Journal of the History of the Behovroral Sciences

Volume 26. October 1990

Aton Gurevich. Medieval Popular Culture: Problems of Belief and Perception.

Translated by Jdnos M. Bak and Paul A. Hollingsworth. Cambridge Studies in

Oral and Literate Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Editions
de la maison des sciences de Ihomme, 1988. xx + 275 pp. $44.50 (cloth) (Reviewed
by James A. Brundage)
Aron Gurevich, one of the major medieval historians currently active in the Soviet
Union, has hitherto ignored religious issues and values almost completely in earlier works
on medieval culture and mentalities. In this interesting and stimulating new study,
however, Gurevich begins to right the balance by addressing the problem of the relationship between the religious beliefs and practices that theologians and other members
of the clerical elite expounded and the beliefs and practices current among the vast majority of ordinary medieval people, both clerical and lay. The principal difficulty in such
a study lies in discovering just what ordinary people, most of them unversed in Latin
and unlearned in theology, actually did believe about the mysteries of the spiritual life,
since they did not often create records themselves and generally left only faint traces
at best in the records created by others.
Gurevich seeks evidence about popular religious beliefs in sermons addressed to
lay audiences, catechisms and other works of lowbrow theology, as well as in popular
art - that is, artefacts such as statutes, stained glass, and frescoes in churches, which
were visible and accessible to the ordinary run of the faithful, rather than, for example,
manuscript illuminations, which only the elite were likely to see. For the early Middle
Ages he draws heavily upon evidence from saints lives. He relies as well on the questions and admonitions found in penitentials, which furnish a surprising yield of information about religious practices and cults that high theology disapproved of as deviant
and hence considered sinful. During the high Middle Ages, roughly from 1100 to 1400,
vernacular literature became an increasingly prominent element of lay culture and literary
compositions contribute correspondingly to his documentation of the beliefs and practices of the illiterati or idiotae (that is, those who knew no Latin) from the late medieval
period.
Gurevich argues that the worlds of the learned elite and the vast untaught majority
were in constant contact with one another and that medieval religious ideas and ideals
were a product of interaction between them. That interaction was for centuries a twoway street, he maintains, along which traffic flowed in both directions. So long as each
sector remained open and continued to absorb and incorporate beliefs and practices
from the other, medieval religion remained vigorous. But at some point -and Gurevich
is a bit vague about just when that point was reached, although he hints that it occurred
in the mid-thirteenth century -clerical intellectuals became increasingly unwilling to
tolerate popular traditions and beliefs and to integrate them into the theological systems
of the high culture. Thus the capacity of clerical culture to shape and restructure popular
perceptions became increasingly restricted. Instead, the intellectual and institutional elite
began to reject popular religion as heresy. As the dialogue between the two cultures
broke down, according to Gurevich, popular religion became increasingly alienated from
elite values; that in turn led to increasingly sharp and bitter religious clashes during the
late Middle Ages and the early modern period.
This is certainly an intriguing thesis and Gurevich argues it with verve, gusto, and
impressive learning. Critical readers will want to ponder carefully, however, some short383

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BOOK REVIEWS

comings in his argument. Thus, for example, Gurevich substantially overstates the force
that traditionalism and conservatism exerted in shaping medieval thought and writing.
He observes, rightly enough, that innovation, originality, and novelty were not qualities
that were highly prized, especially in theologians. From there, however, he leaps to the
conclusion that ecclesiastical literature directed to the laity presents a uniform corpus
from Caesarius of Aries all the way to Caesarius of Heisterbach. From that premise
Gurevich draws the unwarranted methodological inference that the historian who deals
with that period need not read all the evidence, but can safely sample the writings of
a few select authors and still comprehend the panorama of unchanging teachings that
remained current throughout those seven static centuries.
If these overarching generalizations were reliable and true, the medieval historians
task would be a great deal simpler and certainly far less fatiguing. Unfortunately, they
are neither reliable nor true and break down seriously when one examines some important cases. Let me mention just one example that happens to be particularly critical for
popular culture, namely, the formation of marriage. It is not even approximately true
that doctrines about the formation of marriage remained fixed and unchanging from
the sixth century (Caesarius of Aries) to the thirteenth (Caesarius of Heisterbach). Instead, marriage formation underwent a series of radical changes during those seven centuries, amid storms of controversy. Those controversies and changes were by no means
confined simply to the academic speculations of an elite circle of theologians. Instead
they were of immediate relevance to, and had direct impact on the interests, lifestyles,
and personal fortunes of, the married laity at every level of society. Much the same
could be said of changes during that same period in theological and canonical teachings
about divorce, separation, and annulment.
Having said that, however, I should add that in some respects developments regarding marriage formation bear out quite handily Gurevichs paradigm of reciprocal interaction between popular beliefs and elite doctrines. Some church authorities were at times
prepared to adjust theological teachings and canonical prescriptions about marriage in
order to accommodate popular notions and practices. And there is substantial evidence
as well that the general public quickly became aware of the rules about marriage formulated by the clerical elite and that ordinary people quite often seriously attempted
to observe them.
Finally I might note that Gurevich seems to me to have paid far too little attention
to canon law, and legal history generally, in his quest for information about popular
culture. The law courts of the medieval church marked, after all, one of the most important intersections where highbrow theology met the practices of common people,
frequently with interesting results for both.

Journal of the Hislory of the Behavioral Sciences

Volume 26. Oclober 19W

Heinrich von Staden. Herophilus: The Art of Medicine in Early Alexandria. Cambridge
and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. xliii + 666 pp. $140.00 (cloth)
(Reviewed by Michael R. McVaugh)
Imagine that, two thousand years hence, Charles Darwins writings and letters have
all been lost and a scholar has been given the task of reconstructing Darwins thought