Elisabeth van Houts

Latin poetry and the Anglo-Norman court 1066–1135: The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio

In order to answer the question whether the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio is the poem written shortly after 1066 by Bishop Guy of Amiens or anonymously in the early twelfth century, the Carmen is set in the context of the Latin poetry written between 1066 and 1135. A survey of the poems, which have survived in manuscripts or in the works of Orderic Vitalis and Henry of Huntingdon, concerning William the Conqueror and his family, shows that, although he himself was a major source of inspiration, neither he nor his sons were patrons of literature. On the contrary, his daughters Cecily and Adela and his daughters-in-law Mathilda II and Adeliza of Louvain actively encouraged poets. During the whole period the majority of poets came from outside the Anglo-Norman realm. The survey also shows that the only contemporary poem describing work and that this poem is only one of three celebrating a military victory of the conqueror or his sons. Since the Carmen contains an apostrophe to William the Conqueror as still al...

The Normans in Europe

Introduction 1. From Vikings to Normans 2. The Normans in Normandy 3. The Normans and Britain: the Norman Conquest of England 4. The Normans and their neighbours Bibliography Genealogical charts: Ducal family of Normandy Royal families of England Hauteville family in Italy Crispin family Maps: Normandy Mediterranean area as a whole

The Memory of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066

After the thematic approach of the previous chapters where we looked at the acknowledgement of oral witnesses in historiography and hagiography, at women’s unofficial role in commemoration and the significance of objects as pegs for memories, we turn now to the memorial tradition of one event. The occasion of the arrival of the Normans in England was a sudden event which caused the death of the ruling class of the English nation and its consequent replacement by another elite. No other event in western European history of the central Middle Ages can be compared for its shocking effects: the carnage on the battlefield, the loss of life and the consequent political upheaval. Apart from the social, economic and cultural consequences, the event caused an explosion of historical writing that finds no contemporary parallel. It is through the pages of the four generations of chronicles, annals, saints’ lives and vernacular poetry that we can sense the Shockwaves of horror, pain, regret and grief.

Saints’ Lives and Miracles

This chapter on hagiography and the problems faced by hagiographers in collecting and weighing information will revolve around two axes. The first concerns the close association between oral and written modes of gathering evidence on sainthood and miracles. The difficulty of collecting information many years after a saint’s death, the first attempts at jotting down notes in the process of writing, the physical vulnerability of written records, as well as the reconstruction of the chain of informants, are similar to the problems faced by historians. Study of the saints’ lives and of other hagiographical writings also suggests a development between the beginning and end of our period: from haphazard oral recordings of sainthood toward a much greater degree of scrutiny of witness accounts and other evidence in writing as demanded by the tightening of canon law regulations. The second axis concerns the differences in the degree of collaboration between men and women throughout Europe. Germany shows the greatest consistency in the positive attitude taken by men and women writing hagiography towards female oral witness accounts, whereas French and, more particularly, English sources display a far greater ambiguity in this respect.

Chronicles and Annals

Most information in chronicles necessarily derives in the first instance from people who had first-hand knowledge of the persons and places referred to, or who had witnessed, perhaps as participants, the events described. However, this information may have passed from mouth to mouth before being recorded in writing, and the version we have today may not be the original record; it may well have been copied from an older written version and perhaps deliberately modified in the process. Some chroniclers wrote from personal experience and most relied to some extent on oral evidence from others, but almost all made use of written evidence as well. Sometimes this written evidence was in the form of charters or letters, but more frequently it lay in the works of their predecessors, which they copied to an extent that would be unthinkable today. There were, of course, no copyright laws to restrain them, and the fact that texts had to be copied by scribes if they were to be disseminated at all must have encouraged the ‘creative’ copying which so often occurred. The creativity of the copier lay sometimes in correction of the original narrative and at other times in the chronological extension of it to bring it up to date. In the process he often made use of his own personal experience or of evidence not available to the original author.

Ancestors, Family Reputation and Female Traditions

In the previous chapters we have seen how relatively few historians and hagiographers acknowledged women as their informants about the past. Some, like Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, even found it necessary to defend their use of female sources against the implicit criticism of readers who seemingly demanded an all-male cast. On the other hand, we have also seen that men and women collaborated in the process of preserving the past. Both lay women and nuns helped with the collect-ion of historical data and their role is most clear in the context of personal histories rather than institutional histories. An extension of this role can be found in the abundance of implicit evidence that exists outlining the role of women close to the historiographical endeavour. Some of this evidence can be found in the chronicles, annals, saints’ lives and other hagiographical texts discussed in Chapters 2 and 3.

Objects as Pegs for Memory

In the previous chapters we have occasionally signalled how memories of persons and places are linked with objects and sites. Objects such as jewellery, sacred vessels or cloths were passed on from one generation to the next and carried with them stories of their donors. That material evidence helps to trigger memories has been shown conclusively in anthropological studies of primarily oral cultures in modern times. The use of photographs, especially, has been found to be enormously effective in helping to recall the (recent) past.1 In the Middle Ages the use of pictures and objects to recall past events, and stories in general, was well known and advocated by the clergy as a means of teaching the illiterate.2 Today we have to rely on written references to ways in which medieval people were reminded of the past by looking at sites and objects. Few of the actual sites and objects which are mentioned in the sources have survived. Of the surviving material evidence, only objects from ecclesiastical institutions remain because churches and monasteries had archives and treasuries built in which to keep their heirlooms for ever. Very few objects from a secular background have survived, however, because family possessions if not stored in institutions, got dispersed and lost. Buildings and sites were more durable and they, like objects, had stories of their founders or later events attached to them.