MEMORY WAS EVERYTHING in the Middle Ages: it was vital to the functioning of medieval society. Christian religion was experienced on the basis that the biblical narrative and the lives of the saints were accepted as historical truths; sovereigns held their domains by invoking dynasties that dated back to the origins of humanity; while families, both noble and bourgeois, and even collective identities, such as that of cities and nations, justified their existence through stories that guaranteed their deep and unbroken historical roots. Memory was the record of a past taken as a basis for identity. Thus, it had both a collective and an individualized aspect. In the twelfth century, Chrétien de Troyes explained how the Knight of the Lion lost his human behaviour until he recovered his memory and, with it, his identity. Remembering was necessary to human existence. Only by doing so could the present be endowed with meaning, allowing the individual to adopt a way of life leading to parousia (salvation), and avoiding temptations and false messiahs. Thus, memory was vital to medieval personhood when understood holistically and was a notable trait at both the individual and collective levels. Rulers wielding different kinds of power (political, religious, and so on) attempted to consolidate their position by promoting specific visions and records of the past that would help form a shared memory. This book sets out from this expansive definition of memory, which incorporates both personal and public aspects of the term in line with common contemporary scholarly understandings of the word.

History and memory were intertwined. It was important to follow the logic of a certain thread from the past to justify the prevailing order in the present. In light of this, exploring the manifestations of memory can be used by historians as a prism through which to penetrate the value system of a particular culture; thus, this volume uses memory as a means of analyzing the European Middle Ages. This project's two companion volumes deal with the allied concepts of identity and ideology as part of a larger project that seeks to map and interrogate the significance of all three in the Middle Ages in Western Europe.