Matthew Paris

But the image has also been seen as a neat summary of the career of Matthew Paris himself. One of the few, famous names among medieval chroniclers, Matthew has been remembered above all as a reporter on events on a national and international stage, the course and consequences – not least, the immense costs – of the Christian kingdoms’ crusading; the counter attacks of Muslims in the Middle East and Mongols along Europe’s eastern frontier; and the crises that beset the reign of King Henry at home and abroad. Matthew did have a fascination for affairs of state, the force of the personalities involved, the grandeur of the setting and the sheer romance of some of their adventures. He could not forget the story of the king’s brother, Richard, earl of Cornwall, being entertained by Emperor Frederick II with a show of Saracen girls dancing on top of rolling spheres. Matthew was an early example of a newshound, gathering intelligence of imperial, royal, noble – and papal – machinations and manoeuvres which are found in few other contemporary accounts of the first half of the thirteenth century.

Yet it was only a handful of these scenes that Matthew witnessed for himself. He saw the elephant in London but much of what he reported of the king and the royal family, their exploits in and outside the kingdom and their personality traits he picked up only at second or third hand. Nor were these subjects of rulers, invasions and conquests the sole, or even the main focus of his work either with a pen or a paintbrush. Revisiting his manuscript books and artworks for the new Cambridge Companion to Matthew Paris has highlighted the breadth of his interests, in the record of the distant past alongside the annals of his own day, and in the Church and religion just as much as kingship and politics. This underlines that what we have in Matthew and his work are not the scoops and snapshots of a prototype court correspondent but an exceptional witness to the quite different, but equally extraordinary world of the medieval monastery. 

Matthew’s writing, drawing of maps and painting of portraits, scenes and picture stories reveal more clearly than almost any other source the place of these institutions in medieval society. They were sites of record, of social and national memory, as well as arenas for announcements of the latest news. Although they housed those who had vowed to follow an unworldly way-of-life, there was always communication and contact with people and affairs outside their precincts. The several saints’ lives he wrote and illustrated remind us that monasteries were not remote retreats but public churches on the route-map of every devout layperson. That he wrote them in both his monks’ Latin and in the Norman French language shows the important role of the monasteries in mediating the multiple languages and cultural identities of medieval Europe. 

On close inspection, the physical features of his parchments and paintings also challenge the long-standing assumption that chroniclers, and other writers and creative artists, stood apart from their monastic communities, more attuned to life outside the cloister. Although Matthew not only composed his chronicles but also wrote them into his manuscripts, he did not work alone. Slight variations in the script point to teamwork; distinctions between under-drawing and over-painting suggest that while Matthew may have directed the design of his illustrations, he did not paint them all. Nor were his books and pictures kept confined to the monastery. A note on the first leaf of his illustrated Life of Alban tells how texts and images such as these were shared with patrons, to be read out and looked at in their own households. In fact, Matthew’s illustrated life of England’s most popular saint, Thomas Becket, appears to have been borrowed for use as a template by a professional book workshop in London making copies for private clients. Matthew’s master-copy of his Flowers of History also became a model for copies made for other monasteries in the south and east of England.

Living in this 21st-century age of rolling, global news-streams it is only natural that we look at Matthew as a forerunner of a phenomenon that fills our own horizons, but his true value is as guide to a scene which has disappeared from our world completely, the social and cultural ferment of the medieval monastery.