Writing Conquest: Traditions of Anglo-Saxon Invasion and Resistance in the Twelfth Century A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Christopher H. Flack IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Professor Andrew Scheil, Adviser September 2013 © Christopher H. Flack 2013 i Acknowledgements While this dissertation may bear my name alone, I never could have completed it without the help of innumerable people. I would, therefore, like to thank the English Department at the University of Minnesota; not only were they incredibly generous, but their support—as a whole—and their commitment to professionalization have been invaluable to me throughout this process. To the libraries at the University of Minnesota as well, I have to extend my thanks. Not only did they allow me to take out entirely too many books for my own good and bear with me when I invariably neglected to turn them back on time, but they never failed to seek out those rare texts instrumental to the completion of this work. While I cannot thank the faculty at the University of Minnesota enough for their dedication both inside and out of the classroom, I’d like to especially thank those members of my committee who have all helped make this dissertation a reality. To Mary Franklin-Brown, Lianna Farber, Rebecca Krug I extend my heartfelt thanks for their time, comments, guidance, and help throughout this process. I, of course, owe my greatest debt to my adviser Professor Andrew Scheil, who never flinched when I asked him for advice on a multitude of subjects, who tirelessly read innumerable materials—whether those be abstracts, fellowship applications, conference presentations, or dissertation chapters—who steadfastly supported me in all my endeavors, and who encouraged me to pursue all my scholarly interests—even in things like Old Norse and Gothic. I’d also like to thank all my friends and family, whose patience and kindness helped me get through even the bleakest of moments. Without my parents’ support I invariably would be leading a far different, and more miserable life, as a medical doctor of some variety; to my brother for helping me procrastinate in new and different ways. I would like to extend my greatest of thanks to my wife. No matter the time, nor her level of exhaustion, she was always willing to listen, to help me find my way, to keep me grounded by reminding me of what was important, and to wrangle a screaming toddler bent on watching cartoons on dada’s computer. She never even balked when I asked her to read over yet another chapter for me; I’m afraid that at this point she might know the dissertation even better than I do. Finally to my sons, Rory and Conor, who remind me every day just how lucky I am. ii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Section I Chapter 1 7 The Adventus Saxonum: Remembering the Conquerors and the Conquered Chapter 2 51 The Adventus Saxonum in the Twelfth-Century: William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon Chapter 3 84 Nova Proditio: Vortigern and the Germanic Tribes in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae Section II Chapter 4 113 De verbo in verbum? Translating the Battle of Brunanburh into Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum Section III Chapter 5 142 1066: Harold Godwinson, the English, and England in the Early Accounts of the Battle of Hastings Chapter 6 180 The Afterlife of 1066: Twelfth-Century Accounts of the Battle of Hastings Conclusion 227 Bibliography 231 Appendix: Texts and Translations 240 1 Introduction No doubt in an attempt to find a solid foundation through which the stark social, religious, political, and cultural upheaval could be understood, historical writing in England during the long twelfth-century (ca. 1100-1250) reached almost unprecedented heights, both in quantity and in quality. As James Campbell once remarked, this was the period that witnessed “the greatest advances in the study and understanding of Anglo- Saxon history made before the nineteenth century”;1 this was the age of Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, and Geoffrey of Monmouth—among others—each of whom sought to fit their own particular Anglo-Norman moment into the wider sweep of insular history. And yet, to do so required a deft touch. Shortly after the Norman Conquest of 1066 wherein the native aristocracy was replaced almost wholesale and the French language predominated; as such, the place of the Anglo-Saxon past in the twelfth-century was far from secure. As such, traditional, or even foundational, narratives of the Anglo- Saxon past were under unique stress; otherwise largely stable representations of the adventus Saxonum, the battle of Brunanburh, and the Norman Conquest of 1066, for instance, were drastically modified, augmented, and rewritten in a new ideological context. Writing Conquest examines the ways in which Latin, Old English, and Middle English historical texts remembered these traditional narratives of the past. While 1 James Campbell, “Some Twelfth-Century Views of the Anglo-Saxon Past,” in Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London: Hambledon Press, 1986), 209. 