Download PDF | (Boydell Medieval Texts_ 4) David Cox - Saint Simon de Montfort_ the Miracles, Laments, Prayers and Hymns-Boydell Press (2024).
238 Pages
Preface and Acknowledgements
The forbidden miracle cult of Simon de Montfort earl of Leicester, who died in 1265, produced a remarkable body of literature before expiring from natural causes after some fifteen years. The writings included laments, prayers and hymns, and a book of some two hundred miracles. The products of that creative surge reveal how some people tried to cope with political events that they could feel and describe but could not influence.
In 1840 James Orchard Halliwell published an edition of the miracle book and, whatever the shortcomings of the sole manuscript and however slight his contribution to our understanding of it, Halliwell’s edition has been consulted with profit by generations of historians. A century and a half later Iris Pinkstone, founder of the Simon de Montfort Society, was aware that an English translation would be needed if the full potential of the miracle book were to be appreciated, especially as proficiency in Latin ought no longer to be assumed. A further consideration was that many of the names mentioned in the manuscript were unrecognizable after medieval recopying; Halliwell could not overcome that obstacle, but in the present century it can be breached with tools that he never had. Iris therefore tried to find a competent translator. I understood her aspiration at the time and might have offered to help, but I was busy with other publications and sadly, just as I found myself able to make a start, we received the news of Iris’s death.
Nevertheless, my belated readiness to carry out her project coincided happily with the re-emergence of another scheme, which I had imagined some decades earlier but had not been qualified to begin at the time: a collected edition and translation of the Montfortian verses and prayers. It became obvious that such an edition would complement that of the miracle book, and the present volume therefore assembles all the known texts that Simon de Montfort’s cult produced. Most of them have been printed at least once since 1800, but in scattered places and in various editorial styles. It will be a modest step forward to have them brought together, freshly edited and translated.
The Simon de Montfort Society has of course encouraged the project from the beginning. I record my thanks to all the repositories that have provided images of manuscripts in their possession. ‘Anno milleno’ (203), not previously published, is included here by permission of the Master and Fellows of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. In matters of detail several individuals have also come to my assistance, among whom I should like to mention Anne Bailey, Paul Cullen, Paul Duffy and Abigail Hartman. Michael Bennett gave wise advice on the organization of the material, and my wife Janice has kindly commented on the Introduction, while Richard Barber and Christy Beale, together with their professional colleagues, have guided the book through the press with meticulous skill and consideration. But the begetter and rightful dedicatee of the project remains, of course, the late Iris Pinkstone.
Introduction
The texts in this edition are all related to the sudden death of Simon de Montfort earl of Leicester, which occurred on 4 August 1265 at the battle of Evesham in Worcestershire. As a revolutionary politician and soldier he had been so popular and successful in England that during his lifetime some had begun to portray him as a Christ-like saviour. The shock of his death, magnified by horror at the royalist mutilation of his corpse, launched a miracle cult so vigorous that it soon spread to parts of the British Isles that were well beyond his burial place at Evesham abbey! In defiance of royalist threats the cult lasted some fifteen years, during which Earl Simon’s devotees compiled a miracle book and composed laments, prayers and hymns.
The miracle book
The monks of Evesham welcomed pilgrims at Simon de Montfort’s grave and recorded every miracle story that came to them. Some miracles had been generated locally but reports of many more were received from other parts of the country. It seems that they usually came by word of mouth; in only two instances is there some indication that a report was delivered in writing (127, 190).7 When a story was given orally, the monks’ first task was to write a summary, not necessarily in complete sentences, of what may have been a long-winded or unstructured tale.’ At Evesham the note needed to record the identity (not necessarily the name) of the miracle’s recipient and that of the informant (if it was someone else); where the recipient lived (unless they were a prominent person whose residence was well known); the nature of the miracle; and who else could vouch for the story.
When the informant referred to a minor place outside Worcestershire and beyond the adjoining counties nearest to Evesham (Gloucestershire and Warwickshire) they were asked for its county or its nearest well-known town.* Those details were enough to make the story credible and verifiable.’ There are only two references to testimony on oath (127-8) and none was needed, for there was no prospect of the formal canonization proceedings that would have called for sworn statements.° The recording monk could choose to include more details than those described, but he often settled for the minimum. In particular, the date of a miracle was not of the essence and was not routinely taken down. The monks’ preliminary notes would thereafter have remained a collection of loose sheets until a miracle book was started. Meanwhile they did not have to be kept in the exact order in which the stories had arrived; that may be why reports that reached Evesham simultaneously are sometimes found separated in the book (e.g. 29 and 31; 41-5 and 47). In any case, the monks were more interested in the substance of the stories than in their precise chronology.’
