The Royal Forests of Medieval England

Arboreal Politics in the <i>Knight's Tale</i>

Some time between 1390 and his death in 1400, Chaucer served as a substitute forester in North Petherton, Somerset.1 Although it probably required little more than occasional desk work, and although it was the last and worst-documented of Chaucer's many dalliances with the administrative machinery of late-fourteenth-century England, the position affirms the persistence into the reign of Richard II of the decadent Norman royal forest system.2 While it is uncertain whether art imitated life or vice versa in each case, a number of Chaucer's literary works mention forestry and make use of its specialized vocabulary.3 In the Book of the Duchess, for example, the poet employs a slew of technical terms over the course of Octavian's hunt (344–86).4 The Knight's Yeoman and (as will be shown) the Friar's Tale's devil-yeoman are especially important in the present connection because they are foresters, albeit of a more practical variety than the historical Chaucer. In what follows, it is argued that the Friar's Tale, by a series of dramatic ironies, critiques the royal forest system in which Chaucer was (or was to become) a minor official. The first section outlines fourteenth-century English forest history and its reception in poetry of the period; the second presents a reading of the Friar's Tale, with special attention to the figure of the devil-yeoman and the tale's satire on the royal forest and other administrative systems.As the Crown's economic stranglehold on lands designated “forest” weakened toward the end of the fourteenth century, the English nobles grew bolder in cultivating local protocols for their woodlands, giving rise to a rich hunting culture that would come to symbolize the British leisure class. At the same time, the relaxing of royal forest law drove into the literary mainstream the figure of the tricksy forest outlaw, whose popular cognomen “Robin Hood” was to be the occasion for one of British literature's most successful fantasies.5 In addition to the historical convenience of a forester Chaucer, then, the thirty or so years of his literary career stand at the crossroads of the two great moments in medieval forest history: on the one hand, the final gasps of the Norman forest scheme; on the other, the appropriation of the hunt as an aristocratic prerogative. The convergence of the two moments in the late fourteenth century fostered an imagined English forestland, endlessly refashioned in tales and technical literature, in which the peasant, the outlaw, the forester, and the noble hunter meet and quarrel.6 Chaucer's forests, too, for all that they may seem a shamelessly exploited motif, provide a backdrop to characters who act out “the growing self-consciousness of the romance tradition.”7The last quarter of the fourteenth century witnessed a series of crises in and around the royal forest. As aristocratic as well as popular opposition to the Norman forest system grew keener, Richard and his deputies continued to cede forest rights to the barony in exchange for fealty, a trend that had gained momentum since John first began large-scale strategic disafforestment with his Great Charter of 1215.8 A tacit coalition sprang up between the Crown and the barony with respect to hunting rights, so that by the time of the Peasants' Revolt in 1381, it was the abolition of the hunting privileges of the elite, and not of the royal forest, which formed a part of the rebels' demands.9 On a number of occasions, the political controversy surrounding the Norman forest touched the historical Chaucer. John of Gaunt, 1st Duke of Lancaster, for whom Chaucer wrote The Book of the Duchess, upon returning from Spain in 1389 found his dukedom split by a fierce dispute between denizens of Yorkshire and his forest officials, over hunting rights in his forests, parks, and chases there.10 In 1390, Chaucer was robbed of his horse and official monies by forest vagabonds at a place in Surrey referred to in court proceedings as “le fowle ok.”11 A third circumstance even more firmly implicates Chaucer in forest history and the history of hunting literature. In assuming the North Petherton forestership, Chaucer substituted for John of Gaunt's nephew, Edward of Norwich, 2nd Duke of York, who would later (ca. 1406–1413) pen medieval England's most ambitious hunting treatise, The Master of Game, a liberal Englishing of Gaston de Foix's Livre de Chasse.12 Nor was Edward unfamiliar with his successor's literary oeuvre. In the prologue to his manual, having humbly laid out the purpose of the work, he produces by way of an epigraph a couplet misremembered from Chaucer's prologue to the Legend of Good Women.13Chaucer's minor role in the decline of the Norman forest administration having been delineated, the forest setting in the Friar's Tale gains a new depth. For even if it was composed before his appointment to Petherton, Chaucer's reworking of the devil-and-advocate fable engages with the contemporary reality of the royal forest bureaucracy that would eventually draw him into its orbit. Neither the vaguely threatening groves of the Knight's Tale, nor the impromptu hunting zone of the Book of the Duchess, nor the flatly wrought “Forestes, parkes ful of wilde deer” (V 1190) imaged forth by the Franklin's Tale's magician, the forest of the Friar's Tale is composed to feel more historical—if less remarkable—to a contemporary audience, because the tale takes aim at foresters as well as summoners. To be sure, Chaucer's “grene-wode shawe” (III 1386) owes much to the romance tradition, but the Friar specifies at the beginning of his tale that the summoner was the wiliest chap “in Engelond” (III 1322), and that the archdeacon who supervised him “was dwellynge in my contree” (III 1301). Furthermore, the Friar's remarks in his Prologue and the Summoner's irate interruptions make clear to the pilgrims that the fable's true target is a flesh-and-blood summoner, opening the door for a second analogy between the Friar's summoner and an historical one. Finally, the use of technical terminology throughout the tale adds to the impression of historicity.14While Chaucer's trajectory in the literary-critical imagination from “court poet” to “city poet” has bypassed the natural world,15 recent scholarship has turned to his bureaucratic obligations more generally,16 and for good reason: the historical Chaucer could have boasted along with the Roman de la Rose's Fals-Semblant that “Trop sai bien mes abiz changier,Prendre l'un e l'autre estrangier:Or sui chevaliers, or sui moines,Or sui prelaz, or sui chanoines,Or sui clers, autre eure sui prestres,Or sui deciples, or sui maistres,Or chastelains, or forestiers;Briement je sui de touz mestiers.”(lines 11187–94)“I know well how to change my guises, pick up one and put down another: now I'm a knight, now I'm a monk, now I'm a prelate, now I'm a canon, now I'm a clerk, at another time I'm a priest, now I'm a disciple, now I'm a master, now a castellan, now a forester; in short, I do all the jobs.”17 In this extensive list of occupations, officials comprise a decided majority. Although, of course, Chaucer did not attain to all of these professions, his work as an esquire, a controller of customs, a clerk of works, a forester, and so on, doubtless contributed to the panoramic view of society famously explored in the frame narrative of the Canterbury Tales. Seven of Chaucer's pilgrims are officials in some capacity (the Friar, the Knight's Yeoman, the Man of Law, the Manciple, the Pardoner, the Reeve, and the Summoner). To some extent, Chaucer's diverse stints as a bureaucrat must have contributed to the timeliness and complexity of the Friar's Tale's satire on corrupt officialdom.18Given the importance of hunting and the royal forest in late-fourteenth-century English political history, it should not be surprising to find two foresters among Chaucer's creations.19 The pride of place granted to the Knight's Yeoman in the General Prologue testifies to a type and a profession indispensable for a complete “compaignye/Of sondry folk” (I 24–25).20 The Yeoman is outfitted with clothing and accoutrements proper to a gamekeeper, a private forester serving a lord. He certainly appears to be ready for whatever the woodlands throw at him. He wears a green coat and hood, and a brooch imprinted with an image of St. Christopher; he carries a bow and a sheaf of peacock arrows, a bracer, a sword, a small shield, a dagger, and a horn with a green shoulder-strap. One is assured that his aptitude is commensurate with his gear: he looks after his arrows “yemanly” (I 106), and “Of wodecraft wel koude he al the usage” (I 110). The apparent approbation with which Chaucer the pilgrim pronounces these earthy words—“yemanly,” “wodecraft”—reflects the new aristocratic associations of venery and forest husbandry. The implication is that only a very well-to-do knight possessed the means to retain a skilled forester to patrol his woodlands and serve as “master of game” on his hunts.21 While describing in his treatise the all-important “undoing” (disembowelment) of the slain deer, Edward of Norwich distinguishes the hunter's competence from that of the “woodman” along similar lines and in almost identical terms: But on þat oþir syde, if þe lorde woll haue þat dere vndone, he þat he byddeth, as byforn is seide, shuld vndone hym þe moste wodmanly and clenly þat he can. And ne wondreth ʒou noght þat I say wodmanly, for it is a point þat longeth to a wodmanes craft; and þough it be wele fittyng to ane hunter for to kunne done it, neuerþelatter it longeth more to wodmancraft þan to hunters. And þerfore, as of þe manere how he shuld be vndo, I passe ouere lyghtly, for þer nys no wodman ne good hunter in Englonde þat þei ne can do it wele inow, and wele bettir þan I can tech hem.22 Thus the byzantine legal infrastructure governing the foresta regis and the forestarii regis, which had reached its zenith with Henry II's 1184 Assize of the Forest, has been transmuted by Chaucer's time into a complex aristocratic craft predicated on a technical protocol. The admirable competency exhibited by the Yeoman is yeomanry itself, the sum of the duties a forester performed for his lord. Chaucer rounds out the description of the Yeoman with the wry observation that “A forster was he, soothly, as I gesse” (I 117), as though it needed saying. The irony detectable in this line demonstrates the fourteenth-century forester's ready recognizability in literature, at least in ideal terms. For if the symbolical tidiness with which the Yeoman makes his entrance is fueled by anxieties about the practical problem of distinguishing between foresters, outlaws, and locals in England's woodlands, Chaucer's portrait shows, at the very least, how a forester ought to appear.Aside from the ominous “frenges blake” that adorn his hat, the devil-yeoman of the Friar's Tale is a perfect miniature of the Knight's Yeoman, right down to his “gay” comportment and his “arwes brighte and kene”: And happed that he saugh bifore hym rydeA gay yeman, under a forest syde.A bowe he bar, and arwes brighte and kene;He hadde upon a courtepy of grene,An hat upon his heed with frenges blake.