Book Giveaway and Guest Post by Gareth Russell: ‘Gasping for comprehension’: The Plantagenet monarchy’s treatment of the Jews

I am delighted to welcome Gareth Russell to The Medieval World today as he makes his fifth stop on a virtual book tour for the newly released A History of the English Monarchy. 

In addition to a wonderful guest post by Gareth, MadeGlobal have several copies of  the book to give away! To be entered into a draw to win, leave a comment at the end of this post with your email address (so that you can be contacted), or email me directly at themedievalworld@hotmail.co.uk. Entries close on Friday 4 September, so be quick!

‘Gasping for comprehension’: The Plantagenet monarchy’s treatment of the Jews

By Gareth Russell

While writing my latest book A History of the English Monarchy: From Boadicea to Elizabeth I, there were very few stories that affected me more than the Diaspora under Edward I. Between 1290 and 1656 there were no Jews in England – or, at least, none who could admit to it. In November 1290, Edward I had the entire Jewish community expelled from England in an event known as the Diaspora. Prior to this, Jews had no civil rights in thirteenth-century England; only Christians had rights in relation to their ruler. As a result, Anglo-Jewry existed as a unique legal class that was offered protection by the Sovereign but not by the letter of the law.

Unfortunately, royal protection was not always efficacious. Anti-Semitic riots had erupted during the festivities for Richard the Lionheart’s coronation in 1189 and King Richard was severely criticised by the clergy for allowing Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity during the violence to return to their old religion. When Richard went on Crusade, the absence of their kingly protector left the Jews particularly vulnerable and massacres of local Jewish communities occurred at Stamford, Bury St Edmunds and Lynn. The Jewish community in Lincoln were granted sanctuary in the royal castle, but during the celebrations for Passover their co-religionists in York were not so lucky. They were surrounded in Clifford’s Tower by a baying mob who demanded that they either convert to Christianity or perish. Imitating the actions of the Jewish martyrs at the fortress of Masada in the first century AD, the Jews of York chose mass suicide over falling into the hands of their enemies. Those few who did not were butchered within minutes of leaving their place of shelter.

Clifford's Tower, York, 2014.

There were some medieval English Christians who objected to the persecution of the Jews. The Bishop of Lincoln criticised Simon de Montfort’s cruelty towards them during the reign of Henry III by reminding him that the Jews ‘are a wandering people [...] they are fugitives from their proper home, that is Jerusalem, they wander through uncertain stopping places and flee from fear of death’. But the majority of medieval Christians believed sympathy to be wasted on the non-believer. In 1234, Pope Gregory IX argued that there was strong theological justification for discriminating against the Jews, because the Gospel according to Saint John made it quite clear that the Jews were forever stained with the blood of Christ. Despite the fact that the Jewish community made up less than a quarter of a percent of the overall English population in the thirteenth century, anti-Semitism was widespread, as were stories of Jews participating in human sacrifice or the kidnapping and murder of Christian martyr-children. Christians, so it was claimed, were the real victims and it was their way of life that was being threatened.

In contrast to this consensus of clerical and popular paranoia, the English royal family struggled to define their policy towards the Jews on both a personal and political level. Queens were likely to be particularly familiar with high-ranking English Jews due to a levy known as the queens-gold, a tax that had originally been created by Henry I to supplement the income of his second wife, Adeliza of Louvain. It meant that an extra ten percent was added to any fine owed to the Crown by a Christian over the value of ten marks, as well as on any tax paid by the Jews.

However, in a climate of hatred, considerable popularity could be won by any sovereign who took a stand against the Jewish community. Shortly after his coronation, Edward I decreed that all Jews should be removed from any estates that had been granted to the Queen Mother in her widowhood. Eleanor of Provence had apparently made this request herself, since she did not want any contact with sin imperilling the salvation of her soul. This led to the eviction of Jewish communities in Marlborough, Gloucester, Worcester, Andover, Bath, Guildford and Cambridge. Later in the same year, Edward implemented that Statute of the Jewry, which forbade Christians to live near Jews, implemented a special new tax on every Jew above the age of twelve, restricted where Jews were allowed to live and, amongst other provisions, declared that when in public every Jew over the age of seven had to wear a yellow badge, known as the tabula, measuring six inches by three. In 1287 all Jews were expelled from English territory in Gascony and on 18 July 1290, the policy was extended to England. In the midst of the wedding celebrations for his daughter Mary, who was marrying the Duke of Brabant, King Edward issued a decree banishing all the Jews from his kingdom. They were given just over three months to pack up their lives and leave in time for the Feast of All Saints, which falls on the first day of November.

