Abstract
We have seen how the size of a public mattered, as did the location in which it gathered. But how was this public addressed? Answering this question brings us to the core of the differing traditions of English and German historical scholarship. Among historians of Angevin and Plantagenet England, greater emphasis is commonly placed on the tools and mechanisms of royal administration, and relatively little attention has been paid to how these formed part of a process of political communication. In the context of rebellions, for instance, the primary focus has been on nature and the importance of financial and bureaucratic reform to rebels.1 In Germany, by contrast, scholarship has increasingly focused on what Gerd Althoff has termed ‘symbolic forms of communication’,2 that is, on ideas, concepts and claims conveyed largely through gestures, ceremonies and rituals,3 rather than (though not necessarily to the complete exclusion of) the spoken or written word. This has served to exacerbate and deepen a perceived gulf between German and English politics: the one administrative—bureaucratic,4 the other concerned with issues of honour and ritual.5
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Notes
Althoff, Spielregeln der Politik; ‘Zur Bedeutung symbolischer Kommunikation fur das Verständnis des Mittelalters’, FrilhmittelalterlicheStudien 31 (1997), 370— 89. Formen und Funktionen, ed. Althoff; Zeichen, Rituale, Werte, ed. Althoff.
Some of the most important titles are: K.J. Leyser, Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society. Ottonian Saxony (Oxford, 1979); ‘Ritual, Zeremonie und Gestik: das ottonische Reich’, Frithmittelalterliche Studien 27 (1993), 1–26; Althoff, Spielregeln; P. Buc, The Dangers of Ritual (Princeton, 2001); ‘Political rituals and political imagination in the medieval West from the fourth century to the eleventh’, The Medieval World, ed. Linehan and Nelson, 432–50; ‘Rituel politique et imaginaire politique au haut Moyen Age’, Revue Historique 306 (2002), 843–83; G. Koziol, BeggingPardon and Favour. Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca, 1992); Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, ed. D. Cannadine and S. Price (Cambridge, 1987); H.-J. Berbig, ‘Zur rechtlichen Relevanz von Ritus und Zeremoniell im romischdeutschen Imperium’, Zeitschrift furKirchengeschichte 92 (1981), 204–49; J.C. Schmitt, La raison des Gestes dans l’Occidentmedieval (Paris, 1990); Gestures, ed. J.C. Schmitt (London, 1984); and the collected articles of Janet Nelson: Politics and Ritual in Early Medieval Europe (London, 1984); Rulers and RulingFamilies in EarlyMedieval Europe (London, 1999).
G. Koziol, ‘England, France, and the Problem of Sacrality in Twelfth-Century Ritual’, Cultures ofPower, ed. Bisson, 124–48; C.W. Hollister, ‘Anglo-Norman political culture and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, Anglo-Norman Political Culture and the 12th-Century Renaissance. Proceedings of the Borchard Conference on Anglo-Norman History, 1995, ed. C.W. Hollister (Woodbridge, 1997), 1–16; M. Aurell, L’Empire des Plantagenet 1154–1224 (Paris, 2003), 123–33; Chaou, L’ideologie Plantagenet.
Nick Vincent, for instance, has pointed to the importance of religious symbolism in the politics of Henry II and Henry III: The Holy Blood, 188–96; ‘The pilgrimages’; Reuter, ‘Velle sibi’. Klaus van Eickels and Knut Gorich have highlighted the significance of friendship rituals and of amorphous concepts such as honour for relations between the kings of England and their neighbours: Gorich, ‘Verletzte Ehre?’; van Eickels, Vom inszenierten Konsens. See also the concluding remarks by Philippe Buc in Culture Politique des Plantagenêt (1154–1224), ed. M. Aurell (Poitiers, 2003), 377–83, and by Nicholas Vincent in Noblesses de l’espace Plantagenêt, ed. Aurell. More specifically for the thirteenth century see Weiler, ‘Symbolism and politics’ and ‘Knighting, homage’.
Petkov, The Kiss of Peace; van Eickels, Vom symbolischen Konsens. This has been argued against by C. Garnier, ‘Zeichen und Schrift. Symbolische Handlungen und literale Fixierung am Beispiel von Friedensschlussen des 13. Jahrhunderts’, Frithmittelalterliche Studien 32 (1998), 263–87, Weiler, ‘Knighting, homage’.
G. Althoff, ‘Beratungen uber die Gestaltung zeremonieller und ritueller Verfahren im Mittelalter’, Vormodeme politische Verfahren, ed. B. StollbergRilinger (Berlin, 2001), 53–71.
R.M. Haines, ‘Canterbury versus York: fluctuating fortunes in a perennial conflict’, Ecclesia Anglicana. Studies in the English Church of the Later Middle Ages (Toronto, 1989), 69–105.
Early Charters of the Cathedral Church ofStPaul, London, ed. M. Gibbs, Camden 3rd series 58 (1939), no. 182. I am grateful to Nicholas Vincent for this reference.
See, tor instance, Historia Ecciesie Abingdonensis, vol. ii, ed. and transl. J. Hudson (Oxford, 2002); Thomas of Marlborough, History of the Abbey of Evesham, ed. and transl. J. Sayers and L. Watkins (Oxford, 2003); see also the perceptive remarks made by A. Boureau, ‘How law came to the monks: the use of law in English society at the beginning of the thirteenth century’, Past & Present, 167 (2000), 29–74. I am grateful to Nicholas Vincent for drawing this article to my attention.
Die Zwiefalter Chroniken Ortliebs und Bertholds, ed. and transl. L. Wallach, E. Konig, and K.O. Muller, Schwäbische Chroniken der Stauferzeit 2 (Stuttgart, 1941; repr. Sigmaringen, 1978) provides a good example.
H. Kamp, Friedensstifter und Vermittler im Mittelalter (Darmstadt, 2001).
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© 2007 Björn Weiler
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Weiler, B. (2007). Addressing the Public: Rituals, Gestures and Charters. In: Kingship, Rebellion and Political Culture. Medieval Culture and Society. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230593589_8
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