(III 1379–83) Green trappings are stock symbols of forest-goers, and so they need not indicate any specific connection between the two characters, beyond the typological one explored below.23 While critics have noted the devil's similarity toRobin Hood24 and to a hunter,25 the ensuing conversation between the yeoman and the summoner makes clear that the devil is posing as a “bailly” (official), a fact acknowledged more than once by both characters (III 1396, 1419, 1427–28, etc.). Clad in green and mounted, the demon most closely resembles the type of middling forest official known as a “riding forester.”26 It makes sense that a devil should impersonate an official in a tale devoted to: (1) the proper execution of an office; (2) the temptation to embezzle; (3) lordship and servitude; (4) economies infernal, divine, and human; and (5) “the ultimate justice of the social dispensation.”27 Rather than providing a colorless foil for the summoner's comeuppance, the devil's disguise adds its own specific layers of irony to the tale's moral.28 By dressing the devil as a forester—a departure from all known sources and analogues—Chaucer pits one “bailly” against another, elaborating a critique of administration that subtly reshapes the conceit of the devil-and-advocate fable.The primary ironic effect of the devil's trappings is the implicit comparison of foresters to devils. Read as a forester, the demon takes on the aspect of an official supervising his domain, as he inquires after the summoner's itinerary with perhaps more than friendly interest: “‘Wher rydestow, under this grene-wode shawe?’/Seyde this yeman, ‘Wiltow fer to day?’” (III 1386–87). At the same time, this is also Satan's minister watching for his moment to snatch away a sinner. When the devil lists for the summoner's edification the disguises available to demons (“Somtyme lyk a man, or lyk an ape,/Or lyk an angel kan I ryde or go” [III 1464–65]), he not only intones the superficiality of fleshly existence, but defines the contours of an administrative program.29 The summoner's downfall lies in his inability to pierce the superficial reality by correctly identifying in the forester's garb the signposts of demonhood: the black-fringed hat, the green gear, the residence “fer in the north contree” (III 1413).30 Crucially, both levels of reality represented by the devil-yeoman contain an administrative system (the royal forest and the administration of heaven and hell), and the summoner worsts the green-clad stranger in both of them, to his mortal peril. While attempting to impress a forester, the summoner proves crueler than a devil.Congruent with the irony that the summoner is crueler than a devil is the irony that he is crueler than a forester. Foresters' reputation for abuses of power had its roots in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the heyday of the forest regime in England. In 1279 the denizens of Somerset forest, where Chaucer was to hold his forestership, made so bold as to bring an action against their local forest deputies for official malfeasance.31 The form of their complaint is similar to accounts of corrupt clerical officials in the century to follow, and the Somerset foresters' alleged abuses resemble nothing so much as the Friar's summoner's “purchasyng” (III 1449): they leverage privileges against their own profit, they extort on pain of frivolous litigation, they steal outright. By the fourteenth century, the ponderous machinery of the kingdom-wide Forest Eyre had given way to ad hoc commissions of oyer et terminer and sporadic local “perambulations” to reaffirm the bounds of the forest.32 The rapid decline of the royal forest arrangement (including the desuetude of the forest courts in the early fourteenth century) accounts for the lack of similar formal complaints during Chaucer's lifetime. As the scale of corruption in the forest system shrank along with the royal forest itself toward the end of the fourteenth century, the figure of the corrupt forester hardened into a literary trope. At the same time, many other administrative systems—for example, the ecclesiastical courts that summoners served—were growing in power and complexity. Thus the Friar's Tale juxtaposes an old problem official with a new one, implying an analogy between the two.33The third irony arises from the summoner's incorrect assumption that a forester must be as evil as he himself is. As the Friar explains at the beginning of his tale, the summoner's vices flourish because of his relatively unsupervised position in a bureaucracy (“His maister knew nat alwey what he wan” [III 1345])—superadded to which, one might say, is the personal hatefulness that sends this particular summoner to hell. But the most immediate cause of the summoner's predicament is his overestimation of the forester's corruption. His dumbfounded reply to the devil's revelation of his true identity (“I wende ye were a yeman trewely./Ye han a mannes shap as wel as I” [III 1457–58]) signifies not only ‘I thought you were a young man: a person, like me,’ but also ‘I thought you were a bailiff: you look just like me.’ Under the first interpretation, the summoner is shocked to learn that the stranger is not of this world; but, as critics of the tale often note, his subsequent behavior suggests that he continues to mistake the demon for a mortal. Under the second interpretation, he is shocked to learn that the stranger is not a corrupt official, a partner in crime, as he had presumed. Because the devil-yeoman's account of his infernal duties so closely resembles the stereotype of the corrupt forester, the summoner fails to grasp the superficiality of the disguise. His demonological inquiries reveal that he understands “feend” (III 1448) as an exotic subgenre of the term bailly, and his primary interest in the discussion is to glean “[s]om subtiltee” (III 1420) that he can apply to his own endeavors. The first question he puts to the yeoman (“Han ye a figure thanne determinat/In helle, ther ye been in youre estat?” [III 1459–60]) reveals a mind working to incorporate new information into a familiar system, to subsume demondom in the same estates typology that comprehends summoners and foresters. Later, the devil makes his most explicit threat on the summoner's soul, and the summoner responds with at the of with his by in a of this than he was on ryde I with it be so that this nat a yeman, is ful The summoner's his to the forester's by his yeman and it also his of the with the he to mistake the for the for implicit in the of the tale, but is made explicit to the by the Friar's opening description of the is the specific into which the devil At a time the of the royal forest administration was very much on the would have the irony that the summoner fails to for the of a forester less corrupt than he, and to himself a term for a forest official. Chaucer the of yeman to point up the summoner's between the forest system and the infernal of which the devil-yeoman is a means of these ironies, the tale pits against one another two of In to the Chaucer the devil in an to the summoner's in its position its administrative The specific of a forester on the of this in the fourteenth century, and in the literary of same that whom Richard and as a of the of a new type of literary with to the forest, by rapid disafforestment and the of forest throughout the fourteenth In the Friar's Tale a similar type of is a for the Friar's on To his I nat been out of his han of no of is the point that so the His so been of the the out of [III not only to the Friar's of with of his but also to the of his By rights, a summoner ought to serve the of his in of the and may his the Friar a system at all levels by the down his in the of their and their the two pilgrims in a about and beyond the question of the of which of course, they also continues his of into his own The Summoner's is all a in his proper the he had in his [III His is by his and (III that of official at for the the and him a a with the of in upon diverse manere many a I the The Summoner's is where the Friar's summoner is The formal over the of the the Summoner's a of his own the of that has the place of bureaucratic the Friar's tale with over Chaucer the for the between the summoner and the forester. Although the satire in the disguise of a about the role of the fourteenth-century forest the tale's of the is The devil's that been ful and ful is to and is ful and perhaps official in the forest. or not the from the poet Friar's Tale may well have been composed before historical Chaucer could have the reputation of the he during the last of his When the devil on to the summoner that by I I al that by or by to I al my he the stereotype of the corrupt forester, and his own As it the devil will need no or to of the summoner's in all this very the demon with an His on (III not found in any of the tale, on and its could be as one is to that he has to means at other and under other his of corruption in comparison with the summoner's in the of an the devil an important in the as he been to his (III as the devil's the summoner's by so both of the corrupt forester the in the of forest history and the rise of bureaucracy in England, the summoner's about demondom a growing contemporary with the Friar's Tale a of the of the devil-and-advocate the summoner's to his on a it a departure from the of good and As in the tale's sources and Chaucer's devil not or his respect for him as an By the devil as a forest official, Chaucer one than his sources in an administrative than a for the The devil's as demon and yeoman a comparison between and and if Chaucer to or to have his Friar that clerical administration by its the irony of the royal forest as its reveals the outlines of a much more critique of When the devil-yeoman the summoner to of (III Chaucer not only makes clear the Friar's point that it is in the of the that han (III he also for his the narrative of on the to and for a working of the and infernal that takes the form of an and in whose image is to its

