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William of Newburgh and the Northumbrian construction of English history

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 33; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/j.jmedhist.2007.09.002

1873-1279

Anne Lawrence‐Mathers,

Byzantine Studies and History

Abstract William of Newburgh is chiefly known for his account of twelfth-century English politics, in the History of English affairs. However, the Prologue to this work also deserves attention, since it takes the almost unprecedented form of a comprehensive attack on Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia regum Britanniae, and especially on the account of the heroic career of King Arthur. William's Prologue opens with the forthright statement: ‘The history of our people, that is the English, was written by the venerable priest and monk, BEDE’ (sic). It goes on to make use of a remarkable range of information, including the extremely rare work of Gildas. The argument of this article is that this ‘English’ view of history is related to the contents of a set of complex manuscripts from Durham and the Northumbrian Cistercian houses. These give details of the generations of ‘English’ kings who conquered post-Roman Britain, together with extracts from the works of Gildas and Nennius, amongst many others. Together, they place Bede's version of the coming of the English at the centre of an encyclopaedic reconstruction of world history, which William of Newburgh (who dedicates his work to the abbot of Rievaulx) also follows. It need hardly be stressed that in this version of history there is no room for King Arthur. Keywords: EnglandHistoriographyWilliam of NewburghKing ArthurCisterciansManuscripts Notes 1 See G. Walsh and M.J. Kennedy, William of Newburgh, the ‘History of English affairs’, Book 1 (Warminster, 1988). 2 A. Gransden, Historical writing in England c.550 to 1307 (London, 1974). For brief discussion of Newburgh and its books see A. Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the 11th and 12th centuries (Woodbridge, 2003), 187–8. 3 Gransden, ‘Bede's reputation as an historian in medieval England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 32 (1981), at 20–2. 4 For William's handling of current political issues and the sources for his main Historia, see J. Gillingham, ‘The historian as judge; William of Newburgh and Hubert Walter’, English Historical Review, 119, 484 (2004), 1275–87. 5 For a valuable listing and discussion of manuscripts see J. Crick, The ‘Historia regum Britanniae’ of Geoffrey of Monmouth, vol. III, A summary catalogue of the manuscripts (Woodbridge 1989). 6 For a compact survey see B. Meehan, ‘Durham twelfth-century manuscripts in Cistercian houses’, in: Anglo-Norman Durham 1093–1193, ed. D. Rollason, M. Harvey and M. Prestwich (Woodbridge 1994), 439–50. 7 For discussion on Gerald see J. Crick, ‘The British past and the Welsh future: Gerald of Wales, Geoffrey of Monmouth and Arthur of Britain’, Celtica, 23 (1999), 60–75. 8 This date depends upon the evidence of BL, MS Stowe 62, which belonged to William's house of Newburgh, and which has been recognised at least since the nineteenth century as probably taken directly from William's own notes. The opening of the manuscript is fully, if rather naively, rubricated, and brief incipits and explicits are given for each book except the last. This ends abruptly with the events of 1197, to which are appended an account of a ‘prodigy’ which occurred in 1198. Despite the fact that ample space is available, neither an overall conclusion nor a simple explicit for the book is given. This gives a definite impression that work on both the text and the fair copy were abruptly brought to an end at this point. 9 For the story see L. Thorpe, trans., Gerald of Wales; the journey through Wales and the description of Wales (Harmondsworth 1978), 116–18. 10 Crick, ‘The British past’, passim. 11 Crick, ‘The British past’, 71–2. See also W.A. Nitze, ‘The exhumation of King Arthur at Glastonbury’, Speculum, 9 (1934), 355–61. 