Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas: Ritualised Communication in Text and Practice Lars Kjær One of the most attractive reasons for studying thirteenth-century England is the excellent opportunities for comparative studies.1 The rich administrative evidence allows us to ask and answer questions that must necessarily remain opaque in more data-poor areas. At the same time, as historians such as Nicholas Vincent and Bjorn Weiler have shown, the interdisciplinary, analytical approaches developed in conti- nental historiography can help us unpack the riches of the English sources and restore complexity and depth to our understanding of the medieval past.2 In this paper I will be looking at the way in which the English evidence can help further the vexed question of the relationship between rituals-in-text and rituals-in-practice. A decade ago Philippe Buc inaugurated a vigorous and fruitful debate amongst historians of medieval ritual with the publication of his The Dangers of Ritual. Buc argued that the descriptions of rituals found in narrative sources were so circumscribed with political interests, and so informed by classical and scriptural models, that they can only with great difficulty be used as evidence of actual ritual performance.3 One of the topics covered in the resulting debate has been the numerous accounts of disturbed royal solemnities found in the English narrative sources, such as Matthew Paris’s Chronica majora. Geoffrey Koziol has argued that these stories reveal the difficulties that the post-Conquest kings of England, unlike their Capetian rivals, 1 I would like to thank Carl Watkins for reading an earlier version of this article and the participants at the 2011 Thirteenth Century England conference for their helpful comments and a lively discussion. 2 N. Vincent, ‘Conclusions’, in Noblesses de l’espace Plantagenêt (1154–1224): table ronde tenue à Poitiers le 13 mai 2000, ed. M. Aurell (Poitiers, 2000), 207–14; N. Vincent, The Holy Blood: King Henry III and the Westminster Blood Relic (Cambridge, 2001); N. Vincent, ‘The pilgrimages of the Angevin kings of England, 1154–1272’, in Pilgrimage: The English Experience from Becket to Bunyan, ed. C. Morris and P. Roberts (Cambridge, 2002), 12–45; B. Weiler, ‘Symbolism and politics in the reign of Henry III’, TCE 9, 15–41; B. Weiler, ‘Knighting, homage, and the meaning of ritual: the kings of England and their neighbours in the thirteenth century’, Viator 37 (2006), 275–99; B. Weiler, Kingship, Rebellion, and Political Culture: England and Germany, c.1215–1250 (Basingstoke, 2007); see also David Carpenter, The Reign of Henry III (1996), chapters 20 and 21; David Carpenter, ‘The meetings of King Henry III and Louis IX’, TCE 10, 1–30 and below n. 56. 3 P. Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton, 2001), 72–9; for the ensuing debate see especially the review by G. Koziol, ‘Review article: The dangers of polemic: is ritual still an interesting topic of historical study?’, Early Medieval Europe 11 (2002), 389–96; the reply by Buc, ‘The monster and the critics: a ritual reply’, Early Medieval Europe 15 (2007), 441–52; and C. Pössel, ‘The magic of early medieval ritual’, Early Medieval Europe 17 (2009), 111–25; S. Maclean, ‘Ritual, misunderstanding, and the contest for meaning: representations of the disputed royal assembly at Frankfurt, 873’, in Representations of Power in Medieval Germany, 800–1500, ed. B. Weiler and S. MacLean (Turnhout, 2006), 97–119. 142 Lars Kjær faced when trying to use ritualised actions to buttress their dignity and authority.4 Buc, however, has questioned whether these narrative sources allow us access to the actual reception of rituals in the English court. Rather than straightforwardly revealing contemporary conditions, chroniclers’ accounts of bad, disrupted rituals ‘point to authorial dissent. Whether authorial dissent is itself symptomatic of actual social disorder is another matter altogether.’5 There can, of course, be no single answer to the question of the trustworthiness of chroniclers: it depends, amongst other things, on the agenda of the individual writer, his access to information, and his distance in time and space to the events. A closer study of Matthew Paris’s writ- ings may, however, help further the debate because we are often able to compare and contrast his narratives with the administrative sources of the royal court. In this way we may get a firmer sense of how and how much one well-informed writer crafted his descriptions of ritualised actions and the extent to which his narrative allow us to say something about what actually happened at the royal court.6 Matthew Paris’s Narratives of the Royal Christmas In the Chronica majora, and its abbreviations, Paris opened each year with a descrip- tion of how and where the king held Christmas. Paris’s ideals for the conduct of a royal festival are demonstrated in the first account he penned of a royal Christmas season. In 1235 Henry III had celebrated the Nativity at Winchester with suitable festivity, but it was the banquet that followed on 20 January in order to celebrate the coronation of his new bride, Eleanor of Provence, which attracted most of Paris’s attention. During the banquet the prelates, nobles and burgesses of England fulfilled their traditional duties not just willingly but with real enthusiasm. Disputes over who had the right to fulfil which duties at the feast were set aside by common agreement ‘so that no discord should overshadow the joy of the wedding celebration’.7 During the banquet England’s religious and secular leaders were united in an ideal, ordered community: the magnates were allocated their places at table in order of seniority. Crucially, the abbot of St Albans was given precedence amongst the abbots, in respect of the seniority of St Alban, the proto-martyr of England. Thus seated the guests enjoyed the abundance of royal largesse: ‘everything in the whole world which could bring happiness and glory was found in abundance there’.8 This ideal state of order and commensality is, however, rarely achieved again by Henry III in the Christmases described in the Chronica majora.9 4 G. Koziol, ‘England, France and the problem of sacrality in twelfth-century ritual’, in Cultures of Power, Lordship, Status and Process in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. T.N. Bisson (Philadelphia, 1995), 124–48 (at 137); see also the critique of Koziol’s conclusions in Vincent, Holy Blood, 189–96; Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages’, 39–40. 