Reflections on la estoire de Seint Aedward le rei: hagiography and kingship in thirteenth-century England

Reflections on La estoire de Seint Aedward le rei: hagiography and kingship in thirteenth-century England

This

the Confessor

saints’ ,

The imager_j of St Edzelard as formulated in thirteenth-rentuv England is a neglected source for consideration of wider contemporar_l, questions oj ro_yal policy and patronage. The discussion lends weight to the theov that Matthew Paris was the author of the most distinguished illustrated Life of St Edward, at Cambridge. It proceeds to discuss the wa_ys in which older narratives about the saint were modernized to accord with contemporar?) concerns. The pictorial and textual presentation of Edward’s kingship and relationship with his barons is regarded as central evidence of the relay his lif provided a yardstick of kingb conduct. of Mrdir\-al

History

with a thirteenth-

verse life of St Edward

in the University

Library

at

the opinion of the present writer correctly) attributed to Alatthew Paris, at least from the point of view of its text. Illustrated

Dedicated with affection to Professor George Henderson

0304-4181/90/$03.50

is concerned

illustrated

Cambridge, a work dedicated to Queen Eleanor of Pro\rence and commonly (and in

Paul Binski

Journal

paper

century

lives of this type are presently

at-

tracting interest as instances of medieval narration ‘positioned’ ideologically. Here the focus of interest is not so much narratalogical as historical: where do the texts and images of this work stand in relation to hlatthew Paris’s oeuvre and, more importantly, in relation to contemporar)conceptualizations of kingship’? How were earlier lives of St Edward the Confessor adapted to contemporary concerns3 In what sense can this poem be called ‘courtly’? Although the view that such works are topical in character is opposed here (we are not dealing with a text of political thought), it is nevertheless suggested that they should be read as informal propositions about their world, and not solely from the point of view of literary and artistic attribution. Seventy years ago, Dr. 1\I. R. James published an introduction to a Roxburghe Club facsimile of the ilmid-thirteenth-centuq. Anglolustrated Norman

French

verse life of St Edward

the

Confessor, dedicated to Queen Eleanor of Provence, and now MS. Ee. iii. 59 in the University Libraqat Cambridge (James 1920; Alorgan 1988a:94-8 no. 123). The text of this life had already been published (not without controversy) by H. R. Luard in one of the earliest volumes of the Rolls Series (Luard 1858; \l:allace 1983). In his introduction, James, adopting an approach akin to that of contemporary scholars of

16 (1990) 333-350

0 1990-El

srvier

Science

Publishers

B.\..

(North-Holland)

333

‘English Borenius sixty-four

Primiti\m’

such

Tancred

as

and \V. R. Lethaby, turned pen-and-wash illustrations

to the ofiled-

ward in order to place them in some sort of coherent contest, created according to him by the life and

Lvork of Matthew

justl) celebrated monk-author Abbey. It \vas largely James

Paris,

the

of St Albans who here, and

gan 1988b; Vaughan 1958:161-81; \Yallace 1983:s\rii-xxi). Second, there is the more elusive question of the caste of mind exhibited I>). such texts: whose taste was catering, and Ivhose taste being catered for; where (if I 1x1)- paraphrase
li\,es stand

in relation

to the stud)

of medieval institutional

sainthood and kingship in the sense, 110~. they inform the ‘literar). sociolog).‘ of ro),al biograph!. (Rosenthal 1971; Folz 1984). AlatheM. Paris is interesting in this respect a5 one acquainted \vitll the court and royal person of Henr). I I I. one \vllo ostensihl>. held strong (indeed, according to Vaughan, ‘inimical and offensi\.e’) opinions ahout them, and \vllo can be

in subsequent publications, created the cornmonl>.-held idea of hIatthe\v’s oeww: the illustration of a substantial number of chronicles, saints’ li\.es, de\,otional works, e\‘en Apocalypses (James I920: 13-34; James 1925-6; Lcthaby 1916, 1917). Subsequently, and especialI>. since tile 195Os, the extent of hlatthew‘s wvrk (or rathe . disputed, the

pinged upon his literir)~ scnsib’ilit)(Vaughan 1938:3-3, 12-13, 18, 124. 146-7; \\‘allace 1983:xs\iii-ssix). So far as attribution i\ concerned, llo~\~c\~cr, it seems that the path is not to presume upon \\ iseat hlatthmv’s pri\.atc political Lvorld \-iv\\. ~ doubtless C\~CII a monk like I\Iatthccv could disscnible iii a prestigious commission - but rather to app~~~acl~ the matter fiw~n the point of \ie\v of‘ the arcliaeolog). of the tc\t itself. Let us first consider the issue of attribu-

second connparativel!. neglected. first the sccniiiigl~~ straiglithr\vard of‘analyzing illustrated nlanuscripts

There is question such as

tion. The te\t of the Cambridge dedmzr-d is a \-ernacular \msification and adaptation of an earlier ritcl of Xelred of Rie\xulx. one

the Cambridge .Aehn~N’ (and along \z.itll it the Dublin ;Ifbm md .4nzpkihlu.~ (Dublin. Trillit). (:ollcgc AIS. ITi,), the Gctt) Thontm and XIatthmv’s Edmmd dedicated to the Chuntess of Xrundcl) as texts or picture c) cles \\-liich ina!. or ma!’ not have been gcncrated 1~). AIattllexz. l~imsclf (hlorgan 1982 no. 85; Backhouse and De Hamel 1988; Alor-

wliosc numerous thirteenth-ccntu1-\interpolations \\.ollld ha\.c been imposs~hlc hefore 1236 (the date of Hem). I I I’s nlarriagc to Eleanor of Prm.cncc) and higIll> improb ahlc afier 1272. when Henr)- died. The unique C:ambridge cop of this lift is usuall). dated in the 1240s’ or (more rccentl?,) the 12Xls (Henderson 1967: 100: \Vallace

334

said to ha\-e understood tional sciise, in a \\‘a\

them, in an instituthat ma\ lia\.c ini-

1983:xxi-xxiii; One

Morgan

commonly-held

is less established.

belief

1988a; about

Its opening

no.

