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Henry II and Ganelon Syracuse Scholar (1979-1991) Volume 4 Issue 1 Syracuse Scholar Spring 1983 Article 4 1983 Henry II and Ganelon Paul R. Hyams Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/suscholar Part of the Medieval History Commons Recommended Citation Hyams, Paul R. (1983) "Henry II and Ganelon," Syracuse Scholar (1979-1991): Vol. 4 : Iss. 1 , Article 4. Available at: https://surface.syr.edu/suscholar/vol4/iss1/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Syracuse Scholar (1979-1991) by an authorized editor of SURFACE. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Hyams: Henry II and Ganelon Henry II and Ganelon Paul R. Hyams nee upon a time, there was a king of Nantes, called Equitan, 0 a good and courteous ruler, filled with a proper enthusiasm for princely things: Equitan had a seneschal, a good knight, brave and loyal, who took care ofhis landfor him, governed and administered it. Unless the king was making war, he would never, no matter what the emergency, neglect his hunting, his hawking or other amusements. 1 [lines 21-28] In time Equitan fell in love with his seneschal's wife and seduced her, while the ''seneschal sat in court, trying pleas and accusations.'' Now these two illicit lovers came to a hot and sticky end. The wronged Paul R. Hyams was educated at Ox­ husband killed the couple by upending them in a tub of boiling water ford University and is now a fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. He is in­ intended for himself. How this happened is, sadly, beside the present terested in the development of point. Readers interested in torrid love affairs must consult the original English law in the twelfth and thir­ or one of the excellent translations available. A modern audience may teenth centuries and is the author of King, Lords and Peasants in Medieval indeed feel that the lovers received a deserved comeuppance. England: The Common Law of But the tale's author, Marie de France, intended a good deal more Vtfleinage in the Twelfth and Thir­ teenth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon than this. Contemporaries swiftly seized her thrust at the double stan­ Press, 1980). dards demanded in public life . Castle society applauded chivalry at story I. Most of the translations are my time but in the real world valued stability at least as highly. People own, quite often adapted from those with much to lose required much of their kings, whom they expected easily available. The excellent verse translation by Robert Hanning and both to cut a fine knightly figure and to manage daily business, however Joan Ferrante, The Lais of Man·e de dull. Such genteel folk naturally tended to despise the boring task of France (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1978), was unfortunately unavailable justicing the lower orders in "pleas and accusations." They accepted to me in England. I first met Equitan that the job must be done but did not easily see functionaries who did in the prose translation by Paul Brians, Bawdy Tales from the Courts so as potential stars of a story like this one. Marie reflected this of Medie val France (New York: miscalculation by never deigning to name the seneschal; yet he, not Harper Torchbooks, 1972), and have the king, discharged the burden of government in knightly society. used the edition of A. Ewart (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1944). But law in the twelfth century could be a genteel activity too. Knights Published by SURFACE, 2013 1 24-SYRACUSE SCHOLAR Syracuse Scholar (1979-1991), Vol. 4, Iss. 1 [2013], Art. 4 and ladies participated with skill and enthusiasm in the dramas of their own disputes and awaited crucial judgments with bated breath. In this essay I hope to glean something of the gentleman's view of law from literary texts, and thus to illuminate the more forbidding and obscure texts of the lawyers themselves. I choose two works, one, the The Song of Roland, possibly the greatest and most readable of early medieval masterpieces, and the other, Lanval, a rather sophisticated courtier's fairy tale. My goal is to use vernacular literature to study techniques for resolving disputes in Angevin England. 