To find the earliest date at which the notes could have been entered in a miracle book one need look no further than its first item (3), which happens to record an incident that can be closely dated and provides the terminus a quo. The following extract from it contains the pertinent clues:
One Richard, surnamed Badger, from Evesham, was on his way towards Stratford upon Avon with his merchandise when a large army came into view, approaching from Kenilworth. In fear he turned back along the road and there he met Sir William Beauchamp with all his retinue ... Richard said, ‘Take care! Look, here come your enemies.’ ... And this was a year later [than the battle of Evesham]; that is, in the second year and during the war.
Since William Beauchamp died in the earlier part of 1269,* the incident must have occurred before then. Closer dating comes from the reference to an armed force of Beauchamp’s enemies from Kenilworth approaching Evesham from the direction of Stratford upon Avon. Kenilworth castle, thirty miles north-east of Evesham, was the chief stronghold of the Montfortian rebels immediately after the battle of Evesham. The king laid siege to it in late June 1266’ but until then the occupants were able to range over Warwickshire and prey upon the population."® The first miracle in the Evesham book had evidently occurred before the siege, while the Kenilworth rebels were still at large.
The item’s final clause, though difficult to construe, holds even more dating evidence. In the unique and late manuscript it reads thus (with capitalization and abbreviation exactly as here): Correct interpretation of this is not straightforward” but a simple reading is possible if one assumes that abbreviations have led to scribal errors during recopying. In some earlier copy of the miracle book it is possible that ‘In E’ had read ‘I E’, th reuoluto. [Es’c’\do A& TG which can be extended as: Et hoc anno reuoluto. Id est secundo anno et tempore guerre. which translates as: And this was a year later; that is, in the second year and during the war.
By that reading, it seems that the first miracle to be entered in the Evesham book had occurred in the ‘second year’ (which presumably began on 25 March 1266) and before late June that year, when the Kenilworth rebels were finally contained. The phrase ‘during the war’, if that is the correct translation of ‘T G’, would suggest further that the entry was not copied into the book until after the rebellion had come to an end; ‘during the war’ would have been redundant while the war was in progress, but afterwards it would have given a context for the story. All in all, it seems to me that the Evesham miracle book was probably started some time after 1 July 1267."
Some decades earlier, the abbey had had good experience of setting out a miracle book after St Wulfsige, an eleventh-century recluse, was buried in the abbey church. His book had been compiled c.1200% and two leaves have survived from an early-thirteenth-century fair copy of it, a handsome production written in double columns with red rubrics and red and blue pen-flourished initials.'® The organizer of Simon de Montfort’s miracle book is likely to have known it and may therefore have visualized something similar as a fair copy of his own collection. He may be cautiously identified as the sacrist of the abbey, who was by custom a senior monk charged with custody of the abbey church and its contents and with keeping all the offerings made there;"” by 1271 that man was Reynold of Inkberrow,'* who had been a monk of Evesham since 1259 or earlier.'? As sacrist, Reynold may have been the person who started Earl Simon’s miracle collection and who at some point had the items copied into a book.
Such a book was desirable as a convenient file of stories from which to tell visitors to Evesham about past miracles and to suggest the wonders that their own offerings might bring about; Earl Simon’s miracle book eventually offered so wide a variety of tales that the monks could cite whichever seemed relevant to the concerns of any particular visitor. Pilgrims, thus instructed, could go away and tell others about what they had learnt, just as the book’s epigraph (2) recommends. The epigraph reads simply ‘Nichil opertum quod non reueletur, etc.’ (Nothing is covered that should not be revealed, etc.) It alludes to the Sermon on the Mount and was an appropriate saying at a time when everyone needed to treat the miracles with secrecy. The ‘etc.’, however, conceals an exhortation that was considerably more defiant of authority:
Therefore fear them not. For nothing is covered that shall not be revealed: nor hid, that shall not be known. That which I tell you in the dark, speak ye in the light: and that which you hear in the ear, preach ye upon the housetops. And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
Christ’s injunction would have been closely applicable in the early years of Simon de Montfort’s cult if the abbey wanted visitors to reject the threat of secular punishment and to tell everyone about the miracles. Exposition of the epigraph and of stories from the rest of the book would have stimulated them to spread the word, and for a time there was certainly publicity enough to generate a spectacular influx of funds to the abbey. The Lanercost chronicle refers to the ‘daily’ offerings of Earl Simon’s devotees at Evesham and to the impressive building works that were made possible with their money.”! A description of the new Lady chapel, begun ten years after the battle, tells of ‘windows, a beautiful vault, and gilded bosses’ and ‘the story of the Saviour and the stories of various virgins splendidly painted’.” The miracle book helped with the cost of such works; indeed, nothing suggests that it had any other public purpose.”
