William of Malmesbury: Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, the History of the English Bishops: Volume I 0198207700, 9780198207702

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OXFORD MEDIEVAL TEXTS General Editors ]. W. B I N N S W. J. B L A I R D. D ' A V R A Y

R. C. L O V E

WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY GESTA PONTIFICVMANGLORVM THE H I S T O R Y OF THE ENGLISH BISHOPS

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William of Malmesbury GESTA PONTIFICVM ANGLORVM The History of the English Bishops VOLUME ONE: TEXT AND TRANSLATION

EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY

M. WINTERBOTTOM WITH THE A S S I S T A N C E OF

R. M. T H O M S O N

C L A R E N D O N P R E S SO X F O R D

OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford 0x2 6op Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © M. Winterbottom 2007 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2007 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, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Typeset by Anne Joshua, Oxford Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddies Ltd, King's Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 978-0-19-820770-2 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

PREFACE

The present volume contains a new text and translation of William of Malmesbury's Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, together with an introduction that discusses the manuscripts and the principles of the edition; R. M. Thomson's Volume II will provide a full commentary. I am deeply indebted to Professor Thomson for his help with Volume I, which extended far beyond the palaeographical and historical matters in which he specializes. We discussed countless problems together, with pleasure and profit, and the whole is only the latest product of a long and happy collaboration. I am also very grateful for the help and encouragement of Dr Christine Rauer. Rod Thomson and I thank Dr Christine Ferdinand for making us so welcome in the library of Magdalen College, Oxford. Every possible help and courtesy was extended by the General Editors of the series, past and present, and by Anne Gelling and Samantha Skyrme at the Press. I was exceptionally fortunate to have Dr Bonnie Blackburn as the learned and meticulous copy editor of this volume. Of the skills of Anne Joshua it is impossible to speak too highly. Oxford, July 2006 M.W.

FOR NICOLETTE WITH LOVE AND GRATITUDE

CONTENTS

ABBREVIATED REFERENCES INTRODUCTION

IX xi

1. The Manuscripts

xi

2. The Corrections in A

xv

3. Editions

xxv

4. Principles of the Present Edition

xxvi

SIG L A

xxxiii

TEXT A N D T R A N S L A T I O N Prologue Book i Book 2 Book 3 Book 4 Book 5

2 4 222 324 420 498

INDEX

665

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ABBREVIATED REFERENCES

AA SS AG

Alcuin, Epist.

Acta Sanctorum (first edn., Antwerp/Brussels 16431894) William of Malmesbury, De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie, cited by page from John Scott, The Early History of Glastonbury (Woodbridge, 1981)

Aldhelm

cited by page and line from E. Dtimmler, MGH Epist. iv (1895) cited by page from R. Ehwald, MGH AA xv (1919)

Anglia Sacra

Anglia Sacra, ed. H. Wharton, 2 vols. (London, 1691)

ASC BHL

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Bibliotheca H agiographic a Latina

CCSL Councils

Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina Councils and Synods, i: AD 871-1204, ed. D. Whitelock, M. Brett, and C. N. L. Brooke, 2 parts (Oxford, 1981)

Eadmer, HN

Eadmer, Historia Novorum, cited by page from the edition of M. Rule (Rolls Series, 1884) Eadmer, Vita S. Anselmi, cited by book and chapter from the Nelson Medieval Texts edition by R. W. Southern (1962; OMT, 1972) Faricius, Vita S. Aldhelmi. See p. 498, n. 3.

Eadmer, VA

Faricius GP

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (cited by chapter and section)

GR

William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, cited by chapter and section from the OMT edition by R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson, and M. Winterbottom (1998) = GRl William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, General Introduction and Commentary by R. M. Thomson (OMT, 1999)

GR II

H &S

HBC

Councils and Ecclesiastical Documents relating to Great Britain and Ireland, ed. A. W. Haddan and W. Stubbs, 3 vols. (Oxford, 1869-78) Handbook of British Chronology, 3rd edn., ed. E. B.

