Wednesday 19 June 2013

What's Wrong With the Barlow Carmen? Part II and Part III

I've now read the 1999 Barlow Carmen.  Professor Barlow is generous with citations of his academic peers, the currency of academia.  I can see why he was popular.  His book creates an anthology of authority and academic insight about the Carmen, but he adds nothing original to the interpretation of the Latin.

Professor Barlow must have been a wonderful man and an inspirational teacher.  His former students - now leading classicists and professors themselves - are very loyal.  Even so, I have to believe that deference to academic precedent and received authority, without recognition that much of it was fanciful, are not the best way to gain an insight into the Carmen or tell its story.

Five hours with the Barlow Carmen at the British Library was enough to convince me that I have not wasted my time in re-translating the Carmen.  I am sure I have made many mistakes in my translation.  My Latin is not perfect and I am an inexperienced translator, but at least I am doing the work myself - and I make corrections as I recognise my errors. I don't accept received translation errors, or cling to errors I have made rather than emending them to more accurately reflect the original text. 

The things I considered inaccurate in the M&M Carmen were all there repeated in the Barlow Carmen:
-  William is among the four who kill Harold;
-  The army is at Canterbury for a month rather than Dover;
-  A dude with a bad kidney and game leg ruled London.

Here's Barlow on the most important lines in dispute, lines 681-688:
In the city was a man, crippled by kidney trouble and hampered in his walk because he had suffered many wounds while serving his country.  As he lacked mobility he was carried in a litter; but it was he ruled over the city fathers and it was with his help that the city's business was done.  To this man the king, through an envoy, covertly unveiled another way out, and secretly asked to view it with favour.

No way does the Latin say this.  It doesn't even make sense.  How could "the city's business" be "done" with the aid of itinerant and ignorant provincial staller?  Why would the aldermen and portreeve tolerate his sudden interference?  Where was the Witanagemot, which had appointed Edgar to be king of the City, in allowing the staller to usurp authority over the City?  How could a rural staller be an expert on urban defenses?  Why would the City's citizens take orders from a wounded, incontinent interloper?  None of this makes any sense, either in the context of the Carmen or in the context of known history about the medieval administration of the City of London.

This is silliness, and that it is persistent silliness that has endured since the first transcriptions makes it more unfortunate but not more credible.  In 1066 you might eat a kidney from an animal, but you would be unlikely to diagnose a kidney complaint in a living human.  To think anyone would be diagnosed and then described in text as having "kidney trouble" is far-fetched.  At that time you were much more likely to be described as "elf shot" if you had a mysterious, debilitating condition.

I have now written to the Royal Library of Belgium to ask for a digital photograph of the relevant lines of the manuscript.  I want to know once and for all whether the word is renum - kidney - or regnum - kingdom.  Even if the word on the vellum is renum, as indicated by my 1837 and 1840 transcriptions, that doesn't change my view that regnum was intended.  It would, however, establish whether the transcription error occured in the 12th century when the Brussels Carmen was copied by some cleric, or in the 19th century when the manuscript Carmen was transcribed into modern text.  

Worse than the received translation is the determination to justify it.  There is no record of any Ansgar having any authority in 1066 London.  There are no documents which identify this mythical ruler of the weak kidney and war wounds.  That hasn't stopped Barlow and others looking around for any Ansgar they could find and transplanting him to London, and even interlacing his name in the Carmen in the English narrative out of context.  There was only one Ansgar they could identify, a Sussex staller, and so they say he must have travelled to London to lead the revolt there after receiving his wounds at Hastings.

This mythologising is inconsistent with everything we know about London in 1066.  London in 1066, like London today, was a corporate jurisdiction ruled by its burgesses (citizens) through elected aldermen.  Its most important officials were the bishop of London and the portreeve: the bishop for its sacred offices and the portreeve for the secular administration and taxation of commerce. 

Ansgar the staller ruling London is even inconsistent with the Carmen itself, which makes clear that London's great men rule it by consensus and democratic voting.  The Carmen describes their deliberations and records their votes, not once but twice.  First it describes their deliberation and voting to open negotiations with King William on the basis of the 1066 charter.  Second it describes their deliberations and voting to approve his coronation as king.

It seems obvious to me that Ansgardus is a corruption of Edgar.  London did have a king in 1066, and the Carmen would name the boy king.  As there is no other name for the boy king mentioned in the Carmen, it must be Ansgardus.  Also, the Latin makes perfect sense both times the name is used if it references the boy king.  More telling still, line 726 says  Quicquid ab Ansgardo nuncius attulerat - whatever the envoy brought from Edgar.  Envoys are always characterised by the authority of the ruler they speak for, and since London had a king, only the king could send an envoy to William.