5 Buc, Dangers, 10 6 For discussions of Paris’s reliability as a chronicler see R. Vaughan, Matthew Paris (Cambridge, 1958), 131–4; and for comparisons between his narratives and the governmental records, D.A. Carpenter, ‘Matthew Paris and Henry III’s speech at the Exchequer in October 1256’, in Carpenter, Reign of Henry III, 137–50; and K. Staniland, ‘The nuptials of Alexander III of Scotland and Margaret Plantagenet’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 30 (1986), 20–45. B. Weiler, ‘Matthew Paris on the writing of history’, JMH 35 (2009), 254–78, points out the need for more careful study of Paris as an author. 7 The record kept in the Red Book of the Exchequer mentions contenciones magne over the offices to be done and records that a decision was postponed till after Easter: English Coronation Records, ed. L.G.W. Legg (1901), 58 and see ibid., 58–61 for the similarities to Paris’s account. 8 CM, iii. 336–9; cf. M. Howell, Eleanor of Provence (Oxford, 1998), 16–20. 9 Paris is, however, inclined to be generous whenever Henry was honouring St Albans with his presence, CM, iv. 358, 402, v. 233–4, 257–8, 319–20, 574, 617, vi. 389–90; for some of his better  Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas 143 The complaints that Paris raises in the context of Henry’s solemnities are a familiar catalogue. Henry was overly affectionate towards foreigners and alienated the native aristocracy.10 He wasted his money prodigally upon his favourites, but was miserly and greedy towards his own subjects. Finally, he was a weak and naïve king who listened to bad counsel. The Christmas feast of 1240 was the first to be disturbed by Henry’s undue love of foreigners. On Christmas Day Henry, ‘at the request of the legate, whom he desired very much to please’, knighted the papal legate, Otto’s, nephew Advocatus, and granted him an income of 30 pounds. At the banquet Henry placed Otto in his own royal seat and himself accepted the seat at his right hand, with all the bishops and aristocrats moving one seat further down the table ‘according to the king’s plan and will’. While thus disturbing the tradi- tional seating order according to his voluntas the king ignored the ‘angry looks’ of his noble subjects.11 Favouring foreigners and showing excessive deference to the pope was in any case problematic according to Paris, but these favourites were also unworthy of the royal generosity. Advocatus immediately sold the income he had been given by the king ‘since he knew that he would soon be leaving together with his master’.12 The legate departed England on the day after the Epiphany, leaving the English church much poorer for his visit, but not before a new foreign scourge had landed in England: Peter of Savoy, the uncle of Queen Eleanor.13 Besides granting Peter the honour of Richmond, Henry also knighted him at the feast of St Edward the Confessor, 5 January, and gave him ‘precious gifts’. On the following day, when the Epiphany marked the end of the Christmas season, Peter was honoured with a great banquet ‘to which the citizens of London were summoned by a royal edict, indeed they were coerced to come to that great celebration, under the penalty of a fine of 100s’.14 There is a world of difference between these feasts dedicated to the honour of foreigners, which the king’s loyal subjects are forced to attend, and the voluntary service and commensality of the coronation feast five years earlier. Henry’s enthral- ment to foreigners continued in the next few years to overshadow his reign and his Christmas celebrations.15 In 1242 Henry spent Christmas in Bordeaux where his mother-in-law, Countess Beatrice of Provence, ‘extorted immoderate incomes’ from him.16 Back in England, during Christmas 1243, Henry ‘did all he could to seem pleasing and agreeable’ to Beatrice who was there for the wedding of her daughter to Richard of Cornwall.17 The spell was not broken until Christmas 1245, when ‘just before the Epiphany concluded the solemnities of the Lord’s Nativity’ news arrived of how Beatrice had betrayed the king by handing her youngest daughter and all the castles she maintained for Henry over to the king of France. At these tidings Christmas celebrations see CM, iv. 590, v. 1, 94; for the glorious visit to Paris in December 1254 see CM, v. 475–84 and Carpenter, ‘Meetings’, but see how swiftly Paris undercuts the story with a reference to Henry’s debts and greedy behaviour towards his own magnates CM, v. 484–5. 10 On Matthew Paris and Henry’s foreign favourites see H. Ridgeway, ‘King Henry III and the “Aliens”, 1236–1272’, TCE 2, 81–92 (at 86); H. Ridgeway, ‘Foreign favourites and Henry III’s problems of patronage, 1247–58’, EHR 104 (1989), 590–610. 11 On the problematic place of the king’s ‘will’ in Roman law and thirteenth-century thought, see W. Childs, ‘Resistance and treason in the Vita Edwardi Secundi’, TCE 6, 177–81, at 181. 12 CM, iv. 83–4. 13 CM, iv. 84–5. 14 CM, iv. 85–6; the precious gifts are mentioned in Flores, ii. 244. 15 See the disturbances related to Peter of Savoy which Paris relates took place around Christmas 1241, CM, iv. 177–8. 16 CM, iv. 236. 17 CM, iv. 283; similarly but worse in Flores, ii. 268. 144 Lars Kjær Henry was ‘immoderately disturbed’, but people showed no compassion towards him. This, Paris explains, was because they remembered that the last time Beatrice had been in England she had remarked scornfully, upon seeing Henry’s prodigality in entertaining her, that she regretted giving her daughters in marriage to such a foolish king and his brother.18 Henry’s prodigal generosity to foreigners contrasted with the unbecoming miser- liness and rapacity he showed towards his own subjects. In 1250 Henry celebrated Christmas at the vacant see of Winchester, and had the woods of the see cut down and sold and added the profits to his treasury, something Paris condemns as an act of rapina.19 The Chronica majora immediately went on to recount a thunderstorm that struck on Christmas night: ‘a sign, as it was feared, of God’s anger’ and of troubles to come.20 After this note of divine foreboding, the narrative returns to the affairs of the royal Christmas celebration: At that same most distinguished feast, although all his ancestors had been accustomed since antiquity to distribute