Robert the Monk's history of the First Crusade (1095-99), which was probably completed c. 111... more Robert the Monk's history of the First Crusade (1095-99), which was probably completed c. 1110, was in the nature of a medieval "bestseller", proving by far the most popular narrative of the crusade's events; the number of surviving manuscript copies far exceeds those of the many other accounts of the crusades written in the early decades of the twelfth century, when literary retellings of the crusaders' exploits were much in vogue. This volume presents the first critical edition to be published since the 1860s, grounded in a close study of the more than 80 manuscripts of the text that survive in libraries and archives across Europe. In their detailed introduction the editors explore the vexed problem of the author's identity, as well as the date of the text, its manuscript transmission, and the reasons for its success, for example among monasteries belonging to the Cistercian order in southern Germany. Damien Kempf is Lecturer in Medieval History at the Un...
The First Crusade was full of politics: full, that is, of the interplay between power, authority,... more The First Crusade was full of politics: full, that is, of the interplay between power, authority, and institutions; full of competing interests and conflict._ Even if the amount of information available to us were substantially less than it actually is, we would still be able Lo infer much about the political dimensions of the crusade from the first-order facts known to us: that the crusade army was a composite of diverse nationalities and regional identities; the crusade's ability, morc or less, to retain its cohesion as a collective and goal--driven enterprise over the course of more than two arduous years; and the crusade's mobility, which entailed a regular series of interactions, accommodations, and conflicts with the political cultures of the areas through which it moved. A further fIrst-order fact in this category, perhaps, is that there was a fairly smooth transition from the prosecution of the First Crusade itself (taking the fall of Jerusalem in July 1099 and the b...
Alongside annals, chronicles were the main genre of historical writing in the Middle Ages. Their ... more Alongside annals, chronicles were the main genre of historical writing in the Middle Ages. Their significance as sources for the study of medieval history and culture is today widely recognised not only by historians, but also by students of medieval literature and linguistics and by art historians. The series The Medieval Chronicle aims to provide a representative survey of the on-going research in the field of chronicle studies, illustrated by examples from specific chronicles from a wide variety of countries, periods and cultural backgrounds.
In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, in the schools of northern France which were am... more In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, in the schools of northern France which were among the forerunners of the medieval university, one of the biggest intellectual debates to attract the attention of scholars was the relationship between words and things, and by extension the ways in which language does or does not capture the reality of the world that we perceive around us. This debate was no empty academic exercise. Perhaps the greatest thinker of the age, Peter Abelard, cut his intellectual teeth on the problem. At stake ultimately was the way in which people could say that they understood God, whose revelation to humankind was believed to be transmitted through the Bible, that is to say, through words. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’, as the opening of the Gospel of St John declares. Does something exist independently of our having a word for it, so that words are simply after-the-fact labels that we devise in order to describe the world to one another satisfactorily? Or does a word have a more active function, actually creating the notion of the thing that it designates?
This book is aimed at students and general readers coming to the study of medieval history for th... more This book is aimed at students and general readers coming to the study of medieval history for the first time, as well as at those with a background in other branches of medieval studies who are interested in finding out a little about historians’ aims and perspectives. This is not a brief history of what happened in the Middle Ages or of the development of the medieval historical profession. Nor is the book intended to be a contribution to the currently fashionable debates about the nature of history and history-writing (although the present author’s own position on some of these debates will be implicit in parts of the discussion). Rather, the book aims to set the scene for the study of medieval history by placing it in a wider context as a cultural phenomenon, a collection of inherited labels, a scholarly methodology, and, like all academic subjects, something that needs to justify itself in what we are increasingly encouraged to regard as the educational ‘market place’.
No one can come to the formal study of history with a mind like a blank sheet of paper. We are al... more No one can come to the formal study of history with a mind like a blank sheet of paper. We are already conditioned to engage with the past by the culture that surrounds us. The past — or, to be more accurate, a selection of highlights from the past — is embedded in Western popular culture in a host of ways. This has implications for our understanding of history even as we aim for the levels of sophistication and complexity that academic study demands. Academic history sometimes tries to project an image of detachment, situating itself above the busy swirl of popular culture. It is often said, with some justice, that one of the benefits of studying history to an advanced level is that it equips people to see through all the misconceptions and half-truths about the past that exist in the public domain. On the other hand, the idea of scholarly detachment can also be taken too far. When this happens, it can quickly descend into pious posturing which severely underestimates the significance of popular culture in all our lives. Exposure to popular culture is not ‘wrong’ or detrimental to your scholarly health. It is not something to be sheepish about as one enters the hallowed portals of academe. Popular culture accounts for some of the instinctive curiosity that makes us interested in history.