Persecution of Jewish people was an ongoing feature of medieval life

Some of those in the elite who had maintained relatively friendly relations with the Jews, like the King’s younger brother Edmund, his wife Queen Eleanor of Castile and the Archbishop of York, tried their best to secure safe passage out of England for their former associates. Desperate to prevent a triumphalist pogrom against the émigrés, Archbishop John le Romeyn of York threatened any Christian caught in his diocese molesting or harming the Jews as they left with excommunication. Prince Edmund managed to obtain a special license for a Jewish gentleman called Aaron fil Vives to sell his houses and rents in London, Canterbury and Oxford to Christians and Queen Eleanor begged Edward to grant Hagin fil Deulecresse, the Jewish Archpresbyter, a similar permit. He did so on the grounds that Hagin was ‘the Jew of his dearest consort Eleanor’.

The majority of English Jews were not so lucky. As one ship carrying the exiles sailed up the Thames, the captain claimed that his ship had run aground on a sandbank. To lighten the load as the vessel was re-floated, the Jewish passengers were allowed off to stretch their legs on the bank. Once they had disembarked, the captain and crew sailed away, leaving them to drown in the incoming tide. Those who survived the Diaspora of 1290 were scattered to the wind and Anglo-Jewish settlers were found in Amiens, Paris, Spain, northern Italy, Germany, and even as far afield as Cairo. A London scribe reflected that they had become ‘a fugitive people exiled from England for all time, always a wretched people to wander anywhere in the world’.

Reflecting on the importance of History is easy, but its applicability is an altogether more fraught concept. The expulsion of the Jews in 1290, with all the cruelty it showcased and the misery it entailed, certainly has an even more sinister appearance in light of the Holocaust of the twentieth century. That the Nazi Holocaust had nothing to do with Christian teaching should be obvious to all but the most zealous and disingenuous of Christianity’s critics. What happened in the 1940s was the result of a totalitarian political ideology and a perverted interpretation of evolutionary science. However, simply because Christianity’s fundamental teachings are the antithesis of the horrors found in Auschwitz does not mean that it is automatically innocent of nurturing the long-term European anti-Semitism that helped make Auschwitz or its sister camps possible.

For centuries, the Christian faith taught that Jews were not only inferior to Christians but also harmful – a tumour in the body politics. This was not a view unique to Catholicism. The diatribes of Martin Luther and the pogroms carried out by Russian peasants show that Protestantism and the Orthodox churches were just as capable of vicious hatred against Judaism. Jews were admittedly treated badly under the pagan Roman Empire and their religion was mocked, but so too were many other peoples of the empire, none of whom endured bitter persecution once the Roman Empire had vanished. Anti-Semitism as we know it was encouraged and hideously magnified by medieval Christianity and it is impossible to escape reaching that conclusion when examining the fate of the Jewish community in thirteenth-century England.

Medieval Christianity was an extraordinarily beautiful thing. It moulded some of the noblest minds in European history. Its capacity to move the faithful towards acts of courage, charity and compassion, the haunting beauty of its music, its art, the brilliant and subtle complexities of its theology, the men and women who sacrificed everything to live by its teachings, its cathedrals, built by thousands of hands over the course of generations, are proof of the devotion it inspired and the wonders it was capable of. In a violent age, it tried to promote values like chivalry, mercy and honour. It preached strongly against rape and canonised dozens of young women who had been its victims. And yet, it condoned and even celebrated the persecution of the Jews. In 1943, even as the Nazi Holocaust gathered its dread momentum, the historian Joshua Trachtenburg wrote that ‘the most vivid impression to be gained from a reading of medieval allusions to the Jews is of a hatred so vast and abysmal, so intense that it leaves one gasping for comprehension’. Perhaps, in the end, the Diaspora’s greatest lesson is not just of what was wrong with the thirteenth century or medieval religion, but a reminder, if ever one was needed, of man’s inhumanity to man, how readily he can justify it and the tragedies of the past.

