In the twenty-first century, political medievalism has been dominated by the right wing, including but not limited to far-right violent extremists. Scholarship exploring the medievalisms of the post-war far right has tended towards the very contemporary and reactive with, for example, examinations of the manifesto of the Oslo White terrorist murderer, the digital medievalisms of the English Defence League and Al-Qaida, US identitarians and other extremist groups, and the circulation of medievalist memes. These investigations are typically focused on the digital realm, including social media, and often on overtly political speech. Cord Whitaker finds roots of alt-right medievalisms in twentieth-century fascisms, but the medievalism of the far right between the end of World War II and the present remains under-studied, as do medievalist novels by extremists. Novels by White extremists, particularly William L. Pierce’s infamous The Turner Diaries, have received some scholarly attention, but this has without exception focused on those that narrativize violent White revolution set in near-future dystopias. In this essay, I explore the political function of the medievalist novels of Harold A. Covington (1953–2018), an American White nationalist and neo-Nazi. Covington articulated his vision of an ideal “Aryan” nation in his medievalist novels, which construct a male-led White nuclear family as a microcosm for the political state.

Covington was a prolific writer of both non-fiction and fiction, which he disseminated online from the early days of the internet, including on blogs and internet radio, and via print-on-demand services and e-books in PDF and other formats. He was notorious for having organized the National Socialist Party of America march that resulted in the Greensboro Massacre. Covington’s chief political goals were neo-Nazi revolution and establishment of an “Aryan” ethnostate in the Pacific Northwest of North America. To this end, he founded the Northwest Front in 2008, building on earlier ideas, including those of Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler, to first encourage migration of Whites to that area and then incite separatist revolution and the founding of what he named the Northwest American Republic (NAR). He developed and articulated this political project through both non-fiction and fiction. His most infamous novels are the Northwest quintet, a series of near-future dystopias that are “blueprints and fantasies” of his plan for achieving these specific political goals.

That the new receiver in 1795 was closely related to his predecessor underlined that the trustees were unwilling to place confidence in those not already known to them. Although nineteenth-century English Christianity was overwhelmingly evangelical, DWT was now synonymous with Unitarianism, lending it a sectarian character. Following the critical report of the Commission of Inquiry into the State of Education in Wales, DWT's schools were reformed and improved.

Richard Webb Jupp and the Trustees

Richard Jupp, the receiver, resigned in July 1795. Dying four years later, he was buried in Bunhill Fields, having been succeeded in December 1795 by his nephew and namesake the attorney, Richard Webb Jupp (1767–1852). Fourteen years later Webb Jupp had so established himself that the trustees readily acceded to his request for an increase in salary of an extra £20 a year, at the same time granting the secretary £10 more annually. In 1842 Webb Jupp was living at Carpenters’ Hall, London Wall, having also served since 1798 as clerk to the Carpenters’ Company, of which his uncle had once been master. If the taint of nepotism coloured his appointment to DWT, he was to prove a skilful and capable administrator.

In 1798 Rochemont Barbauld (c. 1749–1808) and in 1801 Thomas Belsham became trustees. Belsham had succeeded Priestley as minister of the Gravel Pit Chapel, Hackney in 1794 and eleven years later followed Disney as minister of the ‘most fashionable’ Essex Street Chapel. After Lindsey and Priestley, Belsham was the principal advocate of unitarianism. Perhaps sensitive to criticism, the trustees ruled in 1807 that, as regards laymen, ‘two Trustees of the same family’ might not serve concurrently, although at their next meeting this resolution was rescinded. In 1809 the trustees discussed the issue of canvassing for a seat on DWT, concluding that such conduct tended ‘to destroy the independence, to degrade the dignity and to disturb the harmony of the Society’. Had such canvassing already occurred?

The fact that those dissenters in London, with approved theological views, were few in number led to awkwardnesses in recruitment, although their circle was fashionably sympathetic to political radicalism.

Medieval outlaws do not often attract attention in reporting on twenty-first-century business practices. However, in the spring and summer of 2021, Robinhood Markets, Inc. was accused by the Wall Street internal watchdog Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) of “‘systemic supervisory failures’ and giving customers ‘false or misleading information’” in the use and marketing of the company’s stock trading app. Furthermore, FINRA’s filing noted that “since late 2017, Robinhood ‘failed to exercise due diligence’ before approving customers to trade options.” The company’s fine is the largest (yet) levied by FINRA on a company, and comes in the wake of a tragedy in the summer of 2020 – a young trader died by suicide after the app posted a massive negative balance to his account – and the so-called “Reddit rally” in January 2021, an explosive and deliberate stock-price manipulation of GameStop and other stocks by traders engaged with the r/WallStreetBets forum.