... Les classiques de l'histoire de France au moyen âge, 34; Paris, 1981), 58-62; Hugh o... more ... Les classiques de l'histoire de France au moyen âge, 34; Paris, 1981), 58-62; Hugh of Fleury, 'Liber qui modernorum regum Francorum continet actus', MGH SS 9, 390; Hariulf, 'Vita sancii Amulfi episcopi Suessionensis', PL, HA, 1396; John the Monk, 'Chronicon Besuense', PL ...
The long collection of miracles of St Thomas Becket written by William, a monk of Christ Church, ... more The long collection of miracles of St Thomas Becket written by William, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, between 1172 and c.1179 is, like many other examples of the genre, a rich source for attitudes towards sanctity, relics, and pilgrimage. A far more unusual feature of William's text is the author's criticism of the recent English presence in Ireland. William's comments on this score amount to a loaded stretching of the normal parameters of his textual medium, resulting in an evaluative engagement with current affairs of the sort that we would more normally associate with reflective forms of history-writing. William's criticism focused in particular upon the expedition to Ireland undertaken by King Henry II (October 1171eApril 1172), inverting the very rhetoric that Henry had used to justify his Irish adventure. William was not himself Irish, as has sometimes been supposed, nor was he registering his institution's frustrations about its exclusion from the new ecclesiastical order in Ireland, as might be implied by the traditional but questionable 'Canterbury plot' interpretation of the much-debated papal bull Laudabiliter. Instead, William was skilfully engaging with current debates about the rectitude of Henry II's Irish expedition, and more broadly contesting emerging prejudices about England's 'uncultivated' neighbours, in order to effect a subtle critique of the king's involvement in Becket's murder.
Guibert of Nogent, 'Gesta Dei per Francos' [hereafter Guibert, 'Gesta ... more Guibert of Nogent, 'Gesta Dei per Francos' [hereafter Guibert, 'Gesta Dei'], Recueil des historians des croisades: historians occidentaux, ed. Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres(5 vols., Paris, 1844-95) [hereafterRHCOcc], iv. 124('novum salutispromeren-dae ...
This volume provides a variety of complementary points of entry to the history of France between ... more This volume provides a variety of complementary points of entry to the history of France between 900 and 1200. Chapters contributed by a leading team of historians cover key themes such as France's political culture and identity, rural economy and society, the ...
Robert the Monk's history of the First Crusade (1095-99), which was probably completed c. 111... more Robert the Monk's history of the First Crusade (1095-99), which was probably completed c. 1110, was in the nature of a medieval "bestseller", proving by far the most popular narrative of the crusade's events; the number of surviving manuscript copies far exceeds those of the many other accounts of the crusades written in the early decades of the twelfth century, when literary retellings of the crusaders' exploits were much in vogue. This volume presents the first critical edition to be published since the 1860s, grounded in a close study of the more than 80 manuscripts of the text that survive in libraries and archives across Europe. In their detailed introduction the editors explore the vexed problem of the author's identity, as well as the date of the text, its manuscript transmission, and the reasons for its success, for example among monasteries belonging to the Cistercian order in southern Germany. Damien Kempf is Lecturer in Medieval History at the Un...
The First Crusade was full of politics: full, that is, of the interplay between power, authority,... more The First Crusade was full of politics: full, that is, of the interplay between power, authority, and institutions; full of competing interests and conflict._ Even if the amount of information available to us were substantially less than it actually is, we would still be able Lo infer much about the political dimensions of the crusade from the first-order facts known to us: that the crusade army was a composite of diverse nationalities and regional identities; the crusade's ability, morc or less, to retain its cohesion as a collective and goal--driven enterprise over the course of more than two arduous years; and the crusade's mobility, which entailed a regular series of interactions, accommodations, and conflicts with the political cultures of the areas through which it moved. A further fIrst-order fact in this category, perhaps, is that there was a fairly smooth transition from the prosecution of the First Crusade itself (taking the fall of Jerusalem in July 1099 and the b...
Alongside annals, chronicles were the main genre of historical writing in the Middle Ages. Their ... more Alongside annals, chronicles were the main genre of historical writing in the Middle Ages. Their significance as sources for the study of medieval history and culture is today widely recognised not only by historians, but also by students of medieval literature and linguistics and by art historians. The series The Medieval Chronicle aims to provide a representative survey of the on-going research in the field of chronicle studies, illustrated by examples from specific chronicles from a wide variety of countries, periods and cultural backgrounds.