xx

ABBREVIATED REFERENCES

Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, and I. Roy (London, 1986) HE Bede, Historia Ecclesiastics Gentis Anglorum HN William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, cited by book and chapter from the OMT edition by E. King and K. R. Potter (1998) Hesbert, CAO R.-J. Hesbert, Corpus Antiphonalium Officii, 6 vols. (Rome, 1963-79) Regesta Pontificum Ronutnorum . . . ad Annum 1198, ed. JL P. Jaffe; 2nd edn. by S. Loewenfeld et al., 2 vols. (Leipzig, 1885-8) Leland, Comm. Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis, Autore loanne Lelando, ed. A. Hall (Oxford, 1709) Letters of Lanfrimc The Letters of Lanfranc Archbishop of Canterbury, ed. H. Clover and M. Gibson (OMT, 1979) MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica AA Auctores Antiquissimi Epist. Epistolae OMT Oxford Medieval Texts Osbern, Vita cited from W. Stubbs, Memorials of Saint Dunstan S. Dunstant (Rolls Series 1874), pp. 69-161 PL Patrologia Latino, P. H. Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Charters (Royal Historical S Society Guides and Handbooks, viii; 1968), cited by document number; revisions incorporated continuously in The Electronic Sawyer at website http://www.trin. cam.ac.uk/chartwww/ Sancti Anselmi Opera Omnia, ed. F. S. Schmitt (rev. SAO edn., 6 vols. in 2; Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt, 1968) VD William of Malmesbury, Vita S. Dunstani, cited from William of Malmesbury, Saints' Lives, ed. and trans. M. Winterbottom and R. M. Thomson (OMT, 2002), pp. 166-303 William of Malmesbury, Vita S. Wulfstani, cited from vw William of Malmesbury, Saints' Lives, pp. 8-155 Eddius Stephanus (Stephen of Ripon), Vita S. Wilfridi, Vtta S. Wilfridi ed. and trans. B. Colgrave (Cambridge, 1927)

INTRODUCTION

i. THE M A N U S C R I P T S The autograph (A) In his edition for the Rolls Series, published in 1870, N. E. S. A. Hamilton set the manuscript tradition of the Gesta pontificum on a secure footing. In particular, he showed by unassailable arguments that Oxford, Magdalen College MS lat. 172 (A) is William's autograph.1 For us, as for Hamilton, A is naturally the base manuscript, and it merits a full description.2 The manuscript is bound in seventeenth-century blind-tooled calf over pasteboard, and sewn on three bands. The binder retrimmed the edges, sometimes affecting William's marginalia, but the book was always pocket-sized, with 106 leaves measuring 180 x 120-5 mmThere are no endleaves. Pagination in arabic numerals was provided in a hand of the fourteenth century; at the head of fo. i is the Malmesbury abbey pressmark 'C. 4', of much the same date. The text ends on fo. 104; fos. iO4Y-io6Y (still bearing the fourteenth-century pagination) are blank, but for a thirteenth-century pencil note on fo. io5Y: '[Ina] Aldelmi monitu Glastoniense monasterium ut in gestis regum legitur a nouo fecit nee parui precii rura Melduno intulit anno Domini [septinjgentesimo primo dictante Winberto clerico regis'; and on fo. io6Y are sixteenth- or seventeenth-century notes on Aldhelm. The pagination shows that no leaves have been lost since that time. The parchment was well prepared, but the makeup into quires is markedly irregular.3 The leaves were frame-ruled with stylus, 1 The classic article is N. R. Ker, 'William of Malmesbury's handwriting', English Historical Review, lix (1944), 371-6, reprinted in his Books, Collectors and Libraries: Studies in the Medieval Heritage, ed. A. G. Watson (London and Ronceverte, 1985), pp. 60—6. 2 Provided by RMT; the only previous modern description is in his William of Malmesbury (rev. edn., Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 80-1 with nn. When and how the MS left Malmesbury are now obscure to us. In the i6th c. it belonged to the martyrologist John Foxe (d. 1587): N. R. Ker, Catalogue of Manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon (Oxford, 1957), p. 235. A Magdalen man, he may well have picked it up on the open market in Oxford. Presumably it entered the College with the rest of his books, presented by his son Samuel in 1614. 3 Collation: i10, 212, 310 (wants i and 7), 410 (wants 5), s-78, 814, 9'°, 10", n 8 (wants 6, doubtless blank). The missing leaves in quires 3 and 4 were extracted by William himself in the process of re-editing the text: see below, pp. 90, 126, 160.

