SOURCE: Knowles, David. “The Critics of the Monks: Gerald of Wales, Walter Map and the Satirists.” In The Monastic Order in England: A History of Its Development from the Times of St. Dunstan to the Fourth Lateran Council, 943-1216, pp. 662-78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1950.

[In the following excerpt, first published in 1940, Knowles examines Gerald's criticism of monks, discusses some limitations of his arguments, and compares and contrasts his interests to those of his contemporary and fellow critic of monasticism, Walter Map.]

I

In an earlier chapter some account was given of the active hostility shown towards the monastic body by a group of influential bishops in the last decades of the twelfth century. At the very moment when the opposition of the secular clergy in high places was thus making itself felt, another and hitherto unprecedented form of attack began which was to continue intermittently in one form or another until the Reformation. This was the criticism of the monastic life of the country by members of the new class of highly educated clerks who filled various administrative or magisterial posts in the royal and episcopal households or in the various schools, some of which were to develop into universities. The literary education of the day, based as it was on Latin models, and including among its most familiar text-books the satires of Horace, Persius and Juvenal, and the epigrams of Martial, gave to those with a talent for writing a bent towards the satirical and critical, and there was throughout the Middle Ages, especially in the universities of France and Italy, a floating population of men at once brilliant and irresponsible, occupied with matters of religion and yet without depth of feeling, to which earlier and later centuries afford no exact parallel. This type made its first considerable appearance in the literature of Europe in the works of two clerks who moved in the highest English ecclesiastical circles at the end of the reign of Henry II. That Gerald de Barri and Walter Map did not stand alone, but were the representatives of a whole movement of taste and sentiment, can be seen from many incidents and personalities of the time,¹ but they may not unfairly be taken as the most eminent members of their class. Both were severe and persistent critics of the monastic body, and as their writings, not without influence in their own day, continue to be sources from which modern students derive both facts and opinions, it is necessary to consider in some detail the nature and truth of the charges which they bring against the monks.

II

Gerald of Wales is probably of all the writers of the twelfth century the one most familiar to English readers, and he has been consistently fortunate in the friends he has found among editors and biographers.² His excursion into the realm of Irish history and ethnology has ensured to him celebrity of one kind, and it so happens that of his other works, the book in which his amiable qualities appear to the best advantage and his failings are inconspicuous is one which by reason of its subject has appealed during the last century to innumerable lovers of the beauties of Wales. Gerald de Barri belongs to that small class of writers which counts in its ranks the illustrious name of Cicero and is made up of those to whom the world listens most readily when they speak about themselves. Vain and naïve to a degree, he provides us in his pages with a whole arsenal of weapons with which to attack him, yet he has always succeeded in exciting in his readers an interest which has in it more of affection than dislike. He is, indeed, a medieval member of the fraternity to which belong Cellini and Pepys and Creevey, and has the peculiar advantage of having written in an age of which the abundant literature is for the most part serious, formless and colourless; his extreme facility, his vivacity, and his love of anecdote have therefore all the charm of contrast. He has besides a number of characteristics which give him a kinship with the modern world: a love, or at least a sense, of natural beauty and wild landscape; a warm affection for his home and for his native land; a keen memory for friendships that had meant much to him in the past; a curiosity for the marvellous and the uncanny; a ready, if often ineffectual, aspiration towards the ideal; and a genuine admiration for nobility of character. It may be added that these qualities, as has already been suggested, are seen at their best in the two or three books which are most readily accessible in translation and which deal with subjects of general interest; in much of his later work the facility becomes mere fluidity and utter formlessness, and the love of anecdote sheer sculduddry.

Gerald's life was one of movement, disturbance and controversy, and it put him in a position to know well many of the most eminent figures of his day; he was, indeed, acquainted with almost all those whose names have recurred so often in these pages: the kings Henry II, Richard and John; the archbishops Hubert Walter, Baldwin and Stephen Langton; Hugh of Lincoln, Innocent III, Walter Map and many others. In the final event, his was a life of disappointment, frustration and waste, and this declension is unquestionably reflected in his works. The writings of his early days, before the death of Henry II, have in them freshness and generosity of appreciation; then came the years of adventure and strife, and the books that deal with them have a tinge of strain and bitterness, and all is regarded from the angle of a personal quarrel; the keen observer of earlier years is still there, but he is no longer tolerant and receptive. Finally, the last books, and in particular the Speculum Ecclesiae, fall in tone below the level demanded of any serious work of history or criticism; the chapters flow out like water from a spring, or like the words of a man talking to himself with little or no inflexion of the voice, and the matter is as fluid as the manner. Yet even here Gerald's gift of vivacity does not wholly desert him; the reader may at times feel indignation, or disgust, but his attention is held; Gerald never falls into mere dullness.

III

The Itinerarium Kambriae, describing his tour with Baldwin in 1188, is the earliest of his works in which Gerald discusses the monastic orders, and it is by far the most sober. He is led into the topic at the beginning of the book by the visit paid to Llanthony, a house of Augustinian canons situated almost at the head of a lonely valley in the Black Mountains.³ It was a house dear to Gerald from early days, and he remarks on its solitude and simplicity of life. Its daughter, New Lanthony near Gloucester, had a different ideal, so he tells us, and its grasping spirit had caused losses to the mother-house. But in both the rule was well kept.⁴ He goes on to contrast the canons with the monks, black and white, and the theme is introduced which, with certain variations, is developed and repeated in all that he wrote after. For the black monks he has little praise. They are rich, yet their riches serve no good purpose, for in part they are wasted in luxurious living, and in part they slip between the fingers of the many who have a share in their administration. The white monks, on the other hand, are excellent men of business and all is centred in the hands of one procurator; they do not live on rents and charges, but on their own work; they are most sparing in their diet and therefore able to practise the most abundant works of charity to the poor and travellers.⁵ Their fault is a grasping anxiety to acquire more and more land. The methods of the two bodies, Gerald continues, are utterly opposed one to the other. If you were to make a present to a community of black monks of a fully equipped abbey in the enjoyment of ample revenues, it would be dilapidated and poverty-stricken in a very short time. Give the Cistercians a wilderness or a forest, and in a few years you will find a dignified abbey in the midst of smiling plenty.⁶ Consequently, whereas the black monks will let a crowd of paupers starve at their gates rather than give up one of their thirteen courses, the white will abandon one of their two scanty dishes rather than see a single poor man in want. Best of all, and combining the good qualities of black and white monks, are the canons.⁷