                  ____________________________________________________

Thank you for an interesting post, Gareth! 

Here's a description of the book from the publisher:

In A History of the English Monarchy, historian Gareth Russell traces the story of the English monarchy and the interactions between popular belief, religious faith and brutal political reality that helped shape the extraordinary journey of one of history’s most important institutions.

From the birth of the nation to the dazzling court of Elizabeth I, A History of the English Monarchy charts the fascinating path of the English monarchy from the uprising of ‘Warrior Queen’ Boadicea in AD60 through each king and queen up to the ‘Golden Age’ of Elizabeth I. Russell offers a fresh take on a fascinating subject as old as the nation itself. Legends, tales and, above all, hard facts tell an incredible story… a history of the English Monarchy.

ISBN: 978-84-943721-2-4        Pages: 322

Follow the rest of the book tour!

About the author:

Gareth Russell is an historian and writer from Belfast, Northern Ireland. He studied Modern History at the University of Oxford and completed a postgraduate in medieval history at Queen’s University, Belfast. He is the author of two novels and three non-fiction books, including his most recent book, A History of the English Monarchy: From Boadicea to Elizabeth I. He is currently writing a biography of Queen Catherine Howard.

Be sure to take a look at Gareth's wonderful blog too, Confessions of a Ci-Devant  

Remember that if you'd like to win your own copy of the book leave a comment below with your email. Good luck!

Guest Post by Kathryn Warner: Edward II's Rustic Pursuits

As a part of the blog tour for her newly published book Edward II: The Unconventional King, I am delighted to welcome to The Medieval World historian Kathryn Warner, with a guest post on Edward II's Rustic Pursuits.




There were certain outdoor pursuits which most royal and noble men of the Middle Ages enjoyed: jousting, hunting and hawking.  Participation in these activities was conventional and expected for men of a certain rank, but one king, however, preferred much more unusual hobbies.  He was Edward II.

"From his youth he devoted himself in private to the art of rowing and driving carts, of digging ditches and thatching houses, as was commonly said, and also with his companions at night to various works of ingenuity and skill, and to other pointless trivial occupations unsuitable for the son of a king," commented the Lanercost chronicler disapprovingly.  Edward II also loved building walls, swimming, rowing, hedging, working with wrought iron and shoeing horses, and not only did he enjoy such hobbies, he showed talent for them: the Scalacronica, a chronicle written by the son of a knight who had known Edward well, called him "very skilful in what he delighted to employ his hands upon."

Most unusually for the fourteenth century, Edward II loved being around water, swimming and rowing.  In February 1303 before his accession, when he was eighteen, he had to pay four shillings in compensation to his Fool Robert Bussard or Buffard, because the two men went swimming together in the Thames at Windsor and Robert was injured in some way by "the trick the prince [of Wales] played on him in the water."  In the autumn of 1315, Edward II spent a congenial month in the Fens with "a great company of common people," swimming and rowing on various lakes and waterways.  To us this may sound like a healthy and relaxing holiday, but Edward's contemporaries were baffled and offended, and the Westminster chronicler talked of his "silly company of swimmers" and his "childish frivolities," and sarcastically declared that the king had gone to the Fens so that "he might refresh his soul with many waters."

In June 1314, Edward II humiliatingly lost the battle of Bannockburn to Robert Bruce, king of Scotland.  A member of Edward's own household, Robert de Newington, was arrested for stating that nobody could have expected the king to win the battle when he spent all his time idling, digging and thatching. A clerk in Edward's service who wrote the Vita Edwardi Secundi (Life of Edward II) also wrote despairingly "If only he had given to arms the labour that he expended on rustic pursuits, he would have raised England aloft; his name would have resounded through the land." The king's willingness to "give himself up always to improper works and occupations" was deemed important enough to be mentioned at his deposition of January 1327 as one of the reasons for his unsuitability to be king, not only because such occupations were considered incompatible with his royal dignity, but because they led him "to neglect the business of his kingdom."

