Robert Bartlett (1) (1950–)

Robert Bartlett's Blood Royal is a sprawling history of dynastic politics in medieval Europe has much to recommend it. Rather than concentrating on merely England, France, and Germany as many "histories of the European Middle Ages" do, Bartlett's scope encompasses Ireland to Byzantium and everywhere in between (or almost; that he even touches on Iceland but omits Kyivan Rus' is odd). The breadth of his coverage, both geographical and topical, verges on the encyclopaedic, and anyone who's read his work before will be unsurprised to hear that he has a great eye for the vivid anecdote.

But I'll be honest and say that having read scholarship by Barlett before, I was expecting more from this book. That I can describe it as verging on the encyclopaedic also points to one of the big issues with this book: it is a work of sprawling description rather than of analysis. I'm not quite sure who it's aimed for. It seems too long and dense to be read by the kind of general reader who would also watch one of Bartlett's BBC documentaries, but for the academic reader it seems to lack much by way of driving thrust. It's not a bad book by any means, and I'll gladly keep my copy around for reference, but I wasn't as impressed by this as I'd hoped to be.… (mer)

In 1290, an English lord called William de Briouze ordered that Welshman named William Cragh be hanged by the neck until dead. Almost 20 years later, a papal commission would interview the formerly dead Cragh, and a number of other people, about his seemingly-miraculous return to life and whether it was the result of the heavenly intercession of Thomas de Cantilupe, late bishop of Hereford and then candidate for sainthood. Robert Bartlett uses the surviving commission records to provide the framework for an exploration of the mental world of those inhabiting the Welsh Marches in the early fourteenth century: their ideas about faith, politics, inquiry, time and space among others.

For those who are relatively unfamiliar with medieval history, Bartlett’s study will provide an interesting introduction both to the topic and to how a historian can use a microhistorical study to provide a glimpse of another world. He writes accessibly and clearly. However, this is not a straightforward narrative history or even one entirely focused on the eponymous Hanged Man (Bartlett doesn’t even venture a guess as to the physiological mechanism that could explain Cragh’s survival, but I suppose in the absence of any evidence beyond the commission records it couldn’t be anything other than a wild guess), and some lay readers may find it frustrating on that ground. (Although the fact that there are no ultimate conclusions or neat ends to the story is also part of the point!) For those with more of a background in medieval history, there will likely be not much new here.… (mer)