regal robes and costly jewels, the king nevertheless, being perhaps concerned and anxious for his pilgrimage, gave no clothes to his knights or his household.21 Henry also diminished the expense of his table, but instead of living simply and ascetically, he imposed himself on religious houses and men of a middling sort, demanding not only hospitality but also gifts for himself, his family and his cour- tiers. Indeed, Henry did not shrink from demanding them as obligations rather than as gratuita and the court had no regard for the spirit behind the presents, but was only interested in their material value. Henry’s court had become, like that of Rome, a prostitute selling herself for gain.22 What spoiled Henry’s celebrations were both his own parsimony and his unwill- ingness to show proper gratitude for the gifts he received. In 1252 Henry celebrated Christmas at Winchester. During the Christmas banquet the citizens of Winchester sent him a ‘most noble present of food and drink which was well able to move all who saw it to admiration’. Henry, however, was unmoved and ‘as an act of grati- tude’ shortly thereafter obliged the citizens to grant him 200 marks, ‘and thus he transformed the solemnity of the Nativity into mourning and lamentation’.23 Two years later, when Henry returned from France shortly after Christmas, a similar situ- ation occurred. Upon his arrival in London he was honourably received by the citi- zens, who had prayed for his safe passage, and given a gift of £100. Henry, however, showed no gratitude for the gift or their devotion to him, for which he was criticised by a bystander.24 The king responded that the £100 was an obligation (debitum) and if the Londoners wanted his gratitude they should voluntarily (spontaneum) give him a large and honourable gift. The Londoners then purchased a costly cup, worth £200, which they offered ‘reverently’ for his affection. Henry accepted it and thanked them, though not in equal measure to the value of the gift, nor did he show 18 CM, iv. 505; omitted in Flores, ii. 306. 19 CM, v. 198. 20 CM, v. 198–9, for Paris’s belief that the weather ‘conformed to the state of the world’ see CM, iv. 568. 21 CM, v. 199. 22 CM, v. 199. 23 CM, v. 359. 24 For Paris’s use of unnamed bystanders to express moral judgement, see Weiler, ‘Writing of history’, 263.  Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas 145 the Londoners a friendly face.25 Again, Henry’s greed and inability to appreciate the love of his devoted subjects destroyed the harmony that the exchange of gifts should symbolise. Henry was even more directly at fault in the disastrous Christmas celebration of 1238. That year the king was celebrating Christmas at the expense of the vacant see of Winchester, for which ‘if he had a strict, faithful and able corrector’ he would have been severely reproached. His rapacity towards the church would have called down divine vengeance on him and his kingdom, were it not for his liberal almsgiv- ing.26 Divine disapproval does not, however, fail to manifest itself, on Christmas Day, ‘in order that the worldly joy should not continue unmixed, for a certain unex- pected reason the joy of that feast was thrown into confusion.’ After mass, Gilbert Marshal, earl of Pembroke, arrived at the king’s dwelling expecting to participate at the Christmas feast. Henry’s marshals, however, impudently refused him and his men access and drove them back with their wands while shouting abuse at them. The affront was magnified by the fact that as hereditary marshal it was Gilbert’s obligation to quell disputes and protect the doors of the royal hall.27 Despite his anger, Gilbert was unwilling to let the ‘serenity of such a feast be overclouded’ and dissimulated his feelings and returned to his lodgings where he held a grand banquet, and to the sound of trumpets invited not only his own men but everyone who wished to eat at his table. The next morning Gilbert sent messengers to ask the king why he had inflicted such great injury on him, his loyal subject, and especially why he had done so ‘on such a day’. Henry III replied by asking how Gilbert dared to stand up to him in this way: ‘How dare he threaten me and, as it is said, “raise his hell” against me, against whom it is hard for him to kick’, and pointed out that Gilbert’s older brother Richard Marshal had lost his life in rebellion against him. After hearing this, the Marshal realised the depths of the king’s anger and quickly left court.28 Paris here makes reference to the gospel of John, where Christ says of Judas ‘the one who ate my food has raised his heel against me’ (John 13:18). But the parallel rebounds to Henry’s disadvantage, since unlike Christ Henry did not share his food – food which was provided by the church – with the alleged traitor. Henry restricted access to his table to those he considered his own people, where Gilbert explicitly invited everyone, not just his own men. Where Gilbert controlled his feelings and sought to preserve the ‘serenity’ of the Nativity, Henry was willing to disturb the solemnity for his private reasons, which are left as opaque to the reader as they appear to be to Gilbert Marshal. Feasting could certainly be used as a challenge, but before trying to analyse the signals this ritualised action had sent in practice (if it really happened) we need to unpack the purpose it fills in the narra- tive of the Chronica majora. Since we are told that Gilbert only held his banquet in order to preserve the solemnity of the Nativity, Henry appears even more mean- spirited: he was not only himself willing to abuse the traditional Christmas banquet for political purposes, but was unable to grasp the proper disinterested piety of a good English aristocrat. Henry’s worldly ambitions also overclouded the grandest Christmas celebra- tion of his reign, or at least the record of it preserved in the Chronica majora. In December 1251, Henry’s daughter Margaret was to be married to the young King 25 CM, v. 485–6. 26 CM, iii. 522–3. 27 English Coronation Records, 60; Gilbert had himself carried a wand before the king and queen at Henry’s marriage to Eleanor, CM, iii. 338. 28 CM, iii. 522–4. 