Barbara Hanawalt is perhaps best known for her work on the women of late medieval London, but in her new book she now turns to the city's male-dominated elite. Hanawalt's book takes an interest in the communicative construction of social consensus and order within the English urban sphere of the later Middle Ages, a theme which has also recently been explored in studies by Christian D. Liddy on ‘citizenship’ and ‘speech’, for example. In particular, she explores the role played by ‘ceremony’ as an ‘active performance of power’ that promoted ‘civility’ and thus helped ‘to establish the social and governmental hierarchy’ (p. 2) of London.
The two key terms of her book receive a rather brief theoretical introduction. With regard to ‘ceremony’ as a means of mapping relationships of power, Hanawalt points to Catherine Bell's methodology for studying rituals. ‘Civility’ is defined in terms of a ‘civil society’ that valued the peaceful possession of property, personal security and access to legal recourse, but also relied on loyalty to the city, the acceptance of the authority of municipal officials and ‘urbane and polite behavior’ (p. 3). In this context, a more detailed discussion of the norms and values associated with London's bonum commune in particular, based on Hanawalt's expertise in the city's history, could have added valuable comparative nuances to more extensive definitions by Eberhard Isenmann, for instance, mainly based on cities in continental Europe.
But perhaps the brief discussion of theory and terminology is meant to encourage a wider audience to read her book as a thematically focused yet easily accessible guide to London life in the later Middle Ages. This impression is supported by a convenient glossary of London-specific terms, but also by the first chapter, which outlines the city's ‘Urban environment’ in its spatial and social dimensions. The second chapter on ‘The city and the crown’ initially continues this sketch of London's structures by stressing its dependence on the monarchy, before turning to royal entries staged by the urban elite as a means of visualizing ‘the importance of the mayor and the city to the monarchy’, and ‘lecturing the king on the virtues of a good monarch’ (p. 51) by means of ceremony.
The third chapter on ‘Civic rituals and elected officials’ shows how municipal officials, first and foremost the city's mayors, were endowed with authority by means of ceremonies and symbols. Here, Hanawalt shows her detailed knowledge of the rituals that marked the annual transition from one mayor to another: ‘The ritual was theater, and in London, as in Florence, the ceremonies and rituals underscored power’ (p. 59). However, the chapter on ‘Rebellion and submission’ shows that the efficacy of ceremony in conveying this power was by no means guaranteed. Rather, Hanawalt's survey of court cases dealing with offences from slanderous speech to uncleanliness underlines that the maintenance of the city's ‘common good’ – and the defence of the urban elite's privileged status – was a continuous exercise.
Other institutions contributed to this process as well, as the last two chapters demonstrate. ‘Guilds as incubators for citizenship’ invested their officials in a ritual manner analogous to municipal officials, and thus began to function as an ‘extension of civic government’ (p. 106) throughout the late medieval period. The same is true for the institutions discussed in ‘Civic lessons for the masses’. Next to the most public expressions of concern with social order in the form of criers, bills and punishments audible and visible to all residents of London, inn and tavern keepers were tasked with ensuring the compliance of guests in the city, while those who wished to stay permanently received ‘basic lessons in civic responsibility’ (p. 138) through their inclusion in the wards. Parish guilds, finally, promoted mutual solidarity and charity, too, notably in the context of religious celebrations ‘at the heart of parish guilds’ (p. 145).
In the quite overtly religious context of a medieval city, a point that still requires further explanation in this otherwise well-written and insightful book, is Hanawalt's claim about the ‘secular’ (p. 80) nature of civic ceremonies staged in London. Certainly, the government behind these ceremonies related their rule to the sacred to a certain degree, so that St Paul prominently featured on the late medieval seals of the city, for instance. Hanawalt herself describes how a procession brought the newly inaugurated mayor to St Paul's Cathedral and to the church of St Thomas. In fact, scholars of German cities even argue that all urban rituals (and processions in particular) had religious connotations: citizens conceived of their city as a ‘sacred community’ (Sakralgemeinschaft) and thus saw Christian piety and unity as a central aspect of ‘good’, citizen-like conduct. Thus, if Ceremony and Civility indeed remains Hanawalt's ‘final book’ (p. vii) on London, maybe she can still be persuaded to write a smaller but much-needed piece on the norms and values – secular and/or sacred – associated with ‘civility’ and ‘citizenship’ in late medieval England and compared to the rest of Europe's cities.
