History Scotland Magazine: Review - Medieval Scotland, A. D. M. Barrell

Medieval Scotland

A.D.M.Barrell

Cambridge University Press 2000 pp. xiii + 298 incl. 3 maps and 4 genealogical tables 35.00 Hardback

In the ten years since the publication of Michael Lynchs Scotland: A New History, the output of research into the politics, culture and society of medieval Scotland has been tremendous. In this latest offering from CUP, Andrew Barrell offers a synthesis of much of that new research and has largely succeeded in assembling a useful and accessible text for both a lower undergraduate and a general lay readership. I say largely succeeded, as there are some significant problems in content and structure that diminish the books overall value. Some of these are presumably editorial decisions and arise from constraint of space, but the author acknowledges that social and economic history and Scotlands foreign contacts have received at best shallow or patchy consideration, and the whole of the kingdoms pre-twelfth-century formative era is compressed into a distressingly short introductory section. In a book that sets out to discover the origins and nature of Scottish identity, these are serious omissions and it must be asked if the weighting towards political narrative is the best means towards achieving that stated aim. The content, moreover, is skewed heavily towards the post-1300 period, an imbalance produced by the mass of new research carried out in respect of the later Middle Ages. By attempting to engage with this work, a dichotomy is produced in the text that serves to accentuate the climactic water-shed that Dr Barrell perceives to occur with the Wars of Independence, but it is a division made artificially sharp by over-reliance on one body of published research. This unhelpful weighting is most evident in Chapter 7, which takes as its focus crown-magnate relations in the later Middle Ages. While bearing in mind that this book is a synthesis and does not constitute original research, and as a consequence is handicapped by the comparative absence of similarly detailed research for the pre-1300 era, failure to examine this theme in the earlier period, where discussion of such relationships is central to understanding of the political development of the kingdom, reinforces artificially the sense of dichotomy. Selective use of the results of recent research has, furthermore, produced an awkward juxtaposition of traditional historiography with the new. Whilst it is important to highlight the extent of the revisionism of the recent work, it is unhelpful to compare and contrast the new research, based as it is on detailed examination, criticism and analysis of the primary sources for individual reigns, with the earlier work, which was principally synthetic and intended to offer a coherent overview of then current historiography. This problem is compounded by concentration on the over-mighty magnate thesis, primarily through focus on the activities of the Douglases and the MacDonalds. It is a theme that needs careful handling, both in terms of exploration of the development of the thesis, and in discussion of the rise of these families. Neither issue is adequately addressed. In particular, there is a failure to consider the origins and development of magnatial power, and, more especially, the kinship of these men with the Stewart kings. Consideration of this relationship alters significantly interpretation of their behaviour in the early 1400s and puts a different gloss on to the struggle for power in northern and western Scotland.

Problems such as these are offset in part by strengths in other areas, most especially in Dr Barrells particular area of expertise, the medieval Church. In this area, the coverage is more genuinely balanced for the whole of the period from the twelfth-century reforms to the mid-sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation, but, as with the political commentary, there is a shying away from any detailed analysis of the pre-twelfth century Church. It should be admitted, however, that a critical evaluation of the published research on that specific topic would have resulted in a further significant imbalance within the books structure. Instead, the clear exposition on the patterns of twelfth-century reform, the development of the secular and regular Church, and the even-handed discussion of the evidence to be extracted from the papal records serves to set Scottish spiritual life firmly into a European context and avoids the controversies that bedevil study of the early Church. The deft handling of complex material here, however, particularly in his very valuable discussion of Scoto-Papal relations and issues such as provision and pluralism, serves to emphasise the difficulties elsewhere in the text. In the final judgement, such variation in treatment detracts significantly from the value of the book. Perhaps these problems should be taken as an indication that the scale of the subject is too great for it to be treated adequately in a single volume?

Richard D. Oram
University of Aberdeen