Guest blogger post

From Elizabeth.  She is fascinated with why adults spend so much time pushing buttons on their shiny things that open and close.  She opened my blogpost-composing program all by herself, and proceeded to contribute the following:

 

 

ujnnbbbbbbbi4rty;u0op[78y-u\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\bgggggg4oooo

 

 

9k]];io’.~*

k,j’n;.l’;/..’’’’’``’’’’’’’’3q2d1iB1`G2KQJMKK

QUL.;````````q!@

GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG15UI85Y5

   21`WW

DFGYYD,, 5¼66666S

HH3``````````````VCV CV XQV V VC ZXJK<

 

---------------------

 

I should also point out that she is very conscientious about her spelling, and called up the spell-checker at least five times while writing. She also tried to make a category for it (something like 23b4, I believe), but the silly  enter key was mysteriously stuck (possibly something to do with the fact that she was leaning on shift).

She is now performing similar operations with her little (musical) keyboard, and trying to play it with her mouth.

Comment moderation on.

Sadly. Tired of the links to suspicious auto-downloads that were turning up on every post, and the occasional porn. But in recompense I have removed the word verification thingie, and the requirement that you be a registered user.

Notes on the concept of history in Henry of Huntingdon's Prologue

In around 1130 Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, was commissioned by his boss Bishop Alexander of Lincoln to write a history of the English people. The result was the Historia Anglorum, nominally completed in 1135, but which he continued to revise and extend until his death, some 40-odd years later.

The prologue was written in 1135, addressed to Bishop Alexander, and contains some interesting statements about Henry's ideas of historical writing, and about the structure of history itself.

Henry appears to have three central ideas about history: that the study of it is worthy and improving, that it is structured in a comprehensible way by a divine hand, and that its shape demonstrates the ultimate failure and decline of all worldly things.

----

1. History as genre.

Nothing is more excellent in this life than to investigate and become familiar with the course of worldly events. Where does the grandeur of valiant men shine more brightly, or the wisdom of the prudent, or the discretion of the righteous, or the moderation of the temperate, than in the context of history? (3)

Cynicism would immediately suggest that, if you're turning to history to find brighter examples of "the grandeur of valiant men" than you can observe in the world around you, the history you're reading probably isn't very historical.  However, this not only imposes modern genre divisions on the twelfth century, but misses Henry's point. 'History' could include, eg, Homer, as Henry proves in the very next sentence.  A catalogue of the Ramsey Abbey library in the mid fourteenth century includes, under the heading 'Books of History', a volume of the Acts of the Apostles - despite having plenty of copies of the Bible and New Testament under other headings [2]. In Henry's view, the purpose of history is (broadly speaking) to teach, and he finds it a more effective tool for doing so than philosophy. 

"Narrative" might, in some ways, be a better term, perhaps with “historical” as a clarifying adjective when necessary. Henry’s estimation of its pedagogical value seems centred on the fact that it tells a story, rather than preaching abstractly.  As Jesus taught effectively by parables, Homer's stories and the examples of men's actions shown within them teach more effectively than the "many volumes of moral philosophy" that Chrysippus and Crantor "sweated to produce".  Narrative demonstrates proper and imitable moral codes "more clearly and agreeably than the philosophers" (3). 

The question of factual accuracy seems not expected to arise. Perhaps, as the events of history are shaped according to divine plan, a written history may be assumed to be true to that plan if it improves the reader.  And truth must surely be ranked above mere accuracy.

---

2. History as pattern. According to Henry, Homer's characters embody various vices and virtues. Ulysses is prudence, Agamemnon fortitude, Nestor temperance, and Menelaus justice; while Ajax represents imprudence, Priam feebleness, Achilles intemperateness and Paris injustice. 

So far so good – unless you’ve actually read the Iliad.  My predominant impression of Menelaus is not of his sense of justice; I’m sure Priam has some qualities as a ruler besides being old and a little infirm; I’d call Agamemnon irascible before I’d call him strong.

But the list couples them into opposing pairs: Ulysses/Ajax, Agamemnon/Priam, Nestor/Achilles, Menelaus/Paris.  And those pairs are supported and encouraged by the narrative – Homer sets them against each other, with the possible exception of Nestor/Achilles (though one might easily make the case for it, particularly once Agamemnon and Ulysses are already spoken for).  And the most obvious contrast between Agamemnon and Priam could very well be strength and weakness, and Nestor and Achilles certainly contrast in the extent of their emotional self-indulgence.  The competition between Ulysses and Ajax undeniably pivots on some intellectual quality, which one might choose to label prudence.  And Menelaus - justice? Well, if you want an opponent to Paris, and the injustice of Paris’ most infamous action, who else would it be but the husband whose property he stole?

