Royal Rage and the Construction of Anglo-Norman Authority, c. 1000-1250

Kate McGrath

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9783030112226
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030112233
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

This book explores how eleventh- and twelfth-century Anglo-Norman ecclesiastical authors attributed anger to kings in the exercise of their duties, and how such attributions related to larger expansions of royal authority. It argues that ecclesiastical writers used their works to legitimize certain displays of royal anger, often resulting in violence, while at the same time deploying a shared emotional language that also allowed them to condemn other types of displays. These texts are particularly concerned about displays of anger in regard to suppressing revolt, ensuring justice, protecting honor, and respecting the status of kingship. In all of these areas, the role of ecclesiastical and lay counsel forms an important limit on the growth and expansion of royal prerogatives.

© The Author(s) 2019

Kate McGrathRoyal Rage and the Construction of Anglo-Norman Authority, c. 1000-1250Palgrave Studies in the History of Emotionshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11223-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Kate McGrath¹

(1)

Department of History, Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT, USA

Kate McGrath

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

During the Norman rebellions led by Robert Curthose (c. 1051–1134) and Robert Bellême (c. 1056–c. 1130) , Orderic Vitalis (1075–c. 1142), an Anglo-Norman chronicler of the monastery of Saint-Évroul, tells us that Bishop Serlo of Sèez (d. 1123) used Easter services to address King Henry I (r. 1100–1135) of England.¹ In front of the other worshipers, Orderic claims that Bishop Serlo began to complain quite publicly and dramatically about all the harm that the rebels were causing his parishioners. Orderic writes, “Sighing long and sadly, he said to the king, who had humbly taken his seat with some of his magnates at the end of the church among the boxes of the peasants, ‘All Christians should mourn in their hearts to see the Church trodden underfoot and the wretched people destroyed. … [I]ndeed, all Normandy, dominated by godless bandits, is without a true ruler.’”² Orderic notes that Bishop Serlo proceeded to describe several specific acts that he thought were particularly egregious, such as the burning of churches and killing of unarmed peasants. In the speech Orderic has constructed for him, he attributes these outrages to Robert Curthose’s lack of effective rule. According to Orderic, he exclaims, “When the ruler is foolish the whole province is in danger and the wretched people suffer utter deprivation.”³ Orderic then ends this scene by having Serlo issue a final, desperate plea. “‘I address them too, my lord king, to your ears,” Serlo said, “so that your spirit may be kindled by the zeal of God to imitate Phineas [Numbers 25:7–8] and Mattathias [Maccabees 2:24] and his sons. Rise up boldly in the name of God … Just king, in this dire distress of your native land, ‘become angry’ [irascere ] to some purpose and as, David, prophet and king, teaches, ‘sin not’ by taking up arms not for lust of earthly power but for the defense of your country.”⁴ By quoting Psalm 4, Orderic confirms the view that humans could get angry without sinning, provided they conformed to models of Biblical anger. He is suggesting that if Henry took action, in this case violent action, to suppress the rebellion that he would be following the model established by the great kings of the Bible, and thereby, demonstrating the righteousness of his rule.⁵ Orderic Vitalis has constructed an elaborate justification for Henry to not only experience anger but also to display his anger in violence. By doing so, Orderic implies that Henry would be restoring royal leadership to Normandy, as Serlo’s speech suggests that Henry’s failure to display his anger would confirm that Normandy currently lacked a true ruler.⁶

This story is just one of many in Anglo-Norman and Northern French historical writings by ecclesiastical authors who represented anger as an essential element in the politics of eleventh- and twelfth-century England and Normandy. Ecclesiastical historians, such as Orderic, Dudo of St. Quentin (c. 960–1026) , William of Jumièges (d. c. 1070) , William of Poitiers (c. 1020–1090) , William of Malmesbury (c. 1095–1143) , and Henry of Huntingdon (c. 1088–1157) , repeatedly explained why conflicts broke out, how they were conducted, and by what means they were ended by reference to the anger of the participants.⁷ In fact, they consistently refer to these episodes in a manner that has the effect of constructing a cycle for the expression of anger in which kings get angry, act out in anger, and then release their anger to make peace. In the story related above, Orderic seems to be offering King Henry broad authority to take military action as part of his exercise of kingship. Such references to anger in medieval stories about conflict are ubiquitous. In surveying Latin and Old French texts, scholars have noted how frequently anger is treated as a motivating force in politics in histories, royal biographies, saints’ lives, episcopal letters, and other kinds of Latin texts, as well as in French epics and romances.⁸ The common attribution of anger to kings in eleventh- and twelfth-century Anglo-Norman texts surely suggests that their authors valued it as an important component in characterizing royal decision-making and royal actions.⁹ Lindsay Diggelman suggests referring to this as “emotional kingship.”¹⁰ Scholars, then, need to understand what role anger rhetoric plays in the construction of models of kingship in these narratives.