This chapter addresses the oft-debated question of the knowledge of Latin by the Jews in the Middle Ages, focusing on the case of Jewish legal documents or starrs from England, dating from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Jews in medieval England used Hebrew and Aramaic in their literary works and legal documents but spoke French and possibly some English. The language of the overwhelming majority of legal contracts and records involving Jews in medieval England is Latin, and Jewish individuals simply had to cope with the legal and administrative intricacies of a system expressed in this language. Scholars working on intellectual contacts between Jews and Christians have focused primarily on the transmission of Hebrew texts into Latin, and agreed that most intellectual contacts, at least until the end of the twelfth century, were carried out through oral tutorials in the vernacular. Keywords: Hebrew texts; Jews; legal contracts; Medieval England

Reviewed by: Love, Marriage, and Family in the Middle Ages: A Reader and: Love, Sex and Marriage in the Middle Ages: A Sourcebook Mathew Kuefler Love, Marriage, and Family in the Middle Ages: A Reader. Edited by Jacqueline Murray . [Readings in Medieval Civilizations and Cultures, 7.] (Peterborough, Canada: Broadview. 2001. Pp. xiv, 524. $29.95 paperback.) Love, Sex and Marriage in the Middle Ages: A Sourcebook. Edited by Conor McCarthy . (New York: Routledge. 2004. Pp. xii, 292. $24.95 paperback.) Two sourcebooks with very similar titles have appeared in the last few years. The first is part of a Broadview Press series of thematic medieval sourcebooks. The second is part of Routledge's growing number of history sourcebooks. Both Murray's and McCarthy's additions to these lists would be useful in medieval history courses on the related subjects, or in more general courses on the [End Page 743] history of sexuality. Nonetheless, the two books approach their subjects in curiously different ways. Murray's book is organized thematically. She begins with a chapter on "Foundations and Influences," providing examples of the biblical, Roman, and Germanic antecedents to the Middle Ages. Her next chapter, "Love and Its Dangers," notes the various medieval debates about the emotion. The third chapter, "Marriage and the Church," reviews theological writings and ecclesiastical regulations, followed by a fourth, "Marriage Ceremonies, Rituals, and Customs," that includes liturgies and legends specifically on weddings. Her fifth and sixth chapters, "Husbands and Wives" and "Marriage and Family," relate the vicissitudes of that relationship, as ideals and realities, respectively. The seventh, "Childbirth," compares religious and medical writings on that subject, and the eighth, "Parents and Children," continues with ideals and realities of the lives of children. The ninth and last chapter, "Beyond Christendom," samples Jewish and Muslim writings from medieval Europe, as an explicit contrast with what has come before. Within each chapter, sources are organized chronologically. McCarthy's book is also organized both thematically (as parts) and chronologically (as chapters). He begins with "Ecclesiastical Sources," including chapters on "The Church Fathers," "Anglo-Saxon England," "Theology and Canon Law," and "Canon Law and Actual Practice." His part two, "Legal Sources," contains chapters on Anglo-Saxon and Norman law. The title of part three, "Letters, Chronicles, Biography, Conduct Books," indicates its various chapters, although "Saints' Lives and Female Religious Writings" takes the place of biography. Part four, "Literary Sources," divides its chapters according to Old English, Latin, Old French, and Middle English literatures. Part five, finally, "Medical Sources," consists of two chapters, one on women's health and the other on love. Two things should be immediately apparent. First is that Murray has organized her book according to topics, while McCarthy has used genres to structure his book. The advantages and disadvantages of both approaches are clear. Murray's groupings allow her to bring together and contrast ecclesiastical and medical authorities on childbirth, for example, noting their different concerns. McCarthy's organization, in contrast, allows him to show the changing interests and emphases of patristic, early medieval, and canonists' writings on sex and marriage. The second major difference between the two is their geographical range. Murray's book includes sources from Iceland to Egypt, while McCarthy's restricts his to writings from England or that circulated there, although he admits that he adds some outside examples "to illustrate an aspect of medieval life for which I know of no English source" (p. 23), such as the record of a hermaphrodite from Colmar and glosses on the Viaticum of Constantine the African on lovesickness. The advantages of Murray's decision over that of McCarthy's will be clear to readers from outside of England. She writes: "During the Middle Ages, western Europe was a remarkably homogeneous culture. Despite regional [End Page 744] identities, a myriad of jurisdictions, shifting boundaries, and internal political tensions, Europe nevertheless was Christendom, united by religion and distinct from non-Christians" (p. 469). McCarthy's decision is a bit more difficult to defend. He writes: "There is no such place as 'medieval England,' politically or geographically speaking.... Nor is there any such place as 'medieval England' linguistically speaking" (p. 23). Yet he offers no compelling reason to counterbalance...

