From civilitas to civility: Codes of manners in medieval and early modern England

Transactions of the Royal Historical Society

Volumn 12, Issue , 2002, Pages 267-289

  Gillingham, John ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33745941442     PISSN: 00804401     EISSN: 14740648     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0080440102000105     Document Type: Review

References (137)

1. A. Bryson, From Courtesy to Civility: Changing Codes of Conduct in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1998)
2. M. B. Becker, Civility and Society in Western Europe, 1300-1600 (Bloomington, IN, 1988)
3. P. Burke, 'A Civil Tongue: Language and Politeness in Early Modern Europe', in Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, ed. P. Burke, B. Harrison and P. Slack (Oxford, 2000), 36
4. Bryson, Courtesy to Civility, 27. What goes unmentioned in the 'practical and technical' didactic literature, but is clear - at least in the minds of the male authors of romances - is the impact made by the elegant performance of table service by a handsome and well-dressed young man: 'no lady seeing him was not deeply affected and troubled by the pangs of love ... did not want to hold him softly to her under an ermine coverlet', 'The Romance of Horn', in The Birth of Romance trans. J. Weiss (1992), 11
5. N. Orme, Medieval Children (2001), 3-10
6. and D. Knox, 'Disciplina: The Monastic and Clerical Origins of European Civility', in Renaissance Society and Culture, ed. J. Monfasini and R. G. Musto (New York, 1991), 129-32
7. J. Gillingham, 'Civilising the English? The English Histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume', Historical Research, 74 (2001), 17-43. It is clear that the contrast between English civility and Irish barbarism took root in the twelfth century
8. By far the most helpful study of the genre in English is J. W. Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain Poet (Woodbridge, 1985)
9. For text and translation see A. G. Elliott, 'The Facetus: Or, The Art of Courtly Living', Allegorica, 2 (1977), 27-57
10. H. Rosamund Parsons, 'Anglo-Norman Books of Courtesy and Nurture', Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 44 (1929), 399, 410
11. See also such lines as 'Se tu veulx estre bien courtois / Regardes ces reigles en françoys', F. J. Furnivall, Manners and Meals in Olden Time (1868), II, 3, 8, 16
12. At all levels aristocracy and gentry had in common 'a distinctive life-style and a self-conscious adherence to a set of courtly and chivalric values', C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989), 19
13. Hence the genre of Mirrors of Princes aimed at a much wider audience than princes. Cf. D. A. L. Morgan, 'The Individual Style of the English Gentleman', in Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Late Medieval Europe, ed. M. Jones (1986)
14. and P. Coss, The Knight in Medieval England 1000-1400 (Stroud, 1993), ch. 5
15. They are L'Apprise de Nurture and the Petit Traitise, both known only in a single fifteenth-century manuscript, Parsons, 'Anglo-Norman Books', 430-1, 451
16. Parsons, 'Anglo-Norman Books', 404, 413
17. Bryson, Courtesy to Civility, 29
18. Nicholls, Matter of Courtesy, 73-4. Naturally the 'bourgeois' wished to be as well mannered as the 'noble', and this was a genre that was read by both
19. On the urban household's reading matter see F. Riddy, 'Mother Knows Best: Reading Social Change in a Courtesy Text', Speculum, 71 (1996), 66-86, especially 77 for the point that it was more acceptable for a businessman's son to try to be Sir Gawain than it was for his daughter to pass herself off as a lady
20. Edited in J. Morawski, Le facet en françoys (Poznan, 1923)
21. . In one MS it is called liber facetie, in another liber urbani, Nicholls Matter of Courtesy, 10 n. 10
22. N. Orme, English Schools in the Middle Ages (1973), 104-6
23. For the fifty-eight early printed editions see S. Gieben, 'Robert Grosseteste and Medieval Courtesy-Books', Vivarium, 5 (1967), 51
24. Morawski, Le facet, 11. 45 bis, 73-4
25. In the 1240s John of Garland placed the Septem Rusticitates in opposition to the Septem Curialitates, Morale Scolarium of John of Garland, ed. L. J. Paetow (Berkeley, 1927), chs. 20 and 21. Chapter 9 on table manners entitled De curialitatibus begins by saying 'I defend courtliness and criticize rusticity.'