This work seeks to understand how eleventh- and twelfth-century Anglo-Norman ecclesiastical authors attributed emotions to kings in the exercise of their duties and how such attributions related to larger expansions of royal authority. It posits that ecclesiastical writers used their works to legitimize certain displays of royal anger, often resulting in violence, while at the same time deploying a shared emotional language that also allowed them to condemn other types of displays. The theological ambivalence toward anger made it a useful tool for ecclesiastics to use to evaluate royal actions. Its classification as one of the so-called Seven Deadly Sins meant that it could be used to condemn blameworthy or excessive behavior; at the same time, its attribution to the saints—and even God—made it possible to also characterize kings as wielders of divine vengeance in other contexts.¹¹ As a result, the examination of how these authors attribute the emotion of anger to royal actions allows us to better understand contemporary ecclesiastical responses to the growth of royal authority and centralization in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.

I argue that attributions of anger were used as important markers in Anglo-Norman historical narratives in order to distinguish between appropriate and inappropriate displays of violence and ultimately the exercise of royal power.¹² Anger was used by ecclesiastical historians to provide greater legitimacy for the exercise of royal prerogatives by labeling their actions as not only just but even often righteous.¹³ At the same time, however, ecclesiastical historians also used it to comment on what they saw as necessary restraints and limits on royal power. I argue that appropriate and inappropriate displays fit a pattern in that these historians consistently mark similar displays as either appropriate or inappropriate, and, therefore, they reveal underlying social norms for honorable royal behavior.¹⁴

Ecclesiastical writers do not discuss royal anger in a political vacuum, as many of the episodes for appropriate or inappropriate anger occur in situations dealing with the contemporary aristocracy. As we see in the example above, Orderic Vitalis has Bishop Serlo demand royal actions against what he sees as the out of control behavior of Robert Curthose and Robert of Bellême. These texts, then, also focus on the appropriate relationships between kings and their nobility. Such attention is, perhaps, not surprising, as royal expansion often came at the expense of aristocratic privileges. What is noteworthy, however, is that in constructing these episodes, ecclesiastical historians provide insight into the relationship between kings and nobles. Moreover, they comment on whether kings are models of the behaviors and sentiments expected of a ruler. Understanding how and why ecclesiastical historians attributed anger to kings, then, allows important insight into the development and contestations of models of kingship in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, as well as into larger discussions of the evolution of norms for aristocratic feuding and warfare.

I should be clear that this study only examines the attribution of anger to kings. Like most aspects of medieval history—and society more broadly—much of the experience and expression of emotions were certainly gendered.¹⁵ While this work will touch on these considerations in the context of specific episodes and examples, the focus, however, is directly on the masculine construction of anger and its call for the appropriate masculine displays of prowess and violence in response. While the construction of queens’ anger is certainly important and needed, it is not in the purview of this analysis. As a result, we will only be looking at the history of the emotions of Anglo-Norman kings.

To that end, I argue that ecclesiastical writers of eleventh- and twelfth-century Anglo-Norman and Northern French historical narratives imputed anger of one kind or another to kings for the purposes of explicitly characterizing and evaluating their conduct and of implicitly commenting on the expansion of royal authority during the period. As Geoffrey White argues, “Emotions glossed as anger frequently encode judgments about violations of person and moral order. In light of these understandings, talk about anger becomes an idiom for moral argumentation: it signals the perception of transgression and the possibility of corrective action.”¹⁶ Though there are many ways in which Orderic’s depiction of the call for anger in the opening passage can be interpreted, I will argue that we should pay attention to both the language and imagery used to represent anger and to the way in which anger encoded customary conventions for social behavior. The ubiquity and consistency of the terminology and rhetoric used to signify anger across this whole body of ecclesiastical texts suggests that we should consider passages that represent anger as not merely descriptive of a given subject’s emotional state or m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. The Ecclesiastical Culture of Anger
• 3. Righteous Royal Rage
• 4. Shameful Royal Rage
• 5. Role of Counsel in Directing Royal Rage
• 6. Epilogue
• Back Matter