Men Who Brew: Masculinity and the Production of Drink in Medieval Icelandic Literature

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper was presented, in an earlier form, on a panel dedicated to animate images chaired by Dr. Jacqueline Jung at the 40th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May, 2005. I thank Dr. Jung, the other panelists, and audience members for their useful input. Dr. Vibeke Olsen generously gave of her time in reading and commenting on a draft of the paper. Also deserving of thanks is Courtney Hill, Undergraduate Research Fellow at Utah State University, who provided assistance in the early stages of research. I received generous institutional support for this project from the Art Department, the Women and Gender Research Institute, and the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at Utah State University. Notes 1 – Notably, Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). 2 – This point is raised (in relation to post-Iconoclastic art theory in Byzantium) by Charles Barber, ‘From Image into Art: Art after Byzantine Iconoclasm,’ Gesta, 34/1 (1995), 5–10. 3 – The Gregorian dictum that ‘pictures are the books of the illiterate’ became one of the most widely propagated and intentionally misconstrued apologetics for the image in the medieval west, as Celia Chazelle demonstrated in her article, ‘Pictures, Books, and the Illiterate: Pope Gregory I's Letters to Serenus of Marseilles,’ Word & Image, 6 (1990), 138–53. Lawrence Duggan (‘Was Art Really the “Book of the Illiterate”?’ Word & Image, 5 (1989), 227–51) also explored the disingenuousness with which medieval authors employed this trope. Conrad Rudolph noted that Bernard's view of the role of art in the instruction of illiterates was absolutely orthodox in this respect, and that he viewed this as the purview of the secular clergy (Things of Greater Importance: Bernard of Clairvaux's Apologia and the Medieval Attitude Toward Art (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), 50–4, 194–5). Jeffrey Hamburger observed that ‘Women have historically been regarded as one of the primary, even formative audiences for devotional art, so it comes as a surprise that devotional imagery has never been adequately analyzed in terms of gender,’ a shortfall his own work has done much to address (‘Introduction: Texts Versus Images: Female Spirituality from an Art Historian's Perspective,’ in The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), 15). 4 – Miracle collections abounded between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, and were often tied to a specific shrine, though in the case of Mary, a more geographically decentralized literature of miracles emerged over the last decades of the twelfth century, as discussed by Benedicta Ward in Miracles and the Medieval Mind: Theory, Record, and Event, 1000–1215, revised edition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 132–3, in passim; in the course of the thirteenth century, these collections became more generalized with a view to use as exempla in sermons. A cogent discussion of this shift and of its causes is found in Marcus Bull, The Miracles of Our Lady of Rocamadour: Analysis and Translation (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 1999), 8–10. 5 – On the relationship between the Mendicant orders and the development of the exemplum collections intended for the use of preachers, see David D'Avray, The Preaching of the Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris Before 1300 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), 90–131. 6 – Caesarius of Heisterbach, Caesarii Heisterbacensis monachi ordinis Cisterciensis Dialogus miraculorum [Textum ad quatuor codicum manuscriptorum editionisque principis fidem accurate recognovit Josephus Strange] 2 volumes (Ridgewood, NJ: Gregg Press, 1966; reprint of Cologne, Bonn, Brussels: S.M. Heberle, 1851); English edition, The Dialogue on Miracles by Caesarius of Heisterbach, trans. H. von E. Scott and C. C. Swinton Bland, with an introduction by G. G. Coulton (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1929); Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, 2 volumes, ed. V. Frederic Koenig (Geneva: Droz, 1955–1966); no English translation exists; Gonzalo de Berceo, Milagros de Nuestra Señora, 3rd edition, ed. Vicente Beltrán (Barcelona: Planeta, 1990); English edition, Miracles of Our Lady, ed. and trans. Richard Terry Mount and Annette Grant Cash (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1997); Jacobi a Voragine, Legenda aurea 2nd edition, ed. Giovanni Paolo Maggioni (Firenze: Tavarnuzze, 1988); English version The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, ed. and trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); Alfonso X, o Sábio, Cantigas de Santa Maria, 4 volumes, ed. Walter Mettmann (Madrid: Coimbra, 1959–1972); English edition, Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, ed. and trans. Kathleen Kulp-Hill, with an introduction by Connie Scarborough (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000). 7 – The study of the miracle literature constitutes a discipline of its own, with an extensive critical apparatus. Albert Poncelet, ‘Index miraculorum B.V. Mariae quae saec. VI–XV latine conscripta sunt,’ Analecta Bollandiana, 21 (1902), 242–360, lists incipits of miracles of the Virgin found in many of the major Latin collections from the twelfth through fifteenth centuries. Tubach's Index Exemplorum catalogs known narrative types used in medieval collections of exempla (didactic stories) for preachers and is used as an indexing tool to cross-reference miracles found in multiple collections. A recent project sponsored by the British Academy and hosted by Oxford University focuses on the Cantigas de Santa Maria, but, according to its organizers, ‘will eventually contain all Latin and vernacular miracle collections associated with the CSM miracle stories, as well as cycles of miracles associated with particular shrines’ (The Oxford Cantigas de Santa Maria Database, URL http://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/index.php?p=collections_list, accessed 10 July 2008). Numerous critical studies on the Marian miracle tradition exist, ranging from monographs on single authors, such as Gautier de Coinci, to textual studies of individual miracles, to thematic investigations of parts of or the entire corpus: for a bibliography, see Anne McCormick, ‘Imaging sex: The body and gender in Virgin Mary miracle tales of thirteenth century Spain and France,’ doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley (1996), 208–31. 8 – The literature on the rise of Marian devotion is vast, but a critical source is Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion, vol. I (London: Sheed and Ward, 1985), 210–64. Also see Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (New Haven: Yale, 1988), 125–6, in passim. For development of Marian imagery in the visual and literary arts, see Penny Schine Gold, The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985). More recently, Margot Fassler has provided a long view of the emergence of Marian devotion as part of the liturgy, and as a stimulus for visual responses: ‘Mary's Nativity, Fulbert of Chartres, and the Stirps Jesse: Liturgical Innovation Around 1000 and its Afterlife,’ Speculum 75 (2000), 389–434. Rachel Fulton's contribution, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), provides important reassessment of the development of Marian devotion in terms of Mary's salvific and empathetic rather than exemplary and maternal role. 9 – Fulton, 204–43. 10 – Carolyn Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1982), 137. 11 – On the dating and authorship of this antiphon, see Jose Maria Canal, Salve Regina Misericordiae. Historia y leyendas en torno a esta antifona (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1963). 12 – Both examples occur in numerous compilations of miracles and exempla. See Frederic Tubach, Index Exemplorum: A Handbook of Medieval Religious Tales (Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia, 1969), index numbers 536 (appears in 18 distinct texts), 3572 (22 texts), respectively. 13 – Caesarius of Heisterbach, The Dialogue on Miracles, vol. I, 525–6. This is Poncelet no. 755. The Latin is found in the Dialogus miraculorum, vol. I, distinctio VII, capitulum XLIV, 62–3. 14 – This visual argument is spelled out most explicitly in the south tympanum of the west façade at Chartres, where the body of Christ in the Nativity scene in the lowest register, in the Presentation in the Temple in the middle register, and on the lap of the Virgin in the upper register underscores the Incarnation and the role of Mary's body as a vessel or seat for the Incarnate Word. See Adolf Katzenellenbogen, The Sculptural Programs of Chartres Cathedral (New York and London: W.W. Norton, 1959), 8–12. 15 – Ilene Forsyth, The Throne of Wisdom: Wood Sculptures of the Madonna in Romanesque France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), 31–60. 16 – Forsyth, 144, 185 (fig. 143). 17 – Forsyth, 131. 18 – For example, when Lancelot, in Le Chevalier de la Charrette (ca. 1170), finds an ivory comb with some hairs from the head of Guinevere, they are described as light and filled with light ‘si clers et si luisanz’ v. 1415). Chrétien de Troyes, Romans, ed. Charles Mela (Paris: Libraire Générale Française, 1994), 540. When Le Comte de la Marche (ca. 1250) praises the beauty of his beloved in a lyric that begins ‘You are like rubies and other precious stones,’ he speaks of the freshness and high color of her complexion. ‘Je me merveille/de la color tant fresche et tant vermeille’ (v. 13–14, Tout autresi comme li rubiz), Anthologie de la poésie lyrique française des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 244. 