26. See also Gieben, 'Grosseteste', 54-5, for the seven rusticitates opposed to the seven urbanitates
27. J. Tolan, Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (Gainesville, 1993), Appendix 3, for a list of manuscripts
28. Cc. 4 and 26, in The 'Disciplina Clericalis' of Petrus Alfonsi, ed. E. Hermes, (1977) 114-15, 150-1
29. C. Burnett, 'The Works of Petrus Alfonsi', Medium Aevum, 66 (1997), 44
30. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, I, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998), c. 400
31. Urbanus Magnus Danielis Becclesiensis, ed. J. G. Smyly (Dublin, 1939). It ends 'Explicit liber Urbani Danielis Becclesiensis', after stating that it was 'Old King Henry' who first gave this teaching to the uncourtly (illepidis). It has become conventional to add the word magnus to its title to distinguish it from other poems called Urbanus
32. R. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings 1075-1225 (Oxford, 2000), 579, 582-8. There are some useful comments in T. Zotz, 'Urbanitas: Zur Bedeutung und Funktion einer antiken Wertvorstellung innerhalb der höfischen Kultur des hohen Mittelalters', in Curialitas: Studien zu Grundfragen der höfischritterlichen Kultur, ed. J. Fleckenstein (Göttingen, 1990), an article to which I am much indebted
33. How, for example, should we read the warning against striking an enemy while he is squatting to defecate? Urbanus, ll. 1094-7
34. Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy, 162-6, 185. The subject of Daniel's influence on subsequent works, particularly in Anglo-Norman, is one which has been taken further by Frédérique Lachaud in 'Littérature de civilité et "processus de civilisation" à la fin du XIIe siècle: le cas anglais d'après l'Urbanus magnus', in Les échanges culturels: actes du congrès des médiévistes français, Boulogne-sur-Mer 2001, ed. D. Courtemanche and A.-M. Helvétius (Paris, 2002). I owe much to Frédérique Lachaud's kindness in letting me see in advance of publication both this and another paper, 'L'enseignement des bonnes manières en milieu de cour en Angleterre d'après l'Urbanus magnus attribué à Daniel de Beccles', to be published in Erziehung und Bildung am Hofe. 7. Symposium der Residenzen-Kommission in Celle, ed. H. Kruse and W. Paravicini (Sigmaringen, 2002)
35. For other examples of the phrase gracia morum see C. S. Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness - Civilizing Trends and the Formation of Courtly Ideals, 939-1210 (Philadelphia, 1985), 33, 95-6, 140
36. See P. W. Cummins, 'A Salernitan Regimen of Health', Allegorica, 1 (1976) 78-81
37. But for a different view see Bryson, Courtesy to Chivalry, 278
38. and Knox, 'Disciplina', 107, 117, 126
39. In the short fifteenth-century poem, Ut te geras ad mensam, you were advised not to scratch yourself like a mole, Furnivall, Meals and manners, II, 26
40. Elias believed that 'courtois verses say little on this subject', Civilizing Process, 110, but he did not know of Daniel's work
41. Urbanus, ll. 1047-9, 1083-103
42. Urbanus, ll. 1290-2, 2203-5. Cf. T. A. Heslop, 'Orford Castle: Nostalgia and Sophisticated Living', Architectural History, 34 (1991), 44, for the careful attention paid to the ventilation of privies in a twelfth-century castle
43. In this section 'a major preoccupation is the continuous and difficult attempt to segregate the working life of an agrarian community from the civilized enclave of the semi-public household space', Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 587-8
44. See S. L. Waugh, 'Tenure to Contract: Lordship and Clientage in Thirteenth-Century England', English Historical Review 101 (1986), 811-39
45. Urbanus, ll. 2002-12. Nor indeed should you either beat or desert your wife, 1997-9, 2013-26. There is also some succinct advice on best practice when with a prostitute, 2103-6. It seems likely that much of what Daniel wrote about sexual relations between the sexes was intended to amuse
46. See Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, 586-7
47. According to the twelfth-century Historia Gaufridi ducis, Henry II's father, Geoffrey le Bel, was praised because 'he bore injuries patiently and clemently; if he heard abuse heaped on him he pretended not to hear it', Chroniques des comtes d'Anjou, ed. L. Halphen and R. Poupardin (Paris, 1913), 177
