Book review: Medieval French Peasants,

Negotiation and Resistance: Peasant Agency in High Medieval France

Constance Brittain Bouchard   Cornell UP  2022

Insightful and Informative 

This as a book I would recommend very highly to anyone looking both at the history of France in the period and at the life of medieval peasants in general.

This is very much a source based study, and Constance Bouchard, having edited several of them for publication, clearly knows the sources very well.

She makes a strong case for the peasants

hiding in plain sight in the cartularies that survive from the monastic houses, and that if we look at such records we will find them. I am sure that the lessons and insights she offers mutatis mutandis can be applied to other parts of France or Western Europe. Thus England had a different history in regard to serfdom in the same period, but what the book argues could still be used profitably as an insight when looking at English conditions as revealed in manorial court rolls and other records

Yes, peasant life was doubtless often hard, but what Bouchard shows are real peasants, not the archetypes created by historians and social theorists centuries later without reference to the archival evidence. These real peasants showed very considerable vitality in defending and negotiating their best interests. They emerge as lively and resilient, not downtrodden victims.

This readable, humane study which makes medieval people step out of the shadows for at least a few minutes as flesh and blood and not just theories or statistics, is of great value for the general reader, for students and for academics looking for pointers with their research. It is a book which in a relatively short format reveals a lot in an accessible, thoughtful, and informative way.

Posted on Amazon  25.3.2023

Reconstructing an Arthurian romance

Yesterday I wrote about the digital reconstruction of a piece of medieval sculpture from Shaftesbury using computer technology Today it is the turn of a manuscript to get the equivalent treatment.

Cambridge University website reported on work done by the University Library and the University’s Cultural Heritage Imaging Laboratory with a portion of the Suite Vulgate du Merlin, and dated to between 1275 and 1315, which had survived because it had been used to bind some Suffolk estate documents after 1500. The manuscript fragment was only re-discovered in 2019. It is one of a number to survive of the French language text, but each one has differences due to manuscrip copyists individual variations. It has been possible to assign the manuscript to a group within the wider cycle.

Because of the folds and tears, and because the text is in part sewn into the book the Library eschewed the risky process of separating the manuscript out, and turned to the latest digital technology to reach into the recesses and scan the remains. As a result this variant coffee could be retrieved whilst preserving an example of what often happened to discarded texts.

The handsomely illustrated article can be seen at Modern magic unlocks Merlin's medieval secrets

Digital reconstruction of a medieval sculpture from Shaftesbury

The BBC News website reported upon a computer project to digitally reconstruct a shattered late mediaeval sculpture depicting the Mass of Saint Gregory which was found buried in a wall in St Peter’s church in Shaftesbury in the 1970s. 

Digital imaging of all the 170 or so fragments has enabled a beginning to be made on piecing together this once very substantial statue. It is thought to have been six feet or so high when complete.

The report can be read at Smashed medieval statue from Dorset church reformed digitally

There is more about the computer work from the experts involved at Bournemouth University at BU computer animation experts and archaeologists use digital technology to reassemble shattered statue

An idea of the considerable size of the statue can be gleaned from a film clip of the unveiling of the larger portion of the remains of the statue in Shaftesbury Museum by H.M. Deputy Lord Lieutenant. This can be seen at Shaftesbury Abbey on Instagram: "Our restored 15th century St Gregory Mass statue has been unveiled! 

Looking at what survives and the many small fragments of the whole work I am once again appalled by the ferocity of destruction wrought by fanatics in the mid-sixteenth century.

On the positive side to go and see the remains of the sculpture is yet another excellent reason for going to visit the beautiful and historic, and in some ways little known, county of Dorset.

“The work of human hands”

LifeSite News can be a rather curious site, not least for those of us living on the European side of the Atlantic, and for whom a lot of North American concerns seem, well, a bit strange. However it does cover a lot of Canadian stories, being based there, as well as ones from the US. Other stories have a wider appeal and relevance.

One such was a short article by John-Henry Weston, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of the website, which was published yesterday.

The point he is making was new to me, and as it was to him, so it is I imagine to many others. His article, which is worth looking at and reflecting upon, can be read at Did you know the Novus Ordo uses a phrase that Scripture associates with idolatry?

