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

by Thomas of Monmouth

  8. Take it, daughter, take it and put it in your bosom: This is an allusion to John 19:15: ‘tolle tolle crucifige eum’; ‘Away with him; away with him; crucify him.’ The word sinus can mean ‘bosom’ or ‘lap’.

  9. suddenly: Thomas frequently emphasizes the suddenness of occurrences in the Life and Passion. Suddenness enhances the sense of wonder in the events recounted; see Steven Justice, ‘Did the Middle Ages Believe in Their Miracles?’, Representations 103 (2008), pp. 1–29; esp. pp. 7–8.

  10. the interpretation of visions: Interpreters of dreams (coniectores) were classified around 1159 by John of Salisbury (c. 1120–80) as operating a type of magic: ‘Coniectores sunt qui artificio quodam sibi uendicant somniorum interpretationem,’ Ioannis Saresberiensis Policraticus I–IV, ed. K. S. B. Keats-Rohan (Turnhout: Brepols, 1993), I, 11–12, pp. 57–61; esp. p. 59. On the reception of classical ideas about dreams in the Middle Ages, see Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). I am extremely grateful to Sophie Page for introducing me to the scholarship on dreams.

  11. twelve years old: The age of twelve (sometimes fourteen for boys) was considered the threshold towards maturity and responsibility; see Shulamith Shahar, Childhood in the Middle Ages, trans. Chaya Galai (London: Routledge, 1990), pp. 23–8. On age descriptions in hagiography and miracles tales, see Didier Lett, L’Enfant des miracles: Enfance et société au Moyen-ge (XIIe–XIIIe siècle) (Paris: Aubier, 1997), pp. 31–9. On stages of the life cycle, see Isabelle Cochelin, ‘Introduction: Pre-Thirteenth-Century Definitions of the Life Cycle’, in Medieval Life Cycles: Continuity and Change, ed. Isabelle Cochelin and Karen Smyth (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), esp. pp. 29–36. Twelve was the age at which Jesus made his pilgrimage to Jerusalem and then was ‘lost’ for three days, during which his parents searched for him anxiously, as described in Luke 2:41–52. This passage fascinated Aelred of Rievaulx (1110–67), who wrote in 1153–7 a devotional treatise in response to the request of Ivo of the Cistercian abbey of Warden in Bedfordshire. On the theme of age, see Denise L. Despres, ‘Adolescence and Sanctity: The Life and Passion of Saint William of Norwich’, Journal of Religion 90 (2010), pp. 33–62; esp. pp. 45–8.

  12. the boy was born to the woman: An echo of Isaiah 9:6: ‘parvulus enim natus est nobis’, ‘For a child is born to us.’

  13. chains … broke into parts: Shackles were broken at the tomb of early medieval saints, as recounted by the highly influential Gregory of Tours in his The History of the Franks, trans. Lewis Thorpe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), VI, 19, p. 215, and VI, 6, p. 334. Jessopp comments on the influence of St Martin’s Life on subsequent medieval hagiography: CUL Add 7481, J62 (8 December 1894).

  14. Haveringland: A village in Norfolk. It is reasonable to assume that Haveringland (or Heverland) was William’s place of birth. Thomas Martin, the eighteenth-century antiquary, described the church’s west window as containing ‘divers ancient panes of historical painting’ related to the life of William (Norfolk Record Office, Rye MS 17, II, fol. 202r). For further description of these images, see Ann Eljenholm Nichols, The Early Art of Norfolk: A Subject List of Extant and Lost Art, Including Items Relevant to Early Drama (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002), p. 236. The parish of Haveringland also possessed a bell inscribed ‘Sancte Willelme martir ora pro nobis’ (Norfolk Record Office, fol. 202v). For a description of the bell, see The East Anglian 7 (1897–8), p. 212.

  15. fast … on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays: Such feats of fasting were not expected of the laity in the Middle Ages, and definitely not of children. I am grateful to Dr Rob Meens for his opinion on penitential fasting.

  16. the art of tanning: Tanning was prominent in most English towns, see John Cherry, ‘Leather’, in English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products, ed. John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 295–318.

  17. surety: Clothes were valuable possessions, commonly pawned against loans. Thomas refers here to the occupation of Jews as moneylenders, which developed in the twelfth century in several English towns, already in Stephen’s reign, and especially in the following decades; see Nick Barratt, ‘Finance and the Economy in the Reign of Henry II’, in Henry II: New Interpretations, ed. Christopher Harper-Bill and Nicholas Vincent (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2007), pp. 242–56; esp. pp. 244–5.

