Urban Panegyric and the Transformation of the Medieval City, 1100-1300 0198717733, 9780198717737

Table of contents :
Cover
Urban Panegyric and the Transformation of the Medieval City,1100–1300
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Contents
Introduction
URBAN PANEGYRIC AND ITS SOURCES
HISTORIOGRAPHY
PARAMETERS OF THE STUDY
URBAN TRANSFORMATION, 1100–1300: THE BACKGROUND
STRUCTURE
1: The Sources: An Overview
2: Interpretation and Audience
INTERPRETING PANEGYRIC: FABRICATION, HYPERBOLE, AND TRUTH
AUTHORSHIP AND LITERARY CONVENTIONS
AUDIENCE
3: The Holy City
THE CITY IN CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE
REPLICATING THE HOLY CITY: BOLOGNA AND CHESTER
CITIES AS RECORDS OF CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH
PRAISING THE CITY’S RELIGIOUS MATRIX: SAINTS, HIERARCHIES, AND PIETY
4: The Evil City: Urban Critiques
DEEP CRITIQUES
DISORDER AND LAMENTATION
5: The City of Abundance: Commerce, Hinterland, People
COMMERCIAL REVIVAL
HINTERLAND
PEOPLE
6: Urban Landscapes and Sites of Power
THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING BOOM
URBAN FORTIFICATIONS
METROPOLISES AND SITES OF PUBLIC POWER
7: Education, History, and Sophistication
THE CITY AND THE MEDIEVAL INTELLECTUAL RENAISSANCE
ANCIENT URBAN HISTORIES
In Praise of the Medieval City: Conclusions
Bibliography
MANUSCRIPTS AND INCUNABULA
PRINTED PRIMARY SOURCES
SECONDARY
Index

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OX F O R D S T U D I E S I N M E D I E VA L E U RO P E A N H I S TO RY General Editors joh n h . a rn old  pat r i c k j . ge a ry and joh n wat ts

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Urban Panegyric and the Transformation of the Medieval City, 1100–1300 PAU L O L D F I E L D

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3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Paul Oldfield 2019 The moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2019 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2018945416 ISBN 978–0–19–871773–7 Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Acknowledgements Having read so much panegyric over the course of writing this book, it is such a great delight to finally have the opportunity to reverse the flow and deliver my own praise for countless individuals who have provided invaluable advice, support, and inspiration. I thank my colleagues (past and present) in History at the University of Manchester for numerous insightful conversations about praise and cities, ­particularly Georg Christ, Katy Dutton, Paul Fouracre, Charles Insley, Stephen Mossman, and Martin Ryan. I am also very grateful for the support of the University in granting a period of research leave, and also to the British Academy for the award of a mid-career Fellowship for six months in 2016, both of which provided me with valuable time and space to enrich and develop this project. In addition, I have had the great fortune to receive superb support from staff at various libraries: the document supply team in the University Library for locating numerous inter-library loans on my behalf; and staff in the Special Collections at the John Rylands Library, Manchester, those at the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh who enabled me to consult important incunabula and manuscripts. I must also thank the editorial team at Oxford University Press, Stephanie Ireland, Cathryn Steele, the anonymous readers, and the series editors John Arnold and especially John Watts, all of whom have supported and guided me with great patience and skill: this book is immeasurably stronger as a result. A great pleasure in working on such a big project is the opportunity it opens up for speaking with and learning from colleagues elsewhere in academia. Aside from my aforementioned colleagues at Manchester and Oxford University Press, I have also had the great fortune to have received crucial assistance and expert advice from Laura Ashe, David Bachrach, Andrew Brown, Ardis Butterfield, Jan Dumolyn, Tim Greenwood, Tom Licence, Maureen Miller, James M. Murray, David Rollason, Dennis Romano, Jeffrey Ruth, Graeme Small, Fabrizio Titone, Steven Vanderputten, Gary Warnaby, and Chris Wickham. A special thanks is always reserved for Graham Loud and his willingness to offer his expertise and guidance and for Ian Moxon likewise with his invaluable assistance with difficult Latin passages and for generously offering his own translations. The support and enthusiasm of friends and family has, however, been the most crucial factor in helping me see this project through to its completion. Their curiosity and comfort repeatedly served as a tonic and I am left amused and touched at being surrounded by loved ones who now know far more than any non-academic should about things medieval! But, in particular my wife Kate, and my young sons Finlay and Sebastian, have truly demonstrated to me the paradox of praise; that the more praiseworthy a thing is, the harder it is to articulate that praise. For where to start and where to stop praising three so very important individuals to me? To say Kate encouraged and strengthened me, and to report that Finlay and Sebastian

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vi Acknowledgements showed such pride and delight in my endeavours, reflects mere glimmers of a much deeper, much more inspiring, and wholly irreplaceable support which they unknowingly but unconditionally gave. No praise can encapsulate what this has meant to me. No praise can convey how fortunate I feel. And no praise can stand as thanks for the smile that now crosses my face as I think of all their warmth and of all their mischief.

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Contents Introduction

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1. The Sources: An Overview

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2. Interpretation and Audience

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3. The Holy City

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4. The Evil City: Urban Critiques

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5. The City of Abundance: Commerce, Hinterland, People

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6. Urban Landscapes and Sites of Power

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7. Education, History, and Sophistication

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In Praise of the Medieval City: Conclusions Bibliography Index

187 191 212

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Introduction A process of intensive urbanization marked Europe’s twelfth and thirteenth ­centuries. This much has been abundantly clear ever since Henri Pirenne’s pioneering thesis and the rich and contested historiography it has generated on the history of medieval Europe’s cities.1 If one can question the morphologies, chronologies, continuities, and intensities evident throughout the course of medieval urbanization, the tangible reality of physical change affected in those cities is irrefutable. Demographic, material, commercial, and topographic transformation occurred within cities—in simple terms they became bigger, more influential within wider economic networks, and their layout more complex and more textured—while numerous urban settlements were established ex novo; and these processes reached their apex, or experienced crucial accelerations, roughly during the two centuries running from 1100 to 1300. Consequently, cities could now harness newfound political, commercial, cultural, and military influence which positioned them at the centre of Europe’s map of power politics. To note, however, that change occurred, and to try to measure it in quantifiable terms (this city’s population doubled, that city built twenty new churches), is to present only half the picture. The other half was an imagined city built on constantly renewable cultural memories, emotions, and affinities; a malleable city which could be more meaningful and intrinsic to an urban inhabitant’s lived ­experience. Thus, another crucial facet to change and urbanization in our period was the formation of civic consciousness.2 It was underpinned by the rapid growth of urban populations and conurbations and the concomitant competition for resources and status which this aroused among urban centres. This necessitated greater focus on affective conduits for affinities—the language of citizenship, the cultivation of patron saints, the production of civic histories, the construction of civic buildings, and the delineation of more expansive and regularized public spaces, to name but a few—all of which could bind together expanded urban 1  H. Pirenne, Medieval Cities: Their Origins and the Revival of Trade, trans. F. D. Halsey (Princeton, 1925); examples of wide-ranging comparative works on the medieval city include: E. Ennen, Die Europäische Stadt des Mittelalters (Göttingen, 1972); D. Nicholas, The Growth of the Medieval City: From Late Antiquity to the Early Fourteenth Century (London, 1997); K. D. Lilley, Urban Life in the Middle Ages, 1000–1450 (Basingstoke, 2001); P. Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine. Tome. 1. De l’Antiquité au XVIIIe siècle. Genèse des villes européenes (Paris, 2003); C. Loveluck, Northwest Europe in the Early Middle Ages, c. a d 600–1150: A Comparative Archaeology (Cambridge, 2013). 2  For important, though broad, discussion see: P. Riesenberg, Citizenship in the Western Tradition: Plato to Rousseau (Chapel Hill, 1992), pp. 118–39.

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l­andscapes and communities in ways which personal, face-to-face relationships alone could not, and which could project a positive (often imagined) image of the city. Integral to the generation of civic consciousness was the capability to d ­ isseminate its core messages, and in the period post-1100 we see such capabilities put into practice in ways which had arguably not been achieved on such a widespread scale since antiquity. Increased literacy rates and the development of new centres of education, the maturation and expanded aspirations of urban governments, the management of the physical urban landscape, and novel expressions of religious devotion, particularly among the laity, all stimulated more articulate attachments to, and understandings of, the city which attempted to transcend the increasingly eclectic groupings which co-habited the urban landscape. This civic consciousness created appreciation of the positive values connected with the urban world, attached pride to one’s home city, and countered negative, disparaging perspectives on the city. It was nuanced in scholarly circles by exposure to Aristotle’s Politics, which became available once again in the thirteenth century, and also by a deeper engagement with Ciceronian texts which emphasized the unified communitas and its civic obligations.3 Drawing from these ideas, that influential medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas identified the ‘ultimate community’ in the self-sufficient civitas.4 Thus, identifying and understanding the development of civic awareness opens up the possibility of evaluating what the more fundamental urban transformations of the period meant, in qualitative terms, to some of those who directly experienced them. Crucially, it allows us to assess which aspects of this great phase of  urbanization challenged, empowered, bewildered, and defined contemporary city-dwellers, and to evaluate what the city represented to them. And framing the foregoing sketch is the acknowledgement that medieval notions of urban living can continue to question the so-called myth of modernity ‘as a radical break with the past’.5 For civic consciousness in the Central Middle Ages was very much a conscious ‘mode of being’ well before commentators of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—such as the celebrated cultural observer Walter Benjamin—identified ‘civicness’ as an emblem of modernity.6 Civic consciousness is, of course, a more ephemeral entity to identify than a newly built city wall or parish church; it can appear in all manner of guises, often underlying rather than directly defining developments, and its interpretation 3  D. Luscombe, ‘City and Politics before the coming of the Politics: some illustrations’, in D. Abulafia, M. Franklin, M. Rubin (eds), Church and City in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 41–3. 4  Luscombe, ‘City and Politics’, p. 48; H-J. Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana in civitate: Städtekritik und Städtelob im 12. und 13. Jahrhundert’, Historische Zeitschrift, CCLVII, ii (1993), pp. 333–4. 5  See D. Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (Hoboken, 2013), who prefers to see the formation of modernity less in terms of breaks and more so in ‘decisive moments of creative destruction’ (p. 1). 6 For an overview on Walter Benjamin’s interpretation of the city see G. Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis. Walter Benjamin and the City (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 1–20. A. Butterfield, ‘Chaucer and the Detritus of the City’, in A. Butterfield (ed.), Chaucer and the City (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 3–22 offers an excellent survey on how Benjamin’s approach can be applied to thinking on the city, and concludes with the observation, important for assessing the medieval city, ‘that modernity is always changing, and has always been there’ (p. 22). See also M. Boone, ‘Cities in Late Medieval Europe. The Promise and the Curse of Modernity’, Urban History, XXXIX (2012), pp. 329–49 for an excellent discussion of the role of the medieval city in scholarly discourses on modernity.

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Introduction 3 invariably open-ended. Fortunately, many of the key components of civic ­consciousness were absorbed into, and articulated most vividly by, literary works which offered praise of cities—urban panegyric—which were produced in far greater quantity during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries than at any previous point. Crucially too, the messages within these works of urban panegyric reached a far greater audience than had been the case for comparable forms in the Early Middle Ages. Their material ostensibly addressed the most prominent, laudatory features of urban living, but at the same time tapped into a range of qualitative, quantitative, and functional transformations that were occurring throughout Medieval Europe’s cities so as to serve as commentaries on what the medieval city meant to (at least some of ) its inhabitants. Indeed, used reflectively these works also demonstrate what the city was not, or what it should not be, those points on which urban life might be censured. In short they act as cultural texts, a ‘storage medium’ for the construction of cultural memories.7 The present study thus utilizes this vital body of material which has, to my mind, not been sufficiently integrated into studies of medieval urban life. Urban panegyric has often been dismissed as being too bound by convention, rhetoric, and exaggeration and therefore rather sidelined from understandings of the medieval city. The aim of this study is to demonstrate that the messages within urban panegyric are indeed highly valuable ones. It represents the first sustained ­examination of the content and significance of urban panegyric in the Central Middle Ages. It will connect the production of urban panegyric to two major underlying transformations in the medieval city. It will explore how the physical and functional changes in medieval cities influenced the production of laudatory material on the city and by extension how this shaped civic consciousness. Connected to this, it will ask, vice versa, what that material can reveal about urban transformation. It will also locate the role of urban panegyric in the wider ideological battle which orbited around the concept of the medieval city; one in which new discourses emerged after c.1100 and which contested notions of the evil and the good city. U R B A N PA N E G Y R I C A N D I T S S O U RC E S This work aims to track both physical and ideological change associated with the city during the crucial period of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and uniquely to do so through the prism of urban panegyric, a vastly undervalued textual record which offers a significant voice on these transitions and which has yet to be  examined extensively nor fully connected to wider urban transitions. It will provide a wide and comparative geographic analysis, incorporating material on England, Flanders, France, Germany, Iberia, Northern and Southern Italy and Sicily, and (occasionally) the Near East. In Chapter  2 we will discuss at greater length how the material within some of the sources can be interpreted. But it is 7  A. Erll, Memory in Culture, trans. S. B. Young (Basingstoke, 2011), pp. 161–2.

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important to establish some very broad methodological parameters at the outset, by considering how this study defines urban panegyric. Urban panegyric appears in many literary shapes and sizes, but simply put, I identify it here as any textual record that can be interpreted as praising (implicitly or explicitly) an aspect of urban life. Thus, for example, seemingly uncomplicated ‘descriptions’ of cities can often be viewed—as will be shown in this study—as implicit praise. At the more explicit end of the scale, at its most formulaic, and arguably most discernible, urban panegyric was influenced by the laus civitatis. This literary template crystallized during Antiquity via rhetorical treatises on the  construction of panegyric and encomium which were produced by some of  the  most renowned rhetoricians and grammarians of the day: Quintilian, Hermogenes, Priscian, and Menander Rhetor to name some of the most ­important.8 Collectively these works demonstrated ways in which praise could be applied to a city, and their guidance remained influential, not least because its flexibility ­covered most of the fundamental characteristics of the city in the Middle Ages. Popular subjects for praise included: the origins of a city and the etymology of its name, its physical size, its material legacy (religious and secular buildings; monumental structures such as city walls, towers, and gates; public spaces such as squares, amphitheatres and marketplaces), its wealth and commercial vitality, its geographical situation and layout (including fertility of surrounding lands), the attributes/ achievements of its inhabitants (especially if they were pious, learned, or famous) and (from the Christian era) of its chief patron saints, and the city’s status comparative to other urban centres. The classical influences derived from the early rhetorical texts on urban panegyric were subsequently overlaid by Christian understandings of the city (for more see Chapter  3) to ensure that there were some broader framing devices, agendas, and commonalities which underpinned some of the medieval praise we shall encounter. An eighth-century Lombard text called De Laudibus Urbium did attempt to aid an author in the production of urban panegyric, and echoes some of the earlier classical rhetoricians: The first praise of cities should furnish the dignity of the founder and it should include praise of distinguished men and also gods, just as Athens is said to have been established by Minerva: and they shall seem true rather than fabulous. The second [theme of praise] concerns the form of fortifications and the site, which is either inland or maritime and in the mountains or in the plane. The third concerns the fertility of the lands, the bountifulness of the springs, the habits of the inhabitants. Then concerning its ornaments, which afterwards should be added, or its good fortune, if things had developed unaided or had occurred by virtue, weapons and warfare. We shall also praise it if that city has many noble men, by whose glory it shall provide light for the whole world. We should also be accustomed for praise to be shaped by neighbouring cities, if ours is greater, so 8  For an excellent summary of the pre-1100 material see J. Ruth, Urban Honor in Spain. The Laus Urbis from Antiquity through Humanism (Lewiston, 2011), Chapters 1–2.

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Introduction 5 that we protect others, or if lesser, so that by the light of neighbours we are illuminated. In these things also we shall briefly make comparison.9

The tract then showed the reader how to perform such a comparison. Yet, this type of explicit instruction on the praise of cities was remarkably rare in the Middle Ages. Thus, despite the guidance of classical rhetorical manuals and the evident continuities and recurring themes within aspects of medieval urban panegyric, no linear literary tradition of urban praise developed nor any authoritative taxonomy of laudatory qualities was established. Astrid Erll’s analysis suggests that ‘only when authors and recipients of a mnemonic community share the knowledge of genre conventions [ . . . ] can one speak of the existence of a genre.’10 For the Middle Ages it remains problematic to establish how far authors and audience were explicitly aware of such genre conventions rather than absorbing them at a more subconscious cultural level. For these reasons the present study makes no attempt to delineate nor to offer a definitive model of what constitutes the laus civitatis and urban panegyric in general. Praise within the laus civitatis model could focus on any combination of laudatory attributes, exclude some, and nuance others. The laus civitatis template (and urban panegyric more broadly) is at best a loose category, which in itself demonstrates the variety of ways to praise and conceptualize cities. Each example of praise (and conversely censure) needs to be assessed individually and then comparatively by considering authorship, context, purpose, and type of source, and then, of course, by focusing on the content of the praise itself. Text and context cannot be separated.11 Understandably, the type of distinctive praise which formed extensive passages of texts, or which represent ‘free-standing’ works in their own right, has dominated scholarship on urban panegyric. Some of the most celebrated examples, all of which will be encountered in this study, are the Mirabilia Urbis Romae on Rome (c.1143), William FitzStephen’s description of the city of London, its origins, and its future (c.1173), and Bonvesin da la Riva’s distinguished De Magnalibus Urbis Mediolani on the city of Milan (1288).12 Indeed, J. K. Hyde’s seminal study in the 1960s showcased the importance of many of these works.13 Yet on closer inspection it becomes apparent that these major laudes civitatum are a mixed bag, diverse

9  De Laudibus Urbium, Latin text in G. Fasoli, ‘La coscienza civica nelle “Laudes Civitatum” ’, in her Scritti di storia medievale, ed. F. Bocchi et al. (Bologna, 1974), p. 295 n. 6. 10 Erll, Memory, p. 74. 11 Erll, Memory, p. 171. 12  An edition of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae can be found in Codice topografico della città di Roma, eds. R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, vol. III (Rome, 1946), pp. 17–65; William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae in Materials for the History of Thomas Becket, ed. J. Craigie Robertson, Rolls Series, LXVII, vol. III (London, 1877). There is also a translation of FitzStephen’s description of London by H. E. Butler, reproduced in F. Stenton, Norman London: An Essay (Introduction by F. Donald Logan) (New York, 1990), pp. 47–60; Bonvesin da la Riva, De Magnalibus Mediolani (Le Meraviglie di Milano), ed. and trans. P. Chiesa (Milan, 2009). 13 J. K. Hyde, ‘Medieval Descriptions of Cities’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, XLVIII (1965–6), pp. 308–40.

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in content, purpose, and form.14 Many are embedded in much larger tracts, like  the aforesaid description of London which serves as a prologue to William FitzStephen’s Vita of Thomas Becket. In some works too—the Gesta Treverorum for Trier, Boncampagno da Signa’s for Ancona, or Martin da Canal’s for Venice, for example—praise is conveyed implicitly through an entire text which takes a city as its central reference point. The Gesta Treverorum, for instance, has been described quite rightly as written by an author ‘who incorporated into his chronicle everything that contributed to the glory of the Treveri’.15 In others it can be detected indirectly in strategies which enhanced a city’s reputation without applying overt praise, perhaps by simply recording an urban foundation legend which projected the city’s origins into a distant past.16 Furthermore, some works which considered the city as a universal entity and presented that entity in a positive light—such as the Christian philosophers Alain de Lille in the twelfth century and Albert Magnus in the thirteenth—have also been included here as types of urban panegyric.17 All of this reflects the varied forms panegyric could take and the diversity of the textual source types through which it appeared: chronicles, annals, poems, chansons and romances, hagiographies, letters, sermons, legal, political, and theological treatises, customary tracts, and administrative documents. The approach in the present study therefore recognizes the heterogeneity within the body of works conventionally labelled as laudes civitatum and takes a more holistic interpretation of what constitutes urban panegyric and where to locate it.  The corpus of ‘major’ laudes civitatum distract from the considerably larger occurrence of what Elisa Occhipinti termed microlaudes, smaller passages of urban ­panegyric and description of varied forms and length inserted into larger works.18 Sometimes these may simply be a line or two within a text, sometimes more, but their concision and subtextual implications can be powerful and articulate deeprooted messages. This approach allows us to consider small passages of praise in the same terms, and potentially of the same value, as ‘recognized’/‘major’ laudes civitatum. Thus, to offer two seemingly polarized examples from the thirteenth century, it might be possible to compare and utilize on an equal footing John de 14  D. Romagnoli, ‘La coscienza civica nella città comunale italiana: il caso di Milano’, in F. Sabaté (ed.), El mercat: un món de contactes i intercanvis (Lleida, 2014), pp. 59–62 notes the fluid overlap evident in the so-called mirabilia, itineraria and laudes civitatum genres. 15  W. Hammer, ‘The Concept of the New or Second Rome in the Middle Ages’, Speculum, XIX (1944), pp. 57–8. 16  Gesta Treverorum, ed. G. Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, VIII (Hannover, 1848), pp. 130–200; see the important work by H. Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung des 11. Jahrhunderts, insbesondere zu den Gesta Treverorum (Bonn, 1968); and K. Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves. Écriture hagiographique et passé historique de la métropole mosellane VIII–XIII siècle (Ostfildern, 2010), pp. 277–87. 17  Alain de Lille, Opera Omnia, ed. J-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, CCX (Paris, 1855), cols. 200–3; the sermons in which Albert delivered his discourse on the city are edited by J. B. Schneyer in ‘Alberts des Grossen Augsburger Predigtzyklus über den hl. Augustinus’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, XXXVI (1969), pp. 100–47 [henceforth: Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle]. 18  E. Occhipinti, ‘Immagini di città. Le Laudes Civitatum e la rappresentazione dei centri urbani nell’Italia settentrionale’, Società e Storia, XIV (1991), p. 25.

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Introduction 7 Garlande’s Parisiana Poetria (c.1231–35), a student textbook on Latin prose and verse, which contains under the section on constructing hyperbole a short sentence on the city of Paris (‘The famous name of Paris reaches to the stars, and its borders contain the human race’), alongside Bonvesin’s aforementioned De Magnalibus Urbis Mediolani, a book dedicated to the praise of the city of Milan and consisting of eight chapters covering the cities virtues: location, buildings, inhabitants, wealth, strength, faith, liberty, nobility.19 John’s praise of Paris, as short as it may be, merely reflects the tip of an iceberg. Below it, submerged, lie numerous literary and ­cultural traditions and evident links to urban realities which were left u ­ narticulated but believed by the author to be sufficiently understood and resonant to serve as part of a pedagogic tool for local university students. The brief praise of Paris’s hosting of a large and eclectic population taps into some of the oldest literary features of urban panegyric but also speaks directly to thirteenth-century e­ xperiences of urban life, as cities (particularly Paris) expanded, became the locus of diverse communities, and their rulers willingly promoted their power through the governance and protection of the mosaic of peoples inhabiting their cities. Bonvesin, on the other hand, might provide far more explicit and explicated praise, but the same background of literary and cultural influences mixed with lived urban experiences suffuses the text. Approached in this way, the issue then is one of degree not type. Similarly, one could compare the often passing, but crucial representations of the city in any number of ‘secular’ and ‘fictionalized’ Epic and Romance works with the extensive, and distinct, prologue of William FitzStephen’s Vita of Thomas Becket which was entitled Descriptio nobilissimae civitatis Londoniae (c.1173).20 In some of the former, for example Jean Renart’s L’Escoufle (c.1200–2), supportive urban inhabitants and the city itself (in this case Montpellier) act as agents e­ nabling the redemption of the chief characters (Aelis and Guillaume).21 Several scholars have demonstrated how these types of works can be used as entry points into the conflicted aristocratic and mercantile perceptions of the city while telling us a great deal about both positive and negative experiences of urban life in the Central Middle Ages.22 In FitzStephen’s work, the description of London is informative and rich, but like L’Escoufle its ‘background’ noises are equally as important (particularly the use of classical authors such as Virgil and Plato, and the imperial claims made for London) as is the juxtaposition of this descriptio with a hagiographical 19  John de Garlande, The Parisiana Poetria of John of Garlande, ed. and trans. T. Lawler (New Haven, 1974), Chapter  6, p. 129: ‘Sidera Parisius famoso nomine tangit, Humanumque genus ­ambitus Urbis tangit’. 20  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, pp. 2–13. 21  Jean Renart, L’Escoufle, trans. A. Micha (Paris, 1992). 22  J. Le Goff, ‘Warriors and Conquering Bourgeois. The Image of the City in Twelfth-Century French Literature’, in his Medieval Imagination, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1992), pp. 151–76; U. Mölk, ‘Die literarische Entdeckung der Stadt im französischen Mittelalter’, in J. Fleckenstein and K. Stackmann (eds), Über Bürger, Stadt und städtische Literatur im Spätmittelalter (Göttingen, 1980), pp. 203–15; M. Harney, ‘Siege Warfare in Medieval Hispanic Epic and Romance’, in I. A. Corfis and M. Wolfe (eds), The Medieval City Under Siege (Woodbridge, 1995), pp. 177–90, emphasizes the broad distinction between epics which presented the knights’ desire to acquire the city against the chivalric romances which showed the knights being absorbed into the city (pp. 187–8).

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text. Both tell us much about medieval urban identities and the conceptualization of the medieval city. Thus, the present study will also utilize less well-known, and often shorter, pieces of laudatory and conceptual material. This heterogeneity of source types—which will be set out in more detail in Chapter 1—represents another salient indicator of transformation in the urban world. Through combining this diverse corpus of material it will be demonstrated that the messages within the so-called ‘major’ laudes civitatum were simultaneously far more quotidian and far less generic than had previously been thought, and that some of the seemingly derivative material within them become more meaningful once properly contextualized. H I S TO R I O G R A P H Y Fortunately, this study has been able to utilize some key scholarship on medieval urban identities, on literary criticism, on audience and reception, on cultural ­studies, and on cultural geography.23 It has also drawn on studies from the social sciences to help further understand, for example, the formation of group identities, notions of legitimacy, and interpretations of crowds, all of which shaped medieval perceptions of the city.24 While there exists a huge historiography on the medieval city, scholarship directly on medieval urban panegyric is remarkably meagre. Among the broader (though still regrettably brief ) treatments there are, however, several important studies. The aforementioned work by J. K. Hyde played a crucial role in placing medieval works of urban panegyric on the radar of many scholars. While Hyde’s analysis is rather narrow with its approach to city descriptions (descriptiones) which rejected works which he deemed too short or interconnected with another text to be autonomous, it nonetheless presented an important underpinning interpretation:

23 A work which remains fundamental in any discussion of urban identities is S. Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300 (Oxford, 2nd edition, 1997), pp. 155–218; on literary criticism see A. Minnis and I. Johnson (eds), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 2: The Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2005) and A. Bennett and N. Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (Edinburgh, 4th edition, 2009); on literacy, audience, and reception see: J. Tompkins (ed.), Reader-Response Criticism: from Formalism to Post-Structuralism (Baltimore, 1989); D. H. Green, Medieval Listening and Reading. The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800–1300 (Cambridge, 1994); W. J. Ong, ‘Orality, Literacy and Medieval Textualization’, New Literary History, XVI (1984), pp. 1–12; M. Mostert and A. Adamska (eds), Uses of the Written Word in Medieval Towns: Medieval Urban Literacy, II (Turnhout, 2014); Erll, Memory; on cultural geography in a medieval urban context see: K. D. Lilley, City and Cosmos. The Medieval World in Urban Form (London, 2009). 24  For example: M. J. Hornsey et al., ‘Relations between High and Low Power Groups: the importance of legitimacy’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, XXIX (2003), pp. 216–27; D. Waddington and M. King, ‘The Disorderly Crowd: from Classical Psychological Reductionism to Socio-Contextual Theory: the impact on public order policing strategies’, The Howard Journal, XLIV (2005), pp. 490–503; R. M. Chow et al., ‘The Two Faces of Dominance: the differential effect of ingroup superiority and outgroup inferiority on dominant-group identity and group esteem’, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, XLIV (2008), pp. 1073–81.

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Introduction 9 The gradual elaboration of descriptive literature from the tenth to the fourteenth ­centuries represents not so much the growth of a literary tradition as a change in its subject-matter. The medieval descriptiones are a manifestation of the growth of cities and the rising culture and self-confidence of the citizens.

Indeed, for Hyde, prior to 1400 a genuine medieval literary tradition of the laus civitatis ‘was either lacking, or at the best sporadic’, and these works of praise instead tend to ‘reflect successive stages in the fortunes of medieval cities’.25 Later, Occhipinti’s work, although solely examining Italy, suggested a compelling methodological approach to urban panegyric. By acknowledging the importance of (the already noted) microlaudes, Occhipinti highlighted the impossibility of constructing an evolutionary line of development among such works owing to the extreme diversity among the types of sources. Instead, Occhipinti saw greater value in ­mining these sources for what they tell us about civic self-identity and their representations of the city rather than in attempting to identify an autonomous literary genre with distinct characteristics.26 Aligned to this approach, Harmut Kugler’s study emphasized the need for scholars to recognize the heterogeneity of works praising cities. It acknowledged the value of studying these as literary works but also stressed the importance of contextualizing them within their contemporary urban settings.27 Hyde’s, Occhipinti’s, and Kugler’s methodologies underpin this present study. Other studies have done a great deal to frame some of the key themes of this study, by elucidating the spiritual and ideological understandings of the city, and highlighting the interrelationship between urban praise and condemnation. Hans Hans-Joachim Schmidt’s masterful analysis of the Christian moralizing and allegorical interpretation of the medieval city in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries makes much of the interplay with fundamental urban transitions, and is complemented by Thomas Renna’s works on Cistercian thinking on the city.28 And Paolo Zanna’s excellent study built a nuanced picture of the classical and biblical legacies framing medieval urban descriptions, and his examination of elegiac works demonstrated their significance for medieval conceptions of the city.29 25  Hyde, ‘Medieval Descriptions’, pp. 308–10. 26  Occhipinti, ‘Immagini’, pp. 25–6. 27  H. Kugler, Die Vorstellung der Stadt in der Literatur des deutschen Mittelalters (Munich, 1986), especially pp. 17–26. 28  Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 297–354; T. Renna, ‘The City in Early Cistercian Thought’, Citeaux: Commentarii cistercienses, XXXIV (1983), pp. 5–19 and ‘The Idea of the City in Otto of Freising and Henry of Albano’, Citeaux: Commentarii cistercienses, XV (1984), pp. 55–72. 29  P. Zanna, ‘Descriptiones Urbium and Elegy in Latin and Vernaculars in the Early Middle Ages’, Studi Medievali, XXXII, 3rd series (1991), pp. 523–96. More focused, localized, examinations have also been produced. A sample would include: Fasoli, ‘coscienza civica’, pp. 293–318; M. Accame Lanzillotta, Contributi sui Mirabilia urbis Romae (Genoa, 1996); D. Kinney, ‘Fact and Fiction in the Mirabilia Urbis Romae’, in É. Ó Carragáin and C. Neuman de Vegvar (eds), Roma Felix. Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome (Aldershot, 2007), pp. 235–52; Ruth, Urban Honor; G. Rosser, ‘Myth, Image and Social Process in the English Medieval Town’, Urban History, XXIII (1996), pp. 5–25; J. Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City. Genre, intertextuality and Fitzstephen’s Description of London (c.1173)’, in his Reading the Past. Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Dublin, 1996), pp. 15–36; Le Goff, ‘Warriors’, pp. 151–76; Mölk, ‘literarische Entdeckung’, pp. 203–15; Kugler, Vorstellung der Stadt; A. Haverkamp, ‘ “Heilige Städte” im hohen Mittealter’, in F. Graus (ed.), Mentalitäten im Mittelalter (Sigmaringen, 1987), pp. 119–56.

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Two additional works require particular mention, however, because they have been important to the present study in addressing specific topics that will be ­covered here. Carrie E. Beňes’ study on urban origin legends demonstrates the growing interest (in this case in Northern Italy from 1250 to 1350) in civic histories and foundation myths in an increasingly classicizing environment.30 The work will be drawn upon, particularly in Chapter 7, but the way Beňes demonstrated how such legends were projected to a wider audience in several different media supports some of my methodological approaches presented in Chapter  2. Keith Lilley’s monograph likewise combines the abstract with the concrete to show how theoretical conceptions of the city could be mapped onto, and influence the layout of, the physical city, and used to promote the notion of holy cities: this approach will be valuable for the analysis in Chapters 2 and 3 below.31 Perhaps the most salient feature of the entire body of scholarship is the dearth of in-depth book-length studies on a European-wide spectrum. Carl-Joachim Classen produced a welcome and erudite monograph on descriptiones and laudes urbium. However, in reality it represents an extended article-length study, half dedicated to the classical period, and the brief examination halts at the twelfth century.32 Chiara Frugoni also offered a thought-provoking examination of the changing concept of the city throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In combining an ­analysis of architectural, topographic, iconographic, and textual sources, Frugoni pointed the way towards a more holistic and interdisciplinary approach. That said, as the work proceeds, it becomes increasingly and then (in chapters covering the Later Middle Ages) exclusively focused on Italy.33 There is, therefore, a need for an indepth, methodologically flexible and interdisciplinary approach to this subject, but it has yet to be achieved and very little sustained comparative analysis across medieval Europe has been conducted. The present study aims to offer a small step towards addressing this. PA R A M E T E R S O F T H E S T U D Y It is important to acknowledge where this study’s limits lie. First, the very idea of the city has always been a contested subject field. Indeed, the terminology used for urban settlements in the Middle Ages itself was highly fluid and open to various interpretations. The most frequently used label, civitas, reflected ‘a double heritage from Antiquity, a concept of political philosophy and an administrative term’.34 30  C. E. Beňes, Urban Legends. Civic Identity and the Classical Past in Northern Italy, 1250–1350 (University Park, Pa, 2011). 31 Lilley, City and Cosmos. 32  C-J. Classen, Die Stadt im Spiegel der Descriptiones und Laudes Urbium in der antiken und mittelalterlichen Literatur bis zum Ende des zwölften Jahrhunderts (Hildesheim, 1980). See the assessment of Classen’s book in Kugler, Vorstellung der Stadt, pp. 23–4. 33  C. Frugoni, A Distant City. Images of Urban Experience in the Medieval World, trans. W. McCuaig (Princeton, 1991). 34  P. Michaud-Quantin, Universitas: expressions du mouvement communautaire dans le Moyen-Âge latin (Paris, 1970), p. 111.

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Introduction 11 It represented both the Ciceronian ideal of a city as a community of individuals brought together under the same law, and as an imperial jurisdictional category for an urban centre and its dependent territories.35 In the Early Middle Ages, as ­bishops invariably took over political and administrative leadership in many postRoman cities, the term civitas also became synonymous with urban episcopal centres. However, other meanings abounded in the Middle Ages. Civitas could imply a walled or fortified centre, a settlement with a legal status recognized in a charter of privileges, an administrative locus, a place of a certain demographic density and physical size, or one with particular commercial and consumer functions. Alongside this, other terms were applied to centres which could appear to have urban characteristics: urbs, municipium, villa, or oppidum could often be used interchangeably with the label civitas.36 Thus, the ‘richness of the general lexicon’ of the medieval city undoubtedly poses challenges for establishing typologies, particularly when we add in seemingly intermediary terms such as portus, burgus (a term originally connected to a settlement’s military functions), and suburbium, all of which could contain urban associations.37 This terminology likewise varied depending on the education and agenda of the author applying the term.38 For some commentators the city could be the physical entity—its buildings and infrastructure—for others, like the Christian philosopher St Augustine (d.430) it is the inhabitants, or a particular mode of being. In his Etymologies (c. ad 615–636) Isidore of Seville offered his own influential interpretation of the city: A city (civitas) is a multitude of people (hominum multitudo) drawn together by a bond of community, named after its ‘citizens’ (dicta a civibus), that is, from the inhabitants of the city (ab ipsis incolis urbis) [. . .] Now urbs is the name for the actual buildings, while civitas is not the stones, but the inhabitants.39

Isidore thus echoed the Ciceronian and Augustinian position of the city (civitas) as a community, which dwelled in a particular physical setting, the urbs. Later Christian thinking of the Middle Ages witnessed a partial shift from Augustine’s equation of city with community, to twelfth-century ideas of the city as a ‘place’, in line no doubt with the marked material expansion of many urban centres at this

35 Michaud-Quantin, Universitas, pp. 111–12. 36  Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, pp. 287–8; sometimes urbs could denote a city of higher status, connected no doubt to its intrinsic association with the city of Rome: MichaudQuantin, Universitas, pp. 117–19; for specific examples from Normandy see P. Bouet, ‘L’image des villes normandes chez les écrivains normands de langue latine des XI et XII siècles’, in P. Bouet and F. Neveux (eds), Les villes normandes au Moyen Âge. Renaissance, essor, crise. Actes du colloque de Cerisyla-Salle, 8–12 octobre 2003 (Caen, 2006), pp. 320, 327–8. 37  Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, pp. 369–70. Burgus/burg became a particularly common urban designation in medieval Germany and to a lesser extent France: F. Opll, ‘Das Werden der mittelalterlichen Stadt’, Historische Zeitschrift, CCLXXX (2005), pp. 567–73. 38  Opll, ‘Das Werden der mittelalterlichen Stadt’, p. 567. 39  Isidore of Seville, Etymologiarum sive Originum libri XX, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford, 1911), vol. II. XV.I.II. My translation slightly adapts the one found in The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. S. A. Barney et al. (Cambridge, 2006), XV.II.I, p. 305.

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time.40 Connected to this association with place, the interrelationship with the countryside, as we shall see in Chapter 5, could offer an important framework for defining the city. Rather crude dichotomies might be established between the worlds inside and outside the city wall: the urban as metaphor for ‘civilized’ and the rural for ‘unsophisticated’; the city as ‘haven’ and the country as ‘wild’, or, to turn it around, the ‘corrupt’ city of man versus the ‘moral/simple’ ‘natural’ world; or the ‘chaotic’ city juxtaposed with the solitude and the metaphorical ‘desert’ of the rural.41 The interrelationship was, of course, far more mutually dependent than this, both in Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. At the same time, the revived interest in Aristotle’s Politics in the thirteenth century also ensured that the term civitas retained a broader meaning as the ‘body politic’, an associational ­interpretation more layered than a simple expression of a location that was urbanized.42 As city laws were developed to consolidate this associational drive so too did the allure of having access to the rights those laws brought. Consequently, from the twelfth century onwards individuals were more willing to self-identify as a civis or its close derivative burgensis to flag up this membership of a civic association with the benefits it might convey, and urban governments were more determined to control who could use the term. In practice, then, medieval commentators offered nuanced and varied criteria to identify the city.43 The Vita Mathildis (written from 1111 to 1116) by the monk Donizone of Canossa offers one revealing case of a contemporary commentary on what a city should be. His work contained an urbana altercatio between Canossa and Mantua which indicates that several different criteria were all thrown into the mix when conceptualizing the city. In the altercatio, both Canossa and Mantua vie to assert their urban credentials in order to claim the relics of Matilda’s father Boniface. Mantua claims boldly and simply: ‘I am called a city (‘Urbs ego sum dicta’), you, Canossa, are merely a stronghold (‘arx’)’; and ‘nowhere else is it right for such a body to be than in a city’.44 Canossa accepted that Mantua may have the name of city (‘Urbis nomen habes’) but that it could not claim great honour (‘sed 40  M. Richter, ‘Urbanitas-rusticitas: linguistic aspects of a medieval dichotomy’, Studies in Church History, XVI (1979), pp. 152–3. 41  This drew on Aristotle’s position, which was more accessible in the twelfth century, that those who organized themselves within cities could be termed true beings, those outside were not: see C. E. Honess, From Florence to the Heavenly City. The Poetry of Citizenship in Dante (London, 2006), p. 23; J. Le Goff, ‘The Town as an Agent of Civilisation, c.1200–c.1500’, trans. E. King, in C. M. Cipolla (ed.), The Fontana Economic History of Europe, vol. I, Chapter 2 (London, 1971), pp. 6, 12. 42  Luscombe, ‘City and Politics’, pp. 44–5. 43  For discussion of the urban–rural relationship in Antiquity and in the Old Testament in particular, see L. L. Grabbe, ‘Introduction and Overview’, in L. L. Grabbe and R. D. Haak (eds), ‘Every City shall be Forsaken’. Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East (Sheffield, 2001), pp. 30–3 where the author presents the view of an oppositional relationship between city and country in the Middle Ages. For more on the latter see M. Richter, ‘Urbanitas-rusticitas’, pp. 147–57. However, B. Beck, ‘Les villes normandes au Moyen Âge: de la ville réelle à la ville rêvée’, in P. Bouet and F. Neveux (eds), Les villes normandes au Moyen Âge. Renaissance, essor, crise. Actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 8–12 octobre 2003 (Caen, 2006), pp. 337–8, argues that separation between town and country was more evident in Antiquity than the Middle Ages. 44  Donizone di Canossa, Vita di Matilde di Canossa, ed. and trans. P. Golinelli (Milan, 2008), Bk. I.VIII, lines 601, 605, p. 58.

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Introduction 13 non es grandis honore’).45 For Mantua might have many inhabitants (‘populos multos habeas’), but it lacked triumphs because it did not have a circuit wall to protect it.46 Canossa’s fortifications, on the other hand, rendered it impregnable.47 Mantua responded that it had a marvellous church, bishop, priests, and many venerated relics; Canossa claimed in turn that its own direct dependence on the papacy conferred freedom and higher nobility.48 The remainder of the altercatio then shifts to Canossa’s efforts to deny Mantua an esteemed classical heritage by refuting the latter’s claim to be the birthplace of Virgil. The altercatio ends with an apparent victory for Canossa, but it seems a hollow one, and indeed Canossa ‘commands’ Mantua to keep Boniface’s relics.49 Thus, the recognition of the city here was identified variously with its materiality, its inhabitants, spirituality, cultural esteem, and heritage. Another example can be found in the sermons of the great thirteenthcentury philosopher Albert Magnus, who combined several criteria within his potent neo-Platonic/Augustinian emphasis on the city. Albert identified its four quintessential characteristics thus: fortification (munitio), sophistication (urbanitas), unity (unitas), and liberty (libertas).50 More modern, but contested, definitions of the city, as can be seen in Lewis Mumford’s influential commentary of 1937, broadened the measures notably: ‘The city in its complete sense, then, is a geographic plexus, an economic organisation, an institutional process, a theater of social action, and an aesthetic symbol of collective unity’.51 Medieval historians of the twentieth century continued to set out the varied criteria for defining the medieval city: from Rodney Hilton’s preference for occupational heterogeneity as one of the main markers of the urban to Jacques Le Goff’s compelling association between the number of Mendicant convents and the size and wealth of a city.52 But the careful treatment of the issue by medievalists further demonstrates how difficult and indeed misleading it could be to present a single, monolithic definition of ‘city’ or ‘urban’. In truth, not one of the multiple ways of categorizing the city is fully satisfactory and deserves ­privileging. All the ‘cities’ in this present study were identified at some point in the Middle Ages as either a civitas, urbs, municipium, villa, or oppidum. Encapsulated 45  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, Bk. I.VIII, line 606, p. 58. 46  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, Bk. I.VIII, lines 607–14, p. 58. 47  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, Bk. I.VIII, lines 618–32, p. 60. 48  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, Bk. I.VIII, lines 638–75, pp. 60–2. 49  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, Bk. I.VIII, lines 679–748, pp. 64–8. 50  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, pp. 100–47 (quote at p. 105). For a similar Augustinian view of the city, but different in some of its salient facets, see the ideal city proposed by William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris (1228–49): J. Le Goff, ‘An Urban Metaphor of William of Auvergne’, in his Medieval Imagination, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1992), pp. 177–80. 51  L. Mumford, ‘What is a City?’, Architectural Record (1937), reproduced in R. T. LeGates and F. Stout (eds), The City Reader (London, 2011), p. 93. For a survey of the sociological approach to cities see B. D. Nefzger, ‘The Sociology of Preindustrial Cities’, in L. L. Grabbe and R. D. Haak (eds), ‘Every City shall be Forsaken’. Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East (Sheffield, 2001), pp. 159–71. 52  R. H. Hilton, English and French Towns in Feudal Society: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, 1992), especially pp. 6–7, 33, 152; J. Le Goff, ‘Ordres mendicants et urbanisation dans las France médiévale’, Annales. Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations, XXV (1970), pp. 924–46; See also J. B. Freed, The Friars and German Society in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1977), p. 52.

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within these terms was a spread of political, legal, religious, material, military, and economic functions, with different authors/works emphasizing some of these functions over others.53 The ensuing study should then at least offer the reader several angles through which to see how flexible these definitions of the city could be, and to consider some of them as they might apply in the Middle Ages. The chronological parameters of this work, 1100 to 1300, inevitably impose certain artificial boundaries. Comparable works interlinking with comparable urban developments of course existed before and after these dates, and consequently we will sometimes move earlier and later in time. However, the overwhelming rise in output in works of urban panegyric and the most intense phase of medieval urbanization correlate primarily with the twelfth and thirteenth c­ enturies and this period therefore remains the focus of the study. Also, as already pointed out, comparative analysis is fundamental to this work in order to move beyond the more localized studies. The present study therefore attempts to utilize as wide a range of source types as applicable and spread them as evenly as possible both chronologically and geographically. In doing so, I hope to strike a balance between breadth and depth, offering some more intensive analyses on particular works and cities, while keeping in mind the universality or the uniqueness of patterns and differences which might well be missed if we focused on a more narrow body of texts. At the same time, conversely, there is a lack of source coverage for many of Europe’s medieval cities. For some cities we have very little material, for others only one or two works which arguably provide momentary snapshots. In some cases—for the Flemish cities of Bruges, Ghent, and Ypres—the near silence in our source records for this period is both astonishing and surely significant. In other words, there are inevitably chronological and geographical gaps in this study, and there are equally source hotspots—Italy obviously—which we cannot and should not avoid.

U R B A N T R A N S F O R M AT I O N , 1 1 0 0 – 1 3 0 0 : T H E   B A C KG RO U N D Before setting out the plan of this book we should also make the important point that, while the work does not follow a chronological analysis, some of the salient themes in this study and the nature of the sources themselves experienced change over time, and this will be teased out in places. Most cities in 1300 looked different and were doing things differently to those of 1100. This must be kept in mind, with the obvious caveat that our picture must surely be distorted by the greater quantity of evidence available as we move towards the latter date. Each thematic chapter will contextualize and highlight this more fully, but it will be useful here 53  All three labels, particularly, urbs and civitas, were often used interchangeably, but sometimes urbs could denote a city of higher status, see Michaud-Quantin, Universitas, pp. 111–19 and for specific examples for Normandy see P. Bouet, ‘L’image des villes normandes chez les écrivains normands de langue latine des XI et XII siècles’, in Bouet, ‘L’image des villes’, pp. 320, 327–8.

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Introduction 15 in at least the broadest of brush strokes to remind ourselves of some of the most significant aspects of urban growth and then revisit them in subsequent chapters. Above all, after 1100, cities were shaped by a rapid rise in population, stimulated by rural migration, climatic change, and the revival of the economy, which c­ entred wealth in cities, and this in turn attracted further migrants. Figures for medieval urban populations are notoriously problematic, and growth could be uneven and hit temporary downturns through plague and war, but by the mid-to late thirteenth century some truly large cities had emerged. Several Italian cities may have had populations above 100,000, such as Milan (perhaps even as high as 150–200,000), Florence, Venice, Naples, and Palermo.54 Recent estimates suggest a population of around 80–100,000 for London in 1300, and perhaps an even higher figure for Paris.55 Rome’s population, and numerous other cities—Bruges, Cologne, Montpellier, Rouen, Seville—may have reached somewhere in the region of 40–50,000 by 1300.56 Yet the most important statistic is the one on relative growth—most cities of all ranks in Europe appear to have doubled in size at some point between the start of the twelfth and the end of the thirteenth century, whether it be a York expanding from c.8,000 in 1086 to c.23,000 in c.1290, or a Padua from c.15,000 in 1174 to c.35,000 in 1320.57 And this level of relative growth is of course to be amplified in those cases where ‘new’ cities were founded, a phenomenon which peaked in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.58 Most cities expanded beyond their original footprint during this period, establishing extra-mural suburbs, or even incorporating them in newly expanded circuits of city walls, as occurred most spectacularly at Florence in the thirteenth century.59 Cities consequently underwent a physical transformation in line with commercial revival and Church reform. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries was therefore an era of intensive urban construction. New shrine centres, cathedrals, and religious complexes, like Santo Stefano at Bologna, city walls, gates and towers, and guildhouses marked a new urban skyline. Distinct secular spaces also re-emerged, pioneered in thirteenth-century Italy with communal palace complexes and public piazzas. At a more quotidian level, multi-storey buildings and subdivided tenements became more common, as did stone housing, 54  See E. Hubert, ‘Le construction de la ville: sur l’urbanisation dans l’Italie médievale’, Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, LIX (2004), pp. 109–19; for the debates on Milan’s population see P. Grillo, Milano in età comunale (1183–1276): istituzioni, società, economia (Spoleto, 2001), pp. 39–41 and P.  Racine, ‘Milan à la fin du XIII siècle: 60,000 ou 200,000 habitants?’, Aevum, LVIII (1984), pp. 246–53; see also the brief but useful survey, Nicholas, Growth of the Medieval City, pp. 178–82. 55  S. Rees Jones, York: The Making of a City, 1068–1350 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 236–7; B. M. S. Campbell et al., A Medieval Capital and Its Grain Supply: Agrarian Production and Distribution in the London Region, c.1300 (Cheltenham, 1993), pp. 8–11. 56  C. Wickham, Medieval Rome: Stability and Crisis of a City, 900–1150 (Oxford, 2014), p. 112; Nicholas, Growth of the Medieval City, pp. 178, 180. 57  Rees Jones, York, p. 236; Nicholas, Growth of the Medieval City, p. 182. 58 The classic work remains M. Beresford, New Towns of the Middle Ages: Town Plantation in England, Wales, and Gascony (London, 1967); see more recently Lilley, City and Cosmos, especially pp. 41–73. 59  See the work of F. Sznura: L’espansione urbana di Firenze nel Dugento (Florence, 1975) and ‘Civic Urbanism in Medieval Florence’, in A. Molho, K. Raaflaub, and J. Emlen (eds), City States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy (Stuttgart, 1991), pp. 403–18.

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funded by newly rich merchants and artisans.60 These stone houses reflected both status and the need for protection stimulated by the growth of urban populations and the density of housing constructed in flammable materials. Stone housing, and the development from c.1200 of civic building regulations to ensure stone party walls, thus served as a means for the more wealthy to protect property and ­merchandise against fire and urban disorder. And, as a result of migration and trade, most urban populations by 1300 were more diverse in background and composition (and more transient) than they had been in 1100. It should be no surprise that, against this backdrop, cities began to define membership of the urban community more closely. But such was the social fluidity that in reality cities ‘tolerated several citizenships’, with gradations of legal rights and obligations functioning within them.61 In sum, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries represented one of the most intense and complex periods of population growth in European history prior to the nineteenth century, and witnessed significant transformation in urban social ordering and city topographies. Concomitant to this demographic expansion was the commercial revival of the Central Middle Ages. By 1100, mercantile and artisanal groups were certainly prominent features of the urban landscape, but by 1300, guilds and confraternities had formed around many of these merchant and specialized craft groups, projecting conspicuous wealth and influence through rituals, festivities, monumental buildings (such as the aforesaid stone houses and towers), and also, in some cases, claiming political power in urban government.62 In line with the commercial boom, markets became ever more the focal point of urban communities and were regulated more strictly. As the thirteenth century progressed, improved farming techniques saw bigger surpluses in urban hinterlands reaching city markets. The development of international trading fairs and networks, aided by the expansion of Latin Christendom’s frontiers, also saw luxury goods from distant lands appear in cities, along with more and more foreign merchants, who in some cases established mercantile enclaves in their host cities. Underpinning these transformations, by the late thirteenth century, Europe’s urban economies were highly monetized and technically more sophisticated through the introduction of systems of credit, insurance, bills of exchange, and banking facilities. Historians quite rightly see the thirteenth century as the point at which a true profit economy, rooted in cities, emerged in Western Europe and as a period in which a new focus on numbers and data came to the fore.63 Equally, urban governments were ruling in a very different manner by 1300. Two centuries earlier, many urban governments—especially in Italy—were starting to develop embryonic communal institutions, or at the least urban elites were aspiring to a more prominent role in the government of their own cities. Over the course of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, several cities—not just in Northern 60  Hubert, ‘construction de la ville’, pp. 121–2. 61 Riesenberg, Citizenship, p. 111. 62 Loveluck, Northwest Europe, pp. 302–27, 328–60. 63  See L. K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe (Ithaca, 1978); A. Murray, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), pp. 180-7; Romagnoli, ‘coscienza civica’, pp. 69–74.

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Introduction 17 Italy, but to lesser degrees in England, Iberia, France, Flanders, and Southern Italy—had attained a much higher level of self-government, either through formal communal bodies, or via more informal agreements with higher authorities. Indeed, these centuries witnessed a surge in associational movements—communes, guilds, and confraternities—all of which developed their own norms of social action and political practice.64 Even if numbers remained restricted and processes could hardly be described as democratic within these associations, a greater proportion of urban inhabitants in Europe could play a role in urban government than had been the case in 1100. And urban governments were becoming ever more interventionist as their administrative complexity and capabilities crystallized. Civic councils, again pioneered in Italy but echoed elsewhere, took more interest in their urban hinterlands, in taxation, in the urban environment (both ­aesthetically and functionally), in justice, in commercial enterprise, and in external military policy.65 The new demographic and commercial wealth of cities had assisted greatly in this process. Urban social hierarchies became more fluid too, with certain ­kin-groups able to utilize new forms of liquid wealth and social esteem to rise to prominence. By the same process, established elite families could rapidly lose their status, and no wonder that the motif of Fortuna and her Wheel—signalling the cyclical rotation of success and failure—was so resonant in the Central Middle Ages.66 This should remind us of the fragility of wealth, the limitations of urban welfare support, and the omnipresent spectre of poverty in medieval cities. The development of more intensive urban governments which were simultaneously more accessible to a wider body of the urban populace also generated a ­deleterious by-product: urban faction and conflict. New constellations of power formed within cities, they could be based around professions, migrant communities, religious, landed and mercantile communities, and even by city quarter. As cities acquired greater power, so that power became ever more contested. This could be internal: urban uprisings blighted the Italian communes, especially in the thirteenth century, but they were a feature of most cities in our period. And it could be external: cities were coveted by higher authorities, kings and emperors, for their wealth and political and military potential. Cities might pull away from those higher authorities, or conversely become entangled in higher power politics and consequently find themselves attacked and conquered. From the mid-twelfth century onwards many monarchies were visibly constructing more centralized and powerful administrative states—above all in England (though of course here the ‘centralized state’ was already a prominent feature in the eleventh century), France, 64  For an excellent study see: O. G. Oexle, ‘Peace Through Conspiracy’, in B. Jussen (ed.), Ordering Medieval Society. Perspectives on Intellectual and Practical Modes of Shaping Social Relations, trans. P. Selwyn (Philadelphia, 2001), pp. 285–322. 65  F. Bocchi, ‘Regulation of the Urban Environment by the Italian Communes from the Twelfth to the Fourteenth Century’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, LXXII (1990), pp. 63–78. 66  R. L. Greene, ‘Fortune’, in J. R. Strayer (ed.), Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. 3 (New York, 1985), pp. 145–7 and also the discussion in the introduction of ‘Hugo Falcandus’, The History of the Tyrants of Sicily by Hugo Falcandus, 1153–69, trans. G. A. Loud and T. E. J. Wiedemann (Manchester, 1998), pp. 37–8.

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Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

Southern Italy, and Iberia—and the control of cities, especially the major ­metropolises, was integral to this both pragmatically and symbolically. This was particularly so when embryonic ‘capitals’ (and I use this word in the very loosest sense) were forming from the late twelfth century in places like London and Paris, both of which transformed from de-facto ‘chief cities’ to bureaucratic centres of monarchy, and also at Palermo. Likewise, revived notions of reform or renovatio placed Rome once again firmly at the centre of a universal entity. If necessary, control of cities could be achieved by force, but more often collaboration and cooperation was the state of play between monarchy/emperor/pope and city. The ongoing compromises and negotiation to achieve this, however, could certainly create tension. This is not to say that cities were not peaceful places too, or that they were more violent in 1300, but rather that there were now greater possibilities for conflict at several different levels. A revived economy also combined with new currents of spiritual reform and lay piety—already crystallizing in the early eleventh century—to change the religious landscape of the medieval city. Great new or extended cathedrals, both in the Romanesque and Gothic styles, were being constructed in many medieval cities from the late eleventh century and would dominate the cityscape both physically and mentally. Church reform and ecclesiastical organization also gave the papacy a greater presence in many cities of Latin Christendom. Increasing evidence for investment in urban saints’ cults additionally saw the development of multiple shrine centres in several cities. A city such as Benevento could by the start of our period claim the bodies of some 220 saints in the city cathedral and the monastery of Santa Sofia alone. But the important point is that many were rediscovered and translated to new, worthier shrines in the twelfth century, and the laity participated more directly in these public events.67 As mentioned too, growing urban populations required the restructuring of the parish network and the building of more churches to meet the needs of the laity. Particularly by the thirteenth century, this demand was also met by the crystallizing of urban religious confraternities and other lay-spiritual associations. Alongside these signs of communal religiosity there was also a simultaneous lay interest on a more individualized personal level along with new understandings of the fate of the soul. Thinking on Purgatory was refined, salvation increasingly became an individual responsibility, and Christ’s suffering during the Passion was experienced in a more emotively visceral manner. The construction of new public urban cemeteries, and sites replicating the Passion in some medieval cities, such as the Santo Stefano complex at Bologna, seem to reflect this spiritual climate and new projection of emotions.68 Then, from the 67  G. Luongo, ‘Alla ricerca del sacro. Le traslazioni dei santi in epoca altomedioevale’, in A. Ruggiero (ed.), Il ritorno di Paolino (Naples/Rome, 1990), p. 35 n. 76; A. Vuolo, ‘Agiografia benevantana’, in G.  Andenna and G. Picasso (eds), Longobardia e longobardi nell’Italia meridionale. Le istituzioni ­ecclesiastiche (Milan, 1996), pp. 199–237. 68  On urban burial sites see C. Bruzelius, ‘The Dead come to Town: preaching, burying, and building in the Mendicant Orders’, in A. Gajewski and Z. Opačić (eds), The Year 1300 and the Creation of a New European Architecture (Turnhout, 2007), pp. 203–24.

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Introduction 19 early thirteenth century, the rise of the Mendicant Orders established friaries in many European cities and ensured the presence of a new, conspicuous, and urban religious order offering charity and edification through sermons. In short, by 1300, urban communities experienced more points of contact with religious institutions and conduits to salvation within the city itself than ever before. Finally, we must also acknowledge the steady evolution of the city as a centre of  knowledge transmission. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, standards of education and numbers of students in cathedral and urban schools appear to have increased in line with the developments of the so-called Twelfth-Century Renaissance.69 Thus, an alternative to a monastic education became more viable and a greater cross-fertilization occurred between learning, religious institutions, commerce, and lay urban communities. The emerging school at St Paul’s Cathedral in London serves as an indicative example: here in the twelfth century we find several learned figures, such as the chronicler Ralph de Diceto, and canons named Quintilian and Cyprian (who were father and son), suggesting an association with classical knowledge and rhetoric. Other canons displayed expertise in mathematics, law, and astronomy, while one had a kin-group connection with a family of moneyers. Indeed, a measure of length was inscribed within the new nave of the cathedral and thus ‘St Paul’s foot’ became a standard measurement used in commercial transactions within the city, while legal business was also conducted within the cathedral.70 Furthermore, in some cities by the start of the thirteenth century, universities were established, providing a more distinctive institutional framework for education and marking a true watershed in the generation of knowledge in Europe. Alongside this, the Mendicants, motivated by a strong educational agenda, also established their own urban schools in many cities. Underpinning these changes we find widespread evidence for the growth of literacy, particularly among the laity, much of which could be termed, by the thirteenth century, ‘pragmatic literacy’ aimed at merchants, judges, and civic officials who increasingly needed to work with the written word.71 Consequently, while monasteries still played a crucial role, cities became loci for cultural production and the generation of k­ nowledge, and it should not be surprising that works focusing on urban histories became more popular. In closing, it is important to stress that by 1300 all the aforesaid developments ensured the fundamental importance of the city to the leading political actors of the Middle Ages. Not just monarchs, as seen above, but influential churchmen (popes, bishops, and abbots), powerful members of the landed nobility and urban elites sought to utilize the city as a platform for their power. The richness of 69  See I. P. Wei, Intellectual Culture in Medieval Paris: Theologians and the University, c.1100–1330 (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 8–51; and the contributions in R. L. Benson, G. Constable, and C. D. Lanham (eds), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, MA, 1982). 70  D. Keene, ‘From Conquest to Capital: St. Paul’s c.1100–1300’, in A. Burns, A. Saint, and D. Keene (eds), St. Paul’s: the Cathedral Church of London, 604–2004 (New Haven, 2004), pp. 27–8. 71  See the works cited in footnote 23 above and see the contributions in R. Britnell (ed.), Pragmatic Literacy. East and West, 1200–1300 (Woodbridge, 1997).

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Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

the urban landscape offered a symbolic stage (as we shall see in greater detail in Chapters 3, 4, and 6) for such actors to project legitimacy and authority and thus to make claims on the city’s governance, productivity, and military potential. Civic ceremonies and rituals were an effective way to articulate and defend such claims, particularly as the itinerary of their performance might assert control over actual spaces within the city. Likewise, other groups within the urban community could utilize them as mechanisms for protest or as expressions of identity, solidarity, and status. Thus, a variety of processions and ritual performances were promoted by a number of agents and groups associated with the city, and they became regular features of urban life and its ever more complex textures. In this context, the ­production of urban panegyric might be viewed as a textual counterpart to this climate of procession, ritual, and identity affirmation. S T RU C T U R E The foregoing discussion has mapped out the contours of development of some of the more integral components of urban life across the twelfth and thirteenth ­centuries, components which we shall revisit time and again as this study progresses. The book will commence, in Chapter  1, with an overview of the main sources utilized, followed, in Chapter  2, by a more extensive discussion of the methodology adopted throughout; establishing how this study interprets and ­utilizes the evidence within works of urban panegyric. Other crucial objectives in the second chapter will be the demonstration of how far authors of urban panegyric were familiar with the urban world, and to what extent the material within their works was disseminated to wider audiences. It is the contention here that the authors were often very much part of the urban experience and that the reception of their material was more extensive than previously considered and that this provides added significance to the role of these works in the process of urban change. The overriding purpose, therefore, of the second chapter is to establish a framework which signals the importance of the material within works of urban ­panegyric both as a record of transformation in the urban world and as an agent within that process. Chapters 3 and 4 will then present the two diametrically opposed extremes by which the city was understood in order to frame the later chapters. In Chapter 3 we will examine the presentation of cities as holy entities. It will combine biblical, Augustinian, and monastic understandings of the city and its place within wider Christian discourse, with an analysis of several works which map the emergence, or revival, of urban-based cults, and which praise the city’s religious buildings, officials, and place in a Christian hierarchy. Conversely, Chapter 4 will examine the nature of criticism aimed at the city in the period 1100–1300, as the good-versusevil-city dialectic raged. While the roots of the evil-city paradigm can be located in works of lamentation and censure of the city produced in the Ancient world, developments in the Central Middle Ages added potency and nuance. The spiritual

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Introduction 21 reforms of the eleventh and twelfth centuries espoused withdrawal from a riotous, crowded world and presented the cloister as a new Garden of Eden. These perspectives were not a monastic monopoly, however, and secular sources could also view the city with great suspicion. Some of this was driven by revived interest in the Classics and thus encouraged a Sallustian moralizing interpretative approach. Equally, some secular rulers, fearful of the growing independence of urban communities, and inherent factionalism, were a highly receptive audience for the portrayal of the sinister city. In some cases, works were produced with an eye to an imagined future, to urge a populace to unite, to appreciate and defend the glories of their city against internal implosion or external intervention, and this was often presented in the form of a lamentation for the city’s impending fate, which in turn could be read as praise for what could be lost. The aim, then, of Chapters 3 and 4 will be to emphasize the contested ideological climate surrounding the city. From this it will be argued that, while urban panegyric drew on a range of ancient and pre-established templates, this ‘competition’ for the city ensured that positive representations of the city needed also to be compelling and to resonate with the genuine lived and future experience of the medieval urban inhabitant. The subsequent chapters then identify some of the other key themes articulated by, and evidenced within, medieval urban panegyric; themes which drill down to some of those core transformations just discussed which were occurring in the medieval city. Chapters 5 and 6 focus directly on two key features of many works of urban panegyric: praise of the city’s commerce and resources, both natural and human, and of its material splendour. While Chapter 4 shows that the urban ‘mass’ aroused criticism, and condemnation also struck at the city’s fostering of an ­avaricious profit economy, here we will see that conversely population size and commerce were also reasons for pride. Chapter 5 will consider the focus on commercial exchange, resources, and productivity, while Chapter 6 will examine how some works, in a climate of rapid demographic growth, extolled the physical urban landscape. As part of this we will explore how and why several works of urban panegyric track the process through which some cities aspired to a greater political influence, or to a more articulated confirmation of their status, sometimes in the form of embryonic ‘capitals’. These chapters will also consider how the expansion in population and commercial capacity led to a growing ‘culture of numbers’ evident in some works (most famously in Bonvesin da la Riva’s praise of Milan). This revealed a greater interest in specific quantities, sizes, measurements, and particular topographies and emerged out of the so-called twelfth-century renaissance and the increased commercial imperative to calculate and quantify. Finally, Chapter 7 pulls many of the threads of the preceding chapters together. It will revisit the development of civic consciousness and examine how this process created increased pride and interest in a city’s history and its famous deeds. This thirst for a relationship with the past, and particularly the construction of urban origin accounts, was evident in several of our works of urban panegyric. At the same time, it went hand in hand with the renewed interrelationship between the city and knowledge generation, driven by rising literacy rates and the so-called

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Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

twelfth-century renaissance in learning and interest in the Classics. The chapter will explore what features of the urban past, above all an ancient one, were deemed worthy of emphasis and why this might have been. Alongside this, it will also explore the renewed interplay between the city and notions of civilized culture as urban schools and universities flourished and manuals of etiquette were produced for civic elites. The collective outcome of all these chapters is a book that places the idealized and the imagined city in relationship with the lived and the changing city, and which through this interaction creates a deeper understanding of city praise and the multifaceted experience of urban living in the Middle Ages.

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1 The Sources An Overview Before interpreting our sources more closely, it is necessary first to offer a tour d’horizon in order to demonstrate their heterogeneity. This, it must be stressed, will not cover every source used in this study, and each source will be handled on a case-by-case basis when encountered subsequently, but brief illustration of some of the main sources and source-types will help situate the reader more firmly in the analysis that follows. Urban panegyric was disseminated via hagiographies, poems, chronicles, epistles, charters, encyclopaedia, and works of compilation, texts focused directly on one city and its history, vernacular texts, and sermons. The pattern of reception for these works was equally diverse, and different elements of different works aimed at and reached different audiences, and this will be considered in more detail in Chapter 2. At the same time, it is also imperative to acknowledge that many works do not fit neatly into particular categories or literary genres. The Gesta Treverorum, for example, might appear to be a historiographical work, but it also synthesizes a large corpus of hagiographic material from Trier.1 The attempt to arrange the works below, therefore, inevitably reflects some artificial grouping. The survey will commence also with a short discussion on pre-1100 material simply to remind the reader at this point that the later works did not exist in a vacuum. As noted in the introduction, works of panegyric generally contained praise focused on one, but more usually a combination, of the following: origins of the city and the etymology of its name; prestige based on size in material, symbolic, and human terms; the splendour of its buildings and other monumental structures; its wealth and commercial strength; its geographical setting and layout; the achievements and characteristics of its population often framed by accomplishments associated with knowledge, religiosity, and military valour; and the city’s status in relation to other urban centres. All our sources, as heterogeneous as they are, in one way or another drew from this list and then adapted the material substantially to fit specific contexts. This much is already evident in some notable works of late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. One such celebrated and extended work in praise of the city, in this case on Antioch, was produced by Libanius in c.360. It was widely disseminated and explored, among many other praiseworthy attributes, the city’s productivity and pleasing climate, its esteemed

1 Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, pp. 285–7.

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Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

founders and rulers, and its large and eclectic populace.2 Slightly later, the rhetorician Ausonius (d. c.393) produced his Ordo Urbium Nobilium which consolidated the notion of a hierarchy of cities.3 It listed twenty in order of fame, focusing primarily on their commercial attributes: Rome, Constantinople, Carthage, Antioch, Alexandria, Trier, Milan, Capua, Aquileia, Arles, Seville, Córdoba, Tarragona, Braga, Athens, Catania, Syracuse, Toulouse, Narbonne, and Bordeaux. By the early Middle Ages, most works praising the city were shaped by the presence of Christianity and appeared in verse form: two of the earliest and most famous were for Milan (Versum de Mediolano Civitate, c.730–40) and Verona (Versus de Verona, c.796) respectively.4 Both focus on the city’s material splendour and its saintly protectors, although the Versus de Verona in particular still finds space to acknowledge the city’s pagan past.5 Also from the late eighth century could be added the short verse praise of his native city by Charlemagne’s famous courtier, Alcuin of York, which appeared at the start of his longer poem on the city’s bishops, rulers, and saints. It eulogized the city’s Roman imperial past, its ‘high walls and lofty towers’, its fertility and attraction to foreign settlers.6 Alcuin offers a lament too on the end of the Roman era at York. The lamentation thus links to another strand of early medieval panegyric which noted great cities by mourning their capture, decay, or destruction, and which drew on classical and biblical precedents (more of which in Chapters 3 and 4).7 Such poetic laments were produced for Aquileia (attributed to its patriarch, Paulinus, d.802) and one for Modena, seemingly composed in c.900 when the city was threatened by Magyar raids.8 Paulinus has also been attributed with a poem on Rome, focused especially on its cults of St Peter and Paul, and needless to say that there was a long tradition of poetry on the city stretching back to Antiquity.9 2  Translated in G. Downey, ‘Libanius’ Oration in Praise of Antioch (Oration XI)’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, CIII (1959), pp. 656–81. 3 Ausonius, Ordo Urbium Nobilium, in R. P. H. Green (ed.), Opera [Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca Oxoniensis] (Oxford, 1999), pp. 189–95. 4 Both authors remain anonymous and both poems are edited in Versus de Verona, Versum de Mediolano Civitate, ed. G. B. Pighi (Bologna, 1960). 5  For analysis see Hyde, ‘Medieval Descriptions’, pp. 4–7; Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 57–64. 6 Alcuin, The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York, ed. and trans. P. Godman, (Oxford, 1982), pp. 4–7. 7  Zanna, ‘Descriptiones Urbium’, pp. 523–96. 8  Versus de Destructione Aquilegiae, ed. E. Dümmler, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, vol. I (Berlin, 1881), pp. 142–4; for translations of the Aquileia and Modena poems: P. Godman, Poetry of the Carolingian Renaissance (London, 1985), pp. 106–13, pp. 324–7; Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 65–7; Hyde, ‘Medieval Descriptions’, pp. 7–8. 9  Edited by E. Dümmler in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Poetae Latini Aevi Carolini, vol. I (Berlin, 1881), pp. 136–7; C. Witke, ‘Rome as “Region of Difference” in the Poetry of Hildebert of Lavardin’, in A. S. Bernardo and S. Levin (eds), The Classics in the Middle Ages: Papers of the Twentieth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies (Binghamton, 1990), pp. 404–6. The Versus Romae (c.878) represents another elegiac poem on Rome. Granier offers an extensive analysis of the poem and concludes that it inverted the traditional categories of urban praise by using them as channels through which to actually critique Rome: T. Granier, ‘À rebours des laudes civitatum: les Versus Romae et le discours sur la ville dans l’Italie du haut Moyen Àge’, in C. Carozzi and H. Taviani-Carozzi (eds), Le médiéviste devant ses sources: questions et methodes (Aix-en-Provence, 2004), pp. 131–54. See also The Silvae of Statius, trans. B. R. Nayle (Indianapolis, 2004): the Silvae of Statius (mid-40s to mid-90s ad), termed ‘occasional poetry’, included praise of Córdoba as birthplace of Lucian (Silvae 2.7, verses 30–43, p. 89) and of Naples for its peace, beauty, climate, buildings, and entertainment (Silvae 3.5, verses 110–46. p. 120).

