Religion in the History of the Medieval West (Variorum Collected Studies) [1 ed.] 0860789403, 9780860789406, 9781003418597

Table of contents :
Cover
Series
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Preface
APPROACHES TO MEDIEVAL CULTURE AND RELIGION
I The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem
II The Future of Medieval Church History
III The “Crisis of Cenobitism” Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050-1150
IV An Afterword on Medieval Studies, Or the Future of Abelard and Heloise
CHRISTENING THE SOCIAL ORDER
V Christening the Romans
VI Faith as a Concept of Order in Medieval Christendom
VII Theophilus Presbyter and Rupert of Deutz: The Manual Arts and Benedictine Theology in the Early Twelfth Century
VIII ‘God is no Respecter of Persons’: Sacred Texts and Social Realities
RE-INVENTING RELIGIOUS LIFE IN MEDIEVAL SOCIETY
IX Dominic and the Brothers: Vitae as Life-forming exempla in the Order of Preachers
X Friar Johannes Nyder on Laypeople Living as Religious in the World
Index

Citation preview

ANTONYBLACK Church, State and Community: Historical and Comparative Perspectives Also in the Variorum Collected Studies Series: ANN FREEMAN Theodulf of Orléans: Council of Nicaea

Charlemagne’s Spokesman against the Second

BRIAN PATRICK McGUIRE Friendship and Faith: Cistercian Men, Women, and their Stories, 1100-1250 GORDONLEFF Heresy, Philosophy and Religion in the Medieval West GARY DICKSON Religious Enthusiasm in the Medieval West Revivals, Crusades, Saints

GILES CONSTABLE Cluny from the Tenth to the Twelfth Centuries Further Studies

JACQUES DUBOIS (Ed. Jean-Loup Lemaitre) Aspects de la vie monastique en France au Moyen Age PETER LINEHAN Past and Present in Medieval

Spain

BERNARD HAMILTON Monastic Reform, Catharism and the Crusades (900-1300) H.E.J. COWDREY Popes and Church Reform in the 11th Century

H.E.J. COWDREY The Crusades and Latin Monasticism, 11th—12th Centuries

RICHARD KAY Councils and Clerical Culture in the Medieval West

GILES CONSTABLE Culture and Spirituality in Medieval Europe

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

in the History of the Medieval West

Religion

Professor John Van

Engen

John Van Engen

Religion in the History of the Medieval West

I~ ~~o~I!!n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 2004 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition © 2004 by John Van Engen All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Van Engen, John H. Religion in the history of the medieval West. - (Variorum collected studies series) 1. Christianity - Europe - History - To 1500 2. Religion and sociology Europe - History-To 1500 3. Europe - Church history- 600-1500 4. Europe - Social conditions-To 1492 I. Title 270.3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Religion in the history of the medieval West/ [edited by] John Van Engen. p. cm. - (Variorum collected studies) Includes index. ISBN 0-86078-940-3 (alk. paper) 1. Church history- Middle Ages, 600-1500. 2. Europe- Church history600-1500. I. Van Engen, John H. II. Series: Collected studies. BR252.R37 2004 274'.03--dc22

2004003232

ISBN 13: 978-0-86078-940-6 (hbk)

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS793

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418597

Contents

vii-ix Preface

APPROACHES TO MEDIEVAL CULTURE AND RELIGION

I

The Christian Middle Ages 519-552 Problem

II

The Future of Medieval Church

as an

Historiographical

History 492-52

III “Crisis of Cenobitism” Reconsidered: Benedictine The 269-304 Monasticism in the Years 1050-1150

IV Afterword on Medieval Studies, Or the Future of An 401-431 Abelard and Heloise

CHRISTENING THE SOCIAL ORDER

V

Christening the Romans1-45

VI

Faith

as a

19-67 Concept of Order in Medieval Christendom

VII Theophilus Presbyter and Rupert of Deutz: The Manual Arts and Benedictine Theology in the Early Twelfth Century

147-163

‘God VIII is no Respecter of Persons’: Sacred Texts and Social Realities243-264

RE-INVENTING RELIGIOUS LIFE IN MEDIEVAL SOCIETY IX and the Brothers: Vitae Dominic in the Order of Preachers7-25

X

as

Life-forming exempla

Friar Johannes Nyder on Laypeople Living in the World 583-615

as

Religious

Index 1-8

This volume contains

x

+

332 pages

Preface

These essays seek to situate religion in the history of medieval Europe: as an unavoidable presence in everyday life, as a conceptual framework for social and

political life, a force integral to its historical dynamics. Most were written during the 1990s, two (I III) in the mid-1980s, one sparked by graduate work with Lynn White, jr (VII). The topic of religion in medieval society is hardly new. Disputes about religion threaded their way through European history from the fourth to the nineteenth century. Religious energies drove human action and imagination fully as much as questions of polity or society, often entirely bound up with political and social manifestations. If enlightenment thinkers looked back on Europe’s “middle” or “dark” centuries as a time ruined by barbarous superstition, romantic and restoration figures dreamed of a lost era when faith had made Europe one and brought to fruition all that was best. Our own age, in the wake of “secularization” (that term medieval in origin, and now debated in meaning), prefers, mostly, to be quit of medieval religion. But fascination with a distant sacral past abides, and a wide-angle perspective may give us pause about its “datedness.” When in the twenty-first century the European community hesitates to embrace Turkey as a full member, or heaps Israeli society alternately with guilty generosity and acid criticism, is that bom merely of political or legal policy-making? Or, does modern Europe act still in some unconscious way on cultural patterns rooted in its long religious past? Is the ghost of Christendom a shadowy presence two hundred years after the ,

Revolution and the disestablishment of churches and the emancipation of non-baptized peoples? Or is medieval Christendom itself no ghost but a self-serving myth? Hard questions, but pertinent; and hardly the only way to highlight the role religion has played in the making of Europe. Some longer view, as I see it, must, at least in part, animate medieval historians in the twenty-first century. It is liberating. We need no longer be

trapped inside bitter confessional disputes between Catholics and Protestants, believers and skeptics, the enlightened and the romantic, the humanist and the nihilist. Nor indeed should historians be hostage any longer to endless, age-old rivalries turning on embedded socio-religious privileges, rights and status. But this longer perspective, with its new vantage points, is also confusing. It may tempt us, at its extremes, to treat the Middle Ages as totally

Preface

very distant past, or to lift out some single feature as a present-day most, I would emphasize, it has fostered approaches to medieval in which history religion can now play its rightful part, with multiple sources, earlier shunted aside as “religious” and therefore irrelevant or embarrassing, now freed up, rendered serviceable. In the last generation or so, such sources, imaginatively exploited, have opened up rich quarries revelatory of every sort

other,

a

concern. For

of human and historical practice and attitude. Recent historians have also moved to point up all those forces in medieval religion not Christian, or at least not clerical, emphasizing the undervalued roles of Jews, Muslims, dissenters, laity, and pagans in the making of European history. Still, and this is where these essays find

place, at the conceptual level historians have been tempted simply things on their head, to raise up laity in place of clerics, dissenters in place of inquisitors, women in place of men, reliquaries in place of pulpits, convivencia in place of unitary polities, affection in place of thought, body in place of spirit. Twice, once in the mid-1980s (I) and again in 2002 (II) I drew attention to this reversal, and pointed toward a middling, dialectical, more interactive approach to medieval religion and society, and urged that, in any case, we be self-conscious about our historiographical assumptions and a

to turn

,

moves.

These ten essays arose on distinct occasions, not out of a single historical project. But they all concern, in one or another way, the question now labeled “Christianization,” a broad abstraction for a presumed process, as large in

European history as its social counter-part “feudalism,” though not yet tested and critiqued at the same sustained level. These essays take seriously learned materials produced on religion in the middle ages, much of it in Latin, much of it written by professionals, whether monks or clerics or professors, as well as the authoritative texts that served as fixed referent points for that society. A generation of historians has wondrously opened up hagiography and miracle cults and affective writings as historical sources. It is, ironically, the learned materials generated by lawyers and theologians and disputants that remain nearly off-limits. These are sources we must learn to read productively. That is something I attempted with respect to the concept of “faith” (VI) The materials must be read for what they say or mean to say, but also in a critical, cross-grained way thus, how medieval figures used a biblical parable to rank-order their society as “judges” and the “judged” or a biblical .

—

commonplace to project the God of their society as “impartial” (VIII) I remain skeptical about holding such texts automatically at arm’s length because they .

written in Latin or by clerics or in the form of learned discourse, a stance I find as methodologically unsatisfactory as earlier assumptions that these texts could be read literally and simplistically as the beliefs or practices of all or were

most

Europeans.

Preface

Several essays explore ways in which medieval religion acted as more than mirror or reflection of social and political forces, but as itself a force, thus caught in a dialectical movement back and forth. This held true, in surprising ways, even for the name of the religion, the slang word that would eventually yield our words “Christendom” and “christening.” Its mixed reception in the Late Roman Empire discloses the complex relations between Rome and its new a

public religion (V) The essays take seriously, moreover, that religion and society changed over the course of the Middle Ages, and so allow a .

considerable space for inventiveness. I was a student of Gerhart Ladner, my debt to him reflected in an essay not reproduced here. 1 Though I have written relatively little on “reform,” his central theme, the sense in his work of the positive movement possible or present in medieval religion informs my work. So, whether it be the very presence of Christians as a new force in Roman society (V) or an increased appreciation for labor in medieval society (VII) or the coming of the Dominicans as a “guild” of preachers (IX) or forms of ,

,

,

religion outside Religion, outside profession and cloistering (X) it is this capacity for change, driven by ideals coming from without (or at least justified in that way) and by convictions coming from within, their results sometimes startling or upsetting, that is for me one of the central features of religion as a ,

force in the making of medieval history. For urging me to gather these essays, and his extended patience, I am indebted to John Smedley, publisher at Ashgate Publishing Limited. For

permission to reprint these essays, I acknowledge the generosity of: The American Historical Association (I); The American Society of Church History (II); The Medieval Academy of America (III); University of Notre Dame Press (IV, VI, IX); Fordham University Press (V); Viator (VII); Hambledon and London Publishers (VIII); and Duncker & Humblot GmbH (X). For his expert help in preparing the index, many thanks to Dr Matthew Dowd. My oldest son, Hans, though of a practical rather than a scholarly bent, accompanied me with interest and affection through all these years. This volume is for him. JOHN VAN ENGEN Notre Dame

September

2003

1 “Images

and Ideas: The Achievements of Gerhart B. Ladner, with a

his Published Works,” Viator 20

(1989),

pp. 85-115.

Bibliography of

Publisher's Note

The articles in this volume, as in all others in the Variorum Collected Studies Series, have not been given a new, continuous pagination. In order to avoid confusion, and to facilitate their use where these same studies have been referred to elsewhere, the original pagination has been maintained wherever

possible. Each article has been given a Roman number in order of appearance, as listed in the Contents. This number is repeated on each page and is quoted in the index entries.

Religion and Culture Medieval to Approaches

I

as

The Christian Middle Ages an Historiographical Problem

MIDDLE AGES, THE SO-CALLED MIDDLE TIME between antiquity and the era of early modern reformers, a full one thousand years of European history, has been subject to wild swings in interpretive emphasis, ranging from the “dark ages” described by Renaissance humanists, Protestant reformers, and enlightened philosophes to the “golden age” depicted by Restoration Romantics and

THE the

neo-Scholastic Catholics. 1 But each of those outlooks still shared the

common

essentially “Christian” or “Catholic,” whether it was vilified as so much superstition or revered as so much authoritative tradition. Precisely that common assumption has come under scrutiny in the last twenty years. All the texts pored over by generations of medievalists, some historians now claim, have disclosed the views only of a minuscule clerical elite; the

presupposition

great

mass

observed and not

that medieval culture

of medieval folk lived in

was

a

“folklore” culture best likened to that

by anthropologists in Third World countries. Forms of primitive magic faith largely governed religious-cultural attitudes and practices. 3 This 2

Annual Meeting of the American Historical a session jointly sponsored by the Catholic Historical Association and the American Society of Church History. My thanks to Bernard McGinn of the University of Chicago for the invitation, Karl Morrison of the University of Kansas for his commentary, and William Courtenay of the University of Wisconsin for encouragement. thoughtful 1 For a general orientation and bibliographies, see Giorgio Falco, La polemica sul medioevo (Turin, 1933); Wallace K. Ferguson, The Renaissance in Historical Thought (Boston, 1948), 113-32, 290-385; Hans R. Guggisberg, Das europäische Mittelalter im amerikanischen Geschichtsdenken des 19. und des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts (Basel, 1964); Jürgen Voss, Das Mittelalter im historischen Denken Frankreichs (Munich, 1972); and Ludovico Gatto, Viaggi intorno al concetto di medioevo (Rome, 1977). For newer work, see Norman Cantor, “What Has Happened in Medieval Studies?” Humanities, 5.5 (1984): 16-19; Karl Morrison, “Fragmentation and Unity in ‘American Medievalism,’” in M. Kammen, ed., The Past before Us (Ithaca, N.Y., 1980), 49-77; Ovidio Capitani, Medioevo passato prossimo: Appunti storiografici tra due guerre e molte crisi (Bologna, 1979); and Piero Zerbi, Il medioevo nella storiografia degli ultimi vent’anni A

first draft of this essay

was

read at the

Ninety-Ninth

Association, held in Chicago, December 27-30, 1984,

at

(Milan, 1976).

2 Jacques Le Goff first promulgated widely this folkloric view of medieval culture. See Le Goff, La civilisation de l’occident médiéval (Paris, 1964), 18-19. But the notion was not entirely new. See C. S. Lewis, “Imagination and Thought in the Middle Ages,” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature 1966), 41. Also see the still-earlier works mentioned in note 39, below. (Cambridge, 3 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York, 1971): “The medieval church thus appeared as a vast reservoir of magical power” (p. 45). “The line between magic and religion is one which it is impossible to draw in many primitive societies; it is equally difficult to recognize in medieval England” (p. 50). Many other historians have pointed up widespread “magical” conceptions of religious life, but in ways that qualify Thomas’s sweeping description. See, for instance, Aaron J. Gurjewitsch, Das Weltbild des mittelalterlichen Menschen (Munich, 1978), 352-400; Joseph-Claude Poulin, “Entre magie

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418597-1

newest historiographical shift has proved so powerful that even authors kindly disposed to Catholic Christianity have summarized the state of late medieval religious life as “in broad stretches a religious consciousness that can hardly be called Christian.” 4 A little background will indicate the extent of this shift. In 1799, as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation verged on collapse, a

petty nobleman known

as

Novalis drafted

an

influential essay, “Christendom

or

Europe,” recalling “that beautiful and brilliant time when Europe was a single Christian land.” Just three years later, from exile in London, Chateaubriand vigorously defended the medieval Genius of Christianity. And over the next generation or two, in the aftermath of enlightenment, revolution, and industrialization, European intellectuals everywhere rediscovered the spirit and beauty of an ancient order animated in the main, as they saw it, by Catholic Christianity. 5 Toward the end of the century, in 1879, Pope Leo XIII challenged his Catholic flock to recover their medieval philosophical heritage and to refute modern heresy. Aeterni patris laid the foundations for a remarkable neo-Thomist revival that has shaped Catholic thought into the present day. 6 At the turn of the century, the pope’s more specifically apologetic purposes combined with a general European flowering of historical and philosophical learning to produce a brilliant revival of medieval scholarship, with Christian philosophy very much at its center. Best known among the institutes that encouraged the new scholarship are those associated with Maurice DeWulf and Fernand van Steenberghen in Louvain, Fernand Grabmann in Munich, Martin Mandonnet in Fribourg, and Etienne Gilson in Toronto. The first volume of Mediaeval Studies, official organ of the Pontifical Institute in Toronto, carried a letter from the archbishop of Toronto,

blessing this enterprise for “applying the best methods of scientific scholarship to the study and interpretation of the thought of those Ages of Faith.” A paperback series on philosophy published in the 1950s included a volume on the medieval period called The Age of Belief. The editor of that book noted that, “as we become increasingly aware of our own spiritual bankruptcy, we may look its titular head,

religion: Recherches sur les utilisations marginales de l'écrit dans la culture populaire du haut moyen age,” in Pierre Boglioni, ed., La culture populaire au moyen âge (Quebec, 1979), 123-43; Patrick Geary, “Humiliation of Saints,” in Stephen Wilson, ed., Saints and Their Cults: Studies in Religious Sociology, Folklore, and History (Cambridge, 1983), 123-40; Edward Peters, The Magician, the Witch, and the Law (Philadelphia, 1978); Jeffrey Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 1972); and Raoul Manselli, Magia e stregonaria nel Medio Evo (Turin, 1976). For a useful historiographic discussion, see Peters, The Magician, the Witch, and the Law, 203-12. 4 J. van Herwaarden and R. de Keyser, “Het gelovige volk in de late middeleeuwen,” in Algemene et

Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 4 (Haarlem, 1980): 420. R.5 Samuel, ed.. Die Christenheit oder Europa, in Novalis, Schriften, 4 vols. (Stuttgart, 1960), 3: 507; and René de Chateaubriand, Génie du Christianisme, ed. Pierre Reboul, 2 vols. (Paris, 1966). There is no single synthetic work on “medievalism” in the Romantic era. But see Raoul Manselli, “Il medioevo come Christianitas: Una scoperta romantica,” in Vittorio Branca, ed., Concetto, storia, miti e immagini del medioevo (Venice, 1973), 51-89; Gatto, Viaggi intorno al concetto, 107-21; Voss, Mittelalter im historischen Denken Frankreichs, 312-38; and Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early ModernEurope (New York, 1978), 3-22. Burke linked the Romantic notion of medievalism to the discovery in the early nineteenth century of “popular” culture and folklore. 6 See the essays in V. B. Brezik, ed., One Hundred Years of Thomism (Houston, 1981). On the context of Aeterni Patris, see Pierre Thibault, Savoir et pouvoir: Philosophic thomiste et politique clericale au XIXe siècle

(Quebec, 1972).

The Christian Middle back with

certain

a

appreciation—and

even

Ages

with

a

certain

nostalgia—to

those

solvent centuries, to that Age of Belief.” Through parochial education such views came to permeate the Catholic community. 7 But, outside it as well,

spiritually

scholars and “Christian”

ordinary folks alike looked on medieval civilization as predominantly

or

“Catholic” in character.

Just over a decade ago, Jean Delumeau, one of the first Catholics admitted to the prestigious Collège de France, vigorously contested what he called the “legend of the Christian Middle Ages.” Together with Keith Thomas, Carlo Ginzburg, Gerald Strauss, Robert Muchembled, and several others, he argued that medieval folk were at best only superficially Christianized; Christian faith and practice first took hold among the European masses during the Reformation and Counter Reformation movements. 8 These historians of the early modern era were, at least in part, still engaging in the old practice of setting up a “medieval straw man” to be conveniently knocked over by Luther, Calvin, and Trent. But this interpretation rapidly gained adherents among historians of the medieval period as well. Gabriel Le Bras questioned fashionable new arguments about the origins and pace of Europe’s “de-Christianization” on the grounds that medieval Europe was in reality never all that thoroughly Christianized. André Vauchez and Paolo Brezzi, both Catholic, likewise repudiated the “myth of the Christian Middle Ages.” 9 Even in studies of medieval philosophy, which were once central to the notion of a Christian medieval Europe, images of a prevailing “Christian spirit” have yielded to an emphasis on logic and nonmetaphysical issues and an insistence on many differing schools of thought. Indeed, one scholar (also a Catholic priest) has interpreted Dante as secretly skeptical of Christian claims to philosophical truth. 10 7

See the page facing the imprimatur in the first volume of Mediaeval Studies (1939). On Toronto’s institute, see Lawrence K. Shook, Catholic Post-Secondary Education in English-Speaking Canada: A History (Toronto, 1971), 210-28, and Etienne Gilson (Toronto, 1984), 180, 192-95; Anne Fremantle, The Age of Belief (New York, 1954), x; and Philip Gleason, “Mass and Maypole Revisited: American Catholics and the Middle Ages,” Catholic Historical Review, 57 (1971): 249-74. 8 Delumeau, Le catholicisme entre Luther et Voltaire, Nouvelle Clio, no. 30 (Paris, 1971), 234-35, and “Au sujet de la déchristianisation,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 22 (1975): 57. On Delumeau and his views, see M. Despland, “How Close Are We to Having a Full History of Christianity? The Work of Jean Delumeau,” Religious Studies Review, 9 (1983): 24-33. Also see Muchembled, Culture populaire et culture des élites dans la France moderne (XVe–XVIII6 siècles) (Paris, 1978), 131-33; Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms (New York, 1982), esp. 126; and Strauss, Luther’s House of Learning: Indoctrination of the Young in the German Reformation (Baltimore, Md., 1978), 268-308. For a good review of this literature and viewpoint, see Natalie Z. Davis, “From ‘Popular Religion’ to Religious Cultures,” in Steven Ozment, ed., Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research (St. Louis, Mo., 1982), 321-42. For another approach, see Jean9 Wirth, Luther: Etude d’histoire religieuse (Geneva, 1981), 35-90. Le Bras,“‘Déchristianisation’: Mot fallacieux,” Cahiers d’histoire, 9 (1964): 92-97; and Delumeau, “Au sujet de la déchristianisation,” 52-60. Also see Brezzi, Metodologia storiografica e problematica medioevale (Rome, 1975), esp. 163-94; and Vauchez, “Les nouvelles orientations de l’histoire religieuse de la France médiévale (avant le XIIIe siècle),” in his Religion et société dans l’occident médiévale (Turin, 1980), 293: “La renaissance catholique de la première moitié du XIXe siècle qui se fondait sur une vision de la mythique 10

Chrétienité.” See Etienne Gilson, The Spirit ofMediaeval Philosophy (New York, 1936), 404. Gilson in summary of his book described himself as “wishing to set forth a spirit of medieval philosophy, and [as] having identified it with the spirit of Christian philosophy. Compare the introduction to Norman Kretzmann et al., eds., The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, (Cambridge, 1982), 3. The Cambridge History, with its quite different emphases, was written partly as a pedagogical corrective, but it was also meant, in the editors’ words, to “help end the era during which [medieval philosophical thought] has been studied in a philosophical ghetto.” Jaroslav Pelikan made similar remarks. See Pelikan, “The

The old Romantic

image, in short, has been turned on its head. Jacques Le Goff lengthy survey of medieval Christianity by declaring that “towards 1500 Europe was still virtually mission country." 11 Were the Middle Ages then a flourishing epoch of Catholic Christianity or a millennium of Indo-European folklore? A number of studies, published since the early 1970s, have offered an easy, but inadequate, answer. The traditional achievements of the Christian Middle Ages are ascribed to an educated “clerical elite” and the folkloric practices pervasive in the medieval era, and newly appreciated by historians, to the rest of the “people.” More noteworthy than the solution, it seems to me, was the emergence of the issue. That such a question— whether medieval culture was essentially “Christian” and what that might mean— could become central to medieval historiography reflected a crucial change. Until fifty years ago the study of medieval religious life was left largely to theologians, church historians, and members of religious orders. Richard Southern recently made this point in the wry opening sentence of his appreciation of Beryl Smalley, his lifelong colleague. “In 1927, when Beryl Smalley began to study the Bible in the Middle Ages,” he wrote, “I think it would be true to say that the Bible had almost no place in the minds of medieval historians.” 12 The present debate derives in no small measure from the emergence of medieval religious life as a field of historical inquiry fully as legitimate as medieval politics, warfare, and economics. How that happened, and its impact on our view of the Middle Ages, can most easily be understood by examining the works and perspectives of influential scholars and 13 by outlining three general interpretive tendencies. A brief word must also be said about the continuing—and yet changing—influence of confessional considerations, that is, perspectives influenced by or derived from personal religious concluded

convictions

IN

HIS

that

a

or

affiliations.

DISSERTATION, COMPLETED IN

Joachim

of Fiore

“millenarian” but

a

was

1927, Herbert Grundmann (1902-70) argued

neither

significant

a

dangerous “heretic” nor a wild-eyed product of the intellectual and

witness to and

Middle Ages as ‘Age of Faith,’” in his The Growth of Medieval Theology (Chicago, 1978), 1-8. Also see Ernest L. Fortin, Dissidence et philosophie au moyen âge: Dante et ses antécédents (Montreal, 1983), esp. 160. 11 Le Goff, “Le christianisme médiévale en Occident du concile de Nice (325) à la réforme (début du XVIe siècle),” in Histoire des religions, Encyclopédic de la Pléiade (Paris, 1972), vol. 2, p. 856: “La Chrétienté vers 1500 c’est, presque, un pays de mission.” 12 Southern, “Beryl Smalley and the Place of the Bible in Medieval Studies, 1927-1984,” in Katherine Walsh and Diana Woods, eds., The Bible in the Medieval World: Essays in Memory ofBeryl Smalley (Oxford, 1985), 1. 13 A full survey of recent scholarship in medieval religious history is not possible here. For general orientations, see François Rapp, “Réflexions sur la religion populaire au moyen âge,” in Bernard Plongeron, ed., La religion populaire: Approches historiques (Paris, 1976), 51-98; Bernard McGinn, “Medieval Christianity: An Introduction to the Literature, 1957-1977,” Anglican Theological Review, 60 (1978): 278-305; Le Goff, “Le christianisme médiévale”; and Vauchez, “Nouvelles orientations de l’histoire religieuse.” On the larger interpretative issues, see the essays in Cristianesimo nella storia, 5 (1984): 29-166.

spiritual

milieu of his time. 14 To get at that milieu, that larger setting, required published his monumental Religious

another decade of work before Grundmann Movements in the Middle

Ages, which has become the foundation for the historical study of medieval religious life. 15 Most of its themes are now commonplace: the twelfth-century quest for the “apostolic life,” with particular sensitivity to the issue of poverty; the common inspiration of groups ending up both inside and outside the church (with comparisons of Francis and Waldo); the centrality of women in those movements; Innocent III’s skillful and crucial handling of the mendicants; and the rise of a vernacular religious culture for the laity, especially lay women. Yet, just because so much subsequent work still stands in the shadow of this book, Grundmann’s distinctly personal approach deserves closer analysis. The focal point, both scholarly and personal, for all his work remained the individual quest for the truly apostolic (that is, Christian) life. 16 Grundmann’s interest and exposition normally stopped short the moment any movement gained official approbation as an order or reprobation as a sect—the only two long-term options, in his view, possible within the structures of the medieval church. In general, Grundmann was more taken therefore with hermits and wandering preachers than with professed monks, with adult converts than with child oblates, with religious women still partly in the world (Beguines) than with nuns, and with individuals making their own spiritual way (Waldo, Francis) than with spokesmen for established groups. 17 Individualistic “heresiarchs” deserved sympathetic study; “heretics” or the "religious” who joined groups for familial, social, or cultural reasons he mostly left to others. As the new orders produced by religious movements grew ever more “monkish,” he saw that fringe groups would inevitably turn

all the

more

“radical.” 18

What Grundmann

centrality of these

taught

historians above all

movements in medieval

was to

history and

take

the

seriously both the religious motivation of

14 Grundmann, Studien über Joachim von Fiore (1927; reprint edn., Darmstadt, 1966). It is striking how many scholars sought a new and less confessional view of medieval religious life by way of studying Joachim. See Emile Gebhart, Introduction à l'histoire du sentiment religieux en Italie (Paris, 18S4), and L’Italie mystique (3d edn., Paris, 1899); Paul Fournier, Etudes sur Joachim de Fiore et ses doctrines (Paris, 1899); Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1969); Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London, 1957); Ernst Benz, Ecclesia Spiritualis (Stuttgart, 1934); Grundmann, Studien über Joachim von Fiore; Giovanni Volpe, Movimenti religiosi e sette ereticali nella società medievale italiana (Florence, 1922); Ernesto Buonaiuti, Gioacchino da Fiore: I tempi, la vita, il messaggio (Rome, 1931); and Raffaelo Morghen, Medioevo cristiano (Rome, 1951). Reeves began her work in the 1930s. One may wonder in retrospect whether studies of Joachim offered the best approach to medieval religious culture. 15 Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter (1935; reprint edn., Darmstadt, 1970). For a good introduction to Grundmann’s work, see the necrology by Arno Borst, in Grundmann, Ausgewählte Aufsätze, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Schriften, no. 25 (Stuttgart, 1976-78), 1: 1-25. The volume includes a complete bibliography. See Grundmann, Ausgewählte Aufsätze, 1: 26-37. Also see R. Büchner, “Religiösität, Spiritualismus, geistige Armut, Bildung: Herbert Grundmann’s geistesgeschichtliche Studien,"Innsbrucker Historische Studien, 1 (1978): 239-51. 16 See Borst’s comment in Grundmann, Ausgewählte Aufsätze, 1: 2: “Ein eigenes Verständnis vom christlichen Evangelium und seiner Verwirklichung; hier liegt die tiefste Würzel für sein Lebenswerk.” 17 Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen, 5-6. All these themes, inherent in Religiöse Bewegungen, were in separate essays under that same title and gathered into volume 1 of his Aufsätze. developed 18 See, especially, Grundmann, “Hérésies savantes et hérésies populaires au moyen âge,” in Ausgewählte Aufätsze, 1: 417-22, and his “Neue Beiträge zur Geschichte der religiösen Bewegungen im Mittelalter,” in Religiöse Bewegungen, 513, and Ausgewählte Aufsätze, 1: 67.

their adherents he

regardless of origins, be they Cathars or Free Spirits.

19

But, while

religious movements should not be dismissed by church historians as “heretical” or interpreted by general historians as “social protest,” Grundmann never defined exactly what he understood by the term “movement.” His own book was really a series of connected essays, and he virtually ignored routine religious practices and institutional developments. (Interestingly, Grundmann himself ceased formal practice in the State Lutheran Church.) Indeed, the institutionalization of a religious movement seemed to him neither desirable nor possible, so—to redo his title—ordinary religious life (or practice) in the Middle Ages remained largely untreated and, by implication, unworthy of treatment, since those “moved” to “religion” had to go beyond it. By contrast, for Etienne Delaruelle (1904-71), a French Catholic, the heart of medieval religious life lay in the “piety” of the “people." 20 Like Grundmann, he was committed to the exposition of authentic Christian experience and much less interested in socioeconomic questions. But he searched for that Christianity in collective expressions of piety, such as crusades and pilgrimages, and in common cults, like those of the cross and the saints. He knew well enough that popular religiosity often expended itself in practices verging on magic, varieties of gross superstition, and perfunctory external rites, but he intuitively focused elsewhere, on taking up the cross to go on crusade rather than on its attendant indulgences, on pilgrimages as penitential acts rather than on shrines, on devotion to the saints rather than on miracles and magic. He also believed that medieval religious life underwent an increasing interiorization—bringing a deepened personal appropriation, moving away from crusades and pilgrimages, for instance, and toward observances such as the stations of the cross. Delaruelle steadily resisted the identification of medieval religious life with either the “professionally” or the “extraordinarily” (that is, heretically) religious, but he conceded deep “tension, even opposition,” between clerical and popular Christianity, and he saw Saint Francis as the only figure truly to transcend it. 21 Nonetheless, Delaruelle’s work, exemplified best in his contribution to the fourteenth volume in the series Histoire de L’église, effectively brought the piety of ordinary people into the mainstream of historical study (and, in another context, directly influenced Vatican Council II). Yet Delaruelle never defined these “people” conceptually or socially, which was was

clear that these

19 For works by two excellent disciples of Grundmann, see Arno Borst, Die Katharer, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Schriften, no. 12 (Stuttgart, 1953); and Robert E. Lerner, The Heresy of the Free

(Princeton, N.J., 1972). Spirit 20 Delaruelle never published his thesis on Catherine of Siena. For his most important works, see L'église au temps du Grand Schisme et de la crise conciliare, Histoire de l’église, no. 14 (Paris, 1964), La piété populaire au moyen âge, ed. R. Manselli and A. Vauchez (Turin, 1975), and L’idée de croisade au moyen âge, ed. R. Richard (Turin, 1980). Both collections of essays have important introductions to Delaruelle and his work. Also see M. H. Vicaire, “L’apport d’Etienne Delaruelle aux études de spiritualité populaire médiévale,” in La religion populaire en Languedoc, Cahiers de Fanjeaux, no. 11 (Toulouse, 1976), 23-36. Vicaire offered a positive evaluation of Delaruelle’s work. For a more negative view, see J. C. Schmitt,“‘Religion populaire’ et culture folklorique,” Annales, économies, sociétés, civilisation, 31 (1976):

941-53. 21 For the closest Delaruelle came to a definition of “popular piety,” see his “La vie commune des clercs et la spiritualité populaire au moyen âge,” and “Saint François d’Assise et la piété populaire,” in La piété populaire au moyen âge, 165-67, 275.

of Jean-Claude Schmitt’s main criticisms, nor did he confront squarely the gap piety between their actual practice and the formal prescriptions of the church. Jean Leclercq (1911-), Delaruelle's contemporary, introduced historians to monastic piety in such a way—and so successfully—that numerous lay and even agnostic scholars are focusing sympathetically on monastic spiritual life, an undertaking almost inconceivable two generations ago. Building on the work of André Wilmart and others, Leclercq placed the development of the monastic orders within general cultural and literary history and transformed monastic “spirituality” into a coherent world view or outlook, which enabled historians to fit monastic thought and devotional literature far better into the larger medieval 22 story. But Leclercq’s “monastic theology" lacks firm historical definition and is therefore subject, like Grundmann’s “religious movements” and Delaruelle’s “popular piety,” to a certain vagueness or even opportunism in its concrete historical applications. At the same time, and in much the same context, Marie-Dominique Chenu and Yves Congar attempted to elucidate theological and 23 ecclesiological themes contextually. Their purpose, much like that of Delaruelle and Leclercq, was to reform and to promote from within the church through historical understanding, but their effect—not altogether unintended—was to make these materials generally accessible and thus to draw many others into their one

in

study. If Grundmann established the

study of medieval “religious movements,” "popular piety,” and Leclercq "monastic theology,” Gabriel Le Bras (1891-1970) founded “religious sociology.” An expert in history and law, Le Bras approached religion from the perspective of its organization and practice, in an effort to explain historically the variety and degree of Catholic practice observable Delaruelle

in modern France. 24 In terms of the Annales school, what Delaruelle did for religious “mentalities,” Le Bras undertook, at Marc Bloch’s specific encouragement, for religious “societies.” He called for a “religious geography” to map out local

practice and the physical state of churches and cemeteries, studies of parishes

22 Leclercq’s most influential work was The Love of Learning and Desire for God (2d paperback edn., New York, 1974), first published in 1957 under the title L'amour des lettres et le désir de Dieu: Initiation aux auteurs monastiques du moyen âge. For a complete bibliography, see Réginald Grégoire, “Bibliographie de Dom Jean Leclercq,” Studia Monastica, 10 (1968): 161-80, and 20 (1978): 409-23. For a critical review of Leclercq’s historical contribution, see G. G. Meerseman,“‘Teologia monastica’ e riforma ecclesiastica da Leone IX a Callisto II,” in Il monachesimo e la riforma ecclesiastica, 1049-1123 (Milan, 1971), 257-70; and Gregorio Penco, “La teologia monastica: Bilancio di un dibattito,” Benedictina, 26 (1979): 189-98. For a partial redefinition of monastic theology, see Leclercq, “The Renewal of Theology,” in Robert Benson et al., eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, 1982), 68-87, esp. 71 n. 7. 23 Chenu, La théologie au douzième siècle (Paris, 1957), and Introduction à l'étude de Saint Thomas d’Acquin (Paris, 1950); Congar, L’ecclésiologie du haul moyen âge (Paris, 1968), and L’église de Saint Augustin à l'époque moderne (Paris, 1970). Chenu’s La théologie au douzième siècle has been partially translated by Lester K. Little and Jerome Taylor as Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century (Chicago, 1968). Also see the essays by Congar in Droit ancien et structures ecclésiales (London, 1982). 24 The best approach to Le Bras is through his two-volume Etudes de sociologie religieuse (Paris, 1955-56), where his most important essays have been organized, as it were, programmatically. For a complete bibliography, see Etudes d’histoire du droit canonique dediés à Gabriel Le Bras, 2 vols. (Paris 1965), 1: ix–xxxiii. And for a useful interpretative introduction, see Henri Desroche, “Areas and Methods of a Sociology of Religion: The Work of G. Le Bras,” Journal of Religion, 35 (1955): 34-47. The subtitle of the first essay (from 1931) in his Etudes d’histoire reads “Pour un examen détaillé et pour une explication historique de l’état du Catholicisme dans les diverses régions de la France.”

and confraternities to get at local social organization and of canon law, visitation records, synodical statutes, and parish registers to get at local sources. His own masterful

account

Christendom

of medieval ecclesiastical institutions revealed

a

Latin

interest groups

overlapping competing versus bishops, religious versus seculars, parishoners versus vicars, and so on)—all greatly differentiated in time and place and yet, somehow, in the High Middle Ages, roughly amalgamated into a “common law” of the church, a term that suggests “practice” becoming “norm.” Such close examination permanently shattered any hazy Romantic notions of medieval Christendom as singularly unified or pious and disclosed enormous gaps between ideal and reality, Christian doctrine and popular practice. 25 Yet Le Bras’s own inspiration clearly arose out of a scholarly effort to recover his childhood experience in a village parish. A posthumous book on “the church and the village” described each village church as a “religious capital” and looked back nostalgically on a time when village life, in all its “lived” dimensions, revolved around the (cardinals

comprised

and

of several

versus

popes,

chapters

church. 26 In

England, meanwhile,

where the

adage “history

is past

politics” reigned

into

the 1920s, a historian of strict Dissenter stock established the study of medieval religious life. Maurice Powicke (1879-1963), together with David Knowles

(1896-1974) of Benedictine and neo-Scholastic background, produced in Richard Southern, Beryl Smalley, Christopher Cheney, Christopher Brooke, and many others a generation or two of rare accomplishment. Powicke, notably for a Dissenter, concentrated attention on medieval Christianity’s mainstream: the prescriptions of councils and synods, the teachings of schoolmen, the lives of monks. Yet he also said of medieval

religious life: “We no longer believe in that Paganism abounded, but it was the literal 27 paganism of the natural man.” Powicke’s perception of a blend between the “naturally pagan” and mainstream Christianity’s finest achievements was to find a continuing echo. Richard Southern (1911-) described medieval civilization as a mix between “the practical, business-like and earthy, and the intellectual, spiritual

well-behaved

body

of the faithful.

.

.

.

25 This more critical vision of medieval Christianity is particularly evident in two dissertations directed by Le Bras. See Paul Adam, La vie paroissiale en France au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1964); and Jacques Toussaert, Le sentiment religieux en Flandre à la fin du moyen âge (Paris, 1963). Toussaert’s book, widely used in France and America, received critical reviews in Flanders. For a general appraisal with references to other reviews, see Ludo Milis, “De devotionele praktijk in de laat-middeleeuwse Nederlanden,” in J. D. Janssens, ed., Hoofsheid en devotie in de middeleeuwse maatschappij (Brussels, 1982) 133-45, and 144 n. 10. 26 See Le Bras, Prologomènes, Histoire du droit et des institutions de l’église en Occident, no. 1 (Paris, 1955), and Institutions ecclésiastique de la chréienité médiévale, Histoire de l’église, no. 12 (1959/1964). Compare his L'église et le village (Paris, 1976). Le Bras’s work was the inspiration for the “new” history of “lived” Christianity. See Jean Delumeau, ed., Histoire véçue du peuple chrétien, 2 vols. (Toulouse, 1979). In general Le Bras’s approach has proved much more fruitful for the study of early modern than of medieval Christianity because of the far greater supply of documentary sources available after about 1400. 27 Powicke, Christian Life in the Middle Ages and Other Essays (Oxford, 1935) 5, 3. For an excellent appreciation of Powicke with bibliography by Richard W. Southern, see Proceedings ofthe British Academy, 50 (1964): 275-304. For an earlier bibliography, see Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke (Oxford, 1948), 469-91. For further insight into the historiographical shift since the 1930s, see Richard Southern, “Marjorie Reeves as an Historian,” in Ann Williams, ed., Prophecy and Millenarianism: Essays in Honour of Marjorie Reeves (Burnt Hill, England, 1980), 3-9.

and

aspiring.” His survey of the medieval church, perhaps the most influential of generation, dealt primarily with the practical, “the connexion between social setting,” while leaving the intellectual and religious organizations and spiritual to another volume on Scholasticism, which is still awaited. Partly, like Leclercq, under Wilmart’s influence, Southern identified the “aspiring” especially with monastic spirituality, a theme most evident in his works on Anselm. 28 Smalley (1906-84) focused on the schoolmen’s literal and historical study of the Bible, though one of her best books took up precisely the same juxtaposition— intellectuals in politics—that Southern highlighted. 29 This notion of a “mix” between the natural and the spiritual man, though much milder in its rhetoric, proved as corrosive of the old Romantic images of medieval Christianity as the ideas of Delumeau, Le Bras, and their colleagues. It was Christopher Cheney the last

.

.

.

the realities of ecclesiastical administration, 30 who demonstrated the Jewish community's role in developing Christian

(1905-), after all, who laid

Smalley exegesis,

out

and Southern who discarded

Oxford and insisted that universities While these scholars, active in

as

myths

were

the schools of Chartres and

meant to serve very

England, Germany,

early practical ends. 31

and France since the 1920s

and 1930s, laid the foundation for a study of medieval religious life in both its ideals and its practical realities, another group, mostly younger and influenced in part by church reform and countercultural movements, set out to explore and to

religious aspirations of medieval fringe groups. This was a general phenomenon, associated, for instance, with Norman Cohn’s book The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957), 32 but the approach took especially pronounced forms among scholars in countries with crumbling Catholic orthodoxies and is nowhere better illustrated than in the work of two Italian historians, Raffaeilo Morghen (1895-1983) and Raoul Manselli (d. 1984). Morghen insisted that “the fundamental theme inspiring and permeating the whole development of medieval include the

28 Southern, Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (New York, 1970), vii, and Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Baltimore, Md., 1970), 15. The essay “Medieval Humanism” in the first book represents, in effect, the paradigmatic interpretation of the greatest achievement of the High Middle Ages as a successful synthesis between the “natural” and the “spiritual.” For a bibliography of Southern’s works, see R. H. C. Davis and J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, eds., The Writing ofHistory in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to Richard William Southern (Oxford, 1981), 495-502. 29 For insights into Smalley’s and Southern’s historiographical positions, see Southern, “Beryl Smalley and the Place of the Bible in Medieval Studies,” 1-16. Also see Smalley’s preface to the third edition of The Study ofthe Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1983), vii–xvii. The title of Smalley’s The Becket Conflict and the Schools: A Study of Intellectuals in Politics (Totowa, N.J., 1973) is noteworthy. For a collection of her essays and a bibliography of her work, see Studies in Medieval Thought and Learningfrom Abelard to Wyclif (London, 1981), esp. 417-22. 30 Cheney’s work is well represented in his collected studies, Medieval Texts and Studies (Oxford, 1973), and in From Becket to Langton: English Church Government, 1170-1213 (Manchester, 1956) and Pope Innocent III and England, Päpste und Papsttum, no. 9 (Stuttgart, 1976). For a complete bibliography to 1975, see Church and Government in the Middle Ages: Essays Presented to C. R. Cheney on his 70th Birthday (Cambridge, 1976), 275-84. The juxtaposition evident in the title Church and Government is again

noteworthy. 31

Southern, “The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres,” in Benson et al., Renaissance and Renewal, 113-72, and “From Schools to University,” in J. I. Catto, The History of the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1984), vol. 1, pp. 1-36. 32 See Jeffrey Russell and Carl Berkhout, Medieval Heresies: A Bibliography, 1960-79 (Toronto, 1981). For a review of Russell’s Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, N.Y., 1984), see Norman Cohn, “Giving the Devil His Due,” New York Review of Books, April 25, 1985, pp. 13-14.

civilization

was

the Christian

religious

between a clerical hierarchy and

an

tradition.” But he

saw

its force

as

divided

unchanneled, virtually uncontrollable religious

“religious conscience of lay society, which rose together city and the communes.” Joachim, he contended, not Innocent or Friar was “the greatest exponent, master, and prophet Thomas, Pope of all the spirituality of the thirteenth century.” 33 So, too, Manselli, Morghen’s disciple, specifically defended the Romantic notion of a medieval Christian movement

rooted in the

with the renewed life of the

civilization but located it in “foundational” values rather than hierarchical structures and

interpreted

critical and heretical movements was—to

as

signs

of

vitality. paraphrase major works—heretical reformers, Franciscan spirituals, religious deviants, popular religiosity, magic and witchcraft, and, lastly, Saint Francis. 34 His entire approach wholly presupposed an institutional church, yet he tended to put the “truly religious” outside it. Manselli sought to include “popular” and even “fringe” elements in the medieval church but was often unclear about their relationship to each other and to medieval Christianity as a whole, and, while rejecting both neo-Scholastic and social determinist interpretations, he still attempted to understand medieval Christianity as a socioreligious unity. All the historians described thus far, whatever their emphasis or approach, had, it is fair to say, a personal religious interest in the study of a Christian medieval civilization. A new school has emerged comprised of historians, represented here by Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt, who have approached medieval religious life as historical anthropologists investigating a native culture subjected to the propaganda of Christian missionaries. Missionary is, roughly, Schmitt’s 35 in his book The of of the Dominican Bourbon, image, Holy Greyhound, Stephen Le Goff first the notion of a distinct inquisitor. wholly propagated religious culture among the people, worthy of serious study and essential to an understanding of earlier European life. From the beginning, he has had a flair for dramatic pronouncements, choosing to write a textbook rather than a thèse d’état, to collect his essays under the programmatic French title Pour un autre moyen âge, and to focus his one major historical monograph on purgatory, understood as a creative new Accordingly,

the focus of his research

the titles of his

33

Morghen, Medioevo Cristiano (1951; 4th edn., Rome, 1974), 19, 253, 257. For a bibliography of Morghen’s works, see Studi sul medioevo cristiano offerti a R. Morghen, 2 vols. (Rome, 1974), 1: xi–xxi. Also see Morghen, “La lezione di Medioevo Cristiano,” Quaderni catanesi, 2 (1980): 453-68, and “Cultura laica e cultura cattolica in Roma ai primi del’900,” Archivio della società romana di storia patria, 102 (1979): 393-411. By way of his teacher, Ernesto Buonaiuti, Morghen had intellectual contacts with Modernist historians condemned by the hierarchy in the early twentieth-century. Among Morghen’s own students, Manselli studied “heretics” and Arsenio Frugoni examined a radical evangelical critic of the Roman papacy in the twelfth century. See Frugoni, Arnoldo da Brescia (Rome, 1954). On Frugoni and his collected essays, see Giovanni Miccoli, “Gli Incontri nel Medio Evo di Arsenio Frugoni,” Studi Medievali,

24 (1983): 469-86. 34 Manselli, “La Christianitas medioevale di fronte all’eresia,” in Branca, Concetto, storia, miti e immagini, 90-133, esp. 132-33, Studi sulle eresie del secolo XII (Rome, 1953), Spirituali e Beghini in Provenza (Rome, 1959), I fenomeni di devianza nel medioevo (Turin, 1972), Magia, and San Francesco d’Assisi (Rome, 1981). Manselli’s personal views are most evident in the opening and closing chapters of his La religion populaire au moyen âge (Montreal, 1975). For a bibliography of his relevant work, see La religion populaire, 14-15. 35 Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound: Guinefort, Healer of Children since the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 1983), 11-35.

product

of medieval man's

36

spatial imagination. numerous historians adopting related approaches,

With this school, and with study of medieval religious

the

life has in

a sense come full circle. Practices that earlier generations of Protestants enlightened liberals dismissed as so much superstition, and many Catholics quietly downplayed or entirely overlooked, have been taken up enthusiastically— with a heavy debt to anthropologists and folklorists—as the authentic (and non-Christian) religion of the people. 37 The study of both comparative religions and folklore dates from the nineteenth century, and both disciplines have been fitfully applied to the study of medieval religious life. There was a fierce debate in the early twentieth century over the cult of the saints and their relics as a “pagan survival,” 38 and several German scholars, especially Catholics, attempted in the 1930s to elucidate sympathetically the role of folklore in various aspects of medieval religious life. 39 Le Goff, Schmitt, and others have now set out to draw far more systematically on structural analysis as a way of getting at a submerged popular culture in which religion—that is, a religion common to Indo-European peoples—played a key role as a cohesive force.

and

At the heart of Le Goff's and Schmitt's vision is

cultures, the

an

argument for

two

distinct

clerical and bookish, the other popular, oral, and customary, the first accessible through traditional intellectual and spiritual categories, the second one

mainly through cultural anthropology and comparative religions.40 Further, these argued that bookish, clerical culture was to some degree an

historians have

36 Le Goff’s Pour un autre moyen âge (Paris, 1977) has been translated. See Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1980). For an illuminating preface on Le Goff's outlook, see Time, Work, and Culture, vii–xv. Also sec Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago, 1984). For reviews of Le Goff’s works, see Times Literary Supplement, June 18, 1982, pp. 651-52; Adriaan Bredero, “Le moyen âge et le purgatoire,” Revue d'histoire écclésiastique, 78 (1983): 429-51; Aaron Gurevich, “Popular and Scholarly Medieval Cultural Traditions: Notes in the Margins of Jacques Le Goff’s Book," Journal of Medieval History, 9 (1983): 78-98; and E. Mégier, “Deux examples de ‘prépurgatoire’ chez les historiens: A propos de La naissance du Purgatoire de Jacques Le Goff,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale, 28 (1985): 45-62. There is a generally positive presentation of this whole “French” school (but with examples mostly from modern history) by Willem Frijhoff; “Van ‘Histoire de l’église’ naar ‘histoire religieuse,’” Nederlands Archief voor 61 (1981): 113-53. Kerkgeschiedenis, 37 For the clearest presentation of Le Goff’s thesis, see his “Clerical Culture and Folklore Traditions in Merovingian Civilization” and “Ecclesiastical Culture and Folklore in the Middle Ages: Saint Marcellus of Paris and the Dragon,” in Time, Work, and Culture, 153-88. Also see Schmitt, “‘Religion populaire’ et culture folklorique,” and “'Jeunes’ et danse des chevaux de bois: Le folklore méridional dans la litterature des exempla (XIIIe–XIVe siècles),” in Religion populaire en Languedoc, 127-58. 38 For the best and most balanced survey of a large body of works, see František Graus, Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger: Studien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit (Prague, 1965). 39 German scholars had a tradition of work in “Volkskunde” going back at least to the Brothers Grimm. See Heinrich Schauerte, “Entwicklung und gegenwärtiger Stand der religiösen Volkskundeforschung,” Historisches Jahrbuch, 72 (1953): 516-34. Peter Browe, Otto Höfler, and especially Georg Schreiber (1882-1963) were among the most significant of these scholars. On Schreiber, see Nikolaus Grass, “In Memoriam,” Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung für Rechtsgeschichte, Kanonistische Abteilung, 49 (1963): 621-26. Broadly speaking, German scholarship in “religious folklore” declined after the Second World War, and French work, stimulated by structural anthropology, increased. 40 For the most explicit expression of structuralism, see Le Goff, “Melusina: Mother and Pioneer,” in Time, Work, and Culture, 205-22; and Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound, 40-48. Also see, for Claude Brémond’s structural analysis of an exemplum, Jean-Claude Schmitt et al., L’exemplum, Typologie des sources, no. 40 (Turnhout, 1981), 113. This interpretive approach also underlies R. Howard Bloch’s Etymologies and Genealogies (Chicago, 1983). For far greater skepticism about the reliability of literary accounts of “superstition,” see Dieter Harmening, Superstitio: Überlieferungs- und theoriegeschichtliche Untersuchungen zur kirchlich-theologischen Aberglaubensliteratur des Mittelalters (Berlin, 1979).

