the oldest sons of those same two kings, Alfonso IX of León and Alfonso VIII of Castile.27 The Cortes of Carrión, held in 1188, was a double occasion, as the Castilian royal chancellor Juan de Soria narrated: Fuit preterea positum et firmatum ut idem rex Legionis fieret miles a predicto rege Castelle et tunc oscularetur manum eius, quod et factum est. Celebrata namque curia famosa et nobili apud Carrionem, idem rex Legionis accinctus est gladio a predicto rege Castelle in ecclesia Sancti Zoili et osculatus est manum regis Castelle, presentibus Galleciis et Legionensibus et Castellanis. It was agreed and confirmed that the King of León should be made a knight by the King of Castile and then that he should kiss his hand. This was done. Now a famous and noble curia was celebrated at Carrión where the King of León was girded with his sword by the King of Castile in the church of San Zoilio. He also kissed the hand of the King of Castile in the presence of Galicians, Leonese, and Castilians.28 The drama of the scene was remembered by Alfonso VIII of Castile’s charters in dating clauses for more than two years, with the years being denoted by their

25 ‘Fuit hic rex Fredenandus armis strenuus, in bellis victoriosus, circa omnes pius, benignus, liberalis et largitate preclarus’: Lucas Tudensis, Chronicon mundi, ed. by Falque, iv. 79, ll. 10–13. 26 Lucas, though perhaps the more competent historian by modern standards, was still a Leonese partisan, and his narrative moves from Sancho’s untimely death to Fernando’s avuncular concern for the orphaned Alfonso VIII, whom the Leonese King swiftly secures and leaves under the tutelage of a trusted nobleman: Chronicon mundi, ed. by Falque, iv. 79, ll. 1–10. 27 This was just the beginning of a difficult relationship between Alfonso IX and the kingdom of Castile: Martín Rodríguez, ‘Alfonso IX y sus relaciones’. 28 Juan of Osma, Chronica latina regum Castellae’, ed. by Brea, p. 44 (ch. 11, ll. 11–17); The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, trans. by O’Callaghan, p. 22.

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passing since the occasion when the Castilian king had knighted his Leonese cousin and the Leonese king had kissed the Castilian’s hand in a gesture of submission.29 Castilian and Leonese charters routinely included this kind of ‘news’ in the datum clauses of charters, as a way of commemorating the important (usually royal) events of recent history, and to connect them to the more local affairs represented by charters.30 Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, drawing on Juan de Soria’s account and not wanting to miss the opportunity to remind his readers of the gesture of submission that kissing the Castilian king’s hand represented, further added the detail that Alfonso IX came to his Castilian cousin not only to be knighted but to seek aid against the Portuguese.31 Not surprisingly, the Leonese charters of Alfonso IX fail to mention the scene in any of their datum clauses.32 But why would a chronicler actively elect to privilege one part of a kingdom over another? In the case of Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada and Juan de Soria, the choice was more than just good politics, it was a question of loyalty. The fortunes of both men, although they got their start during the reign of Alfonso VIII, soared under Fernando III (Castile: r. 1217–1252; León: r. 1230–1252), and in many ways Fernando was a model king for both chroniclers.33 Yet, for all that Fernando accomplished during his reign, León remained a source of frustration for thirteen years, while he grappled with his father and half-sisters to secure his inheritance of the kingdom.34 For this reason, some of the already extant tendencies of Castilian hostility toward their Leonese neighbours were likely deployed, not only to check Leonese advances but to rhetorically assert Castilian dominance. In the episode of the treaty of Sahagún, Castilian kingship was given greater nobility and vigour, both qualities to which the young Castilian court aspired. For the incident at the Cortes of Carrión, the dominance of Castile over León was so deeply entrenched that Fernando’s own Leonese father was given second place behind his grandfather’s Castilian magnitude. Although Fernando had become militarily dominant, rhetorical dominance went hand-in-glove with political hegemony, and reinforcing actions with words ensured that Fernando’s models of kingship and leadership were taken seriously in both his own period and those that followed.35 The ways in which León and Castile 29 For example González, El reino de Castilla, ii, 868–963. 30 This phenomenon, as exemplified in the charters of Fernando III (Alfonso VIII’s grandson), has been recently examined by Holt, ‘In eo tempore’. 31 Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, ed. by Fernández Valverde, p. 246 (vii. 24, ll. 1–7). 32 González, Alfonso IX. 33 This point has recently been made in considerable detail by de Ayala Martínez, ‘La realeza’. 34 On the difficulties of his succession to the Leonese throne, see Bianchini, The Queen’s Hand, pp. 180–207. 35 This insight belongs to Edward Holt, who graciously shared a draft of one of his dissertation chapters on the subject with me prior to its completion: Holt, ‘Liturgy, Ritual, and Kingship’, pp. 225–65; Holt, ‘Laudes regiae’, pp. 140–64.

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were commemorated in chronicles demonstrates the lasting impact of this subversion: Fernando III routinely listed Castile before Toledo in his charters, such was the sway of his grandfather’s court’s historical memory.

Treason, Defeat, Fever, and Fate There were, contrary to the smoothness portrayed by medieval Castilian chroniclers, uneasy moments of tension, misfortune, and even outright disaster. Dynastic shifts were no exception. Medieval Leonese and Castilian kingship never enjoyed a Capetian level of uninterrupted succession, and serious complications often resulted from the kinds of misfortunes that diverted succession-planning and kingdom-building.36 That being said, there were more than a few instances where the inheritance of the Castilian and Leonese thrones was complicated by ‘acts of God’. In the untimely deaths of Sancho II of Castile, the Infante Sancho Alfónsez of León, and the Infante Fernando Alfónsez of Castile, we can better examine the ways in which thirteenth-century chroniclers attempted to soften the blows of what would appear to be significant setbacks for the royal succession. If the relationship between Alfonso VIII and Alfonso IX, discussed above, was fraught with complications, the one between Sancho II of Castile (r. 1065–1072) and his brother Alfonso VI (r. 1072–1109) was downright Byzantine. The two sons of Fernando I of León-Castile battled one another for supremacy — both having effectively eclipsed their brother King García of Galicia — and Alfonso VI was pushed into exile among the ta’ifa of Toledo.37 Although the available sources are not definitive on what happened next, Alfonso seems to have arranged for his older brother to be assassinated in 1072 outside the walls of Zamora, where Sancho was besieging his sister Urraca.38 The early twelfth-century chronicle called the Historia Roderici Campidoctoris took a different tack from later versions, and suggested that Alfonso VI was enraged at Rodrigo for his attacks on Muslim territories in retribution for a raid on San Esteban de Gormaz.39 Important as this change would be, the earliest versions of the story were not the only ones recorded. Juan de Soria’s Chronica latina says that ‘[at Zamora], as the report had it, [King Sancho] was killed treacherously by a certain agent of Satan named Vellido Adólfez’.40 In similar fashion, Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada noted that it was el Cid who required Alfonso VI to swear that he was ‘not conscious of 36 James Naus has rightly called the succession success of the Capetians a ‘miracle’: Naus, Constructing Kingship. 37 Reilly, The Kingdom of León-Castilla, pp. 75–76. 38 Linehan, History and the Historians, p. 172. 39 The World of El Cid, ed. and trans. by Barton and Fletcher, p. 104. 40 The translation here is from The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, trans. by O’Callaghan, p. 4. For the Latin: Juan of Osma, Chronica latina regum Castellae, ed. by Brea, p. 44.

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the death of his brother King Sancho’.41 We can validate these observations with the account of Lucas of Túy, because it was more pro-Leonese, in that even Lucas noted that the assembled nobles made Alfonso VI swear that he was not involved in the death of his brother.42 The Alfonsine Histories, admittedly written in the latter part of the thirteenth century, still echoed these treatments but expanded on them significantly, possibly incorporating a now-lost epic poem narrating the death of Sancho II.43 Taken as a whole, these sources suggest that the story of Sancho II was minimized for two reasons which are obvious but nevertheless potent. First, Alfonso VI was Fernando III’s ancestor on both his maternal and paternal sides, back six and five generations respectively.44 Second, although this descent was important as a hereditary marker of legitimacy, minimizing the role of Alfonso VI in the matter also minimized the ancestral shame of the assassination: given that Fernando III was himself the product of an illegitimate marriage, ancestral guilt would have been a heavy weight indeed. Beyond the relationship between Sancho II and Alfonso VI, two crown princes, one Leonese and one Castilian, served opposite roles. Where untimely deaths were causes for anxiety, honourable deaths were a cause for muted celebration.45 In the cases of Sancho Alfónsez (fl. 1107 × 1108) and Fernando Alfónsez (fl. 1208–1211), two crown princes separated by more than a century, the treatments of deaths in battle against the Almoravids and Almohads respectively were laudatory if tempered. The two princes shared similar biographies: both were the sons of reigning, militarily successful kings; both were struck low in their youth after a battle against Moroccan caliphal forces. Depictions of Sancho Alfónsez are few in the early sources. According to some chroniclers, he was the son of Alfonso VI and Zaīda, daughter of al-Mu’tamid, the ta’ifa King of Seville.46 Interesting though that lineage may have been, Sancho’s death appears to have come at the hands of al-Mu’tamid’s

41 ‘Castellani etiam et Nauarri ad ipsum ilico conuenerunt et ante omnia iuramentum, ut diximus, exergerunt, quod non fuerat conscius mortis regis Sancii fratris sui’: Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, ed. by Fernández Valverde, p. 201 (vi. 20, ll. 5–8). 42 Lucas Tudensis, Chronicon mundi, ed. by Falque, iv. 68. 43 Primera crónica general de España, ed. by Menéndez Pidal, pp. 505–13. Whether the Carmen de morte sanctii regis (hypothesized by Entwistle to have been preserved in the Historia najarense and included in the Primera crónica general) ever existed in a Latin form is debatable. It may well be that the Cid and King Sancho poems formed part of a larger cycle, but much more work needs to be done. Entwistle, ‘On the Carmen de morte sanctii regis’; Smith, ‘The Dating’, p. 108; Bautista, ‘Sancho II y Rodrigo Campeador’. 44 See the genealogical trees in the notes to The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, trans. by O’Callaghan, pp. 20 n. 7, 22 n. 3. 45 Open and truly joyous celebration, of course, was reserved solely for the deaths of enemies. 46 The earliest known version of this story is Ximénez de Rada’s, although he uses her baptismal name, Maria: Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, ed. Fernández Valverde, p. 214 (vi. 30).

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foes the Almoravids, whose arrival in the peninsula displaced al-Mu’tamid (among others) and provoked the Leonese into action.47 The battle of Uclés was disastrous for the Leonese: not only was the Infante Sancho killed, the Almoravids destroyed so many troops that the king was wounded so badly that he died in the following year.48 The Crusade of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212 appears, by most reckonings, to have been the idea of the Infante Fernando Alfónsez.49 Beginning in the previous year, the Castilian vanguard began, in a co-ordinated effort with the Crown of Aragon, to soften up the Almohad borders with cavalry raids.50 The Infante Fernando was encouraged on by the then-young Archbishop Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, and the two men pursued the crusade vigorously.51 The young prince, the flower of Castilian youth, died in the autumn of 1211.52 Literary depictions from both Leonese and Castilian chronicles present both Infantes in favourable lights, but contrast in their detailed depictions of the princes. Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada and Juan de Soria record the deaths of the two princes in different ways, given that neither cleric knew Sancho Alfónsez personally but both knew Fernando Alfónsez. Sancho Alfónsez was ‘[Alfonso VI’s] only son named Sancho, [who] had been killed by the Saracens near the town of Uclés’, and Alfonso lamented his passing, asking ‘where is my son, the joy of my life, the solace of my old age, my one and only heir?’53 In contrast, however, both Juan de Soria and Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada lamented the Infante Fernando’s death at length. Juan says, ‘before fifteen days [after the fall of Salvatierra] had scarcely passed, the King’s son Fernando, the flower of young men, the adornment of the kingdom, the right

47 Simon Barton has noted that the tactic of marrying and sexually dominating the women of a religious Other among royal families expressed a kind of cultural dominance. In this sense, the story of Zaīda probably serves as a marker of the dominance of León over the ta’ifa kings: Barton, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines, pp. 123–28. 48 García Fitz, Castilla y León frente al Islam, pp. 355–57. 49 Gómez, ‘The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa’; de Ayala Martínez, ‘Holy War and Crusade’; Alvira Cabrer, Las Navas de Tolosa, pp. 68–71; O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade, pp. 66–67. 50 Alvira Cabrer, ‘Prendiendo el fuego de la guerra’, pp. 184, 192. 51 Rodrigo’s hand has widely been seen behind Fernando’s letter to Innocent III that provoked the pontiff to confer crusading status on the campaign, which is not terribly surprising, given his role in crafting other letters connected to the same crusade. 52 The Anales Toledanos I record that Fernando died on 14 October 1211, and Fernando’s death was lamented by both Juan de Soria and Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada: Anales Toledanos, ed. by Flórez, p. 395. 53 Again, I prefer O’Callaghan’s translation: The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, trans. by O’Callaghan, p. 5; Juan of Osma, Chronica latina regum Castellae, ed. by Brea, p. 36 (ch. 2, ll. 35–37): ‘unicus quem habuerat, nomine Sancius, interfectus fuerat, a Sarracenis iuxta uillam, que dicitur Vcles’. The second quotation, from Rodrigo’s Historia de rebus, is my own, but the Latin is telling: ‘Vbi est filius meus, iocunditas uite mee, solacium senectutis, unicus heres meus?’: Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, ed. by Fernández Valverde, pp. 216–17 (vi. 32, ll. 33–34).