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The Sources: An Overview

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It should be noted that the Modena lament occurs at the outset to the life of St  Gimignano, bishop of Modena. Locating urban praise at the start of saints’ lives and deeds of bishops (Gesta episcoporum) proved a popular format, no doubt building on a prominent strand of classical rhetorical treatises that focused on the praise of individuals. Indeed, a work such as the ninth-century Vita of the Bishop Athanasio I of Naples (840–72) by the Neapolitan cleric John the Deacon incorporated several facets of the laus civitatis. At a time when Naples was vying with Capua for regional supremacy and aiming for metropolitan status, the Vita’s opening chapter eulogized the city’s amenities, its fortifications (which it claimed had been notably extended during the Gothic Wars, first by Belisarius and then by Narses), and its classical traditions associated both with the famous ‘magicianpoet’ Virgil and the Augustus Octavian. It claimed Naples to be the oldest of Italy’s cities (‘universarum eam antiquissimam esse Italicarum urbium’), and, after Rome, inferior to no other. As one would expect, the Vita also praised the city’s Christian faith. It boasted numerous churches, monasteries, and nunneries which day and night offered up prayer, with Greek and Latin clerics chanting in unity. Its first bishop, St Asprenus, was ordained by none other than St Peter, and the city was guarded by St Gennarus and St Agrippinus. In short, Naples, called thus because it was ‘the mistress of nine cities’ (‘novem civitatum dominatrix’), was a ‘city of mercy and piety (“civitas misericordiae et pietatis est”) fortified by complete integrity’.10 There are several comparable examples, and some particularly developed versions of urban praise were produced in the eleventh century. Again from Milan, which appears to have developed a distinct local tradition of urban panegyric, one finds the De Situ Civitatis Mediolani at the beginning of a work which covers Milan’s first bishops starting with the famous Apostle St Barnabas, companion of St Paul and reputed founder of the Milanese Church.11 Paolo Tomea’s meticulous research has convincingly dated this anonymous work to c.998–1018.12 The importance of the praise delivered in the De Situ is amplified by its utilization by Bonvesin da la Riva in his De Magnalibus Mediolani in the late thirteenth century.13 The De Situ praises the fertility of Milan’s territories (particularly the abundance of wine), its exalted place both in the empire and in the Christian Church, the beauty and industry of its people, and the etymology of the city’s name. Dating to the second half of that century, Sigebert of Gembloux’s praise of Metz (De Laude Urbe Mettensis) is also found at the start of a hagiographical text, a Vita of Bishop Theoderic I of Metz (d.984).14 Sigebert, a prolific author who spent most of his time as a monk at the 10  Vita et Translatio S. Athanasii Neapolitani Episcopi (BHL 735 e 737) Sec. IX, ed. A. Vuolo (Rome, 2001), pp. 115–19. See also G. Vitolo, Città e coscienza cittadina nel Mezzogiorno medievale (secc. IX-XII) (Salerno, 1990), pp. 9–13; Granier, ‘À rebours des laudes civitatum’, p. 143; H. Delehaye, ‘Hagiographie napolitaine’, Analecta Bollandiana, LVII (1939), pp. 5–64. 11  An accessible Latin edition and Italian translation of the De Situ Civitatis Mediolani is provided at xxxv–xxxvii of Chiesa’s 2009 edition of Bonvesin da la Riva’s De Magnalibus. 12  P. Tomea, Tradizione apostolica e coscienza cittadina a Milano nel medioevo. La leggenda di san Barnaba (Milan, 1993), pp. 19–20, 361–6, 418–19. 13 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, xxxviii, and, for example, Bk. V.XI, p. 104. 14 Sigebert of Gembloux, Vita Deoderici Episcopi Mettensis, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, IV, ed. G. H. Pertz (Hanover, 1841), pp. 476–9 and also M. Chazan, ‘Erudition et conscience

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Benedictine abbey of Gembloux near Namur, said little directly about the citizenry but focused his praise on Metz’s material grandeur, its buildings, churches, and fortifications, its fertile, well-watered hinterland, and on the etymology of the city’s name. The Annolied (produced between 1077 and 1081 in Early Middle High German) might also be seen as a quasi-hagiographical text, for it merges sacred and secular history and also appears to be an attempt to sanctify Bishop Anno of Cologne (d.1075).15 Within it are several passages on great German cities and their origin stories, especially Cologne (‘the most beautiful town ever built in Germany’).16 Even in such a brief survey it is clear that Italian cities dominated the field of urban praise in the early Middle Ages, undoubtedly as a result of the more entrenched urban culture and deeper urban continuities which prevailed after the collapse of the Roman Empire. But if this study could do for this earlier period what it aims to do for that post-1100, a much broader geographic spread of works would emerge. The aforementioned praise by Sigebert and the Annolied demonstrate this. So too Dudo of St Quentin’s chronicle (dated c.1000 × 1020) on the Normans, with its verse praise of ‘opulent’ Rouen, and Gerhard von Seeon’s Carmen Bambergense (of 1012), dedicated to Emperor Henry II, which commends Bamberg as a centre of learning (another Cariath Sepher, the biblical ‘town of letters’).17 For the period under study here—1100–1300—praise of cities certainly appeared in tried and trusted formats. Thus, urban panegyric continued to be embedded in hagiographical works, often in a prologue. Perhaps most famously, William FitzStephen (a clerk of Thomas Becket) provided an extended description of the city of London (of c.1173) in the opening to his Vita of St Thomas Becket, while Richerius of Metz (c.1135) offered a laus of Tours and Metz in an extended prologue to his verse life of St Martin.18 The Vita of St Petronio (first produced in Latin in 1162–80, followed by a more coherent and detailed late thirteenth-century vernacular version based on a different manuscript tradition) featured several passages which glorified the city of Bologna.19 A Vita of St Lambert (c.1144–45) by a canon Nicholas merged holy and episcopal histories in order to explain Liège’s promotion to a city and its claims for local pre-eminence, while the Translatio of St Andrew (thirteenth century) urbaine dans “L’Éloge de Metz” de Sigebert de Gembloux’, Cahiers lorrains, III–IV (1992), pp. 441–53; Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 68–9; Classen, Stadt, pp. 50–1; Schmidt, ‘Societas Christiana’, pp. 324–5. 15  F. G. Gentry, ‘German Literature to 1160’, in F. G. Gentry (ed.), A Companion to Middle High German Literature to the Fourteenth Century (Leiden, 2002), pp. 103–6. 16  Das Annolied, trans. G. Dunphy, at http://www.dunphy.de/Medieval/Annolied, quote at section 7 [accessed 02/02/16]. 17  Dudo of St Quentin, De Moribus et Actis Primorum Normannie Ducum, ed. J. Lair (Caen, 1865), Bk. IV.90, pp. 247–8 and translated in Dudo of St Quentin, History of the Normans, trans. E. Christianesen (Woodbridge, 1998), p. 100; Gerhard von Seeon, Carmen Bambergense, ed. K. Strecker, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Poetae Latini medii aevi 5, 1,2 (Leipzig, 1937), pp. 397–9; Classen, Stadt, pp. 46–7. 18 Richerius of Metz, Vita S. Martini episcopi Turonensis, ed. R. Drecker in R. Wirsel (ed.), Programm des königlichen Gymnasiums zu Trier für das Schuljahr 1885–86 (Trier, 1886), pp. 1–22. 19  The Latin Vita Sancti Petronii episcopi et confessoris is edited in F. Lanzoni, S. Petronio vescovo di Bologna nella storia e nella leggenda (Rome, 1907), pp. 224–50; it was reproduced (and consulted for the present study) in E. Cecchi Gattolin, Il santuario di Santo Stefano in Bologna (Modena, 1976), appendix I, pp. 3–8; the vernacular vita is edited in Vita di san Petronio, ed. M. Corti (Bologna, 1962), xiii–xxxix.

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set out Amalfi’s virtues in order to show why it had deserved to receive such esteemed relics in 1208.20 Also worth mentioning here is the Vita Mathildis (written from 1111 to 1116) by the monk Donizone of the monastery of Sant’Apollonio di Canossa. It represents a verse paean to the Canossa dynasty (Donizone’s own title for the work was De principibus Canusinis), but it has a hagiographical flavour in its portrayal of Countess Matilda of Tuscany (d.1115) and her father Boniface. Indeed, Donizone hoped to encourage Matilda to choose his monastery as her family’s mausoleum.21 And, like several hagiographical works which are concerned with sanctifying the location of a cult, within it are laudatory passages on cities, particularly the rhetorical dispute (in Bk. I.VIII) in which Canossa and Mantua extol their own urban credentials and virtues in order to claim possession of the body of Matilda’s father.22 Closely associated in form to these hagiographical works are other texts which might be termed Gesta episcoporum and which often contained urban panegyric.23 Thus, praise of Metz (heavily dependent on Sigebert of Gembloux’s work) opened the early twelfth-century Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium, while the Anglo-Norman historian William of Malmesbury included several short laudatory passages on cities (Bristol, Canterbury, Chester, Cologne, Norwich, York, among others) in his Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (c.1125), a historical catalogue of the bishoprics and leading monasteries of England.24 Praise of cities in poetic form also continued to be popular. Indeed, a number of the aforesaid hagiographies were produced in verse, to which we could add the likes of the Vita of Adelbert II, archbishop of Mainz (d.1141) which was composed by Anselm of Havelberg (in c.1142) and praised cities—Mainz, Reims, Paris, Montpellier—connected to the saint’s life.25 Three of the most influential poets of the twelfth century included urban panegyric within their works: Hildebert of Lavardin produced two famous poems in the mid-twelfth century which at the same time lamented and eulogized Rome; Hugh Primas offered praise of Amiens and Reims; and the Archpoet acclaimed (and lamented) Pavia and Novara in his work.26 There are also several more extensive laudatory works in verse which focus 20  Vita Landiberti auctore Nicolai, eds. B. Krusch and W. Levison, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores Rerum Merovingicarum, VI (Hannover, 1913), pp. 407–29; R. Adam, ‘La Vita Landiberti Leodiensis (ca 1144–45) du chanoine Nicolas de Liège’, Le Moyen Age, CXI (2005), pp. 503–28; Translatio Corporis S. Andree Apostoli de Constantinopoli in Amalfiam, ed. P. Pirri, in P. Pirri, Il duomo di Amalfi e il chiostro del paradiso (Rome, 1941), pp. 135–48. 21  See R. Houghton, ‘Reconsidering Donizone’s Vita Mathildis: Boniface of Canossa and Emperor Henry II’, Journal of Medieval History, XLI (2015), p. 392. 22  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, ix–xii, and Bk. I.VIII, pp. 58–68; Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 75–6. 23  See C. Santarossa, ‘The Creation of a Model for the Episcopal Historiography: the Liber de Episcopis Mettensibus of Paul the Deacon’, Studi Medievali, LV, 3rd series (2014), pp. 551–64. 24  Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium, ed. G. H. Pertz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, X, (Hannover, 1852), p. 534; William of Malmesbury, The Deeds of the Bishops of England/Gesta Pontificum Anglorum, trans. D. Preest (Woodbridge 2002), 3, 91–2, 99, 134, 139, 196–7, 208, 291. 25  Anselm of Havelberg, Vita Adelberti II Moguntini, ed. P. Jaffé, Bibliotheca Rerum Germanicarum, III (Berlin, 1866), pp. 563–603. 26  Hildebert of Lavardin, Carmina minora, ed. A. B. Scott (Leipzig, 1969), no. 36 pp. 22–4, no. 38 pp. 25–7; Hugh Primas and the Archpoet, ed. and trans. F. Adcock (Cambridge, 1994); see also P. Godman, The Archpoet and Medieval Culture (Oxford, 2014).

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Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

on one city or a particular event associated with it. The Bergamese scholar Mosè del Brolo dedicated a lengthy piece (although the extant version is incomplete) called the Liber Pergaminus (dated to c.1118) to praise of Bergamo and its surrounding territories.27 Around the same time, following Pisa’s capture of the Balearic Islands (1113–15), the city’s government commissioned the Liber Maiolichinus (c.1117– c.1125), a work of verse in 3,500 hexameters imbued with civic pride and containing several allusions to the city’s ancient and esteemed roots.28 Another famed maritime city, Genoa, was also the subject of a verse praise of the late thirteenth century by an anonymous poet.29 A particularly notable and extensive work of verse was the Versos de Julia Romula o La Urbe Hispalense (1250) by Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, which glorified Seville through an account of its capture in 1248 by Fernando III of Castile.30 Among the countless other poems which praised cities are the already mentioned Vita Mathildis, a short Old English poem (conventionally dated to c.1104 × 1115) on Durham’s magnificence, location, and relic collections; an anonymous poem comparing Rouen to Rome, produced around 1148 for the new Duke of Normandy, Geoffrey of Anjou; the epic-style Carmen de expugnatione Almariae urbis (c.1149) which commended the role of León in the capture of Muslim-ruled Almeria; and the Versus de dignitate urbis Tornacensis (second-half of the twelfth century) in which the city of Tournai speaks in the first person (particularly about its ancient history and lucrative trade).31 27  Mosè del Brolo, Liber Pergaminus, ed. G. Gorni, Studi Medievali, XI, 3rd series (1970), pp. 409–60. 28  Liber Maiolichinus de gestis Pisanorum illustribus, ed. C. Calisse, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, XXIX (Turin, 1966); G. Scalia, ‘“Romanitas” Pisana tra XI e XII secolo: le iscrizioni romane del Duomo e la statua del console Rodolfo’, Studi Medievali, XIII, 3rd series (1972), pp. 791–843; C. Wickham, Sleepwalking into a New World. The Emergence of Italian City Communes in the Twelfth Century (Princeton, 2015), pp. 71–5; M. Campopiano, ‘The Problems of Origins in Early Communal Historiography: Pisa, Genoa, and Milan compared’, in M. Mostert and A. Adamska (eds), Uses of the Written Word in Medieval Towns: Medieval Urban Literacy, II (Turnhout, 2014), p. 235. 29 Anonimo Genovese, in Poeti del Duecento, ed. G. Contini, vol. 1 (Milan/Naples, 1960), pp. 750–9. A partial translation of this poem can be found in T. Dean (trans.), The Towns of Italy in the Later Middle Ages (Manchester, 2000), pp. 21–3. 30  The version of the poem used in the present study is the one edited (with a Spanish translation and useful introduction) in Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Un poema latino a Sevilla, Versos de Julia Rómula o la urbe Hispalense de Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada (1250), ed. and trans. R. Carande Herrero (Seville, 1986). There is also an edition in L. Charlo Brea, J. A. Est.vez Sola, R. Carande Herrero (eds), Chronica Hispana saeculi XIII, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis, LXXIII (Turnhout, 1997). See also Ruth, Urban Honor, pp. 144–9. 31  (Durham) An edition is contained in T. W. O’Donnell, ‘The Old English Durham, the Historia de sancto Cuthberto, and the Unreformed in Late Anglo-Saxon Literature’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, CXIII (2014), pp. 131–55 who also disputes the dating, pushing it back to the early eleventh century; C. B. Kendall, ‘Let Us Now Praise a Famous City: Wordplay in the OE “Durham” and the Cult of St. Cuthbert’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, LXXXVII (1988), pp. 507–21 and J. Grossi, ‘Preserving the Future in the Old English Durham’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, CXI (2012), pp. 42–73 (with a translation of the poem at p. 44), however, argue for the later date. (Rouen) Edited and translated in E. Van Houts, ‘Rouen as another Rome in the Twelfth Century’, in L. Hicks and E. Brenner (eds), Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911–1300 (Turnhout, 2013), pp. 101–24. (Almeria) El ‘Poema de Almeria’ y la Épica Románica, ed. and trans. H. Salvador Martinez, (Madrid, 1975) contains a Latin edition and Spanish translation. I have used this edition, and the English translation in S. Barton and R. A. Fletcher (eds), The World of El Cid: Chronicles of the Spanish Reconquest (Manchester, 2000), pp. 250–63. (Tournai) Versus de dignitate

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Encomiastic verse on cities was also incorporated into larger works: Godfrey of Viterbo’s Pantheon (c.1190), which defies easy categorization but broadly functioned as a Staufen world chronicle, drew on legendary material and incorporated verse eulogies of several cities, such as Cologne and Bamberg.32 Similarly, the English scholar Alexander Neckam (d.1217) incorporated praise and censure of a number of cities (including Autun, Lyon, Milan, Paris, Pavia, Ravenna, Rome, Toulouse, and Venice) in his De Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae, a wide-ranging verse treatise on natural philosophy.33 On the other hand, after 1100, urban panegyric worked its way more frequently into narrative sources than before and it also appeared in what were effectively new formats. Consequently, from the twelfth century, prose panegyric became more prominent and secular in tone, as Jeffrey Ruth has noted, although urban praise continued to have spiritual and religious facets through its repeated application in hagiographies, sermons, and other records produced by ecclesiastical writers.34 Again, here we can only offer a representative sample of the type of material available. Among narrative and chronicle accounts there are several valuable works. The famous First Crusade chronicle, the anonymous Gesta Francorum of c.1100 (and the various works which were subsequently based upon it) contained a laudatory description of Antioch, and in a comparable context, at the time of the Second Crusade, the (almost certainly) Anglo-French priest who authored the De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi (c.1148) provided a double-edged description of the city of Lisbon prior to its capture.35 Several accounts associated with the crusading movement of course offered material on the city of Jerusalem and also Constantinople, but perhaps one of the fullest descriptions is found in William of Malmesbury’s chronicle of the English kings, the Gesta Regum Anglorum (c.1127). Here the reader is treated to lengthy coverage of some of the great cities of Christianity: Rome, Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Antioch.36 Brief descriptions of cities, all laudatory in essence, appear in narratives across Western Europe. In Iberia, the Primera cronica general de Espana, commissioned and edited by Alfonso X of Castile (and worked on incrementally in the decades after his death in c.1284 and completed around the 1320s) recounted, for example, the capture of Seville in 1248 and extolled the city’s virtues.37 From Southern Italy, urbis Tornacensis, ed. G. Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XIV (Hannover, 1883), pp. 357–8. 32  Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon, ed. G. Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XXII (Hannover, 1872), pp. 107–307. 33  Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum libri duo/De Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae, ed. T. Wright, Rolls Series, XXXIV (London, 1863). 34 Ruth, Urban Honor, pp. 87–8. 35  Gesta Francorum et aliorum Hierosolimitanorum, ed. and trans. R. M. T. Hill (London, 1962), pp. 76–7; De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi. The Conquest of Lisbon, ed. and trans. C. W. David (New York, 1936; reissued with new foreword by Jonathan Phillips, 2001), pp. 90–7; and for further discussion on the author’s identity, pp. xx–xxvi. 36  William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum/The History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. M. Thomson and M. Winterbottom (Oxford, 1998), pp. 612–20, 622–32, 640–2. 37  Primera crónica general de España, eds. R. Menéndez Pidal and O. Catalán, 2 vols. (Madrid, 1977–8), ii. 768–70; the passage on the capture of Seville is also translated by S. Doubleday in

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the chronicle on the deeds of King Roger II of Sicily, by the Campanian abbot Alexander of Telese (c.1136), contained a short, pointed praise of Capua.38 From Normandy, the monk Orderic Vitalis incorporated laudatory passages on Rouen in his Ecclesiastical History (completed by c.1143), and from Germany, Otto, Bishop of Freising, included short praise of the likes of Mainz and Zurich in his Gesta Friderici Imperatoris (c.1158).39 From England, the mid twelfth-century Gesta Stephani contained short passages on Exeter, Bristol, Bath, and Oxford.40 We should also include here the famous work of Geoffrey of Monmouth. His influential Historia Regum Britanniae (completed c.1150) offered a largely fabricated history of early Britain up to the sixth century, but one which also provided valuable insights into twelfth-century discourses on the origins of London, its future (through Merlin’s Prophecies in Book VII), and the status of other cities such as York.41 Praise within epistles also becomes more prominent from the twelfth century.42 This could be in the shape of epistolary poems like Rodulfus Tortarius’ verse epistle Ad Robertum (post-1106) which presented the city of Caen as a hive of commercial activity alongside the seductive splendour of Bayeux.43 Or praise could appear in more conventional letter-writing. A letter by an anonymous author (almost certainly written in 1190 by the so-called ‘Hugo Falcandus’ who produced an earlier narrative account of the Sicilian kingdom) which praised (and lamented) a number of Sicilian cities was addressed to a Peter the Treasurer of the Church of Palermo.44 Similarly, Gui of Bazoches, a French cleric and chronicler, wrote a letter (between 1175 and 1190) to a friend extolling the delights of Paris.45 As will become apparent in Chapter 7, urban panegyric was also expressed through a city’s function as an educational hub. With the development of urban and cathedral O. Constable (ed.), Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim and Jewish Sources (Philadelphia, 1997), pp. 217–20. See also A. Rodríguez, ‘Narratives of Expansion, Last Wills, Poor Expectations and the Conquest of Seville (1248)’, in J. Hudson and S. Crumplin (eds), ‘The Making of Europe’: Essays in Honour of Robert Bartlett (Leiden, 2016), pp. 128–30. 38  Alexander of Telese, Alexandri Telesini Abbatis Ystoria Rogerii Regis Sicilie Calabrie atque Apulie, ed. L. de Nava (Rome, 1991), Bk. II.66, p. 55. An English translation is in G. A. Loud (trans.), Roger II and the Creation of the Kingdom of Sicily (Manchester, 2012), p. 102. 39  Orderic Vitalis, The Ecclesiastical History, ed. and trans. M. Chibnall, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1968–80), vol. II, Bk. IV, p. 224; vol. III, Bk. V, p. 36; Otto of Freising, Gesta Friderici I. Imperatoris, eds. B. De Simon and G. Waitz (Hannover/Leipzig, 1912), Bk. I.VIII, pp. 24–5; Bk. I.XIII, p. 28; an English translation is available: Otto of Freising, The Deeds of Frederick Barbarossa, trans. C. C. Mierow (New York, 1953), pp. 42, 45–6. 40  Gesta Stephani, ed. and trans. K. R. Potter (Oxford, 1976), pp. 32, 56, 58, 140. 41  Geoffrey of Monmouth, The History of the Kings of Britain/Historia Regum Britannie, ed. M. D. Reeve and trans. N. Wright (Woodbridge, 2007), Bk. I.23, pp. 28–31; II.27, p. 35; III.53, pp. 66–7. 42  Although praise in this form also had a long pre-existing tradition, see for example Statius’ ­panegyric on Naples in a letter to his wife of c.93 ad: Silvae, 3.5 pp. 117–21. 43  Rodulphus Tortarius, Carmina, eds. M. B. Ogle and D. M. Schullian (Rome, 1933), Epistula IX, pp. 319–30. 44  The letter is edited in ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia o Liber de Regno Sicilie e la Epistola ad  Petrum Panormitane Ecclesie Thesaurium, ed. G. B. Siragusa, Fonti per la storia d’Italia, XXII (Rome, 1897), pp. 169–86; and an English translation is in ‘Hugo Falcandus’, The History of the Tyrants of Sicily by Hugo Falcandus, 1153–69, trans. G.A. Loud and T. E. J. Wiedemann (Manchester, 1998), pp. 252–63. 45  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, eds. H. S. Denifle and É. Chatelain, vol. I (Paris, 1889), no. 54, pp. 55–6.

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schools in the twelfth century, and the rise of universities in the thirteenth, a wider body of letters and documents circulated which praised cities as centres of learning. The aforesaid letter of Gui of Bazoches fits with that trend, to which one could add the founding charters (or recruitment adverts) of the universities of Naples (1224) and Toulouse (1229) with their praise of their host cities, or any number of papal missives on the thirteenth-century University of Paris with their wordplay on Paris (Parisius) as paradise (Paradisus).46 The production of works associated with the new climate of university education would also include the aforementioned Parisiana Poetria (c.1220) of the scholar John de Garlande, and his Dictionarius (c.1200), textbooks both aimed at Parisian students. The latter, which takes the form of a guided tour through Paris, might be read as a work underpinned by both praise and critique of that city.47 Perhaps more significantly, the Dictionarius could be categorized alongside two other types of prominent sources on urban panegyric in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. First, encyclopaedia and other works of compilation became more common in our period, and some inevitably covered cities. Positive descriptions of cities were contained in the famous geographical treatise known as the Book of Roger (c.1154) which was commissioned by Roger II of Sicily and produced by the Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi. These descriptions ranged across Europe (and beyond) but become fuller and more laudatory for Sicily, particularly for the cities of Catania, Messina, and Palermo.48 The aforementioned Pantheon of Godfrey of Viterbo and the De Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae of Alexander Neckam would also fit here, as would the Otia Imperialia (c.1210) of Gervase of Tilbury, with its recording of fascinating material on the ancient origins of London and popular Neapolitan legends on Virgil which served to aggrandize Naples.49 So too, the Franciscan Bartholomew Anglicus’s encyclopaedic work De Proprietatibus Rerum (c.1245) which in Book XV on De Regionibus offered laudatory entries on several European cities.50 As a result of its practical utility with its valuable medical and geographical information, and its fusing of Augustinian theology with some Aristotelian works of natural science recently available in Europe, the De Proprietatibus Rerum is widely acknowledged to have been the ‘most popular medieval encyclopaedia’.51 Another important work for our study, an eclectic text 46  L’Epistolario di Pier della Vigna, eds. E. D’Angelo et al. (Soveria Mannelli, 2014), pp. 489–91 with Italian translation at pp. 491–3; Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 51, p. 50, no. 72, pp. 129–31. See also S. C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the University. The Schools of Paris and their Critics, 1100–1215 (Stanford, 1985), pp. 12–17. 47  John de Garlande, Parisiana Poetria; John de Garlande, The Dictionarius, trans. B. Blatt Rubin (Kansas, 1981). 48  Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, trans. P-A. Jaubert and revised by H. Bresc and A. Nef (Paris, 1999), pp. 307–9, 312, 314. 49  Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia. Recreation of an Emperor, ed. and trans. S. E. Banks and J. W. Binns (Oxford, 2002), Bk. II.17, pp. 398–9; Bk. III.12–13, pp. 576–85; Bk. III.112, pp. 802–3. 50  M. C. Seymour et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus and his Encyclopedia (Aldershot, 1992), pp. 1–16, 158–71. The Latin edition which I have consulted is the Incunabulum published at Cologne, and dated c.1472, held at the John Rylands Library, Manchester. 51 E. Keen, The Journey of a Book. Bartholomew the Englishman and the Properties of Things (Canberra, 2007), p. 3. Seymour, et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus, pp. 11–35.

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with edifying functions, is the De Preconiis Hispanie (c.1278) of the Franciscan Juan Gil de Zamora.52 Described as a ‘hybrid document with scholarly, ethical and didactic aims’, it was a work of encomium and guidance for Sancho IV, the son and successor of Alfonso X of Castile (d.1284).53 The De Preconiis Hispanie included a lengthy chapter (VIII) on the etymologies and early histories of several Iberian cities, and also ended with a passage praising the site of the city of Zamora.54 Second, in focusing solely on Paris, the aforementioned Dictionarius also links to works which were entirely framed around one city, and which usually boosted a city’s reputation through explicit or implicit praise. Such works became increasingly popular in the post-1100 era. We have already encountered the Liber Maiorichanus for Pisa, the Liber Pergaminus for Bergamo, and the late thirteenth-century poem on Genoa, all works in verse. To this list we could add the chronicle (completed c.1140–44) by the notary Falco which focuses on his native city of Benevento and the Liber de Obsidione Ancone (c.1198), a work by the university master Boncompagno da Signa which recounts the siege of Ancona in 1176 and is suffused with praise for the city and its inhabitants.55 Thirteenth-century examples would include the anonymous Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae (c.1204) for Florence and Martin da Canal’s Estoire de Venise (1267 × 1275).56 Alongside these are three celebrated, and closely connected, works of the twelfth and early thirteenth century which focus on Rome and, in varying ways, the material legacies of its classical and early Christian history: the Mirabilia Urbis Romae (c.1143) possibly by the canon Benedict of St Peter’s, Rome; the Graphia Aureae Urbis Romae (c.1155), quite likely the work of the prolific Montecassino historian and forger Peter the Deacon; and the De Mirabilibus Urbis Romae (c.1200) by the Englishman Master Gregory.57 Of course, one of the most famed and developed works of urban panegyric is the previously mentioned De Magnalibus Urbis Mediolani (1288). The author, Bonvesin da la Riva, a tertiary in the order of the Humiliati and a teacher of grammar, produced a remarkable and extensive treatise on Milan and its virtues.58 It is immediately apparent from this short survey that Italian cities dominate this source-type, and this has contributed inevitably to a greater concentration of research on the interrelationship between Italy, urban panegyric, and civic consciousness. As if to prove the point, relatively minor cities like Lodi received such 52  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, ed. M. de Castro (Madrid, 1955). 53 Ruth, Urban Honor, p. 137. 54  De Preconiis Hispanie; Gil later produced a text (in c.1282) called the De Preconiis Civitatis Numantine which was framed as a lament for the city of Zamora and was largely copied from the more extended De Preconiis Hispanie, see Ruth, Urban Honor, p. 138. 55  Falcone di Benevento, Chronicon Beneventanum, ed. E. D’Angelo (Florence, 1998); Boncompagno da Signa, Liber de Obsidione Ancone, ed. and trans. P. Garbini (Rome, 1999). 56  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, ed. R. Chellini (Rome, 2009), vii–ix, pp. 3, 5–6, 25, which greatly influenced subsequent Florentine historical works, such as the Gesta Florentinorum, vernacular histories, and famed authors such as Brunetto Latini, Giovanni Villani, and Dante Alighieri; Martin da Canal, Les Estoires de Venise, ed. A. Limentani (Florence, 1972); an English translation is also now available: Martin da Canal, Les Estoires de Venise, trans. L. K. Morreale (Padua, 2009). 57  All edited in Codice topografico della città di Roma, vol. III: Mirabilia Urbis Romae, pp. 17–64; Graphia Aureae Urbis Romae, pp. 77–110; Master Gregory, De Mirabilibus Urbis Romae, pp. 143–67. 58 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus.

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treatment in the verse form of the De laude civitatis Laude (c.1252), by an ­anonymous Franciscan.59 But the point should be clear that non-Italian cities are also represented in this source-type. The Gesta Treverorum (first compiled probably by a monk of the Trier monastery of St Eucharius in c.1100, with a continuation in c.1132), for example, is devoted to the history of Trier and full of laudatory material, particularly related to the city’s putative early history.60 A certain Lucian, quite likely a monk, produced the De Laude Cestrie (c.1195–c.1200), a work on Chester which could fit into several categories. In its extant, and incomplete version, it is c.80,000 words, about three quarters of which broadly praises Chester through a discussion of the etymology of the city’s name, a Neo-Platonic/Augustinian reading of the city’s topography, and a long excursion on Chester’s four guardian saints (a city gate being dedicated to each one) which verged into the territory of hagiography. The remaining quarter of the work contains discussion on spiritual meditation and the relationship between the secular and religious orders of the Church.61 A final example, the vernacular Vraies Cronikes de Tournai (c.1290) synthesized earlier works on Tournai’s putative esteemed origins to produce a work that implicitly praised the city’s urban government and loyalty to the Capetian monarchs of France.62 Two final innovations also influenced the production and dissemination of urban panegyric post-1100. First, was the rise of works in the vernacular, a development which gained pace at the turn of the thirteenth century and which ensured greater circulation of the material (for more on this see Chapter  2). 59  De laude civitatis Laude, ed. and trans. A. Caretta (Lodi, 1962). I have also consulted the manuscript of this poem held at Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland, Adv. 18.4.10, fols. 38r–40r to check the transcription which Caretta was only able to make from a photocopy, and I am satisfied with its accuracy. It should be pointed out that this poem, which is preceded in the manuscript by a copy of a work of Isidore of Seville (fols 1r–23r) and the index of the chapters of Godfrey of Viterbo’s Speculum regum (fols. 23v–38r), does not actually have a title assigned to it in the original. It commences simply with the first verse (‘Iuxta ripam Adue sedet urbs iocunda’) towards the bottom of fol. 38r following a short gap separating it from the aforementioned Speculum regum. 60  Gesta Treverorum; Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, pp. 301–2. 61  I have consulted the sole manuscript—Oxford Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 672—of Lucian’s De Laude Cestrie at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Mark Faulkner has recently provided an excellent online edition and translation of key excerpts from the De Laude Cestrie (http://www.medievalchester. ac.uk/texts/facing/Lucian.html?page=0) [accessed 25/01/16]. Selected excerpts were also edited by M. V. Taylor, ‘Extracts from the MS. Liber Luciani De laude Cestrie written about the year 1195 and now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’, The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, LXIV (Manchester, 1912). In this study, I shall use Faulkner’s translation but alongside it place in brackets the manuscript foliation for each translation in order that the reader can locate them in their original context should they so wish. See also M. Faulkner, ‘The Spatial Hermeneutics of Lucian’s De Laude Cestrie’, in C. A. M. Clarke (ed.), Mapping the Medieval City. Space, Place and Identity in Chester c.1200–1600 (Cardiff, 2011), pp. 78–98. 62  Les Vraies chroniques de Tournai, ed. and trans. Y. Coutant (Louvain-La-Neuve, 2012); see also K. Krause, ‘Edifier, moraliser et plaire: les Vraies Cronikes de Tournai et le manuscript Paris, BNF, fr.  24430’, in J. Pycke and A. Dupont (eds), Archives et manuscrits précieux tournaisiens, vol. 3 (Tournai, 2009), pp. 85–94; G. Small, ‘Les origines de la ville de Tournai dans les chroniques légendaires du bas Moyen-Âge’, in J. Dumoulin and J. Pycke (eds), Les grands siècles de Tournai (Tournai, 1993) pp. 81–113; I. Glorieux, ‘Tournai, une ville fondée par un soldat de Tullus Hostilius? À propos des origines légendaires de la cité des Cinq clochers’, (2004) http://bcs.fltr.ucl.ac.be/FE/08/Tournai.html [accessed 19/01/16].

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Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300

Chansons de Geste and Romances accounted for a significant proportion of early vernacular writing, and in many the city featured, both in a positive and negative function. In the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, important material on the city appears in the works of Chrétien de Troyes—most vividly in La Cont du Graal (where the cities in question are fictional)—in Jean Renart’s L’Escoufle (which uses Montpellier as one of the key settings in the narrative), in Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube’s Girart de Vienne (Vienne), the Charroi de Nimes (Nimes and Orange), and in Aiol (Poitiers and Orléans).63 In addition, several other aforementioned works from different literary genres appeared in vernacular in their original versions, for example, chronicles such as the Primera cronica general de Espana, the Estoires de Venise of Martin da Canal, and the Vraies Cronikes for Tournai. Also, vernacular works were composed in the newly formed Puys of north-west Europe. These poetic, lay a­ ssociations produced verse compositions, some of which were framed by civic pride and praise of the city (for more see Chapter 2). In this context, though not north-west European, we might also recall the anonymous author who composed a vernacular verse praise of Genoa in the late thirteenth century.64 Other works were adapted (and sometimes notably revised) into the vernacular: the Mirabilia Urbis Romae was reworked into the mid-thirteenth-century Le Miracole de Roma, the vernacular Vita San Petronio significantly expanded the earlier Latin vita, while Book XV (containing material on cities) of Bartholomew Anglicus’s De Proprietatibus Rerum was translated into Anglo-Norman perhaps as early as c.1260.65 A second innovation took the form of sermons, most of them public, most in the vernacular, and increasingly delivered in urban settings via the emergent mendicant orders. Numerous sermons dealt directly or indirectly with the city, praising and censuring it. It might well be that Lucian’s work on Chester was adapted for sermons, while the De laude civitatis Laude almost certainly was. The philosopher and Cistercian monk Alain de Lille compared the city to the Christian community in one of his sermons (Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, Civitas Dei) from the later twelfth century in the diocese of Laon.66 Later, between 1257 and 1263, the great scholar and Dominican Albert Magnus delivered a sermon-cycle (almost entirely in German) at Augsburg in which he meditated on the comparison between the City and the Church.67 And at Florence in c.1300, the Dominican preacher Remigio de’Girolami presented the seven virtues of Florence in one of his sermons.68 63  Chrétien de Troyes, The Story of the Grail in The Complete Romances of Chrétien de Troyes, trans. D. Staines (Bloomington, 1993) and Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal, ed. K. Busby (Tübingen, 1993); Jean Renart, L’Escoufle; Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, Girart de Vienne, trans. B. Guidot (Paris, 2006); Le Charroi de Nimes, trans. H. J. Godin (Oxford, 1936); Aiol. A Chanson de Geste, trans. S. C. Malicote and A. Richard Hartman (New York, 2014). 64  Anonimo Genovese, pp. 751–9. 65 [Le] Miracole de Roma, in Codice topografico della città di Roma, eds. R. Valentini and G. Zucchetti, vol. III, (Rome, 1946), pp. 116–36; Barthélemy L’Anglais, Le Livre des Regions, ed. B. A. Pitts (London, 2006). 66  Alain de Lille, Opera Omnia, cols. 200–3. 67  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle. 68  The Latin extract is provided in C. T. Davis, ‘An Early Florentine Political Theorist: Fra Remigio de’Girolami’, in his Dante’s Italy and Other Essays (Philadelphia, 1984), p. 206, fn. 30.

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Countless other examples could be added. However, the preceding source discussion has aimed to provide an overview of the diversity and broad groupings of the material available. And while this monograph is based primarily upon the aforementioned body of textual sources, it will nuance and support the evidence within them by also turning to urban material culture (coinage, seals, architecture, inscriptions, and archaeology) and evidence on the city’s soundscape.69 69  For more on these other sources see Chapter 2.

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2 Interpretation and Audience From around 1100, cities were praised through an increasingly large, diverse, and novel corpus of sources; this in itself is indicative of deep change in the medieval city. Much of this praise was ostensibly rooted in long-standing literary traditions which emerged in the classical period, and which thereafter, under the influence of Christian models, experienced a gradual but discernible mutation in form during the early medieval period. With this in mind, the aim of this chapter is twofold: first, to establish some of the ways in which the sources can be utilized; second, to demonstrate the urban connections of several authors of urban panegyric, and to consider how some of the latter was disseminated to wider audiences after 1100. In doing so, this chapter establishes the significance of works of urban panegyric for understanding transformations in the urban world in the period 1100–1300. I N T E R P R E T I N G PA N E G Y R I C : FA B R I C AT I O N , H Y P E R B O L E , A N D T RU T H Some of the earliest forms of city praise in Antiquity were embedded in the teaching of rhetoric, and particularly in one of its subdivisions known as epideictic or demonstrative rhetoric.1 This branch of rhetoric had both a moralizing and didactic mission which engaged with praise and censure and was often associated with poetic discourse.2 Its defining principles were transmitted into the Middle Ages, initially through rhetorical handbooks utilized in monastic and other schools, and historical writing itself was viewed as a branch of rhetoric.3 While it is vital to be wary of the multiplicity of agendas subsumed within works of praise, equally they should not be dismissed as self-serving fabrications nor interpreted as entertainment or fiction as understood in the modern sense. Indeed, works of praise pose methodological challenges comparable to those created by ‘standard’ historical narratives, which are 1  J. A. Burrow, The Poetry of Praise (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 8–9; M. S. Kempshall, Rhetoric and the Writing of History (Manchester, 2011), pp. 138–68. 2  Indeed, this interrelationship was nuanced further by the use of praise of one thing to censure something else. For an example, see the English monk Richard of Devizes’s praise of Jews as condemnation of lax Christian behaviour: R. Levine, ‘Why Praise Jews: Satire and History in the Middle Ages’, Journal of Medieval History, XII (1986), pp. 291–6. 3  M. Otter, ‘Functions of Fiction in Historical Writing’, in N. Partner (ed.), Writing Medieval History (London, 2005), p. 118.

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just as constructed and moralized through the selective positioning of information into their own plot structures.4 The example from John de Garlande’s Parisiana Poetria (encountered in the introduction) is succinctly instructive and worth revisiting here. John’s illustration of an example of hyperbole presents Paris’s celebrity (‘Parisius famoso nomine’) as touching the stars (‘sidera tangit’), and the city as a magnet for all kinds of people, while his definition of hyperbole is ‘an expression that goes beyond the truth, either to heighten or to belittle’.5 It is all too easily overlooked that ‘truth’ (and, by extension, reality) often remained the core around which embellishment or understatement functioned. In this case, regardless of the degree of distortion, the Paris of John’s day (c.1220) was becoming one of Latin Christianity’s most renowned and frequented cities; any student, merchant, or monarch of the day would have acknowledged as much.6 Exaggeration and praise had its own ‘quality-control’ too. Quintilian, the Roman rhetorician of the first century ad whose work remained influential in the Middle Ages, had recommended only an ‘appropriate exaggeration of the truth’, and it was also noted by the Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson (d.1241) that if panegyric became too extraordinary it risked ‘mockery not praise’.7 A similar approach is rooted in some of the earliest rhetorical tracts and evident in by far the most extensive treatise on how to praise a city, produced, in the late third or early fourth century ad, by the sophist Menander.8 Here, Menander offers an exhaustive array of topics which could be praised under three main headings: position of the city, its origins, and its accomplishments. More significantly for our purpose, Menander repeatedly demonstrates how to manoeuvre the subject matter to find positives. For example: If the city is continental and very remote from the sea, you will praise the security afforded by its remoteness and adduce those opinions of philosophers which commend continental settlements and those most distant from the sea. You will also enumerate the evils of the contrary situation. If on the other hand the city is by the sea, or is an island, you will speak ill of continental areas and continental settlements, and enumerate all the good things that come from the sea.9

Or: If the city is very ancient, you will say that oldest means most honourable, and the city is eternal like the gods. If it is of the middle period, ‘it is not declining or growing old 4  See the seminal work of Hayden White, especially The Content of the Form. Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, 1987), and, for a succinct overview, ‘The Historical Text as Literary Artifact’, in R. H. Canary and H. Kozicki (eds), The Writing of History. Literary Form and Historical Understanding (Madison, 1978), pp. 41–62. 5  John de Garlande, Parisiana Poetria, p. 129. 6  See J. W. Baldwin, Paris, 1200 (Stanford, 2010). 7 Burrow, Poetry of Praise, p. 17; Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, trans. L. M. Hollander (Austin, 1964), p. 4, cited in Kempshall, Rhetoric, p. 165. 8  Menander Rhetor, trans. D. A. Russell and N. G. Wilson (Oxford, 1981), pp. 33–75; although a Greek text, with little evidence of direct transmission into Latin works, it was very popular in the Byzantine period and there are notable similarities found in a later Latin treatise of the eighth century, the De Laudibus Urbium, so we may posit some indirect influence: Ruth, Urban Honor, pp. 24–31, 33. 9  Menander Rhetor, p. 37.

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and enfeebled, nor yet is it newly set up’. If it is new, ‘it is in its bloom like a girl in her prime’, and ‘its civic life is full of more and greater promise’. The more recent cities must be shown not to be inferior in dignity to the oldest, and those of the middle period to be able to stand on their own in comparison to both.10

While Menander advocates skilful manipulation he rarely (at least explicitly) advises outright fabrication or concealment of evidence. He encourages the panegyrist to make enquiries, to find supporting authorities, and when he discusses ‘evidence’ that appears more dubious (such as foundation myths), he tends to do so because it appears to be widely accepted (‘as the Athenians say they originated with the sun’).11 For Menander the key is not to alter the evidence as such but to find a positive way to interpret it. Other early rhetorical tracts on praise were more laconic and more matter of fact in their approach to the evidence supporting praise, with little overt encouragement at outright dissimulation. Priscian (fl. c.500), who adapted into a Latin translation the Progymnasmata of Hermogenes (fl. 161–80), asserted that praise, in the context of an individual, ‘has as its goal only to bear witness to his virtue’.12 He later turned to praise of cities: You may speak of their origin, that they are peculiar to one place; of their food, saying that they were nourished by the gods. You may, in short, treat a city exactly as you treat an individual: what is its structure, what profession does it follow, what has it accomplished?13

Moreover, it is well established that any understanding of a dialectic between truth/reality/history and dishonesty/imaginary/fiction in the Middle Ages needs to acknowledge the porous boundaries that exist between these seemingly polar opposites and to be mindful of the multidirectional flows of material that criss-crossed between them.14 Literary genres were highly malleable in the Middle Ages—myth weaved its way into works we might consider more overtly narrative/historical, while historical ‘fact’ seeped into works, such as poetry and epic, which we might initially interpret as fiction; and both ‘truth’ and ‘fiction’ supported each other.15 As such, works of panegyric appear to fit Monica Otter’s category of ‘hybrid and intermediary texts’, displaying the semi-historical and semi-mythical side by side.16 It is not then a case of isolating different components of the text—the conventional, the fictive, the real—but rather in acknowledging that everything in context has a significance.17

10  Menander Rhetor, p. 51. 11  Menander Rhetor, p. 49. 12  Priscian the Grammarian, Fundamentals Adapted from Hermogenes, trans. J. M. Miller in Readings in Medieval Rhetoric, ed. and trans. J. M. Miller, M. H. Prosser, T. W. Benson (Bloomington, 1973), p. 61. 13  Priscian the Grammarian, Fundamentals, p. 63. 14  I am extremely grateful to Laura Ashe for her advice on this section. 15  H. R. Jauss, ‘The Communicative Role of Fiction’, in his Question and Answer. Forms of Dialogic Understanding, ed. and trans. M. Hays (Minneapolis, 1989), pp. 3–50. 16  Otter, ‘Functions of Fiction’, pp. 111–12. 17  See P. Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 199–200.

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AU T H O R S H I P A N D L I T E R A RY C O N V E N T I O N S Monica Otter’s work also foregrounds the pivotal, interpretative role of the reader and reminds us of the importance of audience and the latter’s prominent role in shaping the meaning and content of any given text. It is necessary to consider how the author and his (most were indeed men) text interacted with the urban world and a wider audience in order to then establish how messages within urban panegyric were disseminated and in turn how they could actively influence and reflect medieval understandings of the city. Surprisingly little research has engaged with this issue, leaving a prevailing, implicit view that urban panegyric had limited circulation and contemporary impact; a view bolstered, it seems, by the prominent role of churchmen and monks in its production, and by the presence of rather conservative language and thematic templates. I shall take as a fundamental basepoint Laura Ashe’s rationale on how to interpret meaning in medieval texts: texts represent ‘locations of conscious and unconscious meaning, and meanings presumed to be valuable to those who commissioned, produced, read and listened to them’.18 In recognizing both the implicit and/or explicit meanings built into texts by their authors, patrons, and audiences, those texts (even though they may appear to a modern reader as fictional, historical, or somewhere in between) instantly serve as a mirror onto the present. I would like to push this further still and apply these perspectives to urban panegyric. Although works of urban panegyric might appear genre conscious (although they are rarely explicitly so) and often produced by churchmen, this does not denude them of great contemporary significance. The presence of seemingly conventional language and tropes certainly demonstrates an author’s intellectual debts and how these might have shaped his methodology of praise. But equally this does not mean that the approach was conservative or ahistorical. Neither does it follow that we should apply a mental and intellectual insularity to both author and audience that other evidence often does not support, for at least two reasons. The first is that it is abundantly clear that churchmen (both secular and regular)—a group who produced much of the urban panegyric in our period—interacted with the lay urban world in a plethora of ways. Pastoral duties, kin-group connections (Thomas Becket, for example, was born in London, in a large house in Cheapside on London’s major commercial street, and was the son of an immigrant merchant of Rouen), legal processes, commercial transactions, and other civic tasks, such as administration and political counsel, ensured that the dividing line between spiritual and secular was as blurred as the aforementioned boundaries between literary genres. Recent studies on hagiographical texts and particularly the miracula within them has emphasized how they were often created through the exchange of information between churchmen and laity, and that they served not only as models for other religious officials but were also pitched for the laity’s comprehension and according 18  L. Ashe, Fiction and History in England, 1066–1200 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 2.

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to their expectations.19 William FitzStephen, the author of a Vita of Thomas Becket, perfectly encapsulates such blending of the ecclesiastical and the secular. He identified himself in this work as a fellow-citizen (concivis), cleric, and associate of the Londoner Becket, and then proceeded to insert a laudatory depiction of London in the prologue of his hagiographical work.20 As a citizen and churchman he was extremely well-placed to produce such a hybrid work. Even traditional monastic observers were not detached from the urban world, particularly when some monasteries were actually located within them. For instance, the De Laude Cestrie (c.1195–c.1200) was produced by Lucian, who in his work displays an intimate knowledge of Chester’s topography and who was quite probably a monk at the urban monastery of St Werburgh’s which could provide religious services to the citizens.21 But, more significantly, a host of new spiritual movements were rooted explicitly within the city. The Mendicants were at the forefront. Their activities and strategies displayed a nuanced knowledge of urbanization and lay concerns over salvation and were based on the view that preaching in cities was qualitatively and quantitatively more effective.22 Several works in praise of the city were produced by Mendicants.23 And a number of these Mendicants were themselves products of an urban world and understood it intimately: the Dominican Remigio de’Girolami, for example, came from a family which was prominent in Florence’s civic government and he himself demonstrated a deep interest in his sermons for Florentine secular affairs.24 There were also members of other new intermediary spiritual associations and confraternities who were attuned to writing urban panegyric. Bonvesin da la Riva, for example, was a member of the Third Order of the Humiliati at Milan. It was a lay spiritual confraternity which focused on charitable acts and hospital work. But of more relevance here, some of these groups—like the Humiliati—increasingly played active roles in urban governments, and, as evidenced in his De Magnalibus, Bonvesin clearly had access to communal records and officials.25 Indeed, secular administrative meetings and 19  S. Yarrow, Saints and their Communities. Miracle Stories in Twelfth-Century England (Oxford, 2006), pp. 13–23. 20  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 1. 21  Faulkner, ‘Spatial Hermeneutics’, pp. 181–4. 22  Le Goff, ‘Ordres mendicants’, p. 930. See also Bruzelius, ‘The Dead come to Town’, pp. 203–24. 23  Albert Magnus: Augsburg Sermon Cycle; Henry of Rimini: Henry of Rimini’s Paean to Venice (ca. 1300), trans. J. E. Law, in K. L. Jansen, J. Drell, and F. Andrews (eds), Medieval Italy. Texts in Translation (Philadelphia, 2009), pp. 514–16. A Latin edition of the praise is available in D. Robey and J. Law, ‘The Venetian Myth and the De Repubblica Veneta of Pier Paolo Vergerio’, Rinascimento, XXV, 2nd  series (1975), pp. 54–6; the anonymous Franciscan author of De laude civitatis Laude; Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De Proprietatibus Rerum: a work that has been classed as a popular ‘resource-manual for preachers’ and was a widely used text for medieval university students, see P. Biller, The Measure of Multitude: Population in Medieval Thought (Oxford, 2000), p. 221; Seymour, et al., Bartholomaeus Anglicus, pp. 12–13, 33; Remigio de’Girolami: see Davis, ‘An Early Florentine Political Theorist’, p. 206 and fn. 30. 24  For Remigio’s kin-group and his activities in Florentine secular politics, see: D. Carron, ‘Remigio de’Girolami dans la Florence de Dante’, Reti Medievali, XVIII (2017), pp. 443–71. 25 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, xiv, xix and, for evidence that he used communal documents, see for example Bk. III.XIIII, pp. 48–9 and Bk. III.XXVII, p. 52. For more on the integration of churchmen into urban governments, see the contributions in F. Andrews and M. A. Pincelli (eds), Churchmen and Urban Government in Late Medieval Italy, c.1200–c.1450 (Cambridge, 2013).

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courts were often held within urban religious buildings, while one consequence of the material revival of cities after 1100 was a reaffirming of links between cathedrals and their bishops on the one hand and their urban communities on the other, as we have already seen in the case of St Paul’s in London.26 The emergence of cathedral and urban schools, in which churchmen provided varying levels of educational training to the laity, offered a further channel for religious-secular cross-fertilization. Teachers, university masters, and court officials, who were trained in the Church and thereafter formally remained in its lower orders, increasingly taught lay students and were thus immersed in the secular city. Having failed to obtain a prebend in 1198, the Bolognese rhetorician Boncampagno da Signa opted to live as a layman. Shortly after, he produced the Liber de obsidione Ancone for Ancona’s new podestà with its praise, both implicit and explicit, of the city.27 Another example is provided by Godfrey of Viterbo. Brought up in urbanized Italy, educated in Bamberg, and later a chaplain and notary at the Staufen court, which led to frequent travel between Germany and Rome, Kugler asserts that these experiences formed an acute observer of urban forms, reflected in some of Godfrey’s laudatory verse passages on cities in his Pantheon.28 In fact, urban schools may well have provided the forum for the production and circulation of works of urban panegyric: it would seem, for instance, that the anonymous Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae was first disseminated in the early thirteenth century within Florence’s cathedral school; here the myths and praise of Florence found within a text with an elementary lexical style could have been absorbed by laypeople who appear to have been able to learn elementary grammar there.29 To complete this picture of multiple exchanges and flows of information it should also be noted that several works which offer praise of cities were produced by laypeople, some directly from the urban community: the lay notary Falco of  Benevento produced laudatory portrayals of his native city in his chronicle (­finished c.1140–44), as did the aforementioned Boncompagno for Ancona.30 The anonymous author of the vernacular Vita of St Petronio appears to have been a layman, and the Anonymous Genovese likewise.31 Some of the vernacular Epics and Romances which contain valuable material on the medieval city were produced by lay jongleurs, most famously Chrétien de Troyes and Rutebeuf.32 In summary, a state of cross-fertilization existed. The authors (when we can identify them) of many works of urban panegyric were often conditioned by urban experiences and mutual exchanges of information and ideas with the laity. Thus, they were well informed on the benefits and, of course, the dangers of contemporary urban 26  See introduction, p. 19. 27  Boncampagno da Signa, Liber, xii. 28 Kugler, Vorstellung der Stadt, pp. 161–5. 29 E. Faini, ‘Prima di Brunetto. Sulla formazione intelletuale dei laici a Firenze ai primi del Ducento’, Reti Medievali, XVIII (2017), pp. 198–218 (especially pp. 208–13). 30  On Falco’s career see Falcone di Benevento, Chronicon, vii–xiv and G. A. Loud, ‘The Genesis and Context of the Chronicle of Falco of Benevento’, Anglo-Norman Studies, XV (1993), pp. 177–98. 31  S. Epstein, Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1528 (Chapel Hill, 1996), p. 167. 32  A. Thompson, Cities of God: the Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park, Pa, 2005), p. 118.

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experiences and they were also able to weave this information into whatever objectives they were pursuing within their work. The second reason to question a mental and intellectual insularity is the reality that most authors wrote for objectives that served a purpose in their present. The expense of producing written documents required, as Klaus Krönert suggested, a specific causa scribendi.33 To achieve this required the use of language and symbols that were meaningful beyond the text, to at least one other person, but usually to a whole community or indeed several. Usually this involved borrowing ideas, quotes, structures, and themes from earlier classical or Christian texts. Steadily over time this recurrent dependency on other texts (what scholars term intertextuality) created a familiar stock, or sedimentary layers, of ideas and terms which conferred auctoritas. But we cannot always be certain that author and audience understood the precise meanings of those intertextual connections. Indeed, recent studies, such as Benjamin Pohl’s, have questioned the practical levels of Latinity of clerical scribes who ‘actually reveal themselves as being no more qualified to read’ content than lay members of court.34 Thus the function of intertextual connections often did not depend on accessing knowledge of earlier traditions, nor necessarily implied a conservative retreat to an imagined, distant past. Instead, they regularly served different and very current purposes, and led to ‘a “re-charging” of elements from old works with new meaning’.35 It tended towards a ‘reinscription of the past’ which became more marked in the climate of change in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.36 Moreover, recycling well-established, conventional (we might call it ‘safe’) language was often the most effective way of projecting messages explicitly or by allusion, for it enabled the recipient to easily access a store of commonly understood cultural symbols through which to situate and interpret the information being presented to them within a contemporary context. It offered ‘scaffolding’, a secure frame, with suitable latitude for understanding new developments in the present and by extension for predicting the city’s potential future pathways. Beryl Smalley called the author of such works the ‘precedent hunter’ who accepts that ‘ “novelty” looks better if he presents it as having been “heard of ” in the past’.37 Studies on widely different topics and media have revealed how universal such strategies could be. Irene O’Daly, for example, noted that the twelfth-century English philosopher John of Salisbury drew on classical learning and tropes to explain contemporary Rome, and then applied these—particularly Seneca’s ideas on frugality—to search for a response to the climate of avarice which he perceived 33 Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, pp. 17, 298–301. 34 B. Pohl, Dudo of St Quentin’s Historia Normannorum: Tradition, Innovation and Memory (Woodbridge, 2015), p. 259. 35 Erll, Memory, pp. 70–4 (quote at p. 73). Godman, Archpoet, pp. 111–12 argues that, for many medieval writers and audiences, to locate intertextual references ‘superhuman powers of syncretism would have been required’. 36 Pohl, Dudo, pp. 224, pp. 257–9, quote at p. 258. 37  B. Smalley, ‘Ecclesiastical Attitudes to Novelty, c.1100–c.1250’, Studies in Church History, XII (1975), pp. 116, 121.

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to be rife in the twelfth-century city.38 Still in Rome, Chris Wickham demonstrated that for all its classicizing rhetoric, the Senate, founded in 1143, had a radical ‘project’ that was an ‘unusually self-aware, and also unusually anti-aristocratic, version of a contemporary north Italian consulate’.39 Another example returns us even more directly to works on the idea of the medieval city. Alexander Elinson’s assessment of Arabic Andalusi city elegies concluded that they were ‘curiously poised between the reality of a tangible loss acutely felt by the individual, and a highly conventional language that is used to understand and express it’.40 One could even move this discussion into the realm of visual culture. The twelfth-century kings of Sicily were known for projecting a hybrid Byzantine/Arab-Islamic image of their monarchy. While this borrowing of symbols and traditions was once viewed as evidence of an intellectual programme of royal multiculturalism, it is now generally considered more a reflection of a highly pragmatic strategy to communicate a message of power and legitimacy to Greek and Muslim subjects for whom interaction with those conventional symbols would trigger a stream of meanings and information about their current place in the kingdom.41 Therefore, important contemporary changes, especially if they are challenging ones, often require stable and established language/tropes (and some form of anchorage to an understood past) in order to render their magnitude and meaning more familiar and intelligible.42 I would suggest that much of the material of medieval urban panegyric can be handled in a comparable way, where one encounters (at least at first glance) apparently conservative/generic/recurrent literary templates which overlay some deep changes. Placing those templates and that stable language into a closer relationship with the contemporary context means that urban panegyric can be used to indicate and indeed interpret what changes were occurring and how they were experienced. Thus, Ausonius’s praise of the deeds of citizens, of the monumental buildings, of commerce, and of the fertile hinterlands of his twenty most ‘famous’ cities each represented a slim, visible surface layer concealing a mine of meanings specific to the social, political, economic, and cultural world of the author and his audience in the late fourth century.43 If in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 38  I. O’Daly, ‘An Assessment of the Political Symbolism of the City of Rome in the Writings of John of Salisbury’, in L. I. Hamilton and S. Riccioni (eds), Rome Re-Imagined: Twelfth-Century Jews, Christians and Muslims Encounter the Eternal City. Special Edition of Medieval Encounters, XVII (2011), pp. 512–33. Likewise, J. A. Yunck, The Lineage of Lady Meed: The Development of Mediaeval Venality Satire (Notre Dame, 1963), found that satire on medieval Rome was riddled with standard tropes, but that once properly contextualized the material could be read as very current and resonant commentary on wider papal and imperial ideologies during and after the Investiture Contest. 39 Wickham, Medieval Rome, p. 446. 40  A. E. Elinson, Looking Back at al-Andalus. The Poetics of Loss and Nostalgia in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Literature (Leiden, 2009), p. 16. 41  A. Metcalfe, The Muslims of Medieval Italy (Edinburgh, 2009), pp. 235–53. 42  On this, see Erll, Memory, pp. 148–9. 43 Ausonius, Ordo Urbium Nobilium, pp. 189–95. D. Frye, ‘Aristocratic Responses to Late Roman Urban Change: the examples of Ausonius and Sidonius in Gaul’, The Classical World, XCVI (2003), pp. 185–96, demonstrates that Ausonius’s praise of cities needs to be situated in the context of urban change in the late Roman period, and that this produced in him a conflicted attitude towards urban life which blended disdain, realism, and emotional attachment (particularly to his home city of Bordeaux).

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a William FitzStephen, a Lucian of Chester, or a Bonvesin da la Riva framed their praise of London, Chester, and Milan respectively according to comparable themes, the meanings they imputed onto their material need to be adjusted in line with the radically different urban world within which these works were formed. There is a significance in William FitzStephen’s classicizing allusions in his descriptions of London in the context of the 1170s, and in Lucian’s Neo-Platonic Christian moralizing of Chester at the close of the twelfth century, and we shall address this in later chapters. But it is safe to say that, in both cases, classical and biblical packaging acts as an aid not a barrier to understanding twelfth-century cities.44 And of course, plenty within our works broke from pre-existing moulds and adopted new language which also deserves attention: for example, Bonvesin’s love of numbers, or the series of hagiographers from the eleventh and twelfth centuries who created a foundation legend for Liège that seemed to go against the mainstream of city origin accounts that appeared at that time.45 AU D I E N C E Works of urban panegyric can then, for all their formulaic packaging, make a telling contribution to our understanding of the medieval city in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Like all textual records, we need to consider both the author’s personal experience and the projection of its information to an audience, imagined or real. But is it possible to say more about the potential audiences for urban panegyric? The preceding discussion has argued that conservative language and topoi could serve as one method to convey contemporary messages as clearly as possible. It also noted that it was acknowledged that praise needed to be controlled, in other words sufficiently realistic, in order for it to retain its integrity. Both suggest anticipated audiences. Unfortunately, for most works of urban panegyric little can be said for certain about their circulation and audiences. Manuscript traditions are of scant help here in determining dissemination or popularity. Surviving manuscript ­numbers rarely equate to the number of copies produced in the Middle Ages, and indeed popular works were more likely to be moved around, damaged, and lost.46 Furthermore, as shall be discussed shortly, there were many other modes of disseminating information from manuscripts other than direct contact with them. There is 44  D. J. Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics: London, 1150–1250’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6th series, XVIII (2008), p. 74 concludes that FitzStephen’s descriptio ‘contains much that is demonstrably true and is notable for its sense of the landscape of the city, the specialised trades and the surrounding territory’. 45 Romagnoli, ‘coscienza civica’, pp. 69–74; for examples of Bonvesin’s use of statistics see Chapter 5; the Liège legends claimed the city was founded by one or (according to different versions) more of its patron saints; normally saints were attributed a missionary role which inaugurated the Christian era of the city, but not in establishing the city ex novo. More common was the classical foundation legend. See C. Saucier, A Paradise of Priests. Singing the Civic and Episcopal Hagiography of Medieval Liège (Woodbridge, 2014), especially Chapters 1–3 and Adam, ‘Vita Landiberti’, pp. 503–28. 46 For a succinct summary of these issues, see L. Shopkow, History and Community. Norman Historical Writing in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Washington, D.C., 1997), p. 218.

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not the space here to track the manuscript transmission of all the heterogeneous works used, but it might be indicative to note the wide disparities in production/ survival, if only to highlight the problems in interpreting this information. The important works by Lucian on Chester and by Bonvesin on Milan each only survive in one manuscript copy. But Bonvesin’s, for example, definitely existed in more than one copy and circulated quite widely; it was used heavily by Galvano Fiamma in his fourteenth-century Milanese chronicle, and was cited in several other Italian works in the same century.47 Mere scattered fragments survive of Eustachio da Matera’s mid-thirteenth-century planctus Italiae—just short passages on the cities of Taranto, Naples, Potenza, and Messina—and yet no less a figure than Giovanni Boccaccio knew of the work in the fourteenth century.48 At the other end of the spectrum Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, with its mythical aggrandizing of London, survives in over 200 medieval copies and Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval, Le Conte du Graal, with its varied depictions of urban life, survives in around fifteen; and both heavily influenced many other medieval works.49 Bartholomew Anglicus’s De Proprietatibus Rerum proved so influential that by 1284 it had become prescribed on Parisian stationers’ book lists. Book XV, containing material on cities, was deemed so important that it was separately copied, and even into the vernacular, for example the late thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman translation called Le Livre des Regions.50 Given the problems in following manuscript production, and that direct references in our works to audiences are rare, we therefore need to construct a composite picture of modes of dissemination from various different sources. If it is only possible to trace this picture in its broadest outlines, and to rest some of it on speculation, it should at least fill in some of the gaps and allow one to envisage how the material in urban panegyric achieved a reception. As a start point, it is easier, in some cases at least, to identify what Leah Shopkow termed the ‘implied first reader’ of a text, or in other words its primary reception/ audience.51 This is, of course, simplest in the case of letters, such as one by the anonymous author (almost certainly dated to 1190 and by the so-called ‘Hugo Falcandus’) which praised (and lamented) several Sicilian cities and which was 47 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, xi–xii; G. Polimeni, ‘ “In contrarium est cronica Bonevisini”. La Cronica extravagans di Galvano Fiamma e la nuova commendatio civitatis’, in R. Wilhelm and S.  Dörr (eds), Bonvesin da la Riva: poesia, lingua e storia a Milano nel tardo Medioevo (Heidelberg, 2009), pp. 81–93. 48  A. Altamura, ‘I frammenti di Eustazio da Matera’, Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania, XV (1946), pp. 133–40; see also E. Cuozzo, ‘Eustachio da Matera’, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, XLIII (1993) at http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/eustachio-da-matera_%28Dizionario_Biografico%29/ [accessed 05/05/16]. 49  For Geoffrey of Monmouth see: M. D. Reeve, ‘The Transmission of the Historia regum Britanniae’, Journal of Medieval Latin, I (1991), pp. 73–117; Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, pp. 72–5; Monmouth’s Historia was also reworked into influential vernacular accounts, most famously Wace’s, Roman de Brut (finished c.1155). For Chrétien see: Chrétien de Troyes, Le Roman de Perceval, ix–xxxix; there are also other manuscript fragments extant. 50  Barthélemy L’Anglais, Livre des Regions, with important discussion in the editor’s introduction at pp. 1–6. 51 Shopkow, History and Community, pp. 212–45 (quote at p. 219).

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addressed to a Peter the Treasurer of the Church of Palermo.52 Also, the French cleric and chronicler Gui of Bazoches wrote a letter (dated between 1175 and 1190) to an unnamed friend, which eulogized Paris.53 Ecclesiastical works, which included portrayals and praise of cities, were usually produced primarily for a local religious community: Orderic Vitalis (with his coverage of Rouen) for the community at St Evroult in Normandy, Lucian of Chester apparently wrote for a canon of St John’s, Chester, and thus for the city’s secular clergy, while Albert Magnus’s sermons appear initially aimed at the Dominicans and nuns of Augsburg.54 Others aimed for specific patronage or were commissioned by secular rulers, and so it is possible to imagine their initial dissemination within aristocratic courts. Donizone addressed his Vita Mathildis to Matilda herself, and the Canossa dynasty more generally, but his text appears also to have been distributed extensively throughout other monasteries associated with the dynasty.55 Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada produced his Versos de Julia Romula o La Urbe Hispalense (1250), praising Seville and its capture by Fernando III of Castile, and in so doing made an unashamed plea for reward from Alfonso X, Fernando’s heir. The initial letters of each verse of the poem spelled out this request and Guillermo reiterated it in his closing verses: ‘In the initial letters just look carefully/O reader, what they contain is clearly explained/To the first-born of the king they boldly suggest/to reward mercifully the author Guillermo’.56 Indeed, it seems evident that the new stock of vernacular Epics and Romances (interspersed with valuable depictions of the city) were ­produced primarily for aristocratic courts driven by a new appetite for cultural consumption.57 Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval, Le Conte du Graal, for example, was produced for his patron Count Philip of Flanders (d.1191). But, although it is more difficult to pinpoint secondary, wider audiences, these literary productions need not have been solely accessible to small circles of educated readers who were primarily situated in enclosed religious or aristocratic communities. Some of our authors hoped and intended for their works to reach wider, amorphous audiences, perhaps through public recitals.58 This may have been wishful thinking, and partly a literary device to enhance the value of the text, but it cannot be wholly dismissed. In the ninth book of his Ecclesiastical History, Orderic Vitalis hoped that other curious readers would engage with his work and utilize it for the benefit of their contemporaries.59 Boncompagno da Signa’s account of the siege of Ancona was produced for the incoming podestà of that city, Ugolino Gosia. But Boncampagno also admitted in his prologue that a wider aim existed: that ‘I should compose it [the account] for common use (“in comune”), 52  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, pp. 169–86. 53  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 54, pp. 55–6. 54 Shopkow, History and Community, pp. 212–13, 231–4; Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 3 (fol. 5r–6v); Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, pp. 102–4. 55  Houghton, ‘Reconsidering Donizone’s Vita Mathildis’, p. 391. 56  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 106, pp. 54–5. 57  Le Goff, ‘Warriors’, pp. 151–76. 58 Green, Medieval Listening and Reading, p. 71 suggests that medieval literature was widely intended for public recital. 59 Shopkow, History and Community, pp. 212–13.

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because you [Ugolino] do not desire to have alone what is recognised to be valuable to many (“ad multorum utilitatem”).’60 The work was thus very likely utilized for public recital. Bonvesin da la Riva addressed his work to all people of the Catholic faith who would encounter the text, and claimed that it was not only foreigners (‘gentes extraneas’) but also his fellow-citizens (‘compatriatos meos’) who ‘slept in  the desert of ignorance’ who should learn about the marvels of Milan.61 Bonvesin thus implies both groups were intended to interact with his work. He tells us that divine inspiration, and no specific individual, suggested the idea of the work to him, and that his De Magnalibus should encourage friends, enemies, and foreigners to recognize God and the wonders of Milan. Bonvesin clearly envisaged the potential for his work to have been disseminated. It is framed by an appeal to his fellow-citizens to unite and eradicate civil faction in the city, and that he also needed to defend himself against the claim that promoting the virtues of Milan could draw the attentions of a covetous foreign tyrant, suggests he foresaw its possible wider impact.62 The work had a didactic function and could thus be classed, as Daniela Romagnoli suggests, as a speculum civium (‘mirror for citizens’) taking its place alongside those manuals of instruction, the speculum principum (‘mirror for princes’), which grew in popularity after the mid-twelfth century.63 That Bonvesin’s work was utilized in other fourteenth-century works, particularly Galvano Fiamma’s Chronica Extravagans, at the least indicates its prominence in elite Milanese circles. Furthermore, the content itself of several works of urban panegyric indicates that it was intended for a local audience which was the only one thoroughly capable of understanding particular allusions and urban references within the text. Mosè del Brolo’s Liber Pergaminus (c.1118), in praise of his native Bergamo and opening with a plea for divine protection of the city and its inhabitants, was, as Gorni noted, ‘funzionale soltanto per un destinatario bergamasco’ who could draw meaning from the poem’s precise details.64 The same could be said of many other works: Lucian’s praise of Chester, in which that author admitted writing out of love for his fellow Cestrians and ‘for the consolation of the citizens’, the anonymous De laude civitatis Laude, or the Gesta Treverorum, the contents of which were seemingly tailored to the local tastes of an urban patriciate.65 The consensus on the Vraies Cronikes de Tournai suggests that it was produced for a Tournasien public because of the secular content of the work, its more overt praise of urban officials, and the use of local dialect and place names within the text.66 60  Boncompagno da Signa, Liber, p. 110. 61 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Prologue, pp. 8–9. 62 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Prologue, pp. 10–11. 63  Romagnoli, ‘coscienza civica’, pp. 66–7. 64  Mosè del Brolo, Liber Pergaminus, lines 1–4, p. 440 (quote from Gorni at p. 418). 65  See Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 5 (fol. 8r–8v), 6 (fol. 10r), and also 11 (fol. 15r); Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 149–50, suggests that the title of the Gesta Treverorum itself, the sizeable amount of pre-Christian, secular material, the focus on warfare in several places, repeated references to principes Trebirorum, and the increasing role of the leading citizens in Trier’s saints cults from the late eleventh century, all indicate that the intended audience included a prominent lay element. 66  Vraies chroniques, for example 3a p. 47 for the city being governed by powerful and wise administrators (‘de grans et poisans et sage administrateurs’); 22, 24, 27, 29, 30 pp. 63–7 for the citizens’

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Any understanding of potential audiences also needs to take account of developments in lay literacy rates. Recent work suggests higher levels of lay literacy in the early Middle Ages than had conventionally been assumed, and that private lay archives existed, some of which were deposited in religious houses.67 However, these literacy levels clearly accelerated noticeably from the twelfth century when the written word received greater trust and status.68 This occurred in line with new administrative and commercial imperatives, and was aided by the growth of urban schools. Indeed, the chasm between clerical and lay levels of literacy significantly narrowed in this period. Notaries, lawyers, judges, and merchants all needed to interact more regularly with the written word and to acquire at least a ‘pragmatic literacy’.69 And, according to Parkes, by the thirteenth century the ‘pragmatic reader’ ‘began to look beyond his immediate professional horizons’ to metamorphose into a ‘cultivated reader’, consumer of a wider literary canon.70 These changes were most pronounced in the cities of Italy, and the likes of the aforesaid Falco of Benevento and Caffaro of Genoa were two early products of these changes. Furthermore, there was a pervasive rise in vernacular writing in the late twelfth century. It is in this century, for example, that we have the earliest evidence of vernacular translations of parts of the Bible produced for the laity: these included Lambert of Bègue’s French translations in Liège, and the famous request for translations by the merchant Waldo (founder of the Waldensians) at Lyon.71 More widespread still were the vernacular French Epic and Romance cycles. But other works such as hagiographies and narrative histories (such as the Primera crónica general de España) made works accessible to a much wider audience not literate in Latin. Martin da Canal’s Histoire de Venise was actually written in a romance-epic style in Franco-Venetian and aimed at a threefold audience which appears to have comprised the FrancoVenetian community spread across the Veneto and Northern Italy, and the French communities of Western European and the Latin East.72 brave defence of Tournai; 32a p. 68 for the adoption under the rule of the Romans of consuls for the community of Tournai and 32b p. 68 which says the consuls are now called eswardeur (note 48 p. 182 shows that the arrangements for the government of Tournai here represented those set out in a charter of 1188); 153a p. 145 for the local names of the city gates; Krause, ‘Edifier’; Small, ‘Les origines’, pp. 92–104. 67  See M. Costambeys, M. Innes, and A. J. Kosto (eds), Documentary Culture and the Laity in the Early Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2012) and A. J. Kosto, ‘Laymen, Clerics and Documentary Practices in the Early Middle Ages: The Example of Catalonia’, Speculum, LXXX (2005), pp. 44–74. 68  On trust and status in the context of charter production see J. W. J. Burgers, ‘Trust in Writing: Charters in the Twelfth-Century County of Holland’, in P. Schulte, M. Mostert, and I. van Renswoude (eds), Strategies of Writing. Studies on Text and Trust in the Middle Ages (Turnhout, 2008), pp. 111–31 (especially, pp. 123–5). See also M. B. Parkes, ‘The Literacy of the Laity’ in his Scribes, Scripts and Readers. Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of Medieval Texts (London, 1991), pp. 275–97. 69  See the contributions in Britnell (ed.), Pragmatic Literacy and G. Arnaldi, ‘Il notaio-cronista e le cronache cittadine in Italia’, in La storia del diritto nel quadro delle scienze storiche (Florence, 1966), pp. 293–309. 70  Parkes, ‘Literacy of the Laity’, p. 297. 71  M. Hoogvliet, ‘Encouraging Lay People to Read the Bible in the French Vernaculars: new groups of readers and textual communities’, Church History and Religious Culture, XCIII (2013), pp. 241–3. 72  See the discussion by Morreale in the introduction to her translation: Martin da Canal, Les Estoires de Venise, xii–xv.