123).

the book verses

con-

tain a dedication to Eleanor which has been taken as evidence that this particular copy was a royal book (Luard 1858:26-7, 180-l; James 1920:10-12; lliallace 1983:xiv-xvii). But the manuscript has no medieval distinguishing marks of ownership. In view of Eleanor’s later attachment to Amesbury, one might look for evidence of Fontevrault/ Amesbury provenance, but of this there is none. Its royal character has been established principally and probably correctly on the basis of the style of the pictures (James 1920:32; Vaughan 1958:221-2; Henderson 1967:83 ff.). Although related to Matthew Paris’s drawings in technique, the best analogies to its idiom come from a circle of works associated directly or indirectly with Ivestminster: the drawings added at the back of the \\‘estminster Psalter (BL MS. 2. A. XXII), (a book classed in lvestminster Abbey’s L’estry inventory of 1388 with a Psalter with Apocalypse formerly in the possession of Henry III), and owing to their somewhat specialized imagery probabl) executed about 1250-54 (Morgan 1988a:49 no. 95; Legg 1890:234); a now fragmentar) mural showing the head of a king in one of the thirteenth-century bays of the Dean’s Cloister at \vindsor Castle executed almost without doubt by \l’illiam, a \vestminster monk and pirtor Regis, about 1248-52 (Tristram 1950:622, pl. 26, suppl. pl. 18; James 1920:37; Henderson 1967:85); and a copy of the Flares Historiarum illuminated at ll’estminster in the 1250s (Manchester, Chetham’s Library MS. 67 12) (Morgan 1988a:jO no. 96). The illustrators of the Cambridge Aedward (the pictures were done

by more with Morgan

the

than

one hand)

artists and

also worked

of the

Dyson

closely

(unprovenanced)

Perrins

(now

Apocalypses (New York, Pierpont Library MS. M. 524 and Malibu,

Getty) Morgan J, Paul

Getty Museum, Ludwig MS. III i) (Morgan 1988a:nos. 122, 124). Aedward, in other words, is far from isolated and represents the output and range of talent of a professional, probably metropolitan establishment with connections to the royal works at \\Testminster and \C’indsor, but almost certainly not the Benedictine abbey of St Albans. The work has, therefore, oscillated between two great Benedictine houses outside London, some scholars (notably the first seriously to take an interest in the text, namely Luard 1858 and Fritz 1910) favouring I\‘estminster’s authorship for its text, others Uames, Vaughan, \t’allace) hiatthew Paris’s; some art-historians Uames) favouring Matthew’s authorship of the pictures, others (Henderson, Morgan) !Vestminster’s. If a consensus can be said to emerge from all this, it is that the work was basically compiled in some earlier version b) Matthew but copied at \l:estminster. However, more or less the reverse, that the work was a llTestminster product which influenced Matthew, by Dr. Morgan, the codicology

has been proposed recently the first scholar to turn to of this and comparable manuscripts (hlorgan 198813). In considering this question it is not necessary here to restate the evidence for Matthew’s activity in this field as a whole, first set out by Dr James and amplified by Richard Vaughan (James 1920: 13 ff.; Vaughan 1958: 168 ff.). In Aedward’s case the two most telling snippets are a flyleaf

335

,.i U! p.

_) .I

note in the Dublin Alban nndAmphibalus stat-

1920: 13; Bloch

ing in effect

90; Barlow

(though

this is disputed)

that

Matthew translated and drew out a book of the lives of St Thomas and St Edward which he had circulated amongst highlyplaced ladies, notably the Queen’s sister, the Countess of Cornwall; and a phrase (also of disputed significance) in Aedward itself stating

that the poet also drew out the something which cannot liavre pictures, been common in this period and which has been taken as proof of Matthew’s authorship (Luard 1858:290 11. 3961-64; nIorgan 1988b:85 ff.). The extent to which the pictures themselves evince directly or indirectly Matthew’s art is a complex one, given that the particular formulations we have are not, superficially at least, ~~Iattliew’s own. It would be an ambitious project indeed to ‘read through the present illustrations to consider the nature of whatev,er prototypes they may have had. Certainly there is nothing in Matthew’s drawings to match the interest in facial expressions or back-turned figures present in Aedzmrd’s pictures. These demonstrate a new taste much more akin to the increasingly ambitious pictorial outlook of the contemporary Apocalypses. The matter at work cannot lier pictorial based at their

of the pictorial formulations be divorced from that of eartraditions about St Edward most likely source: \\‘estmin-

ster Abbey and Palace. Aed~wd’s author used Aelred and sources based originally at St Albans Abbey, and Aelred in turn adapted earlier work by that notorious Ft’estminster forger and prior, Osbert of Clare. Material of this type clearly enjoyed wider currency in Benedictine circles by the thirteenth century since Matthew Paris knew and admired Aelred’s vita (James

1923; MPL,

1970:256-85;

xiv, xxiii ff.). The earliest,

cxcv: ~01s. 737Wallace

1983:ix-

indeed pre-Con-

quest, Kin AEdwardi Regis edited by Frank Barlow casts light on aspects of the first surviving occurrences of narrative material about St Edward in the Bayeux Tapestry, especially the signification of the meticulously-observed death-bed events in the embroidery which have (superficially, as we shall see) elements in common with the corresponding scenes in the thirteenth-century Aedward (Luard 1858:389 ff.; Barlow 1962; \\‘ilson 1985). The Bayeux Tapestr); thus presumably bears witness to a destroyed reserve of stories about the saint which underwent radical expansion and reformulation specifically at \l:estminster as the twelfth century progressed, but whose existence has at least to be posited in considering what ideas informed Aedleard itself. It was presumably this reserve, or something like it, which created the basis of the tapestries which Abbot Richard de Berkyng donated to the choir of \l:estminster Abbe! some time between 1222 and 1246. These depicted twenty-two events from the life of St Edward on one side of the choir, and a corresponding set of Gospel events on the other, both accompanied by Latin rhyming inscriptions and completed with votive images. Although destroyed, the tapestries remained in place after the Dissolution, and were included in a notebook of the later sixteenth-century antiquary Robert Hare, who recorded the inscriptions in the hangings (Robinson 1909: 103-8). As M. R. -James first recognized, there is an intimate relationship between this textual documentation and two extant but later medieval St Edward picture-cycles linked indepen-