19 – Respectively: Metropolitan Museum 16.32.194 and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe 1893.199. The Hamburg Madonna is illustrated in Images in Ivory: Precious Objects of the Gothic Age, ed. Peter Barnett (Detroit: Detroit Institute for the Arts, 1997), cat. 1, 116–7. 20 – Conrad Rudolph, The ‘Things of Greater Importance,’ 50–4, 63–9, 110–24. 21 – See note 3, above. 22 – Bernard of Clairvaux, Homilies in Praise of the Blessed Virgin Mary, trans. Marie-Bernard Saöd (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1993), Homily II.2, 16. The translation is based on the authoritative Latin edition by Jean Leclerq and H. Rochais: Sancti Bernardi Opera, IV (Rome: Editiones cistercienses, 1966), 13–58. 23 – For the relationship between chansons courtoise and chansons mariales, see Pierre Bec, La Lyrique Française au Moyen Age: contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médioevaux, I: etudes (Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale de l'Université de Poitiers, 6) (Paris: A. et J. Picard, 1977) 143. 24 – ‘Rose fresche et clere … nete et pure et sainne,’ Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, ed. V. Frederic Koenig, vol. 1 (Geneva: Droz, 1966), I Chanson V.III.73, 78, 35, my translation. 25 – Most recently, Daniel E. O'Sullivan, ‘Marian devotion in medieval French literature: In and beyond the world of lyric,’ dissertation, Boston College, 2000. 26 – G.R. Owst, Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England (Cambridge, 1933), 18. 27 – The anthropologist J.L. Austin first theorized speech as active (rather than simply reflective or descriptive), and following this model, Liza Bakewell has developed a theory of images as acts (rather than simply representations) which seems a fertile characterization in light of the apparent agency of images in the context of medieval Christianity. See, Liza Bakewell, ‘Image acts,’ American Anthropologist, 100.1 (March, 1998), 22. 28 – This is Poncelet number 168, Tubach number 5152. Alfonso X of Castile and Leon, Cantigas de Santa Maria, ed. Jesús Montoya (Madrid: Cátedra, 1988), no. 38. Translation: Songs of Holy Mary of Alfonso X, The Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, trans. Kathleen Kulp-Hill (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000), 51. 29 – The Cantigas date to the second half of the thirteenth century, but contain many episodes that are attested in earlier literature. 30 – Alfonso X of Castile and Leon, Songs of Holy Mary, 51–2. 31 – For anti-Semitism and the representation of Jews in the CSM, see Dwayne Carpenter, ‘Social Perception and Literary Portrayal: Jews and Muslims in Medieval Spanish Literature,’ in Convivencia: Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Spain, ed. V. B. Mann, et al. (New York: Brazillier/The Jewish Museum, 1992), 61–87. The same author identifies Jewish disparagement of the Virgin as one of the major themes in the CSM narratives that deal with Jewish characters: see, ‘The portrayal of the Jew in Alfonso the learned's Cantigas de Santa Maria,’ in In Iberia and beyond: Hispanic Jews between cultures, ed. Bernard D. Cooperman (Newark/London: Associated University Presses, 1998), 15–42, esp. 16. Further bibliography on the anti-Semitic arguments of the CSM is discussed by Eva Frojmovic, ‘Messianic Politics in Re-Christianized Spain: Images of the Sanctuary in Hebrew Bible Manuscripts,’ in Imagining the Self, Imagining the Other: Visual Representation and Jewish-Christian Dynamics in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, ed. E. Frojmovic (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 120–1, note 66. 32 – Ovid, Metamorphoses, books 1–5, ed. William Anderson (Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), book 3, lines 155–253, 91–4. On Ovid's currency among educated readers in the later Middle Ages, see Jeremy Dimmick, ‘Ovid in the Middle Ages: Authority and Poetry,’ in The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, ed. Philip Hardie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 264–87. 33 – The Virgin's breasts — and indeed breasts more generally — were a subject of much devotional rumination. See, for example, Margaret R. Miles, ‘The Virgin's One Bare Breast: Female Nudity and Religious Meaning in Tuscan Early Renaissance Culture,’ in The Female Body in Western Culture: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Susan Rubin Suleiman (Cambridge, MA, and London: 1985 and 1986), 193–208; Carolyn Walker Bynum ‘Jesus as Mother and Abbot as Mother,’ in Jesus as Mother: Studies in Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: 1982), 110–69). 34 – Belting, 432. 35 – Summa Theologia I 5, 4 ad. 1 36 – Even Roger Bacon's Perspectiva concludes with a rationale for the optical theory's utility to contemplation of the divine, as Dallas Denery II discusses in Seeing and Being Seen in the Later Medieval World: Optics, Theology and Religious Life (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 6. Suzannah Biernoff writes, ‘Sight, as it was defined by Bacon and his contemporaries, offered a means of communion that exceeds Belting's model of “communication’ or ‘dialogue.” The visual relationship — more than any other sensory interaction — allowed for bodily participation in the divine.’ (Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002), 134.) 37 – Umberto Eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages, trans. Hugh Bredin (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), 71. 38 – The Virgin's gaze as a transgressive example of active female viewing is addressed by Sarah Stanbury, ‘The Virgin's Gaze: Spectacle and Transgression in Middle English Lyrics of the Passion,’ PMLA, 106, no. 5 (1991), 1083–93. 39 – Poncelet number 804; English version, Dialogue on the Miracles, 500–1; Latin, Dialogus Miraculorum, book VII, capitulum 33, 41–2. 40 – Caesarius, Dialogue on Miracles, 501; for the Latin, Dialogus Miraculorum, 42. 41 – The notion of the gaze as a violent instrument has been most fully theorized and explored in the context of feminist film studies, building on discussions of violence and rhetoric by Levinas, Lacan, and Derrida. The classic essay is Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,’ Screen 16.3 (1975), 6–18, reprinted in Feminism and Film Theory, ed. Constance Penley (New York: Routledge, 1988), 57–68. Mulvey, however, never uses this specific phrase. For a concise summary of arguments pertaining to idea of ‘the violence of the gaze,’ see C. Nadia Serematkis, ‘Intersection: Benjamin, Bloch, Braudel, beyond,’ in The Senses Still: Perception and Memory as Material Culture in Modernity, ed. C. Nadia Serematkis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 57. 42 – Sarah Stanbury, ‘The Virgin's Gaze,’ 1091. 43 – Caesarius, Dialogus miraculorum, book VII, capitulum XLV, 64–5. A similar tale is found in the Cantigas, no. 76, and was also included in Jacobus of Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, vol. 2, trans. W.G. Ryan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), 155. 44 – The miracle of the knight spared humiliation has several variations, cataloged by Poncelet at nos. 727, 1087, 1443; the miracle of the Virgin of Chincolla is found only in the CSM, where it is miracle no.185 (Oxford CSM Database, http://csm.mml.ox.ac.uk/index.php?p=poemdata_view&rec=185, accessed 15 July 2008). 45 – The Theophilus miracle is Poncelet no. 74/75. ‘Douce Dame … de doucheur fontaine et ruissiaus,’ Adam de la Halle, ‘Gloröeuse Vierge Marie’ line 19–20. Anthologie de la poésie lyrique française des XIIe et XIIIe siècle, ed. Jean Dufournet (Paris: Gallimard, 1989), 292. 46 – Michael Cothren, ‘The Iconography of Theophilus Windows in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century,’ Speculum, 59.2 (1994), 310–1, Appendices A and B. 47 – The restriction of subjectivity by the language of the courtly love is widely discussed in literary criticism. For an excellent and critical overview of the scholarship and bibliography, see E. Jane Burns, ‘Courtly Love: Who Needs it? Recent Feminist Work in the Medieval French Tradition,’ Signs, 27 (2001), 23–57. Naomi Wolf's characterization of later-medieval love poetry as silencing women ‘by taking them beautifully apart,’ also relates to the scopic delights of both the courtly lyric and the visual representation of the Virgin (The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women (London: Vintage, 1991), 59). 48 – New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, M. 729 fol. 232v. The miniature is widely reproduced, most recently in color on the cover of Roger Wieck, Painted Prayers: The Book of Hours in Medieval and Renaissance Art (New York: George Braziller, 1999). A full-page reproduction is also available in L'art au temps des rois maudits: Philippe le Bel et ses fils, 1285–1328: Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, 17 mars-29 juin 1998 (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux, 1998), cat. no. 202, 299. 49 – Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, ms. 6329, fol. 1v. The miniature is reproduced in L'art au temps des rois maudits, cat. no. 205, 304.

