Herinnering in geschrift en praktijk in religieuze gemeenschappen

in the naming of a ‘motte de Warenne’ at Saint-Omer, exploiting the waxing and waning of
Anglo-Flemish diplomacy around the turn of the century. 16 The suddenness of the Warenne’s
renewed presence after an interval of almost one hundred years is as intriguing as its dying days
there before. What happened in the interval with regard to the monastery’s memory of its one
time advocate family is a complete mystery. On the family’s side in the mid- twelfth-century,
however, the only hints of knowledge of its Flemish (but not Saint-Omer) past, is the passage
in the Warenne Chronicle recording William I’s bequest of lands in Flanders to his son
Reginald and the reference in Gundrada’s epitaph, written at the time of her death but carved
afresh on her new tombstone, that she was a foreigner of ducal stock. 17 The evidence of
the Warenne dossier suggests strongly that it is almost impossible to distinguish between
institutional and family contribution to memorial traditions. Seemingly extinct memories
of ancestors’ old rights, patronage and landholding, were on occasion revived, sometimes
suddenly , to the benefit of institution and dynasty providing evidence that memorial traditions
are flexible constructs of artificial lives that can be put on hold as and when circumstances
required.
The thought of memorial tradition as an artificial construct with a life that allows for
resurrection after apparent death, discussed thus far in vocabulary derived from the life cycle,
poses an interesting paradox. The lifecycle of man from birth to death is a biological process
that by definition is finite. The Christian faith, and others as well, provide spiritual consolation
in its belief that biological life, that on earth, is just a preparation for the life that really matters:
eternal life after death. Against the background of this belief structure, medieval man clearly
had no problems with the birth and death and rebirth of traditions. On average collective
memory lasted three or four generations, or at least was considered to be able to produce valid
testimonies provided the witness could recall a chain of memories going back to a (great)
grandfather (even if the (great) grandson had never personally known him). Thereafter a new
chain would begin. 18
The chronology of collective memory was, therefore, a process organised by the biology of
the lifecycle. Three to four generations covering a period during which members of a family
could biologically have met and talked and exchanged memories of past events. Each life, from
birth to death, is a concatenation of events that carries emotions with it. 19 Birth equates with joy
and death with grief. Hence the life cycle vocabulary for death (or birth for that matter) is tied
16
Van Houts, ‘The Warenne View of the Past, 1066-1203’, 115-19. The first charter in which Hamelin occurs can
be found in Les chartes de Saint-Bertin, ed. Haigneré, vol. I, no. 325, where on p. 114 it is dated to c. 1182; the
‘motte de Warenne’ is mentioned in A. Derville, Saint-Omer des origins au début du XIVe siècle (Lille, 1995),
p. 37.
17
+ STIRPS GUNDRADA . DVCV (M) DEC (VS) EVI . NOBILE GERMEN:/ INTVLIT ECCLESIIS
ANGLORV (M) BALSAMA MORV (M): ¨Gundrada, offspring of dukes, glory of the age, noble shoot / brought
to the churches of the English the balm of her character ‘(Gundrada’s epitaph, first two lines). The passage on the
division of the inheritance can be found in The Warenne Chronicle, ed. van Houts and Love, par. 17 (Hyde
Chronicle, ed. Edwards, p. 299): ‘Willelmus autem de Warennia apud obsidionem Peueneselli sagitta in crure
ualde uulneratus Leuwias cum omnium merore deportatus est. Cumque sibi mortem imminere uideret duos filios
suos iuxta regis decretum heredes fecit, Willelmum uidelicet in Anglia et Reginaldum in Flandria, et sic in pace
quieuit in Domino’.
18
On lifecycle and memory, see E.van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900-1200 (Basingstoke:
Macmillan, 1999), pp. 27-28.
19
For a recent exploration of the history of emotions, especially in the Middle ages, see the debate on this subject
in Early Medieval Europe 10 (2001), pp. 225-27 (C. Cubitt, ‘The History of Emotions: A Debate: Introduction’),
pp. 229-41 (B. H. Rosenwein, ‘Writing without Fear about Early Medieval Emotions’), pp. 243-50 (M. Garrison,
‘The Study of Emotions in Early Medieval History: Some Starting Points’), pp. 251-56 (C. Larrington, ‘The
Psychology of Emotion and Study of the Medieval World’).
33