Charlemagne in the 1170's: Reading
the Oxford Roland
in the Context of the Becket
Controversy
by James Cain
______________________________________________________________________________
SECTION I:
INTRODUCTION
Any attempt
at historicizing the Song of Roland
is bound to be beset by a number of serious difficulties. Perhaps the most imposing of these is the
cherished position that the poem has come to occupy within the field of
Medieval Studies as an example of the oral transmission of cultural information
from generation to generation without benefit of writing or authorial
control. The anonymity of the poet or
poets who composed the piece, the association of the work with minstrel
traditions outside the dominant conventions of literate culture, the continuous
accretion of narrative material supplied by multiple performers on successive
occasions, all militate against the story's being limited to any one
specifiable historical context. But at
some point, it has to be admitted, the work needs to have been removed from the
constant variability of an oral environment in order to be committed to a
solid, more or less immutable textual format, and this is the point at which
some form of historical analysis can commence.
The earliest redaction of the text
in vernacular French and the standard model on which nearly all modern printed
editions have been based is, of course, MS Digby 23 in the Bodleian Library at
Oxford (hereinafter referred to simply as the Oxford Roland), a twelfth-century version of the poem in an insular Norman
dialect, written in a somewhat clumsy and unusual hand on 72 folios of
unfinished parchment approximately 17 cm long by 12 cm wide, bound together in
a single volume with a thirteenth-century copy of Chalcidius' Latin translation
of Plato's Timaeus. A supplementary inscription in
fourteenth-century handwriting traces ownership of the book back to the abbey
of Austin canons at St. Mary's in Oseney just outside of Oxford.[1] The trouble is that, beyond the very broad
parameters just set out here, it has been notoriously difficult to assign any
precise date or location for the text's initial production, the most basic
information without which even the preliminaries of historical research cannot
begin to proceed responsibly. A whole
series of philological, paleographic, and codicological examinations of the
manuscript have yielded a wide range of conjectures that extend the text's
transcription anywhere from the last quarter of the eleventh century to the
third quarter of the twelfth century without reaching any firm sense of
scholarly consensus, although more recent studies have definitely tended to
cluster towards the latter end of the spectrum.[2]
Without reliable scientific
corroboration of one kind or another, it is nevertheless possible -- though not
without some considerable risk -- to adduce historical evidence internal to the
text itself. As early as 1943, Émile
Mireaux pointed out that the gratuitous and chronologically inaccurate inclusion
of Geoffrey of Anjou as Charlemagne's seneschal and standard-bearer in the poem
would seem to have been intended as a posthumous tribute to the Plantagenet
Count of the same name, the father of King Henry II of England.[3] Even more revealing, perhaps, is the scribal
error that Mireaux notes in folio 52r of the manuscript, at laisse 206, v.2883,
where Charlemagne's champion in the final trial scene—Geoffrey's brother,
Thierry of Anjou—is mistakenly identified as "Henri" in what is presumbably an unconscious slippage
nearly always corrected by modern editors.
In both of these instances, Henry II and his Angevin lineage have been
inscribed into the poem as staunch supporters of Charlemagne's interests. The
Oxford Roland goes even further,
however, in directly assimilating the figure of Charlemagne to Henry
himself. In folios 42r-43v at laisse
172, vv.2316-37, the full extent of Charlemagne's dominions is catalogued,
beginning with Anjou, Brittany, Poitou, Maine, Normandy, Provence, and the
Aquitaine, and concluding with Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and finally England,
where the emperor is said to have kept his seat of power.[4] This description in no way corresponds to
the historical dimensions of Carolingian territory, since the British Isles had
always remained free from imperial control, but it does bear a striking
resemblance to the lands that Henry himself had acquired either by inheritance,
marriage, or force of conquest, especially after the invasion of Ireland was
completed in 1172 and Scotland's autonomy was successfully suppressed in December
1174 following a failed insurrection.
In addition, I have noticed, that
the reference to "the Valley of Maurienne" [vals de moriane] that occurs in line 2318 of this passage is an
obscure allusion to the comital region of northern Italy, encompassing the
districts of Piedmont and Savoy, which was traditionally a possession of the
Holy Roman Empire. For the most part,
it was of little geographical or historical interest to the rest of Europe,
except for a period of time around February of 1173, when it was given over in
custody to Henry II by the Treaty of Montferrat as part of a bridal settlement
arranged on behalf of Henry's youngest son John and the Count of Maurienne's
eldest daughter Alice, both of whom were still infants at the time. Contemporary chroniclers viewed this event
as portentous of further incursions into Italy, and Henry actually entered into
talks with Rome and with the other cities of the Lombard League—during their
common revolt against Frederick Barbarossa—to discuss the possibility of
subsuming these territories under his personal control as well.[5] These ambitions of spreading an Angevin
Empire into the very center of Europe were entertained at some length, and
though this momentous expansion of Henry's dominion never actually took place,
it was nevertheless eagerly anticipated for quite some time, and its symbolic
importance can be found registered in a number of contemporary accounts. In the De
Principis Instructione of Gerald of Wales, for instance, which was not
completed until some 40 years after the event itself, the valley of Maurienne
figures as Henry's first foray into the Holy Roman Empire of the Hohenstaufens,
a bold and compelling gesture which can be taken as a clear indication of the
king's eminent suitability for carrying on the imperial traditions of other
great leaders from history.[6] But in the Oxford Roland, it is represented as the place where Charlemagne is
entrusted by God with the miraculous sword that will ultimately create his
empire. Durendal becomes an emblem of
the allegorical sword that rulers were believed to have received from the hand
of God as a token of their right to govern,[7]
and it is there, significantly, in the Valley of Maurienne that Charlemagne,
acting as an obvious epitome for Henry II, solemnly accepts this grave
responsibility. In both of these
instances, the Henry of history and the Charlemagne of legend, each is seen to
be assuming the mantle of imperial power from the moment he takes on this portion
of the Holy Roman Empire.
I must admit to finding these
textual distortions linking the figure of Charlemagne with Henry II compelling
evidence for situating the text of the Oxford Roland in the literary environment of the Plantagenet courts during
the mid-1170's, particularly since the similarities between the two monarchs
were repeatedly adduced during that period by Henry II's own supporters in an
effort to strengthen the English king's claims to sovereign authority. Jordan Fantosme, for instance, in his verse
chronicle of the war of 1173-74 between Henry II and his sons, makes the
connection explicit when he refers to his overlord Henry as:
Le plus honurable e le plus conquerant
Que
fust en nule terre puis le tens Moysant,
Fors
sulement li reis Charles, ki poeste fud grant
Par
les dudze cumpaignuns, Olivier e Rodlant.
The
most honorable and most victorious
Who
has ever been in any land since the time of Moses,
With
the single exception of King Charles, whose power was great
Because
of the twelve peers, Oliver and Roland. [laisse 10, vv.111-14][8]
Such
Carolingian allusions are not at all uncommon in the Plantagenet literary
circles, and versions of the same Roland and Charlemagne material can be found
circulating throughout much of Henry II's reign, as Walter Map, one of the
king's more intimate associates, clearly testifies in his memoirs of courtly
life, the De Nugis Curialium. Here, literary and scholarly culture mixes
easily with the oral performances of troops of jongleurs, indicating that the
two different spheres were not as far apart socially as many scholars have
tended to suggest.