  18. Godwin: Throughout the twelfth century, and beyond, bishops attempted to enforce priestly celibacy, a standard central to Church reform since the eleventh century. The expectation of celibacy applied to those aiming to rise into the major clerical orders, the highest being presbiter, priest. It took a long time for this to become the expected norm. Thomas of Monmouth describes Godwin as being such a priest, though clearly not celibate, indeed, he was father to a son, Alexander, William’s cousin (see below, pp. 27–8); on married priests, see Emma Mason, ‘A Truth Universally Acknowledged’, Studies in Church History 16 (1979), pp. 171–86; at pp. 175–6.

  19. pascha approached in three days: Passover in 1144 began at sundown 20 March and lasted until sundown 27 March.

  20. the cook of William, Archdeacon of Norwich: Norwich Cathedral Priory employed three or four cooks in the thirteenth century and they were well remunerated. They lived with their families in the cathedral precinct and had close knowledge of the institution; see Philip Slavin, Bread and Ale for the Brethren: The Provisioning of Norwich Cathedral Priory, 1260–1536, Studies in Regional and Local History 11 (Hatfield: University of Herefordshire Press, 2012), p. 158, and Roberta Gilchrist, Norwich Cathedral Close: The Evolution of the English Cathedral Landscape (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2005), pp. 14–17. On archdeacons and their roles, see English Episcopal Acta VI, pp. xxxix–xliii. Twelfth-century archdeacons often took the title of their diocese, but by this period those of the Norwich diocese were designated as Norwich, Norfolk, Suffolk and Sudbury. William was Archdeacon of Norwich between 1126–7 and 1148; see John Le Neve, Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicanae 1066–1300, II. Monastic Cathedrals, compiled by Diana E. Greenway (London: Athlone Press, 1971), pp. 62–3.

  21. a maternal instinct: ‘presagis uisceribus’; on the depiction of maternal instinct and parental feeling towards holy children and those cured, see Lett, L’Enfant des miracles, pp. 144–7.

  22. The lamb … the sheep … the wolf: This echoes a fable about a poor priest and a wolf fighting over a sheep in a ditch:

  Hinc stat lupus, hinc presbiter; timent, sed dispariliter,

  Nam ut fidenter arbitror, lupus stabat securior.

  Here stands the wolf, there the priest; they fear, but unequally,

  For, as I judge in good faith, the wolf stood in a safer position.

  See The Cambridge Songs (Carmina Cantabrigiensia), ed. Jan M. Ziolkowski, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 192 (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998), no. 35, couplet 12, pp. 100–113; at pp. 112–13.

  23. thirty pieces of silver: Judas Iscariot’s reward, Matt. 26:14–15: ‘tunc abiit unus de duodecim qui dicitur Iudas Scarioth ad principes sacerdotum et ait illis quid vultis mihi dare et ego vobis eum tradam at illi constituerunt ei triginta argenteos’; ‘Then went one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, to the chief priests, and said to them: What will you give me, and I will deliver him unto you? But they appointed him thirty pieces of silver’; and again, Matt. 27:5: ‘et proiectis argenteis in templo recessit et abiens laqueo se suspendit’, ‘And casting down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed: and went and hanged himself with an halter.’

  24. refused, and swears: The author veers here constantly between past and present tenses.

  25. William was handed over to the traitor: On this scene, see the close reading offered in MacLehose, ‘A Tender Age’, paragraphs 267, 291–3.

  26. lamb led to the slaughter: See Psalm 43:22: ‘aestimati sumus sicut oves occisionis’; ‘we are counted as sheep for the slaughter’; Isaiah 53:7: ‘sicut ovis ad occisionem ducetur, et quasi agnus coram t
ondente se obmutescet, et non aperiet os suum’; ‘he shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter, and shall be dumb as a lamb before his shearer, and he shall not open his mouth’.

  27. their pascha that year: Passover infact began on the evening of 20 March in 1144.

  28. a teasel: ‘Prickly flowerheads of the fuller’s teasel used to raise the nap on the surface of cloth’, The Overseas Trade of London, ed. H. Cobb, London Record Society Publications 27 (London: London Record Society, 1990), p. 187; see also Penelope Walton, ‘Textiles’, in English Medieval Industries: Craftsmen, Techniques, Products, ed. John Blair and Nigel Ramsay (London: Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 319–54; esp. pp. 332, 334. For images, see John H. Munro, ‘Medieval Woollens: Textiles, Textile Technology and Industrial Organization, c. 800–1500’, in The Cambridge History of Western Textiles I, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 181–227; esp. pp. 209–10.

