The Life and Passion of William of Norwich (Penguin Classics)

by Thomas of Monmouth

  104. See Rachel Fulton Brown, ‘Three-in-One: Making God in Twelfth-Century Liturgy, Theology and Devotion’, in European Transformations: The Long Twelfth Century, ed. Thomas F. X. Noble and John Van Engen (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), pp. 468–98. On the role of images and imagination in this spirituality, see Sara Lipton, ‘ “The Sweet Lean of His Head”: Writing about Looking at the Crucifix in the High Middle Ages’, Speculum 80 (2005), pp. 1172–1208.

  105. See Yarrow, Saints and their Communities, pp. 75–81.

  106. See Cubitt, ‘Sites and Sauctity’. On anti-Judaism in the eleventh century and its association with monastic liturgical life, see Daniel F. Callahan, ‘Ademar of Chabannes, Millennial Fears and the Development of Western Anti-Judaism’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995), pp. 19–35.

  107. For a discussion of Jews as ‘underlings’ see Younge, ‘The Canterbury Anthology’, pp. 184–6.

  108. Ibid., pp. 70–72.

  109. Ibid., pp. 81–2.

  110. See Three Eleventh-Century Anglo-Latin Saints’ Lives: Vita S. Birini, Vita et miracula S. Kenelmi and Vita S. Rumwoldi, ed. and trans. Rosalind C. Love (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. xxiii–xxix, xxxix–xlviii.

  111. For an analysis of William and his mother in the light of devotions to Mary and Jesus, see MacLehose, ‘A Tender Age’, paragraphs 228–9.

  112. See T. A. Heslop, ‘The English Origins of the Coronation of the Virgin’, The Burlington Magazine 147 (2005), pp. 790–97 and ‘The Virgin Mary’s Regalia and 12th-century English Seals’, in The Vanishing Past: Studies of Medieval Art, Liturgy and Metrology Presented to Christopher Hohler, ed. Alan Borg and Andrew Martindale, British Archaeological Reports International Series 111 (Oxford, 1981), pp. 53–62.

  113. See Richard Southern, ‘The English Origins of the “Miracles of the Virgin” ’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies 4 (1958), pp. 176–216.

  114. For a discussion of possible antecedents, see Jessopp and James, pp. lxii–lxiv. In 1147 a Jew was accused of murder in Würzburg (see Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, pp. 168–70).

  115. ‘Hoc etiam fecerunt de sancto Willelmo in Anglia apud Norwiz, tempore Stephani regis; quo sepulto in ecclesia episcopali, multa miracula fiunt ad sepulchrum ejus. Similiter factum est de alio apud Glouecestriam, tempore Henrici secundi regis […] Et frequenter, ut dicitur, faciunt hoc in tempore Paschali, si opportunitatem invenerint,’ The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni, ed. Richard Howlett, Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I IV (London: HMSO, 1889 [Wiesbaden: Kraus Reprints, 1964]), pp. 250–251. For an evaluation of this testimony, see Langmuir, ‘Historiographic Crucifixion’, pp. 285–6. See also The Chronicles of Robert de Monte, trans. Joseph Stevenson (Lampeter: Llanerch, 1991), p. 114.

  116. ‘Helinandi Frigidi Montis monachi chronicon’, Patrologia Latina 212, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris, 1855), cols. 1036–7. The entry is placed under the year 1146 and the boy William is described as being fifteen years old; McCulloh, ‘Jewish Ritual Murder’, pp. 719–24. On Hélinand, see E. Rozanne Elder, ‘Early Cistercian Writers’, in The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order, ed. Mette Birkedal Bruun (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 199–217; esp. pp. 207–8. On the making and impact of the Chronicon, see Monique Paulmier-Foucart, ‘Ecrire l’histoire au XIIIe siècle: Vincent de Beauvais et Hélinand de Froidmont’, Annales de l’Est 33 (1981), pp. 49–70; esp. pp. 52–4, 65–6. A good example of the compilation work similar to the Cistercian interest in visionary material is the Liber revelationum (c. 1200–1206) of Peter of Cornwall (1139/40–1221), prior of the Augustinians at Holy Trinity Church, London; for its contents, see M. R. James and Claude Jenkins, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Manuscripts in the Library of Lambeth Palace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930), no. 51, pp. 71–85. I am most grateful to Helen Birkett, who introduced me to Peter of Cornwall and with whom I had a most illuminating conversation about Cistercian literary networks.