337

dently to \\‘estminster: that consisting of nineteen illustrations at the end of Trinity College, Cambridge MS. B. 10. 2 (c. 1400) and the sculptures on the Abbey’s fifteenthcentury high altar screen (James 1920: 7 1-3; Binski 1990). These later representations, which in the case of the hIS. B. 10. 2 illustrations are so close to the texts in the Berkyng tapestries that the!. almost certainl) reproduced their content, demonstrate that \Testminster Abbey, in keeping with the medie\.al view that repetition guarantees truth, clung to a home-grown recension of pictures, and in so clinging, authenticated it as the ‘offIcia1’ line. An important point emerges from this bodl, of \j’estminster material: its numerous points of general and specific difIerence with the more richly handled Cambridge Artlulard. Apart from yuite fundamental difIerences of structure and narrative intent dedzval-d is not only- much more thorough but contains a good deal of res gestne, the tapestries and their dcpcndants none the It’estminster recension demonstrates exactl). the staleness of a picture cycle catering for the inured outlook of longstanding routine observance. It lacks the ii-es11 dynamic touch which lightens the otherwise somewhat fulsome test of the Cambridge Aedward. FVhere \l’estminster’s tradition is constricted and emblematic in character, dedu,ard’s is more genuinelv affective, broader and more resonant in its moral interpretation of its subject matter. To all intents and purposes it could be the kvork of a talented outsider. The Berkyng tapestries tend thus to push Aedward’s pictorial and presumably also testual formulation away from Ivestminster. If Aedtetard were genuinely a \Yestminster

338

product we would also have to account for two things: first, in the light of the later medieval retention of \l:estminster’s own picture c\rcle, the failure of so splendid a life as Aedxard to command any later authorit) at \Vestminster itselc second (with respect to Fritz’s h).pothesis that dedti:ard was actually written b>, a \\‘estminster monk) the absence of any independent e\.idence for the existence at this time in Lt’estminster’s community of someone who was clearly a substantial and knell-informed literaq- figure. \\‘estminster strikes us again and again, after the time of Osbert and before the consolidation of the house under royal patronage in the second half of the thirteenth century, as a convent largely dependent upon outsiders for its more distinguished literar). products: upon the Cistercian Aelred in the later twelfth centur). for the oficial test of St Edward’s life; upon hlatthew Paris in the thirteenth for so fundamental a thing as a \\‘estminster chronicle, simply an adapted \,ersion of the in-house St Albans F/OyesHistoriarum (Vaughan 1958:92 ff., 174-5: Morgan 1988a:50-2). The Cambridge Aedward is, I believe, another example bearing witness simultaneously to this general local failing, and to the court’s ready eye for new material. in question That the outsider was Rlatthew Paris himself still remains the most likely solution, not because of some apprehension of l%Iattliew’s ‘opinions’ but rather simply because of the textual archaeology of the manuscript itself: \$%oever put Aedulard together not onl!. took ad\;antage of the boosting of the element of historical writing alread>, present in Aelred’s life, especially with respect to the period of Danish rule and the Norman Conquest, but

was closely texts.

also

both

acquainted Logically

historically-minded with therefore

Matthew Aedward

and Paris’s must

either have been compiled by Matthew himself at some date commensurate with the compilation of his historical writings, or by someone else with access to his material writing after its more general diffusion. As Dr Morgan has argued, if the text was put together at \\Testminster with a Matthew Paris source at hand, the type of Latin source available would most likely be Matthew’s Flares Historiarum, and the date after about 1252 when this text may have become familiar at Vl’estminster prior to its being continued there from circa 1265 (Vaughan 1958:168-81; \i’allace 1983:xxviixix; Morgan 1988b:95). But this view is based upon an a priori assumption about iledward’s date, which entails believing that the composition of the text and its appearance in the Cambridge manuscript were events which occurred in quick succession in the 1250s. To accept this we would need hard evidence that Aedward’s pictures would have been stylistically impossible before 1250. Again - and this must weigh heavily in favour of Matthew’s direct implication various elements in Aedward’s text indicate a date of composition of the prototype in the 1240s (\Yallace 1983:xxi-xxiii; Binski 1990). These elements simply serve to press the work into Matthew’s immediate circle rather than into that of a slightly later but informed and perhaps even lay versifier, since at so early a date Matthew’s works are unlikely to have spread far outside his immediate circle, let alone to non-Benedictines (Morgan 1988b:95-6). If the Cambridge Aedward is a Westminster copy dating to the 1250s of a Matthew

