"King John of England is best remembered for Magna Carta and military failure-but his fascination with gemstones reveals a different side of medieval kingship. In a world where jewels were believed to hold real protective and healing powers, John's treasure hoard may have been as much about magic as it was about wealth. 1066 and All That, written by W.C. Sellar and R.J. Yeatsman brilliantly satirises the then still highly influential Victorian and Edwardian approach to the writing of history."
"According to Sellar and Yeatsman, and therefore the generation of historians that they are satirising, England's monarchs can, and probably should be, neatly organised into two simple categories, good or bad. Interestingly the main criteria against which the worthiness that the Kings and Queens of England was measured against was their historical contributions to the development of parliamentary democracy and the then contemporary British political establishment."
"Such an approach to history almost inevitably involves the projection of the values, practices and structures of the historian's society onto a medieval world which would find them alien and almost incomprehensible. This danger is the primary source of Sellar and Yeatsman's satire which lambasted the assumption of previous generations of historians that their own society was the crowning achievement and desired end point of history."
King John is best remembered for the Magna Carta and military failures, yet his fascination with gemstones reveals a different aspect of medieval kingship. Jewels were widely believed to possess protective and healing powers, so his treasure may have served magical as well as monetary purposes. Victorian and Edwardian historians tended to categorize monarchs simply as good or bad, gauging worth by contributions to parliamentary democracy and contemporary political structures. Such value judgements often praised Magna Carta while condemning other reigns. The projection of modern values onto a medieval world risks misunderstanding; satire targeted this anachronistic assumption. Historians continue to debate royal effectiveness and legacy.
Read at Medievalists.net
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]