It takes some jiggling and squinting, but the pattern is visible, once you impose it. Henry goes on to do the same for characters in the Old Testament.  Yet this is not literary analysis, but an observation of patterns in history. Man did not put them there, although he may have, through ‘true’ writing, made them clearer.  These events, and the patterns within them, were shaped by God,  creator both of the the participants in history and the medium through which it moves, time. And, of course, of the historian. This is how history is shaped. 

Perhaps this justifies the departure from authority that Henry allows himself in the structure of his Historia.  Bede is his primary source, naturally, but Bede does not anticipate the shape Henry gives to British history.  It is dominated by five invasions, called plagues, visited on Britain by “divine vengeance” whenever her people become too sinful or arrogant (15). The invasions by the Romans, Picts and Scots, English, Danes, and finally Normans thus provide for Henry a structure around which he can shape the events that precede and follow them, repeatedly building up a litany of sin and pride which leads to devastation and pain.  The most recent iteration is, of course, still being feelingly lived in Henry’s lifetime.

For Henry, history is the story of God "raising up and putting down peoples and kingdoms by Thy judgement, that operates sometimes secretly and sometimes openly" (17). History repeats, because the same hand is at work throughout – and that hand seems to deliberately create comprehensible patterns for the moral edification of mankind.

----

3. O Fortuna, velut luna semper crescis aut decrescis… 

There may be an implicit comfort in the idea of God sitting back and shaping history, but the rise-and-crash pattern isn’t a very comfortable one for those who live through it.  Henry’s view of history is essentially pessimistic, founded on mutability and divine punishment.  What was is lost; what is wil be lost. 

Early in the first book, Henry describes the geography of Britain, both as it is and as it once was.  He gives the names of "twenty-eight very noble cities" for which the island was famous once, many of which have changed or been forgotten, or belong to cities that no longer exist (13).  Then, on describing the division of the island into shires, he decides it necessary to include a list of their names.  For, he says,

with the passage of time it may perhaps come about, in the same way that the names of the cities just mentioned - which were once well loved and highly regarded - are now considered barbarous and ridiculous, that the names of the shires, which are now very well known, may become either unrecognizable or unbelievable.  From this it is clear how pitiably and uselessly we who live in the shires strive to make our own names famous, when even the names of cities and countries cannot survive. (17)

Not only their names will be loss, but their honour.  As the English are now shamefully subject to the Normans, so have their place names suffered a corresponding loss in status: they are now ridiculous. And from the vainglory of a people, to that of a shire, to that of the individual, Henry turns to point his favourite moral.

But notice what remains constant in this tale of ruin.  It is his own individual striving, his own achievement – or at least, that of the men among whom he now numbers himself.  At this future point he envisions, when provinces have shifted and been renamed, when human memory fails, he clearly still expects his history to be present and read to speak the names of the lost shires.  It is history writing which provides the link between past, present and future. Henry knows the names of the old cities because of the books he has consulted in old libraries, and we know them because we have read them in his work.  The people in his future will know the names of the shires for the same reason – and they will also know those of the old cities.  Henry’s work stretches from past to future, linking through the present, sitting in that privileged position that allows him to survey, however mistily, the whole of creation.  He becomes ever so slightly atemporal – and as such, he even rebukes his temporal patron:

And we pray you, Bishop Alexander, father of the fatherland, prince second to the king, that anything we have written well may be brightened by your praise... Here you see kings and peoples whom the lottery of fate has raised up and put down, but judge[3] the future by them.  See, great father, what has become of the powerful: see how the honour, the lustre, the glory of the world come to nothing. (7-9)

Is Alexander, prince second to the king, to be numbered among the glorious powerful, invited to see his own downfall in the pattern of Henry’s history? Well, technically he’s a member of the secular clergy – he is subject to the movements of the saeculi.

----

4. And one other thing:

History ... brings the past into view as though it were present, and allows judgement of the future by representing the past. (5)

This sounds familiar, but not in application to humans.  According to Augustinian (and Boethian) adaptations of Aristotelian/Platonic philosophy, all created beings exist in time and are subject to it, unable to grasp the past or know the future, existing only in a perpetually fleeting present.  God, by contrast, is not subject to time: it is an aspect of his creation, and he lives in an eternal now which includes all of time and creation. Every moment is equally present to him. 

