LUARD'S "MATTHEW PARIS."* IN introducing a portion of the Chronica
Majora which is generally more important and national than we have found the commencements of this work (see Spectator, September 14, 1872), Mr. Luard speaks of the old editions by Archbishop Parker and his revisor Wats (1640) as thoroughly untrustworthy, the text not having been corrected by the best Oxford MS., and being, moreover, corrupted by errors and inconsiderate alterations of which a long list is placed before us. Among the most striking examples, we find an emphatic testimony to the moral conduct of William the Conqueror in his youth, which has been completely falsified and reversed ; we find afterwards that William Rufus had not only the crown of England left him by his father, but also his mother's inheritance and the State treasure, so that Prince Henry was passed over altogether ; and in Stephen's reign we find Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, consecrated not by the papal legate solely, but by the legate and a bishop, the words "ipso legato" having been gradually altered to " episcopo cum legato." In many other altered passages we may find that the original text has been misconstrued, or that new expressions have been introduced, more or leas successfully, for the sake of elegance. The entire chronicle is regarded by our editor as having served Matthew Paris as a rough draft of his Historic Anglorum ; it represents, in fact, an earlier chronicle compiled in the monastery of St. Albans, in the margin of which he has written corrections, additions, and sometimes rough memoranda of passages to be rejected or repolished, as we may see by such words as "imper- tinens," "vacat," "hoc ante," &c. This old document, of whose authorship Mr. Luard at first spoke indefinitely, he now assigns in part to an Abbot John, whose work seems to have ended in the year 1188, where we have the memorandum, "usque hue chronica Johannis abbatis, et hic finis." This is supposed to refer to "Johannes de Cella," twenty-first abbot of St. Albans (from 1195
• Matthaei Parisiensis, Monachi Sancti Albania Chronica Mgiora. Edited by Henry Richards Luard, M.A_ Sc, Vol. II , A.D. 1067 to A D. 1216. Published under the direction of the Master of the Roils. 1874.
to 1214), who had been noted for his learning while a student at Paris, and as Matthew Paris tells us (Gesta Abbatum), might be considered as "a Priscian in grammar, an Ovid in prosody, and a Galen in medicine" (we must pass over a quainter phrase which extols his proficiency in the last-mentioned art). The circumstances of his having introduced into the abbey the his- torical compendium of Petrus Comestor (see our former number), and of his having been at one time Prior of Wallingford, have furnished some arguments for Mr. Luard's identification of him.
From the year 1188, Roger of Wendover seems to have been the first compiler of the Chronicle, in which be may be considered as an original authority after 1202; Matthew Paris follows him with little variation up to 1213, and then begins to incor- porate his own additions with the text, except in some passages which indicate a later revision. As 'neither Matthew Paris nor Abbot John was remarkable for accuracy, it may be imagined that the Chronica Mojora have a very patchy appearance, and that we have two or three separate entries under various dates of such events as the foundation of Battle Abbey and the execution of Waltheof. In point also of style and Latinity, the work is very unequal; Abbot John borrowed his records from more than forty authors, and has often disfigured their mode of writing by his condensations. Matthew Paris always loves jingle and verbal antithesis, and affects largely the diction of the Vulgate. The rhetorical manner, as well as the superstition of William of Malmesbury, is preserved by his copyists to an extent that must frequently force itself upon the attention of the reader. The substance of the history in general is mostly English or eccle- siastical, but we find in it a pretty full account of the first Crusade (in which William of Tyre is closely followed), beside a liberal admixture of miraculous legends from various sources, such as that of our old acquaintance, the rat-devoured bishop.
The most prominent of the passages which are printed in large type,. and for which Matthew Paris is especially re- sponsible, appear to us, exclusively of local records and scraps traced by Mr. Luard to the Southwark Annals, to be more remarkable as literary extravagances than for their histori- cal value. All the precursors of Matthew are fond of pro- digious narratives, but those which he furnishes are peculiarly tinged with the rancour of a clerical partisan, or with the levity and assurance of a satirist. In connection with the death of Rufus, he piles portent upon portent, making that King dream the dream of a cannibal, and after his death appear in the likeness of a naked black man conveyed on the back of a diabolical goat. Queen Matilda is supposed to have accepted a husband with great reluct- ance, and to have pronounced a curse on her future offspring (" Consentio, sed fructum ventiis mei diabolo commendo ") ; after- wards poor Prince William and the companions of his shipwreck are stated to have incurred this judgment by an infamous crime. King Henry's ingratiating speeches are hyperbolically described as "super nael et favum oleumque mellita et mollita." We are assured also that he blinded his brother Robert, whose afflictions, however, were not, on the whole, unmerited. To Abbot John's account of the state in which the royal lamprey-lover left his mortal tenement it was not easy to add new horrors, but Matthew introduces prematurely a tempest in which the world seemed to be collapsing.
Of Stephen, our Chronicles tell us little, except in accordance with the plain statements of Henry of Huntingdon. The abbot, however, bids adieu to him as " militi egregio et mente piissimo." We have some further notices of the contemporary crusade, but Matthew concludes the subject in a very summary way ; his predecessor enlivens these worldly topics with a long narrative about Patrick's purgatory, for which Mr. Longfellow might have found a place in his "Illustrations of Dante's Comedy." The life and miracles of the hermit Wulfric are added ; we must pass over many similar legends in other places.
