Forgotten Melodies
When the Normans came in 1066 they deliberately destroyed English chant, the last survivor in Western Europe of a tradition five centuries old.
1083
King William I 1066-1087
When the Normans came in 1066 they deliberately destroyed English chant, the last survivor in Western Europe of a tradition five centuries old.
1083
King William I 1066-1087
After the Norman Conquest of 1066, ambitious Norman clergymen lined up to do whatever King William wanted in exchange for preferment — and what William wanted was to eradicate English identity, bringing the country into line with the ways of the near Continent.
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THIS may be easily proved by what happened in the case of Turstin, of Caen, and the convent of Glastonbury.* This shameless abbot, attempting to compel the monks of Glastonbury to disuse the chant which had been introduced into England by the disciples of the blessed Pope Gregory,* and to adopt the chant of the Flemings or Normans,* which they had never learned or heard before, a violent tumult arose, which ended in disgrace to the holy order.
For when the monks refused new fashions, and their haughty superior persisted in his obstinacy, all of a sudden, laymen, armed with spears, came to their master’s aid, and surrounding the monks severely beat some of them, and, as report says, mortally wounded them.* I could relate many such instances, if they would edify the reader's mind; but such subjects are by no means agreeable, and, therefore, without dwelling on them, I gladly employ my pen on other matters.
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Turstin was appointed in 1081; these events took place in 1083. Orderic goes on to note how one monk, Guimond of La Croix Saint-Leufroy in the French diocese of Evreux, refused such an appointment. He wrote to William at great length and in no uncertain terms, saying that communities should choose their own abbots and that superior ecclesiastical authority should step in only if the community’s choice broke church law. See .
On the Gregorian Mission of 597, see The Baptism of Kent. In Northumbria, the music and art was particularly influenced by Eastern models thanks to the Abbot of Monkwearmouth and Jarrow, St Benedict Biscop. See How Benedict Biscop brought Byzantium to Britain. Some of the iconography of those days has survived in the Lindisfarne Gospels; but sadly, the sacred sounds of the English Church disappeared forever with Abbot Turstin and others like him.
The chant of the Flemish and the Normans was more or less what we today call Gregorian chant. As Orderic evidently knew, Pope St Gregory I (r. 590-604) did not devise this chant; it belongs to an altogether later time, when Charlemagne (r. 800-814) was King of the Franks. Apparently, ‘Gregorian’ chant differed markedly from English chant.
These events invite comparison with those at the Zographou monastery on Mount Athos two hundred years later, when Patriarch of Constantinople John Bekkos wanted them to rubber-stamp the Union of Lyons. See Image of Joy.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
What did Abbot Turstin tell the monks to do?
To abandon their traditional style of chant.
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Turstin did whatever William asked. He was ambitious. There were many clergy like him.
See if you can include one or more of these words in your answer.
INot alone. IIPlease. IIIPromotion.