“ideological reflection” of the social elite but operated far more as an instrument of its oppression. This social component, though important to their interpretation, seems the least developed and least convincing. Surely medieval churchmen used their spiritual authority and intellectual abilities to economic and political advantage, as demonstrated, for instance, in Joseph Lynch’s study of simoniac entrance into monastic life. But learned clerics comprised, as Le Bras insisted, a congerie of mutually competing interests, not a uniform class, and in any case two-thirds were

or more

not in the

fruitful

of the landed estates—and the power that came with them— of a clerical elite. 41 More important and much more

possession

by this school to dredge up from the bottom, as it peasant religious “folklore.” Insights from the analysis of have stimulated historians to deal with folk practices on their comparative religions own terms, and not just as some degraded form of Christianity or as the “paganism of the natural man." These insights have also forced historians to reflect again on the import of the church doing its business and developing its culture in a language unknown to most of its people—a point to which the members of this school 42 repeatedly return. Indeed, their work reflects a broader concern to recover medieval traditions outside those recorded and upheld by a clerical elite. 43 But to argue that the people had a wholly distinct religious culture, not somehow amalgamated into Christian practice, is quite another matter. Before adopting such a view, historians must examine more closely the sources used to argue for it and the interpretive presuppositions that have guided it. The main evidence cited by proponents of separate cultures derives from exempla44 and from 45 inquisitorial records. Both record the stories and sometimes the words of people are

the attempts made

were, the residues of

41

The thesis is generally argued more forcefully by Schmitt; The Holy Greyhound, 169-70, and L'exemplum, 107: “L'exemplum a compte parmi les moyens le plus remarquables des échanges culturels, parce qu'il ètait d’abord l’un des instruments les plus efftcaces du pouvoir idéologique.” To view the “clerical establishment” as a relatively unified whole is central to the structure of this thesis. See Le Goff’s introduction to Jean-Claude Schmitt, Mort d'une hérésie: L’église et les clercsface aux béguines et aux béghards du Rhin supérieur du XIVe au XVe siècle (Paris, 1978), 6. But also see Le Bras, Institutions écclésiastique; and Lynch, Simonical Entry into Religious Life from 1000 to 1250 (Columbus, Ohio, 1976), 25-60. Lynch thought “oppression” stemmed mostly from the perceived and desired religious power of the monastic

habit. 42 See Thomas Tender, “Seventeen Authors in Search of Two Religious Cultures,” Catholic Historical Review, 71 (1985): 248-57. Tentler’s review here of Faire Croire: Modalités de la diffusion et de la réception des messages religieux du XIIe au XVe siècle, Collection de l’école française de Rome, no. 51 (Rome, 1981), offers a good schematic survey of the issues. In the introduction to that volume, André Vauchez’s “Présentation” (pages 7-16) suggests, in a kind of reversal, that the new learning of a university-trained after 1200 was responsible for dividing the religious culture. clergy 43 This is explicit throughout Le Goff’s Time, Work, and Culture. Also see, for instance, Georges Duby’s Medieval Marriage: Two Models from Twelfth-Century France (Baltimore, Md., 1978). Duby’s book contains a similar thesis of two competing cultures, primarily on the social rather than on the religiousplane. 44

Exempla were the essential sources for Schmitt’s The Holy Greyhound. See the joint introduction to by Schmitt, Le Goff, and Bremond in L'exemplum. For a good orientation to the sources, see Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Recueils françiscans d’exempla et perfectionnement des techniques intellectuelles du XIIle au XVe siècles,” Bibliothèque de l'école des chartes, 135 (1977): 5-21. For references to more works, mostly on the literary aspects of the exempla, see Peter von Moos, “The Use of exempla in the Policraticus of John of Salisbury,” in M. Wilks, ed. The World ofJohn of Salisbury (Oxford, 1984), this genre

210-13. 45

Inquisitorial records were the essential sources for Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms and Roy Ladurie’s Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324 (Paris, 1975). On Ladurie’s use

Emmanuel Le

at odds with

approved practice

or

orthodox doctrine. Because these materials

first abounded in the thirteenth century, Le Goff and Schmitt have renamed this “age of faith” a great “age of folklore.” 46 Most of these “folkloric”

originated

or

stories and

accounts

stemmed, however, from attempts which has

at clerical instruction

influenced the

clearly interpretation suppression (inquisition), as essentially “repressive.” Crucial to the argument of this school is the conviction that these stories, despite stereotyping, repetition, and elaboration, preserve a core of authentic experience and belief alien to the (exempla)

or

of Latin Christian culture

Christian establishment. However unverifiable except

that may be—and it is ultimately

true

structural

comparative analysis—the impulse to by using compile exemplary stories and inquisitorial records originated with learned clerics, making these sources at best only a very indirect indicator of the strength and quality of popular folklore and a much better indicator of clerical zeal to deepen Christian faith and practice. Even Schmitt conceded that the uncovering of strange happenings in a remote village suggests a deep penetration of Christianity into the 47 countryside. Moreover, Alexander Murray, in a recent study of this same genre, found stories of plenty of people who struggled with moral and cultic questions pertinent to Christian practice but accounts of only one or two who stood 48 altogether outside or against medieval Christendom. Similarly, new studies using the

sermon

underwent

literature of the thirteenth century—a collection of documents that expansion then and within which exempla are merely a

enormous

subcategory—have yielded much Those

or

texts

reveal

an

information

outlook shared,

on common

more

or

practices

and beliefs.

less, between preacher and

surprisingly—might sometimes have 49 appeared terribly maddeningly indifferent. These sources comprise a relatively meager harvest of materials. From them historians can produce a separate religious culture only by inferring from selected stories—admittedly, with striking parallels to Indo-European folklore—a supposed majority culture and by assuming that this culture remained essentially unchanged from prehistoric times to the late Middle Ages and beyond. This is no less dogmatic and ahistorical in its interpretive approach than the neo-Scholastic Catholic who inferred from Bernard or Thomas a thriving Christian culture across the whole sweep of the Middle Ages. But this assumption of two cultures, including audience,

even

when the audience—not sinful

so

or even

Leonard Boyle, “Montaillou Revisited: ‘Mentalité’ and Methodology,” in J. A. Raftis, Medieval Peasants (Toronto, 1981), 119-40. Jacques Le Goff and Jean-Claude Schmitt, “Au XIIIe siècle: Une parole nouvelle,” in Delumeau, Histoire véçue, 271-75. Essays by Pierre Riché, C. M. de la Roncière, Alexandre Geystor, and François Rapp, each with references to additional works, also recognize, but in a more balanced way, a folk ibid 195-221, 281-314, 315-34, 335-64. religion; 47 Schmitt, The Holy Greyhound, 177. In the L’exemplum, Schmitt spoke, with greater nuance, of an effort to “reinforce the process of Christianization”; L’exemplum, 102-03. 48 Alexander Murray, “Confession as a Historical Source in the Thirteenth Century,” in Davis and Wallace-Hadrill, The Writing of History, 275-322. 49 Alexander Murray, “Piety and Impiety in Thirteenth-Century Italy,” in G. Cumming and D. Baker, eds., Popular Belief and Practice (Cambridge, 1972), 83-107, and “Religion among the Poor in Thirteenth-Century France: The Testimony of Humbert of Romans,” Traditio, 30 (1974): 285-324; and, especially, D. L. D’Avray, The Preaching ofthe Friars: Sermons Diffused from Paris before 1300 (Oxford,

of sources,

see

ed., Pathways

to

46

.,

1985).

a

silent

majority largely

untouched

by society’s religious

leaders for

nearly

a

thousand years, has not gone unchallenged. Recent studies of the cults of the saints and relics—the point of origin for many studies of popular religion—have rejected any such notion of a dual or bilevel religious culture. Gregory the Great wrote his Dialogues to instruct and please Roman aristocrats, not just to pander to peasants;

Gregory of Tours described peasants and bishops alike attempting to gain access holy power of relics; and Carolingian reliquary shrines attracted the veneration of learned monks and bishops as well as lords and peasants. 50 There certainly was much more to medieval religious culture than a naive reading of the prescriptive sources might suggest, but medieval Christianity is better conceived as comprised of complex and diverse elements spread across a very wide but more or less continuous spectrum. The burden of proof still lies with those who argue for two radically different religious cultures. For they must then also demonstrate —and not just assume—a disjunction between popular practice and ecclesiastical institutions, between “low” and “high” culture, so great and so absolute as to exclude any appreciation of mutual influence, thus driving a very deep and quite improbable wedge between religious mentalities and religious institutions. Yet this thesis has probably done more than anything else in the last two decades to make religious culture, encompassing all the people and all aspects of medieval society, central to medieval historiography. to the

AS

SUCCEEDED IN BRINGING religious life into the mainstream of history, interpretations of medieval Christianity inevitably fell subject to the same forces or predispositions affecting historiography generally since the Second World War. The resultant impact on our conception of a “Christian Middle Ages” may be illustrated in three general tendencies or emphases. First, historical study has become particularized and localized. Only forty years ago a French author could begin a book on the “medieval Christian empire” containing the declaration that medieval Christendom offered a “stable climate,” a “unified whole (bloc)” within which “medieval men lived and moved.” An Italian author of the same era referred to a “Holy Roman Republic” that included a “universalism of church and empire, of Romanism and Christianity [that] excluded any possibility of civilized life outside itself.” Only a generation later such views seem illusory. This thousand-year stretch of history produced a variety of Christian ideals and societies or, if one prefers, of “Christendoms.” 51 Such HISTORIANS

medieval

50

Adalbert de Vogué, Grégoire Le Grand, Dialogues, Sources chrétiennes, no. 251 (Paris, 1978); Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago, 1981); and J. Hubert and M.-C. Hubert, “Piété chrétienne ou paganisme? Les statues-reliquaires de l’Europe carolingienne,” in Cristianizzazione ed organizzazione ecclesiastica delle campagne nell’alto medioevo: Espansione e resistenze (Spoleto, 1982), 235-68. For Brown’s own change of outlook, see his “The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity,” Representations, 1.2 (1983): 1-25. 51 Henri Brémond, L’empire chrétien et ses destinées en occident du XIe au XIIe siècles (Paris, 1944), 10-22; and Giovanni Faico, The Holy Roman Republic: A Historic Profile ofthe Middle Ages, trans. K. Virginia Kent (New York, 1964), 22. By way of contrast, see Delumeau, “Au sujet de la déchristianisation,” 56.

Similarly, in

secular

history, Georges Duby’s inaugural lecture at the Collège de

France

spoke of “des

particularization, altogether expected in regional studies, has also begun to affect our understanding of broader subjects, in particular, Christian religious organization and culture. Scholars have shown, for instance, that “territorial” churches,

“episcopalist” in structure and with distinct traditions in law, liturgy, and devotional practice, predominated at least to 1050, and in the later Middle Ages “national” churches emerged strengthened from the crisis of the Great Schism. Indeed, one scholar said that interventions from Rome and enhanced papal authority during the Gregorian Reform “ruined” the church in the province of Narbonne. 52 In monastic history, too, the “Benedictine centuries” and “Cluniac reform” have dissolved into a variety of competing Benedictine enterprises, 53 which has resulted in a new perspective on the innovative Cistercian effort to reform by centralization and institutionalization. In philosophy, scholars over the last generation have rediscovered the influence of Platonic thought as well as the importance of differing receptions of Aristotle; in theology, many different schools of thought, usually linked to particular universities or religious orders, have replaced any vague notion of a single or continuous “Scholastic” tradition. 54 Even the Christian ideal itself, as represented by its saints, has been shown to differ widely in space (north and south of the Alps) and in time (eighth-century Aquitaine versus thirteenth-century Lombardy). 55 In sum, few medieval historians speak with any confidence of some common ideal animating all of medieval Christianity irrespective of particular places, times, schools, orders, and authors. sociétiés médiévales,” not “la société médiévale.” The lecture was reprinted as “Les societés médiévales: Une approche d’ensemble,” in his Hommes et structures du moyen âge (Paris, 1973), 361-79. 52 The early medieval “episcopalist” church has been much studied since the Second World War but was first explicated by Theodor Schieffer. See Schieffer, “La chiesa nazionale di osservanza romana,” in Le chiese nei regni dell'Europa occidentale e i loro rapporti con Roma sino all’800 (Spoleto, 1960), 73-94. Also see Fredrich Kempf, “Chiesa territoriali e chiesa romana nel secolo VIII,” in I problemi dell'occidente nel secolo VIII (Spoleto, 1973), 293-317; and Horst Fuhrmann, “Das Papsttum und das kirchliche Leben im Frankreich,” in Nascità dell’Europa ed Europa carolingia: Un’equazione da verificare (Spoleto, 1981), 419-56. For surveys of the late medieval church, see J. A. F. Thomson, Popes and Princes, 1417-1517: Politics and Polity in the Late Medieval Church (London, 1980); Francis Oakley, The Late Medieval Church (Ithaca, N.Y., 1979), 23-79. On the church in Narbonne, see Elizabeth Magnou-Nortier, La société laïque et l'église dans la province écclésiastique de Narbonne de la fin du VIIIe à la fin du XIe siècle (Toulouse, 1974). 53 See Kassius Ballinger, Gorze-Kluny, Studia Anselmiana, nos. 22-25 (Rome, 1950-51). For an appreciation of Hallinger and a discussion of the context of his work, see Giles Constable, “The Study of Monastic History Today,” in Constable, Religious Life and Thought (11th-12th c.) (London, 1979),

chap. 54

1.

On Platonism, see the work of Stephen Gersh, for instance, his From Iamblichus to Eriugena (Leiden, 1978). For a pioneering essay, see M.-D. Chenu, “The Platonisms of the Twelfth Century,” in his Nature, Man, and Society, 49-68. On Aristotelianism, see Ferdnand van Steenberghen, La philosophic aux XIIIe siècle (Louvain, 1966), together with the essays and bibliography in the Cambridge History ofLater Medieval Philosophy. On theology, see, for instance, Heiko Oberman, “Fourteenth-Century Religious Thought: A Premature Profile,” Speculum, 53 (1978): 80-93; William Courtenay, Covenant and Causality in Medieval Thought (London, 1984); and J. I. Catto, “Theology and Theologians, 1220-1320,” in Catto, The History of the University of Oxford, vol. 1, pp. 471-517. 55 Among many works, see Wilson, Saints and Their Cults, esp. 309-417; Joseph-Claude Poulin, L’idéal de saintété dans l'Acquitaine carolingienne d’après lessources hagiographiques, 750-950 (Quebec, 1975); André Vauchez, La saintété en Occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge (Rome, 1981); Michael Goodich, Vita perfecta: The Ideal of Sainthood in the Thirteenth Century (Stuttgart, 1982); and Donald Weinstein and Rudolph Bell, Saints and Society: The Two Worlds of Western Christianity, 1000-1700 (Chicago, 1982).

Second, widespread enthusiasm for sociological interpretations of historical phenomena has also had its impact on our comprehension of medieval religious life. Vague talk about the “spirit,” “genius,” or underlying “faith” of medieval Christendom has given way to depictions of a church that functioned virtually as a “state” with a strong sense of its own socioeconomic and political interests, of religious houses that acted as major socioeconomic forces in their regions, and of a papacy seated firmly in its social setting in Rome. From one of Robert Brentano’s studies, one could easily conclude that the thirteenth-century church’s most important figure was not a pope, theologian, or mystic but the proctor, the facilitator of endless routine business. 56 A series of contrasts may help make plain the dimensions of this historiographical shift. Where Hippolyte Delehaye attempted to place medieval hagiography in a larger spiritual and literary tradition, Vauchez and many others have concentrated on its social outlook and setting. 57 Where Walter Ullmann ascribed the papacy’s ascendancy to its inherent legal and theological principles, Jeffrey Richards, Jane Sayers, and many others have traced the rise of papal authority to sociopolitical and administrative developments in Rome and the curia. 58 Where Grundmann ascribed the twelfth-century religious revival to a quest for the apostolic ideal, a whole generation of scholars has focused on varying reactions to the so-called Commercial Revolution, whence the reformers' troubled fascination with religious poverty. 59 Where Grundmann again ascribed the rise of universities to a quest for learning, Southern, Peter Classen, and John Baldwin, hardly social determinists, have stressed the function of university men in society and the development of a new “learned elite” 60 (Bildungsstand). And where an earlier generation of historians of theology was endlessly fascinated with uncovering the intellectual roots of Scholasticism, more recent scholars have taken up such “social” questions as the sacramentality of 56

Southern, Western Society and the Church, 15-23; Pamela Johnson, Prayer, Patronage, and Power: The Abbey of La Trinité, Vendôme, 1032-1187 (New York, 1981); Jeffrey Richards, The Popes and the Papacy in the Early Middle Ages, 476-752 (London, 1979); and Brentano, Rome before Avignon: A Social History of Thirteenth-Century Rome (New York, 1974), Two Churches: England and Italy in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1968). 57 Delehaye, Sanctus: Essai sur le culte des saints dans l'antiquité (Brussels, 1927); and Baudouin de Gaiffier, Recherches d’hagiographie latine (Brussels, 1971). And, for a work still mainly literary and religious in approach, see Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago, 1984). Important examples of works that follow the sociological approach are listed

in note 55, above. 58 Walter Ullmann, The Growth ofPapal Government in the Middle Ages: A Study in the Ideological Relations ofClerical to Lay Power (London, 1955). Also see Francis Oakley, “Celestial Hierarchies Revisited: Walter Ullmann’s Vision of Medieval Politics,” Past and Present, 60 (1973): 3-48; and Friedrich Kempf, “Die päpstliche Gewalt in der mittelalterlichen Welt: Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Walter Ullmann,” Miscellanea Historiae Pontificiae, 21 (1959); 117-69. Compare Richards, The Popes and the Papacy; Jane Sayers, Papal Government and England during the Pontificate ofHonorius III (1216-27) (Cambridge, 1984); and Cheney, Innocent III and England. 59 For a summary of many works, see Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy (Ithaca, N.Y., 1978); and Lester K. Little and Barbara Rosenwein, “Social Meaning in the Monastic and Mendicant Spiritualities,” Past and Present, 63 (1974): 4-32. 60 Herbert Grundmann, “Vom Ursprung der Universität,” in Ausgewählte Aufsätze, 3: 292-342. Contrast Peter Classen, Studium und Gesellschaft, ed. J. Fried, Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Schriften, no. 29 (Stuttgart, 1983); John Baldwin, “Masters at Paris from 1179 to 1215: A Social Perspective,” in Benson et al., Renaissance and Renewal, 138-72; and Southern, “The Schools of Paris and the School of Chartres,” and “From Schools to University.”

development of pastoral care. 61 All this is not even to discuss a host of studies on the social composition of individual religious houses, dioceses, and so on—for example, recent attempts to apply the modern sociological concept of “anomie” to the conditions in which Cluny arose or to move beyond the theoretical dimensions of the Franciscan dispute over the issue of poverty by analyzing the actual wealth and social position of one city’s mendicant houses. 62 Indeed, scholars are now using religious data to draw social inferences: the existence of a “city” from its mendicant foundations, familial and social relationships from hagiographical accounts, social “mentalities” from shifting attitudes toward Beguines and Beghards, and even a “sociological” 63 interpretation of the mass. The third general trend in recent historiography is its dramatic shift downward. For studies of medieval religious life, this means the examination of “popular 64 religion” now threatens to eclipse work on popes, theologians, and bishops. The of this shift is most evident in the themes chosen for research. Doctrinal impact disputes and papal policies have given way to relics, the cult of the saints, pilgrimages, miracles, purgatory, and the like. Even Rosalind Brooke and Christopher Brooke, moderate scholars on this question, judged that it was appropriate to begin their recent work with relics, pilgrimages, and the cult of the saints before concluding with the sacraments and teachings of Scripture. 65 Only thirty-five years ago, Christopher Dawson in his Gifford lectures found true Christianity much more deeply rooted among the people than among a corrupt clerical elite. 66 Today, on the other extreme, there is a curious and quite unjustified tendency, as in LeRoy Ladurie’s Montaillou, to identify the “popular” with the marriage and

such

“practical”

matters as the

61 Hans Zeimentz, Ehe nach der Frühscholastik (Dusseldorf, 1973); and Leonard Boyle, Pastoral Care, Clerical Education, and Canon Law, 1200-1400 (London, 1981), and “Summae confessorum,” in Les genres litteraires dans les sources théologiques et philosophiques médiévales (Louvain, 1982), 227-37. 62 Barbara Rosenwein, Rhinocerous Bound: Cluny in the Tenth Century (Philadelphia, 1982); and B. Neidiger, Mendikanten zwischen Ordensideal und städtischer Realität: Untersuchungen zum wirtschaftlichen Verhalten der Bettelorden in Basel (Berlin, 1981). 63 Jacques Le Goff, “Apostolat mendiant et fait urbain dans la France médiévale: L’implantation des ordres mendiants,” and “Ordres mendiants et urbanisation dans la France médiévale: Etat de l’inquète,” Annales, économies, sociétés, civilisation, 23 (1968): 335-52, and 25 (1970): 924-46; John Freed, The Friars and German Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1977); Bell and Weinstein, Saints and Society; Schmitt, Mort d'une hérésie; and John Bossy, “Essai de sociographie de la messe,” Annales, économies, sociétés, civilisation, 36 (1981): 44-70. For a review of Schmitt’s Mort d’une hérésie by Robert Lerner and one by Lawrence Duggan, see, respectively, Speculum, 54 (1979): 842-44 and AHR, 84 (1979): 1034-35. 64 For orientation to a vast number of new works, see Manselli, Religion populaire; Rapp, “Reflexions sur la religion populaire;” and Natalie Davis, “Some Tasks and Themes in the History of Popular Religion,” in Charles Trinkaus and Heiko Oberman, eds., The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion (Leiden, 1974), 307-36. 65 Jonathon Sumption, Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion (Totowa, N.J., 1976); Barbara Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Philadelphia, 1982); and Brooke and Brooke, Popular Religion in the Middle Ages (New York, 1983). 66 Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Rise of Western Culture (London, 1950), 219: “And [Langland’s] poem seems to prove that the fundamental principles of the creative period of medieval religion had been more completely assimilated and incorporated by the new vernacular culture of the common people than it had been by the higher and more literary culture of the ruling elements in Church and state.” This is virtually the exact opposite of the views fashionable today. But Dawson also recognized that “the early centuries of the Middle Ages saw the rise of a new Christian mythology [meaning, the legends of the saints]” and that “it was inevitable that the Christian ascetic and saint should acquire some of the features of the pagan shaman and demigod”; ibid 34. .,

“outlandish”

or

social levels that

the

“extraordinary.” neither learned

Studies of

a

“routine”

religious life

at

lower

vehicle of protest are of the first of these

extraordinary just beginning to make their appearance. Yet what some revealed of ignorant superstition and indifferent sacramental practice probably did more than anything else to tarnish the old Romantic image of medieval Christianity. One recent study, on the other hand, based on wills and combining all these new emphases on the local, the social, and the popular, discloses a vigorous Christian practice shared by both clerics and laity in late medieval Norwich and 67 argues that the Reformation was built there on strength rather than on failure. While the inclusion of new approaches to medieval Christianity has certainly done much to undermine the image of it created by reading the accomplished texts of monks and mendicants, the eventual integration of this material will actually deepen our understanding of the way in which religious teachings and institutions shaped ordinary lives, and ordinary lives in turn those teachings and institutions. A brief word should be said about the way in which the introduction of religious life into the mainstream of medieval historical inquiry has intersected with traditional confessional considerations. A topic such as medieval Christianity has inevitably—and quite understandably—attracted many historians with distinct confessional interests. Change over the last generation or so within the Christian church has had a noticeable affect on the study of medieval Christianity. The rapprochement between Catholics and Protestants broadly called "ecumenism” has not altogether blurred their differing perspectives, but it has decreased the tendency to adopt interpretations derived more from religious affiliation than from historical inquiry. Protestant as well as Jewish and agnostic historians now approach medieval religious life far more sympathetically, and Catholic historians in turn far more critically, than was conceivable in the past. At times inherited roles and outlooks have been virtually reversed. Plainly put, medieval Christianity is no longer an overwhelmingly “Catholic" subject attracting mainly “Catholic” scholars. Great changes have come within the Roman Catholic Church where traditionally the largest number of medieval religious historians have been found. These Catholic scholars, perceptibly caught up in all the issues that arose from the Second Vatican Council, have done as much as any other group to change our understanding of medieval Christianity. At the risk of oversimplifying, three tendencies seem most apparent. First, where an earlier generation saw medieval Christianity as a complete entity or as “development of doctrine,” recent scholars, led by Catholics such as Gerhart Ladner, have approached it as a series of reform movements, pointing up not only the centrality of reform both as an idea and an impulse but also, implicitly, the recurring need for reform. Second, where an earlier generation saw the medieval church as quintessentially papal, recent scholars, led by Catholics such as Brian Tierney, Francis Oakley, Congar, and was

nor

nor a

67

Jocelyn Hillgarth, “Popular Religion in Visigothic Spain,” in E. James, ed., Visigothic Spain: New Approaches (Oxford, 1980), 3-60; Toussaert, Sentiment religieux en Flandre; and Norman P. Tanner, The

Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370-1532, Studies and Texts, no. 66, (Toronto, 1984). Also see François Rapp, Réformes et Réformation à Strasbourg: Eglise et société dans la diocèse de Strasbourg, 1450-1525

(Paris, 1974).

many others, have discovered its conciliar dimension, predominant in practice in the early and late Middle Ages and vital in theory even during the strongest papal

period. And, third,

generation located medieval Christianity’s theology, recent scholars, led by Catholics such as Smalley, Henri De Lubac, van Steenberghen, Stephen Kuttner, and Ullman, have sought that achievement in biblical theology, philosophical pluralism, and ecclesiastical jurisprudence. Add what I have said about Le Bras’s emphasis on local practice, Delaruelle’s on lay piety, and Manselli’s on dissenting religions, and it is clear that Catholics themselves have radically redone the Ultramontane, neo-Scholastic image of medieval Christianity on which they were reared only a generation ago. where

an

earlier

main intellectual achievement in

ALL

a

kind of philosophical

Lynn White, Jr., one of my teachers, Christianity is not what it used to be. This is less the result of new findings (important as they are) than of new questions. In an age frequently labeled “post-Christian,” in which secular governments must spend large sums of money to preserve “redundant" churches as museum pieces, scholars and other people alike have begun to wonder how the European countryside ever came to be dotted IN

ALL, TO PARAPHRASE A LINE from

medieval

with

so

many churches, how clerics

came to

be counted

as

the “first order” in

society, and how culture came to be shaped and censored by religious norms. Was this not all imposed by an ambitious “clerical elite”? Is not secularization or “de-Christianization” simply a return to the views most people have always held? Were not most medieval folk far less caught up in Christian culture than has been assumed? In their boldness and bluntness, these questions can seem almost rhetorical. So much older work on medieval culture then suddenly seems beside the point, particularly if scholars are prepared to dismiss that culture as the product and outlook only of a minuscule elite. The question, in the jargon of our day, is the extent of the “Christianization” of medieval society, that is, the degree to which specifically Christian teachings and practices shaped the cultural milieu of medieval folk both high and low. 68 It is a question fundamental to the interpretation of European medieval culture. Long before the Restoration Romantics, most Europeans took for granted the formative influence of Judeo-Christian religion in the shaping of European culture. And Le Goff, building on the work of Michelet, emphatically declared the medieval epoch crucial to the formation of a distinctive European civilization— mentioning every area except religion. What is needed, then, is a way of getting at the truth about medieval religious life and of stating the reality of its imprint and legacy without falling prey to either extreme, a mythical golden age of Catholic Christianity or an equally mythical millennium of Indo-European folk religion. Scholars must recognize, as reflective medieval folk did, that medieval religious life included a constant struggle to establish or renew Christian religious culture in the 68 “Christianization” has become something of a catchword now, and it would be futile to list all the books that refer to it. But see, for instance, Jean Delumeau, Un chemin d’histoire: Chrétienité et déchristianisation (Paris, 1981); Cristianizzazione ed organnizzazione; and Ramsey MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire (A.D. 100-400) (New Haven, Conn.. 1984).

religious practices, some derived from what Powicke “paganism of the natural man,” some of more ancient heritage, as Le Goff and Schmitt would rightly insist. Some of these practices and outlooks were rejected outright, others absorbed, even “baptized.” The struggle was a real one and did not end, as older interpretations sometimes imply, with the official conversion of a people. 69 Medieval folk understood well enough that they did not live in a golden age of Christian religious life, though they constantly invoked Christian norms and practices as the ideal toward which they strove. Indeed, medieval churchmen acted so forcefully at times to repress dissent and superstition precisely because they understood just how tenuous Christianity’s hold was and believed people’s eternal fate truly hung in the balance (to borrow an image common on sculpted church fronts). No single short essay could hope to survey all the recent work or even the basic problems pertinent to the question of Christianization, for in one sense it touches on nearly all aspects of medieval cultural history and much institutional history as well. The question is in fact much too broad, much too ill defined, and as such it will never receive a satisfying answer. The question must be brought into sharper focus, and what can be done in a brief essay is to direct attention toward six key issues or problems that bear scrutiny. But, first, two caveats. Apart from the Indo-European folkloric tales accentuated by Le Goff, Schmitt, face of various other

described

as

the

and others, most of the evidence for a failure of Christianization in the medieval period has come from accounts of incompetent clerics, ignorant peasants,

infrequent communion, and the like. Destructive as these image of a “golden age” of medieval Christendom, they that medieval culture was “non-Christian.” To offer a simplistic hardly prove in the past election many Americans had only a the fact that counterexample, superficial understanding of the issues and that barely half of them voted hardly superstitious

women,

70

accounts may be to the

proves that half of American voters are “monarchists” or “anarchists.” Medieval Christian culture in fact saw and attempted to explain such lapses: increased on the advancing kingdom of the saints, the sinfulness of mankind, the differing levels of devotion expected of saints, clergy, and laymen, and so on. Moreover, that a record of such lapses exists is the result at least as much

demonic attacks

of intensified efforts at reform as of laments over failure. Whether similar evidence

points up failure or efforts at reform has too often been a largely subjective matter. But historians should not discount the reality and actual degree of failure or the outright rejection. We must take seriously numerous reports of practices, of peasants returning to older charms in moments of crisis, of princes and clerics tempted to join the Muslim or especially the Jewish faith, of scholars attracted by another vision of cosmology and causation. No doubt these phenomena received too little attention in the past. But to concentrate on

evidence of

non-Christian

69 Le Goff, Time, Work, and Culture, x–xi; and Powicke, Christian Life, 8: “The history of the Church is the record of the gradual and mutual adaptation of Christianity and paganism to each other. The complete victory of the former has always been a remote vision.” 70 See Toussaert, Sentiment Religieux en Flandre; Adam, Vie paroissiale; Murray, “Piety and Impiety”; and Delumeau, Le Catholicisme.

them alone risks clerics

saw

Christian

fit

to

error as

well

by overlooking

record these instances

as

the

larger cultural

context

in which

part of their continuing effort

to

instill

practices.

Second, if the

new

critics of a

age of medieval Christendom have made of evidence, so too have both old and new

golden

in their

unwary assumptions proponents of a Christian Middle Ages in their sense of Christianity’s chronological advance. The basic scheme—more often assumed than stated or argued—

some

use

vague sense of evolutionary development—so nineteenth century to social, political, and religious rests on a

frequently applied in

the

The process of after the collapse of the Roman events.

Christianization was conceived as beginning empire with the mass baptism of Germanic, Celtic, and Slavic peoples whose grasp of Christian doctrine and practice must have been embryonic at best. The process then advanced to an effective implanting of Christianity during the Carolingian era (and about the year 1000 on the northern and eastern peripheries of Europe), a first real “taking root” in the period of the reform movements (1050-1150), and a flowering from the time of Francis (d. 1226) and Lateran Council IV (1215), followed at some point in the fourteenth century by decay or. in the image projected by Johan Huizinga’s famous book, a kind of “autumnal over-ripeness.” A newer scheme, which attempts to include religious culture within the interpretive schemes of social history favored by the Annales and related schools, accepts the first three stages with some reserve, then puts the real turning point in the process of Christianization in the later twelfth century, followed by relative continuity in religious practice until much later in the history of “Old Europe” or the ancien régime. Neither scheme adequately takes account of great regional and cultural variations over a period of one thousand years. The point here is not to reject these schemes as wholly false or to repudiate all such schemes but to register a warning about the arbitrariness of their imposition. The word “Christianization” suggests an unfolding process, and it is all too tempting to fill in the stages of development from too little evidence or to fix the temporal boundaries of each stage. Historians must accept that there were periods of sporadic change, when a pattern of advance or regression is not perceptible, periods of discernible change whether for good or ill, and periods of relative stability, without the whole necessarily fitting into a continuing, evolutionary process. There follow, then, six observations on Christianization, understood as an object of historical study and as an essential part of the medieval cultural legacy. First, an as

examination of the word and the concept. Unlike so many historical labels, such feudalism, "Christendom" (Christianitas) was a term medieval writers applied to

themselves and their civilization. What attention. Manselli ascribed the

they understood by it has received too little origin of the concept and the term to a

self-conscious, defensive reaction

Islam. Most other scholars have focused their

attention

primarily

is, Christendom

uses

upon universal

as a

Rome, with all that

implies

to

of the term in reference

society

of believers

to

subject

ecclesiastical to

polity,

that

the vicar of Christ in

for the relations of "Christians”

to

kings

and of

71 popes. Both ideas represent one part of the truth, but there basic meaning that is especially pertinent here and found as well

“Christian

kings” to

is another

more

in vernacular texts.

King Edmund's Code, issued in the 940s, enjoined tithes on “every Christian man by reason of his Christianity” (aelcun Christene men be his Cristendome), and in the prologue to his second code King Edmund spoke of taking council with people both high and low on how best to cultivate Christianity in his kingdom (hu ic maehte Cristendomes maest araeran). Laws from the early eleventh century, probably written by the cleric Wulfstan, spoke of “violating one's Christianity [Cristendom] or honoring heathendom [haethendom] in word or deed.” And Ethelred began his law code with a common pledge to love God, to hold zealously to a single Christianity (aenne Cristendom), to cast off all paganism (aelcne haethendome), and to hold to one Christianity under one kingship (thaet we under anum cynedome aenne Cristendom healdan willath). A Latin version of Ethelred’s code, containing various nuances and amplifications, speaks of “Christ-worshippers [Christicolarum]," the “observance of the Catholic religion” (catholice cultu religionis), and a “Christian religious practice [cultu religionis Christianae] wholly free of 72 superstition"—all synonyms, it seems, for Christianitas. The meaning of Christianitas in the vernacular is clear enough from these texts: a common religious observance (cultus) overseen and enforced by the king together with his lords and bishops. Observance began with baptism, the simplest meaning of Christianitas, as in the English word “christening.” This society of the baptized could assume a vague territorial sense—quite apart from the threat of Islam—as when anyone who dared marry a nun was declared "an outlaw before God, banned from 'Christendom,' and forfeit of his properties.” 73 But a “ban from Christendom” meant first of all

a ban from the sacraments, the heart of religious practice, for in Latin the term Christianitas covered all the sacramental and liturgical ministrations suspended by an interdict. Thus, one English chronicler could laconically report that, “on the order of the pope, Christianity was prohibited.” Scholastic theologians did not lose sight of the most basic meaning of Christianitas. Albertus Magnus declared a Christian "perfect [or complete] whose Christianity sufficed for salvation” (perfectus Christianus est, cui Christianitas sufficit ad salutem), 74 by which he meant a person whose faith and practice, liturgical and moral, sufficed for salvation. Christianitas could also be a term for

71 Raoul Manselli, “La respublica Christiana e l’Islam,” in L'Occidente e l’Islam nell'alto medioevo (Spoleto, 1965), 115-47, and “Christianitas,” in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 2, 1915-16. For interpretations focusing on ecclesiastical polity, see Jean Rupp, L’idée de la chrétienté dans la pensée pontificate des origines à Innocent III (Paris, 1939); Gerhart Ladner, “The Concepts of ‘Ecclesia’ and ‘Christianitas’ and Their Relation to the Idea of Papal ‘Plenitudo potestatis’ from Gregory VII to Boniface VIII,” in Sacerdozio e regno da Gregorio VII a Bonifacio VIII (Rome, 1954), 49-77; Jan van Laarhoven,“‘Christianitas’ et réforme grégorienne,” Studi Gregoriani, 6 (1959/1961): 1-98; and Friederich Kempf, “Das Problem der Christianitas im 12.-13. Jahrhunderten,” Historisches Jahrbuch, 79 (1960): 104-23. 72 Dorothy Whitelock et al., Councils and Synods (Oxford, 1981), 1: 62, 65, 305, 344, 362-63. Whitelock normally translated Cristendom as “Christian faith,” which seems partly to miss the element of

observance and practice that was actually so basic. 73 Ibid 440. 74 christianitas prohibita est.” Annales Waverly, ed. H. R. Luard, Rolls series, “Quibus iussu papae vol. 36.2, p. 229. Albertus De sacramentis 65, in Opera Omnia, vol. 26, pp. 45, 52. For more examples, .,

.

.

.

such

a

person (vestra christianitas) both in Latin and in the vernacular. In French Christientet was probably used most often to distinguish Christians

epic literature,

from Saracens, but what underlay that distinction was an evident set of beliefs and especially practices. Dante had cristianesmo rhyme once with battesmo and battesmo

rhyme

twice with paganesmo, establishing the same verbal and conceptual associations.75 In its most basic sense, then, the word Christianitas referred neither to an

ecclesiastical

polity nor to the opponents of Islam but to the religious faith and practice that medieval men entirely presupposed when elaborating their political policies and philosophical propositions. Or, as one of the earliest Dutch-Latin lexicons put it at the end of the Middle Ages (ca. 1480), “Christianitas is the rite and/or property [ritus vel proprietas] by which people are called Christian.” 76 This meaning also had an institutional manifestation—and not just in the sense of “all Christendom” or the whole society of believers in Europe. From the mid-ninth century, bishops appointed rural deans to oversee country pastors and their ministrations; especially after the later twelfth century, these deans came to be called “deans of Christianitas,” their districts sometimes simply Christianitates, their courts “court Christian,” and their meetings or rulings a “council [concilium] of Christianitas.”77 Such deans of Christianity had responsibility precisely for the way in which country priests carried out all the duties and rites essential to the maintenance of Christianitas, thereby insuring the Christian character of the people. The extant sources pertinent to these deans and the religious culture they supervised are few, partly because of the odds against preserving such local archival records and partly because much of the deans’ supervision must have taken place in ways never committed to writing. 78 But the point still stands: the figure, beyond the local priest himself, with responsibility for religious culture in the countryside was called the “dean of Christianitas.” “Christendom” was the term medieval folk at every level used to identify their religious culture. Second, Christianization therefore required, in cultural terms, the putting in place of the means to structure Christian profession and practice, that is, the rituals the Dictionary ofMedieval Latinfrom British Sources (London, 1981), vol. 2, p. 333; and Mittellateinisches Wörterbuch (Munich, 1971), vol. 2, pp. 554-55. 75 The Song of Roland, ll. 431, 3164, 3980; and Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française (Paris, 1938), vol. 2, pp. 130-31. Dante Inferno 4.37, Paradiso 24.106, Purgatorio 22.91, and Paradiso 20.125. My thanks to Christopher Kleinhenz of the University of Wisconsin for calling Dante’s passages to my attention. 76 Conflatus vocabularum, cited in the Lexicon Latinitatis Nederlandicae medii aevi (Leiden, 1981), vol. 2, p. 1186. 77 See Paul Hinschius, Das Kirchenrecht der Katholiken und Protestanten in Deutschland (1878; reprint edn., Graz, 1959), vol. 2, pp. 269-77. For older works, see Hans E. Feine, Kirchliche Rechtsgeschichte: Die katholische Kirche (5th edn., Cologne, 1972), 201, 203-04, 427-28. Compare Paul R. Hyams, “Deans and Their Doings: The Norwich Inquiry of 1286,” in Stephen Kuttner and Kenneth Pennington, eds., Proceedings of the Sixth International Congress of Medieval Canon Law (Vatican City, 1985), 619-46. The vocabulary can be followed through the standard medieval Latin dictionaries, such as those mentioned in notes 74 and 76, above. 78 For a summary of the pertinent Carolingian legislation, see Regino of Prüm De synodalibus causis et disciplinis ecclesiasticis. One interesting set of records from the fourteenth century and the diocese of Liège has been published; “Droit coutumier du Concile de Bastogne,” Annales de L'Institut Archéologique du Luxembourg, 58 (1927): 16-26. Also see Hyams, “Deans and Their Doings”; and Jean Burcklé, Les chapitres ruraux des anciens éuêchés de Strasbourg et de Bâle (Colmar, 1935).

see

and institutions deans and

priests supervised. 79 The official christening of a king or people hardly produced deep faith or organized practice overnight; in anthropological terms, it did not in itself transform a customary culture. Two Spoleto conferences (often good barometers of historical interests), less than fifteen years apart, nicely addressed this shift in historiographical perception. The first dealt with the conversion to Christianity in Europe; the second was entitled “Christianization and Ecclesiastical Organization of the Countryside: Advances and Resistance," thereby getting at what was actually required for “conversion of Europe.” 80 In the early Middle Ages, observance of Christian ritual and practice normally preceded local institutional organization, often by generations. Until the year 1000, it remained common for people simply to assemble from time to time around a cross. But eventually and at varying times throughout Europe, the parish church emerged as the seat of ritual and practice. Recently, scholars have begun to place great emphasis on the parish as one of the fundamental institutions of medieval and Old Europe, but these studies have also demonstrated its relatively slow and late formation. Basic parish organization was not complete until the eleventh or twelfth century, even in Italy, where Christianity first reached Europe, and parishes developed correspondingly later as Christianity moved toward the northern and eastern peripheries of Europe. 81 Well into the eleventh century, “parish” (parochium) usually still meant “diocese,” and “priest” (sacerdos) meant the bishop. Most country parishes, by contrast, were formed at local initiative, that is, most grew slowly out of the needs or interests (spiritual as well as financial) of local communities and almost never from any hierarchical masterplan, although some churches certainly were established by force, for example, by Charlemagne’s Saxon campaigns. Local formation of parishes created the nearly insoluable problem of “private” or “proprietary” churches with a mixture of religious, political, and economic motives quite impossible to disentangle. A sense of territoriality increased only slowly and primarily as a result of Carolingian tithing 82 legislation. But, in time, the way parishes developed locally across Europe had an enduring effect. The parish became the center of medieval village life. 79 A simple description from a charter dated 1204 reads as follows: “Per sacerdotem eius capelle ibidem baptizentur parvuli, sepeliantur mortui, visitentur infirmi, introducantur nupte, et cetera que ad christianitatem pertinent debite peragantur.” Klaas Heeringa, Oorkondenboek van het Sticht Utrecht (Utrecht, 1959), vol. 2, no. 568, p. 34. 80 La conversione al cristianesimo nell'Europa dell’alto medioevo (Spoleto, 1967); and Cristianizzazione ed ecclesiastica. organizzazione 81 For orientation to this complex subject, see Jean Gaudemet, “La paroisse au moyen âge,” Revue d'histoire de l’église de France, 59 (1973): 5-21. For new recognition of the parish as a fundamental element of “Old Europe,” see Susan Reynolds, Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900-1300 (Oxford, 1984), 79-100; and Robert Fossier, Enfance de l'Europe: Aspects économiques et sociaux (Paris, 1982), 345-64. For newer work on parishes and religious life, see Cristianizzazione ed organnizzazione; Cinzio Violante, “Pievi e parrocchie dalla fine del X all’inizio del XIII secolo,” in Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche della “sotietas christiana” dei secoli XI–XII: Diocesi, pievi, parrocchie (Milan, 1978), 643-799; and Pievi e parrocchie in Italia nel basso medioevo (sec. XIII–XV), 2 vols. (Rome, 1984). 82 Josef Semmler, “Zehntgebot und Pfarrtermination in karolingischer Zeit,” in Aus Kirche und Reich: Festschrift für Friedrich Kempf (Sigmaringen, 1983), 33-44; Caroline Boyd, Tithes and Parishes in Medieval Italy (Ithaca, N.Y., 1952); and Jerzy Kloczowski, “Les paroisses en Bohème, en Hongrie et en Pologne (Xe–XIIIe siècle),” in Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche, 187-99. In Kloczowski’s article, the Polish word for church is linked to the Latin word castellum.

Anglo-Saxon, referred

to

for instance, did not include a word for parish (“priest-shire” area of a priest’s rule or responsibility), but “parish” in Middle

the

English, almost from the beginning and certainly by the thirteenth century, could 83 indiscriminately to village and church. So, too, in French, the local commune (in recent studies treated as the encadrement of the countryside and folk) was most commonly known before the Revolution as the “parish.” The village community found its identity in its “parish.” At the heart of parish life were its rituals. Synodical statutes reveal not only the practices normative for Christian observance but also, by implication and sometimes explicitly, the transgressions of that norm. Visitation records disclose what matters bishops, archdeacons, and their associates thought most in need of correction. Liturgical sources, though much harder for historians to deal with, are equally important. The real measure of Christian religious culture on a broad scale must be the degree to which time, space, and ritual observances came to be defined and grasped essentially in terms of the Christian liturgical year. Carolingian legislation placed great emphasis on Sunday as a required day of rest, thus punctuating the “secular” week and drawing attention to religious obligations. After the year 1200 or so, and much earlier in some instances, ordinary legal and administrative documents were routinely dated in terms of the appropriate saints’ day or feast day. Of those rituals that touched each individual in the parish personally, the Christianization of birth and death seems to have proceeded 84 rapidly in the ceremonies surrounding “christening” and “last rites.” Marriage, however, was not brought literally into the church and before the altar until the end of the Middle Ages, though Christian guidelines began to transform that institution in the ninth century and its sacramentality was established in the twelfth. The result, typically, was an overlay of Christian and other notions of marriage, but to imagine wholly separate and distinct conceptions of marriage competing over centuries is an exaggeration. 85 Similarly, private confession, which originated in the monastery, only gradually became a ritual practiced in the country parish, a routine rather than an extraordinary event required annually of every Christian after 1215. In the High Middle Ages it became the chief means of personal religious formation, chiefly by examining each individual against a standardized list of vices and virtues; even Dominican preaching aimed ultimately at bringing souls to confession. Two of the most sophisticated and successful pastoral manuals refer

83

See “parish” in the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, 1933), vol. 7, p. 479. Jean Chelini, “La pratique dominicale des laïcs dans l’église franque sous le règne de Pépin," Revue d'histoire de l'église de France, 42 (1956): 161-74. For general orientation, see Arnold Angenendt, “Die Liturgie und die Organisation des kirchlichen Lebens auf dem Lande,” in Cristianizzazione ed organnizzazione, 169-226. On baptism and last rites, see, for instance, Arnold Angenendt, Kaiserherrschaft und Königstaufe (New York, 1984); and Damien Sicard, La liturgie de la mort dans l’église latine des origines à la réforme carolingienne (Munster, 1978). 85 See J. B. Moulin and P. Mutembe, Le rituel du mariage en France du XIIe au XVIe siècle (Paris, 1974); Suzanne Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500-900 (Philadelphia, 1982); and Zeimentz, Ehe. Contrast Georges Duby, The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest (New York, 1983). There is, once again, a good Spoleto volume; Il matrimanio nella società alto medioevo (Spoleto, 1977). For a short, but balanced, essay, see Christopher Brooke, “Marriage and Society in the Central Middle Ages,” in B. Oathwaite, Marriage and Society (Baltimore, Md., 1983), 17-34. 84

to come out

of the Middle

Ages,

those

by

William of

Pagula

and Guido of

Montrocher, both appeared in the early fourteenth century, and both are divided into three books that treat, respectively, the creed, commandments, and vices and virtues, the sacraments with particular emphasis on the eucharist, and penance. To

highlight this last point is therefore appropriate, though to argue whether penance aimed at “religious formation” or “social control” is somewhat beside the point. Confession and penance shaped Christian faith and practice in all spheres

of life, from the

sexuality.

more

overtly “spiritual”

to matters of business

(usury)

and

86

However slowly and fitfully such ritual and juridical structures were put in place, they hold the key to the process of Christianization. The study of parochial organization, liturgy, confraternities, pastoralia, and so on will in time bring historians much closer to understanding “routine” religious life in the Middle Ages than the study of unusual instances, for example, of an isolated Cathar village, a holy dog, or an eccentric miller. Indeed, if the line of interpretation recently adopted by Bernd Moeller, Steven Ozment, Thomas Tender, and other historians of the Reformation is correct, the problem by the late Middle Ages was of another order. The ecclesiastical culture and practices meant to Christianize the people, to shape their naming, marriage, formation, and burial, had so piled up as to become “burdensome,” even insupportable, hence, the appeal of Luther’s message of 87 “liberty” for the Christian man. This is not to argue that all medieval folk were deeply “Christianized” but only that the ecclesiastical and cultural mechanisms became, ironically, part of the problem. Third, any study of religious culture must take religion seriously. Recent studies have made medieval religion important by treating it essentially in functionalist terms, setting out the ways in which religious culture dealt with human relations, illness, death, the fertility of fields and animals, and so on. Such an approach makes religion central and accessible without raising confessional issues. But it can easily become reductionist, thus ultimately unsatisfactory and even erroneous. Historians of religious culture must take “religious man” seriously, just as economic historians take “economic man,” or political historians “political man,” seriously. 88 Anything less will ultimately fail to do justice to the phenomena under investigation and, in particular, fail to account for the dynamic inherent in people acting on religious conviction. 86

For the best approach to the enormous number of recent works, see Thomas Tender, Sin and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation (Princeton, N.J., 1977); and Boyle, “Summae confessorum.” For a debate between Tentler and Boyle, see Pursuit of the Holy, 103-37. Also see Roberto Rusconi, “De la prédication à la confession: Transmission et contrôle des modèles de comportement au XIIIe siècle,” in Faire Croire, 67-85. On William of Pagula, see Leonard Boyle, “The Oculus Sacerdotis and Some Other Works of William of Pagula,” in his Pastoral Care, chap. 4. On Guido, see Louis Binz, Vie religieuse et réforme écclésiastique dans la diocèse de Genève pendant le Grand Schisme et la crise conciliare (1378-1450)

(Geneva, 1973), 347-52.

