This collection of eleven essays is the fruit of Leeds panels in 2022, part of the current flowering in study of historical engagement in post-Conquest England, including two other edited collections from the same series in the past decade. This volume concerns itself specifically with the ways post-Conquest authors engaged with and shaped the pre-Conquest past for their diverse purposes. As a result, the articles are all engaged with questions of authorial purpose as well as audience expectations, while other common themes include source study and the presence of alternate traditions or oral sources, the importance of both language and content in analysis, and relations between monasteries, lay society, and secular clerics. While the majority of the articles discuss twelfth-century authors and Latin texts, a few chapters also move into the thirteenth century or consider vernacular sources. Despite the variety of authors and texts considered, there are still many fruitful comparisons and cross-relationships between the articles that help the entire volume to hold together.
In addition to an introduction that primarily summarizes the various contributions, the articles themselves are divided into two parts, with each part arranged both chronologically and thematically. The articles in the first part, “Writing the Past,” are especially concerned with source study, and most consider a single author or text. The first three chapters all engage with historical writing at Canterbury. In the first, Daniel Anlezark distinguishes at least three authorial personas in the 1080 to 1100 annals of the Peterborough Chronicle, although he also identifies a monastic, Christ Church Canterbury, focus throughout. The first author, writing up until either 1087 or possibly 1090, is anti-William I and speaks from personal authority as witness of the king’s bad behavior. The annals from 1091 to 1094 were all likely written together by a separate author, since they use a more objective voice and criticize William Rufus only very obliquely. A new author appears to take over again around 1100, with still other word choices and a slightly more personal style. While this chapter does not fit as clearly into the main theme of the volume as some of the others, it remains a helpful contribution to source study and the understanding of the later entries in the Chronicle.
Eleanor Parker considers pre-Conquest history more explicitly in her article about Eadmer’s depictions of the pre-Conquest church at Canterbury, both physical and institutional. She argues that while Eadmer associated the Conquest with disruption, he also dated change at Canterbury to the death of Dunstan in 988, with the consequence that he envisioned Lanfranc and Anselm’s reforms returning the church to its previous morals. In addition, Parker demonstrates how Eadmer created continuity in his history of Christ Church by giving English monks important roles in conveying the story of the past. Throughout, Parker focuses on Eadmer’s less well-known historical writing and illuminates the important ways he rewrote earlier texts as a way of both recognizing and eliding differences in the church’s history.
Michael Staunton’s chapter moves forward in time to a comparison between the late-twelfth-century Gervase of Canterbury and his contemporary, Richard of Devizes, to illustrate that medieval authors used the past for many purposes beyond instrumental ones like trying to maintain their institution’s power. As an example, Staunton demonstrates how Richard of Devizes used the past primarily to entertain an audience used to allusions and for whom historical veracity was less important than telling a good story that fulfilled their expectations about the characters. This chapter is especially helpful at reminding the reader not to assume what an author’s purpose is when reading, but to allow for many different purposes, and so serves as a counterpoint to the focus on more political purposes described in many of the other chapters.
The final articles in Part One do not deal with Canterbury, at least directly, and consider either smaller Latin or vernacular texts. Stanislav Mereminskii gives a thorough analysis of the Libellus de primo Saxonum aduentu, a small “handbook of chronology” composed at Durham in the early twelfth century. Mereminskii’s consideration of the four manuscripts and their sources leads him to suggest that the text might have been composed in the bishop’s household, perhaps for Ranulf Flambard, and created in at least two stages. Despite its length and seeming simplicity, the Libellus used a wide range of sources, many of which are no longer extant, and the chapter is a good reminder of the variety of medieval engagement with history.
Elisabeth van Houts’s article similarly considers an excerpted text to discover its original context, focusing attention on the Libellus de gestis regum Anglorum, an excerpt of the earliest version of William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum Anglorum. Based on its manuscript circulation and its emphasis on the relationship between English and French rulers, van Houts argues that the text was composed in the mid-twelfth century in a Cistercian context, so that the monks could navigate the newly fraught relationship between the kings of England and France now that King Henry II of England also ruled Normandy. In addition, van Houts highlights the text’s connection to Empress Mathilda, and the way Mathilda’s books moved across any perceived boundary between lay and monastic libraries, an important general corrective to strong scholarly separation between the spheres.