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hand of his father, was seized with an acute fever and gave his life at Madrid’.54 Likewise, Rodrigo lamented Fernando’s passing, saying that, ‘in his death the lament of the fatherland, the grief inconsolable in his father, because he saw himself in the mirror of life, he was the very expectation of the people’.55 The archbishop of Toledo goes on to note that, with the queen weeping and throwing herself on the prince’s casket, he himself buried the prince at the monarchy’s family monastery, Las Huelgas in Burgos.56 The inopportune deaths of kings and princes provided an opportunity for medieval chroniclers to shape, at a distance, the ways in which the hand of God could be understood in the workings of fate. From a practical standpoint, reshaping the story of Sancho II’s death, which was so notorious at the time, gave Castilian authors the chance to soften the blow in historical treatments and to amplify the role of Castilian nobles in standing against ignoble acts; the latter ensured their own nobility of character within the political context of the contemporary court environment. The depictions of the deaths of Sancho Alfónsez and Fernando Alfónsez, two princes struck low in times of wars against Muslims, allowed Castilian authors to glorify the justly bellicose attitudes of contemporary Castilians, Fernando III and his nobility included, in their attacks against Muslim polities — it was simply in Castilian blood to fight holy wars for the sake of Christendom. Both deaths were virtuous. Sancho Alfónsez fell in defeat, but the death of Fernando Alfónsez was even more impactful, given that his was a death on a victorious campaign. Despite the loss that their deaths inflicted, they represented moments where, even if in disastrous circumstances, Castile was painted in a favourable light.

Written by the Victors? The story of Castilian dominance, painted by the early thirteenth-century Castilian chroniclers, was far from being a well-worn path. In the middle of the twelfth century, Castile would hardly have been the safe bet to assume any great hegemony over the other peninsular kingdoms, even over León or Navarre. Establishing a more fluent literary record of Castile’s rise to power was no easily accomplishable task, since there was too much evidence of great

54 The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, trans. by O’Callaghan, p. 41; Juan of Osma, Chronica latina regum Castellae, ed. by Brea, p. 55 (ch. 20, ll. 1–3): ‘Post hoc elapsis uix XVcim diebus predictus Ferrandus, filius regis, flos iuuenum, decus regni, patris dextera, uite sue, correptus acuta febre, in Matrit terminum dedit’. 55 ‘In cuius morte fletus patrie, luctus inconsolabilis genitori, quia in ipsum tanquam in uite speculum contemplabatur, erat enim expectatio populorum’: Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, ed. by Fernández Valverde, p. 258 (vii. 36, ll. 16–18). 56 Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae, ed. by Fernández Valverde, p. 258 (vii. 36, ll. 19–42).

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challenges, but it was possible to smooth off the rougher edges of the historical conflict between a formerly dominant León and a newly triumphant Castile. Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada and Juan de Soria both altered some episodes in Castilian history subtly in order to shift the focus of some stories enough to paint Castile in a more favourable light. Their larger agenda, outside the act of chronicle writing, provides us with a larger window into the reasons that influenced their strategic rhetorical and narratological choices, so it is to these authors that we must turn. Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada was not born Castilian but Navarrese, although he quickly appropriated the Castilian cause after his return to Castile in 1207 and appointment to the episcopate of Osma in 1208.57 After a brief period as bishop-elect of Osma, Rodrigo was quickly promoted to the archiepiscopate of Toledo, elevating him to one of the very highest posts in the Iberian clergy.58 As the archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo’s priorities were supposed to be pan-Iberian: he was to lead crusades, ensure pastoral discipline, and enforce the rules and regulations of the Church. As the Toledan prelate, he laid claim to the mantle of Primas Hispaniarum, Primate of the Spains, a title which put him above even the other metropolitan archbishops in the peninsula. Claiming the title and having it recognized, however, were markedly different problems: early in his career, Rodrigo’s attempts at having the primacy recognized were thwarted at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, and he spent much of his career attempting to assert his dominance over other churches in other kingdoms.59 While ecclesiastical provinces — bishops and dioceses owing allegiance to a metropolitan archbishop — were still enforced on paper, the political divisions in the Iberian peninsula were far more impactful from the late twelfth century onward.60 Practically speaking, Rodrigo’s attempts to buoy the reputation of Castile enhanced the prestige of Toledo, as the ecclesiastical primate of that kingdom, and vice versa. So, the attempts to enhance the history of Castile rhetorically reinforced Toledo’s claims to prominence as the religious heart of Castile.61 Rodrigo did not distil his historical prose from the ether, but rather relied heavily on the works of Juan de Soria and Lucas of Túy.62 Although they had 57 Reilly, ‘Alfonso VIII’, pp. 438–41, 448. 58 In contrast to Reilly’s cynical portrayal, see the much earlier, if flawed, work of Gorosterratzu, Don Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada. 59 On the primacy disputes at Fourth Lateran, see García y García, Historia del Concilio IV Lateranense, pp. 95–97; Rivera Recio, ‘Personajes hispanos’; Lincoln, ‘Riots, Reluctance, and Reformers’. 60 On the realignment around political divisions rather than ecclesiastical provinces, see Linehan, The Spanish Church, pp. 1–19, 322–30; Linehan, History and the Historians, pp. 278–88. 61 Pick, Conflict and Coexistence, pp. 14–16. 62 Much of Rodrigo’s account employs his own eyewitness narrative, but he drew heavily from contemporary Christian and Muslim chronicles in the breadth of his work: Reilly, ‘The De rebus Hispanie’.

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mutual interests, Juan de Soria was Rodrigo’s rival in the Castilian ecclesiastical cursus honorum: he served as the Castilian cancellarius; was elected to the bishopric of Osma, before being transferred to Burgos; and served at the royal court as one of the most valuable administrative agents of his generation.63 Lucas of Túy fits a similar pattern, but for a different part of Fernando III’s kingdom. Serving first as a canon of San Isidoro in León before being elected to the episcopate of Túy, Lucas was one of the most prolific clerical authors in early thirteenth-century León.64 In the case of the former, we can surmise that Juan de Soria composed his chronicle at the behest of a member of the curia around Fernando, perhaps at the behest of the king himself. For the latter, a specific patron for Lucas’s Chronicon mundi is clearly identifiable: it was none other than Queen Berenguela.65 Between these two, then, we can glimpse the underlying agenda for Rodrigo’s two most prominent sources for the Historia de rebus Hispanie, and his agenda is what must bear the weight of scholarly focus. To what end would the archbishop of Toledo seek to secure Castilian hegemony over the kingdom of León? Fernando signed most of his charters as ‘King of Castile and Toledo’ before 1230, and added León and Galicia as part of his progressively expanding titles.66 The ordering of the titles demonstrates the importance of the see of Toledo to his monarchical presentation. Moreover, Fernando’s attempts to secure the kingdom of León and to add it to his demesne — to the disadvantage of his half-sisters — brought his political goals into convergence with the goal of his ambitious archbishop of Toledo to secure León and Santiago de Compostela’s adherence to Toledan claims to the primacy.67 For Rodrigo, who was outmatched at Fourth Lateran and worked tirelessly to arrange the Iberian Church under his control, the strength of Fernando’s Castile was proof of the positive influence of Toledo, and the two men worked hand-in-glove to effect their mutual goals.68 (Occasionally this co-operation provoked papal and legatine displeasure.69) Rodrigo went so far as to lead the siege of Quesada, a royal target, to improve the fortunes

63 Lomax, ‘The Authorship’; Linehan, ‘Juan de Soria’; Fernández Ordóñez, ‘La composición por etapas’. 64 Linehan, ‘Dates and Doubts’; Reilly, ‘Bishop Lucas of Túy’. 65 For the dates of Lucas’s work and the details of his career, see Linehan, ‘Dates and Doubts’; Reilly, ‘Bishop Lucas of Túy’. For Berenguela’s cultural patronage: Bianchini, The Queen’s Hand, pp. 9–16; Shadis, Berenguela of Castile, pp. 73–76. 66 ‘Et ego rex Ferdinandus, regnans in Castella et Toleto’: González, Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III, p. 7 and after. 67 Rodrigo’s attempts to secure the primacy at Fourth Lateran were recorded by a Toledan eyewitness: García y García, Historia del Concilio IV Lateranense, pp. 106–12. 68 On Rodrigo and Fourth Lateran: Linehan, History and the Historians, pp. 328–31. 69 The closeness between secular and clerical society was part of what provoked the ire of Jean d’Abbeville, and the use of Crusade subsidies for non-Crusade projects, with Fernando’s tacit blessing, gave the papacy more than a little to be concerned about: Linehan, The Spanish Church, pp. 7–10.

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of the kingdom and secure lucrative support for Toledo.70 By supporting royal ambitions, Rodrigo was able to expand his own influence over the other archbishops of the Iberian peninsula. The internecine conflicts between Castile and León were a major problem for preventing the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula by North African Muslim powers. Castilian historians needed to resolve the conflicts in a fashion that preserved some historical truths, so as to give credibility to their accounts; by retouching some important events they reworked history and were able to portray Castile in a more favourable light. Among the most famous of chivalric stories in twelfth-century León and Castile, the Cantar de mio Cid offered a convenient mechanism to tell stories about the power of Castile in an age of Leonese cravenness. The death of Sancho II, the pivotal moment in the prehistory of the conflict between Alfonso VI and Rodrigo Díaz de Bivar, was only narrated in passing by early chroniclers, but was given a more expansive treatment by thirteenth-century historians. The conflict between the two kingdoms of León and Castile in the aftermath of the death of Alfonso VII was significant. The formal diplomatic meeting at Sahagún between Fernando II and Sancho III was fraught with dramatic tension and the scene was given prominence in the narrative of the De rebus Hispanie. The resolution of that story had a parallel in the treatment of Alfonso IX of León by his Castilian cousin Alfonso VIII at the Cortes of Carrión. The episodes that portrayed Castile’s superiority over León were treated more extensively by pro-Castilian authors who used the episodes to provide cultural contiguity within the court of a young and vital Castilian monarch who was laying claim to dynastic hegemony over León. Fortune and fate were difficult to control in a historical narrative, but the deaths of both the Infante Sancho Alfónsez and the Infante Fernando Alfónsez were reworked to portray their deaths favourably. The deaths of both crown princes in the aftermath of two military campaigns, Uclés and Salvatierra, were virtuous occasions. Both princes were fighting against a worthy foe — Moroccan invading forces — in a time when the kingdom needed the strength of a unified and powerful aristocracy and monarchy. Their deaths, though a tragic blow to both kings Alfonso, served to add a virtuous tone to their fathers’ deeds. Theirs was a special suffering: the loss of a son for love of kingdom and Christendom. In the case of Alfonso VI, that was a necessary addition, given that he was, in some instances, widely suspected of assassinating his elder brother Sancho II of Castile. By adding to the virtue of the dynasty and diluting the prestige of the Leonese side, Castilian chroniclers could both raise the profile of Castilian deeds while undercutting the potency of any Leonese claims of noble action. The writing of history, for medieval as for modern historians, involves tactical choices about which examples to deploy and on which points to 70 García Fitz, Castilla y León frente al Islam, p. 122.

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focus. Beyond even the examples studied here, there are many more that reveal much about the ways in which Castilian chroniclers in the age of Fernando III and Alfonso X reshaped the history that they had received from their predecessors.71 By the same token, the proliferation of historical writings in the first half of the thirteenth century was no accident, as I have argued here, and was part of a larger programme designed to assert the hegemony of Castile over its cousin-kingdom of León. To return to the two Rodrigos with which this chapter began, there can be little hesitation in asserting that the joie de vivre of Rodrigo Ximenez de Rada’s era shaped the way that the story of el Cid was told. The rewriting of history was in the air. For Pere Abbat, the author of the Cantar de mio Cid, the symbolism of the opening scene of the climactic book was all too real a sentiment in the Castilian court: two young Leonese noblemen combined were no match for the gravitas of the Castilian adventurer Rodrigo Díaz de Bivar. That the Castilian mercenary, outside the Castilian royal city of Burgos, dominated a lion — the very emblem of the kings of León — was a potent symbol. The rewriting of historical memories into chronicles that emphasized the dominance of one kingdom over another was yet another weapon in the Castilian arsenal. For the two chancellors who wrote the Castilian histories produced in the 1220s and 1230s, the story of the Cid and the Infantes de Carrión was not the only story of lions made sorely afraid by a Castilian nobleman. Juan de Soria and especially Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada made specific and concerted attempts to undermine or co-opt Leonese achievements on numerous fronts, in order to better distance the glorious achievements of Castile from the lacklustre deeds of León. Their rhetorical strategy does not go unnoticed, since the ways they crafted the message are evident in the chronicles themselves. In rewriting the histories of their shared past, Castile endeavoured to ensure that León was the lion that seemed sorely afraid.