In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, in the schools of northern France which were am... more In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, in the schools of northern France which were among the forerunners of the medieval university, one of the biggest intellectual debates to attract the attention of scholars was the relationship between words and things, and by extension the ways in which language does or does not capture the reality of the world that we perceive around us. This debate was no empty academic exercise. Perhaps the greatest thinker of the age, Peter Abelard, cut his intellectual teeth on the problem. At stake ultimately was the way in which people could say that they understood God, whose revelation to humankind was believed to be transmitted through the Bible, that is to say, through words. ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God’, as the opening of the Gospel of St John declares. Does something exist independently of our having a word for it, so that words are simply after-the-fact labels that we devise in order to describe the world to one another satisfactorily? Or does a word have a more active function, actually creating the notion of the thing that it designates?
This book is aimed at students and general readers coming to the study of medieval history for th... more This book is aimed at students and general readers coming to the study of medieval history for the first time, as well as at those with a background in other branches of medieval studies who are interested in finding out a little about historians’ aims and perspectives. This is not a brief history of what happened in the Middle Ages or of the development of the medieval historical profession. Nor is the book intended to be a contribution to the currently fashionable debates about the nature of history and history-writing (although the present author’s own position on some of these debates will be implicit in parts of the discussion). Rather, the book aims to set the scene for the study of medieval history by placing it in a wider context as a cultural phenomenon, a collection of inherited labels, a scholarly methodology, and, like all academic subjects, something that needs to justify itself in what we are increasingly encouraged to regard as the educational ‘market place’.
No one can come to the formal study of history with a mind like a blank sheet of paper. We are al... more No one can come to the formal study of history with a mind like a blank sheet of paper. We are already conditioned to engage with the past by the culture that surrounds us. The past — or, to be more accurate, a selection of highlights from the past — is embedded in Western popular culture in a host of ways. This has implications for our understanding of history even as we aim for the levels of sophistication and complexity that academic study demands. Academic history sometimes tries to project an image of detachment, situating itself above the busy swirl of popular culture. It is often said, with some justice, that one of the benefits of studying history to an advanced level is that it equips people to see through all the misconceptions and half-truths about the past that exist in the public domain. On the other hand, the idea of scholarly detachment can also be taken too far. When this happens, it can quickly descend into pious posturing which severely underestimates the significance of popular culture in all our lives. Exposure to popular culture is not ‘wrong’ or detrimental to your scholarly health. It is not something to be sheepish about as one enters the hallowed portals of academe. Popular culture accounts for some of the instinctive curiosity that makes us interested in history.
... Les classiques de l'histoire de France au moyen âge, 34; Paris, 1981), 58-62; Hugh o... more ... Les classiques de l'histoire de France au moyen âge, 34; Paris, 1981), 58-62; Hugh of Fleury, 'Liber qui modernorum regum Francorum continet actus', MGH SS 9, 390; Hariulf, 'Vita sancii Amulfi episcopi Suessionensis', PL, HA, 1396; John the Monk, 'Chronicon Besuense', PL ...
The long collection of miracles of St Thomas Becket written by William, a monk of Christ Church, ... more The long collection of miracles of St Thomas Becket written by William, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, between 1172 and c.1179 is, like many other examples of the genre, a rich source for attitudes towards sanctity, relics, and pilgrimage. A far more unusual feature of William's text is the author's criticism of the recent English presence in Ireland. William's comments on this score amount to a loaded stretching of the normal parameters of his textual medium, resulting in an evaluative engagement with current affairs of the sort that we would more normally associate with reflective forms of history-writing. William's criticism focused in particular upon the expedition to Ireland undertaken by King Henry II (October 1171eApril 1172), inverting the very rhetoric that Henry had used to justify his Irish adventure. William was not himself Irish, as has sometimes been supposed, nor was he registering his institution's frustrations about its exclusion from the new ecclesiastical order in Ireland, as might be implied by the traditional but questionable 'Canterbury plot' interpretation of the much-debated papal bull Laudabiliter. Instead, William was skilfully engaging with current debates about the rectitude of Henry II's Irish expedition, and more broadly contesting emerging prejudices about England's 'uncultivated' neighbours, in order to effect a subtle critique of the king's involvement in Becket's murder.
Guibert of Nogent, 'Gesta Dei per Francos' [hereafter Guibert, 'Gesta ... more Guibert of Nogent, 'Gesta Dei per Francos' [hereafter Guibert, 'Gesta Dei'], Recueil des historians des croisades: historians occidentaux, ed. Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres(5 vols., Paris, 1844-95) [hereafterRHCOcc], iv. 124('novum salutispromeren-dae ...
This volume provides a variety of complementary points of entry to the history of France between ... more This volume provides a variety of complementary points of entry to the history of France between 900 and 1200. Chapters contributed by a leading team of historians cover key themes such as France's political culture and identity, rural economy and society, the ...
Uploads
Papers by Marcus Bull