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Evidence for changes in literacy were established many years ago by James Westfall Thompson and by the more influential work of Erich Auerbach who concluded that vernacular writing in particular produced ‘a literary public’ from the late twelfth century.73 As Auerbach himself noted though, this picture requires further nuancing, for there existed ‘many intermediate stages between total illiteracy and real proficiency’.74 More recent studies focus on different registers of literacy, from the highly skilled, to the pragmatic, to the ability to understand through listening, or to access translations in the vernacular.75 The interlinking of orality and literacy here is evident, and emphasizes how literary works were adapted for performative practices.76 Indeed, as Brian Stock noted some years ago, literacy should not solely be measured by modern notions of individual literacy. Literacy functioned most commonly in textual communities. The latter required only one individual able to understand the text and who could then pass on the information verbally to a wider group which was thus drawn into a literate world.77 It is not too far a leap to suggest that some of the assigning of names among the laity which were of saints or of heroes from epics—in thirteenth-century Pisa, for example, names linked to characters from the Pris d’Orange were common—resulted from loose membership within textual communities.78 Moreover, several medieval authors, like the French Abbot Guibert of Nogent, acknowledged the importance of writing in a simple style and pitching their work at different levels for multiple audiences which might interpret the material literally or (if more learned) allegorically.79 And no less a scholarly figure than William of Malmesbury commenced his description of the gates and relics of Rome by acknowledging a need

73  J. Westfall Thompson, The Literacy of the Laity in the Middle Ages (University of California, 1939; republished: 1963, New York); E. Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, trans. R. Manheim (New York, 1965), pp. 235–338 (quote at p. 277). 74 Auerbach, Literary Language, p. 292. 75  See the editors’ introduction in Mostert and Adamska, Uses of the Written Word, pp. 1–16. Also, Green, Medieval Listening and Reading, pp. 3–19, and the seminal work by M. T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record. England 1066–1307 (Hoboken, 3rd edition, 2012); M. Mostert, ‘Using and keeping written texts: reading and writing as forms of communication in the early Middle Ages’, Scrivere e leggere nell’alto medioevo: Spoleto, 28 aprile—4 maggio, 2011, vol. 1 (Spoleto, 2012), p. 76 suggests four literary registers: illiterate, semi-illiterate, semi-literate, and literate. Pohl, Dudo, pp. 156–65 offers an excellent overview of the different ways to understand medieval literacy and the way the laity were able to interact with a literate world. 76 Kempshall, Rhetoric, pp. 23–6. 77  B. Stock, Listening for the Text. On the Uses of the Past (Baltimore, 1990), p. 23. See also Ong, ‘Orality’, pp. 1–12. 78  M. Mitterauer and J. Morrissey, Pisa nel Medioevo. Potenza sul mare e motore di cultura (Rome, 2015), pp. 255–6. For naming patterns at Bari associated with the cult of St Nicholas see J-M. Martin, ‘Anthroponymie et onomastique à Bari (950–1250)’, Mélanges de l’ecole française de Rome. Moyen âge, CVI (1994), pp. 683–701. 79  Guibert of Nogent, Liber Quo Ordine Sermo Fieri Debeat/A Book about the Way a Sermon Ought to be Given, trans. J. M. Miller, in Readings in Medieval Rhetoric, ed. and trans. J. M. Miller, M. H. Prosser, T. W. Benson (Bloomington, 1973), p. 170 advised the preacher that ‘Though he preaches simple and uncomplicated matter to the unlettered, at the same time he should try to reach a higher plane with the uneducated [. . .] When he expounds such things by explaining them in detail, he will make clear and lucid for the peasants and common people ideas which at first seem difficult and confusing even to the very learned.’; Kempshall, Rhetoric, pp. 396–7, 406.

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for it to be more widely intelligible, thus, he says, ‘I will use the casual words of everyday speech (“erit sermo cotidianus et levis”)’.80 So it seems significant that several authors of works of urban panegyric mention that their texts might be heard as well as read. Martin da Canal justified writing in Franco-Venetian because ‘the French language has spread all over the world, and is the most delightful to read and hear’.81 Before commencing his description of London at the start of his Vita of Thomas Becket, William FitzStephen stated that the work ‘was for the assistance and the edification of all readers or listeners (“omnium legentium et audientium”)’, and certainly, as Keene notes, Londoners in the thirteenth century knew the work as it served as a preface for a later set of city customs, the Liber Custumarum.82 Likewise, Lucian of Chester mentioned the option of conveying his information ‘either in writing or orally (“vel calamo vel colloquio”)’ and in his introduction Bonvesin speaks of both friends and enemies of Milan ‘reading and listening to these marvels (“hec legentes et audientes magnalia”)’.83 Indeed, it should be noted that ‘legere’ did not always simply translate as ‘read’, it could also carry meanings such as ‘recite’ and ‘tell’.84 Communal readings could be deemed more normative than private, personal reading.85 Indeed, with the rise of lay confraternities and guild associations, additional urban fora were available alongside more traditional religious festivals for communal performances at celebrations and ceremonies.86 The dissemination of information within them cultivated collective civic consciousness and group pride. Poetic works were also obviously readily adaptable to an oral performance and some Epic and Romance vernaculars were disseminated (often through song and acting) to a wider, non-aristocratic audience.87 Birge Vitz’s study on early French Romances notes the varied modalities of performance across a ‘spectrum’ of events, from the high-level public and festive to the low-level and quotidian, and emphasizes the central role of ‘gesture’ in producing a ‘dramatic’, even ‘theatrical’ delivery.88 The Chanson de Geste known as Aiol, a work full of vivid depictions of urban life, circulated throughout important literary circles in France and Flanders 80  William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, pp. 614–15. 81  Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, trans. Morreale, p. 3 (Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, p. 2). 82  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 1; Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, p. 76. 83 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 5 (fol. 8r–8v); Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Prologue, p. 10. 84  See E. Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance in Early French Romance (Woodbridge, 1999), pp. 178–80. 85  Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance, pp. 210–27. 86  See generally Thompson, Cities of God. 87 J. J. Duggan, ‘Medieval Epic as Popular Historiography. Appropriation of the Historical Knowledge in the Vernacular Epic’, in H. U. Gumbrecht, et al. (eds), La Littérature Historiographique des Origines à 1500: Grundriss der Romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, vol. XI (Heidelberg, 1987), p. 285 notes that the audience for Epics ‘spanned all socio-economic levels of society’ and that they thus reflect a repository of collective memory which tied different social groups together. The Annolied (Anno’s Song), 1 lines 1–4 commences thus: ‘Often have we listened to tales/Of antiquity related in song;/How valiant heroes battled,/How powerful cities fell to them.’ 88  Birge Vitz, Orality and Performance, pp. 164–227.

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in the thirteenth century. However, its first attested notice, in the Poème moral of an anonymous lay author (c.1200), occurs within a complaint that lay people left Mass before it had ended to listen to extracts of Aiol performed in the streets by jongleurs (‘Autés est qui ne welt a la charolle aleir,/Mais bien welt tote jour oïr d’Ayul chanteir;/Ne cuide nul mal faire, s’il ot bien vieleir,/Mais je cuid qu’il nest(t) sen pechies esculteir’).89 One particular combination of association and performance developed in the form of the Puys, which emerged primarily in north-west Europe in the thirteenth century and are best defined as poetic institutions with a fluid membership. Puys were attested in Arras, Douai, Ghent, Lille, Tournai, Rouen, Valenciennes, and also briefly in London. They demonstrate the cultural and literary aspirations which were crystallizing within the urban lay classes. Evidence suggests that the poetry was disseminated to mixed urban audiences by a socially diverse range of poets, and that public debates were held to select the best composition.90 Indeed, the Puys in Arras were part, according to Carol Symes, of a newly emergent public sphere marked by a ‘pervasive orality’ and ‘sophisticated forms of symbolic communication’.91 Explicit urban panegyric is not found in their literary outputs, but only a small portion of it appears to be extant, and from the surviving material, praise of the city certainly underpinned the activities of the Puys. The first statutes of the London Puy, for instance, stated that the festival of the Puy was in honour of God, Mary, all saints, the king, barons, ‘and to the end that the city of London may be renowned for all good things in all places’.92 The most famous Puy was that of Arras where some of the poems eulogized the city as a veritable school of life (‘Arras est escole de tous biens entendre’), some addressed contemporary civic disturbances, and others mentioned the qualities of its inhabitants.93 Urban panegyric was thus part of the civic soundscape too.94 Public speeches (publici contiones) were ever more embedded within the political life of medieval cities, especially in Italy where leading communal officials, especially the podestà, 89  La Poème moral, ed. A. Bayot (Liège, 1929), lines 3141–44 p. 223; Aiol, introduction, ix–x; on the singing (chanter) of chansons de geste, see J. E. Merceron, ‘Sur les syntagmes chanson de geste, chanter de geste, et chanter de . . .+ anthroponyme: contextes, usages et polémiques’, in S. Marnette, J. F. Levy, and L. Zarker Morgan (eds), Si sai encore moult bon estoire, chançon moult bone et ancienne. Studies in the Text and Context of Old French Narrative in Honour of Joseph. F. Duggan (Oxford, 2014), pp. 125–53. 90  A. Butterfield, Poetry and Music in Medieval France (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 133–50. See also L.  B. Richardson, ‘The Confrérie des Jongleurs et des Bourgeois and the Puy D’Arras in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century Literature’, in J. Fisher and P. A. Gaeng (eds), Studies in Honor of Mario A. Pei (Chapel Hill, 1972), pp. 161–71. 91  C. Symes, ‘Out in the Open in Arras: Sightlines, Soundscapes and the Shaping of a Medieval Public Sphere’, in C. Goodson, A. E. Lester, and C. Symes (eds), Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400–1500. Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space (Farnham, 2010), p. 281. 92  Munimenta Gildhallae Londoniensis: Liber albus, Liber custumarum, et Liber Horn, ed. and trans. H. T. Riley, Rolls Series, XII, Vol. 2, Pt. 2 (London, 1863), p. 579; A. F. Sutton, ‘Merchants, Music and Social Harmony: the London Puy and its French and London Contexts, circa 1300’, The London Journal, XVII (1992), pp. 1–17. 93  R. Berger, Littérature et société Arrageoises au XIII siècle. Les chansons et dits artésiens (Arras, 1981), I, p. 120; III, pp. 128–34; XIII, pp. 175–9. 94  See generally the excellent study by Saucier, Paradise of Priests, pp. 2–3.

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were expected to include eloquent public-speaking as part of their skill set.95 They were often required to deliver inaugural addresses to large assemblies which invariably praised the host city. In the Liber de Obsidione Ancone, the city’s new podestà, for instance, told a large crowd how it ‘was manifest to the whole of Italy, that the city of Ancona is very powerful and famous [“toti est Italie manifestum quod anchonitana civitas potens est plurimum et famosa”], and its strength extends forth widely on sea and land’.96 The specifics of the speech might well have been created by the work’s author, Boncompagno da Signa, but such public speeches and their laudatory tone were integral parts of urban life. And there were other more traditional and recognized channels through which this was the case; channels that is to verbally communicate some of the information from our texts. Several examples of urban panegyric are embedded in hagiographical works or gesta episcoporum, and excerpts from these types of sources were often read out during Church services, or could be adapted into religious processions and saints’ feast days.97 The task was made all the more easier if the work was produced in the vernacular, like the latethirteenth-century Vita of San Petronio which praised Bologna for its relic collection, its large contado, its cultivation of learning, and its construction of an urban topography mirroring that of the city of Jerusalem.98 This vernacular vita was dependent on the city’s communal Registrum Novum and in turn influenced the wording of the public decree of 1301 which established a new, more conspicuous celebration day for the saint.99 An even more direct connection between texts and (lay)audience emerged with the increased provision of sermons which were often held in urban, public spaces. These were delivered more and more by Mendicants who were particularly attuned to debates on urban living and who followed the developing instruction in the ars predicandi, which stressed the need to shape sermons for different audiences and to deliver them through sophisticated and effective structuring of the content.100 Humbert of Romans (d.1277), a Dominican who became Master General of the 95  E. Artifoni, ‘I podestà professionali e la fondazione retorica della politica comunale’, Quaderni Storici, LXIII (1986), pp. 696–8. (687–719). 96  Boncampagno da Signa, Liber, p. 160. 97  At Liège, antiphons (such as Sanctus itaque Lambertus) sung in liturgical performances became veritable civic anthems, praising the city’s sanctification. Their associated processions also created a public dimension and the city’s craft guilds participated in some of them: Saucier, Paradise of Priests, pp. 39–44, 88. 98  Vita di San Petronio, chap. V, pp. 23, 26–8, chap. VII, pp. 35–44. 99 A. M. Orselli, ‘Spirito cittadino e temi politico-culturali nel culto di San Petronio’, in La coscienza cittadina nei comuni italiani del Duecento: 11–14 ottobre 1970 (Todi, 1972), pp. 294–321; D. Webb, Patrons and Defenders. The Saints in the Italian City-States (London, 1996), pp. 174–80. 100  See Le Goff, ‘Ordres mendicants’, pp. 924–46; and also the contributions in J. Hamesse et al., (eds), Medieval Sermons and Society: Cloister, City, University (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1998); J. G. Tuthill, ‘The School Sermon Exported: the case of Pelagius Parvus’, Viator, XXII (1991), pp. 175–7; D. L. D’Avray, ‘Sermons to the Upper Bourgeoisie by a Thirteenth-Century Franciscan’, Studies in Church History, XVI (1979), pp. 187–99, demonstrated that the Franciscan preacher Guibert of Tournai aimed his ad status collection of sermons at the citizenry, particularly those in public office, and merchants. See also G. Barone, ‘L’ordine dei predicatori e le città. Teologia e politica nel pensiero e nell’azione dei predicatori’, Mélanges de l’ecole française de Rome. Moyen âge, LXXXIX (1977), pp. 609–18, and, in the same volume, G. Todeschini, ‘Ordini mendicanti e coscienza cittadina’, pp. 657–66.

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Order, stated that preaching was about the simplification of the message for the less educated ranks of society, that it should be delivered like a song (‘quasi quidam cantus’).101 The De laude civitatis Laude (c.1252), glorifying through verse the virtues of the city of Lodi, may well have been adapted for public sermons. Composed by an anonymous Franciscan, the poem ends with the inclusion of chapter IX of the Rule of St Francis which exhorts the brothers to preach in a clear, concise, and calculated manner on vices and virtues for the edification of the faithful.102 Another sermon delivered before 1250 by Pelagius Parvus, a Portuguese Dominican, discussed the features of a city; while it was probably presented to fellow Dominicans, it may well be that it was intended that those listening should then use the material in their own public sermons.103 The aforementioned work of Bartholomew Anglicus might similarly been seen as resource for preaching. And the series of sermons by the Dominican Albert Magnus, which were framed by a laudatory interpretation of the city, also included lay people in the audience and were delivered in German.104 There are, finally, possible indications that some works containing forms of urban panegyric were also utilized, and thus found different audiences, for practical purposes. The aforementioned Parisiana Poetria of John de Garlande was devised as a handbook for Parisian university students, and the De laude civitatis Laude might have served as a model for local Franciscan sermons. Scholarship on Boncampagno da Signa’s use of deliberative speeches in his work on Ancona argues, very plausibly, that they functioned as vignettes of the political process in a commune, and thus the work served, in Garbini’s words, as ‘a disguised manual of political eloquence’ for the urban elite.105 It is not entirely unfeasible to suggest that some forms of urban panegyric (the De Laude Cestrie of Lucian, for example) could have served as guidebooks for visitors, but in their current forms they can hardly be described as wholly functional for that purpose. The Mirabilia Urbis Romae (c.1140–43), with its selective list of ancient monuments of both pagan and Christian Rome, was also traditionally seen this way, as a guidebook for Rome’s many visiting pilgrims. More recent readings have emphasized that this work formed instead part of a rhetorical literary programme (connected clearly to the twelfth-century renaissance) and it was not a practical text.106 On the other hand, Kinney argues that the fictive aspects of the Mirabilia may reflect flawed attempts to interpret Rome’s landscape and that the text is an attempt to understand the city’s topography, Riccioni suggests that in one respect it acted as 101  Cited in G. Delcorno, Giordano da Pisa e l’antica predicazione volgare (Florence, 1975), p. 31. 102  De laude civitatis Laude, p. 66. 103  J. G. Tuthill, ‘Cities and Kingship in the Medieval West. Joinville’s Louis IX and Paris’, in J. Glenn (ed.), The Middle Ages in Texts and Texture. Reflections on Medieval Sources (Toronto, 2011), p. 275. 104  Sermon 7 was explicitly delivered ‘ad populum in vulgari’, Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, p. 142; Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, p. 332. 105 See Stone’s introductory discussion in Boncompagno da Signa, The History of the Siege of Ancona, trans. A. F. Stone (Venice, 2002), xviii; and Garbini’s commentary in Boncompagno da Signa, Liber, pp. 61–73 (quote at p. 70). 106 For an overview of the historiography on the Mirabilia see Kinney, ‘Fact and Fiction’, pp. 237–9.

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‘a kind of register of church property’ in the twelfth century, while Hamilton shifts the focus and claims for it the role of a commentary on key liturgical routes through the city.107 The latter three interpretations then allow the Mirabilia a function beyond the purely literary. And if we follow Wickham’s view that it is ‘not a programmatic text, dedicated to a particular version of the Roman past’, we should confer on it the potential for multiple functions, even if we cannot be sure what exactly they were.108 Perhaps the author of the Mirabilia was happy for it to be multivalent and was not seeking the type of prescriptive work that modern scholars are searching for. That the Mirabilia was also translated by the mid-thirteenth century into Roman dialect (in the form of Le Miracole de Roma), and into French, shows too that it spread in ever wider circles.109 There is one further feature of the reception of the material under consideration in this study. The transformations evident in urban society—rising literacy rates, changes in cultural consumption, new indicators of civic consciousness, and participation in urban government—suggest the generation of a broad audience which was increasingly receptive to urban panegyric. Gervase Rosser’s study of myth and image in medieval English cities evidences the importance of ‘medieval urban street culture’ in creating civic myths, shaping urban identities, and defining social power.110 He notes too that the messages about a city which were delivered through elite channels (literary works, documents issued by urban governments, architecture) needed to resonate with a wider public, to generate a shared identity between rulers and ruled, otherwise they risked being ineffective.111 Information thus passed from top to bottom and vice versa. Likewise, Derek Keene’s work on medieval London illustrates the close interplay between literary and popular legends and urban buildings and landscapes—all seemingly informing each ­other.112 Michael Camille’s work on medieval street and commercial signs also emphasizes these types of visual markers as ‘another kind of quotidian literacy’.113 We can then measure the potential reception of urban panegyric by exploring more widely ‘the ambient culture’ of the city through such intermediality. Appreciating

107  Kinney, ‘Fact and Fiction’, p. 252; S. Riccioni, ‘Rewriting Antiquity, Renewing Rome: the identity of the Eternal City through visual art, monumental inscriptions and the Mirabilia’, in L. I. Hamilton and S. Riccioni (eds), Rome Re-Imagined: Twelfth-Century Jews, Christians and Muslims Encounter the Eternal City. Special Edition of Medieval Encounters, XVII (2011), p. 442; L. I. Hamilton, ‘The Rituals of Renaissance: liturgy and mythic history in the Marvels of Rome’, pp. 417–38 (in the same volume as Riccioni). 108 Wickham, Medieval Rome, p. 381. 109  M. A. Lanzillotta, Contributi sui Mirabilia Urbis Romae (Genoa, 1996), p. 19; D. J. A. Ross, ‘Les merveilles de Rome. Two medieval French versions of the “Mirabilia Urbis Romae” ’, Classica et Mediaevalia, XXX (1969), pp. 617–65. See also C. Nardella, ‘L’antiquaria romana dal “Liber Pontificalis” ai “Mirabilia Urbis Romae”’, in Roma antica nel Medioevo: mito, rappresentazioni, sopravvivenze nella ‘Respublica Christiana’ dei secoli IX–XIII: atti della quattordicesima Settimana internazionale di studio, Mendola, 24–8 agosto 1999 (Milan, 2001), pp. 423–48. 110  Rosser, ‘Myth’, p. 12. 111  Rosser, ‘Myth’, p. 25. 112  Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, pp. 69–99. 113 M. Camille, ‘Signs of the City. Place, Power, and Public Fantasy in Medieval Paris’, in B. Rosenwein and M. Kobialka (eds), Medieval Practices of Space (Minneapolis, 2000), p. 9.

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how textual, verbal, and visual information interacted will enable us to identify comparable interests and messages that are echoed in urban material culture.114 Urban landscapes and monuments, coins, and seals all played a part here. Chapter  6 will look closely at the significance of topography and buildings in urban panegyric and so at this point it is only necessary to offer some brief, framing points. As will be covered later in this study, much of the material in urban panegyric in this period focused heavily on the grandeur and symbolism of urban buildings and layout (for more on Christian symbolism, see Chapter  3). The Mirabilia Urbis Romae (with its focus on ancient and Early Christian monuments), Bonvesin’s De Magnalibus (with its quantifying of Milan’s urban infrastructure) and Lucian’s De Laude Cestrie (with its Neo-Platonic reading of the cruciform plan of central Chester and its four gates situated at the cardinal points) are just three that stand out. There is no doubt that it is possible to track traces of these views beyond the text. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, citizens looked at the urban fabric surrounding them and found ways to read a past from it, to interpret and guard buildings and monuments as records of urban glory. Indeed, Lucian of Chester admitted that he utilized the symbolism of the gates in his treatise as a vivid, extratextual mnemonic device: ‘I have judged these gates worth depicting, O city of Chester, so that what the reader has in his books, the inhabitant may hold in his gaze and memory’.115 And in one of the most renowned cases, in 1162 the Roman senate commanded that the Colonna di Traiano, for the honour of ‘the whole Roman people’ ‘should remain whole and uncorrupted for as long as the world lasts’.116 Moreover, some civic elites embarked on projects to enhance or construct the urban landscape in ways which magnified prestige: aesthetics and ideology were brought into the mix alongside functionality.117 Indeed, Keith Lilley’s work indicates some of the ways in which the medieval mind mapped the cosmos onto the city, and how urban topographies could be planned in order to mimic notions of a heavenly city.118 The Holy City motif was, of course, a popular one in urban panegyric (see Chapter 3) and it too permeated the urban fabric. In Trier, for example, a thirteenth-century relief on one of the city’s main gates (the Neutor) depicted Christ flanked by St Peter and the local saint of Trier, Eucharius. The latter was also carrying a model of a city, implied as heavenly, and thus the relief suggests that to enter Trier is to enter a Holy City.119 And as Chapter 3 discusses, the Santo Stefano complex 114  K. Starkey, ‘Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages’, in K. Starkey and H. Wenzel (eds), Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages (Basingstoke, 2005), p. 6; Rosser, ‘Myth’, p. 15. 115 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 24 (fol. 88r). 116  Codice diplomatico del Senato Romano dal MCXLIV al MCCCXLVII, ed. F. Bartoloni, vol. 1 (Rome, 1948), no. 18, pp. 25–7 (quote at p. 27); see also Wickham, Medieval Rome, p. 375 and n. 159. 117  For example, Philip Augustus’s paving of the major streets of Paris: Baldwin, Paris, pp. 19–20; or the management of public space and boundaries which warranted the production in Bologna of a Liber Terminorum in 1294: J. Heers, Espaces publics, espaces privés dans la ville. Le Liber Terminorum de Bologne (1294) (Paris, 1984). On the shaping of Bologna’s urban space see also D. Romano, Markets and Marketplaces in Medieval Italy, c.1100 to c.1440 (New Haven, 2015), pp. 49–54. 118  K. Lilley, City and Cosmos. 119  Haverkamp, ‘ “Heilige Städte” ’, pp. 122 and 145 (fig. 2); for city gates in the Rhineland see U. Mainzer, Stadttore im Rheinland (Cologne, 1976).

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attempted to replicate Jerusalem in Bologna. Its construction, noted with pride in the thirteenth-century Vita San Petronio, offered the citizenry an interactive experience of the Holy City. Italy arguably led the way in the adaptation and reinterpretation of the urban landscape. Eleventh- and twelfth-century inscriptions from Pisa, found in prominent locations such as the cathedral, praised Pisa’s glory through its military victories and its civic harmony, and likened the city to ancient Rome.120 They served as visible, material counterparts to the classicizing messages produced in the Carmen in Victoriam Pisanorum and the Liber Maiorichinus which celebrated the city’s military expeditions to Mahdia and the Balearics in 1087 and 1113–15 respectively.121 At Florence, a famous inscription dating to 1255 on the Palazzo del Podestà spoke of a ‘flourishing city’(‘urbem florente’), ‘abounding in riches’ (‘est quia cunctorum Florentia plena bonorum’), enjoying ‘prosperity and distinctions as well as a masterful citizenry’(‘gaudet fortuna signis populoque potenti’) and dominance over all of Tuscany.122 Comparable messages were already evident in the Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae (c.1204). Carrie E. Beneš’ excellent study of urban foundation legends in Northern Italy from 1250 to 1350 showed how cities absorbed popular myths and used them to inspire their citizens by rebuilding and reinterpreting ancient walls, gates, statues, and aqueducts.123 This flow of information between text and urban landscape was found across Europe. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s story of King Lud’s foundation of London may have influenced (as we shall shortly see) the design of the city’s first common seal and was seemingly given greater currency by the construction of the effigies of thirteen kings on Ludgate (where Geoffrey said Lud was buried) in the 1260s.124 Likewise, Monmouth’s tale of York’s foundation by the Trojan prince Ebrauc weaved its way into the city’s collective consciousness; by the later Middle Ages Ebrauc featured in civic festivities and was depicted in the great east window of York Minster.125 On the other hand, illustrations of cities in the Middle Ages remained rather schematic ideograms and, if in manuscripts, often not readily accessible. But Matthew Paris’s depiction of London, for example, was no simple outline. It was not an accurate sketch by any means, but it was layered with meaning, labelling the city as effectively the capital of England, noting London’s Brutus foundation legends and showing symbolic urban landmarks: its 120 Scalia, ‘ “Romanitas” Pisana’, pp. 791–843; Mitterauer and Morrissey, Pisa nel Medioevo, pp. 226–49; F. Redi, ‘La porta aurea di Pisa: un caso forse risolto’, in Pisa e la Toscana occidentale nel Medioevo. A Cinzio Violante nei suoi 70 anni, vol. 2 (Pisa, 1991), pp. 1–24; Campopiano, ‘Problem of Origins’, pp. 229–35. 121  G. Scalia, ‘Epigraphica Pisana—testi latini sulla spedizione contro le Baleari del 1113–15 e su altre imprese anti-saracene del sec. XI’, Miscellanea di studi ispani, VI (1963), pp. 234–86; Wickham, Sleepwalking, pp. 67–73. 122  Translations of the inscription are taken from J. MacCracken, ‘The Dedication Inscription of the Palazzo del Podestà’, Rivista d’Arte, XXX (1955), pp. 185–9 (which also includes an edition of the inscription). 123 Beňes, Urban Legends, see especially pp. 167–71. 124  Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, Bk. I.23, pp. 28–31; III.53, pp. 66–7; Rosser, ‘Myth’, p. 14. 125  Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, Bk. II, 27, p. 35; S. Rees Jones, York, pp. 3–5.

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six gates, the Tower of London, and St Paul’s in the centre.126 Furthermore, some paintings (particularly in Italy) of cities were displayed as murals or on panels in public buildings and emphasized the city’s unity through its enclosure within fortified walls, and more often its sacred virtues by depicting ecclesiastical buildings and/or mimicking plans of the city of Jerusalem.127 Coins and seals also conveyed important messages about the city and bore ‘witness to a splendid visual culture’.128 Despite regional fluctuations, Western Europe’s economy gradually became more monetized across our period, and a wider body of urban inhabitants grew familiar with coins and their imagery, both of which consequently acquired deeper sociocultural significance.129 Many cities adopted the image of their patron saint on coinage—St Matthew on coins at Salerno, St Nicholas at Bari, and so on—highlighting their cities as unique and divinely favoured.130 These in turn became symbolic of the city’s identity and reputation. Already from the mid-eleventh century, coins at Trier were echoing other textual references to the city’s perceived special status by carrying the laudatory legend Roma secunda on them.131 The symbolic significance of coinage was vividly expressed in a sermon by the Dominican preacher Remigio de’Girolami at Florence in c.1300. Remigio stated that God had conferred seven advantages (bona) on the city. One of those advantages was a ‘noble money’, the florin, of the best gold and decorated on one side by the image of St John the Baptist and the other by the Florentine lily.132 Remigio was partially attempting to demonstrate the dangers that prosperity could lead to, but in doing so revealed his view that the city’s coinage and its imagery were indicative of Florence’s glory and singular rank. While they might not have been as readily visible as coins, from the mid-twelfth century seals became increasingly common. They incorporated rather more nuanced ideas which were closely connected to the rise of urban self-government and the valorization of cities. These seals were certainly known to and validated by urban patriciates as many documents with attached seals involved the urban body as one party to an agreement. As well as appending such public documents, seals could also be attached to conveyances or agreements between private parties, thus conferring additional authority to theses transactions. Their verbal and iconographic 126  S. Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora (Aldershot, 1987), pp. 332–5 and fig. 204. Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, pp. 78–9. It seems Matthew fitted in as many gates as he was able; William FitzStephen’s Vita of Becket, on the other hand, recorded seven gates, and was almost certainly accurate: Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 3. 127  See P. Lavedan, Représentation des villes dans l’art du Moyen Âge (Paris, 1954). 128  M. Späth, ‘Art for New Corporations: seal imagery of French urban communities in the thirteenth century’, in S. Solway (ed.), Medieval Coins and Seals. Constructing Identity, Signifying Power (Turnhout, 2015), p. 333. 129  On these fluctuations see R. Naismith, ‘The English monetary economy, c.973–1100: the contribution of single finds’, Economic History Review, LXVI (2013), pp. 198–225 which suggests that the economy of the late seventh and early eighth centuries in England witnessed greater monetization than the period 973–1100. 130  P. Grierson and L. Travaini, Medieval European Coinage: with a catalogue of the coins in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 14, Italy (3), South Italy, Sicily and Sardinia (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 616–17, 619–20, 622–3. 131 Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 163–4. 132  Davis, ‘An Early Florentine Political Theorist’, p. 206 and fn. 30.

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messages were also well-suited for projecting information to multiple audiences. Again, much like textual works on urban panegyric, seals utilized conventional symbolism alongside realistic representations (of buildings/landscapes) specific to some of the cities.133 The imagery on some of these seals presented the city as an impressive structural entity, replete with fortifications, towers, buildings, and bridges. Most represent the urban community as a distinct, collective entity (either through the legend or the image), often living within a Holy City (a central building usually shown adorned with a cross), and enclosed from the surrounding countryside.134 Examples from France and north-west Europe display these motifs.135 The material magnitude and complexity of the city is displayed in a seal of 1185 at Cambrai appended to an agreement between the city and its bishop (a city with fortifications, full of towers, surrounding a central monument and tower); at Montpellier in 1218 (a fortified city built on a wooded mountain, with battlements, with two towers and two gates at each extremity, a central monument with cupola and cross, a bell tower, and other buildings, with a hand at the top conferring a divine blessing on the city); at Avignon in 1226 (a bridge over a river, battlements, gates, and a central tower with a cross); at Valenciennes in 1246 (a fortified city on rocky terrain, walled, with a small castle with two turrets and six towers, and two further towers with pointed roofs, with a flag of a lion, and the sun and moon in the background).136 Equally common (as on coins too) were depictions of patron saints, emphasizing the city as sacred space: the seal of Pamiers (1267) depicted scenes from the passion of St Antoninus and Metz (1283), portrayed the stoning of St Stephen (to whom the city’s cathedral was dedicated).137 Strasbourg’s seal (1295) depicted the Virgin with Child seated before a city and on a canopy above the Virgin a message read: ‘The Virgin asks the Child to serve the people and the city’.138 Animals were also represented and deemed symbolic of the city. Among the most popular were eagles, lions, leopards, paschal lambs, and also mythical creatures.139 In the case of Marseille, the patron saint and creature motifs were even mixed. The city’s seal, the earliest dating to 1237, depicted the city’s patron, St Victor, on horseback trampling the Tarasque, a mythological Provençal creature. The legend reads: Massiliam Vere. Victor. Cives. Que Tuere (‘Victor truly protects Marseille and its citizens’).140 Allusions to communal governments also appear. A seal of Saint-Omer of 1199, which was 133 B. Bedos-Rezak, ‘Towns and Seals: representations and signification in Medieval France’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, LXXII (1990), pp. 39–45. 134  Bedos-Rezak, ‘Towns and Seals’, pp. 43–5. 135  The examples are drawn from a comprehensive catalogue for the region: B. Bedos, Corpus des sceaux français du Moyen Âge. I. Les sceaux des villes (Paris, 1980). 136 Bedos, Corpus, no. 166, p. 153; no. 454, p. 347; no. 70, p. 83; no. 705, pp. 513–14. 137 Bedos, Corpus, no. 513, pp. 386–7; no. 410, pp. 320–1. 138 Bedos, Corpus, no. 670, p. 491. 139  Arles, for instance, used a lion with part of the legend reading: ‘Famous in the highest ranks, it [Arles] is used to being called the rage of the lion’; ‘ira leonis’—rage of the lion—used as a wordplay on the city’s Latin name Arelate. Avignon used an eagle or gyrfalcon; Corbie, a raven (playing on the link between the city’s name and corvus, the Latin for raven); and Crépy-en-Valois, a rampant griffin: see Bedos, Corpus, no. 46, p. 61; nos. 68, 70–1, pp. 81, 83–4; no. 224, p. 193; no. 231, p. 197. 140 Bedos, Corpus, no. 390, p. 306.

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appended to a pledge by the city, shows four individuals, surrounded by other heads, perhaps representing a city council.141 Similar groups were displayed on seals at Meulan, 1195 (twelve individual heads); Amiens, 1228 (six heads arranged around a central rose); Troyes, 1232 (a person sat in a circle of twelve heads); Dijon, 1234 (a central rider on a horse, surrounded by twenty heads).142 Several Rhineland seals projected images of Holy Cities and a unified citizenry. The earliest from Trier dating to around the mid-thirteenth century portrays Sancta Treveris (Holy Trier) with Christ standing over the city. He raises his right hand in blessing, while the left holds a key (claves regni caelorum: the key to the kingdom of heaven) which St Peter and St Eucharus (a Trier saint) reach out for. Below we see five smaller individuals, apparently citizens just visible behind the city walls, and who also touch the key. The inscription on the seal says Trevericam Plebem Dominus Benedicat Et Urbem (‘The Lord shall bless the people and city of Trier’).143 In Italy, seals became commonplace from the mid-twelfth century as a validation of communal acts and independence, so vital in a region where urban governments were claiming newfound, extensive powers.144 Bascapè arranged the seals into the following groups: those offering recognition; those exalting or defending the city (Luca potens sternit—sibi que contraria cernit: powerful Lucca shall strike whoever opposes it (1181)); those alluding to privileges, traditions, and mythic origin (the lion for Messina, the eagle for Aquila, the lily for Florence); those expressing a prayer, often to a patron saint.145 Urban topography was also depicted and sometimes incorporated famous monuments such as the Porta Aurea on a seal at Ravenna.146 London’s earliest common seal (dating to 1218–19) is particularly impressive as an effort to enhance and convey the city’s reputation. Arranged in a spectacular design, it appears to have been informed by textual material on the city provided by Geoffrey of Monmouth and William FitzStephen.147 One side displays St Paul, as the protector of the city, and St Thomas Becket, as protector of the citizens and clergy, and Derek Keene connects the latter’s appearance to efforts by the citizens of London to commemorate their city as Thomas’s birthplace; a point made 141 Bedos, Corpus, no. 638, p. 463. 142 Bedos, Corpus, no. 413, pp. 322–3; no. 27, p. 48; no. 695, p. 509; no. 244, p. 206. For the Dijon seal, see also Späth, ‘Art for New Corporations’, pp. 336–40. 143  Haverkamp, ‘ “Heilige Städte” ’, pp. 121–2 and p. 145 for the image. Comparable imagery was found on seals at Cologne with St Peter (patron of the city’s cathedral) sat on a cathedra and the legend reading Sancta Colonia Dei Gratia Romanae Ecclesiae Fidelis Filia (p. 123) and a similar one for Mainz (p. 124). 144 G. C. Bascapè, ‘I sigilli dei comuni italiani nel Medio Evo e nell’età moderna’, in Studi di Paleografia, diplomatica storia e araldica in onore di Cesare Manaresi (Milan, 1953), pp. 59–123. 145  Bascapè, ‘I sigilli’, pp. 71–117 (Lucca quote at pp. 71–2; Messina at p. 110; Aquila and Florence at p. 114). On origin myths, Rosser, ‘Myth’, p. 12 notes how a seal for Grimsby of c.1300 celebrates the city’s popular origin legends by depicting the three figures who were deemed central to the settlements foundation—Havelock the Scandinavian prince, Goldeburgh the English princess, and Grim the local fisherman. 146  Bascapè, ‘I sigilli’, p. 89. 147  The discussion of the seal follows that provided by Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, pp. 77–8. But see also E. A. New, ‘The Common Seal and Communal Identity in Medieval London’, in S. Solway (ed.), Medieval Coins and Seals. Constructing Identity, Signifying Power (Turnhout, 2015), pp. 297–318, who dates the seal earlier, to the 1190s.

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explicit, of course, in William FitzStephen’s descriptio. A quite realistic depiction of the city is also incorporated. Its inclusion of a city wall by the Thames (which did not exist at the time) shows the desire to establish the city’s ancient standing as its appearance may well stem from information garnered from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s mythical account of King Lud’s fortification of the city which was then filtered through FitzStephen. The alternate side of the seal shows two groups of citizens (the city council again?) seemingly addressing St Thomas.148 There thus emerges in the seal a clear interplay between different types of media able to articulate a nuanced and laudatory conceptualization of the city grounded in both past and present. To recap then, this chapter has demonstrated some ways to interpret panegyric, suggesting that rhetoric, hidden agendas, and recurrent conventions and tropes should not overshadow the valuable information that can be drawn from them. One explanation which supports this is the exposure of most of our authors to a contemporary urban environment and their need to achieve objectives which required regulation by some sort of audience. The chapter also considered modes of dissemination, and while identifying specific audiences is not always possible, the weight of the contextual evidence suggests that the information could be circulated, and had the potential to reach wider (lay) audiences. The many channels for dissemination of the textual material, and the equally numerous comparable messages found in the urban landscape, buildings, coins, and seals, indicate that urban panegyric was operating in an ongoing multimedia dialogue with the contemporary urban world. If in some cases we cannot make direct links between literary material and the historical city, we can almost always say that the relevance of that material could hardly be missed by contemporary city dwellers. The literary works were shaped by wider contemporary developments and at the same time were able to project outwards influential messages about the city’s past, present, and predicted future, thus assisting urban communities to evaluate, interpret, and locate themselves within the transformations occurring throughout their cities.

148  Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, p. 78; William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 4.

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3 The Holy City Religion and the holy underpin much urban panegyric in the Middle Ages, and indeed it had done so since Antiquity. From the Christian era, praise of cities through the prism of their religious virtues fell into two interrelated approaches. The first embedded the role of the city within wider Christian narratives about man’s salvation. It was invariably connected to medieval Christian thinking on Jerusalem, the Heavenly City, and the triumph of Christianity. Indeed, the city, its gates, streets, and marketplaces, was often the setting for the ritualized entry of sacred relics, royal visitations, and a host of liturgical processions, particularly at Easter. These events recast the city as Jerusalem, and sometimes involved thousands of urban inhabitants.1 The second approach drilled down onto specific manifestations of the sacred character of a particular city—its patron saints, its religious buildings and shrines, its religious officials, its place within the universal Church hierarchy, and its pious citizenry. Both approaches featured in urban panegyric before 1100 and indicate a certain continuity and stability in one aspect of thinking on the city. However, all the religious dimensions of the city were notably amplified in twelfth- and thirteenth-century panegyric, and these can be connected to some of the urban transformations discussed in the introduction. One of these changes resulted, undoubtedly, from the increased contact with the East and re-acquaintance with Jerusalem, the city so central to Christian thinking. Through the rise in the late eleventh century of longdistance trade, pilgrimage, and Crusading to the Holy Land, the city of Jerusalem emerged as a tangible reality in the West and this stimulated efforts to identify positive emotional and physical attachments to Jerusalem within several European cities. Textual productions, including works of urban panegyric, helped establish those connections and valorize cities through replication of the Holy City par excellence. Another important change arose from the impact of the Church reform movement which gathered pace in the late eleventh century and which continued its (admittedly uneven) development in the twelfth century. On the one hand, the reform movement encouraged withdrawal from, and rejection of, the world (contemptus mundi), and the city was targeted as the antithesis of such an ascetic drive (see Chapter 4). But the reform movement had other consequences. It encouraged diocesan and urban reorganization. In England, for example, closer episcopal control was implemented over private urban chapels which had been established by 1  See D. Rollason, The Power of Place: Rulers and their Palaces, Landscapes, Cities, and Holy Places (Princeton, 2016), pp. 245–54.

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the laity and this helped consolidate urban parochial structures.2 It also eventually placed cities, through their bishops, in a closer relationship with Rome and the papacy as the latter established a more ordered ecclesiastical superstructure across Latin Christendom. The re-emergence of Rome and the papacy can certainly be detected in some works of urban panegyric. Furthermore, the reform movement often placed question marks over incumbent bishops, with rival candidates waiting in the wings. In such a climate, new reform candidates or existing bishops, or the supporters of either, were keen to validate their position within their urban communities. Legitimizing strategies often included the reconstruction of the cathedral, usually on a much grander scale than beforehand. It also invariably went hand in hand with the building of shrines to promote saints within the city, perhaps through an invention or translation which ‘re-awakened’ a long dormant cult. One need only think of the wave of cathedral building, and concomitant re-energizing of cults, in England or Southern Italy in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.3 Or the development of new religious complexes in several cities, like the Piazza dei Miracoli in Pisa which was commenced in 1064 and eventually included a new cathedral, baptistery, the famous leaning tower, and the Camposanto burial ground.4 The material expansion of the urban Church was also partially driven by a demographic boom which created a need for more religious houses within cities to cater for growing populations and a commercial take-off which provided funds and artisan specialism to build them. Trade networks might also act as channels through which relic theft ( furta sacra) was performed; the translation of St Nicholas of Myra to Bari in 1087 being a particularly well-known case of the convergence of lay urban piety, mercantile networks and regional competition between cities (Bari, Venice, Benevento, and Trani).5 Saints’ cults could hover above the unsettling transitions brought about by a quickened pace of urbanization and migration into cities. They could be employed as a vessel through which to articulate newfound confidence and at the same time as a conduit to bind, however loosely, communities which were larger and, in many cases, more divided than ever before. All of the above also dovetailed with transformations in the piety and religious identity of the laity. To paraphrase John Van Engen: in the twelfth century the laity desired to bridge the divide between two types of faith—‘implicit’ (that is unarticulated and arguably, in their own eyes, imperfectly understood) and ‘explicit’ (the performance of that faith as modelled by church officials)—and to do so by obtaining means of instruction which were part of the ‘priestly sacred culture’.6 The laity’s 2 See C. N. L. Brooke, ‘The Medieval Town as an Ecclesiastical Centre’, in his Churches and Churchmen in Medieval Europe (London, 1999), pp. 91–106. 3  R. Plant, ‘Ecclesiastical architecture, c. 1050 to c. 1200’, in C. Harper-Bill and E. M. C. Van Houts (eds), A Companion to the Anglo-Norman World (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 215–53; P. Oldfield, Sanctity and Pilgrimage in Medieval Southern Italy, 1000–1200 (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 64–106. 4  Mitterauer and Morrissey, Pisa nel Medioevo, pp. 205–26. 5  A. Pertusi, ‘Ai confini tra religione e politica. La contesa per le reliquie di S. Nicola tra Bari, Venezia e Genova’, Quaderni medievali, V (1978), pp. 6–56. 6  J. Van Engen, ‘The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem’, American Historical Review, XCI (1986), p. 547.

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apparent aspiration to connect more formally and meticulously with their faith was achieved through several strategies, such as membership in confraternities, new religious tertiary orders, and participation in textual communities. Indeed, the twelfth century saw the first vernacular translations of the Bible for the laity in cities like Liège, Metz, and Lyon.7 New mercantile wealth often enabled the significant funding which underpinned this. As Caroline Bruzelius has shown, as new lay understandings of Purgatory in the twelfth century combined with the rise of the Mendicants in the thirteenth, an ‘exchange of services’ increasingly occurred between laity and Mendicants. The former offered vital donations, and the latter offered commemorative prayers and burial places in their churches which lay patronage had helped fund.8 Civic-religious public spaces emerged, such as prominently located lay burial grounds like the twelfth-century Camposancto at Pisa and the thirteenth-century Chiostro del Paradiso at Amalfi, or churches dedicated to artisan groups which indicated lay patronage.9 But there was also a simultaneous trend across the twelfth century to create a more personalized faith, in which salvation was as much an individual as a group responsibility. It was framed by increased interaction with the holy sites of Jerusalem which enabled greater focus on Christ’s suffering and by new monastic spirituality which stressed a personalized relationship with God. One manifestation of this was an increase in private lay commissions of monuments and works of art in religious buildings. Jill Caskey’s study demonstrated one notable example of the wealthy Amalfitan Rufolo family which in the 1260s and 1270s commissioned a pulpit and ciborium of marble and mosaic for the cathedral of Ravello in Campania, and to this could be added several South Italian examples of lay donations of bronze doors for cathedrals and shrines.10 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, cathedral schools and the rise of universities made these new spiritual transformations all the more possible, as they provided cities with a distinctive civilizing/educational role which enabled further Christian-informed teaching and reflection (see Chapter 7). This led to additional blurring of the secular–spiritual divide within cities, a blurring already noted in the discussion in Chapter 2 on ecclesiastical authors of panegyric and their knowledge of the urban world. It created a mutual exchange of information and understanding which was amplified by the rise of the Mendicants who forged even closer ties between religious instruction and urban communities. Thus, in summary, within many twelfth- and thirteenth-century cities, new cathedrals, religious buildings, and cults (new or revived) were positioned within changing urban devotional landscapes. Consequently, and despite that increased competition among a greater number of religious houses created tensions, the city 7  Hoogvliet, ‘Encouraging Lay People’, pp. 241–3. 8  Bruzelius, ‘The Dead come to Town’, pp. 203–24. 9  Mitteraurer and Morrissey, Pisa nel Medioevo, pp. 205–26; J. Caskey, Art and Patronage in the Medieval Mediterranean. Merchant Culture in the Region of Amalfi (Cambridge, 2004), p. 93 fig. 28. In  twelfth-century Rome there were numerous churches dedicated to artisan groups, for example St Benedict of the kettle-makers (de Caccabis) and St Nicholas of the Rope-makers (Funariorum), see D. Kinney, ‘Rome in the Twelfth Century: Urbs fracta and renovatio’, Gesta, XLV (2006), pp. 212–13. 10 Caskey, Art and Patronage, p. 7; P. Belli D’Elia, Le porte di bronzo delle cattedrali di Puglia (Bari, 1999).

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could offer more access points for salvation than at any previous time.11 This all meant that Christian (and, of course, secular) commentators had plenty of ways and reasons to see the city positively in its spiritual context, and this was reflected in urban panegyric of the period. The religious buildings and saints cults offered urban inhabitants new conduits to focus civic pride on, to enhance group cohesion, and to demonstrate their faith, while they also served to measure their urban church’s position in a wider Christian hierarchy at a time of growing political and economic competition between cities. Reforming credentials, the magnitude of a cathedral, the quantity of religious buildings and the officials staffing them, and the fame and number of patron saints, could all be deployed as markers of heightened urban status in this new climate.

THE CITY IN CHRISTIAN DISCOURSE Before examining how, in the context just described, authors of urban panegyric praised their cities’ specific holy attributes, it is important to consider wider Christian discourses and models of thinking on the city which may have framed some of those same authors’ works.12 To start, one needs to establish some of the salient ways in which the city was interpreted within Christian thinking, but for the purposes here this complex topic need only be traced in brief outline.13 The city always played a pivotal role in early Christian belief. In the Bible, the city seemingly undergoes a gradual redemption: commencing its exposition on the path to salvation in the Garden of Eden and eventually ending it in the Eternal City. In Genesis, the first city founded by Cain, for example, was deemed detestable, while Sodom and Gomorrah, along with Babylon, symbolized corruption and envy.14 That said, an alternative understanding, for the Old Testament at least, suggests that cities themselves were not being critiqued, instead when they were censured it was as a context rather than as a cause of a problem.15 Gradually the City was more and more valorized in the Old Testament, particularly with the emergence of Jerusalem and its rule by Kings David and Solomon. Robert Carroll is undoubtedly correct that a reading of the city in the Old Testament indicates that ‘there is only one city, but it has multitudinous representations, manifestations and instantiations’. Thus Jerusalem equals Babylon and it can be 11  A. Haverkamp, ‘Cities as Cultic Centres in Germany and Italy during the Early and High Middle Ages’, in B. Z. Kedar and R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (eds), Sacred Space. Shrine, City, Land (New York, 1998), p. 178. 12 Two works of fundamental importance for this topic are Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’ and Haverkamp, ‘ “Heilige Städte”. Also see the recent work by D. Iogna-Prat, Cité de Dieu, Cité des Hommes. L’Église et l’architecture de la société (1200–1500) (Paris, 2016). 13  There is, of course, an extensive literature on the city in Christian thought. For some works, see the following footnotes and also T. Renna, Jerusalem in Medieval Thought, 400–1300 (Lampeter, 2002). 14  See the useful discussion in Le Goff, ‘Warriors’, pp. 169–72. 15  Grabbe, ‘Introduction and Overview’, in Grabbe and Haak, ‘Every City’, p. 21.

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simultaneously transcendental and a ‘city of chaos’.16 While this supports an interpretation moving beyond binary representations, and indeed the Jerusalem of the New Testament, scene of Jesus’s passion, would encapsulate both the redemptive and repugnant faces of the city, an enduring double-trope nevertheless did become established, one in which Jerusalem was cast as the good city where salvation was obtained in opposition to Babylon, the evil city of sin. There was an overt eschatological dimension too: a new, celestial Jerusalem would rise at the end of all things offering salvation to all, imagery that was powerfully conveyed in the Book of Revelation and which consolidated its enduring influence. It was in the City of God, the work of the Christian philosopher St Augustine (d.430), that the ‘two-cities’ paradigm was given its most influential rendering. Augustine’s work delineated the two models of the city—the spiritual and the terrestrial, the latter emblematic of the futility of human enterprise. As Augustine put it in Book XIV, Chap. 28: ‘Two cities then, have been created by two loves: that is, the earthly by love of self-extending even to contempt of God, and the heavenly by love of God extending to contempt of self ’, and in the Heavenly City ‘man has no wisdom beyond the piety which rightly worships the true God’.17 It would heavily inform much subsequent Christian political theorizing of the medieval period.18 Indeed, the monastic revival of the eleventh and twelfth centuries endorsed the binary understanding of the city. In monastic writings the city appears either to be avoided, as a symbol of worldly lust and arrogance, or to be embraced as a metaphor for the monastery (often called an urbs or civitas) and the contemplative life (the amoenus locus).19 Benedictine monks of the twelfth century offered scathing denunciations of urban communes (usually within the context of a violent episode associated with them): Guibert of Nogent famously condemned the commune at Laon, while the English monastic chronicler Richard of Devizes critiqued the London commune as the ‘tumult of the people, the terror of the kingdom, the tepidity of the priesthood’.20 The Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux invited the clergy to flee Paris, ‘from the midst of Babylon’ (‘a medio Babylonis’), and to shelter in urbes refugii (by which he meant monasteries).21 However, as Congar and Renna have shown, some influential Cistercian thinkers of the mid-to-late twelfth century—the likes of Otto of Freising in his Chronicle of the Two Cities and Henry of Albano— believed that the contemplative life, and the City of God, could be realized in 16  R. P. Carroll, ‘City of Chaos, City of Stone, City of Flesh: Urbanscapes in Prophetic Discourses’, in L. L. Grabbe and R. D. Haak (eds), ‘Every City shall be Forsaken’. Urbanism and Prophecy in Ancient Israel and the Near East (Sheffield, 2001), pp. 55–61 (quotes at p. 56). 17  Augustine of Hippo, The City of God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge, 1998), Bk. XIV.28, pp. 632–3. 18  Le Goff, ‘Warriors’, p. 171. 19  See the excellent analysis by Renna, ‘The City in Early Christian Thought’, pp. 5–19. 20  Guibert de Nogent, De Vita Sua, sive Monodiae/Autobiographie, ed. and trans. E-R. Labande (Paris, 1981), III.7, pp. 320–1; Richard of Devizes, The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of the Time of Richard the First, ed. and trans. J. T. Appleby (London, 1963), p. 49; Hilton, English and French Towns, p. 129. 21 Bernard of Clairvaux, Sancti Bernardi Opera. IV: Sermones, eds. J. Leclerq, H. Rochais (Rome, 1966), p. 113; Haverkamp, ‘ “Heilige Städte” ’, p. 120; Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 299, 307–8, 312.

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conjunction with the earthly Church. Otto, in particular, saw the partnership of Ecclesia and Civitas Dei as a mirror of Christian society. Thus they began to soften the theoretical dualism between Augustine’s two cities, and this was given concrete form as members of certain religious orders, particularly the Cistercians, were increasingly occupied in urban roles, as administrators, arbitrators, and peacemakers.22 From an alternate perspective the Mendicants also demonstrated an influential model which showed that the Christian life could be fulfilled within an urban environment. This formed part of a deeper recognition from within the Church of the political and economic capabilities of cities and of the imperative to harness that power. The developments already indicated in the renewed material presence of the Church within cities and with the changes in lay spirituality also pushed in the same direction. The earthly and spiritual city had always been enmeshed and less polarized than initial impressions of Christian discourses would suggest. Christian thinkers had, however, always recognized this, and certainly in the twelfth and thirteenth century there were clear voices advocating, and forces demonstrating, that the interweaving of the ‘two cities’, good and evil, was more natural or beneficial than their separation. The vices of the city might in fact serve as important trials on the path to salvation. Indeed, the evil city, counter to nature, always lurked, and Chapter  4 shall indeed consider the forms in which this was so. But for now, keeping that opposite face of the city in mind, we shall look more closely at the Holy City discourses of some influential commentators of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; commentators who used the city as a metaphor for the right functioning of Christian community and thus set the former in a positive light. That they also drew on the city’s functions and built landscape suggests that they understood that the material growth of cities in their time would serve as evocative devices through which to draw parallels with Christian faith. Such imagery was of course evident in medieval art. Jerusalem was often depicted in ideogrammatic style as a circular or square city divided into four quarters by the resonant form of a cross linking its cardinal points, and some representations of other cities were influenced by this template.23 Apostles and virtues were also equated with urban forms and placed within depictions 22  Y-M-J. Congar, ‘Église et Cité de Dieu chez quelques auteurs cisterciens à l’epoque des Croisades, en particulier dans le “De Peregrinante Civitate Dei” ’, in Mélanges offerts a Étienne Gilson (Paris, 1959), pp. 173–202; see also Renna, ‘The Idea of the City’, pp. 55–72. P. Zerbi, ‘Les “nouveaux” monastères dans les vie de la cite de Milan Durant la première motié du XII siècle’, in Religion et culture dans la cité italienne de l’antiquité à nos jours: actes du Colloque du Centre interdisciplinaire de recherches sur l’Italie, des 8–9–10 novembre 1979 (Strasbourg, 1981), pp. 57–72, demonstrates the progressive intervention of the Cistercians in twelfth-century Milanese society and their growing attentiveness to the City. Likewise, several contributions in Andrews and Pincelli (eds), Churchmen and Urban Government show the increasing role of religious orders, such as the Cistercians (Chapter 14 by Grillo) and the Camaldolese (Chapter 16 by Caby), in urban government. On the other hand, some Cistercians stuck more firmly to the distinction between the two cities, viewing the earthly with distaste, see. B. Kienzle, ‘Cistercian Views of the City in the Sermons of Helinand of Froidmont’, in J. Hamesse et al., (eds), Medieval Sermons and Society: Cloister, City, University (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1998), pp. 165–82. 23 Lavedan, Représentation, pp. 12–13; Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 3–29; see also R. S. Lopez, ‘The Crossroads within the Wall’, in O. Handlin and J. Burchard (eds), The Historian and the City (Cambridge, MA, 1963), pp. 27–43.

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of the Civitas Dei. A miniature from a lectionary (of c.1130) displayed Archbishop Frederick I of Cologne (d.1131) sat within the City of God below Christ, flanked by Old and New Testament figures representing the city gates, and with the cardinal virtues serving as its towers.24 Several medieval churchmen conceptualized the urban landscape in comparable fashion. In the late twelfth century, the philosopher (and latterly Cistercian monk) Alain de Lille delivered his second sermon for the Annunciation—Gloriosa dicta sunt de te, Civitas Dei (Psal. LXXXVI)—on the theme of the ideal Christian community as a fortified city:25 In this city, the walls (murus) were perseverance, the stone (caementum) was moderation, the rampart (propugnaculum) was strength, the fortification (vallum) was prudence. The eastern gate (orientalis porta) was faith, through which the light of justice begins to shine within it; the southern gate (meridiana porta) was charity, through which the flames of the Holy Spirit warms it; the northern gate (septentrionalis porta) was virginity, through which carnal lust is extinguished; the western gate (occidentalis porta) was humility through which worldly temptations are repelled.26

Alain also brought the natural world into a relationship with the city. A river of celestial grace protects the city, which in addition contains gardens with flowers representing virtues (the myrtle is temperance, the rose is patience, the lily is chastity, the violet is eternal contemplation). Alain unfolded a tripartite rendering of the city as symbol of salvation: The King of kings therefore built three cities, so that he might live with the sons of men. In the first city was the creator, in the second was the saviour, in the third was the merciful. In the first his power resounded, in the second his knowledge, in the third his grace.27

In the 1240s, Pelagius Parvus, a Portuguese Dominican Preacher (prior of a convent in Coimbra), instead drew analogies between the functions of the city and the Virgin Mary. In one of his sermons delivered for the festival of the Annunciation, Pelagius identified four ways in which the city served as metaphor for the Virgin Mary: first ‘because in times of war the city offers refuge, just as the Virgin Mary does in times of temptation and persecution’; second because in the city ‘all necessities are found’ (‘omnia necessaria inveniuntur’) just as they are with the Blessed Virgin; third, because the city rules over all nearby places, just as the Virgin Mary does for all churches and saints; fourth, because the city is the special residence of the king, just as Jesus Christ resides in the Virgin Mary.28 24  A. Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Medieval Art (London, 1939), pp. 32–3 and fig. 33; and p. 42 and figs. 46, 47 for similar representations in the miniatures which illustrate the visions of St Hildegard of Bingen’s Liber Scivias of c.1175. There is, regrettably, not space here to discuss in greater depth the visual representation of cities in the Middle Ages. 25  Kienzle, ‘Cistercian Views’, p. 170; Richter, ‘Urbanitas-rusticitas’, p. 152. 26  Alain de Lille, Opera Omnia, cols 200–1. 27  Alain de Lille, Opera Omnia, col. 201. 28 The sermon is edited in J. G. Tuthill, The Sermons of Brother Paio: Thirteenth Century Dominican Preacher (Sermons in Latin Text), Unpublished PhD, University of California, Berkeley, 1982, pp. 283–5; see also pp. 11–16 for the biography of Pelagius.

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An even wider-ranging treatment of the city as a simile for key Christian figures and for the Christian life generally was offered, between 1257 and 1263, by the celebrated Dominican scholar Albert Magnus in a sermon-cycle at Augsburg. Not only was Albert, like the aforementioned Pelagius, part of an Order finely attuned to urban phenomena, he himself also served as a civic peace-broker and thus well understood the complexities of urban living.29 Commencing on 28th August (the feast day of St Augustine), he delivered seven sermons over eight days, all but one (the sixth) in German to audiences which included the clergy, Dominican brothers and nuns, and the lay population of Augsburg.30 The binding theme of the sermon cycle was taken from Matthew, 5:14, and was linked to Zion, the sacred urban hill and site of ancient Jerusalem: ‘a city set on a hill cannot be hidden’ (Non potest civitas ascondi supra montem posita). In other words, according to Albert, ‘it shall always come to light and be seen from afar’; the city, like good Christian deeds, is to serve as an example to others.31 Albert commenced his first sermon with a precise summary of his position: the Church Fathers can be compared to a city ‘on account of fortification (munitio), community/refinement (urbanitas), unity (unitas) and freedom (libertas), which are within them’.32 On the theme of fortification, Albert draws on Plato’s example of the Athenians’ defence of their city against Hercules to demonstrate that, through the word of preaching and the example of good works, St Augustine and his fellow doctors were the defence of the universal Church and the populace.33 The Book of Isaiah too is quoted and linked to urban monuments— ‘Christ was like a wall to all his people’. Albert adds later that ‘the high tower is the Christian life, namely the Church, whose stones are saints’.34 The conclusion is clear: ‘the holy martyrs are a wall of living stones united behind which we must stand.’35 But there is a note of warning too: the devil is like a roaring lion roaming around looking to devour, thus one should never go outside the wall. And, no matter how strong the wall is, it will be rendered worthless if the cives are disunited and lazy, and consequently they will be captured by the enemy.36 In Albert’s second sermon he treats the topic of community (urbanitas) and says its ordering and government are like the Church and requires three things: ‘monarchia, aristocratia et thimocratia’.37 The monarchy provides justice, the aristocracy offers wise guidance, and the timocracy, those with honour and powerful

29  H. Stehkämper, ‘Pro bono pacis. Albertus Magnus als Friedensvermittler und Schiedsrichter’, in H. Bannasch and H-P. Lachmann (eds), Aus Geschichte und ihren Hilfswissenschaften. Festschrift für Walter Heinemeyer zum 65. Geburtstag (Marburg, 1979), pp. 297–382; Freed, Friars, pp. 40, 93–105. 30  For discussion see Schneyer’s commentary in Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, pp. 100–4. 31  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 1, p. 105. 32  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 1, p. 105. 33  For the application of biblical allegorical traditions on buildings: J. Mann, ‘Allegorical Buildings in Medieval Literature’, Medium Aevum, LXIII (1994), pp. 191–210. 34  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 1, pp. 106, 107. 35  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 1, p. 108. 36  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 1, p. 108. 37  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 2, pp. 111–12.

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in wealth, care for the well-being of the people in difficult times.38 The third sermon covers unity, the need for citizens (and therefore the Church) to live by one law and to do so equitably, and the fourth deals with liberty and the freedom of humankind, which lead to personal salvation.39 The final (apparently incomplete) sermon concludes with six reasons why keeping such a beautiful city hidden would be a great loss: because of the magnificence of its founder; the joy of the foundation; the multitude of its citizens; the beauty of its facilities; the happiness of its inhabitants; and the worship of religion, wherein citizens convene for their services.40 While Albert used an anonymous abstract city to symbolize the Church, his sermons often contain exempla to illustrate his points. Specific cities are in fact mentioned: Athens (in sermon 1); Zion and Jerusalem (in sermon 6), from the former emanates law, the latter the word of God, both illuminating the uncultivated. Jerusalem here is also termed the ‘mother and metropolis of all cities’; Rome, which seen from afar, refreshes, as Albert tells us from his own experience (in sermon 6); and, most pointedly, the discussion in sermon 4 on freedom mentions the office of advocatus in Augsburg itself, an office which we are told protects and guides citizens, its power stemming from them rather than over them.41 Other urban examples are also scattered throughout the sermon cycle, grounding the abstract in the concrete: sermon 3 on unity and equality, for instance, includes a lengthy discussion on fair exchange and a ‘just price’ which would have resonated among merchants and artisans familiar with the thirteenth-century urban market economy.42 Such broad applications of the city to a model holy community could be multiplied many times over in manifold works.43 One might note in conclusion that lurking behind all these urban representations are sins—envy, discord, avarice—which can bring down both the city and the Church. But if sins can be averted, the city itself has the capacity for good, the facility to offer salvation, and the chance to be a civilizing agent.44 This perspective of hope implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, underpinned much urban panegyric in the Central Middle Ages.

38  See the useful summary of this by Schneyer in Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, pp. 102–3. 39  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 3, 4. See also Schmidt, pp. 332–3. 40  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 7, p. 143, and Schneyer’s discussion at p. 104. 41  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 6, p. 135, pp. 138–9, p. 141, Sermon 4, p. 126. 42  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, Sermon 3, p. 120, pp. 122–3. 43  See, for example, the work of William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris (1228–49) who set out his own Augustinian definition of an ideal city shaped by a civilization of equality markedly different from the countryside, and shepherded by Churchmen who brought God and laity into a symbiotic relationship: Le Goff, ‘Urban Metaphor’, pp. 177–80; and of course Dante Alighieri’s representation of a Heavenly City in his Divine Comedy, the place where the highest articulation of communal living could be found: Honess, From Florence, pp. 51–63. 44  In the sermons of the influential Franciscan preacher Berthold von Regensburg (d.1272), the city was often presented as a suitable place to serve God: see H-J. Schmidt, ‘Arbeit und sozial Ordnung. Zur Wertung städtischer Lebensweise bei Berthold von Regensburg’, Archiv f ür Kulturgeschichte, LXXI (1989), p. 265. The theme of a culture of civilization underpinned several discussions of the city’s role within Christianity and will be treated further in Chapter 7.

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Urban Panegyric and the Medieval City, 1100–1300 R E P L I C AT I N G T H E H O LY C I T Y: BOLOGNA AND CHESTER

So, with universal associations between the city and Christianity constantly evolving, the city was ever more endowed with positive spiritual attributes, particularly in the light of twelfth- and thirteenth-century developments. Against this backdrop, we can now examine how some of our works of urban panegyric embedded particular cities into sacred discourses and notions of Christian triumph. There were numerous ways to implant the city into a holy narrative. William of Malmesbury did so by inserting small laudatory passages on cities into his survey of the bishoprics of England, thus allusively interweaving the ‘real’ earthly city into English spiritual history.45 This of course echoed several hagiographies which often preceded their praise of the saint with praise of the host city (see ‘Praising the City’s Religious Matrix’ below). One brief example shows how this simple interrelationship between saint and city worked. In the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade, a thirteenth-century account covered the translation of the relics of the Apostle St Andrew from Constantinople to Amalfi.46 Prior to the main narrative, the author established that Amalfi was worthy of such a holy gift.47 The city shone (‘rutilabat’) among all the cities of the kingdom of Sicily, surpassing them in the strength and wealth of its land and the tireless rectitude of its people (‘gentis strenue probitate’). Its inhabitants were accustomed to travel the trading route-ways of the seas and spread the glory of the city’s name far and wide like a fragrant perfume (‘velut unguentum aromatum effundentes’). They were also devoted to God, and gentle and benevolent to all. The audience could well appreciate then why St Andrew bestowed his holy presence on Amalfi. Non-hagiographical texts could also interlink the city with the holy. In several documents and other works on Paris of the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, authors enjoyed aligning the city (thanks to its emergent university, famed theologians, and consequent advances in Christian teaching) with Christian salvation; thus Paris (Parisius) was like Paradise (Paradisus), or the city was likened to Cariath Sepher, the Old Testament civitas litterarum where inner understanding is attained. In this way Paris proved the final home of the translatio studii tradition while several cities, through the theological studies pursued in their urban schools and universities, could claim a role in enhancing Christian wisdom (for more see Chapter 7).48 On other occasions, authors mapped their city more directly onto the plan of the archetypal Holy City. The Versus de Verona of c.800 had already done so with its presentation of Verona in the form of a square echoing depictions of the celestial 45  William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Bishops of England, for example pp. 91–2 (London), p. 139 (York), p. 197 (Bristol). 46  Translatio Corporis S. Andree Apostoli, pp. 135–48. 47  Translatio Corporis S. Andree Apostoli, p. 141. 48  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 51 p. 50, no. 70 p. 127, no. 75 p. 133 (which also makes comparison with Zion and Jerusalem), no. 82 p. 140; it was also, through its learning, deemed the place where the true Pax Christi operated, see Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, p. 335.

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Jerusalem.49 Keith Lilley’s work on medieval urbanism has placed great emphasis on such a link between cosmological theorizing and urban forms; the city as microcosm reflecting a Christian macrocosm.50 Urbanscapes could carry symbolic meaning. Cross-plan road layouts and gates positioned at cardinal points could reflect the oft-depicted four-squared plan of celestial Jerusalem. The spatial ordering of the city might also represent a taxonomy of Christian moralizing: markets and cathedrals, focal points of productivity and spirituality at the centre, as Jerusalem was believed to be at the centre of the world; the indigent, prostitutes, and lepers at the margins, like those cast out of God’s House.51 An ever more spiritually informed laity might well have been capable of understanding those comparisons. An imagined, sacred geometry could perhaps even influence the pragmatics of urban design, although incontrovertible evidence for this is rare, and mostly applies to new-town foundations. Nonetheless, two examples of works containing urban panegyric which appear particularly sensitive to the desire to locate their city landscape within a cosmological framework are the vitae of San Petronio and the treatise on Chester by the monk Lucian. The twelfth- and thirteenth-century vitae of St Petronio (d. c.450) both show a patron saint determined to rebuild Bologna after its destruction, and to recreate it in the image of Jerusalem, and also praising the vast collection of relics that protect the city and for which Petronio was largely responsible for. Towards its end, and just prior to a long excursus listing the city’s relics, the Latin version offers an emphatic call for celebration: ‘Be happy, remarkable city of Bologna, you should rejoice in the very sweet harmony of voices and angelic dancing, for you are favourably adorned by the patronage of many saints. O how blessed is the city of the Bolognesi.’52 The vernacular version of the thirteenth century reveals some significant changes, offering a more extended and ‘politically-loaded’ account of Petronio’s promotion of Bologna’s status.53 We shall discuss this ‘political’ aspect further in Chapter  6, but for now we need only note that the vernacular vita emphasizes Bologna’s holy attributes even more pointedly and that it fits into a widespread trend that saw cities develop closer links with local saints deemed more symbolic of their community.54 In the thirteenth-century vernacular account, while in conversation with the Emperor Theodosius, St Petronio states his aims: ‘My Lord, I am so keen to visit those holy places beyond the sea, where the sepulchre of the Lord Jesus Christ is and where he was placed on the cross, to see the Valley of Josaphat with the Mount of Olives. From all these holy places I wish to adorn the city of Bologna and to assimilate it to the holy place of Jerusalem’.55

49  Versus de Verona, line 4 p. 152; Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 57–64. 50  K. D. Lilley, City and Cosmos. 51  On the civic symbolism of the marketplace, see Romano, Markets, pp. 19–41. 52  Vita Sancti Petronii, p. 8. 53  See Corti’s commentary in Vita di san Petronio Corti, xiii–xxxix. 54  Orselli, ‘Spirito’; Webb, Patrons and Defenders, pp. 174–80. 55  Vita di San Petronio, chap. V, p. 23.

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According to the vita, the saint’s relic hunting in the Holy Land (and later in Constantinople, Rome, and the Romagna too) was indeed very productive.56 But while such holy relics were intended to place a particular location in a closer communion with Jerusalem, it was the extraordinary material reshaping of Bologna itself which did most to achieve this. While the text backdates the construction in Bologna of a complex of sites imitating both the Holy Sepulchre and Jerusalem to the fifth century, in reality it was a more recent event. The building programme was certainly already underway by c.1030 when it was referred to in the Vita S. Bononii. Recent archaeological surveys and architectural reinterpretation suggest, however, that the twelfth century saw significant rebuilding and extension of this complex (which continued to be developed for centuries). It incorporated a centrally planned church dedicated to Santo Stefano which resembled the Holy Sepulchre restored in Jerusalem after 1048 and several other religious buildings such as a chapel of the Holy Cross which housed imitations of the key Jerusalem relics. Within the complex a host of sites associated with the Passion, such as the Denial of St Peter, were created. Beyond the immediate complex other holy sites were constructed across Bologna, including the Mount of Olives, the Church of the Ascension, and the Valley of Josaphat. All of these sites appear to have assumed important liturgical functions during Easter Week celebrations, an event in which the laity participated.57 A particularly extensive section of the vernacular Vita of St Petronio is dedicated to this construction project.58 Its detailed description advertises and explains a very important development within Bologna’s recent history, and does so for inhabitants of a city who had certainly shown plenty of interest in the Holy Land from the start of the crusading movement.59 In the text, St Petronio masterminds the building project, it is entirely his vision and its detail certainly corresponds with features of the real complex. St Petronio is shown reshaping Bologna’s urban landscape after it had been devastated by Emperor Theodosius, founding the Church of Santo Stefano and making it ‘in the likeness of the holy place of Jerusalem’ within which he placed a copy of the Holy Sepulchre. Nearby was built, among other monuments, the marble Column of Flagellation, and further on Calvary. The text also describes the saint’s construction of the Church of Santa Tecla in imitation of the Valley of Josaphat ‘where our Lord Jesus Christ will come to judge the living and the dead’. After this, St Petronio commenced work on the Mount of Olives and ‘remade the city’ with holy places, churches, and hospitals. Finally, and this recorded only in the vernacular version, with the assistance of St Ambrose of Milan and St Ursicinus of Ravenna, St Petronio placed four holy crosses at the corners of the city, locations which correlated with Bologna’s thirteenth-century expansion.60 56  Vita di San Petronio, chap. V, pp. 23–6, 33–5. 57 See R. G. Ousterhout, ‘The Church of Santo Stefano: A “Jerusalem” in Bologna’, Gesta, XX (1981), pp. 311–21; Cecchi Gattolin, Santuario; Thompson, Cities of God, pp. 42–4. 58  Vita San Petronio, chap. VIII, pp. 35–45. 59  For example, shortly after his appeal for a crusade in 1095, Pope Urban II addressed a letter about the expedition to the Bolognesi. 60  The four crosses are now located in the Church of San Petronio, see the footnote on pp. 42–3 of Vita di San Petronio.

