Month: March 2020

Review of “Life of St. Edward the Confessor” by Aelred of Rievaulx

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Hagiography is defined simply as the life of a saint. Though today more often used pejoratively to describe overly idealized accounts of people’s lives, it still serves as a label for the genre of books that arose during the early Christian era about pious men and women produced to provide moral and spiritual examples for their audience. Never having read hagiography before, Aelred of Rievaulx’s Life of Saint Edward was my introduction to the form, and I knew it would prove interesting reading for this reason if for no other. But it proved even more fascinating for the contrast it provided with other accounts of his life, both for what it featured and how it portrayed the major figures in his life.

Aelred’s account of Edward’s life rests heavily on the Vita Eadwardi regis, which Aelred rewrote so as to emphasize the Christian elements of Edward’s life. Throughout the book he recounts several visions and cures involving Edward (both during the king’s life and after his death) and makes repeated assertions of Edward’s inherent goodness, to the point where his subject comes across as something of a holy fool. Nowhere is this better demonstrated then in the famous anecdote about Edward’s reaction to the thief who was stealing his treasure, in which the king declared “He has more need of it than we do.” Such a statement may underscore the personality one might expect a saint to possess, but it certainly flies in the face of the Edward that Barlow describes in his book.

Given Edward’s saintliness and his chaste marriage to a dignified woman, the problem arises for Aelred as to who to blame for the less than saintly aspects of his reign. Here the Godwins come to the rescue, serving as the villains of Aelred’s narrative. Earl Godwin is the most prominent of the foils, suffering what Aelred deems a “miserable” death for his sins. While Godwin’s son Harold fares a little better, Aelred follows the Norman portrayal of him as a usurper, with even the credit for his victory over Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge diminished by Edward’s promise of victory to an abbot in a vision prior to the battle. Even after his death, it seems, Edward proved himself to be a better king than his successor.

While it may be unfair to judge Aelred’s book by modern standards, in the end it shouldn’t serve as anyone’s basis for understanding Edward as a person or his policies as king. As Jerome Barton, the book’s translator, acknowledges, its main value today is primarily as a historical source about later medieval devotion. Nevertheless, for anyone interested in learning how people in the later Middle Ages saw Edward it’s an invaluable work, one that as a true hagiography is unique among biographies of British monarchs.

Review of “The Life of King Edward Who Rests at Westminster,” by Anon.

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When Frank Barlow published his biography of Edward the Confessor in 1970, it was not his first contribution to studies of the king, Six years earlier, he published a translation of a much older Latin work, Vita Eadwardi regis qui apud Westmonasterium requiescut, or The Life of King Edward, who rests at Westminster. Written in the early 12th century, it is attributed to “an anonymous monk of Saint-Bertin” whose identity is unknown to us today. Though the text was likely revised and portions of it are missing, it offers nonetheless a rare near-contemporaneous account of Edward’s life and reign.

Yet Barlow does more than simply provide a translation of the work. In a substantial introduction taking up nearly half of the book, he summarizes Edward’s life, recounts the history of the Vita Eadwardi, situates it within contemporary literary traditions, and considers the evidence for the two monks, Goscelin and Folcard, whom he regards as the most likely candidates as the anonymous author. It is scholarly work of the highest order, and it does an excellent job of giving the reader a context in which to understand the Vita Eadwardi and the circumstances in which it was written. He supplements this with four appendices which detail the textual relationship between the Vita Eadwardi and two other contemporary historical works, subsequent interpretations of Edward’s Prophecy of the Great Tree, a biography of Goscelin and list of his works, and a history of the cult of Edward that anticipates his later work on it for his biography of the king

Sandwiched between these two sections is the text of the Vita Eadwardi itself, which Barlow divides into two parts, designated as books i and ii. The first book is the more straightforwardly historical account of the two of them, and presents a number of different episodes from Edward’s life. The Godwins feature prominently in them, which Barlow notes reflects the patronage of Queen Edith – to whom the work is dedicated – and suggests some of the original intentions of the book when it was first commissioned. The second book is an account of Edward’s religious life, and includes accounts of the miraculous cures attributed to Edward as king, as well as a pair of visions he had. The text itself is in both Latin and in English, with the Latin on the left-hand page and Barlow’s English translation on the right, which adds to the value of the book and provides Latin-proficient readers with a handy means of checking Barlow’s tradition with the original text.