The conflation of past, present and future suggested by Henry here thus does more than broaden the mind or provide the reader with knowledge.  It places him[4] halfway outside of time, less subject than previously to its constraints, able to grasp a little more of the course and pattern of events and guess at their meaning.  Implicitly, it also enables him to observe enough of time to at least guess at the ideal eternity on which it is modelled, and so glimpse a little of the nature of he who made it.  In short, he rises further above the beast and closer to the divine. 

It is perfectly logical, therefore, for Henry to continue:

The knowledge of past events has further virtues, especially in that it distinguishes rational creatures from brutes, for brutes, whether man or beast, do not know - nor, indeed, do they wish to know - about their origins, their race and the events and happenings in their native land. Of the two, I consider those brutish men to be the more wretched, because what is natural to beasts comes to brutish men from their own mindlessness, and what beasts would not be capable of, even if they wished to be, such men, even if capable, do not desire. (5)

The lives and deaths of these men, he says, are condemned to "perpetual silence" - they do not speak, or they are not spoken of. History does not include them.

---------------------

[1] All quotations are from Diana Greenway's 1995 edition and translation of the Historia Anglorum (Oxford: Clarendon).

[2] Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis. Ed. W. Dunn Macray. London: Longman and Co., 1886. Rolls Series 83.359.
[3] According to the Latin, this is the imperative, not an indicative sharing its subject with the previous clause.
[4] You know the good thing about studying the Middle Ages? Frequently, you can get away with just using the masculine pronoun, rather than saying "they" (informal), "one" (limited and stuffy), or that ugly "he or she". Given the overwhelming majority of Henry's intended audience would have been male, I think I can legitimately avoid the charge of slighting my own gender.

Hugh Despenser: a finger in every pie...

... and lo, the pie was then abruptly smashed and everyone did make a grab for the finger. And they clamoured over the rings thereupon.

Cotton Vesp. A xviii[1] contains a cartulary of Ramsey Abbey of the mid-1300s. On f. 113v there’s a list of the abbots from its founding (though incomplete) with a sentence or less about each. Except for Simon of Eye, abbot from 1316-1342. In place of his entry, we have a long and detailed obituary, amounting to a short biography or chronicle (pp. 349-353 in Macray’s edition). It is headed “De obitu Simonis Eye quondam Abbatis, et de diversis notabilibus per ipsum factis in vita sua” (Of the death of Simon of Eye sometime Abbot and of the diverse deeds of note performed by him in his lifetime); but the “notabiles” that the composer saw fit to record are obsessively, almost exclusively, concerned with money.

The first page and a half in Macray’s edition, after a brief introduction (in which we are informed that he spent lavishly on strengthening the church against “persecutiones” and “insultus”), are almost entirely a list of “Item adquisivit” and “Item emit” (also he acquired, also he bought).

The second section of the obituary is a more expansive narrative of his abbacy, but it is also heavily structured by the movement of money. The title seems to suggest a story marked by the conventions of martyrdom – ‘Placita et adversitates quae sustinuit pro ecclesia sua’ – but if so, Simon’s trials and sufferings are only financial. Even the grand narrative of national affairs is phrased in these terms. For 1326, the year in which Queen Isabella and Roger Mortimer invaded England, deposed Edward II and set his son on the throne in his place, this author reports that the abbot “sustinuit magnum certamen et laborem cum illis de Ramesey [the village] propter mutationem saeculi quia dominus Rex cum matre sua applicuit in Angliam” (351). The dramatic deposition and incarceration of a crowned king appears only as it causes trouble to Simon de Eye and arguments with the villagers.

But this next section in particular entertains me.  The monk writing is terribly indignant over what happened the following year, when Isabella, Mortimer and Edward III stopped by to visit.  The villagers got uppity again, and the men and women of Ramsey, because of “malam voluntatem versus dictum abbatem” (ill will towards that abbot), accused him of treachery before the king.  The charge was “ipsum habere magnam partem thesauri Hugonis le Despenser nuper suspensi” – that he had taken to himself a large part of the wealth of Hugh Despenser, then lately hanged.

Poor Hugh. To the best of my knowledge he hadn’t any property in the area (though, let’s face it, he had some just about everywhere by that stage), but his thesauri seems to have reached legendary status, especially in a country still suffering through the effects of the Great Famine (technically ended 1322, but all those abandoned villages and unsown crops and reduced labour forces take their toll).  Accusations and acquisitions naturally attend the downfall.  Even if Eye had not grabbed some (and the author doesn’t comment on that, because he’s too busy being indignant), it was obviously credible enough or easily enough imagined that the villagers thought it was a good accusation to effectively get the king on their side in their ongoing struggles with the abbey.