Works Cited Primary Sources Anales Toledanos, in España sagrada: theatro geographico-historico de la iglesia de España, ed. by Enrique Flórez (Madrid: Marin, 1767), pp. 381–423 Los cartularios de Toledo: catalogo documental, ed. by Francisco J. Hernández, Monumenta ecclesiae toletanae historica, 1 (Madrid: Fundación Ramon Areces, 1985) Documentación de la catedral de Burgos (804–1183), ed. by José Manuel Garrido Garrido, Fuentes medievales castellano-leonesas, 13 (Burgos: Gráficas Cervantes, 1983)

71 For an interesting survey of this larger trend, see Fernández-Ordóñez, ‘De la historiografía’.

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Documentación de la catedral de Palencia (1035–1247), ed. by Teresa Abajo Martín, Fuentes medievales castellano-leonesas, 103 (Burgos: Gráfica Cervantes, 1986) Documentación medieval de la catedral de Segovia (1115–1300), ed. by Luis-Miguel Villar Garcia (Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca y Ediciones Universidad de Deusto, 1990) Juan of Osma, Chronica latina regum Castellae, in Chronica Hispana saeculi XIII, ed. by Luis Charlo Brea, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Mediaevalis, 73 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), pp. 7–111 The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, trans. by Joseph F. O’Callaghan, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 236 (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002) Lucas Tudensis, Chronicon mundi, ed. by Emma Falque, in Opera omnia, i, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, 74 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003) Primera crónica general de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV en 1289, ed. by Ramón Menéndez Pidal (Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1955) Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispaniae sive Historia Gothica, ed. by J. Fernández Valverde, Corpus Christianorum Continuatio Medievalis, 72 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1987) The Song of the Cid: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text, ed. by Burton Raffel (New York: Penguin, 2009) The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest, ed. and trans. by Simon Barton and R. A. Fletcher (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) Secondary Works Alvira Cabrer, Martín, Las Navas de Tolosa 1212: idea, liturgia y memoria de la batalla (Madrid: Silex Ediciones, 2012) ———, ‘Prendiendo el fuego de la guerra: Operaciones militares en las fronters cristiano-almohades entre 1209 y 1211’, in Iglesia, guerra y monarquia en la Edad Media: miscelánea de estudios medievales, ed. by José Peña González and Manuel Alejandro Rodríguez de la Peña (Madrid: CEU Ediciones, 2014), pp. 139–92 Barton, Simon, A History of Spain, 2nd edn (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) ———, ‘El Cid, Cluny and the Medieval Spanish Reconquista’, English Historical Review, 126 (2011), 517–43 ———, Conquerors, Brides, and Concubines: Interfaith Relations and Social Power in Medieval Iberia (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015) Bautista, Francisco, ‘Sancho II y Rodrigo Campeador en la Chronica naierensis’, e-Spania: revue interdisciplinaire d’études hispaniques médiévales et modernes, 7 ( June 2009) Bianchini, Janna, The Queen’s Hand: Power and Authority in the Reign of Berenguela of Castile (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012) ———, ‘The Infantazgo in the Reign of Alfonso VIII’, in King Alfonso VIII of Castile: Government, Family, and War, ed. by Miguel Gómez, Kyle C. Lincoln, and Damian Smith (New York: Fordham University Press, 2019), pp. 59–79

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Cerda, José Manuel, ‘The Marriage of Alfonso VIII of Castile and Leonor Plantagenet: The First Bond between Spain and England in the Middle Ages’, in Les stratégies matrimoniales (IXe–XIIIe siècles), ed. by Martín Aurell, Histoire de famille. La parenté au Moyen Age, 14 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 143–53 de Ayala Martínez, Carlos, ‘La realeza en la cronística castellano-leonesa del siglo XIII: la imagen de Fernando III’, in Monarquía, crónicas, archivos y cancillerías en los reinos hispano-cristianos: siglos XIII–XV, ed. by Esteban Sarasa Sánchez (Zaragoza: Institución ‘Fernando el Católico’, 2015), pp. 247–76 ———, ‘Holy War and Crusade during the Reign of Alfonso VIII’, in King Alfonso VIII of Castile: Government, Family, and War, ed. by Miguel Gómez, Kyle C. Lincoln, and Damian Smith (New York: Fordham Univeristy Press, 2019), pp. 118–42 de Riquer, Martín, Los trovadores: historia literaria y textos, 2nd edn, 3 vols (Barcelona: Editorial Ariel, 1992) Entwistle, William J., ‘On the Carmen de morte sanctii regis’, Bulletin Hispanique, 30 (1928), 204–19 Fernández Conde, Francisco Javier, ‘Alfonso VI, rey de León y Castilla: imperator totius Hispanie’, in El reino de Hispania (siglos VIII–XII): teoría y prácticas del poder, ed. by Francisco Javier Fernandez Conde, José María Mínguez, and Ermelindo Portela (Madrid: Akal, 2019), pp. 107–30 Fernández-Ordóñez, Inés, ‘De la historiografía fernandina a la alfonsí’, Alcanate: Revista de estudios Alfonsíes, 3 (2002–2003), 93–134 ———, ‘La composición por etapas de la Chronica latina regum Castellae (1223– 1237) de Juan de Soria’, e-Spania: revue interdisciplinaire d’études hispaniques médiévales et modernes, 2 (December 2006) Fita, Fidel, ‘Obispos mozárabes, refugiados en Toledo a mediados del siglo XII’, Boletín de la Real Academia de la Historia, 30 (1897), 529–32 Fletcher, Richard, The Quest for El Cid, paperback edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) García Fitz, Francisco, Castilla y León frente al Islam: etrategias de expansión y tácticas militares (siglos XI–XIII) (Seville: Universidad de Sevilla, 1998) García y García, Antonio, Historia del Concilio IV Lateranense de 1215 (Salamanca: Centro de Estudios Orientales y Ecuménicos ‘Juan XXIII’, 2005) Gómez, Miguel Dolan, ‘The Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa: The Culture and Practice of Crusading in Medieval Iberia’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 2011) González, Julio, Alfonso IX (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Instituto Jerónimo Zurita, 1944) ———, El reino de Castilla en la epoca de Alfonso VIII, 3 vols (Madrid: Escuela de Estudios Medievales, 1960) ———, Reinado y diplomas de Fernando III, 3 vols (Córdoba: Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Córdoba, 1980–1986)

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Gorosterratzu, Javier, Don Rodrigo Jimenez de Rada, gran estadista, escritor y prelado: estudio documentado de su vida, de los cuarenta años de su primacia en la iglesia de España y de su cancillerato en Castilla, y en particular la prueba de su asistencia al Concilio IV de Litran tan debatida en la controversia de la venida de Santiago a España (Pamplona: Viuda de T. Bescansa, 1925) Henriet, Patrick, ‘Deo votas: l’Infantado et la fonction des infantes dans la Castille et le León des Xe–XIIe siècles’, in Au clôitre et dans le monde: Femmes, hommes et sociétés (IXe–XVe siècle). Mélanges en l’honneur de Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq, ed. by Patrick Henriet and Anne-Marie Legras, Cultures et civilisations médiévales, 23 (Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2000), pp. 189–203 Holt, Edward L., ‘In eo tempore: The Circulation of News and Reputation in the Charters of Fernando III’, Bulletin of Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies, 42 (2017), 4–22 ———, ‘Liturgy, Ritual, and Kingship in the Age of Fernando III of Castile-León (r. 1217–1252)’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Saint Louis University, 2018) ———, ‘Laudes regiae: Liturgy and Royal Power in Thirteenth-Century CastileLeón’, in The Sword and the Cross: Castile-León in the Era of Fernando III, ed. by Edward L. Holt and Teresa Witcombe (Leiden: Brill, 2020), pp. 140–64 Lay, Stephen, The Reconquest Kings of Portugal: Political and Cultural Reorientation on the Medieval Frontier (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Lincoln, Kyle C., ‘Una cum uxore mea: Alfonso VIII, Leonor Plantagenet, and Marriage Alliances at the Court of Castile’, Revista Chilena de Estudios Medievales, 4 ( July–December, 2013), 13–33 ———, ‘Beating Swords into Croziers: Warrior Bishops in the Kingdom of Castile, c. 1158–1214’, Journal of Medieval History, 44 (2018), 83–103 ———, ‘Riots, Reluctance, and Reformers: The Church in the Kingdom of Castile and the IV Lateran Council’, Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies, 12 (2020), pp. 230–47 Linehan, Peter, The Spanish Church and the Papacy in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971) ———, History and the Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) ———, ‘On Further Thought: Lucas of Tuy, Rodrigo of Toledo and the Alfonsine Histories’, Anuario de estudios medievales, 27 (1997), 415–35 ———, ‘Dates and Doubts about Don Lucas’, Cahiers de linguistique et de civilisation hispaniques médiévales, 24 (2001), 201–17 ———, ‘Juan de Soria: The Chancellor as Chronicler’, e-Spania: revue interdisciplinaire d’études hispaniques médiévales et modernes, 2 (December 2006)

———, Spain, 1157–1300: A Partible Inheritance (Malden: Blackwell, 2008) Lomax, Derek W., ‘The Authorship of the Chronique latine des rois de Castille’, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, 40 (1963), 205–11 Martín Rodríguez, José-Luis, ‘Alfonso IX y sus relaciones con Castilla’, Espacio, Tiempo y Forma, Serie III: Historia Medieval, 7 (1994), 11–31

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Martin, Therese, ‘Hacia una clarificación del Infantazgo en tiempos de la reina Urraca y su hija la infanta Sancha (ca. 1107–1159)’, e-Spania: revue interdisciplinaire d’études hispaniques médiévales et modernes (2008) Martínez Díaz, Gonzalo, Alfonso VIII, rey de Castilla y Toledo (1158–1214) (Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2007) Naus, James L., Constructing Kingship: The Capetian Monarchs of France and the Early Crusades (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016) O’Callaghan, Joseph F., Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003) Palacios Martín, Bonifacio, ‘Alfonso VIII y su política de frontera en Extremadura: la creación de diócesis de Plasencia’, En la España medieval, 15 (1992), 77–96 Pick, Lucy K., Conflict and Coexistence: Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Medieval Spain (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004) Powers, James F., ‘The Early Reconquest Episcopate at Cuenca, 1177–1284’, Catholic Historical Review, 87 (2001), 1–16 Reilly, Bernard F., The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VI, 1065–1109 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) ———, The Contest of Christian and Muslim Spain, 1031–1157 (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992) ———, The Medieval Spains (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993) ———, The Kingdom of León-Castilla under King Alfonso VII, 1126–1157 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) ———, ‘Bishop Lucas of Túy and the Latin Chronicle Tradition in Iberia’, Catholic Historical Review, 93 (2007), 767–88 ———, ‘The De rebus Hispanie and the Mature Latin Chronicle in the Iberian Middle Ages’, Viator, 43 no. 2 (2012), 131–45 ———, ‘Alfonso VIII, the Castilian Episcopate, and the Accession of Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada as the Archbishop of Toledo in 1210’, Catholic Historical Review, 99 (2013), 437–54 Rivera Recio, Juan Francisco, ‘Personajes hispanos asistentes en 1215 al IV Concilio de Letran (Revisión y aportación nueva de documentos. Datos biográficos)’, Hispania Sacra, 4, no. 8 (1951), 335–55 Rodríguez López, Ana, ‘Dotes y arras en la política territorial de la monarquía feudal castellana: siglos XII–XIII’, Arenal: Revista de Historia de las Mujeres, 2 (1995), 271–93 Serrano, Luciano, El obispado de Burgos y Castilla primitiva desde el siglo V al XIII, 3 vols (Madrid: Instituto de Valencia de Don Juan, 1935) Shadis, Miriam, Berenguela of Castile (1180–1246) and Political Women in the High Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) Sirantoine, Hélène, Imperator Hispaniae: les idéologies impériales dans le royaume de León (IXe–XIIe siècles) (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 2012) Smith, Colin, ‘The Dating and Relationship of the Historia Roderici and the Carmen Campi Doctoris’, Olifant, 9.3–4 (1982), 99–112

Gregory Fedorenko

Thirteenth-Century Memories of the Normans in the Mediterranean in the Estoire de Tancrède de Hauteville

If, as George Eliot once famously observed, ‘the happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history’, then the casual student could be forgiven for gaining the impression that the period of the collapse of the Anglo-Norman realm was, when compared to its twelfth-century prime, a remarkably benign one for its inhabitants.1 The great narrative thread of Latin Norman historiography, which depended on a continuous process of rewriting the history of the ducal dynasty begun by Dudo of Saint-Quentin in the late tenth century and then taken up in turn by William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, appears to peter out in two failed attempts at a continuation for the Plantagenet kings by Wace and Benoît, written in the 1170s and 1180s.2 As the ‘Empire of the Normans’ came under the control of the counts of Anjou and then, from 1204, of the Capetian kings of France, so the impulse to rework and repurpose ‘Norman history’, whether dealing with the exploits of famous Normans in Normandy, England, or the Mediterranean, appears to have progressively faded.3 Or, at least, Norman history stopped being written in quite the same way. After a lengthy hiatus during the period in which Normandy was numbered among the possessions of the Plantagenet kings, the impulse to rework the narrative history of the Norman dukes ironically resurfaced most strongly after the duchy’s conquest by the Capetian kings of France in 1204. The product 1 George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860), chapter 3, 3rd para., consulted online via Project Gutenberg at . 2 The Gesta Normannorum ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts; Wace, Le roman de Rou, ed. by Holden, translated as The History of the Norman People, by Burgess; Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Chronique des ducs de Normandie, ed. by Fahlin. 3 See, for example, Ashe, Fiction and History, p. 68.

Greg Fedorenko  •  completed his PhD at Cambridge University in 2012 under the supervision of Professor Elisabeth van Houts. He is currently an Executive Director at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Rewriting History in the Central Middle Ages, 900–1300, ed. by Emily A. Winkler and C. P. Lewis, IMR 26 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022), pp. 315–334 © FHG10.1484/M.IMR-EB.5.126756

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of this burst of creative energy was the early thirteenth-century Chronique de Normandie — a rather imprecise modern editor’s title which refers to a collection of closely related texts which edit, translate, and (in most cases) continue the Gesta Normannorum ducum, the main Latin serial biography of the Norman dukes.4 However, whereas certain of the authors of the Gesta Normannorum ducum had had close links to the Norman ducal court, the twenty-seven surviving manuscripts of the Chronique de Normandie transmit a keenly contested debate over the recent and distant Norman past that had passed outside centralized control. Unifying the text’s disparate strands, however, is an interest in the history of the Normans as it was expressed by the Gesta Normannorum ducum’s focus on the illustrious deeds of the Norman dukes, as well as by its frequent potted genealogical histories of some of the most prominent aristocratic lineages of the duchy.5 The popular success of the project of rewriting which transformed the Gesta Normannorum ducum into the Chronique de Normandie, indicated by the diversity of extant redactions of the latter text, the large number of surviving manuscripts, and their relative chronological proximity to the events they describe, is likely to have been considerably enhanced by the fact that this rewriting involved the translation of Latin source materials into French, the language of the Anglo-Norman aristocracy.6 As such, the Chronique de Normandie stands as one of the first examples of history written in French prose, alongside well-known examples such as the Pseudo-Turpin chronicle of Charlemagne’s campaigns in Spain, and the continuations of William of Tyre’s history of the Crusades known as the Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier.7 The manuscript context for the Chronique de Normandie suggests that the audiences for this work would have been familiar with Pseudo-Turpin, which circulates frequently alongside it in the (admittedly later) manuscript compilations in which the Chronique is found.8 They would, in addition, have been familiar with the history of the kings of France, given the circulation of a parallel text alongside the Chronique which, in a similar vein to its Norman counterpart, translated and rewrote an earlier Latin history of its dynasty, and to which, in its earliest redaction, the Chronique is appended without its own title and incipit.9 This text, entitled the Geste de France in many of its

4 Fedorenko, ‘The Thirteenth-Century Chronique de Normandie’. 5 Fedorenko, ‘The Thirteenth-Century Chronique de Normandie’, p. 169. 6 Fedorenko, ‘The Language of Authority?’. The literature on the establishment of French prose as a historiographical medium is substantial. See, for example, Labory, ‘Les débuts de la chronique’. 7 An Anonymous Old French Translation, ed. by Walpole; Le Turpin français, ed. by Walpole; The Old French Johannes Translation, ed. by Walpole; Walpole, ‘The Burgundian Translation’; La traduction du Pseudo-Turpin du manuscrit Vatican, ed. by Buridant; Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. by Mas Latrie; L’estoire d’Eracles Empereur. 8 See Walpole, Philip Mouskés, p. 50. 9 Fedorenko, ‘The Thirteenth-Century Chronique de Normandie’, pp. 179–80.