Xll

INTRODUCTION

£.140 x 85 mm, but no lines were ruled for writing on (hence the number of lines of text varies between about 33 and 53 per page). Major divisions of the text open with larger initials in red or ink of text, sometimes with simple ornament; others are touched with red. William was responsible for the rubrication (beginning at c. 84) and probably for the painted initials as well. He wrote all of the text except for a twelfth-century pen-trial on the erased lower portion of fo. 3QY.4 A neat hand not much later than William's has provided chapter heads in the margins of Book 5. These mark the subsections that William was no longer signalling with red initials (though he redtouched some initials at the beginning of the book). Throughout, his hand varies much in size and degree of formality, and there are erasures, cancellations, and marginal and interlinear additions passim.5 On fo. i the Prologue is in a tiny hand, whereas the opening of Book i (ending in the middle of the bottom line) is larger, and becomes larger still at the foot of the page. It is probable that all of fo. i was copied over an erasure (see also below, p. xxv). Folios iv-iov are in a large, comparatively formal style; fos. 11 (beginning a new quire) to 44Y are in a smaller and less formal one; fos. 45-104 are written in a tiny hand again. Folio 43Y has been scraped blank (fo. 44 begins the section on Rochester).6 None of the script is in William's most formal style; it grows less formal as it becomes smaller.7 In spite of these features, the text does not represent, strictly speaking, a rough draft (see also below, p. xxvii). It must have begun as a clean but working copy of the first state of the Gesta, thus written over a short period and finished just after mid-ii25. 8 It was then revised sporadically over the next decade and a half to provide the basis for what is effectively another recension. It is thus a rough draft of that recension only. 4 The pen-trial is the incomplete sentence 'Fateor inbecillitatem meam nolo spe pugnare' {Jerome, Adv. Vigilant, xvi; PL xxiii. 352A [3676]). Hamilton (p. 121 n . i ) wrongly attributed it to William and is followed by A. Gransden, Historical Writing in England c.550—c.i307 (London, 1974), p. 180. Facsimiles of his hand in this manuscript are given by Hamilton as a frontispiece, and in Gransden, pi. v. 5 For details of William's editing, see Hamilton, pp. xii-xviii, below, pp. xv-xxv, and the apparatus criticus to this volume. 6 GP 72. 7 For William's formal and informal hands, see Thomson, William of Malmesbury, pp. 76—7 and pi. 1-2. It is possible that William developed his 'formal' hand over time, and indeed the most formal writing in A is of his latest additions: the record of Archbishop Thurstan's death (125. 2), and of the most recent bishops of Hereford (169). 8 The date at which William finished writing is established at 278. 3 (see the commentary ad loc.).

THE M A N U S C R I P T S

Xlll

The 'First Recension' Hamilton further showed that we do not need to despair at the loss of many details of A's earlier state beneath erasures that withstand even the prying eye of the modern ultra-violet lamp. For a number of extant manuscripts, containing what Hamilton called the First Recension, are descended from A before it had been so drastically corrected. Hamilton did not enquire into the relationships of these MSS, or if he did he does not tell us the outcome. But in giving the text of this recension in his footnotes, he used two of them only: B

London, British Library Cotton Claud. A. v, s. XII, from the Benedictine priory of Belvoir (Lines.). It contains the first four books (the third a good deal shortened), together with a brisk abbreviation of the fifth. London, British Library Harley 3641, s. XII ex., once at the Cistercian abbey of Byland (Yorks.). It now concludes at 186. i, but its copies show that it originally continued to the end of the fourth book.9 Like B, it has Book 3 in a shortened form, and it also abridges the Canterbury documents in Book i.

