Lindsay Diggelmann

Hewing the Ancient Elm: Anger, Arboricide, and Medieval Kingship

During the blazing summer of 1188 Philip II of France met his rival and vas sal, Henry II of England and Normandy, near Gisors on the Epte. This had been a customary venue of conferences between kings of France and dukes of Normandy since at least the early twelfth century, as the region around the Epte in the county of the Vexin, northwest of Paris, marked the boundary between their two areas of direct rule. On this occasion negotiations ended in acrimony. In the fullest chronicle version of the story, the French monarch’s mood was not helped by the fact that Henry and his retinue had occupied the shady space beneath the wide canopy of an elm tree that marked the traditional meeting place, leaving Philip and his entourage to suffer in the summer sun. In reaction to this insult, Philip ordered his men to destroy the offending elm, a task they appear to have carried out with violent enthusiasm. The cutting down of a tree is not a normal way to bring diplomatic conferences to an end, even in the Middle Ages, and the cultural significance of the episode is ripe for deeper investigation. Contemporary references to the event are thin on detail and attempts to reconstruct the ways in which observers might have understood the hewing of the elm are fraught with difficulty. Nonetheless, Philip’s destruction of the elm should be seen as a statement of political intent and an intriguing challenge to the diplomatic status quo of the Franco-Norman border zone. Furthermore, two later texts are of interest. William the Breton’s Philippide and the anonymous History of William Marshal, both composed in the early thirteenth century (in other words, a generation or so after the event), treat the hewing of the elm prominently. They deal with the incident from opposing French and Anglo-Norman viewpoints, offering sharply different inter pretations of the motivations and emotional states of mind of the protagonists and hinting at the possible reactions to the tree’s demise in the context of ongoing political and military rivalry between Plantagenet and Capet.

Introduction: Peace by Means of Culture

It is often argued that a shared culture, or at least shared cultural references or practices, can help to foster peace and prevent war. This essay examines in detail and criticizes one such argument, made by Patrick Leigh Fermor, in the context of his discussing an incident during World War II, when he and a captured German general found a form of agreement, a ground for peace between them, in their both knowing Horace’s ode I.9 by heart in Latin. By way of introducing the sixth and final installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Peace by Other Means,” this essay proposes that Leigh Fermor’s narrative be understood in terms of commerce, rather than consensus. It concludes by examining Ezra Pound’s use of the word commerce in his poem “A Pact” (“Let there be commerce between us”) to define his relationship with his “detested” and “pig-headed” poetic “father,” Walt Whitman.

Emotional Responses to Medieval Warfare in the History of William Marshal

The early thirteenth-century French text known as the History of William Marshal tells the story of its eponymous hero’s lengthy career in the service of the first Plantagenet monarchs. Set against the background of ongoing conflicts between the Capetian king Philip II of France and his great rivals, Henry II of England and his sons Richard and John, the poem is an invaluable source for the political and cultural history of the period. Warfare, both serious and recreational, forms a central motif as William Marshal develops into a figure of unmatched chivalric prowess. While his skills on the battlefield and on the tournament circuit are duly celebrated, the poem offers a far more complex picture of medieval warfare and its emotional repercussions than simple hero-worship would allow. As the brief quote above suggests, the habitual conflicts of a ruling elite that viewed warfare as its very raison d’etre gave rise to serious moral questions for contemporary observers. The absence of peace and the advent of war could be construed as a direct result of emotional excess (envy, pride), while military successes and failures could be shown as both reflecting and bringing forth emotional crises on the part of participants. Here I examine several episodes of warfare in the History, reaching back as far as the reign of King Stephen in the 1140s, in order to demonstrate how frequently and effectively the poem’s author makes use of the language of emotions.

