In the previous blogpost I presented a brief overview of the cult of Edward the Confessor, the historical framework for my MA thesis. In this blogpost I will continue on the subject of Edward and present an introduction to the methodological issues I have faced in my work on the king's three images, i.e. how the king and has been depicted in three categories of literature: historiography, hagiography and liturgy. The purpose of my thesis is to examine how these three categories relate and influence each other. The liturgical excerpts are taken from MS Rawlinson liturg. g. 10 and have been translated by me, with invaluable assistance from my supervisor.
Edward the Confessor and Edward Martyr (MS Royal 2B VI, 13thC), courtesy of British Library
And so as
the king moved forward little by little, burdened by this noble
burden, the tendons that the longstanding illness had contracted were
suddenly extended, the passage of blood that his stiffened veins had
restricted resumed, his bones became firm, and his withered flesh
became warm again. His joints emerged out of his flesh, and his feet
were separated from his buttocks. The man stretched out his lower
legs from the knees, which were now flexible and flowing with healthy
blood. The royal clothing was adorned rather than defiled.
- The
Life of Saint Edward,
Aelred of Rievaulx (translated by Jane Patricia Freeland)
The
Representation of St. Edward
The heart of the issue is as follows: how was Edward the Confessor
represented in the various Medieval texts, and how do the various
categories relate?
To answer this we must first look at what texts we are dealing with.
I have divided the literature about Edward into three categories - or
genres - and I have made this division based on the conventions and
purposes that guide the respective types of texts. First of all we
have historiography and hagiography which both are historical
narratives with an expressed didactic purpose. I have chosen to treat
these two separately because while they both fall under the aegis of
history, the genre of hagiography has a very unique structure in that
it is centred around repetition and moulded after the Gospels'
presentation of Christ. A hagiography is a sacred biography focussed
on one particular person and his or her saintly and virtuous life,
death and miracles. For this reason the hagiographic texts of Edward
the Confessor are treated as a category of their own. The third type
of text is the liturgical, and this is a category set to music, aimed
at celebrating a saint in a particular setting - i.e. the Church
space - on days assigned to the saint in question. Liturgy is a form
of communication between the supplicating choir and the recipient
saint - unlike the two other genres it is not designed to be
intelligible for an audience beyond this. When examining the various
textual sources for St. Edward they must all be approached on their
own accord, keeping in mind the guiding conventions in order to
understand how they function within the cult.
Historiography
Historiographical works occupy the largest share of the Edward
literature. The most important work is Vita Ædwardi -
abbreviated Vita I - which was executed by an anonymous
Flemish monk at the behest of Edward's widow Edith. The text was
completed shortly after Edward's death and - although this is an
issue of some contention - had as its purpose to ensure Edith a
favourable position in the Norman regime. This text is very important
in that it established Edward's virtues and typology, and provided
later writers - both historiographers and hagiographers - with
material with which they developed Edward's character. Not every
characteristic was included in later texts, and some characteristics
were added later. The characteristics that did make it into the
standard repertoire and became canonical virtues, so to speak, were
Edward the Solomonic peacemaker, the chaste king, the man of visions
- likened to the prophet Jonah who foretold the fall of Niniveh - and
the pious monarch who preferred to discuss theology with monks rather
than to immerse himself in the world of the court - a sort of monkish
king with traditions all the way back to Merovingian times. These
virtues were also to some extent included in Norman historiographies
written shortly after the Conquest.
The next significant historiographical text, however, was William of
Malmesbury's Deeds of the English Kings written in the
mid-1120s. In this book William presents Edward as an almost dual
figure: on the one hand Edward was a very saintly king - although not
regarded by William as a saint - whose piety, charity, chastity,
temperance and humility ensured him a favourable standing in the eyes
of God. Edward's rule was pre-ordained by the Almighty, William
stated, and this could be seen in Edward's ability to heal the sick
and foretell the future. However, William was adamant that this was
due to Edward's personal piety, not his office as king. In his book
William of Malmesbury in fact uses Edward as a foil against the idea
that sanctity came inherently with kingship, a claim that was on the
rise in France. In this light it is also interesting to note that the
second representation of Edward is that of a man too simple of mind
to be a good king. In fact, claims William, had it not been for God's
personal intercession England would have fallen into destitution
during Edward's reign because of his inability to rule.
These two historiographical texts were very formative for the later
tradition. Hagiographies were based on these works, and in the case
of William of Malmesbury he was copied more or less verbatim into
later works of history - which was a common practice in the Middle
Ages. The perhaps most interesting aspect of the historiographical
tradition is that historians would include Edward's less saintly
characteristics - as found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and to some
extent in pre-canonisation histories - such as his confiscation of
his mother's possession and the king's participation in war. These
elements were included even after Edward had been established as a
saint.
Hagiography
The first proper hagiography written
for Edward the Confessor - i.e. the first that unequivocally follows
the conventions established for hagiographic texts - is Vita
Beati Regis Edwardi (or Vita
II for short) written c.1138 by
Osbert of Clare, prior of Westminster Abbey. This text was a part of
a conscious effort to have Edward canonised, although - as we
have seen - that effort ultimately failed. In Vita
II
Osbert gleaned material from Vita
I,
William of Malmesbury and a handful of other sources and arranged
them in a hagiographic structure. This meant, chiefly, to remove the
political narrative of Vita
I,
include more miracles and pays more attention to Edward's virtues.
