Identity in History Episode 3: Medieval Religious Identities
Richard Godbehere examines the Autobiography of Guibert de Nogent: “Here we look at the definitions of Autobiography and a rare one written by a medieval monk, the narrative constructs behind the work and the identity we can glean from its pages.” Richard Godbehere describes himself as a student of Intellectual History (especially religious, supernatural, pseudoscientific and the history of anomalous ideas), Psychology (including Anomalistic Psychology) and memetics. Click here to see his Youtube channel.
Introduction: My talk this afternoon looks both backwards and forwards: backwards to the tradition of medieval studies and the influence of new approaches and methodologies in the second half of the twentieth century – my own professional lifetime – and forwards, more briefly and tentatively, to what appear to be the directions in which medieval studies are moving, both in Europe and in America. I shall not discuss other parts of the world, though interesting work is being done by medievalists elsewhere, as in Japan and Australia.
I shall concentrate on the history of medieval religion and religious life, in part because it illustrates some of the most striking developments and changes in medieval studies and in part because the CEU has made notable contributions in this field. It is also, I should admit, the area I know best and in which much of my own research has been done. You will forgive me, I hope, if I draw at places in my talk on my own experience and on a paper that I presented recently in England on the study of medieval religious life and spirituality.
This novel details the events of one knight, Sir John Potenhale, serving under the Black Prince, Edward, son of Edward III, during his campaigns in France in the mid-14th century.
The story begins with Sir John Potenhale seeking out the widow of another knight. He comes to deliver something of value to the knight’s widow when she asks him to tell her how she met her husband and to start his story at the point when he was knighted. Potenhale then begins his tale when he was serving as a squire to Sir John Chandos who was a knight in service to King Edward and his son. Potenhale is fortunate enough to witness Prince Edward’s knighting and dreams of the day when he too will become a knight.
After the battle of Crecy, Edward knights Potenhale and takes him into his service and household. Potenhale meets Margery, a lady-in-waiting to the prince’s cousin, Joan of Kent, and falls in love with her. However, the Black Plague strikes and Potenhale is wracked with guilt as to whether he should remain a knight or save his soul and take monastic vows. The book details his inner struggle with his knighthood, his growing prowess and adventures as a knight, and his love of Margery.
The book was exciting and enjoyable. A lot of the novel detailed battles at Calais, Crecy, at sea and military marches across France.There is the small side bar of Potenhale pursuing Margery but the book does not really focus on their love story, it is more a retelling of his experiences as a knight and of his relationship with the widow’s husband, Sir Geoffroi. Potenhale meets him after a battle where Geoffroi is taken as Potenhale’s prisoner. Geoffroi remains in the custody of the English for a year until a ransom can be raised to free him. Potenhale respects the French knight greatly and it is in him that he seeks advice about whether he should remain a knight or take holy orders.
The descritpions of battles were not tedious and drawn out at all and added colour to the story. I found Potenhale to be an interesting character and I liked the way the story was told from his memories in the first person. I enjoyed watching him grow as a knight and I liked the twist of the side story about his love for Margery and the difficulties that surround their union. Potenhale’s relationship to the Black Prince and the backdrop of Plagues stricken England, flagellants, notions of redemption and knightly honour also make the book a good read.
There is but one small complaint – there is a line near the end of the book where the author makes a reference to tennis and I found it a very odd analogy for a medieval historical novel. I looked up the history of tennis and while it technically existed in the 12th century, it existed as a handball sport and was not that well known. The reference made in the novel is very modern in tone and I found it jarringly out of place. I doesn’t fit at all and should be removed.
All in all, the book was great and I recommend it for a light summer read. It is battle heavy, and plot heavy but not boring in the least and I really enjoyed it.
Trials for Sorcery in Early Fourteenth-Century Avignon
Session:Politics, Condemnation, and Sorcery in the Fourteenth Century
ByRobert Ticknor, Tulane University
This paper dealt with the question of magic and sorcery and the bridge between abstract theological questions and actual magic.
The general category of magic is crucial to the understanding cultural mores in societies. Magic takes a more central position in religion and certain social groups than previously thought; it is not just a sidebar to the witch hunt.
What does it mean to charge someone with witchcraft in the 14th century?When can one use the term “magic”? Historians often look to anthropologists however, some of these definitions don’t fit into phenomena considered “magic” by people in the 14th century. Classic authors and texts by early Christian writers were used as definitions of magic even if these were now obsolete, i.e., the writing of Isadore de Seville. Scholastic and theological treatises don’t offer much in the way of the practice of magic but they do serve as a starting point. Magic and miracles are fundamentally opposed but can look the same. Modern historians blur these lines but in the minds of people in the Middle Ages – there was a very definite separation of these two ideas of magic and miracles.
A case of sorcery in the 14th century: In 1303, a Franciscan friar by the name of Bernard of Délicieux preached a sermon that rose up against the Inquisition; Bernard took over the town and freed people incarcerated by them. Bernard also prophesied the Pope’s death; when the Pope died a few months after his prophesy, Bernard was accused of sorcery in the Pope’s “murder”. In 1317, Bernard was arrested for the Pope’s murder after ‘lying low’ since 1306. Bernard claimed he prophesied the Pope’s death through Scripture, but nonetheless, he was tortured and then released. He was convicted of impeding the Inquisition and then stripped of his clerical status and sentenced to life in prison where he died in 1320.