12 Nancy F. Partner, Serious entertainments, the writing of history in twelfth-century England (Chicago and London 1977), 64–5. 13 For a fuller description of the manuscript, and of its place in the putative ‘northern style’ see A. Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria, 187–8. 14 For this see J.C. Gorman, ‘William of Newburgh's Explanatio sacri epithalamii in Matrem sponsi’, published as Specilegium Friburgense, 6 (1960). 15 Walsh and Kennedy, William of Newburgh, 26. 16 See for instance the entries for Burton-on-Trent, Bury St Edmunds, Crowland, Glastonbury, Norwich, Reading, Rochester, St Albans, Westminster, Whitby, Worcester and York (in other words, all the catalogues in which the work is listed) in, English Benedictine libraries, the shorter catalogues, ed. R. Sharpe et al. (Corpus of British medieval library catalogues 4, London 1996). 17 For the Rievaulx catalogue see The libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, ed. D. Bell (Corpus of British medieval library catalogues 3, London, 1992), 87–140. Entry 104 reads Beda de yistoria Anglorum in uno volumine (see Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, ed. Bell, 105). 18 For these entries, see Catalogi veteres librorum ecclesiae Cathedralis Dunelm., ed B. Botfield (Surtees Society 7, London, 1838), at 2, 3, and 5. 19 For the text see Walsh and Kennedy, William of Newburgh, 28. 20 For the confusion of Gildas with Nennius (meaning by this the author/compiler of the Historia Britonum), and for medieval versions of the latter, see D. Dumville, ‘The historical value of the Historia Britonum’, Arthurian literature, 6 (1986), 1–26; and D. Dumville ‘“Nennius” and the Historia Brittonum’, Studia Celtica, 10 & 11 (1975–76), 78–95. 21 On this see N. Wright, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth and Gildas’, Arthurian literature, 2 (1982), 1–33. 22 Partner, Serious entertainments, 67. 23 For these commentaries see Kelley M. Wickham-Crowley, Writing the future; Layamon's prophetic history (Cardiff 2002), 111, and J. Ziolkowski, ‘The nature of prophecy in Geoffrey of Monmouth's Vita Merlini’, in: Poetry and prophecy, ed. J.L. Kugel (Ithaca, 1990), 151–76. 24 See Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, ed. Bell, 87–140. 25 On the use of this technique by Symeon of Durham see Symeon of Durham, ‘Libellus de exordio atque procurso istius, hoc est Dunhelmensis, ecclesie, ed. and trans D. Rollason (Oxford, 2000), especially xliv–l. For comment see the review of this edition by P. McGurk in Reviews in History (2001), Institute of Historical Research, . 26 C.N.L. Brooke, ‘Geoffrey of Monmouth as a historian’, in: C.N.L. Brooke The church and the Welsh border in the central middle ages (Woodbridge, 1986), 95–106; and J. Rider, ‘Arthur and the saints’, in: King Arthur through the ages, ed. V. Lagorio and M. Leake Day (New York and London, 1990), 3–21. 27 Augustine was one of the fundamental authors for monastic libraries; Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae was somewhat rarer, but a copy was available at Durham from the early twelfth century, and this may have been the exemplar for the Rievaulx version of this text (now lost) which was divided between two composite volumes (see Libraries of the Cistercians, Gilbertines and Premonstratensians, ed. Bell, 101). 28 See Gillingham, ‘The historian as judge’, 1275–87. 29 See note 6 above. 30 D'Ardenne, ‘A neglected manuscript of British history’, in: English and medieval studies presented to J.R.R. Tolkien, ed. N. Davis and C.L.Wrenn (London 1962), 84–93, at 90. 31 C. Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, in: Symeon of Durham, historian of Durham and the North, ed. D. Rollason (Stamford, 1998), 61–105, at 92. 32 D. Dumville, ‘The historical value of the Historia Brittonum’, 1–26, at 7. See also D. Dumville, ‘Celtic-Latin texts in northern England, c1150–c1250’, Celtica, 12 (1977), 19–49. 33 See English Benedictine libraries, ed. Sharpe et al., 638. 34 R.A.B. Mynors, Durham Cathedral manuscripts to the end of the twelfth century (Durham 1939), 41–2. 35 Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, n.52. 36 Meehan, ‘Durham manuscripts’, 441. 