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William of Malmesbury's Life and Works1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Dom Hugh Farmer O.S.B.
Dom Hugh Farmer O.S.B.
Affiliation:
Quarr Abbey, Isle of Wight
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Extract

The movement which we call the twelfth century Renaissance included a revival of Latin classics and Roman Law, the rediscovery of much Greek and Arabic science and philosophy, the development of Romanesque architecture into Gothic, and the writing of history of greater quantity and improved quality. John of Salisbury, archbishop Theobald's curial clerk, who died in 1180 as bishop of Chartres, is generally regarded as England's most finished product of this movement, but a generation before him William, monk of Malmesbury, already displayed many of its characteristics. A polymath whose interests included history and hagiography, law and the classics, archeology and architecture, he had however none of John's cosmopolitanism or contact with the great men of his day, he had little acquaintance with science or philosophy and contributed nothing to the development of theology. A monk all his life, he was representative of the scholarly Benedìctine researcher (he was almost halfway in time between St. Bede and Mabillon), but he was also outstanding because he had the genius and the wide range of interests which were shared by few.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , April 1962 , pp. 39 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1962

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References

page 39 note 2 Cf. Haskins, C., The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, Harvard 1927, passimGoogle Scholar and Southern, R. W. ‘The place of England in the Twelfth Century Renaissance’, in History, xlv (1960), 201–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 40 note 1 The principal study of William is W. Stubbs's introduction to the Gesta Regum (RS.), 1887–9. James's, M. R.Two Ancient English Scholars, Glasgow 1931Google Scholar, adds useful information about William's work on the classics. Ker's, N. R. study ‘The handwriting of William of Malmesbury’ in EHR. (1944), 371–6Google Scholar, corrects the work of previous scholars in this field; since it was published, two more of William's autographs have been discovered: Oriel College Oxford MS. 42 by Dr. L. Minio-Paluello (entirely in William's hand), and Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 330, i by Mr. T. A. M. Bishop. Professor R. A. B. Mynors has explored the MSS. and various recensions of the Gesta Regum anew. All these scholars have generously shared their discoveries with the present writer.

page 40 note 2 The principal sources for the history of Malmesbury are William's Gesta Pontificum, bk. v (ed. N. E. S. A. Hamilton, RS., 1870) and the Registrum Malmesberiense (RS., 1879–80). See also Dom A. Watkin's excellent article in VCH: Wiltshire, iii (1956), 210–31.

page 41 note 1 Gesta Pontificum, 431–2.

page 42 note 1 Gesta Regum, prologue to bk. ii.

page 42 note 2 Stubbs lists the following classical authors cited: Horace, Virgil, Plautus, Persius, Juvenal, Terence, Lucan, Ovid, Plato, the two Senecas, Caesar, Suetonius, Livy, Pliny and Josephus. Cicero is cited only once or twice. Ecclesiastical writers included St. Jerome, Paschasius Radbertus, Isidore and Peter Damian, and foreign historians Jordanes, Sidonius Apollinaris, Marianus Scotus, Hariulf of Centoul, Fulbert of Chartres, William of Jumièges, Fulcher of Chartres, etc. (xxi–ii).

page 42 note 3 In the earliest redaction of the Gesta Regum the first sentence printed on p. 2 of Stubbs's edition reads: Ita pretermissis a tempore Bede ducentis et uiginti et quatuor annis, quos iste nulla memoria dignatus est, absque litterarum patrocinio claudicat cursus annorum in medio; unde michi, tum propter patrie caritatem, tum propter Matildis regine et fratrum ecclesie nostre adhortantium auctoritatem, cure fuit interruptam temporum sarcire, et exarata barbarice Romano sale condire etc. Queen Matilda died in 1118.

page 42 note 4 ‘Sec hec quomodocumque se habeant, illud reuera constat quod, sicut in cartis eiusdem ecclesie legi, rex Ethelstanus ecclesiam Miclaniensem sancto Petro excelsiorem fecit, multis redditibus habitatores consolatus.’ This passage of a number of MSS. of the ‘B’ recension belongs to the Gesta Regum, i. 156.