Today’s the day…

It not often, alas, these days that one rushes to share articles from the Oxford student newspapers. Neither Cherwell nor the Oxford Student are noted for being much more than a diary of the previous week, or in the case of the Oxford Student rehashing timeworn themes from OUSU. The next generation of Oxford novelists seem to be scribbling away elsewhere. It was therefore a pleasure to come across today the following offering from the Oxford Student - the city of dreaming spires can still deliver ….

Oxford University to abolish Classics degree – The Oxford Student

Mind you, given the destructive urges of some in the Universiry hierarchy, we may be laughing too soon….

Happy April Fool’s Day to you all.

Twenty years on

Today, March 31, is the twentieth anniversary of my reception into the Catholic Church, and, as is my wont on this important personal date, I will repost and revise accordingly my account of the reasons that led to my decision.

Originally  I wrote this piece in my early days of blogging about my reasons for being received. As the years go by I republish it with what seem to me appropriate emendations and additions.

It was on Thursday in the Octave of Easter 2005, and chosen because it enabled friends and relatives who would not have been able to attend at the Easter Vigil to be present and, in one case, to be my sponsor.

I took as my confirmation name Philip - not only the name of the founder of the Oratory and of an Apostle, but also my father's first name and one that I had always liked. So John Robert became John Robert Philip. I subsequently went to the not inconsiderable expense of adding the name by deed poll, so I can insist on officialdom recognising my spiritual journey.

As it happened, by being received when I was, I thereby became one of the very last Catholics to be received into the Church in the pontificate of Pope John Paul II - I feel I squeezed through the door of history in that respect. There are those converts who used to describe themselves as "John Paul II Catholics" or similar phrases. I am, by historic fact and by sympathy a "Benedict XVI Catholic", but, and it is a very important "but", I am a Catholic first - Popes inevitably come and go. That said I consider it an enormous good fortune for the Church and, for me as an individual member of it, to have had Pope Benedict in the Chair of Peter. His pontificate was a great blessing for the whole church, and a wonderful time in which to enter into a fully Catholic life.

As I made my decision to seek reception I codified my ideas about the matter into nine categories or groups. St Edmund Campion had his Decem Rationes which he placed so provocatively in St Mary's Church in Oxford in 1581. Mine are more personal perhaps, but, in that they may interest others, here are my Novem Rationes from 2005:

1. I believed all that the Catholic Church believed - so why was I not in full communion with it? I read the Catechism through and found nothing from which to dissent within it.

2. In particular I accepted the claims of the Papacy and its necessity in order to maintain orthodoxy and unity.

3. As a historian I appreciated the Catholic case for the nature of the Church and the Papacy, and the fact of its historical continuity - Walter Ullman's point that the Papacy is the one governing institution in the West that links the Apostolic age to the Atomic age resonates in my mind.

4. The call to Unity - not only the principal of Ut unum sint  but also the specific claims to expressing that unity with all other Catholics through the Holy See as described by the Fathers.

5. The Catholic Church is seen to act on issues contingent upon Christian belief - Life issues might be the most obvious, but there were others, and with an authentic response being made.

6. I realised that my historic sympathies were with Catholicism - which side would I have been on, or at least I believed I would have been on or wanted to be on in say, the Reformation? Well it was clear. My heart lay with the Catholic cause.

7. The state of Anglicanism was not encouraging. For Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics the situation was one of increasing isolation, and the sense that a Third Province would not be granted.

8. Much as I loved my Anglican places of worship - Pusey House and St Thomas the Martyr in Oxford - I felt that I was called to move on. I was at an age when I still could make a change, but that there was not time to delay. If this was the time, then so be it.

9. I thought that many of my Anglican friends were moving or would move into full communion with Rome. Those friendships, based and rooted in a shared spiritual life, were very important to my own spiritual development, and they were pointing all in the same direction.

Looking back from this point, twenty years later, I have never had cause to regret my decision. There is no "twenty year itch."

I still endorse those nine sets of ideas.

The last three invite some additional comments.

The Church of England has continued on its way, and has failed to have the generosity to provide for Traditionalist Anglo-Catholics. “Women bishops” have arrived and even if not quite as divisive as one expected it is because of them that many Anglo-Catholics have left. The argument that such inclusivity of personnel would lead to a national spiritual revival is seemingly as vacuous as one always thought it would be. What is so very sad to see is the decline of the “Vision Glorious” in the Church of England. It is also very sad to see so much of the life of the Anglican Church as part of our national life unravelling under incompetent leadership.

