Charles Homer Haskins (1870–1937) bequeathed to Medieval Studies one of its pivotal concepts: that of the twelfth-century Renaissance.¹ Since its publication in 1927, his book bearing this title has inspired numerous studies, which confirm this as a well-founded idea.² Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1155) is one of the most characteristic writers of the decisive renewal of western literature from 1100 to 1200, a renewal to which Haskins was the first to draw attention.³ Indeed, Geoffrey is the most widely circulated historian of the Middle Ages: hisHistory of the Kings of Britain(1136–8) exists in 217 medieval manuscripts,...

MS Latin 173 of the Reginensis collection of the Vatican Library is a small (152 x 106mm) compilation of ninety-six folios containing three groups of texts in hands of the late eleventh and twelfth century.¹ Mostly it consists of narratives pertaining to the monastery of St Michael of La Chiusa, a community of Benedictine monks living in the alpine passes north of Turin. The first quire, however, is a narrative fragment that begins ‘Ego Fulco, comes Andegavensis’. Thisincipitclause and the narrative that follows allege that the text was written by Fulk IV le Réchin, count of Anjou (1067...

In hisHistoria novorum, Eadmer narrates Canterbury’s failure to assert primacy over York before the royal court in 1120.¹ Immediately following this episode, he describes the discovery of important documents by the monks of Christ Church after a diligent search of ‘the hidden places of ancient cupboards and ancient Gospel books, which had been looked on only as ornaments in the house of God’.² Eadmer then inserts copies of ten papal bulls into his history. As we now know, these documents were forgeries. But nonetheless they were presented before the papal curia in 1123 and, according to Hugh the Chanter...

One of the immediate consequences of Pope Gregory’s successful mission to Kent toward the end of the sixth century was the preparation of a code by King Æthelberht cataloguing the appropriate compensations for various wrongs.¹ The laconic style in which the bulk of its provisions was composed may show the text’s indebtedness to earlier Frankish legislation, something almost to be expected given the pronounced Frankish role in the conversion of Kent.² The exact character of Æthelberht’s borrowings from Continental legislation is, however, likely to remain enigmatic; indeed, what seem to be borrowings may simply be evidence for a shared legal...

Hospitality has played an integral role in society throughout the ages and across cultures, and it remains an important part of everyday life.¹ Its importance in the twelfth century was bound up with and reflected by a growing preoccupation with conduct as well as an increasing concern with reputation and rank and, accordingly, of the public forum. There was a great self-awareness of how one was seen, how words, actions and gestures were evaluated, and how this might affect standing.² Indeed, it was for this very reason that the twelfth-century satirist and archdeacon of Oxford, Walter Map, found himself lumbered...

Many interpreters of theHistoria regum Britanniehave seen in its invention of a glorious British royal past a work of ethnic or national partisanship, a brief for Welsh (or Breton or Cornish) collective pride.¹ This is a reasonable account, and remains dominant in discussions of Geoffrey’sHistoria. And yet there are moments in which the narrative’s inflections ofgensidentity quite exceed simple ethnic partisanship.² Pure, bounded ethnic or national essences are not entirely what theHistoriais about. Via postcolonial and cultural studies, scholars have uncovered a certain ambivalence in the text’s deployment of collective identities.³ Of particular...

In a recent book, Hugh Thomas has examined the process of ‘assimilation’ between the Normans and the English during the century and a half following the Norman Conquest.¹ We certainly agree with Thomas’s long-term description of the assimilation process, but disagree with his assessment of the initial base from which this assimilation took place. Indeed, as Thomas put it:

… the brutality of the conquest furthered the cause of ethnic harmony and assimilation in the long run, even as it poisoned relations in the short term. Because William so thoroughly and successfully obliterated his opposition, and inspired such terror, the...

When Henry II reformed the English coinage in 1154 and again in 1180 he must have been conscious of providing England with a stable currency that would replace the extremely varied coins that had been circulating through the two decades of the civil wars.¹ In fact, Henry’s new sterling coinage was considerably more stable than that of his Anglo-Saxon and Norman predecessors, whose issues changed periodically in design and sometimes even in weight standard and silver fineness as well. What Henry could not have known, however, was that his new coinage was to provide a stable monetary medium well beyond...

Charles Homer Haskins wrote about the Normans in Sicily as elegantly and insightfully as anyone before or since. InThe Normans in European Historyhe expressed his admiration for King Roger II (1130–54):

It is not too much to call the kingdom of Roger and his successors the first modern state, just as Roger’s non-feudal policy, far-sightedness and diplomatic skill have sometimes won for him the title of the first modern king.¹

Haskins may have admired Emperor Frederick II even more but argued that many of Frederick’s virtues had their origins in Roger’s cosmopolitan Palermo.² ‘Nowhere else’, he observed,...