III The Central Middle Ages (900–1200)

III The Central Middle Ages (900–1200) abhl_1213 14..31 (i) British History C.P. Lewis British histories There is little this year that takes the whole of the British Isles as its field, but Clare Downham, Viking kings of Britain and Ireland: the dynasty of Ívarr to A.D. 1014 (Dunedin Academic P., £25), although concerned with just one Scandinavian dynasty based in what came to be the backwater of the Isle of Man, provides a detailed political narrative and analysis across the whole of the British Isles. She draws on numismatic, archaeological, and place-name evidence besides the written sources, and in many ways replaces Alfred Smyth’s Scandinavian York and Dublin (1979) as the first point of reference for her topic. Unlike Smyth, she avoids relying on the highly problematic and much later evidence of the Icelandic sagas. A byproduct of her interest in political connections across the Irish Sea is ‘St Bega: myth, maiden, or bracelet? An Insular cult and its origins’ (J. of Med. Hist., 33). England: sources and their interpretation Two further exemplary editions of narrative sources, edited to the very highest standards of the Oxford Medieval Texts (OMT) series lead the way. John Hudson (ed. and trans.), Historia ecclesie abbendonensis: the history of the church of Abingdon, volume 1 (Clarendon P., £100) completes his two-volume edition of a source which is not just about Abingdon abbey but important for Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman history generally (volume 2 appeared in 2007). A complex text is here presented with great clarity, an excellent facing-page translation, and copious scholarly commentary. M. Winterbottom (ed. and trans.), William of Malmesbury: Gesta pontificum anglorum, The history of the English bishops, I: text and translation (Clarendon P., £110) is the first of two volumes which will set on a wholly new footing historians’ use of Malmesbury’s enthralling compendium of history and story-telling about the English bishops and their dioceses. We await a companion volume including an introduction and commentary. OMT has been exceptionally productive in recent years, making many of the narrative sources for the Norman Conquest period available (in libraries, given the price) in much more reliable editions than previously. They are much used as set sources in advanced undergraduate work, but need a lot of explanation, so a warm welcome can be given to Eric Knibbs, ‘How to use modern critical editions of medieval Latin texts’ (Hist. Compass, 5/6). On the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Stephen Baxter, ‘MS C of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the politics of mid-eleventh-century England’ (E.H.R., 122) is important for showing how the Chronicle developed in the last years of Anglo-Saxon England, as well as for making a strong case that the different manuscripts embody the politics of the period. There has long been a need for a better edition and translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s fabulous history of early Britain, and that want has now been filled by Michael D. Reeve (ed.) and Neil Wright (trans.), Geoffrey of Monmouth, The history of the kings of Britain: an edition and translation of the De gestis Britonum (Historia regum Britannie) (Boydell P., £50). The Latin text is based on a much more secure knowledge of its complicated manuscript transmission (some 220 manuscripts having survived), and the translation is elegant and readable. This now becomes the standard edition, and should open up more confident use of an intriguing text. © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES (900–1200) 15 David Roffe, Decoding Domesday (Boydell P., £50) builds on the idea powerfully (and controversially) advanced in his Domesday: the inquest and the book (2000): that Domesday Book was not the intended outcome of the Domesday Inquest. He sees a shift in the concerns of the people who devised and carried through what became Domesday Book, from diversified concerns with geld (i.e. taxation) and service in the Inquest, to lordship in the Book. His view that Domesday Book described only the land which was assessed to service, not all land, if correct, changes fundamentally how Domesday Book can be mined for information about late eleventh-century England. But even if that central idea is not accepted (and some reviewers clearly do not), this book has very useful accounts of the historiography of Domesday scholarship and the contents of Domesday Book. Roffe provides a brief taster for the book in ‘Decoding Domesday’ (Hist. Today, June 2007). Still on Domesday Book, I am sorry to say that the preface of Colin Flight, The survey of the whole of England: studies of the documentation resulting from the survey conducted in 1086 (British Archaeological Reports, British Ser. 405, 2006, £30) was enough to put me off reading any more. It is symptomatic of the author’s approach that he just cannot bring himself to call it what everyone else calls it. His evidently painstaking analysis of the text may well have produced some gems, but it is doubtful whether they will ever be absorbed by the mainstream scholarship which he plainly distrusts. The two definitive series of editions of charters are also continuing full-steam: two instalments of Anglo-Saxon Charters in Julia Crick (ed.), Charters of St Albans (OUP, £45) and S. E. Kelly (ed.), Charters of Bath and Wells (OUP, £50), and one of English Episcopal Acta in Mary Cheney, David Smith, Christopher Brooke, and Philippa M. Hoskin (eds), Worcester, 1062–1185 (OUP, £45). There are also new ecclesiastical charters in B. R. Kemp, ‘Archidiaconal and vice-archidiaconal acta: additions and corrections’ (Hist. Research, 80), which prints sixteen documents discovered since the author’s Canterbury & York Soc. edition of 2001. Emilie Amt and Stephen D. Church (eds), Dialogus de scaccario (The dialogue of the exchequer) and Constitutio domus regis (The disposition of the royal household) (Clarendon P., £85) replaces the existing editions (published 1902 and 1950) of two texts of the early twelfth century which have been central to our understanding of the growth of bureaucratic government in England. The Bayeux Tapestry continues to attract attention and reinterpretation, often by scholars with expertise in disciplines such as art history. Gale Owen-Crocker, ‘Reading the Bayeux Tapestry through Canterbury eyes’, in Simon Keynes and Alfred P. Smyth (eds), Anglo-Saxons: studies presented to Cyril Roy Hart (Four Courts P., 2006, £55) has the interesting idea of looking at some of the conventional artistic motifs of the Canterbury school of manuscript illumination which appear embroidered in the margins of the Tapestry. She draws out their resonances for Canterbury artists, and so is able to make some new suggestions about what they meant when used in the Tapestry. Janet Burton (ed.), The foundation history of the abbeys of Byland and Jervaulx (Borthwick Institute, 2006, £15) is the first modern edition of an interesting account of the origins of two Savignac (soon Cistercian) houses in Yorkshire. England: surveys Interest this year centres on royal biography. Several important contributions are made in Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent (eds), Henry II: new interpretations (Boydell P., £55), including those of Nicholas Vincent on Henry’s court (drawing on the forthcoming edition of his acta), Ian Short on vernacular court culture, Martin Aurell on courtly interest in King Arthur, Anne Duggan on the Becket controversy, Paul Brand on developments in law, Jean Dunbabin and John Gillingham on different aspects of relations with France, Edmund King on events in the dying days of King Stephen’s reign, Nick Barratt on royal revenues, Martin Allen on the coinage, and Matthew Strickland on Henry’s eldest son, the Young King. Jean Flori’s French biography of Richard the Lionheart, king and knight now appears in a translation by Jean Birrell © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. 