King Stephen,the English church,and a female mystic: Christina of Markyate's Vita as a neglected source for the council of Winchester (August 1139) and its aftermath

One of the central reasons for the disintegration of royal authority (sometimes called ‘the Anarchy’) during the reign of King Stephen of England is generally thought to have been his troubled relationship with the English church. The king was summoned to appear before the legate in England, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (who was also Stephen's brother), at a church council called for Winchester on 29 August 1139, in order to show cause for his conduct in arresting several prominent bishops and in confiscating their property. Several major chroniclers discuss the events leading up to and occurring at the council of Winchester, especially William of Malmesbury in his Historia novella and the anonymous Gesta Stephani. The versions of events contained in these sources are not entirely consistent. The present paper examines yet another recounting of the events of the council, seldom appreciated by historians of twelfth-century England, presented in the Vita of Christina of Markyate (c.1096/98–c.1155/66), composed by an anonymous monk of St Albans between 1140 and 1146. Christina was close to the abbot of St Albans, Geoffrey de Gorham, who was probably the patron of the Vita and who quite likely attended the Winchester council and apparently became involved in its aftermath. These events are recorded in some detail in the Vita, presenting us with a vivid recounting of the council and the immediate consequences thereof. The narrative of the Vita contains a somewhat different picture of the personalities and occurrences surrounding the Winchester council than we encounter in the chronicles. The current essay compares the Vita to the standard accounts. We argue that the Vita may be the earliest and possibly most reliable source for the events of the council. Moreover, if we privilege the report of the Vita, the council becomes an especially significant moment in the breakdown of relations between Stephen and the English church.     

King Stephen,the English church,and a female mystic: Christina of Markyate's Vita as a neglected source for the council of Winchester (August 1139) and its aftermath

One of the central reasons for the disintegration of royal authority (sometimes called ‘the Anarchy’) during the reign of King Stephen of England is generally thought to have been his troubled relationship with the English church. The king was summoned to appear before the legate in England, Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester (who was also Stephen's brother), at a church council called for Winchester on 29 August 1139, in order to show cause for his conduct in arresting several prominent bishops and in confiscating their property. Several major chroniclers discuss the events leading up to and occurring at the council of Winchester, especially William of Malmesbury in his Historia novella and the anonymous Gesta Stephani. The versions of events contained in these sources are not entirely consistent. The present paper examines yet another recounting of the events of the council, seldom appreciated by historians of twelfth-century England, presented in the Vita of Christina of Markyate (c.1096/98–c.1155/66), composed by an anonymous monk of St Albans between 1140 and 1146. Christina was close to the abbot of St Albans, Geoffrey de Gorham, who was probably the patron of the Vita and who quite likely attended the Winchester council and apparently became involved in its aftermath. These events are recorded in some detail in the Vita, presenting us with a vivid recounting of the council and the immediate consequences thereof. The narrative of the Vita contains a somewhat different picture of the personalities and occurrences surrounding the Winchester council than we encounter in the chronicles. The current essay compares the Vita to the standard accounts. We argue that the Vita may be the earliest and possibly most reliable source for the events of the council. Moreover, if we privilege the report of the Vita, the council becomes an especially significant moment in the breakdown of relations between Stephen and the English church.     

The growth of secure inheritance in Anglo-Norman England

The following paper traces the crystallization of inheritance custom in England from 1086 to 1154. Inheritance of baronial estates has long been considered by historians to have been tenuous in the reigns of William the Conqueror and his sons, but by dating instances of forfeiture, escheat and other forms of disinheritance, and by comparing these dates with those of political turmoil, it can be shown that the custom became fairly secure and regular in the latter half of the reign of Henry I, only to be disrupted in the civil wars of Stephen's reign.     

St Anselm of Canterbury: the philosopher-saint as politician

From the beginning of Anselm's career as abbot of Bec he was a shrewd and skilful politician. Eadmer describes him as using a certain ‘holy guile’, having great psychological insight, and using methods of kindly persuasion supplemented by logical argument to gain his ends.This pattern is reflected in the church-state controversies in England. Anselm outlined this method to his successor at Bec, showing him an effective way of advancing and enriching his monastery.Anselm had a definite program of reform for the English church. From the beginning he had a vision of the archbishop of Canterbury as primate of Britain, a co-ruler of the kingdom. Anselm also claimed certain specific rights: to recognize and contact the papacy; to hold councils for the reform of the church; to receive the archbishopric free from simony; to hold the lands of Canterbury free from the king's control or from extraordinary taxes; and to ban lay investitute.During his rule Anselm accomplished all these goals, one by one, by taking advantage of times when the kings were faced with political crises and pressing his claims just then. He acted shrewdly, at times with ‘holy guile’, at times with skilful negotiation, but always aware of the potent effect of public opinion. Thus Anselm reflected the growing concept of raison d'état in the Anglo Norman state, and thereby used his raison d'église more effectively.     