87 For a critical review of this interpretation, see Lawrence Duggan, “Fear and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation,” Archiv für Reformations geschichte, 75 (1981): 153-75. 88 For a similar point, but with an emphasis slightly different from mine, see Richard C. Trexler, “Reverence and Profanity in the Study of Early Modern Religion,” in K. von Greyerz, ed., Religion and Society in Early Modern Europe (London, 1984), 245-69.

In medieval Christendom, religious culture rested ultimately on “faith” or “belief,” meaning professed assent to certain propositions as well as inner conviction. Those propositions were articulated in the Apostles’ Creed, or, as it was most commonly called in medieval Latin, “the articles of the faith,” and those articles

were binding on all alike from peasant to pope. The first statutes prescribing the duties of priests, issued in the Carolingian era and then revived beginning in Paris shortly after 1200, more or less uniformly insisted that “all endowed with the name of Christian know the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed.” 89 Both the prayer and the creed were normally repeated at Sunday mass and by godparents at baptism; both were among the earliest texts translated into the vernacular languages. And such preaching as there was must have centered on them—together with the commandments, vices, and virtues—for they were given a basic exposition in nearly every known pastoral manual. So, too, nearly every with some kind of question about adherence to the inquisitorial proceeding began

creed

or

“articles of the faith.”

But medieval

knowledge

religious culture was also capable of a radical disjunction between theology, compiled in the

and belief. The standard textbook in

mid-twelfth century, noted that “there are those in the church who are less able, cannot identify or distinguish the articles of the Creed; yet they believe what

who

is contained in the Creed, for

they believe

what

they do

not know

[credunt enim

quae ignorant].” Out of this distinction developed the doctrine of an “implicit faith” held by the many “simple folk” who intended to believe what the church believed. 90 Both the doctrine and its varying application were of central importance in medieval

religious culture. The authorized law book (and textbook) of the

medieval church, Pope Gregory IX’s Decretals of 1234, for example, begins with a profession of faith (taken from the first article of Lateran Council IV), thus

making faith a matter of law. In an influential commentary, Pope Innocent IV (d. 1254) explained that all Christians were bound to believe that there is a God who rewards the good, and, implicitly, all Christians were bound to believe all the articles of faith held by the church. But priests charged with the cure of souls were to know the articles explicitly, though poor and unlearned minor clerics might also be dispensed from this. 91 In medieval religious culture, the element of cognitive 89 “Ut praesbiteri praevideant ut omnes qui christiano censentur nomine orationem dominicam vel simbolum memoriter teneant,” ed. Emil Seckel, Neues Archiv, 29 (1904): 292. Also see Peter Brommer, ed., Capitula episcoporum I, Monumenta Germaniae Historica (1984); and “Capitula episcoporum: Bemerkungen zu den bischöflichen Kapitularien,” Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, 91 (1980): 207-36. For an excellent discussion of the whole genre, see “Capitula Episcoporum": Die bischöflichen Kapitularien des 9. und 10. Jahrhunderts, Typologie des sources, no. 43 (Turnhout, 1985). For the early thirteenth century, compare the statutes from Paris: “Exhortentur populum semper presbyteri ad dicendam dominicam orationem et ‘Credo in Deum’ et ‘Salutationem Beate Virginis,” ed. Odette Pontal, Les statuts synodauxfrançais du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1971), vol. 1, pp. xxv–lxxvii, 74. For a good example of the genre’s use to historians, see Joseph Avril, Le gouvernement des évêques et la vie religieuse dans le diocèse d’Angers (1148-1240), 2 vols. (Paris, [1984]). 90 Petrus Lombardus, Sententiae, Liber III, D. 25, c. 2 (3d edn., Grottaferrata, 1981), vol. 2, p. 155. Schmitt has recently given the doctrine of implicit faith more attention; “Du bon usage du Credo," in Faire Croire, 337-61. 91 “De fide teneas quia quaedam est fidei mensura ad quam quilibet tenetur et quae sufficit simplicibus et forte etiam omnibus laicis, scilicet, quia oportet quemlibet adultum accedentem ad fidem credere quia Deus est et quia est remunerator omnium bonorum. Item oportet omnes alios articulos

confession

absent and may the liturgical

usually followed granted—as in Innocent’s reference to clerics who attended the altar without necessarily knowing exactly what happened there. Fourth, after about the year 1000, Christendom, rooted in practice and profession and given shape by liturgical, ecclesiastical, and creedal structures, included every person in medieval Europe except the Jews. Certain religious observances were therefore expected of, and certain elements of religious culture were common to, all: baptism at birth and last rites at death to secure eternal salvation, rudimentary knowledge of the Apostles’ Creed and Lord’s Prayer, rest on Sunday and feast days (holy days) with attendance at mass, fasting at specified times, confession once a year after 1215 (usually Shrove Tuesday), communion at Easter, the payment of various fees and tithes at specified times, and alms for the needy (partly as a penitential exercise). Whatever their level of indifference, superstition, or immorality, every European grounded his or her religious life in this basic cultural structure. 92 But, since baptism now included all people, real differences, even “dualities,” in expectations arose—and not just those between a literate clerical and a customary popular culture. Medieval Christian texts refer constantly to the need for “conversion” and for “winning souls” (lucrum animarum). Between the eighth and twelfth centuries these expressions usually meant entry into a monastic order, an option taken by many “secular” clerics and noble laymen late in life but increasingly chosen by members of all social classes, for example, by the “lay brothers” (conversi). “Religious” referred most commonly therefore, as it still does in many languages today, to the professed and professionally religious. 93 After the thirteenth century, “winning was never

rather than

preceded

never

be discounted. Yet it

practice

that all took for

fidei credere implicite, idest credere verum esse quicquid credit ecclesia catholica. Hanc autem mensuram extendere debent praelati ecclesiarum quicumque curam animarum habent, quia debent scire articulos fidei explicite et distincte. Non negamus tamen papa et alii superiores preiati possint dispensative ex certis causis minus literatos et minus industriosos in temporalibus sustinere. De clericis autem inferioribus satis est—si essent pauperes qui non possent intendere studio, qui non habent magistros vel expensas, quia oportet eis propriis manibus quaerere victum—quod eis sufficiat scire sicut simplicibus laicis et aliquantulum plus, sicut de Sacramento altaris; quia oportet eos credere quod in sacramento altaris conficitur verum corpus Christi, et hoc ideo quia circa illud quotidie et continue versantur plus quam laid.” Innocentius IV, In quinque libros decretalium Commentaria (Venice, 1610), 2. 92 Delaruelle culled the following from a fourteenth-century inquisition document: “Ut asserit, ut verus et fidelis christianus frequentando ecclesias, divina officia audiendo, oblationesque faciendo, necnon annis singulis sua peccata confitendo et corrigendo, ac religiosas mendicantes in domo suo recipiendo”; L’église, 728. See 93 Peter Biller, “Words and the Medieval Notion of ‘Religion,’" Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 36 (1985): 351-69. Biller qualified the claim of an early modern historian that in the Middle Ages “religion” for the most part meant only the monastic life. See John Bossy, “Some Elementary Forms of Durkheim,” Past and Present, 95 (1982): 4-5. Biller was right to point out that in the Middle Ages “religion” could also be understood as a “system of faith and morals” and that laymen could also be “religious.” But it is important to note that in the passage from Cardinal Hostiensis’ Summa Aurea on the Decretals, which Biller cited, people are “religious” because they live “stricter” and “holier” lives than others live: “Largo modo dicitur ‘religiosus’ qui in domo propria sancte et religiose vivit, licet non sit dicitur talis ‘religiosus’ non ideo, quod astrictus sit alicui regulae certae, sed respectu vitae, professus quam arctiorem et sanctiorem ducit quam ceteres seculares qui omnino saeculariter, idest dissolute vivunt,” Summa Aurea (Venice, 1574 edn., reprint edn., Turin, 1963), 1108; and Biller, “Words and the Medieval Notion of ‘Religion,’” 358 n. 24. The language of a “stricter” life style was taken over from monasticism, and those other “dissolute worldly folk” were baptized Christians. .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

souls” referred

more often, especially among the mendicants, to bringing people through preaching, though mendicant houses also had more and more conversi, confraternities, and other religious groups associated with them. The later Middle Ages produced a whole series of formal and informal groups comprised of laymen and secular clerics who wished to live more “religiously” by engaging in particular liturgical and penitential exercises. 94 That is to say, medieval folk themselves recognized real distance between the mass of baptized Christians and the “converted,” between the “simple faithful” and the “religious,” between those

to penance

whose souls had and had The

not

been “won.”

the gap between “implicit” and “explicit” faith was instruction, but for men and women to go beyond the status of the merely baptized to the securely won required regular participation in the sacraments, especially means

to close

confession and the eucharist, instruction and the sacraments

or

entry into the formal religious life. Both

required

an

ordained

priesthood.

In the

early

Ages, the intercession of the saints, the power of relics, and the prayers of monks seemed almost to overwhelm ordinary priestly functions, despite the Middle

importance

of the viaticum and Christian burial. But from the twelfth century

onward, the duality between ordained priests, at whatever social, intellectual, or even moral level, as dispensers of the life-bringing sacraments and a dependent

laity obligated spiritually and materially to such intermediaries affected nearly 95 every aspect of the religious culture. Much of the talk about “lay piety” during the last twenty years has therefore been somewhat misleading. The whole inner dynamic was for the laity to acquire parts of the priestly sacred culture, whether it be abbreviated books of hours for noble women, set prayers for confraternities and tertiaries, chantry priests for guilds and patricians who could afford them, windows and burial sites in churches, It is

striking

or even

stolen hosts and oils

to use as

charms.

to note, for

number of extant

instance, that the Middle Dutch text with the largest manuscripts, more than eight hundred, is Geert Grote’s

translation of certain

liturgical hours for the use of laymen and laywomen. certainly those, as Schmitt and Le Goff have argued, who Although sought access to the holy outside church-approved means, all the evidence suggests that the dynamic shaping religious culture from the eleventh century onward lay in the efforts of medieval folk to go beyond baptism, implicit faith, and days of obligation to acquire for themselves what ordained holy men, at whatever level, possessed as a privilege and maintained as a duty. The dynamic, that is, lay in movement from one set of expectations toward another, expectations that in there

were

94 For the religious and structural issues raised here, see Duane Osheim, “Conversion, Conversi, and the Christian Life in Late Medieval Tuscany,” Speculum, 58 (1983): 368-90; Delaruelle, L’église, 666-94; Daniela Rando,“‘Laicus religiosus’ tra strutture civili ed ecclesiastiche: L’ospedale di Ognissanti in Treviso (sec. XIII),” Studi Medievali, 24 (1983): 617-56; and Kaspar Elm, “Die Bruderschaft vom Gemeinsamen Leben: Eine geschichtliche Lebensform zwischen Kloster und Welt, Mittelalter und Neuzeit,” Ons geestlijk erf, 59 (1985): 470-96. The example that Hostiensis gave of a “religiosus” concerned a “hospital”; Biller, “Words and the Medieval Notion of ‘Religion,’” n. 9. 95 Among many studies on the importance of the sacerdotal-lay division, two recent works treat different aspects of its impact on religious culture. See Caroline W. Bynum, Jesus as Mother (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1982), 3-8, 170-72; and Johannes Laudage, Priesterbild und Reformpapsttum im 11.

Jahrhundert (Cologne, 1984).

principle

cut across social and intellectual lines. Such

expectations might

well have

reinforced and coalesced with other social, economic, and cultural divisions. For example, monks and university men came predominantly from the upper social

ranks, and simple country priests could enjoy sizable livings. The issue, however, a society of the baptized both the common elements underlying religious culture and the distinctions in law and the social order as well as in religious expectations. Fifth, the practice and profession that encompassed Cristendom was expounded in books and yet was learned chiefly by doing. Here the new school of historical interpretation has pinpointed one of the principal problems in interpreting medieval religious culture. Illiterate folk had somehow to appropriate religious teachings from books in another language—from the Bible, service books, law books, and so on—and to shape their religious lives accordingly. Using an anthropological perspective, historians of the new school have concluded that such a process was well nigh impossible or transpired mainly under duress. Kings forced their people to conform; priests compelled illiterate men and women to mumble certain words and perform certain rituals to guarantee their happiness in the hereafter; confessors tried to reshape the inner lives of reluctant penitents, and

is to

in

recognize

all of medieval

so on.

To describe this process, these historians now use the term “acculturation,” by American anthropologists to describe what happens when an

first coined

indigenous

culture is colonized

or

subject

to

proselytizing by another,

dominant

culture. 96 A half-dozen papers (rather than a half-dozen sentences) would be required to review adequately this question of the interaction between an oral and

recently argued that “textual communities,” as during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, which reached out to include and to influence illiterate laymen high and low. 97 And, indeed, one reform movement after another in that period and later revolved around access to and implementation of a normative text. Yet Stock’s argument, to work historically, requires him to “see through” well-known “clerical” texts and to a

literate culture. Brian Stock has

he

nicely put it,

formed

discover oral communities behind them. This form of argument, much like Schmitt’s and Le Goff's, is inevitably circular, for the state of those oral communities

can

only be inferred from texts that were supposedly the product significant expansion of textual communities (the plural

another culture. A

of is

important) may have occurred in the twelfth century, but the medieval Christian community was, like the Jewish and Muslim communities to which it can be its very nature a textual community. notoriously slow in their development of a widespread literate religious culture. And yet every baptized person had some vague notion that the mysteries of his religion were contained in books, and more than a few

compared on

this

point, by

Medieval Christians

were

96

For an excellent survey of the issues, see Faire Croire, 2-5. Also see Elikia M’Bokolo, “Acculturation,” in La nouvelle histoire, ed. J. Le Goff et al. (Paris, 1978), 21-24. For a more critical view, see Jean Wirth, “Against the Acculturation Thesis,” in von Greyerz, Religion and Society in Early Modern 66-78. For an introduction to this complicated subject, with helpful references, see, especially, the opening and closing chapters of Brian Stock’s The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, N.J., 1983).

Europe, 97

must have harbored some natural sense or

curiosity

about what the books said.

Moreover, despite undeniable and continuing complaints in medieval visitation records about inadequate or missing liturgical books and the like, newer studies

Carolingian era those books were fairly well society. 98 The real interpretive issue must therefore turn on the ways and means found to transmit the mysteries of those religious texts and the people’s reception or understanding of what was transmitted. The methods employed to teach religious ideas and practices included, especially, materials now studied by art and literary historians: mystery plays developing out of the mass, wall paintings as “books for the illiterate,” vernacular sermons, saints’ lives in epic form, and so on. A difficult area, this, and one in which historians often must work from hints rather than solid sources. For example, if Waldensians made a point of averting their eyes from the “images” on entering a church, Catholic folk, presumably, naturally looked to wall paintings and stained glass windows for the mysteries of their faith. If vernacular literature cannot be understood properly apart from its use of Scripture and figurative interpretations, as Friederich Ohly and D. W. Robertson have contended, clearly at least some 99 knowledge of Scripture had made its way into lay culture. And, if sculpted cathedral fronts really bore antiheretical messages, as some art historians argue, churchmen assumed evidently that laymen could understand them. There are, in addition, all those treatises—many in the vernacular—on the commandments, the seem

to

indicate that

distributed,

even at

by

the

the lowest level of

creeds, the vices, and the virtues, which may well prove the most crucial sources 100 through which to explore this question. That the great majority of medieval folk were cut

off from direct

access to

the written

undeniable. But the real question is the degree

to

norms

of

a

Christian culture is

which their rituals, art, literature,

and

cosmology had nonetheless been shaped or influenced by those norms, that say, the degree to which Christian culture had over time become their oral culture. That concerned Christians were inevitably oriented toward the texts must also be taken seriously. Think of Waldo, Francis, and any number of others attempting to learn and implement the gospel. The process of increasing Christianization was not some brutal “acculturation” but rather an impetus built into a religious community based on books. All this is difficult enough, but it is even more difficult to assess how medieval folk received and understood all that church practices and texts prescribed. The end product was inevitably some synthesis between the old and new cultures under the aegis of Christendom—my sixth point. Cultures do change, even oral and is

to

98

See, for instance, Carl Hammer, Jr., “Country Churches, Clerical Inventories, and the Renaissance in Bavaria,” Church History, 49 (1980): 5-17.

Carolingian 99

Part of a fourteenth-century inquisitorial record from Piedmont reads as follows: “Nos bene vadimus ad ecclesiam et dicimus illud quod videtur nobis sed nos noluimus adorare picturas.” “Quando erat in ecclesia, non debebat aspicere ymagines nec orare, sed solum habere cor Deo celli,” as quoted by G. G. Merlo, Eretici e inquisitori nella societàpiemontese del trecento (Turin, 1977), 24 n. 27, and 25 n. 32. Friederich Ohly, Schriften zur mittelalterlichen Bedeutungsforschung (Darmstadt, 1977); and D. W. Robertson, Essays in Medieval Culture (Princeton, N.J., 1980). 100 For one example, newly edited by I. Sullens, see Robert Mannyng of Brunne, Handlyng Synne (Binghamton, 1983), a Middle-English translation of an Anglo-French Manuel des Pechiez.

customary

ones, and at some undeterminable

to consider themselves “Christian.” This

culture

to

another,

can

point

only have been very slow with

and absorbed from the

new.

people

most

transition, from

one

in

Europe came

customary religious

much retained from the old

But it is absurd to draw

an

absolute social and

intellectual line between the "bookish” and the

“customary” cultures. Clerics, after all, also came from among the folk and continued to work with them in villages, towns, and courts; villagers thought of the church, especially the nave, as “theirs”; great families often considered abbeys or bishoprics, including Rome’s, as “theirs”; and even university men dealt routinely with bakers and innkeepers, magistrates and courtiers. A recent study of Thomas Aquinas, for instance, indicates that he understood a great deal of popular religious culture. 101 Certainly, as Schmitt, Le Goff, and others have demonstrated, Christian materials could be—and were—appropriated and employed within mental frameworks still essentially of another religious sort. Christian motifs often functioned in non-Christian ways, and this must be taken seriously. But here two important qualifications must be made. First, while non-Christian attitudes often governed Christian usages—say, a “magical” view of the sacraments—practices of nonChristian origin early became endowed with Christian meaning. To retain the old name for the first day of the week (as in Germanic languages), though an interesting mark of the uneven process of conversion, was not after a while consciously to honor the sun rather than the Lord (as in the Romance languages). To cast a host into a raging fire, whatever the non-Christian roots of this practice, was to deploy the power believed inherent in the Body of Christ. Even to call on the powers ascribed to saints and relics was not to intercede with Christian deity but with the person described in the legends read

appointed

feast

and at the shrines. All this is

some nonout on

the

deny the maintenance of

days religious culture that was non-Christian in practice and belief, but it is to qualify the exaggerated claims made on the basis of studies into selected bits of medieval folklore. The synthesis was total, from the Christian as well as the non-Christian side, and the cultural dynamic lay with Christianization, recurring efforts to purify, domesticate, and rationalize. Influence cut both ways. All the emphasis of late has fallen on the imposition of a new religious culture from on high by a clerical elite, its brutal disregard for the indigenous religious culture, and its failure to gain much ground (this slightly contradictory) until the seventeenth century, and there is certainly truth in such observations, however much they must be qualified by particular times, places, and not to

much in medieval

instances. Written clerical culture, however, also absorbed

popular religious culture,

as

and

a

great deal from

plainly obviously in the from a people “compromised” religious strictly the prescriptions of a given text (biblical,

demonstrated

most

various reform movements that recalled life

style

to one

monastic, legal,

following or

more

whatever).

101 B. Lacroix and A. M. Landry, “Quelques thèmes de la Thomas d’Aquin,” in La culture populaire, 165-79.

religion populaire

chez le

théolgien

University-trained intellectuals frequently took as their point of departure the practice of Christianity, not just an internal analysis of its texts. This is overwhelmingly obvious in Gratian’s Decretum, the university textbook for canon law, but the same holds true in theology. Hugh of St. Victor’s summary gathering of texts “on the mysteries [sacraments] of the Christian faith” seeks precisely, especially in its second part on redemption, to explain practice, various acts of worship, grades of churchmen, signification of vestments, and so on. Even Peter Lombard’s theological textbook, especially in Book IV on the “signs” the Christian community was to “use” (in Augustinian language from his On Christian Learning), presupposed practice. When schoolmen discussed at length, for instance, the validity and effectiveness of a baptism performed with incorrect, ungrammatical, or mixed-up words (and a host of similar questions), 102 they took up issues deeply rooted in practice, not just verbal gymnastics, and by making distinctions or stressing “intentionality” sought to move beyond the anxieties arising from what might be called a “magical” mentality. But in so doing they also gave new shape and form to many Christian teachings. Indeed, purgatory seems to have been one such notion, 103 and, ironically, Le Goff's own argument hinges on the point at which the Latin word made its appearance in clerical texts. The cult of the saints and of relics is another instance where popular practice outran theological articulation and ecclesiastical control; both

were

forced

to

catch up later. So, too,

indulgences, accompanied by vague notions of “forgiveness” or “entry into heaven,” were sought and dispensed long before the theological explanations or ecclesiastical manipulations of the “elite” could rationalize and exploit them. Admittedly, questions and texts on the how, why, and what of practice moved things ever further toward intellectual abstraction, especially after the universities reached full maturity as autonomous corporations in the course of the thirteenth century. But, to come full circle, the very gathering and ordering of the exempla in written documents reveals real concern with reaching, assessing, and encouraging, as well as repressing, popular religiosity. Scholars must take full account of both the syncretism and the recurrent Christianizing dynamic. ADHERENCE TO THE PRACTICES, STRUCTURES, and obligations of Christendom could well be imposed, but Christianity could endure and shape religious culture only if it sprang from internal assent, however socially conditioned. No acculturation theory will adequately account for the people’s concern to acquire and to preserve their Christendom. But neither

can

historians describe

or measure

those convictions

in any detail, except when they are recorded in biographical or autobiographical accounts, rarely written by the great mass of ordinary medieval folk, or when they generated “conversions” and the accompanying changes in life style. Historians of medieval Christian culture will their 102

early modern

colleagues

on

always be dependent far more than sophisticated writings produced by

the texts and

Peter the Chanter Summa de sacramentis et animae consiliis 1.26-32. Gurevich wrote, “Therefore I tend to see both cultural traditions, scholarly and popular, at work together in the history of purgatory’s ‘birth’; the initiative belonged to the latter, and thinkers and theoreticians had to follow it.” “Popular and Scholarly Medieval Cultural Traditions,” 88. 103

literate clerics, and prescriptions for all

they must concede the realities of a gap between common Europeans and the great diversity of local practice, as well as between public conformity and inner conviction. But, before despairing or treating medieval religious life as comprised of two cultures, they should also recognize and explore all the many elements, from above and below, that were shared. Our image of medieval Christian culture, embracing both commonality and real distinctions, must necessarily be complex, partly because of the complexities of Judeo-Christian religion itself, partly because of the variety of traditions that went into its successive medieval constructs, and not least because propensity of medieval religious culture to turn repeatedly on itself in

of the

critique

and reform. This last element received support as well from Scripture prophets and Jesus himself are shown severely criticizing the inherited

where the

religious culture of the chosen people; in medieval religious culture baptized Christians constantly needed correction.

a

population

of

Then, too, for all the broad compass of medieval Christian culture, the “world” still very much there, taken for granted in the texts and yet all the more difficult

was

nearly everyone was necessarily a part both of the “world” and Insight into this duality may be gained from a late memoir. In one of the more personal passages of his Courtier’s twelfth-century Trifles, Walter Map, an English cleric and also a courtier in the time of Henry II, described the terrible vices and vanities court life imposed on people and then urged his readers to maintain through it all a hidden devotion to the Trinity (in occulto colatur Trinitas). Elsewhere he spoke both of a holy hermit in the Welsh marchlands whose prayers, Map believed, had kept the hermit safe during a storm on the channel and of succubi (folkloric creatures) who plagued folks in that part of the world. 104 Here are all the elements present in medieval religious culture: worldliness and devotion, prayer and superstition. But the inner dynamic of it all, to

discern because

of “Christian culture.”

I would submit, sprang from a commitment to Christendom. In sum, to study the Christianization of medieval religious culture, historians must take seriously medieval peoples’ frequent use of that term in both Latin and the vernacular languages to describe their own loyal ties and civilization; the ritual, ecclesiastical, and legal mechanisms put in place to plant, foster, and sustain that religious culture at every social level; the dynamic inherent in acting on religious belief; the differing religious obligations and expectations established for a population of baptized Christians; the means and media used to communicate the

teachings of written texts to an illiterate populace; and finally the inevitable synthesis of old and new in the resultant religious culture. Recent study of popular religious culture has forced historians to focus on its distinctive and sometimes non-Christian character and function. But any approach that denies the reality of Christianization as crucial to the formation and flowering of medieval religious culture will miss wholly its inner dynamic. 104

Walter

Map De nugis

curialium D. 4.13, 2.2, 12.

II

The Future

of Medieval

Church

History

For centuries, from its Roman endorsement as imperial cult around the year 400 to its revolutionary disestablishment in the 1790s, the Christian religion laid claim to the allegiance of Europe's peoples, even a right to set policies about Jews.1 This fateful historical conjunction between the making of Europe and the spread of Christian allegiance rested upon an ever-changing mix of custom, law, and conviction, religious in coloration but political, social, and cultural in expression. Diverse practices and patterns, worked out over centuries, became so tightly interwoven that to pull on one was to stretch or unravel another. To call for religious purity or poverty was to upset social and legal custom; to round up heretics was to secure political order, and the reverse; to see into the end-state of things presaged, for some, the overthrow of Roman prelacy as the reign of Babylon, whence its reverse: to manage time and chronology was to stabilize the standing order. This pattern continued well past the year 1500 and incipient "modernity." To challenge the religious order in the sixteenth century was to provoke a bloodletting in the political; to topple the social order in the eighteenth was to unleash pent-up fury against the religious. In the world of early Europe—or, as they said, of "Christendom"—things religious hung together with other human realities, the political, the social, the cultural. As late as the 1870s the papacy regarded defending its land against Italian nationalists as on a par with defending the faith against philosophical modernists. When this story gets fit into an overarching narrative, as it nearly always does, all its complexity and contingency goes missing. Narratives born of confessional polemics have largely given way, though they still influence our interpretive structures in surprising ways. Other narratives have seized the imagination: an ever advancing "Christianization," always falling short, making it just in time for "de-christianization," a "clerical power" ever insinuating its octopuslike tentacles, a subversive "popular religion" ever disrupting author-

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418597-2

The

Future of Medieval Church History

itarian structures. I work on these themes myself and do not mean to mock. But I suggest we keep in mind the ironic fate of earlier such themes. The "superstition" that was the sport of protestant divines and enlightened wits has proved, in our generation, potent stuff, the mother lode of cultural and religious history. This impulse to construct large narratives and to center them round one or two dominant themes comes as part of our historical inheritance. For Reformers, also for Revolutionaries, no less for defenders, this thousand years and more of "Christendom" represented, in retrospect, a single multicolored tapestry, altered and rewoven from time to time, but whole. For critics it curtained off the admirably "ancient" from the hopefully "new" and had to be torn away; for sympathizers its diverse threads yielded to artful stretching, its designs provided enticing models, its whole enfolding new and old. Whatever the chosen metaphor, this vision of things persisted, astonishingly, nearly to our day. True, to imagine the fabric of medieval Christendom as a single weave, once the animating vision of Romantics and Neo-Thomists, is now dismissed as delusory, a vain attempt to fantasize the past in behalf of a contested present. No less illusory in our day, going back to protestants looking for covert believers or classicists for clever skeptics, is another version, more or less its reverse: to construe as authentic only those peoples or practices regarded as in resistance, the "pagan" or "popular" or "visionary" or heretical, or whatever else. Both approaches are equally single-minded, and equally distorting. The Christian religion came to rest upon subterranean layers put down over centuries, multiple, on all differing soils: the human reality of near universal christening, the social reality of human settlement organized as a grid of parishes, the institutional reality of a single church projecting its reach across lands and languages, the political reality of power buttressed by and answerable to supernatural claims, and not least, the cultural reality of human affections and perceptions. These informed attitudes and drove social and political practices. In a much-read work on manners of the early eighteenth century, Lord Shaftesbury sardonically observed that "The very word Christian is, in common Language, us'd for Man, in opposition to Brute-beast, without leaving so much as a middle place for the poor Heathen or 2 Pagan." This verbal usage went back a thousand years, was found in virtually all European languages, and survived into the mid-twentieth century. Carlo Levi, in his memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, recalls a despondent peasant saying, "We're not Christians"—meaning, not 2. Lord

Shaftebury (Anthony Ashley Cooper),

Characteristicks

Times, 3d ed., 3 vols. (London: Darby, 1723), 3:88.

of Men, Manners, Opinions,

3

accounted fully human. Even enlightened thinkers dared not fully renounce the force of this equation between "Christian" and "human." Diderot and d'Alembert, treating "Christianisme" (1753) and "Europe" (1756) in their Encyclopédie, confidently stated that "the name 'Christian' is destined one day to fill the whole earth." Europe, small but powerful owing to its arms, commerce, arts, and sciences, would continue to expand, they explained, owing specially "to its 'Christianity' whose beneficial ethic (morale) tends only to the happiness of society." This view, inspired partly by Montesquieu, held that Europe's Christian religion, for all its superstition, intolerance, and fixation on the afterlife, could generate the best mores and greatest in this life (qui peut le plus contribuer à notre bonheur dans happiness 4 cefle-ci). Perhaps they wrote tongue-in-cheek. But that is hardly certain. Their confidence in the potential "reasonableness" of Europe's dominant religion and its "civilizing" ways (that likewise a new term in those days) would inspire colonizers and missionaries for another century and a half, down to World War I. Revolutionary upheavals did their best to sweep away Old Europe, and with it Christianity's role in defining order, moral and cultural, sacred and social; but passionate and learned disputes over religious policy and practice drove much of nineteenth-century culture. And they arise still in the twenty-first, in disputes over the presence and practices of Islamic peoples in post-Christian Europe, the role of Jews in post-Holocaust Europe, the right of Turkey to join an ostensibly secular European Union. Today people of all stripes, the ecumenically religious, those with no religious predilections, those shocked by the explosive power latent in religious convictions, have a rightful interest in thinking anew about religion's place in the shaping of early European history. For students of the medieval church, vestiges of Christendom, of Europe founded upon a long religious past, have proved, to put it simply, a bane and a blessing. The sheer durability astounds and sometime attracts. Elements of the medieval church, from vestments to liturgies, institutions to theologies, laws to practices, hung on, and 5 not just in the Catholic Church, to the last generation —and in some Stopped at Eboli (New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1963), 3, cited by Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 1. Encyclopédie, 3:381-87 (1753), 6:22 (1756). It is easy to overstate this, to focus on the "long haul" and not see steady change. Still, in a journalistic piece issued at the University of Notre Dame in the spring of 2002, in the wake of discussions about Islamic fundamentalism, Scott Appleby, a distinguished historian of fundamentalism and American Catholicism, wrote: "Islam has been remarkeably resistant to the differentiation and privatization of religion that often accompanies secularization. (In this Islam resembles Roman Catholicism, which officially retained a largely medieval worldview until approximately the mid-1960s)." Peace/

3. Carlo Levi, Christ 4. 5.

ways still.

They also provoked, inversely, constant and fierce reaction,

Protestant, Jewish, secular. As historians

we

still fall back, almost

mindlessly, on categories they devised to drive our story line, the contrary pulls of church and state, orthodoxy and heresy, institution and individual, clergy and people, spirit and flesh. Our sympathies may swing this way and that, as have partisans' through the generations, more recently to forces secularizing, dissenting, lay, personal, fleshly, and female. But we perpetuate the categories and the conflicts. And there is this too, even if we approach as critics. The enterprise itself astounds: For more than a thousand years, to define society, even the human itself, as a microcosm of the divine. That enterprise, the looming shadow of this thousand years, generated scholarly purpose, acknowledged or unacknowledged. Church history's task, whatever the fashions or methods, seemed manifest: to account for how Christianity entered into the making of medieval culture and society, all that was best, all that was worst. Whatever energies this imparted to historians, positive or negative, it had fateful interpretive consequences. The medieval church was framed, almost unavoidably, to act as a hinge: between the early church and reform, the antique and the modern, the good and the bad. For those in the Christian tradition, the early church served as the disputed paradigm (and in some measure is still). The medieval church became the contested battleground, a long and varied history to be defended and authorized or demonized and discarded. Two centuries and more into secularization, this plot line still survives, still throws up issues, now not so much confessional as cultural and social. The presence of the

perceived or imagined, religious or cultural, good or bad, exorcizing. Or does it? In a postmodern, post-Christian, post-Vatican II world, can the medieval church provoke anything but eccentric interest? Offer up anything but "medieval,"

still cuts close to the bone, still needs

hooks for romantics, or polemicists, or reactionaries? These questions, new and yet not new, were faced already in the years after the Revolution. After Enlightenment and Revolution many turned first to one extreme, dismissing all religion, Christianity in particular, as irrelevant to an understanding of the human condition, an epiphenomenal expression of social or material interests, an alien life form harmful to humans. Disputing how to treat religion—as beneath notice or a sacred subject—itself became a key part of European history in the nineteenth century. Looking back upon Europe's Colloquy ([San Diego:] Kroc Center for Peace and Justice, n.d.), 11. Whether or not this is strictly accurate, it reflects widely held attitudes about the Roman Church and the Middle Ages before Vatican 11.

long religious history, in anger or in nostalgia, historians and pundits attempted to grasp its complexity and movement in a single word, even as they had already effectively reduced its social history to something called "feudalism" (also a new term). They hit upon the term "Christianization," and meant by it the creation of a broad cultural and religious matrix, not just the forming of a church. The word itself was a neologism, a product of the postrevolutionary debates, first appearing in European languages, at all or on any noteworthy scale, between the 1830s and the 1860s. This is telltale. Around 1830 vague hopes for Restoration inspired poets and politicians alike, a longing ache for an imagined lost and better time. Around 1860 the tone turned palpably more secular, certainly in the educated middle classes, also among workers alienated through industrialization, with inherited assumptions about the church and its practices slowly, sometimes agonizingly, left behind. Between 1830 and 1860 "Christianization" emerged as a vague, convenient, all-encompassing term for Europe's inherited sacred history, good or ill, its imagined collective mission since Christ and Constantine, no less its longtime coercive privileging of one religion's mores and ministers. Such a sense of things held, broadly speaking, I suggest, for a century, from 1860 to 1960. Those secularly predisposed implicitly accepted and quietly ignored Europe's "Christianization," focusing instead on political movements toward monarchy or parliament, social movements toward noble privilege or urban freedom, philosophical efforts to critique a sacred metaphysics, and so on. Those religiously predisposed, especially Catholics, regarded the church, its institutions, and its teachings as a viable and living organism nourished into fullness during the middle ages, and so privileged medieval materials as a point of origin and continuing inspiration—an outlook that bore much scholarly fruit between 1879 and the 1960s. Protestants, for their part, often still regarded the medieval church as worthy of critique and exposure, or alternatively its reformers and heretics as heroic forerunners. Jewish scholars, when they did not devote themselves to a comparable (and comparably productive) Wissenschaft des Judentums, assimilated their scholarly endeavors broadly to these streams. In the 1960s all this began to change. Within the Christian religion Vatican Council II marked and accelerated a change so great that Catholics themselves began to resist the "living organism" metaphor, emerged as virulent critics of an untroubled traditionalism, interested in dissidents of all sorts, suspicious of authority and the clergy and inherited theologies—while Protestants, for their part, found medieval teachings and practices, once exotic territory, more intriguing,

less forbidding. Broadly, and most importantly, European society moved decisively and rapidly toward overt secularism. This meant religion could be ignored or, more frequently, treated as culture or politics without the special handling that came, even implicitly, with an entrusted sacred identity. Social and cultural explanations for ecclesiastical matters seemed more persuasive than religious; pluralist cultures, and religious alternatives, more appealing than monoliths. The ancient and privileged institutions of Early Europe, such as universities and religious orders, came under assault or withered. In this climate, not surprisingly, scholars took up the “Christianization" theme again and, without always being conscious of it, went back to the conceptual and historical issues first raised in the 1830s. They argued for its success or failure, saw it as a culture imposed from above or worked out by negotiation, imagined a religion reaching all people or restricted to elites, as creative or coercive, and so on. That debate, in full swing, is what I tried to get hold of and sort through in 6 an article written in 1984/85. A good fifteen years later the study of religious culture in Old Europe (that is, in the late antique, medieval, and early modern periods) is flourishing, nearly displacing social or economic history in some

quarters. Religious phenomena routinely get treated—along

with politics, economy, and thought—as essential components of historic human life, integral to a full understanding of European societies and cultures. The word "Christianization" gets bandied about more than ever, invoked as if its meaning were clear, though the term has moved no closer to meaningful historical definition. Two approaches, at first glance almost contradictory, seem standard, nearly beyond critique or reflection. What historians seek in all the evidence left behind by medieval churches and churchmen are the social and political interests they manifest, not so much their hierarchical or religious programs. Those items belong, it is assumed, largely to the past; political interests, by contrast, are a human constant. In this way the medieval church ceases to be an ahistorical abstraction, its religion conceived rather as wholly bound up with social needs and aspirations in all their fullness and locality, its churches a primary facilitator of ambition and expression in Early Europe. If a social vision ties European churches firmly to their material realities, a "spiritualizing" vision aims to gain, so to speak, an outside angle. Visionaries, mystics, apocalyptics, and dissenters of all types, once regarded as extraordinary or even eccentric, have taken center stage. Though partly valued 6. "The Christian Middle Ages as an Review 91 (1986): 519-52.

Historiographical Problem," The American Historical

still as protestors, now more Foucauldian than Marxist in spirit, the fascination with these persons or groups lies in their voices, conceived as potentially more singular or authentic, especially the vernacular voices of women or marginalized persons, than the mouthing of normative views by prelates or the professed or conforming parishioners. Both these approaches have brought enormous gains (also some new interpretive orthodoxies). Both tend to displace the older story with reversals and leave the old story partly in place, partly in limbo. Both have only begun to critique their own built-in assumptions and narrative lines. Of all the historical approaches to come out of the 1970s, perhaps the most successful as an interpretive rubric, the one to spawn the most literature and discussion, was "popular religion," imagined and presented as an autonomous religious outlook, at once ancient and of the people, a set of indigenous sacred practices overtly or covertly resistant to the christianizing forces of the elite. This notion, which owed something to Gramscian visions of resistance from below, sensitized historians to a whole range of phenomena otherwise dismissed, or awkwardly dealt with, as "superstition" and "heresy," inherited terms that merely replicated the labels and judgments of medieval prelates. With significant help from anthropological paradigms, phenomena once set aside could reemerge as foundational, central to our understanding of religion and culture, sometimes an alternative way into an alternative religious past, sometimes a way of getting at the "people" rather than the "prelates," all of it opening up sources ignored or undervalued, especially hagiography, miracles stories, and the like. Still, this notion of "popular religion" has itself, in the meantime, come in for a good deal of critique, 7 in part for its in for its of part handling sources, and is unacknowledged agendas, used sparingly by professional historians, though still widely invoked in popular writing and in textbooks. Work from the 1980s has stimulated a further re-thinking, beyond the "social," "visionary," and "popular" approaches to medieval religious history coming out of the 1960s and 1970s. Allow me to get at that work by way of four books published between 1983 and 1991, each important, each representative of queries and methods found in many other scholars. Brian Stock's Implications of Literacy appeared in 1983 and made "textual communities" an interpretive formula. Perhaps, for a religious community based upon interpreting a sacred book, this should not have surprised. Certainly, Augustine's De doc7. See

François-André Isambert, Le

Minuit, 1982).

sens

du sacré: fête et

religion populaire (Paris:

Editions de

trina Christiana (On Christian Learning) had long informed medievalist work, and has since received renewed attention. But Stock's book and his conceptual argument signaled and fostered a new approach to literacy and its cultural reach, first located at a turning point in medieval history (twelfth century), his methods now being extended to later vernacular communities as well. At issue is an "instrumentalization" of writing and of reason, cognitive skills mustered in behalf of personal or group understanding, as well as the exercise of social powers, personal or collective—undertaken with a sense of religious mission, across diverse communities, orthodox and heretical, professed and lay. These interactions—among the cognitive, the social, and the sacred—have proved exceedingly complex and also disputed. Literacy is now being integrated into the history of the 8middle ages in varying ways (Clanchy in 1979 or McKitterick in 1989), with multiple notions of the ends it served, the forms it took, the social groups caught up in it. Queries about it centrally affect our sense of the medieval church as a historical force: the degree to which the use of texts by churchmen (and increasingly some laypeople) fostered religious participation and coherence, be it in preached or vernacular or prayed forms, also the measure to which their reasoned discourse and written documents mainly protected a lordly dominance—Cistercian choir monks forbidding literacy to lay brothers, women largely blocked from access to Latin texts and learning. Carolyn Walker Bynum's Holy Feast and Holy Fast appeared in 1987. It fostered and signals much innovative work on women's religious practices and attitudes, on the understanding of body and ascetic practices as central to religious expression and meaning, on hagiography as key to grasping medieval ideals and practices, on the centrality of the Eucharist in later medieval piety. Around it has swirled much subsequent work, multilayered in argument, about the degree to which women's voices and experiences were distinctive and may be detected as such, making gender thus a demarcator in medieval religion, also the measure to which women were more closely associated in cultural perception (and perhaps religious practice) with than body spirit. Barbara Newman has asked creatively about formative religious exercises distinctive to women, and Amy Hollywood has pointed to the importance of spirit as well as body, especially in

8. Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Michael T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066-1307, 2d ed. (Oxford: Black-well, 1993); Rosamund McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word (Cambridge: ,

Cambridge University Press, 1989).

9

prominent female mystic authors. Work on those women authors has flourished as never before, though the interpretation of their language and voice remains

No less their place broadly in medieval these works are often quite extraordinary; religious history: By a broad witness, under utilized, to "lay" views of by another, the world. Medieval churchmen themselves tried to "discern the spirits" at work here, an effort at ecclesiastical guidance and control that may have had men disproportionately discerning (thus, judging) the experiences of women. R. I. Moore's The Formation of a Persecuting Society also appeared in 1987, and generated widespread acceptance of a kind of Foucauldian vision of the church as an all-encompassing disciplinary society, with clerics as self-interested manipulators of a state-like power. Moore's essay offered a way to account for a drastic marginalization of minorities by the Christian majority, while linking this move to a well-known theme, the growth of centralized church power, and especially the Roman papacy, as a result of the Gregorian Reform movement. In a further argument, and a newer book, he casts the "reform" and "renaissance" of the twelfth century as the first European "revolution," 11 the empowering of a clerical and governmental elite. Moore's work raises issues driving much recent work on the medieval church: the extent of its power (was it really state-like and all-embracing?), the ends of its power (self-advancement? fear? charity?), the room within it for maneuver and negotiation, also for difference or neglect, and of course the nature of the marginalization it affected and with what intent. Moore also effectively offered a direct challenge to an ameliorative view of the church's role in reforming and educating European society, Romantic and Catholic in origin, but widely held in one or

disputed.

one measure

10

9. Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987). See Barbara Newman, From Virile Woman to WomanChrist (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), esp. chap. 1, "Flaws in the Golden Bowl: Gender and Spiritual Formation in the Twelfth Century"; and Amy Hollywood, The Soul as Virgin Wife (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1995), esp. chap. 2, "The Religiosity of the Mulieres sanctae." 10. See now, with references to further literature, Dyan Elliott, "Seeing Double: John Gerson, the Discernment of Spirits, and Joan of Arc," The American Historical Review 107 (2002): 26-54; and Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and their Interpreters, ed. Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999). 11. R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Perseaiting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 900-1250 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); and The First European Revolution c. 970-1215 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000). For the interest in marginals, in general, see now Paul Freedman and Gabrielle M. Spiegel, "Medievalisms Old and New: The Rediscovery of Alterity in North American Medieval Studies," The American Historical Review 103 (1998): 677-704.

much of the twentieth century. It too gained cogent expression, in R. W. Southern's Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995: based on lectures first given in 1971-72). Miri Rubin's Corpus Christi appeared in 1991 and shows how a new cult, linked with shifts in belief, could centrally animate social and literary manifestations in later medieval culture. Rubin's work is exemplary for the "cultural harvesting," if I may put it that way, of devotion and dogma, a methodological move that brings traditional medieval sources into new historical play. This approach was signaled and opened up influentially by Jacques Le Goff's Birth of Purgatory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984: French, 1981). Le Goff looked to the medieval "imaginary," meaning, cultural images, and human imagination at work together to shape historical life and expression. A surprising amount of that imaginary was religious in character, some of it arising directly from items of belief as well as practice. Rubin points more to the literary dimensions of this cultural imaginary, her recent book (1999) working out the way exempla, the stories that moved medieval sermons, might effect a "literary assault on late medieval Jews." Still others have turned this "cultural harvesting" to matters of social history, thus Paul Freedman to the peasantry, ninety percent of the medieval population, Ruth Mazo Karras to prostitutes (images of whores become saints), Katherine Jansen to the saintly, paradigmatic, and penitential in lay sinners (sermons on Mary another form

through

recent and

Magdalen).

12

We would now find it nearly impossible to imagine study of the medieval church apart from the issues raised by these works: literacy and discourse; women, bodies, and asceticism; clerics and power; images, devotion and culture. But how should we write about the Christian religion and the churches of this long middle ages? Differences from period to period, century to century, even generation to generation, not to speak of region to region and group to group, seem overwhelming in detail. Hobbe's "ghost of the Roman Empire" may finally have evanesced, but we professionals are in no agreement at all on whether to hold this thousand years together or how, on what basis, to divide out epochs and themes. For the purposes of this essay, 12. Miri Rubin,

Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Mediezml Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Paul Freedman, Images of the Medieval Peasant (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); Ruth Mazo Karras, Common Women: Prostihition and Sexuality in Medieval England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), esp. chap. 6; Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

I am going to proceed schematically into eight areas, more or less four linked pairs. We begin, not with Christianity or the church, but religion. What did Medieval Europeans think it was? What are we looking to find, to examine and understand historically? We are tempted still by singular rather than plural definitions, driven by our own expectations more than theirs. The word and concept meant for them, most often and most immediately, professed religion, the exemplary holiness of nuns, monks, and friars, thus also the privileged status of these institutional forms, the great stone complexes we can still see, the landed wealth these "religious" once accrued, the legal protections they enjoyed. We look down from these paradigmatic heights (as many of our written sources do) to a host of groups and forms now called semireligious 14 (beguines, tertiaries, hermits, hospices, almshouses, and the like); then to the churchmen operating in the world, its "secular" front line, the powerful prelates and "ignorant" parish priests so often lampooned by poets and reformers, or occasionally honored (Chaucer!); then still further down to lay Christians of every social estate struggling to imitate "real religious" from afar (confraternities!) or to win a blessing from them by way of gifts. This is one perspective, not at all disinterested, real in our sources, very powerful in the medieval imagination, sometimes slighted now in efforts to get round a pattern based on hierarchies of holiness. Alternatively, we may see religion just as fully as an independent and unpredictable force, a flash of supernatural lightening, dangerous, threatening, a host of divine and

attempt to recast Medieval Christianity in terms of culture and comparative religions is now Arnold Angenendt's Geschiclite der Religiosität im Mittelalter, 2d ed. (Darmstadt: Primus Verlag, 2000), with an introductory setting of his subject (1-30). His account presents these "thousand years" as replete with historical change, and yet as approachable by way of central themes in the Christian religion: God, humans, sin, last things, and so on. The work closes, notably, with quotations from the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski and the anthropologist Clifford Geertz. This grand 758-page treatment proceeds under the auspices of this assumption: "Letztlich ist nach Religion überhaupt zu fragen. Mag das Mittelalter vielleicht nicht die uns am stärksten prägende Religionsepoche gewesen sein—das war das konfessionelle Zeitalter—gewiss war es die am meisten von Religion durchtrankte" (757). That is, he suggests the Middle Ages may not have been the period mostly deeply marked by religion (rather, the confessional imprint made on the early modern period), but it was the time in European history most deeply saturated by religion. The best orientation to this status or estate in medieval socio-religious life is Kaspar Elm's rich article: "Vita regularis sine regula: Bedeutung, Rechtsstellung und Selbstver-ständnis des mittelalterlichen und frühneuzeitlichen Semireligiosentums," in Häresie und vorzeitige Reformation im Spätmittelalter, ed. František (Munich: Šmahel R. Olderbourg, 1998), 239-73. I offer corroboration and queries in "Friar Johannes Nyder on Laypeople Living as Religious in the World," Vita Religiosa im Mittelalter: Festschrift für Kaspar Elm zum 70. Geburtstag (Berlin: Dunker & Humblot, 1999), 583-615.

13. The most ambitious

14.

demonic presences, a locus for wondrous powers of all sorts. This is the world that anthropologists have sensitized us to over the last generation, and cultural historians are now drawing out ever more fully in work on saints and demons, miracle-working shrines and controverted cults, now too in its visuals and iconic dimensions. From still another angle, third, that of ordinary practice at ground level, a world of routines and obligations and rites, we encounter notions of "law" in both Latin and vernacular sources, a conceptual maze still hardly studied. Where we might employ the term "religion" or "faith-community," they said "law": Christ's law, the law of Saracens or infidels, the law of Jews. To give but a single example, John of Mandeville, whose mythic fourteenth-century travels were translated into ten languages and widely read, opened his account by describing the Holy Land, the first goal of his travel, as the place where Christ "wold do many myracles and preche and teche the feythe and the law of us cristen men" (precher et enseigner la foi et la lei de nous christiens, in his French), as he elsewhere referred to the "law of the Saracens" 15 and to the world as made up of "diverse lands and laws." The word was multivalent in meaning, like people's experiences of religious communities and practices. "Law" could refer to their Scriptures (Wycliffe cites the Gospel this way, as did many), but more fully to observable rites and ethics, the distinguishing practices, partly matters of custom, partly of law, what the philosophes referred to later as a religion's "morale." These three quite different notions of "religion" 16 hardly exhaust its possible meanings. It is more important to recognize that all were present and at work simultaneously in medieval society and culture. So, was everyone in the Middle Ages hopelessly religious? Around the year 1115, a northern French abbot named Guibert of Nogent, about sixty years old, wrote a work "on his life" entitled "Solo-Songs," the first notable autobiographical effort since Augustine's Confessions. In fact a volume of tales, personal, ecclesiastical, and miraculous, his last book narrates an urban uprising against the bishop of Laon. In a crucial and horrific scene in the cathedral itself, a knight runs the

15.