Apart from this long passage, Gerald has little to say on the subject of monasticism in the Itinerarium. He has, however, some warm words of praise for the charity and hospitality shown by the abbot of Margam,⁸ and tells for the first time the story of the disgraced abbot of Strata Marcella.⁹ Before he had occasion to treat of the white monks again, the circumstances of his own life had brought him into collision with several members of the order. There was, first of all, William Wibert, cellarer and later abbot of Bittlesden. Gerald met him first at the court of Queen Eleanor in 1192.¹⁰ He had then recently been deposed by visitors from the post of cellarer and accused of peculation, mismanagement, and a number of other misdemeanours.¹¹ He attached himself to Gerald, who was then frequently employed as English emissary in Wales, and who admits or professes that he was completely deceived as to his real character; the connection, in any case, would seem to reflect either upon Gerald's honesty or upon his perspicacity. After several journeys together, William represented to people of influence that Gerald was playing false to the English, and that therefore his, William's, constant surveillance was necessary; moreover, if Gerald is to be at all believed, he persuaded Peter de Leia, bishop of St David's, that there were hopes of his translation to Worcester, meaning thereby to secure the vacant see for himself.¹² This, indeed, we are told, was the motive for all his activity against Gerald. In any case the archdeacon resolved to have his revenge;¹³ William had, by favour of the queen-mother, obtained the abbey of Bittlesden; Gerald accused him both to the abbot of Garendon, the mother of Bittlesden, and to the abbot of Cîteaux; they moved, if slowly; a visitation by the abbot of L'Aumône was followed by another of the four abbots of Fountains, Rievaulx, Wardon and Waverley in 1198, in which William was finally deposed.¹⁴ We are not reassured as to the sincerity of Gerald's attitude or the truth of his allegations by his own assertion that he himself had previously been reconciled to William Wibert and had offered to write a withdrawal of his accusations.¹⁵

Whatever may have been the sincerity of his attitude, the affair embroiled Gerald with Hubert Walter, whose protégé William had been,¹⁶ and the abbot of Bittlesden, as he himself tells us, caused him to feel towards the white monks the hostility which had been previously aroused in him towards the black by the conduct of Peter de Leia.¹⁷ These incidents occurred before the St David's election of 1198. In that unfortunate business Cistercians thwarted Gerald at every turn. In the first place, Hubert Walter, who was justiciar as well as archbishop, happened to be on the Marches when Peter de Leia died, and refused utterly, remembering the business of William Wibert, to allow Gerald to administer the diocese during the vacancy.¹⁸ Then the chapter of St David's, after nominating Gerald as first choice, added three other names, those of Walter, abbot of St Dogmael's, a Tironian,¹⁹ Peter, abbot of Whitland, and Reginald Foliot; in addition to these the abbot of Dore decided to play for his own hand in the matter,²⁰ while Hubert Walter, for his part, put up yet another Cistercian as candidate, Alexander of Ford, for whom he had recently secured the abbacy of Meaux, together with Geoffrey, prior of Llanthony. Thus Gerald had among his opponents four Cistercian abbots and one grey monk.²¹ But the worst was yet to come. Forced for the third time to make the journey to Rome, a lack of ready money drove him to raise cash on his library. According to his own story, this had been housed since 1198 at Strata Florida; he now approached the abbot, who agreed to take the books into pawn. When all had been arranged one of the monks persuaded the abbot that such a course was contrary to the Cistercian statutes; they might buy books but not advance a loan upon them. Faced with this emergency at the very moment of departure, Gerald had no alternative but to sell the books.²² How far in all this Gerald's account of facts and motives can be trusted must always remain a matter of opinion; the hostile feelings that ensued are, however, beyond a doubt, and Strata Florida was added as fifth to the four other monastic houses, Bittlesden, Whitland, Dore and St Dogmael's, against which this resentment burned. To these must be added the community of Christ Church, Canterbury, which had espoused the cause of the archbishop in the suit against Menevia. The observant reader of the books written at this time (1198-1203) will not fail to see that, with certain insignificant exceptions, these, his personal enemies and their communities, are the only monks against whom he levels his criticisms. The same cannot be said of his last work, the Speculum Ecclesiae, though here, too, his personal enemies occupy no inconsiderable place. This book, which its author had projected as early as 1190, was receiving additions at least as late as 1215-16.²³ So far as is known, it exists only in a single manuscript, which contains notes made by Gerald himself, and it was perhaps never published during his lifetime. It is by far the most painful of his books to read. Lacking the cohesion which the narrative form imposes on much of Gerald's earlier work, it consists for the most part of a catalogue of instances of monastic corruption and depravity. Quidquid agunt monachi. … Yet for all the length of the book, Gerald deals with surprisingly few concrete, individual cases, and several even of these are related without names or with only the vaguest of references. Some of them can indeed be identified from his other works, for Gerald was no foe to the maxim that what is best will bear repetition, while his unfortunate experiences in the abbeys of Wales, and in particular the incident of the library lost at Strata Florida,²⁴ are constantly reappearing when least expected, in some such manner as does the consulate of 63 b.c. in Cicero's later speeches, or the memory of King Charles's head in the conversation of Mr Dick.

IV

When the historian comes to assess the value of Gerald's arraignment of contemporary monasticism a kind of paralysis invades him; he has a sense that he is hunting in a nightmare or grappling with wraiths. For to suppose that Gerald had the intention, similar to that of a later reformer or modern critic, of arraigning the monks of his time before the bar of the world's or posterity's judgment, is to attribute to his mind a consistency and a purpose which it did not possess. He was but a keen, critical, perhaps we may even feel at times a morbid, spectator;²⁵ he had moved for the greater part of his manhood in the circles of courts and schools whither gravitated all that was least settled in the intellectual life of the times, and where numberless acute minds, perpetually witnessing the intrigues of ecclesiastics and serving as a clearing-house for all scandals, were unhindered in all that they said or wrote by any responsibility of office or by the standards of sobriety which common consent, sanctioned by law, has imposed upon all who publish books at the present day. His criticisms, therefore, like those which a wronged or wounded man utters in private conversation, are often thrown out with no ulterior purpose whatsoever.