2 A brief discussion of the 2. R. Howard Bloch, Medieval French legal reforms of Henry II will serve as background. Literature and Law (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), is the first attempt to enry II has generally been treated in the textbooks and survey the content of legal ideas in Old French literature. Bloch hoped to H monographs primarily as an English king. Yet he was mar­ emphasize the "importance of the ried to Eleanor of Aquitaine and possessed more extensive historical background of courtliness as against those who would ignore, deny, and prestigious territories in France than in England. Happily, recent or simplify it'' (p. 6). studies of twelfth-century England have begun to recognize these im­ portant links with the French mainland and to examine their influence on native institutions and development. To date, however, this revi­ sion has hardly touched the history of law. Thus a textbook view of Henry II's legal reforms might still run something like this: During the reign, disparate elements of legal potentiality (such as itinerant justices, the use of writs to indicate royal wishes in the con­ duct of litigation, and the use of juries to decide disputes on factual evidence) were brought together in a series of brilliant, centralizing reforms which created a novel system of law better than anything foreigners could manage at the time. Numerous discriminatory, com­ peting, and irrationally functioning court systems were first dominated, and then replaced, by the king's common law. After the Dark Ages justice could thus again approximate to the ancient ideal of neither fear nor favor, but right. And the guiding genius behind this crucial change may well have been Henry himself.J 3. W. L. Warren, Henry II (London: Behind such views lie, I think, two misleading premises. First, because Eyre Methuen, 1973); D. M. Stenton, English justice between the Conquest much of the scholarship concentrates too narrowly on legal forms and and the Great Charter, 1066- 1215, the concomitant sources, concepts and patterns taken from the profes­ Jayne Lectures for 1963 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1964 ). sional lawyer's world of the thirteenth century have been extended backward to the twelfth. Therefore the static technical nature of later law has been exaggerated for the earlier period. Professor S. F. C. Milsom' s recent book, The Legal Framework of English Feudalism, 4 a 4. Cambridge: Cambridge University lawyerly analysis of legal materials, has repaired some of the damage; Press, 1975. Among many reviews, see my own in English Histon·cal Review but a more just and enduring balance can be struck by use of the 93 (1978): 856- 61 , and that of Robert dynamic material provided by chronicles and contemporary literature. C. Palmer, Michigan Law Review 79 (1981): 1130-64. Twelfth-century law was quite central in the social life of the classes that mattered in twelfth-century society. This was seldom if ever true later, when law had become professionalized and remote. 5 5. Robert C. Palmer, "The Origins of Second, British patriotism, still proud of its common law today, the Legal Profession in England," The Insh jun.st, n.s. 11 (1976): 126- 46, is naturally leans toward a belief in the uniqueness of the English approach a recent inquiry that places profes­ to problems of law and order. Just why this unique virtue should have sionalization earlier than I would. been born from a twelfth-century empire centered on Anjou is rather obscure. In truth, Angevin England shared a common intellectual world with the rest of French-speaking Europe. Knightly mores and custom defined the social or legal limits of acceptable behavior all over north­ ern Europe. Furthermore, the so-called feudal custom of Anglo-Norman England demonstrably belongs to one of the three regional groups https://surface.syr.edu/suscholar/vol4/iss1/4 2 Hyams: Henry II and Ganelon HENRY II AND GANELON-25 into which French custom can be divided, that of the West from which most baronial families of twelfth-century England originally sprang. Dif­ ferences of detail between the cross-Channel customs were hardly greater than those between continental areas within the western region of France-Normandy, Brittany, and Poitou. The language of custom should reflect this linkage. The common French words which eventually became common law terms of art, such as essoin (excuse , reason for nonappearance in court) and esgart (award, judgment) could not have been understood very differently in Angevin England than they were 6. Paul R. Hyams , " The Common in continental France. 6 Law and the French Connection," in This leads to a point well put by Bishop Stubbs a century ago. ''In Proceedings of the Battle Conference on Anglo-Norman Studies, IV (1981) , truth," he said, "I would call your attention to . the fact that the ed. R. Allen Brown (Woodbridge, same age that originated the forms in which our national and constitu­ Suffolk: Boydell Press , 1982) . tionallife began to mould itself, was also an age of great literary activ­ ity; of very learned and acute men, and of culture enough to appreciate 7. W. Stubbs, Seventeen Lectures on and conserve the fruits of their labours.' ' 7 Even now the culture of the Study of Medieval and Modern Henry II ' s glittering court has been little studied in the manner that History (Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1887), p. 136. Stubbs envisaged.
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