Wednesday 23 April 2014

The Textus Roffensis - England's forgotten jewel



Everyone knows the names of the great documents of English history, Domesday Book and Magna Carta, but England produced documents long before the Normans arrived.  One of the far lesser known documents is the Textus Roffensis, the Book of Rochester, which, despite what the name suggests, has national importance.

The Textus is really two volumes bound into one, a collecting together of carefully selected old documents that were all copied at the same time and eventually came to be bound together.  They are not unconnected, indeed both volumes were written out by the same scribe and finished off by later hands.  One volume contains a copy of the laws of Æthelberht, king of Kent who, in 597, invited St Augustine to England to reintroduce Christianity to England and thus founded the cathedrals of Canterbury and Rochester.  It also contains a copy of the coronation charter of King Henry I from 1100.  The second contains a register of varying kinds of document, grants, charters and lists.

Lists of bishops.
Later names were added by different scribes
The Textus itself dates back to around 1122 and its compilation was almost certainly directed by Bishop Ernulf, a cleric of Bec, the same institution that produced the great Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc.  It was written, as I said, by one single scribe, one who was highly accomplished and was probably Prior Ordwine.  It was bound into one document at around 1314 and generally left alone beyond a few annotations in the margin from various hands up to the 17th century. Each page was numbered using arabic numerals which were only in use in England from around 1300 onwards, fitting with a binding date of c.1314.  We can say with some certainty that this was the case as the register volume contains lists of Archbishops of Canterbury and bishops of Rochester but both cease at 1314, Walter for Canterbury and Hamo of Rochester.  It was probably Hamo who directed it to be bound, a great promoter of Rochester cathedral.

The laws of Æthelberht as found in the Textus Roffensis is the earliest surviving codified law in the English language.  Written law was a sign of civilisation in Europe and to write down laws was to promote Kent.  Allowing St Augustine to visit would have been another sign that Æthelberht wanted to be seen as innovative, a renaissance man of his time.  Can we be sure that this is genuinely from Æthelberht's time? There will always be a touch of doubt over such a long period of time, these laws were already 500 years old when they were copied by Ordwine, but the language of the text is archaic English, the Jutish dialect which was never as widespread as West Saxon, and was lost when Mercian and West Midland dialects went on to become the base of the Middle English more familiar to Ordwine.  It couldn't be re-created.  Also, the laws were not attributed to Æthelberht but to the people of Kent, which was an early Frankish style, but later, say in the time of Alfred a little over 200 years later, it was the king who headed the law, not the people.

The only illuminated letter
 in the Textus
Henry I's coronation of charter of 1100 is also important as it is the oldest known copy of the document in existence, copied out in 1122 at the same time as the laws above.  In his coronation charter Henry promised to uphold the laws of Edward the Confessor.  The Rochester scriptorium preserved a version of the basis of them, Æthelberht's laws, a version for Ordwine to copy - did Henry use it?  He was known to the cathedral, its bishop, Gundulf, witnessed the coronation charter in 1100 and later in 1130 Henry attended the cathedral's re-consecration ceremony. The coronation charter was known to the rebel barons of 1215 and formed a loose basis for Magna Carta.

The other documents contained in the Textus Roffensis include two grants of land to the St Andrew's church in 604.  It is quite possible that both of these are forgeries, one almost certainly is, but if the other is not it could be the earliest record of English place names and street names.  Why would anyone forge grants of land from 604?  The answer lies in the other documents included by the same scribe in the Textus.

There is a list that contains details of all the parishes that paid for and received chrism from the cathedral, chrism being a holy oil for use in baptisms.  This list dates to 1080 at the latest, and is possibly pre-conquest.  It certainly pre-dates the great survey of England, Domesday Book.  Such a list records subservient parishes to the cathedral and sets out its rights over them.  Couple this with grants of land, you further extend, record and emphasis the cathedral's rights and responsibilities. This would be very useful if the need arose to assert those rights if they were ever encroached upon, or, in the case of Domesday Book, prove to an outside authority. 