37 For this text, and the place of this manuscript in its dissemination, see The ‘Gesta Normannorum Ducum’ of William of Jumieges, Orderic Vitalis and Robert of Torigni, ed. and trans. E.M.C. van Houts, 2 vols (Oxford 1992–95). 38 Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 82. 39 See M. Miller, ‘Consular years in the Historia Brittonum’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, 29, 1 (1980), 17–34. 40 For full description see M.R. James, A descriptive catalogue of the manuscripts in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1912), 317–23. 41 H. Blair, ‘Some observations on the “Historia regum” attributed to Symeon of Durham’, in: Celt and Saxon, ed. N.K Chadwick (Cambridge, 1963), at 74–6. 42 D. Baker, ‘Scissors and paste: Corpus Christi Cambridge MS 139 again’, in: The materials, sources and methods of ecclesiastical history, ed. D. Baker (Studies in Church History 11, Oxford, 1975, 84–139. 43 For fuller discussion of the textual relationships and their implications see Meehan, ‘Durham manuscripts’. 44 James, Descriptive catalogue, 323. 45 This Master Laurence had also been a pupil of Hugh of St Victor. See G.E. Croydon, ‘Abbot Laurence of Westminster and Hugh of St Victor’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2 (1950), 169–71. 46 Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 62–72. 47 Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 73. 48 See A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘English Cistercian manuscripts of the twelfth century’, in: Cistercian art and architecture in the British Isles, ed. C. Norton and D. Park (Cambridge 1986), 284–98, and eadem, Manuscripts in Northumbria, 194–216. 49 Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 87. 50 Mynors, Durham Cathedral manuscripts, 6–8. For further discussion see A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘Cistercian decoration: twelfth-century legislation on illumination, and its interpretation in England’, Reading Medieval Studies, 21 (1995), 31–52. 51 For the Chrysologus comparison see A. Lawrence-Mathers, ‘The artistic influence of Durham manuscripts’, in: Rollason et al, Anglo-Norman Durham, ed. Rollason, Harvey and Prestwich, 451–69 and plates 87 and 88. 52 See note 49. 53 See D.A. Harvey, ‘The Sawley map and other world maps in twelfth-century England’, Imago Mundi, 49 (1997), 33–42. 54 Norton, ‘History, wisdom and illumination’, 87. 55 See D. Baker, ‘Ailred of Rievaulx and Walter Espec’, The Haskins Society Journal, 1 (1989), 91–8. 56 Baker, ‘Ailred of Rievaulx and Walter Espec’. See also J. Bliese, ‘The battle rhetoric of Aelred of Rievaulx’, 99–106 in the same volume where Aelred's depiction of his namesake, King Alfred is further discussed. 57 Gransden, Historical writing, 213. 58 Patrologia Latina, ed. J.-P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64) vol. 195, col.565. 59 Gransden, Historical writing, 213. 60 For discussion of this see Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria, 237–9. 61 I. Short, ‘Gaimar's Epilogue and Geoffrey of Monmouth's liber vetustissimus’, Speculum, 69 (1994), 323–43. 62 For discussion see J.R. Davies, ‘The Book of Llandaf: a twelfth-century perspective’, Anglo-Norman studies, 21 (1998), 31–46. 63 See C. Norton, St William of York (Woodbridge, 2006), 127–8, and n.9. 64 F.M. Powicke, ‘Maurice of Rievaulx’, English Historical Review, 36, 141 (1921), 17–29. 65 Powicke, ‘Maurice of Rievaulx’, 17 and n.1. 66 For discussion of William's terminology in relation to Northumbria see Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria, 3–6. 67 For at least one apparent ‘pilgrimage' to Bede's cell by a medieval Northumbrian historian, see Symeon of Durham, Libellus de exordio atque procursu istius hoc est Dunhelmensis ecclesie, ed and trans. Rollason, I, 14, 68–71. 68 On this work and its popularity in England see J. Harrison, ‘The English reception of Hugh of Saint-Victor's Chronicle’, British Library Journal (2002), 1–33, online at . 69 Catalogi Veteres Librorum Ecclesie Cathedralis Dunelm, ed. Botfield, at 118–19. 70 For the text, see Patrologia Latina, ed. Migne, vol. 198, cols.1053–844.