Cesar en Lucani, Eneas Maronis,
multis uiuunt in laudibus, plurimum suis meritis et non minimum uigilancia
poetarum. Nobis diuinam Karolorum et
Pepinorum nobilitatem uulgaribus ritmis scola mimorum concelebrat; presentes
uero Cesares nemo loquitur; eorum tamen mores cum fortitudine, temperancia et
omnium admiracione presto sunt ad calamum.
Alexander Macedo subacti sibi mundi calumpniatus angustias, uiso tandem
Achillis templo suspirans ait: 'Felicem te, iuuenis, qui tanto frueris precone
meritorum'; Homerum intelligens.[9]
[The Caesar of Lucan, the Aeneas of Vergil live on in their
encomia, due in large part to their own merits, but not least of all because of
the attentiveness of the poets. For us,
the school of minstrels extolls the divine nobility of Charleses and Pepins in
vernacular verses. But no one ever
speaks of present-day Caesars. Their
manners, along with their courage, their temperance, and the admiration that
everyone feels for them, are still for the pen to write. Alexander of Macedon, who disparaged the
narrowness of the world that he had succeeded in conquering for himself, gave a
sigh upon seeing the tomb of Achilles and said: "How fortunate you are,
young man, to enjoy so great a preacher of your merits," meaning Homer.]
Even as
Walter laments the paucity of good writing about his own contemporaries, it is
possible to discern from this statement the underlying ideological motivations
he accepts as the enduring basis for most forms of literary composition, namely
the glorification of political rulers.
For Henry II and for the groups of trained performers who frequented his
courts [the scola mimorum],
Charlemagne was already coming to occupy the position that Julius Caesar had
held for the Silver-Age poet Lucan, that Aeneas had held for Vergil, Achilles
for Homer, or even what Alexander the Great had been for his own biographer
Julius Valerius, the original source for Walter's anecdote.[10] In this respect, the Oxford Roland has much in common with the rest
of the Anglo-Norman and Anglo-Latin literature emanating from the Plantagenet
courts around Henry II, the majority of which treats of the heroic exploits of
historical and legendary figures such as these, exceptional leaders like Henry
himself who had gone on to become the founders and transmitters of great world
empires.
As a general
rule, then, in developing an historicizing argument about the Oxford Roland and its political ramications
for twelfth-century English society, I have had to rely on a number of purely
text-based assumptions: (1) that the transfer of oral material into writing is
itself an historically significant event motivated by a specific set of
historical circumstances; (2) that the process of converting an oral work into
a written text necessarily involves an alteration in the traditional material
in ways that are historically revealing; (3) that allusions, references,
images, figures, and symbols occurring within the text can occasionally be
traced to contemporary historical events through correlations with other
geographically proximate historical documents; and (4) that the presence of
these historically significant allusions, references, images, figures, and
symbols can help to explain why the oral material was selected for textual
preservation in the first place. With
these methodological considerations in mind, I would like to turn now to the
specific historical significance that attached itself to the figure of
Charlemagne during the middle years of Henry's reign, in order to understand
more fully how his textual image might have been functioning, politically and
rhetorically, within the literature issuing from the Plantagenet courts.
SECTION II:
CONFESSIONS OF FAITH
On the 29th of December 1165, some
350 years after his death, the Emperor Charlemagne was elevated to sainthood in
his capacity as both King and Confessor.
Relics of his body were ceremonially translated to the Marienkirche in
Cologne from his final resting place in Aachen, which had only recently been
rediscovered by means of a miraculous revelation. Archbishop Rainald of Dassel, the Imperial Chancellor, presided
at the service with the solemn blessing of his holiness Pope Paschal III and
with the full support of the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa. The event itself was commemorated in an
imperial decree that Barbarossa issued less than two weeks later on the 8th of
January 1166:
Nunc vero electum et sanctissimum confessorem eum
confitemur et veneramur in terris, quem in sancta conversatione vixisse et pura
confessione ac vera penitentia ad deum migrasse et inter sanctos confessores
sanctum confessorem et verum confessorem credimus coronatum in celis. Inde est quod nos gloriosis factis et
meritis tam sanctissimi imperatoris Karoli confidenter animati et sedula
petitione carissimi amici nostri Heinrici illustris regis Anglie inducti,
assensu et auctoritate domini pape Paschalis et ex consilio principum
universorum tam saecularium quam ecclesiasticorum pro revelatione, exaltatione
atque canonizatione sanctissimi corporis eius sollempnem curiam in natali
domini aput Aquisgranum celebravimus
[Now we may
truly acknowledge him to be God's chosen and most blessed Confessor and thus we
venerate him in all the lands. We
believe that he lived his life in saintly counsel, that he departed to God with
a clean conscience and with true penitence, and that he has been crowned a holy
Confessor among holy Confessors and a true Confessor in heaven. This is why, having been so confidently
disposed on account of the merits and glorious deeds of this most saintly
emperor Charles, and having been persuaded by the earnest appeal of our very
dear friend Henry, the illustrious king of England, we celebrated a solemn
feast at Aachen at Christmastime for the purpose of exhibiting, consecrating,
and canonizing his most blessed body, with the approval and the authority of
the lord pope Paschal and with the universal consent of all the princes, both
secular and ecclesiastical alike.]
This
official announcement of Charlemagne's translation and canonization is in many
ways a perfect example of what J.L. Austin has famously defined as a
performative speech act,[11]
a specific function of language wherein the act of uttering a statement
actually brings into being the very thing that is being discussed. Here, for example, the text's proclamation
of Charlemagne as a saintly Confessor is what effectively transforms him into a
saintly Confessor. Over and over again
within the space of a few short lines, the text of the decree keeps stressing
the performative aspects of its own language: from the phrase "we
acknowledge him a most blessed Confessor" [confitemur] and "we venerate him" [veneramur] to the "we believe him to have been crowned a true
Confessor in heaven" [credimus]
to the papal consent that is required to make the ceremony officially binding [assensu et auctoritate domini pape Paschalis]
to the universal agreement of all the prelates and potentates consulted [consilio principum universorum]. Moreover, it is by virtue of the very
performative acts he is said to have undertaken even within his own lifetime
that Charlemagne is deemed worthy of the distinction of saintliness and the
title of "Confessor," a term which technically refers to anyone who
testifies to his faith in the face of hazardous adversity without having
managed to achieve the crowning glory of martyrdom. And lastly, it is through his own speech act of contrition, the
confessing of his sins, that Charlemagne is finally able to arrive before God
with a manifestly clean conscience [pura
confessione]. According to the
specific protocols operating within this imperial decree, then, the performance
of confession in each of its three different senses—acknowledgment,
testimonial, and absolution—serves to distinguish the ninth-century emperor as
a Confessor among confessors.
