The Printing of Twelfth-Century English Historiography, and the Integration of Law with History

Chapter 10 opens with the first printing in the 1590s of several of the great works of twelfth-century English historical writing: Lord William Howard’s edition of John of Worcester (1592); and Henry Savile’s of William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Roger of Howden, and (purporting to be twelfth-century) Pseudo-Ingulf’s Historia Croylandensis (1596). It then proceeds to the editing and publication of works of Norman historiography which encompassed the Conquest: William of Jumièges, William of Poitiers, and Orderic Vitalis. It pays a great deal of attention to William Camden and Robert Cotton. The chapter culminates with a discussion of John Selden’s edition of Eadmer’s Historia novorum. This is shown to combine the two strands of antiquarian interest examined in preceding chapters: medieval historical writing, and medieval law. In terms both of choice of text and focus of editorial attention, it reveals that by the reign of James VI and I, the Conquest had again become the key issue in English medieval history. The chapter also discusses chorographical history as espoused by William Lambarde and William Camden, and the beginnings of scholarly investigation of Domesday Book. It ends by looking forward to the central role which controversy about the Conquest would play in political arguments of the seventeenth century.

The Early Twelfth-Century Perspective in English Historical Writing

Chapter 1 explains why, about 40 years after the Conquest, a number of English monastic historians tried to construct the first histories of England to be written since Bede’s Ecclesiastical History. According to William of Malmesbury, English historical writing has been a chain broken at Bede’s death. The sudden initiative to mend that chain at the beginning of the twelfth century was prompted by the need, consequent on the Conquest, to validate title to ecclesiastical land and to authenticate the claims of English saints to sanctity. The chapter argues that the wholesale rebuilding of major English churches in the half century after the Conquest also played a key part. It explains why most of the historians were precentors (or cantors) of their institutions. By examining in detail their treatment of the Conquest itself, it shows how they connected post-Conquest England with what had preceded it. The effect was to create a continuous history of England which transcended the Conquest.

Fideales Erzählen

Literary theory has developed its understanding of narrative as either fictional or factual without taking into account the specific conditions of literature that is grounded in religious faith. The paper discusses the shortcomings of the dichotomy ‘fictional’/‘factual’ with regard to medieval religious literature. It argues that it is necessary to conceptualize further modes of narration in order to describe adequately the historical and global plurality of story-telling. The concept of “fideal narrative” is introduced in order to specify the pragmatic and epistemological conditions of religious literature. Its historical validity is tested in a comparison of the prologues of historiographer and hagiographer William of Malmesbury.

Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) as a Clockmaker

The paper analyses three preserved reports, depicting Gerbert of Aurillac (also known as: of Reims, of Ravenna, of Bobbio, and in 999–1003 as Pope Sylvester II) as a clockmaker. The Benedictine monk William of Malmesbury (died around 1143) writes about clocks Gerbert made in Reims in The History of the English Kings and describes them as arte mechanica compositum. The Benedictine Arnold Wion (died around 1610) mentions clocks from Ravenna, where Gerbert allegedly constructed a clepsydra, in The Tree of Life. In his Chronicle, Thietmar of Merseburg (died around 1018) describes a horologium with an observation tube (fistula) from Magdeburg. These three references are analysed from a historical standpoint and especially Williams’s and Thietmar’s short reports are interpreted as possible references to timekeeping devices – the astrolabe and the nocturlabe.

Margaret Coombe, Anne Mouron, Christiania Whitehead (Hgg.), Saints of North-East England. Medieval Church Studies, 39. Brepols: Turnhout, 2017, xviii,360 S.

Nordengland ist anders: darauf machte bereits William of Malmesbury im 12. Jahrhundert aufmerksam, als er auf die ,,nichtverständliche“ Sprache verwies, in der man in diesen Landesteilen zu kommunizieren pflegte. Wer heute durch Städte wie Durham und York wandert oder gar der Ruinenromantik zisterziensischer Großabteien wie Fountains oder Rievaulx erliegt, spürt, über welchen kulturellen Reichtum der Norden Englands verfügte und noch immer verfügt. Teil dieses kulturellen Erbes sind die Heiligen. Ab dem 7. und 8. Jahrhundert entstanden einflussreiche Heiligenkulte in Northumbria. Oswald, Aidan, Hilda, Aebbe, Cuthbert, John of Beverly, Wilfrid, und wie sie alle heißen mögen, hielten ihre schützende Hand über den Norden und prägten die lokalen Identitäten entscheidend mit, kein Kult aber war einflussreicher als derjenige des Hl. Cuthbert. Um 634 wurde er geboren und nach einem heiligmäßigen Leben als Asket und Einsiedler zum Bischof von Lindisfarne erhoben. Er starb 687 als Eremit im Ruch der Heiligkeit. Heilungswunder an seinem Grab ereigneten sich unmittelbar nach seiner Beisetzung. 995 fand er seine endgültige Ruhestätte in Durham, die Translation in die neu erbaute Kathedrale erfolgte 1104. Doch auch wenn Cuthbert die Heiligenszene dominierte, pflegte man in sanctis keinen ausschließlichen Blick auf die Vergangenheit. Neue Kulte kamen im 12. Jahrhundert hinzu, darunter diejenigen des Godric von Finchale, Bartholomäus von Farne oder Waldef von Melrose, wobei sich die jeweilige Kultpraxis stark dem Vorbild des Hl. Cuthbert verbunden zeigte.

William of Malmesbury’s Work on the Declamationes maiores

The English historian William of Malmesbury (died c.1142) wrote in various genres, including the celebrated Gesta regum Anglorum and Gesta pontificum Anglorum, the ‘deeds’ of the kings and bishops of the English, and was enormously well read in the classical and patristic Latin available to him. This paper was published in 2014. It concerns William’s annotations, in MS Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson G. 139, of the Major Declamations wrongly attributed to Quintilian. It discusses the textual affinities of the manuscript itself, and then some of the passages where William made conjectures on the text. Five of them anticipate modern conjectures, but William often puts his finger on a problem even when he cannot solve it. The paper also discusses a special Nota sign used by William some thirty times to signal passages whose content interested him, and suggests why they may have caught his attention.

The Earl and the Chronicler

Earl Robert fought for the Empress Matilda’s succession to England’s with quill as well as sword. He commissioned William of Malmesbury to write a history of their succession-fraught era. The result was the Historia Novella. The earl’s education and literary habits and previous patronage experience were among the likely influences behind this role. The work is an apologia for Matilda’s claim and for Robert’s sponsorship and, as such, biased; it also features other of the author’s faults but also his virtues as a historian. The first edition contains evidence that Robert, directly or indirectly, was one of Malmesbury’s sources; the second, in the form of the copy given to Margam Abbey, Earl Robert’s foundation, may well have been produced under the auspices of his son, Earl William (1147–83).