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Wonders, prodigies and marvels: unusual bodies and the fear of heresy in Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicon Anglicanum

2000; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 26; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1016/s0304-4181(99)00019-6

1873-1279

Elizabeth Freeman,

Medieval History and Crusades

Abstract Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicon Anglicanum is traditionally consulted for its narrative of English royal politics and crusading history in the late-twelfth and early-thirteenth centuries. Within this national history there are six short anecdotes, four concerning English wonders and two concerning French religious history. Although previous scholarship suggests that these stories are simply random inclusions in the history, it will be argued that they present and develop a theme of critical importance to the Chronicon overall — this being that the unified body of Christian believers is at risk of assault and disintegration. It will be seen that all six stories focus on the human body — the abnormal body, the heretical body, the miraculous body — and that this physical body is a metaphor for the Christian body at its broadest. There is currently strong scholarly interest in medieval wonders and this article indicates the ways in which the unusual, the unaccustomed and the prodigious all carried great meaning for medieval audiences. In this instance, the unusual bodies described in six stories reflect the concerns of the Chronicon and of thirteenth-century Cistercians more broadly. The main concern, logical for a history describing the Fourth Crusade, is that of possible assault on Christian orthodoxy. Keywords: WondersHeresyFourth CrusadeRalph of Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum Historiography Notes 1 Radulphi de Coggeshall Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson (Rolls Series 66, London, 1875), 1–208 (hereafter CA). All translations are my own. 2 Most scholars date the history approximately rather than definitely. A. Gransden states that the history was written ‘soon after John's death’, Historical writing in England c.550 to c.1307 (London, 1974), 318. For further comments, see A.J. Andrea, ‘Cistercian accounts of the Fourth Crusade: were they anti-Venetian?’, Analecta Cisterciensia, 41 (1985), 3–41 at 10–11. The earliest version of the history appears in London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian D. x, an early-thirteenth-century manuscript written and updated over an unspecified period. The Chronicon's manuscript history is a vexed area which is still not understood completely. The best study is D.A. Carpenter's recent investigation, ‘Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall's account of the last years of King Richard and the first years of King John’, English Historical Review, 113 (1998), 1210–30 at 1212–14 and notes therein. 3 Past scholarship has concentrated on these two areas. See Carpenter, ‘Abbot Ralph of Coggeshall's account of the last years of King Richard and the first years of King John’; Gransden, Historical writing in England, 322–31; J. Gillingham, ‘The unromantic death of Richard I’, Speculum, 54 (1979), 18–41 at 26–28; G. Jacquin, Le style historique dans les récits françaises et latin de la quatrième croisade (Geneva, 1986), 13, 339, 417, and Andrea, ‘Cistercian accounts of the Fourth Crusade: were they anti-Venetian?’, 10–13, 41. 4 G.N. Hartcher, ‘Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicon Anglicanum: an investigative analysis’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1979), 94–95, 151, 195. 5 CA, 117–28. 6 CA, 117–18. This episode has been understudied and has received only an undiscussed translation in E. Hallam, Plantagenet chronicles (London, 1986), 268–69. 7 CA, 118–20. This story is relatively well known, mainly since an independent version of it exists in William of Newburgh's Historia regum Anglicarum. For brief discussion, see K. Briggs, Fairies in tradition and literature (London, 1967), 7–8, and N. Orme, ‘The culture of children in medieval England’, Past and Present, 148 (1995), 48–88 at 74–75, although the latter work places greater emphasis on William's version. 