Jean de Mandeville, Le Livre des Merveilles du Monde, ed. Christiane Deluz (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2000), 89. This terminology is applied to Jewish and Christian communities already around 1100; see my "Ralph of Flaix: The Book of Leviticus Interpreted as Christian Community," in Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. John Van Engen and Michael Alan Signer (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001),

152-55. 16. See now, as well, Maureen C. Miller, "Religion Makes a Difference: Clerical and Lay Cultures in the Courts of Northern Italy, 1000-1300," The American Historical Review 105 (2000): 1095-1130.

with a sword. The man was captured and himself executed two years later. Guibert was clear that the bishop, no saint, had brought on his own troubles, but this knight, as he tells it, was entirely without remorse. In the middle of the Lenten fast Theudegald ate and drank to the point of vomiting, then rubbed his protruding stomach and declared himself "full of the glory of God"—to the amazement of all around. He went to his death without penance, "with that same lack of sensibility towards God in which he had 17 lived" —Guibert's Latin word, "insensibilitas," meaning "insensitive" but especially "unperceptive." Religious symbols and acts may have saturated life, but Guibert had encountered someone who was (in our language) "areligious," indifferent to such tugs or claims. Or was this simply the darkest epithet he could hurl, a man so inhuman as to be insensitive to religion? Compare, to gain perspective, this passage from a sermon delivered a few years later by Bernard of Clairvaux: "During Holy Week all Christians, not just monks, more than usual or beyond their usual practice, cultivate piety, show modesty, pursue humility, put on seriousness, appear somehow to suffer with the suffering Christ. In this time is there anyone so irreligious as not to show remorse? Who so insolent as not to be humble? Who so testy as not to be kindly? Who so self-indulgent as not to abstain? Who so 18 lustful as not to contain himself? Who so evil as not to do penance?" Guibert, it seems, had met at least one person who defiantly spumed all Bernard's rhetorical expectations—and there must have been more like him. We need, in short, studies sensitive to the full range of religion and areligion lurking in the language and perceptual world of our medieval sources. It requires art as well as method to take seriously the framing paradigms for "religion" and their mutations over time, and yet to see as well, in all their variety, the devout and the indifferent, the ordinary and the zealous. We must also, second, take fuller account of the reality, or at least the possibility, of plural religious cultures, and not only among the baptized. Just how much religious space existed in traditional Europe for non-Christians? How did it vary by time and place, by social class and gender? Consider this story from Pope Gregory the Great's Dialogues, a work written in the 590s and widely read throughout the Middle Ages. A bishop of Fundi, confident of his holiness, kept a nun as his chaste companion and began to take note of her beauty. A Jew

bishop through

17. Guibert, De uita sua, 3.14, ed. E. R. Labande, Autobiographie (Paris: Belles Lettres, 1981), 396. 18. Bernard, Sermo, "Feria IV hebdomadae sanctae," Sancti Bernardi Opera, ed. J. Leclercq, H. Rochais, et al. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1968), 5:56.

traveling from

Rome to Appia, finding himself without accommodations, took shelter for the night in a temple to Apollo. Fearing its ghostly presences, he made the sign of the cross for good luck. In the middle of the night he was awakened by a noisy meeting of demons, plotting the fate of human souls, their leader relishing the capture of this bishop. The demons, perceiving the Jew, himself shaking with fear, then stayed away, owing to his use of the sign of the cross. In the morning the Jew hastened to the bishop and confronted him with his lust. The bishop denied it twice. Why then, the Jew retorted, did you slap her on the backside last night? The bishop confessed his failings to the Jew and enquired of his preternatural knowledge. Hearing of the convocation of demons, he banished all women from his house-hold, including his favorite, and transformed the temple of Apollo into a chapel of St. Andrew, even eventually brought his Jewish rescuer to baptism. This is a tale of the marvelous, full of religious commonplaces that move toward a "happy ending" (fostering a narrative of "Christianization"). Still, between the lines it discloses a world filled with spiritual forces and human paradoxes: a temple to Apollo still standing on a major road, demons at night conspiring to in a topple an overconfident bishop, a Jew trying the sign of the cross 19 moment of terror, a bishop confessing his failings to a Jew. Pope Gregory wrote these tales, highly influential throughout the middle ages, to highlight the powers of godliness present still in his crumbling society. This intention presupposed monks and parishioners who did not see it round them, who experienced their world rather as full of forces, human, demonic, and spiritual, all competing, all at once strong and routine, bereft of heroic Christian holiness. This may work for the year 600, you object, but hardly the year 1100. Consider this: Guibert tells indignantly of a prominent local prince, Count John of Soissons, practicing Christian rites and professing Christian belief but intrigued by the Jews at his court, also by certain local heretics, indeed so "soft" on Jews that the abbot felt compelled to write a tractate to straighten out this "Judaizer." Perhaps Guibert engaged a medieval form of character assassination: a Christian prince so bad as to go easy on Jews and heretics. But perhaps not. Perhaps this was a medieval prince fascinated by religion, especially religious alternatives. It was princes and merchants, after all, who interacted with others, got to know them as human, saw their reli-

19.

Gregory, Dialogi, III.7, ed. Adalbert de Vogüé (Sources Chrétiennes 260, Paris: 1979), 278-84. The point that Gregory draws out of the tale is other than mine, a story of fear and of hope: a great person may be shaken (this bishop) and yet not overthrown.

20

Our impulse is to move toward either extreme: to imagine relations between Christians and other groups as violent and coercive, or exceptionally as capable of mutual understanding and warm exchanges. The first predominates, is easily invoked and understood, and can be supported with endless texts. The second is also powerful, in arguments about convivencia on the Iberian Peninsula or in Sicily, about exegesis in the tradition identified by Smalley, about dialogues or textual borrowing among intellectuals. At issue, however, is life in local places, ordinary relations grasped concretely (neither romantically nor cynically) so that the violent encounters, and indeed the expulsions, may be understood in all their 21 It is crucial to understand what each grasped or historical fullness. about the other, what forms of communication and social imagined interaction worked in practice and how, what differences in status or gender made a religious difference and why (the worries about servants and wet nurses, going both ways, but not so much, it seems, for doctors and merchants). All this does not yield quite so neat a storyline. It does allow, potentially, real space for real peoples and cultures to inhabit. Pogroms were a part of medieval society. So were synagogues and baths located in central squares within sight of the bishop or mayor's palace. In close medieval quarters people could not help but know one another, react to, and even learn from one another. They were all part of the same city and usually spoke a common tongue. The same approach, I think, can be applied in some ways to "pagans," though they were not formally recognized, like Jews or Muslims, as persons with human rights and a sacred book—and almost never left an independent record of themselves. Scholars today are trying harder, and rightly so, to construct a place for22"pagan" practices All the same, and outlooks within a longer European history. even today this false abstraction, an invention of Late Roman Chris-

gious practices

as

possibilities.

20. See my remarks on this case (n. 15 above), 153, and in the same volume, Jan Ziolkowski's "Put in No-Man's Land: Guibert of Nogent's Accusations against a Judaizing and Jew-Supporting Christian," 110-22. 21. The most influential recent work of this sort is David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996); but see also, for instance, Mark Meyerson, The Muslims of Valencia in the Age of Fernando and Isabel: Between Coexistence and Crusade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), and his edited volume, Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural Change (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), and the volume edited by Michael Signer and myself (n. 15

above). provocatively titled set of essays gathered by Ludo Milis, The Pagan Middle Ages (Rochester, N.Y: Boydell Press, 1998; Dutch original 1991), and the essay by Robert Bartlett, "Reflections on Paganism and Christianity in Medieval Europe," Proceedings of

22. See the

the British

Academy

101

(1999):

55-76.

inevitably, in opposition or as romantic This fails over: to do justice to specific cults and twice nostalgia. but no less in practices, construing Christian practices concretely as or presuming accommodating the other. Practices alien to Christianity went on within sight of the baptized, across borders or within their own communities, for generations, widely accepted as a given. Some of the christened found such practices not alien but familiar, even comforting, and sought creative ways to continue or adapt them. On the other hand, because pagans and their practices were denied, formally and legally, any inherent rights, their place within and alongside Christian practices rarely enters our written sources in rich or complex ways. An issue Merovingian historians have dealt with for 23 a long time, it deserves closer attention in other parts of Europe, this of traditional making 24 European Christianity alongside other deep With the volume turned down, so to speak, the easy traditions. labeling set aside, also the romantic nostalgia, can we create spaces for real people with real cultures and real belief systems, where they existed in accommodation, to be sure, but even where they existed in opposition or under stress? In sum, it is fair for historians to focus on one or another of the understandings of medieval religion, or to find most telltale or exciting points of tension or competition (which were certainly real), or to emphasize a plurality of religious cultures. What needs attention, however, are approaches that, depending upon time and place, allow for their simultaneous presence, several affecting the same person or community. Whatever we make of the world in Gregory's tale from the 590s, in the later Middle Ages, in an urban complex, Carthusians and Benedictines would have existed alongside friars and beguines (and their southern counterparts) and possibly a Jewish community, also many persons taken with a shrine or a visionary or apocalyptic prophecies, many others committed to a confraternity or to special ascetic exercises, and all these alongside ordinary parishioners as well as the indifferent or cynical. It may be that religion "saturated" the social and cultural atmosphere, but experiences of religion were potians, gets constructed, almost

23. See 24.

now Ian Wood, The Missionary Life: Saints and the Evangelisation of Europe, 400-1050 (New York: Longman, 2001). See, for instance, the essays in: Alan V. Murray, ed., Crusade and Conversion on the Baltic Frontier, 1150-1500 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001), with an extensive bibliography; and in James Muldoon, ed., Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1997); and in Guyda Armstrong and Ian N. Wood, ed., Christianizing Peoples and Converting Individuals (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000). It is a measure of our conceptual difficulty, of course, also of our source difficulty, that we come to these "pagans" or to "pagan practices," historically, almost exclusively in conjunction

with their conversion,

or now

their Christianization.

This is a and recover. core reality for most medieval Europeans, third, was their christening. It came to them as an extended legacy of the Roman Empire. All peoples within the kingdoms of medieval Europe, Jews excepted, were christened as infants, a matter of custom and of law. Because generations of birthright Christians took this for granted, or still do, scholars have only begun to ask what christening meant (or did not mean) over time, what it entailed, for what purposes it was invoked, when simply taken for granted. Indeed we have only begun to assemble a record of the material and liturgical essentials, the putting in place of local fonts, often a point of pride and identity: a with further elaborations twelfth-century phenomenon particularly, it seems, 25 later, especially in the fifteenth century. Being dipped into a font, waist high or more, together with christening's liturgical blessing and anointing, bestowed a name and a guardian angel, fit each child into a network of spiritual kin, joined them to the "Christian people" at large and in a parish, welcomed them into life-long rights and obligations as their "law," and opened the gates of heaven to an everlasting future. Into the sixteenth century, Europeans were simply "Christians," the "faithful," an old term for the baptized, over against the infidel. This tells us, as historians, everything and nothing. Even the terminology is fundamentally ambiguous. The term "christianitas" and its vernacular equivalents often meant, most fundamentally, baptism, then as well all the other rites that set the christened apart from other religious practitioners, thus finally the "Christian people" (a term common from the ninth century onwards). When Charlemagne put down a Saxon rebellion in 777 and many were baptized, he threatened them with loss of liberty and property if they did not keep their christianitas in all things and their fidelitas to himself and the 26 Frankish people. Christianitas and fidelitas, Latin abstractions in form, stood for christening and fealty, concrete ritual acts performed before the king and his people, each a pact opening out into lifelong obligations, each offering a new identity, religious and political. What

tentially layered, competitive, contradictory, unpredictable.

world The

we

need to

see

25. See, for instance, C. S. Drake, The Romanesque Fonts of Northern Europe and Scandinavia (Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2002), and Ann Eljenhom Nichols, Seeable Signs: The Iconography of the Seven Sacraments, 1350-1544 (Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 1994), both with additional bibliography. It is striking that Drake's book, the first of its kind, was put together by someone who took the subject up in retirement, not originally a historical or art historical professional. 26. F. Kurze, ed., Annales regni francorum, a.777, in Scriptores rerum germanicarum in usuni scholarum ex Monumentis Germaniae historicis separatim editi 6 (Hanover: Hahniani, 1895), 48.

they their

had to

give up was their "evil custom" (malam consuetudinem), returning to former practices. Christening was, for Europeans,

"good custom." Christening could make people presumptuous. In his book on the lay estate, the first of its kind, offering a kind of "rule" for laypeople comparable to the reformed rules for clerics and monks, Jonas of Orleans, spent an entire chapter correcting the view, held by many around 820, he said, that the reborn, no matter how wickedly they lived, faced only purgatorial fire at death and would never finally be lost. Many were saying this aloud, deluding themselves and others with a vain sense of security. The unbaptized who do good, he said pointedly, will be better off than the baptized who carry on in wickedness. His notion of a good pagan, uncommon then, took direct 27

aim at the smug, those who claimed the faith, vaunted the name and expected everlasting life on the strength of their christening alone. A reforming preacher's zeal, no doubt, but what he sensed was as well an attitude that stuck, or recurred, throughout the Middle Ages. Six hundred years later, Julian of Norwich, a laywoman and visionary, worried about those "who had received cristondom and live an unchristian life and die out of charity." In one vision she heard a word 28 from the Lord that nonetheless "all things shall be well." But what then of the church's word about hell? Could christening and judgment, birth and death, hang together? It was a "secret," she learned, a revelation she could not disclose at that time. Was this secret, as some believe, assurance that inclusion here below by way of christening meant inclusion hereafter as well in the company of God? Would the earthly order of christening be sustained into the heavens, and "all be well?" Or, as many others held, would the End-time be marked by folding all peoples, especially Jews, God's chosen, into the company of the christened? Strong religious presumptions, anchored in near universal christening, they held powerful sociological and attitudinal consequences for medieval Europe. If, fourth, virtually everyone was accounted among the christened, who made up the "world?" This term referred to no set social group but effectively figured the "other": for professed religious, it meant life outside the cloister; for clerics, the laity; for observant laypeople, the notoriously wicked; for the christened, all the infidels. We historians too easily get ensnared in their rhetorical binaries, especially

27. 28.

Jonas Aurelianensis, De institutione laicali, 1.19, in J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae cursus completes: Series Latina (Paris: Apud Gamieri Fratres, 1844-91), 106:158. Julian of Norwich, A Book of Showings, ed. Edmund Colledge-James Walsh (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1978), the long text (c. 32), 422-26.

since the term for "worldly"and for "laypeople" were, notably, often the same (secularii in Latin). We rightly look to trace out real battles between church and state, reformed and unreformed houses, the converted and the unconverted, the life of virtue and of vice—tensions that significantly drive our stories (and even our analysis). Still, everyone, even professed religious and dutiful clerics, lived in the world; their privileges and endowments disproportionately shaping that society, as critics were keen to point out. As a matter of historical sociology, also of theological understanding, nearly everyone belonged to the christened as well as to the world, the clergy and the religious no less than the laity. In a sermon for the feast day of Paul's conversion, St. Bernard complained that things were worse in his day because now the persecutors were themselves all proudly Christian! The “whole of the Christian people, from the least to the greatest, appear to conspire against" true converts (meaning, monks like Bernard). Those who are in the "first place" (including priests and bishops) are actually “first" (= rule: principatum) in persecution. Their 29 "form of life" (conversatio) is actually the "perversion of the people." The near total overlap between christened and worldly, converted and perverted, meant constant movement, sometimes obvious and tense, sometimes subtle and symbiotic. Take the blessing of knights' swords and the keeping of vigils prior to dubbing. If prowess in battle defined the role of the dominant social class, landholding aside, was this the wholesale capitulation of religious sanction to the governing social order, or an attempt to introduce restraint and ethical purpose into a bloody business, or both? The deeper historical question is: Who set the social and cultural tone? Who wanted the religious sanctions, and why? The answers may be multiple, even contradictory, and will certainly vary by time, place, and circumstance, but are not simple. Allow me to offer one striking example. When church lawyers in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries began to construe religious vows as an irrevocable legal contract as much as a liturgical blessing, they turned for analogies and helps to the legal contract they knew best: marriage. Over against an earlier time when parental will or a period of practice (sexual or liturgical) sealed a move into a life estate, each individual was now to undertake a free and intentional act, a vow joining a young person (postpuberty) to a social estate for life. To work through the complexities that inevitably arose in real human lives, lawyers turned to the contractual relations of married men and women, and transferred that structure, more or less, to the

29.

Bernard, Sermo,

"In conversione s.

Pauli," 3,

in

Opera,

4:328-29.

30

—the exact opposite of what a simple top-down, would suggest. These reversals are the stuff of medieval cultural and religious life. Here the discourse model, the dark sense of a pervasive and hierarchical power of the word over vulnerable peoples, can sometimes betray us, not encourage us to see into all the subtle and intriguing interactions. Think of the triumphs of spousal mysticism in the high and late Middle Ages, also in the vernacular, as in the works of Hadewijch and Margaret of Porete. Whatever they knew of Bernardine and Victorine traditions, their cultural world was that of the court, where they learned the emotional force and exquisite language of erotic love and rendered what they experienced now as spiritual union or emptying into God. The pursuit of love between men and women, at times in despair or in vain, often with great difficulty and disillusion, all its worldly forms, languages, metaphors, and even emotions, helped inform their characterization of the pursuit of God. This is partly gendered. These women arguably had easier access to vernacular court literature than Latin monastic literature (though, here too, one must be careful in making hasty judgments). But who is to say what experience and songs Bernard and William and Richard of St. Victor, all adult converts and men of the world, brought to the monastery and to their Latin expositions of spousal

professed religious clergy

to

people, modeling

mysticism? Another kind of reversal deserves note: the contemptus mundi tractates that flourished in waves throughout medieval Europe, first in Latin, then in the vernacular. Why this raging denigration of the flesh, of marriage, of honors, of the pleasures of eating and of dancing, of wealth—why, indeed, if these were not the attitudes largely taken for granted? They are, to be sure, savagely caricatured—childbearing as deadly, sex as disgusting, women as difficult, riches as anxiety-producing, and so on. But this attack aims at the real world that most of the christened cherished and lived in, the life monks or preachers had to overcome if they were to lead at least a few toward a "converted" lifestyle. Nearly all high medieval devotional writers, Bernard, for instance, in his influential On Loving God, began with the body and the world, with the love of self, in hopes of leading the devout inward and upward to a love of God for God's own self. All the great schoolmen, and certainly Thomas Aquinas, made sense of the world by way of Aristotle, taking seriously as foundational the natural and created world and the human perception of it. Church 30. I have explored this in 323-43.

"Religious

Profession: From

Liturgy

to

Law," Viator 29 (1998):

this drastically under-studied, put much effort into understanding and validating custom, practices that became law unless were they trumped by divine law. This world of nature, marriage, the sexuality, body, honors, customary practices, and all the rest was self-evidently there, as self-evident as the world of christening, as real as churches and sacraments and saints and prayers. What we need is better language and frameworks for teasing out the shifting interactions, how people defined and negotiated distinct sacred and profane spheres, how certain aspects of human life, or of culture, or of social power, or of the interior life, moved from one to another or back again, sometimes comfortably, sometimes dialectically. One way to think about the historical dynamics of medieval culture and society is to ask, fifth, what energies sprang from christening, what powers for rethinking or remaking. Christening imposed upon infants a host of obligations they were expected freely to embrace as adults: confession, communion, monogamous marriage, tithe paying, submission to Christian clergy and courts. The "faithful" were to orient their lives freely in faith, a faith demanded of everyone but Jews, a faith sometimes extorted when they refused or deviated. Routine citizenship, its rites and practices, was enough, and yet not enough, for the cross was irremovable from their forehead, even if visible to God alone, a guarantee perhaps of eternal wellbeing, a curse if the baptized failed to meet expectations. Medieval Christians were to believe and to act on the strength of free wills, even as churchmen moved to instill and enforce conformity to the will of God. The baptized were to evidence charity in love and almsgiving, but also engaged in almsgiving commonly as a means to appease their Lord. The paradoxes are multiple, and historians must seize upon them, not shy away from them. Tensions between obligation and participation, fear and charity, indifference and engagement energized this religious culture. All the tension breaks apart, flattens out, if we read this culture entirely through the eyes of the pious and the powerful, as many did in the past, or of dissenters and non-conformists, as we often do now. Christening created, historically speaking, a mix of potentialities and obligations, correspondent to Christian teachings about this rite as conferring at once powers and expectations. All the acts and beliefs and aspirations coming out of christening operated best, most then held (prelates and parishioners alike actually), within a predictable range of customary practices overseen by persons bearing divine authority; this was "safest," most comfortable. But there were always persons who set out to gain the power or presence of Christ in themselves and for themselves, also the powers resident in one of

lawyers,

Christ's saints or Christ's rites, and the range of expression could then become altogether unpredictable, exciting, threatening, awe inspiring, unsettling. Either way, christening acted out in ways customary or extraordinary, in deeds or in thoughts, in person or in a collective, it almost never transpired without social and cultural entanglements. A long dialogue in Middle Dutch, probably from the 1330s, mystical and antihierarchical in orientation, asks, among many questions, who count as "peasant boors" (dorper). The answer: Any persons unashamed of their sin and of their unjust lives, be they kings, counts, or knights, priests. But these privileged people, comes the response, often pursue fleshly pleasure like animals and say it is their hired men and their stewards who are the boors. No, comes the response, the noble are rather those who lead holy lives and give a good example to fellow Christians, who exercise themselves in all the virtues and in 31 good works, even if as men at the plough or women spinning. Christening could help keep people in their place, socially and culturally, or help people rethink and remake their place. It is this ambivalence and unpredictability we need to recapture. Church historians traditionally looked for these energies at work in the building of institutions or the construing of dogmatic and moral teachings, and legitimately enough, for those were central to medieval creativity, though the interest owed as much to early modern confessional preoccupations. Medieval historians, for the last generation or two, have looked rather to the drive for holiness, ever changing, in anti-institutional, approved forms or unapproved, institutionalized or 32 and its impact on the socio-cultural environment. If not holiness in themselves, people were equally eager to gain access to the powers of holiness—in these saints and their shrines, in the religious and their intercessions, in prophets and preachers and their "divine" word. More, they were prepared to get it by fair means and foul (sacra furta!), to act out in whatever ways they believed holiness demanded, to Joseph Schweitzer, Meister Eckhart und der Laie: ein antihierarchischer Dialog des 14. Jahrhunderts axis den Niederlanden (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1997), 64 (= c. 74). The Middle Dutch scholar who first found this and a related text presented them to a broader public as "two Christian Democrats from the fourteenth century" (with all the resonance of that political stance around 1900): C. G. N. de Vooys, "Twee Christen-Democraten uit de veertiende eeuw," De XXe Eeuw (1903): 280-310. We might think about what comparable label we would apply today, also how useful or compelling such labeling is. In a striking way, this was pointed to already by Gerhart B. Ladner, "Greatness in Medieval History," The Catholic Historical Review 50 (1964): 1-26. Among truly innumerable Saints works, I mention Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century and their Religious Milieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), and Aviad Kleinberg, Prophets in their own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

31. Franz

32.

commit great material resources to the support, embodiment, and ornamentation of holiness in all its manifestation. It is hard for historians to find a balance. Either we domesticate this drive, as they tried to do, and thus replicate the churchmen themselves and our sources (and the people in orders who until recently led in the study of them), or we highlight all the extraordinary aspects, the lightening strokes that electrified a person or community and then disappeared again, or were suppressed as too dangerous. We should be clear: both were true. Those professed to a recognized life of holiness enjoyed social standing and material privileges. At the same time, people driven to seek holiness, acknowledged as saints or not, upset their environments: upset families by breaking out of them, upset parishes by declaring routine observations unsatisfactory, upset monasteries at ease with a manageable holiness, upset accepted notions of encountering the divine, upset gender expectations when women broke free of men in ascetic holiness or divine revelation, even upset historical boundaries. For it was they, working with princes, who set out to convert those beyond the established borders of Christian Europe, not generally neighbors and merchants content with people across the river who kept to their own rites. Alongside the variable energies of holiness, historians, even earlier, focused on reform as the force that, historically speaking, bundled and drove christening's energies most in matters of institutional and personal change. How else to explain repeated efforts to remake people or institutions in the image of a higher ideal, personal or corporate? More, the shift from remaking a person in the image of God to remaking a convent or a church or a whole society in the image of a God-like ideal may well be one fundamental marker in Europe's medieval history. One important book has made it the signal marker for one of medieval Europe's turning points: The Reformation of the 33 Twelfth Century. Powerful drives to overhaul the self or a religious house or the church at large have nothing routine or assured about them, however, nor can they be mindlessly explained as triggered by decline (even if that perception or its rhetoric sometimes played its role). To treat "reform" as cyclical, almost predictable, robs its history of drive and contingency—and allows us to get away with explanations or narratives that are ultimately unsatisfying. One alternative is to take more seriously historical resistance, not only those people or groups anxiously defending their self-interests, but all those genuinely shocked by this disruption of custom, by the zeal with which 33. Giles

Constable, The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

peoples and long-held practices got repudiated as inadequate or evil. That being true, no less puzzling is this: how do potential energies became actual, under what conditions, with what mechanisms? How much energy does it take to break with custom and ease and recognized interests, from whence does it come, and why do others join in? Then there are the energies that shape pastoral care in ordinary lives. The building of parishes and parochial routines has a complex history, with great changes over time. For most people this was the point where the church intersected at critical junctures in their lives, at 34 childbearing and burying, blessing and confessing and tithe paying. Much of this might be reduced to routine, or rather widely varying local routines. But how should we consider it historically? How should we imagine what went on, with what sense of animation or inner direction or of external pressure? A culture driven by fear or trust, or some mix between the two? The title for a priest ("dominus," "sire,") was "lord," same as that extended to a knight: a measure of respect or fear, or both? Duffy has argued that parish worship worked 35 well, even remarkably well, even on the eve of the Reformation. An early generation of scholars had pointed to all the evidence of complaint and neglect, also to the parish's role in structuring and controling (encadrement in French) the lives of ordinary people. More recently, scholars emphasize a generally strengthening association with the parish, including enhanced claims to rights in the managing of 36 parish affairs. Christening, very simply put, as a source of religious and cultural and social energies, was laden with potential for anarchic outbursts—cultivating or possessing holiness, reforming the self or an institution, pastoring a community—but as well, and no less, grounds to impose disciplining authority. Inquisitors, after all, claimed their jurisdiction by reason of a person's baptism. If historians look to religiosity in its diversity, to plural cultures, to christening in all its potentialities and manifestations, what then of the 34. A literature just coming into its own here, partly driven by the pioneering work of Leonard Boyle and his students; see his gathered essays, Pastoral Care, Clerical Education and Canon Law, 1200-1400 (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981). Two of his students have introduced this material in a wonderful set of pastoral texts: John Shinners and William Dohar, Pastors and the Care of Souls in Medieval England (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998). See also several stimulating chapters in: Histoire véçue du peuple chrétien, ed. Jean Delumeau (Toulouse: Privat, 1979), with the relevant section appearing under the rubric "L'offensive chré tienne." 35. Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1500 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992). 36. See now, Katherine L. French, Gary G. Gibss, Beat A. Kümin, ed., The Parish in English Life, 1400-1600 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), and Katherine L. French, The People of the Parish: Community Life in a Late Medieval English Diocese

(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001).

church?

Studying the church as such,

my sixth

point, has

fallen out of

too much institutional power, too much orthodoxy, too many men. That perception is not only ours. Some late medieval theorists,

favor,

especially champions of papal primacy, sought to telescope the church, the whole body of the baptized, into the persona of the pope or of a council or the clergy as a social estate. In part this corresponded to a sociological reality: the clergy stood apart in law, in clothing, in marital status, in their claims on property. Also to a cultural reality: the apart world of a literate and privileged elite, "clericalism" in their day, "experts" or "intellectuals" in ours. That said, however, as history this is an unsubtle and inadequate response. Institutions have played a key role in the making of European history, that partly a Roman inheritance, and medieval churchmen proved amazingly creative and adaptive in the making and sustaining of a very complex body of what was, in effect, multiple institutions, also, integrally, in church law generating in effect the first adapting and expanding law, 37 "common law" of Europe. For its institutional, legal, and social at owed least as much to the church and to churchmen history Europe the talent (arguably largest pool in its day) as to princely courts, far on such more crucial issues as representation, poor relief, arguably basic human rights, and so on. In addition, apart from reiterating the significance of the medieval church's history as such, in its institutions, law, cultural achievements, and personnel, it is critical to insist upon a real sense of history, of change and contingency and locality with respect to this imagined monolith, a sense of "churches" rather than "the Church," a refusal to "straight-jacket" this thousand-year history into a dominant narrative costume of whatever color or style. A fresh look at the medieval church might benefit, I think, from two additional considerations. First, the question of authority. Authority structures are integral to all societies, with tensions between obligation and participation inherent in all cultural polities. Medieval Christian practice was sustained by a complex interaction of fearful obedience, engaged will, and plodding conformity. Amidst needs, desires, and group conformity, could individuals make their own religious way? In what populations, what times and places? When was force brought to bear? Without discounting all the learned arguments about 37. One excellent way to get at that, as law, is Richard Helmholz's The Spirit of Classical Canon Law (Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press, 1996). While the enormous scholarly effort in canon law studies of the 1960s and 1970s has waned, its fruits and its practitioners are still essential to understanding the medieval church's creative response to all matters human and political. See, for instance, Brian Tierney's The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies on Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Church Law, 1150-1625

(Atlanta: Scholars, 1997).

the nature and reach of hierarchical authorities, these practical questions, on the ground, faced most people. Church lawyers reflected repeatedly on act and intention, will and coercion, intricate cases of

making restitution, contracting marriage, entering a monastery, injuring a cleric, refusing a prescribed fast. As levels of coercion mounted, they weighted relations between bodily torture and spoken testimony, also between conformity and intention (in the case, say, of Lollards or conversos). Defenses mounted on behalf of "private" religious groups such as beguines or hermits and by the Modern Devout maneuvered to explain why and how they chose to live a religious life apart from vows, to strive for extraordinary virtue apart from obligation—and powerful figures like Cardinal Jean Gerson and Friar John Nyder conceded the point. Ecclesiastical authority was real and frightening, backed up by divine threats; at the same time, often malleable and permeable in practice, reactive to the participation of its own lay subjects, and finally dependent upon them for any enforcement. Churchmen, moreover, disputed continuously among themselves about the reach and application of privilege and power, at the highest levels and also the lowest, battling with each other as regularly as with princes or townspeople. So we must be wary of treating the church and clergy as abstractions, as if they comprised a common social class or ideological program. In historical reality, the clergy varied in class, culture, and outlook nearly as much as the rest of society. Churchmen persecuted their own: bishops and priests on opposing sides of the Investiture struggle, Popes against Spiritual Franciscans or beguines, monks imprisoning recalcitrant members. True, laypeople worried that churchmen would go soft on their own, an essential point behind King Henry's intent to try criminous clerics himself, matched by Becket's defense to the death of his jurisdiction. Still, laypeople could also prove tolerant and understanding (say, of local priests with “hearthmates"). Mendicants and secular churchmen often held more contempt for each other than for their lay charges and played out their rivalry before urban townspeople. Here is where social and cultural differentiation, as well as local studies, help break down impersonal abstractions, exemplarily represented already in 1968 by Robert Brentano's Two Churches: England and Italy in the Thirteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press). New work is being done on parishes in all their rich variety, their combining of the personal and the communal, of social and religious loyalties, of shared responsibility for the fabric and the finances; also on religious houses as they functioned over time in their social environments, their recruitment, their services to benefactors, their management of properties, their

role among urban neighbors—Franciscans acquiring urban rents, the Modern Devout investing in the equivalent of city bonds. I come to my final pair, religious practices and religious teachings. Anthropology opened a way for historians to grasp ritual practices as inherent to a sacred society, its symbols and rites constituting a symbolic cosmos, holding together (or manifesting) social structures and human relations. This allowed medieval historians to approach their materials as, so to speak, outside observers examining a foreign culture, not to argue about their own religious heritages. This has limits. Today, historians are questioning the wholesale application of twentieth-century techniques and concepts to historic societies like Old Europe, in view of the opacity and multiple meanings of texts, real differences among societies, and, again, the position of the observer. All the same, Medieval Christians, it turns out, took over from Romans, as one definition of religio, "the dutiful observance of a cult binding one to God." That is, in their view too, practices, and the duty to perform rites, lay at the heart of religion. Paxton's study of Christianizing death and Lynch's of god-parentage have explored critical life-passages anchored in rituals and opening out into social practices: a kinship network meant to guarantee the passing on of the faith that also served to cement alternative social bonds, a ceremony to console the dying and those left behind reinforcing the church's claim on a person, a final moral accounting before God, a final 39 material accounting to neighbors and the local parish. Ritual acts, all bearing a measure of supernatural power, some singled out by the church as bearers in themselves of divine presences and graces, were concrete: blessing bread with the sign of the cross, coming to a sacred site (church or chapel or shrine) to pray. They were also numerous and variable and individually performed (if not a group performance, such as a procession). In fact, a great diversity of rituals coexisted, some in competition, some alongside one another, some accommodating one another. A perceived desecration of rites, moreover, by dissenters or heretics or eccentrics, might spark greater outrage than unusual teachings, as evidenced by the charges against 38

38. Good orientation,

39.

especially in the introduction, in Riti e rituali nelle societá medievali, ed. Jacques Chiffoleau, Lauro Martines, Agostino Paravicini Bagliani (Spoleto: Centro italiano di studi sull'alto medioevo, 1994); and see now Phillipe Buc, The Dangers of Ritual: Between Early Medieval Texts and Social Scientific Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). Frederick Paxton, Christianizing Death: The Creation of a Ritual Process in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Joseph Lynch, Godparents and Kinship in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), and Christianizing Kinship: Ritual Sponsorship in Anglo-Saxon England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998).

Lollards, for instance, or worries about Jews mocking during Holy Week. All these rituals, and the stories that went with them, only sometimes got imposed from on high, this ever the pipedream of reformers and prelates. There was almost endless room for invention: New feast-days, new benedictions, new cults, new devotional rites that then become standard (stations of the cross or the rosary). These ritual practices might reinforce boundaries, social (knights' vigils) or professional (artisans' confraternities) or gendered (churching for new mothers), or cut across difference to assemble people drawn by a common devotion to the Virgin or a local saint. It is this ambiguity, the solidarity and the boundary making, that historians can further explore: conversos in Spain, a striking case, who kept certain distinctively Jewish ritual practices—and the meaning of that, subversive or

comforting. Medieval churchmen understood the centrality of ritual: their booklists often began with Bibles and liturgical service books, their law and theology dealt exhaustively with sacraments and other rites, their sermons explicated rites, their vestments, vessels, and visual adornments served performance. And yet, asked what their task was in cultivating a christened people, they would have spoken more of practices or rather mores, better, of instruction or training in the moral practices that marked a christened person. In the early thirteenth on century Thomas of Chobham's summa preaching noted that sermons served two ends, instruction in the faith and enunciating mores (ad informationem fidei et morum nuntiatio). But, he says, since the hard work of conversion is over and nearly all now believe, we are left with the "easier" task of instructing people in good mores (relictum est nostre quod facile est, scilicet ut instruamus alios in bonis predicationi 40 moribus). Any firm distinction between rites and practices would be misleading and anachronistic. Yet, "good practices" shaped a community that accounted itself a "religious law," was the stuff of confession and spiritual guidance, informed casuistic and devotional reflection alike. Like rites, practices were concrete, Carolingian princes and prelates emphasizing, for instance, Sunday rest, a demarcation of time and of human labor. In the twelfth century Guibert was stunned that someone dared ignore and mock the Lenten fast. Fasting was a practice everyone could see, in their family, in their neighbors, also by extension in professed religious who were to maintain levels of constant fasting. In the thirteenth century, annual confession and communion became required practices, generally carried out on set Chobham, Summa de arte praedicandi, vol. 1, ed. Franco Morenzoni, in Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1988), 82:15.

40. Thomas of

in ways visible to all. For interpreting medieval religiosity, other may be as telling, especially almsgiving: at the heart of devotional expression, a way of redeeming sins, a final life's testament, a means to "soften" the Judge. Indulgences in the later Middle Ages encouraged and rewarded practices, be they pilgrimages, set prayers, gifts to "good causes"—while also benefiting those causes, the maintenance of a shrine, the building of a church, and so on. Whether or not practices became more quantified over time, some contemporaries, especially those of a mystical bend, harshly castigated all the spiritual "merchants" engaged in "bargaining" with God hy way of rites and practices. No less important than public rites and mores were, for lack of a better term, interior practices, not only acts but attitudes, not only embodied gestures but en-spirited affections. So much of preaching, devotional manuals, and visual materials aimed toward this end. Well known to scholars of spirituality and art and literature, this material has only recently begun to interest historians. New attention to emotions in history (anger or fear, for instance) is an approach medieval churchmen would have understood and approved, for their teaching on virtues and vices, on works of mercy, on the joys of heaven and pains of hell, sought to draw the human emotions—the faculties of the soul, they would have said—into the cause of christening. Rites and practices, my last point, are not and were not self-interpreting. Since the 1970s a kind of divide has emerged, even a gap, between those focusing on "ritual" and those interpreting thought or teaching, partly a reaction to the older apologetic purposes of church history, partly an unhappiness with intellectual history, partly to get round the apparent exclusion of women from formal teaching roles. Still, teaching and content mattered, maybe not to everyone, but to many, even most. Marguerite of Porete died for it, as did others, people who clung to positions adjudged heretical. To set them apart, as outside the circle of teachers and practices they sought to improve upon, in my view, robs them of their courage and vision, these Waldensians, spiritual Franciscans, Joachite Prophets, and so many others. Their presence, and this dialectic, created a constant buzz inside medieval culture, not just outside or over against it. Rituals told stories; practices embodied a way of life; both presumed, imparted, or sprang from teachings. In recent years historians have emphasized practice rather than belief, body over mind, discursive manipulation rather than persuasive teaching, coercion over conviction. There is in all that something true to medieval outlooks and ways, something worth saying. But a correction seems due. Content also mattered. Thought was as central to the energies of christening, whether in their

days

practices

remaking or their disciplining mode, as rituals and practices. Just as it would make little sense to talk about feudalism in social history without talking about land, contractual relations, loyalties, and so on, it is self-defeating to talk about European religious history apart from its notions of God, incarnation, the human person, moral acts, 41 and so on. To deny to the unlearned, caught up in moral and ritual practice, all powers of reflection on what governed their earthly lives and eternal fates is, in my view, to empty them of a piece of their humanity. To deny learned churchmen any compassionate insight into the earthly dilemmas of their subject peoples is to rule out in advance any measure of the virtue expected of those entrusted with souls. Because they were caught up in the same paradoxes that held for all the christened, and clerics were charged with care for others, not just power over them, these writings, read sensitively for their social and religious assumptions, disclose them wrestling with the paradoxes. Learned legal, theological and devotional texts, wrongly set aside as forbidding or self-serving, often contain the stuff of critique and self-critique, enabling historians to tease out the internal cultural and religious dilemmas. Indeed, when people resisted authorities, they effectively turned norms back upon the social elites charged to enforce or teach them. In the later Middle Ages, we now recognize, there was an explosion of religious literature in the vernacular, prose, and poetry. This makes sense only if we take seriously its audience and its content, its teachings and purposes, ordinary as well as extraordinary. Beliefs and practices became boundary issues. What needs study is how and why, which issues, in which places, and when. Consider Marguerite of Porete, burned at Paris in 1310. To understand her difficult book, she explained in the poem that introduced her writings, those whose "treasure" was their scientia, all the theologians and clerics, would have to proceed humbly, putting their confidence rather in those gifted with Love and illumined with Faith. She self-consciously reversed, that is, the call to entrust one's self to those gifted with knowledge through study and also steadfastly refused to bend to her theological inquisitors, even to answer them (a remarkable consistency). Yet she secured recommendations from theologians and appended notice of three to her book, perhaps also added sev-

a provocative statement of this point, see now Alain de Libera, Penser au Moyen Áge (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1991); a good example of taking teachings, content, seriously is now Caroline Walker Bynum, The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200-1336 (New York: Columbia University Press 1995).

41. For

42

chapters to clarify her teachings. It is this intricate tension, this expectation to participate and to teach, even when it provokes a forceful reaction, that must inform a more complex sense of medieval religion and its thought. In short, ritual and practice, religion and reflection, though abstract terms fraught with methodological problems, belong together, must cohere. My point, to say it simply, is not to impugn the old ways of doing medieval church history, or indeed any of the new. We live in a different time, of global history and global religion, when most Europeans think of themselves as post-Christian and most Christian communities have moved away from their medieval or early modern traditions. We must frame our subject, the medieval church, openly and invitingly, in all the fullness of its cultures and contingencies. The eight themes noted here offer one way to do that, allowing for pluralism and individuality, for commonalities and explosive energies, for religion and society, also for those traits distinctive to medieval Christian beliefs and aspirations, rites and practices, culture and thought. enteen additional

42.

Porete Speculum simplicium animarum, ed. Paul Verdeyen, in Continuatio Medtaevalis (Turnhout: Brepols, 1986), 69: 8, 405-9.

Margaretae

Corpus Christianorum,

III

The

“Crisis

of Cenobitism”

Reconsidered: Benedictine Monasticism in the Years 1050-1150 Well

into the twelfth century and beyond, most medieval Christians instinctively identified some form of the contemplative life, usually Benedictine

monasticism, as the highest “order” in Christian society and the exemplar 1 toward which all should strive. It is altogether appropriate then that within the broad compass of medieval studies few areas have attracted such concentrated attention since the Second World War as the religious revival of the 2 twelfth century. This movement, hardly mentioned two generations ago in Charles Homer Haskins’s “renaissance,” looms so large today that its preachers and reformers threaten at times to overshadow Haskins’s poets, translators, lawyers, and scholars. Such a notable shift in emphasis could hardly have taken place without a distinct rearrangement of the historiographical terrain. To create a separate space worthy of monastic thought and culture, Jean Leclercq argued vigorously for a “monastic theology” that rivaled “scholasticism” in creativity and beauty. And to provide a setting adequate to so many contemporary reformers, several scholars argued for a 1 Yves Congar, “Les laïcs et l’ecclésiologie des ‘ordines’ chez les théologiens des XIe et XIIe siècles,” in I laid nella ‘Sodetas Christiana' dei secoli XI e XII, Miscellanea del Centro di studi medioevali 5 (Milan, 1968), pp. 83—117, and “Modèle monastique et modèle sacerdotal en Occident de Grégoire VII (1073—85) à Innocent III (1198),” in Mélanges E.-R, Labande: Etudes de civilisation médiévale (IXe—XIIe siècles) (Poitiers, 1975), pp. 153—60. 2 For conceptual and bibliographical orientation, see Giles Constable, “Renewal and Reform in Religious Life: Concepts and Realities,” in Robert Benson and Giles Constable, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), pp. 37—67; and idem, “The Study of Monastic History Today,” in Vaclav Mudroch and G. S. Couse, eds., Essays on the Reconstruction of Medieval History (Montreal, 1974), pp. 21—51, esp. pp. 36—40. Two of the most influential scholars have undoubtedly been Jean Leclercq, especially his Love of Learning and the Desire for God, 2nd paperback ed. (New York, 1974) [a bibliography of his work to 1972 in Bernard of Clairvaux: Studies Presented to Dom Jean Leclercq (Washington, D.C., 1973), pp. 215—64]; and MarieDominique Chenu, La théologie au douzème siècle (Paris, 1957), partially translated by Lester K. Little and Jerome Taylor as Nature, Man, and Society in the Twelfth Century (Chicago, 1968). The French originals both appeared in 1957, as did, coincidentally, the first volume in the new critical edition of Sancti Bernardi Opera omnia, ed. Jean Leclercq, C. H. Talbot, and Henri Rochais (Rome, 1957). Many other influential historians of the postwar generation, such as Richard W. Southern

in

Cinzio Violante in Italy, and Herbert Grundmann in Germany, also worked intensively in this area. A good and attractive introduction now in Christopher N. L. Brooke, The Monastic World, 1000—1300 (London, 1974), and C. H. Lawrence, Medieval Monastidsm: Forms of

England,

Religious Life

in Western

Europe

in the Middle

Ages (London, 1984).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418597-3

The “Crisis

of Cenobitism”

“crisis” in traditional Benedictine monasticism. The “crisis of cenobitism” during the years between 1050 and 1150 has elicited several influential essays and a separate entry in Giles Constable’s bibliography of medieval monasticism.3

earned

This essay will examine critically the evidence for such a “crisis” and propose another approach toward understanding Benedictine monasticism in the

early

twelfth century.

The notion of crisis rests upon of Benedictine dominance

an

important

observation. After

generations

groups suddenly appeared everywhere after claim to Christian perfection. Contemporaries were new

the year 1050, each laying plainly startled. How was this to be

4

must have gone wrong with Benedictine monasticism. Guibert of Nogent, himself a Black Monk, set the scene for his depiction of this religious renewal (ca. 1115)

explained? Something

deeply

as thinned in numbers, lax in observance, by describing many older houses 5 and rich in material goods. According to Orderic Vitalis, also a Black Monk,

Robert of Molesme (a founding father of the Cistercians) complained that hardly a monastery could be found which still held strictly to the norm of

Benedict’s Rule. 6 And Bernard of Clairvaux, the Benedictines for their tortured

wines, stylish

clothing,

and

lavishly

a

master of

biting

satire,

pil oried

of food, aromatic No one surpassed Bernard

preparation

built churches.

7

in rhetorical power or subsequent influence, but several others drew up their own lists of charges and many others freely insulted their Benedictine brethren.

8

At

mid-century

Nicholas of Clairvaux

captured

the

spirit

of these

3

Giles Constable, Medieval Monasticism: A Select Bibliography (Toronto, 1976), p. 41, with six items numbered 222-27. 4 An Augustinian adversary of Rupert of Deutz likened this new diversity to a waxing and waning of the moon and to the four beasts [ successive orders] in the dream interpreted by Daniel (PL 170:535—36). About 1150 Anselm of Havelberg drew on apocalyptic imagery to =

interpret religious diversity: Dialogus 1, ed. Gaston Salet, Sources chrétiennes 118 (Paris, 1966). La Chartreuse: San Bernardo e la diversità Cîteaux general Giles Constable, “Cluny delle forme di vita religiosa nel XII secolo,” in Studi su S. Bernardo di Chiaravalle, Bibliotheca Cisterciensis 6 (Rome, 1975), pp. 93-114. Guibert, De vita sua 1.8, ed. Edmonde-René Labande (Paris, 1981), p. 50. Guibert had a notion of “decline” (“decedente inter habenas iniquitatum seculo, sanctae conversationis refrixit caritas”) as following upon a previous “golden age” and preceding renewal. 6 The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis 8, ed. Marjorie Chibnall, 4 (Oxford, 1973), pp. 312 ff. For interpretation, see Chibnall, The World of Orderic Vitalis (Oxford, 1984), pp. 58-85, esp. pp. See in

—

—

5

82-83.

7Bernardi Apologia 12.16-30, ed. Leclercq and Rochais, Opera omnia, 3:91—92, 95-107. For background, see Adriaan Rredero, “Cluny et Cîteaux au Xllème siècle: Les origines de la controverse," Studi medievali 12 (1970). 135—75; and idem, “Guillaume de Saint-Thierry au carrefour des courants monastiques de son temps,” Guillaume de Saint-Thierry: Actes du colloque internationale (Saint-Thierry, 1979), pp. 279-97. 8 On these polemical treatises, see André Wilmart, “Une riposte de l’ancien monachisme au manifeste de saint Bernard,” Revue bénédictine 46 (1934), 309—44; Jean Leclercq, “Nouvelle réponse de 1’ancien monachisme aux critiques des cisterciens,” Revue bénédictine 67 (1957), 77-93; Giovanni Lunardi, L’ideale monastico nelle polemiche del secolo XII sulla vita religiosa (Noci, 1970), pp. 18—49; Caroline Walker Bynum, Docere verbo et exemplo: An Aspect of Twelfth-Century Spirituality,

The “Crisis

religious

new out

in

a

of Cenobitism"

striking image: they represented,

he claimed,

a

of the Old Testament shadow of the Cluniacs into the revealed

the Cistercians.

9

transition

purity

of

twentieth-century scholars accepted the view of monastic history implicit here, thereby endowing the reformers’ critique with epoch-making importance. In 1928 Dom Germain Morin edited two brief works by a hermit named Raynaldus, who charged that monastic houses (coenobia) in his day (probably 1090/1110) had become social institutions preoccupied with legal and economic affairs, with the maintenance of particular offices and customs, and quite simply with the “good life,” rendering them entirely unfit to nurture the spiritual life. Morin saw that Raynaldus’s critique sprang mainly from Several

his enthusiasm for the eremitical life, but he conceded the existence of certain “abuses” and “signs of decadence” producing a “brief period of crisis” in

early-twelfth-century Charles Dereine, the

monasticism. two

Twenty years later, Jean Leclercq and

postwar scholars

probably

most

responsible

for

of monks and canons, launched the term “crisis of cenobitism” upon its present course. Leclercq first identified such a “crisis” in the life of Abbot John of Fécamp (d. 1078). His writings, newly

breathing

new

life into the

10

study

a monk caught in the simplicity administering a ducal abbey while yearning still for the 11 and spiritual intensity he had known as a young hermit in Italy. Leclercq commented simply that eleventh-century monastic houses had failed apparently to meet all spiritual needs, and eremitical vocations consequently were 12 on the increase. Two years later, Dereine explored the case of Odo of Tournai (d. 1113) and from it inferred, for the first time, a generalized crisis. Monks had become too wealthy and clerical; reform consequently required a 13

uncovered and edited, disclosed the frustrations of

difficulties of

radical break,

Dominique

a

Six years later, in 1954, Marieinfluential essay on the “evangelical

return to the Desert Fathers.

