Wendy Cope's Manifesto

As you might know, I'm currently spending some research time in York, and if you've been reading this blog for some time you also know I have a very close relationship with that city. In several previous blogposts (here, here, and here) I've talked about my habit of buying books whenever I'm in York, and this is largely because York is home to many amazing little bookshops. True to form and tradition, the first day I arrived, while I was waiting for my appointment with the letting agency to sign my contract for the apartment I'm renting, I spent a long a carefully deliberating time at The Little Apple Bookshop on High Petergate, exploring their selection of novels and poetry. I left with two books of verse.

One of the books I bought was a collection by Wendy Cope, titled Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis (Faber & Faber 1997). I had been thinking of buying that book for some time already, as part of my aim of reading more books written by women. This particular collection contains several delightful poems, many of which showcase Wendy Cope's sharp sense for rhythm and rhyme, and her impressive ability to satirize other poets, a point perhaps made most expressly clear in the poem "Waste Land Limericks", which sums up T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land" in a matter of two pages.

For this blogpost, I'm presenting one of the poems from Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis, called "Manifesto".


Manifesto

I'll work, for there's new purpose in my art -
I'll must all my talent, all my wit
And write the poems that will win your heart.

Pierced by a rusty allegoric dart,
What can I do but make the best of it?
I'll work, for there's new purpose in my art.

You're always on my mind when we're apart -
I can't afford to daydream, so I'll sit
And write the poems that will win your heart.

I am no beauty but I'm pretty smart
And I intend to be your favourite -
I'll work, for there's new purpose in my art.

And if some bloodless literary fart
Says that it's all too personal, I'll spit
And write the poems that will win your heart.

I feel terrific now I've made a start -
I'll have another book before I quiet.
I'll work, for there's new purpose in my art,
And write the poems that will win your heart.

Back to the beginning, in a way

Five years ago this month I arrived in York as an exchange student to spend a term at the University of York as part of my MA degree. I was very excited about this, both because by that time I was already deeply in love with York, but also because the road there had passed through a lengthy and detailed bureaucratic process in which there were enough uncertainties to make me think at some point whether it was all worth the trouble. Fortunately, the two administrative secretaries at the York Centre for Medieval Studies were very capable ladies and guided me through the process successfully.

This year I'm back in York as an exchange student, spending a term at the University of York as part of my PhD thesis. I have been looking forward to this for quite some time, especially since this possibility was partly why I decided to do my PhD at the Centre for Medieval Literature, which is a cooperative enterprise by the University of York and the University of Southern Denmark. I'm excited to be back, and although I've spent most of my time at the work space I've been allotted on campus, I've spent enough time walking about the town to see what has change and to appreciate what is pretty much as it was back when I first came to study.

With this short blogpost I'm going back to the beginning of things, in a way. I started this blog five years ago this month, and when I started my posts were mainly updates of what I was doing and things I had seen on my many wanderings in town or on short trips to various places, such as Whitby, Edinburgh and Durham. My emphasis back then was to share with my friends those things great or small which interested me, fascinated me or which simply were there, like some snowdrops in churchyards. I thought of this blog as a way to share things that were relevant to my time in England, and this is reflected both in the name, in the brief description of the blog and the quotations in the margins which I still have kept. The blog has come a long way since then, and so have I. To some extent, there is still a strong presence of the kind of everyday minutiae which draw my attention from time to time, but my emphasis now is on the academic side of things. Most of my blogposts now are concerned with my work, and I spend more time doing research for the things I post now than I did five years ago, although even back then I had embraced the importance of research.

In the present blogpost I return to the beginning of things since I now allow myself the kind of personal reflection which marked some of my earlier writings, and in a way it feels right to do so five years later. I do this kind of thing less now, in part because I think there are much more interesting things to talk about than myself, but also because I have gained a much wider audience in these five years, an audience which is here predominantly for the academic stuff.

I'm very happy to have this blog as an outlet for my many fascinations and my sundry experiences in research and in life outside it (if such a thing can exist for a medievalist). I try to maintain a balance between academic and accessible, and also between academic and non-academic material, such as poetry, music or nature, and this allows me to tie together elements in my spectrum of interests which lie relatively far apart. All this, of course, hopefully without becoming too careless about the question of audience.

I have changed a great deal in these past five years, and things have changed a great deal for me in many ways, and this blog, too, has undergone some changes although these changes have been primarily additions rather than alterations. It's nice to look back at those five years, thinking of what I've done, what I've achieved, what I have yet to achieve, and of course there are many things I wish I would have known back then which I know now. Many things have changed, but at the core this blog remains a mixture of personal and academic journalism, and although the balance between those two has shifted, I'm happy to think that the blog is only improved, not markedly altered since I first began writing it five years ago.

