Reading-spots, part 7

 

For work-related reasons, I am currently thinking back to one of my favourite reading-spots from the past few years, namely the restaurant Taiga in the neighbourhood of Lista in Madrid, where I spent many evenings in April and May of 2023, reading, writing, thinking, and just enjoying existence. One of the reasons why this reading-spot has such a strong place in my memory is partly that the two weeks I spent in Madrid that spring were two of the best weeks I have had in the past decade, and from my sidewalk table I could enjoy the feeling of being in a familiar and beloved place - feeling at home, of sorts. Another reason why this particular reading-spot is so important to me, is that it was here that I took a huge step in a new professional direction. 

This spring, I had started focusing more on researching utopian literature, a field in which I had long been interested, and which I was now able to pursue with more concerted effort thanks to a friend and colleague with whom I began collaborating. On that sidewalk outside the restaurant, I spent long evenings reading Gabriel de Foigny's utopian novel La Terre Australe Connue (The Southern Land, Known) in David Fausett's English translation. I spent much time thinking and writing fervently on a draft that provided an important foundation for future writing. It felt already then like an intellectual turning-point, and this feeling has since been proven correct. 

But this sidewalk table was also the spot for other types of reading, and other types of thinking. It was a busy spring, and I was also preparing a conference presentation to be held in Rome in a month's time, as well as a speech to be held in a fortnight's time in my home village. Looking back, this table was the nexus of my effort to be a man of the world yet remain a village boy at one and the same time, two roles that I try to connect through my intellectual work. It was also a place where I enjoyed the verses of my friend Raquel Lanseros, one of my all-time favourite poets, whose words have given me so much to be thankful for in this life. 

In short, this was a reading-spot, a writing-spot, and a thinking-spot where much happened, at least in my brain and on paper. It is a place I will always treasure.   

A ritual for fishing

 

Earlier this month, I went with my parents to set out fishing nets in a lake. This is an old practice, and a way by which we have harvested food for generations. There is a lot of skill involved, and as I am quite rusty I need to practice so that the mechanics of the various steps become engrained into my muscle memory. Several things can go wrong. For instance, it is important to start near land where the water is shallow, so that the fish is less likely to swim behind the end of the net. For the same reason, when the rower is moving the boat away from the shore, it is important to let the net slip off the hook swiftly and without too much tugging, lest the stone that weighs down the net in the shoremost end is dragged further away from land. 

Setting out fish nets is a practice that goes far back down the earlier generations, and this kind of continuity is part of what grounds me deeper in my native village. There is a timelessness to it, even though the nets we use today, as well as the boat, are both of a type that is decidedly modern, made with modern technology and from modern materials. In other words, fishing with nets is one of those things that remind us that we are always closer to the ways of the past than we are to the ways of an imagined, high-technological, techno-utopian future. 

We had five nets to set, and my father set the first one in a spot of his choosing. He stood in the aft end of the boat while my mother rowed, and he let the net slip off the hook with practiced ease. As the hook itself was the last part remaining, my father spat on it before sending it into the water. This is an old superstition meant to bring good luck, and people also do this with the fishing hook before casting it into a river or a lake.   

The next four nets were set by me while my mother rowed the boat straight ahead. As I am out of practice, I focused intensely on making sure that I didn't drag the net or the net didn't get caught in itself, as it sometimes does when it is a net that is old and frayed. But as the first of my four nets was about to leave my hand, I also leant forward and spat drily and unpreparedly on the hook before releasing it. I did the same with the other nets, and each time I felt an odd satisfaction. This is a ritual, a marking of a transition from one stage to the next, the releasing of the hook a liminal state, a threshold. As so many things in the current historical epoch is entangled in emptiness and destructive fantasies, this kind of ritual felt deeply satisfying, indeed wholesome, as it was an odd but harmless way to mark an important shift in the labour of the evening. I do not believe in such superstitions, but I do believe in the importance of rituals for human beings, however constructed they are. Some rituals are good to have, to retain, to construct, to invent, because these rituals are brief moments that ground us in reality and make us come closer to the interconnectedness of it all. 

I do not believe in such superstition. But the net that my father set was the one that caught the greatest haul.  

Saint Martin and the birds in Salamanca

From the Middle Ages, we have numerous stories about saints and animals. Some of these stories are about animal companions, such as Saint Hugh of Lincoln and his swan. Others are stories of protection (Saint Giles and the wounded hind), stories about healing and recovery  (Saint Thorlak and the lost cow), or stories about control over the animals (Saint Francis and the singing locust, or Saint Edward the Confessor and the nightingales). Regardless of the shape of these stories, they all serve to demonstrate the holiness of the saint in question because of their care for animals or their owners, or because of their miraculous communication with them. These stories also convey the hierarchy of Creation, according to Christian theology, in which humans were set above the beasts and were commanded to be custodians of the earth.  