16 ANNUAL BULLETIN OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE (Edinburgh U.P., 2006, £75, pbk £25), providing a chronological account and a treatment of Richard’s image in relation to medieval chivalry. England: government, law, and society Stephen Baxter, The earls of Mercia: lordship and power in late Anglo-Saxon England (OUP, £60) is one of the most interesting of this year’s books on any topic, and has had enthusiastic reviews from all sides. It provides a detailed analysis of the acquisition and exercise of power by the earls of Mercia in the eleventh century, and makes a major contribution to our understanding of politics and aristocratic society. Baxter differs from David Roffe (see above, Sources) on important points in the interpretation of Domesday Book, and offers cogent accounts of the nature of the earldoms, landed wealth, lordship over smaller landowners, and the strengths and limitations of royal authority. Also contributing to understanding political culture is Charles Insley, ‘Assemblies and charters in late Anglo-Saxon England’, in P. S. Barnwell and Marco Mostert (eds), Political assemblies in the earlier Middle Ages (Brepols, 2003, £50). Insley shows that certain features of tenth-century royal charters, such as claims about rule and apologies for misdeeds, conveyed political messages. Robin Fleming, ‘Acquiring, flaunting and destroying silk in late Anglo-Saxon England’ (Early Med. Europe, 15) belongs in this section, too, since she shows that silk had an ideological and politicized meaning for those who acquired and wore it. But this is a remarkably rich and wide-ranging article which also addresses economic history in a wholly new way, and is based on a deep understanding of how much historians of the period can learn from using archaeological evidence and thinking about material culture. Some of the practicalities of royal government in the twelfth century are illuminated in S. D. Church, ‘Some aspects of the royal itinerary in the twelfth century’ (13th-Century England, 11); Mark Hagger, ‘A Pipe Roll for 25 Henry I’ (E.H.R., 122) [a short extract discovered in a fourteenth-century manuscript proves that the Pipe Rolls began earlier than the earliest surviving one, of 31 Henry I]; and Nicholas Karn, ‘Nigel, bishop of Ely, and the restoration of the exchequer after the “anarchy” of King Stephen’s reign’ (Hist. Research, 80) [the chronology is better understood by examining the careers of the royal officials involved]. George Garnett, Conquered England: kingship, succession, and tenure, 1066–1166 (OUP, £65) is a learned, original, and provocative account of the rupture of 1066 in English history and its consequences over the following century. Garnett sees the homage done personally to the new Norman king as a wholly new element in the English state and society, and one which had profound and disturbing consequences for political history. Early reaction to the book in reviews suggests that a hornet’s nest has been stirred up by the way in which Garnett’s thesis undercuts prevailing ideas about continuity across the Conquest. Narrower aspects of Anglo-Saxon law are variously the subjects of Andrew Rabin, ‘Old English forespeca and the role of the advocate in Anglo-Saxon law’ (Med. Studs, 69); Scott Thompson Smith, ‘Of kings and cattle thieves: the rhetorical work of the Fonthill Letter’ (J. of English and Germanic Philology, 106) [a tenth-century property dispute where local and national concerns intersected]; and Michael Fordham, ‘Peacekeeping and order on the Anglo-Welsh frontier in the early tenth century’ (Midland Hist., 32) [the ‘Ordinance concerning the Dunsæte’ seen as representative of the Old English state’s involvement in dispute settlement along its borders]. England: family and gender Stacy S. Klein, Ruling women: queenship and gender in Anglo-Saxon literature (Notre Dame U.P., 2006, £19.95) adds much to our knowledge of queenship in the late Anglo-Saxon period, because for the first time it gives a systematic and expert account of how queens were represented in the literature of the period. An important article by Pauline Stafford, ‘Chronicle D, 1067 and women: gendering conquest in eleventh-century England’, in Keynes and Smyth (eds), Anglo-Saxons (see above, Sources) draws attention to the prominence of women in a crucial annal in the © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES (900–1200) 17 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. She sees the representation of gender there as a means by which the chronicler was able to comment on political events. A useful collection of Stafford’s previously published essays, Gender, family and the legitimation of power: England from the ninth to early twelfth century (Ashgate Variorum, 2006, £60) is prefaced by a new one which draws out the main themes and conclusions of her work. Kirsten A. Fenton, ‘Ideas and ideals of masculinity in William of Malmesbury’ (Women’s Hist. R., 16) shows that Malmesbury thought that restraint was the key to ideal male behaviour. England: identities Despite all the attention paid to Englishness in recent years, there is still space for a fresh (but too brief) look at the name of the country: George T. Beech, ‘The naming of England’ (Hist. Today, Oct. 2007) shows that ‘Engla land’ (the name of a country) replaced ‘Angelcynn’ (the name of a people) over the period 1014–35. The implications need following up. The identity of the Welsh within England is the concern of two articles in N. J. Higham (ed.), Britons in Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell P., £50) (which otherwise has a much earlier chronological focus): C. P. Lewis, ‘Welsh territories and Welsh identities in late Anglo-Saxon England’ and David Thornton, ‘Some Welshmen in Domesday Book and beyond: aspects of Anglo-Welsh relations in the eleventh century’. Regional identities, illuminated before 1066 by Baxter’s book on Mercia (see above, Government), are covered for the late twelfth century by Anne Lawrence-Mathers, ‘William of Newburgh and the Northumbrian construction of English history’ (J. of Med. Hist., 33). Food for thought on language use and language choice in post-Conquest England is provided by Kathryn A. Lowe, ‘Post-Conquest bilingual composition in memoranda from Bury St Edmunds’ (R. of English Studs, 59): different types of document were written in Latin and English, but the implications could have been further explored. Anglo-Saxon attitudes to death and the dead perhaps best come here as an aspect of identities. Christina Lee, Feasting the dead: food and drink in Anglo-Saxon burial rituals (Boydell P., £45) tries to make sense both of the early archaeological evidence and of the later written sources. Her argument is that practices and traditions of mortuary feasting first evident from archaeology in the pagan period continued to be important right through into the tenth and eleventh centuries. J. L. Buckberry and D. M. Hadley, ‘An Anglo-Saxon execution cemetery at Walkington Wold, Yorkshire’ (Oxford J. of Archaeology, 26) is an archaeological report full of technicalities, but also usefully sums up what we now know about execution cemeteries and the attitudes to the dead that they illustrate. Beliefs about the world and the identity of humanity within it are also touched on in a rather dense technical study of language and texts by Alaric Hall, Elves in Anglo-Saxon England: matters of belief, health, gender and identity (Boydell P., £45), and in Britt Mize, ‘The representation of the mind as an enclosure in Old English poetry’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 35, 2006). Martin K. Foys, ‘An unfinished mappa mundi from late-eleventhcentury Worcester’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 35, 2006) argues for a hitherto unrecognized tradition of Anglo-Saxon maps of the world, with implications for their own place in it. England: settlement, landscape, and the economy Interest in the origins of medieval common-field systems has had something of a revival in recent years. A thoughtful and interesting contribution is made from a local perspective in Sue Oosthuizen, Landscapes decoded: the origins and development of Cambridgeshire’s medieval fields (Hertfordshire U.P., 2006, £14.99). Careful study leads her to suggest that this particular system originated in the period of Mercian dominance before the Vikings, so running contrary to the orthodox idea that common-field systems dated from after 900. Another local study of interest (from a very different part of the country) is Peter Herring, ‘Medieval fields at Brown Willy, Bodmin Moor’, in Sam Turner (ed.), Medieval Devon and Cornwall: shaping an ancient countryside (Windgather P., 2006, £19.99), which identifies four © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. 18 ANNUAL BULLETIN OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE phases of settlement at a marginal moorland hamlet over the three hundred years before 1275. Two clearly explained Somerset examples of the fragmentation of large land-units into parish-sized territories during the central Middle Ages could be read by historians interested in other regions as models of development: F. R. Thorn, ‘Shapwick, Domesday Book and the “Polden estate” ’ (Somerset Archaeology and Natural Hist., 151) and Mick Aston and Michael Costen, ‘An early medieval secular and ecclesiastical estate: the origins of the parish of Winscombe in north Somerset’ (ibid.). Thorn’s in particular is an excellent demonstration of just how much can be squeezed out of a close analysis of Domesday Book. The important contribution which test-pitting is making to understanding the development of villages is well explained in Carenza Lewis, ‘New avenues for the investigation of currently occupied medieval rural settlement: preliminary observations from the Higher Education Field Academy’ (Med. Archaeology, 51). From this year’s issue onwards, Med. Archaeology has added to the usual mass of very brief reports of archaeological fieldwork (often enough, frankly, of little intrinsic interest) a new section of extended ‘fieldwork highlights’, reporting the most significant work at greater length. Among other studies of settlement and topography at a very local level I would single out Paul Everson and David Stocker, ‘Little Sturton rediscovered, part 1: the grange of Kirkstead abbey’ (Lincolnshire Hist. and Archaeology, 40, 2005) and David Bourne, ‘Flaxton: the layout of the original planned settlement’ (Yorkshire Archaeological J., 78, 2006). For a stimulating report on continuing research, on ring-fenced Anglo-Saxon farms, see Ros Faith, ‘Worthys and enclosures’ (Med. Settlement Research Group Annual Report, 