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The crosses were positioned to guard Bologna, and St Ambrose even inscribed on a marble tablet the warning that any ‘king, tyrant or baron’ attempting to harm Bologna would fall dead. The Bolognesi could now experience Jerusalem and the Passion without leaving their own city. The Vita of St Petronio and the medieval construction project in Bologna demonstrated how a Holy City landscape could be carved into an urban topography. The real and the imagined cities were evocatively combined in both textual and material form to provide the Bolognesi of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with an intelligible narrative on their city’s deep and exalted Christian heritage.61 Another work of the late twelfth century, Lucian’s De Laude Cestrie, on the other hand, found within the existing urbanscape of Chester an allegorical Holy City representative of Christianity itself. Lucian interprets the city as if viewed from above, much like the eighth-century tracts on Verona and Milan had done. Indeed, as a monk of St Werburgh’s, Lucian may have been able to do so from the city abbey’s church tower, and combined this with his own Christian contemplation to see sacred messages within the urban topography.62 Unlike the author(s) of the Vita of San Petronio, Lucian’s praise of Chester was not primarily stimulated by recent changes within the urban topography. Instead, Lucian’s eulogy of the city was likely inspired by his engagement with twelfth-century Neo-Platonic theology, and, as John Doran has argued, driven by fear of external intervention in the religious ordering of the city from Hugh de Nonant (d.1198), Bishop of Coventry, as well as from the Archbishop of Canterbury: hence, Lucian’s call for collaboration between Chester’s secular clergy and its monks, and the emphasis on Chester’s associations with Rome to reinforce papal protection of his abbey of St Werburgh’s.63 Indeed, Lucian drew particular parallels between Chester and Rome through the patronage of St Peter who ‘chose Rome so that he might speak to the world, Chester so that he might defend her. There he placed a universal throne, here he established a special shrine’.64 St Peter here uses the city as a bulwark for Christianity, ‘protecting the edge of the world for the glory of God’.65 Lucian’s cosmological praise of Chester perhaps, then, served partly as a plea for papal protection at a time when the 61  For further examples of the recording of popular understandings of urban space see the collection of works known as the Patria of Constantinople (dating from the eighth to the tenth century and subsequently rearranged in the twelfth) which contain historical and legendary material on this city and its landmarks: see G. Dagron, Constantinople Imaginaire: études sur le recueil des Patria (Paris, 1984). 62  See the useful overview of Lucian’s work by K. D. Lilley, ‘Imagining the city: Christian symbolism and Chester’s medieval urban form’, part of an AHRC-funded project: http://www.medievalchester. ac.uk/context/lilley.html [accessed 11/05/16]. 63  See Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 6 (fol. 8v) in which Lucian expresses his fears about the imposition of an ‘unlearned, languid and dull-witted bishop’, of a ‘greedy, hateful and vague’ archdeacon, and of a clergy ‘only suited to the hellish furnace’. See J. Doran, ‘St Werburgh’s, St John’s and the Liber Luciani de Laude Cestrie’, in C. A. M. Clarke (ed.), Mapping the Medieval City. Space, Place and Identity in Medieval Chester, 1200–1600 (Cardiff, 2011), pp. 57–77 and J. Doran, ‘Authority and Care. The Significance of Rome in Twelfth-Century Chester’, in É. Ó Carragáin and C. Neuman de Vegvar (eds), Roma Felix. Formation and Reflections of Medieval Rome (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 307–32. 64 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 20 (fol. 28r). 65 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 21 (fol. 29v).

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papacy’s growing ability to intervene in distant affairs meant that those pleas might actually be heard.66 At the same time, indications that the work could have been delivered orally support the likelihood that Lucian hoped to edify both his fellow churchmen and the laity of Chester.67 As Lucian himself asserted early in his work on the inner meaning of Chester’s trisyllabic name, he wanted to consider ‘over and over whether what is hidden from many could be made clear; and what escapes the notice of the feeble might be made manifest through perspicacious lovers of learning’.68 That trisyllabic name was also mapped onto a trinity of categories by Lucian and imbued with religious import. Lucian’s first interpretation of Chester was in its representation of ‘a learned bishop, a generous archdeacon and a shining clergy’. His second interpretation stood for ‘the honesty of her nobles, the faith of her citizens, and the religion of her monks’.69 The third interpretation represented ‘the unfailing goodness of our Father’ who provides Chester ‘with supplies from servants in three places, from Ireland, from the Welsh Marches and from the shires of England’.70 Later in his treatise Lucian connected Chester to a Christian cosmology with perhaps his most vivid elucidation of the city’s topography: Chester also has two perfectly straight streets intersecting like the blessed cross [. . .] which form four roads, culminating at the four gates, mystically revealing that the grace of the Great King dwells in the very city, who, through the four evangelists, showed the twin law of the Old and New Testaments to be completed through the mystery of the holy cross.71

Godfrey of Viterbo’s Pantheon offered a similar verse depiction of Bamberg, although he neglected to elucidate explicitly any deeper meaning. Set out in crossform, Bamberg’s urban core appeared to be shaped by its five main churches. For Godfrey, the cruciform pattern was created by the positioning of St Stephen’s, St  Jacob’s, St Michael’s, and St Mary’s around the cathedral of St Peter’s in the ­centre.72 Indeed, the cruciform was often seen by urban inhabitants to be inscribed into the topographical, historical, and material arrangement of city landscapes and functioned, in David Ross Winter’s analysis, as ‘a polysemic testament to the medieval willingness to allegorize and to make multiple readings of a single form 66  It is worth noting too that these Roman analogies were applied to several other cities, which equally saw benefits in cultivating papal patronage. The Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae also claimed that Florence replicated papal Rome, likely as a channel to express Florence’s own regional ecclesiastical supremacy. It alleged that the city was rebuilt in the sixth century and that the location of its five main churches—San Pietro, San Paolo, San Lorenzo, Santo Stefano, and San Giovanni— was related to the Roman churches of the same names. The anonymous author, however, seems to have in mind his contemporary Florence and was keen to alert his readers to the symbolic importance of its landscape, as the arrangement of churches appears to reflect the processional route around c.1200 which was organized by the Cathedral clergy in Easter week: Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 44, 96. 67  See Chapter 2, pp. 47, 50, 55. 68 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 4 (fol. 7v–8r). 69 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 6 (fol. 8v–9v). 70 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 9 (fol. 11v–12r). 71 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 9 (fol. 13r). 72  Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon, pp. 240–1; Kugler, Vorstellung der Stadt, pp. 160–3.

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or object’.73 Lucian provided one such reading on the true significance of Chester’s cruciform ordering: ‘a qualified observer may understand that the true God, who arranged these streets in the shape of the glorious cross, does not cease to be a most gentle protector to the lovely city and its dear citizens.’74 A Christian moralized landscape is then reinforced by a comparison of the centrality of the city’s market—a place where provisions are obtained—with the eternal bread of heaven ‘formed in the centre of the earth’.75 According to Lucian, anyone standing in the central marketplace can fully understand how God arranged for ‘the prosperity of the citizens’ by turning to view the churches positioned at the city’s gates, its cardinal points—the Church of St John to the east, of St Peter to the west, of St Werburgh to the north and of St Michael the Archangel to the south.76 The saints of these churches—‘a treasure-house of grace’—served as ‘four principal guardians in a mystical square’, each saint tasked with the specific duty to protect a section of the city and its inhabitants.77 Lucian then devoted extensive explanation to the protective duties performed by each patron saint and how they intersected with the city’s topography and the Christian universe and summarized thus: ‘John watches from the east so that goodness might spring forth, Peter from the west so that wickedness might die, Werburgh from the north so that enmity might be confounded, Michael from the south so that eternal life might be earnt.’78 There are several other components to Lucian’s treatise on Chester beyond spiritual interpretations. He also focused on some specific secular and natural features of the city, and these are dealt with elsewhere. But for now two important closing comments are necessary. First, Lucian believed it was God who made Chester a city, for it ‘is truly and vividly esteemed a city (‘civitas deputatur’) and the God of all deigns to protect and redeem it for all time’, and that this in turn brought Chester into the centre of the Christian universe.79 Second, it is true that not all of Lucian’s spatial ordering of the city was wholly accurate. The marketplace, for example, was not in the absolute centre of the city. But it was undoubtedly 73  D. R. Winter, ‘Making the City for Christ: Spatiality and the Invention of Utrecht’s Medieval Cross of Churches’, in M. Cohen and F. Madeline (eds), Space in the Medieval West. Places, Territories, and Imagined Geographies (Farnham, 2014), pp. 77–96 (quote at p. 81), and which considers the varied meanings embedded in Utrecht’s ‘Cross of Churches’ (Kerkenkruis) complex dating to the eleventh and twelfth centuries. 74 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 9 (fol. 13r). 75 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 9 (fol. 13r). For an analysis of the ‘moral marketplace’ see Romano, Markets. 76 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 9 (fol. 13r). 77 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 10 (fol. 14v) and 14 (fol. 16v–17r). In Excerpt 23a (fol. 55r–55v) Lucian emphasized that the city had many other guardians too, such as St James the Apostle, St Martin the Confessor, and St Olave. Lucian also described St Werburgh’s combatting of a fire which struck the city in c.1180: trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 23 (fol. 54v). For the development of St Werburgh’s cult in twelfth-century Chester, see A. Thacker, ‘The Early Medieval City and its Buildings’, in A. Thacker (ed.), Medieval Archaeology, Art and Architecture at Chester (Leeds, 2000), p. 25; see also O. Creighton, ‘Town Defences and the Making of Urban Landscapes’, in M. F. Gardiner and S. Rippon (eds), Medieval Landscapes, (Macclesfield, 2007), p. 50. 78 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 24 (fol. 87v) and also Excerpts 14–20 (fol. 16v–28r). 79 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 25 (fol. 113r).

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centrally located and Lucian offered more than enough approximations to Chester’s contemporary urban landscape to disseminate a message that would be visually resonant to contemporary inhabitants of Chester.80 It was thus a multifaceted text that could interact meaningfully with its audience in both an allegorical and literal fashion. CITIES AS RECORDS OF CHRISTIAN TRIUMPH There were still other ways to place cities into a medieval macrocosmic Christian worldview. When ‘Christian’ cities were conquered by ‘barbarian/pagan’ forces or vice versa, or when Christian worship within them overlaid earlier manifestations of paganism, those cities were represented as participating in a cosmic struggle. In doing so, they were assigned a role in discourses which stressed a preordained triumph of Christianity and indeed Antiquity’s ‘capacity to be Christianised’.81 Early examples abound. The Versus de Destructione Aquileia (c.800), drawing on enduring imagery of the destruction of Troy, eulogized the lost beauty, renown, and Christian faith of Aquileia in a lament on the sack of the city by Attila the Hun (in 452). The Huns destroyed buildings, burnt scripture, killed priests, and yet they are portrayed as an agent of divine displeasure: ‘Anger vent from heaven upon you/ immediately stirred up a cruel people/which hastened from the rising of the sun to destroy you.’82 The city and its destruction served as a Christian exemplar for the futility of earthly endeavours, for Attila ended up tortured in hellfire, and the poem ends with hopeful instruction that prayer and correction ‘may curb the heathen and check the envious’, and thus ensure salvation.83 The near contemporary Versus de Verona is also framed by the distinction between pagan and Christian. It  commences with discussion of the ancient remains of the city—its temples, walls—before embedding a narrative of the Passion and the rise of Christianity which was then developed in a Veronese setting by focusing on the works of a long list of patron saints, headed by St Zeno.84 But, as Frugoni noted, there remains a sense of continuity between both eras, and the pagan world is handled neutrally, even with some admiration. The poet states: ‘Behold it [Verona], founded well by evil men who did not know the law of our God and who worshipped the old idols of wood and stone’.85 The praise of Verona then shows a city’s pagan past serving as a platform for Christian success.86 80  Faulkner, ‘Spatial Hermeneutics’, p. 84. For Chester’s medieval topography see Thacker, ‘The Early Medieval City’, pp. 16–30 and especially the map on p. 22 and the discussion on p. 27 which shows, for example, the central location of the market/trading core of the city. 81  J. Leeker, ‘Formes médiévales de la véneration de l’Antiquité’, in P. Nobel (ed.), La Transmission des savoirs au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance. 1: Du XII au XV siècle (Besançon, 2005), p. 81. 82 Godman, Poetry, pp. 108–9. See also Zanna, ‘Descriptiones Urbium’, pp. 525–30. 83 Godman, Poetry, pp. 112–13. A similar interplay between Christianity and paganism was offered in the poem O tu qui servas (composed in 892), the subject of which is a Magyar attack on Modena, Frugoni, A Distant City, pp. 66–7; Hyde, ‘Medieval descriptions’, pp. 7–8. 84  Versus de Verona, pp. 152–4. 85  Versus de Verona, lines 22–4, p. 152. 86 Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 57–64.

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In the Central Middle Ages these discourses continued to be voiced through the prism of cities but within a changed context. A more self-confident Christianity radiating outwards from Papal Rome, the twelfth-century renewal of interest in Antiquity, and the material rebuilding of the Church in many locations, influenced the production of works on several cities, but particularly on Rome, which interweaved pagan and Christian subject matter into urban histories. We shall explore the question of material splendour in Chapter 6 and of urban histories in Chapter 7. Here, however, we need to consider the subtextual message of Christian victory which appears. In many works, too many to list, the simple tracking of an urban history which commenced in a pagan past was reshaped by a process of Christian conversion. It culminated in the generation of a series of holy figures and buildings which implicitly presented a teleological progression which worked towards Christian triumph.87 A celebrated work which might be considered of this type is the Mirabilia Urbis Romae of 1143, and to a lesser extent its close relation the Graphia Auris Urbae of c.1155.88 Both are extremely difficult to categorize, and we have already discussed the multivalent nature of the Mirabilia in particular.89 But one function of the Mirabilia, and it should be stressed only one, appears to be the promotion of Christian accomplishment as testified through the landscape of medieval Rome. In one clear sense, with its selective coverage of locations of pagan (temples, palaces, triumphal arches) and Christian (places of martyrdom, early churches) power, the Mirabilia demonstrates how some of the key coordinates of pagan Rome prophesized the rise of Christianity.90 The beauty of the buildings themselves symbolized the city’s sacred virtues.91 One of the most overt examples of Christian triumph within the Mirabilia occurs in the record of Octavian’s vision. Unsure of the senate’s wish to proclaim him a God, Octavian turned to the Tibertine Sibyl who informed him that ‘from heaven the everlasting king shall come,/and be present in the flesh so that he shall judge the world’. Then in the heavens appeared a virgin on an altar holding a child, and a voice saying, ‘this is the altar of the son of God’. Octavian immediately prostrated himself on the ground in worship. The author of the Mirabilia then located the event in the Roman landscape, telling the reader that it took place in what now is the Church of Santa Maria in Capitolio, also, thus called Santa Maria in Aracoeli (altar of heaven).92 As Jennifer Summit suggests, the early sites of Christianity in Rome subvert the city’s imperial topography. They are shown to be located in the ‘interstitial spaces’, ‘outside’, ‘beneath’, ‘in-between’, and ‘behind’ the monuments of the classical city.93 87  See for example the Gesta Treverorum. 88  Zanna, ‘Descriptiones Urbium’, p. 582 notes the Christianized depiction of Rome in the Graphea. 89  See Chapter 2, pp. 53–4. 90  For an excellent survey see Kinney, ‘Fact and Fiction’, pp. 235–52. 91  M. Campanelli, ‘Monuments and Histories: ideas and images of Antiquity in some descriptions of Rome’, in C. Bolgia, R. McKitterick and J. Osborne (eds), Rome Across Time and Space: Cultural Transmission and the Exchange of Ideas, c. 500–1400 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 37. 92  Mirabilia Urbis Romae, 11, pp. 28–9. Lanzillotta, Contributi, pp. 83–6. 93  J. Summit, ‘Topography as Historiography. Petrarch, Chaucer and the Making of Medieval Rome’, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, XXX (2000), p. 225.

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The ruins of ancient Rome then function as symbol of Christian achievement.94 Indeed, this can be taken further. Louis Hamilton’s assessment of the Mirabilia indicates that it should be read alongside the Ordo Romanae Ecclesiae (c.1140–1143) of Benedict, a canon of St Peter’s and quite probably the author of the Mirabilia. In this reading, the Ordo set out papal protocol for religious ceremonies within the city, while the Mirabilia covers and explains the meaning of church dedications (such as the Pantheon, and St Peter’s-in-Chains), and elements of the sanctoral cycle (an apparent sermon for the feasts of SS Abdon, Senne, Sixtus, and Laurence).95 Thus the Mirabilia appears in one guise as a commentary on papal liturgical itineraries of the city underpinned with subtle allusions to the translation of spiritual power from Jerusalem to Rome (echoed in the dedication account of St-Peter’s-inChains which records the transfer of the chains from Jerusalem) and the consequent subordination of the East. All point to a message of Christian Roman Renewal and papal hegemony in the Mediterranean fully in line with the papal programme of reform as it developed in the twelfth century.96 It must be stressed that the theme of renovatio Romae, so evident in the twelfth century, was a multifaceted one. It could allude to Christianity, to the papacy, to the empire, to intellectual renewal, or to Antiquity in general.97 Disentangling these different strands of meaning is not always possible or indeed necessary. Such is the case for Hildebert of Lavardin (bishop of Le Mans and then archbishop of Tours, d.1133), a celebrated scholar, who famously produced two poems (numbers 36 and 38 of his collection) on Rome’s pagan past and Christian present.98 The first (poem 36) speaks directly to Rome and offers a lament on its ruined ancient grandeur and a meditation on loss (‘Nothing is equal to you, Rome, even in so much ruin/fallen one can see how great you were whole’).99 There is no reference to Christianity, and Hildebert eulogizes the glory of Rome’s past, visible in its ruined ancient buildings. The second poem, however, is spoken by the city itself, which has become a Christian centre, praising the Cross that has superseded the city of Antiquity.100 Rome declares, ‘When statues, when foolish deities pleased me/I was eminent in war, in people, in fortifications/But at once throwing down images and superstitious altars,/I was joined in servitude to God’ and ‘The standard of the cross gave more than the eagle’s, Peter more than Caesar,/more than all the leaders of the defenceless people’.101 This view of Rome was indeed very popular. Hildebert’s work influenced William of Malmesbury’s description of the city and the French Benedictine monk 94  Kinney, ‘Rome in the Twelfth Century’, p. 216. 95  Mirabilia Urbis Romae, 16, pp. 34–6, 17, pp. 36–9, 18, pp. 40–2. 96  Hamilton, ‘Rituals of Renaissance’, pp. 425–31; see also Riccioni, ‘Rewriting Antiquity’, pp. 439–63. 97  Kinney, ‘Rome in the Twelfth Century’, p. 203. 98  Hildebert of Lavardin, Carmina, no. 36, pp. 22–4 and no. 38, pp. 25–7. 99  Hildebert of Lavardin, Carmina, no. 36, lines 1–2, p. 22. 100  A. Michel, ‘Rome chez Hildebert de Lavardin’, in D. Poirion (ed.), Jérusalem, Rome, Constantinople: l’image et le mythe de la ville au Moyen Âge: colloque du Départment d’études médiévales de I’Université de Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV) (Paris, 1986), pp. 197–203; C. Witke, ‘Rome’, pp. 403–11; F. J. E. Raby, A History of Christian-Latin Poetry from the Beginnings to the Close of the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1927), pp. 265–73; Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 317–18. 101  Hildebert of Lavardin, Carmina, lines 1–4, pp. 25–6, lines 11–12, p. 26.

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Bernard of Cluny’s satirical attack on vice-ridden Rome in his 3,000 verse De Contemptu Mundi.102 The theme of Roman renovatio also pervaded several other works of urban panegyric, for as Rome’s esteem revived in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries so other cities positioned themselves in comparison to it. The trope of Roma Secunda or Roma altera had been common in works of Antiquity; for instance, Ausonius’s Ordo Urbium Nobilium conferred it on Capua (‘Roma altera’).103 It was redeployed in the Middle Ages for authors interested in Christian and classical history, and is particularly prevalent in works emanating from Trier (for more see Chapter 7).104 The Passio Sanctorum Martirum Trevirensium (dating to the late eleventh century), for example, juxtaposed pagan and Christian Rome in order to highlight the city’s ancient and present pre-eminence.105 Prior to the arrival of the early Christian missionaries Eucharius, Valerius, and Maternus, Trier was said to be honoured by the emperors and the Roman people for its fame, power, and nobility so that it was called a second Rome (‘ut secunda vocaretur Roma’).106 But after the people of Trier were converted, the city which had formerly surpassed all in heathen superstition, now excels in the Christian faith in this region, and so while then it was called secunda Roma, now among us it is called the first-born daughter of St Peter (‘beati Petri primitiva filia vocatur’). Hence today the archbishop (‘presul’) of Trier is called the primate (‘primas’).107

Once again, the achievements of a Roman and pagan past were built upon and surpassed following the city’s Christianization. Urban praise was also embedded into a wider Christian narrative as a result of conquests. This was a common context for urban panegyric. Praise of cities which have recently fallen to a new ruler could serve as a way of advertising the strength of a new authority which was capable of dominating such a renowned city. Great cities and great men formed a mutually beneficial alliance. Even the resistance of a city magnified both its and its conqueror’s glory.108 However, different emphases could be attached to praise when 102  William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, pp. 612–20; Bernard of Cluny, Scorn for the World: Bernard of Cluny’s De Contemptu Mundi, ed. and trans. R. E. Pepin (East Lansing, 1991), pp. 170–81, for example (pp. 172–3): ‘Now you [Rome] do not lead with your eagles, but the singular light, the singular light of the cross is pre-eminent. Peter stands higher than the Caesars, God above the gods’. 103 Ausonius, Ordo Urbium Nobilium, p. 191. 104  See Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, pp. 315–16; Hammer, ‘Concept’, pp. 50–62. 105 The Passio Sanctorum Martirum Trevirensium is edited in F-J. Heyen, ‘Die Öffnung der Paulinus-Gruft in Trier im Jahre 1072 und die Trierer Märtyrerlegende’, Archiv für mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte XVI (1964), pp. 56–66. 106  Passio Sanctorum Martirum Trevirensium, p. 58. 107  Passio Sanctorum Martirum Trevirensium, pp. 58–9. 108  From Southern Italy alone there are several works which integrate praise of cities as they are about to be captured, or have recently been so. William of Apulia (writing c.1098) did so for Salerno and Amalfi after they had submitted to Robert Guiscard, Alexander of Telese (c.1136) for Capua as it was annexed by Roger II of Sicily, and in c.1190, with the Staufen invasion of the Kingdom of Sicily, an anonymous letter lamented via praise the impending fall of several Sicilian cities. In these cases (aside from the letter of lament of c.1190), the audience is asked to glory in a ruler’s expanded power and reputation and to view the eminence of captured cities as a measure of it: William of Apulia, La geste de Robert Guiscard, ed. and trans. M. Mathieu (Palermo, 1961), Bk. III, p. 190; Alexander of

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conquests occurred in conjunction with the marked expansion of Latin Christendom from the mid-eleventh century which created new relationships and frontiers with Islam. As the Italian maritime cities—Pisa, Genoa, and Venice—expanded their commercial and territorial reach throughout the Mediterranean in the twelfth century they produced literary works which recorded and extolled their activities. In doing so, they repeatedly attempted to demonstrate how their city’s accomplishments should be applauded for simultaneously enlarging and protecting Christian frontier zones.109 The Christian capture of cities, particularly in the Holy Land and Iberia, could be used to demonstrate Christianity’s superiority over a supposed ‘pagan’ religion.110 Through their redemption, those newly conquered cities could be valorized as centres of Christian faith or serve as prophetic lessons. Brief allusions of this sort were made in accounts of conquests during the First and Second Crusades. A number of laudatory descriptions were produced for Antioch after it was captured in 1098. The earliest, by a participant of the First Crusade, the anonymous Gesta Francorum, echoes its probable lay author by offering a rather secular description focusing on fortifications (citadels, towers, walls), landscape, and its ancient foundation by King Antiochus. The Gesta does also note that Antioch was a patriarchate and the city contained ‘many churches and three hundred and sixty monasteries’, but there was no overt attempt to fit the city into a record of prophetic Christian triumph.111 On the other hand, the chaplain Fulcher of Chartres (who settled in Jerusalem and composed a chronicle which ends abruptly in 1127) was quick to praise the city’s fortifications, merchandise, and setting, but also noted Antioch’s role in the rise of Christianity. He referenced churches associated with St  Peter the Apostle and Mary and concluded: ‘These had for a long time been under the control of the Turks but God, foreseeing all, kept them intact for us so that one day He would be honoured in them by ourselves’.112 Descriptions of Jerusalem just prior to, and after, its capture in 1099 were also predictably framed by its role in Christian faith and its key Christian sites, but in many ways it was the city of Antioch which came to symbolize the Crusading experience.113 Telese, Ystoria Rogerii, Bk. II.66–7, pp. 55–6; the letter is edited in ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, pp. 169–86; of course, resistance to conquest was another occasion to praise a city. It provided further opportunity for Bonvesin da la Riva to eulogize Milan, and the subject matter for Boncampagno da Signa’s Liber de Obsidione Ancone, underpinned as it was by praise of Ancona while under siege. For more on Bonvesin’s praise of Milan’s history of resistance: De Magnalibus, Bks V.II–XVI, pp. 94–117. 109  Martin da Canal’s work on Venice continued to make these connections in the thirteenth century; see ‘Praising the City’s Religious Matrix’ below. For background see: C. Marshall, ‘The Crusading Motivations of the Italian City Republics in the Latin East, 1096–1104’, in M. Bull and N. Housley (eds), The Experience of Crusading, vol. 1, Western Approaches (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 60–79; S. Schein, ‘From “Milites Christi” to “Mali Christiani” The Italian Communes in Western Historical Literature’, in G. Airaldi and B. Z. Kedar (eds), I communi italiani nel regno crociato di Gerusalemme (Genoa, 1986), pp. 679–89. 110  See for background J. V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York, 2002). 111  Gesta Francorum, pp. 76–7. 112  Fulcher of Chartres, A History of the Expedition to Jerusalem 1095–1127, trans. F. R. Ryan and H. S. Fink (Knoxville, 1969), pp. 92–3. 113 E. Albu, ‘Antioch and the Normans’, in K. Hurlock and P. Oldfield (eds), Crusading and Pilgrimage in the Norman World (Woodbridge, 2015), pp. 159–75.

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In Western Europe, comparable messages were echoed for cities which fell to Christian conquerors in Iberia. The De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi, an eye-witness account of the capture of Lisbon in 1148 probably by an Anglo-French priest named Raol, offers a short passage on the city.114 The author’s focus mostly rests on the size of the city’s population, its layout and defences. There is, however, brief allusion to the city’s Christian significance following a diatribe by the author on the religious heterodoxy and vice within the city. The author recalls the memory of a church which celebrated three Christian martyrs (Verissimus, Maxima, and Julia) in the era before Lisbon passed to Muslim rule, and notes that although it was razed to the ground by the Muslims, three stones remained that could never be moved; a message on the permanence of the Christian faith. Also at the same time, a joint force of Christian Iberian and Genoese forces conquered the Muslim port of Almeria in 1147. The event was recorded in an anonymous epic-style poem of 385-and-a-half verses which was full of influences from the Old Testament, Virgil, and Ovid. It was appended to the end of the Chronica Adefonsi Imperatoris and endeavoured to set out a Christian victory, suffused with the emergent Crusading ideal. The participants—a list of prominent aristocrats and regional groups (such as the Galicians, Asturians)—are praised, and also, opportunity is taken to exalt the status of the city of León. Playing on the city’s name, its citizens are likened to a lion; ‘they rush forward like a lion (“prorumpit more leonis”)’ and the city itself ‘occupies the summit of the whole Hispanic kingdom’ (‘Haec tenet Hispani totius culmina regni’).115 Indeed the king of animals serves as metaphor for the city’s rank: ‘as the lion exceeds other animals in reputation, so León surpasses all the other cities in honour’ (‘Ut leo devincit Animalia vique decore, sic cunctas urbes haec vincit prorsus honore’).116 Earlier, the poet transposed the significance of the whole expedition onto the defeated city of Almeria and indicated that its fate should concern all of Christian Iberia and beyond.117 Its name would be known to all for generations. It offered edification, for it was ‘the nourishment of the young, the blooming gift of the old, the guide of the weak, the pious light of the youthful, the law of the bishops, the final devastation of the Moabites, the destiny of the Franks, the awful death of the Moors.’118 Christian control of Almeria was in the event ephemeral, for it fell to the Almohads in 1157. Nonetheless, in such ways could cities be praised as exemplars for the right path and serve as key coordinates in Christianity’s universal struggle. One final Iberian example, just over one hundred years later, unpacked some of these ideas further. The Rithmi de Iulia Romula seu Ispalensi urbe, a Latin epic-style poem of 1250, praised the Castilian royal dynasty after its conquest in 1248 of Muslim Seville, a key urban centre on the peninsula. As covered in Chapter 2, its author, Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, had been deposed as abbot of Sahagún on accusations of simony, and used the poem to make an unashamed plea for royal 114  De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi, pp. 94–7. 115  El ‘Poema de Almeria’, lines 67–8, p. 28; World of El Cid, trans. Barton and Fletcher, p. 252. 116  El ‘Poema de Almeria’, lines 72–3, p. 28; World of El Cid, trans. Barton and Fletcher, p. 252. 117  El ‘Poema de Almeria’, pp. 140–3. 118  El ‘Poema de Almeria’, lines 43–6, p. 26; World of El Cid, trans. Barton and Fletcher, p. 251.

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patronage, hoping it might find its way into other chronicle accounts.119 The poem praises Fernando III’s capture of Seville in 1248. It was an event deemed pivotal to the reconfiguration of Christian power in the peninsula and which had deep ramifications for the ongoing dispute over supreme primatial status in Iberia between the Churches of Toledo and Seville.120 In the poem the city is eulogized in many ways—its natural resources, its origins, its beautiful buildings and fortifications, its role as a centre of learning, its pre-eminence among other Iberian cities—but here we shall focus on the manner in which that eulogy presented a Holy City whose recovery advertised the recent progress of Christianity.121 Guillermo set the city within a narrative of fluctuating Christian fortunes. First he covered the city’s holy virtues in the Visigothic era, prior to its fall to Islam. Seville was both a ‘civitas Regalis’ and an ‘urbs Pontificalis’.122 Its religious leaders were responsible for the revival of Christianity in early medieval Iberia: ‘The bishop Leander, glory of monks,/And brother Isidore, doctor of the Spanish,/They illuminate and recall the Gothic people/From the error of heresy to the faith of the just’.123 The city was guided by forty-three priests, who guarded the city, and ensured that Seville was ‘directed along the road of salvation’.124 Then Guillermo covered the conquest of Iberia by the Muslims and continued with this thirteenth-century interpretation of the progress of Muslim conquest and Christian response. Key moments of Christian recovery were signposted—the capture of Toledo (1085), the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa (1212)—before turning to the exploits of Fernando III, a king focused on ‘liberating the holy places under the power of God’.125 Córdoba fell in 1236, followed by Baeza, Úbeda, and Jaén in 1246.126 Then Guillermo turned to a description of the siege and negotiations which led to the surrender of Seville. During negotiations it was suggested to Fernando that the Muslim population should be allowed to remain in Seville. The king’s response was emphatic: ‘I have considered the advice, but it does not seem right:/That the key of Spain should be given to the Agareni;/Rather it is agreeable that the city should be fully purged,/ And to fully re-establish the Christian cult.’ The Muslims are then depicted weeping 119 Ruth, Urban Honor, pp. 144–9. 120  For an extensive analysis of the primatial dispute see P. Linehan, History and Historians of Medieval Spain (Oxford, 1993), especially pp. 313–462. Seville became the southern centre of Castilian royal power; indeed Fernando III was buried there, and his successor, Alfonso X, resided there more often than Toledo; see P. Linehan, ‘La conquista de Sevilla y los historiadores’, in his Historical Memory and Clerical Activity in Medieval Spain and Portugal (Farnham, 2012), Part VIII, p. 235. F. Arias Guillén, ‘A Kingdom without a Capital? Itineration and spaces of royal power in Castile, c.1252–1350’, Journal of Medieval History, XXXIX (2013), pp. 465–71. On the growing importance of primatial status see F. Delivré, ‘The Foundations of Political Claims in the Western Church (Eleventh–Thirteenth Centuries)’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, LIX (2008), pp. 383–406. 121  Another account of the capture of Seville is provided in the Primera crónica general de España (produced post-1284), ii. chap. 1128–29, pp. 768–70. It lavishes particular praise on Seville’s buildings, elegance, and commerce, notes the city’s royal dignity, and also highlights Fernando’s restoration of the archiepiscopal see in thanks to God. 122  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 6, pp. 28–9. 123  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 7, pp. 28–9. 124  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 16, 18, pp. 32–3. 125  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 38, 41, pp. 38–9, 47, pp. 40–1. 126  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 49, 50, pp. 40–1.

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as they abandoned Seville.127 Fernando’s triumphal entry into Seville followed and visitors from across Iberia arrived. Sacred Christian teachings blossomed in the city again under the watch of the saints Leander, Isidore, Justa and Rufina.128 It is at that point ‘the city is given to the reverence of the Christian people,/Under the power of God everything is provided.’129 Thus, in this poem, Seville is shown to be a city holy from its early history and an exemplar of a wider unfolding Christian triumph sprung from suffering and struggle.130 P R A I S I N G T H E C I T Y ’ S R E L I G I O U S M AT R I X : S A I N T S , H I E R A RC H I E S , A N D P I E T Y Urban panegyric was not only embedded in meta-narratives, but focused also on the ‘nuts and bolts’ in order to evidence the holy attributes of cities. These ‘nuts and bolts’ broadly fit into three overlapping categories: saints’ cults, religious hierarchies, and urban piety. The tradition of saintly guardians protecting the city and serving as a measure of its rank had long roots. Their omnipresence was visibly demonstrated on local coins and seals, via regular relic processions which involved the urban populace and proceeded through the city’s streets, by the dedication of churches and chapels which marked the urban landscape, and by the requirement to pay tithes on the feast days of local saints. The presence of saintly protectors was arguably the most conspicuous feature of the smaller number of early medieval 127  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 61, pp. 42–3, 63, pp. 44–5. D. Crites, ‘Churches Made Fit For A King: Alfonso X and Meaning in the Religious Architecture of PostConquest Seville’, Medieval Encounters, XV (2009), pp. 391–413 demonstrates how Fernando’s son and successor, Alfonso X, appropriated Seville’s Great Mosque and transformed it into the city’s cathedral replete with imperial imagery. At the same time, the majority of the city’s Muslim population seems to have left Seville after its fall: J. F. O’Callaghan, Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain (Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 113–16. 128  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, lines 22–3, pp. 48–9. The cathedral was formally restored on 22 December 1248, which was also the 185th anniversary of the transfer of Isidore’s relics from Muslim Seville to Christian Léon. In addition, shortly after the conquest, Alfonso X commenced a programme of building Gothic-style parish churches throughout the city as a visible sign of Seville’s restored Latin Christian credentials, see Crites, ‘Churches’, pp. 392–3, 398–9. 129  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 87, pp. 50–1. 130  The fall of Córdoba in 1236 was also seen by several contemporary commentators as a pivotal and symbolic moment in the recovery of Christianity, and thus the city’s capture was eulogized and afforded notable attention: see Rodríguez, ‘Narratives of Expansion’, pp. 126–7. See, for instance, The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, trans. J. F. O’Callaghan (Tempe, AZ, 2002), composed by an anonymous author in the first half of the thirteenth century, it culminates with King Fernando III’s conquest of Córdoba in 1236 (chapters 69–74, pp. 132-43). Here Córdoba’s monuments and layout are praised (p. 142). It is variously described as a ‘noble city’ (p. 134), ‘the famous city of Córdoba, endowed with a certain special splendour and rich soil’ (p. 140), the ‘great city’ (p. 142) and one depicted as being lost to Christianity since the fall of Visigothic Spain in 711 and restored to it by a brave and pious Castilian monarch. The Historia de rebus Hispanie sive Historie Gothica (completed between 1246 and 1247), the work of the archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jimenéz de Rada, also praised Córdoba on its capture: Rodrigo Jimenéz de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie sive Historie Gothica, ed. J. Fernández Valverde, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis, LXXII (Turnhout, 1987), Bk. VIIII.XVII, pp. 299–300; and the chronicle of Lucas of Túy (completed 1237–38), Chronicon Mundi, ed. E. Falque, Corpus Christianorum. Continuatio Mediaevalis, LXXIV (Turnhout, 2003), culminates with the city’s capture: Bk. IV, pp. 340–2.

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works of urban panegyric. The Versum de Mediolano Civitate noted several saints who were stationed around Milan’s walls (Victor, Nabor and Maternus, Felix and Eustorgius, Nazarius, Simplicianus, Celsus and Valeria, Dionisius, Calemerus, Benedict, and the city’s three main saints Ambrose, Gervasius, and Protasius) and boasted: There is no city in this region,/Where there are discovered and rest so many relics/Of the saintly elect, so many who watch over it./O how happy and blessed is the city of Milan,/That it should merit to have so many saintly defenders,/Through whose prayers it remains unconquered and abundant.131

The Versus de Verona devoted considerably more space to its city’s holy protectors, and listed thirty-five saints, twelve apostles, and forty martyrs in total.132 Those saints reflected Veronese superiority: ‘There is no city in Ausonia more deserving of praise than you,/More Splendid, strong and scented by the bodies of saints,/ Opulent alone among a hundred [cities] in Italy.’133 Similar valorizing of the presence of saintly protectors appears in many other pre-1100 works on cities, notably in Sigebert of Gembloux’s eleventh-century Vita of Bishop Theoderic I which offers a eulogy of Metz and praises Theoderic for collecting so many relics for a city lacking its own saints, and thus raising it to be caput among the other urbes.134 As the Versum de Mediolano Civitate had already done, by the twelfth century Christian thinkers even more clearly equated the city’s fortifications, and by extension physical and spiritual protection, with saintly figures. With the construction of new wall circuits, many cities endowed towers and gates with sacral significance through association with saints.135 In Trier, a thirteenth-century relief on the Neutor, one of the city’s gates, showed the local saint, Eucharius, holding a Heavenly City and indicating that Trier should be considered in the same light.136 Lucian of Chester’s work also showed how this theme could easily be connected to an urban topography. In the most detailed sections of his work, he made explicit the positioning of churches and gates dedicated to saints (John, Peter, Werburgh, Michael the Archangel) situated around the perimeter of Chester as a sign of God’s esteem for the city and the protection he conferred upon it. Indeed, one strategy for praise continued to focus on how many saints a city could call upon.137 And this was rarely an empty boast, for with the material revival of urban 131  Versum de Mediolano Civitate in Versus de Verona, lines 31–42, p. 146; Romagnoli, ‘coscienza civica’, pp. 62–3. 132  Versus de Verona, pp. 152–5. Of one hundred verses, approximately fifty-one cover the city’s saints: see Godman, Poetry, p. 182 note 34, and a translation of the poem at pp. 180–7. 133  Versus de Verona, lines 88–90, p. 154. 134  Sigebert of Gembloux, Vita Deoderici, p. 477; see also Chazan, ‘Erudition’, pp. 443–5. 135  T. Gregory, ‘Lo spazio come geografia del sacro nell’occidente alto medievale’, in Uomo e spazio nell’alto Medioevo. Atti 50. settimana di studio del Centro Italiano di studi sull’alto Medioevo, Spoleto, 4–8 aprile 2002, vol. 1 (Spoleto, 2003), p. 49. 136  Haverkamp, ‘ “Heilige Städte” ’, pp. 122 and 145 (fig. 2); for city gates in the Rhineland see Mainzer, Stadttore. 137  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, Bk. I.II, line 406, p. 38 claims that Canossa was endowed with numerous relics, and Bk. I.VIII, line 640, p. 60 shows Mantua responding with its own boast of ‘Reliquie multe’.

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churches in the reform era and beyond, translations, reinventions, and dedications created urban maps ever more dotted with saints and their shrines. In a particularly prestigious setting, for example, King Louis IX’s acquisition of several Passion relics in the thirteenth century, and the construction of Saint-Chapelle to house them, earned Paris praise in liturgical texts. In a mid-thirteenth-century hymn dedicated to the Feast of the Crown of Thorns Paris was addressed thus: ‘To you, O famous city, endowed with every praise, mother of learning, the crown [of Thorns] was entrusted; in you it was placed, city of Paris.’138 In Western Europe, however, Rome’s relic collections led the way. William of Malmesbury’s description of Rome (although critical of the city too) in his Gesta Regum Anglorum is effectively a tour of Roman shrines, and the Mirabilia Urbis Romae was full of information on them along with the history of its churches and the saints to whom they were dedicated.139 Rising pilgrim numbers to Rome in the twelfth century undoubtedly fed this knowledge across Europe.140 Several works of praise followed this quantitative approach, some simply referring to shrines and relics in the plural. Bonvesin da la Riva calculated that Milan had 200 saints’ shrines and some 480 altars; thirty-six churches dedicated to the Virgin Mary and 240 more in the city’s contado; and some sixty bodies of saints in Milan and its contado, which he credited with saving the city from foreign tyrants.141 However, Bonvesin also demonstrated a hierarchy among the crowd of Milanese saints, with St Ambrose (‘one of the four principal doctors of the Church, excelling all others in wisdom and virtue’) at the top followed by St Barnabas, St Gervasius, and St Protasius.142 Many cities became synonymous with at least one particular saint and this was reflected in and promoted by urban panegyric. Close a­ ssociations with saints were consolidated and explicated in several works which often detailed the formative role of a particular saint in the city’s early Christian history and its rise to fame. The mid-twelfth-century Vita of St Lambert included laudatory passages on Liège which claimed that the very presence of his relics ‘promoted that place [Liège] into an important city, into an exalted episcopal see.’143 Such accounts also 138  ‘Tibi, O urbs inclita,/omni laude praedita,/mater studiorum, est corona credita/et in te reposita, urbs Parisiorum’, cited in J. Blezzard, S. Ryle, and J. Alexander, ‘New Perspectives on the Feast of the Crown of Thorns’, Journal of the Plainsong and the Mediaeval Music Society, X (1987), p. 33, and see also M. Cohen, ‘Metropolitan Architecture, Demographics and the Urban Identity of Paris in the Thirteenth Century’, in C. Goodson, A. E. Lester, and C. Symes (eds), Cities, Texts and Social Networks, 400–1500. Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space (Farnham, 2010), p. 96. 139  William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, pp. 614–21; Constantinople and Jerusalem were the other major relic storehouses of the Middle Ages. 140  See D. J. Birch, Pilgrimage to Rome in the Middle Ages: Continuity and Change (Woodbridge, 1998). 141 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. II.VIII, pp. 28–9; IV.XXIV, pp. 88–9; VII.I, pp. 138–41. According to Bonvesin, the number of saints included thirty-one of the ninety-one archbishops stretching from the first incumbent, St Barnabas, to Bonvesin’s present day: VIII.VII, pp. 152–5; elsewhere he calculated ninety-four chapels in the city and more than 700 in the contado: III.IV, pp. 40–1; and six urban monasteries and eight nunneries; in the contado there were a total of fifty-four monasteries for men and women: III.V, pp. 42–3. 142 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. IV.XXI, pp. 86–7; VII.I, pp. 138–41; VIII.III, pp. 146–9; VIII. VII, pp. 152–5. 143  Vita Landiberti, p. 418.

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aided the citizenry to understand some of the dedications of key religious buildings in their cities as well as their own urban history. Bonvesin explained in detail the pioneering activities of St Barnabas and St Ambrose in his city’s development.144 Such links had become so universally understood that in a work such as Alexander Neckam’s De Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae, a late twelfth-century verse treatise on natural philosophy, numerous cities were attached to an early Christian saint (sometimes more) to ensure their distinction from others. Thus Milan was primarily the city of St Ambrose, Ravenna of St Peter’s apostle St Apollinaris, Limoges of St Leonard, Paris of St Denis, and Tours, the city of St Martin, Martinopolis.145 Following the translation of St Nicholas of Myra in 1087, Bari was also sometimes termed portus Sancti Nicholai, just as Venice was known as the city of St Mark, something which Martin da Canal’s work of panegyric repeatedly underlined.146 Indeed, from the discussion in Chapter 2 it is evident that the display of saints on coinage and civic seals served as a metonym for the city itself. The assimilation of a city’s reputation with a saint offered the city, in modern jargon, its own much-valued USP, and there are manifold explanations which may have boosted the necessity for this. Three reasons might be understood as general factors underpinning each city-cult relationship but difficult to pinpoint for certain: an intensified civic piety, the increased urbanization and competition for resources of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and the growth in pilgrimage from the mid-eleventh century. Two others might be viewed as more specific to certain city cults: responses to new relationships between centre and periphery which required cities to define their identity within new political configurations, and responses to transformations in ecclesiastical jurisdictions which impacted on cities. Durham and the cult of St Cuthbert offers a good example. St Cuthbert had been associated with Durham well before the Old English poem De situ Dunelmi et de sanctorum reliquiis praised the city and emphasized Cuthbert as its figurehead. The poem emphasizes the gathering of a collection of relics in the city (including the head of King Oswald and the remains of Bede), but St Cuthbert is first on the list with the poem itself possibly composed in connection to the latter’s translation to the newly completed city cathedral in 1104. Arguments for its date of composition range from the early eleventh century through to 1104 × 1115. Whatever the precise date, the poem was clearly in use in the early twelfth century and influential as attested in its reference in other Durham works and its survival in a late twelfthcentury manuscript. In fact, the poem’s forging of an immutable tie between the city of Durham and St Cuthbert was part of a broader programme of works produced by the Durham monastic community to memorialize and protect their rights in the face of vigorous episcopal encroachment led by the city’s new Norman bishops.147 It was a time of great change, the construction of the magnificent new 144  For example Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.III, pp. 146–8; VIII.VII, pp. 152–4. 145  Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, pp. 448–55. 146  For example, Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, pp. 2, 16–20, 246–54, 340–2. 147  O’Donnell, ‘The Old English Durham’; Kendall, ‘Let Us Now Praise a Famous City’; Grossi, ‘Preserving the Future’.

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Norman cathedral altered the landscape of the city and the poem was current at a time when the aftershocks of the Norman conquest were still reverberating, royal authority being felt from the South like never before, and the ecclesiastical map of England had been redrawn. Through this careful textual programme, including the poem, and the redevelopment of the shrine complex in 1104, the cult of St Cuthbert was becoming increasingly synonymous with Durham, Anglo-Saxon identity, and the divine protection of Northern England. Consequently, the Normans were also keen to promote the city–cult interrelationship in a bid to legitimize Norman power in the region.148 It is worth reiterating here that the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw significant changes in diocesan maps, and an increasing sophistication of episcopal administrative structures and careful delineation of jurisdictions. It was also an era which witnessed a growing concern among several metropolitans to confirm their primatial status, aided by the spread of Gratian’s Decretum (c.1140) which helped elucidate ‘the juridical figure of the primate’.149 This inevitably created tensions, claims, and attempts to support or challenge them, and urban panegyric was mobilized in this context. In some of the associations between city and saint in urban panegyric we may detect in the backdrop some of those issues of ecclesiastical hierarchy and authority. Krönert’s study has detailed the production of a corpus of approximately twenty-five hagiographical texts from Trier from c.960 onwards which utilized saintly cults to articulate the city’s exalted status. Several of these texts were synthesized in the Gesta Treverorum (c.1101, with a later continuation c.1132) and in this way became part of the city’s official history.150 Collectively they emphasized the city’s religious orthodoxy and its apostolic traditions, with its first bishops Eucharius, Valerius, and Maternus said to have been sent by St Peter, and Maternus to have converted, among others, the people of Cologne.151 They also concentrated on Trier’s imperial connections (linked to the reputed presence in the city of Constantine’s mother Helen, and ancient monuments such as the Porta Nigra).152 The Gesta Treverorum gave plenty of coverage to the city’s evangelization, and also to the group martyrdom which occurred in Trier in 291. The Gesta drew on two recent accounts of the latter event, the Historia martyrum Treverensium (c.1072) and the Passio sanctorum martyrum Treverensium (c.1100). Both these accounts, in turn, had been produced in the aftermath of the discovery of the tomb of martyrs at the monastery of St-Paulin in Trier in 1072. This event gave the city its own prestigious group of martyr saints to rival Cologne’s 11,000 virgin martyrs.153 No doubt a combination of all the above information was used to ward off counterclaims from the likes of Cologne and Reims over ecclesiastical primacy in the region. The focus in Trier on ancient saints and imperial heritage clearly served as 148  For the wider context see also W. M. Aird, St Cuthbert and the Normans: the Church of Durham, 1071–1153 (Woodbridge, 1998). 149  Delivré, ‘Foundations’, p. 405. 150 Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, p. 287. 151  Gesta Treverorum, pp. 145–7; Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, pp. 309–14. 152 Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, pp. 315–16. 153  Gesta Treverorum, pp. 143–53; Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, pp. 40, 277–8, 310–14; Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 144–6.

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an attempt to give the city a ‘deeper history’ of pre-eminence as it repositioned itself once again in an empire, this time one reconstituted by the Ottonians and then developed by the Salians.154 These associations continued throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in other works produced at Trier. An epistle associated with the Translatio Sancti Modoaldi (c.1107) took the saint’s translation as further evidence to commend the ‘glorious, metropolitan Trier, the most noble of cities, whose primary dignity merits it the name of another Roma (altera Roma)’.155 The Gesta of Henry II Archbishop of Trier (1260–86) also recounted an intrusion into the monastery of St Mathias, and used this as a platform to eulogize the saint’s impact on the city, clearly with one eye on ecclesiastical supremacy. St Mathias is described as ‘the great patron of all Germany’ through whom the city of Trier and all of Germany is honoured.156 Saucier has, likewise, shown that the production of hagiographical works which implicitly praised Liège by exalting its saintly founders seemed to be partially driven by competition with the nearby bishopric of Maastricht.157 The aforementioned poem on Seville by Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada might well also be read as a validation for Seville’s archiepiscopal status following its conquest. It fed into the ongoing dispute over primatial status in the Iberian peninsula between Toledo and Seville.158 To assert Seville’s special status, the poem draws on SS Leander and Isidore, figures who an earlier Iberian chronicler, Lucas of Túy (who completed his work c.1237–38) presented as the first primates of Iberia before the ‘dignitas primacie’ was translated to Toledo in the seventh century.159 A section of the poem which calls Seville the Metropolitan of Betica, the Roman province in Hispania with its capital at Córdoba, is closely followed by a record of the role of Leander and Isidore in steering the Visigoths away from heresy: true Christianity emanates from Seville, a city worthy of metropolitan, and perhaps primatial, rank.160 Comparable agendas appear in William FitzStephen’s panegyric of London, a panegyric which binds the city to St Thomas Becket’s rapidly expanding cult through its insertion at the start of his vita. Becket was born in London, and, having been recently martyred, his cult had gained astonishing power and popularity. As John Scattergood’s analysis demonstrates, FitzStephen’s description of London is underpinned by his attempt to promote the city as a centre of empire, heir, and indeed always superior, 154 Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, p. 300 shows that the hagiographic texts also, of course, had more local functions, serving to express the superiority of specific saints, and playing out local antagonisms between monastic houses in Trier, particularly between Saint-Paulin and the royal abbey of Saint-Maximin. 155  Translatio et miracula Sancti Modoaldi, ed. P. Jaffé, in G. H. Pertz (ed.), Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XII (Hannover, 1856), p. 286. 156  Gesta Henrici Archiepiscopi et Theoderici Abbatis, ed. G. Waitz, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XXIV (Hannover, 1879), p. 434. 157 Saucier, Paradise of Priests, pp. 17–18, 36, 47, 96. 158 Linehan, History, pp. 313–462. 159  Lucas of Túy, Chronicon Mundi, Praefatio, p. 6, Bk. III.4, p. 165; Bk. III.9, p. 170; Bk. III.14, p. 177. See also Linehan, History, pp. 350 and n. 4, 357–8 and Linehan, ‘La conquista’, pp. 229–44. 160  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, lines 22, 25–8, pp. 28–9. O’Callaghan, Reconquest, p. 16, indeed after Seville fell in 1248, Remondo bishop of Segovia was promoted to archbishop of the re-established metropolitan see of Seville and the city’s Great Mosque transformed into the cathedral, see Crites, ‘Churches’, pp. 391–9.

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to Rome.161 London of the late twelfth century was certainly morphing into a metropolis, a ‘proto-capital’ of a wider Angevin realm. Alongside its secular grandeur, the city’s ecclesiastical status also needed safeguarding. FitzStephen generally suffuses his description with nods to a pious city, evident in its three principal churches and multitude of other conventual and parish churches, its holy plays, and its claim to be birthplace to that most Christian of emperors, Constantine.162 All in line with a city which, by 1200, had become the ‘pre-eminent English concentration of innovative religious and charitable institutions’.163 But he also handles as neutrally as possible the issue of the city’s relationship with Becket and its claims to metropolitan rank. He says: In the Church of St Paul is the Episcopal See: it was formerly a Metropolitan, and it is believed that it will be so again, if the citizens return to the island, unless perhaps the archiepiscopal title of the Blessed Martyr Thomas and the presence of his body should preserve forever that dignity for Canterbury, where now it rests. But since St Thomas had illuminated both these cities, having risen in London and set in Canterbury, in consideration of the saint himself, and with justice accepted, may make further claim against the other.164

FitzStephen here seems to be drawing from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, especially where it claims that Britain’s original archiepiscopal sees were in ‘the noblest cities’ of London, York, and Caerleon, and that London subsequently passed the honour to Canterbury.165 Indeed, Gilbert Foliot, the then bishop of London, utilized the Historia Regum Britanniae as evidence that London, not Canterbury, should have ecclesiastical primacy in Britain.166 The Bishop of London would of course never be successful, but by the thirteenth century Thomas Becket was at least widely venerated in the city as a local saint. One final development explains another reason why some urban panegyric emphasized a special relationship between a saint and a city: the looming presence of the papacy. The papal reform movement and the incremental extension of papal power, accelerated during the pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216), brought Rome into closer contact with the city through its urban ecclesiastical hierarchies. Cities, or particular communities within them, might look favourably on this, or, indeed, might not. And some might position themselves in relation to it, as several works from Trier did by presenting their city as a Secunda Roma.167 The altercatio 161  Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City’, pp. 32–6. 162  Alongside its ancient history, urban fortifications, and resources Gervase of Tilbury also considered London to be ‘so blessed in the number of those faithfully serving God in its holy monasteries and illustrious collegiate churches’, Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, II. 17, pp. 398–401. 163  D. J. Keene, ‘London from the Post-Roman Period to 1300’, in D. M. Palliser (ed.), The Cambridge Urban History of Britain. Vol. 1, 600–1540 (Cambridge, 2000), p. 211. 164  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 2; the translation here follows, with some minor adaptations, that of Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City’, p. 33. 165  Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, Bk. IV.72, pp. 88–9; it is of course worth noting that Pope Gregory the Great’s mission to restore the English sees had originally intended London to have primacy. 166  Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City’, p. 34. 167  This also, of course, had classical resonances too, for which see Chapter 7.

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between Mantua and Canossa in Donizone’s Vita Mathildis shows how papal power could be used as a positive, especially when viewed by an Italian monastic author who supported papal reform. In its attempt to outdo Mantua to claim the relics of Boniface, Canossa boasted of its direct dependence on the papacy, whereas the former was subjected to the Patriarch of Aquileia.168 Lucian of Chester also approved of the authority of the papacy. His emphasis on St Peter’s patronage of Chester was seemingly linked to the hope that Rome might grant immunity to his monastery of St Werburgh, safeguarding it from episcopal intervention.169 On the other hand, Bonvesin’s extensive eulogy of Milan is shaped by a more guarded respect for Rome which allowed room to assert his city’s own independence and exalted status. Milanese ecclesiastical autonomy had remained a divisive issue for centuries, and it was at the heart of the disturbances in Milan in the second half of the eleventh century with the efforts of the Salian emperors on the one hand, and papal reformers on the other, to intervene in the city’s religious ordering.170 Bonvesin frequently stresses that the city’s archbishop enjoyed a special immunity and privilege and articulates his (and we could add Milan’s) view above all through his linking of the city’s status with its most prominent saints, Barnabas and Ambrose.171 In chapter VIII.II, Bonvesin relays an ancient dispute over archiepiscopal rank between Milan and Ravenna, and called upon a decretal of Gregory I which commanded respect for the hierarchy established in antiquity. Bonvesin then supports this position by arguing that the city’s first bishop, St Barnabas, was an apostle, while Ravenna’s, St Apollinaris, was merely a disciple of an apostle. Thus Bonvesin asks: ‘Was perhaps the Christian Church not founded here [Milan] before in any other city of Italy?’ Moreover, according to Bonvesin, the Ambrosian liturgy, introduced by Ambrose, a native of Rome, conferred a unique status on the city.172 Further on, he adds that the city can claim a greater dignity still, for St Barnabas became bishop in the fourth year prior to St Peter establishing his seat in Rome, and thus in the thirteenth year after Christ’s Passion.173 Having established his evidence, Bonvesin then claimed Milan’s respect for Rome, and its willingness to suffer for the Roman Church. He noted that the city, unlike others in Lombardy, never abandoned Rome during the reign of Frederick Barbarossa, and always persevered in its loyalty to it. Milan thus was worthy of the name Roma secunda and enjoys ‘after the highest pontiff, first place in the hierarchy among all archbishops of the world, and full liberty’.174 The archbishop is ‘like 168  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, lines 644–67, p. 62. 169  See above p. 73 and Doran, ‘Authority and Care’. 170  See C. Violante, La pataria milanese e la riforma ecclesiastica 1: Le premesse (1045–1057) (Rome, 1955); Wickham, Sleepwalking, pp. 21–9. The late eleventh-century Milanese chronicler Landulf Senior was particularly hostile to the encroachments of papal reformers on Milan’s Ambrosian, ecclesiastical liberties, see Romagnoli, ‘coscienza civica’, p. 64. 171  See for example, Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VII.II, p. 140; VIII.IV, p. 150. One such alleged privilege was the archbishop’s role, on a par with the popes, in the coronation of the emperor, VIII.III, pp. 146–8. 172 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.III, pp. 146–50. 173 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.VII, pp. 152–3. 174 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VI.I–II, pp. 132–5; VIII.IV, pp. 150–1.

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another pope [quasi alter papi], head of the Ambrosian liturgy’, a privilege established ‘through the divine miracle and generous gift of our patron St Ambrose’.175 Other manifestations of holiness, beyond association with sanctity, were attributed to cities in some works of urban panegyric. They tended to focus on the magnificence and quantity of the city’s religious buildings, and on the piety of its inhabitants and religious officials: messages that no doubt resonated in a changing climate of lay religiosity and reform and which gave the laity a sense of agency. This chapter has already noted some of the significant ways in which religious buildings were presented in works of urban panegyric, from their qualitative and locational importance in Lucian’s Chester, to their sheer abundance in Bonvesin’s Milan or FitzStephen’s or Gervase of Tilbury’s London. The Mirabilia Urbis Romae, of course, utilized sites of Christian worship to demonstrate the city’s unique spiritual and historical stratigraphy. At a more mundane level, religious buildings served as key markers of civic esteem. Orderic’s description of Rouen speaks of its remarkable churches, and the most important religious building of all, the cathedral, served to indicate a city’s and its ruling elite’s authority and status; this was especially evident in the wave of cathedral building enacted in English cities after the Norman conquest.176 It is also summed up starkly in Donizone’s altercatio when Mantua attempts to gain the upper hand over Canossa by boasting of its magnificent cathedral (which other evidence indicates had been recently rebuilt), which resonated with priestly song, and guarded a host of relics.177 Similarly, Rodulfus Tortarius’s depiction of Bayeux in his verse epistle Ad Robertum is dominated by the magnificence of the city’s cathedral, ‘the high towers of the honourable temple’, and its fine stonework and decoration.178 Magnificent religious buildings meant little if suitable officials and a receptive flock were lacking. However, we have already seen how distinctive changes to lay religiosity were occurring in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries and this mirrors closely the theme of piety built into the city’s fabric in many works of urban panegyric. By the late twelfth century it was a message doubtless also conscious of the emergence in a number of cities of a variety of unorthodox groups which would be branded as heretical.179 And it was a message equally aware of the growing concerns about poverty associated with rising urban populations and how it could be remedied, particularly through charitable acts. Urban piety was explicitly apparent throughout Martin da Canal’s panegyric work on Venice, and dovetailed neatly with the text’s clear political agendas—to demonstrate Venetian loyalty to the papacy and the Crusade ideal and rebuild Venetian power in mainland Italy, the Adriatic, 175 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.V, pp. 150–1. 176  Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, III. Bk. V, pp. 36–7. 177  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, lines 636–43, p. 60. 178  Rodulphus Tortarius, Carmina, xxi–iii and Epistula IX, lines 291–302, p. 329. Bouet, ‘L’image des villes’, pp. 330–1. 179  For instance, in some of his sermons, Federigo Visconti, Archbishop of Pisa (1254–77), boasted of Pisa’s ‘purity of faith’ and freedom from heresy: A. Murray, ‘Archbishop and Mendicants in Thirteenth-Century Pisa’, in K. Elm (ed.), Stellung und Wirksamkeit der Bettelorden in der städtischen Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1981), pp. 42–3.

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and the Eastern Mediterranean.180 Thus, one of Martin’s avowed aims was to show ‘how perfectly they [the Venetians] follow the faith of Jesus Christ and how obedient they are to the Holy Church, and how they never disobey the commandments of the Holy Church. Within the great city of Venice no Patarenes, Cathars, usurers, murderers, bandits or robbers dare to dwell.’181 His subsequent survey of the city’s legendary early history made much of the Venetians’ sustenance of Christianity after the devastations of Attila in Italy, as they built seventy churches and many other religious houses in the lagoons.182 Other Venetian traditions of the twelfth century even placed the city’s foundation on the feast day of the Annunciation and thus intrinsically rooted in a pure faith.183 Henry of Rimini’s praise of c.1300 consolidated this picture of Venetian piety by noting the citizens’ devotion to God, their support for the poor (via hospitals, alms, testamentary bequests) and the absence of heretics and usurers.184 Similar praise for a charitable ethos underpinning urban piety occurred in the Anonymous Genovese. During a rare pause from his eulogy of the commercial city, he boasted that the Genoese were renowned donors of alms to mendicants, foreigners, and the poor throughout Lombardy, and in return had received God’s protection and support.185 More succinctly, William FitzStephen provided a summary list of reasons why no other city was deserving of more respect than London, at the top of which was the citizens’ ‘attending church, honouring the rules of God, observing feast-days, giving alms’, and he also boasted of the city’s culture of holy plays rather than secular shows.186 But it is Bonvesin’s praise of Milan which most deeply claims an integral religiosity fused into the urban landscape, but one which could be corrupted too. Bonvesin’s position is clear: the Milanesi are famed as a model of religiosity (‘religiositatis exemplum’). Indeed the honesty of its religious and its enduring loyalty to the Church was deemed by the author to be one of the city’s six strengths (‘specialia’).187 Evidence for this was seemingly abundant: the number and diversity of female religious orders, the presence of the Humiliati, of the Carmelites, and of course the 180  C. Cracco, Società e stato nel medioevo veneziano (secoli xii–xiv) (Florence, 1967), pp. 270–85; G. Fasoli, ‘La Cronique de Veniciens di Martino da Canale’, Studi medievali, II, 3rd series (1961), pp. 55–6; see also the introduction by Morreale in Martin da Canal, Les Estoires de Venise, viii–xvii. 181  Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, trans. Morreale, p. 3; Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, p. 2. 182  Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, p. 6. 183  P. Fortini Brown, Venice and Antiquity: the Venetian Sense of Past (New Haven, 1996), p. 21. 184  Henry of Rimini’s Paean to Venice (ca. 1300), trans. Law, p. 516. 185  Anonimo Genovese, ed. Contini, lines 175–86, pp. 757–8: Anonimo Genovese, trans. Dean, Towns of Italy, p. 22. 186  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, pp. 9–12 (quote at p. 8). For praise of the intrinsic piety of Chester see Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 6 (fol. 8v–9r), 11 (fol. 15r), 13 (fol. 15v–16r), 24 (fol. 88r–88v); Lucian also offered further ‘hard’ evidence of his city’s religiosity, such as two venerable priests of Chester (trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 19 (fol. 27v–28r)) and the holy processions of the city’s clerks on holy days (trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 25 (fol. 112r)). He also acknowledged that the citizens of Chester were ‘generous in hospitality’ and ‘compassionate to the poor’ (trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 25 (fol. 113v)). 187 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.I.38; VIII.IX, p. 156.

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Franciscans and Dominicans.188 The latter two were also listed by Bonvesin under the city’s spiritual gifts, for they fought heresy, and planted and nurtured the Catholic faith among the populace.189 Milan was thus blessed with more than 10,000 religious by whose virtues and prayers God had protected the city from many dangers.190 The city’s faith was unique and supreme, and this was augmented by the tradition that the apostle St Barnabas became its first bishop before St Peter had established himself in Rome. Furthermore, this faith was framed by the Ambrosian liturgy, and by its constant loyalty to Rome, which, Bonvesin notes, unlike other cities was never abandoned during the conflicts with Frederick Barbarossa and which earned it the title Roma secunda.191 It was additionally augmented by the spiritual fortitude of its former citizens. Bonvesin records that Milan produced two Roman emperors and in recent times several podestàs for other cities. But this was dwarfed by his long list of Milanesi who became saints, three who became popes, and there were also legates, cardinals, and bishops of other cities, including a current patriarch of Aquileia.192 Furthermore, Bonvesin believed that ‘our city enjoyed a special dignity’ (‘nostre civitatis dignitas pretiosa’), for its inhabitants from ancient times could perform penance for their sins within their own diocese.193 All well and good, but Bonvesin sounds a note of caution. Impiety, immorality, and pride always lurked; he used the latter to explain the city’s destruction in 1162 by Frederick Barbarossa, and the former two played a role in his lament on factionalism in contemporary Milan.194 It was a factionalism in which Bonvesin saw Lucifer at work, and exacerbated by corrupt religious. In this mourning tone Bonvesin ended his remarkable work with a prayer to Christ to keep the Milanesi on the right path (‘cives recte ambulantes in via recta converset’).195 The Liber Pergaminus, however, claimed to know how such discord could be avoided: guidance by pious governors. It boasted that the Bergamesi lived in peace, following civic laws, which were carefully managed by twelve holy men (‘viris sanctis est hec duodenis’). The latter, civic consuls we are to assume, were elected by the people and worked on holy laws (‘sanctas leges’) day and night.196 Here then we see the eliding of the apostolic mission (the twelve holy figures) with communal government, a trend which

188 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.IX and X, pp. 44–6. Similar praise of Lodi’s religious is found in De laude civitatis Laude. Its anonymous Franciscan author boasted that: ‘[at Lodi there exists] the Rule of female orders, the flower of women flourishing in divine form, whose senses and grace is worth more than gold. There is a delectable bishop, serene in mind, learned in doctrine; and there is a clergy genuine and strict in the Regular Law. There is the Rule of the Friars who preach in high voice their beloved duty, correcting the miserable, offering the rewards of their renewed Law’: De laude civitatis Laude, pp. 60–3. 189 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. IV.XXIII, p. 86. 190 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XI, p. 46. 191 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VI.I, pp. 132–5. 192 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. V.XIX, pp. 120–3; VIII.VIII, pp. 154–7. 193 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.VI, pp. 152–3. 194 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. V.III, pp. 98–101. 195 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.XV, pp. 162–9. 196  Mosè del Brolo, Liber Pergaminus, lines 271–80, p. 452.

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would amplify in the thirteenth century as secular urban government appropriated a panoply of religious symbols into its public display.197 So, cities had long functioned as a key metaphor in Christian discourse. Some attempted to replicate the Holy City, others were deemed to represent a narrative of Christian triumph, and many boasted of their magnificent religious monuments, pious clergy, and populace framed by an impressive charitable culture. But a caveat must be appended. Faith and spirituality framed many works of urban panegyric, either explicitly or implicitly. But it did not permeate all aspects of thinking on and praise of the city. Some works were almost entirely driven by secular themes: Mose del Brolo’s Liber Pergaminus, the work of Hugh Primas, or any number of French Epics and Romances.198 Gregory’s Marvels of Rome famously viewed the city primarily through its non-Christian past, while in one of his sermons the Dominican Remigio de’Girolami could present seven virtues of Florence which were all secular: abundance of wealth, the nobility of money, the multitude of people, the sophistication of living, the wool industry, the manufacture of armour, and building works in the contado.199 At a simple level, there were many secular aspects of the city—buildings, commerce, types of communities—which were prominent in panegyric. Moreover, secular, classical, and religious ideas interweaved in most works, especially when ancient urban histories were recounted.200 The laudatory Roma secunda label, for instance, could have dual Christian or secular meanings focused on the papacy or the Roman Empire, and it could be both a pragmatic and a symbolic statement. The tension in this duality needs to be kept in mind, particularly as the secular components of cities (explored in Chapters 5–7) became more pronounced in our period.

197 Frugoni, Distant City, p. 74; Wickham, Sleepwalking, pp. 52–3, 171–2; see also Thompson, Cities of God and Andrews and Pincelli (eds), Churchmen and Urban Government. 198  For discussion of the secular tone of the Liber Pergaminus see Frugoni, Distant City, p. 74. 199  Davis, ‘An Early Florentine Political Theorist’, p. 206 and fn. 30. 200  Kinney, ‘Rome in the Twelfth Century’, pp. 199–203 shows, through the prism of Rome’s twelfth-century churches, how ‘political renovatio, ecclesiastical reform, and humanistic renaissance could all flow together to become a single’ context, in this case Rome.

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4 The Evil City Urban Critiques Any assessment of praise of the city must be grounded in the acknowledgement of the vast spectrum of urban experiences available. Counter-claims to the Good or Holy City were abundant. Fundamental criticism of urban living coexisted with endorsement of it, and understanding this divergence produces a more comprehensive perspective of urban praise. This chapter therefore offers a consideration of some of the more prominent critiques of the city. It will also delve into some of our works of urban panegyric to identify elements of lamentation and critique of cities, and what objectives these served, before concluding that, by the thirteenth century, those critiques were being absorbed into (and indeed were contributing to) an ideological framework which valorized cities. DEEP CRITIQUES The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, an Aesop’s Fable, demonstrates how deep criticisms of the city run both in time and in subject matter. An exceedingly popular story dating back some centuries before the Christian era, it presents the city in opposition to the countryside. The country mouse visits his cousin in the city. The latter proudly shows the former the wealth and rich living on offer there. But the city lifestyle borders on decadence and hinges on a dangerous pact. The city cousin might have access to riches but daily he risks feline ambush and gambles with his life. The country mouse, shaken, returns gratefully to his rural abode. The city is opulence and danger, its alternative, in this case the country, is simplicity and safety. Urban theorizing has never shaken off such a deeply stark dichotomy. As seen in Chapter 3, biblical thinking on the city, subsequently developed by St Augustine, further refined the oppositions between the good and evil city. But if one can detect a gradual valorization of the city in early Christian thinking, it never came close to silencing urban critiques. The damned city of Cain and the abominable Babylon remained.1 Indeed, transformations in the Central Middle Ages conferred even greater force and relevance to some of those critiques.2 As urban populations 1  See the discussion of Cain and the city in Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, I. 19, pp. 104–7 where the city is a product of human hatred and anger; Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 302–3. 2  See the important article by Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’.

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expanded from the eleventh century, the more crowded cityscapes could become overwhelming for some observers and arouse fear of the potential force unleashed by the urban ‘mob’.3 The incapacity of urban facilities to support fully the entire urban community accentuated the diverse components of the city by making marginalized groups and the indigent more prominent. Both could easily be targeted as the burdensome and immoral detritus of the city. Consequently, complaints pointed out inebriation, impiety, violence, corruption, and the hazard of fire as just some of the city’s several failings. Some of these critiques surfaced, as we shall see, even in some of our works which ostensibly praised cities. William FitzStephen conceded that ‘the sole plagues of London are the excessive drinking of the foolish and frequent fire’: the city’s services and dense housing then could nurture both intemperance and inferno.4 Lucian’s treatise on Chester, moreover, lamented that Cestrians were too eager to watch the spectacle of dog fights, bear-baiting, and jousts rather than see the ‘spectacle’ of divine service performed in two of the city’s churches which were dedicated to the Virgin Mary.5 The crystallization of integrated commercial networks in the twelfth century which brought more traders and merchant into cities, and a concomitant steep increase in rural and student migration, also drastically changed the composition of urban communities. Transience and diversity was much more evident. For some, a city’s large population and heterogeneity elicited ‘a celebration of diversity’ (as we shall see in Chapter 5), but for others it engendered a desire ‘to impose order on it’ which could be rooted in critique.6 When urban elites, backed by thriving urban markets, attempted to harness the power of this urban body to assert greater forms of independence, the city became a player in the field of power politics and one that could be deemed destabilizing to existing hierarchies. At the same time, the evolving religious needs of the laity could cause consternation and arouse concerns about heretical practices.7 The crucial driver here was resources. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the city generated wealth like never before. It was central to the so-called commercial revolution of the period, a hub for short and long-distance commerce, artisan specialism, and an increasingly monetized system geared towards a profit economy. The latter, commerce not just for sustenance but for active acquisition of profit, nurtured the rise of a true mercantile class in medieval cities, a development which threatened to destabilize the conventional medieval framework of three orders: oratores, laboratores, and bellatores.8 The profit economy was 3  Some of these responses might broadly be explained as those of a smaller ‘dominant in-group’ perpetuating a notion of superiority which distinguished it from a larger out-group deemed to be ‘inferior’: see Chow et al., ‘The Two Faces of Dominance’; they are also likely to be framed by ideas among that group about the ‘legitimacy’ of the power relationships between them: see Hornsey et al., ‘Relations between High and Low Power Groups’. See also Waddington and King, ‘The Disorderly Crowd’. 4  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 8. 5 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 24 (fol. 88r–88v). 6  A. Mandanipour, ‘Social Exclusion and Space’, in A. Mandanipour, G. Cors, and J. Allen (eds), Social Exclusion in European Cities: Processes, Experiences, and Responses (London, 1998), excerpts reproduced in R. T. LeGates and F. Stout (eds), The City Reader (London, 2011), p. 190. 7  Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 297–9. 8  For discussion of the system of orders see Hilton, English and French Towns, pp. 108–17.

