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Memory and Kingship in the Manuscripts of Matthew Paris

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Memorialising Premodern Monarchs

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Abstract

On 13 October 1247 Matthew Paris was one of those who attended the ceremonial presentation of the relic of the Holy Blood by Henry III to Westminster Abbey. He was seen by the king who asked him to record these events, before inviting him and his companions to join in the subsequent banquet. The chronicler did as the king requested, including a memorable image to accompany it. In this chapter I am interested in exploring how the illustrations and diagrams found throughout Paris’s chronicles acted as aides-mémoire for information considered important at the time. Both Matthew Paris and Henry III recognised that chronicles played a significant role in recording and preserving such events, marking them as memorable and important.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Translated in Suzanne Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 225–226. The full text can be found in Matthew Paris, Chronica Majora, ed. H.R. Luard, 7 vols. (London: Rolls Series, 1872–1884) (hereafter referenced as CM), iv, 644–645.

  2. 2.

    Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK, MSS. 26 and 16; and British Library, UK, MS Royal 14 C. VII.

  3. 3.

    British Library UK, MS Royal 14 C. VII.

  4. 4.

    Judith Collard, “Flores Historiarum Manuscripts: The Illumination of a Late Thirteenth-Century Chronicle Series,” Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, 71.4 (2008): 441–466.

  5. 5.

    Chetham Library, Manchester, UK, MS. 6712.

  6. 6.

    British Library, UK, MS Cotton Claudius D. VI.

  7. 7.

    Richard Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958), 3

  8. 8.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 224–227, Plate X.

  9. 9.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 4.

  10. 10.

    Nicholas Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Westminster Blood Relic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

  11. 11.

    Vincent, The Holy Blood, 4.

  12. 12.

    David Carpenter, Henry III: 1207–1258 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 476–478. Carpenter also points out the connection with the June 1247 canonisation of Edmund of Abingdon who was recently translated to a new shrine in Pontigny and was taken up by the French royal house.

  13. 13.

    M.R. James, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1912), 58; Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 306–309.

  14. 14.

    Björn Weiler, “Matthew Paris on the writing of history,” Journal of Medieval History 35 (2009): 263.

  15. 15.

    Paris, CM, vi, 92–94, Carpenter, Henry III, 419.

  16. 16.

    Paris, CM, v, 617–618; Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 4; Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 5; Carpenter, Henry III, 399.

  17. 17.

    Carpenter, Henry III, 399; Paris, CM, V, 617–618.

  18. 18.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 39.

  19. 19.

    See, for example, the Liber Additamentorum, (British Library, UK, MS. Cotton Nero D. I, fols. 171–171v, 186, 199.) Thomas D. Tremlett ed., Rolls of Arms: Henry III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 45–52; Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 250–253; Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 467–468.

  20. 20.

    Pamela Tudor-Craig, “The Painted Chamber at Westminster,” Archaeological Journal 114 (1957): 104.

  21. 21.

    Paul Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power 1200–1400, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 76–82.

  22. 22.

    Pamela Tudor-Craig, “The Painted Chamber,” 103–104, Matthew Paris, CM, v, 480.

  23. 23.

    Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 3; Matthew Paris, Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden (hereafter referenced as HA), 3 vols. (London: Rolls Series, 1866–1868) ii, 241; CM, iii, 336.

  24. 24.

    CM, v, 233–234; Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 4.

  25. 25.

    CM. v, 42–45; Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 4.

  26. 26.

    The manuscripts that include such genealogies are: the Chronica Majora, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK, MS. 26, fol. iv verso; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK, MS 16, fols. Iii–iii verso; Historia Anglorum, British Library, UK, MS. Royal 14. C. VII, fols. 8v-9, Abbreviatio Chronicorum Angliae, British Library, UK, MS. Cotton Claudius D. VI, fols. 5 verso–9 verso.

  27. 27.

    M.R. James edited a facsimile of this manuscript, La estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei, (Oxford: Roxburghe Club, 1920); the manuscript is also available digitally: accessed 1 February 2020, http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/manuscripts/Ee.3.59/. The text has been edited twice in Lives of Edward the Confessor, ed. H. R. Luard, (London: Rolls Series, 1858) and La estoire de seint Aedward le Rei attributed to Matthew Paris, ed. Kathryn Young Wallace, (London: Anglo-Norman Text Society, 1983). The text has also been translated in The History of Saint Edward the King by Matthew Paris, trans. Thelma S. Fenster and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2008).

  28. 28.

    Unusually this manuscript is paginated rather than the usual foliation.