My Carmen is supported by a much closer alignment between Latin and English, known facts and contemporary documents as well as common sense.  William is turned from razing London and subjugating its citizenry by a bishop's disclosure of the church of Rome's protection of the City as a livery port originally ceded by King Offa to St Denis in 790.  There is plenty of factual support for this interpretation:
  • William the Norman was bishop of London in 1066.  With a name like that, he might have been nervous about having an anti-Norman king with a history of genocides in church port liveries ruling England.
  • Saint-Denis dominated all international trade between Paris and all other medieval ports from the 7th century onwards, building itself into a huge monopoly on trade that rivalled anything Rome had achieved under the era of empire.  Saint-Denis was the most influential church in France, where all but two French kings are buried.  King William would no more thwart Saint-Denis than he would the pope;
  • Saint-Denis cartularies include copies of the King Offa 790 port livery charter that endowed port liveries at Londonwick, Hastings and Pevensey to the Abbey of Saint-Denis along with generous immunities and privileges in connection with trade and commerce, and later royal charters by later Saxon kings that confirmed the port liveries up to the time of Edward the Confessor;
  • Duke William had sworn to restore the church liveries seized by Godwin of Wessex and the young Harold before setting out for England, as recorded at Steyning in respect of Fecamp Abbey liveries, so ceding London to Saint-Denis would be entirely consistent with his known respect for church liveries, especially those belonging to French and Norman churches;
  • It was customary in medieval England - and medieval France too - to allow civil (as opposed to feudal) government in church livery boroughs, with burgesses/citizens electing aldermen on democratic principles, and independent laws and courts;
  • The Corporation of London retains the 1066 charter for London which accords with my interpretation of the Carmen.  The 1066 charter is addressed to William, the bishop of London, Godfrey, the portreeve, and the burgesses of London - both French and English.  Addressing Frankish (or more accurately Anglo-Norman) citizens of London indicates that trade and emigration from France were significant drivers of the City's prosperity, which would be expected after 24 years of Edward the Confessor's pro-Norman administration.  The charter assures the Frankish and English citizens of London that they will remain "law-worthy" - meaning they can make and enforce their own laws, consistent with urban civil rule in both France and England;
  • In 1067 King William restored Hastings, Rye, Old Winchelsea, the Manor of Rameslie (including the port at Petit Iham), and Steyning to Fecamp Abbey in a royal charter that cited earlier charters of Edward and his Saxon predecessors, confirming the importance of the livery ports seized by Godwin and Harold as a casus belli for the conquest and demonstrating William's determination to generously provide for the church as king of England.
I don't have to mythologise or make stuff up to support my interpretation of the Carmen.  The facts and the records are there, substantiating what the Carmen rightly says about events of 1066.

184 years of silliness is enough.  It is time the Carmen was given meaning that makes sense in the context of real history and not made up fantasy.

Earlier post: What's Wrong With the Barlow Carmen?

Update:  What's Wrong With the Barlow Carmen? Part III (9 July 2013)

It just isn't publicly available!  I've been waiting four weeks for an inter-library loan of a Barlow Carmen through my local library.  The email came Friday advising it was ready to collect.   It wasn't.  They said come back Tuesday as the emails sometimes go ahead of the books.  So I went again today.

It's not the Barlow Carmen.  It's Morton and Muntz again.  Despite my carefully specifying Barlow's name as translator and the OMT ISBN number for the 1999 edition, they could only get a Morton and Muntz 1972 Carmen.  Instead of "kidney trouble" the dude who rules London at line 682 is "crippled by a weakness of the loins". 

This is hugely irritating as I was planning to complete a line by line comparison of my translation to Barlow's before the Battle Conference in two weeks' time.

Well, at least the British Library is reasonably convenient.  I've ordered the Barlow Carmen (offsite storage so 48 hours delay!) to be available in the reading room Thursday morning.  I'll take my laptop and transcribe it onsite.

The Carmen is a consitutional original source document about the creation of England as a Christian nation in Europe.  It is unconscionable that it should be so difficult for the public to get a look at it.

Did I mention my Carmen is available globally?  And affordable?  'Nuf said.












Wednesday 5 June 2013

Lanfranc - A very unhappy archbishop of Canterbury!

I came across a 1070 letter of Lanfranc of Pavia (prior of Bec, next abbot of Caen, then archbishop of Canterbury from 1070) to Pope Alexander II, and had no sooner started reading it than I was hooting with laughter.  It's a pure joy to read, despite it expressing the unhappiness of poor Lanfranc at finding himself beset among the brutish, pagan and near-pagan English against his will. 

