Henry of Blois, New Interpretations ed. by William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns

Abstract

Reviewed by: Henry of Blois, New Interpretations ed. by William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns Benjamin Bertrand William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns, eds., Henry of Blois, New Interpretations ( Woodbridge: Boydell, 2020), xvii + 289 pp., 60 ills. This new volume offers an exciting collection of interdisciplinary essays on a well-known but seldom-studied player in twelfth-century English history, Henry of Blois. By calling attention to the multifaceted career of this bishop, abbot, papal legate, and brother to King Stephen of England, the contributors hope to subvert long-standing historiographical biases about his life and blaze a trail for future research. As editors William Kynan-Wilson and John Munns make clear in their introduction, historians have often trivialized Henry of Blois as a corrupt opportunist, disregarding his place as a churchman of international importance and as a powerful patron of the arts. The book and its nine collected essays are [End Page 260] the result of a symposium on the eponymous bishop held at Fitzwilliam College in 2015, with contributors from the fields of history, archaeology, and art history. By reexamining various aspects of Henry of Blois's life through available written, archaeological, and artistic evidence, the book's editors and contributors hope to inject new life into discussions of the bishop. Kynan-Wilson and Munns are careful to define the scope of their project in their introduction. They describe the book not as a new biography of Henry of Blois but as an attempt to "offer new interpretations of specific aspects of Henry's life, personality, career and significance as they have drawn the interest of individual contributors." (3). They are particularly interested in breaking down older scholarly interpretations that sought to characterize Henry's career as either a success or a failure. The editors seek to integrate Henry into "the narrative of medieval European history" by understanding him in the context of his many continental connections (2). There is a commendable focus in their introduction on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scholars who embraced Henry as a symbol of a more "muscular Church" (14). Their historiographical survey speaks favorably of Lena Voss's Heinrich von Blois, Bischof von Winchester, the last major monograph published on Henry in 1932, and somewhat less so of David Knowles's discussion of the bishop in his writing. Knowles's rather negative portrait of Henry as an opportunist and lackluster churchman is much of what this volume hopes to reinterpret. The editors' limited scope for the volume is both realistic and commendable, positioning the reader for the nine essays that follow. While not organized into sections per se, the volume's essays seem to have been grouped thematically, with the first three addressing Henry's place in twelfth-century ecclesiastical politics. M. J. Franklin's article concerns Henry's attachments and loyalties to the monastery where he was raised, Cluny. He pores over the evidence for Henry's itinerary, noting his many visits to the abbey and the considerable time and resources he devoted to it. Franklin argues that scholars must recognize this commitment to his mother house in order to understand fully Henry's political motivations. Barbara Bombi analyzes another aspect of Henry's career by focusing on his tenure as England's papal legate from 1139–43. She reassesses Henry's legatine achievements to argue that, rather than wielding his power capriciously and corruptly, Henry primarily used his position to advance Church reform and papal interests. She argues for a re-contextualization not only of his career but also of legatine powers in the twelfth century, offering a fresh perspective on Henry's legatine activities. John Munns's contribution to the volume further reconsiders Henry's episcopacy by comparing him to his "episcopal colleagues" (69). He pushes back on scholars who have characterized Henry as uniquely nepotistic, militaristic, and opportunistic. On the contrary, Munns suggests that his behavior was in fact fairly typical of English bishops at this time. He argues that historians have been too quick to "substitute caricature for complexity" when analyzing figures such as Henry of Blois (92). Throughout this handful of essays, the authors do an admirable job of providing context for the bishop's...