Herinnering in geschrift en praktijk in religieuze gemeenschappen

and kings of England from Robert the Magnificent (1028-35) to the account of the White Ship
disaster in November 1120 when William Adelin, eldest son and heir of King Henry I (1100-
1135) died in the shipwreck. Special attention throughout is paid to the earls of Warenne and
the support that they gave to the Norman kings of England. The largest space is devoted to the
relationship between William II of Warenne and King Henry I. The crucial question as to how
far the Warenne chronicler may have covered the years beyond 1120 is impossible to answer
definitively. The new argument put forward recently is that the Warenne Chronicle was
composed early in the reign of king Henry II probably shortly after 1157, when William IV and
his wife Isabel lost the lands given to them in 1153. 6 The narrative probably formed part of the
appeal process and was meant to remind the king of the invaluable support his ancestors and
particularly his grandfather Henry I received from the Warennes, especially in Normandy in the
years 1114-20, the period which takes up almost half of the narrative. Although the chronicle
survives anonymously there are good grounds to suggest that its author may have been Master
Eustace of Boulogne, chancellor of William IV and Isabel. Other written sources are the
family ’s charters which have been published in volume VIII of the Early Yorkshire Charters
series and form an indispensible collection of data which allows us to trace the extend of the
family kin group, benefactions to family foundations and liturgical remembrance of ancestors. 7
The limitations of the Warenne Chronicle and the charters are that they provide little clues as
to the material and visual aspects of the memorial traditions and their decline.
Illustration 1 – Gundrada’s tomb stone (Southover church, near Lewes,UK)
Fortunately, and exceptionally, one of the actual tombs of the Warenne family has survived.
Gundrada’s tombstone, the oldest surviving tombstone of a woman in England, can still be seen
in Southover church near Brighton to where it was transported after its discovery in the former
grounds of St. Pancras Lewes (Illustration 1). 8 With it go two engraved leaden mid twelfthcentury
caskets in which the remains of Gundrada and her husband William had been kept
since their transfer to a new grave in c.1147 on the occasion of the consecration of the new
abbey church at St. Pancras (Illustrations 2 and 3). While William’s tombstone (known from
6
Van Houts, ‘The Warenne View of the Past, 1066-1203’, 110-14.
7
Early Yorkshire Charters, Vol. VIII.
8
F. Anderson, ‘“Uxor mea”, the First Wife of William of Warenne’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, 130
(1992), pp. 107-29; for a different interpretation of the epitaph, see E. van Houts, ‘The Epitaph of Gundrada of
Warenne’, in Nova de Veteribus: mittel-und neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed. A. Bihrer and
E. Stein (Munich: K.G.Saur, 2004), pp. 366-78.
29