Long road into York

I have arrived in York. I have arrived in York where I will be doing my work for the next two months, as a part of an exchange deal between the universities of York and Southern Denmark, the two hosts for the Centre of the Medieval Literature. I arrived in York early Monday morning after a thirty-hour journey about which I've complained to many of my colleagues already, and I'm still in the long process of settling in. I'll return with posts more pertinent to my doings here, and with reports from one of my favourite cities in the world, but for the time being I'm still heavily encumbered by travel fatigue and from all the details that need to be sorted, so I'll let T. S. Eliot's poem Journey of the Magi represent my mental state at present.

Adoration of the magi
MS Egerton 2781, f.13v, book of hours, use of Sarum, 2nd quarter of the 14th century
Courtesy of British Library

'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sorefooted, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
and running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arriving at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you might say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.




Text courtesy of this website

Wine for the Epiphany - a miracle of Saint Martin's

Today is the feast of the Epiphany, marking the day when the three kings or the three magi came to visit the Christ-child in Bethlehem. In the medieval calendars, Epiphany was a feast of great importance and was celebrated with due liturgical rites.

In this blogpost, I wish to present a story about a miracle wrought through Bishop Martin of Tours on the feast of the Epiphany. The story comes from the third book of the Miracles of Bishop Martin, written by Gregory of Tours who held Martin as his particular patron saint.

Bishop Martin of Tours and a crippled man
MS Egerton 3018, f.117, missal, use of Cologne, 1st quarter of the 15th century
Courtesy of British Library

Adoration of the magi
MS Egerton 2125, f.182v, prayer book, Ghent, c.1519
Courtesy of British Library

It is common in stories about saints that their deeds in life, or the miracles wrought through them either while living or posthumously, are in some way meant to be in imitation of deeds performed by Christ in the gospels. In this case, as will be seen, the imitation is of the miracle at Cana, where Christ made water into wine at the wedding feast.

As will also be seen, the connection to the miracle at Cana is circuitous at best, yet Gregory himself makes this overt connection in the first paragraph, saying:

There was also that extraordinary miracle on Epiphany, when, at the request of the blessed bishop Martin, the Lord produced Falernian wine from water and made wine come forth from the riverbed for a poor man, just as he had once transformed water into wine.

- Gregory of Tours, The Miracles of Bishop Martin, book 2, chapter 16 (translated by Giselle de Nie)

The specification of Falernian wine might seem a bit odd at first, a detail somewhat on the acribic side even for God, but I'm tempted to ascribe this to Gregory's sense of humour, The miracle itself is placed within the frame narrative of a fishing trip on the Loire river which was undertaken by Gregory himself. Together with some companions he inquires a local boatman where there are good places for fishing, and the boatman points out one spot, adding that they should invoke the aid of Saint Martin in order to secure a catch. Gregory's companions show some skepticism to this, saying that "no one had ever seen a fish caught in his name". The boatman then goes on to correct this misapprehension.

For I shall tell you what happened to me this year, how through the invocation of his name and with the Lord's help I deserved to get what I wished. In effect, it was the day of Epiphany and when I entered my storeroom I found nothing in it to drink. When I had left it I prayed, saying: 'Most holy Martin, send me some wine in this sacred solemnity lest, when the others are drinking, I remain deprived.'

- Gregory of Tours, The Miracles of Bishop Martin (translated by Giselle de Nie)

As he is praying, the boatman is called to the other shore of the river to help a traveller across, and as he is rowing "suddenly a huge fish sprang from the water and fell into the boat". The boatman continues:

Having immediately killed it and ferried the men, I returned home, sold the fish for a couple of gallons of wine, and dined along with the others. You will therefore know how quickly, if he is asked in faith, Martin will appear to help in situations in which he is invoked.

- Gregory of Tours, The Miracles of Bishop Martin (translated by Giselle de Nie)

This is arguably not the most impressive way of turning water into wine, and the story sounds more like a folktale in which help comes in unexpected ways and where wishes are granted after having been filtered through a great deal of interpretative liberty. However, Gregory makes the connection overtly and it is clear that in the taxonomy of miracles, the circuitous route to the wine belongs to the same category as the miracle at Cana.

The wedding feast at Cana
MS Egerton 2781, f.15v, book of hours, use of Sarum, 2nd quarter of the 14th century
Courtesy of British Library

The wedding at Cana
MS Arundel 157, f.6v, St. Albans, c.1240, possibly by Matthew Paris
Courtesy of British Library

Narrative and Saints' Lives, part II - Saint-collectives and their figureheads

 In a previous blogpost I wrote down some reflections on the structuring of the narrative in stories about saints. This post was prompted by a reading group I've been arranging at the Centre for Medieval Literature in Odense where I work, in which we've read excerpts from Legenda Aurea by Jacobus de Voragine. The present post follows in the same vein, but while the previous post considered narrative in stories which were very brief, I here wish to consider what happens to the narrative when the story contains a great multitude of characters. The post in centred on the story of Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins of Cologne, parts of which legend we translated in the last reading group session of the semester.

I'm also happy to know that the reading group inspired my colleague Alaistair Matthews to blog about his thoughts on the Ursula legend and medieval German literature, which can be read here.