  29. Just as we condemned Christ … inflict on them: There may be an echo here of the liturgy of Improperia (reproaches) for Good Friday, in which Christ remonstrates with His people. It spread in the eleventh century and early twelfth centuries; see Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), pp. 60–61, 104–105, 245.

  30. when we were enquiring carefully into the affair: Some six years later, c. 1150. See the Introduction above, pp. xii–xiii.

  31. wound to his left side: This refers to the wound to Jesus’s left side inflicted by a Roman soldier, according to John 19:34: ‘sed unus militum lancea latus eius aperuit et continuo exivit sanguis et aqua’; ‘But one of the soldiers with a spear opened his side, and immediately there came out blood and water.’

  32. In the margin in Latin: Year since the Incarnation of the Lord MCXLIIII, XI Calends of April, feria IIII, Wednesday.

  33. into a privy: Within the corpus of the miracles of the Virgin Mary, which was codified in England in the twelfth century, there is a story of a Christian boy killed for chanting a Marian hymn while passing through a Jewish neighbourhood. The killer is described as burying the boy in a privy, from which his singing voice continued to be heard. On this tradition, which was eventually reworked by Chaucer in ‘The Prioress’s Tale’, see Roger Dahood, ‘English Historical Narratives of Jewish Child-Murder, Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale, and the Date of Chaucer’s Unknown Source’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (2009), pp. 125–40.

  34. either cleanse the sewers … where they wish: Sewers and cesspits are commonly found in excavations of medieval towns, often situated at boundaries between properties; see John Schofield and Alan Vince, Medieval Towns (London: Continuum, 2nd edn 2003), pp. 82–3, 86–7. Before the thirteenth century cesspits were unlined, or lined with timber, so as to allow for liquid refuse to drain away and other waste to accumulate. During excavations of Norwich Castle, refuse pits were found in houses close to the area of Jewish settlement; see Elizabeth Shepherd Popescu, Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey, 1987–1998. Part I (Norwich: East Anglian Archaeology, 2009), pp. 429–30, 482–4. The clearing of cesspits at the change of tenancy is not widely attested, although it seems sensible enough. Here Eleazar imagines the clearing of the cesspit as a public act through which a Christian tenant might make public disdain of a previous Jewish tenant.

  35. totally eliminated from the realm of England: While mass expulsions from territories of European polities became more common from the later thirteenth century, regional expulsion (due to an ecclesiastical initiative or an outbreak of local animosity) is recorded already in the twelfth century, though not in England; see Robert Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997), pp. 30–31, 107, 118–19.

  36. ritual: Thomas uses the word sacramento (‘sacrament’), but in the twelfth century this was used in a general sense to denote an important rite of the Church, rather than one of the seven sacraments which became more clearly defined by the end of that century; see Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 14–24.

  37. Thorpe Wood: This became part of the patrimony of the bishopric of Norwich, as a gift from Henry I to Bishop Losinga in 1101. Just east of the city, it was used for unofficial grazing by the poor; it also attracted a community of lepers, dedicated to St Mary Magdalene. See Carole Rawcliffe, ‘Sickness and Health’, in Medieval Norwich, ed. Carole Rawcliffe and Richard Wilson (London: Hambledon Press, 2004), pp. 301–24, esp. p. 305, and see map on p. 307. Thorpe Wood later became Mousehold Heath; see Oliver Rackham, The History of the Countryside (London: J. M. Dent, 1986), pp. 299–302, and Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape (London: J. M. Dent, revised edn, 1990), pp. 144–5. For the enduring significance of the Heath, see Andy Wood, ‘Kett’s Rebellion’, in Medieval Norwich, ed. Rawcliffe and Wilson, pp. 277–300, esp. pp. 281, 292–3.

  38. St Mary Magdalene: This leper house was founded by Bishop Losinga; see Carole Rawcliffe, The Hospitals of Medieval Norwich, Studies in East Anglian History 2 (Norwich: Centre of East Anglian Studies, University of East Anglia, 1995), pp. 26, 41–3, 163, and see fig. 2 on p. 45.

  39. St Leonard’s: Also founded by Bishop Losinga, for the accommodation of the monks of Norwich while the cathedral was being constructed in the 1090s, upon episcopal land in Thorpe Wood. It later became a cell of Norwich Cathedral Priory, headed by a prior who was appointed by the bishop; see Victoria County History: Norfolk II (London: Institute of Historical Research, 1906), p. 329. See also Everett U. Crosby, Bishop and Chapter in Twelfth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 178–81.