Beyond this, it is almost always singularly difficult to grip one of Gerald's stories and (to use the phrase) nail it to the counter. When is he telling the exact truth concerning an incident of which he has himself been witness? When is he recording a mass of hearsay accretions which have crystallized round a core of fact? When is he merely retailing a legend so remote from the facts as to be little more than a fabliau or a ben trovato? On occasion the reader can be tolerably certain of the answer to such questions; more often he is forced to leave the anecdote in a kind of penumbra which conceals the boundaries of fact and fiction.

With regard to the black monks, the first and on the whole the most severe charges are brought against the cells where only a few monks, or even only a single individual, were in residence. Here it is probable that facts went far to justify the indictment. These small country priories and cells, unorganized as monasteries and accomplishing no work for the Church, had no sufficient spiritual raison d'être; inevitably their personnel was inferior, and their observance incomplete; under such conditions worse would often follow.

After the cells, Gerald criticizes the rich diet of the black monks. Excess in matters of food and drink has always formed a wide and attractive target for satirists from Lucilius and Juvenal to Dryden and Swift. Eighty years before Gerald wrote, the topic of Cluniac meals had supplied material for some of Bernard's most brilliant pages; the monastic good cheer was to continue as a commonplace until the Reformation and beyond, and the evidence of the chronicles of the twelfth century shows that in many, perhaps in most, of the great black monk houses the food was varied and doubtless excellently cooked, and that a hierarchy of feasts had been established with extra pittances and rounds of wine. It does not, however, strengthen Gerald's case that in a book not completed in 1215 he should take as his three palmary examples an incident at Christ Church in 1180, another at Winchester of the same date, and a third, apparently at Hereford, which may indeed rest upon a substratum of truth, but which reads like an adaptation of the fourth satire of Juvenal.²⁶

After gluttony, incontinence. In this matter Gerald presents his readers with a few highly coloured stories concerning individuals, almost always unnamed, and a number of general charges. Thus after describing the worldly and luxurious life of an unnamed abbot, in language which reads like a romance,²⁷ he goes on to insinuate unnatural vice,²⁸ and continues to give in great detail, but with no names, two cases of this. He then passes to a consideration of the misdeeds of the three abbots of Evesham, Bardney and Westminster, who were deposed by the legate Nicholas of Tusculum; in the case of Evesham, which can be checked from Marleberge's narrative, he is substantially correct, though he gives no adequate account of the previous history of Roger Norreys or of the detestation with which he was regarded by the communities of Christ Church and Evesham; of the other two he tells us nothing definite.²⁹ It must indeed be confessed that Gerald's method of procedure is in effect more odious than he perhaps intended, for he insinuates that depravity was widespread, whereas the chronicles and other literature of c. 1200 allow no such general judgment to be passed, and while during his lifetime his attacks were read by a few friends only, they are at the present day in the hands of all interested in medieval history. We have, therefore, no contemporary rejoinder to his strictures, and few are sufficiently familiar with all the sources to criticize them adequately for themselves.

He proposes as a remedy the institution of a system of chapters and visitation, preferably by the Ordinary, on the Cistercian model. The suggestion was not original; as has been seen, it was familiar in Curial circles and was the goal at which Innocent III consistently aimed, and no doubt was a commonplace in all gatherings of clerks. Gerald undoubtedly exaggerates the probable efficacy of the system, while he ignores the causes, legal and historical, lying behind the instances of exemption which he so deplores. Nor does he seem to have reflected that the principal cases of scandal to which he refers were the outcome of the general antinomian struggle for independence of which his own assertion of metropolitan rights at Menevia was such a striking instance. In the event, he lived to see and welcome the application of the visitation system to the black monks.

With regard to the white monks, Gerald's judgments are in some important respects different from those he pronounces on the black. In the first place, as he himself remarks, the Cistercians had no cells, which were always a special object of his attack; next, they were in possession of visitatorial and legislative machinery of whose efficacy he himself had made more than one reassuring test.³⁰ Consequently, though some of his bitterest abuse is directed to the address of individual Cistercians of whom he had at one time or another fallen foul, there can be no question but that on the whole the white monks fare better at his hands than the black. If we set on one side the many stories of the misdeeds of Welsh abbots and the tale of his own wrongs, of which the whole litany from William Wibert to the lost library is rehearsed anew more than once,³¹ and do not take too seriously some anecdotes of Cistercian good cheer,³² the head and front of their offending is avarice, which leads only too often to injustice. To own fair acres in the neighbourhood of an abbey of the white monks, so Gerald gives his reader to understand, was to invite a repetition of the history of Naboth's vineyard, and he quotes more than once the appropriate line of Virgil.³³ As Whitland did by Tallach, and Strata Florida by a poor nunnery under Plynlimmon, so did Aberconway by the simple culdees of Beddgelert.³⁴ Sometimes even the brood preys on itself, and he tells us of the absorption of Trescoit by the rich Dore and of the persecution of Neath by Margam;³⁵ more often parish churches are left desolate by the white monks. How far the particular stories, and the interpretation put upon them, are merely the issue of scandal or jealousy, it is quite impossible to determine. The Cistercians were excellent farmers, as all contemporaries admit and as Gerald himself in more than one emphatic passage asserts, and, as modern commercial life has repeatedly shown, it is not always easy to distinguish between the jealous complaints of inefficient competitors and the charges of real injustice brought against an all-powerful syndicate or a multiple-branch store. Gerald, we may think, like the children in the market-place, is not easy to satisfy: the black monks are a scandal to him by reason of their inefficiency, the white by their sound business methods. To modern readers in particular, too long familiar with a countryside where agricultural prosperity is a thing of the past, the picture so often given in his pages of the smiling, rich and well-ordered fields and pastures, which gave to the environs of a Cistercian abbey the appearance of a rose of Sharon in the desert, outweighs the charge of adding field to field, and although to-day we may feel deeply the loss of the smallest fringe of woodland, it is difficult to accept as a crime the deforestation of three hundred acres of a remote Herefordshire valley in the twelfth century, even though its sylvan charms and sporting possibilities are set out in some of the most vivid pages that Gerald ever penned.³⁶