C

Hamilton, without discussion, in effect printed the text of B, while recording some variants from C. He at least implies, therefore, the independence of C from B.10 Collation shows that they are indeed independent of each other, but also that they are not separate copies of A; rather, they are descended from a lost copy of A, which we may call ft.11 My own apparatus accordingly makes them equal partners in witnessing to this version of the text. Four other books fall into this group. One is probably a copy of B: H

London, British Library Harley 2, s. XIII in., from the Augustinian priory of Thornton (Lines.). This breaks off in 73. 9, at the end of a recto. 9

I use F (see below) as a substitute for C in the last sections of Book 4. Superior readings of C (all from passages only preserved in /3) include 49. 5/3 2 offerentem (om. B); 55. 3/3 6 narrentur; 63. i accedunt; 118*. 2 reus (om. B); 119. 3 in (om. B) risum; 134. 3/3 i puellas (om. B); 134. 3/3 2 ornamentis (om. B). 11 Errors of/3 against A are legion. A selection: 18. 2 om. multasset; 19. 12 om. pax . . . euanuit; om. monacho; 24. 4 om. quod ipse . . . insinuabit; 25. 10 om. scripta; 49. 3 surrexit; 82. 6 om. manu; 156. 3 monimento; and of course the abbreviation of the Life of Wilfrid (see app. crit. to 100. 3). In reporting /3's (reconstructed) readings I have not recorded minor differences of spelling between B and C. I (of course) do not aim to record all /3 readings, only those of use in throwing light on the reading of A before correction, or of interest in some other way. 10

xiv

INTRODUCTION

Three descend separately from C, and contain the first four books: F L S

Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 357, s. XII, from the Augustinian priory of Bridlington (Yorks.). Oxford, Bodleian Library Rawlinson 6.199, s- XIV—XV, from York Minster. The books are eccentrically arranged. Oxford, Bodleian Library Laud Misc. 598, s. XV.

Five of these six 'First Recension' books form a neat geographical group, and it may well be that the lost )3 was a copy of A requested by some northern house that went on to populate the area. The remaining manuscripts

Hamilton's division into a First and Second Recension is not sufficiently nuanced, as he himself saw when he classed the All Souls manuscript as transitional between the two. We should think rather of a spectrum. After William had modified his autograph to suppress the offensive material that is the glory of )3, he continued to tinker with it. Its state at three later stages can be glimpsed in what appear to be three independent descendants. In order of date, they are: E

Oxford, All Souls College 34, s. XII med. It ends in mid-line at 186. 4 uitam.12 G London, British Library Arundel 222, s. XII. Contains the first four books. Annotated and perhaps owned by John Leland. O Cambridge, Trinity College R. 5. 36 (727), s. XII—XIII, originally at Malmesbury itself. Contains the first four books.

The first of these MSS, E, was crucial to the later tradition of GP. Mysteriously, two very late books, both at Trinity College, Cambridge (R. 7. 4. (742) and R. 7. 13. (751), the latter from Sherborne, and both s. XV + XVI), seem to reflect the uncorrected state of E. But it was in its corrected form that E proved most fertile. One distinguished descendant13 was D

London, British Library Royal 13 D. v, s. XIII, from St Albans, the carrier of a significant witness (Cd) to the GR.

12 The end of a gathering in A, which had presumably become temporarily dismembered at the moment of copying. 13 Both D and the MPQ^ group are much affected by contamination, perhaps from A itself.

THE M A N U S C R I P T S

XV

In some close relationship to D is a coherent group consisting of three books with a Midland or northern provenance: M Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley 956, s. XV in., from Lichfield Cathedral. P Cambridge, Trinity College R. 5. 40 (728), s. XIII (where the defective text is filled up by different hands to the end of Book 4), from York Minster. Q^ Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 43, s. XIV, East Anglian. Finally, we find another apparently close-knit (Kentish) group:14 J

London, British Library Harley 261, s. XIII, from Rochester Cathedral Priory. K Oxford, Bodleian Library Hatton 54, s. XIV in., also from Rochester Cathedral Priory. N Cambridge, University Library Ff. i. 25, s. XII. R Oxford, Bodleian Library Laud. Misc. 729, s. XIII, in Shropshire in the sixteenth century. Tr Dublin, Trinity College 602, s. XII ex., from St Augustine's Abbey, Canterbury (kindly examined for us by Professor A. B. Scott).

2. THE C O R R E C T I O N S IN A The earliest corrections

As we have seen, j3, E, and G enable us to glimpse the state of A at different stages in its writing. As a result, we can form a good idea of the order in which William made the innumerable corrections to his autograph. Many of these corrections15 were made very early, sometimes in the course of the original copying, and accordingly are reproduced alike in ft, E, and G; they show up in my apparatus where readings are attributed to '«.