The final article in Part One, by Jacqueline M. Burek, moves forward to the fourteenth century and Robert Mannyng’s Story of Inglande and, like Staunton’s contribution, emphasizes literary features of the text. Burek’s article is particularly strong in the way it combines so many different elements of Mannyng’s work to support the claim that Mannyng divides his text between British and English history, rather than at the Conquest. Both the verse forms and the content combine to suggest that England and the English continue across the Conquest. Most interestingly, Burek demonstrates how the link between the king’s body and the land present in Mannyng’s work means that pre-Conquest royal burials both emphasize continuity and present the possibility of other perspectives on the past. As such, this chapter marks the transition to the next section, about identity and the way post-Conquest authors created and troubled identity markers.
The first two articles of Part Two, “Writing Identities,” are less concerned with traditional source study, and instead consider alternate sources of history in addition to written evidence. The first, by Cynthia Turner Camp, is particularly impressive. It is one of the more theoretical chapters in the volume, using Michel de Certeau’s theorization of space as practiced place to argue for the importance of considering the embodied experience of medieval people in the landscape. Through an investigation of smaller monastic sites with pre-Conquest connections to saints, she analyzes the narratives of space, as well as the presence of alternative spatial practices in archeology or the written record, to identify both institutional perspectives that claim the pre-Conquest saint for the (often new) monastic community, as well as frequent evidence of other uses of the space that do not accord with simple monastic control. Like Burek, Turner Camp demonstrates medieval peoples’ awareness of the multi-valent nature of the past and its physical remains.
In the next article, Connor C. Wilson argues that Aelred of Rievaulx’s Relatio de Standardo was written for the Northern English community that fought in the battle and their descendants, both religious and secular. It claims that the text could have been written earlier than currently dated, perhaps even earlier than 1152, and that the audience for the text includes the secular community in northern England, in addition to the more commonly recognized monastic audience. Wilson analyzes the historical description of Norman victories in Walter’s harangue before the battle for the way it creates a military community supported by God across the conquest. The chapter therefore argues for more overlap between secular and monastic audiences, like van Houts’s.
The final three articles analyze the representation of pre-Conquest figures in post-Conquest texts. The first two of the three consider Mercian figures: Julian Calcagno on King Offa and Matthew Firth on Æthelflæd. They also both examine Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, and the Worcester Chronicle; in addition, Calcagno also includes Gerald of Wales and Matthew Paris. After a careful and useful summary of the pre-Conquest information about their subjects, they turn to the analysis of how the authors adapted that information, based on their historiographical approach. For Calcagno, this consideration also includes each author’s association with St. Albans, founded by Offa, or Hereford, resting place of Æthelberht who Offa killed. Firth, in turn, argues that the stability in how Æthelflæd was treated goes beyond use of the same written sources and instead reflects cultural memory that remembers her positively in comparison to other tenth-century royal women. Despite this stability, though, the three authors still depicted Æthelflæd very differently, from a model queen, to a model ruler, to a sole ruler with little concern for didacticism. Both Firth and Calcagno demonstrate the way careful source study and comparison between authors can illuminate continuities and discontinuities in historiographical approaches.
Finally, Kimberly Lifton argues Walter Map transforms Eadric Silvaticus into a parable of colonization, where cultural assimilation through marriage and church, represented by Alnoth, the son of Eadric, and a fairy maiden, ultimately succeeds after colonization by force had failed. Lifton uses postcolonial theory and especially formulations of hybridity to contend that the refashioning of the Saxon rebel Eadric Silvaticus into an Anglo-Norman lord, and especially the creation of Alnoth, the wonderful hybrid son, is Map’s way of arguing for a certain kind of colonization of Wales, one where intermarriage creates a third, and better, space.
Overall, these articles cover a wide range of sources and themes. While Eadmer of Canterbury, William of Malmesbury, and Henry of Huntingdon appear frequently, as giants in twelfth-century historiography, many of the articles make important contributions to our understanding of less well-known texts. These articles are often especially valuable. Thus, Mereminskii’s and Turner Camp’s contributions both shed light on smaller and less obvious historical sources and demonstrate how important those are to the wider understanding of medieval historiography. Even the articles that examine the well-known authors often consider their less-frequently studied texts or approach those authors from different angles. For example, Parker considers Eadmer’s Miracula S. Dunstani, van Houts examines an abridgement of William of Malmesbury, and Staunton, Calcagno, and Firth all compare several different authors. Any collection of articles that arises out of conference papers will often struggle with cohesion, and there are certainly some articles that do not fit as well as others. In addition, the division of the articles into the two parts is not always obvious, and there are several chapters that could have appeared in either section, since, as these articles demonstrate, the relationship between history and identity is always slippery. However, these are mostly small difficulties, and all the articles are useful contributions to the study of their particular authors, texts, and methods.