WILLIAM OF M.kLMESBURY"S ENGLISH PRELATES.* THE well-known Gesta Pontifiewn of
William of Malmesbury
comprises records of the early English prelates, which are, for the most part, geographically arranged, so that in the first four books he begins with the See of Canterbury, and goes on to the other
dioceses according to the kingdoms of the Heptarchy, noticing everywhere the local relics and religious houses ; while the fifth book (omitted in Savile's edition) is devoted to a more copious and particular account of the life of St. Aldhelm, besides his posthumous miracles, and the final fortunes of the Abbey of Malmesbary, which he had governed. The Latin of the author is, comparatively speaking, elegant and scholarlike ; he is rather florid, though at times happily sententious, but has a marked addiction to ending his periods with a rhyme or assonance, as in his first folio we read " multorum sanctorum cineribus copiosa, patrociniis gloriosa," and soon after, " ut non vacillet veritas, et institute servetur brevitas," and " vel obsisteret ex sententia, vel permitteret ex conniventia." William's notices of prelates near his own time are pretty largely illustrated from their correspondence ; he also uses legal documents, but sometimes such as are of ques- tionable authenticity. But the more historical portions of this work must be supplemented by references to his Gesla Begun:, or civil history of England. Where we descend to local antiquities he has often little to tell us, and is anxious that little should not be tedious ; hence his notices of successive bishops are either very summary or very legendary. Among those of Winchester we turn with curiosity to St. Swithin, who was the friend of Egbert and tutor of his son Ethelwulf ; but we find nothing about the prognostics now drawn from the weather on his f6te-day, though it is recorded for what reasons he chose to be buried outside the church. He is, nevertheless, credited with some remark- able miracles, e.g., he extended his crozier over a whole basketful of smashed eggs, and restored them as sound as ever to a poor old woman from whom they had been snatched by unruly workmen. One of his successors had the courage to chant masses for the dead, not only by day, but by night, in a church- yard, and his concluding" Requiescant in pace" was answered with an " Amen " from an "infinite host" of spirits, who were fain to assure him his pains were not lost. This is certainly an excep- tional story, for we may question whether the priest deceived his congregation in it, or they for once had found an opportunity of deceiving him : " istud mirabilius quo infrequens est." Further- more, the remains of St. Swithiu were enshrined by Bishop Athelwold in the tenth century, and continued to effect miracles in our author's days. He himself saw a man whose eyes had been scooped out by robbers, and who had recovered his sight through the saint's merits, with the same or other eyes, for they had been thrown down at some distance. But the number of prodigies pro- duced by these relics had at one time been so great as to fatigue the very monks who exhibited them, and St. S within warned them in a dream that they were growing too idle and sleepy for him. However, it is in the book on St. Aldhelta that Vihiatn of Mahnesbury has heaped together the most extravagant prodigies, while confessing that he has learnt them from tradition, and not from literary documents ; e.g., the saint at Rome causes a child of nine days old to give judicial evidence that the Pope is not to blame for his having come into the world. The name of the real culprit is somehow meantime disclosed to Aldheltn, but he discreetly refuses to make it known. But the text of William of Malmes- bury has been repeatedly ransacked for the quota it contains of objective truth. We will now confine ourselves to the peculiar claims and deficiencies of the new edition.
The Gesta Pontificunt was produced in 1125, five years after the author's Gesta Regain, and re-edited by him not earlier than 1140 ; and the texts of both these epochs have served as a basis to the copies of the work which have hitherto been current. Mr. Hamil- ton, however, has discovered in the Magdalene Library what he judges to be an autograph manuscript, both from the handwriting, —as illustrated by a document at Lambeth which bears the author's signature, and from the general appearance of the alterations marked, as also from various faulty strokes of the pen, which have caused words to be misread by the immediate copiers.
Among the above alterations are observed not only corrections of the style and supplementary additions referring to the period.
between 1125 and 1140, but important excisions on which, accord- ing to Mr. Hamilton, no one would have ventured but the author himself. We are told that "the character of the matter suppressed, often conveying severe reflections upon living or recently deceased persons, supplies us with the reason why they were suppressed.
• Witter:lei Mcernabirien4is 4 Oestis Pont ifiewn Any:orunt, Libri Quin7ue. Edited a from the Autograph Manuscript by N. E. S. A. liamilton. itoth Publications. 1870:
It seems probable that as age and responsibility grew upon him, Malmesbury deemed it wise to prune off many of the exuberances of his somewhat sarcastic style." For instance, in the reign of William IL, "we have a short and rather dry account of Robert Bloet, Bishop of Lincoln, on the whole favourable. By turning to the notes, the reader will find a long and truly vehement attack upon the same person, charging him with manifold evil-doing. These passages are erased in A (MS.), but appear at length in those MSS. which were made from Malmesbury's first recension.