Some extant entries in Edward II's household accounts also provide a glimpse into his love of spending time with his common subjects and watching or taking part in their activities. In November 1322 near Doncaster, he stood by a river to watch ten fishermen fishing, shortly afterwards went to the forge at Temple Hirst in Yorkshire to chat to his blacksmith John Cole, and in May 1326 invited a group of shipwrights to stay with him at Kenilworth Castle. In August 1326, the king joined in when a group of men were hired to make hedges and a ditch in the park of Kenilworth Castle, and some weeks earlier had bought drinks for a group of men hired to clean the ditches around Edward's London manor of Burgundy "in the king's presence." There are many other such entries. All fourteenth-century chroniclers who describe Edward II's appearance comment on his enormous strength: "he was one of the strongest men in his realm"; "handsome in body and great of strength"; "tall and strong, a fine figure of a handsome man" and so on. Edward revelled in his strength and in his excellent health and fitness; he loved the outdoors and demanding physical exercise; he was as far removed from the caricatured feeble court fop he is depicted as in Braveheart and much modern fiction as any man possibly could be. Were he alive in our century, he would no doubt be admired as a king with the common touch and as an excellent role model to encourage his increasingly sedentary subjects to take up some exercise. Sadly for Edward II, he was born in the wrong era, and his favourite activities attracted little but bewildered and horrified contempt.

                                               

To find out more about Edward II  have a look at Kathryn's new book; a biography of this much maligned king.

History has not been overly kind to Edward; having been subject to cutting criticism throughout his reign, he garnered a particularly poor reputation in the many years that followed. Today he is typically remembered for his inadequacy as a king, likely homosexuality, and of course that red hot poker. In The Unconventional King, Kathryn sets out to right some of these wrongs regarding his reputation, and the rumours that have surrounded him for centuries. She achieves this with great success; the unconventional king with the myths around him cleared, emerges as a man in his own right with a captivating life story.

The book is meticulously researched, and this shines through in every chapter. It proves to be a fascinating read and makes a refreshing change to read about this king's virtues, as well as his weaknesses as a ruler. 

The book is available for purchase now directly from Amberley Publishing, or at Amazon UK, Amazon US, The Book Depository, and The Guardian Bookshop.

ISBN: 9781445641201 

Format: Hardback; eBook.

Visit Kathryn's blog here: http://edwardthesecond.blogspot.co.uk

She can also be found on Facebook and Twitter

Guest Post by Amy Ellis-Thompson: Manuscript culture: poets, scribes and compilers or the modsnottor mon of the medieval manuscript

Consideration of the medieval manuscript is not merely that of a single hand in an isolated monastery, etching words of devotion into a well-treated animal hide, but a train of investigation that spans the entire medieval period. Manuscript culture applies to all literary production before the introduction of the printing press, from Germany into England by William Caxton in the 1470s. Although early medieval manuscripts were primarily religious and Latinate, the four extant vernacular poetic codices (Exeter, Vercelli, Cotton Vitellius or ‘Beowulf’ and Junius) contain between them the entire gamut of Old English literature that we read today. Late Medieval manuscript culture considers the parallel existence of print and manuscript in the 14^th and 15^th century. As print became dominant, the scribal system fell into disuse, and the use of ‘rude speche’ and ‘olde bookes’ was homogenised into the faster-moving dissemination of printed pamphlets and sonnet sequences. 

Scop poetry in the Old English Exeter Book

The manuscript itself problematizes our modern perception of both book and author. Authorship in the Anglo-Saxon period was not of the importance it is today, so the textual production and culture of the Old English poem comes to the fore in the absence of an authorial biography. The compiler of a manuscript florilegium (excerpts of other writing; literally a gathering of flowers) does not seek to present a single authorial voice, but constructs a complete entity from a diverse selection of vernacular poetry. The codices of Old English poetry are often themselves hearkening back to tradition: gatherings of poems based on earlier oral traditions of a scop or Anglo-Saxon minstrel. Such self-conscious references to orality (seen, for example in the scop poems Deor and Widsith of the Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501, compiled c. 950) makes the Exeter Book a collective product of the Anglo-Saxon imagination.  Despite the restricted literacy of tenth century Anglo-Saxon England, the codex was written within a literate, monastic context, drawing upon secular and religious sources for its Christian readership.