Anglicanorum Coetibus has been issued - I pray it will be successful in extending the unity of the Church to others of like faith and mind outside its formal bounds. Since 2011 we have witnessed the establishment of the Ordinariate first in England and then in the USA and Australasia. I have been able to help to support those joining it here by acting as a pro-sponsor in two cases, or simply by turning up to support their Masses, and, of course, by praying for it.

Summorum Pontificum reasserted the right to have traditional forms of the liturgy and it has been followed by a strong and positive response, and that needs to be continued - as has been said what was sacred once is sacred now. What has been achieved there needs to be maintained and defended. The success of groups such as FSSP and ICKSP shows there is a real and growing demand for traditional liturgy. I have found myself that during “lockdown” I have been increasingly drawn towards EF rather than OF celebrations. That was, ironically, confined with the publication of Traditiones Custodes. That came as a shock, but in this country it appears, so far, to have had little impact in most places, though I do have friends who have been deeply affected by it. 

I am still on excellent terms with friends from Pusey House and St Thomas', and I rejoiced at Fr Hunwicke's appointment to the latter in 2007 before he moved into the Ordinariate. It has been good to see all that is happening at both institutions for the wider Catholic cause. It was very good for my humility that they could manage and survive without me! I retain enormously happy memories of my time at both places and at also the churches I worshipped at in Yorkshire before I came to Oxford.

Nonetheless I increasingly find it difficult to see why more people in the Anglo-Catholic tradition are not availing themselves of all - and it is so much - that is offered by the Ordinariate. It is all they have ever said they wanted or indeed hoped for - bar, possibly, taking their church buildings with them, and, though I can sympathise in that matter to a great extent, but not to the exclusion of what ultimately matters.

As to my friends - well, I was the second of our group to make the move, and three more followed in the next eighteen months. Two of those married and I have had the privilege of being on three separate occasions proxy-godfather to their children. In the following years two other married couples and their families were received. More recently two other friends from those years made the journey. Four of the men have been ordained to the priesthood.

Along the way I have made many other new friends amongst those converting, and I have been made very welcome in my new spiritual home. I was extremely lucky to have the Oratory and also SS Gregory and Augustine and Blackfriars as places in which to worship regularly in Oxford. The last year has made me more familiar with FSSP and ICKSP churches both here in this country and worldwide - including ‘virtually’ attending Mass on occasion in Switzerland, Mexico, the US and Australia - and that helps to remind one that the Catholic Church is truly Universal. In 2021 I was enabled by Zoom to attend the Priestly Ordination in Washington DC and subsequently the First Mass in his home parish in New Orleans of a young Dominican I had taught in Oxford. That is in addition to physically being present at several such Ordinations, Masses and Professions here in Oxford, Bournemouth, Chelmsford and London. The Catholic Church is attracting some truly excellent young men to its priesthood.

It was as a Catholic that I was able to attend the Beatification of John Henry Newman in Birmingham in 2010 which was a great joy. I feel my journey, my Apologia ( were it ever written ), owes not a little to his influence and intercession.

Being a Catholic has opened up so many opportunities for worship, devotion and understanding - not to mention contact with so many people and places - that I could never have imagined possible beforehand. There is a new sense of belonging, of that which is dignum et justum, from that time on. What happens in time and space also happens in Eternity. For all of that I have a profound gratitude. 

Soon after I was received a friend and I likened the process of conversion and reception not to swimming the Tiber, but to paddling across - when we reached the opposite bank we found friends waiting in the deck-chairs to hand one a towel to dry one's feet and then to hand you a missal or breviary to read as you sat down to watch who would be next to come over.

May St Philip Neri, St John Henry Newman and all the saints continue to pray for me, and for those seeking their home in the Church.

For a bit more background see also my post Ten years ago from 2014.

Book review : King Edward IV as a military commander

As today is the anniversary of the battle of Towton it seems a not inappropriate day upon which to share a review I wrote of a book about the victorious King Edward IV and his role as a military commander. Looking at the other reviews on Amazon of the book the reviews are either very positive or rather dismissive. For once I sought a via media…..