All of this makes Barlow’s work an indispensable resource for anyone studying Edward’s life, especially for those seeking to understand how he was viewed by his contemporaries. The impressive part is that Barlow even makes the Vita Eadwardi work as a biography for a modern reader who picks it up without any real background knowledge about Edward or his times. It really is a remarkable effort, and while people today may prefer a more up-to-date work in terms of interpretation and accessibility, it can definitely be recommended for someone seeking something a little different from the norm for English royal biography.

Review of “Edward the Confessor” by Frank Barlow

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Frank Barlow was one of the most distinguished medievalists of his era. A prolific author, he wrote and translated over a dozen other books, including biographies of William Rufus and Thomas Becket and an anonymous account of Edward the Confessor’s life originally written in the early 12th century. Over the course of his career he was elected to both the British Academy and the Royal Society of Literature, and he capped it all off by being appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his work as a historian. Reading his biography of Edward, it’s easy to see how he earned his accolades. Not only is it among the best books that I have read so far for this project, it’s one of the best historical biographies I have ever read, period.

After beginning his book by describing the world into which Edward was born, Barlow takes his readers through Edward’s early years abroad, through the circumstances that led to his ascension to the throne in 1042, to his twenty-four year reign as king. Throughout the book Barlow is careful not to go beyond the evidence, and he is candid about the gaps in what we know about Edward’s life. But he makes the best use of the available sources (which are more extensive than they are for most of Edward’s predecessors) to explain Edward’s achievements as king, particularly in his management of the Godwin family and the challenges they posed during the first decade of his reign.

What makes Barlow’s book stand out from the others that I’ve read, though, is his ability to use his materials to bring his subject to life in his narrative. Barlow gives his reader a real sense of Edward’s personality, one that penetrates through the hagiography and the misconceptions it generated to show him for the ordinary person that he was. While giving Edward due credit for his achievements as king, in the end he concludes that he was a mediocrity lacking in distinction beyond surviving on the throne.

How this mediocrity became a saint is the subject of the penultimate chapter of the book. In it Barlow identifies the intermittent development of Edward’s saintly reputation in the decades after his death and notes the agendas of the people who cultivated that image opportunistically into a figure worthy of canonization. How they achieved it makes for an account of religious politics that benefits enormously from Barlow’s matter-of-fact retelling of how it happened.

The result is a sober, evenhanded account that brushes past the image of the saintly king to show how Edward reclaimed the crown and survived nearly a quarter-century on the throne. In some respects reading it first may be unfair to the other Edward biographies awaiting me, as thanks to its measured analysis and clear judgments this will be a very difficult book to match in terms of quality, much less surpass.

On to Edward the Confessor!

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Edward the Confessor, from an early 13th c. image

Edward the Confessor had a circuitous path to the English throne. The eldest son of Æthelred the Unready by his second wife Emma, he was twice forced into exile as a boy by the Scandinavian conquest of England. After a quarter of a century on the Continent, he was invited to return by the childless Harthacnut, whom Edward succeeded on the throne upon Harthacnut’s death in 1042. Though Edward spent over two decades on the throne, his rule became notable only in retrospect, as he was the last king of the House of Wessex and, nearly a century later, canonized by the Catholic Church as a saint, the only English king ever to enjoy such treatment.

For such a historic king, I expected there to be more biographies of him than is the case. Yet the options are disappointingly few. I will start with Frank Barlow’s biography of Edward for the English Monarchs series. Judging from other sources, it seems to be the standard work on Edward’s life, though if that is because of its quality or because the lack of new material on his life remains to be seen.