The important consideration for the modern reader is that there is no single author of the codex: when we read the Exeter Book we are considering a manuscript arranged by a compiler. This may or may not be the same person as the single scribe who copied out all of the poems over a length of time, who differs again from the original poets of each text, who may have written the texts generations apart. There may potentially be more than fifty authors of the Exeter Book. Without explicit information regarding the original composition of each poem, they can be considered within the context of a single volume: the arrangement in which they have been placed by the compiler.

The other three extant Anglo-Saxon vernacular poetic codices – the Vercelli, Cotton Vitellius or ‘Beowulf’, and Junius manuscripts – are also florilegia, although arguably not as diverse in theme and style. The Exeter Book ranges from the Christology beginning the codex through saint’s lives, elegiac narratives, maxims, riddles, a bestiary triptych and homilies, entirely in verse. Although the Exeter Book is the most diverse collective example of early vernacular poetry, there is a lack of uniformity to all four codices.

Beowulf begins: immortal lines from the Cotton Vitellius manuscript

The structure of a single manuscript, and the compilation of a diverse range of poetry, is tantamount to a consideration of what that codex offers the reader. The ordering of the manuscript, in the absence of any information about the original authors of the poems, can help us make sense of what the compiler of, for example, the Exeter Book is trying to achieve, what wisdom can be gained from reading the manuscript as a whole from start to finish. Basically, what the point of the entire codex is. Palaeographical and codicological evidence (see Patrick Conner) has shown that the Exeter Book codex is made of three separate manuscript booklets. However, it is not written in stone (or etched on pig-hide) what literary issues bind each booklet as one entity within the entire codex. Each reader, considering the literary themes of the poetry of the Exeter Book alongside the codicological facts of how the manuscript as a physical book was put together, may come up with different suggestions to this engaging riddle.

From the 10^th to the 14^th century, the medieval manuscript exists in a very different context. The monastic scribe and Christian emphasis shifted into a commercial venture. The 14^th C illuminated Auchinleck manuscript, for example, allows us to raise issues of authorship and identity on a different level to that of the Old English Exeter Book. It is a collection of Middle English lays, copied by four of five different scribes, and its use of both the vernacular and impressive illuminations suggest it is a commercial venture. L.H. Loomis proposed the production of the Auchinleck manuscript in a London ‘bookshop.’ Recent criticism has suggested that the scribes were not working in a physical ‘bookshop’ under one roof, but were operating under similar scribal principles. There is an undeniable sense of unity and ordering throughout the entire manuscript. The use of the vernacular shows issues of national, rather than authorial identity: England struggling to reclaim its language and identity over three hundred years after the Norman Conquest. Like the Exeter Book, the Auchinleck MS tells its own story of culture, authorship and the literature being read by a pre-Chaucerian generation

Eye-catching: the visually appealing pages of the Auchinleck Manuscript, containing Middle English lays for the 14^th C secular reader.

The medieval manuscript allows us to read more than Old or Middle English literature: it allows us to read the medieval reader themselves. Manuscript annotations show us which elements of a medieval text were emphasised or even disputed. The 15^th C red-ink annotations on the 14^th C Middle English devotional vernacular prose text The Book of Margery Kempe (see Kelly Parsons) provide us with a laymen’s reading alongside a text scribed by Carthusian monks. The annotations in red ink underline and repeat for emphasis words in the text referring to ‘seculer pepil,’ and women, as well as the readers own ‘amen amen amen(s)’ of affective piety in the margins. Not only do we have a medieval spiritual biography, but a record of the particular chords it struck with a late medieval reader.

The Book of Margery Kempe: annotations in different hands add small drawings and comments around the text.

