Social Memory in Late Medieval England

Village Life and Proofs of Age

Joel T. Rosenthal

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319696997
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319697000
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Medieval History
• Index: Literature

This concise and unique volume explores the vital relationship between testimony, memory, and the community in medieval society. Joel T. Rosenthal assembles various categories of testimonies to illuminate how "ordinary" Late Medieval people saw themselves as units of their community, their awareness of the issues surrounding the theater of birth, their interest in the world of and beyond the village, and what aspects of the ubiquitous mother Church were worth recalling. Supported by primary sources and by modern scholarly focus on such issues as social memory, village life, rumor and gossip, and demography, this book provides both a wealth of source material and insightful discussion on how historians can chart the role of memory and community in its shaping of medieval identity and society.

© The Author(s) 2018

Joel T. RosenthalSocial Memory in Late Medieval EnglandThe New Middle Ageshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69700-0_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Joel T. Rosenthal¹ 

(1)

Department of History, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, USA

 

Abstract

The Proof of Age was a document produced at a hearing held by the escheator to determine whether the heir to property held in chief had reached legal age. The substance of the proceeding was the collection of 12 memories from men of the village telling how or why they remembered the date of the heir’s birth and baptism 21 years ago (or 14, or 16, for heiresses). These memories open a window on the events of daily life: seeing the baptism, burying a relative, buying a horse, telling of a great windstorm, and more of such memories. Whether all the memories were based on “what really happened” or were formulaic responses, has been debated. But regardless, they were all deemed sufficient and in their large numbers they shed light on the ordinary life of ordinary men (and what these men learned from “their” women).

Keywords

Social memoryOrality

End Abstract

Historians often use the metaphor of weaving a tapestry, or perhaps it is painting a mural. In these essays my goal is to create a mosaic, arranging thousands of small tesserae—mostly coming to us in the form of “one liners” of memory—so we can step back and admire a coherent picture of ordinary life, mostly at the village level, in late medieval England. The small units we have at hand to work with are the memories—the social memories as offered by the 12 jurors at a Proof of Age proceeding—as we chart them across 75 years of life, death, and memory.

The literature on social memory is vast—far beyond the scope of this small volume to do more than to touch in passing—but what I offer below is based on the idea that what people claimed they remembered from around the time the heir was born and baptized—whether the memory given was “true” or fabricated for the occasion—reveals which events, interactions, life milestones, and personal affairs were pulled out as the critical mnemonic. Which memory to offer? Today, were we asked to peg an event, such as a birth or a marriage or a death, against some point in the 1990s, what would we choose to tie an individualized or personal memory to the central event, such as a baptism? The coincidence of the personal, the social, or sometimes the external, with that baptism (or whatever we are trying to pin down) would be our guide; socially credible, probably known to our peers, fitting into the context of community and local culture. Going back 21 years we would have to take into account the vagaries of time and the crowding of events, the uncertainties of personal recollection, and sometimes at least the need to choose. But against the currents of erosion and fading colors, there was, in the late medieval world of orality and the networking of friends and neighbors in the life of village or local community, a process of recovery, usually resting on the most prosaic of events and giving us a glimpse into the sort of experiences that held their own in men’s memories over the years.