Yet for all his accusations and abuse, some of which is indeed harsh enough, and although he asserts more than once that the white habit has become black as soot³⁷ with stains that resist all the fuller's art and the strength of the most mordant lye,³⁸ Gerald retains a very deep reverence for the white monks and an earnest hope that all may yet be well. Whether this is merely the outcome of a desire to witness to the truth, or whether he never wholly forgot the pleasant associations of the distant past, and old friendship and kindnesses at Margam³⁹ and Strata Florida, we cannot tell. Whatever the motive, the fact remains, and one of the most eloquent and sincere passages in the Speculum Ecclesiae is a prayer that the alms and works of charity of the Cistercians may even now bring about an outpouring of grace that shall leave the order in the snow-white purity of its origins.⁴⁰ Indeed, the more carefully his pages are studied, the stronger is the impression received that essentially the white monks were still true to the spirit of prayer, work and charity, and that Gerald realized this and wished to record it, as he recorded many times the vigilance and success of their system of discipline.

Besides his charges against the monks, Gerald makes one or two general judgments of considerable interest. Thus he states (or perhaps introduces another as stating) that the black monks on the Continent are far more remiss than their English brethren, while on the other hand the French Cistercians are stricter than the English. He adds as an incontrovertible fact that the monks who come from France to cells belonging to their abbeys are far worse offenders against their Rule than English monks in cells.⁴¹ Here, as always, it is not easy to say whether Gerald is giving his mature and settled opinion. Probably, in this case, he is; probably, also, his opinion is tolerably correct. The reader of these pages will have had ample opportunity of forming a judgment on the black monks; as regards the Cistercians, no student of English monastic history in the twelfth century can have failed to remark on a certain absence of distinction in the annals of the white monks, with the important exception of the houses north of the Humber and the Ribble, with which Gerald had no firsthand acquaintance.

Gerald never wavers in his admiration for the Carthusians,⁴² and he has a predilection (shared by Henry II) for the order of Grandmont, though in his account of the origins and constitutions of these he shows the same lack of exact information as in his narrative of the origins of Cîteaux. He has besides some characteristic personal likings. He had lived at Lincoln when Hugh of Avalon was bishop, and although there is nothing to show that he had close or indeed any personal relations with the saint, he must have had numberless opportunities of speaking with his entourage. It is therefore somewhat surprising that his brief life of St Hugh, though unexceptionable in tone, should be a colourless piece of work which adds little to our knowledge either of the saint or of his biographer.⁴³ More personal is his persevering memory of Baldwin's early kindness, repeated during their Welsh tour and never forgotten, though from time to time Gerald lets fall derogatory expressions concerning the archbishop.⁴⁴ His constant admiration for Henry of Winchester is less comprehensible. It is possible, though there is no explicit evidence, that Gerald himself had received some kindness at the hands of the old bishop in the mellow days at the end of his life; certainly he lavishes on him praise such as he gives to no other,⁴⁵ though Henry's conduct in the past had offended against so many of the monastic proprieties.

Gerald of Wales, throughout his works and in all the changes of his life, remains something of an enigma, a strange compound of prejudice and perspicacity, of superficiality and insight, of vanity and zeal, of fervent aspirations and unworthy utterances. He learnt nothing and forgot nothing, and though he was seventy or more when he revised his latest writings they are as inconsistent and irresponsible as his earliest works. It is perhaps this very characteristic of irresponsibility, joined to the vivacity which never wholly forsook him, that has caused almost all who have studied his pages to extend to him an indulgence usually accorded only to the warm and hasty aberrations of youth, and to allude to his prejudices, his obscenities and his calumnies in a tone of banter. Yet Gerald must bear the responsibility of having aspersed the fair fame of a whole class of men, the majority of whom were sincerely striving to follow a high ideal, and of having done so in a way which gave those whom he attacked no means of replying, and which has poisoned the ears of countless readers in later centuries. Lightly as all profess to treat him, more than one weighty writer on monastic history has insensibly adopted Gerald's opinions and conclusions, and he has thus come to occupy among the sources of history a position of importance which is out of proportion to his worth. When all is said, it is not easy to account for his extreme animus against the monastic body. Had he himself, in his youth, felt the call to a perfect following of Christ, and chosen instead the ambitious career of preferment and celebrity?⁴⁶

V

In any discussion of the literature that proceeded from the court circle of clerks the name of Walter Map is necessarily associated with that of Gerald of Wales. The careers of the two men had many points of similarity and contact. Both were by blood and birth connected with Wales;⁴⁷ both had studied in Paris;⁴⁸ both were archdeacons; both spent much time at court; both were familiar with the Lincoln of St Hugh;⁴⁹ both strove unsuccessfully for the office of bishop,⁵⁰ and they shared many of the tastes and opinions that counted for much in their lives.