These virtues are the same that has already been established: Edward
was a Solomonic man of peace, a prophet, a chaste man, a temperate
and pious man pre-ordained to rule by God. Osbert's emphasis,
however, is Edward's visions and his healing - both while living and
posthumously - and this is of course natural since Osbert aimed to
propagate Edward's sainthood. There were, however, some novelties
aside from the new miracles and the new visions. Osbert wrote for a
well-educated Papacy heavily influenced by Cistercian devotion to the
Virgin Mary, and he therefore included Edward's invocation of the
Holy Virgin and compared Edward with antitypes from the Classical
lexicon: His charity was compared to the covetous Midas and his
mildness was contrasted with the tyranny of Dionysious of Siracuse.
When
Edward had been canonised in 1161 the Abbot of Westminster saw the
need for a new hagiography, ostensibly one that was better suited for
a royal audience than Vita II and
one through which they could hope to mould the king according to
their own tastes. The Abbot commissioned Aelred of Rievaulx and on
the translation of Edward's relics October 13 1163, Aelred presented
his Vita Sancti Edwardi
- henceforth Vita III
- to the king at Westminster and held a sermon based on the passage
from Luke where Christ says nobody hides their light under a bushel.
Vita III became the
official vita and it
engendered a wide array of adaptations in prose and verse,
Anglo-Norman and Middle-English. Aelred's was the last proper vita
written for Edward, and although there were later Latin adaptations
too, these were abbreviations. Since Aelred wrote for a royal
audience he made some changes accordingly: he left out the Classical
antitypes of Vita II
and compared Edward instead with a larger catalogue of Biblical
figures - some of them women. He also added a few more miracles, some
of which were meant to show that Edward could work wonders beyond the
walls of Westminster. When it comes to virtues Aelred presents
essentially the same list as Osbert, but he gives them more space:
while Osbert dedicates 9 pages to Edward's chastity, Aelred spends
more than 20; while Osbert refers to Edward's temperance a couple of
times within five pages, Aelred returns to it on at least four very
separate occasions. Additionally Aelred emphasises the Christlike
aspects of Edward to a greater degree. Another interesting difference
is that while Osbert explicitly says that all kings should take heed
from this story, Aelred specifically turns to Henry II - which was
probably part of the reason why a new vita was
needed.
Liturgy
Liturgy
is a tricky category in this regard since it stands out in certain
ways. One the one hand liturgy has an historical dimension in that
parts of the liturgical repertoire presents episodes from the saint's
life and miracles - especially the lessons at Matins, which were read
as opposed to the chants which were sung. The lessons at Matins were
also called historia
since it was from the saint's historia
they took much of their material - material that clearly belongs to
the established historical narrative. On the other hand these
episodes are interspersed with scriptural readings and chants
sometimes taken from a common repertoire, and several of the
liturgical items were sung, not read. We have, in other words, a
category far more complex than the simple narratives of
historiography and hagiography. Because of the difference in form,
liturgists had to present the material in a different, more
compressed way than the ordinary hagiographer. In other words, what
Osbert and Aelred could dedicate several chapters to, the liturgist
had to compress into one or two chants comprising only from about
four to fourteen lines, give or take. In addition the material was
sometimes rendered in verse, which added certain constraints to the
manner of expression, and we see this in an episode recounted in both
vitae regarding an
Irish cripple: where the hagiographers dedicate a chapter to the
matter, the liturgist expresses the case accordingly:
Who
exerts power over riches and mundane
delights, observe in awe the
grace and glory of
King Edward who [although] a mighty
and
noble king is [nonetheless] so humble
that
someone so miserably ugly and crippled
he supported [him and]
carrying [him]
made the one carried healthy again.
This is from a
lesson, read at Matins, and treats the same episode as depicted in
the epigraph. The compression of meaning becomes even more acute in
the chants - which sometimes deal with biographical details - which
are much shorter. One such chant is the responsory, which was
performed after the lesson, and had a particular division: the main
division is between the choral respond and the verse. The respond is
in turn divided into responsum and repetenda, and the repetenda is
repeated after the verse. In this way, the heart of the message -
what needs to be emphasised - is placed in the repetenda, which thus
contains the key to the responsory. I will now show you some examples
taken from the material for Matins, which was the first service of
the day, held a few hours after sunset. The Matins was the longest of
the services and it is here we find the narrative material.
This can be seen
here:
[R]
The man was called back to his fatherland
from
exile by the intercession of Saint Peter
and to
rule the entire kingdom
[r].he
was elevated to his ancestral throne
[v]
Although he was married
he
led a celibate life.
[r]
he was elevated to the ancestral throne.
As we see, the important part of the message is that Edward was elevated - or in this sense probably pre-ordained - to the English throne. The compression of material is further illustrated in another lesson from Matins:
The
merits of the holy king
are pleasing to God;
this simple
meaning [truth?]
a threefold vision demonstrates.
First: the
Seven Sleepers turned around.
Second:
The Danish king
who
was enclosed in the seas.
Third:
Miraculously appeared
Christ
[unto] Edward visibly
when
he participated in Mass.
Through his holy prayers
we shall be
saved in Heaven.
As we see from these examples the form of liturgy contains very different guidelines for the liturgist than the hagiographer, and although both categories deal with the same material, it is presented very differently. There is also another great difference to keep in mind: while hagiographies could be dedicated to either a courtly or a clerical audience, the liturgical image was not meant to be beheld by anyone but those who performed the liturgy and the one for whom it was performed: the saint. This means that when we behold the king's liturgical image we see him the way his devotees saw him. We see emphasised those virtues, characteristics and topics most important to those who through their prayers and liturgical performance upheld the cult and constituted the very heart of it. By unveiling the liturgical image we come almost face to face with the most central part of the cult.
