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Written World THE WRITTEN WORLD Past and Place in the Work of Orderic Vitalis AMANDA JANE HINGST University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana © 2009 University of Notre Dame Press Copyright © 2009 by University of Notre Dame Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hingst, Amanda Jane, 1976– The written world : past and place in the work of Orderic Vitalis / by Amanda Jane Hingst. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-268-03086-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-268-03086-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Ordericus Vitalis, 1075–1143? 2. Ordericus Vitalis, 1075–1143? Historia ecclesiastica. 3. Church history—Middle Ages, 600–1500. 4. Religion and geography. 5. Normandy (France)—History—To 1515. 6. Great Britain—History—To 1485. 7. Crusades. 8. Normans. I. Title. BR252.H56 2009 270.4—dc22 2009004363 ∞ The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. © 2009 University of Notre Dame Press Acknowledgments Monks, Orderic Vitalis said, need only two things to survive: wood and water. Historians need three: money, books, and friends. The first was provided by a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship from the U.S. De- partment of Education, which supported four years of my graduate study, including two years of work on the dissertation that became this book. The University of California, Berkeley, also provided fi- nancial support through the Fletcher Jones Fellowship and the Dean’s Normative Time Fellowship. The books, medieval and modern, needed for this study came from libraries around the world. The Département des Manuscrits (division occidentale) at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, graciously allowed me access to Orderic Vitalis’s autograph manu- script of his Historia Ecclesiastica as well as many other treasures. Thanks are also due to the staffs of the Bibliothèque de la ville in Rouen, of the Mediathèque de la communauté urbaine d’Alençon, and of the British Library, all of whom were consistently helpful and understanding. Catherine Hilliard, the librarian at St John’s Col- lege, Oxford, kindly gave me permission to use images from one of that library’s manuscripts and helped to provide me with photo- graphs. Back in the United States, staff members at the many ex- cellent libraries of the University of California, Berkeley, provided me with a wealth of assistance, as did those at the Flora Lamson Hewlett Library at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley and at the John M. Olin Library at Washington University in St. Louis. The Robbins Collection in the Law Library of the School of Law at ix © 2009 University of Notre Dame Press x Acknowledgments the University of California, Berkeley, gave me a quiet and congenial place to work as well as access to some rare reference materials. From my California days I must also thank Geoffrey Koziol, my graduate advisor, and Susanna Elm, Steven Justice, Jennifer Miller, R. I. Moore, Maureen Miller, and the participants in the California Medieval History Seminar at the Huntington Library in May 2004, where I pre- sented a version of chapter 1 of this study. From St. Louis, I want to thank Joe Loewenstein and everyone involved in the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, where I spent two lovely years teaching as an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow. I still can’t believe how much I learned. Charity Urbanski has read my work, given me reliable counsel, and was my companion through Normandy; I couldn’t have done it all with- out her (especially since I can’t drive a stick shift . .). David Spafford, Ruth Jewett-Warner (who gave me an invaluable gift at a particularly opportune time), Dan Warner, Rebecca Moyle, Vi∂ar Pálsson, Mike Car- ver, and Mark Pegg all provided suggestions, hospitality, and support. With Jocelin of Brakelond, the late Robert Brentano taught me how to look for the world in a single text. He died before this study was any- thing more than a vague idea—my work, and the world, are the poorer for his absence. Thanks also to Barbara Hanrahan at the University of Notre Dame Press for her enthusiasm and support, and Matthew Dowd for his careful attention. Orderic reminds his readers that “the state of the world is driven by change.” My family has cheered me on through many changes over the years, and I owe them more than I can say. My sister Rachel Hingst always reminds me that I have choices, and that the world is wider and more varied by far than medieval geographers could ever have imag- ined. My parents, Warren and Susan Hingst, have supported me through some unconventional choices, and have never doubted that I could do this, all the more so in those many moments when I did doubt. So this book is dedicated to my father and my mother, with love. © 2009 University of Notre Dame Press Prologue “In the year of our Lord 1118, on the vigil of the birth of the Lord, a violent gale leveled many buildings and woods in western regions,” the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman monk and historian Orderic Vitalis opened the twelfth book of his Historia Ecclesiastica. He im- mediately went on. “After the death of Pope Paschal, Giovanni of Gaeta, previously chancellor and master of the Roman pontificate, was elected pope as Gelasius and canonically consecrated by the Roman clerics against the wishes of the Emperor. Then Archbishop Bourdin of Braga, called Gregory VIII by his partisans, was intruded into the Church of God with imperial consent. This then grew into a grievous dissension,” and, like the storm that chronologically and narratively ushered in the schism, “a fierce persecution rose up and violently disturbed the Catholic people.”1 But this did not exhaust the significance of the gale that had marked the changing of that year. “At that time in Brittany the Devil appeared to a certain woman lying in bed after childbirth, and taking on the image of her husband he brought the food for which she had asked.” Deceived by the illusion, she ate. “A little while later her husband returned, heard what had happened, became very much afraid, and came back with a priest. The priest, invoking the name of the Lord, touched the woman, sprinkled her with holy water, and told her what to say if the im- postor were to return. Satan came again, and following the instruc- tions she questioned him”—inquisiuit, a questioning in search of truth. “‘Right before Christmas a very great gale resounded dread- fully, and greatly terrified us,’ she said. ‘What did it portend? It de- stroyed churches and homes, flung the tops of towers to the ground, xi © 2009 University of Notre Dame Press xii Prologue and cut down innumerous oaks in the woods.’” The laywoman’s words, remember, were scripted by the Breton priest and devised by the learned priest Orderic as a query into the nature of things obscure. “Satan re- plied, ‘It was decreed by the Lord that a great portion of mankind would perish, but the powerful prayer of the heavenly host persuaded Him to spare the men and command that huge trees fall instead. However, be- fore three years pass there will be terrifying tribulation on the Earth, and very many illustrious people will succumb to destruction.’” Having learned what she wished to know, the woman splashed some holy water on the Devil and he disappeared.2 Orderic scraped nineteen lines of his graceful brown script off the parchment surface of what is now folio 157v of MS Latin 10913 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France so that he could squeeze the story of Satan’s inquisition by a postpartum Breton woman in at this point in his Historia. The erasure is so complete that it is impossible to eke out any glimpse of the previous text, and it can be dated no more precisely than between the mid-1130s and Orderic’s death circa 1142.3 Between the schism that follows immediately in the gale’s narrative wake and the ap- pearance of the Devil in Brittany run some twenty-three lines concern- ing the conflict between England’s King Henry I and his rival Louis VI of France and eight more on the fate of Pope Gelasius, who in 1119 “passed quickly away like a morning frost touched by the breath of God.”4 The tale is immediately followed by another evil sign, this one in England at Ely where a mysterious Jerusalemite ordered a pregnant cow to be sliced open to reveal three piglets; the deaths of Count William of Évreux, Queen Edith-Matilda, and Robert, count of Meulan followed, Orderic reported. Modern historians have tended to pass over these stories, these por- tents that dot the Historia Ecclesiastica as they do so many medieval his- tories, and hurry on to the portions of Orderic’s account alleged to be more accurate, more believable, more real.5 Even Mark Twain, of all the unlikely critics, scorned the cosmic interpretations offered up by twelfth- century historiography, observing about Orderic’s younger English con- temporary Henry of Huntingdon, “Sometimes I am half persuaded that he is only a guesser, and not a good one. The divine wisdom must surely be of a better quality than he makes it out to be.” The historical inter- © 2009 University of Notre Dame Press Prologue xiii pretation of God’s plan was not a skill prized highly by Twain.
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