146 Lars Kjær Alexander III of Scotland. Paris describes in much detail the multitude of nobles converging on York from England, Scotland and France ‘in order to celebrate the wedding in a manner that was fitting for such exalted persons’. From the onset, however, a sense of discord was present. The followings of the assembled kings and magnates were pompose et numeroso and when their marshals tried to secure lodgings fights broke out, so that a man was killed and many wounded.29 The fight over the lodgings was only the first indicator of the atmosphere of conflict that underlined all the worldly pomp and circumstance. Henry III and Alexander of Scotland competed in presenting large numbers of knights dressed in costly new clothing, and there was such ‘worldly and wanton vanity’, that if it was all described it would cause both ‘admiration and tedium (or disgust)’ (admirationem et taedium) in the listener.30 The kings also took turns in entertaining the guests and ‘competed with each other in producing delightful and copious feasts for their guests, so that theatrical, worldly vanity (mundi vanitas theatralis) displayed as much as possible of its brief and transient delight to the mortals’. These feasts were not directed to the honour of God but used to impress rivals; although Paris approved of the archbishop of York’s generosity he also remarked that the 4,000 marks which he expended had been ‘spilled on a sterile shore’ – a necessary expenditure to preserve his reputation and silence ‘the mouth of the iniquitous’.31 Under these conditions order could hardly be maintained. Since ‘many people were squeezed and pressed together in an unruly and disorganised crowd, in order to take part in and observe the solemnity of such a marriage’ it became necessary to perform the rite ‘in secret and before it was expected at the very break of dawn’. In order to avoid a complete breakdown of order the marriage had to be transformed into an almost clandestine affair.32 Once the marriage ceremony was completed the struggle for supremacy burst into the open. After marrying Princess Margaret the eleven-year old King Alexander did homage to Henry for his English lands. Afterwards, however, Henry unexpectedly asked him also to do homage for the kingdom of Scotland. Alexander refused saying that ‘he had come there peacefully and for the honour of the king of England, and by his command, in order that, in truth, through the marriage he could ally himself to him and not to answer such a difficult question’ since he had not had the opportunity to confer about it with his nobility.33 When he heard this answer Henry was unwilling to harass (molestare) his young son-in-law further and in order not to let ‘such a serene festival to be clouded over by any disturbance’ he dropped the demand. The memory of the peaceful gathering had nevertheless, at least in Paris’s narrative, been marred by Henry III’s attempt to hood-wink his young son-in-law.34 Kay Staniland, in an article on the marriage ceremony in York, argued that Paris gave ‘a very generalised description’ of the ceremony and suggests that Paris’s 29 CM, v. 266–7. 30 CM, v. 268. 31 CM, v. 270, referencing Psalm 63:11. 32 CM, v. 267; compare with the complaints raised about the legitimacy of the marriage of William de Munchensi to a Lady Amy, which had taken place ‘before sunrise’, Episcopal Registers, Diocese of Worcester: Register of Bishop Godfrey Giffard, September 23rd, 1268, to August 15th, 1301, ed. J.W.W. Bund, 2 vols (Worcester Historical Soc., Oxford, 1902), ii. 359–60. Paris is in no way inferring that the marriage is not legal – but the unorthodox timing lessens its magnificence. 33 Compare other instances of heroic and eloquent resistance to royal demands such as that of Countess Isabel of Arundel; CM, v. 336. 34 CM, v. 268; see also Weiler, ‘Knighting, homage’, 290–1.  Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas 147 narrative can be used as a straightforward supplement to the royal records.35 A comparison of Paris’s descriptions of the marriage of Margaret and Alexander and of Henry and Eleanor of Provence should, however, alert us to the subtly critical tenor of the former. Where the ceremony of 1235 had been characterised by order, joy and commensality, the celebration in 1251 was marred by discord, competition and empty vanity. This becomes more evident when we compare the version of events of the Chronica majora with that found in those of Paris’s writings which were designed for circulation outside St Albans. The Historia Anglorum may have been designed with a courtly audience in mind, and certainly its description of the wedding feast in 1251 contains nothing that could offend such an audience:36 The king and queen were at York with a multitude of prelates and a great number of magnates, for the joining in marriage of his daughter Margaret to Alexander, king of Scotland, and in order to celebrate the nuptials there as was fitting. On Christmas Day the king of England gave the king of Scotland the belt of knighthood and with him 20 squires, all of whom were dressed in precious and intricately fashioned clothing, just as is fitting and proper (debuit et decuit) for such a celebrated young squire. On the morning, that is, on the day of St Stephen, the king of Scotland … took in marriage the daughter of the king of England … with great solemnity.37 The jostling crowds and the vain display of worldly grandeur have disappeared alongside Henry’s disruptive attempt to subjugate Scotland. Instead we are presented with a much more harmonious picture of a great multitude celebrating together in a fitting manner, with due attention being paid to the royal gifts of clothing which are both ‘fitting and proper’, words of praise not present in the Chronica majora’s description of the bestowal of knighthood.38 The editorial work done by Matthew Paris to the Chronica majora offers further evidence of how controversial he consid- ered some of his descriptions of the royal Christmases to be. In the margin of the account of the king’s disagreement with Gilbert Marshal in 1238 Paris had noted non multum necesse, and next to the description of Henry’s humiliation after Beatrice of Provence’s betrayal, he had noted vacat quia offendiculum.39 Paris’s descriptions of rituals were carefully constructed, and we need to read them with some sensitivity. Complaints about foreigners, greed and ill-will towards the native nobility are ubiquitous in Paris’s portrayal of Henry’s reign. By showing how they disrupted the Christmas celebrations Paris was placing Henry’s reign sub specie aeterni. It highlighted for his monastic audience the seriousness of Henry’s failings and the way they threatened to upset the right order of the world. The stock expres- sion with which Paris introduces many of the disruptions to the feast – that they happened ‘in order that the worldly joy should not remain unmixed’ – indicates that a divine judgement lay behind the events.40 In Paris’s telling, the divine anger is provoked by the fact that Henry’s mind is set neither on divine worship nor on ensuring the happiness of his subjects. Instead his focus was on his relations with 35 Staniland, ‘Nuptials’, 22, 44–5. 