I contend that the startup, which began public trading of its own stocks in July 2021, deliberately uses superficial modern neomedieval interpretations of Robin Hood to attract and retain investors, to stand out from its competitors, and that this rhetoric is ultimately devalued and corrupted by its service to individual economic benefit. Furthermore, the company’s rhetorical presentation, and its famous in-app “game-ification” of trading (now reportedly mitigated), establish unconscious expectations for the company’s product that cannot be realized within the current American economic system. Indeed, it is possible that Robinhood, as a company, is itself also participating in these expectations, which fits within neomedievalism’s capacity for self-cannibalization and, more broadly, with KellyAnn Fitzpatrick’s view of neomedievalism as a continual process of building upon past representations with no intention or desire for historical accuracy. Neomedievalism reciprocally reuses and revises common cultural knowledge to provide a faint essence of what audiences perceive as vaguely medieval-ish. A neomedieval text, or cultural artifact, draws rhetorical power from that shared awareness, for example that Robin Hood robs from the rich to give to the poor, and discards other elements that do not meet the needs of the rhetor or audience. Accuracy is unnecessary. Consequently, wildly divergent interpretations emerge from the communal understanding of the core concept:

The Norse-Germanic branch of medievalism in Britain during the First World War has been strangely neglected in both literary-cultural and historical scholarship. Several studies have addressed that period’s rampant “military medievalism,” considering the conscription of the Arthurian Middle Ages, crusade motifs, and medieval historical figures such as Joan of Arc and Henry V to “do their bit” in the war effort. Ulrich Müller’s observation that “The Middle Ages and Medievalism have much to do with modern ideologies” in the Second World War is equally applicable to the First World War. Between 1914 and 1918, Britain and Germany diversely engaged with the strand of military medievalism that borrowed and assembled ideological permutations from Norse mythology (and its German appropriations, especially Wagner’s). British political utilizations of such material, which had been more limited and fragmentary in the nineteenth century, expanded precipitously in the early twentieth with the impetus of an unprecedented global conflict. Germany’s simultaneous deployment of the same motifs further galvanized the production of propagandistic materials that assimilated figures and tropes from the medieval Icelandic (Old Norse) Eddas. Political medievalism, and not least the weaponization of Norse myth in a high-stakes “war of words” that accompanied the physical conflict, played a large role in directing public opinion on the ethical positioning of the major players in the Great War. This study will explore how the plurality of uses of Norse myth in the wartime British and German press diverged (and occasionally converged), especially focusing on how Britain used Norse motifs across media to contrast the Entente and Central Powers, portraying itself as morally superior while vilifying or reproving their opponent’s policies, actions, and national character.

Before the turbulence of the 1910s, the so-called “long nineteenth century” (1789–1914) was a time of major artistic, academic, and socio-political growth in Britain and Germany that witnessed increasingly diversified forms and contexts for medievalism in general and Norse medievalism in particular. The medieval revival (with its accompanying studies of folklore and mythology) stimulated concurrent socio-cultural developments and more variegated uses of medieval and mythic material in both nations, which became politicized at different rates.

The practice of having two officers was retained. A receiver was appointed in 1762 and a secretary in 1766. Appointments of men from within a narrow field also continued. DWL's catalogue was improved. Breaking with precedent, a married librarian was appointed, and librarians were sometimes older than hitherto.

DWT Officers and DWL

After John Cooper's death in 1762, he was replaced as receiver by Richard Jupp junior (1728–99), an architect who had designed, among other buildings, the entrance and wings of Guy's Hospital (where George Sampson had once worked). From 1768, Jupp was also surveyor to the East India Company and became master of the Worshipful Company of Carpenters, a City of London livery company, to which he had been apprenticed. The trustee, Benjamin Avery, Guy's Hospital's most active governor, may have influenced Jupp's appointment.

Following Nathaniel Neal, the curiously named Oliver Cromwell (c. 1742–1821), a descendant of the Lord Protector, became secretary in 1766. This Cromwell, a solicitor with chambers in Essex Street, Strand, was also clerk to St Thomas’ Hospital. In addition, William Travers, DWT's agent in north Wales, died, to be succeeded by his brother, Edward, who resigned in 1769 when John Kenrick II was appointed. In 1767 Richard Jones (1728–1800) became librarian, having studied at Northampton under Doddridge and ministered in Cambridge and at Crosby Square, London. Jones was librarian for three years, then minister of Hanover Chapel, Peckham 1770–1800. In appreciation, the trustees gave £20 to Hoyle and £50 to Palmer, former librarians, for ‘new modelling the Catalogue’, and in March 1768 Samuel Baker (1711–78) of Covent Garden was engaged to finish the catalogue. If completed in six months, he was promised £200; if unfinished, he forfeited half that sum. Baker conceded in June that he needed another six months.

James Pickbourn (1736–1814) became DW librarian in 1770, completing the numerical catalogue in two years. In March 1773, Pickbourn was granted leave of absence to accompany ‘some young Gentlemen abroad to assist them in their studies’. The trustees engaged John Calder (1733–1815) as his deputy, reappointing both Pickbourn, though still absent, and Calder in December.