8 qui formam omnium membrorum caeteris hominibus similem habebant, sed in colore cutis ab omnibus mortalibus nostrae habitabilis discrepabant, CA, 118. 9 CA, 120. Despite the current interest in medieval giants, I have been unable to discover any modern discussions of this episode. Sections of it are translated, but not discussed, in Hallam, Plantagenet chronicles, 269. 10 De quodam fantastico spiritu, CA, 120–21. Past treatments of this story have been cursory. They have concentrated on either the nature of the spirit and its folkloric connections or the degree to which this episode shows English to have been spoken and understood by Anglo-Norman families. On the former, see Briggs, Fairies in tradition and literature, 7. On the latter see I. Short, ‘Tam Angli quam Franci: Self-definition in Anglo-Norman England’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 18 (1995), 153–75 at 157; P.R. Coss, ‘Aspects of cultural diffusion in medieval England: the early romances, local society and Robin Hood’, Past and Present, 108 (1985), 35–79 at 51–52. 11 Mira et risui digna et agebat et loquebatur, et aliquoties aliorum occultos actus detegens. CA, 121. 12 William of Newburgh, Historia regum Anglicarum, in: Chronicles of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, 4 vols (Rolls Series 82, London, 1886), vol. 1, 82–84. The two stories do not seem to be textually linked and, since none of the surviving Historia regum Anglicarum manuscripts comes from near Coggeshall, there is no evidence that Ralph ever read or had access to William's earlier version. For an analysis of William of Newburgh's version (but with no reference to Ralph), see M. Otter, Inventiones: Fictions and referentiality in twelfth-century English historical writing (Chapel Hill and London, 1996), 103–108. 13 Walter Map, De nugis curialium. Courtiers' trifles, ed. and trans. M.R. James, revised C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford, 1983), 4. 13, ‘Of Nicholas Pipe, the man of the sea’. This version also appears in Gervase of Tilbury's Otia Imperialia, in: Scriptores rerum Brunsvicensium, ed. G. Leibnitz, 2 vols (Hanover, 1707–10), vol. 1, 2. 12. Other than the basic fact of a man living in the sea there are no links, either linguistically or plot-wise, between these accounts and the Chronicon's story. 14 Hartcher, ‘Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicon Anglicanum’, 183. 15 Further, the stories ‘have no religious aspect at all; they are just local marvels of interest to those who lived in the area’, Hartcher, ‘Ralph of Coggeshall's Chronicon Anglicanum’, 184. 16 Gransden, Historical writing in England, 330; Stevenson, ‘Introduction’, CA, xii. 17 C.W. Bynum, ‘Wonder’, American Historical Review, 102 (1997), 1–26 at 2, n. 8, for references and passim for a comprehensive bibliography. Of the many contributions to this growing field, the following repay attention; D. Bouthillier, ‘“Miraculum”: Une catégorie fondamentale chez Pierre le Vénérable’, Revue thomiste, 80 (1980), 357–86; J. Le Goff, ‘The marvelous in the medieval west’, in: The medieval imagination, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago and London, 1988), 27–44; F. Dubost, Aspects fantastiques de la littérature narrative médiévale (XIIème – XIIIème siècles), 2 vols (Paris, 1991); Miracles, prodiges et merveilles au Moyen Age: XXV Congrès de la SHME, Orléans, juin 1994 (Paris, 1995). 18 Bynum, ‘Wonder’, 7–14. 19 qui castellano praedicto traditus prae admiratione, CA, 117. 20 Aliud quoque mirum priori non dissimile in Suthfolke contigit, CA, 118. 21 et satis admirando contrectavimus, CA, 120. 22 On insolitum as a common word among theological writers (as opposed to other writers) on wonder, see Bynum, ‘Wonder’, 7. 23 apparuerunt in quadam herbosa planitie vestigia humana insolitae longitudinis; Mira et risui digna et agebat et loquebatur, et alioquoties aliorum occultos actus detegens. CA, 120, 121. 