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surviving manuscripts, appears to have been composed at roughly the same time as the Chronique, with both Chronique and Geste occasionally updated alongside one another by the same author at various junctures in a period broadly encompassing the years from 1180 to 1243.10 That a ‘Franco-Norman’ historiography should have emerged around the time of the duchy’s collapse appears to offer considerable fodder for those historians who have emphasized the Normans’ chameleon-like penchant for cultural miscegenation as core to their historical identity.11 However, this apparent desire to align the dual genealogical histories of the French kings and Norman dukes did not imply a lack of interest in the deeds of illustrious Normans outside western Europe. More particularly, three of the manuscripts which transmit copies of the Chronique de Normandie and Geste de France also include a short history of the Norman experience in southern Italy, suggesting that, even after the collapse of the Anglo-Norman realm as a political unit, aristocratic audiences in northern France continued to find the Norman diaspora in southern Europe a worthy topic for recollection and remembrance.

The Text The least enigmatic aspect of the short chronicle known as the Estoire de Tancrède de Hauteville happens, happily enough, to be its title, which prefaces each surviving manuscript copy of the text. However, even here it is necessary to sound an immediate note of qualification. Firstly, the Tancred referred to here is not the Tancred de Hauteville who formed part of the leadership of the First Crusade, and who was later the subject of an extended biography written by Ralph of Caen.12 Nor is the text concerned with the Tancred de Hauteville who was King of Sicily between 1189 and 1194, and who briefly tangled with Richard I of England on the latter’s journey to the Holy Land. The Tancred in question is the first of his line of whom we are aware — the forefather of one of the most famous and prominent of all Norman families, whose ultimate significance to the course of European history is matched only by our near-total ignorance of his life and character. In addition, two out of three manuscript examples append an important suffix to the work’s heading: Estoire de Tancrède de Hauteville et de Richard de Quarrel, that is, the History of Tancred de Hauteville and of Richard I, Prince of Capua and Count of Aversa, who rose from relative obscurity to become one of the most powerful aristocrats of southern Italy, and about whom, in

10 The latter date refers to the approximate point of composition of Philippe Mousket’s Chronique rimée. See Chronique rimée de Philippe Mouskés, ed. by Reiffenberg; Mantou, ‘Philippe Mousket’. 11 See, for example, Potts, ‘Atque unum ex diversis’; van Houts, ‘Qui étaient les Normands?’. 12 The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen, trans. by Bachrach and Bachrach.

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spite of his apparently secondary significance to the matter of the work, the text reports on in greater detail than any other individual.13 The Estoire de Tancrède is not entirely unknown, and indeed has already been printed twice, albeit each time in abbreviated form. The most recent edition, however, dates to 1883, where the text’s genealogy of Tancred was transcribed and briefly discussed in a footnote spread over two pages of Odon Delarc’s Les Normands en Italie.14 Prior to this date, the inexhaustible Francisque Michel prefaced his edition of the Chronique de Normandie with a transcript of the text, but his use of a single, mutilated manuscript meant not only that he confusingly amalgamated the History of Tancred with the broader Norman Chronicle, but also that his presentation of it was incomplete at the beginning and end.15 The Chronique de Normandie accompanies the Estoire de Tancrède in two of the three manuscripts in which the latter text appears. These manuscripts, which are near-identical in composition and appear to have been executed by the same scribe, have been localized to the northern Île de France or the south of Picardy, possibly to the abbey of Saint-Corneille at Compiègne, and seem to have been written down in the closing third of the thirteenth century.16 The text of the Estoire de Tancrède found in these two manuscripts, now held in the Bibliothèque nationale, is near-identical, with a few light deviations seemingly explicable by scribal errors or carelessness. The third witness of the Estoire, however, contains material differences to the version in the Compiègne manuscripts, including deviations in the genealogy of Tancred’s descendants. This manuscript, currently held in the Burgerbibliothek of Bern, was recently brought to attention as part of the AHRC-funded electronic edition of the twelfth-century romance Partonopeus de Blois, where it was also judged to date from the late thirteenth century.17 Albert Henry, an editor of one of the other texts included within it, likewise accorded it an origin in Picardy, although a provenance in the Benedictine abbey of Fleury, south of Paris, has also been mooted.18 In contrast to the Paris manuscripts, this codex does not contain a version of the Chronique de Normandie, although it does contain the Geste de France. Although the date of the most recent event to find its way into the Estoire de Tancrède is the death of William II, count of Apulia, in 1127, the medium of French prose chosen for the work’s composition, together with

13 For details of Richard’s career, see for example Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, pp. 103–04, 126–27; Chalandon, Histoire de la domination Normande, i, 115–17, 144–47, 167–71, 212–24. 14 Delarc, Les Normands en Italie, pp. 82–83. 15 Les Chroniques de Normandie, ed. by Michel, pp. 1–4. Michel used BnF, MS fr. 24431 for his edition. 16 The best modern description is in Careri and others, eds, Album de manuscrits français du XIIIe siècle, pp. 151–58. 17 Partonopeus de Blois, ed. by Eley and others (accessed 18 July 2020). 18 ‘La Bataille des vins’, ed. by Henry.

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its close association with two other genealogical histories in the Chronique de Normandie and Geste de France, both of which were composed in the early thirteenth century, suggests a later date of composition. This does not, however, preclude the possibility that the author of the Estoire de Tancrède used a Latin source text for at least part of his narrative, as was the case not only with the Chronique and Geste but also with a great many other early works of French prose history made at around the same time (including compilations of ancient history, such as the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César and Li fet des Romains).19 The idea of a Latin progenitor for the Estoire de Tancrède was favoured by Delarc, who opined that ‘everything indicates that it is a translation made in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries of a Latin text which no-one has yet identified’.20 However, as Delarc also identified, such a Latin original (if indeed it existed) stems from a separate tradition to the most widely known accounts of the careers of the individuals dealt with by the Estoire de Tancrède, including the works of the best-known chroniclers of the Norman experience in southern Italy known today. One suggestion in the text of the Estoire de Tancrède as to where a Latin source chronicle may have been written is the chronicle’s assertion that Robert Guiscard defeated the emperors of Rome and Byzantium ‘in a single day’, which seemingly derives from the Gesta Normannorum ducum’s claim that the victories were won in the same year.21 Indeed, a small sub-group of two manuscripts containing Robert of Torigni’s redaction of this Latin text is in accordance with the Estoire in claiming that the victories were won in a day, not a year, suggesting that a potential progenitor for the version found in the French text lies within the tradition of the Gesta Normannorum ducum.22 The author of the Estoire appears, for example, to have felt it necessary to comment in specific detail about Norman geography, informing his or her audience firmly that the family home of Richard ‘de Quarrel’ was located ‘near to Saint-Pierre-sur-Dives in the county of the Hiémois’.23 The text thereby assumes a sufficient degree of contextual knowledge on the part of its audience to make such a localization method both comprehensible and relevant. The text may also, in this case, be accurate, given that, as noted by Le Prévost in his edition of Orderic’s Ecclesiastical History, it is possible that ‘Quarrel’ derives from the village of Carel, to the south-west of Saint-Pierresur-Dives (although Le Prévost seems to have favoured an identification with Linières-la-Quarrel and Vilaines-la-Quarrel in the region of Mamers, near

19 Histoire ancienne i, ed. by de Visser-van Terwisga; Histoire ancienne ii, ed. by de Visser-van Terwisga. 20 Delarc, Les normands en Italie, p. 83. 21 Gesta Normannorum ducum, ed. and trans. by van Houts, ii, 108. 22 Van Houts, Gesta Normannorum ducum: een Studie, pp. 280, 283. The manuscripts are van Houts’s F6 and F8: Leiden, University Library, MS Vossius Lat. F 77; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 181. 23 Estoire de Tancrède, ll. 31–32: below, Appendix.

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Alençon).24 The broadening of the family tree of the ‘historical’ Tancred in the Estoire, compared to our Latin sources, would have been of interest to audience members able to associate themselves with any of the ‘extra’ descendants attributed to him, making the text’s appeal both genealogical and spatial. Although the absence of an authorial prologue makes any such conclusion necessarily speculative, the Estoire’s context and content suggest it was composed in northern France in the early decades of the thirteenth century, at least in part as an adaptation of an earlier Latin narrative.

Rewriting the ‘Historical’ Tancred de Hauteville and Richard of Capua As alluded to above, information on the life of Tancred himself is scarce. Much of what we know derives from a single source: the Deeds of Count Roger, a text written around 1090 by Geoffrey Malaterra, a monk in the service of Roger de Hauteville, the first Norman Count of Sicily.25 Roger’s father Tancred, Geoffrey informs us near the start of his history, was resident in the village of Hauteville, near Coutances, which he possessed by hereditary right.26 Malaterra goes on to present details regarding Tancred’s first marriage, to a lady called Muriella, which produced five sons: William ‘Iron Arm’, Drogo, Humphrey, Geoffrey, and Serlo, before Muriella died while Tancred was still a young man.27 ‘Because’, we are told, ‘Tancred was a decent man who abhorred inappropriate sexual relations, he entered into marriage a second time, choosing to be content with one legitimate wife rather than being stained by the foul embrace of concubines’.28 From this second marriage were likewise born a succession of sons, seven this time, Robert, Malger, William, Aubrey, Hubert, Tancred, and Roger, as well as three daughters. Nothing more is said at this point regarding Tancred’s life and career — a fact perhaps responsible for John Julius Norwich’s characterization of him as remarkable mainly for his ‘determined and persistent fecundity’.29 It is therefore something of a relief to turn to Richard of Capua, about whom we are considerably better informed. This is in no small measure thanks to the historical endeavours of another southern Italian chronicler, Amatus of Montecassino, who concluded his History of the Normans, written during the 1080s, shortly after Richard’s death in 1078. Richard, Amatus tells

24 Orderici Vitalis ecclesiasticae historiae libri tredecim, ed. and trans. by Le Prévost, ii, 56. 25 Geoffrey Malaterra, The Deeds of Count Roger, trans. by Wolf. The first of two volumes of a new edition of Geoffrey Malaterra’s work, edited by Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel, has recently appeared: Geoffrey Malaterra, Histoire du Grand Comte Roger, i. 26 Malaterra, The Deeds of Count Roger, p. 53. 27 Malaterra, The Deeds of Count Roger, p. 53. 28 Malaterra, The Deeds of Count Roger, p. 53. 29 Norwich, The Normans in the South, p. 39.

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us, was ‘a fine figure of a man and a lord of good stature, a young man with an open countenance, strikingly handsome and loved by everyone who saw him’, adding that ‘by deliberate choice, he rode a horse so small that his feet almost touched the ground’.30 Richard became a member of the Hauteville family by his marriage to Fressenda, one of Tancred’s daughters by his second wife, and led an energetic programme of expansion from his investiture as Count of Aversa in 1050 after overcoming not only the native Lombards but also his own brother-in-law Drogo. A key advance was his capture in 1058 of the city of Capua, which gave Richard the nominal legitimacy to extend his rule from Aversa over the entirety of the lands of the city’s erstwhile Lombard rulers. It is probable that Richard was confirmed in his possession of Capua by the Pope at the synod of Melfi in 1059, but in any event he was certainly a papal ally by 1061, when he was at Rome to assist in the enthronement of Pope Alexander II against the claim of the anti-pope Honorius II. However, this did not stop him from marching on Rome itself in 1066 in an apparent bid to win control of it, and he finally died on yet another campaign, this time in an attempt to bring Naples under his dominion. In the persons of Tancred and Richard, therefore, we arguably have one individual famous primarily by virtue of his descendants, and one other by virtue of his achievements. At any rate, this is the apparent view of the author of the Estoire de Tancrède de Hauteville. In the first instance, the text goes into deep and exhaustive detail regarding Tancred’s family tree and offspring. However, the thirteenth-century text is, at several points, at variance with Malaterra’s account. In contrast to Malaterra’s assertion that Tancred had twelve sons, we read in the Estoire that the true figure was only nine.31 Roger, Drogo, Humphrey, William of the Principate, and Robert Guiscard all appear, but seven more of Tancred’s sons given by Malaterra, including Geoffrey (ancestor of the counts of Loritello), Serlo, and William ‘Iron Arm’, the effective leader of the Normans in Italy during the 1030s and 1040s, are excluded. In addition, the genealogical ordering of the sons is partially inverted, with Roger, generally believed to be the youngest of Tancred’s sons, instead being raised to the status of the first-born, and his relatively late arrival in Sicily compared to that of his brothers explained by his having remained behind in Normandy to look after his father’s lands once Tancred had reached old age. Odder still is the inclusion of four extra sons of Tancred, who rub shoulders in the family tree with conspicuously better known and better attested relations. Henry, Count of Monte Sant’Angelo, whom the text cites as Tancred’s fifth son, is known to have been active in the principality of Capua around 1100, when he established a hospital subject to Montecassino outside the walls of his town, but he was in reality not a relative of Tancred de Hauteville but the

30 Amatus of Montecassino, The History of the Normans, trans. by Dunbar, p. 84. 31 Malaterra, The Deeds of Count Roger, p. 53; Estoire de Tancrède, ll. 2–14.