Manuscript study allows us to read around the words of the Old or Middle English poem itself, considering poets, scribes, compilers and annotators, as well as the culture of textual production, to consider ‘authorship’ in an entirely different and fascinating way.

Amy Ellis-Thompson is an MA student in Medieval Literatures at the University of York. Contact email: amy.ellisthompson@gmail.com

Further Reading:

Brown, Michelle P. ‘Anglo-Saxon Manuscript Production: Issues of Making and Using,’ in A Companion to Anglo-Saxon Literature, eds. Philip Pulsiano and Elaine Treharne (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001).

Conner, Patrick W. ‘The Structure of the Exeter Book Codex (Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501)’, in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts: Basic Readings, ed. M. P. Richards (London, Garland Publishing, 1994), pp. 301-315.

Jayatilaka, Rohini. ‘Old English Manuscripts and Readers,’ in A Companion to Medieval Poetry, ed., Corinne Saunders (Wiley and Sons: Oxford, 2010), pp.51-64.

Lerer, Seth. Literacy and Power in Anglo-Saxon Literature (London: University of Nebraska Press, 1991).

Parsons, Kelly.  Kerby-Fulton, Kathyrn and Hilmo, Maidie ed., 'The Red-Ink Annotator of The Book of Margery Kempe and his Lay Audience,' in The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe and Gower, (Canada: Victoria, 2001), p. 143.

Shonk, T.A. ‘A Study of the Auchinleck Manuscript: Bookmen and Bookmaking in the Early Fourteenth Century,’ Speculum, 60 (1985) pp. 71-91.

Guest Post: Historical Writing in Medieval England: A Very Short Introduction - Michael Tansini

When people think of medieval literature, they think of the Knights of King Arthur searching for the holy grail, hordes of Vikings running around various parts of Europe, and Beowulf overcoming the monstrous Grendel (and, if the 2008 film starring Ray Winstone is to be believed, overcoming some pretty serious Oedipal issues). The idea of some medieval monk or cleric writing genealogical histories does not filter through to public consciousness, or, if it does, it is only before a Monty Python-esque giant foot stomps on the poor writer. However to ignore historical writing in the Middle Ages, and especially writing in England is to ignore some of the most exciting literature of the whole period. 

(Alas, there are no historical writings about the Giant Foot outbreak of 1178) 

When we think of history today, it is of dates and events and people that can be clearly traced with historical records and archaeological evidence. In the High Middle Ages (roughly late 11^th to early 14^th century) it was different. Many noble families, especially in Norman England and France, could barely trace back their family line three of four generations. The lost grandeur of Rome inspired many to attempt to create an ancestral link to justify their present rule. Moreover the Norman invasion of England had resulted in the overthrow of English government. Though the basic Anglo-Saxon administrative framework remained, English religious leaders and landowners were removed in favour of Norman ones; the English language, which had been unique in Europe for featuring a good deal of historical writing, rapidly fell out of use. So in the twelfth century, when historians such as John (or Florence, depending on which critic you believe) of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon and Eadmer, start writing histories of Britain, and in particular the Anglo-Saxon ‘English’, it must be seen in the context of radical societal upheaval. 

(A Medieval scribe, looking bored)

Nor is this historical writing limited to the English. Orderic Vitalis was an Anglo-Norman clergyman whose monumental ‘Ecclesiastical History’ is symptomatic of divided loyalties. He praises Henry I as a lion but condemns William the Conqueror for his Harrying of the North and describes the Norman subjugation as a ‘yoke’.  Geoffrey of Monmouth’s ‘History of the Kings of Britain’ is often derided as falsifying and myth-making but it also represents an attempt by Welsh Britons to commemorate their own history that English writers (like Henry of Huntingdon) have ignored). Geoffrey was the first writer to depict King Arthur as we recognise him, and his depiction of Arthur’s life and Merlin’s Prophecies were the foundation for the growth in Arthurian literature.