48. Urbanus, ll. 1354-7, 1748-56
49. Urbanus, ll. 449-73. In this short passage the word concives is used five times
50. M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record (2nd edn, Oxford, 1993), 194, 198-200, 246-7
51. C. Meale, 'The Middle English Romance of Ipomedon: A Late Medieval "Mirror" for Princes and Merchants', Reading Medieval Studies, 10 (1984), 136-83, esp. 150-6
52. Caxton's Book of Courtesy, ed. F. J. Furnivall (1868), 32-7. In a poem of just 532 lines, fifty-six are on the subject of reading these four authors
53. cf. 'Le bel teisir est curteisie', Ipomedon, l. 2630
54. Cf. 'Vos ne prendrez la venjaunce, De espeye ne de launce, Mais autrement purrez conquere, Amendement par lay de terre, Ne seez pas trope hastif, Ceo vous prie, moun chere fiz', in Urbain le Courtois, Parsons, 'Anglo-Norman Books', 404
55. The young men at Edward IV's court were to be taught 'temperate behaving and patience', A. R. Myers, The Household of Edward IV (Manchester, 1959), 126-7
56. Erasmus, De civilitate morum puerilium in Opera Omnia (Leiden, 1540), tom. 1, 870
57. Robert Whittinton's bi-lingual version in the 1554 edition, sig. Diii-iv; modern English in Complete Works of Erasmus, XXV, ed. J. K. Sowards (Toronto, 1985), 289
58. Elias, Civilizing Process, 64-5
59. C. Roussel, 'Le legs de la Rose: modèles et préceptes de la sociabilité médiévale', in Pour une histoire des traités de savoir-vivre en Europe, ed. A. Montandon (Clermont-Ferrand, 1994), 1
60. Erasmus was 'a monk versed in medieval tradition' whose achievement was to give 'coherence and orderly arrangement to the medieval body of precepts', M. T. Brentano, Relationship of the Latin Facetus Literature to the Medieval English Courtesy Poems (Lawrence, KA, 1935), 105-6. To this I would add that he seasoned his commonplaces with an occasional phrase in Greek
61. Jaeger, The Origins of Courtliness, 36-7. I am more inclined to believe that laymen and secular-minded clerics always shared values which clerics then first expressed in written form
62. Cf. J. Gillingham, 'Thegns and Knights in Eleventh-Century England: Who Was Then the Gentleman?', TRHS, 6th ser., 5 (1995)
63. repr. in idem, The English in the Twelfth Century (Woodbridge, 2000), 163-85, esp. 180-2
64. Burke, 'A Civil Tongue', 37
65. O. Walker, Of Education, Especially of Young Gentlemen (3rd impression, 1677), 219
66. The unknown author explained that he had written maxime ut gloriose viverent et ad honorem contingerent, T. Hunt, Le Livre de Catun (Anglo-Norman Text Society, Plain Texts Series II, 1994), 9
67. See R. Hazelton, 'The Christianization of "Cato"; The Disticha Catonis in the Light of Late Medieval Commentaries', Medieval Studies, 19 (1957), 157-73
68. R. R. Bolgar, The Classical Heritage and its Beneficiaries (Cambridge, 1958), 125
69. D. Knox, 'Erasmus' De Civilitate and the Religious Origins of Civility in Protestant Europe', Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, 86 (1995), 7-55. According to my count, Erasmus used forms of (in)civilis twenty times, (in)decorum fifteen times, (in)urbanus eleven times, rusticus eight times
70. In De Rhetorica, Alcuin advised those who wanted to learn civiles mores to read his book; cited in C. S. Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe, 950-1200 (Philadelphia, 1994), 30-1
71. William described Wihtred of Kent as domi enim civilis (translated by Mynors as 'civilized at home'), and said that after brutal beginnings Cnut settled down to behave magna civilitate, Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, cc. 15, 181
72. According to Gerald, the Emperor Augustus, famed for his patronage of architecture and letters, lived civilissime, Giraldi Cambrensis Opera, VIII, ed. G. F. Warner (Rolls Series, 1891), 51
73. H. Liebeschütz, Medieval Humanism in the Life and Writings of John of Salisbury (1950), 92-3
