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This volume of the Haskins Society Journal furthers the Society's commitment to historical and interdisciplinary research on the early and central Middle Ages, especially in the Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Angevin worlds but also on the continent. The topics of the essays it contains range from the curious place of Francia in the historiography of medieval Europe to strategies of royal land distribution in tenth-century Anglo-Saxon England to the representation of men and masculinity in the works of Anglo-Norman historians. Essays on the place of polemical literature in Frutolf of Michelsberg's Chronicle, exploration of the relationship between chivalry and crusading in Baudry of Bourgeuil's History, and Cosmas of Prague's manipulation of historical memory in the service of ecclesiastical privilege and priority each extend the volume's engagement with medieval historiography, employing rich continental examples to do so. Investigations of comital personnel in Anjou and Henry II's management of royal forests and his foresters shed new light on the evolving nature of secular governance in the twelfth centuries and challenge and refine important aspects of our view of medieval rule in this period. The volume ends with a wide-ranging reflection on the continuing importance of the art object itself in medieval history and visual studies. Contributors: H.F. Doherty, Kathryn Dutton, Kirsten Fenton, Paul Fouracre, Herbert Kessler, Ryan Lavelle, Thomas J.H. McCarthy, Lisa Wolverton, Simon Yarrow.
These associated articles offer exploratory investigations into constructions of masculinity at the courts of the Anglo-Norman kings as contributions to the larger study of gender in the Anglo-Norman realm. Using contemporary chronicle accounts, each examines representations of men and masculine behaviour at the royal court during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Recent historiography has seen this period as critical in the emergence of courtly behaviour and ideas. Much of this has been in response to Norbert Elias' great book, The Civilizing Process, which saw the courts of early modern European monarchs as focal points for the diffusion of civilized behavioural norms that helped stabilize the state as a whole. It was C. Stephen Jaeger, however, who first investigated how Elias' thesis related to the Middle Ages and ultimately challenged the Elias narrative. For Jaeger the great moment and mechanism of social change was to be found not in the early modern period but in late tenth-century Ottonian Germany. It was here in the figure of the courtier bishop that Jaeger traced how a new social code, devised from classical models, allowed the court to be identified as a civilizing institution that helped promote political cohesion. Despite their chronological differences both Elias and Jaeger are concerned with larger historical narratives and debates concerning the role of the court within the transformation of the state and the nation.
In the latter years of Henry I's reign, one of his knights (milites) experienced a troublesome dream. Whilst asleep he dreamt that his long, luxurious hair was strangling him. He was so unnerved by this vision that upon waking he promptly had it all cut off. The knight (miles) was apparently one of a number of long-haired men who, forgetful of their natural sex, had wished to grow their hair long in order to look like women. This dream episode and subsequent hair-cutting is reported by the twelfth-century Benedictine monk William of Malmesbury. Malmesbury goes on to comment that as a result of this dream many others also had their hair cut but that it was a short-lived fashion. Indeed, according to Malmesbury, barely a year had passed before:
… all who regarded themselves as courtiers (curiales) relapsed into their old faults. They vied with women (feminis) in the length of their locks, and when, the hair was inadequate, they fastened on a kind of hair-piece, forgetting, or rather not knowing, the Apostle's judgement, ‘If a man has long hair, it is to his shame.’
Malmesbury's explicit use of gendered imagery raises a whole series of questions. Men are here compared to women with their long flowing hair in a way that makes clear that this is not how men should act.