And yet, in the end, some doubts
must still remain about the final effectiveness of this imperial
pronouncement. So many different speech
acts have been occurring within the text here, so many different attempts have been made at
confirming and reinforcing Charlemagne's saintliness, that some suspicion might
well be aroused as to whether any one of these statements ever accomplishes its
intended purpose. At what point, it might
be asked, does Charlemagne actually become a saint? Is it at the moment when Barbarossa's proclamation officially
registers him among the elect [Nunc
vero electum et sanctissimum confessorem eum confitemur]? Or does it take place the week before when
the Archbishop of Cologne speaks the words of consecration during the
celebration of the Mass? Is there a
significant difference between the two events, between the oral declaration and
the written record? Does it matter
whether the statement issues from Friedrich Barbarossa, the Holy Roman Emperor,
or from his chancellor the Archbishop of Cologne? Does one form of performative activity have more binding force
than the other, and if the first affirmation were entirely adequate to the task
at hand, is the second one really necessary or is it merely an empty and
superfluous gesture? Does Charlemagne's
elevation to sainthood not take place much earlier, perhaps, from the moment
the Pope gives his approval or the assembly of princes and prelates pronounce their
universal acclamation? Or does it
happen earlier still even, at the moment of Charlemagne's death, when God
formally accepts him into the company of the blessèd? If that is in fact the case, then any human speech act will
simply be redundant and inconsequential, while if that is not the case, then no
amount of performative speech is ever capable of making it come to pass. In either event, the performance of the
speech act itself may be regarded as utterly worthless and void.
Austin, for his part, provides us
with something of a solution to this quandary.
He suggests that for any act of performative utterance to be considered
truly efficacious, a certain number of conditions must first be found to apply:
(1) that "there must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a
certain conventional effect"; (2) that the procedure "include the
uttering of certain words by certain persons in certain circumstances";
(3) that "the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be
appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked"; and
(4) that "the procedure must be executed by all participants both
correctly and completely."[12] As regards the present matter of
Charlemagne's beatification, the first of these requirements is easily enough
satisfied: the Catholic Church by this time had already instituted a
long-standing and generally accepted practice of admitting individuals into the
communion of saints, and furthermore, the ritual act of canonization was
commonly understood to have the desired effect of making the person so
designated a potential intercessor with the Almighty and a venerable object of
devotion among Christian practitioners.
As for the suitability of Charlemagne's candidacy, there are certainly
ample grounds to be found for its justification. Although the historical Charlemagne was not particularly well
known for exceptional piety during his own life -- and the rumors that were
circulating about him throughout the twelfth century suggested that his
personal shortcomings were both many and great[13]
-- the emperor was nevertheless celebrated for the lasting contributions he had
made to the spread of Christianity in Europe through his frequent endowments of
monasteries, churches, and episcopal sees, through his political, military, and
financial support of the Pope in Rome, and through his wholesale conversion of
pagan populations by force of conquest.[14] Moreover, the canonization of Christian
monarchs had become such a matter of routine by this time that the twelfth century
would subsequently become known as "the century of the holy rulers"[15]
because of all the kings who had been nominated for sainthood. Clearly, there is no difficulty enlisting
existing precedents to support the validity of Charlemagne's claims to sanctity.
As for the statement's conformity to
official procedure -- with respect to the second, third, and fourth of Austin's
conditions -- there seems to be no serious impediment to prevent the
performative act from taking effect.
There is no need to determine which exact words were used during the
Mass at the Marienkirche, even if such a transcript did exist, because the
canonization ceremony at this time did not employ a universally standardized
formula across the entire Church, and phrasing could vary from place to place
and from one occasion to another without substantially compromising the outcome
of the event. Success depended instead
on the general acceptance of the speaker's competence to guarantee the statement's
validity, and this is where the whole process starts to get complicated. The question now arises whether Rainald of
Dassel, the Archbishop of Cologne, was fully capable of designating Charlemagne
a saint. Certainly, it would have been
more customary for the proclamation to have been issued by a solemn council of
the whole Church,[16] but Pope
Alexander III had already dispensed with this formality nearly five years
before when he acceded to the petition of Henry II of England to have his
ancestor Edward the Confessor canonized and then further consented to have
Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, perform the translation
ceremony. Based on this recent example,
which Henry II appears to have mentioned to Friedrich Barbarossa, it would have
been perfectly consistent with official Church procedure for the Archbishop of
Cologne as Primate of the Holy Roman Empire to officiate at Charlemagne's
elevation, provided that he had the Pope's approval. The text is quite insistent on this point, assuring its readers
that the event took place with the full cooperation of his eminence Pope
Paschal III [assensu et auctoritate
domini pape Paschalis]. The
effectiveness of the whole procedure, in fact, now hinges on this one single
phrase, "by the assent and the authority of the lord pope." The trouble here is that Pope Paschal III
was never actually recognized by most Europeans as their legitimate
pontiff.
Contention over the rightful
occupancy of the papacy, which was to divide the Church for the better part of
twenty years, went back to 1159 when the successor to Pope Hadrian IV was being
decided. Cardinal Roland Bandinelli, a
canonist and papal chancellor, quickly emerged as the frontrunner in the
election, but his candidacy was vehemently opposed by Friedrich Barbarossa on
political grounds. The Cardinal, it
seems, had managed to infuriate the Hohenstaufen ruler at the Diet of Besançon
some two years earlier when he suggested, in his capacity as papal legate, that
the Emperor properly owed obedience to the Pope as his natural overlord, a position
which was hardly consistent with existing principles of imperial
sovereignty. Barbarossa's adherents in
the college of cardinals put forward a rival by the name of Cardinal Octavian. When the election arrived, Roland had the
majority of supporters and went on to style himself as Alexander III, but he
did not have the unanimous approval of all the delegates, and the institutional
Church had no clear policy for how to proceed in the event of a split
decision. Barbarossa then took it upon
himself as Holy Roman Emperor to arbitrate the matter, and as might well be
expected, he sided with his own candidate Octavian, who held the position as
Victor IV. The schism that ensued left
it uncertain as to which of the two popes, if either, was to be considered the
genuine occupant of the throne of St. Peter, and only subsequently was it
determined that Alexander III had in fact been elected canonically while Victor
IV was gradually relegated to the status of an anti-pope. But while this crisis in ecclesiastical control
persisted, tensions began to escalate as Alexander III excommunicated
Barbarossa and then threatened to depose him.
The emperor retaliated by driving the pope out of Rome in a successful
military strike that sent him into an extended exile in France. The stand-off continued like this for some
time with each side continually undermining the other until the 22nd of April
1164 when Victor IV suddenly died.
Immediately the same day, Barbarossa installed another one of his
partisans, Guido of Crema, to take Victor's place as Pope Paschal III. But if the first of the emperor's papal
figureheads lacked convincing spiritual authority, then the second was at even
more of a disadvantage because his appointment had not followed even the
ordinary protocols required for canonical election and he came to be regarded
as purely a creature of Barbarossa's political objectives.
This was the situation on the 29th
of December 1165 when it came to the point of canonizing the emperor
Charlemagne. On the surface of things,
it would seem that the whole induction ceremony should now be set aside as
technically invalid since Paschal III's authority as pope would have been
deemed strictly insufficient for the purposes at hand. Such would have been the opinion of J.L.