Map, it would seem, was the older of the two by a few years. If less complex and less sympathetic in character than Gerald, he was possessed of a keener wit and a more decisive temperament. Gerald's admiration for him was very great, and we owe to this almost all that is known of Map's pursuits and qualities save what can be deduced from his own pages; indeed, it is possible that the brilliant, hard, cynical mind of the archdeacon of Oxford had a moulding influence on Gerald's more receptive spirit.⁵¹ Certainly, with his great natural talents and his friendship with Henry II, Map must have been a force of considerable power in creating a “public opinion” in the administrative circles where the highest figures in lay and ecclesiastical life met and mixed. If Gerald is more critical of the black than of the white monks, Map's hostility, so far as it can be traced in his book De Nugis Curialium and the few genuine poems, is reserved almost exclusively for the Cistercians, against whom he proceeds in a chapter of great violence, consisting, like similar passages in the Speculum Ecclesiae, of bitter general accusations, mingled with a number of isolated examples and a fair proportion of ribaldry, a compound which Gerald thinks fit to characterize as urbane and witty criticism, seasoned with the salt of wisdom.⁵² As with Gerald, so with Map, the primary cause of this hostility must probably be assigned to the recollection of a wrong, real or imaginary, suffered at the hands of the white monks, for there is no reason to disbelieve the account his friend gives of the loss incurred by Map in his revenues from the church of Westbury in Dean as a result of the alleged encroachments of the neighbouring Cistercians of Flaxley.⁵³ It was in consequence of this supposed act of injustice that Map added to his judge's oath, by which he swore to do justice to all, an excepting clause covering Jews and Cistercians.⁵⁴ Of the two bodies, in fact, Map professed to prefer the former; when Gerald related to him a sad story of two white monks becoming Jews Map remarked that it was strange that, having decided to change their lives for the better, they had not made the conversion complete by becoming Christians.⁵⁵ These, and other still more bitter, coarse and heartless gibes were not mere flashes of wit or outbursts of passion, but the manifestation of a deep and implacable hostility⁵⁶ on the part of one who was no private satirist, but a man in high public office, who had the ear of the king himself.

Map's principal charge is one of shameless and remorseless avarice. The Cistercians will do anything to extend the boundaries of their land;⁵⁷ their rule requires that they should dwell in a solitude; if, therefore, they cannot find one, they make it for themselves;⁵⁸ they destroy villages and churches and allow the outcast inhabitants to die of want or earn a little bread by crime or shame; they forge their charters and cozen the rightful owners of the land, and the fields of waving corn cover the site of a populous village.⁵⁹ Map does not share Gerald's admiration for Cistercian hospitality and charity; as to the former, it is only bestowed on the great and the gullible, not on the children of Egypt; as for the latter, they dispense in alms to Paul far less than they have robbed from Peter.⁶⁰ They vaunt their hard labour, rough clothes and coarse food,⁶¹ but the upland Welsh have a far more rough and laborious life than the white monks.⁶² And Map passes to a piece of ribaldry on the abandonment of breeches by the Cistercians.

It would be uncritical to treat as a serious pronouncement such an outpouring as this. We are indeed justified in adding Map as one more witness to the undoubted tendency among the white monks throughout England, and especially perhaps in Wales, to carry their spirit of thrift and keen husbandry to excess, and to throw the cloak of obedience to the letter of their rule over actions whose real motive was esprit de corps and aggrandizement. But Map, perhaps even more than Gerald, lacked both balance of mind and ethical sobriety; to the deeper aspects of the Christian life he was quite blind, and therefore failed to see any of its manifestations in those around him.⁶³

From Map, as from Gerald, a number of details can be gleaned. He also, but more correctly than his friend, describes the origins of Cistercians, Carthusians and Grandimontines.⁶⁴ Indeed, points of contact between the two are all but innumerable. They shared an acquaintance with Abbot Hamelin of Gloucester and Abbot Serlo of L'Aumône, an Englishman by birth; they both admired Baldwin, whom they had known when bishop of Worcester; both took an interest in hermits.⁶⁵ One of the most pleasing passages in the De Nugis Curialium is an appreciation of the work of Gilbert of Sempringham, who was alive when the words were written, but Gilbert had influence with Henry II, and adverse criticism would not have been welcomed.⁶⁶

VI

Gerald of Wales and Walter Map were but two outstanding figures in a whole army of contemporary satirists. The genre was fashionable among those who had passed through the training of the schools, and the mood suited the forty years between the murder of Becket and the death of John, a period full of disillusion without the great figures and ideals that had given their stamp to the first half of the century. To such an extent was satire, and satire of the monastic orders, the vogue in all polite circles, that a black monk is found among the leading practitioners. Nigel Wireker was a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, an exact contemporary of Gervase and, like him, an active participant in the struggle between the convent and the archbishop.⁶⁷ He was the author of several satirical works in prose and verse which had a considerable reputation throughout the remaining centuries of the Middle Ages; chief among them is the Speculum Stultorum, which relates the adventures of a dissatisfied monk and gives his judgment on the various orders together with the reasons which prevented him from joining each.⁶⁸ His criticisms, compared with those of Gerald and Map, are restrained, and the striking similarity between the three in the points selected for satire, and the facility with which a black monk is willing to satirize the Cluniacs, indicates that there was a floating body of commonplaces from which all drew.⁶⁹

Wireker accuses the Cluniacs of eating meat even on Fridays,⁷⁰ and of wearing expensive garments; the system of cells is also criticized, though with some ambiguity. The hardships of their life are the midnight office and the exhausting chant.⁷¹ The white monks provide the aspirant with nothing but the two dishes of the Rule, with much hard work and little rest;⁷² they eat no meat, but include birds in their scheme of diet. Their vice is avarice, which tolerates no neighbour and is never content with plenty;⁷³ less space is, however, devoted to this fault than to a consideration of the advantages and disadvantages arising from their lack of breeches, a subject which proved an inexhaustible source of material for coarse pleasantry; the frequency with which it is exploited is a sufficient indication of the moral earnestness of the writer concerned. Nigel then passes the other orders in review, dwelling on the severity of the Carthusians and the Grandimontines; the black canons are reasonable, the white, rigorous and simple; for the secular canons he has nothing but hard words. Finally, the Gilbertines, here as in Map, are spoken of with a respect bordering almost on affection.⁷⁴ Of all the orders he makes the complaint that they have forgotten poverty and amassed wealth, but his language here, as indeed throughout the bulk of his work, is very general, and it is clear that he is merely developing a literary topic.

Notes

1. Hugh of Nonant, bishop of Coventry, eloquent, witty and bitter, is clearly of the same family; so is Richard of Devizes, monk of Winchester. One can see the type evolving in such men as John of Salisbury, Peter of Blois and Gerard la Pucelle. There had, of course, been satirists of the monks in an earlier age, such as Adalberon of Laon, who attacked Cluny in the eleventh century in his Carmen ad Rotbertum regem (ed. G. A. Hückel, Les poèmes satiriques d'Adalbéron) and Hugo Sottovagina of York, who also wrote a poem against Cluniacs (Hist. York, ii, xiii), but there had been as yet, in England, nothing like the concentrated attack of Gerald and Map.