The miracles
The progress of Simon de Montfort’s miracle cult can be traced in broad outline by reference to the few datable stories that appear in the Evesham book.” Since the datable miracles are mostly entered in date order, each undatable miracle probably occurred at some time between the nearest datable ones before and after it. One may therefore suggest that the events between 3 and 103 can mostly be assigned to 1265-66 and that most of the miracles between 103 and 175 would have happened between c.1266 and 1272.*> The latest datable miracle was reported to Evesham in 1279 (195) and two further stories were entered before the book was closed; it thus appears that the abbey received some twenty reports between c.1272 and c.1280 but none after that. The miracle cult had evidently been widely supported until the early 1270s, but outside Evesham abbey it had declined thereafter and had reached virtual extinction c.1280.
The nature of Simon de Montfort’s miracles is well attested by the Evesham book. John Theilmann compared Earl Simon’s reported cures with those of seven other English cult figures, from Earl Waltheof to King Henry VI, and found that cases of blindness and of mental illness formed a smaller proportion of Montfort’s cures while his proportion of chronic and crippling conditions was greater.”° The miracle book usually describes a patient’s symptoms but rarely has a diagnosis, and it uses the blanket term gutta (gout) over a broad range of painful ailments. Meanwhile, of the accidental injuries presented to the earl, about half were to children.” One in ten of the cures in the book resulted from a visit to Evesham abbey or to the nearby ‘Earl’s well’ but most of the rest were obtained at home, usually by ‘measuring’ and penny-bending. John Brown had been suffering from a form
of paralysis:
after being measured to the earl he made up his candle to the measurement, and when he came to Evesham he recovered from the disability to which he had been subject. (16)
The story refers to a custom whereby the patient or an affected part was measured with a piece of string in the name of a saint.?* Seven in ten of the cures in the Evesham miracle book were achieved in that way. After the cure, the string was sometimes used to make the wick of a candle,” to be taken to the saint’s restingplace as a token or offering. But people who could not afford beeswax were not obliged to make a candle, because tallow, a cheaper alternative, was not acceptable in a church.*° The few candles mentioned in the Evesham book were therefore made for patients of superior means, and they usually charged a subordinate or friend with taking their candle to Evesham. Likewise only better-off patients sent waxen thank-offerings in the form of images of themselves or of their cured limbs. As an alternative to measuring, one could just bend a penny in Earl Simon’s name, but that was relatively rare. A bent penny alone would sometimes produce a cure, but if a penny was bent it was usually done to accompany a measuring, the two actions together resulting in a miracle. The penny might be gilded as well as bent (86); it could also be sent to Evesham in token of a cure obtained by other means (6); and it could even be sent in memory of someone who had prayed to Earl Simon and failed to be cured (186).
Most of the miracles in the book had been granted in response to prayers and measurings, but some had occurred unexpectedly after dreams or visions involving Earl Simon. A miracle of that kind might be bestowed on one of his supporters, but it was more likely to be experienced by a sceptic or critic. In one vision Simon de Montfort told a former enemy that, ‘Some are penitent, some will be penitent and some without penitence will die a bad death.’ (169) By appearing in person Montfort would bring about repentance or else contrive a drastic punishment.