Austin, most likely, since the conditions he established for the successful
implementation of performative speech have clearly been violated. But as Judith Butler has gone on to notice,
there is more at stake with these speech acts than simply meets the eye. For Butler, the invocation of authorizing
conventions in the execution of performative statements not only derives its
efficacy from the conventions being cited but also -- and at the same time --
endows these same discursive conventions with the binding or conferring power
they are designed to effect. Thus, in
connection with the formal operations of judicial procedure, she writes
that:
the judge
who authorizes and installs the situation he names . . . invariably cites the law that he applies, and it is
the power of this citation that gives the performative its binding or
conferring power. And though it may
appear that the binding power of his words is derived from the force of his
will or from a prior authority, the opposite is more true: it is through the citation of the law that the
figure of the judge's 'will' is produced and the 'priority' of textual
authority is established. Indeed, it is
through the invocation of convention that the speech act of the judge derives
its binding power; that binding power is to be found neither in the subject of
the judge nor in his will, but in the citational legacy by which a contemporary
'act' emerges in the context of a chain of binding conventions.[17]
Extending
these insights back to the circumstances surrounding Charlemagne's
canonization, it may be supposed that Paschal III gains whatever authority he
has through the very act of exercising that authority. In this instance, moreover, the selection of
Charlemagne as the designated object for the performance of this particular
rite amounts to a choice that is by no means insignificant or inconsequential,
for it is the authority of Charlemagne's example that ultimately enables
Paschal to undertake this performative endeavor in the first place.
As one of the foremost exponents of
a thaumaturgical or theocratic form of kingship, Charlemagne had espoused the
Gelasian doctrine of the two swords, whereby the monarch as the vicar of God on
earth [vicarius Dei] exercised both
spiritual and temporal power in the governance of his realm. In this dual function as both king and
priest [rex et sacerdos], Charlemagne
had managed to combine the interests of the Church with those of the State, the
sacred with the secular, the religious with the manifestly political, for in
extending his territory, he exerted his evangelizing influence over the peoples
he subjugated, and in procuring for himself the literate clergy he needed to
regulate his new dominions, he became an exemplary benefactor of church
institutions. Whatever advances he may
have made on the Church's behalf were inextricably linked with his own
ambitions for establishing another world empire on the model of the ancient
Romans, for after the fall of Rome, it was the institutional Church that had
preserved the memory of Rome as a universal power, even to the point of
carrying on its organizational system of metropolitan sees. Popes submitted to Charlemagne's judgments
voluntarily for he had succeeded in making them his feudal dependents, and he
regularly took it upon himself to intervene in the Church matters whenever he
felt that the occasion demanded it.
These seem to have been the very principles that Friedrich Barbarossa
was hoping to revive when he lent his support to the canonization of
Charlemagne as King and Confessor, but since the time of the Gregorian Reform
Movement and the Investiture Conflict at the end of the previous century, such
notions had been growing increasingly unsupportable. For the past seventy years, churchmen had committed themselves to
resisting all manner of imperial interference in ecclesiastical affairs, and
they strenuously defended the autonomy of the Church from the encroachments of
lay authority, particularly with regard to the ritual investiture of prelates
and popes. For Barbarossa, the appeal
of Charlemagne as a fitting object of veneration lies in the opportunity it
provides for a renovation of these antiquated arrangements of mutual interest
and reciprocal reinforcement between Church and State, in which the Holy Roman
Emperor came to preside as the official head of each, and the whole
canonization ceremony can now be understood as a clever exercise in
self-validation. For if Paschal III has
the authority to make Charlemagne a saint, then Barbarossa must have had the
authority to make Paschal the pope, and if Barbarossa has the power to make
Paschal the pope, then it can only be that the example of Charlemagne has so
empowered him, and this can only happen if Charlemagne has already been made a
saint. The delightful circularity in
this reasoning, which takes its own conclusions as premises, proves positively
irrefutible, however flawed the logic itself might turn out to be. But tautology, it must be pointed out, is a
device of rhetoric rather than of logic, and its point, therefore, is simply to
convince. It requires nothing more than
faith in order to function effectively.
This, then, is the first major point
that I would like to make in relation to my historical discussion of the Roland text. In the years immediately
following the 29th of December 1165, what the figure of Charlemagne had come to
represent was the real crisis in institutional authority that had resulted from
recurring conflicts between Church and State, and inasmuch as this image of
Charlemagne was actively being invoked at the time, it served to establish an
authorizing convention for principles of theocratic kingship, which were then
used to underwrite the political sovereignty of secular governments. This emphasis on the sacral nature of
rulership can be seen quite clearly in another one of the Anglo-Norman legends
about Charlemagne that was committed to writing around the same time as the
Oxford Roland, the Voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et
Constantinople.[18] Here, the text of the poem is divided into
two separate adventures or journeys. In
the first section [vv.98-232], Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers of France make
a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and receive from the patriarch the religious relics
that form the basis for the emperor's claims to spiritual authority; in the
second [vv.233-857], they carry off the treasure of the Byzantine emperor,
which represents the foundation of his temporal power. The Roland,
admittedly, is far less direct in its application of these conventions, but the
subtext is still evident here nevertheless.
Time and again throughout the poem, Charlemagne is shown to have been
assisted by divine intervention in his relentless campaign against the
Saracens. In Laisse 179, he appeals to
heaven to make the sun stand still for him so that he can continue to pursue
the enemy in flight, and the natural order of the entire universe is
momentarily suspended as God performs this miracle on the emperor's behalf,
just as the Hebrew God of the Old Testament had done for Joshua in his battle
against the Amorites.[19] The citation of this episode from the Bible
[Joshua, chapter 10, verses 12-14] is
particularly notable, for as Beryl Smalley has pointed out, the same passage
was used extensively by English canonists at the time to demonstrate that God
showed favor to His chosen people directly through their military leaders
without any mediation from the priests or the Levites.[20] In the laisse immediately following, the
Saracens are seen to perish in the river Ebro in exactly the same manner as
Pharaoh and his cavalry do in the Book of
Exodus [chapter 14, verses 21-29], with the result that Charlemagne
suddenly becomes recognized as another Moses.
This layering of textual
resemblances between Charlemagne and the Hebrew Patriarchs serves to validate and
endorse the royalist positions being held during this period, but it is when
the Oxford manuscript draws parallels from the New Testament and Christian
salvation history that the strongest case for sacral kingship is actually being
made. The Twelve Peers of France are
associated not only with the twelve tribes of Israel but also with the twelve
apostles. The connection is made
directly when Archbishop Turpin,[21]
one of the Frankish generals, is referred to as "such a prophet as no man
has been since the time of the apostles" ["Dès les apostres ne fut hom tel prophète," v.2255], and when,
in the Voyage de Charlemagne, a Jew
happens to observe Charlemagne and the Twelve Peers sitting at the reliquary
table from the Last Supper in a Jerusalem monastery, he is so impressed by
their glorious appearance that he mistakes them for a vision of God Himself
surrounded by His twelve apostles, whereupon he immediately applies to the
local patriarch for conversion [vv.139-40].