Edward IV and the Wars of the Roses

David Saniuste   Pen and Sword Military 2011

A useful study that stimulates thought

This is a useful book for the specialist and the non-specialist alike. It is valuable for its account of both warfare at the time and in its reconstructions of individual battles. These are excellent, informed, and considered descriptions, bearing in mind how limited are the original accounts. For these Santiuste draws extensively upon up to date interpretations. In all that I would agree with the positive views of most of the reviews, but would enter a few reservations about other things.

Like too many books on this period there seems to be an implicit bias that the Yorkists were ipso facto good because they were successful. Edward IV is not just the subject of the book but starts to become the hero. The same material could show that although he was successful he was in many ways reprehensible.

Edward could turn on the charm, he and the Yorkists were good at the fifteenth century version of PR, but, given the opportunity, he was often ruthless and indeed vicious in dealing with opponents. What we do not necessarily know is why he pardoned some, and what his thinking was in these cases. This is where evidence is, alas, lacking.

The idea behind the book is good - but we need more information to make the picture more complete. So not just Edward as being a successful leader because he won battles, but evidence appears to be lacking as to what made him so - not just being 6’3”, firing up his troops with morale boosting speeches and interpretations of the three suns at Mortimers Cross, and fighting in the heat of the fray. As to the battles he won - how much did luck and the weather feature as determinants at Towton and Barnet, let alone treachery at Northampton? Equally he was wrong footed on the military-political front several times in 1469-70. What we lack is more insight into to his training, formation or natural ability - its lack is not the author’s fault but it limits what he can really say.

Did Edward IV improve his military resources in terms of recruitment, organisation or weaponry? There is something on artillery, but was he significantly in advance of contemporaries such as Charles of Burgundy and Louis XI, though in this aspect he avoided the fate of James II of Scots. What was his impact, if at all, on warfare? Did he have time to think about strategy and tactics in the period up to 1471 when he was actually fighting battles? What, if anything, was his input into his brother’s 1482 campaign against the Scots? Questions like this are largely unanswered, and probably unanswerable.

Inevitably this tends at times to become another biography of the King rather than to fulfil its laudable aim of analysing his military competence and achievement. We see how Edward IV won battles but not necessarily why.

Posted 11.12.2022

The Battle of Towton remembered

I usually post something on this day to mark the anniversary of the battle of Towton in 1461. On this 564th anniversary I realised that over the years I have written a considerable amount on this blog about Towton, and think that rather than spending time copying and pasting links to all these pieces I have written it is easier to suggest that if you want to look at them, readers should go to the search facility, at the bottom of the side bar and simply type in “Towton”, and be taken to a varied set of articles.

Next year is  not only the 565th anniversary, which trips off the tongue more easily, but it will actually fall on Palm Sunday. Maybe someone will organise more to commemorate the events of that bloody and terrible day for that reason alone. It will be the fortieth anniversary of the first of the Anglican rite Requiem Masses I organised in Saxton Church, where the churchyard contains the bones of many of the slain. 

In those intervening years, we have learned considerably more about the battle, notably with the excavation of the burial pit at Towton  Hall, and the comprehensive scientific study of the remains of the victims. It now looks as if the profile.of the chapel commissioned by King Richard III in 1484 has been identified, embedded in the later buildings of Towton Hall. A further significant discovery were the remains of handguns used by some of the troops at the battle. Whether these were English, or perhaps Burgundians fighting with the Yorkists or French on the Lancastrian side, is not clear. 

In one of my previous posts, I speculate on how far reaching the significance of the battle is. For those who were there, it was clearly very significant indeed. For many it was their last day of life. For the victorious Yorkists it inaugurated almost a quarter of a century.of often tenuous power, for the Lancastrians the horror of defeat, exile, and, for many, subsequent violent deaths. it certainly did not resolve the political problems of the realm and in many ways could be seen as exacerbating them. Without the battle of Towton, there would not have been the subsequent battles of Tewkesbury and Bosworth, and probably a very different political history for the country right down to the present day. Would there have been the English reformation, the Union of the Crowns, the Civil War? We cannot know but what happened on the field of Towton changed, one way or another, the course of British history. 

I usually end these posts on this day by asking readers to join me in praying for the repose of the souls of all those who fought and those who died at Towton in 1461.