After that I’m going to try something different by reading two near-contemporary biographies of Edward. The first of these is the anonymous Vita Ædwardi Regis, or Life of King Edward. Written around 1100, it is easily the oldest biography of a monarch that I am evaluating for this site, and I’m especially interested to see how royal biographies were written nearly a millennia ago. After that I will read Aelred of Rievaulx’s The Life of Saint Edward, King and Confessor, which was written after Edward’s canonization and is the only literal example of a hagiography that I will read for this project. That fact alone has me looking forward to it with interest.

The last of the four biographies of Edward that I will read is Peter Rex’s 2008 book King & Saint: The Life of Edward the Confessor. I hoped that I would also have James’s Campbell’s biography of Edward for the Penguin Monarchs series as an option, but from what I can gather it seems that Campbell passed away before completing the manuscript. Because of this Rex’s book represents the most modern take on Edward’s life, and if it’s anything like Rex’s biography of Edward it should be a highly accessible work.

Review of “Harthacnut: the Last Danish King of England” by Ian Howard

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Harthacnut is among the more unjustly forgotten kings in English history. The younger son of Cnut the Great, he succeeded his father as king of Denmark upon Cnut’s death in 1035. While also due some portion of the English throne, events in Denmark prevented him from traveling there, allowing his half-brother Harold (known as Harold Harefoot) to take control over England, which he ruled from 1037 until his death in 1040. With Harold’s death Harthacnut asserted his claim over England, arriving with what amounted to an occupation force of Danes. Yet Harthacnut’s reign was brief, as he died just two years later while drinking a toast to a bride at a wedding.

Harthacnut’s brief but eventful reign is the stuff from which novels are written, yet to date only Ian Howard has undertaken a biography of him. Howard brings an unusual background to the project, as he became a scholar of 11th century Anglo-Danish history after retiring from a successful career in business. In this respect he reminded me of Peter Rex, another author of royal biographies who turned to writing books about the late Anglo-Saxon era only after a career spent on other concerns.

The similarity between the two men extends to the challenge they faced in writing their respective biographies, in terms of a relative lack of material from which to construct an account of their subject’s life and reign. Whereas Rex faced this challenge because of the years of peace enjoyed by Edgar, for Howard it’s one born in large part of the brevity of Harthacnut’s reign. For all of its excitement, Harthacnut simply didn’t have the time enjoyed by his father to leave much of a documented imprint.

An additional factor undoubtedly played a role as well, as Harthacnut was more of a Danish king than an English one. Howard makes this point subtly throughout his book, showing how the young prince spent more time in Denmark than in England and detailing how the recurring challenges he faced there as king forced him to postpone his plans to go to England be crowned until the temptation to assume the throne became too much for Harold Harefoot to resist. This he covers mainly through English-language materials, raising the question of whether a more complete account of Harefoot’s life would have been possible had Howard employed Danish sources to the extent that some of Cnut’s biographers did. While it’s doubtful it would be as useful for understanding Harthacnut’s rule over England, it would help in many ways to get a fuller understanding of him as a king.

One of the ways Howard fills this gap in his coverage created by Harthacnut’s absence from England is by detailing the events of the drawn-out succession crisis following Cnut’s death in 1035. Here he gives particular attention to Emma’s activities as queen mother, featuring her in a way that the biographers of her husbands Æthelred and Cnut did not. It was surprising to discover how central she was to the politics of the period given the background role she generally played in the previous works I had read about the monarchs of the period. It definitely piqued my interest in her, and I plan on following up at some point with a biography focused on her rather than on one of her husbands or her sons.

Yet Howard’s coverage of Emma only highlights just how little there is for the biographer to say about Harthacnut’s time as England’s ruler. His labors in this respect are commendable, as they give us the sort of biographical effort all too often lacking for monarchs of the Anglo-Saxon era. Hopefully it is one that can inspire further works, particularly about his rule in Denmark and the broader insights that it can offer about Harthacnut as a king. Until then, though, Howard’s useful but somewhat limited study stands alone for anyone searching for a book about this underexamined monarch.