The most entertaining thing, I find, is that the author isn’t really concerned with telling the story of the accusation and its outcome, but rather the story of how outrageous and ungrateful those sorry little plebeians were, and how poor long-suffering Simon was such a martyr for putting up with them.  His last word on the subject is that “[p]ropter quae idem abbas pacifice sustinuit magnam tribulationem, ac diffusas fecit expensas pro dicto falso clamore sedando” – on account of these accusations that abbot pacifically suffered great trials, and it cost him many expenses to subdue that false clamour.

And note the terms in which his martyrdom is expressed? Good old money.

--------------

The relevant passage:

… dominus Rex cum matre sua Regina et aliis filiis et cum Rogero de Mortuo Mari, instinctu dicti Johannis de Hothom tunc cancellarii Regis, venerunt apud Rameseiam cum tota familia eorum, ubi plures de Rameseia tam viri quam mulieres, attendentes malam voluntatem versus dictum abbatem, in adventu ipsorum Regis et Reginae dictum abbatem false et malitiose accusabant et traditorem regni vocabant, asserentes ipsum habere magnam partem thesauri Hugonis le Despenser nuper suspensi. Vendicabant etiam mercatum de Rameseia, communiam in diversis locis, et alias libertates eis injuste ablatas et subtractas. Propter quae idem abbas pacifice sustinuit magnam tribulationem, ac diffusas fecit expensas pro dicto falso clamore sedando.

--------------

[1] Published in the appendices of the Chronicon Abbatiae Rameseiensis, which should be called the Liber Benefactorum Rameseiensis, as the main manuscript calls itself. Ed. W. Dunn Macray. London: Longman and Co., 1886. Rolls Series 83. 351.

Ramblings on Christina of Markyate’s mouth

So I accidentally bought a book the other day (the bookshop was just there, flashing its volumes enticingly at me): The Life of Christina of Markyate, A Twelfth-Century Recluse. It’s published in 2005 by Toronto U. P., but is actually a re-issue of a 1959 edition+translation by C. H. Talbot, who managed with great effort to transcribe those parts of the single manuscript that were not destroyed or obscured by the Cotton fire of 1731 (honestly, why would you move a collection of priceless manuscripts to a place called Ashburnham House for temporary storage? Someone was just asking for trouble).  My excuse for the flagrant self-indulgence (it cost all of $9!) is that it is tangentially related to my thesis, as it’s a product of St Albans, and I’ll be using existing studies on the historical-writing culture of St Albans as a touchstone for more original work that I intend to do on other places.  And, although she lived during the first half of the 12th century, and the vita seems to have been writing during her vita, the surviving manuscript was written (apparently with some intentional alteration from the lost original) in the mid 14th, so it’s within my time period too[1].

I’ve only just started reading it, but I was immediately struck by the style of narration, in which speech is very prominent.  It frequently uses direct speech, marked by the use of the first person (note the punctuation of the transcription):

Dixitque. Dimitte me. ut eam hostium obserare. Quia licet minime Deum metuimus. saltem homines opere tali ne superveniant vereri debemus.
And she said to him: ‘Allow me to bolt the door: for even if we have no fear of God, at least we should take precautions that no man should catch us in this act.’ (42-43) 

Direct speech is both frequent and usually marks the emotional and moral crux of each scene. Not only that, but it emphasises speech and its style and effect to such a degree that it would not be an exaggeration to call the whole vita (well, so far as I’ve read) a narrative of speech events.

• Almost every scene centres around a particular potent occasion of speech. 
• Christina’s devotion to Christ is learned and expressed through speech, as is the battle for her mind and chastity. 
• The proof of her holiness is in her speech: eg, when young she speaks aloud to Christ in her room at night, in a loud clear voice, believing that no mortal could hear her while she was addressing God.
• Her spiritual education by Sueno is told in terms of his speech and the “colloquium” he had with her. And the elided “cum” in “cum”+“loquor” is appropriate: we are told that he is learning from her speech as much as the other way around.
• Similarly, when trying to force her into marriage, her parents’ primary method of coercion is to keep all religious, god-fearing men from having “colloquium” with her, as if blocking access to the words can keep God away. Instead, she is surrounded examples of bad speech, by “people given to jesting, boasting, worldly amusement, and those whose evil communications [mala colloquia] corrupt good manners [mores bonos]” (47).
• In addition, they set one of her best friends on her, who uses flattery and persuasion and sheer persistence for a whole year to try to persuade her to consent – to that one verbal act that constitutes a contract of betrothal or marriage (depending on verb tense).
• Vows, prayers and moments of verbal consent are the turning points that provide the dramatic structure of the narrative.
• In trying to seduce her, the evil bishop Ralph of Durham uses not force, or even simply words, but explicitly “that mouth which he used to consecrate the sacred species”, neatly demonstrating the moral difference between his speech and hers.

