Laughter and Grief in Twelfth-Century Accounts of the Death of William Rufus

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-208
Author(s):  
Lindsay M. Diggelmann
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
Perceptions And Expectations

Abstract The death of King William Rufus while hunting in August 1100 is often acknowledged as a fitting end for an unpopular and ineffective monarch, based largely on descriptions of the event in several twelfth-century texts. While it will never be possible to arrive at a definitive explanation of what happened, near-contemporary representations of the king’s behaviour and death reveal much about perceptions and expectations of medieval kingship. By examining varying descriptions of the king’s laughter – sometimes cynical and manipulative, sometimes generous and inclusive – and the corresponding portrayals of the extent of his subjects’ grief at their monarch’s passing, it is possible to reconstruct the outlines of a debate over appropriate emotional performance and its contribution to successful – or unsuccessful – rulership. The very positive depiction of Rufus’s emotional regime in Gaimar’s Estoire des Engleis sits in stark contrast to the more negative mainstream view, represented especially in the Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis.

Patrons and Minders: the Intrusion of the Secular into Sacred Spaces in the Late Middle Ages

1992 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 143-178
Author(s):  
Andrew Martindale
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Sacred Spaces ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
Sequence Of Events ◽  
Entire Sequence ◽  
Written Sources

From the twelfth century onwards it became common for sacred spaces—that is, churches—to be invaded by objects and imagery which are often surprising and bizarre and which, in their secular-ity, have little to do with the fundamental teachings of Christianity. Many of these objects are familiar, some less familiar; arid the topic seems appropriate for a ‘generalist’ audience of ecclesiastical history specialists. It should be said at once that this secularity seems to reach a peak around the middle of the fourteenth century, to be followed by a slow and somewhat irregular retreat; but since the entire sequence of events is accompanied by an almost complete silence in the written sources, the reasons for what was happening remain largely speculative. I shall return to this point.

scholarly journals "Longing in vain to climb into the ducal bed": gossip and rumor in Orderic Vitalis' Ecclesiastical History

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Katherine E. Sheffield
Keyword(s):  
Information Management ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Theoretical Work ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Good Reputation

For twelfth century Christians talk was an important tool and potential snare. The monastic chronicler Orderic Vitalis viewed talk as a potentially powerful tool and the EH reflected his belief that a sensible person, particularly a person whose duties required the maintenance of a good reputation, learned to effectively manage the information available. Chapter 1 surveyed important work in the talk studies field that analyzes gossip and rumor, Chapter 2 discussed Orderic Vitalis' background, the historical approach of his sources and his own historical approach, Chapter 3 applied theoretical work on talk to the EH, Chapter 4 analyzed the performance of information management, and Chapter 5 addressed possible gender issues.

The Preservation of the Sources for English Medieval History in the Sixteenth Century

2020 ◽  
pp. 286-331
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Old English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
English History ◽  
John Bale ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Parallel Text ◽  
English Law ◽  
John Leland

Chapter 8 opens with two events which took place in the summer of 1568: the commission to Archbishop Matthew Parker to identify and record manuscripts dispersed from monastic libraries, especially books with a bearing on English history, and the publication of William Lambarde’s APXAIONOMIA, his edition of Old English law, much of it in parallel text, Old English and Latin. The chapter then reverts to the dissolution itself, and who can be shown to have saved which particular books. It pays particular attention to the activities of John Leland, John Bale, and certain bibliophilic royal commissioners, most notably Sir John Prise. Although initial official interest in English history concentrated on the period of the conversion and before, collectors saved the great works of the twelfth century, and it was these that Prise envisaged in his will should be edited and printed. The chapter then considers the circle around Parker, most particularly John Joscelyn, and the use they made of the medieval English histories in their polemical works on ecclesiastical history. Parker’s editions of Matthew Paris were the first works of medieval English historiography to be printed, probably on account of Matthew’s anti-papal instincts. In counterpoint with all this concern for the sources, the chapter also addresses the Italian Polydore Vergil’s recently published and influential attempt to write up English medieval history, for the period in question largely on the basis of the great histories of the early twelfth century.

scholarly journals Royal succession and kingship among the Picts

2008 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas Evans
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
Female Line ◽  
Male Line ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