21, 2006). Yet another castellologist offers an overview of the state of castle studies: Sarah Speight, ‘British castle studies in the late 20th and 21st centuries’ (Hist. Compass, 2, 2004). Daniel Étienne, ‘Les châteaux de Guillaume fils Osbern dans le sud des marches galloises’ (Annales de Normandie, 56, 2006) provides a much needed conspectus, responding to ideas about some of the castles individually put forward by other scholars. There are new empirical data for individual castles (from excavations as long ago as the 1960s and 1970s) in David Austin, Acts of perception: a study of Barnard Castle in Teesdale (2 vols, Architectural and Archaeological Soc. of Durham and Northumberland, £65) and Andrew Saunders, Excavations at Launceston castle, Cornwall (Soc. for Med. Archaeology, 2006, £45). Probably of wider interest for its integration of fieldwork, documentary sources, and what can be gleaned from courtly literature of the late thirteenth century is P. S. Barnwell, ‘The power of Peak castle: cultural contexts and changing perceptions’ (J. of the British Archaeological Association, 160). On the economy, the period 950–1250 is brilliantly illuminated from a completely new perspective in John Blair (ed.), Waterways and canal-building in medieval England (OUP, £55). The collection is avowedly preliminary, and some of the articles focus on later periods (inevitably, given the nature of the evidence), but the whole collection, which brings together historians, archaeologists, and place-name specialists, adds up to a coherent and exciting account. It is of great interest for historians of trade, regional difference, and even political authority. Overdue for mention here is James Campbell, ‘Domesday herrings’, in Christopher Harper-Bill, Carole Rawcliffe, and Richard G. Wilson (eds), East Anglia’s history: studies in honour of Norman Scarfe (Boydell P., 2002, £50). The modest title conceals an important contribution to economic history, which shows that the dense population of eleventh-century East Anglia was sustained on very small land holdings by a vast herring fishery, which itself required industrial-scale salt production (to preserve the fish) and the ‘open-cast peat mines’ which formed the Broads (to make the salt). England: the church and religion Belief systems rather wider than religion lie at the heart of an engrossing book, C. S. Watkins, History and the supernatural in medieval © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES (900–1200) 19 England (CUP, £55). Using the copious historical writings of the long twelfth century (from 1066 to after 1300), Watkins explores ‘Thinking about the supernatural’, ‘Inventing pagans’, ‘Prayers, spells and saints’, ‘Special powers and magical arts’, ‘Imagining the dead’, and ‘Thinking with the supernatural’. Throughout he is concerned with the boundary between beliefs which were acceptable in a Christian context and those which were not. Astonishingly, Mary Frances Giandrea, Episcopal culture in late Anglo-Saxon England (Boydell P., £60) is the first book specifically about bishops and their functions in England in the period 900–1066. The author begins by showing how wrong we have been to follow the condemnatory judgements of their detractors in the post-Conquest, post-Gregorian church of the earlier twelfth century. Separate chapters then treat the roles of bishops variously as royal servants, heads of cathedrals, supervisors of pastoral care within their dioceses, and landowners, and finally their function in local society. The book synthesizes a great deal of scholarship and provides a distinctive and convincing account of the physical and mental worlds of Anglo-Saxon bishops. The archbishops of Canterbury’s cultural, religious, and financial exchanges are illuminated by Steven Vanderputten, ‘Canterbury and Flanders in the late tenth century’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 35, 2006), which edits, translates, and discusses a group of four letters sent to archbishops by Flemish abbots. Michael Staunton, Thomas Becket and his biographers (Boydell P., 2006, £45) is a masterly account of how the story of the archbishop’s extraordinary life and shocking death was shaped and presented in his ten almost contemporary biographies. Christopher Norton, St William of York (York Medieval P., 2006, £45) adds to the small corpus of modern biographies of individual twelfthcentury bishops (he was archbishop of York 1141–7 and 1153–4), and is especially adept and interesting in the chapters on architectural and artistic patronage. An important aspect of monastic life is scrutinized in Julie Kerr, Monastic hospitality: the Benedictines in England, c. 1070–c. 1250 (Boydell P., £55). This is a rounded and interesting study, which covers the practical details of hospitality, how it was organized and paid for, and its spiritual aspects. See also the same author’s ‘ “Welcome the coming and speed the parting guest”: hospitality in twelfth-century England’ (J. of Med. Hist., 33). Emilia Jamroziak, Rievaulx abbey and its social context, 1132–1300: memory, locality, and networks (Brepols, 2005, €60) is a rich local study which places the abbey in its setting of patrons, benefactors, and neighbours. Judith A. Frost, The foundation of Nostell priory, 1109–1153 (Borthwick Paper 111) is pamphlet length but also a substantial scholarly account. An important reassessment of the lives of English nuns in the eleventh century is provided by Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, ‘Goscelin and the consecration of Eve’ (AngloSaxon England, 35, 2006). Michael D. C. Drout, How tradition works: a meme-based cultural poetics of the Anglo-Saxon tenth century (Arizona Center for Med. and Renaissance Studs, 2006, £38) will be hard going for many historians, but its central premise is fascinating: that the Benedictine Reform’s emphasis on the memorization and repetition of liturgical formulae spilled over into secular texts from the same period, including wills and wisdom literature. Those interested in saints’ cults and church dedications in the central Middle Ages (the period when most medieval English parish churches were established) will be able to get a great deal of stimulus from Graham Jones, Saints in the Landscape (Tempus, £16.99) despite its lack of explicit interest in chronological development. The year has seen a huge amount of work on individual cults, leading off with three substantial monographs. Virginia Blanton, Signs of devotion: the cult of St Æthelthryth in medieval England, 695–1615 (Pennsylvania State U.P., £44.50) provides a full account of the cult of one of the more important female English saints, the patroness of Ely abbey (a bishopric from the twelfth century). Susan E. Wilson, The life and after-life of St John of Beverley: the evolution of the cult of an Anglo-Saxon saint (Ashgate, 2006, £55) likewise covers a long period but has much to say about the central Middle Ages. Christine Walsh, The cult of St © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. 20 ANNUAL BULLETIN OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE Katherine of Alexandria in early medieval Europe (Ashgate, £55) includes a chapter on the spread of the cult to England, evidently in the eleventh century. Other publications on saints’ cults include Heather Edwards, ‘The saint of Middleham and Giggleswick’ (Yorkshire Archaeological J., 76, 2004) [St Alchhild; with a useful appendix of all known Anglo-Saxon female saints]; John R. Black, ‘Tradition and transformation in the cult of St. Guthlac in early medieval England’ (Heroic Age, 10) [Guthlac evolving from an ascetic solitary to the defender of a wealthy monastery]; Tom Licence, ‘The Life and Miracles of Godric of Throckenholt’ (Analecta Bollandiana, 124, 2006) [edition and translation of a rediscovered text from the early twelfth century]; and John M. McCulloh, ‘Unofficial elements in the cult of St. William of Norwich’ (Hagiographica, 13, 2006) [showing how an official cult of a boy-saint supposed to be the victim of ritual murder by Jews interacted with unofficial interest]. Anglo-Saxon devotion to the cross (their word was ‘rood’) lies at the heart of a big book which straddles conventional disciplinary boundaries in a challenging way. Éamonn Ó Carragáin, Ritual and the rood: liturgical images and the Old English poems of the Dream of the rood tradition (British Library, 2005, £50) considers the pre-Viking Northumbrian stone crosses at Ruthwell and Bewcastle, the tenth-century poem Dream of the rood preserved in the Vercelli Book of Old English poetry, and the eleventh-century treasure known as the Brussels reliquary cross. Ó Carragáin’s scholarship is high-powered but also controversial, and the book should be read alongside reviews, including that by Daniel Paul O’Donnell in Heroic Age, 9 (Oct. 2006). For one of those crosses, Patrick W. Conner, ‘The Ruthwell monument runic poem in a tenth-century context’ (R. of English Studs, 59) argues that the runic poem was added in the later tenth or even the eleventh century, an important revision. Samuel Fanous and Henrietta Leyser (eds), Christina of Markyate: a twelfth-century holy woman (Routledge, 2005, £55, pbk £18.99) is a richly interdisciplinary collection which covers all aspects of her life. Tom Licence, ‘Evidence of recluses in eleventhcentury England’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 