Pages of the Textus showing marginalia,
arabic numerals and water damage
after it was dropped in the River Medway
Consider the situation here - Anglo Saxon monks and an accomplished Anglo Saxon Prior with a highly regarded Norman bishop asserting the rights of an institution founded under a forward thinking Anglo Saxon king, asserting its rights to land granted before the conquest.  Bishop Ernulf was recording the heritage of his institution from before the Norman conquest, a self-conscious act to preserve and recognise its entire history, not just the few years under Norman influence.  There was no mass sweeping away of all that came before by the Normans.  Bishop Ernulf protected his bishopric and his priory and that, for me, is the poignancy of this collection of documents - the explicit cooperation between conqueror and conquered to protect something that transcended both.

The Textus was always a valuable book and it was lent to several supposedly trustworthy people over the years.  It suffered a few accidents along the way.  In 1631 the volume was taken to London and in the absence of its recipient at the appointed boarding house, was left with the landlord's wife, who promptly sold it for 5s to a Dr Thomas Leonard.  Nothing short of a court case could prevail upon Dr Leonard to hand it back.  And on another occasion, on its way back from another trip to London it, somehow, ended up in the river Medway.  Water and vellum do not mix and the pages were damaged by the presumably dirty water and still show signs of shrinkage after restoration.

The new works in Rochester cathedral crypt will provide a light-sensitive display environment for this remarkable document to be displayed.  Maybe then more people will know of it and understand its place in the history of England.


Wednesday 16 April 2014

In Contemplation of Bones


Continuing my adventures at Rochester cathedral.

It is hardly on the scale of the fantastic find in Leicester of the earthly remains of King Richard III, but mysterious bones have been uncovered at Rochester Cathedral.

The excavation site
A Heritage Lottery grant, along with privately raised funds, is currently providing the finance for a new project to renovate the crypt at Rochester.  At the moment the crypt is an empty, echoing space with a couple of chapels, one enclosed behind glass and impressive wrought ironwork, but it feels very much a utilitarian part of the cathedral, made more so by the small kitchenette in one corner to provide teas for the choir between practice and services.  The project intends to breathe new life into the somewhat dark and dingy area and transform it into a permanent exhibition space with new displays including the unique and extremely valuable Textus Roffensis.  More on that next week.

Part of these works has involved digging a trench outside the crypt on the north side of the cathedral, alongside the presbytery.  This is to enable more toilets to be built and connected to the sewer system.  So far, so suitably undignified.  During these excavation works the contractors came upon a large number of bones, an event which was entirely unexpected.  According to the, albeit sketchy, records for the cathedral, there are not supposed to be burials here.  There is a lay cemetery on the north side stretching from the nave transept to the west front along the length of the nave, and it was thought that the monastic burial ground was closer to this.

This old photo shows the area
without the modern walls

The bones could be monastic, the bodies of the monks who lived and served at the cathedral over the centuries.  They could also be lay people, those who lived in the town and were suitably wealthy to be interred so close to the cathedral.  Unless substantial complete skeletons are recovered, which I do not believe to be the case, it will probably be impossible to tell.  A full skeleton, or near complete set of bones can tell you how the person lived, diseases they may have suffered from and analysis of their bones and teeth can show the kind of diet they would have had. 

The shadow of Richard III
The fragments that I saw being removed from the trench are small and broken.  They will never be identified and, even as anonymous fragments, they will be treated with the utmost dignity fully in compliance with Church of England advice.  I wonder that a handful of unnamed bones of indeterminate age and sex will receive more tender care than a king who still resides in a cardboard box in a lab.

I was told by the contractors on the site that as they uncovered the bones they were put to one side and when an appreciable amount was collected the clergy would come out of the cathedral in full regalia to reclaim them and take them back into the cathedral.  I don't know where they all are now, however, what I do know is that they will all be reinterred as close as possible to where they were found, the same place if possible and in the presence of the clergy.  Some have already been laid back to rest, their ground not earmarked for more interference, but there are some still waiting to be returned once the building work has been completed.