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equally open to the charge of wanton avarice, and the fear that ­people could lose their wealth and status in an instant; no wonder Fortune’s Wheel became such a resonant concept in the Central Middle Ages.9 The popular French poetry of Rutebeuf (d.1285) picked up on this blending of riches and poverty. One of his compositions (C’est de la Povretei Rutebuef, dated to c.1277), drawing on his own experience of a bustling Paris, lamented how much worse his poverty felt amid so much wealth.10 And where wealth and power converged, corruption was felt to not be far away, opening doors to influence through money and not merit. Unsurprisingly, Giovanni da Viterbo’s manual for good urban government—Liber de Regimine Civitatum (produced at Venice 1228 × 1264)—called avarice the ‘mother of all evils’ (‘mater est omnium malorum’).11 The economic climate seemed as cut-throat as it was unstable. Flipped around, however, several of these transformations could be, and (as other chapters in this book demonstrate) were, viewed as empowering and innovative. But for those observing the city through a different optic, rapid change, close and communal living and the omnipresence of profit created a volatile environment which could, and did often, lead to violence and the breakdown of order. As Chapter 3 touched on, some of the deepest censure of urban living came from the monastic Church. Withdrawal from the world was, of course, a central tenet of monasticism from its origins in the Egyptian desert, enabling closer communion with God and more effective combat of sin. In the process, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly, the city was established as the dialectical opposite: a place where true connection to God could not be achieved amid a maelstrom of sinful behaviour. Underpinned by spiritual reform, a wave of eremitical movements and new monastic orders—the Cistercians and Carthusians above all—emphasized the importance of interior contemplation, worldly retreat, and ascetic austerity. Allied to this, some monastic thinking of the eleventh and twelfth centuries identified the city as a site devoid of virtue whereas the monastery represented a veritable Garden of Eden.12 Indeed, it might be no coincidence that the eremitical revival in Western Europe occurred first and foremost in Central and Northern Italy, the most urbanized zone of medieval Europe. One of its pioneers in the eleventh century was the Italian reforming monk and theologian Peter Damian. In one famous letter, a criticism addressed to the hermit Teuzo who had opted to live in an urban cell, Peter asked, ‘what business do you have in cities?’ and suggested that Teuzo sought ‘applause and glory’, among the ‘flattering mob’ of the noisy, wine-soaked city.13 9 Little, Religious Poverty, pp. 3–18. Romano, Markets, p. 190 notes the increasing tension between notions of ‘self-interest and the common good’ in medieval commerce and how this shaped efforts to open up public spaces so that commercial activity was more visible and less prone to corruption. 10 Rutebeuf, Ouevres completes, ed. M. Zink, 2 vols (Paris, 1989–90), ii. 419–23. 11  Giovanni da Viterbo, Liber de Regimine Civitatum, ed. C. Salvemini, in Scripta Anecdota Glossatorum, vol. 3 (Bologna, 1901), p. 240. 12  Haverkamp, ‘Heilige Städte’, p. 119; G. Constable, ‘Renewal and Reform in Religious Life. Concepts and Realities’, in R. L. Benson, G. Constable, C. D. Lanham (eds), Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Oxford, 1982), pp. 48–9. 13  Peter Damian, The Letters of Peter Damian, vol. 2, ed. and trans. O. J. Blum (Washington, D. C., 1990), no. 44 p. 225; see also K. L. Jasper, ‘Reforming the Monastic Landscape: Peter Damian’s Design for Personal and Communal Devotion’, in A. Classen (ed.), Rural Space in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age: The Spatial Turn in Premodern Studies (Berlin, 2012), pp. 193–207.

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We have also already noted the pleas of the Cistercian abbot, St Bernard of Clairvaux, for the clergy to flee Babylonian Paris, but more conventional Benedictine monks continued to hold comparable views.14 The English Benedictine Richard of Devizes might have been attacking lax Christian behaviour in his late twelfth-­ century chronicle, but he did so by deriding a number of English cities, above all London where ‘whatever evil or malicious thing that can be found in any part of the world, you will find in that one city’.15 We have also already encountered his, and Abbot Guibert of Nogent’s, hostility to destabilizing urban experimentation in the form of communes. To Guibert, referring to events at Laon in c.1112, the urban commune was ‘a new and evil name (novum ac pessimum nomen)’.16 According to Jehangir Malegam, communes and the oaths associated with their membership were understood by many churchmen to be inversions of God’s peace. While the ecclesiastical view of communes would be rehabilitated in light of papal and royal alliances with cities in the later twelfth century, during their early development communes were often condemned for offering a false and conspiratorial peace.17 In contrast, communal associations often claimed that they were created in order to maintain peace and concord.18 Moreover, Guibert’s denunciation of the commune also targeted its violent nature and the monetary stimulus associated with it. Guibert believed it was not only the corrupt Church of Laon, but the corrupt minting of debased coinage which sparked the initial uprising that led to the establishment of the commune.19 Concerns about an immoral use of money, particularly the practice of usury, were connected to the new monetized, profit economy of the twelfth century, for which the city in turn was often implicitly blamed for fostering. These moral tensions fed especially into the wide corpus of venality satire, a genre which gained renewed vigour in the twelfth century. Its chief target was Rome and its papal court, places where money was, of course, available in unusual quantities due to pilgrimage and the workings of papal patronage.20 Bernard of Cluny’s De Contemptu Mundi waxed lyrical on Rome’s subversion to money: ‘A gold coin renders the eyes of the Romans 14 See also L. J. R. Milis, ‘Monks, Canons and the City: A Barren Relationship’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXXII (2002), pp. 667–88, which tracks the conceptual challenges faced by monks in engaging with the urban world, but also the shifts in attitude which occurred across the twelfth and thirteenth century as the monastic church became more able ‘to accept the new urban space into their worldview’ (pp. 687–88). 15  Richard of Devizes, Chronicle, pp. 64–7. 16 Guibert de Nogent, De Vita Sua, III.7, pp. 320–1; see also Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 299–310. Likewise, in his mid-twelfth-century Vézelay Chronicle, Hugh of Poitiers, a monk of the abbey of St Mary Magdalen, wrote of the ‘odious commune of the burghers of Vézelay’ which challenged the seigneurial powers of his abbey: Hugh of Poitiers, The Vézelay Chronicle, trans. J. Scott and J. O. Ward (Binghamton, 1992), p. 310. 17  J. Y. Malegam, The Sleep of Behemoth. Disputing Peace and Violence in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200 (Ithaca, 2013), pp. 230–63. 18  See Oexle, ‘Peace Through Conspiracy’, pp. 285–322. 19  G. E. M. Gasper, ‘Contemplating Money and Wealth in Monastic Writing, c.1060–c.1160’, in G. E. M. Gasper and S. H. Gullbekk (eds), Money and the Church in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200. Practice, Morality and Thought (Farnham, 2015), pp. 55–6; Malegam, Sleep of Behemoth, pp. 244–52. 20 Wickham, Medieval Rome, pp. 169–76 discusses the monetization of Roman society in the twelfth century. Among the wealth of literature on the imagery of Rome and vice see: Yunck, The Lineage of Lady Meed; O’ Daly, ‘An Assessment of the Political Symbolism’, pp. 512–33.

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blind for you; it grants you open doors, Ciceronian eloquence, a steadfast heart.’21 Similarly, in his De Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae, the English scholar and abbot of Cirencester Alexander Neckam offered the following parting words to the city: ‘books (libri) I love, but money (librae) I reject; Rome farewell’.22 Such critiques on the commercial culture were not, it must be noted, solely the preserve of the monastic world, and were voiced by secular churchmen too. On the other hand, they were countered to some extent by the Mendicants. Attuned as they were to the harsh imperatives of urban life, Franciscans and Dominicans worked out a theology which accepted profit based on notions of a ‘just price’ and the proper use of those gains.23 As we have seen, the Dominican Albert Magnus’ sermon-cycle on the Christian Church and the city contained discussion on just such an issue. But the Mendicant solution to the disquieting role of liquid wealth only addressed the tip of the iceberg. For the profit economy was more than a question of prices and commercial transactions, it created investment and wealth in different sectors of the city and contributed to the wider process of urbanization. It underpinned urban construction projects and the founding of schools and later universities, both of which drew criticism. From the outset the Cistercians had attacked the ostentatious buildings of the Cluniac Order, and some secular churchmen, like the Parisian scholar Peter the Chanter (d.1197), similarly directed their ire at grandiose church constructions.24 But others, no doubt walking amid scaffolding and the clanging of work-tools, extended this critique to excessive building projects in general. Such was the case for the Cistercian Helinand of Froidmont (d.1237), from the diocese of Beauvais, who saw urban construction as symbolic of rising vice and exploitation.25 This no doubt drew on biblical themes: in the Book of Genesis, towers—most conspicuously the Tower of Babel—symbolized the conceit of humankind in opposition to God, while Proverbs 17.16 said ‘He that maketh his house high, seeketh a downfall’.26 The proliferation of private urban tower-houses, in the context of twelfth- and thirteenth-century urban politics, especially in Italy, could corroborate this critique. They often served as central points of kin-group affinities, and thus contributed to urban factionalism and were equated with civil disorder. Indeed, in Pisa the city’s Archbishop Daimbert 21  Bernard of Cluny, De Contemptu Mundi, pp. 170–1. Already in the ninth century, the Versus Romae (dated to c.878) lamented Rome’s decadence and decay, the climate of avarice, the selling of relics, and explicitly mapped human conduct onto the city’s material form when it interlinked the decline of Rome’s morals with the fall of its walls (‘moribus et muris, Roma vetusta, cadis’): Granier, ‘À rebours des laudes civitatum’, pp. 131–54 which includes the Latin edition alongside a French translation on pp. 131–2. The Latin quote above is found at verse 10 of the poem. 22  Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, pp. 445–8. 23 Little, Religious Poverty, pp. 173–83. 24  J. W. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants. The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and his Circle, 2 vols (Princeton, 1970), vol. 1, pp. 66–8, notes that during Peter’s time in Paris the long-term construction at Notre Dame raised its apse to a record 105 feet. 25  Kienzle, ‘Cistercian views of the city’, pp. 176–8. 26 See Godman, Archpoet, p. 46. The chronicle of Salimbene de Adam (dating to c.1282–87) quotes the same passage from Proverbs in an account of the collapse of a tower in Padua which was being constructed for someone accused of usury: Salimbene de Adam, Chronicle, trans. J. L. Baird, G. Baglivi, and J. R. Kane (Binghamton, 1986), p. 52.

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famously oversaw a decree (dated 1088 × 1092), sworn by all inhabitants of the city and its suburbs, which limited the height of urban towers. The towers themselves were linked with all manner of ills in the city; the document’s arenga states that the decision to issue statutes on the towers resulted from a consideration of ‘the ancient plague of pride in the city of Pisa which daily creates innumerable homicides, perjuries and sinful consanguineous unions, and especially on account of the destruction of houses and many other evils’.27 With such associations we can well understand then why Mosè del Brolo in his Liber Pergaminus praises Bergamo for having few towers climbing to the skies, a testament to the ‘golden peace (‘pax aurea’)’ that bound the citizens, both poor and rich.28 The establishment of universities, with its influx of young students, also placed the city in the firing line. Writing in c.1220, Jacques de Vitry, former student at the University of Paris and then subsequently Augustinian canon at Oignies and bishop of Acre from c.1215, famously denounced the city of Paris in his work (Historia Occidentalis) on the Western Church. In Chapter 7, entitled De Statu Parisiensis Civitatis, Jacques offered a conflicting picture of Paris. He noted the city’s potential to serve as a paradise, an ‘urbs fidelis et gloriosa’, but wrote of the city’s ‘evil and dark days’ soiled by innumerable crimes (‘criminibus’) and vices (‘sordibus’). These offences were caused by a dissolute clergy, akin to ‘a mangy goat and an infested sheep’ and who engaged in the vice of fornication in brothels. Among this group, Jacques numbered the Parisian students who had time for nothing except learning or hearing something new: some studying only to know, which is curiosity; others to be known, which is vanity; others for reward, which is cupidity and the perversity of simony. But few were studying to edify or be edified.29

And he condemned equally the academic disputations and sectarian divisions which created a culture of slander and violent confrontation.30 Such student misdemeanours were deemed symptomatic of urban decadence, and represented the city’s nurturing of excess, discord, and vain intellectual posturing.31 Indeed, decades before Jacques’ condemnation, Peter de Celle, a Benedictine and later bishop of Chartres (1181–83), had already maligned Paris’s reputation for empty learning.32 In a letter to the English philosopher John of Salisbury, Peter 27  The document is edited in G. Rossetti, ‘Il lodo del vescovo Daiberto sull’altezza delle torri: prima carta costituzionale della repubblica pisana’, in Pisa e la Toscana occidentale nel Medioevo. A Cinzio Violante nei suoi 70 anni, vol. 2 (Pisa, 1991), pp. 27–31. See also Wickham, Sleepwalking, pp. 79–80. A connection between buildings and pride was noted by Hugh of Poitiers (Vézelay Chronicle, pp. 128–9) who included in his chronicle a papal directive to King Louis VII of France to support the Church at Vézelay by destroying the stone houses of the city’s burghers, ‘so that the pride of the burghers will be beaten down’. 28  Mosè del Brolo, Liber Pergaminus, lines 271–4, p. 452. See also Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 73–5. 29  Jacques de Vitry, Historia Occidentalis, ed. J. F. Hinnesbuch (Fribourg, 1972), p. 92; Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 309–10. 30  Jacques de Vitry, Historia Occidentalis also singled out the specific misbehaviour of student groups, for example, the ‘absurd and boastful’ Normans and the ‘tyrannical and cruel’ Sicilians, pp. 91–2. 31  J. Le Goff, Les Intellectuels au Moyen Âge (Paris, 1957), pp. 67–8. 32  See also Godman, Archpoet, pp. 19–21.

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certainly noted the abundance of bread and wine in the city, the ‘profusion of friends’ and ‘groups of companions’, and asked who ‘does not rate Paris as a place of delights, a garden, a field of first-fruits?’ But these were merely ‘empty joys’ for ‘where luxury reigns, there the soul is enslaved and afflicted. O Paris, how suitable you are for seizing and deceiving souls! Within you is a net of vices, a snare of evil, an infernal arrow which pierces the hearts of the foolish.’ Peter concluded that the true school of Christ does not require study and reading to understand eternal bliss, nor does it need ‘cheating debates’ or ‘refined sophistries’.33 As will be seen in Chapter 7, while the city’s role as a conduit for learning also received great praise, it nevertheless always remained a contentious topic. Unfortunately, the restrained, committed, and learned student tended to avoid the headlines and disappear from view. Not so the controversial side of student culture—drinking, fighting, gambling, and sex—which appeared to be serviced by the city. It is recorded in numerous court cases across Europe and a range of student letters and songs (most famously the Carmina Burana).34 Closely associated with the latter, in its content and performative function, was the goliardic poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; some of which mocked urban vice and deviancy, and did so often for a courtly/lay audience no doubt very familiar with elements of the content. One of its most famed exponents, the so-called Archpoet, could encapsulate this in a question, asking ‘who [in Pavia] can stay pure in reputation? [. . .] Every alley leads you to Venus and her boudoir; in a place where towers are so many, Truth has no tower’.35 Through these sorts of works, the laity was both exposed to and complicit in some of the defining critiques of the city. This too was mirrored in a number of the vernacular works of Epic and Romance which may have initially aimed at an aristocratic audience, but anecdotal evidence and modes of dissemination indicate reception among the lower levels of the laity also.36 Such a vast genre unsurprisingly presents a mixed view of the city, and Le Goff has amply demonstrated the juxtaposition of praise and censure. Works such as Chrétien de Troyes’ Le Conte du Graal, Jean Renart’s L’Escoufle, or the Charroi de Nimes presented cities as places of possibility and centres of power and wealth, idealized prizes worthy of conquest, much like a noble Lady.37 But they could also display cities simmering with mal-intent, their streets occupied by crowds which 33  Peter de Celle, Epistolarum. Liber Primus, ed. J-P. Migne, Patrologia Latina, CCII (Paris, 1855), cc.519–20; also Kienzle, ‘Cistercian Views’, pp. 173–5. 34  For examples of misdemeanours and crimes involving Bolognese students, see some of the documents edited in the appendix in G. Zaccagnini, La vita dei maestri e degli scolari nello Studio di Bologna nei secoli XIII e XIV (Geneva, 1926), pp. 141–69; see also C. H. Haskins, ‘The Life of Medieval Students as Illustrated by Their Letters’, American Historical Review, III (1898), pp. 203–29; R. Mazo Karras, From Boys to Men: Formation of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, 2002), pp. 67–108; for the role of prostitution within cities, see the example of Bruges: J. M. Murray, Bruges. Cradle of Capitalism, 1280–1390 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 78–81. 35  Hugh Primas and the Archpoet, poem X, pp. 114–17. See also generally Godman, Archpoet. 36  For more see Chapter 2. 37 Le Goff, ‘Warriors’, pp. 151–76; see also U. Mölk, ‘literarische Entdeckung, pp. 203–15; P. S. Noble, ‘Knights and Burgesses in the Feudal Epic’, in C. Harper-Bill and R. Harvey (eds), The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood, I (Woodbridge, 1986), pp. 104–10; Hilton, English and French Towns, pp. 105–7.

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could seamlessly mutate into mobs, and the whole framed by a commercial code of lifestyle almost unfathomable. Le Conte du Graal, for instance, recounted the knight Gawain beholding the site of a city full of beautiful and industrious people, marvelling at the wealth and goods available, only for the same knight to be caught shortly after in a sudden and terrifying urban riot with citizens wielding pitchforks and maces.38 Aiol is redolent with comparable messages. Gautier of St Denis, ‘a rich and influential burgher’ aided the young knight Aiol and was presented as ‘charitable’, ‘prudent and judicious’.39 Cities were depicted as valuable assets.40 But Aiol’s impoverished appearance repeatedly attracted the ridicule of citizens as he passed through the streets of Poitiers and Orléans.41 Though some did take pity on him, other citizens at Poitiers were ‘cruel and full of evil intentions/They heaped abuse and harsh blame on Aiol’.42 At Orléans, Aiol experienced the ‘rabble’, witnessed drinking games and gambling in the tavern, and got involved in a fracas with a drunkard.43 Pointedly Aiol encountered even more scorn as he entered the city’s marketplace, where burghers and vendors threw animal offcuts at him.44 It was there that Aiol met the slanderous ‘broad-bellied’ Hersent, wife of the butcher Hagenon.45 Both, we are told, had arrived at Orléans ‘as wretched vagabonds’. But through lending pawned items at usurious rates they amassed great wealth; ‘two-thirds of Orléans owed them money’ and they ‘kept on impoverishing the noblemen’ and ‘ridiculing the city’s burghers’. Hersent mocked Aiol and offered to take him into her service and provide the young knight with ‘a long sausage, large and drooping’ to attach to his lance. But Aiol won the battle of wits by suggesting that Hersent was a pile of dung, a mother of flies, and crucially he earned the laughter and validation of the marketplace audience.46 One conspicuous South Italian example may serve as a concluding illustration of the view held in some circles of the city as a hotbed of unrest. It is important for it was an extremely ‘secular’ account and it was not from the group of aforementioned works of poetry, Epic or Romance. Produced by an anonymous author often labelled ‘Hugo Falcandus’, it recorded affairs at the heart of the Sicilian kingdom in the years 1154 to 1166. Framed by a Sallustian moralizing which flung scathing condemnations at most of the kingdom’s key political players, it also invariably displayed cities in the grip of rumour, dissolute conduct, and irrational mob violence. ‘Falcandus’ typically claimed of the port city of Messina that it ‘held within its walls almost every type of human being, free from no kind of wickedness, rejecting no crime’.47 A perspective on the city not far removed from the aforementioned monastic view of Richard of Devizes and other churchmen, and thus one that shared common ground within some lay and ecclesiastical circles. 38  Chrétien de Troyes, The Story of the Grail Roman de Perceval, pp. 408–9, 410–11. 39  Aiol, chap. 27–30, lines 1082–255, pp. 28–32. 40  Aiol, chap. 80, lines 3151–2, p. 80. 41  Aiol, chap. 25–6, lines 944–1062, pp. 25–7; chap. 43–74, lines 1912–2949, pp. 49–74. 42  Aiol, chap. 25, lines 956–7, p. 24. 43  Aiol, chap. 67, lines 2506–80, pp. 63–5. 44  Aiol, chap. 67, lines 2581–2, p. 65. 45  Aiol, chap. 67, lines 2588–90, p. 65. 46  Aiol, chap. 70, lines 2652–734, pp. 67–9. 47  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, p. 156; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, pp. 107–8.

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D I S O R D E R A N D L A M E N TAT I O N As urban populations grew and their composition diversified, and as the evident wealth and power of cities drew covetous glances from both internal and external forces, the imperative for peace and unity became more pressing. The spectre of its reverse—violence and disorder—thus drew more condemnation. It was often voiced in the form of lamentation or elegy and appears in a wide range of source-types including a number of works which also simultaneously praise cities. The interrelationship however between this sort of praise and censure was neither accidental nor counter-intuitive.48 Several authors, aware of the ‘two-cities’ paradigm, utilized lamentation in ways that ultimately underpinned praise.49 It was a strategy formed in Antiquity, when rhetorical training exercises often interlinked themes of laus (praise) and vituperatio (censure).50 These were often associated with treatments of human behaviour, critiques of avarice juxtaposed with praise of virtue. However, works from Antiquity also developed the idea, according to Pernot, of the ‘personification of the city’. In so doing the city itself mimicked the human lifecycle of birth (foundation), growth (history, topographical expansion), and death (destruction/ decay), and the state of its ‘health’ could reflect how far it was a repository for moral action both good and bad.51 Influential biblical models, noted in Chapter 3, likewise developed the tension in human behaviour via the virtuous and the damned city. Several elegiac poems of the Middle Ages followed this interpretative approach. In lamenting disunity, immorality, and loss they opened up the possibility of implicit praise of the city in question, by offering simultaneously a tacit countervision of the city’s ethical potential.52 We have already noted how these tropes were also applied to Rome by several medieval authors and especially in the famous poems of Hildebert of Lavardin which portrayed Roman vice cohabiting with grandeur.53 It is possible to detect comparable laments interlinking with praise in prose panegyric too, and to see them as a comment on contemporary challenges to 48  For more see P. Oldfield, ‘“To Destroy a City so Great and Remarkable”: Lamentation, Panegyric and the Idea of the Medieval City’, in R. Balzaretti, J. Barrow, and P. Skinner (eds), Italy and Medieval Europe: Papers for Chris Wickham on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday (Oxford, 2018). 49  Important works on this topic are Zanna, ‘Descriptiones Urbium’ and Ruth, Urban Honor, pp. 5–35, 132–4. 50 Burrow, Poetry of Praise, pp. 6–28. 51  L. Pernot, La Rhétorique de L’Éloge dans le Monde Gréco-Romain (Paris, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 178–216, and especially pp. 190–3. 52  Among such poems are Paulinus of Aquileia’s Versus de Destructione Aquileiae (of c.802), Serlo’s poem on the conquest of Bayeux in 1105, and the twelfth-century goliardic poetry of Hugh Primas of Orléans and his famed lament (Urbs erat illustris) on the demise of Troy: Versus de Destructione Aquilegiae, pp. 142–4; Versus Serlonis de capta Bajocensium, in The Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century, ed. T. Wright, Rolls Series, LIX, vol. II (London 1872), pp. 208–12; Hugh Primas and the Archpoet, Poem IX, pp. 18–21. 53  For one particularly critical poem on Rome see Granier, ‘À rebours des laudes civitatum’, pp. 131–54 in which he analyses the Versus Romae (dated c.878). Another example of a city lament is the twelfthcentury Carmen De Destructione Civitatis Mediolanensis which decried the razing of Milan by Frederick Barbarossa in 1162: E. Dümmler, ‘Gedicht auf die Zerstörung Mailands’, Neues Archiv, XI (1886), pp. 466–74; see also Armenian parallels in T. Greenwood, ‘A Reassessment of the History of Łewond’, Le Muséon, CXXV (2012), pp. 146–7, 150–4.

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civic peace and an effort to identify solutions. One example is found in the chronicle of the lay notary Falco of Benevento (completed c.1140–44), a work which presents a city eulogized against the backdrop of an ominous external threat allied with insidious internal discord. Falco’s chronicle commences with its focus on Beneventan urban affairs but gradually follows two distinct trajectories: one, from as early as the first decade of the twelfth century, highlighting and lamenting internal civic factionalism in Benevento, the other, from the late 1120s, showing increasing concern at the threat posed to Beneventan independence by the rising power of Roger II of Sicily and the conflict this created with both the papacy and the German Empire. Faced by these pressures, Falco’s chronicle records the trauma of living in Benevento in the 1120s and 1130s. Politically motivated assassination occurred, houses were attacked, streets and squares became battlegrounds, countless individuals were exiled from the city (including Falco of Benevento himself from 1134 to 1137), and citizens were killed defending the city from external attack.54 It is all the more notable then that Falco breaks this breathless narrative to celebrate the discovery and translation on 15 May 1119 of the relics of several Beneventan relics. In describing the event and joyous response among the Beneventans, Falco treats us to his own microlaus of his native city.55 He eulogizes the prestige of the Beneventan saints, which reflect glory on the city. He focuses on the instinctual piety of the citizens, as crowds (Falco included) flocked weeping to touch and kiss the relics, and how joyful processions occurred across the different city quarters offering us simultaneously a brief survey of the city’s topography. Falco also located the event in Benevento’s long historical memory, emphasizing the city’s tradition of devotion to its saints by stating: ‘Indeed I believe that the city had not been so utterly filled with joy since the coming of its patron, St Bartholomew’; an event which had occurred in 838.56 Equally, the creative and artisan skills of the Beneventans are praised. To memorialize the event, the city’s churchmen commissioned the building of wooden machines and large floats on which bells, musical instruments, and candles were placed, and next to them young men played drums, lyres, and flutes. Falco eulogized one such nautical-themed float: ‘Oh, if you could have been there, reader, you would have seen many craftsmen, and here a body of watermen working, by whose industry this float was made in the form of a ship’.57 This large float was then pushed through the narrow streets of the city, and at one point was physically carried past obstacles to reach the holy relics. In his euphoria, Falco reveals openly why he delayed on such a glowing snapshot of his city, for it represented a much yearned for civic unity, ‘something unheard for many years, the city of Benevento moved only by honour and love for the Saints’, ‘Who among the citizens living at that time could remember when the city had been so entirely joyful’.58 It was, as Massimo Oldoni noted, ‘il piu bello giorno nella vita di Falcone’; 54  See for example: Falcone di Benevento, Chronicon, p. 39; for Falco’s exile, p. 184. 55  The following quotes are from Graham Loud’s English translation in Roger II, pp. 154–6, followed by reference to the Latin edition; Falcone di Benevento, Chronicon, pp. 46–52. 56  Loud (trans.), Roger II, p. 155; Falcone di Benevento, Chronicon, p. 48; Oldfield, Sanctity and Pilgrimage, pp. 22–5. 57  Loud (trans.), Roger II, p. 155; Falcone di Benevento, Chronicon, p. 50. 58  Loud (trans.), Roger II, p. 155; Falcone di Benevento, Chronicon, p. 48.

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a day which Falco used to hold up a mirror to his turbulent and discordant city and show what it could and should be.59 Indeed, a number of works of panegyric praise civic ceremonies: William FitzStephen noted the spectacle of London’s youth participating in sporting festivals and feast days, while Martin da Canal sets out in minute detail a cycle of extravagant civic ritual which aimed to envelope the entire Venetian urban community.60 Urban elites, and writers on the city, hoped that these types of events could serve as an antidote to unrest and serve as a blueprint for a harmonious urban future.61 Another South Italian example could be added here too: a letter written almost certainly in 1190 (and quite possibly by the so-called ‘Hugo Falcandus’) to Peter the Treasurer of the Church of Palermo.62 It is a letter of lamentation at the prospect of the impact of the German imperial invasion on the Kingdom of Sicily, and more especially on the island of Sicily; an invasion which had split the kingdom into factions and created concern about civil discord. The author feared how greatly the most peaceful state of that realm would be shattered either by the blast of enemy invasion, or by the heavy storm of internal conflict; my mind was stunned, and I abandoned my undertaking; my lyre turned to grief, I preferred to begin tearful tunes, a sad song of lamentation.63

Emphatically signalling a tragedy that was unravelling, the author exhibited a deep affinity with Sicily, and its classical past, and attempted to paper over its fragmenting unity. He called for concord between the region’s Christian and Muslim communities and reminded them that Sicily was worth fighting for through a lengthy laudatory description of Palermo, along with shorter passages on Catania, Messina, and Syracuse.64 In the case of Catania and, more so, Syracuse, the encomium is notable for being almost entirely rooted in the past and laced with an equal dose of admonishment and pessimism.65 Syracuse is shown to have deviated from its esteemed heritage.66 The city’s military capabilities have diminished through inertia and years of peace, and the author begs the citizens to fortify the city’s walls with towers. The laus civitatis model emphasizes urban fortifications and population density, and so the author’s proclamation that Syracuse no longer commands the 59  M. Oldoni, ‘Realismo e dissidenza nella storiografia su Ruggero II: Falcone di Benevento e Alessandro di Telese’, in Società, potere e popolo nell’età di Ruggero II. Atti delle terze giornate normannosveve, Bari, 23–5 maggio 1977 (Bari, 1979), p. 265. 60  William FitzStephen, Vita S. Thomae, pp. 9–11; Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, pp. 246–63, 282–305. 61 Hilton, English and French Towns, pp. 117–23 emphasizes the function of civic ceremony in creating social harmony. 62  The following quotes from the letter use Loud’s translation in ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, pp. 252–63, followed by reference to the Latin edition: ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, pp. 169–86. See the useful analysis of the representation of cities in the letter in E. Pispisa, ‘L’immagine della città nella storiografia meridionale del Ducento’, Quaderni Medievali, XXX (1990), pp. 67–71. 63  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, p. 252; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, p. 169. 64  Also briefly mentioned are the people of Agrigento and Mazara, the new city walls of Cefalù, and the fields of Patti: ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, p. 258; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, p. 176. 65 Pispisa, ‘L’immagine della città’, pp. 69, which suggests the author distrusted Messina and Catania and their potential desire for independence. 66  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, pp. 257–8; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, pp. 175–6.

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resources to build defensive structures, nor has sufficient manpower and military prowess, is damning. The author amplifies his pessimism through praise of Syracuse’s ancient heritage. He recounts the migration of the Corinthians to Sicily and their foundation of Syracuse, constructing the city walls in the finest spot on the island. He praises the teaching of philosophers and the beauty of the poetry which flourished in the city—all lost long ago. He also notes the presence in the city of mythological landmarks; the fountain Arethusa and subterranean river Alpheus, lamenting that both will be polluted by the foreign invaders. In clear despair, the author claims the city would have fared better had it remained under the despotic rule of the tyrant Dionysius, rather than suffer rule by the Germans.67 While the city of Messina is implored to action through recollection of its past deeds, the tone here is more optimistic and unambiguously laudatory.68 The city is ‘powerful and outstanding in the great nobility’ of its courageous citizens. The older citizens are expert in strategy, the younger in warfare, and all are protected by the city’s walls and towers. The author stirs the Messinesi to think as a collective, and to remember previous achievements, in this case naval expeditions which commenced from Sicily’s chief port; the attacks on Byzantine territories (in 1147 and 1185), several expeditions to the North African coast (especially between 1144 and 1152), and campaigns against the Balearic Islands (1178 and 1181–82). Thus the people of Messina ‘defeated the arrogance of the Greeks’, ‘plundered Africa and Spain’, and brought back ‘immense booty and spoils’.69 The message is clear: the Messinesi should remain confident, trust in their strength, resist the impending invasion, and ensure ‘immortal glory and a famous reputation’. Finally, turning to the city of Palermo, the author reserves his fullest and most conventional approbation.70 We will look at this description again in Chapter 6; for the moment we need only signal the author’s strategy. Palermo is described as a noble city which ‘deserves the unique privilege of rising above the entire kingdom’, and consequently our author endeavours to ‘give some impression of how much lamentation will be needed to mourn her [Palermo], how enormous the glory with which she has been endowed’ (‘ut ex hoc ipso appareat quanta sit lamentatione deflenda, quanta fuerit dotibus gloriosa’).71 Thereafter we are treated to a topographical survey of the city’s component parts, mixed with discursions on buildings and amenities, craftsmanship, trade, and the fertility of Palermo’s hinterland. Both the description of the city and the letter itself end with a final plea: that it should be clear ‘how much lamentation’ (‘liquidum fiat quantis lamentationibus’) and tears would be necessary to suitably mourn the city’s impending fate.72 67  Syracuse was ruled by the tyrants Dionysius I and Dionysius II from 405–357 bc, see B. Caven, Dionysius I. War-lord of Sicily (New Haven, 1990). 68  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, p. 256; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, pp. 174–5. 69  For these expeditions see: H. Houben, Roger II of Sicily. A Ruler between East and West, trans. G. A. Loud and D. Milburn (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 76–86; H. Houben, ‘La politica estera di Guglielmo II tra vocazione mediterranea e destino europeo’, in his Mezzogiorno normanno-svevo. Monasteri e castelli, ebrei e musulmani (Naples, 1996), pp. 145–57. 70  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, pp. 258–63; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, pp. 177–86. 71  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, pp. 254, 257; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, pp. 172, 177. 72  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, p. 263; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, p. 186.

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One final example demonstrates the extent to which lament could underpin a work of overt praise. It is found in the remarkable panegyric, De Magnalibus Mediolani, of Bonvesin da la Riva. Bonvesin boasts of Milan’s greatness throughout eight chapters full of detailed evidence and statistics. But this does not prevent him from noting critical defects associated with the city. First was Milan’s magnificence which ensured that it would always be the object of envy and predation. Bonvesin does not shy away from listing those predators—ranging from Attila the Hun right through to the Staufen emperors—who had humiliated the city in times past.73 He noted the especial ignominy of losing the relics of the Three Magi to Frederick Barbarossa after the city was destroyed in 1162.74 Bonvesin mused on the loss and wondered if it was God’s judgement and retribution for Milanese sins; the people having become ‘puffed up by an excess of glory’ and who had ‘ungratefully [. . .] failed to recognize the Lord Jesus Christ as the architect of your power’.75 On the other hand, he also provided some comfort for the Milanese, suggesting that as they were fighting enemies of the Church, the city would earn eternal praise and that Milan had emerged stronger from the disaster of 1162. However, for Bonvesin the gravest flaw of all was envy, which generated civic faction, a menace which appears throughout the entire work and endangered the liberties which the author was so proud of. The subject was, however, treated most pointedly at the very end of the work where Bonvesin unleashes a tirade against factionalism in Milan: Oh wonder of the world! Oh, city noble for all types of qualities! Oh, venerable city, consecrated by the most holy blood of so many martyrs! Who dares to make you restive, if not the insolence of some of your citizens, for whom the wealth of the entire world would not satisfy? And whatever is the reason for such impudence? I’ll have to say it is envy, which gnaws away at its own masters and incites them to all sorts of crime [. . .]76

This led to plotting, alliances with foreigners, violence, and the prospect of tyrannous rule. It replicated, according to Bonvesin, the example of Lucifer and created the sort of hatreds which would destroy his remarkable city.77 Earlier in his work Bonvesin had actually attempted to explain the contradictions created by a work praising a city which was known to be riven with factions. He posed a hypothetical question on the matter: ‘How are you able to praise the Milanesi for the way they conduct their lives? Does not everybody know the undisguised envy, civil discord and cruel destruction that exists among them?’ Bonvesin responds that the argument could not be valid otherwise the following would hold true: ‘there was dispute among the twelve apostles, there was the betrayal of Judas, there was also he who denied Christ three times, therefore the apostles should not be praised.’78

73 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. V.II–VII, pp. 94–101; V.XI, pp. 104–7; V.XVI, pp. 114–17. 74 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. V.VI, pp. 98–9; VI.II, pp. 134–7. 75 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. V.VII, pp. 100–1. 76 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.XV, pp. 164–5. 77 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.XV, pp. 166–7. 78 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.I, pp. 38–9.

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Bonvesin’s concerns over civil discord echoes closely other evidence from cities, particularly, but not exclusively, those of communal Italy, which indicate great discomfort at the inabilities of urban communities to manage social transformation and emergent rivalries.79 It reflects the unsettling climate within Milan at the time Bonvesin was producing his work. Two powerful kin-groups, the Delle Torre and Visconti, were struggling for political predominance in the city as the traditional mechanisms of communal government crumbled.80 Bonvesin trod a careful path in his work, such that it is difficult to identify which of the two kin-groups claimed his affinities.81 But what is certain is that Bonvesin put forward an emotive lament which appealed for civic harmony and did so through the prism of panegyric. For Alfredo Bosisio, Bonvesin identified a crisis in the city’s collective civic conscience and attempted to remedy it through a text which would educate an exhausted citizenry by showing it the correct path of action; it thus functioned as a mirror for the citizens (‘speculum civium’), according to Daniela Romagnoli.82 Indeed, the quest for civic unity and the promotion of peace would only intensify as the thirteenth moved into the fourteenth century. Remigio de’Girolami, who we know preached on the virtues of Florence in c.1300, also devoted his efforts to ending civic faction and establishing peace. For him, peace was linked to the Aristotelian idea of the Bonum Commune (Common Good), to which all should be subordinate, and the peaceful city was to be equated to a metaphorical healthy body.83 This political theorizing was later developed more fully by Marsilius of Padua in his Defensor Pacis (1324).84 As Andrea Zorzi has shown, Italian city governments in the thirteenth century promoted a ‘politique de pacification’ at the heart of their political ideology. Manuals of ars dictaminis (public speaking), sermons, poems, and civic statutes aimed at educating the citizenry in the importance of harmony and justice as a means to realize the civilizing grandeur of their own city.85 Manuals of good governance also sought to bind communities in peace. 79  See J. K. Hyde, ‘Contemporary Views on Faction and Civil Strife in Thirteenth-and FourteenthCentury Italy’, in his Literacy and its Uses. Studies on Late Medieval Italy, ed. D. Waley (Manchester, 1993), pp. 58–86. 80  P. Grillo, ‘Un egemonia sovracittadina: la famiglia della Torre di Milano e le città Lombarde (1259–1277)’, Rivista Storica Italiana, CXX (2008), pp. 694–730 and Grillo, Milano in età comunale, pp. 643–74. 81  This ambiguity is also reflected in Bonvesin’s other work, some of which can be read as sympathetic to government by an individual and others which appear to validate the claims of the masses, for more see: G. Orlandi, ‘Note sul “De magnalibus Mediolani” di Bonvesin da la Riva’, Studi Medievali, XVII, 3rd series (1976), pp. 871–2, 875–8; see also A. Bosisio, ‘In margine al “De magnalibus Mediolani” di Bonvesin de la Riva’, in Studi sulla cultura lombarda. In memoria di Mario Apollonio, vol. 1 (Milan, 1972), pp. 54–8; and Oldfield, ‘To Destroy a City’, (forthcoming). 82  A. Bosisio, ‘Milano e la sua coscienza cittadina nel Duecento’, in La coscienza cittadina nei comuni italiani del Duecento: 11–14 ottobre 1970 (Todi, 1972), pp. 90–1; Romagnoli, ‘La coscienza’, pp. 65–76. 83 Davis, ‘Early Florentine Political Theorist’, pp. 198–207; Carron, ‘Remigio de’Girolami’, pp. 453–4. 84  Hyde, ‘Contemporary Views’, pp. 64–7, 72–3, 79–82. 85  A. Zorzi, ‘Bien Commun et conflits politiques dans l’Italie communale’, in E. Lecuppre-Desjardin and A-L. Van Bruaene (eds), De Bono Communi. The Discourse of the Common Good in the European City (13th–16th c.) (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 267–90 (quote at pp. 275–6); see also p. 281 for Remigio’s use of a pun on words in his De Bono Comuni to illustrate the deep impact of civic discord and the

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One such manual, Giovanni da Viterbo’s Liber de Regimine Civitatum (produced at Venice 1228 × 1264) even offered a new understanding of the term civitas. Its three syllables signified ci(tra)-vi(m)-(habi)tas: live without violence.86 Likewise, as we shall see in Chapter 7, the development of urban origins myths and histories offered a deep backstory of civic unity as an antidote to contemporary factionalism. It is, therefore, impossible to avoid the fear of social implosion and disorder which appears in several guises in urban panegyric. This was not just an Italian phenomenon, and it might well have stemmed from the multiplicity of ­associational and kin-group bodies that formed in cities, and the fears from ‘outsiders’ that these bodies each excluded others and conspired for their own gain against the greater good.87 It clearly animated Lucian of Chester, for instance, as he acknowledged, his praiseworthy picture of Chester ‘may not be steadfast and perpetual’, the next generation of churchmen could be corrupt, and ‘the wheel of fortune and the evil of the times will cut short our laughter’, leading to ‘deep groaning and grieving’.88 Here once again, a deeper call for unity and firm purpose is exposed along with the concomitant fear of present and future disharmony in ever more nebulous urban communities. Lucian hoped that the city’s secular and regular clergy could be a more harmonious body, and that this would serve as a model for the laity.89 Indeed, even when the fear of disorder seems to be absent, it is in fact very much present, as Martin da Canal’s work proves. Cracco and Morreale agree that one impulse behind Martin’s idealistic vision of Venice and its history was the emergence in the 1260s of the sort of factionalism (between the Dandolo and the Tiepolo) that Venice had seemed immune from.90 His work was thus both a denial of these dangers and an implicit plea to overcome them, shaped by his carefully crafted depiction of Venice’s unity during civic festivities, its smooth election procedures for the new doge, and the city’s efficient and deep-rooted constitutional arrangements backed by all social groups. But even Martin let his guard slip towards the end of his (unfinished) work when he offered a prayer to St Mark on behalf of the Venetians which included a  plea to ‘keep Venice/without any discord./Peace, good will,/without turning towards evil,/may there be, in Venice, Good Sir,/for mercy’s sake,/as our ancestors did/as this book records’.91 Albert Magnus had, of course, designated unitas, and symbiosis between a person’s identity and their city; namely that if Florence were destroyed it would transform a Florentine citizen (civis florentinus) into a weeper ( flerentinus). For more on the civilized city, see Chapter 7. 86  Giovanno da Viterbo, Liber de Regimine Civitatum, p. 218; Artifoni, ‘podestà’, p. 700; See also Andrea Zorzi’s entry at http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-da-viterbo_%28DizionarioBiografico%29/ [accessed 07/06/16]. 87  Oexle, ‘Peace Through Conspiracy’, pp. 304–9, discusses the ‘paradoxes’ and tensions raised by these associational bodies. 88 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 6 (fol. 8v–9v). 89  Doran, ‘St Werburgh’s’, pp. 57–77. 90 Cracco, Società, pp. 268, 287–8; see also Morreale’s introduction in Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, viii. 91  Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, trans. Morreale, pp. 129–32 (quote at p. 132); Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, pp. 340–2. For a contextualization linking the prayer to Venice’s external politics, see also A. Limentani, ‘Tradizione letteraria e funzione pubblicistica nella preghiera a San Marco di Martino da Canal’, Cultura neolatina, XXIV (1964), pp. 142–96. Henry of Rimini continued to present an embellished picture of unity and peace in his praise of

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the imperative of the citizenry to follow one law, as one of his four defining features of the city. And he had also warned of the dangers of not doing so: capitulation to an enemy.92 So, it appears clear that urban panegyric and critique, often in the form of a lamentation, worked together. Ostensibly they present the contrasting coordinates within which the medieval city was located, understood, and indeed experienced. Based on centuries of Christian tradition these twin strands of praise and censure seem to embody irreconcilable concepts of the city. But, actually, in many works, critiquing and lamenting the city was an acknowledgement of the ‘Good’ city, a worthy target of that invective and grief. Implicitly it also offered a blueprint for an ideal future; one still indirectly framed by an eschatological conception ‘that time belongs to God alone’.93 As Schorske noted, the resonance of the ‘dazzling picture’ of a virtuous city depended on the image of its defective alternative, and vice versa.94 The city could be redeemed, it could be a force of good, and it could be a site of both earthly and spiritual empowerment. Absolute rejection of the city in all its manifestations was rare; it repeatedly served as a model or point of reference onto which was transposed all manner of theological, ideological, and social schemata. Schmitt set out the important function of some of the critiques of the city, that they were in effect merely an extension of the civitas sacra. Healing could occur in the city rather than by fleeing it, and criticism was aimed towards this redemptive end, producing a more optimistic and realistic understanding of urban conditions.95 New forms of lay religiosity and the rise of Mendicant urbanism undoubtedly aided the shift in this direction. Indeed, as Chapter 3 suggested, the city and its challenges were increasingly viewed as a necessary path towards salvation or (in Epic and Romance works) as the location for the full performance of aristocratic virtue. The city was more clearly than ever in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a place where good things—community, salvation, charity—could happen, and it was sin, not the city itself, which could pervert this. This is a crucial distinction. In the majority of cases, then, censure and lamentation could only exist in a framework shaped by an inherently positive interpretation of the city and one which looked creatively to the future. Indeed, urban panegyric utilized lamentation of a lost glorious past and problematic present to signpost implicitly the dangers and possibilities that might form the city’s future. In this sense, panegyric functioned as a part of a rolling and intrinsically contemporary discourse.

Venice (c.1300): ‘nobody is ever driven into exile by a hostile faction; immigrants and refugees are offered sanctuary; there is no oppression or invasion from foreign parts. Everything is secure. Murder and the shedding of blood are never, or only rarely, heard of.’: Henry of Rimini’s Paean to Venice (ca. 1300), trans. Law, p. 515. 92  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle, p. 108. 93  J-C. Schmitt, ‘Appropriating the Future’, in J. A. Burrow and I. P. Wei (eds), Medieval Futures. Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2000), p. 13. 94  C. E. Schorske, ‘The Idea of the City in European Thought: Voltaire to Spengler’, in O. Handlin and J. Burchard (eds), The Historian and the City (Cambridge, MA, 1963), pp. 1–4. 95  Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 350–1.

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5 The City of Abundance Commerce, Hinterland, People Chapters 3 and 4 have shown that religious schema were integral to interpretations of the medieval city, both positive and critical. However, if religious discourse was always present, the articulation of urban self-identities was not always wholly bound to it. All aspects of the city were capable of a double—profane–spiritual— reading. The commercial climate, built environment (see Chapter 6), the imagined past, and the acquisition of knowledge (see Chapter 7) could all be integrated into a Christian cosmology or simultaneously reflect a lay taxonomy of urban virtues. Of all these, it was the generation and application of commerce and resources which was deemed a specifically urban phenomenon and, especially from the twelfth century onwards, received the most scathing critique. But commerce stands equally as the prime example to show how alternative positive discourses could operate effectively and develop as a source of pride and identity within urban communities. This chapter then explores urban panegyric which focuses on commerce, and fits this into broader representations of the city as a paradise of abundant resources, enriched by trade, a fertile hinterland, and a plentiful population. C O M M E RC I A L R E V I VA L Historians are in agreement that the Central Middle Ages witnessed a quite dramatic commercial revival. What caused that revival remains a matter of contention: a combination undoubtedly of the growth of a seigneurial class and more centralized government which tended to militate against political and military disorder, and which established a new group of consumers and concomitant artisanal and mercantile classes to meet that demand; rising populations which also stimulated supply and demand; more stable climactic conditions; and more effective exploitation of the natural landscape.1 When exactly that revival can be detected, and the extent of its regional nuances, also continues to be debated. But two points are palpably clear. The commercial revival was in full swing by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and it was spearheaded from urban centres. By this point, the trading and commercial features of the city were more pronounced than ever. Cities had developed into sites of artisan specialism. They also served as prime 1  For a useful overview see Loveluck, Northwest Europe, especially pp. 302–7.

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market centres, initially on a local level, but as commerce revived, many were integrated into regional and long-distance trading networks which shaped several cities into large-scale distribution centres. Rouen, for example, took on this role for the wine trade in North-West Europe, while York did the same for wool production in Northern England.2 As a result, cities were increasingly distinguished by their ability to attract diverse communities to work and trade within them, and the consequent evolution of urban groups which acquired more wealth, influence, and aspiration for political autonomy. To critics this produced worrying and destabilizing outcomes, but to others it embodied the cosmopolitanism and magnetic pull of the city and its ability to generate resources. These latter, laudatory, perspectives underpinned a great deal of urban panegyric in our period. Much like praise of the built landscape (see Chapter 6), some of it was generic and followed earlier forms of praise. The praise of cities in Ausonius’s Ordo Urbium Nobilium might have been restricted by the author’s uncertainty over the changing late Roman city, but it also identified commerce and the array of merchandise available in urban centres as worthy of acclamation.3 Alcuin’s early medieval verse praise of ancient York commended the city as a haven for ships from distant ports, and noted its alluring richness which pulled to the city people from all over the world who were seeking wealth.4 Building on this, in our later period the commercial facet of cities and their association with abundance certainly received great prominence in urban praise. It was also often firmly focused on the city as the agent of abundance through its exploitation of fertile hinterlands and trading networks, and cannot be detached from the transitions which were occurring in urban economies post-1100. A strikingly direct example can be found in the twelfth-century Vita S. Martini, where the abbot Richerius commenced his laus of Metz by congratulating the city for its wealth and copious resources: Metz, clap in your triumph, princely people, clap (with) your hands,/city adequately filled with useful goods,/clap, filled to bursting with the good gifts of the earth./You possess grain, wine, milk, honey, salt, salt fish, cumin,/apples, nuts, vegetables, pepper, purple cloths, clear pale wax,/rams, lambs, meat, fish, robes, garments./You possess treasure houses: the value of gold fights on your behalf,/a weight of coins fills up the recesses of your houses.5

2  D. Bates, ‘Rouen from 900 to 1204: from Scandinavian Settlement to Angevin “Capital” ’, in J. Stratford (ed.), Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology at Rouen (London, 1993), p. 6; Rees Jones, York, p. 248. 3  For example, Ausonius, Ordo Urbium Nobilium, p. 190 for the goods arriving at Trier via the Moselle, the ‘copia rerum’ at Milan, and p. 192 for commerce at Arles; and Frye, ‘Aristocratic Responses’, pp. 188–9. 4 Alcuin, The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York, pp. 4–7. 5  Richerius of Metz, Vita S. Martini, p. 3 (I am grateful to I. S. Moxon for this translation). Likewise, in the late thirteenth century, the Primera Cronica General eulogized Seville’s wealth, embodied partly in the constant throng of ships bringing to the city ‘all the merchandise of the world’. Vice versa, Seville’s olive oil supplied ‘the whole world’. Goods arrived from Tangier, Ceuta, Bougie, Alexandria, Genoa, Portugal, England, Pisa, Lombardy, Bordeaux, Bayonne, Sicily, Gascony, Catalonia, Aragon, and many other ‘Christian and Moorish lands’: Doubleday (trans.) in Constable (ed.), Medieval Iberia, pp. 217–20; Primera crónica general de España, ii. chap. 1128–29, pp. 768–70.

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Similarly, the microlaudes inserted into William of Malmesbury’s Gesta Pontificum Anglorum (c.1120s) repeatedly eulogized the commercial activity of English cities: London was ‘rich from the wealth of its citizens, and packed with merchants from all lands’; Norwich was ‘famous for its trade’; York ‘embraces ships coming from Germany and Ireland’; Bristol has ‘a flourishing foreign trade’ and Exeter ‘is such a trade centre that you would not fail to find there any item judged profitable for human use’.6 The very concept of plenitude and marketplaces full of goods was, as Dennis Romano has outlined, pivotal to a city’s reputation. It promoted the ‘beneficent rule of its governing elite’, and showcased divine approval.7 Toledo was pointedly praised in this way by its archbishop, Rodrigo Jimenéz de Rada in his Historia de rebus Hispanie sive Historie Gothica (completed between 1246 and 1247). Its opulence and abundant resources (‘que sola potuit sui oppulencia omnium necessitatibus non deesse’) meant it could provide sustenance for the various Christian armies from across Europe which had assembled in the city in preparation for the pivotal Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. Toledo’s plenitude was meant to reflect well on the King of Castile and to be understood as a gift to the Christian cause.8 In almost every case, external evidence for thriving commerce corroborates the messages within the panegyric. In places, that panegyric might smack of convention, but it reflected a particularly conspicuous function of the city in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Already at the start of the eleventh century Dudo of St Quentin’s eulogy of Rouen had signalled the city’s emerging commercial vibrancy and noted merchants hailing from distant lands. If we may be sceptical about traders visiting the city from Greece and India, the mention of Bretons, Danes, English, Frisians, Irish, and Scots might well reflect, according to David Bates, an accurate picture of the city’s trade at this point.9 Praise of Rouen post-1100 continued this theme. Orderic Vitalis’s brief passages praising Rouen speak of a ‘city thronged with merchants and a meeting-place of trade routes’ and William of Newburgh’s Chronicle (c.1196–98) noted that ‘Rouen is one of the most famous cities in Europe (‘una ex clarissimis Europae civitatibus’), situated on the great river Seine, on which the commerce of many regions is brought into the city’.10 Other evidence supports this picture of a commercial entrepôt in the 6  William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Bishops of England, pp. 91–2, 99, 134, 139, 197, 291. Muhammad al-Idrisi’s descriptions of cities in his geographical survey of c.1154 were equally framed by resources, hinterland, and population density. On the South Italian mainland, Salerno is simply described as ‘a remarkable city, with well-provisioned markets and goods of all types, in particular wheat and other cereals’. And Naples is recorded as ‘a beautiful city, ancient, prosperous and full of vibrant markets where it is possible to do business because of the abundance of merchandise and commodities in general’: Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, pp. 378–9. 7 Romano, Markets, pp. 19–41 (quote at p. 31). 8  Rodrigo Jimenéz de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie, Bk. VIII.I, pp. 259–60. 9 Dudo, History of the Normans, p. 100 and see the other laudatory verses on Rouen and its trade on pp. 122, 150; Bates, ‘Rouen’, p. 1. 10  Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, III. Bk. V, pp. 36–7. William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, ed. R. Howlett, Rolls Series, LXXXII, vol. I (London, 1884), Bk. II.36, pp. 190–1. See also P. Bouet, ‘L’image des villes’, pp. 329–31, 333–4.

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mid-twelfth century. The composition of the famous Etablissements de Rouen (c.1150–51) highlights Rouen’s trading networks, especially with London.11 It also implies the emergence of an influential Rouennais class, one conspicuous by its wealth as testified in charter evidence, and which is to be associated quite possibly with the construction of stone town houses in the city during the twelfth century.12 Similarly, William FitzStephen’s London was full of commercial buzz: ‘to this city, from all nations which are under the heavens, traders delight to transport maritime commerce’.13 This trade apparently brought in gold from Arabia, incense and spice from Sabaea, weapons from Scythia, palm oil from Babylon, precious gems from the Nile, silks from China, wines from France, and furs from Scandinavia.14 If FitzStephen drew on Virgil’s Georgics in his portrait of the city’s commerce, at the same time he adapted it sufficiently to fit the realities of London’s twelfth-century trade.15 Its underpinning message of long-distance commerce and a diversity of goods tallies with other evidence, particularly archaeological, which indicates London’s expanding economy of the twelfth century.16 Most pointed of all is evidence of praise on the great Italian commercial cities encapsulated most fully in the late thirteenth-century poem by the Anonymous Genovese who noted that Genoa always enjoyed ‘a great abundance of merchandise from the Levant, overseas and all other places’.17 Consequently, the anonymous poet eulogized the city’s plentiful shops, full of all types of crafts and ‘fine merchandise’, so that ‘anything you want you can have at once.’ The poet was so enamoured with the commercialization of the city that he lamented the shutting of the city’s shops on Sundays and feast days.18 Genoa, of course, had become renowned for its trading activity, one of the leading commercial centres of the Medieval Mediterranean: as the poem happily acknowledged: ‘Its shipping is so great that it sails all over the seas, and so rich are its ships that each is worth twice any others.’19 A city’s trading activities could also be used as evidence of urban innovation; an ability to transcend the limits placed on it by landscape and environment. For instance, while Rodulfus Tortarius visited Caen early in the twelfth century and praised its mercantile activity (‘Innumerable merchandise being brought there,/I beheld crowds flowing as one from all sides,/Just like a swarm of bees bound together in 11  A. Giry, Les Établissements de Rouen, 2 vols (Paris, 1883–5); Bates, ‘Rouen’, pp. 5–7. 12  S. Deck, ‘Les marchands de Rouen sous les Ducs’, Annales de Normandie, VI (1956), pp. 248–9; L. Musset, ‘A-t-il existé en Normandie au XI siècle une aristocratie d’argent’, Annales de Normandie, IX (1959), pp. 285–99; for more on Rouen’s topographical transformation see Chapter 6. 13  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, pp. 5, 7. 14  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 7. 15  For more on this point see Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City’, p. 29 and C. M. Barron, London in the Later Middle Ages: Government and People, 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2004), p. 84. 16 Particularly the development of the city’s waterfront area: Barron, London, pp. 45–97 and Keene, ‘London’, pp. 192–4; and integration with the regional agricultural sector, see Campbell et al., Medieval Capital, pp. 1–12. 17  Anonimo Genovese, trans. Dean, Towns of Italy, p. 22: Anonimo Genovese, ed. Contini, lines 121–40, pp. 755–6. 18  Anonimo Genovese, trans. Dean, Towns of Italy, p. 22: Anonimo Genovese, ed. Contini, lines 151–62 pp. 756–7. 19  Anonimo Genovese, trans. Dean, Towns of Italy, p. 23: Anonimo Genovese, ed. Contini, lines 191–4, p. 758.

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beautiful work’), he also noted that the city lacked forests, French walnuts, vines, figs, and olives.20 But commerce overcame this, for the city had a great harbour which received merchandise from England and other coastal regions.21 William of Malmesbury’s description of Chester in his Gesta Pontificum Anglorum was even more explicit about the role of merchants in defining cities, and enabling them to function almost in opposition to nature, for ‘goods are taken from [Chester] to Ireland, and essential supplies carried back, so that the efforts of merchants bring in what the nature of the soil fails to produce.’22 Lucian’s praise of Chester similarly pinpointed God’s provision of an ‘enriching river’ which enabled ‘industrious merchants’ from Aquitaine, Spain, Ireland, and Germany to arrive at Chester’s port and ‘replenish the city with a variety of goods, so that, consoled in all ways by the kindness of our God, we may often drink more and better wine, than those places in the region which glory in their success in viticulture’.23 The commercial enterprise within medieval cities then was praised for the way it provided diversity and connectivity, and thus created a wonder, for the citizen could experience the world without stepping beyond the city walls. Understandably, harbours were often the focus of praise in some works, for they enabled this circulation of resources, and often vividly represented humankind’s ability to shape and profit from the natural world. Boncompagno da Signa praised the natural security of Ancona’s famous harbour, enthusing that it needed to be seen to be believed, and the Gesta Stephani noted the importance of the topography of Bristol’s waterways and how they produced a safe harbour that could hold a thousand ships.24 The poem by the Anonymous Genovese went further, noting that the city’s ancestors had overcome the lack of natural anchorage to develop a beautiful port that ‘cost more than a whole city is worth’.25 A lack of a port was actually deemed by Bonvesin da la Riva to be one of Milan’s greatest defects.26 Nonetheless, this did not deter him from focusing on the human agents of a thriving urban economy and attempting to quantify them; all part of Bonvesin’s remarkable sensitivity for numbers and data that was itself a testament to the impact on the citizenry of an urban commercial boom that valorized statistics.27 In chapter III, Bonvesin covered thirty-five categories of citizens and urban buildings. They ranged from the number of poorhouses in the city to the number of individuals exempt from secular jurisdiction and also included ‘professionals’— such as knights, experts in law, notaries, and surgeons. Here too Bonvesin recorded the city’s artisans and other unskilled workers who are shown as particularly crucial for the functioning of the city. They embodied the ‘Common Good’ and Milan’s 20  Rodulphus Tortarius, Carmina, lines 139–41, p. 324; lines, 221–2, p. 327 21  Rodulphus Tortarius, Carmina, lines 219, 223–4, p. 327. See also Bouet, ‘L’image des villes’, pp. 330–1. 22  William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Bishops of England, p. 208. 23 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 9 (fol. 13r). 24  Boncompagno da Signa, Liber, p. 116; Gesta Stephani, p. 56. 25  Anonimo Genovese, trans. Dean, Towns of Italy, p. 22: Anonimo Genovese, ed. Contini, lines 87–100, p. 754. 26 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.X, pp. 156–7. 27 Murray, Reason and Society, pp. 180–7; see also generally Biller, The Measure of Multitude.

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efficient, interdependent organization. The city’s ovens (and implicitly its bakers ‘who bake bread for the needs of the citizens’) numbered 300 (as Bonvesin read from the books of the commune), with a further one hundred or more exempt ovens for the city’s religious communities.28 The innkeepers who sell fine wine of all types numbered over 1,000.29 The butchers totalled more than 440.30 Almost every day more than 400 fishermen brought all varieties of fish to a city that also boasted some eighty smiths and more than thirty manufacturers of brass-bells for horses.31 Bonvesin concluded his survey of the urban economy thus: As for the workers of all types, the weavers of wool, of linen, of cotton and silk, the cobblers, skinners, tailors, and of every kind of metalworker and so on; or of the merchants who travel through all the lands of the world for their trade, who are involved in the markets in other cities; or the shopkeepers, or the dealers; if I would also describe their number, I believe that whoever read and heard this would be astonished. The aforesaid information, referring only to the city, is sufficient; through it one can understand the plentiful number of citizens and the crowds of foreign people who have flocked to this city.32

In Book IV Bonvesin revisited Milan’s market economy to complete his picture of a city of abundance: Within the city general markets are held four times annually, that is on the day of the ordination of St Ambrose, on the feast-day of St Laurence, on the Assumption of the Holy Mother of God, and on the feast-day of St Bartholomew. At these markets arrive an astonishingly countless number of merchants and buyers of all types of things. Moreover, on two days of each week, that is on Friday and Saturday, in various parts of the city there is held a common market; even more, daily also almost everything necessary for people is placed on sale in abundance and with great shouts, not only in fixed places, but even throughout the streets. [Bonvesin then discusses markets in the contado] From all the aforesaid it is evident that in our city, which has sufficient money, there is the best life, where everything which serves human pleasure is at hand. For it is clear enough that anyone, providing they are healthy and not worthless, may gain riches and honour according to their state.33

The city praised as a site for dazzling riches and as an agent for the generation of wealth thus features prominently in urban panegyric. It represented, as Clarke noted, a kind of urbanized pastoral locus amoenus drawn from early monastic thinking.34 Cities were ascribed epithets signalling this, or their status measured by it. ‘Opulent Salerno’ became a well-known phrase for a city boasting trading links around the Mediterranean, its own coinage, and a hinterland full of resources.35 28 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XXVII, pp. 52–3. 29 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XXVIII, pp. 54–5. 30 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XXVIX, pp. 54–5. 31 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XXX, XXXII, XXXIII, pp. 54–5, 56–7. 32 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XXXIII, pp. 56–7. 33 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. IV.XVIII, pp. 82–5. 34  C. A. M. Clarke, Literary Landscapes and the Idea of England (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 90–105. 35  See, for example, V. D’Arienzo (ed.), Una cittá nel Mediterraneo: l’Opulenta Salernum (Salerno, 2001).

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The passage on Bristol in the Gesta Stephani labelled it ‘almost the richest city of all in the country’ [civitas omnium fere regionis civitatum opulentissima].36 The association with wealth was largely seen as a ‘good thing’, and challenged critiques (see Chapter 4), particularly within monastic circles, of the new profit economy. Indeed, the popular Parisian poet Rutebeuf struck at both sides of the debate on urban wealth, when in his work C’est de la Povretei Rutebeuf he lamented that the pain of his poverty was amplified by being so close to ‘all the riches’ Paris could offer.37 But for several commentators, some noted above, the productive dynamism of the market was to be lauded. In particular, Mendicant sensitivity to the realities and benefits of thirteenth-century urbanism supported the ‘commercial city’.38 The Florentine Dominican, Remigio de’Girolami, whose father had served in the city’s communal government, identified seven virtues in late thirteenth-century Florence.39 The first two on his list were ‘abundance of money’ and ‘the nobility of the currency’, the latter signalled, according to Remigio, by the highest quality gold and the images of John the Baptist on one side and the Florentine lily on the other. The second-half of the thirteenth century was, of course, the great period of Florentine economic growth with the establishment of the famed Florin and the rise of banking companies like the Bardi and the Peruzzi. Unsurprisingly, a component of the Florentine origin narratives of the thirteenth century even associated the city’s foundation with the place where a Roman army had established a market.40 Also, on Remigio’s list were the manufacture of wool and weaponry, while any religious attributes (aside from the mention of John the Baptist on the Florin) were notably absent. His contemporary, the Dominican preacher Giordano da Pisa, addressing the Florentine ‘borghesia’ around 1300, stressed that commerce in itself was worthy, that there could even be good forms of usury, but that both could be corrupted by men.41 This notion echoed Christian thinking on the city more broadly (see Chapter 3). Although it could be degraded by the actions of mankind, the city remained intrinsically good. Even commercial activity reflected God’s love and approval. Lucian saw Chester’s marketplace as pivotal to his cosmological praise of the city. Its central location and supply of goods was equated with heaven and the eternal bread, and it was the spot where citizens could fully appreciate 36  Gesta Stephani, p. 56. Seville was also labelled opulenta: Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 63, pp. 44–5. 37 Rutebeuf, Ouevres completes, ii. p. 423. 38  D. R. Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence: the Social World of Franciscan and Dominican Spirituality (Athens, GA, 1989), p. 111 suggests that the Florentines saw the figure of the Dominican preacher as an ‘ideologue for the merchant-banker class’; and also the comparable view on the city and the urban economy of the German Franciscan preacher Berthold von Regensburg: see Schmidt, ‘Arbeit’, pp. 261–96 where ‘Work is no longer solely a punishment which God had inflicted on Adam during the expulsion from Paradise, but also a means of personal satisfaction and improvement’ (p. 269), and all forms of occupation are fundamental in their contribution to the whole (p. 285). 39 Davis, ‘Early Florentine Political Theorist’, p. 206 fn. 30; Lesnick, Preaching in Medieval Florence, pp. 108–11; Carron, ‘Remigio de’Girolami’, pp. 446–8. 40  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, p. 40. 41 Delcorno, Giordano da Pisa, pp. 54–5, 58–9. Albert Magnus devoted space in his sermons to discuss usury too: Augsburg Sermon Cycle, pp. 120, 122–3.

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God’s patronage of Chester.42 God’s hand was also to be seen in the threefold supply of provisions to the city from Ireland, Wales, and England.43 With such justification, gold, precious metals and gems, and coinage could all be used to valorize urban identity. Richerius’s houses in Metz full of gold, Gervase of Tilbury’s London ‘rich in silver and gold’, or Bonvesin’s Milan enabling its citizens to accumulate wealth and prestige were recorded as signs of urban pride.44 This association was evident in some of the most influential vernacular Epics and Romances of the time. As we have seen, this varied body of performative works offered a mixed outlook on the city as a commercial hub (see Chapter 4). Artisans and merchants could be depicted as debauched and untrustworthy, the marketplace a battleground of deceit, a place of reckoning.45 These works could express an ideological chasm between urban community and aristocracy. In Le Charroi de Nimes, the hero famously encountered a serf en route to Nimes and asked the latter to tell him of the ‘mode of life in the city’. The serf instinctively praised the city’s cheap products, where food was half the price elsewhere. In response William scolded the serf, for ‘he was not asking about prices’ but of his enemy King Otrant who held the city.46 But the city’s resources and commercial ethos were treated positively in some tales. Wealthy burghers aided the hero and were virtuous and kind: one named Gautier of St Denis supported Aiol in his quest, and the owner of a pilgrim hostel assisted William, the hero of L’Escoufle, at Montpellier.47 Moreover, L’Escoufle’s homeless female hero, Aelis, and her companion, Isabelle, settled in Montpellier and became rich after establishing a successful craft business, making jewellery, belts, and other precious objects. This enabled them to produce a gift for the Countess of St Gilles. Consequently they were able to gain access to the court, thus taking another step towards reclaiming a lost noble status.48 The knightly classes were repeatedly shown to be mesmerized by the wealth stored inside cities, keen to control it or weigh their power or determination by it. Aiol declared at one point that ‘I wouldn’t be so happy/If I were given an entire city’s gold’, while in Girart de Vienne the gold of all of Paris or Montpellier is said not to tempt characters to alter their stance, and Girart himself was astonished by the marble walls of Vienne and the wealth which would accrue to any lord of the city.49 This marvelling at the city’s resources was summed up in Le Conte du Graal 42 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 9 (fol. 13r). 43 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 9 (fol. 11v–12r) and also Excerpt 25 (fol. 114r). 44  For Richerius and Bonvesin see above pp. 26, 32; Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, II. 17, pp. 398–401. 45  See especially the experience of Aiol at Orléans (for which, see Chapter 4, p. 102). The importance of the marketplace as an ideological battleground, and the fear of its sinful subversion, encouraged greater regulation from city governments (especially in Italy) to root out fraud and shape the city’s commercial core as a moral space adorned with monuments and other visual aids to encourage honesty and charity, see Romano, Markets, pp. 159–220. 46  Charroi de Nimes, p. 23. 47  Aiol, chap. 27–30, lines 1082–255, pp. 28–32; Jean Renart, L’Escoufle, pp. 98–104. 48  Jean Renart, L’Escoufle, pp. 88–9. 49  Aiol, chap. 30, lines 1291–2, p. 33; Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, Girart de Vienne, XI, p. 13; XCV, p. 99; XCIX, p. 102; CII, p. 111; CXXXI, p. 144.

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when the knight Gawain observed a city buzzing with commercial and artisanal activity: money-changers dealing in gold and silver coins, squares and streets bustling with all types of workers making weaponry, cloths, tableware, jewellery; it seemed every day was a fair, and the city was replete with wealth and merchandise.50 As Michael Harney noted in the context of Hispanic Epic and Romance, the city was adapted into ‘a bourgeois locus amoenus’.51 HINTERLAND The city’s ability to generate wealth and harness resources was not solely situated within the urban settlement proper. It was intimately connected with a hinterland which yielded all manner of produce and materials to provision the city and its markets. Urban identity had always been forged in relationship to the surrounding countryside. The beauty and fertility of a city’s site was one of the most conventional features of early urban panegyric and tells us how proud urban inhabitants felt to articulate associations with that landscape. Libanius’s extensive praise of Antioch in the fourth century devoted much space to the city’s surrounding landscape and fertility noting that ‘the first and greatest praise of a city is the excellence of its land’.52 The eighth-century De Laudibus Urbium equally advised that a city’s site (inland, on the coast, mountainous) and the fertility of its lands should be a cornerstone of urban praise.53 This type of praise drew on literary notions of the locus amoenus, an idealized place of natural refuge, voiced in works of classical authors like Virgil, and nurtured in medieval monastic circles.54 Such praise retained its prominence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium, for example, opened its prologue in praise of Metz by highlighting the city’s bountiful hinterland set in the conventional language of an earthly paradise. Metz was ‘amply pleasant (‘satis amoena’) in the delights of its rivers, fruitful in vineyards and woodlands, made eminent by its mountains, more illustrious than other cities in the natural quality of its nearby salt-works, its air healthy.’55 City names could even be based on those productive hinterlands. One explanation of Metz’s name, recorded in the Gesta and earlier works, was linked to the city’s fertile territory, and similar laudatory interpretations were put forward for Capua’s name (for more see Chapter 7). However, while praise of urban hinterlands was undoubtedly based on a long-standing literary convention, its true value in the Central Middle Ages is only apparent when placed alongside significant developments in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These developments ­arguably brought city and hinterland into a more interdependent relationship than at any 50  Chrétien de Troyes, The Story of the Grail Roman de Perceval, pp. 408–9. 51  Harney, ‘Siege Warfare’, pp. 187–8. 52  Libanius, ‘Oration’, 13, p. 657, and also 19–41, pp. 657–9. 53  De Laudibus Urbium, ed. in Fasoli, ‘La coscienza civica’, p. 295 n. 6. 54  E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask (London, 1953), pp. 183–202. 55  Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium, p. 534.

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previous point. Demographic growth created a surplus among a rural community which at the same time was drawn to cities by the economic take-off apparent within them. The attraction was exerted not just on the peasantry but the rural nobility too. It also compelled cities to harness more effectively the resources within hinterlands in order to meet the demands of growing urban populations and the financing of civic projects. The intensification of the city’s function as a local and regional market pulled more rural-based traders and goods into the urban market. Improvements in infrastructure, such as roads and hostels, enabled better movement throughout urban hinterlands. And, finally, as city governments evolved their political aspirations and interventionist policies some sought to make concerted jurisdictional claims over wider territories. While urban communities articulated a distinct identity based on city-dwelling, as much of our urban panegyric attests, that identity was implicitly forged by interaction with the city’s surrounding countryside. As Tom Scott has recently shown, several urban centres, most prominently in Central and Northern Italy, developed into city states during our period, with power over wide territories. Scholarship has been sharply divided over this process. Should the paradigm be one of the city’s conquest of the contado (the Italian term for an urban hinterland and which often corresponded with a city’s diocesan boundaries), or the contado’s conquest of the city? Or even that of a ‘triangular relationship’ between city, rural lords, and rural communities.56 The end product was invariably the same: a closer enmeshing of city and hinterland, and a ‘conquest’ which was undoubtedly mutually dependent on powerholders in both city and countryside. At least in its Italian format, by the end of the thirteenth century many cities had acquired jurisdictional powers over extensive hinterlands and were operating interventionist strategies or ‘patterns of control’.57 The rural economy was consequently commercialized through this process. Attempts were put in place to meet the ‘existential need’ of the city by controlling the distribution of people and goods within hinterlands, by taxing rural communities, and by encouraging rural landholding among the urban laity.58 Italian cities were at the vanguard of most shifts in the functioning of the medieval city, so let us also take an arguably more representative case. The city of York was in the thirteenth century one of the largest urban centres of an increasingly centralized medieval state. Cities in this English realm were not able to claim the sorts of freedom and political control over their hinterlands that their Italian counterparts achieved. Indeed, the extent of royal authority here meant that cities did not have to oversee the maintenance of peace in their hinterlands or engage in strategies to 56  See a very useful overview of the scholarship in Grillo, Milano, pp. 589–94, and also T. Scott, The City-State in Europe, 1000–1600: Hinterland—Territory—Region (Oxford, 2012), especially, pp.  24–8; also A. I. Pini, ‘Un aspetto dei rapporti tra città e territorio nel Medioevo: la politica demografica ad elastico di Bologna fra il XII e il XIV secolo’, in L. De Rosa (ed.), Studi in memoria di Federigo Melis, vol. 1 (Naples, 1978), pp. 365–408. 57 Scott, City-State, pp. 39–50 (quote at p. 43). 58 Scott, City-State, pp. 214–41 (quote at p. 236). Pini, ‘Un aspetto dei rapporti tra città e territorio nel Medioevo’, pp. 365–408, offers a rich study of the urban government’s approach to rural migration into Bologna. Campbell et al., Medieval Capital, tracks London’s increasing efforts by c.1300 to ensure a grain supply from its hinterland.