36) shows that ‘reclusion’ was a phenomenon of the mid eleventh century, and influenced by developments on the Continent. Most of the chapters about England in Martin Carver (ed.), The cross goes north: processes of conversion in northern Europe, AD 300–1300 (York Medieval P., 2003; pbk 2005, £25) deal with an earlier period, but it is worth looking out for Philip Rahtz and Lorna Watts, ‘Three ages of conversion at Kirkdale, North Yorkshire’ (which includes a new discussion of the eleventh-century sundial) and Sam Turner, ‘Making a Christian landscape: early medieval Cornwall’ (for the chronology of local church foundation to 1070). The Old English preaching texts preserved as homilies have been much discussed by literary scholars, but even so there are a great many new insights in Aaron J. Kleist (ed.), The Old English homily: precedent, practice, and appropriation (Brepols, €90). The cultural significance of twelfth-century interest in pre-Conquest homilies has still not been fully appreciated by historians: there is further food for thought on that subject here in the articles by Mary Richards, Aidan Conti, and Mary Swan. England: architecture and art Peter Draper, The formation of English Gothic: architecture and identity (Yale U.P., $80) is a very fine book indeed, which integrates close study of individual buildings with wider considerations. For the careful exposition of an individual monastic church and how its architectural form related to its local patrons see Jackie Hall, ‘Croxden abbey church: architecture, burial and patronage’ (J. of the British Archaeological Association, 160). The conference transactions of the British Archaeological Association always have much of interest. Mike McCarthy and David Weston (eds), Carlisle and Cumbria: Roman and medieval architecture, art and archaeology (Maney, 2004, £48, pbk £32) includes Jill A. Franklin’s review of the architecture of the Augustinian canons as context for Carlisle cathedral, Richard Plant on the Romanesque cathedral church, Malcolm Thurlby on © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES (900–1200) 21 Romanesque more widely in the diocese, John A. A. Goodall on the great tower of Carlisle castle, and Henry Summerson’s overview of the development of the city in the Middle Ages. Tim Ayers and Tim Tatton-Brown (eds), Medieval art, architecture and archaeology at Rochester (Maney, 2006, £65, pbk £24.50) has Nicholas Brooks’s masterly summary of the history of Rochester to 1066, Tim Tatton-Brown on topography, Richard Plant on the Norman cathedral, Jane Geddes on its remarkable door, Richard Halsey on the twelfthcentury nave, Peter Draper on the Gothic east end, and Jeremy Ashbee and John Goodall on Rochester castle. The latest issue of the Association’s journal (J. of the British Archaeological Association, 159, 2006) is devoted to cloisters, and includes David M. Robinson and Stuart Harrison’s essay and comprehensive gazetteer of Cistercian cloisters in England and Wales, John Montague on Old Sarum and more widely the secular cathedrals, and Jeremy Ashbee on palace cloisters. A further instalment of the superbly produced corpus of Anglo-Saxon sculpture appears as Rosemary Cramp, Corpus of Anglo-Saxon stone sculpture, VII: south-west England (OUP, 2006, £75). Quite how much contextual detail can be extracted from close and expert study of a single sculptural feature in one church is shown by Rita Wood, ‘The Romanesque chancel arch at Liverton, North Riding’ (Yorkshire Archaeological J., 78, 2006), an exemplary article of its kind. Likewise, a local study of a very common but neglected type of burial monument opens up all kinds of possibilities: Aleksandra McClain, ‘Medieval cross slabs, in the North Riding of Yorkshire: chronology, distribution and social implications’ (ibid., 79). Jennifer S. Alexander, ‘The introduction and use of masons’ marks in Romanesque buildings in England’ (Med. Archaeology, 51) is too modestly titled, since it ranges widely over differences between Anglo-Saxon and Norman England in quarrying and building techniques. The most abundantly illustrated manuscript to survive from Anglo-Saxon England is the subject of Benjamin C. Withers, The illustrated Old English Hexateuch, Cotton Claudius B.iv: the frontier of seeing and reading in Anglo-Saxon England (British Library, £45). Withers professes to explore its cultural context, but expert reviewers have criticized his failure to examine how it fits into the context of early eleventh-century St Augustine’s abbey in Canterbury (where it was made) and his over-reliance on art-historical theory. England: learning and literary culture Michael Lapidge has produced the immensely learned The Anglo-Saxon library (OUP, 2006, £71, pbk 2008 £27.50), which offers a valuable introduction to book ownership in the period, and a catalogue of known volumes which will form an essential research tool. The depth of Lapidge’s influence on the field is fully demonstrated in the two volumes of Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe and Andy Orchard (eds), Latin learning and English lore: studies in Anglo-Saxon literature for Michael Lapidge (Toronto U.P., 2005, $150). Volume 2 includes papers on the period after Alfred (all admirably summarized in the introduction). Highlights for me include Jane Stevenson, ‘Anglo-Latin women poets’ and Martha Bayless on the evidence for board games with dice in Anglo-Saxon England. Elizabeth M. Tyler, Old English poetics: the aesthetics of the familiar in Anglo-Saxon England (York Medieval P., 2006, £50) is really a work for literary specialists, but its central message, which gets to the heart of how the poets operated within their tradition, will be important for anyone who reads the Old English poetry for insights into AngloSaxon society. The clear value of drawing on expert analysis of literary texts is also shown by Jayne Carroll, ‘Engla waldend, rex admirabilis: poetic representations of King Edgar’ (R. of English Studs, 58), since when the lay Latin chronicler Æthelweard adapted the monastic Old English poems about Edgar from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he changed their tone fundamentally, from religious elegy to secular panegyric, giving historians a quite different impression of Edgar. Historians have been chary of thinking about the strange collection of material which was collected together in a famous manuscript in the early eleventh century, and so will © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. 22 ANNUAL BULLETIN OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE derive much stimulus from Kathryn Powell, ‘Meditating on men and monsters: a reconsideration of the thematic unity of the Beowulf manuscript’ (R. of English Studs, 57, 2006): she argues that this collection of tales of monstrous foreign aggression was especially ‘appropriate and readable’ in Æthelred II’s reign. Every year brings new ‘solutions’ to one or more of the Old English riddles. Scott Gwara and Barbara L. Bolt, ‘A “double solution” for Exeter Book Riddle 51, “Pen and three fingers” ’ (Notes & Queries, 54) is notable in suggesting that the author of the riddle intended a double meaning. One item stands out in Alastair Minnis and Ian Johnson (eds), The Cambridge history of literary criticism, II: the Middle Ages (CUP, 2005, £100) as a must for historians, despite the esoteric topic, and that is Ananya Jahanara Kabir, ‘Anglo-Saxon textual attitudes’, which probes at how the Anglo-Saxons regarded their own literature. England: politics and warfare The most important article of the year is about political culture. Julia Barrow, ‘Demonstrative behaviour and political communication in later Anglo-Saxon England’ (Anglo-Saxon England, 36) is about what she calls the ‘metalanguage’ of ritual and gesture, and she aims to describe the local English dialect of that language, comparing it with its Continental forms. She covers overt public acts of ‘demonstrative piety’, royal responses to violence and rebellion, the settlement of disputes, treaties, arbitration, and the granting of land and churches. This has not been done before for Anglo-Saxon England, and her approach will make readers think about politics afresh. Events and their repercussions are at the heart of Simon Keynes, ‘An abbot, an archbishop, and the viking raids of 1006–7 and 1009–12’ (ibid.) [a very long article which shows the impact on the thought and writings of Ælfric, Wulfstan, and Æthelred II] and of J. R. Maddicott, ‘Responses to the threat of invasion, 1085’ (E.H.R., 122) [using a neglected passage in William of Malmesbury’s Life of Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester to say new things about the lead-up to Domesday Book]. Ann Williams, in Keynes and Smyth (eds), Anglo-Saxons (see above, Sources), examines how the word antecessor was used in Domesday Book. It literally means ‘ancestor’ but was deliberately used throughout the Domesday enquiry to define the relationship by which the lands of individual English landowners (as antecessores) were transferred en bloc to Norman newcomers. The word was thus an ideological statement about legitimate rights and the nature of the Norman conquest. Overseas political relations in the 1140s are among the concerns of Stephen Marritt, ‘Drogo the sheriff: a neglected lost romance tradition and Anglo-Norwegian relations in the twelfth