36 Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 123–4. 37 Matthaei Parisiensis, monachi Sancti Albani: Historia Anglorum, ed. F. Madden, 3 vols (RS 44, 1866–9), iii, 118. 38 CM, v. 267. 39 CM, iii. 522, iv. 505; Vaughan, Matthew Paris, 117, 123. 40 CM, iii. 522, iv. 504, v. 357, 731. 148 Lars Kjær his Poitevin favourites, his own treasury and other grand, but selfish, political goals. Henry’s willingness to interrupt the solemnities in order to promote his own agendas contrasts with the decorum shown by the English magnates who set aside their own complaints and disputes in order to preserve the solemnity of the Nativity. Paris was writing in a wider tradition that insisted that holy days should be set aside for worship of the Lord and kept free from discord and worldly ambi- tions. The readings for Christmas, New Year and Epiphany in manuals of devo- tion such as the South English Legendary reminded their aristocratic readers of the divine meaning of the holy days (Christ’s birth and circumcision and the offerings of the three kings) and instructed them to contemplate the enormity of His sacri- fice.41 Robert Grosseteste, similarly, in a letter to the deans and canons of Lincoln reminded them of the need for reverend worship on the day of the Circumcision. For ‘the circumcision of our Lord Jesus Christ was his first suffering and of no little pain and it is also the sign of the spiritual circumcision whereby the foreskin of hearts are removed’.42 To transgress against the Christian mandates on the holy days was particularly detestable; Paris had Gilbert Marshal complain that Henry III would sow discord talis dies. When holy days were used as cover for aggressive acts it could provoke considerable outrage: in 1283 the Dunstable annals recorded that Dafydd ap Gruffydd was condemned by the magnates of England to have his intestines burned because of the blasphemia he had committed by killing Roger Clifford tempus Dominicae Passionis, on Palm Sunday.43 Henry had committed no blasphemy, but nor did he undergo the circumcision of the heart that Grosseteste preached. In the Chronica majora at least he appeared consistently willing to subordinate the solemnity of the holy days to his own inter- ests. By portraying him in this manner Paris placed Henry within a patristic tradi- tion that associated bad rulers with their willingness to manipulate divine cere- monies for material, political reasons. The tradition went back to St Augustine’s critique of the rulers of pagan Rome who would manipulate public ceremonies to further their own sectarian ambitions, often leading to chaos and disorderliness, in contrast to the saintly Christians whose rituals were turned to God and from which spread true joy and consensus.44 The distinction between those who approached rituals with the right, reverend intention and those who approached them with a mind dedicated to worldly gain was central to Christian thought. Christians had, through Christ, received a privileged access to the true meaning of religious cere- mony, in opposition to Judaism that knew the same rituals but only in a superficial and worldly way, without grasping its inner, spiritual meaning. In his Hexaemeron Grosseteste discussed the culpability of those who approached the ‘offerings and ceremonies’(hostias et mandata cerimonialia) mandated by the Old Law in a ‘worldly’ (carnales) manner and understood them to offer ‘worldly advantages and delights (usibus et voluptatibus carnis)’.45 Such men were hardly true Christians, and would die in sin. Henry’s faults are most clearly demonstrated by comparing him with Paris’s 41 South English Legendary, i. 3–5; on the significance of holy days to the twelfth- and thirteenth- century kings of England see Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages’, 24–6. 42 Roberti Grosseteste Episcopi quondam Lincolniensis Epistolae, ed. H.R. Luard (RS 25, 1861), 118–19, translation from The Letters of Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, tr. F.A.C. Mantello and J. Goering (Toronto, 2010), 145–6. 43 Dunstable, 294. 44 As shown in Buc, Dangers, 15–50 and 143–7. 45 Robert Grosseteste Hexaëmeron, ed. R.C. Dales and S. Gieben (Oxford, 1982), 11.9.2, p. 315.  Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas 149 good kings. Far from subverting the feast for the satisfaction of their own desires, these men risked their life and health to honour Christ. In the Vitae duorum Offarum the enemies of the bellicose King Offa II of Mercia begged him to grant a truce until after the Lord’s Nativity. Although Offa had almost defeated them, he will- ingly agreed so that the solemnity of the Lord’s Nativity could be celebrated ‘more gladly, joyfully and peacefully’. His treacherous enemies, however, ‘not respecting that holy season (tempus sacrum)’ and knowing that they could only succeed by attacking Offa while his army was celebrating ambushed him on the night following Christmas Day. Only Offa’s divinely inspired prowess allowed him and his men to escape and take vengeance.46 The pacific Edward the Confessor’s devotion to the Nativity took a different form: on the morning of the Christmas feast he was seized by a terrible sickness. Nevertheless, he managed to act with a happy countenance for the full three days of the festival, feasting amongst his noble guests ‘although it pained him.’ For this pious king Christmas was not an opportunity to demonstrate his power but an obligation that he underwent to honour God and see his nobles united in happiness.47 More generally Offa and the Confessor’s feasts and ceremo- nies were characterised by the commensal joy of the host and guests, who praise their king ‘with one voice’.48 This is also true of the feasts of Louis IX as described in the Chronica majora. Before Christmas 1245, ‘at which time magnates are accustomed to give new clothing to their men’, the king of France had a greater quantity of robes made than normal, and secretly had crosses finely sewn in gold thread on the outer-part of the robes. On Christmas Day, before sunrise, the king ordered his knights wearing their new robes to hear mass with him. There, when the sun rose, the knights realised with what pie sophisticates the king had ‘cheated’ them and how he had ‘become a preacher by deeds rather than by words’. Since it would be disgraceful for them to put down the crosses they ‘laughed, not however derisively, but with an effusion of joyous tears’ and pledged themselves to the crusade.49 Paris was lavish in his praise for this: he titled the section ‘of a certain courtly and pious deception of the king of the French’ and he noted in the margin that this deed was both humorous, laudable and memorable. Although Louis here acted in a novus modus Paris is careful to show that his actions were in accordance with the best traditions of royal behaviour. In fact Louis was improving upon them, by inserting a higher pious purpose into the secular tradition. The Chronica majora moves straight on to describe Henry III’s Christmas feast the same year, a celebration which, as discussed above, ended with his humiliation when news reached court of how Beatrice of Provence had broken her word, and the commemoration of her scorn for his gifts.50 On the one hand, a king whose pious gifts moved knights to righteous action and pious tears of joy, on the other, a king whose prodigal gifts, given in order to secure his vain, political schemes, moved the recipient to scorn his prodigality. There were several reasons why Paris found the events of the royal Christmas worth discussing in detail. The king was the indispensable font of justice, as well as the greatest source of patronage, and the question of who were in the king’s favour 46 The Lives of Two Offas: Vitae duorum Offarum, ed. and tr. M. Swanton (Crediton, 2010), 65–70. 47 La Estoire de Seint Aedward le Rei attributed to Matthew Paris, ed. K.Y. Wallace (1983), ll. 3635–60, p. 103 48 CM, i. 360; Vitae duorum Offarum, 21, 45–7. Note Offa II’s refusal to use his feast as an occasion to seize his rival Ethelbert, ibid., 91; CM, i. 355. 49 CM, iv. 502–3. 50 CM, iv. 505. 150 Lars Kjær and who were not was of truly national importance,51 but the royal court was not simply the household of a supremely important magnate. Political thought in the thirteenth century placed increasing emphasis on the special position of the monarch within his realm, his rights and responsibilities for the common good. At the same time there was a growing sense that the king’s subjects had both the right and obli- gation to comment upon and – perhaps in the last instance – correct the misuses of royal power.52 By the mid thirteenth century the maxim from Roman law quod omnes tangit ab omnibus approbetur (what touches all should be approved by all) was increasingly applied to discussions of public affairs in England.53 Alongside Paris’s ‘modern’ interest in the common weal there is also evidence in the Chronica majora of a concern with a phenomenon often considered to have been more important in the earlier Middle Ages: the sacred nature of kingship. NicholasVincent, David Carpenter and others have drawn attention to the impor- tance of religious symbolism in Henry III’s conception and promulgation of the royal dignity.54 The correct conduct of the royal celebrations on the great holy days was important, not just for the king’s honour, but for the relationship of crown and country with the divine. In the coronation prayer, the archbishop of Canterbury implored God to ensure the ‘splendour’ of the royal hall.55 In the Chronica majora Paris commented that Henry’s choice to place the burden of his Christmas feast on the see of Winchester in 1238 ‘would have caused great peril to himself and the kingdom, by arousing God’s anger against him’ if it was not for his alms.56 The thunderstorm on Christmas night 1250, which Paris placed in the middle of his account of Henry’s greed and miserliness, was held to be an ill omen for the affairs of the kingdom.57 In placing the affairs of the royal Christmas at the opening of each year, following on directly from the summary of the state of the weather and prosperity of the realm which concluded each year, Paris was hinting at an older tradition that saw the conduct of the king and his court as central to the wellbeing of the realm.58 Like many of his contemporaries Paris was disillusioned about the way Henry managed his responsibilities, but this was not least because of his high opinion of the office of kingship, and the importance he placed on the correct exer- cise of its political, as well as religious and ceremonial, responsibilities. 51 Cf. N. Vincent, Peter des Roches: An Alien in English Politics, 1205–38 (Cambridge, 1996), 280–3 and CM, iv. 590. 52 C. Burt, ‘Political ideas and dialogue in England in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries’, in TCE 13, 1–10; J.R. Maddicott, The Origins of the English Parliament, 924‒1327 (Oxford, 2010), 106–272. 53 Maddicott, English Parliament, 209–10, 216 and, on Paris’s interest in Parliamentary politics, ibid., 159. 54 Vincent, Holy Blood, 190–6; Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages’, 31–45; P. Binski, Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets: Kingship and the Representation of Power, 1200–1400 (New Haven, 1995), 121–48; Carpenter, ‘The burial of King Henry III’, 28–54; S. Dixon-Smith, ‘The image and reality of alms-giving in the Great Halls of Henry III’, J. of the British Archaeological Association 152 (1999), 79–96. 55 English Coronation Records, 92; the prayer is discussed in Dixon-Smith, ‘Image and reality’, 80. 56 CM, iii, 522–3. 57 CM, v. 198–9 and compare CM, v. 538–9, where a solar eclipse during the Christmas ceremony and troubles between Henry III and the Lord Edward are juxtaposed; on weather and divination see C.S. Watkins, History and the Supernatural in Medieval England (Cambridge, 2007), 140–4. 58 See Vincent, ‘Pilgrimages’, 43–4; R. Meens, ‘Politics, mirrors of princes and the Bible: sins, kings and the well-being of the realm’, Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998), 345–57.  Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas 151 Verisimilitude and Authorial Strategies In light of Paris’s skill in crafting and re-crafting descriptions of rituals it is neces- sary to ask to what extent they can be treated as evidence of actual practice at the royal court. Must we, as Buc advises, give up the attempt to reconstruct what actually happened and concentrate on the way chroniclers fought over the meaning of rituals?59 A comparison of the narrative of the Chronica majora with the royal records suggests not. In 1240 Paris claimed that Henry III gave Advocatus, the nephew of the papal legate, an income of £30 which he afterwards immediately sold. The Patent Rolls confirm that Henry on 25 December granted Advocatus the custody and marriage of the heirs and widow of Robert de Barnevill.60 On 7 January the Charter Rolls record that Advocatus had assigned the same to the bishop of Carlisle.61 Matthew’s account then is not pure fiction, but it does appear that he was either misinformed or decided to heighten the impact by placing both the grant and its sale on the day of the Nativity. No record of the seating order at the Christmas meal has survived, but Henry’s high regard for the papacy is confirmed in a letter of Robert Grosseteste.62 Further, the contemporary Franciscan chronicler Salimbene reports a similar story of how Henry III had ‘stood up from table and descended from the dais’, in order to welcome the Minister-General John of Parma. When his knights reproached him for humbling himself in this way, Henry had replied that ‘he who honours the servants of God cannot humiliate himself too much’.63 Part of Paris’s account of the gifts and festivities held to celebrate the arrival of Peter of Savoy can also be substantiated; on 4 January 1241 Henry ordered that twenty silver plates and twenty silver saucers should be given as gifts to Peter of Savoy.64 So too can the account of Henry’s attempts to please Beatrice of Savoy during Christmas 1242: on 18 December Henry had ordered his tailors to make a robe of the ‘best scarlet-cloth that can be found in the city of London’ for the countess which he would give her at Christmas.65 A more substantial gift was the annual fee of £400 for six years which he gave her on 28 December.66 Finally, on New Year’s Day she was given a figure of an eagle, made of pure gold with precious stones, the total cost of which ran to £100 6s. The eagle was probably a reference to the black eagle on the Savoy coat of arms and would have illustrated the king’s special regard for her amongst the standard New Year’s gifts of rings, cups and belts.67 When Paris pointed out that the news of Beatrice of Savoy’s betrayal reached the English court ‘just before Epiphany consummated the solemnities of the Nativity’ in 1246, he was drawing attention to Henry’s sycophantic behaviour on previous festive occasions. There is, however, circumstantial evidence that suggests news of the marriage between Beatrice’s daughter and Charles of Anjou did reach the English court around the beginning of January. Innocent IV’s dispensation allowing Charles and the younger Beatrice to marry was issued 28 December 1245 and 59 Buc, Dangers, 75. 60 CPR, 1232–1247, 241; CR, 1227–1242, 257, states that it was granted on 14 December. 61 CChR, 1226–1257, 255. 62 Roberti Grosseteste ... Epistolae, 338–9. 63 Salimbene de Adam, Cronica, ed. G. Scalia, 2 vols (Bari, 1966), i, 444; discussed in Weiler, ‘Symbolism and Politics’, 31–2. 64 CR, 1232–1247, 264. 65 CM, iv. 283; CR, 1242–1247, 145; see Howell, Eleanor, 39. 66 CPR, 1232–1247, 414. 67 CLR, 1240–1245, 213; on New Year’s gifts see B. Wild, ‘A gift inventory from the reign of Henry III’, EHR 125 (2010), 529–69. 152 Lars Kjær Charles quickly sent in men to stake his claim to Provence.68 On 16 January Henry concluded a treaty with Amadeus, count of Savoy, probably in response to the Poitevin marriage.69 Emissaries were also sent to the papal court, for on 1 March 1246 Innocent IV issued a response to the complaints of Henry III and Richard of Cornwall’s messengers about the injustice done to the rights of their wives in Provence.70 Paris’s account of the reduction of royal hospitality and generosity in 1250 is also substantiated by the royal records. Since no household accounts survive from between 1227 and 1259 our main source of information is the accounts rendered by the keepers of the Wardrobe before the Exchequer at the end of their period of office. Under Peter Chaceporc, who served as keeper from June 1245 to February 1252, the average daily expenditure of the household had been around £13 11s, substantially higher than the average daily expense of £9 15s 9d recorded between February and October 1252. 71 The surviving accounts of plate in the wardrobe show the same tendency:72 Table 1 Wardrobe accounts of Peter Chaceporc, Artauld of Saint-Romain, June 1245 to February 1252 January 1255 to April 1256 Average number Average number Average number Average number received as gifts given as gifts received as gifts given as gifts pro anno pro anno pro anno pro anno Rings  40.8 453  21.5 190 Brooches  36.2 152.6 13 106 Cups 133.4  90.6 154.6  35.4 Belts  22.6  23.6  12.3  30.8 Basins  19.2  10.6  31.5   6.2 By the mid 1250s the king had become significantly less generous with his plate, giving less than half of the number of rings that he did previously, one-third fewer brooches, one-third fewer cups and about half of the number of basins that he used to; only the number of belts increased slightly. That the shift happened around 1250 is suggested by Peter Chaceporc’s accounts for Henry III’s gold treasure: in the five years prior to 1250 Chaceporc had conferred an annual average of 87.8 marks of gold to the treasury from various incomes including fines and gifts. At the end of the regnal year 28 October 1250 to 27 October 1251 he stored 434 marks and the next 68 R. Sternfeld, Karl von Anjou als Graf der Provence, 1245–1265 (Berlin, 1888), 266 and see ibid., 21–4. 69 Foedera, i, 264; CPR, 1232–1247, 469; Howell, Eleanor, 47; B. Weiler, Henry III of England and the Staufen Empire, 1216–1272 (Woodbridge, 2006), 126–7; a letter discussing the possibility of this treaty is preserved Royal Letters, ii, 200–201 but the dating is uncertain; N. Denholm-Young, Richard of Cornwall (Oxford, 1947), 52 n. 4 argues that it must have been before the treaty was signed in January. 70 Les Registres d’Innocent IV, ed. E. Berger, 4 vols (Paris, 1884–1921), i, 291 no. 1967. 71 As suggested by D.A. Carpenter, ‘The household rolls of King Henry III of England (1216–72)’, HR 86 (2007), 22–46, 35–6. 