Ursula shielding the virgins in her cloak
Amiens - BM - ms. 0203, f.045, book of hours, use of Rome, 15th century
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

The Legend of Ursula

The legend of Ursula has been long in the making, and the story has received elaborating impulses at various points over a long stretch of time. The earliest evidence for a veneration of the virgin martyrs of Cologne is found in an inscription in an old basilica which states that a certain Clematius built this chapel in honour of the martyred virgins of the city. The inscription is believed to be from the fourth, or possibly the fifth, century, and is the foundation for the rest of the legend, although it provides neither names, dates or numbers.

The next step in the development of the legend came in the ninth century, when a sermon was written in natali sanctarum Coloniensum virginum, for the birthday of the holy virgins of Cologne. This birthday refers to the day of their death, considered in the theology of sainthood to be the heavenly birthday of the saint, the day when the saint entered, or was reborn in, Heaven. In this sermon we are for the first time given names and numbers, and it is stated that there were several thousand virgins, foremost of whom was the virgin Pinnosa. The high number of virgins is repeated in the martyrology of Wandalbert of Prüm, c.850, where it is said that there were several thousand of these virgins. This source might have been the Sermo in natali, for the martyrology of Usuard, c.875, only gives the names Martha and Saula and adds that there were several others, and this suggests that the high number of the Sermo had not yet become consensus. However, only a few decades after Usuard the number is set at eleven thousand and this became consensus for the centuries to come.

It was during the course of the tenth century that prose narratives emerged in which the basic story was established: The daughter of a Christian English king, Ursula, is asked for her hand in marriage by a pagan prince. Ursula wants to avoid the marriage, so she asks for a delay of three years, and in this time she summons ten fellow virgins and each of these eleven have a retinue of thousand virgins. They set off in a ship and are borne by the winds to Cologne, and from there they undergo circuitous route which takes them via Basel and Rome back to Cologne again where they are martyred by the Huns. This story is probably derived from an old legend, a version of which is also found in Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the British Kings, where we find Ursula, eleven thousand noble virgins, and their retinue of sixty thousand young women. 

The ships sailing to Cologne
MS Egerton 3028, f.7, Wace, Roman de Brut, 14th century
Courtesy of British Library

By the thirteenth century, in the time when Jacobus was compiling the Legenda Aurea, the legend had become very elaborate. In the version recorded by Jacobus, Ursula demands that her bethroted is baptized, and she wants to bring the non-Christian virgins of her retinue to baptism as well, thus giving Ursula a more active and apostolic role. As in the above-mentioned legend, Ursula demands ten virgins to follow her, and a retinue of thousand virgins for each of the eleven. The virgins are then brought in from all over the world, and a special mention is made of Gerasina of Sicily who joins Ursula - though not herself a virgin - and brings her five children with her. This is a crucial point in the story, that in addition to the eleven thousand virgins there is a multitude of followers of both sexes who, as it is said, joins this new knighthood of Ursula, all bent on martyrdom.

The virgins and their followers then set out on the route described above and when they arrive in Rome they are greeted by Pope Cyriacus who is British and also fictional. Cyriacus joins up with the virgins and they all leave for Cologne, together with a number of other bishops who had held offices in cities as diverse as Ravenna, Lucca and Antioch. In addition, we learn that Ursula's husband-to-be, Ethereus, is also compelled by an angelic message to leave Britain where he has been residing and go to Cologne to meet his martyrdom.

At this stage in the story we are introduced to the first antagonists of the story, two scheming pagan commanders of the Roman army called Maximus and Africanus. They are concerned that this massive array of Christians "would make the Christian religion flourish overmuch", and so they plot to bring about the death of Ursula and her companions. They therefore communicate with their kinsman Julius, who despite his name and familial relations is the chief of the Huns, and he agrees to march on Cologne and slaughter the Christians. When all the groups of people finally converge on Cologne, it is Justus who plays the role as the traditional tempter as we find it in the classical accounts of virgin martyrs. For as the Huns are slaughtering the Christians, Justus becomes so dazzled by Ursula's beauty that he asks her to marry him. She refuses, and Justus shoots and arrow through her.

The last section of the legend as recounted by Jacobus tells of one virgin, Cordula, who had hidden in the ships during the massacre, but gave up herself and was martyred on the next day, leaving her outside the celebration of the martyrs.

Ursula's martyrdom by a Hun's arrow
Mans (Le) - BM - ms. 0688, f.028, book of hours, c.1435-1440
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

Narrative and characters

The account in Legenda Aurea reads more like a chivalric romance rather than a saint's life, and this has been the case since the earliest prose narratives about the virgins of Cologne. The level of elaboration, however, the numerous characters, the profusion of sub-plots and the gathering of people from a wide-ranging geographical spectre, all these are typical of the chivalric romance as this genre came about in the twelfth century, the century which also saw a new surge in the cult of the eleven thousand virgins.