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In 1844 W. H. Blaauw suggested that ‘persons of all ranks’ had attested Earl Simon’s miracles,*! and as late as 2019 I carelessly echoed that opinion;* but within the pages of the miracle book it cannot properly be said that all ranks are represented. There I have counted 182 recipients of miracles, including children;* the proportion of children is markedly smaller than in comparable collections. Of all recipients at least a third had noble, knightly, gentry, mercantile or ecclesiastical status; the secular and religious clergy made up a fifth of all recipients, and thus a much higher proportion than they did in the general population.* Altogether Simon de Montfort’s miracle cult attracted greater than usual proportions of men and upper-class people, including senior churchmen.** Meanwhile as many as twothirds of recipients mentioned in the book may have belonged to the households of manual workers;* about half of all miracle recipients who appear in it are actually of unstated occupation or rank, but they probably belonged to manual households because their names rarely if ever occur in contemporary public records. Those supposed manual workers might have included anyone from substantial farmers and master craftsmen downwards, but in practice a lack of money or leisure probably prevented many at the lower end of the manual scale — not to mention paupers, vagrants and criminals — from making their stories known at Evesham, if indeed they had any. Servants and the poor do occur in the book but only as the observers of miracles, not as the recipients.
The miracle book’s careful recording of place-names enables one to estimate the geographical extent of Earl Simon’s cult. Ronald Finucane* noted some concordance between the distribution of Montfortian estates (Fig. 1)*? and that of the reported miracles (Fig. 2);*° and Clive Knowles demonstrated that the distribution of Montfortian estates corresponded to the most economically advanced, most densely populated areas of England, that is to say the Midlands and the east.*! Thus Finucane and Knowles between them showed that miracles and population density coincided. And their observations hold good, because I have been able positively to identify and map eighty-two English and Welsh sources of miracle stories (Fig. 2), some of which generated more than one report; another ten such places, though not identified, are known to have been in Berkshire, Cheshire, Derbyshire, Devon (two places), Gloucestershire, Kent (two), Northamptonshire, Northumberland and Oxfordshire. Fig. 2 therefore confirms that most reports of miracles did come from eastern England and the Midlands; within the Midlands there was naturally a loose concentration around Evesham. The map shows a separate concentration in Kent and Sussex, which were less populous but had a disproportionate number of Montfortian supporters.*
The miracle clusters in some of the more populous towns were not necessarily a reflection of their size; after all, there are no identifiable reports from Leicester or Worcester. They were both under royalist control after the battle of Evesham* and it therefore seems that lordship, as well as size, may have influenced miracle numbers. Where there is evidence, it often shows that a miracle comes from an estate that is or has been held at some level by an active contrariant. And the tenants of a detested royalist might also lean towards the cult of Earl Simon, as at the royal manor of Brill in Buckinghamshire (109-10) and at Filby in Norfolk (76) and Gainsborough in Lincolnshire (162), which were held by the king’s ‘alien’ half-brother William de Valence. Nothing was predetermined, however, and at that period any direct influence of a particular individual on the personal inclinations of another was, of its nature, rarely if ever documented.* It seems likely, indeed, that in densely occupied regions any miracle story might spread instantly of its own accord and be widely believed without reference to anyone in authority. Stories shared in common in that way appear to underlie the miracle book’s many instances of whole households or neighbourhoods bearing witness to a particular event.
The laments, prayers and hymns
While miracle stories were accumulating at Evesham abbey, Simon de Montfort’s death and the continuing brutalities of the rebellion inspired verse laments and a longing for peace. Three surviving laments can be dated to the period between the battle of Evesham and the peace agreement of 1 July 1267, and the rest probably should be. Since the authors had access to writing materials, had a fluent command of Latin or French, and had the still rarer ability to use them in verse, they were probably professional people, secular churchmen, or members of religious orders, writing on their own behalf or at the request of a colleague or patron (e.g. 206). While it is hardly likely that all literary people were devoted to Earl Simon, none of the extant verses made in the years of controversy 1258-67 is directed against him, and the writers of chronicles applauded him almost without exception. Some of the laments, however, were as much about the disorder and suffering caused by both sides in the rebellion, and one of them does not mention Simon at all (208).
None of the laments is modelled directly upon another and no two are alike in formal structure, but the authors share several assumptions as if each is drawing independently upon an unwritten consensus. The verses agree, for instance, that after the death of Simon de Montfort the country was bereft of justice, peace, truth and the rule of law; they agree, too, that his death amounted to a martyrdom freely suffered for great ideals, like the murder of Thomas Becket; and that Earl Simon’s martyrdom qualified him for sainthood — one of the laments does call him a saint (203 lines 58, 70). The laments deal in ideas that were common currency at the time. But they also express personal anguish, and confused or bitter feelings could be alleviated by turning them into verse, making the ugly and threatening into the elegant and controlled. In the words of John Donne, Griefe brought to numbers cannot be so fierce, For, he tames it, that fetters it in verse.”