Chenu

published

a

highly

Harvard

Theological Studies 31 (Missoula, 1979), pp. 119-79; and John Van Engen, Rupert of (Berkeley, 1983), pp. 307—33. 9 “Uno denique consensu reliquimus omnia, et de Veteri Testamento et umbra Cluniacensium ad Cisterciensium evolavimus puritatem.” Nicholas of Clairvaux, Epistola 8, PL 196:1603. 10 Germain Morin, “Rainaud l’ermite et Ives de Chartres: Un épisode de la crise du cénobitisme

Deutz

XI—Xlle siècie,” Revue bénédictine 40 (1928), 99—115, here p. 112. “Pudet me ac piget publicis conventibus repraesentari, urbem ingredi, potentes alloqui, feminas intueri, verbosae multitudini interesse et talia multa pati qualia mundus agit. Libera animam servi tui ab his iurgiis et contentionibus, ab his causarum tumultibus et multiplici adventantium au

11

.

.

.

strepitu, ab hoc multo saeculo quod patior in monasterio, inter hanc frequentiam fratrum, ubi cotidie in multis offendo, et da mihi illud solitudinis secretum et spiritale oportunae ad te vacationis otium. ." Lamentation, ed. Jean Leclercq and J. P. Bonnes, Un maître de la vie .

spirituelle au XIe siècie: Jean 12 13

de Fécamp (Paris, 1946), p. 195. Ibid ., pp. 13-29. Charles Dereine, “Odon de Tournai et la crise du cénobitisme

âge latin 4 (1948), 137—54.

The essential

source

au Xle siècie,” Revue du moyen is Herman’s Liber de restauratione monasterii sancti

Martini Tornacensis of 1146, MGH SS 14:274—317.

revival” of the twelfth century, which he located among the new religious in the new cities and contrasted with the old-fashioned Benedictines of the 14 feudal countryside. In 1958 Leclercq took up the argument again in what is still the best general essay on the subject. Now he, too, argued for a general crisis during the years 1050—1150 and pointed to religious poverty, or rather “material prosperity,” 15 Two years later, Norman Cantor published a as the chief underlying issue. still more sweeping interpretation. The “crisis of western monasticism,” in his view, sprang from the Benedictines’ loss of leadership during the Gregorian Reform, which in turn provoked searching questions about their raison d’etre 16 In 1972, one chapter of Bede Lackner’s and their privileges and wealth. dissertation, The Eleventh-Century Background of Cîteaux, offered a thoughtful summary of the sources and problems. Without discounting issues arising from social circumstances, he saw “the crux of the problem [as] the formula to satisfy generous souls insufficiency of the Benedictine and Cluniac 17 already on the lookout for new solutions.” In sum, this crisis18now seemed an accepted fact, even if its details remained to be worked out. It is this assumed “reality” that requires a second look, for neither the word nor the concept of “crisis” appears as such in any contemporary source. Its present usage seems to have three intertwined roots. First, it may simply serve 14 “Moines, clercs, laïcs au carrefour de la vie évangelique” and “Le réveil Evangelique” in Chenu (n. 2 above), pp. 225—73; the first essay appeared originally in Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 69 (1954), 59—89. While Chenu’s attempt to place these developments in a social setting was most commendable, it was also very schematic, to the point of becoming misleading, and has been

invoked far too often and too uncritically. Reading carefully the texts which first provoked the term “crisis of cenobitism” should have given pause. Monks buried in the countryside were not what troubled

“Quid

Raynaldus: “Nosti quia evangelicis apostolicisque sanctionibus obedire necessarium est; hoc autem aut vix aut numquam in coenobiis urbe vel oppido constitutis fieri potest.” dicemus de his qui in urbibus commorantes saepius audiunt ab ipso dormitorio ipsas

mulierum cantilenas et earum strepitus et choreas, et inquirunt principum et vulgi rumores, et aliquando vident et locuntur cum mulieribus, et habitant inter fumantes coquinas?” Morin (n. 10 above), pp. 103, 109. Compare n. 11 above. Lester K. Little, Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy (Ithaca, 1981), drew upon and qualified Chenu’s schema. 15 Jean Leclercq, “La crise du monachisme aux Xle et Xlle siècles,” Bulletino dell'Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo 70 (1958), 19—41. 16 Norman F. Cantor, “The Crisis of Western Monasticism, 1050—1130,” American Historical Review 66 (I960), 47—67. There is a critique of one aspect of this view in Denis Bethell, “English Black Monks and Episcopal Elections in the 1120’s,” English Historical Review 84 (1969), 673-98. 17

Bede Lackner, The Eleventh-Century Background of Cîteaux, Cistercian Studies 8 (Washington, D.C., 1972), pp. 92—112, here p. 92, which in fact paraphrases Leclercq (n. 15 above), p. 21. 18 Thus, recently, in Glauco M. Cantarella, “Pietro il venerabile, Cluny, i monasteri cluniacensi dell'Italia settentrionale: Un altro aspetto della crisi del monachesimo nel XII secolo?” in Cluny in Lombardia, Italia Benedettina 1 (Cesena, 1979), 1:383—427, esp. pp. 384, 420—23. See also David Knowles, “Cistercians and Cluniacs: The Controversy between St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable," in his Historian and Character (Cambridge, Eng., 1963), pp. 50—75 (an essay which goes back in its essentials to the 1930s and was first delivered in 1955); and the sketchier but also more views of Philibert Schmitz, “Le monachisme bénédictin au XIIe siècle,” in San Bernardo:

positive

Publicazione commemorativa nell'VIII centenario della

sua

morte

(Milan, 1954), pp.

1—13.

as a

generic

for the entire movement of renewal, with the phrase “crisis emphasizing specifically the strong eremitical impulse found

term

of cenobitism”

early Cistercians and canons regular as well as the Carthusians and Vallumbrosans. Such usage is primarily a matter of convention and hardly objectionable insofar as it carries no unwarranted connotations about the state of contemporary cenobite houses. Several historians, it should be noted, have distinguished between an enthusiasm for new forms of religious life, so evident in the years 1050—1150, and the state of those houses the new religious 19 chose to leave. Second, and most commonly, the idea of “crisis” is rooted in a literal reading of the Benedictines’ critics. Two observations are in order here. First,

among

attacks

on

the Benedictines

prominence

were

not

in the historical literature

as their present quite so numerous 20 This is not to minimize might suggest.

their impact, for the Benedictines were indeed jolted by the unprecedented railing at their way of life and deeply dismayed at one source

the

consequent

orders and “stricter” houses. But they represent among many. Second, and more importantly, these treatises

loss of monks to

only

harsh and

newer

cannot be read without

considering their original purposes and setting. They anything but objective accounts of Benedictine monasticism, in that they sought to justify the new monks’ break with traditional monasticism and to recruit others for their houses. Their very stridency betrays the uncomfortable position in which the authors found themselves. We forget: when Bernard thundered away in 1120 and again in 1125 he was still a little-known radical attached to a struggling religious experiment who mounted the nerve to let fly at the most powerful and respected religious establishment of his day. Even he could hardly have dreamed that one day historians would read this

were

entire situation backward, through his eyes. The notion of “crisis,” finally, also has some

orders

history. Religious by growth, flowering,

marked

are

and

applications peculiar to monastic as having a life cycle

often conceived

decay,

or, in other terms, charismatic

21 Whatever institutionalization, and decadent stagnation. truth there may be in this observation and most historians would concede

founding,

mature

—

19

Thus, explicitly, David Knowles, Christian Monasticism (New York, 1968), pp. 62 ff.; and implicitly Brooke (n. 2 above), p. 125, and by placing his chapter on “cloister and world” after that on “hermits.” Of recent dictionary articles, the term and concept of “crisis” is notably avoided by Bennett D. Hill, “Benedictines,” in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 2 (New York, 1983), pp. 171—76; Josef Semmler, “Benediktiner,” in the Lexikon des Mittelalters, 1 (Munich, 1977—80), pp. 1884—87; Karl Suso Frank, “Benediktiner,” in the Theologische Realenzyklopädie, 5 (Berlin, 1979), pp. 549—60; and Giorgio Picasso, “Benedettini,” in the Dizionario degli istituzioni di perfezione, 1 (Rome, 1974), pp. 1290—1306; but not by Raoul Manselli in the Lexikon des Mittelalters, 1:1876. 20 Ursmer Berltère, “Les origines de Cîteaux et l’ordre bénédictin au XIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 1 (1900), 448—71, and 2 (1901), 253-90, already identified most of the texts and issues; compare Wilmart and Leclercq (n. 8 above), Lackner (n. 17 above), and Kassius Hallinger, “Die Anfänge von Cîteaux,” in Aus Kirche und Reich: Festschrift für Friedrich Kempf (Sigmaringen, 1983), pp. 225-36. 21 Raymond Hostie, Vie

et mart

des ordres

religieux (Paris, 1972).

some commonsense

these

applicability

of it to

religious

orders

as

to other collective

recent histories of medieval monasticism have often set enterprises in cycles chronological and even causal series. Thus Cluny and Gorze

human

—

made to follow upon Carolingian decline, Citeaux and the canons regular upon Cluniac decadence, the Franciscans and Dominicans upon Cistercian corruption. In this form the pattern can actually distort what it is supposed to are

explain; of

decay

it encourages historians to uncover and highlight every in “established" orders, often out of all real proportion,

possible sign

“explanationa" 22 coming of the new, while it oversimplifies or simply begs all the truly interesting and difficult questions about renewal, reducing each instance broadly to another “reaction” against “decadence." It can also generate serious chronological distortions. Thus Cluny may appear at the end of one chapter in the vanguard of reform overcoming Carolingian decadence, dismissed at the opening of the next, on the Cistercians, as quite only to be 23 moribund. A new vision of religious perfection need not require the decadence as an

for the

of another; two or more may well flourish in the same era. A term without firm support in the sources and liable to so many misconceptions is probably best avoided altogether. But what terms should be used? What

was

happening

renewal? And what

religious

among the Benedictines in the midst of this it about Benedictinism that

was

to define themselves over

against

brought

religious

so

many new the received tradition? This essay

will attempt to answer, or at least make some initial observations about, those questions but always from the viewpoint of the Black Monks. It should not —

be misconstrued

monks, which is old. But first

a

as some a

alternative

different

rough

subject,

explanation

nor

for the

for that matter

coming of the new apology for the

as an

definition of the “Benedictines.”

Until 1215, when all Benedictines were ordered to organize congregations similar to those of the Cistercians, every monastic house was in principle independent. But already in the late twelfth century, and more or less consistently

down such

as

to the

present

day,

observers classified

Benedictines” all those not sprung from 24 the Cistercians (the “White Monks”). To

as

“Black Monks”

one

of the

newer

or

“traditional

groups

generalize about all these into this potential anarchy

houses may seem little short of foolhardy, but scholars have brought some semblance of order. A coherent Benedictine tradition

22

began

to take

shape only

in the ninth century, for the Rule

of St.

example among many: Josef Semmler, “Karl der Grosse und das fränkische Mönchtum,” in Wolfgang Braunfels, ed., Karl der Grosse: Lebenswerk und Nachleben, 2 (Düsseldorf, 1965), pp. 255—89, asserted that monastic reform in the Garolingian era was preceded One characteristic

by “viele Krisenerscheinungen” (p. 287). 23Thus, to varying degrees, Ursmer Berlière, L’ordre monastique des origines au XIIe siècle (Maredsous, 1921), in the transition from chapters 4/5 to 6; and Marcel Pacaut, Les ordres monastique et religieux au moyen âge (Paris, 1970), in the transition from chapters 5/6 to 7/8. 24 Jacques Dubois, “Les ordres monastiques au XIIIe siècle en France d’après les sermons d’Humbert de Romans, maître général des Frères Precheurs (†1277),” Sacris erudiri 26 (1983), 187-220, esp. pp. 190-96; and idem, “Les ordres religieux au XIIe siècle selon la curie romaine,” Revue bénédictine 78 (1968), 283—309.

Benedict first

Carolingian Aniane

emerged as the norm for Western monasticism in the wake of the chiefly as a result of the personal efforts of Benedict of

reform,

(d. 821)

and the

imperial legislation

of 816/17. Yet the Rule

provided

only basic constitutional structures; efforts to establish a uniform observance 25 as well, a single But in diverse reform way of living out the Rule, failed.

early tenth and early eleventh centuries, certain worked out observances Cluny was the most famous with links to the that bound (often many Carolingian) together larger networks of houses. A relatively small number of these set the tone for Benedictine 26 history into the late eleventh century. It is this tradition, rooted in the era and decisively about 1050, that must be followed Carolingian shaped by movements

houses

—

between the

of which

—

into the years 1050—1150. One final qualifier. Despite these

regional and transregional networks Benedictine overwhelmingly a local affair. Discipline and entirely upon the quality of an abbot, the over-

monasticism remained

well-being depended sight of a bishop, or

almost the

protection of a lord. Such considerable autonomy, combined with the difficulties of maintaining stability anywhere in this era, rendered Benedictine houses extraordinarily vulnerable. The sources recount numerous instances where failing discipline sank well below Guibert’s

self-indulgence (n. 5 above). But the issue perspective, to determine when such ruinations multiplied into an irreversible trend, as the “crisis” interpretation suggests it did during the years 1050—1150, or when these represented isolated cases that awaited the next reforming abbot, bishop, or lord. All generalizations offered in this essay, in other words, must be tested against, and might well be qualified by, regional sources. Yet the attempt seems worth making. Historians are in any case already generalizing about the state of Benedictine monasticism, and the time has come to see whether the Benedictines so highly

spiritual

indifference and material

for historians is

one

of scale and

praised in 1000 had fallen so far by 1100. This essay has two parts. Part 1 will review the state of Benedictine monasticism as revealed by four external indicators; here the evidence comes mostly from

published

studies. Part 2 sets these results in

perspective by examining comes mostly from the

the Benedictines’ internal outlook; here the evidence sources.

1. Benedictine Vitality: Four External Indicators Benedictines played a crucial role in rebuilding Europe during the years between 900 and 1050, and the evidence reveals no decrease in their momentum over the next century. In four crucial areas recruitment, revenue, —

25

Best orientation in Josef Semmier and Heinrich Bacht, “Benedikt von Aniane,” in Lexikon des Una regula, una consuetudo,” in Walter Mittelalters, 1:1864—67, and Semmier, “Benedictus II Lourdaux and D. Verhelst, eds., Benedictine Culture (Louvain, 1983), pp. 1—49 {both with further literature). The crucial texts edited by Semmier in Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum, 1 (Siegburg, —

1963). 26

Essential is Kassius

together

Hallinger,

with the survey articles in

Gorze—Kluny, n.

19 above.

Analecta Anselmiana 22—25 (Rome,

1950),

quality

of

personnel,

and

leadership

in the church

rather that Benedictine houses held their

during the

During so

—

own or even

the evidence indicates increased in prosperity

years 1050—1150.

the century in which Cistercians,

canons

regular,

Carthusians, and

many others came to the fore, Benedictines suffered no decline in numbers. In England, the number of Black Monks more than tripled following the

reaching its all-time peak during

the

reign of Henry I (1100—1135). implant, and referred to it 27 as “in a sense a ‘lag’ from the past.” But during the next forty years (1136-76), which presumably offer a sounder basis for English comparison, new Benedictine houses were founded even during the first flurry of Cistercian growth, though the number of White Monk houses initially expanded at 28 nearly four times the rate of the Black (58/15). In numbers of monks, too, Black estimates are Monk totals continued to increase though only possible, conquest,

Dom David Knowles ascribed this to the Norman

until the very end of the century. 29 If there was a “crisis” in recruitment for and that almost certainly is not the right word it English Benedictines —

—

began early thirteenth century (ca. 1180-1215). New foundations came virtually to a halt, numbers began to slip, and a certain institutional mediocrity set in, whereby, in Knowles’s inimitable language, “everything 30 tended, in the long run, to strike an average.” No such systematic survey exists for the Continent. But the remarkable body of evidence gathered more than fifty years ago by Ursmer Berlière is of 31 and a close reading yields the same result. The twelfth some assistance, century saw, if anything, an increase in Benedictine vocations: Saint-Jacques in Liège had at least 23 monks in 1107 and 25 in 1256; Saint-Bertin at Saintmer had dropped to 8 as a result of plague in 1030, but rose to 120 under Abbot Lambert (1095—1123, the years of the supposed “crisis”) and held steadily around 50 after 1250; Nonantola in Italy indicated 20 in 1123, 34 in 32 1194, and 14 in 1265. Recent studies of individual houses reveal much the same pattern. Cluny grew from around 100 monks at the death of Odilo rather in the

(1049),

this

already

300 at the death of

a significant increase over the past fifty years, to a claimed Hugh (1109) and a claimed 300—400 at the death of Peter

27

David Knowles, The Monastic Order in England, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, Eng., 1950), pp. 126—27, 172-76, 189-90 (the quotation), 713—14; and David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religions Houses: England and Wales, 2nd ed. (London, 1971), pp. 488—89. 28 Knowles (n. 27 above), p. 711, with data in appendix 13; Knowles and Hadcock (n. 27 above), pp. 18-21, 28-30, 52-103, 488-89. 29 Knowles and Hadcock (n. 27 above), pp. 488—89, estimate that decline set in just before 1216. 30

Knowles (n. 27 above), p. 299 and all of ch. 17. Ursmer Berlière, “Le nombre des moines dans les anciens monastères,” Revue bénédictine 41 (1929), 231—61, and 42 (1930), 19—42; see also Jacques Dubois, “Du nombre des moines dans les monastères,” Lettre de Ligugé 134 (1969), 24—36, reprinted in his Histoire monastique en France au XIIe siècle (London, 1982). 31

32

Berlière (n.

31

above),

pp. 231, 237, 241, 250, 31.

(1156), only

attained its

highest

Siegburg, founded near though its statistics do not reach into the Angers had, rather typically, “15 in 977, 57 1082.”

33

La Trinité at Vendôme likewise numbers (about 100) in the early twelfth century. 34 35 Cologne in 1075, grew to 120 monks by 1120. And,

to settle after 1250 at about 250.

twelfth century, Saint-Aubin at in 1038, 78 in 1060, and 105 in

36

With all due allowance for the

of medieval numbers and the

unreliability

vagaries of local circumstance, the same pattern emerges time and again: the Benedictines held steadily or grew appreciably in new foundations and total numbers

throughout the period of supposed crisis (1050—1150). This was not contemporaries. Rupert of Deutz, writing in the mid-1120s, noted that the harvest was plentiful, though trusted workers (reliable prelates) were still 37 few. The context here is demographic expansion and religious enthusiasm, from which the Benedictines benefited too perhaps even first of all, since they were the recognized “apostolic order.” However that may be, the twelfth century, especially its first half, marked the high point of Benedictine expansion. lost

on

—

38

Crisis, however, could come in other forms, as a serious decline in revenue personnel. Benedictine houses were extremely expensive to build and maintain, and some historians have perceived signs of financial strain in the early twelfth century. From an entirely different perspective Georges Duby if not in

for an “economic crisis” at Cluny, originating in a neglect of revenue produced by the domain (especially during the years 1080-1125) and a consequent shortfall in liquid wealth. Peter the Venerable (1122—56) subsequently attempted to assess and increase the domain’s yield (thus generating something akin to a “budget”) and also to curtail expenses, but he was forced finally to obtain substantial loans, especially from Henry of Blois, bishop of Winchester 39 and brother to the English king Stephen. Duby and J. Ambrose Raftis

argued

33 34

35 36 37

Noreen Hunt, Cluny under St. Penelope D. Johnson, Prayer,

Hugh, 1049—1109 (Notre Dame, 1968), pp. 82-85. Patronage, and Power: The Abbey of la Trinité, Vendôme, 1032—1187

(New York, 1981), p. 43. Josef Semmler, Die Klosterreform

von

Siegburg (Bonn, 1959).

Dubois (n. 31 above), p. 30. “Hoc usque hodie gemit omnis

xenodochiis sub

sacra

paterfamilias domini messis professione degentium. Rupert of Deutz, .

..

..

multi coetus in coenobiis sive De

gloria et

honore Filii hominis

8, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaevalis 29:239. 38 Hill (n. 19 above): “About 1070—1130, when Benedictine expansion reached its peak ...” (p. 173). “Down to roughly the mid twelfth century, expansion continued with new foundations on a strong note of recruitment (p. 174). So, earlier, Knowles (n. 18 above), p. 54, from a more .

.

critical

perspective: “reception into the monastic family at Cluny and elsewhere of vast numbers of new recruits without adequate probation or training. .” 39 Georges Duby, “Économic domaniale et économic monétaire: Le budget de l’abbaye de Cluny entre 1080 et 1155,” Annales 7 (1952), 155—71. Compare Nicolas Huyghebaert, “Une crise à Cluny en 1157: L’élection de Robert le Gros, successeur de Pierre le Vénérable,” Revue bénédictine 93 (1983), 337-53, and Giles Constable, “The Abbots and Anti-Abbot of Cluny during the Papal Schism of 1159,” Revue bénédictine 94 (1984), 370-400. .

.

emphasized as well the “consumption-oriented” character of moorganization. Designed essentially to provide for the monks’ basic needs their shelter, victuals, and vestments it made little provision for generating creative new sources of revenue, leaving houses necessarily in 40 trouble any time consumption outran agricultural production. By the early thirteenth century at least, nearly all historians agree, stagnating incomes forced Benedictines to begin reducing the size of their houses and to battle in 41

both have

nastic economic —

—

court over every

In the revenue

early

piece

of land to which

held claim.

they

twelfth century Black Monks

religious

to so many new

feared

surely

a

loss of

gifts

and

foundations. Monastic houses drew their

first of all from land, and truly sizable gifts from kings and princes had probably peaked already in the early eleventh century. But gifts continued revenue

in, and available studies suggest that Benedictine abbeys were general prosperous. At Cluny, at Monte Cassino, at the abbeys of Saint-Remi, Saint-Thierry, and Saint-Nicaise in the diocese of Reims, at St. Pantaleon in Cologne, at Saint-Amand, at Saint-Jacques in Liege, at the imperial abbey of Werden on the Ruhr, and in the Latin monasteries of Sicily to name only a representative few landed possessions (the domain or “temporal") to come

in

never so

—

—

reached their greatest extent in the mid-twelfth century.

42

More

recently,

40

J. Ambrose Raftis, “Western Monasticism and Economic Organization,” Comparative Studies Society and History 3 (1961), 452—69, esp. pp. 463 ff.; Georges Duby, “Le monachisme et l’économie rurale,” in Il monachesimo e la riforma ecclesiastica (1049-1122) (Milan, 1971), pp. 336-49. in

41

example, in 1197 at Saint-Laurent in Liège the abbot decreed: “Cum variis et multiplicibus quotidie censum ecclesiarum decrescere, substantias attenuari videamus pro varietate temporis et rerum confusione, ex praesentibus futura metientes, ruinae domus nostrae volentes praecavere, attendentes in ea numerum personarum adeo excrevisse [still in the 1190s!] quod omnes prae nimia multitudine penuariam sustinere cogeremur et res praebendae sustentamini nostro minime sufficeret necessitate astricti ordinavimus quod quam cito numerus praebendarum nostrarum, qui nimis erat ampliatus, per decessum virorum ad quadraginta fuerat redactus, quadragenarium nullatenus amplius excedet. E. Martène and U. Durand, eds., Veterum scriptorum amplissima collectio, 4 (Paris, 1729), pp. 1179—80. Thus, too, Knowles (n. 27 above) and Hill (n. 19 above), but compare Dubois, “Ordres monastiques” (n. 24 above), p. 193: “Au XIIIe siècle les abbayes de moines noirs sont nombreuses et puissantes. .” 42 Hunt (n. 33 above), pp. 67—82, esp. p. 69; Guy de Valous, Le temporel et la situation financière des établissements de l'ordre de Cluny du XIIe au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1935), pp. 5—18, 153 ff.; H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Age of Abbot Desiderius (Oxford, 1983), pp. 2-19; Françoise Poirier-Coutansais, Les abbayes bénédictines du diocèse de Reims, Gallia Monastica 1 (Paris, 1974), pp. 29, 152, 225; H. J. Kracht, Geschichte der Benediktinerabtei St. Pantaleon in Köln, 962—1250 (Siegburg, 1975), pp. 122—26, 192—98; Henri Platelle, Le temporel de l’abbaye de Saint-Amand des origines à 1340 (Paris, 1962), pp. 185-214, esp. pp. 212—14; Jacques Stiennon, Etude sur le chartrier et le domaine de l’abbaye de Saint-Jacques de Liège (1015—1209), Bibliothèque de la Faculté de philosophic et lettres de l’Université de Liège 124 (Paris, 1951), pp. 364 ff.; Wilhelm Stuwer, Die Reichsabtei Werden a.d. Ruhr, Germania sacra, Neue Folge 21 (Berlin, 1981), pp. 90 ff., 242—45; Lynn White, jr., Latin Monasticism in Norman Sicily (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), passim. In general, Brooke (n. 2 above), p. in this era, as does 95, refers to the “flow of offerings and enormous richness of the result Johnson (n. 34 above), pp. 69 ff. For

causis

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

Duby pointed in the

toward monastic houses

early

twelfth century.

The domain may in but it was not the only the

some

the

exemplars

instances have been

source

of

revenue.

of

agricultural

producing

lordship

less real income,

From the ninth century and especially “restoring” churches and tithes to

lords began patrimony, mostly by presenting

early eleventh, lay

ecclesiastical

as

43

them to monastic houses. The

reform of the church lent this movement considerable

impetus, continuing

it

well into the twelfth century. What therefore originated as a pious act on the 44 part of lay lords became a windfall for Benedictine monks. Secular clerics and

canons

revenue

monks

—

regular angrily protested it

was

this monastic drain

on

ecclesiastical

in fact contrary to early medieval canon law with notable help from a set of forgeries which

prevailed, Europe just

45

—

but the

spread

all

and from their brother monk, in the years 1050-1150 46 the lawyer Gratian. Though such “spiritual” incomes are not statistically measurable, they seem to have increased appreciably until the end of the across

twelfth century. Benedictine houses also had

point

in need of further

course

to take

an

study.

ancient association with fairs and markets, a growth accelerated in the

When economic

of the eleventh century, this association put abbeys in advantage of it, with new or revitalized fairs (as at

Saint-Denis)

prime position Compiègne and a

rights in countless localities across Christendom.47 of society” should also take a prominent role in

and with market

That the “first order

43

Georges Duby, Guerriers etpaysans, VIIe—XIIe siècle: Premier essor de l'économie européenne (Paris, 1973), pp. 240-46. 44 Basic orientation on this complicated issue: Guillaume Mollat, “La restitution des églises privées au patrimoine ecclésiastique en France du IXe au XIe siècle,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 4th ser. 27 (1949), 399—423; Giles Constable, “Monastic Possession of Churches and ‘Spiritualia’ in the Age of Reform,” in Il monachesimo (n. 40 above), pp. 304—31, with the subsequent discussion, pp. 332—35; Constable (n. 46 below), pp. 57-82; Bernard Chevalier, “Les restitutions d’églises dans le diocese de Tours du Xe au XIIe siècle,” in Mélanges (n. 1 above), pp. 129—43; and Brian R. Kemp, “Monastic Possession of Parish Churches in England in the Twelfth Century,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 31 (1980), 133—60. 45 See Giles Constable, “The Treatise ‘Hortatur nos’ and Accompanying Canonical Texts on the Performance of Pastoral Work by Monks,” in Speculum historiale: Festschrift Johannes Spörl (Munich, 1966), pp. 567—77. Martin Brett of Cambridge reported to me privately that he has uncovered more than seventy-five copies of these pseudo-pontifical privileges; such a number may suggest increased defensiveness on the monks’ part but also the importance of church revenues. 46

Giles Constable, Monastic Tithes from Their Origins to the Twelfth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), pp. 165—85. John T. Noonan, Jr., “Gratian Slept Here: The Changing Identity of the Father of the Systematic Study of Canon Law,” Traditio 35 (1979), 145-72, has justifiably questioned how much is really known about Gratian, but the evidence points clearly to the fact that he was a monk, though probably not a Vallumbrosan. 47 General orientation in Anne Lombard-Jourdain, “Fairs,” in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 4 (New York, 1984), pp. 582—90. See also Philibert Schmitz, Histoire de l'ordre de Saint Benôit, 7 vols. (Maredsous, 1948—56), 2:26—34, and Robert Fossier, Enfance de l'Europe (Paris, 1982), pp. 757—67, with further bibliography in Constable (n. 3 above), pp. 111-12.

the

incongruous in the year 1100. reaped from fairs and markets, but such revenues must be placed alongside those from the domain and the church to arrive at a total picture of Benedictine prosperity in the new

monetary economy

Virtually

early

no

sources

exist to

hardly

seemed

measure

the incomes

twelfth century.

One of the most

important signs of continuing Benedictine prosperity, precisely the one religious reformers found most objectionable: namely, the outpouring of wealth into vessels, vestments, and buildings. Economic crisis and artistic achievement are not necessarily incompatible, but medieval historians have spoken all too easily of both “monastic crisis” and “monastic achievement” during the twelfth century, 48 without acknowledging the potential contradiction. Benedictine contributions to architecture, wall painting, and the minor arts expanded from the period always considered “Benedictine” (900-1050) into the next century (1050-1150) and slightly beyond, without any perceivable break. In the quite literal rebuilding of however,

was

Europe, they put up the greatest churches in Christendom, Monte Cassino (1070s), Cluny III (1088—1130), Vezelay, and many other “internationally known” structures, as well as scores of lesser abbeys still counted as important 49 local monuments. No doubt many of these buildings strained monastic

budgets, but they were built nonetheless, and in the building enormously quickened the flow of wealth into the hands of artisans, craftsmen, materials suppliers, and others. Much of the finest in Romanesque art derived from Benedictine prosperity, and its most accomplished displays date roughly to the century between 1050 and 1150. As with recruitment, so with revenues: the Benedictines with and benefited from Benedictine mid-twelfth

a

generally kept pace European expansion. But what then of also began to increase, especially after the

broader

indebtedness, which century? Expenditure clearly outstripped

income

—

as,

one

might add, it seems perennially to have done in aristocratic households. But was that necessarily a sign of decadence, of failure to make the transition from

agricultural to a monetary economy, as Duby’s interpretation of Cluny implied? All the evidence, including some of abbeys becoming “moneylenders" in their own right, 50 suggests that at least until 1150 or so Benedictine abbeys were more likely in the forefront of monetary development. They were in a better position to command credit, and more of it, than most others. an

48

George Zarnecki, The Monastic Achievement (New York, 1972); much the same theme in above), ch. 7. 49 Helpful overviews in Anselme Dimier, “Trois quarts de siècle d’intense activité sur les chantiers de construction monastiques,” in Il monachesimo (n. 40 above), pp. 228-52; Wolfgang Giese, “Zu Bautätigkeit von Bischöfen und Äbten des 10. bis 12, Jahrhunderts,” Deutsches Archiv 38 (1982), 388—438; Schmitz (n. 47 above), 2:217—330; R. E. Swartwout, The Monastic Craftsman: An Inquiry into the Services of Monks to Art in Britain and in Europe North of the Alps during the Middle Ages (Cambridge, Eng., 1932). Further bibliography in Constable (n. 3 above), pp. 141—45. 50 Robert Génestal, Rôle des monastères comme établissements de crédit étudié en Normandie du XIe à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1901); Johnson (n. 34 above), p. 60; Chibnall (n. 6 above), pp. 54-56. Brooke (n. 2

quickly and enthusiastically, to meet basic produce from their own land, and undertook enormously expensive building projects on the assumption that the money could be procured, whether in gifts (as the king of Catalonia’s for Cluny), or by the sale of “rediscovered” treasures (a common motif in literature from this time), or by trade in land and commercial rights (such as fairs). In the early twelfth century theirs seemed, if anything, a progressive 51 stance. Unlike the reformers, they fearlessly entered this new world of towns, commerce, and credit and applied its proffered goods and services to the greater glory of God by acquiring ever finer churches, furnishings, and vestments. In time, even a generation or two, the demands of an inflating monetary economy exhausted the potential of their scattered and inefficient estates, putting the Cistercians with their new approach in a much better economic position. But who in 1120 or 1130 could have guessed that the Cistercians’ renunciation of this new monetary world and disciplined exploitation Consequently they began,

needs with this

new

much

too

money rather than with

of “wilderness” land would in the end prove the

more

lucrative investment?

Even if numbers and income held steadily or expanded into the mid-twelfth century, the quality of personnel, it is commonly objected, declined noticeably. In the words of Dom Knowles, “When an institute has ceased to lead the it age, inevitably ceases to attract to itself the individuals who by their vision, their ability, and their zeal are marked out to be the leaders of the age to 52 come." Bernard of Clairvaux, Bruno the Carthusian, Peter Damian, Hugh of Saint-Victor, Norbert of Xanten not one of them was a Black Monk. Yet, another list might be drawn up: Lanfranc and Anselm of Bee, Guibert of Nogent, Peter Abelard, Rupert of Deutz, Theophilus Presbyter, Suger of all were Black Monks Saint-Denis, Orderic Vitalis, William of Malmesbury active in the years 1050—1150. Rival lists of extraordinary individuals may prove relatively little, and it is almost impossible to measure the quality of ordinary recruitment at local levels. But Benedictines manifestly continued to draw a fair share of talented monks, who contributed more than their share to —

—

the “renaissance.”

53

had in Hugh (1049—1109) its most effective administrator (1122—56) its most literate intellectual. Under Desiderius of Cassino (1057—86) the mother house of the Benedictines produced

Cluny probably and in Peter Monte

51

of

Duby (n. 43 above), pp. 262 ff., and Little (n. 14 above), pp. 61—69, now suggest a similar line interpretation; compare, more critically, Knowles (n. 18 above), p. 55.

52 53

Knowles (n. 18 above), p. 55. In a later work, Knowles (n. 19

above),

pp. 59—60 commented: “The

century-and-a-half

between the accession of Odilo (994) and the death of Peter the Venerable (1156), abbots of As historians, as theologians, Ciuny, saw the height of black monk ascendancy and achievement. ...

biblical commentators and

writers of spiritual instruction they were supreme until 1100 and still notable in 1150.” Compare Brooke (n. 2 above), pp. 99—122, and Van Engen (n. 8 above), pp. 162—63, suggesting stronger continuity, if not necessarily “supremacy,” down to 1150. as

as

54

work in law, literature, and rhetoric. In theology, the work of Anselm and Lanfranc of Bee, of Abelard and Rupert, and of the unknown

important

55

author of the “first scholastic commentary on the Gospel” speaks for itself, as does in law the medieval textbook on canon law and the “first case-book of 56

English common law.” The mystical life, an area often reserved to the religious, was described in influential works by Hildegard of Bingen 57

new

and

Elizabeth of Schonau, among many others. Benedictines also wrote the first accounts of the craftsman’s art (Theophilus) and of “gothic” architecture

(Suger)

58

Abelard).

notably

as

It

less able

Thomas of

stately

well was

first autobiographies (Otloh, Guibert, Rupert, late twelfth century that Black Monks seemed acquire and hold good people. Think, for example, of

as

the

not until the to

Aquino choosing

the

fledgling

Dominicans of

Naples

over

the

Monte Cassino.

If then the Black Monks suffered

income,

or

quality prior

to

1150,

no

demonstrable decline in recruitment, their influence began to slip, that

surely

leadership in Western Christendom which had largely been theirs as the “first order” of society. While few scholars have argued this quite so globally as Cantor (n. 16 above), many presume it in their presentations of religious renewal and intellectual advance in the twelfth century. To assess Benedictine in Christendom is a vague business at best, but a few corrections

leadership

need to be introduced into the From the

early

prevailing perspective.

1130s the Cistercian Bernard of Clairvaux exercised

a

religious

and ecclesiastical influence second to none, and the regular canon Hugh of Saint-Victor a theological influence second to few. The contrast between them and

an

older

Cluny (d. 1109),

generation

of Benedictine

who mediated between

figures such as Abbot Hugh of kings and popes in the Investiture

Contest, and Lanfranc (d. 1089) and Anselm of Bee (d. 1109), who set the theological pace in the late eleventh century, seems only too obvious. A shift in leadership undeniably took place. But it occurred, at the very earliest, sometime after 1130, which is to say, nearly at the end of the supposed 59 century of crisis. Even then, Black Monks had hardly disappeared from the 54 55 56

Cowdrey (n. 42 above), pp. 19-27. Van Engen (n. 8 above), pp. 101 ff.

N. 46 above; and Eleanor Searle, ed., The Chronicle of Battle Abbey (Oxford, 1980), p. 1. Jean Leclercq, et al., The Spirituality of the Middle Ages (New York, 1968), pp. 162—86; Schmitz (n. 47 above), 2:365-93, 6:188-249. 58 Panofsky (n. 106 below), and John Van Engen, “Theophilus Presbyter and Rupert of Deutz: The Manual Arts and Benedictine Theology in the Early Twelfth Century,” Viator 11 (1980), 57

147-63. 59

This has been linked to the papal schism of 1130 and the emergence of a “new reform party.” See Stanley Chodorow, Christian Political Theory and Church Politics in the Mid-Twelfth Century (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 17 ff., and Glauco M. Cantarella, “Un problema del XII secolo: L’ecclesiologia di Pietro il Venerabile,” Studi medievali 19 (1978), 159-209, esp. pp. 159-64, for the older literature. Timothy Reuter, “Zur Anerkennung Papst Innocenz II.,” Deutsches Archiv 39 (1983), 395-416, has delivered a devastating critique of earlier arguments for a great ecclesiastical crisis or shift in 1130. Even Cantarella (p. 162), whose arguments about the “old-fashioned”

scene.

In the 1140s the chief ecclesiastical advisers to the

England,

and Germany

were

kings of France, all Black Monks (Suger of Saint-Denis, Henry of

Blois, and Wibald of Stavelot respectively), and the king of Aragon (Ramiros, 1134—37) had been taken from a Benedictine monastery. Black Monks also predominated in the momentous movement of church reform. 60 They provided nearly all the popes until 1120 and crucial centers of reform in particular dioceses (such as St. Blasien in Constance and SaintLaurent and Saint-Hubert in Liège), as well as many leading canonists and theologians. Benedictines wrote fully one-half of the contentious pamphlets produced by the reform movement and frequently served as papal legates. for tough decrees against concubinage seemed to mean suspension 61 priests in England, monks were ordered to fill their places. It was a Benedictine named Bernard who first occupied the reconquered primatial see of Toledo and worked with Abbot Hugh and Pope Gregory to repress the 62 In sum, the same pattern Mozarabic liturgy and introduce the Roman rite. here as in the other areas examined: Benedictines participated fully emerges and as a matter of course in a general flowering of religious influence. Prior to 1050 only two men with Cluniac associations (as revealed by necrologies) were 63 elevated to bishoprics, but between 1050 and 1150/60 there were dozens. in the from the 1070s to with a brief Moreover, 1161, early interruption twelfth century, Cluniac monks consistently held the cardinal-bishopric of Ostia, giving them the role of consecrating new popes and thus unofficial 64 leadership in the nascent college of cardinals. In retrospect, Black Monks were never again to exert so much influence in the church at large as in the When

many

years between 1050 and the 1130s. The same holds true, down to around 1130 world. In the past much has

Cluniacs

are quite one-sided, dates Georges Duby, Saint Bernard:

hinged

at

least, within the monastic

upon views of

Cluny.

65

In the later

the definitive emergence of the “new reform party” to 1138/43; L’art cistercien (Paris, 1976), p. 14, suggested 1134 for the

definitive emergence of the Cistercians. 60 In a large literature see esp. H. E. J. Cowdrey, The Cluniacs and the Gregorian Reform (Oxford, 1970); and idem (n. 42 above). 61 Dorothy Whitelock, Martin Brett, and Christopher Brooke, Councils and Synods (Oxford,

1982), 62

p. 683. Odilo Engels,

“Papsttum, Reconquista und spanisches Landkonzil im Hochmittelalter,” Archivum 1 (1969), 37—49, 241—87, and Lexikon des Mittelalters, 1:1989-90. pontificiae 63 Joachim Mehne, “Cluniacenserbischöfe,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 11 (1977), 241—87; so also Bethel (n. 16 above) on the election of Benedictine bishops in the 1120s in England, and Giles Constable, “Cluniac Administration and Administrators in the Twelfth Century,” in Order and Innovation in the Twelfth Century: Essays in Honor ofJoseph R. Strayer (Princeton, 1976), pp. 17—30. 64 Mehne (n. 63 above), pp. 286—87. 65 General orientation in Helmut Richter, Cluny (Darmstadt, 1975), pp. vii—xi, 401-14; Hunt (n. 33 above), pp. 124—85; Piero Zerbi, “L’immagine di Cluny nella piu recente storiografia,” and Cinzio Violante, “Per una riconsiderazione della presenza cluniacense in Lombardia,” in Cluny in Lombardia (n. 18 above), 1:9—26, 2:520—35; and Barbara Rosenwein, Rhinoceros Bound: Cluny in the Tenth Century (Philadelphia, 1982), ch. 1. historiae

especially the years 1070—1110, Christendom’s greatest experienced unparalleled growth, expanding its connections and observance into Germany, northern Italy, Spain, the Lowlands, and 66 observers England. It was in hindsight the crest of the wave, but to ecclesiastical 67 At that in the years 1080—1120 it seemed, and was, very impressive. time Odo of Tournai, one of the “crisis” figures, turned first to Cluny for help 68 with his new foundation. Even the controversial reign of Abbot Pons (1109—22) has been construed as an attempt at reforms consonant with changing 69 religious aspirations. The abbatial conference at Reims in 1131 and Peter eleventh century, Benedictine house

the Venerable’s reforms between 1122 and 1146/47 indicate that “established” and not just Benedictine monasticism was capable still of responding to 70 is is that world. What true Benedictine a new flatly resisting religious leadership in Christendom acquired rivals after 1100, who came increasingly to the fore after 1130, and that Benedictine leadership declined steadily after —

—

1150.

Every

external indicator, recruitment, revenues,

quality

of

personnel,

and

influence in the church, discloses nothing of general decline or decadence. To the contrary, Benedictine houses shared fully in a broader social and cultural

expansion. and

Yet in the years between 1050 and 1150 hundreds of devout men turned their backs on the Benedictines and sought spiritual perfection

women

elsewhere. They knew very well that Benedictine monasticism was a powerful, wealthy, and influential establishment. But the evidence accrued here for “prosperity” or “vitality” largely spelled “bankruptcy” for them. The tone of their attacks, especially in the early days, betrayed something like despair that the religious life could ever be set right against such odds. The issue was not decadence but prosperity, as Leclercq already pointed out. And 66

Hunt (n. 33 above), pp. 124-85; Hallinger (n. 26 above); Hermann Jakobs, Die Hirsauer (Cologne, 1971); Cluny in Lombardia (n. 18 above), passim, with a helpful overview by G. Spinelli, “Repertorio cronologico delle fondazione cluniacensi nell’attuale Lombardia,” 2:501-20; Knowles (n. 27 above), pp. 145-58. 67 Writing in 1146, but of the years 1095—1105, Herman of Tournai said: “Cluniacense siquidem cenobium tunc in toto regno Francorum erat excellentissime religionis, quoniam nondum

germinaverat rigor Cisterciensis, restauratione

nec

de domno Norberto adhuc

aliqua mentio erat." Liber de

80, MGH SS 14:313.

68

Thus Herman: “. sed institutis et regula Cluniacensis cenobii contentus esset, quod solum lama et religione necnon et caritate universis Gallie monasteriis eo tempore [1095] preminebat et a venerabili abbate Liber de restauratione 70, MGH SS 14:307. Hugone regebatur.” 69 The large and controversial literature on Pons may be approached by way of H. E. J. Cowdrey, '‘Abbot Pontius of Cluny (1109-22/26),” Studi Gregoriani 11 (1978), 177-277; Piero Zerbi, “Intorno alio scisma di Ponzio, abate di Cluny (1122-26),” in his Tra Milano e Cluny (Rome, 1978), pp. 309—71; and Adriaan Bredero, “Une controverse sur Cluny au XIIe siècle." Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique 76 (1981), 48—72. 70 See Giles Constable, “The Monastic Policy of Peter the Venerable,” in Pierre Abélard—Pierre le Vénérable (Paris, 1975), pp. 119-38, and his edition of Peter’s statutes in consuetudinum .

.

et

Corpus

monasticarum, 6 (Siegburg, 1976), pp. 19-106; Stanislaus Ceglar, “Guillaume de Saint-Thierry et son rôle directeur aux premiers chapitres des abbés bériédictins de Reims 1131 et Soissons 1132,” in Guillaume de Saint-Thierry (n. 7 above), pp. 299-309, with the edited texts, pp. 312-50.

the strong

implication was that material prosperity meant spiritual decadence.

This must be tested in Part 2.

2. Benedictine Monasticism: The Religious Outlook The Benedictines shared with their critics sources common to all of Western monasticism, among them Cassian, Benedict, and Gregory. Continuity and differentiation within this tradition has been one of Jean Leclercq’s main 71 themes through the years. The character of Benedictine monasticism was shaped by the interaction between these spiritual ideals and the social realities of the monks’ status as the first order of society. One may speak of a Benedictine 72 outlook or “mentality,” a distinctive set of attitudes and way of doing that took 850 and 1050 but rarely received full and between things shape express exposition, except occasionally after 1125 in self-defense. The situation was quite different for the Cistercians and others who had to define themselves at once over against the “establishment.” Yet the Benedictines’ extant historiography, customaries, and necrologies, when taken together, reveal the essential features of an outlook crucial to the question of spiritual and material “prosperity.” The following will consider in turn the Black Monks’ attitudes towards material prosperity, their religious function, and interactions with secular society. At the heart of monasticism is its commitment to the pursuit of religious perfection, and at the heart of that, at least from the time of the Desert Fathers, was a large measure of asceticism, meaning denial of the flesh and the world. Benedict and his followers presupposed asceticism, only moderating some of its extreme manifestations. But Benedict’s vision was still of a voluntary lay community on the fringes of society. What emphases might Benedictines develop once they had become the center of a Christian society, as they did increasingly after 850? The Rule contained neither the word nor the concept of religious poverty as such. Black Monks accordingly never focused on religious poverty as an end in itself, though they followed the Rule 73 Benedictine assiduously in instituting means of formal almsgiving. 71

Jean Leclercq, Etudes sur la vocabulaire monastique du moyen âge, Studia Anselmiana 48 (Rome, sources de la spiritualité occidental: Etapes et constantes (Paris, 1964); Chances de la spiritualité

1961); Aux

occidental (Paris, 1966). Besides Brooke and Lawrence (n. 2 above), recent efforts to get at this Benedictine outlook include André Vauchez, La spiritualité du moyen âge occidental (Paris, 1975), pp. 33—51; Richard W. Southern, The Making of the Middle Ages (London, 1953), pp. 156-69, and Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, 1970), pp. 223-35; Chibnall (n. 6 above), pp. 45-114; Leclercq (n. 49 above), pp. 101 10; Lester K. Little and Barbara Rosenwein, “Social Meaning in the Monastic and Mendicant Spiritualities,” Past and Present 63 (1974), 4-16; Little (n. 14 above), 72

—

pp. 61-69; Rosenwein (n. 66 above), passim. Except for Chibnall and Rosenwein there is still a tendency to approach the Benedictines from the new monks’ viewpoint and consequently to overstate “symptoms of decline” among Black Monks. 73 See Réginald “La place de la dans la conception et la pratique de la vie monastique médiévale latine,” in Il monachesimo (n. 40 above), pp. 173-92, and Willibrord Witters, “Pauvres et pauvreté dans les coutumiers monastiques du moyen âge,” in Michel Mollat, ed.,

Grégoire,

pauvreté

chronicles and lives nonetheless contain numerous passages attitude toward material well-being.

reflecting

a

distinctive

Consider the virtues of several

prominent Benedictine abbots as recorded Jotsald’s Life of Odilo of Cluny (999—1049) with a of the opens description saintly abbot’s manifest possession of the

for the edification of their communities. four cardinal virtues and then “exterior”

—

in the transition from his “interior” to his

up his building and renovating of churches, comparing him in this to Octavius Caesar, who was said to have found Rome in

glory

—

points

wood and left it in marble.

74

Of his successor Abbot Hugh (1049-1109) Gilo 1120 that among interior virtues he was notable for a largesse (liberalitas) greater even than that of kings with their vast treasuries (a characteristic blending of Benedictine and aristocratic attitudes), and though he despised money (pecunias quasi viles sarcinulas reputans), he built a house for

wrote about

women on

and

family property outfitted with most pleasing (valde idoneas) facilities a reliquary studded with gold and gems

appointments (ornamenta) and (auro et gemmis). The second book of

III.

then

75

opened

with

a

lengthy chapter

on

Hugh's building Cluny Already in the tenth century the founder of Gorze, celebrated at the outset for his ascetic virtues, received notice as well for his

expertise in agricultural production, whereby his lands were made to yield more than enough (ad omnem semper copiam superesset), and for his gathering of master builders who constructed a beautiful fortress-like house (primum 76 claustrum

in modum

muro

Saint-Arnulf inherited constructed

a

poverty (omnino necessarium These

castri).

So too

church in

one

of his associates: Heribert of

within one year he fine church and increased its material endowment from utter

.

a

complete disrepair;

pauperrimam) to overflowing 77 supereffluxerit). .

concerns

abundance (in

omnem

copiam

rerum

.

and

emphases

were

echoed dozens of times in the lives of

other Benedictine abbots and reformers.

Hugh

of

said much the

Flavigny

sur l’histoire de la pauvreté (Paris, 1974), 1:177-215. The enormous recent literature on religious poverty, much of it implicitly from the viewpoint of the new religious, has somewhat distorted the original concept as found in the Rule and the earlier Benedictines. 74 “Et praeter haec interiora, fuerunt in eo extrinsecus gloriosa studia in aedificiis sanctorum locorum construendis, renovandis et ornamentis undecumque acquirendis. Et praeter haec [list] diversarum ecclesiarum multiplex numerus, haec omnia illius industria suo tempore in aedificiis, in possessionibus et ornamentis amplissime dilatata creverunt.” Jotsaldi vita Odilonis 1.13, PL 142:908. See Jacques Hourlier, “Saint Odilon bâtisseur," Revue Mabillon 51 (1961), 303-24. The classical reference also used in the Vita Gauzlini 65, ed. Bautier and Labary (n. 82 below),

Études

.

.

.

p. 134. 75 “Sic Cluniacum renovavit in omnibus pastor inclitus, tarn muris exterioribus quam structuris interioribus, officinas adiacentes melioravit, ordinatius ordinem commendavit, bona quae invenit ubertim dilatando.” Gilonis vita sancti Hugonis 2.1, ed. H. E. J. Cowdrey, Studi Gregoriani 11 (1978),

91; cp. 1.5, 10, 12, 43—45, pp. 53-54, 60, 62, 83—86. This theme received Hildebaid’s Vita Hugonis 39, PL 159:884—85. 76 Vita Johannis Gorziensis 89—90, MGH SS 4:362. 77 Ibid 67, 4:356. .

even

fuller treatment in

same

for Richard of Saint-Vanne.