  29. 29.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 168–170

  30. 30.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 170.

  31. 31.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 140.

  32. 32.

    Olivier Laborderie, “The First King of England? Egbert and the Foundations of Royal Legitimacy in Thirteenth-century Historiography,” in The Image and Perception of Monarchy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, eds. Sean McGlynn and Elena Woodacre, (Newcastle-on-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), 75.

  33. 33.

    This is found in the Abbreviatio Chronicorum Angliae, British Library, UK, MS. Cotton Claudius D. VI, fols. 8 verso–9 verso.

  34. 34.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 147.

  35. 35.

    This is found in the British Library, UK, MS. Royal 14 C. VII, fol. 8v.

  36. 36.

    Lewis cites the example of Brutus; Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 143, 147.

  37. 37.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 156.

  38. 38.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 147.

  39. 39.

    Judith Collard, “King John and the symbol of the falling crown in the Chronicles of Matthew Paris,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 3rd series, 6 (2009): 35–52.

  40. 40.

    Galbraith, Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris, 17–19, 34–37; Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 182; see also V.H. Galbraith, “Good and Bad Kings in English History,” History 30 (1945): 119–132. Here Galbraith argues that the idea of a good king, as found in medieval chronicles, was bound up with a king’s religious activities. Little account was taken of the tensions between good government and papal encroachments. A king was considered to be good if he was generous to the Church and successful in war (120–124).

  41. 41.

    Translated in Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 182, CM, ii, 562–563.

  42. 42.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 185; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, UK, MS 16, fol. 48.

  43. 43.

    See Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 156; Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts 1190–1250 (New York: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1982), 144, no. 93.

  44. 44.

    Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 223.

  45. 45.

    Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 145.

  46. 46.

    Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts 1190–1250, 142–143, 144, no. 93; Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 143.

  47. 47.

    Elizabeth Lipsmeyer, “The Donor and his Model Church in Medieval Art from Early Christian Times to the Late Romanesque Period,” (Ph.D. Diss., Rutgers University, New Brunswick, 1981).

  48. 48.

    Lipsmeyer, “The Donor and his Model Church,” 74; see also G. Schramm, Die Deutschen Kaiser und Könige in Bildern ihrer Zeit (Leipzig: Leipzig University, Institut für Kultur- und Universalgeschichte, 1928–1929), 137.

  49. 49.

    Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts 1190–1250, 89–90; Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 140.

  50. 50.

    History of Saint Edward the King, 54; Wallace, La estoire de seint Aedward le Rei, 4.

  51. 51.

    History of Saint Edward the King, 54; Wallace, La estoire de seint Aedward le Rei, 2–3.

  52. 52.

    Judith Collard, “Gender and Genealogy: English Illuminated Royal Genealogical Rolls from the Thirteenth Century,” Parergon n.s. 17 (2000): 15; K. Sisam, “Anglo-Saxon royal genealogies,” Proceedings of the British Academy 3 (1953): 289–348; D. Dumville, “Kingship, Genealogies and Regnal Lists,” in Early Medieval Kingship, eds. P.H. Sawyer and I.N. Wood, (Leeds: University of Leeds, 1977), 72–104.

  53. 53.

    Paris, HA, i, 3–5.

  54. 54.

    British Library, UK, MS Otho D. iii; Roger of Wendover, Flores Historiarum, ed. H.G. Hewlett, 3 vols. (London: Rolls Series, 1886–1889). Wendover’s influence and importance was discussed in several texts. V.H. Galbraith, Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris, (Glasgow: Jackson, Son and Co, 1944); Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 21–34.

  55. 55.

    Bede, Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, eds. Bertram Colgrave and R.A.B. Mynors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.)

  56. 56.

    An autograph version is housed at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK, MS 157; Judith Collard, “Henry I’s dream in John of Worcester’s Chronicle (Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 157) and the Illustration of Twelfth-Century English Chronicles,” Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010): 121. See also John of Worcester, The Chronicle of John of Worcester, eds. Reginald P. Darlington, P. McGurk, and Jennifer Bray, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995–1998).

  57. 57.

    Paris, HA, i, 5.

  58. 58.

    “…ecce speculum humanae conditionis.” Paris, HA, i, 4.

  59. 59.

    Translated in Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, 226.

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    Judith Collard

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    Gabrielle Storey

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Collard, J. (2022). Memory and Kingship in the Manuscripts of Matthew Paris. In: Storey, G. (eds) Memorialising Premodern Monarchs. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84130-0_9

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