Of Henry H. the Abbot speaks without bitterness, though, of course, censuring the Constitutions of Clarendon, and siding with Becket in the subsequent controversy. He has not exactly given a full or clear account of this affair, but has arranged his matter more formally than usual, and quoted in full some interesting documents. He has stooped to a satirical myth in order to vilify the policy of the Bishop of London (Gilbert). To all this part of the text Matthew has scarcely added anything but a silly com- ment on the unlucky Tuesdays of the Archbishop's life. He has also inserted Pope Alexander's letter to the Sultan of Iconium on the "Evidences of Christianity," with the sole object, as one might suspect, of appending some sarcasms on the unequal proficiency of Rome in her "faith and morals." Matthew has described, how- ever, one or two of the concluding scenes in the life of Becket,
and insisted on some intimations given in them of a "prophetic soul." To the miracles wrought at Becket's shrine, the abbot gives ample testimony, including among them the resuscitation, not only of men and women, but of inferior animals,—a statement which we may commend to the attention of some modern theorists. The last paragraphs compiled by Abbot John relate chiefly to the victories of Saladin in the Holy Land.
Under the hands of Roger of Wendover our Chronicle seems to undergo a slight general improvement in style and matter. He is favourably disposed to Coeur de Lion, gives a peculiar account of his having redeemed the relics which had been seized by Saladin throughout the Holy Land, and in mentioning how he was im- prisoned at Trifels, has ingeniously quoted Aristotle to show that the race who gave their name to this place deemed it a virtue to kill their parents. But we may have further occasion to speak of this author in connection with Mr. Luard's next volume. Matthew Paris's additions are still desultory and malicious ; he asserts that the king wilfully lost his great seal, and had a new one, under which all his dependents, and especially the prior of St. Albans, were forced to have their charters renewed, neither gratuitously nor without crossing the Channel. By way of showing his impar- tiality, he abuses Saladin, and tells a strange story of his murder- ing a captive with his own hands after inquiring how the latter would have acted in his place. The same author blunderingly derives the word Alkoran, "alias Althoran," from the Arabic Al, that is, tot urn I and thoran, law. We may give a somewhat abridged translation of the "story of the quarrel between Richard and Leopold, Duke of Austria," as a further specimen of Matthew's levity and perverse ingenuity :— " About this time the Duke came to Acre, to fight in fulfilment of his vow, dre. When his marshals who preceded him had taken quarters and made the necessary preparations for him, there came upon them in haste a certain knight of King Richard's retinue, a Norman by nation, who, in the manner of his people boiling over with folly, asserted boast- fully that he had more right to that lodging than any one else, inas- much as he had come there first and marked it out for himself and his companions. Reproaches having been multiplied on both sides, the clamour reached the ears of the King. The latter, too par- tially and credulously disposed to the cause and the words of the Norman, fell into a fury against the Duke's retinue, and without weighing the Lord's caution, I will go down and see' (Gen. xviii. 21), ordered hastily (prtecepit proecipitanter) and unseemlily that the Duke's standard, which had been set up in the lodging for a token, should be cast into a sewer. This when the Duke knew, being left shelterless and foully mocked by the voluble Normans, he went to the King and complained, but brought back nothing but scoffs. Thus despised by the King, the Duke turned to the King of Kings and with tears entreated the Lord God of vengeances that by crushing the proud He would here-
after console the sufferer of so great a wrong For this deed, King Richard blushed afterwards when he was reproached not a little."
As the first precursor of Matthew Paris has found room in his annals for one vision of a future state, so Roger of Wendover gives us two ; and in one case the seer, the "monk of Eynsham," seems to have found ordinary pictures of hell deficient not only in physical horror, but in an obscenity which might dispose some ordinary sinners to sigh after heavenly purity. We have not exactly anything of this kind in that part of the Chronicle which Matthew has written, but we may perhaps recognise an equally audacious flight of fancy in his account of King John's embassy to Morocco, in which he offered to renounce his faith and resign his dominions for the sake of being revenged upon his enemies. The disdain with which the Sultan regards his suppliant, his candid estimate of Christianity, and his philosophic principle of conservatism in religion are dramatically expressed, and such as a grain of truth would have rendered deeply interesting. As to John's general character, we suppose he has few friends who will care much to vindicate him from the censures of any historical writer ; but Matthew Paris's licentious wit, his monstrous state- ments, and indiscriminate terms of censure may dispose us to read him cautiously even on this subject. His story of Pandulph's trampling on'the tribute-money paid by John has been properly rejected by Dr. Lingard.
But it may be more useful to mention that Mr. Luard draws our attention to the licence with which Matthew and Roger have quoted Magna Charts., at once mixing it up, in spite of manifest incongruities, with the Forest laws of Henry III., introducing a clause from an unknown source, which can hardly be an entire fabrication, and altering another clause so that it enjoins the expulsion of the foreign mercenaries with the wife and children of one of them, and not simply that they should be incapacitated from holding office. Here Mr. Luard leaves it a question whether our authorities have represented the law with too much deference to the peculiar quarrels of their monastery, or rather to the predilections of the new Sovereign.
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