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protect them against rival cities. Toll revenue collected within hinterlands also often had to be conveyed to the Crown. And yet, as Sarah Rees Jones’ recent study makes clear, through a process of negotiation between an emerging and sophisticated civic government on the one hand, and a pragmatic monarchy on the other, York was able to claim a range of trading privileges which regulated and taxed all manner of products entering the city from the lowland Vale of York.59 The establishment of a major new urban market, the Thursday Market, overseen by the city government controlled the vending of products brought into the city by rural traders. New religious houses in Yorkshire purchased hospices, usually around the city’s periphery, which could serve as distribution points for wool and other goods drawn from monastic estates. And, while civic processional routes changed to fit with the changing commercial topography of the city, they continued to cater for rural participants too. As Rees Jones concludes: The City of York may not have enjoyed the formal control over its rural hinterland that some continental cities enjoyed, but its institutions of government still developed both formal and informal mechanisms to ensure that its relationship with the countryside remained a dynamic and vital one.60

These were the sorts of normative city–hinterland relationships found across Europe, and they were the lifeblood of medieval cities. Literary and artistic attempts to present cities as walled-off, internalized, and unified against an outside world were highly unlikely then to be denials of this fundamentally important state of mutual interaction. It was more probably a vivid statement of civic aspiration, unity, and power which itself was implicitly exemplified in connection to, rather than disconnection from, valuable hinterlands. Thus, the prominence of the hinterland in urban panegyric post-1100 needs to be read in the context not just of the locus amoenus tradition but as part of the reconfiguration of urban–rural networks of movement and trade. Most of our works of urban panegyric express the beauty and fertility of their city’s hinterland in conventional, well-established terms. The description of Palermo in c.1190 set out a veritable garden of Eden in the Conca d’Oro just outside the city: ‘a blessed plain, to be extolled in all future centuries (‘o beatam cunctisque seculis predicandam planitiem’)’.61 The Liber Pergaminus is full of coverage, often generic, of the city’s setting and the fertility of its fields, cereals, vines, and olives.62 The De laude civitatis Laude likewise is permeated with laudatory references to a rich hinterland: full of lambs, sheep, plough-oxen, woods, vines, figs, olives, meadows, and rivers, including the Adda on which the city was sited.63 And William FitzStephen, with Virgilian borrowings, praised the 59  Rees Jones, York, pp. 235–69. 60  Rees Jones, York, p. 269. 61  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, p. 260; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, p. 184. 62  Mosè del Brolo, Liber Pergaminus, lines 127–50, pp. 446–7, lines 181–4, p. 448; G. Cremaschi, Mosè di Brolo e la cultura a Bergamo nei secoli XI e XII (Bergamo, 1945), pp. 105–7. 63  De laude civitatis Laude, for example, lines 5–8, p. 46; lines 16–18, pp. 48–50; lines 22–4, pp. 50–2; lines 34–6, p. 54; lines 54–6, pp. 58–60. See also De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi, pp. 90–7 which offered a detailed excursus of the fertility of Lisbon’s hinterland, its healthy air, and medicinal springs, all of which enabled the city to sustain a huge population.

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pasturelands, pleasant meadows riddled with streams and watermills, rich woodlands and fields which were located to the north of London.64 But in some works, the praise of the hinterland reveals more than an image of bucolic virtue. The way the surrounding territory was placed in relationship to cities indicates how hinterlands mattered to them in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Evidence of the drive for jurisdictional control of hinterlands is apparent in the vernacular version of the Vita of San Petronio and in Bonvesin da la Riva’s work on Milan. In San Petronio’s Vita the saint received imperial confirmation of the boundaries of Bologna’s contado, an act which Petronio said would safeguard the Bolognesi from poverty. Those boundaries approximated closely to the ones sought by Bologna’s communal government in the thirteenth century and thus can be read as contemporary efforts to assert the extent of Bologna’s rural jurisdiction and thus capacity to provision its sizeable urban populace.65 Bonvesin’s De Magnalibus demonstrates much more opaquely the remarkable extent to which Milan’s contado was subsumed into the city’s functioning and identity. The contado is repeatedly praised and it is encompassed within Bonvesin’s project to quantify and measure.66 His ability to access information about the contado from communal records, fiscal registers, and administrators and artisans active outside the city testifies to Milan’s close control of its hinterland.67 In Bk. II.X Bonvesin enumerated the magnitude of the city’s jurisdiction: it governed more than fifty burgi (sizeable urban settlements in their own right), including Monza which was ‘more worthy of being called a civitas than a burgus’, along with some 1,150 villages with fortifications (in some of which resided more than 500 men eligible to fight).68 And in Bk. II.XI there are listed numerous settlements which fell under the jurisdiction of the Milanese Church or which were exempt from the authority of the commune.69 There were also innumerable beautiful houses that rose both in the city and its comitatus (contado), and various other types of buildings and settlements: holy churches, villages, villas, fortresses, mills, farmsteads, and religious houses, including the famous Cistercian monastery of Chiaravalle.70 The contado was a garden of delights (delitiarum paradisus) beyond comparison, and one in full symbiosis with the city. In many places Bonvesin considered the city and contado in unison.71 Bk. IV offered an exhaustive record of all the products 64  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 3. See also the Old English Durham poem which praises the river Wear that flows around Durham and its surrounding forests and dales full of animals, Grossi, ‘Preserving the Future’, p. 44. 65  Vita di San Petronio, chap. V, p. 27; Webb, Patrons and Defenders, pp. 174–6. 66 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. I.III, pp. 20–1, where Bonvesin lists all the products of the contado along with the virtue of Milan’s location. 67  For more on Milan’s control of its contado: Grillo, Milano, pp. 89–176, 589–642. 68 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. II.X, pp. 30–1. 69 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. II.XI, pp. 30–3. 70 In De Magnalibus, Bk. II.XII, pp. 32–3, Bonvesin also noted that ‘extra civitatem in diocesi’ there were more than 2,500 beautiful shrines dedicated to saints, with more than 2,600 altars. 71 In De Magnalibus, Bk. III.II, pp. 40–1; VII, pp. 44–5; XII, pp. 46–7 he calculated the collective population of the city and contado of Milan (more than 200,000 men eligible for combat, and more than 700,000 when including women, children, and elderly), and arrived at a joint number of 220 houses of the Second Order of the Humiliati spread across city and contado. Elsewhere (De Magnalibus,

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and natural resources drawn from Milan’s contado and conveys a picture of an urban government which knew every corner and every crop of the hinterland. Its bounty and productivity was worth eulogizing. At one point Bonvesin marvelled at the plentiful grape harvest which annually produced enough barrels to fill more than 600,000 wagons, and boasted that many cities’ entire grape harvest did not produce more wine than the amount which the flies of Milan ended up being intoxicated on!72 The contado’s watermills, numbering more than 900 and their wheels at least 3,000, produced food not only for so many Milanesi citizens, but for more than 100,000 dogs. Indeed, these mill-wheels ground so much cereal that there was an abundance of bread in Milan and Bonvesin believed that there were several cities in Italy whose inhabitants consumed less bread than Milan’s dogs alone.73 Here too the hinterland becomes a distinctive marker of inter-urban competition and pride. Another important feature of some of our urban panegyric is the focus on extramural suburbs as worthy of praise, which indicates that their authors were attuned to a nuanced and blurred line between city and countryside as well as the polyfocal nature of urban settlement. Urban population growth saw the progressive expansion of extramural suburbs in many European cities.74 These areas immediately adjacent to city walls or the core urban nucleus served as intermediate ‘zones of transition’ where the urban and rural were thoroughly blended.75 Extramural suburbs could offer space for the construction of larger houses for urban elites, or conversely they might host trades, such as tanning, deemed unsuitable for a densely inhabited area. For most cities, suburbs were affluent hubs of trading and the sites of markets where rural commodities were sold, just like that of the St Giles market outside York.76 They were clearly places worthy of praise, sometimes quasi-cities in themselves.77 At Milan, Bonvesin da la Riva boasted of an urban plan which was unable to be contained by its ditch and enclosing walls: ‘therefore outside its walls were so many suburban buildings sufficient to be a city by itself.’78 In his laudatory depiction of Paris, Gui of Bazoches recorded two similarly impressive suburbs Bk. III.III, pp. 40–1; V, pp. 42–3; VII, IX, X, pp. 45–6; Bk. III.XXXIV, pp. 56–7) he noted the respective numbers of religious houses in the city and contado and acknowledged (though opted not to quantify) the great number of noble people, masters of arts, doctors, merchants, farmers, and artisans of all types who inhabited the contado. 72 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. IV, pp. 60–85; the wine harvest at VII, pp. 72–3. 73 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. IV.XIIII, pp. 78–81. At XVIII, pp. 84–5 Bonvesin also discussed the markets held in the settlements of the contado. 74  Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, pp. 404–9; D. J. Keene, ‘Suburban Growth’, in M. W. Barley (ed.), The Plans and Topography of Medieval Towns in England and Wales (London, 1976), pp. 71–82 offers evidence for England and shows that most suburbs expanded most rapidly in the twelfth century and had peaked in size by c.1300. 75  Creighton, ‘Town Defences’, p. 48. 76  Rees Jones, York, p. 262. 77  Indeed, sometimes a single large extramural settlement developed into what became effectively a second urban centre. This ‘ville double’ model was particularly common in France, for instance Limoges and Saint-Martial, Tours and Saint-Martin, Arras and Saint-Vaast: Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, pp. 405–6. 78 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. II.V, pp. 26–7. Later on, however, (Bk. III.VI, pp. 42–3) Bonvesin would note that Milan’s suburbs should always be counted as part of the city, suggesting that there remained some uncertainty on how to categorize these extra-urban settlements.

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extending right and left from the Ile-de-la-Cité, ‘the lesser of which, surpassing jealous cities, causes envy’.79 These suburbs were Paris’s celebrated Left and Right Banks, the student and commercial quarters respectively, which by 1211 would be enclosed by fortified walls and absorbed more directly into an expanding city.80 Gui noted that both suburbs were connected to central Paris by bridges and that the Grand Pont led to the commercial quarter of the Right Bank which was full of ships, resources, and merchandise. Elsewhere, William FitzStephen noted the magnificent Westminster Palace, which was situated some two miles from the city of London proper to which it was joined by ‘a crowded suburb (‘suburbio frequenti continuante’)’. He also mentioned, beyond the walls, the citizens’ gardens, and later indicated that some of London’s suburbs were blessed with springs. The most famous were Holywell (‘Fons Sacer’), Clerkenwell (‘Fons Clericorum’), and Saint Clement’s Well (‘Fons sancti Clementis’), which were visited by great crowds, particularly young students in London who left the city to enjoy the air of a summer evening.81 FitzStephen’s description of the different ways in which land was used (allotments, orchards, pasture, meadows, rivers, woodland, arable) as one moved out of London indicates accurately the sort of concentric circles of distinctive agrarian activity that emerged from the interrelationship with a large site of consumption such as London. Gui of Bazoches’s account also emphasized the intermediary role of suburbs in city–hinterland relationships when he signalled to the flow and movement made possible between urban centre and suburban periphery by bridges. The chronicler Alexander of Telese did likewise in his short praise of ‘the illustrious city’ (‘illustrissimam urbem’) of Capua, when he eulogized the city’s Casolini bridge, which was ‘of great size and wonderful workmanship [and] has been built across [the Volturno river], which allows people to go in and out from one part of the city to the other where there is an extensive suburb’; he followed this pointedly with praise of all the merchandise that flowed into the city.82 In a similar fashion several works also praised the waterways and rivers which brought ships and produce into the city. The De laude civitatis Laude eulogized the Adda which brought ships laden with merchandise and both Orderic Vitalis and William of Newburgh pinpointed the vital role of the Seine in Rouen’s affluence.83 The sustenance of growing urban 79  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 54 pp. 55–6. 80  B. Gauthiez, ‘Paris, un Rouen Capetien? (Développements compares de Rouen et Paris sous les règnes de Henri II et Philippe Auguste)’, Anglo-Norman Studies, XVI (1993), pp. 131–3; the partcritique, part eulogy of Lisbon, delivered in the De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi, pp. 94–5 recorded a circular wall around the city’s highest point, which then extended down on both sides to the Tagus, and beyond naturally fortified suburbs which were cut into the rocks below the walls. 81  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, pp. 3–4. For a city of its size, medieval London was unusual in not enclosing its expanding suburbs in an extended circuit wall: O. Creighton, ‘“Castles of Communities”: Medieval Town Defences in England, Wales and Gascony’, Château Gaillard, XXII (2006), p. 77. 82  Loud (trans.), Roger II, p. 102; Alexander of Telese, Ystoria Rogerii, Bk. II.66, p. 55. 83  De laude civitatis Laude, lines 104, p. 46; lines 19–21, p. 50; line 38, p. 56; line 54, p. 58; Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, III. Bk. V, pp. 36–7; William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, Bk. II.36, pp. 190–1. The Gesta Treverorum, pp. 131–2 praised the Moselle’s importance to Trier.

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populations underpins this focus in urban panegyric on the influx of commodities from the hinterland into the city. Feeding all those mouths was part of the wonder of the city, and (more prosaically) the responsibility of its governing elite. Early in the thirteenth century, Gervase of Tilbury emphasized this precise point in his eulogy of London. It was one of the main reasons why London ‘is itself deservedly the envy of all’. Having noted the city’s port, the Thames stocked with fish, the plentiful pasturage, and ‘woodland full of game’, Gervase asked rhetorically: ‘Who indeed would believe that such a large populace could be so law-abiding, could enjoy such a stable supply of wheat and all other grains, such plentifully flowing wine even though vines are not grown there, and such a teeming abundance of all worldly goods.’84 PEOPLE We must conclude this chapter on the city’s resources by noting one feature of praise which underpinned everything. What is abundantly clear in praise relating to a city’s commerce and hinterland is that the city depended not just on the products of commerce and the hinterland but on people too. The migrant agricultural labourers and low-skilled workers who sourced the products, the artisans who manufactured them, and the merchants who distributed commodities: these were resources of the utmost importance to cities. Hence some urban panegyric praised the people inhabiting the surrounding rural lands, and suggested that the glories of the nearby city radiated on to them. The wider context often conferred further layers of meaning. Within the framework of the ideology of Christian Reconquest in Iberia the magnetic pull of famous cities was undoubtedly stressed as part of a process of re-Christianization. The Primera Cronica General claimed that after the Castilian conquest of Seville in 1248, King Fernando divided up the city’s hinterland and settled it with many people who were attracted by ‘the fame of the great splendours of Seville’.85 Rodrigo Jimenéz de Rada presented a parallel picture in his description of the capture of Córdoba (1236): And so great was the abundance, charm and fertility of that city, that, having heard such great praise of it, people from all parts of Spain and future inhabitants [of Córdoba] left their birthplaces, as if assembling to the royal news, and so it [Córdoba] was filled by inhabitants without delay, so that houses were lacking for inhabitants, not inhabitants for houses.86

We have already noted how Bonvesin proudly incorporated the inhabitants of the contado into his glowing depiction of Milan, and the De laude civitatis Laude presented a similar symbiosis between city and hinterland and praised the latter’s workers: ‘standing in their fields, good guardians (‘boni vigiles’), farmers (‘coloni’) 84  Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, II. 17, pp. 398–9; Campbell et al., Medieval Capital, shows how well-functioning London’s grain supply was in the thirteenth century. 85  Doubleday (trans.) in Constable (ed.), Medieval Iberia, p. 220. 86  Rodrigo Jimenéz de Rada, Historia de rebus Hispanie, Bk. VIIII.XVII, pp. 299–300.

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ready at the plough’.87 Both can be linked to a process of urban aspiration to control hinterlands more fully and to the rise of rural migration into cities. The human element of the city translated into praise of population mass. Works of urban panegyric all start from the premise that a large population was praiseworthy. They present the alternative to the critique of the ‘over-crowded’ city prey to mob culture. Large, diverse populations demonstrated the magnetic attraction of a city which must contain all manner of benefits to shelter so many people, and which showcased the city’s power (politically and militarily) and productivity.88 Libanius’s praise of Antioch (of 360) had placed particular prominence on the heterogeneous population of the city; a result of its ability to attract immigrants.89 The city and its marketplaces were full of people from all over the world: Indeed, if a man had the idea of travelling all over the earth, not to see how the cities looked, but to learn their ways, our city would fulfil his purpose and save him his journeying. If he sits in our market place he will sample every city, there will be so many people from each place with whom he can talk.90

The urban revival of the Central Middle Ages reawakened such connections. Anselm’s Vita Adalberti II drew on the link between resources and population in praising Reims where ‘rich resources of the city nourish its countless citizens’.91 Likewise, the Anonymous Genovese poet praised his city ‘full of people, and well supplied with everything’ and spoke glowingly of the city’s roads overcrowded with foreign merchants bringing their merchandise.92 If populations became worryingly large, attempts were made to manage this, perhaps by imposing trading regulations which reduced the number of resident foreign merchants, or (as was attempted at Bologna in the mid-thirteenth century) by compelling recent rural immigrants to return to the urban hinterland.93 The aforementioned Anonymous Genovese instead saw a large population, in conjunction with the city’s commercial acumen, as an opportunity to establish a diaspora which would disseminate the city’s fame: ‘there are so many Genoese, and they are so scattered across the world, that wherever they are they make another Genoa.’94 The tendency for laconic praise of population size evident in early forms of panegyric continued in many works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. However, there are some hints that commentators were prepared to engage with and praise population size a little more deeply. Indeed, evidence for significant population growth in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries adds greater resonance to this type of praise. We have already discussed evidence for increasing urban 87  De laude civitatis Laude, line 48, p. 58. 88  See Hubert, ‘construction de la ville’, pp. 126–39 for the attempts of urban governments, ecclesiastical institutions, and lay landholders to promote immigration into Italian cities. 89  Libanius, ‘Oration’, 164–74, pp. 670–1. 90  Libanius, ‘Oration’, 166, p. 670. 91  Anselm of Havelberg, Vita Adelberti II Moguntini, line 252, p. 576. 92  Anonimo Genovese, trans. Dean, Towns of Italy, pp. 21, 23: Anonimo Genovese, ed. Contini, lines 69–70, p. 753, lines 219–24, p. 759. 93  Pini, ‘Un aspetto dei rapporti’. 94  Anonimo Genovese, trans. Dean, Towns of Italy, p. 23: Anonimo Genovese, ed. Contini, lines 195–8, p. 758.

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populations after c.1100 and will revisit elements of it again in exploring the built city in Chapter 6. Our works of urban panegyric offer three forms of evidence and praise for the size of city populations. One, as we have seen above, was to show that a city’s commerce and resources attracted countless merchants and visitors who boosted, at least temporarily, the city’s population. Transient populations could be targets of criticism, but when a William FitzStephen or the author of the Primera Cronica General boasted of the ships and merchants which arrived in London and Seville respectively, it was a diversity, perhaps even a multiculturalism, to be celebrated. Another was to offer the sort of indirect evidence that medieval historians have to rely on to track population growth: the building of religious houses/ creation of new parishes and circuit walls (see Chapters 3 and 6 respectively), and the presence of extramural suburbs.95 Indeed, praise of the latter also provided an image of a vibrant, poly-focal city. Finally, there is more direct evidence, ranging from generic statements about a sizeable populace to attempts to quantify it, some obviously more rigorous than others. Of the former, generic statements, we could cite many. Boncampagno da Signa’s opening praise description of Ancona, calling it a ‘civitas modica set populosa’, and several of Muhammad al-Idrisi’s entries on cities, noting their populous nature, represent the standard.96 John de Garlande’s works also commended and recorded the stereotype of a crowded city, in this case Paris. His Parisiana Poetria used, as an example of hyperbole, the dictum ‘The famous name of Paris reaches to the stars, and its borders contain the human race’, but in his other work, his Dictionarius, proceeded to offer a quotidian tour of a frenetic and packed city which seemed not too far removed from his other hyperbolized Paris.97 This matched Bartholomew Anglicus’s entry in his encyclopaedia of c.1245 which said that the city ‘receives people from all parts of the world, [and] supplies them with all necessities’, and his entries for several other cities labelled them ‘populous’, particularly those in Italy.98 These commentators were articulating one of the most enduring identities of a city, its population density. The ‘multitude of people’ was one of Remigio de’Girolami’s seven virtues of Florence, and this same theme was the fulcrum around which Gervase of Tilbury’s praise of London swung, a city so marvellous that it could sustain such a huge populace.99 And in the altercatio between Mantua and Canossa, the former asserted its status as an urbs by bragging of all the people within it. Canossa responded: ‘You may have the name of a city 95  Though the number of parishes are not everywhere a sure guide to population growth, as some expanding cities might in fact rationalize and reduce the number of parishes as a result of growth. 96 Boncompagno da Signa, Liber, p. 118; Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, for example Augsburg ‘a city of middling size, densely built, very populous and frequented by rich merchants’ (p. 369); Pisa was ‘one of the most important and celebrated cities of the Christian territories. Its territory is vast, its markets flourishing, its dwellings well-populated.’ (p. 372); Ghent had ‘numerous dwellings’ (p. 428). 97  John de Garlande, Parisiana Poetria, chap. 6, p. 129; John de Garlande, Dictionarius. 98  Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum (Cologne, c.1472), Manchester, John Rylands Library, Bk. XV (without pagination); Biller, The Measure of Multitude, pp. 221–4. 99  Davis, ‘Early Florentine Political Theorist’, p. 206 fn. 30; Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, II. 17, pp. 398–9.

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(‘Urbis habes nomen’), but you are not esteemed in honour./While you have many people (‘Si populos multos habeas’), we know you live without glory.’100 Only occasionally did commentators venture to augment their praise of populations with numbers, some of which were most likely embellished to some degree. The De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi marvelled at a Lisbon (including its suburbs) apparently capable of sustaining 60,000 tax-paying families, a city ‘populous beyond what can readily be believed’ (‘Populosa supra quod existimari nequit.’) and swelled at the time of the Crusaders’ siege of the city to some 154,000 men, as the author claimed to have learned from the Muslim governor of the city.101 Juan Gil de Zamora’s De Preconiis Hispanie signalled Toledo out as an urbs more populous than any other city in Iberia, and plentiful in its resources. In his brief survey of the city’s history he also jumped to the present when he noted that ‘in our times are found in this city 70,000 Jews who pay tribute, excluding children, women and the poor. There is a countless multitude of Christians and Saracens.’102 Toledo thus appeared as a multicultural metropolis. William FitzStephen claimed that at the time of the ‘Anarchy’ during King Stephen’s reign, London could assemble 20,000 armed horsemen and 60,000 footsoldiers, both clearly exaggerated figures, although London was known to possess a formidable civic army in the twelfth century.103 It was Bonvesin da la Riva, however, relying heavily on data and its apparent accountability, who offered the most detailed effort to quantify and praise an urban population.104 His De Magnalibus exemplified the new culture of numbers of the thirteenth century which had been generated by commercial and governmental imperatives. For Alexander Murray his ‘number-consciousness’ represented a ‘landmark in the history of statistics’, and his work one that ‘reads like a stores inventory’.105 It was also part of a new climate keen to understand demography and, following the title of Peter Biller’s extensive study, gain a ‘measure of the multitude’.106 As we have already seen, Bonvesin calculated the total population of city and contado at more than 200,000 men eligible for combat.107 In a later section he added that the city supplied 40,000 of these, and that the city and contado together provided 2,000 knights.108 Having researched at length and received agreement from many others, he estimated that the entire population of both city and contado surpassed 700,000.109 Elsewhere he boasted that Milan was so fully populated that in the city alone there was 150 parishes, some of which housed more than 500 families, others even pushed beyond 1000.110 In the following 100  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, lines 601–2, 606–8, p. 58. 101  De Expugnatione Lyxbonensi, pp. 94–5. 102  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, pp. 217–18. 103  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 4; see also the comments in Stenton, Norman London, pp. 9, 33. 104  See Chiesa’s introduction in Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, xvi–xvii. 105 Murray, Reason and Society, pp. 181–3. 106 Biller, The Measure of the Multitude. 107 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.II, pp. 40–1. 108 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XV, pp. 48–9; III.XVI, pp. 50–1. 109 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XII, pp. 46–7. 110 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XIII, pp. 48–9.

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distinctio Bonvesin offered a calculation of the entire urban population. He arrived at a figure of 200,000.111 It is a number which has split opinion among modern scholars.112 His inductive research did at least attempt to substantiate the estimates. Bonvesin based his figure of 200,000 on data furnished to him by urban officials charged with exacting taxes from milling which indicated that every day the urban population consumed at least 1,200 bushels of corn. But more important for us is the acknowledgement of, and pride in, a vast populace, something echoed in many of our texts. For Bonvesin, the observation that Milan’s ‘numerous populace daily increases in number, and the city expands with its buildings’ represented a veritable testament of the city’s magnificence and success.113 Therefore, through its commerce, hinterland, and substantial population the medieval city could appear to be a wondrous thing, simultaneously self-sufficient and at the centre of an intricate symbiosis of wider networks. Those praising the city saw a productivity and generation of wealth that embodied a type of human enterprise, often divinely backed, which was particularly befitting of the emergent urban world of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. 111 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XIIII, pp. 48–9. 112 Grillo, Milano, pp. 39–41; Chiesa in Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, xvii; Racine, ‘Milan’, pp. 246–63. 113 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.II, pp. 40–1.

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6 Urban Landscapes and Sites of Power Lay urban culture intermixed with the religious to find ways of reifying an intangible civic consciousness, and a particularly vivid conduit for a transferral between the imagined/aspired and the real was found in the built urban landscape. This chapter, then, keeping in mind those dual cultures (lay and religious), examines how works of praise valued urban buildings and layouts, and places this type of praise into the context of a boom in construction activity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries which changed the visage of many cities. It explores some of the built structures that dominate panegyric, like circuit walls, gates, and towers. Religious infrastructure is also central to these works of praise, but they have been examined in Chapter 3 and so here we look primarily at ‘secular’ buildings. The chapter will finally consider how urban panegyric engaged with the development of cities as they crystallized into metropolises and asserted their political function as centres of public power. T H E M E D I E VA L B U I L D I N G B O O M The praise of civic buildings and fortifications was at the core of the earliest urban panegyric and remained so throughout the early Middle Ages. Ausonius praised Milan’s numerous elegant houses, Trier’s impressive walls, and Bordeaux’s high towers.1 Libanius celebrated the continual buzz of construction works in Antioch and the Versum de Mediolano Civitate referenced Milan’s towers, wide circuit walls, gates, and paved streets.2 But when we encounter comparable praise of a city’s built environment in the post-1100 period we should not consider this simply as the legacy of a weighty literary tradition. Certainly these earlier works established a precedent, but lines of transmission within this tradition are disjointed at best, and we need to tread carefully in interpreting intertextual references as classicizing, conservative, or backwards-looking in tone. Indeed, when post-1100 authors of urban panegyric praised the magnificence and symbolism of buildings, sometimes in ways echoing earlier works, we must primarily place this in relationship with the significant transformations that were occurring in cities and around these authors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and this will then allow us to see how some 1 Ausonius, Ordo Urbium Nobilium, pp. 191, 194. 2  Libanius, ‘Oration’, 227, pp. 676–7; Versum de Mediolano Civitate in Versus de Verona, lines 1–18, pp. 145–6.

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literary traditions could continue to be recast in new environments. That the twelfth and thirteenth centuries saw marked changes in the urban landscape is clear enough. As one scholar put it, in the context of Italy but applicable across Europe, ‘a great amount of earth was being turned over and moved’: a medieval building boom was underway which affected most of Europe’s cities during this period.3 Commerce, climactic stability, population growth, and new religious and political cultures contributed to this activity.4 Together they endowed urban buildings with a significance far beyond the functional. In large, amorphous urban communities which nurtured maturing ambitions for power and influence, those buildings were equally projections of aspiration and markers of identity. As much was evident in the prominence accorded to urban buildings in city-seals, coinage, and in medieval illustrations of urban settlements, like Matthew of Paris’s depictions of London, Paris, Rome, and other cities.5 Another indicator of the multivalent qualities of built structures can be found in the revived investment in stone buildings, particularly among the rising mercantile classes whose increasing material wealth was beginning to marry up with higher social status. Following an initial boom in timber building, stone town houses became common in many cities of the twelfth century, not just in Italy, but in places like Canterbury, Ghent, London, and Southampton.6 Among some of the most remarkable archaeological discoveries for twelfth-century Rouen has been the revelation of ‘une architecture civile en pierre’ in excavations on town houses at Rue de la Pie and Rue Saint Romain.7 Indeed, the Liber Pergaminus praised the houses of the rich and poor in Bergamo which were built from stone cut from the nearby mountains and which boasted sparkling roofs.8 Buildings were full of messages. Hildebert of Lavardin’s poems on Rome, the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, and Gregory’s meditations on the destruction of the city’s ancient buildings in his Narracio de mirabilibus urbis Romae, showed emphatically how the state of a city’s edifices, in this case ruinous, could serve as a metaphor for its ‘health’ and for that of society at large.9 Bonvesin da la Riva did the same by dedicating the second chapter of his De Magnalibus to the city’s buildings and later demonstrated how far the symbolic import of monuments could go. In chapter III. XXXV he recorded the Milanese practice of commemorating the dead with urns made of marble, flint, and other types of stone, some of which cost more than twenty silver marks, and Bonvesin believed this proof that his fellow-citizens 3  M. Greenhalgh, The Survival of Roman Antiquities in the Middle Ages (London, 1989), p. 59. 4 Greenhalgh, Survival of Roman Antiquities, pp. 56–8. 5  See Chapter 2; Lewis, Art of Matthew Paris, pp. 332–5. 6 Loveluck, Northwest Europe, pp. 302–27, 339–41. 7 D. Pitte, ‘Apports récents de l’archéologie à la connaissance des villes de haute-normandie au Moyen Âge (1975-2000)’, in P. Bouet and F. Neveux (eds), Les villes normandes au Moyen Âge. Renaissance, essor, crise. Actes du colloque de Cerisy-la-Salle, 8–12 octobre 2003 (Caen, 2006), pp. 152–3. 8  Mosè del Brolo, Liber Pergaminus, lines 267–70, p. 452. 9  See C. D. Benson, ‘The Dead and the Living: some medieval descriptions of the ruins and relics of Rome known to the English’, in A. Classen (ed.), Urban Space in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age (Berlin, 2009), pp. 155–70; Campanelli, ‘Monuments and Histories’, pp. 38–9.

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magnified their honour in both life and death.10 Another layer of meaning was provided by a renewed sensitivity to Antiquity, which William of Malmesbury tapped into when he noted that York was ‘still exhibiting Roman elegance’ in the 1120s.11 On a more dramatic scale, the Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae presented Florence born in the topographic image of Rome. It claimed that Florence’s foundation was tied to a competition which would create a city almost identical to Rome. Several Romans were given the task of building a set of monumental structures—including towers, walls, a Capitol, an amphitheatre, aqueduct, thermal baths. The city would be named after whoever built their structure first. The event ended in a draw, all the buildings were finished on the same day.12 But, more importantly, this account showed the renewed interest of thirteenth-century urban inhabitants in the classical ruins surrounding them. At the time of writing, the remnants of these monuments still shaped Florence’s landscape and toponyms and Florentines clearly sought to reinterpret them.13 The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were the great period of the discovery and reuse of Roman spolia in Europe’s cities, and of a deeper appreciation of the form and aesthetics of the cityscape.14 Greenhalgh has noted a link between ‘population levels, prosperity, and the discovery and perhaps appreciation of antiquities’.15 More built structures were required for more people, more investment and more recycling of existing materials was able to achieve this, and deeper interaction with the intrinsic meaning of materials and with the appearance and location of buildings ensued thanks to the wider intellectual and political climate. All of this can of course become rather ‘chicken and egg’. The chain of cause and effect is far from clear, but quantity of people and investment both represent a sine qua non for refined appreciation of the role buildings should perform, and for understanding what the city represented in this period. This important context must be kept firmly in mind when reading panegyric which explores urban buildings. In some ways this is far more important, understanding the background—what buildings represented and the socio-economic changes which were physically reshaping cities—than attempting a positivist pinpointing of panegyrics which presented an ‘authentic’ depiction of urban layouts as opposed to those which were more stylized and idealized.16 No single work presented a ‘true’ portrait of the city’s built landscape. Having said that, in Kugler’s analysis, mindful of what can be gleaned from other evidence, Godfrey of Viterbo’s verse description of Bamberg, where he was schooled, appears to be relatively ­accurate and ‘modern’. He correctly portrayed the cathedral, overlooking 10 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XXXV, p. 58. 11  William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Bishops of England, p. 139. 12  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 40–2. 13  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 74–81. See Chapter 7 for more on the engagement of medieval cities with Antiquity. 14  M. Greenhalgh, ‘Ipsa ruina docet: l’uso dell’antico nel Medioevo’, pp. 115–67 and C. Frugoni, ‘L’antichità: dai “Mirabilia” alla propaganda politica’, pp. 21–32, both in S. Settis (ed), Memoria dell’antico nell’arte italiana, vol. 1 (Turin, 1984). 15 Greenhalgh, Survival of Roman Antiquities, p. 62. 16  A point made convincingly by Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City’, p. 32.

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the river from a hilltop, dominating the upper town while his cruciform distribution of Bamberg’s four main churches broadly corresponds to their known positions. Godfrey depicted the city’s strength as drawn from this spiritually fortified hill-top zone, rather than from any circuit walls; archaeological evidence suggests indeed that Bamberg was not fortified in the later twelfth century.17 Likewise, Lucian’s symmetrical cross-plan of Chester, with its central emplotment of the market, was not fully accurate, but it was near enough to be resonant and intelligible and, if we overlook his rhetorical flourishes, William FitzStephen offers a similarly accurate description of London.18 In Italy, the descriptions of the material infrastructure of Bologna in the vernacular vita of St Petronio and of Milan by Bonvesin are impressive in their detail and approximation to their respective contemporary cities.19 Bonvesin’s work, in particular, reflects a quite remarkable application of data and measurements to calculate the city’s component parts in a quantitative framework.20 Both contain inconsistencies, and ground their image of the city’s material dimensions in Christian thinking, but neither opted to rely solely on an imagined city to do so. One way or another, all urban panegyric dealt with cityscapes that were becoming more complex and variegated. Unmanaged urban growth would eventually hit a tipping point in the thirteenth century when we find greater evidence for city governments intervening in urban planning.21 In the face of this, whether ‘realistic’ or not, most praise of cities focused on key reference points in the urban landscape and used them to decode the complexity of cityscapes by projecting information onto buildings and urban layouts which emphasized an order and simplicity that was rarely present. In this way, in most works of urban panegyric, prominent monuments (fortifications, towers, palaces, churches) and open public spaces reflected the fundamental nodes of power and authority on an ordered landscape and pointed out a city’s exceptional status. Indeed, these lofty buildings and spaces seemed simultaneously to dominate the urban fabric by shaping, containing, or embracing the city. U R B A N F O RT I F I C AT I O N S We have already explored the importance of some of the city’s religious ­infrastructure—shrines, cathedrals, urban churches—in Chapter 3. They feature heavily as markers of urban status and identity. So too did other, more ‘secular’ structures, particularly city fortifications which feature heavily in panegyric. Some cities never had a fortified wall; they were rather uncommon in Britain and some never expanded to enclose adjacent suburbs, indicative, perhaps, of the greater political 17 Kugler, Vorstellung der Stadt, pp. 160–6; Godfrey of Viterbo, Pantheon, pp. 240–1. 18  See Chapter 3; Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, p. 74. 19  See Corti’s commentary in Vita di san Petronio, xxxvi. 20  Romagnoli, ‘coscienza civica’, pp. 69–74; Romagnoli; Murray, Reason and Society, pp. 181–3. 21  See, for instance, Bocchi, ‘Regulation’, pp. 63–78.

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security provided by the English monarchy.22 Nevertheless, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was undoubtedly a great period of urban circuit wall construction, sometimes enhancing existing Roman structures, and incorporating an ever expanding urban sprawl. In the twelfth century alone, Bologna constructed three new circuit walls, and by 1300 Florence had achieved the same number, expanding its enclosed urban space from 25 to 630 hectares in the process.23 Italian cities may have led the way, but this was a Europe-wide phenomenon: for instance, Rouen expanded its walls in both the twelfth and thirteenth century, and Worms doubled its urban enceinte in the mid-thirteenth.24 Indeed, studies by Salamagne and Wolfe show c.1200 to be a turning point in the construction of permanent urban defences in Medieval France. The contested political landscape in which a rising Capetian monarchy vied with a range of seigneurial rulers, such as the Dukes of Normandy and the Counts of Flanders, made cities key sites to be controlled and meant it was important for many to be more effectively fortified. This combined with a growth in urban wealth and desire for urban autonomy generated the investment and demand for expensive stone walls. There should be no surprise that from the mid-twelfth century several seigneurial lords of France, including the Angevins and especially the Capetian monarchs, were eager to acknowledge communal privileges and strike alliances with walled cities.25 Indeed Wolfe sees the latter as pivotal in the creation ‘of the medieval state under Philip II [which] thus hinged on the vital partnership among walled towns, episcopal sees, and the monarchy’.26 City walls clearly served a number of crucial functions. They simultaneously protected and projected power and stature. In different times and places, they could represent external domination or internal urban aspiration for autonomous power. They could also symbolize spiritual virtue and unity (see Chapter 3). Walls, gates, and towers all functioned as sites from which saints offered their protection, or they could serve as metaphors for Christian faith. In more simple terms, urban fortifications of course were utilitarian and military in function. Indeed, they also acted as boundaries and checkpoints for notions of citizenship and the receipt of revenue, and thus contributed to the generation of a communal identity and pride.27 Indeed, they stood as testament to urban communal activity, for they required 22  Creighton, ‘Town Defences’, p. 44. Although Keene, ‘Suburban Growth’, p. 77 notes that several important cities—including York, Bristol, and Nottingham—did enclose their suburbs. 23  Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, p. 405; see Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, fig. 3 for a map of Florence’s three main circuit walls. 24  Pitte, ‘Apports récents’, pp. 150–2; D. S. Bachrach, ‘Making Peace and War in the “City State” of Worms, 1235–1273’, German History, XXIV (2006), p. 510. 25  See the short but useful account in A. Salamagne, Les Villes Fortes au Moyen Âge (Paris, 2002), pp. 14–26; and M. Wolfe, Walled Towns and the Shaping of France: From the Medieval to the Early Modern Era (New York, 2009), pp. 3–53. 26 Wolfe, Walled Towns, p. 35 and also p. 42 which sees the ‘most consistent unifying feature’ of Capetian expansion as ‘the monarchy’s partnership with towns’. 27  See the example of York, where tax collectors were located near the city’s man gates: Rees Jones, York, pp. 260–1. Toll barriers were often situated at city walls which therefore protected the market inside. However, as noted in Chapter 5, there were other markers beyond city walls which demarcated the urban and rural and which created a more hazy urban fringe, see Creighton, ‘Town Defences’, pp. 48–50.

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collective financing, maintenance, and defence.28 Caffaro’s annals noted this multivalent function of the city wall when it recorded how in 1159 the Genoese ‘built 1,700 battlements, as much to make the wall look attractive and to make it stronger as for the convenience and safety of the city and its citizens’.29 At the same time, urban enceintes were contested structures. Different elements of the urban community could obtain different rights associated to sections of the walls; the latter thus could exclude and disadvantage as well as unify.30 Structures embodying such a range of meaning needed therefore to be emphasized. But urban circuit walls were extremely varied in form. Some did not enclose all suburbs and could leave large open spaces within the walls; as Oliver Creighton makes clear, ‘rather than constituting linear barriers as sometimes assumed, town defences often comprised multi-layered “belts” of features including ditches, earthworks and perhaps intra-mural streets.’31 City walls are one of the most common structures referenced in works of panegyric, and their frequent appearance within them demonstrates their perceived importance for urban status and reputation. Many indicate that a city was enclosed by a magnificent set of walls, often with fortified towers and gates: the quantity of these latter two features additionally served as a way of showcasing the size of a city’s urban plan. These works also tend to allude to the type of coherent enceinte shown on civic seals and ideographic depictions. It is as if the fortifications served to contain and unify the disparate facets of the contemporary medieval city. William FitzStephen’s description of London represented a distinct attempt to ­recreate the ideal fortified circuit even though the author actually acknowledged it currently did not exist. He presented the Tower of London to the east, two strongly fortified castles in the west, from which ran a high wall with seven double gates, and towers at intervals on the north circuit. That left the south, which FitzStephen said had been similarly fortified with walls and towers, but which had been washed away by the force of the Thames.32 Excavations have indeed discovered remains of fourth-century and earlier riverside walls and also the destruction of such a wall in the eleventh century, thus traces may have been visible in FitzStephen’s time.33 More frequently, panegyric recorded city walls in a rather more laconic style but one which should not lead us to overlook their fundamental significance. The Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium, for instance, opens with praise of Metz as an ‘extremely fortified city, encircled by a wall and river’.34 This emphasis should not surprise given that the city’s enclosed urban plan expanded from 71 hectares in the twelfth century to 160 hectares by the close of the thirteenth. It represented a rapid 28  Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, p. 421. 29  Caffaro, ‘Annals of Genoa, 1099–1163’, in M. Hall and J. Phillips (trans.), Caffaro, Genoa and the Twelfth-Century Crusades (Farnham, 2013), p. 85. 30  Creighton, ‘Castles of Communities’, p. 80. 31  Creighton, ‘Castles of Communities’, p. 78. 32  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 3. 33 Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City’, p. 19 and footnote 13; Creighton, ‘Castles of Communities’, p. 77. 34  Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium, p. 534.

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transformation for the city’s inhabitants, one which was signalled most vividly by the presence of a more extensive urban enceinte.35 The eulogy of Antioch in the Gesta Francorum noted two walls surrounding the city ‘the greater of which is very high and amazingly broad, built of great stones, and there are set upon it four hundred and fifty towers’.36 And in his verse Vita Adelberti II, Anselm of Havelberg commenced his praise of Reims, where Adalbert studied, by focusing on the city’s protecting walls, towers, and gates, and later vaunted its defensibility against enemies.37 Likewise, Alexander of Telese’s eulogy of Capua praised the city’s towers and circuit wall, through the middle of which ran the River Volturno.38 But the Mirabilia Urbis Romae won the contest for most praiseworthy urban fortifications and which aimed to convey the overwhelming magnitude (and thus significance) of Rome and its urban landscape. The oldest manuscript of the Mirabilia opens with a description of the city walls which seemingly adapted information drawn from the Einsiedeln Itinerary of the Carolingian era and boasts that ‘The walls of the city of Rome have 361 towers, 49 bastions, 6,900 battlements, 12 gates, excluding Trastevere, 5 posterns. Its circuit is 22 miles, excepting Trastevere and the Leonine city.’39 But urban panegyric did not always reduce its focus on city walls and fortification to such simple notions of physical, linear ‘boundaries’ and defensive structures. It could acknowledge the blurred settlement distribution within urban agglomerations, some of which fell into ‘a zone of transition’ beyond the city walls.40 As discussed in Chapter 5, some urban panegyric noted with pride the presence of extramural suburbs which provided an image of an organic city, its success and expanding population propelling it beyond its conventional confines. Moreover, some of the most laudatory representations of urban fortifications occur in Epics and Romance where these structures could function as neat cultural demarcations of dissonant perspectives: the urban and mercantile on one side, the aristocratic, the martial, and the rural on the other. They could also express the power of the city through the apparent impregnability of its fortifications, and also signal its attractions through the implication that important things within required 35  Boucheron et al., Histoire de l’Europe urbaine, p. 405. 36  Gesta Francorum, pp. 76–7; William of Malmesbury’s description of Antioch—after Rome, Constantinople and Alexandria ‘exalted to fourth place among all the cities of the world’—similarly noted that it was ‘surrounded by a very high wall, and even includes a mountain within its defences’: William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, pp. 630–3. 37 Anselm of Havelberg, Vita Adelberti II Moguntini, lines 244–50, pp. 575–6; lines 285–91, p. 577. The twelfth-century walls of Reims consisted primarily of the pre-existing Gallo-Roman structure which enclosed a space of around 60 hectares: Salamagne, Villes Fortes, p. 21; similar generic references to urban fortifications are mentioned in several examples of urban panegyric: for example, Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, III. Bk. V, pp. 36–7, praised Rouen’s powerful walls, ramparts, and battlements. 38  Alexander of Telese, Ystoria Rogerii, Bk. II.66, p. 55. 39  Mirabilia Urbis Romae, 1, p. 17 and footnote 2 notes the minor differences in numbers in the Graphia Aureae Urbis and Le Miracole de Roma. Of course, within the large area enclosed by Rome’s walls in the medieval period there were large spaces of disabitato, although recent studies suggest less than was thought: see most recently Wickham, Medieval Rome, pp. 112–20. For the towers of Rome see E. Amadei, Le torri di Roma (Rome, 3rd edition, 1969). 40  Creighton, ‘Town Defences’, p. 48.

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such impressive protection. Indeed, the internal wealth of the city was emphasized when its fortifications were sometimes shown to be constructed from implausibly lavish materials.41 In Girart de Vienne, the city of Vienne is portrayed as ‘the powerful and worthy city, with its walls of marble, singularly high and impressive.’ Girart’s response is telling: ‘Here is a very flourishing city! In all my life, I have not seen one that is as imposing. Whoever rules it must be very powerful. Even if he owns nothing else, he has all the riches he might desire.’42 Thus these emblematic urban structures could be used to signify and simplify complex questions around different sociocultural identities and the rising commercial power of the city. City gates were equally integral to all urban systems of fortification and by extension to urban identity, and they receive similar marked reference in several works.43 As entrance points, they acted as overt sites of symbolism, representing places where power could be communicated or urban identities shaped. They were the sites through which citizens connected to wider, often markedly different and more unfamiliar worlds and thus they were imbued with greater resonance. William of Malmesbury used gates and relics to navigate his reader around the city of Rome, while in Chapter 3 we noted in detail how Lucian based a large part of his cosmological interpretation of Chester’s urban plan on the city’s four gates and their protective functions augmented by saintly patrons.44 Gates could particularly serve as receptacles for urban/folk traditions which were crucial to the formation of local identity and the sense of places as unique sites worthy of extra attention and praise. This is the case in the Miracole de Roma, the thirteenth-century Italian vernacular version of the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, which records additional information about each city gate, and recounted the significance of the Porta Taurina with its two sculpted bulls-heads on each side: the one facing externally was lean, symbolizing those arriving in the city with meagre means, the one facing internally was fat, representing those who left wealthy.45 Indeed, many urban gates, as at Trier, contained inscriptions and legendary imagery intended to convey important 41  This drew on biblical tradition. In the Book of Revelation, xxi, 19–21, the foundations of the walls of celestial Jerusalem were furnished with twelve types of precious stones: Mann, ‘Allegorical Buildings’, p. 194. See also W. G. Van Emden, ‘Medieval French Representations of City and Other Walls’, in J. D. Tracy (ed.), City Walls. The Urban Enceinte in Global Perspective (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 530–72; and Harney, ‘Siege Warfare’, pp. 177–90 which suggests that works of Romance tend to indicate an aristocratic willingness, despite evident differences, to assimilate into urban culture. 42 Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, Girart de Vienne, XI, p. 13. Besides being termed ‘impressive’ (LXXXIX, p. 92), ‘marvellous’ (XCII, p. 94; CLXXXII, p. 195) ‘opulent’ (CXIV, p. 125), and ‘illustrious’ (CXIX, p. 132; XCIX, p. 102), the single most common label applied to Vienne is ‘powerful’ and/or ‘fortified’ (LXXIII, p. 76; XCI, p. 93; CXVV, p. 124; CXIV, p. 126; CXXII, p. 135; CLXXVI, p. 185). In Le Cont du Graal, Chrétien de Troyes shows Gawain gazing on a city with walls and tower ‘so strong that they feared no assault’, sheltering an abundance of resources and commercial activities: The Story of the Grail, pp. 408–9. 43  See, for example, Vraies chroniques, 37, p. 72, 153a p. 145. 44  William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, pp. 612–21. 45  Le Miracole de Roma, p. 135. Gervase of Tilbury, Otia Imperialia, III. 12–13, pp. 580–3 recorded a similar folk tradition about the gates of Naples. It was claimed that the city was protected by the famous poet-magician Virgil, and that those who unknowingly entered a certain city gate through its right-hand side would receive good fortune, while those who used the left-hand side would receive bad fortune. The gate was said to be adorned by two marble heads which symbolized these fates—one laughing in delight at good fortune, the other weeping over bad fortune.

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information about the status of the city.46 Gates also served as focal points for urban quarters and solidarities associated with them. Lucian’s treatise on Chester explicitly recorded how John the Baptist, from his location at the city’s eastern gate, ‘has custody of believers in the east of the city’, and this sort of message undoubtedly helped forge local urban identities.47 Bonvesin da la Riva similarly elaborated on the role of Milan’s gates as foci for intra-urban affinities, noting how distinctive imagery, colours, and standards served to differentiate each community associated with a gate: There are six different types of emblems depicted on shields and standards according to which of the six main city gates they belong to. For Porta Orientale the shields are white with lions depicted in black. For Porta Nuova they are white and black divided into four sections: the top left and bottom right are black, the remaining two sections are white. For Porta Comasina they are chequered white and red. For Porta Vercellina the shields are divided in two, red at the top and white at the bottom. For Porta Ticinense they are entirely white. For Porta Romana they are all red. Likewise each gate possesses a standard with the same colours and design; moreover, when the army is ordered to be formed, the commune distributes to each gate a white standard with a red cross on.48

Towers—both public and private—also feature heavily in urban panegyric, and they had done so in some of the most conspicuous early works of praise too. The Versus de Verona counted forty-eight gleaming towers around the city’s circuit, eight of which were taller than the rest, while Alcuin’s poem on York praised its ‘high walls and lofty towers’.49 Numerous works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries incorporate towers into their praise, often in connection with urban walls and gates. We have already encountered several references above, to which could be added many more.50 In some of them we can find particularly pointed indicators of the deeper significance projected by urban towers. Donizone’s Vita Mathildis, for example, had Canossa boast of its towers, which thus fortify it more than any city, and which appear as a constitutive element of urban status.51 Some urban panegyric, always inclined to amplify, attempted to quantify their number as a means of further praise: the Gesta Francorum reckoned Antioch boasted 450 ­towers, the Mirabilia claimed 361 for Rome, and Bonvesin, always apparently careful with his data, calculated 120 bell towers in Milan (totalling more than 200 bells).52 If we must be highly cautious with some of the numbers, the collective 46  See Chapter 3, p. 84; Creighton, ‘Castles of Communities’, p. 80. 47 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 14 (fol. 17r). 48 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. V.XXII, pp. 126–7. 49  Versus de Verona, lines 5–6, p. 152; Alcuin, The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York, pp. 4–5. 50  See for example, William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, p. 134 on Exeter. 51  Donizone di Canossa, Vita, line 122, p. 20. 52  See above, p. 136; Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. II.IX, pp. 28–9, here however Bonvesin declined to estimate how many bell towers could be found in the contado. The important guardian role played by towers is noted by the chronicler William of Newburgh. In describing the siege of Rouen by the Capetian king in 1174, the chronicler noted the vantage point afforded by a certain church tower within Rouen with its ancient bell called Ruvell, and which customarily was rung to alert the citizens to danger: William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, Bk. II.36, p. 193.

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voice heralds a cityscape punctuated by these imposing structures, and if we remember that increasing urban populations necessitated greater subdividing of plots, resort to more multistorey housing, and drove the demand for more urban churches within new parish networks, the end results pushed the city ever more skywards.53 These structures also generated the ‘verticality’ of the city which, for many medieval commentators and designers of civic seals, so distinguished the urban from the rural.54 The building boom of the Central Middle Ages accentuated this urban trait. More durable urban fortifications created even more conspicuous urban towers and belfries in many cities; and especially in Northern Italy a particularly wealthy urban aristocracy constructed private towers as a symbol of their power and influence within the city. The Epics and Romances of the period signpost these urban attributes as perhaps the most vivid representation of the city. Le Charroi de Nimes singled out Nimes’ towers, ‘great and pointed’, and ‘lofty’.55 As Tullio Gregory noted, the verticality of space was central to Christianity and events such as the Ascension: a ‘scale of values’ functioned with high representing the heavens and low representing hell, and it is possible to see these interpretations underpinning several works of urban praise.56 In Girart de Vienne, Paris was noted for its ‘great bell-towers looking to the heavens’, and this reaching to the sky and to God is echoed in the Vita S. Martini of Richerius of Metz which, among its fifty-nine laudatory verses addressed to Metz, noted ‘Your crenellated towers are connected to the clouds’.57 Indeed, Bonvesin demonstrated how the essential attribute of the tower, its height, enabled the appreciation of the city’s magnificence. Bonvesin had earlier noted that Milan was fashioned in a circle, a sign of its perfection, and in chapter II.VIII advised anyone ‘who wishes to see and savour the form of the city and the quality and quantity of its estates and buildings, should ascend thankfully the tower of the curia of the commune; from there, turning the eyes all round one can marvel at the wonderful sight’.58 Indeed, towers certainly inspired wonder. The Primera crónica general conveyed the marvel of these constructions in its short laus of Seville, situated in the chronicle just prior to an account of the city’s conquest by Fernando III in 1248.59 The author devoted approximately half of his praise to the city’s commerce and abundance of goods, and the other half to its built landscape. He praised the city’s high and strong walls girded by equally remarkable towers, implying how impressive was Fernando’s capture of the city. He also marvelled at length on two particularly magnificent towers which signified urban wealth and ingenuity: the Tower of Gold (the present-day Torre del Oro) and the Tower of Saint Mary. The former was built 53  On multistorey housing in London and Paris, see Keene, ‘London’, p. 194. 54  See Beck, ‘Les villes normandes’, p. 342; for seals see Chapter 2, pp. 57–60. 55  Charroi de Nimes, pp. 12, 36. 56  Gregory, ‘spazio’, pp. 27–37 (quote at p. 37). 57  Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube, Girart de Vienne, XLVI, p. 52; Richerius of Metz, Vita S. Martini, p. 3, trans. I. S. Moxon. See also the example of the construction of the imposing tower of St Romain on the north side of the main façade of the cathedral of Rouen, dated to c.1160–65: Gauthiez, ‘Paris, un Rouen Capetien?’, p. 121. 58 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. II.IV, pp. 26–7; II.IX, pp. 28–9. 59  Primera crónica general, ii. chap. 1128–9, pp. 768–70.

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in the sea ‘and so evenly constructed and by hard work made so delicate and so marvellous, and how much it cost the king who ordered it built’.60 The Tower of Saint Mary was shown to be a beacon of glory, beauty, and nobility. Its height was estimated at over 240 fathoms, its fine construction the product of an unrivalled mastery. Among the many adornments of the tower were four spheres, placed on top of each other. The smallest sphere was at the top, the largest at the bottom, and it was ‘such an extraordinary piece of work that it is difficult for someone who has not seen it to believe’.61 The Primera crónica general claimed it was so big that a city gate had to be widened when it was brought into Seville, and when the sun struck the sphere it reflected bright rays all day long. M E T RO P O L I S E S A N D S I T E S O F P U B L I C P OW E R But in the case of Seville these towers did not just represent the sort of lavish wealth and complex beauty increasingly associated with cities, they were also indicators of royal dominance, and likewise in Epics and Romances urban towers are presented as structures befitting of nobles and monarchs who can thus monitor their urban subjects. The Primera crónica general certainly offered a pointed message here, for Seville would become a new locus of an expansive Castilian royal power in Southern Iberia.62 And this is not surprising too, given that the work was commissioned and edited by Fernando’s son and successor Alfonso X. Thus, in the praise of Seville it was an unidentified king who commissioned the Tower of Gold, while the Tower of Mary had such a beautiful staircase ‘that kings and queens and important men who want to go up there on horseback can go up to the top when they wish.’63 But, according to the chronicle, it was King Fernando’s impetus that shaped the city after its conquest. The king restored the cathedral church of St Mary, and settled the city with new inhabitants, giving properties and houses to nobles, knights, and the military orders. He also arranged for new elegant streets to be laid out befitting ‘the grandeur of a rich and noble and thriving city’, and conferred

60  Doubleday (trans.) in Constable (ed.), Medieval Iberia, p. 218. 61  Doubleday (trans.) in Constable (ed.), Medieval Iberia, p. 218. The tower is to be identified with the Giralda, now a bell tower on the Cathedral of Seville, which is dedicated to St Mary. It was originally constructed in the late twelfth century as a minaret for the mosque located there under Almohad rule, and sported a large finial with four bronze balls, see Crites, ‘Churches’, p. 394. 62  Elsewhere it had described Seville as the royal capital of Andalucia: Primera crónica general, ii. chap. 1075, p. 748; chap. 1125, p. 767; chap. 1129, p. 769; see also Linehan, ‘La conquista’, p. 233. Comparable messages were displayed in the account of the conquest of Córdoba in 1236 by King Fernando III of Castile. The Latin Chronicle of the Kings of Castile, p. 142, praised the city’s monuments which were fit for a king. After the city’s surrender, Fernando ‘entered the most noble palace that the kings of the Moors had prepared for themselves. So much and so many wonderful things were said about it and by those who saw it, that those who had not seen it found it unbelievable’ and later ‘the celebrated king sat on the throne of glory of the kingdom of Córdoba’. Moreover, ‘The walls remained standing; the sublime height of the walls was adorned with lofty towers; the houses were resplendent with gilded panelling; the streets of the city, arranged in order, lie open to passersby’. 63  Doubleday (trans.) in Constable (ed.), Medieval Iberia, p. 218.

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‘great liberties and freedoms’ on Seville.64 The city was indeed to be developed into one of the key centres of Castilian monarchy. The new cathedral was to serve as a royal pantheon, and Fernando would be buried before its main altar, while the use of imperial imagery within the same building would signify the imperial ambitions of Fernando’s heir, Alfonso X.65 This royal programme is also echoed in the Rithmi de Iulia Romula Seu Ispalensi Urbe, with its focus on royal appropriation of Seville’s magnificent edifices. After receiving the surrender of the city, The king enters Seville accompanied by sonorous trumpets; He heads to the royal house, he reaches the most esteemed part; There he establishes his throne in a luxurious building. His companions in battle enter afterwards; Everyone, as was befitting, entered fearlessly. The king fittingly donates to them riches and palaces; The king stays confidently in the Royal city (‘in urbe Regia’).66

The example of Seville, the ‘royal city’, points to an important development within which some works of urban panegyric are embedded: the emphasis on urban monuments and topographies as reflecting wider public authority. The late twelfth and thirteenth centuries was a crucial period in the gestation of power in some European monarchies. The Anglo-Norman kingdom of England, Capetian France, the kingdom of Sicily and, to a lesser extent, Castilian Iberia, all developed more centralized administrative structures. In each case, to differing extents, itinerant rule gradually gave way to government from a more restricted set of semi-permanent loci, or recognized sites of public power. This process aimed to bring centre and periphery into a closer relationship. To do this a ‘centre’ needed to be explicitly identified, and this shift was echoed in certain works of urban praise. Governmental institutions, ceremonial sites, and diplomatic venues were therefore increasingly brought together into one or two key locations, and these were invariably cities. This was not purely a phenomenon of the Central Middle Ages. Metz, for instance, appeared in Paul the Deacon’s Liber de episcopis Mettensibus (c.784) as a city lauded for its fundamental place at the heart of the Carolingian dynasty and its realm; a claim it nonetheless never quite achieved.67 In the Central Middle Ages, however, a combination of conditions had emerged to enable some cities to attain more entrenched positions at the centre of emergent polities. The coterminous demographic and commercial expansion within urban communities in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries endowed cities with greater financial and political influence and thus some of them became ever more attractive as fulcrums of power. Indeed, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s influential Historia had already by c.1138 explicitly constructed an image of the archetypal royal centre when he depicted King Arthur’s 64  Doubleday (trans.) in Constable (ed.), Medieval Iberia, pp. 219–20. For the allotting of land and rewards, and the promotion of Christian immigration after Seville’s fall, see Rodríguez, ‘Narratives of Expansion’, pp. 130–3. 65  Crites, ‘Churches’, pp. 391–413. 66  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 68–9, pp. 44–5. 67 D. Kempf, ‘Paul the Deacon’s Liber de episcopis Mettensibus and the role of Metz in the Carolingian Realm’, Journal of Medieval History, XXX (2004), pp. 279–99.

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power as rooted in the city of Caerleon. Here was an urban site made worthy for crown-wearing ceremonies by a series of ‘refinements’ reflected in its ‘superior wealth’, the nearby river Usk which transported into the city visiting dignitaries, royal palaces with golden-decked roofs akin to Rome, churches dedicated to famed martyrs, and a college of 200 learned scholars.68 Moreover, it was no coincidence that when Abbot Alexander of Telese in his chronicle (of c.1136), a speculum principis for the new Sicilian king, emphasized the importance of controlling cities for the preservation of justice and peace in Roger II’s kingdom, it occurred in an alloquium at the end of his work which was addressed to the king and drew biblical-Roman parallels with the Kingdom of Heaven, Old Testament Kings such as Nebuchadnezzar and David, and the Emperors Octavian and Constantine.69 Likewise, Jean de Joinville’s famous biography of King Louis IX has him advise his son on the importance of maintaining the realm’s cities, for their wealth and power would protect the monarchy.70 Monarchies either invested in, and developed some cities into, key centres of public power, or attached themselves more explicitly to already thriving cities for legitimacy, some of which, under the twin impetus of demographic growth and governmental patronage, crystallized into true metropolises by medieval standards.71 It would be going too far to apply the modern meaning of capital to these medieval locations, and the scholarly debate will continue over their categorization and their problematic role in modern national teleologies. In a number of medieval polities there existed instead a plurality of sites that functioned intermittently as centres of power.72 For instance, in thirteenth century Iberia there remained several competing centres of power: Burgos, Compostela, León, Seville, and Toledo all could offer different claims to be caput of Spain. In the kingdom of Castile, with its rapid southward expansion in the thirteenth century, there was a strong impetus to identify a handful of contending symbolic centres which collectively would bind the monarchy together (Seville, as just seen, being one of them).73 But in several cases one or two cities were ascribed a particularly pre-eminent role and their names would become metonyms for the kingdom/region itself, and in this context I utilize the term ‘capital’, although only very loosely. Some of our urban panegyric certainly reflects and records these transformations, above all by offering evidence on the boosting of a city’s standing by glorying in its material magnificence and associations with high public power. At the same time, other cities—particularly in Central and Northern Italy—developed a more autonomous economic and political 68  Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, Bk. IX.156, pp. 208–11. 69  Alexander of Telese, Ystoria Rogerii, ‘Alloquium’, pp. 89–92; E. D’Angelo, Storiografi e cronologi latini del Mezzogiorno normanno-svevo (Naples, 2003), pp.125–33. 70  Jean de Joinville, The History of St Louis, trans., N. de Wailly and J. Evans (Oxford, 1938), Bk. II.CXLV, p. 225; Tuthill, ‘Cities and Kingship’, pp. 277–82. 71  For more on such sites of power see Rollason, Power of Place. 72  See the excellent analysis of P. Boucheron, D. Menjot, and P. Monnet, ‘Formes d’emergence, d’affirmation et de déclin des capitales: rapport introductif ’, in their Les villes capitales au Moyen Âge: XXXVie congrès de la SHMES, Istanbul, 1er–6 Juin 2005 (Paris, 2006), pp. 13–56. 73  Arias Guillén, ‘A Kingdom without a Capital?’, pp. 456–76; Linehan, History, pp. 389–91, 419–21.

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power which was also echoed in panegyric and which transposed aspects of urban aspiration onto the city’s built landscape. We shall start by examining some of those cities which were increasingly associated with centralized and/or royal power. In Northern France, according to Bernard Gauthiez’s analysis, the first city which was truly developed in a political sense was Rouen.74 The city had always been a centre of political gravity in Normandy since the tenth century, but its political functions crystallized markedly in the twelfth. Panegyric on Rouen sheds some light on this marked transformation and how it changed the city’s visage. Orderic’s praise of the city dates from the second quarter of the twelfth century, but in referring to Rouen as ‘the capital of all Normandy from the earliest days’ and highlighting its Roman origin through the etymology of the city’s name (he equated Rodomus with domus Romanorum: ‘the dwelling of the Romans’) it points towards an important later development in the role of the city.75 As Elisabeth Van Houts has recently shown, some twelfth-century works praised Rouen ‘as another Rome’ and thus presented the city as a central place in a new Anglo-Norman imperial constellation that was forming in the era around the accession of Henry II.76 An anonymous poem, Rothoma nobilis, was produced in 1148 for Henry’s father, Geoffrey of Anjou, Duke of Normandy since 1144, and celebrated Rouen as the centre of a wider Norman world: Noble Rouen, ancient city, mighty and beautiful, The Norman people put you in charge of them; Imperial honour adorns you; Like Rome you are in reputation and in name, Remove the middle (Ro ‘tho’ ma] and Rouen becomes Rome.77

The verse Draco Normannicus (dated c.1167 × 1169) of Stephen of Rouen, monk of a priory of Bec, also emphasized Rouen’s antiquity and magnificence, its imperial traits and parallels with Rome.78 It did this within a broader narrative framework which presented Normandy’s distant past and present as a continuity, and which was shaped by competition with the Franks/Capetians.79 Stephen provided a revealing account of the arrival at Rouen of Rollo (d. c.932) the ‘founder’ of the Norman ducal dynasty. Here the city was shown as a powerful entity replete with gates, walls, towers, and a bridge, which has led Van Houts to suggest that Stephen was drawing on the city in its later twelfth-century form when a new stone bridge was known to have been constructed outside the city.80 Significantly, the citizens of Rouen resisted Rollo bravely, but the latter was victorious, and it is here then, at Rouen, that Rollo became dux and that he negotiated an agreement with the 74  Gauthiez, ‘Paris, un Rouen Capetien?’, pp. 117–36. 75  Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, III. Bk. V, pp. 36–7. 76  Van Houts, ‘Rouen as another Rome’, pp. 101–24. 77  Edited and translated in the appendix of Van Houts, ‘Rouen as another Rome’, p. 119. 78  See the discussion in Van Houts, ‘Rouen as another Rome’, pp. 101–24. 79  As demonstrated by E. Kuhl, ‘Time and Identity in Stephen of Rouen’s Draco Normannicus’, Journal of Medieval History, XL (2014), pp. 421–38, which rehabilitates Stephen’s text as a work of genuine contemporary significance. 80  Van Houts, ‘Rouen as another Rome’, pp. 101–24.

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Carolingian King Charles which appeared to bring Normandy into being. Thus, echoing earlier Carolingian-inspired allusions from Dudo of St Quentin’s Historia Normannorum, Rouen was simultaneously presented as integral to the origins of the Normans and redolent with imperial grandeur. It reflected the growing importance of the city as a site of power within a climate underpinned by competition with the Capetian monarchy, and also the twelfth-century intellectual fervour for both the classical world and urban histories (see Chapter 7).81 Both the Rothoma nobilis and the Draco Normannicus point towards Rouen’s aggrandized status. Indeed, when the French monastic chronicler Rigord recorded the city’s capture in 1204 by Philip Augustus he was keen to show Rouen’s eminence as a reflection of the expansion of Capetian power: the king had captured ‘an opulent city, head and leader of all of Normandy (‘civitatem opulentissimam, totius Normannie caput et principatum’)’.82 The caput of Normandy was already in c.1150 the largest city in Northern France, marginally bigger than Paris: around 50 hectares to the latter’s 40. Under Henry II, King of England and Duke of Normandy, Rouen would become, in Gauthiez’s view, a veritable metropolis. Indeed, increasing references to the city as a ‘metropolis’ from the mid-twelfth century onwards, in narrative accounts and on Rouennais coinage, appear to carry the double meaning of a metropolitan church and a chief/‘capital’ city.83 A royal residence was established on the south bank of the Siene at Quevilly (1150s), the aforementioned stone bridge was constructed (before 1167), a new extended enceinte built (by 1190), and four new parishes had been established (by 1208).84 By c.1190 Rouen had reached some 85 hectares, its main streets were paved, and it was the most frequented Continental city on the Anglo-Norman royal itinerary.85 Moreover, around Rouen were residences of key government officials and representatives of leading ecclesiastical figures of the Anglo-Norman realm, while within the city ‘une carte du système des pouvoirs’ (royal, ecclesiastical, economic, and financial) emerged.86 Rouen’s political importance was downgraded after the Capetian conquest of 1204, and this coincided with the reviving power of the Capetian monarchy and the emergence of Paris as a metropolis and the monarchy’s political centre.87 Twelfth-century Paris was already firmly on the European map as an intellectual

81  In a laudatory poem within his chronicle, Dudo of St Quentin had singled out Rouen as a special locus of Norman power: Dudo of St Quentin, History of the Normans, pp. 100, 120; Bates, ‘Rouen’, pp. 1–11. See also Pohl, Dudo, pp. 216–20, who emphasizes the imperial symbolism in Dudo’s presentation of Rouen and the city’s perceived role as ‘the nucleus’ of the Norman state’ (p. 218). 82 Rigord, Gesta Philippi Augusti, in Œuvres de Rigord et de Guillaume le Breton, historiens de Philippe-Auguste, ed. H. F. Delaborde, 2 vols (Paris, 1882–85), vol. 1, chap. 142, p. 161. 83  Bates, ‘Rouen, p. 5 and footnote 54 for references in Orderic’s work. See also J. Pilet-Lemière, ‘Deniers inédits à la legend METROPOLIS’, Bulletin de la Societé française de numismatique, XL (1985), pp. 639–40. 84  Gauthiez, ‘Paris, un Rouen Capetien?’, pp. 117–23. 85 By the early thirteenth century the city possibly had some 40,000 inhabitants, see Bates, ‘Rouen’, p. 1. 86  Gauthiez, ‘Paris, un Rouen Capetien?’, pp. 127–8 and fig. 9. 87  Gauthiez, ‘Paris, un Rouen Capetien?’, pp. 127–36.

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centre, owing to its highly regarded schools and the masters it attracted.88 But it was the intervention of Philip II Augustus which propelled the city into an ascendant position. In 1183 he expanded the city’s main market and ordered the construction of shelters (hence the market’s name Les Halles) for the merchants. In 1186 the king ordered the city’s principal streets to be paved, and the chronicler Rigord (writing c.1206) presented this plan as part of the monarch’s awareness of the city’s ancient heritage. Philip had been appalled by the intolerable smell emanating from the city’s streets and knew that before it had been renamed in honour of Priam’s son, Paris, the city was called Lutea because of the smell of the dirt (‘a luti fetore’) within the city.89 Later, in 1190, Paris received an extended city wall which enclosed vast spaces, including the new market, and enabled the urbanization of several new quarters such as the Bourg Thibout. In c.1200 Philip Augustus established a fortified royal residence, the Louvre, in the city’s Right Bank.90 Another royal initiative led to a wall enclosing urban sectors on the Left Bank in 1211, and promoted the development of the university quarters there. During this period too, the Gothic cathedral of Notre Dame, founded in 1163, underwent a construction programme which would continue into the thirteenth century and see it become the tallest building in Northern France.91 Concomitant to all this urban planning was the creation of some ten new city parishes on either side of the Seine and the construction or reconstruction of approximately fifty-five new religious buildings after 1200.92 Collectively, as Cohen’s study makes clear, these ecclesiastical structures, many influenced by the distinctive Rayonnant architecture, bound the city together visually. They articulated a distinctive sense of place, an urban identity showcasing Paris ‘at once as the sacred, civic, royal and artistic centre of France’.93 From c.40 hectares in 1150, the city grew to more than 114 in 1190 and to 189 by 1211. It was a quite rapid expansion and one that went hand in hand with a reform of the kingdom’s administration and a close alliance with the monastery of St Denis which would serve as a royal necropolis. Together these transformations guaranteed that revenues, business, and litigation would flow to the city and the monarchy. While Paris did not receive in this period the sort of extended panegyric that William FitzStephen would devote to London, another ‘capital’ emerging from its chrysalis, we do have laudatory works that focus on the city’s urban topography and which can be linked to the impact of royal patronage. A letter dating 1174 × 1190 of Gui of Bazoches, a chronicler and canon of Châlons-sur-Marne, 88  See Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, vol. 1, pp. 72–5 and more recently Wei, Intellectual Culture, pp. 8–86. 89 Rigord, Gesta Philippi Augusti, vol. 1, chap. 37, pp. 53–4. 90  Gauthiez, ‘Paris, un Rouen Capetien?’, pp. 131–2. Baldwin, Paris, pp. 25–31. 91 Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, vol. 1, pp. 63–72. Also in the mid-twelfth century, just north of the city, St Denis, the royal abbey and mausoleum, underwent a major rebuilding project in the latest Gothic style. 92  For an excellent overview of the way the city’s urban space was transformed during this period see Cohen, ‘Metropolitan Architecture’, pp. 65–100 (pp. 99–100 for a list of the new or rebuilt Parisian ecclesiastical buildings). 93  Cohen, ‘Metropolitan Architecture’, pp. 67, 72, 98 (quote at 67).