century’ (Hist. Research, 80). Scotland The New Edinburgh History of Scotland tackles a formative period in Scottish history with Alex Woolf, From Pictland to Alba: Scotland, 789–1070 (Edinburgh U.P., £19.99). Meeting the series brief for a narrative account of a period so devoid of contemporary indigenous sources is a tall order, but Woolf rises to the challenge by deploying his great knowledge of the source material from Scotland and its neighbours, by formidable ingenuity in asking answerable questions, and by admirably clear writing. His book should now be the first place to turn to for a history of the period. Several aspects of Scandinavian Scotland are examined in Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor, and Gareth Williams (eds), West over sea: studies in Scandinavian seaborne expansion and settlement before 1300. A Festschrift in honour of Dr Barbara E. Crawford (Brill, £98). The first part of a three-volume edition of one of the main contemporary sources for Scottish history in the twelfth century appears as Dauvit Broun and Julian Harrison (eds), The Chronicle of Melrose abbey: a stratigraphic edition, I: introduction and facsimile edition (Boydell P., £40). The book provides a detailed introduction to the complex chronicle text, besides interesting chapters on ‘Melrose abbey and its world’ and Cistercian chronicle writing in general. Richard Fawcett (ed.), Royal Dunfermline (Soc. of Antiquaries of Scotland, 2005, £18) covers the architecture of the important monastic © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES (900–1200) 23 church, its Romanesque sculpture, the cult of St Margaret of Scotland, and the early royal palace. A remarkable manuscript survival associated with St Margaret is expertly and engagingly discussed in a delightful illustrated work by Rebecca Rushforth, St Margaret’s gospel-book: the favourite book of an eleventh-century queen of Scots (Bodleian Library, £25). Rushforth opens out from an account of how the texts were chosen and how the book was made to its personal and wider cultural context. Journal articles this year concentrate on charters: Norman F. Shead, ‘Compassed about with so great a cloud: the witnesses of Scottish episcopal acta before ca. 1250’ (Scottish Hist. R., 86) [finding patterns of witnessing by bishops’ clerks, chaplains, households, and relatives like those throughout the West]; Arkady Hodge, ‘A new charter of William the Lion relating to Strathearn’ (ibid.) [charter of 1208 or 1210 but providing information about local landholders in the twelfth century]; and Elsa Catherine Hamilton, ‘The earls of Dunbar and the church in Lothian and the Merse’ (Innes R., 58) [monastic patronage, teinds, and conflicts over jurisdiction]. Wales The stone sculpture of early medieval Wales (that is, to around 1100) has long been recognized as an important body of material for understanding Welsh culture, society, and even politics in a period poorly documented in writing. V. E. Nash-Williams’s catalogue of 1950 has long been outdated, and two of the three volumes planned to supersede it have now appeared, under the title A corpus of early medieval inscribed stones and stone sculpture in Wales (University of Wales P., £85 each). Volume 1 is Mark Redknap and John M. Lewis, South-east Wales and the English borders, covering the historic counties of Glamorgan, Brecknock, Monmouth, and Radnor, besides the culturally Welsh areas of Herefordshire and Shropshire. Volume 2 is Nancy Edwards, South-west Wales, covering Cardigan, Carmarthen, and Pembroke. Both are definitive treatments which draw on the expertise of specialists in all the different disciplines needed to understand these intriguing monuments, and superbly illustrated. Some of the implications of the scholarship evident in these volumes are teased out by Mark Redknap, ‘Crossing boundaries: stylistic diversity and external contacts in early medieval Wales and the March: reflections on metalwork and sculpture’ (Cambrian Med. Celtic Studs, 53/54). Attention is also drawn to the historical potential of the sculpture by David Griffiths, ‘Maen Achwyfan and the context of Viking settlement in north-east Wales’ (Archaeologia Cambrensis, 155, 2006). Neil Phillips, Earthwork castles of Gwent and Ergyng, AD 1050–1250 (British Archaeological Reports, British Ser. 420, 2006, £40) includes a comprehensive gazetteer for this small but well castled region, though the interpretative discussion which prefaces it is on the thin side. The architecture and sculpture of individual buildings in twelfthcentury Wales are used to great effect in throwing light on local political culture by J. K. Knight and Rita Wood, ‘St Gwynllyw’s cathedral, Newport: the Romanesque archway’ (Archaeologia Cambrensis, 155, 2006) and Rita Wood and David Stephenson, ‘The Romanesque doorway at St Padarn’s church, Llanbadarn Fawr, Radnorshire’ (ibid. 156). A special issue of Archaeologia Cambrensis (154, 2005), devoted to the Cistercians in Wales and western England, includes three papers which give lucid and stimulating overviews: Janet Burton on the arrival and spread of the Savignacs and Cistercians, James Bond on the siting of their houses, and Huw Pryce on their patrons. The first part of Kathryn Hurlock, ‘Power, preaching and the Crusades in Pura Wallia, c. 1180–c. 1280’ (13th-Century England, 11) deals with Archbishop Baldwin’s preaching tour of 1188. Ireland The long-awaited Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, A new history of Ireland, I: prehistoric and early Ireland (OUP, 2005, £130), over thirty years in preparation, is inevitably uneven. The late Kathleen Hughes’s chapter on the church 800–1050, for example, is printed as she left it in 1974, and F. J. Byrne’s account of ‘Ireland and her neighbours, c. 1014–c. 1072’ has no footnotes. But other parts of this very fat volume are excellent: T. M. CharlesEdwards’s masterly overview, which should be read to set the period 900–1169 in long © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. 24 ANNUAL BULLETIN OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE context; Nancy Edwards on the archaeology; Roger Stalley’s brief but very clear introduction to Irish Romanesque architecture; Patrick F. Wallace’s synthesis of a great deal of recent archaeology in Viking Age towns; Michael Kenny on coinage; and Marie Therese Flanagan’s detailed political narrative of the period 1072–1166. A useful work of reference omitted in previous years is Seán Duffy (ed.), Medieval Ireland: an encyclopaedia (Routledge, 2005, £110). It has almost 350 entries covering the whole of the medieval period, and helpfully includes lists of further reading for each. The fifteen surviving charters of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries are expertly edited with a very substantial scholarly introduction in Marie Therese Flanagan, Irish royal charters: texts and contexts (OUP, 2005, £85). Elizabeth Fitzpatrick, ‘Royal inauguration assembly and the church in medieval Ireland’, in Barnwell and Mostert (eds), Political assemblies (see above, Government), for the twelfth century shows the limits of church reform, since inauguration assemblies in that period remained firmly under royal control. Raghnall Ó Floinn, ‘The foundation relics of Christ Church cathedral and the origins of the diocese of Dublin’ (Med. Dublin, 7, 2006) uses a relic-list to document the ambitions and external contacts of the cathedral and its patrons from the mid eleventh century onwards. Robin Chapman Stacey, Dark speech: the performance of law in early Ireland (Pennsylvania U.P., £39) is an important book which focuses on how legal debate was conducted in court as a performance of speech and gesture. There is a useful and accessible introduction to twelfth-century Irish literary culture in Máire Herbert, ‘Crossing historical and literary boundaries: Irish written culture around the year 1000’ (Cambrian Med. Celtic Studs, 53/54). Different approaches to Henry II’s relations with Ireland are taken in Seán Duffy’s contribution to Harper-Bill and Vincent (eds), Henry II (see above, Sources) and Marcus Bull, ‘Criticism of Henry II’s expedition to Ireland in William of Canterbury’s miracles of St Thomas Becket’ (J. of Med. Hist., 33). Andrew Halpin, ‘Development phases in Hiberno-Norse Dublin: a tale of two cities’ (Med. Dublin, 6, 2005) helpfully synthesizes a mass of recent archaeological work to give a coherent picture, but further discoveries continue to be made, for example about pre-Norman settlement in Oxmantown (including twelfth-century riverside reclamation and a horse-mill), reported by Abi Cryerhall, ‘Excavations at Hammond Lane, Dublin: from hurdle-ford to iron-founding’ (ibid. 7, 2006). Artistic influence from the Continent is explored in Fergus O’Farrell, ‘St. Patrick’s cross, Cashel: a re-assessment’ (J. of the Roy. Soc. of Antiquaries of Ireland, 136, 2006). (ii) European History Bernard Gowers General Philip Ditchfield, La culture matérielle médiévale: l’Italie méridionale byzantine et normande (Ecole française de Rome, €92), draws on documentary and material evidence to produce an account of everyday material culture in south-eastern Italy between the tenth and twelfth centuries; from housing to agricultural implements to weapons. Comprehensive and well-organised, this should be of interest to many beyond those working on the region in