In the example I quoted above, the use of direct speech provides the dramatic and moral crux of the scene. Ralph is  trying to seduce/rape the young Christina in his bedroom, and she is employing a ruse to allow her nearer the door so that she can escape, while pretending to acquiesce. The direct speech thus dramatises the ploy, heightening its effect, and doubles it by having her feign what we as readers know is a completely insincere disregard for God and God’s omnipresence. At the same time, that jarring note serves as a harsh reminder of exactly what the bishop’s priorities should be, highlighting his hypocrisy and thus suggesting that Christina’s apparent dishonesty is excusable, in the service of a higher truth.

The bishop demands her oath that she would not ‘fail’ but that she indeed lock the door; she swears to it, darts out of the room and locks him in. These happen in reported speech, rather than direct, playing out the suggestions inherent in the direct speech.

Incidentally, the word I’ve rendered above as ‘fail’ is my own translation of ‘falleret’.  Talbot, who prefers throughout to read this text as a literal account of her life[2], misses the double meaning here and translates it as ‘deceive him’ – certainly the primary meaning in context, and the only meaning Ralph intends, but I would have preferred to have the ominous hint preserved.  To fall truly in this instance, to fail in her vows of virginity, would be to stay in the room with him.

This emphasises the difference maintained throughout the scene between her reading of words (which is largely allegorical) and his (determinedly centred on the physically present).  She observes that the door is closed but not bolted (“clausum… sed non obseratum”). Similarly, her chastity is so far defended, but not inviolable.  Bolting the door erects a physical barrier between her and her would-be violator, just as there is already a spiritual barrier between them.  She has kept her promise she made to him: she has locked the door both physically and spiritually, in a manner far more significant than he intended. She is not forsworn: she adheres to a truth he cannot comprehend.


--------------------

[1] Copying a text, especially with substantial editing, definitely counts as historical writing for my purposes.  Oddly, Talbot seems to make little distinction between the original author and the amending copyist – so far as I can tell, as he uses the word ‘biographer’ for both, he seems to assume they’re both from St Albans on the grounds of the same textual evidence (use of “nostrum” etc when referring to the saint or monastery).


[2] He emphasises the biographer’s close relationship to her and the fact that it was written in her lifetime, as well as the paucity of fantastical tales that mark most hagiography of the period, to conclude that it was a genuine attempt at a “history” of the real woman rather than a collection of “stock elements”.  I… disagree, mostly with that distinction.

Bloggers with faces and pre-Carolingian Baptists (in the sixties)

Further Things I Have Learned In New York:

- CUNY is fun. And has fun people at it.

- Some bloggers are real people, and are actually moderating your panel (hi Jenn!).

- Mediaeval music theorists also used Venn diagrams.

- You can tell at the start of the day which of the speakers from the first panel will be interested enough to stick around for the rest of the day, and which will vanish soon after giving their own paper.

- More people will appear for the papers immediately preceding and succeeding lunch.

- No matter how interesting the papers, those chairs start to hurt after five hours.

- Friends of the Saints is a fun group to join for an evening's discussion after the conference, even if you haven't done the reading.

- Most importantly.  If you (hypothetically speaking) wander into the room where such a group is meeting simply because you want the free wine and cheese, despite not being any  manner of historian, do indeed sit down at the back of the group to shield the single focus of your intent, but do not feel obliged to comment on the proceedings. Really.  There is a reason we haven't discussed Protestants or Baptists yet.We're not being discriminatory, it's just that we're discussing the pre-Carolingian relics trade.

- In entirely unrelated news, some discussion leaders are very very good at taking random comments and assimilating them into the discussion as if they were actually relevant and helpful. Now, there is a skill I envy.

New York, New .... Jersey?

Things I Have Learned So Far While In New York For A CUNY Grad Conference:

- There are two Penn stations. When the man at the air train tells you to get off at Penn Station, he actually means do not get off at Penn Station, but rather stay on the train and wait for the next Penn Station. Otherwise, you will find you are still in New Jersey.

- Always book a hotel right next to the Empire State Building. That way, you can step out of the train station and go 'hm, Eighth Avenue, but is Fifth this way or ... oh, what is that I see looming right over the skyline over there? Right, that way it is.'