Introduction: By the beginning of the 13th century an insidious heresy swept through the Languedoc region of southern France. These apostates, called Albigenses, or Cathars, preached an unorthodox ‘heretical’ version of the Christian faith that spread quietly and powerfully from town to town. It led to a bloody and fearsome act; one perpetrated by Europeans on fellow Europeans: The Albigensian Crusade.
This comparative historiography is a careful attempt to examine the state of scholarship on the Albigensian Crusade. With no primary sources readily available, a close inspection of a large number of secondary sources proved invaluable in gaining an understanding of this event. Even then, one is left with questions, for scholars do not always agree.
Four points of contention arose from this survey: the nature of the Cathar heresy, the reason that local Latin Christians had no part in the persecution of the Cathars, the origin of the call for the Crusade, and finally the explanation for the strange events at Montségur.
A Companion to Clare of Assisi: Life, Writings, and Spirituality
By Joan Mueller
Brill, 2010
ISBN: 978 90 04 18216 5
Clare of Assisi: Life, Writings and Spirituality examines Clare not merely as an obedient footnote to the friars, but as a Franciscan founder in her own right who kept primitive Franciscan ideals alive into the middle of the thirteenth century and transposed them into a woman’s key. Bringing together the best of international research, the text examines Clare’s importance within the early Franciscan milieu and her contribution to the thirteenth-century women’s movement. It studies the radicalism of Clare’s Franciscan choice, her life within the Monastery of San Damiano, her politicking with Agnes of Prague for the ‘privilege of poverty,’ and her uniqueness among other women in Gregory IX’s Damianite ordo. Following this historical study are critical translations and literary analyses of Clare’s four letters to Agnes of Prague as well as a new translation and commentary on Clare’s Forma Vitae.
Wolves in Lamb’s Clothing: Redeeming the Images of Catherine of Siena and Angela of Foligno
By Caroljane Roberson
Master’s Thesis, Wake Forest University, 2009
Abstract: Medieval holy women were revered for their power and efforts, by both their communities and the Church. However, what are contemporary women to make of these female saints? This paper will examine Blessed Angela of Foligno (1248 – 1309), a Franciscan tertiary, and Saint Catherine of Siena (1347 – 1380), a Dominican tertiary. They were Catholic holy women from medieval Italy. These two women had mystical visions and practiced extreme mortification. While such behaviors may seem strange and somewhat detrimental to the modern feminist scholar, we must examine these behaviors from the context of the time period of Angela and Catherine.
This paper will attempt to contextualize the actions and texts of both women, to show that though they appear on the surface to be the submissive ‘lambs’ of the Church which today’s feminists vilify, underneath the ‘lamb’s clothing’ of orthodoxy they are more akin to the ‘wolves’ contemporary feminists are seeking for inspiration. Angela and Catherine submitted to the Church by practicing imitatio Christi, becoming part of official orders as tertiaries and revealing their actions and visions to confessors. In their behavior and writings, both women supported the ideals of the Church. This conformity allowed Angela and Catherine to avoid charges of heresy and to carve out a space for themselves within the Catholic Church.
However, both women threatened to cross the line into heterodoxy with their critiques of the Church and the extreme degree to which they took their asceticism. In addition to their sanctity amongst the laity, both women were able to usurp some of the Church’s spiritual authority through their actions and texts. Thus, though both women wore the ‘lamb’s clothing’ of conformity, they were ‘wolves’ underneath.
Confraternities, Memoria, and Law in Late Medieval Italy
By Thomas Frank
Confraternitas, Vol 17, No 1 (2006)
Introduction: To view medieval brotherhoods or confraternities as associations of laymen or clerics with predominantly religious functions almost automatically leads to the conclusion that fraternity and memoria have much in common. This, at least, can be assumed if we focus on the religious or socio-religious dimension of the notion, marked in the following article by the Latin term memoria. Such an understanding of memoria, emphasizing its religious dimension, could be further elaborated. It is indeed possible to interpret all the efforts of Christians (or of adherents of other religions) to assure the salvation of their souls as care of memoria in a wider sense. In this case, not only prayer and liturgy, but also charitable works, as offered for example by brotherhoods, hospitals, or individual benefactors, could be included because all these pious activities point to the effect that the believer and god ‘commemorate’ each other.
This article, however, concentrates on a narrower idea of memoria, defi ned as performative commemoration that is realised liturgically and collectively. The focus lies especially on commemoration of the dead and prayers for the living. What this meant for confraternities in late medieval Italy is discussed in the first part of this article (I). Next, legal documents and juridical texts will be used to illustrate the role of memoria for the perception of confraternities in medieval society (II). The article concludes with some refl ections concerning the concept of ‘confraternity’ in modern historical research (III).
Lecture by Helen C. Evans, Mary and Michael Jaharis Curator of Byzantine Art, Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, eds. Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cambridge University Press, 2003)
Introduction: In 1406 Sir Henry later Lord Fitzhugh, trusted servant of King Henry IV, visited Vadstena, the Bridgettine monastery for men and women in Sweden. Vadstena was the mother-house of the Order of the Most Holy Saviour and had been founded by the controversial continental mystic St Bridget of Sweden, who had died in 1373 and had been canonized in Fitzhugh was so impressed by what he saw that he gave one of his manors near Cambridge as the future site for an English Bridgettine foundation.
It was not until 1415 that Henry V, son of Henry IV, laid the foundation-stone of Syon Abbey at Twickenham in Middlesex and Fitzhugh’s dream became a reality. But Fitzhugh’s generous gesture is an indication of the degree of pious and aristocratic interest in the Swedish visionary and prophet in early fifteenth-century England.