It is interesting to note the strategies employed to make the narrative more accessible to the reader or the listener. The various sub-plots of Gerasina of Sicily, Pope Cyriacus, the Bishop of Greece and his widowed sister, and others, all contribute to make the narrative more episodic. This in turns creates a different curve of suspense than what we find in most other narratives of Legenda Aurea, where the trajectory is more straightforward, more formulaic. Ursula and her companions, however, do not follow the typical trajectory, but rather a trajectory which might be said to bear greater resemblance to that of errant knights in the romances - except that the journey of the virgins are guided by divine power and angelic messages.

Another aspect which emphasises the similarity between chivalric romance and the Ursula story is the wide geographic scope. Ursula's followers come from all over Christendom, from locations which are both exotic and more familiar, at least to the continental audience. Ravenna, Lucca, Sicily, Antioch, Britain, Greece, all these are place-names thrown in seemingly to provide that blend of familiar and exotic which is so typical of the chivalric romance. For example, in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, written in the early 13th century, we find figures like Morholt of Ireland, Lot the king of Norway, Count Lanzidant of Greenland, Kingrisin king of Ascalon and Ipomidon of Babylon, to mention only a few of the most exotic members of the cast. This wide-reaching geographic blend is a staple of the chivalric romance, and in the abovementioned History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, we read how King Arthur subdued a wide range of kingdoms, as illustrated in the chronicle of Peter Langtoft, seen below.

Arthur standing on the crowns he has conquered
MS Royal 20 A II, f.4, English miscellany, c.1307-c.1327
Courtesy of British Library

It is of course natural that a narrative containing such a multitude of characters is in dire need of figureheads and focal points. This explains for instance the various sub-plots of the story, which I suspect should be seen as a sign of inspiration taken from the numerous chivalric romances written in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Through these sub-plots, Ursula maintains her role as the architecture of the grand scheme, but it also allows for some pauses from the main action and the introduction to new characters which adds faces and thus personality to a massive blob of around seventy thousand persons marching on Cologne. However, it is worth noting that Ursula is the only protagonist character who is featured throughout the story. Eutherius, her husband, appears twice but is largely inactive, while Gerasina, Cyriacus and the unfortunate Cordula are given their time in the limelight and then never mentioned again - with the possible exception of Cyriacus who is mentioned leaving Rome, but as he has also been featured in the preceding paragraph it might still be said to be a continuous sub-plot. In this way, we are given a long list of names which allow us to create some mental images of the characters involved, but they are treated very briefly. However, since Ursula is the only properly recurring character, she is the one most easily imprinted on the mind of the audience. In a way, it seems like the secondary character are there to lift up Ursula as the main protagonist, like a choir is meant to bring out the soloist more strongly in a musical performance. In this way, the multitude is given several heads but only one figurehead.

Another explanation for the various characters might be to add some verisimilitude to the story by mentioned geographical localities which exist in the real world and which therefore act as guarantors of the account's veracity. To such a strategy it is of no significance that in the temporal setting of this narrative - which Jacobus argues must be set in the mid-fifth century, there was no queen of Sicily, and there was no pope called Cyriacus.

Regardless the explanation for the multitude of secondary characters, the need for a primary protagonist is evident. We can ask ourselves why Ursula ended up as this figurehead rather than Pinnosa mentioned in Sermo in natali sanctarum Coloniensum virginum, but ultimately it is only to be expected that an unwieldy mass of virgins needed at least one named figurehead so that the faithful can direct their prayers more easily, or so that the story is lifted out of mere myth, which is what happens easily when no names are attached to such a massive body of saints.

Ursula and Gerasina
Châteauroux - BM - ms. 0002, f.376, breviary, use of Paris, c.1414
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

Ursula and the virgins
MS Royal 13 A IX, f.4, Francesco Roseti of Verona, before 1547
Courtesy of British Library

Concluding thoughts

In the medieval calendars and collections of saints' lives we find several feasts which commemorate groups of saints, men and women grouped together because they had shared eminence in their holy works. In the Legenda Aurea alone we find for instance chapters titled "The Seven Brothers", "The Seven Sleepers", "Saint Adrian and His Companions", "Saint Cyriacus and His Companions" (not to be confused with the character in the Ursula legend", "Saint Hippolytus and His Companions", "The Four Crowned Martyrs", and a few more. In most of these stories there are some saints who are more prominent than the others, and the often low number of companions makes it easier to accept these groups, yet even they have their figureheads.

The need for such figureheads can be exemplified not only by the fact that Ursula has become the leader of the group even though hers is not the oldest name featured in the legend. Another instance can be found in a Norwegian legend most likely based on the story of Ursula. This legend is that of Sanctorum in Selio, the holy of Selje. This legend tells of an Irish princess who escaped marriage to a pagan prince by fleeing to Norway. They were brought to the coast of Selje, which is a small portion of the the Western Norwegian coast. When the pagans came after them, Sunniva prayed for deliverance and the holy were buried in an avalanche of rocks. We don't know exactly how old this story is, but we know that the story was known in the mid-eleventh century from references in Adam of Bremen's History of the Diocese of Hamburg. The name of this princess, however, was not given until the twelfth century, when the relics of these men and women were translated to Bergen. She was then called Sunniva, and she is now one of Norway's four saints. That Sunniva emerges as the leader for the group as a late development in the legend is similar to what we see in Ursula, and points to the need for a figurehead in a group of saints as a phenomenon not limited to the legend of the virgins of Cologne.