- There are many jobs in the world that I Do Not Want. Current top is standing on the street corner holding up the sign that says 'Dunkin Donuts ---->'.

- There really are a lot of yellow taxis.

- No wonder America spawns so many superheroes that fly or leap from building to building. Their streets are canyons.

- They really do offer you cheesecake for breakfast. The place I'm sitting in now even looks like the place where they have the wager over cheesecake or strudel in the Frank Sinatra film of Guys and Dolls. (I am being non-iconic and eating yoghurt with fruit and muesli.)

- It is possible to get decent pizza in New York. As, not three inches deep and drowned with cheese and containing vegetables (if any) that have not been freeze-dried for years.

- And I haven't even gone to the conference yet. Registration is in 45 minutes. The question becomes, after a night spent waking up all the time to the dulcet tones of New York car horn conversations, will I have the brain left by 3 pm to give an engaged and energetic performance? Well, if not, one simply regards it as a performance and falls back on old stage training!

The Tale of Zeus and Dame Ragnelle

No, it will make sense. Bear with me.

So, I’ve a conference next week at which I’m speaking on The Weddynge of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, a mid-15C analogue of the Loathly Lady tale that also appears in, for example, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale. The fact that the conference theme is “Intimacy: Family, Friendship and Fealty” means that I can’t just go haring off after the diversion that occurred to me last night, so: once more unto the blog!

The history of the Loathly Lady figure relative to Irish sovereignty tales (in which the lady represents the country) has been well established.  I have no citations by me, as I am writing this on the bus, but I believe Frederick Madden had something to say about it in his collection of Gawain stories, and it goes on from there according to the usual patterns of late 19-early 20C myth-discovery.  That is, therefore, the accepted mythical ancestor of the figure, and as hunting out mythological precedents is rather out of fashion and the genealogy is well traced I don’t believe  anyone has thought to dispute it, or posit any additional ancestor.

But surely the obvious classical precedent is the god-who-comes-to-dinner? Zeus, or some other god (usually Zeus as the patron of hospitality), disguises him/herself as some ugly, poor old beggar and asks for shelter and food. Or, of course, for help crossing a river, etc.  This is a test, the protagonist responds according to their moral stature, and the god suddenly sheds his unprepossessing exterior to reveal himself in all his glory to pass judgement on the protagonist, along with appropriate reward or punishment.  I don’t recall offhand whether any examples of that trope appear in Ovid, but it’s entirely in keeping with the system of virtue and reward evident in the Aeneid, to consider just two of the most culturally influential classical texts extant in the Middle Ages.

The main linking device is, of course, the transformation: a disguised stranger who appeared unworthy according to the ideals of the genre – poor and old and helpless in Greek mythology, disgusting and unmannerly and often old in romance – is suddenly transformed into the epitome of those ideals. In addition:

• the transformation is in direct response to the actions of the protagonist towards the stranger,
• in entering the narrative, the stranger will, explicitly or otherwise, initiate a kind of test for the protagonist, in which their response demonstrates (and thereby establishes) their virtue,
• the stranger retains to him/herself the authority to pass judgement on the protagonist’s actions after the return transformation (rather than delegating that task to the narrator), claiming the status of moral arbiter of the narrative,
• similarly, the stranger him/herself dispenses punishment or reward.

The trouble with this is that it’s a bit of a jump from Greek mythology to mediaeval romance.  And there is a good deal of cultural filtering and reconditioning that must take place there to make any Greek story (or figure) have any relevance to a late-mediaeval audience.

So where else can we find a more immediate precedent to this figure, a precedent that provides a type of bridging device between classical myth and late-mediaeval readership? a precedent in a tradition that is entirely accustomed to absorbing classical and/or pagan stories and recasting them to its own set of moral values?

Well:

... whanne Seint Iulian reste hym aboute midnyght al forweried [weary] and the wedyr colde and a gret froste, he herde a vois that wepte piteously and cried: 'Iulian, helpe me ouer for Goddes loue or ellis I perische for greuous colde.' And whanne he herde that voys he arose al sodenly [immediately] and passed the colde water and founde that pore creature that deied nigh for colde, toke hym up and bere hym to his hous and light the fere and dede al his diligence to warme hym. And as he myght in no wise make hym take warmthe he toke hym in his armes and bare hym to his bedde... And a litell after he that apered to be so sike and as a foule lepre stied vp shinyng into heuene, saieng to his oste: 'Iulian, oure Lorde hathe sent me to the, sendyng the to saie that he hathe receiued thi and ye bothe shull reste in oure Lorde witheinne a litell tyme' And anone he vanished awaye... (Gilte Legende, ed. Richard Hamer, EETS 2006; v. 1, 144)