Monk, or merchant?
The discovery of the bones of Richard III in 2012 has caused a great many people to re-evaluate how they feel about the disturbance of a grave, certainly not least myself.  I studied archaeology and digging up bones was part and parcel of investigating barrows and burial pits, cists and sarcophagi.  But it is so easy to lose sight of them as people.  Richard III brought that message crashing down on us - you put a name to the bones and suddenly they become a flesh and blood person with thoughts, feelings and family.  These bones were people, merchants maybe, seamstresses, inn keepers, squires, sailors, monks.  We will probably never know for sure unless we find a document stating who was buried here but we can be fairly certain that they were all loved and cherished to be where they were.  They were disturbed by accident, not from some pre-planned excavation looking to retrieve them.  Somehow that makes a difference.  It is less mercenary.  And it does seem rather fitting that they were discovered during a project to bring better understanding of the cathedral and its place in the world to a wider audience.  By finding a new burial site we have furthered our knowledge of the cathedral and its wider community.



Thursday 10 April 2014

My favourite Holy Roman Emperor: Charles IV of Bohemia

Charles
I didn't know Charles existed until last year.  There, I've admitted it.  And I found him quite by accident.

Having driven past signs to Crécy on holiday I became intrigued.  I was a devoted Normans and Angevins fan and never really showed any great interest beyond Edward I and his domestic wars.  I had touched on Edward III but only as far as society was concerned, not politics. And so I embarked on a personal project to learn about Edward and Crécy.

No fewer than five kings took to that field in northern France, and one was slain - not the king of France, or even of England, but Bohemia.  I had to find out what a Bohemian king - a blind one at that - was doing fighting in a battle between France and England.  And during that search I discovered that this king had a son.  Charles.

The outline of his life is, in a nutshell - born 14th May 1316, a boy removed from his homeland to be brought up in what was his extended family at the court of the French king.  He was sent to fight in Italy and then re-established the role of the monarchy in Bohemia.  After arguing with his father they then reconciled and were together frequently around Europe, culminating in Charles election as king of the Romans, (i.e. Germany) and in the Battle of Crécy a couple of months later, where John was killed.  Charles became king of Bohemia, won around his opponents to gain complete control over the Holy Roman Empire, made Prague its capital and personally ruled half of Europe.  He married four times and died from pneumonia on 29th November 1378.

But that really doesn't tell you much about the man. 

Charles was reckoned handsome, above average height for the age, golden haired in his youth darkening to brown by middle age, with large brown eyes and a delicate nose.  He must have looked rather exotic and along with his wealth and status explains his popularity with the ladies of Lucca in Italy.  He talks in his autobiography of enjoying the charms on offer in Lucca, but by the time he was writing he expressed regret over his behaviour.


Charles and Anna, his third wife
Charles had four wives. Yes, FOUR wives.  It sounds excessive but Blanche, his first wife, to whom he was reputedly devoted, died suddenly in 1348.  His second wife Anne died after three years of marriage, in child birth.  His third wife Anna lived longer and was the first queen of Bohemia to be crowned empress. She had been betrothed to his son Václav but Václav died aged just eleven months old and when his second wife Anne died he married Anna himself.   She was just fourteen and he was thirty-seven.  She gave Charles the son he craved but she died aged twenty-three, again in childbirth.  Only his fourth wife Elizabeth outlived him.  

Against the accepted norm of the age, Charles appears to have been faithful to his wives, once he left Italy and began to live with Blanche as her husband, that is.  There is just one attributed illegitimate child, a son called Vilem who is mentioned in a single source in 1377.  No more is known about him, not even his age in 1377 so there is no way to tie him down to a time in Charles' life.  So there is no evidence to suggest he was conceived while Charles was married.  My personal opinion tends towards thinking that Vilem was the result of a union between Charles and some lady who offered him comfort after Blanche died.  Fanciful maybe, but as he became more and more detached as he grew older, it seems unlikely that he sought out a romantic entanglement.