24 Bynum, ‘Wonder’, 15, 21. 25 The story is entitled ‘de superstitione Publicanorum’, CA, 121–25. Modern scholars, however, have renamed the episode the ‘Witch of Rheims’ story, in keeping with the interest this anecdote has provoked among scholars of witchcraft. See A.C. Kors and E. Peters, Witchcraft in Europe 1100–1700. A documentary history (London, 1973), 44–47, and W.L. Wakefield and A.P. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York and London, 1969). 26 prodigiosum quiddam in urbe Remensium, CA, 122. 27 ‘Because they blur categorical distinctions with their heterogeneity and mobility, monsters are especially symbolic of displaced, hence threatening, matter.’ M. Uebel, ‘Unthinking the monster: twelfth-century responses to Saracen alterity’, in: Monster theory: reading culture, ed. J.J. Cohen (Minneapolis and London, 1996), 264–91 at 266. Likewise, in the same collection of essays, J.J. Cohen reminds us that ‘[b]ecause of its ontological liminality, the monster notoriously appears at times of crisis as a kind of third term that problematizes the clash of extremes’, ‘Monster culture (seven theses)’, 3–25 at 6. 28 Quod audiens magister Gervasius intellexit protinus hanc esse de illa impiissima secta Publicanorum, qui illo in tempore ubique exquirebantur. CA, 122. 29 Ad quod verbum mox a terris elevata, glomum agili volatu cunctis aspicientibus extra fenestram subsecuta est, malignorum spirituum ministerio, ut credimus, subvecta, qui quondam Simonem Magum in aere sustulerunt. CA, 124. 30 See D. Baker, ‘Heresy and learning in early Cistercianism’, in: Schism, heresy and religious protest, ed. D. Baker (Studies in Church History 9, Oxford, 1972), 93–107; B.M. Kienzle and S.A. Shroff, ‘Cistercians and heresy: doctrinal consultation in some twelfth-century correspondence from southern France’, Cı̂teaux: Commentarii Cistercienses, 39 (1990), 159–66; B.M. Kienzle, ‘Tending the Lord's vineyard: Cistercians, rhetoric and heresy, 1143–1229. Part I: Bernard of Clairvaux, the 1143 sermons and the 1145 preaching mission’, Heresis, 25 (1995), 29–61, and Martha G. Newman, The boundaries of charity: Cistercian culture and ecclesiastical reform (Stanford, 1996), ch. 9. 31 John of Ford, Sermons on the final verses of the Song of Songs VI, trans. W.M. Beckett (Kalamazoo, 1984), sermon 85: 3, 29. 32 Baker, ‘Heresy and learning in early Cistercianism’. 33 E.L. Saak, ‘The limits of knowledge: Hélinand de Froidmont's Chronicon’, in: Pre-modern encyclopaedic texts, ed. P. Binkley (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1997), 289–302 at 300. See also E. Smits, ‘Helinand of Froidmont and the A-Text of Seneca's tragedies’, Mnemosyne, 4th series, 36 (1983), 324–58, esp. 328–37 for the polemical use of Hélinand's exempla. 34 A.B.H. Nitert, ‘Matière de France and the world chronicle of Aubri de Trois-Fontaines’, in: Aspects de l'épopée romane. Mentalités. Idéologies. Intertextualités, ed. H. van Dijk and W. Noomen (Groningen, 1995), 409–18. 35 J. Berlioz, ‘Exemplum et histoire: Césaire de Heisterbach (v.1180–v.1240) et la croisade albigeoise’, Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes, 147 (1989), 49–96. 36 CA, 125–28. On Alpais, see Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, 2 vols (Brussels, 1898–99, 1900–1901), no. 306–307. 37 C.W. Bynum, Holy feast and holy fast (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1987), 73, 83, 84, 91, 134–35, 146, 148, 168, 196, 200, 205, 213, 275, 299, 308 n. 6, 388 n. 51 on Alpais. The only other discussion I have found is by B.P. McGuire where Alpais is presented as a proponent of the new types of friendships which were developing between religious men and women in the thirteenth century; ‘The Cistercians and friendship: an opening to women’, in: Hidden Springs. Cistercian monastic women book one, ed. J.A. Nichols and L. Thomas Shank (Kalamazoo, 1995), 171–200 at 178–80. 38 Acta Sanctorum quotquot toto orbe coluntur (Paris, 1863–), November, vol. 2, part 1, November 3, 167–209. The author was an anonymous Cistercian monk from the nearby monastery of Echarlis in the diocese of Sens, who wrote before Alpais's death in 1211, and perhaps as early as 1181. 