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shows that Paris’s layout and infrastructure was already being praised and that the expanding city was bound to a royal identity.94 Gui described to his friend the site of the city in which his studies had flourished. Paris is named a ‘most-celebrated city’ (‘celeberrimam civitatem’) but also a royal city (‘urbe regali’), and he elaborates: ‘For just as the glittering moon, reflecting the glory of the stars, suppresses the sunbeam, so the aforesaid city [Paris], crowned by royal dignity, raises its masterful head above other cities.’95 Gui praises Paris’s setting, its fertile hinterland bringing forth the delights of Ceres and Bacchus, the Seine cutting through the city, and the enviable suburbs on both banks of the river. He also described the two stone bridges connecting the suburbs to the central Ile-de-la-Cité: the Grand Pont leading to the commercial quarter of the Right Bank which abounded, Gui noted, in ships, resources, and merchandise; and the Petit-Pont leading to the student quarter on the Left Bank, dedicated, according to Gui, to passers-by, strollers, and disputants in logic. But Guy soon returned his attention to the ‘royal city’ and specifically to the Ile-de-la-Cité where the exceptionally high royal palace rises, ‘which stands head and shoulders over all cities’. And he amplified his message: ‘it is not only the marvellous building works, but the authority of that noble monarchy which commands reverence.’ Gui illustrated the monarchy’s esteem in verse, utilizing ‘domus’ to stand both for the king and Paris: This is the dwelling (‘domus’), the glory of the Franks, of which Generations continually will sing in praise. This is the dwelling which rules over Gaul, powerful in war, Flanders rich in resources. This is the dwelling which Burgundy’s royal authority, The Normans’ rule, and the warlike Bretons fear.96

Gui finished his eulogy of royal Paris with mention of the city’s contribution to learning (more of which in Chapter  7). As Baldwin noted, the material city described by Gui is the one on the cusp of the great transformations wrought by Philip II.97 Gui’s praise seems prophetic. But it rather suggests that Paris’s unplanned urbanization of the earlier twelfth century had already attracted the political aspirations of the monarchy, aspirations which had then been germinating, as one would expect, before the full force of the royal building programme got underway. Later works hint at the impact of the transformations in Paris in the decades either side of 1200. John de Garlande, a Parisian master, produced works which were fully in tune with Paris as a bustling and celebrated metropolis. Indeed, John’s surname derived from the Clos de Garlande, one of the new student quarters on the Left Bank which had recently been incorporated into the city; he  was therefore extremely well placed to comment on the city’s urbanization. His  Dictionarius, produced in c.1220 for his students, took readers through a crowded and bustling Paris full of delights and dangers. Here we see a commercial 94  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 54, pp. 55–6. See the useful commentary in Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, vol. 1, pp. 63–5. 95  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 54, p. 55. 96  I would like to thank Ian Moxon for his very useful suggestions for the translation of this verse. 97 Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, vol. 1, p. 65.

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centre—artisans, goldsmiths, merchants, and money-changers packed into the marketplace or on the Grand Pont—worthy of a ‘capital’ city.98 In his other work, the Poetria Parisiana, John spoke of the famous name of Paris reaching the stars and the city containing innumerable people.99 By 1220 that boast carried a weight that it could not have done a mere fifty years previously. Paris was very much the centre of royal authority in Joinville’s Life of Louis IX, but although more extended works of praise on Paris would not be produced until the early fourteenth century (and thus fall outside this study), their model, the royal-metropolis, had long been set.100 William FitzStephen’s praise of London also connects with another city’s rise to prominence within a particular realm, and does so partly by emphasizing urban landscape. There is no need to recapitulate in detail the evidence for London’s marked urban expansion in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (the development of the city’s waterfront in conjunction with growing regional and international commercial activity, the extension of the city’s boundaries, intensive building activity, particularly in stone, the creation of ‘new streets’ and parishes, a populace perhaps reaching c.80,000) which peaked in c.1300, nor the genesis of its function as the political heart of the English kingdom.101 Like Rouen, elements of that function had long been established in conjunction with the royal monastic complex at nearby Westminster, but London experienced a similar maturation in the later twelfth century as a more sophisticated administrative apparatus was gradually established there.102 London, however, owed its eminent position more 98  John de Garlande, Dictionarius. 99 John de Garlande, Parisiana Poetria, p. 129. Also worth a mention here is the poetry of Rutebeuf (d.1285) which drew heavily on his own experience of an increasingly crowded, vibrant, but dangerous Paris (see Chapter 4, p. 97). According to N. Freeman Salgado, ‘Two Poets of the Medieval City’, Yale French Studies, XXXII (1964), pp. 12–21, Rutebeuf and his works were a product of Paris’s evident urbanization of the thirteenth century. 100  For example, the Vie de St Denis (completed in 1317) glorified Paris’s wealth and magnificence under the guardianship of St Denis, the French royal patron saint. It also included some remarkable bridge scenes illustrating daily urban life, and thus departed from more conventional depiction of city walls, towers, and gates: see C. Serchuk, ‘Paris and the Rhetoric of Town Praise in the Vie de St. Denis Manuscript’, Journal of the Walters Art Gallery, LVII (1999), pp. 35–47. Better known is Jean de Jandun’s Tractatus de laudibus Parisius, dated to 1323, which presents Paris, as Gui de Bazoches did, as a city which places France above all others. Paris too is lauded as a place of learning, and the grandeur of its buildings deemed symbolic of the city’s rank. See E. Inglis, ‘Gothic Architecture and a Scholastic: Jean de Jandun’s “Tractatus de laudibus Parisius” (1323)’, Gesta, XLII (2003), pp. 63–85. 101  Keene, ‘London’, pp. 190–216 offers a useful overview. See also the detailed analysis in Barron, London, especially pp. 45–7. In the 1140s, for example, the Gesta Stephani, pp. 4, 12 pointedly called London ‘the queen metropolis of the whole kingdom’, and later its ‘head’, and also recorded that its citizens believed they enjoyed a special role in the royal coronation. See also, the chapter on London in J. A. Green, Forging the Kingdom. Power in English Society, 973–1189 (Cambridge, 2017), pp. 198–220. 102  K. Yoshitake, ‘The Place of Government in Transition: Winchester, Westminster and London in the Mid-Twelfth Century’, in P. Dalton and D. E. Luscombe (eds), Rulership and Rebellion in the Anglo-Norman World, c.1066–c.1216. Essays in Honour of Professor Edmund King (Farnham, 2015), pp. 61–75 indicates that the pivotal phase in which the centre of English government shifted to London occurred during the troubles of King Stephen’s reign. The resulting change in political geography favoured London and this led to the decisive development in the later twelfth century of a central treasury there, removed from the pre-existing governmental centre at Winchester; J-P. Genet, ‘Londres est-elle une capitale?’, in P. Boucheron, D. Menjot, and P. Monnet (eds), Les villes capitales au Moyen Âge, pp. 155–85 emphasizes the continued symbolic importance of Westminster and its detachment from London, making the latter ‘une capitale indirecte’ (p. 166).

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to its own ability to generate wealth and to attract migrants; royal agency in the city’s development as a permanent ‘capital’ did not match that of Capetian Paris.103 But during the reign of Henry II, London (aided by its association with the nearby development of Westminster as a royal judicial centre) definitively moved ahead of Winchester as the centre of power in the English realm. This dovetailed with a renewed interest in the city’s ancient history (for more see Chapter  7) as outlined in excellent treatments by both Clark and Keene.104 Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain set out London’s pre-Roman foundation by a group of Trojans, led by Brutus, who named the city Trinovantum or New Troy. Brutus, in turn, was said to have conferred his name on Britain and its inhabitants. Early mythical rulers of the city were linked to well-known medieval London landmarks: for example, King Lud to Ludgate, and Prince Belinus to Billingsate. London was also shown to be an ancient ‘capital’, the burial site for kings, and its Church to have a plausible claim to metropolitan status.105 As Clark noted, this was very much a record of twelfth-century London’s need for a ‘pedigree’ and filtered into several media: the artwork of Matthew Paris labelled the city chef dengleterre and New Troy, noting Brutus as its founder; and Derek Keene has suggested influences in the famous city seal of c.1220 and, like John Scattergood, in the work of William FitzStephen.106 The latter’s description utilizes London’s urban topography to demonstrate the sense, in the 1170s, of the city’s rise to unique rank and indeed pretensions as a centre of empire. FitzStephen opened with praise of the far-flung fame of a city which was ‘the throne of the kingdom of the English’ (regni Anglorum sedes).107 The infrastructure of a royal ‘capital’ is referenced in the Tower of London, the royal palace of Westminster, and the city’s mighty fortifications.108 But as part of the city’s increasing influence, London’s urban community sought more control over its own affairs, the city’s government by 1200 became vastly more complex in its structure, and the monarchy, in its need to control the city, both respected and feared these developments; hence the mixed approach of carrot (acknowledging the special rights of Londoners) and stick (building imposing urban fortifications, like the Tower of London and Baynard’s Castle).109 In its simplest terms FitzStephen presents London as a ‘centre’ of the highest magnitude. London, like Rouen, attracted the sort of high-profile inhabitants who gravitated towards a ‘capital’ and its citizens were so eminent that they were called barons.110 103  Keene, ‘London’, pp. 213–15. 104  The following section follows the works of both scholars: J. Clark, ‘Trinovantum—the evolution of a legend’, Journal of Medieval History, VII (1981), pp.135–51; Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, pp. 72–80. 105  Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, Bk. I.23, pp. 28–31; III.44, pp. 58–9; III.53, pp. 66–7. 106  Clark, ‘Trinovantum’, pp. 148–9; Lewis, The Art of Matthew Paris, pp. 332–5 and fig. 204; Keene, ‘Text, Visualisation and Politics’, pp. 74–80; Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City’, pp. 31–2. 107  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 2. 108  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 3. 109 Barron, London, pp. 9–29 and 20–42; Keene, ‘London’, pp. 203–11. 110  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 4. While this particular reference to barons may be a late medieval addition to FitzStephen’s text, it should be noted that other twelfth-century commentators used similar grandiose terms—such as optimates—to describe Londoners: see Green, Forging the Kingdom, p. 218.

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FitzStephen notes that almost all of the bishops, abbots, and magnates of England were made ‘citizens (‘cives’) and freemen (‘municipes’) of the city of London’, and possessed ‘distinguished houses’ (‘aedificia praeclara’) there for when their king or metropolitan summoned them to assembly.111 But London’s rank is indeed higher than a mere ‘capital’, the city is the centre of a new empire, it thus competes with Rouen for primacy in the Angevin conglomeration of power. In this context, as John Scattergood pointed out, FitzStephen’s London is repeatedly framed by a comparison with Rome; but the former equals and in several respects surpasses the latter, having inherited its legacy and enhanced it through Christian worship as demonstrated by the city’s multitude of religious houses. Roman parallels are delivered through intertextual references to Juvenal, Horace, Virgil, and Plato and the claim that Emperor Constantine was born in London.112 But more explicit comparisons are brought out: London is divided, like Rome, into quarters (‘regionibus est distincta’), and has annually appointed vicecomites (sheriffs) in place of consuls, and a senatorial rank (‘senatoriam dignitatem’); London’s holy plays outdo those of ancient, pagan Rome; and its citizens have overcome many other nations and subdued the Roman Empire.113 Moreover, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History is drawn on to revisit the legend of Brutus and London’s foundation as a New Troy before Romulus and Remus had established Rome, and to claim that ‘the Londoners, who were then called Trinovantes’, repelled Julius Caesar.114 In short, FitzStephen’s London, and its physical, cultural, and historical landscape, reflected both the crystallization of a metropolis and, as Scattergood states, its claim to be at the heart of Angevin politics.115 However, the symbiosis between city and monarchy was most evident in the twelfth-century kingdom of Sicily. Control and governance of cities, especially in a newly constructed monarchy like Sicily, was crucial as Alexander of Telese had advised in his chronicle.116 Under Islamic rule already one of the largest cities in Europe, Palermo was rapidly developed from the 1140s onwards by the Sicilian kings into a locus of royal power, a veritable ‘capital’.117 In the city could be found the chief royal residence and a cluster of royal palaces.118 Here was also based the royal fiscal administration (the dīwān) and the royal inner council (familiares regis).119 Palermo also boasted a series of lavishly adorned religious complexes which were associated with the monarchy and decorated with exquisite mosaics, sarcophagi, 111  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 8. 112  Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City’, pp. 26–32; William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 12. 113  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, pp. 8, 9, 12. The regiones were the city’s wards which had probably been in existence since the tenth century and were units of military and local administration: see J. Haslam, ‘Parishes, Churches, Wards and Gates in Eastern London’, in J. Blair (ed.), Minsters and Parish Churches. The Local Church in Transition, 950–1200 (Oxford, 1988), pp. 37–8. 114  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, pp. 8, 12. Gervase of Tilbury’s short encomium of the city in his Otia Imperialia likewise noted the Brutus foundation myth, and waxed lyrical about the city’s fortification and resources which made it the envy of all, II.17, pp. 398–9. 115  Scattergood, ‘Misrepresenting the City’, pp. 33–6. 116  See above p. 192. 117  There is a large corpus of literature on medieval Palermo, see most recently A. Nef (ed.), A Companion to Medieval Palermo. The History of a Mediterranean City from 600 to 1500 (Leiden, 2013). 118 Metcalfe, Muslims of Medieval Italy, pp. 235–45. 119  See H. Takayama, The Administration of the Norman Kingdom of Sicily (Leiden, 1993); J. Johns, Arabic Administration in Norman Sicily: the Royal Dīwān (Cambridge, 2002).

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ground plans, and sculptural programmes. These included the stunning mosaics in the church of Santa Maria dell’Ammariglio and the magnificent royal chapel (the Cappella Palatina), which served as a diplomatic space and a statement of the monarchy’s sacral kingship, the royal porphyry tombs at Palermo Cathedral which equated the Sicilian kings with Byzantine imperial authority, and the newly constructed (c.1182) monastic cathedral of Monreale placed just outside Palermo and intended as a royal mausoleum.120 Works praising this ‘capital’ and metropolis focused especially on its material splendour and urban topography, implicitly and explicitly praising the monarchy and emphasizing its interrelationship with the urban world. This ideological nexus is evident in the Book of Roger, commissioned by Roger II and finished shortly after the king’s death in 1154 by the Muslim scholar Muhammad al-Idrisi. It is a geographic survey of the known world, offering up information on its natural resources and its population. It was also accompanied by the production of a now lost silver planisphere. Its utility as a practical resource for travel and administration remains in question.121 Some sections are derivative, but others do appear to have been updated to fit contemporary developments.122 At the very least, one function of the project was that it offered the monarchy ‘a systematically constructed framework within which Roger II could conceptualize his kingdom and its constituent parts relative to lands overseas’.123 It was geared towards articulating the new monarchy’s self-identity and locating it in the wider world. Information on cities in the Book of Roger was central to this programme. Indeed, much of the data in the Book of Roger are structured around urban settlements. Crucially, in the section on the kingdom of Sicily, there is a notable difference in the description of cities on the South Italian mainland and on Sicily. On the mainland, cities are always described in a positive manner, laudatory in essence, but the information is laconic and even formulaic. Once we enter Sicily the nature of the material changes subtly. The Book of Roger shows that cities were the vessels for praise of an island that is ‘the pearl of our times [. . .] in the past, travellers came from abroad and all those who journeyed from city to city and from metropolis to metropolis agreed in praising its qualities, exalting the extent of its territory, eulogising its extraordinary beauty’.124

120  Of the many works on Palermitan royal architecture see for example: W. Tronzo, The Cultures of his Kingdom. Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo (Princeton, 1997) and S. Brodbeck, Les saints de la Cathédrale de Monreale en Sicile: iconographie, hagiographie et pouvoir royal à la fin du XIIe siècle (Rome, 2010). On Sicilian royal burials the classic work remains J. Deér, The Dynastic Porphyry Tombs of the Norman Period in Sicily, trans. G. A. Gilhoff (Cambridge, MA, 1959). 121  Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, pp. 47–53. 122  Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, pp. 43–7. See the recent study by J-C. Ducène, ‘Routes in Southern Italy in the Geographical Works of al-Idrīsī’, in A. L. Gascoigne, L. V. Hicks, and M. O’Doherty (eds), Journeying Along Medieval Routes in Europe and the Middle East (Turnhout, 2016), pp. 143–66 which argues that the work can, in many places, ‘be regarded as both contemporary and trustworthy’ (p. 162). 123 Metcalfe, Muslims of Medieval Italy, p. 264. 124  Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, p. 305.

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And presently it is ruled by the great King Roger who ‘exalted the magnificence of the kingdom’.125 Having entered Sicily, we are offered fuller descriptions of cities which are in line with this more overt programme of praise, as if the nearer we approach the centre of royal power the more praiseworthy its urban centres become. Messina is ‘one of the most remarkable and prosperous of localities [and] a place of constant coming and going’. Its land is fertile, full of orchards, watercourses, and mills. Ships are constructed here; vessels arrive from every region of Christendom and ‘it is there that one finds congregated the greatest ships and that one encounters travellers and merchants from every sort of country, Christian and Muslim’. The city’s markets are vibrant, wealth abounds and the harbour ‘is spoken of throughout the entire world’.126 At Syracuse, ‘one of the most famous and remarkable’ cities, people visit from all parts. Al-Idrisi tells us that the city’s celebrity compelled him to describe it in great detail because ‘it is an illustrious metropolis and a renowned fortified location’; its port is without equal in the entire world. It is the source of the famous fountain Arethusa. We are then treated to a familiar list: abundant markets, beautiful buildings and baths, fertile hinterland.127 Almost identical is the description of Agrigento, another ‘illustrious metropolis’, ‘of ancient foundation and renowned throughout the world’. Again travellers arrive from all over the world, its high buildings and quarters ‘seduce the observer’. Its gardens are full of produce and it is ‘an ancient city whose monuments reflect its past greatness and power’.128 The most extended praise of a city is of course reserved for Palermo, the royal ‘capital’, ‘most illustrious for its importance, among the most celebrated and prestigious centres of preaching in the world’.129 It is of ‘unequalled glory’, a governmental centre from ancient days and the hub of military operations. We hear of magnificent and sumptuously decorated buildings and palaces, mosques, watercourses, abundant fruits: ‘its buildings and walks are so beautiful that it is impossible for the pen to describe them or for the mind to imagine them; everything is a real seduction for the eye’. The city’s urban plan is covered, taking in the ancient walled town, the Cassaro (‘renowned throughout the entire world’). Its fortifications are said to be impregnable. The city’s large suburb is described with its garden, parks, and canals, and next to it the old town, the Khalisa, which, we are told, was where the elites resided in the days of Muslim rule. In short, all who visit ‘attest the splendour of Palermo and describe it in exaggerated terms’. According to the Book of Roger, visitors should expect to be seduced and dazzled by the status, prosperity, and beauty of Sicily, evidenced above all in its cities, especially Palermo, and unified under the guidance of the monarchy. People gravitate to the island as if it were the centre of the world. This was not wishful thinking. These same ideas were echoed by the Muslim traveller Ibn Jubayr who visited 125  Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, p. 306. 126  Loud (trans.), Roger II, p. 361 (Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, p. 312). 127  Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, p. 315. 128  Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, p. 317. 129  Loud (trans.), Roger II, pp. 358–60 (Muhammad al-Idrisi, La Première Géographie de l’Occident, pp. 307–9).

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Palermo in 1185. He reported that it ‘is an ancient and elegant city, magnificent and gracious, and seductive to look upon [. . .] it dazzles the eyes with perfection [. . .] The King, to whom it is his world, has embellished it to perfection and taken it as the capital of his Frankish kingdom.’130 Ibn Jubayr’s account, infused with the wondrous tones of the Islamic Rihla, marvelled especially at the spectacle produced by several of the city’s buildings. The royal palaces were situated in the city’s ‘higher parts, like pearls encircling a woman’s throat’, the church of Santa Maria dell’Ammariglio, with its lavish decorative schemes commissioned by the chief royal minister George of Antioch, was deemed ‘the most wonderful edifice in the world’, and the city’s Qasr al-Qadim quarter where one could see ‘mansions like lofty castles with towers hidden in the skies, bewildering the sight with their splendour.’131 Idrisi’s project showed how the monarchy invested its self-image and status above all in Sicily and particularly in the city of Palermo and demonstrates that the kings were able to harness scholarship to express their power. Another evidently learned scholar, imbibed with the renewed classical influence of the twelfth century, also praised Palermo in a comparable fashion, but in vastly different circumstances. We have already encountered the letter (dated to c.1190 and possibly the work of the so-called Hugo Falcandus) in Chapter 4, as a testament of the combination of lamentation and praise. As part of his appeal to save the kingdom, the author gloried in the delights of a handful of Sicilian cities, but directed his focus on Palermo and connected the city intimately with the monarchy.132 The city’s status is set out unequivocally: it is a noble city which ‘deserves the unique privilege of rising above the entire kingdom’.133 Then follows an assessment of the city’s urban plan, key buildings, commercial productivity, and natural resources. Unlike al-Idrisi’s account, it is a closer snapshot of the present, for there is no word on the city’s former deeds let alone its foundation, perhaps because Palermo truly rose to prominence under Muslim rule.134 Moreover, the depiction is hierarchical: the monarchy is portrayed dominating the ideological and physical fabric of the city. Thus, the treatment of the city commences with description of the main royal palace complex and its associated buildings, along with the beauty of their architecture and decoration, and the author concludes this opening section with re-emphasis on the centrality of the royal presence: ‘Just as the heard rises above the rest of the body, so the palace, arranged and adorned in this way, anointed by the grace of every kind of delight, overlooks the whole city (‘sic toti supereminet civitati’)’.135 The second part of the description of Palermo offered a breakdown of the city’s layout, based on its three main divisions. Here we encounter key public landmarks: important streets (such as the Via Marmorea and the Via Coperta), gates (the Lower Gate, the Gate of St Agatha), public spaces (the Forum of the Muslims), buildings 130  Ibn Jubayr, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, trans. R. J. C. Broadhurst (London, 1952), p. 348. 131  Ibn Jubayr, Travels, pp. 348–9. 132  Pispisa, ‘L’immagine della città’, pp. 70–1. 133  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, p. 254; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, p. 172. 134  Although the letter still records buildings whose owners (such as Maio of Bari) were no longer alive in c.1190. 135  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, p. 260; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, p. 180.

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of the urban elite (of a Siddiq the Muslim, of a Count Silvester, of Maio of Bari the royal minister assassinated in 1160), religious buildings (including the celebrated church of Santa Maria dell’Ammariglio), city walls, and the commercial hub in the wealthy Amalfitan quarter. The final section of the treatment of Palermo moves from description of the ‘astonishing buildings of this marvellous city’ (‘preclare huius urbis miranda edificia’), its rich public amenities (fountains and aqueducts), and its ever verdant trees to description of the city’s fertile hinterland (the present Conca d’Oro).136 This metropolis, then, magnificent through its material splendour and layout, functioned as the centrepiece of a newly formed monarchy’s public persona. Indeed, as Laura Sciascia has recently demonstrated, the Norman kings were engaged in a constantly renewed contract with Palermo, in order to enable the monarchy, through a series of ceremonial events, to use the city as a stage, indeed ‘a theatre of power’.137 It is the twelfth-century panegyrics of Palermo which display most keenly the dazzling spectacle of this stage. All of these works eulogizing royal centres do, however, underplay the poly-focal nature of power in cities, the complexity of urban governments that functioned below royal administration, and the growing desire among urban communities for greater self-government. Such increased aspiration for urban autonomy was evident across Europe in regions as diverse as England, Germany, and Iberia, where these movements could often be accommodated within the existing sociopolitical order.138 This movement found its most advanced form in Central and Northern Italy, however, where many cities established communal and other forms of self-rule which were effectively independent of higher authority. But urban elites were not always aware of, or prepared to admit, the true scale of the transformations they were enacting. Even in Italy, for a long time communal elites appeared to be unaware of the full significance of the changes around them; they were, as Chris Wickham has shown, ‘sleepwalking into a new world’.139 We should not be overly surprised then at the limited focus on these processes in works of urban panegyric, especially in non-Italian regions. In the latter areas, this perhaps reflects a less entrenched communal movement and/or its easier integration into the existing political structures. It may also expose the inclination among authors who were from the Church, or associated with an aristocratic elite, to present the urban community as a harmonious body and which precluded recognition of strata within it that might occupy a privileged role in urban government. Innovation could also be often wrapped in conventional language and frameworks in order to render it more acceptable and this too would conceal such developments: this seems to explain some of the urban foundation accounts covered in Chapter 7 which articulate messages of urban autonomy but ones wrapped up in the comfort and precedent of classical history.140 136  ‘Hugo Falcandus’, History, p. 261; ‘Hugo Falcandus’, La Historia, p. 184. 137  L. Sciascia, ‘Palermo as a Stage for, and a Mirror of, Political Developments from the 12th to the 15th Century’, in A. Nef (ed.), A Companion to Medieval Palermo, pp. 299–323. 138  This is a central argument in Hilton’s work on the integration of cities into what he terms ‘feudal society’: Hilton, English and French Towns. 139 Wickham, Sleepwalking. 140  Smalley, ‘Ecclesiastical Attitudes’, pp. 113–31.

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That said, some works of urban panegyric were attuned to the growing sophistication of urban government and desire for civic autonomy, and embedded it more explicitly into praise of the city, and particularly its topography and certain sites of public power. The Vraies Cronikes de Tournai (c.1290), for instance, repeatedly eulogized the city’s inhabitants and particularly its ancient government of elected and wise administrators (‘de grans et poisans et sage administrateurs’) and thus was framed by the agency of its own citizens. It showed them full of pride (‘orguel’), resistant to external domination, choosing their own leader and acting in ways that mirrored the city’s expanding communal government of the late thirteenth century.141 At one point, the anonymous author even explained what those ancient officials were now called in present-day Tournai: the dictators were now named provosts, the tribunes were the jurors, the consuls were the eswardeurs.142 But most works which addressed this fundamental facet of urban life in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were primarily Italian ones, where complex forms of civic self-government were a more conspicuous and normative feature of urban life. We shall finish this chapter, therefore, by looking at these Italian examples. There are indeed a few instances of the impact of the Italian movement for self-government in works of urban panegyric. The Liber Pergaminus, we recall from Chapter 3, praised its twelve sancti viri (clearly urban consuls) who were elected by the people and who toiled on holy laws for the city day and night.143 In Boncompagno da Signa’s Liber de Obsidione Ancone, a short praise of the city’s fame is presented through the mouth of the city’s new podestà in a speech to the citizenry. Moreover, according to Garbini, a leading expert on Boncompagno, we should remember that the Liber is a work commissioned by a new regime led by a new podestà at the end of the twelfth century, and yet it celebrates the heroic deeds of the city in 1173 under the rule of a preceding aristocratic consular government. Thus this work is a praise of the city, its citizens, and a now defunct administration, and as such represents a public effort by the podestà to reassure and conciliate an ousted elite.144 The Anonymous Genovese was, however, much more explicit in praising Genoa’s autonomy: ‘No prince or baron has ever been able to bring it into subjection or to take away its freedom’.145 Bonvesin da la Riva’s work pushes this aspect of Italian urban life much further. It is effectively a paean to the city’s sophisticated and independent government, and to the city’s ‘natural liberty’.146 Milan is presented as a world set apart: ‘this most fortunate city, like a world in itself separate from the rest of the globe (‘hec felicissima civitas, quasi per se mundus quidam a reliquo condividus orbe’)’; exalted among its fellow cities of Lombardy ‘like the rose or lily among flowers, like 141  Vraies chroniques, 3a p. 47, 19 p. 61, 32a p. 68, 42 p. 75, 119–20 p. 119, 142a –b pp. 133–4 and see note 48 p. 182; Small, ‘Les origines’, pp. 92–104. 142  Vraies chroniques, 32b p. 68. 143  Mosè del Brolo, Liber Pergaminus, lines 271–80, p. 452. 144  Boncompagno da Signa, Liber, pp. 158–60, and see Garbini’s introduction to the edition at pp. 27–8; on the importance of the podestà in public discourse see: Artifoni, ‘podestà’, pp. 687–719. 145  Anonimo Genovese, trans. Dean, Towns of Italy, p. 22: Anonimo Genovese, ed. Contini, lines 77–80, p. 754. 146 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Prologue, pp. 10–11.

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the cedar in Lebanon, like the lion among quadrupeds, and the eagle among the birds’.147 Although when Bonvesin wrote Milan’s communal regime was disintegrating in the face of the rising power of the Delle Torre and Visconti kin-groups, he still demonstrated the complexity and reach of the city’s government with its communal registers, urban fiscal and provisioning systems, and control of the contado (see Chapter 5). And he also praised the city’s main site of public power, the court of the commune, the built complex where civic government was centred. For Bonvesin it was worthy of such a great city, and such distinctive communal palace complexes, symbolic of the power and freedom of urban governments, had arisen in numerous thirteenth-century North Italian cities.148 Its grand dimensions (measured by Bonvesin at 130 cubits east to west, and 136 south to north) enabled anyone who wanted to enter and listen to proceedings clearly. A marvellous palace (‘mirabile palatium’), and a tower with the four bells of the commune, rose in its middle. On the east side of the complex there was a palace in which the chief urban officials, the podestà and the judges, resided. At the northern end of this palace was the chapel of the podestà, dedicated to the city’s patron, St Ambrose. Nearby was yet another palace, while to the south of the complex was an arcade where convictions were read out publicly. The complex, in short, encapsulated the city’s public, judicial, and religious authority and its size and supposed accessibility set out claims to be a forum for the entire citizenry. The rise of communal government at Bologna and its connection to the urban landscape is also apparent in the Vita of San Petronio. As Maria Corti noted long ago, the differences in the narrative and the praise of the city between the Latin and vernacular versions indicate the changing nature of government in the city.149 The  Latin vita, dated to 1180, presented San Petronio effectively re-founding Bologna after its mythical destruction by Emperor Theodosius I, who was enraged by the murder of his imperial vicar by the Bolognesi.150 This destruction and homicide clearly mirrored Frederick Barbarossa’s recent razing of Milan in 1162 and the assassination of his own imperial vicar. In the Latin vita then, San Petronio rebuilt Bologna along with its famous Santo Stefano complex replicating Jerusalem, and in doing so denied any imperial agency in a reconstruction project which shaped Bologna’s civic identity. It is, as Corti noted, an ‘exquisitely Guelf version of the Petronio legend’ in an era when Bologna had sheltered Milanese refugees and supported the papacy against the Staufen Empire.151 Nearly a century later, 147 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Prologue pp. 12–13; Bk. IV.XVII, p. 82 and, similarly, Bk. VIII.X, p. 158. 148 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. II.III, pp. 24–7; see G. Andenna, ‘La simbologia del potere nelle città comunali lombarde: I palazzi pubblici’, in Le forme della propaganda politica nel Due e nel Trecento. Relazioni tenute al convegno internazionale di Trieste (2–5 marzo 1993) (Rome, 1994), pp. 369–93 (pp. 369, 386–7 for Milan’s communal palace); M. Miller, ‘From Episcopal to Communal Palaces: places and power in Northern Italy (1000–1250)’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, LIV (1995), pp. 175–85; J. Schulz, ‘Urbanism in Medieval Venice’, in A. Molho, K. A. Raaflaub, and J. Emlen (eds), City States in Classical Antiquity and Medieval Italy. Athens and Rome, Florence and Venice (Stuttgart, 1991), pp. 435–6. 149  Vita di san Petronio, especially xxxii–vi. 150  Vita Sancti Petronii, pp. 6–7. 151  Vita di san Petronio, xxv–xxxii.

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(dating probably somewhere from 1257 to the 1270s), the vernacular vita offered a different and more elaborate version of San Petronio’s life.152 It presented the papacy as the highest authority and associated Petronio more closely with St Ambrose, an anti-imperial saint.153 But, written in a period when the threat of the Staufen emperors had receded with the death of Frederick II in 1250, the vita no longer presents such a hostile front to empire. Following the murder of the imperial vicar and Bologna’s destruction, the saint visited Emperor Theodosius in Constantinople. Theodosius supplied Petronio with revenues from the imperial treasury to fund the rebuilding of Bologna. The vernacular vita thereafter offered an extended and detailed description of the Santo Stefano complex which appears to be close to its thirteenth-century layout. Here Petronio is even more conspicuous in his capacity as Bologna’s supreme urban planner, developing its most resonant public site albeit with the support of imperial financial aid. But there is more. The vernacular vita, the work quite probably of a lay author, is imbued with a communal pride absent from the earlier Latin version produced by a monk of Santo Stefano. As well as rebuilding the city, Petronio requested, and received, from the emperor three guarantees. First, that ‘my city of Bologna may be free and exempt from servitude, so that no tyrant or lord may ever destroy or ruin it’.154 Second, a confirmation of the city’s contado, so that Bologna would never be poor. The boundaries delineated by the emperor corresponded to those which Bologna in the thirteenth century was attempting to consolidate.155 Third, imperial recognition of the city’s studium, which was by the thirteenth century one of the most famed medieval universities.156 These concessions fit the political climate of late thirteenth-century Bologna. The latter two concessions had in fact appeared in the Registrum Novum of the city’s commune in 1257, a record which the author of the vernacular vita clearly knew of and thus the hagiography was influenced by the city’s culture of careful civic record-keeping.157 It is notable also that during the period when the vernacular vita was produced, the cult of San Petronio was rapidly assimilated with the city’s commune and public life. Between 1257 and c.1300, the saint was honoured ever more conspicuously in communal processions, candle offerings, and feast-day celebrations.158 So the vita must be seen as part of a multimedia take-off of the saint’s cult in close association with the ongoing crystallization of Bolognese civic identity and urban administrative reform. But Petronio’s role in the vita as urban planner par excellence was as resonant in late thirteenth-century Bologna as the image of him as civic freedom fighter. As Pini has shown, by the 1250s Bologna was reaching its demographic capacity, and ranked among the top five or six largest cities in Europe. Its population was swelled by university students and rural migrants. In response, the Bolognese 152  Vita di san Petronio, xxi. 153  Vita di san Petronio, xxxii; Thompson, Cities of God, p. 118. 154  Vita di san Petronio, chap. V, p. 26. 155 Webb, Patrons and Defenders, pp. 174–6. 156  Vita di san Petronio, chap. V, pp. 26–8. 157  Vita di san Petronio, xxxv. 158  See Orselli, ‘Spirito cittadino’, pp. 294–321, and (in the same volume) A. I. Pini, ‘Origine e testimonianze del sentimento civico Bolognese’, pp. 137–93; also Webb, Patrons and Defenders, pp. 174–80; Thompson, Cities of God, pp. 116–19, 137, 164.

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government decreed a series of acts in the 1240s and 50s to encourage repopulation of the contado. But it was a civil war and the expulsion in 1274 of some 12,000 inhabitants (out of a total of c.50,000) associated with the Ghibelline faction that eased population pressure and created the opportunity to reshape parts of the city.159 The last two decades of the thirteenth century consequently saw efforts to improve the city’s aesthetic appearance by creating a more ordered and accessible network of streets, and a consistent set of dimensions and styles for new constructions. New public spaces and buildings were created, such as the Piazza Maggiore (the major city square), the nearby Piazza del Comune (the Communal Square), and a city hall (the Palazzo Nuovo).160 This intense spirit of urban planning was exemplified by the composition of the Liber Terminorum of 1294 which was concerned with the management of Bologna’s public space and boundaries.161 In this context of demographic fluctuations and concern for improving the public aspect of the city we can readily appreciate the importance of a saint who was celebrated above all for glorifying Bologna through its urban landscape, and who was depicted in a miniature which accompanied the vernacular vita as holding the city in his hands.162 A final example can be found in works on Venice, a city which followed a different model of urban autonomy under its government directed by the figure of the doge. Venice’s rise to powerful city state at the heart of an extensive trading empire is well known, as is the city elite’s assiduous promotion of public ritual to project Venetian strength. Martin da Canal’s Estoire, a carefully crafted encomium of the city, showcased Venice’s sophisticated procedures for the election of a new doge and eulogized the city’s lavish public processions.163 Henry of Rimini’s later praise of the city pushed this further and set Venice out as the ideal government, a ‘mixed constitution’ which comprised elements of monarchic, oligarchic, and popular rule. So proud were its citizens that they loyally defended the city’s freedom and in return the Venetian state assiduously protected its people’s welfare.164 But it is Martin’s work which particularly demonstrated how Venetian pride in government and order was associated with specific sites of power. From the mid-twelfth century the Venetian government increasingly intervened in matters concerning the city’s layout, and it commenced construction of St Mark’s square. By the mid-1260s it was almost complete and produced a civic space of ‘astonishing coherence’.165 This is reflected in Martin’s description of the celebrations for the election of the new doge Renieri Zeno which he used to praise Venice and its government through the magnificence of its built landscape. The account tells of viewing stands constructed by noble Venetians in order to witness the doge’s election parade. 159  Pini, ‘Un aspetto dei rapporti’. 160 Nicholas, Growth of the Medieval City, pp. 200–1; Romano, Markets, pp. 49–54. 161 Heers, Espaces publics; for comparable management and reshaping of the public spaces of Florence in the thirteenth century, see Sznura, ‘Civic Urbanism’, pp. 403–18. 162 Thompson, Cities of God, p. 118. 163  Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, pp. 246–62, 270–304. 164  Henry of Rimini’s Paean to Venice (ca. 1300), trans. Law, pp. 515–16. 165  Schulz, ‘Urbanism’, pp. 432–5 (quote at p. 432); Fortini Brown, Venice, p. 14.

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The stands were situated near St Mark’s square, the central locus of Venetian power, which Martin presented, via its array of buildings, as a microcosm of Venice’s wealth, charity, and harmonious interrelationship between governing elite and populace: [St Mark’s Square] is now the most beautiful square in the whole world; facing the rising sun is the most beautiful church in the world, and adjacent to that church is the palace of the doge, large and marvellously beautiful, and on the other side the place of the master chaplains, and to the south, the front end of the square looks onto the water. And on one side of the square is the palace of Monseignor the doge, and on the other there are the palaces and fine lodgings to house the lesser folk; and these palaces continue until they reach Monseignor St Mark’s clock tower, which is so large and so high that no one could find its equal. And there is a hospital there that Madame the dogaressa had built to shelter the sick, and they shelter them daily, and it is called ‘Monseignor St Mark’s Hospital’166

The description of the square and its buildings continued—mentioning countless palaces of the treasurers and nobility—and culminated with coverage of the new doge’s arrival before the assembled nobility and populace of the city, and the days of festivities and jousting that followed. In the backdrop, as we noted in Chapter 4, all was far from harmonious. To paraphrase Cracco, Martin was sounding a painful song in light of the city’s recent upheavals.167 Internally, Venice was experiencing factionalism, from which it had for so long seemed immune. Externally, it was struggling to reassert its moral authority on the international stage and its vision for a renewed territorial and mercantile empire in the aftermath of the collapse of the Latin Empire of Constantinople.168 Conversely, the stability and community evoked by St Mark’s Square showcased the glory and unity of Venice and by extension the worthiness of the city’s ambitions. It was a space worthy of an imperial capital, and worthy of Venice which, after 1204, had controlled large areas of the Eastern Empire.169 To inflate a city into an empire or into an autonomous world of its own (echoes of which we have seen above in the treatments, among others, of Rouen, London, Palermo, Milan, Bologna, and Venice) was the ambitious and timeless secular counterpart to the conflation of a particular urban centre with the Eternal City of God. But, as Schmidt astutely noted, while religious schema never disappeared, the twelfth century saw the creation of a body of works which praised cities in a more overtly secular manner.170 The varied forms of praise covered in this chapter linked to monuments, sites of public power, and the development of new forms of 166  Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, trans. Morreale, pp. 49–50; Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, p. 128. 167 Cracco, Società, p. 269. 168 Cracco, Società, pp. 265–90; see also Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, trans. Morreale, xvii. 169  Schulz, ‘Urbanism’, pp. 439–40. Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, pp. 8–10, notes the different tributes and services owed to the doge—from the likes of the Istrians, Slavonians, Paduans, and Trevisans—which seemed to consolidate Venice’s imperial qualities; Fasoli, ‘Cronique des Veniciens’, p. 53. 170  Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, pp. 326–7.

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political authority associated with cities might well fit this shift. In the climate of change in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, they testify to the city’s centrality both to state formation and to the gestation of movements for greater urban autonomy and lay participation in city government. A city’s significant buildings and public spaces were regularly seen and visited by its local elites/rulers and its citizens. Some of these monuments and sites undoubtedly evoked awe and pride, while others were perhaps misunderstood, or overlooked and taken for granted as a mere quotidian presence. They could mean many things to many people. In a fast-changing urban environment, it was the task of panegyric to tackle the multiplicity of meanings: first to capture the wonder and special characteristics of a city’s built environment and second to decode it for a particular audience, and thus to explain what sort of power, what sort of messages on identity, and what type of self-esteem the physical structures and spaces of the city might encapsulate.

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7 Education, History, and Sophistication Under the influence of a renewed interest in Roman law and the rediscovery of Aristotle’s Politics, a prominent feature of thinking on the city in the twelfth and thirteenth century was the emphasis on its civilizing role. Albert Magnus, in his Augsburg sermon cycle, used the term urbanitas to describe the urban community, a word which could also convey a perception of sophistication and refinement discernibly connected with urbanus—urban.1 This notion of urban sophistication underpinned civic consciousness and pride during our period and drew from many streams of evidence. The Holy City paradigm, explored in Chapter 3, provided one. Another, conspicuous within contemporary urban panegyric, was the city’s catalytic relationship with knowledge generation. A further conduit was provided by more concerted efforts to reshape the cultural memory of cities by identifying their distant origins and early histories, and which presented cities deeply imbued with esteemed traditions and memories of unity.2 Both—knowledge generation and historical reconstruction—shall be explored in this chapter, and both were utilized by some authors of panegyric to showcase the civilized elegance of their subject. T H E C I T Y A N D T H E M E D I E VA L INTELLECTUAL RENAISSANCE The twelfth century witnessed an intellectual regeneration, the importance of which scholars have long acknowledged. The labels applied to this process—revival, reawakening, regeneration, renaissance—may differ. Its chronology and scope, and the factors which stimulated it, may be contested. But it is clear that this century was at the heart of a series of interconnected intellectual achievements that reshaped European society: new learning, above all scholasticism, refined understanding of individual psychology and emotion, the transmission of Greek and Islamic learning to Latin Christendom, deeper engagement with Antiquity, the creation of universities, and the valorization of vernacular literature.3 Spiritual reform, 1  Albert Magnus, Augsburg Sermon Cycle Sermon 1, p. 105, Sermon 2, pp. 111–12; see also Richter, ‘Urbanitas-rusticitas’, pp. 149–57; D. Romagnoli, ‘Cortesia nella città: un modello complesso. Note sull’etnica medievale delle buone maniere’, in D. Romagnoli (ed.), La città e la corte. Buone e cattive maniere tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Milan, 1991), pp. 34–6; Luscombe, ‘City and Politics’, pp. 41–55. 2  For a lucid discussion of cultural memory in a medieval context see Pohl, Dudo, pp. 6–9; and also Arll, Memory. 3  See the important contributions in Benson, Constable, Lanham (eds), Renaissance and Renewal.

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commercial revival, growth in literacy, and military success all underpinned it. And so too did urbanization, for in encouraging and funding the combination of facilities, resources, and individuals in a location where knowledge transfer was highly effective, cities were increasingly identified as leading centres of learning. Already prominent by the tenth century, cathedral schools had become notable features in several twelfth-century urban landscapes, particularly in north-western European cities like Cambrai, Chartres, Laon, Metz, Orléans, Reims, and Trier. Also by the twelfth century these were joined by other urban schools which admitted lay students (especially in Italy) and, a clear product of urbanization, by schools based in collegiate churches.4 Hyde was quite right that the competition created between these schools, underpinned as it was by commercial growth, re­presented ‘a pure application of the market mentality to the question of learning’, and that the students were a new consumer class.5 By the end of the first quarter of the thirteenth century in some cities—most notably Bologna, Cambridge, Naples, Oxford, Padua, Paris—the first universities (studia generales) had emerged, setting a new protective and revolutionary institutional framework for higher education. The city, one way or another, was by this point monopolizing learning. Aware of the advantages of these trends, ruling elites were keen to promote learning within their key sites of power, usually a principal city. Learned scholars were vital cogs within public relations strategies, they could construct legitimate images of virtuous rulership. This was underpinned by the ideal of the translatio studii. It claimed that ruling and knowledge were interconnected, and that political authority and divine learning was gradually transferred via the Jews, Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans to its final destination in Western Europe.6 It should not be surprising that ecclesiastical authors in particular were keen to acknowledge transformations which placed cities in ever closer association with learning and which asserted their ‘role in Christian self-understanding’.7 This connection appeared more prominently in several works of urban panegyric from the eleventh century onwards, often in ones which eulogized a famed figure and situated them within praise of a city where their educational formation took place. A number focus, for example, on Reims and its cathedral school, eulogizing the city above all as a hub of learning. Esteemed as an intellectual centre since Carolingian times, its stock revived markedly from the mid-eleventh century onwards and nurtured renowned scholars such as Bruno of Cologne (d.1101), the founder of the Carthusians.8 Balderic of Bourgueil, later Archbishop of Dol, 4 Useful background in Wei, Intellectual Culture, pp. 8–51; C. S. Jaeger, The Envy of Angels: Cathedral Schools and Social Ideals in Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, 1994); J. Barrow, The Clergy in the Medieval World: Secular Clerics, their Families and Careers in North-Western Europe, c. 800–c.1200 (Cambridge, 2015), pp. 185–7. 5  J. K. Hyde, ‘Universities and Cities in Medieval Italy’, in T. Bender (ed.), The University and the City. From Medieval Origins to the Present (Oxford, 1988), pp. 16, 19. 6  A. G. Jongkens, ‘Translatio Studii: Les avatars d’un theme médiéval’, in Miscellanea Mediaevalia in Memoriam Jan Frederik Niermeyer (Gronigen, 1967), pp. 41–51; Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, vol. 1 pp. 72–3; Ferruolo, Origins, pp. 13–14. 7  Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, p. 335. 8  See the works of J. R. Williams: ‘Godfrey of Rheims, a Humanist of the Eleventh Century’, Speculum, XXII (1947), pp. 29–45; ‘The Cathedral School of Rheims in the Eleventh Century’, Speculum, XXIX

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produced a poem on Godfrey (d.1095) a master of the cathedral school of Reims, which praised the city as another Rome (‘Nobilis urbis Remis, Remis velut altera Roma’) and above all as a centre of education.9 In the twelfth century, Anselm’s Vita Adalberti tracked the eponymous hero, and future Archbishop of Mainz, through his educational development in Mainz, Hildesheim, Paris, and Montpellier, but devoted the greatest praise to Reims. Anselm celebrated its topography, resources, early Christian history and, of course, the flourishing scholae of learning and philosophy which enticed Adalbert to the city.10 The contemporary verse of Hugh Primas also commended Reims ‘which holds high office as the first among our cities’ (‘civitatum prima tenens principatum’). For the poet, the city was marked out by its intellectual distinction, enhanced by the famed Master Alberic, and in particular by ‘her holy spring of learning’ rooted in Christian doctrine and the sacraments. At Reims one found ‘not a school for vanities; here they lecture on the verities, not in the name of Socrates but in the eternal Trinity’s. Here there’s no Platonic teaching: one true God is all the preaching.’11 In this climate, with its distinctive focus on learning (both classical and Christian), it is understandable that some works of urban panegyric sought to advertise the multitude of schools and teachers within cities, or attempted to demonstrate how fundamental institutions of learning were to an urban history or identity. William FitzStephen dedicated a passage of his laudatory description of London to the city’s ‘famous schools’. Indeed, we have already noted the twelfthcentury prominence of St Paul’s and its canons within the educational and commercial networks of London. Important scholars were active here, and canons called Quintilian and Cyprian, with their allusions to classical learning, were also attested.12 But in addition to the school of St Paul, and those of the church of the Holy Trinity and of Saint Martin, FitzStephen claimed the presence of several others filled with eminent teachers well-versed in dialectic. While some commentators condemned sophistry and academic disputation (see Chapter 4), FitzStephen revelled in the varied academic competitions of persuasion and trickery which occurred in London’s schools.13 Around a century later, Bonvesin’s panegyric on (1954), pp. 661–77; ‘The Cathedral School of Reims in the time of Master Alberic’, Traditio, XX (1964), pp. 93–114. 9  Balderic of Bourgueil, Carmina, ed. J. Hilbert (Heidelberg, 1979), ‘Ad Godfredum Remensem’, no. 99, pp. 112–18, especially lines 87–110; Classen, Stadt, p. 51; Williams, ‘Godfrey of Rheims’. 10  Anselm of Havelberg, Vita Adelberti II Moguntini, for example, lines 300–12, p. 577, lines 455–58, p. 582. The Vita praised other urban centres of learning: it claimed Mainz was illuminated by philosophy and schools, and compared its reputation in the arts to that of Rome, lines 65–74, p. 570; Paris ‘an eminent place, highly refined’ was praised for the study of logic, lines 680–3, p. 589; Montpellier’s fame as a centre of medical knowledge was noted, lines 796–805, pp. 592–3; J. Bumke, Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages, trans. T. Dunlap (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 67–75, on the attraction in Germany of a French education. See also F. J. E. Raby, A History of Secular Latin Poetry in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2nd edition, 1957), vol. 2 pp. 147–8; Classen, Stadt, p. 58. 11  Hugh Primas and the Archpoet, Poem XVIII, pp. 44–5. On Alberic, see Williams, ‘The Cathedral School of Reims in the time of Master Alberic’, pp. 93–114. 12  Keene, ‘From Conquest to Capital’, pp. 17–32. See above p. 19. 13  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, pp. 4–5. He also commented, with apparent approval, on the games/sports (ludi) played by London scholars on the Carnival holiday, p. 9.

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Milan also demonstrated the enduring pride in a city’s educational apparatus. In the case of Bonvesin’s Milan, this was very much interconnected too with the generation of a professional class which was itself the product of teaching and training. The city was praised for hosting 120 experts in civil and canon law, forming a ‘collegium’ (guild, or fellowship) without equal ‘in size and wisdom in the whole world’.14 This ‘collegium’ was considered by Bonvesin to be among the six strengths (‘specialia’) of Milan (the others being the city’s good waters, the abundance and honesty of its religious, Milan’s unique liturgy, the hierarchical dignity of the archbishopric, and the city’s unbreakable fidelity to the Church).15 Equally part of this urban professional group were the city’s 1,500 notaries, 28 medical experts, and 150 surgeons who surpassed in fame all their fellow practitioners in other Lombard cities.16 Bonvesin’s Milan also boasted an impressive body of teachers: eight professors of grammar, according to Bonvesin (himself a teacher of grammar) a greater number than in other cities, and who had numerous pupils (‘discipulorum copiam’); fourteen excellent doctors of the Ambrosian chant; and more than seventy teachers of elementary education (‘inicialium vero litterarum pedagogi’).17 Excellence in learning was undoubtedly integral to Milan’s celebrity. Consequently, as Bonvesin admitted, it proved a disappointment that the city did not have a studium generale even if it had forty book copiers, a number at which Bonvesin marvelled because there was no university in Milan.18 In Bk. VIII.XI, Bonvesin openly addressed the lack of a studium generale, and could not hide its importance.19 ‘There are some cities’, said Bonvesin, ‘who by themselves should not claim much fame’ (‘Sunt enim quedam civitates que per se in multa claritate non essent’), but the presence of an abundance of foreigners (‘extranearum gentium’), attracted in the hope of study, conferred glory on those cities. Paris and Bologna were cited as examples. Instead Bonvesin rationalized that it was better for a city’s glory not to be measured by the number of foreigners who visit it but by its own natural virtues. And thus, Milan was to be praised by its natural nobility (‘naturalis nobilitas’) which provided products and sustenance to many foreign cities (‘multis extraneis civitatibus’). If Milan could not compete in offering intellectual nourishment to foreigners it could claim to offer material nourishment instead. Despite Bonvesin’s attempted rebuttal, the undoubted significance of a studium generale was of course promoted by those cities which hosted them.20 Bologna and its studium with its famed school of law became synonymous entities. Alexander 14 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XVII, pp. 50–1. 15 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.IX, pp. 156–7. 16 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XVIII, pp. 50–1; Bk. III.XXI, XXII, pp. 52–3. The De laude civitatis Laude also praised Lodi’s body of judges of peace (‘iudicibus pacis’), medics, and lawyers, and signalled the famed Lodesi judge and poet Orfino who produced the De regimine et sapientia potestatis, a tract on civic government: line 30, p. 54; lines 45–7, p. 58; lines 57–8, p. 60. 17 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XIII, XIIII, XXV, pp. 52–3. 18 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. III.XXVI, pp. 52–3. 19 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.XI, pp. 158–9. 20  On the formation of Universities see the contributions in H. De Ridder-Symoens (ed.) A History of the University in Europe, Vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 2003).

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Neckam’s (d.1217) entry for Bologna simply noted that the city was served freely by Justinian, alluding to the widespread view that the city was the home of the  twelfth-century rediscovery and subsequent teaching of Justinianic law or the Corpus Iuris Civilis.21 By the thirteenth century the studium was pivotal to the city’s identity. While it was not referenced in the Latin Vita of San Petronio of c.1180, the subsequent success of the studium encouraged its inclusion in the vernacular version of the second half of the thirteenth century. According to the latter, San Petronio was presented as a learned philosopher, doctor, legal expert, and decretalist who had received an imperial grant recognizing the studium, an act which was presented as integral to the putative fifth-century rebuilding of the city.22 It also stressed Bologna as the ‘mother’ of learning and good customs, and indeed the studium was known as Bononia mater studiorum.23 Perhaps mindful of the successful Bolognese model, some rulers attempted to establish universities and issued promotional material which vaunted the host cities. In 1224 Frederick II of Sicily issued a general circular throughout his kingdom confirming the foundation of a studium generale ‘at Naples, the most pleasant city’ (‘amenissimam civitatem’). Prospective students would benefit from living ‘where there is an abundance of things, where there are large and sufficiently spacious homes, where the customs of the citizens are favourable, where all the necessities of human life can be easily transported by land or sea.’24 There was an aplenty of grain, wine, meat, and fish. A mere five years later, backed by the papacy, the Count of Toulouse and the citizens aimed to establish a university in Toulouse. Aware of the suspension of the Paris university in 1229, the hope was to attract some of the latter’s exiled students and masters, and also to advertise the city’s continued campaign to eradicate heretical movements which had been rife in Southern France.25 Just as at Naples, a general letter (written by Parisian scholar John de  Garlande no less) praised the virtues of the city of Toulouse.26 The city was depicted with an undoubted nod to contemporary representations of Paris. It 21  Alexander Neckam, De Naturis Rerum, p. 450. 22  Vita di san Petronio, chap. V, pp. 26–8; VIII, p. 49. 23  Vita di san Petronio, chap. V, p. 28. Pini, ‘Origine’, pp. 140–2, 158–68 explores the complex role of the studium in the construction of Bolognese identity; at points the universalistic perspective of the studium combined with its superior literary culture worked against the development of a more localized and specific Bolognese identity, at others, its fame was co-opted into Bologna’s civic consciousness as a source of pride. 24  The most recent edition of the circular is in L’Epistolario di Pier della Vigna, eds. E. D’Angelo et al., (Soveria Mannelli, 2014), pp. 489–91 with Italian translation at pp. 491–3; on the background to the university see P. Oldfield, ‘The Kingdom of Sicily and the Early University Movement’, Viator, XL (2009), pp. 135–50 and F. Delle Donne, ‘Per scientiarum haustum et seminarium doctrinarum: edizione e studio dei documenti relativi allo Studium di Napoli in età sveva’, Bullettino dell’istituto storico italiano per il medio evo, CXI (2009), pp. 101–225. 25  Alexander Neckam’s entry for Toulouse noted the city’s beauty and crafts/arts and its famous reputation but also, in referring to the errors of Faustus and Manicheanism, alluded to its association with heresy: De Naturis Rerum, p. 450. 26  The letter is edited in Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 72, pp. 129–31. The translation used here is from L. Thorndike (trans.), University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York, 1944), pp. 32–5. On the background to the university see C. E. Smith, The University of Toulouse in the Middle Ages: its Origins and Growth to 1500 ad (Milwaukee, 1958).

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was a ‘second Troy’; the glory of Toulouse and its studium (‘Tholose gloriam simul cum studio’) should be known for it was a ‘land of promise flowing with milk and honey’.27 It was rich in pastures and crops, fruit trees, vineyards, and enjoyed a ‘temperate air’ which had always been ‘preferred by the ancient philosophers’. The city now was a haven of peace, Mars no longer rages here (‘Hic est pax, alibi toto Mars sevit in orbe’). Its people were courteous and good humour abounded, Aristotle was not forbidden as it was at Paris, and scholars could gain a plenary indulgence by studying at Toulouse, thus the city and its studium played a role in salvation. The letter ended by encouraging the reader to leave home and visit the city in order ‘to marvel at more good things than we have mentioned’. However, it was Paris, of all university cities, which accrued most praise from its association with the cultivation of learning. The city had established its reputation as a home for several leading schools already by the first half of the twelfth century. It had been able to attract leading thinkers of the day to study and teach in the city: the likes of Peter Abelard, Hugh of Saint Victor, John of Salisbury, and countless others. Scholars in Paris enjoyed an unusual level of academic freedom. Unlike in most other cities, no one school dominated learning. Instead, a set of overlapping ecclesiastical and secular jurisdictions and exemptions enabled several schools (above all the Cathedral School, and monastic schools such as St Genevieve and St Victor, and several independent schools such as the one on the Petit Pont) to compete for students. It was a climate that stimulated original thinking and academic excellence.28 By the start of the thirteenth century Parisian learning had heavily shaped Europe’s intellectual community. Numerous works associated with some of these schools and scholars praised the city.29 The English philosopher Alexander Neckam likely studied at the school on the Petit Pont in the 1170s or 80s, and in his entry for Paris in De Natura Rerum was one of the first writers to make what would become a famous wordplay on the city’s name: Paris (Parisius) becomes Paradise (Paradisus), it was a ‘garden of delights’ (‘paradisus deliciarum’). It was made thus by its exercise of logic and because ‘the arts flourish, the divine page reigns, the laws stand, justice shines, medicine flourishes’.30 Gui of Bazoches also studied in Paris and his letter (of c.1175 × 1190) showcased Paris’s intellectual magnificence in much the same promotional fashion as the aforementioned letters establishing the universities at Naples and Toulouse.31 27  S. C. Ferruolo, ‘Parisius-Paradisus: The City, its Schools, and the Origins of the University of Paris’, in T. Bender (ed.), The University and the City. From Medieval Origins to the Present (Oxford, 1988), pp. 28, 35. 28 Ferruolo, Origins, pp. 15–17, 17–26. A. L. Gabriel, ‘Les écoles de la cathédrale de Notre-Dame et le commencement de l’université de Paris’, Revue d’histoire de l’Église de France, L (1964), pp. 73–98. Baldwin, Masters, Princes and Merchants, pp. 72–7. 29  We have, for instance, already seen above that Archbishop Adalbert II of Mainz (d.1141) had studied at Paris in the early twelfth century, and his Vita praised the city’s scholarly climate, particularly its logicians. See also the twelfth-century satirical work of Johannes de Hauvilla, Architrenius, ed. and trans. W. Wetherbee (Cambridge, 1994), Bk. II, chap. 17, pp. 58–9 in which, among several qualities, Paris is lauded as ‘a Greece in its libraries (‘Greca libris’), an India in its schools (‘Inda studiis’), a Rome for poets (‘Romana poetis’), an Attica for philosophers (‘Attica philosophis’)’. 30  Alexander Neckam, De Natura Rerum, p. 453. 31  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 54, p. 56.

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After praising the city’s resources and urban topography, Gui completed his eulogy with a passage on learning in the city. Gui referred to disputations in logic in the city’s Left Bank, but his concluding passage placed the main centre of knowledge generation in firm association with the monarchy, locating it on the Ile-de France, the royal island (‘in hac insula regale’). It was here that the seven liberal arts flourished, where noble eloquence and laws and decrees were read. The city was the ‘fountain of healthful doctrine’ (‘fons doctrine salutaris’). The early thirteenthcentury chronicle by William the Breton also made the monarchy the chief protagonist behind the city’s academic excellence. The city’s wealth and beauty attracted scholars, as also did, in this commentator’s eyes, the academic liberties offered by Philip Augustus. Together they transformed the city into a flourishing centre of letters, home to a number of scholars unequalled even in ancient Athens or Egypt.32 The comparison with ancient centres of learning nourished the aforementioned ideal of the translatio studii from East to West, and located the final destination of that journey at Paris. A letter by Philip of Harvengt (d.1183), a member of the Premonstratensian abbey of Bonne-Espérance in Hainaut, alluded to this intellectual transfer. Philip wrote to a friend who had been led to Paris by a love of  knowledge (‘amore ductus scientie Parisius advenisti’) and who had found Jerusalem there. In the city the sacred teachings of David, the prophecies of Isaiah, and the instructions of the sapiens Solomon could be accessed. Consequently: here such a great crowd, such a great number of clerics, knock at the door, so as to surpass the numerous multitude of laypeople. Fortunate city (‘Felix civitas’), in which holy books are opened with such fervour, and their complicated mysteries are resolved through the gift of the Spirit which suffuses them, in which there is such a great diligence of readers, in short such a great knowledge of scriptures that it deserves to be named like Cariath Sepher, a city of letters (‘civitas litterarum’).33

Similar language and associations (paradise, translatio studii) subsequently found its way into papal decrees and university sermons. The papacy was particularly keen to bolster Paris as a centre of theology in the service of the Christian Church, and therefore receptive to the aggrandizing of Paris’s sacred reputation. A papal epistle of November 1229, for example, stated that: It is known that the river course is the study of letters, from which the garden (paradisus) of the universal church is irrigated and nourished according to the grace of the Holy Spirit, the reservoir of which is the city of Paris, because the studium of Paris has thrived hitherto.34

One of 1230 spoke of the city being nourished by Zion and its likeness to Jerusalem.35 Another of 1231 labelled ‘Paris the mother of science like another 32 Ferruolo, Origins, p. 12. 33  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 51, p. 50 (this translation benefited from helpful revisions suggested by I. S. Moxon, for which I am grateful); Gabriel, ‘Les écoles’, p. 75. 34  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 70, p. 127. 35  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 75, p. 133.

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Cariath Sepher, city of letters’.36 Bartholomew Anglicus’s popular encyclopaedia disseminated this image of Paris—comparable to ancient Athens, its knowledge uplifting all of Europe—even more widely.37 Collectively, these works offered an optimistic alternative to Jacque de Vitry’s condemnation of the types of students at, and learning undertaken in, early thirteenth-century Paris (see Chapter 4). A N C I E N T U R B A N H I S TO R I E S Looking back to the ancient roots of learning formed part of a prominent trend in twelfth-century intellectual developments. Indeed, a product of the twelfth-century intellectual revival was a more reflective engagement with the community’s (and individual’s) position in society, and this seems to have contributed to an increased production of historical writing as one conduit of the formation of cultural memories. Efforts, for instance, were made by some kin-groups to establish dynastic genealogies, often with legendary progenitors.38 Urban communities did the same. The subject of urban origin stories and histories in the Middle Ages is a vast one, not least because they appeared in multiple media formats: the reshaping of the urban landscape also saw the redeployment of antique spolia and the commissioning of monuments and artworks all of which projected information about a city’s prestigious distant past. We can only scratch the surface here in order to delineate some of the salient messages emanating from literary works of urban panegryic. Works tended to cover one or sometimes all of the following: the city’s foundation and its early history in the classical past; its Christianization; and sometimes more recent historical events. All generated a series of moments around which urban identities could crystallize, those ‘sites of memory’ identified in Pierre Nora’s influential paradigm, and which were often established during phases of social and political tension.39 Likewise, as noted in the earlier discussion of lamentation (Chapter  4), in providing information on past glories and failures such information could serve implicitly as warnings and models for the future of the city and often formed part of an ongoing eschatological dialogue. Here we shall primarily explore the first category, foundation accounts and the use of ancient history, in some depth, for it was a particularly consistent and significant feature of works of panegyric post-1100. Indeed, we have already considered the second 36  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 82, p. 140. See also the sermon by the Chancellor of the University of Paris in 1230, edited in M. M. Davy, Les Sermons Universitaires Parisiens, 1230–31 (Paris, 1931), pp. 167–73; and also see Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, p. 335. 37  Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum (Cologne, c.1472), Manchester, John Rylands Library, Bk. XV (without pagination). 38  See, for example, N. Paul, ‘Origo Consulum: rumours of murder, a crisis of lordship, and the legendary origins of the Counts of Anjou’, French History, XXIX (2015), pp. 139–60. 39  P. Nora, Les lieux de mémoire, I: La République (Paris, 1984). Such moments of tension have been connected, for instance, to the production of historical texts in the twelfth century which created a ‘communal’ memory for several North Italian cities: see E. Faini, ‘Alle origini della memoria comunale’, Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken, LXXXVIII (2008), pp. 61–81.

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category in the examination in Chapter 3 on the various ways in which the early Christian histories of cities were weaved into panegyric. The process of conversion, the emergence of pioneering saintly bishops and pious citizens, and the historic acquisition of holy relics was evident in several works of panegyric for cities as diverse as Bologna, Liège, London, Milan, and Seville.40 Equally, we will not cover the representation of more recent urban history in some of the works utilized here, for it is a category which is particularly amorphous and would require a study in itself. But it is important to acknowledge that more recent history was recorded in several cases to bolster a city’s reputation and to speak to contemporary concerns. Falco’s chronicle of Benevento, the Liber Obsidione Ancone and Martin da Canal’s history of Venice, for example, are all built around recent historical events which are underpinned by an image of a  noble and virtuous city on the side of ‘good’. Moreover, in Chapter  8 of his De Preconiis Hispanie, Juan Gil de Zamora offered a lengthy survey of his native city’s history. It covered Zamora’s ancient history, its fate during the reign of Alfonso III of Asturias (d.910), its repeated resistance to paying tribute to external powers, and the city’s role during the succession dispute between the infanta Urraca (d.1101) and her brother Sancho II (d.1072).41 In the latter episode, the siege of Zamora of 1072 and the council that followed to settle the crisis placed the city as pivotal to the fortunes of the kingdom of Léon-Castile and set the scene for praise. According to the De Preconiis Hispanie, when Sancho attempted to subdue the city he was aware of ‘the eloquence of the citizens, their famous loyalty and the glorious victories they had obtained since the ancient time of the Romans.’42 It also occasioned the following plea from Sancho or his leading commander ( Juan Gil admits his uncertainty here): ‘O Zamora, Zamora, if, according to my desire, I can obtain you, I will believe my dominion to be secure over the Aragonese, the Navarrese, the Christians and the Saracens of Spain.’43 The sentiment was consolidated by Juan Gil in his closing section on the ‘condition of the city of Zamora’. Juan Gil claimed that of all other cities Zamora was the ‘principal city’ which guaranteed the stability of the kingdom of Alfonso VII, the conqueror of Toledo (in 1085).44 The chapter closed with Juan Gil’s lament that the city’s fame and virtue had drawn covetous principes and prelates to attempt to dominate the city, and enrich themselves through onerous exactions. Here the didactic agenda of Juan Gil’s work becomes clear, to employ historical narrative to teach good governance to his pupil, 40  Of the many other cases, we might note the Vita Adalberti’s praise of Reims and the role of St Remigius in converting the pagan Franks there (Anselm of Havelberg, Vita Adelberti II Moguntini, lines 261–9, p. 576); Richerius’s provision of an extensive list demonstrating ‘the favour of the saints’ (‘Gratia sanctorum’) who protected Metz and which served as a tour d’horizon of the city’s early Christian history (Richerius of Metz, Vita S. Martini, p. 3), and Martin da Canal’s coverage of the translation of St Mark’s relics to Venice which gave the city links to a distant apostolic past (Martin da Canal, Estoires de Venice, ed. and trans. Limentani, pp. 16–23; Fortini Brown, Venice, pp. 15, 24; Schulz, ‘Urbanism’, p. 439). 41  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, pp. 238–74. 42  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, p. 259. 43  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, p. 259. 44  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, p. 274.

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Sancho IV, the heir to the Castilian throne, and to show the importance of the just treatment of great cities like Zamora.45 With a similar eye to the present, Bonvesin da la Riva dedicated most of Book V to a survey of Milanese history. It ran from the city’s ancient foundation through to its struggles with Frederick Barbarossa and later Frederick II. Its underpinning message was that the city’s prestige attracted predators and conquest: the city had fallen three times in the fifth century (to Attila, to Odoacer and finally to the Goths), and six in total by 1001. Book V continued in this vein, setting out later external threats up to the mid-thirteenth century. Bonvesin clearly hoped that a record of the ‘brave deeds of the Milanese’, both their victories and defeats, would serve to illuminate the city’s grandeur and liberty, the latter truly threatened not by foreign kings or tyrants but if the ‘citizens turned their swords against each other’.46 We turn, then, to the reconstruction of ancient urban histories. The twelfth century witnessed a growing engagement with Antiquity and influential authors such as Ovid, Sallust, and Virgil, and thus many works of urban panegyric focused at length on the ancient history of the city and its origins.47 This was by no means a new phenomenon. Early medieval accounts took interest in ancient history too. The Versus de Verona engaged with the city’s ancient past in order to show Christianity’s triumph over paganism, while Alcuin’s verse on York showed pride in the city’s Roman history.48 Rome usually served as the fulcrum around which these urban histories revolved. Early works often compared certain cities against Rome, like the ninth-century Vita S. Athanasii which claimed it was the only city superior to Naples and its own prestigious early history.49 But the Renovatio Romae ideal of the twelfth century firmly resituated Rome at the heart of medieval political and religious ideologies, either as the symbol of empire (that is, secular power) or of apostolic authority (spiritual power). Consequently, the early history of several cities was placed in a much more explicit relationship to Rome and its ancient history. In some cases the city was shown to have pre-dated Rome (usually with Greek or Trojan founders), in some the city was its ally or near duplicate, in others it was founded by Roman initiative.50 Some cities were designated as a second (secunda), new (nova), or other (altera) Rome, and the analogy might be with imperial or apostolic Rome, or both. Tournai notably received such treatment, but Trier was the one to which these Roman labels were applied the most.51 It had been the main northern urban settlement of the Late Roman Empire, and at times home 45  Gil’s work above all demonstrated the correct characteristics of a prince, the obligations of the king to God, and his relations with his subjects. It is under the latter theme that we should consider the inclusion of the material on the cities and their etymologies; see M. De Castro, ‘Las ideas politicas y la formación del principe en el “De Preconiis Hispanie” de Fr. Juan Gil de Zamora’, Hispania, XXII (1962), pp. 507–41. 46 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. V.II, pp. 94–5; XVI, pp. 114–17. 47  See the contributions in R. R. Bolgar (ed.), Classical Influences on European Culture, A.D. 500– 1500 (London, 1971) and A. S. Bernardo and S. Levin (eds), The Classics in the Middle Ages (Binghamton, NY, 1990). 48  For example Versus de Verona, lines 7–15, 22–4, p. 152; Alcuin, The Bishops, Kings and Saints of York, pp. 4–7. 49  Vita et Translatio S. Athanasii, pp. 115–19. 50 Beneš, Urban Legends, pp. 13–36. 51  Vraies chroniques, 19, p. 61, 22, p. 63.

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to emperors such as Constantine the Great. A number of local hagiographical texts from the tenth century onwards, and legends on coins, referenced the Roman parallel, and it underpinned the treatment of the city’s early history in the Gesta Treverorum.52 Bonvesin da la Riva likewise claimed his city as a Roma secunda, drawing on Milanese traditions dating back to the early eleventh century.53 He did so both in the context of the city’s loyalty to the Roman Church (see Chapter 3), and also in relation to imperial Rome.54 The entry in Bk VIII.I articulates the dual strands of comparison with Rome: The first [reason for Milan’s dignity] is because here, just like a secunda Roma, often the emperors had their throne, namely Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian, Maximian, and other gentiles, who persecuted Christians before the Church was strong; these, as it is read, splendidly enhanced our city. Afterwards, with the Church now flourishing, many Catholic emperors followed, that is Philip, Constantine III, Constans, Constantius Gallus, Jovian, Valens, Valentinian, Gratian and, finally, Theodosius who, often staying in the city, made their residence there.55

Of course, it is self-evident that the Mirabilia Urbis Romae, the Graphia Aurea, and especially the De Mirabilibus Urbis Romae were rooted in the city’s ancient and early Christian past.56 Scholars have identified a number of possible reasons for how and why that past was treated the way it was in these texts on Rome (see Chapter 3), but one consistent message emerging from them was the indubitably unique status of the city of Rome as evidenced in its ancient history. Ultimately, ancient origin stories were deployed to aggrandize a city, to emphasize its liberty, and to render it exceptional; to articulate a particular status.57 For many cities, establishing a historical relationship with Rome served to boost its own reputation and to make claims about a city’s exalted position within any number of contemporary political and ecclesiastical hierarchies. It was also another conduit through which civic identity could be crafted and an ever expanding urban community bound together in a proud, shared past. That this occurred during the twelfth- and thirteenth-century urban boom is then no coincidence. It is these factors, rather than any factual traces within the ‘historical’ accounts, that are more important to the present study. It should come as little surprise that several Northern and Central Italian cities took a deep interest in reconstructing an ancient urban history. Doing so could 52  For discussion see Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, pp. 309–12; Hammer, ‘Concept’, especially pp. 57–8; Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 162–4; if secunda Roma could in the tenth century carry a pejorative meaning, linked to a replication of a pagan Rome, that interpretation appears to have been in retreat by the eleventh century. Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, p. 162. 53  Landulf Senior’s Chronicle (written probably after 1075) claimed Roman emperors preferred Milan to Rome because of its beauty and healthful air; for discussion see M. Campopiano, ‘Problem of Origins’, pp. 243–7. 54 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VI.I–II, pp. 132–5; VIII.IV, pp. 150–1. 55 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.I, pp. 144–5; Bk. VIII.II, pp. 144–6 goes on to note the second reason for Milan’s dignity was that Roman emperors were crowned Kings of Italy in Milan. 56  See Benson, ‘The Dead and the Living’, pp. 147–82. 57  According to A. D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation (Oxford, 1999), p. 69, claims to a ‘special dignity, in virtue of antiquity and pedigree’ were related to the seeking of ‘a status confirmation—for dominant communities—or status reversal—for suppressed minorities.’