Proofs of Age are fascinating documents and most of the memories they relate can be organized around some common themes. Their strengths and weaknesses will be explored, along with insights they provide into both the conventional and the unusual: familiar and oft-repeated recollections of births in the juror’s family or of falls and broken shins as against the memory of an earthquake or a miracle cure. The format of this series does not allow for a full bibliographical exposition of all that has been said about the Proofs, nor about social memory and orality. The brief references we offer here are merely a starting point into these complicated and intriguing issues.¹ But we work from the premise that all of the thousands of memories we have were offered in the presence of the juror’s peers, often, in fact, coming in the form of a joint memory from a number of the men. Credibility in the context of village life and memory was always on the table, whether the events being recalled “really” happened or not. Accordingly, to some extent building our mosaic on these memories rests on an act of faith. But against any issues of veracity (let alone of probability) we must keep in mind that whatever memory was offered, it was always accepted as a sufficient; no juror was ever questioned beyond the formulaic “how do you remember,” let alone being contradicted or rebutted. One spoke before one’s peers, and in doing so, when the Proofs are put together and we focus on their sameness and the common themes that link so many of them, we have our mosaic with its splashes and patches of the colors from which life is constructed. Memories of birth, death, marriage, accidents, a pilgrimage to Canterbury, fires and floods, and more of these ordinary events are the bread-and-butter of life. As these memories are offered by men who have no other port of entry into the historical record, we can express our appreciation for what they recounted in their fleeting moment on center stage.

Footnotes

1

For the Proofs, these references cover some of the basic treatments and the attached notes and bibliographies are a gateway to the whole question of the Proofs as a primary source: Sue Sheridan Walker, “Proof of Age of Heirs in Medieval England,” Mediaeval Studies 35 (1973), 306–23: Joel T. Rosenthal, Telling Tales: Sources and Narration in Late Medieval England (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2003), 1–62, 161–79: J. Bedell, “Memory and Proof of Age in England 1272–1327,” Past and Present 162 (1999), 3–27: Matthew Holford, “‘Testimony (to some extent fictitious)’: Proofs of Age in the first half of the fifteenth century,” Historical Research (2008), 1–25: W. D. Deller, “The Texture of Literacy in the Memories of Late Medieval Proof-of-Age Jurors,” Journal of Medieval History 38/2 (2012), 1–15: W. S. Deller, “Proofs of Age 1246 to 1430: their Nature, Veracity and Use as Sources,” in The Later Medieval Inquisitions Post Mortem: Mapping the Medieval Countryside and Rural Society, ed. Michael Hicks (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2016), 136–60. The literature on social memory and orality and literacy is so extensive that a reference to a few basic (or classic) items has to suffice: M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd ed., 1993): James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Social Memory (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). There is a special issue on oral history, memory, and the written tradition: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th series, 9 (1999).

 

© The Author(s) 2018

Joel T. RosenthalSocial Memory in Late Medieval EnglandThe New Middle Ageshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69700-0_2

Begin Abstract

2. Proofs of Age: The What and the Why

Joel T. Rosenthal¹

(1)

Department of History, Stony Brook University, Stony Brook, New York, USA

Abstract

The Proof of Age proceeding really began when the heir petitioned that he or she was now of age. The guardians were “warned” of the impending hearing and the 12 men of the village, diligently questioned about their memory, told why they knew the heir had been baptized 21 years ago. The memories are noteworthy for the weight they place on acts of writing that set the date, for an attention to details and specific information, and to the exclusion of the direct voices or memories of women. Jurors often joined in a common memory and, since they opened with a self-stated age, we get a cross section of the middle-aged and elderly men who would have represented the lore and social memory of the village.

Keywords

AgeComing of ageJuriesLiteracy and memoryEscheator

End Abstract

A Proof of Age proceeding was a common, routinized, and pro forma exercise, presided over by the escheator of the county and designed to elicit a set of memories used to establish the age of an heir or heiress.¹ For us, these memories open a window on aspects of ordinary and everyday life in late medieval England. The purpose of the Proof was to determine whether the heir to an estate held in chief (or by knight service) had now come of legal age and was therefore entitled to claim his or her property. A Proof, both as a process and then as the record of that process, was composed of or compiled from 12 supportive memories, offered by the 12 men of the village summoned for the occasion and now harking back to how or why they remembered the critical date of the heir’s birth and/or baptism —some 21 or 16 or 14 ye...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Proofs of Age: The What and the Why
• 3. The Theater of Baptism
• 4. Life in the Village: Good News and Bad
• 5. More Scenes from Village Life
• 6. Life Beyond the Village
• 7. Memory Is a Strange Country
• Backmatter