39 fama celebris de miraculoso ejus jejunio; fide facta archiepiscopo de tam miraculoso jejunio, CA, 126, 127. 40 For various medieval authors who provide this distinction between miracula and mirabilia, see Bynum, ‘Wonder’, 4–5 and 8, n. 31; R. Bartlett, Gerald of Wales, 1146–1223 (Oxford, 1982), 105; and J.-C. Schmitt, Ghosts in the Middle Ages (Paris, 1994; trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan, Chicago and London, 1998), 79–80. As Bynum points out, this terminological distinction was firmly in place by 1200. 41 Non fuit autem mirum si tanta eam commotio diu tenuit, CA, 128. 42 This had been occurring with the papacy's encouragement since the reign of Henry II, C. Holdsworth, ‘Peacemaking in the twelfth century’, Anglo-Norman Studies, 19 (1996), 1–17 at 9–11. 43 Gransden's approach is common. She mentions that Ralph must have used some unknown ‘Cistercian collection of pious tracts’ but Ralph's reasons for including these anecdotes, or their function in the Chronicon as a whole, is not explored, Historical writing in England, 328, n. 71. 44 Holdsworth, ‘Peacemaking in the twelfth century’, 11. 45 C.W. Bynum, The resurrection of the body in Western Christianity, 200–1336 (New York, 1995), 135–36, 176, on this view being held by both monastic and scholastic writers in the twelfth century and into the thirteenth. For other surveys, see Bynum's earlier essays in her Fragmentation and redemption: essays on gender and the human body in medieval religion (New York, 1992), esp. ch. 7, ‘Material continuity, personal survival and the resurrection of the body: a scholastic discussion in its medieval and modern contexts’, 239–97. 46 On the Cistercians, see Bynum, The resurrection of the body in Western Christianity, 163–76. See also 224–25 on the range of sources (art, hagiography, theology) which all stressed this new literalism in that the body must be resurrected in its entirety. 47 R.I. Moore, The formation of a persecuting society: power and deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford, 1987). For the strong link between alleged heresy and alleged bodily misdemeanours (in place by the early-thirteenth century), see Bynum, The resurrection of the body in Western Christianity, 214–20, esp. 216. 48 Bynum, The resurrection of the body in Western Christianity, 220–25. 49 A good introduction to this field is found in Bynum's Fragmentation and redemption, esp. ch. 6, ‘The female body and religious practice in the later Middle Ages’, 181–238, which expands ideas suggested in her Holy feast and holy fast. 50 On theories of women's bodies, see J. Cadden, Meanings of sex differences in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 4. 51 It is specifically in the years around and succeeding 1200 that Bynum locates this debate. Significantly, Bynum has recently pointed out that the two types of writers (those who exhibited fascination and curiosity at bodily change and abnormalities; those who exhibited repulsion) were nonetheless linked by their belief that psychosomatic unity was essential to personhood, ‘Metamorphosis, or Gerald and the werewolf’, Speculum, 73 (1998), 987–1013. This dual focus further confirms the ubiquity of bodily debates and metaphors at this time. 52 The classic account is E.H. Kantorowicz, The king's two bodies (Princeton NJ, 1957). The clearest pronouncement of the metaphor before Ralph of Coggeshall's period was in John of Salisbury's Policraticus, written in 1159, Policraticus: of the frivolities of courtiers and the footprints of philosophers, ed. and trans. C.J. Nederman (Cambridge, 1990), 5: 2. See also J. Le Goff, ‘Head or heart: political uses of the body metaphor in the Middle Ages’, in: Fragments for the history of the human body, ed. Michel Feher with Ramona Naddaff and Nadia Tazi, 3 vols (New York, 1989), vol. 3, 13–26. 53 Newman, The boundaries of charity, 2, 233. 54 Bynum specifically dates this movement to the period around 1200, ‘Metamorphosis, or Gerald and the werewolf’, 1013.