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project an independent status in a region where cities competed for ascendancy with neighbouring cities and where movements for urban autonomy regularly clashed with papal and German imperial objectives. As Beneš’ excellent study has shown, numerous Italian cities, with their ‘civic mythmakers’, articulated an often fantastical and contradictory classical past through various media.58 Urban histories were projected through art, architecture, seals, coinage, and texts. There is no need to retread a path already expertly navigated by Beneš, and here I will only briefly flag up a few representative examples from works used in the present study. Several medieval Lombard cities claimed, for instance, the Gauls as their founders. They were deemed of ‘equal antiquity’ and thus of ‘equal prestige’ to the Romans; and thus this connection asserted their parity with and independence from any authority based on Rome in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.59 Bonvesin da la Riva claimed Milan was founded by the Gauls 502 years before the birth of Christ and 200 years after the foundation of Rome.60 The Liber Pergaminus claimed Bergamo itself was founded by Brennus, the leader of the warlike Galli Senones.61 Indeed, in the Liber Pergaminus, Brennus’s actions were identified as the catalyst for the creation of an alliance and thus equivalence with Rome. The poem’s final surviving verses (307–72) cover Brennus’s ill-fated expedition against Rome, and the resultant dispatch of the Roman commander Fabius to rule over Bergamo. But through this intervention, Rome and Bergamo were joined in symbiosis, for Fabius was a good governor ‘not inferior to Aeneas in piety, to Cato in resolve, or to Cicero in love and guardianship of his patria’.62 Produced at a time when the bishop of Bergamo Ambrose di Mozzo was attempting to restore order in the city following the excommunication of his predecessor, the Liber Pergaminus made a call to an ancient and proud history which was bolstered through its interweaving with Rome’s past. In doing so it served as a worthy exemplar for unity in the ­present and the future.63 Roman origins were also of fundamental importance for Florence.64 In the thirteenth century the city was undergoing a quite radical population expansion 58 Beneš, Urban Legends, pp. 13–36. Pisan attempts from the second half of the eleventh century to align its history to Rome’s via texts, inscriptions, and civic monuments are well known and covered in Scalia, ‘“Romanitas” Pisana’, pp. 791–843; see also Mitterauer and Morrissey, Pisa nel Medioevo, pp. 226–49 and Wickham, Sleepwalking, pp. 71–3. One can also include the South Italian city of Naples. By the twelfth century it had developed a strong set of local traditions which claimed that Virgil and his magical powers protected the city, see Oldfield, Sanctity and Pilgrimage, pp. 214–17 and Granier, ‘À rebours des laudes civitatum’, pp. 148–9. Mantua’s reputation was also bolstered by its claims to be Virgil’s birthplace. This was notably articulated in the altercatio between Mantua and Canossa in Donizone di Canossa, Vita, Bk. I.VIII, lines 679–748, pp. 65–9. 59 Beneš, Urban Legends, p. 18; Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 75–6. 60 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. V.I, pp. 92–5. Bonvesin again followed earlier Milanese works which ascribed the city’s foundation to Brennus and the Gauls, such as the early eleventh-century Libellus de Situ civitatis Mediolani. Campopiano, ‘Problem of Origins’, p. 246 stresses that these origin accounts were designed by the Milanese clergy to protect the city’s autonomy from Roman intervention. 61  Mosè del Brolo, Liber Pergaminus, lines 13–26, p. 441. 62  Mosè del Brolo, Liber Pergaminus, lines 361–2, p. 455. 63  Fasoli, ‘coscienza civica’, pp. 309–10. 64 See S. U. Baldassarri, ‘Like Fathers like Sons: Theories on the Origins of the City in Late Medieval Florence’, Modern Language Notes, CXXIV (2009), pp. 23–44; and also the useful discussion

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and development of both its urban topography and commercial capacity.65 Such a dramatic transformation stimulated a rethinking of Florence’s rise and, during the same period, a series of urban origin accounts were produced both in Latin and the vernacular. While all had variants, the main themes were established in their earliest form in the Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae. Its most recent editor, Riccardo Chellini, dates the work to the first decade of the thirteenth century and demonstrated its influence on subsequent Florentine historical works, such as the Gesta Florentinorum (1240s × 1250s), vernacular Tuscan histories, and famed authors such as Brunetto Latini, Giovanni Villani, and Dante Alighieri.66 In the Chronica, Florence’s origins are interlinked, via the settlement of Fiesole, to Troy and Rome. The foundation of Fiesole was said to be the work of Atlas and Apollo, and subsequently Dardanus, the founder of Troy, was claimed to have been born in Fiesole. In turn, the Trojan exile Aeneas would eventually arrive in Italy and his descendants Romulus and Remus would found Rome, thus presenting Fiesole as an agent in Rome’s creation.67 Then, Fiesole’s history is merged with Florence’s and through this the latter appropriates the former’s ancient heritage. Julius Cesar besieged Fiesole and ordered its inhabitants to destroy the settlement and, together with the Romans, build a city where the Roman commander Florinus had encamped. Despite Caesar’s attempts to name the city Cesaria, the Roman senators opted to commemorate Florinus’s efforts in first locating the site of the city and then capturing Fiesole. Therefore, the city took the name of Florentia, because of Florinus who had been its first ‘habitator’ and died there, and the ‘flores’ (flowers) that were found at the initial encampment; and also because Florinus ‘floruit in armis’ (‘flourished in combat’) and won his victory with the ensis (sword), ‘the mistress of all weapons and made in the image of the lily ( floris lilii)’.68 Florence was unequivocally set out as a creation of Rome: the account of the city’s foundation showed it stocked by the most noble Roman citizens, its ecclesiastical topography planned as a replica of papal Rome, and its temporary name, prior to the designation of Florentia, was parva Romula (little Rome). The contemporary thirteenth-century politics behind this historical reconstruction are complex.69 The presentation of Fiesole’s ancient prominence appears to have been driven by Florence’s desire to control the bishop of Fiesole by persuading him not to move his see further away from Florence and closer to the latter’s rival Arezzo. in Beneš, Urban Legends, pp. 15–17 which also covers the De laude civitatis Laude and the ancient Roman connections it established for Lodi: De laude civitatis Laude, lines 9–11, p. 48. 65 On Florence’s urban topography see Sznura, L’espansione urbana; Sznura, ‘Civic Urbanism’, pp. 403–18. 66  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, vii–ix, pp. 3, 5–6, 25. For a useful overview of how later iterations of the Florentine origin myth evolved see Baldassarri, ‘Like Fathers like Sons’, pp. 23–44. 67  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 32–6, 53–61. 68  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 40–1, 74. 69  See L. K. Morreale, ‘French Literature, Florentine Politics, and Vernacular Historical Writing, 1270–1348’, Speculum, LXXXV (2010), pp. 868–93 for more on how the Florentines recorded their ancient history in various vernacular forms, and the sociopolitical context behind this. The Liber Obsidione Ancone similarly claimed that Ancona was founded by the emperors of Rome, in this case in order to subjugate the Slavs in Sclavonia, Boncompagno da Signa, Liber, pp. 116–19.

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The opposition to Caesar’s plans to name Florence after him seem to reflect Florentine hostility to the strategies of Frederick Barbarossa (and the Staufens in general) to dominate Italian communal government. And the discussion of the etymologies of other Tuscan cities reflects twelfth and thirteenth century Florentine perspectives on its network of alliances and rivalries in Central Italy (for more see pp. 183–4 below).70 Also by the start of the thirteenth century, at the latest, Venice had begun to record legends surrounding the city’s association with Aeneas and its own Trojan origins which thus claimed to antedate those of Rome.71 Much like Florence, this was a city able to exert increasing political influence across the Mediterranean, largely through the construction of its own impressive commercial network. Operating in such high political circles—rubbing shoulders with popes, kings, and emperors—undoubtedly encouraged Venetians to locate a suitably prestigious history to further justify their city’s contemporary status. The lack of a discernible Roman foundation was, in this respect, especially troubling for Venice and was acknowledged in John the Deacon’s early eleventh-century history.72 Such concerns appear increasingly to shape Venetian historiography on the city’s origins in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The Origo Civitatum Italie (often known also as the Chronicon Altinate, and which survives in three redactions dating between c.1080 and c.1200), as Fortini Brown has shown, pushed Venetian origins back to a Trojan past and a foundation by Antenor, and Venice’s Christian roots were augmented by presenting the city as a home for Christian refugees and heir to the destroyed patriarchate of Aquileia.73 These messages were echoed in the city’s material culture, such as monumental gateways and sculptures adorning the basilica of San Marco, which espoused Christian renewal and Venice’s historic grandeur.74 Martin da Canal’s Estoire de Venise reflected similar reconstructions of Venice’s past. It set out to eulogize the city at a time when it was imperative for Venice to emphasize its importance to the papacy, crusading, and Mediterranean politics, and also to demonstrate the city’s internal stability, despite recent factionalism suggesting the contrary.75 A start-point for Martin da Canal’s objectives was to establish the city’s illustrious antiquity. Like earlier Venetian accounts, he claimed that Venice’s origins could be traced back to Trojan exiles who founded several cities between Milan and Hungary. The destructive arrival of Attila saw the devastation of these cities, and noble men and women fled to what would become the Venetian lagoon where they built beautiful cities full of equally beautiful churches. Consequently, Martin dated Venice’s foundation to the year 421.76 70 See Chellini’s important analysis of this context in Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 98–128. 71  For further background see Fortini Brown, Venice and T. S. Brown, ‘History as myth: medieval perceptions of Venice’s Roman and Byzantine Past’, in R. Beaton and C. Roueché (eds), The Making of Byzantine History. Studies dedicated to Donald M. Nicol (Aldershot, 1993), pp. 145–57. 72  Fortini Brown, Venice, pp. 6–8. 73  Fortini Brown, Venice, pp. 11–14. 74  Fortini Brown, Venice, pp. 18–21. 75 Cracco, Società, pp. 270–85. See also the introduction by Morreale in Martin da Canal, Les Estoires de Venise, viii–xvii. 76  Martin da Canal, Les Estoires de Venise, ed. and trans. Limentani, pp. 6–9.

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By the end of the thirteenth century, Venetian histories were backdating the city’s foundation even more explicitly to the Trojan era. The ambiguity of the version relayed in Martin’s account, a Trojan heritage but a distinct foundation only in the fifth century, was bypassed by the end of the thirteenth century with accounts of Trojans led by Antenor immediately settling on the spot where Venice would rise.77 Such reconstruction of ancient urban histories was far from an Italian phenomenon. Indeed, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of the mid-twelfth century, as we shall see below (p. 179), articulated a conception of a Trojan origin for London well before Venice had attempted the same. Comparable interest in establishing a history which matched, surpassed, or dovetailed with Ancient Rome’s was evident in several works of the twelfth century from across Western Europe. For some cities, a classical past was recorded in an explicit but more fleeting manner. It continued, for instance, to define the city of Chester apparently in a positive fashion; William of Malmesbury in his survey of the English Church still noted that Chester ‘is known as the city of the legions, as the veterans of the Julian legions settled there’.78 Later in the same century, Lucian’s treatise on Chester, with its mix of Neo-Platonic and Augustinian thinking, set the city in a Christianized landscape but one which still valorized the city’s ancient legacies. Lucian acknowledged, with apparent pride, that it once hosted Roman legions and protected the borders of the Roman Empire.79 Elsewhere, Juan Gil de Zamora’s De Preconiis Hispanie contained a section on the etymologies and earliest history of several important Iberian cities which, drawing on the works of Isidore of Seville and Lucas de Túy’s Chronicon Mundi, gave prominent place to Roman agency in their respective urban traditions.80 Thus we learn that Léon was originally called Flos (flower) but subsequently changed its name to Legio after the Roman legion which was established there, and then after its capture by Leovigild, King of the Goths, was renamed Leo (lion) in his honour.81 Toledo was named Tholetum, either linked to its foundation by two Roman consuls during the reign of Tholomeus Evergitis, the King of Egypt, or, following another tradition, from a combination of the names of the two proconsuls—Tholemonus and Brutus—who built the city.82 Juan Gil naturally also recorded various traditions on the name of Zamora. One recorded its first name as Numantia, perhaps after Neuma Pompilio, the second king of the Romans who first established the city. Its name changed to Zamora however; a combination of ‘Zara’, the daughter of the Roman consul Pompeii who obtained the city’s freedom from her father’s siege, and ‘mora’, a jumbling of Roma.83

77  It should also be noted that integrating Antenor into Venetian history was linked to, and undercut, nearby Padua’s own origin legends which claimed the Trojan as its founder, see Beneš, Urban Legends, p. 58. 78  William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Bishops of England, p. 208. 79 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 9 (fol. 12r). 80  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, pp. 213–38, which follows Lucas de Túy, Chronicon Mundi, Bk. II.68, p. 154; Bk. II.115, pp. 104–5. 81  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, pp. 214–15. 82  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, pp. 217–19. 83  Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, pp. 238–46.

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One version also linked Zamora’s name to Julius Caesar (‘Cesaris mora’), and as we have already seen at Florence, for example, Caesar often played a pivotal role in these ancient urban histories.84 While Caesar’s representation in the Middle Ages could certainly be ambivalent, generally he was conceived of as a model ruler, and in relation to urban centres was usually depicted as a ‘civilising force’ through his founding of cities.85 Thus, to acknowledge the agency of Julius Caesar was to acknowledge the city’s realization as a civilized organism.86 The Annolied (c.1080) conferred on cities a role in its wider salvation history, and linked Caesar, or his commanders, with the founding of Worms, Speyer, Mainz, and Metz.87 Orderic Vitalis similarly claimed that Julius Caesar ordered Rouen to be built by the Seine and garrisoned with a Roman legion.88 Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada commenced his laudatory survey of Seville’s history with its foundation by Julius Caesar, and his work drew on one of the city’s well-known names which derived from a combination of Julius and Romulus (the legendary founder of Rome).89 For some cities, an interdependent corpus of texts collectively devoted much space to an ancient history. Trier produced one of the largest bodies of such literature (much of it hagiographic) of any non-Italian city, which dedicated significant space to the city’s ancient roots and Roman parallels. Several scholars, particularly Krönert, have demonstrated the extent of this literary programme. It was already in evidence in the tenth century and looked for corroboration in the city’s built landscape by explaining, for example, the ancient history of city-gates and classical inscriptions.90 Much of this was synthesized by c.1101 into the Gesta Treverorum and its later iterations, a source written in a simple Latin style which Thomas thus believes served a lay audience.91 It spoke to the twelfth-century urban elite’s sense of self-esteem and also the city’s ecclesiastical communities as inhabitants of a city with a long tradition of independence and as home to an archbishopric vying with Cologne, Mainz, and Reims for regional primacy. Thus, the city was claimed to be founded by, and named after, Trebeta, the son of Ninus King of the Assyrians, 84  Another example from the De Preconiis Hispanie, p. 216, and drawing from Isidore’s Etymologies, is Emerita (Mérida in Extremadura), which was believed to be founded by Julius Caesar and named after the veterans (emeriti) of his army who had been allowed to settle there. 85  For a useful overview see A. Suerbaum, ‘The Middle Ages’, in M. Griffin (ed.), A Companion to Julius Caesar (Hoboken, 2009), pp. 315–34 and especially pp. 319–23. 86  It also could reflect contemporary positions on rulership and the clash between empire and papacy, dependent on how a particular author opted to portray Caesar: for more see Suerbaum, ‘The Middle Ages’, pp. 330–2. 87  Annolied, 30, lines 1–16; Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 138–9. 88  Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, III. Bk. V, pp. 36–7. As seen in Chapter 6, other Rouennais literary works of the eleventh and twelfth century were keen to exploit the city’s association with Rome, and sometimes this could be in negative terms, like in the late eleventh-century Vita of Romanus of Rouen: see Van Houts, ‘Rouen as Another Rome’. 89  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, pp. 16–17, 26–7, and 23, pp. 34–5. This drew from Isidore of Seville’s Etymologies, and was also recorded by Lucas de Túy, Chronicon Mundi, Bk. I.97, p. 81 and Juan Gil de Zamora, De Preconiis Hispanie, pp. 213–14. 90 Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves; Hammer, ‘Concept’; Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtss­ chreibung, pp. 158–205. 91 Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 150–2. Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, pp. 285–7, which also believes that the texts had a possible lay audience and may have aided the production of vernacular sermons and the performance of civic processions, pp. 320–2.

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who was viewed as the first ruler of the first great empire in history.92 Subsequently, it was inhabited by Gauls who were descended from one of Noah’s sons.93 This demonstrated that the city was founded 1,250 years before Rome. It was Trebeta’s son, Hero, in collaboration with the principes of Trier (for which we should read the urban elite) who effectively planned out and adorned the city.94 The Gesta Treverorum then detailed the city gates and the etymology of each of their names, particularly the famous Porta Nigra which dominated the medieval city. And it noted, among other things, the construction of high towers, palaces, statues, temples, baths, theatres, and an impressive bridge on the Moselle.95 The city was also ‘not only greatly protected through human endeavour, but also naturally, by rivers, woods, and steep mountains’, on one of which a high castle guarded the city.96 The Gesta’s audience was not to be surprised that such a city could subjugate, time and again, so many others. The Treveri imposed their yoke (‘iugum’) on five most noble cities lying on the banks of the river Rhine (‘quinque urbes nobilissimas in ripa Reni fluminis constitutas’): Basel, Strasbourg, Worms, Mainz, and Cologne.97 This was information well received by any inhabitant of Trier in the Middle Ages. The Gesta even says that Trier established an alliance with the people of Reims who as a mark of respect (perhaps to be read as deference) consequently built a gate in their city named Treberica, a link which might well reveal twelfthcentury rivalry between the two cities over their respective primatial ranking.98 Having demonstrated Trier’s ancient supremacy, Rome was allowed to emerge within the Gesta’s narrative. The message was explicit. Rome established friendship with the Treveri (‘amicitias cum Treberibus’), and Trier was called a second Rome (‘secundam Romam appellavere’) on account of its ancient nobility and the dignity of its citizens. From that point onwards Trier was to enjoy the prestige of Roman privilege: ‘the Treberi began to have Roman customs and laws, which are known to continue to hold to this day.’99 Moreover, the Roman senator Arimaspes, having heard of the eminent virtues of the Treveri, visited the city, was given an exalted office there and never wanted to return to his patria. Arimaspes was later assassinated but was said to have left a famous epitaph to the Treveri.100 By the time Julius Caesar appeared in the Gesta the nature of Trier’s magnificence had been well 92  Gesta Treverorum, p. 130; Krönert, L’Exaltation de Trèves, p. 277. 93  Gesta Treverorum, p. 130. 94 Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 143–53. 95  Gesta Treverorum, pp. 131–2. 96  Gesta Treverorum, p. 133. 97  Gesta Treverorum, p. 133. 98  Gesta Treverorum, pp. 133–4, which does acknowledge that the Treveri and Remenses are the principales in Gallia. In the twelfth century the archbishops of Trier attempted to consolidate their primatial status. They were probably aware of the Notitia galliarum (c.400) which listed episcopal rankings in ancient Gaul and which circulated in over one hundred copies between the ninth and twelfth centuries. In it, Trier was listed as the metropolitan of the Provincia Belgica prima with four subordinate sees including Metz, while Reims was designated metropolitan of Provincia Belgica secunda with twelve subordinate sees. So Trier could boast jurisdiction over the first province of Belgica, while Reims could counter with its higher number of suffragans: Notitia Provinciarum et Civitatum Galliae, in Itineraria et alia geographica, vol. 1, Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina, CLXXV (Turnhout, 1965), pp. 390–2; and also Delivre, ‘Foundations’, pp. 400–2. 99  Gesta Treverorum, p. 135. 100 Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 165–76 offers an exhaustive examination of the Arimaspes epitaph, its history, potential authenticity, and its presence in medieval Trier.

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and truly established. The city’s Christianization, martyrs, and other early saintly figures would also be recorded, as we noted in Chapter  3. Thus a pagan and early Christian history was mobilized in order to indicate that the pre-eminence the city laid claim to in the twelfth century was in fact founded on a continuity of status and tradition that had crystallized over thousands of years. Comparable associations with an ancient history were also developed in a set of interlinked texts produced in Tournai during the mid-to-late twelfth century. The Liber de antiquitate urbis Tornacensis (c.1141–84), the Historiae Tornacenses (1160 × 1184) and the Versus de dignitate urbis Tornacensis (second half of the twelfth century) all set out the city’s ancient origins.101 They drew on ancient authors, such as Virgil and St Jerome, and they were produced at a time when the Church of Tournai was attempting to separate its diocese from its long-standing dependency on the bishopric of Noyon. Cases clearly needed to be established for new rankings in a reconfigured ecclesiastical map, and Hériman, abbot of Saint Martin de Tournai, had been sent to Rome in 1140 for this purpose.102 Indeed, the Historiae Tornacenses, an anonymous monastic text drawing on an account by Hériman, recorded how the city’s ancient history was rediscovered. It occurred in a series of visions witnessed in 1141–42 by a young canon of the city’s cathedral named Henry. The latter saw St Eleutherius, Tournai’s first bishop (d. c.530), who recounted to him the city’s ancient history and primacy. Variations appear across the texts, but the broad lines of the literary reconstruction of Tournai’s ancient origins are reasonably clear. The city was founded c.143 years after Rome, and by the Romans themselves during the tenth year of the reign of the fifth king of Rome, Tarquinius Priscus (616–579 bc). It was termed a royal city (‘civitas regia’) but also ‘another or little Rome’ (‘alteraque vel minor Roma vocata’).103 The opening lines of the Versus pick this up (‘Founded by noble men, just like another Rome’: ‘Nobilibus fundata viris velut altera Roma’).104 It was called another Rome because of its magnificent buildings, strong towers and walls, the dignity of the citizens, and the beauty of the place, which enabled it to assert power over neighbouring cities and settlements and which almost led to the Romans transferring their ­capital to the city.105 But under the subsequent Roman king, Servius Tullius, Tournai refused to pay the customary tributes and rebelled. Negotiations eventually saved the city from destruction, but the act meant the city could no longer be called little Rome but instead Hostilis, on account of its courageous resistance.106 The city would retain this name until a later destruction in 340 bc and subsequent

101  The interrelationship, authorship, and dating of all these texts is complex and far from clear. For overviews see: P. Rolland, ‘Les origines légendaires de Tournai (Etude critique)’, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, XXV (1946–7), pp. 555–81; Glorieux, ‘Tournai’. 102  G. Small, ‘Les origines’, pp. 87–92 for the sources behind these first foundation accounts, and for their twelfth-century context. 103  Historiae Tornacenses, ed. G. Waits, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, XIV (Hannover, 1883), p. 329. 104  Versus de dignitate urbis Tornacensis, p. 357. 105  Historiae Tornacenses, p. 329. Tournai was also given the honour of gathering tributes for Rome from 125 cities in the region, Small, ‘Les origines’, p. 86; Glorieux, ‘Tournai’. 106  Historiae Tornacenses, pp. 329–30.

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restoration in 297 bc under the new name of Nervius. This was an apparent association with the then king Servius, but quite likely also referencing the Nervii, an ancient local people. In 57 bc the city, having seemingly elected its own king called Turnus, and having offered fierce resistance, would be destroyed again by none other than Julius Caesar. Its final rebuilding (and the third by the Romans) took place during the second year (55 ad) of the reign of Nero. The city was renamed Tornacus, in recognition of Turnus (himself probably an allusion to a character in the Aeneid ) who had led the city’s defence against Julius Caesar.107 So, in the mid-twelfth century, the ecclesiastical community in Tournai ‘rediscovered’ an ancient history which showcased the city’s long-standing dignity. The agents of Tournai’s dignity were, however, ambiguous. Rome founded the city three times, yet on two occasions Tournai fiercely resisted Roman intervention, and was even destroyed by Caesar. The four iterations of the city’s name served as unequivocal coordinates within the narrative: a little Rome; Hostilis, in honour of its courageous opposition; Nervius, drawing on its refoundation by Servius, or a possible allusion to a local people who almost defeated Caesar; Tornacus, in h ­ onour of Caesar’s brave opponent.108 Tournai then was a Roman creation, but its founders acknowledged and respected its fierce independence. Indeed, the later parts of the Versus portray a city against which Fortuna had turned, and therefore its achievements were its own and all the greater for it.109 The overriding message from this collection of texts was a pointed and flexible one at a time when the city’s ecclesiastical leaders were hoping to assert their episcopal independence. They were no doubt aware of the dangers of too much intervention from Rome (papal or imperial) but at the same time needed the papacy’s support, which they received in 1146 when Eugenius III conferred on Tournai its own bishop.110 It was, as Graeme Small’s compelling analysis demonstrates, also a malleable ancient history of the city (‘Histoire légendaire, histoire caméléon’) which was utilized by different communities within Tournai in subsequent centuries.111 The story of the refusal of a city to pay revenues to Rome (and thus any external authority) also chimed with the ambitions of the city’s laity. According to Small, the Tournai legends were increasingly secularized for a lay audience. Already by the 107  Historiae Tornacenses, p. 330. The ancient Nervii, where Tournai was located, almost catastrophically defeated Julius Caesar in 57 bc (as detailed in Book 2 of Caesar’s Commentarii de bello Gallico); Turnus appears to have been based on, or named after, the character in the Aeneid who was the leader of the Rutuli. He resisted the arrival of Aeneas and his Trojan followers in Italy and was eventually killed by Aeneas. The Versus de dignitate urbis Tornacensis, pp. 357–8 indeed refers to Turnus and his Rutulians. I am very grateful to Ian Moxon for drawing my attention to the possible links associated with both names. See also Rolland, ‘Les origines légendaires’, pp. 569–70. 108  A similar legendary account of the origins and early history of Amiens can be found in the Roman d’Abladane, a work in Old French prose, possibly by a cleric of Amiens (c.1260 × c.1290), of which only the first section survives. In it the city is presented as equal to Rome and thus drawing the latter’s attention. Initially called Abladane, it consequently submits to Julius Caesar, later rebels, and is razed to the ground. It is rebuilt and renamed Somme Noble, destroyed once more, and finally called Amiens. See Le Roman d’Abladane, ed. G. Palumbo (Paris, 2011), and L-F. Flutre, ‘Le Roman d’Abladane’, Romania, XCII (1971), pp. 458–506. 109  Versus de dignitate urbis Tornacensis, p. 357. I am very grateful to Ian Moxon for discussion on Fortuna’s role in this work. 110  Small, ‘Les origines’, p. 91. 111  Small, ‘Les origines’, p. 103.

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mid-twelfth century Tournai had developed a commune with officials carrying the classicizing label of senators who would have been receptive to the Latin legends.112 By c.1290 a new version of the origin legends, the Vraies Cronikes, appeared in the vernacular to reshape the twelfth-century ecclesiastically inspired Latin accounts.113 The Vraies Cronikes was produced at a time when the literary activity of Tournai’s laity was flourishing, and at a point when the urban population was larger and more diverse (and thus in need of a cohesive identity). It was also a phase in which the commune of Tournai had recently assumed greater power from the bishop. The vernacular, more secular reworking of the Vraies Cronikes, which continued to glorify the city, was clearly aimed at a wider lay public and situated in the context of a series of important urban transitions. Urban officials were praised, brave citizens were noted, and the arrangement of the city’s ancient government was mapped onto Tournai’s communal government of the latethirteenth century.114 These ancient urban histories and origin accounts are of particular significance to the present study, for they reflect the intermediality of our sources, and how key information could be disseminated across various platforms throughout a city. Allusions to a city’s ancient urban history could be presented on buildings, inscriptions, artwork, seals, coins, within texts, and via the institutional apparatus of urban government, particularly in the form of classicizing official titles such as consuls and senators (see Chapter 2). London offers an illuminating example, which we have already noted earlier (see Chapter 6). Geoffrey of Monmouth’s treatment of London’s ancient history seems to have cross-fertilized into several other prominent media forms. Monmouth’s influential account claimed the city had been founded as Trinovantum (Troia Nova: New Troy), well before Rome. Its founders were Trojan exiles led by King Brutus, a great grandson of Aeneas. This and Monmouth’s account of the city’s refortification by King Lud appear to have influenced several other representations of the city: in texts such as William FitzStephen’s Vita of Thomas Becket, which boasted that London was far older than Rome owing to Brutus’s foundation, and Gervase of Tilbury’s Otia Imperialia; in episcopal epistles; on London’s earliest common seal; the artwork of Matthew Paris; and interpretation of urban landmarks such as Ludgate. The relationship between these ancient histories and the etymology of place names is particularly significant. London/Lundinium was believed, via Monmouth’s work, to derive from King Lud.115 Countless other cities explored their own ancient etymologies.116 Of all the material in these textual histories, this was the sort of snappy and vivid information 112  Small, ‘Les origines’, pp. 91–2. 113  Small, ‘Les origines’, pp. 92–104 for his detailed breakdown of how and why the Vraies Cronikes secularised the city’s legends. 114  See Chapter 6, p. 154, and, especially, Vraies chroniques, 32b, p. 68. 115 Geoffrey of Monmouth, History of the Kings of Britain, Bk. III.53, pp. 66–7 and indeed Monmouth’s account claimed that the city’s name gradually metamorphosed—Karelud became Kaerlunden which became Lundene and then Londres—as languages changed and new conquerors arrived. 116  Much modern scholarship has been devoted to the roots of urban toponyms, often (but not always) suggesting different explanations (associated with local linguistic morphologies and natural

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that moved easily beyond the text. All urban inhabitants could engage with it, for they would be familiar with and regularly see and hear their city’s name (in either its Latin or vernacular derivatives). Coinage, seals, inscriptions, processions, performances, stories, charters, and legal documents could all carry forms of the city’s name. Etymological constructions served as triggers which alluded to a deeper meaning behind a highly familiar word in a city’s landscape and soundscape. As Frugoni noted, it was imbibed with a ‘magical power’.117 In pointing towards a laudatory understanding of the city’s age, status, and distinctive features these etymologies consequently evoked pride and identification within urban communities. Following Medway and Warnaby’s research, these etymologies represented the city’s evolving ‘autobiographical memory’, and it might be possible to see in them a form of branding, of ‘toponymic commodification’, within an increasingly competitive urban world. The place name itself thus became a valued artefact.118 There are numerous city etymologies and indeed multiple versions for particular cities. Many traced their origins back well before our period, or were created after 1100 by authors who had consulted several earlier texts, most notably Isidore of Seville’s seminal work. But many of these etymologies were refined and given greater prominence post-1100 through several of the media forms just mentioned, and particularly in a number of works which offered praise of a city. Lucian’s treatise on Chester demonstrated how far the form of a name could serve as an entry point for a range of discourses. He utilized the city’s trisyllabic name, Cestria, as a device to reveal the city’s hidden virtues in groupings of three.119 For example, one threefold interpretation of Cestria was that it represented the presence in the city of ‘a learned bishop, a generous archdeacon, a shining clergy’, another was the honesty of its nobles, the faith of its citizens, the religion of its monks.120 Towards the end of his work Lucian offered a more prosaic rendering: that the Saxon word for city—Ceaster—was simply applied to Chester/Cestria, and demonstrated its intrinsic urban status.121 Lucian concluded with the significance of a city’s name: Therefore the learned inhabitant dwelling amongst us prudently directs his attention to notice how, not without significance, when various cities have taken their names from their location, in memory of their founder, or by some accident the name of our Chester resounds maternally, magnificently and uniquely.122 landscapes) from those put forward in our works of panegyric: see, for example: G. Battista Pellegrini, Toponomastica italiana (Milan, 1990). 117 Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 68–9. 118  For an excellent discussion, see D. Medway and G. Warnaby, ‘What’s in a name? Place branding and toponymic commodification’, Environment and Planning A, XLVI (2014), pp. 153–67. 119 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 3 (fol. 5v), 4 (fol. 7v–8r), 6 (fol. 8v). 120 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 6 (fol. 8v–9r). 121 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 25 (fol. 113r), and see Faulkner’s comment in fn. 86 of his edition. Lucian offered here other etymologies which he cited from other histories. Gloucester was named after its founder the Emperor Claudius; Leicester from its founder Lear, King of the Britons, and, following Bede, Rochester after a chieftain called Rof. In his Deeds of the Bishops of England, pp. 196, 208, William of Malmesbury also noted that Gloucester was named after Claudius, and that Chester was known ‘as the city of legions’, a common alternative label for the city. 122 Lucian, De Laude Cestrie, trans. Faulkner, Excerpt 25 (fol. 113r).

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Bonvesin da la Riva’s treatise on Milan also attempted to uncover a set of ancient meanings hidden within the city’s name. He drew these from ancient sources, from Isidore’s Etymologies (Bk. XV.57), and from the early eleventh-century Libellus de Situ Civitatis Mediolanis.123 Bonvesin initially opted for a simple explanation based on location: Milan (Mediolanum) assumed its name because it was midway between the rivers Ticino and the Adda (‘quasi media lance inter amnes’).124 More incredibly (‘quod est mirandum’) it was also said that the city was called Mediolanum after a pig with wool on the middle of its back (‘in medio tergo lanuto’) which was found on the spot where Milan would subsequently rise.125 Thus, one derivation was drawn from the natural location, another, seemingly, echoed Aeneas’ discovery of a sow at the place where Rome would be founded. But it is towards the end of his work that Bonvesin applies a Platonic understanding to the significance of Milan’s name. In two distinctiones he revealed some of the inner mysteries of the meaning of Mediolanum; mysteries which explained the city’s preordained magnificence.126 As Bonvesin believed: ‘from the interpretation of its name (‘interpretatio vocabuli’) the nature of our city is understood’. Mediolanum began and ended with the letter ‘M’ which was larger than all other letters: thus this indicated that the glory of Milan was spread widely from one end of the globe to the other (‘glorie latitudo dilatate per orbem terrarum in principio et in fine’). The M also stood for the number 1,000 (‘millesimus’), the largest number expressed in a single word or symbol. Thus it represented the perfect number of simplicity, and so too Milan from the start and end of time would be numbered among the perfect cities (‘in perfectarum numero civitatum’). Moreover, the two middle letters of Mediolanum—‘O’ and ‘L’—conveyed important messages. The perfect circularity of ‘O’ indicated its beauty, dignity and perfection over all other letters. Likewise, Milan (claimed by Bonvesin to be perfectly round in its layout) was more beautiful and perfect than other cities. The letter ‘L’ represented the length and height of the city’s nobility and glory which would remain so forever due to God’s grace and the prayers and merits of the Virgin Mary, St Ambrose, and all the other saints and holy relics of Milan. Finally, the city’s name included all five vowels, each one in a different syllable. This signified that, just as its name did not lack a single vowel, so Milan itself was not lacking in anything necessary for the five human senses. As the names of other cities lacked one of the vowels, therefore when compared to Milan they were also defective in some of the fundamental necessities of life. The very

123 Isidore, Etymologies, Bk. XV.57, p. 304; for discussion see Chiesa’s commentary in Bonvesin, De  Magnalibus, p. 176. For the relevant passage from the Libellus, see Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, xxxv–xxxvii. 124 Battista Pellegrini, Toponomastica italiana, pp. 109–10 notes the possibility that the name indeed derived from the city’s location in the middle of certain landscape features: medio (middle) and planum (plain). 125 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. I.I, pp. 16–19. The ‘woolly pig’ explanation was relayed in Isidore’s Etymologies too. Bonvesin noted that the city, in ancient times, was also called Alba (white), because it shone with a brightness beyond all others, as it was less stained by vice. 126 Bonvesin, De Magnalibus, Bk. VIII.XII, XIII, pp. 160–2; and Chiesa’s commentary on pp. 252–3.

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name of Milan thus acted as a vivid signifier of its stature, through associations with landscape (and centrality), ancient Rome and the city’s inherent perfection. More commonly, works established the city’s etymology in a more unembellished and concise fashion than Lucian and Bonvesin’s approach. They also tended to tap more directly into an ancient heritage and articulated a simple equation: older = better. We can recall that the Gesta Treverorum announced starkly that Trier was significantly older than Rome, because it took its name from its founder Trebeta, the son of Ninus King of the Assyrians.127 Capua was afforded similar ancient prestige. Alexander of Telese employed a passage in praise of the city in his chronicle in order to emphasize the significance of the control of that city to the new monarch Roger II of Sicily.128 Within the encomium, Alexander noted two significant interpretations of Capua’s name. One, following the Aeneid, indicated that the city was named after its founder King Capy. The other, that it derived from campus and alluded to the famed fertility of Capua’s hinterland. Variants of both explanations had already appeared in Isidore’s Etymologies.129 Together these etymologies presented an ancient (in this case older than Rome), noble, and rich city worthy of a new twelfth-century king and worthy of the honour of its citizens. Another way to establish a city’s worthiness, as already noted, was to connect its name with Julius Caesar. For Orderic Vitalis it was Caesar who ordered the foundation of Rouen after his conquest of Neustria, and the city took its name Rodomus from Romanorum domus (‘dwelling of the Romans’) signifying its population by Romans and the city’s intrinsic Romanitas.130 Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada’s verse on Seville commenced with explanation of the city’s two names which also derived from Isidore’s Etymologies.131 Iulia Romula derived from Caesar and Rome, and ‘When a distinguished name thus honours it,/Its famous name should be praised everywhere’.132 The city’s alternative name—Ispalis—derived more prosaically from its natural location in the marshes which consequently required the city to be underpinned by stakes (in palis) to prevent it from submerging.133 It is significant to note that two (sometimes more) etymological traditions were allowed for and even actively promoted. This enabled authors and audience the flexibility to present and accept layers of information which may bolster a city’s status or (in the case of more straightforward explanations derived from the natural location) emphasize its unique situation which could thus not be replicated elsewhere. It also showed willingness to allow for uncertainty and in such an environment provided a safety net in case one of these traditions or features was rejected. 127  Gesta Treverorum, p. 130. 128  Alexander of Telese, Ystoria Rogerii, Bk. II.66, p. 55; for more see P. Oldfield, ‘Alexander of Telese’s Encomium of Capua and the Formation of the Kingdom of Sicily’, History CII (2017), pp. 183–200. 129 Isidore, Etymologies, Bk. XV.54, p. 304 said that Capua was named ‘for its capacity (capacitas), because its land holds (capere) all produce for living, and others say from the flat (campester) land in which it is situated’. 130  Orderic Vitalis, Ecclesiastical History, III. Bk. V, pp. 36–7. 131 Isidore, Etymologies, Bk. XV.71, p. 305. 132  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, pp. 26–7 and 2 pp. 28–9. 133  Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada, Versos de Julia Rómula, 5 pp. 28–9.

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Metz represented one such case of a city which developed multiple etymological traditions associated with location and ancient founder. The twelfth-century Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium opened with praise of the city and explanation of its name.134 Utilizing information provided in the preceding century in Sigebert of Gembloux’s Vita Deoderici, the Gesta expounded that the city ‘because of its situation and for diverse reasons, is called many names’.135 One was Dividunum because it was like a dunum (fort), or mons (mountain), of the gods.136 Another was Mediomatricus. This name was linked to the Gallic people (the Mediomatrici) who lived in the region during the time of Julius Caesar. However, both Sigebert and the Gesta indicated it derived from the city’s position at the centre of a fertile territory, flanked by other important cities (Trier, Toul, and Verdun). The city, in the middle (medio), thus protected and nourished like a mother (mater); a notion of centrality already noted in explanations of Milan’s toponym. The third name, Metius, had finally triumphed. It earned the name by virtue of its conquest by a certain Metius, one of Julius Caesar’s commanders. Indeed, Sigebert had invoked recently discovered material evidence in support of this explanation, and the Gesta repeated it. A couplet had been found carved on stones recently unearthed and which read: ‘In the time when Caesar waged his war against the Gauls/then Metius conquered the city of Mediomatricus’. The Gesta implied that such a name change was no cause of shame, by noting it was standard Roman practice for cities to be named after their Roman conquerors or other famous Romans: thus Reims was named after Remus the brother of Romulus, Toul after Tullius Hostilis, and Cologne was called Agrippina from Agrippa, the famous Roman general.137 In closing this assessment of the use of urban etymologies, it should be noted that they could be constructed in order to articulate inter-urban friendships, alliances, and rivalries. A particularly clear example of this can be found in the Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae. We have already seen some explanations of Florence’s name which were offered by the Chronica, and that these ostensibly marginalized the role of Julius Caesar in the city’s foundation. This could be read as a c.1200 Florentine critique of the Staufen dynasty and particularly of Frederick Barbarossa’s attempts to rename Alessandria—a city founded and named after Pope Alexander III—as Cesaria.138 Chapter 13 of the Chronica was also dedicated to the etymologies of other Tuscan cities.139 In it we may find, as Chellini’s close analysis 134  Gesta Episcoporum Mettensium, p. 534. 135 Sigebert of Gembloux, Vita Deoderici, p. 477; see Chazan, ‘Erudition’, pp. 441–53 and Frugoni, Distant City, pp. 68–9. 136  Divodurum was the centre of power for the Gallic people known as the Mediomatrici. 137  Balderic of Bourgeuil, Carmina, in his verse epistle Ad Godefredum Remensem offered an alternative version of Reims’s foundation in which the city was established by a soldier of Remus (‘miles Remi’): no. 99, lines 87–92 pp. 114–15. See also Hammer, ‘Concept’, pp. 60–1. William of Malmesbury in his Gesta Regum Anglorum, pp. 296–7 elaborated on Cologne’s widely known etymology: it was named after Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, and later ‘renamed Colonia by the Emperor Trajan because he was chosen emperor there and established there colonies of Roman citizens’. 138  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 90–1, 113. 139  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 45–7.

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does, possible attempts to exalt and undermine neighbouring cities.140 Lucca, a traditional Florentine ally, is praised for its name which derived from lux and signified the first Tuscan city to see the ‘light’, to embrace Christianity, and to obtain a bishopric from the Apostolic See.141 The Chronica’s record of the interpretation of Pisa’s name appeared more neutral and aware of Pisa’s traditional alliance with the German Empire. The city’s name apparently derived from the scales (‘pese’) used in the port to weigh tributes dispatched from imperial subjects. On the other hand, the Chronica appears to have subtly revised Siena’s well-known etymology for more underhand reasons. First recorded in the Policraticus of John of Salisbury (c.1159), Siena was claimed to have been named after the elderly (‘senes’) whom the invading Senoni Gauls had settled in the spot where the city would rise.142 By c.1200 this version of Siena’s name was widely disseminated, and embraced by the city itself when it commenced the minting of silver denari in c.1180 carrying the legend Sena vetus. The Chronica, however, brought this foundation narrative forward to the Lombard period, and so Florence had far more ancient origins.143 Another rival city, Pistoia, was also defamed in the Chronica through its name.144 It claimed the city was founded by survivors of the Catiline conspiracy, and named due to a plague at the time. The author of the Chronica, as Chellini suggests, appears to have drawn a link between the Latin pestis (plague), its vernacular derivative pistolenzia and the vernacular for the people of Pistoia (pistolese).145 * * * * The collective force of knowledge generation and the construction of deep, classicizing histories encountered in this chapter, combined in a particularly potent way in the twelfth and thirteenth century to empower cities and bolster their status. It embedded them moreover within a larger meta-narrative, as integral players within the progression of society’s civilizing process. The role ascribed to Julius Caesar in founding several cities became a leitmotif for their intrinsic refinement, as did the enduring influence of Cicero’s De inventione in the Middle Ages which stressed the role of eloquence in transforming man from a wandering animal into (by implication) a civic creature willing to reject violence and accept the rule of justice.146 Medieval philosophers, like Albert Magnus, developed this by interlinking urban and urbanitas. Numerous authors chose to praise their city through its dignity and the elegance of their citizens. The title of the anonymous Versus de dignitate 140 This passage thus follows Chellini’s valuable assessment in Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 98–104. 141  This tradition may have been familiar to the author of the Chronica through its record in the Vita Anselmi episcopi Lucensis of Rangerio (c.1096): Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, p. 99, 109 note 7. 142 Beneš, Urban Legends, pp. 13–36. 143  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 100–4. 144  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, p. 42. 145  Chronica de Origine Civitatis Florentiae, pp. 81–2. 146  The anonymous author of the eleventh-century Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai (Gesta episcoporum Cameracensium) introduced his work with a chapter on the foundation of cities and their role in taming the savagery of man by inculcating a sense of community, for discussion see Schmidt, ‘Societas christiana’, p. 324 and Thomas, Studien zur Trierer Geschichtsschreibung, pp. 155–6.

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urbis Tornacensis framed Tournai in such a light and the epistula establishing the University of Toulouse in 1229 lauded the courtesy of the city’s inhabitants.147 William of Malmesbury spoke of the citizens of Canterbury as ‘a mixture of simplicity and sophistication’ and who, more than all other English, were ‘still imbued with the spirit of an antique nobility’.148 As Daniel Gerrard has recently shown, this depiction of Canterbury fitted with William’s wider elaboration of a taxonomy of English cities rated according to their ‘English virtues’. The most eminent, according to Malmesbury, were found in Southern England—Canterbury in the ecclesiastical sphere and London in the secular—with northern cities like York exhibiting some virtues but ones often tainted by association with rebellion or ‘barbarian’ conduct.149 William FitzStephen would have concurred, for he claimed that Londoners demonstrated the most refined behaviour.150 Elsewhere, the AngloNorman translation of Book XV of Bartholomew Anglicus’s De Proprietatibus Rebus claimed it would take ‘too long to recount all the goodness and virtues and wisdom and knowledge and foresight and harmony and peace and love and humility and righteousness of the people of Venice’.151 Constructing more complex and deeper urban histories provided layers and layers of civic experience and refinement, elongating the fermentation phase of the civilizing process. By the thirteenth century, if not earlier, urban culture was increasingly in tune with this message. As Otto Gerhard Oexle has shown, the various associational bodies in Europe’s cities contributed to this sense of progressive civilization. For these bodies were implicitly founded on regulations and mutually agreed sets of behavioural norms.152 Daniela Romagnoli’s studies have, moreover, shown the growing demand among Italian mercantile and artisan groups for a discourse of urban civility.153 Literature, sermons, and manuals were produced on the performance of courtesy and good manners, and much of this was augmented by the curricula in urban schools of the thirteenth century. This didactic programme looked to craft the ideal citizen, and dovetailed with the new sociopolitical philosophy of the Common Good. It had its counterpart in the more courtly French vernacular romances, several of which portrayed merchants and burghers operating in a refined fashion. One of the authors considered in this study, Bonvesin da la Riva, was at the forefront of this shift. According to Romagnoli, his  De Magnalibus functioned as a mirror for the citizens (‘speculum civium’) to fashion appropriate civic behaviour, and he was also the author of a popular 147  Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, no. 72, p. 131; Thorndike (trans.), University Records, p. 35. 148  William of Malmesbury, Deeds of the Bishops of England, p. 3. 149  D. Gerrard, ‘William of Malmesbury and Civic Virtue’, in R. D. Thomson, E. Dolmans, and E. Winkler (eds), Discovering William of Malmesbury (Woodbridge, 2017), pp. 27–36 (especially pp. 35–6). 150  William FitzStephen, Vita Sancti Thomae, p. 4. 151  Barthélemy L’Anglais, Livre des Regions, p. 46. Henry of Rimini’s praise of Venice agreed, noting the citizens’ magnificent clothes, and how they avoided debauchery so as not to disrupt trading or ‘affairs of state’: Henry of Rimini’s Paean to Venice (ca. 1300), trans. Law, p. 516. 152  Oexle, ‘Peace Through Conspiracy’, p. 295. 153  See especially Romagnoli, ‘Cortesia nella città’, pp. 30–1, 34–6, 52–62.

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vernacular manual on dining etiquette called De quinquaginta curialitatibus ad mensam (The fifty courtesies of the table).154 This urban culture was evident in the Anonymous Genovese’s praise of his fellow-citizens; their sartorial finery seemed to upgrade social status: men dressed like marquises, maids and squires like ladies and knights respectively, and wives appeared as queens. Their feast-making, courtliness, ‘nobility and honour’ were all unmatched.155 The city as the fulcrum of civilization became a popular motif in the Central Middle Ages. If it was not entirely new, it was for the first time provided with an array of associational groups and both textual and visual material to consolidate it like never before and, as importantly, to project it onto an urban audience more than ever receptive to its core message. 154  Romagnoli, ‘La coscienza’, pp. 65–76. 155  Anonimo Genovese, trans. Dean, Towns of Italy, p. 23: Anonimo Genovese, ed. Contini, lines 199–214, pp. 758–9.

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In Praise of the Medieval City Conclusions It is important to acknowledge that all our texts of urban panegyric are open to multiple readings, and that this study offers just one approach, one set of interpretations, to this fascinating and heterogeneous body of material. It is an approach which above all prioritizes situating these literary texts in their respective historical contexts. It has attempted a wide analysis, but it makes no claims to be definitive. Moreover, panegyric, after all, aims first and foremost to pinpoint the positive and embellish where possible. Anything that worked against this was inevitably marginalized, although occasionally through the cracks we can see glimpses of challenging issues that might raise critique, confusion, and counter-narrative. The works selected here offer, for example, only snapshots of the urban poor, of the endeavour, as Marc Boone put it, ‘to reconcile individual and collective needs’ within the city, or of the complexity of urban governments, law and customs—all crucial aspects of urban identity and experience.1 As noted too, some cities feature heavily, and many not at all. The reasons for this would be worthy of another entire study in itself. Rather, this study aims to identify what were those features deemed most praiseworthy by contemporaries and why, and to offer a mix of both literal and symbolic readings of that information. It does so by drawing on a deliberately heterogeneous body of works in order to create the most representative picture possible. It aims to acknowledge local diversity and contexts, but to also show that interconnected patterns across such diverse material indicate significant messages that should not be overlooked. What are those significant messages? The medieval city was praised through multiple voices—this much is clear from the foregoing study. The quantity and diversity of commentators willing to engage with and commend the city in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries is quite remarkable. On its own this is deserving of particular note and arguably has not yet been fully appreciated, especially if we move away from conventional, genre-driven understandings of urban panegyric. These works of praise worked alongside deep critiques of the city too, and both the positive and negative attributes of the city functioned in tandem, informing and strengthening each other. But it is the view here that laments and critiques of the city could not shake off the implicit acknowledgement that the city could be an 1  M. Boone, ‘Cities in Late Medieval Europe. The Promise and the Curse of Modernity’, Urban History, XXXIX (2012), p. 348.

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agent for good. Often those critiques were in fact commentaries on a morality and behaviour that was situated within the city but which could, with the correct approach, be removed from the city, making the latter a conduit for charitable, communal, and pious living. The city itself, the urban world it could generate, was not always of necessity intrinsically sinful but could instead offer a platform for correct conduct, harmony, and spirituality. As part of this discourse, then, works of panegyric could be seen as looking forward, providing a map to navigate dangers by exploring a city’s past and present in order to move towards an ideal urban future which was often framed by an eschatological blueprint.2 It is clear that there are wide differences in the focus and content of medieval urban panegyric. Different combinations of attributes are prioritized in each individual text. There are equally wide differences in the motives behinds its production. But this study has argued for one consistent feature—that they were all, as socially constructed artefacts, products of, or witnesses to, pronounced urban transformation and contributed to that process by centring some of the great changes in medieval society within cities themselves: changes in spiritual practice, Church organization, commercial exchange, urban topography and material culture, population size and formation, education, and historical enquiry. These significant changes across the twelfth and thirteenth centuries impacted on the urban world, and the texts considered in this study were in dialogue with that transformation. They were inherently part of the process. This was grounded in their simultaneous capacity to engage with the past, present, and future. Some of these texts were also disseminated to wider audiences than perhaps has previously been appreciated; at the very least their messages correlated with other evidence—inscribed on buildings and in their topographical arrangement, on seals and coins, in performances, processions, and festivals—which was available in a public sphere and thus represent more widely circulated information and discourses. We might just see some of these texts, and the information contained within, as something more than mere products representing a narrower elite perspective of the city. Certainly, the texts included in this study all, to a greater or lesser extent, owe debts to deeper literary traditions. But this borrowing, this intertextuality, was often conducted in order to address contemporary developments and to glance at the future. As such, both their individual and collective voice makes them precious resources. We can appreciate through these texts what sort of values, symbols, and concerns mattered, and needed to be articulated, as the urban world transformed. For some, these were connected to the saintly landscape of the city, or the preeminence of its Church and officials, the piety of its inhabitants, the city’s mimicking of a holy topography, or its role in the wider reawakening of Latin Christendom. On other occasions, praise was directed at the commercial vibrancy, natural productivity, and enormous and diverse population that were all situated within a city. The significance of the material revival of a city’s built landscape and the cultural and political claims of a city’s ascendancy (particularly vis-à-vis other cities) associated with elements of this also emerged in some urban panegyric. Those claims, 2  Schmitt, ‘Appropriating the Future’, pp. 13–17.

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Conclusions 189 and accompanying symbols of legitimacy, could often be articulated through the reconstruction of laudatory urban histories, while emphasis on learning and sophistication spoke to a range of political, sociocultural, and religious needs which were rooted in cities. Collectively, this cocktail of praise would appear to have represented the key coordinates around which more nuanced urban identities formed, both at a community, and at an individual level. Here we might find in these works on urban panegyric a crucial contribution to what Marc Boone identified as perhaps the most significant understanding of the function of the medieval city in the Central Middle Ages: as ‘an experiment in social organization that produced a unique partnership between the individual and the collective’.3 Each inhabitant’s individual civic identity was polysemous and could be shaped around one or more of the positive collective attributes of a city identified within this study. This should not be underestimated. Positivity, pride, and community, filtered through urban panegyric, were empowering emotional tools. Each played a crucial role in mediating the often unsettling and energizing experiences brought about by the evidently significant transformations of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century urban world. 3  Boone, ‘Cities’, p. 349.

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Index Adelbert II of Mainz, St  27, 126, 136, 162, 165, 168 Agrigento  105, 151 Agripinnus, St  25 Alain de Lille  6, 34, 67 Alberic of Reims  162 Albert Magnus  6, 13, 34, 46, 68–9, 99, 109–10, 117, 160, 184; see also Mendicants Alcuin of York  24, 112, 138, 169 Alessandria 183 Alexander Neckam  29, 31, 86, 99, 163–4, 165 Alexander of Telese  30, 79–80, 124, 136, 142, 149, 182 Alexander III, pope (1159–81)  183 Alexandria  24, 112, 136 Alfonso X, king of Castile and Léon (1252–84)  29, 32, 46, 82, 83, 140–1 Almeria  28, 81 Amalfi  26–7, 63, 70, 79; see also Andrew, St Ambrose, St  72–3, 84, 85–6, 90–1, 93, 116, 155, 156, 163, 181 Amiens  27, 59, 178 Ancona  6, 32, 41, 46–7, 52, 53, 80, 115, 127, 154, 168, 172; see also Boncompagno da Signa Andrew, St  26–7, 70 Anno II of Cologne, St  26 Anonymous Genovese  28, 32, 34, 41, 92, 114, 115, 126, 154, 186 Anselm of Havelberg  27, 126, 136, 162, 165, 168 Antioch  23–4, 29, 80, 119, 126, 130, 136, 138; see also Libanius Antoninus, St  58 Apollinaris, St  86, 90 Aquila 59 Aquileia  24, 76, 90, 93, 103, 173 Archpoet  27, 101 Arezzo 172 Aristotle  2, 12, 31, 108, 165 Arles  24, 58, 112 Arras  51, 123 Asprenus, St  25 Athanasio I, St  25, 169 Athens  4, 24, 38, 68–9, 166, 167 Attila the Hun  76, 92, 107, 169, 173 Augsburg  34, 46, 68–9, 127, 160 Augustine of Hippo, St (and Augustinian ideas)  11, 13, 20, 31, 33, 65–6, 68, 69, 95, 174 Augustus Octavian  25, 77, 142 Ausonius  24, 43, 79, 112, 130 Autun 29 Avignon 58

Balderic of Bourgueil, archbishop of Dol  161–2, 183 Bamberg  26, 29, 41, 74, 132–3 Barnabas, St  25, 85–6, 90, 93 Bari  57, 62, 86 Bartholomew Anglicus  31, 34, 40, 45, 53, 127, 185 Bartholomew, St  104, 116 Basel 176 Bath 30 Bayeux  30, 91, 103 Bayonne 112 Bede  86, 180 Belisarius 25 Benedict, canon of St Peter’s Rome  32, 78 Benevento  18, 32, 41, 62, 104–5, 168; see also Falco of Benevento Bergamo  28, 32, 47, 93–4, 121, 131, 154, 171; see also Mosè del Brolo Bernard of Clairvaux, St  65, 98 Bernard of Cluny  78–9, 98–9 Berthold von Regensburg  69, 117 Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube  34, 118, 137, 139 Bologna  15, 18, 26, 52, 55–6, 71–3, 120, 122, 126, 133, 134, 155–7, 158, 161, 163–4, 168; see also Petronio, St; Santo Stefano Boncompagno da Signa  6, 32, 41, 46–7, 52, 53, 80, 115, 127, 154, 168, 172 Boniface of Tuscany  12–13, 27, 90 Bonvesin da la Riva  5, 7, 21, 25, 32, 40, 44, 45, 47, 50, 55, 80, 85–6, 90–1, 94, 107–8, 115–16, 118, 122–3, 125, 128–9, 131–2, 133, 138, 139, 154–5, 162–3, 169, 170, 171, 181–2, 185–6 Bordeaux  24, 43, 112, 130 Bougie 112 Braga 24 Bristol  27, 30, 70, 113, 115, 117, 134 Bruges  14, 15 Bruno of Cologne  161 Brunetto Latini  32, 172 Burgos 142 Caen  30, 114–15 Caffaro of Genoa  48, 135 Cambrai  58, 161, 184 Cambridge 161 Canossa  12–13, 27, 84, 90, 91, 127–8, 138, 171; see also Boniface of Tuscany; Donizone of Canossa; Matilda of Canossa Canterbury  27, 89, 131, 185 Capua  24, 25, 30, 79, 119, 124, 136, 182

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Index Carmelites 92 Carthage 24 Carthusians  97, 161 Catania  24, 31, 105 Cefalù 105 Ceuta 112 Chartres  80, 100, 161 Chester  27, 33, 34, 40, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 55, 71, 73–6, 84, 90, 91, 92, 95, 109, 115, 117–18, 133, 137, 138, 174, 180; see also Lucian of Chester; St Werburgh’s monastery Chrétien de Troyes  34, 41, 45, 46, 101–2, 118–19, 137 Cicero  2, 11, 99, 171, 184 Cistercians  9, 34, 65–7, 97, 98, 99, 122; see also Bernard of Clairvaux, St; Otto of Freising Cluniacs 99 Coimbra 67 Cologne  15, 26, 27, 29, 59, 67, 87, 161, 175–6, 183 Compostela 142 Constantine, Roman emperor  87, 89, 142, 149, 169–70 Constantinople  24, 29, 70, 72, 73, 85, 136, 142 Corbie 58 Córdoba  24, 82, 83, 88, 125, 140 Crépy-en-Valois 58 Cuthbert, St  86–7 Cyprian  19, 162 Daimbert, archbishop of Pisa  99–100 Dante Alighieri  32, 69, 172 David, king (Old Testament)  64, 142, 166 Denis, St  86, 145, 147 Dijon 59 Dominicans  34, 40, 46, 52–3, 57, 67, 68–9, 93, 94, 99, 117; see also Albert Magnus; Humbert of Romans; Mendicants; Pelagius Parvus; Remigio de’Girolami Donizone of Canossa  12–13, 27, 46, 84, 89–90, 91, 127–8, 138, 171 Douai 51 Dudo of St Quentin  26, 113, 144 Durham  28, 86–7, 122 Eleutherius, St  177 Eucharius, St  55, 59, 84, 87 Eugenius III, pope (1145–53)  178 Eustachio da Matera  45 Exeter  30, 113, 138 Falco of Benevento  32, 41, 48, 104–5, 168 Fernando III, king of Castile and Léon (1217/1230–52)  28, 46, 83, 125, 139–41 Fiesole 172–3 Florence  15, 32, 34, 40, 41, 56, 57, 59, 74, 94, 108, 117, 132, 134, 157, 171–3, 175, 183–4; see also Remigio de’Girolami

213

Franciscans  31, 32–3, 40, 52–3, 69, 93, 99, 117; see also Bartholomew Anglicus; Berthold von Regensburg; Lodi; Mendicants Frederick I, archbishop of Cologne  67 Frederick I Barbarossa, emperor (1155–90)  90, 93, 103, 107, 155, 169, 173, 183 Frederick II, king of Sicily and emperor (1198/1220–50)  156, 164, 169 Fulcher of Chartres  80 Galvano Fiamma  45, 47 Gennarus, St  25 Genoa  28, 32, 34, 80, 81, 92, 112, 114, 115, 126, 135, 154, 186; see also Anonymous Genovese; Caffaro of Genoa Geoffrey of Anjou, duke of Normandy (1144–51)  28, 143 Geoffrey of Monmouth  30, 45, 56–7, 59–60, 89, 141–2, 148–9, 179 George of Antioch  152 Gerhard von Seeon  26 Gervase of Tilbury  31, 89, 91, 118, 125, 127, 137, 149, 179 Gervasius, St  84, 85 Ghent  14, 51, 127, 131 Gilbert Folio, bishop of London  89 Gimignano, St  25 Giordano da Pisa  117 Giovanni Boccaccio  45 Giovanni da Viterbo  97, 109 Giovanni Villani  32, 172 Gloucester 180 Godfrey of Reims  161–2 Godfrey of Viterbo  29, 31, 33, 41, 74, 132–3 Gratian 87 Gregory I, pope (590–604)  89, 90 Grimsby 59 Guibert of Nogent  49, 65, 98 Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada  28, 46, 81–3, 88, 117, 141, 175, 182 Gui of Bazoches  30–1, 46, 123–4, 145–6, 165–6 Helen, empress  87 Helinand of Froidmont  99 Henry II, archbishop of Trier  88 Henry II, emperor (1002–24)  26 Henry II, king of England (1154–89)  143, 144, 148 Henry of Albano  65 Henry of Rimini  40, 92, 109–10, 157, 185 Hermogenes  4, 38 Hildebert of Lavardin  27, 78, 103, 131 Hildesheim 162 Horace 149 Hugh of Poitiers  98, 100 Hugh of Saint Victor  165 Hugh Primas  27, 94, 103, 162 Hugo Falcandus  30, 45–6, 102, 105–6, 152–3

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214 Index Humbert of Romans  52–3 Humiliati  32, 40, 92, 122 Ibn Jubayr  151–2 Innocent III, pope (1198–1216)  89 Isidore of Seville, St  11, 33, 82–3, 88, 174, 175, 180, 181, 182 Jacques de Vitry, bishop of Acre  100, 167 Jean de Jandun  147 Jean de Joinville  142, 147 Jean Renart  7, 34, 101, 118 Jerome, St  177 Jerusalem  29, 52, 55–6, 57, 61, 63, 64–7, 68–9, 70–6, 78, 80, 85, 155, 166 Johannes de Hauvilla  165 John de Garlande  6–7, 31–2, 37, 53, 127, 146–7, 164 John the Baptist, St  57, 75, 84, 117, 138 John the Deacon  25, 173 John of Salisbury  42–3, 100–1, 165, 184 Juan Gil de Zamora  32, 128, 168–9, 174–5 Judas 107 Julia, St  81 Julius Caesar, Roman emperor  149, 172–3, 175, 176–7, 178, 182, 183, 184 Justa, St  83 Justinian, Eastern Roman emperor  164 Juvenal 149 Lambert of Bègue  48 Lambert, St  26, 85 Laon  65, 98, 161 Leander, St  82–3, 88 Leicester 180 Léon  28, 81, 83, 142, 174 Leonard, St  86 Libanius  23–4, 119, 126, 130 Liège  26, 44, 48, 52, 63, 85, 88, 168; see also Lambert, St Lille 51 Limoges  86, 123 Lisbon  29, 81, 121, 124, 128 Lodi  32–3, 34, 40, 47, 53, 93, 121, 124, 125–6, 163, 171–2 London  5–6, 7–8, 15, 18, 19, 26, 30, 31, 39–40, 44, 45, 50, 51, 54, 56–7, 59–60, 65, 70, 88–9, 91, 92, 96, 98, 105, 113, 114, 118, 120, 121–2, 124, 125, 127, 128, 131, 133, 135, 139, 145, 147–9, 158, 162, 168, 174, 179, 185; see also Geoffrey of Monmouth; Gervase of Tilbury; Ralph de Diceto; St Paul’s Cathedral; Thomas Becket, St; William FitzStephen Louis IX, St and king of France (1226–70)  85, 142, 147 Lucas of Túy  83, 88, 174, 175 Lucca  59, 184 Lucian 24

Lucian of Chester  33, 34, 40, 44, 45, 46, 47, 50, 53, 55, 71, 73–6, 84, 90, 91, 92, 96, 109, 115, 117–18, 133, 137, 138, 174, 180, 182 Lyon  29, 48, 63 Maastricht 88 Mahdia 56 Maio of Bari  152–3 Mainz  27, 30, 59, 162, 175–6 Mantua  12–13, 27, 84, 90, 91, 127–8, 171; see also Boniface of Tuscany; Donizone of Canossa; Matilda of Canossa; Virgil Mark, St  86, 109, 157–8, 168 Marseille 58 Marsilius of Padua  108 Martin da Canal  6, 32, 34, 48, 50, 80, 86, 91–2, 105, 109–10, 157–8, 168, 173–4 Martin, St  26, 86 Master Gregory  32, 94, 131 Maternus, St  79, 87 Mathias, St  88 Matilda of Canossa  12, 27, 46, 89–90 Matthew Paris  56–7, 131, 148, 179 Matthew, St  57, 68 Maxima, St  81 Mazara 105 Menander Rhetor  4, 37–8 Mendicants  13, 18–19, 34, 40, 52–3, 63, 66, 92, 93, 99, 110, 117; see also Dominicans; Franciscans Mérida 175 Messina  31, 45, 59, 102, 105–6, 151 Metz  25–6, 27, 58, 63, 84, 112, 118, 119, 135–6, 139, 141, 161, 168, 175, 176, 183; see also Richerius of Metz; Sigebert of Gembloux Meulan 59 Michael the Archangel, St  75, 84 Milan  5, 7, 15, 21, 24, 25, 29, 32, 40, 44, 45, 47, 50, 55, 72, 73, 80, 84, 85–6, 90–1, 92–4, 103, 107–8, 112, 115–16, 118, 122–3, 125, 128–9, 130, 131–2, 133, 138, 139, 154–5, 158, 162–3, 168, 169, 170, 171, 173, 181–2, 183, 185–6; see also Ambrose, St; Barnabas, St; Bonvesin da la Riva Minerva 4 Modena  24–5, 76 Modoald, St  88 Monreale 150 Montpellier  7, 15, 27, 34, 58, 118, 162 Monza 122 Mosè del Brolo  28, 47, 93–4, 100, 121, 131, 154, 171 Muhammad al-Idrisi  31, 113, 127, 150–2 Naples  15, 24, 25, 30, 31, 45, 113, 137, 161, 164, 165, 169, 171 Narbonne 24 Narses 25

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Index Nicholas, Liège canon  26 Nicholas, St  57, 62, 86 Nimes  34, 101, 118, 139 Norwich  27, 113 Nottingham 134 Novara 27 Noyon 177 Orange  34, 49 Orderic Vitalis  30, 46, 91, 113, 124, 136, 143, 144, 175, 182 Orléans  34, 102, 103, 118, 161 Otto of Freising  30, 65–6 Ovid  81, 169 Oxford  30, 161 Padua  15, 99, 158, 161, 174 Palermo  15, 18, 30, 31, 105–6, 121, 149–53, 158; see also Hugo Falcandus; Muhammad al-Idrisi Pamiers 58 Paris  7, 13, 15, 18, 27, 29, 30–2, 37, 45, 46, 53, 55, 65, 69, 70, 85, 86, 97, 98, 99, 100–1, 117, 118, 123–4, 127, 131, 139, 144–7, 148, 161, 162, 163, 164–7; see also Gui of Bazoches; John de Garlande Patti 105 Paul, St  25, 59 Paulinus of Aquileia  24, 103 Pavia  27, 29, 101 Pelagius Parvus  53, 67–8 Peter Abelard  165 Peter Damian  97 Peter de Celle, bishop of Chartres  100–1 Peter, St  25, 55, 59, 72, 73–5, 78, 80, 84, 86, 87, 90, 93 Peter the Chanter  99 Peter the Deacon  32 Petronio, St  26, 34, 41, 52, 71–3, 122, 133, 155–7, 164 Philip II Augustus, king of France (1180–1223)  55, 134, 144, 145–6, 166 Philip, count of Flanders (1168–91)  46 Philip of Harvengt  166 Pisa  28, 32, 49, 56, 62, 63, 80, 91, 99–100, 112, 127, 171, 184 Pistoia 184 Plato (and neo-Platonic ideas)  7, 13, 33, 44, 55, 68, 73, 149, 163, 174, 181 Poitiers  34, 102 Potenza 45 Priscian  4, 38 Protasius, St  84, 85 Quintilian  4, 19, 37, 162 Ralph de Diceto  19 Ravello 63 Ravenna  29, 59, 72, 86, 90

215

Reims  27, 87, 126, 136, 161–2, 168, 175–6, 183 Remigio de’Girolami  34, 40, 57, 94, 108, 117 Renieri Zeno, doge of Venice  157–8 Richard of Devizes  36, 65, 98 Richerius of Metz  26, 112, 118, 139, 168 Rigord  144, 145 Rochester 180 Rodrigo Jimenéz de Rada, archbishop of Toledo  83, 113, 125 Rodulfus Tortarius  30, 91, 114–15 Roger II, king of Sicily (1130–54)  30, 31, 79, 104, 142, 150–1, 182 Rollo of Normandy  143 Rome  5, 15, 18, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 32, 34, 41, 42–3, 49, 53–4, 55, 56, 57, 62, 63, 69, 72, 73–5, 77–9, 85, 89–91, 93, 94, 98–9, 103, 131, 132, 136, 137, 138, 142, 149, 162, 165, 169–84; see also Hildebert of Lavardin Rouen  15, 26, 28, 30, 39, 46, 51, 91, 112, 113–14, 124, 131, 134, 136, 138, 139, 143–4, 147, 148, 149, 158, 175, 182 Rufina, St  83 Rutebeuf  41, 97, 117, 147 Saint-Omer 58–9 St Paul’s Cathedral (London)  19, 41, 57, 89, 162 St Werburgh’s monastery (Chester)  40, 73, 90 Salerno  57, 79, 113, 116 Salimbene de Adam  99 Sallust  21, 102, 169 Sancho II, king of Castile and Léon (1065–72) 168 Sancho IV, king of Castile and Léon (1284–95)  32, 168–9 Santo Stefano (Bologna)  15, 18, 55–6, 72–3, 155–6 Seneca 43 Seville  15, 24, 28, 29, 46, 81–3, 88, 112, 117, 125, 127, 139–41, 142, 168, 175, 182; see also Guillermo Pérez de la Calzada Siena 184 Sigebert of Gembloux  25–6, 27, 84, 183 Snorri Sturluson  37 Socrates 162 Solomon, king (Old Testament)  64, 166 Southampton 131 Speyer 175 Statius  24, 30 Stephen of Rouen  143–4 Stephen, St  58 Strasbourg  58, 176 Syracuse  24, 105–6, 151 Tangier 112 Taranto 45 Tarragona 24 Theoderic I, St  25, 84, 183 Theodosius, Roman emperor  71–2, 155–6 Thomas Aquinas  2

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216 Index Thomas Becket, St  6, 7, 26, 39–40, 50, 57, 59–60, 88–9, 179 Toledo  82, 88, 113, 128, 142, 174 Toul 183 Toulouse  24, 29, 31, 164–5, 185 Tournai  28, 33, 34, 47, 51, 154, 169, 177–9, 184–5 Tours  26, 86, 123 Trani 62 Trier  6, 23, 24, 32, 47, 55, 59, 79, 84, 87–8, 89, 112, 124, 130, 137–8, 161, 169–70, 175–7, 182, 183; see also Eucharius, St Troyes 59 Urban II, pope (1088–99)  72 Ursicinus, St  72 Utrecht 74–5 Valenciennes  56, 58 Valerius, St  79, 87 Venice  6, 15, 29, 32, 48, 62, 80, 86, 91–2, 97, 105, 109–10, 157–8, 168, 173–4, 185; see also Martin da Canal Verdun 183 Verissimus, St  81 Verona  24, 70–1, 73, 76, 84, 138, 169 Vézelay  98, 100 Victor, St  58 Vienne  34, 118, 137

Virgin Mary  51, 58, 67, 77, 80, 85, 95, 139–41, 181 Virgil  7, 13, 31, 81, 114, 119, 121–2, 137, 149, 169, 171, 177 Waldo (Waldensians)  48 Werburgh, St  75, 84 Westminster  124, 147–8 William of Auvergne, bishop of Paris  13, 69 William FitzStephen  5–6, 7–8, 26, 40, 44, 50, 57, 59–60, 88–9, 91, 92, 96, 105, 114, 121–2, 124, 127, 128, 133, 135, 145, 147–9, 162, 174, 179, 185 William of Malmesbury  27, 29, 49–50, 70, 78, 85, 113, 115, 132, 136, 137, 174, 183, 185 William of Newburgh  113, 124, 138 William the Breton  166 Winchester 147–8 Worms  134, 175, 176 York  15, 24, 27, 30, 56, 70, 89, 112, 113, 120–1, 123, 132, 134, 138, 169, 185; see also Alcuin of York; Geoffrey of Monmouth Ypres 14 Zamora  32, 168–9, 174–5 Zeno, St  76 Zurich 30