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Violence and Christian Piety in the Romances of the London Thornton Manuscript

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Violence and Christian Piety in the Romances of the London Thornton Manuscript HOLY BLOODSHED: VIOLENCE AND CHRISTIAN PIETY IN THE ROMANCES OF THE LONDON THORNTON MANUSCRIPT DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in Medieval English Literature in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Emily Lavin Leverett, M.A. ***** The Ohio State University 2006 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Ethan Knapp, Adviser Professor Richard Firth Green __________________________ Adviser Professor Lisa Kiser English Graduate Program Copyright by Emily Lavin Leverett 2006 ABSTRACT Graphic violence dominates the three romances in the opening section of the London Thornton Manuscript: The Siege of Jerusalem, The Siege of Milan and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain. In this dissertation I argue that these romances individually use graphic violence as a means of coping with late medieval English anxieties about Christian failures abroad and rising English heresy at home; together, along with the devotional texts surrounding them, they become examples of violent devotional expression. Whether studied alone or as a group, in these romances violence in the name of Christian devotion is imagined as both necessary and praiseworthy. Each romance fundamentally employs violence to reveal Christian and, at times, specifically English Christian dominance over a threatening group or ideology. At the same time, by repeatedly using violence as a marker of devotion, but portraying it as at the service of Church orthodoxy, these romances create boundaries, containing and directing the violence towards real political and ideological goals: the perpetuation of the orthodox Church in England. Finally, I argue that the graphic violence that so marks the three romances found in the opening section of the London Thornton manuscript is normalized and contained by the orthodox religious boundaries provided by the ii devotional texts surrounding them. The instances of graphic violence in the romances become one in a series of many; each is simply another in a string of variant manifestations of devotion. The Siege of Jerusalem, The Siege of Milan and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain are all fourteenth century romances that contain heroes whose violence is fundamental to their displays of piety. In the fifteenth century, for compiler Robert Thornton, these romances fit neatly into a series with devotional texts, suggesting that he might have read the heroes’ violent religious displays as an extension of popular meditative devotion. iii Dedicated to my father iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my adviser, Ethan Knapp, for his intellectual support, encouragement and patience, and for his expertise and guidance in the field of Medieval English literature, all of which made this dissertation possible. I thank Lisa Kiser and Richard Firth Green, my committee members, for their time and valuable contributions to my project. I thank my friends and colleagues, Henry Griffy, Andy Vogel, Richard Rader and Kavita S. Hatwalkar for their repeated comments on my project. I especially thank Sarah Adams for all her support. I thank Janice Banducci, Adam Story and especially my father, Gerald Leverett, for their continued support, encouragement and belief in me and in my project. v VITA January 1 1976……………………………Born – Bakersfield, California 1998……………………………………….B.A. Literature, Claremont McKenna College 2000……………………………………….M.A. English, The Ohio State University 2000-2005…………………………………Graduate Teaching Associate and Lecturer, The Ohio State University 2005-present……………………………….Lecturer, The Ohio State University--Newark FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: English vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract………………………………………………………………...……………..…...ii Dedication……………………………………………………...…………………….…...iv Acknowledgments……………………………………...………………………….………v Vita……………………………………………..……………………………….…….….vi Chapters: 1. Introduction………………………………………………………………………..1 2. Violence, Piety and Christian Knighthood in The Siege of Jerusalem………………………...…………….………………..20 3. Religion and Politics in Late Fourteenth Century England: the Lollard Saracen, the Heretic King and Warrior Priest in The Siege of Milan ……………………………………………………………69 4. Retracing Steps: (Re)Performed Violence as Christian Masculinity in Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain…………………………………………131 5. Rereading Texts and Contexts: the London Thornton Manuscript……………………………………………....176 Bibliography………………………………………...………………………….