5. The development of culture

The 11^th-12^th centuries was a period of significant changes in English culture due to the Norman Conquest and the influence of Norman culture on the English court and the nobility. It was a transitional period from Old English and Anglo-Saxon literature of the conquered on the one hand, and the Norman French and continental French literature and the conquerors, on the other hand, to a new language and a new people, with their specific culture.

The 13^th century in Britain witnessed an intellectual development which established Britain’s reputation as equal to the continental centres of learning. Central to this was the founding of the two great universities at Cambridge and Oxford.

• First universities

Originally, the first universities in Europe appeared in Italy and France. A fully developed university comprised four faculties: three superior faculties – Theology, Canon law, Medicine – and one inferior (primary) faculty of Art where music, grammar, geometry and logic were taught. University graduates were awarded with 3 degrees: Bachelor of Science, Master of Arts and Doctor. Towards the end of the 13^th century there appeared colleges where other subjects were taught. It became a custom with students to go about from one great university to another, learning what they could from the most famous professors of the time.

Already at the end of the 11^th century Oxford was a centre of learning. In the middle of the 12^th century, after controversial debates at Paris University, a group of professors were expelled. They went over to England and in 1168 founded schools in Oxford which formed the first university. Students and scholars were attracted to to Oxford where they tried to recreate the style of learning they had experienced in Europe. However, the plague, which devastated whole towns, led to a temporary dispersion of the schools. In 1214 the university received a charter from the Pope, and by the end of the 13^th century four colleges had been founded: University, Balliol, Merton and St. Edmund Hall. There were already 1500 students and the university was famous all over Europe.

Another university was founded in Cambridge. It is generally considered to date from 1209, when a group of students who had been driven out of Oxford by serious rioting came to Cambridge to continue their studies. Following a Papal Bull of 1318, Cambridge was declared a ‘studium generale’ or place of general education, which meant that degree holders could teach in any Christian country.

Unless a university student was a member of a religious house, it was necessary for him to provide for his own board and lodgings, and usually he would reside with a family in town. This caused certain problems: the young students, who were usually 14 or 15 years old, were often ill-disciplined and needed supervision and financial aid as the landlords often charged them more than other tenants. That led to the opening of colleges, with their hostels and the first student grants which were paid by benefactors and charity funds.

The nobles generally had no use for university education in the Middle Ages. It was the sons of the lower middle-class families who hoped to better their stations in life by getting an education. Most of the English writers and poets of the time had university education.

• Literature of the 11^th-13^th centuries

The Norman barons were followed to England by the churchmen, scribes, minstrels, merchants and artisans. Each rank of society had its own literature. Monks wrote historical chronicles in Latin. Scholars in universities wrote about their experiments - also in Latin. Even religious satires were written in Latin. The aristocracy wrote their poetry in Norman-French. But the peasants and townspeople made up their songs and ballads in Anglo-Saxon.

The literature of the 11-12^th centuries was represented by the romance, the ballad, the fable and the fabliau. The fable and the fabliau were typical literary forms of the townsfolk. Animal characters in fables mocked out human evils and conveyed a moral. Fabliaux were short funny stories about cunning crooks and unfaithful wives written as metrical tales.

The influence of continental literature was marked by the increasing popularity of French chivalric romances – a form already popular in France and Germany, which revolved around the love of a knight for a lady, with definite religious undertones. In southern France the lyric poets of the Middle Ages called ‘troubadours’ wrote dancing-songs called ‘ballads’ (stemming from the same root as ‘ballet’).

The most famous poet in the reign of Henry II was the Norman poet Wace. An educated person who had studied theology at Paris University, he was a clergyman, a secretary, a teacher, a writer and a poet. His chief works were two rhyming chronicles written in form of romance: Brut, or the Acts of the Britts and Rollo, or the Acts of the Normans.

Of great importance was the introduction into English of the Arthurian legend, first in 1140 by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Britons) and then by Wace who translated History of the Britons into French. Geoffrey of Monmouth had been brought up in Wales and lived close to the myth of King Arthur, the legendary Celtic chief.

Later, in the 13^th -15^th centuries there appeared a series of legends about King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table. The best-known legends are “Arthur and Merlin”, “Lancelot of the Lake”, “Percival of Wales”, “Sir Tristram” and others. In the 15^th century Thomas Malory collected Arthurian stories and arranged them in twenty books.

Soon another powerful myth gained popularity, that of Robin Hood and his merry men, the outlaws who would not accept Norman rule but lived free in Sherwood Forest.

Norman kings, who were fond of hunting, turned vast territories into King’s Forest. (The word ‘forest’ comes from the Latin word ‘fores’ which means ‘out of doors’.) It was not a wood, though some parts of King’s Forest were wooded. King’s Forest was carefully guarded: peasants could neither make their living by hunting nor cut trees or shrubs nor pick firewood. Sheep and cattle that had the right to feed in the forest were branded with a special mark and their owners paid taxes. Unbranded animals, if caught, were made royal property. No goats were allowed in the forest as deer hated their smell and would not feed in the place where goats had walked. A man who killed a deer in the forest was either blinded, or had his fingers or arm cut off, or even put to death.

No wonder rebellious peasants, serfs and people who were driven to despair by hunger and need hunted in the forest, thus becoming outlaws.

Ballads describe Robin Hood, the famous legendary outlaw of the period as a strong, brave and skilful archer. Robin Hood was presumably a Saxon nobleman who had been ruined by the Normans. Together with his merry men (Little John – a gigantic manly fellow, brother Tuck – a stray friar and the others) they fought against Norman nobles and clergy and would appear wherever the poor were in need of help. Ballads about Robin Hood were composed and sung throughout the 12^th and the 13^th centuries. Robin is supposed to have lived in the reign of King Henry II and his son Richard the Lion Heart. All through the ballads goes the idea of Robin waiting for Richard the Lion Heart to return. Then he would lay his bow at the king’s feet and subdue to the lawful king, whose wicked brother John had taken his place while Richard went crusading.

• Art and architecture in Norman England

Art and architecture in the 12^th century were especially influenced by continental developments. In addition, crusaders returning from the Holy Lands brought back Byzantine influences. One of the four most unusual churches, the Round Church in Cambridge, is the oldest of the four surviving Norman churches built in 1130. The style was introduced by the returning crusaders in remembrance of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The production of illuminated manuscripts increased as new religious orders and monasteries were founded. The use of elaborate initials of these manuscripts was accompanied by a variety of depictions of events, monsters and people which became increasingly sophisticated as the century progressed, until this Romanesque illumination became Gothic. In architecture, the 12^th and 13^th centuries also experienced this transition, with the development of the early Gothic style. It was in this style that the original Westminster Abbey was constructed from 1245.

DO YOU KNOW THAT King Harold Godwin’s elder daughter Gytha married Prince Waldemar of Novgorod, later King Waldemar of Kiev, and became Queen. William the Conqueror, the illegitimate son of the Norman duke Robert the Devil, was also known as William the Bastard. The Bayeux Tapestry (1067-1077), an embroided wall-hanging in coloured wool on linen, narrating the events leading up to the invasion of England by William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings in 1066, is believed to have been made by William’s wife Matilda and her ladies in waiting. In 1940, when Britain was desperately fighting against fascist Germany, there circulated a rumour that King Arthur, who would never die, had come again to drive out the expected invader.

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