That seems to have been the essential purpose of each lament. None of them favours a continuance of the rebellion; far from it, they call on all parties to return to peace and harmony and they beg for divine, not human, retribution upon those who will not do so.*
The verses probably circulated privately on loose sheets or rolls, and only one copy of each is now known.” The former existence of other copies can be assumed, and is attested by the variant readings or alternative versions that have survived (e.g. 203 lines 9, 11, 76; 204-5); even so, the texts need never have passed beyond the acquaintance of a cultured few. Had the laments been intended for wider consumption they would have been in English, and if they had been consumed more widely there would probably be more extant copies. No-one without advanced Latin or French could understand them, and their sentiments could not be relayed to a wider audience through the official structures of shire and diocese or by the preaching orders; those had been the most effective channels of Montfortian ideas before the battle of Evesham, but now they were blocked.
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In the seclusion of their precincts religious houses in several parts of England began to remember the death of Earl Simon and his companions every year on 4 August; so much is evident from entries in their calendars. The texts of prayers and hymns for Earl Simon have also survived and some of them were clearly designed to be heard in church; two are motets and were included in large service books (216, 222), and we have elements of at least three different offices or memoriae (commemorations), presumably from three separate churches (215, 220-1). The annual commemorations were apparently intended for use at the evening office of Vespers and the night-time offices of Matins and Lauds.” Like the laments, the prayers and hymns draw upon feelings that were current in the disordered period 1265-67. They are addressed to God, to Christ, to the Blessed Virgin or to the earl himself and evidently assume that he is a saint or that he should be. In so doing, however, they offended against the Dictum of Kenilworth, which in 1266 recommended corporal punishment for treating Earl Simon as a saint. Indeed,
certain Franciscans
out of his excellent deeds composed an admirable office about him, that is to say readings, responses, versicles, a hymn, and other things that belong to the glory and honour of a martyr, which will not obtain a solemn performance in God’s church, as is hoped, while Edward is alive.*!
That was apparently written before November 1272, because it refers to ‘Edward’, not ‘King Edward’ or ‘the king’. It is therefore uncertain whether the extant prayers and hymns could have been used in church at the time they were composed. But it is hard to believe that the attempt was never made.
Saint Simon
The writers of Montfortian literature were not trying to stimulate public opinion after the battle of Evesham but to express it in a satisfying way. In order to construct such noble abstractions as ‘the English people’, ‘justice’, ‘betrayal’, ‘martyrdom’ and ‘revenge’ they alluded repeatedly to the then familiar details of Simon de Montfort’s person, career, death and miracles.
In 1258 as earl of Leicester Simon had been one of the barons who forced Henry II to accept a programme of reforms in central and local government. Each of the reformers then swore an oath to support the rest, and in the eyes of Earl Simon their mutual oath transformed a campaign for secular reform into a sacred mission. For years he had tried to absorb the advice of pastors like Robert Grosseteste but had progressed far less in piety than the chief object of his contempt, King Henry. After 1258, however, Montfort was to be found urgently seeking appropriate godliness through severe private penance. By taking up selfsanctifying exercises that included nightly vigils, the continuous wearing of a hair shirt and an abstinence from marital intercourse, he hoped to become a knight of Christ.
The cause to which he then dedicated himself went by the broad name of ‘justice’, which to its adherents meant honesty, fairness, or righteous conduct. It promised to remedy the abuses then practised by local officials; it would stop the king’s indulgence of his foreign relatives in England, which had amplified the public’s aversion to all ‘aliens’; and it would rectify royal and papal interference in the English church. The intended result would be a harmonious ‘community of the realm’. In the pursuit of those ideals Simon de Montfort’s oath and privations would give him the strength to withstand all doubters and opponents, to become a popular hero and to lead the reform movement not only to victory at the battle of Lewes in 1264 but also to its annihilation a year later on the field of Evesham.”