  117. Only rarely did Hélinand use visions whose origins lay outside Cistercian houses; see Christopher Thomas John Wilson, ‘The Dissemination of Visions of the Otherworld in England and Northern France, c.1150–c.1321’, dissertation submitted to the University of Exeter (2012), p. 218.

  118. I am grateful to David Bell for his most interesting comments on Thomas of Beverley and for his authoritative support for the identification of CUL Add 3037 as a Cistercian manuscript. See E. L. O’Brien, ‘Beverley, Thomas of (d. after 1225)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

  119. See Brian Patrick McGuire, ‘The Cistercians and the Rise of the Exemplum in Early Thirteenth-Century France: A Re-evaluation of Paris BN MS Lat. 15912’, Classica et mediaevalia 34 (1983), pp. 211–67; at pp. 248–9. For this collection, see Collectio Exemplorum Cisterciensis e Codice Parisiensi, Bnf, Lat. 15912 Asseruata, ed. Jacques Berlioz and Marie-Anne Polo de Beaulieu, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 243 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012). See also Stefano Mula, ‘Geography and the Early Cistercian Exempla Collections’, Cistercian Studies Quarterly 46 (2011), pp. 27–43.

  120. See McGuire, ‘The Cistercians’, pp. 217–21, 225–6.

  121. On Anglo-Norman Norwich, see Brian Ayers, Norwich: Archaeology of a Fine City (Stroud: Amberley, 2009), pp. 55–88.

  122. For a social and cultural history based on miracle stories, see Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology and the Daily Lives of the Poor (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002).

  123. For an account of one such trial, see Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder; for an accusation dismissed, see Elena Lourie, ‘A Plot Which Failed? The Case of the Corpse Found in the Jewish Call of Barcelona (1301)’, Mediterranean Historical Review 1 (1986), pp. 187–220. For a parody of an accusation, see Anthony P. Bale, ‘Richard of Devizes and Fictions of Judaism’, Jewish Culture and History 3 (2000), pp. 55–72.

  A Note on the Text

  On a late summer day, 29 August 1891, seated at his desk in Scarning Rectory in North Norfolk, Augustus Jessopp (1823–1914), clergyman, charismatic schoolmaster and from 1895 honorary canon of Norwich Cathedral, wrote the following letter:

  Scarning Rectory

  East Dereham

  29/8/1891

  My dear James,

  I am extremely obliged to you for the very interesting account you sent me of the finding of the long lost life of S. William of Norwich […] This find is all important, and I am even surprised a bit. I congratulate you cordially on securing such a curious treasure for the University Library. […]

  I hope you will go into print and if I can be of any assistance at all you may rely on my cooperating cordially with you. The chances are that the discovery of this MS. will throw light upon the whole cycle of stories about Jews crucifying or otherwise slaying Christian boys in the 12th and 13th centuries. But does it illustrate the story of the Prioress’ Tale?

  Is it too much to hope that you the discoverer and therefore a privileged person would come over here and pay me a visit with the treasure under your arm? Gratefully I should welcome you!

  With many thanks for so kindly writing to me this information,

  I am,

  faithfully yours,

  Augustus Jessopp1

  Here begins the modern engagement with the historical affair of William of Norwich. Jessopp was a prolific writer, whose range included sermons, ghost stories and much local history.2 The addressee of his letter was M. R. James (1862–1936), a scholar with a fast-growing international reputation for his expertise in medieval art and manuscript studies; at that time he was Assistant Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and later he was to become Provost of both King’s College Cambridge and Eton.3 James, too, wrote ghost stories, which often took place in libraries and involved manuscript scholars.

  The ‘curious treasure’ that Jessopp was so eager to see was a manuscript acquired in 1891 by Cambridge University Library (CUL), shortly
to become MS Additional 3037 in the university’s collection. It was one of seven manuscripts purchased by the CUL from the parish of Brent Eleigh in Suffolk, where they had been kept in a ‘small dark building’. M. R. James noted that

  None of the MSS was without interest, but two were unique – a volume containing the long-lost life of St William of Norwich (a boy supposed to have been kidnapped and crucified by Jews in 1124 [sic]) and a bulky but mutilated Register of British Saints, written in the early part of the seventeenth century by Nicholas Roscarrock.4

  As we shall see, these two manuscripts share an interesting history.