Here it is, from Lanfranci Opera, J.A. Giles (1844):

To Pope Alexander, the chief shepherd of holy Church, Lanfranc, an unworthy prelate, canonical obedience.  I know no one, holy father, to whom I can with greater propriety unfold my troubles than to you, who are the cause of these calamities.  For when William, duke of Normandy, drew me forth from the monastery of Le Bec where I had assumed the religious habit, and appointed me to preside over that of Caen, I found myself unequal to the task of governing a few monks.  Therefore I cannot comprehend by what dispensastion of the Almighty I have been promoted at your behest to undertake the supervision of an innumberable mulititude.  The aforesaid prince, after he had become king of England, tried every means to bring this about, but laboured in vain until your legates, Ermenfrid, bishop of Sitten, and Hubert, cardinal of the holy Roman Church, came to Normandy, caused the bishops, abbots and magnates of that land to be assembled, and in their presence and by virtue of the authority of the apostolic see commanded me to undertake the government of the church of Canterbury.  Against this I pleaded in vain my incapacity and unworthiness, my ignorance of the language and of the barbarous people.  My plea did not avail.  What need of further words!  I gave my consent, I came, I took the burden upon me, and such are the cares and troubles, the discomfort of mind I daily endure, so great are the annoyance, the suffering, the losses caused me by different persons pulling me in opposite directions, the harshness, avarice and baseness that I see around me; so dire is the peril to which in my view holy Church is exposed, that I grow weary of my life, and lament that it has been prolonged to witness such times.  But bad as is the present state of things when I look around me, I feel the future will be still worse.  That I may not detain your highness, whose time must be fully occupied with other weighty matters, longer than is necessary - since it was beyond dispute by your authority that I became charged with these duties - I entreat you in God's name and for the sake of your own soul, by the same authority to release me from them and grant me leave to return once more to the monastic life I love above all other.  Do not, I pray, spurn this my petition, for I only ask what is right and necessary to my well-being.  You should remember, and indeed never forget, how ready I have always been to entertain in my monastery your kinsfolk and others who came bearing letters of introduction from Rome.  I instructed them in both sacred and secular learning as well as I was able to teach or they to learn; and many other things I might mention in which I have been of service to you or your predecessors when time or circumstances allowed.  My conscience bears witness that I do not say this boastfully or by way of reproach, or to obtain favours from you beyond what is due to my obedience.  My sole object in writing this letter is to put forward a just and valid reason why for Christ's sake I should obtain the favour I am seeking at your hands.  If, however, you should be guided by the interests of others and decide to refuse my request, it is greatly to be feared you may run the risk - which  God forbid - of committing a sin by the very act you consider well-pleasing to God.  For I have met with no spiritual success in these parts either directly or indirectly, or, if any, it is so slight that it cannot possibly be weighed against my misfortunes.  But enough of this for the present.  When I was at Rome and by God's grace had the pleasure of seeing you and conversing with you, you invited me to visit you again the following year at Christmas and to spend three or four months in your palace as your guest.  But God is my witness, and the angels, that I could not do so without great personal inconvenience and to the detriment of my affairs.  For this there are many different reasons, too long to be related in a short letter; but, should the heavenly powers preserve my life circumstances permit, I long to visit you and the shrine of the holy apostles and the holy Roman Church.  To this end I entreat you to pray the divine mercy that long life may be granted to my lord the king of England and peace from all his enemies.  May his heart ever be moved by love for God and holy Church with all devotion of spirit.  For while he lives we enjoy peace of a kind, but after his death we may scarcely hope to experience either peace or any manner of good.
I can't help wondering if Pope Alexander II had the same reaction I did when he read this, and envision him rolling about on crimson cushions laughing at the trials of the ever-insolent and insubordinate Lanfranc.

Whatever his misgivings about his qualifications or temperment, Lanfranc proved an efficient and conscientious administrator.  He rebuilt Canterbury Cathedral, which burnt down on his arrival in England.  He placed one of his proteges in St Albans where the grand St Albans Cathedral soon grew as a centre for learning.  Both were erected by the same architect and craftsmen, using Caen stone imported from Normandy.  Lanfranc oversaw the reformation of the English church to bring it in line with Rome's orthodoxy, placing Norman prelates in charge of bishoprics and abbeys throughout England.

Despite his cares of office, Lanfranc would outlive his former student.  Alexander II died in 1073.  Lanfranc would remain archbishop of Canterbury until his death in 1089.  His death removed the last constraint on the ill-natured William Rufus, King William II, who then fell out with the Church and brought chaos on the realm as the wily Lanfranc had much earlier predicted.