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nephew of Richard I of Capua himself.32 The other sons mentioned by the Estoire in addition to Malaterra’s account — Raymond of Contequai, Gerard of Aliane, and John of Treves — are yet more shadowy. The rendering of the toponyms attributed to these individuals suggests that the author of the Estoire may have been unfamiliar with the precise locations mentioned, at least compared to the location of Count Richard’s ancestral home of ‘Quarrel’. Contequai (as it is rendered in one Parisian manuscript, or Cantequam in the other, and Catencai in the Berne manuscript) may be a reference to the town of Catanzaro (Cantacium in Latin), where a Norman county was established around 1088.33 If the Catanzaro connection is accepted, then the rendering of this place-name into French in a different way by each witness of the Estoire’s text suggests a degree of unfamiliarity with the geography of southern Italy by its northern French authors, who seem to have striven to associate new individuals with Tancred’s line at the same time as lacking clarity on the precise geographic scope of their historical achievements. On one level, a lack of familiarity with the ancient history of the Hauteville family in early thirteenth-century Normandy is hardly surprising. True, the existence of Malaterra’s account was known in twelfth-century Normandy, being explicitly cited by Orderic Vitalis in his Ecclesiastical History along with the information that Tancred had had twelve sons (as opposed to nine, as the Estoire’s version has it).34 However, it should be noted that Marjorie Chibnall was dubious of the idea that Orderic used Malaterra’s work directly rather than merely having heard of its existence, and it is certainly true that the Ecclesiastical History does not include the small element of added colour included in the Deeds of Count Roger regarding Tancred’s life over and above his marital affairs, which deals with his spectacular dispatch of an enormous and dangerous boar that had killed several of the hunting dogs of Duke Richard II.35 Elsewhere, despite the interest in the Normans in southern Italy shown by a range of Anglo-Norman historians, including Aelred of Rievaulx and Henry of Huntingdon (who use them as examples of the strength of Norman expansionism and drive to dominate), information on Tancred and his immediate descendants is relatively sparse. For example, Ralph of Caen’s brief account of the descent of Tancred, Prince of Antioch, concentrates only on the deeds of his uncles Robert Guiscard and Roger, without mentioning his namesake great-grandfather.36 We are left with the impression of a figure of considerable importance about whom, by the early thirteenth century, nobody could remember very much, which made him a prime specimen for genealogical reimagining. 32 Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, p. 248. 33 Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, pp. 180, 250. Potential candidates for ‘Raymond’ and ‘Gerard’ are Rainulf I or II of Caiazzo and Gerard, Count of Ariano. I have been unable to identify John of Treves. 34 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, , ii, 98–101. 35 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, ii, pp. xxii–xxiii. 36 The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen, trans. by Bachrach and Bachrach, p. 21.

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The structure of the Estoire de Tancrède, and the conspicuously full family history of Tancred’s line, may therefore reflect the desire of early thirteenth-century audiences to link their contemporary reality with the history of a genealogy which had, by the probable time of the text’s composition, risen to European prominence. We find, for example, in all three manuscripts a reference to a ‘Queen of Hungary’, Tancred’s granddaughter by his ‘eldest son’ Roger de Hauteville, Count of Sicily, which ties in with information provided by Malaterra to the effect that Coloman of Hungary did indeed marry Roger’s daughter.37 Tancred of Antioch, his predecessor’s namesake leader of the First Crusade, appears in the Berne manuscript’s account not once but twice, first (and incorrectly, along with the Paris manuscripts) as the grandson of the original Tancred in the maternal line, and second (correctly) as the half-brother-in-law of Bohemond of Antioch thanks to the marriage of each of these celebrated individuals to a daughter of Philip I of France.38 The status of Bohemond himself as a crusader would have been well known to an early thirteenth-century audience, although the Estoire de Tancrède’s (erroneous) insistence that Mabel ‘Curta Lupa’, Robert Guiscard’s daughter by his second wife Sichelgaita of Salerno, was in fact Bohemond’s full sister is an interesting point nonetheless. As the text records, Mabel herself married William of Grandmesnil, a representative of a Norman family which not only had close links to the Hauteville clan but also to the abbey of Saint-Evroul, which it had founded.39 The net result, therefore, is to tie the Grandmesnil genealogy more tightly to the prestigious Bohemond and Tancred than would otherwise have been the case. It is probably coincidental that Mabel’s nickname, found in the Estoire, also appears in the Ecclesiastical History of that most famous of Saint-Evroul residents, Orderic Vitalis, although it may be indicative of a common ‘fund of legend that became entangled in history’ (as Chibnall put it) that was echoed by both texts.40 The genealogical structure of the Estoire, then, places it alongside not only the Chronique de Normandie and Geste de France as the history of a well-known and important family, but also echoes the emphasis on genealogy and crusading identity evident in much lengthier and more ambitious early vernacular histories. This is true not only for the Geste de France, which integrates a French translation of the Latin account of Charlemagne’s putative journey to Jerusalem known as the Descriptio qualiter Karolus Magnus into the main body of a text primarily concerned with the deeds of the French kings in France, but also for later redactions of the Chronique de Normandie, which supplement a translation of Robert of Torigni’s Gesta Normannorum ducum with a French 37 Geoffrey Malaterra, The Deeds of Count Roger, trans. by Wolf, pp. 205–07. Malaterra further notes that the Bishop of Nicastra was able to save himself from pirate attack by invoking the divine merit of the sons of Tancred de Hauteville. 38 Estoire de Tancrède, ll. 15, 22. 39 Bartlett, The Making of Europe, pp. 28–29. 40 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Chibnall, ii, p. xxiii; iv, 338–39.

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translation of the account of the deeds of Richard the Lionheart as presented by Ralph of Coggeshall.41 Such a linkage between crusading and vernacular historiography is also present in the much better known case of the PseudoTurpin chronicle, whose early patrons were, as Nicholas Paul has pointed out, often prominent holy warriors.42 The expanded wingspan of Tancred’s family tree in the Estoire compared to Malaterra’s account may well have provided ample opportunities for interested parties in the early thirteenth century to claim an association with his descendants, particularly given the apparently novel identification by the text of four daughters among Tancred’s children. Four individuals — Tancred of Antioch, Geoffrey of Conversano, Herbert of Venosa, and Geoffrey of Lis — are named as his grandsons in the female line, all of whom would have provided potential association points by which a later aristocratic genealogy could have been linked with the Hautevilles.43 It is worth noting that the text’s author appears in little doubt that matrilineal descent could be a viable means of transmitting a legal status, reproducing the remark found in William of Apulia’s chronicle (and recently highlighted by Sarah McDougall) that it was by his marriage to Sichelgaita of Salerno (rather than by virtue of his own conquests) that Robert Guiscard was made Duke of Apulia.44 If the southern Italian Norman past was one of crusading glamour, however, then this did not exclude early thirteenth-century audiences sharing anecdotes among themselves which portrayed the leaders of the conquest of southern Italy in a somewhat less ethically pure light. The Estoire de Richard de Quarrel, for example, takes as its main theme an underhanded land-grab by the titular hero conducted partly as a joking response to a papal dare but also in defiance of established legal authority. Richard, it is claimed, was invested with the city of Benevento by the Pope in jest during the ceremonial excommunication of a ‘Prince Gaimar’ (probably a reference to Gaimar IV of Salerno, c. 1013–1052), but after successfully winning it in battle refused to take part in legal negotiations initiated by his nominal overlord, instead merely taking possession of it and filling the Terra di Lavoro (between Rome and Benevento) with Normans.45 This story, from an unidentified source, does bear some relation to the course of Richard’s career as is commonly set out in modern historiography. Richard was indeed at some point invested with

41 The relevant section of the Chronique draws from information presented in Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon anglicanum, ed. by Stevenson, pp. 30–58. Descriptio, ed. by Rauschen. 42 Paul, ‘Crusade and Family Memory’, pp. 172–77. See also Paul, To Follow in their Footsteps, pp. 74–89. 43 The first two individuals are identifiable (in the second case with Geoffrey ‘the Elder’ of Conversano, a nephew of Robert Guiscard), but I have been unable to identify either Herbert of Venosa or Geoffrey of Lis. 44 McDougall, Royal Bastards, p. 136. William of Apulia, Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, ed. by Mathieu, p. 156. 45 Estoire de Tancrède, ll. 50–51.

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lands in Italy (Capua, rather than Benevento) by the Pope, and he did indeed later turn against the wishes of the papacy by marching on Rome in 1066.46 However, there is no record of Richard ever having been active around or near Benevento soon after his arrival in Rome, and there was no such figure as ‘Prince Gaimar of Capua’ (none of the princes of Salerno who shared that name being recorded as ever having been imprisoned by the pope). Amongst the accounts of Richard’s career that exist outside the Estoire, the text appears to have the closest relationship with Amatus of Montecassino’s History of the Normans. In the first place, the Estoire claims that, following his interview with the Pope, Richard went up into the mountains, and captured a castle called Gencam. This appears to be a reference to the capture of the town of Genzano, which is recounted by Amatus with the important additional information that Richard was actually invited into Genzano by its ruler, Sarulus, rather than the Estoire’s claim that Richard captured the place by trickery.47 The Estoire’s claim that Richard’s base of operations for this expedition was a castle belonging to a certain Count Rainier of Tingne, also appears to echo Amatus, who informs us that Richard occupied the town of Teano shortly after finally gaining entrance to his own capital of Capua.48 However, this event did not occur until 1062, significantly after the date of the Genzano story, and there was no ‘Count Rainier’ of Teano until at least 1112, when Rao (almost certainly a Norman) is attested as the town’s lord.49 The Estoire is thematically similar to Amatus’s treatment of events in 1049 and 1050, which includes an account of the imprisonment of Richard of Capua by Drogo de Hauteville (following which he was released on the request of Gaimar IV of Salerno) and an account of the homage of the citizens of Benevento to Leo IX in 1051.50 However, the significance of these events is inverted in the Estoire compared to Amatus’s text. Rather than Richard having been imprisoned by a fellow Norman, only to be freed on Gaimar’s initiative, in the Estoire it is Richard who imprisons Gaimar. Rather than the citizens of Benevento submitting to the authority of the Pope, who accepts their homage and insists that Norman attacks on the city and its territory cease at once, in the Estoire the Pope encourages the Normans to attack the city and to take possession of it. While the Estoire’s account may have made use of the same pool of collective memory which is crystallized in Amatus’s text, therefore, it does so in a unique manner which, arguably, reflects stereotypical perceptions of the Norman propensity for greed, cunning, and a lack of respect for the rules.51 Taken in aggregate, therefore, the dual chronicles of the Estoire would have stood as a supplementary text to the Chronique de Normandie and Geste de 46 Chalandon, Histoire de la domination Normande, i, 220–21. 47 Amatus, The History of the Normans, pp. 84–85. 48 Amatus, The History of the Normans, p. 122. 49 I am grateful to Professor Graham Loud for this information. 50 Amatus, The History of the Normans, pp. 90–92. 51 See for example Albu, The Normans in their Histories, pp. 1–6.

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France to audiences in need of an account of the history of the Normans of southern Italy in the vernacular — a need which, it should be stressed, is later evident through the existence of Amatus’s chronicle only in a fourteenth-century French translation present in manuscript alongside a late thirteenth-century Latin chronicle (the so-called Historia Sicula by the ‘Vatican anonymous’) which itself begins with an account of the life of Tancred de Hauteville.52 The history of the ‘Norman achievement’ in the Mediterranean was hence, even after the collapse of the Anglo-Norman realm in 1204, felt significant enough to memorialize in a way that assisted the potential establishment of genealogical linkages with the Hauteville dynasty, as well as one which still presented the Normans in a recognizably stereotypical light. Ironically, as a distinctively Norman political identity waned, so a cultural identity appears to have become more relevant. However, by the early thirteenth century, the process of rewriting and reimagining the Norman past which had long contributed to the perpetuation of such a cultural identity had moved beyond the centrally mandated tradition of the various redactions of the Gesta Normannorum ducum to a process driven from the ‘bottom up’, in the light of local concerns — whether specific (such as the desire to link an individual to the Hauteville dynasty, potentially due to its crusading pedigree) or ‘general’ (reimagining the distant Norman past in an entertaining and anecdotal manner). The founders of the Norman domination in southern Italy remained highly relevant for early thirteenth-century consumers of vernacular prose history, who, thanks to the Estoire de Tancrède and its association with the Chronique de Normandie and Geste de France, had access to an account of their careers to sit alongside that of Richard the Lionheart or Charlemagne as an example of aristocratic good (and bad) behaviour.

52 Loud, The Age of Robert Guiscard, p. 18.

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Appendix: The Estoire de Tancrède de Hauteville After MS C1 (BnF, MS fr. 17177, fol. 274v), with variants from MSS C2 (BnF, MS fr. 24431, fols 54r–55v) and V (Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 113, fol. 115v).53 Text 1

Ch’est l’estoire de Tangre d’Oteviller et Richart de Quarrel.

2 3 4 5 6

Tangres d’Oteviller, qui est en la contree de Coustentin, fu empereres Robers Guichars, et si ot .ix. filz et .iiii. filles. L’ainsnés de ses filz fu Rogiers, li quens de Sezile, qui garda la terre son pere d’Otevillier por Tanqueres son pere, qui chaus estoit en viellesce. Si aama la fille au prestre de la vile, et en eut .i. fill, Jourdain ot non, et une fille qui puis fu royne de Hongrie.

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Cist Rogiers prist puis fame quant alez fu em Puille, fille fu au marchis de Lombardie. Si ot .i. fill le roy Rogier, qui requist la coronne de Sezile a l’apostoyle, et dist qu’il ne voloit pas tenir ce que Robers Guichars ses oncles avoit fait, qui dit ausi qu’il n’avoit cure de si povre corone, et dont fu enoinz a roi. L’autre des fix Tangrez fu li quens Droons de Loretel. Li tiers fu quens Humfroys de Quaritate. Li quars fu Williaume de Princete. Li quinz fu Henris, qui quens fu de Mont Angle. Li sistes fu li quens Gerars d’Aliane. Li septismes fu li quens Remons de Contequai. Li .viii. fu li quens Richars, qui fu li puisnés et fu maistres de tout le linaige. Li .ix. fu li evesques Jehans de Treves.