  The retired clergyman and the Cambridge scholar developed a working relationship, as revealed in forty-three surviving letters between them. Jessopp was far keener to promote this collaboration, while James was often immersed in other interesting projects, not least his responsibilities at the Fitzwilliam Museum. James had the manuscript transcribed in Cambridge and sheets were sent on to Jessopp for translation; Jessopp translated the first three books – the more demanding task by far – and James the last four. They also shared between them the writing of the introduction.5

  CUL Add. 3037 was copied around 1200 and is arranged in two columns.6 It is written by two scribes in an English hand on good parchment and with care. The volume measures 193 × 227 mm and is still encased within the original binding of two oak boards; in some places marks of a chemise (a leather covering) can be seen.7 Its quires of good quality parchment were sewn at the top and bottom of the spine, and were also held together with kettle stitches. The sewing and absence of glue also suggest the date of c. 1200. Quire 8 (of 11) now lacks three folios (fols. 140–42).8

  CUL Add. 3037 contains the following works:9

  Folios 1–77r: Thomas of Monmouth’s Life and Passion of William of Norwich, dedicated to Bishop William Turbe (bishop from 1146 or early 1147 to his death in January 1174).

  Folios 77v–80v: Isaac de l’Etoîle (c. 1100–c. 1169) to John of Canterbury (or aux Bellesmains) (1122–c. 1204), Bishop of Poitiers (1162–82), Archbishop of Lyon (1182–93), Letter On the Office of the Mass.10

  Folio 80v: A later addition: an extract from a commentary on the Apocalypse, composed by Haimo of Halberstadt (of Auxerre) (d. 853).11

  Folios 81r–119v: John, Abbot of Forde (c. 1145–1214), Life of Wulfric of Haselbury (composed in the 1180s), preceded by two letters of dedication, one of four surviving manuscripts of Wulfric’s Life.12

  Folios 119v–168r: Life and Miracles of Blessed Godric of Finchale, by one Walter, written in the 1180s and before 1196. This is a reworked, shorter version of the Life of Godric by the Augustinian canon Reginald of Durham, written at the suggestion of the Cistercian abbot Aelred of Rievaulx, who much admired Godric.13

  Folio 168r: A poem addressed to Stephen Langton (c. 1150–1228), Archbishop of Canterbury, on the occasion of his appointment to that post in 1207.14

  A late medieval list of contents, faintly visible on the flyleaf, shows that another section, possibly a book of law, once formed part of the volume.15

  Item 1, the Life and Passion, is followed by three other main items (2, 4 and 5), all by Cistercian authors; all four works mirror contemporary English religious and ecclesiastical life. They offer accounts of recent exemplary figures – a martyr and two hermits – and a new allegorical interpretation of the meaning of the liturgy of the altar. The Life of Godric exemplifies the qualities of simplicity, which the author of Wulfric’s Life appreciated, too; Thomas of Monmouth describes William as innocent, but also as simple and modest, qualities much cherished by Cistercians.16

  The texts assembled in our manuscript are decorated and rubricated throughout in similar fashion: red, green and blue inks are used to give prominence to initials at the beginning of books and sections; and these inks were also used – often in pairs – to provide pen-stroke decoration to the initials.17 This is not a sumptuous manuscript, but several workers of a single copying workshop (scriptorium) have lavished attention on it. The two scribes took care to mark word breaks with diagonal strokes, and helped the reader with catchwords (as on fols. 48v, 56v, 71r and 72v); the scribe or a rubricator followed instructions still visible at the bottom of many folios; and an illuminator filled in most of the spaces left for initials. This contributes to the ease of reading and of recitation aloud. Still visible at the bottom of several folios of CUL Add. 3037 is staining caused by dripping candle wax (fols. 29v and 39r).

  A Cistercian origin for our manuscript is suggested by the contents, but also reinforced by its script, decoration and punctuation.18 The scribes (or corrector) used throughout the punctus flexus, alongside the punctus and the punctus elevatus. The punctus flexus – which aided reading aloud – indicated a medial minor pause, like a comma, and is a usage associated almost uniquely with the scribal practices of the Cistercian Order from early in its history, at least since around 1109.19 The restrained style of initial decoration is also in keeping with the customs of Cistercian scriptoria, and reflects attitudes to luxury and display, which were widely considered and debated within the Order.20 Furthermore, the Life of Godric of Finchale is marked for liturgical purposes into eight readings (for the feast and its octave) with stresses introduced to facilitate reading. Our manuscript is a book of recent writings by and for Cistercians.