page 43 note 1 Gesta Regum, prologue to bk. i.

page 43 note 2 William often paraphrases or quotes from his sources; he seldom transcribes them: cf. Galbraith, V. H., Historical Research in Medieval England (1951), 15Google Scholar. Thus he could write (Gesta Regum, i. 82): ‘I have inserted in my narrative portions of this letter (i.e. of St. Boniface), partly in the words of the author, partly in my own, shortening the sentences as seemed proper. For this I shall be easily excused because there is need for brevity for those who are eager to resume the thread of history’. There are also disconcerting variants between his text of the Canterbury forgeries and the ‘official’ Canterbury version. The same could be said of his copy of the letters of St. Anselm. The legendary elements in the Gesta Regum give William some claim to be considered as a precursor of the historical novelist.

page 43 note 3 Cf. Gervase of Canterbury (R.S.), i. 87.

page 43 note 4 There are about thirty-five surviving MSS. of the Gesta Regum and twenty of all or part of the Gesta Pontificum, some of them of workmanship of splendid quality. Both works were first printed by Savile in 1596. For the great influence of the Gesta Regum in the Middle Ages, see Stubbs, op. cit., i. xci–xciii.

page 44 note 1 This identification is accepted as certain by Madan, Stubbs, Hamilton and N. R. Ker. The hand is the same as that of the verses of Lambeth Palace MS. 224 (mentioned below), which are self-explanatory, and with that of part of MS. Arch. Selden B. 16 (Roman History and Law) in the Bodleian Library. William's somewhat spiky hand exhibits certain peculiarities such as accents on the prepositions a and e, contractions often placed too far back and the use of π as a signe de renvoi, which, when all found together, make identification all but certain.

page 45 note 1 E.g., 20–1, 175, 186, 254, 277, 437. Some of these passages describe his intention to write a collection of lives of English saints, which do not seem to have survived. His lives of the Glastonbury saints (except St. Dunstan) are slight, his best hagiography is the life of St. Wulstan (ed. R. R. Darlington, 1928), based on the Anglo-Saxon life by Coleman and composed by William towards the end of his life. This and the relation to John of Worcester are evidence of his strong connexion with Worcester, strengthened by the presence in William's computistical MS. of Robert of Hereford's excerpts from Marianus Scotus, which links well with William's keen interest in chronology. For his connexion with Glastonbury, see J. A. Robinson, Somerset Historical Essays (1921).

page 46 note 1 These passages are taken from the Gesta Pontificum, xv, xvi and 289.

page 47 note 1 Also given to Balliol by Gray was a MS. containing William's text of the rare Tertullian and Lactantius, the former of which may have been the basis of the Basle edition of 1598.

page 47 note 2 Cited by Haskins, op. cit., 96.

page 48 note 1 Translated by M. R. James, op. cit., 22.

page 49 note 1 Translated by M. R. James, op. cit., 26–7.

page 49 note 2 CCC Cambridge, MS. 330, i.

page 49 note 3 Oriel College Oxford, MS. 42, fol. 2 (in margin).

page 51 note 1 Bodley MS. 868, fol. 1. This passage was printed by Stubbs, op. cit., i. cxxi. A study of this work by the present writer is in preparation.

page 51 note 2 The royal palace at Woodstock, whose ruins Vanburgh tried unsuccessfully to preserve, was on the site of the present tall monument.

page 51 note 3 These are found respectively in Cambridge University Library MS. Ii.3.20 and Merton College Oxford MS. 181.

page 51 note 4 I am indebted to Mr. P. N. Carter for the use of his thesis.

page 52 note 1 Cited by R. W. Hunt from De connubio patriarche Iacob in ‘English learning in the twelfth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, xix (1936), 31–2.Google Scholar

page 52 note 2 Historia Novella, § 481.

page 53 note 1 Cf. R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (1958), reviewed by the present writer in Dublin Review (1959), 83–7.