Republicans,Unionists and Jacobites: The 1st Marquess of Tweeddale and the Restoration of the British Parliament

Although John Hay, 1st marquess of Tweeddale, contributed significantly to both the ruthless overthrow of Charles I, and the establishment of the first British parliament in the 1650s, most of his political career was concerned with attempting to re-establish this parliament after it was dissolved at the restoration of Charles II. His first attempt ended in defeat at the hands of the king and the duke of Lauderdale in 1670, but following the overthrow of James VII and II in 1688, Tweeddale tried to persuade the prince of Orange to unite Scotland and England. The prince, however, showed much more interest in securing the crown of Scotland than uniting the two kingdoms. Tweeddale, as lord high commissioner to the Scottish parliament in 1695, responded by passing legislation designed to provoke the English parliament into accepting union. He was also engaged in a jacobite intrigue to restore King James. Tweeddale intended that the restored monarch would be little more than a puppet, who could be used to legitimise what was effectively a republican regime in all but name. By this means the restored parliament would avoid the unpopularity which brought down the first British parliament in 1660. Tweeddale's scheme came to nought, but the technique he employed to manipulate the English parliament, and exploit the jacobite threat, contributed to the restoration of the British parliament ten years after his death.     

On the Ambivalence of Orthodoxy in American Anthropology

The establishment of professional anthropology is contrasted with the flawed limits and freedom of early self-trained anthropologists working outside of the academy. The work of ethnographer and linguist Jaime de Angulo and photographer Edward S. Curtis are oppositional examples of early 20th century self-trained anthropologically informed field research. While Curtis's career illustrates how work outside of academic anthropological circles often failed to document Indian culture, de Angulo's work provides an example of a brilliant scholar producing innovative, high quality work that would have been difficult to produce under the strictures of early 20th century academic life.     

“Hangd for the True Faith”: Embodied Devotion in Early Modern English Carmelite Cloisters

The annals of the English Carmelites of Antwerp document religious devotions which were intensely corporeal. Biographical sketches of individual sisters describe spiritual practices in which prayer and meditation, often enhanced by visual or bodily contact with devotional objects, fostered mystical encounters with Christ, saints, and martyrs. The Passion and the physical torment of holy figures who died for their faith infused the cloister's spirituality. At Antwerp, nuns encountered stories of suffering in devotional books and in hagiographical accounts of both the early Christian, and the more recent English, martyrs. They might also engage physically with Christ and saints through the cloister's relic collection and other objects of devotion. This article explores the religious milieu at Antwerp, considering the nuns' spiritual proclivity for suffering, which was inspired in part by their religious exile from England. It argues that a culture of martyrdom infused private devotional practices and shaped the convent's corporate identity.     

New evidence on the origins of the Latin Mirror of Simple Souls from a forgotten Paduan manuscript

This article examines an overlooked fifteenth-century document which attacks and refutes 35 extracts from a Latin copy of the condemned fourteenth-century work The Mirror of Simple Souls. It gives an overview of the document's origins, provenance and contents, and then discusses how certain omissions in the text's source citations have crucial implications for more firmly establishing the date of origin for the Latin translation of the Mirror.     

Charles the Bald and Aethelwulf of Wessex: the alliance of 856 and strategies of royal succession

Scholars have usually supposed that the marriage of King Aethelwulf of Wessex to the daughter of Charles the Bald in 856 signified the creation of an anti-Danish alliance between the two rulers. That this union signified a royal accord is not in doubt but there is no evidence to associate it with any venture against Danes. Though the evidence is not conclusive it appears more probable that Aethelwulf's marriage to Princess Judith was part of a scheme to prevent or to undermine a rebellion in England then being fomented by Aethelwulf's son Aethelbald who desired his father's throne. For his part Charles the Bald aimed at gaining influence in England. At the time of her marriage Judith was crowned and anointed and this was a rare occurrence. When analyzed in the proper light it suggests the existence of a compact by the terms of which Aethelwulf would disinherit Aethelbald at some future date should Judith bear a son. The marriage, then, did not signify an alliance against Danes. Rather it denoted an alliance against Aethelwulf's son Aethelbald.     