2. Gerald, if fortunate in his friends, has not been wholly fortunate in his copyists and editors. Some of his principal works exist only in a single manuscript: e.g. the Speculum Ecclesiae only in Brit. Mus. MS. Cott. Tib. B xiii, a manuscript from which several chapters were missing even before it suffered damage from the fire of 1731; the De Invectionibus only in MS. Vat. Regin. 470. The eight volumes of the Rolls Series containing his works are far from satisfactory, especially those edited by J. S. Brewer; the text is often untrustworthy, there are no historical or topographical notes of value, and the introductions leave much to be desired. An advance was made in one direction by the edition of the De Invectionibus by W. S. Davies in Y Cymmrodor, vol. xxx (1920), but even this text is not fully critical and the introduction somewhat tentative. Recently an excellent translation has appeared of the De Rebus a se Gestis (The Autobiography of Gerald of Wales, translated by H. E. Butler, with an introduction by C. H. Williamson, London, 1937). The article in the DNB [Dictionary of National Biography] which relies too much on Brewer, gives little light. The best short account is that given by Prof. F. M. Powicke in a lecture, Gerald of Wales (Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, xii, 2, July 1928, 389-410, reprinted in The Christian Life in the Middle Ages and other Essays). There is room for a complete critical and annotated edition which should both settle the text, indicate (where possible) Gerald's inaccuracies, and draw attention by means of cross-references to his many repetitions. For his use of the term Cluniacensis v. Appendix XXII.

3. The picturesque ruins of the church still exist; the site of some of the domestic buildings is occupied by an hotel, well known to anglers. The abbey is on the north (i.e. the sunny) side of the narrow valley, and Gerald bears witness to the healthiness of the place (Itinerarium Kambriae in Rolls Series, Opera, vi, 37 seqq.). In strong contrast is the site, still farther up the valley, chosen by Father Ignatius at the end of the last century; this is on the south side, dark and damp.

4. Itinerarium Kambriae, 41: “Utrinque tamen, tam hic quam ibi, quae aliis hodie cunctis praeminet ordinibus, ab Augustino instituta canonica servatur disciplina.”

5. Itinerarium, 43: “Hospitalitatis namque gratia, quam hujus ordinis viri, quanquam in se abstinentissimi, prae aliis cunctis, caritate largiflua in pauperes et peregrinos infatiganter exercent.”

6. Itinerarium, 45.

7. Itinerarium, 46. It must be remembered that the Cluniac, Peter de Leia, had already crossed Gerald's path.

8. Itinerarium, 67: “Prae aliis cunctis ordinis illius per Kambriam locis … caritativa largitione laudatissimum.”

9. Itinerarium, 59. This story in its various editions affords another good illustration of Gerald's methods. The abbot, whose name was Enoc, Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 168), not Enatus as printed in Gemma Ecclesiastica (ii, 248), was abbot after Ithel (ob. 1186) and before Gruffudd (ob. 1196); cf. Brut, 233, 245. He was guilty of misconduct with a nun and abandoned the habit. In the Gemma Ecclesiastica, written before c. 1200, Gerald tells the story a second time and says that the culprit after many years (pluribus annis) returned to Whitland, the house of his profession, and did full penance. In the Speculum Ecclesiae, written c. 1216, the story is told for the third time, somewhat more fully, with no mention of the repentance.

10. He gives the date in Ep. xxviii (i, 295): “Anno quo dominus rex in Alemannia detentus fuerat.”

11. Gerald gives the fullest list in his letter to the abbot of Cîteaux, Ep. i (i, 207-9). He asserts that he ascertained William's misdeeds on enquiry after he himself had become suspicious. William was clearly a man of bad character, but it is hard to believe that if he had been formally deposed for these offences Gerald would have heard nothing of his evil reputation during the months spent in his company.

12. Ep. xxviii (i, 300).

13. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 160-1): “Vindicis animi vitio et naturae Britannicae, quae vindictam appetit, incontinenti forte contagio.”

14. The date is given by Ann. Waverl., which records the deposition s.a. 1198. The abbot of Garendon was Reginald (ibid., s.a. 1195); of Waverley, John (ibid., s.a. 1196); of Rievaulx, the distinguished Ernald, sometime abbot of Melrose (Chron. Mailr., s.a. 1189); of Fountains, Ralph Haget.

15. Ep. xxviii (i, 294): “Consului [Willelmo] quatinus Lincolniam veniens, litteras a me retractationis praemissarum et excusationis acciperet.”

16. Ep. xxviii (i, 293-4) and De Rebus a se Gestis (i, 95-6).

17. Ep. (i, 213): “Ob has igitur monachi istius, nec monachi tamen sed verius demoniaci, alteriusque cujusdam Cluniacensem cucullam praeferentis [no doubt Peter de Leia] … nequitias, quotiens litanias repeto … etiam hanc … deprecationem ingemino, cunctisque fidelibus et amicis praecipue ac familiaribus ingeminandam in fide consulo: ‘A monachorum malitia, libera nos, Domine.’” The passage pleased Gerald, and he repeated it four years later in a letter to Hubert Walter (i, 298), where the editor renders the Latin untranslatable by printing abbas for ob has, and demonachi for demoniaci.

18. De Rebus a se Gestis (i, 95).

19. He was a relative of Gerald, who calls him consobrinus (De Invectionibus (iii, 34); cf. cognatum vestrum, De Rebus a se Gestis (i, 179)). Gerald further asserts that Hubert Walter put him up to draw off the support of other relations.

20. De Rebus a se Gestis (i, 104).

21. For the Cistercian abbots and Walter of St Dogmael's, Gerald's works should be consulted, passim. For Alexander of Ford, v.s. p. 367.

22. De Rebus a se Gestis (i, 117); Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 154-5).

23. Itinerarium Kambriae, vi, 47: “Sicut in libro quem de ecclesiasticis ordinibus, Deo annuente, scripturi sumus, plenius explicabitur.” In the Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 94) there is a reference to the Fourth Lateran Council.