There was a setback in 1261 when King Henry regained control of government; Montfort, alone among the leading reformers, would not abandon his oath but chose instead to leave the country. Nevertheless, the cause of reform still had many supporters in the English localities and in 1263 they enabled him to return to England, his oath intact, and with a dominant position in the movement. After becoming God’s pre-eminent champion of ‘justice’ in England, ‘the hope of the oppressed, the voice of the common people’ (203 line 30), Earl Simon was able to attract many followers, especially idealistic young men. Turmoil and civil war ensued, and at Lewes in May 1264 Montfort’s army unexpectedly defeated and captured the king and his son and heir, Edward.*? There followed a fragile truce in which Earl Simon began to introduce further reforms. His career had by then reached a precarious summit and the Song of Lewes, a long poem written between the battles of Lewes and Evesham, argues learnedly that Earl Simon’s new regime could claim both political legitimacy and divine support. At one point the Song likens Simon to Christ because he was ready to die at Lewes for the good of the many, and it attributes his victory there to God’s favour.™* The Song portrays him as the people’s only salvation, the long-rejected ‘cornerstone’ that could unite a divided nation;* it was a metaphor that Jesus had applied to himself.
In March 1265, in the presence of lords, knights and burgesses summoned by Earl Simon from all parts of England, a dramatic ceremony in Westminster Hall memorably reasserted the holiness of his movement. The proceedings were ordered to be announced in every shire court for onward transmission to the manors, and each bishop had a diocesan structure through which to pass down the notion of Montfortian sanctity to the parishes.*’ At the same time the Franciscan friars were using their special status in towns and rich households to preach in Earl Simon’s favour.® As one of King Henry’s councillors had observed in 1261, ‘If the lord king had preachers on his behalf such as the opposite side has, it would be better for him.’
Edward escaped from custody in May 1265 and in coalition with barons from the marches of Wales gathered an army recruited from Earl Simon’s enemies. They included men who had known and once admired Earl Simon and had sworn to uphold the plan of reform but were now ready to put aside their oaths; Gilbert of Clare earl of Gloucester was only the most prominent of the defectors. War broke out again and on 4 August 1265 at the battle of Evesham Earl Simon died with many of those who had remained loyal to him, including his eldest son Henry and the chief justiciar Hugh le Despenser.® On the battlefield Simon had been singled out by a squad of twelve fighters, selected by Edward to find and kill him. When the twelve surrounded him"! they called upon him to surrender,” with good reason to believe that he would not; ‘I will never surrender to dogs and perjurers, but only to God,’ he cried,@ and was then brought down. There followed the notorious mistreatment of Earl Simon’s corpse where it lay: the head, hands, feet and genitals were cut off and all dispersed as trophies. Meanwhile such was the disparity of forces that the Montfortian army was soon overwhelmed and slaughtered. As Robert of Gloucester wrote, ‘Such was the murder of Evesham, for battle was it none.’™
Later that day the monks of Evesham abbey retrieved what remained of Earl Simon’s body and buried it in the most prestigious position they had, near the tomb of St Wulfsige in the choir of the abbey church, immediately in front of the steps to the presbytery (Fig. 3). Henry de Montfort and Hugh le Despenser had died with the Earl and were laid to rest beside him.® Simon’s remaining adherents interpreted his battlefield assassination as a martyrdom, especially as it was accompanied by immediate evidence of his extraordinary piety: the hair shirt was revealed when his armour was stripped off. Montfort’s cause had indeed been sacred to him personally but it was also intrinsically popular, and that would be the vital force in shaping and sustaining his reputation as a saint. Meanwhile, however, martyrdom alone did not prove that Simon de Montfort was in fact a saint; confirmation of his ultimate glorification would depend on God sending miracles, and it was not inevitable that he would do so. For not everyone was dismayed to hear that Earl Simon was dead: the constable of Bridgnorth castle in Shropshire maintained a posthumous aversion to him, ‘because he deprived me of many valuable things’ (79), and others continued to disparage him for political reasons, even within religious houses that had been enthusiastically Montfortian (74, 200). Nevertheless, everybody who had remained attached to Simon’s fight for reform felt bereavement and anger, and while they had to give up hope of social change they clung to the possibility that in their personal difficulties God would allow Earl Simon to intercede for them in heaven. Predictably, when news of his miracles broke, ‘Sighs were changed into shouts of praise, and the former level of gladness was revived.’
