The Importance of Being Ambiguous: Innuendo and Legerdemain in William of Malmesbury’s Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum Anglorum

Summary

One of the qualities that make William of Malmesbury’s twined histories Gesta regum and Gesta pontificum Anglorum so absorbing, but one that also bedevils the efforts of historians to make use of their contents, is their studied ambiguity. These works are full of paradoxes – full of sudden shifts of perspective and dramatic changes of direction. There are many passages where the author sets out contrasting positions without committing himself to either side. Consider, for instance, his comments about the effects of King William I’s almsgiving, one of the most quoted passages in the Gesta regum. He begins with praise:

Thus, the monastic flock increased in his time on both sides [of the Channel], and monasteries surged forward, old in religion but new in buildings.

But then he continues by reporting reservations expressed by others:

Yet here I should consider the dissent (mussitatio) of those who said that it would have been better to conserve the ancient [houses] in their former state than to build new ones from robbery, the old having been half-mutilated.

Thomson and Winterbottom translate mussitatio as ‘grumbles’, a word whose connotations imply that William meant to criticize the ‘murmuring’ – that he saw the dissenters as mean-spirited and backward; but it is far from clear that William is on the side of the builders. There are, to be sure, passages where he celebrates the achievements of the Normans in architecture and religion, but there is invariably a word or a detail which undercuts that praise. Consider, for example, another much-quoted passage from book three of Gesta regum:

The standard of religion, dead everywhere in England, has been revived by the arrival [of the Normans]: you may see everywhere that churches in villages and monasteries in towns and cities arise in a new style of building – you may see the homeland blossom with newly devised rituals – such that whoever has wealth reckons that a day is wasted for himself which is not made famous by some outstanding magnificence.

Religionis normam, usquequaque in Anglia emortuam, aduentu suo suscitarunt; uideas ubique in uillis aecclesias, in uicis et urbibus monasteria nouo edificandi genere consurgere, recenti ritu patriam florere, ita ut sibi perisse diem quisque opulentus exis-timet quem non aliqua preclara magnificentia illustret.