Reviewed by: Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems ed. by Julia Boffey and Christiana Whitehead, and: Lyric Tactics: Poetry, Genre, and Practice in Later Medieval England by Ingrid Nelson Roderick J. Lyall Boffey, Julia, and Christiana Whitehead, eds, Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2018; hardcover; pp. xvii, 310; 8 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. £60.00; ISBN 9781843844976. Nelson, Ingrid, Lyric Tactics: Poetry, Genre, and Practice in Later Medieval England (The Middle Ages Series), Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017; cloth; pp. 214; 2 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$65.00; ISBN 9780812248791. That medieval lyric, especially the great body of anonymous lyric, has been accorded less critical attention than it deserves is almost an axiom of literary studies. Despite the existence of outstanding collections by Carleton Brown, Rossell Hope Robbins, and others, and the invaluable resource of the Index of Middle English Verse, the sheer volume and variety of shorter verse forms in medieval English, along with the canonical primacy of big names—or indeed, any name at all—have long contributed to the critical neglect of all but a very few of the shorter poems that survive in manuscript miscellanies, commonplace books, and often in contexts that are otherwise anything but literary. These two volumes therefore come as welcome additions to the critical corpus. Although there is a certain degree of overlap, to the extent that both deal with the fourteenth-century Franciscan William Herebert and with ‘Antigone’s song’ from Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde (of which more in a moment), the two books could scarcely be more different in approach. Boffey and Whitehead provide nineteen essays, all but two of which focus tightly upon specific texts, grouped under the themes of Affect, Visuality, Mouvance, and Transformation, and Words, Music, and Speech. The reader is greatly helped by the practice of citing at the outset the poem to be discussed, and by notes cross-referencing other essays in the volume that touch on related questions. The earliest poems discussed date from the thirteenth century; the latest is Sir Thomas Wyatt’s ‘In eternum’. Ingrid Nelson, by contrast, approaches her texts from a very specific theoretical perspective, stating that her study (in an echo of the New Historicist Louis Montrose) ‘defines the medieval lyric genre as much by what it does (its cultural work) as by what it is (its formal features)’ (p. 6). She, too, begins in the early Middle English period and ends with Wyatt; her book had, in fact, appeared in time for Boffey and Whitehead to engage with it briefly in their introduction. Two broad questions are posed by both approaches. One is the perennially thorny issue of generic definition: ‘lyric’, with its associations with music and with the evocation of deeply experienced emotion, fits well with many shorter [End Page 224] poems written in the Middle Ages, but not so well with others that are essentially didactic, political, or comic. While opting, faut de mieux, to employ the term, both Boffey and Whitehead on the one hand and Nelson on the other acknowledge the problem: for Nelson, indeed, it is the focus upon cultural practice that may offer a way out of the difficulty, although for this reader at least it would take a much more wide-ranging body of material to establish the case. The other important dimension, clearly represented in both volumes but inviting much more exploration, arises from what has been called the ‘codicological turn’ in scholarship, a greater awareness both of the importance of manuscript context in understanding how texts were read (or used) and of the significance of scribal intervention in shaping and reshaping the texts themselves. The theme is firmly established in Tom Duncan’s opening chapter of the collaborative volume, his meticulous analysis of the minutiae of textual transmission raising crucial questions for any potential editor, but hinting too at interpretative issues that recur in many of the subsequent readings, such as that by A. S. Lazikant of a poem in Trinity College, Cambridge, MS B.14.39, or Michael P. Kuczynski’s study of one in Eton College MS 36, or Natalie Jones...