15 16 17 18 19 20

Des quatre filles Tangre issirent neveus. De l’ainsnee fu Tangres, princes d’Antioche, a qui la cité remest quant Crestiens l’orent comquise. De l’autre fu li quens Guifroys de Conversane, et icist Guifroys ot une fille qu’il donna au duc Robert de Normendie. Ele ot non Sebile, et si gist en la mere eglyse de Roem. Ceste fame ot .i. fill, qui ot non Willaumes, et fu quens de Flandres. De la tierce fille fu li quens Herbers. De la quarte fu li quens Guifroys de Lis.

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

De Robert Guichart issirent .ii. filz et une fille de .ii. fames qu’il espousa. La premiere fu Aubree, et si fu nez de cele fame Buiamons, qui fu princes de Bar, et fu a prendre Antioche. Et si ot Buiamons une sereur de son pere et de sa mere, qui ot non Mabile Escorche Leuve. Et fu donnee a Williaume de Grontemaisnill, qui grans terres eut en Calabre. Et puis laissa Robert Guichart Auberee, et si prist la fille au duc Lamdol de Puille, et de son heritage fu Robers Guichars dus. Si em fu nez Rogiers Bourse, qui puis fu nés après la mort son pere et dus et sires fu de tout le linaige. Et cist prist a fame la royne de Danemarche, et cele ot non Ale, et fu file le conte Robert de Flandres. Del duc Robert oissi li dus Williaumes, qui fu larges et bons chevaliers, et sires fu de la duchee de Puille et de Calabre et de Sezile, et saisiz fu dou regne duqu’a la mort.

31 32 33 34 35 36

Iceste estoyre est de Richart de Quarrel, qui est jouste Saint Pierre sor Dyve de la contree d’Uimoys. Cist s’esmut soi quart de chevalers por aler a Robert Guichart em Puille. Si vint en la cité de Romme. Il trouva l’apostoile ou moustier Saint Pierre trestout revestus comme de la messe chanter. Si escommenioit le prince Guimar de Cappes, qui tolue li avoit la cité de Bonivent, qui estoit ou demaine Saint Pierre, car toute la princeté de Cappes est et doit estre de la teneure l’apostoyle.

37 38

Quant Richart de Quarrel oi qu’il escommenioit le prince Guimar, si li dit: “Sire, il est Lombars, si ne vous portera ja foy. Mais vous me donnez la princete, et je vous

53 Manuscript designations have been kept consistent with those in Fedorenko, ‘The Texts’, pp. 268–74, 306–07.

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42 43 44

renderai Bonivent”. Quant li apostoiles l’oy, si le torna a gas et li dist: “Tu es des Tafurs d’outre les mons, qui vont au duc Robert Guichart em Puille. Or me tent ça ton bordon, et je t’en saisirai se tu la pues comquerre”. Cil li tendi, et li apostoyles l’en saisi par gas. Puis en ala Richars en terre de Labor, a une cité au conte Rahier qui estoit quens de Tingne, et assambla de Normans .xxx. chevalers. Si ala en la montaigne, si prist .i. chastel a larron qui avoit a non dou Gencam.

45 46 47 48 49 50 51

Un jour se combati o le prince Guimar, et le prist. Puis le rendi a l’apostole, si come il ot en covenant, et la cité de Bo //54 nivent si comme il li avoit en couvenant. Quant li princes Gaimar se vit en prison en la cité de Roume, il offri a l’apostoyle qu’il li renderoit Bonivent et la cité d’Averse de croissance qu’il li delivrast et li rendit sa princeté. //55 Et l’apostoile li graa, mais que par jugement l’estavoit a estre. Puis en proia le prince Richard, mais il n’en vot rien faire se li remest par jugement por ço qu’il avoit pris Gaimart et sa maisnie, et icil Richard pupla la terre de Labor de Normans.

52 53 54

Ensi conquist Robers Guiscars totes les terres, qu’il dona et departi a ses amis et se ferma par mariages en totes terres, dont il fu creus et redoutés et deça mer et dela, et donc li roi et li conte sont estrait et li prince des terres.

39 40 41

 

Variant readings (by line number) 1, V, Or commence cil estoires de Tangre d’Autevile, le pere Robert Guiscart 2, V, f. ot nom Rogiers, si ot le fille do prestre de Wargavile a feme, dont il ot Jordanet, qui puis conquist Aufrique, et Robers Guiscars ses frere le fist puis Conte de Felis, la cité maior en Sesile, et g. lonc tans la t. s. p. Autevile, por co que li frere le tenoient por sot, et Tangres estoit en viellece 6, V, R. de H. et fu suer Jordan 7, V, feme qu’il fu Quens, la fille al Marcis Marenfroit de Lonbardie 9, V, voloit pas tenir l’orguel que R. G 11, V, fu li Quens Hainfrois de Civetate, et li quars fu li Quens Richars de Tarence, et li quins fu li Quens Guillames de Princete, et li s. fu li q. Jerars d’A . 13, C2, d’Aliance; V, d’Aliene; C2, Remons de Cantequam; V, Roimons de Catencai; V, uitimes fu Robers Guiscars, qui fu rois et sires de tos les autres de son linage, car tos les fut segnors et conquist les terres qu’il lor dona, et ki desconfi l’Empereur Robert de Rome, et l’Empereur Alex de Costantinoble tot en i ior par son effort. li nuevimes fu li vesques Iehans de le Truie; C2, li .viii. fu Robers guichars 17, V, dona le Conte Robert de Normandie, et cele contesse avoit a nom Sebile, et gist en l’archevesquie de Ruem. 19, V, li Q. H. de Venose.

 

22, V, fu Princes de Bar, et cil Buiamons ot une feme qui ot a nom Costance. Cele fu departie de son premier baron, le Conte Huon de Troies, et par co l’ot puis Buiamons. Et cele Costance ot une niece, qui fu fille le Roi de France, et si fu donée a Tangre d’Antioche. Et si ot B. une s 25, V, G. la Contesse A. 26, V, Puille, et cele dame ot a nom Siglegaite, et de son iretage R. G. rois

54 End of C1, text moves to C2. 55 Text moves to V.

Thirteenth-Century Memories of the Normans in the Mediterranean 27, C2, fu dus apres la m. s. p.; V, fu rois apres la m. s. p. et sires de tot son linage. Et c. rois p. la Roine de Danemarce a feme. 28, V, R. de F. Si ot do roi de Danemarce le Conte Charlon de Flandres et do Roi Rogier Borse si ot le roi Guillame 29, C2, duc Rogiers bourse; V, roi Rogier borse; V, la terre de Sesile, et après sa mort fu Sesile roiames. 31, V, Del Prince Richart de Capes est ceste ystoire. Il fu de la vile de Quarel, ioste s. p. s. d. 32, V, soi quint de chevalers; omits em Puille 36, V, omits et doit estre 39, V, des Taphus de Normendie qui vont a Robert Guiscars, mais ten moi ton bordon 42, V, Sire de Tiene 43, C2, Tynne; C2, N. tant qu’il furent xx; V, N. xx chevalers 44, V, a n. d. G., puis l’apelerent Richart de Gencam de cila qu’il fu princes  

45, V, P. G., sel venqui en camp et prist. 46, C1, la c. de Bo // 48, C2, sa princeté, Li Apostoyles li creanta, mais que par iugement li couvenroit estre //

Translation

This is the History of Tancred of Hauteville and of Richard of Quarrel. Tancred of Hauteville (which is in the Cotentin region) was the sire of Robert Guiscard, and had nine sons and four daughters. The oldest of his sons was Roger, the Count of Sicily, who held his father’s lands at Hauteville for a long time once Tancred had fallen into old age. He loved the daughter of the village priest, and had by her a son, Jordan, and a daughter who later became the Queen of Hungary. Roger took a wife once he had left for Apulia, the daughter of the Marquis of Lombardy. They had one son, King Roger, who asked the crown of Sicily from the Pope, saying that he did not wish to be held to what his uncle Robert Guiscard had done, nor his view that he did not care for so poor a crown. Consequently, he was crowned King. The second of Tancred’s sons was Count Drogo of Loritello. The third was Count Humphrey of Quaritate. The fourth was William of the Principate. The fifth was Henry, Count of Monte Sant’Angelo. The sixth was Count Gerard of Aliane. The seventh was Raymond of Contequai. The eighth was Count Richard, who despite being the youngest was the greatest of the line. The ninth was John, Bishop of Treves. Tancred had the following grandsons from his four daughters. From the eldest, Tancred, Prince of Antioch, to whom the city fell when the Christians conquered it. From the second, Count Geoffrey of Conversano, who had a daughter who was given in marriage to Duke Robert of Normandy. She

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was called Sibylla, and lies in the cathedral of Rouen. This lady had one son, William, Count of Flanders. From Tancred’s third daughter came Count Herbert, and from his fourth Count Geoffrey of Lis. Robert Guiscard had two sons and a daughter from the two women he married. The first was Alberada, from whom Bohemond, Prince of Bari, was born, who was at the capture of Antioch. Bohemond had a sister by his father and mother, whose name was Mabel Courte Louve. She was given to William of Grandmesnil in marriage, who held great lands in Calabria. Subsequently, Robert Guiscard left Alberada and took in marriage the daughter of Landulf, Duke of Apulia, and by her hereditary succession he was himself made Duke. From this marriage was born Roger Borsa, who was born after the death of his father, and was Duke and lord of the entire family. This Roger took in marriage the Queen of Denmark, Adele by name, the daughter of Count Robert of Flanders. From Duke Robert was descended Duke William, who was a gracious and good knight, lord of the duchy of Apulia and of Calabria and of Sicily, and who held the land up until his death. This is the history of Richard of Quarrel (which is near to Saint-Pierre-surDives in the region of the Hiémois), who left with four knights to go to Robert Guiscard in Apulia. He came to the city of Rome, where he found the Pope in the church of St Peter robed as if to say Mass. Indeed, he was excommunicating Prince Gaimar of Capua, who had taken the city of Benevento (which is of the patrimony of St Peter) away from him, for the entire principality of Capua is and must remain the property of the pope. When Richard of Quarrel heard that he was excommunicating Prince Gaimar, he said to him ‘Sire, he is a Lombard, and he will never act in good faith towards you. But if you give the principality to me, I will give you Benevento’. When the Pope heard this, he jokingly turned to him and said ‘you are one of the pagans from over the mountains who are coming to Duke Robert Guiscard in Apulia. Now stretch out your staff to me — I will invest you with the principality with it, if you can conquer it!’ He stretched it out, and the Pope invested him as a joke. Richard then went into the Terra di Lavoro, to a city belonging to Count Rainier of Tingne, and gathered together thirty Norman knights. He went into the mountains, and there took a castle by stealth, which went by the name of Gencam. He fought one day against Prince Gaimar, and took him prisoner, after which he delivered him to the Pope together with the city of Benevento, as he had promised. When Gaimar was imprisoned in Rome, he offered to give up Benevento and the city of Aversa to the Pope in the belief that he would be freed and the Pope would give him back his principality. The Pope granted him his request on condition that it should necessarily be by legal judgement.

Thirteenth-Century Memories of the Normans in the Mediterranean

He then put the matter to Prince Richard, but Richard wished to have nothing to do with it if it were to be settled by legal judgement because he was the one who had captured Gaimar and his men, and he populated the Terra di Lavoro with Normans. Thereafter, Robert Guiscard conquered all the lands, which he granted to and shared with his friends and solemnized with marriages, on account of which he was feared and renowned both at home and abroad, and from whom kings, counts, and princes are descended.

Works Cited Manuscripts and Archival Sources Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 113 Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 181 Leiden, University Library, MS Vossius Latin F 77 Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 17177 ———, MS français 24431 Primary Sources Amatus of Montecassino, The History of the Normans, trans. by Prescott N. Dunbar, revised with an introduction and notes by Graham A. Loud (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004) An Anonymous Old French Translation of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle: A Critical Edition of the Text Contained in Bibliothèque nationale mss fr. 2137 and 17203 and Incorporated by Philippe Mouskés in his Chronique rimée, ed. by Ronald N. Walpole, Mediaeval Academy Books, 89 (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1979) ‘La Bataille des vins’: Édition, avec introduction, notes, glossaire et tables, ed. by Albert Henry, Bulletin de l’Académie royale de Belgique: Classe des lettres et des sciences morales et politiques, 6th series, 2 (1991), 203–48 Benoît de Sainte-Maure, Chronique des ducs de Normandie, ed. by Carin Fahlin, 3 vols (Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells, 1951–1979) ‘The Burgundian Translation of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle in the Bibliothèque nationale (French MS 25438)’, Romance Philology, 2 (1948–1949), 177–215; 3 (1949–1950), 83–116 Chronique d’Ernoul et de Bernard le Trésorier, ed. by L. de Mas Latrie (Paris: Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, 1871) Chronique rimée de Philippe Mouskés, ed. by Frédéric de Reiffenberg, 2 vols (Brussels: Commission royal d’histoire, 1836–1838) Les Chroniques de Normandie, ed. by Francisque Michel (Rouen: Édouard Frère, 1839)

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Descriptio, qualiter Karolus magnus clavum et coronam domini a Constantinopoli Aquisgrani detulerit ed. by Gerhard Rauschen, in Die Legende Karls des Grossen im 11. und 12. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1890), pp. 97–125 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, ed. and trans. by Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–1980) L’estoire d’Eracles Empereur, in Recueil des historiens des Croisades: historiens occidentaux, 5 vols (Paris: Imprimerie Royale, 1841–1895), ii, 1–481 Geoffrey Malaterra, The Deeds of Count Roger of Calabria and Sicily and of his Brother Duke Robert Guiscard, trans. by Kenneth Baxter Wolf (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005) ———, Histoire du Grand Comte Roger et de son frère Robert Guiscard, i, ed. and trans. by Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2016) The Gesta Normannorum ducum of William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. by Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992–1995) The Gesta Tancredi of Ralph of Caen, trans. by Bernard S. Bachrach and David S. Bachrach (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010) Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Estoires Rogier, i: Assyrie, Thèbes, Le Minotaure, les Amazones, Hercule, ed. by Marijke de Visser-van Terwisga (Orléans: Paradigme, 1995) Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, Estoires Rogier, ii, ed. by Marijke de Visser-van Terwisga (Orléans: Paradigme, 1999) The History of the Norman People: Wace’s Roman de Rou, trans. by Glyn S. Burgess (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004) The Old French Johannes Translation of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle: A Critical Edition, ed. by Ronald N. Walpole (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976) Orderici Vitalis ecclesiasticae historiae libri tredecim, ed. and trans. by A. Le Prévost, 5 vols (Paris: J. Renouard, 1835–1855) Partonopeus de Blois: An Electronic Edition, ed. by Penny Eley, Penny Simons, Mario Longtin, Catherine Hanley, and Philip Shaw (Sheffield: HriOnline, 2005)

Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon anglicanum, ed. by Joseph Stevenson, Rolls Series 66 (London, 1875) La traduction du Pseudo-Turpin du manuscrit Vatican, Regina 624, ed. by Claude Buridant, Publications Romanes et Françaises, 142 (Geneva: Droz, 1976) Le Turpin français, dit le Turpin I, ed. by Ronald N. Walpole, Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations, 3 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985) Wace, Le roman de Rou, ed. by A. J. Holden, 3 vols (Paris: Société des anciens textes françaises, 1970–1973) William of Apulia, Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, ed. by Marguerite Mathieu (Palermo: Instituto siciliano di studi bizantini e neoellenici, 1961)

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Secondary Works Albu, Emily, The Normans in their Histories: Propaganda, Myth and Subversion (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2001) Ashe, Laura, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) Bartlett, Robert, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (London: Allen Lane, 1993) Careri, Maria, and others, ed., Album de manuscrits français du XIIIe siècle: mise en page et mise en texte (Rome: Viella, 2001) Chalandon, Ferdinand, Histoire de la domination Normande en Italie et en Sicile, 2 vols (Paris: Picard, 1907) Delarc, Odon, Les Normands en Italie: depuis les premières invasions jusqu’à l’avénement de S. Grégoire VII (Paris: Leroux, 1883) Fedorenko, Gregory, ‘The Texts, Manuscripts and Historical Significance of the Prose Chronique de Normandie and Geste de France’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2012) ———, ‘The Language of Authority? The Source Texts for the Dual Chronicles of the “Anonymous of Béthune” (fl. c. 1220) and the Evolution of Old French Prose Historiography’, in Authority and Gender in Medieval and Renaissance Chronicles, ed. by Juliana Dresvina and Nicholas Sparks (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), pp. 202–30 ———, ‘The Thirteenth-Century Chronique de Normandie’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 35 (2012), 163–80 Labory, Gillette, ‘Les débuts de la chronique en français (XIIe et XIIIe siècles)’, in The Medieval Chronicle iii: Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle, Doorn/Utrecht, 12–17 July 2002, ed. by Erik Kooper (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 1–26 Loud, Graham, The Age of Robert Guiscard: Southern Italy and the Norman Conquest (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013) McDougall, Sarah, Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800–1230 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017) Mantou, Reine ‘Philippe Mousket’, in Dictionnaire des lettres francaises: le moyen âge, ed. by Robert Bossuat, Louis Pichard, and Guy Raynaud de Lage (Paris: Fayard, 1992), pp. 1146–47 Norwich, John Julius, The Normans in the South, 1016–1130 (London: Longman, 1967) Paul, Nicholas L., ‘Crusade and Family Memory before 1225’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004) ———, To Follow in their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012) Potts, Cassandra ‘Atque unum ex diversis gentibus populum effecit: Historical Tradition and the Norman Identity’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 18 (1995), 139–52

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van Houts, Elisabeth M. C., Gesta Normannorum ducum: een Studie over de Handschriften, de Tekst, het Geschiedwork en het Genre (Groningen: Kripps Repo, 1982) ———, ‘Qui étaient les Normands? Quelques observations sur des liens entre la Normandie, l’Angleterre et l’Italie au début du 11e siècle’, in 911–2011: Penser les mondes Normands médiévaux, ed. by David Bates and Pierre Bauduin (Caen: Presses universitaires de Caen, 2016), pp. 129–46 Walpole, Ronald N., Philip Mouskés and the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle, University of California Publications in Modern Philology, 26 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947) ———, ‘The Burgundian Translation of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle in the Bibliothèque nationale (French MS 25438)’, Romance Philology, 2 (1948–1949), 177–215; 3 (1949–1950), 83–116

Indexes Three indexes are provided: a selective and structured index of topics which we hope will encourage readers to follow themes and ideas between chapters; an index of medieval and classical writers and rewriters of historical and other works; and an index of places where writing and rewriting was undertaken. Bold figures indicate a substantial treatment of the topic, person, or place in question.

I. Index of Topics The index is grouped into six broad areas. Section 3 is necessarily selective. The emphasis throughout is on themes which occur in more than one chapter. With two exceptions, the headwords within each section are arranged alphabetically. 1. Phenomenology (The Experience of Rewriting) 2. Genre 3. Subject Matter 4. Techniques of Composition 5. Textual Features 6. Readers 1. Phenomenology (The Experience of Rewriting): 30–31 archaic names of districts and peoples:  126–38, 280–88 authorial identity:  270–90 authorial modesty:  18, 26, 273–74, 281 authority:  23, 30–31 defined: 18 collaboration:  20, 43, 69, 72 education:  52, 152–53, 170, 171, 174, 175–77, 179, 189 literary style:  204–05, 209–17, 272–55, 281 misrepresentation of facts, intentional: 107, 151–64, 202–04, 217–18 motive:  16, 19–21, 102–05, 121–22, 143–45, 169–90, 269, 307 commemoration and preservation of memory:  16, 18, 77 n. 77, 102, 106,

109, 138, 140, 152, 162, 163, 178, 196, 197, 217–18, 231, 252, 286, 287, 289, 302–03, 310, 315–31 current political purposes:  83–89, 101–17, 121–45, 151–64, 295–310 moral purpose:  17, 20, 31, 50–51, 56–57, 59, 85, 88–89, 169–90, 196, 198, 202, 208–18, 243–65, 269, 279 perspective:  17, 24, 25, 30, 69, 86, 161, 180–81, 269, 274 backward-looking:  26, 27, 67, 73 n. 46, 77 forward-looking:  26, 77, 160 outward-looking:  23, 26, 67, 73 cyclical: 72 linear: 72 rhetoric:  16, 81, 101, 122–23, 143, 152–53, 176, 187, 196, 211, 217

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2. Genre: 16, 17, 238 annals and chronicles:  18, 24, 29–30, 39–59, 69, 160–63, 197, 225–38 charters and cartularies:  19, 25, 151–64, 229–30, 297–98, 301–02, 303, 308 computus:  41, 45, 49, 57, 58 contemporary history:  28, 42, 47, 52–53, 195–218, 270, 276–77, 285, 288–89 ecclesiastical history:  270–90 conversion history:  25, 103–07, 181 diocesan history:  25, 44, 55 monastic history:  19, 21, 42–43, 52, 54, 55, 76–77, 151–64, 270–90 papal history:  57, 59, 202–04, 270 family and dynastic history and genealogy:  21, 25, 41, 69–70, 71–72, 195–218, 315–31 fictions:  19, 28, 56, 70–71, 80–82, 88, 152–53 hagiography:  19, 25, 42, 71, 83, 103, 106, 110–11, 112–15, 160, 230, 274, 285–86, 288 imperial history (translatio imperii):  45–59, 74

letters:  101 n. 1, 121, 122–23, 129, 141, 142, 153, 156, 160, 177–78, 178, 180, 196, 198 n. 12, 205, 262 n. 97, 263 nn. 104 and 109, 269, 305 n. 51 national history and origin legends:  29, 72–77, 79–80, 84–85, 101–17, 136–37 news communiqués:  28, 122–23, 302 poetry:  75–76, 83, 121–45, 175–76, 187–88, 190, 195–218, 278, 286, 295–96, 304 regional and local history:  49, 50, 270–90 regnal history:  18–19, 29, 41, 54, 59, 102, 115, 169–90, 225–38, 243–65, 277, 295–310, 316–17 regnal lists and tables:  40, 44 romance:  17, 24 saga:  24–25, 70–71 salvation history:  48, 57, 59, 77, 109, 112, 264–65 universal chronicles:  28, 29, 39–59, 72, 75–77, 172, 190

3. Subject Matter ancient heroes Alexander:  46, 73–74, 115, 130–31, 132–33, 140–41 Charlemagne:  46, 48, 316, 323, 326 See also cities: Troy Anglo-Saxon history:  40, 80, 84, 160–64, 181–84, 187, 225–38, 243–65, 274–75, 282–83, 285–86, 287–88 animals and animal imagery:  69, 70, 108, 126–27, 134, 141, 143, 259, 295–96, 310, 322 biblical history:  20–21, 23, 44, 45, 50, 72, 75, 76, 78, 89–90, 115, 121–45, 217, 270 burial places:  71, 79, 83, 159, 286 character and personality:  182–84, 207–14, 246–60, 265, 300–01, 320 cheese: 18

cities, ancient and modern Babylon:  124–25, 127–28, 144 Byzantium/Constantinople: 124, 131 Jerusalem:  24, 102, 110–11, 133–34, 140, 257, 323 Rome:  27, 49, 57, 79, 143, 181, 186, 202–03, 262, 321, 325, 330 Troy:  73–75, 79, 84 continuity and discontinuity in history: 24, 101–17, 121–45, 289 crusades and crusading:  17, 24, 46–47, 70, 173–74, 274, 316, 317, 323–24 emotions:  21, 211–17, 248–52 end of time:  50, 72, 77 Greek history, classical:  40, 73–75, 84, 107, 109–20

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languages, origin of:  73 marches, borders, and frontiers:  106, 128, 143, 270–71, 277, 280–81, 284–85, 289, 298, 305 marriages:  71, 87, 206, 232–38, 320–21, 323, 324, 329–31 place-names:  71, 74, 200, 322 prophecy:  50, 56, 125–28, 138, 247, 263 relics:  114, 155, 159 Roman history, classical:  26–27, 39–40, 45–46, 48–49, 50–51, 54, 58–59, 73–75, 80 n. 96, 107, 109–20, 136–40, 143–44, 174, 180, 184–87, 198, 262

stelae: 140 war battles:  23–24, 70, 82, 86, 125, 126, 132–33, 138, 141, 144, 182–84, 186, 199, 203, 209–10, 250, 251, 277, 284–85, 304, 305, 324 campaigning and conquest:  121–45, 195–218, 234, 295–310, 315–31 invasion:  72, 84, 182–83, 277, 287, 299 rebellion:  105, 133, 249–50, 252, 264, 277, 279, 282, 287

4. Techniques of Composition comparison of sources:  78–79, 226, 234, 270 continuation:  22, 27, 29, 40, 42–43, 47, 49, 53–54, 56–58, 69, 172, 226, 227, 228, 237, 238, 315–16 copying:  17, 22, 27, 31, 42–44, 52–55, 56, 78, 156, 172, 226, 231, 270 eye-witness testimony written down:  196, 197, 272, 274, 275, 287 forgery:  151–64 imperial orations:  121, 123, 129–30, 132–38, 139–43 invented speeches:  156, 183–84, 186–87, 209–10, 270, 279, 285, 286–87 new composition:  17, 18, 26, 53, 172, 283–84

oral tradition written down:  17, 18, 24–25, 71, 116, 215, 272, 281, 282 ‘plausible narration’ (argumentum):  151–64, 195–218 rewriting:  passim defined: 17 chronological limits:  26–29 as ‘curating’ the past:  18–19, 22–24, 29–31 geographical limits:  24–26 as ‘using’ the past:  19, 21–22 stories and anecdotes retold:  26–27, 46, 56, 72, 108, 262–63, 325 summary, précis, and excerpts:  19, 31, 40, 44, 54, 55, 57, 58, 159, 234, 270, 287–88

5. Textual Features annotations and marginalia (inc. glossing and endorsements):  20, 21, 39, 52, 55, 160–61, 226, 228, 230–31, 234, 238 autograph manuscripts:  20, 44–45, 46, 49, 52, 172 contemporary titles:  49, 50, 159, 270, 316–17, 317 dating systems (incarnation, passion, regnal years):  21, 35–40, 49–50, 200

erasure and overwriting:  47, 157, 162–63, 273 language canonical literary languages Greek:  107, 111–12, 121–45, 152 Latin 18, 39–59, 68, 71, 78, 79, 80–81, 82, 151–64, 169–90, 208, 225, 233–38, 243–65, 270–90, 295–310, 315–16, 319–20, 323, 326 Syriac: 112

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translation:  16, 18–19, 68, 73, 84, 101, 109, 111, 233, 316, 319, 323–24, 326 vernaculars Armenian:  101–17 French:  17, 169, 179, 189, 190, 295–310 Georgian:  101–17 Irish: 25, 67–90 Old English:  20, 225–38 Welsh: 25–26 prologues and prefaces:  17, 26, 43–44, 45, 51–52, 56–57, 174, 178, 179–80, 184,

188, 196, 245 n. 8, 251, 261 n. 95, 263 n. 110, 269, 272, 280–82, 320 starting points creation of the world:  40, 44–45, 47, 49, 49–50, 54, 56, 57, 72, 75 birth of Christ:  39, 40, 41, 42, 45, 55, 57, 270 reign of Augustus:  54 father’s arrival in England:  283–84 own birth:  281

6. Readers audiences:  10, 16, 20, 23, 48, 78, 82, 86–89, 122–24, 130, 134, 137, 144, 169–90, 197–98, 233, 272, 276, 286, 316–17, 319, 323, 324, 326

circulation of manuscripts:  42, 46, 53–55, 58, 170–75, 188–89, 316 patrons:  10, 16, 20, 21, 23, 47–48, 121–22, 177–79, 185, 187, 195–98, 269, 281, 308, 324