This need for figureheads is probably not limited only to the medieval cult of saints, especially since there are plenty of postmedieval collectives of saints that are officially recognized. We have for instance the forty martyrs of England and Wales, or the martyrs of Nagasaki in 1622, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with these cases to know whether any figureheads emerged. It will, however, be interesting to see the development of the collective of saints canonized by the Armenian church earlier this year. In commemoration of the genocide of the Armenians in 1915, the Armenian church canonized all 1.5 million victims of the persecution, and the question is whether anyone, and if so who, will emerge as leaders and figureheads of the possibly biggest saint-collective in Christian history.

Ursula and the virgins in the most traditional depiction
Mâcon - BM - ms. 0003, f.003, Jacobus de Voragine, Légende dorée, c.1470
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

Literature


Farmer, David, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, Oxford University Press, 2005

Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, translated by William Granger Ryan, Princeton University Press, 2012

Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, translated by A. T. Hatto, Penguin Classics, 1980

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15225d.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/armenia/11559613/Armenian-Church-makes-saints-of-1.5-million-genocide-victims.html

Ruminations on the ivory tower

As a historian by education I have spent most of my adult life in academia. This means that I have become exposed to the prejudices that come from both sides, both from academics who think that people outside academia are hopelessly ignorant, and from non-academics who think academics to be out of touch with the real world. I'm quite sure most of my fellow scholars have been in touch with these ideas one way or the other. Personally I consider both these sides to be indulging in caricatures and I have little patience for either, but naturally there are some people from both within and without academia who come dangerously close to their respective caricatures.

In my current job as a PhD candidate at the Centre for Medieval Literature in Odense, Denmark, part of the many aspects of my work deals with impact and outreach, i.e. how to ensure how my research can be made available and accessible beyond the Centre itself. This has been a long-standing preoccupation for me as well, and this is part of why this blog has developed from its original travelogue form towards its current form as a channel for disseminating information about my research and reading. To my mind, academic research must have as one of its purposes to be made accessible to non-specialists so that the research can actually be of use to the public discourse. This is perhaps particularly pertinent to medievalists whose subject matter is perennially a topic in non-specialist discourse, yet often without regard for the latest research on the matter itself - which is why so many myths about the Middle Ages persist so very strongly even in our time.

I was reminded of all this today when I was having a chat with my mother, and she wanted me to tell about what I had been up to lately at work. Not knowing where to start, I began talking about some of things that had taken most of my time in the week before leaving for home. This spiralled into a sprawling and eclectic conversation jumping from one topic to the next, only briefly touching directly on my own research. We were joined later by my father as I was explaining the origins of the cult of saints, and the conversation kept going on to medieval manuscripts, Reformation history and church history.

This latter topic is of some particular interest to my family since we live just a few hundred meters from where the medieval church of our village, Hyen, once stood. This is a church we know very little about, and I have only seen it mentioned twice in the ecclesiastical diplomas from the fourteenth century. Nothing remains from the structure itself, and it is likely that it was a wooden church, or that perhaps its stonework became embedded in the cellar walls of the nearby farms. No excavation has been undertaken, and today it is only marked by a menhir which was raised in its commemoration in the 1950s.

This church is the only proper connection my home village has to the Middle Ages, and it is apt to provoke some speculation. My father became triggered by our talk of manuscripts and started thinking of the sources that he thought must once have been there, such as books containing details about baptisms and weddings, arguing that these details must have been kept to provide data for the tax collectors and eventual disputes. It struck me how natural such expectations are to a modern mind, accustomed as we are to a wealth of paper and information. For my father, these convictions were perhaps all the more easily entertained because he is a sexton at the modern village church and a part of his job is to write down these details in the registers. I then took the opportunity to explain just how precious vellum was, and that our church was likely to have been a somewhat poor church, and that it might not even have had an entire bible among its possessions.

My father's expectations and his modern vantage point opened up for me a series of speculations about what our local priests might have had in terms of books, and that forced me to put together facts with conjecture, mingling what I knew from my academic work and what little information we have available about the church which once stood near our farm.

Later that evening I went with my father to help him with a few things in church, and as we were finishing he showed me the church registers which are kept there, looking up the details for the day of my baptism back in 1987 and the day of my confirmation in 2002. It was quite amazing to see these documents both from a personal and from a historian's point of view, and it became all the more clear to me what expectations a modern mind might have regarding medieval source materials.