Appropriately enough, that comes from the story of St Julian Hospitaller, Zeus’ descendant in the role of protecting the sacred laws of hospitality and defending the safety of guests.  But it works perfectly well in a Christian context, thus refigured – well enough that throughout the Gilte Legende (and elsewhere), saints and even Jesus himself regularly pop up where they’re not expected, mysteriously disguised, usually as someone helpless, and initiate a test of some kind or another.  Quite of a piece with the popular belief that saints really could interfere in a very material way with everyday life – all your big brothers are watching you.

So, if Dame Ragnelle has cross-genre precedents in, for example, St Julian and others, can we expect that her contemporary audience might have recognised them and picked up on the currents? I think so – if nothing else, Ragnelle seems to deliberately play with the collision of genre, pushing herself forcibly into society, conscious of her own incongruity and playing it for all it’s worth with her fine clothes and horse.  If so, the audience could expect her at her appearance to make demands which would set up a challenge as a moral test – apparently for both Arthur and Gawain. And she does, tests which Gawain passes and Arthur fails (largely by fobbing responsibility off on his nephew).

But if she refers to or recalls testing figures in hagiography, does this have an effect on what is being tested? Courtly virtues? Christian ones?  The story of St Julian explicitly opposes the life of the court (and its values) with the humble Christian values that  attend helping mysterious sick strangers (for which you have to live in an isolated hut beside a ‘flode’). The Wife of Bath’s nameless loathly lady gives a pillow-lecture that could be read as being in opposition to ‘courtly’ virtues. And Gawain, when his ugly wife has become beautiful, thanks God for her deliverance from a curse (and presumably for his from the equally horrible fate of having to look on her all the time). Perhaps Arthur’s failure is that he tries to adhere to courtly virtues which are (or could be read as) so dependent on appearance as reflective of personal status.

Another temporality thought - on conversion

According to Patrick Geary (Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages, London: Cornell UP, 1994), there is, under the parish church of Flonheim, a series of tombs that predate the conversion of the local population to Christianity.

[Archaeologist] Ament sees grave 5 as a founder's burial, like that at Lavoye.  Around it, in the sixth and early seventh centuries, other clan members were buried.  When the chapel was built, the importance of this founder's burial was still recalled, and the builders included the other clan graves within the confines of its walls... [This positioning] strongly suggest[s] that the continuity between pre-Christian and Christian clan members was not  broken by baptism.  In fact, on a physical, structural level, the founder was given a burial infra ecclesia after the fact, thus including him in the newly Christianized clan tradition. (37-8).

Well, why not? Why do we assume that conversion is tied to a moment in time, extending only forward from that moment and denied to all who came before it? We do now, of course, because of long-established tradition that (for example) pagans are denied entry into heaven, even Virgil because he unluckily died just a few years short of a certain critical historical moment.  But that's quite an assumption to make, isn't it? That everyone would automatically understands religion and relationship to religious standing in that way? Why can it not simply be a cultural and behavioural difference, a difference in architecture, into which one may incorporate the past as easily as one might build a temple to an ancestor in a new architectural style and depict them in this generation's sartorial fashions in the frescoes?

Widows, memory and identity

I was reading a couple of days ago a chapter by Bernard Jussen: “Challenging the Culture of Memoria: Dead Men, Oblivious and the ‘Faithless Widow’ in the Middle Ages”[1].

Now, for a start, that’s an interesting premise: memory not just as an abstract concept but as a culture and set of behaviour that the abandoned wife performs, with the effect that she keeps her dead husband ‘alive’ to the community; that her remarriage ‘forgets’ him, implicitly killing him or consigning him to oblivion.

Jussen examines the story of the Faithless Widow[2] in its various mutations over the years (and it dates back originally to Ancient Rome) to show that the mediaeval versions focus less on the sexual misdemeanour than on the implications of remarriage.  For Jussen, that is where the threat lies, not in the (adulterous?) sex itself. He then extends this to examine the tension between a widow’s duty to the dead (mourning, fidelity, memory) and to the living (feeding and clothing herself and her children, maintaining the dead man’s house and social status), seeing the tension as ideally resolved with a set period of mourning.  The wife ‘dies’ with her husband (and he points to extravagant hopeless behaviour associated with the deserted wife at a funeral, including flinging herself onto the coffin and into the grave) and suffers a period of ‘death’, suiting her habit and social behaviour to this new (temporary) identity, before returning to life and the living (221-22).