………217 vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION This dissertation is a study of the three romances in the opening section of Robert Thornton’s fifteenth century manuscript (BL Add. 30142): The Siege of Jerusalem, The 1 Siege of Milan, and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain.TPF F PT Brought together some fifty to seventy-five years after their original composition in the fourteenth century, the culture in which each was specifically created differs from the culture of Robert Thornton. In this dissertation, I examine each romance in its own original context in turn, discussing the particular cultural considerations at its composition and they ways that each romance becomes a location for debate on various subjects. These three romances all have at stake the justification of chivalric violence. Each of these romances, I argue, suggests that violence is fundamentally viable and honorable when done in the service of the Church. With a surprising lack of women in these romances—not one of them is a love story of any kind—they function as a kind of male fantasy of permissible violent retribution. All of the heroes—Titus and Vespasian; Roland, Charlemagne and Turpin; and the Christian 1 TP PT Ralph Hanna and David Lawton, eds., The Siege of Jerusalem, Early English Text Society Original Ser. 320 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003); all citations from Hanna and Lawton. Alan Lupack ed., Three Middle English Charlemagne Romances (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications Western Michigan University 1990); all citations from Milan are from Lupack’s edition. Sidney J. Herrtage, ed., The English Charlemagne Romances Part II: “The Sege off Melayne” and “The Romance of Duke Rowland and Sire Otuell of Spayne,” Early English Text Society Original Ser. 35 (London: N. Trübner and Co. 1880); all citations from Otuel are from Herrtage’s edition. 1 convert Otuel—are defined as, or become, heroic because of their participation in violence in the service of God. Furthermore, I argue that these fantasies of violence are not merely abstract; these romances engage in real cultural concerns: fourteenth century popular devotion, heresy, and troubled chivalric masculinity. Finally, I argue that for the mid-fifteenth century compiler Robert Thornton, a member of the gentry who would be neither hermit nor knight, these romances function as part of a fantasy of violent devotion. The romances are found in the London Thornton manuscript with classic medieval texts of the Passion, allowing him to vicariously participate in both imitatio Christi and imitatio militis. In sum, I argue that these romances are about the integration of violence and religion; all three offer ways for people—via the chivalric feats of the heroes—to elide the contradictions between the two. The romance genre itself is one that tends towards repetition of themes, characters and plots, and romance tends towards the predictable and patterned. The romances of the late fourteenth century take as their guide romances composed centuries earlier, and the stories of Arthur, Charlemagne and others are re-written or translated from continental originals. Such repetition speaks to the staying power of the romance genre: Romance is a genre particularly resistant to becoming out-of-date. Longevity is a consequence of its nature, it makes a virtue out of archaism. If the mores and ethics of twelfth-century tales are carried forward into fourteenth-century versions, the patina of archaism becomes exotic, not 2 old-fashioned. In this respect, it is a conservative form, although any genre with an inclination to celebrate youth, energy and change will have 2 an inbuilt tendency to challenge authority, secular or spiritual.TPF FPT While the romance might be used as a form to challenge authority, exactly how it challenges such authority will vary over time. A single romance recopied and reread, even exactly, a generation later might have very different connotations and overtones: Even successive recopyings of a single text record a process of shifting interpretations and significances, and those shifts become more marked as traditional elements are re-used in stories and new contexts. Such differences are intensified as stories and motifs move across authors, periods, readership groups, and changing political and linguistic 3 conditions.TPF FPT This notion of re-created and shifted meaning is central to the arguments of this dissertation. All of the romances considered in this dissertation are examples of later considerations of their subject matter or characters. While The Siege of Milan has no known original, the characters of Roland, Charlemagne and Bishop Turpin are all well known. Both Jerusalem and Otuel have numerous predecessors in English, Latin, French or some combination of the three. The moments of recopying and rewriting (often with innovations on the new author’s part) are significant. These “unoriginal” texts are not reproduced without consideration and change. 2 TP PT Rosalind Field, “Romance in England, 1066-1400,” The Cambridge History of Medieval Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999) 175. 3 TP PT Helen Cooper,
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