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History and the Written Word in the Angevin Empire (C. 1154–C. 1200)

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History and the Written Word in the Angevin Empire (C. 1154–C. 1200) View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by White Rose E-theses Online History and the Written Word in the Angevin Empire (c. 1154–c. 1200) William Henry Jonathan Bainton PhD Medieval Studies November 2010 ABSTRACT It is axiomatic that later twelfth-century England witnessed a growth in the sophistication of government and a related proliferation of written records. This period is also noted for its prolific and distinctive historical writing—which was often written by administrators and reproduced administrative documents. Taking these connected phenomena as its starting point, this study investigates how the changing uses of, access to and attitudes towards the written word affected the writing of history. Conversely, it also seeks to understand how historiography—which had long been associated with the written word—shaped contemporary assumptions about the written word itself. It assesses why historians quoted (and versified) so many documents in their histories, and traces structural similarities between chronicles and other contemporary forms of documentary collection. In doing so, it suggests that the apparently ‘official’ documents reproduced by histories are better thought of as social productions that told stories about the past, for and about those holding public office. It suggests that by rewriting documents as history, historical writing played a fundamental role in committing them to memory—and that it used historical narrative to explain the documents of the past to an imagined future. It also investigates why the period’s historical writing is so attuned to the performances that surrounded the written word. By investigating the presentation of documentary practices in both Latin and vernacular historiography, and by reconstructing the multilingual milieu that historians and historiography inhabited, the study challenges the way that vernacular textual practices are associated primarily with orality and performance, and Latin textual practices with writing and the making of ‘passive’ records. In the process, it suggests that both vernacular and Latin (historical) writing presented a normative picture of the functions of the written word—and of the literati—in contemporary society. CONTENTS Tables and illustrations..........................................................................................vi Prefatory notes ......................................................................................................vii Acknowledgements.................................................................................................ix Chapter 1. Introduction .......................................................................................1 Chapter 2. History and documents..................................................................19 Chapter 3. Quotation..........................................................................................71 Chapter 4. Context............................................................................................109 Chapter 5. Performances .................................................................................133 Chapter 6. Languages ......................................................................................155 Chapter 7. Conclusion......................................................................................195 Appendices........................................................................................................211 Appendix A ...........................................................................................213 Appendix B............................................................................................217 Appendix C ...........................................................................................219 Appendix D ...........................................................................................221 Abbreviations ......................................................................................................227 Bibliography ........................................................................................................229 TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS Tables Table 1. Documents classified by type 45 Table 2. Assemblies in the Gesta 200 Table 3. Senders of letters in Diceto’s Ymagines Chronicorum 213 Table 4. Recipients of letters in Diceto’s Ymagines Chronicorum 213 Table 5. Senders of letters in Howden’s Gesta 214 Table 6. Recipients of letters in Howden’s Gesta 214 Table 7. Senders of letters in Howden’s Chronica 215 Table 8. Recipients of letters in Howden’s Chronica 215 Table 9. Introductory formulas 219 Illustrations Figure 1. William of Apulia’s seal. Reproduced from Roger of 144 Howden, Chronica, edited by William Stubbs (London, 1868–71), 2:98 (in the public domain) vi NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY AND TRANSLATIONS Orthography Changing editorial practices mean that editors from different periods have followed different orthographical conventions. I have maintained the orthography of the editions from which I have quoted (with the exception of æ, which I have rendered ae). This means that the orthography of Latin quotations is not consistent throughout the study. Translations Where bibliographical details of a translation (or edition with translation) of a text are given, translations will be those of the editors. Otherwise, all translations will be mine, and will be literal, unless stated. Abbreviations In accordance with University regulations, a list of abbreviations is provided immediately before the bibliography, below. vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This study was funded by a research studentship provided by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It took shape at the Centre for Medieval Studies at York, and I am grateful to its members for providing such a collaborative and supportive environment in which to work. Claudia Esch, Philippa Hoskin, Sarah Rees-Jones and Carol Symes kindly shared their expertise and their thoughts about specific problems. Mark Ormrod was instrumental in helping me conceptualize this project as a dissertation when it was in its early stages. Thomas O’Donnell shared his thoughtful perspectives on multilingualism and patronage. I am grateful to Matthew Kempshall for his enduring intellectual and moral support, and, for their inspiring generosity, to Elizabeth Tyler and my supervisors Peter Biller and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. Finally, I thank my parents, my brother and Elisabeth Engell Jessen—teachers, all of them—for their love and support. ix x 1 Introduction The two dazzling cultural achievements of later twelfth-century England were its sophisticated administrative government and its prolific historical writing, and the intimate relationship between these two phenomena has long been acknowledged. At the heart of this relationship lay a mastery of literate technology, which was shared by those who wrote history and those who participated in literate government. It is a mastery that is epitomized above all by those ‘civil servant historians,’ as Robert Bartlett has called them, who did both.1 This study is about the relationship between the historiographical and administrative cultures of later twelfth-century England; and I place the implications of their common concern with the written word at the centre of its field of view. More specifically, I situate the prolific historiographical production of later twelfth-century England within the context of the widening diffusion of a ‘literate mentality,’ as Michael Clanchy called it, that took place in the same period.2 The rise of the literate mentality was a consequence of, and stimulant to, the ‘new uses and forms of writing’ that appeared in this period as records were produced and retained ‘on an unprecedented scale.’3 People ‘began to think of facts not as recorded in texts but embodied in texts.’4 ‘Literate modes’ of thinking spread both territorially and socially.5 In this study I show how historiography’s cultural function—as a form of written record and artificial memory—was affected by these developments. I chart how 1 For the ‘civil servant historians’ of the period, see Robert Bartlett, England Under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 1075–1225 (Oxford, 2000), 630–1. 2 For the term ‘literate mentality,’ see M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1993), 185–96, a giant of a work upon whose shoulders this study precariously attempts to perch. 3 Clanchy, Memory, 1. 4 Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, 1983), 62. 5 Clanchy, Memory, 2. 1 historiography was penetrated by new administrative techniques, and by administrative assumptions about the written word. And I assess how historiography as a discursive genre was affected by the new generic and linguistic configurations that appeared in this period as a consequence of the spread of literacy.6 In doing so I offer a new perspective on the way that historical writing functioned as an institution of cultural memory in the public life of Angevin England. The story of the spread of literacy is frequently caught up in a narrative of increasing rationalization, subjective self-awareness and cognitive sophistication, and it often seems that as soon as the written word irrupted into society, writing became a passive and ephemeral vehicle of information.7 Scholarship’s focus on the increasing importance of writing tends to neglect the oral practices and ritual performances
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