Of course, this is very interesting to me, because it raises the question of a very particular kind of temporal identity – that defined by a period in one’s life, rather than within a broader social epoch.  Widowhood is in itself a kind of identity bestowed by temporality and focussed on the past (until and unless it is renounced).  Effectively, your time is over.  Mourning is much more intense, more prescribed, more culturally sensitive and more symbolic – but implies a return to some kind of life, albeit the life of widowhood that is, in itself, an end. 

How did women think about themselves as different during either period? or how were they told they should? Of course, it would always differ from one individual to the next; but can we see women looking forward to the end of mourning, seeing themselves as living within a death with expected resurrection, or was the ‘death’, while experienced, meant to be complete, hopeless? Do we find comparisons to purgatory, to hell, to the three days before the Resurrection? Or (re. either mourning or widowhood) to more ordinary, everyday experiences of religion than the spiritual – Lent, for example, turning the experience to simply a kind of fasting, a time in which behaviour is culturally restricted but identity is not fundamentally altered?

Can we usefully consider widowhood (or mourning) beside other liminal and peripheral social figures / states of being?

- More permanent models of death-in-life are offered by monks and nuns, or (more extremely) anchorites, with the habits (both sartorial and behavioural!) to match. For some (all?) of these, the change in identity may have a start date, but (most likely) not an end date, or not an expected one.  On the other hand, the expected or prescribed temporal shift here might be less to do with entering a new model of identity and more to do with modelling oneself on heavenly time, rather than earthly. In moving towards that kind of time, they place themselves closer to God, and their prayers gain (presumably) more effect with him to beg favour for others.

- What about lepers – with the ceremony of consecration that is so close to a funeral? with their special outsider status, halfway elevated and halfway lowered? This has a definite starting date, and it is not something undertaken willingly.  It also has an implicit end date, in that leprosy is an eventual sentence of death – you are on time that God allows you.  Lepers are also interesting in that that time they spend suffering on earth (earthly time) reduces not just their own time suffering in heavenly time after death in purgatory, but that of other people.  Their sentence to reduced time on earth, their physical bodily status within that time, their adherence to particular socially prescribed behaviour, has the power to affect the spiritual status of others, and their very relationship to God.

- Unchurched new mothers? This was a prescribed time out of society, like mourning – but with taints of uncleanliness, like leprosy, and with the very real threat of death for one or both parties.  Like widowhood, however, it has a stipulated ending, and offers the way to a joyous ‘rebirth’ into society for the mother, who has with her own body brought another Christian soul into the world, if all went well.

Widows are also special in similar ways – particularly during mourning, they are expected to perform certain behaviours that aid their husbands’ passage through purgatory and towards God. At the same time, society expects them to return to their duties to the living, and their husbands’ living house.  In the case of many women, the ability to support their children financially would mean marrying again, potentially endangering their devotions to the dead husbands.

I don’t think I’m aiming for any particular argument here, just tossing ideas around.  But we seem to have arrived at:

- People placed on the periphery of society, in privileged, socially prescribed positions that are analogous to death (and often compared explicitly to it by the behaviour and dress custom accords them) seem to be simultaneously ‘shut away’, hidden from view, and yet to have some kind of special access to the heavenly help line. 

- In drawing closer to heavenly time, how do they gain the ability to affect the spiritual state of others, with a focus on the time allotted others in torment after death?

- How does mediaeval theology distinguish between earthly time and heavenly? how did individuals understand themselves within this pattern?

- To what extent does failure to correctly adhere to the identity prescribed to the individual by their special status diminish or remove the effect of their influence, retarding the process of (eg) the husband’s passage through purgatory?

- Meanwhile, performing proscribed actions seem to be able to cause the husband to retrospectively ‘vanish’ from time altogether.  If the re-marrying wife who violates her mourning hangs her husband up in place of the nameless thief,  remarriage figures as oblivion/death, analogous to an eternal (or very very long) time spent in purgatory.

--------------

[1] In Patrick J. Geary, Gerd Althoff, Johannes Fried (eds). Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.

[2] Newly widowed woman cries and weeps on the grave of her husband, refusing to leave it despite her family’s insistence that she ‘return to life’; passing soldier says the same thing and she has sex with him on her husband’s grave, promising/proposing to marry him; his neglect of his duty has meanwhile caused the hanged corpse he ought to have been guarding to be stolen, so she proposes they dig up her husband and hang him in the other corpse’s place to prevent the soldier being punished.