74. John distinguished three types of dinner parties: plebeian, philosophical and the civil. The plebeian is characterised by its excesses, so far removed from urbanity as to be closer to barbaric vice than to the civil life (ab omni urbanitate adeo procul est ut barbariei vitiis familiarius sit quam vitae civili); the philosophical by its sober solemnity; the civil by its moderation, rationality and witty good cheer, Policratici sive de nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum libri VIII, ed. C. C. J. Webb (Oxford, 1929), II, 253-7, 279-84
75. According to Herbert, Thomas possessed civilis gratia ... urbana, benigna, socialis. The well-born youth sent to serve at his court was tam civiliter eruditam et tam urbane edoctam thanks to the care (civilem et domesticam custodiam) taken by urbanus novus hic noster paterfamilias, a man who added civilitas to his moderation, Vita Sancti Thomae, in Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, III, ed. J. C. Robertson (Rolls Series, 1877), 227-33
76. The passage is discussed in Zotz, 'Urbanitas', 428-30, and Jaeger, Envy of Angels, 297-308
77. Matthew Paris described Robert Grosseteste as in mensa refectionis corporalis dapsilis, copiosus et civilis, hilaris et affabilis, Chronica Majora, V, ed. H. R. Luard (Rolls Series, 1880), 407
78. Southern translated civilis here as 'urbane'. According to Aquinas, Orpheus homines bestiales et solitarios reduceret ad civilitatem, cited by J. Fisch, 'Zivilisation, Kultur', in Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, ed. O. Brunner et al., VII (Stuttgart, 1992), 694
79. On the legacy of the humanists see Clanchy, Memory to Written Record, 14-16
80. M. McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford, 1971)
81. Entry 'facetus' in Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources, I (1975)
82. T. Hunt, Teaching and Learning Latin in Thirteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 1991), I, 177
83. Jaeger, Courtliness, 122, 127, 154-61
84. Zotz, 'Urbanitas', 409-11
85. Printed by Gieben, 'Grosseteste', 71
86. Lanfranc, 'Liber de corpore et sanguine', Patrologia Latina, 150, 414
87. Zotz, 'Urbanitas', 393, 406
88. Zotz, 'Urbitanitas', 396-406
89. 'He pleased the world as well as God. His table was more like Caesar's than a prelate's.' Vita Sancti Thomae, 230-1
90. Knox, 'Disciplina', 107-35. Part of the problem is that in this article Knox consistently writes as though 'monastic' and 'clerical' were one and the same thing, a sleight of hand which elides the gulf between two very different sorts of clerics, the courtly and the austerely religious. Nicholls had earlier made a case for monastic influence on the origins of courtesy, pointing to similarities between provisions about table manners and spitting in courtesy books and monastic rules and customaries
91. Knox, 'Disciplina', 117
92. see Cameron, '"Civilized Religion"', 49
93. and Ingram, 'Sexual Manners', 93
94. Ingram, 'Sexual Manners', 91-3
95. The suggestion that there was 'a new conception of manners which by implying a separation between good manners and morality allowed the first to be judged by the standards of the second', Bryson, Courtesy to Civility, 199, is to ignore the monastic attacks on courtly manners
96. Urbanus, l. 1948
97. F. Heal and C. Holmes, The Gentry in England and Wales 1500-1700 (1994), 276
98. On the material culture of the late Anglo-Saxon aristocracy and gentry see R. Fleming, 'The New Wealth, the New Rich and the New Political Style in Late Anglo-Saxon England', Anglo-Norman Studies, 23 (2000), 1-22
99. and on their close involvement with towns, eadem, 'Rural Elites and Urban Communities in Late-Saxon England', Past and Present, 141 (1993)
100. J. Hatcher, 'Labour, Leisure and Economic Thought before the Nineteenth Century', Past and Present, 160 (1998)
101. C. Carpenter, 'Who Ruled the Midlands in the Later Middle Ages?', Midland History, 19 (1994), 5
102. Cf. A. McFarlane, 'Civility and the Decline of Magic', in Civil Histories, ed. Burke, Harrison and Slack, 156-7
103. Gillingham, 'Civilizing the English?', 38-9
104. See also P. Nightingale, 'Knights and Merchants: Trade, Politics and the Gentry in Late Medieval England', Past and Present, 169 (2000), 36-62, on the long history of the appeal of commercial profit to nobility and gentry
105. D. Starkey, 'The Age of the Household', in The Later Middle Ages, ed. S. Medcalf (1981), 244