Paris

original,

who would of the

we

have

have

another

commissioned

life of St Edward

under

problem: a later such

copy cir-

cumstances? Presumably not Eleanor of Provence, who is likely to have been first on the list of recipients. Aedward-manuscript’s have

been

partly

The patronage of the workshop appears to royal

and

partly

non-

royal; if more were known about the ownership of the related Apocalypses this question would be more easily addressed. Highly-placed churchmen, courtiers, the royal familia, are all possibilities. Aedward itself, as we have noted, betrays no evidence of its ownership, less of its readership. Eleanor of Provence’s books were doubtless of this character, although her hagiological concerns remain unresearched. Curiously, however, it is not Eleanor of Provence but her daughter-in-law Eleanor of Castile who provides us with one piece of evidence for the ownership at court of manuscript saints’ lives which has remained largely unnoted. Amongst the accounts for Eleanor’s wardrobe is a damaged document of 1288 which, under May of that year, includes a payment of 37s 10d for the repair of “the queen’s books of the lives of the blessed Thomas and St Edward” (libros reginae . . . de aita beati Thome et Sancti Edwardi . . . (etc.); PRO ElOl/ 352111 mem. 2; Parsons 1977:13). Eleanor of Castile evidently possessed two books which (given their joint repair) were presumably related to one another and of some antiquity. The combination is striking since it repeats that of the lives of St Thomas and St Edward, mentioned in the flyleaf of Matthew Paris’s Alban and Amphibalus. This combination was one made available by Matthew himself to Eleanor of Provence’s sister Sanchia, Countess of Cornwall, as

339

well as to the Countess

of Arundel,

at some

point by circa 1250. dedward was produced in all probability 1250-60. Eleanor of Castile effectively entered the royal circle in 1254 on her marriage to the Prince Edward. \Vas

the

Cambridge

iiedxwd

made

for

Eleanor of Castile around the time of her marriage, to introduce her to the cult of her husband’s name-saint? Conceivably, since the date is about right, and the e/hthalnmium at the start of its text presumabl>- not irrele\.ant to Eleanor’s new condition, one previousl?, enjoyed b>r her mother-in-law as introduced to English a foreign princess things. If so, was it also one of the books repaired in the 128Os, and so originall) coupled with a complementar!. life of St Thomas, the pair of volumes being the same in content as those circulated by LIatthe\\ in the )-ears around 1250? These speculations are necessary not so much because they prove an)-thing ne\\ about the history of dedulnrd itself, but rather because the)- indicate how fluid and longstanding the readership of such books mav ha\.e been. All the evidence unco\,ered so far indicates a preponderantl>. female readership. If the traditional arguments two of attribution are correct, about hlatthew’s

lives kvere dedicated

to aristocrat-

ic ladies: Aedzwd to the Queen. Edmurzd to Isabel Countess of Arundel. This ma). have been because r\Iatthe\v understood that such texts were suited to female literacy; but the question of literacy must also take into account the role of such patronesses not just as readers but as potential benefactors of’ the Benedictine Order (Eleanor through her marriage to Henry III, Isabel as patroness of \l’)-mondham Prior)-, a daughter house of St Albans in East Anglia) lvhose support

may have been elicited precisely by the M-riting of saints’ lives (so much is explicitl> stated in a later St Albans source; Rile> 1870:432). Tempting as it is to align the test of Aedzlwd with Henry III’s perception of his

own

evidence

kingship that Henry

there

is, of course,

was actually

no

aware of

its contents. Nevertheless one also bvonders Lvhat male readership a book of this t).pe might ha1.c had. To read Aedward is to apprehend its nature as a document of issues extrinsic to its narrative subject, issues touching on the paradigmatic nature of saintI>. kingship. The tone of its pictures is at times cheerfully deft and circumstantial, its less eventful courtly scenes enli\,ened b) the ne\v attention to facial expressions which burgeoned in the 1240s in Gothic art and Lvhich fully evince knowx features of the art patronage of Henr). III (Binski 1986:42-S) ~ its faster-mo\ing warlike narratives shot through kvith gaily secular and eminently masculine vigour. As a text, rledword stands as accomplished professional historical writing and also as edif>-ing literature, exhorting its readers in contcmporar~language to be like St Edward Lvithout endIcssl~~ engaging in haughty polemic. \\‘hoe\‘cr \vrotc ;ledwzrd was a keen]). tactfLl1 obser\~cr of’ the contemporar)’ thirtcenth-centur). courtl). language of rulership; a point bvorth emphasising when one considers that it is exactl>. this, the propositional nature of the text, that has been most neglected in the interests of establishing its authorship. It is to this dimension of the text that me no~v turn. To ha\rc become so eminentl) contemporary, not onl>- in the mildly obsequious compliments paid here and there to Eleanor and Henry (Luard 1858: 181~ 287) hut also in outlook, earlier St Edwxrd-

material This

of necessity

transformation

had to be transformed. operated

in three

not re-

be

more

characterized,

demoted,

nor

a guilt-ridden

more

crudely

Godwin

ig-

lated areas: adjustments to the plot-structure, changes to the delineation of Edward’s personal rule, and in revisions to the concept of kingship viewed institutionally. Aed-

nominiously dragged off the set while choking on bread swallowed in “trial by morsel”, (Fig. 4), Harold disposed of in a colourfully chaotic melie - a Bayeux Tapestry in parve -

ward is, in the first place, Gothic, document in

at Hastings (f. 34~). Their fall is portrayed for us in Aedward with exactly the relish for

a fully modernised, spirit, combining

sweetness of tone with a fully up-to-date religious sensibility. Its elaborate treatment of St Edward’s eucharistic visions and their fulsome accompaniment by tearful devotions, although already present in Osbert of Clare’s account, is perhaps the single most of this trait (Luard obvious example 1858:215 ff., 250 ff.; Barlow 1970:273-4; Marrow 1979:8; Gouttebroze 1982:2993 14). The twelfthand thirteenth-century literature of St Edward the Confessor exemplifies the continuous if expendable flux of all dynamic hagiography. The most obvious transformations apparent in Aedward are not so much those of religious sensibility as historical interpretation, best exemplified by the utter renoersement des alliances in relations between Edward and the Godwin family. In the 1060s pre-Conquest Vita AEdz>ardi Regis the Godwins, saintly Edith and all, are eulogized as kingmakers, Earl Godwin creating Edward, and the English in turn prospering under their .joint authority, with Harold in the wings as a second Judas Maccabeus (BarVita is essentially a procommending the sterling qualities (Jrobitas) of the Godwin line (Barlow 1970:291-300). Earl Godwin is renowned for his loyalty (Barlow 1962:4). By the thirteenth century, however, and mostly as a result of Aelred’s rewrite (Barlow 1962:xxxv), Earl Godwin and his son could low 1962). The longed encomium,