question (and provides all the incidental detail one would need for a period novel). The second edition of R.I. Moore’s The Formation of a Persecuting Society: authority and deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Blackwell, £19.99), includes a substantial © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES (900–1200) 25 new ‘Bibliographical Excursus’ on the debates stimulated by the first edition (1987). That these debates retain vitality is demonstrated in Jonathan Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages (Princeton U.P., £19.95). He seeks to challenge Moore’s formulation of a ‘persecuting society’, in the context of a wider (and somewhat different) project, which emphasises the survival and participation of Jews in wider Christian society during the central middle ages, rather than the experience of exclusion. See also David Malkiel, ‘Jews and Apostates in Medieval Europe: Boundaries Real and Imagined’ (P. and Pr., 194), which presents a less clear-cut picture of changes in religious affiliation involving eleventh- and twelfth-century Ashkenazim than many medieval (and modern) commentators have acknowledged. Rachel Fulton and Bruce W. Holsinger (eds), History in the Comic Mode: Medieval Communities and the Matter for the Person (Columbia U.P., £29), which is inspired by the work of Caroline Walker Bynum, contains pleasing short papers on the central middle ages, including Frederick S. Paxton on why a particular Liudolfing abbess did not become a saint, and Jessica Goldberg on eleventh-century Jewish merchants’ correspondence. Two books on gifts-giving, encompassing a wide range of practices and attitudes, will be of interest beyond the immediate range of the material discussed. Wendy Davies, Acts of Giving: Individual, Community, and Church in Tenth-Century Christian Spain (OUP, £55) asks why laypeople gave gifts of land to ecclesiastical communities. Her answers illuminate social, political, economic and ecclesiastical relationships, utilising documentary sources that allow insights even into peasant society. Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld, Do ut des: Gift Giving, Memoria and Conflict Management in the Medieval Low Countries (Verloren, €29) includes new, reprinted and newly-translated material, to examine a variety of social relationships in the period c.900 to 1200. Collective volumes with content on multiple themes: Andres Laubinger, Brunhilde Gedderth and Claudia Dobrinski (eds), Text-Bild-Schrift: Vermittlung von Information im Mittelalter (Wilhelm Fink, €24.90) contains case-studies on various methods of conveying information; coinage, letters, buildings, and on relations between the written and spoken word. Hans-Werner Goetz, Vorstellungsgeschichte; Gesammelte Schriften zuWahrnehmungen, Deutungen und Vorstellungen im Mittelalter (Winkler, €58.50) brings together 27 articles published between 1978 and 2006; with a chronological span from the Carolingians to the twelfth centuries, and a thematic range encompassing politics, religion, society and the economy. Michael McCormick, Paul Edward Dutton, and Paul A. Mayewski, ‘Volcanoes and the climate forcing of Carolingian Europe, A.D. 750–950’ (Speculum, 82) is a suggestive foray into the relationship between climate and human history (co-written by an environmental scientist), albeit well aware that this approach is still in its early stages. Church and religious history On materials for papal history, Hans-Georg Krause et al (eds), Die Touler Vita Leos IX (MGH/Hahnsche Buchhandlung €35) is a new edition with German translation. In addition, Martin Brett provides ‘Some New Letters of Popes Urban II and Paschal II’ (J. Eccl. Hist., 58), see also Jacques van Wijnendaele ‘Une curieuse Vie de saint: Vie de Gregoire VII de Paul de Bernried’ (Rev. belge de philologie et d’hist., 85) and Anne J. Duggan, ‘ “Tempering the wind . . .”: moderation and discretion in late twelfth-century papal decretals’ (Studs in Church Hist., 43). On papal involvement beyond Rome, Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, presents a careful examination of The Popes and the Baltic Crusades, 1147–1254 (Brill €99); what emerges for the twelfth century is less a consistent papal policy than varying configurations of clerical and lay initiative at different levels between the Baltic and Rome; Kriston R. Rennie, ‘Uproot and destroy, build and plant’: legatine authority under Pope Gregory VII’ (J. of Med. Hist., 33). There has been interesting work on bishops. John Ott and Anna Trumbore Jones (eds), The Bishop Reformed: Studies of Episcopal Power and Culture in the Central Middle Ages (Ashgate, £60) contains studies focused on the tenth to twelfth centuries. The volume is more than the sum of its parts; the variety of episcopal careers and © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. 26 ANNUAL BULLETIN OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE representations, rooted in individual sees, in itself constitutes one theme. See also John Howe, ‘St Berardus of Marsica (d. 1130) ‘Model Gregorian Bishop’’ (J. of Eccl. His., 58), who demonstrates that Berardus was more the product of his local milieu than the agent of ‘Gregorian reform’. The cumulative effect of this work is to problematise further the concept of ‘reform’, especially as a phenomenon centred on Rome. Marion Gasmand, Les évêques de la province ecclésiastique de Bourges: milieu Xe-fin XIe siècle (Connaissances et Savoirs, €35) helpfully identifies and discusses the bishops in question. For episcopal sources, Claire Giordanengo (ed.) presents Le registre de Lambert, évêque d’Arras: (1093–1115) (CNRS Editions €75), in French and Latin, while Theo Riches discusses a well-known text: ‘Episcopal Historiography as Archive: Some Reflections on the Autograph of the Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium’ (Jaarboek voor Middeleeuwse Geschiedenis, 10). On monasticism: the papers in Gert Melville and Anne Müller (eds), Mittelalterliche Orden und Klöster im Vergleich: Methodische Ansätze und Perspektiven (LIT, €49.90) make comparisons of various monastic features across orders, discussing the methodological implications of this approach, and emphasising the need to examine the negotiation between distinctive traditions and the uniform elements of monasticism. The practice of silence, and concomitant systems of hand gestures, were widespread in medieval monasticism, but their inherent nature makes them difficult to analyse. Nonetheless, Scott G. Bruce, Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism: The Cluniac Tradition c. 900–1200 (CUP, £53) manages to consider this interaction between religious imperatives and social practice. On other monastic activities and attitudes: Constance H. Berman ‘Monastic hospitals in southern France and colleges in Montpellier, Toulouse, Paris, and Oxford: the Cistercian urban presence’, (Rev. d’hist. Eccl., 102), Graham A. Loud, ‘Varieties of monastic discipline in southern Italy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries’ (Studs in Church Hist., 43), Christopher Jones, ‘Monastic identity and sodomitic danger in the Occupatio by Odo of Cluny’ (Speculum, 82). Gerd Althoff, ‘Zum Verhältnis von Norm und Realität in sächsischen Frauenklöstern’, (Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 40) focuses in particular on Hrothswita of Gandersheim. Alison I. Beach (ed.), Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Reform and Renewal in TwelfthCentury Germany (Brepols, €60) also gives its due to nuns, with a stimulating selection of papers. Fiona J. Griffiths, The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century (Pennsylvania U.P., £42.50) is a study of the Hortus deliciarum produced in the late twelfth century under Abbess Herrad of Hohenbourg. (See also below, ‘Intellectual and cultural history’: Tilo Altenburg on Hildegard of Bingen). Monastic interaction with wider society is explored in Steven Vanderputten, ‘A time of great confusion: Second-generation Cluniac reformers and resistance to monastic centralization in the county of Flanders (c. 1125–1145)’ (Rev. d’hist. ecclés., 102) and Cécile Dejaedin-Bazaille, ‘La relation de dépendance entre saint Benoît et ses serfs: contrainte ou protection?’ (Le moyen âge, 113). (The latter can be read alongside Paul Fouracre, ‘Marmoutier: Familia versus Family. The Relations between Monastery and Serfs in Eleventh-Century North-West France’, in Wendy Davies, Guy Halsall and Andrew Reynolds (eds), People and Space in the Middle Ages, 300–1300 (Brepols 2006, €75). On monks in the wider world, see also Stephen D. White, ‘Garsinde v. Sainte Foy: Argument, Threat, and Vengeance in Eleventh-Century Monastic Litigation’ in Janet Burton and Emilia Jamroziak (eds), Religious and Laity in Northern Europe, 1000–1400 (Brepols, €80), which pursues his approach to violence and language in monastic texts. On saints’ cults: Christine Walsh, The Cult of St Katherine of Alexandria in Early Medieval Europe (Ashgate, £55) takes the topic up to c.1200, including the establishment of the cult in the west from the tenth century. Marcel Girault and Pierre-Gilles Girault (eds), Livre des Miracles de saint Gilles: Liber miraculorum sancti Egidii: La vie d’un sanctuaire de pèlerinage au XIIe siècle (Paradigme, €28) is an edition and French translation of the key text for this important cult. © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES (900–1200) 27 Law Wilfried Hartmann (ed.), Recht und Gericht in Kirche undWelt um 900 (Oldenbourg, €49.80) includes papers on tenth-century material, discussing an interesting (if disparate) variety of legal (-political, -social, -ecclesiastical) topics from across western Europe. On canon law, careful and persuasive discussions of two crucial eleventh-century texts come from Christof Rolker, ‘The earliest work of Ivo of Chartres: the case of Ivo’s Eucharist florilegium and the canon law collections attributed to him’, and Greta Austin, ‘Freising and Worms in the early eleventh century: revisiting the relationship between the Collectio duodecim partium and Burchard’s Decretum’ (both Zeit. der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte. Kanonistische Abteilung, 124). These can be read alongside Martin Brett, ‘Finding the Law: Sources of Canonical Authority before Gratian’, Bruce Brasington, ‘Collections of Bishops’ Letters as Legal Florilegia’, and Dominique Bauer, ‘From Ivo of Chartres to the Decretum Gratiani: The Legal Nature of a Political Theology Revolution’, in Per Anderson et al (eds), Law before Gratian: Law in Western Europe c.500–1100: Proceedings of theThird CarlsbergAcademy Conference on Medieval Legal History (DJØF, €16). Gerhard Dilcher and Diego Quaglioni (eds), Gli inizi del diritto pubblico: L’età de Federico Barbarossa: legislazione e scienza del diritto / Die Anfänge des öffentlichen Rechts. Gesetzgebung im Zeitalter Friedrich Barbarossas und das Gelehrte Recht (Dunckner & Humblot/Società editrice il Mulia, €26) contains essays in German and Italian on twelfth-century law (canon and civil) in northern Italy. The tight focus does not prevent the papers addressing broad questions for this dynamic period in legal history. Political history Philippe Buc, ‘The monster and the critics: a ritual reply’ (Early Med. Europe, 15) addresses with characteristic robustness some responses to his book The Dangers of Ritual (2001). On social-political culture and expectation, Élisabeth CrouzetPavan and Jacques Verger, La dérision au Moyen Âge: De la pratique sociale au rituel politique (PUPS, €24) contains some relevant papers. Ambitious attempts to conceive of the military lay elite come from Dominique Barthélemy, La chevalerie: de la Germanie antique à la France du XIIe siècle (Fayard, €26), and Andrew Cowell, The Medieval Warrior Aristocracy: Gifts, Violence, Performance, and the Sacred (Boydell and Brewer, £50). Although it is likely that neither will be found widely convincing, nor are they entirely lacking in interest. Cowell has some interesting readings of literary texts, while Barthélemy attempts to work through some of the implications of his interventions in the ‘f **d*l revolution’ debate. Other contributions on the profession of violence include John Gillingham, ‘‘Holding to the Rules of War (Bellica Iura Tenentes)’: Right Conduct before, during, and after Battle in North-Western Europe in the Eleventh Century’, (Anglo-Norman Studs, 29), and Claude Gauvard, ‘La violence commanditée: La criminalisation des “tueurs à gages” aux derniers siècles du Moyen Age’ (Annales, 62). Intellectual and cultural history Henry Mayr-Harting draws upon wide learning and close reading of the manuscripts to reconstruct the ‘thought world’ of Bruno of Cologne and his circle in Church and Cosmos in Early Ottonian Germany: The View from Cologne (OUP, £55). Elsewhere in Ottonian Germany, Marek Thue Kretschnet, Rewriting Roman History in the Middle Ages: The ‘Historia Romana’ and the Manuscript Bamberg Hist. 3 (Brill, €118), contains a detailed discussion of a c.1000 Halberstadt historical manuscript, including an edition of the version of the Historia Romana contained therein. Conradin von Planta (ed.), Die Annalen des Klosters Einsiedeln: Edition und Kommentar (MGH/ Hahnsche Buchhandlung, €35) presents a long-running set of annals begun in the tenth century. Jan M. Ziolkowski, Nota Bene: Reading Classics and Writing Melodies in the Early Middle Ages (Brepols, €55) investigates the practice of providing musical notations to the manuscripts of some classical texts such as Virgil and Horace, in the tenth to twelfth centuries. © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. 28 ANNUAL BULLETIN OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE The possibilities and limitations of intellectual exchange across confessional and linguistic boundaries are explored in Thomas E. Burman, Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560 (Pennsylvania U.P., £31), Diana Lobel, A Sufi-Jewish Dialogue: Philosophy and Mysticism in Bahya Ibn Paqūda’s Duties of the Heart (Pennsylvania U.P., $59.95) – concerning tenth- and eleventh-century Spain – and Anne Elizabeth Redgate ‘An Armenian physician at the early tenth-century court of Louis III of Provence? The case of the Autun Glossary’ (Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean, 19). See also Scott G. Bruce, ‘An Abbot between two cultures: Maiolus of Cluny considers the Muslims of La Garde-Freinet’ (Early Med. Europe, 15). Viator 38:2 carries a section on tenth- to twelfth-century friendship: Rebecca L. Slitt, ‘Justifying cross-cultural friendship: Bohemond, Firuz, and the fall of Antioch’, Courtney DeMayo, ‘Ciceronian amicitia in the letters of Gerbert of Aurillac’, Constant J. Mews, ‘Cicero and the boundaries of friendship in the twelfth century’, and Cary J. Nederman, ‘Friendship in Public Life during the Twelfth Century: Theory and Practice in the Writings of John of Salisbury’. For the stars of the twelfth century: on Hildegard of Bingen, Tilo Altenburg, Soziale Ordnungsvorstellungen bei Hildegard von Bingen (Hiersemann, €149), places her social thought in its wider contemporary intellectual context. Peter Dronke, Christopher P. Evans, Hugh Feiss (eds), Hildegardis Bingensis. Opera minora (Brepols, €265). Bernard of Clairvaux: M. B. Pranger, ‘The persona of the preacher in Bernard of Clairvaux’, Med. Sermon Studs, 51; Paul Verdeyen and Raffaele Fassetta (eds) Bernard de Clairvaux, Sermons sur le Cantique V: Sermons 69–86 (Cerf, €55). Abelard: David Luscombe et al. (eds) Petri Abaelardi opera theologica VI: Sententiae magistri Petri Abaelardi. Liber Sententiarum magistri Petri (CCCM 14) (Brepols, €140), contains the Sentences written by Abelard’s student(s), and reconstructs parts of Abelard’s own Sentences. Other items of interest: Vivarium 45:2–3 is a special issue, edited by John Marenbon, on ‘The Many Roots of Medieval Logic: The Aristotelian and Non-Aristotelian Traditions’; Richard Gameson, ‘The earliest books of Arras Cathedral’ (Scriptorium, 61) concerns the re-established diocese of the twelfth century; Tovio J. Holopainen, ‘Anselm’s Argumentum and the Early Medieval Theory of Argument’ (Vivarium 45). Byzantium Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire (Allen Lane, £20) is aimed at a general audience. Margaret Mullett (ed.) Founders and Refounders of Byzantine Monasteries (Belfast Byzantine Enterprises) covers much of Byzantine history, but includes papers relevant to this period. Questions of eleventh-century high politics are addressed in Peter Frankopan, ‘Kinship and the Distribution of Power in Komnenian Byzantium’ (E.H.R., 122); Frederick Lauritzen, ‘A Courtier in the Women’s Quarters: The Rise and Fall of Psellos’ (Byzantion, 77). On different aspects of Byzantium’s external affairs, Brett Whalen, ‘Rethinking the Schism of 1054: Authority, Heresy, and the Latin Rite’ (Traditio, 62); Bernadette MartinHisard, ‘La Vie de Georges l’Hagiorite (1009/1010–29 Juin 1065)’ (Rev. des études byzantines, 64–65) translates a Georgian source for Byzantine involvement to the east. Simon Franklin and Maria Mavroudi, ‘Graeco-Slavic and Graeco-Arabic Translation Moments and Their Cultural Implications: Problems and Possibilities of Comparison’ (Byzantino-Slavica, 65) looks at the ninth to twelfth centuries. Eastern Europe and Scandinavia Nora Berend (ed.), Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus’ c.900–1200 (CUP, £55) is a wide-ranging and stimulating collection. On Scandinavia, Richard Holt, ‘What if the Sea were Different? Urbanization in Medieval Norway’ (Rodney Hilton’s Middle Ages: P. and Pr., 195, Supplement 2); Philip Line, Kingship and State Formation in Sweden 1130–1290 (Brill, €135); Nils Hybel and Bjørn Poulsen, The Danish Resources c. 1000–1500: Growth and Recession (Brill, €120). Margete Syrstad Andås, Øystein Ekroll, Andreas Haug and Nils Holger Petersen (eds), The Medieval Cathedral of Trondheim: Architectural and © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES (900–1200) 29 Ritual Constructions in their European Context (Brepols, €60). Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor and Gareth Williams (eds), West over Sea: Studies in Scandinavian SeaBorne Expansion and Settlement Before 1300 (Festschrift for Barbara E. Crawford) (Brill, €135) contains papers on Scandinavian as well as British Isles topics. Orri Vésteinsson, ‘A Divided Society: Peasants and the Aristocracy in Medieval Iceland’ (Viking and Med. Scandinavia, 3) argues that social hierarchy on the island has been underemphasised. On Russia: Simon Franklin, ‘On meanings, functions and paradigms of law in early Rus’ (Russian Hist., 34). Mikhail Raev, ‘The Russian-Byzantine treaty of 971: Theophilos and Sveneld’ (Rev. des études byzantines 64–65). Peter B. Golden, Hillel Ben-Shammi, and András Róna-Tas, The World of the Khazars (Brill, €125) makes available some recent research on this important but unfamiliar topic. See also Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt on the Baltic crusades (above: The Church and Religion). Germany, Austria and Low Countries Bernard S. and David S. Bachrach, ‘Saxon military revolution, 912–973? Myth and reality’ (Early Med. Europe,15) attempts to argue that Henry I always had an effective mounted armed force, as duke and king, but that his real military importance was in fortifications. Hagen Keller, ‘Das “Erbe” Ottos des Großen. Das ottonische Reich nach der Erweiterung zum Imperium’ (Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 41) discusses Otto I’s policies and political culture. Note also Hans K. Schulze, Die Heiratsurkunde der Kaiserin Theophanu: Die griechische Kaiserin und das römischdeutsche Reich 972–991 (Hahnsche Buchhandlung, €29). For German medieval historians’ accounts of memorable episodes in the careers of two emperors: Jacek Banaszkiewicz, ‘Ein Ritter flieht, oder wie Kaiser Otto II sich vom Schlachtfeld bei Cotrone rettete’ (Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 40); Jan Paul Niederkorn, ‘Zu glatt und daher verdächtig? Zur Glaubwürdigkeit der Schilderung der Wahl Friedrich Barbarossas (1152) durch Otto von Freising’ (Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, 115). On particular areas: Peter Schmid and Heinrich Wanderwitz (eds), Die Geburt Österreichs: 850 Jahre Privilegium minus (Schnell & Steiner, €29.90) contains papers approaching the Privilegium minus from a variety of directions. Many of the papers in Christine and Klaus van Eickels (eds) Das Bistum Bamberg in der Welt des Mittelalters (Bamberg U.P., €15), deal very specifically with the diocese; those on its foundation by Bernd Schneidmüller and Klaus van Eickels encompass broader horizons. Lutz Partenheimer, Die Entstehung der Mark Brandenburg (Böhlau, €19.90) attempts to account for the origins of the polity of Brandenburg from the tenth to twelfth centuries. Note also the new edition: E. D. Hehl (ed.), Die Konzilien Deutschlands und Reichsitaliens 916–1001, part 2: 962–1001 (MGH/(MGH/Hahnsche Buchhandlung, €120). Iberian peninsula For Wendy Davies on tenth-century Spain, see above (General). Pascal Buresi, ‘Captifs et rachat de captifs. Du miracle à l’institution’ (Cahiers de civisilations méd., 50); Wendy Davies, ‘Lordship and Community: Northern Spain on the Eve of the Year 1000’, and Isabel Alfonso, ‘Exploring Difference within Rural Communities in the Northern Iberian kingdoms, 1000–1300’ (both in Rodney Hilton’s Middle Ages: P. and Pr., 195, Supplement 2). Italy and Sicily From north to south: Holger Berwinkel, Verwüsten und Belagern: Friedrich Barbarossas Krieg gegen Mailand (1158–1162) (Max Niemeyer, €46) sets military operations into a wider context; logistical and political. Maria Elena Cortese, Signori, castelli, città: L’aristocrazia del turirorio fiorentio tra X e XII secolo (Olschki, €45) examines a regional aristocracy. Graham A. Loud, The Latin Church in Norman Italy (CUP, £70), is a wide-ranging and authoritative monograph from the leader in the field. Oliver Becker, ‘Der Dom von Salerno und die Abteikirche von Montecassino: Anspruch und Wirkung zweier © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. 30 ANNUAL BULLETIN OF HISTORICAL LITERATURE Bauprojekte in Unteritalien im 11. Jahrhundert’ (Frühmittelalterliche Studien, 41) discusses architecture in political and ecclesiastical context (and has further implications for ‘reform’, see above: The Church and Religion). Different aspects of the development of, and background to, Norman power are explored in Kenneth Pennington, ‘The Normans in Palermo: King Roger II’s legislation’ (Haskins Soc. J. 18); Paul Oldfield, ‘Urban Government in Southern Italy c.1085–c.1127’ (E.H.R., 122). See also Philip Ditchfield on material culture (above: General) and G. A. Loud on southern monasticism (above: The Church and Religion). France The material in two exemplary regional studies has wider implications, Frédéric Boutoulle, Le duc et la societé: Pouvoirs et groups sociaux dans la Gasconie bordelaise au XIIe siècle (1075–1199) (Ausonius, €30), Theodore Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 1100–1300 (Pennsylvania U. P., £62.50). Kimberly A. Lo Prete, Adela of Blois: Countess and Lord (c.1067–1137) (Four Courts P., £65) is a biography of a woman who became much more than the Conqueror’s daughter. Normandy is well served. Véronique Gazeau, Normannia monastica (Xe-XIIe siècle) 2 vols (Publications du CRAHM, €60) provides a great deal of information on Norman monasticism, especially the prosopography of its leaders, while Leonie V. Hicks, Religious Life in Normandy, 1050–1300: Space, Gender and Social Pressure (Boydell P., £45) explores religion in social context. Lay power is discussed by Mark Hagger, ‘The Norman Vicomte, c.1035–1135: What Did He Do?’(Anglo-Norman Studs, 29), and Gilduin Davy, ‘Les chartes ducale, miroir du droit coutumier normand? Hypotheses sur les evocations de la coutume dans les actes des ducs de Normandie (fin XIe-fin XIIe siècles)’ (Rev. hist. de droit français et étranger, 85). The tradition of Norman history-writing is dealt with in Samantha Kahn Herrick’s Imagining the Sacred Past: Hagiography and Power in Early Normandy (Harvard U.P., £32.95), and Laurence Mathey-Maille, Écritures du passé. Histoires des ducs de Normandie (Champion, €55). There is also relevant material in Anne-Marie Flambard Héricher and Véronique Gazeau (eds) 1204: La Normandie entre Plantagenêts et Capétiens (Publications du CRAHM, €42.40). Other studies focused on specific regions include Teddy Veron, L’intégration des Mauges à l’Anjou au XIe siècle (Presses Universitaires de Limoges, €28), enhanced by the inclusion of 98 charters and other material from a long eleventh century; Claire Taylor, ‘Reform and the Basque dukes of Gascony: a context for the origins of the Peace of God and the murder of Abbo of Fleury’ (Early Med. Europe, 15); Hélène Débax, ‘Le serrement des mains. Éléments pour un analyse du rituel des serments féodaux en Languedoc et en Provence (XIe-XIIe siècles)’ (Le moyen âge, 113). Three articles address aspects of the interaction between lay and ecclesiastical authority in Flanders: Paulo Charruadas, ‘Principauté territoriale, reliques et Paix de Dieu: le comté de Flandre et l’abbaye de Lobbes à travers les Miracula S. Ursmari in itinere per Flandriam facta (vers 1060)’ (Rev. du Nord, 89); Walter Ysebaert, ‘The Power of Personal Networks: Clerics as Political Actors in the Conflict between Capetian France and the County of Flanders during the Last Decade of the Twelfth Century’, in B. M. Bolton & C. E. Meek (eds), Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages (Brepols, €70); Steven Vanderputten, ‘Fulcard’s pigsty: Cluniac reformers, dispute settlement, and the lower aristocracy in early twelfth-century Flanders’ (Viator, 38). The Crusades and the Latin East There was no tailing off in Crusades scholarship in 2007. Jonathan Phillips, The Second Crusade: Extending the Frontiers of Christendom (Yale U.P., £25) successfully gives this less familiar topic its due, including the conquest of Lisbon and the Baltic campaigns. Scholarly projects also bore fruit with Denys Pringle, The Churches of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem: A corpus, Vol. III, The City of Jerusalem (£110), and Susan B. Edgington, Albert of Aachen: Historia Ierosolimitana / History of the Journey to Jerusalem (OUP, £120). Ronnie Ellenblum, Crusader Castles and Modern Histories (CUP, £53) combines a review of the field’s modern historiography with a reassessment of the role of Crusader © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association. THE CENTRAL MIDDLE AGES (900–1200) 31 castles, which emerge as cultural and economic artefacts as much as military strongholds. Mary Whitby (ed.) Byzantines and Crusaders in Non-Greek Sources, 1025–1204 (OUP for the British Academy, £55) draws attention to the multiplicity of languages, cultures, identities in and around the eastern Mediterranean in this period. On this note, see also Kiril Petkov, ‘ “To Disdain the Truth and Look at Others with Contempt”: Byzantines and Muslims on Latin Pride and Arrogance, ca. 1100–1300’ (Al-Masaq: Islam and the Med. Mediterranean, 19) and Christopher MacEvitt, ‘The Chronicle of Matthew of Edessa: Apocalypse, the First Crusade and the Armenian Diaspora’ (Dumbarton Oaks Papers, 61) discusses an Armenian source. These varied perspectives on the crusades complement more familiar dualistic notions of Crusaders vs Muslims. Three leading figures in modern Crusades history are honoured: Norman Housley (ed.), Knighthoods of Christ: Essays on the History of the Crusades and the Knights Templar presented to Malcolm Barber (Ashgate, £55); Iris Shagrir, Ronnie Ellenblum, and Jonathan Riley-Smith (eds), In Laudem Hierosolymitani: Studies in Crusades and Medieval Cultures in Honour of Benjamin Z. Kedar (Ashgate, £70); Karl Borchardt, Nikolas Jaspert and Helen J. Nicholson (eds), The Hospitallers, the Mediterranean and Europe: Festschrift for Anthony Luttrell (Ashgate, £60). © 2009 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2009 The Historical Association.