106. See also N. Tadmor, 'The Concept of the Household-Family in Eighteenth-Century England', Past and Present, 151 (1996)
107. For earlier re-buildings involving a tendency to create more and smaller, more private, more functionally defined rooms, C. M. Woolgar, The Great Household in Late Medieval England (1999), 59-68
108. For similar fashions in religious houses where the monks wished to live like gentlemen, B. Harvey, Living and Dying in England 1100-1540 (1993), 78n, 130-3
109. For Daniel's awareness of the head of the house's private space, Urbanus, ll. 1360-5
110. Heal and Holmes, Gentry 1500-1700, 312-15
111. We should not, however, underestimate the amount of time the late medieval gentry spent in London, often leaving their wives to look after their country estates, C. Richmond, 'The Pastons and London', in Courts and Regions in Medieval Europe, ed. S. R. Jones, R. Marks and A. J. Minnis (York, 2000), 213
112. By then the aristocracy tended to move, in a 'modern pattern', between a London house and just one or two major country houses, Dyer, Standards of Living, 99-100
113. See also C. Barron,'Centres of Conspicuous Consumption: The Aristocratic Town House in London 1200-1550', London Journal, 20 (1995)
114. K. Thomas, 'Cleanliness and Godliness in Early Modern England', in Religion, Culture and Society in Early Modern Britain, ed. A. Fletcher and P. Roberts (1994), 58, 61
115. R. Eales, Chess: The History of a Game (1985), 71-9
116. C. Page, Voices and Instruments of the Middle Ages (1987), ch. 1
117. R. Grassby, 'The Decline of Falconry in Early Modern England', Past and Present, 157 (1997), 37-62
118. A. Young, Tudor and Jacobean Tournaments (1987), 40-2
119. On fishing see R. C. Hoffmann, 'Fishing for Sport in Medieval Europe: New Evidence', Speculum, 60 (1985), 877-902
120. S. Anglo, The Martial Arts of Renaissance Europe (2000)
121. F. Heal, Hospitality in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1990), esp. 91, 147-52, 165-6
122. K. Mertes, The English Noble Household 1250-1600 (Oxford, 1988) for the lack of change prior to 1600
123. T. Meron, Bloody Constraint: War and Chivalry in Shakespeare (Oxford, 1998), 109
124. Most such statements reflect the influential views of M. E. James, e.g. Society, Politics and Culture: Studies in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 1986). However, his belief that ancient ideas on virtuous and noble conduct had little or no influence until they appeared in print is founded upon the usual assumptions about the scale and ubiquity of violence in medieval English politics
125. See Bryson, Courtesy to Civility, 237, for another qualification of his theory of a seventeenth-century attenuation of honour
126. L. Stone, The Crisis of the Aristocracy 1558-1641 (Oxford, 1967), 96-7
127. Heslop, 'Orford Castle'; C. Coulson, Cultural Realities and Reappraisals in English Castle-Study', Journal of Medieval Hisory, 22 (1996), 171-208
128. idem, 'Peaceable Power in English Castles', Anglo-Norman Studies, 23 (2000/1), 69-95
129. M. S. R. Jenner, 'Civilization and Deodorization? Smell in Early Modern English Culture', in Civil Histories, ed. Burke, Harrison and Slack, 143
130. C. Taylor, 'Medieval Ornamental Landscapes', Landscapes, 1 (2000), 38-55
131. R. Liddiard, 'Castle Rising, Norfolk: A "Landscape of Lordship"?', Anglo-Norman Studies, 22 (1999/2000)
132. Dyer, Standards of Living, 53, 76-7
133. L. Bryskett, Literary Works, ed. J. H. P. Pafford (1972), 65-85, esp. 70-1
134. S. Daniel, The Collection of the Historie of England (1618), 67
135. By basing his views on the high level of aristocratic bloodshed in medieval England on ducal statistics, T. H. Hollingsworth, 'A Demographic Study of the British Ducal Families', Population Studies, 11 (1957), 8
136. Daniel of Beccles would have had no difficulty in agreeing with John Aubrey's view (cited by Heal and Holmes, Gentry 1500-1700, 276), of the educated gentleman: 'the management of his estates will take up most of his time, besides visits and returns of visits'
137. For the spread of the earliest treatises on dancing, composed in mid-fifteenth-century Italy, via France to England, N. Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy 1066-1530 (1984), 173-4