  Scholars have hitherto assumed that our manuscript originated in Norwich Cathedral Priory, but this is clearly not the case. In 1534 the antiquary John Leland (c. 1506–52) described a manuscript of Norwich Cathedral Priory as ‘A Life of St William of Norwich’ (‘Vita S. Gulielmi Nordouicensis’), and noted that the manuscript begins with a carmen, a poem whose opening words are ‘Illustrious martyrs’ (‘Egregii martyres’), quite unrelated to any of the materials in our surviving manuscript.21 The chronicler John of Tynemouth (active around 1350–63) had already consulted a Norwich manuscript of the Life of William and included excerpts from it in his Sanctilogium Angliae, Walliae, Scotiae et Hiberniae. This work became known more widely from its reworking a century later by John Capgrave (1393–1464), the Augustinian friar of King’s Lynn, Norfolk, as the Nova Legenda Anglie, first printed in 1516.22

  Early copies of the Life and Passion must have existed in Norwich Cathedral Priory for use on William’s feast day, which – as mentioned above – was celebrated by the later thirteenth century on 24 March as a double feast with twelve lessons.23 In August 1272 Norwich Cathedral’s library was destroyed by a fire that damaged the whole cathedral compound, except the Lady chapel. That summer there had been several confrontations between townsmen and those living under the protection of the cathedral, the priory’s men. The Bury chronicle dramatically describes how the monks were driven out of the priory; their servants were tortured and ‘all the valuables in the treasury, vestry and refectory as well as in the other offices of the church and in the cupboards’ were smashed, plundered and burnt.24 Only a handful of manuscripts survived the fire: those kept not in the library but in other parts of the priory.25 Early copies of the Life and Passion must have perished in this manner.

  Library fires were not uncommon and some of the greatest religious institutions in medieval Europe – like Canterbury Cathedral – lost their libraries in this way. In the aftermath of such catastrophes efforts were usually made to replace the lost volumes. Those books most urgently needed for the community’s life were usually copied from what must have been borrowed originals. Indeed, the accounts of Norwich Cathedral record the relevant purchases of parchment and ink and the hiring of scribes.26 Religious institutions relied for more extensive replacement of books upon gifts and bequests. Clearly, the priory acquired a copy of the Life and Passion, and mild interest in William of Norwich is evident in the fifteenth century, when a confraternity of skinners made William its patron.27 At least one manuscript survived up to the time of Leland’s visit in 1534,28 but this is not our manuscript, for it is described as a copy of the Life and Passion alone.

  Our manuscript was clearly created in a Cister
cian house, of which only one existed in East Anglia: Sibton in Suffolk.29 Sibton was founded around 1150 as a daughter of Warden Priory in Bedfordshire by William de Cheney (d. 1174), the brother of John of Chesney, the sheriff described by Thomas as protecting the Jews after William of Norwich’s alleged murder. His brother William inherited the office of sheriff and was designated as John’s executor.30 A later tradition claimed that Sibton came about because John vowed on his deathbed to arrange for a Cistercian abbey to be founded in expiation for ‘the many ill deeds he committed while acting as sheriff, both in times of peace and in times of war’.31

  Sibton was sold to the Duke of Norfolk in 1536, before its dissolution.32 Lord William Howard of Naworth (1563–1640) is the first-known owner of our manuscript; he also possessed Sibton’s cartulary (a book containing copies of charters and deeds), compiled in the later thirteenth century.33 Howard left notes on the margins of some folios in his distinctive hand.34 Educated at Cambridge, he lived with his family in Middlesex and London in the 1580s, when he openly embraced Catholicism. After a period of imprisonment in the Tower of London in 1583 and then again in 1585–6, for Catholic sympathies deemed treasonous, he retired to Naworth Castle in Cumbria. Here he ran his estates, collected books and supported a number of Catholic priests and scholars. He came to own more than 120 medieval manuscripts, some of which had once belonged to monastic libraries.35 Nicholas Roscarrock, a fellow prisoner in the Tower, became a pensioner at Naworth Castle in 1607 and lived there until his death in 1633. Roscarrock included an entry about William of Norwich in the compendium of English saints, which he composed while at Naworth Castle, a manuscript purchased by Cambridge University Library alongside CUL Add. 3037.36

  William of Norwich attracted the attention of William Howard. He was perhaps a poignant inspiration in a period when the Howards faced the constant threat – and occasional reality – of martyrdom. Around 1607 Howard had two beads added to his antique rosary, the Langdale Rosary, made around 1500:37 the bead inscribed ‘St William of Norwich Martyr’ had on its other side Saint Endellion, a Cornish virgin martyr favoured by Roscarrock and his family.38 Several books from Howard’s collection reached the library of Brent Eleigh in Suffolk, a gift of the Suffolk clergyman Fane Edge (d. 1727), whose signature appears on our manuscript. He had received them from his mother, a woman with Howard connections on both sides of her family.39 These are the medieval manuscripts that M. R. James was invited to survey. One of them is our manuscript.