78

Abbot Theodoric’s arrival at Saint-Hubert

in the Ardennes in 1055

increases, it is reported, not only brought substantial 79 in sanctity and recruits but also in income. Abbo of Fleury’s decoration of his a virtuous matter, his biographer established by reference to abbey church Solomon received separate treatment following remarks on his writings (c. 3) and miracles of healing (c. 4) and preceding those on the reform of his house (c. 6). 80 William of Dijon protested vigorously in one case against the suspicion that he had worked hard to reform a particular house for its endowment (augmentum terrenarum opum) and had subsequently become puffed up by his religious and economic success (pro virtutum gratia vel rerum copia). His biographer noted approvingly nonetheless that his chief house, the ducal abbey of Fecamp in Normandy, was considerably enriched in the wake of William’s reforming efforts (multorum donorum ac possessionum largitionibus ampliavit 81 —

—

[princeps] locum).

one

summary

example

Examples

could be

will suffice. André of

multiplied

Fleury’s

almost

endlessly,

but

Vita Gauzlini recounted

in detail the great wealth of land, vessels, and books this abbot accrued for his abbey, all, according to the preface, out of his great desire for an “ampliationem

loci,” These themes

an

enlarging

or

enriching

of the

82

place.

prevalent in the great monastic chronicles of even most, such chronicles originated in narrative

are even more

the years 850—1150.

Many,

83 data contained in cartularies, and the cartularies in for the house’s material deep holdings. The attitudes in this careful preservation of cartularies and laborious writing of

of the

expansions turn from

implicit

raw

concern

chronicles have yet to be fully integrated into representations of Benedictine monasticism. Such accounts, usually prepared at the behest of abbots or brothers, served as edifying reading as well as records of material endowment. Lists of with

gifts

descriptions

and the story of their bestowal became sanctity and discipline.

entirely

interwoven

of

78

Hugonis Chronicon 2.7, 8, MGH SS 8:373: “Edificata igitur nova aecclesia maiori ambitu et elegantiori opere. ." 79 “Compertum habemus ex tunc cum numero fidelium crescente religione censum ecclesiae affatim crevisse, tam in agrorum et praediorum ac ecclesiarum augmentatione, quam in reddituum Post haec [a list of revenues] considerans agrestem et nimis incultum multiplicatione. loci situm coepit deserta reaedificaturus, diruta et vetustate consumpta renovare, angusta deiecto veteri et parvissimo quod ibi erat claustro, novum et magnum, quale modo ampliare .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

videtur, construxit.” Vita Theodorici 20, 22, MGH SS 12:48, 49-50. 80 Aimonis vita Abbonis 15, PL 139:405—6. 81 Glaberi vita domni Willelmi abbatis 12, 13, ed. Neidhard Bulst, Deutsches Archiv 30 (1974), 471. 82 Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette Labary, eds., André de Fleury, Vie de Gauzlin, abbé de Fleury, Sources d’histoire médiévale 2 (Paris, 1969), p. 38 and passim. 83 The Liber largitorius vel notarius monasterii Pharphensis, ed. Giuseppe Zuchetti (Rome, 1913—32), developed on the basis of the Regesto di Farfa, ed. Ugo Balzani, 5 vols. (Rome, 1879—1914), is

major source for the history of central Italy and Rome in the central Middle Ages. The same is in origins, for Orderic Vitalis’s Historia ecclesiastica; see books 3—4 and the introductory remarks of Chibnall (n. 6 above), 1:45-48. Cp. Michel Sot, Gesta episcoporum—Gesta abbatum, Typologie des sources 37 (Turnhout, 1981), pp. 44—50. a

true,

On the basis of

lost liber terrarum, William of

Malmesbury in the 1130s put antiquities of Glastonbury, and in the preface he flattered its protector, Bishop Henry of Winchester, with doing more than anyone before him to extend its lands (ampliandis patrimoniis) and buildings (extruendis edificiis) while preserving its peace (pace incolarum tuenda) and religious 84 together

a

work

a

on

the

life (religione monachorum)

in that order.

—

the order

nearly everywhere, although

Similar elements reappeared vary when a work was

might

not addressed to a house’s protector. Hariulf s famous account, three decades earlier, of the abbots and monks of Saint-Riquier strung together chapters on property and church acquisitions, relations with princes, monastic virtues, the power of relics, and more, all buttressed with numerous charters quoted verbatim and all judged by the simple standard of the favor (nostri loci amator) 85 or ruin (contemptores, desertores) abbots or patrons brought upon his house. Nor was this a recent, “decadent” development. The earliest work in this genre (a Gesta abbatum become a general history of the house) and the first on the continent to include charter documents, the Gesta abbatum Fontanellensium of the 830s, was already devoted in the main to records of gifts, treasure, abbots included, building projects, and the like, and the virtues prized in its 86 especially, excellent management of its material resources. In the tenth century

Folcuin’s Chronicle abbot to

“gather

into

of Saint-Bertin

one

codex the

was

written at the

gifts (traditiones)

with their charters and the deeds of the abbots.”

specific

request of his

of the faithful

87

together

These material considerations came through most frankly in the series of documents known as “foundation” charters or narratives. Here the point was precisely to lay out the spiritual and political circumstances of a particular house’s founding together with its material bases. Nearly every house had one. An especially striking instance comes from the first decade of the twelfth 84

John Scott, The Early History of Glastonbury: An Edition, Translation, and Study of 'William of Malmesbury's De Antiquitate Glastonie Ecclesie (Totowa, N.J., 1981), p. 42, and the editor’s introductory 85

remarks, pp. 15—26.

praiseworthy abbot (here the religious comes first): ".. postquam multas peccatorum animas sanctis monitis instruendo de perversitate traxerat ad correctionem et de fauce diaboli A

erutas

.

Christi

omnipotentis resignaverat gratiae, postquam almiflui confessoris Christi Recharii numero et religiositate, aedificiis, libris, palliis, auro et argento variisque decorarat Hariulf, Chronique de l'abbaye de Saint-Riquier 4.33, ed. augmentarat ornamentis.

ecclesiam fratrum et

.

.

Ferdinand Lot (Paris, 1894), p. 266; cp. pp. 201-2, 274. 86 “Quod [monasterium] fere aedificiis destitutum ac in aegestate redactum atque relictum invenit [Abbot Ansegis, 823—33]; sed intra pauci temporis spatium nobili sua industria recuperare studuit. Omnia namque aedificia et

et privata ipse idem a fundamentis construi Nam in praeceptis rei rusticae sagacissimus erat; maxima ilia copia nunquam deesset, quam semper larga

publica

atque in maiori elegantia restaurari fecit. unde factum est ut diversarum manu

87

.

...

.

frugum indigentibus erogare noverat.” Gesta sanctorum patrum and R. P. J. Laporte (Rouen, 1936), pp. 93—94.

cunctis

R. Lohier

Folcuini Gesta abbatum

later:

.

s.

Fontanellensis coenobii, ed.

Bertini Sithiensium. The same standard of abbatial virtues appears turn morum probitate, turn rerum communium

". gradum suscepti regiminis [abbatis] .

.

dispositione,

turn

aedifitiorum dirutorum reedificatione adornavit” (c. 18). MGH SS 13:607.

century regarding the foundation of Sainte-Foy at Selestat in Alsace. Its author concluded a lengthy account of political and economic difficulties with a triumphal summary sentence. Their monks first suffered “unacceptable poverty" (nimis pauperam vitarn prius ducentes) but following their patron’s intervention “became wealthy” (subito divites facti) and were now in full possession of their material endowment (totum possederunt). 88 Such a startling declaration was no sign of spiritual decadence or hypocrisy. An inclination to link material and spiritual well-being may derive ultimately from the human condition. But specific conditions within which Benedictine monasticism unfolded lent it a certain prominence. The Benedictines’ claim to first rank among the orders of Christian society rested on an otherworldly, and basically world-denying, norm; but for both them and their patrons the manifestations of that claim went beyond asceticism to assume this-worldly features, such as appropriately magnificent churches and rituals. More specific still are the social conditions within which Benedictine monasticism developed in the years 850—1050. In the midst of invasion, warfare, natural catastrophe, and rampant worldliness, new foundations or refoundations invariably seemed a hard-won triumph over the collective forces of evil. The case of the monks of Tournus, forced to move time and again up the river 89 Loire to escape Norman destruction, is well known. But there are many more instances. At Lobbes destruction by the Hungarians and dilapidation in the wake of dynastic warfare finally got reversed in the 970s; only then, its 90 chronicler recorded, could a fine church be made even finer. The foundation notice for Ascovia, near Strassburg, recounted the bishop’s restorative gifts “after a long interval of time” and “destruction by the Hungarians,”91and all this “lest the God-fearers be in want” (ne esset inopia timentibus Deum). This theme became so commonplace in the tenth and eleventh centuries that it often gave shape to local monastic accounts. An early poem from Jumièges, probably written on the occasion of the church’s reconsecration, described in turn its “first foundation,” “destruction,” and “restoration,” this last including a rebuilding (structuras renovare) and bountiful gifts from the duke (praedea, divitias quo possent quaestibus absque/quique monoptolemi seclusam ducere vitam) 92 So stereotyped are these accounts that scholars have begun to 88

De fundatione s. Fidis Sletstatensis, MGH SS 15/2:1000. A collection of these texts in MGH SS 15/2:960—1125, 1269—88; see also Jörg Kastner, Historiae fundationum monasteriorum: Frühformen monastischer Institutionsgeschichtsschreibung im Mittelalter, Münchener Beiträge zur Mediävistik und Renaissance-Forschung 18 (Munich, 1974), and Vivian H. Galbraith, “Monastic Foundation Charters in the Eleventh and Twelfth Century,” Cambridge Historical Journal 4 (1934), 205—22, 296-98. 89 From its

Marc Bloch, Feudal Society (Chicago, 1964), p. 20. se satis elegans erat, ut in ornamentis elegantior redderetur operam dedit; [details follow].” Folcuini Gesta abbatum Lobiensium 29, quam de pulchra fecit pulcherrimam MGH SS 4:70-71. 90

use

by

“Ecclesia quia per

.

91 92

.

.

Notitia fundationis et restaurationis monasterii Ascoviensis, MGH SS 15/2:995—96. PL 138:396-98.

doubt their reliability.93 But the religious outlook of their narratives, written to edify the brethren, is clear enough: the establishment of a prosperous and beautiful house marked the victory of God and his saints over the Devil and 94 his hosts. Maintenance often proved fully as difficult as foundation, an ongoing battle against material and spiritual odds. An incompetent abbot, prior, or cellarer, a greedy patron, a bad mix of brothers, an outbreak of feudal violence or of illness, a bad harvest, or a fire could quickly reduce a Benedictine house to religious and economic ruin, with, normally, no religious superior to intervene. Here too reformers and their patrons understood very well that material well-being was just as important as the renewal of the office or the restoration of discipline. Virtually without exception, the reform of a Benedictine house meant, among other things, the restitution of alienated goods, an increase 95 in proffered gifts, and an enlargement of the church’s treasury. Poverty, as Rudolph of Saint-Trond put it near the beginning of his chronicle, was

something in

need of “correction.”

96

Benedictine

religious life was hardly

conceivable apart from its material underpinnings, and so reform of the one 97 meant enlargement of the other. At Saint-Laurent in Liège the removal of a 93

See, for instance, Horst Zettel, Das Bild der

Normanneneinfälle in westfränkischen, ostfränkischen

und

angelsächsischen Quellen des 8. bis 11. Jahrhunderts (Munich, 1977), and Albert d’Haenens, Les invasions normandes en Belgique au IXe siècle: Le phénomène et sa repercussion dans l'historiographie médiévale (Louvain, 1967). 94 In 1135 Ortlieb’s preface to an account of the foundation of Zwiefalten sums up these central Benedictine themes: ". quibus auctoribus ad spiritalem et angelicam vitam isdem locus ab initio coaptatus, quibus traditoribus prediis et aliis donariis amplificatus, uel qualiter regularibus discipline institutus atque virtutum ornamentis fuerit decoratus.” Ortliebi Zwifaltensis Chronicon, MGH SS 10:70. So also at Fleury, where a destructive fire threatened “prosperity” and led to an even finer restoration (the details given at great length): “Dum Floriacensis conventus totius prosperitatis vernaret in floribus, temptator antiquus, totius boni aemulus, ac si alterum Job debellandum adoritur; qui, divino permissu, omnia assiduis Sabeorum rapinis diuturnisque cpit demoliri pressuris. ...” Whereupon the abbot promised his monks: “Arbitror etiam ego, si Deus intercedentibus orationibus vestris longioris vit§ spatia mihi contulerit, aliorsum citiusque quam necessitudinibus vestris pro speratis, haec omnia me restauratum ire ac in melius reformare viribus operan dare.” Vita Gauzlini 57, 58, ed. Bautier and Gillette (n. 82 above), pp. 104, 111—12. 95 Thus, in summarizing Richard of Saint-Vanne’s work: “. quanta soliicitudine in ampliando loco et monastica religione innormanda, et utensilibus necessariis divinis cultibus invigilaverit, vix enarrare quis poterit?” Vita Richardi 7, MGH SS 11:283; and Poppo of Stavelot’s: “In his itaque tarn consilii quam impensarum administratione, regiminis statum astipulavit; turn in singulis omnia et in omnibus singula, ut oportuit et decuit, ampliavit.” Vita Popponis 19, MGH SS 11:305. Cp. nn. 74, 75, 79, 86 above. 96 “Factus igitur abbas multam paupertatem in loco nostro invenit parumque in ordine nostro religionis. Maturius utrumque correxit; paupertatem ex eis, quae ab imperatrice dono acceperat et a regio loco secum detulerat, ordinem ex disciplina maxima, quam Hersfeldiae didicerat. Per 21 annum aecctesia nostra et temporalibus et famosissime crescebat spiritualibus.” Gesta abbatum Trudonensium 1.7, MGH SS 10:233. See also n. 41 above. 97 “. et cum interioribus extruendis sine intermissione operam dederit, non minus exteriorinus, quae item misere ubique locorum delapsa fuerant, reficiendis strenuus et prudens incubuit.” Vita Johannis Gorziensis 67, MGH SS 4:356. .

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

squandering, worldly abbot and the installation of a reformer brought a notable 98 increase in spiritual fervor and economic well-being. Even Herluin of Bee, a founder sensitive to the new issue of poverty, was granted a longer life 99 to see the completion and dedication of a much enlarged church. Material prosperity, in sum, seemed both a condition for and a sign of 100 spiritual prosperity. Benedictine monks filled their chronicles and lives with accounts of properties, treasures, rebuilt churches, and magnificent books, partly of course to insure the record of them but no less to document and celebrate God’s blessing upon the monks. So basic and self-evident had this become for them that it required expression, normally, only when challenged. Rudolph of Saint-Trond opened the sad tale of his abbey’s desolation with a is, only spiritual decline lengthy commentary on the judgment of God; that 101 could have brought on such material destruction. But the most devastating challenge, aimed directly at the nexus between spiritual and material prosperity, came from the new reformers, who consistently dismissed the Benedictines’ material success as a sign of corruption 102 rather than prosperity. Nicholas of Clairvaux put it quite cynically: “Where you find more gold, he said to them, there you think to see greater merit; where more vestments, greater virtue; and where more food and clothing, 103 there the truer observance of the prescribed.” An early and illuminating illustration of this contrast in outlooks may be found in the life of Bernard of Tiron. He and Gervasius, acting as prior and abbot, jointly restored the abbey of Saint-Savin, which needed reform, the Life clearly states, in both its spiritual life and temporal affairs. They succeeded, and Gervasius, true to the Benedictine

approach, proceeded

at once to

(coenobii amplificandi et ditandi) and to that parochial church for its revenues. Prior transaction

as

simoniacal, and the

two

enlarge

and enrich the

end intended to Bernard

reformers

stubbornly

parted

98 ". dum illius [reforming abbot’s] labore et ingenio accreverit congregatio et exterius multiplex rerum ecclesiasticarum acquisitio.” sancti Huberti 36, ed. Karl Banquet (Brussels, 1906), p. 98. .

99

acquire

.

a

abbey

certain

blocked the

completely

ways

interius

and

optime religionis

Cantatorium sive Chronicon

PL 150:708.

100

“Haec autem omnia et alia dehinc narranda [rebuilding projects] non ex reditibus, nec ex divitiis eiusdem loci, set ex donationibus fidelium consummavit, quoniam propter novitatem mundae vitae omnes eum [reforming abbot] excolebant et amabant, plures ei se suaque .

.

.

dedentes.” Casus monasterii Petrishusensis 3.8, MGH SS 20:650. 101 Gesta abbatum Trudonensium 2.1, MGH SS 10:236. 102

Thus St. Bernard in his inimitable rhetoric: “Sed esto, fiant haec ad honorem Dei. Illud interrogo monachus monachos, quod in gentilibus gentilis arguebat: ‘Dicite, ait ille,

autem

Nos vero qui iam de populo pontifices, in sancto, quid facit aurum?’ [Persius, Saturn. 2.69]. exivimus, qui mundi quaeque pretiosa ac speciosa pro Christo reliquimus. Quem, inquam, ex his fructum requirimus: stultorum admirationem, an simplicium oblationem? O vanitas vanitatum, sed non vanior quam insanior! Fulget ecclesia parietibus, et in pauperibus eget. Suos lapidos induit auro, et suos filios nudos deserit.” Apologia 12.28, ed. Leclercq and Rochais, .

.

.

.

.

.

.

3:104-5. 103

Nicholas of Clairvaux,

Epistola 8,

PL 196:1603.

.

.

104

lastingly.

Bernard

went on to become a

significant figure

among the

new

religious.

examples may serve to conclude this section and to illuminate the culmination in the twelfth century of this Benedictine link between material and spiritual prosperity. Peter the Deacon’s history of the Benedictines' Two well-known

mother house at Monte Cassino expanded into an important general house’s history. Yet he focused throughout upon that which built up his 105 and fame. Also in treasure, possessions, political connections, structures, the 1140s and with the same intent, though in a much more individualistic manner, Suger of Saint-Denis composed a work “on his administration.” Best known

as an

art-historical source, this work has in

reality

two main

themes,

the enrichment of the

106

abbey’s possessions and the rebuilding of its church. Almost at the close of the supposed century of crisis, Suger drew upon new architectural and philosophical ideals to express wonderfully the convergence in the Benedictine mind between material and Benedictine monks also arrived at

a

spiritual prosperity.

distinctive

understanding of their

religious

counted among “those who prayed,” monks ranked as the chief intercessors, the purest and most single-minded by reason of their profession and therefore in most people's minds the most effective. In a world battered by every conceivable disaster and form of sin, intercession in the divine court seemed nearly the only barrier between them and destruction. Kings and popes, prelates and princes, and lay persons of all stations consistently turned to monks when they most needed divine aid. Intercession was above all for souls, especially departed souls, but it could also be in behalf of the harvest, of military victory, or the duties to their fellow Christians. While all clerics

prince's well-being. This intercessory

were

107

necessarily obscuring, by spiritual foundation telling proofs of its importance. Thousands of documents, from royal108 to the charters such as King Edgar’s for the New Minster in Winchester 109 attest to its centrality in the religious lesser gifts of knights and peasants,

the

104

function

came

foundations laid down

to

overlay,

without

the Rule. Cartularies contain the most

PL 172:1377.

105

Hartmut Hoffmann, ed., Die Chronik von Montecassino, MGH SS 34 (1980). 106 Liber de rebus in administration sua gestis, in Suger’s Oeuvres ed. A. Lecoy de la Marche (Paris, 1867), pp. 155—209; partially edited and translated by Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger On the Abbey Church of Saint Denis and Its Art Treasures, 2nd ed. (Princeton, 1981),

complètes,

pp. 40—81. 107 There is no adequate study of this intercessory task, especially as it goes beyond prayer for souls. A characteristic example of people seeking the monks’ prayers for their temporal needs in Miracula s. Bercharii 30, AASS OSB 2:860. 108 ". veros Dei cultores monachico gradu fungentes, qui pro nostris nostrorumque inubi .

.

quiescientium 109

As in

excessibus sedulo intercederunt servitio, quo eorum intercessionibus nostri regiminis .” Councils and Synods (n. 61 above), p. 125.

vigerent munitus. this knight signing over

status

.

.

his properties to Cluny: “Ego Grimaldus miles (queratur hoc in memoriale, ubi canitur cotidie missa matutinalis cum nomine eius [marginal note]) dono Deo et fratribus Cluniaco manentibus post mortem meam quicquod iure hereditario possi-

signum

outlook of Benedictines and their supporters. Nearly two-thirds of the charters issued during Odilo of Cluny’s reign (999—1049) alluded specifically to

110 But such concerns probably prayer for benefactors and the faithful departed. over ninety percent of all gifts made to Benedictine houses behind well lay in the tenth and eleventh centuries. It was an age, one might say, that could ill

luxury of prayer solely for its own sake. The monks’ intercessory prayers, and only indirectly their otherworldly asceticism, made them the first order of Christian society in most people’s minds and generated that outpouring of wealth which Benedictines had come both to expect and to depend afford the

upon. Two crucial Benedictine

developments, much studied and much disputed monastic historians, were fostered by this intercessory task: an ever among more elaborate office and the increased ordination of monks. Both got underway in the

Carolingian

era

owed

much

as

become the monks

or more

and

proceeded steadily

into the

twelfth

early

ancient ideal, but elaboration of the office to the growing sense that liturgical intercession had

century. “Perennial” prayer

was an

task of the

especially, but religious life, whence patrons 111 Not all houses hardly object to more and more of it. Cluny, but her reputation evident in the awed response even

primary

well, could

as

went as far as

—

reflects contemporary expectations eremitical reformer like Peter Damian and ideals. Monks interceding prayerfully in the court of heaven were what people of every rank expected and, crudely put, what they were of

an

—

—

doing so as nearly continuously as possible was what they such compelling and gratifying. Monks themselves appropriated 112 warriors. themselves as Cluny society’s spiritual expectations, imagining forever memorialized this intercessory task by adding to the liturgical calendar 113 paying

for

—

and

found most

in the

early

eleventh century the feast of All Souls.

And what set

Cluny

dere video tali tenore et convenientia ut memoriam mei, quoad vixero, in suis orationibus habeant. ." Albert Bruel, ed., Recueil des chartes de l’abbaye de Cluny, 5 (Paris, 1894), p. 118 .

(#3765, from 110

ca.

1100).

Saint Odilon de Cluny (Louvain, 1964), pp. 125—26. Hallinger, “Überlieferung und Steigerung im Mönchtum des 8. bis 12. Jahrhunderts,” in Eulogia: Miscellanea in onore di P. Burkhard Neunheuser OSB, Studia Anseimiana 68 (Rome, 1979), pp. 125—87, with a distinctly critical viewpoint. 111

Jacques Hourlier, See

now

Kassius

AasRiLClPeWarandM"R112BFgoiasteurnabsurwcdigaoealrtnyc,:l" Viator 2 (1971), 129-58; cp. Rosenwein and Little (n. 72 above). The metaphor appears in the charter for Winchester when the king explains why he has replaced canons with monks: “Quod nullis intercessionibus [of the canons] prodesse poterant, sed potius, ut beatus ait

Gregorius,

iusti vindictam iudicis provocarent, qui variis vitiorum nevis contaminati gratos cuneos qui pro nobis incunctanter intercederent nostri iuris monasteriis .

.

.

Domino monachorum

Synods (n. 61 above), p. 125. Odilo’s decree, and the vision of released souls usually associated with it, in PL 142:879. It specified, among other things, that “cuncti fratres offerant privatim, et publice celebrent pro S"ee Hourlier (n. 110 above), pp. 125—28, and Willibald requie omnium animarum fidelium.

devotus hilar iter collocavi.” Councils and 113

.

Jorden, Das 1930).

ster,

cluniazensische

.

Totengedächtniswesen,

Munäterische

Beitragë zur Theologie

13

(Mün

apart in the

popular

mind was precisely the effectiveness of her monks’ prayers heaven. 114

in

speeding souls

in

From the ninth century onward Benedictine monks entered the priesthood ever larger numbers, and they were probably chiefly responsible for the

to

115

introduction of the as

the most

itself. If in

became the

private mass. Daily mass gradually gained recognition important of all forms of intercession, that of the Holy Sacrifice the popular mind, as Jaroslav Pelikan has suggested, the host “holiest relic,” 116 the power of holy monks to confect it represented

the most efficacious force to enlist and natural did all this without commentary

seem

on

sinful man’s behalf. So necessary

that the clericalization of monks

proceeded

protest. Rupert spoke of the mass both as the monk’s encounter with Christ himself and as the great work brought in by the daily 117 harvest of benefactions. Two or three generations earlier, in what was surely a new emphasis in depictions of monastic virtue, Abbot Odilo in his last days reportedly counted up the number of masses he had said in his lifetime. 118 And in the 1120s, Black Monks reacted with astonished horror at new monks who professed to prefer felling trees and planting seed to praying 119 in choir and saying mass at the altar. This second shift produced what may well be the most characteristic expression in stone of the Benedictine religious outlook, the side altar. For so many priests to say mass daily in behalf of themselves and numerous benefactors, more altars were needed, and these were distributed around the choir and the transept, the

or

120

It is worth noting parts of the church reserved for monks. that they were almost entirely absent from early Cistercian houses. This shift toward the centrality of liturgical and priestly intercession also produced Benedictine monasticism’s most characteristic written records, customaries and memorial books. The customaries that came to regulate Benedictine life from the ninth century onwards recently much studied as a dealt particularly with the minute way of distinguishing various groups 121 regulation of liturgical detail. Beyond the Rule itself and administrative two

—

—

114

Radulfus Giaber, Historiarum libri V 5.13, ed. Maurice Prou (Paris, 1886), pp. 124—25. complicated subject, see Otto Nussbaum, Kloster, Priestermönch und Privatmesse, Theophaneia 14 (Bonn, 1961); Angelus Häussling, Mönchskonvent und Eucharistiefeier (Münster, 115

On this

1973);

Arnold

Angenendt,

“Missa

specialis: Zugleich

ein

Beitrag

zur

Entstehung der

Privatmessen,"

Frühmittelalterliche Studien 17 (1983), 153-221; and the literature in Constable (n. 3 above), pp. 135—36. 116 117

Jaroslav Pelikan, The Growth of Medieval Theology (600—1300) (Chicago, 1978), pp. 183—84. Rupert, In regulam Benedicti 3.8, 11 12, PL 170:515, 518—20. See Van Engen (n. 8 above), —

pp. 315-23. 118 Damiani vita Odilonis 2, PL 144:928—29. 119 Rupert, In regulam Benedicti 3.10, PL 170:517. 120

Kenneth J. Conant, Benedictine Contributions to Church Architecture (Latrobe, 1949), and more generally Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800—1200, 2nd ed. (Harmondsworth, 1974). 121 Dom Kassius Ballinger is the major historian who stimulated the analysis of customaries as historical documents; see his “Consuetudo: Begriff, Formen, Forschungsberichte, Inhalt,” in Untersuchungen zu Kloster und Stift, Studien zur Germania sacra 14 (Göttingen, 1980), pp. 140—66,

matters, this is what in contemporary minds most needed spelling out. Prayerful intercession had to be done right if God was to be moved and glorified rather than

angered.

undertook reform

122

For this

reason

kings, prelates,

or

princes

often

against the will of the monks, and the most characteristic document of that reform was a new written customary with a precise

stipulation saw

—

even

of the monks’

whether

what monks

or

were

123

As Dom Kassius Hallinger clearly liturgical day. occasionally exaggerated points of difference

not he

—

to say when and in what vestments was at the heart of the

matter.

About

inward-looking religious or devotional matters as such the customaries nothing. This should not be construed to mean that Benedictines were religiously indifferent beings performing their assigned offices in merely perfunctory fashion, though reformers were later to charge so and reform-minded Benedictines in the early twelfth century insisted that said next to

monks be able to understand from

well

as

and eremitic

private reading

124

to say the office. For quite apart the office described in the retreats

as

—

—

customaries was a profoundly religious way of life. This “Work of God,” as Benedict called it, shaped the whole of Benedictine religious thought, as Leclercq has often emphasized; treatises most often focused upon the office and its assigned Scripture and rarely, in contrast with the new monks, upon 125 The way of the inner recesses of a heart striving toward union with God. the life described in these customaries fulfilled both religious and the social of the first order of

society. pertinent to this intercessory function were the memorial books and necrologies. “Memorial books” or “books of life” date to Carolingian times and were usually kept on or near the high altar (cp. n. 109 above). Together with the necrologies, more often kept in the chapter room, where obligations Even

more

the lists could be read off each

morning, they

contained the record of all the

and the prologue to Corpus consuetudinum monasticarum, 1 (Siegburg, 1963), pp. xxii-lxxix. By way of critical contrast, Joachim Wollasch, “Neue Methoden der Erforschung des Mönchtums im Mittelalter,” Historische Zeitschrift 225 (1977), 529—71, and Jean Leclercq, “Pour une histoire de la

ecclésiastique 57 (1962), 385—408, 783—812. preface to his Regularis concordia: “Id solummodo

vie à Cluny,” Revue d'histoire 122

Thus Dunstan in the

catholicis

regulari

deditis adtendendum censuimus, ne ea quae usu patrum pro rege ac benefactoribus, quorum beneficiis Christo largiente pascimur, intercessionis oramine consuete canimus, nimia

iugo

psallendo Deum potius ad iracundiam inconsiderate, quod absit, provocent quam provide peccaminum veniam invitent.” Councils and Synods (n. 61 above), p. 139. Compare n. 112

velocitate ad above. 123

The link between reform and written customaries may be seen, for instance, in the Carolingian 25 above), in Dunstan (n. 122 above), pp. 136—41, and in the preface to Peter

legislation (n.

the Venerable’s statutes (n. 70 above), pp. 39-40. 124 Thus Rupert, De divinis officiis, Prologus, CCCM 7:5—6; Honorius generalis, PL 172:861.

Augustodunensis,

Sermo

125 Emphases largely undifferentiated in Leclercq’s influential Love of Learning and Desire for God, and untreated in his “Le monachisme clunisien,” in Théologie de la vie monastique, Théologie 49 (Paris, 1961), pp. 447-57. Cp. Van Engen (n. 8 above), pp. 360-68.

126 pray for. Hardly “devotional books,” these lists nonetheless provided the focal point for much of the Benedictines’ devotion, which is to say, of their priestly intercession. The names included in these books were those of their own monks, their benefactors, monks from associated abbeys, and especially in the memorial books other persons of notability. Such books rarely offer any quotable passages on the monks’ religious outlook,127

souls monks

were

to

—

—

and

they

were

not

peculiar

to monastic houses

(cathedrals

and collegiate

Black they function. religious The veneration of relics, the other primary means of intercession in that age, and Benedictine prayer were surely two different religious phenomena. Yet monks often served as guardians of relics and thus appeared as the primary coworkers of the saints interceding in the divine court. Apart from ancient and established shrines, such as those in Rome, Benedictine houses became the major repositories of relics and chief beneficiaries of the resultant pilgrimages and gifts. Whether it be Sainte-Foy at Conques, Mont-SaintMichel, Saint-Benoît at Fleury, Sainte-Madeleine at Vézelay, or any of dozens more, their shrines attracted as many pilgrims and penitents as any in Europe. Benedictines understood and fostered the sense of heavenly power associated with relics. Their chronicles and other documents consistently listed reliquary holdings alongside properties and treasure as marks of their spiritual and material prosperity. 128 Up until 1150 monastic miracle collections, among them those of Saint Benedict himself at Fleury, were easily the major ones 129 preserved. And when Peter the Venerable took up the defense of Cluny he did so in part by narrating the miracles still performed in its churches and by its monks. 130 This emphasis upon the Benedictines’ intercessory function, whether churches had them too), but

were

at the very heart of the

Monks’

126

The major stimulus came here from Joachim Wollasch and Karl Schmid, students of Gerd Tellenbach; see their “Die Gemeinschaft der Lebenden und Verstorbenen in Zeugnissen des Mittelalters,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 1 (1967), 365—405 (thatjournal includes annual reports of their work). A recent summary by Wollasch, “Les obituaires, témoins de la vie clunisienne,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 22 (1979), 139—71. Their largest publication to date, in five volumes, is Die Klostergemeinschaft von Fulda im früheren Mittelalter (Munich, 1978). 127 But one of the earliest makes the connections clear: “pro omnibus his utriusque sexus missam cotidie caelebrari. qui hunc locum pro amore dei ad usus monacharum de rebus suis ditauerunt uel suas nobis seu antecessarum nostrarum largiti sunt elemosinas siue qui se in nostris uel illarum

se

commendauerunt orationibus. tarn pro uiuis quam et pro defunctis. unde et

nomina

eorum

qui in tempore antecessarum nostrarum fuerunt subter scripsimus.” Eduard Hlawitschka, Karl Schmid, and Gerd Tellenbach, eds., Liber memorialis von Remiremont, MGH Libri Memoriales 1 (Dublin, 1970), p. 1. See Giles Constable, “The Liber Memorialis of Remiremont,” Speculum 47 (1972), 261—77, where this is translated on pp. 263—64. 128 Thus in Hariulf (n. 85 above), p. 162; the Vita Gauzlini 3, 20, ed. Bautier and Labary (n. 82 above), pp. 40, 61—62; and compare the Triumphus sancti Remacli, MGH SS 11:438—61. Outstanding bibliography now in S. Wilson, Saints and Their Cults (Cambridge, Eng., 1983), pp. 311 ff. 129 See Benedicta Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. 36—66, and Alexandre Vidier, L’historiographie à Saint-Benôit-sur-Loire et les miracles de Saint Benôit (Paris, 1965). 130 De miraculis, PL 189:851-954.

priestly

and

liturgical

manifestations,

as

or

in

cooperation

with the saints, had

important

external

in the aforementioned side altars. It meant that monks the customaries and

necrologies) but stately worship grand. Luxurious adornment of their intercession, approaching God by way of ever finer vessels, vestments, and churches, seemed altogether laudatory. In 1110 Rupert explained to critics that “mass” (missa) came from the word for “envoy” (missus), that it represented the most effective means of intercession between man and God, and that therefore only the finest craftsmen should be employed to 131 When Theophilus Presbyter, Suger of Saint-Denis, adorn such an “envoy.” and others in the twelfth century were forced to defend such adornment, they did so on the basis of a religious outlook that had prevailed among Benedictines 132 and their patrons since the ninth century. Bernard charged them with using wealth to produce wealth, luxury to attract contributions from the people. The truly spiritual monk, he asserted thinking primarily of men pursuing required their own salvation, not of monk-priests interceding for others 133 no such lavish displays. New monks, as one of their first moves, the luxurious regularly repudiated the incomes and obligations together with 134 But for Benedictines vestments and vessels associated with spiritual intercession. such adornment was a measure of devotion to their appointed religious had to be

disciplined

and literate

(hence

also that their houses had to be

and their

—

—

task.

135

in Benedictine cartularies and of souls in their beyond monastery walls, and thus to the third characteristic of the Benedictine way of life, a relatively easy and open relationship with secular society. This is no novel observation, but it must be integrated with the Benedictines’ entire socioreligious outlook. They were pledged to a rejection of the world, they fostered the contemptus mundi in their hagiography and other religious literature, and yet as the first order in Christian society they had to interact with the world. This interaction, both socioeconomic and religious, directly affected the tone of life within the cloister and therefore the monks’ entire outlook. John of Fécamp indeed prayed God to deliver him from the “world” that encroached upon his own reformed The records of

properties

necrologies point

abbey (n.

11

to connections

above).

One of the most

telling indicators is literary:

Benedictines

wrote

virtually all

131

Rupert, De divinis officiis 2.23, CCCM 7:56—60. Engen (n. 58 above); Panofsky (n. 106 above). 133 Bernard, Apologia 12.28, ed. Leclercq and Rochais, 3:104—6; and Theophilus Presbyter, De diversis artibus, prologues to bks. 1 and 3, ed. 132

Van

contrast

the views of

C. Dodwell

(London,

1961), pp. 1-3, 62-63. 134

Thus the Cistercians’ Summa cartae caritatis 23; and Odo at Tournai, in Herman, Liber de restauratione 68, MGH SS 14:306. 135 To the “Cistercian’s” claim that “haec omnia non necessarius usus sed oculorum concupiscentia requirit,” the “Cluniac” replied, “. quid posset fieri decentius quam quod sacratissima Christi sacramenta preciosissimo metallo honoramus?” Idung, Dialogus duorum monachorum 1.37, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, Studi medievali 13 (1972), 390. .

.

the great chronicles and lives extant from the years 850-1150. Peter Damian severely criticized their historical interests as inappropriate for “perfect monks.’’

136

Some, like Michael Scottus,

Sigebert,

and Frutolf,

consciously took

up the “annal” or “world chronicle” tradition, while Hugh of Fleury thought it 137 useful to instruct a certain countess in ecclesiastical history. Even more undertook and

of their

accounts

own

houses

centering precisely

upon economic

bonds; many of these accounts, of which the one by Ordericus Vitalis must be the most stunning, grew into important regional or 138 Without the cartularies, chronicles, and lives written transregional histories. by monks historians would know precious little about the European world

intercessory

between 850 and 1100. However much Benedictines and the world

attempted

to throw up barriers between themselves

celibacy, ordinary and necessary ties, intercessory sort, inextricably drew them back into its affairs and assumptions. Three broad points about the monks’ interaction with the world related to their “prosperity” and general position in the twelfth-century world. The first pertains to the location of the monasteries. Benedictines were never far from the people and often situated near major population centers. The best evidence here is physical, those abbeys or their vestiges located just outside the walls of medieval cities or in the towns and villages sprung up around them. Critics complained about the nearness of Benedictine especially

of

an

—

walls,

silence

—

economic and

139

houses to the world (n. 14 above). A more fair-minded author labeled as those “who live close to men, such as the Cluniacs and the

Black Monks

like,” meaning,

as

he

explained,

those “who,

living

among

men

in cities,

towns, and villages, are sustained by the alms of the faithful, church revenues, 140 and tithes.” Even if their houses had not been founded near cities, as 136 137

138

Damianus, De perfectione monachorum 23, PL 145:324. André Wilmart, “L’histoire ecclésiastique composée par Hughes de Fleury Revue bénédictine 50 (1938), 297, 301-4.

et

ses

destinateurs,"

There is no adequate investigation of Benedictine historiography as a whole, but see Paolo Lamma, Momenti di storiografia cluniacense, Studi storici 42—44 (Rome, 1961); Hans Woiter, Ordericus Vitalis: Ein Beitrag zur kluniazensischen Geschichtsschreibung (Wiesbaden, 1955); Chibnall (n. 6 above), pp. 181-220; and Jean Leclercq, “L’historiographie monastique de Léon IX à Calixte II,” in Il monachesimo (n. 40 above), pp. 272-302. 139 A topic insufficiently studied, but see Émile Lesne, Histoire de la propriété ecclésiastique en France, 6 (Lille, 1943), pp. 389-443; Jean-Fran^ois Lestocquoy, “Abbayes et origines des villes,” Revue d’histoire de l'église de France 33 (1947), 108-12; Little (n. 14 above), pp. 65-66; and Susan Reynolds, An Introduction to the History of English Medieval Towns (Oxford, 1977), pp. 41-42. Rosalind B. Brooke, “Abbots and Monks, Pilgrims and Townsfolk: The Example of Vézelay,” forthcoming in Miscellanea historiae ecclesiasticae, was not yet available to me. 140 Libellus de diversis ordinibus et professionibus qui sunt in aecclesia, ed. Giles Constable and Bernard Smith (Oxford, 1972), pp. 18 ff. Compare Idung, Dialogus duorurn monachorum 3.31, ed. Huygens, p. 452: “Et quia vestra [Benedictine] monasteria non solum in villis, sed etiam in civitatibus et in locis quae sunt contigua civitatibus sita sunt, nostra [Cistercian] vero minime, idcirco nos, in respectu vestri, soiitarii et contemplativi recte dici possumus, quamvis tu dixeris: noster ordo est contemplativus et vester activus.” Of Odo at Tournai, it is reported that “cognovit,

level matched or surpassed only by episcopal and princely courts, Benedictines necessarily gathered considerable populations around them traders, carters, smiths, weavers, vintners. And even if a particular official took responsibility for dealing with the townsmen, their activities hardly escaped the monks' attention. It is striking to note that nearly every

consumers on a

—

account

of communal unrest in the eleventh and twelfth centuries 111

originated

Remote houses, such as Conques or Mont-Saintstill attract Michel, might pilgrim traffic in particular seasons of the year. The new religious were to flee to the wilderness, but the Benedictines seem

with

a

Benedictine author.

to have taken their

Yet

they sought

setting for granted, keep “the world"

still to

for

they rarely

at arm’s

length

commented upon it. thus, architecturally, —

and ambulatories from choirs, cloisters from the outseparate whole inner sanctum from the world beyond the walls. At and the buildings, Vézelay the monks fought fiercely to maintain control over their town precisely to

naves

pilgrim traffic, and their gain control of the Rupert fought spiritual immunity. castle at Deutz, but primarily with a view to driving laymen out of its walls and 143 towers. The same mixture of material and spiritual concerns wras evident at in order to insure

—

142

own

all at

once

—

revenue,

likewise

hard to

Bury St. Edmunds, Saint-Trond, and countless other places. The social dimensions of this interaction are no less illuminating. Linkage between the highest spiritual and the highest social orders was very real, from

style of life to feudal obligations and a common commitment physical battle. As economic households, as centers of social interaction, and as physical monuments, even monuments to royal victories,144 Benedictine abbeys often seemed little different from aristocratic courts, and in certain respects better. So too the monks’ standards forjudging spiritual prosperity and maintaining intercessory ritual betrayed aristocratic norms. Rupert urged readers to show as much zeal for spiritual ends as noblemen did for material, while St. Bernard savagely denounced the Cluniac recruitment and to

a

spiritual

or

monachis iuxta urbem habitantibus, quos populares sive seculares quidam nominant, non ex antiquorum instituta posse servari.” Herman, Liber de restauratione 68, MGH SS 14:306. 141See the texts in Albert Vermeesch, Essai sur les origines et la signification de la commune dans la

toto

Nord de la France (Louvain,

1966), and his suggestion that townsmen even borrowed vocabulary regarding “community.” 142 Texts gathered in Monumenta Vizeliacensia, ed. R. B. C. Huygens, CCCM 42 (1976). 143 Rupert’s De incendio, ed. Herbert Grundmann, Deutsches Archiv 22 (1966), 441—71, and interpreted there, pp. 385-440, and in Van Engen (n. 8 above), pp. 248-61. 144 Elizabeth Hallam, “Monasteries as ‘War Memorials’: Battle Abbey and La Victoire,” in The Church and War, Studies in Church History 20 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 49-57. The nature of the sources has frustrated most efforts at an exact analysis of the social composition of Benedictine houses. But see, for instance, Cinzio Violante, “Il monachesimo cluniacense di fronte al mondo politico ed ecclesiastico (secoli X e XI),” in Spiritualità Cluniacense (Todi, 1960), pp. 155-242; J.

Fechter, Cluny, Adel und Volk: Studien über das Verhältnis des Klosters zu den Ständen, 910—1156 (Diss. Tübingen, 1966); and Joachim Wollasch, “Wer waren die Mönche von Cluny vom X. bis zum XII. Jahrhundert?” in Clio et son regard: Mélanges d'histoire, d’histoire de l'art et d’archéologie offerts àJacques Stiennon, ed. Rita Lejeune and J. Decker (Liège, 1982), pp. 663—78.

style

of life

145

Even the nothing other than aristocratic self-indulgence. common depiction of themselves, the likening of their worship

as

monks’ most

to that of the

elders

twenty-four

gathered

frequently suggested, foregathered round a royal throne. Revelation,

in

its

round the Lord in the Book of visual

representation,

courtiers

religious outlook, however, assumption that all tasks, including spiritual ones such as intercession, originated in particular social “orders” or “offices” and that these largely overrode in practice individual predilections.146 Monks learned by doing, as oblates growing up in an abbey, much as knights, artisans, and peasants did in the company of their peers. Monks often paid sizable amounts, comparable to dowries, for the privilege of entering monasteries, a practice taken as a self-evident means of supporting the house and a proper exchange for the opportunity of joining the first rank of Christian 147 From childhood monks were trained for the spiritually noble society. and ennobling task of worship and intercession in the celestial court and only indirectly, if at all, for the personally self-indulgent joys of contemplation, 148 To use another metaphor common though those were by no means excluded. in that era, the Benedictine’s marriage to Christ was normally no less prearranged than his lay brother’s to some advantageous princess, and either of those forced unions might prove equally disastrous or delightful. The contrast with the new monks helps make the point plain. There were striking The social link that most affected the Benedictine derived rather from

a

common

similarities in motivation between hermits and

145

new

monks in the twelfth

cen-

Thus Bernard

on two “noble” traits, ostentatious clothing and horse riding: “Quaeritur ad quod utilius sed quod subtilius invenitur; non quod repellat frigus, sed quod superbire compellat; non denique iuxta Regulam quod vilius comparari potest, sed quod venustius,

induendum,

non

immo vanius ostentari.

Dicas, si videas transeuntes [on horse], non patres esse monasteriorum dominos castellorum, non rectores animarum sed principes provinciarum.” Apologia 10.24, 11.27, ed. Ledercq and Rochais, 3:101, 103. Rupert also criticized monks too concerned about food and clothing (De gloria et honore Filii hominis super Matthaeum 6, CCCM .

.

.

sed

29:177—91, but playfully referred

himself as

an “Epicurean” (ibid p. 366) and made reference saeculares homines prudentius, probably would not have: vigilantius atque cupidius commodis temporalibus et transitoriae saluti suae prospiciunt, quam spiritualis propositi uiri circa aeternam salutem suam sollicitudinem studiumque pietatis adhibeant. Imitemur ergo saltern illos in his, quae sunt ad Deum, excitemur saltern exemplo illorum in his, quae pertinent ad uitam aeternam.” De sancta Trinitate 41.21, CCCM 24:2100. 146 It is striking that a Victorine summa de confessione from about 1215 has as its key question for a monks, religiosis diligenter inquirendum est an sincerum habuerint ingressum.” Peter of Poitiers, Compilatio praesens, ed. Jean Longère, CCCM 51:50—51. 147 Such “entrance fees” came to be construed as simoniacal; see Joseph Lynch, Simoniacal Entry into Religious Life (Columbus, 1976); Johnson (n. 54 above), p. 44. 148 Honorius Augustodunensis identified the subject matter for each order: “Monachis de religione, conversis de sancta conversatione, clericis de vitae honestate, laicis de elemosinarum largitate oportet nos praedicare, et nos ipsos [monk-priests] per omnia omnibus exemplum praebere." Sermo generalis, PL 172:861. Monks, that is to say, were responsible for “religion.”

to

the world in

.

.

a

way the

new

to

monks

.,

.

.

tury

men” (iuvenes) setting out on their own spiritual way and all those “young 149

own way in battle and in love. About the Benedictines’ ecclesiastical influence and intellectual involvement,

who set off to make their

much has already been said by way of demonstrating its culmination early twelfth century. Far too much has been made of reluctant monk-bishops and barbed critiques aimed at the new schools. Benedictines steadily assumed responsibilities in parishes, bishoprics, and schools from the ninth century onwards. Very often these developed quite naturally out of their economic and intercessory interaction with the world. Despite canonistic a significant role, directly and indirectly, in prohibitions monks played 150 The author of the Libellus de diversis ordinibus observed improving pastoral care. that the people demanded their preaching and penitential services (n. 140 above) presumably because they were better. One Benedictine house took upon itself the training of local parish priests simply because they were so 151 and students trained by Lanfranc at Bee were sent out, Ordericus said, bad, 152 to “rule the church.” Scholarly monks also interacted boldly with the new schools, critically at times but with a presumed equality and even as those who knew better. The new religious refer critically to Benedictines studying law 153

thirdly, in the

—

and medicine at the schools.

preserve as much as possible of the contemplative 154 but there is no consistent responsibilities, or overwhelming evidence to suggest that they saw service in the church even the world as a betrayal of their vows. When the newly elected Pope

Conscientious monks

struggled

to

life in the midst of other

or

Leo IX left for Rome, he called on the advisory and secretarial services of two Benedictines who became Cardinal Humbert and Cardinal Hugh Candidus. When

they

in turn needed

theological advice on the Eucharist, they turned to city and chapter of Regensburg split over their upon a native son, then the abbot of Siegburg. When

Abbot Lanfranc. When the next

King

bishop, they

called

Louis VII needed

a

regent

to oversee his Christian land while he went

149

The new style set in contrast with the old by Herbert Grundmann, “Adelsbekehrungen im Hochmittelalter: Conversi und Nutriti im Kloster,” in his Ausgewählte Aufsätze, MGH Schriften 25/1 (Stuttgart, 1976), pp. 125—49; and jean Leclercq, Monks and Love in Twelfth-Century France

(Oxford, 1979). Fossier (n. 47 above), pp. 301—13, has recently interpreted these new religious as a primary manifestation of the “revolution” that brought forth the “new Europe.” 150 See now Giles Constable, “Monasteries, Rural Churches, and the cura animarum in the Early Middle Ages,” in Cristianizzazione ed organizzazione ecclesiastica delle campagne nell'alto medioevo: Espansione e resistenze (Spoieto, 1982), pp. 349-89. 151 According to Radulfus Glaber’s Vita Willelmi 14, ed. Bulst (n. 81 above), p. 472. 152 Orderic, Historia ecclesiastica 4, ed. Chibnall, 2:297. Erna Patzelt, “Moines-médicins,” in Mélanges (n. 1 above), pp. 577-88. A case is known from the early 1120s of a Black Monk forced by his abbot to study medicine and to serve “in the world,” whence he fled to the Cistercians; Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 67, ed. Leclercq and Rochais, 153

7:164-65. 154

This issue addressed CCCM 46A: 158-59.

already in

the tenth century

by Rather, Praeloquia 5.20,

ed. Peter Reid,

on

Crusade, Abbot Suger

Such

agreed.

several with explicit examples especially the monk-bishop Martin —

monk-pope Gregory multiplied many times over. Perhaps in summation it can be

reference to the could be

or

—

put very

simply: Benedictines could hardly have exercised the influence and enjoyed the prestige they did were there not deep bonds between them and the world they at once renounced, lived off, and prayed for. From the twelfth century it became common to charge that such interaction fostered a worldly and self-indulgent prosperity. Enormous endowments, beautiful buildings, and ecclesiastical obligations undermined religious “poverty."155 And for nearly the rest of the Middle Ages poverty became pivotal in the pursuit of religious perfection even as it was, in certain respects, the —

central issue for the last

generation

of monastic historians. In retrospect, the

concept of poverty, however much it nuanced

or

helpful

cuts to

the

quick, does religious

assessment of the social and

monks assumed in the years 850—1150

as

not permit a very roles Benedictine

the first order of Christian

society.