One of the more compelling arguments that had been offered for
canonizing Charlemagne in the first place was that, in conquering and
converting the pagans in Europe, he had been performing an apostolic function.[22] In this context, then, the battles between
the Franks and the Saracens are presented as continuing the earlier mission of
the early Christian evangelists, and eventually the holy war between believers
and non-believers starts to take on the apocalyptic dimension of a cosmic
battle between the forces of good and evil.
At Roland's death, for example, all of France is overcome with
premonitions of the Last Judgment:
En France en ad mult merveillus turment:
Orez i ad de tuneire e de vent,
Pluies e gresila desmesureement;
Chiedent i fuildres e menut e suvent,
E terremoete ço i ad veirement.
De seint Michel del Peril josqu'as Seinz,
Dès Besençun tresqu'al port de Guitsand,
N'en ad recet dunt del mur ne cravent.
Cuntre midi tenebres i ad granz.
N'i ad clartet, se li ciels nen i fent.
Hume nel veit ki mult ne s'espoant.
Dient plusor: "Ço est li definement,
La fin del secle ki nus est en present."
Il nel sevent, ne dient veir nient:
Ço est li granz dulors por la mort de Rollant. [Laisse 110, vv.1423-37]
[In France there is prodigious turmoil: / there is a mighty
tempest of thunder and wind, / rain and hail beyond all measure; / lightning
strikes quickly and often, / and there is even an earthquake if the truth be
told. / From Mont St. Michel to Sens, / from Besançon to the port of Wissant, /
there is no refuge where the walls have not cracked. / At noontime there is a
great darkness. / There is no light except when the skies split apart. / No man
sees this who does not shudder. / Many say: "This is the final moment, /
the end of the world is upon us." / They do not know, nor do they speak
the truth. / It is the great sorrow for Roland's death.]
The text
insists that the world has not really come to an end, that France is simply
registering the enormous grief it is experiencing over the loss of its greatest
hero, but if this passage is not referring to the final conflict in the Book of Revelations, then it must
certainly be recalling the death of Jesus, which is described in much the same
language in the Gospel accounts [particularly Matthew 27.45-54; but also, Mark
15.33-39 and Luke 23.44-49]. Roland performs the role of the Christian
Savior who sacrifices his own life in his continuing struggle against the
forces of darkness, and the arch-felon Ganelon, who betrays the hero in
exchange for Saracen wealth [in laisses 45-50, vv. 596-641], becomes another
incarnation of the treacherous Judas.
Having been left to execute divine retribution and restore order within
the poem, Charlemagne is finally cast in the supreme role of God the Father, a
living apotheosis of the Almighty himself and the full embodiment of what a
theocratic king should be.
SECTION III:
CONSTITUTING AUTHORITY
It remains now to be seen how events
were playing out in England at this time.
It must be remembered that Henry II was the first to propose to
Friedrich Barbarossa the idea of canonizing Charlemagne a saint [sedula petitione carissimi amici nostri
Heinrici illustris regis Anglie inducti].
Indeed, it may be said that Henry had even masterminded the whole
project from the start. Robert Folz has
suggested that the subject was initially broached during an interview he had
had with Archbishop Rainald of Dassel, the imperial chancellor, at a meeting
held in Rouen on the 15th of April 1165, at a time when the Plantagenet king
was actively considering withdrawing his support from Alexander III and
throwing in his lot with the Holy Roman Empire.[23] Negotiations were currently taking place for
strengthening English ties with the Hohenstaufens through the marriages of two
of Henry's daughters, Mathilda and Joanna, to Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony
and Bavaria, and the younger son of Friedrich Barbarossa. What had prompted this novel alliance on
Henry's part was the Pope's continual interference in the struggle he was
having with his own Archbishop, Thomas Becket.
The dispute between the King and the
Primate of England had been gradually developing over the better part of the
past two years, from the month of July in 1163 when Philip de Broc, a canon of
Lincoln, had been acquitted of murder in the Court Spiritual of his diocese. The royal justiciar in the county Simon fitz
Peter, not content that justice had been served in this case, sought to
rearraign the offender in the secular courts of the King's Bench only to meet
with the clerk's utter contempt. The
matter was brought to the King's attention in the presence of the Archbishop of
Canterbury, and Henry very quickly became infuriated both at the insult to his
personal agent and at the blatant disregard for royal authority, while Becket,
for his part, demurred and insisted that lay tribunals had no proper
jurisdiction over clerics in ecclesiastical orders. Henry, who was intent on having the rule of law applied equitably
and universally throughout his kingdom, called together a synod of all his
bishops at Westminster that October to decide the issue and to determine what
the traditional recourse had been for cases like this in the past. With nearly a sixth of the population in
some form of clerical orders,[24]
it was imperative that the problem be addressed expeditiously since the potential
for widespread irregularities threatened to debilitate the entire system of
English law that Henry had been working so diligently to restore after the
calamitous disorder of his predecessor's reign. During the session, the King suggested that reprobate clerics,
once they had been convicted of crimes in their local church courts and
stripped of their office, should be resubmitted for judgment in the lay courts
where the penalties were harsher and would better accord with the charges
against them. This time around, the
Archbishop found himself dissenting vociferously, claiming that the liberties
of the Church were now being jeapordized and that it was not only inappropriate
but contrary to Scripture for anyone to be tried twice over for the identical crime.[25] A heated debate ensued among the various
participants for the next several hours, and Henry finally left the council
without obtaining the satisfaction he so eagerly desired.
He reconvened the assembly three
months later at his hunting-lodge in Clarendon after canvassing supporters
through the Bishop of London, Gilbert Foliot, and after commissioning two of
his closest advisors, Richard de Lucy and Jocelin de Bailliol, to draw up a
list of the customary practices that had traditionally been observed in the
time of his grandfather Henry I. The
resulting document, known afterwards as the Constitutions of Clarendon, did
little more than reaffirm "the acknowledged customs and privileges of the
realm."[26] Even though it may have appeared highly
controversial at the time due to its bold restatement of royalist principles,
the claims it lays down were fairly conservative in their premises and made no
attempt at extending royal domination beyond the limits that Henry's
Anglo-Norman ancestors had enjoyed with respect to their dealings with the
English Church.[27] Thomas
Becket initially resisted the many restrictions which he felt that Henry had
been placing upon the Church, but under heavy duress from the other bishops he
eventually relented, and at the end of three days he affixed his signature to
the document and gave his solemn oath to uphold it in practice. A final copy of
the document was then presented to Alexander III for papal approval, as was
customary in such cases, but the Pope took exception to all but six of the
articles and rejected the document outright.
Becket immediately repented his earlier hastiness in submitting to the
King and reneged on the oath he had just sworn to observe the law.
