Description
Book SynopsisSeven hundred years ago, executioners led a Welsh rebel named William Cragh to a wintry hill to be hanged. They placed a noose around his neck, dropped him from the gallows, and later pronounced him dead. But was he dead? This book tells the story of this putative miracle - why it happened, what it meant, and how we know about it.
Trade Review"A gripping, educative and quite often disquieting excursion into [an] alien land... Robert Bartlett examines with verve, scholarship, and gusto the extraordinary story."--Maurice Keen, London Review of Books "Rich in drama, mystery, curiosity and coincidence... [Bartlett's] performance opens for us a panoramic window into the world of the Middle Ages and encapsulates an entire culture within the context of a botched execution and a theological inquiry. It is a virtuoso display of scholarship."--Jan Morris, The Times (London) "As well as revealing the mechanics of execution, the politics of a Marcher lordship and the dynamics of miracle, the testimony in the Cragh case enables us to explore issues as intimate and elusive as how medieval people remembered distant events and how they described units of space and time. Voices of the distant past can be heard again."--History Today "A delightful book... Professor Bartlett's 168 pages are ... more readable than most thrillers... [I]n The Hanged Man men and women long dead (and, in one case, resurrected) walk and talk across 800 years."--Byron Rogers, The Spectator "An absorbing book that is elegantly, lucidly and entertainingly written."--Sean McGLynn, Medieval History Magazine "It is ... a complex look at history from the point of view of a particular, diverse set of subjects ... that has the power to generate considerable interest in the medieval period."--Patricia Clare Ingham, American Historical Review "The Hanged Man... is a fascinating and well-told tale, well worth the reading."--James Given, Speculum "The author shows that memory is flawed--as modern witnesses all too often demonstrate--and is shaped by the fullness of experience... [T]he genius of this work is that ... it is a model for teasing every bit of evidence from a brief source to reveal the mental world of medieval people."--Joyce E. Salisbury, The Historian "The Hanged Man is an outstanding introduction to the politics and culture of late thirteenth-and early fourteenth-century Britain. I recommend it unequivocally."--Michael Cichon, Canadian Journal of History "The Hanged Man is a yarn in the best tradition, all the better for its historical provenance, a satisfying, engrossing, and remarkable read."--Michael G. Cornelius, Bloomsbury Review
Table of ContentsPreface ix Chapter 1: The Story 1 Chapter 2: The Questioners 12 Chapter 3: The Plot Thickens 22 Chapter 4: An Autumn Day 34 Chapter 5: Death by Hanging 42 Chapter 6: Time and Space 53 Chapter 7: Colonial Wales 68 Chapter 8: The Lord 86 Chapter 9: The Lady 97 Chapter 10: Narrative,Memory, and Inquisition 106 Chapter 11: The New Saint 117 Chapter 12: Aftermath 124 Notes 143 Index 161