The

notion of “crisis” has cast a shadow over twelfth-century Benedictine monasticism for which there is little or no justification in the sources. Surely the Benedictines suffered from any number of problems endemic to institutionalized

religious organizations, but there is no evidence that instances were increasing in number or gravity. On the contrary, two centuries of accumulated strength placed the Benedictines in an excellent position to take advantage of a new European expansion between 1050 and 1150. As the population rose, so too did the number of monks and houses in the traditional “apostolic” order. As the economy expanded, so too did Benedictine landed wealth and “spiritual” incomes, very probably reaching their

of “decadent” houses

As intellectual renewal and church reform swept over participated actively, often in positions of leadership.

greatest

extent.

Europe,

Benedictines

While all this is clear

enough in individual studies, the specter of “crisis” has general evaluations. Flourishing houses, devout monks, and accomplished intellectuals should not be regarded as exceptions, and cases of the reverse deserve more careful investigation than they receive when obscured it in

than examples of a presumed broader decline. part of European expansion in the twelfth century was religious renewal, and for that, critics have charged, the Benedictines were too

treated An

155

more

little

as

more

important

Thus Robert of Torigny, De immutatione ordinis monachorum 7, PL 202:1313: “Videntes abbates nominatissimorum monasteriorum, quae reges Francorum, et alii consulares et

itaque

potentes in praediis suis aedificaverant, sed propter abundantiam divitiarum nimium dissoluta ." But see especially Jacques de Vitry’s Historia occidentalis of about 1220, ed. J. Hinnebusch,

erant.

.

Spicilegium Friburgense 17 (Fribourg, 1972), which describes the growth of new religious a way followed closely by many twentieth-century historians. Of the Black Monks he says,". supra modum ditati sunt et immensis possessionibus diiatati. Postquam autem venenum divitiarum infusum est, agris et vineis, decimis et aliis redditibus, villis et oppidis et innumeris possessionibus impinguati, incrassati, diiatati, pro parte maiori recalcitrare ceperunt” orders in .

.

(c. 20, p. 128).

.

.

.

self-indulgent prosperity. To cite contrary instances of Benedictines genuinely touched by the religious aspirations of the new age is only a and a potentially misleading one, for it deals with the question partial answer as the reformers framed it. This essay has argued for a distinctly Benedictine religious outlook that took shape between 850 and 1050 and was fully realized between 1050 and 1150. Not reducible to any single phrase or term, it is nonetheless illuminated by the Benedictines' unique position for two or three centuries as the first order of Christian society and the primary exemplars of Christian perfection. More than anyone else they were to be in the world and not of it, to represent in this world an ideal and a position of leadership based on denial of the world. The result was a combination of asceticism and privilege that Benedictines and their supporters took for granted, rarely even bothering to explain or defend, but to which a later age would react. Material and spiritual well-being became closely bound together, the one serving as a condition and index of and reward for the other. The divine office continued to shape Benedictine prayer life, but in choir and at the altar it also fulfilled the monks’ primary socioreligious task, intercession for the whole of the Christian people. To carry out their responsibilities as far gone in

—

first at

once

in asceticism and in Christian

society

Benedictines

inevitably

interacted with that

larger society, even while remaining committed to separation from it. What Benedictines accomplished in the early twelfth century building magnificent churches, enlarging intercessory networks, and contributing to every aspect of the general European expansion grew out of and remained essentially consistent with the religious and social outlook they —

—

had inherited. If Benedictine monasticism of

was

still vital in the

early

twelfth century, the

many new religious cannot be interpreted simply as a response to “decadence,” What animated these hermits, monks, and canons was a new

coming

so

vision of the

religious life, a way of pursuing perfection which they believed to Gospel. Many different elements entered into that new vision. and only one was their reaction to a powerful and prospering One monastic establishment. At the risk of exaggerating and oversimplifying, the be closer

to

the

—

—

contrast may be

put in

Benedictines had and divine

a

few sentences. Material

struggled blessing,

and which the

they

took

prosperity, sign of

as a

for which the faithful observance

religious renounced in favor of strict responsibility to intercede for the religious repudiated all intercessory and ecclesiastical new

poverty. Where Benedictines had assumed rest of

society,

obligations

the

new

to concentrate in isolated communities upon

Where Benedictines had interacted

quite easily

personal salvation. society, often

with secular

from the edge of population centers, the new religious fled towns, churches, and schools to seek out the “wilderness.” Accordingly, even as Benedictines had led the way in the production of cartularies, necrologies, customaries, and chronicles, the new religious pioneered in an inward-looking devotional literature that the

new

eventually reshaped the spirituality of the Western church. What religious brought off was something akin to a revolution or a refor-

mation a fundamental and remarkably successful attack upon an ancient and well-established way of life. As with all such revolutions or reformations, the part that surprises, fascinates, and finally eludes simple explanation is the degree of response evoked by a zealous few. By the 1120s at least Benedictines had to take note and by the 1130s to make adjustments. By the end of the century this new vision had virtually become the standard by which religious life was to be judged and Benedictine history to be written (see n. 155 above). The new religious and their success constituted only one factor, however, in eventually removing Black Monks from the center stage of medieval religious life. The expansion of Europe between 1050 and 1150 produced as its end result a new world in which the various elements that had cohered in the Benedictines’ socioreligious position became redistributed, as it were, among more specialized groups. New religious orders, focusing upon a strictly ascetic followership of Jesus, laid claim to be first among religious exemplars. So, too, the tasks Black Monks had combined with the monastic life went over to others, Intercession, and ecclesiastical leadership generally, devolved upon a revitalized sacerdotal hierarchy, reaching down eventually to parish priests —

penance and chantry priests making daily intercession. This transition became evident architecturally in the late twelfth century when cathedrals began to supersede abbeys as the most magnificent churches in Christendom. In the same way markets and crafts went over entirely to secular merchants and craftsmen, schools to separately incorporated masters, political advice to professional courtiers, and so on through the list. There even arose a religious group, the mendicants, with an explicit claim to be in the world and not of it. In this new world the Benedictines began to look compromised, less than perfect in any respect. From the late twelfth century or early thirteenth century, while never undergoing any sudden crisis or collapse, they assumed a position ever less central to medieval religious life. But that was not true in the initial years of this European expansion when they were peculiarly well poised to participate actively in its every phase.

overseeing

IV

An Afterword

on

Medieval

Studies,

Or the

Future of Abelard and Heloise

GOD

serve the greatest people of France.” So reads the will ofJean de Meun, famed continuator of the Romance of the Rose. About 1302, presenting one of his works to King Philip the Fair, Jean explained that he had served the great of the land by providing vernacular translations of Vegetius, the Marvels of Ireland, Ailred’s Spiritual Friendship, Boethius’ Consolation, 1 and The Life and Letters of Pierre Abelard and Heloise his Wife. What Jean de Meun looked back upon as his life’s work medievalists might well take up as matter fit for an afterword on Medieval Studies. A medievalist would want to ask, among other things, why the nobility of France in the later thirteenth century patronized this combination of imaginative fiction, military strategy, fantastic travelorue, spiritual counsel, philosophy, and letters. An essayist on Medieval Studies in turn would ask where these six works get studied in the modern academy and how, and whether they ever fit into the same course of study. Such an essay, perhaps the more interesting one, will not be attempted here—or rather, will be left to the imagination of readers. This essay will take as its point of departure just one of the translated works. For while the other four had already circulated widely in Latin, the letters of Abelard and Heloise remained, so far as scholars can determine, unknown before Jean de Meun translated them around 1290. He worked from a Latin manuscript, now lost, judged comparable in quality and content to two others copied in Jean’s lifetime, the earliest extant witnesses to the letters. One (A) came into the hands of Petrarch around 1337, who made a number of textual an-

GRANTED IT TO ME to

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418597-4

notations; another (T) belonged to the chapter at Notre Dame in 2 Paris and was sold in 1347 to the chancellor of the university. Two more can be dated to the generation after 1300. After five generations of neglect stretching to 150 years, in other words, this correspondence

suddenly

came

into vogue among Latin

intellectuals,

and that vogue persisted, attested by five more Latin manuscripts and evidences of another fourteen, one ordered up by Coluccio Salutati, the humanist chancellor of Florence. Jean de Meun’s vernacular version, by contrast, survived in a single poor copy made approximately a century after his original translation. medievalist to make of these late

manuscripts, this newfound interest? Jean’s work may represent unique vernacular testimony to wider enthusiasm for a recendy recovered work, including a new and more general receptiveness to the rhetoric of these letters; or Jean may have initiated that recovery by retrieving 3 or he might himself have a Latin manuscript from the Paraclete; So what is

a

authored the Latin agreement.

4

In the

correspondence. Scholars have reached no larger perspective of medieval studies, however,

thing seems certain: in Paris, about 1290, fascination with the lives, loves, and letters of Abelard and Heloise, attested earlier only in glancing references to their affair, first began, and was never again wholly to abate. In some larger sense, modern medievalists are the heirs to this work of reinscribing, translating, and one

interpreting. But disruption and discontinuity are as much a part of the story as continuity and inheritance. This holds true for the Paraclete itself, the presumed source or repository of any authentic correspondence. Only two generations after Jean de Meun, war with the English brought destruction, possibly leveling the cloister in 1356 (the reference is vague) and emptying the house for a decade. More than a century later, on 2 May 1497, the abbess of the Paraclete had the bodies of Abelard and Heloise translated from their original burial site in Abelard’s oratory (a place called le Petit-Moustier, located alongside the river Arduisson on convent property near the cloister) and entombed on either side of the high altar in the convent 5 church. Discontinuity holds as well for access to copies of these letters. The first edition appeared a full 150 years after Gutenberg. In 1616 François d’Amboise, a lawyer and royal counselor, initiated the first

An Afterword

on

Medieval Studies

edition of Abelard and Heloise’s Opera Omnia, inspired to do so by reading a manuscript copy of their letters. Heloise received almost equal billing on the title page (a difference only in type size:

primae paracletensis abbatissae). But apparently found, or was given, no copy of the correspondence at the Paraclete, though he was given and he included in his edition copies of Abelard’s liturgical and philosophical works. The edition promptly landed on the Index, even though he had taken care to print the medieval censures of Abelard’s thought at 6 the beginning. One generation before this edition and d’Amboise’s request for everything the Paraclete had on Abelard and Heloise, et Heloisae

coniugis

eius

d’Amboise

the

convent

the

wars

of

England all

itself had been

religion. She,

it

occupied by was

a

Protestant abbess

rumored,

during

had seized and sent to

of Abelard’s works.

For its last two centuries the convent

ruled by abbesses the first of them patronized was

from the La Rochfoucauld family; d’Amboise. It was not their social acclaim, however, but a poem written in English by Alexander Pope, a century after the first edition (1717), that attracted new attention to the letters, and made sentimental depictions of Heloise all the rage: Soon

as

thy letters trembling

I

unclose,

That well-known name awakens all my woes. Oh name for ever sad! for ever dear! Still breathed in sighs, still usher’d with a tear. I tremble too, where’er my own I find, Some dire misfortune follows close behind. Line after line my gushing eyes o’erflow, Led through a sad variety of woe; When at the close of each

Fancy

sad, sorrowing day,

restores what vengeance snatch’d away,

Then conscience

sleeps,

and

leaving

All my loose soul unbounded

Nature

springs

free,

to thee.

demons all restraint remove, And stir within me ev’ry source of love.

Provoking

I hear thee, view thee, gaze o’er all thy charms, And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms.

Sudden you mount, you beckon from the skies; Clouds interpose, waves roar, and winds arise. I shriek, start up, the same sad prospect find, And wake to all the griefs I left behind.

Come, Abelard! for

what hast thou to dread?

The torch of Venus burns not for the dead. Nature stands

Ev’n thou

art

check’d; religion disapproves: 7 cold—yet Eloisa loves.

following century, romantic images of Abelard and Heloise, represented in sculpture and painting, in poems and plays, rendered them an unavoidable presence in aristocratic and bourgeois culture. After the Revolution, the dismantling of cloister and church For the

as

resulted in the removal of their bodies to a Parisian cemetery (Pere-Lachaise).8 The cult of Abelard and Heloise, as the martyrs of romantic love, peaked in the mid-nineteenth century. Almost all of it in that age of letters, upon their letters, reproduced in nearly rested, a hundred editions, translations, and versions over about seventy-five years. In the midst of the cult’s popularity, in the year 1857, there appeared, in a new journal devoted to literary correspondence, the first scholarly article questioning the authenticity of 9 those same letters. And in the succeeding one hundred years scholarly and other reconstructions have enlivened each succeeding generation, becoming the occasion in this last generation for new editions (one still in progress), for learned disputes over authenticity, and for nude scenes of love-making and violation on and screen. stage The letters of Abelard and Heloise, and the corresponding images, cults, and reconstructions over the past centuries, may stand as emblematic for a pattern that could be traced out for many other medieval figures. In the case of Abelard’s equally famous adversary, Bernard of Clairvaux, Giles Constable has pointed up a remarkably intense recopying of his works (and those of many other twelfth-century spiritual writers) two centuries later by the so-called Modern 10 a pattern of reappropriation Devout and the Observants, which could be followed into the reading of Bernard byJohn Calvin

by seventeenth-century Trappists or by nineteenth-century restores of the religious life or indeed by nineteenth-century secular humanists, down to the reading and re-editing undertaken by Jean or

Leclercq in our own day which played so significant a role in the flowering of monastic studies. Patterns of recovery and transmission have plainly manifested themselves differently in the cases of Bernard and Abelard, betraying differing avenues and purposes work in the preserving and appropriating. Real differences in the medieval materials being preserved or appropriated are also disclosed. Medievalists have generally left it to “medievalism” to study the patterns of transmission, those framing images of the Middle Ages, while Medieval Studies has gone after that on which such reconstructions rest. But medievalists must be reminded from time to time of their intellectual debt to medievalism: what they are attempting to recall or represent or reconstruct is not so easily or naively separated from that framework, which is to say, from their overarching purposes (“why”) or their chosen means (“how”). Popular, even vulgar, forms of medievalism may often occasion serious scholarly study, either to clarify or to disabuse, and the scholarly interpretations of one generation may well persist, in attenuated or fancifled forms, as the popular images of the next. It is not so easy to separate out and describe in some ideal way, uncluttered at

or present purposes, the presumptive original of medieval studies. (“what”) Medieval Studies 11 is said to be interdisciplinary, a relatively new word in the educator’s vocabulary, as Roberta Frank has taught 12 A discipline is an acquired body of learning which, as its name us. suggests, shapes the mind. The disciplines, as educators use the word in university jargon today, represent intellectual conventions for the dividing up of human knowledge and expression. With the professionalization of higher education over the past century those conventions have acquired institutional forpi and interests as departments. The disciplining inherent in these disciplines comes quickly to light when two differently disciplined scholars discuss the same matter. What one, say a person disciplined in history, finds insightful or persuasive or helpful may well leave the other, say a person disciplined in philosophy, largely unmoved or unconvinced.

by past

content

person disciplined in art history, is invisible to or has no persuasive effect upon someone otherwise disciplined. And when one enters the sphere of another, say literary critics working out a philosophy-like conceptual apparatus, those What

one

sees, say

a

disciplined in the sphere encroached upon, say philosophers, can prove quick to dismiss the others as amateurs or not clear-headed. To break out of or transcend these disciplinary mind-sets, in other words, requires a difficult and risky undertaking, both intellectually and institutionally. A long view of the history of education may well disclose near constant motion between disciplining, the shaping of the mind and the affections toward certain ends, and the discipline, understood as the scientia or body of knowledge which is to be conveyed— with the emphasis tending toward one or the other in differing eras and circumstances. Except for a few remarkable figures like Dilthey or

Weber

or

Durkheim

at the turn

of the century, humanists, until

recently and for the most part, have waxed eloquent about the ends of their disciplining and largely presupposed as self-evident the object discipline: to shape literate or sensitive people, to form thoughtful citizens, historians treat the past, philosophers treat thought, musicologists treat music, English teachers treat grammar or composition or literature written in the English language, and so on. Each of these recognized “disciplines” appears to carve out or claim for itself, even “name,” some particular facet of human experience or expression or cognition in which its professors of their

good

or

or

claim expertise. But to what does a medievalist lay claim? What object does he she name and to what end? Medieval Studies was not conceived

origins as a discipline or a department. It arose as a challenge existing or newly forming intellectual conventions, an alternative

in its to

way to hold

together bodies of knowledge becoming separated or to pursue matters being neglected. Though individual champions of Medieval Studies certainly had particular subject-matters in mind, the proffered rationale intentionally did not specify any one aspect of human experience and expression across time and space, as did other disciplines. The first bulletin for Notre Dame’s Medieval Institute declared its intent in 1947 as “to acquire exact information about, and accurate knowledge of, Mediaeval life, thought and history by utilizing every method and device known to modern scholarship.” Stated generically, then, Medieval Studies is—potentially —the study of any and all peoples, societies, languages, cultures, and material artifacts found on one continent (Europe) during the course of one-thousand years (500-1500). As an ideal

the Kalamazoo Congress, Medieval Studies takes in all aspects of human thought and experience and expression, literally everything, as the student of past Kalamazoo programs knows, from theology to scatology. The act of segmenting off those thousand years, moreover, was not inspired by the perception of some internal dynamic or manifest feature. It was born rather of nostalgia and contempt, nostalgia on the part of European humanists and reformers for an earlier and better time, Antique or Early Christian, and an accompanying contempt for what separated them from that lost age. The temporal divider, that is, came first, segmenting off as “middle” all the years that divided humanists and reformers from a presumed better time; what unified those Middle Ages was not some essential internal characteristic—though several were soon ascribed to it—but rather the perception that they had intervened or disrupted. An exact reversal of this interplay of nostalgia and contempt came later, especially following the French Revolution, and it inspired another

conception

or as

generation

to

annually embodied

repudiate

reason,

at

industrialization, democracy,

or

secularization in order to seek again all that had been lost, or an image of what had been lost. For these people the temporal divider was explicitly assumed to have encompassed an age possessing thematic unity—a time of faith, social order, courtesy, closeness to nature, simpler human relations—which they desired to reclaim, in spirit or in deed. The

spatial

divider

looked back

was

largely finessed,

mainly

to

for while the first reformers

Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem (also

Augustine), they presupposed as the locus of their endeavors the lands in which they lived. The spatial boundaries represented a still living cultural reality, a product in fact of those Middle Ages. For that cultural unit they had many particluar and few general names. They increasingly substituted the classicizing “Europe” for the widespread but—to the good Latinist —embarrassing “christianitas.” Christendom, a complex term common in medieval sources and common still in the nineteenth century, referred essentially to the peoples, cultures, and lands of Latin Christianity, effectively overlooking or repudiating the Jews within and the Muslims or non-Christians beyond its borders. The “Europa” of ancient and medieval cartography took as its boundaries the Mediterranean and the rivers of Russia. But cartographers at times to, say, the Africa of

and humanists endowed that geographical space cultural force of “christianitas,” and latterly with

initially

with the

overtones

of scientific

building or political expansion. The “West,” a much vaguer term found occasionally in ancient sources, inevitably took its meaning from an explicit or implied contrast with the “East.” Other terms, “gothic” in particular, occasionally transformed a cultural smear into a spatial reality, as in “the gothic technology

or state

North.” Late

In recent years, the dividers have increasingly been dissolved. Antiquity (250-650) has acquired an epochal life of its own,

neither medieval

reminiscent of what after. Renaissance and Reformation have been drawn back into the Middle Ages, or the late Middle Ages forward into the early modern. Students of the long view have interposed new dividers (1000/1200-1800) and a new name (Old Europe), arguing that social and economic relations in particular retained medieval features into the nineteenth century. Students of

came

nor

antique but with features

before and what

came

culture, both high and low, have preferred to emphasize continuous appropriations and reappropriations, with persisting patterns

predispositions rather than the sharp breaks suggested by terms like “renaissance,” “reformation,” or “enlightenment.” All this is justified by greater attention to medieval peoples’ own sense of living on the cusp between the “ancient” and the “modern” (meaning, their own day), protected by the authority of “tradition” and carried forward by the force of “innovation” or “reform.” There is then no neutral or self-evident term for this thousand-year segment of European history and culture, for the object of the medievalist’s discipline, since each term comes laden with meaning implicit in the dividers or imposed by cultural appropriations, or

including our own. Abelard, too, repudiated "essentializing universals, though he held that the matter (res) was prior to a concept of it (intellectus) expressed by the voice in words (vox). For the modern scholar, difficulties persist in using any word whose past cultural overtones may be perceived, for instance, to exclude Islam or the Jewish peoples from medieval studies or indeed the eastern Christian peoples and cultures. Yet arguing terms apart from investigating peoples and cultures, a grave temptation at times, will not resolve the difficulty. And, again following Abelard, both the words and the concepts presuppose social patterns and

cultural unities necessary to render individual items from the medieval past intelligible, patterns which, though widely varying, remain distinguishable from those of antiquity and modern Europe. The “Middle Ages,” used in the plural and without singular thematic attributions, may prove, however artificial in origin, the most capacious term for the object of our study. But is that not simply to return to our

starting-point? point in creating

The

posit

an

all-encompassing definition is not to object of study full of materials

term but an

meaningless general potentially productive

of meaning. One volume entitled Medieval

Studies has divided its

subject-matter into 137 bibliographical

a

subfields,

each in itself

capacious (“canon law”

The true nominalist would be

required

to

“social history").13 list each of the

or

inclusion; here a rhetorical gesture must suffice. Medieval Studies must equip scholars to teach and write about Beolwulf, Dante, and Chaucer but also about writings not recognized

possible

items for

about Christendom but also about a Middle Ages not limited to Latin Christians; about kings and lords and peasants but also about a range of events and social relations with no as

literary

set texts;

direct connections to the modern state Anselm and

Aquinas anticipatory

or

parliaments;

about

and Ockham but also about thinkers not accounted of modern

Mystical Lamb but also

thoughts;

about Sutton Hoo

or

the

objects not idolized in modern museum or museum-like settings. The object of Medieval Studies is then as large and as pluralistic as the writings and artifacts

of the Middle

about innumerable

Ages themselves—and

so

conceived it allows, even combine patterns that may

encourages, medievalists to disrupt or to elsewhere have hardened into disciplines

or

departments.

This may sound too platitudinous or self-evident, until working medievalists apply it to cases they know. Since about 1290 Europeans and their cultural heirs have known about, and have given meanings to, the Abelard and Heloise of the letters, above all, the first letter, titled in manuscripts a “consolatory [letter] to a friend,” together with Heloise’s “deprecatory” reply (both rhetorical

various

exchange that followed. Medieval ample room in its teaching and for those first six letters. But there is as well the complicated study letter of spiritual guidance, a virtual rule for nuns, which has gained categories),

and the double

Studies must continue to make

more

careful attention in the debates of the last generation (and

in fact translated into medieval French, though not included in Monfrin’s widely used “standard edition” in 1959). There is Heloise the abbess, said at her death to be “outstanding in letters and religion" 14 (prima abbatissa documentis et religione clarissima) and “equal to her Peter in sensibility, moral action, and intellectual skill and without equal in her knowledge of Scripture” (Illa suo Petro was

15

par sensu, moribus, arte,/Scripturas omnes noverat absque pare), whose work establishing the institutions, prayer-life, and properties of the Paraclete can be partially reconstructed from letters, rules and cartularies. That

prayer-life elicited from Abelard 129 strikingly Paraclete, several of them translated into

for the

original hymns 16 by the later thirteenth century. There is Abelard the musician, of whom at least one melody has survived intact. There is Abelard the homilist; to Heloise, notably, Abelard explained in his prefatory letter that he was not an orator and that she would find 17 the rhetorical style plain. There is, as Abelard’s letter presupposes, Heloise the master of Latin letters, who could cite ancient florilegia to express modern emotion. There remains throughout Abelard the arrogant master whose presumed self-depiction has governed 18 most historical reconstructions of the early university. At the same time there is Abelard the Benedictine monk, who castigated the self-righteousness of the canons regular and the White Monks, likened contemporary monks to ancient philosophers, and died at 19 Cluny. There is Abelard the scriptural exegete, provoked to some of his most intriguing interpretations not by students in Laon and Paris (famous scenes in the correspondence) but by “problems posed by Heloise.” Heloise, the student of exegesis, seems to have compiled the forty-two “problems” and “solutions” in their extant form, complete with a rhetorically sophisticated prefatory letter declaring that she and the sisters were following his exhortations in French

attempting

to

understand Scripture. It

was

them, too, that he interpreted in effect reflections on

for

the opening providing 20 cosmography. There is Abelard the Christian who self-consciously raised in a “soliloquy” and in a “conversation” the question of his faith stance alongside that of a Jew and a “philosopher” (Arabic/Aristotelin 21 natural philosophy). There is Abelard the ethicist who wrote the first medieval Latin book on ethics as such, choosing for his title the Socratic “know yourself” (Scito teipsum), treating not the intricacies of love but—among other things—the nature of of Genesis,

an issue raised with respect to Heloise in his poem to Astrolabe. There is Abelard the thinker whose investigations into the nature of words and things were, it now seems, the product of his own original reflection, not of access to more Aristotelian sources. There is Abelard the theologian, whose attempts to rethink the central mystery of the Christian faith, to construe the Trinity in terms of concepts drawn from fresh philosophical reading (the Holy Spirit likened to Plato’s world soul, and so on), drew down the ire and condemnation of those who had never heard or conceived such thoughts and felt compelled to protect the received 22 language. And there is the human couple who wrote nearly all their extant works as castrated master and monk, as willing student but less than willing nun. The forms of address in their other letters intriguingly mirrored the contrasting personae of the correspondence, she addressing him as “beloved to many but most beloved to me” (dilecte multissed dilectissime nobis) and he her as “dear in the world but most dear in Christ” (soror Heloissa, in saeculo 23 quondam cara, nunc in Christo carissima). All these differing images of Abelard and Heloise, all the sources and disciplines required to reconstruct them—that is the Middle Ages envisioned by Medieval Studies. No single discipline in the modern university would accommodate all that is required to approach Abelard and Heloise as letter-writers, much less as poets, philosophers, liturgists, and ethicists; and therein remains the foundational justification for pursuing Medieval Studies, whether as a degree-granting program, a curricular arrangement, a gathering of like-minded people, or a personal scholarly ideal. But such differing images depend only in

penance,

their

son

part upon the range of sources, or our means of access to them, the factors recent medievalists have tended to emphasize (and to which this essay will return). They depend as well upon our purposes, some conscious, some arising unconsciously from cultural or social givens. It is essential, but not enough, to say that we intend to understsand Abelard and Heloise in the fullness of their own world. For, colloquially put, what we find has much to do with what, and

seeking. Dronke noted tellingly that opinions authenticity of the letters rested importantly upon whether scholars imagined such a love affair, such a troubled, even unrepentant, Heloise, as possible in the Middle Ages—or rather especially why, about the

we are

dismissed it all

rhetorician’s

naughty exercise, some celibate 24 fantasy. All scholarship, we have been told repeatedly in the last years, driven as much by the “why” as the “what” questions, the disciplining intent as much as the disciplinary content. Here too, Abelard as some

cleric’s erotic

is

25 A century ago scholars and Heloise offer rich illustration. in and found Heloise the sought champion of “free love,” in Abelard the champion of “free thinking,” a half-century ago in them both “Christian humanism” or in their ordered letters mutual 26 movement from physical love to spiritual care. In our own generation Le Goff has seen in Abelard “the first professor” Dronke in Heloise a “woman writer”; Brooke in their letters an early theology of love and marriage; Nichols in Heloise the first woman to articulate an anthropology that credited sensual perception by way of 27 the body; and so on. It may well be that in those areas of the academic enterprise which we Americans call “studies” the “why” questions play an even larger role in giving shape to the “what.” Where the subject matter is by definition capacious and amorphous, with no long tradition of set texts or set questions or set paths of pedagogy, the purposes that animate study will inevitably serve even more to structure the materials and matters studied. In our day, accordingly, questions animated by feminist concerns, by efforts to deal justly with Judaism and Islam, by sympathies with the “people,” by curiosity about non-Christian religious practices, by fascination with hermeneutic issues or linguistic interactions have done as much as new sources or new

disciplinary approaches

of the “what” of the Middle

to

enlarge

our sense

Ages.

The declared

goal of Medieval Studies was at its origins to pursue disinterested or “scientific” approach to Europe’s medieval past. Such declarations were (and are) sincerely made and to a degree truly practiced. Some students of neo-scholastic philosophy and theology hold, for instance, that the undoing of their modern forms came in part from the careful historical laying bare of their scholastic beginnings, even as the philologists and new critics who prepared editions opened the way for wholly opposing approaches to those same texts. Yet in the work of most scholars there have also a

pulsed deeper purposes, usefully distinguished as personal, public, and academic.

Personal purposes are as various as we are. We cannot escape ourselves as interpreters, though we may strive for a certain reflective or ironic distance. Our sources do not discover or interpret themselves. Some scholars therefore have taken up a more confessional mode, saying upfront what they are seeking and why. Sixty years ago Carl Becker coined the slogan “every man his own historian," and we might similarly encourage everyone to become their own medievalist, in effect to construct their own Middle Ages. But for all the reality of these personal purposes, and their effect upon our reconstructions, our teaching, writing, and intellectual exchange also presuppose common material, common language, common questions, even common conclusions. For the personal questions often merge, to greater or lesser degrees, into public questions; audiences require and expect that they will. For a generation or two medievalists, together with their students and readers, were interested, perhaps disproportionately, in the self as spirit, particularly as thinking or questing spirit, now increasingly in the self as body, especially engendered body; for many years in the self as bound up in political and social collectivities, now increasingly in the self as material agent; for many years in the self as giving expression

larger perceived realities, now more to the self as verbal signifier or image-maker creating realities; for many years to the self as absorbed into a comprehensive in words

or

images

to

the self as participating in competing or overlapping cultures. This way of putting it takes the orientations of the self, individual or collective, as the point of departure, as shaping the framing interpretive structures we bring to bear upon our medieval materials. Another approach presupposes a public medieval culture with which individual medievalists become engaged. In the realm of politics, positions were argued by way of medieval precedents, adjudged good or bad, well into the nineteenth century, past the French Revolution’s repudiation of “feudalism” and the English Reform Bill’s revision of county privileges, with the search for, say, representative government or constitutional precedents or women's legal status in the Middle Ages continuing into our day. In the realm of religion, down into the 1960s members of the Catholic church, and most outside it, saw in her Latin liturgy, Gregorian chant, devotional art, religious orders in their varied habits, canon

culture,

now more to

law, Thomistic theology, Aristotelian philosophy, and devotional practice a living extension of the medieval past. In the realm of culture,

early twentieth-century educators saw in the monuments of the European past the foundations of a high culture they concerned to pass on, whether in the field of national literatures, many

were

philosophical reflection, or artistic monuments, or universities, medieval Latin literature, the avowed purpose for the of the Medieval Academy of America. To engage in medieval founding studies was one way of understanding, participating in, even influencing, that public culture. or

or

In North America, however, Protestant, enlightened, and revolutionary founders sowed serious doubt early on about the “culture" to be found in medieval Europe. A century ago Henry Adams (and others) rethought those doubts and embraced new visions of medieval culture; waves of European immigrants—ironically, from the vantage point of Adams’s class—strengthened the sense of connection, and in 1949 Curtius believed he saw in American medievalists a conscious effort to reappropriate that culture. Then in 1958 Lynn White in turn rethought Henry Adams and rewrote medieval 28 culture to approximate American dynamism. But, for all these impulses to distance or to

reappropriate,

it remains true that Americans

call medieval culture theirs only at several removes: removed as it also is for modern Europeans; removed in space, to us only in books or museums; still farther removed, if present our familial or cultural roots are not European. Even Americans with familial or cultural roots in Europe sprang themselves mostly from among peasants, the unfree or dispossessed, those holding little personal stake in the old European order. The sting of that removal was real: asked why he had left, my grandfather, landless in the Dutch village of Kampernieuwstad, his only ambition and desire to work the land, replied brusquely that he had no land; so he left, never to see his native land again. But what such European immigrants carried to America was no less real: language and food, social behaviors and expectations, cultural commitments, religious beliefs. The heirs to those immigrants have never been able to decide whether they should spitefully keep their distance, avoiding that old corruption, or return to Europe with pent-up intensity, reclaiming or making space for all that was once denied them. The study of the European Middle Ages remains for Americans a conin time,

connection and disjunction, the tug of social and cultural features still influential among us and the shimmer of something totally and yet perceptibly other. The sense of distance has its advantages. Call it the outsider’s

tinuing dialectic between

the peasant’s perspective. We can raise any question, pursue any subject-matter, without regard for party or religious affiliation, for regional or national loyalties, for school networks or university patronage.

or

For

some

have functioned

Americans,

mostly

as

the

European Middle Ages Happy Isles, the totally (but appreciably)

it is true, the

other. Others have exercised benign neglect or sharp critique or focused upon that which fell outside the Old Order, the peasants, the marginalized, the Jews, the dissidents, the heretics— evident, for instance, in the work of Henry Charles Lea. But the issue for our generation—given changing demographic patterns, a deeper embedding of distinctly American social and cultural patterns, and access to a variety of cultures around the world—is whether medieval Europe has still the compelling quality of connectedness, of something worth studying and quarreling about, whether indeed it has any noteworthy function in public culture, or is

merely one possible “origin,”

“other,”

one

possible figure

of the

among many from which Americans could choose.

distantly Despairing

medievalists can easily summon up numerous arguments on the negative side. Yet it is worth noting all the work that rests upon a conviction of something worth recalling or representing differently: ly: feminist scholars tracing back into the Middle Ages the dilemmas faced by women in their social roles and self-understanding, students of Jewish history tracing back into Christendom the social and cultural position of that people, scholars of sexuality tracing back into the Middle Ages moral expectations and surprising possibilities; students of philosophy tracing logical and metaphysical foundations back into a rewritten history of medieval philosophy; and much more. Whatever medievalists may understand to be their personal and public purposes and however those may influence their sense of what the Middle Ages encompass, their work is carried out in the world of the academy. Their representations of the Middle Ages must intersect and shape those of students. As late twentieth-century Americans, students too are alternately fascinated and put off by the European Middle Ages. The reasons are easily stated: peo-

ple reared in mass democracies have for monarchical or lordly institutions;

preoccupations

of

religious

little a

taste or

understanding

materialistic age finds the

hardly intelligible; an “updated” medieval past mostly embarrassing; popular culture a

age

church finds its finds the artifices of noble courts or the elitist culture of Latin clerics incomprehensible. Or students may be drawn precisely to that which was configured so differently, and by other equally plausible attractions, including a concern to understand the sources of their own culture and the nature of the world’s “Europeanization.” In either case the teacher is left with a challenge, to render more intelligible what seems at first a wholly other world populated by wholly other people, or to render more complex what has been too comfortably and superficially appropriated. But this is only to state for Medieval Studies the tasks peculiar to good pedagogy. The as

more

appropriate questions may have

professionals: we are doing

we

be those

exaggerated

our

we

put

own

to ourselves

scruples

medievalists and why, and in effect foisted them upon our audiences? Patent dangers loom at either extreme. If the formative stage in the making of European culture and society is studied only as the distant past, and for its own sake, the learning has no power of disciplining, little or no formative meaning for the present-day student or reader. But if the European past is rendered only through the framing lens of present-day questions, making it largely an additional tool or weapon in contemporary cultural or social disputes, the learning loses much or most of its about what

as

disciplinary content, becoming thereby, ironically, equally dispensable or irrelevant. To justify our enterprise in the world of higher education, our approach to the Middle Ages must proceed in tension, must make its way through a kind of magnetized force-field, with the past “in its own right” as one imaginary pole and the present in its own right as the other. As professionals, medievalists must address not only questions of content and purpose but also questions of technique (the “how”), of the expertise appropriate

to

their intellectual labors.

This essay will conclude by saying something about five marks found, it seems to me, in professional medievalists, though not all necessarily in the same scholar.

There is, first, expertise in the materials remaining to us from medieval cultures and societies. Virtually all those materials were

hand-made, from the codices containing written works (manuscripts) to the visual images, from the buildings to the furrowed fields. Medievalists, oriented early on toward philology, have virtually transformed their subject by focusing ever greater attention on the material transmitters of medieval cultural and social life: the manuscripts themselves in codicology, their scripts in paleography, documents in diplomatics, material remains in archeology, seals in sphragology, coins in numismatics, images in catalogues and iconographic indices, and so on through an ever longer list. Out of this arose, in the minds of some, notions of the medievalist as a high-powered technician, a person whose claim to scientia rests upon an acquired expertise in handling materials as arcane to most people quantum physics. Medievalists forego acquiring such skills at their peril, at the risk indeed of laying any foundation for their interpretive endeavors. This is not to sacrifice the intellect to technique, or meaning to method. For most medievalists it remains clear that the materials, however fascinating in themselves, are not the end, neither for our students nor for our readers, that the foundation is not the building. Just as importantly, careful attention to medieval materials renders the act of interpretation more complex, not less, makes it palpably plain that ordered photographs or printed editions may radically foreshorten contextual realities and possibilities. This holds true for major and oft-edited literary monuments like Beowulf or the Canterbury Tales, as it does for the notes taken by schoolmen, the lists kept by stewards and merchants, the images fabricated for churches, the tapestries woven for castle walls. Scholarly productions too far abstracted from the material realities have regularly created “works” or “units” or “languages” or “cultural intentions” or “social groups” that never existed as such. On the other hand, to yield entirely to the particular, to make as many editions as there are manuscripts, or to make no edition at all—the temptation of our age—is no less an act of interpretation, albeit a despairing 29 one. Rendering medieval cultures and societies more complex— if you prefer, “problematizing” its literary works or social configurations —has arisen, in short, as much from more careful attention to the materials as from latter-day questions. Expertise in medieval materials must comprise more than a pious sentiment, a rhetorical flourish, a quick glance at a manuas

script, image, or charter “in the original” before publishing. It must be born of practice: tracing out the scripts of more than one manuscript,

reading visually the textures and lines of more than one local image, reconstructing more than one manuscript from loose quires leaves to bound codex, choosing among several variants to construct a text. Only at that point does the medievalist come face to

or

face with the nature of the medieval materials in which he or she claims expertise. This requires that medievalists have opportunities to learn, extending to the equivalent of apprenticeships in classrooms or less formal settings. It means too that the profession must continue to make space for those whose life’s work consists in developing, teaching, or applying such skills. Most medievalists can attain, with effort and practice, at least artisan levels of skill; those who achieve, or are gifted with, truly genial expertise remain few. Moreover, few medievalists will attain multiple such competences —a reality brought home painfully when a child or friend asks about some object in a museum or book, and we know only as much as the curators or editors have explained to us. At the risk of overstating the point, and making this essay too long, the general claim may be tested again on Abelard and Heloise. For all the attention paid to their letters and love life, serious research into the manuscript transmission has been undertaken only in the last generation. It was twenty years ago, in 1972, that John Benson first asked pointedly why, if they were authentic, Abelard and Heloise’s letters had remained hidden for 160 years (from 1130-1290)? Where had the original pieces gone (none survive)? And who made of them an ordered correspondence?30 Is not Heloise, in the Paraclete, the most likely keeper and the most likely editorial hand—quite the opposite of arguments a generation ago from printed text that Abelard had composed hers, or even Benton's notion of the correspondence as a celibate’s fantasy? But what purposes, private or public, should be read in this rhetorical exchange? What signs of editing—of her editing—remain? Should it be compared to her editing of the forty-two questions and answers 31 on scriptural interpretation, of which we have still no critical edition? The questions are no less basic about Abelard’s production. His philosophical and theological works have survived mostly in one to four manuscripts. Why? Do they represent the fragments of

restless teacher who never properly wrote out his teaching? Scraps copied on the run by students in different times and places? The inevitable aftermath of heresy charges? Or the lack of a religious order interested enough to preserve and transmit his works? The works of Bernard of Clairvaux and Hugh of St. Victor have come down to us in the hundreds of manuscripts. Should we conclude that Abelard’s influence and personage have been wholly exaggerated by modern interpreters reading only printed editions 32 Is it significant that Abelard’s and his own arrogant accounts? “apology” (the public defense of his faith) has come down in the most copies (14), with his poem to his son Astrolabe, his challenging repository of Sic et Non authorities, and one version of his theology all tied for second (12 each)? Does this transmission tell us about Abelard, his times and his influence, or about the avenues of transmission, also an aspect of medieval culture? Careful attention to the materials, in short, offers no way out, and certainly no end in itself. It necessarily forms the basis, however, for whatever representations medievalists may choose in the future to make of Abelard and Heloise. The second mark of medievalists is attentiveness to language. Inherited from earlier philological ly oriented scholars, it has been sustained by necessity. Whatever medievalists choose to study, they must deal with materials written in languages that are not modern, whether medieval Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, or the medieval vernaculars. This is not peculiar to the literary scholar; the economic historian dealing with financial records, the art historian pursuing patronage, the musicologist reading lyrics, the philosopher interpreting thought in its original formulation—all must deal with medieval languages simply to do their work. And since medieval societies and cultures were at once international and local, modern studies appear in all the European languages. a

This,

too, has

required

a

degree

of

specialization

that may

make the medievalist look more like a technician than a scholar. All the learned multi-volume dictionaries and glossaries contain indispensable scholarship, which may appear to be more enabling than interpretive and enticing. American institutions in particular may struggle to justify expensive enterprises which have no apparent bearing upon the national language. The Medieval Academy of America, ironically, was founded precisely to protect learning in the

to western medieval culture, medieval Latin, has no obvious heir or protector. Each medievalist must additionally find ways to achieve competence in the particular subfields, whatever the languages, in which he or she works. Thus the social historian must know the vocabulary for farm implements or positions at court, the musicologist the words for musical instruments and styles, the historian of medicine the language of bodies and herbs, the legal historian the nuances of law and the courts, and the literary historian more capaciously all the language's

language fundamental

which

now

possibilities. Increasing mastery, once again, is not a matter of technique alone but of gaining an interpretive capacity essential for access to medieval cultures and societies. Echoes and reminiscences from the Scriptures, rhetoric patterned on schoolbook or classical models, divisions drawn from legal or economic records, and much more must become recognizable to the medievalist, for these were the presumed framework, at times the unconscious givens, of medieval cultural expression. But for the medievalist working backwards through the language toward those social and cultural givens, rather than outward from them, the language presents an additional problem. It is the fundamental question about whether and how social and cultural realities can be reconstructed by way of linguistic 33 expression. To a degree all scholarly work presupposes it. Already in medieval times, when the Word was the presumed access to or expression of Ultimate Reality, differing philosophical views developed—Abelard was himself a contributor—on the relations between words and things. The pendulum has swung steadily, also in our own day, between notions of the text as disclosing only the text or relations with other texts and the text as disclosing realities beyond. While there may be general disciplinary inclinations— broadly speaking, historians to infer social and cultural realities, literary scholars to infer internal or intertextual references—all scholars incline one way or the other not just according to mood or conviction but, it must be conceded, according to what proves useful to a given argument. Both extremes remain in high fashion, to read realities directly out of the words, even as being shaped by the words, and to read the words mostly as words, as intertextual play. Even if medievalists temper extreme claims in practice, the evidence they cite to elicit a more contextualized reading itself rests on readings of medieval language.

Language

in the Middle

Ages also had

an

interactive social

function. Medieval societies were necessarily multi-lingual and multi-cultural. The language of religion, often of the state and of institutions, of higher learning, of medicine, and more was at one remove at least from the language of the home, the street, and the field, a lesser remove in the case of the romance-speaking countries, a near total remove in the case of germanic, Slavic, or Celtic countries. But the vernacular language of the courts or the cities, and eventually of the written literatures, was itself at some remove from the countless regional and local dialects of village and home. Medievalists must therefore sort out not only the written and the oral languages, with the varying social and cultural roles assigned to each, but must also attempt to reconstruct various layers of understanding or comprehension in the interaction of all these languages —with their own conclusions drawn from the reading of extant written texts and without forgetting that medieval Latin was itself a spoken language. Here too, some simple social division or univocal linguistic theory will not do the job. Careful and thoughtful reading in more than one medieval language will help. Analogies from multi-lingual, multi-cultural America may prove helpful, if

discerningly applied. From Abelard and Heloise

we

have

only

Latin

works, though

Abelard was originally from Brittany and Heloise from Paris. Was their love-making conducted in the Latin which the master taught his student, or in the Old French of the Parisian streets? Initially their exchanges were more brazen in writing than in speaking (pleraque audacius scribere quam colloqui et moult de choses plus hardiment escripre que de bouche dire). But when Abelard teasingly recalled the seduction (assuming he wrote this), should we think it in his labored Latin or Jean de Meun’s French? With the books lying open, he tells us, more words were exchanged about love than about the reading, more kisses than learned sayings; hands reached more for breasts than for books, and eyes mirrored love more than they were directed to the reading. 34 But how should we reconstruct intentions out of these words? Abelard introduced it all as a conquest born of the pride that leads to a fall; Heloise described it as a love that emptied itself and transcended all forms to gain the beloved. But when she declared the name “friend,” even “concubine” or “courtesan,” dearer to her than “wife,” was she thinking those words in the schoolmen’s Latin or =

35 the Parisians’ Old French? Whichever the case, Abelard thought that Heloise, amidst the love-making, learned her Latin rhetoric well: he introduces her as not the least in beauty but the best in letters (Que cum per faciem non esset infima, per habundantiam Et comme ceste ne feust pas basse par litterarum erat suprema. 36 babundance de lettres estoit la souveraine). He assumed beauté, par that she had also learned her technical theology well. To reassure her in the midst of troubling charges about her husband’s =

heterodoxy—or as he ambiguously put it, so that all worry and shadow might be driven from the white splendor of her breast (a soient desploiees de la beauté candore tui pectoris explodantur de ton couraige)—Abelard set out for her his confession of faith, a technical statement requiring real theological understanding to =

37 The future of Abelard and Heloise, in read, let alone to grasp or as as lovers, rests upon our ability to grasp short, theologians

their

language in all its nuances. The third mark of medievalists is

two marks

of the

interdisciplinarity. If the first technically learned, the mastery

suggested something languages, the third must reclaim all the intel ectual liberty originally associated with the notion of not being bound, intellectually or institutionally, by the conventions or orthodoxies of a single discipline. This is much easier to say than to do, either in the classroom or in research or in the disciplining of one’s of materials and

own

mind and sensitivities. The

shortcuts,

history

into

a

a

little poetry thrown into

study

image

temptation

of

literature,

and

a

is to reach for face-saving

work of history,

inevitably

these

days

a

little

an

exemplary

or two.

The most general temptation of late is to combine disciplinary work with one or another framing conceptual apparatus called generically “theory.” The principle is clear and not unwelcome to an interdisciplinary medievalist: to address the larger questions of

knowing, interpreting, and perceiving which help scholars escape the traps of disciplinary conventions. In practice, however, “theory” has become virtually another discipline with its own canons of authors, assumptions and intellectual conventions (generally present-minded in the extreme), and its own discourses. its

own

sets of

At best it becomes thus another set

discipline with which multidisciplinary

medievalists might choose to intersect; at worst another of strictures to escape or rise above. To speak the

language

of Beowulf and of

Foucault, of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle 38

speak two languages, and thus perhaps one form of interdisciplinarity. By acting as a kind of leaven in the academic dough, by raising fundamental questions about how texts and

Derrida,

is indeed to

be inferred from them, and the like, theoretical discourse may form some kind of useful preamble, putting questions into play—not just about language, but about social configurations, and the like—that might otherwise get overlooked. The exercise has missed something, however, if the confrontation is not tense, even explosive, for the presuppositions about the nature and ends of human life in medieval texts and in contemporary theories are frequently, perhaps mostly, in tension or even directly at odds. Interdisciplinarity cannot be reduced to a single definition, or it would mark the beginning of a new discipline. It cannot mean without discipline, the opportune seizing upon one or another image mean, what

can

representation that happens to suit or to please. It must mastering, or at least moving comfortably, in more than one discipline. The habits of mind, the tenor of questions, the method of thought, associated with a given discipline must be acquired, and yet worn lightly enough to make room for those of another, if not or

mean

several others. An interdisciplinary scholar refuses to be trapped by the modes of a single discipline but draws appreciably, not superficially, upon several. Curricular programs may help, but finally this must be a personal achievement. It requires double duty in the mastery of materials and paths of pedagogy. More than that, it requires living with honest intellectual tension. The literary scholar, the historian, and the art historian will not think or see the same objects in the same way. To reproduce that tension in a classroom is most instructive for students (and for the instructors). To reproduce that tension in a single mind, to interpret and to write intelligibly in the midst of that tension, is another matter and a far greater

challenge.