All in all, my talk with my parents reminded me once again why it is so crucial that academics not only stick to their own when discussing and disseminating their work. When I'm talking with my colleagues at lunch, for instance, or at a conference, we have a common frame of reference which is radically different from the frames of reference that non-specialists can be expected to have. This is why it is sometimes quite easy to talk about work to fellow medievalists, even though we have our own specializations to bridge. But precisely because my parents are not schooled in medieval history, I need to engage more with basic matters, matters which I most often take for granted and therefore might not problematize sufficiently well. Furthermore, when I have to explain what I otherwise would find superfluous to explain, I am taken down those routes which might lead me to apply knowledge more conjecturally than is the norm in academic work. I'm therefore quite happy that my parents open up these paths to me in this way.

Some thoughts on an inclusive syllabus - gender

Jousting women
BL MS Royal 2 B VII, f.197v, psalter, England, between 1310 and 1320
Courtesy of British Library

A few days ago, November 30, academic and blogger Erin Wunker launched an appeal to fellow academics for crafting syllabi that emphasised inclusiveness and diversity. The appeal was disseminated on Twitter via the hashtag inclusivesyllabus, devised by Wunker's co-blogger Aimée Morrison (Associate Professor at University of Waterloo). I myself became aware of this appeal thanks to medievalist Dorothy Kim who picked itand redirected it more specifically to teachers of the pre-1500 eras. What followed was an engaging discussion about various ways in which to make syllabi more inclusive. Some of the suggestions that arose were collected in storify by Jonathan Hsy, and it became evident that there were many ways to go about making a syllabus more inclusive.

Personally, as a historian of medieval texts, I embrace the idea of an inclusive syllabus because a history syllabus should reflect historical reality, and the reality is that the medieval world was both diverse and complex (though often not inclusive in the modern sense). In this blogpost I wish to present some of my ideas for an inclusive syllabus, ideas which emerged in the course of the Twitter discussion, and which I think are more easily fleshed out here. In the following I will only address one topic, and hopefully I will return to other topics in later blogposts. Since this post is the result of a collaborative discussion my ideas were inspired by the suggestions of several people, sometimes in agreement, sometimes in opposition. I will try my best to provide due acknowledgement for these ideas, and if some readers who participated in this discussion feel they have been forgotten, please let me know.

The following is a set of works, themes and strategies by which I believe a syllabus of a course in medieval studies can become more inclusive. It is worth noting that this is not an exhaustive list by any means. It is also worth noting that the following does not comprise a syllabus of its own, but that it is intended to provide ideas for those who are designing their own syllabi. Moreover, I want to emphasise that a great number of participants in this dicussion come from literary studies, while I myself have a background predominantly from history. This means that my perspective will be somewhat different, and it also means that many suggestions might be more suitable for history rather than, say, English courses. However, I'm of the opinion that to teach medieval literature without also bringing in medieval history to provide a context for this literature is shoddy and wrong.

A final remark worth making is that the degree and level of diversity and inclusiveness in a medieval studies syllabus depends very much on the course itself. I for my part would love to design a course which was centred on precisely the diversity of medieval history. However, even though syllabi can often emphasise diversity only up to a point, the important thing is to be aware that measures can be taken to ensure an increased attention to diversity, both in introductory courses and more specialised courses.

Marie de France writing her lais
Bibliothèque nationale de France - BnF, Arsenal Library, Ms. 3142 f. 256, France, 1285-92
Courtesy of Wikimedia

Suggestions for inclusive syllabi - gender


Scholarship and secondary reading

There are many ways in which a syllabus can be made more inclusive, and a good place to start is to make sure that the reading list includes scholarship done by both men and women. In medieval studies, this is not difficult at all: Many brilliant scholars, both male and female, have contributed to the field of medieval studies for decades, and to have both men and women is important not only because it is more inclusive but also because that often is the only way to accurately represent the contributions done in a field of medieval scholarship. Once when I was a teaching assistant at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, after having finished my MA thesis, I was approached by one of the female history students who asked if I could give her some names of female academics. She made it quite clear that she wanted someone of her own gender to look up to, and in a field like history I can understand that very well as it often comes across - at least to first-year students - that history is largely written, and enacted, by men. Having done my MA thesis on the cult of Saint Edward the Confessor in the High Middle Ages, I was not short on suggestions and ended up compiling a long list of female academics whom I had myself relied on for my dissertation. To provide students with the sensation that they have someone from their own gender to look up to, and via those role models to be reassured that their gender does not prohibit a career in a field of medieval studies, is one of the cornerstones of an inclusive syllabus.

The same point, that students need to feel represented, should also be made when it comes to ethnicity. However, in medieval studies - especially history - that is less easily done simply because a vast majority of medieval scholarship is conducted by Caucasian men and women in Europe and in North America. When possible, inclusion of relevant scholarship by non-Caucasian academics is a positive thing and is to be encouraged. 