2 invariably this study engages with questions about the exigent social and political forces operative on these narratives, the primary focus is on how invasion and resistance survive as textual memory. In this, it differs from the large body of more traditional historical studies in that it provides a systematic, literary analysis of these formative moments of Anglo-Saxon history during a fascinatingly complex period. Perhaps more importantly, Writing Conquest represents a radical expansion of previous scholarly studies in two important ways. First, whereas previous studies largely analyze these moments of conquest, invasion, and resistance in isolation, Writing Conquest contextualizes them both inter- and intratextually; in so doing this study sheds new light on how the literary tradition of these foundational moments developed diachronically, but also how individual authors—like William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon—responded to and reshaped these narratives to fit their ideological and literary contexts. Second, this study pairs more traditional historiographical works with what have been described as more fictional constructs—like Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, or the anonymous Vita Haroldi—in order to provide new insight on the relationship between fiction and history.2 In its basic structure, Writing Conquest has three sections, each treating different moments of invasion and resistance in Anglo-Saxon England: the first concerns the adventus Saxonum (the invasion of Roman Britain by the Germanic “founding fathers” of 2 For recent studies of that examine the intersection between history and fiction, see particularly Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past: the Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), Gabrielle Spiegel, The Past as Text: The Theory and Pratice of Medieval Historiography (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), D. H. Green, The Beginnings of Medieval Romance: Fact and Fiction, 1150-1220 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), Robert M. Stein, Reality Fictions: Romance History, and Governmental Authority, 1025-1180 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), and Laura Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066-1200 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 3 the Anglo-Saxons), the second the battle of Brunanburh (a watershed moment of Anglo- Saxon resistance to Viking invasion in the tenth century), and the third the Norman Conquest of 1066. Each section begins with the early tradition and then moves to the reception of this material in twelfth-century England. In section one—chapters one, two, and three—I examine the ways in which the adventus Saxonum was remembered. In chapter one, for instance, I suggest that the work of historians like Gildas, Bede, and Nennius depends on a set of metaphorical commonplaces—the marking of linguistic difference, the inclusion or suppression of names, and the geographic marginalization of the Britons—in their representation of the adventus Saxonum. While—as Robert Hanning has noted—Bede and Gildas ultimately fit the adventus Saxonum within a providential model that saw this event as just punishment for the sins of the British, each historian uses these metaphoric commonplaces to their own ends. Gildas, for instance, emphasizes Vortigern’s responsibility, strips the Germanic tribesmen of their humanity, and accents the dichotomized relationship between the Germanic tribes and the Britons; while Bede maintains Gildas’s distinctive binary relationship, his narrative begins to rehabilitate Vortigern’s role in the adventus Saxonum by shifting blame more squarely onto the Britons themselves. It is not until Nennius’s time, however, that this rehabilitation reaches its apex as Vortigern is all but absolved of political responsibility; here it is his personal, and not his political, failure that precipitates the coming of the Germanic tribes. Chapter two moves to the twelfth century and examines the representation of the adventus Saxonum in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Regum Anglorum, and Henry of Huntingdon’s Historia Anglorum. Herein I argue that William of Malmesbury shifts 4 away from that early tendency to recuperate the fall of the Britons and instead uses this providential scheme he had inherited from Gildas to chart the ascendancy of the Anglo- Normans in a post-Conquest Britain. For him, the Germanic tribes are the forbearers of his current society, and the adventus Saxonum is the foundational moment of a perdurable reign that endures because of the Norman Conquest of 1066. The adventus Saxonum, then, marks not a moment of rupture, but continuity. In contrast, Henry of Huntingdon relies on a providential scheme that is inherently cyclical and repeatable.