royal

downfalls

exhibited

by the gilded

late

thirteenth-century Old Testament wall paintings once in the Palace of !Yestminster. Thus after his accession Harold is likened in his kingship to a thornbush, a comparison reserved at the time for wicked Roman emperors or malicious Old Testakings ment like Abimelech, whose exemplary story, fully Augustinian in implication, was later painted on the walls of the king’s Painted Chamber at Fliestminster (Luard 1858:177 (caption LXI), 295 1. 4113; Binski 1986:99-100). Aedwargs text is rather fond of these botanical images of rulership (Luard 1858:182 11. 97-101, 212 1. 1171, 271 1. 3274). The biblical analogies are especially fitting since it is Harold who, in being rebuked by the ghost of Edward at his bedside, reminds us of obvious royal failures like Saul whose fate was similarly predicted by the shadow of Samuel (Luard 1858:296-7; compare 1 Sam. 28: 13-20). It is characteristic of the renovation of Edward’s historical position, his being split off from the Godwin line, that Aedward takes especial pains over the matter of the succession to the throne after the saint’s death. \\hile Edward and the Bayeux Tapestry agree in enlarging the dramatic element of Edward’s death-bed moments, their narrative purpose in doing so is frankly opposed. In the Godwin-minded Vita AEdwardi, Edward on his death bed extends his hand to

341

Figure 3. Cambridge Unilrersity Library MS Ee III 59. f’, 101.: In an early representation London. Edward is advised bv his barons to take a wife: he ponders their ad\-ice at an altar. the Syndics of Cambridge Un;versity Library.

342

of parliament B> permission

in of‘

Earl biguity

Harold

and

of purpose)

(with

only

commends

slight Queen

amEdith

and the kingdom to his keeping. It may be this moment that is represented taking place in the Palace of \Yestminster in the corresponding scene in the Bayeux Tapestry (Barlow 1962:79; Barlow 1970:250-3; !Yilson 1985: 183, 198). Aedward in contrast clears

the Confessor

of the charge

of com-

plicity. Its death-bed pictures (fos. 28-9) are predominantly concerned with the saint’s visions and culminate in the gracious reception of Edward into heaven sponsored by his friends St Peter and St John. Prior to his death Edward finally commends Edith not to Harold but to the 1o);al folk gathered in his chamber; the kingdom is not men1858:288 11. 3871 ff.). tioned (Luard Harold’s absence from this process is stressed by his entry a few stanzas later to deliver a set-piece speech about the issue of the succession which runs against his earlier assurances (Luard 1858:289 11. 3895 ff., 281 11. 3615 ff.; \\:allace 1983:xxix). His gauche presumption at so delicate a moment is thus cast in high relief, and Edward’s implication in his illegal succession denied (Bernstein 1986:118-22). The one survi\ral from the once-eulogized Godwin clan is Edith herself, St Edward’s somewhat vapid queen. Her presence, so potentially tainted by her lineage, presents a literary problem in Aedward. Godwin engineers the marriage to conceal his earlier ill-deeds, and “because Godwin was an attainted traitor, they fear the streamlet takes the flavour of its spring” (Luard 1858:2 13 11. 1198 ff.) . Aedward however clears the waters. Edith is portrayed in conventionally pious fashion: “of her father she follows not the steps” . . . “as comes the rose from the

thorn,

came

Edith

from

Godwin”

spina rosam genuit Godwinus Editham 1858:212

11. 1152, 1171-2,

1175-6).

- sicut (Luard She and

her husband make a chaste marriage. Aedward in fact provides few details about her. Most notable is her skill as an embroidress. Although 1858:212

stressed by Osbert (Luard 11. 1159 ff.; Barlow 1962:14-15;

Barlow 1970:80), this talent was one especially fitting to the thirteenth century, a period when rich English ecclesiastical embroidery, opus Anglicanum, was gaining a European-wide reputation especially amongst popes (Christie 1938:2-3). Here hagiography and life intersect. it’hen in 1245 Henry undertook \Yestminster Abbey’s reconstruction partly in the style of great north French churches, opus Francigenum, the relics of St Edward and Queen Edith were moved from the eastern limb of the church where they had rested together. In October of that year Henry mandated that a choir cope should be made promptl) for presentation to the saint’s shrine “with the gold threads found upon the body of Queen Edith, sometime wife of the Blessed Edward”, textile relics perhaps thought of as Edith’s handiwork which exemplify a stated and perhaps prior literary interest (Calendar Close Rolls 1242-7:344). The possibility that this understanding of relics of the Anglo-Saxon past also carried with it a comprehension of the ‘Old Englishness’ of the medium of embroidery itself is worth entertaining in view of the idiom of Aedulard’s drawings, pen and wash, a long-established pre-Conquest English technique. The ambivalence of Henry’s patronage, here French, there English, is striking. St Edward it was who, according to Aedward, advanced his English barons but judiciously

343

eschewed

“Flatters

and aliens of whose lo?-

alty he was not sure” - a swipe perhaps at a thirteenth-century court whose alien presences, Queen Eleanor included, inflamed

hunting

and hawking

(Barlow

1962:27,

28,

the seething xenophobia Matthew Paris (Luard

of none other than 1858:205 11. 914-8,

40). Privately, in contrast, he is a king of conventional piety, modesty and charity, )-et to a great extent outclassed in these qualities by Edith, the benefactress of Il’ilton (Barlow 1962:41, 44-8; Barlow