One crucial element in medieval

interdisciplinarity

is the

effort to contextualize, or as Lee Patterson has argued “to historicize.39" The latter term has come to assume many meanings, particularly in the work of literary scholars. In this context, however, while allowing for all the complexities of historical understanding and reconstruction, it means that whatever habits of mind are brought to bear upon the materials and languages of the Euro-

pean Middle

Ages, the results must be disciplined by an attempt to measure them against the possibilities of the medieval context. It means as well that the personal, the contingent, the subjective, whether in thought or action, must receive its due, as must the political and social circumstances within which the personal is played out. This introduces an additional tension in the interpretive act: not all the possibilities generated by multidisciplinary work, but all the possibilities measured against, disciplined by, the context. Nothing will so quickly discredit interdisciplinary work as the impression that it offers up glib comparisons or flattened generalities that no disciplined scholar would accept. It will require scholars who can live with and reproduce those tensions, the tensions inherent in differing habits of mind, and the tensions between all the possibilities and the contextual possibilities, to represent justly Heloise the writer, the lover, the nun, the exegete, and the mother; or Abelard the master, the monk, the hymn-writer, the philosopher, the castrated lover, and the preacher. It deserves note in this regard that one of the recent series of books on Abelard and Heloise was devoted 40 almost entirely to questions of context. The fourth mark of

a

medievalist

is, ironically

and

more

briefly, disciplinary. generation ago medievalists took great intel ectual pleasure in linking up with colleagues outside their own discipline (as is evident still at Kalamazoo). But where medievalists are present in sufficient numbers and with a vital program they may well begin to think of other medievalists as their natural colleagues. And within departmentalized disciplines modernists may be only too happy to relegate medieval colleagues or medieval subject-matters to Medieval Studies. Some medievalists may also hide behind their interdisciplinarity as an excuse to avoid questions, texts, or methods within a discipline which they find repugnant or irrelevant. It was against all these tendencies, and in behalf of medievalists willing to address contemporary issues, that Lee Patterson spoke out in his critique of a—sometimes willfully—marginalized 41 Medieval Studies. A

Reclaiming

or

insisting

upon

disciplinarity is not just a pragmatic a departmental home or a contemporary

move, a way to find a job or voice. It is an intellectual

necessity, both with respect to medieval materials and to our academic responsibilities. One cannot take on the question of Heloise’s rhetorical expertise or our

Abelard’s concept of moderate realism unless one has been formed in the deeper and longer traditions of Latin literature or western philosophy. Moreover, if medievalists expea to be heard, they must also listen: they must be open, horizontally and diachronically, to the questions and observations of their disciplinary colleagues. Of late, however, this argument has become somewhat one-sided, exhorting medievalists to take over and apply the questions, the method, or the jargon which other colleagues find compelling. Medievalists certainly should not be afraid to confront such questions; it was in many cases the Middle Ages that first laid the philosophical or literary foundations that made possible the asking of such questions in modern western culture. But by the same token, medievalists should not fear to take on their colleagues, ancient or modern, on the basis of questions, cultural concerns, and social configurations peculiar to medieval Europe. The intellectual exchange must go both ways, within and beyond the disciplines, if Abelard and Heloise are in the future to be taken seriously both in their own right and in contemporary culture. The fifth mark of a medievalist, lastly and also briefly, is that he or she is, by instinct, a comparativist. The same impulse of mind that makes someone unsatisfied with the conventions or strictures of a single discipline will also incline them to seek points of comparision, a means to triangulate on the subject-matter they are attempting to understand and communicate. This instinct has at times been channeled off too quickly into set paths, the legal historian turning to comparative constitutions (when “constitution” may require a wholly different sense in a medieval context), the literary or religious historian manipulating indo-germanic myths. But the instinct remains an important one, which, soundly practiced, medievalists must encourage in one another. The difficulty in making comparisons, as in developing interdisciplinarity, is to get beyond the superficial fix, the all too easy likening of one motif or rhetorical pattern or folkloric story to another. A self-conscious comparativist must seek to grasp genuine differences in mental or cultural patterns, while allowing for, say, transferences between the vernacular of the court and the Latin of the cleric. The same applies to philosophers: it is one thing to note the role of Jewish and Arabic thinkers in shaping the conceptual apparatus Latin Christians brought to Aristotle; it is another to high-

light the differences that persisted, and to seek out their sources in larger cultural or religious predispositions. Self-conscious comparativists of comparison apt for medieval studies. studies of non-literate societies on the edge of modernity,

must choose

Anthropological

points

viewed through the lens of modern examiners, have inspried medievalists to reexamine the cultural and ritual histories of medieval Europe’s non-literate peoples, often quite fruitfully. But it may be that comparisons to a society such as that in Hindu India may be more apt; there too was a relatively common sacred text, protected and interpreted by a sacred caste, producing a relatively common veneer of culture, beneath which there developed a congery of differing peoples, languages, and societies. The tensions in such a society between the sacred and the profane, the literate and the non-literate, the socially privileged and the unprivileged, may offer far more fitting points of comparison for the situation in me-dieval Christendom. To make such comparisons meaningfully will require more than seizing upon some neat structure provided by Geertz or Turner; it would require steeping one’s self in another language and culture. But that should be the impulse of a medievalist, sensitive to the distinct cultural worlds that competed or blended in the making of Europe. The movement of modern Americans and Europeans onto a global stage represents no threat as such to the study of Europe in its formative stage. Danger lies more in the direction of that homogenization of all cultures promoted by the popular media and encountered by Americans mostly in the comfort of their couches or their theater seats. Where the full reality of cultural and social difference becomes manifest, with their consequences for peoples’ lives, questions about the origins of various western societies in the European Middle Ages will, if properly dealt with, only become more interesting.

Medievalists,

to

conclude,

must find their way

through—to

return

earlier image—a kind of forcefield: constrained by medieval materials, by medieval words, and no less by modern-day questions and assumptions, drawn by interpretive questions from multiple perspectives, no less by comparative questions that put early Europe into comparative settings. At the center of this imaginary forcefield there must be scholars and teachers who are imaginative, thoughtful, and critical. For in the end no amount of expertise or methodology, interdisciplinary or otherwise, directed to an

at sources or at comes

only

of mind

interpretation, will yield compelling insights. That quality of mind and imagination, however dependent

from the

upon fundamental skills. The ends to which those qualities directed must likewise arise from subjective powers of

are

judgment and discernment. For many those ends remain the pleasure of scholarly work, the scientia, of acquiring multidisciplinary learning, about the medieval European past. For many it is the selfconscious pursuit of a particular political, cultural, or religious For some academics, more openly stated these days, it is agenda. the pursuit of power and influence (Abelard’s own self-confessed aims). And for some it is sapientia, wisdom or insight into the human condition, born of thoughtful multidisciplinary reflection on the achievements, dilemmas, and perceptions of human beings in medieval Europe. Those methods and ends have to do not only with ourselves and our students and our readers; they have to do as well with the future of Abelard and Heloise.

Notes In memory of

Lynn White, Jr., and Michael Sheehan

1. Cited here from Eric Hicks, ed., La Vie et les Epistres Pierres Abaelart et Heloys sa fame, Nouvelle bibliothèque du moyenâge 16 (Paris-Geneva, 1991), xxvii (with further references). 2. For the manuscripts, see Jacques Monfrin, Abélard, Historia calamitatum (Paris, 1959), 9-31; David Luscombe, Julia Barrow, and Charles Burnett, “A Checklist of the Manuscripts Containing the Writings of Peter

Abelard and Heloise and Other Works Closely Associated with Abelard and His School,” Revue d’Histoire des Textes 14-15 (1984-1985): 244-245; and Hicks, La Vie et les Epistres, xliv-liv. On fourteenth-century humanist readers of the correspondence, see Peter Dronke, Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Testimonies, W. R Ker Lecture 26 (Glasgow, 1976), 55-60. Because this is not an essay on Abelard and Heloise as such, I will cite literature only for illustrative purposes. 3. Jacques Monfrin, “Le problème de l’authenticité de la correspondance d’Abélard et d’Heloise,” in Pierre Abélard—Pierre le Vénérable (Paris, 1975), 415f., has argued that the entire transmission rests on a single, now lost, exemplar, which he presumes came from the Paraclete. 4. For the arguments, which have taken many twists and turns, see John Benton, “Fraud, Fiction, and Borrowing in the Corresponence of

Abelard and Heloisein Pierre Abélard, 469-506, followed by his retraction in “A Reconsideration of the Authenticity of the Correspondence of Abelard and Heloise,” and the further commentary of D. E. Luscombe, “The Letters of Heloise and Abelard since ‘Cluny 1972’,” and Peter von Moos, “Post festurn: Was kommt nach der Authentizitätsdebatteüber die Briefe Abaelards und Heloises?” in Petrus Abaelardus (1079-1142): Person, Werk und Wirkung, ed. Rudolf Thomas, Trierer Theologische Studien 38 (Trier 1980), 41-52, 19-40, 75-100. The strongest defender of “fraud” is now Hubert Silvestre, “L’Idylle d’Abélard et Héloïse: la part du roman,” Bulletin de la Classe des Lettres et des Sciences Politiques de l’Académie Royale de Belgique 5e série 71 (1985): 157-200.

photograph of the original document recording the translation reproduced in Charlotte Charrier, Héloïse dans l’histoire et dam la légende (Paris, 1933), facing p. 306. 6. Ibid 403-406, with a reproduction of the title page. 7. Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard,” 11. 29-36, 225-28, 231-34, 245-48, 257-60. 8. The story of their various sepulchral monuments is a long and interesting one, well told by Charrier, Heloise, 309-365. 9. L. Lalanne, “Quelques doutes sur l’authenticité de la correspondance amoureuse d’Héloïse et d’Abailard,” La Correspondance litteraire 1 5. A

.,

(1856-1857): 27-33. 10. Giles Constable, “The Popularity of Twelfth-Century Spiritual Writers in the Late Middle Ages,” in Renaissance Studies in Honor ofHans Baron, ed. Anthony Molho-John Tedeschi, (Florence-DeKalb, Ill., 1971), 5-28; and “Twelfth-Century Spirituality and the Late Middle Ages,” Medieval and Renaissance Studies 5 (1971): 27-60. 11. In this essay I try to maintain a distinction between “medieval studies” (lower case), meaning any and all possible study of the European Middle Ages, and “Medieval Studies” (upper case), meaning some curricular or degree-granting arrangement. The latter is obviously some specific or institutionalized form of the former. But in my experience nearly every institutional arrangement of Medieval Studies varies, depending upon the local constellation of departments, colleges, programs, and budgets, even the force of local personalities and patrons. 12. Roberta Frank, “‘Interdisciplinary’: The First Half-Century,” in Wordsfor Robert Burchfield’s Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. E. G. Stanley and T. E Hoad (Cambridge, 1988), 91-101. 13. Everett Crosby, Julian Bishko, and Robert Kellogg, Medieval Studies: A Bibliographical Guide (New York, 1983). 14. From a necrology, still in manuscript (Troyes 2450), cited in Charrier,

Héloïse, 301.

15. This

epitaph

edited and discussed in Dronke, Abelard and Helosie,

21-22, 49.

Chrysogonus Waddell, Hymn Collectionsfrom the Paraclete, nn. 8-9 (Trappist, Ky., 1987-1989)

16.

Cistercian

Liturgy Series,

17. PL 178.379-80 18. Essential, for instance, to Jacques Le Goff, “How Did the Medieval University Conceive of Itself?” in his Time, Work and Culture in the Middle

Ages (Chicago, 1980), 122-134;

but likewise

to most

other

depictions.

19. Letter 12, ed. E. R. Smits, Peter Abelard, Letters IX-XIV (Groningen, 1983), 257-269, with commentary 153-172; and the sermon against the Cistercians

published by L.J. Engels,

“Attendite

a

falsis prophetis: Un

texte de Pierre Abélard contre les Cisterciens retrouveé?” in Corona Gratiarum:

Mélanges E. Dekkers (Bruges, 1975) 2.195-228; and more generally, David Luscombe, “Pierre Abélard et le monachisme,” in Pierre Abélard, 271-278. 20. PL 178.677-78, 731-32. Eileen Kearney is preparing an edition of this text. 21. Collationes or Dialogus inter philosophum, Iudeum et Christianum, ed. Rudolf Thomas (Stuttgart, 1970). In the opening of the dialogue he could also label Christians, from the philosopher’s stance, as “insane.” 22. Orientation to the latter two aspects now by David Luscombe, in History of Twelfth-Century Western Philosophy, ed. Peter Dronke (Cambridge, 1988), 279-307. 23. PL 178.677, 375, 731, 1771. Good orientation by Mary M. McLaughlin, “Abelard as Autobiographer: The Motives and Meaning of his ‘Story of Calamities’,” Speculum 42 (1967): 463-488, and “Peter Abelard

A

and the

Dignity

of Women:

Twelfth-Century

‘Feminism’ in

Theory

and

Abélard, 287-334 24. Dronke, Abelard and Heloise, whose entire lecture, with its various partial editions, aimed to establish what contemporaries and near contemporaries held to be believable about Abelard and Heloise. 25. Besides Charrier, Héloïse, see Peter von Moos, Mittelalterforschung und Ideologiekritik: Die Gelehrtenstreit um Heloise (Munich, 1974), which perceptively reviews the interpretive attitudes scholars have Practice,”

brought

in Pierre

to

their

philological

treat the controversy before it in motion anew!

discussions of

authenticity.

His 135 pages all

Benton, “Fiction, Fraud, and Borrowing,”

set

26. E. Gilson, Heloise and Abelard (Ann Arbor, 1968), which grew of a course at the Collègede France in 1936-37 on “The Medieval Origins of Humanism.” The notion of the ordered correspondence as il ustrating out

a

spiritual progression

was

suggested by Richard Southern, Me-

dieval Humanism (New York, 1970), 86-104, in a paper first read in 1953, and was argued more fully by D. W. Robertson, Abelard and Heloise (New

York, 1972). 27. Jacques Le Goff, Les Intellectuels au moyenâge (Paris, 1957), 40;

of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete (Cambridge, 1984); Christopher Brooke, The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford, 1989), 93-118; Stephen Nichols, “An Intellectual Anthropology of Marriage in the Middle Ages,” in The New Medievalism, ed. Marina S. Brownlee, Kevin Brownlee, and Stephen G. Nichols (Baltimore 1991), 85-88. 28. A lecture on “The Medieval Bases of Western Thought,” included in Ernst Robert Curtius’s European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York, 1963), 585-596. Lynn White, Jr.’s “Dynamo and Virgin Reconsidered," first published in the American Scholar (1958), reprinted in White’s essays, published as Machina ex Deo in 1968 and republished as Virgin and Dynamo Reconsidered: Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture (Cambridge, Mass, 1971), 57-74. 29. See for instance, David E Hult, “Reading it Right: The Ideology of Text Editing,” in The New Medievalism, 113-130. 30. Benton, “Fraud, Fiction, and Borrowing,” 471-473 (the first point in his challenging essay). Peter

Dronke, Woman

Writers

31. See Peter Dronke, “Heloise’s Problemata and Letters: Some Form and Content,” in Petrus Abaelardus, 53-73. 32. Nikolaus M Häring, “Abelard Yesterday and Today,” in Pierre Abélard, 341-403, with the provocative summary (based on the number of extant manuscripts), “... Abelard’s original popularity was of very short duration.... We know much more about Abelard today than scholars of many centuries before us knew or cared to know about him. They considered their parchment too precious to ‘waste’ it on Abelard, whereas we admire the manifold and many-sided revelations of his genius.” 33. A point well made by Gabrielle Speigel, “History, Historicism, and the Social Logic of the Text in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 65 (1990):

Questions of

59-86.

“Apertis itque libris, plura de amore quam de lectione verba se ingerebant, plura erant oscula quam sententie; sepius ad sinus quam ad 34.

libros reducebantur manus, crebrius oculos amor in se reflectebat quam lectio in scripturam dirigebat.” “Quant li livre donquez estoient ouvert, s’embatoient entre nous d’amour que de leçon; plus y de plus parolles venoient baissiers que sentences; plus souvent getions les mains es saings que aus livres; plus souvent reflechisoit amour les yeulx de l’un a l’autre que la leçon ne faisoit a l’escripture.” (Hicks, La Vie et les Epistres, 11.) =

35. “Et si uxoris nomen sanctius ac validius videtur, dulcius michi semper extitit amice vocabulum, aut—si non indigneris—concubine vel scorti....” “Et se li noms d’estre appellee ta femme me semblast plus sains et mielx vaillans, li noms d’amie me fust tousjours plus dous, ou se tu n’en as desdaing, le nom de meschine ou de ta soingnante..." (Hicks, La Vie et les Epistres, 49. My italics.) =

36. Ibid 37. Ibid

.,

10.

149-150. It is disputed whether the French translation of and of two other pieces came from Jean de Meun. confessio 38. See the interesting examples in Allen Frantzen’s Speaking Two Languages: Traditional Disciplines and Contemporary Theory in Medieval Studies (Albany, 1991), particularly Frantzen’s own “Prologue: Documents and Monuments: Difference and Interdisciplinarity in the Study of Medieval Culture” and Martin Irvine’s “Medieval Textuality and the Archaeology of Textual Culture,” 1-33, and 181-210. 39. “Critical Historicism and Medieval Studies,” in Lee Patterson, ed., Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380-1530 (Berkeley, .,

this

1990), 1-14. 40. Abélard et son temps, ed. Jean Jolivet (Paris, 1981). 41. Lee Patterson, “On the Margin: Postmodernism, Ironic History, and Medieval Studies,” Speculum 65 (1990): 87-108, and Negotiating the Past

(Madison, 1987), 37-38.

Order Social the Christening

Christening V Romans the

Europe was christened in the waters of Roman Christianity. Creeds, liturgies, hierarchies, saints, and ascetic practices favored in later imperial Rome washed the European peoples in successive centuries and marked their Christianity indelibly. The splendor of that imperial era, rescued from facile notions of a declining Rome, has come to historical life in a distinct epoch called “late antiquity” (300-650). Its monuments testify to an ethos at once classical and spiritual. Late antique Christians instinctively took from Roman surroundings all that suited their new religious ends, from the architectural form given churches to the rhetoric and philosophy that mediated sermons and theologies. This Roman imprint passed to European Christians as a sacred legacy: the basilica as a church rather than a civic hall, the metropolitan as a clerical rather than a civic official, Rome as the city of Saint Peter rather than the emperor, the Empire as destined for Christ’s birth as much as Augustus’s triumphs. Medieval believers, seeking to re-create the church of first-century Jerusalem, fixed repeatedly upon exemplars from late antique Rome: the teachings of Augustine, the Bible of Jerome, the philosophical theology of Boethius, the laws of Leo, the Rule of Benedict, the prayers ascribed to Gregory. Even the story of Rome’s religious transformation entered into the self-understanding of medieval and modern Europeans, the conversion narrative joined to biblical history with its outcome treated as providential and decisive. The religious upheaval within late antique Rome turned on christening as its fulcrum. Christening marked, for each individual, the point of transition, and over

was

itself transformed: from adult conversion to infant initiation, from

cult, from

a

mystery

distinct way of life to a common title. The Roman Empire had known any number of mystery religions, some elitist and secretive, some to a mass

a

orgiastic. But no other expanded from an inner circle of devotees felt religious participation. Whatever the attractive power of these cults needs, close social bonds, the lure of the supernatural, the hope of immortality christening channeled those energies into an annual rite at Easter, and a life-changing ethic. A generation after Constantine (about 366), Basil of Caesarea celebrated baptism as paradigmatic for all who would separate themselves from the old life. Those who stepped up from these sacred waters lived a new life, not the deadly life of this world. The christened, born from on high and named after the Son, changed their place (topos), way of life (tropos), and companions; they reschematized their life (a wordplay in Greek on changing popular,

some

to mass

—

—

DOI: 10.4324/9781003418597-5

to declare: we are now citizens of heaven

garb)

late

antique

Romans: the christened life

life. Innumerable

townspeople joined,

1 (Phil. 3:20). This vision bedazzled

was

the antechamber to

among them

ever

a

heavenly

finer minds and

nobler families. the end of the fourth century, converted Romans rendered in ritual and stone this paradigm of personal transformation. They erected baptistries as public

By

monuments in their

cities, exploiting

to this new end the ancient architectural

form of the mausoleum. Its vaulted space, a burial place for privileged pagans, became a fountain of life for all believers. As Ambrose explained to the newly

baptized, the font looked like a tomb ("ideo fons quasi sepultura”) to mark their 2 dying to the old life; its water washed them for the new. Romans entered their city’s baptistry accompanied by family, friends, and sponsors, where, addressed by name, each assumed the title “Christian.” At the bishop’s church in Rome, an inscription encircling the inner chamber of the baptistry (added in the 430s and still visible) proclaimed in Latin meter that any who entered this vault —

whatever its visual reminiscences

only

once, but to purge their

Here

a

people

was

made

holy

—

came

deadly and

a

not to die in the

flesh, like those born

self and rise reborn to life without end.

city born;

here

a

virginal

womb bore the

reborn without social distinction. 3

contradictory impulses entered into the act of christening in reality, Gregory Nazianzus disclosed in a remarkable sermon preached at Constantinople in the year 380. A “declamation” on the theme of baptism, this sermon for the day after Epiphany (the celebration of Christ’s baptism) was delivered in, rhetorically speaking, the most ambitious Greek. Its opening sentence called for more solemn rejoicing on "this day of lights” and feast day of “our salvation” than what friends of the flesh expended annually on their marriage anniversaries, birthdays, or naming days, or on such occasions as coming of age 4 or founding a house. Of the three births humans knew (in the flesh, through baptism, and at resurrection) his theme would be the second, for this engendering in daylight (rather than at night) represented, inversely, a birth that freed from passion, an illumination of the soul, a transposition in life form, an image (eikon) Just how many

social

Basil of Caesarea On Baptism 1.2.13, 15, 21, 27, ed. Jeanne Ducatillon, SC 357 (Paris, 1 1989), 144. 150, 170, 186. I wish to thank Dr. Lisa Wolverton of the Harvard Society of Fellows, who

carefully read

and

critiqued the

entire

manuscript.

De sacramentis 2.19, ed. Otto Faller, CSEL 73 (Vienna, 1955), 34. For many references, see Walter Bedard, The Symbolism of the Baptismal Font in Early Christian

Ambrose 2 more

Thought (Washington, D.C., 1951). 3 Three half-lines from eight distichs, possibly

echoed in

Pope

Leo's Sermo 49.3, ed. Antonius

Chavasse. CCL 138 (Turnhout, 1973), 287. See Paul Underwood, “The Fountain of Life in Manuscripts of the Gospels,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950): 41-138, at 55-57. 4

Gregory

of Nazianzus Oratio 40.1, ed. Claudio Moreschini, SC 358 (Paris, 1990), 198.

Christthe Romans ening

of beatitude above. 5 or

taught, should not despair amidst life’s degradations, They should seek the power of christening to purify the self, beyond the body, which they could not see,

People,

he

fear these waters.

and empower that part of and thus seal out demonic forces. 6 At the turn toward leaders had

so

Christian majority, Gregory faced a dilemma. Christian impressed on people the momentous character of this rebirth that a

many put it off to the end of their lives, as had Constantine. Most of Gregory’s declamation (chaps, 17-40), after picturing baptism in radiant metaphors, urged

youth (who might wait too long), not the elderly (facing death), perhaps, thought themselves above it), not men of affairs who feared to expend abroad God’s “philanthropy” (as Gregory named it), not those wishing still to enjoy this life for a time, not those who substituted good intentions for the ritual act itself. Even children were to be baptized when they perceived something of what they were doing, at about age

its audience not to not

delay: virgin

not

ascetics (who,

three. 7

urged participation, he deplored the societal colorings that now tarnished its heavenly aura. People insisted on waiting for a metropolitan or some other high prelate to perform the rite. They needed first to gather their relatives and friends, or purchase a suitable gift (suggesting still a notion of spiritual exchange), or procure new clothing. Poor people protested they had no gift to bring to the rite; rich people refused christening alongside the poor, masters 8 alongside slaves. To all this Gregory opposed the life of the reborn as an agon, an athletic contest, a struggle to purify the self in preparation, then to safeguard that purity. The font washed not the body but the inner “image.” Not an act of “sophistry but of insemination,” this “sowing.” paradoxically, cleansed each limb, sanctified every sense, “straightened out the way of life.” Situations that Romans had perceived as social the Gospel rendered religious: the poor were an occasion for charity, the stranger for hospitality, the debtor for generosity. In ecclesiastical practice adult Romans could not present themselves for baptism apart from catechesis, a regimen (three years long, later reduced to Lent) of instruction, ascesis, prayer, self-examination, and self-discipline. What moved has largely people to undertake such a regimen why they “converted" eluded historians, who have pursued various explanatory motifs from power and As he

9

—

5

Ibid

.,

6

Ibid

.,

Ibid

.,

8Ibid

.,

7

9

Ibid

.,

1-4 (198-204). 7-8, 10 (208-12, 216-18). 28

(262).8

25-27 (252-60). 32, 3S, 31 (270-72, 284, 268).

—

law to miracles and

10

11

persuasion. Christening itself deserves more attention as central to the story: the glory of its stone baptisteries, the power of its ritual, the claims of its ethic, the bonds of its society, the gleam of immortality. This essay will not study christening as such, nor can it review all the secondary literature treating its supposed result, “Christianization.” Focused upon primary sources, this essay considers two phenomena closely bound up with christening: the name that came with it, the common title claimed by christened Romans; and the perceptual world that Romans made their own after christening, as revealed in their collective prayer. Claiming

"Christianity"

The abstract term christianitas, the title that the christened claimed,

betrays history and use the anomalous position that they would assume within the Empire. By the end of the sixth century, Pope Gregory I (590-604) looked out upon a world in which most Romans had been christened, the Empire itself sometimes called a res publica Christiana, and the church long since granted peace (tranquillitas). Yet this peace, with its common Christian title, cloaked in its

false individuals: For some are signed with the title of christianitas [thus, christened] only because they see that with the name of Christ so highly exalted nearly all now are baptized (fideles). Because they perceive that others are so designated, they are embarrassed not to appear themselves as ‘faithful’. Yet they neglect to be what they glory in 12 being called.

10

Peter Brown (Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World [Cambridge, 1995]) noted explicitly (p. x): “I have long suspected that accounts of the Christianisation of the Roman world are at their most misleading when they speak of that process as if it were a single block, capable of a single comprehensive description, that, in turn, implies the possibility of a single, all-embracing explanation.” For the present range of interpretation, see Ramsay MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire A.D. 100-400 (New Haven, 1984); Robert Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (Cambridge, 1990); Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley, 1991); Peter Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, 1992); idem, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, 200-1000 (Oxford, 1996); Jocelyn Hillgarth, “Modes of Evangelization of Western Europe in the Seventh Century," in Irland und die Christenheit (Stuttgart, 1987), 311-30. For the monumental evidence, see The Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century, ed. Kurt Weitzmann (Princeton, 1979), a 1977 exhibit published with an accompanying symposium in 1980. John Mathews, The Clash of Gods (Princeton, 1993) challenged facile “imperial" interpretations of Christian art. 11 Despite fine studies of the theology and liturgy of baptism, little has been done to integrate this subject into history and culture; one recent attempt is Peter Cramer, Baptism and Change in the Early Middle Ages, c. 200-c. 1150 (Cambridge, 1993), with a good bibliography. 12 Gregory Moralia 25.10.26, ed. M. Adriaen, CCL 143B (Turnhout, 1985), 1251-52.

Three centuries after Constantine went into battle cross, Romans

expected

protected

with the

sign of the invisibly

to bear this same mark on their own person,

upon their foreheads at baptism. More, they “Christian” as their special honor, their privileged token

impressed

in this

now

claimed the title

(praerogativa).13 nearly three centuries it

had always gloried addressed to the Antoninus Pius about apology emperor the year 153/55, Justin Martyr objected that suspicion attached to the very name “Christian," condemnation to its confession. To go by the name alone, he punned in Greek, its claimants should be suspected of “goodness” (chrestotatoi). He 14 pleaded that “Christians" be judged by their deeds, not their name. Fifty years Romans had not

name.

For

meant trouble. In an

later, in

a

treatise To Pagans, Tertullian declared the name still an issue in or barbarism, and was itself the reason

Africa. The label hinted at either crime for hatred directed

against

them (“ratio totius odii adversus nos,

nomen

in

causa

denying them, were wryly noted, the name, were forced by freely confessing who adopted the Romans torture to it. About the by year 200, prudent deny name were disparaged: I am astonished, people would say, that such a serious man could become a Christian. Indeed for their refusal to recognize the gods and altars of the ruling Romans, and their separation from the “people” of the 15 Jews, Christians were called “some third race” (“plane, tertium genus dicimur”) 16 an exotic people alien from all the rest. Such were “the christened,” those who claimed christianitas for themselves. While a historian should not naively equate one word with the self-conscious identity of countless anonymous individuals, the uses of this word in late antiquity disclose the process of forming an identity. est”). Those accused of other crimes, he forced

on

torture to confess. Christians,

—

Christianitas derived from the Greek translation (christos) of

a

Hebrew title

(messiah) meaning “the anointed one,” which was reserved in Jewish apocalyptic for an endtime figure destined to restore Israel and rule over the nations. Around the year 3794 after creation, as Jewish rabbis reckoned it, or the year 786 after the founding of their city, as Romans reckoned it, certain Jews, distinguished

initially

as

Nazareth

followers of “the this

figure, restoration had begun that believed and belonged to

13 See 14

the

n.

was

way” (Acts 9:32), became convinced that Jesus of rising from the dead a reign and would embrace all peoples. His followers, those who the "assembly of God” (the church), addressed one and that with his

96 below.

Apologia 1.4, ed. André Wartelle (Paris, 1987), chapter and provides its underlying theme.

15

Justin

100-102. The word "name"

begins

Tertullian Ad nationes 1.3.3, 1.2.1, 1.4.8, 1.8.1, ed. J. G. P. Borleffs, CCL 1 (Turnhout,

1954), 13, 12, 15, 21. 16

See still Adolf

von

Harnack, The Mission and

Centuries, 2 vols. (New York, 1908), 1:266-78.

Expansion of Christianity

in the First Three

another

“brothers” and “saints.” 17 But in the

as

Syrian city

the homeland of Jesus, those who followed this Christ —

head

Messianic Jews

god.

or

18

sect or person or

Built upon

Herod

populace.

Paul

“believers.” But the word

or

kingdom,

Agrippa

II to

see

Jesus

as

of Antioch, outside to be called “Christians"

sectarians named after their

Greek and Latin suffix for adherents to

a common

(-ianos, -ianus), the word must have

the Hellenistic Greek

"saints”

awaiting

the

came

never

come

used it in his letters; he wrote to

known. When Paul instructed

was

a

from Roman authorities

the fulfillment of the

prophets, this would persuade me

King

Hellenistic

to act as a brief, you In in view all shameful ‘Christian’” (Acts 26:28). Rome too, where Tacitus’s and sect became known and degraded practices collected, the word within a cut him off with a retort: “In

dynast

generation

of Jesus. Those whom the mob

(vulgus) called “Chrestians” represented “deadly foreign cult” (exitiabilis superstitio). participate fully in the Roman way of life (hence

in Tacitus’s senatorial mind Its adherents’ refusal to

a

“haters of the human race”) allowed Nero to make scapegoats of them and to have “Christians” executed in the imperial gardens for burning the city. 19 Believers turned the word around, from

a smear or even a

of honor. The first letter ascribed to Peter (1 Pet. 4:15-16)

suffered, “not

as a

murderer

not to feel shame but “to

or a

glorify

thief

or an

crime into

enjoined

evildoer” but “as

a

a

badge

any who

‘Christian’,”

God in this label.” Internal resistance to the

term, if there

was any, gave way early. The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, in Hellenistic Syria, directed that any who came to dwell in the community “in the name of the Lord” were to be hospitably received and to work

compiled

craft; the community

at their as a

was

to take care that no idler lived among them

"Christian.” 20 Outside such communities, the local

populace

in Asia Minor

Pliny, the local Roman governor, that Christians were ruining the by refusing to eat sacrificial meats. The adherents to this “evil and excessive foreign cult,” Pliny learned in the fall of 112, “chant a hymn together to Christ as to a god," and could not, if truly committed to this sect, be compelled to speak evil of Christ. So, to test their resolve, he ordered the complained

to

butchers’ trade

accused to

curse

17

Ibid

18

See Justin

11:26),”

.,

Christ: those who refused he had led away for execution. 21

2.1-24.

Revue

Taylor, “Why Were the Disciples Biblique 101 (1994): 75-94.

First Called ‘Christians’ at Antioch? (Acts

19 Cornelius Tacitus Annales 15.44, ed. H. Heubner (Stuttgart, 1983), 369. See Robert Wilken, The Christians as the Romans Saw Them (New Haven, 1984) 48-50. 20 Didache 12.3, ed. Willy Rordorf and Andre Tuilier, SC 248 (Paris, 1978), 188. The Ethiopian version, notably, lacks the word “Christian.” Yet the next sentence of the Greek text (see n. 41 below) contains a wordplay that presupposes the word (placed at the end of the sentence

effect). epistularurn lihri 10.96; see A. N. Sherwin-White, The Letters of Pliny: A and Social Commentary (Oxford, 1966), 691-710; Wilken, Christians, 15-17,

for rhetorical 21

Plini secundi

Historical 22-24.

About the same year as Pliny’s letter, the overseer (bishop) of the church in Antioch wrote letters to believers in Asia Minor and Rome. Headed for Rome and execution,

Ignatius told the assembly of believers there not to dissuade him, just to call himself a “Christian” (pi) povov Lsycopat Xpiabut to ttavoi;), prove himself so. Claiming the sectarian word for himself, he for the recorded time, invoked an abstract form of it, playing upon its first also, still subversive connotations: “For christianismos is not merely a matter of persuasive speaking but a grand force (megethos) when it comes to be hated by the world (kosmos).” 22 The word, whether smear or badge of honor, bespoke a force rooted in personal conviction. Later, Polycarp of Smyrna, after refusing to revile Christ or swear by the fortune of Caesar, was depicted as declaring to the examining procurator, “I am a Christian. If you wish to learn the rationale (logos) of christianismos, give me a day and hear me out.” 23 Second-century believers knew a precedent for their ease with the term christianismos. Jews had long since accepted ioudaismos, also Hellenistic in origin, 24 as a general term for their way of life. The apostle Paul, who as Saul of Tarsus claimed to have excelled beyond his peers in the study of Torah, even to have harassed the “assembly of God,” referred to his former way of life as “Judaism” (Gal. 1:13-14). Ignatius, who modeled his letters on Paul’s, now invoked the parallel term for the new religion, reminding believers at Magnesia-on-the-Meander that “having become disciples of Christ, we are to act as disciples by living according to christianismos (paBcopev Kara Xpiaxiaviapov Ig-

for he wished not

natius wrote to believers, it should be noted, in unrefined Greek, unrestrained

by high

rhetorical standards. 25 A term that had circulated in street talk

or

within

insiders’ groups could enter his prose without fear of scorn. Thus, keenly conscious of his group’s origins in Judaism and its persistent conflicts with, for

instance, Sabbath-keepers, he argued that "it would be absurd

to talk ‘Jesus

Christ’ and to Judaize. For it is not christianismos that has believed in ioudaismos, but ioudaismos in christianismos, in which every tongue believing in 26 gathered together.” Ignatius presented the move from Judaism

God has been

to Christianism as the transition to a

all God-seekers could —

22

a

join

religious community with universal claims: according to christianismos

the “Christ-talkers” and live

claim Roman authorities and Hellenistic intellectuals found absurd.

Ignatius Ad Rom. 3.1, ed. P. Th. Camelot, SC 10 (Paris, 1969), 110. See William R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch: A Commentary on the Letters of Ignatius of Antioch (Philadelphia,

1985), 173-74. 23

Mart.

Poly.

10.1 (SC 10.222).

24

2 Macc. 2:21, 8:1, 14:38. 25 Schoedel, Ignatius, 7-8, with further references. 26Ignatius

Magn. 10.1,

3 (SC 10.88-90). In Greek the term ‘'believes” is the verbal form of as a transitive verb. The expressed opposition to

the word “faith,” not reproducible in English “Judaism” is found as well in Phil. 6.1 (124).

Compare Schoedel, Ignatius, 126-27,

200-203.

Beyond elite,

as

representatives of the Greek-speaking by Lucian, Celsus, Porphyry, and others, poured contempt

the circle of believers, most

evidenced

upon Judaism and Christianism as odd and exclusive, sometimes subversive, cults. These intellectuals spoke for the “world,” increasingly the point of tension and

comparison

for Christian communities after Judaism

The dominant culture in that world

was

was

driven into diaspora.

“Hellenism” (hellenismos),

the verbal model for both “Judaism” and “Christianism” and

a

probably

term that

27

Beyond the mastery of the Greek language and culture, and the refined way of life presumed to go with it, “Hellenism” obliged radiated attractive

meanings.

its adherents to

single body

no

of

thought,

and

rarely required persistence

unto

way of life, yet set its cultivators apart as favored. By the end of the second century, learned Christian apologists self-consciously challenged

death for

a name or

this dominant culture,

projecting

a

rival vision of the

cosmos

with “Christians,"

“Hellenes,” as the central animating force: Christians were, The Letter Diognetus claimed, “as the soul is to the body,” now becoming “diffused not

to

through a

the cities

as

the soul

through

the limbs.” 28

Late in the second century (about 177-80), a Hellenist named Celsus directed “against Christians.” Three generations later (about 248), in an

learned attack

29

equally learned riposte, Origen defended christianismos. The term appeared in his opening sentence, linked to a charge that it masked a secret society plotting against public law. Origen used it far more frequently than any previous author, and more frequently in this apologetic work than in his biblical commentaries. He sought to breathe positive meaning into christianismos, to rebut critics and fortify believers. His usage presumed people outside the community, or wavering on its edge, who wielded the term in public debate as a label for suspect sectarians. For it was to a group and the way its people lived, or were suspected of living, that the term referred first of all. 30 Speaking for Christian self-understanding, Origen insisted additionally that it referred to a set of truths (Ttept tcov ev xptcmaviagcp dXqBcov), which he set in sharp contrast to what someone might take away from Hellenistic teaching and training (sLA,t|vik(I>v 8o32 31 ypdicav Kai yupvaai'cov). Christianismos was thus something taught. It was .

also

a

story, known

people

now, he

claimed,

to the whole

kosmos,

a

narrative to which

W. Bowersock, Hellenism in Late Antiquity (Ann Arbor, 1990). Meecham (Manchester, 1949), 80-81, 113-14.

Epistle to Diognetus 6, ed. Henry G. term is Xpicmavol, not Xpitmavtapoi;.

28The 29

.

gave witness (in Greek, martyr), something for which Greeks and barbarians, wise and foolish, were prepared to fight to the death even in “our own

27 Glen

The

.

Contra Celsum 1.1, ed. Paul Koetschau, GCS

30

Ibid

.,

31

Ibid

.,

32

Ibid

.,

Origenes

1

(Leipzig, 1899),

well, as suggested by 3.75 (266). 8.52 (GCS Origenes 2.267). 1.2 (GCS Origenes 1.57). 3.72 (GCS Origenes 1.264).

have used the abstract term

as

56. Celsus may

world.” 33 Christ, the Son of God, he

explained,

established first “Judaism” and

then “Christianism." The latter must be conceived built

name

the

and

now

still

as a

“residence” with foundations

by way of cures done apostles being confessed it People publicly, risking death by not practicing the normal pieties. People also renounced it, manifested by sacrificing in not gathering, that is, for the the customary way or swearing to stay at home and bloodless sacrifice. 35 In christianismos Christian of weekly meetings teaching there was, Origen declared, no blind belief but careful analysis of writings, which are believed. Sects and heresies had arisen within it, he conceded, partly owing 36 This Greek term to the variety and difficulty of the Jewish scriptures. Henry Chadwick translated it "Christianity” or “Christian teachings” or “Christian life”

in the

on

built up

of Jesus. 34

—

—

—

embraced

more

to the name,

than suspect sectarians. For adherents to the group or claimants Origen emphasized, it signified a historical narrative and a

taught truth,

a group profession, a lifestyle subject to force still at work in the everyday world of healing.

public reprisals,

a

divine

persecution initiated in 303, the emperor slavery if they persisted in their choice 37 of This struck at the weakest members of society; christianismos. (prothesis) it also fit common Hellenistic claims that adherents to the sect came predominantly Two

generations later,

in the last great

Diocletian threatened servants with

from the lower stratum. About ten years later Eusebius, the church historian, directly confronted the hostility and scorn that had enveloped this label and the group it stood for. In an apologetic work called Preparation for the Gospel, begun not long after 313, he brashly put the disgraced term first, together with 6

pledge

a

ti jtotE

to set out "what sort of

eartv).

38

Just

as

Rightly understood, iudaismos, but

of

the

nor

an

was

in

thing it then really is” (xov xpicmaviapov, played upon the parallel verbal constructions.

he said, christianismos is not hellenismos, also not

and true divine wisdom

Gospel subsequently argued

“Hellenism” but It

and

a new

boldly,

he

a

distinct form of

reality

(theosophia).

that "Christianism”

religion

39

was

His Demonstration neither “Judaism”

(eusebeia) and wisdom

the oldest and truest of them

—

a

claim to

(philosophia). authenticity

allusion to the notion that Plato and the

Moses and the

33

Ibid

.,

34

Ibid

.,

prophets

without

philosophers had borrowed from indeed the form by which acknowledging it —

1.7, 8, 26 (GCS Origenes 1.59, 60, 78). Origenes 1.213, 225). 35 Ibid 2.15, 17, 13 (GCS Origenes 1.144. 147, 142). 36 Ibid 1.9, 3.12 (GCS Origenes 1.61, 211). 37 Eusebius Church History 8.2.4, ed. Theodor Mommsen, GCS Eusebius 2, 2 (Leipzig. 1909), 742-43. Rufinus's Latin did not know the abstract term: “si qui servorum permansisset 3.14, 28 (GCS

.,

.,

Christianus.” 38

Eusebius La

préparation évangélique 1.1,

206 (Paris, 1974), 96. 39 Ibid 1.5.12 (136). .,

ed. Jean Sirinell and Edouard des Places, SC

the

40

deity was most truly worshipped. Court intellectuals like Eusebius went beyond Origen to elevate the tainted label of “christianism” into the sublime world of philosophy, piety, and theosophy. Within the circle of believers, however, homilies and theological tractates referred, as from the beginning, to “the faith" and to “believers" (the same root word in Greek), biblical terms that also gained ready acceptance among the rhetorically sophisticated. Believers early invented several words derived from the name of their Lord. One of the earliest, found already in the Didache and in Ps-Ignatius, joined “Christ” with “merchant” to lambast as “Christ-profiteers” (christemporos) those who assumed the Lord’s name for personal gain. The idler who joined the community as a “Christian” and refused to work was a christemporos. More emphatically, after the first extensive christenings, Basil of Caesarea offered consolation to a friend besieged by enemies and traitors: he should not be deceived by the false words of those who masquerade as professing the true faith, for “such are Christ-profiteers, not Christians, forever preferring to live by what is useful to them in this life rather than by the truth.” 42 Adjectival forms, predictably, came early. By about 200, despite the word’s and the group’s marginal status, Clement of Alexandria boldly presented “Christian piety” (eusebeia) to the learned as a kind of “Christian knowledge” (episteme) expressed in distinct “Christian reasonings” (logoi). 43 A verbal form, comparable in appearance to the English word “christianize,” meant in origin simply “to act as a Christian.” Origen used it extensively in his apology. Only in the later fourth century, as Christianity moved toward the majority imperial religion, did this word gain the additional meaning of to “convert” or “make Christian.” As “the faith” became ever more entwined with imperial life, and ultimately a matter of imperial law, adherents to christianismos no longer represented isolated religious enthusiasts but the dominant party at court and in the cities. Yet the word itself was not comparably elevated in formal prose to dignify the group identity of imperial Christians, a silent concession perhaps to the continued presence of its despisers. Even Eusebius, despite the bold apologetic opening of his Preparation, later wrote a history of the “church,” not of christianismos. That word appeared only twice in his work, both citations. 44 In his triumphal life of Constantine the word appeared three times in chapter titles (1.27, 2.24, 4.38), but in the text only as a quotation from Constantine himself. The emperor, 41

40

This is the force of the first substantive chapter of his Demonstratio evangelica 1.2 (PG 22.23-28), where the comparison is elaborated at length. 41 Didache 12.5 (SC 248.188). 42 Basil Letter 240.3 (PG 32.897). 43 Clement Fragmenta 68, ed. Otto Stählin, GCS Clemens 3 (Leipzig, 1906), 229. 44 See Diocletian’s edict (8.2.4) cited at n. 37 above; and Polycarp's martyrdom (as in n. 23 above). Rufinus translated the abstraction logos christicinismou as ratio christianae religionis: Eusebius Church History 4.15.21 (ed. Mommsen, GCS Eusebius 2, 344-45).

devotee but not yet baptized, used it in his letter permitting the “reverent 45 worship" that characterized “Christianism” echoing its recognition value in

a

—

discourse.

public Colloquial

usage indeed

abstract form, must

always

was

have been far

it in the face of

more common

in

personal or its spoken than written

suspicious of this sect, then of confessors persecution. The History of the [Egyptian] Monks,

Greek, first in the mouths of

claiming

another matter. The word, in its

accusers

by Rufinus, tells the story of Filemon who mocked Christians in a persecution, then was moved to convert by their virtue and kindness. Before the local magistrate, who thought him joking or insane, he proclaimed, “I am a Christian, which is the finest species of human being.” Handed over to the flames, he and a monk called upon God, and a sudden squall put out the fire. Judge and people then cried out together, “Great and one is the God of the Christians alone!” Later a prefect from Alexandria angrily intervened and had all who persisted in this confession drowned in the sea: for these saints, Rufinus added, not their death but their baptism. 46 If proclaiming Christian identity could put so much at risk, or after Constantine affirm solidarity with the imperial court, a word for it was sure to find ready uses. That word could flourish in street language, even if considered unsuitable for theological prose. In the fourth century Bishop Athanasius found no place for it in arguing the Nicene conception of a Triune God, but employed it on two other telltale occasions. Athanasius dismissed Arians (who opposed the consubstantial deity of Christ) as people in his Alexandrian church who dared call themselves “Christians” while not truly knowing Scripture, the faith, or christianismos the term here catching up all else that came with faithful life and teaching. 47 In his influential Life of Anthony, he depicted that simple desert monk as effectively persuading people to join the faith while learned Greek philosophers proved unable to turn people from christianismos to hellenismos, that is, from claiming identity with Christ to affirming identity with world culture. In the later fourth century, Epiphanius’s massive treatise against heretics found no use for the term in articulating the orthodox faith or defining compliance translated time of

—

48

with the church. But it described Constantine

45

as

“exalted 49 in christianismos and

Vita Constantini 2.24, ed. F. Winkelmarm, GCS Eusebius 1

46

(Berlin, 1991), 58. (New York, 1990),

Rufinus Historia monachorum 19.6-15, ed. Eva Schulz-Fliigel 47 Athanasius Oratio contra Arianos 1.1 (PG 26.13). 48

Athanasius Vita Antonii 78

(PG 26.952).

The

new

critical edition

by G.

352-53.

J. M. Bartelink in

SC 400 (Paris, 1994), 334 reads christianoi. Just less than half the manuscripts read christianismos, parallel to hellenismos and apparently acceptable for many readers. 49 Probably the correct translation, but the word 8K0eidt,a) originally meant “divinize,” and the

sense

god-like

for some

fourth-century

in Christianism.”

Roman Christians could well have been

“having been

made

in the

apostolic faith found in churches”:50 that is to say, as divinely exemplifying identity in the battle for orthdoxy. Not all emperors proved exemplars. In a church history from the early fifth century, Sozomenos described Athanasius as gaining greater success in moving Hellenes toward christianismos through preaching than had the emperor Constantius by harassing them. Yet many Hellenes, he went on, gazed at the emperor Theodosius II to whom this work was dedicated and “easily went over to christianismos,” the emperor again 51 serving as group exemplar. Such a colloquial word found readier uses in sermons. Even so refined a rhetorician as John Chrysostom employed it. At Antioch in 387, he preached a series of sermons to calm the city after a tax revolt in which the people had knocked over the imperial effigies. He suggested that extraordinary mildness on the emperor’s part would make the “Hellenes” ashamed, or rather would “instruct" Christian

—

—

them to “abandon their

and turn to the power of christianismos, 52 from the thereby learning philosophy emperor as well as the bishop." On another occasion he chastised his people, zealous, he noted, for all sorts of other own error

our

things but inclined to hang their heads and grow sluggish when it came to standing up for christianismos, as when “Hellenes” asked them, “who then is this Father or Son or Holy Ghost?” 55 Even though there were “now” more Christians than pagans, he observed

on

another occasion, how could the latter “marvel 54

reprehensible lives of Christians? Too living in self-indulgence contrary to many people feigned the cross. 55 This name, he insisted in another sermon, was properly honorable 56 indicating that its meaning was still tainted or now rendered vulgar by common usage. The character of this group was spiritual: its most perfect rule was imitation of Christ, and as well looking out for neighbors. 57 Its adherents knew the of freedom even in conditions of servitude a view regarded as so much grace foolishness by “Hellenes?" 58 Just how common this term was becoming is evident from the sermons ascribed to “Macarius,” probably a Syrian Christian writing in the later fourth century. He taught people in a plain, unsophisticated Greek probably close to the spoken language. Christianismos is not, he insisted, merely a matter of fate or fortune a striking notion he must have encountered! but a great mystery wholly at christianismos” when

they

see

the

christianismos, while

—

—

—

—

50

Epiphanius

Adversus haereses 2.49 (PG 42.204).

51

Sozomenus Historia ecclesiastica 5.10, 5.15, 8.1 (PG 67.1140, 1256, 1509). 52 John Chrysostom Homilies to the People 21 (PG 49.220). See Cameron (n. 10 above), 137 53 In Johannem 17 (PG 59.112). 54 55

Hom. in I Tim. 10.3 (PG 62.551). Hom. in Phil. 2.1 (PG 62.276).

56 Hom. in Rom. 6.1 (PG

60.432).

57 Hom. in I Cor. 25.3, 36.3 (PG 61.208, 310). 58 Hom. in I Cor. 19.5 (PG 61.157).

to this world. 59 His defensive

foreign

christianismos and its recent

posture presumed scoffers who ascribed

quirky turn in the wheel practitioners ordinary a part of this world. He called on his listeners to conceive of it as something spiritually extraordinary. It is properly, he began one series of sermons, an armed struggle, its “integrity” and “way” foreign to this world; people stuck in carnal affairs have no idea what they seek in christianismos. 60 This is its mark (semeion): that you see people famished, in an altered state, undergoing punishment, poor in 61 spirit, humbled in their own eyes, seeking day and night. Rather than being 62 was in and a stumbling block. or christianismos truth a scandal fated, ordinary In its true form (6 akri0f]5 xpiatiaviapoq), he emphasized, it is nothing less than the inner heart of a human being made entirely new, 63 not a “mere profession" or “simple faith" but “power and spiritual action" (energeia). Macarius’s sermons, whether preached to lay people or ascetics, presupposed a world three generations after Constantine in which christianismos had become a word routinely on people’s lips, a movement ascendant on the wheel of fortune but also an allegiance in danger of losing its extraordinary spiritual qualities to of fate,

well

as

success

to the stars or to a

who had made it all too

as

—

inveterate

commonness.

One remarkable text, also from the later fourth century, confirms by way of exception this impression of a label caught between the mockery of an earlier age and the to

questions

commonness

writer, he sought

of

a new

majority. Gregory

of

Nyssa replied by

letter

by certain Harmonius about this very term. As a learned self-consciously to elevate the word above the common uses

raised

a

of the crowd. To work out its

meaning Gregory proposed to imitate a “personal (presumably numerous by the later fourth who christianismos. century) feigned They offered reason enough to grasp instead its right meaning and to act on what the title signified. 65 Gregory located in Christ all the perfections anyone truly bearing this name should possess. A proper definition or interpretation of the term (lijv Stdvowxv sppr|veuaeiev) sprang from Christ’s being: christianismos is imitation of the divine nature 66 (XpicTTiavictpo!; scm xfjq beia? 4>i>ceco