24. Cf. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 161), where he says: “quae [sc. loss of the books] vix quidem a scriptoris et operis hujus auctoris mente recedit.”

25. It is impossible not to feel that the struggle for Menevia left Gerald's mind morbidly sore on some points. And there would appear to have been a real psychological weakness where sexual matters were in question.

26. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 57); cf. the story of the turbot in Juvenal, Sat. iv.

27. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 86). He was a monk of St Augustine's his nostris diebus (this in Gerald's idiom would cover any date between 1170 and 1215) who became abbot by simony of a magnus et opimus convent. I have not succeeded in tracing him.

28. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 87): “Absit autem ut Sodomae vitio … congregationem sacram … contaminari posse credere quis praesumat.”

29. For the abbots of Bardney and Westminster Gerald is our only source of information; the former he accuses of worldliness and incontinence; of the latter he says merely that he was “non minus caeteris duobus, ut fama ferebat, flagitiosum”, Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 92-3).

30. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 102): “Circumspecte vero Cistercienses in his et similibus cavendis sibi providerunt, dum et cellis per totum ordinem carent, et cuncta supervacua et honestatis ordini contraria per visitatores et capitula resecare curant.” Cf. ibid. 114, 121-4.

31. E.g. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 146-9, 156 seqq., 161 seqq., 232).

32. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 208-18). These stories, even more than the generality of Gerald's anecdotes, have a ring about them which suggests that they were old favourites of raconteurs in the circle of Map, and that they reposed upon the most fragile basis of fact.

33. Virgil, Ecl. ix, 28: “Mantua, vae, miserae nimium vicina Cremonae.”

34. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 143-5, 152-3, 167).

35. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 205-6, 129-39; et alibi).

36. Speculum Ecclesiae, passim, especially iv, 186-93. It is unfortunate that the manuscript is greatly damaged in these pages; some of the descriptions show a real sense of natural beauty, e.g. (iv, 190): “tam proceris arboribus ilicibusque rectis et altis per totum robur inferius levibus ac planis, et in ipsa solum summitate frondosis, et tanquam in vertice crispatis, naturali artificio quodam ad delicias intuentium ordinate dispositis, etc.”

37. He quotes more than once Ovid, Metamorph. ii, 541: “Qui color albus erat nunc est contrarius albo.”

38. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 117): “Tam tenaciter et tanquam inseparabiliter ordini sacro dictae maculae naevus adhaesit, quod nullo nitro, nulla fullonis herba, hactenus ablui valuerit aut deleri.”

39. Gerald, it would seem, had often before 1188 enjoyed the hospitality of the learned and discreet abbot Cunan at Margam, caritativa largitione laudatissimus (Itinerarium Kambriae, 67), and more than once he relates of him something approaching to a miracle.

40. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 117): “Forsan autem eveniet, gratia desuper inspirante, quod per ordinis orationes ac merita totius per orbem universum tam longe lateque diffusum ac dilatatum, praecipueque propter eleemosynas tantas et caritatis opera, necnon et hospitalitatis officia praeclara, quibus infatigabiliter cunctis praeeminet et praecellit, totum evanescet in brevi quod dedecuit, niveumque de caetero corpus indecens omnis et inconveniens, per Dei gratiam, menda relinquat.” It is an interesting example of Gerald's methods of thought and consistency of opinion that this passage is found to be little more than an amplification of one written some twenty years previously in Itinerarium Kambriae, 43. A good specimen of his inaccuracy may be seen in his account of Cistercian origins, Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 111-14).

41. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 45).

42. V. esp. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 248 seqq.), but his incidental references are all consistent e.g. (iv, 194) referring to Adam II of Dore, who had been a clerk and a black monk previously: “utinam … qui saltum duplicem … de statu clericali scilicet ad ordinem Cluniacensem, a Cluniacensi quoque ad Cisterciensem … tertium subsequenter in ordinis Cartusiensis carcerem, omni tam edacitatis nimiae quam cupiditatis multae [MS. mude] notabili naevo carentem, etc.”

43. Opera, vii, 83 seqq. The editor, E. A. Freeman, remarks in his preface, p. liv: “In the life of St Hugh we see Gerald at once at his best and his worst. He is at his worst because he is at his best … because he was simply setting down what he had heard and read.” The epigram is scarcely justified. The composition is neither Gerald's worst nor his best: it is colourless.

44. Gerald often speaks of Baldwin. Besides Itinerarium Kambriae, 148, v. esp. Speculum Ecclesiae (IV, 76-80 and 104 seqq.). In the last passage—a quintessentially Geraldic episode—there is the most pleasing portrait. The incident related must have taken place at least later than summer, 1180, for Baldwin was already bishop. Gerald therefore must have been at least thirty-four, yet he refers to Abbot Serlo's admiration for his fleeting youthful beauty: “eram autem tunc adolescens … facie quoque fragili … formae nitore praeclarus.” In later life his large and bushy eyebrows were a distinguishing feature (De Jure et Statu Menevensis Ecclesiae, iii, 293). Serlo was an Englishman a Wiltunia (Map, Nug. Cur. 70); he died in 1181 (Ann. Waverl., s.a.).

45. Esp. in Vita S. Remigii (vii, 43 seqq.) and Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 80-1).

46. Gerald once in early life asked of a Welsh hermit to pray for him that he might understand Scripture. The hermit, whose Latin was weak, replied: “Och, och, noli dicere scire sed custodire; vana, vana est scire nisi custodire” (De Rebus a se Gestis, i, 90). He had perhaps judged Gerald more truly than he knew.

47. Map = Ap = ‘son of’. It would seem to have been a current sobriquet for a Welshman. Walter appears to have come from the Herefordshire marches; cf. excellent article in DNB. I quote De Nugis Curialium from the Camden Society's edition, as being more accessible than the far superior text of M. R. James in Anecdota Oxoniensia, Med. and Mod. Series, 14 (1914).