The various topoi of animals in saint-stories provide a useful background for appreciating a symbolic convergence in the Church of Saint Martin in Salamanca. I went past this church a couple of times when I last visited Salamanca earlier this year, and I happened to note that there is an extensive avian symbolism in both the decoration and the use of the church - all of which has nothing to do with the legend of Saint Martin, but serves to highlight how such coincidences can reinforce pre-existing associations. 

 

One of the entrances to the church was easily accessible as I walked between my hotel and the university area, and I was entranced by the beautiful carvings on the Romanesque portal, a nice - if partial - survival of the twelfth-century stone church, which has been expanded and renovated at various times. The figure of Saint Martin seen above the portal is most likely form the renovation campaign of 1586, but the figures in the arches of the portal show the typical design of the twelfth century, and also has the wear to be expected of carvings that old. In capitals between the pillars and the arches are several winged creatures, including what appear to be sphinxes, long-necked birds (possibly storks), and harpies. These figures are stock characters in Romanesque art, possibly signifying the wild and chaotic world beyond Christian civilisation which the church visitor leaves behind when entering the hallowed space beyond the doors. 

These figures have nothing to do with Saint Martin and his legend. While there is an avian episode from the story of Martin of Tours - in which he hid among geese to avoid being elected bishop - these particular carvings are part of the portal because they were typical figures of their time. Despite not pertaining to Saint Martin's legend, however, these winged creatures do bring a certain symmetry, not so much to the legend itself, but to the Salamancan church of today. Above the church bell, a pair of storks have built a nest and were flying back and forth across the neighbouring streets. As storks are common in Salamanca, there is nothing uncommon about this sight, nor does it have any particular significance for the legend of Saint Martin. Nonetheless, there is something pleasing about the coincidental convergence of iconography and reality when storks settle on the building dedicated to a saint who hid among birds, and which building is also decorated with several avian creatures, including what might possibly be storks. These are coincidences, serendipities, happenstances - but they do converge in a wonderful way to show how life and art sometimes line up, and when you know the art you can also appreciate this convergence more strongly. And we should expect that medieval venerators of Saint Martin would do just that in case they saw birds nesting on this church in the Middle Ages. 

The Loon - a poem by Robert Bly

 

This morning, a pair of loons were frolicking in the lake behind the house of my late grandparents. While I am used to hearing their ghostly cry in one of the lakes higher up in one of the valleys - where their plaintive sound is more naturally at home - this was not the first time I have seen them in this little bay of the lake. And as always happens when I see or hear loons, I was reminded of Robert Bly's wonderful short poem.

The Loon 

From far out in the center of the naked lake

the loon’s cry rose…

it was the cry of someone who owned very little 

- Robert Bly

Lost stories - a possible example from Santiago de Compostela

 

As a historian predominantly concerned with texts, I am keenly aware of how important stories are to the shaping of societies, identities - indeed, of history in general. The way our understanding of the world is shaped happens through stories, often in ways we do not notice. This is why it is so crucial to get at the narrative drive behind people's actions, and also why it can be so difficult to make certain people understand that their understanding of historical reality is not built on solid ground. 

My research deals with stories practically every day. I analyse them, compare them, keep track of their variations, and try to examine how they have shaped the historical context of any given period, and - mutatis mutandis - how the historical context has shaped the stories. The stories that I research are usually well known, if only within a specific field of history or literature, and it has never happened that I have encountered a previously unknown story. (I came close once, but that is a tale for another day.) However, sometimes I do come across stories in images which I do not recognise. For instance, several of the full-page illuminations of the so-called Rothschild Canticles - a fourteenth-century religious florilegium - depict scenes that I do not know, and that I cannot decipher. Although these stories are unknown to me, however, I am certain that there are experts who will be able to recognise them.

Last year, when I visited the cathedral museum of Santiago de Compostela, I was struck by a series of carved pillars displayed there. The pillars date to the twelfth century, and are from an early stage in the cathedral's building history. They are exquisitely carved and testify to the skill and craft that went into decorating and constructing the cathedral. Along the winding grooves of each pillar are figures and floral forms that seem to depict episodes from stories - perhaps even consecutive episodes from one and the same story. And even though I looked at them carefully while I was there, and even though I have looked at them even more carefully since, I cannot identify the story or stories they represent. The Compostelans who passed by them in the cathedral, however, most likely understood exactly what these carvings meant. They might have heard the stories from sermons, or they might know the stories on which the related sermons were based, or they might have talked to the masons who carved them once they had received instructions from the cathedral clergy. Perhaps pilgrims from all across Latin Christendom were likewise able to recognise these figures. After all, several individuals, both masons and clerics, who were active in twelfth-centuy Compostela came from France and might have brought stories with them from their native places. To us, or at least to me, these stories are lost. 