72 The data from which these are calculated are found in B. Wild, ‘Secrecy, splendour and statecraft: the Jewel Accounts of King Henry III of England, 1216–1272’, HR 83 (2010), 409–30 (at 419–21).  Matthew Paris and the Royal Christmas 153 year again 447 marks.73 Since the king regularly passed on the gifts he received this indicates that a larger proportion of these were kept in the treasury.74 The account of Gilbert Marshal’s hostile reception at Henry III’s court, however, bears the trace of a very partisan interpretation.75 There had been difficulties between Henry III and Gilbert Marshal before: Gilbert had participated in the rebellion of his brother Richard but had been forgiven in 1234.76 The relationship between the earl and the king, however, never became entirely harmonious. In 1236, Gilbert was reported to have supported the demand of his brother-in-law, King Alexander II of Scotland, for Northumberland.77 Most dramatically, at the beginning of 1238 Gilbert had risen with Richard of Cornwall and many others in protest against the marriage of Simon de Montfort and Eleanor, the king’s sister and Gilbert Marshal’s former sister-in-law. Gilbert had a natural place at the centre of the rebellion since it was he who would have to pay out the £400 a year for her dower, and with Simon at her side she had found an energetic defender of her rights.78 The dower may also in a more direct way have contributed to the difficulties between Henry and Gilbert in December 1238. Payment of this had caused problems before, and Henry III had become increasingly closely involved in securing the rights of his sister and now his favourite, Simon. In 1235 Gilbert had pledged himself to give all the profits from five manors to her until she had been paid back £400 in arrears from the payments of her dower, Henry III had personally guaranteed that the earl would pay and promised that he would ‘compel him to the observance thereof without regard to any excuses.’79 In June 1238 there were again troubles with the payment of the dower and the king commanded that, unless Gilbert paid the £200 which he owed, his lands were to be disdained.80 The moneys do not appear to have been paid and the problem of the dower was apparently on the king’s mind over Christmas for on 13 January 1239 Henry himself paid Simon de Montfort the £200 which Gilbert Marshal had failed to pay during the Michaelmas term of 1238.81 It is likely that some confron- tation did occur between Henry III and Gilbert Marshal during Christmas 1238, but the context of the story (whether because of Paris’s partisan views or lack of information) is cast so as to give the impression that it was Henry, and not Gilbert, who was disrupting the solemnity of the Nativity. Paris’s account of the royal Christmas ceremony in 1251 is also substantiated by the royal records. A reference on the patent rolls to a complaint by the canons of St Peter’s, claiming that Henry III’s marshals had taken some of their houses and distributed them amongst the magnates, seems to confirm Paris’s allegations about lack of accommodation.82 The great quantities of food which the sheriffs were ordered to provide substantiate the grandeur of the banquets,83 and we know that 73 Carpenter, ‘The gold treasure of King Henry III’, in his Reign of Henry III, 107–36, 131–6. 74 See Wild, ‘Secrecy, splendour’, 420–1. 75 On Matthew Paris’s sympathy for Gilbert Marshal see C.H. Lawrence, St. Edmund of Abingdon: A Study in Hagiography and History (Oxford, 1960), 92. 76 Dunstable, 137; CM, iii. 292. 77 CM, iii. 373 78 CM, iii. 476; CPR, 1232–1247, 208; for the dower see J.R. Maddicott, Simon de Montfort (Cambridge, 1994), 50. In 1244 Henry III constituted himself surety of the payments and they were calculated as £400, CPR, 1232–1247, 415. 79 CPR, 1232–1247, 125. 80 CR, 1237–1242, 60–1.See now L.J. Wilkinson, Eleanor de Montfort (London, 2012), 68. 81 CLR, 1226–1240, 360. 82 CPR, 1247–58, 124; Staniland, ‘Nuptials’, 41. 83 Staniland, ‘Nuptials’, 29. 154 Lars Kjær Henry III and Louis IX took turns feasting one another at their meeting in 1259.84 The gifts of clothes given to Alexander III and his followers seem to be confirmed by an entry in the close rolls from November 1251 ordering the keeper of the ward- robe to acquire ‘scarlet or other precious cloth’ for robes for the knighting of some of the king’s foreign guests.85 Paris was clearly both well informed and conscientious about giving a factu- ally accurate description of the events of the royal Christmas ceremony. Despite this, he was able to weave from the actual events of a celebration like the one in York in 1251 two very different accounts: on the one hand, the Christmas of the Chronica majora where conflict and disharmony was always threatening to burst out and destroy the solemnity, and on the other, the harmonious feast of the Historia Anglorum. Paris was skilled at crafting narratives of ritualised action but the inves- tigation above suggests that he, at least, did not go so far as to ‘invent’ rituals that had not taken place, nor did he recycle purely literary tropes. What he did was to take the events of the royal Christmas feasts and present them in a manner that aligned itself with his various authorial agendas.86 The example of Matthew Paris’s writings on the royal Christmas then does not suggest that we need to ‘retreat to the textual level’.87 They do, however, remind us of the richness and complexity of the chronicle evidence so well explored by Buc. We would do well to heed the complaint Timothy Reuter raised about the historiography of medieval England, and the thirteenth century in particular: ‘we’re still inclined to treat literary texts as low-grade archives which can be mined for “facts”. There’s little sense that we need to read them as narratives, in full awareness of what literary theorists have to tell us about narratology, authorial voice, and so on.’88 84 Carpenter, ‘Meetings’, 12. 85 CR, 1251–3, 15; Staniland, ‘Nuptials’, 36. 86 MacLean, ‘Ritual, misunderstanding’, 110, 119, argues convincingly for an approach to rituals that seeks both to reconstruct past rituals and the later quest for control of the memory of the event. 87 The phrase is from Pössel, ‘Magic’, 118–19. 88 T. Reuter, ‘Modern mentalities and medieval polities’, in Medieval Polities and Modern Mentalities, ed. J.L. Nelson (Cambridge, 2006), 3–18, at 12 and 9–10.