Catherine of Siena
Autun - BM - ms. 0269, f.170v, Book of Hours, Use of Autun, c.1480-1490
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

Female medieval authors

The majority of recorded medieval history is dominated by men. The majority of known individuals from the Middle Ages, both in the political sphere, the religious sphere, the cultural sphere, the mercantile sphere and so on, are men. Most of the texts written in the Middle Ages were written by men and largely for men. This is how the situation is, and the majority of primary sources for a syllabus in medieval studies is most likely to be comprised of male writers or male authors (not always the same thing in the Middle Ages), unless the course was designed specifically to teach female writers, which would be an interesting challenge. The problem, however, is not that most medieval sources were written by men, this is to be expected. The problem arises when the many female influences on medieval texts are ignored, and it is here an inclusive syllabus can make an important difference.

Although most medieval authors were men, we have quite a list of female authors as well and these can be employed in a wide range of syllabi, covering several angles and subjects. Since women in the Middle Ages had several restrictions for how they could participate in society. However, many women did become notable authors, for instance due to their education as nuns. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that many authors did not themselves write the works they authored, but dictated them to a scribe. This also meant that the literacy was not necessarily the obstacle we might think it is. I also want to point to Hildegard of Bingen for a case where lack of education was seen as a strong point. In her collection of celestial visions Scivias, Hildegard emphasises her insufficient education and lifts it up as a mark of the authenticity of her vision. Because she is lacking rhetorical prowess and can only describe her visions in simple words, her prose is also - she argues - more true, more accessible, more accurate. This claim of superiority in content through inferiority in style is a timeworn topos of much medieval writing and originated in part in opposition to the rhetoric of pagan writers of the early Christian period. Hildegard is here following an old tradition, but she employs the motif as a woman: Since she, as a woman, is less educated than high-ranking churchmen, her prose is untouched - thus not falsified - by rhetorical ornament.

It is also important to note that although there were many medieval femal writers and authors, several female voices gained dissemination through the translation of their words into Latin. This was the case with Saint Birgitta of Sweden whose revelations were translated by her confessor. In the case of some Italian female recluses who became venerated as saints, their stories were also written down into Latin by their male, mendicant confessors. The stories and the content of the works came from women, but word and content was shaped by men educated in the hagiographic genre.

Despite social restrictions, women could become powerful voices in their age, and could be ardent critics of men of powers, be they kings or popes, such as Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena respectively. Most of the primary sources from the Middle Ages which have a female authorship are religious works since it was in the religious sphere could be most active and could most easily express themselves in literature. These works, however, are applicable not only to religious matters but can be used to explore several aspects of medieval culture. 

Christine de Pizan
BL MS Harley 4431, various works by Christine de Pizan, France, c.1410-c.1414
Courtesy of British Library

Below is an incomplete list of female late-antique and medieval authors which provides important suggestions to elements of an inclusive syllabus:


Anna Komnene, The Alexiad

Anonymous nun of Barking Abbey, Life of Edward the Confessor (in Anglo-Norman verse)

Birgitta of Sweden, Revelations

Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies; The Treasure of the City of Ladies

Clemence of Barking, Life of Saint Catherine (in Anglo-Norman verse)

Egeria, The Pilgrimage

Elisabeth von Schönau, various works

Hadewijch of Brabant, various works

Heloise, Letters

Hildegard von Bingen, Scivias

Hrothsvita of Gandersheim, various works

Jorunn Skáldmær, skaldic extracts preserved in The Prose Edda

Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe

Marie de France, Lais

Medieval women as patrons

As was pointed out by Erica Weaver, medieval women of power - either as queens or abbesses - were important patrons of arts and were the dedicatees of many important works of medieval literature. Chrétien de Troyes, for instance had Marie duchess of Champagne as his patron, and Marie's mother Eleanor of Aquitaine was the patron of writers such as Wace and Benoit de Sainte-Maure. One of the perhaps most interesting cases of female medieval patronage is Queen Emma of England who commissioned the historiographical work now known as Encomium Emmae Reginae (alternately Gesta Cnutonis). This latter work is available in translation and has been the subject of much excellent scholarship.

Emma receiving the encomium
BL MS Add. 33241, Encomium Emmae Reginae eleventh century
Courtesy of Wikimedia

It is here important to note that although female literacy was generally lower than the literacy of men, literacy in the Middle Ages is not the same as being familiar with literature. In the Middle Ages, reading was a communal activity and one person would often read aloud to others, either during mealtimes in the monastery, in the royal court, or in the families of nobles and the merchants. Precisely since the ability to read was so limited, those who could read were often given the task of reading to others, and sometimes work could be recited from memory - which was made easier by writing in verse, and which is why prose texts could sometimes be rendered into verse as a mnemonic tool. Medieval literature had a strong oral element we sometimes tend to overlook.


Medieval female saints

In addition to teaching works authored by women, an inclusive syllabus also needs to contain works written about women, even though these works were authored by men. One helpful perspective here is history, where legal documents of various kinds provide examples of the the roles, the constrictions, but also the possibilities of women in the Middle Ages. Even in a literature course, it would be a great addition to provide some historical context for the lives of medieval women, for women in the Middle Ages were not secondary characters to historical events although they have been made to be so by traditional historiographical works.