The loss of stories is a colossal barrier to our understanding of the past. Without catching the various references that remain in the surviving source material, we are unable to understand parts of the storyworlds of the people in a specific period - storyworlds whose stories might have influenced how they made certain decisions, for instance through fear of becoming like the fool in a story, or through a desire to become like the hero of a particularly beloved story. As an example of such a story that might not be altogether lost - I hope those who know it will tell me - but very much lost on me, I give you a sequence of figures from one of the twelfth-century pillars. 

From the top and downward in a spiral, we see a devil standing behind a mermaid, while holding the tale of a snake which is coiling itself around the rightarm and shoulder of the mermaid. The mermaid is clutching her tail with her righthand and holding her tailfin with her left. From under her tail emerges the serpent's head, and it seems to spew a jet - probably of poison - arches its way behind a pair of human figures. The figure closest to the serpent's head is a man who might be hooded. In his right hand is a knife whose blade lies flat along his right thigh. The other figure has a headdress which suggests that it is a woman, and she has seductively placed her right hand on top of the man's right thigh while the left is equally seductively placed on the inside of the man's left shin. The hem of the man's dress - possibly a monk's habit - can be seen flowing behind the woman's head, suggesting she has free access to the man's body.    

What is the story? From these details, it might appear some kind of clerical warning against the sins of the flesh. The mermaid, or siren, is a typical symbol for lust - always blamed on the women - and the devil holding a serpent might be a reference to the temptation of Adam and Eve. The two figures, however, are clearly not Adam and Eve, because they are already dressed - at least partially - and the man is holding a knife. Is he about to castrate himself in order to avoid the temptation of carnal congress? Perhaps in recollection of Christ's words in Matthew 18:9 about cutting out the eye that tempts you to sin? Or is he about to kill the woman, just as we read in stories about some saints to whom the devil appeared as a seductress? The story unfolding along the pillar might draw on all these references mentioned here - after all, they were part of the Latin Christian storyworld. But even if my interpretation of the individual elements is correct - and it might not be - the story itself is no clearer. Are we dealing with a legendary episode? Or perhaps something from Galicia, something even witnessed by those who commissioned the carvings to be made? Or is it more a collection of semiotic signs that together are meant to remind clerics of key aspects of their supposedly chaste way of life, rather than a story as we commonly think of it? It is easy enough to ask these questions, but the story that is likely to be behind this sequence of carvings is lost to me. 

A new, short chapter

Some chapters are so short that they can hardly be considered chapters, but appear rather as vignettes interspersed in-between chapters as intermezzos in the main narrative, or as a parallel story told in brief episodes. (I am here in particular thinking of the untitled vignettes that separate the individual short stories in Ernest Hemingway's In Our Time.) I am currently living through one of those chapters. 

From May 01 until October 31, I am employed at the University of Bergen as a co-editor of the online encyclopedia Medieval Nordic Literature in Latin, which was published in 2008 and last updated in 2012. Thanks to a six-year grant to the project CODICUM, centred in part at the University of Bergen, some resources were allocated to update the encyclopedia in accordance with the advances in research in the past seventeen years. The job has already proved both interesting and intense, as there is much information that has to be sorted and navigated in order to assess what to do, how to do it, and where to begin. In the course of this work, I have been reminded of how much research has been done on various topics within the broader umbrella of medieval Nordic literature in Latin, and also of how much remains to be done in the cases of some of the more neglected or at least more minor texts and sources. 

This employment is short, but a welcome respite from unemployment, and a very fortuitous opportunity to delve into some sources that I have not yet managed to devote as much attention to as they truly deserve.    

 

Compostela by night

This month, I have spent much time writing about the cult of Saint James the Elder in medieval Europe, as he was formulated and disseminated at and from the cult centre at Santiago de Compostela. Today, April 29, most of my work day was dedicated to writing a one and a half page summary of the cult-making process of the twelfth century. While the writing itself only took a few hours, those hours were founded on long periods of reading, travelling, writing, discussing and researching spread throughout 2024. In order to write that page and a half, I relied on notes and memories, and in order to reach this particular point in my work I have read three books, numerous articles, travelled to Santiago de Compostela twice, prepared and given two conference presentations, and expanded my personal library. This preparatory work is part of the pleasure of writing academic texts, but it is work that is rarely acknowledged by funding bodies or by universities. But today, I could relish in all those hours spread across 2024 that I had dedicated to researching the cult of Saint James and the history of Santiago de Compostela. And part of that relish rested on some of the glorious views of the city that I was able to witness in the course of my travels. Below are some of those views, taken a late evening in December, on a day that cemented my love for Santiago de Compostela even more strongly, and made me feel even more at home in its confusing and confounding streetscape.