Reviewed by: Chivalry in Medieval England Sam Zeno Conedera SJ Nigel Saul, Chivalry in Medieval England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 2011) 416 pp., ill. The stated aim of Chivalry in Medieval England is “to present an account of English aristocratic society in the Middle Ages which puts chivalry centre-stage” (5). Nigel Saul, whose extensive work on the subject prepared the way for this synthetic work, has admirably achieved his aim. Although Chivalry will make an invaluable reference work, it is more of a tour of medieval military, political, social, and cultural developments in England and northern France from the vantage point of the elusive phenomenon we call “chivalry.” Saul’s [End Page 274] blend of chronological and thematic approaches and plurality of perspectives are keys to his accomplishment. The first six chapters are primarily chronological with thematic overtones, moving from the origins of English chivalry at the time of the Norman Conquest to the end of the fourteenth century. The next ten chapters are primarily thematic in orientation, dealing with topics like crusading, literature, and gender, but they proceed chronologically in their internal organization. The final two chapters deal with late chivalry under the Yorkists and its ultimate transformation and decline in the Tudor age. Acknowledging that chivalry is “tantalizingly hard to define precisely” and means different things to different people, Saul draws on a wide range of evidence to view the phenomenon from as many angles as possible (3). His descriptions and analysis of fortifications, churches, and funerary monuments show that his research includes a great deal of legwork outside of archives and libraries. Chivalry is decisively oriented towards solving historical problems. Saul does not rest with demonstrating that a particular development took place, but seeks to explain why it did, in clear and accessible language. Two examples should suffice to illustrate the point. At the same time that war was endemic throughout England and Normandy in the late eleventh and early twelfth century, the conduct of war was being softened by a new courtesy. Saul says that the paradox itself offers the explanation: in a situation of constant warfare, it was in everyone’s interest to agree to a set of conventions that limited the impact of hostilities on participants and their followers (11). In explaining the twelfth-century English aristocracy’s fascination with Arthurian literature and history, the author refers to numerous factors. Within a few generations of the Norman Conquest, the aristocracy began to see itself as more English than French, but it still knew rather little about the history of the conquered country (49). The English, alone among the peoples of the British Isles, had no real foundation myth of their own (43). Thus the Arthur legend was one of the key elements in the creation of English mythology and history, which was portrayed in the nascent chivalric terms of the twelfth century, rather than as the social reality of the past (51). Saul’s treatment of such problems is consistently articulate and well supported. Saul is closely attentive to the changing fortunes of chivalry over the course of time, avoiding the pitfall of sweeping generalizations or synchronic myopia. He notes, for example, the early date for the first decline of English chivalry: the loss of Normandy under John Lackland (61). By the end of the thirteenth century, the number of knights in the country dropped from almost 4,000 to about 1,250 (63). Financial pressures, aspiration to status, the incorporation of knights into the royal justice system, and the absence of large-scale warfare all contributed to the infrequency of dubbing. At the same time, knights of the thirteenth century moved more into the countryside and established the foundations for the gentry (68). Aside from broad social and political factors, the initiatives of particular monarchs played an important role in defining and redefining chivalry. Richard the Lionheart was the first English monarch to personally transform chivalry by incorporating it into the image of kingship. He made war a virtue rather than a necessity and actively encouraged tournaments throughout the realm (34–36). Edward I responded to the aforementioned thirteenth-century decline of knighthood by once again raising the military profile of...

The whole subject of forests, especially forests in the Middle Ages, is overlaid with a great deal of romanticism. The picture of a heavily-wooded England with primeval forests dotted here and there with villages connected by meandering tracks to relieve their isolation is fixed. Only a handful of Robin Hood bands lived within the depths of the forest itself. The present concern for man's destruction of his environment has caused this idyllic picture to be contrasted with the denuded landscape of large areas today, and the pathetic remnants of Sherwood Forest can be used as a cautionary lesson on industrialization since the eighteenth century. In fact, that lesson needs to be extended backward in time and the picture of the untouched medieval forest abandoned, for the reality was that men in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries made heavy use of the forests and encroached upon them just as man had done since he first came to the island or, more emphatically, since the Anglo-Saxon invaders began to make drastic changes in forested areas by their farming practices. However, after the Norman Conquest, the policies adopted for the royal forests did serve as some protection for the trees, even though the Norman kings no more had this as their purpose than had their predecessors. The thesis of this article is that the medieval English kings from the Normans on were conservationists in spite of themselves, even in the face of continuous demands from their own barons for disafforestment. Royal forest regulations enforced within the extensive areas under forest law protected the trees from complete destruction and slowed the inevitable encroachment of field upon forest.

Hunting in wooded regions was a major part of the lives of kings and their followers from early medieval times. Under the Norman kings huge areas were deliberately set aside for this purpose. It gave rise to a rich body of documentary evidence and literary works, playing a noteworthy role, too, in medieval lore and legend. The use of the woods for pasture was not normally precluded by this usage. However, economic forces were increasingly to conflict with the preservation of so much woodland and the forest law that was so restrictive, especially the requirement for additional land for agriculture. Deer-parks were enclosed and forests diminished in size and in later historical times the latter were seen primarily as a source of timber. Hunting itself, however, continued but in a very different form, moving to the rural countryside over most of lowland England until it faced present-day legislation.