His increasing detachment from people encroached on his personal life.  There is a poignant tale told about his second wife Anne.  Generally held to be bright and intelligent, she felt neglected by Charles, and prepared a love potion to lure him to her.  It nearly killed him.

His fourth wife also had cause to feel aggrieved.  Elizabeth of Pomerania was a rather comical woman.  Her party piece performed at banquets was to bend pieces of iron such as bars and horse shoes with her bare hands.  They had children, including two sons but, although she and Charles rubbed along together well enough he favoured his children by earlier marriages.  She outlived him and despite her complaints appears to have been fond of him and requested that she be buried beside him.

Young Charles
His health suffered later in life. By his later years Charles was still quick witted and affable but he was not warm.  He avoided making eye contact with people and preferred to whittle at a piece of wood with a knife than to engage.  He did what he had to but appears to have taken little joy in it.  He had been injured numerous times, including at Crécy.  One of these injuries was to his neck which probably broke a vertebra causing him to stoop.  He suffered from gout and found riding uncomfortable and travelled in a litter.  Finally he fell and broke his leg causing him to be bedridden.  And thus he died from pneumonia.

I have saved my favourite story for last.  In 1348, the year when Europe was first beset by the Black Death, Pope Clement VI had cause to berate Charles.  He told the emperor to dress more modestly.  Apparently Charles was something of a dedicated follower of fashion and favoured the new taste for extremely short tunics.  He shocked not just the pope but the people of Prague because he showed an immodest amount of leg.  So shocking was this deemed to be, over a hundred years later Pope Pius II wrote that Charles had not dressed properly.


And that is the image I leave you with - a handsome, exotic, young man with long brown hair, large eyes and a delicate nose; the most powerful man in Europe who dressed in a scandalously short tunic with too much finely shaped leg on show.

Thursday 3 April 2014

The Ghost in the Machine

Continuing my account of growing up in Rochester cathedral in Kent, England.

The organ blower, in its dim little room in the crypt of Rochester cathedral, was always breaking down.  It was old, temperamental, and had a mind of its own.  That was the rational explanation.  The less rational version of events, which somehow seemed far more likely to those of us who had spent so much time in it, under it and around it, was that it was haunted.  There is a list of the former choir masters and organists of Rochester cathedral on a panel next to the door to the organ loft under the quire screen.  I often looked at that list and wondered which was responsible for what went on with the blower, and indeed, the organ itself.

Area of the crypt where the organ blower 
room was, through arch to the right. 
The wall to the left is a 'false' wall.

The blower's party piece was to shut down during a musical service.  It was a very noisy piece of machinery, even up in the quire you could feel there was a constant rumbling when it was switched on and the sound of air being forced into the wheezing bellows located behind the organ console was always in the background.  So when it was switched off, you knew.  On one occasion when I was sitting out a service in the organ loft, the blower switched itself off.  The choir master rushed down to the blower room to see if there was anything he could do, but had to return to conduct the now a capella version of the anthem as the organ was utterly dead.  Professionals that they were, the choir coped without a raised eyebrow.  Once freed by the sermon, the choir master climbed back up the narrow steps to the organ loft to continue pushing buttons and trying again and again to restart the blower with no success.  Then, with no warning, it burst back into life, all on its own.  Neither the choir nor the congregation were particularly surprised.  They were so used to the blower and its foibles that it was just another day at Rochester cathedral.

There was another incident, recounted to me by one of the organ scholars.  The scholars were generally young musical genii taking a year out of university to study church music in its natural environment.  They were creative and some were more whimsical than others.  This particular one was bright, intelligent and perfectly down to earth.  He headed out quite late one evening, he explained, leaving the house he occupied on Minor Canon Row to walk around the cathedral to the Gundulf tower which was the only out of hours access to the building.  As he walked he heard the unmistakable sound of someone playing the organ.  He wondered who it could be because he was scheduled to practice that night, so no one else should have been there.  He had the choir master's keys himself, so who was it?  He was rather agitated as they were using his time and he hastened around the west front.