249 Il. 2496-9; Vaughan all this Edith’s presence

1958:142, 146). In was of course his-

1970: 132). By the time of Aelred’s uita, and in dedzcard itself, only the latter prilratc

torically necessary. Through her conspiracy of chastity with Edtvard she brought about the confusion over the succession while also ending the legitimacy of the Godwin claim; thus sanitised she reinforced the role of the Old English line; and she performed the allimportant f’unction of emphasizing the correspondences between Edward’s kingship and marriage and that of Henry III.
Aedxlard

tions which certainly post-date his canoniman). of which are \vliolly thirzation, teenth-centur), in character. But what of its central figure? In the T’ita ~lEdwal-di Regis EdLvard emerges with not a little ambivalence. He is at once a man of passionate temper and prompt and vigorous action; he suffers from a “boiling tumult of the mind” and is fond of rustic outdoor pursuits like

344

qualities remain banal Edbvard.

typical

of an increasing11

He becomes perceptibl) more passi\re and retiring in the face of el’ents, left onl>, Lvith his visions and the performance of miracles described by Barlow as the “scrapings of the barrel” (Barlow 1970:261; Folz 1984:118-19). He seldom does anything at all. In Aedzvanfs pictures he is represented sitting or lying do\vn on about thirty occasions, standing on eight, and onl~s once discomposing himself ph) sicall>- on the occasion of carrying an Irish cripple to the high altar of \Vestminsler Abbey. Churchmen are seen on horses in this manuscript, but never the king. Ed\\xrd’s presence is felt much more impressi\.ely after his death, a5 protector of Harold at the battle of Stamford Bridge. The problem posed b\- this dramatic deficienqr in EdLvard‘s earthl!./)pr.colza, made worse by the free references lo other ruler5 being “flobvers of chivalr).” and “fierce as a dragon” (Luard 1858:183 Il. 127-8, 186 11. 267-8), becomes more apparent in the later Zlilne, and it ma). have been as a result of a neI\ nerd to hold interest that we find a grooving emphasis on eventfulness itself; res gfstm, in the later t\velfth- and thirteenth-centur)accounts. The constitutional \-alue of St Edward’s sedentary holiness is not lost on ,Aedzr~ard’s author, ho>vever. \\‘hile Aedx,ard reflects changes in devotional outlook typical of the

period

it also

indicates

changes

in

the

nature

kingship

itself. The

sensitivity and

text opens

to wider

perception

of

with remarks

employed

for Edward

II

in

1308

(Corpus

Christi College, Cambridge, MS. 20; Legg 1900:41-3), and certainly had earlier cur-

to the effect that there were two types of good and holy English king: those who, like

rency tions

Arthur, Edmund and Cnut, “by strength and courage increased their baronage”; and

painted nearest the ward in the king’s

Coronation of St EdPainted Chamber at

those, like Oswald, Oswin, Edmund Edward himself, who “were more

\Yestminster, quite (Binski 1986:34-45,

possibly col. pls.

and wise,

since it was the crowned personificaof Largesce and Debonereti that were

before I-II).

1272 Such

peaceable and moderate” and ruled by good counsel, chastity and intelligence (Luard 1858: 179-80; \Yallace 1983: 150; Barlow 1970:256-7; Vauchez 1981:187-97, 195). Edward’s kingship may not have been one of action but it is one of virtue and justice (Luard 1858:128 ff., 158 ff.). His visionary powers stemmed from his chastity. His bravery and enterprise consisted of his suppression of the flesh (Luard 1858: 180 11. 25 ff.). His simplicity of manner (and his alarming proneness to grin vacantly while experiencing his visions) verged upon that of a child, if not exactly a holy simpleton (Luard 1858:215-6, 274 1. 3370; Barlow 1970: 132). His resemblance to Solomon was a longstanding feature of his literature, already present in the Vita AEdwardi; so too were his virginity and mercifulness, his balelessness (Barlow 1962:3; Barlow 1970: 129 ff.; Luard 1858:204-5). In Aedward

representations sent out clear signals: that with the coronation of Edward the virtues too were crowned and their reign begun, and that Henry’s familia was supposedly like that of St Edward’s in its gentleness of manner and provision of hos@talitas continua.

his chief virtues are those of generosity largitas - and debonaireness, royal virtues indeed, and ones associated significantly

1981:194; Nelson 1973:39-44). cently-published study of Henry sonal rule, for example, David

enough in later thirteenthand fourteenthcentury Anglo-Norman terminology with the English coronation oath (Luard 1858:207 11. 974-5, 191 1. 446, 205 1. 911, 209 1. 1053, 233 1. 1916, 271 1. 3271). They occur for example in the royal oath in the earliest French vernacular version of the fourth recension of the coronation service

has drawn attention to those paradigmatic elements in the holy reign of St Edward which may have reinforced certain aspects of Henry’s self-perception of his own rule (Carpenter 1985:59-62). Among the most important of these is underlined by Aedzlard’s pervasive rhetoric about the wholeness, unity and wellbeing in the kingdom of

It is at this point that we can perhaps begin to understand what resonance a text like that of Aedward might have had for an informed thirteenth-century audience, and to appreciate how it might have chimed in with contemporary views of the institution of kingship. If, as Vauchez indicates, the sanctification of royalty reached its apogee in France and England at a time when monarchy and feudalism were fundamentally in conflict in the eleventh century, the later development and maturation of royal cults in the time of their decline depended partly on their being especially responsive to new climates of thinking (Vauchez In a reIII’s perCarpenter