Even works now considered literary had a strong historical background. It is important to note that while there was the difference between ‘fabula’, roughly translating to a story and a ‘historia’, history, these genre boundaries were far from fluid. Thus the writers Wace and Gaimar wrote literary stories about the history of England in Anglo-Norman which contain clear genealogical elements in addition to their underappreciated literary merit. And Jordan Fantosme’s Chronicle, though often shelved in the history section of a university library, uses a flexible metrical structure, dashing heroic speeches and bloody battles in a portrayal of Henry II’s war against the Scots.

(Henry II in less murderous times)

This can only be a rudimentary sketch of the exciting and (from a literary perspective) underappreciated burst of historical writing in England. I have not mentioned the historical writers of the thirteenth century, notably Matthew Paris, nor the wealth of writing on the Continent. It is a type of writing which undermines genre, ethnic national boundaries as quickly as these boundaries are set up, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Michael Tansini is an MA student in Medieval Literatures at the University of York

List of Works Mentioned

Eadmer, Lives and Miracles trans. and ed. Muir and Turner (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006)

Gaimar, Estoire des Engleis, trans. and ed. Ian Short. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)

Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, trans. and ed. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1977)

Henry of Huntingdon, History of the English People 1000-1154, trans. and ed. Diana Greenway (Oxford: OUP), 2009

John of Worcester, Chronicle, trans. and ed. McGur, 3 volumes. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998)

Jordan De Fantosme, Chronicle ed. R.C Johnson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981)

Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History trans. and ed. Marjorie Chibnall 6 volumes (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1969-80)

Wace, La Roman de Brut, trans. and ed. Judith Weiss (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002)

Two interesting Critical Studies

Gransden, Antonia. Historical Writing in England 550-1307. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974)

Partner, Nancy. Serious Entertainments: The Writing of History in Twelfth Century England. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977

Guest Post - Visualizing the past: transforming medieval history into action documentaries

I'd like to welcome guest blogger Nicole Tomlinson to The Medieval World today! Nicole is the staff writer for Battle Castle, an action documentary series on medieval castles starring Dan Snow that will premiere on History Television in Canada on February 23, 2012 and is scheduled to air on Discovery Knowledge in the UK this Spring. BBC Worldwide has distribution rights for the series, so international air dates will be announced in the future. For the latest updates, like them on Facebook (www.facebook.com/battlecastle) or follow on Twitter (www.twitter.com/battlecastle). Also, be sure to check out their great page over at http://battlecastle.tv, and the latest trailer for the show here.

Welcome, Nicole!

Presenter Dan Snow in the castellan's tower. Credited to Medieval Media Inc.

1271. Northern Syria.

Outside the crown jewel of Crusader castles, a powerful Mamluk army led by a usurper king prepares to lay siege. Armed with the mighty trebuchet, they’re here for one reason – to seize Crac des Chevaliers and drive Christians from this land for good.

Inside, a castellan and his elite group of knights gaze upon their enemy, and the walls that will determine their fate. Strong, precise stones, laid by their predecessors, now in danger of being destroyed. Their castle was borne of conquest and domination. If it falls, so will the vision that raised it.  

Castellan who defends Crac des Chevaliers in 1271 in the first episode of the Battle Castle series. Credited to Medieval Media Inc.

As staff writer for the action documentary series Battle Castle, I’ve seen this bit of past played out hundreds of times. In history books, in my head, and on screen. And I still get shivery and goose-bumpy when I think of it. I feel that it’s a natural reaction. As human beings, our urge to experience yesterday is as powerful – and undeniable – as the epic siege that challenged Crac des Chevaliers more than 700 years ago.

As a filmmaker, how do you transform our visions of the past into one cohesive, compelling, and factually-accurate documentary? In the Battle Castle universe, it started with inspiration and culminated in a powerful fusion of knowledge and imagination. Part of my role along the journey from vision to visualization has involved historical verification. From building periods to army positioning to the weather, part of my job was to ensure that our team was “keeping it real” on screen. But when you’re making factual shows about events that transpired before the age of visual capture, sometimes “keeping it real” can be a real challenge.