48. Map had attended the lectures of Gerard la Pucelle (N.C. [de Nugis Curialium] 73): “vidi … in schola magistri Girardi Puellae.” Cf. Giraldus, ep. xxiv (i, 271).

49. Map was precentor of Lincoln before St Hugh's arrival; the collocation of characters is a strange one, but of the relations of the two nothing is known, save that on one occasion Hugh refused to forward Map's candidature for the see of Hereford.

50. Map was in the running for Hereford in 1199, and Gerald recommended him (somewhat half-heartedly) for St David's in 1203, De Jure et Statu Menev. Ecclesiae (iii, 321). I have not noticed any explicit statement that either Map or Gerald were in priest's orders.

51. Gerald's references are always laudatory, e.g. De Jure et Statu Menev. Ecclesiae (iii, 335): “Duo viri literati plurimum et in scripturis affatim eruditi … scilicet mag. Robertus de Bello-fago … et mag. Galterus Mapus”; Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 140): “Vir ille celebri fama conspicuus et tam literarum copia quam curialium quoque verborum facetia praeditus”; ibid. 219. How far the curious letter to Map, ep. xxiv (i, 271 seqq.) was serious is questionable.

52. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 219): “Ad sales saporifero sapientiae sale conditos urbanasque reprehensiones … W. Mapi … vertamus.”

53. Ibid.: “In primis causam commotionis et exasperationis hujus in ordinem istum palam proponere dignum duximus. Monasterium igitur quoddam … partem ecclesiae de Westburi grandem … in detrimentum ejusdem ecclesiae non modicum occupaverunt; propter quod maxime in domum illam ordinemque totum exacerbatus plurimum fuit et conturbatus.” Cf. Map's own words in N.C. 57: “Ego autem de his … quod scio … loquor nec inexpertus.”

54. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 219): “Semper adjicere solebat se cunctis … praeterquam Judaeis et albis monachis fidelem pro posse futurum.”

55. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 140). Here again Map's enmity, or as Gerald calls it his urbana eloquentia, is attributed to the Flaxley incident. How far the story of the visits of the abbot of Flaxley and Map to each other urging conversion, when each in turn was supposed to be dying, is simply a ben trovato cannot be decided with certainty.

56. Cf. Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 221) for a heartless, indeed blasphemous, action of Map which Gerald introduces with the statement: “noverat [rex Henricus] enim animum ejus huic ordini per omnia contrarium, cunctisque negotiis et agendis ejus quantum poterat adversarium.” Map, whether he wrote them or not, would certainly not have disowned the verses (Latin Poems attributed to Walter Map, 56) de Grisiis Monachis:

    “Duo sunt qui nesciunt satis detestari,
              quae exosa sentio coelo, terra, mari,
              quibus omnis regio solet devastari,
              quibus nullo studio potest obviari,
    Pestis animalium, quae shuta vocatur,
              et Cisterciensium quae sic dilatatur.”

57. Map (N.C. 53-4) mentions the tale, given in greater detail by Gerald, Speculum Ecclesiae (iv, 225-7), of the thorn-tree, a conspicuous landmark, shifted and replanted by the monks of Byland.

58. N.C. 48: “Et ut soli sint, solitudinem faciunt.” Had the Agricola of Tacitus been known at the time, Map would have had a still more telling epigram.

59. N.C. 48: “Ut … dicere possis: ‘Nunc seges est, ubi Troia fuit’” (Ovid, Ep. i, 53). For us, a sentiment exactly the reverse of Map's is evoked by such names as Chalk Farm or Shepherd's Bush.

60. N.C. 51-2.

61. N.C. 51. An interesting admission (here agreeing with Gerald) of the Cistercian discipline and observance.

62. N.C. 52.

63. One who could not only utter, with all its circumstances, but commit to writing some years later such a piece of obscenity as that in N.C. 42, can clearly make no pretensions to judge of spiritual things.

64. The two latter orders were patronized by Henry II. This probably accounts for the special attention devoted to them by the two court clerics.

65. N.C. 69, 70. Had Map also been to school at Gloucester?

66. N.C. 59.

67. The earliest authority for his surname appears to be Bale, and for his having held the office of precentor, Leland. His share in the controversies at Canterbury is clear from Epp. Cant., and from his works it may be gathered that he was a client, perhaps a relative, of William Longchamp the Chancellor.

68. Nigel has been edited by Wright in Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets of the XII century, vol. 1. The Speculum Stultorum or, as it came to be called, Dan Burnel the Ass, is the subject of an allusion in Chaucer which proves it to have been familiar in his day, as indeed is shown by the number of MSS in existence. Cf. Nonnes Preestes Tale, line 492, where “daun Russell the Fox” is introduced as saying:

    “I have wel rad in daun Burnel the Asse.”

69. As the context shows, Nigel refers to Cluny itself. Not only does he give the name of the mother-abbey in his first line (p. 83) on the subject:

    “esse Niger Monachus si forte velim Cluniaci,”

    but he goes on to describe aspects of the constitutional system of Cluny.

70. Ed. Wright, 83:

    “Multotiens carnes et pinguia saepe vorare
              in feria sexta saepe licebit eis.
    Pellicias portant, etc.”

71. Ibid.: “Surgere me facient media de nocte, etc.” A reference to the elaborate liturgy of Cluny, which led to all kinds of variations and anticipations in the hour of the night office.

72. Ibid. 84:

    “Si fuero monachus albus generalia dura
              hi pulmenta duo, sed bene cocta, dabunt.

    .....

    sabbata rara colunt, male respondente coquina;
              est ibi virga frequens atque diaeta gravis.”

73. Ibid.:

    “Agrorum cupidi nunquam metas sibi poni
              vicinis vellent pestis iniqua suis. …
    paucis contenti, non cessant quaerere magna
              et cum possideant omnia, semper egent.”

74. Ibid. 94:

    “Est et adhuc alius nuper novus ordo repertus.
              quem bene, nam bonus est, commemorate decet.
    Simplingham dictus de simplicitate vocatus, etc.”

Abbreviations

DNB: Dictionary of National Biography

N.C.: Walter Map, de Nugis Curialium, ed. Camden Society (1850)