Ideas and Solidarities of the Medieval Laity: England and Western Europe

264 Pages·2022·22.747 MB·English

by  Susan Reynolds

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COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES
Ideas and Solidarities
of the Medieval Laity
Susan Reynolds
Susan Reynolds
Ideas and Solidarities
of the Medieval Laity
England and Western Europe
First published 1995 by Ashgate Publishing
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First issued in paperback 2022
This edition copyright © 1995 by Susan Reynolds.
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British Library CIP Data
Reynolds, Susan
Ideas and Solidarities of the Medieval Laity: England and Western
Europe.
(Variorum Collected Studies Series; CS495).
I. Title. 11. Series.
940.1
US Library of Congress CIP Data
Reynolds, Susan.
Ideas and Solidarities of the Medieval Laity: England and Western
Europe / Susan Reynolds. p. cm. -- (Collected Studies Series; CS495).
ISBN 0-86078-485-1 (alk. paper)
1. Great Britain--History--Medieval period, 1066-1485. 2. England-
Sociallife and customs--l066-1485. 3. City and town life--England-
History. 4. Cities and towns, Medieval--England. 5. City and town
life--Europe--History. 6. Cities and towns, Medieval--Europe.
7. Europe--History--1476-1492. 8. Laity--Catholic Church.
I. Title. 11. Series: Collected Studies; CS495
DA185. R48 1995 95-1530
942. 03--dc20 CIP
COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS495
ISBN 13: 978-0-860-78485-2 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-03-234041-8 (Pbk)
DOl: 10.4324/9781003323068
CONTENTS
Preface vii-viii
GENERAL IDEAS AND SOLIDARITIES
I Social mentalities and the case of medieval scepticism 21-41
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society series 5, 41.
London, 1991
II Medieval origines gentium and the community of
the realm 375-390
History 68. London, 1983
HI What do we mean by “Anglo-Saxon” and
“Anglo-Saxons”? 395-414
Journal of British Studies 24. Chicago, III., 1985
TV Eadric Silvaticus and the English resistance 102-105
Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 54.
London, 1981
V Magna Carta 1297 and the legal use of literacy 233-244
Historical Research 62. Oxford, 1989
VI The history of the idea of incorporation or legal personality:
a case of fallacious teleology
1-20
First publication
URBAN IDEAS AND SOLIDARITIES
VII English towns of the eleventh century in a European context 1-12
Die Stadt im 11. Jahrhundert, ed. P. Johanek. Munster: Institutfur
verleichende Stadtegeschichte an der Universitdt Munster, 1995
VIE Towns in Domesday Book 295-309
Domesday Studies, ed. J.C. Holt. Woodbridge: Boyd ell & Brewer
for the Royal Historical Society, 1987
vi
IX The rulers of London in the twelfth century 337-357
History 57. London, 1972
X The farm and taxation of London, 1154-1216 211-228
Guildhall Studies in London History 1. London, 1975
XI Decline and decay in late medieval towns: a look at some
of the concepts and arguments 1-4
Urban History Yearbook. Leicester, 1980, pp. 76-78
XII The forged charters of Barnstaple 699-720
English Historical Review 84. Harlow, 1969
Xin 1483: Gloucester and town government in the middle ages 40-51
The 1483 Gloucester Charter in History, ed. N.M. Herbert et al.
Gloucester: Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1983
XIV Medieval urban history and the history of political thought 1-13
Urban History Yearbook. Leicester, 1982, pp. 14-23
XV The writing of medieval urban history in England 43-57
Theoretische geschiedenis/Historiography and Theory 19.
Amsterdam, 1992
XVI Space and time in English medieval towns 1-7
First publication
Index
1-11
253
This volume contains viii + pages
PREFACE
My interest in the collective activities of medieval lay people and the solidar­
ities that underlay them were awakened soon after I started to work on medieval
English towns in the mid-sixties. On the one hand I was struck by the dogged
persistence of the people of Barnstaple, whose enterprise in fabricating charters
for themselves I began to perceive dimly as soon as I happened on the footnote
to the Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1476-85, p. 62 (see no. XII in this volume).
On the other, I was puzzled by the difficulty of deducing the interests and values
that motivated the leading Londoners in the twelfth century: calling them
patricians in the usual fashion did not seem to help much (no. IX and its by­
product no. X). When I began to compare English towns with towns elsewhere
it seemed important to look more directly at the ideas about society and politics
that their inhabitants were likely to have held (no. XIV). From there it was natural,
especially in the context of teaching medieval English and European history to
undergraduates, to consider people outside towns as well. That needed a whole
book (Kingdoms and communities in western Europe), which was published
by Oxford in 1984, but produced two papers about the solidarities of kingdoms
and peoples on the way (nos. II and IV).
All but one of the other papers printed here have followed from this combi­
nation of interests. Thinking about the ideas of the medieval laity confirmed
my sense that their capacity for rational and independent thought has often been
underestimated by those who see the middle ages through the eyes of the clergy
and academics of the time: hence no. I. It also convinced me that we can only
sort out our own ideas if we look directly at them and at the historiographical
tradition we have inherited (nos. HI, VI, XI, XV). The one essay that at first
sight falls outside this line of thought is that on Magna Carta, 1297 (no. XV).
Like the Barnstaple forgeries, it was serendipitous: I was invited to attend the
Committee on the Export of Works of Art to advise on the proposed sale of an
original of the charter to America. Looking at the original made me realise that
there was something odd about making a concession in a new charter by
changing a text within it that was supposedly being recited verbatim. The
interplay of the traditions and ideas of the baronage with those of the new legal
profession that were implied in the story I worked out, together with the way
that the use of written records affected both groups, seem to bring this essay
within the scope of the kind of ideas and solidarities that interest me.
Although I have excluded articles that have been more or less completely
incorporated later into books, anyone who - improbably - tried to read these