In a fit of anger, Henry drew up
legal proceedings against the Archbishop on three counts: first, for having
perjured himself in the present instance; second, for having illegally absented
himself from court during an appeal brought against him by John the Marshall;
and third, for financial improprieties amounting to treason, which Becket was
supposed to have committed during the Siege of Toulouse in his previous service
as Henry's chancellor.[28] From the 1st to the 29th of October 1164,
the King convened a council at Northampton to bring a conviction against his former
favorite, but the Archbishop fled for protection to the Cistercian abbey of
Pontigny in France, where he remained for the next six years, studying theology
and regularly excommunicating the most prominent of Henry's supporters when he
wasn't threatening the entire kingdom with interdict. Alexander III, for his part, was now faced with the prospect of
losing Henry's support forever, and under imminent danger of invasion from
Frederick Barbarossa,[29]
he quickly moderated his position by increasing his distance from Thomas
Becket. He continued his attempts to
mediate between the King and the Archbishop through his emissaries, but he
softened or annulled most of Becket's censures and prevented him from
condemning the king directly. Becket
was mostly reduced by this point to ineffectual posturing, and he finally came
to terms with Henry II at La Ferté Bernard on the 22nd of July 1170. On the first of December, the Archbishop
returned to England where he was greeted upon landing at Sandwich by a round of
insults from many quarters, including apparently the young king Henry III. Then, on Christmas Day during Mass, he took
his reprisals from the pulpit, reiterating his earlier orders of
excommunication he had pronounced against his enemies. When Henry received report of this event the
next day in Rouen, he was completely outraged and gave orders to have Becket
arrested immediately. Three days later,
on the 29th of December 1170, five years to the day after the Emperor
Charlemagne was canonized, Thomas Becket was murdered at the altar of
Canterbury Cathedral by four of Henry II's household knights.
All the controversy that had been
raised over the Constitutions of Clarendon had very little to do in the end
with the edicts themselves -- their
practice in the past having seldom raised much serious objection -- but the
stipulation that the edicts were to be "inviolably observed for ever and
ever" was a cause for some concern.
Routines, which had formerly been treated as flexible, ad hoc, and subject to change, were now
being made permanent and irrevocable once they were committed to writing. These sixteen articles represented an
attempt to stabilize a set of authorizing conventions and regular operating
procedures in order to forestall any further resistance to the exercise of
sovereign power. They kept the King
from having to reassert his rights every time his prerogative was called into
question. This process of textualizing
political authority, so characteristic of Henry II's reign,[30]
can be regarded, not just as a bald assertion of power but as a preemptive
strategy aimed at inhibiting competing conventions and suppressing variant or
opposing claims. This final observation
relates to my concluding point, then, about the textuality of the Oxford Roland.
The ongoing struggle for dominance and control, not just of people but
of normative traditions and customs as well, helps to explain the cultural
importance of selecting only certain
versions of orally transmitted materials, particularly works like the Roland with its strong ideological
content, and then fixing their form
forever. Thus, England in this period
emerges as the major center for the production and dissemination of most of the
earliest texts we have of the Charlemagne legends: not only the Oxford Roland and the Voyage de Charlemagne but also the Latin Turpin that Walter Map mentions in the De Nugis Curialium and the De
Prodicione Guenonis, which is a Latin retelling of the trial of Ganelon,
and even the earliest version of the story in German, the Roulandeslied of Conrad the Clerk, may have originated here as well
since the translation is generally thought to have been commissioned by Duke
Henry the Lion and his wife Margaret, the noble daughter of Henry II, whose
marriage in 1168 took place right in the middle of all this turmoil and
dissension.[31]
If the number of different textual
examples I have cited here so far is any indication of how much Henry II was
depending on textual justification as confirmation of his political authority,
it may also be testifying to an underlying anxiety as well, a growing suspicion
that no amount of appeal to precedents or citational conventions would ever be
sufficient any more when the authorizing structures themselves, both oral and
literate, were collapsing around him.
The rift between Church and State and the schism within the Church had
so completely destroyed the credibility of both institutions and impaired
each's ability to confer power upon its own members, that religious leaders
could excommunicate secular leaders from their Church at will, and secular
leaders could attempt to put religious leaders on trial in their courts and
pronounce convictions, and each side could threaten to depose the other,
without any of these performative acts having the slightest consequence or
binding effect. Faith had completely
disappeared from the process, and all that was required now was to withdraw
one's support from one of the two competing establishments and transfer it to
the other for all the authority of the first to have been rendered useless and
ineffectual. Revolts, rebellions, and
political defections continually undermined Henry II's career in the aftermath
of the Becket Controversy, to the point when in April of 1173, nearly all of
the territories he governed rose up against him, led by his own sons and
supported by his wife, his feudal overlord, and many of his leading
tenants-in-chief, and it was only through repeated military victories that he
managed to reestablish his position.
The image of Charlemagne may survive in the Plantagenet texts as a
figure of universal sovereignty, the conquering ruler of a great world empire,
but in late twelfth-century politics, he served as an emblem for a world that
was falling apart. In the end, even the
celebration of Charlemagne's feast day was finally preempted, when the 29th of
December was rededicated to the memory of Thomas Becket, who had been created a
saint and martyr of the Catholic Church on the 1st of March 1172, just 14
months after his death.
[1] This
community of Austin canons at St. Mary's in Oseney, which by the fourteenth
century had combined with the neighboring communities of St. George's and St.
Frideswide's, is significant for the purposes of this study on a number of
accounts. First of all, the abbey was a
major center of literary and scholarly activity in England during the
twelfth-century when it served many of the same educational functions as the
university at Oxford would come to assume shortly afterwards. Well-known literary figures like Geoffrey of
Monmouth had been a member of the priory of St. George's when he wrote the Historia Regum Britanniae for Henry II's
uncle Robert of Gloucester, and Gerald of Wales delivered his Topographia Hiberniae there in praise of
Henry II during the 1180's. Second, the
community, through its founders, retained very close connections to the English
royal family. The original priory had
been founded at Oseney in 1129 by Robert D'Oilly, sheriff of Oxford and constable to Henry II's grandfather, King
Henry I, at the request of his Robert's wife Editha, herself one of the king's
more celebrated mistresses. The charter
for the priory explicitly dedicated the members of the community to the service
of royal interests, "for the personal welfare of the king and the public
safety of the entire realm" (pro
salute regis & incolumitate tocius regni). During the civil wars between Stephen of Boulogne and Henry II's
mother, the Empress Mathilda, the D'Oilly family sided with the empress, and
the community of St. Mary's, having been accorded the full status of an abbey
in the second year of Henry II's reign, would continue to benefit from
Plantagenet patronage throughout Henry's lifetime. See "A charter of Robert d'Oiley," in Cartulary of Oseney Abbey, 3 volumes,
ed. H.E. Salter, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929: I, 1. J.C. Dickinson, The Origins of the Austin Canons and Their
Introduction into England, London: SPCK, 1950: 122, 141. Moreover, there are a number of attestations
to the abbey's enduring interest in the Roland
material. For instance, in the
mid-thirteenth-century chronicle attributed to Thomas Wykes, one of the later
canons of Oseney abbey, the scribe has made a telling slippage at one point by
substituting the name 'Roland' for that of 'Rollo,' the first Duke of Normandy
and the progenitor of Henry's Norman line, ("Willelmi Lungespeye, filii Rolandi, qui fuit primus dux Normannorum"). See the "Chronicon Vulgo Dictum
Chronicon Thomae Wykes," Annales
Monastici, vol. IV, ed. Henry Richards Luard, London: Longmans, Green,
Reader, and Dyer, 1869: 8. Dominica
Legge takes for granted that the manuscript had always belonged to Oseney,
where she notes that a long tradition of epic composition was to remain in
practice, as evidenced by the thirteenth-century authorship of the Chanson de Gui de Warewick by another
canon of that community. See: M.
