1 - William of Malmesbury and his Environment

Summary

BY THE LATE eleventh century, when William of Malmesbury was born, England was well along the path of recovery from the chaos which had followed the Norman Conquest. In addition it was beginning to benefit from the substantial, if sometimes painful, innovations made by its new masters. As in the realm of government, law and order, so in the world of learning and religion: the new ecclesiastical hierarchy was determined to sweep away the purely insular elements in English cultural and religious life, which they regarded as unauthoritative and barbarous, and to bring the country back into the mainstream of Latin Christendom as they understood it. The reforms which had come to Normandy from Italy were now to be transmitted to England; and the process, entailing the imposition of a style of Christian life and organization modelled on the Benedictine institutions and ethos, was to be carried out briskly and rigorously.

Not that the English were prepared to acquiesce in the loss of their valued traditions without a struggle. Initially it seemed as if the invaders would triumph by brute force; but as the years passed it became obvious that native traditions had not been entirely obliterated, and that it might even prove beneficial if some were allowed to re-emerge. Local saints and festivals, Latin writings such as Bede's, vernacular records such as the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and royal law-codes began to return to legitimacy and even prominence by the late eleventh century. The confrontation and eventual osmosis of imported and revived native culture took place (or is at least most visible to us) within the greater religious institutions of England, in particular in the Benedictine monasteries of the south. It was in such a place, and as part of this process, that William of Malmesbury was to make his notable contribution to both English and European literature and learning.

If certain of William's words, written in his middle years, are taken literally, then he was born in 1096. In a separate discussion below I have set out the considerable difficulties involved in accepting this, and propose that he is more likely to have been born about 1085–90. Certainly he was born not far from Malmesbury in Wiltshire, perhaps just over the border in Somerset, in or near the town of Bruton.