The royal court known variously as the “court of the verge,” the “court of the steward and marshal,” or the “Marshalsea court,” and which was said to try “pleas of the hall” (placita aule), appeared as a distinct and separate tribunal during the second half of Edward I's reign. It is difficult to trace the process whereby it distinguished its highly specialized jurisdiction over matters of personal interest to the king and his household from the general jurisdiction exercised coram rege and thereby succeeded in separating itself from the undifferentiated Curia Regis. Since at least the early thirteenth century the steward of the household was viewed as having a special judicial role within the household, of which he was the appointed head. As a result of that process of departmentalization which created the other agencies of royal justice and administration, a special household jurisdiction appeared toward the end of the thirteenth century. About the year 1290 the court of the steward and marshal of the household emerged as a separate and identifiable judicial body with its own personnel, procedures, and rolls, and with a jurisdictional competence encompassing pleas of trespass within the verge, cases of debt involving members of the household, and pleas of contempt of the king's rights of purveyance and carriage. In substance, the court claimed to try cases involving the domestic servants of the crown and certain acts affronting the royal dignity and, in geographical terms, breaches of the king's peace within the vicinity of the royal residence, which was assumed to extend twelve miles in every direction from the especially sacrosanct presence of the sovereign.

Historians have never been properly grateful for that perpetually inquisitive student in medieval dialogues whose chief claim to fame is that he elicited bursts of wisdom from the ever-patient master. To him we owe this rather curious definition of the English royal forest as formulated by the master in Richard fitz Nigel's Dialogue of the Exchequer written about 1178:The King's forest is a safe abode for wild animals, not all of them but only the woodland ones, and not everywhere, but in particular places suitable for the purpose. That is why it is called “forest” (foresta), as though theeofferesta(i.e. a haunt of wild animals,ferarum statio), were changed intoo.Fortunately, the master had already discussed the essential point that the forest was an area of special jurisdiction subject to a special law:The whole organization of the forests, the punishment, pecuniary or corporal, of forest offences, is outside the jurisdiction of the other courts, and solely dependent on the decision of the King, or of some officer specially appointed by him. The forest has its own laws, based, it is said, not on the Common Law of the realm, but on the arbitrary legislation of the King; so that what is done in accordance with forest law is not called “just” without qualification, but “just, according to forest law.”Although modern scholarship suggests that the arbitrary nature of forest law in the thirteenth century was exaggerated, there can be no question that it had a bad reputation among contemporaries, who raised the cry that it placed the protection of wild beasts above that of men.

Reviewed by: Words, Stones, & Herbs: The Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England Lea T. Olsan Keywords medieval healing, power of words, reading, materiality, vernacular translation Louise M. Bishop . Words, Stones, & Herbs: The Healing Word in Medieval and Early Modern England. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2007. Pp. xiv + 276. The phrase "words, stones, and herbs" in the title of Bishop's book derives from lines added to a Middle English translation of Gilbert the Englishman's [End Page 118] compendium of medicine, where it is said that God gives power to words, to herbs, and to stones. The tri-fold axiom was a commonplace that circulated mostly in Latin and usually carried the qualification that, of the three, words had the most power. Although the Gilbert quotation points straightforwardly to God as the source of the power in these elements, questions about exactly how these powers (virtus) operated led to sophisticated debates among high-profile medieval thinkers in the thirteenth century and generated doctrinal pronouncements that exacerbated fears of demonic involvement. Historians have subsequently examined medieval beliefs in the powers in stones, plants, and animals by studying conceptions of the properties of things, both ordinary and special, the influence of the stars, the capacities of demons, and reports of miracles. The power of words, especially the utilization of words and signs as a medical therapy, was a form of benevolent magic and marginal religious practice that was well known and widely practiced in the Middle Ages. Louise Bishop's book directs our attention away from medieval conceptions of the power of words employed in healing to the larger considerations of the "materiality" of medieval medicine, the healing powers of reading, the social construct of reading audiences, the significance of vernacular translations, and the political implications of self-help medical publications in the reign of Henry VIII. In Bishop's methodology, selected abstractions and metaphors are used to construct a historical social narrative. The "work joins medicine, materiality, vernacularity, and piety by reading medical texts literarily and literary texts medically." At the outset, she says, "[the book's] methodology is suggestive rather than exhaustive, cumulative rather than absolute." Bishop's project breaks ground because it brings together and cuts across disciplines and discourses in ways that more discipline-bound scholars rarely do. There are some positive results, as when in her Introduction (pp. 3-6), she explores the medical metaphors in Piers Plowman. Elsewhere the experiment does not work, either because a phrase under interpretation has been overloaded with irrelevant semantic content, as in the interpretation of the name of the remedy for the malady Noli me tangere, or because key interpretive terms such as "Galenic medicine" or "the feminine vernacular" are insufficiently or inaccurately explained. Bishop displays an admirably wide range of secondary reading and no lack of confidence in utilizing secondary sources to construct an argument. The risk here is that a seductive paradigm can highjack the argument, as does Harris Coulter's oversimplified idea that there existed from antiquity a divide between rationalist and empiricist medicine based on professional jealousy that led to a bias against non-university medicine in the Middle Ages and beyond. Unfortunately, this conception establishes a platform [End Page 119] for a social construction of medieval medicine that inaccurately sets the vernacular compilations and translations in opposition to learned Latin medicine. Bishop's first three chapters establish key interpretive terms: "Galenic medicine," "materiality," "healing word," "medical metaphors," "healing reading," and "vernacularity." Chapter 4 posits that the dangers of alchemical transmutation explicit in Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Prologue and Tale are analogous to the dangers of translation from Latin into the vernacular, with implied threats to the orthodox soul. The close readings of the tale lead to an excursus on the relation of alchemical transmutation and language translation. Chapter 5 treats the presence of women healers, however difficult they are to document, and Middle English translations of medical texts as interrelated phenomena. Then it examines Henry of Lancaster's Livre de seyntz medicine, which, like Piers Plowman, integrates medical metaphors into pious literature. Chapter 6 seeks to unpack the ways that one recipe—"For Noli me tangere," drawn from a...

Previous articleNext article No AccessCommon Law in the Thirteenth-Century English Royal ForestElizabeth Cox WrightElizabeth Cox Wright Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 3, Number 2Apr., 1928 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2848054 Views: 8Total views on this site Citations: 4Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1928 The Mediaeval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:John Langton Royal and non-royal forests and chases in England and Wales, Historical Research 88, no.241241 (May 2015): 381–401.https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2281.12098M. M. Postan The Cambridge Economic History of Europe from the Decline of the Roman Empire, (Mar 2008).https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521045056M. M. Postan England, (Jan 1966): 548–632.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521045056.014Gaillard Lapsley Some Recent Advance In English Constitutional History (Before 1485), Cambridge Historical Journal 5, no.22 (Dec 2011): 119–161.https://doi.org/10.1017/S147469130000130X

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