345

England ous rule 1858:204,

resulting

from St Edward’s virtu1962:3, 12-13; Luard (Barlow 218). As Carpenter notes, this

rhetoric without pictorial or is not emblematic counterparts in Henry III’s patronage at \\:estminster and elsewhere of what might be called baronial art, art celebrating Henry’s unity with his peers. St Edward’s relations bvith his barons

as

presented to us in the thirteenth-centur) Lrerse life deserve scrutiny. The text holds in efrect that the barons are the king’s natural counsellors, and in his relations with them in curin Edward is seen as a skilled capitulator to their will: over the question of their desire that he take a wife, or that he abstain from pilgrimage to Rome, for example (Luard 1858:209 ff.? 211 11. 1123-32, 221-2). The caption to the picture on f. 101~ of Aedzml-d (Fig. 3) espands the test beneath, \vhich refers to the counts and barons advising Edward to marr)-, in observing that man). people gathered in London to hold a council and parliament (Cuncil tenent e @rlmeut), the used clselz-here b\. kvord ‘parliament’ Llatthew Paris from around 1246 and evidently emerging as an official term for such assemblies in the later 1240s (Luard 1858:5, 164, 209; Treharne 1970:71-3). \Vhat is striking here is partl!, the language of the caption. and partl!, the sense of locating baronial counsel and go\.ernmerit at London and specificall!. at \Vestminster, a comparati\rely new idea rcfleeting the later twelfth-century concentration at \Vestminster of governmental and fiscal institutions (Calvin 1963:491-2). Xccording to dedmzrd, Edlvard’s single most important act of patronage there, his reof \t:estminstcr Abbe)., is foundation sug,qested to him by the barons as a means

346

of releasing him from his vow to St Peter that he should make a pilgrimage to Rome; according to them he should found a church in the midst of the land to aid spirituall! kings past, present and future (Luard 1858:222-8). \Vestminster Abbe!, thus emerges as the prime physical symbol of Edward’s cooperative monarchy and his openness

to good

counsel,

exemplified

in

fully Gothic fashion by the royal and baronial shields slung peacably in stone along the choir aisles of Henry III’s church: whose pedigree corresponds closely to the type of readership envisaged for Aeduwrd itself (Royal Commission on Historical 1Ionuments 1924:53-4, 55-6, pls. 102-3; Carpenter 1985:59-60). The unprecedented richness of the abbey’s internal decoration \vith marble-work and car\rings - sculptures of St Edward himself preside over the transepts of the church - reflects not just a balancing of English and French approaches to great church building, but more especiall). the embodiment of the ro)-al \rirtue of largitns of kvliicli the saint cvas such an example. Aeduwd is especially deliberate in devoting o\‘cr 900 lines to the story of the abbe)., its rebuilding and the confirmation of its privileges, and the baronial presence at its dedication (Luard 1858:222-49 11. 1531-2481, 3601 K.). Is this textual image of \\*estminstcr Abbey a prescriptive one, one representing a Benedictine vielv of the political utilit) of urging this aspect of St Ed\vard’s kingship upon a king, Henr!, II I. \\-hose patronage \Vestminster Abbe)- itself sought in the earl) 1240s prior to the kin,g’s acti\.e in\.ol\,cment in the rebuilding of the abbe).? It is certainl!. curious that the test betra).s no sign that Hcnr)- had actuall>. acted along those lines b>- the time it \vas

compiled

(Binski

Edward’s inactivity,

1990).

Henry

capitulation, is thus

not

coupled truly

that

with

his

of a weak

III

whose

be as restorative

kingship

will

of the Golden

ultimately Age as was

St Edward’s.

or hopeless king, of contemporary

This way (and indeed

deposition 1945: 119-32).

a rex in&is in the language juridical thinking, ripe for Galbraith (Peters 1970; The point of these events is

derstood with reference to a more formal embodiment of exactly these restorative no-

to demonstrate ous ruler to

that it is possible for a virtubroadcast his patronage or

tions associated with Edwardi (Liebermann

of formulating St Edward’s Henry’s) kingship can be un-

St Edward: the Leges 1903:627 ff.; Barlow

largesse, to yield strategically in a spirit of magnanimity, and, most importantly, to attain his chosen ends, without the arbitrary exertion of vis and voluntas. Edward is a fortunate king, rex @issimus, who managed basically to keep himself out of trouble (Barlow 1970:72). His passive guise renders him if not weak-willed, at least not obviously willful. Since Aedward implicitly identifies the nature of the office of kingship under St Edward with the saint’s personality, it follows that his restoration of the ancient happiness of the English was unlikely to outlive his reign. On his death-bed, Edward entered a trance in which he had a vision of a green branch severed from its trunk and removed a distance of three acres, whence by a mystery it was rejoined with its original roots (Barlow 1962: 75-6; Luard 1858:283-7). Aedward’s author explains the allegory with somewhat forced ingenuity: the distancing of the branch from the tree symbolized the

1970:266; Folz 1984: 155-8). The Leges Edwardi asserted the role of St Edward as the guarantor, the emblem, of the peace, old-established rights and freedoms of the English. Henry I, under whom St Edward’s grave at \\:estminster was first opened, restored the laga Eadwardi in his coronation charter (Folz 1984:265-6). The formal compilation of the laws shortly afterwards provided a basis for their constant citation in the baronial cause in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As J. C. Holt and others have noted, the type of guarantees and laws in the Leges Edwardi were a matter of active interest in thirteenth-century political debate (Holt 1965:17, 48, 79, 96, 98, 101, 133, 135, 137, 238). They represented to the baronial opposition to King John’s Angevin despotism what Magna Carta was in turn to seventeenth-century conmean to stitutionalists resisting Stuart absolutism (Holt 1965: 17). Powicke recognised that the

troubles the kingdom duly experienced under three bastard monarchs until Henry I restored the Old English line by his marriage to Edith daughter of Margaret of Scotland, a line to which Henry III was naturally held to belong; “NOM’ are king, now are barons, and the kingdom of a common blood of England and Normandy” (Barlow 1970:265, 269-70; Luard 1858:287; Vaughan 1958: 176; Folz 1984: 139). It is thus