Dominica Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature
and Its Background, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963: 162, 169.
[2] Joseph Bédier and Edmund Stengel, following Théophile
Gautier and Gaston Paris, assign a date somewhere in the 1170's on the grounds
of textual and philological evidence, while Malcolm Parkes opts for the second
quarter of the twelfth century on the basis of paleographic and codicological
evidence. M.B. Parkes, "The Date
of the Oxford Manuscript of La Chanson de
Roland (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 23), Medioevo Romanzo 10.2 (1985): 161-176. Ian Short, however, reverts to a dating in the 1170's strictly on
paleographical grounds, supplanting Charles Samaran's previously authoritative
judgment recommending the period 1130-1140.
Ian Short, "The Oxford Manuscript of the Chanson de Roland: A Paleographic Note," Romania 94 (1973): 221-31. Charles Samaran, Introduction to La Chanson de Roland, reproduction
phototypique du MS Digby 23 de la Bodleian Library d'Oxford, ed. A. de
Laborde, Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1933: 28-32. The handwriting has been characterized by
paleographers as shaky and a bit irregular, prompting some critics to assume
that the scribe was very old at the time of transcription and thus arguing for
a dating of the manuscript towards the end of this range. See M. Dominica Legge, Anglo-Norman Literature and Its Background: 4-5, 169, 369.
[3] Émile Mireaux, La
Chanson de Roland et l'Histoire de France, Paris: Éditions Albin Michel,
1943: 82-96. Mireaux further notes in
this discussion that the title of standard-bearer or seneschal of France was an
honor that Henry II had acquired from his continental overlord, the French king
Louis VII, on August 31, 1158 [Alternately, the date January 6, 1169 is
proposed by Eyton as the outcome of the treaty of Montmirail]. Prior to that time, the title had never
belonged to the House of Anjou.
4 In between are listed places where Henry had
concluded alliances: Lombardy, the region around Rome, Bavaria, Flanders,
Burgundy, Poland, Constantinople, and Saxony, vv. 2326-30. The full text of the citation appears below
followed by my own translation. Folios
42r-43v, Laisse CLXXII, vv.2316-34. La Chanson de Roland, ed. Pierre Jonin,
Paris: Gallimard, 1979.
["Ah!
Durendal, how beautiful you are and shining and white! / Against the sun, you
sparkle and gleam! / Charles was in the Valley of Maurienne / When God sent an
angel from heaven / Telling him to give you to a lordly captain: / Thereupon,
the great and courteous king girded it on me himself. / I used it to conquer both Anjou and
Brittany, / Then I conquered both Poitou and Maine; / I used it to conquer
Normandy the free, / Then I conquered Provence and Aquitaine / And Lombardy and
all of the Roman domain; / With it I have conquered Bavaria and the whole of
Flanders / And Burgundy and all of Poland, / Constantinople, where they now pay
him homage, / And even in Saxony they do what he requires; / With it I have
conquered Scotland [Wales, and Ireland] / And England where he maintains the
seat of his power; / With it I have conquered so many countries and territories
/ That now belong to Charles of the white beard."]
[5] These developments provoked a great deal
of commentary from Henry's contemporaries and were regarded as extraordinarily
impressive accomplishments for their novelty at the time. Accounts of these events are given in the
following primary sources: Roger of Hoveden, Gesta Regis Henrici Secundi, vol.
I, 36-8; Receuil des Actes de Henri II, II, 1-4; Letter of John of Salisbury,
Materials for the Life of Becket, vol. VIII, 26-30; Peter of Blois, Epistula
13, Patrologia Latina CCVII, col. 340.
Discussed in: Austin Lane Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta,
330-2; W.L. Warren, Henry II, 117, 221.
[6] Gerald of Wales, De
Principis Instructione Liber, in Giraldi
Cambrensis Opera, 8 volumes, ed. George F. Warner, London: Rolls Series,
Kraus Reprint Ltd, 1964: VIII, 157.
"Praeterea in transmarinis Aquitannicae Galliae partibus
praeter Andegaviam, Cenomanniam et Turoniam, quae ei patrimoniali jure,
Pictaviam quoque et Gasconiam totam usque ad Pyrenaeos Hispaniae montes, quae
ei matrimonialiter obvenerant, dominatui suo Alverniam et Berricum, Gisortium
quoque cum Vesegino Normannico, olim Normanniae subtracto, viriliter
adjecit. Nec solum ad Francorum,
simplicis ac sancti viri Ludovici regis abutens commoditate, verum etiam ad
Romanum imperium, occasione werrae diutinae et inexorabilis discordiae inter
imperatorem Frethericum et suos obortae, tam Italia tota quam urbe Romulea
saepius invitatus, comparata quidem sibi ad hoc Morianae vallis et Alpium via,
sed non efficaciter obtenta, animositate sua ambitum extendit. Solet quippe, quoniam "ex abundantia
cordis os loquitur," animosum pariter et ambitiosum coram privatis suis
nonnunquam verbum emittere, totum videlicet mundum uni probo potentique viro
parum esse. Adeo siquidem per universum
orbem nominis ejus fama celebris exstiterat, ut ipsa prae cunctis terrae
regibus ac principibus et fidelibus ad gloriam fuerit et gentilibus ad
terrorem. Cuncti quoque terrarum
principes tam Christiani quam Gentiles, et sicut Alemannicus Frethericus et
Manuel Graecus, sic Noradinus suo tempore et post Psaladinus, et sicut Asiae
sic et Europae, Hispaniae vidilicet, tam fidei domesticae quam infideles,
eundem exeniis et nuntiis crebris honorare consueverunt et visitare."
["Moreover,
he added upon his holdings overseas in the Aquitaine, for besides Anjou, Maine,
and Touraine -- which were his by right of inheritance -- and Poitou and the
whole of Gascony as far as the Pyrenees in Spain -- which fell to him through
marriage -- he manfully annexed the regions of Auvergne, Berry, and Gisors with
the Norman Vexin, which had formerly been alienated from Normandy. He extended his dominion energetically not
only through the empire of the French, abusing the kindly disposition of that
simple and holy man King Louis [VII], but also to the [Holy] Roman Empire, on
the occasion of the persistent warfare and inexorable discord that had arisen
between the emperor Frederick and his subjects. He had been invited there many times by the whole of Italy as
well as by the city of Rome, and he even prepared himself for this undertaking
by a passageway through the valley of Maurienne and the Alps, but he never
secured it effectively. He was often in
the habit, though, since "his mouth speaks from the fullness of his
heart," of letting slip a bold and ambititous remark in the presence of
his closest confidants, to the effect that the whole world was not enough for
one mighty and capable man. Thus, the
reputation of his famous name spread throughout the entire world so that it
abounded in glory above all the kings of the earth, above the princes and above
all the faithful, to the terrible dread of the pagans. The princes from all the lands about, both
Christians and Saracens, even the German [Emperor] Frederick and the Byzantine
[Emperor] Manuel, the emir Nouradin in his time and later Saladin, from Asia
just as much as from Europe and even from Spain, those who were members of the
faith as well as those who were infidels, all used to honor him with frequent
gifts and visit him with regular embassies."]