The Continuity of the Conquest: Charlemagne and Anglo-Norman Imperialism by Wendy Marie Hoofnagle (review)

understood without much trouble. The third chapter is dedicated to the Core Group: the description of the manuscripts, the construction of the booklets, and their origin. The chapter contains a similar level of detail to the previous one, presenting the information in an orderly way, substantiated by diagrams of quires and tables. Following this extensive description is an account of the topics covered in the manuscripts and their context. Alchemy in particular requires some explanation, considering its unlawfulness in fifteenth-century England. The fourth chapter discusses the subgroup ‘Family Resemblance’: manuscripts that display some resemblance but cannot be said to belong to either other subgroup. This subgroup was created by Voigts, just as the others, and Honkapohja discusses them thoroughly. However, while he recognizes that the manuscripts had a shared origin, the author considers all but one source in the subgroup to be irrelevant to the Core Group. He bases this on a lack of textual resemblance and overlap in codicological characteristics. The last two chapters of the book deal with the language and multilingualism of the Group. Honkapohja determines a clear-cut rift between the English and Latin languages, where the Latin text covers the technical material while the English appears to serve as an aid for those who did not adequately understand Latin. The two languages lack equal sophistication; it would appear the Group’s reputation of multilingualism is tenuous at best. Honkapohja ends his book with an impressive dialectological analysis of the language used in the manuscripts, and an appendix containing the full collation of one of the texts. Honkapohja’s Alchemy, Medicine, and Commercial Book Production: A Codicological and Linguistic Study of the Voigts-Sloane Manuscript Group offers a comprehensive analysis of the manuscripts through an ambitious combination of codicological and linguistic approaches. While technical at times, the descriptions are detailed and well structured, making it a pleasant read. Ten years well spent, I would say! flora guiJt, The Hague, The Netherlands

Magna Carta and Memorialization: The Perils of Historical Anniversaries

2015 was a big year for anniversaries. As well as commemorating Magna Carta, New Zealand marked the ANZAC centenary, while the 175th anniversaries of the Treaty and of Auckland city (1840) also received attention. Why is it that we continue to use such moments of chronological coincidence to consider the meaning of past events? Recent triumphalism concerning Magna Carta may allow us to feel good about ourselves and our legal heritage, but it has very little to say about the political circumstances of the thirteenth century. This chapter examines the gap between the medieval Magna Carta and its modern legacy to reflect on the methodological pitfalls of commemorating anniversaries and on the curious cultural imperative of big round numbers.

MARRIAGE, PEACE, AND ENMITY IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

As is well known, marriage was frequently employed as an instrument of diplomatic policy in premodern Europe. Dynastic leaders used the marriages of their own family members to create or confirm alliances with other ruling houses. Peace was often the aim and the outcome of such agreements, but the reality of marital politics was far more complicated. Arranging a marriage could be a statement of enmity by two families toward a third party. Attempts to dissolve or prevent marriages already arranged by one’s rivals amounted to viable political tactics. During the twelfth century, as rules around the formation and dissolution of Christian marriage were in flux, opportunities for manipulation of accepted practices abounded. This article examines a series of marriages between members of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin ruling families, focusing especially on the reign of Henry I (1100–35), to demonstrate the complexity of marital practices and their links to peace and war. Literary works of the age, notably Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae , offer further cultural perspectives on the nature of political marriages. Whereas short-term tactical considerations meant that marriages were often tied to episodes of conflict and rivalry, from a longer-term perspective the usefulness of marriage as a means of securing and maintaining peace remained an important element of premodern diplomacy.

Reimagining History in Anglo-Norman Prose Chronicles by John Spence (review)

Review(s) of: Reimagining history in anglo-norman prose chronicles, by Spence, John, Woodbridge and Rochester, York Medieval Press/Boydell, 2013, hardback, pp. 236, R.R.P. 55.00 pounds, ISBN 9781903153451.

Writing to the King: Nation, Kingship and Literature in England 1250-1350 (review)

Review(s) of: Writing to the king: Nation, kingship and literature in England 1250-1350, by Matthews, David, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2010; hardback; pp. xv, 221; R.R.P. AU

Passion and Order: Restraint of Grief in the Medieval Italian Communes (review)

145.00, 50.00 pounds; ISBN 9780521111379.

Charles the Bold and Italy 1467-1477: Politics and Personnel (review)

Parergon 26.2 (2009) limitations, hierarchies in space-time, and comprising a domain beyond Christine’s reach. Kay describes this text as aspiring to ‘discover a universal moral and political order’ from the experiences of the individual, the universal becoming the construct of many minds. Kay’s volume offers medievalists, particularly those who study literature, an inventive approach to the genre of didactic poetry, including compelling philosophical interpretations of a good selection of texts. In formulating her conclusion, Kay introduces the question of these concepts in the Roman de la Rose, suggesting that there is yet room for further interpretation along this vein. Stephanie L. Hathaway Departments of French and Germanic Studies University of Sydney