Dear Graham,
I apologise if I have caused you concern with my 'sweeping web statement'.
Put it down to my training. I hope you liked the 'impeccably academic'!
(And indeed 'St Pulkers').
It is a received wisdom that St Leonard was associated with forests. I
have had it recited at me on numerous occasions by members of the local
history society. (I actually live in a parish which at the time of the
Norman Conquest was on the edge of a large area of forest - the Norwood of
later centuries - and the church is dedicated to St Leonard.... )
I have gradually accumulated a series of tests for the hypothesis. The
'stick it in a wood and call it St Leonards' is a nice story, and I was
initially impressed, but when you hear it recited mantra-like year in, year
out it wears a bit. I come from a somewhat less trusting background.
There are two tests for any hypothesis. One is that it is should be more
likely than the null hypothesis. The second is that you can't think of
anything even more likely. Thus there was nothing intrinsically wrong with
the academic method of the medieval scholars who put the world at the centre
of the universe. They were only at fault when they relied on it as a
received wisdom when something more probable was (re-) discovered and
presented to them.
I think we both disagree with the null hypothesis viz. that the dedication
of a church to St Leonard was a random event, independent of time and place.
It is clear from your map (which I coudn't print) that the distribution of
St Leonard dedications in Leicestershire is not random.
We have two hypotheses. The first that St Leonard was the dedicatee of
choice in woodland areas (a nice 'green' story); the second, that he was a
dedicatee of choice in the Norman period (i.e. imposed by an evil EC-like
continental bureaucracy) . You are the 'green man'; I am the evil
bureaucrat. Of course these hypotheses are not necessarily mutually
exclusive nor yet the real answer.
To introduce an analogy - you can use height to distinguish between men and
women. If you say that any adult taller than 5'5" is male and anyone
shorter is female, this will give you the correct result in the vast
majority of cases. So it's a good heuristic solution. However, as we all
should know, height is not the best criterion! There are other
characteristics that we can use. Height is not an inappropriate criterion:
it can be very useful from a distance. Close up, it is simply not the best.
There are other things we have to look for.
I apologise for going on at such length but it strikes me that in a way this
nicely distinguishes between the 'medieval' mindset and the 'renaissance'
one. And I will continue this discussion off-list.
The thing I was really after was a thumping good overview of the various
'vitae' of St Leonard. The reason I put my message out to the
[log in to unmask] list is because these people can tell you
what a saint had for breakfast...
Regards,
John A.W. Lock
As I remember, St Leonard's at York is inside the medieval walls....just.
Up by the library...
----- Original Message -----
From: <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Cc: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, September 23, 1999 11:44 AM
Subject: Re: St Albert & the problem of sources... take St Leonard for
example
> Forwarded message:
> From [log in to unmask] Thu Sep 23 11:38:09 1999
> From: [log in to unmask]
> Message-Id: <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Re: St Albert & the problem of sources... take St Leonard for
example
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Date: Thu, 23 Sep 1999 11:38:08 +0100 (BST)
> Cc: [log in to unmask]
> In-Reply-To: <001e01bf065a$73b79e60$44f8f7c2@johnlock> from "john lock" at
Sep 24, 99 08:00:13 am
> X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL25]
> Content-Type: text
>
> Dear John (and any other colleagues following this thread)
>
> The 'someone' you recall is me. I'm sorry if I failed to respond to a
request
> and hope you will forgive me if I appeared discourteous.
>
> That parochial dedications in honour of St Leonard are relatively frequent
> in well-wooded landscapes of medieval England, and that in _champagne_
> districts they are relatively frequent in 'marginal' parishes, are
observations
> arising from the ongoing work to construct a comprehensive,
parish-by-parish
> inventory of religious devotion (TASC). There is no reason to believe that
these
> results will be overturned as attention moves from the largely nucleated
quarter
> of England so far investigated to those regions characterised by more
dispersed
> settlement. See, for example, the statistics for Kent as between what
Everitt
> calls 'original' and 'wilderness' parishes (Alan Everitt, _Continuity and
> Colonization: The evolution of Kentish settlement_, Leicester University
Press,
> 1986, pp. 234-9).
>
> TASC is in process of construction, but a large chunk of the database is
due to
> be deposited with the British Historical Data Archive at the Univeresity
of
> Essex later this autumn. A searchable sample is available on my web-site,
and
> if you ask for Leonard dedications you will be presented with a list of
> Leicestershire cases which are demonstrably supportive of my observation.
If you
> would like me to go through them for you off-list, I'll be pleased to do
so.
>
> Of course this is not the only aspect of the Leonard distribution pattern
which
> is noteworthy, though it is interesting, for example, that some of the
medieval
> hospitals under Leonard's patronage were located outside town gates
leading
> towards wooded _pays_ - on the Kingswood side of Bristol, for example, and
the
> Charnwood side of Leicester. In these two cases royal and quasi-regal
lordship
> obtained over the heavily wooded _pays_ (naturally I'm avoiding the term
> _forest_ here because of its legal connotations in medieval England), and
here
> is a third noteworthy aspect, but again resonating with the 'vita'. This
> 'lordly' association, together with the 'forest', hunting, and
circumambulatory
> motifs of the legend, may be reflected in the saint's choice at places
with
> medieval parks or other associations with the hunt.
>
> Lastly, the chronology of Leonard's veneration in England largely dictated
that
> the places where he would be parochial or chapelry patron were those late
in
> obtaining their own churches. Those places were most likely to be marginal
or
> peripheral settlements.
>
> Now, I'm speaking here only about England. What the situation was on the
> Continent is for others to say. Hence the potential importance of TASC.
>
> You say of my interpretation, John:
>
> > It seemed overly eclectic. Leonard had the good fortune to be a popular
> > french saint at a time of great norman expansion; thus he was a regular
> > dedicatee
> > as normans developed their new english estates. Thus the association
could
> > be deemed fortuitous rather than descriptive. The latter wouldn't really
> > explain St Leonard's Hospital in York, say.
>
> I don't know enough about St Leonard's, York, to comment on its location
at a
> western gate. But Leonard's patronage of hospitals seems to be a
reasonable
> development from his legend. I'd hesitate to put it down to 'Norman
expansion'.
> Norman influence will go some way to explaining Leonard's presence. That
much
> is obvious. It won't, however, explain by itself the characteristics of
the
> distribution patterns that I've briefly outlined.
>
> Sorry I gave the impression of hoisting an unsubstantiated 'sweeping web
> statement' on the members of this List. This is too important an area to
allow
> such impressions to gain hold, so I will conclude by asking for your
critical
> comments with my thanks for giving me the opportunity to make up for my
earlier
> discourtesy.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Graham Jones
>
> ************************************
> Dr Graham Jones
> Leverhulme Special Research Fellow
> University of Leicester
> Department of English Local History
> Marc Fitch House
> 5 Salisbury Road
> Leicester LE1 7QR
>
> Tel: +44 (0)116-252-2765 (direct)
> 252-2762 (department
> and voicemail)
> Fax: +44 (0)116-252-5769
> e-Mail: [log in to unmask]
> Web:<http://www.le.ac.uk/elh/grj1/>
> ************************************
>
>
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