The Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpretations (review)

Reviews 241 Jean Rotin II; but apart from a general statement about the earlier traditions of the Boucicaut and Bedford Masters, there is little reference to those broader artistic relationships and trends which would have helped to situate this manuscript more vibrantly within the development of fifteenth-century French iUumination. Textual details are occasionally discussed with great precision; it is assumed, however, that readers are familiar with this type of personal prayerbook and no effort is made either in the Introduction or the commentaries to locate the manuscript within the developing genre of the Book of Hours. The very professional listing of all the texts in the appendix, however, opens the way for further research in this area. The black and white illustrations of the manuscript's pages are clear in detail; it is disappointing, however, that these are not in colour, particularly since these days it is almost invariably the practice to produce such partial facsimile editions in colour. Nevertheless the book is otherwise well presented and makes available both to a scholarly and more general audience the literary and visual contents of a fine medieval manuscript. Margaret M . Manion Department of Fine Arts University of Melbourne Morillo, Stephen, ed., The Battle of Hastings: Sources and Interpreta (Warfare and History), Woodbridge, The Boydell Press, 1996; cloth; pp. xxxti, 230; 18 maps, 26 b / w illustrations; R.R.P. £29.50, c.US$51.00. In this volume from the Warfare and History series, Stephen Morillo introduces an impressive array of primary and secondary materials to describe the events preceding and surrounding the battle of Hastings. This military engagement was destined to cause 'a synthesis of AngloSaxon and Norman elements of law, administration and culture . . . creating a cross Channel Anglo-Norman realm that was in m a n y ways more than the sum of its parts'. Nor were the medium and long-term effects of the outcome of the confrontation between Duke William of Normandy and Harold Godwinson, King of England confined to the 242 Reviews British Isles. According to Sellars and Yeatman, at least, in 1066 and All That, 'from this time onwards England stopped being conquered and thus was able to become top nation'. The battle of Hastings has been seen as a major historical and historiographical turning point, a 'Decisive Battle', which changed the course of western European history. In his Introduction, Morillo examines the 'philosophical and cultural assumptions' underpinning this concept of the Decisive Battle: the 'excessive focus on the battlefields of history' and on history as 'shaped by the lives and actions of Great Men'. He succinctly advances the view that whilst the Great M a n approach to history has a long and venerable pedigree . . . [it] is no longer a very respectable philosophic peg for the hanging of theories of history'. Morillo prefers to use Chaos Theory, where 'small inputs can create very large perturbations'. H e hastens to explain that chaotic systems are not random: unpredictable they m a y be, hut normal laws of cause and effect' make changes in such a system expticable. Chance, luck and the canniness to exploit an opportunity are as important as the personal abilities of a 'great' commander; 'the first Norman king should be known as William the Lucky Bastard'. Mortilo notes that much of the significance of Hastings is retrospective and therefore contends that any historiographical analysis of the battle should be approached by attempting to see it 'as the participants did,~in the context of its past and present and not its future'. Through a series of simple maps, supported by text, he proceeds to reconstruct the day-long fighting and produces a persuasive version of its events. Part 1 deals with primary sources. The accounts by William of Poitiers (Gesta Willelmi) and William of Jumieges (Gesta Normannorum Ducum) provide Norman perspectives on the battle; the Anglo-Saxon chronicle(s) understandably record 'the events of that year as calamitous'. Florence of Worcester's Chronicon ex Chronicis, compiled some fifty years after the battle, offers an Anglo-Norman perception; next come the vivid images of the Bayeux Tapestry; finally, the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio, a work generaUy attributed to Guy, bishop of Amiens. All...