[7] The image of the two swords, deriving from
allegorized interpretations of Luke 22:38, was used by medieval commentators to
support the
divine ordination of royal and ecclesiastical power. It was first used by Alcuin to explain to Charlemagne his dual
purpose as emperor: to rid the world of heresy and to subjugate the
pagans. The concept would have a long
and politically charged afterlife as it was appropriated by both sides in the
Investiture Conflict. See: Joseph Canning,
A History of Medieval Political Thought,
49-50, 99-100, 109, 132, 139, 152; Ernst Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies, 456, 460.
[8] Jordan
Fantosme's Chronicle, ed. R.C.
Johnston, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981: 10.
[9] Walter Map, De
Nugis Curialium (Courtiers' Trifles), ed. and trans. M.R. James, revised by
C.N.L. Brooke and R.A.B. Mynors, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983:.V.1.
[10] The episode where Alexander addresses the tomb of
Achilles is recorded in Julius Valerius'
Res Gestae Alexandri, i.47; see p. 405, n. 2 in the James, Brooke, and
Mynors edition of the De Nugis Curialium.
[11] J.L.
Austin, HowTo Do Things With Words,
Second Edition, Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1962, 1975.
[13]According to the "Miracles of St. Goar,"
"The Life of St. Gilles," and the so-called "Kaiserchronik,"
Charlemagne was said to have been guilty of some particularly egregious and
unspeakable sin for which he was eventually pardoned directly by God without
benefit of confession or priestly mediation.
By the twelfth century, this scandalous fault had come to be identified
with an incestuous love affair he was supposed to have had with his sister
Alais, from which liaison the hero Roland was born. See: Robert Folz, Le
Souvenir et la légende de Charlemagne dans l'Empire germanique médiéval,
Paris: Société d'Édition Les Belles Lettres, 1950: 203-37.
[14]For the official list of reasons behind Charlemagne's
canonization, see: Robert Folz, Le
souvenir et la légende de Charlemagne, 209-10.
[15] Theodor Klauser, "Die Liturgie der
Heiligsprechung," in Heilige
Ûberliefung, Beitrãge zur Geschichte des alten Mönchtums und des
Benediktinerordens, Supplementband, Munich, 1938: 229 ff. Cited in Bernard W. Scholz, "The
Canonization of Edward the Confessor," Speculum
36.1 (January 1961), 38-60, 48.
[16] Such was
the procedure recommended in the bull of canonization for the Emperor Henry II
in 1146: Scholz, "The Canonization of Edward the Confessor," 50.
[17] Judith Butler, "Critically Queer," in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies
1.1 (1993): 17-32, 17-18; reprinted in Bodies
That Matter:On the Discursive Limits of "Sex," New York and
London: Routledge, 1993: 225.
[18] Le Voyage de Charlemagne à Jérusalem et à
Constantinople, ed. Paul Aebischer, Geneva: Librairie Droz, Paris:
Librairie Minard, 1965.
[19] Joshua 10.14 regards this prodigy as truly
extraordinary, however: "There has been no day like it before or since,
when the Lord heeded a human voice; for the Lord fought for Israel."
[20]Such arguments, citing similar scriptural precedents,
had actually been used by Henry's partisans against Thomas Becket to justify
lay control over the clergy. See: Beryl
Smalley, The Becket Conflict and the
Schools, 131, 162.
[21]The figure of Turpin would have struck twelfth-century
audiences for its daring refutation of canon law, since priests had been
prohibited by the Church from bearing arms and following worldly occupations at
the Reform Council held by Pope Leo IX at Rheims in 1049 (article vi). See: Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 31.
[24]This estimate has been provided in: W.L. Warren, Henry
II, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1973: 460.
[25]Becket was quoting from Jerome's commentary on the
prophet Nahum where it says, "God does not judge twice in the same
case." Cited in: W.L. Warren, Henry II, 467.
[26] These articles consisted chiefly of the following
precepts elaborated over sixteen separate articles: (i) that all disputes
between clerics and laymen, both civil and criminal, were to remain subject to
final adjudication by the lord king [§§ 1,3,8,9,10,13]; (ii) that all who held
property of the king, both tenured barons and beneficed clergy alike, were
under feudal obligation to the king and therefore required his consent before
undertaking any measures that might affect himself, his policies, or his
principal agents [§§ 4,7,11]; and (iii) that all estates in England, whether
occupied by the Church or by the nobility, ultimately belonged to the king, who
retained the right to them if not the actual possession, and when they became
vacant, either through death or forfeiture, their revenues and chattels
defaulted back to royal control until such time as they were granted to someone
new [§§ 2,12,14]. " The
Constitutions of Clarendon (January 1164)," English Historical Documents, 1042-1189, Volume II: 718-22.
[27] For the general conformity of the Constitutions of
Clarendon with earlier precedents, see: Austin Lane Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna Carta, 206-7; W.L. Warren, Henry II, 474-82.
28 Becket
was charged with having misappropriated a total of 2,000 marks during the
campaign against Toulouse. See: Austin
Lane Poole, From Domesday Book to Magna
Carta, 208.
29 In the autumn of 1166, the Holy Roman Emperor was
mobilizing an army to attack the pope once again.
30 M. T.
Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record:
England 1066-1307, 2nd edition, Oxford and Cambridge MA: Blackwell, 1993:
44-80.
31 The Ruolandes
liet, the earliest version of the Roland
material in German, has been traced back to the court of Henry II through his
daughter Mathilda, who is credited by the author Conrad with having
commissioned this translation of a preexisting poem after her marriage to Duke
Henry the Lion of Saxony and Bavaria.
See Das Rolandslied des Pfaffen Konrad, ed. Dieter Kartschoke, Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam,
1993: 604, vv. 9017-24: "Nu wünschen wir alle gelîche / dem
herzogen Hainrîche, / daß im got lône. / diu matteria, diu ist scoene, / diu
süeze wir von im haben. / daz buoch hiez er vor tragen, / gescriben ze den
Karlingen. / des gerte diu edele herzoginne, / aines rîchen küniges barn."
["Now may we all alike wish our blessings / upon Duke Henry / so that God
may protect him. / The material itself is lovely; / let us partake of its
sweetness. / He commanded that this book be translated, / since it had been
written in French, / to please the noble duchess, / the child of a mighty
king."] Elsewhere in the poem, the author Conrad explains
that he translated the text not directly from the French but through an
intervening translation in Latin: vv. 9080-3.
For the positive identification of the 'Herzog Hainriche' as Henry the
Lion and of the 'edele Herzoginne' and her father as Mathilda and Henry II, see
the afterword of this editon, 791; also, Robert Folz, Le souvenir et la légende de
Charlemagne, 240-1. Once again, Henry II can be seen recirculating
Charlemagne's reputation back into Germany where the emperor's successors still
ruled.