Four female saints (the Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, Margaret and one more)
BL MS Royal 2 B VII, f.308, psalter, England, between 1310 and 1320
Courtesy of British Library

One field in which the role of women, the perception of women and the importance of women in the Middle Ages can be seen is in the cult of saints. I emphasise this field because the cult of saints is my own particular field, so I am more than a little biased. Nonetheless, I maintain that in the cult of saints we see the convergence of many subjects and many perspectives which are useful to the topic at hand. For instance, when reading texts pertaining to medieval female saints, we can in some cases grasp the outlines of the historicity of the lives of these women (though that historicity has been obscured by the pre-requisites of hagiography). We can also be able to detect how male medieval writers viewed women. A great number of such writers held a view of women which was tinged with various degrees of misogyny inherited largely from patristic writers and parts of the Biblical narrative, and which was cultivated by a monastic environment in which celibacy and separation of the sexes were seen as crucial steps towards spiritual perfection. Also secular writers, like Giovanni Boccaccio, were likely to hold such views of the feminine. However, men who wrote down hagiographies for women were faced with a subject which had attained holiness and yet belonged to what was considered the weaker sex. In these hagiogaphies, therefore, male writers were compelled to provide a more nuanced depiction of women, and even though they might exude a more negative attitude to women in general they at least had to acknowledge that their protagonists were holy persons.

The cult of saints is an important source for an inclusive syllabus, not only because it is a repository for mixed attitudes towards women, but also because women themselves could write hagiographies. I've mentioned above the Life of Saint Catherine written by Clemence of Barking, for instance. Clemence's Life was, however, an adaptation, a vernacular version of an existing legend.The norm was that men were the ones writing the Latin, seminal lives, such as when Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and Osbert of Clare were commissioned to write the vitae of English female monastics who were believed to be saints. In the genre of hagiography, however, we see an interesting intersection of men and women in the cases where the lives of the women were dictated by the women themselves in the vernacular and then translated into Latin as the vita of that woman by a male figure, often her confessor. This is believed to be the case with Christina Markyate in the twelfth century, and became a widespread trend in the emergence of cults of female recluses in Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. In the case of the Italian ascetic women, their confessors and/or hagiographers were often monks of the Dominican and Franciscan orders who sought to make of these women examples for others to follow, and who also were likely to give these vita a certain mendicant spin. This relationship between a female author and a male writer, translator and editor is an interesting area of study, and there are numerous examples of this relationship. As mentioned above, the same relationship goes for male scribes who latinized the visions and polemics of women religious who later became saints, such as Birgitta of Sweden, but in those cases we can at least expect that the author has been active in the editing process, whereas in the case of hagiographies the author and protagonist has been dead for some time by the time the hagiography is published.

Elizabeth of Hungary reading
Chambéry - BM - ms. 0004, f. 652, Franciscan breviary, Milan, c.1430
Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

During the Middle Ages, there were many female saints which were venerated throughout Christendom. Some of these women were mythical and belonged to such a distant past that their mere historicity is dubious, namely SS Margaret, Lucy, Agnes, Agatha, Catherine of Alexandria, Barbara and others. Some were results of more slowly coalescing legends, as in the cases of SS Ursula, and Sunniva of Norway. Other women were historical, although veneration and hagiography naturally added some sediments of myth to their stories, such as Eadburga of Winchester, Elizabeth of Hungary, or Margaret of Scotland. This rich repository of medieval stories about women is a great and needful addition to an inclusive medievalist syllabus.

Below is a list of some lives of female saints available in English translation:

Anonymous, The Life of Christina Markyate (Oxford World Classics)

Clemence of Barking, Life of Saint Catherine (Everyman)

Geoffrey of Burton, Life and Miracles of St Modwenna (Oxford Medieval Texts)

Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, texts on the female saints of Ely (Oxford Medieval Texts)

Niketas Magistros, Life of Theoktistes of Lesbos (Dumbarton Oaks)

Raymond of Capua, The Life of Agnes of Montepulciano (Dominican nuns of summit)


Shorter versions of legends and lives can be found in Jacobus de Voragine's The Golden Legend (Princeton University Press). For a more detailed studies of these women, it is also necessary to work with their liturgical offices.

In addition to these female saints, it is of course important to remember the omnipresent cult of the Virgin Mary, which resulted in an expansive body of literature, both in Latin and in the vernacular. This subject is too big for this present blogpost, but should not be overlooked as it covers both religious and secular literature, hymns, liturgical offices, miracle collections and prose narratives. 

Mary of Egypt
BL MS Royal 20 D VI, Lives of the saints, Wauchier de Denain, France, 13th century
Courtesy of British Library

Women also appear in medieval texts as representatives of otherness, but this is a subject I hope to cover in a later blogpost.