The Book of the Foundation of St Bartholomew’s Church: Consecration, Restoration, and Translation

Laura Varnam

So al these thyngis that bene seide or shall be seide / they beholde the ende / and consummacioun of this document / For trewly God is yn this place.1 This statement appears midway through the Middle English transla- tion of the twelfth-centuryL atin foundation legend known as The Book of the Foundation of St Bartholomew’s Church. As a foundation legend the text’s primary aim is to narrate the construction of the church of St Bartholomew the Great in London, and to consecrate it as a sacred space by promoting its claims to sanctity. The textual and physical space of the church are conflated in the quotation above because the referent of ‘trewly God is yn this place’ is at once the church itself, the immediate subject of the foundation legend, and the translated document, in need of particular authorisation because of its status as a vernacular text. The Middle English translation was commissioned during the ‘Great Restoration’ of St Bartholomew’s at the turn of the fifteenth-century and its promotion of the sanctity of the church played a major role in the church’s strategy to re-establish itself as the dominant church in medieval London. The Middle English translation of The Book of the Foundation fol- lows a transcription of the original Latin foundation legend in British Library MS Cotton Vespasian B IX, dated c.1400.2 St Bartholomew the Great was founded in Smithfield, just outside the walls of the city of London, in 1123 by Rahere and the Latin foundation legend

1 The Book of the Foundation of St Bartholomew’s Church, ed. Norman Moore, EETS, o. s. 163 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 32. All quotations refer to this edition. For the benefit of readers unfamiliar with Middle English, I provide my own paraphrase. ‘So all these things that have been said or shall be said, they behold the end and consummation of this document. For truly, God is in this place’. 2 see Moore p. xi and Laura Varnam, ‘The Howse of God on Erthe: Constructions of Sacred Space in Late Middle English Religious Literature’, unpublished DPhil the- sis, Oxford University (2007), 36–40. 58 laura varnam was composed some fifty years after the building process had begun. St Bartholomew’s was the church of the Augustinian priory and it was closely, although not always harmoniously, associated with St Bartho- lomew’s Hospital, through their shared founder. The original Latin text was translated into Middle English when the physical church was itself being translated into a new form. During the ‘Great Restora- tion’ of St Bartholomew’s the physical space of the priory church was undergoing a major transformation: the east end of the church was entirely remodelled, the parish chapel was extended, and the monu- ment to the founder Rahere was commissioned.3 Much of this restora- tion was sponsored by Roger Walden, Bishop of London and favourite of Richard II, and I have argued elsewhere that Walden also instigated the translation of the foundation legend as a parallel activity to his involvement in the physical restoration.4 The Middle English transla- tion, which is the focus of this chapter, resonates back in time to its original twefth-century composition and the sacred space Rahere con- structed. But, it is Janus-like in its ability to be of relevance to a late medieval-London architecture and socio-political context which the original Latin author could never have envisaged. This chapter will begin by examining the relationship between The Book of the Foundation and the space that it depicts, the Romanesque church of St Bartholomew the Great, in both its twelfth- and fifteenth- century incarnations. It will focus in particular on the text’s construc- tion of the church and its builders in order to explore the notion of the sacred which is produced through the interaction of the physi- cal structure with its textual re-imagining. My analysis will also be especially alert to the scriptural and symbolic language with which the sacred is constructed in the text, much of which draws upon the medi- eval church consecration ceremony. The second section of this chapter will discuss the text’s consecration of the church through the narra- tion of its miracles. It will argue that the location of many of those miracles outside the material building produces a sacred space which is mobile, contagious, and while dependent upon is not restrained by the physical boundaries of its architecture. The chapter will conclude

3 see E. A. Webb, The Records of St Bartholomew’s Priory and of the Church and Parish of St Bartholomew the Great, West Smithfield, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford Univer- sity Press, 1921), vol. II, esp. 11–12. 4 Varnam, 36–40.