Whether because of its centrality to medievalism as a whole or to this moment in particular, no other theme in my seventeen years of editing Studies in Medievalism has attracted as many submissions as has politics. Indeed, I could easily have filled a fourth volume on it, and I suspect a journal devoted solely to politics in medievalism would have no problem producing quarterly editions. Every day someone somewhere publicly invokes the Middle Ages as a lens through which to see these troubled times.

Certainly, the authors in this volume, like those in the last two, have found many such references, made not only by professional politicians but also by amateurs operating in political arenas or negotiating everyday exchanges with their opponents. Taken in its broadest sense, politics can be seen as part and parcel of any attempt to persuade others, and common caricatures of the Middle Ages as a crude but zealous era lend themselves to aggressive proselytizing. Those attempting to present themselves as civilized and above irrational bias frequently label their opponents as medieval, while others – often including those opponents – proudly invoke the Middle Ages as a way to claim authenticity and/ or fervency.

Studies of such extreme perspectives therefore provide valuable insights into perceptions of not only the Middle Ages but also the moment in which the respondents are operating, and by “respondents” I do not mean only the subjects of these analyses. Given the challenges of remaining neutral in discussing such biased subjects, many of these studies also shed light on their own author’s or authors’ views of the moment in which they are writing. Indeed, a volume such as the one you are reading can be a particularly enriching survey of such perspectives, for as the authors cover much more range collectively than they do individually they also establish interconnections that, intentionally or otherwise, amplify their observations and conclusions. Thus, even as this volume’s first part offers new approaches to the politics that run throughout the second part, so the latter demonstrates how (well) those approaches work in practice.

Much of the groundwork for perceiving a symbiotic relationship between these two parts is, appropriately enough, exemplified and further explained by Elizabeth Emery in the first part’s first essay as she defends its title, “Public Medievalism: Fustel de Coulanges and the Case for ‘Diplomatic Negotiations.’”

In October 1723, the second minute book of the committee listed trustees with their addresses.

Dr Josh Oldfield in Red lion Street near Clerkenwell Church

Dr Ed Calamy near Old palace yard Westminster

Mr Wm Tong in Ironmonger lane

Mr Wm Harris in Alyff Street Goodmans fields

Mr Evans at No 15 in prescot Street, Goodmans Fields

Mr Zec Merrill at Hampstead Middlesex

Mr Ths Reynolds in Reed lane, Fenchurch Street

Mr Jos Archer at Mr Barber's of Brentwood Essex

Mr Isaac Bates at Hackney

Mr James Read at the dripping pan in the poultry

Mr Benja Robinson in Basinghall Street

Mr Fran Barkstead at the Bell in Stocks Market

Mr Benj Sheppard at Mrs Williams at Hoxton

Mr Geo Smyth in Clapton Hackney

Mr Jno Moreton at the Artichoak in Throgmorton Street

Mr Richd Watts at the White bear in Cornhill will not act

Choosen the 31 Decem 1723 to supply the places of Mr Farrington Mr Lorimer Mr Jer Smith & Mr Addee decd

Sir John Fryer in Love lane. Aldermanbury

Mr Jos Williams at Mr Moreton's in Throgmorton Street

Mr Jabez Earl in James Street Convent garden next door to the mitre tavern at grocers

Mr Benj Grovenor in Hoxton Square

In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, medievalists around the world began drawing parallels to well-known outbreaks of various plagues in the Middle Ages, notably the Black Death, which arrived in Europe in 1347, and the earlier iteration of the Yersinia pestis strain known as the Justinian Plague in the mid-sixth century. They cited other outbreaks of disease in Europe, noting for example that the bubonic plague was not eradicated for several centuries and came round in many summers for another wave. The last great plague in London was in 1665; a generation earlier, in the seventeenth century, Shakespeare and his company famously toured the counties or penned new plays when the live theaters of London were closed by the city fathers. These narratives were reassuring on two fronts in March and April 2020: first, medievalists were thrilled to have their expertise suddenly become obviously relevant and useful in non-misogynistic and non-White-supremacist ways, so they rushed to explain that previous pandemics had indeed struck harder in urban areas, and had given rise to rhetorical outbursts and various varieties of apocalyptic mania – just as this one was doing. Medievalists, improbably, had answers that were relevant and timely. Second, this outpouring of information, generally in legacy media outlets such as newspapers, but also in online blogs and social-media commentaries, provided a profoundly reassuring historical context to the problem of an incipient pandemic, and a context more directly applicable and comforting to the modern mind than the standard comparison to the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. Unlike that disease, the bubonic plague virus – like the coronavirus – would not freeze and vanish during the winter. Like the Black Death, the coronavirus would stick around both literally, attaching itself to protein receptors in human cells, and also metaphorically, as people were already discussing the new normal of post-pandemic living. However, although civilization was very different in the fourteenth century and doctors did not properly understand the transmission vectors of the disease, they did find a way to endure it and its effects, and despite massive losses of between one-quarter and three-quarters of the population in most European locations, humanity survived and found a way to thrive. By analogy and by precedent, then, humanity would find a way through in the modern era of a global pandemic as well.

This reassuring narrative also offers a brief genuflection towards the gods of progress, in two forms.