Rochester cathedral west front

He unlocked the gate in the outer wall of the little courtyard outside the Gundulf tower, which he thought unusual as it was normally secured by the last person to leave.  He then unlocked the heavy wooden door into the tower itself.  The organ was still playing and the student's feet sped up, anxious now to find out who was in there.  He hurried through the little stone corridor that links the tower to the cathedral proper and opened the door at the end, again, usually left open, and walked around the corner, up the stone steps to the quire screen and to the door of the organ loft.  The organ fell silent.  The door was locked.  The organ loft was empty.  The silence was utter.  Not even the bellows gushed air as they settled, as they should have, had the blower just been switched off.  He left again, he told me, far more rapidly than he had arrived.

Big, old buildings filled with history and dead people should by rights always feel as if they are haunted, especially at night.  The dark should hold menace.  The lamp posts throwing weak light through the stained glass windows should chase shadows across the stone floor.  But the cathedral isn't like that.  Maybe because I knew it so well, maybe because I really did know it with my eyes closed, and in total darkness, I never felt anything sinister there.  If it was truly haunted it was by those who couldn't bear to leave this remarkable foundation.  I was there in the middle of the night on more than one occasion.  My parents were called upon whenever the organ blower gave up, and if that was at midnight, then so be it.  I would be roused from my bed, made to dress and trek down to the cathedral so my parents could fix whatever had gone wrong this time.  The empty, silent church became a playground.  The only lights were those we needed to navigate from the Gundulf tower to the crypt entrance on the other side of the nave.  The rest was left unlit.  No one would hear us, no one would see us, and there was no limit on the places my brother and I could go.   Yes, it was cold more often than not, and going to the loo was a chilly and sometimes chilling experience as the only loos were in an uncovered gap beside the Gundulf tower, effectually outside and filled with spiders.

The organ. The case was designed
by Sir George Gilbert Scott

The organ underwent a major renovation and rebuild in 1989 and part of that was to replace the blower.  I was lucky enough to work on this rebuild, though I suspect that my electrical work behind the console was replaced in 2006 when the electrics were further upgraded.  I, of course, got to scamper up the scaffolding that reached up giving access to both the organ front and the crossing roof so it could also undergo renovation.  The new blower was relocated and the old blower room finally opened back up to the public.  The stonework here still retains its dark, mouldy hue from being enclosed for so long.  I heard no more of the supernatural goings on, so maybe the modern organ is too complex for the ghostly organist to manage.

The cathedral still holds secrets that are thrown up when they are least expected.  There is a chair store that reaches under the cemetery to the north of the cathedral and during work to underpin it several lead coffins were found.  The archaeologists told them to put them right back again and not to attempt to open them.  We always knew the crypt extended further back than the white washed wall to the west.  There is, behind the wall, an enormous pipe that fed air to the organ from the blower, big enough to crawl through.   In this space it is rumoured that a member of the Dracule family was laid to rest, the same family that fed the Dracula legend.  A lottery heritage grant is opening this area up, the wall being knocked through, so maybe we will finally discover if this is true.  Above in the nave is a large, enigmatic stone on which is carved the words 'Entrance to the Vault' but this vault has never been located, even using geophys equipment.  I know what used to be kept behind the high altar!

At the time I saw little strange in my unconventional childhood - it was just how it was.  The cathedral and the community were an integral part of my life.  My headmistress was a steward at the cathedral and had known me since I was a baby.  She requested that I attend her school.  My RE teacher was married to a Canon and had also known me most of my life.  When 'Songs of Praise' came it was natural that we all sat in the front.  I didn't really understand the awe from my fellow students on Diocesan singing courses when I had to reply to the question 'Which church are you from?' with 'The Cathedral.'

I didn't think I'd miss it.  But now when I go back it feels different, like visiting an aged relative you haven't seen for some time who no longer quite remembers you.  The stage is the same but the players are all different and a new story is being acted out.  My small part in the history of this great place has come to an end.  Now I am merely a spectator.  But I have my memories and that won't ever change, rather like the cathedral itself.