  40. and indeed recognizing them as Jews: The implication here is that the Jews recognized him.

  41. Jews did not … on that day: By the thirteenth century, ecclesiastical and urban legislation required that Jews refrain from appearing outdoors during Holy Week; see Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), pp. 28–34.

  42. the wood: Woods often appear as sites of violent deeds that remain undetected; see the plan of Kenelm’s sister (as reported by William of Malmesbury) to have her brother killed while he is hunting in deep woods; see William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum: The History of the English Kings I, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors and completed by R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), Book II, ch. 211, pp. 390–93.

  43. John, the sheriff: John de Chesney (de Querceto) occurs as sheriff from 1140 and dies c. 1146; see Judith A. Green, English Sheriffs to 1154 Public Record Office Handbooks 24 (London: HMSO, 1990), p. 61, and H. A. Cronne, The Reign of Stephen, 1135–54: Anarchy in England (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970), pp. 149–50. The office of sheriff passed through the family: John was succeeded by his brother, William; see below, Book Four, note 8, p. 233.

  44. 100 marks: 1 mark was the equivalent of ⅔ lb of silver; 100 marks = 66.66 lb of silver.

  45. to whom … his own functions: The bishop had delegated to Wichemann the treatment of those sins reserved to him. I am grateful to Michael Haren for an illuminating exchange about this section.

  46. and: A gap for his name was left by the scribe.

  47. he set forth to them in order: By the twelfth century confessional secrecy was well established, and is evident in Gratian’s Decretum: ‘Sacerdos ante omnia caveat, ne de his, qui ei confitentur peccata sua, recitet alicui quod ea confessus est; non propinquis, non extraneis, neque, quod absit, pro aliquo scandalo. Nam si hoc fecerit, deponatur, et omnibus diebus vitae suae ignominiosus peregrinando pergat,’ II.33.q.3.c.2. What we have here is a tale not of confession, but of the revelation of a secret by a layman on his deathbed, following a prompt in a dream. Here is a pious death scene, with the priest as a reliable witness, who passed it on to Thomas. I am very grateful here to the insight into this section offered to me very generously by Michael Haren.

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p; 48. a fiery ladder: An echo of Jacob’s ladder, as in Genesis 28:12: ‘viditque in somnis scalam stantem super terram et cacumen illius tangens caelum angelos quoque Dei ascendentes et descendentes per eam’; ‘And he saw in his sleep a ladder standing upon the earth, and the top thereof touching heaven: the angels also of God ascending and descending by it.’

  49. Sprowston … Bishop Everard: Sprowston, a village in Norfolk (and now a suburb of Norwich), was part of the manor held by Sir Richard de Lucy. On Bishop Everard, see English Episcopal Acta VI, pp. xxxi–xxxiii. He retired in 1145 to the Cistercian Abbey of Fontenay in Burgundy, where he supervised the completion of the buildings there; see Kenneth J. Conant, Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800–1200 (Harmondsworth: Pelican, 1974), p. 228. He was buried in a prominent location and his tomb inscription reads ‘Here lies Lord Eborard, Bishop of Norwich, who built this temple’, Eric Fernie, An Architectural History of Norwich Cathedral (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 16, n. 64.

  50. Legarda – the widow of William Apulus: Legarda, an old Frankish name, was common in Poitou in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; William Apulus is not a known person, but Apulus is a name for men from southern Italy, lands ruled by Norman kings; see The Carmen de Hastingae Proelio of Guy Bishop of Amiens, ed. and trans. Frank Barlow (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 16–17. At the time Thomas was writing William Apulus may have been a person who arrived in England through commercial or martial activities. His widow is sufficiently eminent to be called Domina (‘Lady’) Legarda.

  51. that light was seen … the east: Echoing Matthew 2:2: ‘vidimus enim stellam eius in oriente et venimus adorare eum’; ‘For we have seen his star in the east, and are come to adore him.’

  52. pierced: ‘aporiatum’ is a rare usage and can mean ‘astonished’ or ‘perplexed’, as in Isaiah 59:16: ‘et vidit quia non est vir et aporiatus est’; ‘And he saw that there is not a man: and he stood astonished’; or it can mean ‘straitened’, as in 2 Corinthians 4:8 (as a verb): ‘in omnibus tribulationem patimur sed non angustiamur aporiamur sed non destituimur’; ‘In all things we suffer tribulation, but are not distressed; we are straitened, but are not destitute.’ Earlier the body is described as left hanging from a tree (p. 21).