St Anselm and the English investiture controversy reconsidered

The Investiture Controversy in England has generally been viewed as a two-sided contest between king and pope. But in reality the struggle was between three parties — king, pope, and primate. St Anselm, devoted to his duties as God's steward of his office and its privileges, worked against both King Henry I and Pope Paschal II to bring into reality his idea of the proper status of the primate of all Britain. Anselm had a vision of a political model which he conceived as God's ‘right order’ in England, and all his efforts were directed toward fulfilling this vision.The Investiture Contest may be divided into two parts. The first phase began when Anselm was thwarted by Henry I's duplicity in the archbishop's attempt to force the king to accept the decrees of Rome at the height of a political crisis. Anselm may have seen these decrees as beneficial to the Canterbury primacy. From 1101 to 1103, Anselm wavered between supporting either party completely, meanwhile securing from Paschal all the most important privileges for the primacy of Canterbury. Each time Paschal refused to grant a dispensation for Henry, as Anselm requested, he granted Anselm a privilege for the primacy. Thus Anselm's vision of the primate as almost a patriarch of another world, nearly independent of the pope, was fulfilled by 1103.At this point, Anselm abandoned his vacillation between king and pope, and worked seemingly on behalf of Paschal, but in reality on behalf of the Canterbury primacy. During this second phase, Anselm's political adroitness becomes clear by a correlation, never before made, between the church-state controversy and Henry's campaign to conquer Normandy. By careful maneuvering and skilful propaganda, Anselm forced Henry to choose between submitting to the investiture decree or failing in his attempt to conquer Normandy. At the settlement, a compromise was worked out, Henry conceding on investitures, and Paschal conceding on homage. But investiture was only secondary to Anselm. He ended the dispute not when Henry submitted on investitures, but only when he had gained from Henry concessions which made the primate almost a co-ruler with the king, as his political vision demanded. Only after a public reconcilliation with his archbishop did Henry feel free to complete the Norman campaign.Thus the Investiture Controversy was a three-way struggle. Both king and pope compromised, each giving up some of their goals. But Anselm emerged from the contest having won nearly all his political objectives.     

Three-dimensional recording by laser scanning of the petroglyphs at Rombald's Moor,West Yorkshire

Abstract

A variety of methods have been used to depict and document petroglyphs, from hand sketching to close-range photogrammetry. Most methods, however, record only a two-dimensional image, whereas petroglyphs are by their nature three-dimensional. Additionally, most methods suffer from inaccuracies resulting from the skill and subjectivity of the recorder or distortions imposed by the equipment and conditions under which the panel was viewed. Conventional three-dimensional recording techniques such as the use of traditional moulding and casting materials, may damage the petroglyph itself. An assessment of the various shortcomings of established rock art recording methods resulted in the field-testing of laser scanning with the objective of obtaining a quantitative, three-dimensional record of petroglyph panels and the creation of non-contact replicas. This paper presents the principles behind laser scanning and an account of field trial results of laser scanning rock art in situ at Rombald's Moor, West Yorkshire, England. The work presented was undertaken as part of the Rock Art Pilot Project commissioned by English Heritage in July 1999.     

Making the Lancastrian capital at Leicester: the battle of Boroughbridge,civic diplomacy and seigneurial building projects in fourteenth-century England

Though a community of some note throughout the Middle Ages, Leicester really came to the forefront of England's consciousness following a series of political and economic crises in the first decades of the fourteenth century. Thereafter the relationship between the town and its Lancastrian lords was forced to shift from one of sometimes indifferent, sometimes overwhelming, clientage to a more balanced and mutually beneficial association. This increasingly positive relationship found physical expression in two projects in particular: the renovation of Leicester Castle and the foundation of the Newarke Hospital and College. This building programme gave the Lancastrian dynasty not only a place to stay, entertain and pray in southern England, but also a solid base from which to face the political and economic turmoil of the fourteenth century. This fact, along with Leicester's growing connection to the English royal family, would distinguish the town, and bequeath it an importance even once its Lancastrian lords had become kings of England. Leicester exemplifies important themes in later-medieval urban history. The town not only derived concord out of conflict with its lords in the face of difficult economic circumstances; it also brought some of the most potent aspects of both the English and continental traditions of urban-seigneurial relations together, especially in terms of the lord's political and physical connections with the town under his control.     