Leges, in their doctored late twelfth-century guise, contained within them theories of opposition to the crown, and more specifically to Angevin despotism: “Right and justice ought to rule in the realm rather than the perversities of will; law is always made by right, but will and violence and force are not right” (Holt 1965:79). St Edward accordingly emerges as a paradigm of a form of constitutional monar-

347

cby in a way scarcely

unarticulated

in ear-

Danegeld

(Holt

1965:96-7;

Luard

1858:205

lier accounts. The paradigm provides, in effect, a “yardstick of kingl>- conduct” identifiable as much \vitb opposition to contcmporary kingship and the restriction of its

ff.). His laws simply represented good custom which needed to be grafted back on to English political (and literary) life after the reign of Henr)r‘s father,
so\.ereignt)- as bvitli the reinforcement ‘sacral’ character (Nelson 1973:43-4).

recognized exchequer

of its In-

even I,\- the bureaucracy of the at \\‘estminster in the mid-tbir-

deed the corollar), of this is that M-itbin a ver)- few years of Ed\z-al-d’s composition the

teentli centur!., since it is in an exchequer abbreviate of the Domesda), Book (London,

most significant ‘opposition’ figure of the period, Simon de hlontfort, Lt’a5 himself rcgarded with quasi-saintl>- \.eneration in certain circles (Kingsford 189O:sviii).

PRO hIS. (E36) 284) that we find some routine-looking prefatory illustrations of St Edhvard’s life, indicating both his identit) as the local saint and his role as the protector of an ancient status quo, M;hether of his making or not (hlorgan 1988a:91 no. 121: Folz 1984: 156-7). ~-Iedzcnrd is of‘course a much subtler document than the Domesday abbreviate since it5 images as w.ell as its test speak of a process of skilled pictorial glossing of EdLvard’5 kingship. As \ve 11ave noted, ,4edwnrd is filll) up-to-date in it5 handling ofits subject’5 ima,ycr).. St Edn-ard is presented to us pictoriall) as a somc\t-bat sedentary wt iu.st2i.r granted some miraculous and \-isionarv poivers and placed, con\,entionall!. cnougil

This does not make Aedzr’clrd a document specifically of opposition thought, bo\ve\.er. Such admonitor!. thinking \vas freeI>- adsorbed b>, the royal circle itself; a circle disposed, b)- the late thirteenth ccntur)‘, to surround itself with monumental exemplar) images of good and bad kingship in a fasbion not so \.er>’ different from older C:arolingian practices, and even under Henr1. to dwell pictorialI>. upon tl1e insecurities of kingship (Binski 1986:96 ff.: 1,ammers 1972: Ross 1953). A4edzc’or-d,as \ve l1al.e seen, appears to be responding to just this type of homiletic taste at court. The fact that court and opposition could patronize tilndamrntall), the same lieu. of kingship is also rele\.ant in assessing xvhether the opinions espressed in dedzclard on such matters are themsel\.es a criterion of the test’s authorship. Nor need \ve argue that Aedward contains anything so prosaic as a political theory in order to understand 110~~the caste of mind which warmed to the Leges Edzuwdi is likely to have Lvarmed also to Ae&wtr”s test, either in belie\ring that kings should act per legem and not pey r~oluntatem. 01 at so basic a le\rel as encouraging the kinyS‘s \\illingness to remit arbitrary taxes like the

348

for

the

times.

under

the

protection

of his

.John and Peter. Throughout \ve are a\varc of‘ the intimate relationship between the king’s personalit)(such as it is) and the nature of his reign. Prior to l1is return to England and the inauguration of his glorious reign, Edlvard is in exile in Normand!.. His state is pensi\.e and mournful. Entering a church be falls to his knees and pours out his afflictions, sighing and weeping tenderly and, in his prayer, reminiscing about the fate of king5 (mostly, with cbaracteristic \-icariousness, tl1e more d>-namic t)‘pcs such a5 Alexander. Claesar, Saul and David) in the form of a potted Chronica .\lapatron

saints

jora (Luard 1858:200). 1Ye are again reminded of the two paradigms of kingship

1858:216 1. 1303), was far from negligent. He was instead fortunate in being a gift to

with

church

which

the text opens:

the convention-

ally dashing figures, and the more Edwardlike monarchs whose power came from meekness and tranquillity of spirit, withdrawal from the ordo secularis. The pictures themselves

bring

this home.

In the next

il-

lustration in Aedward (Fig. 2) a messenger brings the joyful news of Edward’s choice as kinn. The messenger, however, stands not before a regally garbed prince, but rather before Edward as a contemplative cowled figure cast about with thick cloth. As Henderson has noted, this is the contemimage-type of another visionary porary exile, St John, as conceived in the contemporary Apocalypses produced in Aedward’s workshop (Henderson 1968: 103). It is also the visual manifestation of another truth about Edward: that, as Joel Rosenthal argued, Edward was in effect a “crowned monk” (Rosenthal 1971:11-12). His favourite company comprised holy monks and discreet clerics; he and Edith lived in marriage “as in a monastic order” (Luard 1858:206 11. 969-7 1, 214 11. 1249-50). His introspective isolation at this point of the narrative reminds us, albeit ironically, of Henry III, the negligent prince who led the simple life, portrayed sitting by himself in Canto VII of Dante’s Purgatorio. Neither Henry nor Edward were especially effective monarchs in their own time. The cult of St Edward shrank rapidly in importance in the fourteenth century and, apart from an interlude under Richard II, was overshadowed not only by the cult of St George but also by the cults of Edward II and, later, Henry VI 198 1: 196). Edward, however, (Vauchez “like a simple infant” (Luard though

and

state

at a time

when

a royal

patron’s support was guaranteed and the substantial literary and pictorial talents of mid-thirteenth-century England were at the disposal of his cult. In this we are reminded that, as an inscription on St Edward’s shrine friend.

once

said,

Henry

III

was indeed

his

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