The complex relationship between masculinity and religion, as experienced in both the secular and ecclesiastical worlds, forms the focus for this volume, whose range encompasses the rabbis of the Babylonian and Palestinian Talmud, and moves via Carolingian and Norman France, Siena, Antioch, and high and late medieval England to the eve of the Reformation. Chapters investigate the creation and reconstitution of different expressions of masculine identity, from the clerical enthusiasts for marriage to the lay practitioners of chastity, from crusading bishops to holy kings. They also consider the extent to which lay and clerical understandings of masculinity existed in an unstable dialectical relationship, at times sharing similar features, at others pointedly different, co-opting and rejecting features of the other; the articles show this interplay to be more far more complicated than a simple linear narrative of either increasing divergence, or of clerical colonization of lay masculinity. They also challenge conventional historiographies of the adoption of clerical celibacy, of the decline of monasticism and the gendered nature of piety. Patricia Cullum is Head of History at the University of Huddersfield; Katherine J. Lewis is Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield. Contributors: James G. Clark, P.H. Cullum, Kirsten A. Fenton, Joanna Huntington, Katherine J. Lewis, Matthew Mesley, Catherine Sanok, Michael L. Satlow, Rachel Stone, Jennifer D. Thibodeaux, Marita von Weissenberg
Edited by
P. H. Cullum, Head of History at the University of Huddersfield,Katherine J. Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
Edited by
P. H. Cullum, Head of History at the University of Huddersfield,Katherine J. Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
Edited by
P. H. Cullum, Head of History at the University of Huddersfield,Katherine J. Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
Edited by
P. H. Cullum, Head of History at the University of Huddersfield,Katherine J. Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
Edited by
P. H. Cullum, Head of History at the University of Huddersfield,Katherine J. Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
In 1125 the papal legate John of Crema arrived in England where he presided over an ecclesiastical council held at Westminster. At this council, according to the twelfth-century chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, John
dealt most severely with the matter of priests’ wives, saying that it was the greatest sin to rise from the side of a whore and go to make the body of Christ. Yet, although on the very same day he had made the body of Christ, he was discovered after vespers with a whore. This affair was very well-known and could not be denied. The high honour which he had enjoyed everywhere was transformed into utter disgrace. So he retreated to his own land, confounded and discredited by the judgment of God.
The apparent glee with which Henry tells this story adds new vitality to the idiom about the pot calling the kettle black. However this narrative episode does have more serious undertones. Right at its heart is the question of clerical celibacy and how far this was a marker of religious identity for men like the papal legate and the English chronicler. The public shaming of John after he was caught in bed with a woman despite his earlier denunciations suggests that sex and sexual behaviour was problematic and even a source of tension for religious men at this time. It also highlights that religious reform was a live issue in twelfth-century England given the legate's earlier criticism of those priests who were married.
Edited by
P. H. Cullum, Head of History at the University of Huddersfield,Katherine J. Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
Edited by
P. H. Cullum, Head of History at the University of Huddersfield,Katherine J. Lewis, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Huddersfield
One of the more unusual explanations for English defeat in 1066 appears in the Life of St Wulfstan. In it Bishop Wulfstan lambastes English noblemen for their luxurious style of living as well as their long flowing hair and he warns them that this will lead to disaster if they do not mend their ways. Not one to be accused of being all talk and no action, Wulfstan proceeds to cut the hair of all those that he can with a special knife which he kept to hand precisely for this purpose.
Anyone who thought it worth objecting he would openly charge with effeminacy [mollitia], and openly threaten them with ill: men who blushed to be what they had been born, and let their hair flow like women, would be no more use than women in the defence of their country against the foreigner. No one would deny that this was shown to be very true that same year when the Normans came.
Wulfstan's prophetic awareness of the coming of the Normans is particularly striking not only because of the wonderful image of Wulfstan as a barber but also because of its explicit use of a gendered language. Men here are compared to women with their long flowing hair and are accused of effeminacy, which implies that they were not acting as men should. Is it also the case that Wulfstan, a cleric reprimanding laymen, is in turn being cast as the ‘real man’ here? He is certainly presented as a figure of power and authority and as a prophet to the English. Is he also a hero in the sense of a masculine ideal? This passage suggests that a gendered reading of the text, with especial reference to the presentation of Wulfstan, may be worth exploring further.
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