The first stories had emerged quickly, and by 1266 reports of Earl Simon’s miracles were common knowledge: according to one royalist, ‘Nearly everybody is saying that Sir Simon, the earl of Leicester, is a saint.’ (3) Moreover, the popular mood was enough to elevate his dead companions Henry de Montfort and Hugh le Despenser to a similar level:
With the father, the son Henry was taken, died and was buried, a martyr and a virtuous knight. A thousand signs show that both of them were saints, with a thousand sick people telling their praises. (203 lines 56-9)
God made several signs of sanctity through Hugh, for the blind received sight on coming to his tomb, and cripples their proper means of walking.®
Any impression that a wave of confidence in Simon de Montfort’s miraculous powers had flooded the country soon after the battle ought, however, to be examined. For some of the miracle cures, the patient did not turn to him spontaneously but did so only after being prompted in a dream or by a friend. Meanwhile the earl’s cult faced not only occasional indifference but also severe royalist opposition. Immediately after the battle of Evesham there was an uncontrolled ‘orgy of vengeance’ against the Montfortians, and then in September 1265 the king began the formal seizure of contrariants’ estates. Well into 1266, therefore, royalists were finding opportunities to intimidate not only Montfortian rebels but also personal enemies whom they alleged to be contrariants. It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the miracles ‘were not revealed in public because of royalist intimidation’,” and that ‘No-one has dared to make known anything like this for fear of the king and his followers.””' Nevertheless, Montfortian rebels were still holding out in defensible places like Kenilworth castle and the Isle of Ely and pillaging the surrounding areas. Amid the discord and violence the signatories of the Dictum of Kenilworth in October 1266 asked the papal legate to forbid anyone to call Earl Simon a saint or a just man or to speak of his ‘vain and fatuous miracles’; and they asked the king to inflict corporal punishment on everyone who disobeyed.” At the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, which was heavily fined for its abbot’s support of the contrariants, someone decided to erase from John de Taxter’s chronicle an assertion that there were miracles; other chroniclers would refer only to rumours of miracles and cited none in particular.”*
Official efforts to suppress Simon de Montfort’s cult were aimed especially at its focal point, Evesham abbey:
the monks of Evesham, among whom Simon is buried, dare neither to show the tomb nor to publish the miracles, because of royalist intimidation.”
concealment is sought by the power of his enemies, which is directed towards covering up the fame of him and his own; through their minions they cause the ways and paths of those who come [to Evesham] to be blocked by day, although many of them try to go there on pilgrimage by night.”
The probable organizer of the Evesham roadblocks was the sheriff of Worcestershire, Sir William Beauchamp of Elmley,” a royalist who had sent two sons to fight in the battle.”* His castle at Elmley stood five miles south-west of the town and his Worcestershire estates almost surrounded the abbey’s.” There is certainly one recorded case of interception by his men, in which staff of Elmley castle stopped a girl on her way from Evesham to Elmley on suspicion that she was bringing back healing water from the battlefield (9).
Once inside the abbey church, however, pilgrims could make their way in peace to the east end of the nave and pray there before the rood and the altar of the Holy Cross (195). Able-bodied visitors could do that without intruding on the monks’ regular services, and if sick or disabled persons arrived they and their companions, including women, might be allowed to pass into the choir to visit the Montfortian graves, even while a service was in progress (196); some patients even ascended to the presbytery to sleep in front of the high altar (194). But notice was being taken that the monks had hosted the Montfortians before the battle, had given Christian burial to the remains of Earl Simon and had admitted pilgrims to his tomb, and William of Marlborough, the abbot-elect, was held to account for those offences. Since William had not yet received papal confirmation the legate was able to bar him from the abbacy in 1266 and replace him with someone from another house.* Inevitably the Evesham monks ‘feared to incur the indignation of the great’ and under external pressure they removed Earl Simon’s remains from the choir and hid them.*! In spite of everything, however, Earl Simon’s empty grave remained a
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cult site,’ and next to it were the undisturbed bodies of Henry de Montfort and
Hugh le Despenser. Also very near was the miracle-working tomb of St Wulfsige (29). A pilgrimage to St Wulfsige could therefore be a visitor’s pretext for illicit veneration of the dead Montfortians. It was fortunate too, or perhaps contrived, that in 1266 an alternative cult site became available outside the town when a pond of healing water was identified on the battlefield (3).*° It was then called the Earl’s well or Earl Simon’s well and became a permanent place of pilgrimage.** Known as the Battle well by the 1450s and ever afterwards, the pond can still be seen,*® and in the nineteenth century local people would use its water to bathe ‘weak’ eyes.