. He seems, even at the first composition, to have doubted whether he had not gone too far in his invective —as shown by his remark sed hoc quomodocunque legentes ferant.' He doubtless found that they did not bear it well, and expunged the obnoxious passages." The passage exemplified by Mr. Hamilton begins, as translated by him in a foot-note, as follows :—" Who never hesitated at the guilt or infamy of any form of lust. The holiness of monastic life he held in contempt, and this led him to order the monks to be removed from Stow and settled at Eynsham. Wicked from wantonness, and through -envy of his illustrious predecessor, he pretended that he was inconvenienced [sua commoda prmverti] by the neighbouring monks ; therefore, if the monks of Eynsham by God's gift were favoured with a happy increase, small thanks to him—[they], for whom he boasted he had done more than enough if he only allowed them to live." In the same style the author proceeds to describe some visions with which these monks and others had been favoured, -and which they had communicated to the bishop as importing grave and immediate perils to him if he did not amend his life. The account given us of another bishop, Ralph of Durham, has been similarly mitigated with the above, though of him "some -sharp things are said even in the revised composition." With both may be compared divers comments on William Rufus, which are too long to copy here. The class of alterations noticed is not traceable in the Life of St. Aldhelm. But William of Malmesbury is at best a corruptly ascetic and "priest party" author, though the excisions in his work are in some measure calculated to redeem his character. From these points Mr. Hamilton proceeds to complete his preface with a regular description of his manuscripts, but without giving us any historic sum- mary of the records. He tells us he has closely followed the orthography of his text, and that this may perhaps be much more 'correct than it will appear at first sight to those who are only acquainted with classical Latin authors through the ordinary modern editions. (This may be safely said of some words, like -attemptavit, but the appearance of ferotior, inditium, is certainly -uncouth, though it may be of some use to know that such spellings have been in vogue.)
In the first note to this preface, the editor questions the date usually assigned to the birth of William of Malmesbury, because it would make him less than ten years old when he assisted Abbot Godfrey (who died in 1105) to found a library. We must own that we cannot see any clear reference to such assistance in the passage where Mr. Hamilton's marginal summary gives us to under- stand that he has found it. We should infer merely that William of Malmesbury had after the death of the abbot exerted himself to complete his work by copying or collecting additional books. The passage is as follows :—"Libri conscripti nonnulli, vel potius bibliothecm primitim libatie. Qued studium si prmlico, videor id quodam modo meo proprio jure facere, qui nullis tnajoribus in hoc praesertim loco ceaserim, immo nisi quod dico jactantia sit, cunctos facile supergressus sim. Sit qui modo parta conservet ; -ego ad legend= multa congessi, probitatem prmlicandi viri in hoc duntaxat emulatus. Ipsius ergo laudabili cepto pro virili portione non defui ; utinam sit qui labores nostros foveat." Here the verbs in the first person may be surely rendered in the perfect tense—I have yielded to no predecessors [or elders] —I have not been wanting—rather than in the simple preterit--I yielded- .exceeded—was wanting. But this kind of ambiguity is common in the language we are accustomed to regard as a model, and perhaps constitutes a more fundamental deficiency in it than that absence of a compendious term for "Three per cent, stocks" and -other modern institutions which was lately so seriously noticed in a deliberation among the does at Cambridge. Only Mr. Hamilton's notion that his author was born about the year 1075 would not auit the latter's statement that he wrote his histories while he was .yet young, and had not approached his fortieth year [see a passage quoted from the preface to his Expositio Threnorum].
We again suspect a slight misinterpretation where we are told in the margin that Lanfranc "attacks the avarice of the Lom- bards." We only find in the -Latin that he throws off from his own person (or nature) the avarice which was an ordinary vice of Lombards (such as he was himself), " Avaritiam, familiare Lon- gobardis vitium, ex persona sul propulsans et decutiens."
In another passage showing how St. Elphege was killed by the Danes, and how they awhile opposed his burial, we are told in the margin, "Some Christians bury him in a dead tree ; the tree revives ; he is then buried at St. Paul's, London." Now the revival of the tree we leave to the reader's " credulitas " (this word is evidently used for faith by our author) ; but burial in a tree is a strange process to attribute to the Christians. We see nothing like it in the Latin—" Sed re in juditium [sic] deducts, convenit ut lignum aridum, quod fors obtulerat, si sanguine ipsitus litum, crastino reviresceret, arbitratu suo Christiani cadaver humarent," where we have no choice but to construe "si lignum reviresceret, &c.," though the arrangement of the words is somewhat singular. In book ii. the margin tells us of Ralph, BishoP of Selsey, how "he withstands King Henry [L] in regard to the collection of money from the Church," and "incurs the anger of the Pope," which would have been a singular consequence ! But the editor, or his assistants, must have read too hastily the Latin, " religiosam con- tumatiam mandatis regis Henrici exhibuit, nolentis per totem Angliam a presbyteris pecuniam exigere. Id, aliis vel concedenti- bus vel meta silentium teneutibus, in solo Rodolphe rigor ponti- ficalis emolliri neguivit." Here the underlined words have been snatched up as referring to the anger of the Pope, whereas they mean the obstinacy of the prelate, just as the title of the whole book refers to English prelates, not English popes. In another place, the words " exosus monachos suos " are, oddly enough, taken to signify that a bishop was hated by his monks! Altogether we fear that county historians and others who may consult this volume for scraps of information—" as business or desire may lead, for every man has business or desires "—must be warned not to trust too implicitly to Mr. Hamilton's marginal summaries, or to a comprehensive index (in which these have been thrown together), lest they should hereby "catch the eel of science by the tail."
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