Take a castle’s construction. Half the time of each of the six Battle Castle episodes – which profile Crac des Chevaliers, Chateau Gaillard, Dover Castle, Conwy Castle, Malbork Castle, and Malaga – is spent exploring how these strongholds were built. Every one has changed since the period they were raised in. For some, we have a pretty clear idea of what was built when. For others, history is not so forthcoming.

In Malaga, Spain, the Castillo de Gibralfaro and its surrounding defences were particularly difficult to represent. The relative lack of heritage investment, dearth of archeological work and issues with over-restoration meant pulling bits of information from multiple sources to model what the castle is best believed to have looked like in 1487 when it was besieged. The city walls, which are virtually non-existent today, were recreated exclusively from historical representations.

In France, Chateau Gaillard presented a whole different challenge. The castle was demolished in the late 16^th century, leaving little more than ruins on most of the site. Though archeological works give us a good idea of what the castle looked like in its prime, it was a very difficult location to film. In this case, CGI and visual effects were brought in to pick up where the present leaves off to carry us back to 1203 when Philip Augustus of France launched his attack against it.

Once the Battle Castle team tackled the builds, we then faced the sieges that tested them. The second half of each of the six shows profiles an epic attack that each of the castles faced. Again, some aspects of these battles are well-documented … others go virtually unmentioned.

Southwest side of Crac des Chevaliers; a focus point of the siege.  Credited to Medieval Media Inc.

In England, showcasing the section of the outer wall that was targeted when Prince Louis of France invaded England in 1216 proved to be anything but straight-forward, as much of it was modified after the siege. In addition, discerning which tunnels were carved into the chalk cliffs by whom, and when, also required some investigation – though historians are fairly certain they can distinguish the medieval tunnels from later war tunnels, it’s still impossible to tell for certain which were carved by French underminers and which were cut by the English garrison attempting to intercept them.

For Conwy Castle and Edward’s other “Iron Ring” fortifications, as well the Teutonic Knights’ Malbork Castle, we had access to a wealth of information about exactly how and when each were built. But in Wales, details of Madog ap Llywelyn’s backstory and contemporary chronicles of the rebellion he launched in 1294 are relatively sparse. And in Poland, details of the siege that Malbork Castle faced in 1410 pale in comparison to accounts of the attacks other castles faced. 

 And then there’s the mighty Crac des Chevaliers. Though we had relatively ample access to historical information on the castle’s build and its siege, as well as the help of current experts, I felt like no matter how much we found out, it wasn’t quite enough to satisfy my desire to know what really happened … in excruciating detail.

While we were making the show, I kept thinking that if I could go back to 1271 in northern Syria, I’d have a field day. I’d take in everything from the exact distance the Muslim army was from the castle to which day they attacked its outerworks to if the ground was slippery or mucky to how a giant trebuchet sounds when it fires to if there was a smell of sweat and fear in the upper castle.

I’d try and speak to the castellan in broken French, asking him questions about how it feels to be besieged. Then I’d attempt to find a translator to speak with Sultan Baybars about his offensive. Once they found out I was from the future, they’d probably press me to reveal the outcome of the battle – and well, I’d have to tell them to watch the show and find out. And, let’s face it … it would be a little awkward. 

Sultan Baybars. Credited to Medieval Media Inc.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), this ill-fated foray into time travel never transpired, and Battle Castle was created, by necessity and design, from the perspective of the present. I suppose that, by making the series, the Battle Castle crew has rewritten history – for our characters, ourselves, and for our audience. As factual programmers, sometimes it’s tempting to think it would be much easier to make these shows if we could live in the past. But as visually-driven storytellers, we’re reminded it’s the technologies of today that allow us to capture these incredible moments in time and share them in whole new ways.

As a writer, I can’t promise that every detail appears on screen as it was. In fact, I can promise some don’t. Certain aspects of our history will always remain a mystery … and as much as we like to think it would be great to have all of our questions answered, maybe it’s better that way. What I can promise is a compelling, factually-driven journey – an epic adventure into the past, visualized like never before.

We hope you enjoy.

Nicole Tomlinson

All of the images in this post are property of Medieval Media Inc. and taken from Episode One: Crac des Chevaliers. This is the first episode from Battle Castle's forthcoming series.