Sovereignty,mercy, and natural law: King James VI/I and Jean Bodin

ABSTRACT

The affinities between Jean Bodin's and King James VI/I's political theories have been recognized, and the fact that James had owned Bodin's Six livres de la république has been recorded, but Bodin's specific influence on James has remained nebulous. This article examines the evidence for James's direct engagement with Bodin, by studying James's copy of the Six livres alongside James's political treatises. It provides substantial new archival evidence for Bodin's influence on James's political thought and, thereby, on Scottish and English theories of sovereignty.     

The Aftermath of the Fifteen in the North of England

Abstract

The Jacobite rebellion of 1715 in England came to an end with the Jacobite surrender at Preston on 14 November 1715. Activity in the North of England pertaining to the rebellion, especially in Lancashire, continued for the next two years. Of major concern was the disposal of over a thousand prisoners, mainly through transportation, though there were some executions. The remaining prisoners were released in 1717. This was not, though, another 'Bloody Assize'. Whigs rejoiced, and some were rewarded, but not all. Jacobite activity continued, albeit at a verbal level, even gaining some recruits. Catholics suffered by being harassed by the soldiery and some fled the North.     

Hegel on the World-historical

The article considers the development and the diversity of the understandings of the Norman Conquest in Jacobean England. In 1603, James VI of Scotland ascended the throne of England, and one of his first policies to unify the two kingdoms culminated in failure in face of English opposition. Modern historians have demonstrated that at the heart of this quick collapse lay a constitutional struggle—the English fear of the loss of their sovereignty. Taking this as the vantage point, the article examines a number of historical publications composed by English lawyers in the following decade. The Jacobean period witnessed a significant proliferation of historical literature, and modern historians have stressed that English common lawyers staunchly adhered to a belief in the ancient constitution, a belief in the antiquity of English law that was counter to royal policies. The article demonstrates how the Union debate, despite its eventual collapse, produced unparalleled interest in the meaning of conquest in the 1610s. It also considers the works of civil lawyers in comparison. By comparing the differing accounts of the Norman Conquest, the article ultimately demonstrates the contested nature of James's kingship in England.     

England,France, the papacy and the Flemish succession, 1361-9

International politics in the 1360s were dominated by a diplomatic duel between England and France to secure the marriage of Margaret de Male, only child of the count of Flanders and ‘the richest heiress in christendom’. This struggle ultimately involved every major European power, including the papacy and the Empire, and resulted in wars in areas as far apart as Hainault, Castile and Lombardy. It was eventually won by the French, leaving the English with a bitter resentment both toward the Flemings and, more especially, towards the papacy, which had been instrumental in securing the victory for France.     

Fragments of the Modern City: Material Culture and the Rhythms of Everyday Life in Victorian London

This essay analyses the influence of Charles Baudelaire's and Théophile Gautier's fetishist poetics on the early works of Algernon Charles Swinburne. If the crucial role played by the Victorian poet as a cultural ‘passeur’ between France and England has often been highlighted in recent criticism, his aesthetic delight in certain forms of sexual deviance such as podophilia has rarely been explored in relation to the verse of his French mentors. Swinburne, Gautier, and Baudelaire may have indeed shared this erotic fascination with feet: this is a fascination that was partly grounded in these poets' common interest in antique literary models, in particular in Sappho's poetry. Rather than extolling the Hellenic ‘sweetness and light’ which some of his contemporaries set so high, Swinburne indulged in dangerously eroticised Dionysian aesthetics which were perceived as both ‘too Hellenic’ and ‘too French’. I argue that the fetishism of the poetic foot may be read as one of the keys to the Victorian poet's subversive shift away from the serenity often associated with Victorian neoclassicism in favour of a Dionysian energy that anticipates Friedrich Nietzsche's works.     

Harehope Hospital and The Arrival of The Order of St Lazarus in England*

A previously unknown deed of the mid-twelfth century significantly changes our understanding of the foundation of the leper hospital at Harehope (Northumberland), which belonged to the Knights of St Lazarus. The deed prompts a reexamination of the introduction of the order of St Lazarus to England. A rereading of contemporary evidence allows parallels to be drawn with the introduction of the order to France, clarifies the founding role of Roger de Mowbray, and opens the possibility that the order’s first establishment in England was at Harehope rather than at Burton Lazars in Leicestershire.