Preservation and rediscovery
Social conflict gradually subsided in the 1270s after an enlightened royal policy allowed disinherited rebels to resume their estates and made institutional changes that satisfied reformist aspirations.*’ The last entry in the Evesham miracle book was made c.1280 and, as far as one can tell, no more laments, prayers, or hymns were composed after that. The existing texts continued to be read but they were no longer topical. Instead, they acquired an appeal as historical documents, literary relics and moral tales. After all, to thoughtful people Simon de Montfort remained a figure of great moral and historical interest, a name to be mentioned when discussion turned to such perennial topics as the changefulness of Fortune or the need for constitutional change.** Like Charles XII of Sweden,
He left the name, at which the world grew pale, To point a moral, or adorn a tale.”
A lesson from Montfort’s career is cited, for instance, in the Vita Edwardi Secundi, written in the early fourteenth century: ‘It is not safe to rise up against the king, because the outcome is likely to be unfortunate. For even Simon earl of Leicester was at last laid low in battle at Evesham.’ The ancient Wheel of Fortune continued to turn and had been invoked soon after the battle in one of the Montfortian hymns (219), and later in that century one of the laments (205) was copied into a book next after a diagram of the Wheel of Life, another representation of a man’s rise and fall. Elsewhere a version of that lament (204) was copied poignantly next to verses that had celebrated Simon’s victory at Lewes. Edward II himself, son of the victor of Evesham, was willing to pay two women for ‘singing of Sir Simon de Montfort and other songs’ in 1323”! and probably relished a reminder of the mighty rebel’s downfall.
Montfortian texts seem to have been valued in the later Middle Ages as specimens of poetry, and perhaps as records of religious and constitutional history. Laments are found copied in books on theology (203) and canon law (207), and another (208) formed part of a handsome compilation of law texts, where there was an intention to set the verses to music. At St Augustine’s abbey, Canterbury, the monk Ralph of Gatwick (fl.1297-1325) gave the house a volume (now lost) that included not only political tracts but also ‘Planctus Anglie de morte Simonis de Montis Fortis’ (England’s Lament on the Death of Simon de Montfort).” And local history in particular was served by a copy of ‘Illos saluauit’ (206) embedded in a chronicle kept at Peterborough abbey, where the verses preserved references to local strife in the post-Evesham rebellion.
Montfortian writings, enjoyable simply as literature, were also a useful bank of exempla for religious teachers. One of the laments (205) was evidently copied by Franciscans in Ireland as sermon material, and the surviving copy of the miracle book was made for a collection of texts that illustrated contacts between living people and the other-world. Churches, too, may have valued Montfortian prayers and hymns as literature, and also as records of a liturgical tradition; church calendars made a hundred years after Simon de Montfort’s death still included his anniversary, and prayers and hymns were being copied even later (221). But such materials did not imply continued devotion to Earl Simon. Only at Evesham did his cult show signs of life after c.1280; at least, the Earl’s well seems to have maintained a reputation for sanctity, for by c.1448 it was marked by a stone Crucifixion under a canopy, and by 1457 Abbot John Wykewone seems to have built a chapel there.” The Battle well chapel was short-lived, however. A printed missal that was given to it before 1502" migrated to the abbey church before the Dissolution, and the chapel was no more than a vague local memory by the mid-eighteenth century.”*
Secular interest in Simon de Montfort outlived the Reformation but his reappearance in imaginative literature came later, in response to the romantic medievalism and liberal politics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It was then that the original Montfortian texts began to appear in print and in some cases to be translated. The first lament published in full was an English verse translation of ‘Chaunter mestoit’ (204) by the young Walter Scott; in 1840 the miracle book was printed; and the first full biography, by Reinhold Pauli, appeared in German in 1867.6 In that process of rediscovery Simon de Montfort acquired the popular image of a fearless champion of democracy and civil rights; and although Pauli and all subsequent historians refer to his faults and misdeeds, no academic or humanitarian assessment has yet erased that image. Places associated with Earl Simon, especially Evesham, Leicester and Lewes, have named streets and public buildings after him and set up monuments in various forms. And since the 1880s he has had a leading role in several works of fiction, including poems and plays; until the 1950s most of them chose to use an archaic diction that is now little appreciated, but a succession of exciting novels about his life and times has emerged since then, more or less in current English. Nevertheless, the monuments, poems, plays and novels of the last two centuries are essentially commemorations of a secular hero; they cannot draw upon the sincere distress and devotion that once powered the laments, prayers, hymns and miracle stories meant for a martyr and a saint.
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