II. Writers Arranged by forename Adémar of Chabannes:  172–73, 173 Aelred of Rievaulx:  322 Agathangelos:  104, 106, 107 Aimoin of Fleury:  172 Airbertach mac Coisse:  83 Albert of Stade:  56–57 Alcuin: 246 Amatus of Montecassino:  195, 209, 320–21, 325–26 Amos: 128–29 Anna Comnena:  198, 215 Ari Þorgilsson:  25 Arseni of Sapara:  105, 108, 109, 110, 111 Asser:  70, 288 Aubin of Angers:  175 Augustine:  27, 50–51, 72, 198, 205, 211 Baldric of Bourgueil:  173, 174, 174–75, 176, 274

Basilakes:  123, 129–30, 136, 137, 138–39, 142–43 Bede:  26, 27, 31, 39, 40, 45, 50, 73, 75, 84, 88–89, 161, 181, 182, 183, 198, 227, 245, 250 n. 34, 253, 256, 261, 262, 279, 280, 288 Benoît de Sainte-Maure:  179 n. 50, 315 Bernard the Treasurer:  316 Bernold of St Blasien:  42 Berthold of Reichenau:  42, 47 Boethius:  72, 216 Burchard of Ursberg:  51–52, 53, 58 ‘Cato’:  171 n. 6 Chrysippus: 179 Cicero:  152, 174, 176, 188 n. 86, 205, 211 Cináed ua hArtacáin:  83 Chrétien of Troyes:  179 n. 50 Crantor: 179

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Diodorus Siculus:  137 Dionysus Periegetes:  137 Donatus:  171 n. 6 Dudo of Saint-Quentin:  18, 70, 173, 176, 189, 208, 315 Eadmer:  160 n. 38, 175 n. 34, 271, 279, 280 Eberhard of Regensburg:  53 Einhard:  46, 176 Ekkehard of Aura:  45, 47, 48–49, 50, 55–56 Eochaid eolach ua Céirín:  77–78 Eochaid ua Flannacáin:  77–78 Ephrem the Lesser:  111–12 Ernoul: 316 Eusebius:  27, 40, 52, 56, 72, 75, 172, 280 Euthymios: 93 Felix: 286 Flann Mainistrech:  75–76, 77–78, 84 Florence of Worcester:  235 n. 34 Frutolf of Michelsberg:  23, 44–58 Gaimar:  235 n. 33, 271 Galbert of Bruges:  28 Geoffrey Malaterra:  189–218, 320–22, 323, 324 Geoffrey of Monmouth:  18, 19, 25, 28, 81, 171, 175 n. 34, 189, 243, 271 George the Hagiorites:  111 Gerald of Wales:  22, 27, 188–89 Gildas:  26, 280 Gilla Cóemáin mac Gilla Samthainne: 75–76 Gregory of Tours:  26, 31 Gregory the Great:  161, 211 Guibert of Nogent:  173, 174, 174–75 Habbakuk:  127, 128 Heimo of Bamberg:  49–50, 58 Henry of Huntingdon:  15–16, 28, 72, 169–90, 245, 261–65, 271, 322 Hermann of Niederaltaich:  52–53, 58 Hermann the Lame:  41–42, 45, 47, 58

Herodotus: 72 Hildebert of Lavardin:  176 Homer: 179 Honorius Augustodunensis:  56 Hugh of St Victor:  89 Hydatius: 56 Isidore of Seville:  88, 153, 164, 198, 208, 218 Jerome:  27, 39, 40, 45, 52, 56, 172, 198 John Italikos:  102–03, 132–34, 138, 140–41, 142 John Kinnamos:  121, 124, 131 n. 33, 144 John of Fécamp:  20–21 John of Salisbury:  188 John of Worcester:  15–16, 78, 175 n. 34, 225, 232–38, 271, 279, 286, 288 John Rufus:  112 Jordanes:  40, 45 Juan de Soria:  298 n. 10, 300–01, 301, 302, 303, 305, 307–08, 310 Justinus: 54 Koriwn:  103 n. 4 Lambert (Lampert) of Hersfeld:  53, 172 Landolphus Sagax:  173 n. 22 Leonti of Ruisi (Leonti Mroveli):  114– 16, 117 Livy: 137 Lucan:  74, 198 Lucas of Túy:  297 n. 7, 301, 304, 307–08 Marbod of Rennes:  175–76 Marianus Scotus (Máel Brígte):  78, 236, 273 Martinus Oppaviensis:  59 Matthew of Edessa:  131 n. 33 Matthew Paris:  29 Michael the Syrian:  107 n. 15 Movsēs Xorenac‘i:  107, 116–17 Mxit‘ar Goš:  108

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Nersēs the Gracious:  108 Niketas Choniates:  121, 124, 131 n. 33, 144 Orderic Vitalis:  9, 15–16, 269–90, 315, 319, 322, 323 Orosius:  27, 45, 54, 198, 280 Otto of Bamberg:  47–48, 48 Otto of Freising:  50–51, 52–53, 57, 58–59, 189 Paul the Deacon:  43, 185, 186 n. 81, 280 Pere Abbat:  296, 310 Peter Comestor:  54 Philippe Mousket:  317 n. 10 Prosper of Aquitaine:  40 Pseudo-Turpin:  316, 324

Socrates Scholasticus:  107 Statius: 74 Stephen Meles:  122 Suetonius: 185–86 Symeon Metaphrastes:  112 Symeon (Simeon) of Durham:  175 n. 34, 271 Theodore Prodromos:  123–29, 133–40, 142 Thietmar of Merseburg:  172 Tigernach:  69, 75, 75–76 n. 67, 83 n. 111, 84 Transmar, bishop of Noyon:  156–57, 159, 160 Urard mac Coise:  88, 89–90 Uxtanēs of Sebasteia:  105, 108

Quintilian:  152, 211 Ralph of Caen:  317, 322 Ralph of Coggeshall:  324 Richer of Reims:  46 Robert of Torigni:  18, 196 n. 3, 243, 315, 319, 323 Robert the Monk:  173, 174, 174–75 Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada:  296, 297 n. 7, 298 n. 13, 300–10 Rodulf Glaber:  172 Rufinus: 107 Sallust:  26, 174, 180, 189 n. 91, 198, 215–16 Saxo Grammaticus:  189 Seneca:  188 n. 86 Sigebert of Gembloux:  47, 49, 78, 172, 273

‘Vatican anonymous’:  326 Vincent of Beauvais:  190 Virgil:  176, 188, 198, 212 Wace:  20–21, 243, 271, 315 Walter Map:  27, 189 Widukind of Corvey:  46, 172, 176, 177, 178 William of Apulia:  189, 195–218, 324 William of Jumièges:  15–16, 18, 70, 173, 178, 189, 208, 315 William of Malmesbury:  9, 15–16, 27, 28, 169–90, 237, 243–65, 271 William of Newburgh:  81 William of Poitiers:  15, 173, 254 n. 60, 272, 275, 283–84, 287 William of Tyre:  131–32, 189–90 Wipo:  172, 178

III. Centres of Writing Altzella (Saxony):  53 Armagh (Ireland):  69, 78 Armenia:  101–17 Austria:  43, 58

Bamberg (Germany):  43, 44, 46, 47–48, 49, 50, 52, 58 Bavaria: 53. See also Niederaltaich, Regensburg

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Berge (Saxony):  55 Brunswick (Saxony):  55 Burton-on-Trent (England):  71 Byzantium:  112, 115, 121–45. See also Mount Athos, Syria Cambrai (Lorraine):  273 Canterbury (England):  151, 154, 160–64, 176, 233, 234 Cappenberg (Westphalia):  54 Castile:  295–310 Clonmacnoise (Ireland):  69, 75 n. 6, 76 Cologne (Germany):  54, 55 Compiègne (France):  318 Corvey (Saxony):  55 Crowland (England):  275 Einsiedeln (Germany, now Switzerland): 40 England:  15–16, 20, 27, 77, 82, 160–63, 169–90, 225–38, 243–65. See also Burton-on-Trent, Canterbury, Crowland, Peterborough, Worcester Erfurt (Germany):  53 Flanders: 25. See also Ghent Fleury (France):  318 France:  27, 172–74, 189–90, 319–20. See also Compiègne, Fleury, Normandy, Picardy Georgia:  101–17 Germany: 27, 39–59, 172, 189–90. See also Altzella, Austria, Bamberg, Bavaria, Berge, Brunswick, Cappenberg, Cologne, Corvey, Einsiedeln, Erfurt, Hamburg, Harsefeld, Hildesheim, Ilsenburg, Lübeck, Magdeburg, Mainz, Melk, Niederaltaich, Paderborn, Pöhlde, Regensburg, Reichenau, Reinhardsbrunn, St Blasien, St Gall, Saxony, Siegburg, Thuringia, Würzburg

Ghent (Flanders):  150, 154–60, 163–64 Glendalough (Ireland):  76 Hamburg (Germany):  58 Harsefeld (Saxony):  44 Hildesheim (Saxony):  40 Iceland: 24–25 Ilsenburg (Saxony):  44 Inisfallen (Ireland):  69, 85, 86 Ireland:  20, 25, 67–90. See also Armagh, Clonmacnoise, Glendalough, Leinster, Monasterboice, Oughaval Islamic world:  10, 24. See also Sicily Italy:  17, 189–90, 195–218. See also Sicily Jerusalem (Latin kingdom):  24 Leinster (Ireland):  76 Lübeck (Germany):  57 Magdeburg (Saxony):  55–56 Mainz (Germany):  44, 78 Melk (Austria):  42, 43, 58 Monasterboice (Ireland):  78 Mount Athos (Byzantium):  111, 114 Niederaltaich (Bavaria):  52–53 Normandy:  27, 173, 269–90, 315–31 Norway: 25 Oughaval (Ireland):  76 Paderborn (Saxony):  54, 55 Peterborough (England):  271 Picardy (France):  318 Pöhlde (Saxony):  56 Poland: 25 Regensburg (Bavaria):  43, 53 Reichenau (Germany):  39–59 Reinhardsbrunn (Thuringia):  53

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St Blasien (Germany):  42 St Gall (Germany, now Switzerland):  39, 40 Saxony: 53. See also Altzella; Berge; Brunswick; Corvey; Harsefeld; Hildesheim; Ilsenburg; Magdeburg; Paderborn; Pöhlde Scandinavia: 24 Scotland: 68 Sicily: 24

Siegburg (Germany):  54 Syria:  111, 114 Thorney (England):  275 Thuringia: 53 Wales:  25–26, 71 Worcester (England):  233, 236, 273, 275 Würzburg (Germany):  43–44

International Medieval Research

All volumes in this series are evaluated by an Editorial Board, strictly on academic grounds, based on reports prepared by referees who have been commissioned by virtue of their specialism in the appropriate field. The Board ensures that the screening is done independently and without conflicts of interest. The definitive texts supplied by authors are also subject to review by the Board before being approved for publication. Further, the volumes are copyedited to conform to the publisher’s stylebook and to the best international academic standards in the field.

Titles in Series Across the Mediterranean Frontiers: Trade, Politics, and Religion, 650–1450, ed. by Dionisius A. Agius and Ian Richard Netton (1997) Dictionaries of Medieval Germanic Languages: A Survey of Current Lexicographical Projects, ed. by K. Van Dalen-Oskam, K. Depuydt, W. J. J. Pijnenburg, and T. H. Schoonheim (1997) From Clermont to Jerusalem: The Crusades and Crusader Societies 1095–1500, ed. by Alan V. Murray (1998) The Community, the Family and the Saint: Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe, ed. by Joyce Hill and Mary Swan (1998) The Vocation of Service to God and Neighbour: Essays on the Interests, Involvements and Problems of Religious Communities and their Members in Medieval Society, ed. by Joan Greatrex (1998) Negotiating Secular and Ecclesiastical Power: Western Europe in the Central Middle Ages, ed. by Arnoud-Jan A. Bijsterveld, Henk Teunis, and Andrew Wareham (1999) Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals, ed. by Guyda Armstrong and Ian N. Wood (2000) Decorations for the Holy Dead: Visual Embellishments on Tombs and Shrines of Saints, ed. by Stephen Lamia and Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo (2002) Time and Eternity: The Medieval Discourse, ed. by Gerhard Jaritz and Gerson Moreno-Riaño (2003) The White Mantle of Churches: Architecture, Liturgy, and Art around the Millennium, ed. by Nigel Hiscock (2003) Love, Marriage, and Family Ties in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by Isabel Davis, Miriam Müller, and Sarah Rees Jones (2003) The Medieval Household in Christian Europe, c. 850–c. 1550: Managing Power, Wealth, and the Body, ed. by Cordelia Beattie, Anna Maslakovic, and Sarah Rees Jones (2003)

Exile in the Middle Ages: Selected Proceedings from the International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 8–11 July 2002, ed. by Laura Napran and Elisabeth van Houts (2004) Representations of Power in Medieval Germany, 800–1500, ed. by Björn Weiler and Simon MacLean (2006) Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages, ed. by Brenda Bolton and Christine Meek (2008) Behaving like Fools: Voice, Gesture, and Laughter in Texts, Manuscripts, and Early Books, ed. by Lucy Perry and Alexander Schwarz (2011) Languages of Love and Hate: Conflict, Communication, and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean, ed. by Sarah Lambert and Helen Nicholson (2012) Medieval Life Cycles: Continuity and Change, ed. by Isabelle Cochelin and Karen Smyth (2013) Problems and Possibilities of Early Medieval Charters, ed. by Jonathan A. Jarrett and Alan Scott McKinley (2013) The Tree: Symbol, Allegory, and Mnemonic Device in Medieval Art and Thought, ed. by Pippa Salonius and Andrea Worm (2014) Travels and Mobilities in the Middle Ages: From the Atlantic to the Black Sea, ed. by Marianne O’Doherty and Felicitas Schmieder (2015) Approaches to Poverty in Medieval Europe: Complexities, Contradictions, Transformations, c. 1100–1500, ed. by Sharon Farmer (2016) Miracles in Medieval Canonization Processes: Structures, Functions, and Methodologies, ed. by Christian Krötzl and Sari Katajala-Peltomaa (2018) Pleasure in the Middle Ages, ed. by Naama Cohen-Hanegbi and Piroska Nagy (2018) ‘Otherness’ in the Middle Ages, ed. by Hans-Werner Goetz and Ian Wood (2021)