When we consider the history of the Picts we are faced with the perennial challenge for the early medievalist of deciding whether the fragments of evidence which survive are representative of the reality of Pictish society, or whether they provide us with distortions, based on patterns of survival. This issue is as relevant to the subject of royal succession as it is to other aspects of Pictish history. The debate over whether the Picts practised a matrilineal system, with the son of the previous king's sister becoming the next king, or whether it was a patrilineal system, with the kingship generally passing through the male line, has dominated the discussion of Pictish succession. Until the 1980s, the matriliny thesis was virtually unquestioned, and accepted by scholars including F. T. Wainwright, Marjorie Anderson, and Isabel Henderson1. The bases for this view were the accounts of the Pictish settlement of northern Britain in Bede's ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ and Irish texts written throughout the medieval period, but mainly surviving in versions from the twelfth century or later.2 In these sources it was claimed that the Picts went to Ireland before arriving in northern Britain, and that they obtained wives from the Irish, with some versions stating that this was done on condition that the succession went through the female line. Other sources which did not openly discuss the nature of Pictish succession, particularly the Irish chronicles and the Pictish king-lists, were then interpreted by scholars in relation to these accounts and were thought to support them.

The Early Twelfth-Century Perspective in English Historical Writing

2020 ◽  
pp. 13-80
Author(s):  
George Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Half Century ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
A Chain ◽  
William Of Malmesbury

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.

Bede's Ecclesiastical History and the Material Conditions of Anglo-Saxon Life

1979 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Joel T. Rosenthal
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Economic Life ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
The West ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So

The author of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People was the greatest historian writing in the West between the later Roman Empire and the twelfth century, when we come to William of Malmesbury, Otto of Freising, and William of Tyre. Bede's qualities as a historian are well known and widely appreciated, and they need no further exposition here. Instead, we propose to be perverse and to attempt to read Bede's text as though he had been a sociologist or an economic anthropologist: What can we learn from him about the “material conditions” of life in post-Roman and early Anglo-Saxon England, especially about life in the sixth and seventh centuries. This is surely a strange purpose for which to use the Ecclesiastical History. We do so both to show that Bede is so rich and so multifaceted that he is immensely valuable for many purposes besides those of greatest obvious interest to him, and because the sources for social and economic life in those years are so poor that everything available is legitimate grist for the mills of our analysis.Actually there are two reasons why Bede might have furnished us with the kind of information we are seeking. One is that among classical and early medieval historians there was a considerable tradition of describing the barbarian world, of paying particular attention to the institutions, mores, and customs of the Germanic people or whoever might be the subject of the tale.

The Cathedral Chapter of St. Andrews and the Culdees in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

1952 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. W. S. Barrow
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
British Isles ◽  
Royal Irish Academy ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of

It has long been a commonplace of Scottish ecclesiastical history that the culdees at St. Andrews, who held a place in the cathedral church in the earlier part of the twelfth century, survived for a further two hundred years. The most authoritative statement of this belief is still to be found in the work of Dr. William Reeves (later Bishop of Down), whose paper on ‘The Culdees of the British Islands’ was read to the Royal Irish Academy at Dublin in 1860, and published there as a book in 1864. Reeves's paper discussed very fully the origins and later history of the culdees in the British Isles, especially in Ireland and Scotland; and it is of some interest to recall that since the author was a vicar-choral of Armagh cathedral he belonged to a corporation which could claim to have directly represented, since the seventeenth century, the older body of culdees attached to the mother church of St. Patrick.

Welsh church history: sources and problems

1975 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
pp. 293-300
Author(s):  
Nigel Yates
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Church History ◽  
Language Barrier ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Ecclesiastical History ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
First Time

When one considers how intimately the ecclesiastical history of Wales has been bound up with that of England from at least the twelfth century until the disestablishment of the Welsh church in 1920, it is perhaps surprising that the subject should present as many problems as it does to those approaching it for the first time, especially to those familiar with the sources of English ecclesiastical history. It will not, of course, be possible in a paper of this length to consider fully all the problems involved, and I wish therefore to confine myself to four which seem to me to be absolutely basic. They are the shortage of primary source material; the lack of competent monographs on many topics; the language barrier which faces those unfamiliar with Welsh; and the dangers inherent in what may be called the ‘Welsh Nationalist’ approach to Welsh ecclesiastical history.

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