1 Doctoral Dissertation ‘How the Corpse of a Most Mighty King…’ The Use of the Death and Burial of the English Monarch (From Edward to Henry I) by James Plumtree Supervisors: Gábor Klaniczay, Gerhard Jaritz Submitted to the Medieval Studies Department and the Doctoral School of History Central European University, Budapest in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy CEU eTD Collection Budapest 2014 2 Table of Contents TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... 2 TABLE OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ 3 ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................ 4 INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................. 6 1. ‘JOYFULLY TAKEN UP TO LIVE WITH GOD’ THE ALTERED PASSING OF EDWARD .......................................................................... 13 1. 1. The King’s Two Deaths in MS C and the Vita Ædwardi Regis .......................... 14 1. 2. Dead Ends: Sulcard’s Prologus and the Bayeux Tapestry .................................. 24 1. 3. The Smell of Sanctity, A Whiff of Fraud: Osbert and the 1102 Translation ....... 31 1. 4. The Death in Histories: Orderic, Malmesbury, and Huntingdon ......................... 36 1. 5. ‘We Have Him’: The King’s Cadaver at Westminster ........................................ 41 1. 6. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 44 2. ‘THIRSTING ABOVE ALL FOR THE BLOOD OF THE KING’ KILLING AND SURVIVAL STORIES OF HAROLD II ...................................................... 46 2. 1. Defeat and Divine Punishment: the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles ............................. 47 2. 2. Requiring a Killing: the Norman Equivocations, and the Arrow in the Eye ....... 49 2. 3. The Burials of Harold: the Cairn or the Church .................................................. 58 2. 4. ‘Saved Only For Repentance’: Understanding Survival Stories.......................... 68 2. 5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 73 3. ‘OUGHT NOT REST IN A PLACE HE HAD SEIZED BY BRUTE FORCE’ THE CONQUEST SEEN THROUGH WILLIAM I’S DEMISE AND BURIAL ...................... 76 3. 1. Politicising the Demise: De obitu Willelmi .......................................................... 77 3. 2. Moralising the Death: Peterborough and Huntingdon ......................................... 81 3. 4. The Deathbed against the Death and the Burial: Malmesbury and Orderic ........ 85 3. 5. Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 96 4. ‘CONSIDERING HIS SQUALID LIFE AND DREADFUL DEATH’ THE STRANGE END(S) OF WILLIAM II ....................................................................... 99 4. 1. Signs and Premonitions: Peterborough, Flavigny, Eadmer, Gilo ...................... 101 4. 2. Retelling the Story: Huntingdon, Malmesbury, Orderic .................................... 106 4. 3. The Lasting Effects of a Contemporary Dispute ............................................... 119 4. 4. A Different Perspective, A Different Death: Gaimar ........................................ 123 4. 5. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 128 5. ‘THEN THIS LAND IMMEDIATELY GREW DARK’ PORTRAYING THE CLOSE OF THE REIGN OF HENRY I ............................................. 130 5. 1. The Death of the Patron: Peter the Venerable, Orderic Vitalis .......................... 131 5. 2. (Dead) Body Politic: Peterborough Chronicle, Historia Novella, Gesta Stephani ..................................................................... 136 5. 3. Moralising the Monarch: Huntingdon’s Dead Henries ...................................... 144 5. 4. The Dead in the Lives of Others: Vita Petri Venerabilis, Vita Wulfrici ............ 149 CEU eTD Collection 5. 5. Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 151 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................. 153 BIBLIOGRAPHY .......................................................................................................... 158 Primary Sources ......................................................................................................... 158 Secondary Literature .................................................................................................. 162 3 Table of Figures Figure 1: Burial and Death of Edward (Bayeux Tapestry) .......................................... 27 Figure 2: Deathbeds in the Old English Hexateuch, and the Bayeux Tapestry ........... 29 Figure 3:Harold’s Death in the Bayeux Tapestry ........................................................ 53 Figure 4: An Arrow in the Eye in the Eleventh-Century Copy of the Utrecht Psalter (British Library MS Harley 603 f2) ............................................................... 55 CEU eTD Collection 4 Abbreviations ANS Anglo-Norman Studies (formerly Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies). ASC C The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol. 5, MS C, ed. Katherine O’Brien O’Keefe (Cambridge: Brewer, 2001). ASC D The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol. 5, MS D, ed, G. P. Cubbin (Cambridge: Brewer, 1996). ASC E The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: A Collaborative Edition, vol. 7, MS E, ed. Susan Irvine (Cambridge: Brewer, 2004). ASC T The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, tr. Michael Swanton (London: Phoenix Press, 2000). BT The Bayeux Tapestry, intro. and commentary by David M. Wilson (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985). EHR English Historical Review GND William of Jumièges, Orderic Vitalis, and Robert of Torigni, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. and tr. Elisabeth M. C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992-5). GRA William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings, ed. and tr. R. A B. Mynors, completed by R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, CEU eTD Collection 1998). HA Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People, ed. and tr. Diana E. Greenway (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). 5 HE Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, ed. and tr. Marjorie Chibnall, 6 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968-80). HN William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella: The Contemporary History, ed. Edmund King, tr. K. R. Potter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). HSJ Haskins Society Journal HW Aelred of Rievaulx, The Historical Works, tr. Jane Patrick Freeland, ed. Marsha L. Dutton (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2005). JMH Journal of Medieval History PL Patrologia Latina CEU eTD Collection 6 Introduction Death in the Middle Ages, being both universal and specific, is still a ripe topic for investigation. Modern attitudes towards mortality have often hindered understanding of the issue. Scholars have frequently put aside or misread the role death played in medieval comprehension of the world.1 To simplify: for the modern man, illness and/or infirmity leads to the doctor, which leads to cure or to removal from the workings of society – with death being far removed from daily existence; for the medieval, such signs were not seen as symptoms to be corrected, but an announcement to prepare the body and the soul for the ritual of death that would lead to eternal salvation. Death in the eleventh and twelfth centuries is doubly ripe for study, owing to claims made by modern historians regarding this period. Philip Ariès, the trailblazer of scholarly research on death, regarded this period as when the long-held views on dying were ‘partially altered’.2 The established belief, that the final location of a soul was to be judged at the Second Coming, gave way to an attitude that saw judgment occurring at the moment of death itself. The final moments of life changed from being a feature of time to being an assessment of a human being. This, perhaps, wasn’t the polarized change that Ariès claimed: the final reckoning was still an important event – the formal judgment of the soul – however death had removed the possibility for penance to alter the outcome. There appeared, quite clearly, a connection between death and judgment. The two destinations – Heaven or Hell – meant death was categorised into ‘good’ and CEU eTD Collection ‘bad’. What determined a ‘good death’ was preparation – the dying person, after putting 1 This neglect is examined in two works that deal with death in the Middle Ages: Patrick J. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (New York: Cornell University Press, 1994), 1-2, and David Crouch, ‘The Culture of Death in the Anglo-Norman World’, in Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the 12th- Century Renaissance, ed. C. Warren Hollister (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1997), 157-180 (157). 2 Philip Ariès, Western Attitudes Toward Death from the Middle Ages to the Present, tr. Patricia M. Ranunt (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1975), 27-28. 7 his or her earthly affairs in order, could be cleansed of their sins so they could join with God. ‘Bad death’ was the opposite: the end appeared so sudden – or unprepared for, owing to an