3 - ‘Since nothing endures here, pay attention’: Henry of Huntingdon's Historia Anglorum

Summary

William of Malmesbury may have been premature in assuming that ‘no one would object to some variety’ in his history. Henry of Huntingdon uses the term varietas only once in his Historia Anglorum (c. 1130s–50s), where it denotes an immoral dichotomy between thought and action. The word appears in a prophecy, purportedly by St Dunstan (but unattested elsewhere), in which the saint foretells how English morality would decline in the years leading up to the Norman Conquest:

Predixit nichilominus uarium adeo seculum creandum, ut uarietas que in mentibus hominum latebat et in actibus patebat, multimoda uariatione uestium et indumentorum designaretur.

(In addition, [Dunstan] predicted that a generation must be born so fickle that the changeableness which was hidden in the minds of men and was revealed in their deeds, would be represented in the manifold diversity of their apparel and garments.)

Henry's editor suggests that this otherwise-unknown prophecy may be Henry's own invention, and that ‘it perhaps reflects Henry's distaste for the fashions of his own day’. That may be true, yet Henry's image also invokes the long-standing association of rhetoric with clothing and, by extension, ancient qualms about rhetoric's ability to reveal or deceive in equal measure. For Henry, varius clothing is a sign of deception – a far cry from the harmonious varietas envisioned by Christian writers, and exemplified by Augustine's interpretation of varius clothing as a symbol of the blessed diversity of the multilingual Church. In contrast, Henry here suggests that varietas hides, rather than reveals, the world's truths.

Moreover, he fills the chapter in which this prophecy appears with a host of rhetorical devices that paint a similarly bleak picture of varietas. Henry employs antithesis and parallel syntax, both in the passage quoted above (e.g., ‘in mentibus hominum latebat et in actibus patebat’) and throughout the whole chapter, to suggest that the years leading up to the Norman Conquest were characterized by their varietas. Because the English behaved in a varius way, Henry explains, God laid for them a varius trap:

Genti enim Anglorum […] Dominus omnipotens dupplicem contricionem proposuit et quasi militares insidias adhibuit. Scilicet ut hinc Dacorum persecutione seuiente, illinc Normannorum coniunctione accrescente, si a Dacorum manifesta fulminatione euaderent, Normannorum inprouisam cum fortitudine cautelam non euaderent.